Paris

by Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart

THE NATIONAL OBJECTIVE IN WAR

When, however, the fateful decision for war has been taken, what does common sense tell us should be the national objective? To ensure a resumption and progressive continuance of what may be termed the peace-time policy, with the shortest and least costly interruption of the normal life of the country.

What stands in the way of this? The determination of the hostile nation to enforce its contrary policy in defiance of our own aims and desires. To gain our aim or objective we have to change this adverse will into a compliance with our own policy, and the sooner and more cheaply in lives and money we can do this, the better chance is there of a continuance of national prosperity in the widest sense.

The aim of a nation in war is, therefore, to subdue the enemy’s will to resist, with the least possible human and economic loss to itself.

If we realize that this is the true objective, we shall appreciate the fact that the destruction of the enemy’s armed forces is but a means—and not necessarily an inevitable or infallible one—to the attainment of our goal. It is clearly not, despite the assertion of military pundits, the sole true objective in war. Clear the air of the fog of catchwords which surrounds the conduct of war, grasp that in the human will lies the source and mainspring of all conflict, as of all other activities of man’s life, and it becomes transparently clear that our goal in war can only be attained by the subjugation of the opposing will. All acts, such as defeat in the field, propaganda, blockade, diplomacy, or attack on the centres of government and population, are seen to be but means to that end; and, instead of being tied to one fixed means, we are free to weigh the respective merits of each. To choose whichever are most suitable, most rapid, and most economic, i.e., which will gain the goal with the minimum disruption of our national life during and after the war. Of what use is decisive victory in battle if we bleed to death as a result of it?

A single man can be beaten by the simple process of killing him. Not so a nation—for total extermination, even if it were possible, would recoil on the heads of the victors in the close-knit organization of the world’s society, and would involve their own ethical and commercial ruin—as we have had a foretaste from the attrition policy of the Great War. But besides being mutually deadly it is unnecessary, for a highly organized state is only as strong as its weakest link. In a great war the whole nation is involved, though not necessarily, or wisely, under arms. The fists and the sinews of war are mutually dependent, and, if we can demoralize one section of the nation, the collapse of its will to resist compels the surrender of the whole—as the last months of 1918 demonstrated.

It is the function of grand strategy to discover and exploit the Achilles’ heel of the enemy nation; to strike not against its strongest bulwark but against its most vulnerable spot. In the earliest recorded war, Paris, son of Priam, King of Troy, thus slew the foremost champion of the Greeks. As the Greek legend runs, Achilles, when a child, having been dipped by his mother, Thetis, in the waters of the Styx, his whole body became invulnerable save only the heel by which she held him. In the Trojan war, after Achilles had slain Hector in direct combat, Paris brought stratagem to bear, and his arrow, guided by Apollo, struck Achilles in his vulnerable heel. It is significant that Apollo, among his numerous attributes, was held to be the sun god, and the god of prophecy, for here surely he forecast the future of war, and shed light on the true objective—a ray of truth too dazzling for the vision of all but a few soldiers.

After dashing out the lives of millions in vain assault against the enemy’s strength, it might not be amiss now to take a lesson from the objective aimed at by Paris three thousand years ago.

Turning from myth to history, it may be useful to glance at two authentic examples of the use of the moral objective—which in each case changed the course of the world’s history.