Paris

by Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart

The enemy nation’s will to resist is subdued by the fact or threat of making life so unpleasant and difficult for the people that they will comply with your terms rather than endure this misery. We use the words “or threat” because sometimes a nation, directly its means of resistance—its forces—were overthrown, has hastened to make peace before its territory was actually invaded. Such timely surrender is merely a recognition of the inevitable consequences.

In what ways is this pressure exerted? Partly through the stomach, partly through the pocket, and partly through the spirit. In the “good old days” more forcible physical measures were practised, burning, pillage, and rapine. But in the present age the wholesale and avowed use of such persuasive aids is barred by the ethical code of nations—and press publicity, though, as the last war showed, still indulged in sporadically with or without the specious excuse of “reprisals.” But if the international conscience is too tender to permit this direct violence, it swallows its qualms where the people’s will to resist is undermined by the indirect method of wholesale starvation. Deprive individuals of food and there is an outcry, cut off the food supply of a nation and the moral sense of the world is undisturbed. Thus the naval weapon is pre-eminently the means of applying “stomach” pressure, because its blockade is indirect instead of direct, general instead of particular. As nothing more surely undermines moral than starvation, a blockade would seem obviously the best means to gain the moral objective were it not for two grave disadvantages. First, it can only be successful where the enemy country is not self-supporting, and can be entirely surrounded—or at any rate its supplies from outside effectively intercepted. Second, it is slow to take effect, and so imposes a strain on the resources of the blockading country.

Pressure through “the pocket” can be exerted directly by levies, confiscation, or seizure of customs—which require a military occupation—and indirectly by the general dislocation of business and the stoppage of the enemy’s commerce. Above all, as the military forces of a modern nation are but the wheels of the car of war, dependent for their driving power on the engine—the nation’s industrial resources—it follows that a breakdown in the engine or in the transmission—the means of transport and communication—will inevitably render the military forces immobile and powerless. Just as the engine and transmission of an automobile, because of the intricacy and delicacy of their joints and working parts, are far more susceptible to damage than the road wheels, so in a modern nation at war its industrial resources and communications form its Achilles’ heel. Mere common sense should tell us that if possible these are the points at which to strike.

Pressure on “the spirit” is intimately connected with that on “the pocket,” a thorough and long-continued interruption of the normal life of a nation is as depressing and demoralizing as the intimidation of the people by methods of terrorism—which, even if temporarily successful, usually react among civilized nations to the detriment of the aggressor by stimulating the will to resist or by so outraging the moral sense of other nations as to pave the way for their intervention.

In the past a military occupation of the hostile country has generally been the ultimate method of bringing to bear this pressure on the spirit, and may still be necessary against semi-civilized peoples spread out in little self-supporting communities, whose material wants are simple, and who offer no highly organized industrial and economic system for attack or control by an enemy.

But though the indignity and restrictions that arise from a military occupation are always galling, the conscience of the world forbids, or at least limits, the terrorism of earlier times and so makes the mere presence of an invading army less irksome. Conversely, with the growth of civilization the dislocation or control of an enemy’s industrial centres and communications becomes both more effective and more easy as the means by which to subdue his will to resist.

Every modern industrial nation has its vitals; in one case it may be essential mining areas, in another manufacturing districts, a third may be dependent on overseas trade coming into its ports, a fourth so highly centralized that its capital is the real as well as the nominal heart of its life. In most cases there is a blend of these several factors, and in all the regular flow of transport along its arteries is a vital requirement.

As warships are tied to the sea, they cannot penetrate into an enemy country; as, moreover, they are notoriously at a disadvantage against land defences, they cannot even occupy his ports. Hence they are limited to indirect action against the enemy’s vitals—either by blockade, by enabling troops to be landed, or nowadays by serving as a mobile base for aircraft which can strike at “nerve centres” within some 250 miles of the coast.

Armies have hitherto been the means of “direct action,” whether against the resources of the enemy nation, the intimidation of the people, or by the capture or overthrow of individuals who were the mainspring of the opposing policy.

Armies, however, suffer one serious handicap in subduing the hostile will. Being tied to one plane of movement, compelled to move across the land, it has rarely been possible for them to reach the enemy capital or other vital centres without first disposing of the enemy’s main army, which forms the shield of the opposing government and nation. It was because of this age-long limitation that the short-sighted, if natural, delusion arose that the armed forces themselves were the real objective.