The Purpose of an Army

“What’s the purpose of an army,” I ask.

“To fight battles” comes a quick response.

“To fight wars” comes another.

A brief conversation then follows, from practitioners of the art, about this seemingly easiest of questions.

But much of the conversation doesn’t get much above the parapet of the trench. It takes hard thinking, the application of argument and logic, for them to understand that battles and wars are but way stations on the road to achieving the ultimate purpose of an army, which is, as you all know, the achievement of strategic effect.

To a quizzical audience, who imagines perhaps that the job of an army revolves around not much more than the hurly-burly of bayonet drill and section attacks, I continue:

The entire purpose of an army is to ensure that a country secures strategic value from its existence. As strategy is a dimension of political purpose, it follows that the role of an army is to secure valuable political goals or results for the country. It may be that battles have to be fought on the way, and campaigns launched and won, but the purpose of all these is always to achieve a specific political purpose. This purpose will vary with time and circumstance. It may be to repel and invader, to destroy a particular threat, to work with an ally to prevent a hostile power taking advantage of a particular geo-political situation, or to deter an enemy from taking up arms in the first place. It can be seen, therefore, that the existence or otherwise of an army is of incalculable value to a country.

“If its good at fighting” comes a response.

“And funded, trained and equipped” responds another

“Of course,” I reply. “Both assertions are true. But there’s something even more important in the calculation.”

More quizzical looks.

“Let me give you an example” I say. “When the Japanese invaded India in March 1944 the Japanese troops of the 15^th Army seemed intuitively to think that their job was to fight their Indian and British opponents in battle, and defeat them. Seeking battle, and destroying their enemy when they did so, seemed to be the logical purpose of their bushido-driven army. After all, this was where glory lay. This might sound correct, but its actually a sub-optimal view of war.

“For example, when General Sato of the 31^st Division first came across opposition at Jessami, from an untried and weak battalion of the Assam Regiment, he decided to stop and wipe it out. He spent 5 days trying to do so, thus squandering the opportunity to fall on an unprotected Kohima early. Further south, General Yamauchi’s 15^th Division did likewise at Sangshak. If both men had ignored the lure of battle, the greater prizes of Kohima and Imphal might have fallen into their lap.

Eyes start lighting up in front of me.

“Battle isn’t necessarily the ‘be all and end all’ of an army’s purpose” I suggest.

“But it gets worse. When Sato eventually gets to Kohima he decides to fight a quick battle against the weak defenders of the town. He thinks it’ll be easy. After all, he has about 15,000 men left and the enemy only about 1,000. He entirely ignores the huge stores dump at Dimapur 46-miles further on down the valley. This dump is one of the largest dumps east of Suez, designed to fuel a future Allied advance across the Chindwin into Burma.”

“So, Dimapur was the smarter target?” prompts one of the group.

“Exactly” I reply. “The capture of Dimapur would have had a dramatic strategic effect on the ability of the allies to wage war in the Far East. It was a stone’s throw for Sato from Kohima, and yet he never once lifted his eyes from the battle in front of him to consider an alternative view of the world. In so doing he fought what I believe was a largely unnecessary battle. And he lost. By fighting at Kohima, he gave General Bill Slim the opportunity he needed to reinforce the garrison and resist the onslaught. Slim’s forces were always able to grow, whilst Sato’s would only diminish as battle continued.”

Flickers of understanding ripple around.

“The reality is that the Japanese were strategically inept in 1944. They simply couldn’t see the opportunity staring them in the face. They lost the war in part as a result of this strategic incompetence.”

Silence.

“Let me give you another example” I continue. “In Korea in January 1951 the Supreme Commander of the U.N. armies, General MacArthur, had lost confidence in his inexperienced U.S. and South Korean troops to turn the tide of the war. The Chinese had entered the fray in late October 1950 and had reversed MacArthur’s rather foolhardy rush to the Yalu at the end of the previous year. The ‘Big Bugout’ came as something of a humiliation to MacArthur and he sought a rapid, decisive reversal of U.S. and U.N. fortunes. He thought that the only way of achieving strategic effect was to deploy B-29s from Guam loaded up with some of American’s stockpile of atomic bombs, to bomb China into submission.”

“That clearly didn’t happen” replied one of the more astute historical analysts in the party.

“No,” I reply, “it didn’t, because calmer heads prevailed. The ambition in Washington was not to escalate the war into a nuclear confrontation with Peking and Moscow, but the men in whom MacArthur had lost faith in fact turned out to be the real instruments of change in Korea.”

“How so?” came the inevitable question.

“Through the agency of the new 8^th Army commander, Matthew Ridgway” I replied. “Ridgway knew that the further and faster the Chinese armies advanced, sooner or later they’d outrun their supplies and their vanguards would exhaust themselves. If he could stop these tips of the enemy spear by placing steady troops in their path, instructed to fight and counter-attack the advancing columns, he had a good chance of turning the tide of the enemy campaign. He was right,” I continued. “Despite MacArthur’s pessimism, a reinvigorated 8^th Army and X Corps, buoyed by success on the battlefield at long last, stopped the Chinese offensive in its tracks, and pushed it back beyond the 38^th Parallel. The Chinese never recovered, the U.N. managed to achieve their goal of stabilizing a Main Line of Resistance along the 38^th Parallel, and the Chinese were eventually persuaded that they could no longer achieve their goal – the unification of Korea under communist rule – by war alone.”

“So the so-called strategic weapon – atomic bombs – which MacArthur wanted to use, did not achieve their strategic purpose?” responded one.

“Oh, they did” I reply. “Atomic weapons persuaded Peking and Moscow – and Washington for that matter – that a settlement on the battlefield of Korea was required. The war had to be resolved on the battlefield. What Ridgway demonstrated was that underneath the threshold of atomic engagement, well-equipped conventional forces could achieve a decisive strategic effect: the ending of the war on terms that the U.S. and U.N. had set out.”

“What’s the lesson from all this?” I continue. “Simply this. If we consider that armies are sub-strategic, and that the strategic clubs in our country’s military golf bag are the independent nuclear deterrent, for example, or an Aircraft Carrier Task Force, we deny ourselves a vital tool in securing real strategic effect for the country.”

“So the Army, if properly constituted, could be a tool for decisive strategic effect?” someone offers.

Heads are nodding in agreement. They’re getting it, at last.

“Yes.”

“Finally,” I say, “there’s one more example for you to ponder. In 1936 Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland, forbidden to him by the Versailles Treaty. We know that if Britain or France had enforced the treaty by sending back the troops they had removed in 1931, Hitler would have immediately backed down. Hitler didn’t at that time have full control of the Reichswehr, and was terrified that intervention from the victors of the Great War would undo his Nazi project at one swoop.”

“So, if we had intervened in 1936, could we have prevented the Second World War?” comes one surprised reaction.

“That’s what the evidence suggests” I respond. “But it would have required two things that Britain simply didn’t have in 1936.”

“Like what?” came the inevitable rejoinder.

“First, we didn’t have a deployable military capability able to nip Hitler’s aspirations in the bud. Second, there was no political will in London or Paris to enforce the Versailles Treaty. The Western Powers were undone in 1936 in the face of the rise of rampant militarism in Germany by a number of things, not the least of which was the lack of an army able to exercise a deterrent effect in Europe, combined with political ineptitude in London that was unable to determine the nature of the threat facing the country. The result was the most calamitous war the world has ever seen.”

Silence, for a moment at least. Then, one of the group asks, contemplatively: “So if we were to have a credible army, it could have as much deterrent effect as the Independent Nuclear Deterrent; perhaps more so?”

“Yes! Both play their own separate roles in the golf bag of military capabilities this country has to offer,” I answer. “Both can be used by not being used, if you get my meaning. But to be effective one has to have them in the first place, and to be determined – politically – to use them if the need arises.”

More silence.

“The army could be a decisive strategic tool in this country’s armoury” I continue, in part to fill the vacuum, “so long as it’s seen by a potential enemy as being capable enough of deterring it from doing what it wants. The trick, of course, is for our government to ensure that we can have an army – along with other capabilities in the air and at sea – to achieve what we need for our security. It is clearly important to use an army strategically at the operational level of war, as the Japanese failed to do in 1944. It is equally important to realise that good armies can have grand strategic - or political - results, if deployed as Ridgway demonstrated in Korea. But in the first place, one needs an army….”

The group contemplates this point, knowing the hard reality of an impoverished British Army, unable to respond to the challenge of events churning on our European doorstep, just as in 1936. There isn’t anything more to say. The group drifts away, disconsolate.

“Never mind,” I say to their backs as they walk away, “we always have the Navy…”