ON WAR # 7:

Some German Lessons

By William S. Lind
March 12, 2003

Also from Bill Lind: "4th Generation Warfare and the Dangers of Being the Only Superpower:  A Warning from Clausewitz," in Counterpunch, March 8, 2003.

[Re-printed with permission]

Between 1809 and 1945, the Prussian and, later, German armies developed what is often called maneuver warfare or "Third Generation" warfare. For the past quarter century, the U.S. military has been trying to adopt this German way of war, and failing. Instead, we now appear to be copying two fatal German mistakes: thinking that a lower level of war trumps a higher, and initiating a war on two fronts.

There are several ways of defining levels of war. One is John Boyd's trinity of moral, mental and physical. Another is the more traditional strategic, operational and tactical. One of the reasons Germany lost both world wars was that she thought operational excellence would trump strategic failure. In reality, a higher level of war always trumps a lower.

America seems now to have taken this German error and extended it. The present American way of war assumes that superiority at the tactical (or perhaps merely technical) level, manifested in high technology, will overcome massive failures at the strategic and moral levels. Strategically, a war with Iraq will help, not hurt, our real enemies, non-state forces such as al-Qa'ida. Morally, we are launching an aggressive war against a weak enemy for no clear reason. Putting the two together leads to self-isolation, which is exactly what happened to Germany. The notion that Wunderwaffe [editor's note" "wonder weapons," like the V-2 ballistic missile or the Me-262 jet fighter that Germany fielded during WW II] will somehow overcome isolation and strategic failure will prove as viable for Washington now as it did for Germany in 1944-45.

Not content with duplicating just one fatal German mistake, we are moving to add a second by getting into a war on two fronts. Our eastern front may be Korea. The situation there is steadily getting hotter, and Washington's response so far has been to pretend it is not happening while saying Kim Jong II is a nut case.

Strategically, what North Korea is doing makes perfect sense. North Korea knows it is part of the "axis of evil," and it sees the United States preparing to attack another member of that axis, Iraq. The same voices in Washington that have demanded war with Iraq are beginning to make noises about Iran, accusing it of attempting to develop nuclear weapons and suggesting it should be next on the hit list. If I were a North Korean general, I would certainly assume an American attack is at some point a very real possibility, perhaps an inevitability.

On that basis, North Korea has decided it needs one of two things: a formal, legally binding non-aggression pact with the United States, or nuclear weapons. Washington has turned the idea of a non-aggression pact down flat, which can only lead to greater fear in Pyongyang. So, North Korea is going to build nukes. What other choice does it have?

Everyone in the region—Russia, China, Japan and even South Korea—is desperately urging Washington to talk with North Korea. Washington continues to refuse. Adding fuel to what may soon become a conflagration, President Bush last week spoke openly about the possibility of a military "solution" to the problem of the North Korean nuclear weapons program. Far from solving anything, such an action would probably give us a two-front war.

As was the case with Germany, a war on two fronts would leave the American military stretched dangerously thin. Our war plan for Korea assumes South Korea will carry the main burden of a war while Japan offers safe logistical bases. But those assumptions could prove wrong. North Korea has indicated it might attack American forces in the region while offering peace with South Korea; the new South Korean president has said that if the U.S. and North Korea went to war, South Korea might offer to mediate. A North Korean threat of a nuke on Osaka might leads Japan to declare neutrality, in which case we could not use Japanese bases. In such a situation, our options might be initiating the use of nuclear weapons or trying to stage a Dunkirk. Either one would be yet another strategic disaster.

It would be an historical oddity if the United States, having failed to copy the Germans in what they got right, instead duplicated what they got wrong. In view of the almost lighthearted military optimism that currently prevails in Washington, one cannot help remembering Marx's comment about history occurring as tragedy, then repeating itself as farce.

William S. Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. Mr. Lind can be contacted through Steve Lilienthal at 202-204-5304 or by sending an e-mail to

© 2003

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