Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare (review)

The term operational level of war became popular within U.S. military circles in the aftermath of the Vietnam War; It refers to combined arms (armor, infantry, artillery, air power) attacks across an entire theater of operations. The term encompasses aspects of warfare that exist between the study of tactics and strategy and reflects the effort mostly of U.S. Army officers to devise superior operating concepts to defeat likely opponents. The study of the operational level of warfare appeals to both armchair strategists and military professionals because it highlights the way generals command armies and underscores the effect of leadership and even military genius on battlefield outcomes. This field of study explains how well-executed military plans can trump brute force and superior numbers on the battlefield.

Robert M. Citino, like other students of the operational level of war, highlights the great success stories of combined-arms operations. Commonly if erroneously referred to as Blitzkrieg following the Nazi victory over numerically superior French forces in May 1940, these lightning wars have shared several characteristics. The victor has been a highly professional military that obtains optimum performance out of the latest technology to inflict a quick, relatively bloodless victory over a hapless, if numerically superior, opponent. By accurately identifying the Schwerpunkt (point of main effort), combined-arms attacks can cause an entire army to collapse quickly, without horrific attritional engagements that can kill untold numbers of combatants. Regardless of the rarefied debates about the merits of firepower and maneuver in tank operations, or the use of arcane German military terminology in dissertations on "operational art," military professionals have an obvious personal stake in keeping the next war as short and bloodless as possible.

What Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm illustrates, however, is that the entire concept of "operational level of war" is artificial, suspect, and maybe even downright dangerous. Military historians are quick to point out that the idea of an operational level of war is appealing to officers and planners because it allows them to concentrate on the mechanics of military operations and to escape the strategic issues that govern warfare. As planners devise exquisite operational concepts, they sometimes lose sight of how their operations can produce strategic consequences that can impede or undermine the attainment of larger political objectives. All war is about politics, but the operational level of war ignores that reality and instead treats large-scale military operations as simply military operations without political importance.

Citino's study provides ample evidence that the history of war is replete with brilliant military maneuvers that ended in strategic disaster. As long as navies ply the oceans, for example, sailors will talk about the brilliantly conceived and executed Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. What is left out is that the attack itself doomed Japan to a long war of attrition it could not possibly win. The successful surprise attack eliminated the political basis of Japanese war plans (i.e., U.S. willingness to reach a compromise settlement in the face of Japanese expansion). In the summer of 1941, the Nazi Wehrmacht executed an armored dash that destroyed scores of Soviet divisions and brought German forces to within sight of the Kremlin six months later. The outskirts of Moscow marked a good spot to begin the brutal attritional engagement that ended in Germany's total defeat in May 1945. Citino also notes that several U.S. military operations during the Vietnam War—the defense and relief of Khe Sanh and the urban warfare in Hue during the Tet offensive—demonstrated the U.S. military's prowess in conducting set-piece battles, air-mobile operations, and combined-arms urban warfare. Citino's account of these successes in wars that ended in disaster simply highlights the fact that operational artistry cannot salvage flawed strategy or policy.

To his credit, Citino notes that at times it is difficult to ascertain what determines these lopsided victories—one side's brilliance or the other's incompetence...