7 ms·

I appreciated the historical context, but was disappointed that it seemed to fizzle to nothing at the end, just circling around "Urban warfare is messy; bummer"

I appreciated the historical context, but was disappointed that it seemed to fizzle to nothing at the end, just circling around "Urban warfare is messy; bummer". I mean, I was hoping that it could offer at least the basics of a strategy for any of Russia, Ukraine, Hamas or Israel to achieve a decisive victory, but couldn't find any. My mind kept yelling "What would Clausewitz do in this situation?" but left at empty-handed as I was at the start. It actually had the gall to finish with: > Clausewitz offers no checklist for success in cities, but rather something more valuable. What he offers is a way to think clearly ... I'm pretty sure that a checklist for success would have been more valuable.

KnuthIsGod 1y ago
A checklist approach to strategy is only useful if your adversaries are foolish enough to use a checklist themselves.
- falcor84 1y ago
  Well, yes, a "checklist" (his word) might be too much of a strawman, but what would be useful would be a strategy in the game theoretical sense - a decision mechanism of actions conditional on different situations (e.g. "If the enemy is hiding in a network of tunnel under civilian population, you should wait until ... and then randomly ..., but if they ... then reverse course and instead ..."). Quoting again from the author's closing remarks: > Victory in this environment requires more than technological superiority. It demands clarity of purpose, coherence between means and ends, disciplined execution, and moral restraint—the very fundamentals Clausewitz insisted upon. These are not optional in the urban century. They are decisive. But that's so vague that I can't help but again yell "But what is decisive?!", "What should the commanders/politicians do in practice?". It's almost astrology in how it doesn't say anything objectionable.
  - lukan 1y ago
    "What should the commanders/politicians do in practice?" It simply depends. No situation is unique. Israels strategy towards tunnels for example is to blow up and level everything. Ukraine does not deem that acceptable to the russian tunnels inside Ukraine.
    - falcor84 1y ago
      What do you mean it depends? What does it depend on? I was hoping that being "the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute" [0], the author could offer some actual advice on strategy. Or what is the institute for? Hopefully not just for writing essays. As for Israel's strategy towards tunnels, I actually have no understanding of what's going on there, but I can just say that whatever they're doing has not been effective in achieving a decisive victory, and is thus ipso facto not a good strategy. So I'm wondering what might a good strategy have been. The author now has two years of hindsight - could he not use that time and information to offer some alternative approach? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spencer_(military_officer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spencer_(military_officer...
      - lukan 1y ago
        "What do you mean it depends? What does it depend on?" The terrain, your avaiable forces and equipment, the morale of your soldiers, the main goal of the operation, the short, mid and long term plans. Outside reactions. Strength of enemy. Outside reactions, will the enemy get more support if X happens or less, will it matter if key target is achieved before time Y, ... There is no magic bullet for something as complex as urban warfare. If you want to level all, just use a nuke. But there seems to be reasons, why that is not a valid option. If you go with lots of ground troops, you will have casualties. Here the question how much is acceptable to your own population. If you go fast, you achieve a different effect then going slow. Etc. Etc etc.
      - breppp 1y ago
        The issue is mainly the hostages, as any tunnel or building may contain one that really slows the pace of advance considerably and ironically increases palestinian suffering
    - pjc50 1y ago
      What Russian tunnels in Ukraine? The battlefields are of very, very different sizes, and the Ukraine war is mostly not taking place in occupied cities at the moment.
  - bell-cot 1y ago
    In one sense, your checklist is whatever you wrote down before starting: > Clausewitz also famously wrote, “No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.” You could also make a checklist of stuff like "reduce effectiveness of enemy's forces" and "minimize damage to your own ability to wage war" - but that's basics which any upperclassman at a military academy could recite, in regard to pretty much any war ever. It's been 2 centuries since Clausewitz was writing about military theory. He's still widely read because his ideas are big-picture abstractions. Bridging the gap between his abstractions and what to do, with whatever current-day/recent-tech forces you happen to have - that's the job of your flag officers and their staffs. Though their "checklists" will keep changing, as the war progresses.
    - falcor84 1y ago
      Well said. But I'm still left with the question - have we actually benefitted in any way from these two centuries of military theory? If anything, it seems to me that wars are less decisive, more prolonged and often more deadly than they've been in Clausewitz's time. If we treat kinetic warfare as a game, I suppose you could argue that as in any other game, the more knowledgeable and more experienced the players are, the higher the likelihood of a draw. But then, seeing the harm that this is doing to the world, should we not see about changing the rules of war to reduce this likelihood and make things more decisive again, with the aim of reducing overall harm to civilians?
      - bell-cot 1y ago
        > have we actually benefitted in any way from these two centuries of military theory? "How to win" theories - when correct - favor those with the motivation to take them seriously, and the smarts to apply them correctly. I hope that overlaps nicely (in Venn diagram terms) with your "we". Plausibly, some wars have been prevented by military theory - because a nation analyzed their situation, and decided that starting a war would be a bad move. > If anything, it seems to me that wars are less decisive, more prolonged and often more deadly than they've been in Clausewitz's time. That's somewhat an effect of our larger nations and populations, the industrialized basis of modern warfare, and how heavily modern "get firearms, dig in" military technology favors the defense. BUT - pre-Clausewitz wars could also run a very long time - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Year%27s_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Year%27s_War or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Year%27s_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Year%27s_War or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punic_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punic_Wars or ... > If we treat kinetic warfare as a game... Human "games" are generally balanced, or darn close. Vs. very few modern wars were started by anyone who thought things were nicely balanced. > ...should we not see about changing the rules... If you mean military tech or practices aimed at cutting such harm - 'most every modern military is forever working on that.* If you mean treaties banning land mines, or napalm, or nerve gas, or whatever - when well done, those can be quite useful. But in game terms, they are (at most) just changing the costs (in economic, human, and political terms) of making a "break the treaty" move. *Edit: Unfortunately, they're also working on some conflicting goals - like "require even more firepower for our enemies to defeat" and "apply even more firepower, to defeat our enemies".
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > A checklist approach to strategy is only useful if your adversaries are foolish enough to use a checklist themselves Checklists aren't immutable. Having clear pre-war plans and procedures doesn't preclude changing them. But going in without them almost assures defeat.
WillAdams 1y ago
The checklist is one's own ethics and morale guideposts --- every interaction with others has to be done with a consideration for the long-term strategic goals rather than short-term gains --- Clausewitz argues that the will of the people of whom the military is an extension of and their ethics and mores have to be taken into account and all actions done in accord with what will make an acceptable news story. Consider the old adage: >Never do something which you wouldn't want your grandparents to read about in a newspaper, or to discuss with them over Sunday dinner. By extension, a military force should: >Never do anything which when shown on the evening news would result in a Congressional inquiry (or a War Crimes Tribunal).
- falcor84 1y ago
  I'm all for "Be excellent to each other", but in war, the first and foremost consideration is whether the strategy is effective. I'm not a big Clausewitz scholar, but I can't imagine that he or any other general would accept a strategy that prioritises the well-being of the opposing side to the point of their own side admitting defeat. As I see it, the only way that we can have "Rules of War" is by proving that a war can be won while maintaining them. Otherwise (and unless you have a magic wand to make humans non-aggressive), these rules are worse than useless, because they limit the more ethical side, while making them lose to the less ethical.
  - MichaelZuo 1y ago
    Anyone can pretend to have this and that ethics when its comfortable and easy, its only under extreme duress when all pretenders are revealed.
  - iamnothere 1y ago
    I think the lesson is that you can never be sure that you will meet your military objectives—failure is always a possibility—and the blowback from that failure will be more limited if you appear to have conducted your war with adequate respect for noncombatants. Failing to conquer a nation (or depose its government, or secure some land, or defend a border, or whatever your objective is) may be shrugged off by your own nation, and you may even be able to normalize relations after some time. But if you abuse the noncombatant population, you often create bitter enemies, generational hatred, and global pressures on your society from third party observers. In the worst case this eventually escalates to mutual threats of genocide and total war. Even if a nation wins a conflict through sheer brutality, they may lose the occupation, or the reconstruction, or good relations with important partners, or all of the above. And they may create an enemy who will one day return with a vengeance.
wslh 1y ago
Obviously, there is a plenty of content with this search: urban warfare site:il filetype:pdf
pydry 1y ago
Russia is following Clausewitzian principles pretty assiduously. They've got a set of 3 clear objectives and their tactics on the ground, e.g. * prioritizing attrition over the capture of territory. * avoiding urban fighting where possible (e.g. a multi-year avoidance of zaporizhia and kharkiv). * minimizing civilian casualties. Reflect not only the objectives, but the desire to avoid a lot of the "messiness" the author referred to. The fact that Ukrainian civilians fear busification more than drone strikes is a testament to that. None of the other parties (Ukraine, Hamas, Israel) appear to follow clausewitzian logic, though.
- wolvesechoes 1y ago
  You cannot say something that can be considered even sligthly positive about Russia and its strategy.
- psunavy03 1y ago
  If this was remotely true, they'd have won the war already. Russian operational and strategic decision-making has been a bonfire of blazing incompetence since the beginning, which is what led to things breaking down into WWI-style attritional warfare. Leaving the moral dimension aside, this entire war has been basically two JV teams going at it since the beginning. NATO would have wiped the floor with the Russian military based on their performance so far, and it's surprising considering what a juggernaut everyone claimed the Russian military was pre-war.
  - pydry 1y ago
    >If this was remotely true, they'd have won the war already. They're invading the largest country in Europe armed by a military bloc constituting 60% of world military spending. Which part of that screamed quick to you? >Russian operational and strategic decision-making has been a bonfire of blazing incompetence They somehow managed to achieve a body bag exchange ratio of 44:1 and an extreme busification crisis in Ukraine with a volunteer force. It's a more impressive showing than Iraq. >led to things breaking down into WWI-style attritional warfare. Putin announced the strategy of attritional warfare in March 2022 after the land bridge was secured, so one could hardly argue that this wasnt the plan. Ukraine has done a good job of playing into their hands by trying to cling on to land long past the point where it becomes defensible and getting enveloped in cauldron after cauldron. Hence the issue where Ukrainian civilians are now more afraid of their own government's roving kidnapping gangs than living under Moscow's rule. That part is probably going to be the real kicker in the end.
corimaith 1y ago
Also probably to note that much of the "ideological" battles in early Europe, whether it was legitimacy for the throne or religious conflicts tended to end in sobering sieges not unlike Gaza. The difference is they actually all did starve to death when they refused to surrender. Siege of La Rochelle as the climatic battle betwen King Louis and the Huguenots, the population declined from 22k to 5k, comparable to Gaza. But the Huguenots really did loose in the end when they were too weak to resist entry.
anigbrowl 1y ago
Clausewitz's writing (and especially On War) is very abstract and philosophical, to the point that when he mentions specifics it's almost incongruous. There's a bit in On War where he descends from a lofty discussion on what victory means and how generals should should figure that out before the battle starts, to state abruptly that chasing a fleeing enemy is a bad idea, particularly through a forest, because it's a good way to get your forces strung out and cut down. This part is so vivid I've often wondered if he or a superior officer succumbed to enthusiasm and Clausewitz learned this lesson the hard way. One problem with reading Clausewitz is that he was writing in an era of large set-piece battles where you had blocks of infantry that still marched around in square formation, cavalry charges and so on, though centuries-long practices were changing thanks to Napoleon's tactical innovations. Clausewitz writes in generalities rather than specifics because commanders of the time were very familiar with standard dispositions and didn't need them laid out in detail, and likewise strategic ideas like trying to ravage your enemy's supply lines and bypass forts hadn't changed significantly in millenia. Clausewitz was trying to give shape to the questions of whether and why one should go to war in the first place, how to break out of escalatory cycles so you don't end up isolated and so on. I often think he has more to say to the fields of international relations/statecraft than to pure military analysis. If you prefer something less abstract there's a good small book by Machiavelli on the topic (confusingly also titled On War; easiest to find as a double-volume with The Prince) and of course Sun Tzu. I think the Samuel Griffith translation is the best one because Griffith was a marine officer in addition to being a scholar. Lidell-Hart's book Strategy also stands up to repeat reading and functions as a great roadmap of European military history.

KnuthIsGod 1y ago

A checklist approach to strategy is only useful if your adversaries are foolish enough to use a checklist themselves.

falcor84 1y ago
Well, yes, a "checklist" (his word) might be too much of a strawman, but what would be useful would be a strategy in the game theoretical sense - a decision mechanism of actions conditional on different situations (e.g. "If the enemy is hiding in a network of tunnel under civilian population, you should wait until ... and then randomly ..., but if they ... then reverse course and instead ..."). Quoting again from the author's closing remarks: > Victory in this environment requires more than technological superiority. It demands clarity of purpose, coherence between means and ends, disciplined execution, and moral restraint—the very fundamentals Clausewitz insisted upon. These are not optional in the urban century. They are decisive. But that's so vague that I can't help but again yell "But what is decisive?!", "What should the commanders/politicians do in practice?". It's almost astrology in how it doesn't say anything objectionable.
- lukan 1y ago
  "What should the commanders/politicians do in practice?" It simply depends. No situation is unique. Israels strategy towards tunnels for example is to blow up and level everything. Ukraine does not deem that acceptable to the russian tunnels inside Ukraine.
  - falcor84 1y ago
    What do you mean it depends? What does it depend on? I was hoping that being "the chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute" [0], the author could offer some actual advice on strategy. Or what is the institute for? Hopefully not just for writing essays. As for Israel's strategy towards tunnels, I actually have no understanding of what's going on there, but I can just say that whatever they're doing has not been effective in achieving a decisive victory, and is thus ipso facto not a good strategy. So I'm wondering what might a good strategy have been. The author now has two years of hindsight - could he not use that time and information to offer some alternative approach? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spencer_(military_officer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spencer_(military_officer...
    - lukan 1y ago
      "What do you mean it depends? What does it depend on?" The terrain, your avaiable forces and equipment, the morale of your soldiers, the main goal of the operation, the short, mid and long term plans. Outside reactions. Strength of enemy. Outside reactions, will the enemy get more support if X happens or less, will it matter if key target is achieved before time Y, ... There is no magic bullet for something as complex as urban warfare. If you want to level all, just use a nuke. But there seems to be reasons, why that is not a valid option. If you go with lots of ground troops, you will have casualties. Here the question how much is acceptable to your own population. If you go fast, you achieve a different effect then going slow. Etc. Etc etc.
    - breppp 1y ago
      The issue is mainly the hostages, as any tunnel or building may contain one that really slows the pace of advance considerably and ironically increases palestinian suffering
  - pjc50 1y ago
    What Russian tunnels in Ukraine? The battlefields are of very, very different sizes, and the Ukraine war is mostly not taking place in occupied cities at the moment.
- bell-cot 1y ago
  In one sense, your checklist is whatever you wrote down before starting: > Clausewitz also famously wrote, “No one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.” You could also make a checklist of stuff like "reduce effectiveness of enemy's forces" and "minimize damage to your own ability to wage war" - but that's basics which any upperclassman at a military academy could recite, in regard to pretty much any war ever. It's been 2 centuries since Clausewitz was writing about military theory. He's still widely read because his ideas are big-picture abstractions. Bridging the gap between his abstractions and what to do, with whatever current-day/recent-tech forces you happen to have - that's the job of your flag officers and their staffs. Though their "checklists" will keep changing, as the war progresses.
  - falcor84 1y ago
    Well said. But I'm still left with the question - have we actually benefitted in any way from these two centuries of military theory? If anything, it seems to me that wars are less decisive, more prolonged and often more deadly than they've been in Clausewitz's time. If we treat kinetic warfare as a game, I suppose you could argue that as in any other game, the more knowledgeable and more experienced the players are, the higher the likelihood of a draw. But then, seeing the harm that this is doing to the world, should we not see about changing the rules of war to reduce this likelihood and make things more decisive again, with the aim of reducing overall harm to civilians?
    - bell-cot 1y ago
      > have we actually benefitted in any way from these two centuries of military theory? "How to win" theories - when correct - favor those with the motivation to take them seriously, and the smarts to apply them correctly. I hope that overlaps nicely (in Venn diagram terms) with your "we". Plausibly, some wars have been prevented by military theory - because a nation analyzed their situation, and decided that starting a war would be a bad move. > If anything, it seems to me that wars are less decisive, more prolonged and often more deadly than they've been in Clausewitz's time. That's somewhat an effect of our larger nations and populations, the industrialized basis of modern warfare, and how heavily modern "get firearms, dig in" military technology favors the defense. BUT - pre-Clausewitz wars could also run a very long time - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Year%27s_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Year%27s_War or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years'_War or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Year%27s_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Year%27s_War or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punic_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punic_Wars or ... > If we treat kinetic warfare as a game... Human "games" are generally balanced, or darn close. Vs. very few modern wars were started by anyone who thought things were nicely balanced. > ...should we not see about changing the rules... If you mean military tech or practices aimed at cutting such harm - 'most every modern military is forever working on that.* If you mean treaties banning land mines, or napalm, or nerve gas, or whatever - when well done, those can be quite useful. But in game terms, they are (at most) just changing the costs (in economic, human, and political terms) of making a "break the treaty" move. *Edit: Unfortunately, they're also working on some conflicting goals - like "require even more firepower for our enemies to defeat" and "apply even more firepower, to defeat our enemies".
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> A checklist approach to strategy is only useful if your adversaries are foolish enough to use a checklist themselves Checklists aren't immutable. Having clear pre-war plans and procedures doesn't preclude changing them. But going in without them almost assures defeat.

WillAdams 1y ago

The checklist is one's own ethics and morale guideposts --- every interaction with others has to be done with a consideration for the long-term strategic goals rather than short-term gains --- Clausewitz argues that the will of the people of whom the military is an extension of and their ethics and mores have to be taken into account and all actions done in accord with what will make an acceptable news story. Consider the old adage: >Never do something which you wouldn't want your grandparents to read about in a newspaper, or to discuss with them over Sunday dinner. By extension, a military force should: >Never do anything which when shown on the evening news would result in a Congressional inquiry (or a War Crimes Tribunal).

falcor84 1y ago
I'm all for "Be excellent to each other", but in war, the first and foremost consideration is whether the strategy is effective. I'm not a big Clausewitz scholar, but I can't imagine that he or any other general would accept a strategy that prioritises the well-being of the opposing side to the point of their own side admitting defeat. As I see it, the only way that we can have "Rules of War" is by proving that a war can be won while maintaining them. Otherwise (and unless you have a magic wand to make humans non-aggressive), these rules are worse than useless, because they limit the more ethical side, while making them lose to the less ethical.
- MichaelZuo 1y ago
  Anyone can pretend to have this and that ethics when its comfortable and easy, its only under extreme duress when all pretenders are revealed.
- iamnothere 1y ago
  I think the lesson is that you can never be sure that you will meet your military objectives—failure is always a possibility—and the blowback from that failure will be more limited if you appear to have conducted your war with adequate respect for noncombatants. Failing to conquer a nation (or depose its government, or secure some land, or defend a border, or whatever your objective is) may be shrugged off by your own nation, and you may even be able to normalize relations after some time. But if you abuse the noncombatant population, you often create bitter enemies, generational hatred, and global pressures on your society from third party observers. In the worst case this eventually escalates to mutual threats of genocide and total war. Even if a nation wins a conflict through sheer brutality, they may lose the occupation, or the reconstruction, or good relations with important partners, or all of the above. And they may create an enemy who will one day return with a vengeance.

wslh 1y ago

Obviously, there is a plenty of content with this search: urban warfare site:il filetype:pdf

pydry 1y ago

Russia is following Clausewitzian principles pretty assiduously. They've got a set of 3 clear objectives and their tactics on the ground, e.g. * prioritizing attrition over the capture of territory. * avoiding urban fighting where possible (e.g. a multi-year avoidance of zaporizhia and kharkiv). * minimizing civilian casualties. Reflect not only the objectives, but the desire to avoid a lot of the "messiness" the author referred to. The fact that Ukrainian civilians fear busification more than drone strikes is a testament to that. None of the other parties (Ukraine, Hamas, Israel) appear to follow clausewitzian logic, though.

wolvesechoes 1y ago
You cannot say something that can be considered even sligthly positive about Russia and its strategy.
psunavy03 1y ago
If this was remotely true, they'd have won the war already. Russian operational and strategic decision-making has been a bonfire of blazing incompetence since the beginning, which is what led to things breaking down into WWI-style attritional warfare. Leaving the moral dimension aside, this entire war has been basically two JV teams going at it since the beginning. NATO would have wiped the floor with the Russian military based on their performance so far, and it's surprising considering what a juggernaut everyone claimed the Russian military was pre-war.
- pydry 1y ago
  >If this was remotely true, they'd have won the war already. They're invading the largest country in Europe armed by a military bloc constituting 60% of world military spending. Which part of that screamed quick to you? >Russian operational and strategic decision-making has been a bonfire of blazing incompetence They somehow managed to achieve a body bag exchange ratio of 44:1 and an extreme busification crisis in Ukraine with a volunteer force. It's a more impressive showing than Iraq. >led to things breaking down into WWI-style attritional warfare. Putin announced the strategy of attritional warfare in March 2022 after the land bridge was secured, so one could hardly argue that this wasnt the plan. Ukraine has done a good job of playing into their hands by trying to cling on to land long past the point where it becomes defensible and getting enveloped in cauldron after cauldron. Hence the issue where Ukrainian civilians are now more afraid of their own government's roving kidnapping gangs than living under Moscow's rule. That part is probably going to be the real kicker in the end.

corimaith 1y ago

Also probably to note that much of the "ideological" battles in early Europe, whether it was legitimacy for the throne or religious conflicts tended to end in sobering sieges not unlike Gaza. The difference is they actually all did starve to death when they refused to surrender. Siege of La Rochelle as the climatic battle betwen King Louis and the Huguenots, the population declined from 22k to 5k, comparable to Gaza. But the Huguenots really did loose in the end when they were too weak to resist entry.

anigbrowl 1y ago

Clausewitz's writing (and especially On War) is very abstract and philosophical, to the point that when he mentions specifics it's almost incongruous. There's a bit in On War where he descends from a lofty discussion on what victory means and how generals should should figure that out before the battle starts, to state abruptly that chasing a fleeing enemy is a bad idea, particularly through a forest, because it's a good way to get your forces strung out and cut down. This part is so vivid I've often wondered if he or a superior officer succumbed to enthusiasm and Clausewitz learned this lesson the hard way. One problem with reading Clausewitz is that he was writing in an era of large set-piece battles where you had blocks of infantry that still marched around in square formation, cavalry charges and so on, though centuries-long practices were changing thanks to Napoleon's tactical innovations. Clausewitz writes in generalities rather than specifics because commanders of the time were very familiar with standard dispositions and didn't need them laid out in detail, and likewise strategic ideas like trying to ravage your enemy's supply lines and bypass forts hadn't changed significantly in millenia. Clausewitz was trying to give shape to the questions of whether and why one should go to war in the first place, how to break out of escalatory cycles so you don't end up isolated and so on. I often think he has more to say to the fields of international relations/statecraft than to pure military analysis. If you prefer something less abstract there's a good small book by Machiavelli on the topic (confusingly also titled On War; easiest to find as a double-volume with The Prince) and of course Sun Tzu. I think the Samuel Griffith translation is the best one because Griffith was a marine officer in addition to being a scholar. Lidell-Hart's book Strategy also stands up to repeat reading and functions as a great roadmap of European military history.