Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Some Principles of Maritime Strategy by Julian S. (Julian Stafford) Corbett
page 37 of 333 (11%)
is there but one legitimate objective, the enemy's armed forces. Being
sound theory, it of course had an immediate practical value, for obviously
it was a distinction from which the actual work of framing a war plan must
take its departure.

A curious corroboration of the soundness of these views is that Jomini
reached an almost identical standpoint independently and by an entirely
different road. His method was severely concrete, based on the comparison
of observed facts, but it brought him as surely as the abstract method of
his rival to the conclusion that there were two distinct classes of object.
"They are of two different kinds," he says, "one which may be called
territorial or geographical ... the other on the contrary consists
exclusively in the destruction or disorganisation of the enemy's forces
without concerning yourself with geographical points of any kind." It is
under the first category of his first main classification "Of offensive
wars to assert rights," that he deals with what Clausewitz would call
"Limited Wars." Citing as an example Frederick the Great's war for the
conquest of Silesia, he says, "In such a war ... the offensive operations
ought to be proportional to the end in view. The first move is naturally to
occupy the provinces claimed" (not, be it noted, to direct your blow at the
enemy's main force). "Afterwards," he proceeds, "you can push the offensive
according to circumstances and your relative strength in order to obtain
the desired cession by menacing the enemy at home." Here we have
Clausewitz's whole doctrine of "Limited War"; firstly, the primary or
territorial stage, in which you endeavour to occupy the geographical
object, and then the secondary or coercive stage, in which you seek by
exerting general pressure upon your enemy to force him to accept the
adverse situation you have set up.

Such a method of making war obviously differs in a fundamental manner from
DigitalOcean Referral Badge