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In the years following World War I, two of the technologies that had been introduced during that conflict, the aircraft and the tank, became the subject of strategic study.
The leading theorist of air power was Italian general Giulio Douhet who believed that future wars would be won or lost in the air. The air force would carry the offensive and the role of the ground forces would be defensive only. Douhet's doctrine of strategic bombing meant striking at the enemy's heartland -- his cities, industry and communications. Air power would thereby reduce his willingness and capacity to fight.
British general J.F.C. Fuller, architect of the first great tank battle at Cambrai, and his contemporary, B. H. Liddell Hart, were amongst the most prominent advocates of mechanization and motorization of the army. They saw that the armoured fighting vehicle demonstrated firepower, mobility and protection. It would negate the static defences of the trench and machine gun and restore the strategic principles of manoeuvre and offense.
The innovative German General Heinz Guderian further developed Fuller's and Liddell Hart's ideas to create the groundbreaking blitzkrieg tactics that were used by Germany against Poland in 1939 and later against France in 1940. France, still used to stationary World War I strategies, was completely suprised and summarily overwhelmed by Guderian's Panzer Corps.
Technological change has had both an enormous effect on strategy, and little effect on leadership. The use of telegraph and later radio, along with improved transportation, has enabled the rapid movement of large numbers of men. However, the amount of men that one officer can effectively control has, if anything, declined. The increases in the size of the armies has led to an increase in the number of officers.
During the World War II, led by British intelligence forces, the allied forces developed and deployed sophisticated ruses, strategic deception , designed to mislead Axis planners resulting in ineffective actions.
To be completed
The Cold War was the first time period dominated by the threat of total world annihilation through the use of nuclear weapons, a policy known as mutual assured destruction. As a consequence it was also a war in which attacks were not exchanged between the two main rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead, the war was fought through proxies. The battle-grounds were everywhere the superpowers weren't. Instead of mainly being confined to Europe or the Pacific, the entire world was the battlefield, with countries rather than armies acting as main players. The only constant rule was that troops of the Soviet Union and the United States could not overtly fight with each other.
The difference between tactics, strategy and grand strategy began to melt during the Cold War as command and communication technologies improved to a greater extent, in first world armed forces. The third world armed forces controlled by the two superpowers found that grand strategy, strategy and tactics, if anything, moved further apart as the command of the armies fell under the control of super power leaders.
American cold warriors like Dean Acheson and George C. Marshall quickly recognized that the key to victory was the economic defeat of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had adopted a defensive posture following the end of World War II, with the United States and its strong navy quickly finding that it had to aggressively defend much of the world from the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism. It was one of many seeming contradictions in the logic of strategy.
Strategies during the Cold War also dealt with nuclear attack and retaliation. The United States maintained a policy of limited first strike throughout the Cold War. In the event of a Soviet attack on the Western Front, resulting in a breakthrough , the United States would use tactical nuclear weapon s to stop the attack. The Soviet Union responded by adopting a policy of no first use, involving massive retaliation resulting in mutual assured destruction. So, if the Warsaw Pact attacked using conventional weapons, NATO would use tactical nukes. The Soviet Union would respond with an all out nuclear attack, resulting in a similar attack from the United States, with all the consequences the exchange would entail. This did not happen. The United States continues to maintain a policy of limited first strike to the present ( June 2004).| Politics | Business | Finance |
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