Attrition in modern and post-modern war

Strategic Logic and Political Rationality: Essays in Honor of Michael I.Handel

Volumn , Issue , 2003, Pages 70-94

  Kober, Avi ^a,b  

^a BAR ILAN UNIVERSITY   (Israel)

^b BESA Center for Strategic Studies   (Israel)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84906804421     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: 10.4324/9780203497074     Document Type: Chapter

References (73)

1. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 480.
2. Napoleon, Military Maxims (Dublin: Richard Milliken, 1831), p. 12.
3. Clausewitz, On War, p. 93.
4. Amir Shelah, 'Brigadiers [like Needles] in a Hay Stack', Yediot Aharonot, 29 June 2001.
5. See, for example, Jehuda L.Wallach, The Dogma of the Battle of Annihilation (London: Greenwood, 1986), pp. 249-64;
6. Michael Geyer, 'German Strategy in the Age of Machine Warfare, 1914-1945', in Peter Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 527-97;
7. Larry A. Addington, The Blitzkrieg Era and the German General Staff 1865-1941 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971);
8. Hans Guderian, Panzer Leader (London: Arrow, 1990), pp. 39-46;
9. P.H. Vigor, Soviet Blitzkrieg Theory (London:Macmillan, 1984).
10. B.H.Liddell Hart, Strategy (London: Faber & Faber, 1967), p. 47.
11. Hans Delbrück, The History of the Art of War within the Framework of Political History, vol. IV: The Modern Era (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985), pp. 379-83;
12. Gordon A.Craig, 'Delbrück: The Military Historian', in Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 326-53.
13. Gerhard Ritter, Frederick the Great: A Historical Profile (Berkeley, CA:University of California Press, 1968), p. 141.
14. For a summary of these views, see Delbrück, The History of the Art of War, pp. 379-83;
15. see also Colmar Frieherr von der Goltz, The Conduct of War (London:Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1899), p. 64.
16. Friedrich von Bernhardi, On War of Today (New York: Garland, 1972), vol. II, p. 308.
17. Liddell Hart, Strategy, p. 338.
18. B.H.Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War (London: Faber & Faber, 1943), p. 208.
19. Liddell Hart, Strategy, pp. 379-83.
20. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, p. 52.
21. Clausewitz, On War, p. 149.
22. Donald Kagan, 'Athenian Strategy in the Peloponnesian War', in Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox and Alvin Bernstein (eds), The Making of Strategy:Rulers, States and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 34.
23. Archer Jones, The Art of War in the Western World (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987), pp. 65-8;
24. Liddell Hart, Strategy, pp. 46-7.
25. Quoted in Walter Pinter, 'Russian Military Thought: The Western Model and the Shadow of Suvorov', in Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 373.
26. Quoted in John J.Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 85.
27. A.H. Jomini, 'Summary of the Art of War', in Roots of Strategy, Book II (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1987), p. 445;
28. Friedrich Engels, 'Introduction', in Karl Marx, Class Struggle in France (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969).
29. For Moltke's view, see Wallach, Kriegstheorien, pp. 25, 83-4.
30. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1954), Ch. 2;
31. Che Guevara, On Guerrilla Warfare (New York: Praeger, 1961), p. 11;
32. Vo Nguyen Giap, People's War, Peoples Army (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961), pp. 28-30.
33. J.F.C.Fuller, The Second World War 1939-45 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968), pp. 235-8.
34. Clausewitz, On War, pp. 479-83.
35. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works, Ch. 2.
36. See Yehoshfat Harkabi, War and Politics (Tel Aviv: Ma'arachot, 1990 [Hebrew]), p. 416.
37. Marshal (Ferdinand) Foch, The Principles of War (London: Chapman & Hall, 1918), pp. 297-8.
38. David French, British Strategy and War Aims 1914-1916 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986);
39. David French, 'The Meaning of Attrition 1914-1916', English Historical Review, vol. 103, no. 407 (April 1988), pp. 385-405;
40. John Gooch, 'The Weary Titan: Strategy and Policy in Great Britain, 1890-1918', in Murray, Knox, and Bernstein (eds), The Making of Strategy, p. 300.
41. Roger Dingman, 'Atomic Diplomacy during the Korean War', International Security, vol. 13, no. 3 (Winter 1988/89), pp. 50-91.
42. Edgar O'Ballance, The Greek Civil War 1944-1949 (London: Faber & Faber, 1966), pp. 148, 181-5;
43. Robert Asprey, War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History (New York: Morrow, 1994), Ch. 42;
44. Laqueur, Guerrilla, pp. 284-5.
45. Clausewitz, On War, p. 527.
46. Anthony H.Cordesman and Abraham Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, vol. II:The Iran-Iraq War (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990), particularly Chs 4,6, and 8.
47. B.H.Liddell Hart, 'The Ratio of Troops to Space', Military Review, vol. 45, no. 1 (April 1960), pp. 4-5;
48. Eado Hecht, The 'Operational Breakthrough' in German Military Thought 1870-1945 (Tel Aviv: Ma'arachot, 1999 [Hebrew]), p. 79.
49. Eliot A.Cohen, 'A Revolution in Warfare', Foreign Affairs, vol. 75, no. 2 (March/April 1996), p. 45.
50. Quincy Wright, A Study of War (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 93, 143.
51. Norwell De Atkine, 'Why Arabs Lose Wars?', Middle East Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 4 (December 1999), pp. 17-27.
52. Von Bernhardi, On War of Today, vol. II, p. 173.
53. Steven Rosen, 'War, Power, and the Willingness to Suffer', in Bruce M.Russett (ed.), Peace, War and Numbers (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1972), p. 168.
54. Delbrück, The History of the Art of War, p. 361.
55. Harry G.Summers, On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 1983), pp. 95-6.
56. Efraim Inbar, 'Israel's Small War: The Military Response to the Intifada', Armed Forces & Society, vol. 18, no. 1 (Fall 1991), pp. 34-5;
57. Efraim Inbar, Rabin and Israel's National Security (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1999), pp. 104-5.
58. On war of attrition as politico-military strategy, see Bar-Siman-Tov, The Israeli-Egyptian War of Attrition, pp. 30-5.
59. Liddell Hart, Strategy, p. 377.
60. Clausewitz, On War, p. 94.
61. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence, p. 34.
62. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Military Writings, pp. 181-3.
63. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War, pp. 76-7;
64. Bruce Catton, The Civil War (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), pp. 198-253.
65. Fuller, The Conduct of War, p. 178.
66. Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air (London: Faber, 1943).
67. Bar-Siman-Tov, The Israeli-Egyptian War of Attrition, p. 193;
68. Jonathan Shimshoni, Israel and Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), p. 132.
69. Quoted in Inbar, 'Israel's Small War', p. 35.
70. See, for example, Steven Kull and I.M.Destler, Misreading the Public: The Myth of New Isolationism (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1999).
71. E.L.Katzenbach, 'Time, Space and Will: The Politico-Military Strategy of Mao Tse-Tung', in T.N.Greene (ed.), The Guerrilla and How to Fight Him (New York:Praeger, 1962), p. 18.
72. For a discussion of the doctrine, see Michael I.Handel, Masters of War, 3rd edn (London: Frank Cass, 2001), pp. 307-25.
73. On normative and cognitive legitimacy, see Alexander L.George, 'Domestic Constraints on Regime Change in US Foreign Policy', in O.R.Holsti, R.M. Siverson, and A.L.George (eds), Change in the International System (Boulder, CO:Westview, 1980), pp. 233-62.