Liddell Hart's Indirect Approach and Its Application to the Gulf War
Abstract
The dreadful carnage of the Great War caused many military thinkers to review the conduct of warfare. Basil Liddell Hart had fought in the war, risen to the rank of Captain, and been one of its casualties. Liddell Hart blamed Clausewitz, and his obsession with the great battle, for the stalemated war of attrition, and the willingness of Generals on both sides to commit their forces in massed frontal attacks against fortified positions. The invention of the tank and the mobility and protection it afforded assisted him to formulate a new concept for warfare since called the Indirect Approach. His ideas were seized eagerly by some of the military practitioners of the day, names like Charles De Gaulle and a young George Patton, but it is ironical that his enemy of the Great War, the German Army, were best able to apply his methodology in the opening months of World War II in the form of the blitzkrieg. The author believes that the Indirect Approach is as applicable today as it was in 1939, and that its maxims were applied successfully by the coalition forces in the Persian Gulf War. The aim of this paper is to apply these maxims to the coalition strategy in the Gulf War, and discuss the influence of technology as a force multiplier in that war.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 07, 1991
- Accession Number
- ADA438922
Entities
People
- P. J. Mcnamara
Organizations
- National War College