The lessons of World War I are many and varied for those who study warfare. To name a few: economic interconnectedness does not avert armed conflict; democratic states are capable of making durable and costly commitments to both war effort and alliances; the decisiveness of battlefield outcome is a central determinant of the sustainability of peace settlements; technological innovation can radically alter the offense-defense balance in military operations; and “laws of war” can be developed that create enduring norms limiting classes of weaponry.
On this 100th anniversary of the war’s armistice, as we grieve the loss of 19 million lives and the shattering of fin de ciecle European societies, another consequential lesson for our current wars rings out from the battlefields of the Somme and Bealleau Wood: politics must be integral for military planning to rise to the level of strategy.
Alfred von Schlieffen’s plan for overcoming turn-of-the-century Germany’s insufficient forces to fight a two-front war was one of history’s most elegant solutions to a demanding problem: the German army would pass through the Low Countries to pre-emptively defeat the French army in the west and then swing back east to face a slow-mobilizing Russian army. But Schlieffen’s strategy was disastrous as well, because it minimized the importance of violating Belgium’s sovereignty, something diplomats and politicians would have understood would trigger British involvement. The mindset that strategy is separate from politics also allowed Germany’s military to rationalize their defeat on the battlefield as a “stab in the back” by politicians’ lack of support, which shaped how the German military and society viewed the rise of fascism. This delegitimized the political class and kept the military from exercising institutional restraints as Weimar collapsed.
The divorce of strategy from politics emerged after the Napoleonic wars, when great military thinkers like Helmuth von Moltke attempted to professionalize military strategy by segregating warfighting from the pernicious influence of political leaders. But as Sir Lawrence Freedman demonstrates in his magisterial “Strategy: A History,” strategy divorced from politics leads either to irrelevance, because the strategy will not be employed, or disaster, when political leaders are confronted with the unexpected costs and consequences. The failure of Von Schlieffen’s strategy is a vivid illustration of the latter danger.
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