Abstract
Warfare and manoeuvre could be considered as two sides of the same coin. Any writings on a campaign, a battle, or any military engagement will analyse the manoeuvre capabilities of the opposing armies. An army unable to manoeuvre is soon condemned to defeat. That is why this collection of essays edited by Christian Malis, widely respected in France for his works on French strategy and strategists of the last fifty years, explores not only how manoeuvre influences the face of battle, but how manoeuvre – at every level – determines victory or defeat.
The task is very ambitious – in the first place, by bringing together both historians and practitioners (military officers) in order to study the relations between two concepts widely used but scarcely defined. In his introduction Malis begins with a survey of how, in the past decades, the art of war stagnated. A specialist on the theory of nuclear supremacy, he argues that the once dominant western way of war has entered a severe crisis. The rediscovery of small wars and asymmetric warfare therefore demands renewed thought: thus, anyone interested in this field of studies should ‘think out of the box’.
The case studies are gathered in three parts, preceded by a general and theoretical introduction by Lieutenant General Michel Yakovleff, well known in French military circles for his book, ‘Tactique théorique’. In this text Yakovleff suggests that the very word ‘manoeuvre’ is an encompassing concept and introduces what he calls the synchronization of all levels, beginning with anticipation at the strategic level and getting down to the tactical level with the ‘concept de manoeuvre’ (p. 21). For him, the dialectics between warfare and manoeuvre are based on time and rhythm, and victory depends not only on the correlation of forces but also on the ability to switch and adapt to the changing character of war. The
first part thus confronts historical and national concepts of manoeuvre on a large timescale (the German, Israeli, Chinese, and American cases). Corentin Brustlein’s essay on the German military model and the Prussian inheritance links it with other cultures of warfare and is of particular interest. It can furthermore be linked with Pierre Razoux’s analysis of the IDF and with Etienne de Durand’s analysis of US doctrinal renaissance in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. In this text de Durand points out the weakness of the American model which, according to him, lies in the constant and hopeless quest for a decisive battle (p. 86). As de Durand correctly asserts, this major flaw is old fashioned, and should be considered as no more than a historical object (p. 87).
Thus, how can the French model propose something new? The second part of the book deals with the French way of war, tracking down the roots of a ‘French manoeuvre theory’. According to Thierry Widemann, these roots are to be found in the eighteenth century, when manoeuvre was rehabilitated not only on the battlefield, but also on doctrinal and philosophical levels. This is particularly obvious in the Napoleonic model and more surprisingly with the tactical innovations that the French army would propose in the last year of the First World War – as Colonel Goya points out.
The main weakness of this book lies in the third section, which attempts to put manoeuvre warfare in perspective. Here manoeuvre is no longer envisioned in terms of doctrine or cultural strategic backgrounds, but in terms of geographic issues (air power and manoeuvre, naval warfare and manoeuvre, etc.). These last texts are too short to cope with the ‘out of the box’ perspective envisioned in Malis’s project and can hardly propose new strategies and new ways of thinking for future warfare.
With a project this vast, some readers may be disappointed. Non-academics looking for a short but precise synthesis of the evolution of warfare in certain national armies will be pleased with the first and second parts of the book. On the other hand, the last part might be too ambitious to answer questions which would require at least another book to study correctly.