The End of Victory
The first notion the military strategist must discard is victory, for strategy is not about winning. The pure strategist understands that war is but one aspect of social and political competition, an ongoing interaction that has no finality. This is not to say that victory has no place in strategy. The outcome of battles and campaigns are critical variables within the strategist’s plan, but victory is a concept that has no meaning there; it belongs wholly within the realm of tactics. To the tactical and operational planner, wars are indeed won and lost, and the difference is plain. Success is measurable; failure is obvious.
The differences between strategy and tactics are many, but the meaningful ones are located in the focus of effort and the relationship of the planner to boundaries. Both strategist and tactician are necessary to the prosecution of war; each conducts one dimension of the military way. Tactical thinking is concerned with individual actions and decisions, strategic with aggregate interactions and conditions. Tactical planning takes into account the numerous boundaries that restrict action, strategic planning attempts to manipulate the boundaries that enable action. From the tactical perspective, war is bound by real and artificial restrictions of time and space. Social, historical, geographical, and technological characteristics further provide the context of conflict, offering a structure for actions taken. To be sure, in any socio-political dispute in which a beginning and an end can be discerned, and a culmination of events is desired, victory and defeat are the standards of success.
The closer one gets to the battlefield, the more meaningful—and obvious—the measure of victory becomes. Accordingly, as the conceptual scope widens from battle to campaign, from campaign to war, and from war to policy, the more troublesome it is even to determine a beginning, much less an end, to events. In the grandest scope of history, the best we can state is that the beginning is still open to debate, and the end has not yet come. For the strategist, to whom the tactical and operational outcomes of battles, campaigns, and wars are but moments in the unfolding landscape of politics and history, the impact of military action extends well beyond (and before) the causes and outcomes of wars. This larger focus is appropriate for the strategist, who seeks instead of culmination a favorable continuation of events. The distinction is vital. Battles and wars may end, but interaction between individuals and states goes on, and ‘one can no more achieve final victory than one can “win” history.’ [Christopher Bassford, ‘John Keegan and the Tradition of Trashing Clausewitz,’ War and History Vol 1: nr 3 (November 1994), p. 330.]
In this broadest and most encompassing view, strategy represents the link between policy and military action. It connects the conduct of war with the intent of politics. It is subtler than the tactical and operational arts of directly matching means to ends, however. It shapes and guides military means in anticipation of a panoply of possible coming events. In the process, strategy changes the context within which events will happen. Thus strategy, in its simplest form, is simply a plan for attaining continuing advantage. For the goal of strategy is not to culminate events, to establish finality in the discourse between states, but to influence state’s discourse in such a way that it will go forward on favorable terms. For continue it will.