Book Reviews: War & Strategy
125
On Tactics: A Theory of Victory in Battle
By B. A. Friedman
Reviewed by William F. Owen, Co-founder and Vice President of IJ Infinity Group
B
ottom line up front, you should read this book. That said, while I
do recommend it, it is not without some serious issues.
The book is an attempt to construct a theory of tactics. The author
justifies this ambitious goal on the basis that this has not been done to
date. He simply states, “There has never been a true tactical theorist” (1).
That might be correct, and possibly for a very good reason, but it would
also be fair to state that many people have written very insightfully and
usefully about tactics.
What is good, and possibly excellent, is that the author understands
well enough, and advocates for, an understanding of tactics based in their
utility to strategy and thus policy. He does so from the strategic theory
primarily provided by Clausewitz. In that regard, and in my opinion,
he cannot be faulted. This alone makes the work a notable and worthy
addition to the library. Thus the basic argument of the book is that
strategy can only be done as tactics, and tactics needs a body of theory
as rigorous and useful as that which Clausewitz provided for strategy.
He then goes on to provide a series of tenets, not principles, which
should provide the basis of a theory of tactics. These tenets are grouped
into JFC Fuller’s framework of moral, mental, and physical categories.
Any British officer will know these categories have long formed the
United Kingdom’s definition of combat power expressed as conceptual,
physical, and moral. It is noteworthy that combat power is not tactics in
the British framework.
This is where the problems begin because the author never explains
how and why he made the choices he did, and he makes some extremely
odd choices. For example, why Fuller? Fuller’s theoretical body of work
is far from infallible, and its utility is much debated. This might be said
to be a matter of opinion, but Fuller is far more widely criticized and his
ideas are far less certain than some imagine. In the case of conceptual,
moral, and physical, the physical presides over all else. Ask any logistician.
Sadly, the book is devoid of any real discussion of logistics.
While the author cites Foch’s 1903 Principles of War there is no
discussion of the core functions—surely one of the most widely used
tactical frameworks Foch ever developed and discussed as a campaign
planning tool linking strategy with tactics in one coherent form. Foch
is also absent from the discussions on so-called mission command and
attack by infiltration all of which were featured in this 1903 work.
While On Tactics champions the human element of war, Jim Storr’s
Human Face of War is cited exactly once despite being directly relevant
to almost everything the author has to say, especially when it comes to
firepower, maneuver, shock, and surprise. Friedman may wish to assert
there are no true tactical theorists, but Jim Storr is about as close as you
can get, and his work also notably addresses and discusses items such as
the core functions plus a great deal more relevant to tactics.
Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 2017
256 pages
$29.95