ON WAR # 10:

The Duke Of Medina Sidonia

By William S. Lind
31 March 2003

William S. Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. Mr. Lind can be contacted through Steve Lilienthal at 202-204-5304 or by sending an e-mail to

[Reprinted with Permission]

In planning a war, the most important task is to understand what can be planned and what cannot. In general, the initial disposition of forces can be planned, and it must be planned with great care. As Field Marshal von Moltke said, "A mistake in initial dispositions can seldom be put right." But Moltke also said, "No plan survives its first contact with the enemy." Once you cross the enemy's border, you have to adjust and improvise constantly. The conduct of war, as distinct from preparation for war, is (Moltke again) "a matter of expedients." Count von Schlieffen thought otherwise, and in the famous Schlieffen Plan he attempted to extend the logic of railway mobilization planning into the campaign itself. Not surprisingly, the result was failure and, for Germany, a lost war.

A second planning error is to make the war plan depend on a single assumption. Here, the Spanish Armada provides an example. The single assumption on which the Armada depended was that the Spanish commander in the Netherlands, the Duke of Parma, would somehow get his own army to the sea and out into the English Channel, where the Armada would protect its crossing. The Armada's commander, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, did everything he was expected to do. He brought his fleet into the Channel in splendid order, ready to convey Parma's troops. But Parma never came. All Medina Sidonia could do was try to get home (he made it, with his flagship and a goodly portion of his fleet).

Yet a third error in planning is to assume that the enemy will fight the way you would. The classic example here is Napoleon's march to Moscow. Napoleon knew he would have fought a great battle to keep the enemy from taking his capital. But Tsar Alexander did not do that (he fought at Borodino, but was careful not to let his army be destroyed there). He let Napoleon take Moscow, moving the Russian army east and south. Then, he waited. Baffled, Napoleon had no choice but to march back the way he came -- losing nine-tenths of his army in the process.

How does our current war with Iraq look, if we examine it in light of these three errors in military planning?

Regrettably, not very good. Normally, the American military can be counted on to plan initial deployments thoroughly, and, once again, it did. But the Pentagon threw the plan out at the last minute, resulting in chaos. James Kitfield wrote in the March 28 National Journal,

"By far the most dramatic and disruptive change to the battle plan, however, was Rumsfeld's decision last November to slash Central Command's request for forces...Notably, the Pentagon scrapped the Time Phased Force Deployment Data, or "TipFid," by which regional commanders would identify forces needed for a specific campaign, and the individual armed services would manage their deployments by order of priority."

This mess was multiplied by the Schlieffen error: we had a rigid plan for the campaign itself, and did not adjust it despite changes in the situation. Specifically, when the Turks said no to the passage of American forces through Turkey, putting an end to the planned northern front, we continued with the rest of the plan as if nothing had changed. The result at this point is a campaign that looks like a balloon on a string, with a single Army division (about 3,500 combat troops) deep in Iraq and a slender thread of a supply line connecting it to its food, water, fuel and ammunition. The First Marine Division is slowly putting itself in the same situation. No classical strategist can see the picture without his hair standing on end.

On top of all that, like the Armada, our plan depended on a single assumption: that the Iraqis would not fight. Unfortunately, they are fighting, leaving General Franks in the position of the Duke of Medina Sidonia. One division was enough to accept the surrender of Baghdad, but one division is far from enough to take Baghdad. One hates to say so, but the fact that the Iraqis are fighting has caused our initial campaign plan to collapse.

Finally, we seem to have assumed that the Iraqis would fight as we would, relying primarily on their heavy armor units. Instead, they have fallen back on the age-old Arab tradition of light cavalry warfare, directed against our rear. Arabs have a dismal record in tank battles, but at light cavalry warfare, they are quite good. We might recall that an Englishman named Lawrence used Arabs that way against the Turks, with pretty decent results.

The pitfalls in planning a war or a campaign are many. History does, however, warn us what some of them are. Perhaps it is time for Clio to ask Mr. Rumsfeld why he fell into three of the most obvious anyway.

William S. Lind is Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. Mr. Lind can be contacted through Steve Lilienthal at 202-204-5304 or by sending an e-mail to

© 2003

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