American Military History, Volume 1 by Richard W. Stewart

One question that has long interested students of the theory and practice of military affairs is whether war is an art or a science. This is no small question in an age when the lure of technology seeks to reduce so much of human behavior to scientific principles or mechanistic templates. In the eighteenth century, the age of enlightenment, when the systematic study of war began, military theory regarded warfare as mathematical and scientific. A general who knew mathematics and topography, the theorists optimistically maintained, could conduct campaigns with geometrical precision and win wars without bloody battles. In Europe, the violent shock of Napoleonic warfare brought a rude end to the notion of war as a purely scientific or mathematical game. But insofar as the application of physical pressure upon the enemy involves the use of mechanical tools under certain predictable or calculable conditions, it is possible to speak in terms of military science. The systematic application of science to the development of weapons and to technology in general is a comparatively recent development. Since World War II, techniques of research and analysis have been enlisted from scientific fields to make calculations and choices among complex weapon systems and in the management of huge defense programs more exact. Over and above the techniques, the successful conduct of war at all levels of command requires assessing unpredictable variables and taking calculated risks under circumstances for which no precise precedent exists. Since the "fog of war" still holds and wars involve men as well as machines, warfare remains in many ways what it has always been essentially-an art.

Military theorists have long searched for the principles underlying the art of war. They have sought to distill from the great mass of military experience over the centuries simple but fundamental truths to guide commanders through the fog of war. They have evolved lists of principles from an analysis of the campaigns and the writings of the great captains of war, such as Julius Caesar, Frederick the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Helmuth von Moltke. Occasionally the masters have provided their own set of precepts. Foremost among the analysts have been Henri de Jomini, Carl von Clausewitz, Ardant du Picq, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Ferdinand Foch, Giulio Douhet, Basil H. Liddell Hart, J. F. C. Fuller, and Sun Tzu. The axioms range from the Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan B. Forrest's oft-misquoted advice, "Git thar fustest with the mostest men," to Napoleon's 115 maxims. The lists differ in emphasis as well as in number. Some theorists have stressed that the battle is all and the defeat of the enemy's armed forces the correct objective, others that the best path to victory is by indirect methods and approaches that avoid confrontations and rely upon maneuver and psychological pressure.