And here we are, having completed the
first 9 Principles of Joint Operations (HERE, HERE, and HERE). Today we’ll look
at the 3 new Principles, but first a few words about how these have come about
and how the military uses them.
As I said in the first post, we owe the
idea of Principles of War (what the first 9 used to be known as) to Baron Anton
de Jomini, a Swiss banker turned military officer in Napoleon’s army. Jomini is
really the first in Western military history to articulate a set of rules to
follow (“Principles”) in the conduct of warfare. Nowadays Clausewitz is more
popular and Jomini’s “scientific” approach is criticized as creating merely a
“cookbook” for warfare rather than the more intellectual musings of his German
counterpart, but in the 1800’s Jomini’s work was the basis for much of the
teachings of armies all over the world, including the US Military Academy at
West Point; all of the generals on both sides of the US Civil War were brought
up studying Jomini. Today, much of what we as the US military study is a blend
of Jomini’s “science” and Clausewitz’s “art”. The 9 Principles we’ve studied so
far that were previously called the “Principles of War”, while not all concepts
articulated by Jomini, directly follow his orderly approach.
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| Napoleon and his staff. Jomini is probably in the back somewhere. |
Jomini formulated his concepts based on
his experiences in the Napoleonic wars. While you could find plenty of
irregular warfare similar to modern day counterinsurgency (the Peninsular
Campaign in particular stands out), it is the experience in large, conventional
battles that shaped Jomini’s thoughts.
Like Jomini, military thinkers up through the Cold War thought mostly in
terms of large-scale, conventional warfare, with two opposing armies fighting
battles as instruments of national power. In the post-Cold War world, military
thinkers started to pay attention to smaller wars and irregular warfare,
developing concepts like MOOTW (Military Operations Other Than War) and LIC
(Low-Intensity Conflict).
Obviously the old 9 Principles all are
still valid, and indeed can be applied to non-lethal means. They can even
translate outside of warfare—for instance, those of you bombarded by beer
company ads while watching sports are the targets of advertising agencies MASSING
their effects on their target audience to maximize revenue; putting commercials
for kid’s toys during football games would miss the target audience and violate
ECONOMY OF FORCE because it’d be a waste of money. And so we get beer
commercials during football and My Little Pony during cartoons.
However, it is the US/NATO experience in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and mostly the failures of methods designed for
conventional warfare to lead to success in a counterinsurgency (COIN)
environment, that highlighted the need to rethink how we did things. Simply
rolling in and blowing everything up is not an effective way to get a populace
on your side, and if you’re trying to defeat an insurgency rather than conquer
a country, you have to have the populace (and the international community, not
to mention your own citizens) on your side. Hence, we now have added three new
Principles to the original nine. We’ll start with the Principle of Restraint.
Restraint[1]
(1) The
purpose of restraint is to limit
collateral damage and prevent the unnecessary use of force.
(2) A
single act could cause significant military and political consequences;
therefore, judicious use of force is necessary. Restraint requires the careful and disciplined balancing of the
need for security, the conduct of military operations, and the national
strategic end state. For example, the exposure of intelligence gathering
activities, such as interrogation of detainees and prisoners of war, could have
significant political and military repercussions and should be conducted with
sound judgment. Excessive force antagonizes
those parties involved, thereby damaging the legitimacy of the organization
that uses it while potentially enhancing the legitimacy of the opposing party.
(3)
Commanders at all levels must ensure their personnel are properly trained─including knowing and understanding ROE (Rules
of engagement)─and
are quickly informed of any changes. Failure to understand and comply with
established ROE can result in fratricide, mission failure, and/or national
embarrassment. Restraint is best
achieved when ROE issued at the beginning of an operation address most
anticipated situations that may arise. Since the domestic law of some nations
may be more restrictive concerning the use of force than permitted under
coalition or allied force ROE, commanders must be aware of national
restrictions imposed on force participants.
Restraint is most easily described
through the example of targeting: you don’t take out an entire city block with
a JDAAMS bomb to get one guy, because the collateral damage (innocent
bystanders killed, property damage, etc.) is more detrimental to your cause
than anything one person could do to you. Sure, you’ve eliminated one
terrorist, but you’ve probably just created 30 more, as every relative of
someone killed and every person who just lost their home is now angry with you
and at least going to side with the enemy over supporting you.
I can see the wheels turning in some of
your heads—how, exactly, is Nate going to connect this to the samurai? After
all, samurai weren’t exactly out to win the hearts and minds of the populace.
Samurai warfare was a bloody force on force conflict, and we all are familiar
with the stereotype of samurai committing suicide rather than being captured or
surrendering. It doesn’t appear there was much room for restraint on the
Sengoku battlefield.
I would agree with this for the most
part. However, I think I can illustrate the importance of restraint by
comparing Oda Nobunaga to his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi, specifically how
they dealt with daimyo who opposed them.
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| "Bloodshed Demon Nobunaga" is an example of Nobunaga's reputation |
Nobunaga is well known for his lack of
restraint in dealing with enemies. While to say he always stamped out his
defeated foes is a gross over-generalization, in general he was fairly harsh in
dealing with those who opposed him. His treatment of defiant religious
groups—primarily the ten year war against the Ishiyama Honganji and the
complete destruction of the Enryaku-ji Temple on Mt. Hiei and the murder of
every man, woman, and child on the mountain –stand out as brutal examples of
how Nobunaga dealt with any forms of resistance to his authority. The wholesale
destruction of the province of Iga is another example. Nobunaga’s brutality
made opposing him a choice not taken lightly, for sure. However, the scale of
that brutality meant that once a daimyo or other entity made that choice, they
had to resist Nobunaga to the death; there was no way to change your mind and
surrender, as once you opposed Nobunaga, he was determined to annihilate you.
(As I said, this is an oversimplification, as there are examples where this
isn’t true, but for the most part it works).
Especially after 1575, Nobunaga was
powerful enough in central Japan that he could afford not to practice
restraint. It possibly bit him, however, when he was assassinated by Akechi Mitsuhide.
Since to oppose Nobunaga meant you would face his full wrath with no mercy, the
only way to oppose him successfully was to attack him when you could destroy
him. This opportunity presented itself to Mitsuhide in June of 1582, when Oda
Nobunaga and his small force of body guards were overwhelmed by Mitsuhide’s
army at Honno-ji in a surprise attack at dawn. Mitsuhide didn’t exactly have
the option of withdrawing from Nobunaga’s service and going somewhere else.
Now, let’s look at Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Hideyoshi,
of course, crushed Mitsuhide at Yamazaki and was able to claim certain rights
as Nobunaga’s avenger, but he lacked the inherent power that Oda Nobunaga had.
He could not simply crush everyone who stood in his way. Yet within 2 years of
Nobunaga’s death, Hideyoshi had not only consolidated control over Nobunaga’s
territory but was expanding it at a much faster rate than Nobunaga ever did. By
1590, a mere 8 years after Nobunaga’s death, Hideyoshi had complete control of
all of Japan. How? Well, paradoxically, by using restraint.
Unlike Nobunaga, Hideyoshi always gave
his opposition a way out of conflict. Beginning with the Mori right after
Nobunaga’s death, Hideyoshi would follow a pattern of reconciliation and
integration. Those that chose not to submit (Shibata Katsuie, for example, in
1583, or the Hojo in 1590) would be obliterated, but any daimyo that confronted
Hideyoshi was given the option to surrender and retain at least a little of
what they held rather than face complete destruction. Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1584,
the Chosokabe on Shikoku, then the Shimazu on Kyushu, all initially opposed
Hideyoshi, only to be defeated (Tokugawa Ieyasu actually won against Hideyoshi
at Nagakute/Komaki, but submitted when he saw that no matter how many battles he
won, Hideyoshi had material and manpower superiority and would eventually
overwhelm him). Once Hideyoshi
demonstrated his superiority and capability to annihilate his enemy, he gave
them the option of joining him. Some daimyo had their lands reduced (the Shimazu
were pushed back into southern Kyushu, the Chosokabe had to give up all of
Shikoku other than Tosa province) but some actually benefitted (Ieyasu
eventually gave up his home provinces of Mikawa and Totomi, but gained the much
larger territory around Edo in the Kanto). In either case, the daimyo were
given an out that allowed them to keep their heads, some land, and then gain
position within Hideyoshi’s political structure. Eventually, even daimyo not
directly confronted by Hideyoshi’s armies (like the Date of northern Japan) saw
it was best to preemptively submit to his control. By not following a pattern
of total destruction like Nobunaga, Hideyoshi was able to build a coalition of
daimyo loyal to him and obtain control of all of Japan in only 8 years. This is
a textbook example of strategic restraint.[2]
Perseverance
(1) The
purpose of perseverance is to ensure
the commitment necessary to attain the national strategic end state.
(2) Perseverance involves preparation for
measured, protracted military operations in pursuit of the national strategic
end state. Some joint operations may require years to reach the termination
criteria. The underlying causes of the crisis may be elusive, making it
difficult to achieve decisive resolution. The patient, resolute, and persistent
pursuit of national goals and objectives often is essential to success. This
will frequently involve diplomatic, economic, and informational measures to
supplement military efforts.
Perseverance means
keeping up the fight until the other guy buckles. The North Vietnamese did not
defeat the US tactically, by far taking the worst of the fighting throughout
the entire Vietnam War. However, they had more national will to persevere than the American public did,
and outlasted the United States despite their significant tactical
disadvantages. Enemies before and since—the Japanese in WWII felt they could
force the US to surrender because the American public would not accept heavy
casualties, as do terrorist and anti-US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan
today—have tried the same approach. The difference in those two cases is that
Pearl Harbor and 9-11 so inflamed the US public that the will to continue the
fight and persevere was there. (The question remains open in Afghanistan 11
years after 9-11, but this illustrates the point.) Perseverance is the main weapon of any insurgency against a
superior power, usually because it is significantly outgunned and outmanned.
Insurgencies win when they persevere and demonstrate that the governmental
power is unable to destroy them and therefore weak or illegitimate; they fail
when the stronger power has the will and perseverance
to hunt them down.
Two examples will demonstrate this in Japanese history. First, Nobunaga
successfully defeated what may best be described as a religious insurgency in
his ten-year campaign against the Ikko Ikki and the Ishiyama Honganji. The Ikko
sectarian movement, which rejected secular daimyo control in favor of fanatical
obedience to their religious leaders at the Ishiyama Honganji temple in Osaka,
in many ways, threatened the political order itself, not just Nobunaga’s
control of it. A surviving Ikko Ikki meant that a challenge to samurai control
of the populace existed. Consequently, Nobunaga could not allow it to exist if
he intended to consolidate national political control. Over a period of ten
years, Nobunaga fought, blockaded, besieged, and rooted out Ikko supporters in
various areas of the country. At times he engaged the Imperial Court to broker
cease-fires, in order to give him time to reconsolidate and refit his forces in
preparation for the next round of fighting (or to go fight other threats
elsewhere, but I digress…). Even in these peaceful lulls, the endstate—the
destruction of this religious entity outside of samurai political control—was
never abandoned. Nobunaga, as the political hegemon, persevered through obstacles to eventually bring the Ishiyama
Honganji to the point of surrender in 1582.
It may seem like this is no big deal—after all, Nobunaga was a
dictatorial daimyo who didn’t have to answer to the public, didn’t have
reporters documenting things and questioning him like the American military in
Vietnam, and didn’t really have to care what other “nations” thought of how he
handled the Ikko Ikki. Of course he could persevere, you might say, because he
didn’t have anything to keep him from doing so. That would be ignoring the
complexity of the campaign against the Ikko Ikki (with campaigns against them
fought in three separate geographic regions, the need to dismantle their
multi-ringed defenses around the Ishiyama Honganji, and the need to separate
them from their supporting allies the Mori and others, on top of fighting other
daimyo threats in three different theaters of war). For a counterpoint to that
argument, I will show a successful insurgency in Japanese history, outside of
the Sengoku period.
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| Kusunoki Masashige's Statue in Tokyo |
Kusunoki Masashige, famous as the paragon of loyalty for his
dedication to the cause of Emperor Go-Daigo and his struggle against the
failing Kamakura bakufu government, is the quintessential insurgent leader.
Masashige never struck a crushing blow against Kamakura forces. His success was
in surviving. By confounding and eluding government forces in the mountains
south of Kyoto, he demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the Kamakura regime for
the rest of Japan, especially the leaders of warrior houses, to see. Kamakura’s
control rested on the assumption that the Shogun (or rather the Hojo regents
who ran the government) maintained military control over the country. Kusunoki’s
resistance and defeat of pursuing government forces at Chihaya and Akasaka didn’t
militarily or economically cripple the Kamakura regime. What it did, though,
was demonstrate that resistance to Kamakura was a possibility. And so, when the
first armies sent out to defeat Kusunoki failed, Kamakura sent more
armies—armies led by a man named Ashikaga Takauji, and Nitta Yoshisada.
Takauji’s army went west, but instead of engaging and defeating Kusunoki,
switched allegiance to Go-Daigo and secured the capital region for his return.
Nitta Yoshisada’s army turned east back to Kamakura and attacked the government
headquarters, destroying the bakufu capital and the Kamakura government once
and for all in 1333. Kusunoki’s perseverance
and ability to stay alive led to this (temporary) victory. That the successful
commanders fell out and eventually fought each other, with Ashikaga Takauji
defeating Nitta and Kusunoki in 1336 to take control of Japan, should not
diminish from the value of perseverance.
In fact, Takauji himself would make a great case study in perseverance—defeated early on, retreated to the ends of Japan
(Kyushu), only to gather strength again, return to defeat Kusunoki and Nitta,
retake Kyoto and declare himself Shogun, then later forced out by his own
brother before returning and defeating him for control of the Shogunate.
One last note on perseverance:
the old saying describing Japan’s three unifiers states that Nobunaga sewed and
picked the wheat, Hideyoshi pounded the flour and baked the bread, and Ieyasu
ate it. Tokugawa Ieyasu started as an underling of the Imagawa, became the
junior ally of Nobunaga after Nobunaga defeated the Imagawa, challenged
Hideyoshi after Nobunaga’s death only to submit to him, and then eventually
outlived Hideyoshi and destroyed his son to found his own shogunate which
lasted 250+ years. THAT is perseverance.
Legitimacy
(1) The
purpose of legitimacy is to maintain
legal and moral authority in the conduct of operations.
(2) Legitimacy, which can be a decisive
factor in operations, is based on the actual and perceived legality, morality,
and rightness of the actions from the various perspectives of interested
audiences. These audiences will include our national leadership and domestic
population, governments, and civilian populations in the operational area, and
nations and organizations around the world.
(3)
Committed forces must sustain the legitimacy
of the operation and of the host government, where applicable. Security actions
must be balanced with legitimacy concerns. All actions must be considered in
the light of potentially competing strategic and tactical requirements, and
must exhibit fairness in dealing with competing factions where appropriate. Legitimacy may depend on adherence to
objectives agreed to by the international community, ensuring the action is
appropriate to the situation, and fairness in dealing with various factions.
Restricting the use of force, restructuring the type of forces employed, and
ensuring the disciplined conduct of the forces involved may reinforce legitimacy.
(4)
Another aspect of this principle is the legitimacy
bestowed upon a local government through the perception of the populace that it
governs. Humanitarian and civil military operations help develop a sense of legitimacy for the supported
government. Because the populace perceives that the government has genuine
authority to govern and uses proper agencies for valid purposes, they consider
that government as legitimate. During operations in an area where a legitimate
government does not exist, extreme
caution should be used when dealing with individuals and organizations to avoid
inadvertently legitimizing them.
Today, legitimacy is
about doing what the world—the international community, our own public, and
obviously the local nationals in the country we are involved in—will perceive
as moral, just, and right. The other two Principles today play into this—if we
use too much force and do not show restraint,
then that undermines our legitimacy;
if we don’t “stay the course” (persevere)
and we “cut and run” as soon as things get tough, that undermines our legitimacy in a different way.
It would be easy to think that, like with restraint, legitimacy
would not matter to a samurai daimyo of the 16th century. After all,
CNN was not there to document the war atrocities committed by Hideyoshi’s
troops against the Koreans, or Nobunaga’s troops against the Enryakuji, and
even if they were, times were different and it’s not as if Nobunaga or
Hideyoshi had to worry about public approval ratings. Or did they?
I would argue that samurai daimyo, especially those seeking
national power, were obsessed with legitimacy.
There was a voting public they to which they had to demonstrate competency and
right to rule—their warrior subordinates. No, they didn’t go to the polls and
cast a vote, but they could certainly vote with their feet (or their swords)
and overthrow a weak leader who did not make efforts to seek legitimacy. So, in that regard—what WAS
legitimacy, in the 16th
century?
Consider the fact that, despite the turbulent history and almost
constant fighting for control of Japan from the Gempei War in the 1180’s
through the Osaka Campaign of 1615, at no time did any samurai leader attempt
to militarily supplant the Imperial institution. (Theories exist about Ashikaga
Yoshimitsu having the idea around 1400, but there’s no smoking gun that says he
actually intended to remove the emperor and assume the title of emperor
himself.) Why not? Well, the Emperor was a god—or at least Shinto Nationalism
from the pre-WWII era would tell us. How much that was actually believed prior
to the Meiji era is up for debate, but the fact remains that the emperor was a
symbol of divine rule, whatever his personal status as a deity.
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| Jimmu Tenno, the first Emperor |
This symbolism was hereditary—the emperors descended from Jimmu
Tenno, the son of the Sun Goddess—and therefore a samurai warlord could not
just waltz into Kyoto and take over the title of emperor, since he didn’t have
divine DNA. Force alone wouldn’t do the job. Therefore, political control in
Japan, from the time of the Soga and Fujiwara in the Nara and Heian periods through
the end of the WWII, rested on the approval and authority (willingly given or
not) of the emperor. Recognition by, or control of, the emperor was the
difference between being a rebel or being a suppressor of rebels. Gaining court
titles, whether or not any material value was included (and after the Heian
period usually no land or stipend was attached to titles, but that’s a whole
different series of blogposts), gave valuable legitimacy to the holder of the title. This is why samurai warlords
fought from the beginning of samurai warfare. The Taira’s legitimacy came in
the form of Kiyomori named as regent; the Minamoto restructured things when
Yoritomo set up the Shogunate and make Shogun the preferred title for
exercising national warrior control. The Ashikaga fought first Kamakura and
then Go-Daigo to claim the title of Shogun for themselves, going so far as to
set up an alternate successor to the Imperial line as a challenger to Go-Daigo.
Some military rulers even leveraged control of the shogun without becoming
shogun themselves—the Hojo regents of Kamakura or the Hosokawa Kanrei under the
Ashikaga legitimized their control
of the government by being “servants and stewards” of the bakufu, under the
authority of the weak but legitimately
recognized shogun.
We see the same patterns in the Sengoku period. Oda Nobunaga, as
did most daimyo, developed ties with the Shogun early in his career, even
visiting Ashikaga Yoshiteru in Kyoto, according to biographies. When Nobunaga
began to look towards achieving national prominence, he found his legitimacy in the goal of restoring
Ashikaga Yoshiaki, the brother of the assassinated Yoshiteru, to Kyoto as the
heir to the Shogunate. Nobunaga only removed Yoshiaki from power once he had
enough power of his own to be legitimate,
and according to Lamers[3], did everything he could to maintain good relations
with Yoshiaki. After removing Yoshiaki, Nobunaga established direct ties to the
Imperial court, who would reward him with titles further legitimizing his central rule.
After Nobunaga’s death, Hideyoshi masterfully used the court to legitimize his military rule. Like we
talked about before, Hideyoshi did not really start with an independent power
base or a formidable military strength capable of imposing his will on his enemies.
The same was true of his relations with the Imperial court. Recognizing the
disadvantages of his humble birth, Hideyoshi had himself adopted by a Fujiwara
family court noble, instantly giving him a “pedigree”, and adopted the name
Toyotomi, associated with the Fujiwara family. This new “lineage” then allowed
him to assume titles traditionally assigned to the Fujiwara family—namely,
Kampaku (Imperial Regent). While many today assume Shogun to have been a higher
title because most military rulers used that title, Kampaku was actually much
higher on the prestige scale, especially when also paired with the title of
Daijo Daijin (Prime Minister); Hideyoshi held both titles. Of course, titles
were not dispensed just because he got himself adopted by the right people. He had
to have the military strength and the savvy to demonstrate the power to rule,
but the point is no matter how much military power a daimyo had, he still had
to rule under the mantle of Imperial sanctioned legitimacy.
Well, that concludes our look at each
of the Principles of Joint Operations. Next week I’ll return with a look at how
they can be used to inform military historical analysis through a case study of
a particular battle. You’ll never guess which one that might be….
The above
comments represent the views of the author only, and should not be interpreted
to represent the views or official position of the United States Army or the
Department of Defense.
MAJ Nate Ledbetter
Intermediate Level Education Class 12-002
Staff Group D
Fort Gordon, Georgia
Intermediate Level Education Class 12-002
Staff Group D
Fort Gordon, Georgia
[1]
Department of Defense. Joint Publication 3-0, “Joint Operations” Washington,
D.C.: 11 August 2011. Pg. A-3-5 for all definitions.
[2]
For an academic treatment of Hideyoshi’s “federation” building, see Berry, Mary
Elizabeth. Hideyoshi. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1982.
[3] Lamers, Jeroen Pieter. Japonius Tyrannus: The Japanese Warlord, Oda Nobunaga Reconsidered.
Japonica Neerlandica. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2000.
