By Michael F. Duggan
In World War One, there were big pushes and there were attritional battles. For most of the war however, breaching operations attempted by both sides lacked the suppressing firepower necessary to overcome the defensive advantages of the enemy. Armor and close air support lacked the power, sophistication, and doctrine for an effective modern combined arms offensive. The final victory of the Allies in the 100 Days campaign in 1918, had less to do with Blitzkrieg than with the arrival of two million American troops and a general collapse of the German lines.
Between the big offensives of 1916-17 and the 100 Days battles in the summer and fall of 1918, there were trench raids and the development and refinement of infiltration tactics by both sides. But as the name states, these actions involved tactics—small raids—more than strategy, although, like most of the big pushes, they did little to move the lines. Even the first major tank action at Cambrai at the end of 1917 ultimately proved futile as the lumbering monsters were eventually picked-off piecemeal by artillery after their initial shock and first-day gains.
The problem with tactics, operations, and strategy in the First World War—and never before had the three seemed more like one—was the belief that the front embodied a kind of pressurized equilibrium. Pop the enemy’s bubble, so it went, and a general collapse would follow. The petering-out of the German Michael Offensive in the spring of 1918 laid waste to this idea. As Andrew Bacevich recently observed, “Punching holes is a poor substitute for strategy.”1
Western sources are now reporting that the Ukrainian offensive is failing, that after significant losses in armor and infantry, it has not breached the Russian lines (how an army is supposed to launch an integrated combined arms offensive without air superiority, massive stocks of artillery ammunition, a superiority in suppressing fire against an entrenched enemy, and a secure communication system to coordinate it all, is not clear).2 These reports told us what we already knew: that Bradleys and Leopard II tanks Its were picked-off en masse, like the British Mark IVs at Cambrai. Notably, Cambrai was followed by a German counteroffensive.
The Russo-Ukrainian War appears to be a culmination of the World Wars and a return to initial states. After the big pushes of the First World War, the massive combined arms offensives of the Second World War, and the aerial bombing of civilians, modern war has come full circle to grinding offensives along a wide front, attrition, forays into no man’s land, an enemy with a flexible, multilayered defense in depth and pre-sighted kill zones, and small unit infiltration and raids into often booby-trapped enemy trenches. Ironically, tanks, originally developed by the British to breach the fortified German lines, now appear to be primary technological victims of the renewal of positional warfare. The drones and loitering munitions are new. As with the first Cold War, a nuclear Sword of Damocles hangs above the action on the ground.
The First World War was a tragedy, but it was also a crime. After it became apparent during the fall of 1914 and early 1915 that the war would become bogged down into an attritional nightmare, the warring nations should have come to a settlement. The fact that this was not politically feasible at the time does little to excuse it. The Ukrainians have fought better than anyone had expected with competence, courage, and tenacity, but the situation on the front presents them with an overwhelming tactical, operational, strategic, and logistical impasse. As I have written before, through no fault of their own, the numbers are against them. If the diplomats of our time are to effectively apply the lessons of history, they would to well to succeed where the statesmen of 1914-18 failed.
Notes
- Andrew Bacevich, “America’s Compulsion is Intact and Ready for More,” Responsible Statecraft, June 5, 2023.
- For example, see Daniel L. Davis, “Why Ukraine’s Counter-Offensive is Failing,” Responsible Statecraft, July 20, 2023. Davis also makes a strong case for a diplomatic solution to the war.