Transcription
And the Britons, after much trial and error, came up with a way of integrating multiple instruments of national power to deal with this gentleman on the horse. Oh, by the way, if you want to see the horse's skeleton, you can go to the British Army Museum in in London, but that's another story.
Anyway, gross story, but anyhow, here's a good old Napoleon and the Britons tried different things, uh, and eventually figured out the problem is that navies are rarely decisive in wartime. You've got to have other instruments to integrate. Armies sometimes can be, but and so this is where the Britons come up with grand strategy. They coined the term because they need to to do it.
And here's their problem on the eve of Napoleonic Wars. There's Europe has a bunch of consolidated states east and west, and then there's this big tidbit zone in the middle. It's called the Holy Roman Empire, but it's really a tidbit zone, and Napoleon eats up the tidbits. And then you get to 1812, and this is the maximum extent of the French Empire, and this is when the guru of Western Warfare, Carl von Clausewitz, is coming up with his ideas about ground warfare. It's a really bad year for everybody. Not for Napoleon, but everybody else.
And this is when the Britons are thinking about how you're going to use maritime power to deal with this. And here's what they come up with, their strategy for elephant hunting. How do you deal with a continental power that's trying to upend the trading system on which you're making money?
So, rule number one is you keep the home economy growing. That is number one because that's going to produce the money that's going to fund your military, fund your allies, allow you to do everything. Secondly, don't let the elephant forage. You want to close down enemy trade through blockade, commerce raiding. So, you're going to throw it back on its own dwindling resources and its increasingly embittered allies. Rule number three, you want to rent an elephant. You want to find the continental power that is most directly threatened by your continental problem, and you want to arm, fund, do whatever you can to keep them in the fight, cuz that's the main front of whatever this war is. Rule number four, Britain needs to find a theater that is peripheral to that main theater, where access by sea is much more efficient than access by land, and wants to and you want to fight there. Why? Because it's going to do several things for you. The attrition between the peripheral theater and the main theater is going to add up, that's good. You're going to force the enemy to fight with divided attention, and ideally, if it if it's a uh a really good theater, you're going to relieve uh some of the pressure on the main front as your enemy is going to have to divert resources. Rule number five, a rule that Britain has broke at great cost in World War I. Do not take on the enemy main force directly. You certainly do not do that as an opening move. Think about it. A continental power's major strength is this army. That is not Britain's great strength. Britain's great strength is its navy, its ability to generate wealth, and therefore its ability to survive protracted war. Don't play the continental game, it won't be good for you. And rule number six, if you're going to fight on the main front, only do it after you have really bled that elephant. So, that it's been greatly weakened, and you only do it with lots of friends, gang up on them.
As much as a continental power would might want to play this game, it cannot. Why? One is insufficient maritime access. When Mahan talked about egress uh to the sea, basically they're living they're on these narrow seas that are blockaded, which means you cannot get your surface fleet out reliably in wartime. Second, it means your your merchant marine is going nowhere. And in addition, these continental problems often have a surfeit of neighbors, and you of which might invade it. So, it can't play this game.
But, if Britain did and kept at it, it could set itself and its enemies on opposing trend lines. So, the the war is going to increasingly encroach on enemy territory with the main theater and the more peripheral theaters, which is going to undermine the enemy of economy, productive capacity, morale, and together this is going to undermine the ability for your enemy to continue fighting. In effect, it's a strategy of protracted war, but Britain's going to win by the exhausting the other guy first.
And if you look think about it, the focus isn't primarily on the military instrument of national power. It's actually much more about economics, coalitions, institutions, but they're prerequisites for it. You can't play it if you do not have sanctuary at home. Sorry about the double negative, but the point is if people are going to invade over your borders or level your industrial base, you have a hard time trying to do this. Moreover, it requires access, access to peripheral theaters, access to your alliance partners, access to overseas markets, and it also requires institutional stability at home in order to follow a strat consistent strategy over a long period of time. These are some of the characteristics that Mahan would later emphasize.
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