This paper is written as part of a book-length study, currently in
progress, of the origins and development of naval offensive
thinking during the five decades or so leading up to the First
World War. Its particular focus is the idea of the "decisive
battle," i.e., the belief that dominated naval thinking in the
Victorian and Edwardian periods that the goals of war at sea could,
would, and ought to be settled by a single, all-destructive clash
between massed battle fleets. The Great War would demonstrate, of
course, that "real" war was a far cry from the "ideal" that had
been promoted by the "pens behind the fleet." When the "second
Trafalgar" failed to take place, apologists were quick to propose
that this was only to be expected and that the "uneducated hopes"
were disappointed because they had failed to grasp the distinction
between what modem students of strategy call declaratory and action
war planning. The implication was that the professional naval
strategist did know the difference and had prepared all along to
enjoy, as Churchill put it after the Battle of Jutland, "all the
fruits of victory" without the need for the British to seek the
battle at all. The distinction between declaratory and action
policy, i.e., between what one says will be done and what is
planned in fact, may be an obvious one in principle; in practice it
is not, not even for the professional military planner. An
important reason is that only declaratory strategy receives public
exposure at home and abroad, and only it is read, discussed,
absorbed, and liable to be acted upon. Declaratory plans, when
repeated often enough, can take on a life of their own and assume
an action reality that was never intended. This phenomenon is not
unique to naval war planning at the tum of the century. Take, for
example, the U.S. Navy's "Maritime Strategy" of the 1980s. Some
people hold that the avowed aim of an immediate forward offensive
was declaratory and intended to be a deterrent. Or did the
"war-fighters" really mean what they said? Or is it the true
sequence of events that planners became so carried away with their
own declarations that in the course of public promotion,
demonstrative exercises, etc., war-fighting came to imitate
war-posturing? It needs also to be kept in mind that "real" war
planning cannot be at too great odds with public professions for
the simple reason that the discrepancy will eventually become
evident from the kinds of military forces that are built. The
fleets that went to war in August 1914 were built in the image of
the decisive battle. It is true that there were some naval
strategists on both sides in 1914 who were skeptical about the
prospect of a royal road to victory. It is also correct that the
war plans on both sides allowed for strategies short of an
immediate pursuit of battle. Indeed, both the British and German
naval war plans say remarkably little about quick and decisive
action. It is nevertheless disingenuous to suggest that only lay
opinion had been led astray, whereas the professionals knew better
and were unsurprised by the absence of early battle action. When
all was said and done. the naval profession as a whole was just as
committed to what one commentator in 1915 called the "totally wrong
idea of the meaning of naval supremacy .., This paper is made
possible thanks to the author's six-month appointment at the Naval
War College, Newport, Rhode Island, as a Secretary of the Navy
Senior Research Fellow. I am also particularly indebted to the
thoughtful advice and commentary of Commander James V.P. Goldrick.
Royal Australian Navy, Professor John B. Hattendorf, Captain Wayne
Hughes, U.S. Navy (Retired). Commander Graham Rhys-Jones, Royal
Navy, Professor Geoffrey Til, And Mr. Frank Uhlig, Jr. If the final
result does not quite live up to their high standards, only the
author is to blame.
General
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