the protracted conflict

In an article published in 1878, prefiguring the first mass use of tanks forty years later, a British artillery officer, Colonel C. B. Brackenbury, wrote: “Moral effect is the object aimed at in a battle, for the killed and wounded have no influence on the final retirement.” Most military historians would agree with this judgment, and with Colonel Brackenbury’s premise that it is the advance that has, in general, a positive “moral effect” just as retreat tends to be demoralizing. “To advance is to conquer” was Frederick the Great’s favorite aphorism. “Those battles are the best,” he concludes, “into which we force the enemy, for it is an established maxim, to oblige him to do that for which he has no sort of inclination.”

General Giap’s current operations have proceeded according to these principles. He has forced his enemy into a battle for which, assuredly, he has no inclination. He has done so by a bold advance with the primary object not of territory and cities but of devastating moral effect that will promote the enemy’s “final retirement”—which means in this case collapse of the Thieu government and the disappearance of effective American force.

JB

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James Burnham

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In an article published in 1878, prefiguring the first mass use of tanks forty years later, a British artillery officer, Colonel C. B. Brackenbury, wrote: “Moral effect is the object aimed at in a battle, for the killed and wounded have no influence on the final retirement.” Most military historians would agree with this judgment, and with Colonel Brackenbury’s premise that it is the advance that has, in general, a positive “moral effect” just as retreat tends to be demoralizing. “To advance is to conquer” was Frederick the Great’s favorite aphorism. “Those battles are the best,” he concludes, “into which we force the enemy, for it is an established maxim, to oblige him to do that for which he has no sort of inclination.”

General Giap’s current operations have proceeded according to these principles. He has forced his enemy into a battle for which, assuredly, he has no inclination. He has done so by a bold advance with the primary object not of territory and cities but of devastating moral effect that will promote the enemy’s “final retirement”—which means in this case collapse of the Thieu government and the disappearance of effective American force.