"J.R.R. Tolkien's Teachings on 'Culminating Points'" Topic

"Maybe it's encroaching senility, but I find my canon of strategic classics enfolds more and more fiction and literature every year. Move over, Clausewitz and Mahan. Homer, Shakespeare and Conrad want to bend your ear! Even J. R. R. Tolkien has worthwhile things to say about the topsy-turvy demesne of diplomacy and combat. Sure, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is about dwarves, orcs and magic rings. But there's far more to his Middle Earth chronicle than that.

For me, the chief takeaway from Tolkien has always been: despair not. Sound moral counsel. Recently, though, a colleague circulated an amusing but telling web comic that's floating around on the internet. It purports to show how Sauron, the archenemy of all that's good and noble, flouted what Carl von Clausewitz calls the highest and simplest law of strategy. To wit: make yourself strong in general, but especially at the decisive place on the map at the decisive time.

That place is where battles are lost and won. And striking "blow after blow" against the center of an enemy's strength—pounding away repeatedly until he says uncle or collapses—represents the key to victory…"
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Amicalement
Armand

The Silmarillion is the tale of the "Fall" of the Elves and their long, doomed struggle against Melkor, where they face defeat after defeat until all their old kingdoms and creations perish and those who survive must abandon Middle-earth entirely, or "fade" and wither away. Stern, tragic stuff -- but leagues beyond LOTR in its scope and intensity.

The Children of Hurin is much the same (but in a less narrative style, closer to LOTR in construction) -- one long bitter Ragnarok after another, with only Hurin's defiant "Aure entuluva! Day shall come again!" to give hope in the face of certain death.

For me, the chief takeaway from Tolkien has always been: despair not. Sound moral counsel.

Growing up during the Cold War and seeing Communism grow stronger and stronger year by year, I assumed I would eventually die in some doomed resistance movement when they finally took America. I was young and romantic, of course.

But the Lord of Hosts was in the game, for sure, via John Paul II and Lech Walesa and Maggie Thatcher and many others, and most of all Ronaldus Magnus.

Overwhelming western military and economic muscle also had a bit to do with it (we were never in any real danger of being over run by Reds). Cultural influence also played a big role causing those on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain to yearn for something different. Long term containment, patience and diplomacy managed to win the Cold War (with a bit of an assist from Rock and Roll).

It may not have worked aganist Sauron though unless you could get a Lech Walesa lead labor union to arise amongest the Orcs.

TomT