"Today’s Armies Are Still Fighting World War I" Topic

"A hundred years ago today, at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, the First World War in Europe ended. It had cost tens of millions of lives, utterly destroyed the existing political order, and paved the way for the rise of fascism and a repeat performance of global conflict in the form of World War II.

Barbara Tuchman, in her peerless book on the outbreak of the war, "The Guns of August," said, "Nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general." In the end, those long-dead generals passed along not only a few comforting maxims, but also a new way of war. Over the course of four years, warfare fundamentally shifted -- the echoes of that conflict continue to resonate for today's warriors…."
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Amicalement
Armand

Bushwa! Another "armchair general" trying to make a name for himself.

Jim

Actually the author was a real "general". He was a Navy admiral and the commander of the US Southern Command.

James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a retired U.S. Navy admiral and former military commander of NATO…

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You are right my friend….

Amicalement
Armand

Being a retired admiral does not mean his opinions are worth anything. His basic premise seems to be that, since a number of basic military technologies used now were developed in WW1, that modern warfare is no different than WW1 combat. Despite being incorrect on a number of those claims: the submarine, for example, was used in combat several times hundreds of years earlier, and mechanically fired machine guns (gatlings and mitrailleuse) predate WW1 by an easy half century and were used in multiple conflicts before WW1.

But even if he were correct that those were new innovations, the idea that just because they had some nascent version of some technology we now use means that a WW1 tank is functionally interchangeable with a modern one- or more importantly, that the doctrine has remained unchanged- is absolutely ludicrous. By that logic, wars were EXACTLY THE SAME from 20,000BC to 1870, because the primary weapon for decisive military action during that entire period was fundamentally a long pointy stick.

Also, his assertion that WW1 was somehow the first instance of "total war" in which civilian personnel and industry was a target of war is absurd. Has the man never heard of a chevauchée? Does he not understand that a key component of classical Greek warfare was that if you did not leave your fortifications to engage in decisive battle (or were defeated in that battle), the opposing forces would burn your fields and olive groves, punishing your nation's civilian population through starvation and economic disaster?

Literally the only thing that HASN'T changed about war is the one thing he insists was a new innovation for WW1: that it is a method of attaining political advantage through the use of force.

"full national war." … conflict that encompasses entire societies fighting each other. Wars following it – especially World War II, of course – had devastating effects on civilian populations

So did The Thirty Years War. Every war has devastating effects on the location on which it is fought.
In this (OK it was the last, I'm still catching up) century, nations did not stop fighting when their army was defeated in the field. Their population base could sustain multiple armies and they kept on fighting until their economic base was disrupted.
Even before the 20th Century, it was understood that by destroying the economic base an army could be left stranded in the field. e.g. The criminal Sherman waging war, not against an army, but against the civilian population. [The tyrant Lincoln knew that there was a treaty against the destruction of cities among European Nations but remained silent (giving consent) while Atlanta was destroyed.]
Even this pales in comparison to wars of earlier times. Then wars had biblical consequences. e.g. The entire nation being marched off into slavery for 400 years.
Directly or indirectly, it is the civilian population that pays for war. It always has. (Sigh)

I ain't no Admiral … but I certainly think tech and tactics have evolved significantly since the end of WWI 100 years ago.