"Political strategy," IO impact, and propaganda of the deed: "You want it to be one way, but it's the other way"

John Bigelow's 1894 book "The Principles of Strategy" is one of the few noteworthy examples of original American strategic thinking from the period between the 1860s and the 1920s. One reason is Bigelow's relatively novel exploration of what he called "political strategy": the purposive wartime targeting of both "the machinery of the enemy's government" and the will of his subject population so as to impair that government's effective functioning and call its legitimacy into question. Airpower advocates would eventually snow us all into believing that popular support could be decisively impacted through strategic bombing, avoiding the bloody clash of armies (or at least they'd repeat the contention so often that it became a sort of commonplace). As such, it's tough to appreciate just exactly how unconventional this perspective was in its time.

Bigelow opened his chapter on the subject by excerpting from Ulysses Grant's memoirs, specifically recalling the Union commander's comments on Sherman's march through the South:

It had an important bearing in various ways upon the great object we had in view, that of closing the war. All the States east of the Mississippi River, up to the State of Georgia, had felt the hardships of the war. Georgia and South Carolina, and almost all of North Carolina, up to this time had been exempt from invasion by the Northern armies, except upon their immediate sea-coasts. Their newspapers had given such an account of Confederate success that the people who remained at home had been convinced that the Yankees had been whipped from first to last, and driven from pillar to post, and that now they could hardly be holding out for any other purpose than to find a way out of the war with honor to themselves. 

Even during this march of Sherman's, the newspapers in his front were proclaiming daily that his army was nothing better than a mob of men who were frightened out of their wits, and hastening, panic-stricken, to try to get under cover of our navy for protection against the Southern people. As this army was seen marching on triumphantly, however, the minds of the people became disabused, and they saw the true state of affairs. In turn they became disheartened, and would have been glad to submit without compromise. (p. 225)

The old anarchist and Marxist idea of the "propaganda of the deed" has enjoyed something of a resurgence lately in terrorism and insurgency studies. In its original conception, propagande par le fait was about the catalyzing political effect of public violence: through bomb blasts or political killings, individuals could provoke a demonstration of the government's brutality and impotence against committed revolutionaries, inspiring widespread resistance by the masses.

But there's a flip side to that idea, too: if the counter-revolutionary can synthesize his actions with his political message to counter or even pre-empt the challenging narrative, he can demonstrate the bankruptcy of the rebel's self-annihilating concept. This approach can be extended beyond counterinsurgency and irregular warfare and into the "political strategy" that Bigelow juxtaposes with the "regular [military] strategy" of Jomini: by marching through Georgia and making war on the Confederate populace, Sherman obliterated the fantasy narrative that sustained the last vestiges of popular support for the Southern cause. It wasn't enough for Grant's army to inflict staggering losses on Confederate forces -- without fighting a single battle, Sherman made certain the people of the rebellious states bore personal witness to the irrepressible Union army and understood the fraud their own leaders continued to perpetrate on them.

In other words (to put it in a popular modern context): "you want it to be one way, but it's the other way."

Don't forget, this was an era when battle was widely thought to be singularly decisive (even by Grant himself, who began the war with very different ideas about the utility of maneuver vis-a-vis attritive engagements with the main enemy force). And yet the "IO impact" (to use a modern term) of Sherman's operations was indisputable, and perhaps in some ways conclusive.

"If nominated, I will run to Mexico. If elected, I will fight extradition."

Ok, so Dave Petraeus' "Shermanesque statement" wasn't nearly so entertaining as Mo Udall's in 1980, but the general was pretty clear that he's not interested in being president.

"I thought I’d said no about as many ways as I could. I really do mean no. We have all these artful ways of doing it. I’ve tried Shermanesque responses, which everybody goes and finds out what Sherman said was pretty unequivocally no. I’ve done several different ways. I’ve tried quoting the country song, ‘What Part of No Don’t You Understand?’ I mean, I really do mean that. I feel very privileged to be able to serve our country. I’m honored to continue to do that as long as I can contribute, but I will not, ever, run for political office, I can assure you. And again, we have said that repeatedly and I’m hoping that people realize at a certain point you say it so many times that you could never flip, and start your career by flip-flopping into it."

(Now if only we could get Condi Rice to do the same thing!)

By way of comparison, here's what Sherman said when pressured to run in 1871:

"I hereby state, and mean all that I say, that I never have been and never will be a candidate for president; that if nominated by either party I should peremptorily decline; and even if unanimously elected I should decline to serve."

This is more often rendered, somewhat more poetically, as "if nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve."

Some people just can't take no for an answer, though. In 1884, the folks at the Republican convention sent Sherman a telegram that basically said dude, we don't care, we're nominating you. According to this book,

Sherman's son Tom later recalled his father's response to this telegram: "Without taking his cigar from his mouth, without changing his expression, while I stood there trembling by his side, my father wrote the answer, 'I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.'"

A touch more unequivocal, I suppose. Anyway, seems to me Petraeus might do a little better in the South.

I don't understand why people continually rally behind certain non-political individuals like Petraeus and Rice when their views on a broad range of issues relevant to the presidency are completely obscure (or, in the latter case, apparently flexible). Maybe it's a reflection of our deep dissatisfaction with with the political class and with the status quo that we're so eager to elect people without having a damned clue what they believe.