Battle Tactics essays

Battle Tactics essays Much of what we now understand about war and tactics has been gleaned from centuries of history birthed in the Greco-Roman experience. Not only did Greek and Roman culture lead directly into later European theory by inspiring the tactical writers and thinkers of the Rennaissance and its history become a textbook case for latter strategical study, it also had a directly hands-on influence on the Western approach to war. It is hard to find a nation in Europe or Eurasia whose natives did not both train under the direct military guidance of Rome and gain further combat experience in turn fighting against Roman troops. The so-called barbarians of the Roman era, after all, were destined to become the predominate races of medieval and modern Europe, and the ideals of Imperial Rome inextricably bound up with the morality of the dominant European religious structure. (King, 2004; Sazerac, 2002) So it should not be surprising that there is much to be learned from Greco-Roman tactical history, and much that may be applied to the modern world. In particular, parallels may be drawn between the constant warfare between the urban Greco-Roman world and the nomadic barbarian cultures that surrounded it, and the modern counter-insurgency and anti-terrorist "small wars" that engage the attention of the American super-power it seems entirely plausible that if one understood what aspect of the barbarian strategy dissassembled the powerful Greco-Roman civilization, one would be prepared to offer powerful advice regarding the tactics of modern American military movements. To truly understand the difference between the barbarian and the Roman strategies, one must first understand that their tactics were rooted in different primary requirements for success. At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, it seems that Rome (like Greece or Egypt before it) was defined by its urban centers an...