<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"    And so, now we enter a new phase of our relationship. As I mentioned a few days ago, Esquire has invited me to write about the war, the Civil War, roughly in time with the Anniversaries as they arrive. So I will write to you of that which passed 150 years ago, during a great struggle which would determine if this would truly be, &amp;quot;One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.&amp;quot;  That, as you probably know, is the original wording. The other bit was added during a Communist McCarthy scare phase in 1954.  But in my commitment to do this, I wrestled with my own philosophies on writing, and communicating, about war. Up until now the assignment from Pierce and Esquire was pretty much as simple as, &amp;quot;Bates, can you tell us about the Battle of Gettysburg?&amp;quot; Of course I could not leave it at that. Context matters, so the response was, &amp;quot;Well, I can tell you about the whole campaign, but it would leave a dry taste in my mouth just to write about the three days of the battle without putting it into context.&amp;quot; Silly Esquire, they said, &amp;quot;Okay.&amp;quot;  Which lead to 29,000 words. Not sure they have ever dealt with a historian before. But whatever, the intertubes are mostly free, and the NSA did not panic at any of the gazillions of keywords my essays must have triggered.  But now, if we are to enter into an experiment of popular-yet-academic history written by a military professional, I sort of have to add another element. See, most of you do not speak the same language I do. Sure, the words seem to be English, but as I have learned in the past several years serving alongside the British Army, &amp;quot;we are two people separated by a common language.&amp;quot;  You think this is a surmountable problem? Yea, no. Not without agreement. Let me give you an example from an old joke that goes around the US military. See, none of us speak the same language either, apparently. So here is the joke I tell my civilian students to explain the importance of terminology and language.  You are standing there, as the superior officer, and you have one Marine Officer, one Army Officer, one Naval Officer, and one Air Force Officer. You peer down the street, point to a building in the distance, and say, simply, &amp;quot;Secure that building.&amp;quot;  The Marine officer takes his unit and places 1/3 of it in a support-by-fire position with a plethora of machineguns. He suppresses the building with concentrated machinegun fire while he brings in two F/A-18s to drops bombs on the building and uses his mortars to place smoke rounds between his assault element which is at 90-degrees from the support-by-fire element. The assault element Marines enter the building as the support element Marines shift their fires to close any escape routes. The assault element moves ever upward, clearing each room with a fragmentation grenade and a burst from an M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Finally, they reach the top, clear the roof, and hoist an American flag. They call you on the radio and say, &amp;quot;The building is secured.&amp;quot;  In the same scenario, the Army officer raises his binoculars and sends out scouts. He determines that the building is actually empty. He then sends forward his whole unit. Upon arrival he sends 1/3 of his men outward, to secure the outer area. Then, for the next 24 hours, his men work like beavers on amphetamines. They fill and place sandbags in all of the windows, they reinforce vulnerable sections of the structure, they emplace triple-strand concertina barbed-wire well outside, and place directional command-detonated mines at the vulnerable points. They pre-register artillery concentrations on the possible routes to the building and call for pre-planned jet and helicopter support to the parts they think most vulnerable. At the end of 24 hours they can repel 400-800 enemy forces, and the commander calls you and says, &amp;quot;The building is secure.&amp;quot;  The naval officer, in the same scenario, walks down the quiet street to the building. He enters and goes to the top of the building. Then he methodically enters each room and office, spins the dials on any locks/safes that he finds, ensures all the computers are turned off, turns off the lights, and locks the door. He does this for every single room as he moves down through the structure. As he exits the front door he calls you from his Blackberry and reports, &amp;quot;The building is secure.&amp;quot;  The Air Force officer looks at you with mild disdain, as if to say, &amp;quot;Dude, can&amp;#039;t you do this yourself?&amp;quot; He shades his eyes and looks down the street towards the building. Then he opens his iPad 7.0 (not available to the public), and after he confirms the address he also finds he has a crappy connection by his standards (&amp;quot;Under 1GB/sec is sooo oughts.&amp;quot;) So he walks in the opposite direction to the nearest coffee house with free high-speed Wi-Fi, looks up the closest Real Estate agent, and commits to a 6-month rental with an option to buy. Then he sends you a text confirming informing you that, &amp;quot;The building is secure.&amp;quot;  See my problem? And that is just within the military. For what it is worth, telling this story in &amp;quot;mixed&amp;quot; company elicits laughs from the Marines and Navy, and nods of agreement from the Army. Not so much otherwise.  So we need to agree, or at least you need to understand, how I will use certain words. These are words that are widely used in civilian/business life, but the terms used there often bear little relation to the world of conflict and war. Historians, for simplicity, generally confirm to the more precise definitions used by people like me (umm, wearing my primary hat), so here is the first bit. This is not all-inclusive, and I reserve the right to clarify my use of other terms in the future, but these three terms will help you understand what I will be explaining in the coming weeks, and months to follow.  Perhaps the most important bit I need to explain is how we explain the &amp;quot;Levels of War.&amp;quot; I will take this from the top, and be exceedingly simplistic. If there is confusion, I am always here in the comments section, or failing that (after a few days) at my contact email. So, here we go.  The Tactical Level of Warfare: Basically this is everything from me punching you, to you and five of your buddies beating on me, to 10,000 of your buddies defending against 30,000 of my best friends. The terms that fall under this category include, &amp;quot;engagements&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;skirmishes,&amp;quot; but the defining term is &amp;quot;battles.&amp;quot; By the way, &amp;quot;battles&amp;quot; is not defined. But if you want a rough estimate, these are singular fights that take place within a single location over a few seconds, hours, or days. Gettysburg lasted three days. We will talk about sieges at a future date, but it is important to note that although some battles may precede a siege, a siege is an entirely different animal. The definition is somewhat dependent upon the situation. Mostly, time-wise, think &amp;quot;seconds&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;hours&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;several days.&amp;quot; So, this is the level of war at which battles and engagements are planned and executed to accomplish military objectives assigned to tactical units and task forces. These victories, put together, achieve operational results.  The Operational Level of Warfare: Now we are getting to the meat. Since the 1980s, this has been the golden fleece that the US Army has sought, mostly unsuccessfully. At the operational level &amp;quot;joint&amp;quot; (meaning more than one military service, such as &amp;quot;Army&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Navy&amp;quot;) and potentially &amp;quot;combined&amp;quot; (meaning more than one nation), forces act together within a &amp;quot;theater&amp;quot; of operations to perform campaigns and major operations. At this level they plan for combat, conduct combat, and sustain the military forces in combat all in order to accomplish the strategic objectives of the unified commander or higher military authority. In other words, at this level you plan for and execute a series of battles (tactical level) in order to achieve your higher level (but not necessarily war-winning) objective. Again, thinking temporally, imagine several days, to a few weeks, or potentially several months.  You can see how this one is sort of tough to explain. What you see above is mostly the &amp;quot;official&amp;quot; definition. But it relies too much on other slang. Bottom Line: At the operational level you make a plan for a whole series of fights. This series of fights (skirmishes, engagements, whatever), or even battles will depend upon each other. If it all works out, your higher (strategic) objective will be won. That level of objective is where you want to be, because that is the level where wars are won.  The Strategic Level of Warfare: Tough one, as several &amp;quot;strategic&amp;quot; levels exist within official doctrine. But for our purposes I will keep this simple. This is the level of war at which a nation or group of nations use national interests to determine their plans and goals to ensure an effective, responsive national capability, in order to win a war (actually or forecast). Strategy involves the art and science of employing armed forces with other instruments of national power to secure strategic goals. Here one makes the grandest decisions, those that allocate the resources of the entire nation in one direction or another. That is strategy at the highest level, the discussions of &amp;quot;ends, ways, and means.&amp;quot; But at a lower, perhaps more direct level you could say that you string together a series of campaigns to achieve a strategic objective.  To use it in the modern context, in the terms of the drawdowns that all the military forces are facing, if you decided to have a military that was 80% Airpower, 10% Navy, and 10% Army, that would be a pretty big strategic decision. To put it in the WWII context, if you decided to beat Germany first, then Japan, that would be a big strategic decision. Or if you decided to build 300 Army divisions and only 50 Aircraft carriers, versus 100 aircraft carriers and 100 Army divisions. See? This is the big stuff. In the American Civil War\u2026well, we will get to that.  That last is antiseptic, I cede. I can do nothing about that. But in the next couple of weeks I will tell you of battles, I will expound upon campaigns and I will touch upon strategy. If you only have a business idea about the use of the word &amp;quot;strategy,&amp;quot; I hope this helps.  As a younger man I once worked at 9-francise burger-flipping joint, while also selling plasma to make ends meet. This little no-name series of restaurants claimed it had a &amp;quot;strategy,&amp;quot; which mostly consisted of the &amp;quot;tactical&amp;quot; decision to include real ice cream in their menu. Yea, I am not sure their use of the word aligned with my current understanding. Fact is, so many companies and corporations use the words &amp;quot;strategy&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;tactics&amp;quot; that they barely mean anything to civilians. Usually, whichever word they use, it just means, &amp;quot;the plan.&amp;quot; So forgive me for imposing this more precise terminology. But we will need it in the next weeks and months, you will need to understand how I use these words.  I am about to explain a whole war. That ain&amp;#039;t easy if we ain&amp;#039;t speakin&amp;#039; the same language.  Next week, the coolest campaign you never heard of, and one dork. You can write to me, as always, at R_Bateman_LTC@hotmail.com. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a24107/bateman-civil-war-intro-080113/>