Synopsis:
Active defense – for John Keegan – involves a fusion of fixed fighting positions with offensive force dispersion. In this way, military control over a battle space is the sought after product of an active defense. Further, an active defense may advance – or sustain – a greater strategic defense architecture via operational ways and means.
Excerpts:
“A stronghold is a place not merely of safety from attack but also of active defense, a center where the defenders are secure from surprise or superior numbers, and also a base from which they may sally forth to hold predators at bay and to impose military control over the area in which their interests lie.
“A refuge is a place of short-term safety, of value only against an enemy who lacks the means to linger in the vicinity or who operates a crude strategy of raiding against soft targets.
“Above all, it must provide means for the garrison to wage an active defense – fighting-platforms that command a field of fire over prepared killing-grounds and strong gates through which counter-attacks can be mounted at moments of opportunity.
“Edward Luttwak, in his The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, has successfully propagated the belief that the Romans, like the British in India, firmly conceived a scheme of what could and could not be defended, though varying the method by which it was defended in practice – strong central army first, then strong local defense, finally an unsatisfactory mixture of the two – as their fortunes dictated.
“A besieger’s best hope of a quick result, according to the classical strategist Polybius, lay in exploiting the defenders’ complacency or achieving surprise. Treachery was another device.
*All excerpts have been taken from A History of Warfare, Vintage Books.
Strategic Studies Book Club 