campaigns and theatres of war. Hence, the concept was implicit in their theories,
which served as a foundation for successive generations of military commanders
who were to extend modern military theory.
Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, for thirty years the chief of staff
of the Prussian Army, no doubt viewed his actions in terms of achieving military
victory rather than in the more abstract light of using military means to attain
strategic goals, but he was one of the first commanders to grasp the significance of
linking strategy with tactics. His new method of directing armies in the field
found its best expression in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1, which marked
the end of French hegemony in continental Europe and resulted in the creation of
a unified Germany. Operational art also played an important part in the First
World War, especially on the Eastern Front and under Field Marshal Edmund
Allenby in Palestine. For most countries, however, the Second World War pro-
vides the most significant point of departure for contemporary studies of opera-
tional art, not least because of its material scale and geographic scope. The legacy
of that war in the sphere of operational art includes successive and deep opera-
tions, flank manoeuvres, and encirclement, all executed with relatively high speed
and with the objective of destroying the enemy’s army. In the subsequent decades,
as nuclear theory came to dominate both political and military thinking, some
armed forces downplayed the significance of the operational level; in others the
concept lingered in the background; and yet others discovered operational art for
the first time and gave it new expression through doctrine and teaching. 5 That the
United States began to study operational art systematically in the 1980s ensured
that the concept would receive considerable attention among its allies.
Operational art is currently taught at most command and staff colleges
throughout the Western world. Small-scale versions—‘small’ because the oppo-
nents are not regular forces but terrorists, guerrillas, and insurgents of every
kind—are practised at US, NATO, and EU headquarters and command posts.
Procedures for operational planning and guidance of operations include key
elements expressed in terms such as centre of gravity, decisive points, critical
strengths, critical vulnerabilities, critical requirements, lines of operations,
Schwerpunkt(weight of effort), culmination point, and operational deception.
Other important terms include advance, retreat, exterior and interior lines,
breakthrough, flanking movement, and pivots. Military colleges and operational
headquarters abound with manuals, procedures, and checklists for dealing with
the operational level of war and operational art. These materials provide a
common, coherent set of references covering a logical framework, proven meth-
odologies, and a standardized vocabulary. Hence, they are indispensable for
commanders, especially in a day and age when various countries with very
different experiences must work together in alliances and coalitions.
It is, therefore, a paradox that operational art, though acknowledged as an
important element in the planning and execution of military operations at home
and abroad, remains under-researched and relatively poorly understood. Simply
put, manuals, procedures, and checklists cannot substitute for in-depth studies.
They must be accompanied by records and analyses of campaigns that define
2 The Evolution of Operational Art