Conclusion
John Andreas Olsen and Martin van Creveld
This book has presented various perspectives on the evolution of operational
art—the essential linkage between the higher level of strategy and the lower level
of tactics—by scrutinizing how operational theory and practice have evolved in
various armed forces over time. Operational art did not emerge all at once, but
instead grew slowly and gradually. Ideas developed, they were tested in wars, and
new ideas and concepts were built upon them. Over time, the theory and practice
of operational art adapted to accord with contemporary circumstances, and it
was these very adjustments and redefinitions of operational art that ensured its
continuing relevance.
The authors of the various chapters differ in their interpretations of how armed
forces have applied operational art in the past. However, all of them recognize
history as a process subject to political, economic, and social changes on the one
hand and military-technological advances on the other. Further, they share a view
of operational art as interactive: in seeking victories in time and space operational
art uses tactics as itsmeansand serves strategy as itsend, and even the most
elegantly conceived operational plan will ultimately fail if it is paired with
unrealistic war aims. Stated differently, the relationships among strategy, opera-
tional art, and tactics are more important to success than operational art in
isolation. Only by understanding these relationships can a military leader adhere
to Gerhard von Scharnhorst’s dictum to ‘consider the whole of war before its
components’. 1 Strategy is the art of using available and sufficient means to attain
the objective of the war; operational art is the theory and practice of planning
and conducting operations; and tactics is the art of winning the actual battles.
A somewhat simplistic, but nevertheless illustrative, way to capture this concept is
thatstrategyis the art of war,operational artthe art of campaigning, andtactics
the art of battle. 2
An extension of this conceptual framework leads to recognition that success
in operational art depends on two other factors. First, a plan of campaign must
include a termination phase. Termination represents an essential link between
strategy and operational art; what is commonly termed an ‘exit strategy’ is in
fact a goal and product of operational art. Political leaders and military com-
manders tend to devote far more time and effort to planning and preparing for
war, and identifying the optimal timing for attack, than to visualizing the