The Korea Times
Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), the Prussian general and military theorist, never saw a stealth bomber, a precision-guided munition or a ballistic missile defense battery. He died in 1831, 21 years before the American Civil War. And yet the 40-day record of Operation Epic Fury reads as a clinical confirmation of every major principle he documented in "On War" (Vom Kriege) — the book that West Point, the Naval War College and every serious staff college on Earth still assigns to its officers. The principle that governs all the others is this: the political object must govern the military means from the first shot to the last. When the political objective is unclear, the war drifts. When it multiplies, the war fragments. When it is never communicated to the adversary, the adversary cannot surrender to it. When military success fails to produce a political result, the operation has not failed tactically. It has failed strategically — at the level where wars are won or lost. That is what happened here. Operation Epic Fury entered the conflict with five simultaneous war aims: denucleari
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