More on Gaddis, Bush, and Bismarck

In his use of the term “shock and awe” in "Surprise, Security and the American Experience" and in his 2005 piece in Foreign Affairs, it is evident that Gaddis refers to a broader conception of shock and awe than the one envisioned by the military planners and strategists who originally coined the term. In its original coinage, shock and awe was a military concept, referring to a brand of limited, psychological warfare intended to achieve maximum battlefield effectiveness at a minimum cost in lives and materiel and with little damage to civilian infrastructure. Gaddis, however, uses the term to describe how offensive military operations can shock the international system from stasis such that it reconfigures itself favorably to one’s strategic interests. He writes:

It [is] free-market thinking applied to geopolitics: that just as the removal of economic constraints allows the pursuit of self-interest automatically to advance a collective interest, so the breaking up of an old international order would encourage a new one to emerge, more or less spontaneously, based on a universal desire for security, prosperity, and liberty. Shock therapy would produce a safer, saner world.”

For Gaddis, shock and awe is the Grand Strategic principle of the forward-looking statesman who, dissatisfied with the current world order uses his military power and influence to affect radical change therein. The wise statesman, Gaddis adds, will know when to stop administering such “shock therapy” and when to consolidate his gains in the protection and preservation of the changed international order.

It is important, however, that we do not forget the original tactical description of the shock and awe concept. Harlan Ullman, the inventor of the term, describes shock and awe as a means of affecting enemy surrender or paralysis in such a way that excessively costly and destructive military operations become unnecessary. Shock, Ullman writes, is “the momentary reaction to some event leading to paralysis, impotence and a feeling of helplessness…overcoming an enemy so quickly and rendering that enemy incapable so as to make any resistance futile or impossible.” Awe, he continues, is “an effect that translate[s] the initial shock into an enduring quality, so that will and perception would not revert to a pre-existing condition.” Perfect knowledge of the enemy, control of the battlefield environment, use of superior technology, and rapidity and efficiency of execution in battle are the tools that would allow one the ability to affect enemy surrender at such a low cost. The correct use of shock and awe strategy, Ullman concludes, will help one realize one’s post-war political objectives—short of complete military annihilation—by refusing to continue the use of indiscriminate and imprudent military force beyond when it is necessary.

These two different conceptions of the shock and awe idea—the Grand Strategic and the military—work well in tandem: affecting large-scale disruptions in the international order, as described by Gaddis, can be achieved through the accumulation of smaller-scale, rapid, and relatively painless military victories which help guarantee certain key political objectives. In other words, shock and awe applied on the tactical level in successful military operations can be sufficient itself to rattle the international order from the status quo. For example, military victories won quickly and easily can convey the sense to one’s enemies that they too could be quickly and easily overcome in violent confrontation. This may force one’s enemies to alter their conduct or to accept certain political compromises that they may not have been willing to before. Indeed, this seems to have motivated in part the Bush Administration’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003, as the Blitzkrieg operation was hoped to demonstrate to others with what celerity and ease the American military could affect regime change in distant regions of the world.

While Gaddis limits his characterization of Bismarck as shock and awe strategist to a description of how the statesman’s policies conformed to a certain Grand Strategic use of shock and awe, it is useful to consider to what extent Bismarck oversaw the use of shock and awe at the tactical, military level as well. In particular, how much can one can say that the Austro-Prussian War was won through the use of shock and awe-style military tactics in Helmuth von Moltke’s campaign? To what extent did Bismarck use the success of such tactics at the local level to realize a Grand Strategic vision for the restructuring of the European order in the post-war settlement?