We began our current class on the 13th of January. On the 31st of January, our seminar conducted the staff ride at Yorktown. I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the battle, and why it is still relevant today.
Looking back to colonial times, there are a number of events that can claim title to the birth of the United States. The signing of the Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the Constitution serve as two prime examples. From a military perspective, the events of October 1781 at the Battle of Yorktown make a persuasive argument. A deeper look at this battle reveals lessons that we can apply to today’s operating environment.
Globally Integrated Operations
From the British perspective, the American Revolution was another theater of war in a global campaign. Indeed, the North American theater of war was one of five theaters the British operated in at the time. Other theaters and operations included defending the homeland from the French in the English Channel, defending trade routes in the Caribbean, fighting for colonial interest in India, and fighting for colonial interests in Canada.
One of the tenants of today’s globally integrated operations (GIO) is prioritization. The British had to rack and stack their theaters of operations to apply resources, and to assign its military leadership. In this respect, military operations against the Americans ranked at or near the bottom. In terms of resources, quality of leadership, and funding.
Not only were the British prioritizing operations in the Caribbean, so too were the French. The French government has a large land and maritime force operating in the West Indies throughout the American Revolution. Further, any use of French maritime forces to assist Washington and his band of rebels would only occur during hurricane season, a decisive factor into why the siege of Yorktown occurred in October.
Other ongoing battles in other theaters of war include the Great Siege of Gibraltar in April of 1781. In this battle, the French and Spanish combined forces to attempt to seize the island, and wrestle control of the Mediterranean. The siege lasted for approximately three years, and was not lifted until 1783. Settling the matter was the Treaty of Paris, the same treaty that ended the American Revolution.
The Necessity of Allies and Partners
The maritime force fighting the British at the Battle of the Capes, and then sealing off the city of Yorktown was 100% French. On land, the majority of troops conducting the siege of Yorktown were also French. It is clear, without the help of allied forces, the United States doesn’t succeed in Yorktown, and quite possibly doesn’t attain independence.
While working with allies and partners is certainly essential to successful campaigns, the later stages of Yorktown serve as a warning in the employment multinational forces. In terms of space and time, there are two facets of risk; transitions and seams. There is a heightened risk when one unit relieves another force. And there is greater risk on unit boundaries. In the latter, the risk rises when the boundary falls between forces from separate nations.
Following the capture of redoubts 9 and 10, General Cornwallis made a last ditch effort to break out of Yorktown. He formed a force that conducted a counterattack at the seam between American and French forces. Fortunately, the attempted breakout turned out to be a minor event in the siege. However, Cornwallis was correct in his judgement in attempting to fracture the lines between the French and the Americans.
On the modern battlefield, the United States serving as the lead nation in coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq divided the battlespace of each theater of war among various contributing nations. In Iraq for example, the British were responsible for Basra throughout the war. Other nations such as Poland and the Republic of Korea would cover their own areas of operation as well. The risk in dividing the battlefield in this manner is that nations do not always share the same operational or strategic objectives. Moreover, the manner in which nations see the problem and solutions in theater may vary significantly.
Allies and partners are critical to the conduct of military operations in the 21st century. Strategically, maintaining a robust number of allies and partners is critical for the US military to impose its will on adversaries and enemies across the globe. More than just NATO, allies and partners are critical to worldwide basing of forces and equipment, as well as strategic access into zones of conflict. This strategic advantage was critical throughout the 20th century and is essential for the foreseeable future. Indeed, enemies of the US may be able to sneak an agent through customs on a commercial flight, but do not expect Iran or ISIS to stage a battalion on the US border in preparation for an invasion.
Ultimately, it was combined and joint operations that earned America her independence, and it is allies and partners that serve as our military’s center of gravity today.
French Artillery at the first parallel at Yorktown Battlefield
The Joint Advantage
A reading of Thucydides reveals how Athens and Sparta fought for over a decade to a stalemate. Athens, a maritime power could not control territory. Sparta, the regions reigning land power could not move its armies fast enough, nor control sea lines of communication to defeat the Athenians. It was not until Sparta gained an upper hand in the maritime domain that the war could come to its conclusion.
Just as Sparta and Athens fought to a stalemate, by 1781, the Americans and the British had fought for six years resulting in a stalemate. While the British could move its armies at will, and even decisively defeat the Americans in a pitched battle, they did not have the force to control the land. In a similar vain, the Americans could gain positions of advantage over the British, but the British could move their men at will over the sea lines of communication.
The convergence of the French fleet with American and French land forces was the decisive combination of Yorktown. The French fleet under Comte’ DeGrasse had a limited window to support Washington’s combined army (until the end of October). Washington understood the importance of both land and maritime forces working together, and pressed for the siege while within this timeline.
In the maritime domain was more than defeating the enemy fleet. Control of the waterways allowed either side to transport their land forces at will. According to Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Hurricane's Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown, “This—the ability to transport the Continental and French armies by water—was, from Washington’s perspective, the key component to victory. That was how the British had taken both New York and Charleston and how Benedict Arnold had ravaged Virginia—by transporting their armies with lightning speed to wherever the enemy was open to attack.”
In 1986, the Goldwater-Nichols act passed its way through Congress to enforce a joint warfighting philosophy on the US military. Jointness is an operational advantage the US holds over its adversaries and enemies, more specifically nation states who may use a military force to oppose us. The use of Joint Force Commanders in lieu of separate service commanders ensures each service contributes to the same objectives and endstates. Moreover, a system of combatant commanders allows for the formation of operational plans that do not press for service parochialism. Throughout history, there are many examples of nations whose navy or air force’s operations were de-synched from the troops on the ground. The ability to conduct joint and combined arms operations is a distinct operational advantage of the Untied States Military.
Decapitation Strikes
At the onset of the 2003 war in Iraq, the United States attempted to kill Saddam Hussein in a decapitation strike prior to commencement of ground operations. While unsuccessful, the practice of taking out strategic leadership of our enemies remains in practice. Indeed, more often than not, the strategic political and military leadership of an opposing force appears as a center of gravity.
In Yorktown, on the 9th of October, the combined force of the French and Americans opened fire with their artillery and killed the commissary general of the British force, and wounded several officers of the Seventy-sixth Regiment while they sat a dinner party drinking wine. While the strike did not lead to an immediate end of the battle, it served as a wake up call to the British that the combined American and French armies were not a rag-tag force.
The recent killing of Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. drone strike is a more recent example. The long term effects of this decapitation remain to be seen, however, much like other targeted killings, the target is normally a symptom of the problem and not the root cause.
Terrain Still Matters
Decisive to the American victory at Yorktown was how the French and British were able to use the terrain to their advantage. The construction and completion of the first and second parallels to surround the British and put their backs to the river was the beginning of the endgame. In the maritime domain, the French sealing off the entrance to the York River denied the British any hopes of an escape or a relief by British forces in New England.
Overlooking the York River from the Victory Monument
As the geography of war expands to a battlefield that is global in nature, it is still vital to understand geographic terrain features. This applies in all domains, and is equally germane in major combat operations, counter insurgency, and humanitarian assistance type missions. In the two volume series on the U.S. Army in Iraq, the authors make the point multiple times that decisive to the battle for Baghdad and Iraq was the geographical belts around the city.
War Termination
Yorktown provides in interesting case study on how to link the end of a battle to the broader operational and strategic objectives. Following the British surrender, for the first time in the war, British soldiers marched off to prisoner of war camps, to be held until the end of the war. In previous defeats such as Saratoga in 1777, the British were able to send their soldiers home. In reality, this meant sending soldiers to another theater of war in the global campaign, with a new force then sent to North America. The articles of capitulation at Yorktown ended this practice, and took a powerful piece, or 25% of the British Army off the chessboard.
Today, the United States finds it difficult to develop war termination criteria. Indeed, recent wars have exposed the idea of a peace treaty and a formal end to hostilities a vestige of the past, or at a minimum not an idea shared by the rest of the world. Further complicating war termination, is that the United States military trains and educates it’s officer corps to maintain a necessary separation from the political sphere. The war aims of a nation are lie in the realm of elected political leadership, and more often than not military officers are not in a position to set terms of surrender with an adversary. This was evident at the end of the Gulf War, when General Schwarzkopf allowed Saddam’s regime to fly attack helicopters within the northern and southern no-fly zones.
As an aside on the Yorktown Articles of Capitulation, Article IV serves as a reminder, that the fight for freedom did not mean freedom for everyone. The second paragraph of Article IV states
“It is understood that any property obviously belonging to the inhabitants of these States, in the possession of the garrison, shall be subject to be reclaimed.”
The property mentioned included people. George Washington made it a point to have his slaves returned to Mount Vernon. We celebrate the the battlefield victory at Yorktown as advancing towards our freedom from British rule, while for others, it meant future generations would continue to suffer the inhumanity of slavery.
The Siege
History is replete with famous sieges. Famous examples include go back to the the Siege of Athens in the Peloponnesian War and Siege of Masada in ~73 AD. More recent sieges include the Siege of Vicksburg in the American Civil War, the 900-day siege of Leningrad in the Second world War, and the Siege of Aleppo. In the modern era, sieges tend to come in the form of internal crisis, and focus on small pieces of terrain. More often than not the siege occurs against a specific criminal or terrorist group. Examples include the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002, and the 2012 Siege of Eker in Bahrain.
The siege of Yorktown was set at tactical distances, well within the limited artillery range of the late 18th century. The question raised in studying Yorktown is what does a modern day siege look like, and can said siege occur at strategic distances. Advancement is precision guided ballistic missiles offer one way of conducting a siege without the necessity of physically sealing off a city. A second possibility is with effects in cyberspace and space. Cutting off water and electric utilities to a major city, combined with denying space based communications.
Conclusion
We study the past to avoid making mistakes in the future. the Battle or Siege of Yorktown offers many lessons that we can apply to warfare today.