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5. Identifying the Adversary
To carry out a war effectively, to win it, it is indispensable to identify the adversary exactly. This condition must be fulfilled so that our shots will strike home.
Formerly, this was a simple task. According to the period of our history, he was to be found on the other side of the Rhine or the other side of the Channel. He had his war aims, simple and precise, as we had ours. It would have been useless to attempt to convert him to our cause or to hope to cause him to give up the fight without having defeated him.
To gain a victory, the nation and its army put to work all material and moral resources. Any person who dealt with the enemy, or who favored his objectives in any way, was considered a traitor and was treated as such.
In modern warfare, the enemy is far more difficult to identify. No physical frontier separates the two camps. The line of demarcation between friend and foe passes through the very heart of the nation, through the same village, and sometimes divides the same family. It is a nonphysical, often ideological boundary, which must however be expressly delineated if we want to reach the adversary and to defeat him.
Since the military art is simply and completely one of action, it is only when we have identified the enemy that the apparently complex problems posed to the army by modern warfare can be reduced to realistic proportions and easily resolved. The criteria for arriving.at such a point will be difficult to establish; however, a study of the causes of the war and the aims pursued by the adversary will permit us to discover them.
The period of preparation before the opening of hostilities generally takes place under cover of a legally established political party; our opponents can thus get themselves within our frontiers and under the protection of our laws. Covered by legality, they will strive to create a climate favorable to their cause within the country and abroad and to establish on our own territory the essential elements of their warfare organization.
The fact that modern warfare is not officially declared, that a state of war is not generally proclaimed, permits the adversary to continue to take advantage of peacetime legislation, to pursue his activities both openly and secretly. He will strive by every means to preserve the fiction of peace, which is so essential to the pursuit of his design.
Therefore, the surest means of unveiling the adversary is to declare a state of war at the earliest moment, at the very latest when the first symptoms of the struggle are revealed in political assassinations, terrorism, guerrilla activities, etc.
At this stage the preparation of the opponent will be quite well advanced and the danger very great; to minimize this would be a disastrous mistake. Henceforth, any party that has supported or continues to support the enemy shall be considered a party of the enemy.
The nation attacked must fall in behind the government and its army. An army can throw itself into a campaign only when it has the moral support of the nation; it is the nation's faithful reflection because it is composed of the nation's youth and because it carries within it the hopes of the nation. Its unquestioned actions should be praised by the nation to maintain the nobility of the just cause it has been charged to make triumphant. The army, whose responsibility it is to do battle, must receive the unreserved, affectionate, and devoted support of the nation. Any propaganda tending to undermine its morale, causing it to doubt the necessity of its sacrifices/ should be unmercifully repressed.
The army will then know where to strike. Any individual who, in any fashion whatsoever, favors the objectives of the enemy will be considered a traitor and treated as such.
In totalitarian countries, ideological boundaries are extended to the country's geographic limits, so that there may be no doubt as to the enemy to be struck. All enemies of the established power are eliminated or driven out of the national territory.
Although we should avoid these extreme measures, which are unquestionably incompatible with the ideals of liberty dear to us and to the civilization we are defending, we cannot, obviously, defeat an enemy we have not clearly identified.
We know that the enemy consists not of a few armed bands fighting on the ground, but of an organization that feeds him, informs him, and sustains his morale. This is a state of affairs that democracy tolerates within an attacked nation, but it enables the enemy to act secretly or openly in such a way that measures which might deal him a decisive blow are either never taken or are indefinitely delayed.