High Command: Setting the Conditions

It comes as a surprise to many people that Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson did not command at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805) – and not simply because he was incapacitated early in the engagement. There is a case that he didn’t command at the Battle of Nile (1798) either. This peculiarity is not limited to Nelson – the same case can be made that Themistocles did not command at the Battle of Salamis (480BC). Nor should we confine such analysis to naval actions. Who commanded at the Charge of the Light Brigade? Did Napoleaon really command at Austerlitz? Or Eisenhower in Normandy?

The reality is that command in battle is rarely executed by the leader at the top; the fog of war (literal in some cases), the distances involved and the sheer scale of these military engagements (time and mass) mean that these individuals – who have often become synonymous with individual battles – were not intimately involved in the execution. That is not to minimise their importance: their role as commanders was in setting the conditions for success or failure. One may view this as a deep understanding of the adversary (Wellington), selecting the right geography (Themistocles), or prioritising resources to the right place at the right time (Eisenhower). But more than anything else, setting the conditions is about empowering subordinates, supporting them through their own actions (sometimes right, sometimes not), and – critically – in making them all understand the purpose and intent of a particular military action, and how the fight is to be conducted.

Today, one wonders how much of this has been lost. While leaders often talk about the ideas of mission command and decentralisation, the doctrine of Multi-Domain Operations (MDO) presumes beautiful situational awareness in headquarters and the ubiquity of connectivity across any force, anywhere in the world, and ambivalent to the differences between adversaries. The effort of higher commanders is being expended more on connecting systems together – and inventing new ways of doing this – rather than in understanding how to set the conditions for battle (or campaigns).

Nelson has become infamous for his ‘Band of Brothers’; his way of inculcating his subordinate commanders in his philosophy for fighting. This was not something that occurred as a one off before battle, it was a continual process of dinners, instructions, discussion, debates, and storytelling. Harnessing the intellectual capital of his team, and their experiences in actions he had not fought in (and there were not too many of those), Nelson forged a group of individuals into a single ethos of fighting. He had no need to signal continually or to be aware of individual actions but rather depended on their understanding of the right thing to do at the right moment. And it was a philosophy that the entire fleet understood. Thus when HMS Victory was nearly lost to the attack from Redoubtable, the crew knew the end was no certainty: enter HMS (The Fighting) Temeraire.

This is the clear salutary lesson from Trafalgar, which has required relearning in battles since on an almost continual basis from Jutland to Ukraine, Ypres to Lebanon, Crimea to Syria, the Boer War to Yemen. Setting the conditions for war and warfare requires time and effort; these conditions cannot be presupposed, presumed or ignored. The focus of today’s commanders on connectivity, synchronisation, and orders are things of the moment of battle or the immediate run-in to when forces engage with the enemy. Systems – excellent systems – already exist to provide situational awareness and decision support during that period. Tools that can achieve synchronisation and coupling for engaged forces have been developed over previous generations and are approaching a next generation of maturity. These are not issues that commanders need to focus on. It seems, however, that (in the West) commanders do spend a disproportionate amount of time considering the immediate problems of a battle at the expense of working towards setting the conditions for engagements and campaigns.

There seems to be a lack of assistance in preparing commanders for this critical idea of ‘setting the conditions’ in professional military education too. As staff courses for those in the profession of arms settle into their comfortable and rigid syllabi, we should not be reassured that preparation for high command – specifically around setting conditions for success – is being done well enough.

The Battle of Trafalgar is often eulogised as the key to preventing Napoleon from invading England. This is false (the British government of the day had sent enough gold to Russia and Austria to start their own campaign in central Europe, forcing Napoleon to divert the Grand Armie away from the English Channel and ending any threat of invasion months before the battle in the Atlantic). What Trafalgar should be remembered for is the way a commander can set the conditions for battle: this does not preordain victory but it does bring success considerably closer.