For many, Selection and Maintenance of the Aim is the first principle of war. Disregard that we are already on shaky ground since that is not a single principle (selection and maintenance) and consider what it means.

Too often, this “principle” is paid lip service instead of deep consideration. Carefully selecting what we are seeking to achieve is critical and at the strategic level it is often referred to as the Powell Doctrine (referring to US Gen Colin Powell, although this is clearly Powell quoting Carl von Clausewitz).

My epiphany began with a tactical problem at the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr in 1986. The Course Director was wandering around watching as we worked and stopped to speak to me. He was a senior colonel; I was a junior major. He asked me why I was giving my brigade two missions. I was puzzled. In the decade that I had been an army officer it had been normal to get missions like “seek and destroy” or “attack and destroy”. The first part of his lesson was to force me to me decide what I wanted the brigade to do. Was it to attack?

“Yes,” I replied.

“What did your commander tell you to do?”

“Destroy the enemy,” I said. The Oberst looked at me and said nothing. Slowly, I said, “I intend to destroy the enemy by attacking him.”

“Good”, smiled the Oberst. “But are they the same? If you attack and do not destroy the enemy, then have you succeeded or failed?”

“Failed,” I said.

“Nein! You are mistaken. If you tell him to attack and he does it, then the outcome is irrelevant.” I felt that the Oberst was splitting hairs but was not going to argue with my Course Director. He continued. “You have given two distinct missions to your brigade and neither of them relates to the mission you were given by your own commander.”

I gently protested. “Herr Oberst, surely an attack mission implies that I want the enemy destroyed?”

Once again, “Nein! There are many, many reasons for a commander to attack,” he explained. “You may be a distraction, a fixing force or part of a larger turning force. In this case, you want the enemy destroyed (Vernichtet). That means that you must reduce the enemy’s combat power to below 30% effectiveness. Your commander has ordered you to make the enemy unit combat ineffective,” he explained.

I thought I saw where this lesson was going. “So”, I said, “I should change my mission to “destroy and hold”?

The Oberst stared in silence. “Why do you insist on making life complicated for your subordinates?” Part two of his lesson was about to begin. “Herr Major, what does capturing ground have to do with destroying the enemy?”

Let me say that the word epiphany is used a lot. Used properly, it connotes a spiritually significant revelation. Honestly, that’s how I felt at that moment. Unexpectedly, I saw the Oberst’s point. My entire life as a tactical officer had been focused on ground. Naturally, the enemy was considered key and when conducting tactical estimates, the enemy was always considered first — but that was not the same as making the enemy the focus of my thoughts and actions. If I focused on ground, then the enemy could easily fool me. What if the enemy left before I got there? Would I still need to attack my objective, a piece of ground now vacant? I realized how foolish attacking an empty space would be in the context of his explanation – even though, had this been two years before when I was at my own staff college, it would have been exactly correct. In fact, when I was a student on the Combat Team Commander’s course, we routinely assaulted ground that had been abandoned by the enemy! The Oberst was teaching me that I had to focus on the enemy. That is why my commander had given me the order to destroy the enemy.

This revelation flashed through my mind like lightning. The Oberst stood waiting for a reply to his question.

“Herr Oberst”, I began, “the ground is merely the medium over which we fight. The enemy and I use the same ground so I must stop focusing on it and change my focus to him. If I focus on the enemy and destroy him, then the ground will be mine automatically.”

Oberst Hermannsen smiled. “Sehr gut, Herr Major. Sehr gut! ” He tapped me lightly on the shoulder and turned to look over the work of one of my German classmates.