Bella detesta matribus. -War, the horror of mothers. (Horace)
Theories of all sorts govern our lives. Theories give us the ability to keep ships afloat in the sea, planes aloft in the air, and satellites hovering above our planet. Economic systems are regulated and urban development planned through the use of theorems, but what about war? In what is simultaneously man’s greatest endeavor and most colossal failure, is there a concrete theory to explain how, why, when, and if armed struggle should be undertaken?
There are great thinkers of course. The world of strategy has its Einsteins, its Darwins, but what about a unifying thread that connects their thoughts? The apple that dropped on Newton’s head in 1666 tumbles to the ground in exactly the same manner today, but can the same be said about strategy? Is strategic thought so caught up in historical eras and systems that it cannot be extracted and formed into a coherent theory in the present?
To properly understand this complex subject, one must examine the relationship between the use of armed coercion and history. How did each of the great thinkers espouse their ideas on strategy, and how bound up are their ideas in their individual eras? Are there continuing themes in strategic history that can be drawn upon to develop a theory, and conversely, which ideas are entirely new or outdated?
Machiavelli, who is recognized as the first strategist of the modern era, wrote on strategy in the 16th century. As such, there are many aspects of his writing that cannot be extricated from Florence in the 1500’s, such as his dismissal of technological improvements and the effect that the economy had on war, but his thoughts on the need for discipline and a citizen militia based on the ancient model echo throughout history to the present day.
Machiavelli detested the mercenary forces that plagued Europe during his time and looked to the poleis of Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic for inspiration. With citizen forces composed of hearty folk that were fighting for their own lands, Machiavelli perhaps hoped to protect Florence and Italy much in the same fashion as the Athenians at Marathon. There are very interesting parallels with this and the “modern” phenomenon of people’s war.
In his Discourses, Machiavelli wrote “Our religion, moreover, places the supreme happiness in humility, lowliness, and a contempt for worldly objects, whilst the other, on the contrary, places the supreme good in grandeur of soul, strength of body, and all such other qualities as render men formidable”. If the word religion is replaced with ideology, this quote would be distinctly Marxist and one can easily imagine Mao or Giap making this utterance.
To be sure, there are more differences between Mao and Machiavelli than similarities, and one cannot presume to connect these two different fields of strategic thought intrinsically: they are separate ideas separated by hundreds of years. But for the purposes of formulating strategic theory, the way these two ideas merge and disconnect is important.
The citizen forces of both thinkers would be used to defend the state from aggression but each writer’s concept of “the state” was radically different. Machiavelli’s militia would strive to protect the interests of the prince, a goal utterly repugnant to any people’s warrior. A true people’s war seeks to redistribute the power in a given society. It fights to eliminate the colonial system first put in place by the very princes that Machiavelli’s forces would have defended. Following Mao’s three phases, guerilla forces would delegitimize a government from the inside by agitating and attacking innocents to show that they cannot be protected, something that Machiavelli curses the mercenaries of his day for doing.
Despite these differences, the two theories seem to mesh when people’s war enters its third phase: conventional warfare. After gaining enough public support and establishing regular forces with all the harsh discipline that Machiavelli favors, the army of the people is not all that dissimilar from the one suggested by Machiavelli. The long game favored by guerillas evolves into a search for a decisive conflict using the weapons and tactics of the enemy, with a victory leading to legitimacy and the establishment of a new state.
While a direct comparison between Machiavelli’s citizen militia and the people’s army of guerilla warfare is weak at best, the idea for an army composed of motivated citizens can be drawn out and added to a general theory of strategy. To add upon this small kernel of truth, one must continue to examine strategic thinkers.
Clausewitz, a warrior since the age of twelve, fought against the levee en masse for most of his life. When he began to reflect on his experiences in war and the strategic thoughts therein, Clausewitz saw that politics and policy were fundamentally connected with war. He saw war as a large duel, a duel that was simply the “continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means”. This oft quoted line from Vom Kreige is only the beginning of a theory that breaks wars into two categories, limited and absolute, and seeks to arrange strategy in a triad composed of three parts: the government, the people, and the armed forces.
The interplay between policy and the conduct of a war is a very important lesson that can be extracted into our strategic theory. The limited conflicts that took place during the Cold War bring this thought into sharp focus. The Vietnam War is an excellent example of the failure to merge policy and military strategy.
The North Vietnamese policy was to play the long game and fight the French and Americans until their resolve was shaken and they left. Conversely, the American policy was confused and the triad was unsteady. The government and the military were not in close enough collaboration, leading to events, such as the lack of coordination between peace talks and bombing campaigns, which would be comical if they did not result in the deaths of many servicemen and civilians. More importantly, the American people were kept in the dark about the war and quickly ceased supporting it after events like the Têt Offensive.
The Têt Offensive is an excellent example of another Clausewitzian strategic thought that can be added to our greater theory: “in war many roads lead to success, and that they do not all involve the opponent’s outright defeat.” The Americans never lost a large scale battle in Vietnam, but they lost the war nonetheless. This very same lesson can be applied to the German generals of the Second World War and Clausewitz’s contemporary, Napoleon. It is the closest that strategic theory comes to a mathematical proof: tactical brilliance coupled with strategic incompetence equates to a lost war.
Clausewitz also introduces the idea of friction, the fog of war that “makes the apparently easy so difficult”, into strategic thought. This idea is important for the creation of a strategic theory because its very existence makes “every precise theory irrelevant.” It is still important to strategic theory because simply being aware of its existence and the possible complications to battle plans help a commander “so he rarely makes a serious mistake, such as can, in war, shatter confidence”.
A contemporary of Clausewitz and a theorist more familiar to American audiences at the time, Antoine-Henri Jomini sought to make war into a science. He set forth a series of principles that he believed helped Napoleon to ride roughshod across Europe. These principles prescribed “offensive action to mass forces against weaker enemy forces at some decisive point if strategy is to lead to victory.”
Jomini’s failing was that he stressed the scientific and geometric aspects of his principles too much at the expense of human factors. Despite living in a time of great revolution, he broke apart the style of warfare practiced by the French from the crucial humanistic elements of the revolution. His adherence to geometric rules also limited his ability to consider the importance of mobility.
While some will argue that Jomini and Clausewitz are anti-ethical to each other, the two scholars simply wrote about different aspects of war. While Clausewitz focused on the very nature of the struggle itself, Jomini studied the conduct of war. Jomini’s studies are helpful to the idea of a grand strategic theory if you can extract the general idea of a decisive points and interior lines without getting bogged down in the scientific rigmarole. The principle of interior lines was used skillfully by Lee in the American Civil War, and was used in the Battle of Brittan to stymie the German aerial campaign; although it is important to note that Lee, like Napoleon, could not win the war with tactical acumen alone.
The ideas of limited vs. absolute war that Clausewitz raised certainly showed themselves to be unconnected to any specific historical era. Julian Corbett, a British naval historian, borrowed heavily from the idea of limited and unlimited warfare in his writings about naval strategy. He also adopted the idea of solidly merging policy with military action.
Corbett took Clausewitz’s idea of limited and absolute war and applied it skillfully to naval strategy. He argued that a limited war would only truly work with navies and non-continental territories. For example, French territory in North America could be taken in small segments by the English without provoking a global conflict, but an English seizure of an equal size territory in Burgundy would be met with the full force of France’s military might. Great Britain, Corbett argued, used the limited form to threaten naval intervention anywhere, with the threat sometimes being more powerful than intervention itself. This use of the limited form of naval warfare helped to build and sustain an empire that others would have only attained through unlimited war.
Corbett also stressed that land and sea warfare were different parts of the same political tool. While armies on the land campaigned, the chief role of the navy was to “secure the command of the sea or to prevent the enemy from securing it.” The command of the sea he considered to be: the control of lines of communication, the capture of ships and supplies, and the blockade of ports. The fleets did not exist to fight other fleets in heroic actions; they were simply there to carry out national strategy.
Just as Corbett borrowed from Clausewitz, so did Alfred Thayer Mahan from Jomini. Mahan’s father, Dennis Hart Mahan, was an influential professor at West Point who was responsible for introducing Jomini into the American military before the Civil War. It should come as no surprise then that the younger Mahan applied those same lessons to naval warfare.
In his writings, Mahan stressed the primacy of the battleship and dismissed cruiser forces for raiding. Like Corbett, Mahan thought that command of the sea through maritime commerce was important. Unlike Corbett though, he thought that the main purpose of the battle-fleet was to destroy the enemy battle-fleet. He took Jomini’s ideas of concentration and interior lines to heart and based his theories on maritime strategy on a fleet that was undivided and had a superior position with respect to the enemy forces.
Mahan espoused less of a strategic view and more of his own geo-political worldview. The Navy was supreme in his eyes, and things like amphibious landings and power projection were disregarded. It is therefore somewhat natural that we cannot draw much from Mahan for our strategic theory, but we can take the basic assumption on the control of maritime commerce that both he and Corbett shared. Corbett also gives us the idea that naval forces should be simply another tool of the state and an extension of policy.
As the fleets became larger and more advanced, so did warfare. Modern warfare is tied intricately with industrialization and the mobility that it produced. Between the American Civil War and the First World War, the way battles were waged changed drastically. The switch from muzzle-loading firearms to breech-loading rifles, the adoption of effective Maxim and Browning machine guns, and the introduction of more powerful and accurate artillery pieces dramatically increased the lethality of warfare. The banker and financier Ivan Bloch argued that the advent of this new technology, coupled with the Napoleonic tradition of constant attack, would result in horrendous casualties.
Bloch thought that since modern armies are composed of citizen soldiers, a modern day Cannae would result in massive social revolutions. The events of the First World War proved him both wrong and right. Modern armies proved more durable than anticipated, enduring four years of the bloodiest conflict imaginable with only Russia pulling out of the conflict due to domestic upheaval.
Bloch’s other prediction proved true though. The hills and meadows of Europe were churned up by the carnage and monstrosities of modern war, but an answer to the fields of slaughter emerged in the form of a crude armored vehicle. Mobility and the offense would return to warfare and bring along important aspects of strategic theory.
In the late autumn of 1917, the first tank attack in any real strength took place at Cambrai. The combined use of pre-planned artillery bombardments and massed armor opened a new chapter in the long conflict. And so, on a cold November morning, the British launched an attack that caught the Germans completely unawares. Initial gains were impressive; miles of enemy territory were seized when previous battles had netted only a few yards of sod. It was as if elite Swiss pikemen, confident in their ability to repel any mounted attack, were suddenly set upon by fierce steeds that their spears could not harm.
One of the British commanders who planned this attack was J.F.C. Fuller. During the interwar period Fuller lectured and wrote at a frenzied pace, stressing the need to mechanize Brittan’s forces. His efforts went largely unappreciated at home, but were widely distributed throughout Europe. For instance, Heinz Guderian, architect of German mechanized warfare, credited Fuller as someone who influenced his thinking on armored matters greatly.
Fuller called for a complete mechanization of the army. He wanted to have tank formations with supporting mechanized infantry along with second line motorized units. The new units would be able to have the same firepower as current armies, but with a much smaller size and increased flexibility and speed. Commanders would have to be more independent and act on their own initiative to be able to successfully take advantage of the increased speed of combat. With the reintroduction of mobility into war, the important strategic concepts of maneuver and shock were similarly rediscovered.
Shock is an ancient principle of warfare. From the intense clash of two phalanges to an unexpected artillery barrage, shock has played a deciding role in many battles. Shock continued to play a role in modern combat as well, but by the end of the First World War, shock was limited to stationary machine gun nests and unseen gas attacks on fixed trenches. Armored warfare reinvigorated the idea of shock combat by combining the firepower of machine guns and artillery pieces, the protection of a bunker, and the mobility of cavalry forces.
In Armored Warfare, Fuller calls for motorized forces to smash into the enemy’s line at a weak spot, utilizing the shock and relentlessness of their attack to overrun the enemy position. Once the tanks have passed through and crushed the enemy, motorized infantry will move in and secure the gains while the tanks race onward to wreak more havoc in the enemy’s rear. The shock aspect of the attack continues as retreating troops flee to the rear causing even more confusion as pursuing armored forces attack lines of communication and supply.
Maneuver is also a very basic concept that plays a part in all battles and wars, and much like shock, it was improved by the introduction of motorized warfare. Flanking attacks and strikes from unexpected locations became difficult to pull off once both sides settled into static trench warfare, but armor re-energized the idea of maneuver. If the initial clash between armor and an enemy line was designed to provide a breakthrough point that follow-up mechanized forces could exploit, then why not use superior mobility to attack a thinly defended location to achieve the same results with less casualties?
The German attacks through the Ardennes forest in 1940 and 1944 are excellent examples of this principle. The attack in the spring of 1940 smashed through the French lines. Tactical success was coupled with strategic foresight and the French, despite valiant efforts to hold back the German armored flood, were taken out of the war.
The German attack in the winter of 1944 followed the same general idea. The American forces in the targeted sector of the front were thinly spread and weak, ripe for a surprise armor attack, but they held on long enough for reinforcements to arrive and to stabilize the situation. Then American armor attacked the flank of the German advance and began to drive the enemy backwards. Unlike 1940, German tactical skill was not coupled with strategic wisdom, and the attack only weakened an already weary Germany.
To use the example of the invasion of France in 1940 again, one is struck by both the ease with which Germany dispatched her most familiar of enemies, and, utilizing the same tactics with a flawed, albeit manageable strategy in 1941 against the Soviet Union, her failure to bring that campaign to a desirable end. The reason for Hitler’s defeat is ironic considering his role in creating a society that was polarized and mobilized towards his will; he failed to recognize that his enemy was as determined to resist as he was to conquer. Fuller recognized this and stated that “Knowledge of the characteristics of the enemy, of the personality of his higher command, and the morale of his troops” is as important as the knowledge of the enemy’s weaponry and tactics.
After the calamity of the First World War, societies in Europe were starting to lose their faith in the old systems of government. Democracies and Empires that led their citizens into unparalleled carnage quickly lost their appeal and new forms of government came into power. Powerful ideologies fueled these new Fascist and Communist movements across Europe from Spain to Russia, and even more powerful leaders commanded them.
Emerging from the First World War as a Lance Corporal, Adolph Hitler was bitterly disgusted with what he saw as “a gang of wretched criminals” that stabbed Germany in the back and lost the war at home while the front lines still remained strong. Hitler soon became the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party and, after a failed coup led to a prison sentence, began to spread his message of racism and the superiority of the German people. By 1933 he had gained enough support to attain the Chancellorship and become dictator of the Third Reich.
Germany quickly became a totalitarian regime under der Führer, with everything being organized for the welfare of the state. Hitler’s Nazi party permeated into every aspect of German society. Wars were to be fought for lebensraum so that German families could settle and begin to produce strong Aryan children to be the soldiers in the next wave of expansion. Germany would be strong again and if there was doubt in anyone’s mind, Hitler erased it when he stopped paying reparations and openly began rebuilding Germany’s armed forces.
With progressive change taking place in Germany after years of depression and despair, it is somewhat easy to see how Hitler’s message could have been pleasant and simple to follow. But what about the systematic murder of fellow citizens simply because of their ethnicity or religious beliefs? What power led people to ignore genocide on a scale never equaled, to accept the hardships of six long years of war? It was the might of an unquestioned ideology that was supported by an unassailable authority.
Germany was not alone. The Soviet Union adopted the ideology of Communism after the carnage of the First World War caused an uprising that swept away the old order. Under Stalin, the Soviet Union faced a rule that was every bit as cruel and despotic as Hitler’s. Yet during the Second World War, Soviet citizens fought and died on an unprecedented scale to stop and then push back German aggression. Powerful ideologies even held sway in the democracies of the Western Allies, with American and English civilians willing to pay a hefty price in supplies and lives lost to ensure the unconditional surrender of their foes.
The idea of a strong ideology so ingrained into a populace that the policy of the state meshes with the will of the people is a very important one for our strategic theory. It fits nicely between Machiavelli’s ideas on citizen militias and the philosophies of people’s war. In the bloodiest and most epic war in human history, a war that affected every aspect of society across the globe, the will of the people proved to be decisive.
Closely related to the will of the people is strategic bombing. Although something of a misnomer because of its association with the operational level, strategic bombing seeks to break the will of the people that it targets. With the people holding such a powerful political hand, enemy states could no longer simply fight until an opposing king or queen would accept their terms. The people themselves would have to be knocked out of the fight and airpower was seen as the way to do it.
Early airpower theorists saw the urban populations of most nations as materialistic and needy. People who would rise up and demand peace from their leaders if infrastructure critical to their way of life was destroyed. Since aircraft could bypass the front lines and naval blockades of a conflict, and since any modern war with modern technology would blur the line between combatant and non-combatant, airpower was seen as the tool to quickly and efficiently end wars.
These early ideas gained momentum and were spread by the likes of Giulio Douhet. Douhet stressed the creation of an independent air force that was devoted to strategic bombing. He called for the use of three bomb types in strategic bombing: high explosives which would collapse buildings, cut off water mains, and break open gas lines; incendiary bombs which would set new fires and confound the fire fighting efforts on the ground because of their white phosphorous loads; and finally gas attacks which would kill the population and cause panic and terror.
The proponents of strategic bombing were sorely disappointed when its effects proved to be, at best, inconclusive during the Second World War. In fact, the tactical role of close support planes that was dismissed by Douhet proved to be more effective than strategic bombing. It was the close association of airplane and armor that helped lead to the initial German success of 1940-41 and the spectacular end run of the American Third Army in 1944. In the naval sphere, carrier-based aircraft did everything from support amphibious landing and giving close air support, to engaging and destroying the enemy’s navy and naval aviation forces.
American and British bomber raids over Germany did significant damage, but failed to knock the Nazis out of the war. The Germans simply spread out their manufacturing, placing factories some underground, and adapted to the pressure. The Germans were astonished during the Battle of Brittan when the English people refused to submit to relentless bombing. The English and Americans were equally confused when the German and the Japanese people did not rise up to force their leaders to sue for peace in 1944 and 45. The psychological role of strategic bombing did not live up to its potential.
In fact, strategic bombing helped to harden the will and resolve of those who were being bombarded. Civil defense programs helped to give people a purpose. Helping to build a subway that could double as an air shelter or being a block captain during air raids served as a powerful social control, and united the people against their common enemy. In this new type of war, people quickly learned that industrial workers at home were as valuable as the fighting soldiers at the front, if not more so.
What can we take from airpower theory and adopt into our greater strategic theory? For one, the air force should be thought of like Corbett envisioned the navy, as simply a tool of the state used to carry out policy. Secondly, airpower is more effective when coupled and coordinated with a mobile land force. The ability to put firepower from the ground and from the air on a Jominian “decisive point” proved itself to be a powerful combination in the Second World War.
The final topic that shall be discussed was created in the midst of the bombing campaign over Europe and Japan. It envisioned a weapon that combined all three of Douhet’s ideal munitions. High explosives, incendiaries, and poison gas, put together in one bomb, create the blast, heat, and fallout of an atomic weapon. The creation, deployment, and delivery of nuclear warheads would incorporate ideas from the strategic thinkers of the past, but could there be such a thing as nuclear strategy?
Nuclear strategy in the 20th century was predicated on the assumption that there were levels of limited conflict that were acceptable before the near-total destruction of nuclear warfare reared its ugly head; an extension of Clausewitzian limited vs. unlimited warfare theory. Simultaneously, other ideas that Clausewitz and Jomini stressed such as mass and concentration of forces became undesirable in a nuclear environment. In a nuclear war, the classical concentration of conventional forces would simply be a tempting target for a disabling first strike by the enemy.
The strategy that emerged from the era of nuclear warfare was that of deterrence. In order to keep someone from attacking a nation, that nation would have to pose a credible threat. Its nuclear forces would have to be powerful enough to both deal a staggering blow in a first strike and be plentiful and dispersed enough to mount an effective counterattack in the event of an enemy first strike. In addition to posing a threat, and being able to carry out that threat, a nation also had to have the will to use nuclear weapons.
With the end of the Second World War, the world’s nations quickly arrayed themselves into systems of alliances. For the most part, countries fell under the aegis of the United States and NATO or the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. While having a monopoly and then a decided advantage in nuclear weaponry, the United States did not worry itself too much with its obligation to protect Western Europe, but once the Soviet bloc achieved near parity with the West, defense of Europe became more complicated. The United States would certainly use nuclear weapons to defend itself from an attack on her own soil, but would she risk nuclear war over Germany?
With the Soviet forces having numerical superiority over NATO in Europe, the question of a successful defense was raised. France did not think the United States had the will to risk a nuclear exchange over Europe, so it simply developed its own nuclear force. Germany, who was in the middle of the Soviet invasion route, had serious problems with the idea of nuclear weapons being used on her soil to halt the advancing armor columns of the Red Army. Europe asked the questions “would the United States risk Armageddon to defend us, and if she did, would she destroy us with nuclear weapons in the process?”
In the end, nuclear weapons proved to be directly slaved to policy in a manner that no other weapons system was before. They were so powerful that their use couldn’t be risked on anything other than a total policy commitment. Military commanders who wanted their use, like MacArthur in Korea, were denied the most powerful weapon in their arsenal because it would upset the greater policy goal of avoiding a Third World War.
What can one take out of nuclear strategic thought to incorporate into a greater strategic theory? Mainly that nuclear weapons are inherently as inhibiting to a state as they are powerful. They are tied to policy so tightly that they help to shape it. As of yet, their use seems to be slaved to the Cold War. Nuclear weapons, and their propensity for escalatory relationships, are simply too powerful to be used in anything other than a total war.
Deterrence worked to prevent annihilation during the Cold War because the United States faced off against the Soviet Union, but what about the current geopolitical situation? The threat of nuclear destruction does not work against well-established networks of terrorists who commit suicide attacks. Even if a command center was found and targeted in time, a nuclear attack would only strengthen the cause of the dead terrorists, making them martyrs in the eyes of many. In a conflict with a legitimate non-nuclear power, the use of atomic weapons would be seen as unnecessary and the perpetrators seen as international outlaws.
The principles that are to be formed into a theory must first be divided. On the level of grand strategy are loftier ideas that are less dependent on the particulars of the battlefield. The link between policy and warfare is a major key to victory. If the decisions that policy-makers make do not sync up with the military goals of a mission, the mission is doomed to failure. All facets of the armed forces must work towards this strategy as well. The stoppage of commerce, the interdiction of supplies, and war on the ground should all mesh.
One must have cooperation between the people, the government, and the armed forces or the triad will collapse. Along with this is the idea that the most brilliant tactical minds cannot win a war without a good strategy. Statesmen need to first develop a realistic strategy, and then explain and discuss it with the military and the representatives of the people. With everybody on the same page, the war will be easier to wage.
Depending on the limited or unlimited nature of the war, having the people focused and united against the enemy is also a key strategic idea. This must follow the policy of the state however. There is no use in stirring up a deep desire to utterly destroy an enemy that a state is only seeking minor territorial or economic concessions from. Once the people are mobilized, it is also important to retain control of them. People’s wars can sometimes escalate into terrible genocides like in Cambodia or Rwanda if left unchecked.
The last aspect of grand strategy is that of Clausewitzian friction. Leaders must be aware that it exists, and know that, despite the most intricate of planning, it can and will pose challenges that are unexpected. Friction can be a grab bag of variables ranging from misestimating of an enemy leader to a prolonged and unexpected weather phenomenon. Like Clausewitz said, friction makes “every precise theory irrelevant”, but if it is anticipated, then it can be brought under a certain measure of control.
Friction also plays a role in the other level of strategy in our theory, that of theater strategy. Friction in this case takes forms like adverse weather, operational surprise, or the unwillingness of a formerly weak enemy to surrender. Surprise, although very difficult to achieve on a strategic level, should still be seen as a goal. One should have mobile forces that can follow up the inherent shock of the surprise. Attacking decisive points and defending interior lines are also good strategic principles on the theater level. But all of these thoughts, just like tactics, are still subordinate to the grand strategy level. A victory in an entire theater of war will not mean much if the leader of the victorious state has a coalition built against him because of his strategic failings.
So after 500 years of military history, we are left with a few general principles shaped into a strategic theory. But what is the purpose of this theory? Is it to force strategy into a scientific formula so that wars can be planned with exacting accuracy? The answer of course is no. Strategy cannot be set into a system of precise and rational rules. Strategy deals too much with human influences to ever approach the mathematical equations that govern the physical world.
The reason for a theory of strategy is that it helps generals and statesmen understand the past and how it might relate to the present. Thinkers like Clausewitz and Corbett understood theory’s use. Robert C. Morris said that it was “an analytical tool for evaluating history, a formulator of military principles, and the key catalyst for change in military thought.” It is not just a set of principles that worked in the past and therefore will work in the future, it is simply a case study that can be compared to the current situation for the purpose of analytical thinking. It follows the line of thinking of Mark Twain when he wrote “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes.”
