War Planning

Planning for a military campaign or campaigns, either offensive or defensive in orientation. War planning potentially allows a country to be prepared for various future military scenarios that it may face. However, there has been controversy over the years regarding the effectiveness of war planning.

War planning concentrates on developing an effective plan for winning a conflict. To plan for war, models such as war games are often used. Additionally, lessons learned from previous conflicts serve as important sources of information for military planning.

War planning can take place during times of peace or in the midst of a conflict. War plans are often generated during times of peace in preparation for future conflict. During peacetime, plans are made for likely scenarios and some unlikely ones. A primary historical example of preconflict war planning often cited is the period before the outbreak of World War I. Before World War I, the great powers were all engaged in extensive offensive prewar planning.

Criticisms have been made against the practice of prewar planning, however, suggesting that planning for war, specifically offensive war, increases the likelihood of going to war. Some scholars argue that wars have been started by accident because of extensive offensive war planning, which encourages or even compels a nation into war. World War I, with the lead-up to the conflict consisting of heavy offensive war planning, is a commonly cited example of this phenomenon.

Arguably, the rigidity of the war plans and lack of exit strategies may have led these countries into a world war before they realized it. The situation in this case is unlike an ideal situation, in which a politician decides on a course of action and then looks for war plans to achieve the objectives. The war plans became the focus, and the politicians found themselves in a war without a political objective.

However, other scholars have argued that the war plans that were made did not necessarily propel the great powers into war, and that furthermore the assumptions that were made in this case, such as the rigidity of the war plans, were inaccurate. What is clear is that the war planning affected how the war was carried out.

War planning has potential benefits, however. For instance, plans can affect the decision-making apparatus during a crisis because those who can cite specific plans are more likely to have their positions carry more weight. There have also been many past examples of the usefulness of war planning. For example, in World War II, creative war planning helped the Germans achieve much of their battlefield success, although obviously not in the long term.

In practice, there are two types of U.S. planning: that executed as a situation occurs and planning conceived during peacetime. Plans are made on several levels, from the operational level to the strategic level, and occur up and down the military hierarchy. The planning timeline ranges from the beginning stage of a conflict through the potential subsequent stages of the campaign.

War planning, both defensive and offensive, allows a nation to be prepared for potential future scenarios. Due to the impact of chance and the inability of war planners to predict accurately the shape of future conflict, war plans have to be adaptable if they are expected to work. As long as there exists an awareness of the potential limitations of the plan, strategists maintain that war planning is of great benefit to both the military and civilian leadership of a country.

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