{"id":69416,"date":"2022-11-01T01:00:24","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T05:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=69416"},"modified":"2023-09-20T11:10:54","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T15:10:54","slug":"qotd-spartan-strategy-during-the-persian-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/11\/01\/qotd-spartan-strategy-during-the-persian-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Spartan strategy during the Persian wars"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>At the core of strategy is deciding on strategic ends<\/em> and then coordinating the right means<\/em> which will actually achieve those goals. For instance, if the strategic goal is to gain control of a key economic population center (read: a city), you don’t want to try to achieve that by, say, carpet bombing \u2013 you’ll destroy the very asset you wish to gain even if you win<\/em>. In this respect, Sparta’s strategic thinking is straight-jacketed to a very narrow model of warfare. Sparta is the fellow in the aphorism that “when all you have is a hammer” but placed in a world of screws.<\/p>\n

The hammer Sparta has, of course, is hoplite<\/a><\/em> battle. Sparta seeks to solve almost all of its issues by applying a hoplite<\/em> phalanx to the problem<\/strong>, regardless of if the problem can be solved by a hoplite<\/em> phalanx. Spartan strategic thinking is thus marred by both a failure to consider military solutions that did not consist of traditional hoplite<\/em> battles, as well as an inability to consider or execute non-military<\/em> solutions at all.<\/p>\n

We can see the former weakness in Spartan planning in the Persian Wars. Spartan planning is both direct and unrealistic: find a choke-point, fortify it and hold it indefinately with a hoplite<\/em> army. Attempted at Thermopylae this plan fails; the Battle of Thermopylae is often represented in popular culture as an intentional<\/em> delaying action, but it was nothing of the sort \u2013 Herodotus is clear that this was supposed to be the decisive land engagement (Hdt. 7.175; Cf. Diodorus 11.4.1-5). The Spartans then attempt to recreate this plan at the Isthmus of Corinth and have to be rescued from their strategic stupidity by the Athenians, who threaten to leave the alliance if the plan isn’t abandoned (Hdt. 8.49-62). A blockade at the Isthmus would be easy for the Persian army to bypass \u2013 assuming it didn’t simply defeat it with generally superior Persian siegecraft \u2013 and worse yet was a diplomatic disaster given that it meant essentially writing Athens off as a loss, when the Athenian navy provided the bulk of the ships protecting the Isthmus<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part VII: Spartan Ends”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry<\/em><\/a>, 2019-09-27.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the core of strategy is deciding on strategic ends and then coordinating the right means which will actually achieve those goals. For instance, if the strategic goal is to gain control of a key economic population center (read: a city), you don’t want to try to achieve that by, say, carpet bombing \u2013 you’ll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,1526,7,370,5,41],"tags":[1527,31,732,1457,1101,1151],"class_list":["post-69416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-greece","category-history","category-middle-east","category-military","category-quotations","tag-ancientgreece","tag-army","tag-athens","tag-bretdevereaux","tag-persia","tag-sparta"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-i3C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69416"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77579,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69416\/revisions\/77579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}