🚀 go-pugleaf

If you look up the definition of strategy: "the science and art of employing 
the political, economic, psychological and military forces of a nation or 
nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war." 
Therefore you could develop a strategy that had nothing to do with 
battlefield tactics at all. Economic sanctions against a country or nation 
could be said to be implementing  a strategy but never a tactic (since it 
has nothing do with combat).

It could be said that Yamamoto's strategy at Midway was to draw the US 
Pacific fleet into a decisive battle in which superior Japanese naval assets 
would prevail. A decision like this is made at the highest levels of 
command, the people who would develop the tactics to carry out this strategy 
at the lower levels wouldn't even know of the decision until after it was 
made. If you don't know where you're going to attack how can you develop 
tactics? The Japanese naval command had several strategies on where to 
attack next (after the Coral Sea). Some wanted to take out Australia, some 
wanted to hold on to what they had, but to decide where to attack with the 
combined fleet next wasn't a tactical decision.

Would you say the decision by the allies to invade Europe through Normandy 
as opposed to through Norway/Sweden was a tactical decision? I would say 
this strategic decision determined the tactics not the other way around.

-- 
Doug
"Marsh_lion" <marsh...@SPAMparadise.net.nz> wrote in message 
news:44769e3c$1@clear.net.nz...
> pigdos wrote:
>> For the mentally challenged I'll give at least one example of strategy. 
>> When the Imperial Japanese Navy decided to attack both the Aleutian 
>> islands and Midway it was a strategic decision, not a tactical one. 
>> Tactics can only be discussed after such strategic decisions have been 
>> made (if you don't know where you're going to fight how can you make 
>> tactical decisions on how to do it). The tactics of how to carry out this 
>> strategic decision were left up to the admirals who commanded the various 
>> task forces or task groups because they would actually BE there. Nimitz 
>> didn't second guess the tactical decisions of Halsey, but Halsey didn't 
>> dictate the strategy the entire US Navy would pursue in the Pacific 
>> either. Other strategic decisions might be to bomb war production 
>> facilities as opposed to concentration camps --  either could have been 
>> done, but it isn't a tactical decision.
>>
> Ok, where does the difference between strategy and tactics stop? While I 
> agree that it was a strategic move, the carrier fleet still had to decide 
> the strategy on how they were going to take the Islands.
>
> If we look at dictionary.com it gives the definition of tactic as 
> (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=tactic):
> n : a plan for attaining a particular goal [syn: maneuver, manoeuvre]
>
> and Strategy gives (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=strategy):
> A plan of action resulting from strategy or intended to accomplish a 
> specific goal. See Synonyms at plan.
>
> To me this states that the words mean pretty much the same thing (aka they 
> are synonyms), so RTT pretty much means RTS (and RTS pretty much means 
> RTT).
>
> --
> Marsh Lion