Page 50 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

50 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

Opening speech to the initial round table

Prof. Massimo de LEOnARDIS 1

any of the expressions used today in strategic-military language describe situ-
M ations that have always existed in the history of wars. This is the case of joint
and combined operations, asymmetric wars, and coalitions of the willing. In actual fact,
today war itself is no longer referred to by its real name, and expressions such as peace-
keeping operations, military interventions, and humanitarian interventions, by way of
example, are preferably used instead.
Throughout history, on one side or both, most wars were waged by coalitions. In the
sixth anti-Napoleonic coalition (1812-14), national army corps were even united into
2
combined armies .
Armies, naval and air fleets
Traditionally, armies and navies have always cooperated. In most cases, fleets were
simply used to transport armies, but there are several examples of strategies or opera-
tions coordinated between the two Armed Forces. For example, during the second Per-
sian war (480-479 B.C.), the operations of the Greek army were coordinated with those
of the fleet; the heroic land defeat of Marathon was redeemed by the sea victory of Sa-
lamis, a useful precedent for the subsequent Greek land victories at Plataea and Mycale,
where seamen, after disembarking from the ships, fought side by side with the Hoplites.
At a certain stage in their development, even traditionally land empire equipped them-
selves with maritime capacity in order to make a qualitative leap that would allow them
to increase their power, face the enemy and increase their conquests. During the First Pu-
nic War, Rome built its first large fleet, which was crucial for victory, while the Carthag-
inians carried out operations coordinated between the army and the navy. In the last dec-
ade of the twentieth century, German Emperor Wilhelm II decided to build a large navy;
Admiral von Tirpitz, who was its architect, rightly anticipated that if the German Imperial
Navy were to be strong enough to provoke Great Britain, but not to challenge it success-
fully, this choice would prove to be a tragic mistake. The Soviet Union was not content
to reach missile parity with the United States, but, at the instigation of Admiral Sergey
Gorshkov, commander of the Soviet Navy from 1956 to 1985, also aimed at reducing the
naval superiority of the United States, in the awareness that without a strong naval com-
ponent the USSR could not be a true superpower and that, as he repeated several times,
the Navy was a particularly effective means to promote the interests of the Country in the

1 Full Professor of History of International Relations and Institutions at the Università Cattolica del Sacro

Cuore of Milan, Vice-President of the International Commission of Military History.
2 Karl von Clausewitz, who took part in this campaign as an officer of the Russian Army, deals with this topic
in the Italian edition of On War (Della guerra, Milan 1970, Book VIII, pp. 853-54).