Napoleon Bonaparte was a strategic genius whose successes and failures bear ongoing relevance to contemporary strategists.
I note this in light of Nahal Toosi’s piece for Politico on March 1, in which she documents some surreal moments from the early days of the Trump White House. One gem comes from the former White House official turned always pro Trump pundit Sebastian Gorka. Referencing national security meetings that Gorka attended, Toosi notes that:
This is a gem because it’s one of those rare occasions that Gorka is actually right and everyone else in the room is wrong. Because while it might seem odd, I can imagine a great many scenarios where Napoleon’s feats would have merit in the discussion of national security concerns in any one moment.
Here are a few examples applied to events during Gorka’s White House tenure between January and August 2017.
1) April 7, 2017: Overconfidence in Russian winters, and Trump’s showdown summit with Xi Jinping
Aggravated by China’s intellectual property theft, unfair trade practices, and international aggression, President Trump met with President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. What would Trump’s national security team have advised about how to handle Xi?
One guiding answer, albeit from a less auspicious time of Napoleon’s rule, might have been, “Xi is trying to do to us what Napoleon expected he could do to the Russian empire by seizing Moscow. Thus, let Xi make Napoleon’s mistake, and let us copy Kutuzov.”
Just as Napoleon, like Hitler a 130 years later, assumed that his seizure of Moscow in September 1812 would strike the decisive blow in provoking the Russian empire’s submission, in April 2017, Xi believed China’s seemingly unstoppable economic power and military escalations could corral Trump’s submission. Xi’s assumption was that Trump would view American tolerance for Xi’s great new power as inevitable. But advising on the experience of Napoleon in seizing a burned-out Moscow and then being forced into retreat, Gorka could have pointed to the weak fundamentals of the Chinese economy (the metaphor for Napoleon’s seizure of a burned-out Moscow). Gorka could have told Trump to play for time in confidence of the inevitable: China’s economic slowdown and the comparative power of the U.S. economy (the Russian winter equivalent).
Then, Gorka might have said, like the great Russian general Mikhail Kutuzov against Napoleon’s then-depleted and retreating not-so-grand army, Xi’s new weakness would make him ripe for attack.
Just as Kutuzov attacked the edges of the retreating French army, we see Trump’s crackdown on the Huawei technology company, his alliance-based pressure on the edges of Chinese imperialism, and his patient campaign to reach a trade deal that favors U.S. interests. The only difference for Xi is that he, unlike Napoleon’s forces crossing the frozen Russian winter plains, has a chance to agree an orderly retreat — if he is sensible enough to grasp it!
2) April 4, 2017: Austerlitz, and Bashar Assad’s chemical attack on Khan Shaykhun
When, on April 4, 2017, Bashar Assad used a nerve agent to murder around 100 civilians at Khan Shaykun, Trump faced a challenge. He had warned Assad against using those weapons and now Assad had breached the warning. But Assad’s exaggerated confidence was Trump’s opportunity.
The Napoleonic example? Napoleon’s patient resolve at the Battle of Austerlitz in early December 1805. Facing a Russian-led army, Napoleon held his positions and invited the arrogant Russian Tsar Alexander I to throw his main force of its superior starting position at the Pratzen Heights, and thus give space for a counterattack. The relevance to Khan Shaykhun is in Trump allowing Assad to make the first move and thus retaining the moral initiative for America.
Just like Alexander’s fatal arrogance in moving off the Pratzen heights, Assad’s arrogant deployment of his chemical weapons gave Trump the opportunity to teach him a bloody deterrent lesson. Napoleon moved to secure the Pratzen heights and broke the Russian army.Trump’s retaliation against the overstepping Assad re-secured the moral principle, abandoned by former President Barack Obama, that American red-lines will be enforced.
Just as Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz was instrumental in ending the Third Coalition, Trump’s response to Khan Shaykun restored U.S. deterrent credibility. Trump again enforced that credibility when Assad repeated his mistake in 2018.
3) July 4, 2017: The great reform program, and North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile test
This successful test of North Korea’s Hwasong-14 missile platform and warhead re-entry vehicle was an alarming sign of Pyongyang’s growing threat to the U.S. homeland. But Gorka might have suggested that the best Napoleonic way to respond to this threat was not with force that might risk a bloody escalation, but with a new nation.
The example?
Napoleon’s great reforms. Rather than choosing to corral his people, Napoleon chose to win them to a shared mission of mutual interest. Thus followed Napoleon’s new civil code to protect individual rights and legal commerce, his development of an education system built on research and inquiry, and his cultivation of patriotism that bound people to their state. Trump’s grand bargain offer to Kim Jong Un seems to match these tenets: It chooses peaceful mutual interest, denuclearization in return for security guarantees and economic development, and trusting engagement. It rejects bloody constraint in favor of a better peace.
Ultimately, the simple point is this: referencing Napoleon in debates over current security concerns is not necessarily absurd. Indeed, it may well be very clever!
