Between Mobility and Vulnerability: How Oil Influences Military Strategy

• In Event: Poster Session: International Security II

Abstract

How does oil affect wartime military effectiveness? Oil is widely heralded as an irreplaceable "prize" that fuels modern military. What it ignores is a tremendous operational and strategic burden oil imposes on states in delivering oil to the fighting forces and defending the necessary infrastructure, which often goes out of control during wartime. States adopt different strategies to resolve the critical wartime trade-off between mobility and vulnerability--minimalism, restraint, and gamble. The choice they make often historically determined military logistics and effectiveness, and by extension the war outcome itself. This paper looks at the promises and pitfalls of each strategy by looking at the Japanese gamble during the WWII, Chinese restraint in the Korean War, and Vietnamese minimalism during the Vietnam War, all of which were fought against superior US forces. The last section extends the discussion about the mobility and vulnerability trade-off to the military challenges China faces today.

Author

• Inwook Kim, Singapore Management University