Un saisissant parallèle : de Valmy à Iéna

Nous détachons un aspect de l’important article du lieutenant-colonel Yingling, dont nous proposons une rapide analyse par ailleurs. Il s’agit des deux paragraphes qui terminent l’article, qui pourraient effectivement être intitulés : “De Valmy à Iéna”.

«This article began with Frederick the Great's admonition to his officers to focus their energies on the larger aspects of war. The Prussian monarch's innovations had made his army the terror of Europe, but he knew that his adversaries were learning and adapting. Frederick feared that his generals would master his system of war without thinking deeply about the ever-changing nature of war, and in doing so would place Prussia's security at risk. These fears would prove prophetic. At the Battle of Valmy in 1792, Frederick's successors were checked by France's ragtag citizen army. In the fourteen years that followed, Prussia's generals assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like those of the past. In 1806, the Prussian Army marched lockstep into defeat and disaster at the hands of Napoleon at Jena. Frederick's prophecy had come to pass; Prussia became a French vassal.

»Iraq is America's Valmy. America's generals have been checked by a form of war that they did not prepare for and do not understand. They spent the years following the 1991 Gulf War mastering a system of war without thinking deeply about the ever changing nature of war. They marched into Iraq having assumed without much reflection that the wars of the future would look much like the wars of the past. Those few who saw clearly our vulnerability to insurgent tactics said and did little to prepare for these dangers. As at Valmy, this one debacle, however humiliating, will not in itself signal national disaster. The hour is late, but not too late to prepare for the challenges of the Long War. We still have time to select as our generals those who possess the intelligence to visualize future conflicts and the moral courage to advise civilian policymakers on the preparations needed for our security. The power and the responsibility to identify such generals lie with the U.S. Congress. If Congress does not act, our Jena awaits us.»

Il s’agit d’une intéressante analogie, tant historique que politique, qui témoigne effectivement d’un état d’esprit bien spécifique. On ne peut pas ne pas la rapprocher de celle de nombreux écrits de l’école réformiste US, dont Yingling doit certainement être proche. On peut se référer à l’analogie d’un “plan Schlieffen nucléaire”, de la plume d’un “Dr. Werther”, sur le site “Defense & National Interest”. On peut se référer aux références de William S. Lind, que nous citons souvent. Tous ces officiers et experts US réformistes, proches d’être dissidents de la voie officielle, nous donnent en général la réflexion suivante : leur admiration pour la machine militaire prussienne/allemande dans l’Histoire, le constat qu’ils font pourtant de l’échec de cette machine militaire, et l’analogie entre la puissance militaire prussienne et la puissance militaire US, y compris dans son destin catastrophique.

… Ce qui est savoureux, ou révélateur qui sait, c’est qu’on retrouve souvent, dans ces exemples cités, la France sur le chemin de la Prusse : de Valmy à Iéna, des révolutionnaires à Napoléon ; et la Marne, en septembre 1914, contre le plan Schlieffen.

Mis en ligne le 1er mai 2007 à 07H21