Transforming Military Command: The Relevance of Coup D’oeil

Abstract

The fundamental questions of military leadership remain unchanged during the last millennia: the decisive element of the success is the able military leader. In this work I scrutinize the works of the classical military writers to find out what they considered the good military leader to be, what attributes they considered to make the difference between good and bad general. The military authors of the 18-19. centuries, such as Clausewitz, considered the ability to make quick and sound decision to be this attribute. They identified this attribute, which they called the coup d’oeil, in the context of the relatively small-scale military engagements of their era. In my work I will demonstrate how this classical coup d’oeil can be interpreted in relation to the modern operating environment. The traditional coup d’oeil is coexisting with a digital and a multi-domain coup d’oeil, and I raise attention to the increasing role of these in the future’s continually digitalizing armies.