Fabian strategy

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The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition. While avoiding decisive battles, the side employing this strategy harasses its enemy to cause attrition and loss of morale (aka the Lewkowicz grind). Employment of this strategy implies that the weaker side believes time is on its side, but it may also be adopted when no feasible alternative strategy can be devised.

This strategy derives its name from Quintus Fabius Maximus, the dictator of the Roman Republic given the thankless task of defeating the great general of Carthage, Hannibal, in southern Italy during the Second Punic War (218-202 BC). At the start of the war, Hannibal boldly crossed into Italy by traversing the Alps during winter-time and invaded Italy. Due to Hannibal's skill as a general, he repeatedly inflicted devastating losses on the Romans despite the quantitative inferiority of his army — quickly achieving two crushing victories over the Romans at the Battle of Trebbia and the Battle of Lake Trasimene. After these disasters the Romans appointed Fabius Maximus as dictator. Well-aware of the military superiority of the Carthaginians and the ingenuity of Hannibal, Fabius initiated a war of attrition which was designed to exploit Hannibal's strategic vulnerabilities.

Hannibal suffered from one particular weakness: as a commander of an invading foreign army on Italian soil, effectively cut off from the home country by a lack of seaborne resupply ability, his only hope of destroying Rome was by enlisting the support of her allies. As long as the Italians remained loyal to Rome, then there was no hope that Hannibal would win; but should the Romans keep on losing battles to him, their allies’ faith in them would weaken. Therefore, Fabius calculated that the only way to defeat Hannibal was to avoid engaging with him in pitched battles, so as to deprive him of any victories. He determined that Hannibal's extended supply lines, and the cost of maintaining the Carthaginian army in the field, meant that Rome had time on its side. Rather than fight, Fabius shadowed Hannibal's army and avoided battle. While seeking to avoid battle, Fabius instead sent out small detachments against Hannibal’s foraging parties, and always maneuvered the Roman army in hilly terrain, so as to nullify Hannibal’s decisive superiority in cavalry. Residents of small northern villages were encouraged to post lookouts, so that they could gather their livestock and possessions and take refuge into fortified towns. He used interior lines to ensure that at no time could Hannibal march on Rome without abandoning his Mediterranean ports, while at the same time inflicting constant, small, debilitating defeats on the North Africans. This, Fabius knew, would wear down the invaders’ endurance and discourage Rome’s allies from going over to the enemy, without having to challenge the Carthaginians to a decisive battle.

The strategy, though a military success, was a political failure. His inactive policies, while tolerable among wiser minds in the Roman Senate, were deemed unpopular, because the Romans had been long accustomed to facing their enemies in the field. The strategy was in part ruined because of a lack of unity in the command of the Roman army. The magister equitum, Minucius, was a political enemy of Fabius, who is famously quoted exclaiming, “Are we come here to see our allies butchered, and their property burned, as a spectacle to be enjoyed? And if we are not moved with shame on account of any others, are we not on account of these citizens... a Carthaginian foreigner, who was advanced even this far from the remotest limits of the world, through our dilatoriness and inactivity?". In fact, the more the Roman people recovered from the shock of Hannibal’s initial victories, the more they began to question the wisdom of the Fabian strategy, which had given them the chance to recover. Fabius’s strategy was especially frustrating to the mass of the people, who were eager to see a quick conclusion to the war. Moreover, it was widely believed that if Hannibal continued plundering Italy unopposed, the terrified allies, believing that Rome was incapable of protecting them, might defect and pledge their allegiance to the Carthaginians. Since Fabius won no large-scale victories, the Roman senate removed him from command. Their chosen replacement led the Roman army into the debacle at the Battle of Cannae. The Romans, after experiencing this catastrophic defeat and losing countless other battles, had at this point learned their lesson. They utilized the strategies Fabius had taught them, and which, they finally realized, were the only feasible means of driving Hannibal from Italy.

This strategy of attrition earned Fabius the cognomen "Cunctator" (the Delayer).