The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection. While avoiding decisive battles, the side employing this strategy harasses its enemy through skirmishes to cause attrition, disrupt supply and affect morale. This strategy derives its name from Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus.
About Fabian strategy in brief
The Fabian strategy is a military strategy where pitched battles and frontal assaults are avoided in favor of wearing down an opponent through a war of attrition and indirection. While avoiding decisive battles, the side employing this strategy harasses its enemy through skirmishes to cause attrition, disrupt supply and affect morale. This strategy derives its name from Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, the dictator of the Roman Republic given the task of defeating the great Carthaginian general Hannibal in southern Italy during the Second Punic War. The strategy, though a military success, was a political failure. The Romans had been long accustomed to facing and besting their enemies in the field of battle. The lack of unity in the Roman army ruined the political enemy of Fabius. The Roman magister equitum, Marcus Minucius Rufus, is famously quoted as exclaiming,Are we here to see our allies but burned, as a spectacle to be enjoyed? And if we are not moved with shame on account of these victories, which now not the neighboring Samnite citizens…
are we not on the account of any others? The Roman populace grew dimmer and dimmer through the memory of Hannibal’s victories, but now the Samnites are not the only ones to be dimmer, but the Roman citizens, too… The Roman people are dimmer in memory of the victories of a foreigner, who has advanced even far from the limits of the world, through our dilatoriness and inactivity in our activity. The Carthaginians have advanced so far from this remotest limits of our activity that they have even advanced far beyond the limits, and even this far from our activity in this world, in this time of droughts, of hunger and thirst, of sickness and of war. The time, not energy, would cripple Hannibal’s advances. The Romans have time on its side, but it may also be adopted when no feasible alternative strategy can be devised.”
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This page is based on the article Fabian strategy published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
