The Management Of The Northwestern Frontiers In Shenzong Emperor Period Of The Northern Song Dynasty, Based On Strategic Decision And Information Dissemination

During the Xining periods in Northern Song Dynasty, the Emperor Song Shenzong and the prime minister Wang Anshi established the grand strategy that "Suppression Yi-di (the foreigners)" in common. The content of this grand strategy include:"management Xihe area to attack Xia, and then management Xia to assault Liao." The implementation sequence also the strategic objective from easy to difficult by the gradually. first of all, developing Xihe area; secondly, pressing Xia regime; finally, attacking Liao regime. In the Xining periods, Wang Sao and Li Xian worked in the efforts, Northern Song regime had been achieved the strategic objective that developing Xihe area on the whole, and established Xihe lu in the Tao River basin in the west of Qinzhou as a new war zone for the conflict with Xia. But wait until the Yuanfeng periods, when the central authority of Northern Song considered the opportunity that to subvert the domination of Xia regime by military force was ripe and embarked on the strategic planning to suppress Xia, there was a serious military disaster befallen the army of Song. The successive failures in the war of Lingxia and the battle of Yongle fortress caused the grand strategy of Northern Song Dynasty from outward extension regressed inward and cautious again.Strategic decision and military command are of great significance to the war. The orientation of the military strategy and the grand strategy whether to be identical, the military command of the actual combat whether to be efficient and realistic, not only affect the realization of the grand strategy, what is more determine the final result of the military operations to be success or failure. In the series military operations that to open up the northwestern frontiers in the Xining and Yuanfeng periods, the government of Northern Song adopted a three levels military command pattern which constituted by the central authorities, the military region command and generals. Such military command pattern not only reflects the imbalance distribution of the military information, it also embodies the upper and lower level of the strategic decision. Concretely speaking, the emperor and ministers as the principal of central decision layer, planned the grand strategy and participated the decision making of operational art; military region commanders involvemented the decision making of military strategy, which comprised the upper level of operational art and the lower level of tactics; then the generals controlled the wielding of tactics in the actual combat. The military region command, whether in space or level, was living in between the central authorities and battlefront generals. It acted as a linchpin of the military information dissemination laterally as well as played a part of linking up the grand strategy and tactics vertically. Through such a military command pattern, the central authorities achieved the compatibility of central control and command efficacy, as well implied the sublation of the traditional command pattern that called "control of generals by the emperor " limitedly.