The City is the Battle Field of the Future

Title of an Op-Ed in Thursday's Wall St Journal.  The author, John Spencer,  an Army infantryman and deputy director of the West Point Modern War Institute, is calling for specialized training in urban warfare, and implies that the month battle for Mosul would have gone better if the troops had been trained in  specially built exercise city where they could practice tossing grenades in windows and shooting their way up stairways.  Mr. Spenser argues much of the world's population lives in big cities so the Army ought to train to fight in big cities.
   I gotta wonder if Mr Spenser has any knowledge of history at all.  Cities have been highly defensible strong points since ancient times.  Although modern cities lack walls (the invention of artillery made city walls obsolete) they still offer zillions of strong and hidden firing positions, stout masonry buildings that can resist all but the heaviest artillery fire, basements and subways and sewers and all kinds of bomb proof underground places, tall building from which to throw Molotov cocktails on enemy tanks, which are confined to city streets, and more. 
   The traditional way to subdue a city is to starve it out.  Surround the place, cut off all food and supplies, water if you can manage it, and wait them out.  Siege it's called.  In ancient times, siege was undependable, the besiegers often ran out of food before the besieged city did.  In modern times, with trucks and rail to bring up besieger's supplies, the siege can last longer than the city's supplies will. 
   The German's tried to take Stalingrad by frontal assault.  They spent six months at it.  A mere 60,000 Russians managed to hold off 250,000 Germans, and their tanks, artillery and aircraft.  The Russians fought house to house, floor to floor with grenades and sub machine guns.  When the Germans seized a building by daylight, the Russians counterattacked at night and took it back.   Paulus, the German commander, should have put his army across the Volga River, surrounded Stalingrad and starved it out.  He didn't, he threw his men into the teeth of Russian defenses and lost.
   No amount of special training in urban warfare is going to change the facts, cities are tough strong points, and assaulting them is very costly, and often fails.  Don't do frontal assault.  Surround the place and starve it out.