The Roots of Military Doctrine

Change and Continuity in 

Understanding the Practice of 

Warfare

Dr. Aaron P. Jackson

Combat Studies Institute Press

US Army Combined Arms Center

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 
Stand Your Ground by Don Troiani

Lexington, Massachusetts -- April 19, 1775

* Use or reproduction of this print by entities other than the US Government 

is reserved by the artist. This is one of a series of paintings done by the artist 

to highlight the contributions of the Army National Guard to national defense. 

Please contact Don Troiani at HistoricalArtPrints.com.
The Roots of Military Doctrine

Change and Continuity in Understanding the Practice of 

Warfare

Dr. Aaron P. Jackson

Doctrine Desk Officer, Australian Defence Force Joint

Doctrine Centre

Visiting Fellow, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University
ii

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jackson, Aaron P.

The Roots of Military Doctrine: Change and Continuity in Understanding 

the Practice of Warfare / Dr. Aaron P. Jackson, Doctrine Desk Officer, 

Australian Defence Force Joint Doctrine Centre; Visiting Fellow, Griffith 

Asia Institute, Griffith University.

Includes bibliographical references ISBN 978-0-9891372-2-5

1. Military doctrine 2. War (Philosophy) I. Title. U21.2.J33 2013

355.0201--dc23

2013 023912

Combat Studies Institute Press publications cover a wide 

variety of military history topics. The views expressed in this 

CSI Press publication are those of the author(s) and not 

necessarily those of the Department of the Army or the 

Department of Defense. The views expressed in this paper are 

the author’s own and are not necessarily those of the Australian 

Defence Organization or any part thereof.

A full list of CSI Press publications available for downloading can be 

found at:

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/CSI/index.asp

The seal of the Combat Studies Institute authenticates this document as an 

official publication of the CSI. It is prohibited to use CSI’s official seal on 

any republication without the express written permission of the Director 

of CSI.
iii

Foreword

During the 1980s a fable circulated within the US Army concerning Soviet planning for a potential war with the United States. In the 

most common version, a Soviet general is alleged to have declared in 

frustration, “It is impossible to plan against the Americans because they 

don’t follow their own doctrine.” Many readers of this book will have 

heard (or said) that “doctrine is only a guide.” Indeed, the tactical agility 

demonstrated by the US Army on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan 

is due in no small part to a cultural imperative that prizes solutions above 

all else.

 While not disputing the value of unorthodox solutions to difficult 

challenges, the organizational culture that underpins this perspective has 

resulted in a widespread lack of knowledge of Army doctrine by company and field grade officers and mid-level and senior noncommissioned 

officers. Recognizing this, the Army has dramatically re-engineered its 

doctrine to distill the timeless principles into a series of accessible, easily read documents. This process has led to a larger discussion of what 

should and should not be called “doctrine,” and has also included discussion of how we as members of the profession of arms conceptualize 

warfare. Unfortunately, this conversation has not yet included the bulk 

of the Army’s mid-level leaders.

 Dr. Jackson’s monograph is an excellent contribution to remedy that 

shortfall. Its greatest value lies in the fact that it forces the reader to 

reconsider basic assumptions about the purpose and utility of doctrine, 

and what a nation’s military doctrine says about its military institution. 

Jackson’s arguments are well reasoned, his assertions are provocative, 

and his conclusions are profound. After reading this work, your view 

and understanding of doctrine will be powerfully enhanced, and will lead 

to lively discussions at every level.

Thomas E. Hanson

Colonel, Infantry

Director, Combat Studies Institute

v

Contents

Foreword.................................................................................................iii

Contents................................................................................................... v

1. Introduction......................................................................................... 1

Structure

Key Terms

2. The Four “Schools” of Doctrinal Ontology .....................................11

The Technical Manual School 

The Tactical Manual School 

The Operational Manual School 

Military “Thought Collectives” And Allied Doctrine Development

The Military Strategic School 

3. The Relationship between the Four Schools................................... 47

The Training and Educational Role of Doctrine 

The Relationship between Doctrine and Scientific Regimes 

Doctrine, Military Bureaucracy, and State/Military Relations 

Doctrine and Ontological Realism 

4. The Epistemology of Doctrine ......................................................... 65

Doctrine’s “Traditional” Epistemology: Military Positivism 

Twenty-First Century Doctrine: An Epistemological Shift? 

Counterinsurgency, Design, and Anti-Positivism 

Debating Design: What the Proponents and Detractors Think 

5. Significance and Implications ......................................................... 87

Paradigm Shifts 

Possible Avenues for Doctrinal Evolution 

Understanding Relationships 

Conceptual and Terminological Clarity 

6. Conclusion ........................................................................................ 99

Bibliography ....................................................................................... 105

Author Biography .............................................................................. 123

1

Chapter 1

Introduction

This monograph examines military doctrine and explains why 

understanding its evolution and the influences that shape it are of vital 

importance to military practitioners, strategists, and statesmen alike.

Doctrine, defined herein as the expression of a military’s institutional 

“belief system,” constitutes a significant yet hitherto unrecognized 

means by which this belief system can be understood and evaluated. This 

understanding and evaluation is in turn important because it is this belief 

system that determines the way a military fights, the relationship it will 

have with the state and society that sustain it, and its institutional culture.

To get the belief system right means good strategy, victory, stable civilmilitary relations, and organizational wellbeing. Getting it wrong means 

sub-optimal strategy and operational outcomes or even defeat, strained 

civil-military relationships, and organizational dysfunction. This is why 

it is vital that military practitioners, strategists, and statesmen all have a

well-developed understanding of this belief system and its implications. 

Yet currently, many do so only subconsciously, if at all. The aim of this 

monograph is to help make this understanding explicit.

The potentially detrimental results of many military practitioners, 

strategists, and statesmen having developed only an implicit understanding

of the military belief system can be seen in the state of conceptual confusion 

that has reigned since the end of the Cold War. Today, Western militaries 

are awash with competing and contrasting terms, ideas, and concepts. As 

Colin S. Gray recently observed, “Americans in the 2000s went to war and 

by and large have remained conceptually wounded.”1 Brian McAllister 

Linn traced the roots of this problem even further back asserting that “even 

before the [Global War on Terror] the defense community was in the midst 

of a vibrant debate over whether the nature of war itself had changed.”2

This conceptual confusion is most prominently manifest in the volume 

of buzzwords and imprecise terms that have been coined in recent decades 

to describe the nature of warfare and ways that it should be prosecuted. 

Linn, for example, has charged that “the Pentagon routinely issues 

directives purporting to give a concept of war that are little more than 

gibberish.”3 The problem is by no means limited to the US military. In 

a critique of the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) performance in the 2006 

conflict in Lebanon, Milan Vego wrote, “New terms such as strategic

directive, strategic purpose, system boundary, operational boundaries, 
2

campaign organizing theme, and rival system rationale were overused

in place of traditional military terms. Units were ordered to ‘render the 

enemy incoherent,’ make the enemy feel ‘distress’ or ‘chased down,’ or 

‘achieve standoff domination of the theatre.’”4 In short, contemporary 

western militaries are facing a conceptual crisis brought on by an even 

deeper uncertainty about the nature of the strategic and operational 

environments and the links between them, and indeed, whether or not it is

still appropriate to delineate between them.

To address this conceptual crisis as well as to address or avert

other potentially detrimental results of the failure to develop an explicit 

understanding of the military belief system, it is necessary to address 

the underlying cause of this failure. This requires going to the heart of 

what a military institutionally (and by inference what the community 

of practitioners that constitute it) believes and making these beliefs 

explicitly known. What is a legitimate understanding of the military’s 

role considered to be and what is considered illegitimate? And why is that

the case? Only once these questions are answered can the cause of the 

conceptual crisis be understood and only then can it be properly addressed.

Making knowledge of a military’s institutional belief system explicit is 

vital because this system needs to be founded upon a robust intellectual 

construct to ensure that strategic, operational, and tactical analysis is

sound. If this intellectual construct is not robust, buzzwords will continue 

to proliferate but performance will nonetheless falter.

This monograph examines the evolution and nature of the belief 

systems of western militaries through an analysis of their military doctrine. 

More specifically, it examines the meaning and significance of the ways 

in which English speaking western militaries conceptualize, develop, 

implement, and reform their doctrine.5 This analysis is significant because, 

as mentioned above and elaborated below, doctrine constitutes the most

visible expression of a military’s “belief system.” Doctrine therefore 

provides a means to gauge the state of a military’s institutional thought 

and the evolution of this thought over time.

In undertaking its analysis, this monograph chronicles the evolution 

of military doctrine since the 17th century. It employs ontology and 

epistemology as the key tools for its analysis even though in military 

circles these are not commonly used terms (Robert Leonhard, for example, 

remarked that “as a professional infantry officer, when I first heard the word 

epistemology, I thought it had something to do with field sanitation!”).6

But, adhering to Confucius’ adage that “the beginning of wisdom is calling 

things by their right names,” these terms are used herein because they are 
3

the right names for what is under discussion.7 In essence, ontology is the 

study of the nature of reality and the relationships between objects within 

it and epistemology is the theory of knowledge acquisition. To illustrate 

the significance of these terms with a simple example, an ontology is the 

division of military operations into the categories “humanitarian,” “peace 

enforcement,” “counterinsurgency” and “conventional war.” Epistemology 

is the cognitive process used when evaluating a military operation and

assigning it to one of the categories. A more detailed explanation of the 

meaning of both terms is given below.

This monograph posits that a military’s understanding of its 

relationship with the state and society that sustains it has influenced

doctrine to a much greater degree than has been acknowledged in almost all

of the existing literature about doctrine development. Reaching an explicit 

comprehension of the ontology and epistemology of military doctrine is 

vital to enabling military practitioners, strategists, statesmen, and even

doctrine writers, to undertake a more thorough evaluation of the nature 

and content of military doctrine and to ensure that the institutional belief 

system it represents is founded upon a robust intellectual construct. This 

will lead to better evaluations of the strategic and operational concepts 

that appear in doctrine, which in turn will contribute to enhanced military

strategy development and ultimately, to better military performance.

Structure

This monograph proceeds in six chapters, this being the first. In 

the next section of this chapter key terms are defined including military 

doctrine, epistemology and ontology, and their interrelationships are also

examined.

The second chapter offers a history of military doctrine from its 

emergence in the early 17th century to the end of the 20th. This discussion

is undertaken from an ontological perspective and it is determined that 

doctrinal ontology can be divided into four “schools,” each of which 

emerged at a different point in doctrinal history. These schools are labeled 

the technical manual, tactical manual, operational manual, and military

strategic manual schools, with the delineation between each school being

determined by three factors. First, the scope of the content and intended 

audience broadens between each school. Second, the manner in which 

manuals in each school is applied varies with manuals in each successive

school being applied respectively as instruction manuals, training aids,

guidance, and as instruments for analysis. Third, each manual has a 

different type of relationship to a military’s accepted institutional ontology. 
4

This relationship can be described as absent (technical manual school), 

implicit (tactical manual school), explicit (operational manual school), and 

inquisitive (military strategic school), by which it is meant that manuals 

in the fourth school are used as a means to examine ontological questions 

and pose answers to those questions.

In the third chapter, the relationship between these schools is analyzed 

from training and educational, scientific and bureaucratic perspectives. 

These perspectives are adopted because each sheds light on a different 

aspect of the military’s institutional belief system as it is expressed within 

doctrine and together these perspectives also explore the range and

significance of the relationships between doctrine, strategy, the military, 

and its environment. It is also determined in this chapter that despite the 

differences between each of the four ontological schools, doctrine has 

nevertheless consistently employed ontological realism as the basis of its 

discourse. This has formed an enduring bond between each of the schools 

of doctrinal ontology and has usually ensured that they remain mutually 

compatible despite the different scope of their focus.

Turning next to the epistemology of doctrine, the fourth chapter 

determines that positivism, an approach characterized by (self-proclaimed) 

rationality and objectivity, has provided the epistemological foundation 

of doctrine for the first four hundred years of its existence. As such, 

examples of positivist approaches abound within doctrine and include 

most measurable, quantifiable, or linear processes such as that used to 

determine when a soldier has qualified on a weapon system or even the 

military planning process itself.

While positivism remains dominant, since the start of the 21st century 

anti-positivism, emphasizing relativity and subjectivity, has begun to 

influence doctrine, signaling what is perhaps the most salient change 

in the nature of doctrine since its inception. The emergence of this new 

epistemological approach and the state of the debate surrounding its most 

prominent manifestation to date (that being the “design” concept featured 

in several recent US Army, Marine Corps and joint doctrine manuals) is 

also addressed in the fourth chapter.8

The fifth chapter considers the significance and implications of 

doctrinal ontology and epistemology with discussion focusing especially 

on the likely direction in which anti-positivist doctrine will evolve in the 

near future. It is asserted that the shift from positivism to anti-positivism 

is arguably the most pervasive paradigm shift to have occurred in 400 

years of doctrinal history.9 Although several issues are identified that 
5

need to be resolved before this shift is complete, appreciating its potential 

implications for the conduct of military affairs is already of paramount 

importance to military practitioners, strategists, statesmen, and doctrine

writers alike. Anti-positivist approaches have the potential to alter the way 

in which militaries perceive their relationships with external organizations 

including other government agencies, allied militaries, enemies, and

even the state itself and doctrine itself has potential to enable other 

organizations to better communicate with militaries. Finally, developing a 

better understanding of the ontology and epistemology underlying terms, 

concepts, and ideas has the potential to enable doctrine writers to better

thresh the wheat from the chaff.

The idea of doctrine as a belief system is revisited in the conclusion 

(Chapter 6) and the monograph’s core argument—that developing an 

explicit comprehension of the ontology and epistemology of military 

doctrine will assist military practitioners, strategists, statesmen, and

doctrine writers to ensure that the institutional belief system doctrine 

represents is founded upon a robust intellectual construct—is elaborated. 

This is of the utmost importance because a robust appropriate institutional 

belief system (and the doctrine that represents it) contributes greatly 

to determining whether a military will succeed or fail at implementing 

national strategy and strategic policy, at developing corresponding military

strategy, and at conducting military operations.

Before proceeding, it is pertinent to note that this monograph’s 

focus is limited to the doctrine produced by English speaking militaries. 

Other militaries are discussed but only in instances where their doctrine

has subsequently had a substantial impact within their English speaking

counterparts. In the words of Azar Gat, “the center of military thought has 

normally tended to follow the center of military power.”10 For this reason, 

the discussion in this monograph of developments during the 17th to the 

19th centuries is necessarily Euro-centric, while discussion of the 20th and 

21st centuries, shifts its focus to North America, in particular to the United 

States. Despite its limited focus, this study nonetheless has the potential 

to serve as the base for the future conduct of a broader cross-cultural 

examination of other militaries, as the ontological and epistemological 

approaches it details provide a mechanism for this to occur.

Key Terms

The first problem encountered when attempting a study of military 

doctrine is definitional. Specifically, the term “doctrine” has been defined

in so many ways that it has become thoroughly ill-defined.11 For example, 
6

doctrine has been described as “what is written down, usually at the

highest levels, for dissemination throughout an army, the usual intention 

being therefore to instruct and standardize.”12 It has been determined that it 

“stands for an institutional culture of conceptual thinking on the nature of 

conflict and the best conduct of warfare”13 and it has been observed that it 

“is regarded as the foundation of military professional knowledge. Doctrine 

is to soldiers what blueprints are to architects or briefs to lawyers.”14

Official definitions of doctrine do not offer any additional clarity. 

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) Dictionary of Military

and Associated Terms, for example, defines doctrine as “fundamental 

principles by which the military forces or elements thereof guide their 

actions in support of national objectives.” To this very general definition

the seemingly paradoxical clarification is added that, “it is authoritative 

but requires judgment in application.”15

This monograph embraces a definition of doctrine that differs from all 

of those given above yet does not dispute the accuracy of any. Simply, it 

is determined herein that doctrine is representative of a “belief system.”16

More precisely, it is posited that doctrine is the most visible expression

of a military’s belief system. Primarily, this belief system regards the 

accepted paradigms by which a military understands, prepares for, and 

(at least in theory) conducts warfare. Significantly, such paradigms are 

important corollaries of the perceptions a military has of its institutional 

role and legitimacy within broader society. Hence, at a greater level of 

abstraction, doctrine also reflects this aspect of a military’s belief system. 

Importantly, both of these aspects of the belief systems of western 

militaries’ have evolved over time, and as a result, so too has the nature 

of doctrine.

Notwithstanding this definition, three caveats apply to the discussion 

undertaken herein. First, doctrine is considered to be expressive of an 

institutional belief system that may not necessarily align with the belief 

system of all or even a substantial minority of the individuals that are a 

part of that institution. For this reason, the military writings of individual 

scholars from Sun Tzu to the modern era are not considered to be doctrinal 

until they have been formally accepted as such by a military institution.17

Second, doctrine, at least as it is conceived today, takes the form of 

written manuals.18 Although this has not always been the case—the 

original understanding of doctrine is simply “teaching, body of teachings, 

or learning,”19 and for much of their histories, western militaries have 

employed oral rather than written conceptualizations of doctrine—analysis 

herein is concerned primarily with doctrine in its written form.
7

Third, there is general acceptance (often implicitly) that doctrine 

is essentially cognitive in nature. The sources quoted in the opening

paragraph of this section all hint at this aspect and it is also central to 

the definition of doctrine embraced herein. As Dennis Drew and Donald 

Snow observe, “the use of the word believe [in the definition of doctrine] 

suggests that doctrine is the result of an examination and interpretation 

of the available evidence.”20 Both examination and interpretation are

cognitive actions, as cognition itself is “the mental action or process of 

acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and

the senses.”21 Doctrine and the belief system it represents are therefore, the 

result of a process of knowledge acquisition and development.

Because epistemology is concerned primarily with knowledge

acquisition and development, doctrine is understood to play an inherently

epistemological role within the military institutions that produce it.

Discussion herein is thus unavoidably epistemological also, and the term

warrants further explanation. As an academic discipline, epistemology 

is the branch of philosophy that examines theories of knowledge.22 It 

“explores and illuminates the origins, nature, methods, and limits of human 

thought, perception, knowledge, understanding, and learning.”23 It is also 

concerned with identifying the assumptions made, either explicitly or 

implicitly, when one attempts to come to an understanding of something. 

The methods by which humans acquire knowledge has also been a focus 

of epistemological research, as are mechanisms used for the demarcation 

of “true” from “false” knowledge.24

This is important because “everyone adheres to some theory about

what constitutes warranted knowledge—a set of epistemological 

commitments which provide us with criteria for distinguishing between 

reliable and unreliable knowledge.”25 Military practitioners, strategists,

statesmen, and doctrine writers are no exception. In the case of doctrine, 

its very nature as well as its role in legitimizing (or delegitimizing) military 

strategies, theories, and concepts is epistemological. For example, the 

inclusion within doctrine of a concept purporting to explain the nature 

of warfare implies that this concept has been accepted as valid by the 

military as an institution. The decision making process leading to this

acceptance, whether undertaken consciously through deliberate evaluation

or unconsciously through instinct is an epistemological process. Closely 

related to epistemology is ontology, which examines the nature of being and 

the first principles—or categories—involved. Epistemology is concerned 

with the manner by which humans acquire knowledge whereas ontology 

is concerned with the formulation of taxonomies that enable one to reach 
8

an understanding of relationships between entities.26 Although doctrine 

itself is epistemological, the theories and concepts that are legitimized 

or delegitimized by their inclusion within or omission from doctrine, 

encapsulate a military’s accepted and rejected ontological approaches to 

understanding, preparing for, and (supposedly) prosecuting warfare.

To extend the simple example offered in the opening pages of this 

monograph, delineating “irregular” from “conventional” warfare is 

ontological as it involves the construction of a taxonomy that enables the 

categorization of military activities. Evaluating a war in order to determine 

whether the war is irregular or conventional is epistemological, as the

process of evaluation involves making intellectual assumptions in order to 

reach an understanding of the entity under study (in this instance the war 

in question). In the case of a doctrine manual, the inclusion of a discussion 

asserting that there is a difference between irregular and conventional 

warfare indicates the manual’s ontology. The cognitive process used 

during the development of the manual to evaluate this ontology and 

determine that it is acceptable for inclusion within the doctrine indicates 

the epistemology underlying the manual.

While at first glance this seems to imply a hierarchical relationship, 

epistemology and ontology are actually interrelated, meaning that

they continually shape one another. To illustrate this by continuing

the above example, let’s suppose that a military determines (using an 

epistemological process) that it is best to produce two separate doctrine 

manuals, one discussing military strategies for winning irregular warfare 

and the other military strategies for winning conventional warfare. In this 

case, the ontological model adopted will in turn influence the subsequent 

epistemological process that determines exactly what type of strategy will 

be established within each of the two manuals.

A simple, “real-world” example of the overlapping nature of 

ontological and epistemological processes is US Marine Corps General 

James Mattis’ well-known memorandum ordering US Joint Forces 

Command to cease using the term “effects based operations.” In declaring 

that “a clear understanding of [this] concept has proven problematic 

and elusive for US and multinational personnel,” Mattis showed that he 

considered—although it is unlikely that he did so in these terms—that 

the concept’s ontology was not sound and that its implementation did not 

align with the epistemological processes that he as a military practitioner

considered warranted.27
9

Notes

1. Colin S. Gray, “Concept Failure: COIN, Counterinsurgency, and 

Strategic Theory,” Prism, Vol. 3, No. 3, June 2012, pp. 18-19.

2. Brian McAllister Linn, The Echo of Battle: The Army’s Way of War, 

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 1-2.

3. Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 3.

4. Milan N. Vego, “A Case Against Systemic Operational Design,” Joint

Force Quarterly, No. 53, 2nd Quarter 2009, p. 73.

5. Unless stated otherwise, hereinafter the term “doctrine” is used 

exclusively in reference to military doctrine.

6. Robert R. Leonhard, The Principles of War for the Information Age, 

Novato, CA: Presidio, 1998, p. 264.

7. Quoted in: Charles M. Westenhoff, Military Airpower: A Revised Digest 

of Airpower Opinions and Thoughts, Maxwell Air Force Base: Air University 

Press, 2007, p. 239.

8. These manuals include: Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM

5-0 The Operations Process, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing 

Office, March 2010; Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, MCWP 5-1 Marine 

Corps Planning Process, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 

24 August 2010; Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Department of Defense, JP 5-0 Joint 

Operation Planning, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, August 

11, 2011.

9. “Paradigm shift” is used here in the Kuhnsian sense. The term’s 

meaning and significance will be elaborated in the fifth chapter.

10. Azar Gat, A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to

the Cold War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, Book I, p. 107.

11. Dennis Drew and Donald Snow assert that “doctrine is an ill-defined,

poorly understood, and often confusing subject.” Dennis M. Drew & Donald

M. Snow, Making Strategy: An Introduction to National Security Processes and 

Problems, Maxwell Air Force Base: Air University Press, 1988, p. 163.

12. Paul Johnston, “Doctrine is not Enough: The Effect of Doctrine on the 

Behavior of Armies,” Parameters, Vol. XXX, No. 3, Autumn 2000, p. 30.

13. Markus Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence: The Evolution 

of British Military-Strategic Doctrine in the Post-Cold War Era, 1989-2002, 

Studies in Contemporary History and Security Policy No. 13, Bern: Peter Lang, 

2004, p. 22.

14. Michael Evans, Forward from the Past: The Development of Australian 

Army Doctrine, 1972 – Present, Study Paper No. 301, Canberra: Australian 

Army Land Warfare Studies Centre, August 1999, p. 2.
10

15. The epistemological implications of this clarification will be revisited 

in the fourth chapter of this monograph. Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Department 

of Defense, Joint Publication (JP) 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of

Military and Associated Terms, as amended through August 2009, p. 171. This 

is closely aligned to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) definition

of doctrine, as well as to the definition used by several other English-speaking 

militaries. NATO, NATO-Russia Glossary of Contemporary Political and 

Military Terms, Brussels: NATO-Russia Joint Editorial Working Group, undated 

but promulgated online on June 8, 2001, p. 77. Available from www.nato.int/

docu/ glossary/eng/index.htm, accessed on December 20, 2008.

16. Drew & Snow, Making Strategy, p. 163, define doctrine as “what 

we believe about the best way to conduct military affairs.” This is the closest

definition to that used in this monograph, and I am indebted to Howard Coombs 

for suggesting the term used herein.

17. Brian Holden-Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective: 1988-98, Occasional Paper 

No. 33, United Kingdom: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, May 1998, p. 

13.

18. Johnston, “Doctrine is not Enough,” p. 30.

19. Catherine Soanes & Angus Stevenson, eds., Oxford Dictionary of 

English, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 511.

20. Drew & Snow, Making Strategy, p. 163. Original emphasis.

21. Soanes & Stevenson, eds., Oxford Dictionary of English, 2nd ed., p. 

335.

22. Michael Williams, Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to 

Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 1.

23. Richard Maltz, “The Epistemology of Strategy”, paper presented at the 

XX Annual Strategy Conference, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle PA, April 17, 

2009, 2.

24. Gibson Burrell & Gareth Morgan, Sociological Paradigms and 

Organisational Analysis: Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life, 

Portsmouth: Heinemenn, 1979, pp. 1-2.

25. Phil Johnson & Joanne Duberley, Understanding Management 

Research: An Introduction to Epistemology, London: Sage Publications, 2000, p. 

5.

26. Burrell & Morgan, Sociological Paradigms and Organisational 

Analysis, pp. 1-4.

27. General J. N. Mattis, U.S. Joint Forces Command Commander’s 

Guidance for Effects Based Operations, unpublished memorandum dated 14 

August 2008, quote p. 3.
11

Chapter 2

The Four “Schools” of Doctrinal Ontology

This chapter offers a reconsideration of the history of written military

doctrine. Its discussion proceeds chronologically but ontology is used as 

its principle analytical tool (doctrinal epistemology is discussed in later

chapters). Through this history, it is determined that doctrine manuals 

can be grouped into four “schools,” which can be labeled the technical 

manual, tactical manual, operational manual and military strategic 

manual schools.

In addition to each school having emerged at a different point 

in time and as a result of different events, there are three noticeable 

distinctions between the schools. First is the nature of their relationship 

to a military’s ontology. Doctrine in the technical manual school has no 

relationship to a military’s ontology, as manuals in this school discuss 

matters at a micro scale without discussing how these connect to other 

matters (an instruction manual for the employment of a weapon system 

is a typical example of this doctrine). Tactical manuals have an implicit 

relationship with ontology as they assume away “bigger picture” aspects 

of military endeavor in order to concentrate on events within a localized 

time and space (such as the “battlefield”).

Operational manuals have an explicit relationship with a military’s 

ontology as they define preferred methods of conducting military 

activities but their scope is nevertheless limited, although they may detail

the relationship a military has with the state and the types of operations it

expects to undertake, they give these details as though they are a constant

and usually do so only to the extent necessary in order to explain why 

particular operating methods have been established. Military strategic

manuals take their discussion a step further, constituting a means by 

which militaries examine a broad range of ontological questions and 

pose answers to them. In addition to proffering an approach to strategic 

or operational conduct that is likely to overcome the challenges posed 

within a given environment, they also actively seek to define the nature 

of these challenges and to determine what the environment itself is and, 

in some cases, why it is.

The second noticeable distinction between the four schools is that 

the scope of the contents and the intended audience broadens between 

each school. At one end of the spectrum, technical manuals are usually 

aimed at users of specific systems within segments of the military while 
12

at the other end, military strategic manuals are usually aimed at broad 

internal (military) and external audiences. The final distinction is that 

the manner in which the manuals in each school are applied varies 

with manuals in each successive school being applied respectively as 

instruction manuals, training aids, guidance, and as instruments for 

analysis.

The Technical Manual School

The written doctrine of Western militaries has a lineage dating

to 1607 when “the first modern drill book” was published. The book, 

Wapenhandlingen van Roers, Musqetten, Ende Spiessen [Arms Drill

with Arquebus, Musket, and Pike], contained—in the form of a series

of sketches—instructions for the correct employment of the modern

weapon systems of its day. Its publication in Amsterdam the year after 

the establishment of the first modern Military Training Academy at 

Sedan in northern France is a noteworthy coincidence.1

Both of these events coincided with the transition, heralded as a

“revolution” by some,2 of warfare into what has been labeled its “modern”

form. The key military reforms that characterized this transition were 

the universal introduction of gunpowder weapons within European 

militaries and the widespread establishment of permanent military 

forces within European states.3 Importantly this military transition 

was accompanied by, and indeed was a significant part of, a series of 

broader changes within Western European society. Most notable among 

these was the emergence of the modern state system itself, which has 

often been viewed as a consequence of the signing of the Treaties of 

Münster and Osnabrück in 1648. By the end of the 17th century this 

transformation had led to the establishment of military academies in 

many European states and to the publication of numerous drill manuals.5

Since these early drill manuals were not official publications of the 

emergent military institutions of the period, they cannot be considered

as doctrine at least not as it is defined herein.6 Despite this, they are

nonetheless the forebears of what has since become the first of four 

distinctly recognizable “schools” of doctrinal ontology. This first school, 

which could be labeled the “technical manual” school, is characterized

by doctrine that provides concise instructions about how to employ

various military systems, usually hardware. Doctrine manuals that fit

into this category are generally narrow in focus, are usually employed 

as “instruction manuals”, and tend to clearly delineate correct from 

incorrect processes and procedures in absolute and inflexible terms.
13

Although doctrine that fits within the technical manual school is 

almost always “micro” in focus, it occasionally transcends this focus and 

has a “macro” effect. The US Army’s “training revolution” of the early 

1970s is a good example:

[General Paul M.] Gorman formed a joint army-academic

analysis group and instructed them to identify and list all the 

steps necessary to accomplish a particular task or mission in 

the most efficient manner. They then distributed these lists in 

the form of training manuals mandating exactly how each task 

was to be performed. An annual evaluation is the final step in 

the process, requiring soldiers and units to demonstrate their 

mastery of these “skill sets.”7

In this case, the combined effect of several doctrine manuals enabled 

them to have a greater collective impact than the sum of their parts.8

From an ontological perspective, what is omitted from the 

doctrine that constitutes this school is arguably more significant than 

what is included. Absent from this doctrine is anything that addresses 

the possible impact of the environment external to the system under 

discussion. A technical manual tells a soldier how to use his weapon; 

it does not give any information about when it is appropriate to do so. 

Because it omits this information, doctrine in the first school fails to 

even implicitly consider a military’s ontology. This may explain why 

some definitions of doctrine have deliberately excluded this school and 

why acceptance of this exclusion has gradually increased as the other 

schools of written doctrine have emerged.9

Hypothetically, if this school of doctrine existed in a proverbial

vacuum, or in other words if it was representative of the entire extent of 

a military’s belief system, that belief system would be characterized by 

the existence of only a singular, narrow, process-focused outlook. The 

hypothetical military in question would be incapable of undertaking

anything other than pre-determined tasks in adherence with a prescribed

sequence. Clearly, this approach to the conduct of warfare is utterly

impractical. Soldiers have always needed to know both how and when 

to use their weapons. As a result this school of doctrine has never existed

exclusively, although it has often been the only doctrine that is written

down.

In the absence of other schools of written doctrine what has instead

existed beyond technical manuals has generally been transient, informal,
14

and highly personalized. Doctrine of this nature has been identified

historically within the British Army:

Largely eschewing formal written doctrine, the Army made a 

cult of pragmatism, flexibility, and an empirical approach...That 

is not to say that the British Army entirely neglected “doctrine” 

broadly defined...However, doctrine tended to be semi-formal 

at best was centered around one individual commander or 

existed in a specific set of circumstances (usually high-intensity 

war) and was not necessarily easily transferrable elsewhere; 

and in some cases it was more honored in the breach than the 

observance.10

The existence of unwritten doctrine of a similar nature has also been

identified within the US and several Commonwealth Navies as well as 

within the US and Canadian air forces right up until the latter part of 

the 20th century.11 In all of these militaries, as well as in several others, 

champions of this form of doctrine have cited its flexibility as its key 

strength and opponents have attacked the erratic success rate that has 

resulted from its reliance on the abilities of individual commanders.12

In the century and a half from the signing of the Treaties of 

Münster and Osnabrück in 1648 to the commencement of the French 

Revolutionary Wars in 1792, the technology used to prosecute warfare 

advanced steadily if incrementally. Wars occurred for several reasons, 

sometimes yielding decisive results and other times not.13 Although 

doctrine also developed incrementally, a few important factors resulted 

in the ongoing primacy of unwritten doctrine throughout this period. 

One of these factors was the common attitude to war:

To the extent that broad publics thought about problems of 

war and peace, they were generally resigned to war as a fixed 

characteristic of human life or as a divine punishment for the sins 

of people. War was taken for granted. Causes and consequences 

were not the object of study or speculation. Writers were more 

interested in the details of diplomatic maneuvers and military 

campaigns.14

Another factor was the similarities between the social structures within

militaries and the societies that sustained them:

The expanded armed forces of the period developed in a fashion

that did not challenge the social reality of societies organized

around the principles of inegalitarianism and inheritance. Larger

armies brought more opportunities to nobles who benefited 
15

both from the assumption that they were naturally suited for 

positions of command and from the fact that this was usually 

the case. Thus, armies were not forces “outside” society but 

rather reflections of patterns of social control and influence and 

the beliefs that gave cohesion to them.15

Throughout this period, the belief was commonplace that effective

military command, defined as the successful formulation and execution 

of strategy, was an inherent trait possessed exclusively by the nobility. 

Command appointments were thus reserved for the nobility except in the

most unusual of circumstances.16 This perception also appears to have

been fundamental in perpetuating the primacy of unwritten doctrine

throughout this period, despite the promulgation of a limited number of 

written doctrine manuals, most of which fit exclusively within the first

school.

The Tactical Manual School

Despite the ongoing primacy of unwritten doctrine, accompanied

by a limited number of manuals that fit within the first school of written 

doctrine, the 18th century nevertheless witnessed the production of the

first theoretical treatises that aligned with the second school. During 

the latter part of the 18th century in particular, several military theorists

offered treatises that pre-empted the development of the second school.

Most notably, these theorists included Paul Gideon Joly de Maizeroy 

and Jacques Antoine Hippolyte Comte de Guibert in France, Henry 

Humphrey Evans Lloyd in Britain, and Adam Heinrich Dietrich von 

Bürlow in Prussia. Together with a few others, these writers began to 

theorize abouttactics mostly using a mixture of historical studies of earlyto-mid-18th century warfare and Roman warfare and the application of 

geometry as their methodology. 17 In line with the definition of doctrine 

used in this study, their works are personal rather than institutional, and 

therefore cannot be considered as doctrine. However, they nonetheless 

laid the foundation for the emergence of the second school of doctrine 

in the late 18th century and its proliferation in the 19th.

This emergence was gradual, beginning in what was at the time

considered within Europe to be a military backwater – the United States. 

Specifically, in 1779 the newly-raised US Army published Regulations

for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States, Part 1. 

This manual prescribed and thereby standardized tactical drill within 

the US Army and having been approved by (then) Major General 

George Washington as well as by Congress prior to its publication 
16

and distribution throughout the Army, it also constitutes one of the 

first examples of an “official” doctrine manual.18 Owing to its focus 

on tactical drill, this manual had much in common with first school 

doctrine manuals. However, its discussion of tactics also aligned it with 

the second school and it can therefore be viewed as something of a 

“bridging” document between these schools.

Within European militaries, the second distinctive school of written

doctrinal ontology emerged during the 19th century. This emergence 

was gradual, as was the proliferation of this type of doctrine amongst 

Europe’s professional militaries:

[N]either Wellington nor Napoleon had doctrinal manuals 

describing for them the principles of war and the approach they

should take towards operations. However, even while Napoleon 

was still campaigning, the famous Swiss military commentator 

Baron Henri Jomini began publishing works purporting to

explain Napoleon’s method...As militaries professionalized 

and standardized (and bureaucratized), there came about an 

increasing tendency to formalize not just the tactical details of 

drill but the very approach to war that higher commanders should 

take...by 1914 this approach was quite formally established in 

all major Western forces to a greater or lesser extent.19

Importantly, the French Revolutionary and subsequent Napoleonic 

Wars, which together ran from 1792 to 1815, marked a significant 

transformation in the nature of European warfare.20 This transformation 

was the catalyst for the emergence of a new school of doctrinal ontology 

within European militaries.

Just as they triggered drastic reforms to the social structure of 

several European states, so too did the French Revolutionary and 

Napoleonic Wars bring about a change in common attitudes towards and 

the prosecution of warfare.21 For doctrine development, a key change 

was the growth in the professionalism of the officer corps of European 

militaries. Beginning in France following the Revolution and spreading 

through other European states during the 19th century, old systems of 

commissioning officers according to social status and societal position 

were gradually replaced by selection based increasingly on merit.22 With 

this increase in military professionalism came an increased interest 

amongst military officers in the study of warfare. Thus, the postNapoleonic period witnessed an acute acceleration of a trend that had 

begun during the latter part of the 18th century when the impact of the 

Enlightenment on military thought had brought about an expansion in 

the role of military academies and colleges.23
17

The second school of written doctrinal ontology emerged against 

this backdrop and its proliferation was a product of these and other 

military reforms of the 19th century. This school could be labeled the 

“tactical manual” school. Manuals in this school purport to describe 

the most up-to-date tactics at the time of their publication and several 

were initially based on the tactics developed by Napoleon, as described 

by the key military thinkers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, 

Jomini the most famous amongst them.24

Similarly to the technical manual school, manuals in the tactical 

manual school were initially published externally to militaries although

several manuals were tacitly selected to become doctrine through their

semi-official use as instruction manuals at military colleges. By the turn 

of the 20th century however, several militaries had begun to formally 

publish tactical manuals for official use and it is at about this time 

that these manuals became “doctrine” in a form that would be easily 

recognizable today.25

Amongst the new tactical manuals formally published by Western

militaries in the early 20th century was the US Army’s 1905 Field Service

Regulations, the forerunner to Field Manual (FM) 3-0 Operations. This

manual was clearly situated within the tactical manual school of doctrinal

ontology and it has been observed that it, as well as subsequent editions,

“was written at—and reflected only—the tactical level right down to the 

advent of AirLand Battle doctrine in the early 1980s.”26 For example, 

the 1941 edition, which established an intellectual foundation for the 

Army’s success in the Second World War,27 contained very specific 

“doctrines of leading troops in combat and tactics of the combined 

arms.” The intent of these “doctrines” was to constitute “the basis of 

instruction of all arms and services for field service.”28

This is indicative of both the intent and limitations of the content

of doctrine in the tactical manual school. This doctrine has tended to

be applied as a “training aid” during courses at military academies and

colleges and during major exercises where it assists students to develop

workable solutions to tactical problems. Unlike the technical procedures

described by manuals in the first school, there is scope for flexibility 

in the application of doctrine in this school even though it ultimately 

serves to delineate acceptable from unacceptable tactical practice. 

Although doctrine of this nature has long expounded (supposedly 

immutable) “principles of war,” it remains limited in scope because of 

its otherwise exclusively tactical focus.29 Thus it is of little use to higher 

commanders seeking to successfully maneuver larger forces between 
18

tactical encounters and, as a result of this limitation, it has generally 

been accompanied by the continued existence of unwritten doctrine.

Furthermore, its limited scope means that the ontological 

assumptions underlying doctrine in the tactical manual school are 

implicit. Answers to ontological questions that might be raised about the 

relationship between militaries and the states and societies in which they 

exist, the nature of the international environment in which they operate, 

the role that they play within that environment, and their development 

of military strategy, are all taken for granted. Having assumed away the 

answers to questions about these subjects, tactical manuals are free to 

concentrate instead on developing approaches to overcoming an enemy 

on the battlefield.

In the US Army this concentration led to the development of what 

has since been labeled the “American Way of War” (or as Antulio 

Echevarria has suggested, what might be more accurately called 

the “American Way of Battle”).30 This so-called way of war focuses 

primarily on overcoming manpower shortages by exploiting new 

technologies to tactically attrit the enemy on the battlefield. 31 In so 

doing, it assumes away its own inherent ontology, unquestioningly 

embracing a view of warfare in which it is assumed that first, there will 

be a battlefield and second, that the outcome of a battle (or a series of 

battles) is the most important factor in determining the outcome of a 

war. Of course, ontological assumptions of this nature have not been 

limited to the US Army. John Ellis for example, identified the existence 

of similar ontological assumptions on the part of several First World War 

European militaries (although he, like so many others, did so implicitly 

and did not use the term “ontology” anywhere in his analysis).32

As a result of this aspect, manuals in the second ontological school

have the potential to bring about the development of a dissonance 

between tactical means and strategic ends. By taking for granted answers 

to ontological questions about the relationship between militaries and 

societies and the nature of the environment in which militaries operate, 

manuals in the second school are susceptible to providing ill-suited 

guidance when faced with situations that do not match those envisaged 

by the ontological model they implicitly accept. For example, manuals 

that assume “enemy” forces will be that of another state may fail to 

provide adequate guidance for the conduct of operations against 

non-state groups. In such situations, doctrine in the second school 

becomes irrelevant and the success or failure of military endeavors 

must ultimately rely upon the abilities of individual commanders to 
19

come to an independent understanding of the broader context and act 

accordingly.33

In extreme cases the existence of tactical manuals in such situations

may even be counter-productive as commanders following their 

guidance seek to implement tactical solutions that ultimately detract 

from the achievement of strategic goals. For example, it has been 

compellingly argued elsewhere that the dissonance between tactical 

“success” and strategic failure that characterized the American War in 

Vietnam was largely a result of the exclusively tactical nature and role 

of US military doctrine during that war. This problem was exacerbated 

because throughout that War most tactical doctrine did not align with 

the tactics that were required to achieve strategic success.34

The Operational Manual School

There can be little doubt that the American experience in Vietnam

was the catalyst for the subsequent emergence within English speaking

militaries of the third school of doctrinal ontology. This emergence 

has been labeled the US Army’s “doctrinal renaissance”35 and it has 

already been subjected to much intellectual scrutiny.36 The key doctrine 

manual that heralded the emergence of the third ontological school is 

the 1982 edition of FM 100-5 Operations, and the process leading to 

the development of this manual was fundamental in establishing the 

new school.37

Following its withdrawal from Vietnam, the US Army faced 

significant challenges. Organizationally, these included major morale, 

discipline, and drug problems.38 Operationally, the immediate needs of 

the Vietnam War had resulted in a decade-long disruption to the Army’s 

planning for the defense of Western Europe. Concerns about Soviet 

qualitative gains during the intervening period were greatly exacerbated 

by the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, which dramatically demonstrated the 

battlefield potential of modern Soviet weapons systems.39 Confronted 

with this challenge and keen to leave behind the bitter experience of the 

War in Vietnam (intellectually as well as in many other ways), the US 

Army set out to reorient itself toward winning a conventional land war 

in Europe.40

The central mechanism enabling this reorientation was doctrine.

Facilitating this was the establishment of the US Army’s Training and 

Doctrine Command (TRADOC) in 1973, initially under the command

of General William E. DePuy. The 1976 edition of FM 100-5, produced

under DePuy’s leadership, focused on preparing the Army to “win the 
20

first battle of the next war” in Europe.41 The release of this manual 

prompted an unusually high amount of debate both from within 

and outside of the Army which led to it becoming “one of the most 

controversial field manuals ever published by the US Army.”42 This 

debate emerged primarily because the manual established a defensive 

operational doctrine that stood in drastic contrast to the Army’s 

longstanding predilection for offensive operations. Because of the 

debate, several flaws in the tactics this manual promulgated were soon 

apparent.43 Fixing these errors served as the catalyst for next round of 

doctrinal reform, which in turn led to the publication of the 1982 edition 

of FM 100-5.

Although the “AirLand Battle” concept was central to the 1982 

edition of FM 100-5,44 the manual’s key ontological contribution was 

to assert the existence of an operational level of warfare. Stating that 

“operational level of war uses available military resources to attain 

strategic goals within a theater of war,” the doctrine also determined 

that “military strategy employs the armed forces of a nation to secure 

the objectives of national policy” and that “tactics are the specific 

techniques smaller units use to win battles and engagements which 

support operational objectives.”45 In other words, this model perceives 

tactics as a subset of operations, which are in turn a subset of military 

strategy, which is itself a means of achieving national policy goals. 

Despite the appearance of this idea in Prussian/ German doctrine in the 

mid-19th century and in Russian/Soviet doctrine early in the 20th, this 

was the first time it had been included in the doctrine of an English 

speaking Western military.46

The reasons for the American time lag behind Prussia/Germany and

Russia/Soviet are complicated and although an analysis of these reasons 

is not the focus of this monograph, they are nonetheless worth briefly

summarizing.47 Primarily, the time lag was caused by two factors. The 

first was the “American Way of War” that this monograph has already 

touched upon. Because this way of war stresses the exploitation of 

technologies to either attrit or outright annihilate the enemy, it does not 

require any subtlety as far as operational planning is concerned.48 The 

second factor, which became important following the Second World 

War, was the advent of nuclear weapons. These called into question 

the ongoing need for operational planning, as it was initially assumed 

that the prospects of nuclear war would render conventional warfare 

redundant.49 Despite experimentation with tactical innovations such as 

the “Pentomic Division,” the initial impact of the debate about nuclear 
21

weapons was to stymie, until after the end of the Vietnam War, any 

serious attempts towards explicitly developing the operational art.50

When the operational level of warfare was discussed in the 1982 

edition of FM 100-5, it was also the first time that a notable Englishlanguage doctrine manual had made its underlying ontology explicit. 

This ontology, grounded in the Clausewitzian maxim that “war is 

nothing but the continuation of policy with other means,” established 

that the Army’s role was subordinate to national policy.51 It also clearly 

established the Army’s perception of the scope of its role in relation 

to policy, suggesting that once policymakers had set policy goals and 

determined strategic objectives, the Army should be entrusted to plan 

and conduct operations to fulfill these objectives.52 In making this 

suggestion, the manual endorsed what Eliot Cohen referred to as the 

“normal” theory of civil-military relations first expounded by Samuel 

Huntington and since enshrined as “the accepted theoretical standard” 

that civil-military relations should strive to attain.53 The focus on the 

Soviet challenge in Europe made it clear that the Army also considered 

its role to be that of a “conventional” war fighting force. Furthermore, 

the Army was the military of a state and as such existed to undertake 

operations to defeat the military forces of other states. Little doubt 

was left as to the Army’s perception of the prevailing international 

environment or what it understood America’s key policy goals and 

strategic objectives to be.

The second noteworthy difference between the 1982 edition of FM 

100-5 and previous doctrine was that the process used to develop and

refine the new manual was a radical departure from what had previously 

occurred. Hitherto, doctrine had tended to be written by individuals or 

small teams and then circulated to a limited audience for pre-release

feedback. The new process, later summarized by John Romjue, was 

much broader in scope:

The development of the new doctrine was one thing, its 

acceptance by the Army and an influential cadre of civilian 

defense writers and critics was another. Fresh in memory was 

the debate over the 1976 version of FM 100-5 with its active 

defense doctrine. In 1981, TRADOC Headquarters proceeded 

differently from the way it had with the 1976 concept. First, 

[then Commander of TRADOC] General Starry took pains 

to include the Army at large in the development of AirLand 

Battle, disseminating information through briefings and wide 

circulation of Fort Leavenworth’s draft of the new FM 100-
22

5 during 1981. The doctrine was well received. AirLand 

Battle was an offence-oriented doctrine that the Army found 

intellectually, as well as analytically, convincing.54

Together, the explicit ontology propounded within the new manual and

its developers’ willingness to take steps to include the Army and US 

defense and strategic studies communities more broadly in the doctrine

development process indicate the main enduring characteristics of the

third school of doctrinal ontology.

No longer was the role of doctrine limited to the dissemination 

of technical instructions and tactical best-practice. Instead, doctrine 

manuals became a mechanism for disseminating analytically sound 

theoretically-derived operational concepts that prompted commanders 

to engage with them in a much more intellectual manner than had 

previously been the case. Due to this intent, the third school of doctrinal 

ontology could be labeled the “operational manual” school. Manuals 

in this school have tended to be applied to provide “guidance” for 

operational commanders and planning staff. This doctrinal role has 

been accompanied by major changes in the pedagogical use of doctrine. 

Specifically, its usage has increased markedly in prominence within 

intermediate and senior level officer education courses.55

Over the coming years, the other branches of the US military 

underwent their own ontological awakening which saw their doctrine

expand into the third school. For the US Marine Corps (USMC), the 

1989 edition of Fleet Marine Force Manual (FMFM) 1 Warfighting 

and its accompanying publications embodied this awakening.56 As 

Lieutenant Colonel H. T. Hayden later asserted, “until FMFM 1 

Warfighting, FMFM 1-1 Campaigning, and FMFM 1-3 Tactics, not one 

publication taught a Marine how to think about war. Not one produced 

a theory of war.”57 The publication of the 1989 edition of FMFM 1 filled 

this void, making its ontology explicit in the process.

Like the 1982 edition of FM 100-5, the new edition of FMFM 1 

explicitly recognized the existence of an operational level of warfare 

and in so doing, expressed the USMC’s acceptance of a similar 

ontological outlook to that of the Army. This was not, however, the 

central concept featured within the manual. Instead, its key conceptual 

contribution was its development of maneuver warfare, which was 

defined as “a warfighting philosophy that seeks to shatter the enemy’s 

cohesion through a series of rapid, violent, and unexpected actions 

which create a turbulent and rapidly deteriorating situation with which 
23

he cannot cope.”58 Although the Marine Corps viewed its role in relation 

to national policy and strategic goals in the same way as the Army, it had 

developed a different approach to the conduct of operations in pursuit 

of these goals.

The 1992 edition of Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-1 Basic Aerospace

Doctrine of the United States Air Force was the equivalent US Air Force 

(USAF) publication. For the first time in USAF doctrine, this manual 

incorporated a discussion of the operational level of conflict. However 

its main conceptual contribution was the elaboration of seven “tenets 

of aerospace power.”59 Like the USMC, the Air Force had developed its 

own operational approach but nevertheless viewed its role in relation to

national policy and strategy in the same way as the Army. Additionally, 

the manual’s unique format demonstrated the expanded doctrine 

development process typical of the third ontological school: it contained 

two volumes, the first being the doctrine itself and the second featuring 

25 essays that gave intellectual substance to the concepts contained in 

the doctrine.60

The US Navy (USN) also briefly flirted with the third school of 

doctrinal ontology during the mid-1990s following the establishment 

of a short-lived Naval Doctrine Command in 1993.61 This flirtation 

led quickly to the publication of Naval Doctrine Publication (NDP) 

1 Naval Warfare in 1994, which, like its equivalents in the other 

Services, established three levels of war.62 Declaring that “maneuver 

warfare, based on the twin pillars of decisiveness and rapidity, is 

our preferred style of warfighting,”63 it quite deliberately aligned the 

Navy’s operational approach with that of the Marine Corps.64 Thus, 

the ostensible ontological underpinning of the Navy’s third school 

doctrine manual also aligned closely with the proclaimed ontological 

approach of the USMC. The Navy’s manual, however, was notably 

shorter and far less detailed than its Marine Corps (or indeed Army and 

Air Force) equivalent. The reasons for this difference relate to both the 

circumstances of its development and release as well as to the service 

culture of the USN.

Indeed, each service’s culture has played a significant if lowkey role in determining the manner in which the doctrine of each has 

evolved.65 In the case of the US services for example, the Army has 

been credited with being a “doctrine-based organization” while the 

Navy has generally been dismissive of doctrine development.66 As 

the dissemination of the third school of doctrinal ontology illustrates, 

the ontological trends identified within this monograph are broadly 
24

applicable across the services. Differences in service culture are manifest 

as the time lag between the proliferation of each new school of doctrinal 

ontology within each service as well as in the terminology each has used 

to refer to its doctrine. A non-US example is perhaps the most strikingly 

illustrative: manuals in the first and second ontological schools were 

traditionally labeled “procedural manuals” or “fleet instructions” by 

Commonwealth navies and were not acknowledged as being doctrinal 

until the 1990s.67

In the US military, each service views its preferred relationship with 

the state in a Huntingtonian manner, seeing itself as subordinate to the

state’s government and acknowledging that it exists as a mechanism 

to implement the government’s national strategy and related policies.68

However, the means by which each service prefers to implement this

strategy and policy can differ substantially.69 This difference is partly 

the product of service culture, which helps to explain why there is 

a difference between each of the service’s operational approaches 

described above.

Military “Thought Collectives” and Allied Doctrine

Development

The third school of doctrinal ontology also spread to the militaries

of key English speaking US allies. The examples of Britain, Canada, 

and Australia are illustrative. In Britain, the Army was the first of the 

three services to experiment with doctrine in the third ontological 

school, although the inspiration for this experimentation has been 

contested. on one hand, Markus Mäder, has observed that it was “in 

close alignment with the US Armed Forces’ reorientation after the 

Vietnam War and their development of an AirLand Battle concept for 

the European battlefield.”70Hew Strachan, on the other, has asserted that 

the intellectual inspiration for General Sir Nigel Bagnall’s (Chief of the 

General Staff from 1985-88) decision to adopt the operational level of 

war was the German Army and that “the British army mirrored but was 

independent of comparable trends in the United States.”71 Of the two 

accounts, Mäder’s is more closely aligned with the mainstream view 

and Strachan’s account focuses more exclusively on Bagnall and his 

(considerable) individual influence.72

Even if Strachan is correct about the influences upon Bagnall’s 

decision making (which is likely), developments in the US nevertheless 

had an impact on the intellectual debate that surrounded the emergence

of the third school of doctrine in Britain. Regardless of what influenced
25

Bagnall personally, American developments clearly played a significant

role in shaping those around him as well as in setting a tone generally 

for the British debate about their doctrinal direction and requirements.73

Following this period of debate and accompanied by changes to 

senior officer education programs, Britain’s first third school doctrine 

manual, Design for Military Operations—British Military Doctrine, 

was released by the British Army in 1989.74 The new manual discussed 

the levels of war and advanced the maneuverist approach as the Army’s 

preferred operational concept.75 Over the next half decade, “the debate 

over the manoeuvrist [sic] approach spread across Service boundaries 

and the concept was integrated into Britain’s first joint doctrine in 

1997.”76

Although their militaries are substantially smaller than that of the US 

or even the United Kingdom (UK), Australia and Canada also expanded

their doctrine into the third ontological school during the same period.

In Australia, the Army was the first service to do so, addressing the 

operational level of war in the 1985 edition of Manual of Land Warfare

(MLW) One 1.1 Fundamentals of Land Force Operations.

77 A decade 

later the Canadian Forces followed suit, releasing joint operational level

doctrine in 1995.78 The publication of these manuals was accompanied 

in both countries by changes to professional military education 

programs, although these were not as substantial as those undertaken in 

the militaries of their larger allies.79

The emergence of this school was not, however, accompanied within

these allied militaries by the same broad ranging debate that constituted

one of the key characteristics of its emergence within the US military. 

In the case of Australia, Michael Evans noted that the 1985 edition of 

Fundamentals of Land Force Operations “sought to define an Australian 

context for campaign planning.”80 To this end, the development of this

manual was accompanied by some intellectual discussion. However, 

this was mostly internal to the Army and was thus limited in breadth. 

In the case of Canada, Howard Coombs has observed that half a dozen 

or so journal articles, book chapters and internal Canadian Defence 

College papers, and a collection of Symposium papers published in 

1995, constitute the only evidence of the limited debate that occurred 

within the Canadian Forces.81 Even the more extensive debate that 

occurred within the British Army has been described as “rather more 

low key” than that which occurred within the US Army.82

In attempting to explain this situation within the Canadian Forces, 
26

Coombs has offered the only explanation known to this author of why 

this may have been the case within the militaries of any of these US 

allies. Applying Ludwik Fleck’s concept of “thought collectives,” 

which consist of “participants in a definable and collective structure 

of thought generated by an esoteric circle of authorities or experts,” 

Coombs identified a “North American military thought collective.” 

Regarding the emergence of operational level doctrine in Canada, he 

subsequently determined that:

One must situate the paradigm shift within the context of a 

single group of military professionals defined by a common 

purpose rather than locating it in two distinct groups separated 

by nationality... The experts within the larger collective were 

the doctrine writers and then the practitioners of the United 

States Army...None of the hallmarks of the paradigm shift 

[that could be] attributed to professional discourse took place in 

Canada because it had already occurred in the United States. 

The Canadian military implicitly viewed itself as part of a single 

community of practice that extended across the continent and 

followed the paradigm shift that had taken place.83

The existence of international military “thought collectives” is an

interesting notion that warrants further examination.

From the available evidence, it appears that the extent of the 

influence of international developments as a substitute for domestic 

debate is related to the size of the military in question. The larger the 

military, the greater the extent of the intellectual debate surrounding the 

emergence of the third school of doctrinal ontology. This notion aligns 

with Fleck’s conception of the structure and pattern of communication 

within a thought collective. “This group [the experts] communicates 

knowledge within a circle of laypeople that provides feedback on these 

views. Knowledge passes from the inner to outer circles and back again 

so that this cycle is strengthened and collectivized.”84 In light of the 

cursory examination conducted above, it could be argued that the US 

Army thinkers of the late 1970s and early 1980s constituted an inner 

circle with Canadian and Australian thinkers situated in outer circles 

and their British counterparts somewhere in the middle.85

Yet for this to be the case, there needs to be some evidence that

knowledge passes “back again” from these allies to the US military. 

Although there is evidence that this has occurred in a limited number 

of cases—for example in 2005 when the International Institute for 
27

Strategic Studies observed that “large portions of the new US future 

land warfighting concept appear to have been drawn directly from 

the Australian Complex Warfighting doctrine”86—instances such as 

this appear to be limited to at most only a handful of cases. The rest 

of the time, US doctrine development has been influenced instead by 

domestic factors, including conceptual developments, and evaluations 

of America’s own strategic circumstances and operational experiences.87 

As Romjue’s aforementioned account of the process used to develop the 

1982 edition of FM 100-5 attests, a military thought collective exists 

within the US wherein doctrine writers are the “experts” and the defense 

community contains the “laypeople” from which the experts actively 

seek feedback.88 The existence of this domestic thought collective 

means that US doctrine writers are at liberty to ignore their smaller 

allies when it suits them to do so, a liberty these allies do not necessarily 

have themselves due to their need to remain interoperable with the US.89

The result is that although an international military thought 

collective can be identified between the US military and key Englishspeaking allied militaries, the flow of ideas from the inner to the outer 

circles is far stronger and more consistent than the return flow from 

the outer to inner circles. As a result of this divergence from Fleck’s 

conception, the military thought collective also possesses the character 

of an “epistemic community.” Described by Peter Haas as “a network of 

professionals with recognized expertise and competence in a particular 

domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within 

that domain or issue area,” epistemic communities are characterized 

by “a shared set of normative and principled beliefs...shared casual 

beliefs...shared notions of validity...[and] a common policy enterprise,” 

rather than by the explicit transition of ideas between inner to outer 

circles.90 The perception of the Canadian doctrine writers who elected 

to include the operational level of war in Canadian doctrine certainly 

viewed themselves as part of “a single group of military professionals” 

with their US counterparts, regardless of whether those counterparts felt 

likewise.91

Ultimately, however, developments within the US military, 

particularly the doctrinal embrace of the operational level of war, 

influenced the military intellectual communities within the allied 

militaries of Britain, Canada, and Australia. Despite the divergence 

and its implications identified above, Fleck’s “thought collectives,” as 

applied by Coombs, can be identified between the US military and these 

English-speaking allies. This concept will therefore be subsequently 

revisited from time-to-time throughout the rest of this monograph.
28

The Military Strategic School

By the mid-1990s the third school of doctrinal ontology had 

proliferated to most English speaking militaries. However, the global 

strategic situation was changing drastically during the same period, 

generating unusually high and widespread levels of strategic uncertainty 

for Western militaries. This uncertainty was initially generated by 

the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet 

Union. Over the next few years, this would be accompanied by Iraq’s 

unexpected invasion of Kuwait leading to an equally unexpected US 

success in repelling Iraqi forces, substantial post-Cold War military 

budget cuts, renewed policy debate about homosexual and female 

integration in military and combat units, the need to integrate an array 

of newly emergent technologies, and finally by the onset of an awkward 

transition from peacekeeping to peace enforcement which involved the 

conduct of bloody, indecisive, or ultimately failed operations in several 

places, most notably Somalia and the former Yugoslavia.92

Together, these changes triggered a cascade of ontological (and

even epistemological) questions for Western militaries. Why had the 

US won such an impressive victory against Iraq in 1991? How would 

new information technologies change the nature of warfare? What 

would be the American military role in what was being touted as the 

emerging “unipolar world”93 and for that matter what military role 

would its allies (especially those in Western Europe) be expected to 

play given the collapse of the Soviet Union? What were the appropriate 

roles for Western militaries to play during peace enforcement missions? 

Should these missions even be considered “proper” soldiering or were 

they instead something less than worthy of the attention of modern 

military forces? Were peace enforcement missions achievable within 

the boundaries of existing military structures and training? Indeed, 

what was the appropriate structure for military forces now that the Cold 

War was over and the Soviet threat gone? As Western militaries sought 

answers to these questions, the fourth school of doctrinal ontology 

emerged.

This school could be labeled the “military strategic” school. This 

label is derived from the conceptual sub-division of the “strategic level 

of war” into national strategy (alternatively labeled grand strategy 

or national policy objectives) on one hand and military strategy on 

the other. In the first of these sub-divisions, governments determine 

overarching strategic goals that have military as well as other aspects 

while in the second sub-division, militaries themselves develop 
29

institutional strategies to enable them to implement the military aspects 

of national strategy.94 Doctrine manuals in the military strategic school 

are generally referred to as “keystone” or “capstone” manuals and they 

usually sit at the pinnacle of formally established doctrine hierarchies.95

In terms of their content, doctrine manuals in the fourth school tend 

to be philosophical in nature, establishing fundamental principles or a 

core conceptual framework that is intended to describe, categorize, and 

justify military activities as much as guide the application of military 

force in pursuit of national strategic goals. Their precise content, 

however, varies from service to service and military to military. Michael 

Codner concisely summarized this variation in the case of the British 

armed forces:

The Army presents a preferred style of warfare. The [Royal]

Navy is cautious about prescription and offers what is 

essentially a conceptual framework, distilling wisdom from 

the corpus of work on maritime strategic theory. The Royal Air 

Force provides a rigorous and coherent analysis of tasks within 

an overall framework of principles and in so doing, makes a 

logical case for an independent air force.96

Similar variances can be observed in the case of several other armed 

forces including those of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.97

In the US armed forces, the separation of the third and fourth 

schools of doctrinal ontology has been less distinct than in the militaries 

of these smaller allies. In the Army, USMC, and USAF, more recent 

editions of manuals that were formerly located unambiguously within 

the third school have since taken on characteristics more closely aligned 

with the fourth.98

For the Army, these characteristics first crept into the 1993 edition 

of FM 100-5, the second chapter of which discussed the US national 

strategic context and the Army’s military strategic roles therein. The 

rest of the manual, however, continued to focus almost exclusively on 

the operational level of war. The subsequent edition, released in 2001 

with a new reference number of FM 3-0, advocated the conduct of “full 

spectrum operations,” a concept that linked Army operations to military 

strategy in a much more consistent and explicit manner throughout.99 

Another manual, FM 1 The Army, described in its own preface as “one 

of the Army’s two capstone manuals” (the other being FM 3-0) has 

since provided an even stronger bridge between Army operations and 

national strategy.100
30

For the Marine Corps, the 1997 edition of Marine Corps Doctrine

Publication 1 (MCDP 1—the title given to replacement manual for 

FMFM 1), was clearly located within the fourth school of doctrinal 

ontology. It provided a short introductory overview of the nature, theory, 

and conduct of war, leaving more specific discussion about military 

strategy, operations, and tactics to subsequent manuals in the series 

which fit within the fourth, third, and second schools respectively.

101

The 1997 edition of Air Force Basic Doctrine, itself re-titled and

re-numbered as Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 1, included an

unprecedented (in terms of USAF doctrine) discussion about the “levels 

of doctrine.” Explicitly placing itself above operational and tactical 

doctrine, it subsequently confirmed its fourth school status through the 

inclusion of a series of lists such as “principles of war,” “tenets of air 

and space power,” and “air and space power functions.”102 While these 

lists were simple (perhaps even a little simplistic) in comparison to the 

equivalent Army and Marine Corps doctrine, they nonetheless provided 

a conceptually sound explanation of the USAF role in implementing US 

national strategy.103

The USN is conspicuous because it is different to the other Services. 

The fourth school has not emerged at all within the USN, which has 

instead achieved similar functions though non-doctrinal institutional 

strategy publications. These publications include: ...From the Sea; 

FORWARD ...From the Sea; and Anytime, Anywhere.

104 Discussing these 

and other key US Navy strategy documents of the 1990s, Hattendorf 

asserted that:

the documents assembled here, though labeled “strategic

concepts,” are not framed in a specific context that allows them 

to meet the definition of an operational strategy. In conceptual 

terms, they are closer to doctrine than to strategy. Actually, they

lie between doctrine and strategy as strictly defined.105

As Hattendorf’s definition of doctrine is reminiscent of the third 

ontological school discussed above (it “addresses how one generally 

expects, or even prefers, to operate to carry out the broad missions 

that are likely to appear in future scenarios”), his assertion about these 

documents reveals their similarity to doctrine in the fourth school.106

Finally, the 1990s saw the emergence of “joint” doctrine which

involved the proliferation of manuals applicable to all of the services. 

In the US, this doctrine emerged following the 1986 passage of the 

Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act, which 

was designed to balance single service interests with joint operational 
31

and organizational imperatives.107 The Act stimulated a great momentum 

in the US military towards jointness and a joint capstone doctrine 

manual, Joint Publication (JP) 1 Joint Warfare of the US Armed Forces, 

was released in November 1991.108

Other English speaking militaries followed suit during the 1990s or 

early 2000s although they differed from the US in one major way, the 

publication of their own joint doctrine tended to be internally driven 

by their armed forces. Where US joint doctrine had been produced 

because of a legislative catalyst (the Goldwater-Nichols Reorganization 

Act), the move towards jointness on the part of its English speaking 

allies was the product of armed forces reacting to post-Cold War budget 

cuts. These cuts initially brought about the amalgamation of functions 

previously duplicated by each service (such as aspects of logistics) 

with subsequent reforms eventually leading to the establishment of 

permanent joint command structures.109 Importantly, newly established 

joint structures usually had an operational or strategic focus, leaving 

tactical activities to each of the services. The result of this focus was 

that new joint doctrine manuals produced to detail the function of these 

structures tended to fit within the third or fourth schools, with occasional 

manuals in the second and virtually none in the first.110

One of the key distinctive features of doctrine manuals in the 

fourth school is their intended audience. The intended audience of the 

fourth school is much broader while doctrine in the first three schools is 

intended either exclusively or primarily for an internal service audience. 

In addition to the service audience it includes members of other services, 

other government departments, the members of legislative and executive

branches of government, allied militaries, and the general public. The

2005 edition of the US Army’s FM 1, for example, states upfront that 

its intended audience “includes the Executive Branch, Congress, Office

of the Secretary of Defense, Joint Staff, combatant commanders, other 

Services, officers, non-commissioned officers, and enlisted Soldiers of 

all Army components, and Army civilians.”111

Furthermore, this school of doctrine is intended to perform a different

function for each of these audiences. In addition to providing military

strategic level guidance for its internal audience (a similar function

to that of doctrine in the third school), it also constitutes an open and

accessible declaration of institutional strategy, a platform for supporting

service lobbying, and a public relations tool.112 Part of these roles has 

also been to explain how a service contributes to implementing national

strategy and strategic policy. Hence in the US case, documents such as 
32

the National Security Strategy, National Military Strategy, and Defense 

Planning Guidance are taken into account during the development of 

these manuals.113 Yet surprisingly little analysis of the significance and 

impact of these additional aspects has been undertaken and the scope 

of fourth school doctrine manuals is often overlooked. Perhaps this is 

because declarations such as those appearing in FM 1 are the exception, 

not the rule. Usually, the external audience of fourth school doctrine 

manuals tends not to be explicitly mentioned within them.114

Although doctrine in the fourth school has maintained some key

ontological features of the third school, it has in other respects diverged

greatly. Separating it from the third school is the greatly expanded, and 

for that matter not-so-well defined, scope of its focus. That it could 

be labeled “military strategic” rather than “operational” is indicative 

of this. Closely related to this difference in scope is the uncertainty 

confronting militaries during the 1990s. This starkly contrasts with the 

final decade of the Cold War when the third school of doctrinal ontology 

emerged, during which period Western militaries faced a single specific 

threat that was clearly definable in nature and origin. Accompanying 

this was an ontological clarity that was suddenly missing following the 

collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the face of the uncertainty that followed, doctrine became at once

“the military’s instrument for analyzing past experience, guiding current

operations, and exploring future challenges” or what could be labeled

an “instrument for analysis.”115 In other words, as militaries struggled to

determine the nature and extent of their post-Cold War roles, doctrine in 

the fourth school emerged as a mechanism enabling them to undertake

an institutional exploration of the key ontological challenges they were

confronting.

In a few significant ways, doctrine in the fourth school is similar 

to that in the third. It plays a vital role in establishing the military’s 

perception of its role in relation to society, the state, and government 

policy for example. It also constitutes a mechanism for disseminating 

theoretically derived concepts that prompt intellectual engagement, 

however evidence of the ontological uncertainty of the period abounds 

in the plethora of new concepts that have been included in the doctrine 

manuals that together constitute the fourth school. These concepts have 

notably included the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), effects 

based operations (EBO), network centric warfare (NCW), military 

operations other than war (MOOTW), stability and support operations 

(SASO), and rapid decisive operations (RDO) to name but a few.116 
33

In addition, maneuver warfare, conceptually expanded and rebadged 

as “the maneuverist approach,” has been particularly prevalent within 

military strategic doctrine, possibly owing to the flexibility with which 

it can be applied.117

Finally, as the concepts contained in fourth school doctrine manuals

have been derived from a mixture of military and external sources, their

development represents yet another difference from manuals in the other

schools. While first and second school manuals were usually developed 

by individuals or small groups of officers, usually writing within staff 

colleges or general staffs,118 third school manuals usually contain 

concepts of internal military origin that may have been subsequently 

refined in consultation with outsiders.119 The fourth school, however, 

draws on concepts developed both internally to militaries and externally 

by defense academics, commentators, and other members of the defense 

community. This is likely another product of the uncertainty of the era in 

which fourth school doctrine emerged. As militaries attempted to make 

sense of the changed environment and their roles within it, they became 

more willing to consider ideas from a broader variety of sources.
34

Notes

1. John Childs, “The Military Revolution I: The Transition to Modern 

Warfare,” in Charles Townshend, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern 

War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 32-3. This is the traceable,

unbroken lineage of contemporary written doctrine. Although some have argued

that certain Roman treatises constituted doctrine in a similar form to that of 

the modern era, the accuracy of this argument depends on the definition of the 

term “doctrine” that is applied. For example, Richard M. van Nort, The Battle 

of Adrianople and the Military Doctrine of Vegitius, The City University of 

New York: Unpublished PhD Dissertation, 2007, asserts that Roman Legions 

regularly applied doctrine as a matter of routine. Although he appears to 

equate the term “doctrine” to both military theory and tactics, van Nort does 

not explicitly define the term itself, hence leaving the nature of its relationship 

to modern doctrine open to debate. Regarding Wapenhandlingen van Roers, 

Musqetten ende Spiessen, Feld has observed that it was “obviously influenced 

by the numerous fencing books printed throughout Europe after about 1530.” 

Importantly, it differed from these earlier texts in two substantial ways. First, 

its intended audience was militaries rather than the general public, and second, 

the level of procedural detail with which it treated its subject meant that it 

constituted “an integrated instructional device, perhaps the first ever printed.” 

M. D. Feld, “Middle-Class Society and the Rise of Military Professionalism: 

The Dutch Army 1589-1609,” Armed Forces and Society, Vol. 1, No. 4, August 

1975, pp. 423-4.

2. Childs, “The Military Revolution I,” pp. 19-34; Jeremy Black, “The

Military Revolution II: Eighteenth-Century War,” in Townshend, ed., The Oxford 

Illustrated History of Modern War, pp. 35-47.

3. Bruce D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military 

Foundations of Modern Politics, New York, NY: The Free Press, 1994, pp. 64-7, 

110-3.

4. For further details about the significance and effect of these treaties, 

see: Kalevi J. Holsti, Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order 

1648-1989, Cambridge Studies in International Relations No. 14, Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 25-42. The relationship between doctrine 

and the emergence and evolution of the modern, state-centric international

system is further discussed in the third chapter.

5. Childs, “The Military Revolution I,” p. 33.

6. In making this observation it must be remembered that during this

period “modern” militaries had not yet been fully institutionalized, even within

the most “advanced” European states. For this reason, they cannot be expected

by this era to have developed an institutional discourse. Charles Tilly, Coercion,

Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, pp. 67-

95.
35

7. Brian McAllister Linn, The Echo of Battle: The Army’s Way of War, 

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 200-1.

8. Another example of this “macro” effect is the influence of 

marksmanship training on U.S. Army culture and weapons acquisition decisions. 

See: Thomas L. McNaugher, Marksmanship, McNamara and the M16 Rifle:

Organizations, Analysis and Weapons Acquisition, RAND Paper No. P-6306, 

Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, March 1979.

9. For example, see: John S. Clay, “The Fifth Service Looks at Doctrine,” 

Joint Force Quarterly, No. 14, Winter 1996-7, pp. 29-33.

10. Gary Sheffield, “Doctrine and Command in the British Army: An 

Historical Overview,” in Directorate General Development and Doctrine, Army 

Doctrine Publication: Land Operations, United Kingdom: British Army, May 

2005, p. 165.

11. James J. Tritten, “Developing Naval Doctrine ...From the Sea,” 

Joint Force Quarterly, No. 9, Autumn 1995, p. 111; Michael Codner, “British 

Maritime Doctrine and National Military Strategy,” in Centre for Defence 

Studies, Kings College London, Brassey’s Defence Yearbook 1996, London: 

Brassey’s, 1996, pp. 88-104; Aaron P. Jackson, Doctrine Development in Five 

Commonwealth Navies: A Comparative Perspective, Papers in Australian 

Maritime Affairs No. 33, Canberra: Sea Power Centre—Australia, 2010, p. 

1; Robert Futrell, Ideas, Concepts, Doctrine: Volume I: Basic Thinking in the 

United States Air Force 1907-1960, Maxwell Air force Base: Air University 

Press, 1989, p. xi; Aaron P. Jackson, “The Emergence of a “Doctrinal Culture” 

within the Canadian Air Force: Where it Came From, Where it’s at and Where to 

From Here? Part One: Doctrine and Canadian Air Force Culture Prior to the End 

of the Cold War,” Canadian Air Force Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, Summer 2009, pp. 

38-46.

12. Examples of these alternative perspectives include: P. Richard 

Moller, “The Dangers of Doctrine,” in Maritime Security Working Paper No. 

5, Halifax: Dalhousie University, December 1996, pp. 57-71; Milan Vego, 

Joint Operational Warfare: Theory and Practice, Newport RI: U.S. Naval War 

College, 2007, pp. XII.4-XII.6.

13. Holsti, Peace and War, pp. 46-63; Black, “The Military Revolution II,”

pp. 35-47.

14. Holsti, Peace and War, p. 63.

15. Black, “The Military Revolution II,” p. 45.

16. Hal Klepak, “Some Reflections on Generalship Through the Ages,” in 

Bernd Horn & Stephen J. Harris, eds., Generalship and the Art of the Admiral:

Perspectives on Canadian Senior Military Leadership, St. Catherines, ON: 

Vanwell Publishing, 2001, pp. 24-5; Lynn, Battle, pp. 137-9.
36

17. For a detailed discussion about the nature and extent of the works of 

these and other key military thinkers of the late 18th century, see: Azar Gat, A 

History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War, Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 2001, Bk I, pp. 27-55.

18. Walter E. Kretchik, U.S. Army Doctrine: From the American Revolution 

to the War on Terror, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2011, pp. 16-24.

19. Paul Johnston, “Doctrine is Not Enough: The Effect of Doctrine on the 

Behavior of Armies,” Parameters, Vol. XXX, No. 3, Autumn 2000, pp. 31-2.

20. John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture, Cambridge,

MA: Westview, 2003, pp. 179-200.

21. Bernard Brodie, War and Politics, New York: MacMillan Publishing 

Co., 1973, pp. 252-8.

22. Michael Mann, The Sources of Social Power: Volume II: The Rise of

Classes and Nation-States, 1760-1914, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University

Press, 1993, pp. 419-36.

23. John Gooch, “Introduction: Military Doctrine in Military History,” in

John Gooch, ed., The Origins of Contemporary Doctrine, Occasional Paper No. 

30, Camberly: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, September 1997, p. 5; 

Gat, A History of Military Thought, Bk II, pp. 269-72, 285. For a discussion of 

the impact of the Enlightenment on the development of military theory, see Gat,

Bk I, part 1.

24. On the works of Jomini and their influence, see: John Shy, “Jomini,” in 

Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear

Age, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986, pp. 143-85; Gat, A History 

of Military Thought, Bk I, pp. 108-137.

25. John L. Romjue, “The Evolution of American Army Doctrine,” in

Gooch, ed., The Origins of Contemporary Doctrine, pp. 52-3.

26. Romjue, “The Evolution of American Army Doctrine,” p. 53.

27. Christopher R. Gabel, “Preface,” in U.S. Army, FM 100-5 Field 

Service Regulations: Operations [first issued 1941]. Fort Leavenworth: U.S. 

Army Command and General Staff College Press, 1992.

28. U.S. Army, FM 100-5, 1941, p. ii.

29. The idea that universal principles of war existed and could be 

uncovered and applied to guide all military operations regardless of the 

unique circumstances of individual wars, campaigns and battles, first gained 

prominence during the late Renaissance. This idea was subsequently shaped, 

and greatly popularized, by the prevailing intellectual paradigms of the 

Enlightenment, and the notion has remained (rightly or wrongly) within the 

discourse of military theory ever since. Gat, A History of Military Thought, 

Bk I, part 1. See also: John A. Alger, The Quest for Victory: The History of the 
37

Principles of War, Contributions in Military History No. 30, Westport, CT: 

Greenwood Press, 1982, which traces the routes of the principles of war to Sun 

Tzu, but nevertheless observes that their popularization within the West began 

during the 18th century.

30. Echevarria’s insight is itself an indication of the implicit ontological

assumptions made within tactical doctrine. In this case the assumption is that

war is the province of states, while battle is the province of armies. Antulio 

J. Echevarria II, Toward an American Way of War, Carlisle: U.S. Army War 

College Strategic Studies Institute, March 2004.

31. The idea of a distinctive “American Way of War” was first explicitly 

elaborated in: Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of U.S. 

Military Strategy and Policy, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1973; 

a succinct summary of the causes and origins of this approach are also given in:

John Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun, London: Pimlico, 1976, pp. 

21-25 (albeit that Ellis does not use the same label as Weigley).

32. Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun, pp. 111-145.

33. There have of course been many second school doctrine manuals that

address how to combat non-state groups. The assertion here is not that there 

has not been, but rather that different approaches are needed to meet different

challenges. This doctrine only becomes irrelevant if the manuals available (or 

consulted) do not contain the appropriate approach for addressing the challenge

at hand. On second school doctrine written about how to combat non-state

groups, see: Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise 

of American Power, New York: Basic Books, 2002, pp. 281-5; Tim Moreman, 

“‘The Greatest Training Ground in the World’: The Army in India and the NorthWest Frontier, 1901-1947,” in Daniel P. Marston & Chandar S. Sundaram, A

Military History of India and South Asia: From the East India Company to the

Nuclear Era, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008, pp. 53-73.

34. Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, Baltimore, MD: The

John Hopkins University Press, 1986.

35. Romjue, “The Evolution of American Army Doctrine,” p. 70. The

term “revolution in Army thinking” has also been used in reference to the same

events. Richard Lock-Pullan, U.S. Intervention Policy and Army Innovation:

From Vietnam to Iraq, New York, NY: Routledge, 2006, p. 77.

36. For example, see: Roger J. Spiller, “In the Shadow of the Dragon: 

Doctrine and the U.S. Army after Vietnam,” in Jeffrey Grey & Peter Dennis, 

eds., From Past to Future: The Australian Experience of Land/Air Operations, 

Canberra: Australian Defence Force Academy, 1995, pp. 6-46; Richard LockPullan, “How to Rethink War: Conceptual Innovation and AirLand Battle 

Doctrine,” Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 28, No. 4, August 2005, pp. 

679-702; Robert T. Davis II, The Challenge of Adaptation: The U.S. Army in 

the Aftermath of Conflict, 1953-2000, Fort Leavenworth KS: Combat Studies 

Institute Press, March 2008, pp. 45-80.
38

37. Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 100-5 Operations, 

Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, August 20, 1982.

38. Spiller, “In the Shadow of the Dragon,” pp. 15-6.

39. In Spiller’s words, “the October War had the effect of organizing 

knowledge in the absence of operational theory. What had been until now a

collection of undifferentiated suppositions and disparate intentions was given

substance and an organized framework from which specific reforms could be 

undertaken.” Spiller, p. 27.

40. Conrad Crane presents a comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Army’s 

intellectual desire to leave Vietnam behind, concluding that “many of the 

reformers who developed AirLand Battle doctrine and the force to apply it 

were motivated by a sense of indignation and embarrassment about losing in 

Southeast Asia. Out of that defeat the Army developed a new doctrine, force 

structure, and attitude designed to win an ‘anti-Vietnam,’ high-intensity conflict 

with the Soviets in Europe.” Perhaps more revealing is a quote attributed to 

General Starry, one of the primary architects of the Army’s post-Vietnam 

doctrinal reform: “After getting out of Vietnam, the Army looked around and 

realized it should not try to fight that kind of war again.” Conrad C. Crane, 

Avoiding Vietnam: The U.S. Army’s Response to Defeat in Southeast Asia, 

Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, September 2002, pp. 16-17.

41. Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 100-5 Operations, 

Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, July 1, 1976, p. 1.1.

42. Robert A. Doughty, The Evolution of U.S. Army Tactical Doctrine, 1946-

76, Leavenworth Papers No. 1, Fort Leavenworth KS: Combat Studies Institute, 

August 1979, p. 43.

43. For the purposes of this monograph, details of the content of this

manual are less important than the process and debate surrounding its 

development. Readers interested in more details about the content of this manual 

and the criticisms it drew are encouraged to consult: Doughty, pp. 40-6.

44. For a concise overview of the “AirLand Battle” concept, see: John L.

Romjue, “The Evolution of the AirLand Battle Concept,” Air University Review, 

May-June 1984. Available from www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/

aureview/1984/may-jun/romjue.html, accessed on November 30, 2009.

45. Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 100-5 Operations, 1982, p. 

2.3.

46. The implications of this for the Prussian/German and Russian/Soviet 

militaries are that in these militaries the second and third schools of doctrinal 

ontology appeared in a much closer succession than they did in the English 

speaking militaries that are the subject of discussion herein. Because of the 

limits of this study (it’s focus on English speaking militaries) the implications 

of this difference are not discussed here. On the reasons for the U.S. lag behind 

Germany and Russia, see: Vego, Joint Operational Warfare, pp. I.15-I.34, 
39

XII.4; James J. Schneider, The Structure of Strategic Revolution: Total War 

and the Roots of the Soviet Warfare State, Novato CA: Presidio Press, 1994, 

esp. chap. 5; Shimon Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence: The Evolution 

of Operational Theory, London: Frank Cass, 1997; Dennis E. Showalter, 

“Prussian-German Operational Art, 1740-1943” and Jacob W. Kipp, “The Tsarist 

and Soviet Operational Art, 1853-1991,” both in John Andreas Olsen & Martin 

van Creveld, The Evolution of Operational Art: From Napoleon to the Present, 

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 35-95.

47. For a more detailed account see: Antulio J. Echevarria II, “American

Operational Art, 1917-2008,” in Olsen & van Creveld, The Evolution of 

Operational Art, pp. 137-165.

48. Weigley, The American Way of War, p 475.

49. Michael Carver, “Conventional Warfare in the Nuclear Age,” in Paret,

ed., Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 779-814.

50. A. J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army between Korea and 

Vietnam, Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1986, esp. pp. 

103-119; Echevarria, “American Operational Art,” pp. 154-5.

51. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard 

and Peter Paret, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989, p. 69.

52. This aligns with the implicit assumptions underlying several U.S. Army 

manuals that fall within in the tactical manual school. The key difference is 

that discussion within the 1982 edition of FM 100-5 was more detailed and the 

implications of this ontological model were finally made explicit.

53. Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and 

Leadership in Wartime, New York: The Free Press, 2002, p. 226; see also 

Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of

Civil-Military Relations, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959;

Edward M. Coffman, “The Long Shadow of The Soldier and the State,”

Journal of Military History, Vol. 55, No. 1, January 1991, pp. 69-82. Of note, 

subscription to the “normal” school of civil-military relations has not been

limited to FM 100-5: Cohen explicitly states that FM 1 The Army, which fits

within the fourth school of doctrinal ontology, is “largely Huntington in tone”

and “a particularly interesting document”. Cohen, p. 273 (n. 4).

54. Romjue, “The Evolution of the AirLand Battle Concept”.

55. Linn, The Echo of Battle, pp. 211-212, describes the U.S. Army’s 

experience. For examples of this effect in two allied militaries, see: Hew 

Strachan, “Operational Art in Britain, 1909-2009,” in Olsen & van Creveld, The 

Evolution of Operational Art, p. 120; Howard G. Coombs, “In the Wake of a 

Paradigm Shift: The Canadian Forces College and the Operational Level of War 

(1987-1995),” Canadian Military Journal, Vol. 10 No. 2, 2010, pp. 19-27.

56. Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, FMFM 1 Warfighting, Washington, 

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 6, 1989.
40

57. H. T. Hayden, “Introduction: The History and Execution of Marine

Corps Doctrine,” in H. T. Hayden, ed., Warfighting: Maneuver Warfare in the 

U.S. Marine Corps, London: Greenhill Books, 1995, p. 19.

58. Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, FMFM 1, 1989, p. 59.

59. Headquarters, U.S. Air Force, Air Force Manual (AFM) 1-1 (Volume

1), Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, Washington, 

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 1992, pp. 7-8.

60. Headquarters, U.S. Air Force, AFM 1-1 (Volume 2), Basic Aerospace

Doctrine of the United States Air Force, Washington, DC: U.S. Government 

Printing Office, March 1992. The authorship of these essays was not disclosed.

61. Naval Doctrine Command was subsequently disestablished in 1998, at 

which time most of its functions were transferred to the newly established Navy 

Warfare Development Command. John B. Hattendorf, “Introduction,” in John B.

Hattendorf, ed., U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990s: Selected Documents, Newport 

Paper No. 27, Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2006, p. 15.

62. Headquarters, Department of the Navy, Navy Doctrine Publication 

(NDP) 1 Naval Warfare, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,

March 28, 1994, pp. 16-7.

63. Headquarters, Department of the Navy, NDP 1 Naval Warfare, p. 35.

64. Hattendorf, “Introduction,” p. 15.

65. There are very few available sources that address service culture in

depth. Key among the sources available are: Carl H. Builder The Masks of War: 

American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis, Baltimore MD: John Hopkins 

University Press, 1989; Allan D. English, Understanding Military Culture: A

Canadian Perspective, Montreal, QC: McGill-Queens University Press, 2004.

66. U.S. Army Combined Arms Centre, “Doctrine Development”, 

available from http://usacac.army.mil/CAC/doctrine.asp, accessed on August 8, 

2010; Tritten, “Developing Naval Doctrine ...From the Sea,” p. 111.

67. Jackson, Doctrine Development in Five Commonwealth Navies, p. 1.

68. Huntington, The Soldier and the State, part 1; see also Cohen, Supreme

Command, pp. 225-248.

69. Builder, The Masks of War, esp. chap. 6-8.

70. Original emphasis. Markus Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual 

Excellence: The Evolution of British Military-Strategic Doctrine in the PostCold War Era, 1989-2002, Studies in Contemporary History and Security Policy 

No. 13, Bern: Peter Lang, 2004, p. 78.

71. Strachan, “Operational Art in Britain,” pp. 119-121, quote p. 119.

72. Strachan’s account is also brief, although he does note that “Bagnall’s 

contribution is still in need of a full study.” Strachan, “Operational Art in 

Britain,” p. 135 (n. 83).
41

73. Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, pp. 90-2.

74. Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, pp. 78-103; Sheffield, 

“Doctrine and Command in the British Army,” pp. 177-178.

75. Prepared under the Direction of the Chief of the General Staff, Design 

for Military Operations—British Military Doctrine, London: Her Majesty’s 

Stationary Office, 1989.

76. Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, p. 98.

77. Evans, Forward from the Past, p. 28.

78. Canadian Forces, Joint and Combined Operations, Ottawa: Canadian 

National Defence Headquarters, 1995.

79. Coombs, “In the Wake of a Paradigm Shift”, pp. 19-27; David Cox & 

Andrew O’Neil, “Professional Military Education in Australia: Has it All Gone 

Terribly Right?” Australian Defence Force Journal, No. 171, 2006, pp. 59-60.

80. Evans, Forward from the Past, p. 28.

81. Coombs, “In the Wake of a Paradigm Shift,” p. 25.

82. Sheffield, “Doctrine and Command in the British Army,” p. 177.

83. Original emphasis. Coombs, “In the Wake of a Paradigm Shift,” p. 25.

84. Coombs, “In the Wake of a Paradigm Shift,” p. 25.

85. An interesting aside is that New Zealand not only fits within this 

construct, but occupies a position where one would logically expect to find 

it given the small size of its military relative to the other English-speaking 

militaries examined. Each of its Services briefly engaged in the production 

of third and fourth school doctrine during the early and mid-1990s, prior to 

deferring to foreign, usually Australian, doctrine, in lieu of undertaking further 

internal doctrine development in these schools. Since the early-2000s the New 

Zealand Defence Force has produced comprehensive joint doctrine manuals that 

fit within both of these schools, with the content of these manuals being strongly 

influenced by conceptual developments featured in allied doctrine, again 

primarily that of Australia. Thus, relative to the U.S., New Zealand appears 

to be situated in a more outer circle than either Canada or Australia, although 

another thought community also appears extant wherein Australian doctrine 

writers occupy an inner circle and New Zealand doctrine writers an outer circle. 

For further details about doctrine development in New Zealand, see: Aaron P. 

Jackson, “Getting it Right? Military-Strategic Level Doctrine Development in 

New Zealand,” New Zealand Journal of Defence Studies, Vol. 3, August 2008, 

pp. 11-17.

86. International Institute for Strategic Studies, “Complex Irregular Warfare: 

The Face of Contemporary Conflict,” The Military Balance, Vol. 105, No. 1, 

2005, p. 419.
42

87. These developments are discussed in greater detail in subsequent 

chapters.

88. Romjue, “The Evolution of the AirLand Battle Concept”.

89. Even though the U.S. military stresses the need for interoperability

and constantly takes measures to enhance it, interoperability is nevertheless a

more pressing concern for its smaller allies. The reasons for this are summarized 

by Middlemiss and Stairs: “It should be clear that, in any military alliance,

interoperability is primarily an issue for the lesser powers. This is because it is 

the lesser powers that must deal with the military equivalent of “keeping up with

the Joneses.” Nowhere has this been more starkly revealed than in NATO, where 

all the members, save in some degree the United Kingdom and France, have

found it a perennially daunting challenge to maintain military forces that can

operate effectively with the vastly superior military establishment of the United

States.”, Danford W. Middlemiss & Denis Stairs, The Canadian Forces and 

the Doctrine of Interoperability: The Issues, Policy Matters Occasional Paper

Series, Vol. 3, No. 7, Montreal, QC: Institute for Research on Public Policy, June 

2002, p. 14.

90. Peter Haas, “Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International

Policy Coordination,” International Organization, Vol. 46, No. 1, Winter 1992,

p. 3.

91. Coombs, “In the Wake of a Paradigm Shift,” p. 25.

92. For a comparative analysis of Western military responses to these 

challenges during the 1990s, see: Charles C. Moskos, John Allan Williams & 

David R. Segal, eds., The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces after the Cold 

War, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2000.

93. For a prominent example of this debate, see: Charles Krauthammer, 

“The Unipolar Moment,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 1, Winter 1990-1, pp. 23-

33.

94. This division has been promulgated within some capstone doctrine

manuals. See, for example: British Armed Forces, Joint Warfare Publication 

(JWP) 0-01 British Defence Doctrine, 1st ed., London: Her Britannic Majesty’s 

Stationary Office, 1997, pp. 1.8-1.9; Australian Defence Force, Australian 

Defence Doctrine Publication-Doctrine (ADDP-D) Foundations of Australian

Military Doctrine, 2nd ed., Canberra: Defence Publishing Service, July 2005, 

para. 1.7.

95. Doctrine hierarchies have long contained designated keystone or 

capstone manuals. Prior to the emergence of the fourth school of doctrinal 

ontology, these manuals were often accompanied by several other manuals in the 

hierarchy that fit within the same ontological school. The important difference 

between these and manuals in the fourth school is that fourth school manuals are 

generally the only manual of their school within a hierarchy. Below them, it is 

common to find the remainder of the hierarchy consists of several operational, 

tactical and technical manuals.
43

96. Michael Codner, “Purple Prose and Purple Passion: The Joint Defence

Centre,” RU.S.I Journal, Vol. 144, No. 1, February/March 1999, p. 38.

97. In a study of military strategic doctrine in these three countries, this

author found several similarities between each army, navy and air force, but few 

similarities between the three services of each country. The key reason for this

was service culture, which caused army doctrine to have a “downwards” focus 

(providing guidance for operational conduct was the key concern), navy doctrine

to have an “upwards” focus (justifying funding for acquisitions to government

was the key concern) and air force doctrine had an “inwards” focus (educating

airmen about the significance of air power was the key concern). Interestingly, 

joint doctrine exhibited elements of all three of these foci as well as a fourth,

“outwards” focus, to which end it was employed as a device for explaining

military strategy to the general public. Aaron P. Jackson, Doctrine, Strategy and 

Military Culture: Military-Strategic Doctrine Development in Australia, Canada

and New Zealand, 1987-2007, Trenton, ON: Canadian Forces Aerospace 

Warfare Centre, 2013.

98. A holistic study of U.S. military strategic doctrine development 

and its impact is notably absent from the existing literature. Although some, 

such as Chapman, provide a starting point, their work is nonetheless limited. 

Chapman, for example, focuses on doctrine development since World War Two, 

providing a general overview rather than examining military strategic doctrine 

development specifically. As his main objective is to identify sources available 

for further research, his analysis is understandably limited. In contrast, the 

development and significance of military strategic doctrine in Britain, Australia, 

Canada and New Zealand has been the subject of comprehensive analysis. See: 

Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence; Jackson, Doctrine, Strategy and 

Military Culture; Bert Chapman, Military Doctrine: A Reference Handbook, 

Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International, 2009, pp. 6-41.

99. Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 100-5 Operations, 

Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 14, 1993; Headquarters, 

Department of the Army, FM 3-0 Operations, Washington DC: U.S. 

Government Printing Office, June 14, 2001.

100.This manual is not as well known as FM 3-0 and its impact is quite

limited by comparison. Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 1 The 

Army, Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 14, 2001; 

since superseded by: Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 1 The Army, 

Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 2005.

101.Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Doctrine Publication 

(MCDP) 1 Warfighting, Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 

20, 1997; Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, MCDP 1-1 Strategy, Washington

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, November 12, 1997; Headquarters, U.S. 

Marine Corps, MCDP 1-2 Campaigning, Washington DC: U.S. Government 

Printing Office, August 1, 1997; Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, MCDP 1-3 

Tactics, Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, July 30, 1997.
44

102.U.S. Air Force, Air Force Doctrine Document (AFDD) 1 Air Force 

Basic Doctrine, Maxwell Air Force Base: Headquarters Air Force Doctrine 

Centre, September 1997.

103.These lists were simple in the sense that they were descriptive and

exhibited a straightforward, “check-list” type of appearance. This is in contrast

with the equivalent Army and U.S.MC doctrine manuals, which each presented a 

few major thematic concepts that were explicitly linked to national strategy.

104. These and five other U.S.N strategy documents first published during 

the 1990s are reproduced in: Hattendorf, ed., U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990s. A 

brief overview of the circumstances surrounding the development and release of 

each document is also given in this source.

105.Hattendorf, “Introduction,” p. 2.

106.Added emphasis. Hattendorf, p. 3.

107.For a detailed review of the Goldwater-Nichols Reorganization Act, 

see: James R. Locher, “Has it Worked? The Goldwater-Nichols Reorganization 

Act,” Naval War College Review, Vol. LIV, No. 4, Autumn 2001, pp. 95-115.

108.Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Department of Defense, JP 1 Joint Warfare

of the U.S. Armed Forces, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,

November 11, 1991.

109.On joint doctrine development in the UK, Australia, Canada and New 

Zealand, see: Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, pp. 229-258; Jackson, 

Doctrine, Strategy and Military Culture, chap. 7.

110. Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, pp. 297-311; Jackson, 

Doctrine, Strategy and Military Culture, chap. 7.

111. Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 1, 2005, p. iii.

112. Kretchik, U.S. Army Doctrine, pp. 278-286.

113. Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Department of Defense, JP 1 Joint Warfare of the

Armed Forces of the United States, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing 

Office, November 14, 2000, esp. foreword & chaps. 1 & 4; U.S. Navy, “NDP-1 

Naval Warfare,” “The Navy Operational Concept,” “Anytime, Anywhere: A Navy 

for the 21st Century,” and “Navy Strategic Planning Guidance with Long Range 

Guidance,” all reproduced in Hattendorf, ed., U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990s, 

pp. 136, 159-61, 171-2, 173, 177, 210, 219-20; Headquarters, Department of the 

Army, FM 1, June 14, 2001, pp. iv, 17-18; U.S. Air Force, AFDD 1, September 

1997, pp. 5-6.

114. This is also the case regarding allied joint doctrine. See: Mäder, In 

Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, pp. 297-311; Jackson, Doctrine, Strategy and 

Military Culture, conclusion.

115. Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, p. 22.
45

116. For details of the evolution of each of these concepts, see respectively:

David Jablonsky, “U.S. Military Doctrine and the Revolution in Military 

Affairs,” Parameters, Vol. 24, No. 3, Autumn 1994, pp. 18-36; Paul T. Mitchell, 

“EBO: Thinking Effects and Effective Thinking,” Pointer, Vol. 33, No. 1, 2007, 

pp. 50-58; Arthur K. Cebrowski & John J. Garstka, “Network-Centric Warfare: 

Its Origin and Future,” Proceedings, Vol. 124, No. 1, January 1998, pp. 28-35; 

Keith E. Bonn & Anthony E. Baker, Guide to Military Operations Other Than 

War: Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures for Stability and Support Operations: 

Domestic and International, Mechanicsburg PA: Stackpole Books, 2000, pp. 

1-20; Jennifer Morrison Taw, “Stability and Support Operations: History and

Debates,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 33, No. 5, 2010, pp. 387-407; 

Antulio J. Echevarria II, Rapid Decisive Operations: An Assumptions-Based 

Critique, Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, November 2001, 

pp. 3-5.

117. This prevalence has been especially noticeable in joint doctrine. 

In the U.S., the first edition of JP 1 prominently advocated some of the key 

maneuverist ideas, such as targeting an enemy’s strategic and operational centers 

of gravity. This notion has continued through to the current (2007, incorporating

change 1, 2009) edition. The UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have 

been even more explicit, and their joint capstone manuals have all emphasized 

that their armed forces jointly apply a maneuverist approach. Joint Chiefs of 

Staff, U.S. Department of Defense, JP 1, 1991, pp. 46, 56, 65; Joint Chiefs of 

Staff, U.S. Department of Defense, JP 1 Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the 

United States, May 2, 2007, Incorporating Change 1, March 20, 2009, p. I-18, 

available from www.dtic.mil/doctrine/new_pubs/jp1.pdf, accessed on March 4, 

2011; British Armed Forces, JWP 0-01, 1st ed., pp. 4.8-4.9; Canadian Forces, 

Canadian Forces Joint Publication (CFJP) 01 Canadian Military Doctrine, 1st 

ed., Ottawa, ON: Canadian Forces Experimentation Centre, April 2009, pp. 

6-13, available from www.cfd-cdf.forces.gc.ca/cfwc-cgfc/Index/JD/Pub_Eng/

Capstone/ CFJP_%2001_Canadian_Military_Doctrine_En_2009_04_Web.pdf, 

accessed on March 4, 2011; Australian Defence Force, ADDP-D Foundations 

of Australian Military Doctrine, 1st ed., Canberra: Defence Publishing Service, 

May 2002, pp. 5.3-5.5; New Zealand Defence Force, New Zealand Defence 

Doctrine Publication-Doctrine (NZDDP-D) Foundations of New Zealand 

Military Doctrine, 1st ed., Wellington: Development Branch, Headquarters New 

Zealand Defence Force, 2004, pp. 6.18-6.19.

118. Strachan, “Operational Art in Britain,” pp. 96-136.

119. Romjue, “The Evolution of the AirLand Battle Concept”.

47

Chapter 3

The Relationship between the Four Schools

By the end of the 20th century, four distinct schools of doctrinal

ontology had emerged within English speaking western militaries. 

Before proceeding to discuss the epistemology underlying these schools 

and the impact of the developments of the early 21st century, it is first 

pertinent to reflect on the nature of the relationship between these 

schools. This relationship is important as it situates the emergence of 

each school within its broader intellectual context while concurrently 

allowing for the conduct of a detailed analysis of the significance of 

each in relation to the others.

In this chapter, the relationship between the schools is analyzed 

from three different perspectives: the educational, the scientific, and 

the bureaucratic. These perspectives are adopted because each sheds 

light on a different aspect of the military’s institutional belief system 

as it is expressed within doctrine and together these perspectives also 

explore the range and significance of the relationships between doctrine, 

strategy, the military and its environment. It is subsequently determined 

that despite the differences between each of the four ontological schools, 

doctrine has nevertheless consistently employed ontological realism as 

the basis of its discourse. This has formed an enduring bond between 

each of the schools of doctrinal ontology and has usually ensured that 

they remain mutually compatible despite the different scope of their 

focus.

The Training and Educational Role of Doctrine

The first of these perspectives relates primarily to the role of doctrine 

in the delivery of professional military training and education (the 

difference between training and education is that training is designed 

to teach a skill whereas education is designed to increase the recipient’s 

knowledge).1

As asserted above, each school of doctrinal ontology has been 

applied in a different manner—as instruction manuals, training aids, 

guidance, and as an instrument for analysis, respectively. Of note, these 

applications correspond to the requirements of a military practitioner’s 

professional training and education at various stages of their career 

trajectory, as identified by Alan Okros within his paper addressing 

alternative approaches to understanding leadership within a military 

context.2
48

A brief overview of the relevant aspects of Okros’ paper is thus 

warranted. At the core of his observations about military career 

progression is the assertion that:

Entry level formation...is based on engineering and the 

assumptions that one is to focus on learning how to apply 

known procedures to address the profession’s (tactical) issues. 

Mid-level Officer...and senior [non-commissioned member]...

formation is based on the natural sciences and the assumption 

that, at this level, one must learn how to develop general 

(operational) plans of action and update existing (tactical) 

procedures through some form of structured analysis (the 

Operational Planning Process dominates). Senior level Officer 

[formation is] based on the liberal arts and the assumption that, 

at the most senior level, one must learn how to analyze complex 

issues to establish (strategic) guidance which, in turn, informs 

operational planning.3

This is closely related to the division between long-established modes 

of general education: “Arts teaches one how to ask the right questions 

(the strategic focus), the Natural Sciences teach one how to answer these

questions the right way (the operational focus), and Engineering teaches 

one how to apply the answers the right way (the tactical focus).”4 As a

result:

The significant challenge identified is that individuals have to 

transit across all three major faculties of engineering, sciences,

and the arts while also expanding their focus from mastery 

of the military arena...[to] the full spectrum of government 

objectives... the key conclusion is that those moving to the most 

senior staff roles also need to move away from predominant 

reliance on engineering models based on the assumptions 

of a knowable, definable, programmable world to adopting 

philosophical models that acknowledge that one rarely gets the 

question right let alone determines the answers with absolute 

certainty.5

Importantly, the relationship between each of the successive schools 

of doctrinal ontology identified above aligns with the training and 

educational requirements of the military career progression path 

identified by Okros.

Throughout one’s military career, doctrine in the technical manual 

school is consulted to provide instructions about the employment 
49

specific systems. Manuals in this school thus enable training to be 

conducted with the intent of teaching military practitioners the technical 

skills they need to do their job. Although technical manuals are more 

likely to be of relevance to those employed in technical trades (such 

as artillery or engineers) or to those in the initial stages of their career, 

there may nevertheless be cause for those at any stage of their career to 

“consult the instruction manual” if required. Thus, doctrine manuals in 

this school form a foundation for training throughout one’s career.

In alignment with Okros’ analogy, doctrine in the tactical manual

school can be viewed primarily as a training aid for military “engineers.” 

This doctrine is produced with the underlying assumption that the 

problems confronting tactical forces are knowable, definable and, to an 

extent, programmable (regardless of how frequently “re-programming” 

may be required). Accordingly, the employment of this doctrine as a 

training aid aligns with the requirements of training military practitioners 

using an engineering approach.

Doctrine in the other two schools assists in the delivery of education,

rather than in the conduct of training. Continuing with Okros’ analogy, 

doctrine in the operational manual school is targeted at an audience of 

military “natural scientists.” In the words of R. K. Taylor, it “is more 

about creating a framework within which to prepare, plan, and conduct 

operations...rather than [establishing] procedures on ‘how to fight’.”6

For this reason, the guidance it provides can be construed as a means of 

establishing the appropriate questions that operational planners should 

seek to answer.

Finally, as it constitutes an instrument for analysis, doctrine in the

military strategic school can be interpreted as a component of attempts to 

determine which ontological questions militaries need to ask. Doctrine 

manuals in this school therefore constitute something akin to academic

textbooks for military “arts” students who (to again paraphrase Okros) 

are required to analyze a myriad of complex problems as they arise, 

determine their own creative solutions and while in the process of 

doing so, define which questions need to be answered. To this end the 

philosophies, principles, and concepts contained in doctrine manuals 

that fit within this school fill two roles. In the first, they are an expression 

of thought about the nature of the strategic questions confronting 

militaries, and in the second, they are an important source of intellectual 

support to which military practitioners can refer when justifying why 

they have determined to ask certain questions. Coincidentally, this latter 

role corresponds to the citation by arts students of texts that support the 

hypotheses of their papers. 
50

From the training and educational perspective, it can be seen that 

the emergence of each school of doctrinal ontology roughly corresponds 

with major developments in the expansion of formalized professional 

military training and education programs. As previously mentioned, 

the publication of “the first modern drill book,” Wapenhandlingen van 

Roers, Musqetten ende Spiessen, the year after the establishment of 

the first modern military academy, is a noteworthy coincidence.7 The 

17th century subsequently witnessed the proliferation within Europe of 

both military academies and drill manuals, the forerunners to doctrine 

in the technical manual school. During this period, military academies 

focused almost exclusively on providing training for the technically 

inclined military trades of artillery and engineering.8

Towards the end of the 18th century, however, many European 

military academies began to expand their curriculums to cover a broader 

range of subjects, including military theory and tactics.9

In the late 18th 

and early 19th centuries, staff colleges—designed to provide further 

education for mid-level officers selected to serve in staff appointments—

were also opened across the Occident.10 During the latter half of the 20th 

century too,formal education programs were expanded or consolidated at 

all stages of military career progression. This included the establishment 

in 1983 of the US Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies which 

“offered a rigorous education in the tactical and operational levels of 

warfare, staff procedures, planning, and problem solving” based on the 

ontology made explicit in the previous year’s edition of Field Manual 

(FM) 100-5 Operations.

11 Alongside these changes is the trend in most 

English speaking militaries towards an ever increasing percentage of 

officers holding tertiary or even postgraduate degrees.

The Relationship between Doctrine and Scientific Regimes

The second perspective from which the relationship between 

the schools of doctrinal ontology can be analyzed is the scientific 

perspective. In conducting this analysis, the work of Antoine Bousquet 

is most useful. Conducting “enquiry into the profound interrelationship 

of science and warfare,” Bousquet determined that “throughout the 

modern era the dominant corpus of scientific ideas has been reflected 

in the contemporary theories and practices of warfare in the Western 

world.”12 Furthermore, he posited the existence of:

four distinct regimes of the scientific way of warfare, each 

of which is characterised [sic] by a specific theoretical and 

methodological constellation: mechanistic, thermodynamic, 
51

cybernetic, and chaoplexic warfare. At the core of every 

scientific regime we find an associated paradigmatic technology, 

respectively the clock, the engine, the computer, and the 

network.13

Just as the different requirements of professional military education at 

successive stages of a military career, as identified by Okros, align with 

the different schools of doctrinal ontology, so too do each of the four 

“regimes” identified by Bousquet.14

The first of these regimes, the mechanistic, was dominant throughout 

the 17th and 18th centuries. Employing clockwork as its primary 

technological metaphor, the dominance of this regime was marked by 

general belief that, in a similar manner to the sequence of interaction 

between a series of weights as well as cogs and springs within a clock, 

the world could be holistically understood through an examination of 

the nature of its component parts and the interaction between them.15 

Alongside the dominance of this regime emerged the first school of 

doctrinal ontology. Indeed, Bousquet observes about Wapenhandlingen 

van Roers, Musqetten ende Spiessen that it:

acted as an “integrated instructional device,” breaking down the 

use of any given weapon into a series of distinct component 

steps which were arranged in a numbered logical sequence 

and each associated with an individual verbal command. The 

sequence formed a complete cycle to be repeated as many times 

as required.16

This sequence is, of course, analogous to the sequence of interaction 

between the components of a clockwork mechanism. Notably, doctrine 

manuals in the technical manual school have continued to tend towards 

this methodology right up to present day. The US Army’s training 

revolution of the early 1970s employed the same sequence but on a 

larger scale, for example.17

The second regime, the thermodynamic, assumed primacy during 

the 19th century, maintained this position until at least the mid-20th 

century, and employed the engine as its own primary technological 

metaphor. According to this metaphor, the world is composed of 

different types of energies that interact with one another and which can 

be harnessed, concentrated, discharged, or transformed, in the same way 

that an engine converts its fuel source into motive power through the 

process of thermodynamics. For militaries, the spread of technologies 

that had been developed through the application of the science of 
52

thermodynamics irreversibly changed war and new technologies such 

as railways, steamships, automobiles, breech-loading and rifled weapon 

systems, and eventually airplanes, were all developed as a result of this 

branch of scientific endeavor.18

The period of primacy of this scientific regime also coincided with 

the emergence of the second school of doctrinal ontology. Assessed 

from the scientific perspective, it can be concluded that doctrine in this 

school has indeed been influenced by thermodynamics. In concentrating 

its discussion on battlefield tactics, it at least tacitly acknowledges the 

influence of different energies, their interactions, and their exertions and 

impacts upon one another. In particular, linguistics and metaphors relating

to thermodynamics abound. The 1941 edition of FM 100-5, for example, 

discussed attack and defense in relation to a “war of movement,” a concept

that is inherently related to the expenditure and transformation of energy.19

It is important to note at this juncture that the emergence of new 

scientific regimes and their ascendency as the dominant paradigm of their 

era has not been accompanied by the consignment of previous regimes 

to history. Instead, older regimes have continued to coexist alongside 

the newer ones, albeit having passed the mantle of dominance, and have 

even in some instances assumed a complementary position alongside

their successors.20 The same could be said about the influence of each 

regime on the major concepts that have been featured in doctrine. Hence, 

mechanistic ideas, such as the “linear battlefield,” continued to exist 

alongside other (newer and hence more prominent) ideas belonging to 

more recent scientific regimes, long after the mechanistic sciences had 

ceased to constitute the dominant regime.21 The same can subsequently 

be observed in the case of thermodynamics and so on.

The third scientific regime Bousquet identified is the cybernetic and 

its dominant metaphor is the computer, an apparatus designed to capture

information from its environment, process it, and then transmit the 

results back into the environment thus potentially creating a “feedback 

loop.” This regime has its origins in the technological developments 

of the Second World War and became a dominant scientific paradigm 

during the decades thereafter.22 The key significance of this regime is 

that “the promises of cybernetic warfare fuelled the dream of a complete 

automated dominance of the battlefield.” This dream soon came to 

be accompanied by “a drive for certainty and predictability” during 

military operations.23
53

The influence of this drive on military thought was evident in the 

development of several new concepts. Most notable is the replacement 

of the term “command” with “command and control,” the latter part of 

which “suggests a process that involves a feedback mechanism allowing 

the controller to obtain new information from the system, adjust orders 

accordingly, and thus exert continuous direction on subordinates” in the

same way that a computer captures and processes and then disseminates

processed information.24 Although this regime had already begun to 

have a noticeable influence on doctrine prior to the emergence of the 

third school of doctrinal ontology (for instance, the training revolution 

of the 1970s can be construed from this perspective as employing 

doctrine as part of a large scale information gathering and processing 

activity), it nevertheless became an instant feature of the third school 

doctrine manuals of its era of dominance.

This influence was subtle, however. The 1982 edition of FM 100-5 

is illustrative. Despite prominently discussing command and control and

addressing the employment and effect of several cybernetic technologies 

such as sensors and electronic warfare, the cybernetic regime was not 

immediately evident in most of the content of this manual.25 Instead, the

application of training regimes based on the AirLand Battle concept it 

featured were the most prominent result of the influence of cybernetics. 

The Army’s National Training Center (NTC), which opened in 1982:

employed laser weapons to precisely calibrate the damage (so 

that a rifle could not destroy a tank) and teams of observers to 

conduct immediate on-site seminars. Cameras and computers

recorded the words and actions of individuals and units engaged

in combat against a surrogate Soviet force (the Krasnovians). 

Armor, mechanized, and even light units rotated through the 

NTC, conducting tactical exercises (or missions) that simulated 

the violent and intensive combat environment expected in a war 

with the Soviets.26

The application of doctrine had thus taken on the features of an 

enormous scale cybernetic feedback loop, in which information about 

performance could be collected, analyzed, assessed, and evaluated and 

the results widely communicated within a very short timeframe.

The final regime is termed “chaoplexity” by Bousquet in a deliberate 

amalgamation of the terms “chaos theory” and “complexity science,” 

the two dominant scientific paradigms underlying it.27 These paradigms 

emphasize non-linearity and self-organization, and the key metaphor 
54

accompanying them is the network, an abstract concept emphasizing 

multifaceted interaction through an intricate web of interconnectivity 

that exists between different elements of a system, and between the 

system and its environment. Relative to the other regimes, chaoplexity 

is still in a state of intellectual adolescence, having emerged in the 

sciences during the early 1970s and only beginning to shape military 

thinking two decades later.28

Like cybernetics, chaoplexity has influenced the development of 

some key military concepts, although its influence has been notably less 

prominent than any of the other regimes probably due to its relatively 

short lineage. One of the most prolific concepts identified as employing 

the principles of chaos theory is John Boyd’s Decision Cycle (also

known as the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act Cycle or simply as the 

“OODA loop”), which presents a cognitive model of the decision making 

process of participants in combat.29 Bousquet observes a tendency, 

however, for cybernetic concepts to be construed as chaoplexic when 

they in fact are not (his highly detailed critique of Network Centric 

Warfare is informative as it demonstrates this tendency in the case of 

that concept)30 or for chaoplexic concepts to be misinterpreted or oversimplified into a more linear form (Boyd’s Decision Cycle itself suffers 

from this).31

Hence, there is still a way to go before chaoplexity is fully 

established as a dominant paradigm within military thinking regardless 

of its proliferation in the sciences. The application of chaoplexic 

thinking within doctrine has nevertheless increased in recent years 

particularly within doctrine in the fourth school. Furthermore, some 

prominent concepts have been reinterpreted as employing chaoplexic 

metaphors. One example is the maneuverist approach. In this case, 

while it is acknowledged that key associated terms such as “friction,” 

“tempo” and “firepower” remain connotative of thermodynamics, the 

discussion of other ideas such as “uncertainty,” “disorder,” and even 

“complexity” clearly demonstrates the presence of chaoplexic modes of 

interpretation.32 The rise of this mode of thinking within doctrine will be 

revisited from an epistemological perspective in the next chapter.

Overall, from the scientific perspective it can be seen that each of 

the four scientific regimes identified by Bousquet has had a substantial 

influence on the development of concepts featured within the doctrine 

produced during the period of its epoch and that each of the regimes has 

left a noticeable conceptual legacy thereafter. As the emergence of each 
55

of the schools of doctrinal ontology has coincided with the dominance of 

a different scientific regime, the scientific undercurrents of the doctrine 

in each school can be seen to have expanded from the last. In light of 

this, it is possible to determine the existence an ongoing relationship 

between the progress of scientific endeavor on one hand and the content 

of doctrine on the other.

Doctrine, Military Bureaucracy, and State/Military Relations

The third perspective from which the relationship between the 

schools of doctrinal ontology can be analyzed is the bureaucratic 

perspective. Unlike the educational and scientific perspectives, 

analysis from the bureaucratic perspective is not linked to the writings 

of any particular individual. Instead, analysis from the bureaucratic 

perspective draws on various examinations of the rise and expansion 

of the modern state. It is posited that through this lens the expansion of 

doctrine can be seen to have paralleled crucial changes in the nature of 

the states that sustain modern military forces.

The emergence of the modern state, and for that matter of the statecentric international system in which modern militaries purport to 

operate, is contentious and alternate dates have been suggested. While 

those attempting to specify a precise date often cite the proclamation 

of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,33 others have argued that a gradual 

evolutionof the modern state occurred from the early 15th to the early 18th 

century.34 Regardless of which of these views one accepts, the modern 

state and the state-centric international system are both underpinned by 

the primacy of state sovereignty. Although the enshrining of this was a 

major component of the Peace of Westphalia, this does not mean that 

the modern state appeared overnight following its proclamation.35

Subsequent to its emergence as the primary political unit within the 

international system, the role of the state has progressively expanded in 

relation to society. As George Thomas and John Meyer expound, this 

expansion can be viewed as a mixture of the growth of jurisdiction, 

rationalization, and bureaucracy linked to an accelerating rate of 

institutionalization. The first of these facets includes the states’ early 

development of legal systems and taxation structures, the expanding 

scope of these, and more recently constructed apparatus such as national 

finance systems, citizens and civil rights, and the regulation of social 

activities. This has gone hand-in-hand with increasing rationalization, 

which Thomas and Meyer define as “the organization of social life 

within a unified frame of means and ends.”36
56

Bureaucracy has been the preferred mechanism for controlling 

the relationship between means and ends associated with increasing 

rationalization and for implementing the requirements of increasing 

jurisdiction. The increased scope and size of bureaucratic mechanisms 

in particular has been one of the most immediately visible elements 

of state expansion. Accompanying this has been an accelerating rate 

of institutionalization within Western society. In the latter half of the 

20th century, for example, this encompassed most prominently the 

expansion of public education and state-provided welfare mechanisms, 

closely linked to shifting conceptions of citizens’ rights in relation to 

state-provided services.37

Although they offer an excellent summary of the key elements of 

state-expansion, Thomas and Meyer’s account approaches the subject 

from a sociological rather than historical perspective. Hence, it remains 

somewhat ahistoric and a greater elaboration of a few key events is 

required.

The period following the Peace of Westphalia was dominated by the 

monarchic governance of European states, by the occurrence of “limited 

wars” and by the expansion of European power into newly-established 

colonies. The practice of warfare during this period remained limited 

to the conduct of war by permanent “volunteer” military forces that 

were officered primarily by members of the aristocracy. The role, 

scope, and modus operandi of the state and its institutions evolved 

slowly throughout this period, at least relatively to those preceding 

and following it.38 This was also the period in which the first school of 

doctrinal ontology emerged.

The revolutions in North America from 1774 to 1783 and France 

from 1789 to 1799 brought fundamental changes to the relationship 

between states and society. In particular, the concept of citizenship 

was drastically altered. After the revolutions, citizenship became 

universal and a new relationship between “the people” and the state 

was established wherein the people were subjected to increased state 

jurisdiction in exchange for an increased stake in the state itself.39 

This new relationship spread across Europe during the 19th century 

witnessed by increased nationalism on the part of the people and by 

increased jurisdiction, rationalization, and bureaucracy on the part of 

the state. It was against this backdrop that the vast conscripted European 

militaries that would eventually contest both World Wars emerged and 

that these militaries concurrently professionalized and bureaucratized.40 

It was also against this backdrop that the second school of doctrinal 

ontology first appeared.
57

Gradual expansion of the state continued into the 20th century, 

accelerating during the decades following the Second World War. As 

mentioned above, this encompassed most prominently the expansion 

of public education and welfare mechanisms as popular notions of 

citizens’ rights again expanded during this period. This is related to the 

expanding concept of human rights that was traditionally confined to 

civil and political rights (such as those granted by the Bill of Rights 

enshrined within the US Constitution), but which has more recently 

expanded to include economic rights (such as freedom from poverty 

and access to education) and social and cultural rights (to ensure the 

protection of culture and identity).41 As citizens have come to expect 

states to uphold these additional rights, state jurisdiction has increased as 

has rationalization and bureaucracy, and institutionalization has greatly 

expanded within areas such as education and welfare.42 English speaking 

Western militaries, now only one state institution amongst several, 

during this period have further professionalized and bureaucratized, and 

have returned to a voluntary model of service.43

Turning to the relationship between states and militaries, it is 

noteworthy that modern militaries have existed as a recognizable 

institution since the 16th century, about the same time that the modern state 

itself came to exist.44 The evolution of these two entities is inextricably 

linked, with militaries constituting one of the oldest institutions of the 

state. While still a newly-emerged institution, militaries naturally began 

to develop their own institutional discourse, which consisted of written 

as well as other elements. In light of state expansion and the growth of 

bureaucracy in particular, the widening scope of written doctrine can 

be viewed as the gradual bureaucratization of the military’s dominant 

institutional discourse.

Just as the appearance of the first and second schools of doctrinal 

ontology coincided with certain key aspects of state emergence 

and expansion, so too did the third and fourth. The singular explicit 

ontology of doctrine in the third school can be viewed as the translation 

into writing of what had, by the latter part of the 20th century, become 

the dominant idealized model of the state/military relationship.45 In this 

relationship, militaries exist within the international arena and their 

purpose is to deter or defeat the conventional military forces of other 

states.46

The circumstance of the emergence of this school is significant. 

The US Army, where this school of doctrinal ontology originated (at 

least within English speaking militaries), had recently emerged from 
58

a guerrilla war against an unconventional enemy force, was seeking to 

refocus itself on what it considered to be its core business,47 and was 

also attempting to address major challenges to its hitherto longstanding 

institutional and bureaucratic norms.48 By making its dominant 

institutional ontology explicit in writing, the Army’s jurisdiction as a 

bureaucratic organization and subset of the state was clearly defined and 

its legitimacy within American society resultantly increased (or, perhaps 

more accurately, was restored to something akin to its pre-Vietnam 

status). The US Army’s success in this regard may partially explain the 

subsequent spread of this school to other military organizations, which 

sought to emulate its success.

In the period following the Cold War, the ontology defined within 

the third school was challenged both by the removal of the Soviet 

military threat to the West and by the proliferation of military activities 

other than conventional war. As they were called upon to undertake an

increasing variety of activities including most notably peace enforcement 

missions and the provision of humanitarian assistance, English speaking

western militaries were also challenged by post-Cold War budgetary 

pressures.49 Not only were the perceived role of military institutions and

their jurisdiction in relation to that of the state shifting but the military 

bureaucracy was coming under increasing pressure from the state to 

justify its ongoing institutional legitimacy.50 In this environment, there 

was a need for the military to again expand the scope of its institutional 

discourse and doctrine in the fourth school emerged to fill the void.

Viewed from the bureaucratic perspective, it can thus be determined 

that each of the schools of doctrinal ontology emerged either as a 

result of state expansion (the first and second) or because militaries—

understood to be bureaucratic institutions of the state—were acting to 

either increase or maintain their legitimacy (the third and fourth). It is 

therefore unsurprising that the expansion of the modern state, of modern 

military institutions, and of the scope of written doctrine, has occurred 

concomitantly.

Doctrine and Ontological Realism

When examined together, the educational, scientific, and bureaucratic 

perspectives reveal that the relationship between the schools of doctrinal 

ontology is complicated and multifaceted. Returning to the definition of 

doctrine given at the opening of this monograph—that doctrine is the 

most visible expression of a military’s belief system—it can now be 

concluded that this belief system has been shaped by an interwoven 

mixture of trends that are inherent within western society itself. It is 
59

further evident that the ontology underlying written doctrine (and for 

that matter whether doctrine has taken written or verbal form) is related 

to the institutional evolution of modern militaries. Changes in doctrinal 

taxonomies have resulted from, and have in turn influenced, concurrent 

military expansion, professionalization, and bureaucratization. The 

nature of these changes has been strongly influenced by emerging 

technologies and by dominant scientific and sociological paradigms.

It is worth pausing at this juncture also to recall that ontology is

the examination of the nature of being and of the first principles—or 

categories—involved. It is concerned with the formulation of taxonomies 

that enable an understanding of relationships between objects to be 

reached. Analysis to this point has established the existence of four 

distinct ontological schools of doctrine, has discussed the taxonomies 

identified within each, and has elaborated the significance of their 

evolution in relation to broader trends.

Before moving onto the next chapter, a final observation about 

ontology is required. The difference between each of the four schools of 

doctrinal ontology is evident most clearly in the scope of their content,

which incrementally, but also greatly, expands between the first and 

fourth schools. Despite this difference, it is also noteworthy that all of 

the schools have traditionally been linked by the single ontological 

assumption that reality exists, regardless of how individuals may 

perceive (or fail to perceive) its existence. Because of this, doctrine is 

fundamentally realist—an ontological perspective that emphasizes that 

the world beyond human cognition is structured and tangible regardless 

of whether or not humans perceive and label it. This perspective is often 

contrasted with nominalism, which emphasizes that the identification 

and labeling of structures is fundamentally necessary for establishing 

their existence. Without labels, reality remains unstructured.51

The appeal of ontological realism to militaries is understandable. 

Military practitioners are frequently required to venture into harm’s 

way where they may be hurt or even killed regardless of whether they 

understand, or have labeled, the relationships they are encountering.52 

This notwithstanding, militaries are prolific labelers and the concepts 

featured in doctrine can be viewed as a means of labeling objects, 

structures, and the relationships between them. Given the military 

tendency to ontological realism, this is done not to create reality but 

in an effort to come to an understanding of how it works, the ultimate 

aim being to subsequently manipulate it in order to achieve a desired 

outcome (victory).
60

Notes

1. Thomas E. Sheets, “Training” and “Educating” Marine Corps Officers 

for the Future, unpublished monograph: U.S. Army War College, April 1992, pp. 

4-6, available from http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a249432.pdf, accessed 

on September 30, 2012.

2. Alan Okros, Leadership in the Canadian Military Context, Canadian

Forces Leadership Institute Monograph 2010-01, Canada: Canadian Forces 

Leadership Institute, November 2010.

3. In this context, Okros uses the term “formation” to refer to both an 

individual’s official education and training, and to the accompanying informal 

process of socialization. Okros, p. 39.

4. Okros, Leadership in the Canadian Military Context, p. 39.

5. Okros, Leadership in the Canadian Military Context, pp. 40-1.

6. R. K. Taylor, “2020 Vision: Canadian Forces Operational-Level 

Doctrine,” Canadian Military Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, Autumn 2001, pp. 35-42.

7. John Childs, “The Military Revolution I: The Transition to Modern 

Warfare,” in Charles Townshend, ed, The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern 

War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 32-33.

8. Martin van Creveld, The Training of Officers: From Military 

Professionalism to Irrelevance, New York, NY: The Free Press, 1990, pp. 13-

16. The early history U.S. Military Academy at West Point presents another 

example of this tendency. See: Russell F. Weigley, “American Strategy from 

its Beginnings through the First World War,” in Paret, ed., Makers of Modern 

Strategy, pp. 413-8.

9. Azar Gat, A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment 

to the Cold War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, Bk II, pp. 285-6. 

English speaking militaries too followed this pattern. In the United Kingdom, 

the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, which delivered training for Royal 

Engineers and Royal Artillery officers, was inaugurated in 1741. Yet it was not 

until 1801 that the Royal Military College was opened, offering a course for 

future officers of less technical trades, primarily cavalry and infantry. Similarly, 

the opening of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1802 was preceded 

by the establishment in 1794 of a more limited course teaching engineering 

and artillery topics. Anthony Clayton, The British Officer: Leading the Army 

from 1660 to the Present, Edinburgh Gate: Pearson Education, 2007, pp. 57-

58, 72, 88; Brian McAllister Linn, The Echo of Battle: The Army’s Way of War, 

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007, p. 11.

10. The forerunner to these military institutes of “higher education” was 

established within France’s Ministry of War during the 1780s. The establishment 

of staff colleges in other European militaries was a gradual and erratic process, 

with the last major European power to open such a college being Russia in 1832. 

Van Creveld, The Training of Officers, pp. 17-67.
61

11. Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 212.

12. Antoine Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on 

the Battlefields of Modernity, London: Hurst and Co., 2009, p. 3.

13. Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, p. 4.

14. Deferring to Fritjof Capra, Bousquet defines a “regime” as a “social 

paradigm,” which is understood to be “a constellation of concepts, values, 

perceptions, and practices shared by a community, which forms a particular 

vision of reality that is the basis of the way the community organizes itself.” 

Capra, quoted in Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, p. 13. Of note, this 

definition is somewhat similar to Fleck’s concept of “thought communities,” as 

applied by Coombs (see: Coombs, “In the Wake of a Paradigm Shift”, p. 25). 

Both of these concepts are revisited in the fifth chapter.

15. Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, pp. 37-43.

16. Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, p. 58.

17. Linn, The Echo of Battle, pp. 200-1.

18. Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, pp. 64-85.

19. U.S. Army, FM 100-5 Field Service Regulations: Operations [first 

issued 1941]. Ft Leavenworth: U.S. Army Command and General Staff College 

Press, 1992, pp. 112-6.

20. Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare.

21. The conceptualization of the battlefield as linear appeared frequently in 

doctrine manuals in the second school right up until the latter third of the 20th

century. On the origins of the linear conceptualization of warfare, see: Lynn, 

Battle, chap. 4. Significantly, establishing that the battlefield is non-linear was 

at the forefront of the first manual in the third ontological school. Headquarters, 

Department of the Army, FM 100-5 Operations, Washington DC: U.S. 

Government Printing Office, August 20, 1982, pp. 1.1-1.2.

22. Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, pp. 93-119.

23. Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, p. 126.

24. Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, pp. 128-9.

25. Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 100-5, 1982, pp. 7.3-7.7.

26. Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 215.

27. Bousquet has borrowed this term from the earlier work of John Horgan. 

See: Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, p. 164.

28. One of the earliest examples of the implications of this paradigm being 

considered from a strategic studies perspective is: Steven R. Mann, “Chaos

Theory and Strategic Thought,” Parameters, Vol. XXII, No. 3, Autumn 1992, 

pp. 54-68.
62

29. Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, pp. 187-96. For details of 

Boyd’s Decision Cycle, see: Frans P. B. Osinga, Science, Strategy and War: 

The Strategic Theory of John Boyd, London: Routledge, 2007. Although the 

conceptual development of the Decision Cycle is revisited throughout, pp. 229-

32 are particularly pertinent. Boyd’s own graphical representation of the Cycle is

reproduced on p. 231.

30. Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare.

31. “The idea that victory depends on getting inside the enemy’s OODA 

‘loop’ has become commonplace in contemporary military literature, particularly 

in the network-centric variety, to the extent that it has become something of an 

incantation that is not always based on a consistent and faithful understanding 

of Boyd’s ideas.” Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, pp. 194-5. See also:

Osinga, Science, Strategy and War, pp. 5-6, which makes a similar criticism.

32. All of these terms have been sourced from: Headquarters, U.S. Marine

Corps, Marine Corps Doctrine Publication (MCDP) 1 Warfighting, 

Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 20, 1997.

33. See discussion in: Kalevi J. Holsti, Peace and War: Armed Conflicts 

and International Order 1648-1989, Cambridge Studies in International 

Relations No. 14, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 25-42.

34. Martin Wight, Systems of States, Leicester, UK: Leicester University 

Press, 1977, pp. 129-152.

35. Bruce D. Porter’s account presents a typical assessment: “The peace of 

Westphalia is often viewed as marking the birth of the modern European state 

system and the formal recognition of the concept of state sovereignty but this is 

far more evident in retrospect than it was at the time...The Thirty Years’ War did 

not render Europe modern overnight, but it accelerated the modernizing forces 

already unleashed by the Military Revolution and the Reformation.” Bruce 

D. Porter, War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern 

Politics, New York, NY: The Free Press, 1994, p. 72.

36. George M. Thomas & John W. Meyer, “The Expansion of the State,” 

Annual Review of Sociology, No. 10, 1984, pp. 468-70, quote p. 469.

37. Thomas & Meyer, pp. 470-7.

38. Porter, War and the Rise of the State, pp. 105-21.

39. Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1992, 

Oxford: Blackwell, 1992, pp. 107-114; Porter, War and the Rise of the State, pp. 

121-37, 243-57.

40. Porter, War and the Rise of the State, pp. 149-193.

41. These different types of rights have been labeled first, second and 

third generation rights. See: Anthony J. Langlois, “Human Rights,” in Martin 
63

Griffiths, ed., Encyclopedia of International Relations and Global Politics, 

Abingdon: Routledge, 2006, pp. 385-93.

42. Thomas & Meyer, “The Expansion of the State,” pp. 475-7.

43. Hal Klepak, “Some Reflections on Generalship Through the Ages,” in 

Bernd Horn & Stephen J. Harris, eds., Generalship and the Art of the Admiral: 

Perspectives on Canadian Senior Military Leadership, St. Catherines, ON: 

Vanwell Publishing, 2001, pp. 32-3.

44. Childs, “The Military Revolution I,” pp. 21-2.

45. Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and 

Leadership in Wartime, New York: The Free Press, 2002, pp. 225-9.

46. Cohen, Supreme Command, pp. 225-9.

47. Conrad C. Crane, Avoiding Vietnam: The U.S. Army’s Response to 

Defeat in Southeast Asia, Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, 

September 2002, p. 17.

48. The most fundamental of these was the institutional shift from a conscript-based to a volunteer force; however, the concurrent need to address major 

morale, discipline and drug problems constituted major bureaucratic challenges 

as well. Roger J. Spiller, “In the Shadow of the Dragon: Doctrine and the U.S. 

Army after Vietnam,” in Jeffrey Grey & Peter Dennis, eds., From Past to 

Future: The Australian Experience of Land/Air Operations, Canberra: Australian 

Defence Force Academy, 1995, pp. 15-6.

49. John Allen Williams, “The Postmodern Military Reconsidered,” in 

Charles C. Moskos, John Allen Williams & David R. Segal, eds., The Postmodern 

Military: Armed Forces After the Cold War, New York, NY: Oxford University 

Press, 2000, pp. 267-8.

50. Williams, pp.265-7.

51. Gibson Burrell & Gareth Morgan, Sociological Paradigms and 

Organisational Analysis: Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life, 

Portsmouth: Heinemenn, 1979, p. 4.

52. A detailed study of the ontological perspectives and assumptions of military 

practitioners is absent from the existing literature. As a consequence of this void, the 

assertion made here is based on a dual assessment from an ontological perspective 

of the content and application of doctrine, and of existing studies of military and 

Service culture. Works addressing the latter include: Carl H. Builder The Masks 

of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis, Baltimore, MD: John 

Hopkins University Press, 1989; Allan D. English, Understanding Military Culture: 

A Canadian Perspective, Montreal, QC: McGill-Queens University Press, 2004. 

65

Chapter 4

The Epistemology of Doctrine

Having now explored the nature of doctrinal ontology, this 

monograph shifts its focus to the epistemology of doctrine. To this end, 

the first section of this chapter determines that positivism, an approach 

characterized by (self-proclaimed) rationality and objectivity, has 

provided the epistemological foundation of doctrine for the first 400 

years of its existence. As such, examples of positivist approaches abound 

within doctrine and include most measurable, quantifiable, or linear 

processes, such as that used to determine when a soldier has qualified on 

a weapon system or even the military planning process itself.

While positivism remains dominant, since the start of the 21st century

anti-positivism, emphasizing relativity and subjectivity, has begun to

influence doctrine, signaling what is perhaps the most salient change 

in the nature of written doctrine since its inception. The emergence of 

this new epistemological approach is chronicled in the second section 

of this chapter. The third section then discusses the situation that led 

to the emergence of the most prominent manifestation of this new 

epistemological approach to date – the “design” concept featured in 

several recent US Army, Marine Corps, and joint doctrine manuals.

Although anti-positivist approaches have already shaped 

contemporary operational conduct, the epistemological shift to antipositivism is still in its infancy and concepts such as design have been the 

subject of much recent debate. The state of the debate surrounding deign 

in particular is summarized in the final section of this chapter and from 

this it becomes clear that anti-positivist approaches have yet to reach 

their full potential.1

Doctrine’s “Traditional” Epistemology: Military Positivism

Given the consistency with which doctrine has reflected ontological 

realism, it is unsurprising that its epistemology also remained constant 

from the 17th to the 20th centuries. Its epistemological approach is 

positivism, the key aspects of which require explanation. The term 

“positivism” was coined by philosopher Auguste Comte in the mid-19th 

century and his work subsequently “played a significant role in shaping 

the emerging social sciences in the latter half of the 19th century”—the 

period during which the second school of doctrinal ontology was in its 

adolescence. The origins of the positivist approach, however, are in the 

Enlightenment, an intellectual era that ran approximately from the late 

17th century to the conclusion of the 18th century.2
66

The key intellectual facets of the Enlightenment were fourfold. First,

was the belief that the functioning of the world as a whole, including all of 

its components regardless of size or consequence, was subject to a single

set of overarching laws that could be discovered and understood by man.

Second, man was capable of both individual and societal improvement.

Third, there were several compatible goals such as justice, happiness,

liberty, knowledge, and virtue, which all men sought. Finally, as human

progress was possible, these goals were obtainable. That they had not yet

been obtained was the result of ignorance of either the goals themselves

or the means of achieving them and this ignorance was a product of the

failure of man to recognize and understand the universal laws governing

the world.3

Importantly for the subsequent development of epistemological 

positivism, the intellectual viewpoint of the Enlightenment established

that man was a rational actor, capable of coming to a logical reasoned

understanding of the world around him.4 In making positivism explicit, 

Comte’s determination that valid knowledge could be obtained through a

combination of initial observation and subsequent reasoning reveals the

link between his outlook and that of the intellectuals of the Enlightenment.5

At risk of over-simplification, the methodology advocated by 

positivism (as developed by Comte as well as numerous subsequent 

scholars)6 can be summarized as one in which the subjects of study should 

be observed from a neutral viewpoint with the results of observation 

subsequently being assessed in a rational objective manner in order 

to allow the researcher to determine the universal laws governing the 

relationships between them. Advocates of positivism, including Comte 

himself, have asserted that this approach should be applied not only 

within the natural sciences but also within the social sciences and 

humanities where the discovery of universal laws would facilitate their 

subsequent application to selectively alter social conditions so as to bring 

about desired changes to a society.7

The impact of positivism on doctrine development has been 

described by Christopher Paparone, whose brief typology offers one of 

the few available examinations of doctrinal epistemology (although he 

noticeably avoids using the term “epistemology” itself). Asserting that 

“positivism served the foundation [sic] of traditional, post-WW II US 

doctrine,” he was quick to characterize this doctrine as “focus[ing] on 

reductionism, empiricism, linearity, mathematical logic, and predictable 

cause-and-effect relationships.”8 In light of discussion above, it can 

be determined that his assessment of the temporal and geographical 
67

locations of this doctrine was excessively limited – pre-Second World 

War doctrine also adopted positivist methodology and this methodology 

was far from limited to the US military.

Basing his analysis on a two-dimensional continual construct featuring

endurance (defined as the rate of change required to maintain doctrinal 

currency over time) on the horizontal axis and exclusivity (determined by 

the number of concepts featured in a manual) on the vertical, Paparone

identified a key difference between what he labeled “highly positivist” 

and “moderately positivist” doctrine.9 The key difference between these 

was their endurance—highly positivist doctrine changed less over time. 

Both types of doctrine were assessed as being highly exclusive, featuring 

only a few relatively simple concepts in each manual.

Given the relevance of Paparone’s work to this study, cursory though 

it may have been, it is worth recounting his description of each of these 

types of doctrine at length. Regarding highly positivist doctrine, he 

assessed that:

Doctrinal remedies (like independent variables) for a standing

list of problems (like dependent variables) can be expressed

in predetermined terms of tasks and standards. For example,

doctrine expressing how a Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine, or 

Coast Guardsman (military practitioner) must qualify on his or 

her assigned weapon can be quite effective...Effectiveness of 

[highly positivist] doctrine is assessed as much more objective

than subjective, using mathematical probabilities and measures

of effectiveness...Rule-based, sequential, well-oiled, machinelike command and control works well in executing this type

of doctrine...A “trade school” (basic and advanced individual 

training) approach is suitable for indoctrination of Soldiers in this

type.10

Although this description clearly applies to doctrine in the first ontological 

school (Paparone’s affiliation of this doctrine with a “trade school” 

teaching approach is akin to the description herein of first school doctrine 

as “technical manuals”), Paparone also determined that some of the

doctrine assessed by this study as falling within the second school fits the 

description of highly positivist. For example, “a view of the 1976 edition 

of Army FM 100-5 [Field Manual 100-5 Operations] (the precursor to 

3.0) could be categorized as a positivist doctrine focused on simplicity, 

linearity, and predictability.”11

Moderately positivist doctrine “is process oriented and requires 

well-controlled hard-science-like research methods to generate creative
68

hypothesis, identify critical factors (variables), and courses of action as 

well as plans for contingencies if things do not go as planned.”12 It is 

based on:

Rational decision-making processes or templated campaign

planning [that] might work well depending on factor analysis of 

such things as mission, enemy, time and troops available, and

terrain and weather... [Moderately positivist] doctrine prescribes 

processes rather than preset solutions (found in [highly positivist

doctrine]) and requires military staff practitioners with specialized

and practiced analytical skills where hierarchical (commandercentric) decision making works well...

...The dominant values that drive this type of doctrine are, like with

[highly positivist doctrine], associated primarily with exclusivity;

however, practitioners are much more willing to speculate on 

what can possibly happen outside the conventional organization

of “troop-to-task” and perhaps into the interagency realm...

moderately positivist approaches call for planned activities driven

by forecasted conditions. A “professional school” setting (like the 

traditional command and general staff college) is appropriate for 

training and educating Soldiers [to apply] this type [of doctrine]. 13

This description is applicable to the vast majority of manuals found in 

the second, third and fourth schools of doctrinal ontology.

That positivism can be identified in doctrine manuals that fit within 

all four ontological schools, and in countless manuals produced across 

the span of several centuries, are indicative of the pervasiveness of this

branch of epistemology amongst doctrine developers.14 This in turn is

representative of the institutional belief systems of the military forces 

that develop such doctrine manuals–warranted knowledge is that which 

can be mathematically measured when a subject is assessed from a 

neutral viewpoint.

The pervasiveness of doctrinal positivism is evidenced further in

the official definition of doctrine employed by many Western militaries, 

including the US military and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization 

(NATO) partners. The US definition, for example, is that doctrine 

constitutes “fundamental principles by which military forces or elements

thereof guide their actions in support of national objectives.”15 In this case, 

it is implied that there can exist a separation between an observer (military

practitioner/planner) and a subject (current or future military actions,

enemy actions, and/or the environment/situation). The term “fundamental
69

principles,” which is noticeably reminiscent of Enlightenment thinking,

is particularly important, as it assumes the existence of principles

themselves, which the observer (again, the military practitioner/planner) 

can determine when a subject (past military activities) is assessed from a

rational perspective.16 The addendum to this definition of the caveat that 

doctrine “is authoritative but requires judgment in application” constitutes

a nod to post-Enlightenment intellectual trends.17 However, this nod does 

not alter the definition’s underlying positivism, as the sound application 

of judgment presumes the conduct of rational thinking as a prerequisite.

The implications of this intellectual foundation have been the subject

of much recent analysis, although this has rarely been undertaken from an

epistemological viewpoint. The timing of the growth of this analysis has 

been driven by two factors. The first is the implications of the emergence 

of Bousquet’s fourth scientific regime or more specifically the growing 

application of chaos theory and complexity science within doctrine. The

second has been a response to the nature of the wars of the early 21st

century and the initial failure of doctrine to provide adequate guidance

for their prosecution. Both of these factors are explored in depth in the

next section but it is nevertheless necessary to mention them here as these

motives, particularly the second, provide an explanation as to why much

of the recent analysis of doctrinal positivism has viewed that positivism

negatively.18

For example, in one of the earliest critiques of doctrinal positivism,

the argument of which has since been echoed with increasing frequency, 

Steven R. Mann asserted that:

The revolution in strategy founded on a mechanistic ordering of 

reality has been frozen in place and the provocative doctrines of 

the last century have become the confining dogmas of this one... 

Not only does classical strategic thought seek to explain conflict

in linear, sequential terms, but it compels us to reduce highly

complex situations down to a few major variables.19

This critique highlights what is perhaps the most significant reason for the 

widespread adoption within doctrine of a positivist worldview. It posits 

the existence of determinable cause and effect relationships, provided

the variables involved can be identified and, preferably, quantified. In 

so doing, positivist methodology allows strategists and military theorists 

(and for that matter doctrine writers) to stipulate formulas that, if 

conceptually sound and correctly applied, should bring about military 

victory. Despite the recent criticism the application of positivism within 
70

military doctrine has attracted because of this very aspect of its nature, its 

approach was nevertheless well suited for fighting the increasingly-large 

scale and industrialized interstate wars that dominated the international 

system from the time of the Peace of Westphalia until very recently.

Twenty-First Century Doctrine: An Epistemological Shift?

As observed above, the number of critiques of “traditional” military 

doctrine (that founded in positivist epistemology) has grown in recent

years.20 Generally, these critiques are driven by one (or sometimes 

both) of two motives: the growing perception of a need to apply chaos 

theory and complexity science within doctrine; and the initial failure of 

positivist doctrine to provide adequate guidance for the wars of the early 

21st century. Of these motives, the former emerged over a decade before 

the latter, with the tentative application of chaos and complexity theory 

to military affairs initially occurring during the late 1980s.21

At the crux of the critiques from this perspective is the belief either 

that the international system is becoming increasingly complex, as is the

nature and role of warfare within it, or that we are becoming more aware

of its complexity. These critiques emerged to coincide with the end of the

Cold War and have become increasingly popular since. Mann’s argument 

has again become typical:

Traditionally, we see strategic thought as the interplay of a limited

number of factors, principally military, economic, and political.

More sophisticated discussions expand the set to include factors 

such as the environment, technological development, and social

pressures. Yet even this list fails to convey the full complexity

of international affairs...The closer we come to an honest

appreciation of the international environment, the more we must

confess that it is nonlinear and frustratingly interactive.22

Even within the realm of warfare, as opposed to the international 

system more generally, an increasing level of complexity has been 

observed in recent decades. Michael Evans, for example, determined 

that during the 1990s, warfare fractured into three varieties. These he 

identified as modern (encompassing conventional warfare between 

states), postmodern (encompassing peacekeeping and humanitarian 

intervention), and pre-modern (encompassing sub-state and trans-state 

warfare). While he attributed unique features to each, he also noted that 

these three varieties of warfare overlap and that the boundaries between 

them are easily obfuscated.23
71

In response to these observations, as early as the mid-1990s attempts 

to apply chaos theory can be discerned in a limited array of doctrine

manuals, most notably that of the US Marine Corps. In announcing the 

development of the new series of USMC doctrine manuals in 1996 (the 

Marine Corps Doctrine Publication (MCDP) series), Lieutenant General 

Paul K. Van Riper, then Commanding General of the Marine Corps 

Combat Development Command, asserted that the new series “will 

not simply codify conventional military wisdom but will expand the 

boundaries of doctrine by incorporating lessons from other disciplines 

including the new sciences. Specifically, the manuals will incorporate, 

as appropriate, the implications of chaos and complexity theory.”24 In 

particular, the manuals MCDP 1 Warfighting, MCDP 1-1 Strategy and 

MCDP 6 Command and Control have been credited for incorporating 

chaos theory and complexity science into USMC doctrine during the 

mid-1990s.25 This incorporation was, however, subtle, an approach 

to introducing new subject matter that was intended to avoid what

Christopher Bassford identified as “sales resistance” to the introduction 

of new paradigms into doctrine.26

Counterinsurgency, Design, and Anti-Positivism

Since the onset of the major wars of the 21st century, in particular

those in Iraq and Afghanistan, the willingness of military practitioners 

to accept the introduction of new paradigms into doctrine has markedly

increased. This is due mostly to the initial failure of positivist doctrine to

provide adequate guidance for the conduct of these wars, an occurrence

that brought criticism of earlier modes of doctrinal thinking into the

mainstream and which triggered doctrine writers to look for new solutions

to military problems.

The story of the emergence and evolution of this criticism has been

widely told. Notably, its scale and pervasiveness has been compared to

the “doctrinal renaissance” of the early 1980s, which itself had brought 

about the emergence of the third school of doctrinal ontology. Just as this

“renaissance” was the result of the US military experience in Vietnam, 

the initial criticism of doctrine as ill-suited to the wars of the 21st century

grew out of the experience of the early years of the War in Iraq.

As far as most of the popular literature is concerned, the most significant

manifestation of this criticism was the development and publication of 

the 2006 edition of the US Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency 

doctrine manual.27 Although its Army and Marine Corps manual numbers, 

FM 3-24 and Marine Corps Warfighting Publication (MCWP) 3-33.5 
72

respectively, indicate that this manual occupies a spot in the doctrine

hierarchy commensurate with manuals in the second ontological school,

the 2006 edition of Counterinsurgency incorporates elements of the

second, third, and fourth schools and therefore does not sit easily within

the extant ontological construct.28 Why this is the case warrants further

attention.

The situation leading to the development of this manual is now 

a familiar tale. In very brief summary, it begins sometime after the 

invasion and occupation of Iraq when a small but growing cadre of junior 

and mid-ranking US Army officers began to publically criticize the US 

military strategy being used there.29 At times, this criticism became 

outright dissent.30 Soon, this cadre was accompanied by a prominent 

group of retired general officers who also spoke publically against the 

US war strategy (this was later dubbed “the revolt of the generals”).31 

The core criticism leveled by both of these groups was that the Army 

was losing the war in Iraq because of its failure to adopt an appropriate 

counterinsurgency strategy.32

A period of further debate as to what might constitute the “right” 

strategy followed. As the debate widened, an eclectic mix of civilians rose 

to prominence alongside their military counterparts.33 By 2006, (then) 

Lieutenant General David Petraeus, whose tour of duty as Commander 

of the 101st Airborne Division in Mosul in 2003 has been widely credited 

as an early example of effective senior command in Iraq, became a key 

personality within this group.34 His posting in 2006 as Commander US 

Army Combined Arms Center gave him an opportunity to put forward an 

alternative military strategy for waging the war in Iraq.

This strategy was developed in close consultation with several of 

the officers and civilians who had previously expressed dissenting views 

about the prosecution of the Iraq war. It also involved an unprecedented 

level of collaboration between Petraeus and his USMC counterpart, 

Lieutenant General James Mattis, a cooperation that resulted in the 

manual being given positions in both the Army and USMC doctrine 

hierarchies. Updating the Counterinsurgency doctrine manual was the 

primary mechanism used to put forward the strategy with the writing 

team headed by a retired Army officer-turned-academic, Dr Conrad 

Crane.35

Published in December 2006, the immediate impact of the manual 

was unprecedented in scale. It was downloaded 1.5 million times in 

the month after it was posted on the internet by the Army and Marine 

Corps. It was reviewed in numerous forums that ranged from widely-
73

circulated periodicals such as the New York Times to the websites of 

Jihadist groups.36 Overall, it may possibly be the best known and widest 

circulated military doctrine manual ever published.

For the purposes of discussion herein, two components of its content

are especially important. The first was a discussion of “social network 

analysis.” Although included in an annex, this discussion was closely 

linked to the third chapter which addressed the role of intelligence in 

counterinsurgency operations, stressing the importance of building an

understanding the social, economic, cultural, religious, political, ethnic

and linguistic aspects of the operating environment as well as conducting

more traditional analyses of enemy forces.37 The annex discussing

social network analysis drew heavily on complexity sciences and chaos

theory directly engaging with the concept of the network that Bousquet

had identified as paradigmatic of the fourth regime (chaoplexity) of the 

“scientific way of warfare.”38 The Counterinsurgency manual translated

this abstract concept into something more tangible that could be applied

by military staffs to help them develop an understanding of societies,

cultures, and insurgent groups operating within (and between) them.

Second, the Counterinsurgency manual discussed “designing

counterinsurgency campaigns and operations” in its fourth chapter. The

significance of this is the incorporation of design thinking into doctrine. 

The chapter defined “design” by contrasting it to traditional military 

planning:

Design and planning are qualitatively different yet interrelated

activities essential for solving complex problems... Presented a

problem, staffs often rush directly into planning without clearly

understanding the complex environment of the situation, purpose 

of military involvement, and approach required to address the

core issues... Planning applies established procedures to solve a

largely understood problem within an accepted framework. Design 

inquires into the nature of a problem to conceive a framework

for solving that problem. In general, planning is problem solving, 

while design is problem setting. Where planning focuses on 

generating a plan, a series of executable actions, design focuses 

on learning about the nature of an unfamiliar problem.39

As Nagl noted in the introduction to the Chicago University Press edition, 

design was “a gift from the Marine Corps members of the writing team.”40

Although this may have been the case regarding the development of the 

Counterinsurgency manual itself, in fact the term’s origin in the military
74

vernacular lies with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), which developed 

a Systemic Operational Design (SOD) concept during the 1990s. This 

concept in turn drew heavily on design thinking and systems theory that 

had been developed within the social sciences and humanities as far back 

as the 1940s.41

Although the content of the 2006 Counterinsurgency manual

influenced several aspects of the 2008 edition of FM 3-0 Operations,

42 

the extent of the spread of design thinking is perhaps more indicative 

of the Counterinsurgency manual’s general acceptance within the US 

military. In addition to discussing design in the 2008 edition of FM 

3-0, the Army has included it in the 2008 manual FM 3-07 Stability 

Operations and in the 2010 edition of FM 5-0 The Operations Process.

43 

Outside of the Army, design has been elaborated in the 2010 edition of 

MCWP 5-1 Marine Corps Planning Process44 and in the 2011 edition of 

the joint manual Joint Publication (JP) 5-0 Joint Operation Planning.

45 

The inclusion of discussions about design thinking in this variety of 

publications, especially JP 5-0, indicates the concept’s institutional 

acceptance by the US military.

From an epistemological perspective, the inclusion of social network

analysis and design thinking within doctrine (as well as the USMC’s 

earlier discussion of chaos theory within certain manuals in the MCDP 

series) signal a move away from doctrine’s traditional positivism and 

towards an approach more akin to anti-positivism. Refuting the core 

methodology underlying positivism—i.e. objective assessment of the 

subject of study based on observation from a neural perspective—antipositivism instead determines that there can be no such thing as an 

“observer” when studying social phenomena (which include warfare, 

strategy, and most other areas of military endeavor such as the conduct 

of humanitarian operations as an example). Instead, “the social world is 

essentially relativistic and can only be understood from the point of view 

of the individuals who are directly involved in the activities which are to 

be studied.” Hence, “one can only ‘understand’ by occupying the frame 

of reference of the participant in the action.”46 To anti-positivists, there 

can be no such thing as an objective understanding of a subject of study. 

Understanding is instead inherently subjective.

Anti-positivism has an intellectual lineage dating to late 19th century 

thinkers including Max Weber and Wilhelm Dilthey. Unlike positivists, 

who assert that the same methodology can be applied in the natural and

the social sciences, Weber, Dilthey, and subsequent anti-positivists have

argued that the social sciences and humanities differ from the natural
75

sciences and therefore require a different methodology. The key reason

for this difference is that, contrary to the behavior of objects in nature,

human interaction is subject to subjective influences such as human will, 

thought, and emotion. These influences cannot by their nature be observed 

objectively and for that matter cannot be accurately quantified.47

Paparone’s typology is worth revisiting at this juncture as it is once

again one of the few available sources that explicitly addresses this

epistemological approach as it has been applied within doctrine. A word 

of caution is first necessary, however, since Paparone used the term 

“post-positivism,” which in the case of his discussion may actually be

a misnomer. Positivism, anti-positivism, and post-positivism are three

different branches of epistemology altogether. Founded in the writings

of Karl Popper, post-positivism differs from positivism as it rejects the 

existence of “truth.” It does not, however, dispute either the existence of 

objective judgment or the existence of a neural perspective in relation

to subject matter under assessment, which is where anti-positivism’s 

key dispute with positivism lies.48 The definition of post-positivism that 

Paparone gave in his typology seems to incorporate some aspects of both

post-and anti-positivism, and attempts to un-muddle this are hampered by 

a lack of references to his source material.49 Discussion below therefore

proceeds cautiously but nevertheless uses Paparone’s own terminology.

Paparone offered a brief analysis of the 2008 edition of FM 3-0 and of 

a Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) paper discussing design 

thinking that was published in the same year. The issue with nomenclature 

notwithstanding, he concluded that aspects of the 2008 edition of FM 3-0 

are “moderately postpositivist,” a newly-emergent doctrinal category. 

Rather than describing it’s subject matter categorically, as Paparone 

observed of positivist doctrine, moderately post-positivist doctrine 

“would call for viewing the world through overlapping continua...

this type of doctrine requires improvisation, mentally agility [sic], and 

collaborative military practitioners.”50 As an example of an “overlapping 

continua,” he cited the “spectrum of conflict” concept contained within 

FM 3-0.51

In his analysis of the TRADOC paper, which was not a doctrine 

manual but which would go on to influence doctrine, Paparone concluded 

that it is “highly postpositivist:”

Meaning in this doctrine type (perhaps this should be better named 

the “anti-doctrine”) is more contextual and fleeting because high 

complexity prohibits the ability to even imagine what is happening
76

or what will happen next. In this type, how we make sense is 

paradoxically “non-routine” where learning [is] ephemeral in a

real-time dynamic.52

In other words, this type of doctrine acknowledges that ideas that may 

work right now are unlikely to work even a short time into the future

and that no amount of planning will ever be able to accurately predict 

all possible consequences of any action taken. This type of doctrine is 

also difficult to apply due to a large number of interactive variables that 

must be taken into account and the prospects of military success are 

acknowledged as more open to the influence of chance, perception, and 

other subjective factors than they are in positivist doctrine. In essence, 

the advantage of this doctrine is that it allows those “inside” a situation 

to develop a greater understanding of the situation itself and of a greater 

proportion of the possible impacts of their actions.53 Although not directly 

mentioned by Paparone, doctrinal discussions of “design” fit into this 

doctrinal category, which (as elaborated above) is arguably more antithan post-positivist owing to its inherent subjectivity.

Debating Design: What the Proponents and Detractors Think

Unsurprisingly in a large organization such as the military, the

introduction of anti-positivist approaches into doctrine has not been 

without debate. Proponents of design and other concepts applying 

anti-positivist approaches have lauded their employment of non-linear 

thinking, problem framing and emphasis on the role of subjective factors 

such as culture, environment, interconnectedness, and adaptation.54 

Several papers by US military practitioners (particularly Army officers) 

have analyzed these concepts and offered interpretations, supporting 

concepts or guidance to assist with their application.55 Paparone (in 

addition to the typology discussed above) wrote a seven-part series of 

articles for Small Wars Journal which analyzed the applicability of design 

thinking to various areas of military endeavor including leadership, 

ethics, and planning.56

Those who detract from these approaches fall into one of two camps,

with those in the first camp being opposed to the concepts themselves. 

William F. Owen, for example, dismisses many of the terms used in 

systems thinking as “good old wine in shabby new bottles,” arguing that

the new concepts (and their terminology in particular) confuses what was 

previously well understood anyway without adding any value to military

operations.57 Offering a more refined analysis of the theoretical framework 

underlying systems theory, Milan Vego warns that its application by the 
77

military is doomed to failure. In addition to critiquing the concept itself, 

he offers in support of his case an analysis of the IDF’s problematic 

application of SOD during the 2006 conflict in Lebanon.58

In the second camp are those who feel that anti-positivist concepts 

are valid but that their application has gone, or perhaps inevitably 

will go, astray. The reasons underlying their concerns vary. Adam 

Elkus and Crispin Burke warn that although design is highly useful 

in framing operational and strategic problems, at the tactical level its 

vague language and acceptance of uncertainty may actually be counterproductive.59 In a similar vein, Alex Vohr observes that design is 

geared towards counterinsurgency operations, where time allows for a 

detailed understanding of a situation to be developed. He questions its 

appropriateness to conventional operations concluding that in this type of 

warfare, “problem framing runs the risk of ‘paralysis through analysis.’”60 

Greenwood and Hammes offer 10 criticisms of design thinking as applied 

by the US Army. Key amongst these is their assertion that design includes 

some of the key aspects of problem framing but either omits, oversimplifies, or misinterprets several others, hence severely constraining 

its potential to be effectively applied. Furthermore, they express concern 

that military culture may ultimately result in design thinking being boiled 

down to just another checklist, which would encourage the exact opposite 

of what design thinking sets out to achieve.61

Between the US and other English speaking western militaries, 

Fleck’s “thought collectives” (as identified by Coombs) appear to be 

functioning in the same manner as they have previously.62 In Australia 

and Canada, ideas shaped by chaos theory and complexity science have 

been featured in both doctrine and concept papers.63 Most recently, 

US design doctrine has been evaluated in military journals published 

in both countries leading one to hypothesize that it is only a matter of 

time before the concept appears in their doctrine manuals.64 Although 

the British Armed Forces do not yet seem to have debated design, they 

have nevertheless incorporated other anti-positivist ideas into their own 

counterinsurgency doctrine.65 They have also released a joint doctrine 

manual entitled Understanding, which they define as “the ability to 

place knowledge in its wider context to provide us with options for 

decision making.”66 The thought and analysis processes advanced by this 

manual are noteworthy because they occupy a similar position to design 

in relation to the military planning process. The manual also addresses 

an array of similar anti-positivist ideas including the impact of culture, 

judgment, and human nature on decision making.67
78

Despite this debate having served to highlight several areas where 

improvement is warranted, it can be concluded that a doctrinal experiment 

with anti-positivism has well and truly commenced. This indicates 

that the military belief system itself may be shifting substantially as 

a result of recent conflicts, particularly those in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Even if this is not the case, at the very least the belief system is going 

through a period of openness to new ideas. The significance and 

implications of this possibility are addressed in the next chapter.
79

Notes

1. These manuals include: Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 

5-0 The Operations Process, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing 

Office, March 2010; Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, MCWP 5-1 Marine 

Corps Planning Process, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 

24 August 2010; Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Department of Defense, JP 5-0 Joint 

Operation Planning, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, August 

11, 2011.

2. Phil Johnson & Joanne Duberley, Understanding Management 

Research: An Introduction to Epistemology, London: Sage Publications, 

2000, pp. 12-19, quote p. 19. The exact dates of the start and finish of the 

Enlightenment is the subject of ongoing debate. The earliest point at which the 

Enlightenment is identified as commencing is the publication of Isaac Newton’s 

Principia Mathematica in 1687, and the latest point at which it is identified 

as a dominant intellectual paradigm is shortly after the onset of the French 

Revolutionary Wars. Margaret C. Jacob, The Enlightenment: A Brief History 

with Documents, Boston: Bedford/St Martins, 2001, pp. 1-72.

3. This summary has been derived from the insight offered by Isaiah 

Berlin, as quoted in: Johnson & Duberley, Understanding Management 

Research, p. 13. Gendered language has been intentionally employed in this 

description as it reflects the highly-gendered nature of the intellectual discourse 

of the Enlightenment. It should also be observed that the intellectual discourse 

of the Enlightenment was shaped by discoveries in the mechanistic scientific 

regime identified by Bousquet. Indeed, the perception of the world as several 

component parts subject to a single set of overarching laws is metaphorically 

similar to the functioning of a clockwork mechanism. See: Antoine Bousquet, 

The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of 

Modernity, London: Hurst & Co., 2009, pp. 38-50.

4. Johnson & Duberley, Understanding Management Research, pp. 13-14.

5. For a discussion of the influences on Comte’s own intellectual development, as well as an overview of the impact of his writings, see: Gertrud

Lenzer, ed., Auguste Comte and Positivism: The Essential Writings, New York, 

NY: Harper & Row, 1975, pp. xvii-lxviii.

6. For a discussion of these writers, see: Johnson & Duberley, 

Understanding Management Research, pp. 21-27.

7. Auguste Comte, “Plan of the Scientific Operations Necessary for 

Reorganizing Society” [1822]. Reproduced in: Lenzer, ed., Auguste Comte and 

Positivism, pp. 57-61.

8. Christopher R. Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on the Cusp of Postpositivism,” Small Wars Journal, May 2008, available from http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/65-paparone.pdf, accessed on February 17, 

2011.
80

9. Additional results of Paparone’s analysis are discussed in the next 

section of this chapter.

10. Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on the Cusp of Post-positivism.”

11. Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on the Cusp of Post-positivism.”

12. Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on the Cusp of Post-positivism.”

13. Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on the Cusp of Post-positivism.”

14. This assertion is based on the author’s observations of themes present 

across scores of doctrine manuals produced by a half dozen or so Englishspeaking militaries, as well as translations of a few significant manuals produced 

by European militaries and many secondary source analyses of even more. 

Listing all of these doctrine manuals and related sources here would result in 

an unmanageably long endnote, so no attempt will be made to do so. Readers 

interested in more information about which manuals were consulted in making 

this assessment should note that all of the doctrine manuals referred to in the 

second and third chapters contain examples of positivist approaches to their 

subject matter. Furthermore, manuals in the second and third schools are more 

strongly and uniformly positivist than those in the fourth. Readers interested in 

further information about how they can access doctrine manuals are encouraged 

to consult: Bert Chapman, Military Doctrine: A Reference Handbook, Santa 

Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International, 2009.

14. There is a slight discrepancy in the wording of the U.S. and NATO 

definitions, but this is not substantial enough to impact on the underlying 

meaning, which is the same in both cases. Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Department 

of Defense, JP 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and 

Associated Terms, as amended through August 2009, p. 171; NATO, NATORussia Glossary of Contemporary Political and Military Terms, Brussels: 

NATO-Russia Joint Editorial Working Group, undated by promulgated online on 

June 8, 2001, p. 77, available from www.nato.int/docu/glossary/eng/index.htm, 

accessed on December 20, 2008.

16. The temporal relationship between the observer and subject is also

observed by Paparone, who determines that highly-positivist doctrine is 

“present-to-past” oriented, while moderately positivist doctrine is “present-tofuture” oriented. Unfortunately, he does not provide a great deal of detail about 

his reasoning in reaching this conclusion. Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on the 

Cusp of Postpositivism.”

17. For an overview of these trends, see: Azar Gat, A History of Military 

Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War, Oxford: Oxford University 

Press, 2001, Bk I, Pt 2, Bk II & Bk III. A more cynical observer might be 

forgiven for thinking that the caveat has been included as a disclaimer, in case 

the application of doctrine goes awry.

18. This criticism emerged within military circles about forty years after

critiques of positivism had become widespread within the academic community
81

during the 1960s. Johnson & Duberley, Understanding Management Research, 

pp. 27-36.

19. Stephen R. Mann, “Chaos Theory and Strategic Thought,” Parameters, 

Vol. XXII, Autumn 1992, pp. 56-57.

20. These critiques include: Mann, “Chaos Theory and Strategic Thought,” 

pp. 54-68; Gary R. Schamburg, Cloud Patterns: An Operational Hierarchy? 

Unpublished monograph, Fort Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military 

Studies, Academic Year 1994-5; H. R. McMaster, “On War: Lessons to be

Learned,” Survival, Vol. 50, No. 1, February-March 2008, pp. 19-30; Matthew 

Lauder, “Systemic Operational Design: Freeing Operational Planning from the 

Shackles of Linearity,” Canadian Military Journal, Vol. 9, No. 4, 2009, pp. 41-

49; Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on the Cusp of Postpositivism”; Christopher 

R. Paparone, “Design and the Prospects for Decision,” Small Wars Journal, 

November 2010, available online from http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/ 

journal/docs-temp/598-paparone.pdf, accessed October 2, 2012.

21. Some of John Boyd’s theories provide an early example of the 

application of chaos and complexity theory to military thinking; Mann’s “Chaos 

Theory and Strategic Thought” provides an early example of the application 

of chaos theory. For an early example of a book-length treatment of chaos 

theory, written during the mid-1990s and intended as an introductory guide for 

an audience of military practitioners, see: Glenn E. James, Chaos Theory: The 

Essentials for Military Applications, Newport Paper No. 10, Newport, RI: Naval 

War College, 1996. On the relationship between Boyd and chaos and complexity 

theory, see: Frans P. B. Osinga, Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory 

of John Boyd, London: Rutledge, 2007, pp. 52-127. Mann, “Chaos Theory and 

Strategic Thought,” p. 57.

22. Michael Evans, “From Kadesh to Kandahar: Military Theory and the 

Future of War,” Naval War College Review, Vol. LVI, No. 3, Summer 2003, p. 

135.

23. Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, quoted in Christopher Bassford, 

“Doctrinal Complexity: Nonlinearity in Marine Corps Doctrine,” in F. G. 

Hoffman & Gary Horne, eds., Maneuver Warfare Science 1998, Washington 

DC: Department of the Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, 1998, p. 9.

24. Bassford, “Doctrinal Complexity,” pp. 10-11; Adam Elkus, 

“Complexity, Design, and Modern Operational Art: U.S. Evolution or False 

Start?” Canadian Army Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3, Autumn 2010, pp. 57-58.

26. Bassford, “Doctrinal Complexity”, p. 11.

27. See for example: Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: General Petraeus and 

the Untold Story of the American Surge in Iraq, 2006-2008, New York: Allen 

Lane, 2009, esp. pp. 24-31.

28. The process of its development, although touted by some as unique 

due to the scope of its consultation both inside and outside of the military, was 
82

actually akin to the a mixture of the development process for third and fourth

school doctrine manuals. The scale of the consultation was similar to that which

occurred during the development of the 1982 edition of FM 100-5. On the 

development of FM 3-24, see: See: Ricks, The Gamble, pp. 24-31; John Nagl, 

“The Evolution and Importance of Army/Marine Corps Field Manual 3-24, 

Counterinsurgency,” Small Wars Journal Blog Post, June 27, 2007, available 

from http:// smallwarsjournal.com/blog/the-evolution-and-importance-ofarmymarine-corps-field-manual-3-24-counterinsurgency, accessed on April 5, 

2012.

29. Philipp Rotmann, David Tohn & Jaron Wharton, “Learning Under Fire: 

Progress and Dissent in the U.S. Military,” Survival, Vol. 54, No. 1, AugustSeptember 2009, pp. 38-41.

30. The most prominent example is a 2007 article by Lieutenant Colonel 

Paul Yingling, which asserted that “America’s generals have failed to prepare 

our armed forces for war” in Iraq. In making his case, he argued that U.S. Army 

generals “miscalculated both the means and ways necessary to succeed in Iraq,” 

that they “failed to adapt to the demands of counterinsurgency” and that “while

the physical courage of America’s generals is not in doubt, there is less certainty 

regarding their moral courage.” Perhaps most famously, he stated that “a private

who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a 

war.” Paul Yingling, “A Failure in Generalship,” Armed Forces Journal, May 

2007, available from www.armedforcesjournal.com/2007/05/2635198, accessed

on October 28, 2009.

31. Rotmann, Tohn & Wharton, “Learning Under Fire,” p. 41; Martin L. 

Cook, “Revolt of the Generals: A Case Study in Professional Ethics,” Parameters, 

Vol. XXXVIII, No. 1, pp. 4-15.

32. Rotmann, Tohn & Wharton, “Learning Under Fire,” pp. 31-48.

33. Most notably these civilians included David Kilcullen, Conrad Crane 

and Emma Sky, amongst many others.

34. Ricks, The Gamble, pp. 20-21.

35. Walter E. Kretchik, U.S. Army Doctrine: From the American 

Revolution to the War on Terror, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 

2011, pp. 260-264.

36. Nagl, “The Evolution and Importance of Army/Marine Corps Field 

Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency.”

37. Headquarters, Department of the Army & Headquarters, U.S. Marine 

Corps, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5 Counterinsurgency, Washington, DC: U.S. 

Government Printing Office, December 15, 2006, chap. 3. This reference (along 

with all subsequent references made herein) is to the content of the U.S. Army/ 

USMC edition of the manual, not to the subsequent Chicago University Press 

edition.
83

38. Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, pp. 163-184.

39. Headquarters, Department of the Army & Headquarters, U.S. Marine 

Corps, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5, paras. 4.2-4.3.

40. Nagl, “The Evolution and Importance of Army/Marine Corps Field 

Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency.”

41. William T. Sorrels, Glen R. Downing, Paul J. Blakesley, David W. 

Pendall, Jason K. Walk & Richard D. Wallwork, Systemic Operational Design: 

An Introduction, unpublished monograph: School of Advanced Military Studies, 

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, academic year 2004-5, 

pp. 7-13, available from www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA479311, 

accessed on April 11, 2012.

42. Kretchik, U.S. Army Doctrine, pp. 269-77.

43. Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 5-0 The Operations 

Process, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, March 2010, chap. 

3.

44. Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, MCWP 5-1 Marine Corps Planning 

Process, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 24 August 2010, 

chap. 2. A draft version of this new manual was released in August 2009. For 

a critique of the draft manual, see: Jonathan M. Stofka, Designing the Desired 

State: A Process and Model for Operational Design, unpublished Masters thesis: 

Marine Corps University Command and Staff College, academic year 2009-10, 

available from www.mcu.usmc.mil/Student%20Research/STOFKA%20-%20 

MMS%20Paper%20AY%202010.pdf, accessed on April 10, 2012.

45. Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Department of Defense, JP 5-0 Joint 

Operation Planning, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, August 

11, 2011, chap. 3.

46. Gibson Burrell & Gareth Morgan, Sociological Paradigms and 

Organisational Analysis: Elements of the Sociology of Corporate Life, 

Portsmouth: Heinemenn, 1979, p. 5.

47. David Goddard, “Max Weber and the Objectivity of Social Science,” 

History and Theory, Vol. 12, No. 1, 1973, pp. 1-22; Rudolf Makkreel, “Wilhelm 

Dilthey,” in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 

Summer 2012 edition, forthcoming. Available from http://plato.stanford.edu/ 

archives/sum2012/entries/dilthey/, accessed on April 13, 2012.

48. For post-positivism, there is no such thing as “truth” because nothing 

can ever be proven “true” beyond any doubt, no matter how small this doubt

may be. Even in instances where there is absolutely no doubt now, it cannot

ever be guaranteed that doubt will not appear sometime in the future. There 

is, however, such a thing as “false,” and valid knowledge is derived by the 

rejection of things that can be proven false and the retention of things that have 
84

not yet been (or cannot yet be) proven false. The means of determining that 

something is false can, however, be objective in nature. Johnson & Duberley, 

Understanding Management Research, pp. 27-33.

49. Paparone’s definition of post-positivism, given here verbatim, is: 

“Postpositivism is nested in the worldview that humans always are biased in

their ‘objective’ perceptions of reality; hence, this orientation permits going

beyond an empirical sense of reality (i.e. we can never be positive about the

way the world of military operations works). Postpositivism suggest that we can

only approach the truth of reality, but can never really explain it fully; hence, 

to appreciate the complexity of life we humans must learn to value multiple

perspectives. There can be no one best way of examining the complicated truth;

hence, interdisciplinary interpretations are necessary to study reality. Rather

than pursuing a quest for an objective, physical sense of reality, postpositivism

demands we have to make sense of it all (and accept that this sensemaking 

is subject to change). Postpositivism does not reject positivism outright, but 

subordinates the view” [original emphasis]. Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on 

the Cusp of Postpositivism.”

50. Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on the Cusp of Post-positivism.

51. This concept is located at: Headquarters, Department of the Army, FM 

3-0 Operations, Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 22, 

2008, chap. 2.

52. Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on the Cusp of Post-positivism.

53. 53. Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on the Cusp of Post-positivism.”

54. For example, see: Edward C. Cardon & Steve Leonard, “Unleashing 

Design: Planning and the Art of Battle Command,” Military Review, Vol. 90, 

No. 2, March/April 2010, pp. 2-12; Huba Wass de Czege, “Systemic Operational 

Design: Learning and Adapting in Complex Missions,” Military Review, Vol. 

89, No. 1, January/February 2009, pp. 2-12; Ketti Davidson, “From Tactical 

Planning to Operational Design,” Military Review, Vol. 88, No. 5, September/ 

October 2008, pp. 33-39.

55. For example, see: Celestino Perez Jr., “A Practical Guide to Design: A 

Way to Think About It, and A Way to Do It,” Military Review, Vol. 91, No. 2, 

March/April 2011, pp. 41-51; Xander Bullock & Bruce Vitor, “Design: How, 

Not Why,” Military Review, Vol. 90. No. 2, March/April 2010, pp. 102-108; 

Stefan J. Banach & Alex Ryan, “The Art of Design: A Design Methodology,” 

Military Review, Vol. 89, No. 2, March/April 2009, pp. 105-115.

56. For a list of articles in Small Wars Journal that have been authored or coauthored by Paparone, see: http://smallwarsjournal.com/author/chris-paparone, 

accessed on October 25, 2012.

57. William F. Owen, “Essay: The War of New Words: Why Military 

History Trumps Buzzwords,” Armed Forces Journal, November 2009, available 
85

from www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/11/4114043, accessed on April 17, 

2012.

58. Milan N. Vego, “A Case Against Systemic Operational Design,” Joint 

Force Quarterly, No. 53, 2nd Quarter 2009, pp. 69-75.

59. Adam Elkus, & Crispin Burke, “Operational Design: Promise and 

Problems,” Small Wars Journal, February 2010, pp. 16-17. Available from 

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/362-elkus.pdf, accessed on 

April 16, 2012.

60. J. Alex Vohr, “Design in the Context of Operational Art,” Marine Corps 

Gazette, Vol. 94, No. 1, January 2010, pp. 39-42.

61. T. C. Greenwood & T. X. Hammes, “War Planning for Wicked 

Problems: Where Joint Doctrine Fails,” Armed Forces Journal, December 2009, 

available from www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/12/4252237, accessed on 

April 16, 2012.

62. Howard G. Coombs, “In the Wake of a Paradigm Shift: The Canadian 

Forces College and the Operational Level of War (1987-1995),” Canadian 

Military Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2010, pp. 19-27. For a critique of design 

doctrine from a German perspective (published in English), which implicitly 

suggests that a military thought collective exists between the U.S. and each of its 

NATO allies, see: Christof Schaefer, “Design: Extending Military Relevance,” 

Military Review, Vol. 89, No. 5, September/October 2009, pp. 29-39.

63. For a summary of these developments, including an account of an

anomalous if temporary situation in which the Canadian and Australian armies 

embraced the idea of operational complexity without the usual reference to 

their larger allies, see: Aaron P. Jackson, “Moving Beyond Manoeuvre: A 

Conceptual Coming-of-age for the Australian and Canadian Armies,” Australian 

Defence Force Journal, No. 177, November/December 2008, pp. 85-100. See 

also: Australian Army, Adaptive Campaigning: The Land Force Response to 

Complex Warfighting, Version 4.18, reproduced as Appendix 2 to Scott Hopkins, 

ed., Chief of Army’s Exercise Proceedings 2006, Duntroon: Australian Army 

Land Warfare Studies Centre, 2006, pp. 143–171; Andrew B. Godefroy, ed., 

Land Operations 2021: Adaptive Dispersed Operations—A Force Employment 

Concept for Canada’s Army of Tomorrow, Kingston, ON: Directorate of Land 

Concepts and Doctrine, 2007.

64. For example, see: Lauder, “Systemic Operational Design,” pp. 41-

49; David L. Walker, “Refining the Military Appreciation Process for Adaptive 

Campaigning,” Australian Army Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter 2011, pp. 85-100.

65. These included reprinting the “paradoxes of counterinsurgency” section 

of the U.S. Army’s FM 3-24; instructions on “developing a narrative”; and a 

discussion of the role of conundrum. British Army, Field Manual Volume 1 

Part 10, Countering Insurgency, Army Code 71876, Warminster: Land Warfare 

Centre, October 2009.
86

66. UK Ministry of Defence, Joint Doctrine Publication (JDP) 04 

Understanding, Shrivenham, UK: Development Concepts and Doctrine Centre, 

December 2010, p. iii.

67. UK Ministry of Defence, JDP 04 Understanding, esp. chaps. 3-4.
87

Chapter 5

Significance and Implications

The nature, scope, and content of doctrine can only be fully 

understood in light of the intellectual context in which it is written. 

In addition to well-known influences such as military operations and 

national strategies, other lesser realized influences that shape this 

intellectual context include culture, both national and service; intellectual 

trends in the natural and social sciences, and in the humanities; the 

relationships between military institutions, states and societies; and a 

host of other factors.

Previous chapters have shed light on these influences through an 

analysis of the ontology and epistemology of military doctrine. This 

chapter builds on this analysis to address the significance and implications 

for contemporary military doctrine, strategy, and operations. Discussion 

proceeds in four sections, with the first asserting that a significant 

“paradigm shift” is currently underway regarding what constitutes an 

acceptable military belief system. The second section discusses possible 

directions in which military strategic and conceptual thinking may 

evolve in the near future. The third section discusses implications for 

the relationships between militaries and other agencies. In the fourth 

section, discussion turns to the benefits ontology and epistemology 

potentially yield for conceptual and terminological clarity.

Paradigm Shifts

As defined herein, doctrine is the most visible representation 

of a military’s institutional belief system. This belief system regards the 

accepted paradigms by which a military understands, prepares for and 

(at least in theory) conducts warfare. These paradigms are themselves 

corollaries of the perceptions a military has of its institutional role and 

legitimacy within broader society, hence these aspects of a military’s 

belief system are also discernible through its doctrine, albeit at a greater 

level of abstraction. For this reason, doctrine constitutes an institutional

discourse which is reflective of the dominant modes of military thinking 

during various epochs. Historical analysis, such as that conducted in 

previous chapters, offers insights into to how this belief system has 

changed over time.

From the analysis above, it can be seen that the nature of this 

discourse has undergone several of what Thomas Kuhn identified as 
88

“paradigm shifts.” A “paradigm,” as defined by Kuhn, exists amongst 

a community of scientific practitioners who base their research upon a 

“coherent tradition,” which encompasses “law, theory, application and 

instrumentation together”1

—what might otherwise be understood as a 

shared belief system.2 This coherent tradition provides a common set of 

rules and establishes accepted standards that form the basis for further 

research within the paradigm. From time-to-time, the coherent tradition 

is challenged, causing a “paradigm in crisis” followed eventually by a 

“revolution” that introduces a new paradigm and therefore establishes 

a new tradition.3

For doctrine, each of the four “schools of doctrinal ontology” 

identified above constitutes one such paradigm. The concepts and 

theories developed within the doctrine manuals constituting each 

school are analogous to the research undertaken within each of Kuhn’s 

communities of scientific practitioners with the different scope of each 

school representing the coherent tradition underlying this research. In 

line with Kuhn’s hypothesis, these traditions have undergone periods of 

“crisis,” leading to the emergence of a new school of doctrinal ontology 

and therefore establishing a new tradition.

There is, however, one important departure from Kuhn’s thesis. 

Kuhn determines that the emergence of a new paradigm will lead to 

the previous paradigm gradually disappearing. While this is true of 

certain concepts and theories that have appeared in doctrine, risen in 

favor to a pinnacle and then fallen out of favor and disappeared, it is 

not true of the schools themselves. Rather, each of the different schools 

of doctrinal ontology have continued to exist alongside one another, 

in this respect being more akin to the scientific “regimes” identified 

by Bousquet.4 Equating a regime to a “social paradigm,” Bousquet 

defers to Fritjof Capra, who defines it as “a constellation of concepts, 

values, perceptions, and practices shared by a community which forms 

a particular vision of reality that is the basis of the way the community 

organizes itself.”5 For Bousquet, the appearance and rise to dominance 

of one regime does not eliminate another but rather the two regimes 

come to exist alongside each other and may even be complimentary. 

This has certainly been the case with doctrine where paradigm shifts 

have exposed the limits of previous paradigms but have not rendered 

them either useless or antiquated.

Significantly, a paradigm shift appears currently to be underway. 

Furthermore, this shift is arguably the most pervasive to have occurred 

in 400 years of doctrinal history. The reason for this is that it is an
89

epistemological rather than an ontological shift. The emergence in 

recent years of concepts grounded in anti-positivism, in particular those 

related to chaos theory and the complexity sciences, are challenging 

existing doctrinal paradigms at a more fundamental level. These new 

concepts question longstanding assumptions made within all four 

schools of doctrinal ontology, for example by proposing that knowledge 

acquisition is subjective rather than objective, and by readily accepting 

and working within, rather than attempting to regulate around, remove, 

or simply ignore, the existence of metaphysical factors such as culture, 

chance, and human will.

This paradigm shift is far from complete, however. According 

to Kuhn, “during the transition period there will be a large but never 

complete overlap between the problems that can be solved by the old 

and new paradigm but there will also be a decisive difference in the 

modes of solution.”6 The existence at present of such a state of affairs is 

clear from the nature of doctrine manuals that incorporate anti-positivist 

approaches. As Elkus observed, these concepts are still the doctrinal 

equivalent of a “first draft” and numerous criticisms such as those 

summarized in chapter 4 will need to be addressed before the paradigm 

shift can be declared complete.7

There is also the possibility that the incorporation of anti-positivist

approaches into doctrine may turn out to be a flirtation rather than an 

actual paradigm shift. This possibility may come to fruition for any 

number of reasons. Perhaps, as Greenwood and Hammes observe, it may 

simply be beyond the institutional capacity of military organizations to 

accept such a fundamental variation to their world view.8 Alternatively, 

hitherto low-key critiques of Israel’s performance during the 2006 war 

in Lebanon may be yet to have their full impact on the US discourse and 

may ultimately serve to undermine the approach itself.9 In the US case, 

most anti-positivist doctrine came about as a result of its own wars in 

Iraq and Afghanistan. As these wars come to an end, another possibility 

is that doctrine writers may move away from them in favor of a return 

to more traditional approaches.10

A fourth potential reason is the changing nature of strategic challenges. 

As Elkus and Bourke contend:

...the complexity experienced in the context of new wars is 

mostly complexity generated by specifically American factors— 

grand strategic uncertainty, the growing doctrinal problem of 

“compression” and its relationship to a dysfunctional “whole 

of government” approach and geopolitical shifts in American 

strategic primacy.11
90

The implication of this contention is that should American grand strategy 

enter a period of renewed certainty, anti-positivism may well disappear 

from doctrine. The incorporation of design thinking into the 2011 edition 

of Joint Publication (JP) 5-0 Joint Operation Planning notwithstanding, 

anti-positivist doctrine in the US military has thus far been limited to 

the Army and Marine Corps. As the US strategic focus shifts towards 

the Asia-Pacific,12 the Navy and Air Force have recently developed an 

“AirSea Battle” concept for use in this theatre. This concept sits very 

comfortably within the third school of doctrinal ontology (even its name 

is immediately reminiscent of the main operating concept contained 

in the 1982 edition of Field Manual (FM) 100-5 Operations) and its 

underlying epistemology is unquestionably positivist.13

Despite this array of possibilities, historical precedence suggests that 

the new doctrinal paradigm will most likely solidify and eventually take 

its place alongside previous paradigms. Already the debate summarized 

in the previous chapter indicates that several of the issues yet to be 

resolved are under discussion in scholarly and military forums. Again 

historical precedence indicates that the result of these debates is likely 

to shape doctrine over the coming years and indeed, the state of the 

non-doctrinal debate is already yielding clues as to how anti-positivist 

doctrine may evolve in the next few years.

Possible Avenues for Doctrinal Evolution

By evaluating both the state of the debate about anti-positivist 

concepts and the evolution anti-positivism within existing doctrine, one 

can deduce several issues that still need to be addressed. Despite the 

difficulties that satisfactorily resolving these issues pose, addressing 

them will nevertheless be necessary before a paradigm shift can be said 

to have completely occurred.

One of the issues that will need to be addressed concerns the

appropriateness of the extent of anti-positivist doctrine. It has already 

been acknowledged that anti-positivist approaches are more applicable 

at the strategic and operational levels than at the tactical,14 however this 

debate may yet go a step further. In an influential monograph, Justin 

Kelly and Mike Brennan recently posited that “operational art” has now 

expanded to the extent that it has “devoured” several aspects of strategy. 

They call for operational art to re-focus on bridging tactical encounters 

and for a reassertion of strategy to fill all of the other areas currently 

absorbed by operational art.15 This has triggered renewed debate as to what 

the role and extent of the operational level of war and its relationship to 
91

tactics and strategy should be. It is possible that a reconsideration of this 

construct taking into account alternate epistemological approaches will 

emerge, leading tactics and (a constrained re-definition of) operations to 

be assigned to the realms of positivist doctrine and a reasserted strategic 

level to be assigned to that of anti-positivism.

A second issue concerns the means of translating understanding 

derived through anti-positivist approaches into practical results and 

to date, this area remains underdeveloped. Given that anti-positivism 

emphasizes subjectivity, it challenges the legitimacy of most if not all 

traditional mechanisms for measuring the results of military operations. 

In place of this, anti-positivism stresses the importance of perception: 

victory or defeat exists only as it is perceived by participants in conflict 

(be they friendly, enemy, civilians, or neutral fourth-party observers). 

Furthermore, these perceptions are likely to change over time and are 

unlikely to be “black and white.” How to work within this conceptual 

framework and where victory can never be considered as either 

“complete” or “total,” remains an issue to be resolved.16

Thirdly, the clarity of the nomenclature needs to be addressed. As 

things stand, several terms that imply anti-positivist approaches are 

routinely misapplied within positivist constructs. Perhaps the most 

common example of this is the tendency over the past decade or so 

for seemly every military problem to be labeled as “complex,” usually 

without any attempt to determine what this actually means or what its 

ramifications may be.17 This problem is the manifestation of the latest 

terminological fad, wherein the language of an emerging idea has been 

adopted without the doctrine writer being fully aware of, understanding 

or appreciating the idea itself. The same could be said for several 

other terms associated with anti-positivism, including (but certainly 

not limited to) “knowledge,” “understanding,” “adaptation,” and 

even “design,” which should more correctly be referred to as “design 

thinking.”18 Beyond doctrine, this is also a common problem within 

strategic policy and concepts.

Finally, there are two prominent “gaps” that need to be filled. First, 

there exists at present a “comprehension gap:” despite having developed 

an awareness of anti-positivist concepts such as design, many strategists 

and military practitioners are not yet aware of the epistemological roots 

of these concepts or of the implications of these roots. Second, there 

exists also an “application gap,” the bolting of anti-positivist ideas 

onto existing positivist ones has caused this. Both of these problems 

are epitomized by the current placing of design at the beginning of 
92

existing operational planning processes. A detailed assessment of the 

nature of anti-positivist concepts that takes explicitly into account their 

epistemology may yet determine that their application at the strategic 

or operational level requires a separate planning process than the 

application of other doctrine at the operational or tactical level and that 

a bridging construct is necessary between the two. In short, the further 

development of the new epistemological approach is likely to have a 

greater impact on doctrinal ontology than has yet been forthcoming.

Understanding Relationships

Another implication of the analysis herein concerns the ill-explored 

nature of the relationships between militaries and other actors. In the 

past few decades, there has been a growing discussion of the need for 

strategic and operational approaches that are “whole of government,” 

“interagency,” “multinational,” or some other term implying cooperation 

between militaries and other organizations.19 The employment of these 

terms indicates an increased awareness of the nexus of relationships that 

exist between militaries and other parties. The (in)famous “dynamic 

planning for counterinsurgency in Afghanistan” diagram perhaps 

constitutes the most extreme manifestation of this awareness.20 Yet for 

all the criticism this diagram has attracted, it is nevertheless an excellent 

example of the application of chaos theory and complexity science in 

attempting to solve a military problem.21

Anti-positivist approaches offer a new mechanism for understanding 

relationships between, and for that matter within, militaries. As observed 

above, the impact of service culture upon military conduct remains 

seldom-explored,22 as does the relationship between the militaries 

of different states.23 Both of these areas require further exploration 

especially in light of the emerging American strategic refocus on the 

Asia-Pacific region. Tentative steps have recently been taken towards a 

comprehensive reassessment of western (read English speaking in this 

instance) understanding of non- western military culture, history, and 

ideas.24 The application of alternative epistemological approaches, most 

notably those associated with chaos theory and complexity science, yields 

substantial potential for the conduct of a more significant reassessment 

of the nature of the military challenges in this region. Increased crosscultural understanding may, in turn, yield other potential sources to be 

tapped during future doctrine, concept, or even strategy development.

Closer to home, there has been another interesting development 

within the last decade. This monograph chronicles the expansion of 
93

written doctrine within western militaries over the course of 400 years. 

Within the last few years, military-style doctrine—specifically that which 

could be assessed as fitting within the fourth ontological school—has 

been released by other organizations. These include the United Nations 

and non-profit organizations, the latter of which have collaborated 

with the US military.25 These manuals have been labeled “doctrine” 

by their sponsor organizations and have been developed specifically 

to mimic their military equivalents. While the dissemination of ideas 

and concepts between militaries on one hand and non-government 

organizations, the business world, and academia on the other is not 

new, the creation of military-style doctrine by other organizations is. 

This attests to the legitimacy with which doctrine is now viewed as a 

mechanism for transmitting an institutional discourse. It also signifies 

that other organizations appreciate the appeal of doctrine to the military 

audience. The implication of this for enhanced interoperability cannot 

be overstated but due to the recentness of this development it is still too 

early to determine what its ultimate impact will be.

Conceptual and Terminological Clarity

Another significant implication of discussion herein is the realization 

that most of the factors that have affected doctrine development have, for 

most of the existence of doctrine, done so subconsciously. For English 

speaking militaries, it was not until the 1980s that they explicitly defined

their institutional ontology. Explicit discussion of military ontology 

and epistemology to date remains limited to a dozen papers or so. Yet 

awareness of these is of the utmost importance because:

how we come to ask particular questions, how we assess the 

relevance and value of different research methodologies so that 

we can investigate those questions, how we evaluate the outputs 

of research, all express and vary according to our underlying 

epistemological commitments. Even though they often 

remain unrecognized by the individual, such epistemological 

commitments are a key feature of our pre-understandings which 

influence how we make things intelligible.26

At the opening of this monograph, it was observed that contemporary 

militaries are suffering from a glut of buzzwords and imprecise or illdefined terms, ideas, and concepts. As a result, the number of terms and 

concepts that are vying for inclusion in doctrine are more numerous 

than ever before. An understanding of epistemology, and for that matter 

ontology, will give doctrine writers, strategists, statesmen, and military 
94

practitioners a hitherto untapped means by which to identify problems, 

propose solutions, and evaluate the worth of these proposals. Ultimately, 

this will lead to better doctrine and, if the rhetoric of the doctrine itself is

to be believed, will in turn translate into more effective military practice.
95

Notes

1. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed., 

Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1996, pp. 10-11.

2. Howard G. Coombs, “In the Wake of a Paradigm Shift: The Canadian 

Forces College and the Operational Level of War (1987-1995),” Canadian 

Forces Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2010, p. 20.

3. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, pp. 10-22, 84-91.

4. Antoine Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on 

the Battlefields of Modernity, London: Hirst and Co., 2009, p. 4.

5. Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of 

Living Systems, New York, NY: Anchor Books, 1997, pp. 5-6, quote p. 6.

6. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 85.

7. Adam Elkus, “Complexity, Design, and Modern Operational Art: U.S. 

Evolution or False Start?,” Canadian Army Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3, Autumn 

2010, p. 55.

8. T. C. Greenwood & T. X. Hammes, “War Planning for Wicked 

Problems: Where Joint Doctrine Fails,” Armed Forces Journal, December 2009, 

available from www.armedforcesjournal.com/2009/12/4252237, accessed on 

April 16, 2012.

9. For an example of a critique along these lines, see: Milan N. Vego, “A 

Case Against Systemic Operational Design,” Joint Force Quarterly, No. 53, 2nd 

Quarter 2009, pp. 69-75.

10. The abandonment of counterinsurgency theory within third and fourth 

school doctrine already appears to be underway, with future editions of the US 

Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine manual likely to be relegated to the second

school. Crucially for anti-positivist doctrine, however, this abandonment has not 

included design, which remains prominent within key doctrine manuals such 

as JP 5-0. Regarding the progress of what has been dubbed “the rise and fall of 

counterinsurgency,” see: Fred Kaplan, “The End of the Age of Petraeus: The 

Rise and Fall of Counterinsurgency,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 92, No. 1 (January/

February 2013), pp. 75-90.

11. Adam Elkus & Crispin Burke, “Operational Design: Promise and 

Problems,” Small Wars Journal, February 2010, p. 5, available from http://

smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/362-elkus.pdf, accessed on April 

16, 2012.

12. U.S. Department of Defense, Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: 

Priorities for 21st Century Defense, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing 

Office, January 2012, p. 2.

13. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Why AirSea Battle? Washington, DC: Centre 

for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2010; Jan van Tol, with Mark 
96

Gunzinger, Andrew F. Krepinevich & Jim Thomas, AirSea Battle: A Point of 

Departure Operational Concept, Washington, DC: Centre for Strategic and 

Budgetary Assessments, 2010.

14. Elkus & Burke, “Operational Design: Promise and Problems,” pp. 16

15. Justin Kelly & Mike Brennan, Alien: How Operational Art Devoured 

Strategy, Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, September 2009.

16. Although it does not employ an anti-positivist methodology, an 

excellent exploration of some of the issues surrounding the differences between 

perceptions and realities of “victory” is offered in: Ian Bickerton, The Illusion of 

Victory: The True Costs of War, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2011.

17. Bousquet addresses this problem in far greater detail by means of 

conducting a comprehensive critique of the Network Centric Warfare concept. 

Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare, pp. 215-33.

18. David L. Walker, “Refining the Military Appreciation Process for 

Adaptive Campaigning,” Australian Army Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter 2011, 

pp. 96-98.

19. A decade earlier, the vogue term under discussion was “joint,” the 

impetus then being to foster cooperation and collaboration between different 

services of a single military. This approach has arguably been so successful 

at the term “joint” is now generally accepted, and joint approaches to military 

endeavors are commonplace.

20. PA Consulting Group, Dynamic Planning for Counterinsurgency 

in Afghanistan, PowerPoint Presentation, dated 2009, available from http://

msnbcme- dia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/Afghanistan_

Dynamic_Plan- ning.pdf, accessed on May 1, 2012.

21. For an excellent short presentation on how to understand the utility of 

the diagram, see: Eric Berlow, How Complexity Leads to Simplicity, TED: Talks 

in Less Than Six Minutes, July 2010, available from www.ted.com/talks/eric_ 

berlow_how_complexity_leads_to_simplicity.html, accessed on May 15, 2012.

22. The few explorations undertaken to date include: Carl H. Builder The 

Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis, Baltimore, 

MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1989; Allan D. English, Understanding 

Military Culture: A Canadian Perspective, Montreal, QC: McGill-Queens 

University Press, 2004.

23. Coombs’ application of Fleck’s “thought collectives” to Canada’s 

adoption of the “levels of war” construct presents a rare example of an analysis 

of this relationship, albeit that his study is both geographically and temporally 

limited. Coombs, “In the Wake of a Paradigm Shift”, pp. 19-27.

24. Most prominently, see: Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern 

War Through Western Eyes, London: Hirst & Co, 2009.
97

25. United Nations (UN) Department of Peacekeeping Operations, United 

Nations Peacekeeping Operations: Principles and Guidelines, New York, NY: 

United Nations, January 18, 2008; United States Institute of Peace & U.S. 

Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, Guiding Principles for 

Stabilization and Reconstruction, Washington, DC: United States Institute of 

Peace, 2009.

26. Phil Johnson & Joanne Duberley, Understanding Management 

Research: An Introduction to Epistemology, London: Sage Publications, 2000, p. 

1.

99

Chapter 6

Conclusion

Defining military doctrine as expressive of a military’s “belief 

system,” this monograph has conducted an examination of the expansion 

and significance of its written form. This examination occurred first 

through an ontological and subsequently through an epistemological 

lens and links have been established between doctrine on one hand and 

professional military education, scientific discovery, the growth of the 

modern state, the increasing institutionalization and bureaucratization 

of society, and the evolution of thinking within philosophy and the 

social sciences on the other. From this examination, it is discernable 

that military doctrine is a product of its environment. It’s a belief system 

that has been shaped, often subconsciously, by a diverse and seldom 

acknowledged array of factors.

The ontology of doctrine can be divided into four schools that can 

be labeled the technical manual, tactical manual, operational manual, 

and military strategic manual schools. The delineation of doctrinal 

ontology into these schools is based on three factors. First, the scope of 

the content and the intended audience broadens from one school to the 

next. Second, the manner in which manuals in each of these schools is 

applied varies, with the schools being respectively applied as instruction 

manuals, training aids, guidance and as an instrument for analysis.

Third, each manual has a different type of relationship to a 

military’s accepted institutional ontology. Manuals in the first school 

do not engage with this ontology at all, focusing instead on describing 

micro- level processes in isolation from outside factors. Manuals in the 

second school offer only an implicit ontology. Those in the third offer 

an explicit ontology, which initially viewed militaries as subordinate to 

the state and as narrowly tasked with undertaking operations to defeat 

the (conventional) military forces of other states. Although recognition 

of the military’s subordination to the state has remained central within 

this school, the range of military tasks envisioned has since expanded 

to include several other roles (including irregular warfare and a variety 

of operations other than war) and the various relationships militaries 

have with other organizations (both government and non-government) 

are now also addressed. Manuals in the fourth school are often used 

as a means to examine ontological questions, posing answers to these 
100

by way of establishing very general principles or a core conceptual 

framework for military activities.

The relationship between each of the schools is complicated and 

multi-faceted. It is also somewhat blurred and some manuals exhibit 

characteristics attributable to multiple schools. Despite this, the division 

of doctrine into four ontological schools is a useful mechanism for 

examining its evolution over time. When this evolution is examined from 

educational, scientific, and bureaucratic perspectives, the relationship 

between military doctrine, the institutional development of militaries 

themselves, and the changing nature of their relationship with society, 

is elucidated. Given that ontology examines the nature of being and the 

taxonomies used to define reality, it is unsurprising that the evolution of 

doctrine has been closely linked to these relationships.

Yet even as doctrine has evolved into each of the four schools, it has 

consistently been underpinned by ontological realism, a perspective that 

emphasizes that the world beyond human cognition is structured and 

tangible regardless of whether or not humans perceive and label it. The 

taxonomies propounded in doctrine have not been about defining and 

structuring reality. Rather, they have been about understanding reality 

and ultimately manipulating it, the intent being to achieve military 

victory as efficiently as possible. Where doctrine fails to sufficiently 

address a military’s ontology or where the taxonomies that constitute 

that ontology are inappropriate, adherence to doctrine can potentially 

create a dissonance between tactical means and strategic ends, as 

doctrine becomes susceptible to providing ill-suited guidance when 

faced with situations outside of its remit.

Accompanying doctrine’s ontological realism has been its positivist 

epistemology. This epistemology advocates a methodology wherein the 

subject of study (warfare) should be observed from a neutral viewpoint, 

with the results of the observation subsequently being assessed in a 

rational, objective manner. This allows the assessor to determine the 

universal laws governing relationships and, using this knowledge, 

to subsequently manipulate these relationships to achieve a desired 

end state (victory). By its nature this doctrine focuses on linear and 

therefore predictable cause- and-effect relationships. It is both logical 

and reductionist in its outlook. Its advantage is that it allows military 

practitioners to establish processes, both rigid (such as doctrine 

describing how to employ a weapons system) and flexible (such as 

doctrine detailing a military planning process). These processes are 

relatively easy to comprehend and follow, even in instances where 
101

departure from them may be encouraged in certain situations. The 

institutional belief system represented by this doctrine is one in which 

warranted knowledge is that which can be mathematically measured 

from an objective position.

Presently, doctrine may be (to paraphrase both Paparone and Kuhn) 

on the cusp of a paradigm shift.1 This shift involves the emergence of 

doctrine based upon anti-positivist epistemology. Disputing the existence 

of objectivity altogether, anti-positivism emphasizes that everything 

is relative and that any attempt come to an understanding can only be 

undertaken from the perspective of a participant. All understanding is 

therefore inherently subjective and is affected by several intangible 

factors such as chance, perception, and human will. It is considered 

difficult if not impossible to accurately determine cause-and-effect 

relationships due to the concurrent interaction of multiple variables. 

Although more difficult to understand and apply, anti-positivist doctrine 

offers those who successfully do so the prospect of developing a greatly 

enhanced understanding of the situation they are facing and of the 

consequences of their actions, especially at the strategic and operational 

levels. “Design,” featured in manuals such as the 2006 edition of Field 

Manual (FM) 3-24 Counterinsurgency and the 2011 edition of Joint 

Publication (JP) 5-0 Joint Operation Planning, is an example of the 

application of anti-positivism within doctrine.

It must be emphasized that the shift to anti-positivism is still 

embryonic, having commenced at most a few decades ago. The shift 

may therefore turn out to be a chimera, especially given the longstanding and entrenched nature of positivist military thinking and antipositivism’s relative difficulty to grasp. Indeed, current doctrine appears 

to graft anti- positivist concepts onto existing positivist ones, without 

deference to the epistemological confusion—and resultant conceptual 

perversion—that this causes. The conduct of a more detailed assessment 

of this new doctrinal paradigm from an epistemological perspective 

would be highly useful in determining whether to further develop or 

to abandon anti-positivist approaches. At best, their continued ad hoc 

application will translate into sub-optimal operational and, resultantly, 

strategic outcomes. Such an assessment may also assist as a mechanism 

for pruning existing concepts that either muddle these competing 

epistemological approaches or which use the language of one but the 

substance of another.

Ultimately, however, understanding the epistemology of military 

doctrine is important for far broader reasons. Doctrine, expressive of a 
102

military’s institutional belief system, is a gauge for the way militaries 

view their role and therefore their institution, in relation to the states 

and societies that sustain them. The emergence of each new school of 

doctrinal ontology and more recently the inclusion of anti-positivist 

concepts within doctrine, indicate changes in a military’s institutional 

understanding of its relationship with state and society. These changes 

have occurred for one of two reasons. First, formal (written) recognition 

of the military’s role has replaced previously informal (verbal or 

implicit) recognition. Second, following the conclusion of the Cold 

War, changes in what states and societies expected of their militaries led 

these militaries to re-evaluate their role altogether.

This belief system also explains why a military may prefer a certain 

type of strategic approach and why it plans and conducts operations 

the way it does. The incorporation of anti-positivist approaches into 

doctrine has been partly due to the initial failure of positivist strategies 

and tactics during the wars of the early 21st century. The proliferation of 

new, anti-positivist doctrine, in particular the 2006 edition of FM 3-24, 

was accompanied by a change in overall strategy, which had a positive 

effect on the outcome of the war in Iraq in particular. This example 

illustrates the epistemological link between strategy and tactics on one 

hand and doctrine on the other.

The broad range of influences on military doctrine discussed in this 

monograph demonstrate that for most of its 400 year history, most of 

the factors that have influenced doctrine development have been at best 

implicitly understood and at worst not understood at all. The ontological 

and epistemological consideration of doctrine undertaken herein has 

helped to shed light on these influences. Since everyone adheres to a 

set of ontological and epistemological beliefs, whether they realize it 

or not, the advantage to military practitioners, strategists, statesmen, 

and doctrine writers of recognizing and understanding these beliefs is 

that better doctrine, better strategy, and ultimately better operational 

performance, will inevitably come of it.
103

Note

1. Christopher R. Paparone, “FM 3-0: Operations on the Cusp of 

Postpositivism,” Small Wars Journal, May 2008, available from http://

smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs/temp/65-paparone.pdf, accessed on 

February 17, 2011; Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd 

ed., Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1996, pp. 10-11.

105

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Author Biography

Dr Aaron P. Jackson is a Doctrine Desk Officer at the Australian 

Defence Force (ADF) Joint Doctrine Centre. In this appointment 

he has been project manager and/or lead author of six doctrine 

publications, including Australian Defence Doctrine Publication 

(ADDP) 00.1—Command and Control, edition 2, and ADDP 5.0—

Joint Planning, edition 2. He has also contributed in various ways 

during the development of fifteen other joint doctrine and related 

publications, including interagency projects such as the Guide to 

Defence and Australian Federal Police (International Deployment 

Group) Interoperability for Offshore Operations, for which he was 

the ADF’s primary representative and key content authority, and a 

contributing author. Aaron has also served in the Australian Army Reserve 

for over ten years. He has deployed on operations in Timor Leste and 

has served on exercise or exchange in the United States, New Zealand 

and the Philippines. He holds a Doctorate of Philosophy (International 

Relations) and is appointed as a Visiting Fellow at the Griffith Asia 

Institute, Griffith University, Australia. He is the author of Doctrine, 

Strategy and MilitaryCulture: Military-Strategic Doctrine Development 

in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, 1987-2007 (Canadian Forces 

Aerospace Warfare Centre, 2013), Keystone Doctrine Development in 

Five Commonwealth Navies: A Comparative Perspective (Sea Power 

Centre-Australia, 2010), and several peer-reviewed journal articles 

and other academic papers. 

Author’s note: My thanks to Drs Alan Okros and Eric Oullet, and to Colonel 

Howard Coombs PhD, for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts. I would also 

like to offer a special thank you to Dr Paul T. Mitchell, who volunteered a lot 

of his time to act as an unofficial mentor to me during the development of this 

monograph. Any errors are, of course, my own.


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