DREW

PAPERS

THE

Jerey W. Donnithorne

Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

10

Culture Wars

Air Force Culture and

Civil-Military Relations
Air University

David S. Fadok, Lieutenant General, Commander and President

School of Advanced Air and Space Studies

Jeffrey J. Smith, Colonel, PhD, Commandant and Dean
AIR UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIR AND SPACE STUDIES

Culture Wars

Air Force Culture and Civil-Military Relations

Jeffrey W. Donnithorne

Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Drew Paper No. 10

Air University Press

Air Force Research Institute

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 36112-6026
ii

Project Editor

Ernest Allan Rockwell, PhD

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Donnithorne, Jeffrey W.

Culture wars : Air Force culture and civil-military relations / 

Jeffrey W. Donnithorne, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF.

 pages cm — (Drew paper, ISSN 1941-3785 ; no. 10)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-58566-225-8

1. Civil-military relations—United States. 2. United States. Air 

Force—History—20th century. 3. Corporate culture—United 

States. 4. United States—Military policy—Decision making—

Case studies. 5. Aerial reconnaissance, American—Iraq.

6. Sociology, Military—United States—History—20th century. 

I. Title. II. Title: Air Force culture and civil-military relations. 

UA23.D6232 2013

322'.5—dc23

2013010608

Published by Air University Press in August 2013

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The Drew Papers

The Drew Papers are award-winning master’s theses selected for publication by the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS), Maxwell 

AFB, Alabama. This series of papers commemorates the distinguished career 

of Col Dennis “Denny” Drew, USAF, retired. In 30 years at Air University, 

Colonel Drew served on the Air Command and Staff College faculty, directed 

the Airpower Research Institute, and served as dean, associate dean, and professor of military strategy at SAASS. Colonel Drew is one of the Air Force’s 

most extensively published authors and an international speaker in high 

demand. He has lectured to over 100,000 students at Air University as well as 

to foreign military audiences. In 1985 he received the Muir S. Fairchild Award 

for outstanding contributions to Air University. In 2003 Queen Beatrix of the 

Netherlands made him a Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau for his contributions to education in the Royal Netherlands Air Force.

The Drew Papers are dedicated to promoting the understanding of air and 

space power theory and application. These studies are published by the Air 

University Press and broadly distributed throughout the US Air Force, the 

Department of Defense, and other governmental organizations, as well as to 

leading scholars, selected institutions of higher learning, public-policy institutes, and the media.
iv

Please send inquiries or comments to

Commandant and Dean

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v

Contents

Foreword vii

About the Author ix

Acknowledgements xi

Abstract xiii

 1 Introduction 1

 2 Theories of Civil-Military Relations 9

 3 The Power of Organizational Culture 21

 4 Desert Storm: A Case of Curious Working 39

 5 Keeping Watch: A Decade of Quasi War 63

 6 Conclusions 89

Abbreviations 97

Bibliography 99

vii

Foreword

This work sits at the busy, but poorly illuminated, intersection of strategy 

and civil-military relations. As both process and product, American strategy 

pulls from both sides of the Potomac as it attempts to harmonize resources 

and objectives through planning and execution. While civil-military relations 

in the United States are generally healthy, military and civilian policy makers 

do not always agree on the proper means to secure their common ends. Even 

the best of civil-military relationships must endure a messy hybrid of cooperation and resistance between principal stakeholders. A military that believes in 

and submits to civilian control is still a military that harbors its own interests.

Most of the literature on civil-military relations, however, mutes the notion 

of military self-interest by offering normative prescriptions of how the military should behave. Peter Feaver, in Armed Servants, filled this theoretical 

void by applying agency theory to the civil-military relationship. Agency theory comes from economics. It attempts to answer the following question: how 

do principals get agents to perform according to their wishes in the trafficking 

of goods and services? A system of rewards and punishments, combined with 

monitoring regimes, is the key component of the analysis. Feaver, however, aggregated “the military” as a single entity. Lt Col Jeffrey Donnithorne contends 

in this study that service culture is an independent variable in the proclivity 

of a military service to work or shirk a given strategic agenda.

In the author’s words, “The culture of a military service is honorable ballast, giving stability and legacy to a proud institution. But can this cultural 

ballast push a service to rock the boat instead?” Does Air Force culture lead 

Airmen into predictable battles when civilian policies clash with the service’s 

core ethos? Donnithorne attempts to answer this question by positing agency 

as the operative relationship between Air Force servants and civilian masters, 

with service culture persuading the interests of Airmen. He first develops key 

components of that service culture and then applies the inherent proclivities 

to case studies representing modern air warfare. While not startling, his conclusions are consistent with the posited theory and provide an entertaining 

and informative journey through modern military endeavors.

Originally written as a master’s thesis for Air University’s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS), Lieutenant Colonel Donnithorne’s 

Culture Wars: The Impact of Organizational Culture on American Civil-Military 

Relations received the Air University Foundation’s 2010 award for the best 

SAASS thesis on the subject of security studies. I am pleased to commend this 

excellent study to all who believe that broadly informed research, rigorous 
viii

argumentation, and clear expression are vital to the advancement of strategic 

thought and practice.

Stephen D. Chiabotti, PhD

Vice Commandant

School of Advanced Air and Space Studies

FOREWORD
ix

About the Author

Lt Col Jeffrey Donnithorne graduated from Duke University in 1997 with 

a bachelor of science in engineering degree in civil engineering and from The 

George Washington University in 2005 with a master of arts in organizational 

science. His Air Force career includes two operational assignments as a 

weapon systems officer in the F-15E Strike Eagle, an instructor tour at Undergraduate Navigator Training, and an intern staff rotation at the Pentagon. 

Lieutenant Colonel Donnithorne is currently on assignment in Washington, 

DC, pursuing a doctorate degree in international relations at Georgetown 

University.

xi

Acknowledgments

I offer my sincerest thanks to the cast of mentors, friends, and family who 

helped me steer this project from brainstorming to completion. 

First, I thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Stephen Chiabotti, for his practical 

insights into Air Force culture and his keen eye that discerns grand ideas and 

small details with equal acuity. I thank Col Jeff Kubiak for faithfully reading 

my working drafts and sharing insights from his own current research. Finally, I am grateful to Dr. Jim Forsyth, who was instrumental throughout the 

process of shaping my scattered ideas into a project-worthy concept. 

I am grateful to professors Peter Feaver and Damon Coletta for their early 

guidance, and I thank my brother for a well-gifted book.

I thank my loving wife for her steady encouragement and good humor at 

every step. Her accommodation of this project into our home is an enduring 

testimony to Southern hospitality.

Soli Deo Gloria.

xiii

Abstract

This work studies American civil-military relations at the level of an individual military service and considers the impact of the Air Force’s organizational culture on its civil-military relationship. Whereas most of the literature 

on civil-military relations treats the military as a unitary actor, this study considers the services as separate entities with unique self-interests. Furthermore, 

each of the four services is understood to have a unique organizational culture that guides and constrains its members’ thinking. Using the structural 

framework of agency theory, in this work I explore the causal impact of the 

Air Force’s organizational culture on its calculus of cooperating with or resisting a national policy. I review the relevant literature on civil-military relations 

and organizational theory and then build a conceptual bridge between them. 

Next, the work considers the history of the Air Force to discern several basic 

assumptions that shape its unique culture. These cultural insights then inform 

two case studies—Operation Desert Storm and Operations Northern and 

Southern Watch—that demonstrate the causal impact of the Air Force’s culture on its civil-military relationship. In the final section I summarize the key 

findings of the study and suggest logical trailheads for extending this line of 

research.

1

Chapter 1

Introduction

The civil-military challenge is to reconcile a military strong enough 

to do anything the civilians ask them to with a military subordinate enough to do only what civilians authorize them to do.

—Peter Feaver

Armed Servants

Refusing a popular mandate for leadership after the Revolutionary War, 

Gen George Washington chose instead to resign his military commission and 

return to his farm at Mount Vernon. In this iconic act, Washington firmly 

established the ethic of civilian control over the military in the infant United 

States.1

 Over two centuries later, the principle of civilian control still prevails, 

and the reality of military subordination is an article of faith for the nation’s 

uniformed servants. Despite the seeming absence of civil-military conflict, 

the issue of civilian control is rooted in the tenuous paradox of armed delegation. As Peter Feaver’s opening quote suggests, the country seeks a military 

strong enough to fight foreign enemies without using its strength to become 

a domestic threat.2

 Americans trust this institution endowed with exclusive 

and overwhelming power not to be corrupted by that power. Admittedly, 

civil-military relations in the United States have enjoyed good health, avoiding the obvious extreme of an armed coup. Nevertheless, the military services 

and the civilian policy makers have not always agreed on the appropriate 

means to secure their common ends of national security. Consequently, even 

healthy civil-military relationships witness a continuum of cooperation and 

resistance between principal stakeholders. A military that willingly submits 

to civilian control is still a military that has its own interests.

Background

The theoretical literature on civil-military relations favors normative prescriptions for how actors should behave to preserve the ethic of civilian control. The undisputed titan of civil-military theory remains Samuel Huntington, whose seminal work, The Soldier and the State, advises civilian leaders to 

practice “objective control” by granting wide autonomy to the military.3

 Such 

autonomy bolsters the ethic of professionalism within the military services, 
INTRODUCTION

2

which serves to reinforce their willing subordination. Sociologist Morris 

Janowitz responded to Huntington with a constabulary military vision in 

which the military subordinates itself based on “self-imposed professional 

standards and meaningful integration with civilian values.”4

 Both theories 

therefore offer normative visions of ideal-type behaviors without describing 

the subtleties of how civil-military relations actually unfold on a routine basis.

Peter Feaver fills this theoretical void with a deductive theory that accounts 

for the rational incentives that motivate both civilians and the military. Leveraging the vast economic literature on the principal-agent problem, Feaver’s 

agency theory models the civil-military dynamic as a civilian principal employing a military agent to provide security for the nation.5

 Framing the relationship in principal-agent language exposes the inherent issues of moral 

hazard and adverse selection, in which information asymmetries allow agents 

to pursue their own interests rather than those of their principal.6

 Feaver articulates a strategic interaction between civilian principals and military agents 

that incorporates the costs of civilian monitoring, the divergence of military 

and civilian interests, and the probability of costly punishment for military 

shirking.7

 Consequently, agency theory exposes a continuum of working and 

shirking in light of the material incentives involved.

Feaver’s parsimonious theory makes simplifying assumptions to offer a 

structural baseline from which to assess the impact of other explanatory variables. First, agency theory treats the military as a monolithic actor, rather than 

an aggregation of powerful institutions with their own interests at stake. As 

Carl Builder has suggested, however, the most powerful stakeholders in the 

national security apparatus are the military services themselves.8

 If the Army, 

Navy, and Air Force are as influential as Builder implies, understanding civilmilitary relations at the individual-service level merits deeper analysis. Second, agency theory succeeds by modeling a rational framework that accounts 

for material interests; this structural approach creates a useful starting point. 

However, the theory intentionally neglects the cognitive-cultural origins of 

preference formation. Political scientists Adam Stulberg and Michael Salamone observe the tendency for most civil-military theories to “treat military 

institutions as static and monolithic organizations. Yet there is no uniform 

professional military ‘self-interest’ or creed to use as a benchmark.”9

 Understanding the nuanced characteristics of an individual service would permit 

greater understanding of specific self-interest in shaping policy preferences.
INTRODUCTION

3

Research Question

Using agency theory for the structural context, this paper revisits these two 

assumptions to examine cultural factors at the level of an individual military 

service. This research agenda examines the civil-military relationship in the 

United States at the component level of the military services. More specifically, I ask, what explanatory variables shape the preferences of a military service in its calculus of working and shirking with civilian principals? Consequently, this paper attempts to account for a rich spectrum of causality by 

adding cognitive-cultural dynamics to the material-rational baseline of 

agency theory. In addition, by scoping the level of analysis to an individual 

military service with its own unique culture, these sociological variables can 

emerge with greater clarity. 

This work examines the dynamics of civil-military relations for an individual service and argues that organizational culture serves as the dominant 

variable in shaping service preferences. When a military service evaluates national security policy, weighing its options for cooperation or resistance, its 

organizational culture acts as a heuristic for informing judgment. Organizational culture operates like a paradigm in scientific exploration, predisposing 

the attractiveness of certain conclusions while creating cognitive barriers to 

dismiss aberrant ones.10 Therefore, national security policies consonant with 

a service’s long-standing organizational culture will generate enthusiastic 

working, while a policy inconsistent with that culture’s basic assumptions will 

set the conditions for shirking. The rationalist framework of agency theory 

supplies the structural variables for consideration, while an organizational 

culture analysis considers the sociological ones. Together, this complementary approach yields greater explanatory power for understanding the dynamics of a military service as an agent to its civilian principal.

To substantiate the explanatory power of organizational culture, I analyze the 

relevant bodies of literature and synthesize their findings. The civil-militaryrelations literature establishes the context of relevant incentives, while the sociological literature highlights cognitive factors that shape an organization’s 

interpretation of those incentives. More specifically, the sociology and psychology literature exposes the reverberating impact of organizational culture 

on its members.11 Furthermore, the influence of culture appears uniquely 

powerful for military institutions; military members all begin at a common 

reference point—the bottom of the hierarchy—and work their way upward.12

There are no lateral transfers into the upper ranks of the military service; senior officers all arrived at their position by “growing up” in the patterns and 

norms of their service. These observations motivate a growing number of 
INTRODUCTION

4

scholars to suggest the profound impact of military culture on security studies.13 For example, Jeffrey Legro describes the causal role of organizational 

culture in fashioning restraint and cooperation between the British and German militaries in World War II.14 This work appropriates these findings into 

the domain of civil-military relations. 

As a useful exemplar of a military service with a strong organizational culture, the US Air Force between 1990 and 2008 serves as the focus for this 

work. The Air Force during this period merits attention for several important 

reasons. First, with two separate incidents of the secretary of defense firing the 

chief of staff of the Air Force, this time period is bracketed by obvious breakdowns in healthy civil-military relations. In 1990, Secretary Dick Cheney 

fired Gen Michael Dugan in the prelude to Operation Desert Storm.15 Eighteen years later, Secretary Robert Gates fired Gen T. Michael Moseley after a 

series of unfortunate events, most notably the mishandling of nuclear materials.16 Together, these glaring incidents suggest that the Air Force’s relationship 

with its civilian leadership is worthy of greater study. The second reason this 

period is notable is that all seven chiefs of staff during this time were fighter 

pilots. As chapter 3 will describe in greater depth, one of the unique features 

of Air Force culture is the varying dominance of its subcultures. The common 

pedigree of these seven chiefs—all having “grown up” in the fighter culture—

creates a measure of consistency for the system-dominant subculture of the 

period. Finally, this 18-year span is notable because the Air Force sustained 

perpetual combat operations for the entire period. In 1990, the service deployed troops and equipment for Operation Desert Shield and has never left. 

Operations Desert Storm, Southern Watch, Northern Watch, Enduring Freedom, and Iraqi Freedom have anchored the Air Force overseas for two decades. Consequently, this period affords a rich variety of policy decisions in 

which the Air Force figured prominently. Therefore, the period from 1990 to 

2008 contains civil-military confrontations, relative cultural consistency, and 

a wide array of policy decisions suited to further analysis. 

Limitations

This work ambitiously synthesizes the civil-military relations literature 

with the work of cultural security studies. There are, however, limits to the 

ambition and methodology of this work that should be confronted at the outset. First, I do not claim exclusive causality for any one variable. Social science 

literature teems with competing theories of causality: structural versus cultural, functional versus constructivist, rational versus sociological, and so 
INTRODUCTION

5

forth. This work will not end the debate but attempts to incorporate cultural 

considerations into a structural framework; agency theory provides a compelling medium for fusing the two views. Second, some scholars critique cultural approaches to security studies for their use of “amorphous and unusable” definitions and tautological reasoning that cannot be disproven.17 I 

cannot guarantee immunity from this self-serving logic but invoke as much 

definitional precision as possible. Chapter 3 explicates a specific definition of 

organizational culture, followed by unique facets of Air Force culture to evaluate in the case studies. 

Finally, as a uniformed member of the Air Force for nearly 17 years, I cannot claim an objective capacity to evaluate the Air Force’s organizational culture. One of the subtleties of organizational culture is its relative transparency 

to those who exist within it.18 To minimize the inherent subjectivity of such 

analysis, this work stipulates cultural observations made in published works 

by outside scholars. I then compile and categorize these outside observations 

into a systematic view of Air Force culture. Although the observations come 

from published sources, my work of categorization and compilation is itself 

subject to bias. This inherent subjectivity remains an irreducible limitation of 

studying one’s own institution. Nevertheless, every reasonable effort was 

made to minimize its impact on generating worthwhile results. 

Methodology

This work employs a case-study methodology to expose the explanatory 

power of organizational culture in Air Force civil-military relations. In broad 

terms, I follow the customary arc of theory exposition and synthesis, casestudy analysis, and formal conclusions. Chapter 2 discusses the essence of 

civil-military relations theory, with greater attention to the contributions of 

Huntington and Feaver. This chapter details Feaver’s agency theory in both 

formal and informal terms, highlighting the cognitive-cultural potential 

within its rational framework. Chapter 3 offers a lengthy articulation of organizational culture theory, its unique application to security studies, and specific features of Air Force organizational culture. Together, chapters 2 and 3 

identify the gaps in agency theory that cultural variables can fill, the reasons 

organizational culture matters to security studies, and the unique dimensions 

of Air Force culture that inform its understanding of national security policy.

Building on that foundation in chapters 4 and 5, I present two separate case 

studies of national security policies in which the Air Force figured prominently. In both cases, the analysis compares the relative consonance of the 
INTRODUCTION

6

policy decision with the stipulated organizational culture of the Air Force. This 

cultural consideration provides a textured view of the service’s self-interest in 

its calculus of working or shirking, complementing the material incentives 

already included in the model. Chapter 4 details the extensive planning effort 

leading to Operation Desert Storm, while chapter 5 profiles the protracted 

season of Operations Northern and Southern Watch. Finally in chapter 6, I 

summarize the findings, offer concluding observations, and suggest areas for 

further research.

Throughout the Revolutionary War, General Washington nobly subordinated his decision-making and military policies to the civilian oversight of the 

fledgling Continental Congress. His conduct during the war, coupled with the 

willing surrender of his commission after it, established a noble trajectory for 

civil-military relations in the United States. The following analysis scrutinizes 

the continued arc of that trajectory, examining the Air Force’s relationship 

with its civilian principals by testing the relative impact of its storied culture.

Notes

1. Joseph Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 146.

2. Peter D. Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the 

Question of Civilian Control,” Armed Forces & Society 23, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 149–78.

3. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military 

Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957).

4. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (Glencoe, IL: 

Free Press, 1960).

5. Peter D. Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

6. John Brehm and Scott Gates, Working, Shirking, and Sabotage: Bureaucratic Response to 

a Democratic Public (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997).

7. As Feaver explains in his own text, the terms “working” and “shirking” are borrowed 

from the economics literature on the principal-agent problem. These terms carry loaded connotations in a military context but should be understood in a neutral context for the principalagent discussion. Full definitions for these terms appear in chapter 3 of this work.

8. Carl Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

9. Adam Stulberg and Michael Salomone, Managing Defense Transformation: Agency, Culture and Service Change (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007).

10. Jeffrey W. Legro, “Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War II,” International Security 18, no. 4 (1994): 108–42. Legro’s analysis builds on the idea of scientific paradigms posited by Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of 

Chicago, 1996).

11. Chapter 4 will cover the meaning and implications of organizational culture in greater 

depth, primarily using Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd ed. (San 

Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004).
INTRODUCTION

7

12. James Smith, “USAF Culture and Cohesion: Building an Air and Space Force for the 

21st Century,” Airpower Journal (Fall 1998).

13. Chapter 4 reviews the cultural security studies literature in greater detail.

14. Jeffrey W. Legro, “Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War II.”

15. Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 292.

16. Thom Shanker, “Two Leaders Ousted from Air Force in Atomic Errors,” New York Times, 

6 June 2008, accessed 13 Feb 10. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/washington/06military.

html?hp. 

17. Michael C. Desch, Culture and Security (Cambridge, MA: Security Studies Program, 

Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996).

18. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3.

9

Chapter 2

Theories of Civil-Military Relations

War is at one and the same time an autonomous science with 

its own method and goals and yet a subordinate science in that 

its ultimate purposes come from outside itself.

—Samuel Huntington

The Soldier and the State

The best indicator of the state of civilian control is who prevails 

when civilian and military preferences diverge.

—Michael Desch

Civilian Control of the Military

The principle of civilian control stems from the essence of democratic theory 

and the nature of war as a political instrument. In a democracy, the military 

serves a circumscribed and delegated role to provide security for the nation. 

The military’s interests are never autonomous, but must remain subordinate to 

the interests of the polity. The preeminent military theorist Carl von Clausewitz canonized this subordinate role in his enduring work On War.

1 Clausewitz explains, “The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, 

and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.”2

 As an 

executor of policy, the military is inherently subordinate to the elected leaders 

responsible for creating that policy. Therefore, both democratic and military 

theories reinforce the primacy of civilian control, and the civil-military relations literature explores these dynamics with useful clarity. 

This chapter offers an overview of civil-military relations theory, beginning 

at its source in democratic theory. Understanding the unique roles and accountability mechanisms for both civilians and the military frames the subsequent discussion. Next, the chapter highlights the contributions of seminal 

theorists like Huntington, Cohen, Janowitz, and Desch. These theorists provide the foundation on which Feaver builds the principal-agent framework of 

agency theory. Because I use agency theory as the chief prism for my analysis, 

this chapter includes a substantive discussion of Feaver’s informal and formal 

model. Finally, the chapter concludes by exposing the cultural gaps in agency 

theory’s rational framework, thereby establishing the theoretical niche that 

this work purports to inhabit. The chapter prepares the reader to see how organizational culture can be grafted onto the vine of agency theory, preparing 
THEORIES OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

10

the way for chapter 3 to explain its causal significance in the Air Force’s civilmilitary relations. 

Civil-Military Relations in a Democracy

Democracies function through deliberate processes of delegation, representation, and accountability. The general public delegates a prescribed measure of decision-making authority to elected representatives and then holds 

those representatives accountable in subsequent elections. The public therefore serves as the principal, electing representatives to serve as its agents to 

provide sound governance. These elected representatives, in turn, delegate a 

portion of their vested authority to other groups to accomplish specific subtasks—to wit, the military is the delegated authority to provide national security. In this second-order delegation, the elected government serves as the 

principal, and the military acts as the agent.3

This two-tiered delegation between the public, the elected government, 

and the military creates boundaries of action and accountability for each 

group. The elected government, accountable to the public at the polls, bears 

responsibility for crafting policy and making judgments on the use of force in 

the national interest. The military, accountable to its civilian leaders, bears 

responsibility for offering sound military advice, assessing risks, and executing the policy—to include using force and risking lives when directed to do 

so. The distinctions between these roles and responsibilities carry moral significance. Feaver suggests, “The military can describe in some detail the nature of the threat posed by a particular enemy, but only the civilian can decide 

whether to feel threatened and, if so, how or even whether to respond. The 

military assesses the risk, the civilian judges it.”4

 To be sure, the military may 

disagree strongly with a chosen course of action, even offering sound political 

wisdom for its contrary counsel. Nevertheless, democratic theory insists that 

the civilian decisions hold sway. Huntington concurs, “The superior political 

wisdom of the statesman must be accepted as a fact. If the statesman decides 

upon war which the soldier knows can only lead to national catastrophe, then 

the soldier, after presenting his opinion, must fall to and make the best of a 

bad situation.”5

 For the health of the democracy, “civilians have the right to be 

wrong.”6

 If the civilian leaders do indeed make a poor policy decision, their 

principal—the general public—must be trusted to hold them accountable in 

the next election.

By the same logic, the civilian principal must hold its military agent accountable for its conduct. Given the unique power delegated to the military, 
THEORIES OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

11

the domain of civilian oversight carries particular importance. As described 

earlier, the paradox of armed delegation creates an institution endowed with 

sufficient power to counter external threats but sufficiently compliant so as 

not to become an internal threat. There is, however, some trade space in the 

exchange. Without resorting to a hostile coup, a military institution could still 

pursue its own interests at the expense of the civilian agenda. Therefore, the 

question of how best to ensure ongoing control of the military is supremely 

important to a democracy with a military as strong as that found in the United 

States. A wealth of scholarly literature explores these control mechanisms 

with greater fidelity, and the following section details the central themes.

Civil-Military Relations Theorists

For over half a century, Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State has 

dominated the field of civil-military relations in the United States.7

 Consequently, this section begins with Huntington as an ideological point of departure and subsequently considers the contributions of Cohen, Janowitz, and 

Desch.8

 These theorists prepare the foundation for Feaver’s agency theory in 

the section that follows.

Huntington embraces an ideal-type division of labor between political civilian leaders and a professionally apolitical military. Throughout his work, he 

attempts to develop “a system of civil-military relations which will maximize 

military security at the least sacrifice of other social values.”9

 To reach this goal, 

Huntington delineates two methods of civilian control over the military: subjective and objective. Subjective control attempts to blur the lines between 

military and civilian roles, making the military a political extension of its civilian leadership. Conversely, objective control honors the distinctions between 

the two institutions, granting autonomy to the military in performance of its 

delegated mission. Huntington clearly favors the latter: “Subjective civilian 

control achieves its end by civilianizing the military, making them the mirror 

of the state. Objective civilian control achieves its end by militarizing the military, making them the tool of the state.”10 To Huntington, objective control 

maximizes the professional ethic of the military and delimits the respective 

domains of action: the civilians make the policy, and the military carries it out.

Huntington’s advocacy for objective control counters the fusionist thinking of his day. Recognizing that military actions are an extension of political 

discourse, the fusionists sought to eliminate clear distinctions between military and political domains.11 The fusionists extended this logic further, suggesting that the military should embrace political nuance and refrain from 
THEORIES OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

12

giving “purely military” advice.12 Huntington rejects this view, believing that 

objective control, military autonomy, and clear divisions of labor enhance civilian control and national security. He concludes, “A political officer corps, 

rent with faction, subordinated to ulterior ends, lacking prestige but sensitive 

to the appeals of popularity, would endanger the security of the state. A strong, 

integrated, highly professional officer corps, on the other hand, immune to 

politics and respected for its military character, would be a steadying balancing wheel in the conduct of policy.”13 Huntington therefore employs a valuesbased approach, offering a normative theory for how civilians and the military should behave to maximize effective civilian control. Feaver summarizes 

Huntington’s logic and causal chain: “autonomy leads to professionalization, 

which leads to political neutrality and voluntary subordination, which lead to 

secure civilian control.”14

Huntington’s work remains a classic in the literature, particularly among 

military officers who embrace the autonomy he prescribes. Other scholars in 

the field, however, critique Huntington’s views, particularly in light of the 50 

years thence that did not corroborate his theses.15 Defense scholar Eliot Cohen, for example, argues that Huntington’s theory bequeathed to the nation 

the fallacious “normal theory” of civil-military relations: civilians set the policy and authorize the use of force and should then step back and give the 

military free rein to accomplish that policy.16 Cohen adds that popular misconceptions regarding the conduct of the Vietnam War and Operation Desert 

Storm serve to reinforce this normal theory. The conventional wisdom suggests that the war in Vietnam failed because of presidential micromanagement, while the Gulf War was a stunning success because of its presidential 

restraint. Cohen’s analysis refutes these misconceptions, and he argues that 

history’s most successful campaigns witnessed active presidential involvement at a level of great detail: “Rather than a comfortable division of labor, we 

observe in history a far more tense and exhausting interaction over matters of 

detail and not simply the broad outlines of strategy.”17 Cohen therefore rejects 

Huntington’s ideal-type division of labor as an abdication of responsibility on 

the part of the civilian leadership. The statesman, Cohen argues, cannot afford 

to consign himself to being Huntington’s “patient under the care of a surgeon.”18 Cohen, in fact, used this very line of reasoning to urge Pres. George 

W. Bush to hold his Army generals accountable for the failing strategy in Iraq 

in 2006. Cohen asserted that President Johnson’s failure in Vietnam was not 

one of micromanagement, but rather a “failure to force strategic debate.”19 According to Cohen, more active involvement by the civilians is essential for the 

civil-military relationship to benefit the state most profitably.20
THEORIES OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

13

Sociologist Morris Janowitz extends Huntington’s normative logic of civilian control. Janowitz profiles an officer corps that remains subordinate to civilian control on the basis of self-conception and willingness. Speaking of top 

military leaders, he writes, “In their day-to-day activities they live according 

to the self-conception that they are public servants, and according to their 

own formulation of civil-military relations, namely, that ‘there is no question 

about who is in control.’ ”21 Furthermore, Janowitz envisions a constabulary 

role for the US military in the Cold War, altering Huntington’s ideal-type distinction between civilian leaders and an apolitical military. Acting more like 

an international police force than a military, Janowitz’s constabulary force 

would patrol its global bailiwick, use minimal force, and seek “viable international relations, rather than victory” for its efforts.22 These changes to the 

military’s proper role, however, do not change Janowitz’s essential prescription for civilian control. He submits, “The constabulary officer performs his 

duties, which include fighting, because he is a professional with a sense of 

self-esteem and moral worth. . . . He is amenable to civilian political control 

because he recognizes that civilians appreciate and understand the tasks and 

responsibilities of the constabulary force.”23 By emphasizing the roles of selfesteem and professionalism, Janowitz repackages Huntington’s values-based 

logic in a different context.24 Feaver offers a valid critique of both: “In emphasizing the role of professionalism, however, both Huntington and Janowitz are 

vulnerable to charges of defining away the problem of civilian control.”25

In contrast with these normative visions, Michael Desch offers a deductive 

model for understanding civil-military relations in light of varying security 

conditions.26 Desch’s theory incorporates both international and domestic 

threats and contends that civilian control of the military is easiest when international threats are high and domestic threats are low. Conversely, the military is most likely to outmuscle its civilian leadership when domestic threats 

are high and international ones are low. Similar to the logic of Barry Posen’s 

analysis of military doctrines, this theory invokes an internal-external dichotomy and varyingly distracted civilians constraining an autonomy-seeking 

military.27 Ultimately, Desch’s theory offers a deductive model with attractive 

parsimony, but it fails to render the civil-military relationship with any degree 

of useful fidelity. 

Feaver’s Agency Theory

Peter Feaver’s agency theory absorbs the enduring contributions of the 

previous theorists by capturing them in a flexible model. Feaver appropriates 
THEORIES OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

14

the principal-agent literature from economics into the domain of civil-military 

relations and accounts for the material incentives that inform the interaction. 

This section explains the core contributions of agency theory and then identifies the elements in the model where cultural variables can provide added 

richness. 

The Principal-Agent Framework

In economic theory, the principal-agent problem is created in an environment of information asymmetry in which a principal does not have perfect 

knowledge of its agent (adverse selection) and cannot perfectly monitor its 

behavior (moral hazard). These two tenets of divergent interests and information asymmetry thus inform Feaver’s principal-agent framework for civilmilitary relations. Given a military with its own self-interest and unique professional authority, how can the civilian leadership structure the relationship 

to ensure healthy subordination?

Before we analyze the model, we must define the relevant terms and understand their implications. The principal-agent literature from economics uses 

the terms “working” and “shirking” to describe the two options available to 

the agent. These terms are consistent in the literature, and Feaver applies them 

to the civil-military domain, despite the loaded connotations they have in a 

military setting.28 Broadly speaking then, in the civil-military context, “working is doing things the way civilians want, and shirking is doing things the 

way those in the military want.”29 However, this simple categorization belies a 

continuum of cooperative or resistant behaviors lurking beneath appearances. 

As the discussion of democratic theory demonstrates, the military-as-agent 

has a constitutional duty to perform its mission on behalf of its principal. The 

principal delegates responsibility to execute a policy faithfully but retains responsibility for the content and consequences of that policy—again, the civilian principal retains “the right to be wrong.”30 Therefore, “working” should 

meet a higher standard of conduct that faithfully abides the civilians’ intent. 

Feaver’s more rigorous definition states, “Working is the ideal conduct that 

the agent would perform if the principal had full knowledge of what the agent 

could do and was in fact doing.”31

Similarly, the definition of shirking must incorporate this higher standard 

of intent. Shirking can still occur short of a coup or a glaring act of insubordination like Gen Douglas MacArthur’s snubbing of Pres. Harry Truman.32 In 

fact, “the military agent is said to shirk when, whether through laziness, insolence, or preventable incompetence, it deviates from its agreement with the 

civilians in order to pursue different preferences, for instance by not doing 
THEORIES OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

15

what the civilians have requested, or not in the way the civilians wanted, or in 

such a way as to undermine the ability of the civilians to make future decisions.”33 These definitions imply a high standard of faithful conduct for the 

military agent and permit a spectrum of cooperative behavior to emerge. 

Without resorting to an open coup, the military can still imperil a healthy 

civil-military relationship with obstructionist working and petty shirking. 

“The health of the democracy depends . . . as much on respect for the process 

of democratic politics as on the substance of the policies that process yields.”34

The Model

Using these definitions, agency theory models a hierarchal strategic interaction between civilian principals and military agents.35 The first decision belongs to the civilians, who decide whether or not to monitor the military intrusively.36 The next decision is the military’s as it decides whether to work or 

shirk for a given policy. This decision considers several variables, including 

the divergence of interests involved and the military’s perception of receiving 

costly punishment if its shirking is detected.37 Finally, if the military decides 

to shirk and the civilians detect the shirking, the final decision belongs to the 

civilians: whether (and how) to punish the military for its transgression. In 

sum, the strategic interaction of the model incorporates a wide array of variables: external context factors embedded in the civilians’ monitoring decision, the convergence and strength of interests informing the military’s decision to work or shirk, and cost considerations captured in the perception and 

reality of punishment. 

For the purposes of this study, the most illuminating element of the model 

is the military’s decision to work or shirk. In formal terms, the decision to 

work is expressed by the following inequality:

agp > s – w

where a = the probability of detecting shirking

g = the probability of civilians choosing to punish shirking

p = the cost of the punishment to the military

s = the military’s policy preference

w = the civilians’ policy decision38

In plain language, the inequality states that working will occur when the 

military’s calculation of being caught and meaningfully punished is greater 

than the divergence of respective interests. Or, as Feaver suggests, the military 

“will work only if the punishment is great enough to reduce the net gain of 

shirking below that of working.”39 The movement of these variables therefore 

creates conditions in which working or shirking is more or less likely to occur. 
THEORIES OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

16

Decreasing any of the variables on the left side of the inequality will decrease 

the perception of costly punishment, thereby increasing the likelihood of 

shirking.40 For example, if the civilians choose to monitor nonintrusively, decreasing the probability of detecting shirking (“a” is less), other things being 

equal, one would expect shirking to be more likely. Similarly, if the military 

feels strongly about a particular policy on which it disagrees significantly with 

the civilians (increasing the magnitude of “s – w”), shirking is likewise more 

probable. Finally, if the military works for a politically powerful civilian with 

a track record for punishing military failures (“g” is greater), the likelihood of 

shirking is reduced. 

By modeling this hierarchy of choices and incentives, Feaver incorporates 

much of the substantive findings of the previously described theories. “For 

instance,” he argues, “the model shows how Huntington’s arguments about 

the optimal form of delegation can be true under certain conditions, some of 

which Huntington recognized and some of which he did not explicitly identify.”41 Similarly, the model captures Desch’s conclusion that civil-military relations will be their worst with a high domestic threat and a low international 

one. During periods of domestic crisis, the civilians are more likely to be distracted by political concerns, thereby reducing the probability of detecting 

and punishing shirking, thus increasing the probability of the military choosing to shirk. This rational framework succeeds by remaining simple enough 

to be useable, while incorporating enough causal variables to be useful. In 

addition, it exposes gradations of working and shirking to assess the relative 

health of the civil-military relationship.42 While traditional models are silent 

short of the extremes, agency theory offers a relational continuum and suggests which external variables are likely to foster a relatively subordinate or 

stubborn military. Consequently, the model provides a useful understanding 

of what the civilians and military actually do, rather than simply prescribing 

what they should do.

Preference Formation and the Role of Culture

In Feaver’s model, the military is assumed to care about national security 

policy and to have its own idea of the right policies to pursue.43 This work 

explores more deeply how a military service constructs its policy preferences 

on the basis of its organizational culture. For simplicity, agency theory assumes the military has its own policy preference; I probe that assumption to 

ask why a particular service has its own preference and what variables shape 

that preference most profoundly.
THEORIES OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

17

Agency theory assumes the military has three categories of policy preferences: the content of the policy, the interpretation of its behavior, and a general preference for autonomy.44 The model recognizes that military preferences for the content of a policy will vary based on the situation but stipulates 

that militaries generally prefer offensive situations and will likely inflate 

threats and requirements to meet a potential foe from a position of advantage.45 In addition, the theory assumes that the military is concerned with its 

honor and the outside perception of its behavior. Feaver suggests this normative preference may actually dampen the effect of divergent preferences over 

policy content: “Thus the preference for honor can work to mute the impulse 

to shirk for military agents, even when other factors . . . indicate they should.”46

Feaver extends this argument, suggesting that the military’s organizational 

culture of subordination forms an essential component of civilian control. “In 

the civil-military context, an organizational norm that stresses obedience 

gives both civilians and the military a common expectation that the military 

will be subordinate.”47

This work explicitly addresses these assumptions. In its current form, 

agency theory stipulates that the military will have a preference but does not 

presume to suggest the antecedents of that preference. Furthermore, the theory assumes a dampening effect from the general military culture of subordination. Greater fidelity can, however, be extracted from the model in these 

two dimensions: first, by disaggregating the military writ large and analyzing 

a unique military service; and second, by studying a service’s unique organizational culture that directly informs its policy formation. The respective military services have distinct personalities, and a service’s unique culture may 

trigger impulses that echo more loudly than the assumed ethic of subordination.48 For example, the Air Force may still be carrying strains of iconoclastic 

DNA injected by the fiery Brig Gen Billy Mitchell.49 In that case, a cultural 

norm of “independent thinking” may shape behaviors more strongly than the 

prevailing military norm of subordination. The next chapter explores these 

possibilities further and articulates the rationale for understanding a service’s 

organizational culture. After chapter 3 explains the power of organizational 

culture for the Air Force, the two case studies use agency theory to test the 

importance of culture in shaping Air Force preferences. The case studies will 

consider the contextual and material incentives modeled by agency theory 

(variables a, g, p, and w), while analyzing the influence of culture on the Air 

Force’s preference formation (variable s) and its decision to work or shirk.
THEORIES OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

18

Conclusion

Civilian control of the military is an article of faith in the United States. 

Anchored in the logic of democratic theory and echoed in the work of Clausewitz, military subordination to civilian policy constitutes an essential requirement for healthy democracies. Prominent civil-military theorists like Huntington affirm its importance, offering normative prescriptions of objective 

control to sustain a willingly subordinate and professional military. Instead of 

a normative theory, Feaver’s agency theory offers a deductive model that 

makes a causal connection between material incentives and the military’s decision to work or shirk. As a rational baseline, agency theory provides a fitting 

backdrop to assess the impact of sociological variables. Feaver’s analysis 

makes simplifying assumptions about military preferences and the dampening impact of a culture of subordination. The current work complicates these 

assumptions by analyzing the heuristic of organizational culture in forming 

policy preferences for the Air Force. Blending cultural considerations into a 

rational framework ultimately fosters a deeper understanding of the Air 

Force’s civil-military relationship.

Notes

1. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).

2. Ibid., 87.

3. Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral 

Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 7.

4. Peter D. Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 6.

5. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military 

Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 76–77.

6. Feaver, Armed Servants, 6.

7. Huntington, The Soldier and the State.

8. The analysis of Huntington and Janowitz draws largely upon Feaver’s work in Armed 

Servants and “The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of 

Civilian Control,” Armed Forces & Society 23, no. 2 (Winter 1996): 149–78.

9. Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 2.

10. Ibid., 83.

11. Ibid., 352.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., 464.

14. Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique,” 160.

15. In Armed Servants, Feaver presents a lengthy critique of Huntington’s prescription that 

the United States must “change or die.” Huntington believed that the United States must either 
THEORIES OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

19

embrace conservatism and reject liberalism or suffer defeat at the hands of the communist 

threat. Feaver’s chapter 2 presents empirical evidence that the United States neither changed 

nor died, suggesting that Huntington’s thesis is therefore in need of revision.

16. Eliot A. Cohen, “The Unequal Dialogue: The Theory and Reality of Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force,” in Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American 

National Security, eds. Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 

2001), 433.

17. Cohen, “The Unequal Dialogue,” 432. This argument is extended at length in Eliot A. 

Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York: Anchor Books, 2003).

18. Ibid., 434.

19. Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008 (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), 99.

20. This same conclusion is echoed in Jack Snyder, “Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of 

the Offensive, 1914 and 1984,” International Security 9, no. 1 (Summer 1984): 108–46.

21. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (Glencoe, IL: 

Free Press, 1960), 368.

22. Ibid., 418.

23. Ibid., 440.

24. Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique,” 167.

25. Ibid.

26. Michael Desch, Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

27. Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between 

the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984). Posen argues that civilians are 

more active in shaping transformational military doctrine in times of international crisis, while 

military organizational culture carries greater impact during times of relative calm.

28. Feaver, Armed Servants, 3. Feaver explains that his use of the terms is in the technical 

sense of the literature. “Shirking,” for example, is not meant to imply “lazy or desultory behavior, or possibly treasonous treachery.” He asks for “the benefit of the doubt that all plausible 

alternative terms were considered and rejected as presenting equally problematic connotational or definitional challenges.” 

29. Ibid., 60.

30. Ibid., 6.

31. Ibid., 61.

32. Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of 

the United States of America (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 512.

33. Feaver, Armed Servants, 68.

34. Ibid., 302.

35. Robert Jervis offers a valid critique of such decision-theoretic models in light of systemic complexity. Decision-theoretic models such as agency theory incorporate stepwise decisions, in which one decision follows in light of the previous. Jervis argues that actual decisions 

are made contemporaneously in a complex atmosphere of overlapping expectations. Nevertheless, Feaver’s model does not purport to be an ironclad proxy for reality and retains sufficient 

explanatory clarity to be useful. For more, see Robert Jervis, System Effects: Complexity in Political and Social Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 85.
THEORIES OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

20

36. This consideration incorporates the perceived cost of that monitoring, as well as its role 

as an incentive to the military, which is assumed to prefer autonomy (nonintrusive monitoring).

37. If the military and the civilians want the same thing, there is no incentive to shirk. 

Conversely, if the military has a divergent interest and believes that its shirking will not be detected, or not be punished, or that the punishment would not be costly, its incentive to shirk 

increases.

38. This inequality and the associated variables are simplified from Feaver’s more complex 

model. 

39. Feaver, Armed Servants, 107.

40. By obvious extension, increasing the left-side variables will reduce the probability of 

shirking. Increasing either “s” or “w” on the right side only has relevance vis-à-vis the other 

variable, since the delta between the two is the driving factor in the military’s cost calculation.

41. Feaver, Armed Servants, 113.

42. Ibid., 285.

43. Ibid., 63.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid. This assumption is echoed in Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine.

46. Ibid., 64.

47. Ibid., 80.

48. Carl Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy and Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 3.

49. Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., “Understanding Airmen: A Primer for Soldiers,” Military Review

87, no. 5 (September–October 2007), 128.
21

Chapter 3

The Power of Organizational Culture

The perceptions supplied by an organizational culture sometimes can lead an official to behave not as the situation requires 

but as the culture expects.

—James Q. Wilson

Bureaucracy

The rational framework of agency theory aptly models the structural incentives that inform civilian and military behavior. This chapter complements 

that top-down approach with a bottom-up analysis of the cognitive dimensions of the military’s behavior. Political scientist Elizabeth Kier suggests that 

“making sense of how structure matters or what incentives it provides often 

requires understanding the meanings that actors attach to their material 

world.”1

 An organization’s culture supplies that meaning to make sense of its 

external and internal environment. Furthermore, the potency of organizational culture is particularly strong for military organizations given their 

unique parameters of entry and advancement.2

 As the single port of entry 

into the military force, basic military training explicitly inculcates new beliefs, 

assumptions, and language into fresh recruits. Decades later, a portion of 

these recruits will have successfully navigated the complex shoals of training, 

operations, and bureaucracy to achieve positions of leadership. Their career 

success will have been in part a function of their ability to make the organization’s culture their own, thereby shaping their outlook on future decisions. 

This chapter contains three broad areas of emphasis: a brief review of the 

literature to define organizational culture, the use of organizational culture as 

a causal variable in security studies, and finally, an overview of the basic assumptions that undergird the Air Force’s organizational culture. The first section weaves together various definitions from the literature in an effort to 

define terms for the rest of the paper. The second section demonstrates the 

causal role that organizational culture serves for military organizations, from 

shaping doctrine to systems acquisition and war fighting. The final section 

uses this theoretical foundation to survey Air Force history in search of its 

unique organizational culture. As discussed in chapter 2, this cultural analysis 

stipulates cultural observations from other published works and then synthesizes them into five categories of assumptions. These five tenets will form the 
THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

22

basis for assessing the consonance of national security policy with Air Force 

culture in the case studies to follow.

Defining Organizational Culture

As “an empirically based abstraction,” culture can be difficult to define 

even though its impact is intuitively clear.3

 The idea of culture has been used 

to describe a wide array of phenomena, and its profusion can dilute its legitimate impact. If everything can be attributed to culture, then it lacks utility as 

an analytical construct. This section presents a select group of definitions 

from the literature to define more precisely what culture is and what functions 

it serves for members of an organization.

Definitions

Social psychologist Edgar Schein profiles no fewer than 15 different definitions for organizational culture in scholarly literature.4

 While each definition 

spins its own nuance, Schein highlights four elements of culture that persist 

across the literature: its structural stability, depth, breadth, and integration.5

Together, these elements suggest that culture is stable across organizational 

generations; it abides at a deep and generally unconscious level; it pervades 

the organization; and “rituals, climate, values, and behaviors tie together into 

a coherent whole.”6

Reflecting all four elements, Schein’s formal definition of organizational 

culture describes “a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a 

group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, 

that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be 

taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems” (emphasis added).7

 While Schein articulates a thorough sociological definition, other scholars vary the emphasis to provide heuristic conceptions of culture. James Wilson describes an organization’s culture 

as “a persistent, patterned way of thinking. . . . Culture is to an organization 

what personality is to an individual.”8

 Ann Swidler suggests a different metaphor, emphasizing the functional dimension of culture in supplying an action 

inventory: “A culture is not a unified system that pushes action in a consistent 

direction. Rather, it is more like a ‘tool kit’ or repertoire from which actors 

select differing pieces for constructing lines of action.”9

 Finally, Kim Cameron 

and Robert Quinn invoke a colloquial understanding of culture, representing 

“how things are around here.”10
THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

23

Several threads connect the core elements of each definition: a pattern of 

assumptions, a historical genesis, persistent durability, and a common basis 

for action. Therefore, this study will draw from these antecedents to stipulate 

a composite definition: Culture is the prevailing personality of an organization, 

rooted in its collective history, enduring over time, and comprised of assumptions from which it forms a basis for future action.

Manifestation

Schein explains that culture will pervade all levels of an organization, with 

each level of analysis amplifying a tenet of the root culture. The first level of 

cultural manifestation is an organization’s artifacts—the visible, sensory phenomena such as architecture, language, iconography, and ceremonies.11 These 

first-level phenomena communicate the priorities and ethos of an organization and create the first impression for an outside observer. The second level 

of cultural manifestation comprises the espoused beliefs and values of the organization.12 These espoused beliefs constitute what an organization says it 

believes, “[its] sense of what ought to be, as distinct from what is.”13 Espoused 

beliefs that consistently prove effective in solving problems for the organization ossify into the third level of culture: basic assumptions. These basic assumptions form the cultural cortex of the organization, establishing the 

“theories-in-use” that actually determine the organization’s behavior.14 These 

theories-in-use may or may not coincide precisely with the organization’s espoused beliefs. Nevertheless, this root layer of an organization’s culture—its 

basic assumptions—creates the cognitive “tool kit” for future action. 

Schein invokes these three levels to describe what to look for in an organization to discern its unique culture. Additionally, he details where to look in 

an organization’s history for the crucibles of cultural formation. Schein identifies two forces that mold an organization’s basic assumptions: “(1) survival 

in and adaptation to its external environment and (2) integration of its internal processes to ensure the capacity to continue to survive and adapt.”15 Therefore, understanding an organization’s culture involves searching out its artifacts, espoused beliefs, and basic assumptions as formed during its adaptation 

to its external environment and reinforced through its internal processes. 

These categories will inform the final section of this chapter in search of the 

Air Force’s unique organizational culture.

Impact

The core assumptions of an organization’s culture shape its interaction with 

its environment. Schein explains, “Culture as a set of basic assumptions de-
THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

24

fines for us what to pay attention to, what things mean, how to react emotionally to what is going on, and what actions to take in various kinds of situations.”16 This process of mental filtration and sense-making resembles the 

cognitive effect of a paradigm within theoretical science.17 Just as a paradigm 

exerts a causal role on the thinking of those doing “normal science,” an organization’s culture impacts what its members see, ignore, amplify, and discard.18 Therefore, an organization’s culture both “guides and constrains” its 

members and biases the suitability of certain options while blockading the 

viability of others.19

Because of these powerful cognitive effects, an organization with an established culture seeks policies that reinforce its core ethos. Cultures provide 

stability to organizations such that new policies or foreign procedures can 

appear threatening. In their studies of bureaucracies and policy making, Morton Halperin and James Wilson identify the routine behaviors that organizations employ to preserve their culture.20 “Tasks that are not part of the culture,” Wilson notes, “will not be attended to with the same energy and 

resources as are devoted to tasks that are part of it.”21 Likewise, he observes 

that organizations will resist taking on new tasks that appear inconsistent 

with their cultural assumptions. Halperin concurs: “An organization is often 

indifferent to functions not seen as part of its essence or necessary to protect 

its essence.”22 These observations suggest that understanding the behavior of 

a military service requires a deep appreciation of the culture that shapes its 

thinking. Therefore, the next section documents the pervasive influence of 

culture on the military services and national security policy.

The Cultural School of Security Studies

What if military forces were not what we pretend them to be—

the military means to political ends—but were, instead, institutional ends in themselves that may or may not serve the 

larger interests of the nations that support them?

—Carl Builder

The Masks of War

Recognizing the impact of organizational culture on military services, 

scholars increasingly account for these cognitive variables in security studies. 

This section appropriates the academic discussion of organizational culture 

into the specific domain of the military services. The goal of this section is to 

demonstrate clearly that organizational culture comprises the dominant vari-
THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

25

able in shaping a military’s policy preference. This discussion will inform the 

analysis of the later case studies, as the national security policies are compared against the cultural tenets of the Air Force. To substantiate the power of 

organizational culture for the Air Force, this section advances four interlocking precepts: first, there is no single monolithic military culture—each service 

has its own unique culture; second, military service cultures are uniquely 

powerful and pervasive; third, the individual military services exert considerable influence on national security policy; and fourth, the organizational culture of the military services shapes their conceptions of how to structure, 

equip, and fight the nation’s wars.

Scholars have long considered organizational behaviors in their analysis of 

national security. For example, two foundational works in the field—Barry 

Posen’s Sources of Military Doctrine and Graham Allison’s Essence of Decision—incorporate organizational theory as a primary lens of analysis.23 In 

general, these analyses of military behavior consider the military as a monolithic whole with generalized preferences.24 Posen, for example, assumes a 

military preference for offensive doctrines as well as “predictability, stability, 

and certainty.”25 A closer view of the military, however, reveals four distinct 

services, informed by unique cultures and holding unique preferences. Williamson Murray notes, “There is no monolithic American military culture. 

Rather, the four services, reflecting their differing historical antecedents and 

the differences in the environments in which they operate, have evolved cultures that are extraordinarily different.”26 Stephen P. Rosen’s analysis corroborates Murray’s assertion: “Each branch has its own culture and distinct way of 

thinking about the way war should be conducted.”27 This awareness suggests 

the value of studying each military service separately to gain a better understanding of its contribution to security policy.28 Analyzing a service with a 

unique organizational culture illuminates preferences with greater specificity 

and texture than an aggregate military view affords.

Understanding the culturally distinct military services is particularly important in light of the uncommon power of their respective cultures. While 

Schein and others describe the saturating impact of culture for organizations 

in general, military institutions constitute an extreme case. For example, the 

military services employ a “closed career principle” with only one way in and 

one way up.29 Military members enter at the bottom of the hierarchy, reaching 

the top only with time and steady promotion within the organization. From 

day one of a military career, the force-feeding of service culture begins. Military trainers baptize new recruits into their service norms, stripping them of 

their individuality through regulation haircuts and teaching them new ways 

to walk, talk, eat, clean, and dress.30 That same culture continues to inform the 
THE POWER OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

26

rest of one’s military career, though the shock of the new is replaced with the 

transparency of the normal. Because there are no lateral transfers into the upper ranks, those who survive to lead have embraced the dominant cultural 

norms. For these reasons, Kier suggests that military organizations “may be 

the most ‘complete’ societies of any ‘total’ organization.”31 Culture informs the 

worldview of any organization but appears to dominate the worldview of a 

military service.

In addition to boasting strong cultures, military organizations carry powerful influence in the creation of policy. In fact, Carl Builder asserts that the 

military services constitute the major players in the formation of national security policy.32 Furthermore, he affirms the uniqueness of each service culture—what he calls “personality”—and the causal impact those personalities 

have on service behavior. He suggests that these service personalities “will 

even persist through the trauma of war. They affect how the services, in peacetime, perceive war and then plan and buy and train forces. To understand the 

American military styles is to understand what is going on and much of what 

is likely to happen in the national security arena—from Star Wars to the Persian Gulf.”33

Since the military services are power players with equally powerful cultures, a growing literature highlights the causal role of organizational culture 

in shaping service behavior. John Nagl’s influential work on counterinsurgency operations in Malaya and Vietnam highlights the different organizational cultures of the British and American armies.34 These unique cultures, 

Nagl argues, explain the two armies’ varying capacities to become learning 

organizations capable of adapting to counterinsurgency operations. Similarly, 

Jeffrey Legro’s analysis of mutual restraint between Britain and Germany in 

World War II pits a realist view against an organizational culture view.35

Legro’s organizational culture view “posits that the pattern of assumptions, 

ideas, and beliefs that prescribe how a military bureaucracy should conduct 

battle will influence state preferences and actions on the use of that means.”36

To understand phenomena of restraint in submarine warfare, strategic bombing, and the non-use of chemical weapons, Legro argues that the organizational culture lens offers greater explanatory power. For example, after both 

Britain and Germany executed “accidental” bombing attacks on each other in 

the spring of 1940, Germany largely brushed off the offense while Britain eagerly launched retaliatory campaigns. Legro explains the contrasting responses by citing that strategic bombing was not a part of the Luftwaffe culture, though it pulsed at the heart of Royal Air Force (RAF) culture.37

Elizabeth Kier’s study of French and British military doctrine in the interwar years sustains a similar line of argument. Kier does not reject the realist 
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27

framework of self-interest but suggests that cultural lenses inform the content 

of that interest.

38 Builder concurs, observing that a service’s force planning and 

systems acquisition are largely shaped by cultural preferences rather than objective threat analyses.39 Adam Stulberg and Michael Salomone capably summarize the literature: “The common thread to these studies is that military 

culture represents the intellectual and inter-subjective capacity of the different armed services to come to grips with the tasks of preparing for and waging war in different strategic, political, and technological settings.”40 This paper advances the same conclusion.

This chapter defines and details the impact of organizational culture and its 

uniquely powerful role in shaping the policy preferences of the military services. What impact does organizational culture have on civil-military relations? The existing baseline of agency theory models an aggregate military 

with generic self-interest and a culture of subordination. This work relaxes 

these assumptions by (1) disaggregating the military and studying one military service—the Air Force; and (2) analyzing the service’s unique organizational culture that informs its understanding of self-interest—a culture that 

may or may not prize subordination. Moving from the general to the specific, 

what cultural assumptions tacitly shape the Air Force’s preferences? To answer this question, the remainder of this chapter undertakes a cultural analysis of the US Air Force.

The Organizational Culture of the Air Force

Who is the Air Force? It is the keeper and wielder of the decisive instruments of war—the technological marvels of flight 

that have been adapted to war.

—Carl Builder

The Masks of War

This section canvasses Air Force history in search of its artifacts, espoused 

beliefs, and basic assumptions, forged in the fires of external adaptation and 

internal integration. Recalling the definition of culture stipulated earlier in 

this chapter, the goal is to uncover the prevailing personality of the Air Force, 

rooted in its collective history, enduring over time, and comprised of assumptions from which it forms a basis for future action. The methodology of this 

section searches out historical and cultural observations from published 

works and categorizes the recurring themes into five discrete tenets of Air 

Force culture. This paper does not suggest that these five basic assumptions 
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28

are the only ones informing Air Force action, nor do these assumptions saturate the thinking of every Air Force member. They serve as broad generalizations for the purpose of qualitative analysis in the case studies. These assumptions attempt to expose the theories-in-use that shape Air Force policies and 

preferences.41 In the interest of brevity, this section does not provide exacting 

historical detail, so interested readers seeking more background can follow 

the research trailheads suggested by the endnotes. 

Technology Centered

Without question, the most consistent and pervasive description of the Air 

Force is its core connection to technology. As Builder frankly suggests, “The 

Air Force could be said to worship at the altar of technology.”42 The service’s 

love for technology, however, is not a disembodied one; rather, the Air Force 

prizes the human connection to technology as manifest in the airplane. An 

observer’s first impression of the Air Force, rendered through its visible artifacts, illuminates an organizational passion for the airplane. Nearly every Air 

Force base showcases airplane monuments, often right at the entrance to the 

base. As a point of comparison, the parade ground at the US Military Academy at West Point is flanked by monuments to some of the Army’s great generals: Washington, Patton, and MacArthur. The Terrazzo at the US Air Force 

Academy is cornered by the Air Force’s sleekest airplanes: the F-15, F-16, F-4, 

and F-105.43 Walking through the halls of the Pentagon yields similar conclusions, as dramatic paintings and pictures of aircraft dominate the Air Force’s 

corporate territory. This fascination with the airplane stems from the earliest 

days of the Army Air Corps. Perry Smith notes the visceral connection these 

early flyers had with their machines: “To him the airplane was not just a new 

and exciting weapon; it was what carried him miles behind enemy lines and 

brought him back; it was a personal possession which was given a personal, 

usually feminine, name, kissed upon return from a mission, and painted with 

a symbol for each enemy plane shot down or bombing mission completed.”44

This love of technology—particularly as expressed in the airplane—illuminates much about past and present Air Force behavior. Richard Hallion notes, 

“Generally speaking, the technology tail has wagged the Air Force dog.”45 The 

history of the Air Force’s acquisition of both the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) suggests an institutional resistance to these disembodied technologies.46 Historian David MacIsaac avers, 

“However much the official spokesmen of the air services may deny it, [RPAs] 

are not considered an appropriate topic for discussion by most pilots, among 

whom it is an article of faith that a manned aircraft can perform any mission 
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better than an unmanned aircraft.”47 Although the Air Force certainly adopted these unmanned technologies into the service, the bias for manned systems constitutes an abiding element of the service culture.

The Air Force’s institutional passion for technology and airplanes translates into a consistent prioritization of quality over quantity. For example, the 

Air Force historically laments the age of its aircraft fleet rather than the numbers within that fleet.48 Builder aptly observes that to an Airman, “To be outnumbered may be tolerable, but to be outflown is not. The way to get the 

American flier’s attention is to confront him with a superior machine” (emphasis added).49 This observation echoes convincingly with current Airmen 

whose service has labored mightily to procure the F-22 and F-35 to stay ahead 

of foreign competition. Perry Smith agrees that aircraft superiority is the 

prism through which many Airmen view national security.50 Ultimately, this 

fascination with technology and airplanes bleeds into nearly every corner of 

Air Force culture; in fact, several of the forthcoming tenets of Air Force culture are derivatives from this technological core.51

In light of these observations, the following basic assumption informs Air 

Force organizational culture: The Air Force exists because of technology, and its 

ongoing superiority is sustained by the ascendance of its technology. As the first 

and most important machine, the manned airplane is the building block of the 

force. While unmanned technologies have their place, the complexities of combat require an actual—or virtual—human presence over the battlefield. 

Autonomously Decisive

The technological DNA of the Air Force informs the next tenet of its culture: an abiding desire for politically unconstrained, uniquely decisive operations. Forged in the crucible of World War II, and spurred by a desire for 

service autonomy, an unflinching commitment to strategic bombing dominated the early decades of the Air Force.52 Even before World War II concluded, the Army Air Corps commissioned a strategic bombing survey to 

generate empirical evidence for its decisive impact.53 Neither tactical aviation 

nor theater airlift motivated a postwar survey as strategic bombing did.54

Robert Jervis notes that an organization absorbs lessons most acutely when its 

structure is altered or formed to learn a particular lesson from an event.55 The 

Air Force’s history supports Jervis’s assertion; after the publication of the US 

Strategic Bombing Survey, the doctrine of strategic bombing became the theology of Strategic Air Command and, by extension, the Air Force as a whole. 

Morton Halperin observes, for example, the curiosity of the Air Force’s blithe 

treatment of the Berlin airlift.56 At a time when its public image was at its ze-
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nith—having shown the world that America was both mighty and good—the 

Air Force chose not to invest in or publicize its airlift capacity.57 Airlift seemed 

a distraction from its principal focus on strategic bombing.58

The Airman’s love of technology and aircraft, coupled with an organizational commitment to strategic bombing, forged a focus on means instead of 

ends. Historian Michael Sherry details this phenomenon in the context of 

World War II: “The leaders and technicians of the American air force were 

driven by technological fanaticism—a pursuit of destructive ends expressed, 

sanctioned, and disguised by the organization and application of technological means . . . In practice, they often waged destruction as a functional end in 

itself, without a clear comprehension of its relationship to stated purposes.”59

Muting the Clausewitzian ideal of subordinating the violence of war to its 

political purpose, Air Force leaders focused instead on the lethality of their 

means. Sherry suggests that among the Air Force leadership of World War II 

and the Cold War, “The task, not the purpose, of winning governed.”60 Mark 

Clodfelter extends this trajectory into the modern era of precision-guided 

weapons, noting the temptation such weapons might offer. He suggests that 

the precision revolution creates “a modern vision of air power that focuses on 

the lethality of its weaponry rather than on the weaponry’s effectiveness as a 

political instrument.”61

One manifestation of this focus on means over ends is the Air Force’s discomfort with political constraints. Paradoxically, the centralized control and 

flexibility of airpower make it particularly malleable to nuanced political 

pressure; however, the Air Force as an institution is acutely resistant to such 

perceived interference. The nearly unconstrained political environment of total war in Germany and Japan molded an expectation for the right way to use 

airpower. For Air Force leaders like Gen Curtis LeMay, “Politics (except for 

the scramble for resources) ended when war began.”62 In future conflicts, the 

precedent of a free political hand continued to inform Air Force expectations 

in the straitjacket of limited war. During the Korean War, “Senior Air Force 

leaders ‘chafed under the prospect of political constraints’ that reduced the 

decisiveness of air power and surrendered initiative to the enemy.”63 Similarly, 

after the frustrations of Vietnam, Air Force leaders insisted they could have 

been more effective if they had been “free from political restraints.”64 More 

recently, this discomfort with political constraints climaxed during the coercive air campaign of Operation Allied Force. Subjecting every target list to the 

political sensitivities of each country in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) spurred no shortage of frustration for senior Airmen.65 After the 

war, Gen John Jumper commented on such politically constrained gradual 

campaigns: “We hope to be able to convince politicians that is not the best 
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way to do it, but in some cases we are going to have to live with that situation.”66 Reflecting the consensus view throughout Air Force history, Jumper’s 

remarks convey the idea of an air war as an autonomous military endeavor 

with a “best way to do it,” rather than an inherently subordinate extension of 

political activity. 

In sum, the Air Force’s mastery of technology has motivated a desire to 

unleash the full potential of that technology. The promise of airpower grips an 

Airman’s imagination and motivates a passion to showcase that promise. Historically, therefore, Airmen have sought to master the means of war, unshackled from the tangled politics of its purpose. This is not to say that all Airmen 

are uninterested in the political purposes of war, but it indicates a trend that 

shapes the prevailing personality of the service. A basic assumption informing Air Force organizational culture is this: The Air Force has the power to 

change the face of the earth. It can do what no other service can do. To realize its 

true potential, the Air Force should be employed kinetically, offensively, overwhelmingly, and with minimal political interference. 

Future Oriented

The Air Force’s technological core predisposes a forward-looking orientation. As the youngest of the services, born from technological breakthrough, 

the Air Force “identifies the past with obsolescence, and for the air weapon, 

obsolescence equates to defeat.”67 Historian Tami Davis Biddle also detects 

this tendency in Air Force thinking, noting “too great a readiness to focus on 

the future without rigorously considering the past. This is an endemic problem in air forces, which develop their institutional identity around claims to 

see and understand the future more clearly than other services do.”68 An organizational commitment to looking ahead pervades the Air Force culture.

The technological orientation of the service, however, fosters unintended 

consequences. While the Air Force looks forward, its investment in highpriced systems with long development times creates a counterintuitive conservatism. The service builds its doctrine and force structure around the machines and systems in its inventory; however, when emerging technologies 

enable new doctrines or strategies, they threaten the viability of the Air Force’s 

posture. Builder explains, “In fostering technology, even for its cherished instruments, the Air Force is necessarily instigating new concepts and capabilities that challenge the form and preferences of its institution.”69 Mike Worden 

notes a similar vulnerability for any service’s commitment to its doctrine. 

During the golden age of Strategic Air Command’s dominance, the Air Force’s 

commitment to strategic bombing stymied consideration of alternatives. “The 
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intense single-minded focus on their mission and their enemy advanced a 

monistic perspective in an increasingly pluralistic world. Ironically, the senior 

leaders had become steadfast conservatives in a service that professed to be 

always forward looking.”70

Despite this discomfiting tendency for “adverse yaw,” the espoused belief of 

future-orientation informs Air Force culture across the service.71 Consequently, the third basic assumption of the Air Force’s organizational culture is 

this: Technology and potential adversaries change quickly, and the Air Force 

must orient forward to the unknown future instead of the forgotten past. The Air 

Force must pursue next-generation systems today to be ready for tomorrow.

Occupationally Loyal

The Air Force’s technology-focused DNA replicates itself in the hearts of its 

members.72 Builder asserts that the history of the Air Force is steeped in an 

individual passion for flying more than an abiding loyalty to the institution. 

He contends, “The air force identifies itself with flying and things that fly; the 

institution is secondary, it is a means to those things. A brave band of intrepid 

aviators, bonded primarily in the love of flight and flying machines, may have 

a clear sense of themselves, but it is not so much an institutional as it is an 

individual sense of self. And it is not focused so much on who they are as it is 

on what they want to do.”73 Builder cites the volunteer aviators of the Lafayette 

Escadrille, the Flying Tigers, and the RAF Eagle squadrons as examples of 

noble men who served honorably but were motivated by their love of flying: 

“The prospect of combat is not the essential draw; it is simply the justification 

for having and flying these splendid machines.”74

Within the Air Force, this phenomenon gives rise to a “fractionated confederation of subcultures rather than a cohesive military service.”75 In his 

study of Air Force cultural cohesion, James Smith notes the high level of occupational versus institutional loyalties, particularly among pilots.76 Because 

the service is built around a visceral connection with unique machines, loyalties migrate to those machines—and one’s experience of them—rather than to 

the larger institution.77 Throughout the Air Force’s history, “People found 

themselves in an institution because that was the place to do what they wanted 

to do—to fly airplanes, to work on rockets, to develop missiles, to learn an 

interesting or promising trade, etc.”78 A recent advertising campaign by the 

Air Force reinforced this idea by showing young people pursuing their passions—snowboarding, bicycle racing, flying remote-controlled airplanes—

and then announcing, “We’ve been waiting for you.”79 The Air Force markets 
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itself as a venue for doing what you love—but higher, faster, and with a grander 

purpose.

This occupational orientation often inspires loyalties to subgroups within 

the larger Air Force. Because the Air Force maintains a diverse mission portfolio in several war-fighting domains, unique subcultures have developed 

within insulated commands. Then–Chief of Staff of the Air Force Merrill McPeak lamented, “People built loyalties around their commands—intense loyalties in fact—rather than loyalties to air and space power as a whole, to a 

broader, more comprehensive mission.”80 Air Force officer and historian Edward Mann observes the same about the service in 1990: “We were a conglomerate of specialists with greater loyalty to machines and sleeve patches than to 

any single unifying theme or to the Air Force itself. . . . Over the years, we in 

the Air Force had cloistered ourselves in occupational monasteries, efficiently 

performing the rites of our orders with no sense of the church’s mission.”81

These dynamics suggest a hierarchy of overlapping motivations within the Air 

Force culture; desires to serve the country, lead Airmen, fly an airplane, build 

secure cyber networks, and control satellites all collide in a mosaic of motivations. Consequently, a basic assumption persists: The Air Force is an honorable 

and patriotic means to practice a desirable high-tech trade. Loyalties to the trade, 

machine, and subculture often outweigh loyalty to the institution.

Self-Aware

As the youngest of the military services, and one that fought hard for its 

organizational autonomy, the Air Force is uniquely self-aware of its institutional legitimacy. During its infancy as an organization, the Air Force’s adaptation to its external environment required fierce defense of its turf. Assigning 

roles and missions among the services spawned fractious debate and bureaucratic wrangling.82 These dynamics imbued the Air Force with a sensitivity to 

its rightful place in the pantheon of established military services. Builder 

claims, “The Air Force . . . has always been most sensitive to defending or 

guarding its legitimacy as an independent institution.”83 In fact, as recently as 

December 2009, the chief of staff of the Air Force was seeking fresh articulations of “why we need an independent Air Force.”84 Such a rhetorical exercise 

indicates the service still suffers an unsteady conviction of its own institutional legitimacy.

This self-aware posture subjects the service to periodic bouts of identity 

crisis. In 1989, an unpublished white paper entitled “A View of the Air Force 

Today” circulated throughout the Air Force. Its authors articulated an array of 

concerns about the state of their service and ultimately concluded “the Air 
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Force seems to have lost its sense of identity and unique contribution.”85 Two 

years later, the stunning success of Operation Desert Storm seemed to resolve 

the crisis for the Air Force as it proved its decisive worth in dramatic fashion.86 The institutional self-confidence, however, was short-lived. In a study 

published by the Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessments in September 

2009, Thomas Ehrhard concludes, “Today’s Air Force is experiencing an institutional identity crisis that places it at an historical nadir of confidence, reputation, and influence.”87 Symptomatic of this crisis of confidence, Charles J. 

Dunlap, Jr., likewise avers that many Airmen feel unappreciated by the other 

services.88

These phenomena underscore the final basic assumption of Air Force organizational culture: Major combat operations are the best setting to showcase the 

full potential of the independent Air Force. In any other venue, the Air Force 

serves an essential supporting role in which it is largely taken for granted. During these times of invisible contribution, the Air Force must actively articulate its 

relevance to the nation and itself.

In sum, these five attributes capture much of the prevailing personality of 

the Air Force, rooted in its collective history, enduring over time, from which 

it forms a basis for future action: technology centered, autonomously decisive, future oriented, occupationally loyal, and self-aware of its legitimacy. 

Given the power of organizational culture to shape and sustain preferences, 

these five tenets are hypothesized to inform past and future Air Force policies. 

It should be noted again, however, that a distinctive feature of Air Force history and culture is the prominence of its subcultures. As Mike Worden demonstrates, the first half of the Air Force’s life witnessed a dominant bomber 

subculture, while the second half has been dominated by the fighter culture.89

These dominant tribes exerted powerful influence on the service’s culture writ 

large, but the five features described above appear to be consistent across both

eras of Air Force history. Despite the inherent subculture differences within 

the service, in matters of substantive policy the Air Force speaks—and has 

spoken—with one voice.90 Consequently, these five assumptions subsume the 

variations of the subcultures, and they are postulated as enduring elements of 

the Air Force’s organizational culture.

 In the following case studies, the analysis will test various policy decisions 

for their consonance with these five enduring assumptions. The working hypothesis of this paper suggests that policies consistent with the Air Force’s 

basic assumptions will engender working, while policies counter to Air Force 

cultural assumptions will set the conditions for shirking. 
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35

Conclusion

This chapter established the theoretical basis for considering organizational culture as an explanatory variable in shaping a military service’s decision to work or shirk. As organizations adapt to their external environment 

and manage their internal processes, a pervasive culture develops to make 

sense of “how things are around here.”91 Like a paradigm in research science, 

organizational culture provides a mental model for viewing the world, largely 

determining what questions are asked, what answers are given, and what data 

are determined to be outliers. For insular military organizations, the impact 

of service culture is uniquely potent and pervasive. A service’s culture affects 

how it is structured, what it buys, and how it fights. In the context of civilmilitary relations, organizational culture shapes a military service’s calculation of self-interest, informing its decision to work or shirk. While agency 

theory provides the top-down rational framework, this chapter demonstrates 

the power of organizational culture to inform a service’s bottom-up conception of its own interest and policy preferences.

The foundation for case study analysis has therefore been laid. The theory 

of civil-military relations explored the dynamics of two-tiered delegation in a 

democracy and the imperatives of military subordination. Agency theory 

supplied a rational framework for considering the context of incentives, creating a useful continuum of working and shirking. The theory of organizational 

culture demonstrated the power of culture to shape a military service’s policy 

preference within that rational framework. Finally, this chapter concluded 

with five basic assumptions of Air Force culture, suggested by its artifacts and 

espoused beliefs, and forged in its adaptation to the external environment. 

With this unique culture in view, the following two chapters present case 

studies of the Air Force between 1990 and 2008, testing the explanatory power 

of Air Force culture to shape its decision to work or shirk the civilians’ national security policy. 

Notes

1. Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 3.

2. James M. Smith, “Air Force Culture and Cohesion: Building an Air and Space Force for 

the Twenty-First Century,” Airpower Journal 12, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 40–53.

3. Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: JosseyBass, 2004), 7.

4. Ibid., 12–13.

5. Ibid., 14.

6. Ibid., 15.
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36

7. Ibid., 17.

8. James Q. Wilson, Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It (New 

York: Basic Books, 1989), 91. The idea of organizational “personality” is also the dominant 

metaphor throughout Carl H. Builder, The Masks of War: American Military Styles in Strategy 

and Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).

9. Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review

51, no. 2 (April 1986): 277.

10. Kim S. Cameron and Robert E. Quinn, Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture: Based on the Competing Values Framework (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1999), 14.

11. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 25.

12. Ibid., 28.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., 31. Schein attributes the expression “theories-in-use” to the work of Chris Argyris.

15. Ibid., 87.

16. Ibid., 32.

17. See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1996). This connection between organizational culture and scientific paradigms is made 

explicitly in Jeffrey W. Legro, “Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War II,” 

International Security 18, no. 4 (Spring 1994):116.

18. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 10.

19. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 8.

20. Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: The 

Brookings Institution, 1974), 39. Halperin speaks of organizational “essence,” which is similar 

to this study’s definition of “culture.” See also Wilson, Bureaucracy, 101.

21. Wilson, Bureaucracy, 101.

22. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, 39.

23. Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between 

the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984) and Graham Allison and Philip 

Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Longman, 1999).

24. Jeffrey W. Legro, “Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War II,” 110.

25. Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine, 46.

26. Williamson Murray, “Does Military Culture Matter?” Orbis 43, no. 1 (Winter 1999): 34.

27. Stephen P. Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca, 

NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), 19.

28. For further commentary on the need to disaggregate the military into its culturally 

significant components, see Theo Farrell, “Figuring Out Fighting Organisations: The New Organisational Analysis in Strategic Studies,” Journal of Strategic Studies 19, no. 1 (1996): 122–35; 

Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 14; Adam N. Stulberg and Michael D. Salomone, 

Managing Defense Transformation: Agency, Culture and Service Change (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 20; and Jeffrey Legro, Cooperation under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint during 

World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).

29. James Smith, “Air Force Culture and Cohesion,” 41.

30. Larry R. Donnithorne, The West Point Way of Leadership: From Learning Principled 

Leadership to Practicing It (New York: Currency Doubleday, 1994), 20–22.

31. Kier, Imagining War, 29.

32. Builder, The Masks of War, 3.
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33. Ibid., 5.

34. John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

35. Legro, “Military Culture and Inadvertent Escalation in World War II.”

36. Ibid., 117.

37. Ibid., 126. This case is made at length in Legro, Cooperation under Fire.

38. Kier, Imagining War, 38. Zisk undertakes a similar cultural analysis of Soviet doctrinal 

development in Kimberly M. Zisk, Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation, 1955-1991 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

39. Builder, The Masks of War, 6.

40. Stulberg and Salomone, Managing Defense Transformation, 24.

41. Chris Argyris, quoted in Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 31.

42. Builder, The Masks of War, 19.

43. Smith, “Air Force Culture and Cohesion,” 13.

44. Perry M. Smith, The Air Force Plans for Peace, 1943-1945 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), 18.

45. Quoted in Carl H. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory in the 

Evolution and Fate of the U.S. Air Force (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 162.

46. There were pockets of enthusiasm for both systems, but the institutional inertia weighed 

against them. The story of Air Force corporate resistance to the ICBM is detailed in Neil Sheehan, A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon (New York: 

Random House, 2009). For a discussion of resistance to both systems based on organizational 

identity, see Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: 

Princeton University Press, 1976).

47. Quoted in Builder, The Icarus Syndrome, 163.

48. Builder, The Masks of War, 22. For a current lament on the age of Air Force aircraft, see 

Thomas Ehrhard, An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic 

and Budgetary Assessments, 2009), accessed 18 Feb 2010, http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/

PubLibrary/R.20090917.An_Air_Force_Strat/R.20090917.An_Air_Force_Strat.pdf.

49. Ibid., 22.

50. Smith, The Air Force Plans for Peace, 52.

51. For additional observations of the primacy of technology, see Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., 

“Understanding Airmen: A Primer for Soldiers,” Military Review, September–October 2007; 

and Michael Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals: The Problem of Air Force Leadership, 1945-

1982 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air University Press, 1998), 36.

52. Smith, The Air Force Plans for Peace, 17.

53. David MacIsaac, Strategic Bombing in World War Two: The Story of the United States 

Strategic Bombing Survey (New York: Garland, 1976).

54. Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, 17.

55. Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, 239.

56. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, 31.

57. Andrei Cherny, The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s 

Finest Hour (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2008), 511.

58. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, 31.

59. Michael S. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New 

Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 251–52.

60. Ibid., 180.
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61. Mark Clodfelter, The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam

(New York: Free Press, 1989), 203.

62. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power, 180.

63. Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, 43.

64. Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and 

American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

2002), 299. Echoed in Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, 169.

65. Dag Henriksen, NATO’s Gamble: Combining Diplomacy and Airpower in the Kosovo 

Crisis, 1998-1999 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007).

66. Quoted in Paul C. Strickland, “USAF Aerospace-Power Doctrine: Decisive or Coercive?” Aerospace Power Journal 14, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 13–25.

67. Dunlap, “Understanding Airmen,” 127.

68. Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality, 291.

69. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome, 161.

70. Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, 145.

71. “Adverse yaw” refers to an aerodynamic property in which an aircraft’s rolling motion 

in one direction creates a yawing motion in the opposite direction.

72. The discussion of this tenet does not impugn the patriotic motives of any Air Force 

member but paints a broad outline of historic trends across the service.

73. Builder, The Masks of War, 37.

74. Ibid., 23.

75. Smith, “Air Force Culture and Cohesion,” 22.

76. “Occupational” orientation refers to a primary loyalty to the task or occupation, 

whereas an “institutional” orientation gives chief loyalty to the institution itself over the task 

performed within that institution.

77. For greater historical background on the genesis of this subculture phenomenon, see 

Builder, The Icarus Syndrome.

78. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome, 35.

79. Melanie Streeter, “‘We’ve Been Waiting’ Campaign Returns to Television,” Airman, November 2004, 9.

80. Quoted in Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals, 235.

81. Edward C. Mann, Thunder and Lightning: Desert Storm and the Airpower Debates

(Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1995), 163.

82. For a full discussion of this time period, see Jeffrey G. Barlow, Revolt of the Admirals: 

The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945–1950 (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1998).

83. Builder, The Masks of War, 27.

84. Greg Jaffe, “Combat Generation: Drone Operators Climb on Winds of Change in the Air 

Force,” Washington Post, 28 February 2010, accessed 1 March 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.

com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/27/AR2010022703754.html.

85. Quoted in Builder, The Icarus Syndrome, 5.

86. Ibid., 10.

87. Ehrhard, “An Air Force Strategy for the Long Haul,” 28.

88. Dunlap, “Understanding Airmen,” 126.

89. Worden, Rise of the Fighter Generals.

90. This assertion is intended to clarify a useful level of analysis. While studying civilmilitary relations at the service level adds value to the literature, parsing the Air Force even 

further (to the subculture level) would unhelpfully complicate the analysis. 

91. Cameron and Quinn, Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture, 14.
39

Chapter 4

Desert Storm: A Case of Curious Working

Never in the history of air power has so much been accomplished so quickly and at so small a cost.

—Jeffrey Record

Hollow Victory

The way the war was planned, fought, and brought to a close 

often had more to do with the culture of the military services, 

their entrenched concept of warfare, and Powell’s abiding philosophy of decisive force than it did with the Iraqis or the tangled politics of the Middle East.

—Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor

The Generals’ War

Both politically and militarily, Operation Desert Storm appears to be a triumphant declaration of the right way to fight a war. From Iraq’s invasion of 

Kuwait on 2 August 1990 through the ceasefire on 28 February 1991, the 

American military machine proclaimed its coronation as the world’s only 

military superpower. The US military titan marshaled massive and overwhelming force, leveraged superior technology, obliterated the enemy, and 

achieved the limited political objective of ejecting Iraqi forces from Kuwait. 

For the generation of officers whose careers began in the jungles of Vietnam, 

the Gulf War offered a striking rebuke of quagmire conflicts and seemed to 

validate their lessons learned. One such lesson concerned the proper roles of 

the civilian government and the military during war. As a stark contrast to 

Vietnam’s muddled dysfunction, the cooperation between the National Command Authorities (NCA) and the military decision makers during the Gulf 

War has been hailed as the model of healthy civil-military relations.1

 As discussed in chapter 3, Eliot Cohen cites this common appraisal of the Gulf War 

as prime corroboration of the “normal theory” of civil-military relations.2

 The 

truth, however, reveals a far more textured array of civil-military confrontation and policy grappling. 

One of the most prominent cases of civil-military disagreement in the Gulf 

War came at the dawn of the crisis—the decision whether to pursue an offensive or defensive strategy against Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi forces. Bob 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

40

Woodward paints a narrative of offensively minded civilians prodding a reluctant military—primarily Gen Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint 

Chiefs of Staff (CJCS)—to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait.3

 This narrative informs the civil-military relations literature, as Desch codes the Gulf War as a 

case of civil-military disagreement in which civilian preferences ultimately 

prevailed.4

 Feaver, however, recognizes that the actual civil-military relationship was more complex than Desch’s typology implies. The United States 

eventually pursued an offensive strategy to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait, 

though the method of doing so largely conformed to Powell’s preferences. 

Throughout the creation of this national policy, a spectrum of cooperation 

emerges, and agency theory helps illuminate the variables that create it. According to Feaver, the Gulf War exemplified intrusive monitoring by a strong 

secretary of defense, Richard Cheney, and witnessed a complex array of working and shirking behaviors. He observes, “Civil-military relations during the 

Gulf War thus were characterized by bargaining, tradeoffs, and strategic interaction, much as agency theory would expect. There was more shirking 

than the conventional wisdom remembers—perhaps even more than agency 

theory would expect, given the relative intrusiveness of the monitoring.”5

Therefore, the prevailing literature on Gulf War civil-military relations describes a generally healthy cooperation, the hawkish civilians pushing for an 

offensive strategy while military leaders urged caution, and a spectrum of bargaining that occurred along the way. However, this case crackles with further 

intrigue when one analyzes the cooperation or resistance of the individual services to the national policy. As noted earlier, existing analysis posits “the military” resisting the offensive strategy proffered by the civilian NCA—a resistance that approaches Feaver’s stringent definition of shirking. The Air Force, 

however, showed no such signs of resistance to an offensive strategy. When the 

commander of US Central Command (USCENTCOM), Gen H. Norman 

Schwarzkopf, called the Air Staff for planning assistance on 8 August 1990, he 

created a most unique opportunity.6

 Schwarzkopf afforded the Air Force headquarters a rare chance to forge an operational war plan in its own image. Consequently, the Air Force’s stand-alone offensive air campaign against Iraq comported favorably with the offensive posture of the Bush administration; 

however, General Powell never embraced it. As the following analysis demonstrates, the Air Force formed a unique enclave of working amid an otherwise 

shirking military. In fact, General Powell actively tempered the attractiveness 

of the Air Force’s air campaign, fearing that overeager civilian hawks might 

execute an air-only war plan he did not personally support.7

What explains this phenomenon of the Air Force uniquely working in the 

midst of shirking by “the military”? The core thesis of this paper asserts that a 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

41

service’s organizational culture constitutes the explanatory variable in shaping its decision to work or shirk the civilians’ national security policy. This 

chapter, therefore, argues that the Bush administration’s offensively oriented 

policy comported soundly with the cultural tenets of the Air Force as reflected 

in its own policy preference. The Air Force had a unique opportunity to craft 

an offensive air campaign, one that reflected its distinct organizational culture. This campaign offended the ground-centric sensibilities of the CJCS but 

provided a handsome offensive option to eager members of the National Security Council. The difference between the national policy and the Air Force’s 

preference (s – w) was therefore minimized, giving rise to unique Air Force 

working in the midst of military shirking.

To substantiate these assertions, this chapter explores the relevant contextual variables, policy preferences, and the consonance of those policies with 

the Air Force’s organizational culture. First, the chapter provides the civilmilitary context that informs the relative power of the key civilian and military players.8

 Subsequently, the chapter highlights the ongoing interaction 

between the civilians’ desired policy, the military’s desires as moderated by 

General Powell, and the Air Force’s unique policy preference. Having identified all of the key variables in the working-shirking inequality, the chapter 

concludes with an analysis of organizational culture as an explanatory variable in forming the Air Force’s policy. This analysis addresses the extent to 

which Air Force cultural tenets are reflected in its chosen policy and demonstrates that a resounding cultural fit explains the Air Force’s unique cooperation with the Bush administration’s offensive desires. 

This work treats the consonance of the national policy with the Air Force 

culture as the independent variable, while the resultant working or shirking is 

the dependent variable. To present a coherent narrative, however, this chapter 

illuminates the Air Force’s cooperation first (the dependent variable), followed by an analysis of the national policy’s cultural fit with the Air Force (the 

independent variable). While this methodology differs from the conventional 

approach in the literature, it affords greater clarity in this particular case.

Finally, unlike most case studies of the Gulf War, this chapter does not 

discuss the actual fighting of the war. The conduct of this “short, victorious, 

and cheap” war is thoroughly addressed in other history volumes.9

 Rather, 

this chapter shines a spotlight earlier in the narrative to illuminate the civilmilitary wrangling over what kind of war should eventually be fought. The 

focus, therefore, is on the policy, the planning, and ultimately the cultural 

variables that inform those policies. Finally, this analysis makes no prejudicial 

judgments on the strategic wisdom of the respective policies; it is beyond the 

scope of this work to judge which policy was the right one. Instead, this chap-
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

42

ter explains the content of those policies and, in the case of the Air Force, 

demonstrates the causal impact of its organizational culture in creating them. 

The Contextual Variables

The military’s decision to work or shirk is informed by the divergence of 

the policy preferences, weighed against the military’s risk calculation of being 

meaningfully punished for shirking. In chapter 2, this calculation was expressed by the inequality: 

agp > s – w

where a = the probability of detecting shirking

g = the probability of civilians choosing to punish shirking

p = the cost of the punishment to the military

s = the military’s policy preference

w = the civilians’ policy decision

Together, the variables agp constitute the military’s risk calculation of receiving meaningful punishment for shirking—a calculation informed by the 

degree of civilian monitoring and anchored in the perception of relative political power. This section explores the background context of the Gulf War 

period to gain a qualitative appreciation of the variables above. As mentioned 

earlier, Feaver notes the high degree of civilian monitoring by a strong secretary of defense throughout the Gulf War. All else equal, this suggests high 

values for both a and g, making shirking unlikely unless s – w is particularly 

high. In Feaver’s view, the military shirked more often than his agency model 

predicts. The following analysis, however, suggests that for the players involved, shirking was not entirely unexpected. 

The Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986

Hailed as “the most important legislation since World War II” and “the watershed event for the military since [World War II],” the Goldwater-Nichols 

Defense Reorganization Act shook the sturdy foundations of the world’s largest bureaucracy.10 The legislation “sought to decrease service bias in providing 

recommendations to the National Command Authorities” by strengthening 

the authority of the CJCS and streamlining the war fighting chain of command for the combatant commanders.11 Previously, Congress viewed the four 

military services as wielding influence well out of proportion to their statutory responsibilities.12 Furthermore, the counsel offered to the president by 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

43

the Joint Chiefs of Staff suffered the parochial dilution of each chief, lacked 

consensus, and forced the president to adjudicate disagreements. “In designating the Chairman as the principal military adviser,” James Locher observes, “Congress envisioned him becoming an ally of the Secretary with a 

common department-wide, non-parochial perspective.”13 In sum, GoldwaterNichols significantly strengthened the position of the CJCS, offering unprecedented power to any chairman prepared to seize it. 

Three years after the passage of Goldwater-Nichols, Gen Colin Powell assumed the role of CJCS and “wielded power and influence beyond that exercised by previous chairmen.”14 Powell redefined the post and clearly understood his new mandate as principal military adviser to the president. In his 

memoirs, Powell recalls, “I did not have to take a vote among the chiefs before 

I recommended anything. I did not even have to consult them, though it 

would be foolish not to do so.”15 Later, after changing his official letterhead to 

include the word “Chairman” in front of the “Joint Chiefs of Staff,” he explains, “I was not the pipeline for the composite opinions of the chiefs. I was 

speaking for myself to the Secretary and the President.”16 In addition to Powell’s acute understanding of his own role, others in the defense establishment 

clearly appreciated the unique influence he exerted. Schwarzkopf comments 

that not since Gen George Marshall during World War II had an officer enjoyed the access and leverage enjoyed by Powell.17

In addition to strengthening the position of CJCS, Goldwater-Nichols likewise bolstered the role of the secretary of defense. The legislation gave the 

secretary an “elastic clause,” conferring upon him or her the “sole and ultimate power within the Department of Defense on any matter on which the 

Secretary chooses to act.”18 Just as Powell embraced the enlarged duties of his 

role, so too did Secretary Richard Cheney. Even the indomitable Schwarzkopf 

gave Cheney a wide berth, noting that the secretary had “unnerved a lot of 

generals by replacing one four-star and giving warnings to others he felt were 

acting with too much autonomy.”19 Then–Brig Gen Buster Glosson recalls 

Cheney as “tough and respected” and “in no mood to take any nonsense from 

generals.”20 This portrait of Cheney accords with Feaver’s appraisal of a secretary who monitored intrusively and was not afraid to punish military shirking. If these were the only variables in consideration, military shirking would 

indeed be unlikely. Cheney’s clout, however, appears to be matched by the 

strengthened role of the chairman seized by Powell. As the military adviser 

with unmatched power and access to the president, combined with personal 

experience as a national security advisor, Powell no doubt appraised his own 

political power favorably. Powell’s popularity with both the president and the 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

44

public likely influenced his cost-benefit calculation of being punished for 

shirking.

The military faced intrusive monitoring from a strong secretary of defense, 

but it wielded strong political power in the person of Gen Colin Powell. Consequently, the left side of the inequality—agp—yields ambiguous qualitative 

results. The right side, however, incorporates historical factors that strongly 

influenced the military’s policy preferences.

Symptoms of the Vietnam Syndrome

Historian Barbara Tuchman once observed, “Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip.”21 For the generation of military 

leaders in the Gulf War, searing memories of Vietnam seemingly informed 

every decision they made. Political scientist Robert Jervis observes that decision makers learn the most acute lessons from history if they experience a 

particular event personally, if the event occurs early in a career, and if that 

event has a uniquely defining impact on the nation.22 Because of these criteria, 

Jervis notes a 20-year time delay in national policy, as early-career officers rise 

to leadership positions chanting the mantra: “never again.” Jervis’s insight 

clarifies the dynamics of 1990, as the captains and majors who plied the trails 

of Vietnam became the Gulf War generals. Their determination not to repeat 

the mistakes of Vietnam saturated their perceptions and preferences throughout the planning process. 

The Army and the Air Force nursed unique wounds from Vietnam, and 

these varied scars informed different lessons. For Army leaders like Powell 

and Schwarzkopf, the lessons of Vietnam were these: avoid slow and noncommittal troop buildups, use overwhelming force to accomplish a clear objective, have an exit strategy, and be wary of airpower advocates who overpromise and underdeliver.23 In fact, Powell’s commitment to these lessons became 

enshrined as the Powell Corollary to the Weinberger doctrine, a set of principles to guide the use of military force.24 These lessons shepherded Powell’s 

conduct throughout the Gulf War planning, as he “seemingly saw his task as 

ensuring that victory would be made inevitable by applying the Weinberger 

rules.”25 For Air Force leaders like Gen Chuck Horner, a different suite of 

painful lessons guided his conduct: shun political interference from Washington in picking targets, avoid the route package system for separating the Air 

Force and Navy, and use alert-ready close air support assets more efficiently.26

In fact, Horner viewed Washington-based target selection as the death knell 

of any war plan: “If you want to know whether a war is going to be successful 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

45

or not, just ask where the targets are being picked. If they say, ‘We picked 

them in Washington,’ get out of the country. Go to Canada until the war is 

over because it is a loser.”27 These lessons powerfully informed Horner’s own 

vision of how to fight in the Gulf War, as the following discussion will show.

For the key military leaders crafting a response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, 

“the experience of the Vietnam War hung . . . like a solar eclipse stopped in 

mid-movement.”28 The power of the Vietnam experience suggests that the 

military harbored very strong preferences regarding the use of force. Returning to the working-shirking inequality, the variable s represents the military’s 

own policy preference and captures not only the content of that policy but 

also how strongly that preference is held. Consequently, for the inequality 

agp > s – w, the previous discussion illustrates the following: (1) variables agp 

account for a strong secretary of defense meeting an empowered CJCS and 

ultimately yield an inconclusive qualitative value; and (2) the military’s own 

policy preference s appears to be held very strongly, creating the potential for 

a large s – w delta. In sum, despite the intrusive monitoring from a strong 

secretary of defense, the military wielded tremendous power in Chairman 

Colin Powell and held its preferences strongly in the wake of Vietnam. These 

qualitative variables paint a contextual background ripe for military shirking, 

as the following narrative illustrates. 

Civilian Hawks and Military Doves

Despite the generally healthy civil-military relations during the Gulf War, 

civilian and military leaders found ample opportunity for impassioned debate. From the very first National Security Council (NSC) meetings on 2 August 1990, a diversity of views emerged that would bracket the debate for the 

following months. This section highlights the principal views of the civilian 

policy makers and the military, as channeled through its powerful spokesman 

General Powell.

When President Bush convened his National Security Council on 2 August 

1990, the principals confronted the essential question of an appropriate response: whether to draw a defensive line in the sand at the Saudi Arabian 

border, or whether to pursue an offensive strategy to evict Iraqi forces from 

Kuwait.29 As historians Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor observe, “The 

lineup ran counter to what most of the public would have expected. The civilians were looking for a way to roll back the Iraqi gains while the military was 

urging caution.”30 While the president polled his principals, the perspectives 

emerged clearly: Cheney was looking for options that could “hurt Iraq,”31 and 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

46

national security advisor Brent Scowcroft and deputy secretary of state Lawrence Eagleburger counseled, “It is absolutely essential that the U.S. . . . not 

only put a stop to this aggression but roll it back.”32 The dissenting view came 

from Powell, who resisted such enthusiasm for military action and questioned 

whether “it was worth going to war to liberate Kuwait.”33 Powell’s interest in 

these political objectives—no doubt informed by his experience in Vietnam—

inspired a swift rebuke from Cheney, who reminded Powell that he was not 

the national security advisor or secretary of state. “You’re the Chairman of the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff. Give military advice.”34

While the president did not tip his hand during the initial NSC meeting, he 

made his intentions clear two days later. After meeting with his NSC staff and 

top generals at Camp David on 4 August 1990, President Bush announced at 

a press conference that the Iraqi aggression “would not stand.”35 Several days 

later, Bush outlined four key objectives to guide US policy: secure the immediate, unconditional, and complete withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait; 

restore the legitimate government of Kuwait; assure the security and stability 

of the Persian Gulf region; and protect American lives.36 After securing permission to base troops in Saudi Arabia, the massive logistical train of men and 

equipment steamed east and Operation Desert Shield began.

The president clearly articulated his desire for an offensive strategy, but 

that did not prevent Powell from articulating a different vision. As the troop 

buildup continued throughout September 1990, the president and his fellow 

civilians in the NSC appeared enthusiastic about the nascent air campaign 

being developed by the Air Staff and US Central Command Air Forces 

(USCENTAF). Powell, however, retained grave skepticism about the efficacy 

of air strikes to accomplish the president’s objectives.37 In a meeting with 

President Bush and Secretary Cheney on 25 September 1990, Powell urged 

caution against the air-only option and laid out the feasibility of economic 

sanctions as a defensive policy.38 In conversations with former CJCS Admiral 

William Crowe, Powell likewise advocated a containment strategy and complained that “he had been trying to keep the administration tamped down, 

attempting to dampen any enthusiasm for war.”39 On 9 October 1990, Powell 

met with the British air chief marshal and “was making the case for relying on 

economic sanctions.”40

During the same period, the USCENTCOM staff was preparing to brief the 

president and the NSC on their current war plans, comprised of a viable offensive air strategy and a largely defensive ground plan. Schwarzkopf confided in Powell his fears that the civilians might elect to prosecute the plan 

based on its enticingly offensive air component, to which Powell replied, “Do 

you think I’d ever let that happen? My problem is that I’ve got all these hawks 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

47

in the NSC who keep saying we ought to kick Saddam out of Kuwait now. I’ve 

got to have something to keep them under control.”41 On 30 October 1990, 

Powell met with the president again, assured him that air strikes alone could 

not do the job, and requested an additional 150,000–200,000 troops to ensure 

a viable capability to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait. While several NSC staffers interpreted this sizable request as a ploy to dissuade presidential action, 

Bush agreed to the troop request and conformed the US strategy to Powell’s 

preferred vision.42

Evolution of the Air Campaign

In the midst of this political wrangling, the Air Force was busily preparing 

an offensive strategic air campaign against the Iraqi regime. In fact, the availability of air forces in theater and the attractiveness of the air campaign 

tempted the civilian administration to pursue this air-only approach. Consequently, General Powell’s campaign to tamp down the enthusiastic administration was largely an effort to dull the shine on the attractive Air Force plan. 

The following section traces the development of that Air Force plan, its theoretical antecedents, its attractiveness to the offensive-minded civilians, and 

Powell’s dogged efforts to prevent its premature prosecution.

Internal Look and Operation Plan 1002-90

One of the ideological sources of the Gulf War air campaign was USCENTCOM’s Exercise Internal Look in the spring and summer of 1990. As the Soviet 

Union began to dissolve in 1989–1990, CJCS Powell directed USCENTCOM 

to update its Operational Plan (OPLAN) 1002-88 to account for regional 

threats to stability in the Persian Gulf.43 Prophetically, USCENTCOM planners 

drafted a scenario in which Iraq pursued an aggressive land grab from its 

southern neighbors. USCENTCOM’s response was codified in updated 

OPLAN 1002-90, which featured a largely defensive air plan to stop the Iraqi 

forces from invading Saudi Arabia.44 The USCENTAF air plan had six objectives: defend rear areas; maintain air superiority; conduct close air support for 

friendly troops; perform interdiction to delay advancing enemy elements; conduct offensive counterair against southern airfields; and reconnoiter enemy 

rear areas, command and control, and lines of communication.45

USCENTAF commander Gen Chuck Horner was personally involved in 

creating the Internal Look air campaign. Consequently, it formed the baseline 

of his thinking when the exercise scenario became geopolitical reality in August 1990.46 Furthermore, one of the main lessons that USCENTCOM learned 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

48

from Internal Look was that “no matter how much Air Force and attack helicopter reinforcements the allotted forces had, they would have a tough time 

confronting Iraqi armored formations.”47 Therefore, when Iraqi forces followed the Internal Look script and rolled south on 2 August 1990, Horner 

and his USCENTAF staff began work on a defensive plan to protect US forces 

in Saudi Arabia from further Iraqi aggression. This armor-centric defensive 

mind-set contrasted sharply with the other ideological source for the Gulf 

War air campaign—Col John Warden.

Instant Thunder

Within an occupationally loyal, stovepiped Air Force, John Warden defied 

easy categorization. Despite growing up professionally in the fighter community, Warden never embraced the fighter culture or a tribal loyalty to Tactical 

Air Command (TAC).48 Instead, Warden’s intellectual curiosity and appreciation of military history compelled him to look past the artificial divides of the 

Air Force in the 1980s. He recognized that Strategic Air Command (SAC) had 

co-opted the word “strategic” to mean “all things nuclear.” Additionally, TAC 

had embraced the opposite end of the airpower spectrum and sought to lead 

the Air Force “back to [its] roots of supporting the Army.”49 In between these 

poles, a vast landscape of operational art lay fallow, underdeveloped and underappreciated. After his year at the National War College, Warden published The 

Air Campaign in 1988 as a manifesto on the operational level of war—specifically, planning an air campaign to accomplish national objectives.50

By articulating a theory for a conventional campaign against enemy centers of gravity, Warden refreshes old but forgotten principles of the early airpower theorists.51 His book recognizes that airpower could rightfully take the 

lead in accomplishing national objectives under certain conditions. Warden’s 

metaphor is that of a concerto, with one instrument in the lead and the other 

instruments orchestrated around it.52 “Orchestration,” Warden suggests, “not 

subordination or integration, is the sine qua non of modern warfare.”53 Consequently, when ground forces can be isolated or delayed, the air instrument 

could lead the concerto in working directly against political or economic centers. In these favorable situations, Warden argues that “the air campaign . . . 

may be far more important than the ground campaign,” and “the war can 

theoretically be won from the air.”54 Once Warden was on the Air Staff, his 

strategic thinking continued and matured into a paper he entitled “Centers of 

Gravity: The Key to Success in War.”55 In that paper, Warden’s concentricrings model illustrates a systematic approach for targeting enemy centers of 

gravity, with the enemy command at the center and his fielded forces on the 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

49

periphery.56 Warden asserts, “The essence of war is applying pressure against 

the enemy’s innermost strategic ring—its command structure.”57

In his book’s preface, Warden offers his work to “the air force officer who 

wants to think about an air campaign before called on to command or staff 

one.”58 Ironically, that air force officer was himself. When the Gulf War crisis 

began, Warden was chief of the Checkmate planning staff in the Air Staff ’s 

Directorate of Plans and Operations. After cutting short a family vacation, 

Warden hastily returned to the Pentagon on 5 August 1990 and began transforming his theories into war plans. On 6 August 1990, Warden marshaled his 

Checkmate staff to begin assessing Iraq’s strategic centers of gravity, identifying the unique components of its concentric rings. Warden was convinced 

that the existing planning architecture would not generate a truly strategic air 

campaign; he knew that USCENTAF’s plan was inherently defensive and 

USCENTAF’s staff would be preoccupied with deploying forces to theater.59

Warden intended to fill the breach. At a staff meeting that day, Warden told 

his boss, Maj Gen Robert Alexander, “I do not have any idea how it is going to 

come out, but we are going to put something together anyway and see what 

happens.”60

What happened next was a most fortuitous phone call. With Horner acting 

as USCENTCOM commander in theater, General Schwarzkopf knew that 

Horner would be too busy working deployment issues to spearhead a retaliatory air plan against Iraq. Meanwhile, Schwarzkopf and Powell were being 

pressured to give the NCA retaliatory “options” in the event of Iraqi misdeeds. 

Over Horner’s vehement objections to Washington-based meddling, Schwarzkopf decided to call the Air Staff for planning assistance.61 At 0800 on 8 August 1990, Schwarzkopf called the office of the chief of staff, US Air Force 

(CSAF) and spoke with vice CSAF Gen Mike Loh. Schwarzkopf asked if Loh 

“had a team that could provide him with strategic targets for retaliatory strikes 

in case Saddam Hussein did something ‘heinous.’ ”62 Despite the operational 

chain of command specified by Goldwater-Nichols and the statutory limitations to organize, train, and equip, the Air Force headquarters had been invited to help plan a war. 

Loh passed the momentous task down to Alexander, who knew that Warden 

was already hard at work on a strategic air campaign. Warden was handed his 

golden opportunity, and “the man and the moment met and jumped as one.”63

Warden and his Checkmate team furiously churned out a conceptual plan 

that faithfully followed Warden’s own concentric-rings theory. The Checkmate plan bypassed the Iraqi forces massed in Kuwait and targeted centers of 

gravity in downtown Baghdad instead. Furthermore, Warden believed that 

after six to nine days of the air campaign, Iraqi leaders would capitulate, 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

50

thereby obviating the need for a ground invasion.64 Despite objections from 

TAC planners who dismissed the nascent plan as “an academic bunch of 

crap,”65 Warden carried the enthusiastic support of the top Air Force leaders.66

Only two days after the phone call, Warden briefed Schwarzkopf on 10 August 1990 with the initial outlines of Instant Thunder—in name and content, 

an open rebuke of Vietnam-style gradualism. Still desperate for a viable retaliatory option against Iraqi misadventures, Schwarzkopf embraced Warden’s 

briefing enthusiastically. However, as airpower historian John Olsen notes, the 

enthusiasm belied a disconnect: “It is obvious in retrospect that Schwarzkopf 

considered Instant Thunder a retaliation option to be executed if Saddam 

Hussein continued his aggression in any way, while Warden saw it as a standalone, war-winning campaign that should be executed no matter what the 

Iraqis did. The point is critical: whereas Schwarzkopf wanted an air option, 

Warden offered him a military solution to the problem presented by the Iraqi 

regime and believed that Schwarzkopf shared that view.”67

The following day, 11 August 1990, Warden briefed CJCS Colin Powell on 

the developing Instant Thunder air campaign. Although generally positive 

about Warden’s effort, Powell objected to the lack of concern for the Iraqi armor forces in Kuwait. Furthermore, he refused to believe that the strategic air 

campaign could single-handedly accomplish the president’s objectives: “OK, 

it is day six and the strategic campaign is finished. Now what?” With characteristic confidence, Warden replied, “This plan may win the war. You may not 

need a ground attack. . . . I think the Iraqis will withdraw from Kuwait as a 

result of the strategic air campaign.”68 Despite the corroboration offered by Loh 

and Alexander, Powell still insisted that Warden’s plan offered a useful retaliation option or prelude to a ground offensive, but he remained unconvinced it 

would win the war on its own. Exhorting the Air Staff team to make the plan 

more joint, Powell thanked them for their helpful contribution. Warden and 

his team briefed Schwarzkopf again on 17 August 1990, and then flew to 

Riyadh to hand off the plan to USCENTAF planners in theater.69 In Riyadh, 

Instant Thunder collided violently with Chuck Horner, and Warden would not 

survive the impact.

The Ivory Tower Lands in a War Zone

As acting USCENTCOM commander in theater, Horner confronted an 

appalling mass of Iraqi tanks on the Saudi Arabian border. The vulnerability 

of US forces in theater, coupled with the defensive ethos of OPLAN 1002-90, 

informed Horner’s concern with defensive rather than offensive operations.70

Additionally, one of Horner’s contacts at TAC had faxed him an advance copy 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

51

of the Instant Thunder briefing. With an inherent disgust for Washington interference, Horner reacted violently to the very existence of Instant Thunder 

without even seeing its contents.71 After a cursory review, Horner flung the 

brief to his deputy, Maj Gen Thomas Olsen, with the handwritten comments, 

“Do with this what you will. How can a person in an ivory tower far from the 

front, not knowing what needs to be done, write such a message? Wonders 

never cease.”72

Upon arriving in theater on 19 August 1990, Warden and his Checkmate 

team initially briefed Olsen and other USCENTAF planners. Knowing that 

the USCENTAF staff was preoccupied with defensive and logistical concerns, 

Olsen received the briefing positively and appreciated its added value to their 

plan. The following day, however, was a different story. Horner’s receptivity to 

the Air Staff plan did not improve in person; Warden’s presentation started 

poorly and eroded quickly.73 While Warden trumpeted the pure strategic 

merits of his six-day war-winning plan, Horner dismissed it as “an academic 

study” employing “Newtonian science.”74 The two men took turns lecturing 

each other, with Horner showing concern for the massive Iraqi armor presence, while Warden fumed at Horner’s preoccupation with the outermost ring 

of his model. Finally, to the hushed horror of everyone in the room, Warden 

impertinently opined, “Ground forces aren’t important to the campaign . . . 

You’re being overly pessimistic about those tanks.”75

When the briefing concluded shortly thereafter, Horner asked Warden’s 

three assistants to stay in theater to assist USCENTAF planners. Warden was 

conspicuously not asked to remain, and he returned to the United States that 

very night. The following day, Horner hired Brig Gen Buster Glosson to transform the USCENTAF plans and Instant Thunder targeting scheme into an 

executable war plan. Glosson understood his mission as head of the USCENTAF special planning group: “My immediate task was to put together a team 

and get them out of the defensive-planning mindset (in the case of USCENTAF) or the win-it-all naivete of Instant Thunder (in the case of the Washington crowd).”76 With Glosson at the helm and Lt Col Dave Deptula in the 

trenches, the special planning group authored a viable air campaign. Their 

finished product ultimately retained strategic elements from Instant Thunder, 

while incorporating elements of AirLand Battle doctrine to address the Iraqi 

armor in Kuwait. After he successfully briefed Schwarzkopf on 3 September 

1990 and Powell on 13 September 1990, Glosson’s air campaign gained maturity and viability—the only viable piece of USCENTCOM’s response plan at 

that point. In fact, even though he had dismissed the “win-it-all naivete” of 

the Washington crowd, Glosson confessed the stand-alone attractiveness of 

USCENTAF’s air plan. By early October, well before the full complement of 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

52

ground forces was in theater, Glosson was eager to execute his air campaign: 

“The October weather was beautiful. As a commander, I was itching to take 

advantage of it. It would be less than truthful if I didn’t say that in fact, I desperately wanted to start this war in late October, early November. I just 

thought it was the right time and that we didn’t need the Powell build-up we 

were later forced to take.”77

“Your Air Campaign Is Too Good”

While Glosson showed no great affection for Powell’s massive buildup, 

Powell worked hard to scuff the finish on Glosson’s shiny air campaign. One 

of the most striking illustrations of the CJCS shaping the perceptions of the 

NCA came in early October 1990. The president wanted to hear the latest 

USCENTCOM plans, so Powell asked Schwarzkopf to send a team of briefers. 

Schwarzkopf ’s chief of staff, Marine major general Robert Johnston, led the 

team, with Glosson briefing the air campaign and Army lieutenant colonel 

Joseph Purvis briefing the ground plan.78

The team presented first to Cheney, Powell, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 

10 October 1990, and Glosson’s mature air campaign clearly impressed the 

assembled officers. In fact, Powell had grave concerns that the air plan looked 

too good—so good that the president and his advisors might unwisely attempt to follow it.79 Glosson recalls being counseled three separate times after 

his briefing—by Powell; director of the Joint Staff, Lt Gen Mike Carns; and 

finally USCENTCOM chief of staff Johnston. Powell pulled Glosson aside and 

exhorted, “You’ve got to make sure when we go to the White House tomorrow 

that we don’t oversell the air campaign because some of those idiots over there 

may convince the President to execute this before we’re ready.”80 After Powell, 

Carns took a turn with Glosson: “Your air campaign is too good. The Chairman is afraid the President will tell us to execute. He wants you to go through 

the plan much faster and not be so convincing.”81 Finally, Johnston spoke with 

Glosson and channeled the same sentiment on behalf of the chairman. 

 Powell’s resistance to an air-only war strategy persisted throughout the 

planning cycle. On 11 October 1990, the briefing team went to the White 

House and briefed the president and the NSC. Glosson’s brief was well received and prompted Bush to ask whether the military could simply execute 

the first three phases of the air campaign and stop short of a ground invasion. 

Powell—well-prepared for that very reaction—responded quickly, “You’ve 

got to be ready to do Phase IV because your objective won’t be accomplished.”82

After Powell had tamped down any notion of air-only options, the next briefer 

was Lt Col Joe Purvis who presented the Army’s planned assault into the 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

53

strength of the Iraqi defenses.83 This “high diddle diddle up-the-middle plan”84

struck the NSC as gravely unimaginative and prompted National Security 

Advisor Brent Scowcroft to pronounce, “I was not happy, and it sounded to 

me like a briefing by people who didn’t want to do it.”85 Eventually, Powell 

channeled the civilians’ displeasure into his convincing case for deploying 

150,000–200,000 more troops. If they wanted more imagination, then he 

wanted more troops. President Bush met with Powell on 30 October 1990 and 

asked once again, “You and Norm are really sure that air power alone can’t do 

it?”86 Powell assured him that ground troops were essential to secure Iraqi 

withdrawal, and the president approved the request. 

Working and Shirking

From these first two months of planning for Operation Desert Storm, several salient points are worthy of review. Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, 

President Bush and his NSC agreed that Saddam’s forces would not be permitted to stay in Kuwait—they would leave by will or by force. The civilians 

pressed for an offensive strategy but found surprising caution from the president’s principal military adviser, Colin Powell. Clearly shaped by the national 

trauma in Vietnam, Powell urged a course consistent with the tenets of the 

Weinberger doctrine—state a clear political objective, use massive and overwhelming force, and exit promptly when the objectives are achieved. In the 

months that followed, Powell acted as a self-appointed damper of civilian 

enthusiasm, shaping perceptions and strategies to conform to his strongly 

held beliefs. 

Meanwhile, seizing an opportunity and sanctioned by an unusual phone 

call from Schwarzkopf, the Air Force entered the planning arena with an offensive strategic air campaign against the Iraqi regime. Although asked for a 

retaliatory air option, Warden crafted a stand-alone war-winning strategy 

through the air. In the hands of Glosson and Deptula, Warden’s Instant Thunder plan merged with USCENTAF’s defensive plan and became a robust air 

campaign against strategic and tactical targets in Iraq and Kuwait. The powerful, offensive air campaign proved enticing to the civilian NCA, who believed 

it constituted an attractive and viable strategy. Powell, however, believed differently and seized every opportunity to dampen any enthusiasm for an aironly approach. Afraid that the civilians might enact a strategy he thought 

unwise, Powell urged Glosson to make his air campaign briefing less convincing and attractive. In the end, the president’s offensive objectives were accom-
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

54

plished, while Powell ensured that the means for doing so conformed closely 

to his own clear vision for the use of overwhelming force.

In light of the summary above, does Powell’s behavior constitute shirking 

in the strict sense of the principal-agent framework? The chairman’s statutory 

role as principal military adviser complicates a clear working-shirking distinction. In fact, Powell’s duty as CJCS was to provide clear—and, at times, 

contrarian—military counsel to the president. Feaver writes, “There is an exceedingly blurry line between advising against a course of action and resisting 

civilian efforts to pursue that course of action. . . . Thus, evaluating whether 

shirking has occurred is not as simple as discovering whether military advice 

was followed. Rather, it involves judgments about the integrity of the military 

advice itself as well as judgments about the conditions under which civilians 

changed their minds. Were military advisors exaggerating (or minimizing) 

the costs of a course of action so as to tie the hands of the policymaker?”87

Clearly, Powell was powerful and impassioned, and he actively campaigned to 

ensure that the president followed the chairman’s own convictions for the use 

of military force. Furthermore, as explained earlier in the chapter, the contextual variables of relative political power and strongly held preferences suggest 

that shirking would not be unexpected. On the whole, while Powell packaged 

his military counsel in a way that borders on enlightened shirking, he also 

appeared to be acting within the robust authority vested in his principal advisory role. Ultimately, the chairman’s conduct inhabits some middle ground in 

the working-shirking continuum—a position much closer to shirking than 

the “normal theory” of civil-military relations would suggest.

What is clear, however, is that the Air Force enthusiastically “worked” with 

the civilian NCA. The Bush administration wanted an offensive plan to evict 

Iraqi forces from Kuwait, and the Air Force delivered an attractive option to 

do so. The historical record seems to convey that Bush and his team may have 

pursued the offensive air campaign were it not for the active opposition of 

General Powell.88 Thus, while the military—as channeled through the CJCS—

resisted the administration’s policy, the Air Force enthusiastically cooperated. 

What accounts for the Air Force’s unique position?

Organizational Culture at Work

As chapter 3 explains, agency theory holds that the military will work when 

its risk calculation of being meaningfully punished exceeds the divergence of 

policy preferences: agp > s – w. Therefore, working could occur when the risk 

of punishment (agp) is particularly high or when the divergence of interests 

(s – w) is particularly low. In the case of Gulf War policy, the left side of the 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

55

inequality yields ambiguous qualitative values, thereby focusing attention on 

the right side: the degree of policy divergence. For Colin Powell, experience in 

Vietnam fostered an impassioned policy preference at odds with the administration, which inspired his shirking-like behaviors. For the Air Force, a clear 

policy convergence informed its enthusiastic posture vis-à-vis the civilian 

policy. 

This paper argues that organizational culture comprises the predominant 

variable in shaping a service’s preferences and therefore its decision to work or 

shirk the civilian policy. Therefore, this section tests the hypothesis by evaluating the extent to which the Air Force’s cultural tenets comport with the civilian policy. As explained in the chapter introduction, the above analysis 

presented the Air Force’s cooperative posture first, but the causal implication 

cuts in the other direction. The hypothesis argues that a tight correlation between the national policy and the Air Force’s organizational culture will engender working. Having witnessed a unique degree of working in this case 

(the dependent variable), this section works backward to code the independent variable: the degree of correlation between the civilian’s desired policy 

and the organizational culture of the Air Force.

Technology-Centered

Tenet of Air Force Culture

The Air Force exists because of technology, and its ongoing superiority is 

sustained by the ascendance of its technology. As the first and most important machine, the manned airplane is the building block of the force. While 

unmanned technologies have their place, the complexities of combat require an actual—or virtual—human presence over the battlefield.

The Desert Storm air campaign showcased the superiority of American 

technology as no other war had done before. A consensus view of the conflict 

holds that during Desert Storm, technology finally caught up with doctrine—

at long last, Airmen could deliver the precise effects that early airpower advocates espoused.89 Prominent Gulf War historians Thomas Keaney and Eliot 

Cohen observe that five key technologies enabled the air campaign to succeed: stealth/low-observable aircraft design, laser-guided bombs, aerial refueling, the high-speed anti-radiation missile (HARM), and the STU-III secure 

communication device.90 In fact, Warden, Deptula, and Glosson constructed 

their plan at the intersection of stealth and precision technologies.91 The F-117 

stealth fighters, carrying 2,000-pound laser-guided bombs, did all of the 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

56

heavy lifting against defended targets in Baghdad. These F-117s flew 1 percent 

of the total sortie count but struck 40 percent of the strategic targets in Iraq.92

For many in the American public, the enduring visual image from the air war 

was a laser-guided bomb penetrating a ventilator airshaft in downtown Baghdad. These missions constitute a near-perfect consummation of the Air Force’s 

embodied technology-centered culture: brave pilots, sheltered in a technological cocoon of invisibility, penetrating hostile skies to drop bombs with 

pinpoint precision. For Airmen steeped in the culture of the US Air Force, it 

is difficult to imagine a more glorious scenario.

Autonomously Decisive

Tenet of Air Force Culture

The Air Force has the power to change the face of the earth. It can do what 

no other service can do. To realize its true potential, the Air Force should 

be employed kinetically, offensively, overwhelmingly, and with minimal 

political interference.

The air campaign was largely a politics-free, kinetic operation that most 

Airmen viewed as the decisive lead instrument in a war-winning concerto. 

Even though Schwarzkopf had asked for a retaliatory option, Warden exploited the opportunity to choke Saddam Hussein with his five concentric 

rings to win the war from the air. “I have got to admit,” Warden later confessed, “I had more than a little bit of a thought in the back of my mind that 

we might be able to do the whole thing from the Air Force standpoint and 

that would be a very desirable thing to make happen.”93 The Air Force’s desire 

to be decisive was not lost on the other players in the debate. Record notes, 

“Air Force planners, especially those back in Washington, where planning was 

dominated by a conviction that air power could win the war virtually singlehandedly, clearly favored placing the main effort onto the strategic bombardment campaign.”94

The Desert Storm air campaign also reinforced the Air Force’s cultural proclivity for independent, politically unconstrained operations. During the critical planning process, Airmen were empowered to choose all of the targets, 

enjoying wide political latitude. During execution of the plan, the specter of 

Vietnam-style target selection loomed nearby, making President Bush and his 

security team careful to avoid excessive meddling. In fact, Horner later recounted, “We’ll probably never appreciate just how much freedom we had.”95

On the occasions when Air Force leaders did experience political constraints, 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

57

they chafed under the fetters.96 After civilians were killed in the bombing of 

the al-Firdos bunker on 13 February 1991, Powell insisted on vetting all targets in Baghdad.97 Glosson and his team complained to the CSAF, Gen Merrill 

McPeak, who took it up with Powell, ultimately to be convinced of the chairman’s logic. Likewise, when Cheney directed a large apportionment of air assets to the SCUD-hunting mission to keep Israel out of the war, air planners 

resisted such interference with their plan.98

For a service that prizes autonomously decisive operations, Desert Storm 

constitutes an ideal-type case. The Air Force crafted—and largely executed—

an explosive operation with airpower comprising the decisive element with 

minimal political interference.

Future Oriented

Tenet of Air Force Culture

Technology and potential adversaries change quickly, and the Air Force 

must orient forward to the unknown future instead of the forgotten past. 

The Air Force must pursue next-generation systems today to be ready for 

tomorrow.

Operation Desert Storm was at the leading edge of geopolitical realities 

and technological possibilities. As the Soviet Union crumbled, the United 

States emerged as the lone superpower and turned its attention to shoring up 

regional stability. The Gulf War inaugurated a new era, demonstrably proving 

the United States’ capability and intention to police the globe for good. Furthermore, the campaign showcased cutting-edge technology and provided an 

opportunity to renounce the hobgoblins of Vietnam. In nearly every meaningful dimension, the war and the air campaign accorded with the Air Force’s 

cultural predisposition towards the future.

Occupationally Loyal

Tenet of Air Force Culture

The Air Force is an honorable and patriotic means to practice a desirable 

high-tech trade. Loyalties to the trade, machine, and subculture often outweigh loyalty to the institution.

The evolution of the air campaign illustrates the tribal affiliations endemic 

to the Air Force’s organizational culture. As an exception to the rule, the trib-
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

58

ally neutral Warden crafted an offensive air campaign that resembled neither 

SAC’s Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) nor TAC’s AirLand Battle.99

After General Loh contacted both SAC’s Gen John T. Chain and TAC’s Gen 

Robert D. Russ, both major commands sent a team of planners to assist Warden and Checkmate. Because Instant Thunder was clearly a nonnuclear campaign plan, the SIOP-focused SAC planners had little to contribute and did 

not show up in the narrative again. The TAC planners, conversely, objected to 

Instant Thunder’s strategic ethos and dismissal of the Iraqi fielded forces. In 

response, TAC generated its own air campaign that Warden summarily rejected for its Vietnam-style gradualism.100 Ultimately, tribal affiliations 

molded the final air campaign plan, resulting in a strategy that allowed Airmen from each domain to ply their chosen trade. While this aspect of Air 

Force organizational culture does not resound as clearly as the others, it nevertheless bears subtle reflection in the final Desert Storm policy.

Self-Aware

Tenet of Air Force Culture

Major combat operations are the best setting to showcase the full potential of the independent Air Force. In any other venue, the Air Force serves 

an essential supporting role in which it is largely taken for granted. During these times of invisible contribution, the Air Force must actively articulate its relevance to the nation and itself.

The overwhelming success of Operation Desert Storm exorcised the demons of the Air Force identity crisis articulated the year prior. Stealth aircraft, 

laser-guided bombs, tank-plinking, and the visible carnage on the “highway of 

death” cured the plaguing notion that the Air Force had “lost its sense of identity and unique contribution.”101 During the planning of Instant Thunder, Warden articulated the mission “to bring the Air Force back into prominence.”102

In fact, the most publicly egregious example of civil-military confrontation 

during the Gulf War arose from the Air Force’s persistent self-awareness. 

When the Gulf War crisis began, Air Force chief of staff, Gen Michael Dugan, had been in the job less than two months. During the early days of his 

tenure, Dugan intentionally courted the media, seeking to redress what he 

perceived to be a poor relationship with the press.103 After making a trip to 

Saudi Arabia in early September 1990, Dugan spent the flight home speaking 

with reporters about the maturing air campaign plan. When Dugan’s aircentric comments littered the front page of the Washington Post, Cheney was 
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

59

furious and summarily fired Dugan after only 79 days as chief.104 In his subsequent press conference, Cheney cited eight grievances with Dugan’s behavior, 

notably his “egregious judgment” and “inappropriate” example.105 Few in the 

defense community argued with Cheney’s decision, recognizing that Dugan 

had overreached in his efforts to spotlight the Air Force’s unique capability to 

win the war.

Dugan’s transgressions illustrate the extent to which the Air Force was 

aware of its image and relevance. Despite the setbacks imposed by Dugan’s 

firing, the Air Force seized the opportunity afforded by the Gulf War to restore 

its image and rehabilitate its identity—a mission it confidently achieved when 

President Bush declared, “Gulf lesson number one is the value of air power.”106

Conclusion

The preeminent features of Air Force organizational culture clearly saturate the offensive air campaign in the Gulf War. The Air Force’s proposed 

policy for winning the war was technology centered, autonomously decisive, 

future oriented, occupationally loyal, and self-aware. For several of these tenets, the Gulf War affords an ideal-type case study for which a clearer manifestation of Air Force culture can hardly be imagined. Through a fortuitous 

sequence of events, the Air Force as an institution had an opportunity to 

sculpt a campaign plan in its own image, soaked in its own cultural assumptions. The Air Force’s resulting policy preference accorded closely with the 

civilians’ desired offensive policy. This convergence of preferences minimizes 

the value of s – w and explains the Air Force’s unique posture of working amid 

an otherwise-resistant military structure.

This case study illuminates the value of disaggregating the military actor in 

studying American civil-military relations. Whereas existing treatments of 

the Gulf War highlight the positions taken by “the military,” this analysis confirms that the military services are unique actors who may work at crosspurposes with each other in the creation of policy. The military services have 

distinct and powerful organizational cultures, rooted in their unique histories, which inform their appraisal of the national interest. By comparing a 

proposed national policy with the cultural assumptions of an individual service, policy makers can predict pockets of unique cooperation or resistance 

from the military services. In the case of the Gulf War, the civilians’ preferred 

policy correlated squarely with the cultural assumptions of the Air Force, creating an island of cooperation in a sea of resistance.
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

60

Notes

1. Peter Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 235.

2. Eliot A. Cohen, “The Unequal Dialogue: The Theory and Reality of Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force,” in Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security, eds. Peter Feaver and Richard H. Kohn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001); for 

further explication of this argument, see Mackubin T. Owens, “Civil-Military Relations and the 

U.S. Strategy Deficit,” E-notes bulletin, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, PA, February 2010, accessed 11 March 2010, http://www.fpri.org/enotes/201002.owens.civilmilitaryrelations.html. 

3. Bob Woodward, The Commanders (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).

4. Feaver, Armed Servants, 200.

5. Ibid., 239.

6. Diane T. Putney, Airpower Advantage: Planning the Gulf War Air Campaign, 1989–1991

(Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2004), 33.

7. Ibid., 221.

8. Recall that the military’s decision to work or shirk is influenced not only by the preference gap but also by its perception of receiving costly punishment for shirking. These contextual factors indicate the relative strength or weakness of any potential punishment it might 

receive for shirking.

9. Jeffrey Record, Hollow Victory: A Contrary View of the Gulf War (Washington, DC: 

Brassey’s, 1993), 1.

10. James R. Locher, “Taking Stock of Goldwater-Nichols,” Joint Forces Quarterly 13 (Autumn 1996): 9–16. The first quote belongs to former secretary of defense William Perry, and the 

second to former vice CJCS William Owens. 

11. Brooks L. Bash, “Leadership and Parochialism: An Enduring Reality?” Joint Force 

Quarterly 22 (Summer 1999): 65.

12. Locher, “Taking Stock of Goldwater-Nichols,” 10.

13. Ibid., 11.

14. Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, The Generals’ War: The Inside Story of the 

Conflict in the Gulf (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995), 471. 

15. Colin Powell and Joseph Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 

1995), 434.

16. Ibid., 434.

17. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and Peter Petre, It Doesn’t Take a Hero (New York: Bantam 

Books, 1992).

18. Locher, “Taking Stock of Goldwater-Nichols,” 11.

19. Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero, 303.

20. Buster Glosson, War with Iraq: Critical Lessons (Charlotte, NC: Glosson Family Foundation, 2003), 1.

21. Quoted in Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin, 1993), 60.

22. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: 

Princeton University Press, 1976), 261.

23. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 18, 33, 83. 

24. Robert M. Cassidy, “Prophets or Praetorians? The Uptonian Paradox and the Powell 

Corollary,” Parameters 33, no. 3 (2003): 139.

25. Ibid., 139.

26. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 6, 127; Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 91; Tom 

Clancy and Chuck Horner, Every Man a Tiger (New York: Putnam, 1999), 238.
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

61

27. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 6.

28. Record, Hollow Victory, 4.

29. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 18.

30. Ibid., 31.

31. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 24.

32. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 37.

33. Powell, My American Journey, 450.

34. Powell, My American Journey, 452; Putney, Airpower Advantage, 24.

35. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 49.

36. Thomas Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, Revolution in Warfare?: Air Power in the Persian 

Gulf (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), 22.

37. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 83.

38. Powell, My American Journey, 466–7.

39. Woodward, The Commanders, 38.

40. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 130.

41. Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero, 326.

42. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 154.

43. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 10–11.

44. Clancy and Horner, Every Man a Tiger, 248.

45. John Andreas Olsen, John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air Power (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2007), 142.

46. Clancy and Horner, Every Man a Tiger, 238.

47. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 19.

48. John Andreas Olsen, Strategic Air Power in Desert Storm (New York: Frank Cass, 

2003), 78.

49. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 9.

50. John Warden, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1988).

51. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 78.

52. Warden, The Air Campaign, 146.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid., 104, 39.

55. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 39.

56. Ibid., 39–40.

57. Quoted in Putney, Airpower Advantage, 39.

58. Warden, The Air Campaign, xvii.

59. Edward C. Mann, Thunder and Lightning: Desert Storm and the Airpower Debates

(Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1995), 27.

60. Olsen, John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air Power, 145.

61. Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero, 313.

62. Olsen, John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air Power, 146.

63. Richard Davis, quoted in Olsen, John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air 

Power, 146.

64. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 45.

65. Ibid., 52.

66. Olsen, John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air Power, 151. General Loh exhorted Warden, “This is the No. 1 project in the Air Force. You can call on anybody anyplace 

that you need for anything.”

67. Ibid., 159.

68. Ibid.
DESERT STORM: A CASE OF CURIOUS WORKING

62

69. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 81.

70. Clancy and Horner, Every Man a Tiger, 263.

71. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 91.

72. Olsen, John Warden and the Renaissance of American Air Power, 175.

73. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 125.

74. Ibid., 127; Clancy and Horner, Every Man a Tiger, 264.

75. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 130.

76. Glosson, War with Iraq, 24.

77. Ibid., 55.

78. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 129–30.

79. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 221.

80. Glosson, War with Iraq, 58.

81. Ibid.

82. Ibid., 63; Putney, Airpower Advantage, 223.

83. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 138.

84. Ibid., 141.

85. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 224.

86. Ibid., 263.

87. Feaver, Armed Servants, 62. 

88. This deduction comes from the content of the recorded conversations in which Bush 

and the NSC appeared eager to execute an offensive air campaign. After the war, Bush averred, 

“I never considered seriously the possibility of an ‘air-only’ campaign. There was much discussion about what an air campaign might accomplish—and that it might be enough to convince 

Saddam to pull out. But from the outset, I thought we should plan on the assumption that Saddam would resist to the end and develop our force requirements on that basis.” Gordon and 

Trainor, The Generals’ War, 140.

89. Dennis M. Drew, “Desert Storm as a Symbol,” Airpower Journal 6, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 4–13.

90. Keaney and Cohen, Revolution in Warfare?, 189.

91. Ibid., 191.

92. Michael A. Palmer, Guardians of the Gulf: A History of America’s Expanding Role in the 

Persian Gulf, 1833–1992 (New York: Free Press, 1992), 219.

93. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 45.

94. Record, Hollow Victory, 109.

95. Atkinson, Crusade, 296.

96. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 474.

97. Atkinson, Crusade, 289.

98. Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War, 234.

99. Edward C. Mann, Thunder and Lightning: Desert Storm and the Airpower Debates, 28.

100. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 61.

101. Carl H. Builder, The Icarus Syndrome: The Role of Air Power Theory in the Evolution 

and Fate of the U.S. Air Force (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), 5. “Tankplinking” refers to the widespread and precise destruction of Iraqi tanks by American aircraft.

102. Putney, Airpower Advantage, 39.

103. Woodward, The Commanders, 292.

104. Ibid., 294.

105. Ibid., 296.

106. George Bush, “Remarks at the United States Air Force Academy Commencement 

Ceremony in Colorado Springs, Colorado, 29 May 1991” (transcript, George Bush Presidential 

Library and Museum, College Station, TX), accessed 24 March 2009, http://bushlibrary.tamu.

edu/research/public_papers.php?id=3035&year=1991&month=5.
63

Chapter 5

Keeping Watch: A Decade of Quasi War

In any event, as 1998 winds to a close few can claim to have 

predicted in 1991 that overwhelming victory would lead to 

such tattered laurels.

—Rick Atkinson

“Is Mission ‘Pinpricks’ or Punitive?”

I no longer have any sense of what the “containment” of Iraq is 

all about. We just fly missions and drop bombs from time to 

time because we’ve been doing it for 10 years and no one can 

stop us from doing so.

—Andrew Bacevich

quoted in Thomas E. Ricks, “Containing Iraq”

For the US Air Force, the satisfying triumph of Operation Desert Storm 

slowly deteriorated into an interminable decade of frustration. The heady 

days of stealthy precision bombing against leadership targets in Baghdad devolved into a protracted cat-and-mouse battle of wills with Saddam Hussein. 

The 40 days of well-planned bombing became a distant memory, replaced 

with the routine monotony of enforcing no-fly zones, punctuated by an occasional strike against a fleeting mobile radar. Having proved its effectiveness, 

the Air Force became the policy instrument of choice in the years that followed. The employment of airpower, however, often ran counter to the cultural assumptions of the service, creating more frustration than satisfaction 

among Airmen. 

Over the lifespan of Operations Northern and Southern Watch (ONW and 

OSW, respectively), the United States flew over 265,000 sorties in the south 

and more than 122,500 sorties in the northern tier of Iraq.1

 This containment 

of Saddam cost the Department of Defense nearly $12 billion dollars, as well 

as untold degradations in readiness and morale.2

 The Air Force was particularly hard hit, as its constant shuttling of Airmen and aircraft to the Gulf 

spurred widespread discontent and a hemorrhage of personnel out of the service. Despite these trends, however, the appraisal of this national policy remained mixed throughout the Air Force. While many lamented the apparent 

uselessness of “boring holes in the sky,” others touted the rare feat of securing 
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64

national policy objectives through the air. 3 Some commanders bewailed their 

plummeting pilot proficiency, while others appreciated the opportunity to 

drop bombs on enemy targets in a combat-like environment.4

 Overall, the Air 

Force exhibited as much confusion as frustration, unsure whether to appreciate its leading role or decry the dulling of its blade. 

While the Air Force kept Saddam bottled up in Iraq, the realm of civilmilitary relations exploded into prominence with the election of Pres. Bill 

Clinton in 1992. With his draft-dodging background and his efforts to permit 

homosexuals to serve openly, Clinton’s military bona fides were questioned 

from the outset.5

 Furthermore, the growing prominence and political power 

of Chairman Colin Powell conferred untold influence upon the subordinate 

military agent. In fact, respected military historians Russell Weigley and 

Richard Kohn published prominent articles expressing concern for the apparent power imbalance and an “out of control” military.6

 The prevailing literature codes this period as a crisis in civil-military relations, with varying explanations given for its genesis and rationale. Through the lens of agency theory, 

Peter Feaver explains the turbulent dynamics this way:

The reason for these phenomena is that the underlying monitoring/working strategic 

calculation has changed, largely, I would argue, because of a continuing preference gap 

between civilians and the military and a dramatic lowering of military expectations of 

punishment. These factors, in turn, can be traced to many of the deeper changes of the 

past decade, including the end of the Cold War, changes in the relative power position 

of the military vis-à-vis civilians, and the exacerbating factor of President Clinton’s personal baggage, which he brought to the office of commander in chief.7

What does this appraisal look like in formal terms? As earlier chapters explained, the military’s decision to work or shirk is informed by the divergence 

of the policy preferences, weighed against the military’s risk calculation of 

being meaningfully punished for shirking. In chapter 2, this calculation was 

expressed by the inequality: 

agp > s – w

where a = the probability of detecting shirking

g = the probability of civilians choosing to punish shirking

p = the cost of the punishment to the military

s = the military’s policy preference

w = the civilians’ policy decision

According to Feaver’s analysis of the civil-military crisis of the 1990s, the 

civilians continued to monitor intrusively, but the military’s appraisal of receiving costly punishment diminished. Thus, while variable a remained high, 

variables g and p were low and reduced the overall value of the left side of the 
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inequality. Consequently, the right side of the inequality—the preference 

gap—is primed to dominate the result, suggesting that a wide array of working and shirking is likely based on differing degrees of policy agreement. In 

fact, as the Air Force over Iraq will demonstrate, an array of working and 

shirking can exist within the context of a single ongoing policy.

While the Desert Storm case study shows the value of analyzing an individual service, this case study attempts to demonstrate that working and 

shirking represent a continuum of behaviors, not a stark Manichaean typology. The central argument of this paper is that organizational culture uniquely 

shapes a service’s calculation of working or shirking the civilian policy. Therefore, this chapter tests the hypothesis by first assessing the relative consonance 

of the Iraqi containment policy against the cultural assumptions of the Air 

Force. This analysis yields a variegated result—while the no-fly zone enforcement accorded with some tenets of the culture, it clashed with others. Consequently, in light of the variegated cultural overlap, the hypothesis expects a 

mixed result of working and shirking, which in fact occurs. Unlike the Desert 

Storm case in which clear cultural alignment spawned unique working, the 

following decade of armed overwatch reveals mixed cultural alignment and a 

concomitant blend of both working and shirking. These findings illuminate 

one of agency theory’s useful contributions to civil-military relations literature: a capacity to highlight a spectrum of behavior between the poles of docile obedience and a rebellious coup. 

The chapter begins with a historical overview of ONW and OSW, from 

their inception shortly after the Desert Storm cease-fire through the fall of 

2001.8

 This narrative highlights the United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR) that putatively created the no-fly zones, as well as the major 

military interactions between the cagey Saddam and the allied air forces. Capping off the historical narrative is an overview of the critiques and support for 

the national policy of Iraqi containment. Having stipulated the national policy, the following section tests for the preference gap (s – w) by comparing 

that policy against the cultural tenets of the Air Force. The last major section 

of the chapter profiles the spectrum of working and shirking exhibited by Airmen over the decade, with pockets of cooperation and resistance as predicted 

by their degree of cultural consonance. While this chapter does not offer a 

satisfyingly clear case of wholesale working or shirking, its value comes from 

demonstrating the vast trade space of American civil-military relations. This 

chapter concludes that across the continuum from working to shirking, organizational culture informs the decisions that populate the spectrum.
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Cheat and Retreat

Within days of the Safwan cease-fire that ended Operation Desert Storm, 

Saddam Hussein was grabbing headlines. His brutal repression of Kurdish and 

Shiite minority populations galvanized a response by the United Nations Security Council, setting the stage for the decade of containment that followed. 

On the whole, Iraq’s principal objectives throughout the 1990s appeared to be 

maintaining the present regime, putting an end to the UN sanctions, establishing regional hegemony, and covertly pursuing—then discarding—a nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) weapons capability.9

 Conversely, the 

United States pursued objectives to counter Saddam’s intentions: prevent 

Iraqi aggression by keeping it weak but not so weak as to embolden Iran; reverse any gains in the NBC weapons program; destabilize the Iraqi regime 

and invite its overthrow; and lastly, prevent instability among UN allies from 

any overt military action by the United States.10 While these broad objectives 

trace the major contours of the decade, the specific instigations and responses 

paint a more detailed picture. This section highlights the major events, resolutions, and military actions that punctuate the low hum of Iraqi containment 

in the 1990s. In the end, the narrative demonstrates that despite its inherent 

frustrations, the policy succeeded in containing the Iraqi menace. As historian Dennis Showalter graphically opined, “The problem [with] American 

policy toward Iraq is that it’s like a colostomy: It’s pretty disgusting until you 

look at the alternatives.”11

Commitment Begins

After the negotiated cease-fire at Safwan, Iraq, on 2 March 1991, the UN 

Security Council adopted the first of a long line of postwar resolutions. UNSCR 

686 contained common cease-fire provisions, arranging for the return of prisoners and property and Iraqi acceptance of damage liability for its invasion of 

Kuwait.12 A month later, the council passed UNSCR 687 on 3 April 1991, a 

resolution that contained robust provisions for corralling Saddam in a more 

confined diplomatic pasture. While UNSCR 686 simply ended the war, Resolution 687 attempted to shape the diplomatic space for the future. For example, 

it specified a demilitarized zone between Iraq and Kuwait and, more significantly, called for the complete removal of Iraqi NBC weapons capability.13 Furthermore, UNSCR 687 created a United Nations Special Commission for Iraq 

(UNSCOM) to enforce these provisions by “carry[ing] out immediate on-site 

inspection of Iraq’s biological, chemical and missile capabilities, based on Iraq’s 
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declarations and the designation of any additional locations by the Special 

Commission itself.”14 By adding the eradication of NBC capability to its postwar demands, the UN and the international community created the first of 

many commitments they would be challenged to keep.

A second major commitment incurred by the international community, 

and the United States in particular, was the protection of Iraqi minority populations from Saddam’s regime. Almost as soon as coalition tanks silenced 

their guns in the 100-hour ground war, antiregime Shiite populations in the 

southern city of Basra began to revolt.15 This intifada began on 1 March 1991, 

and eventually spread to 13 other cities in the Shiite south and Kurdish north. 

Before the ink on the cease-fire had dried, Iraqi forces rolled into Basra and 

pursued a brutal counterinsurgency campaign against its Shiite inhabitants. 

By mid-March, Iraqi troops pushed north into the Kurdish lands and similarly quelled a nascent rebellion. As a result, tens of thousands of Kurds were 

killed and over one million refugees spilled across the borders into Turkey 

and Iran.16 With a brewing humanitarian crisis on its hands, the UN Security 

Council passed Resolution 688 on 5 April 1991, condemning the Iraqi repression, demanding its cessation, and insisting upon the admittance of international humanitarian aid.17 Curiously, two key elements were conspicuously 

absent in the resolution: there was no mention of the Shiite population in 

southern Iraq, nor were no-fly zones explicitly created. The international 

community was seemingly ambivalent about how to handle the Shiites in the 

south, suspicious of Iranian influence and growing Islamic fundamentalism.18

In addition, while the resolution requested the secretary-general “to use all 

resources at his disposal . . . to address urgently the critical needs of the refugees,”19 it did not specifically mention no-fly zones or the use of force to ensure Iraqi compliance. The charter for unified international action suffered 

considerable ambiguity.20

Nevertheless, US European Command (USEUCOM) established Operation Provide Comfort (OPC) on 16 April 1991, creating a safe haven for the 

Kurds and demarcating a no-fly zone over the northern tier of Iraq.21 Motivated by humanitarian concerns but wary of the implications of creating a 

safe haven, President Bush declared, “We’re going to continue to help these 

refugees. But I do not want one single soldier or airman shoved into a civil 

war in Iraq that’s been going on for ages.” For the military members tasked to 

provide this protection, it was clear that Operation Provide Comfort “created 

stakes where none existed before.”22 Brig Gen Anthony Zinni, later the fourstar commander of Central Command (USCENTCOM), understood the implications of creating and maintaining the Kurdish safe haven: “We were sad-
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dling ourselves with an open-ended commitment to protect them in that 

environment.”23

Commitment Expands

After an additional year of oppression against the Shiites, the international 

community resolved its ambiguous posture and pledged support to the southern Shiites as well. In July 1992, the Iraqi air force started launching air strikes 

against Shiite populations in the south, and the United States responded with 

the creation of a southern no-fly zone.24 Using UNSCR 688 as its justification 

to protect the Iraqi population, the United States established Operation 

Southern Watch on 26 August 1992. Enforcing a no-fly zone south of the 

32nd parallel, OSW enjoyed widespread support from allies—British and 

French air forces flew sorties, while Kuwait and Saudi Arabia provided basing.25 Although ostensibly similar to the northern no-fly zone, OSW reflected 

important differences as well. First, even though it operated in the same country, OSW was run by USCENTCOM while OPC was run by USEUCOM. 

Second, given the larger tract of enforceable territory as well as the basing 

possibilities with allied partners, the force structure in the south was significantly larger than in the north. OPC employed 48 aircraft to enforce the 

northern no-fly zone, while OSW employed nearly 160 US, British, and 

French aircraft.26 Third, OSW was established to deny Iraqi use of southern 

airspace but made no guarantees of protection to the Shiite populations from 

ground-based attacks.27 Despite these significant differences, the strategic implications of expanded commitment remained the same. Historian Michael 

Knights observes, “[OSW] created open-ended military commitments that 

were simple to begin but politically impossible to end without appearing to 

reduce US commitment to regional partners and the Iraqi victims of Saddam’s 

regime.”28

Saddam wasted little time in testing US and international resolve to enforce the southern no-fly zone. After pushing additional ground troops down 

to the south, Iraqi fighters began probing the no-fly zone to test the coalition 

response.29 A series of challenge-and-response encounters over the next few 

months prompted the first of many punitive airstrikes. In the waning days of 

his administration, President Bush authorized a coalition airstrike on 13 January 1993, using over 100 allied aircraft against command-and-control facilities, early-warning radars, and mobile surface-to-air missile batteries in 

southern Iraq.30 Days later, US naval forces followed up this attack with a salvo 

of 46 Tomahawk land attack missiles (TLAM) directed at the Zaafaraniyah 
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nuclear facility. Whatever message President Bush had hoped to deliver to 

Saddam appeared to be lost in translation—inaugurating a pattern for the 

years ahead, the Iraqi dictator continued to denounce and defy.31

Reaction to the US airstrikes was mixed across the US defense community. 

Within the Air Force, the sporadic use of isolated attacks to send political 

messages reminded many of the “bad old days” of Vietnam.32 Such limited use 

of force appeared to violate the recently validated Powell doctrine of overwhelming force. Others in the community, however, expressed greater optimism. In the weeks after these first limited strikes, Secretary of the Air Force 

Donald Rice suggested, “Air power offers the kind of flexibility and precision 

of application that you certainly saw on a much larger scale in Desert Storm, 

and there are going to be opportunities in the future to do more of these limited things.”33 Similarly beguiled by the twin sirens of stealth and precision, 

Secretary of Defense Les Aspin opined that air attacks could now enunciate 

political démarches more clearly than was previously possible: “The limited 

objectives school has been strengthened as technological developments have 

improved our ability to achieve ‘compellence.’ ”34 As President Clinton took 

office in January 1993, this optimism congealed into policy through Aspin’s 

“bottom-up review” of military commitments and requirements. Submitted 

in September 1993, the review identified the requirement to fight two major 

regional conflicts, while sustaining a constant air presence in the Persian 

Gulf.35 Reinforcing the status quo, containment thus became official national 

policy.

Crisis Response through Vigilant Warrior

In October 1994, in a test of his own military readiness and the coalition 

response, Saddam Hussein dusted off his 1990 playbook.36 On 5 October, Saddam dispatched two divisions of his elite Republican Guard to the Iraq-Kuwait 

border in a menacing sign of repeat aggression.37 Under the name Operation 

Vigilant Warrior, the United States rapidly deployed additional aircraft to its 

regional bases, redirected the Navy aircraft carrier USS George Washington

from the Adriatic to the Red Sea, and dispatched a Marine expeditionary unit 

(MEU) and Army mechanized task force into the region.38 As an exemplar of 

deployable deterrence, the swift US reaction achieved its objective. Five days 

after initiating the deployment, Saddam announced that he would remove 

troops from the border, having been convinced that the United States wielded 

both the capacity and will to check his aggression. 
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Saddam’s southern experiment yielded both diplomatic and military changes 

to the status quo. On 15 October 1994, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 949, directing Saddam’s attention to the diplomatic case file against him 

and denouncing his latest bout of wanton aggression. Acting under Chapter 7 

of the UN Charter—which authorizes the use of force—the UNSCR condemned Iraqi aggression, demanded redeployment of its massed troops, demanded that Iraq never again use its military to threaten its neighbors, and 

demanded that Iraq never again mass its troops in the southern portion of the 

country.39 Militarily, this meant that the southern no-fly zone became a nodrive zone as well for the Iraqi army. To enforce these enhanced provisions, 

the Kuwaiti government agreed to base US F-16 and A-10 aircraft at Ahmed 

Al Jaber Air Base in southern Kuwait.40

Although Saddam was deterred from invading Kuwait yet again, the swift 

US response did not deter him from further instigation in other venues. Instead, Saddam emerged from the crisis largely intact, content to suffer the 

benign hardships of another UNSCR and plotting his next move to embarrass 

the West.

Kurdish Intervention and Operation Desert Strike

Saddam seized such an opportunity in August 1996 at the invitation of the 

Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). In the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, the 

KDP had locked horns with a rival Kurdish faction, the Patriotic Union of 

Kurdistan (PUK), with both sides appealing to outside patrons for assistance. 

Under suspicion that the PUK was receiving help from Iran, the KDP asked 

for Iraqi assistance, which Saddam was only too eager to provide.41 On 29 

August 1996, over 30,000 Iraqi troops rolled north to render aid to the KDP, 

entering the protected safe haven enforced by the northern no-fly zone. 

The timing of Saddam’s northern incursion capitalized on a number of distracting factors for the United States. With brewing tensions in China and 

Taiwan, the summer slowdown in Washington, DC, and the pending presidential election, the attention of the National Command Authorities was 

largely diverted elsewhere.42 Having suffered the affront of Iraqi forces in UNpledged territory, the principals and their deputies scrambled to mount a 

suitable response—the result was Operation Desert Strike. Instead of tasking 

the military combatant command to initiate planning, however, the planning 

authority remained confined to Washington. The result of Washington’s planning was another round of political messaging rather than an attack on the 

incursion forces in the north. Deciding to extend the southern no-fly zone up 
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to the 33rd parallel, Secretary of Defense William Perry handed USCENTCOM leaders a list of air defense targets to be struck in southern Iraq.43 USCENTCOM was tasked to execute the plan, but the targeting and messagecrafting originated in Washington.

Military reinforcements poured into theater as part of the US response, but 

diplomatic support for assisting the Kurds remained elusive.44 Both Russia 

and China criticized any US action, and all of the Gulf state allies refused to 

support strike aircraft departing from their bases.45 Ultimately, only Britain, 

Germany, and Japan supported the US action to punish Iraqi involvement in 

the Kurdish north.46 On 3 September 1996, using B-52s stationed in Guam as 

well as TLAMs launched from Navy ships, the United States lobbed 44 cruise 

missiles against air defense installations across southern Iraq.47

Following the strikes, the French discontinued their support for the coalition air activity in the south, roundly condemning the unilateral extension of 

the southern no-fly zone to the 33rd parallel. Eventually, they rejoined the 

effort but refused to participate in actions north of the 32nd parallel. Criticism also came from within the US defense community, as retired general 

Chuck Horner decried the ineffectiveness of targeting southern air defense 

nodes in response to northern military aggression.48 Instead, Horner argued, 

the United States should have targeted Saddam “where it hurts” and attacked 

his military forces. More than halfway through the decade, defense officials 

continued to wrestle with the frustrations of containing Saddam—but contain 

him they did.

Operation Desert Fox and Escalation of the Quasi War

In the summer of 1997, Saddam Hussein renewed his defiance of the UNSCOM and its inspections of Iraqi NBC weapons facilities. On 13 November 

1997, an emboldened Saddam evicted the US members of UNSCOM and refused to readmit them to Iraq.49 Similarly, Saddam began threatening the 

safety of the U-2 reconnaissance flights employed by UNSCOM in its monitoring mission. Thus began a year of diplomatic and military wrangling that 

culminated in late December 1998 with the largest employment of airpower 

since Desert Storm: Operation Desert Fox. After a maddening cycle of Iraqi 

noncompliance with UNSCOM, the United States initiated a four-day blitz 

against targets across the country. The operation began on 16 December with 

an armada of 250 TLAMs followed by naval strike assets from the USS Enterprise.

50 The relentless bombing continued unabated until 20 December when 

it was concluded to avoid spilling into the month of Ramadan.51 Over the 
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72

four-day effort, coalition forces launched over 600 sorties, fired more than 

400 cruise missiles, and struck 211 of 275 planned targets.52

Despite this impressive display of coalition airpower, few observers appeared to be impressed. Andrew Bacevich pilloried the attacks as a pathetic 

manifestation of the Clinton doctrine, exemplified by 

the extraordinary importance assigned to avoiding U.S. casualties, thereby advertising 

America’s own point of vulnerability; the hand-wringing preoccupation with collateral 

damage, signaling that the United States has no stomach for war as such and thereby 

encouraging adversaries to persevere; the reliance on high-technology weapons employed at long range, inviting confusion between the technical capability to hit targets 

and the achievement of operationally meaningful results; [and] vaguely formulated objectives often explained in terms of “sending messages.”53

Clinton himself appeared to be wholly disconnected from the low-grade war 

being fought under his authority. In a major foreign policy speech on 26 February 1999—only two months after Desert Fox—he mentioned Iraq only 

once and the recent bombings not at all.54 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Saddam Hussein remained unimpressed by Clinton’s “tomahawk diplomacy.”55 In the month that followed Desert Fox, the Iraqi air force launched 

70 penetrations of the no-fly zones, employing sophisticated “SAM-bush” 

tactics to lure coalition fighters into the snares of surface-to-air missile sites.56

The Iraqi dictator refused to back down.

In light of Saddam’s continued intransigence, administration officials 

strengthened their endorsement of the entrenched containment policy. In 

March 1999, Secretary of Defense William Cohen assured, “We intend to continue the containment policy. We are going to maintain the no-fly zones, and 

if [Saddam] threatens our pilots, he will pay for it.”57 Furthermore, the administration appeared to embrace a “bolder, tougher policy toward Iraq [that] 

included growing support for Iraqi opposition groups—a ‘containment-plusregime-change’ policy.”58 Over the objections of USCENTCOM commander 

Anthony Zinni, President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act in October 

1998, approving over $97 million to support the democratic opposition in 

Iraq. These diplomatic and financial overtures were matched by a more aggressive posture in the air as well. The administration empowered the military 

to relax the rules of engagement (ROE) that guided coalition aircraft responses in the no-fly zones. Military leaders were given wider latitude to 

loosen the ROEs, giving pilots more authority to respond to surface-to-air 

fire.59 The result was a “low-level war of attrition,” with a marked increase in 

coalition bombing against Iraqi air defense installations.60

This pattern continued through the following election year and the inauguration of Pres. George W. Bush in January 2001. With the new administration, 
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military leaders hoped to put an end to the interminable status quo in Iraq. 

When Lt Gen Charles Wald assumed command of US Central Command Air 

Forces (USCENTAF) in early 2001, he noted, “We needed to get out of this 

middle road that was really dangerous . . . this cynical status quo approach to 

the no-fly zones and to Iraq. You can’t do this tit for tat thing. Our recommendation was that we do something more aggressive.”61 In May 2001, journalist 

Thomas Ricks reported that “one top commander stressed to the administration that the risk of losing a U.S. pilot has grown so great in recent weeks that 

continuing the operation may no longer by justifiable.”62 Other Air Force 

leaders joined in the perception-shaping. As one top official noted, “It’s one of 

those areas that the Administration is reviewing right now: ‘what is our policy 

with respect to Iraq and our partners in the Middle East? What are we really 

trying to accomplish? And how does [sic] Northern Watch and Southern 

Watch connect to what we were doing before?’ Right now I don’t know.”63

Nevertheless, the new Bush administration appeared content to continue 

the general legacy of containment it inherited. In February and August of 

2001, coalition aircraft launched extensive retaliatory attacks in response to 

Iraqi aggression, and the coalition lost its first aircraft on 27 August 2001 near 

Basra—an unmanned Predator drone.64 It took the shattering events of 11 

September 2001 to dislodge the administration’s policy from the containment 

pattern of the previous decade. 

Containment—What Is It Good For?

The national policy of containing the Iraqi regime through airpower 

spanned more than 10 years and three presidential administrations. The critics of the policy were legion, though Newt Gingrich’s assessment is certainly 

representative: “The U.S. looks like an isolated bully using very sophisticated 

weapons to no purpose. So we look arrogant and impotent at the same time.”65

On balance, however, most critics saw the ongoing value of the policy or conceded its inevitability. “Our policy of containment,” noted former Cong. Lee 

Hamilton, “with all its limitations and frustrations, has achieved the vital interests of the United States.”66 Former secretaries of defense William Perry 

and Harold Brown exhausted their strategic imagination to divine a better 

option than containment, but neither could do so. Brown lamented, “This is 

not a good strategy, but I haven’t thought of a better one.”67 Political scientist 

Daniel Byman penned a prominent article for Foreign Affairs magazine expressing a similarly resigned fate: “Since the United States can neither engineer Saddam’s fall nor accept him back into the international community, it 
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really has only one option left—the much-maligned existing policy of containment.”68 Finally, Gen Anthony Zinni offered a useful perspective that 

many in uniform overlooked: “Containment worked. Look at Saddam—what 

did he have? He didn’t threaten anyone in the region. He was contained. It was 

a pain in the ass, but he was contained. He had a deteriorated military. He 

wasn’t a threat to the region. We contained, day-to-day, with fewer troops 

than go to work every day at the Pentagon.”69

Testing for Cultural Consonance

While the sporadic flare-ups in the Gulf occasionally grabbed headlines, 

the Air Force endured the muted monotony of sustained enforcement operations for the whole decade. As a service, the Air Force paid a high price in 

morale, readiness, and retention to execute the national policy; but in exchange for that price, the Air Force provided security and stability for the 

nation, the Persian Gulf region, and the international community.70 This inherent tension suggests that the Air Force embraced certain aspects of its mission, while decrying others. Having outlined the national policy as it unfolded 

over the 1990s, the following section tests the preference gap (s – w) by searching out the degree to which Air Force cultural assumptions are reflected in 

this policy. The results of the preference gap will inform the section that follows, in which the Air Force’s response is more clearly explained.

Technology-Centered

The Air Force exists because of technology, and its ongoing superiority is sustained by the ascendance of its technology. As the first and most important 

machine, the manned airplane is the building block of the force. While unmanned technologies have their place, the complexities of combat require an 

actual—or virtual—human presence over the battlefield. 

The long decade of flying constabulary missions over Iraq was not the technological showcase that Operation Desert Storm had been. The relatively benign nature of no-fly zone enforcement did not require stealthy F-117s to 

penetrate heavily defended airspace to drop precision munitions down ventilator shafts. While the long years of enforcement did not task the Air Force’s 

most technologically sophisticated assets, neither was it an abject technological backwater. The Air Force certainly had ample opportunity to fly hundreds 

of thousands of manned missions, and even introduced the B-1 bomber into 

combat for the first time during Operation Desert Fox.71 In the latter half of 
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the decade, the Air Force also introduced unmanned Predator drones to the 

battlefield. These Predator drones represented a leading edge of aerospace 

technology, but given the primacy of manned platforms in Air Force culture, 

the Predator was only reluctantly accepted. Similarly, the extensive reliance 

on technologically advanced cruise missiles proved equally unsatisfying for 

intrepid Air Force aviators. While a true hallmark of technology, cruise missiles are launched well beyond any threats, are autonomously guided, and absorb all the risk. For a service whose culture prizes on-site aircrews taking 

measured risks to guide weapons precisely to target, outsourcing this duty to 

an unmanned cruise missile did not provide much gratification.

The technological prize that Air Force leaders did want to introduce to the 

no-fly zones was the much-revered F-22 Raptor. The Raptor was—and still 

is—a technological marvel, a supersonic icon of advanced engineering that 

far outpaced any would-be rivals. In fact, the contrast between the F-22’s vast 

superiority and the diffuse post-Soviet threat environment spurred accusations that the Raptor was a solution looking for a problem. For then–Brig Gen 

Dave Deptula, however, the no-fly zones represented a prime problem set that 

the Raptor could solve: “With F-22s operating in a dual role, we could significantly reduce the total number of aircraft required to conduct no-fly zone 

operations, reduce the number of people deployed, and reduce the dollar cost 

of operations while increasing the effectiveness of the operation against a 

wider and more capable spectrum of threats.”72 F-16 pilot Paul White concurred, noting that the Raptor’s technological sophistication empowered it to 

solve the Air Force’s plaguing personnel and morale issues as well: “Although 

many have expressed concern over the proposed high cost of the F-22, a significantly reduced requirement for fighters, tankers, and support personnel 

deployed for Southern and Northern Watch would save the Air Force millions of dollars annually, while drastically reducing current operations tempo 

requirements. Perhaps just as important, curtailing the demands of these constant deployments would pay huge dividends in improving morale and retention in the Air Force.”73

On the whole, OSW and ONW gave the Air Force a protracted opportunity to fly its aircraft and improve its technological superiority at the margins—unmanned drones, datalink software integration, and GPS-guided munitions all made major strides in this era. The benign mission requirements, 

however, meant that the Air Force’s most sophisticated and prized technologies were not on display. 
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Autonomously Decisive

The Air Force has the power to change the face of the earth. It can do what no 

other service can do. To realize its true potential, the Air Force should be employed kinetically, offensively, overwhelmingly, and with minimal political interference. 

Contrary to a core assumption of Air Force culture, airpower in ONW and 

OSW was clearly not used offensively, overwhelmingly, and with minimal political interference. Instead, by the very nature of a protracted enforcement 

policy, the mission required inherently defensive operations, with sporadic 

kinetic engagements designed not to overwhelm but to punish, hemmed in 

by extensive political sensitivities. For an Air Force that wants to be autonomously decisive, the political environment hampered its autonomy, and the 

nature of status quo enforcement meant that there was nothing to decide. 

For commanders executing this policy, the defensive mind-set of no-fly 

zone enforcement created a dangerous operational environment. Maj Gen 

Randall Schmidt, then commander of OSW operations, explained his frustrations: “You don’t want to incur losses in an operation where you’re not out to 

win. . . . This is a commander’s nightmare. If you don’t have the option of going 

offensive, as we didn’t, you have your hands tied. We had the mandate of defending ourselves and the perfect tour would be not to lose anyone and to 

maintain the status quo. That was a recipe for disaster, people got the mentality that I’m not going to war to win, I’m going there to just not lose.”74 This 

trend so concerned Gen Richard Hawley, commander of Air Combat Command, that he expressed a desire to make the desert deployments “more like 

Red Flag.”75 Red Flag exercises are massively offensive war simulations, fought 

in the vast training complex north of Nellis AFB, Nevada. Intended to simulate the first 10 days of a major war, Red Flag is an icon of the kinetically offensive battle the Air Force would like to fight. Hawley’s comment reflects a 

service sufficiently frustrated with its current mission that it needed to inject 

the large-force offensive ethos of Red Flag into the defensively oriented no-fly 

zones. If the policy could not change, then the service would tailor the execution of that policy to accord more closely with its cultural assumptions. One 

Air Force pilot expressed real frustration after a series of OSW deployments 

meant his squadron had to cancel its scheduled participation in Red Flag: 

“[Red Flag deployments] are the kind . . . that are actually fun, that make me 

like the job.”76

Not all Air Force leaders, however, dismissed the significance of the containment mission. After completing a command tour of ONW, then–Brigidier 

General Deptula held a high view of the Air Force’s contribution to national 
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77

security: “When we set up a no-fly zone, we are seizing an element of sovereign authority (the right to control airspace) on behalf of the world. We are 

declaring the subjected state to be less than a full member of the family of 

nations, unfit to govern in at least this one aspect, and under an interdict of 

sorts. This is a surrogate for war that clearly establishes the rogue status of the 

subject state . . . . This highlights aerospace power as a robust instrument of 

power intertwined with policy and diplomacy.”77 Deptula’s lofty assessment 

remained a minority view, however, within the Air Force writ large. 

In sum, this defensively oriented policy saw targets selected by Washington 

principals, punitive response options governed by complex ROEs, and missions constrained by the political sensitivities of host nations like Turkey, 

Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. As a stark contrast to the autonomously decisive 

ethos of the Air Force, the policy grated the service’s core.

Future Oriented

Technology and potential adversaries change quickly, and the Air Force must 

orient forward to the unknown future instead of the forgotten past. The Air 

Force must pursue next-generation systems today to be ready for tomorrow. 

In March 1999, the chief of staff of the Air Force (CSAF), Gen Michael 

Ryan, quoted Brig Gen Billy Mitchell in his testimony to the Senate Armed 

Services Committee: “In the development of air power, one has to look ahead 

and not backward and figure out what is going to happen, not too much what 

has happened.”78 The constabulary enforcement of Iraqi no-fly zones, however, kept the Air Force mired in a perpetual recycling of past grievances. The 

Air Force could hardly look ahead to what was going to happen, as it labored 

mightily to adapt to the current demands of what was happening. In fact, one 

could argue that the traditional garrison-style force structure of the Air Force 

reflected its forward-looking culture of anticipating the next big fight. Being 

prepared for the unknown future required keeping the bulk of one’s force at a 

high level of readiness, ready to deploy for decisive operations, followed by a 

redeployment to garrison to prepare for the next big fight. Instead, the constant demands of OSW and ONW required a wholesale change in the Air 

Force’s posturing of forces. In 1998, CSAF Ryan introduced the air expeditionary force (AEF) “so that we can continue to do things like [OSW and 

ONW] on a consistent basis without driving the force into the ground.”79

Later, CSAF John Jumper concurred that the AEF was born from the demands of maintaining the status quo in the desert: “We reconfigured in order 

to deal with this commitment. There’s no doubt about that.”80
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The Air Force therefore had responsibility for maintaining the status quo 

policy of containing Saddam Hussein in Iraq. While this policy gave the Air 

Force the opportunity to provide security for the nation and the world, it 

blocked the service from its preferred posture of looking ahead to the unknown future.

Occupationally Loyal

The Air Force is an honorable and patriotic means to practice a desirable hightech trade. Loyalties to the trade, machine, and subculture often outweigh loyalty to the institution.

Searching out evidence of this cultural assumption requires probing the 

narrative for areas in which Airmen’s loyalties could be fractionated. In the 

case of ONW and OSW, the frustrations associated with the constant deployments and unsatisfying mission provided the pretext for Airmen—namely 

pilots—to leave the service and ply their trade with the airlines. Recognizing 

that many pilots chose to leave the service for perfectly honorable reasons—

in fact, morally upstanding ones such as family stability—the overall exodus 

of skilled pilots suggests that loyalty to the Air Force institution and its mission was a contingent one. 

For Airmen who love to fly, leaving the service to fly for an airline that 

provides more pay and stability was a completely rational and culturally acceptable choice. In fact, CSAF Ryan suggested, “It’s not their fault they are 

leaving. Maybe it’s our fault”—as if the Air Force bore some responsibility for 

not providing a suitably gratifying means for national service.81 As one article 

reported in September 1998, “[Pilots] are leaving because they can’t justify to 

their families the need for being away from home half the year when US interests really aren’t at stake. And, just as importantly, they can’t justify to 

themselves not being the best.”82 This comment, indicative of an occupationally loyal culture, suggests that somehow being the best was a higher—or at 

least equal—priority to fulfilling national policy. Furthermore, the comment 

intimates that military members retain some autonomous capability to judge 

when US interests are or are not at stake. Civil-military relations theory holds 

that civilians possess the authority to determine what is in the national interest, while the military holds responsibility for executing that policy faithfully. 

Dismissing a tasked mission as a peripheral US interest unworthy of one’s 

professional skill reflects a loyalty to a craft over an institution. Again, this 

commentary in no way denigrates the patriotism or loyalty of pilots who 

chose to leave the service; instead, this merely reflects a service culture that 
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accepts and anticipates that its most well-trained members will leave the service if a more attractive flying option is available elsewhere.

Self-Aware

Major combat operations are the best setting to showcase the full potential of 

the independent Air Force. In any other venue, the Air Force serves an essential 

supporting role in which it is largely taken for granted. During these times of 

invisible contribution, the Air Force must actively articulate its relevance to the 

nation and itself.

The decade of containment over the Iraqi desert did little to sustain the 

buoyed self-image restored by Operation Desert Storm. Instead, the unending patrols and occasional bombings hardly merited any press coverage at all. 

In October 2000, Thomas Ricks reported, “Northern Watch is characteristic 

of U.S. military missions in the post-Cold War era: it is small-scale, openended and largely ignored by the American people. Even though U.S. warplanes are routinely dropping bombs on a foreign country, it has not been an 

issue in the presidential election and has hardly been mentioned by the candidates.”83 For the Air Force, this meant that their heroic sacrifice of morale 

and readiness was not even appreciated by the politicians or the nation. The 

steady demands of no-fly zone enforcement seemingly imperiled the future 

health of the service in support of a cause that—like Showalter’s colostomy 

bag—no one wanted to embrace or abandon. 

In the aggregate, this assessment suggests that the national policy of containment was largely—but not purely—at odds with the Air Force’s cultural 

assumptions. While new technologies were introduced into the fight, they 

were not the shimmering high-tech prizes most central to the Air Force’s 

identity. The no-fly-zone missions gave the Air Force the leading role in enforcing UN sanctions and providing security for the nation, the region, and 

the world; yet those same missions were largely defensive, politically constrained, and reliant on nonheroic cruise missiles. The Air Force had primacy 

in the current fight, but the exhaustive nature of the commitment kept it from 

posturing forward for the next fight. Pilots were given ample opportunity to 

fly, but dissatisfaction with the mission and the operations tempo compelled 

them to ply their trade elsewhere. Finally, despite the operational rigor of constant deployments and engagements with Iraqi air defenses, Airmen’s efforts 

were largely ignored by the press and the nation at large. Assessing the overall 

preference gap (s – w), therefore, suggests that it is not a fixed value but varies 

along the lines of consonance suggested above. 
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Given such varied consistency between the national policy and the Air 

Force’s cultural assumptions, this paper hypothesizes that the service would 

exhibit a range of cooperative and resistant behaviors. In the working-shirking 

continuum, the Air Force’s reaction is likely to echo across the middle portion 

of that spectrum. Defense analysts Adam Stulberg and Michael Salomone invoke the terms hedging and foot-dragging for the middle regions of the continuum between working and shirking, respectively.84 As the following section substantiates, the Air Force both hedged and dragged its feet in executing 

the national policy of containment, consistent with its varied degrees of cultural fit. 

Hedging and Foot-Dragging

As the decade of enforcement began, the Air Force was still riding the 

proud wave of noble purpose created by Operation Desert Storm. In the fall 

of 1992, the first units tasked with flying OSW missions arrived in theater, 

and commanders reported motivated troops who looked forward to their assigned duty.85 One month after OSW was created, Air Force Times ran its first 

major article on the new mission, quoting then–Brig Gen Tad Oelstrom, 

commander of the 4404th Composite Wing: “I think most people come in 

here with a little extra adrenaline. We are on the sharp end of the stick, and we 

are asked to do things that are very important. The eyes of the entire world are 

upon us.”86 The sense of purpose was palpable, and the service savored the 

prominence of its role. This general aura of enthusiasm continued for several 

years, particularly in the shadow of Saddam’s various excursions to test coalition resolve. After Operation Vigilant Warrior in October 1994, an F-15C 

squadron commander asserted, “We’ve been the primary deterrent to Saddam 

Hussein doing something stupid a second time.”87 “It’s just the nature of the 

business,” offered a second squadron commander. “This is what we’re supposed to be doing.”88

The enthusiastic comments from aircrews began to wane through the mid1990s, though Air Force leaders continued to assert the value of the Air Force 

mission. “We are an expeditionary Air Force,” reminded CSAF Ryan. “That’s 

what the nation wants of us.”89 Retired CSAF Larry Welch, comfortably insulated from the grating personnel challenges, offered this macro view: “The job 

of the U.S. military is to protect U.S. national interests. As long as there is a 

national interest there, we’ll be there. It’s as simple as that.”90 Another retired 

CSAF, Merrill McPeak, likewise trumpeted the value of the Air Force’s contribution: “The bombing isn’t hurting us, and it is hurting Saddam.”91 While 
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81

these and other Air Force leaders maintained the “can do” attitude expected 

of the military, the rank and file began to raise a hue and cry. Two interrelated 

issues began to seize the service’s public discourse in the mid-to-late 1990s: 

the relentless operations tempo (OPTEMPO) and the growing disenchantment with the containment mission. Together, these issues fostered a force 

that was as busy as ever but lacked the sense of purpose to make its sacrifices 

seem worthwhile.

Operations Tempo

Beginning around 1997, the exhausting OPTEMPO finally caught up with 

a tired Air Force. Personnel began leaving the service in droves, citing the 

OPTEMPO and time away from their families as the primary factors driving 

their decision.92 Deployed Airmen even took up their case with visiting senators, complaining that they “did not join the military to become part of the 

Foreign Legion.”93 Senator Daniel Inouye recalled, “The first and most persistent question was, ‘When do we get home? When do we get home?’ ”94 Air 

Force leaders were well aware of the OPTEMPO challenges and made sweeping overhauls to force posture through the new AEF construct. Citing eight 

years of scrutiny and hard work to make it happen, CSAF Ryan announced 

the AEF policy in 1998, noting that one of its goals was to “reduce deployment 

tempo by building more stability and predictability.”95

Operation Allied Force taxed the Air Force even further in the spring of 

1999, and the service teetered at a breaking point. In July 1999, CSAF Ryan 

petitioned both the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as the secretary of defense for 

a reprieve from its operational pace.96 Asking for a six-month reconstitution 

period to mend ailing jets and bolster plummeting morale, Ryan noted that 

the active Air Force was 40 percent smaller than the previous decade but sustained four times the number of commitments worldwide.97 In July 1999, for 

example, the Air Force had 6,000 Airmen and 75 aircraft deployed to OSW, 

900 Airmen and 35 aircraft covering ONW, and 12,000 Airmen and 200 aircraft in Yugoslavia and Bosnia.98

Pilots began voicing their displeasure by voting with their feet. Citing the 

higher OPTEMPO and time away from family as the motivator for his departure, one F-16 pilot offered this caveat: “If that desert deployment wasn’t there, 

it wouldn’t be a problem.” His squadron commander endorsed a similar conclusion: “Southwest Asia is the number one irritant, the one thing pushing 

guys out of the Air Force.”99 With scores of pilots turning down the mid-career 

financial bonus and opting for the airlines instead, the Air Force was hemor-
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82

rhaging its critical personnel capability. A 1999 CNN article reported, “The 

Air Force, now short more than 1,400 pilots, says while it’s not yet a crisis, it’s 

headed there if something doesn’t give, and soon.”100

What Is Our Mission?

At the intersection of several Air Force cultural assumptions is an overriding desire for a mission that is globally relevant, politically clear, and tactically 

demanding. As the 1990s drew to a close, Airmen consistently expressed frustration that their demanding deployment schedule was not rewarded with a 

satisfying mission to perform. Instead, they perceived that their constant rotations to the desert suffered from a lack of excitement, national prestige, or 

clear geopolitical importance. One pilot recalled, “The very first time I went 

to Dhahran, I thoroughly enjoyed it. . . . There was a sense of purpose.” The 

intervening years, however, had disabused him of that enjoyment: “Each time 

I go back, I find it less and less stimulating. The flying is boring.”101 In the fall 

of 2000, an Air National Guard pilot summed up his appraisal of the OSW 

mission: “I think almost everybody thinks it is a waste of time.”102

The lack of excitement notwithstanding, other Airmen scorned the degradation of mission capability. An F-15C squadron commander lamented that 

the no-fly-zone mission blunted the tactical edge he trained so hard to 

sharpen: “All you’re doing is making left-hand turns all day. You take in a 

bunch of young pilots, train ‘em up, then we go to Saudi and you watch their 

proficiency plummet.”103 Another Air Force pilot agreed that training for a 

hypothetical and more challenging mission should supersede the nettlesome 

national policy of containing Iraq in support of UN resolutions: “If we go for 

90 days, we give up training opportunities. In places like Kuwait, by and large, 

you are just boring holes in the sky.”104 Reflecting the autonomously decisive 

and future-oriented assumptions of Air Force culture, many Airmen tacitly 

assumed that any national mission that did not fully task their tactical skills 

was a distracting surrogate for one that would.

Finally, another strain of disgruntled Airmen derided the national policy 

for its perceived lack of geopolitical clarity. An Air Force officer assigned to 

OSW observed, “It is kind of a surreal mission, because a lot of people back 

home don’t seem to be aware of what we’re doing. The concern you sometimes 

hear from aircrews is that they don’t understand, from a policy standpoint, 

where this mission is heading.”105 Other Airmen appeared to understand the 

policy but took issue with its limited objectives. In a strikingly clear example 

of the assumption that the Air Force exists to be autonomously decisive, one 
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83

Air Force pilot declared, “We are being used in a limited capacity, which is 

tearing the heart and soul out of the Air Force.”106 Frustrated by the limited 

objectives of containing Iraq, another Airman longed wistfully for the strategic purity of the Cold War.

We don’t train like we used to. We used to be a cohesive fighting force, serving with 

unlimited liability, to protect and defend the United States. We were called to the profession of arms. The “Evil Empire” was the focus of our training, and we had a clear understanding of what constituted the United States’ vital interest. Those times are gone, and 

we’re tired of droning holes in the sky; protecting allied airspace where we’re not welcome. . . . We’ve become instruments of foreign policy before the fact, and we’re not 

doing a damn for the American way of life.107

Conclusions

How might one responsibly characterize the Air Force’s varied cooperation 

and resistance to the national policy of containment? In the grandest view, the 

Air Force certainly was, and is, a loyal band of patriots who faithfully abided 

the ethic of civilian control over the military. More to the point, in fact, many 

Air Force leaders discerned the strategic value of containing Iraqi aggression 

through vigilant air enforcement. Many of those same leaders massively restructured the Air Force to accommodate and work with the expeditionary 

demands of the national policy. The prominent symptoms of hedging and 

foot-dragging, however, came in those areas in which the policy conflicted 

with the service’s basic assumptions. Furthermore, Air Force resistance to the 

policy appeared to be a bottom-up phenomenon in which viral discontent 

swelled into a critical mass. When that critical mass exited the service in striking numbers, Air Force leaders and policy makers took notice. 

Eventually, Air Force and civilian leaders realized that the policy—and its 

steady-state demands—had spurred a subterranean culture clash with a broad 

swath of Airmen. For Airmen from an autonomously decisive culture, the 

hallmarks of containment—defensive operations, politically complex ROEs, 

limited use of force, and degrading tactical skill sets—were antithetical to that 

culture. Airmen raised in a future-oriented culture found the steady-state expeditionary force posture and degraded readiness of constabulary operations 

to be anathema. Occupationally loyal Airmen found that the high costs of 

family separation and eroded skill sets violated their loyalty to their trade. 

Finally, Airmen steeped in a culture of providing independent value to the 

nation found that the loss of mission prestige was too odious to abide. As individual Airmen dragged their feet in resistance to the civilian policy, the 
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84

aggregate effect compelled the service writ large to take action and hedge its 

ongoing cooperation.

The civil-military crisis of the 1990s pitted an empowered military against 

a politically encumbered civilian authority. Feaver cites the external factors—

the end of the Cold War, a uniquely empowered JCS chairman, Clinton’s personal baggage—that changed the material incentives of the agency theory 

model, making a decade of shirking more likely. This chapter has invoked the 

agency theory framework to explain the Air Force’s varied cooperation and 

resistance to the national policy of containment in Iraq. The qualitative values 

of the working inequality (agp > s-w) suggested that any variation in the preference gap would likely dominate the resultant working-shirking dynamic. In 

light of this paper’s hypothesis that organizational culture uniquely informs 

service preferences, this chapter compared the national policy of containment 

against the cultural assumptions of the Air Force. The weak consistency between the two predicted the result that followed: a variegated response from a 

conflicted Air Force. While senior leaders worked hard to accommodate the 

demands of a constabulary mission, individual Airmen deploying for the fifth 

or sixth time could no longer abide the policy’s inconsistency with their service culture. Individual resistance combined into a collective one, as the allvolunteer force volunteered to leave and altered the mission capability of the 

service. While the Air Force provided security for the nation and the world by 

containing Iraq, individual Airmen responded consistently with their cultural 

assumptions and resisted the policy’s demands.

Notes

1. Michael Knights, Cradle of Conflict: Iraq and the Birth of Modern U.S. Military Power

(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005), 243.

2. John A. Tirpak, “Legacy of the Air Blockades,” Air Force Magazine 86, no. 2 (February 2003).

3. David Wood, “Workloads and Pay Woes Driving Veteran Pilots Out of Air Force,” The 

Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), 29 May 1997, 12; Paul K. White, Crises after the Storm: An Appraisal 

of U.S. Air Operations in Iraq since the Persian Gulf War (Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1999), 84.

4. Wood, “Workloads and Pay Woes Driving Veteran Pilots Out of Air Force;” White, Crises after the Storm, 80.

5. Peter Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 183.

6. Russell F. Weigley, “The American Military and the Principle of Civilian Control from 

McClellan to Powell,” The Journal of Military History 57, no. 5 (October 1993); Richard H. Kohn, 

“Out of Control: The Crisis in Civil-Military Relations,” The National Interest 35 (1994): 10.

7. Feaver, Armed Servants, 190.

8. While one could argue that these operations continued until the start of Operation Iraqi 

Freedom in March 2003, this paper curtails the analysis in September 2001. After the terrorist 
KEEPING WATCH: A DECADE OF QUASI WAR

85

attacks of 9/11, world events changed significantly enough so as to alter the policy calculations 

in place.

9. Daniel Byman and Matthew C. Waxman, Confronting Iraq: U.S. Policy and the Use of 

Force since the Gulf War (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2000), xiii.

10. Ibid.

11. Patrick B. Pexton, “Perry: ‘We Are Not Playing Games,’ ” Air Force Times, 23 September 

1996, 4.

12. Henry E. Mattox, A Chronology of United States-Iraqi Relations, 1920–2006 (Jefferson, 

NC: McFarland & Co Publishers, 2008), 85.

13. White, Crises after the Storm, 9.

14. United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 (3 April 

1991), 5, http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/documents/687.pdf (accessed 20 November 2012).

15. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 119.

16. Byman and Waxman, Confronting Iraq, 43.

17. United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 688 (5 April 

1991), http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/596/24/IMG/NR059624.

pdf?OpenElement (accessed 20 November 2012).

18. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 123. In addition, Turkey’s concern about the influx of Kurdish refugees compelled a UN response in the north, while no similar voice advocated for the 

Shiites in the south.

19. United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 688.

20. Michael Knights, “Rolling Escalation,” Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy 30, no. 

11 (2002): 15–17.

21. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 124. Operation Provide Comfort existed as such through 1996, 

after which the same line of effort was continued under the name Operation Northern Watch.

22. Byman and Waxman, Confronting Iraq, 47.

23. Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin 

Press, 2006), 9.

24. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 128.

25. Byman and Waxman, Confronting Iraq, 50.

26. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 129.

27. Byman and Waxman, Confronting Iraq, 48.

28. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 130.

29. White, Crises after the Storm, 22.

30. Mattox, A Chronology of United States-Iraqi Relations, 1920–2006, 94; and White, Crises 

after the Storm, 23.

31. White, Crises after the Storm, 25.

32. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 137.

33. John D. Morrocco, “Raids Highlight Pitfalls of Limited Use of Force,” Aviation Week & 

Space Technology 138, no. 4 (25 January 1993): 49.

34. Ibid.

35. White, Crises after the Storm, 11.

36. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 148.

37. Byman and Waxman, Confronting Iraq, 55.

38. Ibid., 55.
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86

39. United Nations Security Council, United Nations Security Council Resolution 949 (15 

October 1994), accessed 20 November 2012, http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/

GEN/N94/401/71/PDF/N9440171.pdf?OpenElement.

40. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 150.

41. Byman and Waxman, Confronting Iraq, 58.

42. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 153.

43. Ibid., 162.

44. Jon R. Anderson, “Troop Strength in Kuwait Will Reach 30,000,” Air Force Times, 30 

September 1996, 3.

45. Byman and Waxman, Confronting Iraq, 58; Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 161.

46. Mattox, A Chronology of United States-Iraqi Relations, 1920–2006, 105.

47. White, Crises after the Storm, 41.

48. Charles Horner, “What We Should Have Learned in Desert Storm, But Didn’t,” Air 

Force Magazine 79, no. 12 (December 1996): 3–6.

49. White, Crises after the Storm, 50.

50. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 200.

51. Byman and Waxman, Confronting Iraq, 68.

52. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 206.

53. Andrew J. Bacevich, “Discord Still: Clinton and the Military,” Washington Post, 3 January 1999, C01.

54. Ed Blanche, “War of Attrition as Iraq Absorbs the Ongoing US Punishment,” Jane’s Intelligence Review 11, no. 6 (1 June 1999): 27–33.

55. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 139.

56. Ibid., 211–12.

57. William Matthews, “Bombing of Iraq to Continue Indefinitely,” Air Force Times, 15 

March 1999, 7.

58. White, Crises after the Storm, 65.

59. Matthews, “Bombing of Iraq to Continue Indefinitely.” 

60. White, Crises after the Storm, 63.

61. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 235.

62. Thomas E. Ricks, “Cuts Urged in Patrols over Iraq,” Washington Post, 9 May 2001, A01.

63. David Fulghum, “U.S. May Suspend Northern Watch Patrol,” Aviation Week & Space 

Technology 154, no. 20 (14 May 2001): 31.

64. Alan Sipress and Dan Balz, “Bush Signals Escalation in Response to Hussein,” Washington Post, 17 February 2001, A01; Thomas E. Ricks, “U.S., British Jets Attack Three Iraqi Air 

Defense Sites,” Washington Post, 11 August 2001, A18; and Thomas E. Ricks, “Unmanned U.S. 

Plane Is Lost over Iraq,” Washington Post, 28 August 2001, A09.

65. Pexton, “Perry: ‘We Are Not Playing Games.’ ”

66. White, Crises after the Storm, 89.

67. Bryan Bender and Andrew Koch, “Briefing - Iraq: Poisoned Cigars, Perhaps?,” Jane’s 

Defence Weekly 33, no. 15 (12 April 2000): 21–25.

68. Daniel Byman et al., “The Rollback Fantasy,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 1 (January/February 

1999): 37.

69. Ricks, Fiasco, 22.

70. This insight was shared with the author by Dr. Jim Forsyth, professor of National Security Policy at the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS), who heard Gen Anthony 

Zinni assert similar claims. 
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87

71. White, Crises after the Storm, 59.

72. John T. Correll, “Northern Watch,” Air Force Magazine 83, no. 2 (February 2000): 4.

73. White, Crises after the Storm, 86.

74. Knights, Cradle of Conflict, 215.

75. Otto Kreisher, “In the Sandbox,” Air Force Magazine 81, no. 8 (August 1998).

76. Ibid.

77. White, Crises after the Storm, 84.

78. William Mitchell, Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air 

Power (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2009), 20.

79. Bruce D. Callander, “The New Expeditionary Force,” Air Force Magazine 81, no. 9 (September 1998).

80. Tirpak, “Legacy of the Air Blockades,” 48.

81. Kreisher, “In the Sandbox,” 69.

82. Harley A. Hughes, “Bailing Out,” Armed Forces Journal International 136, no. 2 (September 1998): 42–46.

83. Thomas E. Ricks, “Containing Iraq: A Forgotten War,” Washington Post, 25 October 

2000, A01.

84. Adam N. Stulberg and Michael D. Salomone, Managing Defense Transformation: 

Agency, Culture and Service Change (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 42.

85. White, Crises after the Storm, 15.

86. Julie Bird, “Special Report: Southern Watch,” Air Force Times, 28 September 1992, 16–18.

87. Steven Watkins, “No End in Sight,” Air Force Times, 19 December 1994, 12–15.

88. Ibid.

89. Kreisher, “In the Sandbox,” 70.

90. Julie Bird, “The Mission,” Air Force Times, 30 June 1997, 16.

91. Correll, “Northern Watch.”

92. Julie Bird, “Back to the Desert,” Air Force Times, 27 October 1997, 12.

93. Tom Raum, “Airmen Tell Senators It’s Time to Pack Up and Go Home,” Air Force Times,

18 May 1998, 8.

94. Ibid.

95. Michael E. Ryan, “The Promise of the Expeditionary Force,” Air Force Times, 31 August 

1998, 31.

96. William Matthews and Bruce Rolfsen, “Ryan to JCS: Give Us a Break,” Air Force Times,

12 July 1999, 8–10; Pamela Hess, “Pentagon Slowed Iraq Mission for Kosovo,” United Press International, 14 July 1999.

97. Joie Chen and Patty Davis, “Air Force Asks Pentagon for a Timeout,” CNN: The World 

Today, 24 June 1999, transcript, LexisNexis.

98. Matthews and Rolfsen, “Ryan to JCS: Give Us a Break,” 8.

99. Kreisher, “In the Sandbox.”

100. Chen and Davis, “Air Force Asks Pentagon for a Timeout.”

101. Kreisher, “In the Sandbox.”

102. Ricks, “Containing Iraq: A Forgotten War.”

103. Wood, “Workloads and Pay Woes Driving Veteran Pilots Out of Air Force.”

104. Glen Warchol, “Retaining Air Force Top Guns,” Salt Lake Tribune, 7 November 1999, 

A1.
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105. James Kitfield, “The Long Deployment,” Air Force Magazine 83, no. 7 (July 2000), 

http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2000/July%202000/0700deploy.

aspx.

106. Warchol, “Retaining Air Force Top Guns.”

107. Hughes, “Bailing Out.”
89

Chapter 6

Conclusions

The organizational culture of a service, in turn, exerts a strong 

influence on civil-military relations, frequently constraining 

what civilian leaders can do and often constituting an obstacle 

to change and innovation.

—Mackubin Thomas Owens

US Civil-Military Relations after 9/11

I’ll be damned if I permit the United States Army, its institutions, its doctrine, and its traditions, to be destroyed just to win 

this lousy war.

—Senior Army officer in Vietnam

quoted by journalist Ward Just

George Washington’s legacy of principled civil-military relations has endured for over 200 years, strengthened over time by the shared benefits of 

precedent, virtue, and accountability. In service to the American people, the 

government and its military have successfully negotiated the tenuous paradox 

of armed delegation. The ethic of civilian control over the military continues 

to undergird the civil-military relationship, with neither side having to remind or be reminded of its rightful place. This macroscopic bill of health, 

however, belies the spirited and subtle negotiations that comprise the civilmilitary dynamic in the grind of daily affairs. Civilian and military leaders 

share a common goal—the security of the nation—but often differ significantly in their appraisal of how to achieve it. Military leaders, acting in good 

faith in their subordinate role, attempt to shape policy debates to conform to 

their own particular theories of success. Civilian leaders, while craving sound 

military counsel, seek to retain the authority to make substantive decisions 

that are not prepackaged by the military as the only suitable choice. 

By framing this relationship as a principal-agent problem, Peter Feaver captures the inherent tension with useful explanatory power. As chapter 2 explains, agency theory models the relevant incentives that inform the decisions 

of key actors: the civilians’ monitoring decision, the military’s decision to work 

or shirk, and the civilians’ decision whether and how to punish any shirking 

they detect. Feaver’s work contributes meaningfully to the civil-military rela-
CONCLUSIONS

90

tions literature in several ways. First, whereas other theorists stipulate normative solutions for how the civil-military relationship should operate, agency 

theory attempts to model how it does operate. The theory acknowledges that 

both civilian and military players are self-interested actors that respond to 

meaningful incentives. A second major contribution of agency theory is its 

ability to highlight a continuum of cooperation, anchored by the poles of 

working and shirking. A theory without a useful construct for exploring the 

middle ground risks oversimplifying the civil-military dynamic. If the only 

threshold of interest is a violent coup, such blinkered vision overlooks the vast 

trade space that informs the dynamic on a daily basis.

In light of these strengths, I invoked agency theory as this paper’s structural framework but manipulated some of its governing assumptions. First, 

this project recognized that the military is not a unitary actor—instead, it 

viewed the four military services as distinct players in the civil-military arena, 

each wielding a unique brand of power and influence. By parsing the military 

into separate service components, I also made room to assess the influence of 

each service’s unique organizational culture. While agency theory presents a 

rational baseline, it can accommodate cultural factors by exploring their influence on the military’s policy preferences. Consequently, this paper seeks to 

enrich the civil-military literature in two ways: first, by scoping the unit of 

analysis to an individual service; and second, by assessing the influence of 

organizational culture on that service’s decision to work or shirk the civilian 

policy. 

This concluding chapter briefly summarizes the theoretical background of 

the project, followed by the summary findings from its two major case studies. Subsequently, this chapter highlights areas for future research and the relevant policy implications that follow from its conclusions. 

Organizational Culture

With agency theory as a backdrop, this paper hypothesized that organizational culture plays a dominant role in shaping the policy preferences of a 

military service. To ground this hypothesis in existing theory, chapter 3 surveyed the relevant organizational literature and its application to security 

studies. Using Edgar Schein’s work as a foundation, chapter 3 stipulated a 

composite definition of organizational culture: Culture is the prevailing personality of an organization, rooted in its collective history, enduring over time, 

and comprised of assumptions from which it forms a basis for future action. The 

literature clearly conveys that organizational culture helps individuals to 
CONCLUSIONS

91

make sense of their environment, serving as a heuristic to guide and constrain 

their thinking.1

After the academic literature review, the following section appropriated the 

power of organizational culture into the military domain. To substantiate the 

claim that culture plays a uniquely causal role in shaping the preferences of 

the military services, the second section of chapter 3 advanced four main 

ideas. First, there is no single monolithic military culture—each service has 

its own unique culture rooted in that service’s history and adaptation to its 

environment. Second, given the unique parameters that govern military service, the service cultures are particularly powerful and pervasive. Culture informs the worldview of any organization but appears to dominate the worldview of a military service. Third, the separate military services are power 

players in the US defense community, wielding considerable influence that 

must be acknowledged. Fourth and finally, the organizational culture of a 

military service shapes its core conception of how to structure, equip, and 

fight the nation’s wars.

The final substantive section of chapter 3 exported these theoretical conclusions into the kingdom of a single service: the United States Air Force. 

Searching the history of the Air Force for evidence of its artifacts and espoused beliefs, the chapter concluded with five basic assumptions that shape 

the Air Force organizational culture. 

1. Technology Centered 

The Air Force exists because of technology, and its ongoing superiority is 

sustained by the ascendance of its technology. As the first and most important machine, the manned airplane is the building block of the force. While 

unmanned technologies have their place, the complexities of combat require an actual—or virtual—human presence over the battlefield. 

2. Autonomously Decisive 

The Air Force has the power to change the face of the earth. It can do what 

no other service can do. To realize its true potential, the Air Force should 

be employed kinetically, offensively, overwhelmingly, and with minimal 

political interference. 

3. Future Oriented 

Technology and potential adversaries change quickly, and the Air Force 

must orient forward to the unknown future instead of the forgotten past. 
CONCLUSIONS

92

The Air Force must pursue next-generation systems today to be ready for 

tomorrow. 

4. Occupationally Loyal 

The Air Force is an honorable and patriotic means to practice a desirable 

high-tech trade. Loyalties to the trade, machine, and subculture often outweigh loyalty to the institution.

5. Self-Aware 

Major combat operations are the best setting to showcase the full potential 

of the independent Air Force. In any other venue, the Air Force serves an 

essential supporting role in which it is largely taken for granted. During 

these times of invisible contribution, the Air Force must actively articulate 

its relevance to the nation and itself.

While these five assumptions do not comprise an exhaustive list, they appear 

to capture the most salient elements that emerge from Air Force history and 

culture. This paper then carried these assumptions forward into the case studies to explore to what degree they comported with various civilian policies. 

Given the working hypothesis of this paper, I predicted that policies that accorded squarely with Air Force cultural assumptions would engender working, while policies at odds with these assumptions were more likely to foster 

shirking. 

Case Studies

Chapters 4 and 5 presented substantive case studies in which the cultural 

assumptions of the Air Force were tested against the national policy set by 

civilian authorities. The first case study examined the planning period in late 

1990 leading up to Operation Desert Storm. In the early months of this period, the civilian National Command Authorities (NCA) favored an offensive 

strategy to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait, while military leaders like Generals 

Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf urged a more cautionary defensive 

approach. When the civilians kept prompting Schwarzkopf for retaliatory options in the event of Iraqi atrocities, the USCENTCOM commander called 

the Air Staff for planning assistance. Consequently, Col John Warden and his 

Checkmate staff crafted an offensive air campaign that targeted leadership, 

communication, and infrastructure to compel Iraqi withdrawal. Eventually, 

Warden’s Instant Thunder plan was leavened with elements of the AirLand 
CONCLUSIONS

93

Battle doctrine more familiar to United States Central Command Air Forces 

(USCENTAF) planners. As a result, the Air Force crafted an attractive offensive option that comported soundly with the NCA’s desired policy. 

The resistance to that offensive option came primarily from General Powell, 

whose own cultural assumptions about land and air power informed his professional judgment on what should be done. In fact, Powell worked hard to 

make sure the Air Force’s offensive option did not look too attractive to the 

president and his advisors. The picture that emerges from the narrative is an 

offensively oriented Air Force working with the civilian’s desired policy, while 

Powell led the rest of the military in resisting it. Through a fortuitous sequence 

of events, the Air Force as an institution had an opportunity to craft a campaign plan in its own image, steeped in its own cultural assumptions. The Air 

Force’s resulting policy preference accorded closely with the civilian’s desired 

offensive policy. This convergence of preferences, made possible by its consistency with Air Force cultural assumptions, explains the Air Force’s unique 

posture of working amid an otherwise-resistant military structure.

The decade that followed Operation Desert Storm, however, was a different 

story. For more than 10 years, Air Force crews enforced no-fly zones over Iraq 

in support of Operations Northern and Southern Watch. The decisive operations of Desert Storm faded into the long frustrations of containing the Iraqi 

menace. The nature of this open-ended containment policy appeared to be 

largely—but not purely—at odds with the Air Force’s cultural assumptions. 

While new technologies were introduced into the fight, they were not the 

shimmering high-tech prizes most central to the Air Force’s identity. The nofly zone missions gave the Air Force the leading role in enforcing UN sanctions and providing security for the nation, the region, and the world; yet 

those same missions were largely defensive, politically constrained, and reliant on nonheroic cruise missiles. The Air Force had primacy in the current 

fight, but the exhaustive nature of the commitment kept it from posturing 

forward for the next fight. Pilots were given ample opportunity to fly, but dissatisfaction with the mission and the operations tempo compelled them to ply 

their trade elsewhere. Finally, despite the operational rigor of constant deployments and engagements with Iraqi air defenses, Airmen’s efforts were 

largely ignored by the press and the nation at large.

The weak consistency between the policy implications and the Air Force 

culture spurred a variegated response from a conflicted Air Force. While senior leaders worked hard to accommodate the demands of a constabulary 

mission, individual Airmen deploying for the fifth or sixth time could no longer abide the policy’s inconsistency with their service culture. Individual resistance combined into a collective one, as the all-volunteer force volunteered 
CONCLUSIONS

94

to leave and altered the mission capability of the service. While the Air Force 

provided security for the nation and the world by containing Iraq, individual 

Airmen responded consistently with their cultural assumptions and resisted 

the policy’s demands.

Areas for Future Research

While this study pries open the door to assessing the cultural dimensions 

of civil-military relations, vast acreage remains unexplored. Moving from the 

specific to the general, there appear to be three general categories to which 

this current project points for future research: first, expanding the case study 

analysis for the Air Force; second, expanding the research agenda to the other 

three services; and third, exploring the structural changes in the civil-military 

domain that may alter the incentive patterns for the military services.

The most immediate and natural path for extending this current research 

is to assess more cases of Air Force responses to national policy. Due to limitations of time and space, I confined my analysis to two major cases. For methodological completeness, however, this work craves a third case study—one 

that demonstrates the Air Force clearly shirking a policy counter to its cultural assumptions. One possible case worthy of future research would be the 

aircraft acquisition battles of the past 10 years. During this period, the Air 

Force pursued acquisition of both the F-22 Raptor and a fleet of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) like the MQ-1 Predator. While Secretary of Defense Robert Gates pushed the Air Force to acquire and deploy more surveillance assets 

in theater, the leaders of the Air Force appeared more interested in acquiring 

the F-22. An interesting study could examine the civilian policy vis-à-vis both 

systems, the Air Force’s own preferences, and the cultural assumptions informing those preferences. For a second possible case of shirking, the Air 

Force’s nuclear mishandlings of 2007–2008 appear to have a rich cultural 

component. Future research projects could assess the dilution of nuclear culture in the Air Force from the obsessively regimented days of Strategic Air 

Command through its nadir in 2008. Had the mainstream Air Force orphaned 

the nuclear mission? Were exacting nuclear protocols somehow at odds with 

a service culture that had migrated elsewhere?

A logical extension for additional research would be an analysis of the 

other service cultures and their civil-military dynamics. Carl Builder’s The 

Masks of War provides a useful starting point for understanding the images 

and cultures that shape each service. As this paper has done for the Air Force’s 

civil-military relationship, future research could do for the other services. 
CONCLUSIONS

95

What impact do their unique service cultures have on their cooperation with 

or resistance to national policy? A particularly interesting study could be 

done of the US Navy given the distinct bifurcation of its surface warfare personnel from its flyers—a distinction so acute as to merit a different color of 

shoes. Studying the culture of naval aviation would be especially insightful 

given the contrast between its parentage and its operational dynamic: does its 

affiliation with and origins from the surface-fleet Navy govern its culture? Or 

do the elitism and thrills of military aviation create cultural dynamics endemic to a flying-based culture—giving it as much commonality with the Air 

Force as with its parent naval service?

Lastly, there are tectonic movements in place that could be changing American civil-military relations in slow but steady ways. For example, given the 

25-year seasoning period of the Goldwater-Nichols legislation, a useful study 

could compare the service-level civil-military dynamics before and after that 

legislation. By consolidating power in the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

and strengthening the authorities of the combatant commanders, how did the 

legislation alter the incentive structures of the service chiefs? Did confining 

the chiefs’ statutory power to organizing, training, and equipping have any 

unintended consequences? Furthermore, did this legislation unknowingly reinforce the specious divide between politics and war fighting? Discussing the 

civil-military arrangements during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Gen Tommy 

Franks urged, “Keep Washington focused on policy and strategy. Leave me the 

hell alone to run the war.”2

 Mackubin Owens observes the dangerous legacy 

that Goldwater-Nichols may have left to sanction such a divide: “Of course, 

such an attitude is a dysfunctional consequence of the well-intentioned institutional arrangement created by Goldwater-Nichols reinforcing the idea that 

there is an autonomous realm of military action within which civilians have 

no role.”3

 Greater research into the civil-military implications of this foundational legislation is certainly needed.

Another tectonic plate moving slowly beneath our feet is the effect of protracted counterinsurgency operations on the respective service cultures. 

While organizational culture is an enduring phenomenon, it can change in 

discernible ways if the external environment requires different adaptive 

mechanisms. Have service cultures migrated at all in the past several years, 

and if so, what are the implications for civil-military relations? Have the government and the American people—as well as the military itself—come to 

believe that the US military is the only national institution that can actually 

accomplish something worthwhile? Does the military’s effectiveness across 

such a wide mission set mean that it will be handed ever-greater problems 

outside its traditional domain?4
CONCLUSIONS

96

Implications

Civilian principals and military agents share a common interest in pursuing healthy civil-military relations. Grounded in democratic theory, each 

party benefits from knowing both what its role should be as well as the meaningful incentives that motivate the other. For civilian principals, this study has 

attempted to expose the illusion of the military as a unitary actor by highlighting the formative role of organizational culture. In the aggregate, military 

service members certainly share key characteristics that differentiate them 

from the civilian public. In the gritty sphere of policy, however, military leaders from different services are not fungible assets. Admirals have reached 

their position by thriving within the naval culture, while Air Force generals 

have grown up thinking like Airmen. The services have markedly distinct cultures that shape their perception of the national security environment. 

Consequently, understanding the unique service cultures can improve the 

creation of viable policy, clarify communication, and help civilians anticipate 

where pockets of resistance or cooperation are likely to arise. Civilian authorities need not fear an imminent coup but should recognize that policies 

inconsistent with the cultural assumptions of a particular service will likely 

engender hedging or foot-dragging from that service. As this study has shown, 

the organizational culture of a military service plays a dominant role in shaping its preferences, which in turn informs its calculation of working or shirking the civilian policy. In turn, these insights can foster the continued good 

health of American civil-military relations bequeathed by a retiring General 

Washington.

Notes

1. Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: JosseyBass, 2004), 8.

2. Tommy Franks, American Soldier (New York: Regan Books, 2004), 688.

3. Mackubin T. Owens, “Civil-Military Relations and the U.S. Strategy Deficit,” E-notes bulletin, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, PA, February 2010, accessed 11 March 

2010, http://www.fpri.org/enotes/201002.owens.civilmilitaryrelations.html.

4. These issues and questions are reminiscent of those raised in Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., “The 

Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012,” Parameters 22 (Winter 1992): 2–20. Given the 

nature of US military operations since 2001, Dunlap’s concerns appear to be increasingly relevant.
97

Abbreviations

AEF air expeditionary force

CJCS chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

CSAF chief of staff, United States Air Force

HARM high-speed anti-radiation missile

ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile

KDP Kurdish Democratic Party

MEU Marine expeditionary unit

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NBC nuclear, biological, and chemical weapon

NCA National Command Authorities

NSC National Security Council

ONW Operation Northern Watch

OPC Operation Provide Comfort

OPLAN operational plan

OPTEMPO operations tempo

OSW Operation Southern Watch

PUK Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

RAF Royal Air Force (UK)

ROE rules of engagement

RPA remotely piloted aircraft

SAC Strategic Air Command

SIOP Single Integrated Operational Plan

STU-III secure telephone unit–third generation

TAC Tactical Air Command

TLAM Tomahawk land attack missile

UNSCOM United Nations Special Commission for Iraq

UNSCR United Nations Security Council Resolutions

USCENTAF United States Central Command Air Forces

USCENTCOM United States Central Command

USEUCOM United States European Command

99

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ISBN: 978-1-58566-225-8

ISSN: 1941-3785

AFRI

Air Force Research Institute