Art of War Papers

United States’ Grand Strategy Through the 

Lens of Lebanon in 1983 and Iraq in 2003

 Charles P. Bris-Bois III, Major, US Air Force

 Command and General Staff College

 Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
The cover photo: General Dwight D. Eisenhower addresses American 

paratroopers on D-day, official US Army photo, 6 June 1944. CGSC 

Copyright Registration #13-0605 C/E.
United States’ Grand Strategy

 Through the Lens of Lebanon

in 1983 and Iraq in 2003

A thesis presented to the Faculty of the

US Army Command and General Staff College

Master of Military Art and Science

Art of War

by

Charles P. Bris-Bois III, Major, US Air Force

B.S., US Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs,

Colorado, 1999

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

2012-01
ii

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bris-Bois, Charles P., III.

 United States’ grand strategy through the lens of Lebanon / 

by Charles P. Bris-Bois III, Major, US Air Force in 1983 and Iraq 

in 2003.

 pages cm

 “A thesis presented to the Faculty of the US Army Command 

and General Staff College, Master of Military Art and Science, Art 

of War.”

 Includes bibliographical references and index.

 ISBN 978-0-9885837-9-5 (alk. paper)

 1. Strategy--Case studies. 2. United States--Military 

policy--Decision making--Case studies. 3. National security-

-United States--Decision making--Case studies. 4. United States-

-Foreign relations--Decision making--Case studies. 5. United 

States--Armed Forces--Lebanon. 6. Lebanon--History--Israeli 

intervention, 1982-1985. 7. Iraq War, 2003-2011. 8. United 

States--Military policy--Case studies. 9. United States--Foreign 

relations--1945- I. Title. 

 U162.B772 2013

 355’.033573--dc23

 2013021562

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Combat Studies Institute Press
iii

Abstract

United States’ Grand Strategy

Through The Lens of Lebanon in 1983 and Iraq in 2003 

by Major Charles P. Bris-Bois III

The United States failed in both Lebanon in 1982-1984 and 

Iraq in 2003, to achieve its political objectives. While there are 

many reasons for this, perhaps the greatest is that the government failed to coordinate and direct all of its resources in a unified 

manner to achieve its goals. This book outlines four key indicators, present in both Lebanon and Iraq, that suggest the United 

States did not have a grand strategy. Further, this book reveals that 

Lebanon and Iraq are not anomalies; there are both historical and 

structural reasons why the United States struggles to implement 

grand strategies.
iv

Objectives of the Art of War Scholars Program

The Art of War Scholars Program is a laboratory for critical 

thinking. It offers a select group of students a range of accelerated, academically rigorous graduate level courses that promote 

analysis, stimulate the desire for life-long learning, and reinforce 

academic research skills. Art of War graduates will not be satisfied 

with facile arguments; they understand the complexities inherent in almost any endeavor and develop the tools and fortitude to 

confront such complexities, analyze challenges, and independently 

seek nuanced solutions in the face of those who would opt for 

cruder alternatives. Through the pursuit of these outcomes, the 

Art of War Scholars Program seeks to improve and deepen professional military education. 

The Art of War Program places contemporary operations 

(such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan) in a historical framework 

by examining earlier military campaigns. Case studies and readings have been selected to show the consistent level of complexity 

posed by military campaigns throughout the modern era. Coursework emphasizes the importance of understanding previous engagements in order to formulate policy and doctrinal response to 

current and future campaigns. 

One unintended consequence of military history education is 

the phenomenon of commanders and policy makers “cherry picking” history—that is, pointing to isolated examples from past campaigns to bolster a particular position in a debate, without a comprehensive understanding of the context in which such incidents 

occurred. This trend of oversimplification leaves many historians 

wary of introducing these topics into broader, more general discussion. The Art of War program seeks to avoid this pitfall by a thorough examination of context. As one former student stated: “The 

insights gained have left me with more questions than answers but 

have increased my ability to understand greater complexities of 

war rather than the rhetorical narrative that accompanies cursory 

study of any topic.”

Professor Michael Howard, writing “The Use and Abuse of 

Military History” in 1961, proposed a framework for educating 

military officers in the art of war that remains unmatched in its 
v

clarity, simplicity, and totality. The Art of War program endeavors 

to model his plan:

Three general rules of study must therefore be borne in mind 

by the officer who studies military history as a guide to his profession and who wishes to avoid pitfalls. First, he must study in width. 

He must observe the way in which warfare has developed over a 

long historical period. Only by seeing what does change can one 

deduce what does not; and as much as can be learnt from the great 

discontinuities of military history as from the apparent similarities of the techniques employed by the great captains through the 

ages....Next he must study in depth. He should take a single campaign and explore it thoroughly, not simply from official histories, 

but from memoirs, letters, diaries...until the tidy outlines dissolve 

and he catches a glimpse of the confusion and horror of real experience...and, lastly, he must study in context. Campaigns and 

battles are not like games of chess or football matches, conducted 

in total detachment from their environment according to strictly 

defined rules. Wars are not tactical exercises writ large. They are...

conflicts of societies, and they can be fully understood only if one 

understands the nature of the society fighting them. The roots of 

victory and defeat often have to be sought far from the battlefield, 

in political, social, and economic factors which explain why armies 

are constituted as they are, and why their leaders conduct them in 

the way they do.... 

It must not be forgotten that the true use of history, military 

or civil... is not to make men clever for the next time; it is to make 

them wise forever.

Gordon B. Davis, Jr. 

Brigadier General, US Army

Deputy Commanding General

CAC LD&E

Daniel Marston 

DPhil (Oxon) FRHistS

Ike Skelton Distinguished Chair 

in the Art of War

US Army Command & General 

Staff College
vi

Acknowledgements

I first have to thank my beautiful wife Maggie and my two 

wonderful girls that have allowed me to lock myself away for long 

stretches of time to finish this paper. “I promise, next year will be 

the greatest year of our lives!”

I owe a special thanks to Dr. Marston and the incredible staff 

he put together for the Art of War Program. Without your constant 

challenge we would not have learned nearly as much.

To the men that have struggled through this process with me, 

I cannot thank you enough for the help, constant encouragement, 

and support.
vii

Contents page

Abstract.......................................................................................... iii

Objectives of the Art of War Scholars Program............................. iv

Acknowledgements........................................................................ vi

Chapter 1 Introduction...........................................................................1

Chapter 2 Grand Strategy, Doctrine, and Definitions.............................. 7

Chapter 3 How The Government Creates Grand Strategy.............21

Chapter 4 Lebanon Case Study......................................................31

Chapter 5 Iraq Case Study .............................................................51

Chapter 6 Conclusion.....................................................................79

Glossary .........................................................................................85

Bibliography ..................................................................................87
viii

Figures page

Chart 1. National Interest Matrix...................................................14
1

Chapter 1

Introduction

American grand strategy is the collection of plans and policies by which the leadership of the United States mobilizes and 

deploys the country’s resources and capabilities, both military 

and nonmilitary, to achieve its national goals. Grand strategy 

exists in the real world of governing whether it is carefully 

formulated and articulated in advance, or whether it evolves 

ad hoc out of world views, predilections, and subjectivities of 

those who govern. It is a fruitful field for scholars and students 

to study so that those who govern and those who are governed 

might have the richest conceptual repertoire with which to construct and evaluate national policies.1

As the quotation above explains, grand strategy, can either 

be carefully formulated, or can come about in an ad hoc manner, 

influenced heavily by the personalities and beliefs of those who 

govern. Intuitively, a carefully formulated grand strategy sounds 

more pragmatic and safer than one thrown together on an ad hoc 

basis. As dangerous as ad hoc grand strategy seems, there is an 

even more sinister alternative, one in which the employment of the 

nation’s resources and capabilities are never brought together in 

a coordinated fashion. Instead, the resources and capabilities are 

used in ways that contradict each other, so much so, that the political objectives become unachievable.

The relatively short history of United States (US) involvement 

in the Middle East is full of frustrating set backs and lost opportunities whose origins can be traced to a lack of grand strategy for 

the region. Some examples that immediately spring to mind are 

the closure of the Suez Canal, the oil embargo, the failed peace 

processes, the Iranian hostage crisis, the Iran-Iraq war, and the rise 

of Islamic radicals. In each of these examples, the United States’ 

inability to formulate a grand strategy, pre-planned or ad hoc, led 

to the failure of stated political objectives.

The US first became actively engaged in the Middle East in 

1946, when President Harry Truman extended the policy of containment to cover the region, forcing the Soviet Union to abandon 
2

its expansion into Iran.2 In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower 

signed into law House Joint Resolution 117, which quickly became 

known as the Eisenhower Doctrine. The law stated, “The United 

States is prepared to use armed forces to assist any such nation or 

groups of nations [in the Middle East] requesting assistance against 

armed aggression from any country controlled by international 

communism.”3

 In 1958, Eisenhower invoked this law when the 

Lebanese government asked US forces to intervene in Lebanon 

for the first time.4

 In 1970, President Richard Nixon affirmed the 

Eisenhower Doctrine by clearly articulating that the US had three 

strategic goals in the Middle East: prevent conflict which had the 

potential spill over into the entire region, continue the supply of oil 

to the West, and ensure the Suez Canal remained open to international trade.5

United States involvement in the Middle East is a fascinating topic simply because there are so many plots and subplots, that 

all impact any outcome US policy tries to achieve. As one Middle 

East scholar and former Army officer I interviewed told me:

I was there as an Army major: in Beirut Jan-June 1984; and in 

southern Lebanon from July 1984 to March 1985. I went over 

thinking I knew a bit about the Middle East based on reading 

interests and a few courses I had taken here and there. I came 

back sure that I was a novice in the world of the Middle East—

and I was. I certainly was no expert, nor did I meet any—then 

or since.6

Certainly, to be considered an expert, one would need a comprehensive understanding of all the issues that flow through the Middle East. These issues span thousands of years and involve complex 

interactions between religion, ethnicity, natural resources, foreign 

interventions, poverty, wealth, tribalism, and a myriad of other factors. To steal a line from Carl von Clausewitz, “an [understanding 

of the Middle East] that ignores any of them or seeks to fix an arbitrary relationship between them would conflict with reality to such 

an extent that for this reason alone it would be totally useless.”7

Due to limits in length and the recognition, it is not possible to 

convey a true understanding of any of the major undercurrents of 

the Middle East in a single thesis. This paper seeks only to explain 
3

grand strategy formulation and execution from a US perspective. 

To do this, the case study method will be used to look at the US 

military intervention in Lebanon in 1982 to 1984 and the invasion 

of Iraq in 2003. The central question that this paper seeks to answer is “Did the US have a grand strategy in Lebanon from 1982 

to 1983 and Iraq in 2003?” To achieve this goal, the paper will start 

in chapter 2 with ans introduction to grand strategy theory by Carl 

von Clausewitz and B.H. Liddell Hart. In addition, historians Eliot 

Cohen and Walter Russell Mead, argue that US actions in Lebanon 

and Iraq fit into a larger pattern of UUS Foreign Policy. Chapter 

2 concludes with an analysis by Dennis Drew and Donald Snow 

of the components that should be part of any properly formulated 

grand strategy.

Chapter 3 explores the history of grand strategy implementation by the US. Of particular interest is the National Security Act 

of 1947, which changed how the government is organized to both 

formulate and execute grand strategy. The role of the National 

Security Counsel, National Security Advisor and the interagency 

process are discussed in terms of how they affect the formulation 

of grand strategy.

The case studies begin in Chapter 4 by looking at the United 

States Marine Corps intervention in Lebanon from 1982 to 1984. 

The case study starts with a brief historical overview and attempts 

to determine whether or not the US had a grand strategy by assessing four critical factors: Did the policy makers understand the need 

for implementing policies that would enhance political reconciliation as part of the larger grand strategy? Did those same policy 

makers understand that without political reconciliation, none of 

the other policies would lead to the achievement of the political 

objectives? Were the branches, cabinets, and agencies of the US 

government able to set aside their philosophical differences and 

parochial interests to form a coordinated and unified plan of action, 

or did their differences become so great they stopped supporting 

each other all together? Did the US maintain its stated goal of empowering the Lebanese to solve their own problems, or did the US 

“Americanize” the solution and thereby undercut their larger political objectives? Finally, were the actions the military was asked to 
4

take conducive to achieving the political objectives or did military 

action become counterproductive?

The Lebanon case study concludes by summarizing how the 

lack of grand strategy that allowed the US military to drift from its 

original role as peacekeepers, focused on evacuating the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), to shelling Syrian positions 

with the USS New Jersey’s 16-inch guns.

The second case study begins in chapter 5 and covers the US 

invasion of Iraq in 2003. This case study follows the same framework established in chapter 4 and uses the same four questions to 

analyze the role grand strategy played in progression of the US 

military mission from simply deposing Saddam Hussein to a full 

occupation of Iraq.

Finally, the conclusion summarizes the results and synthesizes 

the theory presented in chapter 3 with the case studies from chapters 4 and 5 to give the reader a full understanding of why all the 

instruments of national power were never brought to bear on the 

problems the US faced in both Lebanon and Iraq.
5

Notes

1. Duke University, “Duke University Program in American Grand Strategy,” http://www.duke.edu/wed/agsp/#grandstrategy (accessed 22 May 2012).

2. John Collins, Grand Strategy: Practices and Principles (Annapolis, 

MD: Naval Institute Press, 1973), 149.

3. Peter Hahn, “Securing the Middle East: The Eisenhower Doctrine 

of 1957,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 36, no. 1 (2006). The Eisenhower 

Doctrine of 1957 declared that the United States would distribute economic and 

military aid and, if necessary, use military force to stop the spread of communism in the Middle East. The doctrine consisted of a major commitment by the 

United States to the security and stability of the Middle East and signaled a new 

level of US resolve to exert influence in international affairs. By issuing the 

doctrine, Eisenhower raised the prospect that the United States would fight in 

the Middle East and accepted responsibilities in the region that the United States 

would retain for decades to come.

4. Roger Spiller, Not War But Like War: The American Intervention in 

Lebanon, (Fort Leavenworth, Combat Studies Institute, 1981), 2.

5. Collins, Grand Strategy: Practices and Principles, 151. The first goal 

was tied to balance of power and the global policy of containment. The second 

goal of continuing the supply of oil to the free world was not just for the US, but 

Europe and Japan were heavily dependent on Middle East Oil. The third goal 

was directly tied to the second goal, because most of the Middle East oil traveled 

through the Suez on its way to the West.

6. CB20120312C0001, ORHA Official, Interview by Charles Bris-Bois, 

12 March 2012, Quantico. All interviews conducted for this research were done 

on the condition of anonymity and therefore names will not be released.

7. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds., On War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 89.

7

Chapter 2

Grand Strategy, Doctrine, and Definitions

The sorry state of peace...that has followed most wars can be 

traced to the fact that, unlike strategy, the realm of grand strategy 

is for the most part terra incognita—still awaiting exploration, 

and understanding.1

—B.H. Liddell Hart, Strategy

To determine if the US applied the principles of grand strategy to the 

military interventions in Beirut and Iraq, we must first define what grand 

strategy is, what its components are, and how it is supposed to be developed, coordinated, and implemented. To accomplish this goal, the paper 

will build a theoretical foundation based on the works of Carl von Clausewitz and B.H. Liddell Hart. These theorists will be followed by two modern historians Walter Russell Mead and Eliot Cohen who will be used to 

help put Lebanon and Iraq into the larger historical context, where they 

can be seen as part of a larger continuum of US strategic policy. Finally, 

Dennis Drew and Donald Snow are used to explain how the modern US 

military, in theory, defines and formulates grand strategy.

Carl von Clausewitz

Carl von Clausewitz was a Prussian military officer and a scholar. As 

a soldier, he gained tremendous battlefield experience during the period of 

the Napoleonic wars, which he attempted to distill into a theory of war. The 

work he left, On War, although unfinished, has become one of the most influential books on the art of war ever written. Clausewitz wrote the majority of On War between 1815 and 1830. Highly influenced by the scholarly 

works of the enlightenment and German Romanticism, he endeavored to 

write principles of war that would last the test of time and would not become outdated by advances in technology and new tactics.2

 He intended 

the work to be more than just a rulebook for war. He wanted to provide 

soldiers and statesmen the tools needed to develop their own logic, using 

the laws and principles he laid out.3

 The most famous of these principles 

is his Remarkable Trinity. First, this trinity is composed of blind natural 

force of violence, hatred, and enmity. Second, the play of chance and probability, within which commanders are free to use their creativity. Finally, 

the third piece to the trinity was reason, meaning that war is subjugated to 

policy.4

 This last piece of the trinity, in which Clausewitz added that war is 

subordinate to policy, was not fully articulated until 1827.5

 Prior to 1827, 

Clausewitz’s focus had primarily been on explaining war through the lens 
8

of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.6 Russia’s wars with 

Poland and the Ottoman Empire in the mid 1820s, forced him to rethink 

what he had written in chapters one through six of On War.

7

 He came to 

the conclusion that the nature of war was not linear, meaning that wars did 

not always start small and expand.8

 The Russian wars convinced him that 

wars could be fought for limited purposes as well. Therefore, his position 

that “the complete or partial destruction of the enemy must be regarded as 

the sole object of all engagements” was no longer logically consistent.9

 He 

now recognized there were at least two types of war, one aimed at complete destruction of the enemy, in which the victor could dictate the terms 

of peace, and one in which you fight for limited objectives in order to secure a negotiated peace.10 Thus, Clausewitz went back and added chapters 

seven and eight to On War with this new understanding and also revised 

chapters one and two. He intended to revise the remaining chapters, but he 

passed away in 1831 before he could complete the alterations.11

Hew Strachan, the Chichele Professor of War at Oxford University and 

perhaps the world’s leading scholar on Clausewitz, contends that the fact 

On War was never finished is, “the very source of its enduring strength.” 

Generation after generation has been able to take selectively from On War

what they desired.12 This includes those who advocate the need for grand 

strategy, even though Clausewitz never used the term.

It can be argued that the closest Clausewitz came to describing grand 

strategy was the way in which he described “policy.” In a note he wrote in 

1827, describing how he was revising his thoughts, Clausewitz contended 

that, “because there are two types of wars, it must lead to the recognition 

that war is a political act which is not wholly autonomous; a true political 

instrument that does not act on its own but is controlled by something else, 

the hand of policy.”13 The problem with this is that Clausewitz never truly 

defined what he meant by, policy.14

In German, the word Politik means both policy and domestic politics. In the Michael Howard and Peter Paret translation of On War, they 

chose to translate Politik to mean policy, similar in meaning to the modern 

use of the term foreign policy, completely ignoring the domestic political 

aspects.15 Yet Clausewitz himself recognized the importance of domestic 

politics on strategy in Book 8, when he described how French internal 

politics in the 1790s transformed the wars of Napoleon.16

For Clausewitz, the importance of Politik, using both the foreign policy and domestic politics translation, was that it formed a unifying structure under which he could bring all forms of war together into a coherent 
9

explanation.17 Politik, under Clausewitz’s intentionally vague definition, 

became the “trustee of all the interest of the state,” the “great outlines” 

upon which war was planned and carried out.18 It did so by “unifying and 

reconciling all the aspects of internal administration as well as the spiritual 

values, and whatever else the moral philosopher may care to add.”19

In order to maintain consistency in his logic, Clausewitz refused to 

enter into a debate about how policy unified and reconciled all the aspects 

of the internal administration. Instead, he dismissed this question by saying, “that it [policy], can err, subserve the ambitions, private interests, and 

vanity of those in power, is neither here nor there...here we can only treat 

policy as representative of all interests of the community.”20 Antulio Echevaria, a military practitioner, Princeton scholar, and head of the Strategic 

Studies Institute at the US Army War College, who has written extensively 

on strategy, claims that Clausewitz did this to avoid being bogged down in 

the details, however, the unintended effect was to deny that friction may 

exist in the formulation of policy as well as in the execution of war.21 More 

significantly, it led to the assumption that policy is united around a single 

purpose, rather than several competing ones.22

This paper will endeavor to show that in Lebanon and Iraq, there were 

many competing policy interests, not one, and that the private interests and 

ambitions of those in power affected the development of a grand strategy. 

As discussed above, Clausewitz never employed the term grand strategy, 

but his concept that, policy, unifies and reconciles all the aspects of the 

internal administration is hugely important to any discussion on the topic. 

To the extent that this paper will use On War and Clausewitz’s theories, it 

will be to prove that the US never established a grand strategy because it 

was unable to formulate a policy that was “representative of all interests 

of the community.”

B.H. Liddell Hart

Liddell Hart was a British Army Officer and theorist who is best 

known for his ideas on mechanized warfare, mobility, and airpower.23 Liddell Hart’s view on grand strategy is that it should be used to ensure that 

war achieves a better peace for the victor when hostilities are complete. 

Liddell Hart said, “It is essential to conduct war with constant regard to 

the peace you desire.”24 Liddell Hart links this belief to Clausewitz’s often 

quoted premise that, war is a continuation of policy by other means. In 

other words, the object of war is to achieve what diplomacy alone could 

not. War therefore, must always be conducted with the “subsequent peace” 

in mind.25 For Liddell Hart, policy and grand strategy are separated by the 
10

fact that policy is “the object of the war, what is to be achieved;” while 

grand strategy is policy in action, “the [coordination and direction] of all 

the resources of a nation...towards the attainment of the political object 

of the war—the goal defined by the fundamental policy.”26 As a precursor 

to the modern United States’ definition of instruments of national power, 

Liddell Hart stresses that grand strategy must go beyond military force and 

incorporate financial pressure, diplomatic pressure, and ethical pressure, 

“to weaken and opponent’s will.”27 To accomplish this, grand strategy 

must include calculations of the resources required: money, manpower, 

and “moral resources” and a plan for how the government is going to ensure the resources exist in sufficient quantities.28

The case studies in chapters 4 and 5 will show that part of why the US 

failed to achieve its stated objectives in both Lebanon and Iraq, was because it failed to heed Liddell Hart’s guidance. Liddell Hart believed grand 

strategy must include a properly formulated plan for marshaling appropriate levels of funding and manpower and then tying them to a strategy that 

combines military, diplomatic, and moral pressures in a holistic fashion.

The next section will attempt to provide a historical context for why 

it is so difficult for the US to coordinate and direct all the resources of the 

nation toward the attainment of the political objective.

Modern Theorists

Walter Russell Mead and Eliot Cohen will be used to expand on 

Clausewitz and Liddle Hart’s, theoretical framework, or “High” theory of 

grand strategy, and help put the development of grand strategy in Lebanon and Iraq in a historical context. Walter Russell Mead and Eliot Cohen 

each argue in slightly different ways that there is a continuity in American 

grand strategy. Through analysis of their arguments, it is clear that US actions in Lebanon from 1982 to 1983, and Iraq in 2003 should be viewed 

not as isolated anomalies, but as part of a continuum in foreign-policy 

trends that have roots, which extend back to the founding of the nation.

Walter Russell Mead

In Mead’s view, there are at least four distinguishable patterns in US 

Foreign Policy when viewed over long periods of time.29 In the book, 

Power, Terror, Peace, and War, Mead categorizes these trends and those 

that advocate them as Economic Nationalists Hamiltonians, Idealistic Internationalists Wilsonians, Isolationist Jeffersonians, and Populist Nationalist Jacksonians.30 Mead’s central argument is that each of these schools 

of thought are ingrained in the American DNA and that at different times, 

based on a myriad of complex reasons, mostly tied to internal economic 
11

conditions and external threats, they vie for supremacy in domestic politics. The winner in those competitions for influence plays a predictable 

role in determining foreign policy and US grand strategy.31

Mead argues that since the 1920s the competition has mainly been between the Idealistic Internationalist Wilsonians, and the Populist Nationalist Jacksonians.32 Mead contends that the Wilsonians see an inseparable 

link between US long-term security and the spread of American liberal 

values.33 The interventionist tendencies of the Wilsonians are balanced 

by the Jacksonians, who fervently oppose big government, international 

organizations, and long-term US over-seas commitments to nation building.34 In Mead’s view, the Jacksonians are not isolationists, instead, they 

represent the hawks of foreign policy, quick to use military force to protect vital interests. Rather than seek security through the establishment of 

like values, Jacksonians seek security through the threat of overwhelming 

force.35 This American preference for overwhelming firepower and direct 

violent assault was also recognized by Russell Weigley, in his seminal 

work The American Way of War.

36

The thrust of Mead’s argument is that most Americans have always 

supported the effort to build a safer, more economically stable world that 

values human rights.37 The question is whether it is better to use global liberal institutions and governments or the threat and use of punitive 

force to achieve the objective. Because neither school of thought is able 

to completely control the development of foreign policy, “there will always be contradictions, tensions, and uneasy compromises,” in US grand 

strategy.38 These contradictions, tensions, and uneasy compromises will be 

highlighted in later case studies of Lebanon and Iraq in chapters 4 and 5.

Eliot Cohen

In 1973, when Cohen wrote The Strategy of Innocence?, his thesis was 

that US national security policy reflected and was still influenced by the 

period of 1920 to 1945.39 Like Mead, Cohen believes the policy makers 

of the 1920s were heavily influenced by the legacy of President Woodrow 

Wilson, “American decision makers came to see in the experience of the 

depression and spread of militaristic and totalitarian regimes a confirmation of Wilson’s basic view that a liberal world order was the only guarantee of American Safety.”40 Cohen also believed that the period brought 

about four primary trends in American Foreign Policy that have continued 

to persist. First, because of Pearl Harbor and the threat posed by the rise of 

the Soviet Union, policy makers demanded military readiness and the ability to prevent surprise attacks. This in turn led to the acceptance of a large 

peacetime military with a permanent presence. Because the threats were 
12

external, policy makers viewed national security on global rather than local terms. Finally, a trend we will see brought out again in case studies 

of Lebanon and Iraq, the military developed, “a persistent preference for 

excessively neat patterns of civil-military relations.”41

In the Strategy of Innocence? Cohen also talks about what Mead 

termed the contradictions, tensions, and uneasy compromises in US grand 

strategy. The US, according to Cohen, was forced during World War II to 

make several difficult choices between short-term and long-term goals.42 

In 1940 and 1941, the US had to decide whether it was going to conserve 

its resources for the defense of the Western Hemisphere or deplete them in 

support of the defense of the United Kingdom.43 Another example of uneasy compromise highlighted by Cohen is that although the US was leery 

of the long-term intentions of China and the Soviet Union, it was forced 

to provide the support needed to keep them in the war.44 Thus, while the 

grand strategy may be simplistically described as doing what was required 

to achieve the goal of “unconditional surrender,” it is clear that there were 

many competing interests and views on the appropriate way to accomplish 

that goal. As we will see in the later chapters, the debate about what to 

do and how, is a constant factor in development of grand strategy. This 

debate will play a prominent role in contributing to a dysfunctional relationship between the Department of Defense and the State Department in 

both Lebanon and Iraq.

The case studies of Lebanon and Iraq will also show that there is a tendency in US strategy to “Americanize” the solution by asking the military 

to use overwhelming force in ways that are clearly contrary to the political 

objectives. Cohen saw the same thing in World War II, saying that the conflict shaped and revealed two distinct characteristics of American strategic 

culture: “The preference for massing a vast array of men and machines and 

the predilection for direct and violent assault.”45

Mead and Cohen both argue that in the formulation of grand strategy 

there will always be contradictions, tensions, and uneasy compromises. 

The presence of these conflicts can be attributed to the differences between 

the schools of thought that have evolved within US strategic planning 

circles. Both historians demonstrate that the dominant characteristics of 

American strategic culture can be revealed through examination of virtually every military engagement since 1920. One of the dominant characteristics is that the military’s preference for excessively neat civil-military 

relations precludes diplomats and generals from working hand-in-hand to 

craft holistic, yet nuanced strategies. This lack of cooperation leads to conflict over what to do and how to do it. Finally, historical analysis shows 
13

that while sorting through these complexities and tensions, America’s Jeffersonian preference for overwhelming firepower and direct violent assault takes the lead and often undermines the very goals the US is trying 

to achieve.

Again, the case studies in chapters 4 and 5 will show that with slight 

variations on Mead’s and Cohen’s themes, US actions in Lebanon and Iraq 

can be viewed as part of a continuum of American grand strategy with 

roots that date back to the founding of the nation.

Dennis Drew and Dr. Donald Snow

Perhaps the best definition of grand strategy can be found in a book 

entitled Making Strategy: An Introduction to National Security Processes 

and Problems by Dennis Drew and Donald Snow. For the authors, the 

role of strategy is to define and implement the means necessary to achieve 

national interests or ends.46 The means are typically described in terms 

of instruments of power: diplomacy, information, military, and economy, 

while the ends are usually expressed in terms of national interests such as 

protecting the homeland or ensuring vital sea-lanes remain navigable.47 

Within this framework, Drew and Snow define Grand National Strategy 

as “the process by which the appropriate instruments of power are arrayed 

and employed to accomplish the national interests.”48 Thus, the two parts 

of grand strategy are the vital interests the nation is trying to achieve or 

protect and the instruments being used to achieve or protect those interests.49 

Naturally, the question becomes how does a nation define vital interests? Drew and Snow contend that all vital interests have two components 

in common. First, the nation is “unwilling to compromise” on the interest 

and second, in addition to being unwilling to compromise, in order for an 

interest to be vital, the nation must be willing to employ military force to 

protect the interest.50 In America Overcommitted, Donald Nuechterlein, 

presents a framework for determining which interests are worth fighting 

over and which are not.51 Nuechterlein subdivides national interests into 

four distinct categories: Survival, Vital, Major, and Peripheral, as shown 

in the following chart.
14

Nuechterlein defines a survival interest as one that threatens the physical existence of a nation. Vital interests are those that can create serious 

harm if not met with strong measures, including application of military 

force. Major interests are those which may negatively impact the well-being of the nation, however, the use of military force is not deemed appropriate. Finally, Nuechterlein defines peripheral interests as being the least 

important and generally having little impact on the nation as a whole.53 

Survival interests and peripheral interests are fairly easy for a nation to 

categorize and there is usually little debate regarding the level of importance of the given interest. In contrast, the differentiation between vital 

and major interests is often contentious and requires considerable debate. 

The categorization of the interests in these two categories often shift back 

and forth between being considered vital or major depending on the views 

of the actors making the decision. These debates are especially contentious 

because the dividing line between the two represents which interests will 

be defended with force and which will not.54 Once the vital interests have 

been determined, they must be matched with the means used to achieve or 

protect them.

As mentioned previously, the instruments of national power are the 

means used to achieve or protect national interests. Joint Publication 1, 

Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States, defines instruments of 

national power as the tools the US uses to apply its power. They include 

Chart 1. National Interest Matrix. 52

Source: “Intensity of Interest/National Interest Matrix” from 

“Making Strategy: An Introduction to National Security Processes 

and Problems” by Colonel Dennis M. Drew and Dr. Donald M. 

Snow, Air University Press, 1988, page 29. CGSC Copyright 

Registration #13-0604 C/E.
15

diplomacy, information, military force, and economic strength.55 Diplomacy refers to the ways the diplomatic skills of the nation can be used to 

pursue national interests.56 Joint doctrine states that, diplomacy is the tool 

used to engage with other states and foreign groups to advance the United 

States’ values, interests, and objectives.57 Information, according to Todd 

Kiefer, can best be thought of as awareness or a set of beliefs and perceived facts upon which decisions are made.58 Information, as an instrument of national power, is used to influence domestic and foreign citizens, 

adversaries, and governments through the free exchange of ideas.59 The 

military instrument is perhaps the easiest to understand in that the military 

is used, or its use is threatened, to achieve national interest through the application of violence by the armed forces. The final tool that can be used 

to achieve, or protect national interests, is the economy. The economic 

instrument of national power is often used to apply the carrot-and-stick 

approach to other nations. Economic aide and trade agreements are used 

as enticements to persuade other nations to help the US achieve or protect 

its national interests, while sanctions and tariffs are used to punish those 

who threaten US interests.60 Ultimately, the role of the strategist is to determine what instruments of national power are, “available, appropriate, 

and acceptable” for use in achieving the national objectives.61 Providing 

direction and coordinating the activities of the various departments within 

the US Government capable of applying the instruments of national power 

is the responsibility of the National Security Council.62

Conclusion

This chapter began with an examination of Clausewitz’s definition of 

“policy” as the “trustee of all the interest of the state,” the “great outlines” 

upon which war was planned and carried out.63 Policy, in Clausewitz’s 

work, unified and reconciled all the aspects of the internal administration.64 Yet Clausewitz failed to acknowledge the complexity or friction 

involved in formulating a policy that could be used as a grand strategy. 

Liddell Hart expanded on Clausewitz to say that grand strategy was more 

than policy, it was policy in action. “The [coordination and direction] of 

all the resources of a nation...towards the attainment of the political object 

of the war—the goal defined by the fundamental policy.”65 Liddell Hart 

addressed the complexity Clausewitz chose to ignore, by describing how 

grand strategy must go beyond military force and incorporate financial 

pressure, diplomatic pressure, and ethical pressure in a holistic manner.

Upon this theoretical foundation, the works of Mead and Cohen were 

used to demonstrate the historical context in which Lebanon and Iraq fit 

in the continuum of US grand strategy. The authors highlighted the con-
16

tradictions, tensions, and uneasy compromises that must be made when 

grand strategy moves from theory to practice.

Finally, Drew and Snow were used to show that there are two components to grand strategy: the vital interests the nation is trying to achieve or 

protect, and the instruments being used to achieve or protect those interests. The next chapter will focus on the structure of the US Government 

and how in theory, grand strategy is formulated and implemented within 

that structure.
17

Notes

1. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd ed. (London: Meridian Printing, 1991), 

322.

2. Antulio Echevaria, Clausewitz and Contemporary War (New York: Oxford 

University Press, 2007), 14-16. Echevaria believes Clausewitz used Immanuel 

Kant’s system of logic; however, he did it indirectly, through the lectures and 

textbooks of Johann Kiesewetter, who taught at the General War School in Berlin.

3. Eschevaria.

4. Howard and Paret, On War, 89.

5. It is in this note of 1827 that Clausewitz asserts “war is a continuation of 

state policy.” Hew Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War: A Biography (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007), 77.

6. Beatrice Heuser, Introduction to the abridged edition of On War, by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, eds., On War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University 

Press, 1984).

7. Heuser.

8. Heuser.

9. Howard and Paret, On War, 227.

10. Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, 73.

11. Heuser, Introduction to On War.

12. Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, 26-27.

13. Strachan, 78.

14. CB20120327G0001, Senior British Official, Interview by Charles BrisBois, 27 March 2012, United Kingdom.

15. CB20120327G0001, Senior British Official.

16. Howard and Paret, On War, 609-610.

17. CB20120327G0001, Senior British Official, Interview by Charles BrisBois.

18. Howard and Paret, On War, 606-610.

19. Howard and Paret, 606.

20. Howard and Paret, 607.

21. Echevaria, Clausewitz and Contemporary War, Chapter 4.

22. Echevaria.

23. Liddell Hart, Strategy, Introduction.

24. Hart, 353.

25. Hart, 343.

26. Hart, 322.

27. Hart.

28. Hart.

29. Walter Russell Mead, Power, Terror, Peace, and War (New York: Knopf, 

2004), 19.

30. Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence (New York: Knopf, 2001).
18

31. Mead makes this argument in both Power, Terror, Peace; and War, and 

Special Providence.

32. Mead, Chapters 5 and 6.

33. Mead, Special Providence, Chapter 2. Mead believes that the Wilsonian 

school has its active interventionist roots in the missionaries and fervent Protestants that first settled America. For Mead, Wilsonian liberal values can be interpreted as opposition to militaristic and totalitarian regimes, but the original 

Wilsonians did not believe the spread of democratic society was practical in many 

parts of the world.

34. Mead, Power, Terror, Peace, and War, 98.

35. Mead, Special Providence. 218.

36. Russell Weigley, The American Way of War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1977.)

37. Mead, Power, Terror, Peace, and War, 7.

38. Mead.

39. Eliot Cohen, “The Strategy of Innocence? The United States, 1920-

1945,” in The Making of Strategy: Rules, States, and War, eds. Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox, and Alvin Bernstein (New York: Cambridge University 

Press, 1994), 428-465.

40. Cohen, 454.

41. Cohen, 453.

42. Cohen, 455.

43. Cohen.

44. The US counted on the Soviets to wear down the Germans through attrition in the European theater, and in China expected to use ports and airfields along 

the east coast to launch attacks on the Japanese main islands. Cohen, The Strategy 

of Innocence?, 455.

45. Cohen, “The Strategy of Innocence?” 464.

46. Col Dennis M. Drew and Dr. Donald M. Snow, Making Strategy: An Introduction to National Security Processes and Problems (Maxwell, AL: Air University Press, 1988), 27.

47. Drew and Snow; When Drew and Snow wrote Making Strategy in 1988, 

the instruments of national power did not include information. Drew and Snow 

list the instruments as simply, political/diplomatic, economic and military. Current Joint Doctrine as seen in JP-1, 2009 uses the newer definition to define instruments of national power as Diplomatic, Informational, Military and Economic 

(DIME).

48. Drew and Snow.

49. Drew and Snow.

50. Drew and Snow, 28.

51. Donald Nuechterlein, America Overcommitted: United States National 

Interests in the 1980s (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1985).

52. Donald Nuechterlein.

53. Donald Nuechterlein.

54. Drew and Snow, Making Strategy, 30.
19

55. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Joint Publication (JP) 1, Doctrine for the Armed 

Forces of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2007, 

Incorporating Change 1, 20 March 2009), I-8.

56. Drew and Snow, Making Strategy, 36.

57. Joint Chiefs of Staff, JP 1, I-9.

58. Todd Kiefer, “Competition, War and Transformation: Interagency Framework for Operational Planning and Force Development” (Briefing on 2 June 

2004), www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/jcs/competition.ppt/ (accessed 1 March 

2012). At the time of the briefing in 2004, Todd Kiefer was a Commander in the 

United States Navy working on the Joint Staff J7 at the Pentagon.

59. Joint Chiefs of Staff, JP 1, 1-9.

60. Drew and Snow, Making Strategy, 37.

61. Drew and Snow, 43.

62. Joint Chiefs of Staff, JP 1, I-8.

63. Howard and Paret, On War, 606-610.

64. Howard and Paret, 606.

65. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 322.
21

Chapter 3

How The Government Creates 

Grand Strategy

The Executive Branch has far more often than not failed to formulate, in an integrated and coherent manner judiciously using 

resources drawn from all elements of national power, a mid-and 

long-term strategy necessary to defend and further those interests 

vital to the nation’s security.1

—Don M. Snider, The National Security Strategy:

Documenting Strategic Vision

Grand strategy was defined by Liddell Hart in the last chapter as the 

coordination and direction of all the resources of a nation toward achieving the political objective.2

 Snow and Drew expressed a similar belief in 

the meaning of grand strategy by defining it as, the coordination and direction of all the resources of a nation towards the achievement of political 

objectives.3

 Having established these definitions, the question becomes: 

How does the US government create and implement an agreed upon grand 

strategy? This chapter will explain why grand strategy development and 

implementation is not an easy thing for a democratic government that divides power between the executive and legislative branches. In theory, 

the National Security Council has evolved to overcome these difficulties 

through an interagency process that brings the whole-of-government together to advise the president and help determine what the grand strategy 

should be and which Cabinets within the government should be responsible for its implementation. This chapter will begin with a short historical examination of past United States grand strategies, followed by an 

introduction to the National Security Council. Within the National Security Council, the role of Presidential Decision Documents will be used to 

illuminate how policy is created, and how that policy then through action, 

becomes grand strategy.

History of United States Grand Strategy

World War II

Historians and political scientists generally agree that the best example of the US creating and implementing a coherent and coordinated 

grand strategy occurred at the onset of World War II. Recognizing that the 

US could potentially be drawn into a two-theater conflict, one in Europe 

and one in the Pacific, President Franklin Roosevelt and his administration, decided even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, that if the US had 
22

to fight both Germany and Japan, that the majority of the resources and 

focus would be directed toward Europe.4

 After the defeat of the Nazis, the 

US would then turn its attention toward the Pacific. In reality, the US expended considerable resources and focus on the Pacific Theater prior to the 

defeat of Germany, yet Roosevelt’s Europe-First Policy and its subsequent 

implementation, are held up as the model of grand strategy, because all 

decisions regarding the application of the instruments of national power 

were made with this policy as the fundamental starting point.5

Although scholars hold up the vignette of Word War II as the classic 

example of grand strategy, the politicians of the time found great fault in 

the manner in which the US mobilized and fought the war. Specifically, 

in 1947 the Senate Armed Services Committee, found that it took far too 

long to mobilize the armed forces, resources were used in a wasteful manner, intelligence on enemy capabilities and intentions was lacking, and 

most significantly, there was a disconnect between military objectives and 

political purpose.6

 A similar report from the House of Representatives laid 

out the roadmap for what would eventually be adopted as the National Security Act of 1947. Recognizing the next war may not afford the US time 

to mobilize and deploy forces the way it had for World War I and World 

War II, the report called for a complete overhaul of the nation’s national 

security architecture. Among the recommendations were several new organizations; Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Office of the 

Secretary of Defense, and the National Security Council.7

 The purpose of 

these new entities was to ensure that all policy decisions, whether they be 

domestic, foreign or purely military in nature, were formed with the best 

information available from across the government. The hope was that with 

the ability to more efficiently tap into the nation’s industry, manpower, and 

academia the government would be better stewards of available resources, 

and would position the US to be better prepared for the next war.8

Cold War (1945 to 1988)

While the National Security Act of 1947 was focused on ensuring the 

US was prepared for the next big war, the administration of Harry S. Truman worked vigorously to draft and implement a new grand strategy that 

would minimize the chance of a Third World War, and at the same time 

stop Soviet sponsored communist expansion around the globe. “Relying 

on the experience of the 1930s interwar years as their frame of reference, 

they were convinced that appeasement of totalitarian states during that period had encouraged Axis aggression. [The Truman Administration] therefore adopted the position that Communist Russia represented an ominous 

threat the United States had to resist.”9

 As a result, Containment became 
23

the grand strategy of the US Similar to the Europe-First Policy, the policy 

of Containment gave the government a conceptual framework upon which 

to base all decisions on how to align and execute all the instruments of national power. Historians largely agree that this grand strategy worked well 

for over four decades, lasting from its implementation in 1947 up until the 

collapse of the Soviet Union, 1987 to 1991.10

Post Cold War (1988 to 2001)

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, with Containment no longer necessary, President Clinton had to create a new grand strategy. Later 

in his presidency, when asked by a Cable News Network reporter whether 

or not there was a “Clinton-Doctrine,” President Clinton responded by saying he believed it was, “bringing the world together to stop genocide and 

ethnic cleansing.”11 Although that may be how the President would like to 

be remembered, the reality is that the Clinton Administration’s grand strategy was creating policies and aligning the instruments of national power 

to, “batter down barriers to United States’ trade and investment.”12 There 

was a fundamental belief in both George H.W. Bush’s and Clinton’s administrations that the opening of world markets to United States’ goods 

would not only benefit the US in economic terms, but it would lead to a 

more peaceful world. As many prominent political scientists pointed out 

at the time; no two nations with McDonald’s hamburger restaurants had 

ever gone to war with each other.13 Thus, the implementation of the North 

American Free Trade Act and the World Trade Organization, moved to the 

top of the Clinton Administration’s priority list. President Clinton championed the principle of engagement as the preferred method of dealing with 

both allies and competitors. But because the US no longer had a competitor which could credibly muster enough power to balance or counter-act 

the United States’ desires, the US was essentially able to dictate to the rest 

of the world how it would act in foreign affairs. A prime example of this 

being Europe’s inability to change President Clinton’s approach to dealing 

with Bosnia and Kosovo.14 Because Africa and South Asia did not fit into 

this grand strategy of economic expansion, the US largely ignored these 

regions and their problems, as evidenced by the closing of a large number 

of embassies and consulates in areas not seen as vital in advancing the 

United States’ vital interests.15 Many believe that the combination of the 

collapse of the super-power dominated world order, and America’s subsequent withdrawal from regions deemed unimportant, allowed al-Qaeda 

the ability to expand and exploit areas in South Asia and Africa left behind 

by globalization.
24

Post 9/11

Following the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by al-Qaeda on 11 September 2001, President George W. Bush moved 

away from Clinton’s principle of engagement in international relations 

and moved toward a unilateralist approach that warned both friends and 

enemies, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”16 Bush’s grand strategy 

was now singularly focused on doing whatever was required to prevent 

another attack on the US homeland. The foundation of this defense of the 

homeland was an offensive military campaign aimed at destroying terrorist groups that threatened the US and her allies around the world.17 To gain 

this security for the homeland and help in destroying terrorist networks, 

the Bush Administration was willing to completely alter the nature of the 

relationships it had with other nations and governments. The Taliban, once 

heavily courted as partner in building an oil pipeline that would divert 

Caspian Sea oil through Afghanistan to Pakistani ports under the Clinton 

and Bush Administrations, was now “Enemy #1” due to their refusal to 

hand over Osama bin Laden.18 Pakistan, which previously had fallen out 

of favor with the US because of their Nuclear Weapons programs, went 

from being a target of sanctions, to the United States’ “most important 

military partner.”19 Russia, originally deemed by the Bush Administration 

to be “weak and irrelevant” became an increasingly important partner due 

to their experience fighting the Islamic extremist in Chechnya. Finally, 

Africa went from being a continent that held very few vital interests for 

the US, to a continent that had to be engaged to ensure that al-Qaeda did 

not leave Afghanistan, only to reform in another ungoverned space within 

Africa.20 The key concept to understand, as highlighted by these examples, 

is that the Bush Administration changed the definition of United States’ 

National Interests after September 11th. As discussed above, the previous definition of national interests under the Clinton Administration was 

anything that helped expand trade and investment. After September 11th, 

national interests, “revolved completely around internal debates over what 

was required for the nation’s security.”21 As we’ll see in the next section, 

those internal debates, in theory, are supposed to take place within the 

National Security Council.

The National Security Council

The National Security Council was created as part of the larger National Security Act of 1947. Prior to World War II, the US Government 

dealt with complex problems as individual departments—the State Department, the War Department, the Department of the Navy, and the Trea-
25

sury—with the help and guidance of the president. As the US emerged 

from World War II, with an unprecedented global leadership role, it recognized that the stove-piped approach to dealing with international affairs no 

longer worked. Instead global leadership required a combination of diplomacy, economic enticement, and military strength.22 The National Security Council was created as a means of bringing together the disparate departments under the Executive Branch in order to “mitigate the problems 

that [arose] from the way the United States Government is structured.”23

The National Security Act of 1947 did not knock down the stove-pipes, 

but “it did bend them at the top so that the policy thoughts coming from 

each would come together [within the National Security Council].”24

Per Section 101 of Title I. of the National Security Act entitled, Coordination for National Security, the purpose of the National Security 

Council is threefold. The first objective of the National Security Council 

is to advise the president on how best to integrate foreign, domestic, and 

military policies of the US to achieve national security objectives. The 

second purpose of the National Security Council is to assess and appraise 

the objectives, commitments, and risks associated with the United States’ 

National Security Policy. The final purpose of the National Security Council as laid out in the National Security Act is to review and consider all 

national security policies that have common interests across the departments and agencies of the government.25 The purpose of the National Security Council is to ensure the president regularly looks at all the facets of 

“complex multidimensional issues” and provides guidance that can then 

be carried out in a coordinated fashion by the various departments and 

agencies.26

The National Security Advisor is the person responsible for ensuring 

the president receives multiple points of view from all departments and 

agencies involved in a given policy debate. Due to the way the National 

Security Advisor was created under the Dwight Eisenhower Administration, there is no congressional mandate for the position or formal guidance 

on the duties and responsibilities of the National Security Advisor.27 According to Donald Rumsfeld, successful National Security Advisors perform three key roles. First, they identify where policy guidance from the 

president is necessary. Then they manage the interagency debate to ensure 

the president receives the information needed to make informed decisions 

and provide guidance to the administration. Finally, the National Security 

Advisor should ensure that the president’s decisions are understood by all 

and carried out in the manner prescribed.28 The National Security Advisor 

does this by working with the President and the interagency staff to formulate and issue Presidential Decision Directives.
26

Presidential Decision Directives

Presidential Decision Directives are designed to create intensive interaction among the agencies of the US Government. The process begins 

when the President, normally through the National Security Advisor, issues a Presidential Review Directive, “which tasks the relevant agencies 

to develop a new policy based on broad guidance.”29 In order to be effective, the Presidential Decision Directive has to bring together all of the 

relevant agencies from within the whole-of-government. When President 

Clinton wanted to formulate his Latin American Policy, he sent his Presidential Review Directive to 21 separate agencies within the government, 

thus bringing together both those agencies with direct ties to Latin America and those agencies whose policies had second and third order effects on 

Latin America.30 In theory, once each agency receives the Presidential Review Directive, with the President’s broad guidance, they assign an office 

or person within their particular agency to represent their organization’s 

interests in the larger interagency debate that will result in a Presidential 

Decision Directive. Once the Presidential Decision Directive is issued, the 

heads of the agencies are then tasked to ensure that their agency’s policies and actions align with the new Presidential Decision Directive. Often, 

these shifts require resources, which must be added to the agency or taken from another program. Because Congress holds the purse strings, the 

changes must be “costed out and submitted....for approval and funding, 

without which policy is merely words of hopeful expectations.”31 Grand 

strategy truly begins after the interagency debates have been settled, the 

President has issued a Presidential Decision Directive, the applicable 

agencies of the government have determined what adjustments are needed 

to meet the intent of the Presidential Decision Directive and Congress has 

provided the funding and approval to make the necessary changes. One 

relatively recent Presidential Decision Directive stands out due to the fact 

that it outlined how to more effectively use the interagency process.

Presidential Decision Directive 56: The Clinton Administration’s Policy on Managing Complex Contingency Operations

In 1996, President Clinton’s National Security Staff looked back at 

the way the interagency handled complex contingency operations in Panama (1989 to 1990), Somalia (1992 to 1994), and Haiti (1994 to 1995). 

Because there were no set guidelines on how each of these contingency 

operations should be handled, they were all approached and conducted in 

a somewhat ad-hoc manner.33 Presidential Directive 56 attempted to take 

the best interagency lessons from these events and institutionalize them so 

that the US and the interagency in particular, would be better prepared to 

32
27

handle them.34 “The philosophy behind the document is that interagency 

planning can make or break a [military] operation.”35 The Directive tried 

to effect change in the interagency process by recommending five broad 

reforms: creation of an Executive Committee, the requirement for a detailed political-military implementation plan, interagency rehearsals, interagency after-action reviews, and training for policy makers on how to 

effectively use the interagency process.36 After Presidential Directive 56 

was published, the Clinton administration attempted to apply its principles 

in several contingency operations including Kosovo (1998 to 1999). The 

after-action report from Kosovo highlighted the “recurring problems of 

the interagency: the need for decisive authority (nobody’s in charge), contrasting approaches and institutional cultures (particularly diplomatic versus military) with respect to planning, and the lack of incentives across the 

government to create professionals expert in interagency work.”37 Thus, 

while Presidential Directive 56 attempted to take the best practices from 

previous experiences and institutionalize them, it could not overcome the 

inherent faults that are built into the interagency system: lack of authority, 

cultural differences, and lack of incentives to put the interagency success 

above individual agency parochialism.

The Reality of Grand Strategy

The reality of strategic policy making is that grand strategy is not always well thought through and staffed through the interagency process 

of Presidential Review Directives, interagency debate, and Presidential 

Decision Directives. Often times, administrations find that “speeches, 

press conferences, VIP visits, and presidential travel” contribute to the 

development of policy as much as the formal interagency process.38 The 

United States’ push for NATO expansion is a prime example of policy 

formulation outside the normal National Security Council process, and is 

a cautionary tale of what can be missed when policies are formed without 

regard to grand strategy. In September of 1994, as the Clinton Administration pushed a proposal to expand NATO membership to include the 

Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary; members of the NATO briefing 

team visited Yale University to sell their proposal. During the question and 

answer session that followed, Professor Bruce Russett stood and asked 

several pointed questions such as: Could this proposal undermine President Yeltsin’s efforts to democratize Russia? Could this drive Russia into 

some type of alliance with China? “Then one of the briefers exclaimed, 

in front of [the] entire audience:—Good God!—We’d never thought of 

that!”39 The genesis of the NATO expansion came from a brief meeting 

in the Oval Office between Polish President Lech Walesa, Czech President Vaclav Havel, and President Clinton. When the two Eastern European 
28

leaders asked President Clinton to include the Czech Republic, Poland, 

and Hungary in NATO, he agreed on the spot and from that day forward 

began using speeches, press conferences, and presidential travel to extol 

NATO expansion.40

The interagency process was created to ensure that the second and 

third order effects of policy decisions were thought of, and that the wholeof-government was brought together to offer the President the best advice 

on how to proceed based on policies and stated grand strategies. As this 

example clearly shows, the interagency process is not always used effectively or as it was intended. The remainder of this paper will endeavor 

to explain how the interagency was used to develop a grand strategy for 

Lebanon in 1982 and Iraq in 2003.
29

Notes

1. Don M. Snider and John A. Nagl, The National Security Strategy: Documenting Strategic Vision (Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 2001).

2. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 322.

3. Drew and Snow, Making Strategy, 27.

4. Daniel W. Drezner, “Values, Interests, and American Grand Strategy,” danieldrezner.com/research/leffler.pdf (accessed 7 April 2012).

5. For more information on President Roosevelt and World War II see: Eric 

Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and Waldo Heinrich, 

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the American Entry into WWII.

6. Gregory D. Foster, McNair Paper 27, In Search of Post-Cold War Security 

Structure (Washington, DC: National Defense University, Institute for National 

Strategic Studies, February 1994).

7. Foster, 10.

8. Foster.

9. Foster.

10. Drezner, 430.

11. Walter Lafeber, “The Bush Doctrine,” Diplomatic History 26, no. 4 

(2002): 543-558.

12. Lafeber, 543.

13. Thomas Friedman first presented this theory in his book “The Lexus and 

the Olive Tree.” The theory was disproven when Russia and Georgia went to war. 

Both nations had McDonalds in 2008 when the war occurred.

14. Lafeber, “Bush Doctrine,” 549.

15. Lafeber, 544.

16. President George W. Bush, “Address to a Joint Session of Congress and 

the American People,” 20 September 2001, georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.

gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010920-8.html (accessed 15 April 2012).

17. Lafeber, “Bush Doctrine,” 549.

18. Lafeber, “Bush Doctrine,” 546. The negotiations to build the pipeline 

with the Taliban originally fell apart under the Clinton administration, due to US 

concerns over Taliban human rights abuses and the treatment of women. The 

Bush Administration tried to restart the negotiations but was hampered by the fact 

that Bin Laden was now residing in the country and he had been blamed for the 

US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole.

19. Lafeber, “Bush Doctrine,” 548.

20. Lafeber.

21. Lafeber.

22. Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York, Sentinel, 

2011), 317.

23. Rumsfeld.

24. Rumsfeld.
30

25. Richard A. Best, The National Security Council: An Organizational Assessment (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2009).

26. Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 318.

27. Best, The National Security Council, 8.

28. Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 324.

29. Gabriel Marcella, “National Security and the Interagency Process: Forward into the 21st Century,” in US Army War College Guide to Strategy, eds. 

Joseph R. Cerami, James F. Holcomb, and Army War College (Carlisle Barracks, 

PA: Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, 2001).

30. Marcella, 117.

31. Marcella.

32. When President George W. Bush was elected President, one of the first 

things he did was change the nomenclature from Presidential Decision Directives 

(PDDs) to National Security Presidential Directives (NSPD). For an excellent 

analysis of the National Security Council. See: Gabriel Marcella, Affairs of State: 

The Interagency and National Security (Washington, DC: National Strategic 

Studies Institute, December 2008), StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/

Pub896.pdf (accessed 15 March 2012).

33. John T. Fishel, Civil-Military Operations in the New World (New York: 

Praeger, 1997).

34. Marcella, Affairs of State, 118.

35. Marcella.

36. Fishel, Civil-Military Operations, 95.

37. Marcella, Affairs of State, 119.

38. Marcella, 112.

39. John L. Gaddis, What is Grand Strategy (Duke University, Keynote address for a conference on “American Grand Strategy after War,” 2009).

40. Gaddis, 4. For a complete description of how NATO expansion became 

US policy, see: James M. Goldgeier, Not Whether but When: the US Decision to 

Enlarge NATO (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999).
31

Chapter 4 

Lebanon Case Study

Instead of promoting a rapprochement between Israel and its 

neighbors, the application of US force and diplomacy had succeeded only in pushing these objectives beyond all reach.1

—Ralph A. Hallenbeck, Military Force as an 

Instrument of US Foreign Policy

Understanding how the United States Became Involved

The United States’ initial history of involvement in Lebanon began 

in May of 1958, when then Lebanese President Camille Chamoun asked 

President Eisenhower to deploy US forces to Lebanon in order to dissuade 

Syria from invading. Although reluctant, Eisenhower agreed to employ 

US forces based on three factors. First, Eisenhower was alarmed by the 

increasing Soviet influence in Syria. Second, Eisenhower believed the US 

had to support allies who stood against the Pan-Arabism that was sweeping the region. Finally, the pro-American government in Iraq had just been 

overthrown and executed, leading the US to fear that the government in 

Lebanon would be next if support was not given.2

 Therefore, Eisenhower agreed to send 5,000 Marines and a contingent of US Army soldiers 

to Lebanon for six months.3

 The first US intervention in Lebanon ended 

when it became clear that the Syrians no longer intended to invade and the 

situation stabilized. According to a Central Intelligence Agency analyst, 

who was stationed at the US Embassy in Lebanon in 1982 and interviewed 

as part of this research, the presence of US forces was credited with providing time needed for the rival Lebanese factions to agree on the election 

of a new President, which in-turn led to a semblance of political stability 

and a lack of outright hostility between the factions for nearly 20 years. 

That peace held until the outbreak of the 1975 civil war.4 

Lebanese Civil War

The origins of the 1975 Lebanese Civil War cannot be separated from 

the larger issues of the Middle East, namely the enduring conflict between 

the Israelis and the Palestinians. Following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 

US brokered the Camp David Peace Accords in which Egypt officially 

agreed to recognize Israel in return for Israel returning the Sinai to Egypt.5

As part of the Camp David Peace Talks, Lebanon became a key area of 

foreign-policy interest to the US Following the precedent set by the Egyptians, the US attempted to get the Palestinians to recognize Israel’s right to 

exist in return for Palestinian self-government in the occupied territories.
32

One of the major obstructions to the negotiations was the PLO, which 

because of its militancy, had already been “forcibly expelled” from Jordan and Syria, which did not want the PLO causing trouble within their 

borders. Unfortunately, Lebanon did not have a strong central government or strong military to prevent the PLO from taking refuge in southern 

Lebanon, where they prospered among the Palestinian refugee camps.6

By 1975, there were 350,000 Palestinians in Lebanon.7

 This added to the 

already volatile balance of power between the Maronite Christians, the 

Lebanese Shia Muslims, and Druze within Lebanon.

In 1975, that strain exploded into a full civil war. Unable to control 

the factions, the Lebanese Army broke apart, forcing Lebanese President 

Suleiman Frangieh to ask Syria to intervene and stop the fighting, that 

was now almost completely along sectarian lines. The Syrians deployed 

30,000 troops to Lebanon and from 1976 until 1982; they were able to 

quell the violence as “invited peacekeepers.”8

 Despite the Syrian presence, all of the factions, “maintained well-armed militias, and [sought] 

outside support in order to ensure survival in the internecine Lebanese 

political environment.”9

 In the run-up to the 1982 elections, the Phalange, 

the largest of the Maronite Christian factions, began vehemently voicing 

opposition to the presence of both the PLO and the Syrian peacekeepers 

in Lebanon. The Israelis recognized a natural partner in the Phalange and 

their Lebanese Forces Christian militia, because they were non-Muslim, 

anti-PLO, and anti-Syria.10 To enhance this tie, the Israelis provided over 

$100 million to the Lebanese Forces Christian Militia between 1976 and 

1982.11 In return for this support, the Israelis expected and encouraged the 

Phalange to act as their proxy in attacking the PLO and Syria.12

When the PLO attempted to assassinate the Israeli Ambassador to the 

United Kingdom in early June 1982, the Israelis decided they could no 

longer accept the terrorist organization’s presence on its border. They responded by launching “Operation Peace for Galilee” under the pretext that 

it would create a 25 mile cordon free of the PLO, pushing them beyond the 

range of their limited artillery and rockets.13 However, within four days, 

Israeli troops had surpassed the 25 mile cordon and were at the outskirts 

of Beirut, where the PLO had retreated, and had dug in for a final fight.14

The ensuing siege lasted from mid-June until 15 August 1982, when the 

Israelis accepted a United States-brokered deal to allow the PLO to peacefully leave Beirut, and resettle in eight separate Arab countries, (Jordan, 

Iraq, Tunisia, North Yeman, South Yeman, Syria, Sudan, and Algeria).15

Having few other options, the PLO agreed to this arrangement only after the US and Israel guaranteed safe passage of the fighters and protection 
33

of their families remaining in West Beirut from attack by the Phalange.16 

This guarantee would be backed by a Multi-National Force, which included 800 United States Marines, the French, and the Italians.17 

Thus began the second US intervention into Lebanon, modeled on the 

1958 intervention.18 On August 25, 1982, Col James Mead and his 800 

Marines joined 800 French and 400 Italian soldiers as part of the MultiNational Force charged with the safe evacuation of the PLO from Lebanon. By the first of September, the mission was complete and the Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, ordered the Marines to return to their 

ships and sail to Naples.19 The reprieve was short-lived and on September 

23, 1982 the Marines of the 32nd MAU were ordered to leave Naples and 

return to Beirut following the death of President-elect Bashir Gemayel, 

which will be covered in detail later in this chapter. 

Following the assassination of Bashir Gemayel, the Lebanese National Assembly quickly moved to elect Amin Gemayel to replace his brother.20 One of Gemayel’s first official duties was requesting the return of the 

Multi-National Force, to ensure civil war did not rip the nation apart.21 As 

the Italians, French, and Americans returned to Beirut, it was determined 

that the US would occupy the International Airport. Col Mead, the commander of the 32nd MAU, wanted to occupy the Old Sidon Road and high 

ground around the airport. However, he was not allowed to due to the fact 

that Israeli forces needed that particular route to move logistics to their 

dispersed forces. If the Americans allowed the Israelis to transit supplies 

through areas they controlled, it was feared they would be perceived as 

supporting the Israeli aggression.22 This left the Marines in a vulnerable 

position of not controlling the roads around the airport or the high ground 

that overlooked the airport. For eight months, as the 22nd and 24th MAUs 

exchanged rotations in Lebanon, the Marines faced minor confrontations 

with the Syrians, the Lebanese Muslims, and the Israelis.23 The US forces 

tried in vain to remain neutral, but the Multi-National Force as a whole 

became associated with the Phalange-dominated Lebanese government 

and as a result began to suffer more and more attacks from the Muslim 

opposition, which at this point was being heavily supported by Syria and 

to a lesser extent Iran.24 These attacks steadily rose leading up to April 

18, 1983, when the US Embassy in West Beirut was attacked by a suicide 

truck-bomb.25 

The Israelis were also feeling the effects of the increased attacks 

by the Syrians and factions opposed to the Gemayel government. In September of 1983, they retreated from the Shouf Mountains to more defensible positions south of the Alawi River.26 Because the Lebanese Army 
34

was still weak, it did not have the ability to fill the positions left by the 

Isrealis.27 This allowed the Druze factions supported by Syria to contest 

sections of key terrain that overlooked the international airport. Recognizing the danger posed by allowing this area to fall into the hands of the 

anti-government forces, the US began using its naval gunfire in direct support of the Lebanese Armed Forces that were attempting to fill the vacated 

Israeli positions.28 At first, the US used only five-inch guns from the USS 

Bowen and USS John Rodgers but then on September 25, 1983, the US 

shelled the Shouf mountains with the sixteen-inch guns of the USS New 

Jersey.29 As the analysis later in this chapter will clearly show, this direct 

support of the Lebanese Armed Forces removed any pretext of neutrality 

and linked the Americans directly with the Phalange-dominated Gemayel 

government.30 

Now clearly seen as the enemy, the Marines faced ever-increasing 

attacks and each time they responded in self-defense, they further eroded 

their status as peacekeepers. According to the Marine Commander at the 

time, Col Tim Geraghty, “The Muslim militias, Syrians, and the Iranians 

knew how to play this game. They created circumstances that quickly dissolved our purpose–a peacekeeping force–and then used our self-defense 

responses to rally and fan the flames of discontent among Muslim factions.”31 The flames of discontent culminated on October 23, 1983, when 

the Iranian Leftist group Islamic Amal, drove a nineteen-ton truck, loaded 

with twenty thousand pounds of TNT, into the Marine headquarters killing 

241 Americans.32

The remainder of this chapter will demonstrate that while the initial 

reason for returning to Lebanon, the evacuation of the PLO, was tactically 

successful, a lack of a grand strategy led to decisions that fundamentally 

crippled the US mission in Lebanon and the larger peace process. 

Why the United States’ Mission in Lebanon Failed

The following case study on the United States’ intervention into Lebanon in 1982 will show that the US failed to employ a grand strategy for 

five distinct reasons. First, there was a failure to recognize that ultimate 

success rested almost entirely on political reconciliation between the opposing factions within the Lebanese government, the PLO, and the Syrian 

government. Second, a lack of recognition of how US actions would affect 

political reconciliation led directly to a lack of consensus about what needed to be done and how to do it. Third, these disagreements erupted into 

personality disputes between Secretary of Defense Weinberger and Secretary of State Shultz, which in turn polarized the National Security Council 

and paralyzed it from fulfilling its assigned responsibilities. Fourth, when 
35

the Lebanese proved incapable or unwilling to solve their own problems, 

there was intense pressure from Washington to “Americanize” the solution. Finally, there was a lack of congruency between roles the military 

was given, objectives it was asked to achieve, and overarching United 

Foreign Policy objectives of the US.33

Military Mission Wholly Dependent on Political Reconciliation

If one were designing a grand strategy for the successful achievement 

of US interests in Lebanon, the first and most obvious requirement would 

be for political reconciliation between the factional groups, (Maronite 

Christians, Sunni Muslims, Palestinians, Shiite Muslims, and Druze,) all 

vying for a greater share of power. To an extent, the US recognized this 

early in 1982, prior to the second intervention.34 The Reagan Administration was already engaged in the larger Arab-Israeli peace process in which 

it hoped to demonstrate that the US could act in an even-handed manner, 

seeking the best possible outcome for both the Arabs and the Israelis. By 

acting neutral, the US hoped that achieving progress on the larger ArabIsraeli problem would lead to political reconciliation within Lebanon. The 

process of political reconciliation and the desire to be viewed as a nonpartisan player in the peace process failed, largely because the US failed 

to re-examine its strategic approach after two key events: the massacres at 

Sabra and Shatila, and the 17 May unilateral Israeli-Lebanon Agreement.

Sabra and Shatila

As discussed above, the evacuation of the PLO from Lebanon was 

a tactical success for the Multi National Force. With the PLO out of the 

country, the Lebanese Parliament met to elect a new President. Heavily 

supported both logistically and economically by the Israelis, the Phalange 

Maronite Christian candidate, Bashir Gemayel, easily won the election. 

The US, convinced that Lebanon was now on solid footing, removed the 

Marine contingent.35 However, a suicide bomb attack killed Gemayel 

before he could officially assume the presidency. The Israelis, who had 

agreed not to enter the Muslim area of Western Beirut, as part of the PLO 

evacuation agreement, immediately broke the conditions of the ceasefire.36 They moved on Western Beirut under the pretext that they were going to clear out any remaining PLO fighters. The reality was that only the 

elderly, women, and small children remained in the camp. As the Israelis 

surrounded Sabra and Shatila, the Phalange Christians entered the camp 

and massacred thousands of women and children as retribution for the 

killing of Gemayel.37 World sentiment quickly turned against the Israelis, 

who had the ability to stop the attack but chose not to, and the Americans 

who had prematurely departed Lebanon even though they had guaranteed 
36

the safety of the remaining Palestinians as part of the cease-fire agreement.38 Under intense international pressure, President Reagan agreed to 

send the Marines back into Beirut, thus beginning the third US intervention in Lebanon.

This event marked the first instance where the US should have re-examined its grand strategy to determine what political and military adjustments needed to be made to ensure United States’ objectives in Lebanon 

were achieved. The questions that should have been answered are: Is there 

a realistic chance for political reconciliation between the factions after the 

massacres, or are the ruling Maronite Christians going to have to force the 

other factions into submission? If Gemayel is going to have to subdue the 

rival factions, are the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) capable of doing so, 

without splintering along sectarian lines? Should the US Marines train the 

LAF? Is it wise for the US to be perceived as the backer of the Maronite 

Christians who are subduing Muslim factions, and how will such a perception affect the greater Middle East peace process? If the US chooses to 

back Geyamel’s government, is it willing to use military force to ensure 

the Israelis and Syrians do not interfere in Lebanese internal politics?

The answers to these questions would have formed the basis of grand 

strategy and helped both the State Department and the Department of Defense craft operational strategies to achieve the desired results. Unfortunately, because there was little time and the US was under intense pressure 

to respond, the Marines were sent in with the vague mission of providing 

presence.

This event also marks the beginning of the irreconcilable split between the Department of State and the Department of Defense within the 

Reagan Administration. For Casper Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense, 

the massacre at Sabra and Shatila was a clear example of factional fighting 

and which the US should not become entangled in.39 Already angered that 

the US had been drawn into the Lebanese conflict by what he viewed as Israel’s illegitimate siege of Beirut, he believed that the US should virtually 

cut all ties with Israel.40 Certainly, if the US wanted to retain the position 

of an honest broker to the Arab people, the US should have strongly condemned the Israeli Government and demanded concessions in the peace 

process, but the US did neither.

17 May Agreement

As the fighting continued throughout the remainder of 1982 and into 

early 1983, the US could do very little to convince the Israelis and Syrians 

to withdraw from Lebanon. Israel demanded that the US provide more 
37

economic assistance in return for negotiating a withdrawal; and the Syrians, initially battered and nearly broken by the Israelis in Lebanon, turned 

to the Soviet Union, who were more than willing to supply weapons, ammunition, economic assistance, and training.41 With strong backing from 

the Soviet Union, the Syrians believed they no longer needed to pursue a 

peace agreement.42

Finally, in April 1983, Secretary of State Shultz traveled to the Middle 

East with a mandate from President Reagan to secure a peace agreement 

between Israel and Lebanon. Israel was willing at this point to concede to 

the US’ demands for a peace agreement due to the casualties it was suffering in Lebanon and the loss of domestic support for the occupation, that 

resulted from the Sabra and Shatila massacres.43 Lebanon was weary of 

making a deal because it feared signing any agreement with Israel would 

lead to its banishment from the Arab League, much like what had happened to Egypt after it agreed to the Camp David Peace Accords.44 With 

strong assurances from Secretary Shultz that the US would remain involved in Lebanon, and with few other options, the Lebanese Government 

accepted the peace agreement, which established a diplomatic relationship 

with Israel and called for the withdrawal of both Israeli and Syrian forces 

from Lebanon.45

Predictably, the Syrians rejected the peace agreement, but through 

back channels, the Secretary of State had been assured by Saudi Arabia 

and the Soviet Union that the Syrians would withdrawal as soon as the 

Israelis did.46 Colonel Mead, the Commander of the 22nd MAU, believed 

when he was replaced by the 24th MAU on 30 May 1983 that there was 

still a strong possibility that the US plan to negotiate the full withdrawal 

of Israeli and Syrian forces from Lebanon could still succeed.47 Secretary 

Shultz was relying on the Israelis to continue the threat of permanent occupation as leverage to convince the Syrians to go along with the 17 May 

Agreement. Unfortunately, circumstances on the ground made it impossible for the Israelis to maintain their positions in the Shouf Mountains, 

and they openly began to discuss the possibility of a partial withdrawal 

to the Awali River. Once this occurred, on 4 September 1983, the Syrians 

no longer had any motivation to withdrawal their forces from Lebanon.48 

Hafez al Assad, the President of Syria, believed that the Syrians now had 

the upper-hand, and that with Soviet and Iranian backing he could continue to use both the Druze faction and Syrian troops within Lebanon to 

further undermine Israel, the US, and the Maronite Christian Government 

of Amin Gemayel.49 
38

The US should have taken this opportunity to once again reassess the 

grand strategy for Lebanon. The questions that needed to be answered 

were: Was the US willing to use its considerable military might to force 

the Syrians to withdrawal from Lebanon? If it did, could it also use political pressure to force the withdrawal of Israel? With the Druze firmly in 

the Syrian Camp and actively attacking Lebanese and Israeli Forces, was 

there any chance of political reconciliation? Was it possible for the US to 

use military force against the Syrians and still keep the support of moderate Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt? Would the US’ 

partners in the Multi-National Force; France, Italy, and Great Britain, support the use of overwhelming military force? Did the strong presence of 

the Soviet Union in Syria change the entire calculus?

While none of the answers to these questions were straight forward, 

what should have been plainly obvious to all of the decision makers within 

the US was that there was absolutely no chance the US could achieve any 

of its strategic objectives as long as the Pentagon, Department of State, 

National Security Council, and Congress remained at odds. Success in 

Lebanon required an understanding that a political agreement could not be 

reached without the credible threat of military force, but at the same time, 

military force had to be discriminately used at appropriate times to modify 

the behavior of the Syrians and anti-Government factions within Lebanon. 

Poorly conceived or ill-timed application, of military force had the potential to undermine the political process. Unfortunately, as has been previously discussed in chapter 3, the structure of the US Government does not 

allow for this type of closely coordinated effort between the diplomats and 

the military. This structural flaw led to the failure in Lebanon, and later in 

a similar situation, presented itself again in Iraq, as will be demonstrated 

in the next chapter.

Disagreement over What Needs to be Done and How to do it

A lack of recognition of how the United States’ actions would affect political reconciliation led directly to a lack of consensus about what 

needed to be done and how to do it. These disagreements erupted into 

personality disputes between the Secretary of State and the Secretary of 

Defense, which in turn polarized the National Security Council and paralyzed it from fulfilling its assigned responsibilities. Following the Israeli’s 

retreat from the Shouf Mountains to the Awali River, the Druze Militia 

and the LAF clashed over who would fill their positions. As the fighting 

raged, it became clear that the Druze, supported and armed by the Syrians, 

had the upper hand in the conflict. Special Negotiator Robert McFarland 

convinced the National Security Council that if the Druze were able to 
39

capture the key town of Suq Al Gharb, they would control the high ground 

over looking Beirut and the International Airport, which would place the 

Marines stationed at the airport in even greater danger.50

National Security Decision Directive 103

On 10 September 1983, President Reagan declared, through National 

Security Decision Directive 103, that ensuring Suq Al Gharb did not fall 

to the Anti-Lebanese Forces was vital to the self-defense of the Multi National Force. This Decision Directive is important for two reasons, first, 

the directive provided guidance from the President to his staff on what 

was to be considered US vital interests in Lebanon. Second, the Decision 

Directive changed the Rules of Engagement (ROE) to allow US Forces 

to use air strikes and naval gunfire to defend the town.51 However, there 

were considerable caveats placed on the military commanders before such 

actions could be taken. Namely, the MAU Commander, Colonel Timothy 

Geraghty, had to declare that Suq Al Gharb was in imminent danger of 

being over-run, the enemy was non-Lebanese, and the request had to originate from the Lebanese Government. In reality, there was no way for the 

Marine Amphibious Commander at the International Airport to know if 

Suq Al Gharb was in imminent danger or if those attacking the town were 

non-Lebanese (i.e. Syrian).52

The caveats placed on National Security Decision Directive 103, were 

a symptom of the larger dysfunction within the Reagan Administration 

and the internal conflicts that had developed between the State Department 

and the Department of Defense. Each organization had its own view on the 

utility of military forces in Lebanon and each fought to persuade President 

Reagan to follow their path; the resulting lack of “consistency and continuity” ensured that there could never be a grand strategy.53

State Department versus Department of Defense

Secretary of State Shultz was the most ardent and vocal supporter of 

Marine involvement in the Multi National Force.54 For Shultz the presence 

of the Marines represented the United States’ commitment to Lebanon and 

the entire region. As a diplomat, he was keenly aware that the solution to 

Lebanon’s problems could only be found in political reconciliation, not 

military action.55 However, as a seasoned diplomat, he also understood 

that the credible threat of military force was the strongest leverage he had 

against Syria. The problem was that with the Marines hunkered down at 

the International Airport, their credibility as a fighting force was weakened 

each time they were attacked and failed to respond. Shultz expected three 

things from the military: initially, he advocated a “presence” mission to 
40

help the Lebanese military deter any further outbreak of sectarian violence. When violence did erupt, as he knew it would, he expected a credible threat of force from the Marines and the Navy, to punish those causing 

problems and compel them to stop their activities. Finally, recognizing 

that his prized diplomatic effort, (the 17 May Agreement) could be jeopardized by the Syrians, he expected the military to prevent any direct Syrian 

involvement in Lebanon. In his view, “diplomacy not backed by military 

strength is ineffectual. Leverage, as well as goodwill is required. Power 

and diplomacy are not alternatives. They must go together.”56

At the Department of Defense, Secretary Casper Weinberger had opposed the use of United States Marines from the very beginning.57 He determined independently that diplomatic efforts were futile, and therefore, 

United States Troops should not be put into the middle of a civil war that 

had the potential of spreading into a regional conflict between Israel and 

Syria.58 Weinberger sensed early on that the Israelis had overstretched 

their resources and would be forced to withdrawal.59 He also believed 

that the Syrians would never leave Lebanon unless forced to do so. As 

a pragmatist, Weinberger knew that neither Congress nor the American 

people would support a war with Syria over Lebanon, because Lebanon 

did not fit the definition of a vital US interest in any rational calculation.60 

Furthermore, Secretary Shultz’s original desire for simply, a presence, of 

United States Forces particularly disturbed Weinberger because he could 

not convert, a presence, into a clearly understood and articulated mission 

with objectives, which he could then assign to his forces.61

Beyond their policy differences and their beliefs on how the military 

should be employed in Lebanon, Shultz and Weinberger had a long history 

of conflict, which stemmed all the way back to the Nixon Administration, 

when Shultz was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget 

and Weinberger was his Deputy.62 Their relationship was so acrimonious 

that another Nixon Cabinet Member noted the two refused to even talk 

politely to each other.63 Inside the Reagan Administration, many wondered 

whether their “need to prevail in the administration’s internal bureaucratic 

tug-of war,” took priority over the nation’s best interest.64 Due to the 

manner in which President Reagan crafted policy, neither of them ever 

really won. Shultz was successful in initially convincing the President to 

employ the Marines and he also managed to convince the President that 

they must stay, even after the 23 October terrorist bombing.65 Weinberger, 

however, succeeded at ensuring that the ROE were so stringent that the 

Marines could not be used for anything other than the officially stated, 

presence mission.66 Whether it was because of past history and personal-
41

ity conflicts or simply different beliefs, grand strategy in Lebanon did not 

exist to a large degree because Shultz and Weinberger could not find common ground.

The National Security Council versus Defense and State

The National Security Council during Lebanon was led first by William Clark and then by Robert McFarlane. Secretary Schultz and Secretary Weinberger considered both to be overly militaristic and constantly 

pushing the President to use military force.67 On the State Department 

side, Shultz did not like the way the National Security Council was run, 

saying in his memoir, “time and again, I had seen White House and NSC 

[National Security Council] staff members all too ready to take matters 

into their own hands, usurping power and authority that was not theirs and 

going off on their own.”68 At one point during negotiations for the 17 May 

Agreement, National Security Advisor Clark sent his then deputy, Robert 

McFarland, on a secret trip to the Middle East to conduct back-channel 

diplomacy. When Shultz found out about it, he went to President Reagan 

and said, “when you do this, you undercut me ...[and] you send a message 

to Middle East leaders that if they don’t like what they hear from the Secretary of State, they can use another channel, a back channel to the White 

House.”69 Unfortunately for Shultz, his conversation did little to change 

the fact that the National Security Advisor, for no other reason than daily 

proximity to the President, is able to over-ride the advice of both the Department of Defense and the State Department.70 Shultz and Weinberger 

believed that they continually had to fight to ensure that the National Security Council stayed in its lane of coordination and allowed the State 

Department to conduct operations.71 In defense of the National Security 

Council, they may have thought that because the State Department and the 

Department of Defense refused to cooperate with each other, the only way 

to carry out the President’s desires was to run things themselves.

Whether the National Security Advisor and his staff were blatantly 

attempting to usurp power, or less nefariously, they were simply filling a 

need to carry out the President’s desires, which Defense and State refused 

to cooperate on, the affect was exactly the same. The diplomatic, informational, military, and economic policies aimed at stabilizing Lebanon 

and creating the conditions, within which political reconciliation could 

occur were never integrated into a grand strategy.72 As a result, both allies 

and enemies of the US perceived the internal conflict within the Reagan 

Administration, which in turn led them to believe they could openly challenge the Marine Forces on the ground or simply wait them out.73 
42

If the Strategy is not Working: “Americanize” it

As it became clear the Lebanese Government was failing to take the 

steps necessary to build the political reconciliation, there was a tendency 

to attempt to “Americanize” the strategy. The original intent of the MultiNational Force in Beirut was to provide breathing space for the Geyamel 

Government to conduct negotiations with its internal rivals and form a 

stable government that could stand on its own. The US was intent on remaining neutral in the conflict and believed that showing favoritism to 

one faction over the other would hurt the political reconciliation process. 

There was also a fear that showing favoritism would undermine the effort to achieve a US brokered peace throughout the Middle East. Over 

the course of 1982 and 1983, the strategy of remaining neutral was undermined first by the agreement to train the LAF, and then by National 

Security Decision Directive 103.

By agreeing to train the LAF and provide them American uniforms, 

Colonel Tom Stokes, the Commander of the 24th MAU, inadvertently undermined their position as a neutral peacekeeping force.74 Fearing his Marines would become complacent, with little to occupy their time, Stokes 

accepted a request from the Government of Lebanon to train select groups 

of the LAF.75 In theory, this made perfect sense. In order for the US to 

leave, they would eventually have to be replaced by a professional Lebanese Army comprised of more than just factional militias loyal to their individual religious sects. Unfortunately, the Lebanese Army was never able 

to achieve this status, primarily because President Geyamel was unwilling to negotiate with his Druze and Muslim adversaries.76 Although the 

Marines made great progress with the Lebanese Army, it was ultimately 

viewed as nothing more than a well trained and supplied Phalange Militia.77 Thus, the agreement to train the Lebanese Army was the first step 

in “Americanizing” the political reconciliation process and “inextricably 

linked the intentionally visible Marines to the fate of the LAF and, by extension, identified the Marines and their government completely with the 

fate of the Gemayel government.”78 

National Security Decision Directive 103 represented the ultimate attempt by the US Government to Americanize the reconciliation process. 

After it was put in place on 10 September 1983, Special Negotiator McFarlane put immense pressure on the new MAU Commander, Colonel 

Geraghty, to approve the use of naval gunfire in support of LAF fighting 

to maintain control of Suq Al Gharb.79 President Reagan added to the political pressure by directly phoning Geraghty on 13 September 1983. It 

is reported that he said, “hey pal, you have the 6th Fleet sitting out there, 
43

don’t hesitate to use them.”80 At the same time Geraghty felt the opposite 

pressure from the military chain of command. The European Command, 

the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and ultimately, the Secretary of Defense were 

all in strong agreement that shelling the Shouf would have no enduring 

strategic value and would only endanger United States Forces further by 

removing any doubt as to whether the Multi-National Force was going to 

remain neutral peacekeepers.81 Finally, on 19 September 1983, Geraghty 

relented and gave the approval for the USS John Rogers and the USS 

Virginia to use their 5-inch guns to pound the enemy positions around 

Suq Al Gharb with over 350 rounds.82 His decision was based on two critical factors: first, the Marines at the International Airport were receiving 

greater amounts of shelling from the Shouf Mountains. Second, Russianmade T-55 Tanks were confirmed to be in the area of Suq Al Gharb, which 

clearly indicated direct Syrian involvement.83 

The American shelling of Suq Al Gharb was necessitated by the perceived inability of the Lebanese Government to achieve political reconciliation on its own. It was believed that if the Americans could just provide 

the Lebanese Government with a little more backing, President Geyamel 

would have the legitimacy needed to force the factions into a negotiated 

settlement.84 Certainly an argument can be made that it may have succeeded if the military actions were tightly coordinated with diplomatic, economic, and information operations. Unfortunately, because such a grand 

strategy did not exist, the shelling of the Shouf, “actually had the opposite 

effect of prejudicing that strategy to the point where a new, much more 

confrontational military strategy was unavoidable.”85

Military Roles versus Political Objectives: lack of Congruency

No analysis of Lebanon would be complete without a discussion on 

the lack of congruency between the overarching United States’ Foreign 

Policy objectives and the objectives the Marines were asked to achieve. 

Following the September shelling of Suq Al Gharb, Secretary of Defense 

Casper Weinberger approached President Reagan with a proposal to remove the United States Marines from the International Airport, where they 

were unable to protect themselves, and place them off-shore on Naval vessels, where they would be less vulnerable and yet still able to respond if 

the circumstances required it.86 The State Department countered that if the 

Marines left the airport, it would look like the Americans were cutting and 

running.87 President Reagan agreed with the State Department and decided 

to keep the Marines at the International Airport.88 On 23 October 1983, a 

yellow Mercedes truck, penetrated the barriers around the Marine Headquarters, drove into the lobby and exploded, collapsing the building and 
44

leading to the deaths of 241 United States Marines. Almost immediately, a 

sense began to immerge within the US that the Marines were sent to Lebanon without a clear mission; they lacked adequate support, and did not 

have the means or authority to properly defend themselves.89 The morning 

after the bombing, Senator Ernest Hollings echoed this sentiment during 

an interview on the Today Show saying, “If they were sent there to fight, 

there are too few. If they were sent there to die, there were too many.”90 

Under pressure to explain what happened, Weinberger appointed Retired 

Admiral Robert Long to lead an independent inquiry into the bombing. 

The inquiry was given wide latitude and the conclusions it reached went 

well beyond simple military matters. Specifically on the relationship between the role the military was supposed to perform, and the larger United 

States Foreign Policy objectives, the commission found:

By the end of September 1983, the situation in Lebanon 

had changed to the extent that not one of the initial conditions upon which the mission statement was premised 

was still valid. The environment clearly was hostile. The 

assurances the Government of Lebanon had obtained 

from the various factions were obviously no longer operative as attacks on the USMNF came primarily from extralegal militias. Although USMNF actions could properly 

be classified as self-defense and not “engaging in combat”, the environment could no longer be characterized 

as peaceful. The image of the USMNF, in the eyes of the 

factional militias, had become pro-Israeli, pro-Phalange, 

and anti-Muslim. After the USMNF engaged in direct fire 

support of the LAF, a significant portion of the Lebanese 

populace no longer considered the USMNF a neutral 

force.91 

Although the Long Commission found that there could be no conclusive link between the US providing direct fire support to LAF and the 

terrorist bombing, what was clear was that Marines did not have the force 

composition or ROE that would have allowed them to accomplish the 

United States’ three stated objectives: deter violence, compel an end to the 

ongoing violence, and deny Syria and Syrian-backed opposition the ability 

to undermine the Government of Lebanon.92 

Grand Strategy

The remaining questions are: Would a properly formulated flexible 

grand strategy, which combined all of the elements of national power: di-
45

plomacy, information, military force, and economic assistance have made 

a difference in Lebanon? Would it have allowed the Marines to accomplish the goals set forth by the State Department? Clearly any answer to 

those questions would be purely conjecture; however, to Donald Rumsfeld 

who replaced Robert McFarlane as the Special Negotiator to the Middle 

East, just weeks before the 23 October terrorist attack, the Department of 

Defense’s continuous unwillingness to work with the Department of State 

in formulating a grand strategy was inexcusable.93 For Rumsfeld, Secretary Shultz, and National Security Advisor McFarlane, “Military leaders 

consistently hid behind narrow interpretations of the military mission and 

ROE constraints in order to avoid the military’s larger strategic responsibility.”94 Rumsfeld believed that the regional experts and generals, who 

advised against direct military intervention, did not understand what “the 

lethality of modern, sophisticated weapons in the hands of a well-trained 

military force like the Sixth Fleet, could do.”95 These two beliefs, that the 

Department of Defense had sabotaged US Foreign Policy objectives in 

Lebanon, and that the generals and regional experts did not understand 

what modern, sophisticated weapons could achieve, would lead directly, 

as we will see in the next chapter, to the chaos that ensued after the 2003 

US invasion of Iraq.
46

Notes

1. Ralph A. Hallenbeck, Military Force as an Instrument of US Foreign Policy (New York: Praeger, 1991). Dr. Hallenbeck holds a Ph.D. in Political Science 

from Pennsylvania State University as was the Chief of the Strategic Plans and 

Policy Division on the Army Staff. In 1979, while serving at the US European 

Command as the Chief of Operations and Plans, he was “personally involved 

in planning, supporting, and controlling the activities of the Marine and Naval 

Forces in Lebanon.” From About the Author, in Military Force as an Instrument 

of US Foreign Policy.

2. Lawrence A. Yates, The US Military’s Experience in Stability Operations, 

1789-2000 (Ft Leavenworth, KS: Combat Institute Studies Press, 2005), 80.

3. CB20120313E0001, CIA Analyst, Interview by Charles Bris-Bois, 13 

March 2012, Quantico.

4. CB20120313E0001, CIA Analyst.

5. George Schultz, Turmoil and Triumph: Diplomacy, Power, and the Victory 

of the American Ideal (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), 429.

6. Hallenbeck, Military Force as an Instrument of US Foreign Policy, 3.

7. B. J. Odeh, Lebanon Dynamics of Conflict (London: Zed Books, 1985), 

173-188.

8. Odeh.

9. Odeh.

10. CB20120313E0001, CIA Analyst, Interview.

11. Odeh, Lebanon Dynamics of Conflict, 184.

12. CB20120313E0001, CIA Analyst, Interview.

13. Richard A. Gabriel, Operation Peace for Galilee: The Israeli-PLO War in 

Lebanon (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984).

14. Hallenbeck, Military Force as an Instrument, 7. See also John Laffin, The 

War of Desperation: Lebanon 1982-85 (London: Osprey, 1985); Benis Frank, US 

Marines in Lebanon 1982-1984 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 

1987) for further analysis of the Marines’ initial mission to evacuate the PLO 

from Beirut.

15. Hallenbeck., 13.

16. CB20120313E0001, CIA Analyst, Interview.

17. Col. Timothy J. Geraghty, USMC (Ret.), Peacekeepers At War: Beirut 

1983-The Marine Commander Tells His Story (Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 

2009), 7.

18. CB20120313E0001, CIA Analyst, Interview.

19. Geraghty, Peacekeepers, 5.

20. Peter Huchthausen, America’s Splendid Little Wars: A Short History of 

US Military Engagements: 1975-2000 (New York: Viking, 2003), 51.

21. Huchthausen, America’s Splendid Little Wars, 51.

22. Huchthausen, 52.
47

23. Col James M. Mead, USMC, Interview by Benis M. Frank, Camp Geiger, 

January, 13, 1983, Benis M. Frank Papers, Gray Research Center Archives, Marine Corps University Library, Quantico, Va.

24. Huchthausen, America’s Splendid Little Wars, 53.

25. Huchthausen, 54.

26. Col Timothy J. Geraghty, USMC, Interview by Benis M. Frank, on board 

USS Iwo Jima, November 21 1983, Benis M. Frank Papers, Gray Research Center 

Archives, Marine Corps University Library, Quantico, Va.

27. Geraghty, USMC, Interviews.

28. See full discussion on Suq al Gharb in the Chapter 4 sub-section entitled: 

If the Strategy is not working “Americanize” it.

29. Huchthausen, America’s Splendid Little Wars, 57.

30. Huchthausen. 

31. Geraghty, Peacekeepers, 168.

32. Huchthausen, America’s Splendid Little Wars, 58.

33. These four reasons are derived from Ralph Hallenbeck’s thesis in, Military Force as an Instrument of US Foreign Policy. Hallenbeck actually gave six 

reasons, but for the purposes of this paper, the four most relevant have been chosen and re-ordered by priority. Hallenbeck’s original thesis was intended to show 

that the six main reasons why the US mission in Lebanon failed were the same 

six reasons that led to the failed mission in Vietnam. This paper attempts to take 

that argument one step further and by using four of his six reasons show that they 

can also be used to explain the initial failure of the military mission in Iraq in 

2003. For more information see Hallenbeck, Military Force as an Instrument of 

US Foreign Policy.

34. Col James M. Mead, USMC, Speech to Naval War College, September 

14, 1983, Benis M. Frank Papers, Gray Research Center Archives, Marine Corps 

University Library, Quantico, Va.

35. CB20120313E0001, CIA Analyst, Interview.

36. Col James M. Mead, USMC, Interview by Benis M. Frank, Camp Geiger, 

January, 13, 1983, Benis M. Frank Papers, Gray Research Center Archives, Marine Corps University Library, Quantico, Va.

37. Mead, USMC, Interviews.

38. Sandra Mackey, Lebanon: Death of a Nation (New York: Gogdon and 

Weed, 1989), 181-185.

39. Casper Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 151.

40. Hallenbeck, Military Force as an Instrument, 49-50. Hallenbeck uses 

articles from the both the Washington Post and the New York Times to support 

this assertion. “Lebanon: The Strain is Evident,” Los Angeles Times, 6 February 

1983, 28; “Arens Charges Weinberger Bias, Radio Reports,” Washington Post, 26 

February 83, 13.

41. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 196. The Soviet Union went so far as to 

station technicians in Syria to man their anti-aircraft defenses.

42. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 56-57.
48

43. Mead, Speech to Naval War College.

44. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 197.

45. Schultz.

46. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 155.

47. Col James M. Mead, USMC, Interview II, by Benis M. Frank, Marine 

Corps Head Quarters, May 5, 1984, Benis M. Frank Papers, Gray Research Center Archives, Marine Corps University Library, Quantico, Va.

48. Col Timothy J. Geraghty, USMC, Interview by Benis M. Frank, on board 

USS Iwo Jima, November 21 1983, Benis M. Frank Papers, Gray Research Center 

Archives, Marine Corps University Library, Quantico, Va.

49. For more in-depth explanations of the politics surrounding the 17 May 

Agreement, see all of Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, Chapters 14 and 15.

50. Lou Cannon and Carl M. Cannon, Reagan’s Disciple: George W. Bush’s 

Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), 147.

51. Geraghty, Interview by Benis M. Frank.

52. Geraghty, Peacekeepers at War, 64-72.

53. Geraghty, 172.

54. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 80.

55. Schultz, Chapter 15. Secretary Shultz saw the 17 May Agreement as the 

only reasonable means to achieve lasting peace.

56. Schultz, 138.

57. Casper Weinberger and Gretchen Roberts, In The Arena: A Memoir of the 

20th Century (Lanham, MD: National Book Network, 2001), 312.

58. Weinberger and Roberts.

59. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 135-174.

60. Weinberger.

61. The Weinberger Doctrine, first presented at the National Press Club on 

28 November 1984, was drawn largely from his experience as Secretary of Defense during Lebanon. Within the Doctrine, Weinberger laid out six principles 

that should be met prior to committing combat forces. First, there has to be a 

vital national interest. Second, there has to be a commitment to winning. Third, 

there should be clearly defined political and military objectives. Fourth, when 

the objectives change, as they inevitably do, we must go back and ask, “is this 

conflict still a vital national interest that requires us to fight?” Fifth, there must 

be a reasonable expectation of support from Congress and the American people. 

Sixth, commitment of combat forces should be the last resort. Interestingly, after 

Lebanon, President Reagan held to this doctrine, with only one exception, which 

was the air strikes against Libya in April of 1986.

62. Cannon and Cannon, Reagan’s Disciple, 141.

63. Cannon and Cannon.

64. Hallenbeck, Military Force as an Instrument, 99.

65. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 229.

66. Geraghty, Interview by Benis M. Frank.

67. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 159.

68. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 321.
49

69. Schultz, 313.

70. Weinberger, In the Arena, 351.

71. This propensity for the National Security Council to want to conduct operations rather than simply act as advisors led directly to the Iran-Contra Arms for 

Hostages Scandal, which came to light in 1986. See Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, 

843-845; Weinberger, In the Arena, 299.

72. Geraghty, Peacekeepers at War, 172-173.

73. Geraghty.

74. Eric Hammel, The Root: The Marines in Beirut, August 1982-February 

1984 (St Paul: Zenith Press, 2005), 57. Hammel asserts that Col Stokes made the 

decision to train the LAF. “The decision to honor the Lebanese Ministry of Defense’s request to train and upgrade the LAF was casual, an attempt by the MAU 

commander concerned over the effects of garrison life on his highly motivated 

troops, an effort to allow Marines largely trapped within the BIA to kill time by 

doing one of the things Marines do best: training....In a way, it was among the 

most crucial decisions taken during the entire Marine experience in Beirut.”

75. Frank, US Marines in Lebanon 1982-1984, 40. Frank states that the plan 

was proposed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on November 11, 1982, but only “if it 

did not interfere with the Marines’ basic mission.”

76. CB20120313E0001, CIA Analyst, Interview.

77. Col Geraghty stated, “The LAF had shown a cohesiveness that reflected 

the makeup of the professional balance that reflected the Lebanese people. . . . So 

the cohesiveness of the LAF that handled themselves through two very difficult 

military operations in a period of a month, that was really an army that wasn’t a 

year old, was quite phenomenal.” Geraghty, Interview by Benis M. Frank.

78. Hammel, The Root, 57.

79. Mead, Interview II, by Benis M. Frank.

80. Mead, Speech to Naval War College.

81. Geraghty, Interview by Benis M. Frank.

82. Geraghty.

83. Geraghty.

84. CB20120313E0001, CIA Analyst, Interview.

85. Hallenbeck, Military Force as an Instrument, 97.

86. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace, 161.

87. Geraghty, Interview by Benis M. Frank.

88. The debate regarding whether or not to move the Marines off-shore was 

also influenced by the April 18, 1983 car bombing of the American Embassy in 

Beirut, which killed 61 employees, including 17 Americans. See, Benis Frank, US 

Marines in Lebanon, 59-60.

89. Peter Huchthausen, America’s Splendid Little Wars: A Short History of 

US Military Engagements: 1975-2000 (New York: Viking, 2003), 61.

90. Cannon and Cannon, Reagan’s Disciple, 150.

91. Report of the DOD Commission on Beirut International Airport Terrorist 

Act, October 23, 1883.

92. Geraghty, Peacekeepers at War, 139.
50

93. Hallenbeck, Military Force as an Instrument, 146.

94. Hallenbeck.

95. Hallenbeck.
51

Chapter 5

Iraq Case Study

Understanding How the United States Became Involved

Containment

At the conclusion of the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein remained in 

power with his highly trained Republican Guard largely intact. The decision made by the first Bush Administration to not destroy the Republican 

Guard and remove Saddam Hussein, meant that the US would have to remain in the Gulf region to maintain and enforce the Northern and Southern 

No-Fly Zones designed to protect the Shia in the South and the Kurds in 

the North from Saddam’s brutality.1

 Paul Wolfowitz, the Undersecretary 

for Defense Policy at the time, was one of the few who openly argued 

against the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, insisting 

that the US was passing up an opportunity to remove a proven tyrant.2 

Dick Cheney, the Secretary of Defense, sided with Powell, believing that 

a now weakened Saddam Hussein could be contained.

For over a decade, from 1991 until the invasion in 2003, containment 

largely worked. During the Clinton Administration, the Iraqi Armed Forces made multiple attempts to harass the Kurds and Shia, who were under 

a blanket of protection provided by the American-led coalition of French, 

British, and American aircraft. The Iraqis also attempted to harass the aircraft patrolling the No-Fly Zone, which resulted in counter attacks against 

the anti-aircraft batteries and other designated priority targets.3 While the 

US and its coalition partners were not at war with Iraq, there was a persistent low-level conflict that extended throughout this period of containment.

Iraq Liberation Act

Not everyone was happy with the policy of containment, having left 

government after the first Bush Administration to become the Dean of The 

Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Wolfowitz joined the Project for a New American Century in the mid1990s. The Project for a New American Century was a group of Pro-Israeli, conservative Republicans, which called for the US to change its policy 

of containment toward Iraq and actively seek to overthrow Saddam’s regime.4

 Many within the group believed that by replacing Saddam with a 

democratic government that recognized Israel’s right to exist would have 

two major affects: first, it would remove one of the Israel’s primary threats 

in the region, and second, members of the Project for the New American 
52

Century believed that removing Saddam could be a catalyst to changing 

the entire Middle East.5

 In January 1998, the group presented President 

Clinton with a letter laying out their argument for why containment was 

failing. The authors, which included Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, 

Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby and Elliot Abrams, pointed out that the policy depended on the cooperation of allies to maintain the sanctions, and 

on Saddam’s willingness to allow inspectors access to sites throughout the 

country.6

 On 31 October 1998, President Clinton signed into law the Iraq 

Liberation Act, making regime change the official policy of the US.7 

In response to this new threat from the US, Saddam kicked all of the 

United Nations (UN) Weapons Inspectors out of the country. This action in 

turn led to the launching of Operation Desert Fox, in December of 1998 by 

the US. Richard Butler, the Australian head of the UN Weapons Inspection 

Team, provided the US with a list of 100 possible sites that he believed 

Saddam may be hiding 32,000 chemical munitions, 4,000 tons of chemical 

precursors, and 550 mustard gas bombs that were unaccounted for.8

 From 

a tactical perspective, Operation Desert Fox was a success, with Tomahawk Missiles and air-dropped ordnance hitting 97 of the 100 targets.9 

From a strategic perspective, Operation Desert Fox was less successful, in 

that it created problems for the US by fracturing the coalition that had been 

solidly behind punishing Saddam. France pulled their aircraft from the 

coalition and no longer supported the enforcement of the No-Fly Zones.10 

China called for a review of the sanctions, and Saudi Arabia and Turkey 

disavowed support for the United States’ operation.11 Saudi Arabia and 

Turkey opposed Operation Desert Fox largely for the same reasons they 

opposed expanding the US mandate in 1991, namely they were concerned 

with the second and third order effects the operation could have on their 

internal domestic politics, especially, if the operation led to the collapse of 

the Saddam regime. The Arabs told General Anthony Zinni, Commander 

US Central Command, “An implosion is going to cause chaos...You’re going to have to go in...do you have a plan?”12 This fracturing of the alliance 

of nations opposed to Saddam Hussein would create significant problems 

for George W. Bush and his administration when it attempted to convince 

the UN to authorize war against Iraq once again in 2003.

George W. Bush Administration

After Operation Desert Fox, the US returned to the strategy of responding to Iraq’s actions with limited air strikes. In August of 2001, 

United States Marine Corps Commandant, General Jim Jones, sent the 

Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, a memorandum critiquing the tit-for-tat approach being taken in response to Iraq’s 
53

provocations. Jones believed that the approach was no longer working and 

that it was actually having the negative effect of alienating many within 

the Arab world. Continuing to respond with limited attacks by our aircraft, 

Jones wrote in the memorandum, “is a high risk strategy without clear 

objectives or a discernable end state...the effects it is having on our Arab 

allies is at odds with the risk we are taking.”13 It is obvious from the memorandum that Jones believed that the time had come for a new strategy 

in Iraq, however, he does not lay out in the memorandum what he thinks 

the new strategy should be. On 10 September 2001, just one day before 

the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Secretary Rumsfeld responded by saying, “I am 

working the problem and I certainly agree with your concern.”14 General 

Jones did not need to convince Undersecretary of Defense Wolfowitz or 

the number three-man in the Pentagon, Douglas Feith. Both men were 

ardent supporters of the Iraq Liberation Act, and believed that the US was 

not doing enough to fulfill its stated policy objective of removing Saddam 

Hussein from power.15 Just days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Wolfowitz 

proposed to the President that Iraq should be one of the first nations attacked in the new War on Terror.16 While President Bush agreed that the 

US had to do more than just attack Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, he 

believed they must first deal with the Taliban. On 20 September 2001, he 

told British Prime Minister Tony Blair, “We must deal with [the Taliban] 

first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to 

Iraq.”17

Phase I Operations

President Bush asked Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld immediately to 

begin reviewing options for military action in Iraq. After the 9/11 terrorist 

attacks, President Bush appointed retired General Wayne Downing, the 

former head of Special Operations Command, to be the Deputy National 

Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism.18 With the backing of Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice 

President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, Downing worked with Ahmed 

Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, to revise a plan for starting an insurrection to overthrow Saddam and establish the Iraqi National 

Congress as the interim government. The new plan was based largely on 

the model that had shown great initial successful in Afghanistan, “Bombing, a modest insertion of Special Forces, plus an uprising.”19 

This was not Chalabi’s first interaction with the US Government. The 

Chalabi family had been one of the wealthiest and most politically connected Shia families in Iraq prior to the revolution in 1958, they were also 

tightly connected to the Shia religious elite, Ahmed’s grandfather is buried 
54

in the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf, “no small honor in the Shia world.”20

When Saddam took power in Iraq, Ahmed and his family initially took 

refuge in Lebanon, where he married into another prominent and politically connected Lebanese Shia family.21 Later, Chalabi moved to the US 

where he received a degree in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute 

of Technology and a PhD from the University of Chicago, where he first 

came into contact and built relationships with the Neoconservatives.22 In 

the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, when it became clear that the opposition groups within Iraq were not able to overthrow Saddam Hussein, 

Ahmad Chalabi approached the Clinton Administration with a proposal to 

allow his external dissidents to attempt to oust Saddam from power.23 Clinton agreed to fund Chalabi through the Central Intelligence Agency and a 

small base camp was established from which the Iraqi National Congress 

could operate in the Kurdish-controlled area of Northern Iraq.24 In March 

1995, Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress fighters launched an insurrection that was quickly quelled. Saddam drove Chalabi’s operation out of 

Iraq and executed 130 captured Iraqi National Congress members.25 Feeling they had been misled and sensing that Chalabi and his organization 

were not up to the task, the State Department and the Central Intelligence 

Agency cut ties with the Iraqi National Congress.26 

Downing and Chalabi realized that the Iraqi National Congress’ initial 

attempt to overthrow Saddam in 1995 failed because the anticipated popular uprising never materialized. To ensure this did not happen again, planners proposed using Iranian assets for assistance. The Iranians recognized 

that because of the ethnic make-up of Iraq, replacing Saddam with a Shiite 

Theocracy would never work, but the Iranians still wanted to influence 

the creation of the new government.27 The Iraqi National Congress hoped 

to safely stage its forces inside the Iranian borders as they prepared for 

the invasion, and additionally planned on strategic support from the Shia 

population during the fight to drive out Saddam. To this end, the Office 

of Foreign Assets Control under the Treasury Department gave the Iraqi 

National Congress approval to use US funds to establish a liaison office in 

Tehran, which it did in April of 2001.28

Iran’s ruling mullahs considered the outcome of the USled war with Iraq as a matter of life or death for their regime, but their interests in the current crisis were complex. In principle, the toppling of Saddam Hussein was in 

Tehran’s interest; however, Tehran had a greater interest 

in the dismemberment of Iraq, so that Tehran might, by 

capitalizing on its influence over Syria’s Allawites and 
55

Lebanon’s HizbAllah, consolidate the Shiite belt all the 

way to the Mediterranean.29

In light of Chalabi’s past history and fear over Iranian intentions, the 

Special Envoy to the Middle East, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the State 

Department, voiced strong opposition to Downing’s plan, dubbing it “The 

Bay of Goats,” in reference to the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco.30 Recognizing a lack of support within the government for the Iraqi exile option, 

Rumsfeld tasked the Commander of US Central Command, General Tommy Franks, to develop alternate options. After nearly two years of work, 

Central Command Planners delivered a concept of operations that met the 

demands of the Secretary of Defense. The primary requirement was to 

ensure this proposal was not a duplication of the 1991 war plan, which 

required six months to move all of the men and material into theater prior 

to launching the war.31

Phase II Operations

For almost a year, Central Command quietly built up forces in the 

region. To hide their efforts, a new command and control center was built 

in Qatar inside the climate controlled warehouses that had previously held 

hundreds of prepositioned M1 Tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, which 

were now in Kuwait.32 When the war kicked off, command and control capabilities were double their previous amount, with centers in both Kuwait 

and Qatar. Pentagon planners overlapped rotation schedules so that carrier 

strike groups and Air Force Expeditionary Strike Groups would be twice 

their normal strength leading up to the war, without announcing to the 

press or the Iraqis that a massive build-up was taking place. In addition, 

the Army scheduled large exercises to mask the number of combat troops 

they had in theater.33

Preparations for the war were also moving forward on the political 

front, however, there were disagreements in Washington over whether or 

not to pursue UN consent. On 10 October 2002, the US House and Senate passed resolutions authorizing the US to remove Saddam Hussein, but 

urged the State Department to continue pursuing a UN resolution.34 However, the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed the US should not wait in attacking 

a known Ansar Al-Islam terrorist training camp in northern Iraq that was 

making chemical weapons with the intent of using them to attack Europe 

and the US. Yossef Bodansky, in The Secret History of the Iraq War, claims 

that three terrorists trained at the Ansar Al-Islam facility were caught by 

Israeli special forces as they tried to enter the Palestinian territories.35 In 

subsequent interrogations, the three terrorists revealed a plot to use the 
56

chemical agent ricin against targets in Europe, Turkey, and Russia. On 

14 January 2003, British agents raided a home in Manchester, and recovered some of the ricin made at the Ansar facility.36 At that point, Secretary 

Rumsfeld urged President Bush to authorize an immediate attack to seize 

or destroy the facility, but Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice objected, 

fearing that an attack would undermine efforts to build the coalition and 

gain UN approval.37

Phase III Operations

The main thrust of the attacks, which began on 19 March 2003, were 

led by the US Army’s V Corps in the west, under the Command of Lieutenant General William Wallace and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, 

in the east, led by Lieutenant General James Conway. General Franks 

designated V Corps the main effort. Major General Buford Blount’s 3rd 

Infantry Division (ID) led the Corps into Iraq. Blount divided his infantry 

division into three Brigade Combat Teams. After crossing the Euphrates 

River the Brigade Combat Teams split up and surrounded the southern and 

western portions of Bagdad.

Responsibility for securing the southern oil fields fell to the 1st Marine 

Division, under the command of Lieutenant General James Mattis. After 

securing the oil fields, the Marines raced V Corps to Baghdad where the 

Marines responsibility was to surround the eastern portion of the city.38

Both forces encountered pockets of stiff resistance along their routes, most 

notably, the Marines got tied down in An Nasiriyah, which they originally 

intended to bypass, but both were still able to make it to the outskirts of 

Baghdad in a little over four days.39

For Lieutenant General David McKiernan, the overall Ground Force 

Component Commander, the largest risk to his ground forces was the passage of the Karbala Gap. If Saddam was going to use chemical or biological weapons against the coalition, intelligence officials believed it would 

happen in this region.40 The original plan called for V Corps to avoid the 

cities of Najaf and Karbala during their run toward the Karbala Gap, however, the plan changed due to the strong presence of Paramilitary Forces 

that were coming out of the cities and attacking V Corps’ lines of communication. As a result, the 101st Airborne Division, under the command 

of Major General David Petraeus, was sent into Najaf and Karbala to put 

down the resistance, while the 3rd ID continued to push north. Severe 

sand storms and intense fighting stopped 3rd ID’s northern progress just 

south of the Karbala Gap. While the delay was unexpected, it did allow 

the 3rd ID time to regroup, consolidate, and resupply prior to making the 
57

final push to the outskirts of Baghdad.41 General Wallace recounted after 

the war:

For nearly a year, we had recognized collectively that 

once we were through the Karbala Gap, the fight would 

not be over until we seized the international airport in 

Baghdad. The entire fight from Karbala to the airport was 

considered as one continuous assault, because once we 

crossed through the gap, we were inside the range of all 

the artillery that was in support of Baghdad and all the 

Republican Guard divisions around Baghdad.42

Saddam never employed chemical or biological weapons and 3rd ID 

was able to secure a key bridge across the Euphrates River, allowing the 

assault to progress faster than was expected. As 3rd ID closed in on Baghdad, General Blount sent the 3rd Brigade Combat Team to circle the city 

to the west; the 2nd Brigade Combat Team secured the key intersection of 

Highway 1 and Highway 8 south of the city; and the 1st Brigade Combat 

Team went directly to Baghdad International Airport.43

Baghdad fell on Wednesday, 9 April 2003, with dramatic coverage by 

the media of a statue of Saddam being pulled down in Firdos Square.44

In the proceeding days, the 3rd ID, led by Colonel David Perkins’ 2nd 

Brigade Combat Team, made several Thunder Runs, culminating in the 

2nd Brigade’s capture of the Presidential Palace in the heart of Baghdad.45

Phase III operations had not gone completely as scripted. However, detailed planning and coordination between the Army, Air Force, and Marines allowed V Corps to adjust on the fly and take advantage of situations 

as they presented themselves. Unfortunately, the same could not be said 

for Phase IV operations.46

Phase IV Operations

For a variety of reasons that will be examined further in this chapter, 

Phase IV operations never received the same level of attention or detailed 

planning as Phase III. This does not mean, however, that planning did not 

occur. General Tommy Franks, the Commander of US Central Command, 

had a segment of his staff designated to Phase IV planning.47 The Joint 

Staff created an organization for Phase IV planning. The State Department 

tasked members of their organization to do in-depth planning. The National Security Council designated a lead for coordinating post-war planning; and finally, the Undersecretary of Department of Defense for Policy, 

Douglas Feith, created an organization for planning and conducting post-
58

combat, Phase IV operations in Iraq.48 Yet largely because of personality 

conflicts, faulty assumptions, and political infighting there was little cohesion between the various strategies.49

Substantial Phase IV planning began just two months before Coalition 

forces crossed into Iraq. Secretary Rumsfeld brought retired Lieutenant 

General Jay Garner to the Pentagon in early January 2003 to lead what 

would become the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. 

Garner was the natural choice for the assignment due to his background 

leading Operation Provide Comfort in 1991.50 Following the 1991 Gulf 

War, Garner was tasked with providing humanitarian assistance to 400,000 

Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq near the Turkish border.51 “Without a 

written operational plan to guide him, Garner demonstrated great operational acumen and remarkable diplomacy to bring the operation to a successful end.”52

When Garner was brought back in 2003, the primary focus of his new 

organization centered around immediate reconstruction of vital infrastructure and providing humanitarian relief for the estimated hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who would become refugees during the fighting. A smaller 

subset of his organization’s responsibilities included re-establishing the 

civil administration, which was required to perform everyday duties such 

as maintaining electricity sources and collecting garbage. To accomplish 

these objectives, Garner divided his organization into three pillars: Reconstruction, Humanitarian Assistance, and Civil Administration.53 Due to 

the rapid manner in which Baghdad fell and the military’s use of precision 

weapons that avoided damaging critical infrastructure, the extensive planning that had been put into reconstruction and humanitarian assistance 

was largely unneeded.54 The pillar requiring the greatest attention, civil administration, had received the least amount of planning focus. It had been 

made clear to Garner and his staff prior to the invasion that their primary 

focus was to establish an interim government and hand over responsibility 

as quickly as possible. To this end, Garner met with a group of selected 

exiles and local Iraqis at a deserted airfield outside of Tallil on 14 April 

2003. Within a week, Garner had settled on an interim government that 

consisted of two Kurdish leaders, two Shia exiles from London, a Sunni 

local leader and two Shia leaders who had been living in Iran.55 Arriving 

in Baghdad on 21 April 2003, two weeks after the city fell, Garner and his 

organization could do very little.56 All of the Iraqi ministries they were attempting to re-establish had been looted, and members of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance could not regularly venture out 

into Baghdad due to the increased violence.57 Four days later, on 24 April, 

Garner was informed that Ambassador Paul Bremer would replace him on 
59

12 May 2003. The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance 

would be shut down and replaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority.58

Bremer came to Iraq with a clear mandate from the President, the Vice 

President, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense.59 Four days 

before Bremer left Washington for Iraq, he had a one-on-one lunch with 

President Bush followed by a full meeting of the National Security Council Principals.60 At lunch with the President, Bremer laid out his belief that 

democracy could not be established in Iraq until what “[he] called ‘Shock 

Absorbers’, a free press, trade unions, political parties, professional organizations” were in place.61 He told the President it was a marathon and not 

a sprint. Bush responded by saying, “I understand, and I’m fully committed to bringing representative government to the Iraqi people....We will 

stay until the job is done.”62 The importance of these words, “we will stay 

until the job is done,” should not be underestimated. It is evident at this 

point that Bush realized the US could not achieve the stated objective of 

establishing a representative government by handing Iraq over to the interim government Garner had proposed, which was dominated by exiles 

and Kurds.63

During the National Security Council meeting that followed, Vice 

President Cheney said, “We’re not at a point where representative Iraqi 

leaders can come forward. They’re still too scared. We need a strategy on 

the ground for the postwar situation we actually have and not the one we 

wish we had.”64 Secretary of State Powell followed this with, “The president’s guidance is to take our time on setting up an Interim Iraqi Administration so what we get is a representative group.”65 Why had the administration done a complete turn-around? Why was it now looking to stay in 

Iraq for an extended period? Answers to those questions are not entirely 

clear. What is clear is that with the guidance provided by the President and 

the National Security Council, Bremer felt confident in implementing the 

policy of de-Baathification that had been written in Douglas Feith’s policy 

office.

Once on the ground in Iraq, Garner and a host of others advised Bremer 

that implementing the draconian de-Baathification policy would hamper 

much of the progress made to re-establish civil administration.66 Bremer 

responded by saying that, he, the President, and all of the Principals on the 

National Security Council understood there might be short-term administrative inconveniences, but it would be valuable in the long-term efforts to 

ensure Iraq was not threatened by the possibility of Baathists returning to 

power.67 On 16 May 2003, Bremer held a press conference at the Baghdad 

Convention Center where he officially declared General Order 1, remov-
60

ing the top four levels of Ba’athists from leadership positions in the government, schools, and hospitals.68

Bremer’s arrival in Iraq came at a time of great administrative upheaval and dysfunction. The replacement of The Office of Reconstruction 

and Humanitarian Assistance by the Coalition Provisional Authority corresponded with General Frank’s decision to stand-down General McKiernan’s Combined Forces Land Component Commander Headquarters and 

create a new Combined Joint Task Force to oversee all military units in 

Iraq.

When the time came to pick a name one aide suggested 

CJTF-13, a bit of black humor that pointed to the difficulties ahead. Franks chimed in, “Lets make it CJTF-1369, 

unlucky cocksuckers.”...the episode was indicative of 

Frank’s attitude about the post-war administration.69

Franks chose V Corps as the headquarters around which the Combined Joint Task Force was to be built. Further complicating this transition 

was the fact that V Corps’ Commander, General William “Scott” Wallace, was replaced by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, formerly the 

Commander of 1st Armored Division, who had just arrived in Iraq. As a 

result of these changes, Sanchez, a division commander with no previous 

experience as a corps commander, found himself in charge of the entire 

coalition.70 

The ramifications were significant. General McKiernan had been able 

to cherry-pick the best officers from around the Army for his Combined 

Forces Land Component Commander staff. When these officers left Iraq 

and handed over responsibility to the much smaller V Corps staff, they 

took with them the ability to plan strategic and operational level campaigns, formulate policy, and tap into national-level intelligence. Under 

McKiernan’s Land Component Commander staff, there were several hundred intelligence officers. When Sanchez took over, he was left with fewer 

than thirty.71 Equally as damaging was the fact that the V Corps staff had 

no designated liaison positions for the incoming coalition military partners 

or for Bremer’s new Coalition Provisional Authority interim government. 

72 The months of May and June brought tremendous turnover below corps 

level in the divisions as well.

The Pentagon decided that the policy of Stop-Loss, which limited the 

transfer of personnel during the war, could be lifted after Phase III operations. The result within 1st Armored Division, which had just arrived in 
61

theater to replace the 3rd ID, was that within 45 days, every general officer, the entire division staff, except one, and 70 percent of the battalion 

commanders were replaced by new soldiers.73 The loss of continuity in 

personnel, experience, and cooperate knowledge, contributed significantly 

to the loss of momentum the US forces suffered over the summer of 2003, 

which in turn facilitated the rise of the Sunni insurgency.74

To make matters worse for both the military and the Coalition Provisional Authority, Rumsfeld cancelled the scheduled deployment of the 1st 

Cavalry Division on 21 April, believing the deployment was unnecessary 

because forces were anticipated to withdraw from Iraq in 60 days. According to then Secretary of the Army Thomas White, the Pentagon’s pre-war 

budgetary planning assumed that troop levels would be reduced by 50,000 

within the first 90 days after the completion of Phase III, and they would 

reduce another 50,000 30 days later, essentially leaving a division-plus in 

Iraq to continue the transition.75

Central Command planners made this optimistic planning assumption 

based on another equally optimistic assumption that 300,000 to 400,000 

Iraqi soldiers would be available to replace the United States Forces as 

they rotated out of the country and that Arab nations would contribute 

significant forces to Iraq once Phase III was complete. This assumption 

did not work in practice for several reasons. First, the Iraqi Army followed 

the guidance they were given via leaflets, airdropped prior to the war, and 

laid down their weapons and went home.76 The Iraqi Army essentially disintegrated and it was not clear in the first month after Phase III whether 

they could be easily reassembled.77 Second, the US had only budgeted 

to pay for a single corps of 40,000 Iraqi troops. Even if the Iraqi troops 

could have been successfully called back to service, it is not clear how 

they would have been paid, equipped, or trained.78 Third, the Pentagon 

and State Department failed to gain support from Arab nations, resulting in a lack of volunteers to provide the necessary peacekeeping forces. 

General John Abizaid did have offers from several Iraqi Generals to bring 

back their forces and begin working with the coalition.79 Walter Slocombe, 

who would later join the Coalition Provisional Authority to stand up the 

Iraqi Ministry of Defense, and Ambassador Bremer, however, killed the 

plan because they believed a Sunni-dominated military would send the 

wrong message to the Kurdish and Shia populations.80 Bremer believed 

the first priority should be, “convincing the Iraqis that we’re not going to 

permit the return of Saddam’s instruments of repression...[the new army,] 

would have to represent the entire nation: Shia, Kurds, and Sunni Arabs.”81 
62

Rumsfeld agreed with the plan and on 23 May 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority issued Order No. 2 “Dissolution of Entities.”82

With wholesale changes in policy, civilian oversight, and military 

leadership, progress in Iraq ground to a halt in the summer of 2003 and 

never regained the momentum, it ceded to the insurgents.

Why the United States’ Mission in Iraq Initially Failed

If the intent of operations in Iraq in 2003 was merely ‘regime destruction’, which it was not, then the short, decisive warfighting operation of March and April 2003 might 

in itself have constituted success...In all other respects, it 

might have been counterproductive.83

The following analysis of the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 

will show that the US failed to employ a grand strategy for four distinct 

reasons. First, there was a failure to recognize that ultimate success rested 

almost entirely on political reconciliation between the opposing ethnic 

groups within Iraqi. Second, this lack of recognition of how US actions 

would affect political reconciliation led directly to a lack of consensus 

about what needed to be done and how to do it. These disagreements 

erupted into personality disputes between Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which in turn polarized 

the National Security Council and paralyzed it from fulfilling its assigned 

responsibilities. Third, when the Iraqis proved incapable or unwilling to 

solve their own problems, there was intense pressure from Washington 

to “Americanize” the solution. Finally, there was a lack of congruency 

between the roles the military was given, the objectives it was asked to 

achieve, and the overarching US Foreign Policy objectives.84

Military Mission Wholly Dependent on Political Reconciliation

In the planning for Operation Iraqi Freedom, both the military and 

civilian planners failed to recognize the important role political reconciliation would play in achieving the United States’ objectives. A memorandum dated 29 October 2002, from National Security Advisor Condoleezza 

Rice to Secretary Rumsfeld and other members of the National Security 

Council Principals Committee laid out these goals. The memorandum 

stated the following objectives: “Minimize the risk of WMD [Weapons of 

Mass Destruction] attack against the United States, US fielded forces, our 

allies or friends;” and to do it in a manner that, “minimizes the chance of 

internal instability, fragmentation, and the loss of control of WMD within 

Iraq.” It also identified the need to, “Improve the conditions of life for the 

Iraqi population;” and finally, “end Iraq as a safe haven for terrorists.”85
63

Clearly, if the US was going to minimize the chances of instability and 

fragmentation, improve quality of life, and prevent Iraq from being a safe 

haven for terrorists, there would have to be political reconciliation. In the 

absence of political reconciliation, the Shia, Sunni, and Kurds would naturally compete for dominance, which at best, would result in a low-level 

civil war. A civil war, by its very nature, would ensure that the objectives 

were not met.

The only other means the US could use to achieve its stated goals 

would be to undertake a long-term effort of acting forcefully to impose order and keep factions separated. This approach, in theory, would buy time 

for the creation of internal security and democratic institutions. However, 

this course of action, by virtually all legitimate estimates, would require 

a minimum force of between 300,000 to 500,000 peacekeepers.86 Even 

if there had been widespread consensus among the government and the 

American people that imposing order was the appropriate course of action, it could not have been achieved. The Department of Defense did not 

have a military large enough to commit anywhere near 300,000 troops on 

a long-term basis and maintain its commitments in Afghanistan without 

instituting the draft.87

To borrow Senator Earnest Hollings’ quotation from the last chapter 

on Lebanon, Franks should have recognized early on that his plan to leave 

a division-plus size force in Iraq after the fall of Saddam was nowhere near 

adequate to complete the mission, and that his plan would be open to the 

critique, “if they were put there to fight, there were too few. If they were 

put there to die, they are too many.”88

The question becomes why Franks and his staff at Central Command 

abdicated their responsibility to ensure the military campaign matched the 

overall political objectives? There appear to be three main reasons. First, 

based off his experience in Vietnam, Franks determined he would not let 

politics interfere with his military plan. “Franks would tell the civilians 

to stay the hell out of military matters, and he would keep out of their 

business.”89 Second, he was under tremendous pressure from Rumsfeld to 

transform the military and the way it fought wars into lighter, faster, less 

manpower intensive organization.90 Finally, in keeping with his policy of 

staying out of the civilian politicians’ business, he trusted the Office of 

Special Plans in the Pentagon to deliver on their promise that the Office 

of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance would handle Phase IV 

operations.91 Franks made it clear to his subordinate military commanders 

that they were to “offer only transportation, logistics, and some communications capabilities.”92
64

Under normal conditions, the State Department would have played a 

role in Phase IV operations as well. However, two months before the invasion, the Office of Special Plans, which belonged to the Undersecretary of 

Defense for Policy, Douglas Feith, drafted a memorandum, which called 

for the Department of Defense to have complete control of post-war Iraq. 

The memo was taken straight to the President via the Vice President’s 

office, thus skipping the normal National Security Council debates on its 

merits. President Bush signed the memo on 20 January 2003, as National 

Security Presidential Directive (NSPD) 24.93 To understand how the Office of Special Plans was able to achieve such a feat, a little background on 

the Neoconservatives who ran the office is required.

Neoconservatives

The Neoconservatives’ fundamental belief was that the already secularized Iraq could be turned into a pro-western democracy, which in turn 

would lead other Arab states in the region to overthrow their repressive 

regimes.94 In the Neoconservative narrative, once the old authoritarian regimes were deposed, the underlying causes of Islamic extremism and terrorism would be gone, and moderate Arabs, who also wanted peace with 

Israel, would come to power.95 

Michael Harrington, a political science professor at Queens College, 

first used the term Neoconservative to describe, “liberals he believed were 

acting as conservatives.”96 Although he used the term in a negative fashion, many former liberals who thought the Democratic Party was not doing 

enough to oppose Communism embraced it. After the Cold War the group 

tended to represent those who did not think the US was doing enough to 

support Israel.97

Dr. Leo Stauss and Dr. Albert Wohlstetter, both professors in the political science department at the University of Chicago, are credited with providing the intellectual framework for Neoconservative ideas. Their work 

heavily influenced two students who would become leading Neoconservatives in the Bush Administration, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. 

Stauss was an anti-Communist theorist who taught his students that Winston Churchill’s example of standing up to Hitler and fighting against totalitarianism is what all great leaders should aspire to.98 Wohlstetter was a 

mathematician who provided the science needed to back those who argued 

the US needed more nuclear weapons and an Anti-Ballistic-Weapons System to defend against the Communist threat.

In 1969, Dr. Wohlstetter was working with Senator Henry Jackson, a 

staunch Democrat from Washington State, and a leading proponent of the 
65

Anti-Ballistic-Missile Defense System in the Senate. Needing assistance 

to draft a bill that would authorize the construction of the Anti-Ballistic 

Missile System, he called on the expertise of two graduate students, Paul 

Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. The bill passed the Senate 51 to 50, with the 

Vice President casting the winning vote.99 Wolfowitz went back to school 

to finish his doctoral thesis, which centered on the proliferation of nuclear 

weapons in the Middle East and the need for the US to act preemptively 

to stop Islamic states from acquiring nuclear weapons. In addition, he emphasized the need to protect vital national interests such as the free access to Middle East oil.100 Richard Perle stayed in Washington, eventually 

becoming the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security 

Policy in the Reagan Administration, where he hired Douglas Feith as his 

Deputy Assistant Secretary.101

The three were brought back into government at the beginning of the 

George W. Bush Administration to act as foreign policy advisors for the 

campaign. Wolfowitz became the Undersecretary of Defense, Feith, the 

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and Perle was assigned the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee. Along with their 

neoconservative foreign policy views, the three men brought with them an 

association with another mathematician from the University of Chicago, 

long-time friend Ahmed Chalabi.102

In a previously classified document, written on 30 March 2003, during the coalition’s first weeks of combat as they marched toward Baghdad, 

the Office of Special Plans, run by Feith and supported by Wolfowitz, 

laid out their argument that the new government in Iraq should be led by 

the Shia. The document said, “this implies breaking with Iraq’s history of 

domination by the Sunni Arab minority—a potentially painful political 

process.”103 The document went on to say that while there needed to be 

power sharing between ethnic and sectarian groups, the majority of internal Iraqis were not yet ready to participate in a democratic society. Further, 

the memorandum outlined two interests, one substantive and one procedural. The substantive interest was in a moderate, pro-western, democratic 

Iraq. The procedural interest was in gaining broad support for the new 

government by allowing all Iraqis, including those unfriendly to the west, 

to participate in forming the government. The later procedural interest allowed the US to be hands off, while the substantive interest required direct 

US control of the process. The memo concluded that, “The US should not 

now raise procedural considerations above our substantive goal.”104

The Special Plans Office convinced the President and the National Security Council Principals to adopt the substantive goal and to form an Iraqi 
66

Interim Authority, which would give an advantage to those who shared the 

United States’ interest in a pro-western free Iraq.105 The Iraqi Interim Authority would be controlled by the Coalition Provisional Authority (Paul 

Bremer), and composed of 21 members, one from each of Iraq’s 18 provinces, and one from each of Iraq’s minority religious and ethnic groups; 

the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Yezidis, and the Turkomen.106 In theory, 

this sounded like an attempt to build political reconciliation. In reality, 

because the members were required to “subscribe to a set of principles,” 

those who did not were left out of the process.107 Thus, rather than creating reconciliation, the Iraqi Interim Authority was nothing more than a 

veiled attempt to give the externals and pro-western internals a head-start 

in forming and running the new Iraqi Government. By excluding those 

who did not subscribe to the interests of the US, the creation of the Interim 

Authority guaranteed, “a potentially painful political process,” one that 

would generate greater conflict along sectarian lines rather than reconciliation.

Disagreement over What Needs to be Done and How to Do it

In Iraq, just as it was in Lebanon, political reconciliation was the only 

means by which political objectives could be achieved, thus avoiding civil 

war and allowing the US to decrease force presence. However, in a manner 

similar to what had occurred 20 years earlier in Lebanon, the Pentagon and 

State Department came to vastly different conclusions on what needed to 

be done by the Americans. As the next sections will show, these disagreements erupted into personality conflicts between key cabinet members, 

preventing the two organizations from combining military and diplomatic 

efforts to form a grand strategy.

Rumsfeld versus Powell

While there were many sources of conflict between the Pentagon and 

the State Department, the largest was by far Ahmed Chalabi. As referenced above, the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act made regime change in Iraq 

official US Policy. The Neocons, Perle, Wolfowitz, and Feith, and their 

Project for a New American Century, believed Chalabi was still the best 

viable option for making regime change a reality. They brought forward 

a plan in which the Iraqi National Congress would return to northern Iraq 

and be officially recognized as the provisional government. Supporters of 

this plan proposed that the Iraqi National Congress be funded by the $1.5 

billion in Iraqi assets that had been frozen by the US Government during 

the 1991 Gulf war.108 Ultimately, the Iraq Liberation Act did authorize full 

funding of the Iraqi National Congress. However, the State Department 

blocked all but a small portion of the funds.109
67

Chalabi’s original proposal to the Clinton Administration involved 

the training of 5,000 Iraqi fighters who would eventually be inserted into 

an abandoned airfield near Basra. These actions would force Saddam to 

implement a plan. He could either move against the insurgents, in which 

case American airpower would be employed, or he could choose to keep 

his forces closer to Bagdad for protection, in which case, the insurgents 

would take control of Basra and the southern oil fields thus cutting off the 

oil revenue Saddam needed to stay in power.110

The Clinton Administration rejected the plan largely because of distrust of Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress within the State Department, and because of the opposition by US Central Command Commander 

General Anthony Zinni, who told a Senate committee in 1998, “Even if we 

had Saddam gone, we could end up with fifteen, twenty, or ninety groups 

competing for power.”111

Thus, even before Wolfowitz and Feith were to take their prominent 

positions in Bush’s Department of Defense, the arguments over the utility 

of using Chalabi to carry out America’s Foreign Policy had already created 

deep fissures between them and the State Department. After the President 

signed NSPD 24, giving the Pentagon full control of post-Saddam Iraq, 

the State Department attempted to send two of its brightest civil servants 

to work for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance. 

Tom Warrick had led the Future of Iraq Project at the State Department, 

and was a by-name request from Garner; Megan O’Sullivan was a specialist in ethnic conflict and constitutional design.112 The Pentagon rejected 

both because of previous statements each had made that did not fit with the 

Neoconservative’s view of how post-Saddam Iraq should be run.113 When 

Secretary Powell found out, he called Secretary Rumsfeld and said, “we 

can take prisoners too.”114 Clearly, the conflict between the State Department and the Defense Department had now moved beyond the substantive 

debates over how and when military force should be used. It was now 

personal and would negatively impact future dealings between the two 

departments, ensuring that the diplomatic and military efforts were never 

united into a grand strategy.

Rumsfeld versus the Military

Powell was not the only person with whom Rumsfeld battled and 

allowed professional differences to turn personal. Inside the Pentagon, 

Rumsfeld was publicly feuding with the military brass. For years, dating 

all the way back to his early political career as a Congressman, Rumsfeld had advocated for a more technologically advanced force that could 
68

be rapidly deployed. He told President-Elect Bush not to hire him as the 

Secretary of Defense unless he was prepared to support him in that endeavor.115 Shortly after coming to office, he began to question why the 

Army needed 100,000 soldiers in Europe to stop the Soviet Union when 

the Soviet Union no longer existed. In the Pacific, he questioned why 

South Korea and Japan could not provide more for their own defense. He 

also questioned the utility of keeping forces in Iceland, when their primary 

purpose for being there had been to track Soviet submarines.116

These questions caused great consternation within the Army, “some 

combatant commanders seemed to feel they owned the forces and assets 

under their command, and were loath to part with them.”117 On 10 September 2001, Rumsfeld made a speech in the Pentagon to kick-off the 

Department of Defense Acquisition and Logistics Excellence Week. In the 

speech, Rumsfeld said, there is an adversary that poses, “a serious threat 

to the security of the United States of America...it disrupts the defense 

of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform 

at risk...it is the Pentagon bureaucracy...[and its] uniformity of thought 

and action.”118 Accusing the military leaders and civil servants in the Pentagon of putting soldier’s lives at risk is a serious accusation, one that 

moves beyond simple differences regarding how rapidly transformation 

should happen. With those words, Rumsfeld turned a professional difference of opinion into a personal attack, disillusioning the very people he 

would need to rely heavily upon the next day after terrorists struck the 

Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Nearly two years later, Rumsfeld continued to belittle military leaders, telling Lieutenant General Sanchez, “you 

Army guys, you have no joint experience and all of you are tied to these 

byzantine command structures! You don’t know how to operate in a joint 

environment.”119

As noted in the last chapter, Rumsfeld’s experience in Lebanon led 

him to conclude, “Military leaders consistently hid behind narrow interpretations of the military mission and ROE constraints in order to avoid 

the military’s larger strategic responsibility.”120 Rumsfeld believed the 

generals, by-in-large, did not understand what “the lethality of modern, 

sophisticated weapons in the hands of a well-trained military force, could 

do.”121 This lack of understanding was in Rumsfeld’s belief, the reason 

for the intransigence towards transformation. In the end, the antagonistic 

approach Rumsfeld took with military leaders may have goaded them into 

transforming more rapidly than they were willing to do on their own, but 

it also ensured they would oppose and work against his goals whenever 

they could. The result was that the senior civilian leadership and the senior 
69

military leadership were so divided over the transformation issue that it 

affected their ability to work together to form a grand strategy for Iraq.

If the Strategy is not Working: “Americanize” it

Only if statesmen look to certain military moves and actions to 

produce effects that are foreign to their nature do political decisions influence operations for the worse. In the same way as a 

man who has not fully mastered a foreign language sometimes 

fails to express himself correctly, so statesmen often issue orders 

that defeat the purpose they are meant to serve. 

—Carl von Clausewitz, On War122

The previous case study showed that when Lebanese forces failed to 

make progress toward achieving the outcomes desired by the US, there 

was a tendency to “Americanize” the effort, by adding more American 

training, logistics, and firepower. The previous case study concluded that 

these efforts may have succeeded if they were tied to a larger grand strategy, which combined political, military, and economic efforts. The same 

analysis can be applied to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The US was counting on moderate Arab states, and coalition partners to immediately enter 

Iraq after the removal of Saddam, in order to help the liberated nation 

transition to a new pro-western government.123 When it became clear in 

the run-up to the invasion, that the support was not going to materialize, 

the Office of Special Plans changed direction and decided the Coalition 

Provisional Authority and the US Military would have to assume control 

of Iraq for a minimum of a year.124

The problem with this change was that it was not coordinated with the 

military or economic efforts. Lack of coordination with the military plan is 

evidenced by the fact that General Franks continued to tell his subordinate 

commanders to assume as much risk in leaving Iraq as they had during the 

invasion.125 Yet at the same time, the President, the Secretary of Defense, 

and the Secretary of State, told Paul Bremer he needed to prepare to be in 

control of Iraq for at least a year.

From an economic perspective, the US plan relied on the coalition partners to pay considerable sums of money to help Iraq rebuild and stabilize. 

When this did not occur, Congress approved an $18.4 billion supplemental appropriation for Iraq.126 However, the Coalition Provisional Authority 

never coordinated with the US Agency for International Development on 

how to best spend the money. As a result, the plan to spend the money 

revolved almost entirely around large infrastructure projects, rather than 

immediate needs of the Iraqis and the things that would help bring about 
70

democracy, such as medical facilities, agricultural development, loans to 

small businesses, and the rebuilding of local government infrastructure 

that had been looted during the immediate chaos after the invasion.127

From a pragmatic standpoint, the US had little recourse other than to 

“Americanize” the strategy on the ground, once it became clear that support from moderate Arab States and coalition partners was not going to 

fill the void. However, from a grand strategic perspective this “Americanized” approach had little chance of initial success, because the political 

plan was not properly coordinated with military or economic action.

Military Roles versus Political Objectives

Prior to arriving in Iraq, Ambassador Bremer was given an unpublished RAND study, written by James Dobbins, on what was required to 

stabilize Iraq.128 Dobbins extrapolated, through historical analysis, that 20 

peacekeepers are needed for every 1,000 people in an occupied area.129 

For Iraq, with a population of 25 million, 500,000 peacekeepers would be 

required to successfully stabilize the nation.130 

For military planners, Baghdad was the center of gravity. The 3rd 

ID was assigned the responsibility for capturing Baghdad, which it did 

through the excessive use of firepower during its Thunder Runs through 

the city. However, 3rd ID was ill equipped to secure the city once it had 

been captured. Of the 18,000 forces in 3rd ID, only 10,000 were available 

to conduct patrols. Out of those 10,000, only 1,200 were light infantry 

with the training, knowledge, equipment, and experience required to conduct stability operations.131

The RAND study also emphasized that when too few peacekeepers 

were available they tended to rely on firepower to make up for their lack of 

personnel. This heavy-handed tactic often results in turning the populace 

against the peacekeepers, thus leading to a need to revert to an even greater 

use of excessive force as the situation spiraled out of control.132 

One infantry soldier from the 82nd Airborne who was sent to Baghdad 

to augment 3rd ID in the summer of 2003 found the excessive use of force 

to be astounding. “They made us all attend a course, it was really intended 

for loggie guys they were trying to turn into infantrymen, and I remember 

the instructors saying ‘if there is any doubt, shoot first and then try and 

figure out what’s going on.’ I was like really? That isn’t what I’d been 

taught [in infantry school].”133 When the British Ambassador, John Sawers arrived in Baghdad, his first cable back to Prime Minister Tony Blair 

said, “the troops here [3rd ID], are tired, and are not providing the security 
71

framework needed.”134 Predictably, the good will the Iraqis initially had 

shown to the Americans evaporated over the summer of 2003.

Just as in Lebanon, there was a disparity between military roles and the 

political objective the US tried to achieve. Infantry Divisions, heavily laden with tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, were not organized, trained, 

or equipped to act as peacekeeping forces. Military planners should have 

understood that using 3rd ID as peacekeepers in a non-permissive environment would lead to an excessive use of force that was inconsistent with the 

larger political objectives.

Grand Strategy

The US did not have a grand strategy in Iraq. The framework above 

outlined four of the primary reasons why a grand strategy was not developed. First, the government failed to recognize the importance of political 

reconciliation. This is evident by the fact that both political and military 

leaders failed to recognize the importance of political reconciliation, instead they opted to replace Saddam’s regime with a Shia-dominated government. The underlying motive was to disrupt the Sunni-dominated political culture in the Middle East; something the Special Plans Office in 

the Pentagon knew would be a painful political process, leading to less 

political fighting along sectarian lines rather than reconciliation.

Second, a grand strategy could not be developed because there was 

conflict between the State Department and the Defense Department over 

how to use Ahmad Chalabi. By the time events on the ground made it evident that the US could not simply install the exiles and leave, there was no 

time to create a comprehensive Phase IV plan. Both Jay Garner and Paul 

Bremer went to Iraq under-prepared and with little official guidance from 

Washington. These problems may have been avoided if the National Security Council had forced the State Department and Department of Defense 

to settle their disputes and combine efforts to form a comprehensive grand 

strategy. Instead, NSPD 24 bypassed rigorous debate in the National Security Council and gave all responsibility for post-conflict Iraq to the military.135 Unfortunately, because of the bitter disputes inside the Pentagon 

over transformation, Rumsfeld was no longer listening to the advice of his 

generals and some had stopped cooperating with him. There was no way 

a grand strategy could be created, or executed, within the divided Department of Defense, which was now solely in charge of post-Saddam Iraq.

Third, after Baghdad fell, and it became clear that the Iraqis would be 

unable to contain the looting and stop the violence, the US was forced to 

“Americanize” the plan using its combat forces in the place of peacekeep-
72

ers, which Central Command planners had assumed would flow into Iraq 

from moderate Arab States and coalition partners. The President made it 

clear to Paul Bremer that he intended for the Coalition Provisional Authority to run Iraq for at least a year, while the infrastructure needed for a democratic Iraq was built.136 Unfortunately, that guidance was not coordinated 

with the military, which continued to reduce forces in Iraq at the same time 

the strategy was becoming more and more “Americanized.”

Finally, there was a disconnect between the roles given to the US Army 

and the overall political objective. The 3rd ID did not have a sufficient 

quantity of light infantrymen organized, trained, and equipped to stabilize 

Baghdad. By using tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and disproportionate 

force in an attempt to quell the violence, 3rd ID began to be seen as occupiers that needed to be defeated rather than liberators who needed to be 

supported. Ultimately, it was this loss of support that crippled the United 

States’ mission in Iraq and ensured that the goal of creating a pro-western 

democratic society would take far longer and cost far more than any of the 

war’s supporters had considered. If a grand strategy had been in place that 

combined all of the instruments of national power in a cohesive manner 

under an agreed upon political objective, the high cost paid in Iraq in terms 

of lives, treasure, and US prestige could have been avoided.
73

Notes

1. Terry H. Anderson, Bush’s Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 

2011), 38-39. Anderson lays out five reasons why the US did not remove Saddam 

in 1991: fear of Iraq being partitioned by Syria, Iran and the Kurds, which could 

territorial issues with Turkey; The UN resolution only authorized liberating Kuwait, there was a fear that the coalition would fall apart if the US moved beyond 

the UN mandate. There was also a fear that the US would lose credibility with the 

Arab nations and be viewed as having imperialistic aims if US forces occupied 

Iraq. The US worried that the clear victory it had achieved in liberating Kuwait 

would be lost by an uncertain occupation; and finally, there was a fear that if tribal 

and religious hatreds were unleashed in Iraq, it could disrupt the entire region and 

threaten the world’s access to oil.

2. Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New 

York: Penguin Press, 2006), 6.

3. The Iraqi’s fired at coalition aircraft no fewer than 170 times with antiaircraft missiles and anti-aircraft artillery between 1991 and 2003. For more information, see Anthony Cordesman, The Iraq War (Washington DC: Praeger, 2003), 

60.

4. Geoff Simons, Future Iraq: US Policy in Reshaping the Middle East (London: Saqi Books, 2003) 315.

5. CB20120312D0001, 4ID Political Advisor, Interview by Charles BrisBois, 12 March 2012, Quantico.

6. Simons, Future Iraq, 315.

7. Simons.

8. Cannon and Cannon, Reagan’s Disciple, 182.

9. Cannon and Cannon.

10. George Packer, Assassins’ Gate (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 

2005), 24. France, Russia and China all opposed Operation Desert Fox for trade 

reasons.

11. Anderson, Bush’s Wars, 43.

12. Anderson, 44. Zinni later stated the Arab’s questions, “Shocked the hell 

out of me.”

13. General James Jones, Memorandum for Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff: 

US Military Response in Iraq, 31 August 2001. Rumsfeld Papers, http://www.

rumsfeld.com (accessed 3 March 2012).

14. General James Jones.

15. For a full analysis on Wolfowitz and Feith, see: James Bamford, A Pretext 

for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies (New York: 

Doubleday, 2004).

16. Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 

173.

17. Cannon and Cannon, Reagan’s Disciple, 189.

18. Hersh, Chain of Command, 138.
74

19. Hersh, 173.

20. Fouad Ajami, The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the 

Iraqis in Iraq (New York: Free Press, 2006), 233.

21. Fouad Ajami, 230. Chalabi’s wife is the daughter of Adel Osseiran, former Speaker of the Parliament and a leading figure in Lebanese politics. According to Ajami, the Osseirans were “one of the great notable families of the southern 

Shia world of Lebanon.” p 230.

22. Bamford, A Pretext for War, 274.

23. Hersh, Chain of Command, 164.

24. Hersh.

25. Douglas Feith, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the 

War on Terrorism (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 354.

26. Douglas Feith, 355.

27. Yossef Bodansky, The Secret History of the Iraq War (New York, HarperCollins, 2004), 101.

28. Hersh, Chain of Command, 171.

29. Bodansky, The Secret History of the Iraq War, 86.

30. Bodansky, 165-168.

31. Tommy Franks and Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier (New York: 

HarperCollins, 2004), Chapter 9.

32. Michael Gordon, Bernard E. Trainor, and Craig Wasson, Cobra II: The 

Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (New York, Pantheon, 2006), 

87.

33. Cordesman, The Iraq War, 60.

34. Bodansky, The Secret History of the Iraq War, 58.

35. Micah Zenko, “Foregoing Limited Force: The George W. Bush Administration’s Decision not to Attack Ansar Al-Islam,” Journal of Strategic Studies 32, 

no. 4 (2009): 615-649. From Abstract: “In 2002, a terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam, 

operating out of a camp in Khurmal, northeast Iraq, was reportedly developing 

cyanide gas, toxic poisons, and ricin for potential use against Europe and the 

United States. The Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously supported, and formally 

presented to the White House, a military operation to destroy the Ansar camp.” 

Bodansky, The Secret History of the Iraq War, 51.

36. Bodansky.

37. Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 446. Prime Minister Tony Blair also 

objected to using the ricin found in Manchester as a reason for attacking Iraq, 

because the evidence clearly linked the ricin and the terrorist to Yasser Arafat and 

the Palestinian Authority. Blair did not want to undermine the peace process by 

implicating Arafat or disclose the use of Israeli intelligence in uncovering the plot. 

See Bodansky, The Secret History of the Iraq War, 51-55, for further information.

38. To see a full descriptions of V Corps and the 1st Marine Expeditionary 

Force, their planning and their actions during the initial invasion see Gordon et al., 

Cobra II, Chapters 6-11; Franks and McConnell, American Soldier, Chapter 9-12.

39. Cordesman, The Iraq War, 60.

40. Franks and McConnell, American Soldier, 515.
75

41. Franks and McConnell, 501-503.

42. Cordesman, The Iraq War, 159.

43. Gordon et al., Cobra II, Chapter 19.

44. Franks and McConnell, American Soldier, 523.

45. Gordon et al., Cobra II, 402.

46. The four phases of military operations are defined as: Phase 1. Planning, 

Phase II. Preparation, Phase III. Combat Operations, and Phase IV. Stability/Humanitarian/Civil Operations.

47. CB20120312F0001, ORHA Planner, Interview by Charles Bris-Bois, 14 

March 2012, Washington, DC.

48. CB201120312F0001, ORHA Planner.

49. CB20120312C0001, ORHA Official, Interview.

50. CB20120410B0001, ORHA Officer. Interview by, Charles Bris-Bois, 10 

April 2012, Fort Leavenworth.

51. Gordon Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq: Regime Change, Jay Garner, and the 

ORHA Story (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2011) 1.

52. Gordon Rudd, 2.

53. By far the most in-depth analysis of the Office of Reconstruction and 

Humanitarian Assistance was done by the in-house historian for the organization, 

Dr. Gordon Rudd. See Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq: Regime Change, Jay Garner, 

and the ORHA Story. See also Packer, The Assassins’ Gate, Chapter 4; Gordon et 

al., Cobra II, Chapter 23.

54. Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq, Chapter 6.

55. The two Kurdish leaders were Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. The 

two exiles from London were Ahmed Chalabi and Ayad Allawi. The Sunni was 

Naser Chaderchi and the Shias from Iran were Ibrihim al-Jaafari and Abdul Aziz 

Hakim. From Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq, 322.

56. Gordon et al., Cobra II, 469.

57. Gordon et al., 203. The CIA was of little use to Garner or the military in 

the opening month of the war, as Michael Gordon explains, Army and Marine 

Commander’s faith in the Agency was shaken by their poor performance in the 

run to Baghdad. “In Iraq [unlike Afghanistan], the CIA had few contacts in the 

ruthlessly controlled regime of Saddam Hussein.”

58. Packer, The Assassins’ Gate, 144. Although, Garner had been told from 

the very beginning that he would be replaced by an US Embassy Ambassador as 

soon as the humanitarian relief was complete, he did not expect to be replaced so 

soon.

59. CB20120312F0001, ORHA Planner, Interview.

60. Paul Bremer, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope

(New York: Threshold Editions, 2006), 12.

61. Bremer.

62. Bremer.

63. Bodansky, The Secret History of the Iraq War, 398. The Bush administration was also under pressure from Arab allies who demanded that the future 
76

leader of Iraq must be Sunni or their own regimes would be in danger from radical Shiites they ruled. Unwilling to work with the Sunnis in Iraq, an early Bush 

administrations solution was to pursue a plan that called for turning Iraq into a 

constitutional monarchy with a Hashmite King and Ahmed Chalabi as the Prime 

Minister.

64. Bodansky, 43.

65. Bodansky.

66. The strong objections to the de-Baathification policy are discussed in 

Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq, 311-315, 321-324.

67. Bremer, My Year in Iraq, 41; Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq, 321. Rudd recounts the 16 May press conference announcing General Order 1, during which 

Bremer is quoted as saying, “We are prepared to accept that the policy will result 

in some temporary inefficiency in the administration of the government.”

68. Bremer, My Year in Iraq, 41.

69. Gordon et al., Cobra II, 486.

70. Ricardo Sanchez and Don T. Phillips, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story 

(New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 180-181.

71. Anderson, Bush’s Wars, 150.

72. CB20120312F0001, ORHA Planner, Interview. It is not clear that the V 

Corps staff would have worked any better with Ambassador Bremmer than Sanchez’s staff did. The problem was that roles and responsibilities were not clearly 

defined. Although Bremer believed he was in charge, he was never given the 

authority to direct the military.

73. Sanchez and Phillips, Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, 194.

74. CB20120312F0001, ORHA Planner, Interview. Although it must be noted that this was just one of many reasons why the insurgency grew in the summer 

of 2003. It is also important to note that 1st Armored Division did not have a 

tremendous amount of Middle East experience and had just arrived in theater. The 

loss of team cohesion was far more damaging than the loss experience, simply 

because 1st Armored Division did not have a tremendous amount of experience 

in the Middle East.

75. Gordon et al., Cobra II, 461.

76. CB20120312C0001, ORHA Official, Interview.

77. Ricks, Fiasco, 110.

78. Ricks, 482.

79. CB20120328H0001, Retired Senior British Officer, Interview by Charles 

Bris-Bois, 28 March 2012, United Kingdom.

80. Bremer, My Year in Iraq, 54-56.

81. Bremer, 54.

82. Bremer, 57.

83. Ricks, Fiasco, 116.

84. Hallenbeck, Military Force as an Instrument of US Foreign Policy.

85. Condoleezza Rice, Principle Committee Review of Iraq Policy Paper, 

October 29, 2002, Rumsfeld Papers, http://www.rumsfeld.com (accessed 3 March 

2012).
77

86. CB20120312F0001, ORHA Planner Interview.

87. Weisberg, The Bush Tragedy, 201.

88. Cannon and Cannon, Reagan’s Disciple, 150.

89. Packer, Assassins’ Gate, 120.

90. CB20120410B0001, ORHA Officer, Interview.

91. Packer, Assassins’ Gate, 120.

92. Sanchez, Wiser in Battle, 171.

93. Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq, 93.

94. CB20120312D0001, 4ID Political Advisor, Interview by Charles BrisBois, 12 March 2012, Quantico.

95. Weisberg, The Bush Tragedy, 203.

96. Cannon and Cannon, Reagan’s Disciple, 191.

97. Cannon and Cannon.

98. James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: the History of Bush’s War Cabinet 

(New York: Viking, 2004), 27.

99. Bamford, A Pretext for War, 276.

100. Bamford.

101. Packer, Assassins’ Gate, 76.

102. Packer.

103. Office of the Secretary of Defense Policy, Iraqi Interim Authority Implementation Concept—Summary, 30 March 2003. Rumsfeld Papers, http://www.

rumsfeld.com (accessed 3 March 2012).

104. Office of the Secretary of Defense Policy.

105. CB20120312D0001, 4ID Political Advisor, Interview by Charles BrisBois, 12 March 2012, Quantico.

106. Office of the Secretary of Defense Policy, Iraqi Interim Authority Implementation Concept—Summary.

107. Office of the Secretary of Defense Policy.

108. Hersh, Chain of Command, 166.

109. Feith, War and Decision, 449.

110. Hersh, Chain of Command, 167.

111. Hersh, Chain of Command, 165.

112. Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq, 68-73, 112. The Future of Iraq Project 

sought to bring all of the exile groups together and discuss pertinent issues regarding post-Saddam Iraq. The group, divided into 17 working groups, met several 

times over a 6 month period. Warrick produced a 1,000 page study summarizing 

the conclusions of those working groups.

113. Gordon et al., Cobra II, 159. Initially, the Pentagon rejected all seven of 

the State Department’s ambassadorial-level officials. When Powell threatened to 

pull all State Department support from the Department of Defense, the Pentagon 

relented allowing everyone except Warrick to join ORHA.

114. Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq, 130.

115. Cannon and Cannon, Reagan’s Disciple, 206; Rumsfeld, Known and 

Unknown, 283.

116. Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 302-303.
78

117. Rumsfeld.

118. Rumsfeld, 333.

119. Sanchez, Wiser in Battle, 167.

120. Hallenbeck, Military Force as and Instrument, 143.

121. Hallenbeck, 146.

122. Howard and Paret, On War, 608.

123. Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 31.

124. CB20120312F0001, ORHA Planner, Interview. See discussion above on 

political reconciliation.

125. Sanchez, Wiser in Battle, 168.

126. James Stephenson, Losing the Golden Hour (Washington DC: Potomac 

Books, 2007), 5.

127. James Stevenson, 89.

128. Bremer, My Year in Iraq, 10.

129. “Nation-Building: Lessons Learned,” Memorandum from Ambassador 

Bremer to Secretary Rumsfeld, 4 May 2003, Rumsfeld Papers, http://www.rumsfeld.com (accessed March 3, 2012).

130. “Nation-Building: Lessons Learned,” Rumsfeld Papers.

131. Gordon et al., Cobra II, 469. Even if the decision had been made to put a 

majority of the 18,000 troops in 3rd ID on the streets, it would have been logistically impossible. The entire division only had a few hundred sets of body armor.

132. James Dobbins, America’s Role in Nation-Building: from Germany to 

Iraq (Santa Monica: RAND, 2003), 153.

133. CB20120510A0001, Infantry Officer, Interview by Charles Bris-Bois, 

10 May 2012, Fort Leavenworth.

134. Gordon et al., Cobra II, 472.

135. CB20120312C0001, ORHA Official. Interview.

136. Bremer, My Year in Iraq, 41-43.
79

Chapter 6

Conclusion

Theory

Chapter 2 began with a discussion of Clausewitz’s struggle to reconcile the multiple types of war he found in his analysis of history into 

a single theory of war. Using the analogy of weapons, Clausewitz said 

absolute war was like a “terrible battle-sword that a man needs both hands 

and his entire strength to wield, and with which he strikes home once and 

no more.”1

 History, however, revealed another type of war, one in which 

the mighty sword became merely an instrument, “a light, handy rapier—

sometimes just a foil for the exchange of thrusts, faints and parries.”2 To 

reconcile these contradictions, Clausewitz determined that policy was the 

instrument governments used to limit and expand wars. In Book Eight, 

Chapter Six, of On War it states, “as policy becomes more ambitious and 

vigorous, so will war.”3

 Clausewitz further states, “only if war is looked 

at in this way does the unity reappear, only then can we see that all wars 

are things of the same nature.”4

 In many ways, Clausewitz’s “policy” is a 

simplified expression of what we call grand strategy today. As the Prussian General explained, policy represented, “all the interest of the state,” 

policy, “unifies and reconciles all aspects of the internal administration ...

and is representative of all interests of the community.”5

However, as discussed in Chapter 2, Clausewitz failed to admit that 

there were times when the internal interests of the state could not be unified or reconciled, or that states may have competing and contradictory 

interests. This is why Liddell Hart’s expansion of Clausewitz’s themes is 

so important. Liddell Hart interpreted Clausewitz’s policy as “the object 

of war, what is to be achieved,” while grand strategy was policy in action, “The [coordination and direction] of all the resources of a nation...

towards the attainment of the political object of the war—the goal defined 

by the fundamental policy.”6

Walter Russell Mead and Eliot Cohen use historical analysis of American Foreign Policy to show that coordination and direction of all the resources of the nation in a unified manner has never been achieved.7 There 

have always been contradictions, tensions, and uneasy compromises in 

the formulation of US grand strategy. The presence of these conflicts can 

be attributed to the differences between the schools of thought that have 

evolved within US strategic planning circles. A few of these dominant 

characteristics revolve around the military’s preference for excessively neat civil-military relations, precluding diplomats and generals from 
80

working hand-in-hand to craft holistic, yet nuanced strategies. This lack of 

cooperation leads to conflict over what to do and how to do it. Finally, historical analysis shows that while sorting through these complexities and 

tensions, America’s Jeffersonian preference for overwhelming firepower 

and direct violent assault, takes the lead and often undermines the very 

goals the US is trying to achieve.

The two case studies in this paper, Lebanon 1982 to 1984, and Iraq 

2003, demonstrated the desire and the need for the US to wield the rapier rather than the terrible sword. However, the US never had a policy 

or grand strategy that unified and reconciled all the internal aspects of 

the administration. The Department of Defense and Department of State 

struggled over how to implement the President’s guidance and the plans 

they formulated were at best filled with contradictions, tensions, and uneasy compromises. When plans failed in both Lebanon and Iraq, the US, 

as it has shown a proclivity to do, resorted to overwhelming firepower and 

direct violent assault, undermining the very goals it was trying to achieve.

Lebanon

The contradictions, tensions, and uneasy compromises that were made 

in the planning and execution of the US Military’s intervention in Lebanon 

in 1982 to 1984 fit into the larger pattern of US Foreign Policy Cohen and 

Russell lay out. It was clear early in the dispute that military force would 

have to be combined with diplomacy in a well-timed and coherent fashion 

in order to achieve the political reconciliation, upon which the entire US 

strategy rested.

However, this did not occur due to disputes between the Department 

of Defense, the Department of State, and the National Security Council. 

To borrow Clausewitz’s analogy, Secretary of State Shultz sought to use 

the military as a rapier, applying closely coordinated military action to 

strengthen what was primarily a diplomatic effort. Secretary of Defense 

Weinberger did not believe the military should be used in such a fashion 

and therefore, he fought continuously for strict ROE that severely limited 

how the military could be used. This conflict can clearly be seen in National Security Presidential Directive103, which codified the differences 

between State and Defense, rather than unifying and reconciling their internal disputes.

As a result of NSPD103, the Department of Defense reluctantly agreed 

to the State Department’s demands to “Americanize” the effort by increasing the use of firepower. The ROE defined in NSPD103, however, created 

conditions that did not allow for well-timed and coordinated military ac-
81

tion when the diplomats needed it to strengthen their positions. Instead, it 

often took days to get approval necessary for the application of firepower. 

The uncoordinated use of firepower and diplomacy led to the perception 

that the US was no longer a non-partisan player. The use of naval gunfire 

to shell the Shouf and Syrian positions, and the training the Marines provided to the LAF, undermined the US policy of wanting to be viewed as an 

even-handed negotiator in the peace process. Ultimately, this contributed 

to the conditions under which the factions felt justified in attacking the US 

Forces.

Had the Department of Defense, Department of State, and the National Security Council worked together to formulate a grand strategy, it is 

not possible to determine whether the US would have achieved its political objectives. The issues are too complex and there is simply no way to 

predict in hindsight how the opposing forces would have reacted to a coordinated US grand strategy. However, it is entirely reasonable to assume 

that the Marines would not have been forced into ROE that restricted them 

almost entirely to the International Airport and made them an easy target 

both to shelling from the Shouf and to terrorist attacks. It is also safe to assume that the escalation in military force that culminated in the shelling of 

Syrian positions by the USS New Jersey’s 16-inch guns, with no discernable objective other than retribution, would not have occurred. Finally, a 

coordinated grand strategy would have gone a long way in preventing the 

situation the US found itself in 1984, facing two unfavorable outcomes. 

The US was forced to decide whether to escalate the war and risk greater 

regional conflict including possible direct confrontation with the Soviets 

or withdraw under the perception that the Syrians and Islamic militants 

had forced the US out of Lebanon.

Iraq

As in Lebanon, disputes between the Department of State and the Department of Defense prevented the US from formulating, or executing, a 

grand strategy that would have coordinated and directed resources towards 

the attainment of the political objectives. These disputes revolved primarily around Ahmed Chalabi and the role external opposition groups should 

play in deposing Saddam and running a post-Saddam Iraq. In addition, 

there were strong philosophical differences between State and Defense, 

differences that Mead defined as the differences between Hamiltonians, 

Wilsonians, Jeffersonians, and Jacksonians.

The State Department under Powell was heavily slanted toward the 

Jeffersonians, distrustful of alliances with unsavory partners and the wisdom of attempting to spread democracy. In contrast, the Department of 
82

Defense, led by neoconservatives, favored a combination of the Wilson 

and Jackson schools of thought. From Jackson, the Department of Defense 

took the view that Iraq and any other state, which sponsored terrorism 

and sought weapons of mass destruction, had to be defeated militarily. Yet 

in a very Wilsonian way, the neoconservatives represented by Feith and 

Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, sought to change the dynamics of the Middle 

East by installing a pro-western Shia led democratic government in Iraq 

that would change the balance of power and ultimately lead to the spread 

of democracy throughout the region.8 

These disputes became so contentious that the two departments were 

unable to form a unified and reconciled plan for Phase IV operations. In 

theory, the interagency process, under the direction of the National Security Council, should have reconciled the differences between the departments. However, the process was cut short by NSPD 24, which ended 

interagency debate by giving full control of post-invasion Iraq to the Department of Defense.

With the Office of the Secretary of Defense in full control of postSaddam Iraq, Feith, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, was able 

to recommend last-minute, uncoordinated changes regarding the structure of the new Iraqi Government to Bremer. In fairness, these changes 

were required in late March and early April of 2003, when it became clear 

that Chalabi and the exiles did not have popular support among the Iraqi 

people to govern the country. The fact that the ideas originated in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy contradicts the popular 

narrative that Bremer was making decisions on his own without Pentagon 

guidance. The decision to change from a quick handover to a long term 

occupation was made in April of 2003 as US Forces raced to Baghdad. As 

the evidence in chapter 5 showed, The Office of the Secretary of Defense 

convinced the President and the principals on the National Security Council that this decision was required to prepare Iraq for democracy.

This change gave Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority the 

mandate to carry out harsh de-Baathification rules and disband the Iraqi 

security forces. However, because the change in direction happened literally while US Forces were advancing on Baghdad, there was no time to 

coordinate the military, economic, or information campaigns required to 

create a secure environment in which Iraq could be prepared for democracy.

If grand strategy is the coordination and direction of all the resources 

of a nation, than clearly the US did not have one in Iraq. Primarily because 
83

the government failed to direct and coordinate the nation’s immense resources, the Americans found themselves in control of Iraq with too few 

forces. The forces they had were not organized, trained, or equipped properly to conduct security operations. The heavy-handed tactics used by the 

US Forces in an attempt to quell the violence and end the chaos undermined the strategic message that the Americans were in Iraq to help. These 

actions inadvertently provided justification for those that opposed the US 

to attack American Forces.

Again, had the Department of Defense, Department of State, and the 

National Security Council worked together to formulate a grand strategy 

for Iraq, it is not possible to determine whether the US would have been 

able to avoid the violence and disintegration of Iraqi society that started in 

2003 and lasted until the Surge in 2007. The issues are too complex and 

there is simply no way to predict in hindsight how the opposing forces 

would have reacted to a coordinated US grand strategy. However, it is entirely reasonable to assume that the plan to switch from liberation to occupation would not have been formulated at the last minute, while US Forces 

were racing to Baghdad. It is also highly probable that the tremendous 

turnover of organizations and personnel that took place during the summer 

of 2003 would not have occurred simultaneously. Finally, had there been 

a unified grand strategy, one can safely assume the de-Baathification order 

and the order to disband the Iraqi security forces would have been debated 

by the National Security Council. If still deemed appropriate, the orders 

would have been issued in a manner that allowed for sufficient military 

force to mitigate the inherent risks.

Ultimately, the question this paper answered was not, “would a grand 

strategy have ensured successful achievement of the political objectives in 

Lebanon and Iraq?” The question was, “Did the US have a grand strategy 

when viewed through the prism of Lebanon in 1982 and Iraq in 2003?” 

The two case studies and the framework used which examined four critical 

factors in determining if a grand strategy existed, suggests the answer is 

emphatically no.
84

Notes

1. Howard and Paret, On War, 606.

2. Howard and Paret.

3. Howard and Paret.

4. Howard and Paret.

5. Howard and Paret, 107.

6. Liddell Hart, Strategy, 322.

7. Mead, Special Providence, 28-29.

8. Mead, Special Providence, Chapters 5, 6 and 7.
85

Glossary

ID Infantry Division

LAF Lebanese Armed Forces

MAU Marine Amphibious Unit

NSPD National Security Presidential Directive

PLO Palestinian Liberation Organization

ROE Rules of Engagement

UN United Nations

US United States

87

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