No. 174, October 2000 Strategic Forum 

effective, flexible force.

The military cannot pick and choose its

missions. Their political masters may well

decide that national interests require the use

of force for more nontraditional missions or

in situations that may be less than ideally

suited to military solutions.

Force protection is critical; high rates of

casualties can erode popular support and

undermine the mission. On the other hand,

excessive fear of casualties can erode the

morale of the Armed Forces. The key is forging American leadership that understands the

military risks involved.

Commitments to our allies may draw us

into conflicts where U.S. national interests

are limited, but where American leadership

is essential to the vitality of the alliance.

Even a small operation conducted

abroad requires an extraordinary range of

well-trained forces, either highly deployable

or already in theater.

Despite successes, the Armed Forces

must address a number of challenges: urban

warfare, weapons of mass destruction, tracking and destroying mobile targets, the need

for lighter, more deployable forces, and the

burden of ongoing operations.

significant U.S. military operations over about

the past twenty years—roughly the period the

author has served in Congress—can help

shape answers to a surprisingly large number

of contemporary issues in defense policy. What

follows is a brief review of seven of these military operations, followed by a discussion of

some important lessons. 

Iran (1980)

President Carter authorized an audacious military operation in April 1980 to rescue

American diplomats held hostage in Tehran

since the previous November. Although the

operation ended in disaster in the Iranian

desert at a site in Iran code-named Desert One,

it ultimately had important consequences. It

prompted a great deal of public soul-searching

about the state of U.S. military readiness and,

perhaps most importantly, it marked a turning

point in popular support for military preparedness. The lessons of Desert One also contributed

to steps that Congress took in coming years to

strengthen special operations forces and clarify

lines of command.

traditional peacekeeping force depending for

its effectiveness on maintaining the consent 

contending parties, or whether it was a peace

making force empowered to compel adheren

to agreements more assertively. The rules of

engagement governing the conduct of troops 

the field were ambiguous, and actions necessary to protect the force were not taken. As th

security situation deteriorated, it should have

become apparent that the size and compositi

of the force were inadequate, but decisionma

ers failed to rethink the nature of the mission

and instead allowed U.S. involvement to esca

late incrementally. 

The outcome of that mission shaped

subsequent U.S. debates about the use of mil

tary force. Lebanon was clearly at the forefro

of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger’s

thinking when, in November 1984, he 

articulated what came to be known as the

“Weinberger Doctrine,” laying out six restric

tive conditions on U.S. military action. 

Weinberger’s sharpest critic was Secretary of

State George Shultz, who in a series of three

speeches took issue with most of those conditions. Echoes of their exchange are heard

frequently in debates over military operation
of Operation Just Cause demonstrated the

effectiveness of joint planning and command

structures instituted following enactment of the

Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act

of 1986. Simultaneous, coordinated assaults,

using forces from each of the services, multiplied the impact of the whole operation. The

action achieved a large measure of tactical

surprise. The fact that the initial, critical stages

of the intervention were carried out at night

was particularly significant. As one commander

noted, “We owned the night.” Unmatched

night-fighting capabilities have constituted a

major U.S. tactical advantage ever since.

Panama was clearly a case in which adequate

force was applied to accomplish well-defined

objectives with minimal casualties.

Persian Gulf (1990–1991)

The Persian Gulf War demonstrated the

remarkable reconstitution of U.S. military

power in the 15 years following an institutionally devastating failure in Vietnam. In all,

541,000 U.S. military personnel were committed to Operation Desert Storm, along with

some 200,000 allied forces. Not surprisingly,

given the size, complexity, and importance of

vantages of a well-trained professional military

force; the value of attack helicopters, close

support aircraft, and a number of other platforms when used creatively and with a full

understanding of their potential vulnerabilities;

the critical importance of information dominance; and the absolute necessity of good

diplomacy in managing relations with allies

and in deflecting serious outside challenges to

the cohesiveness of a broad coalition. On all

these diverse matters, the critical lesson is to

keep doing what we have been doing. 

There are some other, more cautionary

lessons to be learned, however. The vulnerability of U.S. forces—and of critical allies—to

weapons of mass destruction was a matter of

grave concern. In the end, deterrence seems to

have worked, but we need to consider whether

it might fail in different circumstances. An

immense effort was devoted to hunting down

mobile missile launchers, but with no success

at all. Desert Storm showed that much work

of 1995, half-hearted NATO efforts at coercive

diplomacy, including the use of “pin-prick” 

strikes, accomplished almost nothing. 

A more extensive application of air pow

in Operation Deliberate Force, in contrast, w

highly successful. Coupled with a Bosnian

government ground offensive, it succeeded in

forcing the Bosnian Serbs to make critical

territorial concessions at the negotiating tabl

With U.S. leadership, NATO finally managed 

forge a peace agreement and salvage its shak

credibility. The ongoing peace operation in

Bosnia has also been largely successful. Assu

ances that U.S. troops would be withdrawn

within a year were not realistic, however, and

the operation now appears open-ended. Cuts 

the size of the peacekeeping force and extens

use of reserves in Bosnia have had some effec

in ameliorating the burden. But Bosnia—an

now Kosovo—remain costly commitments. 

2 Strategic Forum No. 174, October 2

The Honorable Ike Skelton has represented the Fourth District of Missouri in the House of Representative

since 1977. He is active in defense matters in Congress and is the ranking Democrat on the House Armed

Services Committee. This publication is based on the Hofheimer Lecture which he presented at the Armed

Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, on July 21, 2000. Mr. Skelton maintains a Web site at:

http://www.house.gov/skelton.
there appears to have been an effort to attack

economic targets of particular value to Serbian

leaders. Finally, on June 4, the Yugoslav government announced that it would accept a peace

plan that called for an immediate cease-fire,

withdrawal of all Yugoslav military and other

security forces from Kosovo, deployment of an

international peacekeeping force, and steps

toward self-governance for Kosovo. On June 10,

with evidence that Yugoslav forces were withdrawing, bombing ceased.

From the beginning of the campaign,

the military logic of Operation Allied Force was

a matter of intense, even bitter debate. In short,

at least in its inception, the Kosovo air campaign was an exercise in coercive diplomacy

rather than a concerted effort to prevail

through military action by destroying the

enemy capacity to wage war. And to the extent

it became a warfighting exercise, it was much

more a war of attrition than a modern U.S.-

style application of decisive force. In this case,

though, all of the attrition was on the other

side. From the NATO point of view, this seems

to have been enough, since Milosevic ultimately relented. It was not, however, enough to

protect the Kosovars from the depredations of

Yugoslav security forces. 

ministration and will likely have to be addressed anew by every future government.

Those who take absolute positions—especially

in disputes along partisan lines—are likely to

have to swallow their arguments later. In

debates about Bosnia and Kosovo, for example,

some have taken the Weinberger Doctrine

almost as gospel. According to that doctrine,

U.S. forces should be committed only when

vital U.S. interests are at stake, when the mission is clear, when force fully and demonstrably

adequate to accomplish the mission can be

applied, and when public support is assured. 

But that argument was vigorously disputed within the Reagan administration,

particularly by then-Secretary of State George

Shultz, from the moment it was articulated.

Moreover, the Weinberger Doctrine clearly did

not prevail in later decisions on the use of

force, even when Weinberger still led the 

Department of Defense. 

For military commanders, the lesson is

that they cannot pick and choose what missions to prepare for. Political leaders may well

decide that national security interests require

the use of force even in circumstances that give

military planners fits, or that detract from

other priorities, or that may cost lots of money

at a time when funding is tight, or that risk

clusion: if a mission is not sufficiently impor

tant to U.S. national interests to warrant risk

ing casualties, then it may not be worth doin

at all, because casualties may erode popular

support and cause the operation to fail anyw

But this is a bit too simple. Political leaders

cannot avoid deciding on military action wh

public support is uncertain. Choosing a cour

of action that minimizes the risk of casualtie

even at a cost to military effectiveness may n

always be unrealistic or unreasonable. The

critical task is to accept risks when necessary

and to avoid them when unnecessary, and to

imbue U.S. military leaders, from the top of 

chain of command to the bottom, with the

wisdom to know the difference.

Relations with Allies Relations

with allies are never easy. Allies often perceiv

interests differently. And even when their inte

ests and ours appear to coincide closely, histo

domestic politics, varying military capabilitie

and personal relationships among national

leaders will affect the prospects for cooperatio

One lesson of recent military operations is

clear—the United States must be militarily

and diplomatically flexible enough to cooper

ate with allies as much as possible, but also t

No. 174, October 2000 Strategic Forum 
4 Strategic Forum No. 174, October 2

But it is hardly a startling notion that

alliances have costs as well as benefits.

Across-the-Board Strength Even

apparently limited military operations have

required a very broad range of well-trained and

well-equipped forces. The interception of the

Achille Lauro hijackers, a minor exercise of

force not discussed in this paper, was conceivable only because the United States had in

place an extraordinarily varied number of

critical elements: a highly effective global

intelligence capability, including human intelligence and high-technology means of collection; air combat forces that could be deployed

rapidly and flexibly; other air assets, including

electronic warfare aircraft, already in place in

the region to monitor sudden and unexpected

developments; sophisticated radar, able to pick

out aircraft rapidly in high air traffic already in

place in the region; special operations forces

that could be deployed on immediate notice

and transport aircraft able to carry them 6,000

miles across the Atlantic; a global communications network that allowed planners in Washington immediate access to intelligence and

unbroken links to forces in the region; a history of engagement with many nations in the

area that allowed timely contact with key

decisionmakers; and well-trained, well-moti

cleansing, it is critically important, nonetheless,

to consider how a preemptive operation might

have been mounted. The Army deserves credit

for its current focus on building more deployable forces. Still, much remains to be resolved

in determining precisely how lighter ground

forces can accomplish critical missions.

An important unresolved issue is how to

ameliorate the burden of ongoing operations,

such as those in the Persian Gulf, in Bosnia,

and now in Kosovo. Measures adopted to 

ease the burden have not gone far enough.

Clearly there needs to be a discussion of more

radical changes, including at least the strengthening of nonmilitary multinational institutions

established an independent Special Operation

Command in 1987, an action that has been

vindicated by the continued critical importan

of special operations forces in a host of milit

actions since then, and by the marvelous per

formance of those forces when called upon.

Congressional passage of the Goldwater-Nich

Department of Defense Reorganization Act of

1986 clearly helped to clarify and strengthen

command arrangements. 

The main praise for building an increa

ingly flexible and effective force, however, mu

go to the military officers who rebuilt U.S.

military capabilities after the Vietnam War.

This generation has now almost entirely

reached retirement age. The task of the next

generation of military leaders is to learn as w

as its predecessors learned from past conflicts

The Strategic Forum series presents original research b

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other scholars and specialists in national security affair

from this country and abroad. The opinions expressed o

implied in this publication are solely those of the author

and do not necessarily represent the views of the

National Defense University, the Department of Defense

or any other governmental agency.

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