IRREGULAR ENEMIES AND THE ESSENCE OF STRATEGY:

CAN THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR ADAPT?

Colin S. Gray

March 2006

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FOREWORD

At present and probably for some years to come, America’s 

enemies are of an irregular character. These irregular enemies 

necessarily wage war in modes that are largely unconventional.

In this monograph, Dr. Colin S. Gray considers irregular warfare 

in the light of the general theory of strategy and finds that that 

theory is fully adequate to explain the phenomenon. Rather less 

adequate, Dr. Gray suggests, is the traditional American way of war. 

The monograph offers a detailed comparison between the character 

of irregular warfare, insurgency in particular, and the principal 

enduring features of “the American way.” It concludes that there 

is a serious mismatch between that “way” and the kind of behavior 

that is most effective in countering irregular foes.

Dr. Gray poses the question, Can the American way of war adapt 

to a strategic threat context dominated by irregular enemies? He 

suggests that the answer is “perhaps, but only with difficulty.”

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 
iv

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

COLIN S. GRAY is Professor of International Politics and Strategic 

Studies at the University of Reading, England. He worked at the 

International Institute for Strategic Studies (London) and at Hudson 

Institute (Croton-on-Hudson, NY) before founding a defense-oriented 

think tank in the Washington area, the National Institute for Public 

Policy. Dr. Gray served for 5 years in the Reagan administration on 

the President’s General Advisory Committee on Arms Control and 

Disarmament. He has served as an adviser to both the U.S. and British 

governments (he has dual citizenship). His government work has 

included studies of nuclear strategy, arms control policy, maritime 

strategy, space strategy, and the use of special forces. Dr. Gray has 

written 19 books, most recently The Sheriff: America’s Defense of the New 

World Order (University Press of Kentucky, 2004) and Another Bloody 

Century: Future Warfare (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005; distributed 

by Casemate in the United States). In 2006 he will publish Strategy 

and History: Essays on Theory and Practice (Routledge). At present, he 

is working on a textbook, War, Peace, and International Relations: An 

Introduction to Strategic History, to be published by Routledge. Dr. 

Gray is a graduate of the Universities of Manchester and Oxford.
v

SUMMARY

Can the traditional American way of war adapt so as to be 

effective against irregular enemies? An endeavor to answer that 

question shapes and drives this inquiry. In order to address the 

question constructively, the author is obliged to explore and explain 

the nature and relations among three elements fundamental to our 

problem. Those elements are strategy, irregular enemies, and the 

American way of war. Carl von Clausewitz offered his theory of war 

in terms of a “remarkable trinity composed of primordial violence, 

hatred, and enmity . . . the play of chance and probability . . . and 

subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to 

reason alone.” He defined his task as a need “to develop a theory that 

maintains a balance between these three tendencies, like an object 

suspended between three magnets.” The theoretical analogy may be 

imperfect, but still it is useful. Just as Clausewitz sought to explain 

war, and wars, as the product of inherently unstable relations among 

passion, chance, and reason, so this monograph has at its core the 

unstable interactions among irregular enemies, strategy, and the 

American way of war. Unlike Clausewitz, however, our purpose is 

not to develop or improve on general theory. Instead, the intention is 

to confront and try to answer the very specific question with which 

this summary began. To that end, strategic theory is deployed here 

pragmatically, as an aid to soldiers and officials who face challenges 

of a most pressing and serious character.

This inquiry defines and explains the essence of strategy. Next, 

it identifies what is distinctive about irregular enemies and the 

kinds of warfare they wage. Then the analysis proceeds to outline 

the fairly long-enduring traditional American way of war, and 

considers critically the fit between the many separate elements of 

that “way” and the requirements of sound practice in the conduct of 

warfare against irregulars. It concludes with a three-point argument 

which binds together the otherwise somewhat disparate topics and 

material.

The purpose of this monograph, beyond the commitment to offer 

some useful education, includes a desire to help explain better to the 

defense community both what it ought to know already, and—most 
vi

especially—how the separate pieces of the trinitarian puzzle relate to 

each other. Much, probably most, of the content of the monograph is 

already familiar to many people, but it is not really familiar enough. 

Everyone interested in security affairs, surely, believes he/she 

understands strategy, irregular warfare, and the American way in 

war, but just how well are these elements comprehended, and are 

the consequences of their unstable interaction grasped securely? We 

think not. The monograph should make it difficult, not impossible, 

of course, for its readers to remain confused about the basics. These 

pages lay out in explicit detail the nature of strategy, irregular 

warfare, and—last, but not least—the long-preferred American way. 

But what does it all mean?

Both explicitly and implicitly, the monograph asks questions of 

the American defense community at all levels of behavior: strategic, 

operational, and tactical. The three conclusions explain the essential 

unity of the consequences of performance at these levels. We find 

that:

1. War is war and strategy is strategy. Strategically approached, 

there is only war and warfare. It does not matter whether 

a conflict is largely of a regular or an irregular character; 

Clausewitz’s general theory of war and strategy applies 

equally to both. The threat or use of force is instrumental for 

political purposes. The kinds of warfare are of no relevance 

whatever to the authority of the general theory of strategy. 

In short, irregular warfare, waged by a range of irregular 

enemies, is governed by exactly the same lore as is regular 

warfare, viewed strategically.

2. The United States has a persisting strategy deficit. 

Americans are very competent at fighting, but they are much 

less successful in fighting in such a way that they secure the 

strategic and, hence, political, rewards they seek. The United 

States continues to have difficulty regarding war and politics 

as a unity, with war needing to be permeated by political 

considerations.

3. American public, strategic, and military culture is not friendly 

to the means and methods necessary for the waging of 

warfare against irregular enemies. The traditional American 
vii

way of war was developed to defeat regular enemies. It reflects 

many of the strengths of American society and culture. Alas, 

one military style does not suit all kinds of warfare equally 

well. The fit between the traditional “American way,” and 

the requirements of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, 

for example, falls far short of perfect. The pertinent question, 

therefore, is “Can that traditional way of war adapt so as 

to be effective against irregular enemies?” The answer of 

this monograph is “perhaps, but only with difficulty.” The 

analysis and arguments presented here should help reduce 

the difficulty.

IRREGULAR ENEMIES AND THE ESSENCE OF STRATEGY:

CAN THE AMERICAN WAY OF WAR ADAPT?

There are only wars.

 Stuart Kinross, 20041

Without some sense of historical continuity, Americans are likely to 

relearn the lessons of history each time they are faced with a low-intensity 

conflict. But what is more dangerous is the fact that during the relearning 

process Americans may suffer casualties and develop policy directions 

that can only lead to defeat.

 Sam C. Sarkesian, 19842

The conduct of small wars is in fact in certain respects an art by itself, 

diverging widely from what is adapted to the conditions of regular 

warfare, but not so widely that there are not in all its branches points 

which permit comparisons to be established.

 Charles E. Callwell, 19063

Introduction: The Return of Irregular Warfare.

Today the armed forces of the United States are struggling to 

contain and defeat an insurgency on the continent of Asia. Does 

that sound familiar? Strategic history is truly cyclical, a judgment 

resisted weakly and unsuccessfully by those who believe in 

progress in strategic affairs.4 This monograph attempts what its title 

flags: to consider irregular warfare in the light of strategy, and—no 

less important—to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the 

historically dominant American way in warfare with reference to 

their consequences for the conduct of war against irregular enemies. 

The less challenging and controversial part of the monograph 

explains the relationship between irregular enemies and warfare on 

one hand, and the essence of strategy on the other. That essence is as 

certain and enduring a composite of ingredients as irregular enemies 

are disparate and, to a degree, unpredictable. By far the most difficult 

task undertaken here is the effort to answer the question in the 
subtitle: “Can the American way of war adapt?” Is the United States, 

and not only its military tool, able to perform effectively, which is 

to say (grand) strategically, against irregular enemies? The principal 

mission of this inquiry is to probe systematically the elements of 

the American way of war in the light of what Americans have to be 

able to do, and the way they need to behave, in order to succeed in 

warfare against irregulars. Clausewitz is essential for our education, 

but as he insisted, though his general theory can help prepare us for 

the specific challenges we actually face, it can never “construct an 

algebraic formula for use on the battlefield.”5

After a decade wandering in the policy and strategy wilderness, 

we strategists, in common with our politicians, have returned to a 

security context marked by a clear definition of era-defining threat. 

Strategists thrive on bad news. When it does not really exist, we 

do our best to invent it. Any strategic theorist worthy of the title 

can put together a menacing-looking threat briefing at the hint of 

a contract. The difficulty was that for a decade, from 1991 to 2001, 

few people believed our professional pessimism. In January 1994 

I gave my inaugural lecture at the University of Hull in which I 

described the 1990s as an interwar period.6 Some people found this 

to be shockingly atavistic. Surely, peace had broken out and, despite 

the host of more or less irregular wars underway at the time, largescale war between states was now obsolete, or at least obsolescent. 

To talk of the 1990s as an interwar period seemed to some to be 

almost criminally backward-looking.

Well, here we are in 2006, and the Department of Defense (DoD) 

has issued a document with the imposing title, National Defense 

Strategy of the United States of America. The first sentence on page 

one of this august offering states without qualification, “America 

is a nation at war.”7 I hesitate to say, “I told you so,” but I will 

say it anyway. Bad times always return in world politics. I do not 

know how many Americans feel as if they are at war, since not too 

many of war’s characteristic hardships are being suffered by most 

people. I can assure you, though, that America’s allies in Europe 

certainly do not feel themselves to be countries at war. One of the 

burdens of greatness is that the sheriff of world order is obliged to 

undertake, quite disproportionately, the heavy lifting for security on 
behalf of what we term, not without some irony, the international 

community.8

The no-name post-Cold War era is well and truly over: it 

detonated on September 11, 2001 (9/11). For a decade, the threat 

board had been misleadingly naked of major strategic menace. 

Without the True North of the Soviet threat by which to set a reliable 

guiding vector, the American defense community did not really 

know what it was about or, more important, why it might be about 

it. For the better part of 10 years, we debated the idea and meaning 

of a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). This exciting concept 

appealed to historians and to the many technophiles among us. But 

the debate was not exactly overburdened with strategic argument. 

Historically viewed, strategic thought, as a practical subject, tends to 

slumber between episodes of security alarm. The French philosopher 

Raymond Aron made this point exactly, when he wrote in 1968 that 

“Strategic thought draws its inspiration each century, or rather at 

each moment of history, from the problems which events themselves 

pose.”9 This is the reason why bookshop shelves today are groaning 

under the burden of good, bad, and ugly works on terrorism and 

insurgency. Only 5 or 6 years ago, it was a struggle to find anything 

on irregular unpleasantness. Those of us with gray hair will recall 

that Nikita Khrushchev’s general declaration of support for wars of 

national liberation, and the enthusiastic response of the Kennedy 

administration to that challenge, sparked a similar flurry of studies 

of guerrilla warfare and related topics. No doubt some 30 or 40 years 

from now, in best or worst cyclical fashion, a new wave of irregular 

strategic happenings will trigger yet another burst of writing on 

“small wars” (wars between regulars and irregulars).10 Another 

generation of strategic thinkers will rediscover the obvious, or at 

least they will rediscover what we know today. They will invent an 

impressive-sounding concept, some equivalent to Fourth Generation 

Warfare, and give dazzling briefings to credulous officials in need of 

an icon of strategic assuredness.11

The idea that strategy has an essence is deeply attractive. It sounds 

like something incredibly rare and valuable which could be bottled 

and sold. Perhaps, belatedly, I can make my fortune selling Gray’s 

“essence of strategy.” Unfortunately, American understanding 

of strategy, and sound practice of it, is almost desperately rare. 
Strategic thinking and behavior worthy of the name are endangered 

activities in this country. This is hardly a stunningly original insight. 

But familiar though the criticism should be, it loses none of its bite 

for its longevity. Much as the U.S. defense community periodically 

is prodded by irregularist anxiety to worry about insurgency and 

terrorism, so from time to time it remembers the value of strategy. 

Many American defense professionals do not really know what 

strategy is or how it works.12 After all, responsibility for it is well 

above their pay grades, but they know that it is a Very Big and Very 

Important Matter. The pattern has been one wherein a politician 

or two, or a senior official, with a personal interest, has lit the fire 

of genuinely strategic discussion. The fire flares brightly for a brief 

spell, but then dies away for want of fuel. The fire is not fed because 

there is not much demand for the heat and light of truly strategic 

argument in the United States. Ours is not quite a strategy-free 

environment, but such a characterization errs less than we would 

like to admit.

Now that I have somewhat prepared the battlespace, it is high 

time to declare the plot of this inquiry.

The Plot, with Caveats.

I shall make an argument with three intimately connected points. 

In addition to the three points that carry the main burden of the 

argument, I offer six important caveats that bear particularly upon 

the contemporary debate over how to respond to irregular enemies. 

These are controversial.

1. War is war and strategy is strategy. Forget qualifying adjectives: irregular war; guerrilla war; nuclear war; naval strategy; 

counterinsurgent strategy. The many modes of warfare and 

tools of strategy are of no significance for the nature of war 

and strategy. A general theory of war and strategy, such as 

that offered by Clausewitz and in different ways also by Suntzu and Thucydides, is a theory with universal applicability.13

Because war and strategy are imperially authoritative concepts 

that accommodate all relevant modalities, a single general 

theory of war and strategy explains both regular and irregular 

warfare. Irregular warfare is, of course, different from regular 
warfare, but it is not different strategically. If one can think 

strategically, one has the basic intellectual equipment needed 

in order to perform competently in either regular or irregular 

conflict.14 Needless to add, understanding and performance 

are not synonymous.

2. The United States has shown a persisting strategy deficit,

which reflects and feeds a political deficit in its way of war.15

If you do not really function strategically, it does not much 

matter how competent you are at regular, or irregular, 

warfare—you are not going to collect the political rewards that 

American blood and money have paid for. American military 

power has been as awesome tactically as it has rarely been 

impressive operationally or strategically. Fighting should be 

guided by a theory of victory, otherwise the result tends to 

be “a strategy of tactics,” as Andrew Krepinevich observed 

of the United States in Vietnam.16 It is worth noting that the 

German armed forces in both world wars suffered from the 

same malady. Clausewitz did his best to educate his readers 

such that they could not be confused about the night-and-day 

difference between strategy and tactics, but, alas, his wisdom 

has not always dropped onto fertile soil. One would think 

that the following indelible definition and explanation must 

defy even determined efforts at misunderstanding. Probably 

it is the fate of Clausewitz more often to be ignored than 

misinterpreted. He advised that,

Strategy is the use of the engagement for the purpose of the 

war. The strategist must therefore define an aim for the entire 

operational side of the war that will be in accordance with its 

purpose. In other words, he will draft the plan of the war, and the 

aim will determine the series of actions intended to achieve it: he 

will, in fact, shape the individual campaigns and, within these, 

decide on the individual engagements.17

3. American public, strategic, and military culture is not 

friendly to the waging of irregular warfare, which is to say, 

not friendly to the conduct of the only kind of warfare that can 

be effective against irregular enemies. There is a traditional 

American way of war, outlined below, and its features do not 
favor the strengths required to succeed against irregulars.18 In 

the 1960s and more recently, American military culture has 

proved resistant to making radical adjustments in its style 

of warfare in order to meet the distinctive challenges posed 

by an irregular enemy. In both periods, new technology was 

harnessed to “the American way” in the expectation, or hope, 

that the confining rules for effectiveness in irregular combat 

could be broken. Sun-tzu’s insistence upon the need for selfknowledge in war is so familiar as to be a cliché.19 But it is so 

essential to the plot of my story that I shall not be deterred 

from emphasizing his argument. There is no little danger that the 

American military transformation now underway may disappoint 

in the benefits it confers. The principal problems will be neither 

cunning asymmetrical enemies, nor even a shortage of funds 

to carry it along. Instead, the prospective gains from America’s 

military transformation will be limited, if not frustrated, by the 

working of American public, strategic, and military culture. 

If one does not really “do strategy,” it will not much matter 

whether one’s armed forces are transformed or not. The issue 

is not only, or not primarily, How good will U.S. forces be 

tactically and operationally? Rather is it, How will they be 

used? And to achieve what ends will they be committed? Will 

those ends be selected and exploited by a coherent theory 

of victory so as to promote a desirable postwar political 

context?

In sum, the U.S. armed forces face two very different challenges 

to their effectiveness. First, their efforts are ever liable to be poorly 

rewarded because the United States has a persisting difficulty using 

force in strategically purposeful ways. Second, whether or not the 

country can raise its game and function strategically, American forces 

have had a long preferred style in warfare that is not well-suited 

to conflict with irregular enemies. These remain major challenges 

today.

The three elements that constitute the argument of this analysis 

do not make agreeable reading for those who are concerned to 

improve America’s effectiveness as the main guardian of the current 

world order. I lay stress on the potency of culture because it is a 
concept that is easily misused. Today it is popular, at long last 

I must add, to point to the need for greater cultural awareness of 

enemies and allies. Some 30 years ago, or even 20, it was not.20 Major 

General Robert Scales has called for a new culture-centric American 

approach to warfare.21 He is largely correct. But the problem, the real 

problem, is with us and our culture, and that problem truly is more 

of a condition than a challenge to be overcome. We may transform 

the U.S. armed forces in some respects, but it may not be possible to 

transform a preferred way of war that expresses enduring cultural 

realities. To risk banality, America is what it is, and its strategic 

culture faithfully reflects American historical, social, ideological, 

and material realities.22

Strategic history is hugely complex. This complexity is a happy 

hunting ground for professional historians, who thrive on the rich 

uniqueness and contingency of events. But for strategic theorists, 

defense analysts, and policy advocates and policymakers, complexity 

usually is anathema. After all, strategy is a practical business and 

the holy grail is not perfect knowledge or elegant theory, but rather 

solutions to real-world problems that work well enough. The U.S. 

defense community is more than amply populated with theoristadvocates who offer patent strategic medicines of variable promise 

as the answer to current woes. What the medicines have in common 

is that they tend to contain a single Big Idea, and, as powerful 

theories are wont to do, they simplify that complexity of which 

we have just spoken. Generally speaking, the Big Idea has merit, 

sometimes even great merit. Nonetheless each Big Idea, each patent 

solution to America’s contemporary strategic dilemmas, needs to be 

accompanied by a health warning. What follows are seven caveats 

to the triadic argument presented above. They do not invalidate or 

contradict that argument, but they combine to shout caveat emptor! 

These reservations have a direct bearing on judgment as to whether 

the American way of war is likely to prove sufficiently adaptable to 

be effective in combating irregular enemies.

The first caveat warns of the danger of imposing an undue clarity 

of strategic distinction between regular and irregular warfare. It is a 

highly expedient distinction, and it is one which is easily defensible. 

Moreover, it is an important difference. As with all of these caveats, 

the fault lies not with the idea, but rather with its exploitation in an 
oversimplified manner. Bear in mind the ambiguity about the notion 

of “irregular enemies.” That can mean enemies of any genus who 

choose to fight in an irregular mode; or it may refer to foes who are 

deemed to be irregular by definition because they are not the licensed 

sword arms of officially recognized polities. In practice, many 

wars have been waged both regularly and irregularly, sometimes 

simultaneously, and often with shifting emphases. Vietnam, 1965-

75, was a classic example of a war characterized by all modes of 

combat. Prior to Tet 1968, the war was primarily unconventional 

and irregular on the part of the Viet Cong, but there was that 

complicating, growing presence of People’s Army of Vietnam units. 

After Tet, for reason of the debilitating attrition suffered by the 

irregulars and the failure of a general rising to occur, the war became 

ever more regular. Iraq in 2004-05 has witnessed irregular violence 

aplenty, but occasionally that violence has been manifested as highly 

organized insurgent action in defense of symbolic or important 

urban terrain. The beginning of wisdom probably is to be achieved 

by reacquainting oneself with Mao Tse-tung’s three-stage theory of 

protracted revolutionary war.23 Political agitation, guerrilla warfare, 

and regular conventional combat may be distinct phases in a struggle, 

but they can be undertaken in parallel, and, if one has overreached, 

he can step back from a phase.

This caveat against undue neatness in the categorization of conflict 

carries the warning that one size of military response probably will 

not fit the whole of the conflict in question, let alone the whole of the 

military context of an apparently emerging era.

The second caveat is the rather brutal point that merely to 

understand how insurgency works, and therefore how counterinsurgency (COIN) should be pursued, is not necessarily to be able 

to succeed at COIN. To those whose military education has been 

overwhelmingly regular and conventional, the secrets of COIN may 

appear exotic, not to say counterintuitive. Indeed, as we shall explain 

later, the requirements of COIN do pose what amounts to a full 

frontal challenge to the dominant traditional American way of war. 

But the international experience of COIN, successful and otherwise, 

has yielded a tactical and operational lore that is beyond intelligent 

challenge. To state the matter directly, we know how to do COIN. 

There is no mystery to it. It is not a dark art capable of mastery only 
by a relatively few elite soldiers with colored berets. Nonetheless, 

in conflict after conflict, the most elementary, yet vitally important, 

rules for behavior in COIN have a way of being flouted. The results 

are typically, predictably, unfortunate.

I would like to be able to claim that the requirements of COIN are 

so well understood that the problem, self-evidently, must lie with the 

impediments to implementation. However, that may be too generous 

a view. It is at least plausible to argue that some missionary work 

remains to be done before insurgency and COIN are comprehended 

as well as their regular counterparts.24 Of course, ignorance is some 

form of excuse. It would be more difficult to excuse incompetence 

at COIN if the military and its political masters do understand the 

distinctive challenge, but elect to behave in the manner that they 

prefer, regardless. This monograph is concerned not so much about 

the state of understanding of COIN in the U.S. armed forces, but 

rather about the difficulties that impede their ability to translate that 

comprehension into effective performance. To understand is not 

necessarily to be able to behave appropriately.25

Caveat three is a reminder of what we should know already, but 

can be apt to forget when we try to turn conviction into capability 

and behavior. And by behavior I refer to action at all levels from 

tactical up to the grand strategic and even to high policy. Specifically, 

irregular enemies and irregular forms of warfare do not, and can 

never, present us with a single challenge that calls for a single master 

doctrinal response. Recent analyses by Steven Metz and Raymond 

Millen, as well as by Michael Morris—all in work sponsored by the 

Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, one must 

add—point out that insurgencies can be of a liberation or a national 

variety, and even that binary distinction lends itself to much further 

fine-tuning.26 Morris’s fascinating prize essay on al Qaeda speaks all 

too eloquently and persuasively to the variety of contexts for irregular 

conflict, the complexity of the connections between terrorism and 

insurgency, the ability of organizations to shape-shift quite radically, 

and the wide range of tactics that irregulars can employ in different 

circumstances. In Iraq, to select an example not totally at random, 

the motive force of ethno-religious opportunism in a context of some 

political chaos, has led insurgent terrorists to neglect the hearts and 
10

minds of rival communities in favor of brutal military atrocities. That 

kind of irregular enemy has to be defeated, yes defeated, in a manner 

which even Ralph Peters would unreservedly approve.27 So the clear 

message in this caveat, which we develop later, is that the U.S. Army 

must transform itself to be more adaptable. It cannot apply a simple 

template or rely on power-point wisdom that promises victory over 

irregulars in “five easy steps.” Each historical case is different. It is 

only at the level of strategy that one size fits all.

Caveat four is that the theory and practice of COIN should not be 

regarded as a panacea. COIN doctrine and capabilities may become 

fashionable in desperate reaction against the slim rewards from an 

aggressively pursued attritional strategy. When a mode of warfare 

is blessed officially and attracts widespread favorable notice, the 

critical faculties of new devotees often take a vacation. Classic COIN 

methods will not always be feasible, no matter how expert are the 

military practitioners and their civilian partners. COIN takes time, 

usually a great deal of it. Also, it requires a highly plausible political 

story and framework to support and advance. The necessary political 

underpinning for COIN may or may not be available. Moreover, the 

historical slate may not be sufficiently clean. The would-be COINers 

might well have prejudiced their mission fatally through the manner 

of their previous conduct of warfare, which is to say conduct prior 

to their serious resort to the COIN option. In short, COIN expertise 

and capabilities are essential and frequently will bear fruit. But 

they need some permissive conditions, not the least of which is the 

political tolerance of the American public with respect to an enemy 

who is using the war’s temporal dimension as a weapon.28 There is 

some danger that the American defense community today, having 

rediscovered the obvious merits of COIN, will respond with a cry of 

“Eureka,” and proceed as if there is something magically effective 

about it as the all-purpose solution to many irregular enemies. To 

repeat, COIN strategy is not a panacea.

Caveat number five, still on the COIN theme, is the intentionally 

rather subversive thought that it may not be politically sensible, 

or strategically profitable, for American forces to be extensively 

engaged in counterinsurgency operations. This caveat bears on my 

final warning note, treated below as caveat seven, on the problems 

with culture. There is no question but that the U.S. armed forces, 
11

and the Army most especially, need to be adept at COIN. Similarly, 

there is no doubt that COIN, in common with the Special Forces, 

was not exactly held in high official regard for many years.29 There 

was, indeed there is, a capability and doctrinal deficit to make up. 

However, recognition that COIN prowess is at a premium in the global 

strategic context of today does not mean that it should be practiced 

very often by Americans. Simply because America’s traditional way 

of war, favoring firepower, mobility, and an aggressive hunt for the 

main body of the foe, is apt to be ineffective against elusive irregular 

foes, it does not necessarily follow that COIN, by Americans, is the 

superior alternative. As a general rule, the heavy lifting in COIN 

should be performed by local forces, regular and irregular, military 

and civil. It would be inappropriate for the U.S. superpower to 

commit a large fraction of its armed forces, its Army in particular, 

to COIN duties. That activity can be performed successfully only by 

those who truly have the benefit of local knowledge and who intend 

not merely “to stay the course,” but literally to stay. Americans can 

help (as well as sometimes hinder). But history and common sense 

both tell us that, inevitably, the more active American soldiers are 

in providing security for local clients, the more they undermine the 

political legitimacy of those clients.

My sixth caveat reminds that war and warfare are different 

concepts, and the difference is a matter of great importance. War 

is a total relationship—political, legal, social, and military. Warfare 

is the conduct of war, generally by military means. A narrow focus 

upon warfare proper, which is natural enough for armed forces, can 

obscure the need to function grand strategically, in doing which 

military behavior is only one dimension of the effort, albeit a vital 

one. In war with irregular enemies, actual warfare is unlikely to be 

the dominant mode of fruitful engagement. Since irregular foes will 

rarely concentrate and present themselves for open battle, the COIN 

struggle must largely take the form of political, intelligence, economic, 

social, and police activity, always supported by the heavy mailed 

first when opportunity beckons. Busy professionals with orders to 

follow typically are not oversensitive to context. But in wars of all 

kinds, warfare, bluntly stated, fighting, occurs in the context of the 

whole war, and it needs to be conducted in such a way that it fits the 

character of the war and thereby yields useful strategic effectiveness. 
12

When the key distinction and relationship between war and warfare 

are not understood, the inevitable result is misdirected warfare, 

virtually no matter whether it is prosecuted efficiently.30 We will let 

Clausewitz restate this caveat. He insists that “Everything in strategy 

is very simple, but that does not mean that everything is very easy. 

Once it has been determined, from the political conditions, what a 

war is meant to achieve and what it can achieve, it is easy to chart the 

course.”31 This final judgment is a Clausewitzian exaggeration, but 

he lays proper emphasis upon the nesting of military action, and the 

direction of that action by strategy, within the political context of the 

whole war.

My seventh and final caveat to the grand argument of this 

monograph is a warning parallel to that already issued concerning 

COIN theory and technique. Specifically, the undoubted significance 

of culture—public, strategic and military—in war, warfare, and 

strategy, recognized today as never before in recent times at least, 

is encouraging its elevation to the status of panacea. Appreciating 

the disadvantages of their local ignorance. American soldiers wisely 

endorse cultural awareness, if not expertise, as a key, perhaps the key, 

to the achievement of enhanced effectiveness. Obviously for COIN to 

be successful, cultural education is not merely desirable, it is literally 

essential. This monograph is not at all critical of the armed forces’ 

new-found enthusiasm for education in war’s cultural dimension. 

On the contrary, this author has campaigned for a quarter-century 

on behalf of just such a development.32 The problem lies with the 

iconic adoption of culture as the answer. It is not. Recognition of the 

importance of culture is a part of the answer to the question of how 

to be effective in war against irregular (and regular!) enemies. But 

culture is a difficult concept to define and grasp. Even if grasped, 

it is extremely difficult to deal with or function in an alien culture 

of marked variance from one’s own. Moreover, culture does not 

encompass all that matters in the waging of war. For example, no 

measure of cultural empathy would suffice to compensate for a 

missing political framework or for military incompetence.

The United States has two distinct problems in coping with the 

subject of this inquiry, problems that are flagged with scant subtlety in 

the title. Problem one is what I will call a “strategy deficit.” The United 

States often has difficulty with strategy because, unsurprisingly, the 
13

“normal” theory of American civil-military relations does its best 

to close down the strategy bridge that should unite politicians and 

soldiers in an unequal but never-ending dialogue over means and 

ends.33

The second problem is the challenge of coping with irregular 

enemies. As we discuss below, there is difficulty in adapting what 

fairly may be termed the traditional American way of war in a 

manner such that it can be effective against unlike, or asymmetrical, 

enemies.

It is perhaps arguable which of the two problems is the more 

serious, the strategy deficit or the cultural hindrances to adaptation to 

meet irregular foes. It might be argued that a new excellence in COIN, 

resting in part on a military performance enhanced by education in 

cultural awareness, will solve most of America’s current dilemmas 

in dealing with irregular enemies. I decline to believe this new 

excellence would work, valuable though such a development would 

be. It is the firm opinion of this author that, unless America “does 

strategy,” which is to say relates military and other means to its political 

ends in a purposeful, realistic, and adaptable way, improvements in 

military prowess ultimately must yield disappointing results.

The Essence of Strategy.

The key to strategy, certainly to thinking strategically, is the 

simple and rather off-putting question, “So what?” Strategists are 

not interested in the actual conduct of regular or irregular war. Their 

concern is what that conduct means for the course and consequences 

of a conflict. Tactical and operational excellence is always desirable, 

even if not always strictly necessary. Since, inter alia, warfare is 

a competition in learning between imperfect military machines, 

fortunately one need only be good enough. Tactical excellence is 

quality wasted if it is not employed purposefully to advance political 

goals. Of course, this is much easier to advocate than to do. Recall the 

old saying that “nothing is impossible to the person who does not 

have to do it.” So what is strategy and how should one characterize 

its invaluable essence? What should be poured into those bottles of 

“Essence of Strategy?” I will suggest four overlapping ingredients as 

together constituting my preferred “essence.”
14

First, following Carl von Clausewitz (who else), I must insist that 

strategy is about the use made of force and the threat of force for the 

goals of policy.34 It ought to be hard to confuse the crucial distinction 

between behavior and its consequences. Nonetheless, many people 

manage to do so with consummate ease. “Strategic” does not mean 

very important, nuclear, independently decisive, or long-range. No 

weapon or mode of warfare, including terrorism, can be inherently 

strategic. All can have strategic effect. I freely admit that the vital 

concept of strategic effect is as hard to assess as it is central to proper 

understanding of our subject.

Second, strategy is all about the relationship between means 

and ends. Again, this is easy to specify, but fiendishly difficult to 

manage competently. It is always tempting to adopt the attitude that 

we warriors will win the fights and let politics take care of itself. Or, 

for a cognate approach, if we keep winning tactically, our strategy 

will flow agreeably from the cumulative verdicts of the battlefield. 

In practice, a war may thus be waged all but innocent of political 

guidance beyond an injunction to win. If the politicians focus on 

ends, as they should, and soldiers are consumed with means, it is 

probable that no one will be keeping open the strategy bridge that 

should be linking military means with political goals. There needs 

to be a continuous, albeit “unequal,” dialogue between civilian and 

soldier. War and warfare are permeated with political meaning and 

consequences. A competent supreme command knows this and 

behaves accordingly. This dialogue, however, carries implications 

for civilian participation in military decisions in wartime which run 

contrary to the preferred military way in American civil-military 

relations.35

Third, if the strict instrumentality of force is not to be neglected 

or forgotten, and this is the most important ingredient in the essence 

of strategy, there has to be a constant dialogue between policymaker 

and soldier. Policy is nonsense if the troops cannot do it “in the field.” 

Or, looking at it from another angle, the troops may be so effective 

in action that policy is left gasping far behind the unexpected 

opportunities opened by events. On War tells us that “[t]he conduct 

of war, in its great outlines, is therefore policy itself.” The reader has 

already been told that “at the highest level, the art of war turns into 
15

policy—but a policy conducted by fighting battles rather than by 

sending diplomatic notes.”36

Fourth and finally, in case the point should fade from view under 

the pressure of military events, politics must rule. To quote another 

Clausewitzian maxim, “War is simply a continuation of political 

intercourse, with the addition of other means.”37

The most essential of the four ingredients that, when mixed, 

become the essence of strategy, is the instrumentality of the threat 

or use of force. In practice, the pressures and demands of the actual 

waging of war have a way of relegating policy purpose to the 

background. All too often, policy may seem to serve war, rather than 

war serve policy.

One may well ask, if the essence of strategy is so simple, why is it 

so difficult to “do strategy” well? I will suggest a few answers. First, 

strategy by its essential nature is extraordinarily difficult to do.38

Strategy is the bridge connecting the military instrument with the 

guidance of political purpose. Strategic expertise is neither military 

skill nor is it policy wisdom. It is the use of the military for political 

ends. Who is expert in strategy? Neither soldiers nor politicians are 

trained strategists. Indeed, excellence as a soldier on one side, and 

high political gifts on the other, are both off the mark as proof of 

strategic competence. Moreover, it is not entirely self-evident that 

competence in strategy can be taught. After all, by definition it 

requires the exercise of judgment about the value of one currency, 

military effort, in terms of another, political effect. Since war, at its 

core, is a contest of wills, the judgment required of the strategist 

strictly requires knowledge and skills that are unlikely to be widely 

available, if they are available at all. Not for nothing did Clausewitz 

claim that “[w]ar is the realm of chance.”39

The second difficulty worth highlighting is the cultural and skillbias contrast between the soldier and the civilian politician. This 

problem area is especially relevant to the American context and 

its dominant traditional way of war. Theory insists that policy and 

military means must march together, indeed they are one and the 

same, though with policy in the driving seat. However, policy goals, 

war and peace aims, should be chosen, and perhaps periodically 

revised, only in the light of military probabilities. All too obviously, 

the professional soldier and the no less professional politician, 
16

though culturally both American, in fact inhabit quite distinctive 

subcultural universes that have different rules and are marked by 

distinctive skill biases. In practice, true two-way communication of 

often unwelcome news can be difficult. Clausewitz does not address 

this problem, beyond offering the sage advice that “a certain grasp of 

military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy.”40 Well, 

it may be vital, but what if it is missing? Or what if the politicians 

and generals do not respect, like, or trust each other? What if they 

do not share certain key values? To put the matter directly, how 

much influence should America’s Commander-in-Chief be willing 

to exert over the direction and course of military events in time of 

war?41 Should the President leave military decisions to the military, 

even though he or she knows from Clausewitz, and from historical 

experience, that warfare is inalienably political in its consequences?

Third, although the concept of strategic effect is crystal clear 

as an abstraction, how, exactly, is it to be measured? Just what is 

the exchange rate between military success and desired political 

consequence? Especially in the conduct of warfare against irregulars, 

what is the legal currency for the measurement of strategic effect? 

It is easily understandable, albeit unfortunate, why the mystery 

of strategic effect is apt to be solved by soldiers and officials who 

seize upon whatever can be counted as they take the default choice 

of favoring attrition. Bodies, pacified villages, reopened roads, 

declining incident rate, pick your preferences. Again, one must cite 

the strategist’s question, “So what?” The strategist must know what 

military behavior means for the political purpose of the enterprise. 

Body counts need to be interpreted for their strategic value. They 

cannot simply be declared triumphantly as tactical achievements 

with self-evident meaning.

Fourth, strategy is difficult to do as an orderly and wellintegrated exercise in the matching of means to ends because of 

the high inconvenience of the semi-independent behavior of an 

intelligent enemy. Under the exigencies of actual war against a live 

and somewhat unpredictable enemy, regular or irregular—it does 

not matter which—military necessity may compel military behavior 

that is very undesirable in its political consequences. Remember the 

grim irony from Vietnam: “We had to destroy the village in order 
17

to save it.”42 It is amazing how often supposed defense experts and 

strategic thinkers neglect to take proper account of the enemy on his 

own terms.

Finally, friction and the other elements of the climate of war, 

which is to say, “danger, exertion, uncertainty, and chance,” are 

entirely capable of thwarting the best laid of strategic plans.43 Also, 

bad weather, human error, and other inconveniences are not to 

be discounted. Things always go wrong. That is to be expected. A 

sound strategy is one that is tolerant of some of history’s unpleasant 

surprises. Adaptability must be regarded as a cardinal military 

virtue.

Irregular Warfare.

Strategy is strategy regardless of circumstance, but the military 

and related behavior that strategy guides and exploits differ radically 

from case to case. As usual, our Prussian philosopher was as clear as 

could be on this vital matter.

[T]his way of looking at it [war as an instrument of policy] will show us 

how wars must vary with the nature of their motives and of the situations 

which give rise to them. The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching 

act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to 

establish by that test [political motives behind policy] the kind of war on 

which they are embarking, neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it 

into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic 

questions and the most comprehensive.44

The U.S. armed forces excel at high- and mid-intensity regular 

warfare. As explained earlier, regular and irregular modes of warfare 

often coexist. Also, it is true that elite units of regular forces are 

trained to wage war irregularly or unconventionally.45 For the other 

side of the coin, irregular soldiers do not always confine their combat 

to a guerrilla style. They will stand and fight in a regular manner 

either when they have no choice, or, more likely, when they believe 

they have a crushing tactical advantage over some isolated element 

of the regular enemy’s forces. We should recall that following the 

destruction of most of the fighting power of the Vietcong in the Tet 

Offensive and the clashes that came in its wake, the Vietnam war 
18

became ever more regular in style. Paradoxically, with the change 

in command at Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MACV) 

from General William Westmoreland to General Creighton Abrams 

(formerly a George Patton protégé of armored maneuver) in March 

1968, the American effort spearheaded by the intelligent and already 

existing Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support 

program, reaped real dividends from its proper conduct of COIN.46

Meanwhile, the enemy was condemned to expose himself to repeated 

regular defeat. None of which really mattered, of course, because 

the American political center of gravity of the war was well on the 

path to self-destruction.

It is plain to see that irregular enemies and irregular warfare 

comprise richly varied ranges of possibilities. But since this 

monograph has no ambition to be encyclopedic in its coverage, the 

focus here is on one slice of the irregularity spectrum, albeit by far 

the most important. Specifically, the purpose of this discussion is 

to provide a clear marker, a standard, against which, in the next 

section, we can appraise the traditional American way of war.47 If 

America’s future strategic history is going to be heavily populated 

with irregular enemies, foes who certainly will be obliged to fight 

irregularly save in truly exceptional circumstances, it is necessary 

for us to have a clear understanding of the distinctive character of 

the irregular strategic challenge. I must emphasize, yet again, that it 

is only the character of the strategic challenge that is distinctive, not 

its nature.

As the Army proceeds with its long-haul transformation, it must 

never forget that in the future it may well (indeed, in the opinion 

of this theorist, it will) have to face competent regular enemies 

as well as a crowd of irregular foes. However, there is relatively 

little likelihood of the Army finding itself improperly prepared 

with ideas, doctrine, trained people, organization, and equipment 

for regular warfare, although it could happen. Nonetheless, this 

analysis is dealing with trouble enough in the high realms of 

strategy and, at this juncture and later, of irregular warfare. We elect 

not to venture here into the woods of controversy over the future of 

regular, conventional combat.48 Instead, our focus is on insurgency 

and terrorism. The irregular enemies alluded to in the title of this 

monograph are assumed to be insurgents and terrorists. The two 
19

categories overlap, although in principle there is a distinction 

between the two. Terrorism, in common with guerrilla war, is 

simply a mode of warfare; it carries no particular political baggage. 

In principle, anyone can do it, and for any set of motives. Insurgency, 

however, is a concept having considerable political content, and it 

constitutes by far the more serious menace to order and stability. 

None of the popular definitions are beyond challenge, but that 

offered by Krepinevich captures the heart of the matter well enough 

for our purposes: “An insurgency is a protracted struggle conducted 

methodically, step by step, in order to obtain specific intermediate 

objectives leading finally to the overthrow of the existing order.”49

Krepinevich is unduly specific as to method, but he does highlight 

the point that an insurgency is all about an armed effort to effect 

revolutionary, at least radical and decisive, change. It is certain that 

terrorism will be one of the tactics employed by insurgents. But if an 

irregular enemy confines itself, or is compelled to be limited, to acts 

of terrorism, the threat that it poses to political stability is an order of 

magnitude less severe than is the menace from insurgency. Terrorism 

is an expensive and occasionally tragic nuisance for a society. But an 

organization that expresses its frustration, anger, and ambition solely 

by committing isolated outrages, is an organization that is going 

nowhere and can pose no real danger to a basically stable society. 

Needless to add, perhaps, if terrorists are to become insurgents, 

usually they need considerable assistance from what should be the 

forces of order. The struggle between terrorists and counterterrorists 

is very much a contest over legitimacy in the eyes of the public. For 

the purpose of this inquiry, it is useful and appropriate to treat 

insurgency and terrorism as comprising a single class of behavior, 

here termed irregular warfare.50 What follows is a terse description 

of the character of the irregular warfare of insurgency and terrorism. 

Historical examples abound, but we are almost required to think 

principally of two major, and really unavoidable, cases in particular; 

Vietnam and Iraq 2003 to the present. I must emphasize that the 

intention here is not to shed new light on irregular warfare, for that 

subject is very well-understood indeed, at least in theory. Rather, the 

aim is to expose the key features of such warfare so that the depth of 

the challenge to the traditional American way of war can be assayed 

accurately.
20

Lest this analysis be accused of undue simplification, it recognizes 

that insurgency is not a simple, standard phenomenon. It follows 

that COIN must similarly adapt to the specific character of irregular 

challenge in question. An insurgency may move and breed among 

the people, the rural population in the Maoist model or urban 

dwellers in more advanced societies. Alternatively, and especially 

if it favors terrorist tactics, irregulars may devote little attention 

to political efforts at proselytization, placing their faith instead on 

the putative power of the violent deed. By military action, they 

intend to demonstrate the impotence of the government to provide 

protection. This foco theory of revolutionary warfare—focusing 

narrowly on violence per se—has a decidedly mixed record, as Che 

Guevara demonstrated all too personally in Bolivia in October 1967. 

Despite the wide range of terrorist-insurgent challenges, this author 

is persuaded that a single “working theory” of irregular warfare 

and how best to oppose it has sufficient integrity to deserve our 

confidence.

What do we know about countering the irregular warfare of 

insurgency and terrorism?

1. Protect the People. In COIN, the center of gravity is the people 

and their protection. The battlefield of most significance is the 

mind of the public. If people can be protected and believe 

they are protected, COIN is well on the way to success, 

if not outright victory. But to accord first priority to direct 

population protection is not a tactic that has wide appeal to 

a military establishment imbued with an aggressive spirit 

understandably reluctant to appear to surrender the initiative 

to the enemy.

2. Intelligence Is King. The key to operational advantage in 

COIN is timely, reliable intelligence. If COIN is to root out an 

insurgent-terrorist infrastructure, it must have information 

which can come only from the local public at large, or from 

defecting insurgents. Again, if the people feel that they are 

protected, that they have a good enough future with the 

established authorities, and that the authorities are going to 

win, the intelligence problem should solve itself. If insurgents 

lose in the minds of the people, they lose, period. With superior 
21

intelligence, COIN wins. Insurgents or terrorists survive only 

by remaining elusive, by hiding in the sea of the people or in 

remote areas, which renders them ineffective. If the people 

can no longer be trusted to protect the terrorists’ identities 

and safe houses, they cannot function safely. In short, a 

hostile public, or even just an unsympathetic one, translates 

as a social context nonpermissive for irregular warriors.

3. Ideology Matters. It is a general truth that every insurgency 

mobilizes around a political cause. There are apparent 

exceptions, as always, but typically insurgents rally to a potent 

idea, political or religious, or both. The insurgent action in 

Iraq from 2004 to the present appears to violate this principle, 

seeming in many cases to be driven more by a determination 

simply to ferment chaos than by any particular creed or 

vision of the just society. But the history of insurgency and 

COIN is quite unambiguous in its thoroughgoing validation 

of Clausewitz’s insistence upon the political character of all 

military behavior.51 Because COIN is, and can be explained 

as, a set of rules and techniques, as a method for winning 

an irregular conflict, the technique lends itself to being 

mistaken for the “victory kit.” The French colonial army, for 

example, learned in Indochina what to do and what not to 

do against a revolutionary insurgent enemy. Educated by 

defeat in Southeast Asia and in the POW camps of the Viet 

Minh, thoughtful French paratroopers, legionnaires, and 

light infantrymen were ready to wage la guerre moderne in 

Algeria.52 They waged modern war, which is to say irregular 

war, most effectively. Unfortunately for them, they failed 

to secure a firm intellectual grasp of the truth that war is a 

political act and that people are political animals. Tactical 

competence does not magically enable the counterinsurgent 

to manufacture an adequate political story. Modern war, 

French-style, could work tactically and operationally in 

Algeria, but never strategically. The reason was that the 

French military effort, no matter how tactically excellent and 

intellectually sophisticated, was always politically hollow. 

The French had, and could promise, no political idea with 
22

a potent appeal to the Moslem populace. The COIN force 

must work in support of a credible, publicly attractive, 

political vision. That vision cannot be imposed from outside 

the society. More to the point, Western politicians, soldiers, 

and administrators, cannot “build nations,” as the arrogant 

and absurd, but all too familiar, concept of “nation-building” 

suggests. As always, there will be an exception or two. If a 

country is utterly defeated and is occupied by the victor, then 

it is possible for political reconstruction to be effected, even in 

the face of an alien culture. One thinks of Japan after World 

War II. However, even in that case, much that is uniquely 

Japanese survived the cultural assault from abroad.

4. The Irregular Enemy Is Not Usually the Target. Since the 

battlefield in COIN is in people’s minds and the protection of 

the people is the overriding priority, it follows that military 

plans for COIN should be radically different from those 

adopted for regular warfare. It would be a gross exaggeration 

to argue that insurgent forces are irrelevant, but that assertion, 

shocking to many conventional military minds, contains a 

vital verity. When success is possible, which is not always 

the case, COIN wins in the minds, and preferably the hearts 

(though just minds may well suffice), of a public that the COIN 

forces have persuaded will be protected and provided a better 

future. Victory will not be the product of engagements, even 

successful engagements, with insurgents, though military 

defeats will be damaging because they undermine the 

crucial protection story. If the irregular enemy is so foolish 

as to present itself in the open for mechanized destruction, so 

much the better, always provided the COIN elements do not 

waste whole neighborhoods in a ruthless quest to maximize 

the body count of suspected enemies. However, while an 

irregular war can be lost militarily, generally it cannot be 

won in that mode. If an insurgency is allowed to mature from 

Mao’s second phase of guerrilla action into the third and final 

phase of open conventional combat, then indeed military 

events can prove conclusive. Nonetheless, from the point of 

view of COIN, the irregular enemy is more of a distraction 

than a focus for aggressive attention.
23

Insurgents and counterinsurgents are competing for the 

allegiance, or more often just the acquiescence, of the public. 

Actual combat between regular and irregular warriors has 

no strategic significance save with respect to the reputation 

of the belligerents in the eyes of the public, and with regard 

to the actual protection of the people. Contrary to traditional 

military practice, the objectives in COIN are neither the 

irregular enemy’s forces, nor, with a vital reservation, the 

territory that they occupy and use. Insurgents’ sanctuary areas 

are essential targets, because an irregular foe can be defeated 

logistically if it is forcibly deprived of reliable supply and 

intelligence and, as a result, is compelled to operate in ever 

closer proximity to the more heavily populated areas where 

the COIN forces should be deployed most extensively. That 

giant theorist of irregular warfare, Colonel Charles Callwell, 

writing a century ago about the lessons to be drawn from the 

colonial “small war” experiences of several imperial powers, 

averred as a central problem one which we need to treat 

with great reserve in the different conditions of today. He 

noted the near truism that “[i]t is the difficulty of bringing 

the foe to action which, as a rule, forms the most unpleasant 

characteristic of these wars [regulars against irregulars].”53

Contrary to Callwell’s message, however, this monograph 

maintains that determination to bring an elusive irregular 

enemy to battle more often than not proves to be a snare and 

a delusion. Victory, to repeat, is not won in COIN over the 

bodies of dead insurgents, probably not even if one imposes 

attrition on a Homeric scale.

5. Unity of Effort. Irregular warfare is, or at least should be, 

waged on both sides grand strategically. All of the instruments 

of persuasion, coercion, and influence need to be employed. 

The conflict will be political, ideological, economic, diplomatic, 

and military in several modes. The irregular enemy will not 

aspire to defeat the U.S. Army in battle, but it does not need 

to. If the Army strives to win a military victory, it will only 

exhaust itself, frustrate its domestic supporters, and dissipate 

its strengths chasing a chimera. To beat an insurgency, when 
24

that is feasible, the COIN forces must organize and direct a 

strict unity of civilian and military effort with a single chain 

of command, and with political authority unambiguously in 

supreme command. While all warfare is political, irregular 

warfare is the most political of all, if one may be permitted to 

qualify an absolute. Military action has to be subordinated to 

political priorities. And, as we keep noting, the top priority 

must be the security of the majority of the population. The 

argument that the most effective way to protect people is to 

chase after their irregular tormentors, wherever they happen 

to be, simply does not work, attractive though it can sound. 

An analogy with piracy is false. Undoubtedly the superior 

solution to piracy was to take the initiative and attack the 

pirates at home. Unfortunately, few insurgencies provide the 

functional equivalents of pirates’ lairs. For a better maritime 

analogy the introduction of convoying during World Wars 

I and II compelled the “pirate,” that is, the submarine, to 

seek out civilian targets where they were protected. The 

experience of two world wars demonstrated conclusively 

that narrowly focused protection of the convoys per se rather 

than the conduct of aggressive hunting parties sweeping the 

seas looking for raiders, was the path to success. Parallel logic 

holds for the conduct of irregular warfare on land. To return 

to our theme, the focus must never shift from the true center 

of gravity of the struggle, the minds of the people. And COIN 

can succeed only when the military instrument is employed 

as part of a team that is led by political judgment and places its 

highest priority on real-time intelligence gathering from the 

public and solid police work. Of course, it is much easier to 

specify these desirables than it is to deliver them in practice.

6. Culture Is Crucial. In regular warfare between regular 

armies, the terms of engagement and character of military 

behavior will be so substantially similar as almost to 

warrant description as transcultural. The belligerents will 

share strengths and weaknesses in a tolerable common 

contemporary “grammar” of war, as Clausewitz expressed 

the matter.54 Cultural differences will weigh in the balance, 
25

as each side adapts ideas and equipment to suit its own 

circumstances, traditions, preferences, and service politics.55

However, one can imagine a decisive military outcome to 

regular warfare achieved virtually regardless of the cultural 

differences between the protagonists. That is a deliberate 

slight exaggeration. It contrasts usefully with a condition 

of irregular warfare, of insurgency or pure terrorism. In 

the latter case, underappreciated differences in culture by 

a well-meaning but foreign COIN effort are near certain to 

prove fatal for the COIN enterprise. Culture refers to social 

capital. It means the beliefs, attitudes, habits of mind, and 

preferred ways of behavior of a social group. And, to repeat 

yet again, irregular wars are won or lost in the minds of the 

local people. If we do not understand what is in those minds, 

what they value and how much they value it, success secured 

against terrorists and other insurgents will most likely be only 

temporary.

Culture is crucial, both ours and theirs. “Theirs” for 

the obvious reason just outlined; restated, the local people 

decide who wins. “Ours” because we can approach and seek 

to understand other cultures only through the inevitably 

distorting prism of our own. The fact is that America is a 

proud, somewhat ideological, superpower, eager to spread 

and exert its “soft power” but prepared to apply the mailed 

fist of its hard power.56 The very strength of Americans’ 

cultural identity is both a blessing and a hindrance. On 

balance, as an ingredient in the potions prepared to reduce an 

insurgency, American culture is a barrier to understanding 

and effective behavior. To help offset the influence of what 

Americans cannot help being, which is to say, themselves, the 

armed forces have to be educated both formally and by the 

experience gained through direct local exposure. It should be 

needless to add that if the Army wages irregular warfare from 

a series of “Fort Apaches,” isolated from the local people, not 

only does it look hostile, but it cannot acquire the familiarity 

with local opinion and mores that is so essential for success in 

COIN. American lives may be saved by fortification, but the 
26

strategic price is likely acceptance of a high risk of mission 

failure.

7. No Sanctuaries and No External Support. It is standard COIN 

doctrine to attempt to deny insurgents safe areas where they 

can rest, rally, regroup, recover, train, and whence they can 

sally forth at their discretion to wreak havoc. The sanctuaries 

may be protected by rugged natural terrain, complex urban 

terrain, or porous international frontiers. Every military, 

or quasi-military, effort requires a secure base area. COIN 

doctrine is correct to identify enemy sanctuaries as important 

targets. However, it must be apparent from our analysis that 

the key to defeating an insurgency cannot lie in the removal of 

sanctuaries, important though that must be. Indeed, there is 

some danger that a COIN effort could become so persuaded of 

the significance of sanctuary areas and assistance from abroad, 

and of the need to interdict the latter, that the truly decisive 

battlespace would be downgraded. To explain, if the COIN 

campaign is working well, irregulars’ sanctuaries and foreign 

support will not much matter. The struggle will be won or 

lost not by harassing the irregulars’ logistics, but rather by 

shaping the minds and convictions of the target people. Given 

an American way of war that stresses aggressive offensive 

action against enemy forces, sanctuaries and foreign supply 

lines will be tempting targets for the diversion of military 

effort to remote areas, probably far away from the centers of 

population.

8. Time Is a Weapon. Of all the many dimensions of strategy, 

time is the most intractable. Compensation for deficiencies 

elsewhere and corrections of errors are usually possible. But 

time lost is irrecoverable. The Western theory of war and 

strategy pays too little attention to war’s temporal dimension. 

In particular, there is too little recognition that time itself can 

be a weapon. It can be used purposefully to compensate for 

material or other weakness, and to expose and stress the 

vulnerability of the enemy. In irregular warfare, the materially 

disadvantaged combatant is obliged to try to win slowly, for 

no other reason than he cannot win swiftly. When Americans 
27

elect to participate in an irregular conflict, they need to know 

this. Also, they need to know that there may well be no 

practical, feasible way in which they can hasten a favorable 

outcome of a decisive military kind, an outcome that is all 

but certain to be unattainable. The insurgents will behave 

like the guerrillas described so poetically by T. E. Lawrence 

in his classic if overwritten theorizing in the piece “Guerrilla 

Warfare,” where he describes guerrillas who attempt to deny 

our regulars worthwhile targets.57

As explained already, a well-educated COIN force will 

be relatively untroubled by the elusiveness of the irregular 

enemy. It will understand that the battle is won through 

gaining the confidence of the people the regulars can protect, 

not by the number of dead insurgent bodies that can be strewn 

across distant parts of the landscape. However, COIN is slow, 

can be tedious, will face setbacks, may well be challenged by 

less than ideal local political partners, and a host of other 

predictable difficulties. Most of the insurgents will be local, 

American COIN experts will not be. Americans will go 

home. The irregular enemy can win if it is able to outwait 

American patience, in the meantime creating insecurity and 

discouraging major reforms of a kind that should alter public 

attitudes. The mindset needed to combat an enemy who is 

playing a long game is not one that comes naturally to the 

American soldier or, for that matter, to the American public. 

To wage protracted war is not a preference in our military 

or strategic culture. Moreover, to accept the necessity for 

protraction is to tolerate terms of engagement dictated by the 

enemy; that is not an attractive fact to explain and defend to a 

doubting and increasingly impatient news media, public, and 

opposition party.

9. Undercut the Irregular Enemy Politically. While we will be 

tempted to demonize an irregular enemy, label him a terrorist 

or worse, the local people whose allegiance is the prize in the 

contest will have a more nuanced view.58 They will know 

some of the insurgents, and they are certain to have some 

sympathy with some elements of the insurgents’ political 
28

story. Since successful COIN must speak convincingly 

to a public knowledgeable about local issues, including 

information on the character and motives of the insurgents, it 

is essential for us to demonstrate a mastery of local conditions 

in terms that resonate well locally.

There are many aspects to this rather general point about 

undercutting the irregular enemy politically. I will identify just 

two, adding them to the argument already made in favor of talking 

about the enemy in realistic, nondemonizing terms. First, given 

the protracted character of an irregular conflict, there should be 

time, if the political will is present, to address some of the political 

grievances that have fuelled the insurgency. This is not to suggest 

abject surrender to the nominal wish list of the enemy. But it is to 

claim that, more often than not, the insurgents are exploiting some 

quite genuine sources of public unrest. In its political dimension, 

a COIN strategy will seek to deprive the irregulars of their cause 

by co-opting it when feasible. To the extent to which that cannot or 

should not be done, the forces of order will need to demonstrate to 

the public that they offer a politically superior alternative of direct 

local benefit.

Second, a COIN campaign, and the local government that it is 

designed to assist, must behave within the law. The irregular enemy 

wishes to promote chaos, uncertainty, and overreaction by the forces 

of order. Success in COIN is measured by the scale of the public 

confidence that they can live in a land of law and order, wherein 

they need not fear for their personal security at the hands of anyone, 

official or other. It follows that when the government flouts its own 

laws, behaves arbitrarily, abuses detainees, and generally functions 

according to the principle of a very rough expediency, it does the 

insurgents’ work for them. I cannot state often enough or clearly 

enough that victory or defeat in irregular warfare is all about the 

beliefs, attitudes, and consequent behavior of the public. Everything 

that an American COIN effort and its local allies do to combat the 

irregular enemy ultimately has strategic effect, positive or negative, 

upon the minds of that public. They are the stake, and they are the 

battlespace.

The discussion in this section of irregular warfare and its implications for COIN doctrine are not really controversial. However, what 
29

is problematic is the ability of the U.S. military, and the Army in 

particular, to adapt successfully to the character of the warfare 

described broadly above. Self-knowledge is essential if Americans 

are to address the challenge of irregular warfare with some good 

prospect of adapting successfully. In order to throw the pertinent 

realities into stark relief for clear appreciation, the next section 

presents an appreciation of the traditional American way of war, 

a way which in many respects still permeates American behavior. 

That American way of war is considered in light of the behavior 

needed for strategic effectiveness against irregular enemies.

The American Way of War Meets an Irregular Future.

The American way of war has been mentioned throughout this 

monograph, but has not been specified in an orderly and detailed 

way. This apparent neglect is explained by the fact that my primary 

mission has been to consider irregular warfare in strategic perspective. But now the several strands in this analysis come together 

as irregular enemies, and their modes of warfare, understood 

strategically, are considered as a challenge to the traditional American 

way of war. Of necessity, what follows is a personal characterization 

of the traditional, indeed cultural, American way of war. I specify 13 

features, many of which can be qualified anecdotally by pointing out 

exceptions, but all of which I believe to be sound enough to stand as 

valid generalizations. Whereas a single exception must invalidate a 

scientific law (e.g., an apple that declines to obey the law of gravity), 

social scientific lore is far more tolerant of deviant cases. Rather than 

argue for each of my chosen features, I will restrict myself simply 

to explanation. It should be understood that no authoritative listing 

exists. Indeed, there could hardly be such, given that the notion of a 

national way of war is what we social scientists term an essentially 

contested concept. 

The items pertain both to war as a whole and to its military conduct 

in warfare. At least three of the 13 features support the notion that the 

United States tends to confuse Principles of Warfare with Principles 

of War. If the country appreciated and generally adhered to a welldrafted and culturally-embedded set of Principles of War, principles 

that truly were Clausewitzian (and Sun-tzuan and Thucydidean), its 
30

strategic and political performance in conflict after conflict should 

be considerably improved.59 But, for good or ill, Americans are what 

they are strategically. If, as I claim, Americans persist in failing to 

reap desired political rewards from their military efforts, even when 

the efforts themselves are largely successful, there are cultural, even 

structural, reasons why that is so. Most likely, Americans can remake 

their strategic performance only if they first remake their society, and 

that is a task beyond the ability of even the most optimistic agents 

of transformation. Moreover, one suspects that the strategic rewards 

would both disappoint and cost far too much in virtues sacrificed. 

Nonetheless, there is currently wholesale recognition in the armed 

forces of the seriousness and probable longevity of the menace posed 

by irregular enemies. It is at least possible that by deconstructing the 

standard American “way,” and reviewing it from the perspective 

of countering irregulars, some pathways to improved performance 

may be identified. As always, though, first one must alert people to 

the problem.

1. Apolitical 8. Large-scale

2. Astrategic 9. Aggressive, offensive

3. Ahistorical 10. Profoundly regular

4. Problem-solving, optimistic 11. Impatient

5. Culturally challenged 12. Logistically excellent

6. Technology dependent 13. Highly sensitive to casualties

7. Focused on firepower

Characteristics of the American Way of War.

1. Apolitical. Americans are wont to regard war and peace as 

sharply distinct conditions. The U.S. military has a long history 

of waging war for the goal of victory, paying scant regard 

to the consequences of the course of its operations for the 

character of the peace that will follow. Civilian policymakers 

have been the ones primarily at fault. In war after war they 

have tended to neglect the Clausewitzian dictum that war is 

about, and only about, its political purposes. Characteristically, 

though certainly not invariably, U.S. military efforts have not 

been suitably cashed in the coin of political advantage.60 The 
31

traditional American separation of politics and the conduct 

of war is a lethal weakness when dealing with irregular 

enemies. Irregular conflict requires a unity of effort by all the 

instruments of grand strategy, and it must be guided by a 

unified high command. In that high command, the political 

authority has to be paramount. As a general rule, there can be 

no military solution to the challenge posed by irregulars. The 

principle task of the soldier is to provide the security without 

which decisive political progress is impossible.

2. Astrategic. Strategy is, or should be, the bridge that connects 

military power with policy. When Americans wage war as 

a largely autonomous activity, leaving worry about peace 

and its politics to some later day, the strategy bridge has 

broken down. The conduct of war cannot be self-validating. 

For a premier example of this malady, one must cite 

Vietnam. For example, the United States sought to apply its 

new-found theory of limited war in an ill-crafted effort to 

employ modulated, on-off-on coercion by air bombardment 

to influence Hanoi in favor of negotiations.61 To resort to 

Clausewitzian terms again, while war has its policy logic, it 

also has its own “grammar.”62 It is prudent to take notice of 

these words of wisdom from Samuel Huntington: “Military 

forces are not primarily instruments of communication to 

convey signals to an enemy; they are instead instruments of 

coercion to compel him to alter his behavior.”63

Excellence in strategy has not been an American strength, 

at least not since George Washington defeated the British 

strategically. The reasons why Americans talk a lot about 

strategy, but understand it a lot less and practice it rarely, do 

not really concern us in this monograph. Suffice it to say that 

the major causes of the problem are twofold: a longstanding 

tradition of material superiority which offers few incentives 

for strategic calculation; and the nation’s traditional theory of 

civil-military relations, which discourages probing dialogue 

between policymaker and soldier. Unfortunately, the terrorist 

and the insurgent are probably functioning strategically. 

Indeed, they can hope to succeed in no other way. As we 
32

have commented already, such irregulars are playing a long 

game. Their tactical behavior is of little, if any, inherent 

significance. They do not plan and execute would-be decisive 

military actions; COIN is a quintessentially strategic struggle. 

Everything that is done by both sides potentially has political 

implications. This is not exactly a deep insight. What I have 

just stated is nothing more than Clausewitz’s definition of 

strategy. A United States that does not really “do strategy,” at 

least not for long, because it does not truly understand it, will 

be outfought and out-thought by irregular enemies who must

“do strategy” if they are to survive and prosper.

3. Ahistorical. As a future-oriented, still somewhat “new” 

country, one that has a founding ideology of faith in, hope 

for, and commitment to, human betterment, it is only to be 

expected that Americans should be less than highly respectful 

of what they might otherwise be inclined to allow history 

to teach them. A defense community led by the historically 

disrespectful and ill-educated, is all but condemned to 

find itself surprised by events for which some historical 

understanding could have prepared them. History cannot 

repeat itself, of course, but, as naval historian Geoffrey Till has 

aptly observed, “The chief utility of history for the analysis of 

present and future lies in its ability, not to point out lessons, 

but to isolate things that need thinking about. . . . History 

provides insights and questions, not answers.”64 

 As Sam Sarkesian, John Collins, and Max Boot, among 

others, have sought to remind us, the United States has a rich 

and extensive history of experience with irregular enemies.65

Moreover, that experience was by no means entirely negative. 

The trouble was and, until very recently, has remained, 

that such varied experience of irregular warfare was never 

embraced and adopted by the Army as the basis for the 

development of doctrine for a core competency. Rephrased, 

the Army improvised and waged irregular warfare, sometimes 

just regular war against irregulars, when it had to. But that 

task was always viewed officially as a regrettable diversion 

from preparation for “real war.” Real war, of course, meant 
33

war against regular peers, the kind of war that Europeans 

waged against each other. 

To be brutal, the U.S. Army has a fairly well-filled basket of 

negative experience with irregular enemies. If the institution 

is willing to learn, and to regard COIN as a necessary 

enduring competency to be achieved through an adaptable 

transformation, past errors all but demand to be recognized. 

As we have sought to insist throughout this monograph, 

COIN warfare is not a black art. Rather, its principles and 

priorities are well-known and noncontroversial. All that is 

necessary is for the soldier to be willing and able to learn from 

history, recent American history at that. Unfortunately, the 

first and truest love of the U.S. defense community is with 

technology, not with history. That great American strategic 

theorist, Bernard Brodie, explained for all time why history 

should not be neglected. He reminded those in need of 

reminding that “the only empirical data we have about how 

people conduct war and behave under its stresses is our 

experience with it in the past, however much we have to make 

adjustments for subsequent changes in conditions.”66 An 

Army struggling to adapt to the unfamiliar and unwelcome 

challenges of irregular warfare cannot afford to be ahistorical, 

let alone antihistorical. 

4. Problem-solving and Optimistic. Holding to an optimistic 

public culture characterized by the belief that problems can 

always be solved, the American way in war is not easily 

discouraged or deflected once it is exercised with serious 

intent to succeed. That is to say, not when the American way is 

manifested in such anti-strategic sins against sound statecraft 

as the “drive-by” cruise missile attacks of the late 1990s. 

The problem-solving faith, the penchant for the engineering 

fix, has the inevitable consequence of leading U.S. policy, 

including its use of armed force, to attempt the impossible.67

After all, American history is decorated triumphantly with 

“impossible” achievements, typically against physical 

geography. Conditions are often misread as problems. 

Conditions have to be endured, perhaps ameliorated, and 
34

generally tolerated, whereas problems, by definition, can be 

solved.

There are two ways in which an American way of war 

imbued with a problem-solving spirit is apt to stray from 

the path of strategic effectiveness. First, irregular enemies, 

terrorist-insurgents, are not usefully regarded as problems 

to be solved. As we have observed already, these irregulars 

are waging a protracted war, eschewing the kind of open 

engagements that might just produce a clear-cut military 

decision. Since the irregular foe cannot be brought to battle en 

masse, he is not a problem that the Army can solve tactically 

or operationally. Instead, following classic COIN doctrine, 

the problem of the insurgent is best treated as a condition that 

has to be addressed indirectly, as security is provided for, and 

hopefully the trust is gained of, the local people. That has to 

be a slow, gradual process. If one does not understand that 

and act accordingly, one has no future in COIN.

5. Culturally-challenged. Belatedly, it has become fashionable 

to berate the cultural insensitivity that continues to hamper 

American strategic performance.68 Bear in mind American 

public ideology, with its emphasis on political and moral 

uniqueness, manifest destiny, divine mission even, married 

to the multidimensional sense of national greatness. Such 

self-evaluation has not inclined Americans to be especially 

respectful of the beliefs, habits, and behavior of other cultures. 

This has been, and continues to be, especially unfortunate in 

the inexorably competitive field of warfare. From the Indian 

Wars on the internal frontier, to Iraq and Afghanistan today, 

the American way of war has suffered from the self-inflicted 

damage growing out of a failure to understand the enemy of 

the day. For a state that now accepts, indeed insists upon, a 

global mandate to act as sheriff, this lack of cultural empathy, 

including a lack of sufficiently critical self-knowledge, is most 

serious.

There is no mode of warfare, conducted in any geographical environment, wherein the enemy’s strategic culture 

is of no importance. Even in the most extreme of warfare’s 
35

technological forms, a large-scale “exchange” of nuclear 

weapons between super or great powers, the firing and 

targeting doctrine of the foe will not be innocent of cultural 

influence. Nuclear doctrines will express calculations of 

military and geostrategic realities, calculations conducted 

by encultured strategists. Through much of the 1970s and 

1980s, U.S. nuclear strategy carried some promise of damage 

limitation for America only if Soviet nuclear strategy 

reciprocated in targeting restraint. Soviet attitudes towards 

war, including nuclear war, were of vital importance. Since 

culture was, indeed still is, a significant dimension of warfare 

with nuclear weapons, how much more salient must it be 

in irregular conflict. Recall that the battlespace in the fight 

against insurgents and terrorists is in the minds of the people 

whose allegiance or acquiescence is the stake in the struggle. 

In COIN, the Army needs to engage and stay engaged with 

the people who need protection, not with the irregular enemy. 

That enemy will face inevitable defeat if the Army is accepted 

as a friendly guardian, and the people are willing to back the 

political future promised by the government.

It hardly needs emphasizing that to win the trust of the 

people at risk requires a measure of comprehension of their 

beliefs, their hopes and fears, their recent history—in short, 

their culture. To acquire such cultural empathy is no simple 

matter. It cannot be achieved from inside “Fort Apache,” nor 

can it be gained by occasional energetic and violent sweeps 

through “bandit country.”

6. Technology-dependent. The exploitation of machinery 

is the American way of war. One may claim that airpower 

is virtually synonymous with that way of war, and that its 

employment as the leading military instrument of choice has 

become routine. So at least it appeared in the 1990s, during 

the warm afterglow of airpower’s triumph in the First Gulf 

War.69 America is the land of technological marvels and of 

extraordinary technology dependency. It was so from early in 

the 19th century when a shortage of skilled craftsmen—they 

had tended to remain in Europe—obliged Americans to invent 
36

and use machines as substitutes for human skill and muscle. 

Necessity bred preference and then excellence, and the choice 

of mechanical solutions assumed a cultural significance 

that has endured. The watershed, unsurprisingly, was the 

experience of the Civil War. The way of war that succeeded in 

that most bloody of America’s struggles was logistical, having 

been enabled by an exploitation of raw industrial power 

that foreign observers found awesome. American soldiers 

say that the human being matters most, but, in practice, the 

American way of war, past, present, and prospectively future, 

is quintessentially and uniquely technology-dependent. The 

Army’s transformation plans are awash with prudent words 

on the many dimensions of future conflict, but at its core lies 

a drive to acquire an exceedingly expensive Future Combat 

System, consisting of a network of vital technologies.70

Given the range of potential demands that foreign policy 

may place on the Army, the only sound plan for the future 

has to be one that is flexible and adaptable. The enemies of 

tomorrow are at least as likely to take regular as irregular 

forms. The issue is not technology, nor is it any particular 

set of weapons and support systems. Instead, the difficulty 

lies in the fact that the American armed forces are culturally 

attuned to favoring technological solutions over other 

approaches, while irregular enemies pose problems of a 

kind where technology typically offers few real advantages. 

Indeed, machines and dependence upon them are apt to 

have negative value, because although they can save some 

American lives, they tend to isolate American soldiers from 

the social, and even the military, context which is the decisive 

battleground in irregular conflict. Contrary to appearances, 

perhaps, this is to condemn neither machines nor technology 

in principle. Whatever technology can do that is useful in 

COIN and for counterterrorism certainly should be done. 

It is the use, or misuse through overuse, of technology that 

is at issue, not technology itself. The experience of several 

countries demonstrates unambiguously that there is no 

correlation between technical sophistication and success in 
37

the conduct of warfare against irregulars.71 Remember the 

proposed “McNamara Fence” during the Vietnam War and 

suchlike extravagant follies.

7. Focused on Firepower. General Westmoreland, then 

Commander of MACV, once famously and characteristically 

told a press conference that the correct approach to 

counterinsurgency was “firepower.”72 It has long been the 

American way in warfare to send metal in harm’s way in 

place of vulnerable flesh. This admirable expression of the 

country’s machine-mindedness undoubtedly is the single most 

characteristic feature of American war-making at the sharp 

end. Needless to say, perhaps, a devotion to firepower, while 

defensible, indeed necessary, cannot help encouraging the 

armed forces to rely on it even when other modes of military 

behavior would be more suitable. In irregular conflicts in 

particular, heavy and sometimes seemingly indiscriminate, 

certainly disproportionate, resort to firepower solutions, 

readily becomes self-defeating. A focus on firepower as the 

key to a victory defined in classic military terms produces the 

attitude that what we do in war is service targets. Instead of 

being considered in his cultural context, the enemy is reduced 

to the dehumanized status of the object of U.S. firepower.73

At its nadir, this characteristic was demonstrated in action 

in Vietnam with the prevalence of the U.S. artillery’s very 

extensive practice of conducting unaimed harassment and 

interdiction fire.74 A notable fraction of that artillery fire was 

expended for no better reason than that the ammunition was 

available in embarrassing abundance.

Regular warfare is composed of ever varying mixes of 

the eternal trinity of fire, movement, and shock. Irregular 

warfare, however, is different. There can be no decisive 

military engagement, because an agile, elusive, and competent 

irregular enemy will decline to expose himself in such a 

way that he can be obliterated by fire, outmaneuvered to 

annihilation, or destroyed physically and morally by shock 

effect. In COIN the rules of engagement broadly are the reverse 

of those standard in regular combat. When in doubt, one 
38

should not fire. Why? Because as a general rule, COIN must 

be conducted around the civilian population who comprise 

the center of gravity of the conflict. Trigger-happiness cannot 

help producing undesirable collateral damage; in other words, 

dead and wounded civilians and fear of American military 

behavior. Better that an insurgent should escape or, dare one 

say it, that an American or allied soldier or official be killed, 

than that a dozen or so bystanders pay the price for being in 

the wrong place at the wrong time. The kind of disciplined 

self-restraint in the resort to force that is mandatory for 

success in warfare against irregulars does not come easily or 

naturally to young people whom we train to be aggressive 

and to kill when necessary in self-defense. Nor does it come 

easily to officers who have well-founded anxieties about the 

career implications of suffering casualties. If the armed forces 

are serious about supporting policy with high competency in 

the conduct of war against irregulars, then they will need to 

curb their traditional, indeed cultural, excessive love affair 

with firepower.

8. Large-scale. As a superpower, the United States tends to 

excel at enterprises conducted on a scale that matches its total 

assets. Professor Huntington believes, at least he believed in 

1985, that “the United States is a big country, and we should 

fight wars in a big way.”75 More controversially, he claimed 

that “[b]igness not brains is our advantage, and we should 

exploit it.”76 No doubt those words will irritate and anger 

many readers. However, there is an important self-awareness 

in Huntington’s point. As a large rich country, for the better 

part of 200 years the United States has waged its many wars, 

regular and irregular, domestic and foreign, as one would 

expect of a society that is amply endowed materially. Poor 

societies are obliged to wage war frugally. They have no 

choice other than to attempt to fight smarter than their rich 

enemies. The United States has been blessed with wealth in 

all its forms. Inevitably, the armed forces, once mobilized and 

equipped, have fought a rich person’s war. They could hardly 

do otherwise. From the time of the Civil War, foreign observers 
39

have been astonished by the material generosity with which 

American troops have been supplied and equipped. Strategic 

necessity is the mother of military invention, and since the 

1860s, at least, Americans have had little need to invent clever 

work-arounds for material lack. It is not self-evident that the 

United States is able to wage war in a materially minimalist 

fashion, any more than that today’s volunteer soldiers and 

their families would tolerate campaign conditions marked 

by what would be regarded as unnecessary discomfort. The 

American Army at war is American society at war. This is not 

so much a problem as a condition.

True, Americans have at times waged modern war on 

a shoestring, and the experience was predictably unhappy. 

Anyone wondering how Americans perform when the 

material balance is not weighted heavily in their favor will 

not be short of historical evidence. They could do worse than 

study the campaign on Guadalcanal in the second half of 

1942, or, for another grim classic, the fate of Task Force 

Smith in Korea in July 1950.77 These, however, were exceptions 

to the rule that because the United States was the world’s 

greatest industrial nation, it waged its industrial-age warfare 

on a scale that others could not hope to match. But because the 

American way of war traditionally had to be unleashed only 

after a surge of emergency and time-consuming mobilization, 

the cost was apt to be heavy for the soldiers at the sharp 

end. To “come as you are with what you have got” is ever a 

bloody and extraordinarily dangerous duty. The implications 

of America’s excellence in the conduct of warfare on the large 

scale for its ability to combat irregular enemies are mixed, but 

on balance probably have been negative. Warfare against a 

lightly armed irregular foe short of numbers is not simply 

a somewhat scaled-down version of warfare as usual. The 

American strategic cultural trait of “bigness,” of functioning 

with large footprints, is apt to be counterproductive. In COIN, 

the more evident the American presence and influence, the 

less legitimate and competent the local authorities must 

appear to be. The larger the American military contribution, 

particularly if its soldiers look hostile and behave as if they are 
40

in bandit country, the more the U.S. presence will resemble 

an occupation.78 American culture, in all senses of the term, 

is a powerful force, particularly in its hold on Americans. 

Large numbers of Americans, being Americans, acting like 

Americans, and indeed living in cultural and social facsimiles 

of America in an alien society, amount to a challenge, or insult, 

to local mores. This is a necessary consequence of the injection 

of large numbers of Americans, with all the logistics deemed 

essential to the American way of life that the volunteer 

soldier expects, into the midst of an alien cultural milieu. Of 

course, Americans can reduce their visibility by retreating 

into fortified bunkers or by deploying away from heavily 

populated areas. To behave thus, however, is to operate in a 

manner counterproductive for irregular warfare, where the 

battlefield, as we keep insisting, is the people.

9. Aggressive and Offensive. Geopolitics, culture, and material 

endowment have combined to pull the American way of war 

towards an aggressive offensive style. Geopolitically viewed, 

the United States is effectively insular, albeit on a continental 

scale. Not since the War of 1812 has the country faced a serious 

threat in North America except, of course, from its slaveholding states in 1861-65. Because of America’s geopolitical 

isolation, a product of geography and culture, in the 20th 

century the country repeatedly joined in wars that already 

were well underway. America had to take the initiative and 

move men and material across oceans. Also, it was obliged to 

commit to offensive operations in order to take back the gains 

made by enemies in Europe and Asia at the outset of their 

rampages of conquest. U.S. political motives may have been 

broadly defensive. But as was the case with Iraq’s seizure of 

Kuwait in 1990, the principal guardian of the status quo, the 

United States, had no military choice other than aggressive 

offensive action. More often than not, an aggressor is content 

to take his prize and then offer an armistice and a conference 

to bless the crimes just committed. Prior to the creation of 

NATO and the subsequent U.S. commitment to maintain a 

substantial garrison in Europe, the American strategic role 
41

in Eurasia was notably episodic. With the exception of the 

nuclear-shadowed Cold War of 1947-89, a historical anomaly, 

when an American army is sent across an ocean its society 

expects it to do something important. There are many plausible 

explanations for the offensive preference in the American way 

of war; we will cite some of the more significant among them. 

In summary form, an aggressive offensive style:

• is required if decisive victory is to be achieved against 

enemies who have to be ejected from ill-gotten gains, or 

otherwise taught the error of their ways;

• is mandated by a domestic political context that regards 

American participation in war as so extraordinary an 

event that it has to be completed as rapidly as possible, so 

that a condition of peace and normalcy can be restored;

• is fitting because the United States fights only against evil 

regimes, and is not disposed to wage limited wars for 

limited political purposes, save under duress, as in Korea, 

1950-53.

• is appropriate to America’s strength and strengths. The 

United States is obliged to develop forces that are highly 

mobile. In a sense, the conquest of distance has been 

America’s strategic history;

• has a record of success. It is difficult to argue with a history 

that appears to validate the military merits of an offensive 

style.

• via a succession of sometimes parallel offensive operations 

was the American way, briefly in 1918, and then of 

geopolitical necessity in 1942-45.

The American way of war can be traced back to the 18th 

century, if not earlier, but this monograph will content itself 

with noting that the illustrative apogee of that “way” occurred 

during World War II. America had demonstrated to observers 

around the globe a way of war that delivered decisive military 

victory. That way favored mobility, movement (not necessarily 

skillful maneuver), command of “the commons” (the high seas 

and the air), and firepower. Americans sought to take war 
42

to the enemy, as rapidly and destructively as the machines 

of industrial age warfare permitted. The American way was 

truly awesome in its ability to kill people and break things. 

The problem today is that if the country’s strategic future is 

going to be plagued more and more by challenges posed by 

irregular enemies, America’s soldiers will lack enemy targets 

for their traditionally preferred style of operation. As we have 

maintained repeatedly, COIN warfare demotes the irregular 

enemy to the status of a secondary objective. Aggressive 

offensive action against an enemy of uncertain location and 

identity is more likely to wreak political damage upon the 

COIN endeavor, a self-inflicted wound, than upon the enemy. 

Naturally, there is a time and place for offensive action. But, 

as the dominant characteristic of the official style of war, 

offensive action is likely to prove counterproductive against 

irregular enemies in many, perhaps most, circumstances. This 

is not to deny that irregular targets of opportunity certainly 

should be pursued aggressively if the enemy is foolish 

enough to expose himself for discrete destruction. Also, it is 

emphatically true that America’s future strategic history is 

not going to be populated wholly by enemies of an irregular 

kind, no matter how fashionable that belief may be today.

10. Profoundly Regular. Few, if any, armies have been equally 

competent in the conduct of regular and irregular warfare. The 

U.S. Army is no exception to that rule. Both the Army and the 

Marine Corps have registered occasional successes in irregular 

warfare, while individual Americans have proved themselves 

adept at the conduct of guerrilla warfare.79 As institutions, 

however, the U.S. armed forces have not been friendly either 

to irregular warfare or to their own would-be practitioners 

and advocates of what was regarded as the sideshow of 

unconventional warfare or counterinsurgency.80 American 

soldiers have been overwhelmingly regular in their view of, 

approach to, and skill in, warfare. They have always prepared 

near exclusively for “real war,” which is to say combat against 

a tolerably symmetrical, regular enemy. Irregular warfare—or 

low-intensity conflict (LIC) as denominated by the inclusive 
43

and therefore vague 1960s term-of-art81—has been regarded 

as a lesser but included class of challenge. In other words, a 

good regular army has been assumed to be capable of turning 

its strengths to meet irregular enemies, whereas the reverse 

would not be true. It has not generally been appreciated that 

LIC is not simply a scaled-down version of “real war,” but 

requires an entirely different mindset, doctrine, and training.

The United States has a storehouse of first-hand historical 

experience which should educate its soldiers in the need to 

recognize that regular and irregular warfare are significantly 

different. That educational process still has a distance to 

travel, but it will travel nowhere without steady endorsement 

from senior leadership, which appears to be forthcoming at 

present. Anyone in need of persuasion as to the extent of the 

regularity of the mindset dominant in America’s military 

institutions need look no further than to the distinctly 

checkered history of the country’s Special Operations Forces 

(SOF), as we observed earlier.

America’s SOF have endured a Cinderella existence. They 

have prospered somewhat with episodic civilian political 

sponsorship, but not until very recent times have they been 

regarded and treated as an important element in the combined 

arms team. In the 1960s, for example, notwithstanding the 

enthusiasm of some “new frontiersmen” for the green berets 

in COIN, SOF efforts were accommodated all too well within 

the conventional grand designs of MACV.82 Also, in Vietnam 

and since, there is some tension between SOF as the expert 

practitioners of unconventional warfare, and SOF in the 

local liaison and training roles so vital for COIN. Even a very 

regular military mind can be attracted to SOF if their assigned 

tasks are aggressive offensive actions undertaken on a very 

small scale. In other words, some special operations can 

appear simply to be scaled-down versions of the traditional 

American style in war.

The SOF are America’s irregular regulars. How they are 

permitted to operate, and how well or poorly their duties fit 

into a comprehensive grand design for COIN, for example, 

tell us how far America’s regular military establishment has 
44

moved towards incorporating an irregular instrument in its 

toolkit.83 The jury is still out on whether today, really for the 

first time, the armed forces will succeed in making doctrinal 

and operational sense of their invaluable special warriors. On 

one hand, historical experience inclines one to be skeptical, but 

on the other, never before has the country elevated irregular 

enemies to the status of the dominant threat of an era.

11. Impatient. America is an exceptionally ideological society 

and, to date at least, it has distinguished clearly between 

conditions of peace and war. Americans have approached 

warfare as a regrettable occasional evil that has to be concluded 

as decisively and rapidly as possible. That partially moral 

perspective has not always sat well with the requirements of 

a politically effective use of force. For example, an important 

reason why MACV was not impressed by the promise of 

dedicated, time-proven counterinsurgency techniques in 

Vietnam, was the undeniable fact that such a style of warfare 

was expected to take far too long to show major results. 

Furthermore, America’s regular military minds, and the 

domestic public, have been schooled to expect military action 

to produce conclusive results. At Khe Sahn in 1968, for a case 

in point, MACV was searching for an ever elusive decisive 

victory. As a consequence, it was lured into remote terrain , 

far from the cities where the vast majority of the people had 

congregated. The nationwide popular rising (wich never 

came) was planned and expected by Hanoi to be an urban 

event, with a little help from the VC, of course. Today, cultural 

bias towards swift action for swift victory is amplified by 

mass news media that are all too ready to report a lack of 

visible progress as evidence of stalemate and error.

Impatience is always a military vice, but never is this more 

true than in the conduct of war against irregular enemies. 

Those enemies have to use time as a weapon. We cannot 

claim we have not been warned. The rationale for, character, 

and structure of protracted war was described in ample detail 

70 years ago by Mao Tse-tung; with local variants, it has been 

practiced around the world ever since by insurgents of many 
45

political persuasions.84 It is probably no exaggeration to claim 

that a campaign plan fuelled by impatience must prove fatal 

to the prospects for success in irregular warfare. An impatient 

combatant literally will be seeking to achieve the impossible. 

Unless the irregular makes a truly irreversible political 

error, swift and decisive success against him, let alone some 

facsimile of victory, simply is not attainable. The center of 

gravity in irregular warfare, which is to say the local people 

and their allegiance, cannot be seized and held by dramatic 

military action. Against irregular foes, America’s soldiers, 

and more particularly America’s local allies, must be prepared 

to play a long game. The Army knows this, but whether the 

American body politic shares in this enlightenment is much 

less certain. It may be important for this analysis to repeat 

here a point advanced earlier. Americans are right to be 

uneasy about open-ended military commitments to allies who 

are struggling against insurgencies. There is much to be said 

for U.S. forces to devote most of their distinctive strengths 

to keeping the fight fair for our local friends. This may well 

require the taking of suitably violent action, certainly the 

issuing of some fearsome threats, against foreign backers of 

an insurgency. But terrorists and other insurgents ultimately 

can be worn down and overcome only by local initiatives and 

steady effort, not by American COIN behavior, no matter 

how expertly conducted. As a general rule, to which there 

will always be the odd exceptions, irregular wars cannot be 

won by foreigners, regardless of their good intentions and the 

high quality of their means and methods. Such high-quality 

methods are, of course, greatly to be desired, and would 

stand in healthy contrast with much of America’s record in 

countering irregular enemies over the past 50 years.

12. Logistically Excellent. American history is a testament to 

the need to conquer distance. Americans at war have been 

exceptionally able logisticians. With a continental-size 

interior and an effectively insular geostrategic location, such 

ability has been mandatory if the country was to wage war 

at all, let alone wage it effectively. Recalling the point that 
46

virtues can become vices, it can be argued that America 

not infrequently has waged war more logistically than 

strategically, which is not to deny that in practice the two 

almost merge, so interdependent are they.85 The efficient 

support of the sharp end of American war-making can have, 

and has had, the downside of encouraging a tooth-to-tail ratio 

almost absurdly weighted in favor of the latter. A significant 

reason why firepower has been, and remains, the long suit in 

the American way of war, is that there repeatedly has been 

an acute shortage of soldiers in the infantry. A large logistical 

footprint, and none come larger than the American, requires 

a great deal of guarding, helps isolate American troops from 

local people and their culture, and tends to grow as it were 

organically in what has been pejoratively called the “logistical 

snowball.”86 Given that logistics is the science of supply and 

movement, America’s logistical excellence, with its upside 

and its downside, of necessity has rested upon mastery of 

“the commons.” Borrowing from Alfred Thayer Mahan, 

who wrote of the sea as a “wide common,” Barry Posen has 

explained how and why the United States is master not only 

of the wide common of the high seas of Mahan’s time, but 

also of the new commons of the air, space, and cyberspace.87

Should this mastery cease to be assured, the country would 

have difficulty waging war against all except Mexicans and 

Canadians.

Those who might doubt the historical reality of a distinctive 

American way of war are hereby invited to compare with 

other countries the amount of materiel and the quantity 

and quality of support deemed essential to keep American 

soldiers tolerably content in the field. Many critics of General 

Westmoreland’s strategy in Vietnam failed to notice that 

he was always painfully short of fighting soldiers. The U.S. 

military presence under his command may have totaled 

some 550,000, but no more than 80,000 of those soldiers were 

“fighting men.”88 There is a crossover point where logistical 

sufficiency, in any kind of war, regular or irregular, can slip 

into an excess that is counterproductive. In regular warfare, 

the traditional American way provides the infrastructure and 
47

depth of materiel that permit sustained combat. By way of 

the sharpest of contrasts, for example, Hitler’s Luftwaffe was 

always in more or less desperate straits because of a lack of 

spare parts. In World War II, both Germany and Japan fielded 

flashy “shop window” forces that lacked staying power. The 

American way is the reverse of that. But in the conduct of 

irregular warfare, which almost invariably is waged on foreign 

soil, America’s traditional way with abundant goods and 

services for the troops does have a rather obvious downside. 

The American logistical footprint is heavy, and it grows 

organically. The American way of war entails large bases that 

require protection. Those bases, dumps, and other facilities 

help isolate Americans from the local people and their culture, 

and, indeed, they create a distinct economy which signals 

the political fact that America has taken over. Naturally, it is 

difficult to envisage serious measures to lighten the logistical 

footprint, given concerns about reenlistment, political 

pressures from soldiers’ relatives, and soldier-citizens’ notions 

of their rights. To succeed in COIN in particular, as it has been 

discussed in this monograph, the Army needs to adapt in the 

direction of lighter, more agile forces, a process that is already 

underway. Furthermore, in gauging the extent of its material 

necessities in the field, it should give far greater weight to the 

irregular perspective than has been the case heretofore.

13. Highly Sensitive to Casualties. In common with the Roman 

Empire, the American guardian of world order is much averse 

to suffering a high rate of military casualties, and for at least 

one of the same reasons. Both superstates had and have armies 

that are small, too small in the opinion of many, relative to their 

responsibilities. Moreover, well-trained professional soldiers, 

volunteers all, are expensive to raise, train, and retain, and 

are difficult to replace. Beyond the issue of cost-effectiveness, 

however, lies the claim that American society has become so 

sensitive to casualties that it is no longer tolerant of potentially 

bloody ventures in muscular foreign governance. The most 

careful recent sociological research suggests that this popular 

notion about the American way of war, that it must seek 
48

to avoid American casualties at almost any price, has been 

exaggerated.89 Nonetheless, exaggerated or not, it is a fact that 

the United States has been perfecting a way in warfare that is 

expected, even required, to result in very few casualties for 

the home team. U.S. commanders certainly have operated 

since the Cold War under strict orders to avoid losses. The 

familiar emphasis upon force protection as “job one,” virtually 

regardless of the consequences for the success of the mission, 

is a telling expression of this cultural norm. September 11, 

2001, went some way towards reversing the apparent trend 

favoring, even demanding, friendly casualty avoidance. 

Culture, after all, does change with context. As quoted earlier, 

the National Defense Strategy document of March 2005 opens 

with the uncompromising declaration, “America is a nation 

at war.” For so long as Americans believe this to be true, 

the social context for military behavior should be far more 

permissive of casualties than was the case in the 1990s. Both 

history and common sense tell us that Americans will tolerate 

casualties, even high casualties, if they are convinced both 

that the political stakes are vital, and that the government is 

trying hard to win. It must be noted, though, that Americans 

have come to expect an exceedingly low casualty rate because 

that has been their recent experience. That expectation has 

been fed by events, by the evolution of a high-technology 

way in warfare that exposes relatively few American soldiers 

to mortal danger, and by the low quality of recent enemies. 

When the context allows, it is U.S. military style to employ 

machines rather than people and to rely heavily on firepower 

to substitute for a more dangerous mode of combat for 

individuals. A network-centric Army, if able to afford the 

equipment, carries the promise of being supported by even 

more real-time on-call firepower than is available today.

If the United States is serious about combating irregular 

enemies in a way that stands a reasonable prospect of success, 

it will have to send its soldiers into harm’s way to a degree 

that could promote acute political discomfort. The all-service 

defense transformation mandated by the Office of the Secretary of Defense is very much a high-technology voyage into the 
49

future. The focus is on machines, and the further exploitation 

of the computer in particular. Overall, it is not unfair to 

observe that this transformation, with its promise of even 

better performance in Command, Control, Communications, 

Computers, Information/Intelligence, Surveillance, Targeting 

and Reconnaissance (C4ISTAR), should strengthen the 

American ability to wage its traditional style of war. Enemies, 

once detected, will be tracked and then obliterated by standoff firepower, much of it delivered from altitude. American 

soldiers will see little of the foe in the flesh, and civilians will 

be protected from suffering as victims of collateral damage, to 

some degree at least, by the precision with which America’s 

forces will be able to direct their fire. A major attraction of 

this style of war is that few Americans will be at risk. The 

problem is that such a technology-dependent, stand-off style 

is not appropriate for the conduct of war against irregulars, 

except in special cases. Certainly it is not suitable as the 

principal mode of operation. Irregular warfare is different, as 

we must keep insisting. For American soldiers to be useful in 

COIN, they have to be deployed “up close and personal” visà-vis the people who are the stake in the struggle. The more 

determinedly the Army strives to avoid casualties by hiding 

behind fortifications and deploying with armored protection, 

the less likely is it to be effective in achieving the necessary 

relationship of trust with the people. Of course, there will be 

circumstances when insurgents escalate violence in urban 

terrain in an endeavor to tempt Americans to fight back in 

their preferred style with profligate resort to firepower. In 

stressful circumstances, it may be hard to remember that in 

COIN dead insurgents are not proof of success, any more 

than home-side casualty avoidance by us is such proof.

Conclusions.

Early in this monograph I expressed my thinking with a threepointed argument. By way of conclusion, we will revisit those claims, 

with a particular view to drawing together the diverse threads of 

irregular enemies and warfare, strategy, and the American way of 
50

war. Where appropriate, recommendations intended to help the 

Army meet irregular challenges more effectively will be suggested.

The first conclusion of this monograph is that war and strategy 

have, indeed must have, constant natures throughout history 

and with respect to politically motivated violence in all modes. It 

necessarily follows that we need only a single theory to uncover the 

secrets of war and strategy. One can stumble upon foolish references 

to a post-Clausewitzian era, or a pre-Clausewitzian period. Be not 

misled. The great Prussian, with his unfinished theory of war, is 

more than good enough to apply to all periods and all brands of 

nastiness. However, in common with Clausewitz and, one must say, 

the dictates of common sense, I recognize fully that the characteristics 

of war evolve, and that different wars in the same period will have 

distinctive features. Furthermore, the main elements that comprise 

the unchanging nature of war—passion, chance, reason, danger, 

exertion, uncertainty, and friction—though always present, must 

vary in their relative effect. To some degree, but only to some degree, 

they may be controllable.

I affirmed the merit of the hypothesis that strategy does indeed 

have an essence. If there is a single idea which best captures that 

essence, it is instrumentality. So long as one never forgets that strategy 

is about the consequences of the use of force and the threat of its 

use, and not about such use itself, one will keep to the straight and 

narrow. That having been said, a sound grasp of strategy’s essence 

offers no protection, or at most only inadequate protection, against 

foolish policy or military failure. In the latter regard, it is worth 

quoting one of my favorite theorists again, Colonel Charles Callwell 

of the British Army, who wrote in his justly famous book, Small 

Wars, 100 years ago, “Strategy is not, however, the final arbiter in 

war. The battle-field decides, and on the battle-field the advantage 

passes over to the regular army.”90 He had just been explaining how 

the irregular enemy in colonial warfare typically enjoyed a strategic 

advantage. His point was that strategic advantage is all very well, 

but ultimately the troops, regular or irregular, have to be able to 

fight well. The good Colonel was not entirely correct, but we can 

hardly criticize him for not foreseeing the extensive politicization 

of irregular warfare in the 20th century.91 He did not anticipate a 

strategic context wherein the battlefield lay in the minds of the local 

people.
51

Although irregular warfare in all its modes is different from 

regular combat in many respects, it is not at all distinctive from 

the perspective of the essence of strategy. War is war, and strategy 

is strategy. There are no “new” wars and “old” wars, no “Third 

Generation Wars” and “Fourth Generation Wars.” There are only 

wars.92 Strategy, in its essence, works identically for regular and 

for irregular belligerents, and in regular and irregular warfare. The 

characteristics of different forms of war and styles in warfare will 

vary widely, but there is a common currency in strategic effect, no 

matter how that effect is generated. We can appreciate that tactical, 

even operational, excellence, in the waging of irregular war, or 

indeed any kind of war, must be at a severe discount, a waste, if it 

is not directed by a constant concern for its strategic effect upon the 

course of political events. The logic of strategy is the same for wars 

of all kinds, even though the styles and tools of combat will differ.

It is important for the Army to understand the linkages and 

interdependencies among strategy, operations, and tactics. There is 

some value in the concept of strategic land power. The term reminds 

us that what soldiers do has strategic effect. Since that strategic 

effect has political consequences, soldiers should appreciate that 

their tactical behavior is permeated with political meaning. To make 

such a claim risks affronting an American tradition that asserts a 

separation of war from politics, but that view was never sound or 

sustainable, and therefore could not be practical.

The second conclusion of this monograph is that the United States 

has a persisting strategy deficit, which reflects a political deficit, in 

its approach to war in all its forms. To put this conclusion in context, 

we have argued that the United States has an enduring way of war 

which deserves characterization as cultural. It is possible that the 

contemporary drive for military transformation may be hindered, 

even partially frustrated, by American public, strategic, and military 

culture. The current crop of official documents on transformation 

may be too optimistic in their aspirations for American military 

cultural change. Understandably, those documents are not eloquent 

on the question of the country’s competence in strategy.

An American strategy deficit is, of course, a weakness which 

renders the Army a victim rather than a villain. However, soldiers 

cannot be indifferent to the fact that, in conflict after conflict, their 
52

effort and sacrifice do not have the strategic effect that was desired 

and expected. It is a conclusion of this monograph that the Army, 

indeed each of the services, needs to think much harder about 

strategy than it has in the past. There is a sense in which strategy, 

naturally, is above the pay grade of nearly everyone in the military. 

This condition was greatly accentuated by the Goldwater-Nichols 

Act (1986) and the way in which the act was implemented. The 

Army cannot be indifferent to the strategic consequences of its 

military behavior. Not least must this be true because, in its drive 

for transformation, it is striving to be adaptable to a new context 

populated by asymmetric enemies and protracted conflicts. Once the 

Army grants that its tactical and operational actions have strategic 

meaning, which in its turn has to have political meaning, it can track 

back and reconsider whether its tactical habits and preferences may 

benefit from some further adaptation to circumstances. Soldiers have 

to clear their mind of the belief that they do not “do strategy.” If they 

will read Chapter 33 of Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, they will 

discover, or be reminded of, “the false antithesis between strategy . . . 

and tactics.” Lawrence concluded that strategy and tactics “seemed 

only points of view from which to ponder the elements of war. . . .”93

Leaders of the armed forces, senior officials in the national security 

bureaucracy, and assorted experts and would-be opinion leaders 

talk perennially about strategy. And yet, somehow, often in practice 

American strategic performance bears a close resemblance to the view 

of strategy expressed by Field Marshal Helmuth Graf von Moltke, the 

Prussian victor in two of the Wars of German Unification (1866, 1870-

71). Having explained the nature of strategy in sound Clausewitzian 

terms, the Field Marshal proceeded to turn the master’s theory on its 

head. He advised that “[t]he demands of strategy grow silent in the 

face of a tactical victory and adapt themselves to the newly created 

situation. Strategy is a system of expedients.”94 The events of 1914-18 

and 1939-45 bear eloquent witness to the consequences of Moltke’s 

logic. To direct attention to America’s strategy deficit is not to make 

a fine academic point, the kind of claim to be expected of a theorist. 

This deficiency lies at the heart of the country’s difficulties in its 

protracted struggles with irregular enemies. After all, American 

strategy is about the threat or use of force for its political ends. If 
53

America performs poorly at the strategic level, much of the cost 

and effort of the Army’s transformation will be wasted on efforts ill 

suited to the political tasks prescribed by policy.

The third conclusion of the monograph is that there is a traditional 

American way of war which, in some respects, encourages a military 

style that is far from optimal as an approach to the challenges posed 

by irregular enemies. I do not wish to be misunderstood. I am 

not quite arguing that the American way of war, a style reflecting 

cultural influences, will thwart the ambitions for transformation, 

though there are grounds for anxiety in this regard. Also, I am 

certainly not claiming that a way of war is immutable. A way does 

evolve and may adapt, but it does so slowly. After all, it is deeply 

rooted in history, and there are good reasons why it is what it is. 

Also, let me emphasize, although I am concerned to point up its 

weaknesses, especially its strategic deficiencies, the American way 

of war has major characteristic strengths. Indeed, if it did not have 

such strengths, it would not have been adopted, and it would not 

have persisted. Not everyone will agree with each characteristic I 

have discerned in the American way; there is no authorized list. But 

this analysis rests on the strong conviction that there has been and 

is such a “way,” and that its strength will be a problem, perhaps a 

severe problem, for the process of transformation and adaptation. 

Especially is the American way of war likely to be a problem, really 

a harassing condition, for a transformation that focuses significantly 

on the ability to conduct warfare against irregular enemies. In these 

concluding paragraphs, it is probably useful to provide a terse 

reminder of the leading characteristics of “the American way.”

1. Apolitical 8. Large-scale

2. Astrategic 9. Aggressive, offensive

3. Ahistorical 10. Profoundly regular

4. Problem-solving, optimistic 11. Impatient

5. Culturally challenged 12. Logistically excellent

6. Technology dependent 13. Highly sensitive to casualties

7. Focused on firepower

Characteristics of “the American Way.”
54

Previously we have shown how inappropriate many features of 

the traditional American way of war tend to be for a struggle against 

irregular enemies. The dependence on technology, the reliance on 

firepower, the emphasis on U.S. casualty avoidance, for leading 

examples, express a mindset and doctrine that have not adapted 

persuasively to the distinctive conditions of irregular warfare. As 

the leading power willing and able to undertake tasks on behalf 

of global order and stability, however, the United States dare not 

assume that all its future foes will be of an irregular character. This 

means that the armed forces, and the Army in particular, cannot 

“lighten up” comprehensively in order to meet the challenges posed 

by terrorists and insurgents. Assuredly, there will be regular enemies 

in America’s strategic future, even if they are obliged by America’s 

strengths to fight in irregular ways. We have to beware of drawing a 

misleadingly neat distinction between regular and irregular enemies 

and modes of struggle.

The Army has stated clearly enough in official documents that 

it is aware of some of the problems addressed in this monograph. 

Indeed, the Army’s transformation strategy is proclaimed to have 

“three components: transformed culture; transformed processes; 

transformed capabilities.”95 The intent is praiseworthy and sound. 

But does the Army of today appreciate the full scope and depth 

of the way of war that it has inherited? This monograph has been 

designed not so much to attempt to bring new facts about irregular 

warfare to the attention of soldiers. I assume that the problem of 

irregular and asymmetric foes is well enough understood already. 

Rather, my purpose is to show the scope and depth of the challenge 

of cultural change. It will be no small accomplishment to effect radical 

change in a traditional way of war. Especially will this be so when 

the effectiveness of that “way” will be enhanced by the prodigious 

high-technology innovations to which the Department of Defense 

is committed with its vision of transformation. Self-knowledge is 

vital. This monograph invites American soldiers to look at their 

own public, strategic, and military culture, and then consider how 

much change is needed if they are to be competitive with irregular 

enemies.

The three major elements in my argument—irregular enemies, 

strategy, and the traditional American way of war—come together 
55

in my third conclusion. U.S. strategic effectiveness will not be 

challenged successfully by truly more competent enemies, but it 

may fall short for reasons of America’s own political, strategic, and 

military culture. As we have argued before, the problems are twofold. 

Americans need not only to understand that irregular warfare is 

different tactically and operationally from a regular struggle; scarcely 

less important, Americans must never forget that strategy must rule 

all of warfare, regular and irregular. The traditional American way 

of war was designed to take down regular enemies, and was not 

overly attentive to the strategic effect and political consequences 

of military action. That legacy makes the task before the agents of 

transformation and adaptation even greater than perhaps they have 

realized to date. This monograph should be helpful in assisting 

understanding of the structure of the challenge faced by the Army 

today. 

The subtitle of this monograph poses the question, “Can the 

American Way of War Adapt?” My answer is “perhaps, but only 

with difficulty.” Cultural change cannot reliably be implemented 

by plans, orders, and exhortation. Even negative experience is 

not entirely to be trusted as a certain source of sound education 

(remember Vietnam!). What we do know is that the prospects for 

effecting the transformation necessary to meet irregular enemies 

must be much improved if the scope and scale of the challenge are 

recognized honestly.

ENDNOTES

1. Stuart Kinross, “Clausewitz and Low-Intensity Conflict,” The Journal of 

Strategic Studies, Vol. 27, No. 1, March 2004, p. 54.

2. Sam C. Sarkesian, America’s Forgotten Wars: The Counterrevolutionary Past and 

Lessons for the Future, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984, p. 245.

3. Charles E. Callwell, Small Wars: A Tactical Textbook for Imperial Soldiers, 

London: Greenhill Books, 1990 (first published 1906), p. 23.

4. The cyclical view of strategic history is presented and defended in Colin S. 

Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 

2005.

5. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, trans., 

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976, pp. 141, 578 (hereafter cited as 

Clausewitz).
56

6. Colin S. Gray, Villains, Victims and Sheriffs: Strategic Studies for an Inter-War 

Period, An inaugural lecture at the University of Hull, January 12, 1994, Hull, UK: 

University of Hull Press, 1994. Reprinted in Comparative Strategy, Vol. 13, No. 4, 

October-December 1994, pp. 353-369.

7. Donald H. Rumsfeld, The National Defense Strategy of the United States of 

America, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Defense, March 2005, p. 1.

8. See Colin S. Gray, The Sheriff: America’s Defense of the New World Order, 

Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. I seem to specialize in 

controversial concepts and metaphors. My characterization of the United States as 

the contemporary global sheriff is about as popular as was my description of the 

1990s as an interwar period.

9. Raymond Aron, “The Evolution of Modern Strategic Thought,” in Alastair 

Buchan, ed., Problems of Modern Strategy, London: ISS, 1970, p. 25.

10. Callwell, Small Wars, p. 21.

11. Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century, St. 

Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2004.

12. For some basic education, see Clausewitz, esp. Book 3, ch. 1. Also see Colin 

S. Gray, Modern Strategy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, ch. 1; Richard K. 

Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 2, Fall 2000, pp. 

5-50; and Hew Strachan, “The Lost Meaning of Strategy,” Survival, Vol. 47, No. 3, 

Autumn 2005, pp. 33-54.

13. Sun-tzu, The Art of War, Ralph D. Sawyer, trans., Boulder, CO: Westview 

Press, 1994; Robert B. Strassler, ed., The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive 

Guide to “The Peloponnesian War,” Richard Crawley, trans., rev. edn., New York: 

Free Press, 1996.

14. I was tempted to claim that intellectual mastery of the strategic mode of 

reasoning equips one to succeed in war, regular or irregular. Indeed, I included 

that claim in the keynote speech which was the basis of this monograph. On further 

reflection, however, it rapidly became clear that, although skill as a strategist is 

always desirable, it cannot guarantee decisive victory. The enemy may be led by 

strategists who are yet more skilled strategically, or, more likely, the balance of 

advantages and disadvantages may be so heavily weighted to one side or the other 

that no measure of strategic excellence is able to provide sufficient compensation. 

In the text, I warn against treating COIN theory and the discovery of culture as 

panaceas. I could just as well warn against the elevation of strategy to panacea 

status. The American defense community periodically, albeit briefly, succumbs to 

what can fairly be termed “strategism,” meaning an infatuation with strategy.

15. I have developed this argument in some detail in my monograph, 

Transformation and Strategic Surprise, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies 

Institute, U.S. Army War College, April 2005.

16. Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam, Baltimore: Johns 

Hopkins University Press, 1986, ch. 6.
57

17. Clausewitz, p. 177.

18. Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States 

Strategy and Policy, New York: Macmillan, 1973, is now the classic treatment of this 

contestable concept.

19. Sun-tzu, Art of War, p. 179.

20. In the 1970s, a few, a very few, American defense analysts and regional 

experts made the startling suggestion that the Soviet Union might not have bought 

into a common nuclear policy enlightenment. Significant period pieces included: 

Richard Pipes, “Why the Soviet Union Thinks It could Fight and Win a Nuclear 

War,” Commentary, Vol. 64, No. 1, July 1977, pp. 21-34; Jack L. Snyder, The Soviet 

Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operations, R-2154-AF, Santa 

Monica, CA: RAND, September 1977; and Fritz Ermath, “Contrasts in American 

and Soviet Strategic Thought,” International Security, Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1978, pp. 

138-155.

21. Robert H. Scales, Jr., “Culture-Centric Warfare,” U.S. Naval Institute

Proceedings, Vol. 130, No. 10, October 2004, pp. 32-36.

22. The clearest statement of this fact is in Samuel P. Huntington, American 

Military Strategy, Policy Paper 28, Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, 

University of California, Berkeley, 1986.

23. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Military Writings, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 

1963.

24. Robert R. Tomes, “Relearning Counterinsurgency Warfare,” Parameters, 

Vol. XXXIV, No. 1, Spring 2004, pp. 16-28, is very much to the point. From a very 

large literature, Ian F. W. Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies: 

Guerrillas and their Opponents since 1750, London: Routledge, 2001, provides 

invaluable historical perspective, while Donald W. Hamilton, The Art of Insurgency: 

American Military Policy and the Failure of Strategy in Southeast Asia, Westport, CT: 

Praeger Publishers, 1998, is a usefully focused study.

25. Later on in the text I explain the principal characteristics of COIN. I do 

this not because I believe that the U.S. Army does not understand them. Rather is 

the intention both to provide a reminder of “the basics” and, more particularly, to 

showcase the contrast between irregular warfare and America’s preferred regular 

style. With regard to my working assumption that the historically attested principles 

of COIN are well and widely appreciated, some readers of this monograph may be 

of the opinion that it is not as well-founded as I would like to believe.

26. Steven Metz and Raymond Millen, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in 

the 21st Century: Reconceptualizing Threat and Response, Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. 

Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, November 2004; Michael F. Morris, 

“Al Qaeda as Insurgency,” Joint Force Quarterly, No. 39, 4th Qtr. 2005, pp. 41-50.

27. Ralph Peters, “In Praise of Attrition,” Parameters, Vol. XXXIV, No. 2, 

Summer 2004, pp. 24-32.
58

28. The use of time as a weapon to outlast the regular foreign enemy of an 

insurgency is a significant theme in Jeffrey Record, The Wrong War: Why We Lost in 

Vietnam, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998, e.g., pp. 67, 178-179.

29. See Susan L. Marquis, Unconventional Warfare: Rebuilding U.S. Special 

Operations Forces, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997.

30. I develop this argument in “From Principles of Warfare to Principles of 

War: A Clausewitzian Solution,” in Transformation and Strategic Surprise; and 

Strategy and History: Essays on Theory and Practice, London: Routledge, 2006, pp. 

81-87.

31. Clausewitz, p. 178.

32. My early efforts to apply cultural analysis to contemporary strategy 

were focused on superpower nuclear issues. Those efforts eventually were 

collected in Nuclear Strategy and National Style, Lanham, MD: Hamilton Press, 

1986. For a vigorous methodological assault on my endeavors, see Alastair Iain 

Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History, 

Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995, esp. ch. 1. I replied to his critique 

in my Modern Strategy, ch. 5. The primary issue between us was whether culture 

merely influenced behavior, or was evidenced in behavior. Johnston was seeking 

a methodology for the study of culture, whereas I was proceeding empirically, 

without overmuch concern for the feasibility of theory-building. I have always 

been attracted to Callwell’s advice that “[t]heory cannot be accepted as conclusive 

when practice points the other way.” Small Wars, p. 270. For those who wish to 

explore the highways and byways of strategic culture, they could do worse than 

sample the following: Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism, London: Croom 

Helm, 1979; Carl G. Jacobsen, ed., Strategic Power: USA/USSR, New York: St. 

Martin’s Press, 1990; Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: 

Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press, 1996; 

Michael C. Desch, “Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security 

Studies,” International Security, Vol. 23, No. 1, Summer 1998, pp. 141-170; Victor 

Davis Hanson, Why the West Has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam, 

London: Faber and Faber, 2001; and for a more critical view of culture’s strategic 

responsibility, see John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture: From Ancient 

Greece to Modern America, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003; John Glenn, Darryl 

Howlett, and Stuart Poore, eds., Neorealism Versus Strategic Culture, Aldershot, UK: 

Ashgate, 2004; and the sources I cite in Transformation and Strategic Surprise, n. 46.

33. Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership 

in Wartime, New York: Free Press, 2002, is essential contemporary reading on 

American civil-military relations. The “normal” American theory of those relations, 

which describes and praises the separation of soldiers from politics, was presented 

in the classic study by Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory 

and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 

1957.

34. Clausewitz, pp. 177 ff.
59

35. Cohen, Supreme Command.

36. Clausewitz, pp. 610, 607.

37. Ibid., p. 605.

38. The contemporary literature addressing the difficulties of strategic 

performance directly is not extensive, but most people should find it highly useful. 

For some examples, see David Jablonsky, “Why Is Strategy Difficult?” in Gary L. 

Guertner, ed., The Search for Strategy: Politics and Strategic Vision, Westport, CT: 

Greenwood Press, 1993, pp. 3-45; Colin S. Gray, “Why Strategy Is Difficult,” Joint 

Force Quarterly, No. 22, Summer 1999, pp. 6-12; and Richard K. Betts, “The Trouble 

with Strategy: Bridging Policy and Operations,” Joint Force Quarterly, No. 29, 

Autumn/Winter 2001-02, pp. 23-30.

39. Clausewitz, p. 101.

40. Ibid., p. 608.

41. Cohen’s brilliant Supreme Command is essential, but by no means is it the 

last word on the subject.

42. This theorist feels a little uncomfortable quoting this ironic cliché. At a 

recent AWC/SSI conference, he was told by the former soldier who was the source 

of the deadly admission, that he misspoke in stressful circumstances and could 

not clarify his meaning or retract the phrase before the damage was done. Friction 

happens! I hope that the person in question can find it in his generous heart to 

forgive me.

43. Clausewitz, p. 104.

44. Ibid., pp. 88-89.

45. Especially useful studies include J. Paul de B. Taillon, The Evolution of 

Special Forces in Counter-Terrorism: The British and American Experience, Westport, 

CT: Praeger Publishers, 2001; Alastair Finlan, “Warfare by Other Means: Special 

Forces, Terrorism and Grand Strategy,” in Thomas R. Mockaitis and Paul B. Rich, 

eds., Grand Strategy in the War Against Terrorism, London: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 

92-108; and, preeminently, James D. Kiras, Rendering the Mortal Blow Easier: Special 

Operations and the Nature of Strategy, London: Routledge, forthcoming 2006.

46. Three first-rate books by Lewis Sorley are essential reading: Thunderbolt: 

From the Battle of the Bulge to Vietnam and Beyond: General Creighton Abrams and the 

Army of His Times, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997; particularly his A Better 

War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, 

New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999; and Honorable Warrior: General Harold K. Johnson 

and the Ethics of Command, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998. My 

monograph is not specifically about Vietnam, but that war keeps intruding into the 

narrative and analysis despite my best efforts to minimize the intrusion. Most of 

the literature, and certainly the overwhelming bulk of expert opinion on America’s 

performance—political, strategic, and military—is, on balance, strongly negative. 

Therefore, for some balance, it is suitable to recommend two thoughtful books, 
60

one based on firsthand (Australian) experience, which tell a rather more up-beat 

story of the American effort in Vietnam: Mark W. Woodruff, Unheralded Victory: 

Who Won the Vietnam War? New York: HarperCollins, 1999; and C. Dale Walton, 

The Myth of Inevitable U.S. Defeat in Vietnam, London: Frank Cass, 2002. There is 

no question that Americans can be effective in the conduct of irregular warfare 

against revolutionary enemies. For example, see Michael A. Hennessy, Strategy in 

Vietnam: The Marines and Revolutionary Warfare in I Corps, 1965-1972, Westport, CT: 

Praeger Publishers, 1997. The trouble was that the Army, by and large, was not 

committed to implement an effective strategy. For a longer historical perspective, 

Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, New 

York: Basic Books, 2002, is very useful.

47. Deliberately, this monograph does not delve into the controversial policy 

and strategy realm of “the Bush Doctrine,” which licenses the option of taking 

preventive or preemptive cross-border action against enemies of any kind, states, 

or organized groups or movements. Plainly, the kind of bold, hopefully rapidly 

decisive military action required for such attacks is all but designed for its close fit 

with the traditional American way of war, though a few nontrivial caveats need 

noting. U.S. intelligence, though generally excellent technically, has been anything 

but excellent in its human dimension, on the targets at issue, or in the assessments 

reached in Washington. Also, America’s habit of separating war and policy, thereby 

helping to produce an acute strategy deficit, renders surprise attacks on foreign soil 

an exceptionally hazardous option for the American upholder of global law and 

order. At present, I am working on a study to examine this issue in a detailed and 

systematic way. At present, the strategic studies literature offers almost nothing 

of solid value on preemption and prevention as policy choices and consequent 

strategies. What we do have available by and large are leftovers from the strategic 

thought and doctrine of the Cold War, where we briefly debated preventive war, 

and much more seriously considered launch-on-warning and launch-under-attack 

for our strategic nuclear forces.

48. Some worrying possibilities are discussed in the influential article, 

“Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,” 

International Security, Vol. 28, No. 1, Summer 2003, pp. 5-46. Posen is not enthusiastic 

about American commitments to continental warfare.

49. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, p. 7 (emphasis in the original).

50. For my extensive discussion of this subject, see Another Bloody Century, ch. 

6, “Irregular Warfare and Terrorism.”

51. Clausewitz’s chapter on “The People in Arms” recognized the occasional 

potency of guerrilla action, in particular as a military tactic by an outraged people 

against an invader. Such warfare was extensive in the years that he had lived 

through as a serving soldier. But, sensibly enough, he recognized that the irregulars 

could succeed only in highly permissive circumstances. Clausewitz, Book 6, ch. 

26. Certainly it is true to claim that he devoted very little explicit attention to 

people’s war in its several styles. Nonetheless, I believe that Ian Beckett’s fairly 

unappreciative comments on Clausewitz’s treatment of guerrilla warfare are too 
61

negative. Modern Insurgencies and Counter-Insurgencies, p. 14. In fact, Clausewitz 

theorized even better than he may have known for irregular warfare, as this 

monograph argues. Also, see Kinross, “Clausewitz and Low-Intensity Conflict.”

52. See Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency, 

New York: Praeger, 1964; and for a judicious explanation, Peter Paret, French 

Revolutionary Warfare from Indo-China to Algeria: The Analysis of a Political and 

Military Doctrine, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964.

53. Callwell, Small Wars, p. 38.

54. Clausewitz, p. 605.

55. For a persuasive set of scholarly studies of the phenomenon of cultural 

adaptation, see Emily O. Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason, eds., The Diffusion of 

Military Technology and Ideas, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. 

Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, eds., Military Innovation in the Interwar 

Period, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, also have much of value to 

say on the subject of distinctive national responses to common new technological 

opportunities.

56. “Soft power” is shorthand for the many means of gaining influence 

available in principle to American grand strategists short of threatening or taking 

action that must kill people and break things. The founding modern text is Joseph 

S. Nye, Jr., Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, New York: Basic 

Books, 1990. Naturally, it is an attractive concept. It is a little less attractive in 

conflicts with rogues and irregulars because they tend to be less easily seduced 

by some aspect of American culture and ideology than are more normal aspirants 

for the better, which is to say American, way of life. Also, the appealing belief that 

the slow but cumulatively engaging potency of our soft power should preclude 

the necessity for our having to resort to brutal hard power, may simply be wrong. 

The trouble is that when soft power fails over a lengthy period, time, that most 

unforgiving dimension of strategy, will have been lost for truly effective action. 

The case of Iran today promises to be a classic case in illustration of this point, 

alas.

57. T. E. Lawrence, “Guerrilla Warfare,” entry in Encyclopedia Britannica: A 

New Survey of Universal Knowledge, Vol. 10, London: Encyclopedia Britannica, 14th 

edn. 1929, 1959 revision, esp. p. 950B. In his Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph, 

New York: Doubleday, 1991 edn., Lawrence drew upon the insight that “[i]t 

seemed a regular soldier might be helpless without a target, owning only what he 

sat on, and subjugating only what, by order, he could poke his rifle at” (p. 192). 

His undoubted brilliance as a practitioner and theorist of guerrilla warfare is not 

well-communicated, even to this admirer, by his purple prose, overstatements, 

underappreciation of the salience of context, and vanity. Still, the high quality of 

his thought and his record of success do survive his literary pretensions.

58. This important but frequently overlooked point is made most usefully in 

Adam Roberts, “The ‘War on Terror’ in Historical Perspective,” Survival, Vol. 47, 

No. 2, Summer 2005, p. 112.
62

59. An essay in my History and Strategy book compares and contrasts the two 

concepts of Principles of Warfare and Principles of War, and suggests candidates 

for the latter list.

60. See Gray, Transformation and Strategic Surprise.

61. See Stephen Peter Rosen, “Vietnam and the American Theory of Limited 

War,” International Security, Vol. 7, No. 2, Fall 1982, pp. 83-113; Mark Clodfelter, 

The Limits of Air Power: The American Bombing of North Vietnam, New York: Free 

Press, 1989; and Robert A. Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, 

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996, ch. 6.

62. Clausewitz, On War, p. 605. The intellectual godfather of coercive diplomacy, 

American-style, was Thomas C. Schelling. See his timely and influential tour de 

force, Arms and Influence, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966. Another 

very American period piece which had real-world consequence was Herman 

Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios, New York: Praeger, 1965.

63. Huntington, American Military Strategy, p. 16.

64. Geoffrey Till, Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age, London: Macmillan, 

1982, pp. 224-225.

65. Sarkesian, America’s Forgotten Wars; John M. Collins, America’s Small Wars: 

Lessons for the Future, Washington, DC: Brassey’s (U.S.), 1991; and Boot, The Savage 

Wars of Peace.

66. Bernard Brodie, “The Continuing Relevance of On War,” in Clausewitz, p. 

54.

67. See Stanley Hoffman, Gulliver’s Troubles: On the Setting of American Foreign 

Policy, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968.

68. Scales, “Culture-Centric Warfare.”

69. Eliot A. Cohen: “The Mystique of U.S. Air Power,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, 

No. 1, January/February 1994, pp. 109-124; and “The Meaning and Future of Air 

Power,” Orbis, Vol. 39, No. 2, Spring 1995, pp. 189-200. In addition, for careful 

historical perspective, Benjamin S. Lambeth, The Transformation of American Air 

Power, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000, is essential.

70. See, e.g., U.S. Army, 2004 Army Transformation Roadmap, Washington, DC: 

Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Army Operations, Army Transformation 

Office, July 2004.

71. Two British COIN experts judge that “[g]enerally speaking the less 

sophisticated the army, the better able it has been to defeat insurgency.” F. W. 

Beckett and John Pimlott, “Introduction,” to Beckett and Pimlott, eds., Armed 

Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985, p. 10. 

A similarly reserved attitude towards technology has been expressed recently 

by the outstanding British soldier of his generation, a man with an abundance of 

relevant personal experience: General Sir Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The 

Art of War in the Modern World, London: Allen Lane, 2005, esp., pp. 400-401. Many 
63

of his comments echo the standard empirically-based lore on how to wage COIN 

intelligently. It is worth noting that probably the dominant concept in Smith’s 

book is his belief that today, and in the future, the chief challenge facing Western 

armies will be the necessity to function effectively “amongst the people.”

72. Quoted in Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace, p. 294.

73. The bluntest competent assault to date on this military cultural preference 

is to be found in Frederick W. Kagan, “War and Aftermath,” Policy Review, No. 

120, August and September 2003, p. 27. “It is a fundamental mistake to see the 

enemy as a set of targets. The enemy in war is a group of people.”

74. Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace, p. 301. In 1966, for example, two-thirds of 

the American shells expended were fired at no known targets. Also see Record, 

The Wrong War, ch. 3.

75. Huntington, American Military Strategy, p. 15.

76. Ibid., p. 16.

77. The pattern of military sacrifice mandated by a public culture of 

unpreparedness is well told in Charles E. Heller and William A. Stofft, eds., 

America’s First Battles, 1776-1965, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1986; 

see esp. ch. 9 on Korea.

78. This is not to deny that small SOF training teams can make, indeed have 

and should be allowed to make, a crucial difference in the ability of local clients to 

combat insurgents and terrorists. However, there are no free gifts in warfare. Even 

a well-conducted advisory enterprise carries the risk of donating to the irregular 

enemy visible evidence both of American imperialism and of official dependency 

upon the hated outsider.

79. See Sarkesian, America’s Forgotten Wars; Collins, America’s Small Wars; 

Anthony James Joes, America and Guerrilla Warfare, Lexington, KY: University 

Press of Kentucky, 2000; and Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace.

80. See Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam.

81. For an important study from the period, a true period piece, written by 

a gifted and highly experienced British serving soldier, see Frank Kitson, Low 

Intensity Operations, London: Faber and Faber, 1971.

82. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, pp. 230-232.

83. I explored the conditions permissive for the success of SO in my “Handfuls of 

Heroes on Desperate Ventures: When do Special Operations Succeed?” Parameters, 

Vol. XXIX, No. 2, Spring 1999, pp. 2-24. I suspect strongly that by emphasizing SO 

as unconventional warfare, I may well have appeared to undervalue SOF in their 

several COIN roles.

84. Mao Tse-tung, “On Protracted War (May 1938),” in Selected Military 

Writings, pp. 187-266.

85. See Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military 

History of the Civil War, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1983, p. 720, for 
64

the primacy of logistics; and Thomas M. Kane, Military Logistics and Strategic 

Performance, London: Frank Cass, 2001, for a superior explanation of logistics as an 

essential enabler of strategy

86. Henry E. Eccles, Military Concepts and Philosophy, New Brunswick, NJ: 

Rutgers University Press, 1965, p. 83. “[A]ll logistic activities naturally tend to 

grow to inordinate size, and unless positive control is maintained, this growth 

continues until, like a ball of wet snow, a huge accumulation of slush obscures 

the hard core of essential combat support, and the mass becomes unmanageable. 

This snowball effect permeates the entire structure of military organization and 

effort.”

87. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783, 

London: Methuen,1965, p. 25; Barry R. Posen, “Command of the Commons.”

88. Peter M. Dunn, “The American Army: The Vietnam War, 1965-1973,” in 

Beckett and Pimlott, eds., Armed Forces and Modern Counter-Insurgency, p. 103.

89. Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, eds., Soldiers and Civilians: The CivilMilitary Gap and American National Security, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. 

Also see Paul Cornish, “Myth and Reality: U.S. and U.K. Approaches to Casualty 

Aversion and Force Protection,” Defense Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer 2003, 

pp. 121-128.

90. Callwell, Small Wars, p. 90.

91. That development is well-handled in Beckett, Modern Insurgencies and 

Counter-Insurgencies.

92. Mary Kaldor, “Elaborating the ‘New War’ Thesis,” in Isabelle Duyvesteyn 

and Jan Angstrom, eds., Rethinking the Nature of War, London: Frank Cass, 2005, 

pp. 210-224; Hammes, The Sling and the Stone.

93. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, p. 192.

94. Daniel J. Hughes, ed., Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings, Novato, 

CA: Presidio Press, 1993, p. 47 (emphasis added). 

95. U.S. Army, 2004 Transformation Roadmap, p. viii.