TOWARD AN AMERICAN WAY OF WAR

Antulio J. Echevarria II

March 2004
ii

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ISBN 1-58487-156-3
iii

FOREWORD

The American way of war has been much written about 

over the years. That literature is remarkable for its explicit and 

implicit consensus regarding the overriding characteristics of the 

American approach to warfare--aggressive, direct, and focused 

on achieving decisive victory. A way of war implies thinking 

about confl ict holistically, from prewar condition-setting to the 

fi nal accomplishment of one’s strategic objectives. Unfortunately, 

American thinking about war tends to put more emphasis on coercive 

operations--the destruction of an opponent’s regular forces on the 

fi eld of battle--than on what is loosely known as war’s “aftermath.” 

Yet, it is in the aftermath where wars are typically won.

In this monograph, Lieutenant Colonel Echevarria examines 

the principal characteristics and ideas associated with the American 

way of war, past and present. He argues that Americans do not yet 

have a way of war. What they have is a way of battle. Moving from 

a way of battle toward a way of war will require some fundamental 

rethinking about the roles of the grammar and logic of war, about 

the nature of U.S. civil-military relations, and about the practical 

resources necessary to translate military victory into strategic 

success.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 
iv

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

ANTULIO J. ECHEVARRIA II, an Army lieutenant colonel, 

currently is assigned as the Director of National Security Affairs at 

the Strategic Studies Institute. He graduated from the U.S. Military 

Academy in 1981, was commissioned as an armor offi cer, and has 

held a variety of command and staff assignments in Germany 

and Continental United States; he has also served as an Assistant 

Professor of European History at the U.S. Military Academy; 

Squadron S3 of 3/16 Cavalry; Chief of BN/TF and Bde Doctrine 

at the U.S. Army Armor Center at Fort Knox; as an action offi cer at 

the Army After Next project at HQ TRADOC, Ft. Monroe, VA; and 

as a speechwriter for the U.S. Army Chief of Staff. He is a graduate 

of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College, and the 

Army War College, and holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in History 

from Princeton University. Lieutenant Colonel Echevarria is the 

author of After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers before the Great 

War, published by the University Press of Kansas (2001). He also , published by the University Press of Kansas (2001). He also 

has published articles in a number of scholarly and professional 

journals to include the Journal of Military History, War in History, 

War & Society, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Parameters, Joint Force 

Quarterly, Military Review, and Airpower Journal.
v

SUMMARY

Understanding of the American approach to warfare begins 

with historian Russell Weigley’s classic work, The American Way of 

War. He concluded that the American style of waging war centered 

primarily on the idea of achieving a crushing military victory over 

an opponent. Americans—not unlike many of their European 

counterparts—considered war an alternative to bargaining, rather 

than part of an ongoing bargaining process, as in the Clausewitzian 

view. Their concept of war rarely extended beyond the winning of 

battles and campaigns to the gritty work of turning military victory 

into strategic success, and hence was more a way of battle than an 

actual way of war. Unfortunately, the American way of battle has 

not yet matured into a way of war. 

The subject is important not just for academic reasons, but for 

policy ones as well. Assumptions about how American political 

and military leaders conceive of war and approach the waging of 

it tend to inform their decisions in matters of strategic planning, 

budgeting, and concept and doctrine development. The assumptions 

underpinning Defense Transformation, for example, appear to have 

more to do with developing an ever exquisite grammar than they do 

with serving war’s logic.

A Way of War Uniquely American?

Much of what Weigley said about the American way of war 

would apply to the German, French, or British methods of warfare 

as well. Yet, the picture he presents is incomplete. Hence, one would 

do well to consider Max Boot’s Savage Wars of Peace, which contends 

that Americans actually practiced another way of war with regard 

to history’s “small wars”—such as the Boxer Rebellion and the 

Philippine Insurrection—that did not necessarily involve wars for 

the complete overthrow of an opponent. In the fi nal analysis, Boot 

rounds out the picture of the American approach to warfare, thereby 

augmenting Weigley’s thesis rather than overturning it. 
vi

A Way of Battle.

While these two interpretations approach the American tradition 

of warfare from different perspectives, they agree in one very critical 

respect: the American way of war tends to shy away from thinking 

about the complicated process of turning military triumphs, whether 

on the scale of major campaigns or small-unit actions, into strategic 

successes. This tendency is symptomatic of a persistent bifurcation 

in American strategic thinking—though by no means unique to 

Americans—in which military professionals concentrate on winning 

battles and campaigns, while policymakers focus on the diplomatic 

struggles that precede and infl uence, or are infl uenced by, the actual 

fi ghting. This bifurcation is partly a matter of preference and partly 

a by-product of the American tradition of subordinating military 

command to civilian leadership, which creates two separate spheres 

of responsibility, one for diplomacy and one for combat. In other 

words, the Weigley and Boot interpretations are both important for 

implicitly revealing that the American style of warfare amounts to a 

way of battle more than a way of war. 

A New American Way of War?

A growing amount of defense literature refers to a so-called new 

style of American warfare that emphasizes “precision fi repower, 

special forces, psychological operations, and jointness,” rather 

than overwhelming force. The characteristics bear a conspicuous 

resemblance to the qualities of “speed, jointness, knowledge, and 

precision” that underpin the model of the new American way of war 

currently championed by the Offi ce of Force Transformation (OFT) 

and the Offi ce of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). Unfortunately, 

the new American way of war seems headed for the same trap that 

snared both the Weigley and Boot versions of the traditional one, 

that is—it appears geared to fi ght wars as if they were battles and, 

thus, confuses the winning of campaigns or small-scale actions with 

the winning of wars. 
vii

Whose American Way of War?

OSD recently took unqualifi ed possession of the emerging 

American way of war, and began supplanting the traditional 

grammar of war with a new one. However, this new grammar—

which focuses on achieving rapid military victories—was equipped 

only to win battles, not wars. Hence, the successful accomplishment 

of the administration’s goal of building a democratic government in 

Iraq, for example, is still in question, with an insurgency growing 

rapidly. 

Toward a Way of War.

To move toward a genuine way of war, American military and 

political leaders must address two key problems. First, they must 

better defi ne the respective roles and responsibilities of the logic and 

grammar of war, and, in the process, take steps that will diminish 

the bifurcation in American strategic thinking. Second, political 

and military leaders must habituate themselves to thinking more 

thoroughly about how to turn combat successes into favorable 

strategic outcomes. Such thinking is not new, but it is clearly not yet 

a matter of habit. Failure to see the purpose for which a war is fought 

as part of war itself amounts to treating battle as an end in itself. 

Until Americans clarify the roles of grammar and logic and 

develop a habit of thinking about war that goes beyond battles, they 

will have a way of war in name only. 

1

TOWARD AN AMERICAN WAY OF WAR

Serious inquiry into the American approach to waging war 

began in the early 1970s with the publication of Russell Weigley’s 

The American Way of War.

1

 Examining how war was thought about 

and practiced by key U.S. military and political fi gures from George 

Washington to Robert McNamara, Weigley concluded that, except 

in the early days of the nation’s existence, the American way of 

war centered on the pursuit of a crushing military victory―either 

through a strategy of attrition or one of annihilation―over an 

adversary.2 U.S. military men and political leaders typically saw the 

destruction of an opponent’s armed might and the occupation of 

his capital as marking the end of war and the beginning of postwar 

negotiations. Thus, Americans―not unlike many of their European 

counterparts―considered war an alternative to bargaining, rather 

than part of an ongoing bargaining process, as in the Clausewitzian 

view. In other words, the American concept of war rarely extended 

beyond the winning of battles and campaigns to the gritty work of 

turning military victory into strategic success. Consequently, the 

American approach to war was―to take the liberty of rephrasing 

Weigley’s argument―more a way of battle than an actual way of war. 

Unfortunately, despite the existence of a theoretical foundation and 

a vast transformation effort that is gaining considerable momentum, 

the American way of battle has not yet matured into a way of war.

The phrase “way of war” as it is used here refers to general trends 

in the conduct of, and preferred modes of thinking about, war.3

Specifi cally, in an American context, it refl ects the fundamental ideas 

and expectations, albeit modifi ed in practice, that the U.S. military 

profession and U.S. political leadership have, or have had, about 

war, and their respective roles in it. These ideas and expectations, 

in turn, contribute to the assumptions that inform political and 

military decisionmakers in matters of strategic planning, budgeting, 

and concept and doctrine development. Assumptions currently 

underpinning Defense Transformation, for example, appear to be 

aimed at developing an ever exquisite grammar that quite overlooks 

the centrality of war’s logic.
2

A Way of War Uniquely American?

Much of what Weigley said about the American way of war 

would apply to the German, French, or British methods of warfare 

as well. The German way of war as thought about and practiced by 

the elder Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the Prusso-German General 

Staff from 1857-88, for example, shares much in common with the 

American approach described by Weigley. Moltke equated grand 

strategy with policy―which he considered the discrete province of 

statesmen―and insisted that, while policy had the right to establish 

the goals of a confl ict, even changing them when it saw fi t, it had 

no right to interfere with the conduct of military operations.4

In Clausewitzian terms, then, Moltke acknowledged the initial 

importance of the logic of war, but insisted that its grammar took 

precedence during the actual fi ghting. This kind of reasoning also 

existed in many of the French and British military writings published 

during Moltke’s time and into the late 20th century.5 Hence, despite 

some evident exceptions, Moltke’s segregated, grammarian 

approach to war―rather than Clausewitz’s view of policy and war 

as a logical continuum―seems to bear the greater resemblance to the 

American tradition of warfare.6

Accordingly, while one might expect to see more differences 

than similarities in national styles of war, in the Western context at 

least, the opposite is true. American, British, French, and German 

military writers all studied the campaigns of Napoleon, and later of 

Moltke, drawing many of the same lessons from those studies. They 

saw battles and campaigns in a similar light, believing, for instance, 

that winning wars meant winning battles, and that doing so would 

accomplish most, if not all, of one’s wartime objectives. They 

also faced many of the same fi scal, manning, and organizational 

challenges, nurtured similar traditions regarding the warrior spirit, 

and kept comparably abreast of new developments in military 

technology, tactics, and operational concepts. While Western military 

establishments occasionally adopted different strategies, tactics, or 

operational paradigms, particularly in the period of reorganization 

before World War II, they did so mainly in response to the specifi c 

challenges of their geo-strategic and socio-political situations.7 In 

terms of seeing the fundamental object of war as the destruction of 
3

the enemy’s armed might by the best possible route, however, they 

were largely of one mind.

Such common denominators support the case for the existence 

of a larger Western way of war. Noted authors, such as Victor Davis 

Hanson, in fact, have made such a case. In Carnage and Culture, 

published in 2001, Hanson argued that some of the underlying 

values of Western culture, namely, its traditions of rationalism, 

individualism, and civic duty, led not only to a decided technological 

dominance, as eminent historians such as Geoffrey Parker have 

contended, but also to signifi cant―even decisive―advantages in 

military “organization, discipline, morale, initiative, fl exibility, 

and command.”8 These advantages made Western armies and 

navies more successful in combat than their counterparts in other 

cultures. To his credit, Hanson does not insist that Western values 

have survived unadulterated over the years or that military cultures 

perfectly mirror the cultures of their parent civil societies. Rather, he 

persuasively maintains only that in each of the clash of cultures that 

he examines―such as Cortés’s conquistadors versus Cuauhtémoc’s 

Aztecs in the battles that took place for the city of Tenochtitlán 

(1520-21)―those values were more evident in the Western force 

than in that of its adversary. To be sure, Western military cultures 

often campaigned vigorously against the spread of free thinking 

or individualism―the underpinnings of initiative and fl exibility, 

for example―because they were thought to undermine a soldier’s 

corporate identity and his will to fi ght.9 Nonetheless, U.S. and 

European military institutions were infl uenced more by such ideas 

than were their foes. 

Signifi cantly, Hanson also demonstrates the predominance of 

the concept of annihilation―which he defi nes broadly as the idea 

of “head-to-head battle that destroys the enemy”―in each of the 

clashes of arms he examines and, by extension, in Western military 

thinking in general. Like Weigley, he also underscores the view 

that Westerners saw war principally as a means of “doing what 

politics cannot.”10 Hanson thus agrees with Weigley that, in most of 

Western strategic thought, politics brought war into being, but war 

existed as a violent alternative to politics, rather than as its logical 

extension. Hence, the commonalities that the American style of 

warfare shares with the Western way of war show that Weigley’s 
4

interpretation, though fl awed in some respects, is―to take minor 

license with a celebrated German motto―“greater than it seems.”11

Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that Weigley’s description 

of the American approach to warfare is marred by shortcomings in 

at least two respects: in the errors he makes in military terminology; 

and in his tendency to oversimplify the complexities of American 

military thinking, though generalizations are to be expected in a work 

that spans the better part of 2 centuries. With regard to terminology, 

he incorrectly defi nes the strategies of annihilation and of attrition, 

describing the former as seeking the complete “overthrow of the 

enemy’s military power” and the latter as pursuing lesser objectives 

by means of an “indirect approach,” which he mistakenly says is 

characterized primarily by the gradual erosion or exhaustion of 

an opponent’s forces.12 His misuse of military terminology caused 

some readers to conclude, incorrectly, that the American approach 

to warfare was characterized by applying overwhelming “mass and 

concentration” in a slow, grinding strategy of attrition as General 

Ulysses S. Grant did in the Civil War.13

Regarding his errors of oversimplifi cation, Weigley overlooked 

the considerable amount and variety of American thinking 

concerning the importance of deterring an invasion of the continent, 

which played a key role in the development of U.S. coastal artillery 

and provided a rationale for the long-range bomber, and which both 

refl ected and reinforced U.S. attitudes toward isolationism into the 

early 20th century. These criticisms, however, do not substantively 

undermine Weigley’s thesis―that Americans saw the primary object 

of war as the destruction of an opponent’s armed might rather than 

as the furtherance of political objectives through violent means―so 

much as they qualify it. They merely highlight the exceptions that 

ultimately prove the rule.14 Weigley’s view thus remains a valid way 

of looking at the American style of war as it was thought about and 

practiced for nearly 2 centuries.

However, one recent counterargument to his thesis deserves 

consideration. Max Boot’s Savage Wars of Peace, published in 2002, 

contends that, whatever their preferences, American military and 

political leaders have actually practiced more than one way of 

war.15 Boot maintains that U.S. involvement in history’s “small 

wars”―such as the Boxer Rebellion, the Philippine Insurrection, 
5

and contemporary interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Somalia―

actually outnumbers its participation in major confl icts and is, 

therefore, deserving of inclusion in any description of the American 

style of warfare. Between 1800 and 1934, for example, U.S. Marines 

made 180 landings on foreign shores, more than one per year. During 

roughly the same period, the U.S. Army deployed numerous small 

contingents in actions virtually all over the globe. Likewise, the U.S. 

Navy, though small, was involved in many actions at sea over the 

same time span that, both directly and indirectly, assisted the British 

Royal Navy in keeping the oceans open for commerce. 

Boot also maintains that the U.S. military became involved in 

such small-scale actions not to protect or advance vital interests, but 

for lesser reasons that centered on infl icting punishment, ensuring 

protection, achieving pacifi cation, and benefi ting from profi tmaking.16 For example, the armed expedition launched in 1916 

by President Woodrow Wilson to capture Mexican revolutionary 

Pancho Villa was clearly punitive in nature. The U.S. Navy’s 

involvement in the Barbary Wars (1801-05, and 1815) provides an 

illustration of wars fought for protection, in this case to ensure the 

protection of American merchantmen sailing along the coast of 

North Africa. U.S. interventions in Haiti (1915-34) and the Dominican 

Republic (1916-24) represent attempts at pacifi cation, or modern-day 

nation-building, but they also furthered America’s policy of dollar 

diplomacy.17 Finally, U.S. participation in a multinational expedition 

to Peking during the Boxer Uprising (1900) was as much about 

liberating captive emissaries as it was protecting America’s small, 

but growing economic interests in China from European colonial 

ambitions. 

Furthermore, Boot contends that these small-scale confl icts―

which he also calls “imperial wars”―contributed signifi cantly to the 

rise of the United States as a world power, even though they did 

not directly involve vital interests.18 Hence, he not only calls for the 

recognition of a hitherto uncelebrated small-war tradition in U.S. 

military history, he insists that the American military embrace this 

tradition in an effort to prepare for the wars of the present and of the 

future.19 In the fi nal analysis, Boot augments Weigley’s thesis rather 

than overturning it; he thus rounds out the picture of the American 

way of war, which―after combining both interpretations―looks 

much like the proverbial coin with two sides.
6

A Way of Battle.

In some respects, these two faces are at diametrical odds with 

one another. One side of the coin―Weigley’s interpretation―helps 

explain the intellectual background that ultimately gave rise to 

the Powell doctrine, which, briefl y stated, holds that wars should 

be fought only for vital national interests and must have clear 

political objectives and popular support. It further emphasizes that 

the military should be allowed to use decisive force and that the 

political leadership must have a sound exit strategy for bringing the 

troops home.20 Put simply, the Powell doctrine tends to constrain 

how and why political leaders employ military force. Some might 

argue that this approach leaves the grammar of war to dictate its 

logic, a clear perversion of one of Clausewitz’s key dictums. Others 

would maintain, as Powell himself does, that use of such a doctrine 

as a form of wartime grammar makes perfect sense; the point of 

grammar, after all, is to ensure that the logic behind the message is 

conveyed intact (how it is perceived is another matter).21

In contrast, Boot’s interpretation describes a way of war that 

runs completely counter to the principles of the Powell doctrine: 

America’s involvement in the so-called savage wars of peace rarely 

concerned vital interests, clear political goals, popular support, 

or overwhelming force, and routinely required committing U.S. 

troops abroad for extended periods of time.22 Unfortunately, the 

track record of such interventions―despite Boot’s attempt to prove 

otherwise―is not encouraging. The United States had to occupy the 

Philippines, Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic many 

times, and for many years at a time, in order to impose any kind of 

lasting stability. Sometimes, even after long occupations as in Haiti 

(1915-34) and the Dominican Republic (1916-24), stability quickly 

collapsed after U.S. forces departed. Thus, while the U.S. military’s 

preference for fi ghting major wars may have compromised its ability 

to succeed in small ones, it is also clear that the nation-building tasks 

it was typically asked to perform tended to prove too complex for 

the military tool alone.

The approach that Boot advocates―in which potential 

interventions are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and which claims 

that no alternative to the Powell doctrine is “possible or desirable”―
7

comes close to dismissing the grammar of war altogether.23 To be 

sure, the Powell doctrine imposes constraints on the use of military 

force. However, the absence of a doctrine brings problems of its 

own. A strategic doctrine sends messages both domestically and 

abroad about the extent to which the United States will go to protect 

its interests, vital or otherwise.24 A critical part of that domestic 

audience is, of course, the military itself. Certainly, the Powell 

doctrine sends the message that the military need only concern 

itself with major wars: it will not have to do “windows,” or nationbuilding, for example. However, the absence of a doctrine suggests 

that the political leadership does not know what it is about―where it 

is headed or what its priorities are. Without such priorities to guide 

it, the military will most likely default into preparing only for the 

kinds of wars it prefers to fi ght.25 Hence, the absence of doctrine does 

not necessarily create a better situation than trying to implement a 

poor one. 

Yet, in one very critical respect, the Weigley and Boot 

interpretations agree: the American way of war tends to shy away 

from thinking about the complicated process of turning military 

triumphs, whether on the scale of major campaigns or small-unit 

actions, into strategic successes. This tendency is symptomatic of 

a persistent bifurcation in American strategic thinking―though by 

no means unique to Americans―in which military professionals 

concentrate on winning battles and campaigns, while policymakers 

focus on the diplomatic struggles that precede and infl uence, or are 

infl uenced by, the actual fi ghting. This bifurcation is partly a matter 

of preference and partly a by-product of the American tradition 

of subordinating military command to civilian leadership, which 

creates two separate spheres of responsibility, one for diplomacy and 

one for combat. In other words, the Weigley and Boot interpretations 

are both important for implicitly revealing that the American style of 

warfare amounts to a way of battle more than a way of war. 

A New American Way of War?

While Boot’s work clearly complements that of Weigley, his 

writings go further than just describing an unsung aspect of the 

American way of war. In an article published in Foreign Affairs
8

in 2003, for example, he established himself as one of the leading 

advocates of a so-called new style of American warfare.26 An 

emphasis on “precision fi repower, special forces, psychological 

operations, and jointness”―as opposed to the purported traditional 

dependence on overwhelming force, mass, and concentration―and 

the resultant qualities of “speed, maneuver, fl exibility, and surprise” 

characterize this so-called new approach.27 Boot claims, moreover, 

that the new American way of war makes it possible for the United 

States to wage the “savage wars of peace” more effectively and more 

effi ciently, thereby enabling it to enlarge its “empire of liberty”―by 

which he means the “family of democratic, capitalist nations” that 

benefi t from America’s largesse. This expansion, in fact, the United 

States is morally obligated to do because of its tremendous military 

and economic might.28

The characteristics that Boot describes bear a conspicuous 

resemblance to the qualities of “speed, jointness, knowledge, and 

precision” that underpin the model of the new American way of 

war currently championed by the Offi ce of Force Transformation 

(OFT) and the Offi ce of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).29 This model 

refl ects a crude blend of terminology extracted from Complexity 

theory and air-power theory, particularly John Warden’s notions 

about launching a series of precise, parallel strikes at an adversary’s 

so-called centers of gravity in order to infl ict a certain strategic 

paralysis on him.30 Its origins seem to stem from the initial spate of 

ideas that emerged after Operation DESERT STORM, and gained 

considerable momentum through the 1990s, about America’s new 

style of warfare. These ideas highlighted an air-centric approach 

that appeared to promise quick results with minimal cost in friendly 

casualties and collateral damage. Noted defense analyst, Eliot 

Cohen, pointed out that the potency of contemporary American air 

power gives the American way of war a certain “mystique” that U.S. 

diplomacy would do well to cultivate, though he cautioned that air 

power was hardly a silver bullet.31 However, his warning did little to 

curb the enthusiasm of air-power zealots, such as one-time historian 

at the Smithsonian Institute, Richard Hallion, who claimed that the 

results of Operation DESERT STORM proved that U.S. air power 

had literally―and almost single-handedly―revolutionized warfare.32

Indeed, according to some briefi ngs circulating in the Pentagon at 
9

the time, air power was not only America’s asymmetric advantage, 

it was the future of warfare. Thus, for a time, the new American way 

of war seemed to involve only one service.

Shortly after the end of the confl ict in Kosovo, Cohen summed 

up the salient impressions circulating among defense intellectuals 

about the new American way of war. With views similar to those 

of Weigley and Boot, Cohen saw the traditional U.S. approach to 

war as characterized by a certain aggressiveness or desire to take 

the fi ght to the enemy, by the quest for a decisive battle, by an 

explicit dislike of diplomatic interference, and by a low tolerance 

for anything but clear political objectives. In contrast, the new style 

of warfare refl ected a decided aversion to casualties, typifi ed by a 

greater preference for precision bombing and greater standoff, and it 

seemed willing to step away from the restrictive Powell doctrine and 

to participate more in coalitions, even those created only to address 

humanitarian concerns. The reduced risk of U.S. casualties, in turn, 

made such wars for less-than-vital interests more palatable. Cohen 

also expressed concern, however, that this new way of war increased 

military authority at the expense of civilian control by permitting 

the combatant commander, in this case General Wesley Clark, to 

become the focal point for strategic decisionmaking.33

Critics quickly responded that, in its most important aspects, this 

new style of war was already passé―operating in a world where its 

premises were “no longer valid.”34 In light of the thousands of lives 

lost on September 11, 2001, Americans seemed willing to return 

to an aggressive style of warfare and to bear whatever costs were 

necessary, even in terms of signifi cant U.S. casualties. Indeed, the 

U.S. military’s campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq were to prove 

that the capability for waging the close fi ght, even if based more on 

precision than mass, remained indispensable for achieving favorable 

combat outcomes.35 Those campaigns also demonstrated that civilian 

control over the military was alive and well when a strong civilian 

personality, like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has the helm.

The major differences between the new American way of war 

as understood by defense intellectuals and that conceived by OSD 

lay in the latter’s emphasis on the characteristics of jointness and 

knowledge, which the former regarded as little more than rhetorical 

excess. Defense intellectuals preferred to see the new U.S. way 
10

of war in terms of how it played itself out within the context of 

modern confl ict, while OSD tended to project a list of desired (some 

would say ideal) capabilities into the future. This is not to say that 

OSD’s model was entirely divorced from current events, for it later 

morphed to accommodate the Bush administration’s emerging 

doctrine of strategic preemption.36 OSD now asserts, for example, 

that future military operations overall will have to “shift from being 

reactive (i.e., retaliatory and punitive) to largely preventative.”37

The chief similarity in the views of defense intellectuals and OSD 

resides in the lack of emphasis on the end game, specifically, on the 

need for systematic thinking about the processes and capabilities 

needed to translate military victory into strategic success. As retired 

U.S. Marine General Anthony Zinni remarked, the U.S. military is 

becoming more efficient at “killing and breaking,” but that only 

wins battles, not wars.38 OSD’s model acknowledges the importance 

of “interagency constabulary forces,” for instance, but it does so not

with the intent to achieve a better result in the end game, but with 

the goal of freeing up “elite forces” for further combat operations.39

Consequently, the new American way of war seems headed for the 

same trap that snared both the Weigley and Boot versions of the 

traditional one, that is―it appears geared to fi ght wars as if they 

were battles and, thus, confuses the winning of campaigns or smallscale actions with the winning of wars. 

However, if the history of strategic thinking is any guide, this 

trajectory is not necessarily inevitable. After reaping the fruits of 

its so-called golden decade, and after years of self-examination in 

the wake of Vietnam, for instance, U.S. strategic thought generally 

acknowledged that, in the long run, the winning of battles counts for 

much less than the accomplishment of one’s strategic objectives.40

U.S. Army Colonel Harry Summers’ account of his conversation 

with a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) colonel has been cited often―

and with good reason―to illustrate the point that winning battles 

does not suffi ce for winning wars. When Summers confronted his 

counterpart with the fact that the NVA had never defeated U.S. forces 

on the fi eld of battle, the NVA colonel replied, “That may be so, but 

it is also irrelevant.”41 Summers’ account, of course, maintains that 

American soldiers did their job, but U.S. political leadership failed 

to do its. In other words, the grammar was right, but the logic was 
11

wrong. Almost in spite of itself, however, the account also reinforces 

the point that accomplishing one’s strategic objectives serves as the 

ultimate measure of success in war. 

A debate of sorts that took place from the 1950s to the 1970s 

over the practicality of using military force as a rational extension of 

policy actually foreshadowed this point.42 Robert Osgood, perhaps 

America’s leading theorist of limited war during this period, 

maintained that, even in an age laboring under the shadow of 

nuclear escalation, the use of military force as a rational extension 

of policy still had a place, providing one measured success “only 

in political terms and not purely in terms of crushing the enemy.”43

Osgood also warned that, to approach the use of force in this way, 

Americans would have to overcome some strong tendencies in their 

traditional way of war, the most important being the bifurcation 

in strategic thinking that separates the spheres of “power and 

policy.”44 Similarly, Thomas C. Schelling, a leading theorist of the 

nascent concept of coercive diplomacy, argued that one could apply 

military force not just to achieve the complete overthrow of an 

opponent as in World War II, but in more controlled and measured 

ways―to coerce, intimidate, or deter an adversary―and thereby 

to accomplish any number of aims short of total victory.45 Both 

theorists thus contributed to shifting the general thinking about war 

toward strategic objectives, that is, away from a predominant focus 

on grammar and toward broader concepts of logic.

On the other side of the debate, decorated military commanders, 

such as Admiral J. C. Wylie, countered that war creates new political 

dynamics that change the diplomatic landscape and generally 

render prewar policy “invalid.”46 In a book entitled, Military Strategy, 

he underscored the difference between the terms “policy” and 

“politics,” which confused many who attempted to use Clausewitz’s 

model of political primacy, and contended that war may indeed 

be an extension of politics―meaning the perpetual struggle for 

power―but it was not really the “continuation of policy.”47 In 

actuality, the very fact that war has broken out usually means that 

one policy has collapsed, and another must take its place. Failure 

to adjust policy according to the changing circumstances of confl ict, 

Wylie maintained, can lead to defeat as well as other negative 

consequences. 
12

Although a practical military man, Wylie actually succeeded in 

developing a general theory of military strategy that centered not 

on the pursuit of decisive victory, but on the idea of employing 

military force in ways that would exert “control” over what he 

termed the “centers of gravity” (critical aspects) of any particular 

confl ict, and thereby compel an opponent to comply with one’s 

strategic objectives.48 American strategic theory had thus begun to 

move beyond battles, per se, to explore other ways of using force to 

serve policy effectively. Thus, both civilian and military theorists, 

though divided on some issues, came to similar conclusions about 

the imperative to measure success in war not by the winning or 

losing of battles alone, but by the accomplishment of one’s strategic 

objectives. In other words, the central idea was not how well the 

grammar was adhered to, but how well the logic was served. 

Unfortunately, the outcome of the Vietnam confl ict obscured 

such thinking. Overall, the U.S. military tended to dismiss the 

theories of academics, in particular those of Osgood and Schelling, 

and to resent policymakers who attempted to apply them.49 Such 

academic thinking seemed to ignore the grammar of war altogether 

and to approach warfare as a sterile, one-sided activity in which the 

enemy had no vote. Summers’ study concluded by insisting that 

military men must “once again become masters of the profession of 

arms.”50 The grammar, in other words, must re-assert itself as the 

function that owns the conduct of war.

Whose American Way of War?

Interestingly, while the debate appeared caustic at times, soldiers, 

policymakers, and academics actually agreed on more than they 

realized. All maintained, for instance, that military victory on at least 

some scale was a prerequisite for strategic success. They also saw 

war in general, and the military tool in particular, as an imperfect 

means for achieving that success, though the military blamed the 

lack of attention to the grammar of war for any failures, while 

policymakers and academics saw the rigid and narrowly focused 

military mind as the problem. Unfortunately, it was never clear 

who had responsibility for crafting and nurturing the American way 
13

of war―those who directed it toward some political end, or those 

who developed the operational doctrine and did the fi ghting. The 

American tradition of preserving civilian authority over military 

command seemed only to exacerbate the problem by encouraging 

power and diplomacy to occupy separate spheres.

Notwithstanding Summers’ plea that the military take back 

the profession of arms, the U.S. military’s senior service colleges 

currently instruct students in a model of strategy that comes closer to 

the ideas of Osgood, Schelling, and Wylie, than to those of Summers. 

For example, students are taught to derive military objectives from 

strategic ones. They are also taught to identify the center of gravity―

a military force, an alliance, national will or public support, a set of 

critical capabilities or functions―that they must capture, neutralize, 

or otherwise deal with in order to ensure accomplishment of 

strategic objectives.51 One can debate the accuracy of the doctrinal 

defi nition of center of gravity, but the central point is that military 

operations are presented as means to an end, rather than as ends in 

themselves. 

Despite the theoretical foundation provided by Osgood and 

Wylie and the efforts of senior-level professional military education, 

such thinking has evidently not yet taken root in the American way 

of war. The recent campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, for instance, 

are examples of remarkable military victories. However, those 

victories have not yet culminated in strategic successes.52 As one 

scholar pointed out, the center of gravity in confl icts in which the 

strategic aim is regime change “lies not in the destruction of the old 

system, but in the creation of the new one.”53 The new American way 

of war appears to have misidentifi ed the center of gravity in each 

of these campaigns, placing more emphasis on destroying enemy 

forces than securing population centers and critical infrastructure 

and maintaining order. 

One explanation for this apparent failure is that planning for 

post-confl ict operations was inadequate because the enemy in each 

case collapsed faster than expected and, hence, planners did not have 

suffi cient time for planning.54 In the major confl icts of the past, such 

as World War II, planners had time to conduct post-confl ict planning 

while the campaigns were still underway. With modern U.S. forces 
14

executing operations more rapidly, however, this luxury of time no 

longer exists. The obvious solution is to begin planning for postconfl ict operations at the same time that planning commences for 

combat operations. 

Yet, this explanation overlooks the fact that post-confl ict planning 

for Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, albeit imperfect, was already well 

underway before combat operations began.55 While the specifi cs of 

the resultant post-confl ict scenario could not be known, the basic 

outlines were; political and military leaders might have disagreed 

on the details, but all expected a rapid collapse of organized Iraqi 

resistance. Moreover, post-confl ict operations were not new to 

the American way of war, as a study published by the Army War 

College pointed out; the study even went so far as to list many of 

the tasks that would have to be accomplished in the aftermath of 

decisive operations in Iraq.56 The extent of the undertaking was thus 

no surprise. However, its critical nature and inherent diffi culty were 

either misunderstood or, worse, wished away. 

Operation IRAQI FREEDOM was, in a manner of speaking, a 

case in which the logic of war was fl awed or, more precisely, the 

administration could not resolve the confl ict between two competing 

trains of logic. The fi rst train of logic was the overall goal of effecting 

regime change in Iraq, which, as history shows, requires a laborintensive and time-intensive effort.57 This train of logic ran counter 

to a second one, namely, the desire to win the war quickly and on 

the cheap. The administration, in fact, downplayed the possibility 

that the overall fi nancial cost of the war would be high, even going 

so far as to fi re White House chief economic advisor Lawrence 

Lindsay, who stated publicly that the confl ict could cost between 

$100 and 200 billion.58 It low-balled the total number of U.S. troops 

and other personnel that might have to be put in harm’s way to get 

the job done, and how long they might have to remain deployed. 

The administration evidently hoped to address any fi scal and 

military shortfalls with support from the United Nations (UN) and 

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), particularly for the 

stabilization and reconstruction phases of the confl ict, though how 

much assistance might be forthcoming was unclear.

In addition, the new American way of war―which in practice 

amounted to small, mobile attack forces augmented by special 
15

operations forces and liberal, if precise, doses of air power―seemed, 

at least to those who wished to think so, to offer the possibility of 

winning the war quickly and relatively inexpensively.59 However, 

while this emerging way of war looked to employ new concepts, 

such as shock and awe and effects-based operations, designed to win 

battles quickly, it had no new concept for accomplishing the timeintensive and labor-intensive tasks of regime change more quickly 

and with less labor. 

For their part, senior military offi cials argued that, while a 

small coalition force moving rapidly and supported by adequate 

fi repower might well defeat the Iraqi army, a larger force would still 

be necessary for the ensuing stability operations. Yet, just as they 

had with the services’ initial objections to some of the underlying 

assumptions of Defense Transformation in general, OSD and other 

administration offi cials dismissed such arguments as “old-think” or 

perceived them as foot-dragging by a military perhaps grown too 

accustomed to resisting civilian authority. They countered with the 

claim that coalition troops would be welcomed as liberators, and 

thus fewer forces would actually be needed to win the peace than to 

win the war.60 It did not help matters that, over the preceding years, 

the U.S. military had been portrayed repeatedly in defense circles 

as the proverbial “900-pound gorilla” that refused to change; its 

professional credibility had suffered as a result. Put differently, while 

military professionals were to prove correct about requirements for 

the post-confl ict situation in Iraq, they were not able to convince 

enough policymakers beforehand to make a difference. 

OSD took unqualifi ed possession of the emerging American way 

of war, and began supplanting the traditional grammar of war with 

a new one. However, the hoped-for support from the UN and NATO 

failed to materialize, and the coalition force that invaded Iraq proved 

insuffi cient to provide the stabilization necessary for political and 

economic reconstruction to begin. The successful accomplishment 

of the administration’s goal of building a democratic government 

in Iraq is, thus, still in question, with religious extremists, terrorists, 

criminals, Saddam loyalists and other anti-U.S. factions contributing 

to an apparently growing insurgency.61 Admittedly, logistical 

challenges in the initial stages of the confl ict prevented putting as 
16

many boots on the ground as coalition commanders desired. Still, 

the prevailing assumption―that those troops either would not be 

needed or would come from multinational organizations like the 

UN or NATO―proved wrong, as the administration itself essentially 

admitted later when it appealed to the international community for 

both fi nancial and military support. Hence, OSD’s new and―still 

very theoretical―grammar proved incapable of compensating for 

the underlying fl aw in the war’s logic. That fact notwithstanding, by 

making appropriate adjustments now, especially by recognizing the 

kind of war it is in and by committing to see it through, the United 

States might still accomplish its strategic objectives.

Much like its predecessor, the current American way of war 

focuses principally on defeating the enemy in battle. Its underlying 

concepts―a polyglot of information-centric theories such as 

network-centric warfare, rapid decisive operations, and shock 

and awe―center on “taking down” an opponent quickly, rather 

than fi nding ways to apply military force in the pursuit of broader 

political aims. Moreover, the characteristics of the U.S. style of 

warfare―speed, jointness, knowledge, and precision―are better 

suited for strike operations than for translating such operations into 

strategic successes. Defense Transformation concentrates primarily 

on developing concepts and capabilities for getting to the fi ght 

and for conducting combat operations once there.62 Similarly, the 

capabilities-based approach to defense planning, which underpins 

Defense Transformation, focuses chiefl y on the hardware needed to 

move, shoot, and communicate across a global battlefi eld; in other 

words, capabilities-based planning is about winning battles―not 

wars―in the information age.63

Toward a Way of War.

To move toward a genuine way of war, American military and 

political leaders must address two key problems. First, they must 

better defi ne the respective roles and responsibilities of the logic and 

grammar of war, and, in the process, take steps that will diminish the 

bifurcation in American strategic thinking―what Osgood called the 

disassociation of power and policy.64 Professional military education 

in the United States teaches the Clausewitzian approach, in which 
17

war is seen as pervaded by politics.65 However, in the fi eld, the U.S. 

military prefers Moltke’s method, in which war is seen as governed 

by a grammar that is all but inviolable.66 Ironically, it is Moltke’s 

approach―not Clausewitz’s―that contributes most to preserving 

civilian authority over the military because it prevents the military 

from assuming a dominant role in political decisionmaking, and 

restricts its purview to the actual conduct of war. However, it 

also inhibits thinking about war holistically and thus hampers the 

translation of military victory into strategic success. Thus, a tension 

exists between preserving civilian control, on the one hand, and 

closing the gap between power and policy, on the other.

For some historians and political scientists, the ineffi ciency 

created by the separation of power and policy is an acceptable price 

to pay for the preservation of civilian control over the military. Some 

maintain that the standard for civilian control must, in fact, be as 

absolute as possible in order to prevent its gradual erosion over 

time.67 Included in this absolute standard is the right for civilians 

to be “wrong.”68 Similarly, others contend that, in order to keep 

the confl ict on course and to preserve civilian control, the logic of 

war must aggressively and continually question and challenge the 

grammar, even to the extent of frequently intervening in technical 

matters.69 While such an absolute standard will surely preserve 

civilian control, it might also call into question the need for a military 

profession, since amateurs or part-time soldiers would suffi ce if the 

body of knowledge dealing with the grammar of war is so suspect 

that political leaders must frequently intrude in order to ensure that 

the confl ict remains on course.70 Thus, solving this problem will 

require reexamining some fundamental assumptions regarding 

U.S. civil-military relations along with current notions of military 

professionalism to ensure they are not in confl ict.71

The second problem is an off-shoot of the fi rst: political and 

military leaders must habituate themselves to thinking more 

thoroughly about how to turn combat successes into favorable 

strategic outcomes. Such thinking is not new―with some foundational 

literature on the topic going back to the early 1970s, for instance―but 

it is clearly not yet a matter of habit.72 Current U.S. military doctrine 

also addresses the topic, defi ning the process of translating military 

victory into strategic success in two parts: confl ict termination, or 
18

the formal end of fi ghting; and confl ict resolution, which involves 

resolving the causes of the confl ict.73 However, the new American 

way of war considers such post-confl ict operations not as a part of 

war itself, but something belonging to its aftermath. This unhelpful 

distinction obscures the fact that the principal condition for strategic 

success in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was the establishment 

of a political (and to a certain extent an economic) order favorable 

to the United States.74 Failure to see the purpose for which a war is 

fought as part of war itself as part of war itself amounts to treating battle as an end rather amounts to treating battle as an end rather 

than a means. Decisive strategic victory may be back in vogue, as 

Colin Gray argues, but it will only occur when the powers pursuing 

it are prepared to go beyond military success.75

Clearly, thinking about how to achieve the strategic aims of a 

confl ict will require devoting more attention to the processes and 

resources needed for what analyst Anthony Cordesman called 

“armed nation building.”76 One recent informative study along these 

lines recommends, among other things, creating a force specifi cally 

trained and equipped to conduct nation building and stability 

and reconstruction (S&R) operations.77 One can debate the merits 

of this proposal, particularly in terms of cost, but, at present, the 

Department of Defense has no real metric or analytical standards 

for determining requirements for such operations.78 By comparison, 

it has several ways of measuring the forces required for combat 

operations. There is no getting around the fact that, if the global 

war on terrorism and other strategic endeavors require the United 

States to intervene more frequently in failed and failing states, it will 

need more practical capability in nation building and stability and 

support operations to achieve its strategic aims.

Identifying a problem may well be the hardest part of solving 

it, but recognition is still a long way from implementing practical 

solutions. Until the United States clarifi es the roles of grammar and 

logic and develops a habit of thinking about war that goes beyond 

battles, we will have a way of war in name only. 
19

ENDNOTES

1. Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of U.S. Military 

Strategy and Policy, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1973.

2. Ibid., p. 475.

3. For a similar defi nition, see F.G. Hoffman, Decisive Force: The New American 

Way of War Way of War, Westport: Praeger, 1996, p. 1, which defi nes way of war as the , Westport: Praeger, 1996, p. 1, which defines way of war as the 

“military’s orientation and preferred operational style.”

4. Helmuth von Moltke, “Über Strategie, 1871,” in Großer Generalstab, ed., 

Moltkes Militärisches Werke, 14 Vols., Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1892-1912, here Vol. IV, 

Part 2, pp. 287-293. It is worth noting that by treating policy as a discrete, almost 

living, thing as he does in this essay, Moltke avoids overstepping his bounds 

as Chief of the General Staff and insulting those German statesmen, including 

Chancellor Bismarck and Emperor William I, responsible for shaping policy. 

For an English translation, see Daniel Hughes, Moltke on the Art of War: Selected 

Writings, Novato, CA: Presidio, 1993.

5. See Antulio J. Echevarria II, After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers before 

the Great War the Great War, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000, which compares , Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2000, which compares 

the ideas of German, French, British, Russian, and American military writers from 

1871 to 1914.

6. Perhaps the most signifi cant counterexample is U.S. President Abraham 

Lincoln, who repeatedly “interfered” with the conduct of the Civil War in order 

to ensure his objectives were met. See Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, 

Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, New York: Free Press, 2002.

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

between the World Wars, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984.

8. Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of 

Western Power Western Power, New York: Doubleday, 2001, pp. 20-22. This work expands his , New York: Doubleday, 2001, pp. 20-22. This work expands his 

earlier study, The Western Way of War: The Infantry Battle in Classical Greece, New 

York: Knopf, 1989, by examining the West’s performance in the battles of Salamis, 

480 BC; Gaugamela, 331 BC; Cannae, 216 BC; Poitiers, 732 AD; Tenochtitlán, 1520-

21; Lepanto, 1571; Rorke’s Drift, 1879; Midway, 1942; and Tet, 1968. Geoffrey 

Parker, Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800, 

New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996, argues that Western dominance 

stems from its attitude toward and exploitation of technology, as evidenced by 

the fact that Western culture experienced and made the most of an industrial 

revolution, whereas other cultures did not.
20

9. Antulio J. Echevarria II, “On the Brink of the Abyss: The Warrior Identity 

before the Great War,” War & Society, Vol 13, No. 2, October 1995, pp. 23-40.

10. Hanson, Carnage and Culture, p. 22.

11. The motto is: Mehr sein als scheinen, which roughly translated means to 

be greater than one seems. It appeared in German literature at the end of the 

18th century and was initially ascribed to Prussia, a small state surrounded by 

powerful neighbors. It was later made popular in the German general staff by the 

elder Moltke. 

12. Weigley, American Way of War American Way of War, p. xxii. Weigley borrows from the original , p. xxii. Weigley borrows from the original 

defi nitions of the German historian Hans Delbrück as they were explained by 

Gordon Craig in “Delbrück: The Military Historian,” in Edward Meade Earle, ed., 

Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, New York: 

Atheneum, 1966, pp. 272-275. Strictly speaking, one can use either a strategy of 

annihilation or of attrition to achieve the complete overthrow of an opponent 

or to attain lesser objectives; they are merely ways in the ends-ways-and-means 

equation. For example, one could argue that the Allies fought World War II with 

an overall strategy of attrition―aimed at the complete overthrow of the Axis 

powers―that employed a series of campaign strategies centered on achieving 

decisive battles or battles of annihilation, such as those fought at Midway, 

Stalingrad, and El Alamein. Abraham Rothberg, Counterattack: Eyewitness History 

of World War II, Stalingrad, Midway, El Alamein and the Turning of the Tide, New 

York: Bantam, 1966. The primary difference between a strategy of annihilation 

and one of attrition or erosion lies not in the ends, but the ways; the former 

strategy typically attempts to achieve victory rapidly, through one or two decisive 

battles, while the latter generally takes a more gradual approach. A strategy of 

exhaustion, in contrast, is not really a sub-strategy of attrition, but a discrete 

strategy in its own right where the primary object is to wear down a foe―usually 

an aggressor―psychologically (and to a certain extent materially) in an effort to 

convince him that his goals are not worth the time, energy, blood, and treasure 

they will likely cost him. Accordingly, a strategy of exhaustion works best as a 

defensive strategy against an adversary who is not willing to risk everything. 

The strategy of attrition that Weigley attributes to George Washington during the 

War for Independence was really a strategy of exhaustion in which he hoped to 

drain British patience and persuade the crown to abandon the war by depriving 

its military of an opportunity for a decisive victory. While Weigley admits that the 

term “attrition” does not accurately describe Washington’s strategy and offers the 

term “erosion” in its place, erosion differs in substance from attrition. Weigley, 

American Way of War American Way of War, Chap. 1. Nor, is the strategy of the indirect approach, , Chap. 1. Nor, is the strategy of the indirect approach, 

popularized by military theorist Liddell Hart, a sub-strategy of attrition; it seeks 

to strike in an unexpected, or asymmetric, manner in pursuit of either decisive 

victory or a negotiated settlement. Sir Basil Liddell Hart, The Strategy of the Indirect 

Approach, London: Faber & Faber, 1941. Winston Churchill’s idea of attacking the 
21

Axis powers through the “soft underbelly” of Europe is an example of a strategy 

of the indirect approach.

13. For an example of this error, see Mackubin T. Owens, “The American Way 

of War”, Editorial, The Jerusalem Post, December 2003; http://www.ashbrook.org/

publicat/oped/owens/03/wayofwar.html. In contrast, General Richard B. Meyers, “The 

New American Way of War: Keeping the Legacy Alive,” speech delivered at the 

Navy League Air Space Exposition, Washington, DC, on April 16, 2003, gets it 

right. One can forgive Weigley’s errors regarding military terminology, which 

frequently changes, and not always for the best. The military art course books 

in use at the U.S. Military Academy in the 1970s and 1980s defi ne a strategy of 

annihilation as seeking the “complete destruction of the enemy army,” while a 

strategy of attrition connotes that the enemy force is “slowly being destroyed,” 

and a strategy of exhaustion aims not at the enemy’s force, but “gradually to 

destroy his will and capacity to resist.” U.S. Military Academy, “Defi nitions and 

Doctrine of the Military Art,” West Point, New York, 1979, p. 8. In contrast, a more 

recent edition inserts the term “combat power” into the defi nitions and does not 

even approach the strategies at the same level: it defi nes a strategy of annihilation 

as the “complete and immediate destruction of the enemy’s combat power,” while 

a strategy of attrition is the “gradual erosion of the combat power of the enemy’s 

army,” and a strategy of exhaustion seeks the “gradual erosion of the enemy 

nation’s will or means to resist.” U.S. Military Academy, “History of the Military 

Art Course Book 2001-2002,” p. 8. Adding to the confusion, the Department of 

Defense (DoD) dictionary and current Joint and Army doctrine manuals do not

use the terms annihilation, attrition, or exhaustion in conjunction with the word 

strategy. The DoD dictionary defi nes attrition as the “reduction of the effectiveness 

of a force caused by loss of personnel and materiel.” It does not defi ne annihilation 

or erosion.

14. The best critique of Weigley’s thesis is Brian M. Linn, “The American Way of 

War Revisited,” Revisited,” The Journal of Military History, Vol. 66, No. 2, April 2002, pp. 501-

530. Linn criticizes Weigley for misusing the terms annihilation and attrition, for 

not discussing the American tradition of deterrence, for overstating the infl uence 

of annihilationist thought in U.S. military thinking since the Civil War, and for 

omitting the “propensity for improvisation and practicality” seemingly evident 

in the American practice of war. (Linn suggests that, if there is an American way 

of war, per se, it lies in a utilitarian blend of operational considerations, national 

strategy, and military theory as it is understood historically.) Weigley more or less 

conceded these points in Russell F. Weigley, “Response to Brian McAllister Linn,” 

Journal of Military History, Vol. 66, No. 2, April 2002, pp. 531-533. For other critical 

reviews, see E. M. Coffman, “A Review of The American Way of War,” Journal of 

American History, Vol. 60, March 1974, pp. 1090-1091; J. C. Snell, “A Review of The 

American Way of War,” Annals of the American Academy, No. 410, November 1973, 

pp. 224.
22

15. Max Boot, Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, 

New York: Basic Books, 2002.

16. Ibid., pp. xv-xvi.

17. Dollar diplomacy stood for the early 20th-century policy of making loans 

to countries whose resulting indebtedness could then be used to promote U.S. 

interests.

18. Boot, Savage Wars, p. xvi.

19. In so doing, Boot opens himself up to the criticism that he produced a 

“potted history” designed merely to advance his own neo-conservative views. 

Benjamin Schwartz, “The Post-Powell Doctrine: Two conservative analysts argue 

that the American military has become too cautious about waging war,” New York 

Times Book Review, July 21, 2002, pp. 11-12.

20. The Powell doctrine emerged in 1991-92, as a modifi cation of the 

Weinberger doctrine, developed by Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger in 

1984. The Weinberger doctrine consisted of six points: 1) commitment of U.S. 

forces to combat should only be done to protect vital interests, 2) the United States 

should enter such confl icts with the clear intention of winning, 3) commitment 

of U.S. forces to combat overseas demands clearly defi ned military and political 

objectives, 4) the commitment of U.S. forces must be continually reassessed and 

adjusted based on the changing conditions of the confl ict, 5) commitment of 

U.S. forces is contingent on the support of the American public, 6) commitment 

of U.S. forces to combat should only occur as a last resort. Casper Weinberger, 

Speech delivered at the National Press Club, on November 28, 1984, reprinted in 

Defense, January 1985, pp. 1-11. Powell discusses the timing and rationale behind 

his doctrine in Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey: An 

Autobiography, New York: Random House, 1995. 

21. “Powell’s Doctrine, in Powell’s Words,” The Washington Post, October 7, 

2001, p. B-2, transcript of an interview with Tim Russert.

22. Boot, Savage Wars, pp. 318-319.

23. Ibid., p. 352. Boot argues for the case-by-case approach. He has recently 

done an about-face, however, and embraced the Bush doctrine, which he defends 

in Max Boot, “The Bush Doctrine Lives: The Kay fi ndings point to its importance, 

not its demise,” Weekly Standard, February 16, 2004.

24. One could also argue that in a democracy built on the Lockean tradition of 

holding government accountable, as opposed to the Hegelian tradition in which 

government remains above accountability, some mechanism should exist to 
23

prevent political leaders from abusing power, whether that power be military or 

something else and whether it be wielded domestically or abroad. For differences 

between the Lockean and Hegelian traditions, see Marvin Perry, An Intellectual 

History of Modern Europe, Boston: Houton Miffl in, 1993, pp. 113-117, 190-197.

25. To be sure, strategic documents like the National Security Strategy and 

National Military Strategy might provide guidelines that prevent the military from 

freely interpreting its role. However, the point is that without clear guidance, 

the military will likely default to what it prefers to do. Philip Bobbitt, “How to 

Decide When the U.S. Should Go to War,” London Financial Times, January 28, 

2004, argues that the Bush doctrine is not a doctrine in the proper sense because 

it does not establish a “neutral, general principle” of action that would apply 

to any presidency and to more than one situation, as the Monroe doctrine did. 

In contrast, the so-called Bush doctrine only outlines what might happen if a 

particular situation occurs.

26. Max Boot, “The New American Way of War,” Foreign Affairs Vol. 82, No. 4, 

July/August 2003, pp. 41-58.

27. Ibid., p. 42.

28. Boot, Savage Wars, p. 352. For his description of the American empire, 

see Max Boot, “Everything You Think You Know About the American Way of 

War Is Wrong,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, September 12, 2002, p. 5, http:

//www.fpri.org/enotes/ americawar.20020912.boot.americanwayofwar.html. 

29. Summary of Lessons Learned, Prepared Testimony by SECDEF Donald 

H. Rumsfeld and GEN Tommy R. Franks, presented to the Senate Armed Services 

Committee, July 9, 2003. See also the remarks by Vice President Dick Cheney, “A 

New American Way of War,” to the Heritage Foundation, May 1, 2003, which 

ascribes many of the same characteristics to a new style of American warfare.

30. Admiral (Ret.) Cebrowski, Director of OFT, in fact, recently used terms―

such as “lock out” and “self-synchronization”―drawn from Complexity theory 

along with Wardenesque terms like “precision effects” to describe several of 

the characteristics of OFT’s version of the new American way of war. Arthur 

Cebrowski, Speech to the Heritage Foundation, delivered May 13, 2003, reprinted 

in Transformation Trends, May 27, 2003. For Wardens’ views on air-power, see John 

A. Warden III, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat, Washington, DC: National 

Defense University, 1988; David R. Mets, The Air Campaign: John Warden and the 

Classical Airpower Theorists, Maxwell AFB: Air University Press, 1988; Daniel 

Gouré and Christopher M. Szara, eds., Air and Space Power in the New Millennium, 

Washington, DC: CSIS, 1997; Col. Phillip Meilinger, USAF, ed., The Paths of Heaven: 

The Evolution of Airpower Theory, Maxwell AFB: Air University Press, 1997.
24

31. Eliot A. Cohen, “The Mystique of U.S. Air Power,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, 

No. 1, January/February 1994, pp. 109-124.

32. Richard P. Hallion, Storm Over Iraq: Air Power and the Gulf War, Washington, , Washington, 

DC: Smithsonian Press, 1992; Richard P. Hallion, “Airpower and the Changing 

Nature of Warfare,” Joint Force Quarterly Joint Force Quarterly, Autumn/Winter 1997-98, pp. 39-46; Daniel , Autumn/Winter 1997-98, pp. 39-46; Daniel

T. Kuehl, “Thunder and Storm: Strategic Air Operations in the Gulf War,” in The 

Eagle in the Desert: Looking Back on U.S. Involvement in the Persian Gulf War Eagle in the Desert: Looking Back on U.S. Involvement in the Persian Gulf War, Westport, , Westport,

CT: Praeger, 1996; Lt. Col. John F. Jones, USAF, “Giulio Douhet Vindicated: Desert 

Storm 1991,” Naval War College Review, No. 45, Autumn 1992, pp. 97-101; Col. Phillip 

S. Meilinger, USAF, “Giulio Douhet and Modern War,” Comparative Strategy Comparative Strategy, No. 12, , No. 12,

July-September 1993, pp. 321-338. 

33. Eliot A. Cohen, “Kosovo and the New American Way of War,” in War Over 

Kosovo: Politics and Strategy in a Global Age, ed. by Andrew J. Bacevich and Eliot A. 

Cohen, New York: Columbia University Press, 2001, pp. 38-62. Studies by industry 

think tanks also refl ect similar views with regard to trends in coalition partnering 

and precision-standoff capabilities. See Christopher J. Bowie, Robert Haffa Jr., and 

Robert E. Mullins, Future War: What Trends in America’s Post-Cold War Military 

Confl icts Tell Us About Early 21st Century Warfare, Washington, DC: Northrup 

Grumman Analysis Center, 2003.

34. Stephen Biddle, “The New Way of War?” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 3, 

May/June 2002, pp. 138-144. Offi cial views within the military also highlighted 

the importance of ground troops. See The Kosovo After Action Reviews of the 

Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and “A View from 

the Top,” brief by Admiral James O. Ellis, U.S. Navy, Commander, U.S. Naval 

Forces, Europe; Commander, Allied Forces Southern Europe; and Commander, 

Joint Task Force NOBLE ANVIL. Also, Admiral Bill Owens, Lifting the Fog of War, 

New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2000, pp. 181-183, stated that expectations 

that precision bombing alone could bring about the defeat of Milosevic were 

“absolutely wrong” and resulted in a 78-day campaign that severely tested the 

NATO Alliance.

35. Robert A. Pape, “The True Worth of Air Power,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 

83, No. 2, March/April 2004, pp. 116-130; Frederick W. Kagan, “War and 

Aftermath,” Policy Review, No. 120, August-September 2003, pp. 3-27; Stephen 

Biddle, “Afghanistan and the Future of Warfare,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 2, 

March/April 2003, pp. 31-46; and his statement before the House Armed Services 

Committee, “Operation Iraq Freedom: Outside Perspectives,” dated October 21, 

2003.

36. The advantages and disadvantages of the Bush doctrine are evaluated in 

Larry Korb and Michael Kraig, “Winning the Peace in the 21st Century,” A Task 

Force Report of the Strategies for U.S. National Security Program, The Stanley 
25

Foundation, October 2003. Christopher S. Owens, “Unlikely Partners: Preemption 

and the American Way of War,” in Essays 2003, Washington, DC: National Defense 

University, 2003, pp. 1-16.

37. Arthur K. Cebrowski and Thomas P. M. Barnett, “The American Way of 

War,” Transformation Trends, January 13, 2003, p. 3.

38. General (Ret.) Anthony Zinni, “How Do We Overhaul the Nation’s 

Defense to Win the Next War?” Special transcript of a presentation delivered at 

the U.S. Naval Institute, September 4, 2003.

39. Cebrowski and Barnett, “American Way of War,” p. 3.

40. Colin Gray, Defi ning and Achieving Decisive Victory, Carlisle Barracks, PA: 

Strategic Studies Institute, 2002, p. 2. This is one of several works to refer to the 

period of about 1955-66 as the golden decade of American strategic thinking. See 

also, Weigley, American Way of War, pp. 474-475.

41. Harry G. Summers, Jr., On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, 

Novato, CA: Presidio, 1995, p. 1.

42. The debate is described in Weigley, American Way of War, pp. 474-477. 

43. Robert E. Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy, Chicago: 

University of Chicago Press, 1957, p. 22. See also Robert E. Osgood, Limited War 

Revisited, Boulder: Westview Press, 1979, which reevaluates limited war theory in 

light of the U.S. failure in Vietnam.

44. Other traits Osgood ascribed to the traditional American way of war 

include a cultural aversion to violence, pugnacity, a failure to appreciate power 

politics, a “long” antimilitarist tradition, and a lack of experience with combining 

military power and foreign policy. Osgood, Limited War, pp. 28-42.

45. Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Infl uence, New Haven: Yale University 

Press, 1966, pp. 16, 34. See also Weigley, American Way of War, pp. 474-475. 

46. Admiral J. C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, 

Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1989<1967>, pp. 67-69. Weigley also 

supports this view; see Russell Weigley, “The Political and Strategic Dimensions 

of Military Effectiveness,” in Military Effectiveness, Vol. 3, The Second World War, 

ed. by Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1988, p. 

341.

47. Wylie, Military Strategy, p. 68.
26

48. Note that Wylie specifi cally refers to the centers of gravity of the particular 

kind of war one is fi ghting, continental, maritime, air, guerilla, or a combination, 

not of the individual belligerents. Wylie, Military Strategy, pp. 77-78.

49. Harry Summers’ Foreword, dated June 1, 1995, is representative. Summers, 

On Strategy, pp. xiii-xiv.

50. Ibid., p. 194.

51. Doctrine for Joint Operations: Joint Pub 3-0, Washington, DC: U.S. 

Department of Defense, February 1, 1995, p. GL-4. 

52. Strategic success, in fact, seems a long way off. Hon. Henry J. Hyde, 

Chairman, House International Relations Committee, warned that the drug trade 

in Afghanistan not only undermines the country’s stability and reconstruction, but 

contributes to terrorism; Hearing held February 10, 2004. See also General (Ret.) 

Barry R. McCaffrey, “Afghanistan’s Newest Challenge: U.S. effort will fail unless 

link between terror, drugs overcome,” Armed Forces Journal, January 2004, pp. 8-11. 

Ivo H. Daalder, “Fix What’s Broken in Iraq,” The Boston Globe, February 16, 2004, 

maintains that Iraqi’s security problems are beyond the capabilities of its security 

forces.

53. Kagan, “War and Aftermath,” p. 10.

54. Hans Binnendijk and Stuart Johnson, eds., Transforming for Stabilization and 

Reconstruction Operations, Washington, DC: National Defense University, 2003.

55. Planning and coordination were still inadequate, however. In each 

case, shortages existed in combat support and combat service support units, 

and diffi culties repeatedly occurred in turning over certain functions and 

responsibilities to civilian agencies. In Iraq, in particular, no vetting programs 

for “de-Baathifi cation,” or for restructuring, re-equipping, or re-manning the 

Iraqi military had been worked out in advance. The role of the Organization for 

Reconstruction and Humanitarian Activities (ORHA) was unclear and, in any 

case, it appeared insuffi ciently resourced to accomplish its many Herculean tasks. 

While military planners within the Combined Force Land Component Command 

(CFLCC) had focused primarily on Phase III, Decisive Combat Operations, ORHA 

concentrated on Phase IV, Stability Operations. Unfortunately, little coordination 

had occurred between the two. Conrad Crane, “Phase IV Operations: Where Wars 

are Really Won,” January 8, 2004, briefi ng developed from a study of post-confl ict 

operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

56. Conrad Crane and Andrew Terrill, Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, 

and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-confl ict Scenario, Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. 

Army War College, 2003.
27

57. For historical summaries, see Crane and Terrill, Reconstructing Iraq, pp. 6-

12.

58. James Fallows, “Blind into Baghdad,” The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 293, No. 

1, January/February 2004, p. 60, discusses Lindsay’s fi ring. Of course, such tactics 

are not uncommon in a war of choice in which the justifi cation is not entirely 

apparent. Patrick E. Tyler, “Panel Faults Bush on War Costs and Risks,” The New 

York Times, March 12, 2003. 

59. Former Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey stated as much in 

an address at the Brookings Institute, November 21, 2002.

60. For more on the debate between senior military offi cials and OSD, see 

James Fallows, “Blind into Baghdad,” pp. 52-70.

61. Steven Metz, “Insurgency and Counter Insurgency in Iraq,” The Washington 

Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 1, Winter 2003-04, pp. 25-36; Patrick J. McDonnell, “Iraqi 

Insurgency Is As Lethal As Ever Since Hussein’s Capture,” Los Angeles Times, 

February 4, 2004, p. 1. Jim Krane, “U.S., Iraq Can’t Put A Face On Insurgency,” 

Seattle Times, February 16, 2004, reports that rebel attacks against Americans rose 

from 18 per day in January 2004 to 20-24 per day in February 2004.

62. Director, Force Transformation, Military Transformation: A Strategic 

Approach, Washington, DC: Offi ce of the Secretary of Defense, 2003, contains 

absolutely no mention of the need for post-confl ict thinking or capabilities. To be 

fair, however, OFT did have the broadness of mind to sponsor a study (discussed 

below) designed to look into the problem. Bradley Graham, “Pentagon Considers 

Creating Postwar Peacekeeping Forces,” Washington Post, November 24, 2003, p. 

16.

63. Neither the draft National Military Strategy dated February 4, 2004, nor the 

draft Defense Strategy dated January 30, 2004, addresses this shortcoming.

64. History shows, in fact, that rather than power and policy coming together 

in times of war, the nature of their individual functions often works to keep them 

apart, though that separation is generally less apparent in wars for total victory 

where military and political aims frequently tend to coincide. 

65. This view, though popular in professional military education and in 

political-science literature, actually downplays the role that Clausewitz assigned to 

the grammar of war. Clausewitz’s statement that war’s “grammar may be its own, 

but not its logic” has led many scholars to conclude, wrongly, that he believed 

that political considerations must always outweigh military ones. However, this 

conclusion is somewhat misleading, shaped perhaps by the liberal-democratic 

values of those historians and political scientists who translated and interpreted 
28

Clausewitz rather than by a thorough analysis of his work and of the political 

context in which he wrote. His caveats concerning political control over the use of 

force―such as that policy can infl uence operations for the worse if it attempts to use 

war for purposes foreign to its nature, and that military commanders are entitled 

to require that “policy shall not be inconsistent with [war’s] means”―are actually 

more limiting for policy than they might appear at fi rst blush. LTC A. J. Echevarria 

II, “Clausewitz and Political Control over the Use of Force: A Reconsideration,” 

paper presented to the Society for Military History, May 3, 2003.

66. It is also in accord with the classic work of Samuel P. Huntington, The 

Soldier and the State, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957.

67. This is the message in Richard H. Kohn, “The Erosion of Civilian Control 

of the Military in the United States Today,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 45, No. 

3, Summer 2002, pp. 9-60. 

68. Peter D. Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, 

and the Question of Civilian Control,” Armed Forces & Society, Vol. 23, 1996, p. 

154.

69. Eliot A. Cohen, “The Unequal Dialogue: The Theory and Reality of CivilMilitary Relations and the Use of Force,” in Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, 

eds., Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security, 

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, pp. 429-458. Frank G. Hoffman, “Ghost Busting: 

Civil-Military Relations and the Ghosts of Vietnam,” forthcoming Proceedings, 

supports this view, but proposes more of a cooperative arrangement between 

soldier and statesman.

70. Don M. Snider and Gayle L. Watkins, “Introduction,” in Lloyd J. 

Matthews, ed., The Future of the Army Profession, New York: McGraw Hill, 2002, 

pp. 3-18, affi rm that expertise and the knowledge underlying it are the hallmarks 

of a profession. The client (society) in turn validates the expertise and extends trust 

to the profession. However, the fact that political leaders must meddle in military 

operations suggests that this trust does not exist, or at least does not extend very 

far. This lack of trust, in turn, indicates that the body of knowledge upon which 

the profession is based is not considered valid enough to warrant a military 

profession; hence, an amateur military would suffi ce. 

71. Don M. Snider, “America’s Postmodern Military,” World Policy Journal, 

Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring 2000, pp. 47-54.

72. See, for example, Fred Charles Iklé, Every War Must End, New York: 

Columbia University Press, 1971.
29

73. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Doctrine for Joint Operations, Joint Publication 3-0, 

Washington, DC: Joint Staff, September 10, 2001, p. III-24; see also William Flavin, 

“Planning for Confl ict Termination and Post-Confl ict Success,” Parameters, Vol. 33, 

No. 3, Autumn 2003, pp. 95-112.

74. A point also reinforced by Nadia Schadlow, “War and the Art of 

Governance,” Parameters, Vol. 33, No. 3, Autumn 2003, pp. 85-94. Schadlow 

advocates defi ning activities related to the political and economic reconstruction of 

a state as “governance operations,” and, contrary to current doctrine, recommends 

that the military, specifi cally the U.S. Army, act as the lead in those operations 

until the strategic objectives are achieved.

75. Gray, Decisive Victory, pp. 1-2.

76. Anthony Cordesman, “What is Next in Iraq? Military Developments, 

Military Requirements and Armed Nation Building,” Washington, DC: Center for 

Strategic and International Studies, August 2003, p. 5.

77. Binnendijk and Johnson, eds., Transforming for Stabilization and Reconstruction 

Operations. It is worth pointing out that the study was commissioned by OFT.

78. The NDU study suggested sizing S&R forces to cope with one large S&R 

operation or two-medium-sized ones, which translates into two S&R divisionequivalents (one active and one reserve) with joint assets; key capabilities would 

include military police, construction engineers, civil affairs, and combat troops. In 

at least one important respect, the study’s recommendations fall short, however. It 

states that professional military education is not doing enough to shift U.S. military 

culture to accept the importance of S&R operations. Accordingly, it recommends 

that PME institutions “incorporate more courses and lectures on stabilization and 

reconstruction operations, civil-military cooperation, interagency planning, media 

relations, and negotiations.” While any curriculum has room for improvement, 

changing the culture of the U.S. military―assuming that PME is a valid way to 

do that―is only half of the problem. Just as the American way of war involves 

more than the predilections of military professionals, the benefi ts of a greater 

education regarding S&R operations must extend to the political leadership as 

well. Binnendijk and Johnson, Stabilization and Reconstruction , Stabilization and Reconstruction, pp. 8, 9, 11-12, 91-

93.