THE OWL OF MINERVA FLIES AT TWILIGHT:

DOCTRINAL CHANGE AND CONTINUITY

AND THE REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS

David Jablonsky

Professor of National Security Affairs

U.S. Army War College

May 1994
*******

The views expressed in this report are those of the author

and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of

the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the

U.S. Government. This report is approved for public release;

distribution is unlimited.

*******

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be

forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army

War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA 17013-5050. Comments also may

be conveyed directly to the Conference Organizer, Dr. Earl H.

Tilford, Jr., commercial (717) 245-3234 or DSN 242-3234.

*******

This study was originally presented at the U.S. Army War

College Fifth Annual Strategy Conference held April 26-28, 1994,

with the assistance of the Office of Net Assessment. The

Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to pubish the paper as

part of its Conference Series.

*******

My thanks to the following colleagues for comments on this

paper: Dr. Gary L. Guertner, Professors John J. Madigan III and

Arthur S. Lykke, Jr., Colonels Joseph R. Cerami, Bruce B.G.

Clarke, Robert C. Coon, Neal J. Delisanti, Leonard J. Fullenkamp,

and James S. McCallum.
FOREWORD

In the wake of the Gulf War, there has been increased

interest in what the Soviets once called the Military

Technological Revolution (MTR) and what is now considered more

broadly as a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). In the strict

military sense, that revolution has to do with quantum changes in

areas ranging from information technologies to those dealing with

precision strike weaponry. These changes, in turn, will require

more adjustments in military doctrine and organization.

But as this study demonstrates, revolutions in military

affairs have never been strictly military phenomena. Social and

political transformations in the past have also been major and

often catalytic ingredients of such revolutions. The current

revolution is no exception, whether it involves the relationship

of communication-information breakthroughs to the interaction of

the elements of Clausewitz's remarkable trinity, or the civilmilitary aspects concerning the use of military force in the

post-cold war era.

In all this, the United States military, and particularly

the United States Army, is doctrinally ready to move into the

revolution underway in military affairs. On the one hand, there

is the emphasis on versatility in terms of dealing with the

changes that accompany any such revolution. On the other, there

is the continuity of the doctrinal framework, itself a product of

an earlier RMA, which will serve, this study convincingly

concludes, to ease many of the sociopolitical problems that may

emerge as the revolution in military affairs continues.

JOHN W. MOUNTCASTLE

Colonel, U.S. Army

Director, Strategic Studies Institute
CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

The line it is drawn

The curse it is cast

The slow one now will

Later be fast

As the present now

Will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin'

And the first one now

Will later be last

For the times they are a-changin'.

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan's emphasis on change resonates for the American

military today as it seeks to come to grips with what the Soviet

Union once called the Military Technological Revolution (MTR) and

what is now considered a broader Revolution in Military Affairs

(RMA). "We are in the midst of a dramatic change in the

relationship between technology and the nature of warfare,"

General William Odom has pointed out in this regard while

concluding that no one fully understands that relationship.

"Strategists must think about it, however, and try to uncover its

inchoate ramifications . . . if they are to design an effective

military doctrine and appropriate military capabilities for the

coming decades."1 That, of course, is easier said than done.

Throughout history, the interaction of technology and war has

been as much the result of the arbitrary and the accidental as

the inevitable and the necessary. "There are logical limits to

what can be predicted about technological change," the authors of

the National Defense University's Project 2025 concluded.

Revolutionary advancements are by their very nature

unforeseeable. That they will occur is a near

certainty; what they will be, however,is far less

certain. Changes in technology of a less-thanrevolutionary nature are difficult to predict as well.

Predicting what advancements will be made implies that

one knows that existing obstacles to developing a

technological capability can be overcome. This implies,

paradoxically, that one somehow knows the solution to

the relevant problems in advance of their actual

solution.2

What can help in all this is the knowledge that with change,

there is usually continuity due to what Robert Heilbroner calls

the "inertia of history." Inertia in this sense does not just

mean resistance to change, but also what Heilbroner refers to as

the "viscosity" of history--the tendency of people to repeat and

continue their way of doing things as long as possible. Thus,

despite the fact that the "normal" condition of man has been
sufficient to warrant revolution, such occurrences are remarkable

in history not for their frequency, but for their rarity.3 This

continuity plays a key role in biology and evolution as Stephan

Jay Gould has illustrated with the Panda's "thumb." Pandas are

the herbivorous descendants of carnivorous bears whose true

anatomical thumbs were used in those early days for meat eating.

With the adaption of their diet to bamboo, the pandas required

more flexibility in manipulation. Nevertheless, the pandas have

since made do with their makeshift substitute, the so-called

false thumb--a clumsy, suboptimal structure (a sesamoid thumb)

which, however, works.4

That such suboptimal continuity can apply to technology is

demonstrated by the survival of QWERTY as the first six letters

in the top row of the standard typewriter. That grouping came

about in the first place because in the crude technology of early

machines, excessive speed or unevenness of stroke could cause two

or more keys to jam, with any subsequent strokes increasing the

problem. As a result keys were moved around to find a proper

balance between speed and jamming. That balance was QWERTY, which

slowed down the maximal speed of typing by either allocating

common letters to weak fingers or dispersing those letters to

positions requiring a long stretch from the home row of keys.

This drastically suboptimal arrangement survived and has

continued to dominate up to the present, because the contingency

or historical quirk that led to the development was reinforced by

incumbency, much the same way some politicians can dominate for a

lifetime once they gain office and have access to privilege,

patronage and visibility. The continuity which accompanies the

quirkiness of history that produced the original condition is an

accepted part of the human condition; for absent that quirkiness,

man would not be on earth in an evolutionary sense to enjoy it.

"We need our odd little world," Gould concludes, "where QWERTY

rules and the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."5

The search for continuity draws the statesman and the

analyst to the past, the start point in conventional wisdom for

the process of understanding change. Some, most notably Georg

Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, would not agree. What man learns from

history, the German philosopher pointed out, is that he does not

learn from history--that, in fact, wisdom and direction only

occur "when actuality is already there cut and dried after its

process of formation has been completed." "The owl of Minerva,"

Hegel concluded in this regard, "spreads its wings only with the

falling of the dusk."6

 Others see the sine qua non for dealing

with the present and the future as knowledge of what has gone on

before, the absence of which, in George Santayana's famous maxim,

condemns man to repeat the past. This is sometimes perceived,

however, as encouragement to policymakers who tend to assume that

a trend in the past will continue into the future without

considering what produced that trend or why such a linear

projection might prove to be wrong. "Santayana's aphorism,"

Arthur Schlesinger has pointed out in this regard, "must be

reversed: too often it is those who can remember the past who are
condemned to repeat it."7

The answer to the problem of properly matching continuity

and change lies in the process of what Richard Neustadt and

Ernest May call thinking in "time streams." The core attribute

for such thinking is to imagine the future as it may be when it

becomes the past--a thing of complex continuity. Thus, the

primary challenge is to ascertain whether change has really

happened, is happening or will happen. "What's so new about

that?" is the operative question that can reveal continuity as

well as change. It is not, however, an easy matter to draw

reliable distinctions between the two in advance of retrospect.

How, for instance, could Herbert Hoover have known in the spring

of 1930 that the accustomed past would not reassert itself.

Certainly there was no guide in the experiences of the 1893-97

depression or the financial panics of 1907 and 1921.

Nevertheless, such sudden change does not occur that often in

history; and continuity remains an important anodyne from the

past that can inform the present and the future. This is why

somebody like Thucydides can seem so contemporary--why for

instance, the contest between Athens and Sparta in The

Peloponnesian War seemed to resonate again in the cold war, or

why the expedition to Syracuse had overtones for America's "halfwar" in Vietnam.8

 Ultimately, this is why Hegel was wrong--why

the owl of Minerva actually flies at twilight, leaving the

student in the present as he looks to the past and the future, to

ascertain how much of the flight occurs at dawn and how much at

dusk.

Thinking in time can also help at the macro-level as the

United States prepares to enter a new millennium in which the

future is likely to remain as capricious as it often has been in

the past. As recent events have demonstrated, there are always

new "shocks" that can radically transform the loci of threats,

opportunities, or power. Strategic thinking in such an

environment has to deal with the relatively transparent threats

that still abound while attempting to cushion the nation against

the unexpected, whether in the form of environmental and human

disasters, incipient hostile ideology, or sudden technological

breakthroughs. But what is really new? Such an approach has been

the norm throughout most of America's history. The sense of

abnormality in the current transition period is actually an

artifact of the cold war. It was the bipolar stability of that

long twilight conflict that was the anomaly, the loss of which,

as Henry Kissinger noted of a similar period under the 19th

century European concert of powers, can come as a shock: "For in

the long interval of peace the sense of the tragic was lost; it

was forgotten that states could die, that upheavals could be

irretrievable . . . ."9

In contrast, for most of American history, U.S. strategists

have had to deal with a world in which the nature of prospective

opponents, and particularly the degree of threat, were relatively

more ambiguous than they were in the bipolar context of the
global environment after 1946. "In many respects . . . the era

ahead is ushering in a period of strategic normality," the

authors of the NDU futures project have concluded. "To the

historian writing in 2025, it will be the frozen simplicities of

the cold war that will seem bizarre, not the strategic flux that

characterized the periods before and after it."10

It is too early to know what those historians will say

concerning the current efforts by the U.S. armed forces to deal

with the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). This monograph

will attempt to demonstrate, however, that the American military,

particularly the U.S. Army, has been thinking in time streams for

a considerable period in dealing with its overall doctrinal

framework and that as a consequence, a mix of continuity and

change in that framework will carry it well and effectively into

the vortex of the RMA. That journey will not be without

significant problems, particularly in terms of using the fruits

of the RMA to apply force across the range of military

operations. But as this monograph will also demonstrate, those

problems, as in such revolutions in the past, have more to do

with politics and civil-military relations and cannot be fully

addressed by military doctrine alone.

In any event, broad knowledge based on thinking in time can

only reveal so much in terms of detailed change and continuity.

Dealing with doctrine in the "peaceful" change of the post-cold

war era will encounter similar difficulties. In such times, the

owl of Minerva still flies at an undetermined twilight; and the

military, as Michael Howard has pointed out,

is like a sailor navigating by dead reckoning. You have

left the terra firma of the last war and are

extrapolating from the experiences of that war. The

greater the distance from the last war, the greater

become the chances of error in this extrapolation.

Occasionally there is a break in the clouds: a smallscale conflict occurs somewhere and gives you a "fix"

by showing whether certain weapons and techniques are

effective or not: but it is always a doubtful mix . . .

. For the most part you have to sail on in a fog of

peace until at the last moment. Then, probably when it

is too late, the clouds lift and there is land

immediately ahead; breakers, probably, and rocks. Then

you find out rather late in the day whether your

calculations have been right or not.11
CHAPTER 2

THE REVOLUTION IN MILITARY AFFAIRS

In the wake of the Gulf War, a host of officials and

analysts turned to what the Soviets had long considered was a

modern military revolution as an explanation for that victory.

"The war," Secretary of Defense Cheney concluded in the official

after-action report, "demonstrated dramatically the new

possibilities of what has been called the 'military-technological

revolution in warfare.'"12 This was matched by a study of the war

conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies

(CSIS), which contained a chapter entitled "The Revolution in

Warfare" that was almost rhapsodic as it contemplated a future of

sophisticated battle management systems, space stations and

unmanned aerial vehicles.

In sum, the nature of warfare is changing. Although the

revolutioni in warfare is still underway, its outlines

have become clear. The effects of technology--in

precision guided weapons, in stealthy delivery systems,

in advanced sensor and targeting systems, in battle

management platforms--is transforming and in fact

already has demonstrably transformed the way in which

armed forces conduct their operations.13

In 1993, the CSIS devoted an entire report to the RMA, "a

fundamental advance in technology, doctrine or organization that

renders existing methods of conducting warfare obsolete."14 A true

revolution, the study included, would require a holistic effect

provided by the integrating framework of doctrine and

organization coupled with the enabling capabilities (e.g.,

information dominance, C2) and the executing capabilities (e.g.,

smart weapons, major platforms) provided by technology. "One

without the other more often constitutes an evolution."15

The most enthusiastic response to the revolutionary aspects

of the Gulf conflict has come from Alvin and Heidi Toffler who

see it as ushering in what they term Third Wave warfare. The

First, or agrarian wave, was launched by the agriculture

revolution 10,000 years ago; the Second, or industrial wave, in

the last 300 years by a combination of the Newtonian and

Industrial Revolutions. The Third, or post-industrial wave,

coexists with the other two waves, creating a trisected world, in

which the First Wave sector supplies agricultural and mineral

resources and the Second Wave cheap labor for mass production,

while the Third Wave rises rapidly to dominance based on the

creation and exploitation of knowledge.16

In this milieu, the Tofflers see the addition of a Third

Wave war form as increasing the potential for heterogeneity in

the wars the United States must prevent or fight. In other words,

older warfare forms don't entirely disappear when newer ones

arise, just as Second Wave mass production has not disappeared
with the advent of customized Third Wave products. As a

consequence, there are today approximately 20 countries with

regionally significant Second Wave armies. And some of these as

well as a few First Wave countries are attempting to gain Third

Wave technology. The result is a wide range of military

operations. At one end are the small, essentially First Wave

civil wars and violent conflicts in poor or low tech countries

accompanied by sporadic terrorism and drug wars. At the other end

is the Third Wave warfare presaged, in part, by the Gulf War.

Somewhere in between and lapping at the successive wave, as it

did in Kuwait, is the very strong residue of the large scale

Second Wave warfare.17

The task for the future in all this is to develop "niche

warriors" for Third Wave niche warfare that will eventually

replace large scale, second wave conflicts. These warriors, the

Tofflers envisage "will wage information-intensive warfare,

making use of the latest Third Wave technologies now on the

horizon."18 That in turn will require a new type of fighter,

variously referred to as the "Ph.D. with Rucksack," the

"Knowledge Warriors," and the "Software Soldiers." "Mindless

warriors are to Third Wave war," they conclude, "what unskilled

manual laborers are to the Third Wave economy--an endangered

species."19

The basic outline of the doctrinal framework for the RMA was

also visible to the Tofflers in the Gulf War, reinforcing their

belief that AirLand Battle (ALB) as it evolved in the late 1970s

and 1980s represented "the U.S. military's first conscious

attempt to adapt to the Third Wave of change."20 It is for them by

no means a completed action. Just as the civilization brought by

the Third Wave has not yet reached its mature form, so is ALB

only a beginning as the form of Third Wave war moves toward full

development. In fact, widespread cutbacks in military funding

will cause the armed forces to seek to do more with less and thus

accelerate what the Tofflers perceive as a profound

reconceptualization of war.

What is becoming apparent now is that the military

revolution that began with Air-Land Battle and made its

first public appearance during the Gulf War is still

only in its infancy. The years ahead, despite budget

cuts and rhetoric about peace in the world, will see

military doctrines around the world change in response

to new challenges and new technologies.21

Other reactions to the Gulf War and discussions of the RMA

have been more cautious. While acknowledging the effectiveness of

such technology as the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar

System (JSTAR) and the expanded volume of firepower delivery in

such systems for tactical missiles as the Army Tactical Missile

System (ATACMS) and the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS),

some observers also point to problems ranging from those dealing

with intelligence and bomb damage assessments to those concerning
the tracking of the relatively primitive SCUD launchers. Others

focus on what the Tofflers call a dual war form and emphasize

that much of the technology used in the Gulf War dated back at

least two decades. Thus, there was the mix of M113 APCs with M2

Bradleys; M60A3 tanks with M1A1 Abrams; and B-52Gs and F-4G "Wild

Weasels" helping the F-117A stealth fighters. "The 'militarytechnical revolution' sparkled in the new systems," Eliot Cohen

has pointed out in this regard, "but it drew as much on

considerably more mature technologies."22 In any event, like the

Tofflers, most observers agree that to see the Gulf War as

evidence of a full blown RMA is premature. The experience in that

conflict, one concluded, "only hints at what might be possible in

the revolutionary transformation of U.S. military capabilities

were a military-technical revolution to be created."23

Finally, another group of observers sees the preoccupation

with an RMA and Third Wave warfare as missing the basic point:

the structure of international relations is rapidly changing and

with it a return to First not Third Wave conflict. For A. J.

Bacevich, this preoccupation on the part of the military

demonstrates nothing more than "wooly-headed sentimentality" for

the past embodied in massive Second Wave warfare.24 As a result,

the message from current military thinking in terms of the RMA is

"that the future will be a reprise of World War II in the fancy

dress of high technology."25 It is, in short, a linear extension

of the past into the future, one in which the military's view of

technological marvels "offers a vision of war with which Patton

himself would have felt right at home."26

In a similar manner, so-called "Fourth Generation Warfare"

theorists moved early on beyond their Reform Movement

preoccupation with maneuver warfare to argue that the statecentric world of Clausewitz's remarkable trinity (government,

military, people) was ending. The first three generations of

warfare came about since 1648 because of the interaction of

technological advances and battlefield application combined

secondarily with political imperatives. Now, however, nationstates are losing their importance as the primary actors in the

international arena, even as nongovernmental organizations

increasingly wage conflict to further their own policies. As a

consequence, the Fourth Generation world is a return to a pre1648 environment of politics and war. In this non-trinitarian

world, technology may become virtually irrelevant, with military

forces, effective in second and third generation conflict,

rendered useless in a Tofflerian First Wave environment marked by

flashpoints ranging from groups like the Medellin cartel to

failed states such as Somalia.27

Martin van Creveld returned to the non-trinitarian theme

after the Gulf War in his study on The Transformation of War, in

which there is "every prospect that religious attitudes, beliefs

and fanaticisms will play a larger role in the motivation of

armed conflict than it has, in the West at any rate, for the last

300 years."28 In this large cyclic continuity, he sees the state
losing its monopoly over armed violence and a shift to lowintensity conflicts in which advanced military technology will

become increasingly irrelevant. "Considering the present and

trying to look into the future," he concludes, "I suggest the

Clausewitzian Universe is rapidly becoming out of date and can no

longer provide us with a proper framework for understanding

war."29 To which John Keegan agrees, pointing out that technology

in the form of nuclear weapons long ago undermined Clausewitz's

most basic dictum. Non-trinitarian tendencies in current

international relations only further discredited this

proposition. "War is not the continuation of policy by other

means," he concludes.

. . . Clausewitz's thought is incomplete. It implies

the existence of states, of state interests and of

rational calculation about how they may be achieved . .

. . What it made no allowances for at all was war

without beginning or end, the endemic warfare of nonstate, even pre-state peoples.30

Finally, all this has been tied by Robert Kaplan into an

apocalyptic view of the future world in which the need for a

military technical revolution becomes a gross irrelevance as

states lose their legal monopoly of armed force and the current

distinctions between war and crime break down. At that time, he

points out, "the classificatory grid of nation-states is going to

be replaced by a jagged-glass pattern of city states, shantystates, nebulous and anarchic regionalisms . . . ."31 It will be a

"bifurcated world" with part of the globe inhabited by Hegel's

and Fukuyama's last man--the well-fed recipient of all that

technology can offer, and the other, much larger part, peopled by

Hobbes's First Man, living out his "poor, nasty, brutish, and

short" life. Like van Creveld, Kaplan sees re-primitivized man in

warrior societies operating in an environment marked by planetary

overcrowding and unprecedented resource scarcity in which state

supported, technologically-enhanced military will have no effect.

The intense savagery of the fighting in such diverse

cultural settings as Liberia, Bosnia, the Caucasus, and

Sri Lanka--to say nothing of what obtains in American

inner cities--indicates something very troubling that

those of us inside the stretch limo, concerned with

issues like middle-class entitlements and the future of

interactive cable television, lack the stomach to

contemplate. It is this: a large number of people on

this planet, to whom the comfort and stability of a

middle-class life is utterly unknown, find war and a

barracks existence a step up rather than a step down.32

Thinking in Time: Doctrine and Technology.

The interrelationship of technology and doctrine is an

essential, but extremely complex part of a military revolution.
"A true RMA," Daniel Goure has pointed out in this regard,

"involves not just technological advance but also changes to the

way that militaries think about, organize themselves for, and

wage combat."33 The problem is to keep these elements in balance

during times of great change. The current period, for example,

may be one in which military potential could leap from one

technical era to the next, as occurred between the Napoleonic

Wars and the Franco Prussian War and between the two World Wars

of this century. The rapid changes in computers and communication

combined with the equally swift cost decline of both have already

caused revolutionary changes in large corporate businesses that

have not been seen since the advent of mass bureaucracies in the

previous centuries. Similar changes could produce fundamental

alterations in the military sphere ranging from the most basic

notions of hierarchy and span of control to centralization and

response time.34

In such an environment, the chicken-egg question concerning

doctrine and technology will not become any easier than it has

been in the past. The CSIS report on the military revolution, for

instance, concludes that "decisions on doctrine . . . become a

precondition and guidance for integrating the research and

development of new technologies."35 One example is how development

of mechanized warfare doctrine led to the creation of selfpropelled, protected artillery, capable of keeping up with the

movements of armor units. And in World War II, the need for an

amphibious vehicle that could move cargo from ship to shore

resulted in the creation of the DUKW, or "Duck," used extensively

in the amphibious operations in both the European and Pacific

theaters.36 On the other hand, this order runs the risk of

distorting the result of technological breakthroughs. If doctrine

dominates technology, the technological advantages may be

overlooked, causing a quiet evolution rather than the much

greater change that may be possible or necessary. And in fact

some of the worst failures in warfare have come about not so much

from an unwillingness to adopt new technologies, as from a

persistence in clinging to older doctrines and then adusting the

new technologies to those doctrines. In the U.S. Civil War, for

instance, outdated tactics from the age of Napoleon were used in

the face of modern riflery, new artillery and rifle

entrenchments. In a similar manner, most European armies on the

eve of World War I possessed doctrines emphasizing offensive

maneuver and rapid, decisive battles that barely acknowledged the

new technologies represented by a host of modern weapons ranging

from artillery to the machine gun.37

That war at the outset also saw the continued retention of

horse cavalry, a trend that demonstrated more than the military's

inability to move beyond outmoded doctrines and comfortable but

obsolete techniques. For as Michael Howard has pointed out, the

case for cavalry not just as a reconnaissance force but in a

battlefield role, was cogently made prior to 1914 by officers who

had already experienced the Franco-Prussian, the Russo-Turkish

and the Russo-Japanese Wars. In a similar manner, most Europeans
in this period ignored the lessons of changing warfare made clear

over and over again in the American Civil War. That conflict,

most concluded, came about because of unique terrain

characteristics combined with poor training and leadership, not

because of new technology.38 With or without the major test of

war, innovation, as the complex relationship of doctrine and

technology evolves, may not occur; and there is always the

potential of facing a situation that JFC Fuller described after

the Great War. "We had made up our minds to play whist," he wrote

of 1914, "and when we sat down we found that the game was

poker."39

In the end, there is nothing new in the need to balance the

opposing logic of technology and doctin military affairsrine. For

technology, that logic is linear with a focus that will always be

on efficiency through such methods as standardization and

repetition. Doctrine, on the other hand, has to do with how a

military fights an opponent and is thus concerned with

effectiveness on what is after all at least a two-way strategic

street. As a result, its underlying logic is paradoxical. The

same action in war, for example, will not always cause the same

result--and in fact probably just the opposite. "Given an

opponent who is capable of learning," van Creveld has pointed out

in this regard, "a very real danger exists that an action will

not succeed twice because it has succeeded once."40

Making technology serve with doctrine, then, is a complex

business. Efficiency may not be conducive to effectiveness and

may in fact be just the opposite. A straight line in war, for

example, is not always best. And although the line least expected

may be the longest between two points, it may become the shortest

and thus the most effective because the enemy considers it to be

the longest. On the other hand, the price for the use of

technology in war is a diminishment of its efficiency. Thus,

estimates of technological superiority can be misleading without

consideration of doctrine for the use of that technology. It was

not, after all, just the intrinsic technical superiority of the

longbows that brought victory to the English at Crecy, but the

interaction of that weapon with the tactics and equipment of the

French.41

In all this, there is much to extract from the time streams.

To begin with, there is the sheer ubiquity of modern technology

typified by the image of computer-dependent weapons and equipment

together with their operators at every level of war. That such

technology is a continuing and vital part of service doctrines is

a given in the modern era. But such specialization can also carry

the seeds of future problems that doctrine can't remedy, as the

classic 16th century sea battle of Lepanto demonstrated. It was

the loss of the Ottoman archers using the traditional Turkish

weapon, the composite bow, that was the key aspect of the 30,000

Turkish dead out of 60,000 men engaged at that battle. For the

composite bow required a lifetime of work and practice to master

the requisite skills. It was the loss of these skilled naval
archers, irreplaceable in a single generation, that made Lepanto

the turning point in Mediterranean affairs since that battle

"marked the death of a living tradition that could not be

reconstituted."42

Other lessons abound in history. The pitfalls of doctrine

following a technology-dependent strategic concept can be studied

in the creation of the U.S. Pentomic Army in the late 1950s. And

there is the recognition that in developing doctrine, some

weapons will not be effective until other technological advances

occur. The machine gun, for instance, had to await the invention

of smokeless powder--also a reminder that old and new

technologies can be integrated and have a great effect on

doctrine. The classic case is the relatively minor replacement in

the 16th century of the plug bayonet with the ring bayonet which

allowed the infantry to continue firing with the bayonet

attached, thus transforming the role of the infantry and ending

the debate over "pike" to "shot" ratios.43 A more recent case is

the use of stealth aircraft to precede conventional air in

operations during the Gulf War.

The Gulf War is also a reminder that it is important to

focus on the correct doctrinal and technological aspects in the

after-action phase of any conflict. Less than a century has

passed, in this regard, since the Russo-Japanese War, in which

the French chose to buttress their doctrinal arguments from the

lessons of the successful Japanese offensives rather than examine

the implications of the defensive effectiveness of the machine

gun and barb wire. That war also offers an example in the

subsequent fate of the Czarist army of what can befall a military

that does not innovate with doctrine and technology after defeat.

"Defeat by itself does not tell a military organization what

future wars will look like," Stephen Rosen has observed, "only

that its preparations for the war just ended were not adequate."44

History also demonstrates that doctrinal and technological

surprise is ephemeral at best. The doctrine of Blitzkrieg was

soon matched by new doctrines and radical reorganizations

combined with mass manufacture of anti-armor weaponry. And such

countermeasures over the years have generally ended attempts to

find technological panaceas in the form of wonder weapons. Thus,

there were the dashed expectations for the SAM as an end to the

airplane, for the shaped-charge guided missile in terms of

destroying the tank, and for the attack submarine as a means to

eliminate the surface vessel.45 Only the nuclear weapon has defied

attempts to mitigate its technological ability to surprise, with

restraint only possible in a mutual doctrine of non-use based on

"rationally" assured destruction. That this restraint could break

down in an age of nuclear proliferation is reinforced by time

streams going as far back as 1137, when the Lateran Council

banned the use of the crossbow against Christian enemies, citing

that weapon as not only destructive to mankind, but as being

hateful to God. Richard Coeur de Lion reintroduced the crossbow

into European wars, and many saw his death in 1199 by a bolt from
that weapon as a clear expression of divine displeasure at the

affront to chivalric custom which disapproved of all weapons

other than sword and lance. Nevertheless, technological

innovation continued to outstrip the Council's prohibitions in

the years to come. By 1529, Pierre du Tuerrail de Bayard,

chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, could thank God that he had

always used the proper weapons against knights: the sword, the

lance and the crossbow.46

The role of the Lateran Council is also a reminder that

there is nothing new in the interaction of policy at the highest

civilian and military level with the development of doctrine and

technology. In the interwar years, for example de Gaulle's

proposal for a professional 100,000 man mechanized force was

rejected because, among other reasons, of the political

objections to the creation of a force designed primarily for

offensive conflict.47 In Germany, on the other hand, it was Hitler

who pressed Blitzkrieg on an army that preferred to superimpose

new technology on its current offensive doctrine rather than to

experiment and innovate doctrinally to exploit to a greater

degree all its potential. "That's what I need," he is reported to

have stated in February 1935 after his first glimpse of tank

maneuvers. "That's what I want to have."48 And finally, on a more

modern note, there was the resistance by the U.S. Army in the

1960s, despite the personal direction of the President, to

develop army-wide capabilities for counterinsurgency doctrine

because of the institutional belief that conventional wars would

continue to dominate the Army's strategic requirement.49

Thinking in Time: The Sociopolitical Aspects of RMAs.

"A military revolution, in the fullest sense," the Tofflers

have observed, "occurs only . . . when an entire society

transforms itself, forcing its armed services to change at every

level simultaneously--from technology and culture to

organization, strategy, tactics, training, doctrine and

logistics. When that happens, the relationship of the economy and

society is transformed . . . ."50 But technology is still key. And

the modern pace of change, as van Creveld has demonstrated, is

far removed from what he calls the "Age of Tools," the two

millennia from approximately 500 BC to 1500 AD in which, after a

few basic inventions like bronze weapons and wheeled vehicles,

technological change had little effect on the conduct of war.

There were, of course, such innovations as the stirrup and the

high saddle; but the period was marked more by the constant

alteration of existing technologies than the invention of new

ones. This leisurely pace of technological change provided a

stability to war for the age of tools with the result that

important similarities persisted from conflict in ancient Greece

to war in the later Middle Ages. For the Europeans of 1500, the

past remained "contemporary history, freely to be culled for

inspiration, examples, and for even outright models to copy."51
Even new technology in the form of gunpowder was not enough

to cause a revolution as the old age began to end. The

combination of archers and men-at-arms reached its climax at

Agincourt. The next generations abandoned the bow and turned more

and more to firearms, vainly groping for a tactical form of that

firepower to substitute for the bow. The paradox of this

doctrinal dilemma was that the introduction of the handgun caused

a steep decline in firepower. So superior was the longbow in

speed, accuracy and mobility, that even toward the end of the

17th century, military writers pleaded for it to be

reintroduced.52

Nevertheless, as Michael Roberts has demonstrated, major

changes occurred between 1560 and 1660 in four areas: tactics,

strategy, size of armies, and sociopolitical institutions. All

together, these changes amounted to a "military revolution."53

Robert's thesis is linear. At the tactical level, Maurice of

Nassau's doctrinal innovations changed the traditional 50-foot

deep pike square into a line of musketry only 10 feet deep, all

of which minimized the effect of incoming fire while maximizing

the outgoing fire effect. This exposed more men to face-to-face

combat which in turn required superior courage, proficiency and

discipline for each soldier. It also required entire tactical

units to perform swiftly and in unison the motions required for

volley-firing. The answer was regimentation and discipline with

troops trained to fire, countermarch, load and maneuver

together.54

To all this, Gustavus Adolphus added more doctrinal

innovations in the Thirty Years War--all resulting in a

combination, in Robert's words, of "firepower and shock as nobody

had been able to do since firearms replaced bows," thus ensuring

"the recovery of the art of war from the debility which had been

the result of the inventions of firearms."55 These tactical

innovations led to a revolution in strategy as commanders in the

Thirty Years War broadened their horizons and began to look at

Central Europe as one great theater of war with conflict ranging

over Germany in its entirety as well as along its borders from

Poland and Italy to Lorraine and the Netherlands. The new

perspective was demonstrated in Gustavus' plan for the

destruction of the Austrian Habsburgs by the simultaneous

operations of five to seven armies, all effectively coordinated

to move under his direction on a great curving front from the

middle Oder to the Alpine passes. "(A)ll the wars of Europe," he

wrote, "are now blended into one."56

The enlarged scope of warfare caused great increases in the

size of armies which in turn led to even more ambitious and

complex strategies for making use of the new forces. All of this

meant that waging war became more of a burden and a problem both

for the civilian populations and their rulers because of greater

costs, greater damages and casualties, and greater administrative

challenges. In addition to more people participating directly in

war, the growth of armies brought in a host of noncombatants such
as entrepenuers and financiers who controlled the economic

wherewithall of conflict and with whom the governments had to

deal, paying inordinate sums for uniforms, weaponry and

equipment. In response, the state changed the structure and

philosophy of government, creating the social-political

institutions that placed the ways and means of war in

governmental hands. "By 1660," Michael Roberts concluded of the

revolution that had begun with a fortuitous mix of new doctrine,

organization and technology, "the modern art of war had come to

birth."

Mass armies, strict discipline, absolute submergence of

the individual, had already arrived; the conjoint

ascendancy of financial power and applied science was

already established in all its malignity; the use of

propaganda, psychological warfare, and terrorism as

military weapons was already familiar to theorists, as

well as to commanders in the field; and the last

remaining qualms as to the religious and ethical

legitimacy of war seemed to have been stilled. The road

lay open, broad and straight, to the abyss of the

twentieth century.57

Despite the openness of that road, the transformation

occasioned by the military revolution was slower and the impact

less total than was once thought. Throughout the 17th and early

18th century in Scotland, for instance, there were numerous

encounters in which regular troops equipped with all the tools

provided by the military revolution were defeated by the headlong

charge of undisciplined clansmen armed with traditional weapons.

Only at Culloden in 1746 did the Hanoverian army stop the

Highland Charge and even then only because the British had

overwhelming numerical superiority, considerable field artillery

and, most importantly, improved fire control. In fact, the

military revolution created problems to which there was no easy

solution, the most prominent being that strategic thinking was

crushed between the sustained growth in the size of armies and

the relative scarcity of money, equipment and food. The result,

as Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill and Orrery, wrote in the 1670s, was

that "(b)attells do not now decide national quarrels . . . .For

we make war more like foxes, than like lyons . . . ."58

As a consequence, the classic conflicts in the age of the

military revolution were all "long wars," whether the French

religious wars of 1562-98 and again in 1621-29 or the "80 Years

War" in the Netherlands which involved continuous hostilities

there between 1572 and 1607 and between 1621 and 1647. Equally

important, this tendency continued to mark the battles of the

next century. Thus the War of the Spanish Succession continued

from 1701 to 1713 in spite of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and

Malplaquet. The "drama intrinsic to great battles," Russell

Weigly has observed of the period, "often diverted attention from

indecisiveness; but recalcitrant, intractable indecision

nevertheless persisted."59
Decisiveness returned to the battlefield in the age of

Napoleon without the benefit of any new technology. Classical

strategy, as Figure 1 illustrates, had focused since the time of

Alexander on the destruction of the enemy by means of

concentration in terms of intra-battle maneuver and the battle

itself. The metaphor, James Schneider points out, was one of

torque with force applied at one end of a lever being

concentrated at a single point on the other end.60 It was a

metaphor that could still apply to Napoleon. For while the French

leader revolutionized the concepts of space and time with the

concentric maneuvers of his major, independent, combined arms

units, those maneuvers were still intra-battle in nature, focused

for the most part on the destruction of the enemy in concentrated

battle.

 The real revolution was captured by Clausewitz as he

evaluated what had taken place at each level of the Napoleonic

Wars. For the Prussian philosopher, the essence of the change was

a conceptual framework in which separated military events were

molded together to achieve higher objectives. It was, in fact, a

vertical continuum (Figure 2) in which war emerged as a

continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other
means.
At the tactical level, Clausewitz wrote, "the means are

fighting forces trained for combat; the end is victory." For the

strategist, however, he concluded that military victories were

meaningless unless they were the means to obtain a political end,

"those objects which lead directly to peace."61 Thus, strategy was

"the linking together (Verbindung) of separate battle engagements

into a single whole, for the final object of the war."62 And only

the political or policy level could determine that objective. "To

bring a war, or any one of its campaigns to a successful close

requires a thorough grasp of national policy," Clausewitz pointed

out. "On that level strategy and policy coalesce . . . .63

The full impact of both Clausewitz's concept and Napoleon's

approach to war had to await the technology which by the time of

the American Civil War ushered in a revolution in military

affairs that continued through World War I (Figure 1). To begin

with, there was the breechloading rifle, the increased lethality

of which rendered the dense Napoleonic tactical formations and

tactics obsolete, as American Civil War soldiers discovered more

quickly than their leaders. But that lethality also renewed
interest in Napoleon's concept of extended time and space,

because as battle space began to expand in proportion to the new

range of the improved weapons, the looser formations occasioned

by those weapons had the effect of emptying the battlefield. At

the same time, the railroads speeded the movement of troops to

the battle areas, simplified logistical problems, and, by the

nature of their organizational railheads, enforced the emerging

distributed pattern of operations. The addition of the telegraph

combined with the railroad helped to unify large geographically

separate military formations, while also drawing in what Michael

Roberts described as the sociopolitical elements that accompany

military revolutions. In the Civil War, for example, the

telegraph and the railroad contributed by mail and communications

as well as the flow of wounded and furloughed soldiers to the

psychological front-to-rear link that had begun with the

completion of the Clausewitzian trinity by the French nation-inarms during the French revolutionary wars.64

That linkage also insured a continuous mobilization of the

home front which in turn meant a continuous stream of logistics

contributing to operationally durable formations (Figure 1). The

result, as the constant litany of Confederate tactical victories

illustrated through much of the war, was that single battles no

longer determined national destinies. But as Grant illustrated in

his use of armies scattered throughout the eastern United States

in 1864-65, improved communications coupled with large

operationally durable formations, could result in inter-battle

maneuvers and thus in decisive operations and campaigns

distributed in extended time and space. The result was something

that went beyond the adjustment of activities to one another,

which is the essence of coordination. It was in fact a process to

which the metaphor of fluid rather than torque could apply, since

pressure in one area might result in simultaneous or successive

results elsewhere. Over a century later it would be described as

synchronization, a concept that could involve activities far

removed from each other in time or space, or both, "if their

combined consequences are felt at the decisive time and place."65

That process was captured in a letter to Grant in 1864. "I think

our campaign of the last month," Sherman wrote from Savannah, "as

well as every step I take from this point northward, is as much a

direct attack upon Lee's army as though we were operating within

the sound of his artillery."66 The larger lesson of the century,

however, was captured by Paul Kennedy, an historian accustomed to

thinking in time streams.

All these wars--whether fought in the Tennessee Valley

or the Bohemian plain, in the Crimean Peninsula or the

field of Lorraine--pointed to one general conclusion:

the powers which were defeated were those that had

failed to adapt to the 'military revolution' of the

mid-nineteenth century, the acquisition of new weapons,

the mobilizing and equipping of large armies, the use

of improved communications offered by the railway, the

steamship and the telegraph, and a productive
industrial base to sustain the armed forces.67

But that adaption did not include full doctrinal conversion

from classical strategy, which World War I would reveal as

inadequate to deal with the intricacies of modern warfare.

Napoleon had defined that strategy as the "art of making use of

time and space." But as demonstrated in the Civil War, the

dimensions of these two variables had been stretched and rendered

more complex by the interaction of technology with the elements

of the Clausewitzian trinity. And that very complexity, augmented

by the lack of decisiveness at the tactical level, impeded the

vertical continuum of war outlined in Clausewitz' definition of

strategy as the use of engagements to achieve policy objectives,68

and personified in 1917 by the French general who lamented: "Guns

yes, prisoners yes, but all at an outrageous cost and without

strategic results."69

Only when the continuum was enlarged, as the Great War

demonstrated, was it possible to restore warfighting coherence to

modern combat. And that, in turn, required the classical concept

of strategy to be positioned at a midpoint, an operational level,

designed to orchestrate individual tactical engagements and

battles in order to achieve strategic results (Figure 3). Now, a

military strategic level was added as another way station on the

vertical road to the fulfillment of policy objectives. This left

the concept of strategy, as it had been understood since the time

of Clausewitz, transformed into:

the level of war at which campaigns and major

operations are planned, conducted and sustained to

accomplish strategic objectives . . . . Activities at

this level link tactics and strategy . . . . These

activities imply a broader dimension of time or space

than do tactics; they provide the means by which

tactical successes are exploited to achieve strategic

objectives.70

CHAPTER 3

U.S. ARMY DOCTRINE AND THE RMA

In the wake of Vietnam, the U.S. Army returned to its

traditional focus on Europe. During the previous decade, the

Warsaw Pact had added impressive qualitative improvements to its

already crushing numerical preponderance--a trend only magnified

by new analytical and gaming techniques which emphasized the

quantifiable components of combat power. Added to this was the

1973 Yom Kippur War, the violence and lethality of which came as

a shock to an officer corps conditioned by years of low-intensity

warfare in Southeast Asia. At the same time, an already

demoralized army found itself without a peacetime draft and on

the receiving end of a decade-long deficit in equipment

modernization as well as a large manpower reduction. The result

was "Active Defense," promulgated in the 1976 edition of FM 100-

5, Operations--a doctrine that made a tactical virtue of what was

perceived as a strategic necessity by translating NATO's

politically driven requirement of forward defense into

operational method.71

The criticism of Active Defense began even before the final

result was published. The doctrine was attacked for a lack of

offensive spirit and the loss of all the tactical imponderables

like initiative and morale that accompanied such a spirit; for

what was perceived as an overemphasis on firepower to the

detriment of maneuver; and for the submergence of tactical

creativity in a wave of attrition calculations. But the most

telling criticism was that there was no operational content in

the new doctrine, which promised at best, its critics charged, to

defer defeat without any possibility of operational success. "In

seeking to fulfill its doctrinal commitment to winning the first

battle,'" Richard Sinnreich has pointed out, "the Army was

accused of becoming so preoccupied with fighting the first battle

that it forgot all about winning the last. For an Army

traumatized by ten years of tactical success culminating in

operational failure, no critique could have been more

devastating."72

At the same time, there was renewed focus on Soviet

doctrine, particularly the use of follow-on forces which were

tailored-made, critics pointed out, against an Active Defense

that depended on lateral reinforcement from less threatened areas

in lieu of retaining major reserves. This impetus to extend the

battlefield, however, required technology that could only be

provided by the Air Force--an operative imperative that meant

that a battle extended in time and space would have to be an

AirLand Battle (ALB). The result was the promulgation of ALB

doctrine in the 1982 FM 100-5, which brought the Army full circle

back to the three levels of war as a doctrinal framework for

"securing or retaining the initiative and exercising it

aggressively to defeat the enemy."73 As a consequence, there was

nothing new in the motivation for creating combat coherence
throughout the vertical continuum of war in that framework. It

was simply the age-old combination of technology and doctrine as

a means to return to basics--a return to the business of winning

by an Army that was unwilling, in Sinnreich's words, "to stomach

indefinitely a . . . doctrine which appeared to enshrine the draw

as the objective of military operations."74

The 1986 FM 100-5 continued the focus of 1982, adding

operational art as the method for working the operational level

of war while continuing to emphasize the absolute dominance of

the strategic level in the vertical continuum. It is an emphasis

that has been renewed in the current manual:

Since wars are fought for strategic purposes, the

doctrine addresses the strategic context of the

application of force. Since battle is translated into

strategic objectives by operational art, a major

portion of the manual addresses the operational level

of war. And since all operations must be based on sound

tactics, a major portion of the text covers tactics.75

By now, the other armed forces have followed the Army lead

in terms of using the vertical levels of war as a basic doctrinal

framework--so much so that the current JCS basic doctrinal

publication bears more than a little resemblance to the 1986 Army

manual.

The operational level links the tactical employment of

forces to strategic objectives. The focus at this level

is on operational art--the use of military forces to

achieve strategic goals through the design,

organization, and execution of campaigns and major

operations. Operational art helps commanders use

resources efficiently and effectively to achieve

strategic objectives. It provides a framework to assist

commanders in ordering their thoughts when designing

campaigns and major operations. Operational art helps

commanders understand the conditions for victory before

seeking battle, thus avoiding unnecessary battles.

Without operational art, war would be a set of

disconnected engagements, with relative attrition the

only measure of successor failure.76

Within this overarching framework, the 1993 FM 100-5 clearly

perceives doctrine as the engine that drives the development of

technology. "Doctrine seeks to be sufficiently broad and forward

looking so that it rapidly accommodates major technological

opportunities . . . . It sets the conditions to exploit

technologies . . . ."77 Implicit in this perception is the fact

that even as the current national strategy calls for a policy of

global engagement, the CONUS-based force projection that is

replacing forward defense coupled with a simultaneous build-down

in resources necessitate an optimizing of developing

technologies. This relationship of technology to doctrine is
pervasive throughout the manual. Power projection, for instance,

always runs the risk of the deploying force attacking too soon

before the full component has arrived or waiting so long for that

full deployment that initiative returns to the opponent. This

risk can be mitigated, the FM points out, by using technology to

perform such support functions as intelligence analysis and some

logistics management from CONUS. The result is that more

deployment space can be allocated to combat units--the type of

leverage that one of the original authors of ALB has pointed out

"is too great to ignore."78

The new doctrine has other strong ties to the past,

retaining, for example, the orientation on offensive actions and

the familiar tenets of agility, initiative, depth and

synchronization. To this, in response to the changing

international environment, has been added "versatility," which

"denotes the ability to perform in many roles and environments

during war and operations other than war."79 Operations other than

war (OOTW) can involve combat missions ranging from strikes and

raids to peace enforcement as well as noncombat missions that

could include disaster relief and civil support both at home and

abroad. Force projections in such an environment might include

entirely different successive missions for a unit, involving

noncombat operations in wartime or actual combat in OOTW. The

flexibility involved goes far beyond agility which emphasizes

faster physical and mental reaction from the enemy. That tenet,

the manual concludes, applies to a boxer; versatility to the

decathlete. The U.S. Army, like the decathlete, is capable of

rapid realignment and refocus on widely divergent missions

because of discipline and training.80

In all this, the vertical continuum of war remains as the

doctrinal construct. To begin with the manual draws upon the 1986

contention that the levels in that continuum are not concerned so

much with the level of command or the size of the unit as with

the planned outcome. "The intended purpose," the current manual

points out," . . . determines whether an Army unit functions at

the operational level."81 From this position, the expansiveness of

missions under "full dimensional operations" poses no doctrinal

problems for the underlying framework. "The levels of war apply

not only to war but also to operations other than war."82

This does not mean, however, that war's pride of place has

been relinquished to OOTW. The introduction to the new manual

emphasizes that the "primary focus is warfighting and how

commanders put all the elements together to achieve victory at

least cost to American soldiers."83 The allusion to victory is

also a standard linkage to past doctrines that is now applicable

to full dimensional operations by an Army capable of "quick,

decisive victory--on and off the battlefield--anywhere in the

world and under virtually any conditions . . . ."84 The expansion

of this linkage was confirmed by one of the authors of the

current doctrine, even as he emphasized the continuity. "The

essential criterion . . . remains the same," James McDonough
concludes, "victory--or for operations other than war, success."85

But there is no escaping the dominance of the warfighting

imperative in the current FM 100-5.

The Army must be capable of achieving decisive victory.

The Army must maintain the capability to put

overwhelming combat power on the battlefield to defeat

all enemies through a total force effort. It produces

forces of the highest quality, able to deploy rapidly,

to fight, to sustain themselves, and to win quickly

with minimum casualties. That is decisive victory.86

The Altered Framework.

The framework provided by the vertical continuum of war is

changing. The Gulf War demonstrated the coalition's ability to

use new technology to strike simultaneously at all three levels

of war with what were normally considered strategic capabilities.

For Iraq, these attacks across the entire nation paralyzed its

military effort, with Iraqi forces compelled to operate

throughout the country as if they were within visual range of the

coalition military without any of the normal distinctions between

rear, deep and close operations. "All of this means," one

analysis concludes, "that in future conflict the three levels of

war, as separate and distinct loci of command and functional

responsibilities, will be spaced and timed out of existence."87

The CSIS report on the military technological revolution agrees

that the RMA "clearly holds the potential to blur or permanently

erase, the distinction between tactical, theater and strategic

war."88 But the JCS Doctrine for Joint Operations is more

cautious, preferring a balance of change and continuity.

Advances in technology, information-age media

reporting, and the compression of time-space

relationships contribute to the growing

interrelationships between the levels of war. The

levels of war help commanders visualize a logical flow

of operations, allocate resources, and assign tasks to

the appropriate command. However, commanders at every

level must be aware that in a world of constant,

immediate communications, any single event may cut

across the three levels.89

Figure 4 is the familiar depiction of the vertical continuum

of war, with the darkened center area representing the

operational art required to orchestrate the tactical events in

area 1 to form the military conditions at the operational level

that will achieve strategic objectives in area 2. Figure 5

depicts the more balanced approach to the future reflected in the

JCS description. The expansion and overlap represents a trend

that began earlier this century with the advent of mechanization,

the radio and air forces. The checkered area demonstrates the

future blurring of all three levels of war--the zone of
integration and simultaneity. Finally, the darkened section is

the traditional area of operational art focused on orchestrating

the events in area 1 to achieve the objectives of area 2. The

increased sizes of areas 1 and 2 represent the larger operational

interaction with both strategy and tactics made possible by

technological advances. But at the same time, the diminishment of

the darkened section's size also represents the technologically

compressed decision cycle of the operational commander working at

magnified tempo in extended space. That commander will be faced

with the much more complex job of recognizing those simultaneous

strategic and tactical events that directly influence strategy

and integrating them into the full synchronization calculation

for those strategic objectives that result from the traditional

consideration of what tactical battles and engagements to join or

not to join at the operational level.90

The problems of the operational commander notwithstanding,

the compression of the three levels has the potential to increase

decisiveness in the vertical military continuum from the tactical

to the national military strategic level, certainly against a

technologically inferior opponent. But that decisiveness can be

affected, as the JCS description also implies, by the

communication-information revolution that has gathered speed in

recent decades. Now the technology that has streamlined and

compressed the vertical continuum has also added a horizontal

dimension (Figure 6) that provides the potential for the military
at any level of war to influence national strategy directly. In

the age of CNN, future wars and OOTW will occur in real time for

both the American people and their policymakers. That this

development can have positive results against an enemy was

illustrated by the Gulf War. But the more pernicious results in

terms of less favorable events up and down that continuum has a

long history, whether it be the dismissal of Churchill from the

Asquith government after the operational defeat at Galopoli, the

decision of LBJ not to run for reelection as a result of TET, or

the effects of the tactical loss of U.S. Army rangers in Somalia

on the tenure of former Secretary of Defense Aspin.

All this means a growing complexity with shorter decision

time for the operational commander. At the same time, the midand high-intensity war of the future will add to the emptying of

the battlefield even as that field expands in spatial and

intellectual terms. At the tactical level, the individual soldier
will be able to have a greater impact on events in this expanded

battle space because of increased weapons lethality and an

increased ability to direct accurately long-range precision

fires. This, in turn, will offer more opportunities for the

operational commander by increasing the connection between the

tactical battle space and the operational area, whether it be the

theater of war or the theater of operations. The result is a new

JCS-approved approach to deep operations with a focus on

functions not forces.91 Previously, air theorists tended to limit

the land attack to the actual combat between committed forces

with anything beyond the range of organic fires belonging to the

air commander. Now with permission for tactical commanders to

pursue battle objectives by using either deep or close combat

operations as the main effort, battles and engagements far beyond

the forward line of friendly forces can decide major operations

and campaigns.

This type of technology-enhanced maneuverability has been

perceived as a key result of the RMA, marking the victory over

the Clausewitzian linear methods of the past by the concepts of

nonlinear warfare, in which

smaller, fast moving, more independent units maneuver

around a battlefield, coalesce to attack enemy

formations, then melt away into smaller component parts

less vulnerable to smart weapons. As in war at sea, the

focus will be not so much on seizing territory as on

destroying enemy combat forces.92

This perception, as General Franks has pointed out, is

premature, noting that the "force-projection battlefield

framework can and probably will vary from linear to nonlinear,

with separation of units in time, space and distance."93 For even

as operational art recognizes the need for operational maneuver

free of the restraints of fixed lines, there will always be a

need for integrated operations and the sustainment thereof. The

combination is not new, only unfamiliar. In 1944, Field Marshal

Slim used a combination of linear and nonlinear operations to

gain and maintain the initiative in Burma. At that time, the

British leader pulled the 14th Army back to the Imphal-Kohima

plain and consolidated his lines by establishing a continuous

front. This had the effect of drawing the Japanese army into a

disadvantageous battle which Slim then exploited by initiating

once again a bold nonlinear offensive that eventually produced

victory.94

There is also nothing new in the role that technology will

play in terms of communications up and down the compressed

continuum of war. "From Plato to NATO," Martin van Creveld has

pointed out in this regard, "the history of command in war

consists essentially of an endless quest for certainty."95 But

that certainty is not necessarily enhanced by the quantum leap in

technology which may now inflict Clausewitz's "fog of war" in the

form of what General Starry has called "an operational
information glut."

More information from more sources, made available more

quickly than ever before, equals system overload.

'We're gonna kill 'em with silicon.' Unhappily we may

kill ourselves with silicon unless we learn to get the

right information to the right person at the right time

in the right place. Processing and transmission

technologies far outstrip our ability to assimilate,

sort, and distribute information. The information genie

is out of the bottle. Whether or not . . . enthusiasm

for genie performance is soundly based remains to be

seen. Serious dialogue is required. But first some

serious research about how living systems--people and

organizations--process information and make decisions.

It is all too easy to overestimate what modern

technology might do for us and underestimate what it

can do to us; especially is this the case with

information technology. We may indeed be in the

Information Age, but we have yet to decide who's in

charge!96

The effect of all this on the compressed continuum of war

can be momentous. Shorter decision times occasioned by that

compression and electronically gathered information mean less

time to discover ambiguities or to analyze those ambiguities that

are already apparent. Already in the Gulf War, the flood of new

information from the battlefield caused air commanders to switch

one-fifth of all missions in the time between the printing of

centralized air tasking orders and actual aircraft takeoff.

Moreover, there is also the danger that the military in the

future will become overly dependent on the type of detailed and

accurate information provided in training that just may not be

possible in the melee of war. With the verisimilitude of computer

simulators and war games increasing, the paradox is that warriors

in the future may find themselves all the more at a loss when

reality differs sharply from a familiar cyberworld.97

Such communication trends in the vertical continuum also

have implications for the national military strategy of CONUSbased force projection. If for example, U.S. forces in the future

require ballistic missile support in Southwest Asia, why send

such missiles when ICBMs with conventional warheads that will

soon approach accuracies of near zero CEP can do the job without

tying up strategic lift? Moreover, if theater based intelligence

assets, command centers and battle management platforms become

vulnerable to opponents, one solution may be the establishment of

such assets in CONUS with real-time linkages to theater forces.98

Such linkages were already in evidence in the Gulf War where

communications technology subverted hierarchies up and down the

continuum, even between the theater and the United States. That

such developments could be inevitable as well as desirable was

demonstrated by the NORAD staff in Colorado which relayed

warnings of SCUD launchings to both Riyadh and Tel Aviv. And in
the same conflict, thanks to instant communications, much of the

basis for CENTAF targeting came from the Air Force staff in the

Pentagon, which kept up a flow of targeting information and

proposals to the theater. This arrangement worked well for the

undermanned and overworked air staff working for the CINC in

Riyadh.99

All of this suggests even broader implications not only for

such time honored military principles as unity of command and

delegation of authority, but for the shibboleth of jointness as

well. It would not be the first technological impact on

jointness. In ancient times, for example, the galley ship

operating in sight of land in the Mediterranean was a joint

extension of land operations that ended with the development of

sails and other concomitant ocean-going capabilities. And the

increasing overlap of functions between the Services on the

extended battlefield of the compressed continuum of war has an

antecedent in the invention of the stirrup, which allowed the

mounted warrior to use weapons and wear equipment heretofore

associated exclusively with the foot soldier.100 On a more modern

note the image of Service staffs providing input directly to a

CINC's staff does subvert the intent of the 1986 GoldwaterNichols Act to make the warfighting theater CINCs semiautonomous,

guided by only the broadest direction from the national military

strategic level. On the other hand, as Elliot Cohen has observed,

there should be some room in the future within the altered levels

of war for the operational commander to deal directly with the

individual services, "each of which can pool a great deal of

operational expertise along with a common world view and an

esprit de corps difficult to find among a melange of officers."101

The instantaneous flow of information up the vertical

continuum also means that flag officers at the theater strategic

and even the national military strategic levels may have access

to the same information, or even more, as the forward deployed

operational and tactical commanders. The temptation to move down

that continuum will grow dramatically, particularly if augmented

by the pressure of policymakers, already feeling the force of

much of that information on the horizontal axis (Figure 6)

exerted through the people. Direct political involvement in

military affairs at all levels of war, of course, is not new nor

even unfamiliar. Clausewitz even advocated such involvement,

pointing out that political leaders in the cabinet must become

more knowledgeable concerning technical military affairs.102 And

both Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler regularly descended to

the operational and tactical levels in World War II.103 Finally,

there was the insistence of the White House during the Vietnam

conflict on reviewing, often choosing and approving air strikes

on a daily basis. These are trends spawned by technologies that

will increase, as General Odom has indicated, in quantum

proportion to the changes in those technologies.

The implications of these technological changes have

only been vaguely glimpsed, even within U.S. military
circles. The most awesome one is that the kind of hourby-hour and minute-by-minute coordination of target

acquisition and the launching of strikes previously

confined to division and corps headquarters and to

tactical and strategic air commands within theaters

must now occasionally be performed at the national

level. In other words, the complexity of the 'tactical

operations centers' facing battalions, brigades, and

divisions in combat now confronts the National Military

Command Center at the Pentagon.104

At the same time, as the Army Chief of Staff has pointed

out, the integrative technology on the post-industrial

battlefield will increase the tempo of action-reactioncounteraction and thus continue the necessity for initiative at

lower command levels and for the concomitant decentralization of

decisionmaking.105 Many studies agree, foreseeing that combat

units will become, if anything, more autonomous and selfsustaining, that in the Third Wave military, like the Third Wave

Corporation, "decisional authority is being pushed to the lowest

level possible."106 If so, as the time streams indicate, the

picture of the small unit leader operating independently under a

commander's intent in the nirvana of pure Auftragstaktik, will

not be easy to create. Other images intrude: General Guderian

ceasing to transmit by radio during the 1940 invasion of France

to forestall interference by higher headquarters; helicopters

containing battalion, brigade and even division commanders and

their staffs stacked in the air above a company level fire fight

in Vietnam. All in all, as General Odom has observed, enhanced

communication throughout the compressed levels of war is "an

advantage that can just as easily introduce confusion and become

a liability."107

Warfighting vs. Operations Other Than War.

The technological compression of the three vertical levels

applies to OOTW as well as war, the former primarily due to the

types of missions and advances in communications, the latter to

advances in weapons and equipment as well as in communication.

Thus, a former high level U.N. official could point out that in

peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations, "you require

political direction every time you move a sentry post."108 This

strategic dominance allows the vertical framework to work as a

doctrinal basis in both arenas. Actions at the operational level

of war, James McDonough concludes in this regard, "are more

likely these days to occur across the spectrum of peace, crisis,

and war. Their commonality and their place in operational art is

fixed by their focused pursuit of strategic objectives."109 That

commonality is an important factor in an increasingly complex

military environment of shifting scenarios and rules of

engagement--a situation captured over a century ago by Lewis

Carroll.
"You will observe the Rules of Battle, of course?" the

White Knight remarked, putting on his helmet too. "I

always do," said the Red Knight, and they began banging

away at each other with such fury that Alice got behind

a tree to be out of the way of the blows. "I wonder,

now, what the Rules of Battle are," she said to herself

. . . .110

The U.S. military is currently producing a host of doctrinal

manuals dealing with all categories of OOTW. This focus on OOTW

is a direct result of the end of the cold war--the long twilight

conflict that kept attention on the core relationship between the

superpowers and only occasionally on the periphery in the socalled Third World, a categorization of nation-states that even

owed its origins to the bipolar nature of the international

system. In that world, the absence of superpower war was not

synonymous with global peace; nor was the absence of system

transformation through war translated into global stability.

Instead, recurrent violence in an unstable "peripheral" system

occurred alongside a stable "central" system, with an estimated

127 wars and over 21 million war-related deaths taking place in

the developing world during the cold war. Now, the United States

and other Western industrialized democracies, comprising less

than 13 percent of the global population, have turned their

attention on that developing world where in substantial parts

chaos is likely to dominate for the foreseeable future. As a

result, the principal post-cold war preoccupation of the United

States in terms of OOTW has been peace operations despite the

many other types of operations included in that category by

current U.S. military doctrine.111

Peace operations in the current doctrine encompass three

types of activities: diplomacy, peacekeeping and peaceenforcement.112 Classical peacekeeping was a cold war expedient

that overcame some of the disabling aspects of the bipolar

rivalry by relying on a token U.N. presence and the consent of

opposing parties rather than on military effectiveness. This

traditional capability was firmly grounded in Chapter VI of the

U.N. Charter which focused on pacific settlements of disputes.

Where such settlements failed, the enforcement mechanisms under

Chapter VII were designed to marshall the use of collective force

among the global powers--all reminiscent of World War II. But the

Security Council could not agree during the cold war on any

aspect of collective enforcement; and peacekeeping thus evolved

as an expedient, less powerful instrument which could be used

within the zero-sum environment of the superpowers. This meant in

turn that peacekeeping had limitations that proscribed its wider

use--that forces acting under its charter, unlike combat units,

could very seldom create the conditions for their own success.

Those limitations, evolving from practical experience in the cold

war and now enshrined in current U.S. military doctrine, include

the use of force only in self-defense and, most important, the

consent of all local belligerents. Peacekeeping forces, one

analysis concluded, are like a referee whose success depends "on
the consent of the players and their understanding of the rules

of the game but never on the pugilistic skills of the referee

himself."113

Since the end of the cold war, a "second generation" of U.N.

military operations has emerged under a rejuvenated category of

peace-enforcement which can include the protection of

humanitarian assistance, the guarantee of sanctions, and the

forcible separation of belligerents. In this environment, consent

is not likely and there is an increasing need for more military

power, effectiveness, and capability to exercise a wide range of

military responses. Unfortunately, peacekeeping during the cold

war elicited a price for the United Nation's institutional

competence in this regard. Consent in that era meant that there

were no enemies, and with no enemies there was little pressure on

the U.N. to be militarily effective. And with the stalemate in

the Security Council, there was no incentive on the part of the

member states to improve military competence. As a result, the

Military Staff Committee was stillborn; and ad hocracy in the

absence of "lessons learned" became the order of the day for U.N.

operations.114

Doctrine for peacekeeping and peace-enforcement operations

is closely tied to the development of U.S. post-cold war national

security strategy, particularly, as Bosnia and Somalia have

demonstrated, concerning the issue of multilateralism versus

unilateralism. In the Bush administration, the U.S. military's

base force concept still reflected in the absence of a specific

threat the cold war desire to strike a balance between those two

concepts. That in turn guaranteed that force requirements would

exceed peace dividend expectations--a trend in the face of

uncertain regional threats increasingly hard to justify with

generic color plans. "I'm running out of villains," General

Powell remarked in this regard. "I'm down to Fidel Castro and Kim

Il Sung . . . ."115 Nevertheless, as Secretary Cheney indicated in

his Defense Strategy for the 1990s, the balance remained:

The perceived capability--which depends upon the actual

ability--of the United States to act independently, if

necessary, is thus an important factor even in those

cases where we do not actually use it. It will not

always be incumbent upon us to assume a leadership

role. In some cases, we will promote the assumption of

leadership by others, such as the United Nations or

other regional organizations.

In the end, there is no contradiction between U.S.

leadership and multilateral action; history shows

precisely that U.S. leadership is the necessary

prerequisite for effective international action. A

future President will need options allowing him to lead

and, where the international reaction proves sluggish

or inadequate, to act independently to protect our

critical interests.116
For the U.S. military, as we have seen, the doctrine of

combined arms warfighting whether in a unilateral or multilateral

environment will govern the shaping of the RMA. The goal is to

modify and create technologies and force structures within the

overarching doctrinal framework that adds to warfighting

effectiveness, while enhancing, or at the very least not

diminishing, OOTW capabilities. Certainly in the conventional

sense, for example, there is much to be learned in terms of

strategic mobility and organizational effectiveness from

humanitarian operations such as "Provide Comfort" in northern

Iraq or "Sea Angel" in Bangladesh. The crossover becomes more

explicit as the potential level of violence rises. "Since

operations other than war do not necessarily exclude combat,"

General Franks has pointed out, "how to think about planning and

executing those operations builds on the skills, toughness and

teamwork gained from the primary focus of our doctrine--

warfighting."117

The value of this overarching framework was evident in the

Somalia operation. At the tactical level, the American forces

primarily dealt with their mission-essential and battle tasks

which included operations ranging from air assaults, patrolling,

cordon and searches, and security operations, to those oriented

on infrastructure repairs, civil affairs, and PSYOP. The

operations were "synchronized," in the U.S. division commander's

description, at an operational level which "tended to be complex,

with numerous players (joint, combined, political and NGOs)

involved and great uncertainty as to who the 'good guys' were."118

That notwithstanding, he remained sanguine about the crossover

ability within the doctrinal framework: "Well-trained, combatready, disciplined soldiers can easily adapt to peacekeeping or

peace enforcement missions. Train them for war; they adapt

quickly and easily to Somalia-type operations."119

In all this, technologies from the RMA will certainly play a

role. Those contributing to information dominance will be

particularly important, since a major challenge in many forms of

OOTW is to identify the enemy. Some technologies may emerge in

the areas of arms control verification and space-based

communications; others may range from sensors to nonlethal and

robotic weapons. The total effect of such potential trends

suggests to the Tofflers "that the new, Third Wave war form may

in time prove to be just as powerful against guerrillas and

small-scale opponents waging First Wave war as against Iraq-style

Second Wave armies."120

Technology, however, cannot completely bridge the gap

between warfighting and OOTW in a period of declining resources.

Stripping a division of major units to participate in a Somalitype operation is bound to have serious readiness repercussions.

Even the long standing Multinational Force Observer (MFO)

requirement in the Sinai requires extensive preparation for the

mission and retraining upon completion. Moreover, there are still
the questions concerning the psychological effects of prolonged

peacekeeping operations on the warfighter's determination to kill

and to win.121 In the end, the rationale returns full circle to

the tenet of "versatility" and the doctrinal priority based upon

the primary national military strategic focus on regional

conflict. "A professional, highly trained military with the human

and industrial capital needed to remain ready for regional wars

will be better able to gear up for a larger conflict than a

military designed to fight lower-intensity wars."122

It is a rationale that has grown increasingly controversial

in the full flush of enthusiasm for multilateralism by the

Clinton administration. "The military people haven't looked at

the considerable middle zone between [Desert Storm] and no

action," a State Department official commented as Bosnia heated

up. "We need a new approach to peacekeeping . . . . By

foreclosing options, the military will get pushed in much

later."123 For Paul Bracken, the controversy itself is irrelevant,

since the choices are irrelevant. On the one hand there is

warfighting against "B" competitors, "mid-level developing states

with modernized conventional forces (much like Iraq in 1990),

with the possibility of Model T nuclear, chemical and biological

(NBC) forces." On the other, there is what is essentially OOTW

against "C" competitors, "militarily ineffectual nations with

complex or complicated security problems: ethnic civil war

(Yugoslavia), insurgency (Peru), terrorism (Egypt), civil

disorder (Somalia), or infiltration (narcotic flows)." Bracken's

advice is to avoid the messy "C" states and elevate the doctrine

that is driving the RMA to deal with the "terra incognita" of

potential "A" nations, "peer competitors, or major regional

competitors with which the United States may have to deal." In

the future, "B" countries may graduate to this level by a

combination of training, doctrine, and the availability worldwide

of advanced military technologies, to include weapons of mass

destruction. In any event, an emergent "A" state may not have a

direct adverse effect on U.S. interests, but like Germany after

1870, might so upset a regional balance as to affect those

interests.124

Finally, there are those like the analysts at the Henry

Stimson Center, who see resources as the key to the warfightingOOTW dichotomy. Peace operation needs, they believe, require the

creation of forces that could eventually include two specially

configured Army light divisions and a half dozen independent,

specialized battalions for monitoring operations. These units

would be placed under a specified Army Peacekeeping Command,

created to develop doctrine, specialized training and unique

equipment for international peacekeeping. These forces, the

authors emphasize, would be "additive to needs for unilateral

capabilities," that is "considered a supplemental requirement and

in force planning be added to whatever forces are believed to be

necessary to protect U.S. interests unilaterally through

traditional types of military operations."125 That such an

approach in an era of resource constraints would find little
favor in the current administration is self-evident. The

administration initially embraced "assertive multilateralism"--

what one author has termed "a kind of poor man's

internationalism," the idea of keeping the U.N. as a credible

alternative to Pax-Americana to keep defense costs under control.

International events have since disabused the Clinton White House

of this notion as well as its concomitant, the idea that it could

prove to be an "isolationist's internationalism," allowing

international action without the exertion of American power.126

And, in fact, in an article that apparently presages the longawaited Presidential Decision Directive on the subject, the

Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs recently

returned to the core of the strategic priority driving U.S.

military doctrine as the RMA progresses:

Let us be clear: peacekeeping is not at the center of

our foreign or defense policy. Our armed forces'

primary mission is not to conduct peace operations but

to win wars. The bottom-up review of our post-cold war

defense requirements insures that we remain prepared to

do that . . . . We will never compromise military

readiness to support peacekeeping. Nor would we

hesitate to end our engagement in a peace operation if

that were necessary to concentrate our forces against

an adversary in a major conflict.127
CHAPTER 4

THE SOCIOPOLITICAL DIMENSION

Samuel Huntington outlined two types of civil-military

relations in his classic The Soldier and the State. Subjective

civilian control is achieved by civilianizing the military,

making the armed forces the mirror of the state.128 For some

analysts, this occurred in Washington during the creation and

buildup of the national security state in the cold war, causing

traditional suspicions of a standing military to shift to the

Military Industrial Complex with the New Model Army consisting of

the Pentagon, the defense industry and the Congress, complemented

by "Beltway Bandits," defense research committees and think

tanks. One result, as Alex Roland pointed out, was:

a stalemate of experts, civilians in the services

matched against colleagues in the White House and

Congress. Officers have advanced degrees. Congressmen

are reserve officers. All wear business suits in

Washington. The Pentagon is politicized, and policy

formulation is militarized.129

Objective civilian control, on the other hand, depends on

achieving an equilibrium between the power of the military and

the ideology of the society. In this construct, the issue is the

power of the officer corps relative to civilian elites within

society balanced against the compatibility of the professional

military ethic with the political ideologies prevailing in

society. Thus, there was very little objective civilian control

in the period between the Civil War and World War II, in which

with few threats to the security of American society, there were

both antimilitary ideology and low military-political power,

countered only by the high military professionalism of armed

forces increasingly separate from society. These variables

oscillated for the American armed forces during the cold war,

reaching a zenith in the Reagan years much like that of the 1860-

90 Prussian cum German military, with an objective balance

between military and political power within the government and an

unparalled peacetime military-societal compatibility--all of

which maximized the professionalism of the American military. The

nadir concerning the mix of all three variables in this period

was Vietnam. That conflict exposed not only fundamental rifts

between civilian and military leaders, but the psychological gap

that had opened up between the armed forces and the American

people. "The country that sent us off to war was not there to

welcome us home," two veterans observed in a recent best selling

account of that conflict. "It no longer existed. We answered the

call of one President who was now dead; we followed the orders of

another who would be hounded out of office, and haunted by the

war he mismanaged so badly."130

The civil-military problems in that war stemmed in part from

the civilian crisis management success of the Cuban missile
crisis. The result of that event seemed very Clausewitzian:

extreme centralized political control over the selection, timing

and coordination of military moves down to the lowest tactical

levels. The problem was that the crisis management school focused

only on deterrence in terms of coercive diplomacy and signaling,

with conventional forces, like their nuclear counterparts, having

utility only in their non-use. There was, as a consequence, no

attempt to think through the problems of actually using force for

political ends--the essence of Clausewitz's most famous dictum.

For the crisis management theorist, the threatened (or

even the real) use of force serves only as a means of

communication with one's opponent. He rejects or

ignores other uses of force, for example as a means of

affecting the enemy's will, or simply of denying him

possession of that which he desires. This restrictive

understanding reduces strategy to applied cognitive

psychology, or even the art of non-verbal

communication.131

The result of all this in Vietnam was the "gradual squeeze,"

using the weight of American air power combined with the

commitment of ground forces to signal U.S. resolve. One

consequence was that the initial incremental projection of

American forces had very little relationship to any strategic

conception of their use; and President Johnson's personal

selection of bombing targets came to symbolize not only the

tightly controlled escalation of the air war over Vietnam, but

the overall tightly centralized decisionmaking so symptomatic of

the crisis managers. Another consequence, as we have seen, was a

renewed doctrinal focus by the military on the vertical continuum

of war and on the need for a sustained iterative civil-military

interface at the dominant strategic level on that continuum. "As

military professionals we must speak out," General Weyand

reminded the Army, "we must counsel our political leaders and

alert the American public that there is no such thing as a

'splendid little war.' There is no such thing as a war fought on

the cheap . . . . The Army must make the price of involvement

clear before we get involved, so that America can weigh the

probable costs of involvement against the dangers of

noninvolvement."132

The reference to the American public also demonstrated a

renewed appreciation by the military of this third part of the

Clausewitzian trinity. In both Korea and Vietnam, the public

provided a high degree of initial support that declined as

casualties mounted and victory prospects in the conventional

sense dimmed--but also, as Eliot Cohen observed, "surprisingly

slowly." "Indeed," he concluded, "it is remarkable that it was

not until after three years of combat--in the case of Vietnam

until 1968--that a majority of the American public finally turned

against the War."133 For Vietnam by that time, much of the

centrist antiwar sentiment stemmed simply from frustration at the

inability to bring the war to a victorious and reasonably quick
conclusion. "No kind of greatness," Alexis de Tocqueville had

observed in this regard over a century prior to the Vietnam

conflict, "is more pleasing to the imagination of a democratic

people than military greatness which is brilliant and sudden . .

. ."134

The post-Vietnam military concerns with the other two-thirds

of the Clausewitzian trinity found political expression in a 1984

speech by the Secretary of Defense outlining six criteria for

commitment of U.S. troops abroad. The focus of Secretary

Weinberger's speech was the Vietnam experience, but it was also,

in fact, a reaction to another form of failed OOTW, the Marine

disaster in Lebanon as part of Multinational Force 2. Under this

so-called "Weinberger Doctrine," force would be used as a last

resort and with the clear intention of winning--but only when the

vital interests of the United States and its allies were

threatened. There must also be clearly defined political and

military objectives combined with the knowledge of how the U.S.

forces could accomplish those objectives. "War may be different

today than in Clausewitz's time, but the need for a well-defined

objective and a consistent strategy is still essential."

Moreover, the relationship between political and military

objectives and the size and composition of the forces committed

must be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary with, as

a constant "beacon light," the basic question: "Is this conflict

in our national interest?" Finally, there was the requirement for

the reasonable assurance of support by the American people and

their elected representatives in Congress. "We cannot fight a

battle . . . at home while asking our troops to win a war

overseas or, as in the case of Vietnam, in effect asking our

troops not to win, but just to be there."135

In recent years as the Somalian and Bosnian situations

heated up, the Weinberger Doctrine was reinforced by the U.S.

military's formulation of what came to be called "Overwhelming"

or "Invincible Force" doctrine--an absolutist position focused on

decisive victory, critics charged, "that suggests that America's

political and military leaders lack the judgement to distinguish

between the Boxer Rebellion and Vietnam while spending $290

billion a year for defense."136 General Bernard Trainor was

equally direct. "If you're only going to use the great military

capability we have in a clinical operation that is going to be

short, bloodless and victorious," he noted, "one has to question

whether that force doesn't become irrelevant in the confused

world we are seeing."137 General Powell's reply to such criticisms

demonstrated a clear audit trail back to the earlier doctrine.

"The reason for our success," he stated, referring to recent

American military operations, "is that in every instance we have

carefully matched the use of military force to our political

objectives."

Decisive means and results are always to be preferred,

even if they are not always possible. So you bet I get

nervous when so-called experts suggest that all we need
is a little surgical bombing or a limited attack. When

the desired result isn't obtained, a new set of experts

then comes forward with talk of a little escalation.

History has not been kind to this approach.138

It is a controversy that is part of the U.S. military's

current doctrinal dilemma concerning warfighting and OOTW--one

that was defined almost a decade ago by Secretary of State Shultz

in his reply to the Weinberger Doctrine, but muted at the time by

the cold war. In a complex world, Shultz pointed out, there were

also "grey-area challenges" in regional and local conflicts that

were often far removed from major war but nonetheless had

important cumulative effects on American credibility.

We live as is commonly said, on a shrinking planet and

in a world of increasing interdependence. We have an

important stake in the health of the world economy and

in the overall condition of global security; the

freedom and safety of our fellow human beings will

always impinge upon our moral consciousness. Not all

these challenges threaten vital interests, but at the

same time an accumulation of successful challenges can

add up to a major adverse change in the geo-political

balance . . . . American military power should be

resorted to only if the stakes justify it, if other

means are not available, and then only in a manner

appropriate to the objective. But we cannot opt out of

every contest. If we do, the world's future will be

determined by others--most likely by those who are the

most brutal, the most unscrupulous and the most hostile

to our deeply held principles.139

The Use of Force.

A report on the RMA concludes that "even in major regional

engagements and certainly in peacekeeping or other unconventional

missions, the American and world publics will expect relatively

clean operations, cheap in terms of U.S. lives lost . . . and the

damage done to local society."140 Implicit in this statement is

the subtle shift in the rationale for high technology that

emerged from the Gulf War. During the cold war, the promotion of

technology had been primarily linked to solving the West's

problems with the overwhelming preponderance of the Soviet

forces. In the conflict with Iraq, however, technology was linked

to the saving of American and Allied lives. This rationale has

lingered as the U.S. military moves forward with a national

military strategy focused on regional contingencies, the response

to which, former Secretary of Defense Cheney pointed out, "must

be decisive, requiring the . . . technological edge to win

quickly and with minimum casualties."141

All this confirms changes in outlook underway since the

Vietnam, if not the Korean War. Throughout most of America's
history, as battles from Antietam to Iwo Jima attest, minimizing

U.S. casualties was considered a desirable but hardly necessary

goal for achieving victory. And in fact the traditional criticism

of the American strategic way of war was that it emphasized

attrition and ignored maneuver and guile. That this aspect has

changed and will affect future conflicts was summarized in the

1991 CSIS after-action report on the Gulf War.

The scale of casualties deemed acceptable will vary

with the nature of the war. But it is an important

question whether U.S. citizens will accept far-flung

military operations if casualties are high. There was

great concern in Washington--and great hope in Baghdad-

-that public support in the United States for the Gulf

War would evaporate when the first 10,000 Americans

fell in battle. And if, as in this case, the outcome of

the war is never in doubt and the only question is how

many Americans give their lives to bring about victory,

then the priorities of U.S. military operations--and in

turn, defense procurement strategies--will change.142

Such considerations will be bypassed by the militarytechnical revolution, a subsequent CSIS report on the MTR

promises. That revolution will in fact expand the utility of

force easing the constraints on American policymakers by a

democratic society, particularly those dealing with the

interrelated subjects of friendly casualties, combat

decisiveness, and widespread collateral damage. War in the age of

the MTR, in other words, will be non-trinitarian in the sense

that a low cost, Blitzkrieg-type operation will make a satisfied

public a non-factor, allowing the use of force not just as a last

resort, but as an active instrument designed solely for the

United States to shape the evolving world order. "When the U.S.

interests at stake in a crisis or war are less than obvious to

the public," the study concludes in this regard, "the promise of

a less destructive operation will allow U.S. leaders to wield

their military instrument more efficiently."

With an RMA force, U.S. leaders will be increasingly

free to conduct such operations without assuming

massive risks. The RMA will render the military

instrument more effective by reducing the costs of

military operations, both to the United States and to

its adversaries, and will thereby help mitigate the

constraints on military operations imposed by media

coverage and public opinion.143

Much of this reflects what the Tofflers have called the

"growing fictionalization of reality," in which the Gulf War

comes across as a gigantic simulation.144 And yet at the same

time, they emphasize that "de-massified destruction, customtailored to minimize collateral damage, will increasingly

dominate the zones of battle . . . ."145 Certainly in the wake of

the Gulf War and with more discussion of the MTR and now the RMA,
the general international and domestic public expectation is that

precision weapons will allow the conduct of wars with far less

collateral damage. But this proved chimerical in a conflict that

revealed the potential fragility of the physical infrastructure

of modern economics. For the air campaign directed primarily at

Iraqi military forces also devastated that country's

communications, transportation and civil services, the latter

ranging from the supply of water and electricity to the provision

of health care. All this had further malevolent effects in the

form of malnutrition and disease far removed from the antiseptic

of precision weapons.146

These indirect effects notwithstanding, the role of air

power in the Gulf clearly reflected the emerging rationale for

technology as the means to provide quick decisive victory at very

little human cost. This preoccupation with limiting casualties in

the age of CNN meant that even enemy dead, as the "Highway of

Death" demonstrated in living color, would not be palatable to

the American people. All this has been reinforced by RMA studies

which predict the arrival of so-called nonlethal or disabling

technologies as part of the key to a near bloodless future use of

force in warfare. The ideal, at least for some air power

enthusiasts, would be a return to a type of 18th century warfare

in Europe in which mercenary armies operated in isolation from

society. But as we have seen, that age was not really marked by

strategic decisiveness; and in any event, war and society have

moved even closer over the centuries. Technological change, even

that envisaged by the most ardent believers in the RMA, will not

be enough to cause a reappearance of such a separation. And in

fact air power, for all its uniqueness in the history of warfare,

serves as a useful reminder that continuity is still vital to any

changes that emerge as the RMA progresses, and that in

particular,

glib talk of revolutionary change obscures the

organization impediments to truly radical change in the

conduct of war and, worse, its inherent messiness and

brutality. In the end, students of air power will serve

the country well by putting the Persian Gulf War in a

larger context, one in which the gloomy wisdom of

Sherman tempers the brisk enthusiasm of those who see

air power as a shining sword, effortlessly wielded,

that can create and preserve a just and peaceful world

order.147

Unlike the air power enthusiasts, the U.S. Army continues to

emphasize its linkages with society and has in fact incorporated

those connections into doctrine. In a section entitled "The

American Way of War," the current FM 100-5 emphasizes that

the people expect the military to accomplish its

missions in compliance with national values. The

American people expect decisive victory and abhor

unnecessary casualties. They prefer quick resolution of
conflicts and reserve the right to reconsider their

support should any of these conditions not be met . . .

. In the end, the people will pass judgment on the

appropriateness of the conduct and use of military

operations. Their values and expectations must be

met.148

Those expectations are generally high due to the Allied

victory in the Gulf War coupled with the information-enhanced

horizontal linkage of the public to the vertical continuum of

that conflict. And certainly, although it remains conjectural,

these expectations are tied to a great extent into a further

expectation that technology will continue to be decisive in

maximizing the desired outcomes.

Figure 7 demonstrates one aspect of the interplay of these

variables. In Quadrant 4 there is no problem: low expectations

are matched by low technical capability. This was generally the

situation during World War II, in which low public expectations

in terms of warfighting decisiveness were generally matched until

August 6, 1945 by the inability of technology to make a sudden

breakthrough. Quadrants 2 and 1 also pose no problems, since high

technological capability will satisfy either high or low

expectations. The public relief at the beginning of Desert Storm
demonstrates a Quadrant 2 situation, which by the end of that

conflict had moved to Quadrant 1. The latter situation marks the

permanent position for the United States in an ideal realization

of all that the RMA could portend for the future.

Quadrant 3 poses the most problems in terms of warfighting.

The result can be a World War I type situation in which the

public either has to be disabused of its expectations and

mobilized for greater and longer efforts after the conflict

begins, or allowed to exercise its national will for withdrawal.

Ideally for the American people, the civil-military interplay

that would include consideration of Weinberger doctrine criteria

as well as the concept of overwhelming force would preclude a

situation in which such a choice would have to be made after

initiation of hostilities. In any event, the United States is

unlikely to lose its technological edge concerning conventional

warfighting in the near future and move into the third quadrant.

But the effectiveness of that edge is by no means assured for

OOTW operations. Moreover there is no such doctrinal buffer for

most such operations, which will not necessarily and in most

cases probably not involve vital interests, defined under the

Weinberger criteria as sufficient to justify the use of force.

There are some types of these operations, peacekeeping in

particular, that would appear to avoid this requirement for focus

on vital interests. But as Somalia has demonstrated, peacekeeping

can quickly flow into a peace-enforcement situation in which

American casualties can turn the focus of the public and Congress

quickly back to the issue of vital national interests with

serious implications for American policy and credibility. "The

last thing we need," Senator Nunn concluded in this regard, "is

for the word to go out that the way to get Americans to leave a

country is to kill a few people."149

Equally important, OOTW operations such as peace-enforcement

or counterinsurgency are ultimately political in their foundation

even if conducted by the military. Thus, as we have seen, leading

edge technology is unlikely to allow military effectiveness to

transcend this foundation where "the finesse and expertise that

are the hallmarks of modern military professionalism count far

less than persistence and pure bloody-mindness."150 This means

that such operations are unlikely to be completed in an

expeditious manner, certainly in a time frame acceptable to the

American public and in terms of victory defined in military

activist vocabulary. "No democratic society . . . can fight a

fifty-year war," Douglas Pike concluded in this regard from his

long experience in Vietnam.151

In the end, the nature of most OOTW operations means that

with the possible exception of the principle of last resort, the

basic tenets of the Weinberger Doctrine will not apply in the

application of force. This is particularly true of the most

likely and most contentious of these operations likely to involve
the United States: peacekeeping and peace-enforcement. U.S. vital

interests will probably not be at stake; political and military

objectives will be vague and elusive as will the meaning of

victory; the military forces may become inappropriate as missions

shift; and for all these reasons as well as the inconclusive and

prolonged nature of these essentially political cum military

operations, there will be no sustaining public support. Finally,

given this political nature, the doctrine of rapid, massive

overwhelming force is unlikely to help and may, in fact, be

counterproductive in situations that in many cases call for

restraint and discretion in the application of force.152

Interests and Credibility.

In the wake of the Gulf War, U.S. troops have been involved

in astonishingly wide and divergent missions around the world

ranging from humanitarian relief operations like "Provide

Comfort" to deterring the spread of ethnic conflict in Macedonia.

This type of activity is reminiscent of Great Britain at the end

of the Victorian era in which its empire was an all-engulfing red

splash on the world map--three times the size of the Roman

Empire, with London representing what Rome had once been, caput

mundi, the head of the world. Because of that empire, successive

British governments believed that it was imperative to do

something about each outbreak of chaos anywhere in the world,

sometimes motivated by a fear that local conflicts might spiral,

and other times by a perception that inaction might damage

London's credibility in the various regions of the world. As a

result, two historians of the age of imperialism noted, "once

remote and petty interests in the Sudan, Uganda, and the northern

hinterlands of the Zanzibar were changing into safeguards of

Britain's world power."153

In 1881 at the height of British power, however, the

ascendancy of Germany began to alter the European balance of

power. But the United Kingdom and France, the two countries that

should have been the most concerned with this alteration, were

distracted to a great degree from this primary security problem

by a constant series of crises in Asia and Africa. Ironically,

this lack of attentiveness was to the very core conditions that

had ushered in an era of European peace and prosperity, thus

allowing both nations to pursue imperialism in the first place.

By the time Britain and France refocused their attention from the

periphery to the core after the turn of the century, it was too

late.

Thinking in such time streams suggests a need for

prioritization of effort. This need has traditionally been met by

national interests that represent by descriptive degrees on a

continuum of intensity (e.g., vital, important, peripheral) the

willingness of national actors to use national power to achieve

objectives derived from those interests. Thus, as represented in

the Weinberger Doctrine, a vital interest is defined as the only
one for which the United States would be willing to use military

force. This linkage had a distinctly cold war character since the

use of American military power in any situation during that

period carried the risk of confrontation with the USSR and

consequently an escalation of conflict that could threaten the

nation's survival. That such definitions could have a subjective,

almost circular character to them was illustrated by the 1950

invasion of South Korea, the survival of which had been defined

as outside vital U.S. interests but which, because of the nature

of the attack, quickly joined that category. All that

notwithstanding, the degree of intensity of national interests is

still a reliable relative guide--useful, as an example, in the

case of Bosnia as a reminder that continuity is not always a

product of time streams. "It is important to understand," one

analyst commented, "that conflict in the Balkans led to a general

European war in 1914 because the great powers cared too much

about instability in the Balkans; today they care too little.

This may cause many problems, but it cannot cause a general

war."154

The use of national interests for prioritization is

particularly important in terms of deterrence. The basis for

conventional deterrence, like that of nuclear, has always been

credibility--the combination of capability and the willingness to

use that capability. "Usually the most convincing way to look

willing," Herman Kahn once pointed out about the latter, "is to

be willing."155 Commitment is thus an important adjunct of that

will. But as Thomas Shelling demonstrated long ago, if the depth

of the commitment exceeds the depth (that is, intensity) of the

national interests at stake, the element of commitment is

jeopardized.156 Vietnam, of course, was the ultimate example of

how closely commitment can be tied with credibility. U.S. policy

toward that country was motivated at least partially by the

determination to be perceived as a reliable protector--a key link

to the seamless web of containment. Credibility in the context of

East-West relations, in other words, became an interest in

itself. The problem was that the scale of commitment to that

country failed to achieve some plausible proportionality and

linkage to its intrinsic value to the United States--a value that

American policymakers declared with ever decreasing credibility

to the Home Front.157

Credibility is an even more amorphous concept in the new

international order where there is no great enemy and where local

conflicts in the absence of an East-West conflict are for the

most part really local. In this environment, the United States

does not lose credibility with every decision not to intervene in

foreign crises. Instead, what is required for credibility is the

careful choice of interests, the vigilant protection of those

interests, and, above all, the issuance of only those threats and

promises concerning these interests that will be fulfilled. In

the past, it has been the casual use by the United States of

threats and promises that has damaged its credibility.158
Prioritization is also particularly important in an era of

declining resources in which, as a recent Rand study indicated,

"the issue of 'How Much Is Enough?' has been replaced by 'How

Little Is Enough?' as the central issue concerning future

military strategy . . . ."159 The key in this regard is not to

jeopardize America's unique warfighting capability, an essential

pillar for global stability, by taking on OOTW missions that any

nation can perform, particularly those involving peace

operations. Just because the Soviet threat has disappeared,

doesn't mean that many of the issues, conflicts and problems of

small countries or failed states are any more closely linked with

U.S. vital or important interests than they were in the cold war.

The periphery is still the periphery; and any rational

calculation of national interests points to a national security

prioritization that focuses on Paul Bracken's potential "A"

category peer competitors as well as any "B" level rogue states

capable of attempts at regional hegemony. The "C" category world

of OOTW will simply not meet the strict cost-effectiveness in

this rational environment.160

Ultimately, that world cannot be divorced from either the

costs or the likely success of a mission. After all, the United

States refrained from intervention to aid Hungary in 1956 and

Czechoslovakia in 1968 because the dangers seemed exorbitant

despite the fact that the independence of those countries from

the Soviet Union was a desired goal. In a similar manner, the

most salient argument against the Vietnam War was not that the

spread of Communism in Indochina was tolerable, but that the

costs of preventing its spread were prohibitive. This is not to

say that the American polity is unwilling to expend American

lives in furtherance of, for example, an humanitarian mission.

The bombing of the rail lines to Auschwitz, for example, might

have cost the lives of some U.S. airmen. And American casualties

would certainly have resulted from any attempts to stop Pol Pot's

"Killing Fields." But the fact that these two cases are the most

frequently cited for humanitarian operations also suggests that

there must be a very high threshold in rational cost

effectiveness for expending American lives in this type of

intervention.161

The post-cold war international arena, however, is not a

purely rational environment. The United States is in an Indian

summer in national security in which there are no major threats

to its vital interests or those of its allies. At the same time,

as we have seen, the instability on the "periphery" that marked

the cold war has not diminished, but is now in fact embellished

for the American public by instantaneous global communications.

One result has been a policy shift in terms of the use of

military force. As he left office, President Bush pointed out in

a major speech that such use must be considered on a case-by-case

basis without "rigid criteria" that "would give would-be

troublemakers a blueprint for determining their own action." "The

relative importance of an interest is not a guide," he concluded.

"Military force . . . might be the best way to protect an
interest that qualilfied as important, but less than vital."162

In such a construct, the cumulative effects of credibility

described by Secretary Shultz in 1985 have returned as an

important rationale for the use of force--almost as in the cold

war era, an all-encompassing interest in itself. "It is clearly

in the U.S. interest," one report concludes, "to be known as a

reliable ally, a contributor to regional stability, a defender of

international law, a supporter of peace conflict resolution, a

feared adversary, and a nation committed to the common good."163

This broader definition of security seems to imply a role of

global policeman for the United States--an implication reinforced

by time streams that go back no further than Vietnam. But

dominoes are not just a manifestation of the cold war. The other

three major wars fought by America in this century came about at

least partially because of narrow definitions of security: that

of Britain prior to World War I and of the United States prior to

World War II and Korea, the latter embodied in its exclusion from

the American defense perimeter. "We ought not to employ force

casually," Joshua Muravichik concludes in this regard, "but

neither should we reserve it for little more than direct selfdefense. For such a course is the one most likely to put us in a

position in which we have to use force precisely for direct selfdefense, and at a far greater cost in American blood and

treasure."164

In all this, U.S. military doctrine has attempted to

accommodate change. For the Army, the "versatile" Decathlete of

FM 100-5, the major problem is not to harm agility in one event

by overtraining in another. In the Decathlon, this is avoided by

judicious scheduling of events: the shot put, for instance, would

not immediately proceed or follow the javelin throw. No such

scheduling is possible for the Army in the current environment in

which warfighting and myriad forms of OOTW can often make

simultaneous demands across a blurred continuum of peace, crisis

and war. Still, it is a situation that, in varied form the U.S.

military and, in fact most military, have faced in their

histories. "We have to make war as we must," Lord Kitchener once

commented, "and not as we should like to."165

All that notwithstanding, the situation in the frenzied pace

of post-cold war transition has placed some strains on objective

civil-military relations. Doctrinally, the emphasis on decisive

victory and friendly casualty limitations can be seen as an

attempt by the military to balance military-political power with

military-societal compatibility. But decisive victory is a

political condition--an end state that should be spelled out by

policymakers. There will be times--the Gulf War, for example--

when less than decisive military victory will be a political

requirement. In a similar manner, the doctrinal focus on casualty

limitation, normally the realm of the statesman, might impart a

degree of conservatism that could stifle creativity and

innovation. It might also cause an overemphasis on technology as

a panacea within the RMA that in turn could adversely affect R&D
and force structure.166

The use of overwhelming force appears to be a more

legitimate military preoccupation despite criticism that such

advocacy on the part of the military reverses Clausewitz's most

fundamental dictum by making policy the extension of war. But it

is, in fact, very Clausewitzian for the military to outline what

it needs to achieve the objectives set by policymakers and then

to describe the risk estimation in terms of the calculated

relationship of the provided means to the ends. This calculation

is the essence of strategy. It does not increase the power of the

military vis-a-vis governmental elites, anymore than that offered

by the normal leverage of a divided government. But it does help

to achieve a balance of this political-military relationship with

the demands of American societal values.167

In the end, it is the combination of this balance with a

flexible doctrinal framework that has mitigated the natural

tendency of the military to preserve its institutional values

solely in terms of warfighting. Without that balance, the

leavening influence of the public would not affect the process.

And without the structure of the vertical continuum of war

leading ultimately to the highest and most dominant political

level of strategy, there could be no overarching doctrinal

coherence. How serious the adverse synergism of these twin

deficits can be was illustrated by the Nazi Wehrmacht, which

perceived that without swift decisive victory, other nonmilitary

factors would intrude, threatening the position of war as the

autonomous domain of the military elite. This was the ultimate

rationale for Blitzkrieg, which in fact was the opposite of

doctrine, since success rather than design determined the

priority of actions. That type of opportunism caused impromptu

operations based on the belief that technology (Guderian) or

superior war fighting command capabilities (von Manstein) would

make the ultimate difference in conflict. But cut off from the

public and deprived of anything approaching a coherent strategic

level of war, there could be no sense of operational

purposefulness for the military other than to pursue its

institutional goals almost exclusively. "We still failed to find

any satisfaction in their achievements," von Manstein wrote of

German tactical victories in 1941," . . . for no one was clear

any longer . . . what higher purpose, all these battles were

supposed to serve."168
CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

When thinking in time streams, the key for the future is to

recognize in the present those departures from the past--those

changes which divert or have the potential to divert familiar

flows from the accustomed channels. The pace of technological

change is, of course, a departure from the past that has such a

potential for warfare. For the military, which has less room for

any illusions about the stakes, this is particularly important.

"If you have lost a battle," G. K. Chesterton once noted, "you

cannot believe you have won it."169 In all this, there is a need

for a constant comparison between the present and past coupled

with a sensitivity to prospective breaks in the continuity that

will allow change to be expedited or limited, countered or

accepted--at the very least guided. That comparison indicates

that military doctrine and its organizational concomitant will

play a key role in such an effort concerning technological

change. This is the essence of what has come to be called the

RMA.

But that comparison also draws attention to the continuity

of war as a uniquely human activity, one in which a kind of

"Murphy's Law" transcends the streams of time. Doctrine and

technology, for instance, have rarely been in synch throughout

history. And technological surprise has not often been achieved,

and then only for short periods. Certainly, the utilization of

force has not been rendered any more decisive or easier for any

length of time by technological change. Nor has there been any

easing of the tension that has traditionally marked the

coexistence of military effectiveness and technological

efficiency. The result is that RMAs have never been revolutionary

in the sense of occurring--even in the expanded perspective of

time streams--overnight. In all this, as Neustadt and May

conclude, "it may help . . . to bear in mind that futures arrive

detail by detail and that decisions lightly taken sometimes carry

awful costs."170

The RMA that is currently unfolding will only add to the

complexity of those decisions, particularly because of the

sociopolitical changes which, as Michael Roberts has pointed out,

accompany any such revolution. Thus, the Clinton administration's

recent emphasis on the primacy of warfighting in the use of force

is not a symptom of civil-military imbalance, but rather an

acknowledgement that there is a need for prioritization of effort

and that once the current transition is sorted out, the American

people are not likely to support foreign ventures that are not

clearly linked to U.S. national security interests. And that, at

least for the foreseeable future, appears to rule out the First

Wave form of war embodied in many OOTW missions, leaving the

field to the warfighting that still combines the Second and Third

Wave forms. But as we have seen, nothing is immutable when it

comes to the utility of military force. As a consequence, there
may be a need for strategic leadership that resists a momentary,

video-driven urge by the public for intervention in areas or

situations of only peripheral interest to the United States. Or

conversely, that leadership may require the molding of public

support for such an intervention, either unilaterally or

multilaterally, recognizing the broader need for cumulative

credibility and moral leadership as the world's only superpower,

even while acknowledging that the interest or interests involved

remain peripheral and that involvement in such a venture can make

American credibility an interest in itself.

In all this, the U.S. military must be versatile and

flexible in dealing as much with political and social change as

with that occasioned by technology. This adaptability will

prevent the development of a hunkering in mentality as defender

of the status quo. But it requires facing the issues of change

and continuity head-on. In a similar period of complexity,

medieval chivalry transformed itself into the disciplined

professional cavalry that played a key role in European wars for

200 years. And the army of Frederick the Great reemerged at the

hands of the great Prussian reformers from the disastrous

encounters with Napoleon's revolutionary army to become one of

the greatest war machines in military history. The efforts of the

U.S. military in the wake of the Vietnam conflict were no less

momentous.171

The 1993 FM 100-5 clearly evokes this theme of renewal in

change and continuity, the essence of doctrine which "captures

the lessons of past wars, reflects the nature of war and conflict

in its own time, and anticipates the intellectual and

technological developments that will bring victory now and in the

future."172 This interaction provides, in turn, a dynamic

environment--"a context," the Chief of Staff of the Army points

out, "within which the debate over evolving doctrine can

continue."173 The framework for that debate is the vertical

continuum of war, a dynamic entity that "must be reflective of

constantly changing strategic and tactical environments, and the

operational art, whose job is to connect the two, must be

responsive to all changes."174 The debate will help ensure in the

future against the doctrinal equivalent of what has been called

"the dead hand of Napoleon," a reference to the persistence of

Napoleonic tactics and strategy long after they were rendered

obsolete by changes in weapons technology.175 The debate will also

keep the strands of change and continuity in balance as the Army

prepares for missions in peace and crises as well as war.

The key to the Army approach is the retention of the three

level vertical framework of war, spawned as the result of an

earlier RMA that emptied the battlefield while it expanded the

concepts of time and space. This doctrinal continuity maintains

the focus on the primacy of the strategic level--all the more

important because of the sociopolitical as well as technological

changes that will accompany the RMA. In addition, there is a

great deal of flexibility provided by the divorce of the
framework from any particular size force and by its recognition

that all power elements can play a role in the complex process of

operational synchronization. It is a framework, in short, that

accommodates OOTW as well as warfighting. And in fact, the

increasingly compressed nature of the vertical continuum for

warfighting is the normal state for many OOTW missions, in which

it is almost a cliche that the actions of a soldier on point can

have strategic and political results.

The flexibility in the doctrinal framework also provides

room to examine the constantly shifting organizational tensions

between coherence and dissonance, jointness and independence, and

centralization and decentralization--particularly as they apply

to the current Goldwater-Nichols structure, a rational

organization designed for immediate response to a well-defined

threat. Equally important, this flexibility allows for innovative

give-and-take in the relationship of technology and doctrine. Too

rigid a doctrine, as the French demonstrated prior to World War

I, can impede an appreciation of military-technological changes.

It is also important, however, that technology focused on

immediate or near-term potential threats not hold back long-term

operational concepts or R&D concerning technology focused further

in the future. In the interwar years, for instance, the U.S.

armed forces developed new concepts of operation that were to

prove successful against future "A" level peer competitors,

despite the fact that national policy and sentiment rejected such

efforts because there were no obvious threats to vital interests.

For the Navy, the result was innovative doctrine on carrier task

force operations and amphibious landings. Equally significant,

all this took place at the Naval War College in an environment

free from the tyranny of the "in box," and at a time when Japan

was not a U.S. enemy, when the budget for all the services

together comprised less than one percent of GNP, and when the

force structure for such concepts was nonexistent.176

Within the doctrinal framework, technology will cause

warfare to become more, not less, Clausewitzian. To begin with,

any society or group, whether trinitarian or non-trinitarian, has

identifiable pressure points that a trinitarian state can reach

and target without resorting to a fourth generational or First

Wave response. These third generational responses, moreover, are

normally applied as part of the larger employment of all elements

of power, defined in terms of the trinitarian national state. The

basic fact remains that it is still a state-centric world in

which, as even van Creveld admits, only other technologically

developed states can have a major impact on U.S. national

security. "However spectacular the effects of non-trinitarian

war," he writes, "and however tragic the fate of its victims, at

present it is incapable of seriously threatening the security of

Western states . . . ."177 All of this would assuredly still be

unconvincing for John Keegan who, as we have seen, perceives

technological developments as a major impetus toward a

multicentric world. In reply, Michael Howard has pointed out the

continuity of these views with those in Norman Angell's 1910 The
Grand Illusion--a paean to economic interdependence that faded in

the hot August days of 1914. "I have an awful feeling," he

concludes," that this is where I came in."178

It is in this state-centric world that the technologically

induced compression of the vertical doctrinal framework only

shortens, and thereby strengthens the link of war to policy. With

time compressed over extended space and with that immense space

rendered comprehensible by a technological coup d'oeil, an entire

theater can become a simultaneous battlefield where events, as in

the days of Napoleon, may determine national destinies. In

addition, the horizontal, real time communication link to the

vertical continuum of war only reinforces the interaction of the

people with the other two thirds of the Clausewitzian trinity.

War, in other words, is still a political act. The

sociopolitical effects of revolutions in military affairs that

have occurred since the 16th century have only reinforced this

fact. At the same time, as historical streams throughout this

period indicate, there is always the danger that such

"revolutions" may foster a narrow military view of

professionalism focused purely on technical and tactical

competence with technology viewed as the ultimate panacea,

particularly in an era of downsizing. Part of the answer is to

continue and enlarge upon the iterative civil-military process

that grew out of the creation of the national security state

during the cold war without succumbing to Huntington's subjective

civilian control. "The exclusion of soldiers from politics does

not guarantee peace," Bacevich reminds us. "It only guarantees

that those who command armies in wartime will be politically

obtuse."179 Part of the answer also lies in the continuity of U.S.

military doctrine; for it is well to remember that operational

art is designed to make warfare more effective in a Clausewitzian

political instrumental sense, and that without a framework that

keeps a doctrinal focus on the upper reaches of strategy, there

is always the danger of technological efficiency overriding that

effectiveness.

Implicit in both these answers is a third one, particularly

important if the owl of Minerva is to fly at dawn as well as dusk

as the RMA unfolds. For an understanding of the past is

absolutely essential to the military professional if continuity

and change in that "revolution" are to be understood in the

present which, in Bob Dylan's words, "will later be past."

Thinking in such time streams will require the same type of focus

summarized by Michael Howard almost 30 years ago in his report on

Service Colleges to the British Ministry of Defence.

There will always be a prime need for the fighting

leader in the armed forces; but . . . today the junior

fighting leader often needs to exercise a considerable

degree of independent and informed judgement . . .

while the demands made on his seniors find little

parallel in any civil profession. To fit officers for
so testing a career . . . it is as necessary to extend

their intellectual powers as it is to strengthen their

moral powers and their capacity for physical

endurance.180
ENDNOTES

1. William E. Odom, America's Military Revolution: Strategy

and Structure After the Cold War, Washington, DC: American

University Press, 1993, p. 47. "I believe we are in a revolution

in methods of commanding soldiers and units in battle similar to

the one that took place in the 1920s with the wireless radio and

track-laying technology." Frederick M. Franks, "Full Dimensional

Operations: A Doctrine For an Era of Change," Military Review,

Vol. LXXII, No. 12, December 1993, p. 6. For the Soviet origins

of the concept in terms of electronics and nuclear capability,

see "The Revolution in Military Affairs," Soviet Military

Encyclopedia, Vol. 7, Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1979, p. 82.

2. Alvin H. Bernstein, Director, Project 2025, Washington,

DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies, November 6, 1991,

p. 36. See also Martin van Creveld, Technology and War. From 2000

BC to the Present, New York: The Free Press, 1989, p. 313.

3. Robert L. Heilbroner, The Future as History, New York:

Harper & Row, 1960, pp. 193-197.

4. Stephen Jay Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus. Reflections in

National History, New York: W. W. Norten & Company, 1991, p. 61.

5. Ibid., p. 72.

6. Georg Wilhelm Friedreich Hegel, The Philosophy of Right,

Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952, p. 7.

7. Original emphasis, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Bitter

Heritage: Vietnam and American Democracy, Boston: Houghton

Mifflin, 1966, p. 91. See also, Ernest R. May, "Lessons" of the

Past. The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy,

New York: Oxford University Press, 1973, pp. xi and 179.

8. Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time.

The Uses of History for Decision-Makers, New York: The Free

Press, 1986, pp. 257-266, 251 and 254. The ability to look at

distant futures "with a clear sense of the long past from which

those futures would come." Ibid., p. 248. Key questions are those

"that shed light almost regardless of the answers." Ibid., p.

269. See also the section entitled "The Future as the Mirror of

the Past," in Heilbroner, pp. 18-21. "These are times of both

continuity and change, and must be understood as such. Complex

changes are never complete breaks from the past." Maurice

Mandelbaum, The Anatomy of Historical Knowledge, Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University, 1977, p. 140.

9. Henry Kissinger, A World Restored, Gloucester, MA: Peter

Smith, 1973, p. 6. See also, Fareed Zakaria, "The Core vs. the

Periphery," Commentary, Vol. 96, No. 6, December 1993, p. 26.

10. Bernstein, p. 63.
11. Michael Howard, "Military Science in an Age of Peace,"

RUSI, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence

Studies, No. 119, March 1974, p. 4.

12. U.S. Department of Defense, Conduct of the Persian Gulf

War, Final Report to Congress, Washington, DC: USGPO, April 1992,

p. 164. In the 1960s and 70s, both the United States and the USSR

began the piecemeal aggregation of advanced technology that is

still underway for the United States. Daniel Goure, "Is There a

Military-Technical Revolution in America's Future?", The

Washington Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 4, Autumn 1993, p. 182.

13. James Blackwell, Michael J. Mazarr, Don M. Snider, The

Gulf War. Military Lessons Learned, Washington, DC: CSIS, July

1991, p. 21.

14. Original emphasis. Michael Mazarr, et.al., The Military

Technical Revolution. A Structural Framework, Washington, DC:

CSIS, March 1993, p. 16.

15. Ibid., p. 17.

16. Alvin and Heidi Toffler, War and Anti-War Survival at

the Dawn of the 21st Century, New York: Little, Brown & Company,

1993, p. 22.

17. Ibid., pp. 83-84.

18. Ibid., p. 93.

19. Ibid., p. 74.

20. Ibid., p. 56.

21. Ibid., pp. 135 and 85.

22. Eliot Cohen, "The Mystique of Air Power," Foreign

Affairs, January/February 1994, p. 112. See also Antulio

Echevarria and John M. Shaw, "The New Military Revolution. Post

Industrial Change," Parameters, Vol. XXII, No. 4, Winter 1992-93,

p. 71.

23. Goure, p. 180. "A military-technical revolution has

begun. It is in its infancy." Ibid., p. 183. "Desert Storm

generally serves poorly as an example." L. D. Holder, "Offensive

Tactical Operations," Military Review, Vol. LXXII, No. 12,

December 1993, p. 56.

24. A. J. Bacevich, "New Rules: Modern War and Military

Professionalism," Parameters, Vol. XX, No. 4, December 1990, p.

13. See also Daniel P. Bolger, "The Ghosts of Omdurman," Ibid., Vol. XXI, No. 3, Autumn 1991, pp. 28-39, and Richard D. Hooker,

Jr., "The Mythology Surrounding Maneuver Warfare," Ibid., Vol.
XXIII, No. 1, Spring 1993, pp. 27-38.

25. Bacevich, p. 14.

26. Ibid., p. 15.

 27. William S. Lind, et.al., "Face of War Into the Fourth

Generation," Military Review, Vol. LXIX, No. 10, October 1989,

pp. 2-11. See also Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., "Elegant

Irrelevance: Fourth Generation Warfare," Parameters, Vol. XXIII,

No. 3, Autumn 1993, pp. 53 and 59, who sees the theories of nontrinitarianism and fourth generation warfare as so interlinked

and mutually supporting as to be virtually inseparable; and who

believes (p. 51) that fourth generation warfare theory is

"untenable. Its methods are unclear, its facts contentious and

open to widely varying interpretations and its relevance

questionable."

28. Martin van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York:

The Free Press, 1991, p. 214.

29. Ibid., p. 58. See also Ibid., pp. 49-57, and 205-208.

30. John Keegan, A History of Warfare, New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1993, pp. 3 and 5. Wisdom is to be learned "in the denial

that politics and war belong within the same continuum." Ibid.,

p. 392. The development of nuclear weapons was "the logical

culmination of the technological trend in the western way of

warfare, and the ultimate denial of the proposition that war was,

or might be, a continuation of politics by other means." Ibid.,

p. 391.

31. Robert D. Kaplan, "The Coming Anarchy," The Atlantic

Monthly, Vol. 273, No. 2, February 1994, p. 72.

32. Ibid., p. 72. See also Ibid., pp. 60 and 73.

33. Goure, p. 179.

34. Paul Bracken, "The Military After Next," The Washington

Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 4, Autumn 1993, pp. 161-162. "Thus, as a

doctrine-based army, change begins by changing our body of ideas-

-changing how we think about warfighting and conducting

operations other than war." Franks, p.6.

35. Mazarr, p. 22.

36. Robert A. Doughty, Advancing Military Technology and

Doctrine: An Unresolved Challenge, Chicago: International

Conference Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society,

October 21-23, 1983, pp. 5-7.

37. Ibid., p. 6. But see Michael Howard, "Men Against Fire:

The Doctrine of the Offensive in 1914," Makers of Modern Strategy
from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, ed., Peter Paret, Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1986, p. 526, who points out that the

general staffs of Europe had exhaustively analyzed the influence

of firepower on tactics prior to 1914, and that "well-trained

regular forces already knew that the best answer to the rifle was

the spade. The worst losses were those due not to faulty doctrine

but to inefficiency, inexperience, and the sheer organizational

problems of combining fire and movement on the requisite scale."

See also Williamson Murray, "The German Response to Victory in

Poland. A Case Study in Professionalism," Armed Forces and

Society, Vol. 7, No. 2, Winter 1981, p. 285, who concludes:

Throughout history, military organizations have

attempted to learn from experience. For the most part,

however, they have tended to extract from their

experiences as well as the experiences of others only

what supported their preconceived notions. In fact,

existing doctrine has in most cases become a barrier to

adaptation and improvement.

38. Howard, "Military Science," p. 6 and Jay Luvaas, The

Military Legacy of the Civil War, Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1959, passim.

39. J.F.C. Fuller, The Army In My Time, London: Rich and

Cowan, 1935, p. 73. See also John Ellis, The Social History of

the Machine Gun, New York: Pantheon, 1975, and Edward L.

Katzenbach, "The Horse Cavalry in the Twentieth Century," The Use

of Force: Military Power and International Politics, rev. ed.,

eds., Robert Art and Kenneth N. Waltz, Lanham, MD: University

Press of America, 1993.

40. Original emphasis. Van Creveld, Technology, p. 314.

41. Ibid., p. 319.

42. John Guilmartin, Gunpowder and Galleys. Changing Warfare

and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century,

London: Cambridge University Press, 1974, p. 207, and Keegan, p.

337.

43. Keegan, p. 341.

44. Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War. Innovation

and the Modern Military, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

1993, p. 9; Doughty, pp. 9 and 15.

45. Edward Luttwak, The Paradoxical Logic of Strategy, Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, 1987, pp. 32-

39.

46. Michael Glover, The Velvet Glove. The Decline and Fall

of Moderation in War, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1982, p. 99.

See also Keegan, pp. 321 and 323.
47. Doughty, pp. 26-27. See also his "DeGaulle's Concept of

a Mobile Professional Army: Genesis of French Defeat?,"

Parameters, Vol. IV, No. 2, 1974, pp. 23-24.

48. Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader, translation Constantine

Fitzgibbon, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1952, pp. 29-30.

49. Andrew Krepenevich, The Army in Vietnam, Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, Chapter 2. See also Kurt

Lang, "Military Organizations," Handbook for Organizations, ed.,

James G. March, Chicago. Rand McNally, 1965, p. 857 and Rosen, p.

11.

50. Toffler, p. 32.

51. Van Creveld, Technology, p. 196.

52. Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution 1560-1660,

Belfast: Marjory Boyd, 1956, p. 5. See also Richard A. Preston

and Sydney F. Wise, Men in Arms: A History of Warfare and Its

Interrelationships With Western Society, 4th ed., New York: Holt,

Rinehart, and Winston, 1979.

53. Roberts, p. 7; Echeverria and Shaw, p. 70.

54. "It was only then that modern armies, founded on the

principle of hierarchical subordination, discipline, and social

obligation, took the shape they have retained to the present

day." Gunther E. Rothenberg, "Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus

Adolphus, Raimondo Montecuccoli, and the 'Military Revolution' of

the Seventeenth Century," Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 36 and

37. See also Roberts, p. 7; and Geoffrey Parker, The Military

Revolution. Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-

1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 19-20.

55. Roberts, pp. 8-9.

56. Ibid., p. 13.

57. Ibid., p. 32. See also Ibid., pp. 14-24, Echeverria and

Shaw, p. 76, and Parker, pp. 1-3. But see J.R. Hale, War and

Society in Renaissance Europe 1450-1620, New York: St. Martins

Press, 1985, who cautions, p. 251: "War cannot be thought out of

history and then be put back in order to measure the difference

it made to what else was influencing the course of administrative

and constitutional affairs," and then concludes, p. 252: "War

conditioned but did not create those changes that occurred

between 1450 and 1620 . . . ."

58. Quoted in Parker, p. 16. See also Ibid., pp. 35 and 44.

59. Russell Weigley, The Age of Battles. The Quest for

Decisive Warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1991, p. xiii. See also Parker, p. 43,

who points out that despite the Military Revolution, "wars still

eternalized themselves." Parker also believes that the Military

Revolution described by Roberts actually lasted to the mid-18th

century. Marlborough and Prince Eugene, he points out, used

military methods and objectives too similar to Cromwell and

Turenne to permit a firm line to be drawn. Ibid., p. 147.

60. James J. Schneider, "Vulcan's Anvil: The American Civil

War and the Emergence of Operational Art," Theoretical Paper No.

4, Fort Leavenworth, KS: SAMS, June 16, 1991, p. 15; and "The

Loose Marble--and the Origins of Operational Art," Parameters,

March 1989, p. 86.

61. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans., Peter Paret

and Michael Howard, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976,

pp. 142-143.

62. Michael Howard, Clausewitz, New York: Oxford University

Press, 1983, p. 15; On War, pp. 1127-132.

63. On War, p. 111.

64. Schneider, "Vulcan's Anvil," pp. 25-26; T.N. DuPuy, The

Evolution of Weapons and Warfare, New York: Bobbs-Merril, 1980,

pp. 190-205; and Martin van Creveld, Command in War, Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1985, Chapter 4, "Railroads, Rifles and

Wires."

65. Original emphasis. FM 100-5, 1986, p. 2-11.

66. Bruce Catton, This Hallowed Ground, Garden City, NY:

Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1956, p. 362.

67. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers:

Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, New

York: Random House, 1987, pp. 181-182.

68. David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon, New York:

Macmillan, 1966, p. 161.

69. F.W. von Mellenthin, Panzer Battles, New York:

Ballantine, 1984, p. 264.

70. JCS Pub 1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary of

Military and Associated Terms, Washington, DC: USGPO, December 1,

1989, p. 264. The military strategic level in many cases was the

final destination of the vertical road by the third year of the

war when politics, as John Keegan has pointed out, had largely

become an extension of war. Keegan, p. 234.

71. FM 100-5, 1993, p.v. See also Paul H. Herbert, "Deciding

What Has to be Done: General William E. DePuy and the 1976

Edition of FM 100-5, Operations," Leavenworth Papers, No. 16, Ft.
Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, 1988.

72. Richard Hart Sinnreich, "Strategic Implications of

Doctrinal Change: A Case Analysis," Military Strategy in

Transition: Defense and Deterrence in the 1980s, eds., Keith A.

Dunn and William O. Staudenmaier, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies

Institute, 1983, p. 46. See also Alex Roland, "Technology, Ground

Warfare, and Strategy: The Paradox of American Experience," The

Journal of Military History, Vol. 55, October 1991, pp. 462-463.

73. FM 100-5, August 20, 1982, p. 2-1.

74. Sinnreich, p. 49.

75. FM 100-5, 1993, p.v.

76. Emphasis added. Joint Pub. 3.0, Doctrine for Joint

Operations, Washington, DC: USGPO, September 1993, p. II-3.

77. FM 100-5, 1993, p. 1-2. See also Ibid., p. 2-3:

"Understanding the relationship between doctrine and technology

begins with the premise that doctrine drives the exploitation of

technology."

78. Holder, p. 53.

79. FM 100-5, 1993, p. 2-9.

80. Ibid., p. 2-9. See Figure 2-1, Ibid., p. 2-1.

"Versatility is a prerequisite for a strategic Army, one that can

move anywhere on short notice, whose units can pick up a mission

previously absent from their METL, as well as one they have

trained for and perfected their abilities in over time, and bring

home a victory." James McDonough, "Versatility: The Fifth Tenet,"

Military Review, Vol. LXXII, No. 12, December 1993, p. 14.

81. FM 100-5, 1993, p. 6-2. "The operational level is the

vital link between nation--and theater--strategic arms and the

tactical employment of forces on the battlefield." Ibid. See also

Ibid., p. 6-1.

82. Ibid., p. 1-3 See also JCS Pub. 3-0, P. II-2: "The

levels of war . . . apply to war and to operations other than

war."

83. Ibid., p.v.

84. Emphasis added. Ibid., p. iv.

85. Original emphasis. McDonough, p. 13.

86. Original emphasis. FM 100-5, 1993, p. 1-5.

87. Douglas A. MacGregor, "Future Battle: The Merging Levels
of War," Parameters, Vol. XXII, No. 4, Winter 1992-93, p. 42. See

also Ibid., pp. 38-40.

88. Mazarr, p. 27. See also Ibid., pp. 19 and 26.

89. Joint Pub. 3-0, p. II-2.

90. It is a job that may require specialized commanders and

staffs, schooled in the new complexities of operational art, to

be specifically assigned from a pool as situations develop.

Professor Douglas Campbell, USAWC, January 19, 1994.

91. Holder, p. 52.

92. Blackwell, p. 11.

93. Franks, p. 8.

94. James McDonough, "The Operational Art: Quo Vadis?,"

Maneuver Warfare. An Anthology, ed., Richard D. Hooker, Jr.,

Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1994, pp. 112-113.

95. Van Creveld, Command in War, p. 264.

96. Donn Starry, Review of LTG Frederic J. Brown, "The U.S.

Army in Transition II: Landpower in the Information Age,"

Parameters, Vol. XXIII, No. 3, Autumn 1993, p. 117.

97. Cohen, "Mystique of Air Power," p. 115.

98. Odom, pp. 51 and 53; and Mazarr, p. 27.

99. Cohen, "Mystique of Air Power," pp. 117-118.

100. Keegan, p. 286.

101. Cohen, "Mystique of Air Power," p. 118.

102. On War, pp. 603-610.

103. Gordon A. Craig, "The Political Leader as a

Strategist," Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 481-509.

104. Odom, p. 49.

105. Gordon R. Sullivan and James M. Dubik, Land Warfare in

the 21st Century, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute,

1993, p. 19. See also Cohen, "Mystique of Air Power," p. 115.

106. Toffler, p. 78. See also Bernstein, p. 75.

107. Odom, p. 48. See also van Creveld, Command in War, pp.

255-256.
108. MG Indar Jit Rikhye lecture to the USAWC Advanced

Course on Collective Security and Peacekeeping, February 4, 1994.

109. McDonough, "The Operational Art," p. 106.

110. Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass and What Alice

Found There, in Glover, title page.

111. Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social

Expenditures 1989, Washington: World Priorities, 1989. See also

Charles W. Kegley, Jr., "Explaining Great-Power Peace: The

Sources of Prolonged Postwar Stability," The Long Postwar Peace:

Contending Explanations and Projections, New York: Harper

Collins, 1990, p. 8; Michael Brecher and Jonathan Wilkenfeld,

"International Crisis and Global Instability: The Myth of the

'Long Peace'," Ibid.; and Eliot Cohen, "Distant Battles: Modern

War in the Third World," International Security, Vol. 10, No. 5,

Spring 1986, p. 186.

112. Draft FM 100-23, Peace Operations, Version #6, January

1994, p. 1-1.

113. John MacKinlay and Jarat Chopra, "Second Generation

Multinational Operations," The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 15, No.

3, Summer 1992, p. 114-115. See also FM 100-23, p. 1-2. For the

original criteria, see Brian Urquhart, "Beyond the Sheriffs

Posse," Survival, Vol. XXXII, No. 3, May/June 1990, p. 198.

114. Mackinlay and Chopra, p. 116, see a continuum between

peacekeeping and peace enforcement. The draft military doctrine

on peace operations does not. "Because both are part of peace

operations, it is often incorrectly assumed that they are part of

operations. They take place under vastly different circumstances

involving consent and force. Commanders must recognize these

differences and develop different planning approaches for each of

these operations." FM 100-23, p. 1-3.

115. Ronald D. Asmus, The New U.S. Strategic Debate, Santa

Monica, CA: Rand Arroyo Center, 1993, p. 66.

116. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, Defense Strategy for

the 1990s: The Regional Defense Strategy, Washington, DC:

Department of Defense, January 1993, pp. 8-9.

117. Franks, p. 10.

118. S. L. Arnold, "Somalia: An Operation Other Than War,"

Military Review, Vol. LXXIII, No. 12, December 1993, pp. 31-32.

119. Ibid., p. 35.

120. Toffler, p. 181. Mazarr, p. 53. But see Ibid., p. 54:

"The MTR can make only a limited contribution to irregular

operations;" p. 10: "(Clearly more work is needed on how to make
MTR capabilities more relevant to irregular operations;" and pp.

54-55: "(This study has argued that technologies, doctrines, and

organizations designed to fight a high-intensity MTR war will

have only limited application to most kinds of irregular

operations." See also Joseph F. Pilat and Paul C. White,

"Technology and Strategy in a Changing World," The, Washington

Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring 1990, p. 84.

121. Rikhye lecture, February 4, 1994; and Charles C.

Moskos, Peace Soldiers: The Sociology of a United Nations

Military Force, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976.

On the MFO, LTC(P) William Martinez, USAWC 1994, and LTC(P) Craig

Pearson, USAWC, 1994, March 2, 1994.

122. Mazarr, p. 9.

123. U.S. News and World Report, Vol. 113, No. 11, September

21, 1992, p. 53.

124. Bracken, pp. 164-165 and 167. On peer competitors, see

also Bernstein, pp. 62, 68, and 77.

125. Original emphasis, Barry M. Blechman et.al., Key West

Revisited: Roles and Missions of the U.S. Armed Forces in the

Twenty-First Century, Report No. 8, Washington, DC: The Henry L.

Stimson Center, March 1993, pp. v and 12. Note, however, the

weakened position in Ibid., p. 12: "Some of these forces--

although intended primarily for unilateral operations--should be

earmarked for enforcement actions in support of collective

security and receive the specialized training that could enable

them to operate more effectively with the forces of other

nations."

126. Joshua Muravchik, "Beyond Self-Defense," Commentary,

Vol. 16, No. 6, December 1993, p. 21.

127. Anthony Lake, "The Limits of Peacekeeping," The New

York Times, February 6, 1994, p. IV-17. See Gregory D. Foster,

"Peacekeeping Is Crucial to U.S. Military Future," Ibid., February 13, 1994, who perceives the administration's position as

an attempt "to appease a disgruntled parochial military

establishment that is mired in the past."

128. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State. The

Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, New York:

Vintage Books, 1957, p. 83.

129. Roland, p. 465. See also Richard A. Stubbing with

Richard A. Mendel, The Defense Game: An Insider Explores the

Astonishing Realities of America's Defense Establishment, New

York: Harper and Row, 1986 and Russell Weigley, "The American

Military and the Principle of Civilian Control from McClellan to

Powell," The Journal of Military History, Vol. 57, No. 5, Special

Issue--October 1993, pp. 27-58.
130. Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were

Soldiers Once . . . and Young, New York: Random House, 1992, p.

xv. See also Huntington, pp. 85-86; and Deborah D. Avant, "The

Institutional Sources of Military Doctrine: Hegemons in

Peripheral Wars," International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 37, No.

4, December 1993, pp. 415-416.

131. Eliot A. Cohen, "Why We Should Stop Studying the Cuban

Missile Crisis," The National Interest, No. 2, Winter 1985/86, p.

8. See also Stephen P. Rosen, "Vietnam and the American Theory of

Limited War," International Security, Vol. 7, No. 1, Fall 1982,

pp. 83-113.

 132. Harry G. Summers, Jr., On Strategy: The Vietnam War in

Context, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1981, p. 25.

133. Eliot A. Cohen, "Constraints on America's Conduct of

Small Wars," International Security, Vol. 9, No. 2, Fall 1984, p.

156.

134. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans.

George Lawrence, New York: Anchor Books, 1969, pp. 657-658.

135. Caspar W. Weinberger, "The Uses of Military Power,"

Military Strategy: Theory and Application, ed. Arthur F. Lykke,

Jr., Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College, 1993, pp. 243-248.

136. Jim Hoagland, "August Guns: How Sarajevo Will Reshape

U.S. Strategy," The Washington Post, August 19, 1992.

137. U.S. News and World Report, Vol. 113, No. 11, September

21, 1992, p. 53.

138. Colin L. Powell, "Why Generals Get Nervous," The New

York Times, October 8, 1992, p. A-35. As Senior Military

Assistant to Secretary Weinberger in 1984, Powell apparently

oversaw the writing of the speech to the National Press Club

outlining the Weinberger Doctrine. Richard H. Kohn, "Out of

Control. The Crisis in Civil-Military Relations," The National

Interest, No. 35, Spring 1994, p. 12.

139. Emphasis added. Secretary of State Shultz's statement

before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, January 31, 1985,

reprinted in the Department of State Bulletin, March 1985, p. 19.

140. Mazarr, p. 11.

141. Karl Elkenberry, "Casualty Limitation and Military

Doctrine," Army, Vol. 44, No. 2, February 1994, p. 17; and

Colonel Joseph Cerami, USAWC, March 12, 1994.

142. Blackwell, p. 36. See also Elkenberry, p. 18.
143. Mazarr, pp. 11 and 59-60. See also A. J. Bacevich,

"Learning from Aidid," Commentary, Vol. 96, No. 6, December 1993,

p. 30-31.

144. Toffler, p. 173.

145. Ibid., p. 72.

146. Blackwell, p. 49.

147. Cohen, "Mystique of Air Power," p. 124. Cohen concludes

that perhaps the most dangerous legacy of the air war in the Gulf

War is "the fantasy of near-bloodless use of force." Ibid., p.

121. "If the claims of air power advocates are correct, the

United States has acquired a military edge over conventional

opponents comparable to that exercised in 1898 by the soldiers of

Lord Kitchener against the sword-wielding dervishes of the

Sudan." Ibid., p. 111.

148. FM 100-5, 1993, pp. 1-2--1-3,.

149. Muravchek, p. 24. See also Donald M. Snow,

Peacekeeping, Peacemaking and Peace-Enforcement: The U.S. Role in

the New International Order, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies

Institute, February 1993, pp. 27-29.

150. Bacevich, "Learning from Aidid," p. 33.

151. Douglas Pike, PAVN: People's Army in Vietnam, Novato,

CA: Presidio Press, 1986, p. 252.

152. Snow, p. 32.

153. Quoted in Zakaria, p. 25. See also Bacevich, "Learning

from Aidid," p. 31.

154. Original emphasis. Zakaria, p. 28. See also Edwin J.

Arnold, Jr., "The Use of Military Power in Pursuit of National

Interests," Parameters, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, Spring 1994, p. 6; and

Bernard Brodie, War and Politics, New York: Macmillan, 1973,

Chapter 8.

155. Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1960, p. 287.

156. Thomas C. Shelling, Arms and Influence, New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1966, Chapters 2 and 3.

157. Colin S. Gray, "Deterrence Resurrected: Revisiting Some

Fundamentals," Parameters, Vol. XXI, No. 2, Summer 1991, pp. 15-

16.

158. Zakaria, pp. 27 and 29.
159. Asmus, p. 61.

160. Unilateralist attempts in the Bush administration to

create a strategy for dealing with future "A" category nations

failed. Barton Gellman, "Keeping the U.S. First: Pentagon Would

Preclude a Rival Superpower," The Washington Post, March 11,

1992, p. A-1; and Patrick E. Tyler, "Pentagon Drops Goal of

Blocking New Superpowers," The New York Times, May 24, 1992, p.

1. See also Bernstein, pp. 62, 68 and 77; and Alan Gropman,

"Peace Enforcement is an Oxymoron--It's Synonym is War," Armed

Forces Journal, Vol. 131, No. 7, February 1994, p. 8.

161. Muravchik, pp. 21-22.

162. George Bush, "The Use of Military Force: The

President's Difficult Choice," Defense Issues, Vol. 8, No. 1,

1993, pp. 2-3. See also Arnold, p. 9; and Bracken, p. 158.

163. Mazarr, p. 4.

164. Muravchek, pp. 23-24.

165. Glover, p. 43. But see Winston S. Churchill, The

Unknown War, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1931, p. 288, who

quotes Kitchener: "We cannot make war as we ought; we can only

make it as we can."

166. See Elkenberry, p. 18, who concludes, p. 20 "that

casualty limitation, an issue that must often be addressed

explicitly by statesmen, is best left unmentioned by the military

in its doctrine, and instead considered seriously, but

implicitly, as it plans for war."

167. Kohn, pp. 11-12; and Colonel Leonard Fullenkamp, USAWC,

23 March 1994.

168. Erich von Manstein, Lost Victories, Novato, CA:

Presidio Press, 1982, p. 202. See also Bacevich, "New Rules," pp.

16-17; Michael Geyer, "German Strategy in the Age of Machine

Warfare, 1914-1945," Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 528, 581 and

585; Dennis E. Showalter, "A Dubious Heritage: The Military

Legacy of the Russo-German War," Air University Review, Vol. 36,

March-April 1985, p. 7, who concludes that in response to this

strategic-operational disconnect, Hitler's field commanders

responded "like short-money players in a table-stakes poker game,

concentrating on winning battlefield victories to demonstrate

their virtu and avert the end as long as possible"; and Barry

Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and

Germany Between the World Wars, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University

Press, 1984, whose thesis is that military organizations will

attempt to keep maximum independence from civilian leaders by

structuring doctrine in such a way as to make it immune from

political interference.
169. Neustadt and May, pp. 255-256.

170. Ibid., p. 256. See also Ibid., p. 251.

171. Howard, "Military Science," p. 8; and Toffler, p. 180.

172. FM 100-5, 1993, p.v. "There are some major departures

from the previous doctrine, but great continuity as well."

Franks, p. 7.

173. Gordon R. Sullivan, "From the Editor," Introduction to

Military Review, Vol. LXIII, No. 12, December 1993, p. 1.

"History, after all, has proved that learning organizations are

winning organizations." Ibid.

174. McDonough, "Operational Art," p. 109.

175. Schneider, "Vulcan's Anvil," p. 22.

176. Bracken, p. 172. But see the great difficulty Andrew H.

Higgins had in overcoming Navy and Marine Corps resistance to his

concept for an assault boat based upon the design used in the

Louisiana bayous by fur trappers and oil prospectors. John W.

Mountcastle, "From Bayou to Beachhead: The Marines and Mr.

Higgins," Military Review, Vol. LX, No. 3, March 1988, pp. 20-29.

177. Van Creveld, Transformation of War, p. 61. "Don't throw

away your copy of On War just yet, for instead of being 'radical'

van Creveld's reinterpretation of Clausewitz ends up just being

silly." Harry G. Summers, Jr., "Book Review on Martin van

Creveld's The Transformation of War," Strategic Review, Vol. XIX,

No. 2, Spring 1991, p. 60. See also McKenzie, p. 58.

178. Michael Howard, "To the Ruthless Belong the Spoils,"

Book review of John Keegan's A History of Warfare, The New York

Times Book Review, November 14, 1993, p. 10.

179. Bacevich, "New Rules," p. 19.

180. Michael Howard and C. R. English, Report of the

Committee of Enquiry Into Service Colleges, July 29, 1966. Quoted

in Michael Brock, "Michael Howard's Contribution to Historical

Studies," War, Strategy, and International Politics. Essays in

Honour of Sir Michael Howard, eds., Lawrence Freedman, Paul

Hayes, Robert O'Neil, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, p. 198.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DAVID JABLONSKY is the Professor of National Security Affairs at

the U.S. Army War College. He holds a B.A. in European history

from Dartmouth College; an M.A. in international relations from

Boston University; and an M.A. and Ph.D. in European history from

the University of Kansas. Dr. Jablonsky has held the Elihu Root

Chair of Strategy and currently occupies the General George C.

Marshall Chair of Military Studies. He is the author of numerous

monographs and articles as well as several books: The Nazi Party

in Dissolution: Hitler and the Verbotzeit 1923-1925 (1989),

Churchill, the Great Game, and Total War (1991), and Churchill

and Hitler: Essays on the Political-Military Direction of Total

War (1994).
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General William A. Stofft

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Colonel John W. Mountcastle

Director of Research

Dr. Earl H. Tilford, Jr.

Author

Dr. David Jablonsky

Director of Publications and Production

Ms. Marianne P. Cowling

Secretaries

Mrs. Rosemary E. Moore

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

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Composition

Mrs. Mary Jane Semple

Cover Artist

Mr. Lawrence C. Miller

Figures

Mrs. Roberta Hill