The American Way of War
 

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa577.pdf

BMT

BMT - Thanks, that is an excellent read. I may even have to print it so I can actually study it. Peregrino

Has not the Sec of Defense Rumsfeld been trying to combat this very issue by making the military a lighter more maneuverable force? And isn't his actions the reason why so many general officers are speaking out against him?

Jim

Almost completely ignores the insurgent/ counter-insurgent contributions of SOF in general and SF in particular. Disregards case studies like Central America in the '80s when they do not fit his model.

Very pro-Marine and cites their performance in the I Corps Tacitical Zone of RVN while ignoring Army SF efforts in that region and the fact that the debacle of Khe Sahn was a Marine program. A quick look at the USMC comments and plan prior to their post-war participation in Iraq will demonstrate that the Corps was no better at counter-insurgency than the Army.

I concur with some of his points about Big Army, DoD, the QDR, force structure, and the lack of post-war planning and efforts. Big Army was still teaching the defense of the Fulda Gap from the Soviet Army six years after the Wall fell. One two-hour exercise was dedicated to SO/LIC.

The text by Weigl which the title of the article comes from is much better.

B-Minus.

TR

And with some selective reasoning applied...as a survivor-participant of Restore Hope, I recall the USMC was the core of the JTF...not that Somalia was a COIN operation, but for the better part of the first six months, the Marines were in charge...and not functioning all that effectively, either in managing a multi-national task force or at population and resource control...Lebanon was also a Marine-led fuster cluck and while not directly involved, I had a view from the cheap seats and as I recall, Uncle Sam's Misguided Children didn't fare too well there...

I am not saying the Army would have done better, as TR has stated, Big Army had problems with anything south of Fulda, but outside of the SOF community, LIC/COIN or anything else short of tank battles and strategic bombing got short shrift during my watch...
That's a Santa Claus grade if ever I saw one...

Thanks for the insight on Rummy.........I was not aware he held the USMC in such high regard.


Jim

If you are referring to my comments, they were in reference to the author's work.

TR

The author wouldn't be the first to fall victim to the myth that the Marines are all about fighting light and smart while the Amry just wants to blunder around the plains of Central Europe. Max Boot's otherwise pretty good book on America's small wars falls into that trap as well. His column for the LA Times, too.

The Corps has the same divide the Army does. The Corps since World War Two has been dominated by the major amphibious operations school in the same way the Army has by the heavy conventional tank/infantry community. An MAGTF has a big lumbering tail just like a mechanized division.

Those Marines running the CAP program in Vietnam were just as out of the Corps mainstream as SF was out of the Army mainstream. The Marines deployed three full divisions to Vietnam, which fought for the most part just like the Army divisions there.

I agree with sentiments already expressed. However, what do you guys think about the 12 characteristics of our strategic culture as expressed by Gray? SF excepted of course.

I think he also missed the mark on the reason for the alleged aversion to limited war - I believe it is because we have never had colonies or been an empire. Everything the Europeans know about small war they learned putting down rebellions (or trying to) in their colonies.

I did think you were speaking of the Secretary. Thanks for the correction. I guess one should not engage in such activities when they are of an elderly age and just driven non stop for 14 hours.


Jim

We had "colonies" and did put down rebellions in them. We even gave out a bunch of medals for them (see attached).

But the concept of being a colonial power and putting down rebellions warred (pun intended) with our sense of national identity as an anti-colonial nation. So we (meaning "we" in the general society and big armed forces sense, not the smaller unconventional warfare community) conveniently forgot those lessons.

That, by the way, is where some Marines have an edge, because for all the Marine generals obsessed with refighting the island-hopping major amphibious campaigns of WW2, with all the tanks and planes of the MAGTF, there are still a lot of Marines who read the Small Wars Manual and remember Chesty Puller made his name in Nicaragua long before anyone had heard of the "Frozen Chosen".

AL,
You're nitpicking again. Compared to Europe, we had nothing, ok fine - practically nothing. You know very well what I mean.

We need that smiley hitting the other one with a stick....:p

I don't think I'm nitpicking. There weren't many European colonial wars that matched the Philippine Insurrection in scale. We deployed over 110,000 regulars, U.S. volunteers and state volunteer infantry, and suffered 4,234 killed and 2,779 wounded. And though analogies can often be stretched too far, it is a conflict comparable (and often compared) to the current one in Iraq in many respects.

And before the Spam-Am War, the defining experience for the Army was the Indian Wars. Hell, we still refer to outposts in enemy territory as being in "Indian country."

The World War Two paradigm isn't just appealing to conventionally-minded soldiers for technological or organizational reasons. It is appealing for its moral clarity.

The most salient characteristic, to me, of the American way of war is that it is of paramount importance that we be the good guys. We are uncomfortable with "small wars" because they often require us to confront shades of gray and to make decisions in a world of moral ambiguity. It's far easier to fight to remove the butcher of Baghdad than to fight over who has the right to approve the font face of the typescript used for the new form of contract used to hire butchers for Baghdad butcher shops.

We stayed out of the carnage of World War One for almost three years because we viewed it as merely a war between imperialists over the spoils of their empires. When finally drawn in, we demanded that it be a Great War for Civilization and we bought into the anti-Hun clash of civilization propaganda hook, line and sinker, all the way to renaming sauerkraut "liberty cabbage". When the war ended, and the European victors decided to divide up the spoils and generally ignore Wilson's Fourteen Points vision of liberal nationalism, we abandoned their project and stayed out of the League of Nations.

I confess to only having skimmed the piece that started this thread. I am generally underwhelmed by Cato writings on defense matters. But I note that the author only mentions "good" in the sense of quality, never in the sense of morality, and never talks about the moral component of our war efforts except to say morale often goes down over time.

1. We never fought a war over or against SPAM.
2. The Indian Wars were not colonial - conquest or genocide.
3. Yes, it is important that we be the good guys. That is why we weren't ever "colonial" in our own eyes. Nico, PI, Cuba - maybe a couple of others. Nothing like the Phrench and Brits.

We are saying the same things I think. Having been a colony, it is important for us to be the good guys and generally, that did not mean putting down a lot of insurrections.

Scale over a century ago hardly caused us to think the way we do.


Interesting that you say the PI is compared to Iraq frequently. I agree it could be, but I haven't seen anybody much do it, especially on the pol side.

Better analogy, IMHO than Vietnam to Iraq.

TR

The author seems to forget that the US was a colony, and through the use of light fighting and insurgency - beat the Empire. We, as a nation have forgotten our roots, and have mainstreamed our military over the last 200+ years to match the 'regular' forces of the European model. As a point of fact, most of the irregular units that fought and won our 'insurrection' were disbanded almost immediately after the surrender of Cornwallis. What gained us our freedoms, and set us apart was our use of irregular forces, guerrillas, insurgency, and stealth - the Brits called it cowardly, and ungentlemanly, the Phrench borrowed a few of the models, as did the Germans and Poles. Our military should remember its revolutionary roots, but has become mired in the conventional, mainstream and bureaucratic traditions of the European model. Our military has no one to balme but itself for its conventionalism. We, as SF soldiers, chose to train for the battles that others despised, because there was less glory but much more gain, we chose to stay with the roots of the irregular Revolutionary Army, look at our heritage right down to Roger's Rangers...

***rant, over***

It's not an analogy drawn much on the pol side, given the morality issues previously discussed. I've seen the analogy mostly drawn by military professionals and military historians, especially those who've read Max Boot's The Savage Wars Of Peace (a good book on the early conflicts which falls victim to Marine Corps hagiography in its Vietnam discussion).

Irregular forces should disappear after the successful conclusion of a war, unless they wish to continue to resist the new government.

It is a common misconception that irregular forces and unconventional warfare won the Revolutionary War. The irregulars and the militia usually cut and ran when the real fighting started. Some of the largest battles they fought was with rival Loyalist forces in their AORs. The war was concluded largely fought and won by a conventional ground victory with the assistance of the French Navy, but most of all, by the decision of the Brits to sue for peace.

FYI, the conventional forces were stood down as well, or rerturned to their respective states as militia members.

The founding fathers feared a standing army, and the post-War Army was very small indeed.

TR

Author also seems to have forgotten about the Indian Wars. As those who have read Imperial Grunts will know, there are some people who make a pretty good argument that the Indian Wars were the defining fight for the US Army.

TR-
Yes, the conventional forces carried the brunt of the casualties, and the largest battles - but , the irregular forces using harrass and move brought the Brits to those major campaigns. The use of combined regular and irregular forces, playing their individual strengths was a major factor in the Revolution. Well, that and stretched/interdicted supply lines for the Brits...