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The vietnam war and american military strategy, 1965–1973.

Gregory A. Daddis Gregory A. Daddis Department of History, United States Military Academy West Point
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.239
Published online: 02 March 2015

For nearly a decade, American combat soldiers fought in South Vietnam to help sustain an independent, noncommunist nation in Southeast Asia. After U.S. troops departed in 1973, the collapse of South Vietnam in 1975 prompted a lasting search to explain the United States’ first lost war. Historians of the conflict and participants alike have since critiqued the ways in which civilian policymakers and uniformed leaders applied—some argued misapplied—military power that led to such an undesirable political outcome. While some claimed U.S. politicians failed to commit their nation’s full military might to a limited war, others contended that most officers fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the war they were fighting. Still others argued “winning” was essentially impossible given the true nature of a struggle over Vietnamese national identity in the postcolonial era. On their own, none of these arguments fully satisfy. Contemporary policymakers clearly understood the difficulties of waging a war in Southeast Asia against an enemy committed to national liberation. Yet the faith of these Americans in their power to resolve deep-seated local and regional sociopolitical problems eclipsed the possibility there might be limits to that power. By asking military strategists to simultaneously fight a war and build a nation, senior U.S. policymakers had asked too much of those crafting military strategy to deliver on overly ambitious political objectives. In the end, the Vietnam War exposed the limits of what American military power could achieve in the Cold War era.

counterinsurgency
limited war
Vietnam War
Westmoreland

Introduction

By mid-June 1951, the Korean War had settled into an uneasy, yet conspicuous stalemate. Having blunted North Korean and Chinese offensives that killed thousands of soldiers and civilians, the United Nations forces, now under command of General Matthew B. Ridgway, dug in as both sides agreed to open negotiations. Though the enemy had suffered heavily under the weight of allied ground and air power, Washington and its partners had little stomach to press northward. As the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff declared, the objective was to effect “an end to the fighting . . . and a return to the status quo.” 1 Thus, President Harry Truman’s decision in April to relieve General Douglas MacArthur—who in Ridgway’s words “envisaged no less than the global defeat of communism”—suggested that political limitations were now an intrinsic part of developing and implementing strategy in a time of war. Yet what was the purpose of war and strategy if not the complete destruction of enemy forces? In a time when men had “control of machines capable of laying a world to waste,” Ridgway believed escalation without restraint would lead to disaster. Civilian and military authorities had to set attainable goals and work closely in selecting the means to achieve them. 2

Ridgway’s admonitions forecast inherent problems in a Cold War period increasingly dubbed an era of “limited war.” In short, the very definition of wartime victory seemed in flux. An uncertain end to the fighting in Korea implied there were, in fact, substitutes to winning outright on the field of battle. Even if Korea demonstrated the successful application of communist containment, at least one student of strategy lamented that limited war connoted “a deliberate hobbling of tremendous power.” 3 A Manichean view of the Cold War, however, presented knotty problems for those seeking to confront seemingly expansion-minded communists without unintentionally escalating beyond some nuclear threshold. How could one fight a national war for survival against communism yet agree to negotiate an end to a stalemated war? Political scientist Robert Osgood, writing in 1957, judged there were few alternatives to contesting communists who themselves were limiting military force to “minimize the risk of precipitating total war.” For Osgood, the challenge was to think about contemporary war as more than simply a physical contest between opposing armies. “The problem of limited war is not just a problem of military strategy but is, more broadly, the problem of combining military power with diplomacy and with the economic and psychological instruments of power within a coherent national strategy that is capable of supporting the United States’ political objectives abroad.” 4

If Osgood was correct in suggesting that war required more than just an application of military power, then strategy—as a problem to be solved—entailed more than just battlefield expertise. Thus, the post–World War II generation of U.S. Army officers was forced to think about war more broadly. And they did. Far from being slaves to conventional operations, officers ascending the ranks in the 1950s to command in Vietnam understood the rising importance of local insurgency movements. As Andrew Birtle has persuasively argued, by 1965 the army had “succeeded in integrating counterinsurgency and counterguerrilla warfare in substantive ways into its doctrinal, educational, and training systems.” 5 An examination of contemporary professional journals such as Military Review reveals a military establishment wrestling with the problems of local economic and social development, the importance of community politics, and the role played by indigenous security forces. In truth, officers of the day, echoing the recommendations of Harvard professor Henry Kissinger, did not define limited wars in purely military terms. Rather, they perceived strategic problems as those involving changes in technologies, societies, and, perhaps most importantly, political ideas. 6

These same officers labored to devise a coherent strategy for a limited contest in Southeast Asia within the larger construct of the Cold War. In an important sense, the development of strategy for all combatants necessitated attention to multiple layers, all interlaced. As Lyndon Johnson recalled of Vietnam in his 1971 memoir, “It was a political war, an economic war, and a fighting war—all at the same time.” 7 Moreover, American political and military leaders found that Cold War calculations mattered just as much as the fighting inside South Vietnam. Fears of appearing weak against communism compelled the Johnson White House to escalate in 1965 when it looked like Hanoi was making its final bid for Indochinese domination. As Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara told a journalist in April, if the United States withdrew from Vietnam “there would be a complete shift of world power. Asia goes Red, our prestige and integrity damaged, allies everywhere shaken.” Thus, paraphrasing military theorist Basil Liddell Hart, policy imperatives at the level of grand strategy would set the foundations for—and later circumscribe—the application of military strategy on a lower plane. 8

Liddell Hart’s council that strategy involved more than “fighting power” would lead American officers in Vietnam into a near insolvable dilemma. Clearly, the civil war inside Vietnam was more than just a military problem. Yet in the quest to broaden their conception of war, to consider political and social issues as much as military ones, senior leaders developed a strategy that was so wide-ranging as to be unmanageable. Rather than a narrow focus on enemy attrition, sheer comprehensiveness proved to be a crucial factor undermining American strategy in Vietnam. In attempting to both destroy an adversary and build a nation, uniformed leaders overestimated their capacity to manage a conflict that had long preceded American involvement. A near unquestioning faith in the capacity to do everything overshadowed any unease with entanglement in a civil war rooted in competing notions of national liberation and identity. 9 In the end, senior U.S. policymakers had asked too much of those crafting military strategy to deliver on overly ambitious political objectives.

Devising Strategy for a New Kind of War

By June 1965, General William C. Westmoreland had been serving in the Republic of Vietnam for eighteen months. As the newly appointed commander of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), the former West Point superintendent was heir to a legacy of varied strategic initiatives aimed at sustaining an independent, noncommunist foothold in Southeast Asia. Since the division of Vietnam along the seventeenth parallel in 1954, an American military assistance and advisory group (MAAG) had been training local forces for a threat both externally military and internally political. 10 The image of North Korean forces streaming across an international boundary in 1950 surely weighed heavily on U.S. officers. Yet these same men understood the importance of a steady economy and secure social structure in combating the growing insurgent threat inside South Vietnam. Consequently, the U.S. advisory group focused on more than just advising the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam (ARVN) for conventional operations against the North Vietnam Army (NVA). 11

As advisers, however, the Americans could not dictate strategy to their Vietnamese allies. President Ngo Dinh Diem, struggling to gain popular support for his own social revolution, equally sought ways to secure the population—through programs like agrovilles and strategic hamlets—from a rising communist insurgency. Yet achieving consensus with (and between) Americans proved difficult. Staff officers debated how best to balance economic and political development with population security and the training of South Vietnamese forces. 12 Was the threat more military or political, more external or internal? Were local paramilitary forces or the conventional army better suited to dealing with these threats? All the while, a shadow government competed for influence within the countryside. When MACV was established in February 1962, its chief, Paul D. Harkins, received the mission to “assist and support the Government of South Vietnam in its efforts to provide for its internal security, defeat Communist insurgency, and resist overt aggression.” 13 Here was a tall order. Moreover, as military operations required a solid political footing for ultimate success, an unstable Saigon government further complicated American strategic planning. Following Diem’s overthrow and death in November 1963, the foundations on which the U.S. presence in South Vietnam rested appeared shaky at best. Hanoi’s own escalation in 1964 did little to assuage concern. 14

Though cognizant of the difficulties ahead, American leaders felt they had little choice but to persevere in South Vietnam. By early 1965, with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing him to “take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force” to assist South Vietnam, President Johnson believed he had little alternative but to escalate. He was in a difficult position. Hoping to preserve his domestic agenda but stand strong against communist aggression, Johnson initially hesitated on committing ground troops. Instead, he turned to airpower. Operation Rolling Thunder, launched in early March 1965, aimed at eliminating Hanoi’s support of the southern insurgency. Concurrently, Johnson hoped, in Michael Hunt’s words, to “bring a better life to the people of Vietnam—on American terms.” 15 The president would be disappointed on both counts. The punitive bombing of North Vietnam did little to interfere with Hanoi’s support of the insurgents and nothing to resolve the internal political problems of South Vietnam. Moreover, military leaders complained that the president’s gradual response, of limiting the tempo and ferocity of the air campaign, unduly limited American military might. (Few worried as restlessly as Johnson about full-blown Chinese or Soviet intervention.) By the spring, it became clear the president’s policies in South Vietnam were failing. In June, Westmoreland officially requested additional troops “as a stop-gap measure to save the ARVN from defeat.” 16

The decision to escalate in Vietnam persists as one of the most controversial in twentieth-century American foreign policy. Competing interpretations revolve around the question of purpose. Was escalation chosen as a matter of policy, of containing communism abroad? Was it used as a way to test American capacity in nation-building, of expanding democracy overseas? Or did escalation flow from concerns about prestige and credibility, both national and political? Clearly Johnson considered all these matters in the critical months of early 1965, and it is plausible to argue that the president believed he had few alternatives given reports of South Vietnam being on the verge of collapse. Yet ultimately intervention was a matter of choice. 17 Johnson feared the political ramifications and personal consequences of “losing” Vietnam just as Truman had “lost” China. Thus, when Westmoreland sent a cable to the Pentagon in early June requesting 40,000 combat troops immediately and more than 50,000 later, hasty deliberations in the White House led to support for MACV’s appeal. As McNamara later recalled, “South Vietnam seemed to be crumbling, with the only apparent antidote a massive injection of US troops.” 18

The task now fell to Westmoreland to devise an offensive strategy to use these troops. Realizing Hanoi had committed regular army regiments and battalions to South Vietnam, the MACV commander believed he had no choice but to contest this conventional threat. But he also had to provide security “from the guerrilla, the assassin, the terrorist and the informer.” 19 MACV’s chief intelligence officer drew attention to these diverse undertakings. As Phillip B. Davidson recalled, Westmoreland “had not one battle, but three to fight: first, to contain a growing enemy conventional threat; second, to develop the Republic of Vietnam’s Armed Forces (RVNAF); and third, to pacify and protect the peasants in the South Vietnamese countryside. Each was a monumental task.” 20 Far from being wedded to a battle-centric strategy aimed at racking up high body counts, Westmoreland developed a comprehensive campaign plan for employing his forces that factored in more than just killing the enemy.

Stabilization and security of South Vietnam formed the bedrock of Westmoreland’s “three-phase sustained campaign.” Phase I visualized the commitment of U.S. and allied forces “necessary to halt the losing trend by 1965.” Tasks included securing allied military bases, defending major political and population centers, and strengthening the RVNAF. In Phase II, Westmoreland sought to resume the offensive to “destroy enemy forces” and reinstitute “rural construction activities.” In this phase, aimed to begin in 1966, American forces would “participate in clearing, securing, reserve reaction and offensive operations as required to support and sustain the resumption of pacification.” Finally, in Phase III, MACV would oversee the “defeat and destruction of the remaining enemy forces and base areas.” It is important to note that Westmoreland’s plan included the term “sustained campaign.” 21 The general was under no illusions that U.S. forces were engaged in a war of annihilation aimed at the rapid destruction of the enemy. Attrition suggested that a stable South Vietnam, capable of resisting the military and political pressures of both internal and external aggressors, would not arise in a matter of months or even a few years.

Hanoi’s political and military leaders equally debated the strategic concerns of time, resources, and capabilities. Johnson’s decision to commit U.S. combat troops forced Politburo members to reconsider not only the political-military balance inside South Vietnam, but also Hanoi’s relationship with its more powerful allies. To be sure, national communists like Vo Nguyen Giap had discussed the role of a “long-term revolutionary war” strategy and the importance of political education in military training. 22 By 1965, however, the massive American buildup complicated strategic deliberations. In December, Hanoi’s leadership, increasingly under the sway of First Secretary Le Duan, promulgated Lao Dong Party Resolution 12, which outlined a basic strategy to defeat the Americans “under any circumstances.” The resolution placed greater emphasis on the military struggle as domestic priorities in the North receded into the background. As a result, Le Duan battled with senior military officials like Giap over the pace of military operations and the building of forces for a general offensive against the southern “puppets.” Escalation proved challenging for both sides. 23

The strategic decision making leading to American intervention in Vietnam illustrates the difficulties of developing and implementing strategy for a postcolonial conflict in the nuclear era. Even from Hanoi’s perspective, strategy was not a straightforward process. A sense of contingency, of choices, and of action and reaction permeate the critical years leading to 1965. Why Johnson chose war, and the restrictions he imposed on the conduct of that war, remain contentious questions. So too do inquiries into the nature of the threat that both Americans and their South Vietnamese allies faced. Finally, the relationship between political objectives and the strategy devised to accomplish those objectives offers valuable instruction to those researching the faith in, and limitations of, American power abroad during the Cold War. 24

From Escalation to Stalemate

In March 1965, the first contingent of U.S. Marines landed at Da Nang in Quang Nam province. Their mission, to defend American airbases supporting the bombing campaign against North Vietnam, called for setting up three defensive “enclaves” at Phu Bai, Da Nang, and Chu Lai. As the summer progressed and additional army units arrived in country, Westmoreland sought authorization to expand beyond his airfield security mission. If South Vietnam was to survive, the general needed to have “a substantial and hard-hitting offensive capability . . . with troops that could be maneuvered freely.” 25 With the growing recognition that Rolling Thunder was not achieving desired results, the Pentagon gave Westmoreland the green light. The MACV commander’s desires stemmed largely from his perception of the enemy. To the general, the greatest threat to South Vietnam came not from the National Liberation Front (NLF) insurgency but rather from main force units, both NLF and NVA. Westmoreland appreciated the long-term threat insurgents posed to Saigon, but he worried that since the enemy had committed larger combat units to battle, he ignored them at his peril. 26

The Americans thus undertook offensive operations to provide a shield for the population, one behind which ARVN could promote pacification in the countryside. By early October, the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division had expanded its operations into the Central Highlands, hoping to defeat the enemy and reestablish governmental control in the NLF-dominated countryside. Hanoi, however, had continued its own buildup and three North Vietnam Army regiments had joined local forces in Pleiku province near the Cambodian border. In mid-November, the cavalry’s lead battalion, using new techniques of helicopter insertion onto the battlefield, collided with the NVA. For two days the battle raged. Only the employment of B-52 strategic bombers, called in for close air support, staved off defeat. The battle of Ia Drang clearly demonstrated the necessity of conventional operations—Westmoreland could not risk NVA regiments controlling the critical Highway 19 and thus cutting South Vietnam in two. But the clash raised important questions as well. Was Ia Drang an American victory? Would such battles truly impact Hanoi’s will? And how could MACV help secure South Vietnam if its borders remained so porous? 27

Despite the attention Ia Drang drew—Westmoreland publicly called it an “unprecedented victory”—revolutionary development and nonmilitary programs never strayed far from MACV’s sights. Westmoreland continued to stress psychological operations and civic action, even in the aftermath of Ia Drang. In December, he wrote the 1st Infantry Division’s commander detailing how the buildup of forces should allow for an increased emphasis on pacification: “I am inviting this matter to your personal attention since I feel that an effective rural construction program is essential to the success of our mission.” 28 Unfortunately, these early pacification efforts seemed to be making little progress as Hanoi continued infiltrating troops into South Vietnam and desertions from the South Vietnamese armed forces rose sharply. 29 Accordingly, Westmoreland requested an additional 41,500 troops. Further deployments might be necessary. The request staggered the secretary of defense, who now realized there would be no rapid conclusion to the war. “The U.S. presence rested on a bowl of jelly,” McNamara recalled. His doubts, however, were not forceful enough to derail the president’s commitment to a secure, stable, and noncommunist South Vietnam. 30

When American and South Vietnamese leaders met at Honolulu in early February 1966, Johnson publicly reaffirmed that commitment. While Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky and Chief of State Nguyen Van Thieu pledged a “social revolution” in Vietnam, Johnson urged an expansion of the “other war,” a term increasingly used to describe allied pacification efforts. 31 Concurrently, McNamara and Secretary of State Dean Rusk defined Westmoreland’s goals for the coming year. MACV would increase the South Vietnamese population living in secure areas by 10 percent, multiply critical roads and railroads by 20 percent, and increase the destruction of NLF and NVA base areas by 30 percent. To make sure the president’s directives were not ignored, Westmoreland was to augment the pacified population by 235,000 and ensure the defense of political and population centers under government control. The final goal directed MACV to “attrite, by year’s end, VC/PAVN forces at a rate as high as their capability to put men in the field.” 32

The Honolulu conference is a critical episode for understanding American military strategy in Vietnam. The comprehensive list of strategic objectives presented by Rusk and McNamara forced American commanders to consider the war as an effort in both construction and destruction. The conference also reinforced the necessity of thinking about strategy in broader terms than simply battle. Attrition of enemy forces was only part of a much larger whole. In one sense, pacification of the countryside was a process of trying to create political space so the government of South Vietnam (GVN) could stabilize. (The New York Times reported in April that a “crisis in Saigon” was snagging U.S. efforts.) Yet MACV’s own definition of pacification—“the military, political, economic, and social process of establishing or re-establishing local government responsive to and involving the participation of the people”—seemed problematic. 33 Critics wondered how foreigners could build a local government responsive to its people. Furthermore, the expansive nature of pacification meant U.S. troops would be asked to fight an elusive enemy while implementing a whole host of nonmilitary programs. Thus, while Westmoreland and senior commanders emphasized the importance of winning both control over and support of the Vietnamese people, American soldiers wrestled with building a political community in a land long ravaged by war. That they themselves too often brought devastation to the countryside hardly furthered the goals of pacification. 34

In important ways, waging battle—a necessity given Le Duan’s commitment to a general offensive in South Vietnam—undermined U.S. nation-building efforts in 1966 and underscored the difficulties of coordinating so many strategic actors. This management problem long had been a concern of counterinsurgency theorists. British adviser Sir Robert Thompson, a veteran of the Malayan campaign, articulated the need to find a “proper balance between the military and the civil effort, with complete coordination in all fields. Otherwise a situation will arise in which military operations produce no lasting results because they are unsupported by civil follow-up action.” 35 The reality of South Vietnam bore out Thompson’s claims. Worried about Saigon’s political collapse, American war managers too often focused on short-term, military results. The decentralized nature of strategic implementation equally made it difficult to weave provincial franchises into a larger national effort. 36

This lack of coordination led to pressures for a “single-manager” to coordinate the increasingly vast American enterprise in South Vietnam. (By the end of 1966, more than 385,000 U.S. military personnel alone were serving in country.) In May, Westmoreland incorporated a new directorate into his headquarters—Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support. While ostensibly a South Vietnamese program, CORDS redefined the allied pacification mission. 37 The directorate’s head, Ambassador Robert W. Komer, threw himself into the management problem and assigned each senior U.S. military adviser a civilian deputy for revolutionary development. MACV now provided oversight for all of the allied pacification-related programs: “territorial security forces, the whole RD effort, care and resettlement of refugees, the Chieu Hoi (“Open Arms,” or amnesty) program to bring VC [Vietcong] to the GVN side, the police program, the attempts to stimulate rural economic revival, hamlet schools, and so on.” 38 In short, CORDS assumed full responsibility for pacification.

If CORDS could be viewed as a microcosm of Westmoreland’s comprehensive strategy, it also underscored the difficulties of implementing so many programs at once. Physically controlling the population did not guarantee allied forces were making inroads against the insurgency’s political infrastructure. Improved security conditions did not necessarily win civilian “hearts and minds.” Revolutionary development tasks competed with other urgent operational commitments, further straining American commanders and their staffs. More importantly, pacification required a deeper appreciation of Vietnamese culture than most Americans possessed. 39 Senior officers labored to balance the competing requirements of attacking enemy units and performing civic action in the hamlets and villages. On the ground, many American soldiers made few distinctions between friend and foe when operating in the countryside. The army’s personnel rotation policy, under which individual soldiers served for twelve months before returning home, only exacerbated these problems. With some units experiencing a 90 percent personnel turnover within a three-month period, the pacification process was erratic at best. 40

As 1967 wore on, American journalists increasingly used words like “stalemate” and “quagmire” to describe the war in Vietnam. Early-year operations like Cedar Falls and Junction City, though inflicting heavy damage on the enemy, failed to break Hanoi’s will. At most, pacification was yielding modest results. Political instability in Saigon continued to worry U.S. embassy officials. Both the White House and MACV thus found it ever more difficult to convince Americans at home that their sacrifices were generating results. 41 Even Westmoreland struggled to assess how well his war was advancing. Body counts told only a fraction of the story. A lack of fighting in a certain district could either mean the area was pacified or the enemy was in such control that battle was unnecessary. Two years into the war, American soldiers remained unsure of their progress. (MACV and the CIA even debated the number of soldiers within the enemy’s ranks.) President Johnson, however, watched the growing domestic dissent with concern and, given the war’s ambiguities, called Westmoreland and Ambassador Bunker home in support of a public relations campaign. In three appearances in 1967 MACV’s commander reported to national audiences his views on the ongoing war. Though guarded in his commentary, Westmoreland’s tone nonetheless was optimistic given the president’s desires to disprove claims of a stalemated war. 42

Hanoi’s political and military leaders similarly deliberated their own progress in 1967. Because of the American imperialists’ “aggressive nature,” the Politburo acknowledged the southern insurgency campaign had stalemated in the countryside. Still, to Le Duan in particular, an opportunity existed. A strategic offensive might break the impasse by instigating a popular uprising in the South, thus weakening the South Vietnamese–American alliance and forcing the enemy to the negotiating table. A southern uprising might well convince the international community that the United States was unjustly fighting against an internally led popular revolution. More importantly, a military defeat of the Americans, real or perceived, might change the political context of the entire conflict. 43

During the plan’s first phase, to be executed in late 1967, NVA units would conduct conventional operations along South Vietnam’s borders to draw American forces away from urban areas and to facilitate NLF infiltration into the cities. Le Duan planned the second phase for early 1968, a coordinated offensive by insurgent and regular forces to attack allied troops and support popular uprisings in the cities and surrounding areas. Additional NVA units would reinforce the uprising in the plan’s final phase by assaulting American forces and wearing down U.S. military strength in South Vietnam. 44

Though Le Duan’s desired popular uprising failed to materialize, the general offensive launched in late January 1968 shocked most Americans, especially those watching the war at home. Commencing during the Tet holiday, communist forces attacked more than 200 cities, towns, and villages across South Vietnam. Though not completely surprised, Westmoreland had not anticipated the ability of Hanoi to coordinate an offensive of such size and scope. The allies, however, reacted quickly and the communists suffered mightily under the weight of American and South Vietnamese firepower. Yet the damage to the U.S. position in Vietnam, some argued irreparable, had been done. Even in the offensive’s first hours, senior CIA analyst George Carver predicted that “the degree of success already achieved in Saigon and around the country will adversely affect the image of the GVN (and its powerful American allies as well) in the eyes of the people.” 45 Indeed, Tet had taken a heavy psychological toll on the population. After years of U.S. assistance, the Saigon government appeared incapable of securing the country against a large-scale enemy attack. Any claims of progress seemed artificial at best, intentionally deceitful at worst.

News reports about Westmoreland’s late-February request for an additional 206,000 men, followed soon after by the president’s decision not to run for reelection, only reinforced perceptions of stalemate. Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford, who replaced McNamara in early March, wondered aloud how MACV was winning the war yet needed more troops. Public opinion mirrored growing doubts within Johnson’s inner circle. A 10 March Gallup poll found only 33 percent of Americans believed the United States was making progress in the war. Thus, Johnson approved only 10,500 additional troops for Westmoreland and in late March suspended all air attacks over North Vietnam in hopes of opening talks with Hanoi. If the 1968 Tet offensive was not an outright turning point of the war—many historians still consider it to be—Hanoi’s assault and Washington’s response brought about a shift in American policy and strategic goals. Westmoreland, hoping for a change in strategy that would expand operations into the Cambodian and Laotian sanctuaries and thus shorten the war, instead received word in late spring that he would be leaving Vietnam to become the Chief of Staff of the Army. The best the general had been able to achieve was a long and bloody stalemate. 46

Historians have seized upon the Tet offensive and mid-1968 impasse as proof of a misguided military strategy crafted by a narrow-minded general who cared only for piling up high body counts. Such arguments should be considered with care. Far from being focused only on military operations against enemy main force units, Westmoreland instead crafted a strategy that took into account the issues of pacification, civic action, land reform, and the training of South Vietnamese units. If Tet illustrated anything, it was that battlefield successes—both military and nonmilitary—did not translate automatically into larger political outcomes. Despite the wealth of manpower and resources Americans brought to South Vietnam, they could not solve Saigon’s underlying political, economic, and social problems. Moreover, Westmoreland’s military strategy could not answer the basic questions over which the war was fought. In a contest over Vietnamese national identity in the postcolonial era, the U.S. mission in South Vietnam could only keep Saigon from falling to the communists. It could not convince the people a better future lay with an ally, rather than an enemy, of the United States.

From Stalemate to Withdrawal

In June 1968, Creighton W. Abrams, a West Point classmate of Westmoreland, assumed command of MACV. Only a month before, the enemy launched a series of new attacks in South Vietnam. Dubbed “mini-Tet,” the offensive sputtered out quickly but produced 125,000 new refugees inside a society already heavily dislocated by years of fighting. Reporters were quick to highlight the differences between the outgoing and incoming commanders. But Abrams, in Andrew Birtle’s words, differed from Westmoreland “more in emphasis than in substance.” Stressing a “one war” concept that viewed the enemy as a political-military whole, the new commander confronted familiar problems. As one officer recalled, “By the time Abrams arrived on the scene, there were few options left for changing the character of the war.” 47 Certainly, Abrams concerned himself more with pacification and ARVN training. These programs rose in importance, though, not because of some new strategic concept, but rather because the American phase of the war had largely run its course. From this point forward, the war’s outcome would increasingly rest on the actions of the Vietnamese, both North and South. While U.S. officials remained committed to an independent, noncommunist Vietnam, peace had replaced military victory as Americans’ principal national objective. 48

The inauguration of Richard M. Nixon in January 1969 underscored the diminishing role of South Vietnam in American foreign policy. The new president hoped to concentrate on his larger aim of improving relations with China and the Soviet Union. Such foreign policy designs hinged on reversing the “Americanization” of the war in Southeast Asia while fortifying South Vietnam to withstand future communist aggression. As Nixon’s national security advisor Henry Kissinger recalled, the challenge was to withdraw American forces “as an expression of policy and not as a collapse.” 49 Of course, Nixon, still the Cold War warrior, remained committed to opposing the expansion of communism. Withdrawal from Vietnam thus required maintaining an image of strength during peace negotiations if the United States was to retain credibility as a world power and a deterrent to communist expansion. Nixon’s goal of “peace with honor” thus would hold crucial implications for military strategists inside Vietnam. 50

In truth, Nixon’s larger policy goals complicated the process of de-Americanizing the war, soon dubbed “Vietnamization” by Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. In shifting more of the war’s burden to the South Vietnamese, the president was quietly redefining success. Realizing, in Nixon’s words, that “total military victory was no longer possible,” the new administration sought a “fair negotiated settlement that would preserve the independence of South Vietnam.” 51 (Both Nixon and Laird believed flagging domestic support was limiting their options, long a concern of senior policymakers.) Abrams would preside over an American war effort increasingly concerned with reducing casualties while arranging for U.S. troop withdrawals. Moreover, the impending American departure did little to settle unresolved questions over the most pressing threat to South Vietnam. In preparing to hand over the war, should Americans be training the ARVN to defeat conventional North Vietnamese forces or a battered yet resilient insurgency? 52

After a detailed examination of the war led by Kissinger, Nixon formulated a five-point strategy “to end the war and win the peace.” The new policy depended first on pacification, redefined as “meaningful continuing security for the Vietnamese people.” Nixon also sought diplomatic isolation of North Vietnam and placed increasing weight on negotiations in Paris. Gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces was the fourth aspect of Nixon’s strategy. As the president recalled, “Americans needed tangible evidence that we were winding down the war, and the South Vietnamese needed to be given more responsibility for their defense.” (Some ARVN officers balked at the insinuation that they hadn’t been responsible for their nation’s security.) The final element, Vietnamization, aimed at training and equipping South Vietnam’s armed forces so they could defend the country on their own. Of note, political reform in Saigon, largely a task for Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker, accompanied the military side of Vietnamization. “Our whole strategy,” Nixon declared, “depended on whether this program succeeded.” 53

For Abrams, the problem now became one of synchronizing all facets of his “one war” approach. Back in August 1968, MACV had to fend off another enemy offensive, the third of the year. Without retreating from the conventional threat, Abrams turned increasing attention to pacification. Under the influence of the new CORDS chief William Colby, the GVN initiated an Accelerated Pacification Campaign at year’s end. The campaign endeavored to upgrade 1,000 contested hamlets to relatively secure ratings by the end of January 1969. To provide political space for the Saigon government, U.S. military operations increased dramatically to keep the enemy off balance, further depopulating the countryside and creating more refugees. 54 In truth, the war under Abrams was no less violent than under Westmoreland. Still, the new MACV chief hoped to cut into the NLF infrastructure by boosting the number of those who would rally to Saigon’s side under the Chieu Hoi amnesty program, reinvigorating local defense forces, and neutralizing the insurgency’s political cadre. 55 This last goal fell largely to “Phoenix,” an intelligence coordination program that targeted the NLF political organization for destruction by police and local militia forces. MACV believed the defeat of the enemy infrastructure “essential to preclude re-establishment of an operational or support base to which the VC can return.” 56

While media attention often focused on battles like the costly engagement at “Hamburger Hill” in May 1969, conventional combat operations overshadowed MACV’s larger efforts to improve and modernize South Vietnam’s armed forces. For Abrams, any successful American withdrawal was predicated on improvements in this key area of Vietnamization. In the field, U.S. advisers trained their counterparts on small-unit patrolling and coordinating artillery support with infantry and armor operations. In garrison, the Americans concentrated on improving the ARVN promotion system and building an effective maintenance program. Moreover, ARVN leadership and morale needed attention to help reduce desertion rates. So too did intelligence, logistic, and operational planning programs. Abrams also had to propose an optimal force structure and help develop an operational approach best suited to ARVN capabilities. 57

Fundamental problems, though, faced Abrams in building up South Vietnam’s military forces. After Nguyen Van Thieu, South Vietnam’s president since the September 1967 election, announced a national mobilization in mid-1968, the size of the regular army and popular and regional forces increased substantially. In two years, the total armed forces grew by 40 percent. Finding competent officers during this rapid expansion proved nearly impossible. Additionally, capable ARVN leaders, of which there were many, too often found themselves and their units still relegated to secondary roles during allied maneuvers. 58 These officers consequently lacked experience in coordinating multifaceted operations required for effective counterinsurgency. Problems within the enlisted ranks rivaled those among ARVN’s leadership. Newsweek offered a harsh appraisal of the typical South Vietnamese trooper who was “often dragooned into an army where he is poorly trained, badly paid, insufficiently indoctrinated about why he is fighting—and, for the most part, led by incompetent officers.” 59 Simply increasing the number of soldiers and supplying them with better weapons would not achieve the larger goals of Vietnamization.

Moreover, the ultimate success of Vietnamization depended on resolving perennial problems. Hanoi continued to send men and material into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. North Vietnamese units still found refuge in sanctuaries along the Cambodian and Laotian borders. Thus, expanding the war into Cambodia offered an opportunity to give the GVN the breathing space it needed. From his first day in office, Nixon sought to “quarantine” Cambodia. (Hanoi had taken advantage of the nominally neutral country by building base areas from which NVA units could infiltrate into South Vietnam.) To Nixon and Kissinger, improvements in ARVN readiness and pacification mattered only if South Vietnam’s borders were secure. On April 30, 1970, the president announced that U.S. troops were fighting in Cambodia. By expanding the war, Nixon was hoping to shorten it. While officials in Saigon and Washington heralded the operation’s accomplishments—Nixon stated that the “performance of the ARVN had demonstrated that Vietnamization was working”—the incursion into Cambodia left a mixed record. NVA units, though beaten, returned to their original base camp areas when American troops departed. By early June, the allies had searched only 5 percent of the 7,000 square miles of borderland despite having aimed to disrupt the enemy’s logistical bases. Additionally, the ARVN’s reliance on American firepower did not augur well for a future without U.S. air and artillery backing. 60

Worse, the Cambodian incursion set off a firestorm of political protest at home. After Ohio National Guardsmen fired into a demonstration at Kent State University on May 4, leaving four students dead, a wave of antiwar rallies swept the nation, closing nearly 450 colleges and universities. Less than four months earlier, the New York Times reported on the My Lai massacre. In March 1968, with the Tet offensive still raging, American soldiers on a search and destroy mission had summarily executed more than 300 unarmed civilians. Claims of civilian casualties prompted an informal inquiry, but army investigators covered up the story for nearly eighteen months. 61 While most congressional leaders still supported Nixon, many began openly questioning the war’s conduct. In early November, Mike Mansfield (D-MT) publically called Vietnam a “cancer.” “It’s a tragedy,” argued the Montana senator. “It’s eating out the heart of America. It’s doing us no good.” Senator George McGovern (D-SD) joined the chorus of dissenters, imploring Nixon to “stop our participation in the horrible destruction of this tiny country and its people.” The loss of support incensed the president. Nixon insisted that the pace of Vietnamization, not the level of dissent, determine U.S. troop withdrawals. Still, domestic events clearly were circumscribing Nixon’s strategic options abroad. 62

The discord at home seemed matched by discontent within the ranks of U.S. troops remaining in South Vietnam. Though contemporary views of a disintegrating army now appear overblown, clearly the strategic withdrawal was taking its toll on American soldiers. By early 1970, with the first units already departed Vietnam and more scheduled to leave, officers worried how the withdrawal was affecting their soldiers’ capacity to fight. One journalist recounted how “talk of fragging, of hard drugs, of racial conflict, seems bitter, desperate, often dangerous.” 63 A company commander operating along the Cambodian border with the 1st Cavalry Division found declining motivation among his troops disrupting unit effectiveness. “The colonel wants to make contact with the enemy and so do I,” reported the young captain, “but the men flat don’t.” 64 Few draftees wanted to be fighting in Vietnam in the first place and even fewer wanted to risk being killed in a war clearly that was winding down. In addition, Abrams increasingly had to concern himself with racial polarization inside his army. Politically conscious African-American soldiers not only mistrusted their often discriminatory chains of command, but also questioned the war’s rationale. Many blacks denounced the ideal of bringing democracy to South Vietnam when they were denied many freedoms at home. In short, the U.S. Army in Vietnam seemed to be unraveling. 65

By the end of 1970, U.S. strength dropped to some 254,800 soldiers remaining in country. Kissinger warned that unilateral withdrawals were weakening the bargaining position of the United States in Paris, but Nixon continued with the redeployments to prove Vietnamization was on track. 66 With the new year, however, came the realization that NVA logistical bases remained intact. While the Cambodian operation had denied Hanoi the use of the Sihanoukville port, the Ho Chi Minh Trail continued to serve as a major infiltration route into South Vietnam. “An invasion of the Laos Panhandle,” one ARVN officer recalled, thus “became an attractive idea.” Such an operation would “retain the initiative for the RVNAF, disrupt the flow of enemy personnel and supplies to South Vietnam, and greatly reduce the enemy’s capability to launch an offensive in 1971.” 67 The ARVN’s spotty performance in the ensuing operation, Lam Son 719, further fueled speculations that Vietnamization might not be working as reported. Though Nixon declared the campaign had “assured” the next round of U.S. troop withdrawals, Kissinger worried that Lam Son had exposed “lingering deficiencies” that raised questions over South Vietnam’s ability to bear the full burden of the ongoing war. 68

If Kissinger agonized over the need to balance negotiations with troop withdrawals and offensive operations to keep the enemy off balance, he was not alone. Inside Hanoi’s Politburo, Le Duan equally pondered strategic alternatives in the aftermath of Lam Son 719. Though only sixteen U.S. maneuver battalions remained in South Vietnam by early 1972, on all fronts the war appeared deadlocked. Le Duan hoped a new invasion would “defeat the American ‘Vietnamization’ policy, gain a decisive victory in 1972, and force the U.S. imperialists to negotiate an end to the war from a position of defeat.” 69 Abrams remained unclear regarding enemy intentions. Was a large-scale invasion an act of desperation, as Nixon believed, or a way to gain leverage in negotiations by controlling South Vietnamese territory? North Vietnamese strategists certainly were taking risks but not out of desperation. The 1972 Nguyen-Hue campaign aimed for a collapse of South Vietnam’s armed forces, Thieu’s ouster, and the formation of a coalition government. Failing these ambitious goals, Le Duan envisioned the struggle continuing against a weakened ARVN. In either case, the Politburo believed its “actions would totally change the character of the war in South Vietnam.” 70

The subsequent “Easter Offensive,” begun on March 30, 1972, unleashed three separate NVA thrusts into South Vietnam. In some areas, the ARVN fought bravely; in others, soldiers broke and ran. Abrams responded by throwing B-52 bombers into the battle as Nixon ordered resumption of bombing in the North and the mining of Haiphong harbor. Gradually, yet perceptibly, the offensive’s momentum began to slow. Although North Vietnam’s spring offensive had ended with no dramatic battlefield victory, it had met its goal of changing the character of the war. 71 U.S. officials proclaimed Vietnamization a final success given that the ARVN had successfully blunted the enemy’s assault. Overwhelming U.S. air support, however, quite literally saved many units from being overrun and, more intangibly, helped sustain morale during hard months of fighting. Equally important, North Vietnamese leaders made several errors during the campaign. The separate offensives into South Vietnam dissipated combat strength while placing overwhelming strain on logistical support capabilities. Moreover, tactical commanders lacked experience in employing tanks and squandered infantry units in suicidal assaults. 72

By the end of June, only 49,000 U.S. troops remained in South Vietnam. Like his predecessor, Abrams was pulled to become the army’s chief of staff before the guns had fallen silent. Throughout the summer and fall, stalemated discussions in Paris mirrored the military standoff inside South Vietnam. In October, Kissinger reported to Nixon a breakthrough with the North Vietnamese delegation and announced an impending cease-fire. President Thieu fumed that Kissinger had conceded too much, allowing NVA units to remain in South Vietnam and refused to sign any agreement. The resulting diplomatic impasse, fueled by Thieu’s defiance and Hanoi’s intransigence, infuriated Nixon. By December, the president had reached his limits and ordered a massive air campaign against North Vietnam to break the deadlock. Nixon intended the bombing assault, codenamed Linebacker II, to induce both Hanoi and Saigon to return to the negotiating table. On December 26, the Politburo agreed to resume talks while Nixon pressed Thieu to support the armistice. The final settlement changed little from the principles outlined in October. One month later, on January 27, 1973, the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the Provisional Revolutionary Government signed the Paris Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Vietnam. 73

Conclusions

In large sense, Nixon’s use of B-52 bombers during Linebacker II illustrated the limits of American military power in Vietnam. The press reacted strongly, referring to the bombing of urban targets in North Vietnam as “war by tantrum” and an act of “senseless terror.” 74 But by late 1972, B-52s were the only tools left in Nixon’s arsenal. Despite years of effort and sacrifice, the best the Americans could achieve was a stalemate only temporarily broken by strategic bombing. Many senior military officers, perhaps unsurprisingly, would point to Linebacker II as proof of a mismanaged war. They argued that if only civilian policymakers had been less restrictive in setting unnecessary boundaries, those in uniform could have won much earlier and at much less cost. Such arguments, however, tended to discount the larger political concerns of presidents and their advisers hoping to limit a war that had become the centerpiece of American foreign policy and one that had divided the nation. 75

Others advanced a different “if only” argument regarding U.S. military strategy for Vietnam. They posited that upon taking command of MACV, Abrams, deviating almost immediately from Westmoreland’s conventional methods, had changed the American approach to, and thus nature of, the war. This “better war” thesis found acceptance among many officers in whom a conviction endured that a better application of strategy could have yielded better political results. Yet senior American commanders, even before Westmoreland’s tenure at MACV, tended to see the war as a comprehensive whole and devised their strategy accordingly. Despite frequent heavy-handedness in applying military power inside South Vietnam, almost all officers recognized that the war ultimately was a contest for political power.

Comprehending the complexities of strategy and effectively implementing it, however, were not one and the same. Officers serving in Vietnam quickly found that strategy included much more than simply drafting a plan of political-military action. The complexity of the threat, both political and military, confounded U.S. analysts and staff officers. Westmoreland understood the important role played by southern insurgent forces but argued he could not stamp out these irregular “termites” without substantially eliminating the enemy’s main force units. Even ascertaining enemy motives proved difficult. Not long after Abrams took command, MACV still faced a “real problem, following the Tet offensive, trying to figure out” the enemy’s overall military strategy. 76

Perhaps most importantly, senior U.S. policymakers were asking too much of their military strategists. In the end, the war was a struggle between and among Vietnamese. For the United States, the foundation on which American forces waged a struggle—one that involved both construction of an effective host government and destruction of a committed communist-nationalist enemy—proved too fragile. Officers like Westmoreland and Abrams found that nation-building in a time of war was one of the most difficult tasks to ask of a military force. Yet American faith in the power to reconstruct, if not create, a South Vietnamese political community led to policies that did not address a fundamental issue—the internal contest to define and come to a consensus on Vietnamese nationalism and identity in the modern age.

More than any other conflict during the Cold War era, Vietnam exposed the limits of American military power overseas. It was a reality that many U.S. citizens found, and continue to find, discomforting. Yet if a perspective is to be gained from the long American experience in Southeast Asia, it lies here. Not all problems can be solved by military force, even when that force is combined with political, economic, and social efforts. The capacity of Americans to reshape new political and social communities may not, in fact, be limitless. Writing of his own experiences in the Korean War, Matthew Ridgway offered an important conclusion while the war in Vietnam was still raging. In setting foreign policy objectives, the general advised that policymakers look “to define them with care and to make sure they lie within the range of our vital national interests and that their accomplishment is within our capabilities.” 77 For those seeking to understand the disappointments of American military strategy during the Vietnam War, Ridgway’s counsel seems a useful starting point.

Discussion of the Literature

The historiography on the American experience in Vietnam remains a contentious topic. For a starting point, the best surveys are George Herring’s America’s Longest War: The United States and Vietnam, 1950– 1975, 4th edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002) , which is more a diplomatic and political history, and Mark Atwood Lawrence’s The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) , which places the war in an international perspective. A solid textbook is George Moss , Vietnam: An American Ordeal , 6th edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2009). An excellent collection of essays can be found in both David Anderson’s The Columbia History of the Vietnam War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011 ) and Jayne Werner and Luu Doan Huhnh , The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997).

The escalation of the war under Johnson is well covered. Among the most important works are Fredrik Logevall , Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 ), and Lloyd C. Gardner , Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995) . Larry Berman has two very good works on LBJ: Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982 ), and Larry Berman , Lyndon Johnson’s War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989). Brian VanDeMark’s Into the Quagmire: Lyndon Johnson and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) is also useful. Robert Dallek , Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) , provides a balanced overview of the president’s struggles with the war.

The topic of U.S. military strategy is hotly debated. Gregory A. Daddis , Westmoreland’s War: Reassessing American Strategy in the Vietnam War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) , offers a reinterpretation of those works in suggesting Americans were blind to the realities of the war. Samples of these latter works include: Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. , The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) ; Harry G. Summers Jr. , On Strategy: A Critical Appraisal of the Vietnam War (Novato, CA: Presidio, 1982) ; and Jeffrey Record , The Wrong War: Why We Lost in Vietnam (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998). More persuasive is Andrew J. Birtle , U.S. Army Counterinsurgency and Contingency Operations Doctrine, 1942–1976 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2006). Though Abrams left behind no written work on the war, Lewis Sorley , a staunch admirer of the general, provides insights in Vietnam Chronicles: The Abrams Tapes, 1968–1972 (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2004) . Mark Clodfelter takes on the air war in The Limits of Airpower: The American Bombing of North Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1989). Thomas L. Ahern Jr. looks at the CIA in Vietnam Declassified: The CIA and Counterinsurgency (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010). Finally, an often overlooked yet important work on senior military leaders is Robert Buzzanco , Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

On the war’s final years, see Jeffrey Kimball , Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998) ; Ronald H. Spector , After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1993) ; and James H. Willbanks , Abandoning Vietnam: How America Left and South Vietnam Lost Its War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004) . Lewis Sorley’s A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999) takes an overly sympathetic view of the Abrams’s years.

For memoirs from senior leaders, students should consult William Colby with James McCargar , Lost Victory: A Firsthand Account of America’s Sixteen-Year Involvement in Vietnam (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989) ; Lyndon Baines Johnson , The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency, 1963–1969 (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971) ; Henry Kissinger , Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America’s Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003) ; Robert W Komer , Bureaucracy at War: U.S. Performance in the Vietnam Conflict (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1986) ; Robert S. McNamara , In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995) ; Richard Nixon , RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978) ; Bruce, Palmer Jr. , The 25-Year War: America’s Military Role in Vietnam (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984) ; and William C. Westmoreland , A Soldier Reports (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976). Among the best memoirs from junior officers and soldiers are: Philip Caputo , A Rumor of War (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1977) ; David Donovan , Once a Warrior King (New York: Ballantine, 1986) ; Stuart A. Herrington , Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix: A Personal Account (Navato, CA: Presidio, 2004) ; and Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway . We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young (New York: HarperCollins, 1993). Less a memoir than an excellent collective biography of the enlisted soldier serving in Vietnam is Christian G. Appy , Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993)

Journalists’ accounts were important in covering the American experience and in setting a foundation for how the war has been outlined in popular memory. Among the most indispensable of this genre are David Halberstam , The Best and the Brightest (New York: Random House, 1969) ; David Halberstam , The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964, 1988) ; Michael Herr , Dispatches (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968) ; Don Oberdorfer , Tet! (New York: Doubleday, 1971) ; and Neil Sheehan , A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988). Also useful is Peter Braestrup , Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1977).

The South Vietnamese perspective often gets lost in American-centric works on the war but should not be disregarded. Mark P. Bradley’s Vietnam at War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009) is an excellent one-volume history of the war written from the Vietnamese viewpoint. Both Andrew Wiest , Vietnam’s Forgotten Army Vietnam’s Forgotten Army: Heroism and Betrayal in the ARVN (New York: New York University Press, 2008 ) and Robert K. Brigham , ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006) , make an important contribution for understanding the U.S. Army’s most important allies. Three provincial studies also delve into the war inside South Vietnam’s villages: Eric M. Bergerud , The Dynamics of Defeat: The Vietnam War in Hau Nghia Province (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991) ; Jeffrey Race , War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972) ; and James Walker Trullinger Jr. , Village at War: An Account of Revolution in Vietnam (New York: Longman, 1980). For an argument on the cultural divide between allies, see Frances FitzGerald , Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972).

If the South Vietnamese perspective often is overlooked, the North Vietnamese also tends to get short shrift in American works. Relying on new research, the best among this group are Pierre Asselin , Hanoi’s’ Road to the Vietnam War, 1954–1965 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013) ; Lien-Hang T. Nguyen , Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012) ; Ang Cheng Guan , The Vietnam War from the Other Side: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002 ) and Ending the Vietnam War: The Vietnamese Communists’ Perspective (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004); Victory in Vietnam: The Official History of the People’s Army of Vietnam, 1954–1975 , translated by Merle L. Pribbenow (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002) ; William J. Duiker , The Communist Road to Power , 2d ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996) ; and Warren Wilkins , Grab Their Belts to Fight Them: The Viet Cong’s Big Unit War against the U.S., 1965–1966 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011).

Finally, students should not overlook the value of novels in understanding the war from the soldiers’ viewpoint. Among the best are Bao Ninh , The Sorrow of War: A Novel of North Vietnam (New York: Riverhead, 1996) ; Josiah Bunting , The Lionheads (New York: George Braziller, 1972) ; Karl Marlantes , Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2010) ; Tim O’Brien , The Things They Carried (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990) ; and Robert Roth , Sand in the Wind (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973).

Primary Sources

Among the best documentary collections are Michael H. Hunt , A Vietnam War Reader: A Documentary History from American and Vietnamese Perspectives (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010 ), and Mark Atwood Lawrence , The Vietnam War: An International History in Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Also useful is Robert McMahon and Thomas Paterson , Major Problems in the History of the Vietnam War: Documents and Essays (Boston: Wadsworth, 2007). For encyclopedias on the war, see Spencer C. Tucker , ed., The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social & Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001 ), and Stanley I. Kutler , Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War , 2d ed. (New York: Scribner, 2005).

Researchers should also consult two still useful collections of documents: The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of United States Decision making on Vietnam, ed. Mike Gravel , 5 vols. (Boston: Beacon, 1971–1972), and William Conrad Gibbons , The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships , 4 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986–1995). The U.S. Department of State has collected a wonderful array of documents in the Foreign Relations of the United States ( FRUS ) series. These resources can be found online at http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments .

For researchers delving into primary sources, the best place to begin is the Virtual Vietnam Archive run by Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. This online archive houses more than four million pages of materials and is located at http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/ . The physical archive has much more additional material for researchers. For higher level strategic insights, the presidential libraries in Boston, Massachusetts (Kennedy), Austin, Texas (Johnson), and Yorba Linda, California (Nixon) have important archival holdings. Those seeking insights into the U.S. Army will find excellent resources at the U.S. Army Military History Institute in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Army Center of Military History at Fort McNair, Washington, DC. The National Archives in College Park, Maryland, offers a vast amount of resources as well. Finally, for those wishing to focus on cultural issues within the region, researchers may wish to consult the John M. Echols Collection on Southeast Asia at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Researcher information can be found at http://asia.library.cornell.edu/ac/Echols/index .

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On the Study of War and Warfare

Lt. Gen. HR McMaster | 02.24.17

Editor’s Note: This article, by Lt. Gen H.R. McMaster, appointed national security advisor this week, originally appeared in 2014.

Approaching the Study of War and Warfare

It is hard to improve on the approach to studying war and warfare found in historian Sir Michael Howard’s 1961 seminal essay on how military professionals should develop what Clausewitz described as their own “theory” of war. First, to study in width: to observe how warfare has developed over a long historical period. Next to study in depth: to study campaigns and explore them thoroughly, consulting original sources and applying various theories and interdisciplinary approaches. This is important, Sir Michael observed, because as the “tidy outline dissolves,” we “catch a glimpse of the confusion and horror of real experience.” And lastly to study in context. Wars and warfare must be understood in context of their social, cultural, economic, human, moral, political, and psychological dimensions because “the roots of victory and defeat often have to be sought far from the battlefield.”

To develop understanding in “width, depth, and context,” we must be active learners dedicated to self-study and self-critique. Discussion and debate with others exposes us to different perspectives and helps us consider how what we learn applies to our responsibilities. Participative intellectual activity is critical to the “Self-Development Domain” of our Army’s leader development efforts. And the self-development domain is as important as the Operational Domain (unit training and operational experience) and the Institutional Domain (official Army schools) in helping leaders prepare for the challenges of future war. This is why forums such as the WarCouncil.org are important. Discussions on this site should challenge our assumptions and refine our thinking. [Editor’s note: WarCouncil.org is the domain on which MWI articles were previously published].

Understanding the Context—and the Continuities—of War

Successful American military leaders supplemented their formal learning through active reading, study, and reflection. In 1901, the father of the Army War College, Secretary of War Elihu Root, commented on “the great importance of a thorough and broad education for military officers,” due to the “rapid advance of military science; changes of tactics required by the changes in weapons; our own experience in the difficulty of working out problems of transportation, supply, and hygiene; the wide range of responsibilities which we have seen devolving upon officers charged with the civil government of occupied territory; the delicate relations which constantly arise between military and civil authority.” Thus, Root wrote, there was a “manifest necessity that the soldier, above all others, should be familiar with history.”

Self-study and professional discussions help leaders understand the character of particular conflicts, inform ideas of how armed conflict is likely to evolve, and help leaders understand the complex interactions between military, political, and social factors that influence the situation in war. Because leaders cannot turn back time once war occurs; they must develop an understanding of war and warfare before they enter the field of battle. As nineteenth-century Prussian philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz observed , the study of war and warfare “is meant to educate the mind of the future commander, or, more accurately, to guide him in his self education, not to accompany him to the battlefield; just as a wise teacher guides and stimulates a young man’s intellectual development, but is careful not to lead him by the hand for the rest of his life.” Clausewitz continued, emphasizing that leaders should use their knowledge of military history “to analyze the constituent elements of war, to distinguish precisely what at first sight seems fused, to explain in full the properties of the means employed and to show their probable effects, to define clearly the nature of the ends in view, and to illuminate all phases of warfare in a thorough critical inquiry.”

Many of the recent difficulties we have encountered in strategic decision-making, operational planning, and force development have stemmed, at least in part, from the neglect of critical continuities in the nature of war. Military professionals, through their study of war and warfare in width, depth, and context as well as through discussion and debate in a variety of forums can help identify changes in the character of conflict as well as underscore important continuities in the nature of war. Consider these continuities, for example:

First, war is political. As von Clausewitz observed, “war should never be thought of as something autonomous but always as an instrument of policy.” In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, defense thinking was hijacked by a fantastical theory that considered military operations as ends in and of themselves rather than just one of several instruments of power that must be aligned to achieve sustainable strategic goals. Advocates of the “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA) predicted that advances in surveillance, communications, and information technologies, along with precision-strike weapons, would overwhelm any opponent. Experience in Afghanistan and Iraq revealed the flawed nature of this thinking. Professionals should be skeptical of ideas and concepts that divorce war from its political nature. And skepticism is particularly appropriate concerning theories that promise fast, cheap, and efficient victories through the application of advanced military technologies.

Second, war is human. People fight today for the same fundamental reasons that the Greek historian Thucydides identified nearly 2,500 years ago: fear, honor, and interest. Thinking associated with the RMA dehumanized as well as depoliticized the nature of war. The cultural, social, economic, religious, and historical considerations that comprise the human dimension of war must inform wartime planning as well as our preparation for future armed conflict. In Iraq and Afghanistan, gaining an appreciation of the fears, interests, and sense of honor among their internal communities was critical to move those communities toward political accommodations.

Third, war is an uncertain contest of wills. War’s political and human nature place armed conflict squarely in the realm of uncertainty. The dominant assumption of the RMA, however, was that that knowledge would be the key to victory in future war. Near-perfect intelligence would enable precise military operations within a realm of certainty. In Afghanistan and Iraq, planning was sometimes based on linear projections that did not account for enemy adaptations or the evolution of those conflicts in ways that were difficult to predict at the outset. War remains fundamentally uncertain due to factors that lie outside the reach of information and surveillance technologies. Moreover, war’s uncertainty and non-linearity are results of war’s political and human dimensions as well as the continuous interaction with determined, adaptive enemies. And wars are uncertain because they are contests of wills that unleash unpredictable psychological dynamics.

While a student at the German staff college between the World Wars, Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer noted that “an indomitable will and broad military knowledge, combined with a strong character, are attributes of the successful leader.” Wedermeyer continued, stating that leaders “must have a clear conception of tactical principles and their application,” and “only by continual study of military history and of the conduct of war with careful attention to current developments can the officer acquire the above stated attributes of leadership.” As professional soldiers, we share a moral and professional obligation to read, think critically, and engage in professional discussions. Forums such as WarCouncil.org are critical because junior leaders must develop an appreciation for leadership at the operational, joint, and strategic levels so they can place the actions of their units in context of war aims and develop an ability to advise senior military and civilian leaders on matters of policy and strategy.

To help develop professional expertise, the Maneuver Center of Excellence has developed the Maneuver Leader Self-Study Program (MSSP). The MSSP consists of books, articles, doctrine, film, lectures, practical application exercises, and online discussion forums to educate maneuver leaders about the nature of war and the character of warfare, as well as to emphasize their responsibilities to prepare their soldiers for combat, lead them in battle, and accomplish the mission. The broader intent of the of the MSSP is to enhance understanding of the complex interaction between war and politics in “width, depth, and context.” The program is also meant to foster a commitment to lifelong learning and career-long development to ensure that our leaders are prepared for increased responsibilities. Each MSSP topic contains a brief summary of the chosen topic, its relevance to maneuver leaders, and several study questions for reflection. Topics also contain annotated bibliographies as well as a link to an online discussion forum. In addition to your participation in WarCouncil.org, I invite you to explore the topics—and the discussions—of the MSSP .

Image credit: Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod, US Army

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Military Strategy: A Very Short Introduction (1st edn)

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1 (page 1) p. 1 What is military strategy?

Published: February 2017
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Military strategy is the practice of reducing an adversary’s physical capacity and willingness to fight, and continuing to do so until one’s aim is achieved. It takes place in wartime and peacetime and may involve using force, directly or indirectly, as a threat. Military strategy is often divided into four components: ends (objectives), ways (courses of action), means (resources), and risk . The practice of military strategy is described along with military power, which is augmented by nine “principles of war”: objective, maneuver, surprise, mass, economy of force, offensive, security, simplicity, and unity of command. A general will likely use combinations of military strategies, linking them into a series of operations or campaigns.

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Review Essay of Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War

Review Essay of Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War Miller, Steven E., Sean M. Lynn-Jones, Stephen Van Evera. Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. 328 pp. $46.95 U.S. (pb.) ISBN 0691023492. Review by Richard A. Koenigsberg.

This essential work—consisting of nine essays—reveals the logic or ideology that generated the First World War. To read Michael Howard’s paper, “Men against Fire: Expectations of War in 1914,” click here. To read Stephen Van Evera’s paper, "The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War," click here.

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Having completed a round of research on Hitler and the Holocaust in 1989, I drifted over to an adjacent set of stacks at NYU’s Bobst Library and began skimming books on an earlier episode of Western political violence, the First World War.

I was astonished at what I discovered: the monumental casualties so difficult to fathom—and the way battles were fought. For four years, leaders of the “greatest nations in the world” asked young men to get out of trenches and move toward opposing trenches— where they were torn apart by artillery shells and machine gun-fire. I sought to understand the causes and meaning of this endless slaughter. Historians write about the facts of the war, which began in August 1914 and ended in November 1918. They trace the events that led up to the war, but rarely are able to explain the perpetual slaughter. Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War, Edited by Steven E. Miller, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Stephen Van Evera is perhaps the most important book ever written on the Great War because it succeeds in articulating the ideas that generated events.

Though irrational and bizarre, the First World War grew out of a particular logic. Military Strategy is an edited collection that reveals the mind-set that led to war. Particularly valuable are essays by Michael Howard, “Men Against Fire,” and Stephen Van Evera, “The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War.”

The nations participating in the First World War included the Allied Powers (Russia, France, the British Empire, Italy and the United States), the “Central Powers” (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria), as well as many other countries. Germany moved through Belgium to attack France, expecting a quick victory, which did not occur. Soon there was stalemate, as combatants built 500 miles of zigzagging trenches in France. Soldiers settled in on opposing lines.

Battles occurred when massive numbers of troops got out of their trench and attacked the opposing trench. Modris Eksteins describes the fundamental pattern:

The victimized crowd of attackers in No Man’s Land has become one of the supreme images of this war. Attackers moved forward usually without seeking cover and were mowed down in rows, with the mechanical efficiency of a scythe, like so many blades of grass. “We were very surprised to see them walking,” wrote a German machine-gunner of his experience of a British attack at the Somme. “The officers went in front. I noticed one of them walking calmly, carrying a walking stick. When we started firing, we just had to load and reload. They went down in the hundreds. You didn’t have to aim, we just fired into them.”

By the time the war ended in November 1918, casualties had been staggering. Matthew White’s table summarizes the results : 65 million soldiers were mobilized to fight, of which 9.5 million were dead, over 21 million wounded, and nearly 8 million taken prisoner or missing. Total casualties were over 37 million: 57.7% of all forces mobilized.

The mind boggles at these statistics. What could have been at stake to justify this massive episode of slaughter? What kept the war going for so many years? Jay Winter—one of the most prominent historians of the First World War—concludes his six-part video series, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century , in a tone of baffled bewilderment, summing up his reflections: “The war solved no problems. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.”

What requires explanation is the military strategy that governed the First World War. Why did Generals persist in fighting battles as they did, despite the futility of the strategies they employed? At conferences I’ve attended, the best people can do is say that the Generals were “stupid.”

Historians often ascribe the outbreak of the war, Stephen Van Evera notes, to the “blunders of a mediocre European leadership.” Barbara Tuchman describes the Russian Czar as having “a mind so shallow as to be all surface,” and Luigi Albertini refers to the “untrained, incapable, dull-witted Bethmann-Hollweg,” the “mediocrity of all the personages” in the German government, and the “short-sighted and unenlightened” Austrians.

Of course, the scope of destruction requires an explanation that goes beyond claiming that the Generals who fought the war were shallow, dull-witted and ignorant. Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War draws our attention to an ideology that seems to have lain at the root of what occurred. This strategy, the doctrine of the “offensive at all costs,” governed the thinking of First World War military leaders. It revolved around the belief that in waging war it was imperative to attack at all costs. A nation could achieve victory, according to this philosophy, only if troops had the courage and will to move forward relentlessly—to continue to attack in the face of heavy casualties.

In France, Van Evera tells us, the army became obsessed with the “virtues of the offensive,” an obsession that spread to French civilians. The President of the French Republic, Clement Fallières, announced that “the offensive alone is suited to the temperament of French soldiers. We are determined to march straight against the enemy without hesitation.”

One French officer contended that the offensive “doubles the energy of the troops” and “concentrates the thoughts of the commander.” British officers declared that modern war conditions had enormously “increased the value of moral quality.” Mind would prevail over matter; morale would triumph over machine guns. War, General Ian Hamilton declared, is the triumph of “one will over another weaker will.” Despite the advent of the machine gun, military leaders continued to focus on the significance of the bayonet. German writer Wilhelm Balck stated (1911) that the soldier should be taught “not to shrink from the bayonet attack, but to seek it,” and quotes Russian General Mikhail Dragomirov that the bayonet could not be abolished—even in the face of modern weaponry—because it was the exclusive embodiment of will power, which was the source of success both in war and everyday life.

The doctrine of the offensive at all costs, Michael Howard tells us, grew out of the nagging, fundamental problem of morale, a problem all the greater since a large part of armies would now be made up of reservists, whose moral power, it was feared, had been sapped by the enervating influence of modern life.

Balck observed that the “steadily improving standards of living” tended to increase the instinct of self-preservation and “diminish the spirit of self-sacrifice.” Concern about the army’s morale was bound up with concern about the morale of one’s nation as a whole. Contemporary life would undermine the “fanaticism and national enthusiasm” of a bygone era.

Howard suggests that it was neither the Boer War nor the American Civil War nor even the Franco-Prussian War that established the template for the First World War. Surprisingly, the 1905 Russo-Japanese war provided the model that France, Great Britain and other nations sought to emulate.

In February 1904, the Japanese navy launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur. It took the Japanese army a year to establish themselves in the disputed province of Manchuria, capturing Port Arthur by land assault in a two-week battle involving over half a million men.

The general consensus of European observers—who followed this war closely—was that infantry assaults with bayonets were still not only possible, but necessary. The Japanese had carried them out time and again, and were ultimately successful.

In spite of enormous losses in these assaults (Japan suffered an estimated 85,000 casualties during the war), soldiers had broken through the enemy line against machine gun fire and other obstacles. Bodies were heaped on the ground as one wave of troops followed the next, but the attacks eventually resulted in victory.

Japanese bayonet assaults came, it was true, only at the end of a long and careful advance. A French observer described one Japanese attack:

The whole Japanese line is now lit up with the glitter of steel flashing from the scabbard. Once again officers quit shelter with ringing shouts of “Banzai!" wildly echoed by all the rank and file. Slowly, but not to be denied, they make headway, in spite of the barbed wire, mines and pitfalls, and the merciless hail of bullets. Whole units are destroyed—others take their places; the advancing wave pauses for a moment, but sweeps ever onward. Already they are within a few yards of the trenches. Then, on the Russian side, the long grey line of Siberian Fusiliers forms up in turn, and delivers one last volley before scurrying down the far side of the hill.

Japanese losses in these assaults were heavy, but they succeeded; and so, European theorists argued, such tactics would succeed again. "The Manchurian experience," one British military theorist wrote, showed over and over again that the bayonet was “in no sense an obsolete weapon. The assault is the supreme moment of the fight. From these glorious examples it may be deduced that no duty, however difficult, should be regarded as impossible by well-trained infantry of good morale and discipline."

It was the "morale and discipline" of the Japanese armed forces, Howard tells us, that all observers stressed. They were equally unanimous in stressing that these qualities characterized not only the armed forces but the entire Japanese nation. General Alexei Kuropatkin, the commander of the Russian forces, noted in his memoirs that his nation’s defeat was due not to mistakes in generalship, but Russia’s inferiority in “moral strength.” Lacking “moral exaltation” and the “heroic impulse,” Russia did not have sufficient resolution to conquer the Japanese.

The issue of national morale and will was a central concern of European leaders who studied the War. British General Sir Ian Hamilton stated that the Russo-Japanese war should cause European statesman anxiety. People seemed to forget that millions “outside the charmed circle of Western Civilization are ready to pluck the scepter from nerveless hands as soon as the old spirit is allowed to degenerate.”

Much as some worry today that China might become the “greatest country in the world,” supplanting the United States, so European leaders at the turn of the century worried that Japan might supplant Western nations as the greatest country.

The basis of national greatness was, essentially, the spirit of self-sacrifice. Hamilton said that England still had time to “put her military house in order;” to “implant and cherish the military in the hearts of children.” It would be necessary to impress upon the minds of the next generation of British boys and girls a “feeling of reverence and admiration for the patriotic spirit of their ancestors.” The cult of the offensive, it would appear, represented a desire to make manifest the national will—the capacity for self-sacrifice—and therefore to demonstrate the greatness of one’s nation.

In the following report, British Brigadier-General Hubert Rees describes a battle in which his own brigade was massacred as they advanced on German lines:

They advanced in line after line, dressed as if on parade and not a man shirked going through the extremely heavy barrage, or facing the machine-gun and rifle fire that finally wiped them out. I saw the lines, which advanced in such admirable order melting away under fire. Yet not a man wavered, broke the ranks, or attempted to come back. I have never seen, indeed could never have imagined such a magnificent display of gallantry, discipline and determination. The reports from the very few survivors of this marvelous advance bear out what I saw with my own eyes: that hardly a man of ours got to the German Front line.

In spite of the total failure of this attack, it is evident that General Rees regarded the destruction of his brigade in a positive light. He observed that not a man “shirked” in the face of the machine-gun and rifle fire. He was proud that even though his troops were “melting away under fire,” they continued to advance “in admirable order.” His men did not waver, break ranks, or attempt to retreat. The General gushed that he had never seen such a magnificent display of “gallantry, discipline and determination.”

His soldiers were slaughtered and “hardly a man got to the German Front line.” However, the General does not evaluate the battle in terms of success or failure. Rather, his reflections revolve around the morale and spirit demonstrated by his troops. The fact that his soldiers continued to advance despite being riddled with bullets leads General Rees to conclude that the attack had been “marvelous.”

I theorize that the ideology of the offensive at all costs grew out of the desire to demonstrate the moral courage and will of one’s troops, and therefore the greatness of one’s nation. Such a strategy rarely resulted in breakthroughs. By virtue of attacking—even when slaughter was the result—soldiers exemplified the will to national self-sacrifice for the sake of one’s nation.

Admiration for how the Japanese fought in 1905 led European leaders to adopt the offensive at all costs doctrine in an effort to show that their civilization also possessed moral fiber and greatness. The strategy of the offensive conveyed the strength of the national will: If the Japanese could so easily sacrifice the lives of young men, so too would the nations of Europe.

One may describe the First World War as a vast sacrificial competition. Leaders were willing to send young men to their deaths, and young men did not hesitate to die for their countries. In the “spirit of the offensive,” men got out of trenches and ran into artillery shells and machine gun fire—demonstrating the power of the national will.

Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies

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Research Articles

What good is military strategy an analysis of strategy and effectiveness in the first arab-israeli war.

Jeffrey Meiser
Temmo Cramer
Ryan Turner-Brady
Military strategy
Military Effectiveness
Arab-Israeli War

Introduction

The study of military effectiveness is one of the most vibrant areas of research in the security studies sub-discipline. For two decades, scholars have documented how “operational practices” determine the military effectiveness of armies ( Echevarria 2014: 56 ). This rich scholarship has greatly advanced the base of knowledge on why some military units perform much better than others. Unfortunately, these achievements have obscured the important role military strategy plays in determining operational effectiveness and overall military performance. Military strategy not only directly affects the success of military operations, it also links tactics and operations with national policy. Without a coherent and explicit military strategy, political goals are unlikely to be met in the military realm through the employment of untethered operational art (see Betts 2004 ). The lack of attention to the role of military strategy not only narrows our understanding of military effectiveness, it also seriously challenges the importance of strategy overall. If military strategy has no effect on military performance, then what good is military strategy?

To develop our argument, we create an analytical framework for assessing the impact of military strategy on battlefield performance. This framework is built by surveying and categorizing various conceptualizations of military strategy to identify propositions for how strategy effects outcomes in war. These propositions are applied to a case study of the southern front in the First Arab-Israeli War to determine if and how strategy shapes military effectiveness. We begin our analysis by first defining and summarizing the main trends in scholarship on military effectiveness. These first sections demonstrate the operational focus of the scholarship and the lack of attention to the role of military strategy. We then define strategy, develop an analytical framework for understanding how military strategy affects battlefield performance, and apply that framework to the First Arab-Israeli War. Two major operations on the southern front of the 1948 War provide a good case for this analysis because the two sides in the conflict are evenly matched, and there is a clear decision point in the military strategy with distinct alternatives. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our research and the importance of our findings.

Defining Military Effectiveness

Historians, social scientists, and practitioners have produced numerous studies of military and combat effectiveness, identifying a variety of factors that play a role in explaining why some military units fight more effectively than others. 1 Military effectiveness is often characterized as “the capacity to create military power” ( Millett, Murray & Watman 1986: 37–71 ; Brooks 2007: 9 ; Talmadge 2013: 185 ; Brathwaite 2018: 1–3 ). More specifically, “effectiveness tells how well a state can translate … resources into actual power in war. Effectiveness is the difference between what a state’s raw resources suggest it could potentially do, and what it is actually capable of doing in battle” ( Brooks 2007: 3 ). This explanation suggests that military power is a measure of how well a military force can perform the tasks of combat under a given set of resources. Stephen Biddle ( 2004: 5–6 ) describes these tasks of combat as “the ability to destroy hostile forces while preserving one’s own; the ability to take and hold ground; and the time required to do so.” He further disaggregates the offensive and defensive components of military capability or power and defines “offensive military capability as the capacity to destroy the largest possible defensive force over the largest possible territory for the smallest attacker casualties in the least time; defensive military capability is conversely the ability to preserve the largest possible defensive force over the largest possible territory with the greatest attacker casualties for the longest time.” ( Biddle 2004: 5–6 ).

Drawing on these scholars, we define military effectiveness as the ability to create military power, measured as relative combat efficiency. The central aspect of combat efficiency is the ability to expeditiously inflict relative destruction. To have more military power than an adversary (and thus to have higher military effectiveness), a military force must incapacitate more of the opposing force, more quickly and over a larger area than the opponent.

Operational Practices and Military Effectiveness

Since the publication of Stephen Biddle’s Military Power ( 2004 ), tactical and operational efficiency (labelled by Biddle as the “modern system”) has become the leading explanation for military and combat effectiveness. The main trend in the military effectiveness scholarship is expanding on and refining Biddle’s ( 2004 ) basic argument that that military forces well-trained in the modern system of military tactics and operations are likely to be highly effective fighting forces. For example, Caitlin Talmadge and others use a broader concept of “military practices” that extends beyond pure tactics and operations to also include the promotion and communication practices of military organizations as additional determinants of battlefield effectiveness. For Talmadge ( 2015: 1 ), “promotion patterns, training regimens, command arrangements, and information management in the military serve as the critical link between state resources and battlefield power.” When states implement these practices, “battlefield effectiveness is usually the result.” ( Talmadge 2015: 1 ). This description of elements of effectiveness match what Echevarria ( 2014: 56 ) more accurately calls “operational practices” or the “the planning of military operations and campaigns and everything that supports it” along with “the broader operational functions of intelligence, deployment, maneuver, sustainment, and command and control; and the development of operational doctrine.” Regardless of labels, most of the leading work on military effectiveness focuses on the “skill” component of military performance. However, this has been shown to be only part of the analytical story.

Skillful implementation of best military practices is certainly crucial to combat effectiveness, but does not seem to tell us much about combat motivation, or what Carl von Clausewitz’s translators call “moral powers,” “moral strength,” “moral factors,” “moral elements,” and “moral qualities” ( Clausewitz 1832/1984: 111, 127, 184 ). Moral strength is the will to fight and win signified by confidence, determination, and commitment to the collective cause.

Contemporary scholarship has developed theories of social and task cohesion which suggest that moral strength comes from the desire of combatants to fight for each other and to succeed in the shared mission (see MacCoun, Kier & Belkin 2006: 646–654 ; Wong 2006: 659–663 ; Castillo 2014 ; King 2016: 699–728 ). The study of moral strength shifts our attention from “skill” to “will” factors, but keeps us rooted in operational practices (Braithwaite 2018).

Military strategy is likely to affect both skill and will factors. If strategy can place a military force in an advantageous position, it should act as a force multiplier enabling the successful employment of the modern system of tactics and operations, at the same time boosting the confidence of the troops. Thus, contrary to the prevailing scholarly opinion, there is good reason to believe that military strategy contributes significantly to military effectiveness. To provide evidence in support of this contention, the causal links between strategy and effectiveness must be identified which in turn requires clearly defining military strategy.

Defining Military Strategy

Scholars and practitioners provide a multiplicity of definitions of strategy and military strategy (many equate the two). Richard Betts ( 2004: 6 ) defines strategy “as a plan for using military means to achieve political ends.” Betts ( 2004: 6 ) goes on to define the purpose of strategy: “To devise a rational scheme to achieve an objective through combat or the threat of it; implement the scheme with forces; keep the plan working in the face of enemy reactions (which should be anticipated in the plan); and achieve something close to the objective.” In his most recent book, Colin Gray ( 2015: 24–25 ) uses the “common military focus of the term” and defines strategy (or “strategy bridge”) as that which “serves to connect purposefully a polity’s military assets with its political wishes, which is to say its policy.” Both draw on the classic definition of military strategy as the “use of engagements for the object of war” ( Clausewitz 1832/1984: 128, 181 ).

These definitions are useful for describing what strategy does, but they lack a clear sense of what exactly a strategy is. How do we know a strategy when we see it? How can we judge its quality before it is implemented? Betts ( 2004 ) defines strategy as a “plan” and a “rational scheme”, but a strategy seems to be more than just a plan (list of actions to take) and the phrase rational scheme is too vague to be analytically useful. Gray’s ( 2015 ) definition tells us what strategy does, but not what it is. A different definition gives a more precise and useful meaning: A strategy is a theory of success ( Meiser 2016–2017 ). A military strategy is a theory of military success, and military success is defined by political goals, often simply called policy. Defining strategy as a theory gives some analytical leverage in evaluating strategies and some creative guidance in developing strategy. If we define a theory as a “statement … predicting which actions will lead to what results—and why” ( Christensen & Raynor 2003: 68 ) or simply as “a causal explanation” ( Walt 2005: 26 ), then a military strategy must provide an explanation of how the use of military force is going to cause preferred policy outcomes to occur. This definition focuses the strategist’s mind on how prescribed actions (the theory’s variables) will create desired effects or cause desired outcomes. A military strategy can be judged by its internal logic and, to some degree, it can be tested against historical cases, computer simulations, war games, and other methods.

In sum, a military strategy is a theory of the successful use of military capabilities to achieve political goals. To align this definition with the scholarship on military effectiveness, a military strategy is a theory of how to create military power (or relative combat efficiency) and use that power to achieve political goals.

Strategy and Military Effectiveness

Despite its seemingly obvious importance, the relationship between military effectiveness and military strategy is relatively unexplored. In the introduction to a widely cited edited volume on military effectiveness, Risa Brooks ( 2007 ) describes a “causal chain of military effectiveness”, including eighteen factors that determine military effectiveness. Strategy is conspicuously absent from that list. The closest factors are “strategic assessment” and “strategic command and control” ( Brooks 2007: 9 ). Brooks ( 2007: 14, 19, 22 ) mentions the importance of strategy in passing, but does not explain how and why it affects military effectiveness. Other studies have attempted to link types of strategy with conflict outcomes, but none of these studies examine whether or how strategy is a determinant of battlefield performance ( Sullivan 2012 ; Arreguin-Toft 2005 ; Pape 1996 ).

This section draws on the strategic theory literature to discuss and synthesize arguments about the causal effects of military strategy. There are different views among strategic theorists on how strategy matters, but the most applicable set of arguments is rooted in understanding the purpose of military strategy as the search for sources of relative power advantage. This approach to military strategy fits well with our definition of military effectiveness as the ability to create military power.

Lawrence Freedman ( 2013: xii ) defines strategy as “the art of creating power”, and Richard Rumelt ( 2011: 21–32 ) sees the “discovery of power” as the core attribute of good strategy. Rumelt ( 2011 ) sees strategy-making as a process of finding advantages by pitting your strength against an opponent’s weakness. He gives the example of David and Goliath. David is very aware of his own weaknesses and Goliath’s strengths, but then moves beyond that apparent disadvantage to discover a source of power based on his less apparent capabilities (skill with a slingshot) and Goliath’s weaknesses (lack of head protection) ( Rumelt 2011: 22 ). Freedman ( 2013 ) and Rumelt ( 2011 ) make a crucial connection between strategy and power which suggests a useful intervention point in the scholarship on military effectiveness. If military strategy can be shown to create or enhance military power, then its importance to the study of military performance should be obvious.

While Freedman’s ( 2013 ) and Rumelt’s ( 2011 ) perspectives provide a useful starting point, they do not identify specific sources of military power. Fortunately, strategic theorists do provide guidance in understanding how military strategy can provide a competitive advantage in war. First, Sun Tzu ( 1971: 77 ) argues in favor of creating a strategy based on an analysis of the weaknesses of the adversary’s strategy: “What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.” One side gains an advantage by identifying a flaw in the opponent’s strategy and exploiting that flaw. In this way, one side creates relative military power by exploiting a weakness in the adversary. In more contemporary terms, Sun Tzu is suggesting a path to success by denying victory to your adversary ( Pape 1996 ). If this mechanism of relative power creation is present, an analyst would expect to see one side identifying the strategy of its adversary, finding weaknesses, and then implementing an appropriate counter-strategy to exploit these weaknesses. The analyst would expect to find evidence of actions taken that are consistent with the counter-strategy and would expect those actions to increase the battlefield performance of the side implementing the counter-strategy.

A second way strategy can produce military power, also suggested by Sun Tzu, is through deception and psychological manipulation ( Tzu 1971 ; Yuen 2014 ). This approach is fundamental to Giulio Douhet’s air power theory, J.F.C. Fuller’s mechanized warfare, B.H. Liddell Hart’s indirect approach, and John Boyd’s conceptualization of maneuver warfare ( Freedman 2013: 123–139, 198–201 ). Of these theorist-practitioners, Hart and Boyd provide the best linkage between military strategy and military effectiveness. For Hart, creating “dislocation and exploitation” are the core goals of military strategy ( Hart 1991: 336, 325–326 ). Boyd’s concept of maneuver warfare, articulated in the Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication 1, Warfighting , extends Hart’s approach: “The goal is to attack the enemy ‘system’—to incapacitate the enemy systemically.” ( USMC 1997: 37–38 ). The way of producing this incapacitation is to use “speed and surprise” to concentrate strength “against selected enemy weakness in order to maximize advantage” ( Brown 2018: 150–179 ). Hart ( 1991: 326 ) lists several ways a force can cause dislocation, including unexpectedly changing the direction of attack, dividing the adversary’s forces, putting supply lines in jeopardy, and threatening to cut off avenues of retreat to safe territory. If this mechanism of power creation is present, the analyst should expect to find evidence of a strategy based on producing psychological dislocation within the enemy force and using deception, speed, and concentrated violence at critical nodes in the enemy system. The analyst would also expect to see this strategy implemented through operations that do, in fact, cause surprise and psychological dislocation for the adversary.

Third, strategists can create an advantage by identifying and manipulating the central characteristics of the war. According to Clausewitz ( 1832/1984 ), “the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish … the kind of war on which they are embarking …”. This line of argument is best expressed in J.C. Wylie’s ( 2014: 77–78 ) strategic theory: “The primary aim of the strategist in the conduct of war is some selected degree of control of the enemy for the strategist’s own purpose; this is achieved by control of the pattern of war; and this control of the pattern of war is had by manipulation of the center of gravity of war to the advantage of the strategist and the disadvantage of the opponent.” Going beyond Clausewitz’s ( 1832/1984 ) advice to understand the kind of war, Wylie’s ( 2014 ) suggests the main purpose of strategy is to manipulate the kind of war being fought. Wylie’s ( 2014 ) examples suggest that determining the time and location of the fighting is key to exploiting an adversary’s vulnerabilities and forcing them to react and fight on terms dictated by the protagonist. Relative military power is created by controlling the pattern of war in terms of how, where, and when engagements are fought. If this mechanism of power creation is present, the analyst should expect to find evidence of a strategy seeking to exert control over the kind of war begin fought by shifting the terms of combat to a time, place, and type disadvantageous to the adversary. Furthermore, evidence should be present that is suggesting success in dictating the favorable pattern of war identified in the strategy.

Finally, the core function of strategy is to focus, prioritize, and coordinate resources and action ( Rumelt 2011: 76–104 ; Brands 2014: 7–9; Freedman 2013: ix–xii ; Hoffman 2014: 479–480 ). Military strategy increases violence efficiency by bringing focus to the use of military power by defining the goals and how they should be achieved. Military strategy also allows a commander to coordinate forces across time and space, whether along a front, within a theater, or around the globe, to create and maintain coherence of action. As Clausewitz ( 1832/1984 ) explains, violence untethered from strategy and policy achieves nothing except the perpetuation of violence. For war to maintain a rational basis, violence must serve policy, as articulated through military strategy ( Clausewitz 1832/1984: 75–89 ). A tight linkage of military strategy, operational practice, and tactics is therefore necessary to maximize military effectiveness. No matter how well a military force employs Biddle’s ( 2004 ) modern system of tactics and operations, its efforts will be wasted if their actions are not directly linked to the overarching military strategy. By focusing the resources, military strategy creates military power. If this mechanism of power creation is present, the analyst should expect to find evidence of clear continuity between policy, strategy, operations, and tactics. The operational and tactical choices should flow directly from the overarching military strategy which should provide the theory for how the goals of policy should be achieved by the use of violent force. Military strategy should discipline the use of military power and increase violence efficiency by focusing and prioritizing the use of military power.

The above discussion results in an analytical framework with the following propositions.

Military strategy increases relative military power by:

exploiting weaknesses in the adversary’s strategy to cause failure of their theory or success,
using deception, speed, and concentrated violence to cause psychological dislocation within the adversary’s force,
determining how, where, and when engagements are fought to dictate a favorable pattern of war to exert some level of control over the adversary,
focusing, prioritizing, and coordinating resources and action by linking operational practice to policy.

All the propositions are phased in a cause-and-effect manner, consistent with our definition of strategy as a theory (causal explanation) of success. All the propositions focus on increasing the ability of a force to expeditiously inflict relative destruction on an adversary. The first three propositions apply to decreasing the adversary’s combat efficiency, while the fourth increases the protagonist combat efficiency. The elements of the framework are not mutually exclusive, in fact, they are likely to be grouped together and may have a multiplicative effect. The propositions are not meant to be exhaustive, but should capture the most significant ways military strategy affects military performance. The next section of this essay applies this framework to the IDF’s military strategy against the Egyptian Army in the southern theater of the First Arab-Israeli War.

Strategy and Military Effectiveness in the First Arab-Israeli War

The analytical framework developed above identifies plausible ways military strategy can affect military performance. In this section, the framework is applied to two case studies of Israeli strategy during the First Arab-Israeli War to test the effects of military strategy. First, we provide a brief description of the causes and early stages of the First Arab-Israeli War. Next, we analyze the military strategy developed and employed by General Yigal Allon in the southern theater of war in Operations Yoav and Horev, paying close attention to the elements of our military strategy framework which are present in these cases.

Early Stages of the First Arab-Israeli War

On May 14, 1948, Jewish leader David Ben-Gurion officially established the state of Israel. The basis for this declaration was “UN Resolution 181 (II). Future Government of Palestine”, adopted by the UN General Assembly on November 29, 1947. The resolution partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Yishuv (Jewish residents of Palestine), represented by the Jewish Agency, generally accepted the partition of the land without agreeing to specific borders, but the Arab Palestinians rejected any partition. For its part, Great Britain refused to cooperate with the UN or in any way help prepare Palestine for partition and set a unilateral withdrawal date of May 15, 1948. Arab militias responded to the UN vote by attacking Jewish communities in Palestine. The violence between the Yishuv and Arab Palestinians resulted in hundreds of thousands of Arabs fleeing their homes in Palestine, many seeking to escape the violence and many more expelled by the Haganah (the precursor to the Israeli Defense Force or IDF) in a campaign to secure more land for the emergent Jewish state ( Bunton 2013: chapter 3, chapter 4 ; Bregman 2016: 11–21 ; Tal 2004a: 887–888, 900 ).

The communal violence of 1947 and early 1948 was replaced by regular combat operations of an interstate war on May 15, 1948, when Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq attacked Israel (with additional small contributions from Saudi Arabia and Yemen and aided by irregular combatants). The three main areas of fighting were (1) in the north against Syrian and Iraqi forces, (2) in the south against Egyptian forces, and (3) around Jerusalem against Transjordan and Arab League forces. Only the Egyptian Expeditionary Force occupied a significant amount of land designated for the Jewish state by the UN. While the IDF was relatively successful on the defense, Israeli forces failed to conduct any major offensive operations against the regular Arab state forces until October of 1948. Offensive operations were crucial to the core Israeli political goals of removing the Arab coalition forces from Palestine and establishing secure borders for the state of Israel ( Tal 2004a: 890–984 ; Bregman 2016: 27–32 ). The primary impediment to achieving these goals was the EEF.

The Southern Front

When Egypt entered the war, they sent between 5,500 and 10,000 troops into Palestine commanded by Major General Ahmed Ali al-Mwawi ( Pollack 2004: 15–16 ; Tal 2004b: 374–375 ). The Egyptian Expeditionary Force split up into two columns, of which the stronger proceeded up the coast of the Mediterranean towards Tel Aviv, while the other continued into the Negev and then north toward Jerusalem. After trading blows with the Israelis through the summer of 1948, the Egyptians eventually settled into a defensive line running west to east along the Majdal-Beit Jibrin Road. 2 The EEF manned their line with three long, narrow strips of troops stretching across the width of the Negev in order to cut it off from the rest of Israel ( Tal 2004b: 374–375 ). While the first column of Egyptian troops got bogged down as they advanced past Gaza toward Tel Aviv, IDF leaders debated plans to eliminate the Egyptian forces from the Negev and regain the lost territory. It was a widespread belief among Israelis that if the line carved into the desert by the EEF were to become the perpetual border for the Jewish people, they would be left vulnerable to future Arab incursions. Therefore, Prime and Defense Minister Ben-Gurion and his commanders focused on the destruction or removal of Egyptians forces from Palestine ( Morris 2009: 320–321, 350–358 ).

Strategic Choice

In response to the strategic situation at the southern front, two distinct schools of thought emerged from the minds of IDF commanders Shimon Avidan and Yigal Allon. Avidan proposed “a strategy of direct attack and a battle of annihilation” ( Tal 2004a: 897 ) meant to destroy the EEF in a frontal assault on all Egyptian defensive positions in the Negev. This was the same strategy he unsuccessfully attempted in May of 1948, during Operation Pleshet. Despite its previous failure, Avidan placed his faith in his strategy and recommended it to Ben-Gurion in October 1948. Allon’s alternative was “an indirect approach of breaking up enemy formations and taking advantage of their weak links” ( Tal 2004a: 897–898 ). This strategy involved exploiting the weak points in the Egyptians’ defensive line and its lack of depth. Rather than attack Egyptian strongpoints head-on, Allon wanted to divide and envelop the Egyptian forces and cut off their supply routes and lines of communication. His plan utilized Israel’s advantages in mobility, and initiative, while capitalizing on the Egyptian defense’s static, stretched-out position ( Tal 2004a: 900 ). David Tal ( 2004a: 903 ) compares the two commanders’ strategies:

Avidan and Allon, then, represented two contrasting approaches to the principles of warfare: One advocated a direct frontal assault aimed at eliminating the fighting force of the enemy by means of destruction, while the other sought to destroy the enemy’s combat capabilities by striking at its transportation and supply routes, splitting its defenses, and then gradually dealing with “slices.”

Ben-Gurion was now faced with a choice between strategies based on different theories of success. Avidan believed that it would take a direct assault and destruction of Egyptian positions to end the threat at the southern front. Allon believed that the Egyptian position could be made untenable by fragmenting their defensive line and preventing them from fighting as a unified force. The General Staff of the IDF preferred Avidan’s approach of directly annihilating Egyptian forces, but Ben-Gurion chose Allon’s plan. It was a fraught decision because he believed that Israel’s survival depended on the success of this operation, and he knew it had to be carried out swiftly because the UN Security Council would undoubtedly call for another cease- fire in the coming days ( Morris 2009: 321 ; Tal 2004b: 378 ).

Operation Yoav

Operation Yoav was divided into stages. In the first stage, the plan was to cut the Egyptian Majdal-Beit Jibrin/Majdal-Faluja line with the Harel and Givati Brigades and take advantage of their long supply routes. The IDF would then encircle and defeat the pockets of cut-off Egyptian forces. In subsequent stages, the IDF would move to take other areas occupied by Egyptian forces along the coast in Majdal and Gaza. But before Yoav could begin, Ben-Gurion knew that the IDF must provoke the Egyptians to throw the first punch in order to justify the Israeli attack. On October 15, the IDF sent a supply convoy to their northern Negev settlements, hoping that the Egyptians would continue their practice of firing on the convoys, which was in violation of the current cease-fire agreement. This time, however, the Egyptians offered little response to the convoy and the Israelis set fire to their own fuel truck in an effort to further provoke the Egyptians. The plan worked as the Egyptians proceeded to deploy half a dozen Spitfires to the Israelis’ location, giving the IDF their justification for operation Yoav ( Morris 2009: 323 ). The IDF quickly dispatched their air force, which consisted of a handful of Messerschmitts, Spitfires, B-17s, and other civilian aircraft, to destroy the Egyptian’s central air field in El ‘Arish, grounding the Egyptian’s planes and giving the IDF air superiority. The Egyptians were caught completely off guard and suffered significant losses in the coming air raids ( Morris 2009: 323–325 ; Pollack 2004: 21 ). In these early stages of the operation, Allon managed to surprise and sow confusion within the EEF, while carefully controlling IDF use of violent force in line with the political goal of portraying the Arab forces as the aggressors.

Between October 15 and 22, 1948, the IDF executed Allon’s strategy successfully. The Israelis broke through the Egyptian 4 th brigade on the Majdal-Beit Jibrin line and encircled pockets of Egyptian forces as Allon had envisioned, including the Faluja pocket, where over 4,000 Egyptian soldiers were later forced to surrender. The Faluja encirclement was jeopardized when one of Allon’s commanders, Yitzhak Sadeh of the 8 th Brigade, abandoned the indirect approach and attempted a frontal attack at the village of Iraq al-Manshiyya on October 16. Allon’s plan was to surround and cut off the village and then take the position later through night raids. Instead of following through with this approach, Sadeh convinced Allon to allow a frontal assault on the Egyptian position, arguing the Egyptian forces would scatter at the approach of Israeli tanks. However, the Egyptians held firm and the IDF attack was smashed by entrenched Egyptian forces causing the Israelis to retreat. Sadeh’s failure forced Allon to improvise and adapt in order to break the Egyptian line and complete the encirclement of EEF strongpoints. IDF operational commander Yigael Yadin argued for another direct attack on Iraq al-Manshiyya to demonstrate “tenacity of purpose”, but Yadin allowed Allon to redirect his troops to the east to break through near the village of Huleiqat and cut off Egyptian supply lines, which was successfully executed on October 17 ( Tal 2004b: 381–82 ). The failed assault on Iraq al-Manshiyya stands out as something of a natural experiment, suggesting the choice in strategy was highly consequential for the performance of the IDF during Operation Yoav.

By October 19, the IDF had driven powerful wedges between the western (coastal) and eastern (Hebron Hills) arms of the Egyptian army, effectively isolating the eastern arm and driving a second wedge in between Gaza and Majdal along the coast of the Gaza Strip. These advances “knocked the Egyptian high command off balance” and forced General al-Mwawi to move his headquarters south to avoid capture ( Morris 2009: 326 ; Pollack 2004: 21–22 ). By October 20, the eastern arm of the EEF was further fragmented and retreated to form another west-east defensive line to the south between Gaza and Beersheba. Al-Mwawi believed the type of war had fundamentally changed from conquering territory for Arab Palestinians to “the defense of the Land of Egypt” ( Morris 2009: 327 ). In the final act of Yoav, Allon took Beersheba, the capital of the Negev. Allon could have chosen to attack Majdal or Gaza on the coast, but instead chose Beersheba to complete the victory against the eastern arm of the EEF and cement Israeli control of the upper Negev ( Morris 2009: 327 ). The units making up the eastern column of the Egyptian forces were either defeated in battle, forced to retreat into Egypt proper or into Gaza, or entrapped in isolated pockets by IDF maneuvers. In one short week, the IDF implemented Allon’s strategy with minimal losses, certainly with fewer casualties than would have occurred in a direct frontal assault. In the wake of Operation Yoav, General Mwawi was relieved of command of the EEF ( Pollack 2004: 22 ).

Operation Horev

Though Yoav had been a major success for the Israelis, Egypt still held the Gaza Strip and the Faluja pocket, along with a fortified line south of Beersheba which pressured the central and southern Negev. Moreover, under the second truce, Israel resources were being pushed to the limits and each front posed a major challenge to Israeli leadership. Nearly half of all Israeli men were under arms, rather than aiding in the reconstruction efforts or managing the large numbers of refugees. The Arab nations continued to hold land that was key to Israeli goals. The Syrians held land earmarked as Israeli by the UN partition; the Jordanians and Iraqis remained dug-in on the West Bank, within striking distance of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; and David Ben-Gurion’s grim prediction to his ministers on September 26, 1948, that “a protracted truce will break us” remained just as present in December 1948 ( Morris 2009: 321 ).

However, the truce was equally grim for the Egyptians. The EEF entered the war with no clear strategic objective and under the presumption that the other Arab armies would be doing most of the fighting. The failure to move beyond Gaza and the catastrophe of Operation Yoav eroded the will and effectiveness of the EEF ( Gerges 2007: 157 ). Unable to occupy Jewish settlements, the EEF had pursued a strategy of containment: Occupying fixed positions across wide defensive lines to decrease the freedom of movement of the Israelis. However, the forces defending the positions remained immobile and far too spread out, overextending the EEF ( Gerges 2007: 159 ). All the while, some 4,000 men remained trapped in the Faluja pocket, unable to break out. Cairo was left fearing that the Egyptian army—and the Farouk regime as a whole—would not survive a defeat in Palestine ( Morris 2009: 352 ).

Under these conditions, Israel prepared to extend the success of Yoav and force Egypt out of the Negev and out of the war. By December of 1948, Ben-Gurion decided “only a successful application of force would change the status quo and perhaps jolt the Arab states toward acceptance of Israel, if not actual peace-making.” ( Morris 2009: 353 ). The application of force would be aimed at forcing Egypt out of the Negev. Ben-Gurion set the goal, but the most influential figure in planning and execution of what would be known as Operation Horev, would be General Yigal Allon—the architect behind the Operation Yoav and the Faluja encirclement. Horev would continue his indirect approach designed to exploit Egyptian weaknesses. Benny Morris ( 2009: 360 ) noted that “Allon had no intention of ramming his head against the brick wall of Egyptian defenses.”

Horev would open with a diversionary attack on Hill 86 in the West Bank, meant to convince the EEF that the Israelis would attack Gaza head-on. However, the main thrust would push towards Auja, the entrance to the Sinai and Egyptian territory. From Auja, the IDF units would advance north toward Rafah on the coast to cut off EEF units in the Gaza Strip. In a major improvisation, Allon modified the plan to push beyond Auja and drive deep into Egyptian territory, swinging north towards the Mediterranean in a massive encirclement at the city of Arish, putting the entire Sinai Peninsula in peril and trapping two Egyptian brigades ( Morris 2009: 359 ; Tal 2004: 905). Allon believed this maneuver was necessary because the strong EEF defensive position on the Rafah-Gaza line would make any assault on that position very costly. Therefore, instead of attacking an Egyptian strong point, Allon planned for a deep envelopment into the Sinai, cutting off the supply line from Egypt to Gaza (Tal 2004: 905–906). Such an advance would place Israeli troops well within Egyptian territory. Allon neglected to inform his superiors of this part of his strategy, fearing that “political impediments” might rob the IDF of an overwhelming victory ( Morris 2009: 362 ).

Operation Horev began on December 22, 1948. Egyptian intelligence had correctly estimated that the operation would take place between December 20 and 25—but had failed to ascertain whether the Israelis would be attacking Gaza or the Hebron Hills ( Morris 2009: 358 ). Rain canceled several Israeli air raids meant to soften up and harass EEF units, but the 13 th Battalion of the Golani Brigade proceeded with the decoy attack against Hill 86 in the early afternoon. The attack proved difficult for the Israelis. After being forced off the hill, the Egyptians returned with an extensive artillery barrage followed up by several counterattacks. Egyptian mechanized infantry attacked Hill 86 in waves, eventually forcing the Israelis to retreat late on December 23 ( Morris 2009: 360 ) The heavy fighting at Hill 86 convinced the Egyptians that the main Israeli thrust would come at Gaza and, in turn, the Egyptians repositioned their forces to accommodate an attack from the north ( Morris 2009: 361 ).

Instead, the main Israeli thrust came to the south against the entrance to the Sinai Peninsula on the night of December 24. Using an abandoned Roman road, the 8 th Armored Brigade outflanked Egyptian positions in Asluj (which covered the road to Auja) and swung south ( Pollack 2004: 23 ). Against the Egyptian 1 st Infantry Battalion, the Israelis faced a virtually-static enemy with great success. Prior to the battle, the Egyptians had fortified themselves in hilltops unable to support one another ( Morris 2009: 361 ). Benny Morris ( 2009: 361 ) referred to the flanking maneuver as “the high point of Allon’s generalship”. Egyptian tanks fought as static artillery pieces and made no attempt to prevent the 8 th Armored Brigade’s flanking maneuver. By December 26, the 8 th Armored Brigade had seized Auja and killed an Egyptian deputy battalion commander during a counterattack ( Morris 2009: 362 ). They were reinforced by the Negev Brigade and crossed the Egyptian border at noon on December 28. Facing only light resistance, by December 29 the Israelis were within six miles of Arish in Egypt proper ( Morris 2009: 365 ). An EEF battalion commander had been captured during the drive, while the Bir Lahfan airfield twelve miles south of Arish and four Royal Egyptian Air Force planes had been seized. The remaining Egyptian planes which had not been seized were flown to the Suez Canal area, leaving the EEF completely without air cover ( Morris 2009: 364 ; Pollack 2004: 23 ). The drive on Arish only ended when the Israelis dug in to rest and await reinforcements. By the time the Israelis were ready to renew their attack, Allon had conceded to direct orders from IDF operational commander Yigael Yadin and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to withdraw from the Sinai. Though sporadic fighting continued following the January 2 withdrawal from Egypt, Horev ended Egyptian involvement in the war and forced them to pursue peace ( Morris 2009: 365–369 ; Pollack 2004: 23–24 ).

The victory of Horev came down to the deficiencies in Egyptian strategy and military performance, in stark contrast to the effectiveness of Israeli strategy and tactics. In terms of equipment and manpower deployed during Horev, the Egyptians either matched or exceeded the Israelis. According to Kenneth Pollack ( 2004: 27 ):

In both numbers and quality of operational weapons, there was no time at which Egyptian forces did not have more and better weapons than their opponents, and except during the final Israeli offensives, this superiority was usually very great … the quality and quantity of weapons that they actually possessed should have been more than adequate to defeat the Israelis had Egyptian tactical formations performed better.

While Egyptian forces were overmatched tactically, their poor performance was largely the result of poor Egyptian military strategy and good Israeli military strategy. The lack of a clear policy and military strategy for Egypt laid the foundation for the tactical deficiencies of the EEF (see Gerges 2007: 157 ). In contrast, Allon’s strategy reshaped the conflict in Israel’s favor, significantly increasing Israel’s military power through mobility, surprise, and deception ( Eshel 2004: 23 ).

Allon’s strategy against the EEF at the southern front of the First Arab-Israeli War displayed all four mechanisms described in our analytical framework. Each mechanism had the predicted effect to either decrease the combat efficiency (and overall performance) of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force or increase the combat efficiency (and overall performance) of the Israeli Defense Force.

First, the Egyptian military strategy was to build a well-fortified defensive line to maintain its control of the Negev, to have something to show for its participation in the war, and to prevent Israel from separating Egypt from the rest of the Arab world. If the IDF attacked the fortified positions along Egyptian defensive lines, the EEF had a reasonable chance of success, especially along the Majdal-Beit Jibrin/Majdal-Faluja line attacked in Operation Yoav. Egyptian forces had performed well when fighting from prepared defensive positions and the IDF was inexperienced at coordinated large unit assaults. Allon attacked Egypt’s military strategy by turning its strength into weakness. The EEF held strong points along its line, but its forces were stretched thin. Allon bypassed and encircled the strongest fortifications turning their strength into a liability for Egypt. By encircling major portions of the Egyptian force, the IDF dramatically reduced their combat efficiency. In the most extreme and risky encirclement effort in Operation Horev, Allon’s left-hook into the Sinai threatened the existence of the Egyptian Army as a cohesive fighting force. The IDF did not need to destroy the Egyptian force, it simply needed to threaten its supply lines and path of retreat.

Second, Allon used deception, surprise, speed, and concentrated violent force to knock Egyptian commanders off balance and gain rapid advantages across a wide area of operations. In Operation Yoav, the IDF manipulated Egyptian forces into firing the first shot, responding by eliminating the threat of the Royal Egyptian Air Force and quickly breaking through the Egyptian line at multiple points along both the western and eastern arms of the EEF. These actions caused confusion and threatened the EEF headquarters, significantly reducing Egyptian combat efficiency. In Horev, the IDF used deception to convince Egyptian leaders to concentrate their forces near Gaza, helping to open the path to the Sinai and strongly affecting the relative combat power at Auja. The speed and surprise of the assault by the 8 th Brigade caused significant confusion and demoralized Egyptian junior officers to the extent that they lied to superiors about counterattacking Israeli forces. By severing lines of communication and encircling major elements of the EEF, the IDF significantly enhanced its relative combat efficiency in operations along the southern front.

Third, by shifting to a war of movement, Allon moved the center of gravity to Egyptian held territory and then to Egypt proper. By breaking through the EEF lines, the IDF threatened Egyptian territory, changing the character of the war. After Yoav, and especially Horev, the conflict for Egypt was no longer a war of conquest, but instead a war to preserve the Egyptian army, regime, and territory. In creating a pattern of war characterized by Egyptian shock, demoralization, and retreat, the IDF exercised a degree of control, forcing the EEF to react to Israeli moves. In changing the center of gravity and pattern of the war, Allon’s strategy undermined the cohesion and morale of the EEF, significantly degrading its military power.

Fourth, Allon’s military strategy aligned with Israeli policy, focusing and coordinating the efforts of the IDF on threatening the western arm of the EEF and rapidly disintegrating the eastern arm of the EEF, in order to establish de facto Israeli control of the Negev. The focusing mechanism is most clearly on display in Operation Yoav, where Allon achieved his goals over the necessary time window of seven days and in a manner that was consistent with the Israeli goal of portraying the Arab states as the aggressors. Most importantly, Allon’s strategy removed the EEF from the main portions of the Negev without engaging in a drawn-out war of attrition.

Operation Horev also achieved Israel’s central goal of expelling Egypt from the Negev, but at significant political cost and in a manner at odds with the policy defined by Prime Minister Ben- Gurion. Allon’s strategy consistently secured the coordination of forces across the southern front. Both Yoav and Horev required coordinated action along the front to enable the use of deception and surprise. By directly linking combat operations with policy, Allon was able to maximize the efficiency of IDF combat power at the southern front.

Counterarguments

Military strategy is not the only plausible explanation for the IDF’s success at the southern front. An alternative interpretation by Kenneth Pollack ( 2004: 24–27 ) suggests that tactical deficiencies explain the low military effectiveness of Egyptian forces. This explanation is directly in line with the dominant scholarship explaining military effectiveness by relative advances in operational practices. However, Pollack ( 2004 ) ignores the possibility that the poor tactical performance may have been caused by the strategic advantage of the IDF. Once their initial offensive was halted, Egyptian commanders failed to use military strategy to enhance or create relative combat efficiency. There was no apparent effort to identify and exploit weaknesses in IDF strategy or sow confusion or use deception to weaken Israeli forces. Egyptian forces did not have a strategy for maintaining control of the center of gravity or pattern of war and seemed to lack any clear policy that could focus Egyptian efforts beyond simply holding territory.

Others may argue that the Egyptian forces were overmatched by the IDF in terms of physical or moral factors. The comparison of men and materiel suggests that the EEF was not at a disadvantage with respect to numbers of soldiers, vehicles, or aircraft. According to Pollack ( 2004: 27 ), “there was no time at which Egyptian forces did not have more and better weapons than their opponents.” While the number of soldiers on both sides of the southern front fluctuated throughout the war, during Operation Yoav both sides fielded approximately four infantry brigades, each supported by two armored battalions, and three artillery/mortar battalions. The Egyptians were also supported by various irregular auxiliaries ( Morris 2009: 320–322 ; Tal 2004b: 373–379 ).

During Operation Horev, Israel “deployed elements of five brigades and large auxiliary formations” which amounted to approximately 11 infantry battalions, supported by Home Guard battalions and “several artillery battalions” ( Morris 2009: 358 ). The Egyptians deployed approximately 15 infantry battalions supported by armor, artillery, and auxiliary battalions ( Morris 2009: 358 ). Airpower on both sides was rudimentary and is not seen as contributing significantly to the performance by either side ( Morris 2009: 325 ). If we trust Pollack’s ( 2004 ) assessment of the weapon systems fielded by both sides, it appears that, if anything, the IDF suffered a qualitative and quantitative disadvantage in both operations. Furthermore, the EEF was on the defensive in both operations, which is usually credited as giving something close to a 3-to-1 advantage for the defenders ( Mearsheimer 1989 ).

The moral factor is more difficult to assess, but most accounts suggest Egyptian units fought with determination and courage, especially when fighting from prepared defensive positions ( Morris 2009: 328 ; Tal 2004b: 381 ; Pollack 2004: 24 ). Though they had little combat experience prior to the war, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force was trained and equipped by the British to be a regular army competent in conventional operational practices ( Aloni 2001: 18–22 ; Pollack 2004: 14–15 ). The IDF was “highly motivated”, and the Israelis were experienced fighters, but their experience came mainly from irregular warfare against Palestinian and Arab militias ( Pollack 2004: 15 ; Eshel 2004: 21 ). Even the experienced IDF commanders were unpracticed in large unit conventional warfare ( Tal 2004a: 888–890 ). Furthermore, the diverse cultural backgrounds of the Israeli soldiers meant that entire units did not speak the same language, forcing commanders to issue orders through interpreters, which likely reduced the cohesion ( Eshel 2004: 14 ). In sum, it appears advantages in numbers of soldiers, level of technological sophistication of weapon systems, and level of resolve do not offer a convincing explanation of the superior performance of the IDF at the southern front of the First Arab-Israeli War.

What good is military strategy? In this essay, we argue that military strategy creates and enhances combat efficiency through four specific mechanisms: Exploiting weaknesses in the adversary’s strategy; causing psychological dislocation in the enemy commanders; creating a favorable center of gravity and pattern of war; and focusing resources and controlling violence in service of political goals. Our case study of the Israeli Defense Force at the southern front of the First Arab-Israeli War suggests that our argument has some merit. Yigal Allon’s military strategy for expelling the Egyptian Expeditionary Force from Palestine utilized all four mechanisms and, in doing so, significantly enhanced the relative combat efficiency of the IDF. These findings are significant, but also call for additional research. Moving forward, it is important to continue to develop the precise mechanisms through which strategy increases effectiveness. We identify four mechanisms, but believe that more are likely to be uncovered by additional research. Strategic theory provides a vast store of knowledge that certainly holds more insights into the connections between strategy and military performance.

Our findings lead to two main implications. First, the study of military strategy and military effectiveness should be better linked. On the one hand, scholars of strategic studies (mainly military historians and strategic theorists) generally assume that strategy affects military performance and outcomes in war, but rarely take the time to explain exactly how strategy impacts military effectiveness and shapes outcomes. If military strategy has no effect on military effectiveness, then strategy does not matter. Therefore, it is contingent upon strategic studies scholars to make this linkage explicit. On the other hand, scholars of security studies are focused on operational practices and do not typically consider how military strategy conditions the effectiveness of those operational practices. One reason why strategy is not emphasized in recent studies is the difficulty in identifying the causal mechanisms linking military strategy to combat effectiveness. This essay proposes specific ways in which military strategy directly affects combat effectiveness. We believe this innovative thinking opens new avenues for research on military effectiveness, outcomes in war, and the importance of good military strategy. Indeed, we expect future studies will find that many outcomes attributed to operational practices should instead be attributed to strategy.

The second implication is the need to focus more attention on military strategy as a concept and a causal factor. Much of the scholarship on strategy emphasizes grand or national strategy and therefore misses the importance of military strategy. At the same time, military strategy has been overshadowed by the study of operational practices. While the concept of military strategy has been neglected, it has also been subject to a frontal attack by recent scholarship, arguing that decisive battle is a myth and most wars are won by simply wearing down the opposing side ( Nolan 2017 ; Nolan 2019 ). Taking this argument to its logical conclusion, military strategy matters little. Instead, the most important factors are deciding when and where to fight and then the mobilization of more resources than your opponent. Yet this approach is limited by the simplistic view of a dichotomous typology of military strategy—it must be either maneuver or attrition. The reality is much more complicated. Even attrition requires a strategy of how to achieve the necessary reduction in enemy forces, and how that reduction in forces will result in the realization of national policy.

Military strategy is a vital concept in the study of war because of its crucial role in linking what armies do on the battlefield to national policy. Without a coherent and explicit military strategy, national goals are unlikely to be met through the threat or use of combat. Military strategy is the theory of how violence will be used to achieve policy. When scholars ignore military strategy, the explanations are incomplete and the conclusions are weak. When practitioners ignore military strategy, combat power is limited, performance is poor, and achievements unimpressive.

We treat military effectiveness and combat effectiveness as synonymous because we view the tactical, operational, and strategic levels as being interconnected and do not see any analytical reason for distinguishing between combat and military effectiveness for the purposes of this study. Other scholars may find the need to make a clear distinction.

The Majdal-Beit road runs east to west approximately half way between Tel Aviv and the border with Egypt.

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

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Military Strategy 101

2017, Engage: Naval Warfare Officer's Association Journal

'Strategy' confuses many. At its core however, it's just a way to solve certain kinds of problems. Strategy’s big idea – and its big attraction - is that it offers the possibility of shaping events rather than being shaped by them. This article discusses small ‘s’ strategy rather than solely examining a specific big ‘S’ historical example. Such an approach allows consideration of aspects of strategy common to all that can be used later in solving strategy problems of your own whether devising new ones or critiquing old ones – and we’ll do just that with Operation Iceberg

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Trending topics, essay: capability-based planning and the death of military strategy.

Lt. Cmdr. Kirk Benson, points at a map of the South China sea at the Tactical Flag Command Center (TFCC) of the USS Blue Ridge. Reuters photo via VOA.

In the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review , released days before the September 11 attacks, the Department of Defense announced a shift in approach—one that had been trickling through DOD since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Billed as “a new defense strategy and an associated risk management framework,” the emerging addition to the defense planning lexicon was a “capabilities-based approach.”

Because of an “uncertain” global environment in which the Soviets no longer acted as a global counterweight, no more would DOD plan to fight an actual enemy. Instead, it would plan to deal with a collection of enemy capabilities. As a defense procurement strategy, it was intellectually lazy and simple to execute—instead of studying an adversary and dealing with the unique challenges inherent in fighting a specific enemy, it would instead ignore the necessity of accounting for cultural, geographic and strategy aspects of any given opponent and concentrate on technology instead. Capabilities-based planning (CBP) was in. A strategy oriented on a potential enemy was out.

This was in striking contrast to the approach taken 20 years earlier. In 1981, The U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) unveiled a radical revamping of Army doctrine, by then in development for four years. Titled AirLand Battle, the concept was developed to deal with the preeminent military challenge of the time: how to fight the Red Army and the Warsaw Pact in Central Europe, where NATO faced a combined arms challenge backed with large numbers. This strategy was successfully sold to the Army, the DOD, Congress and the American public and became the concept that drove acquisition, training and force posture and led directly to the combined arms force that fought in Desert Storm.

AirLand Battle was not designed in a vacuum or against a generic adversary, and while it relied heavily on technology, the concept never lost sight of the context. Any direct conflict with the Soviets would have Europe as the central battlefield, if for no other reason than Europe was the only place with opposing NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in proximity. The terrain, the approaches, and the doctrine, equipment, logistical tail and support structure of the Soviet war machine was well characterized, exhaustively researched, and continually updated. The Army knew who it was going to fight and where, and set about answering how the joint force was going to accomplish that task.

That focus is lacking today. In embracing CBP, we have become focused on a fog bank—the nameless, faceless adversary who may be technologically advanced and may even be a “near peer” in a similarly undefined way. But that adversary has no connections to any geography, culture, alliance structure or fighting methodology. That adversary has no objectives, no systemic vulnerabilities, and no preferred way of fighting. Instead, the enemy is a collection of weapons systems that we will fight with a (presumably) more advanced set of similar systems, in a symmetrical widget-on-widget battlefield on a flat, featureless Earth.

Let me decode the term, or at least what it means to me: “We didn’t know who the enemy was anymore but wanted really big weapons programs, anyway.” — Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy Sharon Burke

The CBP strategy is a method for procuring systems that is totally disconnected from the realities of actually fighting an enemy as opposed to fighting a war. To dig ourselves out of an ever-deepening conceptual hole, the DOD is actively engaged in a never-ending search for the elusive and mythical “technological game changer,” sacrificing readiness, forward posture, and representative training along the way. We are witnessing the death of military strategy development in the United States, ignoring the reality that the People’s Republic of China has spent a quarter of a century developing a specific whole-of-government strategy to support a fight against the United States in Asia, and win. We should return to the methods that have proved effective in the past by identifying potential adversaries, characterizing them as unique entities, and planning to counter them using strategies tailored to their national political, economic and defense characteristics—and not just to their weapon systems.

A Disconnected Philosophy

Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace in 2003. DoD Photo

The 2001 QDR was the culmination of a decade of discussion and testimony that had already seen CBP gain acceptance inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. The QDR laid out the new philosophy succinctly:

The new defense strategy is built around the concept of shifting to a “capabilities-based” approach to defense. That concept reflects the fact that the United States cannot know with confidence what nation, combination of nations, or non-state actor will pose threats to vital U.S. interests or those of U.S. allies and friends decades from now. It is possible, however, to anticipate the capabilities that an adversary might employ to coerce its neighbors, deter the United States from acting in defense of its allies and friends, or directly attack the United States or its deployed forces. A capabilities-based model—one that focuses more on how an adversary might fight than who the adversary might be and where a war might occur—broadens the strategic perspective. It requires identifying capabilities that U.S. military forces will need to deter and defeat adversaries who will rely on surprise, deception, and asymmetric warfare to achieve their objectives.

In retrospect, by abandoning the analytical rigor required to identify adversaries and countermeasures in advance, the 2001 QDR offered a false clarity. In no way did CBP broaden the strategic perspective. Rather it narrowed it significantly, because while CBP was not in and of itself a military strategy, it left no room for one by denying that there was a need.

Overwhelming technological superiority was the answer, because it was overwhelming. Not only did we give up an understanding of potential adversaries, but we effectively reduced a perceived need to understand our allies and partners as well. The QDR declared that CBP could “anticipate the capabilities that an adversary might employ to coerce its neighbors,” without recognizing that coercive power was far more than a collection of capabilities but was the sum of a great deal of other factors, from geography to the relative balance between countries.

A capability-based strategy [is] one that focuses less on who might threaten us or where we might be threatened, and more on how we might be threatened and what we need to do to deter and defend against such threats. — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

Furthermore, there was no way to actually analyze what a country might do to coerce its neighbors, because there was no adversary country and no neighbors. The DOD was encouraged to go on adding to its card deck of weapon systems, in the expectation that the deck would produce a military capability that was useful in a given context, which could be whipped out at need. In many respects, this was a return to the “systems analysis” approach popularized by former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, only without the actual systems analysis.

Under the QDR guidance, we no longer had to worry about who the adversary might be and where a war might occur. Only the most tenuous link to operations was required. If a widget could potentially be used under a theoretical set of conditions, then it was a good widget, particularly if it was technologically advanced. Basing, deployment, mobility, tactics, counters and the influence of the environment and terrain were irrelevant, and the obvious connections between assurance, deterrence and wartime operations were lost.

Examples are easy to find, although only one is really necessary. In a generic context, a short-range stealthy fighter might seem like a good idea. In fact, if you consider a NATO battlefield in 1990, it could be a very good idea indeed. There are plenty of airfields, a large number of capable air forces, and the airfields are typically hardened against the threat posed by the Red Army (or even a resurgent one today).

F-117A Nighthawk in 1996. US Air Force Photo

Should an imaginary adversary pose a notional A2/AD environment in Europe, then a stealthy fighter might be a very potent piece of hardware. (It was, and it was called the F-117A.) Today in the Pacific, however, the potency drops away. In the Pacific theater, the distances are so great and the islands so scattered that on the list of desirable aircraft features, stealth takes a very distant third place to range and payload. Against the PRC, only Okinawa is a viable base from which to fly short-range fighters, and it is at risk of obliteration by the massive missile forces arrayed against it. In the Pacific, the bomber appears to be a much more useful platform. Without assessing an actual adversary, it is impossible to assess the utility of major weapons systems or develop a strategy to deal effectively with that enemy.

CBP effectively preempted strategy development, which has implications for deterrence and campaign planning. The 2001 QDR turned deterrence strategy around. Under CBP, mere technological prowess contributed to deterrence. No longer would we need to actually understand an adversary policy, process and objectives to deter somebody—we only needed to parade a modern weapon systems across the world stage and let nature take its course. The QDR noted that an enemy would likely use surprise and asymmetric warfare and that CBP would be used to offset that—without acknowledging that surprise became more likely because we were not postured to thinking about who might actually be an adversary, and that we could not reasonably counter asymmetric warfare because we would no longer analyze those asymmetries that a specific adversary was likely to attempt to offset. Becoming more vulnerable to surprise and asymmetric approaches did nothing to enhance our deterrent posture.

While it is impossible to determine who might have been deterred by the presumably awesome potential of CBP over the past 15 years, we can certainly determine who was not. Al Qaeda and its affiliates were not deterred. The Taliban and their associates were not deterred. Broadly, Islamist groups were not deterred in sub-Saharan Africa, Libya, the Levant, Yemen, Syria or Iraq. Iran may very well have been encouraged to step up both missile and nuclear weapons programs. Syria was not deterred from taking actions against its own population up to and including the use of weapons of mass destruction. The Russians were so undeterred that they executed their first post-Cold War land grab unapologetically, and then followed up with active efforts to further disassemble the borders of Ukraine, in direct violation of the Budapest Memorandum . China’s reef-by-reef expansion in the South China Sea continues unabated. If North Korea was deterred from any provocative action, it cannot be ascertained from its behavior, which is so laden with provocations that it is hard to see where one ends and the next begins. If the emergence of CBP has led to any deterrence at all, it is hard to imagine where and when it might have occurred.

That is not surprising. Deterrence is a product of a perception by another party that there is no real gain in a possible course of action. Absent a country that has overwhelming superiority both on and off the battlefield, the deterrent effect of mere technological superiority is virtually nonexistent, because there is no direct threat associated with technology alone. If an enemy does not believe that the United States has the interest, method or the will to oppose them, then there is no deterrence. We effectively deterred the Soviets from invading Europe because of two key factors: we planned a vigorous defense across the length and breadth of Europe; and we were prepared to go nuclear if we started losing. Since the Red Army’s primary method of winning battles had always been mass, NATO’s technical superiority was not a sufficient deterrent but the ability to obliterate massed forces was. Apocryphally or not, Lenin himself is widely credited with the observation that “quantity has a quality all its own.”

In more modern times, both nation-states and insurgents have actively courted battle with the Americans, even fully acknowledging their own technological inferiority, because they did not believe that technology would prove decisive. Time and time again, these enemies challenged the tech-focused Americans—and in Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria they have been proved correct. Arguably, the Chinese proved the same in Korea, where the better-supplied, better-equipped and better-trained Americans were fought to a standstill by an enemy who believed in mass.

Identifying an Enemy is Passé

Chinese marines attend the farewell ceremony for Russian navy in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province, April 27, 2012. Xinhua Photo

Today, the art of military strategy in the United States has devolved to the point where it is currently passé to describe fighting China or Russia in public. Instead, we discuss a generic anti-access area denial environment that is characterized by long-range weapons and aircraft. This means that, strategy-wise, we are forced into the military equivalent of fantasy football, where our team will presumably do better than the other team on a notional statistical battlefield that bears absolutely no resemblance to the real world. If we are to be prepared to fight an enemy we must be prepared to fight a specific enemy lest we be caught with our eye off the ball when the fastball comes smoking across the plate. And it will come. World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War and Afghanistan all started with the United States shaking off a surprise.

Realistically, there are only four adversary countries worth considering, mostly because they pose a credible and significant threat to the United States or to the world order upon which U.S. prosperity rests. With its international land routes severely constrained by geography, China is effectively an import-dependent island nation with the ability to deliver mass and precision on command—but only close to its own shores. Russia remains a land power with some very good scientists, but one that has neglected its regular military forces for two decades and hasn’t won a war outside the boundaries of the former Soviet Union since the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. North Korea is a marginal nuclear power with an undernourished populace and persistent food shortages, unable to project power much beyond artillery range. Iran is an emerging regional power that has been heavily constrained by military sanctions to the point where its “conventional” forces rely primarily on mass and the possession of rebuilt SCUD-class terror weapons.

“No matter how enmeshed a commander becomes in the elaboration of his own thoughts, it is sometimes necessary to take the enemy into account.” — Winston S. Churchill

Every one of those potential four adversaries is capable of putting up a fight against the United States—possibly a winning one. Conversely, each one of them has its own set of vulnerabilities, geographical constraints and cultural approaches, and each of them must be considered as individuals and not as a member of a generic category—rogue state, near-peer, etc. Those potential adversaries do not themselves capture the entire range of security challenges facing the United States, but they do encompass the most likely and most threatening state-based challenges.

The Department of Defense has invested massive resources in a flawed premise that it is long past time to abandon. There is no real excuse for accepting a premise that in a post-Soviet era, we have insufficient understanding of the security environment. As an internal corporate strategy, CBP might have some utility. As a national security strategy, it has been a costly disaster, resulting in a false sense of often-failing procurement priorities that have demonstrably failed at producing an effective, credible military tool that can be used as an instrument of national policy. Worse yet, it is a policy that could not have been better designed to ensure that we are unprepared for a real enemy. If we are to be prepared to fight another nation, we have to be prepared to fight an actual enemy, with the associated terrain, cultural attributes, military characteristics and national interests. Only by being prepared to fight a real opponent, and obviously so, can we have any hope of providing a deterrent that avoids the fight in the first place.

Col. Michael W. Pietrucha, USAF

Col. Mike Pietrucha was an instructor electronic warfare officer in the F-4G Wild Weasel and the F-15E Strike Eagle, flying 156 combat missions; he took part in 2.5 SAM kills over 10 combat deployments. As an irregular warfare operations officer, he had two additional combat deployments in the company of U.S. Army infantry, combat engineer, and military police units in Iraq and Afghanistan. His views are his alone and do not necessarily represent his service or the Department of Defense.

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Academic Journals

The world in 90 minutes or less: rocket logistics and future military operations.

By CDR Von P. H. Fernandes, Maj Ashley Gunn, MAJ Lucas Hoffmann, and Lt Col Nita McQuitery

This research article was awarded second place in the 2022 CJCS National Defense and Military Strategy Essay Competition within the Strategic Research Paper category. While many students at JFSC achieve a high level of research, papers submitted to the competition represent some of the best research, writing, and thinking completed each academic year at Professional Military Education institutions. Manuscripts receiving recognition achieve an extraordinarily high bar. Other contest winners will be found at Joint Forces Quarterly .

In 1959, Rear Admiral Henry Eccles described Logistics as “the bridge between the economy of the Nation and the tactical operations of its combat forces.” [1] Rocket Logistics, the use of orbital-class rockets to carry cargo from one place on the earth to another, has the potential to shorten that bridge dramatically. In the seventy years since Eccles’s statement, the competitive need for faster and more efficient Logistics operations changed how the Department of Defense (DoD) conducted Logistics and what Logistics contributed to global military operations. Efficient and streamlined Logistics not only provides commanders with freedom of action, but also extends operational reach. The DoD’s ability to conduct efficient Logistics operations determines the extent and degree to which the U.S. can project power globally.

While air cargo became a feature of Logistics operations in World War II, cargo ships continue to transport the vast majority of supplies and military equipment for global military operations. Air cargo delivers speed to logistics efforts but at a fiscal cost and with restrictions on weight and volume. However, air cargo is still not fast enough for some logistical challenges in the USEUCOM, USAFRICOM, USSOUTHCOM, and USINDOPACOM theaters. The U.S. Space Force has a new cutting-edge research and development program, the Vanguard initiative, which is exploring the use of orbital-class rockets for point-to-point transportation. Rocket Logistics promises even faster speeds than air cargo on the battlefield but with higher costs and more restrictions on the cargo type, which, within the scope of this paper, is defined as both personnel and equipment.

Unlike civilian transportation missions, military missions do not have predictable destinations where investments in infrastructure development can be made to ensure a smooth landing. Thus, the Vanguard Program seeks solutions that have an all-terrain final descent system, with ruggedized exteriors to deal with foreign object debris (FOD) on landing and the use of new technologies like those currently being pioneered by NASA which will allow a descending rocket to create a landing pad during the final descent. [2]

Assuming future commercially available rockets will meet all Vanguard program technical goals (the ability to transport 100 tons of personnel and equipment to an unimproved surface anywhere in the world), it becomes valuable to analyze the potential strategic and operational impacts of Rocket Logistics now. [3] The most judicious and pertinent questions to ask are: What are the benefits and limitations of Rocket logistics, and how do these characteristics apply to potential conventional force deployments, Special Operations Forces (SOF) missions, and Humanitarian Assistance/Disaster Response (HA/DR) activities?

Current & Near- Horizon Rocket Technology

The U.S. Air Force, U.S. Space Force, and U.S. Transportation Command are working together to develop and employ Rocket Logistics for worldwide solutions to deliver cargo from one terrestrial location to another. [4] The cargo will be loaded onto an autonomous rocket, which will take off, enter an altitude just above 100 kilometers (km), and travel to any location on Earth. The rocket can then conduct an autonomous, controlled descent to deliver its cargo. This method differs from air, sea, and land transport in several fundamental ways.

The most significant difference between Rocket Logistics and conventional methods is the speed of delivery; rockets are expected to transport tons of material across the planet in under ninety minutes by using an orbital trajectory to reduce transit time. [5] This presents a variety of logistical options to deliver valuable cargo within tactically relevant timelines, as opposed to hours or days (e.g. fourteen hours of flight time for a plane traveling from New York City to Nairobi, Kenya). The second advantage of Rocket Logistics is that movement above 100 kilometers in altitude is not governed by national airspace regulations. This means that the rocket would only need permission to access the nation’s airspace from which it departed and the nation in which it will land. Along the rest of the journey, the rocket will be at an altitude that cannot be obstructed by overflight regulations, allowing the material to be delivered to regions otherwise difficult to access. This speed and flexibility come at an increased cost as the price per kilogram (kg) of cargo is higher for Rocket Logistics than conventional methods. Also, there are logistical concerns about refueling rockets at destinations and landing site requirements. For these reasons, Rocket Logistics is not expected to replace existing logistics capabilities, but function instead as an option for a high-speed, high-cost delivery method with long-range and potentially versatile landing capabilities.

The United States is undergoing a renaissance in the Commercial space industry that can be adapted to Rocket Logistics. Major competitors include SpaceX, United Launch Alliance (ULA), Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Blue Origin. The current market leader in cost, reliability, and capacity, SpaceX, has conducted cargo deliveries into orbit using its Falcon-9 and Falcon Heavy rocket systems, with 137 of 139 launches being successful as of February 3, 2022. [6] SpaceX delivers crews to the International Space Station using Dragon capsules and can deliver 63 tons into orbit with the Falcon Heavy. Moreover, SpaceX’s next-generation system, Starship, currently in prototype testing, is designed to place over 100 tons of cargo into orbit. [7] While launch costs are dependent on numerous factors, current rates for Falcon-9 are around $1,500 per kilogram. This price is much less than the per kilogram average ($25,800) from 1980-2000. Industry observers expect continued price decreases as the technology matures and companies achieve economies of scale. [8] Following current trends, it is possible to project a time when Rocket Logistics will be cost comparable to air cargo, especially when the costs of airfield construction are included. If such cost savings are realized, Rocket Logistics could replace aerial logistics for many routine military and commercial functions.

While an operational Rocket Logistics system could have various delivery mechanisms, the most versatile would be the separable capsule design, similar to that used by SpaceX’s Dragon capsules or the Soyuz capsule. In this case, the booster(s) launches the vehicle into space and returns to a designated launch pad. A separate capsule containing the cargo parachutes to the delivery location with a hatch near ground level. This approach removes the need for specialized landing pads or offloading equipment, and the capsule’s expendability would be mission dependent.

Limitations of Rocket Logistics

While rocket cargo provides numerous advantages in speed, current and near-horizon technologies have several limitations. The physical locations of the existing launch infrastructure limit where rockets can be launched from. Suborbital and orbital launches exert significant G-forces on payloads limiting the types of cargo that can be carried. While the advertised deployment speed of fewer than 90 minutes is accurate, these timelines do not include cargo and fuel loading times. Due to the strength of earth’s gravity relative to current and near-future rocket technology, detachable boosters are used by all currently operational and prototype rocket systems. Since the booster does not proceed to the destination, Rocket Logistics missions to austere locations are unable to return cargo or the delivery capsule to the origin point.

When compared to cargo aircraft, rockets require significantly more specialized ground infrastructure. A military cargo aircraft can find aviation-grade fuel and a supporting runway at thousands of locations across the United States and around the world. In contrast, current commercial rockets typically require specialized launch platforms and fuel that are only available at a few locations. Figure 1 shows existing spaceports in the United States. Notably, only a few locations are currently capable of launching all rocket types. Operationally, the military units would have to fly, use rail transport, or drive personnel and equipment to the launch site(s). Other options would be to construct launch sites near supplies, equipment, and personnel designated for rocket cargo missions or to pre-stage personnel near launch sites. One caveat to this restriction is that a few companies like Virgin Orbit and Northrop Grumman (Orbital Sciences) have developed the capability of launching small orbital rockets from aircraft. Virgin Orbit uses a modified 747 to launch rockets capable of delivering 500 kg of cargo. [9]

Figure 1: U.S. Spaceports: Commercial, Government, and Active Private Spaceports. Source: Federal Aviation Administration, “U.S. Spaceports Commercial, Government, and Active Private Spaceports,” Accessed on April 18, 2022, https://www.faa.gov/space/additional_information/faq/

While cargo aircraft are relatively sedentary in their acceleration profiles, a rocket can produce more G-forces than fighter aircraft. NASA and civilian space companies recognize this and limit flight parameters for the protection of cargo. Despite acceleration limitations, G-forces must be considered when planning the operational usage of rocket cargo. While most military equipment is hardened, the 6 Gs of force experienced in some rocket launches are neither a typical design parameter for ground equipment, especially finely calibrated weapons and sensor systems, nor a typical screening criterion for ground personnel, and should be considered in operational planning for Rocket Logistics.

Figure 2 outlines the G-force limitations expected on the SpaceX Starship rocket, which is currently in the prototype testing phase of development, and outlines how a Starship cargo will likely experience up to 6 Gs of axial acceleration and 2 Gs of lateral acceleration with a maximum of 6.5 Gs of total acceleration. [10] This level of acceleration is similar to that experienced by Soyuz astronauts (~6 Gs) during landings, but is more than the 4-6 Gs that can cause untrained humans to lose consciousness. [11] Consequently, either additional training and medical standards would be required for Rocket Logistics capable units or the acceleration profile would need to be limited to reduce the risk of losing consciousness. Additionally, mission planning would need to consider G-force effects on cargo types to reduce damage to the payload.

A picture containing graphical user interfaceDescription automatically generated

Figure 2: Payload Maximum Design Load Factors. Source: Space Exploration Technologies Corp, “Starship Users Guide,” Modified on March 2020, https://www.spacex.com/media/starship_users_guide_v1.pdf

Rocket cargo is limited by both weight and volume, similar to aircraft, due to high costs and the engineering characteristics of rockets. Planners and procurement officials must factor these constraints into their strategic, operational. and procurement plans. A financial constraint is the cost of launch; for current operational rockets, the cheapest launch cost per kg to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is $1,500 per kg offered by the Falcon Heavy. [12] Physical constraints are the dimensions of the cargo capsule; the Falcon Heavy is limited to carrying cargo that fits in its cylindrical fairing, 5.2m in diameter by 18.7m in height, with a tapered nose as shown in Figure 3. Operationally, these dimensions would allow the Falcon Heavy to carry a single M1A1 tank or a single MH-60R with rotor blades folded. [13] Future equipment procurement may need to consider rocket dimensions and procure foldable and collapsible systems, as all of the services currently do to fit vehicles, helicopters, and tactical aircraft on cargo aircraft and warships.

Figure 3: Falcon Heavy (With Fairing Dimensions). Source: Space Exploration Technologies Corp, “Falcon Users guide,” Modified on September 2021, https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon-users-guide-2021-09.pdf

While SpaceX claims a 100-ton payload and the potential to reach a launch cost of $10 per kg with its next-generation rocket, the cost numbers require significant and rapid reusability which has yet to be operationally proven. [14] In other words, SpaceX purports pricing based on as-yet-unconfirmed capabilities. Thus, for shorter distances, close to existing American military bases, Rocket Logistics is unlikely to be cost-effective compared to air cargo. However, long-distance missions to Europe, Africa, the Pacific, southern South America, and Antarctica are more suitable missions for this approach.

While speed, practice, and anticipation can limit the ground time before the launch of a rocket cargo mission, ground time must still be considered for Rocket Logistics’ operational utility. As with aircraft flight planning, mission planning should include orbital trajectory selection and landing location. Currently, a fully manufactured and certified rocket system typically needs at least 24 hours to go from storage to launch. For example, Space X’s Falcon 9 cargo capsule is delivered to the launch pad and mated to the booster rocket in the 24 hours leading up to a scheduled launch. [15] NASA Astronauts currently board SpaceX's crew capsule 135 minutes prior to flight. [16] SpaceX can fuel its current rocket, the Falcon 9, just 35 minutes prior to launch. [17] As it has gained operational experience, SpaceX has progressively made these launch preparation timelines significantly more aggressive. Thus, a more expedited and streamlined ground experience for the launching of time-sensitive cargo is likely possible, making Rocket Logistics an even more appealing option for rapid global operations.

To achieve orbital or near-orbital velocities and altitudes, current and near-future rocket systems require the assistance of boosters, motherships, or other systems, which return to the launch site or are disposed of. While this process significantly improves the efficiency of the final stage of the rocket vehicle, it limits operations. Unlike a cargo aircraft or helicopter that can carry enough fuel or be refueled in flight, rockets for the foreseeable future will not be able to fly to an expeditionary location and return. The cargo and personnel that deploy via Rocket Logistics must find another way to exit the battlefield. This limitation is no different than traditional airborne infantry operations; however, the difference with rocket cargo is that the delivery mechanism costs significantly more than a parachute and may contain technology that the United States does not want adversaries to obtain. Additionally, Rocket Logistics' ability to deliver significantly further from friendly lines complicates extraction planning and resupply. Operational commanders will need to plan for the extraction of rocket-deployed personnel by air, land, or sea. Only resupply or reinforcement can be done with additional space flights.

Conventional Warfare and Rocket Logistics

The 2018 National Defense Strategy states that U.S. forces must be “strategically predictable, but operationally unpredictable. [18] This concept is useful for employment against strategic competitors but poses significant challenges for the logistics enterprise. In recent years, senior leaders have relied on conventional warfare principles such as Agile Combat Employment (ACE) and Dynamic Force Employment (DFE). The ACE methodology relies less on the large overseas base structure as hubs for projecting combat power and more on the U.S.’s ability to quickly launch, recover, and maintain aircraft from dispersed forward operating locations working closely alongside partners and allies. [19] Similarly, DFE’s goal is to provide options for unpredictable and scalable employment of the Joint force while still maintaining control of the capacity and capability for major combat operations. [20] Both employment methods provide the means needed today to defeat long-term strategic competitors but are an incredible challenge to execute and maintain logistically. Our ability to integrate with allies and partners through DFE, military posture, and contingency operations will challenge adversaries, as long as the U.S. has the logistical capabilities required for these operations. [21]

If the U.S. were to transition from competition to conflict, Rocket Logistics would be a key addition to ACE and DFE capabilities and would complement USTRANSCOM’s existing air, sea, and land operations. Unlike Operations Desert Storm and Enduring Freedom , strategic competitors are far less likely to allow prolonged force build-up. The logistics enterprise must develop innovative support and resupply concepts that do not depend on traditional distribution networks and processes. [22] A rapid-deploying, large-capacity solution is required, which Rocket Logistics would fill. Rocket Logistics mission applications can range from humanitarian aid to contingency response. In concert with other logistical modes, it can be the solution to not only deter an adversary from further aggression but also, in case of conflict, provide the operational endurance commanders need for freedom of action and operational reach in future conventional warfare. When the U.S. rapidly forward-deploys strategic assets in future crises, Rocket Logistics could expedite the coinciding maintenance packages and airbase assets such as Basic Expeditionary Airfield Resources (BEAR) or combat communications, ensuring that operational command and control and critical deployed capabilities are supported, maintained, and integrated into the broader effort.

Additionally, if able to transfer hazardous materials, Rocket Logistics would be an ideal transport mode for munitions movements or fuel resupply, especially in austere locations. Besides delivering supplies, personnel, and equipment to land forces in contingency operations, Rocket Logistics could deliver high-value, urgent supplies to deployed naval forces far from friendly ports, without the need for lengthy transit of supplies through foreign countries and foreign customs procedures. As warships do not carry spare parts for every eventuality, the failure of a critical component may significantly reduce its operational capacity. Rocket Logistics could deliver repair parts and personnel in less time than it takes to draft, route, and submit the required casualty report (CASREP) to request higher-level maintenance support.

Impacts of Rocket Logistics on Asymmetric and Irregular Warfare

U.S. Army Special Operations doctrine outlines the effectiveness of “surprise achieved through speed, stealth, audacity, deception, and new tactics or techniques.” [23] Rocket Logistics has the potential to be an audacious new technique that quickly delivers SOF behind enemy lines and in unexpected locations, but it would sacrifice stealth to do so.

Currently, SOF teams deploy using aircraft, helicopters, and submarines. Air Force Special Operations Command employs specialized C-130s and V-22s to deliver SOF and supplies to the battlefield. [24] These cargo and tilt-rotor aircraft may require aerial refueling or a landing platform near the target area which may supply warning to potential target locations and enable an adversary to intercept the aircraft with air defense systems. In contrast, submarine deployed SOF teams have maximum stealth, but are limited to near coastal areas and require multi-day and multi-week trips to reach most target areas. [25]

Rocket Logistics provides an alternative for SOF delivery to the battlefield. With an under 90-minute transit time, a rocket can deliver a team from the United States faster than a C-130 from a friendly airfield or a tilt-rotor aircraft operating from an off-shore warship. Thus, Rocket Logistics will likely find a significant niche for time sensitive SOF targets like hostage rescue, terrorists, and mobile Weapons of Mass Destruction facilities. Rocket delivery from the Continental United States (CONUS) allows SOF forces to spend more time at home station training vice forward deployments on a ship, submarine, or austere location without access to high-quality training facilities.

As mentioned previously, Rocket Logistics missions will not require overflight clearances from countries along their route to the mission area. Removing this bureaucratic hurdle can dramatically accelerate the response time of SOF units, especially when unfriendly nations close the intervening airspace to U.S. aircraft, forcing significant detours. This characteristic means that Rocket Logistics has the potential to allow forces into areas that are otherwise politically difficult to access. Rocket Logistics will still require landing clearances. Landing clearances routinely require 14-30 days, but emergency requests may be granted in hours.

Despite the advantages of speed and operational flexibility, Rocket Logistics has some operational limitations uniquely applicable to SOF. Due to international treaties, the United States currently announces all rocket launches at least 24 hours prior to departure. [26] While adversaries will not know the final destination, they will know when a launch is scheduled. Once the rocket is in flight, sophisticated adversaries may engage with ballistic missile defense systems and identify the landing site rapidly after a team deploys on the ground. This vulnerability is significantly different from airborne delivered SOF teams flying below the radar horizon and submarine deployed teams. Most adversaries will likely have the capability of detecting the rocket in the descent phase either by sight, hearing, or radar and can easily observe the rocket’s thermal signature as it reenters the atmosphere due to the heating effects of the air friction.

While submarine, tilt-rotor, and helicopter-delivered SOF can exfiltrate from the battlefield in the same manner they enter, parachute and rocket cargo delivered SOF must have an alternate extrication plan. Near-horizon rocket cargo technologies do not have the fuel to return to origin. The technology is a one-way ticket unless the DoD establishes intermediate staging bases (ISBs) stocked with spare boosters and fuel. ISBs in the Pacific and Sub-Saharan Africa could help facilitate the rapid movement of SOF teams and casualties between U.S. bases and these areas of operation with onward travel by other means.

More than just supporting traditional SOF missions, Rocket Logistics could facilitate new types of missions. The United States and its allies constantly compete with China and Russia but only rarely do so via direct military confrontations. Russia and China seek to change the status quo by changing the situation on the ground – delivering troops or fishing fleets to occupy territory. China’s fishing fleet has also hindered the resupply of disputed islands. [27] During grey zone competition, when the U.S., Russia, and China are refraining from direct military confrontation, Rocket Logistics-delivered personnel could rapidly deploy. A rapid repositioning has the potential to rebalance a situation to America’s benefit, giving the U.S. the ability to quickly occupy contested territory. China or Russia would then have the difficult task of dislodging American forces. If such units are isolated or blockaded, Rocket Logistics can provide resupply in an environment where an airfield might not be available.

Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Response Missions

The unique aspects of Rocket Logistics provide critical capabilities in disaster response, either natural or anthropogenic. While it will not provide the cargo capacity needed to mitigate disasters for large populations, the immediacy of the response and the unique landing capabilities can provide necessary solutions that are otherwise unavailable. Historical analyses of previous earthquakes have shown that the greatest demand for emergency medical services occurs within 24 hours of disaster onset. [28] Immediate deployment of medical personnel and a mobile hospital could begin triage and treatment for those whose injuries cannot wait the 24-36 hours it could take for aid to arrive through commercial or military aircraft. Similarly, the deployment of an advanced assessment team could provide situational awareness and support for the major aid force that will follow. Such a unit could carry drones, water testing equipment, environmental sensors, and communication networks to provide international first responders, such as USAID (United States Agency for International Development), awareness of the extent of devastation and the availability of basic services. This team would assist subsequent response organizations in bringing the correct resources to the areas of highest need, easing and accelerating the disaster relief effort. A rocket-deployed advanced team would be most critical in disasters that destroy existing governance structures, as these institutions are unable to provide early data on humanitarian needs to aid organizations, delaying an effective response.

With the right training and expertise, a rapidly deploying team could mitigate the severity of a disaster by responding before the situation passes a critical point of escalation. For example, a quicker response might have mitigated the harm caused by the coolant failure at Fukushima, where the first hydrogen explosion occurred 24 hours after the tsunami damaged the reactor. [29] Rapid response teams would also be helpful in building levees before a dam collapse or delivering iodine pills after a nuclear disaster. In these cases, swift action reduces the impact of a disaster, potentially offsetting the additional cost of using Rocket Logistics. This dynamic adds just-in-time mitigation and prevention techniques to consequence management for the disaster response toolkit. With the rapid capabilities of Rocket Logistics, the Departments of State and Defense will need to spearhead new procedures and methods for expediting diplomatic permissions with international partners.

Rocket Logistics has the ability to expedite disaster response in isolated regions. There are many reasons that a disaster location or an affected population might be difficult to access by other means. As seen in the case of Tropical Cyclone Eloise’s landfall in Mozambique in 2021, the tyranny of distance may inhibit a humanitarian response. On the continents of Africa and South America, and in the island nations of the Pacific, runways for large-fixed wing aircraft either do not exist or could be damaged by the disaster. Rotary-wing assets would be more versatile with respect to landing requirements, but their range is limited as shown in figure 4. [30] Rotary-wing ranges could be extended by using tilt-rotor aircraft, aerial refueling, and lily pad resupply. However, due to crew-day limitations, rotary-wing employment is difficult over longer distances; a constraint not observed with Rocket Logistics. Additionally, since the descent capsule would not have an air-breathing engine like other aircraft, it could enter places where volcanic ash, dust, or sand would preclude the use of other insertion techniques.

Figure 4: Range of UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopter, flying from Dakar, Djibouti, Nairobi, or Pretoria. Source: Google LLC, “Google Maps,” Accessed on April 18, 2022, https://www.google.com/maps/ .

In addition to how Rocket Logistics can help in the actual conduct of disaster response, they also provide clear and essential messaging. As the first international response on the ground, Rocket Logistics allows the U.S. to influence the narrative. An immediate presence within the affected area demonstrates U.S. commitment to its allies and its value as a Partner. Such messaging improves the perceived ability of the U.S. to respond to global security crises.

Weaknesses and Vulnerabilities of Rocket Logistics

Rocket Logistics exposes the U.S. military to vulnerabilities that our global competitors may attempt to exploit in a future conflict, putting military operations, personnel, and assets at risk. The most critical vulnerability is cyber, as Rocket Logistics craft will be heavily dependent on computer systems for navigation and control. Thus, adversaries will likely target space systems via cyber-attacks and intrusions. Malicious forces will likely attempt to infiltrate the supply chain and inject malware to disrupt or degrade critical spacecraft and launch systems. While the rocket will likely operate autonomously with internal navigation, these systems are vulnerable pre-launch and will probably be built on commercial systems that are not as secure as military platforms. Space systems must be protected from adversarial threats as we consider using Rocket Logistics to transport cargo and personnel for U.S. military operations. At the speeds being traveled (about 7.79 kilometers per second), [31] manual control would likely lead to the delivery being many miles off target and to mission failure as a single second of delay in initiation of the deorbit thruster burn could lead to a significant variance in landing location.

As an emerging capability, Rocket Logistics can provide more options to policymakers in Washington and more capabilities to deployed forces. In the initial phases of crises today, America’s political leaders ask the locations of the nearest Carrier Battle Group, Special Forces Group, or Marine Expeditionary Unit and how quickly they can respond. In a future military with Rocket Logistics, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be able to offer policymakers rocket-launched SOF and conventional units as additional options. Rocket-delivered forces will respond faster, potentially reducing the severity of future crises.

However, Rocket Logistics is still an emerging, niche capability. Like the early days of Air Mobility, Rocket Logistics is suitable for high-value, low-weight cargo – SOF team delivery, HA/DR advance teams, and critical resupply for conventional forces far from existing support infrastructure. Changes in equipment procurement, basing, personnel screening, diplomatic procedures, and training will ensure the DoD can take full advantage of this emerging logistical capability and mitigate some of its vulnerabilities. As we have seen with air cargo, over the past century, this capability will expand over time as its relative cost decreases and may absorb some missions from air cargo in the future. Rocket Logistics' key advantages – the speed and ability to evade airspace restrictions – deliver operational flexibility and additional operational security benefits that can deliver results on tomorrow’s battlefield.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official policy or position of Joint Forces Staff College, National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

[1] Joint Publication 4-0: Joint Logistics , I-1, https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp4_0ch1.pdf?ver=2020-07-20-083800-823

[2] "Instant Landing Pads for Artemis Lunar Missions," last modified April 7, 2020, https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2020_Phase_I_Phase_II/Instant_Landing_Pads_for_Artemis_Lunar_Missions/

[3] “Autonomous Precision Landing of Space Rockets,” accessed October 25, 2021, naefrontiers.org/55374/Paper

[4] “Rocket Cargo for Agile Global Logistics,” accessed October 25, 2021, https://afresearchlab.com/technology/successstories/rocket-cargo-for-agile-global-logistics/

[5] “U.S. Military Looking into Rockets to Deliver Goods Around the World,” last modified June 8, 2021, https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/rocket-air-force-cargo-delivery-b1861876.html

[6] “The Falcon 9 may now be the safest rocket ever launched,” Ars Technica, last modified Feburary 3, 2022, https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/02/spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-has-set-a-record-for-most-consecutive-successes/

[7] “Starship Users Guide,” Space Exploration Technologies Corp, last modified March 2020, https://www.spacex.com/media/starship_users_guide_v1.pdf

[8] “Space Transportation Cost,” Futron Corp, last modified September 6, 2002, https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/36996100/space-transportation-costs-trends-in-price-per-pound-to-orbit-/4

[9] “Launcher One User Guide,” Virgin Orbit LLC, last modified August 2020, https://virginorbit.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/LauncherOne-Service-Guide-August-2020.pdf

[10] Space Exploration Technologies Corp, “Starship Users Guide.”

[11] “Astronaut, Cosmonaut in 'Good Health' After Surviving Soyuz Rocket Launch Failure,” last modified October 12, 2018, https://www.space.com/42109-soyuz-launch-failure-astronaut-crew-good-health.html ; “Intense Video of Flight Students Undergoing High G Training,” last modified October 9, 2015, https://www.businessinsider.com/intense-video-of-flight-students-undergoing-high-g-training-2015-10?r=US&IR=T .

[12] “Space Launch to Low Earth Orbit: How Much Does It Cost?,” Roberts, Thomas G., last modified September 2, 2020, https://aerospace.csis.org/data/space-launch-to-low-earth-orbit-how-much-does-it-cost/

[13] “Falcon Users guide,” Space Exploration Technologies Corp, last modified September 2021, https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon-users-guide-2021-09.pdf ; “M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank,” accessed October 20, 2021,

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/m1-specs.htm ; “MH-60R Trifold,” accessed October 22, 2021, https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-martin/rms/documents/mh-60/MH-60R-trifold.pdf .

[14] “Elon Musk Reiterates Insanely Low Starship Launch Costs Of $10/kg,” last modified November 18, 2020, https://wccftech.com/elon-musk-starship-launch-cost-reiterate/

[15] “SPACEX CRS 6 Mission,” SpaceX, last modified April 2015, https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/SpaceX_NASA_CRS-6_PressKit.pdf

[16] “How SpaceX's Crew Dragon Demo-2 Mission Will Work in 13 Steps,” last modified May 18, 2020, https://www.space.com/spacex-crew-dragon-demo-2-step-by-step.html

[17] “NASA approves “load-and-go” fueling for SpaceX commercial crew launches,” Space News, last modified August 18, 2018, https://spacenews.com/nasa-approves-load-and-go-fueling-for-spacex-commercial-crew-launches/

[18] “Dynamic Force Employment,” accessed October 22, 2021, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/dynamic-force-employment.htm

[19] “Command and Control for Agile Combat Employment,” Wild Blue Yonder, last modified August 30, 2021, https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Wild-Blue-Yonder/Article-Display/Article/2753756/command-and-control-for-agile-combat-employment/

[20] “Dynamic Force Employment,” Headquarters Marine Corps, last modified August 2, 2021, https://www.marines.mil/News/News-Display/Article/2708002/dynamic-force-employment/

[21] Headquarters Marine Corps, “Dynamic Force Employment.”

[22] “Logistics Under Fire: Changes for Meeting Dynamically Employed Forces,” National Defense University Press, last modified JFQ100, 1Q 2021, https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/jfq/jfq-100/jfq-100_57-19_Myers-et-al.pdf?ver=kfk0emD9LVkOwykSE2lWRA%3D%3D

[23] Department of the Army, “Army Special Operations Forces, Unconventional Warfare.”

[24] “Air Force Special Operations Command,” accessed October 20, 2021, https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104528/air-force-special-operations-command/

[25] Richard R. Burgess, “Covert Delivery: Two New Submersibles Add Capability and Capacity to Special Operations,” Sea Power 63, no. 8 (October 1, 2020): 30–32, https://eds-p-ebscohost-com.nduezproxy.idm.oclc.org/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=903d8941-c6e3-4894-b167-b1242b5e74de%40redis

[26] "Agreement Between The United States of America and The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Notifications of Launches of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missiles (Ballistic Missile Launch Notification Agreement)," last accessed November 8, 2021, https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/trty/187150.htm < Caution-https://2009-2017.state.gov/t/avc/trty/187150.htm

[27] “A Short History of China's Fishing Militia and What It May Tell Us,” last modified April 6, 2020, https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/04/a-short-history-of-chinas-fishing-militia-and-what.html

[28] David A. Warrell, Timothy M. Cox, Edward J. Benz, Jr., and John D. Firth, Oxford Textbook of Medicine , 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 997, https://books.google.de/books?id=_s65U1n9Lf8C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

[29] “The Fukushima Daiichi Accident,” International Atomic Energy Agency, last modified August 2015, https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1710-ReportByTheDG-Web.pdf

[30] “UH-60A/L Black Hawk Helicopter,” last accessed October 25, 2021, https://www.military.com/equipment/uh-60a-l-black-hawk

[31] “Orbital Parameters: Low Earth Circular Orbits,” Australian Space Academy, accessed October 21, 2021, http://www.spaceacademy.net.au/watch/track/leopars.htm

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Because War Matters: The Communications Problem in Strategic Studies

Phillip dolitsky.

Phillip Dolitsky is a master’s student at the School of International Service at American University. He is working towards becoming a strategic theorist, focusing on the intersection between strategy, military ethics, and classical realism. He wrote his master’s thesis on a Machiavellian approach to Israeli counterterrorism strategy.

“War is the Father of All Things”- Heraclitus[i]

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you- Leon Trotsky[ii]

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, International Relations scholars are scrambling to see what this means for the various theories of world politics. Although classical realists are not likely fazed by Vladimir Putin’s actions,[iii] there will undoubtedly be a plethora of scholarship in the next few decades dedicated to addressing the assumptions that were proven wrong by the invasion of Ukraine (i.e., the decline of major war, the facets of strategic coercion and the role of nuclear deterrence in both). Some have already started building the onramps.[iv] Yet while scholars and practitioners watch the war unfold with dread and begin analyzing its perplexing qualities, many Americans, from today’s youth to sitting US congressmen, seem uninterested and indifferent; they do not see any legitimate reason why a war so far away should matter to them.[v] So while military historians, strategists and scholars witness the return of great power rivalry in the form of competition and armed conflict, with all of its nasty and brutish characteristics, those outside the academic study of international relations are unavailable for comment.

Perhaps there is a simple explanation as to why so few paid keen attention to the war in Ukraine: there was already enough to worry about. There is no doubt that the war in Ukraine came at an already tumultuous time. The COVID Pandemic, rising inflation, ugly domestic politics in the US and abroad, the fall of Kabul— every news cycle seems to compete for our current attention. A war in a distant country lacks the immediacy, urgency and tangibility that rising grocery prices have. In other words, much of the world was distracted by more pressing problems. Yet it seems that this explanation mistakes the tree for the forest. War is perhaps the most distracting and pressing phenomenon that affects the world. War has altered the landscape of history more than any other force. Those of us who study strategy know it to be true; why not the masses? For strategic studies to thrive, we must convey to the average citizen the most basic truth of strategic studies, the truth that explains the discipline’s existence and exonerates the language we use: war matters . War and the fear of war have been, by far, “the most powerful among the influences that have shaped the course of international relations over the past two centuries.”[vi] The disciplines considerable lack of conveying to the public is the fundament upon which the study of war and strategy sits and is what we may dub the “communications problem” in strategic studies. It is to explaining the chasm that separates the world of strategic studies and the general public that this essay now turns.

On Modern Attitudes Toward War

To bridge the gap, a proper understanding of the problem is the first step. Much of the gap is likely explained by the contemporary disdain for all things war. Of course, disdain for war is not new. Writing nearly 50 years ago, Bernard Brodie noted that “we have to disabuse ourselves of the notion that a feeling of distaste for war and of repudiation of its awful characteristics and consequences is a uniquely recent development. There are confirmations of such rejection among sensitive people in the past, but usually ambivalently, as though the sense of being appalled were coupled with a sense of the necessity of accepting that which is appalling—and even finding pleasure in it.”[vii] Today, however, that ambivalence is surely lacking. Even in 1973, Brodie saw that in modern times, “there is often an added dimension that was lacking [in earlier anti-war sentiments]: a sense of disgust and horror at something intrinsically evil.”[viii] That disgust has increased exponentially, especially among Gen Z and Millennials.

There is an irony at play with modern attitudes toward war. Globalization, spurred by technological innovation has made the world not only more connected but also more readily accessible. Families do not need to gather around the radio for the nightly broadcast to hear about events in far off countries; a glance at your phone can provide that information. Yet, Gen Z and Millennials are much more domestically focused than globally. A major study published by the Red Cross revealed that Millennials around the world view corruption, unemployment and poverty as issues more important than war and armed conflict.[ix] In America, nearly half of Gen Z believes that US foreign policy should prioritize climate change, whereas a mere 12% say it should focus on countering Chinese aggression.[x] Moreover, and herein lay a significant departure from past attitudes toward war, many think that war and conflict can be avoided altogether. Not specific wars, but war writ large; nearly 74% of Millennials share this view.[xi]

What accounts for these modern attitudes toward war is a separate essay (if not a multitude of books) in its own right. To be sure, there are many explanations. But high on that list must be the ever-growing ignorance of history that plagues the West. A sort of historical amnesia runs rampant throughout the modern condition, in some ways motivated by the false belief that society has triumphed so much so that everything that came before the present moment has no value to tomorrow; false utopianism breeds apathy towards the past.[xii] Moreover, there is a sad belief that Western governments have been agents of colonialism and subjugation, more than they have been agents of good.[xiii] Couple this historical (ahistorical?) attitude with the fact that many of those who bore witness to the global conflagration and evil of 1939-1945 are no longer with us, and you get the disdain, apathy, and contempt for all things war in the 21st century. If Sir Michael Howard thought it was hard “to convince the peoples of Western Europe that there is, or plausibly might be, a ‘threat to national survival’” in 1979, a problem exacerbated because that generation had “no experience of the Second World War and its aftermath,” it has only gotten harder.[xiv] Strategic studies and military history need to find ways to have their work be accessible and persuasive to the current, dominant discourse. Some convincing is necessary.

On Current Strategic Scholarship

The scholarship that strategic studies produces is often directed towards one of two groups of people. At times, it is written by the people for the people—in the discipline, that is. The highly specialized language is used without clarification, assumptions of first principles already implied. Even the word that defines the discipline, “strategy,” has so many definitions, [xv] each meaning totally different things, connoting so many different ways of thinking, that those within the discipline surely get confused as to an author’s true intent; some have rightly raised the alarm for more effective strategic writing.[xvi] The problem of ambiguous language is all the more acute for those on the outside, who nearly always assume “strategy” means “plan.” “Terrorism,” an activity that is more easily recognized than it is defined, boasts at least 200 definitions, from the disturbingly broad to the oversaturated, hyper-specific and constrained.[xvii] Moreover, it is hard to recommend any recent works on strategy that are able to be understood by those who don’t have tattered copies of Carl von Clausewitz’s On War on their shelves, yet even the great Prussian general’s tract is at times notoriously unclear. Perhaps one example: Clausewitz’s most famous dictum (although not his own), that “war is a continuation of politics by other means” is not such a simple aphorism in its own right, but suffers from a severe translation issue. Hew Strachan has noted that in the original German, Clausewitz used the word politik , a word that can either mean “politics” or “policy,” each with radically different meanings. But since Michael Howard and Peter Paret’s translation is the standard one in the English speaking world, a very significant textual question has been swept away, and with it the ramifications of future studies.[xviii] In this regard, those few floors in the Ivory Tower dedicated to war and strategy resemble an Ivory Prison more than other fields of inquiry. You truly need to be on the inside to understand what is going on. Visitation hours are nonexistent or kept to a bare minimum.

But there is another type of scholarship that so many try to produce: “policy relevant” scholarship.[xix] Professor Francis Gavin notes that “there has been a vigorous effort within the disciplines of political science and strategic studies to encourage scholars to become what is termed ‘policy relevant.’” Spurred on by “array of activities, including fellowships in government, training in opinion writing and media engagement, and funds,” scholars compete for the ear of the policy maker.[xx] To be sure, few things must be as exhilarating as influencing history in the here and now. But this type of relevance is shortsighted. If we cannot inspire the next generation of policy leaders to appreciate war and strategy, no amount of “relevance” will matter. If our thinking about an American defense of Taiwan falls on the ears of citizens who care not for war, who remain completely unaware of how precarious peace is and who elect leaders who share their disdain for international politics and strategy, the discipline will become as relevant as the dinosaurs.[xxi] Strategic studies needs to shift at least some of its attention to becoming a different type of relevant; relevant to the public.

The Main Thing is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

Much of the literature about communicating war is within the context of “selling” a given war and the policies therein, for “even the most justified military campaigns have required more and more hard sell.”[xxii] No longer are the days where war was the exclusive preserve of states and elites; public support is an integral part of a polity’s war plans and operations. Today, “no contemporary government war effort is complete without its Media Operations Centre with dozens of specialists working on the Events Grid, the Master Messages, Scripts, or Rebuttals along the lines of a political election campaign.”[xxiii] But both governments and scholars need to communicate war—its aims, its pressing importance, how it fulfills the state’s needs—before the tanks rolls in.[xxiv] This means taking stock of the blessings the current world order, carved in the blood of war, has bestowed upon us, and convincingly demonstrating how fragile our world truly is.[xxv] If hubris is a cause of war, it is also the cause of destruction.

In order to be relevant to the masses, especially to my generation of Millennials who haven’t witnessed war in the same way my parents and grandparents did, strategic studies needs to communicate the fact that “war and the fear of war have been by far the most powerful among the influences that have shaped the course of international relations over the past two centuries.”[xxvi] It is vital to tell the public that “war has made the modern world more than has any other influence.”[xxvii] It has also unmade the modern world several times. Of course, there is more to history than war and peace (technological change, medical innovation, etc.), but “the strategic dimension to international relations has been by far the most significant of the influences shaping events.”[xxviii] Perhaps the public understands the significance of a particular battle. But an appreciation for the seismic shifts that war inflicts on society? With perhaps one notable exception, Margaret MacMillan’s War: How Conflict Shaped Us , we have yet to scream this from the hilltops in a way digestible to the average citizen. [xxix] We have yet to convince so many of our neighbors that the answer to “why should one care about war?” is “ because war matters. The stakes at play in the international system are simply too high to discount it. ” If the disdain for traditional history identified earlier has led to presentism, articulating the long view of history—what has changed versus what has remained constant—is undoubtedly part of the solution.

Perhaps two suggestions on bridging the gap between the discipline’s recognition of the importance of war and the public’s apathy to war. First, it is imperative that in explaining the nature of our study, strategists and military historians counteract both the claims of our obsession with violence and of peaceful trends in the human condition.

Critics both in and out of the academy claim that strategists and military historians are fascinated by violence. They claim that strategists are emotionless when they discuss, for instance, potential nuclear holocausts.[xxx] In the introduction to one of his many brilliant works on nuclear strategy, Bernard Brodie summed it up best: “Who can enjoy finding himself in a position which, besides being somewhat lonely intellectually, seems by contrast with that of the opposition to be more than a little insensitive, heartless, and even wicked?”[xxxi] We must not allow ourselves to be branded as preoccupied with violence and destruction; we must dispel the notion that studying war with all its awesome consequences is somehow cold, heartless and violence obsessive. If we don’t level similar accusations against the oncologist for studying cancerous tumors, we ought to make clear that we too do not take some perverse pleasure in suffering and death. Indeed, the oncologist and strategist go about their professions in similar ways; to have a better tomorrow, we need to understand the evils of today. Si vis pacem, para bellum is our motto; we should strive for everyone to know that Latin phrase.[xxxii] Moreover, we need to counteract the fatalist claims leveled against strategic studies from our colleagues in peace studies. “Maybe if you stopped talking about war, it would go away!” is a frequent accusation leveled at the strategist. But we are not fatalists. We raise the siren in hopes of preventing catastrophe, not to welcome it.

It is of course uncomfortable to talk about war since war is fundamentally a human endeavor. From the soldiers who fight to the strategists who plan, to engage in war both physically and intellectually is to enter the often scary world of human nature. Mankind is, of course, uniquely capable of displaying acts of kindness and love. Yet, we have never been able to escape Thucydides’ triptych that we fight out of “fear, honor and interest,”[xxxiii] nor have we been able to alter human nature away from Hobbes’ understanding that we are inherently destructive, selfish, competitive, and aggressive.[xxxiv] We ought to remind those outside strategic studies and military history that studying war is, on some level, studying ourselves ; an endeavor that is equally frightening and enlightening.

On the other hand, much of strategic studies’ reception has been tainted by the advent of what some scholars call “Pinkerism.” The eminent cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker has argued in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature that society has become less violent and the frequency of wars are declining.[xxxv] Although Pinker’s work has been critiqued by the strategic studies community, it has seemed to take hold of the public writ large.[xxxvi] We are likely heading into another bloody century, the start of which was ushered in by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Falling prey to our apparently newfound virtues means a future world that will be unprepared for those demons Pinker simply chocks up to randomness.[xxxvii] The public needs to know this . They need to know that even if we are tapping into the better angels of our nature, complacency and wishful thinking in foreign policy has often led to disaster; we should not count on having more angelic actors than not.

A second approach, which might be met with disdain by those looking for book contracts only from publishing houses out of Yale and Oxford, is the writing of historical fiction. The novel, and at times the movie, has been influential in shaping the attitudes the public has towards war.[xxxviii] Catch-22 captivated the anti-war sentiment in the sixties, and its influence is still discussed today.[xxxix] An entire generation of Americans bore witness to the risks and occasional absurdity that surrounded nuclear weapons doctrine with Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, War Games and other movies.[xl] And of course, no intellectual history about the modern study of war is complete without noting the impact of H.G. Wells’ novels.[xli] To be sure— there are some recent novels written to explain the stakes of future war.[xlii] But we can, and should, do more. We must not only write works of futurology; we ought to write alternative historical fiction. Philip Roth is one writer whose works truly make a person grasp the severity of what can happen in the international arena if the bad guys win.[xliii] Historical fiction grounded in strong evidence about where we narrowly escaped catastrophe should stretch our collective imagination about what could have been. A United States where the South won, a world where appeasement was a farcical policy or where the Allies lost; those worlds should be dramatized, grounded in strong historical inquiry, and presented in moving prose. Fiction influenced the public sphere before and there is no reason why it cannot do so again. As great power rivalry rears its ugly head again, now is as great a time as ever.

Colin Gray once noted that those with an eye toward strategic history know that “nothing of real importance changes.”[xliv] Statecraft and strategy, at their core , remain unchanged and have for millennia; it is hard to argue that Alexander the Great or Napoleon or George Marshall would find themselves bewildered by today’s international arena. One such constant—perhaps the constant—is the fear and threat of war and its eventual outbreak. The use of violence for political ends is not going away. As Margaret MacMillan so eloquently notes: “it is not the time to avert our eyes from something we may find abhorrent. We must, more than ever, think about war.”[xlv] And while strategic studies continue to push the limits in scholarship and ideas, we must do what we must to bring the public into the fold. There will always be vigorous debate over what policy is wise, what causes we should die for; there is no one answer to any question in foreign policy. But we should hope that the public understands the stakes at play in the international system. Clausewitz is unlikely to enter into the lexicon of the public at large. But we should hope that we can at least inspire the public to see the significance in what he revolutionized; the forever important study of war.

[i] Heraclitus, Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus, trans. Brooks Haxton (New York: Penguin Books, 2003) 22B53 [ii] Quoted in Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, Fifth edition (New York: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2015), 29. [iii] Colin Gray, one of modernity’s most prolific classical realists, was quite prescient in his 2006 book, when he noted that a Russian invasion of Ukraine “would be intended not as a war, but rather as a vital step in the restoration of the Russian Empire,” a notion that Thucydides would readily recognize. See Colin S. Gray, Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare, Paperback ed, A Phoenix Paperback (London: Phoenix, 2006), 180. [iv] Antulio J. Echevarria II, “Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine in 2022: Implications for Strategic Studies,” Parameters 52, no. 2 (2022): 21–34, https://doi.org/doi:10.55540/0031-1723.3145. [v] Alyssa Lukpat and Emily Cochrane, “Rand Paul Holds up $40 Billion in Aid for Ukraine,” The New York Times, May 12, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/world/europe/rand-paul-ukraine-aid.html; Bill Drexel, “Ukraine War Portends a Leadership Challenge for Millennials,” Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2022, sec. Opinion, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-war-portends-a-leadership-challenge-for-milliennials-american-intervention-narratives-cold-war-11647632434. [vi] Colin S. Gray, War, Peace and International Relations: An Introduction to Strategic History, 2nd ed (Abingdon, UK : New York: Routledge, 2011). [vii] Bernard Brodie, War and Politics: A Mojor Statement on the Relations between Military Affairs and Statecraft by the Dean of American Civilian Strategists (New York: Macmillan [u.a.], 1973), 230. [viii] Brodie, 231. [ix] “They Didn’t Start the Fire: Millennial Views on War and Peace,” Campaign, International Committee of the Red Cross, January 9, 2020, https://www.icrc.org/en/millennials-on-war. [x] Samuel Barnett Alkoutami Natalie Thompson, Sandy, “How Gen Z Will Shake Up Foreign Policy,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, accessed November 22, 2022, https://carnegieendowment.org/2020/12/03/how-gen-z-will-shake-up-foreign-policy-pub-83377; “America Adrift,” Center for American Progress (blog), accessed November 22, 2022, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/america-adrift/; “The Clash of Generations and American Foreign Policy,” War on the Rocks, August 29, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/08/the-clash-of-generations-and-american-foreign-policy/. [xi] “They Didn’t Start the Fire.” [xii] Phillip Dolitsky, “The Disastrous Implications of Historical Amnesia,” The Imaginative Conservative (blog), January 10, 2021, https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2021/01/disastrous-implications-historical-amnesia-phillip-dolitsky.html; Eric Alterman, “The Decline of Historical Thinking,” The New Yorker, February 4, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-decline-of-historical-thinking; James Hankins, “How to Renew Traditional Historical Study in Graduate Schools,” The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal (blog), August 19, 2020, https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2020/08/how-to-renew-traditional-historical-study-in-graduate-schools/. [xiii] Some popular examples include. David Ignatius, “Opinion | Trump’s Betrayal of the Kurds Is Sickening to U.S. Soldiers,” Washington Post, October 15, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/for-us-soldiers-its-a-dagger-to-the-heart-to-abandon-the-kurds/2019/10/14/f0a1db60-eecf-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html; Dominic Tierney, “The Legacy of Obama’s ‘Worst Mistake,’” The Atlantic, April 15, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/04/obamas-worst-mistake-libya/478461/; Robert Malley Pomper Stephen, “Yemen Cannot Afford to Wait,” The Atlantic, April 5, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/us-culpable-yemens-tragedy/586558/. For scholarly works that are too keen on highlighting failures, see David Vine, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017); David Vine, The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State, California Series in Public Anthropology (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2020); Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, First Picador paperback edition (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). [xiv] Michael Howard, The Causes of Wars and Other Essays, 2nd ed., enl (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1984), 73. [xv] For only nine possible definitions, see John Baylis and James J. Wirtz, “Introduction: Strategy in the Contemporary World,” in Strategy in the Contemporary World (Oxford: Oxford, 2019), 4. To be sure, there are many more. [xvi] Lukas Milevski, “Enunciating Strategy: How to Talk about Strategy Effectively,” Military Strategy Magazine 7, no. 1 (Spring 2020): 18–25. [xvii] David J. Lonsdale and Thomas M. Kane, Understanding Contemporary Strategy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 300; Ben Saul, “Defining Terrorism: A Conceptual Minefield,” in The Oxford Handbook of Terrorism, ed. Erica Chenoweth et al. (Oxford University Press, 2019), https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198732914.001.0001. [xviii] Hew Strachan, The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 52. [xix] Here too, the meaning of “policy” changes from organization to organization. A standard definition is elusive. [xx] Francis J. Gavin, “Policy and the Publicly Minded Professor,” Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 1–2 (2017): 269–74. For more on the gap between scholars and policy makers, see Francis J. Gavin, “International Affairs of the Heart,” Yale Journal of International Affairs 7, no. 2 (September 2012): 1–8; Freedman, Lawrence, “Academics and Policy-Making: Rules of Engagement,” Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 1–2 (2017): 263–68; Christopher Preble, “Bridging the Gap: Managing Expectations, Improving Communications,” Journal of Strategic Studies 40, no. 1–2 (2017): 275–82. [xxi] We would be wise to find ways to make Michael Howard’s small yet difficult book relevant to the masses. Peace is an invention and needs to be maintained intrinsically. Defending Taiwan, for instance, is as much a function of peacetime than it is of wartime. See Michael Howard, The Invention of Peace: Reflections on War and International Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). [xxii] Jamie Shea, “Communicating War: The Gamekeeper’s Perspective,” in The Oxford Handbook of War, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199562930.001.0001. [xxiii] Shea. [xxiv] Elbridge Colby’s essay in Time Magazine is one good example. See “Why Protecting Taiwan Really Matters to the U.S.,” Time, accessed November 20, 2022, https://time.com/6221072/why-protecting-taiwan-really-matters-to-the-u-s/. [xxv] John Bew, “World Order: Many-Headed Monster or Noble Pursuit?,” Texas National Security Review, November 24, 2017, https://tnsr.org/2017/11/world-order-many-headed-monster-noble-pursuit/. [xxvi] Gray, War, Peace and International Relations. [xxvii] Gray. [xxviii] Gray. [xxix] Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us, Random House trade paperback edition (New York: Random House, 2021). [xxx] Baylis and Wirtz, “Introduction: Strategy in the Contemporary World,” 9. [xxxi] Bernard Brodie, Escalation and the Nuclear Option, Princeton Legacy Library (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). [xxxii] Perhaps the greatest exposition of this Latin maxim is in Edward Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, Rev. and enl. ed (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001). [xxxiii] Thucydides and Jeremy Mynott, The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge, UK New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). [xxxiv] Thomas Hobbes and David Johnston, Leviathan: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism, Second edition, A Norton Critical Edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2020). [xxxv] Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity (London: Penguin, 2012). [xxxvi] See the critiques in Christopher Coker, Can War Be Eliminated?, Global Futures (Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity, 2014); Christopher Coker, The Improbable War: China, the United States and the Continuing Logic of Great Power Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 173; Colin S. Gray, The Future of Strategy (Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA: Polity, 2015). [xxxvii] Eliot A. Cohen, The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power & the Necessity of Military Force (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 7–10. [xxxviii] Christopher Coker, Men at War: What Fiction Tells Us about Conflict, from the Iliad to Catch-22 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). [xxxix] Ron Rosenbaum, “Seeing Catch-22 Twice,” Slate.Com, August 2, 2011, https://slate.com/human-interest/2011/08/catch-22-the-awful-truth-people-miss-about-heller-s-great-novel.html. [xl] Freedman, Lawrence, “Lessons from Dr. Strangelove: How Fiction Helped Shape the Future of War,” National Post, March 12, 2018, https://nationalpost.com/opinion/lessons-from-dr-strangelove-how-fiction-helped-shape-the-future-of-war; Sean M. Maloney, Deconstructing Dr. Strangelove: The Secret History of Nuclear War Films (Lincoln [Nebraska]: Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2020). [xli] See the important discussion surrounding Wells’ impact in Lawrence Freedman, The Future of War: A History, First edition (New York: Public Affairs, 2017). [xlii] Elliot Ackerman and James Stavridis, 2034: A Novel of the next World War (New York: Penguin Press, 2021); P. W. Singer and August Cole, Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the next World War, First Mariner Books edition (Boston New York: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016) are perhaps the best two (only?) examples. [xliii] Philip Roth, The Plot against America, 1. Vintage international ed (London: Vintage, 2005). [xliv] Colin S. Gray, Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and Strategy, Pbk. ed (Washington, D.C: Potomac Books, 2009), chap. Nothing of Real Importance Changes: Modern History Is Not Modern. [xlv] MacMillan, War.

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About the Essay Competitions
Competition Rules
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SECDEF Essay Competition
CJCS Essay Competition

February 2025: Coordinators provide names of judges to NDU Press.

April 2025: Deadline for schools to submit nominated papers to NDU Press (POC: Jeff Smotherman, [email protected] ).

May 2025: Judges report first-round scores to NDU Press.

May 2025: Judges attend final-round conference at NDU.

For further information, please contact:

Jeff Smotherman Managing Editor 703-965-6949 [email protected]

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategic Essay Competitions

NDU Press hosted the final round of judging on May 16–17, 2024, during which 27 faculty judges from 16 participating professional military education (PME) institutions selected the best entries in each category. There were 97 submissions in this year’s three categories.

The 43rd annual competitions were intended to stimulate new approaches to coordinated civilian and military action from a broad spectrum of civilian and military students. Essays address U.S. Government structure, policies, capabilities, resources, and/or practices and provide creative, feasible ideas on how best to orchestrate the core competencies of our national security institution.

The purpose of this competition is to stimulate thinking about national security strategy, promote well-written research, and contribute to a broader security debate among professionals. NDU Press manages the competition in three phases, with assistance from coordinators and faculty judges representing each participating PME school. First, the schools conduct internal competitions and submit their best essays to NDU Press. Second, judges evaluate nominated essays from other schools virtually. Finally, judges travel to NDU for the final round conference to determine winners in each category.

Click here to read the competition rules

The 2024 Winning Essays

Strategic Research Paper

1 st PLACE Commander Thomas Krasnicki, USN Naval War College (Senior) “It’Considering the Utility of Modern Blockade in a Protracted Conflict With China”

Major Patrick Smith, USA Naval War College (Junior) “Celtic Security in the Atlantic: How Does Ireland Secure Europe’s Western Flank?”

3 rd PLACE Nicholas F. Caron, U.S. Senate Professional Staff Member Naval War College (Junior) “Admiral Rickover in the Pacific Rim: An Argument for U.S. Led Nuclear-Powered Attack Submarine Programs”

Strategy Article

1 st PLACE Colonel Richard Bell, USA, Lieutenant Colonel Elizabeth Goldsmith, USAF, Lieutenant Commander Robert Martinez, USN, and Lieutenant Colonel Donghyun Lee, Republic of Korea Army Joint Combined Warfighting School “Stop Talking to Yourself: Military Recruiting in the Modern Age”

2 nd PLACE Colonel Katie Gaetke, USAF, Commander Joe Jindrich, USN, and Major Thomas Killams, USAF Joint Combined Warfighting School “Incorporating Loss Aversion Bias in Military Planning and Risk Doctrine”

3 rd PLACE Lieutenant Colonel Richard N. DeRohan, USAF National War College “A Case to Strengthen Taiwan’s C2 Resilience”

For all 2024 competitions, the winning essays will be published in Joint Force Quarterly 115 (4th Quarter 2024), the CJCS professional military, interagency, and security studies journal. Authors of the first-, second-, and third-place essays will be recognized by the Secretary of Defense, CJCS, or NDU President with certificates and—if conditions permit—a personal meeting with the Secretary or Chairman.

This is a joint, interagency writing competition, and essays are expected to meet rigorous academic standards. Thus, senior faculty commitment in each participating college or school is an imperative for a healthy competition. Faculty essay coordinators are requested to actively promote and inform students of the opportunity to compete with their colleagues, and faculty judges are requested to make a significant investment of their time in reading and evaluating essays during both phases of judging.

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Space and Missile Defense

Us army working on new missile defense strategy with eye toward 2040.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – The U.S. Army is planning to release a refreshed missile defense strategy focused on needs in the 2040 timeframe to counter a wide variety of complex threats, according to Lt. Gen. Sean Gainey, the service’s Space and Missile Defense Command commander.

The command is targeting October 2025 to release the new strategy, a joint effort by the Space and Missile Defense Center of Excellence and Army Futures Command , as well as other service players such as the Army Air and Missile Defense Commands and the Fires Center of Excellence, he said during a press briefing at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium .

The Army is taking “an integrated approach to the strategy,” Gainey noted, and it will be nested in the Army’s multidomain operations doctrine and warfighting concepts.

The service previously released a strategic air and missile defense vision in 2018, which was focused on the 2028 time period. That strategy centered on structure and force organization, “but also what we fight with and how we fight well,” Gainey said. “But it’s time to look even further into the future.”

The new strategy will take into account “what we’ve learned from previous years and current conflicts to design the type of force we’ll need” to ensure an AMD force is successful in 2040, Gainey said.

Looking at ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and in the Middle East, Gainey noted, “It’s real easy to see the challenges that are out there.”

“We have an idea, we know currently how the threat is evolving and where we believe the threat is [in] the future,” Gainey said. “So, this strategy is going to allow us the opportunity to lay a foundation ... with capability and development to be able to address that future threat.”

Already the command has determined there are some imperatives that will be included in the future strategy.

“We know we will operate under constant observation and in continuous contact — 360-degree coverage is a non-negotiable,” he said.

The strategy also will recognize that technology used for missile defense must have an open architecture and use “all benefits” of artificial intelligence, Gainey noted.

Capability should also be “fast and cost curve-informed and adaptable,” he said.

Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist covering land warfare for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science degree in journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Kenyon College.

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Review Essay of Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War

Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies

Research Articles

Introduction

Defining Military Effectiveness

Operational Practices and Military Effectiveness

Defining Military Strategy

Strategy and Military Effectiveness

Strategy and Military Effectiveness in the First Arab-Israeli War

Early Stages of the First Arab-Israeli War

The Southern Front

Strategic Choice

Operation Yoav

Operation Horev

Counterarguments

Competing Interests

Military Strategy 101

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A Disconnected Philosophy

Identifying an Enemy is Passé

Col. Michael W. Pietrucha, USAF

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Academic Journals

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ground/m1-specs.htm ; “MH-60R Trifold,” accessed October 22, 2021, https://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed-martin/rms/documents/mh-60/MH-60R-trifold.pdf .

Military Strategy Essays

Because War Matters: The Communications Problem in Strategic Studies

On Modern Attitudes Toward War

On Current Strategic Scholarship

The Main Thing is to Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

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