The idea that one should study warfare and national security history, theory, and “science” in order to make instruments of national security more effective is so accepted within government and the military that is banal. In academia, it is substantially more controversial. Without giving into stereotypes of “tenured radicals” that are less valid today (a time of heightened cooperation between academics and the government on national security), it is eminently justifiable to point out that the intimate connection between government and academia fostered during World War II and the early years of the Cold War is a thing of the past. Moreover, the idea that the study of warfare in order to make one’s nation more effective at the winning of military operations, campaigns, and wars is vastly more controversial today than it has been in the past. However, it shouldn’t be–and enabling one’s forces to win is a noble goal for research and analysis.
Due to the sometimes hysterical nature of this subject, it is wise to tread lightly. Perhaps the best place to start is the problem of War Studies (the integrated field comprising international relations, military history, military science, and related social science fields) in America and its quest to justify its relevance. As academia became more specialized, history in turn began moving away from the study of pivotal events to the look at large-scale societal forces (Fernand Braudel’s work for example), and some scholars became actively hostile to government and the military, fields such as military and diplomatic history suffered. By the time the Cold War was done, War Studies had to make a desperate plea for its own relevance as the smaller field of Strategic Studies began to be seen by some as obsolescent.
War Studies scholars made three main arguments to save the field. First, they argued that war was central to the human experience and one cannot understand it purely through social history–combat history and theory is needed. Second, knowledge of war enables a better democracy because citizens need information about how to decide basic matters of national security. Finally, combat history and theory does not equate to a desire for war. These were all good arguments, even if many in the intended audience were not impressed by references to Thucydides or Clausewitz. Each argument can stand on its own as a valid reason for studying conflict. However, winning also matters and provides its own justification. Why?
Unless one is a complete pacifist, they will agree that force has a utility–even if it is a severely circumscribed one. In order for the use of force to be effective, a nation’s army and other organs of national security must be effective. Study of history and theory is one of the major sources of military effectiveness–especially since the last major war against an conventional opponent that inflicted serious operational defeats on an American force was during the Korean War. It is better to learn from other people’s mistakes (if you can) rather than your own. This is true whether one is waging a desperate defense of their homeland or an expeditionary conflict abroad. Operational excellence is a social good that is just as legitimate as any other real-world application of academic knowledge. While people may fervently disagree about the use of force, there are few who would deny its basic utility under some circumstances.
This is not an excuse to ignore the policy dimension, as a poor policy essentially ruins everything that flows from it. It is also not an excuse for history and research that tells policymaker what they want to hear regardless of the political, strategic, or moral consequences. But history and theory that not only illuminates and explains an important issue in War Studies but also has the added benefit of providing some level of assistance to making American military forces more operationally or tactically effective should be seen as commendable. The idea that one’s research should benefit those disadvantaged by society is commonly accepted in academia. But since the utility of force is universally accepted by people of most political persuasions (even if there is little commonality about how it should be used), it is difficult to see why the idea that one’s research should also make force more effective is not as commonly accepted as other academic interventions.
From the category archives:
Current Issues
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It is a tenet of modern strategic theory and practice that globalization has made local problems international. An ethnic revolt, tyrannical dictator, environmental disaster, or criminal gang’s operations in a distant land can have repercussions in Miami, Los Angeles, or New York. The problem is that these analyses start by stating a threat and then proceed to strategies for dealing with them. Rather, we ought to begin to think about our policy. [click to continue ...]
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As campy is it is (especially in light of Chuck Norris’ general canon), the trailer linked above represents one of decision-makers’ worst national security nightmares during the 1960s to the early 1980s: a hijacking and hostages scenario. What UCLA’s David Rapaport calls the “New Left Wave” of paramilitary terrorism featured a number of groups, ranging from highly competent state-supported terrorists with military training and tactical skill to disjointed student radicals playing Che with pipe bombs and poorly written “radical manifestos.” Many groups were somewhat in between. It is sometimes difficult to recognize it in today’s threat environment, but the state’s tactical and operational response to the New Left Wave’s tactical challenge is one of the great success stories in national security policy. [click to continue ...]
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I am something of a science fiction fan. I love things having to do with giant robots, artificial intelligence, aliens, etc. And as I’ve written with Crispin Burke, science fiction can be an interesting lens to look at present defense debates. One of the more interesting contemporary examples of this is Robert Heinlein’s novel Starship Troopers. [click to continue ...]
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One of the biggest hot-button issues in strategy today is limited war. The degree of restraint and the amount of force that can be employed without jeopardizing the mission is both an ethical and operational controversy in counterinsurgency theory and practice. There’s also a growing frustration over the way that the West has been constrained in utilizing force against irregulars and rogue states that do not play by the rules. Shelby Steele’s June 21 op-ed, “The Surrender of the West” typifies a certain kind of reaction to this feeling of futility. The problem, however, is that we have been living in an era of what might broadly can be called “limited warfare” for over sixty years. And this limit may be structural. [click to continue ...]
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Watching the counterinsurgency debate, I can’t help but observe two dueling strawmen. Critics of American COIN see it as armed nation-building and deride population-centric COIN as ahistorical and invalid. Some proponents of COIN respond to these criticisms by portraying the current mode of COIN as superior to a supposed alternative rooted in brutality towards the civilian population and “search and destroy” missions. In reality, however, there is no real practical difference between “enemy-centric” and “population-centric” COIN. Since COIN is a mission that matches military force against military force, it will by necessity focus on the enemy as the primary object, since it is the opponent’s presence that is causing the direct problem (as opposed to root one) that military force seeks to solve. It seems that the American COIN debate’s complications originate from factors outside of purely COIN theory and doctrine. [click to continue ...]
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To expand and simplify some of the issues I raised in the last post, I want to explore in greater depth the idea of OPFOR conventional high-end asymmetric challenges. The point raised in many discussions of anti-access and denial challenges by “hybrid” threats is that conventional tactical challenges and defeats by a state or non-state OPFOR is more likely due to technology diffusion. But what would happen after tactical setbacks? What strategic effect would these have? The implicit idea, it seems, is that a tactical challenge of a modern “Task Force Smith” would result in strategic deterrence of the West. We can explore some of the problems with this in several tactical sketches. [click to continue ...]
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DOD Buzz‘s Greg Grant reports on a panel on future warfare at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS):
“The best panel at CNAS’s annual conference on national security last week featured SOCOM commander Adm. Eric Olson, CSBA’s Jim Thomas, CNAS’ John Nagl and Brookings’ Peter Singer discussing a future force for future wars. One of its conclusions: Battlefield advantage has swung back in favor of the defender (see southern Lebanon, 2006; Route Irish, Baghdad, 2004-?), which is, after all, the historical norm. With the further maturation and proliferation of long-range precision guided weaponry and attendant open-source battle command networks, warfare may be entering the “post-power projection era.””
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Commentators have outdone themselves the past few days criticizing the now-immortal Afghanistan slide. Unfortunately, they’ve largely missed the point.
What are we really looking at in the chart? (It’s available, among other places, at Small Wars Journal.) Yes, it’s a presentation slide, but the figure itself is a causal loop diagram. The presentation package merely provides the frame, and the standard debate regarding the quality of DoD presentations is, at best, secondary here. Tom Fiddaman’s thoughts at MetaSD on the utility of causal loop diagrams are much more informed, balanced, and relevant.
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I have been looking forward to Dima Adamsky’s The Culture of Military Innovation: The Impact of Cultural Factors on the Revolution in Military Affairs in Russia, the United States, and Israel (very wordy title) for a while, so I was very excited when Stanford University Press sent me a review copy (I suppose I should note as a full disclosure that I regularly receive review copies from them as well as other publishers, free of charge). I have followed Adamsky’s work on the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and operational theory generally and have been eagerly awaiting his summary of how the RMA (or, the Military-Technical Revolution in Russia) concept diffused through three military cultures. [click to continue ...]
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