Understanding Military Doctrine: A Multidisciplinary Approach [1 ed.] 0415821649, 9780415821643, 1138477974, 9781138477971, 0203559347, 9780203559345, 1136760385, 9781136760389, 1136760318, 9781136760310, 1136760245, 9781136760242

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I Preliminaries
1 Outlines and sidelines
2 A history of military doctrine
Part II The anatomy of doctrine
3 Military thinking: an elusive undertaking
4 Doctrinal foundationalism
5 Doctrinal coherentism
6 On enculturation
7 Authority
Part III Why doctrine?
8 The utility of doctrine
9 Summary and conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Understanding Military Doctrine

This book puts military doctrine into a wider perspective, drawing on military history, philosophy, and political science. Military doctrines are institutional beliefs about what works in war; given the trauma of 9/11 and the ensuing ‘War on Terror’, serious divergences over what the message of the ‘new’ military doctrine ought to be were expected around the world. However, such questions are often drowned in ferocious meta-doctrinal disagreements. What is a doctrine, after all? This book provides a theoretical understanding of such questions. Divided into three parts, the author investigates the historical roots of military doctrine and explores its growth and expansion until the present day, and goes on to analyse the main characteristics of a military doctrine. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the book concludes that doctrine can be utilised in three key ways: as a tool of command, as a tool of change, and as a tool of education. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, civil– military relations, strategic studies, and war studies, as well as to students in professional military education. Harald Høiback is a Lieutenant Colonel and lectures at the Norwegian Defence University College, Oslo. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Oslo (2010).

Cass Military Studies

Intelligence Activities in Ancient Rome Trust in the gods, but verify Rose Mary Sheldon Clausewitz and African War Politics and strategy in Liberia and Somalia Isabelle Duyvesteyn Strategy and Politics in the Middle East, 1954–60 Defending the northern tier Michael Cohen The Cuban Intervention in Angola, 1965–1991 From Che Guevara to Cuito Cuanavale Edward George Military Leadership in the British Civil Wars, 1642–1651 ‘The genius of this age’ Stanley Carpenter Israel’s Reprisal Policy, 1953–1956 The dynamics of military retaliation Ze’ev Drory Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Second World War Enver Redzic

Leaders in War West Point remembers the 1991 Gulf War Edited by Frederick Kagan and Christian Kubik Khedive Ismail’s Army John Dunn Yugoslav Military Industry 1918–1991 Amadeo Watkins Corporal Hitler and the Great War 1914–1918 The list regiment John Williams Rostóv in the Russian Civil War, 1917–1920 The key to victory Brian Murphy The Tet Effect, Intelligence and the Public Perception of War Jake Blood The US Military Profession into the 21st Century War, peace and politics Edited by Sam C. Sarkesian and Robert E. Connor, Jr.

Civil–Military Relations in Europe Learning from crisis and institutional change Edited by Hans Born, Marina Caparini, Karl Haltiner and Jürgen Kuhlmann

Cultural Diversity in the Armed Forces An international comparison Edited by Joseph Soeters and Jan van der Meulen

Strategic Culture and Ways of War Lawrence Sondhaus

Railways and the Russo-Japanese War Transporting war Felix Patrikeeff and Harold Shukman

Military Unionism in the Post Cold War Era A future reality? Edited by Richard Bartle and Lindy Heinecken

War and Media Operations The US military and the press from Vietnam to Iraq Thomas Rid

Warriors and Politicians U.S. civil–military relations under stress Charles A. Stevenson Military Honour and the Conduct of War From Ancient Greece to Iraq Paul Robinson Military Industry and Regional Defense Policy India, Iraq and Israel Timothy D. Hoyt Managing Defence in a Democracy Edited by Laura R. Cleary and Teri McConville Gender and the Military Women in the armed forces of Western democracies Helena Carreiras Social Sciences and the Military An interdisciplinary overview Edited by Giuseppe Caforio

Ancient China on Postmodern War Enduring ideas from the Chinese strategic tradition Thomas Kane Special Forces, Terrorism and Strategy Warfare by other means Alasdair Finlan Imperial Defence, 1856–1956 The old world order Greg Kennedy Civil–Military Cooperation in Post-Conflict Operations Emerging theory and practice Christopher Ankersen Military Advising and Assistance From mercenaries to privatization, 1815–2007 Donald Stoker Private Military and Security Companies Ethics, policies and civil–military relations Edited by Andrew Alexandra, Deane-Peter Baker and Marina Caparini

Military Cooperation in Multinational Peace Operations Managing cultural diversity and crisis response Edited by Joseph Soeters and Philippe Manigart The Military and Domestic Politics A concordance theory of civil– military relations Rebecca L. Schiff Conscription in the Napoleonic Era A revolution in military affairs? Edited by Donald Stoker, Frederick C. Schneid and Harold D. Blanton Modernity, the Media and the Military The creation of national mythologies on the Western Front 1914–1918 John F. Williams American Soldiers in Iraq McSoldiers or innovative professionals? Morten Ender Complex Peace Operations and Civil–Military Relations Winning the peace Robert Egnell Strategy and the American War of Independence A global approach Edited by Donald Stoker, Kenneth J. Hagan and Michael T. McMaster Managing Military Organisations Theory and practice Edited by Joseph Soeters, Paul C. van Fenema and Robert Beeres

Modern War and the Utility of Force Challenges, methods and strategy Edited by Jan Angstrom and Isabelle Duyvesteyn Democratic Citizenship and War Edited by Yoav Peled, Noah Lewin-Epstein and Guy Mundlak Military Integration after Civil Wars Multiethnic armies, identity and post-conflict reconstruction Florence Gaub Military Ethics and Virtues An interdisciplinary approach for the 21st century Peter Olsthoorn The Counter-Insurgency Myth The British experience of irregular warfare Andrew Mumford Europe, Strategy and Armed Forces Towards military convergence Sven Biscop and Jo Coelmont Managing Diversity in the Military The value of inclusion in a culture of uniformity Edited by Daniel P. McDonald and Kizzy M. Parks The US Military A basic introduction Judith Hicks Stiehm Democratic Civil–Military Relations Soldiering in 21st-century Europe Edited by Sabine Mannitz

Contemporary Military Innovation Between anticipation and adaptation Edited by Dmitry (Dima) Adamsky and Kjell Inge Bjerga Militarism and International Relations Political economy, security and theory Edited by Anna Stavrianakis and Jan Selby Qualitative Methods in Military Studies Research experiences and challenges Edited by Helena Carreiras and Celso Castro

Educating America’s Military Joan Johnson-Freese Military Health Care From pre-deployment to post-separation Jomana Amara and Ann M. Hendricks Contemporary Military Culture and Strategic Studies US and UK armed forces in the 21st century Alastair Finlan Understanding Military Doctrine A multidisciplinary approach Harald Høiback

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Understanding Military Doctrine A multidisciplinary approach

Harald Høiback

First published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Harald Høiback The right of Harald Høiback to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Høiback, Harald, 1969– Understanding military doctrine : a multidisciplinary approach / Harald Høiback. pages cm. -- (CASS Military Studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Military doctrine. I. Title. U21.2.H622 2013 355.4--dc23 2012044263 ISBN: 978-0-415-82164-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-55934-5 (ebk) Typeset in Baskerville by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgements Introduction

xi xii 1

PART I

Preliminaries

7

1

Outlines and sidelines

9

2

A history of military doctrine

25

PART II

The anatomy of doctrine

53

3

Military thinking: an elusive undertaking

55

4

Doctrinal foundationalism

67

5

Doctrinal coherentism

90

6

On enculturation

104

7

Authority

129

PART III

Why doctrine?

147

8

149

The utility of doctrine

x Contents 9

Summary and conclusion

180

Notes Bibliography Index

187 227 249

Figures

1.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 4.1 5.1 6.1 6.2 8.1

The doctrinal heap The doctrinal triangle Toulmin’s turnstile Toulmin’s turnstile in use The warrants’ warrant The four pillars of doctrinal foundationalism The map of military theory making Cultural generations Cultural amenability The doctrinal utility span

21 56 62 62 63 71 100 112 128 156

Acknowledgements

A project like this, which has run for several years, has evidently involved many people. It is impossible to include them all here, but I will, nonetheless, thank those who have gone beyond the call of duty, so to speak, to help me out. First of all, in order to get the project off the ground in the first place, someone with proper authority and budgetary means had to give the thumbs up. In that regard, I want especially to thank Major General Tor Arnt Sandli, Rear Admiral Arne Røksund, and Rear Admiral Louise Dedichen, in order of appearance. On the rung below them, I want, above all, to thank Lieutenant Colonel Harald Håvoll, Colonel John Andreas Olsen, and Lieutenant Colonel Palle Ydstebø, also in order of appearance, for their splendid support of my aim and for covering my back when people were wondering what on earth the strange fellow with all the books was actually doing for his salary. Then we have my academic guardians. I am greatly indebted to my two supervisors Professor Thomas Krogh at the University of Oslo and Professor Sir Hew Strachan at All Souls College, University of Oxford. In addition to his inexhaustible wisdom, the latter has also generously shared some of the Oxford privileges. They had a very different approach to the subject of this book, but being in their crossfire has been a delight. I am also grateful to the two opponents at the disputation in Oslo in December 2010: Professor Theo Farrell at King’s College London, and Professor Janne Haaland Matlary at the University of Oslo. Their questions were intriguing, and their encouragement invaluable. By the same token, I want to thank the ‘silent’ primus inter pares, Professor Kjell Eyvind Johansen at the University of Oslo, for his nononsense approach to this subject and for many valuable comments, and Professor Christopher Coker at the London School of Economics and Political Science for some late dinners in London and his honesty regarding this work. I also want to thank Professor Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson at the University of Oslo for more than once making me stop, and think again. Finally, I want to thank Andrew Humphrys and Annabelle Harris at Routledge, and Denise Bannerman for facilitating the last and crucial stage of this venture.

Acknowledgements xiii At the more practical level, I want to thank the three hard-working stokers at the library of the Norwegian Defence University College: Nina Eskild Riege, Hege Undem Store, and Camilla Pellegrini Meling. Despite the Internet and all of that, the good old library is still the engine room of any educational institution. Since my French is not exactly what I would want it to be, I also have to thank my ‘French connections’ who have helped me out with French sources and the most arcane part of the language: Colonel Benoit Durieux, Torunn Tollefsen, and Lieutenant Colonel Geir Hågen Karlsen. Thanks also to Charlotte Ingalls and Lieutenant Colonel Halvor Johansen for reading and commenting on the entire manuscript, and to Camilla Guldahl Cooper, Anita Schjølseth and Dr Simon Moores for straightening up my English. Any mistakes that have slipped through are, of course, the result of my stubbornness. My roommate for the better part of this voyage, dr. theol., Nils Terje Lunde, also deserves to be mentioned in despatches for his inspiring digressions and pep talks. By the same token, I want to thank my next-door neighbour Commander Ola Bøe-Hansen, mostly for being Ola. This is presumably also a big enough occasion even to thank my mum and dad. Dad introduced me to the military life and mum to the world of books. For more than the most obvious reasons, I would certainly not have been here without you. Finally, I want to thank my closest crew members, my wife and our two boys. Writing this book has so far been the greatest endeavour of my professional life. Being a husband and a dad has undoubtedly been the greatest adventure of my life as a whole. But two good things do not always add up to be fantastic. More than once, my family would have rather seen me work as a bus driver, who does not take his work home each and every day. Nonetheless, I have no excuses or regrets. In my mind, the sunny days have by far outstripped the cloudier ones. Thank you Kate, Ole-Magnus, and Jens-Sigurd for constantly letting me know that there is much more to life than military doctrines.

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Introduction

Napoleon once claimed that one Mameluk was the equal of three Frenchmen, but 100 Frenchmen could manage five times their numbers in Mameluks.1 Hence, even if a Mameluk was much stronger than a Frenchman, the French esprit de corps, organisation, and cohesion, was superior to that of the Mameluk slaves. In order to use human and material resources proficiently, military forces need some shared ideas about how to use them. Indeed, all kinds of organised activity, such as military operations, are based on a common cognitive foundation of some sort. In military matters, military doctrine is another name for such a foundation. Doctrine is military units’ software, so to speak.2 In the case above, the French software was more proficient than the Mameluk’s. More specifically, a military doctrine can be defined as institutionalized beliefs about what works in war and military operations.3 Even if doctrine in its written and officially endorsed form is the main interest here, we will also encounter doctrine in its unwritten and informal form. On St. Helena, Napoleon had ample time to ponder further upon doctrine, however indirectly. Rather self-righteously, he complained that so-and-so marshal failed ‘because he did not understand my system’.4 In other words, his generals had not grasped his doctrine. Albeit, was it not Napoleon’s task to ensure that they did so? Was not indoctrination his responsibility? Doctrine is strongly related to strategy and tactics. Thoughts about what to do in a particular situation to achieve particular aims are strategic thoughts, while tactics denote different techniques for using military weapons and units on the battlefield.5 The same is seen in Carl von Clausewitz’s classic formulation: ‘tactics teaches the use of armed forces in the engagement; strategy, the use of engagements for the object of the war’.6 What doctrine adds to strategy and tactics is, simply put, a formally endorsing and justificatory element. Someone with proper authority to do so interprets the current state of military-related affairs and imposes on the armed forces a common approach to strategic and tactical questions. ‘Doctrine’ is not originally a military word, but has for millennia been an important concept in Christian theology.7 More generally, doctrine is

2 Introduction currently understood as interrelated sets of ideas based upon ‘certain propositions or postulates that cannot be demonstrated to be unquestionably true, which taken together have repercussions for the way in which the believer views the world and for the way in which he lives his life’.8 Hence, it is not only religion that is doctrinal in nature, but political, moral, and even military beliefs – the latter being topic of this book. For at least a century, there has been a multifarious and wide-ranging debate about the nature of military doctrine, and particularly about the feasibility of verbalising, formalising, and deliberately moulding doctrines for the sake of greater military efficiency. Broadly speaking, the pattern of this debate has been rather persistent. Representatives of the military establishment have usually encouraged formal doctrine making. The institutionalisation of beliefs about what works in war should thus be done both systematically and authoritatively. More free-ranging spirits, on the other hand, have, as a rule, strongly cautioned against the latent ossifying effect of formally endorsing certain ways of thinking and acting, and have instead opted for more agile and unfettered ways of spreading beliefs about what works, than formally pinning them down in a doctrine. There has been quite a lot written about specific military doctrines, like, for instance, the extremely offensive French doctrine of 1914 and the rather inept American doctrine during the Vietnam War, but, to the best of my knowledge, there is no comprehensive study available about what a formalised military doctrine actually is, and how it can be utilised, in more general terms. Hence, this study is arguably the first book-length attempt to scrutinise the general anatomy of military doctrine in its formalised form. The structure of this book falls into three parts. The first and preliminary part has two chapters. The first chapter gives a preliminary description of what military doctrine is, and highlights the most important pros and cons of doctrine.9 There is no commonly recognised definition of doctrine, and we thus have to figure out what doctrine actually is in order to be in a position to look at its nature and character.10 As we will encounter repeatedly throughout this book, some commentators regard doctrine as both vital and inevitable, while others see it as completely superfluous. Some of the controversy is undoubtedly rooted in genuine disagreement, but most of it is caused by vague, ambiguous, and often incommensurable language. What seems like a straw man argument for one may thus be the crux of the matter for another. Apart from definitions, Chapter 1 also offers some necessary clarifications and caveats. The second chapter investigates the historical roots of military doctrine and explores its growth and expansion until the present day. If the plethora of definitions is perplexing, doctrine’s history is even more so. Its origin can be located in different countries and in different centuries depending on its definition. While Prussia is usually regarded as doctrine’s country of origin, this book will argue that, even if Prussia, together with

Introduction 3 Russia and the USA, has contributed immensely to doctrinal thinking, it is, in fact, France that originated doctrine as we know it today. In his introduction to Military Doctrine, Bert Chapman lists Germany, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States as the most important contributors to the concept of military doctrine. China, Australia, Canada, India, Israel, and South Africa are also mentioned as countries developing military doctrines, but France is conspicuously absent.11 In other words, France does not figure high in the standard description of doctrine’s evolution. The second (and main) part of the book is chiefly concerned with the framework of doctrine and offers an analysis of the main characteristics of a military doctrine. On a par with many others, even military theorists were deeply influenced by the ‘Cartesian’ view of truth, which often leads to epistemological extremity, and ‘take well nigh for false everything which [is] only plausible’.12 However, it is, of course, philosophical hubris to expect the same standard of excellence in all areas of life, and according to Aristotle ‘it belongs to an educated person to look for just so much precision in each kind of discourse as the nature of the thing one is concerned with admits’.13 Clausewitz (1976) made a similar point about strategy: The reader expects to hear of strategic theory, of lines and angles, and instead of these denizens of the scientific world he finds himself encountering only creatures of everyday life. But the author cannot bring himself to be in the slightest degree more scientific than he considers his subject to warrant – strange as this attitude may appear.14 Hence, the main argument of Chapter 3, about the limits of military theory, is that, even if theory and systematic thinking are crucial in doctrine making, you cannot expect infallible truths. In this study, ‘theory’ is simply defined as: an attempt to bind together in a systematic fashion the knowledge that one has of some particular aspect of the world of experience. The aim is to achieve some form of understanding, where this is usually cashed out as explanatory power and predictive fertility.15 Traditionally, military theory spins its cognitive web around four basic questions: What is war? How is war to be won? How should war be prepared for? And how can war be prevented?16 The theoretical aspect of doctrine may rest on all four, with particular emphasis on question two. In recent years, however, question one has attracted renewed interest. The next chapter, Chapter 4, looks at one of the two cardinal ways to handle the elusiveness of military theory making by doctrinal means, namely doctrinal foundationalism, i.e. the attempt to anchor military theory to something more solid ‘beneath’ or outside the strategic discourse. Here, the

4 Introduction doctrinal justification is expected to be rock solid. The following chapter, Chapter 5, looks at the other cardinal way to handle the elusiveness of military thinking by doctrinal means, namely doctrinal coherentism, i.e. an attempt to bolster military theory with means within the strategic discourse. Here, the doctrinal justification merely aspires to be beyond reasonable doubt. Despite the fact that doctrines traditionally give answers to how questions, especially ‘how to win wars’, they can also be made to answer why questions on a more philosophical level. A quest for meaning is part of human nature and the satisfaction of that quest is done by culture, broadly defined. Hence, Chapter 6 deals with cultural aspects of doctrine. The upshot of the chapter is that military doctrine must be prepared to shoulder a greater responsibility in providing meaning now, than when the importance of military power was virtually self-evident, for instance during the Cold War: ‘It is when there is no publicly obvious mission that you need a published doctrine’.17 The succeeding chapter, Chapter 7, is about doctrine’s authoritative element. Modern democracies will always try to keep a rather tight rein on military operations and thus on military doctrine making. Political considerations can thus have serious consequences for doctrine making, not necessarily in harmony with the military experts’ recommendations. One can, of course, ask whether there are other kinds of authority than those resting on superior knowledge and the power-of-the-best argument.18 Obviously, however, there are, as all kids arguing with their parents know. Even if you have all the best arguments in the world, you may, nevertheless, end up short. Consequently, Chapter 7 looks at how military expertise is influenced by politics and other kinds of non-cognitive authority, and how it can cope with these.19 The third and last part of the book spells out what military doctrines can do, and explains why the future of military doctrine is quite bright. The main argument in Chapter 8 is that different kinds of doctrine can be rewardingly utilised for different purposes. Doctrine is no panacea, but a recipe. Just as it would be irrational to reject a recipe for making pizza simply because it does not help you in preparing a turkey, you should not blame the doctrine if you expect something else from it than what was put into it. In principle, doctrine can be utilised in three different ways: as a tool of command, as a tool of change, and as a tool of education. In more established fields of knowledge than the study of military doctrine, you can start a book by placing it in the cognitive landscape, so to speak; by pointing at books and authors covering relevant themes that you have to leave alone. In this particular case, however, there is no such landscape in view, and this book has, more or less, to establish it. Consequently, the book has a distinct multidisciplinary approach. In this book, doctrine will be illuminated from several different directions, where the most important ‘optic angles’ are the approaches taken

Introduction 5 by historians, philosophers, and social scientists. For a historian, the typical approach to doctrine would be to investigate specific doctrines such as, for instance, the American Field Manual 100–5: Active Defense from 1976. What kind of institutional needs was that particular doctrine a response to? What was the institutional context? Where did the doctrine makers ‘come from’, i.e. what kind of personal and institutional experience did they have, and where were they heading? What were their main political and military concerns? This book will not investigate why particular doctrines ended up the way they did or whether particular doctrines have been effective or not. Those questions are better left to more focused and specialised historical research. Moreover, most of what previous authors have published about military doctrine has been of this sort, i.e. investing particular doctrines. What this book does instead, is to give the broad historical backcloth for such doctrinal investigations. And that mainly happens in Chapter 2. Seen with a philosopher’s eyes, this book has a distinctly bottom-up approach and will presumably be categorised as applied philosophy, in the sense that it takes its starting point in a particular field of knowledge and uses philosophical tools to explore it. To echo Popper, I have been ‘compelled to philosophize by problems which arise outside philosophy’.20 It also pays greater attention to previous thinkers’ contexts and practical quandaries than is usual in conventional philosophy. The core philosophical questions regarding doctrine are; how do we know what works in war, and how can our claim to knowledge about ‘smart moves’ in such an elusive undertaking as war be justified, epistemologically speaking?21 Chapters 3 to 5 in this book are concerned with such questions. While a historian, simply put, hunts for the particular, the social and political scientist looks for laws and regularities. To put it crudely, social scientists may thus view historians as: ‘amateurish, myopic fact-collectors without system, method or theory’.22 Historians, on the other hand, may view social scientists as people who state the ‘obvious in a barbarous and abstract jargon [and] squeeze individuals without mercy into rigid categories’.23 The point here is not to mediate between caricatured positions. The point is merely to indicate that doctrine can be analysed from rather different positions. While Chapter 2 in this book uses a historical approach, Chapter 6, 7, and 8 lean more towards the social and political sciences. Are there any relevant social forces that work in this realm, regardless of time and place? The drawback of a multidisciplinary approach is of course that many readers may have reasons to feel disappointed. A historian would presumably want more about the context of actual doctrines. A philosopher, on the other hand, would find the epistemological arguments cluttered down by too much historical details. A social scientist would presumably ask for

6 Introduction more cases, and so on. However, in this particular context the upside of the multidisciplinary approach is deemed weightier that the downside. What this book offers is a broad overview. By that, hopefully, the book can offer future researchers a steady platform to stand on, where they may drill much deeper than this book does into particular aspects of doctrine.

Part I

Preliminaries

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1

Outlines and sidelines

In 1805, the year of Trafalgar, Admiral Nelson was handed a Navy list and invited by his superiors to choose his own officers. Nelson refused and handed the list back: ‘Choose yourself, my Lord. The same spirit actuates the whole profession. You cannot choose wrong’.1 Since time immemorial, men have searched for a way to create and maintain a community of thought, such as the Royal Navy apparently enjoyed during Nelson’s time. Military community of thought can be created and sustained in several ways. The most common, at least historically, is by cultural means, where new recruits are socialised into the ranks by veterans, without any formal codification of the curriculum. It can also be done directly by the commander, as Nelson did when he gathered his ‘Band of Brothers’ in his cabin: a cumbersome and even dangerous procedure, especially in bad weather, as boat crews had to row their captains to Nelson’s flagship. In our own days, the creation of this semi-mythical brotherhood is not only hampered by bad weather, but made virtually impossible by modern forces’ size, complexity, and extension, modern information technology notwithstanding. A more feasible method today is to promulgate a doctrine, a document containing ‘an approved set of principles and methods, intended to provide large military organizations with a common outlook and a uniform basis of action’.2 In this chapter, we will first give a preliminary description of what a military doctrine actually is and why it is made. Then we will look at some particularly strong arguments against having doctrines. Finally, the chapter ends by stating the scope of this book.

The quintessence of military doctrine In team sports, for instance football, there are, in principle, two ways to make the most of the team. One way is to muster the best players available and arrange them on the field according to their talents, competence, and inclinations. During the match, the players use their skills and judgement as proficiently as they possibly can in order to take advantage of those opportunities that present themselves on the pitch, supported by sporadic orders from the coach on the sideline.

10 Preliminaries The second approach is to develop a permanent system and a particular way to play. The players are picked and trained according to the system and the different roles therein, and they play each game in accordance with institutionalized imperatives and a predetermined scheme. This is the doctrinal approach, whose main purpose is to make the total greater than the sum of the parts. By facilitating synergetic effects via doctrinal harmonisation of decision making and action, you can have the best team without having the best players. Doctrine provides cohesion.3 By providing a conceptual compass and a mental counter-weight, the team can also handle more chaos and confusion than they can without. A doctrine, which, in a competitive field such as this, is a device that tells us how to play in order to win, has to contain three essential elements: theory, culture, and authority. First of all, a doctrine has to be based on assumptions about what works and what leads to victory in the contemporary environment. The foundation of such beliefs can vary considerably, and the persuasive power of the reasons given for doctrinal choices differs correspondingly. All the same, a doctrine needs an element of theory of some sort because statements backed by reason have a rhetorical power and a privileged persuasiveness that mere opinion lacks. A doctrine depends significantly on the power of the arguments supporting it. Second, you have to take your own team into consideration. Who are they? What can you expect from them? What motivates and convinces them? What drew them to the pitch? Would they prefer to go down gloriously rather than to win ugly? In other words, you have to take cultural elements into consideration. Finally, doctrine has to carry some form of authority in addition to the ‘unforced force of the better argument’.4 The players have to take the doctrine seriously in order to give it effect. They cannot constantly secondguess it. They also have to know the nature of the doctrine’s obligations. Do they have to stick to the doctrine, come rain or shine, or do they have some conditional leeway? Obviously, the sport metaphor has important limitations apart from its potentially trivialising effect on questions about war and peace. A fundamental idea in sport is that the competitors have roughly the same access to material and numerical resources, at least on the pitch itself. That is definitely not the case in war, where technology, geostrategy, alliances, and economic muscle can make very unequal sides. Hence, material shortcomings and numerical inferiority are usually the main drivers behind doctrinal ingenuity.5 At the peak of both world wars, for instance, Germany was always materially inferior to its opponents, at least at the geostrategic level. Its warmaking brilliance thus rested on something non-material. Trevor Dupuy claims that this ‘something’ gave the German Army an advantage of 20 per cent compared to the Allies:

Outlines and sidelines 11 In other words, 100 Germans in combat units were the equivalent of about 120 British or American troops in combat units, and equivalent to about 250 Russians in combat units. In the recent Arab–Israeli wars the Israeli CEV [combat effectiveness values] has been over 2.00; i.e. 100 Israelis in combat units were the equivalent of more than 200 Arabs in combat units.6 The point is not that any given German soldier was 2.5 times smarter, stronger, or braver than a Russian soldier, but, put together in units, the Germans had an average output 2.5 times the Russian. Doctrine is by no means the only way to enhance combat effectiveness, but is the one we are investigating here.7 Moreover, military doctrine is currently regarded as a crucial element of military power: ‘In fact it would have been impossible for us to have run any sort of navy at all without doctrine, even if it wasn’t referred to as such’.8 NATO’s acclaim is unconditional: ‘The successful execution of military operations requires a clearly understood and widely accepted doctrine, and this is especially important when operations are to be conducted by allied multinational or coalition forces’.9 Despite the fact that different countries, driven by different concerns, utilise doctrines in different ways, it is still possible to pinpoint the quintessential rationale for issuing doctrines, as done by Jeffrey S. McKitrick and Peter W. Chiarelli: 1 2 3 4 5 6

A doctrine can provide ‘prescribed routines for handling simple tasks’. A doctrine can identify ‘key assumptions and concepts to provide a common basis for understanding operational thinking’. A doctrine can provide a ‘point of reference from which commanders can adapt as appropriate to the situation’. A doctrine can provide a ‘conceptual vehicle for debate, discussion, and evolutionary change’. A doctrine can provide a ‘vehicle for achieving the primacy of integrated, joint operations and forces over the more parochial concerns of the services’. A doctrine can provide a ‘model for training reservist and mobilized forces unable to train sufficiently to develop innovative approaches’.10

The hazards and dangers of doctrine Despite the establishment’s strong backing of military doctrines, there has always been an undercurrent of doctrinal scepticism, which even today can be quite strong: ‘The word has unfortunate historical associations, from half-remembered schoolroom lessons on the Reformation, counterReformation, Spanish Inquisition etc: a manipulative “official line” preached to a credulous and bullied laity’.11

12 Preliminaries The main risk of doctrine is rather easy to grasp, namely its propensity to ossify: ‘There are no shortages of examples in twentieth-century military history to support the contention that doctrine tends to solidify like a slowly moving lava flow’.12 Instead of making you more agile, doctrine becomes a heavy burden: ‘For once a doctrine and its articles become a dogma, woe to the army which lies enthralled under its spell’.13 During Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, for instance, some observers questioned parts of the American air campaign: [O]ne might ask what effect was envisioned in the massive bombing of empty ministries and party headquarters – all long since abandoned by bureaucrats. The attacks on those buildings destroyed much of the documentary evidence on which a full-scale examination of Saddam’s crimes would have to depend. History itself was the loser.14 One explanation of this strange and self-defeating behaviour is that it is part of air doctrine to knock out enemy leadership: ‘The key advantage of air power, over other military forces, is the ability to strike directly at the heart of the enemy, disrupting critical leadership functions, war-sustaining resources and strategy’.15 To crush empty offices is a waste of military power. What is worse, however, is that if you stubbornly stick to a prefabricated scheme of conduct, the opposing side can relatively easily second-guess you, and eventually crush you if it has sufficient means available. Wayne P. Hughes, Jr., captured the dilemma: For a leader and his staff, the challenge is to construct good doctrine that is prescriptive without being constrictive. If doctrine is constructed and construed so rigidly that initiative is destroyed, then its forcefulness will be channelled too narrowly; the enemy will know what to expect and learn to evade the highly focused combat energy that results. On the other hand, a doctrine that denies its own prescriptive nature must – insofar as the denial is believed by those it affects – be powerless.16 Such doctrinal dilemmas have caused many to discard doctrine as too prone to backfire: [M]ilitary doctrine carries a number of risks. These derive from the basic doctrinal dilemma: doctrine must be explicit and specific to achieve useful empirical content; to the degree that this occurs, however, dogmatism and doctrinal righteousness too often prevail. Efforts to avoid this pitfall often result in doctrine that is so abstract as to be of no value in the field.17

Outlines and sidelines 13 A doctrine can also be counterproductive if it turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy, of the negative sort. For instance, Frederick the Great once claimed that ‘we cannot have any enemies except our neighbours’.18 However, Frederick’s own uttering of the sentence could, if it were picked up by others, actually influence whom Prussia would have as enemies in the future. If a non-neighbour was tempted to believe that Prussia had no precautionary measures prepared against it, Frederick’s statement might have been self-undermining. Frederick was himself part of the reality to which his sentence referred, just as any other doctrine maker is. A doctrine can, of course, also be mistaken or inadequate. The imperatives it offers may not work. In the summer of 2006, for instance, the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF ) ran into unexpected problems in their fight against Hezbollah due to, among other factors, a flawed doctrine: After the war, one Israeli General observed that the new doctrine was ‘in complete contradiction to the most important basic principles of operating an army in general . . . and is not based upon, and even ignores, the universal fundamentals of warfare. . . . This is not a concept that is better or worse. It is a completely mistaken concept that could not succeed and should never have been relied upon’.19 The problem was, among other things, that the doctrine, and its most central concept of ‘effects based operations’, assumed a ‘level of unachievable predictability’; it called for an ‘unattainable level of knowledge of the enemy’; and it discounted ‘the human dimensions of war’.20 In effect, it overlooked the most crucial element of war: the quirks of human beings. Presumably, the Israeli general’s main worry was the content of the current doctrine, not the idea of doctrine itself. Another doctrine would presumably have served the IDF better. However, some would claim that it is the very idea of doctrine that is the problem: In itself the danger of a doctrine is that it is apt to ossify into a dogma, and be seized upon by mental emasculates who lack virility of judgement, and who are only too grateful to rest assured that their actions, however inept, find justification in a book, which, if they think at all, is, in their opinion, written in order to exonerate them from doing so. In the past many armies have been destroyed by internal discord, and some have been destroyed by the weapons of their antagonists, but the majority have perished through adhering to dogmas springing from their past successes – that is, self destruction or suicide through inertia of mind.21 A more pertinent allegation, perhaps, is that the heterogeneity of modern wars, i.e. counterinsurgency (COIN) and peace operations, effectively precludes military doctrine. Indoctrination will jeopardise flexibility and pragmatism.22 In other words:

14 Preliminaries anything that can be distilled into written knowledge is already likely to be a bit too old, a bit stale. The cutting edge of operations against an insurgency is the gut instinct that tells a squad leader that a street scene that appears safe really isn’t.23 Even the heterogeneity of old-fashioned imperial policing worked ostensibly against the idea of having a doctrine: ‘there is no such thing as a doctrine of war’ and [if] there were such a thing it would be bad, and especially bad for an army, which may be called upon to operate against a great variety of enemies in various totally dissimilar theatres of war.24 Many have obviously acknowledged the potential dangers of doctrine and have thus tried to forestall the most fatal of them. Hence, there are a number of different rescue attempts based on trying to save the fruit of doctrine while avoiding its potential shortcomings. However, many of those attempts are akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Instead of saving doctrine, they kill it. The first fallacy of this sort can be called ‘reduction into cognitive mist’, and follows in the wake of a rather common way of trying to solve the doctrinal dilemma, i.e. how to make a prescriptive doctrine without inadvertently also making it too constrictive. This approach turns doctrine into a form of guidance on how to think; not how to act.25 The underlying premise seems to be: as long as we do not tell you what to do, you cannot blame us for any future irrelevance of our imperatives and prescriptions. However, this solution can degenerate into platitudes: ‘If doctrine is viewed as offering guidance on how to think, the doctrinal debate vaporizes in the face of two fundamental precepts: (1) “be smart!” and (2) be adaptive’.26 Evidently, a military doctrine that ‘dissolves into admonitions to be smart and adaptive’ is rather empty, since few would rebut such advice or know exactly what it implies in practice.27 Hence, in order to make a doctrine above reproach by never commending anything, the doctrine is turned into nonsense. The next fallacy can be called ‘reduction into daydreaming’. This approach’s suggested escape route out of the doctrinal dilemma is to tell you what to be rather than what to think, i.e. to favour the idea of military virtue, which implies that what you are determines what you do. However, this solution is also in danger of chasing its own tail. If you, for instance, define ‘virtue’ as the willingness and ability to ‘do the right thing’, you are back to square one: The fundamental fact about a good soldier or a good bank-clerk is that he does what his duty requires of him; the question of whether some virtuous impulse, or mere fear of detection, prompted him is secondary, and often irrelevant.28

Outlines and sidelines 15 A contemporary belief in the value of military virtue can be found in the Norwegian Armed Forces Joint Operational Doctrine (2007), which quotes General Sir John W. Hackett to underline the point: . . . the military virtues – fortitude, endurance, loyalty, courage, and so on – these are good qualities in any collection of men, and enrich the society in which they’re prominent. But in the military society, they are functional necessities, which is something quite, quite different. I mean, a man can be false, fleeting, perjured, in every way corrupt, and be a brilliant mathematician, or one of the world’s greatest painters. But there’s one thing he can’t be, and that is a good soldier, sailor, or airman.29 A quick glance at military history suggests the complete opposite, however. In particular, Lord Wellington, who regarded his victorious soldiers as ‘the mere scum of the earth’, would most certainly have struggled to keep a stiff upper lip had he seen Hackett’s statement. There seem to be a lot of things a corrupt man cannot be, but a soldier is not one of them. Perhaps doctrine making is little more than formally authorised daydreaming about the nobility of man? A mere catalogue of esteemed personal traits is, however, of little practical value. The third fallacy can simply be called ‘reduction into everything’. This kind of doctrine tells us how to think, how to be, or what to do, but in a way so vague and ambiguous that it still leads to doctrinal never-never land. Hence, questions, such as ‘What events, if they materialized, would lead us to reject that program?’,30 ought to be asked of doctrines as well. If a doctrine covers all possible eventualities, it is presumably not because it is extremely far-sighted, but because it contains little more than generalities and banalities. The following doctrinal incantation is a case in point: Leaders in our profession have drive and initiative. Drive and initiative means seeing possibilities, taking responsibility and showing initiative. This quality is also exhibited by inspiring others, taking care of subordinate personnel and by an ability to work with others to find good solutions.31 Are there any professions around that would not give this statement their consent? However, the military’s raison d’être, its ability to kill and maim, is completely absent. Consequently, the third fallacy implies that military doctrine making is turned into little more than hot air, either because its advice is just intellectualised common sense or because its propositions are too permissive.32 A fourth fallacy can be called ‘reduction into gibberish’ and is linked to the dark side of institutionalism. Transnational doctrine making can cause a rather mindless import of slogans and buzzwords. If outlandish fads and

16 Preliminaries fashion within military discourse receive too much attention through doctrinal debates and seminars, at the cost of a nation’s own needs and culture, or if lofty concepts become overly dignified due to doctrinal adoption, a written doctrine may end up being too far-fetched to be of any practical use or interest to anyone outside the scholastic aquarium of doctrinaires. This phenomenon is not uncommon in other fields of life: ‘[I]f scholars wanted to be noticed, they had to engage in increasingly ostentatious displays of theoretical virtuosity. In the end, driven by a positive feedback loop, display became everything’.33 When, for instance, US Marine Corps General J. N. Mattis solemnly rejected the concept of effects-based operations (EBO), he apologised: ‘Regrettably, this confusion has also spread to our allies’.34 The certainty promised by this new method of war fighting had not survived contact with the reality of war, as demonstrated during Israel’s aforementioned operations against Hezbollah. Overly sloganeered doctrines can backfire dreadfully and turn doctrine into a self-inflicted wound: ‘An army that adopts tactical doctrine that it cannot apply will greatly multiply its misfortune’.35 Big buzzwords can take the place of real thinking and hard prioritisation. To encapsulate this section about anti-doctrinal sentiments and flawed attempts to rescue doctrine from the abyss: A cynic might suggest at this point that wars are not won by doctrine at all, but through qualities of political leadership or generalship and the effect of both upon the state of morale, none of which can be easily incorporated, if at all, into written doctrine.36 Despite the best of intentions, we are doomed to fail, and fail badly. We should, therefore, be strategic stoics and cross the river when we get there. Each problem should be resolved as it ‘occurs on its own terms free from any system’.37 We should continue to buy the best equipment we can afford and train our soldiers accordingly, but any attempts to write down a doctrine will inexorably turn us into doctrinaires who stubbornly hold on to abstract ideas and force the reality into prefabricated casts. We commit the gravest mistake possible in military matters by not paying due respect to a particular conflict’s nature: The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgement that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive.38 Instead of being a road map or a beacon in the night, or perhaps a kick up the backside, doctrine can instead turn out to be a mere straw to grasp at, an indication of our generation’s need for an ‘illusion of control’.39

Outlines and sidelines 17 Indeed, it can be even worse than a straw, it can be a millstone around our neck, or a Siren luring us into peril: At the most elemental level, military doctrine is seen as a totem or icon that casts light amid deepening gloom, and to offer a way of overcoming uncertainty and disorder, as well as providing a special edge in the clash of arms. The tenacity and fervor with which such virtual dogmas are conceived and adhered to stands in clear tension with the near-impossibility of predicting ultimate reality with any degree of precision. Beyond that lies the paradox that intensity of commitment to a particular schema can add to the shock and confusion that comes with the realization that assumptions are out of phase with reality. The more that doctrine creates clear-cut expectations, whether it is based on linear extrapolation from historical cases, peacetime conditions, or wartime experiences, the greater is its potential, when it misaligns with actuality, for increasing the disorientation of those who depend on it as a guide to specific action and a touchstone of emotional certainty.40 It seems that doctrine is prone to be adopted a war too late, and drag us down when it finally arrives. Even if we start out with a pragmatic view of doctrine, it will turn out to be like Frankenstein’s monster, as it did in France in the inter-war years: Rather than providing the harmony that may be essential to an orchestra or a properly functioning army, doctrine became something to provide intellectual discipline. The army thus implicitly accepted doctrine as a substitute for thinking and an alternative to creative, imaginative actions.41 Apparently, doctrine is a dead-end street, which we ought to keep away from. Strangely perhaps, given what has been said so far, the conclusion of this book is the complete opposite.

Some clarifications and caveats The concept of war is problematic.42 However, in this book the word ‘war’ is used as it is in ordinary language rather than in a strict legal or political sense. Whether the war is large or small, legal or illegal, etc., is not central to the main arguments. Consequently, Clausewitz’s classic definition of war suits our purpose: ‘War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will’.43 The art of war rests on a host of brute facts, for instance the fuel consumption of an aircraft, the range of artillery, and the resilience of a sword. Such facts fall outside the scope of this book, not because the epistemology of brute facts is trivial, but because it would exhaust this study.

18 Preliminaries Here, we will look at justifications of prescriptions about how to compel our enemy to do our will. In other words: how do we know what is smart to do in war? When reading this book, it is also important to keep in mind that war is not the same as combat, and that military success is not the same as strategic success. Harry G. Summers famously put his finger on the problem in his book On Strategy, referring to a conversation in Hanoi in April 1975: ‘ “You know you never defeated us on the battlefield”, said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. “That may be so”, he replied, “but it is also irrelevant” ’.44 Military victories rarely determine the outcomes of war; at most, they only ‘provide political opportunities for the victors’.45 This book will not weed out those doctrines dealing with combat from those dealing with war, since it is irrelevant for this book’s arguments whether a certain doctrine is for winning combat or prevailing in war, as both, to a large extent, are ‘a trial of moral and physical forces through the medium of the latter’.46 This does not mean, of course, that doctrines written for winning in combat are suitable for winning wars, and vice versa, or that the mixture of moral and physical force is the same in both. The point is that the epistemological and ‘meta-doctrinal’ challenges, broadly defined, are strongly related. In his book Leadership, Management, and Command: Rethinking D-Day, Keith Grint distinguishes between three archetypical kinds of problems that a military leader may have to cope with, i.e. tame, wicked, and critical.47 Tame problems occur again and again and are mainly resolved through previous experience and processing. Timetabling the railways and training armies are problems of this sort. Roughly speaking, the handling of such problems is done through management. Wicked problems, on the other hand, are both more novel and more complex, and ‘any apparent “solution” often generates other “problems”, and there is no “right” or “wrong” answer, but there are better or worse alternatives’.48 Such problems are associated with leadership. Finally, coping with critical problems is not about solving problems as such, but about forcing through decisions taken more or less instantaneously. For instance, in a major train crash the challenge is to get things done as rapidly and efficiently as possible, not laboriously to figure out the optimal way to deal with it. That has to wait until later. Such time-critical activity is mainly associated with command. Real problems, in real life, can be hard to pin down to just one of the types of problems outlined above. They can have elements of them all, or abruptly jump from one sort to another. The point here, however, is only to underscore that while most books about military history are about leadership and command, this book revolves mainly around management. One will find very little here about Napoleon’s captivating personality or about how the day was saved by an audacious manoeuvre in the nick of time. Instead, this book deals with tame problems, i.e. problems handled

Outlines and sidelines 19 by the meticulously thinking through of previous experiences and optimising anticipation of the future. A central assumption in this book, however, is that the way you solve tame problems can have an important impact on how you eventually will handle wicked and critical problems in the future. This book revolves around questions about cognition, knowledge, and epistemology. However, it is only a certain kind of knowledge that is of interest, namely scientific knowledge. At the most basic level of articulation, we find the vast amount of unarticulated knowledge called tacit knowledge. Regardless of where we direct our focus, we always rely on particulars ‘of which we are only subsidiarily aware’.49 On the next level of articulation, we find ability knowledge. This type of knowledge is still not articulated by words, but by deeds. If we know how to ride a bicycle, our possession of knowledge is manifest through our patent ability to handle the bike. The extent to which we are able to explain how we do it is irrelevant. It is the performance which justifies the claim to knowledge. The next two levels of knowledge are verbally articulated. The first layer, informal or ‘folksy’ knowledge, denotes knowledge that we regularly use in our vocation and everyday life. We know, for instance, how to operate our television set and perhaps how to change the tyres on our car, and we are usually able to explain the methods to others who are familiar with TVs and cars. Traditional guilds, the stepladder nature of military careers, and the institution of apprenticeship are all based on the capability of humans to share and comprehend such practical and informal knowledge. Justification of informal knowledge is often local and involves both tradition and immediate experience.50 Usually, the trustworthiness of a statement is gauged by the position of the person uttering it. If the master tells the apprentice how to lay bricks, the apprentice should have very good reasons for making objections. At the fourth and last level of articulation, however, organised scepticism is not regarded as cheeky or impertinent, but as a vital precondition. At this level of articulation, we find scientific expertise. People are always prone to theorise, to put some ‘whys’ and ‘becauses’ into the stream of incidents that pass through their lives.51 What distinguishes scientific expertise from ‘folksy’ knowledge is not the theories, but the systematic willingness to scrutinise them. Throughout this study, we will occasionally touch upon all types of knowledge mentioned above, but our main concern is scientific knowledge, involving thought-through arguments and theory making. However, we will not judge to what extent, or whether at all, doctrines ought to follow existing academic standards and whether they should be dressed in scholarly paraphernalia, such as footnotes, references, and correct quotations. What concerns us is the kind of military thinking that supports formal doctrine making, i.e. that kind of thinking which has been closest to the contemporary norms of proper science, social science included.

20 Preliminaries Evidently, those norms have changed considerably during the long time span we cover here, but given that modernity is characterised by a ‘cultural atmosphere that requires justifications made by means of rational arguments’,52 take-my-word-for-it arguments cut very little ice in wellconsidered military deliberations, at least for the last 200 years. A distinction can also be made between ‘prescriptions which belong to practical reasoning and those which logically entail an explanation of a general kind’.53 In the case of practical reasoning, we only need to know whether something works – not why. When it comes to ‘explanation of a general kind’, on the other hand, our belief has to be justified, as we ought to know why ‘a postulated course of action would produce a given result before we can authoritatively recommend it to practitioners’.54 Consequently, an important function of a doctrine, which is made for the benefit of a group of people and not just one expert, will be to explain why the preferred doctrine is superior to all realistic alternatives. To sum up, this book will not deal with the epistemology of brute facts, it will not say very much about command or leadership, and it will not say very much about other kinds of knowledge than scientific expertise, generously defined. I have also to make two small confessions before we dive into the subject matter of this study. First, Western military theorists have been criticised for being unduly Eurocentric, restricting their field of vision to the area between Washington and Moscow, at the expense of the rest of the world. Regrettably, this book will do little to remedy that, since too broad an approach may end up in a shallow summary of global military highlights. This is not an attempt to debunk military thinking outside ‘Greater Europe’; on the contrary, that part of military history both deserves and needs studies of its own. However, the part of this book dealing with generic philosophical challenges for doctrine writers should hopefully be of interest to anyone struggling with such devices. Second, in this book the focus is on military matters, but a lot of the sources used are not of a military character. Hence, when the study refers to works by, for instance, Richard Rorty, the point is not that the works cited are about doctrinal matters, but that what is said there is applicable to this study’s topics as well. Consequently, the references in the footnotes point to the location of the quotations used and do not necessarily imply that the sources quoted are particularly interested in military doctrine making. The same goes in a broader context as well. When this study quotes Rorty in a section about coherentism, for instance, it does not follow that the study takes on or agrees with everything Rorty ever said about the subject; far from it. The idea, admittedly eclectic, is that this study casts the net wide in order to shed some new light on military doctrine. Some of the ideas that are eventually dragged on board may thus be rather detached from their usual surroundings.

Outlines and sidelines 21 Doctrine has also two major border disputes that have to be settled at the onset of this study. The first is with other military documents, while the second is with non-verbal organisational assets. The final thing to do in this chapter is, thus, to make some necessary demarcations. Doctrine and/or ethos If we try to categorise documents governing the activities of armed forces, we instantly run into problems because the terminology is incoherent. We have, consequently, to take stock of a rather tortuous matter before we can proceed. The idea is not to make the military librarians’ job any easier by giving irrevocable definitions of central terms, but to narrow down the range of relevant topics for this study. In the next chapter, we will investigate the evolution of written doctrines, and the aim of the following few pages is merely to isolate doctrines from the myriad of other kinds of military documents. One way to catalogue the mountain of military rules and regulations is to create a hierarchy with regulative documents at the base, saying how things are to be done, and constitutive documents at the apex, explaining how to comprehend military affairs. Procedures in this context are checklists outlining how to perform unilateral and static tasks, for example how to tune a radio or to adjust the barrel of a gun. Procedures are usually issued in handbooks and standing operational procedures, known as ‘SOPs’. A regulation, on the other hand, not only spells out how to do things but what to do when, and what not to do. The plethora of military safety regulations illustrates these types of documents.

Constitutive

National strategy

Doctrine

Manuals

Regulative

Regulations

Procedures

Figure 1.1 The doctrinal heap.

22 Preliminaries The next level in the pyramid consists of manuals which explain different techniques for combining static tasks in order to perform a compound action, for instance how to hit a moving target or to drop a bomb from an aircraft. However, here the ambiguity begins because manuals can also take potential enemy action into consideration and describe tasks and tactics performed by the entire force. Manuals, at this level of conceptualisation, are more or less similar to what we call doctrine in this book. The ambiguity goes the other way as well. The concept of doctrine can become too profuse. NATO, for instance, uses ‘doctrine’ even to denote documents that fall under the term ‘procedures’ in Figure 1.1: ‘Doctrine documents are developed for use by different audiences, with various requirements and purposes. These documents vary from overarching documents to those that describe procedures and tactical or technical standardization issues applicable to the lowest levels’.55 The same said a bit more vividly: ‘Military doctrine can thus be applied to everything from the relationship between the military establishment and the Head of State, down to the question of whether life-jackets should be test-inflated on issue’.56 In this study, however, it is only the overarching documents, the capstone and keystone documents, in military vernacular, that are of interest. So far in this book, we have encountered a number of definitions regarding doctrine. Now it is finally time to pose the most comprehensive and important one. In this book, doctrines are authoritative documents military forces use to guide their actions containing fundamental principles that require judgement in application.57 Such documents can be called doctrine, manual, or suchlike. Therefore, both Field Manuals and Field Service Regulations fall into the category of doctrine in this study. Conversely, documents with ‘doctrine’ on the cover that do not contain fundamental principles that require judgement in application fall outside the scope of this study. In other words, a military document that is not profound enough to touch upon political authority, not specific enough to touch upon strategic culture, and not elucidatory enough to touch upon military theory will not be of interest here, regardless of whether it is written for the tactical, operational, or strategic level. If it is hard to draw a working demarcation line between doctrines on one side and half-breed doctrines and other written documents used by the military to facilitate operations on the other, as we have tried above, it is even harder to achieve a clean cut between doctrine and non-written organisational assets. Nonetheless, in the following we will try to make that cut. ‘Culture’ is a complex concept, but at its most basic level it means merely ‘all that in human society which is socially rather than biologically transmitted’.58 Evidently, all organisations have elements of culture, but some organisations have a ‘strong culture’ as well, meaning a common commitment to ‘the same set of values, beliefs and norms’.59 In military quarters, such attitudes are often called ‘ethos’, which denotes ‘the characteristic spirit and the prevalent sentiment, taste or opinion of a people, institution, or a system’.60 The main idea is that an organisation with a

Outlines and sidelines 23 strong ethos will outperform an opponent with a weaker one, ceteris paribus. The question is: what is the difference between doctrine, on the one hand, and ethos, on the other? Before we embark on an answer, it is important to underscore that what we find is a normative definition for use in this book. In everyday language, ‘doctrine’ is used somewhat interchangeably with ‘ethos’. The core differences between doctrine and ethos are what I call the four ‘A’s: articulation, authority, action, and anticipation. In order for a set of beliefs to be a doctrine, it has to be articulated, preferably on paper. To what extent a doctrine has to be codified in a single document, or a clearly notified set of documents, in order to be a fully-fledged doctrine is a question of both expediency and traditions: As a corollary to all these various procedures for establishing the military doctrines of great Western powers, it may be said that these usually do not constitute single documents which have a definite ‘standard’ structure. They can be pieced together from various statements and documents. Paradoxically, military doctrine is described and analyzed as a whole only in scholarly publications; these, although lacking the imprimatur, give an account of the officially adopted views and of the military policy which is carried out.61 Ethos, on the other hand, does not have an articulated content at all, in the sense that doctrine has. Ethos is a kind of shared feeling which is beyond immediate reach, being ‘nonconfrontable and nondebatable’.62 Doctrine is here to confront. Doctrine has fundamental principles, ethos does not. Second, doctrine is backed by tangible authority. While ethos is carried by inner motivation and peer pressure, doctrine is endorsed by formal authority in some form or other. Third, doctrine is a guide for action. An organisation keeps a doctrine in order to get something done, which is not necessarily the case with ethos. Finally, doctrines are also anticipatory; they are made for the benefit of the future, even if they rest heavily on the past. True, many doctrines have been rather present-centred in the sense that they address immediate concerns, but they still have a forward-directed look, however short: ‘doctrine which is too forward-looking risks losing its relevance for current operations, or may simply not work’.63 One of history’s most famous ‘doctrines’, the German blitzkrieg, was arguably not a doctrine at all because it was not conceptualised and verbalised in advance of operations.64 Ethos, on the other hand, is not forward looking and is not instrumental in the way that doctrines are. It is crucial to underscore that this elucidation of the difference between doctrine and ethos will not be unanimously applauded. Not unusually, the prevailing doctrine has been regarded as an unintentional ossification of

24 Preliminaries military common sense and has only existed in military minds. It has been the task of military historians and other ‘archaeologists’ to reveal it, based on what is visible on the surface.65 Some have gone even further and claimed that this is all there is to doctrine: Military doctrine is not thought up and codified by an individual or single group of people; it is formed on the basis of the entire lifeexperience of a state and is the result of an extremely complex and protracted historical process of creation and development of state ideas. Therefore, military doctrine is national in character.66 However, the whole point of a doctrine, at least in this study’s sense of the word, is exactly that it is ‘thought up and codified by an individual or single group of people’. If the phrase ‘military doctrine’ was replaced by the expression ‘strategic culture’ or ‘ethos’ in Sokolovsky’s statement above, I could give the statement my support. Given that doctrine and ethos are two different things, even if closely related, you can have one without the other. For instance, you can have a chain gang digging ditches in accordance with a doctrine, but without much ethos. And you can have a bunch of Peace Corps volunteers driven by a strong ethos doing the same job without much of a doctrine. More to the point, the French Revolution and other comparable cultural and political upheavals can boost and transform ethos beyond recognition, which again can add considerably to the military arsenal in the sense of invigorated fighting spirit and more individual initiative. However, how to (and even whether to) channel that energy into a formal doctrine, is quite another matter. When digging ditches, it is not evident that you need doctrine or ethos, but in such a heterogeneous and dangerous activity as military operations you usually do, the latter more than the former: ‘Doctrine is important, but ethos is essential’.67 The point here, is that you can have them both. Ethos does not preclude doctrine or vice versa. Indeed, they can facilitate each other. Doctrine can cultivate ethos, and ethos can lubricate doctrine by making it run more smoothly. The summum bonum of doctrinal activity is exactly its potential beneficial influence on ethos. However, turning an ethos too forcefully into a formal doctrine may destroy what you are trying to preserve.68 Since ethos is an unreserved advantage for any organisation, to argue against it is thus almost like arguing against friendship or love. It can be abused or inflated, but generally speaking, most people endorse it. That is obviously not the case with doctrine. Doctrine is something you can be supportive of or antagonistic to in a non-trivial way. That is why doctrine’s future is the topic here, not the future of ethos and similar concepts. This chapter has tried to provide the necessary backdrop and some navigational aids for what follows in the ensuing chapters. In the next chapter, we will lay out doctrine’s ‘biography’.

2

A history of military doctrine

In the previous chapter, we tried to get a preliminary grip on doctrine and fence it off from other documents and non-verbal organisational assets. In this chapter, we will trace the sources of military doctrine, and follow its development from conception, centuries ago, to the present day. Military doctrine in its oral form is almost as old as war itself. When Spartan hoplites advanced, for instance, they were all acting according to imperatives and rules that were doctrinal in nature. This type of tacit doctrine was conveyed by cultural means without much official codification: ‘Pre-modern doctrines are best regarded as loose collections of military folk ways, “tricks of the trade”, handed down by the vets to recruits on the march, in the saddle, or across the bivouac fires’.1 This way of conveying knowledge and imperatives of skills to the novice has by no means disappeared. It is still a very important, perhaps the most important, way to convey all types of procedural knowledge.2 However, this study is restricted to military doctrine in its written form. Whether there existed written doctrines before the Renaissance is a matter of interpretation. The Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and even Muslim-Arabs had military manuals,3 and the textual remnants contain a miscellaneous blend of rules of thumb, different stratagems, ritualised military procedures, and didactic military history. Some even resemble ‘regulations in its broadest sense’, issued in the names of, for example, the Emperors Augustus, Trajan, and Hadrian.4 Some of them may even have been ‘supported by theoretical explanations and general rationale’, and so approximated our definition of doctrine.5 However, whether any of these documents qualify as doctrine, i.e. authoritative military documents containing fundamental principles requiring judgement in application, is, nonetheless, dubious. In any case, the main arguments in this chapter do not depend on the answer to such speculations. Here, it is sufficient to state that, even if the Romans or Byzantines had written doctrines in our sense of the word, there is no evidence that any of them survived to inspire modern doctrine development in more than a very indirect way.6 During the millennium that separated the fall of Rome from Gutenberg’s printing press, the secular use of the written word was growing

26 Preliminaries steadily until Spain became the first state that based its political undertakings primarily on paperwork. Phillip II (1527–1598), consequently, gained the nickname el rey papelero – the king of paper.7 As opposed to his father, Charles V (1500–1558), Phillip preferred to fight wars at the office desk rather than in the field. This was not unique to the Escorial. The rise of what might be called the ‘paper state’ was a general European phenomenon following in the wake of Gutenberg.8 The early part of the seventeenth century also saw a substantial growth in publications for a wider audience, presenting knowledge within a broad field of interest that traditionally had been carried by word of mouth.9 The value of the printed word was not lost on military commanders either, and one of the first embryonic doctrines in history, in its written form, was created by one of Phillip’s most fervent enemies, the house of Nassau. In numbers and materiel, the United Provinces were inferior to the armies of Spain, but inventive minds created new drills and manoeuvres which compensated for Spain’s superiority in flesh and hardware. In the 1590s, John II of Nassau commissioned a written instruction for the conduct of war called the Exercise of Armes, which was published in 1607 by Jacob de Gheyn (1565–1629). The work, which was dedicated to Maurice of Nassau, contained 117 copper engravings portraying the stepby-step sequence for foot soldiers in the handling of their weapons.10 The book, which was based upon a German tradition of Fechtbücher, which were illustrated manuals on swordsmanship and wrestling, was the first drill book in the Western world that combined illustrations of individual movements with the appropriate words of command.11 In the seventeenth century, few soldiers could read, but de Gheyn’s book could be used even by illiterates. The book mainly contained illustrations, which could be enjoyed by anyone. The significance of this is hard to overestimate.12 The utility of written words was also appreciated on the high seas, where, for instance, Fighting Instructions were issued by the Royal Navy in 1653. These instructions were, according to Julian Corbett, ‘nothing less than revolutionary’.13 Crucially, the instructions did not revolutionise practice at sea. On the contrary, what the new orders did was to crystallise ‘into a definite system, and perhaps somewhat extended a practice which had long been familiar though not universal in the service’.14 The revolutionary element lay in pinning practice to paper, which could thus be distributed widely. The flip side of the Fighting Instructions was that they could disadvantageously tie the hands of admirals at sea. As always, the doctrinal dilemma lurked underneath. A rigid adherence to the instructions could hamper creativity and the ability to seize golden tactical opportunities. Consequently, the Fighting Instructions eventually turned into a signal book, setting out what different signals meant rather than how to fight. Naturally, admirals acquired from the book more articulated means of communication, and so

A history of military doctrine 27 added tactical flexibility, but Fighting Instructions did not particularly improve their decision making. Hence, when Nelson forged his band of brothers, he had to use his own personal touch. Frederick the Great’s Instructions for His Generals (1747) is the next serious candidate for being the first military doctrine in its modern and written sense, because it contains all three elements of doctrine, i.e. theory, culture, and authority. First, it contains theory because it justifies its guidelines and has an explanatory ambition, for instance: ‘You see that I fortify these redoubts better than the rest of the entrenchment. Here is the reason for it: these are the points that will be attacked.’15 Second, it contains culture because it takes the societal underpinning of Frederick’s army into consideration: ‘Our regiments are composed half of citizens and half of mercenaries. The latter, not attached to the state by any bonds of interest, become deserters at the first occasion.’ 16 The fact that the soldiers also hated Frederick and his officers had obvious implications for how the troops could be led.17 That was cultural knowledge of the highest importance. Third, the document also carried authority, in the sense that it was endorsed by the king himself. A considerable part of Frederick’s message is thus supported by the fact that he, the king, says it: ‘I have already said, and I repeat it, that I would never put myself in an entrenchment’.18 Even if Frederick’s Instructions were ground-breaking, they differ from modern doctrines in two important ways. First of all, Frederick’s doctrine was secret. In 1748, it was originally sent to his successor to the throne with a request enclosed that it should be shown to no one. An edition of fifty copies was printed in January 1753 and sent to a list of officers whom the king ‘considered models of their profession’.19 Hence, only a very exclusive group of officers received a copy, and they promised not to take it with them into battle and to ensure its return to the king on their deaths. The text did not become common knowledge until 1760, when a general was captured by the Austrians with the manuscript on his person. Then it took only a few years before it was available in print for everyone, in both German and English, in addition to its original French. The secrecy of Fredrick’s manuscript aptly illustrates a generic paradox of all doctrines: how to make them useful to us, but not to our enemies. As demonstrated by a French general in a note to the general staff in 1940: ‘[The contents of the provisional notes on the use of tanks] cannot remain secret indefinitely if one wants them to become sufficiently known.’ 20 The second and most important difference between Fredrick’s Instructions and a modern doctrine is that his instructions resemble a contingency plan and are thus more akin to strategy than to doctrine. When Frederick wrote that ‘[a]s for the nature of your operations it is very difficult to determine them without knowing the circumstances in which you will find yourself ’,21 he was touching a raw nerve in the art of doctrine making. This kind of uncertainty is endemic for all who contemplate future military operations. But when Frederick continued, ‘I daresay,

28 Preliminaries always with certitude and from experience, that Bohemia will never be taken by making war there. In order to capture it permanently from the house of Austria it is necessary for an allied army to go along the Danube’, he abruptly left the area of doctrine and ventured into the area of strategy and military planning. When the Nassau cousins ordered The Exercise of Armes, they were themselves the leading experts in the field, as Frederick was. The latter had perhaps the greatest knowledge of martial and strategic matters in Prussia, and his expertise carried a certain amount of authority in itself, in addition to his royal dignity. The US Congress thus broke new doctrinal ground when it, in 1779, formally bestowed doctrinal authority on a written document. Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben (1730–1794) was born in Prussia and had seen combat during the Seven Years War (1756–1763). He had also attended Frederick the Great’s exclusive Spezialklasse der Kriegskunst.22 With shifting fortune and by long roundabout routes, he was brought to the attention of the American commissioners in Paris, Silas Deane and Benjamin Franklin, in 1777. Both saw Steuben’s military credentials and experience as a potential morale booster for American confidence and presented him by letter to George Washington as a ‘Lieutenant General in the King of Prussia’s service’,23 which was a blatant lie. Steuben had only risen to the modest rank of Stabskapitän (Hauptmann) when he left the Prussian Army in 1763.24 The bluff paid off, however, and Steuben, despite the fact that he initially had to work through interpreters,25 had a galvanising effect on a disorganised army when he joined Washington in 1778. One of the most important things Steuben did, besides radiating forceful Prussian bearing, was to develop the drill instruction that grew into the Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States. The regulations, known among the troops as the ‘Blue Book’, were a stunning piece of work.26 While de Gheyn’s The Exercise of Armes was mainly occupied with individual drill, Steuben’s manual was aimed at the unit. What was exceptional, in our context, however, was not the content, but the fact that the regulation, in competition with others, was sanctioned by Congress. The value of this was not lost on Steuben either: Some perhaps will inquire, Who is that Man who meddles with our Discipline? On what authority does he introduce such or such Thing? In such a Case, I’ll have nothing to answer. I’ll leave the care of my Vindication to Congress.27 The regulation thus gained an unprecedented authoritative pitch, and marked the origins of US Army doctrine.28 Hence, in Congress (on 29 March 1779), President John Jay and Secretary Charles Thompson signed the following:

A history of military doctrine 29 Congress judging it of the greatest importance to prescribe some invariable rules for the order and discipline of the troops, especially for the purpose of introducing an uniformity in their formation and manoeuvres, and in the service of the camp: Ordered, That the following regulations be observed by all the troops of the United States, and that all general and other officers cause the same to be executed with all possible exactness.29 By this act, a central element of military doctrine was firmly established. A written document had formally and solemnly been approved and authorised to add uniformity to formations and manoeuvres.30 It is also important to note that the ‘Blue Book’ had rudiments of the two other constituent elements of doctrine as well: culture and theory. Steuben could have confined himself to translating Prussian regulations into English, but he realised that the American soldiers had little in common with Prussians: The genius of this nation is not to be compared . . . with that of the Prussians, Austrians, or French. You say to your soldier, ‘Do this’, and he does it; but I am obliged to say, ‘This is the reason why you ought to do that’, and then he does it.31 Hence, the cultural fabric of independently minded Americans forced Steuben to add some theory, in the shape of explanations, to his doctrine as well. Importantly, and as a small appetiser for a later chapter in this book, the ‘rise of the common soldier’ that followed in the wake of the French Revolution, where soldiers were gradually treated as both more thinking and more motivated than before in order to ‘fully tap the psychological and intellectual energies of [the] recruits’,32 meant that explanations and encouragements became increasingly important even outside America. Indeed, as we will see repeatedly, when the masters of war ceased to treat the majority of their soldiers as mere criminals and the ‘scum of the earth’, meaning became militarily relevant even at the lowest level, and doctrine became an important vehicle to provide it. The American Revolutionary War was fought over a vast area primarily with amateur soldiers and militia; it was a partisan war. Hence, the commander-in-chief could not be personally present at every juncture. Even in Europe, something important was about to happen in this regard. Until Napoleon, the supreme commander had, as a rule, led his troops personally in the field. The practical restraints on command and control were to all intents and purposes the same for Frederick the Great as they had been for Alexander the Great, but the French Revolution did away with all such numerical limitations. Napoleon’s campaign in Italy from

30 Preliminaries 1796 to 1797 had been conducted along similar lines to Frederick’s style of command, in the sense that it rested on the supreme commander’s personal involvement, and on the fact that the force was ‘small enough to allow the genius of its commander to be employed in person wherever success was in jeopardy’.33 As Napoleon’s empire grew, however, he could no longer direct all battles personally and had successively to trust his marshals, who, to a varying degree, understood his system, and, to a varying degree, had been indoctrinated by the personal example of Napoleon himself. When Napoleon headed for Moscow with almost 600,000 troops under his operational command, much had changed since the Battles of Lodi and Rivoli.

Moltke and the loss of the Feldherrenhügel When we come to Helmuth von Moltke (1800–1891), the so-called Feldherrenhügel was definitely abandoned. There was no longer any ridge or crest where the supreme commander could stand with his telescope and direct the battle via aides-de-camp on horseback. The number of troops and the vastness of the battlefield were definitely beyond the reach of one man.34 Superficially, Moltke’s way of using the large number of troops made available by conscription and steam-powered transportation resembled Napoleon’s way of dividing his Grande Armée into Corps d’Armée. The logic behind the division of troops was the same for both. In order to move and be supplied efficiently, troops had to be split into smaller sections, but they had to be sufficiently large to survive an unexpected clash with the enemy and hold out until supported by adjacent troops. To be sure, in stark contrast to Napoleon, Moltke had both telegraph and railway at his disposal, but, at the tactical level, that was more part of the problem than part of the solution. Both telegraph and railway contributed to an even larger number of troops in the field without helping much on the battlefield itself. The important difference between Napoleon and Moltke was that Napoleon preferred to concentrate his army before the start of the battle.35 True, in many of Napoleon’s battles the outcome had hinged on reinforcements arriving in the heat of the battle itself, but ideally he wanted to run the main battle personally and thus needed the troops ‘within the reach of his direct orders’.36 Moltke, on the other hand, had no intention of running battles in the Napoleonic way and largely confined himself to ‘general strategic orders’.37 The dictum ‘getrennt marschieren, vereint schlagen’ encapsulated neatly Moltke’s de facto doctrine of war. Ideally, the army corps should converge advantageously on the battlefield itself, as Blücher and Wellington had done at Waterloo, and that convergence was Moltke’s main responsibility.38 During the battle itself, the corps and divisional commanders became the most important decision makers. If they misjudged the situation, the

A history of military doctrine 31 whole campaign could be lost. Hence, the success of the undertaking rested heavily on relatively junior commanders: ‘Whereas Napoleon I led and controlled throughout, Moltke brought his armies to their starting point and then abdicated his command and unleashed them’.39 It was thus paramount that the man on the spot used his own judgement. Therefore, Moltke needed some sort of inbuilt compass in his subordinate commanders to preserve cohesion and unity of effort: The aim of the great general staff in Berlin is not to produce one Napoleon, but to make of every corps and divisional commander a worthy peer of Constantin von Alvensleben and of Hiller von Gärtringen, men who will use the perfect instrument placed in their hands with the energy and intelligent initiative shown by the leader of the 3rd Corps at Mars-la-Tour, and of the 1st Division of the Guard at Königgrätz.40 In order to get subordinate commanders to interpret a situation in more or less the same way, Moltke had to make his subordinates more ‘alike in the relative importance they attach[ed] to different respects of comparison’,41 a point we will return to. After the war against Austria in 1866, Moltke ordered the historical section in the general staff to prepare a study of the army’s performance.42 This study, which also pointed to serious shortcomings, served as the basis of new guidelines for senior commanders. The document, titled Verordnung für die höheren Truppenführer (Instructions for Large Unit Commanders), was published on 24 June 1869, and was given a very limited circulation. Among more mundane topics, for instance the structuring of the army and communications between commands and units, we also find the core of German military thinking at the time: Victory (Sieg) in combat is the most important factor in war. Victory alone breaks the will of the enemy and forces him to submit to our will. Neither the possession of a tract of land nor the conquest of a fortified position will suffice. On the contrary, only the destruction (Zerstörung) of the enemy’s fighting power will, as a rule, be decisive. This [destruction of the enemy’s fighting power] is therefore the foremost object of operations (Operationsobjekt).43 Together with the assignment of general staff officers to field units, the Verordnung helped the local commanders to make the proper decision without continuous supervision from above: To offset the evident constraints of the command system as he found it, Moltke transformed the Prussian general staff into a unique instrument combining flexibility and initiative at the local level with

32 Preliminaries conformity to a common operational doctrine and to the intentions of the high command.44 Even this system had its weaknesses, however, which is another point we will return to later. In the war of 1870, Moltke managed to counterbalance French demographic superiority by a better system of war. He made his ‘team’ significantly better than his opponent’s, even if his individual ‘players’ were not, as we will see in the next section. Not surprisingly, in the decades after 1870, most countries with Great Power ambitions tried to emulate the highly successful German way of war and especially their general staff.45 According to General Sir Rupert Smith, Moltke was the true inventor of ‘a coherent military doctrine’ and his 1869 Instructions have, in spirit at least, ‘inspired most operation manuals of Western militaries to this day’.46 Albert Palazzo also gives Moltke the mixed blessing of inventing military doctrine.47 However, even if Moltke is hailed as the founder of modern military doctrine, it was those on the receiving end of Prussian military professionalism, i.e. the French, who coined ‘doctrine’ as a distinct military term.

Auteurs dogmatiques Since doctrine is a rather conventional word, one should perhaps expect that even military theorists have used it to denote the theoretical component of martial experience or the established canon of military knowledge or, in a more modern sense, that part of military activity that is not based on ‘unquestionably true’ propositions. Indeed, if you read Howard and Paret’s translation of Clausewitz’s Vom Kriege, you certainly get the impression that Clausewitz used the word copiously, for instance in headlines, such as ‘A Positive Doctrine Is Unattainable’ and ‘Theory Should Be Study, Not Doctrine’.48 The problem, though, is that Clausewitz himself rarely, if ever, used the word ‘Doktrin’. In its original German, the sentence above read, ‘Eine positive Lehre ist unmöglich’ and ‘Die Theorie soll eine Betrachtung und keine Lehre sein.’49 In other words, ‘doctrine’ was probably not established as a military term when Clausewitz wrote, at least not in German. On the other hand, though, Clausewitz’s contemporary, the Swiss Antoine-Henri Jomini (1779–1869), did use the word ‘doctrine’ occasionally.50 Where Jomini got the expression ‘doctrine’ from, we can only guess. Worthy of note, however, is that the word enjoyed a significant renaissance during Jomini’s own lifetime. In 1816, a French-language paper published in Brussels, Nain jaune réfugié, started to refer to the leaders of the moderate and constitutional Royalists in France as the ‘doctrinaires’.51 Even if it is too open-handed and perhaps even unfair to other theorists to give Jomini the honour of adopting ‘doctrine’ as a military term, the

A history of military doctrine 33 honour for establishing it in its modern sense should at least go to the francophone generation that followed him.52 A younger contemporary of Jomini, the French military writer and theorist Colonel Ardant du Picq (1819–1870), had by the use of questionnaires tried to understand what actually happened to the human will in combat. What convinced one side that it had lost and the other that it had won?53 When du Picq was killed by a German shell near Metz in 1870, he left a collection of notes that was later published as Etudes sur Le Combat (Battle Studies), which dealt with doctrinal matters in the sense that it analysed the cognitive part of war. Hence, with regard to the evolution of ‘doctrine’ as a military concept, du Picq marks an important transition. Ardant du Picq used the word dogmatisme to denote, for instance, the Roman method of battle,54 but he seems not to have used the word doctrine, even if modern English translations put the word ‘doctrine’ in his mouth. In English, du Picq, for instance, claimed: ‘However, cavalry always has the same doctrine: Charge!’ and ‘In this respect there is a complete anarchy of ideas. There is no infantry doctrine.’ 55 In French, however, the wording is ‘Cependant la cavalerie a le même credo, la charge’ and ‘lâ, anarchie complète dans les idées, pas de credo pour l’infanterie’.56 Hence, du Picq did not establish doctrine as a distinct military term, but he was a pioneer in the sense that he delved into questions that we would, today, categorise as doctrinal. It is also important to note that du Picq’s work went virtually unnoticed for decades.57 It was from the ‘new French military school’,58 which flourished around the École supérieure de guerre from the mid 1880s, that the most important doctrinaires evolved. The seminal event that firmly established doctrine as a common military term was the ‘terrible year’ of 1870. The Franco-Prussian War made it painfully clear that France had lost the military superiority personified by Napoleon I, just as Prussia had lost its Frederician invincibility more than sixty years earlier. The soul searching that followed in France was unprecedented: Never before has any army criticised itself so unsparingly, never before has any army stepped so naked to the stool of repentance – the army beaten at Jena [i.e. Prussia in 1806] repented in sackcloth and ashes, but it did not take all Europe into its confidence with the courage of the French General Staff.59 Something had been seriously rotten in the French Army, as France’s shattering defeat could not be explained by technology or numbers alone. The French had not been outgunned, even if the German artillery was superior to theirs. At the Battle of Gravelotte–St. Privat in August 1870, French chassepot rifles had decimated the German attackers. A Prussian regiment had suffered appallingly, with 68 per cent casualties in less than thirty minutes.60 In that battle alone, the German forces suffered more

34 Preliminaries than 20,000 dead and wounded, while the French lost less than half that number. Prussia could not sustain such a casualty rate, despite the fact that it mobilised more men than France. Hence, the French problem was their commanders’ lack of resolve, not their gunnery. Individually, the French soldiers were also presumably brave enough to match the Germans: [A] German officer of high rank, who was in the Franco-German War, admitted to me that in wood-fighting or in any place where the fighting spirit of the individual man came into play, the Germans were not a match for the French, although in disciplined bodies they at that time always beat them.61 This retrospective evaluation can certainly have been coloured by the Great War, but it indicates a point we have visited earlier in this study, the point about the Mameluks. It is fully possible to have good soldiers in bad units, so to speak. The ‘team’ can be weaker than the sum of the ‘players’, and vice versa. Not even Moltke explained the victory with audacity, but, rather, with better staff work: ‘Our arch-enemy the French is as brave as we are, is as determined as we are but he has not got what we have got: a really good General Staff.’ 62 Even French observers supported that view: ‘Our armies were beaten less by the genius of Moltke than by an institution: the great general staff ’.63 Two generations later, Field Marshal Montgomery was in no doubt about where the problem lay: ‘Bazaine’s failure in generalship needs no further discussion; it is sufficient to add that the French troops had displayed a fighting quality which deserved better leadership. Moltke was lucky to have gained such a victory’.64 In order to do better next time, France had obviously to do something serious about its commanders’ bellicosity and its army’s collective ability to run modern battles, and not only improve its staff work. Combat’s mental domain (i.e. du Picq’s topic), as well as its physical, had to be investigated. The Napoleonic spirit of war had to be rekindled in the French forces. They needed something to infuse ‘with life the whole body of an army, without which the most admirable texts and precepts enshrined in regulations are but dead bones and dry dust’.65 In addition to new imperatives and a new formula for victory, the French also needed a way to energise, to inflame willpower, and to foster what later became known as élan vital. The ‘storm of steel’ and ‘zone of death’ that followed the increase in firepower in the decades around 1870 demanded an almost-superhuman willpower to close with the enemy: ‘Between the combatants will always be an impassable zone of fire deadly in equal degree to both the foes.’ 66 In order to succeed, you would, therefore, need the conviction of a crusader, fuelled by the Holy

A history of military doctrine 35 Gospel. In 1892, General Henri Bonnal described how such a ‘gospel’ came about: The ignorance which reigned in our army of 1870, in the matter of practical knowledge of the affairs of war, is known to every one. The lessons which events have given us have not been lost; for never, at any epoch of our history, has an activity been seen comparable to that which manifested itself after the late war. Confused in the beginning, ideas have little by little formed themselves into groups about a few great principles of experience that have formed the basis of a doctrine aiming at discipline of the mind, to-day in full period of development, in which the War College has taken a large part. A doctrine of war does not impose itself; it is born of the unanimous concurrence of understandings under the empire of convictions progressively acquired.67 As said above, military regulations in themselves were not enough, however brilliant; they had to be infused with something more, with doctrine: ‘Without a doctrine, text books are of little avail; better a doctrine without text books than text books without a doctrine, for the former was the case in Napoleon’s time.’68 You could do without the text, but not without the doctrine. In 1903, after more than twenty years’ maturation, ‘doctrine’ was definitely established as a distinct military concept by Ferdinand Foch’s Principles of War. According to Foch, history could never replace acquired experience of war, but it could prepare for it. Moreover, military leadership could no longer be based on mysterious revelations. Hence, the study of history became the ‘true means of learning war and of determining the fixed principles of the art of war’.69 This could subsequently result in a: theory of war which can be taught – which shall be taught to you – and in the shape of a doctrine, which you will be taught to practise. What is meant by these words is the conception and the practical application not of a science of war nor of some limited dogma [dogme fermé], composed of abstract truths outside which all would be heresy, but of a certain number of principles, the application of which, though they will not be open to discussion once they shall have been established, must logically vary according to circumstances while always tending towards the same goal, and that an objective goal. The doctrine will extend itself to the higher side of war, owing to the free development given to your minds by a common manner of seeing, thinking, acting, by which everyone will profit according to the measure of his own gifts; it will nevertheless constitute a discipline of the mind common to you all.70 Persuasiveness and commitment were more important than perfect, but dry, theory: ‘Une doctrine, pour si parfaite qu’on la suppose, ne vaut en

36 Preliminaries effet que par l’homme, assez convaincu et persuasif pour la faire pénétrer dans l’esprit de ses adeptes’.71 Doctrine’s strong religious connotations made it perhaps particularly suited for French officers in the latter part of the nineteenth century. After 1871, the network of Jesuit schools contributed ‘out of all proportion to the entrance list of the most prestigious officer-schools’.72 How strong the link actually was between the Jesuits and the French Army is still disputed.73 Nonetheless, many officers were familiar with the Christian vernacular, including ‘doctrine’. Foch, for instance, was a devout Catholic, and his religiosity may have made him especially receptive to the value of conviction and ‘mental discipline’.74 A doctrine could presumably evoke conviction within the military sphere just as it did within the religious: It is necessary that they [our officers] should understand not only the letter but also the spirit of our regulations, so that they may be certain that these regulations are their most sure guide and one to be followed with sincere conviction and entire faith.75 It is important to add that, even if Foch finalised the development of the concept of doctrine, and, even if leading generals recognised the urgent need for one, that did not mean that France actually had one in a material sense. Foch’s The Principles of War was not a doctrine due to the lack of formal authority, even if his principles and imperatives were in accordance with current common military sense.76 Hence, Joseph Joffre stated on his appointment as chief of the French general staff in 1911 that his most urgent duty was to create a ‘coherent doctrine, to impose it on officers and men alike, to create an instrument to apply what [he] considered the right doctrine’.77 It is also important to note that, even if French military theorists used the word ‘doctrine’, it was not yet part of international military vernacular. To indicate how novel the concept still was when Foch used it in 1903, consider Gabriel Darrieus’ La Guerre Sur Mer (1907). When the book was translated into English in 1908, the subtitle La Doctrine was substituted by Basic Principles.78 In the translator’s preface, we find the reason why: ‘It may be well to state that the French expression which I have translated “Basic Principles” is “La Doctrine”. “The Doctrine” would perhaps express the meaning better, but that seemed to have something of a theological flavour’.79 The subtitle in Darrieus’ book was absent even in the Swedish edition published in 1911, though the Swedish version did use the word ‘krigsdoktrin’ in the running text.80 Indeed, at the fin de siècle, the word doctrinaire was, if we are to believe Oscar Wilde, a ‘word full of terror to the British mind’.81 However, the mere fact that Wilde used the term shows at least that it was on its way into the British language. Moreover, Spenser Wilkinson used the term in a

A history of military doctrine 37 rather modern way in his book from 1895 about the German general staff The Brain of an Army: ‘[The general staff] forms an organism whose arteries spread all through the army, gathering practical experience and carrying wherever they go the same continuous stream of principles and of doctrines.’82 Hence, in The Encyclopædia Britannica (1910), we do find the term, but not as something you would like to be associated with: ‘The word “doctrinaire” has become naturalized in English terminology, as applied, in a slightly contemptuous sense, to a theorist, as distinguished from a practical man of affairs.’ 83 Even T. E. Lawrence knew doctrine’s French connection and religious connotations when he, with a touch of hindsight, figured out how he had won the guerrilla war against the Turks: I had made a comfortable beginning of doctrine, but was left still to find an alternative end and means of war. Ours seemed unlike the ritual of which Foch was priest; and I recalled him, to see a difference in kind between him and us.84 The reason why Lawrence blamed Foch has certainly more to do with his later achievements during the Great War than with any outstanding intellectual talent for doctrine and theory. After all, Foch was the only one of the ‘remarkable group of professors’ at the École de guerre young enough to serve in the Great War.85 Evidently, even the Germans thought about war and how to prepare for it. Scharnhorst and Clausewitz had proved that Germans did not recoil from theorising theory, but the Prussian defeat in 1806 was not an intellectual defeat in the way that France’s defeat of 1870–1871 was. And, after 1870, the French were much more inclined to consider how they thought about war than the Germans were. It was France which had to revive its military spirit and the French needed a name for that something which had been lost since Napoleon I, i.e. la doctrine. To German ears, on the other hand, the word Doktrin implied dogma and rigidity; not very desirable qualities in war.86 Modern doctrine is thus a French invention with a double purpose: to explain how to win the next war and to infuse the will to do so. Hence, when we refer to German doctrine in this book, as we do quite a lot, it is pidgin shorthand for a German blend of their historical experiences of war, the structuring effect of their geostrategic homogeneity, Moltke’s Verordnung für die höheren Truppenführer, and their appreciation of military Bildung. Finally, compared with Germany, France’s political culture and constitution also made it difficult for French doctrine to evolve organically, because political and military stability was completely absent. Between 1874 and 1914, for instance, France had seventeen chiefs of the general staff while Germany had only four.87 The French tenures were far too short to allow any personal influence on the army or any personal honing of the

38 Preliminaries ethos in the manner exercised by von Moltke and Schlieffen in Germany. As a result, in order to have a degree of ‘a common outlook and a uniform basis of action’ at all, the French had to rely on a much more focused and formalised process than the one in Germany. Further research is required to map the complete etymology of ‘doctrine’ as a military term, especially so since there are past military masters beyond my linguistic reach. Moreover, other elusive disciplines, such as economics, and Marxism for that matter, have their own etymology of the word ‘doctrine’ that I have to leave to others. Here, it is sufficient to state that the devastating experience of 1870 made the French particularly sensitive to the non-material aspects of war and that Foch’s publication in 1903 firmly established ‘doctrine’ as a technical military term, at least in France. This conclusion is also vindicated in an article by the Norwegian officer Otto Ruge in 1929: What most of all struck the world after 70–71 were the methodical arrangements Moltke and his general staff had based the operations on. How over the years he had prepared exactly this war based on his plans of operation, had organized and educated the army according to those plans, and educated his subordinates in line with his operational ideas. And by that created a ‘common outlook that alone could ensure the unity of effort towards the common goal’. As Foch gave expression to in ‘La Conduite de la Guerre’ Foch regarded this ‘Unité de doctrine’ as the means that had brought the Germans the victory, despite the substantial shortcomings he found in Moltke’s direction of operations. Others meant the same as Foch. ‘Unité de doctrine’ became a slogan worldwide, and more than a slogan. It was a real need that had to be met. Operations with armies of millions cannot be improvised.88 What had taken Moltke decades to cultivate, had to be accomplished in more expeditious and assiduous ways. According to Ruge, very few military commanders had ever admitted that they followed a fixed system of war.89 It is the distance of time that gives posterity the ability to see the apparent uniformity of the action of, for instance, Frederick the Great. For the contemporaries, the underlying patterns are drowned in particulars and details.90 The French idea after 1870 was thus to be more ‘proactive’; to mould their system of war deliberately, and not only roll with the punches. If we cross the Channel, we see that most Britons maintained a more sceptic attitude to doctrine than the Continental armies. Indeed, some saw the idea behind doctrine as utterly un-British.91 This is typically attributed to the fact that the United Kingdom usually fought small imperial skirmishes that left little to crystallise into doctrine. The fact that the concept of doctrine first occurred on Continental Europe may also have triggered a ‘not-invented-here’ response from the British military establishment:

A history of military doctrine 39 ‘The British dislike of theories and preference for muddling through may then also be explained as a means of distinguishing Britons from other Europeans, and particularly the “intellectual” French.’ 92 While Frederick the Great declared that he could not ‘have any enemies except our neighbours’, his British counterparts could say no such thing: [The British army’s] varied Imperial commitments meant that it was in a very different position from the German army, which knew that its next major war would be fought in Western and Central Europe and could therefore arrange its training and doctrine for that environment and set of enemies.93 While the Germans virtually fought over the same war-torn battlefields again and again, the British Army had their units ‘scattered from Malta to Peshawar, from the Curragh to the Cape’.94 A doctrine could thus ‘prepare the army to face the wrong army at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Studying the campaigns of Napoleon might not help in a war against the Zulus’.95 Doctrine makers have apparently to know who the next enemy is going to be: ‘Knowing the enemy is the bedrock of the business of strategy: strategic theories, in comparison, are second order problems. To concentrate on doctrine before enemies is to put the theoretical cart before the actual horse – a double error.’ 96 Such a (fore)knowledge is a rare luxury for an imperial army. Consequently, the multifarious tasks of imperial policing seemed to call for a ‘doctrine of no doctrine’.97 Each situation had to be treated on its own merit and could not be shoehorned into a prefabricated straitjacket. Some observers go even further and reject a British doctrine even in its weakest form: ‘the British Army does not embrace a “philosophy” (for the want of a better word) which animates the actions of all soldiers under the enormously varied and taxing circumstances that they might encounter in action’.98 The British are utterly pragmatic, or so it seems. Despite the British gut reaction against doctrine, something important happened even there at the turn of the century. While the French had been awoken by Prussian military excellence in 1870, the British Army was humiliated a generation later by a ‘rural rabble’ in the South African War: The first phase of our campaign in Natal and Cape Colony presented to the world the unforeseen spectacle of a highly-trained and welldisciplined regular army, whose armament and equipment were abreast of the requirements of modern war, checked at all points by the levies of two insignificant Republics whose forces were but loose gatherings of armed farmers.99 Just as the Russians had in Manchuria, the British Army, according to Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy (1875–1942), suffered dreadful

40 Preliminaries setbacks due to a lack of doctrine: ‘[I]t is significant that the same lack of an all-permeating, vivifying doctrine is to be found in the army which was beaten at Mukden, and in that which failed at Colenso and at Spion Kop.’ 100 Here it is time to introduce Pope-Hennessy, whom we will meet quite often in this book, more properly. Ladislaus Pope-Hennessy was a British officer who knew French military thinking particularly well and, thus, their predilection for la doctrine. He had, for instance, translated Jean Colin’s seminal Les transformations de la guerre in 1912. There, for instance, we find a rather apt description of doctrine: let us seek in the correspondence of Frederic or Napoleon the traces of their intellectual labour, and alongside the direct teaching furnished by each operation we may build up a more interesting whole−composed of the system of principles and the procedures adopted by the commander, and so arrive at his doctrine and his method.101 The reason why we meet Pope-Hennessy regularly in this book, is that he wrote two seminal articles in The Edinburgh Review about the utility of doctrine, namely: ‘The British Army and Modern Conceptions of War’ in The Edinburgh Review, vol. 213, no. 436 (April 1911), and ‘The Place of Doctrine in War’, The Edinburgh Review, vol. 215, no. 439 ( January 1912). The two articles were originally published anonymously. After the poor performance in the South African War, even the British Army saw the benefit of a written doctrine, and thus published Field Service Regulations (FSR) in 1909. According to Pope-Hennessy, this publication was ground-breaking: ‘for the first time in the history of our Army, its leaders and teachers have laid down definitely what method of battle forms the kernel of its training’.102 Although the word ‘doctrine’ itself had a repulsive ring to the British ear, a lot of what Continental thinkers tried to encapsulate in doctrine obviously had supporters, even in Great Britain. The opening paragraph of FSR gives, in fact, a description of doctrine that most Continental doctrinaires would appreciate: The principles given in this manual have been evolved by experience as generally applicable to the leading of troops. They are to be regarded by all ranks as authoritative, for their violation, in the past, has often been followed by mishap, if not by disaster. They should be so thoroughly impressed on the mind of every commander that, whenever he has to come to a decision in the field, he instinctively gives them their full weight.103 It is thus a bit odd to state that British commanders ignored written doctrines, or that they deliberately refused to have one. Indeed, John

A history of military doctrine 41 Terraine claims that Field Service Regulations was a major, but ‘almost entirely forgotten contribution’ to victory in the Great War.104 When Haig was on the ‘full tide of triumph’, he was quite frank about where the honour was due: [W]e have a surprisingly large number of very capable generals. Thanks to these gentlemen and to their ‘sound military knowledge built up by the study and practice until it has become an instinct’ and to steady adherence to the principles of our Field Service Regulations Part I are our success to be chiefly attributed.105 This was not a great concession on Haig’s part, since the regulations had been produced under his sponsorship as Director of Staff Duties between 1907 and 1909.106 Haig had also a special need to vindicate FSR, since he had struggled hard against fellow officers who had not seen the value of such ‘an un-British concept’.107 At one point, in 1907, Haig was forced to turn the burden of evidence over to his opponents: If General X – will tell us what we ought to do instead of pulling everything to pieces, we shall get on much better. Let us have some system to start with, and if it is not perfect we can improve it.108 When events turned out as they did during the Great War, the United Kingdom was forced to raise an army of millions. In that situation, a conceptual basis to start from, a doctrinal sounding board, which facilitated improvisation, was evidently of great value. Of course, one can go on to ask how far away from FSR one could eventually move and still claim to be under its auspices. One could, for instance, maintain that trench warfare ruined most of the assumptions of FSR, and that the British Army had to fall back on its ethos.109 This is a question of its own how FSR was utilised during the different stages of the Great War, and how much credit it actually deserves for the outcome of the war. Here, we round off this particular discussion by underscoring that the question about a particular doctrine’s actual influence on a modus operandi is a knotty one. The mere fact that a doctrine exists is by no means a proof of its efficiency: ‘Publishing a doctrinal pamphlet or circulating a paper is no more proof of the acceptance of a doctrinal policy than shouting its conclusions from the roof of the old War Office.’ 110 When all is said and done, however, Britain’s affair with doctrine, as we know the concept today, is much closer than some commentators would like us to believe, and commenced – so to speak – between Spion Kop and the digestion of the Great War. The 1909 edition of FSR ‘amounts to a doctrinal manual in all but name’,111 and in the 1924 version of FSR, the document even referred to itself as ‘doctrine’.112

42 Preliminaries Even in the United States the prestige of Prussian professionalism shone bright after 1870, and cast a long dark shadow over Jomini’s legacy.113 When the first official manual, which transcended drill and movements of formations, was published at Fort Leavenworth in 1891 as Infantry Drill Regulations, it was inspired by German predecessors.114 In practice, if not in name, the regulations reintroduced the idea of a written doctrine to the US Army more than 100 years after Steuben.115 The first general doctrine, Field Service Regulations, was subsequently published by the War Department in 1905.116 From then on, new manuals have been issued continuously in America to incorporate lessons from the last war as well as to exploit technological and strategic developments. The First World War was the first major war in history fought with literate conscripts,117 and, combined with the general bureaucratisation of the state administration, it caused the number of military documents to explode. The printed word had become the most efficient way to transmit information to large numbers of enlisted men. The urgent need for troops on the fields of Flanders also made it paramount to push huge numbers of officers and soldiers through boot camps and military classrooms without too much fuss. For instance, during the space of a mere eighteen months, the US Army grew from 1,000,000 men to four million.118 Similarly, the number of officers trained in staff duties in the British Army in 1914 was only 447, of which many were killed in the first months of the war. At the end of the war, there were more than 3,000 staff officers at the Western Front alone.119 The urgency forced military education to be as short and digestible as possible. Doctrine-like documents became an important device in military education and enculturation. To sum up this section about the birth and breakthrough of modern doctrine, the war of 1870 triggered the process that led to modern military doctrine, and the Great War made the word ‘doctrine’ military lingua franca in the Western world and beyond. According to Jay Luvaas, during the war the word ‘doctrine’ was so militarily outlandish, outside France, that you would not even find it in a dictionary: ‘American doughboys trying to converse with their French Allies in World War I could not have found the word [doctrine] in the French–English Military Technical Dictionary issued by the War Department’.120 However, as early as 1921, you could, in fact, find a document called ‘TR 10–5. Doctrines, Principles, and Methods’ on American military shelves, and William ‘Billy’ Mitchell used the word at least as early in more private publications: ‘Our doctrine of aviation, therefore, should be to find out where the hostile air force is’.121 In the 1920s, the nature and purpose of a ‘fighting doctrine’ became fixed as a sub-class of military knowledge, and not only an implicit part of military thinking.122 The explosive increase in authoritative documents since then is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that in 2005 no less than 634 publications ‘define[d] Army doctrine authoritatively’ in the USA alone.123 In other words, ‘[t]he U.S. Army [has become] a doctrine based

A history of military doctrine 43 124

army’. And what is good enough for the best is presumably good enough for the bunch.

The revolutionaries While doctrine’s core functions were established in the period between 1870 and 1918, it gained additional tasks during the twentieth century. In the following pages, we will investigate how doctrine also came to provide the direction for change. First, we will visit the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, and then observe how the US Army used doctrine to recuperate after the misery of the Vietnam War. To unearth all the military aspects of the Russian Revolution is too tall an order for this study, and we will thus restrict our focus to military doctrine. As in the aftermath of most civil wars, the question arose in Russia about what to do with the military competence of the past, both bodily, in the sense of tsarist officers, and conceptually, in the sense of old ways of operations. Indeed, it was not only a question of keeping or changing the content of the doctrine, but whether to have a new doctrine at all, and it is this meta-doctrinal discussion that is of the greatest relevance here.125 The pro-doctrinal faction in the new regime held that even a communist state could use a military doctrine just as advantageously as the bourgeois states had done. According to Mikhail Frunze (1885–1925), it was essential that the new Red Army was held together and governed by a ‘unity of views’ which he called a ‘unified military doctrine (edinaya voennaya doktrina)’.126 To many of the Red commanders, it was paramount that this unified doctrine had to be based on something completely new. Hence, the core of revolutionary doctrine should be offensive spirit and manoeuvre. While the imperialists had practised positional warfare, as manifested in the fields of Flanders, the revolutionaries would base their doctrine on ‘the absolute maneuverist principle’.127 The anti-doctrinal faction held quite another view. It was not obvious to the People’s Commissar for War, Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), that everything their class enemies had done was foolish: It will do incalculable harm if we were to inoculate the military youth with the idea that the old doctrine is utterly worthless and that we have entered a new epoch when everything can be viewed superciliously and with the equipment of an ignoramus.128 To bother to formally introduce a new doctrine was pure nonsense: Only hopeless doctrinaires believe that answers to questions of mobilization, formation, training, education, strategy and tactics can be obtained deductively, in a formal logical manner from the premises of a sacred ‘military doctrine’. What we lack are not magical, all-saying

44 Preliminaries military formulas but a more careful, attentive, precise, vigilant and conscientious work resting on those foundations which we have already firmly lodged. . . . The Communist vanguard is sufficiently assured of revolutionary initiative and aggressive spirit. We do not need verbal, noisy innovations with regard to new military doctrines, nor proclamations of them with the beating of drums; what we need is the systematization of experience, improvement of organization, attention to little details.129 The Red Army already had Marxism and had no need for a written military doctrine, which nobody could come up with anyway: Instead of screaming about military doctrine you should present us with it, demonstrate it, show us at least a particle of that military doctrine which the Red Army is presumably lacking. But the whole trouble is that as soon as our military ‘doctrinaires’ pass from lamentations about the usefulness of doctrine to actual attempts to present us with one, or even with its most general outline they either repeat, not very adequately, what has long ago been said, what has already been assimilated by us, what has already been incorporated in resolutions of the party and of the Soviet congress, in decrees, regulations, statutes and instructions far better and much more precisely than is done by our alleged innovators; or they confuse things, commit blunders and indulge in absolutely impermissible ‘independent thinking’.130 The perpetual doctrinal dilemma was inescapable. Either doctrine would amount to mere platitudes which even a donkey ‘pilfering oats from a torn sack’ would follow, even if the munching donkey had ‘never read Clausewitz’;131 or doctrine was blinkered, and, by overemphasising certain elements of strategy, would reduce the army’s flexibility. According to Major General Aleksandr Svechin (1878–1938), ‘doctrine would rigidify planning and stop debate’.132 If, for instance, all strategy was reduced to offensive action, then the Red Army’s strategy would be extremely predictable and unilateral in its character. In war, comprehension and adaptability were much more important than prearranged doctrine: A narrow doctrine would probably confuse us more than guide us. And we must not forget that only maneuvers are one-sided, while wars are always two-sided. We must be able to get a grasp of war as it is perceived by the opposing side and clarify the other side’s desires and goals. . . . Strategy is a discipline in which success depends very little on the memorization of precepts issued by a school or the assimilation of logical constructs contained in textbooks on strategy. A unity of doctrine based on the unity of strategic guidelines is illusory.133

A history of military doctrine 45 War was decided by particularities and practical skills, not by fluffy newspeak. Hence, it was much more important for the Red Army that its soldiers knew how to grease their boots and cook good cabbage soup than to occupy themselves with ‘fantastic reconstruction’. And if anyone on ‘a holiday occasion’ should call such a practical programme a military doctrine, ‘he will not be held to account’.134 The ‘doctrine of no doctrine’ is also a doctrine. After much bickering, Frunze finally got the upper hand and doctrine became a central concept in Soviet military thinking.135 Arguably, the idea of doctrine has, thenceforth, gone from strength to strength in the Soviet Union. The (Soviet) Russian approach to doctrine is extensive, political, and deductive: ‘Military doctrine depends directly on the social structure, domestic and foreign policy, and the economic, political, and cultural state of a country.’ 136 Even voices within the Western world have occasionally asked for more politicised doctrines: In the sixties and seventies, it was widely argued that military doctrine must be more ‘political’ and include an evaluation of the political situation and evolution; it should identify the probable adversaries and allies, the conflicts which may give rise to war (wars) and the circumstances under which a war (wars) may break out and continue (escalate, de-escalate, terminate).137 However, in the Western world, the bread and butter of military doctrine writing has, as a rule, been pushed down to the military level, leaving politicians to issue guidelines and veto certain propositions, but not to participate actively in the development of doctrine. Here, doctrine is traditionally seen as a military tool explaining how to wage war, not when or why to do it. The Monroe Doctrine of 1823, the Weinberger Doctrine in the Reagan era, and the ‘Bush Doctrine’, i.e. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America from September 2002, could be Western candidates for such high-level doctrine, but they are not really doctrines in this study’s sense of the word since they were of very little practical utility to the troops in the field: ‘No U.S. concepts, not even the combination of “national security policy” and “military posture”, encompass such a broad range of political and military factors as does Soviet military doctrine.’ 138 Moreover, it is only great powers, or even only superpowers, that can have such grand strategic doctrines. Smaller powers rarely decide on whether to start a war or not, only whether they should join a bigger ally, or not. Consequently, Western doctrines focus on the method of war, not the superstructure surrounding it. That said, however, when doctrine promotes certain kinds of operations as more proper and relevant than

46 Preliminaries others, it can obviously have huge consequences for national strategy and peacetime establishment: ‘Doctrine is not simply about winning battles; it is about the construction and development of peace-time forces. It helps them to define their function and shape and to make both clear to their paymasters and the wider public.’ 139 Even if the Russian doctrinal debate in the aftermath of the Revolution is the most philosophically interesting, the American debate after the disaster in Vietnam has been much more influential on contemporary doctrine making in the Western world. Almost echoing the British bewilderment after the humiliation in South Africa, the Americans wondered: how could a superpower with an almostunprecedented record of military victories lose against a ‘fourth-rate power’?140 Obviously, it could not be due to a lack of financial resources or technology. One could always blame the politicians, but perhaps something was seriously wrong with the military itself, with the way it operated, with ‘la doctrine’? No branch of the US military suffered more from the Vietnam War than the Army, which had become an ‘institutional wreck’ by 1973.141 According to H. P. Willmott, the US Army was in the worst situation any army could be in. It was not only an army that had been defeated but ‘a defeated army that had never been beaten in the field’.142 The Army had, in principle, two ways out of its predicament. It could either prepare better for the next Vietnam, i.e. COIN, or it could restore its ability to fight conventional wars with big battalions. As it turned out, it went for the latter.143 As there was no one outside the Army ready to rescue it, the reformation, or transformation to use a neology, had to be instigated from within, i.e. the ‘Army had to reinvent itself ’.144 Hence, the establishment of US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) in 1973, and the ensuing doctrinal process, became a major device to enable recovery from Vietnam.145 It is important to underline that this was not an attempt to examine the recent past in the way the Army had done after both world wars; rather, it was a way to forget all about the recent past: the post-Vietnam army intentionally turned away from the painful memories of its Vietnam experience to focus on the kind of wars it knew how to fight and win: conventional warfare in Europe against the conventional armies of the Soviet Union.146 To shake off the experience from Vietnam was obviously not only an Army concern. Even US policy makers had a need to redirect their attention towards something that could reduce the estrangement from their traditional allies that the Vietnam War had caused. The defence of central Europe became a suitable rallying point; there would be ‘no more Vietnams’.147

A history of military doctrine 47 In 1973, doctrine as a concept was still rather fluffy in the USA and few saw it as a means for badly needed reform.148 To General Paul M. Gorman, who instigated a ‘training revolution’, and to the first commander of TRADOC, General William E. DePuy, training was much more important than doctrine, to the extent that the Army apparently could be ‘transformed by training alone’.149 Superior training in combination with superior weapons would ostensibly give superior tactics, and winning battles was presumably the surest way to win wars. A huge country (such as the USA), which is protected from any conceivable enemy by large oceans, could traditionally afford to lose a battle or two, without losing the war.150 Consequently, America’s approach to war was rather sluggish: ‘The lessons of the previous wars were invariably lost and had to be relearned during the first battles of the next war.’ 151 The invention and proliferation of nuclear weapons had obviously made such a sluggish approach to war rather dubious. In the worst case, there would be no second battle: Today the possession of nuclear weapons by a possible enemy denies any defender the luxury of a period after the start of hostilities in which to create or deploy his weapons, or even decide what to do with them. Survival may well depend on a nation’s ability to solve the problems of modern warfare far in advance.152 However, the Yom Kippur War, in 1973, made it apparent that even a conventional war could be lost in the first battle alone.153 Even without nuclear weapons, the old approach to war had to be reconsidered: ‘The shock of the rapid and massive lethality of the 1973 Arab–Israeli War created the fear that the Warsaw Pact could conduct a surprise attack and overwhelm NATO in the First Battle.’ 154 Hence, now one had to know in advance how to conduct the next war because no learning period was to be expected: ‘Practically all of our wars have caught us with our trousers at half-mast. Next time, we will be lucky to get them up again, let alone buttoned and buckled.’ 155 This lack of rehearsal time became American doctrine’s new raison d’être. According to the new doctrine itself, ‘[t]oday the US Army must, above all else, prepare to win the first battle of the next war. Once the war is upon us, we shall aim at emerging triumphant from the second, third, and final battles as well’.156 The flip side of this conviction was that the US Army perhaps became too focused on winning the first battle at the expense of winning the war, as indicated by the gloomy aftermath of the stunning battlefield success in Iraq in 2003.157 Andrew Krepinevich encapsulates the point tersely: ‘a world-class sprinter was being forced to run a marathon’.158 In contrast to the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, which had occurred during the US Army’s preoccupation in Southeast Asia, the war in 1973 was intensively studied in the USA. Via the Soviet-styled Egyptians, fresh attention

48 Preliminaries was given to Russian conventional warfare. Even if the Egyptian military in 1973 was hardly a ‘carbon copy of the Red Army’, many saw this war almost as a live simulation of the effect of modern weapons in a battle constituted of representatives of both Western and Eastern forces.159 It apparently showed how both technology and Soviet combined arms doctrine had evolved during the US Army’s long years in the Vietnamese wilderness. DePuy was quite honest and claimed that the October War was a ‘marvellous excuse or springboard . . . for reviewing and updating our own doctrine’.160 Moreover, this war was the ‘polar opposite of Vietnam’.161 The war was short and lethal, depending on training and leadership, and not on procrastinating politicians. In short, DePuy saw the Yom Kippur War as ‘the most fortunate thing for us because it dramatized the difference between the wars that we might fight in the future and the wars we had fought in the past’.162 According to DePuy, this was a war decided by military skills alone and not by extraneous factors beyond military commanders’ control. Indeed, ‘had these engagements been run on computer simulations, the Israelis would have lost every battle’.163 Instead of dealing with military theory haphazardly and by bits and pieces at different levels and branches, the Yom Kippur War provided a unique opportunity to refocus and rethink.164 Hence, DePuy turned doctrine development into a ‘general’s business for the first time in American military history’.165 In fact, the USA entered a league of its own. Nowhere else in NATO is doctrine a general’s business as it is in America.166 Exactly to what extent it actually became a general’s business is illustrated by a nononsense letter from DePuy to his subordinate generals dated October 1974, where the fifth paragraph read: We have now participated in enough discussions, listened to enough briefings and seen enough demonstrations to have the best consensus on how to fight that has probably ever existed in the school system of the United States Army. It is now time to institutionalize and perpetuate this consensus through doctrinal publications. In this respect I look to each of you personally to bring this about. If necessary, you must write them yourselves, as I hold each of you personally responsible for achieving the objective I have set.167 Indeed, thinking about doctrine was in danger of being so monopolized by senior officers that DePuy’s successor at TRADOC, General Donn Starry, was bent on changing the ‘perception that new doctrine could only come from the big leather chair in the front office’.168 Outwardly, General DePuy was relatively open-minded about the content of the new doctrine, claiming that the doctrine development process should resemble a ‘pot of soup at a French peasant’s house, forever cooking over the fireplace’, where everyone contributed with

A history of military doctrine 49 something from time to time to make the soup continuously better.169 But as Roger Spiller asserts: To have promoted the free and open exchange of ideas about doctrine would have been antithetical to him and at cross-purpose with his intentions . . . this was William E. DePuy’s house, his fireplace, and his pot of soup. He meant to allow only certain ingredients in the pot.170 Furthermore, DePuy’s personal experience from war told him that most people are unreliable and ‘few men did what had to be done without being told’.171 Hence, the new gospel had to be spread by thorough indoctrination; simple osmosis or gentle rubbing of ethos would not do. The finer details of how the new doctrine evolved and how the fledgling TRADOC wrestled its way into being a power to be reckoned with in the US Army are best told elsewhere.172 Suffice it here to say that both DePuy and the main engine in the doctrinal system of the US Army, Field Manual 100–5: Operations, were not that sacrosanct after all. Instead of harmonising the Army’s way of war and stifling debate, as Svechin claimed doctrine would do, the publication of FM 100–5 in 1976 caused an explosion in heretical military thinking and ‘an unprecedented doctrinal debate’, regardless of, or even due to, DePuy’s attempt to suppress criticism.173 As many as eighty articles on doctrine appeared in Military Review alone.174 Some regarded this fight as a battle for the most catchy slogan with comparatively little substantial gist, but DePuy’s ‘French soup’ literally boiled over, and, in 1982, it was replaced by another ‘kettle’, the AirLand Battle Doctrine. This publication ended the doctrinal revolution in the US Army and set the Army on its course to the stunning victory in the Gulf War. Even if DePuy may have failed in his main mission, he unambiguously established doctrine development as a serious business for serious men, generals, and civilians alike. Before DePuy and TRADOC, the writing of doctrines had, as a rule, been parcelled out to various schools and committees and the sum total had, consequently, been rather wishy-washy and faceless. By establishing TRADOC, and with DePuy’s firm conviction, a ‘transformation of American military thought [into a] coherent and professional process’ had begun.175 Ironically, not even his main opponents realised that it ‘was DePuy who had created the venue in which they were now thinking’.176 DePuy had instigated a new way of thinking about future war. In fact, he had staged a revolution: That revolution consisted not of the substance of the doctrine, but of the unprecedented functions doctrine had been made to serve and the way in which it had been given life. At a time when there were no incentives but many excuses to do otherwise, DePuy managed to

50 Preliminaries harness doctrine in the service of reform. Never had doctrine been put to such a purpose.177 If the US Army had been an institutional wreck in 1973, the situation was totally different in 1991. After the Gulf War, the armed forces won the ‘highest confidence rating any American institution had received since such polls were taken’.178 In March 1991, President Bush rejoiced: ‘It’s a proud day for Americans and by God, we’ve licked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.’ 179 However, as the Somalia, Rwanda, and Balkan affairs would subsequently reveal, the Vietnam syndrome was very much alive. During the Vietnam War, an American general officer had famously declared: ‘I’ll be damned if I permit the United States Army, its institutions, its doctrine and its traditions to be destroyed just to win this lousy war!’180 Evidently, the US Army kept the doctrine, but changed the war, away from COIN and back to inter-state war.181 Cynics may add that the reason why COIN in Iraq (after 2003) stirred so much doctrinal debate about COIN in general, was that the American ground forces this time had nowhere else to go. There were no credible scenarios for conventional wars available at the time, in clear contrast to the situation in the 1970s. Apparently, in stark contrast to the Cold War, contemporary ground forces have to handle COIN, or go out of business completely. The need to get away from the last war is not unique to the postVietnam era. One could, for instance, interpret the development of Principles of War in the decade after the Great War as an attempt to get away from the trenches. Instead of addressing trench-relevant issues, such as field fortifications and logistics, the principles stressed instead issues, such as surprise and simplicity.182 An inter-state desert war, like the one in 1991, was also a perfect showcase for the utility of military doctrine as a tool of military command. Compared with Vietnam, or post-2003 Iraq for that matter, such a war had few non-military subtleties, and the majority of the military commanders could direct their attention almost exclusively to military matters. True, in the heat of battle in 1991 many of the commanders envied predecessors who had operated before the CNN-effect and who were sheltered from the full impact of media attention. However, even the Gulf War of 1991 has now become ‘the good old days’, militarily speaking. The reinvigoration of doctrinal thinking that followed in the USA after the Vietnam War served also as a kick up the backside for British military thinking. As seen previously, Great Britain has never been a great fan of doctrine, or of systematic military contemplation, for that matter: ‘The argument that armies that think about doctrine get caught in preparing to refight the last war became an excuse for not thinking at all rather than for thinking more rigorously.’ 183 However, the new focus on conventional operations in the European theatre, and the (re)introduction of the operational level of war, which we will return to in Chapter 7, forced even

A history of military doctrine 51 Great Britain, as a NATO member, to ‘align British operational thought with that of the other armies likely to operate in Germany’.184 When the British Army published Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine in 1989, it was allegedly ‘breaking new ground’, since this was the first articulated doctrine at a level above the tactical.185 Whether Design for Military Operations actually was the first British doctrine on this level ever is, however, dubious. It depends ultimately on the definition.186 Design for Military Operations can also give the impression that the Army was the doctrinal avant-garde in Britain. However, some would claim that the Air Force should have that honour: The very idea of doctrine – as a set of formal, written, guidelines on the organization and function of an armed service in pursuit of certain stated strategic objectives – is to a large extent a twentieth century development, it owed a good deal to the emergence of military aviation, because air forces, more than armies and navies, were forced to justify their independent existence by adopting a doctrine distinct from the more senior services.187 Even the US Air Force embraced the word ‘doctrine’ swiftly and enthusiastically. Soon after it became a separate branch of the military in 1947, it started to use ‘doctrine’ as a label, for instance in The Air Force Manual 1–2: United States Air Force Basic Doctrine. Suddenly, in the 1980s, the British Army started to see doctrine as something more than just nice to have: ‘It is interesting to note that, for perhaps the first time in its history, the Army in the 1980s came to see the lack of a formal operational doctrine as a problem.’ 188 Design for Military Operations also broke new ground in another important way, because it was one of the first unrestricted British doctrines.189 In the 1947 British Naval War Manual (BR 1806), the title page announced: ‘This book is the property of H.M. Government. Its contents are not to be communicated either directly or indirectly to the Press or to anyone not holding an official position in H.M. services.’ 190 Nowadays, however, written doctrines (or at least some of them) are important display windows for the services, and if the press were to pay them attention, that would not be a bad thing. Hence, modern doctrines, meant for publication, often have a slightly exaggerated and overselling tone. The new willingness to conceptualise and to embrace an unprecedented openness was reinforced by other developments in the early nineties. Due to the loss of the certainties of the Cold War, the military had to argue its case more convincingly and overtly. A desire to draw the academic world into the defence debate also made the declassification of a whole range of military papers essential.191 An important booster, if not the ignition, for this ‘doctrinal glasnost’ was the introduction of the Internet, which encouraged the defence sector to set up a series of websites

52 Preliminaries which made all such information instantly and easily available to a wide audience.192 Inadvertently, this even made the basic doctrinal dilemma more acute. The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual was, for instance, downloaded more than two million times in its first two months on the Internet.193 A number of those downloads were done by people bent on invalidating the manual’s main messages. Even Iraqi insurgents surf the Net.194 The US Armed Forces have traditionally had a less secretive approach to doctrines than their British colleagues. As a rule, FM 100–5 Operations has always been available, but some versions have, nevertheless, been classified (for instance the 1949 version) due to matters concerning nuclear policy.195 Even the 1986 version of FM 100–5 Operations was issued with restricted distribution, with the caveat for ‘US Government agencies only’, but without any formal classification. The most famous versions of FM 100–5 Operations, i.e. Active Defense (1976), and AirLand Battle (1982), were unclassified and available to the public, and even fiercely debated in open sources, as referred to above.196 To sum up this chapter about doctrine’s history: different principles, imperatives and ‘tricks of the trade’ regarding waging war successfully have been around since the dawn of mankind. However, determined debates about whether and how to formalise and utilise them are of a more recent character. It has barely been 100 years since the French first coined, or rather adopted, a specific term in order to get a firmer grip on those organisational features we today call doctrine. What started in France in the final decades of the nineteenth century finally came to fruition in the English-speaking world in the last decades of the twentieth. Today, military doctrine making is taking place continuously and sincerely all around the globe, despite the fact that the philosophical, methodological, and epistemological foundation of the activities is rather wobbly and underexplored. That will be our topic for the next chapters.

Part II

The anatomy of doctrine

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3

Military thinking An elusive undertaking

Previously in this book, we stood on the football pitch and pointed out doctrine’s tripartite nature, i.e. theory, culture, and authority. Here, we will start out by looking at the same trinity from a more elevated position. In Plato’s Phaedrus, there is a charioteer struggling with two horses: one good and one bad. The right-hand horse is a ‘lover of honor with modesty and self-control; companion to true glory, he needs no whip, and is guided by verbal commands alone’.1 The other horse is a crooked, lumbering animal, ‘shaggy around the ears – deaf as a post – and just barely yields to horsewhip and goad combined’.2 The two horses and the charioteer presumably represent reason, passion, and will.3 The charioteer is not a spineless slave of the two horses. He has a clear intention to control them, not just to follow their whims and quirks. The destination which the chariot eventually reaches is, consequently, the net result of three interdependent forces. Clausewitz (1780–1831) also struggled with a trinity resembling Plato’s. According to Clausewitz, war is a ‘paradoxical trinity’ or ‘wunderliche Dreifaltigkeit’, composed of: primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and of its element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason alone.4 Both passion and creativity ought to be subordinated to the political aim of the war, if war is to be the continuation of policy by other means. But, sometimes, it is the dynamics of war, propelled by passion and creativity, that manhandle policy so to speak, and not the other way around. To illustrate the point, Thomas Ricks claimed that the war in Iraq ‘may change [Obama] more than he changes it’.5 This mechanism can be bigger than both war and Obama: What is most striking about the most powerful man in the world is not the power that he wields. It is how constrained he and his lieutenants

56 The anatomy of doctrine are by forces that lie beyond their grasp and perhaps their understanding. Rather than bending history to their will, presidents and those around them are much more likely to dance to history’s tune.6 Hence, any theory of war that ignores policy, passion, or creativity, or ‘seeks to fix an arbitrary relationship between them would conflict with reality to such an extent that for this reason alone it would be totally useless’.7 Since no presentation of life’s strange trinities would be complete without three contributors, we need a third view as well. In The Foundations of the Science of War, John Frederick Charles Fuller (1878–1966) claimed that a: threefold order surrounds us at every turn. Not only do we live in a three-dimensional world, but we think three-dimensionally and our thoughts reflect a threefold order. . . . This threefold order I believe to be the key to the understanding of all things; it is my postulate.8 In this book, I argue that even doctrine exists within a threefold order. Inspired by Plato and Clausewitz, I claim that doctrine ought to be seen as an object caught between three interdependent forces, or ‘suspended between three magnets’.9 Doctrine rests on rationality, a-rationality, and authority. You could certainly have used a quadrant, or a pentagon, or a number of other figures for that matter to illustrate the features of doctrine. Yet, a

Authority (subordination)

Doctrine

Rationality (theory)

Figure 3.1 The doctrinal triangle.

A-rationality (culture)

Military thinking: an elusive undertaking 57 triangle is especially appealing due to its combination of simplicity and complexity. Moreover, as I argue throughout this study, theory, culture, and authority are the most salient aspects of military doctrine. Doctrines tell us who we are (culture), what we ought to do (theory), and what we have to do (authority). Previous analysts of military doctrines have usually squeezed the concept of military doctrine towards just one of the three corners in Figure 3.1. With a penchant for rationality, doctrine can be described as ‘the best available thought that can be defended by reason’.10 Favouring a-rationality, on the other hand, things look different: ‘A culture makes some things possible, some things desirable, and some things unimaginable. Recognizing this simple truth is the first step toward a better understanding of the origins of military doctrine.’ 11 The end result either way is that doctrine appears to be too derivative: ‘Since armies choose doctrines, and not the other way around, fundamentally doctrine may be more an effect than a cause’.12 One of the main assertions in this book is that doctrine is not merely the end result of rationality or culture, but can also be seen as a tool wielded by proper authorities to influence rationality and culture in return. A doctrine is not only the outcome of the battle between the good and the bad horse, if we hark back to our perhaps biased reading of Plato. Doctrine is also influenced by the charioteer’s will and intentions. In the following, we will investigate each of the triangle’s three corners, i.e. the pillars of military doctrine, starting with the theoretical elements in this chapter and tracing them through Chapters 4 and 5. Then, in Chapter 6, we look at culture, and round off with authority in Chapter 7. Thereafter, in the third part of the book, we will return to the whole triangle and see how doctrine can be made to do different things by deliberately altering the balance between the three corners, without neglecting any of them.

The epistemological challenges The American Rear Admiral J. C. Wylie, started his book Military Strategy with a story about Field Marshal Montgomery’s visit to General Eisenhower at Gettysburg when they both were retired, which, according to Wylie, was made newsworthy by ‘Montgomery’s criticism of the conduct of the battle that had taken place there nearly a hundred years earlier’.13 The occasion became a matter of public interest because the criticism was levelled by a professional with expertise and experience second to none in the world. What is odd is Wylie’s reason for telling the story: Field Marshal Montgomery’s criticism was no better, or no worse, than that of the thousands of other critics of that or any other war; essentially all strategic comment or strategic criticism is an ad hoc

58 The anatomy of doctrine sort of business, having not much more than personal judgment, or hunch, or emotion, or bias, or sometimes even self-interest behind it. The only advantage the professional seems to have over the amateur is a little personal experience, and it is seldom that anyone questions whether or not the personal experience is actually relevant.14 How often does, for instance, a medical doctor claim that even his most esteemed colleagues always base their assessments on a hunch, and that their opinions do not carry more weight than those of just anybody sitting in the waiting room? True, Wylie wrote his book in the 1960s, but, according to more recent commentators, little has changed: ‘[M]uch military thinking is not well developed in comparison with other intellectual disciplines [and] we should, regrettably, not expect too much from published military thought. Furthermore, what is written is often not well written, which adds to the problem.’ 15 However, military theory’s reputation is far worse than it actually deserves. The main reason for this scepticism is, of course, that the object of military theory, i.e. war and military operations, is extremely elusive. Compared to natural science, there are three particularly knotty challenges to social science’s epistemology, including the epistemology of military strategy and doctrine writing. (As a reminder, ‘epistemology’ is rather broadly defined in this study and denotes ‘the study of our right to the beliefs we have’).16 First, there is the reflexivity of the social science in relation to the objects of scrutiny, sometimes called the ‘Oedipus effect’, i.e. ‘the influence of the prediction upon the predicted event’.17 In contrast to physics, social science’s objects of study are able to negate the results of the investigations by adaptation: ‘Molecules do not learn from experience. People do, or think they do.’ 18 Hence, the very formulation of a scientific law may undermine its prediction and ‘law-likeness’: Law-like relationships – even if they existed – could not explain the most interesting social outcomes, since these are precisely the outcomes about which actors have the most incentive to learn and adapt their behaviour. Any regularities would be ‘soft’: they would be the outcome of processes that are embedded in history and have a short half-life. They would decay quickly because of the memories, creative searching and learning by political leaders. Ironically, the ‘findings’ of social science contribute to this decay.19 Second, social science has a different type of complexity than physical science. Artificial isolation of simple mechanisms in the ‘Galilean style’ rarely yields the same results in social science as in physical science. To cite Popper again:

Military thinking: an elusive undertaking 59 [A]rtificial isolation would eliminate precisely those factors in sociology which are most important. Robinson Crusoe and his isolated individual economy can never be a valuable model of an economy whose problems arise precisely from the economic interaction of individuals and groups.20 Third, there is the controversy of the theoretical concepts of the social science. To quote Popper once again: Thus we need not be surprised to find that there is very little in the social sciences that resembles the objective and ideal quest for truth which we meet in physics. We must expect to find as many tendencies in the social sciences as can be found in social life; as many standpoints as there are interests.21 While a physicist is rarely afraid of stigmatising his objects of investigation, sociologists are: [A]s anybody who has tried to find ‘neutral’ terminology to describe any social or political matter knows, ethical shades and colours cling to nearly all the words describing social life, and the choice of one description or another will be in part an ethical choice.22 The conundrums above are valid for military epistemology, and thus military doctrine making as well – in fact, particularly so. Indeed, the hazards and dangers of doctrine that we introduced in Chapter 1 of this study can all be traced to one or more of these challenges. Reflexivity is, in fact, the sine qua non of strategy, whose task it is to anticipate what the enemy will anticipate that you will anticipate ad infinitum. Were it not for the reflexivity, it would not be strategy. According to Edward Luttwak, reflexivity, or the paradoxical logic, is not only a complicating element in strategy, it is strategy: The large claim I advance here is that strategy does not merely entail this or that paradoxical proposition, contrary and yet recognized as valid, but rather that the entire realm of strategy is pervaded by a paradoxical logic of its own, standing against the ordinary linear logic by which we live in all other spheres of life.23 Reflexivity is probably the main reason behind military theory’s bad name. It never seems to deliver what it promises: ‘[W]hat works well today will not work well tomorrow, precisely because it worked well today. Mount Everest cannot plan and act deliberately to defeat assaults that already have “shown their hand”; strategic adversaries will do exactly that.’ 24

60 The anatomy of doctrine One of the most scorned military theories of all time is the theory for victory in the Great War, which always fell short of expectation, almost to the very end. However, the reason was not necessarily that the generals were donkeys, but that ‘on the Western Front, each side gradually learned from its mistakes, but often applied that learning only to find that its adversary had learned a little more’.25 The same point can be made with a more ironic twist. In the second edition of Strategy, Liddell Hart printed a condensed translation of an article by the Israeli General, Y. Yadin, written in 1949. Here, Yadin tells a story from the war in 1948 when a copy of Liddell Hart’s Strategy of Indirect Approach was captured from an Egyptian commander.26 So, what if both belligerents followed Liddell Hart’s advice? Would both win? In other words, could you still lose a war if you followed Liddell Hart’s book to the letter? Yadin escaped from this classic dilemma with a rather dull statement, seemingly added to the original article: ‘But fortunately for us they did not grasp the essence of the book, and therefore were completely surprised by our strategic plan based on the principles of this book’.27 It is not hard to imagine why Liddell Hart printed this comment, but it would undoubtedly have been more interesting if the Egyptians had both read and understood his book. Instead of succumbing to the epistemological arch-quandary of strategy, Liddell Hart made fun of it, and echoed Turenne’s comment that a blockhead sometimes perplexed him more than able generals: Hence the unexpected cannot guarantee success. But it guarantees the best chance of it. That is why the successes of history, if not won by exceptionally clever generalship, have been won by generalship that was astoundingly foolish. Perhaps this dual cause explains why Britain has had such a long run of success.28 Whether the purchase of Liddell Hart’s books made you ‘exceptionally clever’, or ‘astoundingly foolish’, did not make much difference, apparently. When it comes to complexity, many military theorists have pointed to the extreme complexity of military operations rather than to strategy’s paradoxical nature to explain why military theory must stop short of scientific laws. Raimondo de Montecuccoli (c.1609–1680) encapsulated the problem succinctly: ‘Obviously, then, one never encounters anything which is clear-cut, well defined, and free of doubt.’ 29 Even Jomini, who was a firm believer in the utility of ‘correct theories’ in war,30 warned against the idea of reducing the ‘system of war to absolute forms’.31 Hence, ‘[t]o give specific precepts for complications which vary infinitely with localities, the resources and the condition of the people and armies, would be absurd’.32 The complexity of war is apparently an intrinsic part of the concept itself, because the most important ingredients in war are humans, and humans are evasive.33

Military thinking: an elusive undertaking 61 Finally, military theory making is also controversial. It is not only the consequences of military reflection, i.e. new and often contentious theories and methods of warfare, that are so, but the very reflection itself.34 Recently, the use of anthropological methods in military matters has caused much controversy: It is fair to say that these developments, emerging gradually in the wake of ‘9/11’ and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have generated a firestorm of controversy, both within the discipline of anthropology itself, and among the wider educated public.35 The fear is obviously that a good profession can be used to do bad things: ‘Anthropologists accuse colleagues working with the US military of weaponising their profession into a tool of spying and torture, servicing a “kill chain” rather than enlightening the waging of war.’ 36 In addition to the three arch-quandaries of social science’s epistemology, military epistemology has a fourth challenge of its own. War is an extreme condition, and what if the relevant knowledge of war has to be gained through war itself? Thus veterans from throughout the political spectrum condemn mere intellectual musing, depict themselves as flesh-witnesses, and stress that only harsh bodily conditions produce authentic and reliable truth by separating the mental chaff accumulated in peacetime from the wheat. The intellect may toy with these truths, commenting on them, inventing theories about them, thinking up arguments to contradict them – yet this is all delusive, because the intellect can have no idea what it is talking about.37 Even such a prominent naval thinker as Julian Corbett had to excuse his trespassing on matters beyond the limits of civilian comprehension: ‘For a civilian to approach the elucidation of such points without professional assistance would be the height of temerity.’ 38 The difficulties portrayed above can seem almost insurmountable, especially when added to more generic problems in general epistemology. However, there are ways to handle them, or at least to live with them. In the following, we will investigate three different ways to deal with the epistemological challenges of doctrine making, but, in order to grasp them, we first have to investigate the anatomy of a military argument. An argument can be regarded as well founded in many different ways, but, according to Stephen E. Toulmin, rational discussion is always dependent on ‘common and understood interpersonal procedures for testing warrants’.39 A warrant is something that allows you to infer a conclusion B from a proposition A: ‘[T]he knowledge that Harry’s hair is red entitles us to set aside any suggestion that it is black, on account of the

62 The anatomy of doctrine D

So C Since W

Figure 3.2 Toulmin’s turnstile. Note A claim or conclusion (C) is based on a range of data (D), and on a warrant (W), which ‘authorize the sort of step’ taken to get from D to C.

warrant, “If anything is red, it will not also be black” .’ 40 Warrants can be of different kinds, and carry varying degrees of persuasiveness, but a rational discussion is possible within military discourse only to the extent that there actually exist interpersonal warrants. The basic elements of an argument can be illustrated by a simple model (see Figure 3.2). In order to demonstrate Toulmin’s model in military matters, we can turn to British Defence Doctrine (1996), where we find the following statement: ‘The objective should be to achieve information dominance over the opponent’.41 Such a statement is not true or false in any meaningful sense, but wise or unwise, attainable or unattainable, or any other term characterising utility and feasibility. However, the claim is backed by data, i.e. statements that have pretensions to truth: ‘The key role played by ULTRA intelligence in the Second World War and the decisive information advantage achieved by the Coalition over Iraq in the Gulf War showed the enduring importance of information and intelligence to victory.’ 42 This claim, that information and intelligence have been important for victory in the past, is presumably either true or false, at least in an everyday sense of the words. The doctrinal argument can then be placed in Toulmin’s model. The distinction between data and warrants is not always clear,43 and we will not distinguish clearly between them. Sometimes a statement can serve as data, sometimes it serves as a warrant, and sometimes it serves as backing for either of them. Back to the epistemological challenges described above. The three promised approaches to these challenges can now be illustrated by Toulmin’s model. Information has had enduring } importance to victory

So { achieve information dominance! Since

The future will resemble the past in relevant ways

Figure 3.3 Toulmin’s turnstile in use.

Military thinking: an elusive undertaking 63 D Doctrinal coherentism: Warrants are convincing

So C Since W

Doctrinal foundationalism: Warrants are inevitable

Doctrinal scepticism: There are no warrants

Figure 3.4 The warrants’ warrant.

Either you succumb to scepticism or you can try to fight it. If you choose to fight it, you can either do it with means from outside the problematic discourse or by more cogent thoughts within the discourse itself. In the following, we will take a short look at scepticism, before we embark on a more thorough investigation of the other two. Doctrinal scepticism implies that any theoretical part of strategy, worthy of the name, will be so trivial that even a donkey would understand it. If, for instance, Leopold von Brenckenhoff had been given a choice between an army of savages and an ‘army of educated troops whose officers [were] experts in the sciences and philosophy’, he would have preferred the former.44 Indeed, according to Brenckenhoff, ‘[p]hilosophy clarifies our mind and makes us better human beings, but worse soldiers’.45 Contemplative habits would blunt belligerency. Brenckenhoff wrote in the second half of the eighteenth century, but even Wellington, a generation later, regarded military education as pure nonsense that could lead to the ‘lowering of the social qualifications’ of the officer corps.46 This does not mean that Brenckenhoff and Wellington preferred stupidity to cleverness, but that they regarded theorising and bookishness as not only irrelevant, but dangerous to the military character. The knowledge of brute military facts, such as ballistics and fortification, was obviously of great importance, as was the ability to infer an adequate response based on experience and observations in the field. However, an ability to explain the outcome theoretically was not of great importance. The fourth epistemological challenge mentioned above, i.e. the extremity of war, precluded armchair strategy, and compelled the art of command to be acquired by practice, ‘under arms, in the field, sweating and freezing’.47 The same can be said with a more modern tack: ‘The principles of strategy and tactics, and the logistics of war are absurdly simple: it is the actualities that make war so complicated and so difficult, and are usually so neglected by historians.’ 48 Hence, ‘we must never imagine that we can induce infallible rules nor reduce war to an exact science’.49 A doctrine containing formally endorsed principles and imperatives would thus be little more than an empty shell, however pompous.

64 The anatomy of doctrine Certainly, some countries have mistrusted strategic theory making more than others. Historically at least, Great Britain, France, and the USA have all, at least in periods, to a certain extent, seen the ‘active man’ and the ‘contemplative man’ as two different persons.50 Great Britain, in particular, is characterised by a ‘deliberate spirit of amateurism’ and is known for its depreciation of both professionalism and education.51 For a nation without even a written constitution, a formal military doctrine can thus seem a bit odd: In the same way that we have no written Constitution, ridicule the grand design of our European neighbours and rely on a pragmatic, step by step study of a problem, as each case emerges, so our military commanders have sought to approach the problems of higher command on an ad hoc basis – treating each problem on its own terms and informed by the spirit of common sense.52 The French had attitudes resembling those of Great Britain, but have perhaps been a bit more prone to ‘think through’ rather than ‘muddle through’ their problems. But even the French have not always held scholarly thinking in particularly high regard. In the mid nineteenth century, Marshal MacMahon expressed his opinion quite frankly: ‘I eliminate from the promotion list any officer whose name I have read on the cover of a book.’ 53 True, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, perhaps the most famous French officer in the last century, was an intellectual officer and a prolific writer, but that was more in spite of, than due to, the military ideals of France where excessive intellectualism could be as much a reason for premature retirement as illness, madness, or sloth.54 The examples above are rather old, but military anti-intellectualism is certainly not dead. In 1987, the commandant of the US Marine Corps, General Alfred Gray, complained about too many intellectuals at the top of the armed services: ‘Naming no names, the 59-year-old Marine general said that what is needed is not intellectuals but “old-fashioned gunslingers” who like a good fight and don’t spend their time with politicians.’ 55 One of the most outspoken anti-intellectualists of all times, the retired officer, Ralph Peters, goes even further: Pragmatism is at the heart of America’s cultural and economic success, and it long remained the key to our military success. When we began to theorize, we began to lose. In the military context, theory is a killer. Theory kills both actively and passively.56 The educational consequences should be apparent: ‘You should never let any full-time university professor near any form of practical responsibility, and you should never let a rising officer near a professor.’ 57 Peters is all too ready to accept the consequences of his views: ‘The natural charge

Military thinking: an elusive undertaking 65 against the arguments advanced here is “anti-intellectualism”. And the accusers would be exactly right’.58 Obviously, there are doctrinal sceptics less frantic than Ralph Peters. They would agree that huge theoretical structures are of dubious value, but maintain that cognitive abilities are important in the heat of battle. Ulysses S. Grant is a distinguished representative of this group: They knew what Frederick did at one place, and Napoleon at another. They were always thinking about what Napoleon would do. Unfortunately for their plans, the rebels would be thinking about something else. I don’t underrate the value of military knowledge, but if men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail. No rules will apply to conditions of war as different as those which exist in Europe and America. Consequently, while our generals were working out problems of an ideal character . . . practical facts were neglected. To that extent I consider remembrance of old campaigns a disadvantage. . . . War is progressive.59 Even in the Prussian Army, the expectations placed on theoretical contemplation were not that great: ‘The belief that no rigorous system of military theory was possible was fundamental to the new currents of military thought in Prussia . . . little could be said about war theoretically.’ 60 Even Helmuth von Moltke, the prototype of an intellectual officer, with almost no personal experience of war at the tactical level, bordered on a mild form of scepticism, something we perhaps could call doctrinal pragmatism: ‘The teachings (Lehre) of strategy go little beyond the first premises of sound reason; one may hardly call them a scholarly discipline (Wissenschaft). Their worth lies almost entirely in practical application.’ 61 Indeed, ‘[i]n war, the qualities of character weigh more heavily than those of reason (Verstand).’62 Presumably, Moltke was underestimating his own craft for polemical effect. According to Ferdinand Foch, it was exactly the Prussians’ understanding of war that made them supreme: [I]n order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal and to know it well. This principle explains the weakness, in 1866, of the Austrians (whom the war of 1859 ought to have made wiser), as against the Prussians who had not fought since 1815. . . . The first made war without understanding it (as, by the way, did the French in 1870, though they also had recently gone to war). The second had understood war without making it, by means of careful study.63 Of the three approaches to strategy’s epistemological challenges depicted in Figure 3.4, only two would bother to develop military doctrines, namely doctrinal foundationalism and doctrinal coherentism. Foundationalists try to solve the epistemological puzzles by digging deeper for ‘real facts’,

66 The anatomy of doctrine which can re-establish our confidence and re-establish the authority of ‘real knowledge’. They differ over what kind of foundation they recognise, but they all see military theory, and the ensuing military doctrine making, resting on something epistemologically unassailable, be it mathematics, or God, or something else. The coherentists, on the other hand, do not accept unquestionable epistemological props outside the military discourse itself, but are not willing to settle for anyone’s whimsical prejudices. They are not willing to accept that anything goes, and military theory making has thus to rest on something between positivism and relativism. In the following chapters, we will investigate closer the epistemological stance of the doctrinal foundationalists and the doctrinal coherentists. Before we do that, however, we have to make one small disclaimer. Both foundationalism and coherentism tie into huge epistemological battles. In this study, however, we restrict our view to doctrinal matters. What we will talk about is thus foundationalism and coherentism within a particular field of knowledge. To borrow a metaphor from Ernest Sosa: For the foundationalist every piece of knowledge stands at the apex of a pyramid that rests on stable and secure foundations whose stability and security do not derive from the upper stories or sections. For the coherentist a body of knowledge is a free-floating raft every plank of which helps directly or indirectly to keep all the others in place, and no plank of which would retain its status with no help from the others.64 For the doctrinal foundationalist, doctrine is a pyramid that rests on an unmovable foundation outside or beneath the doctrinal discourse. To what extent he also thinks that all kinds of knowledge rest on stable and secure foundations is neither here nor there in this particular study. Likewise, for the doctrinal coherentist, doctrine is a raft, without suggesting that every kind of knowledge is free floating.

4

Doctrinal foundationalism

No one reads Antoine-Henri Jomini to find answers to current military questions anymore, as many apparently do with his contemporary Clausewitz. But, according to John Shy, it is Jomini who deserves the ‘dubious title of founder of modern strategy’, due to his methodological isolation of war from its political and social context, and, as a result, ‘turning warfare into a huge game of chess’.1 Jomini instigated the modern way to theorise about war: He began, not indeed the study of war, but the characteristically modern, systematic study of the subject in the form it has retained ever since. . . . His Précis probably did more than any simple book to fix the great subdivisions of modern military science for good and all and to give them common currency.2 He is also the foremost classic doctrinal foundationalist. According to Jomini, the task of military scholars is to discover the perennial principles of war and then to formulate, explain, and justify them for the benefit of the military practitioners who later apply them to the specific circumstances in the field: It is true that theories cannot teach men with mathematical precision what they should do in every possible case; but it is also certain that they will always point out the errors which should be avoided; and this is a highly-important consideration, for these rules thus become, in the hands of skilful generals commanding brave troops, means of almost certain success. The correctness of this statement cannot be denied; and it only remains to be able to discriminate between good rules and bad. In this ability consists the whole of a man’s genius for war.3 In other words, Jomini was an ‘unmistakable product of the age of Enlightenment’,4 but his mission did not disappear with the man. One of the most elaborated attempts to turn war into a positivistic science in the generations after Jomini is J. F. C. Fuller’s work in the inter-war period.

68 The anatomy of doctrine Fuller was, along with many of his countrymen, sceptical of the concept of doctrine, but he had few doubts about the foundation of military knowledge.5 There was nothing in war that put it beyond scientific reach: To deny a science of war and then to theorize on war as an art is pure military alchemy, a process of reasoning which for thousands of years has blinded the soldier to the realities of war, and will continue to blind him until he creates a science of war upon which to base his art.6 The method of Fuller’s new science was rather straightforward: We first observe; next we build up a hypothesis on the facts of our observation; then we deduce the consequences of our hypothesis and test these consequences by an analysis of phenomena; lastly we verify our results, and if no exception can be found to them we call them a law.7 This scheme has much in common with the hypothetico-deductive method, particularly popularised by his younger contemporary Karl Popper. However, the bit about verification and law misses the crucial point of the method. The hypothetico-deductive method can never bring you verified laws, only temporary conjectures.8 Fuller was also rather annoyed by all the preceding theorists who had insisted on the importance of the principles of war without setting out which principles. Since Fuller’s account of this challenge is quite vivid, he is worth quoting at length: In the autumn of 1911 I spent my leave in northern Germany, and returned to England convinced that a European war might break out at any moment. This realization stimulated my interest in military history, and to prepare myself for the inevitable and rapidly approaching struggle I turned to the Field Service Regulations (1909 edition) for assistance. On the first and second pages of Part I, I found the following: The fundamental principles of war are neither very numerous nor in themselves very abstruse, but the application of them is difficult, and cannot be made subject to rules. The correct application of principles to circumstances is the outcome of sound military knowledge, built up by study and practice until it has become an instinct. This was excellent, but what were these fundamental principles? If they are neither numerous nor abstruse they must be few and simple, but not one was mentioned in the book, consequently it appeared to me that, unless I knew what they were, the Field Service Regulations was of little use. I determined, therefore, to discover these hidden truths.9

Doctrinal foundationalism 69 Even Jomini, whom Fuller called ‘one of the few really great military thinkers of the last century’,10 had stopped short of the mark. He had never developed a definite list of the principles of war.11 When the revision of Field Service Regulations recommenced after the Great War, Fuller used the opportunity to correct the shortcomings he had experienced in 1911, and brought to the attention of the committee the idea of a brief list of principles for the conduct of war.12 Hence, Fuller is usually hailed as the father of the principles of war in its current state.13 Fuller’s list, which started with six principles, soon evolved into nine: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The Principle of the Objective The Principle of the Offensive The Principle of Mass The Principle of Economy of Force The Principle of Manoeuvre The Principle of Unity of Command The Principle of Security The Principle of Surprise The Principle of Simplicity.14

Importantly, this particular set of principles is not accepted as valid by all officers in all circumstances, even if it has many devotees. In COIN, for instance, you may see a completely different list.15 The point, however, is that within this school of thought the theoretical bedrock of any doctrine is a relatively short list of basic principles. A more contemporary example of doctrinal foundationalism is Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy, US Army (1916–1995). Dupuy would certainly have been uncomfortable with being associated with Jomini, as he did not try to hide his affection for Clausewitz.16 However, Clausewitz would have had difficulties with some of Dupuy’s statements, particularly that: [t]he patterns of history are clear. While there is some influence of chance on the battlefield, it generally affects both sides equally, and military combat is as close to being deterministic as it is possible for any human activity to be.17 Dupuy claimed that, even if Clausewitz did not manage to reach methodological perfection, his aim was always a: scientific body of theory. . . . There are many hints in the text of On War that Clausewitz believed that it might some day be possible to formulate a more comprehensive, more scientific body of theory in the form of laws and principles than he believed was possible in 1830.18

70 The anatomy of doctrine This claim is easy to accept. Clausewitz would certainly have liked to put the art of war on a more scientific footing, but Dupuy’s attempt to quantify the unquantifiable is harder to accept as being part of Clausewitz’s legacy. Based on what he allegedly found in Clausewitz’s work and in military history, Dupuy developed a Quantified Judgement Model (QJM) that he claimed was rooted in the study of Clausewitz, but that Clausewitz had failed to systematise himself: ‘Just as Newton’s physics can be summarized by the simple formula, F = MA, so too can Clausewitz’s theory of combat be summarized in an equally simple formula: P = NVQ’.19 Dupuy then broke the formula P = NVQ down into a number of new formulas. Even if Clausewitz never expressed that theory as a formula, it was, according to Dupuy, stated so clearly, even in mathematical terms, that such a formula was ‘unquestionably in his mind, and probably not subconsciously’.20 However, the very notion of law, as in ‘laws of numbers’, does not fall easily into Clausewitz’s Weltanschauung: ‘Nor can the theory of war apply the concept of law to action, since no prescriptive formulation universal enough to deserve the name of law can be applied to the constant change and diversity of the phenomena of war.’ 21 Dupuy’s positivistic approach to war seems perhaps arcane to modern officers fed on a diet of non-linearity and complexity, but one should not write it off too quickly. Dupuy’s system was, in fact, one of very few which managed to predict the extremely low casualty rate for the coalition during the Gulf War in 1991.22 Even institutionally, the Jominian approach to war has had repercussions in the modern era. The American Field Manual 100–5: Operations, for instance, which was issued in 1976, was filled with the pontificals of positivist military thinking, such as charts and diagrams. It even tried to ‘impose mathematical rules and predictability’.23 So far, we have investigated some distinguished doctrinal foundationalists who kept rather close to the military discourse itself. In the following, we will examine different versions of doctrinal foundationalism in a more analytical fashion, and see that you can venture rather far from the military discourse in order to find justifications for doctrine’s principles and imperatives. Doctrinal foundationalists search for facts which are rarely available in a direct way, but have to be inferred from some sort of evidence, i.e. ‘a consideration or observation that increases the likelihood of the truth of the belief ’.24 The question is: What kinds of evidence do doctrinal foundationalists accept? In principle, military theory can be based on empirical evidence (i.e. induction) or on the laws of logic (i.e. deduction), where military truth is inferred from more overarching truths. Hence, history, broadly speaking, on the one hand, and ‘cold logic and mathematical calculation’, on the other, more or less exhaust the reservoir of military theorists.25 The end result, however, is often a combination of both.26

Doctrinal foundationalism 71 The outcome of induction and deduction can then be presented either qualitatively or quantitatively, or in a combination thereof. Consequently, the production, the presentation, and the evidential support of military theory within the doctrinal foundationalists’ camp can, at least for the sake of argument, be placed in a model (see Figure 4.1). In the following, we will look deeper into each of the four fields in order to scrutinise further the theoretical pillar of foundationalist doctrines. In other words; if you ask a doctrine maker to justify and defend his doctrinal statements, he will turn to one of these four quadrangles, principally speaking. And, as we will see, each of them has challenges of their own.

Operations research According to Frederick Taylor, the prevailing idea of the past was that ‘[c] aptains of industry are born, not made’.27 If only you got the right man, the methods could be left safely to him. To Taylor, this was a dangerous opinion because the system ought to be much more important than the manager. Henceforth, future leaders had to be ‘trained right as well as born right [since] under systematic management the best man rises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before’.28 Taylor’s worries resembled those of Jomini 100 years earlier. Since it was impossible to find another Napoleon on demand, so to speak, you had better develop a scientific system that ensured that the man who floated to the top was sufficiently mentally equipped. Taylor’s aim, still resembling Jomini’s, was to prove that the best management was a ‘true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles’ and that this was ‘applicable to all kinds of human activities, from our simplest individual acts to the work of our great corporations’.29 Not surprisingly, modern war triggered thoughts resembling Taylor’s. According to Lieutenant Commander Dudley W. Knox, ‘the relative Quantative

Qualitative

Inductive

Operations research

Military historicism

Deductive

Game theory

Axiomatic foundationalism

Figure 4.1 The four pillars of doctrinal foundationalism.

72 The anatomy of doctrine importance of management, as compared with the other ingredients of excellence, is probably greater in war than in any other form of endeavour’.30 Hence, military command required a great ‘measure of “scientific management” ’.31 The time of the great innate captains was definitely over.32 The need for scientific management increased exponentially, so to speak, in the 1930s and especially during the Second World War, where the complexity of war virtually exploded due to new sciences and new technology: During the desperate military situation that arose in England in World War II, it occurred to the people responsible for the defense of the country that physicists, biologists, mathematicians, and other highly trained (and highly specialized) people might have something to contribute to what, historically, were almost universally considered strictly military problems. Involving these people was prompted not only by the depth of the crisis, but also by the introduction of new weapons based on technological know-how foreign to past military experience. These weapons and weapons systems (radar is the outstanding example) were so novel in concept and design that their exploitation could not be planned purely on the basis of traditionally military experience.33 This multidisciplinary approach to war is rather hard to pin down within strict academic boundaries. Consequently, closely related activities have been given a host of different labels, for instance ‘operational analysis’, ‘operations research’, ‘systems engineering’, ‘management science’, ‘costeffectiveness analysis’, and ‘systems analysis’.34 Here, we will not probe into the finer details of the parcelling out of this field, but stick to ‘operations research’. Operations research is based on heuristic models of reality, often mathematical, which help military planners in their planning process just as mathematical models aid meteorologists and demographers, without implying that the equations actually govern the weather or the birth rate. At both the technical and tactical level of war, quantitative methods function quite well (and often superbly so) for instance, when calculating how many elevators a new aircraft carrier needs, or how many bombs are needed to destroy a given target. Indeed, we neglect quantitative methods at our peril: We have seen all too often (in the broad course of history as well as in modern times) what happens when we make key defense policy decisions based solely on instinct, ideology, and impression. To avoid cavalier, careless, and agenda-driven decision-making, we therefore need to study the science of war as well – even as we also remember the

Doctrinal foundationalism 73 cautions of Clausewitz and avoid hubris in our predictions about how any war or other major military endeavour will ultimately unfold.35 At a more political or ‘sublime’ level of war,36 (whether, for instance, to build a new carrier or bomb the target at all) the science of war is often of more limited value: [Military-related operations research] models often tend to measure a military’s effectiveness almost exclusively in terms of its hard assets, neglecting the organizational and other forces that allow a military to use those assets productively. These models draw heavily on technological and numerical indicators of military power, primarily because these are easily quantifiable. They place much less emphasis on intangible factors such as leadership, training, morale, and doctrine that affect a military’s proficiencies in using its weapons and equipment.37 The main limitation of operations research is that it is fundamentally onesided. Any system that can be modelled and broken down into units, processes, and structures in a meaningful way can be explored by operations research. To calculate the aiming point for anti-air artillery shooting at a test target is difficult, but it is within the scope of operations research. But can the action of an enemy be calculated in the same way? Intuitively, the answer seems to be no, but even the interaction with other people can, according to some at least, be recorded in numbers: ‘Game theory is the science of strategy; its formulas tell you what choices to make to get the best deal you can get when interacting with other people.’ 38 While operations research is inductive in the sense that you usually start with given systems and processes, with the aim of improving or changing them, game theory is much closer to pure mathematics and a deductive way of reasoning.

Game theory To use mathematics in strategy is not new. Particularly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the ‘geometrical spirit’ had a firm grip on almost every walk of life. In military thinking, this culminated in the claim by Henrich von Bülow (1757–1807) to a completely geometrical science of strategy.39 If you could calculate and perfectly predict the outcome of any war, the art of war would be extinguished, and ‘the sphere of military genius will at last be so narrowed, that a man of talents will no longer be willing to devote himself to this ungrateful trade’.40 In the aftermath of the German counter-Enlightenment, however, of which Clausewitz was a part, the geometrical approach to war (or at least its extreme version) fell into oblivion, not to be fully restored until the Second World War.

74 The anatomy of doctrine According to Clausewitz, among the whole range of human activities, war ‘most closely resembles a game of cards’.41 However, Clausewitz did not elaborate explicitly on those similarities, but with the aid of modern mathematics later generations could venture further. In the 1920s, for instance, the French mathematician and politician Émile Borel wrote studies about bluffing in poker and the application of mathematics to economics and politics.42 The real breakthrough of modern mathematics into strategy came in 1944 when Princeton University Press published a book by John von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern called Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Apparently, the human race had finally found the holy grail of strategy, in the sense of an impeccable foundation of military theory and strategy: In the literature of social conflict, an exact description of the nature of strategy has been wanting, Machiavelli and Clausewitz notwithstanding. No dictionary defines the term. Von Neumann’s conception is more than a definition, it is a theory complete on the level of pure science.43 While even Jomini had asserted that theory could not ‘teach men with mathematical precision what they should do in every possible case’,44 Neumann and Morgenstern, who, in fact, wrote about economics and not war, gave reasons to reconsider Jomini’s belief. Perhaps mathematics could tell men exactly what to do in every possible situation? Indeed, perhaps mathematics was the only way to know for sure what to do in games of strategy? According to Neumann and Morgenstern, mathematics had not been given its due recognition in economics: ‘The arguments often heard that because of the human element, of the psychological factors etc., or because there is – allegedly – no measurement of important factors, mathematics will find no application, can all be dismissed as utterly mistaken.’ 45 Hence, the aim of the book was to establish that ‘the typical problems of economic behaviour [are] strictly identical with the mathematical notions of suitable games of strategy’.46 Many readers, with the Second World War in mind, presumed that the same would go for war; another interactive activity involving the human element: ‘Since the most extreme form of conflict is war, it is not surprising that some of the first proposed applications of game theory were to tactics in war.’ 47 Game theory was regarded almost as a secret weapon: ‘We hope it will work, just as we hoped in 1942 that the atomic bomb would work.’ 48 A game, in this context, is defined to be any situation in which: 1

There are at least two players, who do not necessarily need to be individuals.

Doctrinal foundationalism 75 2 3 4

Each player has different possible strategies, i.e. courses of action to choose from. The strategies chosen by each player determine the outcome of the game. Each possible outcome is associated with a numerical pay-off, representing the value of the outcome to each player.49

The crux of the matter is that every participant is influenced by the ‘anticipated reactions of the others to his own measures, and that this is true for each of the participants’.50 Apparently, it makes no difference whether such strategic games concern profit or military victory, as long as it is an interactive process involving more than one rational actor. An important feature of game theory is that the symbolic language of mathematics allows for precision on a scale unattainable for qualitative methods. Within the new paradigm of mass warfare and nuclear weapons, mathematics seemed both omnipotent and unavoidable: Much that a future conflict might involve cannot be planned except by calculation; there is no other way to discover how many missiles are needed to destroy a target system or how to preserve a communication centre from a 20-megaton near miss or how to disarm with security.51 Especially within the RAND Corporation, a research organisation founded in 1948 with leftover defence funding as part of the Douglas Aircraft project and under the auspices of the US Air Force,52 the mathematical approach to strategy gained an enormous impact.53 Alas, just as with operations research, the utility of game theory at the level of strategy and politics turned out to be not that significant after all. The expectations far outstripped the actual delivery. First of all, the military utility of game theory rests too much on technological optimism, tacitly reckoning that modern technology will function flawlessly. But ever since the birth of nuclear weapons, there has been a lingering nightmare that a war could erupt due to nothing more than a technological mishap. In such cases, the contribution from game theory seems meagre. Second, since war involves both humans and complicated equipment, the friction of war can make the right answer on paper nearly impossible to turn into reality. Hence, correct answers derived from game theory may be militarily absurd: If an army is to attack the enemy, the time of the attack should be chosen randomly, so that the enemy is not prepared for it. In the simplest case, suppose a general wants to strike the enemy sometime within the next twelve hours. To assure surprise, the general may roll a dice to choose randomly a pair of hours from noon to midnight,

76 The anatomy of doctrine and then toss a coin to choose which of two consecutive hours to use.54 If a commander bases his strategy on dice and coins, the question remains: who would suffer most from surprise, his enemy or his own troops? Third, if mathematics and statistics are held in high esteem, things that might be utterly irrelevant, but easily counted, may become unduly important: ‘[I]f something is easy to measure, be assured that it probably will be.’ 55 An overly slapdash use of quantitative methods can give both strategists and policy makers an unwarranted ‘economist’s approach to battle’.56 In war, this can have dire consequences, as it had in Vietnam: The pressures running from Washington to produce results in a format derived from industrial production and sales statistics led many field commanders, most of them trained as engineers at West Point, to fixate on such indices as ‘body-counts’, sorties flown, and ordnance ‘delivered’ as primary measures of operational effect. The realization in fighting units that such ‘number games’ were meaningless in limited war, but crucial in career dynamics, led to ‘cooked’ figures, ‘fudge factors’, and inflated estimates.57 Therefore: [m]ore than in any other area of mathematical social science, game theory demands that we confront objective results with moral considerations and exercise great care when we are tempted to couch technical conclusions in anthropomorphic terms. Potentially, it is political dynamite.58 The problem, though, is that the scientific prestige of mathematical language may be so irresistible that such calls for caution evaporate. At the RAND Corporation in the 1950s, for instance, most social scientists ‘almost ritualistically acknowledged that many questions resisted quantification. Nevertheless, they also adamantly supported quantifying what was possible’.59 There is a lingering temptation to quantify the unquantifiable. Fourth, even within game theory itself there are certain limitations. A simple game can illustrate the point. Suppose that a person gives you £10 that you have to share with a complete stranger on the street. The rules of the game are that if the stranger accepts your offer, he keeps his share and you keep yours.60 If he refuses, both have to return the money. According to the logic of classical game theory, where it is assumed that a rational decision maker will always maximise utility, the complete stranger should accept any offer. If you, for instance, offer him £1, he should, according to crude game theory, accept because £1 is more than £0. Experience shows,

Doctrinal foundationalism 77 however, that many would be rather annoyed by such a niggardly offer (knowing that you would keep £9 yourself ) and refuse it, thereby forfeiting the profit of £1. According to game theory, that would be utterly irrational, but if we take motivations, such as justice and generosity into account, it is the stingy offer that seems irrational, not the stranger’s response.61 In this light, even war itself may fly in the face of the logic of game theory, because war can have mutual costs that far exceed the expected gain. Hence, game theory ‘does not have normative implications and its empirical significance is very limited’, and it is thus ‘not a box of magic tricks that can help us play games more successfully’.62 Game theory should, instead, be seen as a ‘cousin of logic’, because logic ‘does not allow us to screen out true statements from false ones and does not help us distinguish right from wrong. Game theory does not tell us which action is preferable or predict what other people will do’.63 Although game theory may be unable to predict the actions of a particular person, you can argue that the actions of a sufficiently large number of people are predictable, just like the average behaviour of molecules in a gas, even if the behaviour of a particular molecule is beyond the range of certain forecasts. Indeed, in total wars, such as the Second World War, it did not seem to matter much what an individual soldier did. What mattered was what millions of them did. In other words, even if it was impossible to forecast with certainty what Stalin would do, it would be possible to predict the actions of the Red Army as a whole. Likewise, when high-energy physics lost its privileged position as ‘the queen of the sciences’, PhD graduates in high-energy physics started to work on Wall Street, because ‘systems analysis at Goldman Sachs turns out to be not so different from work on very small particles’.64 However, even if a social scientist can tell how people are likely to behave if a fire bell rings, it is not obvious how relevant that is to military operations at a strategic level. Furthermore, even Neumann and Morgenstern themselves were keen not to exaggerate the magic of large numbers: only after the theory for moderate numbers of participants has been satisfactorily developed will it be possible to decide whether extremely great numbers of participants simplify the situation. Let us say again: We share the hope – chiefly because of the above-mentioned analogy in other fields! – that such simplification indeed occurs.65 Another problem with ‘the law of large numbers’ is that it usually provides little support to the soldiers in the field. Even if the Office of Systems Analysis could tell that the probability of a sniper attack in a given village at a particular time of the year was exactly 17.3 per cent, such information would be of little comfort to the man on the spot. He would be 100 per cent dead if the sniper found him in the open. As with economic forecasts, it is the extreme events that worry the most, the market crashes, not the

78 The anatomy of doctrine average fluctuation.66 T. E. Lawrence philosophised along similar lines: ‘Nine-tenths of tactics were certain enough to be teachable in schools; but the irrational tenth was like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and in it lay the test of generals.’ 67 In war then, it is perhaps neither very small numbers nor very large numbers that matter most, but the numbers in between, ‘the middle ground of more than a few but less than an astronomical number’.68 We should not go too far, however, in debunking the strategic relevance of mathematics and game theory. The Nobel Prize awarded in 1994 to John Harsanyi, Reinhard Selten, and John Nash (who expanded game theory to include non-cooperative games with several players) marked game theory’s acceptance as a serious discipline within mathematics. Evidently, within mathematics and economics, game theory is a powerful tool. Furthermore, even in an elusive activity, such as war, low-intensity wars included, an ability to measure progress numerically can be of great importance; put in a nutshell by the perhaps overtly simplistic slogan: ‘If you’re not keeping [the] score, you’re not playing to win.’ 69 To conclude: quantitative methods are valuable in war just as in other fields of human activity, as long as they are used to solve clearly defined and quantifiable problems. When it comes to war itself, however, quantitative methods have certain limitations: ‘War is a kind of experiment, a test that generally would not be made if the opposing forces could measure accurately one another’s strength.’ 70 Indeed, if it was possible to find an optimal strategy in war, then war as a ‘game’ would (as already pointed out by Bülow) become essentially trivial, and die out as a rather meaningless activity, just as chess would if there existed a perfect algorithm for how to win it.71 War would simply be a means for the strong to reap the harvest of the weak. Hence, blessed are doubt and uncertainty.

Military historicism Even though both mathematics and human conflicts have a long history, the combination of them, such as in game theory, is a surprisingly recent event. The use of military history in military theory making, on the other hand, is almost prehistoric, and so prevalent that it is often hard to see the difference between them: ‘We have early adopted a comprehensive study of military history and confidently left the strategy as a logical result of the former.’ 72 By far the most common way to justify and defend principles and imperatives of military doctrine, and to ‘prove’ their efficiency, is by ‘military historicism’, where historical cases are used as evidence as well as illustrations.73 Indeed, military history has often been produced for the sake of practical utility: ‘Unless history can teach us how to look at the future, the history of war is but a bloody romance.’ 74 Doctrine can thus be portrayed as a ‘dialogue between the past and the present for the benefit of the future’.75

Doctrinal foundationalism 79 Before we address the subject matter of this section about the military’s use of the past, we have to make some clarifications. First, it is important to underscore that military preoccupation with the bygone is motivated by many different needs, for instance to serve ceremonial functions and assist in motivation and identity building. History can be both a medium and a message. Historical cases can be used educationally not because the content in them is of particular interest, but because historical cases are ‘good to think with’ and can have a spurring effect. In other circumstances (for instance when operating in historically sensitive areas such as the Balkans) the very content of history may be of huge operational relevance. In this study, however, it is the past’s argumentative power in doctrine making that is of concern. Second, the term military historicism is prone to giving the wrong impression in the sense that it gives association to history as an academic discipline. However, here we are not particularly interested in history as one field of study among others, but in history as a field of knowledge about lived life. Hence, even other disciplines, for instance anthropology and sociology, can fall into historicism as long as they use the past as part of their argument. This was, of course, one of Popper’s main worries: Social science is nothing but history: this is the thesis. Not, however, history in the traditional sense of a mere chronicle of historical facts. The kind of history with which historicists wish to identify sociology looks not only backwards to the past but also forwards to the future.76 Third, the phrase military historicism can also have different connotations to historians. Historicism does not automatically imply that knowledge of history is all-important, and that the answers to all questions in the humanities lie hidden in the past. It does not in itself say anything about the importance of history’s continuity versus discontinuity, or about progress versus decline. This study does not take issue with the basics of historiography, but uses the term historicism in a distinctive way merely in order to come to terms with history’s exceptionally strong position in military arguments and theory making. The appeal of history to military thinkers is quite easy to understand, and, for a long time, history has been the supreme, and sometimes the only, laboratory for military theorists: ‘What can be more profitable than to learn Wisdom by other men’s follies, to get experience by other men’s cost and labours, and to be safe by other men’s dangers.’ 77 This does not mean that military students and officers read a lot of history, but it implies that if they take time to reason, and conceptually prepare for the future, images of the past are the preferred point of departure: ‘Far from spurning the lessons of the past, most nations and their military establishments have, by contrast, evidenced an insatiate desire to assimilate them.’ 78

80 The anatomy of doctrine The idea of learning from the past rests on the supposition that the past actually resembles the future in relevant ways. Colin S. Gray is exceptionally frank about this: ‘These pages bear the stamp of the pervasive organizing idea that there is an essential unity to all strategic experience in all periods of history because nothing vital to the nature and function of war and strategy changes.’79 By implication, Alexander the Great’s strategic concerns were, in nature, the same as George W. Bush’s. Even Clausewitz was quite frank about this enduring nature of war: ‘Very few of the new manifestations in war can be ascribed to new inventions or new departures in ideas.’ 80 Hence, the theorists’ aim was to put the best practices of the past to print, not to invent new ones: ‘[O]ur aim is not to provide new principles and methods of conducting war; rather, we are concerned with examining the essential content of what has long existed, and to trace it back to its basic elements.’ 81 Even among air power theorists, apparently the most technological and progressive of all the services, the epistemological privilege of history is considerable: ‘In the belief that history is the only laboratory that we have in peacetime to develop and try theories of war, this book draws heavily on the last half century of air warfare.’ 82 How to balance the past and the future when recovering from a war, lost or won, is an abiding military question, but to professional historians, the idea of history having a direct utility seems a bit odd, bordering on some form of historiographic and epistemological naïveté. An important element in the establishment of history as an academic discipline in the nineteenth century was exactly its abandonment of the notion of practical utility. Previously, history had mainly been written to ‘create or sustain certain emotions and beliefs’, usually in support of the reigning regime.83 However, according to Leopold von Ranke, the father of modern historiography, historians had to reduce their ambitions considerably: ‘You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.’ 84 Later, historians have found even that too ambitious, since the past, and thus knowledge of how ‘it really was’, is gone forever. The historian’s task is not to reveal the past, but to reconstruct it, based on different types of sources and his own ideas, both conscious and unconscious. Still, the academic ideal is that proper history should not, overtly or covertly, serve special interests or practical purposes. If it does, it is propaganda or ‘nursery history’.85 By not resisting this temptation, history turns into ‘ “a grab-bag” from which each advocate pulls out a lesson to prove his point’.86 It has also become almost common sense that history does not repeat itself, even if historians repeat one another.87 Hence, a serious problem with the persuasive value of history, given that it is retrievable at all, is that ‘the lessons of history are never clear. Clio is like the Delphic oracle: it is only in retrospect, and usually too late, that we can understand what she

Doctrinal foundationalism 81 88

was trying to say’. When is the relevant parallel Munich 1938 and when is it Sarajevo 1914? It can, in many ways, be more dangerous to learn too much from history than too little: ‘Northern Ireland revealed the dangers of learning lessons too rigidly: the failure to recognize that conclusions drawn from one environment were not transferable to another.’ 89 Consequently, historicism seems to be utterly discredited, being an: approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their principal aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the ‘rhythms’ or the ‘patterns’, the ‘laws’, or the ‘trends’ that underlie the evolution of history.90 There may be laws in nature, and even there they are extremely hard to find, due to the problem of induction, but human history is certainly not governed by them: ‘[I]t is the historian, not the past, which does the dictating in history.’ 91 It is not only the complex metaphysics of time that reduces the past’s direct utility to doctrine makers; even war itself has turned historicism down so to speak. The experience of great strategic upheavals, such as the Great War, can be so staggering that theorists are left without a role model to decode. Hence, after 1918, it was the theoreticians, often with personal combat experience, who had to take the lead. Strategists, such as Svechin, Liddell Hart, and Fuller, all relied heavily on historical studies, but none of them expected to find all the answers to future challenges there. In contrast to Clausewitz, and other thinkers preceding the Great War, these three certainly aimed at some ‘new principles and methods of conducting war’. The exponential growth in military technology ushered in by the Industrial Revolution gave military theorists an unprecedented scope for imaginative thinking: The modern officer accountable for strategic planning and decisions has a burden of which his counterpart of a century or more ago was quite free. Nelson could spend his lifetime learning and perfecting the art of the admiral without any need to fear that the fundamental postulates of that art would change under his feet.92 For a century now, there have apparently always been some new inventions on the horizon.93 Compared to previous centuries, strategy and doctrine development have thus become more science (fiction) and technologydriven than history-driven, so to speak. Another epistemological earthquake followed in the wake of Enola Gay. The invention of nuclear weapons robbed military theorists of even their last asset; their personal experience. This was quite tersely encapsulated by Robert McNamara’s young adviser Alain Enthoven: ‘General, I have fought just as many nuclear wars as you have.’ 94 No one had any personal

82 The anatomy of doctrine war stories or empirical data worthy of the name. True, two Japanese cities had been attacked with the A-bomb, but that was a meagre base to build theory on. How representative were two war-weary Japanese cities, built of ‘paper houses’, when it came to the destructiveness of the A-bomb anyhow? Nobody knew very much about nuclear war.95 By the time of the first explosion of a thermonuclear device in 1953, nuclear weapons had become so destructive that they transformed even international politics.96 The transformation was so ‘completely unprecedented that historical comparisons fail almost completely’.97 With the loss of both history and personal experience, civilians armed with the aforementioned methods of operations research and systems analysis became the new doctors: An interdisciplinary team – economists, engineers, and sociologists – best undertook this job. Using the methods of science, they would be ‘objective and quantitative’. The military, which relied on experience of the last war, was unequipped to think about conflict in the new age. Soldiers would be strategically outmoded if they did not heed the scientific method.98 Without the counter-weight of personal experience and without hard facts, the US doctrine for fighting a nuclear war became almost inevitably a: structure of such baroque and self-referential complexity that it had only a distant relationship with the real world. It was almost as separated from reality as the missile crews who sat the long watches underground in their reinforced concrete command bunkers.99 Since the base for scientific prediction about what would happen if the bomb was used and how the enemy was likely to respond was threadbare, at best; the question about how the Soviets would react if they came under a limited nuclear attack was extremely hard to answer. As we will see in a later chapter, the lack of empirical data caused some theorists to grab an ‘explanation of the last resort’, namely culture; strategic culture that is. The invention of the A-bomb has also been blamed for the fact that the Second World War did not invigorate military theorising, as, for instance, the Napoleonic War and the First World War had done, but that is only partly true. For instance, in 1960 Herman Kahn made a rather abstruse attempt to dethrone Clausewitz by publishing On Thermonuclear War. Intensive military theorising (done by more worldly men) also took place, flourishing almost thirty years later when the USA tried to ‘kick the Vietnam syndrome’, as shown in a previous chapter. To sum up: even if history has been the most used laboratory for testing military theories and has great persuasive power and justificatory leverage

Doctrinal foundationalism 83 in military discussions, it is obviously no panacea. History’s utility has its limitations and is deeply influenced by the historians making it. However, even if the idea of history’s instrumental utility seems naïve to professional historians, it would be a mistake to flatly dismiss the ‘use’ of history as pure alchemy. Historical analogues and parallels, true or not, are deeply ingrained in us all. Hence, no one can escape from history, only from the awareness of it: Because decision-makers always draw on past experience, whether conscious of doing so or not, we sometimes tell students that our course has aims akin to those of junior high school sex education. Since they are bound to do what we talk about, later if not sooner, they ought to profit from a bit of forethought about ways and means.100 Since we all, doctrine makers included, relate to history as presented to us, it is preferable to do it consciously. Used wisely, history with sufficient width, depth, and context has, in fact, much to offer. It is not necessarily the answers history provides, but its ability to provoke us to ask new questions that is of greatest utility.101 The reading of history might give us flexibility of mind and stretch our imagination;102 but used thoughtlessly, the study of history may just as well close our minds to new impressions. Indeed, you can turn dafter rather than sharper by reading history: In this case, as all too often, historical cherry picking does the very thing that the study of history should guard against. Rather than encourage informed analysis and criticism, the army’s interpretation of the past serves to enforce complacency and the ‘comfortable vision of war’.103 Relying too much on past experiences at the cost of theoretical thinking may give the preparation for the next war an ominous rearward inclination: the analyst who wishes to derive general lessons applicable to the future, who is anxious to find the solution which will minimize the appalling human costs of war . . . will be obliged to go beyond history – i.e., beyond experience – to explore the feebly lit realm of ‘what might have been’.104 If we find historicism too deterministic, can history’s utility to doctrine makers perhaps be rescued by a weaker conception of scientific laws? Contemporary and less positivistic theories of knowledge have apparently come to military theory makers’ rescue.

84 The anatomy of doctrine Many military thinkers, especially in the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the following positivistic upsurge, were downright embarrassed by strategy’s appalling lack of scientific laws. Now, however, the demand for laws has been relaxed considerably in most fields of knowledge: Seventeenth-century natural scientists dreamed of uniting the ideas of rationality, necessity, and certainty into a single mathematical package, and the effect of that dream was to inflict on Human Reason a wound that remained unhealed for three hundred years – a wound from which we are only recently beginning to recover.105 Perhaps the general conception of science can meet the military theory makers halfway?106 In the following, we will look at the concept of ‘social mechanism’ as an alternative way to anchor military knowledge to history, although in a less deterministic way than military historicism. According to Jon Elster, there is, in fact, an alternative between theories containing laws and those containing mere descriptions, namely theories containing social mechanism. Mechanisms in this respect are ‘frequently occurring and easily recognizable causal patterns that are triggered under generally unknown conditions or with indeterminate consequences. They allow us to explain but not to predict’.107 A law denotes that ‘[i]f A, then always B’. But a mechanism does not mean more than ‘[i]f A, then sometimes B’.108 Indeed, if we had the choice, we would go for the certainty of a law, but when laws are impossible, as in war, we should go for the second best: In this perspective, mechanisms are good only because they enable us to explain when generalizations break down. They are not desirable in themselves, only faute de mieux. Yet because the best is so hard to attain, it can easily become the enemy of the good. The ‘plea for mechanism’ is not an argument against lawlike explanations, only against the idea that when such explanations fail – which they usually do – we must fall back on narrative and description.109 Still, according to Jon Elster, ‘mechanisms often come in pairs’.110 One example, for instance, is people’s willingness to participate in cooperative ventures, such as cleaning up litter in the neighbourhood. Some would think that since almost everyone else does it, there is no need to participate, while others will think quite the opposite, that since most others do it, I will join as well.111 The principles of war can perhaps be seen in the same light. It is hard to say in advance exactly which principle will kick in, but you are better off if you know the alternatives. Even if the concept of social mechanism is comparatively new, many military thinkers have had similar thoughts. According to Marshal Foch, for instance, the fact that theory could not tell with precision what to do did not make it redundant: ‘ “You cannot learn from a grammar how to

Doctrinal foundationalism 85 write a book of the Iliad, a tragedy of Corneille”. This does not mean that it is useless to study grammar. . .’.112 Hence, adherence to the principles of war does not guarantee victory, but it is not necessarily futile to study them. Napoleon stated it thus: ‘Genius acts by inspiration. That which is good in one circumstance is bad in another, but it is necessary to consider the principles like the axes that give reference to the graph.’113

Axiomatic foundationalism So far, we have worked through three of the corners in Figure 4.1. The last quadrangle remains, namely ‘axiomatic foundationalism’, i.e. qualitative deduction where military theory is inferred from a higher or more fundamental truth. One of the most famous examples of axiomatic foundationalism is Euclid’s classic Elements. The book starts with a catalogue of definitions, postulates, and axioms, where the latter are undemonstrable first principles. Those cannot be proved, only accepted, but if the axioms are accepted, the theorems in the rest of the book follow logically.114 If you do not accept the axioms, the book has little to offer. Even within military thinking, some have tried to base hypotheses and theories on self-evident truths which cannot be proven. Liddell Hart’s ‘Man-in-the-Dark’ theory is a case in point. Liddell Hart complained that young military students were weighed down with too many details long before they had grasped the essence of war.115 Hence, the principles of war had, instead, to be based on something evidentially true: To understand the few essential principles of war, as distinct from the mass of precepts and reservations with which the teaching of it is usually overloaded, we must simplify it and reduce it to the essential elements which are true of any fighting, whether between two individual men or two great national armies. Let us therefore examine the principles which govern the combat of two individuals. From the course of action which is correct in their case we can deduce the essential principles, and can then proceed to apply the latter to the conduct of war.116 In a later publication, Liddell Hart explicitly referred to ‘axioms’ as the base for his principles of war: ‘My aforementioned axioms cannot be condensed into a single word, but they can be put in the fewest words necessary to be practical. Half a dozen in all, so far – four are positive and two negative.’ 117 Foundationalism based on Euclidian axioms has certain features in common with game theory, but military theory can also be based on a different kind of axiom altogether, namely holy revelation. Especially after 11 September 2001, much attention has been devoted to jihad and the religious aspects of war, but evidently war and religion go a long way back.

86 The anatomy of doctrine In 1979, Pakistani Brigadier General, S. K. Malik, published a book called The Quranic Concept of War. According to Malik, the way to wage war can be inferred directly from the Quran: [T]he Quran places warfighting doctrine and its theory in a much different category than western thinkers are accustomed to, because it is not a theory of war derived by man, but of God. This is God’s warfighting principles and commandments revealed. . . . In the Islamic context, the discussion of war is at the level of revealed truth and example, well above theory – God has no need to theorize.118 Unfortunately, the divine doctrine was not revealed en bloc: In marked contrast with the man-made theories and philosophies, the divine concept of war was also not ‘written’ as a single coherent document, nor administered in one concentrated package or dose; it was, in fact, revealed gradually and progressively.119 Hence, the military philosophy of war cannot be deduced without an understanding of the Holy Quran itself.120 But given that the interpretation is correct, ‘[t]he Quranic philosophy of war is infinitely supreme and effective. It strikes a perfect balance between war and policy. It penetrates deep down to systemise and regulate all issues involved in the initiation, planning, conduct and control of wars’.121 Although the direct use of religion to deduce military doctrine seems strange to modern Western eyes, the Bible offers military advice too: When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labour and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it.122 When Oliver Cromwell sacked the city of Drogheda, he was not completely without divine doctrinal justification. It is not only religion that offers an impeccable foundation for military theory; more secular truth may also suffice: ‘Our superiority lies in possessing the irreplaceable scientific method of orientation – Marxism.’ 123 Apparently, Marxist-Leninism gave the Soviets a military science with a coherence and consistency far exceeding that in the Western world: The appearance of new methodology in the study of the phenomena of war is connected with the birth of the Marxist dialectic method which opened new vistas for the determination of laws governing the changes in the nature of war and methods of its conduct.124

Doctrinal foundationalism 87 Doctrinal foundationalism, as described in the previous pages, has (traditionally) a very intuitive appeal to the military mind. Were the reasons behind, for instance, Marlborough’s and Napoleon’s successes pure luck? According to the arch-foundationalist Jomini, it would almost take a donkey to doubt the rock solid foundation of military theory and thus doctrine making: If a few prejudiced military men, after reading this book and carefully studying the detailed and correct history of the campaigns of the great masters of the art of war, still contend that it has neither principles nor rules, I can only pity them, and reply, in the famous words of Frederick, that ‘a mule which had made twenty campaigns under Prince Eugene would not be a better tactician than at the beginning’.125 However, even if foundationalism lies close to military common sense, none of the approaches analysed in Figure 4.1 convincingly solve the epistemological challenges presented in Chapter 3. The main argument against doctrinal foundationalism is directed towards the alluring simplicity of the principles of war. Those principles are nothing less than ‘fundamental truths pertinent to the practice of war’,126 and are the very foundation of military doctrine: ‘[M]ilitary doctrine is based upon precepts that are few (generally less than twelve) in number, that are often expressed by a title or phrase, and that have become widely known as the “principles of war” ’.127 While the range of militarily relevant brute facts is virtually infinite, ranging from nanotechnology to space shuttles, the range of valid statements about how to act in order to win wars and armed conflicts is astonishingly small; indeed, so small that it can be compiled in a short list. It is thus not unreasonable to suspect that the lucidity of the principles is mostly due to pedagogical and mnemonic concerns: [T]hese ‘principles’ are skeletal in the extreme. They not only contain within themselves no hints on how they may be implemented in practice, but their very expression is usually in terms which are either ambiguous or question-begging in their implications.128 The historical stability of the principles is presumably more due to spurious factors, such as conservatism and marketing, than to any unchanging elements in war’s nature: Changes, even marginal ones, in the inherent potentialities or limitations of the machines with which war is waged may affect not merely the handling of those machines but a whole strategic concept. Principles may still survive those changes intact, but if they do it will be because they have little applicability or meaning for the questions that

88 The anatomy of doctrine really matter. The rules fathered by Jomini and Clausewitz may still be fundamental, but they will not tell one how to prepare for or fight a war.129 Hence, ever since the infancy of the principles of war, many observers have regarded them as nothing more than ‘a guide for the young officer and as an aide memoir for the older officer’.130 A simple set of principles is extraordinarily easy to indoctrinate, and thus very apt for the military way of education.131 Others have been more sarcastic and considered principles as little more than necessary material for ‘pedants and parrots’.132 Others again have been even harder: ‘the statement that a principle of war, as a guide to action, is infallible and immutable is nonsense, an insult to an intelligent man, and a dangerous doctrine for an unintelligent one’.133 After all, where does the comparatively small number of principles really come from? The reason why J. F. C. Fuller ended up with nine principles was allegedly his fascination with the ‘threefold order’, which we encountered in Chapter 3, and three groups of three make nine. Fuller most probably took this arithmetical magic sincerely, but almost no one else did.134 The idea of a mysterious order beneath the worldly chaos smacked too much of occultism to most modern minds, and J. E. Edmonds, for instance, mocked Fuller by opting for ‘knife, fork, and spoon’ as a fundamental three-component construct on a par with ‘earth, water, and air’.135 Serious or not, the small number of principles has lingered on. The neatness of the principles is perhaps too cheap an argument against the principles’ credibility. After all, a complicated system can be governed by rather few laws, as for instance indicated by the rather simple laws of Newtonian physics, but doctrinal foundationalism struggles against even larger problems. The second argument against doctrinal foundationalism has been touched upon several times already, and is closely connected to the epistemological challenge we have called reflexivity. Strange as it may seem, many strategists tend to forget that war involves more than one part: ‘People unfamiliar with the arcane world of defence analysis might be surprised to learn just how common it is for imaginative, energetic, and determined strategic thinkers and defence planners to forget that the enemy too has preferences and choices.’ 136 The Polish Major General Stanislaw Sosabowski became, in fact, a legend by posing the relatively simple question, ‘What about the Germans?’, during the briefing for Arnhem in 1944.137 As a consequence, military thinkers tend to lose sight of both the elusiveness of the enemy and the major argument against doctrinal foundationalism, i.e. the paradoxical nature of war caused by the reflexive relations between opponents, also known as the ‘the looping effect of human kinds’.138 This makes it extremely hard to reproduce strategic success: ‘[M]ilitary history should also be about underlining the precariousness of victory and the difficulties of translating it into lasting success.’ 139

Doctrinal foundationalism 89 The final argument against doctrinal foundationalism is directed towards its idols. In the wake of the scientific revolution, it seems as though many military theorists mixed up the achievements of Newton with the achievements of the entrepreneurs. If you think that Newton’s Principia was the secret behind the spinning jenny, it could be tempting to see, for instance, Essai général de tactique by Jacques de Guibert (1743–1790) as behind Austerlitz. However, by being too impressed and inspired by the elegance of scientific ‘high theory’, military theorists forgot all about the shop floor, where the important things happened: ‘[I]t now appears unlikely that the “high theory” of the Scientific Revolution had any substantial direct effect on economically useful technology in either the seventeenth century or the eighteenth.’ 140 Hence, we should not expect too many practical effects from military ‘high theory’ either. According to Clausewitz, the theory of war would have gained a far better reputation if: by means of simple terms and straightforward observation of the conduct of war theory had sought to determine all that was determinable [and if] it had stuck to the point and never parted company with those who have to manage things in battle by the light of their native wit.141 If military theorists had had the entrepreneurs as their idols, and not Newton or Euler, their theories would presumably have been more sober and practical. Donald A. Schön points in the same direction: In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high, hard ground overlooking a swamp. On the high ground, manageable problems lend themselves to solution through the application of researchbased theory and technique. In the swampy lowland, messy, confusing problems defy technical solution. The irony of this situation is that the problems of the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or society at large, however great their technical interest may be, while in the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern.142 In other words: Jomini, Fuller, and Dupuy’s books are nice to read, but have apparently little to offer the man on the battlefield. Given the difficulties of doctrinal foundationalism, it could perhaps be tempting to surrender completely and seek refuge in doctrinal scepticism, but there is another and more promising alternative.

5

Doctrinal coherentism

Even if we give up the notion of fundamental truths in this particular field of knowledge, we do not have to settle for whimsical prejudice. Given the grave consequences of war, we still want to be justified in our decisions. This is the doctrinal coherentist’s position. Even if all relevant warrants are contingent, they are more than mere hunches. The aim of the following is to explain why whimsical prejudice is not the alternative, and why something less sure than facts can be more reliable than gut feelings and feeble premonitions. The point is that justification is accomplished through other people’s acceptance of a statement. Justification is ‘a social phenomenon rather than a transaction between “the knowing subject” and “reality” ’.1 If Jomini is recognised as the father of doctrinal foundationalism, Clausewitz’s paternity of doctrinal coherentism should be just as evident. Clausewitz stated frankly that parts of the art of war could indeed be captured by facts and theory: It is a very difficult task to construct a scientific theory for the art of war [philosophischer Aufbau der Kriegskunst], and so many attempts have failed that most people say it is impossible, since it deals with matters that no permanent law can provide for. One would agree, and abandon the attempts, were it not for the obvious fact that a whole range of propositions can be demonstrated without difficulty . . .2 However, the scientific part of war was less intriguing: ‘In Clausewitz’s view the scientific part of warfare, that is the one that can be measured and rationalized, is only of secondary importance.’ 3 The most important part of war, however, its moral factors, could not be pinned down in rules and principles. Hostile feelings, reflexivity (or lebendige Reaktion in Clausewitz’s German), and the pertinent uncertainty of all information (the notorious fog of war) made it impossible to ‘construct a model for the art of war that can serve as a scaffolding on which the commander can rely for support at any time’.4 An overly myopic reading of On War can thus give the impression that

Doctrinal coherentism 91 Clausewitz’s attitude towards doctrine was rather hostile.5 However, such an interpretation would be far too simplistic. Even if the word Doktrin was rarely used by Clausewitz’s German generation, as seen in Chapter 2 in this book, they had other concepts covering much of the same ground, at least on the physical, tactical, and practical level of war. Here, Clausewitz saw great utility in a device that, today, we would call doctrinal, namely Methodismus: Officers whom one should not expect to have any greater understanding than regulations [Dienstvorschrift] and experience can give them have to be helped along by routine methods tantamount to rules [Methodismus]. These will steady their judgment, and also guard them against eccentric and mistaken schemes, which are the greatest menace in a field where experience is so dearly bought. Routine [Methodismus] apart from its sheer inevitability, also contains one positive advantage. Constant practice leads to brisk, precise, and reliable leadership, reducing natural friction and easing the working of the machine.6 This is a fairly accurate description of the aim and nature of military doctrine. Methodismus was an important lubricant to reduce the ever-present effect of friction. Hence, at the tactical level of war, routine was both beneficial and unavoidable; as the level of war rises, however, method’s utility ‘will decrease to the point where, at the summit, it disappears completely’.7 This was also a conclusion supported by the Norwegian military scholar, and later general, Otto Ruge, who we have already met in Chapter 2: Every army must have a common and approved approach in those areas where system and methods are appropriate, because uniformity is necessary in order to get the machinery running. So important in fact that uniformity is more important than whether the chosen system is the best available. . . . But if you take uniformity further, and try to make commanders think in uniform, then you go astray . . . no one has ever managed the heavy task of being commander without thinking for himself. . . . To think for yourself is not only more important than methods and doctrine. It is the complete opposite.8 So what guidance could Clausewitz offer those on the very summit; the generals who have to think for themselves? First of all, Clausewitz’s main contribution was, of course, On War itself. By reading the book and comprehending its Lehre, future commanders would become significantly better prepared for war than without it. The book provided the reader with a sound theory of war, where the ‘primary purpose of any theory is to clarify concepts and ideas that have become, as it were, confused and entangled’.9 Then came knowledge of history.

92 The anatomy of doctrine Reading and writing history were the most important way for Clausewitz to augment the utility of his own experience. Indeed, the major part of Clausewitz’s collected works is military history. On War occupied only three out of ten volumes of Clausewitz’s collected works. The rest was military history.10 Moreover, history was not theory’s scaffolding, but its prerequisite: [B]ehind On War is a mass of other material, some of it political, most of it military. Clausewitz’s other writings are not separate from On War. They are the rock from which the magnum opus was carved – or, perhaps a more appropriate metaphor, the anvil on which the ideas were forged.11 Clausewitz’s view of history’s importance should perhaps have placed him among the historicists in the previous chapter. However, Clausewitz also had a crucial trait that the historicists lacked. Certainly, history could offer a vital training ground for commanders’ judgement, but it offered no ready-made template for future decisions, as the historicists tend to claim: ‘History may yield no formula, it does provide an exercise for judgement here as everywhere else.’ 12 Hence, Clausewitz’s third doctrinal contribution, and the most important here, in addition to On War and military history, was ‘critical analysis’ or Kritik. Since theory rests on previous events,13 a commander has to figure out what exactly separates the situation at hand from those his theories and doctrines are based upon. The current situation is never exactly how it was yesterday: ‘The evil is only that such a manner originating in a special case easily outlives itself, because it continues whilst circumstances imperceptibly change. This is what theory should prevent by lucid and rational criticism.’ 14 Hence, it was through Kritik that Lehre should derive its practical value: ‘The influence of theoretical principles upon real life is produced more through criticism (Kritik) than through doctrine (Lehre). . . . We therefore think it necessary to fix the point of view for criticism next to that for theory.’ 15 Since criticism could not be based on previous examples and precedents alone, a certain amount of creativity was always left to the man on the spot, but this creativity had to be held in check: Critical analysis is capable of compensating for incomplete historical knowledge in some but not all cases. That is to say, it is an appropriate instrument of augmentation, but it is not supposed to constitute license for pure speculation when vital information is absent.16 Well-founded theory should keep the creativity within bounds. To encapsulate: Theory influences our understanding of history and our understanding of history influences our theories. This is a kind of

Doctrinal coherentism 93 virtuous hermeneutic circle that can be boosted by adding advanced theory created by people brighter than ourselves (as, for instance, by Clausewitz’s On War) and by adding history beyond our own experiences (for instance Clausewitz’s The Campaign of 1812 in Russia). Nonetheless, a certain amount of ingenious thinking has to be left to the man on the spot: It [Theorie] 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.17 The concept of self-education was a fundamental part of Bildung, or ‘selfcultivation’,18 a key word of Clausewitz’s era. Bildung implied a ‘distrust of instrumental or “utilitarian” forms of knowledge’.19 Hence, no exhaustive military vade mecum would do: ‘A book cannot really teach us how to do anything, and therefore “art” should have no place in its title.’ 20 Conversely, given the sublime element of war, nothing could, in fact, serve Bildung better than war.21 Clausewitz granted, in summation, doctrine-like documents great utility at the practical level of war, where habituation is the only remedy for friction. At the sublime level of war, however, mindless imitation of past masters could be fatal. One particularly painful example of commanders who thoughtlessly followed a method at the sublime level of war was the disaster at Jena in 1806, the campaign which resulted in Clausewitz becoming a French prisoner of war: When in 1806 the Prussian generals, Prince Louis at Saalfeld, Tauentzien on the Dornberg near Jena, Grawert on one side of Kapellendorf and Rüchel on the other, plunged into the open jaws of disaster by using Frederick the Great’s oblique order of battle, it was not just a case of style that had outlived its usefulness but the most extreme poverty of the imagination to which routine has ever led. The result was that the Prussian army under Hohenlohe was ruined more completely than any army has ever been ruined on the battlefield.22 Again, Clausewitz was willing to grant the non-experts something doctrinal to cling to on their way to becoming experts in their own right, but he had no quick fix ready for generals.23 Jomini, on the other hand, was more willing to supply such basics of war, even for the top brass: Correct theories, founded upon right principles, sustained by actual events of wars, and added to accurate military history, will form a true school of instruction for generals. If these means do not produce

94 The anatomy of doctrine great men, they will at least produce generals of sufficient skill to take rank next after the natural masters of the art of war.24 In the words of Raymond Aron: ‘Clausewitz was [the] theorist of an art to be cultivated by study and reflection, one that cannot be learned. He inspired, rather than instructed’.25 The philosophy of war has certainly not been the most dynamic field of knowledge since the posthumous publication of On War in the 1830s. Clausewitz and Hegel did, in fact, die in the same cholera epidemic in 1831, and if we had managed to awaken them both today, my guess is that Hegel would have been much more surprised and confused about what has taken place, in the meanwhile, in philosophy at large than Clausewitz would have been about the philosophy of war. In the following, we will add some contemporary philosophy to Clausewitz’s legacy. Our aim is to show that doctrinal coherentists have a better answer to offer the epistemological challenges of strategy and doctrine making, than the doctrinal foundationalists.

Doctrinal coherentism: revisited Nothing is more tangible, physical and definite as war. The ruins of Dresden and the Pulitzer Prize winning photo, by Nick Ut, of the screaming Vietnamese girl running from the carnage of war, give few reasons to regard war as a socially constructed phenomena. On the other hand, though, war is a social construction in an utterly trivial way in the sense that war is made by and for people. What is legally defined as ‘war’, in comparison with other forms of conflict, is also a purely human convention. War, as a legal term, is thus an institutional fact. While brute facts do not depend on what we think about them, institutional facts do: [I]f we give a big cocktail party, and invite everyone in Paris, and if things get out of hand, and it turns out that the casualty rate is greater than the Battle of Austerlitz – all the same, it is not a war; it is just one amazing cocktail party. Part of being a cocktail party is being thought to be a cocktail party; part of being a war is being thought to be a war. This is a remarkable feature of social facts; it has no analogue among physical facts.26 Our concern in this study is not the ontology of brute facts, or the constitutive rules which create war as an institutional fact and a legal concept. Our issue is the justification and evidential basis of certain kinds of regulative rules, i.e. rules that govern and influence already-existing activities, such as armed conflict; and especially the warrants of hypothetical imperatives, i.e. statements that tell what to do in order to accomplish our aims. Hence, our topic is not the social construction of war, but the social

Doctrinal coherentism 95 construction of the ideas we have about how to win them. The main message in this section is that the principles of war are such social constructions. They are not dictated by the reality of war, but are a reflective equilibrium between military experts. Ian Hacking has developed a useful procedure to separate trivial social construction from non-trivial construction. Whatever we suspect to be socially constructed should replace X in the following formula: ‘X need not have existed, or need not be at all as it is. X, or X as it is at present, is not determined by the nature of things; it is not inevitable’.27 If we substitute X with ‘conflict’ or ‘war’, the claim becomes rather trivial. It is, of course, a discussion whether perpetual peace is within the reach of humanity, but it is not hard to imagine, at least, a world without war. However, if we replace X with ‘the principles of war’, things become trickier: the principles of war need not have existed, or need not be at all as they are. The principles of war, or the principles of war as they are at present, are not determined by the nature of things; they are not inevitable. This is controversial because doctrinal foundationalists, such as Jomini, Liddell Hart, and Dupuy, held exactly the opposite view. The content of the principles of war was dictated by essential and enduring elements in the nature of armed conflict. The theorist’s job was to discover the principles and reveal their nature, not to construct them. The armed conflicts we have witnessed throughout history could not have spurred substantially different principles of war from those discovered. Military coherentists, on the other hand, hold that the principles of war reflect the theorists and are not necessarily mirroring any enduring nature of war. Despite the fact that the doctrinal foundationalists are in a majority, the doctrinal coherentists seem to have the strongest case, and in the following we will see why. According to Clausewitz, a major, perhaps the major, source of military friction is the difficulty of convincing others. For instance, the Prussian Army’s inability to reach agreement and to coordinate its preparations in the weeks that led up to its shattering defeat at the hands of Napoleon at Jena and Auerstedt, in October 1806, was appalling. In those days, virtually everybody with sufficient noble birth could meddle in military matters, making it more than difficult to reach decisions and coordinate action. Leo Tolstoy gave a rather vivid description of how such councils functioned: ‘Moreau would have been a prisoner if Suvórov had had a free hand; but he had the Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled the devil himself.’ 28 In fact, it was this sorry state of squabbling that first inspired Clausewitz to use the word ‘friction’: ‘How much must the effectiveness of a gifted man be reduced when he is paralyzed by constant friction with the opinions of others.’ 29 Since this was not the most effective way to run a war, or to develop military doctrine for that matter, one of Clausewitz’s main aims with his magnum

96 The anatomy of doctrine opus On War was to produce knowledgeable and distinguishable military experts. By providing a working theory and making the military terminology less ambiguous, On War made officers better mentally equipped to scrutinise military issues, instead of just producing ‘a futile bandying of words’.30 Most of all, their Kritik could be more penetrating and convincing. There had evidently been military experts around long before Clausewitz’s generation, but that expertise was, as a rule, based on the expert’s name and biography.31 The lack of established theoretical groundwork made personality all important.32 If you, for instance, after reading his Instructions had asked Frederick the Great ‘How do you know all these things?’, he would probably answer with: ‘What do you mean by asking how do I know? I’ve seen war and fought several battles, haven’t I?’ Indeed, people would probably not ask Frederick how he knew, he just knew, and people knew that he did. If he did not, they had to follow his orders, nonetheless. Even if On War did not answer all possible questions, it made it easier to distinguish the experts from the dilettantes and easier to base justifications on the power of the best argument, and not on radiant personality. This was certainly just one instant of a much broader and still continuing trend of giving experts of all sorts greater impact: ‘It is socially beneficial to insure that charlatans and ideologues are screened out and that knowledgeable and unbiased scientists be fully and clearly heard.’ 33 The temptation to resort to biography did not disappear, but the persuasive power of ‘pulling rank’ was significantly reduced, at least if you accepted Clausewitz’s point of departure. Theoretically speaking, the obligation to consistency should ideally weigh equally heavily on all, and Clausewitz tried to develop, with a varying degree of success, a consistent language for such a professional discourse within military matters. To Sir Julian Corbett, who read Clausewitz in the early part of the twentieth century, a more precise terminology was the most important outcome of military theory. As we will return to in Chapter 8, theory ensured that the commander’s words had ‘the same meaning for all’ and would ‘awake in every brain the same process of thought’.34 Hence, ‘[t]heory is useful for both inner contemplation and outer communication’.35 But, are military theory and the principles of war nothing more than mere words? Are we not chasing our own tail here? Robert Fogelin points to the same challenge in a broader context: ‘The evaporation of subject matter is the central threat to significant work on the humanities and, for that matter, in the social sciences as well.’ 36 The recurring question is, in such an indefinite field of knowledge as military theory, what is it that prevents it from becoming ‘merely dialectical’, i.e. ‘mere talk confronting mere talk’?37 Fortunately, we have not lost contact with reality, even if we discard fundamental truths in doctrinal matters. To hark back to Ernest Sosa’s raft, introduced in Chapter 3 of this study, a raft does not float in thin air.

Doctrinal coherentism 97 The medium in which it moves makes some movements possible and some impossible. Sometimes, the raft may even hit solid rock or run aground, causing the crew to rearrange and even substitute planks. Hence, a doctrinal coherentist, or pragmatist for that matter, has one foot in reality and the other in the learned discourse: There is no way in which tools can take one out of touch with reality. No matter whether the tool is a hammer or a gun or a belief or a statement, tool-using is part of the interaction of the organism with its environment.38 A doctrine writer must be like Bacon’s bee, a creature that ‘gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and field, but then transforms and digests it by a power of its own’.39 To recapitulate again: a doctrinal coherentist may agree with a doctrinal foundationalist that theory is needed, but the foundation of the doctrinal coherentist’s theories is not an ‘independent layer of reality’.40 The consequence is not that ‘anything goes’, but that it is human beings who, in one way or another, decide what actually goes when it comes to arguments: There will be norms for acceptance and rejection of them [dispositions to movements of thought or attitudes], but these norms will not simply be read off from the world, or from what these sayings are ‘describing’. The norms will be down to us, rather than down to anything else.41 The fact that it is ‘down to us’ is actually the main leverage of military doctrines, and that which separates doctrines from mere regulations and explanatory manuals. To see this crucial aspect of doctrine, we have to take a short detour via the communal aspect of science, which can be illustrated by two analogies, namely the market and the court. In the market, the selection amounts to a simple elimination of unwanted theories, which fall by the wayside due to lack of demand. In the court metaphor, authoritative decisions mediate the competing claims – and the finality of the judgment is legitimate largely because of procedural criteria (pro veritate habetur) – while leaving open the option of re-examining a case if new evidence justifies such an action.42 Science in general can be seen as a combination of market and court. Theories can make a big name in the market, in the sense that periodicals print vogue articles and people talk about them in the coffee-houses. The world of science also has some quasi-judicial elements, such as norms for

98 The anatomy of doctrine proper research and procedural constraints connected to granting tenure and so forth. Even in the military realm, there is a market for ideas and theories: Just as the world’s fashion houses strive competitively in their seasonal collections or novelty that will sell, so the defence intellectual community in its many institutional forms competes for market share in respect, official access, and cold hard cash. As fashion houses need new designs, so defence analysts and strategic theorists need new, or at least new-sounding ideas.43 However, in the military realm, which has a formal chain of command, there is also a court almost in a literal sense. Military doctrines can be seen as court rulings declaring winners among competing military theories. With some imagination, a doctrine can be seen as a rigged Kuhnian paradigm, in the sense that an established authority has decided how certain aspects of a field of knowledge should be interpreted. Even if we are unable to distinguish between the merits of competing operational concepts with ordinary justificatory techniques and procedures, military doctrine renders judgements in cases left in doubt. Hence, a doctrine adds authority to chosen warrants, which ‘authorise the step from certain types of data to certain types of conclusions’.44 Importantly, doctrinal coherentism, as we promote here, does not entail that anything goes as long as we are committed to singing from the same hymn sheet. Doctrinal coherentists have thus no reason to be intimidated by the standard accusations against relativists: ‘We must, people say, believe that every coherent view is as good as every other, since we have no “outside” touchstone for choice among such views.’ 45 A doctrine that claims that bombarding the enemy with Yorkshire pudding would always lead to victory would hardly be true or useful, in any sense of the word. It not only contradicts the judgement of experts, but runs contrary to the ‘point in hand’, i.e. war itself. Hence, the scope of doctrinal jurisdiction is not infinite. It is within the range of feasible options that the epistemological authority of a doctrine has its greatest leverage. Geoffrey Till points to the same mechanism in one of the most eloquent descriptions of doctrine and theory: ‘Maritime doctrine is the application of military theory in a particular time and place. If maritime theories are about the art of cookery, doctrine is concerned with today’s menus. Both are essential.’ 46 You can obviously have different menus based on the same art of cookery, and you can have different doctrines based on the same theory of war. To keep to the maritime milieu, the so-called Jeune Ecole is a case in point. Jeune Ecole, or ‘the new school’, occurred in France in the latter part of the nineteenth century, and was an attempt to counter British naval supremacy by a more ingenious use of modern technology. Smaller and faster vessels, with mines and torpedoes, were to offset the Royal Navy’s

Doctrinal coherentism 99 predominance in capital ships. The actual feasibility of the new school is better described elsewhere.47 The point here is to suggest that the same art of war could give rise to different kinds of doctrine, where one is not necessarily better than the other: ‘The British, the chief targets of such thinking, were more worried about these ideas than they cared to admit.’ 48 A doctrine’s viability depends, in a nutshell, on mental and material commitment, given that it is within the range of the doable. To conclude this section about doctrinal coherentism: doctrinal coherentists are not sceptics in the sense that they regard military knowledge as arbitrary and relative, but compared with doctrinal foundationalists they hold that doctrinal knowledge has an important communal element. Popper was certainly right when he said that ‘no man’s authority can establish truth by decree’,49 in the sense that the backside of the moon will not change an inch by what experts say about it, but a statement can, nevertheless, turn out to be true or proper because an authoritatively conveyed decree, or doctrine, may bring about a fit between the decree and the world. That the US doctrine functioned so extremely well against Iraq in 1991, was obviously related to the fact that important people in the US forces actually believed in it. It was an instance of the Oedipus effect, of the constructive sort. Cass R. Sunstein has touched upon something similar (although in another setting), but nonetheless revealing: ‘If everyone is both confident and on board, success may well become more likely. Indeed, the group’s enthusiasm might increase the chance of a good outcome even if another course of action would have been better.’ 50 So, finally, even if we have to search in vain for bulletproof axioms and impeccable historical evidence to base our doctrines on, we should not despair: [T]he proper course for epistemology is neither to embrace nor to armour oneself against scepticism, but to moderate one’s ambitions – demanding of arguments and claims to knowledge in any field not that they shall measure up against analytic standards but, more realistically, that they shall achieve whatever sort of cogency or wellfoundedness can relevantly be asked for in that field.51 A similar message can be conveyed a bit more poetically: ‘Warm hearts allied with cool heads seek a middle way between the extremes of abstract theory and personal impulse.’ 52

Epistemological stocktaking In the last two chapters, we have looked into different epistemological rights to the beliefs we have about how to wage and win wars. Despite the general impression that most military thinkers search for an unwarranted degree of certainty in a genuinely elusive field, a closer look reveals that

100 The anatomy of doctrine doctrine’s theoretical pillar can, in fact, be sustained in many different ways. Even if previous chapters have presented military notables from a wide time span, traces of most of them are still with us and can be pinned down in a diagram (see Figure 5.1). Methodologically, the evidential basis of military theory can be split in two: evidentialism and non-evidentialism. Evidentialism, in this context, implies that in order to be justified, a belief has to rest on adequate evidence.53 Non-evidentialism, on the other hand, entails that beliefs rest on something other than evidence, for instance divine revelation, mysticism, or obscurantism, or on a reliable method. The next question is, of course, what kind of evidence is regarded as good evidence? According to Stephen Biddle, in military theory there is no single type of evidence that holds in all circumstances.54 Consequently, military theory has to rest on methodological triangulation to cover the weaknesses of each method, while enhancing the strengths of others.55 The most important methods in this regard are: • •

III

None

Analyse

Montecuccoli

Negative

Napoleon

Pure scepticism

Grant

Non-Evidentialism

Heuristics

I I II III

Jonini

II

Clausewitz

Middle-range theory

Pragmatism

Fuller

Genuine theory (Nomology)

Corbett

Methodological triangulation

The range of theory

• •

social science in general, including war studies; general knowledge of psychological, social, military, or geographic regularities; historiography; formal theory, i.e. the ‘use of mathematical language’;56

Explain

The utility of theory = scepticism = coherentism = foundationalism

Figure 5.1 The map of military theory making.

Predict

Doctrinal coherentism 101 • • •

case studies, i.e. ‘a well- defined aspect of a historical episode that the investigator selects for analysis, rather than a historical event itself ’;57 statistical analysis; simulation and war gaming.

I have placed some key theorists and practitioners into Figure 5.1. The positions are far from indisputable. Fuller, for instance, changed his view during his lifetime. Napoleon could also be placed almost everywhere. His maxims show both traces of scepticism, as in ‘[u]nhappy the general who comes on the field of battle with a system’, and traces of a more scholarly approach: ‘My son should often read and meditate on the campaigns of the great captains. This is the only way to learn the art of war.’ 58 Even Clausewitz showed qualms bordering on doctrinal scepticism: [W]e are overcome by the fear that we shall be irresistibly dragged down to a state of dreary pedantry, and grub around in the underworld of ponderous concepts where no great commander, with his effortless coup d’oeil was ever seen. . . . When all is said and done, it really is the commander’s coup d’oeil, his ability to see things simply, to identify the whole business of war completely with himself, that is the essence of good generalship.59 The view on written doctrine’s utility is, to a certain extent, co-variant with the view on military theory. Everyone in Figure 5.1 saw the value, and even the inevitability, of paperwork in the running of the armed forces. However, their views on what we today will call doctrine, i.e. documents containing fundamental principles, varied considerably. To Fuller and Jomini, for instance, it was obvious that clever men, such as themselves, were indeed capable of writing such documents and that the armed forces would gain tremendously by following them properly. Clausewitz was more reserved, and saw great value in Methodismus at the practical level of war, but warned against the idea that such devices could be directly applicable at the sublime level of war. He was a doctrinaire at the practical level, not at the sublime: The man who means to move in such a medium as the element of war, should bring with him nothing from books but the general education of his understanding. If he extracts from them, on the contrary, ideas cut and dried, not derived from the impulse of the moment, the stream of events will dash his structure to the ground before it is finished.60 This study’s message is that the most viable theoretical position is the one in the centre of Figure 5.1, somewhere near coherentism, i.e. between foundationalism and scepticism. Even if theories are not regarded as true

102 The anatomy of doctrine descriptions of ‘an unobservable reality’, they are still useful instruments ‘which enable us to order and anticipate the observable world’.61 Middlerange theory, with sober epistemological expectations, is presumably the way to go even in military affairs: ‘[T]oday it is possible to advance a distinctly different theory of warfare which, while not approaching the mathematical precision of the “hard” sciences, nevertheless meets the standards of contemporary social and political science.’ 62 If Stephen Toulmin can call economics the ‘physics that never was’, we can safely do the same with strategy.63 We ought to look at theories as tools, not as mirrors. And not at all as a panacea: theory can indeed be quite useful in the maturation of military commanders and in the development of martial institutions, but it is not always necessary and by no means perfect. It should thus be studied assiduously but used with caution.64 Indeed, we ought to follow Clausewitz: ‘A critic should never use the results of theory as laws and standards, but only – as the soldier does – as aids to judgment.’65 Theory is for coping, not copying, to borrow the words of Richard Rorty once again.66 The net result of scientific enquiry, in this particular part of military matters, is more useful instruments of thought and action – no guarantees given: What I assert is that a well-corroborated theory (which has been critically discussed and compared with its competitors, and which has so far ‘survived’) is rationally Preferable to a less well-corroborated theory; and that (short of proposing a new competing theory) we have no better way open to us than to prefer it, and act upon it, even though we know very well that it may let us down badly in some future cases.67 A more military spin on the same message could be provided by Sir Michael Howard’s ‘the best we can hope for doctrinally is not to get the character of future war hopelessly wrong’.68 The same Sir Michael Howard declared, in fact, that doctrines will always be out of step with the situation’s demand: I am tempted to declare dogmatically that whatever doctrine the Armed Forces are working on now, they have got it wrong. I am also tempted to declare that it does not matter that they have got it wrong. What does matter is their capacity to get it right quickly when the moment arrives.69 However, in order to adapt fast, you have to ‘be nearly right to begin with’.70 That is the biggest inducement to peacetime doctrine writers.

Doctrinal coherentism 103 The topic of the previous chapters has been statements and warrants involving some sorts of facts, evidence, and warrants, but important parts of military doctrine do not contain statements with such pretensions. Moreover, rationality itself is a ‘culturally embedded phenomenon’.71 We are justified and rational within cultural limits.72 Consequently, culture, the second corner of the doctrinal triangle, is our next topic.

6

On enculturation

It is an exaggeration, though not a very large one, to assert that every piece about culture starts by stating that the concept of culture is extraordinarily fuzzy and complicated; in fact, one of the fuzziest in the entire universe.1 As a consequence, a lot that could have been said about culture and military matters will not be said here. This chapter’s task is not to elucidate culture, but to elucidate culture in relation to doctrine. What we mean by culture in this study is merely ‘all that in human society which is socially rather than biologically transmitted’,2 and which is a-rational. The aim of this chapter is thus to see how a-rationality impinges on the justification of the beliefs we have about what works in war.3 The outline of the chapter is as follows: first of all, we will see that the explanatory power and justificatory leverage granted to culture in military matters oscillate between extremes. Some observers see it as near zero, while others see it as next to infinite. Second, we will look at how three ‘generations’ of theorists have evolved concerning strategic culture. Third, we will look at one particular way to understand culture’s influence on military thinking and action, namely seeing culture as ‘practices in interaction with discourse’.4 Fourth, we will see how culture can add meaning in quite another way than mere theory can. Finally, we will see how a written doctrine can be made ‘thicker’ (not in the sense of the number of pages, but in the sense of the interpretive depth) by telling exemplary stories and, by that, opening up for casuistry and military virtue. However, before we jump into the debate about culture’s potential importance to military doctrine writers, a bit more has to be said about what culture actually is. Culture is not only an alternative to rational argument, but ‘an alternative conception of reason as such, one which spurns utility and abstraction for the feel and flavour of things’.5 For instance, I may give ample reasons for why I prefer one type of music or one type of food, but the reasons I give are of a different order to the ones I provide to explain why a stone will sink when thrown into a lake. The first type of reason will be of an a-rational type:

On enculturation 105 In any case, our cultural allegiances, whether to those of our own group or to others, are not necessarily irrational because they are a-rational. We can sometimes give reasons for such preferences, as we can give reasons for our choice of partner. It is just that such preferences are not in the end reducible to those reasons, as is plain from the fact that someone else may see why you love your partner without loving him herself.6 Even the so-called ‘norms of war’, i.e. ideas that ‘prescribe or proscribe behaviour’ have a-rational roots.7 The Western reluctance, for instance, to accept huge numbers of casualties in wars far from home is a-rational, but not irrational. We are ready, then, to scrutinise culture’s potential influence on doctrine making, and begin with the debate about the extent to which culture is relevant at all to military doctrine makers.

Culture’s explanatory currency To (neo-)realists, culture is of relatively modest concern in strategy, if at all. Kenneth Waltz, writing in the 1950s, discussed the influence of culture in his seminal Man, the State, and War, but gave it only moderate importance because it was hard to establish the practical relevance of increased knowledge of other cultures. Such knowledge ‘makes some people humble [but] others more arrogant’.8 The balance between those tendencies was hard to find. In any case, the strategic game was, according to Waltz twenty years later, played with very few rules, and culture was not among them: ‘Balance-of-power politics prevail wherever two, and only two, requirements are met: that the order be anarchic and that it be populated by units wishing to survive.’ 9 In game theory (for instance, in the theories of Thomas C. Schelling) the players’ cultural background is of no concern at all, as it is the game itself (i.e. it is the ‘so-called structural variables such as the nature of power distributions between states in the here and now’) that dictates the best move, not the players’ background.10 According to Jack Snyder, Schelling assumed that ‘there is a single, universal strategic rationality, which will be adopted by “any player who had his wits about him” ’.11 In fact, for Schelling, not even wits were actually necessary in strategy as inmates at mental hospitals show ‘an intuitive appreciation of the principles of strategy, or at least of particular applications of them’.12 For many succeeding scholars, however, the transcultural and transhistorical view of the realists seemed preposterous, since they virtually reduced decision makers to culture-free and preconception-free computers of future gains. It seemed extremely naïve not to take the players’ own worldview into account, and not to recognise that our ‘own framework is temporally and culturally bound’.13 In the words of Patrick Porter:

106 The anatomy of doctrine ‘Actors in war are not billiard balls that only operate according to external pressures.’14 Consequently, ‘[d]octrine is not something you put on like a coat’.15 Apparently, people are not like Pavlovian dogs that just respond mechanically to stimuli in the strategic game. You have to know something about the worldview of the dog, so to speak, in order to predict its behaviour. Moreover, worldviews can have serious consequences: ‘In Bosnia or Belfast, culture is not just what you put on the cassette player; it is what you kill for.’ 16 Jack Snyder’s seminal report The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operations (1977) was a particularly poised reaction to the neo-realists: It is enlightening to think of Soviet leaders not just as generic strategists who happen to be playing for the Red team, but as politicians and bureaucrats who have developed and been socialized into a strategic culture that is in many ways unique and who have exhibited distinctive stylistic predispositions in their past crisis behaviour.17 To Snyder, the word ‘strategic’ pointed exclusively to nuclear weapons, which, as seen in a previous chapter of this study, had caused an epistemological earthquake for military thinkers. But the phrase ‘strategic culture’ soon found a wider audience, and Snyder’s apt coinage has travelled far since then. Modern research on strategic culture, or more broadly ‘cultural and ideational influences on strategic choices’, can, according to Alastair Iain Johnston, be divided into three generations.18 To call the development stages ‘generations’ can give the impression that the late generations rest on the first, but that is not the case according to Johnston. He asserted, when his book was published in 1995, that the first generation still dominated,19 and that the main problem was that this generation had ‘generally failed to push the concept of strategic culture forward’.20 It is also important to notice that Johnston’s generations overlap each other considerably. That Jack Snyder, for instance, belongs to the first generation of theorists is by no means obvious, especially if you read more into ‘generation’ than mere chronology. The first generation, from the early 1980s, was mainly concerned with Soviet and with different superpower thinking in the nuclear age. The most important contribution of the first generation was that they ‘challenged the acultural and ahistorical system-based assumptions of the structural-realist.’21 According to Colin Gray, the ringleader of the first generation, we are all entrenched in culture and we are all unable to transcend it: I argue that culture embraces both ideas and behaviour and that it is inescapable: one cannot sensibly contrast culturalist with other

On enculturation 107 approaches to politics or strategy, because all human beings are culturally educated or programmed. So, all strategic behaviour is cultural behaviour. This is inconvenient for scholars who wish to study the distinctive influence of culture. If cultural phenomena cannot be readily identified and isolated, they may well prove too elusive for rigorous examination by social scientists.22 According to this view, culture is highly context-sensitive and is enmeshed in widely divergent and deeply rooted historical experiences and geography, among other variables. According to Johnston, highly critical of the first generation, Gray’s wide ranging approach to culture makes the line of reasoning ‘diffuse, sweepingly broad, and the arguments highly deterministic’.23 Indeed, the first generation’s use of ‘strategic culture’ was too diffuse even for Jack Snyder, the originator of the concept: As a rule, culture is an explanation of last resort. Cultural explanations tend to be vague in their logic, with causes that are quite distant in time and sequence from their purported consequences. Often, culture is a residual label that is affixed to ‘explain’ outcomes that cannot be explained in any more concrete way. Thus, culture, including strategic culture, is an explanation to be used only when all else fails.24 Snyder’s worries were perhaps not only an academic concern over blurred terminology, but a political worry that the concept of different strategic cultures could be used politically by hawks in the Pentagon.25 If the Soviets played by completely different rules than the USA, the Americans could apparently only trust pure military might, not treaties and disarmament. The main difference between the first-and the third-generation’s approach to strategic culture is to what extent culture can be isolated as an explanatory variable. In other words: can culture explain actions? Gray and the first generation rejected such a view. Since culture is everywhere all the time, its influence cannot be tested. Culture can help us understand, not explain ‘[S]trategic culture provides context for understanding, rather than explanatory causality for behaviour.’ 26 In other words; the third generation ‘is seriously in error in its endeavour to distinguish culture from behaviour’.27 Culture is both ‘a context out there that surrounds, and gives meaning to, strategic behaviour’ and ‘the total warp and woof of matters strategic that are thoroughly woven together’.28 The third generation, that emerged in the mid 1990s, was, according to Johnston, a lot more conceptually and methodologically rigorous than the first generation, and tried to narrow the focus of the dependent variables in order to ‘set up more reliable and valid empirical tests for the effects of strategic culture’.29 Compared with the first generation’s interpretive

108 The anatomy of doctrine approach to culture, the third generation had a rather neo-positivistic flair: In essence, we need a notion of strategic culture that is falsifiable, or at least distinguishable from non-strategic culture variables; that captures what strategic culture is supposed to do, namely provide decision-makers with a uniquely ordered set of strategic choices from which we can derive predictions about behaviour; that can be observed in strategic cultural objects; and whose transmission across time can be traced.30 The third generation of thinkers was not willing to give culture an allencompassing quality. Culture is, according to this view, one variable among others, and rarely the most important one, as indicated in Snyder’s ‘culture as an explanation of last resort’ statement from 1990, quoted above. Elizabeth Kier gives the same advice in Imagining War: I do not advocate the wholesale adoption of cultural analyses. In the case of the development of military doctrine, making sense of military and civilian choices requires understanding the cultural context, but this does not mean that cultural analyses are always necessary or that more traditional approaches are unimportant.31 For instance, historians, to use a modern word, were traditionally expected to chronicle dynasties, lists of kings, and battles; nothing more and nothing less. But could that alone explain the course of history? Often there was something left that did not quite fit into the overall explanation. Blaise Pascal called it ‘Cleopatra’s nose’, others call it culture. Elizabeth Kier claims that there is, in fact, more even to war than kings and battles: Unlike most rationalists, who take preferences as given and interests as self-evident, I show how actors’ cultures help define their interests. Independent exigencies such as technology, geography, and the distribution of power are important, but culture is not simply derivative of functional demands or structural imperatives. Culture has an independent causal role in the formation of preferences.32 Even if the cultural approach was launched by the first generation of theorists to counter neo-realism, the third generation is probably more willing to see the approach as a supplement to realism, or indeed as the saviour of realism. According to this point of view realist explanation is preferred most of the time, but in really puzzling cases, where the agent’s behaviour seems dysfunctional, one may opt for a cultural explanation: ‘Given the intuitive attractiveness of rationalist approaches to strategic studies, the onus appears to be on cultural approaches to prove their worth, and this

On enculturation 109 can best be done by explaining behavioural outcomes that are puzzles for rationalists.’33 So far, we have dealt with the first and the third generations’ approach; now it is time to have a look at the second generation, the odd man out, so to speak. While the protagonists of the first and third generation have lobbed arguments at each other for years, the second generation has lacked a unifying standard bearer. While the first and third generations argue about how, or rather whether, culture influences action, the main contribution of the second generation is to turn the table: ‘One of the fundamental questions that have been overlooked by first and third generation scholars of strategic culture theory is that of how strategic culture is produced.’ 34 Culture is not given, but is produced, changed and sustained by human actions. To Edward Lock, a spokesman of the second generation, culture can, to a certain extent, be manipulated and ‘used’: Humans are not cultural ‘dupes’ whose social practices are fully determined by the social structure in which they operate. Instead they are capable of reflecting upon their use of language and the structures that constrain it. However, this is not to say that human agents are free to change strategic culture as they please. 35 Consequently, when the second generation appeared in the mid 1980s, it focused on the superpowers and on latent disjunctions between the strategic-cultural discourse and operational doctrines, where the discourse was used to reinforce the ‘hegemony of strategic elites and their authority to determine the latter [i.e. doctrine]’.36 More broadly speaking, there can be considerable discrepancies between the reality and the discourse of war: ‘The very nature of the Discourse on War dictates that it diverges from the Reality of War. In fact, the variety of these discourses within a single society ensures that no one reality could match the diversity of conception.’ 37 If culture is partly instrumental and can be actively manipulated to reach desired goals, a question soon arises: to what extent are the rulers themselves immune from culture? Do they themselves rise above the cultural restraint? According to Jeffrey S. Lantis, elites have, in this regard, much more ‘latitude than scholars generally allow’.38 According to Elizabeth Kier, categorised as a third generation theorist, culture is manipulative to a certain degree: ‘Culture can have explanatory power, but political entrepreneurs often use culture instrumentally. Although the extent of conscious political manipulation differs, both the British and French cases provide illustrations of “manipulated myths” ’.39 And according to Patrick Porter, culture can be defined as ‘an ambiguous repertoire of competing ideas that can be selected, instrumentalised, and manipulated, instead of a clear

110 The anatomy of doctrine script for action’.40 Consequently, we should not expect people to behave according to a stereotyped expectancy: The dogma of cultural essentialism, then, often fails to deal with many of the complexities of military performance. It misses out the pragmatism and wiliness of both states and non-state actors of war. . . . Cultural legacies are part of the process of decision-making and behaviour, but neither exhaustive of it nor a static element within it.41 According to Williamson Murray on the other hand, our ability to change culture instrumentally is almost fictional: ‘It is almost impossible to change the larger cultural and geographic framework within which military organizations operate.’42 You could perhaps say that even if the cultural framework is near to impossible to change, actors have still some room to manoeuvre within that framework. Anyhow, if rulers are victims of culture, just as the ruled are, we are back to the first generation: ‘How could there be a Strategic Person “beyond culture”?’ 43 Corporate culture (and military culture for that matter) is, perhaps, not like a French garden, after all, where the gardener creates a structured Garden of Eden for his own delight. Maybe it is more like an English garden, where the vegetation is allowed to develop individually within an elaborate system. Or perhaps it is a jungle, where everyone has to look out for himself and danger lurks everywhere? Or rather, perhaps corporate cultures (especially in large bureaucratic organisations like the militaries) are not organic at all, but are better described as a slab of concrete, since they have ‘a powerful tendency to continue doing today whatever they did yesterday’.44 There is perhaps a deep human need, to do tomorrow what you did yesterday: The cognitive and organizational need for simplicity and stable structure also shapes the evolution of doctrinal beliefs. Core assumptions are formed by early experience or training. These are difficult to change, despite disconfirming evidence or incentives to adopt new beliefs. Discrepant information is either ignored or incorporated into the belief system in a way that minimizes the need to change the system’s structure. Vivid, firsthand experience, personal success and failures, and events important to the person’s state or organisation play a disproportionate role in the subsequent learning process. In this way, military doctrine – like any belief system – reflects the need for continuity, ease of recall, and a restricted scope of attention to information.45 Thus, perhaps culture is not something you manipulate, but something that manipulates you? However, even if culture should turn out to be as inflexible as a rock, it is still not irrelevant for military doctrine makers to know its implications.

On enculturation 111 Ingenious doctrinaires can sometimes turn cultural liability into military dynamite, not by changing it, but by understanding it. A case in point is Egypt’s preparation for the October War against Israel in 1973. By that time, Egypt had twenty-five years of experience of Israel’s lethal manoeuvrability, and had learned the hard way that it could not emulate the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF ) way of war, i.e. ‘the ad hoc giveand-take of maneuver warfare’.46 Instead, the Egyptians had to engage Israel ‘in their own kind of fight’.47 For both demographical and cultural reasons, the Egyptians could sustain substantially more casualties than Israel. Their ‘butcher’s bill’ could dwarf the Israelis’. Egypt was, therefore, better prepared for a methodical war of attrition than its Israeli enemies, and staged the battlefield accordingly. The result was an initial Egyptian success that stunned the world. Even if Israel was caught on the wrong foot, it soon regained its balance. The point here, however, is not to evaluate that particular war, but to highlight culture’s relevance for war and doctrine making. The lesson is worth quoting in length: The resultant highly effective Egyptian operation provides a striking demonstration of the way in which militaries possess unique cultural characteristics and can profit from recognizing them. . . . The story told here demonstrates that campaign plans ought to build upon the particular character of the army for which they are intended. In other words, the formal exposition of military culture that is doctrine should conform to the more basic aspects of that culture as expresses in the beliefs and behaviours of its officers and its rank and file. . . . The special character of Egyptian military culture, and the value of harmonizing technology and tactics with it, argues for the absolute necessity to appreciate the uniqueness of the different militaries. Concepts of a universal soldier and ideas of weaponry as dictating a single best way to fight seem naïve.48 The fate of Egypt indicates that an important element of cultural awareness is to accept that certain elements of culture are beyond manipulative reach. Apparently, even doctrine makers should take the Serenity Prayer to heart: ‘Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’49 To sum up the difference between the three generations’ views of the explanatory power of culture, I have drawn a model (see Figure 6.1). The x and y in Figure 6.1 can be anything other than culture, depending on the level of analysis. On a general and conceptual level, the x and y can, for instance, be ‘process’ and ‘structure’. On a more concrete level the variables can, for instance, be the operational, logistical, and technological dimensions of war.

112 The anatomy of doctrine 1st g.

2nd g.

y

y

3rd g. culture

y

culture

culture action

action

action

x

x

x

Culture cannot be separated from action. Culture cannot explain, but can help us to understand

Culture influences action and action influences culture

Culture may have causal power and explanatory potential

Figure 6.1 Cultural generations.

For the first generation, culture is omnipresent and almost deterministic. For the second generation, culture can be a tool in someone’s hand, while for the third generation culture is something intersubjective that, on given occasions, can cause things to happen. Even if our ability to extricate ourselves from our culture should turn out to be modest, an observer could at least try to ‘guard against his own ethnocentric bias’, even if he ‘cannot completely eradicate his own cultural condition, and the structure of ideas and values which it passes on to him’.50 Importantly, the significance of the traditional level of cultural analysis in military affairs, i.e. the national culture, may be waning due to the socalled ‘new institutionalism’. According to this view, global profession-wide organisational fields are more important than national culture in shaping the culture of a given organisation. Due to both information technology and military cooperation through alliances and coalitions, military knowledge, as well as buzzwords and think-tank fads, travel fast across national borders. Military organisations have, in fact, imitated each other for centuries, not only as a result of war and the survival of the fittest, but through ‘institutional isomorphism’, i.e. mimetic processes that lead ‘organizations to model themselves on similar organizations they perceive to be more professional and hence legitimate’.51 Maybe the cultural affinity between

On enculturation 113 two military men of different countries is closer than between the officers and the politicians of the same state? Furthermore, the importance of national culture can also be played down by cultural allegiances below the national level. Perhaps, for instance, the Germans’ combat effectiveness during the world wars was not rooted in the troops’ ‘Germanhood’?52 Perhaps service culture turned out to be more central than the national culture: ‘The German navy proved in two world wars that there was nothing innately competent about German military organisations; as a result, one should hesitate before ascribing undue influence to national culture in how service cultures develop.’ 53 The debate between the first and the third generations’ views on culture’s influence on behaviour (in particular) will probably remain unresolved, as it is more or less a question of philosophical conviction whether to regard culture as being everywhere, or just being a distinct variable.54 To add more empirical data to support one or the other end of this dichotomy would probably resemble Wittgenstein’s teacup. When it is full it is full, even if you continue to pour hot water into it. Supporters of Gray’s view will probably not be swayed by more research along Johnston’s line of thought, and vice versa. The question of how culture actually influences strategic behaviour has apparently come to a dead end, or, more exactly, a bifurcated blind alley. The way out is probably not to continue down one of them, but to turn around and focus on how actors act, rather than ‘why and for what purpose’. 55 The most promising way out of the bifurcated dead end created by reified concepts of culture is via ‘practice theory’, which also offers an apt bridge into the development of doctrine, which we will return to in the next section.

Culture as practices and discourses As noted in the introduction to this chapter, ‘culture’ is an extremely complex concept. One way to get a better grip on it is to see culture as the aggregate of practices and discourses. Practices are routine actions at a collective level, and are defined as the ‘socially recognized forms of activity, done on the basis of what members learn from others, and capable of being done well or badly, correctly or incorrectly’.56 One example of practices is riding in formation. When oldfashioned cavalry rode in formation, the ability to do so was acquired through an ‘extended military training and sustained and developed as part of a military culture transmitted from generation to generation’.57 The decision actually to ride in formation, and selecting routes, etc. is not part of practice, only the collective ability to perform it. Practices, in contrast to values, ideas, and beliefs, are public and visible, and manifest themselves through what members of a group actually do. The concept of discourse, on the other hand, is almost as fluffy as culture; but, in this context, it is sufficient to state that discourse is ‘not

114 The anatomy of doctrine the content of what anyone says, but the system of meanings that allows them to say anything meaningful at all’.58 Hence, justification of beliefs about what works in war has certain cultural limitations. You cannot argue with words that do not yet exist: ‘Not any question is possible at any given time. Rembrandt could not ask whether photography had rendered realist painting redundant.’ 59 Culture, understood as ‘practices in interaction with discourse’,60 is what makes not only doctrine making, but all sorts of collective action and planning possible. A crucial task of future doctrine makers is thus to widen the horizon of military discourse, and indirectly enhance the reservoir of relevant practices. How we think and how we speak influence the way we operate: ‘how war is fought depends, at least in part, on the concepts of war held by those who participate in it: “the idea of war itself is a major factor in the way in which it is waged” ’.61 Hence, Clausewitz’s Kritik, which we encountered in the last chapter, reappears as an important cultural tool. According to Clausewitz, the discourse of critical analyses should ideally be identical with the discourse of action: We must now be allowed to make a few remarks about the instruments critics use – their idiom [die Sprache]; for in a sense it accompanies action in war. Critical analysis, after all, is nothing but thinking that should precede the action. We therefore consider it essential that the language of criticism should have the same character as thinking must have in wars; otherwise it loses its practical value and criticism would lose contact with its subject.62 Perhaps we are in danger of turning Clausewitz on his head, but we can read this urge for reciprocity between the scholars’ discourse and the discourse in the field as a plea that practitioners should let their conceptual horizon be widened by theorists, and not only the other way around. Words and concepts used by doctrine writers ought to develop words and concepts used by the practitioners in the field, and vice versa. The scrutinising and exploring elements of doctrine writing, in the twilight between theory and culture, are particularly important because established practices and discourses can linger on long after the rationale for them has vanished. Bear in mind the old saying that the only thing more difficult to do than getting a new idea into the head of a military man is to get an old one out. One of the more strange cases of such cultural lag is the hilarious ‘horse holding’ discovered during operational research in World War II, where artillery crew drills were studied with the aim of enhancing its efficiency. One of the researchers noticed a man standing by the gun as it was fired with his hands extended in closed fists, and could not figure out what the man was actually doing. Finally, an artillery sergeant explained that the man was ‘olding the “orses” ’, i.e. ‘carrying on a practice from the days of horse artillery, even though the unit had been

On enculturation 115 63

mechanized’. There was a time when holding the horses during firing made perfect sense, but not after the horses disappeared. The tangible parts of ossified military culture, such as bearskin caps and mounted parades, are visible to all. More subtle, and more problematic, are the conceptual museum pieces that linger on in military discourse and military self-perception. The raison d’être of military forces has traditionally been to fight great wars and conduct major operations. Consequently, major war has usually been the ‘conditioning factor’ in shaping doctrine.64 This does not mean, of course, that there have been no doctrines for small wars. US Marine Corps’ Small Wars Manual (1940) is a particularly palpable case in point. Nonetheless, manuals and doctrines for small wars are conspicuously rare. A serious problem, therefore, arises when military forces no longer ‘do’ great wars. In fact, Western military forces have rarely fought them: While low-intensity conflict has most frequently been the actual practical soldiering experiences of Western soldiers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is the dream of what French soldiers knew as la grande guerre that has commanded the attention of theorists and of historians in turn.65 This is not only a phenomenon of the past: As one student admitted in 1998, in the fifteen years since the school’s inception (School of Advanced Military Studies, US Army [SAMS]), American military forces were committed to eleven significant operations, but only Desert Storm resembled any conflict SAMS taught its students to fight.66 Nonetheless, great wars are still the benchmark: It is a fundamental tenet of British military doctrine that the Army should be organised, trained and equipped first and foremost for war. By preparing to fight, the prospect of success across the full range of operations is enhanced. The reverse is not true.67 The discrepancy between preparing for great wars while practising small wars would not be a problem if preparation for major wars also prepared you for lesser conflicts.68 However, that may not always be the case.69 As early as 1896, T. Miller Maguire warned: While looking at the stars, we may tumble in a ditch, and while lost in wonder at how to move effectively from Strasbourg, Mayence and Metz towards Paris . . . we may forget how to handle a few battalions in the passes of the Suleiman Range or in the deserts of Upper Egypt.70

116 The anatomy of doctrine This quandary is evidently still with us: [T]he cause of the turmoil among the troops [in Iraq] wasn’t the quality of commanders, but rather the disconnect between what the Army was designed to do and what it actually found itself doing. ‘I would say that the U.S. Army, ninety percent, was not structured for success’, [Lt. Col. Christopher Holschek] said later. ‘We’ve got a military designed to fight big wars, and it’s constantly fighting small wars’.71 Even if doctrine development can occasionally change both discourse and practice, it produces no miracles. It is paramount to remember that without the solidness of the tangible world, there will be little to cultivate. Structures, historical particularities, and people’s intentions are to be granted explanatory power, alongside culture. To make the same point with a historical case: it is said that the British Army did not understand the full potential of the tank, until they saw how the Germans used it in the Second World War. The cultural lag was allegedly caused by British military conservatism.72 Apparently, the British Army lacked the ability to produce a viable doctrine for the use of tanks: ‘The British invented tanks in the latter part of World War I, but it was the Germans who came up with a superior doctrine – an earlier air land battle doctrine – in the blitzkrieg.’ 73 But the tanks of 1918 were not the tanks of 1940. In 1918, speed, range, and reliability fell far short of operational needs. It was, in fact, the tank that ‘failed the army, not the other way around’.74 Technology, strategy, and political circumstances are all interwoven with culture in mysterious ways, but to reduce it all to culture is to miss the point. If culture explains everything, it ultimately explains nothing: ‘If culture was such a critical explanation for the outcome of the Vietnam War, how does one explain the dramatically different combat performance of the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong compared with the South Vietnamese army?’75 To recapitulate: when people talk of cultural reminiscence and nostalgia in military matters, they often refer to the most visible, but less problematic, aspects of it; for instance drill and parades. Culture’s less tangible parts, however, are tremendously more problematic. If the armed forces’ self-perception, their discourse, and practices are out of line with the realities of modern armed conflict and with the government’s expectations, the utility of force is badly hampered. If the armed forces regard the tasks they are actually given by the government as irrelevant and miles away from their genuine culture and ‘proper’ core mission, both the military and the government have a problem. In this light, doctrine’s main impact may thus be on the way people talk and think about military missions. By enlarging the conceptual tool kit, i.e. making the discourses and practices more relevant, the armed forces can be more responsive to new challenges.

On enculturation 117

Culture as organisation of meaning In the introduction to this study, we gave doctrine the preliminary definition of institutionalised beliefs about what works in war. However, doctrine can undertake another task, related to justification in a broader philosophical sense, than just offering reasons to believe. Doctrine can add meaning at a more existential level as well. The definition of meaning is obviously rather fuzzy, since the concept of definition already implies the concept of meaning. However, in this study, a rough indication will do: ‘meaning is shared mental representations of possible relationships among things, events, and relationships. Thus, meaning connects things’.76 The connotations of meaning in utterances, such as ‘the meaning of this sentence is . . .’ and ‘the meaning of life is . . .’, are strongly related: ‘[A] meaningless life and a meaningless sentence may share common features of disconnected chaos, internal contradiction, or failure to fit context.’ 77 Both sentences and people need meaning, in one way or another, and it is this type of meaning that we deal with here. The quest for meaning is not a leisurely pastime, but a question of life and death. The ‘diseases of meaning’, which people in the (post-)modern world suffer when traditional providers of meaning, such as God, party, or family, disappear can literally be life threatening.78 Conversely, seeing the meaning of things can help you get through harsh times. According to Victor E. Frankl, himself a survivor of the Holocaust: [t]here is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: ‘He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how’.79 How hard it was to see meaning in the concentration camps is glaringly demonstrated by one of Primo Levi’s experiences: When Levi reached out of a window and broke off a fat icicle to quench his thirst, a guard snatched it out of his hands. ‘Warum?’ asked Levi –‘Why?’ ‘Hier ist kein warum’, came the answer –‘Here there’s no why’.80 Usually, doctrine is regarded as a tool to handle military how-question. In this section we will argue that it also can be produced to answer strategic why-questions. In the film Saving Private Ryan (1998), Steven Spielberg tells a story from World War II about an American unit that was sent behind enemy lines to rescue Private James Ryan. General George C. Marshall had

118 The anatomy of doctrine discovered that James’ mother was about to receive a telegram telling her that all of James’ three brothers had died within days of each other. To lose the last surviving son would be too much to ask of this poor woman, and Marshall, therefore, decided that James should be brought back to his mother alive. Naturally, given that this is a Hollywood production, the unit on the rescue mission suffers so many mishaps and calamities that the hero of the movie has many occasions to ponder: how many casualties could we accept to save this single stranger? How many other mothers should lose their beloved sons in order to soothe the grief of this particularly devastated woman? And what if the soldier refused to be saved? What was the meaning of it all? In the film, the dilemma arises due to a particular mission. The aim of the war itself, however, was simple enough – to crush Hitler and the German Armed Forces. It was a war the Allies had to win, no matter what. The Nazi regime had to be eradicated from the face of the earth. In our days, however, whole wars are fought for reasons resembling that of Saving Private Ryan. They are fought to reduce human suffering. And, thus, the question soon arises: what is the meaning of it all? In a word, the United States has no grand purpose in mind. If, as [Zaki] Laidi argues in his book [A World without Meaning], we understand ‘meaning’ to consist of three interrelated notions – a foundation, a sense of unity and a final goal – then humanitarian warfare can properly be described as ‘meaningless’.81 In war, the lack of a convincing ‘why’ can be particularly worrisome. Emblematic satirical works about war, such as, for instance, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 from the Second World War and Anthony Swofford’s Jarhead from the Gulf War in 1991, are, to a certain extent, about the loss of meaning. Hence, future doctrines have to be prepared to shoulder a greater responsibility in providing the ‘whys’ of war. Indeed, future doctrine’s main raison d’être can be as a provider of meaning, because ‘[e]ven the private soldiers and the junior officers of an embattled democratic society must know the purposes for which they risk their lives’.82 A doctrine does not provide meaning to a specific operation, but to the broader idea of having armed forces at all, and to why anyone should wish to be a part of it. The Canadian document Duty with Honour: The Profession of Arms in Canada is a case in point. It is important to have the background of the document in mind when reading it. During the Canadian Forces’ operations in Somalia in the 1990s, Canadian troops committed atrocities that shocked everyday Canadians back home. A Somalia Inquiry Report was subsequently released by the Minister of National Defence in July 1997, and the conclusion was disheartening:

On enculturation 119 From its earliest moments the operation went awry. The soldiers, with some notable exceptions, did their best. But ill-prepared and rudderless, they fell inevitably into the mire that became the Somalia debacle. As a result, a proud legacy was dishonoured . . . planning, training and overall preparations fell far short of what was required; subordinates were held to standards of accountability by which many of those above were not prepared to abide. Our soldiers searched, often in vain, for leadership and inspiration.83 Obviously, something had to be done to save both the battleworthiness and the self-esteem of the Canadian Forces. Issuing Duty with Honour was one of the measures taken to hoist the Canadian Forces away from their moral nadir. The document does not say much about how military operations should be conducted, but says a lot about values, beliefs, and expectations. Hence, its primary aim was to quench the thirst for meaning: This manual describes the profession of arms in Canada for the benefit of members of the Canadian Forces and indeed all citizens. It presents the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the profession, shows how in practice it serves Canada and Canadian interests, and codifies, for the first time, what it means to be a Canadian military professional.84 When military employees struggle to get up in the morning and wonder why they should bother to go to work, some will see it simply as their duty, some will find comfort in thinking about the pay cheque, or the splendour of their uniform, while others want something more. For the latter, the doctrine should be the place to look. Not surprisingly, given the fact that doctrine has its origins in religion, there are certain commonalities between military doctrine making and theology. Both deal with matters of life and death. Both are somewhat weak on tangible empirical facts. Both relate to some form of authority, and both relate to some form of venerated text. According to Richard Dawkins, ‘[r]eligion has at one time or another been thought to fill four main roles in human life: explanation, exhortation, consolation and inspiration’.85 That could also have been said about military doctrine, read in this particular way. It can provide military life with purpose, value, and a sense of superiority. Evidently, the comparison between military doctrine making and theology should not be drawn too far. As argued previously in this study, it is crucial to bolster a doctrine with as much cognitive support as possible in order to give it greater persuasive power: The armed forces doubtlessly would profess to be more scientific than theological. Yet as a matter of practice when offering unsupported

120 The anatomy of doctrine and undocumented generalizations on matters of doctrine to their ‘followers’, they are inviting belief as an act of faith rather than justifiable inferences on the basis of objective evidence open to independent scrutiny.86 Nonetheless, a military doctrine, just like the Bible, can be made to provide meaning, especially in cases where meaning is hard to find elsewhere. To put it another way: ideally soldiers should not ask too many questions: Militaries would prefer that soldiers concentrate on the slight matters which they can actually influence, such as the specifics of their assigned task, rather than dwelling upon the larger issues of why they are risking their lives in combat and whether this risk is justified.87 However, if they start to ask questions about the larger issues, doctrine should be there to comfort them. So far, we have argued that doctrine can be made to provide meaning. In the following, we will focus on a particularly important way to do so, namely by telling stories, because ‘[s]torytelling is fundamental to the human search for meaning’.88 In the following, we will see that storytelling can do several important things for doctrine. Apart from providing meaning, it can also liberate us from the tyranny of principles.

Storytelling as enrichment of doctrine As asserted in Chapter 1 of this study, doctrines that address thinking and virtue are prone to cause some concern. To make people think or feel in certain ways is discouragingly difficult. However, although hard, it is not impossible. If cultivation, or Bildung, is looked upon as ‘personal selffulfilment through interpretive interaction with venerated texts’,89 doctrine, both official and ‘semi-official’, seems to be as good a place to start as any. What is particularly appealing about virtue in doctrinal matters is precisely the difficulty of applying the right principles to particular cases, as we have dealt with extensively in this study. It is notoriously hard to catch a shifting reality in unambiguous guides to action, as indicated by one of the introductory remarks in the rather pretentiously titled book How to Win on the Battlefield: ‘Historically, the ability to maintain flexibility, to learn from mistakes and to develop trends or ideas on how to approach war in the future (rather than trying to “fight the last war”) have been critically important.’ 90 For a military commander though, such statements tend to beg the question. The important thing for a military man is how to accomplish all these things, or what to be in order to be able to do it. Consequently, virtue stands out as an

On enculturation 121 alternative way to handle the complexities of war, just as it does in ethics: ‘Aristotelian virtue ethics regards matters of right and wrong as unencapsulable in rules, and describes the virtuous individual as someone who perceives and fairly effortlessly acts upon situationally unique moral requirements.’ 91 This goes for many kinds of human activities: ‘[V]irtues fit us for excellent functioning in generically human situations.’ 92 Even to Clausewitz, it was obvious that military virtue added an important element to military command: Generally speaking, the need for military virtues becomes greater the more the theatre of operations and other factors tend to complicate the war and disperse the forces. If there is a lesson to be drawn from these facts, it is that when an army lacks military virtues, every effort should be made to keep operations as simple as possible, or else twice as much attention should be paid to other aspects of the military system.93 Virtuous soldiers and officers would be in less need of supervision. They would know what to do, and they would also have the motivation actually to do it. ‘Casuistry’ is another concept strongly related to virtue, even if it has a more dubious ring.94 The motivation behind casuistry is that both moral and political questions tend to be entangled in mutually exclusive standpoints: Activists on both sides of the abortion debate have looked for universal laws and principles, which they could then nail to their respective masts; and their insistence on framing those principles in unqualified and universal terms, wherever this was possible, has done much to make the whole debate irresoluble.95 This ‘tyranny of principles’ is also relevant to military doctrines, in the sense that even military decision makers have to reach a conclusion in situations that ‘are not covered by appeal to any single simple rule’.96 So what is the alternative to rules and principles? When properly conceived (we claim), casuistry redresses the excessive emphasis placed on universal rules and invariant principles by moral philosophers and political preachers alike. Instead we shall take seriously certain features of moral discourse that recent moral philosophers have too little appreciated: the concrete circumstances of actual cases, and the specific maxims that people invoke in facing actual moral dilemmas. If we start by considering similarities and differences between particular types of cases on a practical level, we open up an alternative approach to ethical theory that is wholly consistent with our moral practice.97

122 The anatomy of doctrine If we replace ‘moral’ with ‘military’ in the quotation above, we envisage an alternative way to write military doctrine. Instead of providing rules, principles, and imperatives, a doctrine can present particular cases that the military decision makers can use as a grinding stone or a springboard for their own judgement. Jon Sumida suggests that Clausewitz thought along similar lines: Clausewitz, for example, favors rigorous consideration of a single case in order to provide readers with enough circumstantial detail to recover the difficult emotional conditions of strategic and operational decisionmaking surrounding an event. His primary concern is not right conduct or the correct application of rules or principles as such, but the character of command required to contend with the manifold difficult dilemmas of high command generated over the course of a conflict.98 In order to provide ‘sideways’, but still important knowledge, the case presented has to be detailed enough to offer sufficient similarities and dissimilarities.99 The perfect vehicle for such case presentation is military storytelling. The way to influence how people think is thus not to tell them what to think, but to tell them stories. Stories are much more than mere anecdotes and jokes. Storytelling is, in essence, the conveyance of a sequence of events, i.e. a narrative, by some form of contextualisation and embellishment. Guy Claxton also hints at a similar kind of knowledge that is not reducible to rules and imperatives: There is a kind of knowing which is essentially indirect, sideways, allusive and symbolic; which hints and evokes, touches and moves, in ways that resist explication. And it is accessed not through earnest manipulation of abstraction, but through leisurely contemplation of the particular.100 As mentioned in the introduction to this study, Lord Nelson was willing to accept great risks in getting his closest subordinates to his cabin in open sea. It was these discussions and ‘leisurely contemplation of the particular’ that moulded individuals into a cohesive fighting machine: [S]enior officers met and talked and listened. And it gave us the timeless, evocative image of Lord Nelson’s ‘brothers’ around the table in Victory’s great cabin: the low beams, the yellow lamplight, the weatherlined faces of old friends and shipmates, and all eyes fixed enthralled on the slight, animated figure of the admiral as he laid out his plan (as Collingwood put it) for ‘something which the world may talk of hereafter’. The scene is redolent of daring and destiny, with iconographic nuances of the Last Supper, and is, perhaps, to some degree the product of legend. But in no broad sense is it a lie.101

On enculturation 123 Nelson primed his men for future decisions in future battles without knowing in detail how those battles would actually be fought. He offered them contextualised pegs for convention, an important element in military command, as we will return to in Chapter 8. For bigger units than Nelson’s band of brothers much of this has to be done by the written word. Consequently, perhaps the best doctrines are those that are presented within a greater story (‘thick’ stories that give necessary details for casuistry). In fact, with a closer look, many of the most distinguished generals of our own time turn out to be great storytellers. In the following, we will look at four of them: two British and two American. They all wrote storyenriched doctrines, however indirectly, and however unappreciated. Doctrine as a Bildungsroman In 2005, General Sir Rupert Smith published a book called The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World. The book was not a traditional autobiography, but a reflection upon the utility of force in the modern world by a man with a lifelong experience from the field. Comparisons with Clausewitz were not long in coming. More or less implicitly, Smith warns on the first page that there is no personal story to tell, at least not a traditional chronological story with ‘anecdotes of personalities and events encountered along the way’.102 However, there is obviously a larger story to tell, even a rather long one. Most of the book is made up of quite long and winding chapters on military history; history with a clear purpose that is. The leitmotiv of Smith’s book is that we have entered the era of ‘war amongst the people’, which is characterised by six trends.103 The message of the book is mainly how we got into that situation and how to cope with it. Even if General Smith was no longer formally in a position to issue an official doctrine when the book was published, his Leninesque conclusion to the book is as close as you can get to a military doctrine at the sublime level of war. Smith concludes his book with the question: ‘What is to be done?’ His answer is a thirty-page-long doctrine in miniature, comprising advice, such as ‘never lie to the press’ and ‘the people are not the enemy. The enemy is amongst the people’, and so forth.104 As such, Smith’s book is a splendid illustration of how military doctrines are usually made in the Western world. First, you read some military history, then you add some of your own experience, in Smith’s case including his encounter with ‘the mad, the bad, and the loony’ in Bosnia in the 1990s.105 Then, you extract the doctrinal message and spell out what it is to be done. Again, the phrase that doctrine is a ‘dialogue between the past and the present for the benefit of the future’ is particularly apt, and is exactly the essence of Smith’s endeavour, as I understand it.106

124 The anatomy of doctrine Sir Rupert’s relation to doctrine had also been rather close during his active career. He has been director of the Higher Command and Staff Course, the alma mater of modern British doctrine, and was also the commander of the British 1st Armoured Division during the Gulf War in 1991, which marked a watershed in the British Army’s relation to doctrine: The point here is not whether the doctrine worked or not [during the Gulf War], but that doctrine and thinking about war were considered important. This was reflected in the lessons learnt by the Army, where attention was paid to whether or not the doctrine had worked, again suggesting the importance of doctrine. What is also interesting is that where doctrinal inadequacies were identified, the response was to improve that doctrine rather than questioning the worth of doctrine.107 Smith’s colleague, General Sir Mike Jackson, also wrote a book, Soldier: The Autobiography, published in 2007. This is a thoroughly different book compared with Smith’s. His story is a traditional tale full of funny stories and pitiless descriptions of human shortcomings. Along the way, Jackson even makes observations relevant to future doctrine makers, but not in the clear-cut way that Smith does. Jackson’s message, apart from telling the story about himself, is mainly about the challenges of command and leadership. His own story and his own personality are presented more or less as a benchmark for future leaders, although with a twist. Paradoxically perhaps, given Smith’s ambitions with his book, Jackson’s book is closer to a ‘Clausewitzian doctrine’ (a term that will be explained in Chapter 8) than Smith’s, in the sense that Soldier is a ‘travelogue’ focusing on the human challenges of command rather than on ‘what is to be done’. It is more inspiring than instructive. Across the Atlantic, generals’ biographies come in a much steadier stream than in the UK, and it has been so for quite a while. Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs became a bestseller on a par with the Bible and General Norman Schwarzkopf ’s It Doesn’t Take a Hero made it crystal clear that a hero is, nevertheless, what the reading audience wants. Doctrinally speaking, however, General Colin Powell and General Wesley K. Clark are the most interesting. Powell is one of very few military men who have a doctrine named after him, much to his own bewilderment: ‘You can’t help but be flattered and honored to have a doctrine named after you. I haven’t figured out yet how it happened to me.’108 The Powell Doctrine, or rather the Weinberger Doctrine, is a doctrine at a high level of conceptualisation, setting out ‘when and when not to commit United States military forces abroad’.109 According to Powell, the doctrine (or ‘warfare guidelines’ in Powell’s own words) was triggered by the tragic bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, in October 1983, which killed 241 Marines, and was an event that deeply troubled Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger.110

On enculturation 125 The doctrine contained six tests for determining when to go to war. Instead of listing the tests, we will refer to Powell’s own conclusion, which also contains a neat reminder of the basic doctrinal dilemma: In short, is the national interest at stake? If the answer is yes, go in, and go in to win. Otherwise, stay out. Clausewitz would have applauded. And in the future, when it became my responsibility to advise Presidents on committing our forces to combat, Weinberger’s rules turned out to be a practical guide. However, at the time of the speech [Weinberger at the National Press Club in November 1984], I was concerned that the Weinberger tests, publicly proclaimed, were too explicit and would lead potential enemies to look for loopholes.111 Powell’s biography My American Journey (1995) can be read, apart from many other things, as an illustration of what can happen when you violate this ‘bedrock of my military counsel’,112 and what can be achieved when being true to it. My American Journey can, in a quite literal sense, be read as a strategic doctrine disguised as a captivating personal and national story. The author had, in fact, been in a position both to make and use the doctrine (as a national security adviser and general) and the book was a way to keep the doctrine alive even after the captain himself had left the bridge.113 Indeed, Powell himself saw the communal value of storytelling: When my pile of scribbled stories got to be sufficiently weighty, I showed them to a few close friends and trusted agents. Their response was gratifying. ‘These stories don’t just make pleasant reading,’ I was told. ‘They show you learning something important about life and leadership. Other people may also learn from them. Why don’t you turn them into a book?’114 The last of the modern military storytellers we will investigate here is General Wesley K. Clark and his A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. In our context, it is his comments on the malfunctioning dialogue between politicians and generals in America that is of greatest doctrinal interest. As we will return to in the next chapter, there is a truism in democratic societies that politicians govern generals, not the other way around. Clark does not challenge the basics of that relationship, but he goes a long way towards suggesting that something has, nevertheless, gone seriously wrong somewhere. The Vietnam War marked a low ebb in the relationship between the government and the military, especially the US Army, and Clark, who was himself seriously wounded in the war, is frank in his evaluation: This wasn’t going to happen again, not to our country. We wouldn’t let it. We would win. We would speak out, demand what we needed,

126 The anatomy of doctrine and refuse to be misled or buffaloed by the politicians at the top. That was a resolve many of us shared.115 Clark later adds: ‘We can’t have an army of yes-men.’ 116 As will be apparent in the next chapter of this study, even some of the politicians realised that the civil–military dialogue had collapsed into a monologue. Clark’s own story is about a man who refused to be a military yes-man, to the extent that he was, in effect, fired; a rare fate for a victorious general. When Clark, as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, commanded the war against Milosevic in 1999, he was engaged at a very personal level.117 His personal involvement went so far that his political masters became increasingly impatient with him, but Clark assures the reader: ‘In standing up to my bosses, I was not being insubordinate, I was just doing my duty.’ 118 According to Clark, he eventually pushed too hard and was, consequently, ordered into early retirement.119 However, he was later vindicated by President Clinton, who awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom and said in his remarks that Clark had ‘summoned every ounce of his experience and expertise as a strategist, soldier and a statesman to wage our campaign in Kosovo. He prevailed miraculously without the loss of a single combat casualty’.120 Indeed, even in uniform, you can be a great statesman.121 Clark ends his personal account on a rather gloomy note; he was almost killed in Vietnam (a war that was badly handled by the politicians) and, despite the political friction, he later won the most spectacular victory measured in casualty rates in American history. However, when the Republican hawks moved into the White House in 2001, he shuddered: ‘I perceived a political arrogance in all that Republican posturing, an arrogance I never would have believed before. Where was our country heading?’122 Here, perhaps the failed presidential candidate speaks just as much as the retired general, but Clark, nevertheless, conveyed a powerful message: a too mechanical adherence to the principle of politicians’ primacy can be extremely dangerous. All four generals had retired from their military posts when they published their stories, or doctrines, in disguise. Nevertheless, the books became important vehicles for carrying on the flame of their strong personalities, their leadership, and their doctrinal convictions. Their professional lives had personified the doctrine, so to speak. The point here is that a flora of such exemplary stories, with a sufficient interpretative depth, allows for the promotion of both virtue and casuistry. It does not even take a general to produce such a Bildungsroman. A Bildungsroman is usually a portrait of a young man and: how he enters life in a happy state of naiveté seeking kindred souls, finds friendship and love, how he comes into conflict with the hard realities of the world, how he grows to maturity through diverse

On enculturation 127 life-experiences, finds himself, and attains certainty about his purpose in the world.123 Craig Mullaney’s The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education (2009) is a superb case in point, written by a young soldier with all the necessary credentials, such as Ranger School and West Point, in addition to a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. Even formal doctrines can be reinforced by associating them with a face and a story. The US Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (2006), for instance, was published with a foreword by General David H. Petraeus, one of the ‘two general officers who catalyzed the new doctrine’.124 General Petraeus is the man who, against all odds, turned the tide in Iraq.125 The addition of Petraeus’ name to the document ties it into a greater story, i.e. Petraeus’ personal history. Petraeus is a man who combines bravery in battle, wisdom in war, and a PhD in International Relations, perhaps a perfect combination for fuzzy wars.126 A story can also be told by pictures and illustrations. Many modern doctrines are replete with pictures showing soldiers sheltering kids or giving food to refugees. They are not necessarily staged or insincere; on the contrary, they are there to tell an important story. Even armed and ready to fight modern soldiers are humans; and good humans too. Pictures, in effect, can epitomize the old Roman motto: ‘No better friend, no worse enemy.’ Has this chapter about a-rationality brought us any closer to culture’s relationship to war and the cultural underpinnings of doctrine, or is culture as enigmatic as ever? It is the reader’s privilege to draw that conclusion, but, in order to sum up this chapter, I have produced a model (see Figure 6.2). For cultural elements to have any doctrinal significance, two preconditions have to be met. First of all, culture must have causal power, or at least instrumental effects, in one way or another. If not, cultural elements will be for decoration only, and we are merely reifying a concept that does not have ontological status to cause anything. Second, culture has to be adaptive in one way or another. If the makers of doctrine are culture’s captives, doctrine is reduced to cultural artefacts only. Among the theorists mentioned in this chapter, Elizabeth Kier and Ann Swidler belong to the upper-right corner of Figure 6.2, while Kenneth Waltz and Thomas Schelling belong somewhere in the lower-left corner. Thinkers, such as Jack Snyder, belong somewhere in between. The first generation of theorists, such as Colin Gray, would presumably brush aside the whole model, and claim that culture cannot cause anything, but influences everything. The third generation would presumably be more sympathetic to the model, but would probably have some problems with this idea of culture’s amenability.

Culture’s causal power

128 The anatomy of doctrine

Culture’s manipulativeness Legend: Utility of doctrine

Figure 6.2 Cultural amenability.

As argued in this chapter, doctrine can, under favourable circumstances, also provide meaning. In order to do so, however, a doctrine must employ a much richer part of our culture than mere principles and scanty theoretical explanations do. People are moved by good stories, and doctrine, both official and semi-official, can be made to provide them. So far, we have looked at theory and culture, and now we turn to the last of the three main ingredients of military doctrine, namely authority.

7

Authority

In the last chapter we saw how doctrine, i.e. the beliefs we have about what works in war, can be influenced by a-rational considerations in the shape of culture, and that doctrine can be made ‘thicker’ by presenting it in a wider story. In this chapter, we will see that doctrine can be influenced by political considerations as well. Before we embark on this chapter’s undertakings, it is important to underscore that the word authority has many connotations, especially in military matters. However, most of what could be said about authority will not be said here. Our concern is how ‘external’, or non-cognitive authority, can influence military doctrine making, i.e. authority not based on superior skill or greater knowledge within the pertinent topic, in this case military matters. Non-cognitive authority can influence military doctrine making at different levels. First of all, different kinds of restraints, for instance those of policy, law, and finance, will, to a varying degree, influence the actions and decisions of all people living in a modern society. Some actions are, for different reasons, prohibited, even if they could be ‘useful’ within a given perspective. Just as dissecting living prisoners to test medical theories is out of bounds for physicians, so is the use of poison gas to military doctrine making. At the next level of non-cognitive influence, we find instances of nonexperts interfering with the scientific arguments themselves, and not only with the framework and limitations of the scientists’ work. Historically, there are examples of scientists trying to align their findings with a political doctrine, as the Ukrainian agronomist Trofim Denisovich Lysenko (1898–1976) did. However, even with backing from Stalin and Communism, the crop refused to align dutifully with his theories: ‘[T]he most interesting aspect of Lysenkoism is not the direct political intervention to decide a scientific issue, but how bad science grew out of good under the influence of a particular science policy.’ 1 Nowadays Lysenkoism is usually regarded as a joke or a hideous blemish on the otherwise incorruptible ideals of proper science. However, in military theory and doctrine making, you can find versions of Lysenkoism everywhere.

130 The anatomy of doctrine In the following, we will look closer at these levels of non-cognitive influence, and the chapter will be rounded off by looking at different ways for doctrine makers to handle both political prerogatives and the more nebulous versions of non-cognitive influence. We will see that for different reasons, military experts have to endure a lot more political meddling than most of their civilian counterparts.

Emasculated experts Even if doctrine making is mainly a military calling in the Western world, it rarely takes place in a political vacuum. Military doctrine making can be a politically sensitive business, and this section will spell out certain challenges that follow in the wake of the so-called ‘unequal dialogue’ between officers and their political masters.2 In democracies, it is a truism that politicians (over)rule generals, not the other way around; hence, the ‘unequal dialogue’. Flag officers have the right to raise their voice in ways compatible with their strategic culture, but, as long as the orders they finally receive are legal, the only option they have is to comply if they are truly subordinated, or resign if they are not: ‘[T]he politicians should get what they ask for, even if it is not what they really want. In other words, the politicians have a right to be wrong.’ 3 That experts have to follow orders and directions from people without their level of expertise is not peculiar to the military. That is part of democracy: One of the oldest questions in political theory is the relation of science to politics, expertise to democratic participation. Indeed, it is one of the central concerns that Plato and Aristotle raised against Athenian democracy. For them, democracy was a dangerous system in that it permitted the less intelligent to rule over the more intelligent.4 On the other hand, experts with extreme competence within a minuscule area should preferably not have excessive influence on the whole: ‘[E]xpertise is a problem because it is a kind of violation of the conditions of rough equality presupposed by democratic accountability.’ 5 The politicians’ job is thus to balance the needs and desires of experts and nonexperts alike. Although both surgeons and dentists accept that politicians and non-medical managers decide where a new hospital should be located, how much money should be spent on certain kinds of operations, and even prohibit certain medical methods, they will not accept that amateurs, however politically empowered, look over their shoulder and second-guess their decisions in the operating room. However, that is exactly what military experts have to endure. During the air operations against Milosevic’s regime in 1999, for instance, the American commander of Allied Air Forces Southern Europe,

Authority 131 Lieutenant General Michael C. Short, complained acrimoniously about the corruption of his trade: ‘It was highly frustrating that airpower [was] not being used as well as it could be and the way you have been taught to use it.’ 6 Even Short’s military superior, General Wesley K. Clark, had reasons to be frustrated: Using military force effectively requires departing from the political dynamic and following the so-called ‘Principles of War’ identified by post-Napoleonic military writers a century and a half ago. Every military officer learns them in early training. Most of us spend a lifetime understanding how to apply them.7 Short and Clark’s frustrations cut deep in the military psyche: As a specialist in warfare, he wants none of the half-light and dubiety of morals and politics in his profession. He desires to be under orders and to know what is expected of him all the time. Since war is so much simpler if played according to rules, he yearns for the security and stability of formal principles in fighting.8 But can generals really depart from the political dynamic? They cannot. In clear contrast to lawyers and physicians, military officers do not owe allegiance to their trade, but to the chain of command. The lawyers have the blind Lady Justice and the physicians have their Hippocratic Oath, including the vow ‘I will preserve the purity of my life and my arts’. Military officers have no such thing. Military oaths are of an entirely different character. Hence, Short and Clark had to accept that their political masters interfered in their daily business to a degree that no physician would tolerate. Given one particular definition of professionalism, certainly provocative to some, military officers are, consequently, not really professionals: A professional is someone who receives important occupational rewards from a reference group whose membership is limited to people who have undergone specialised formal education and have accepted a group-defined code of proper conduct.9 At least since the breakthrough of national armies after the French Revolution, the military vocation is as far from professional, and as close to bureaucratic, as it is possible to get: ‘We might define a bureaucrat as someone whose occupational incentives come entirely from within the agency.’ 10 If military officers were accountable to anyone outside the chain of command, it would be regarded as highly suspicious or even criminal. There are, in principle, two reasons why militaries are not real professionals and why they have to tolerate more political meddling than physicians.

132 The anatomy of doctrine The first reason has to do with cognitive authority, or the lack thereof; the other with political authority, or the excess thereof. One definition of expert, among many others, is ‘one whose special knowledge of skill causes him or her to be regarded as an authority’.11 The question is: on exactly what kinds of observations do we base that judgement? What kinds of knowledge or skill affect our esteem? The nature of experts and expertise is evidently too immense to be covered in its entirety. Here, we will simply distinguish between two kinds of experts: exoteric and esoteric.12 Simply put, some kinds of experts have a track record that, in principle, is visible to non-experts, while other kinds of experts do not. You go to the dentist because he usually cures your toothache; if he does not, you go to another. Hence, a dentist is an exoteric expert, because he does tangible things that a layperson cannot do, even if much of his knowledge seems esoteric and impenetrable to the amateur. As a recognised expert, the dentist gains cognitive authority that gives a substantial justificatory leverage compared to the amateur in settling arguments about dental care. In many areas of life, it is easy to see why this is so. Whether we should ask a certified and trained engineer to construct a new bridge, or a much cheaper amateur, is a bogus question, or a criminal one. In the military sphere, however, when we keep questions of brute facts aside, there are, due to the epistemological challenges investigated in previous chapters, no exoteric experts around. The past record of a general does not tell very much about the likelihood of winning the next war, just as little as the past success of a stockbroker guarantees that he will make the right investment the next time as well. This is the crux of the matter: Simply, things that move, and therefore require knowledge, do not usually have experts, while things that don’t move seem to have some experts. In other words, professions that deal with the future and base their studies on the nonrepeatable past have an expert problem.13 Notably, the esoteric element of military theory rests on its unconvincing track record, not necessarily on convoluted concepts or abstruse language: ‘[The principles of war], while not often apparent to the uninitiated, are certainly not esoteric. They have the characteristic of being obvious at least when pointed out.’14 The point here is that strategists, as esoteric experts, have to accept more meddling from amateurs than exoteric experts because their claim to expertise is not evident and they are, consequently, under constant suspicion of being pompous dabblers, as Field Marshal Montgomery was during his visit to Gettysburg (cf. Chapter 3). Many brilliant military men have also been engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan the last decade, but to what extent they succeeded, and why, is still an open question. Despite the attempts by Jomini, Fuller, and

Authority 133 Dupuy, as dealt with in Chapter 4 of this study, strategy is not a field that makes for exoteric experts and palpable expertise. The second reason why officers and doctrine makers have to accept more political meddling than other highly educated groups is the severity of war’s means and consequences: ‘[war] is like a great tempest which blows upon us all, mingles with the church organ, whistles through the streets, steals into our fireside’.15 Due to the ramifications of war, it is impossible for the politicians to leave war to the specialists alone. Hence, the emblematic adage that ‘war is too serious a matter to entrust to military men’.16 Even if military theory making is a highly speculative undertaking, the consequences of being wrong can be catastrophically tangible. Consequently, most politicians do not have the nerves to stand back and leave questions of war and peace to the (esoteric) experts alone. At least, that is how generals, such as Short and Clark, apparently see it, and how the ‘normal theory of civil-military relations’ has it:17 The essence of objective civilian control is the recognition of autonomous military professionalism; the essence of subjective civilian control is the denial of an independent military sphere. Historically, the demand for objective control has come from the military profession, the demand for subjective control from the multifarious civilian groups anxious to maximize their power in military affairs.18 That there actually is an independent military sphere is apparently endorsed by the master himself: The basic element in Clausewitz’s theory is his concept of the dual nature of war. War is at one and the same time an autonomous science with its own method and goals and yet a subordinate science in that its ultimate purpose comes from outside itself. This concept of war is a true professional one, embodying as it does the essentials of any profession: the delimitation of a unique subject matter independent of other human thought and activity and the recognition of the limits of this subject matter within the total framework of human activity and purpose.19 This reading of Clausewitz, however, misses a crucial point. One of Clausewitz’s core ideas was exactly that war could never be seen in isolation from policy. War is policy so to speak, mixed with other means: We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy [politischer Akt] but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means. What remains peculiar to war is simply the peculiar nature of its means.20

134 The anatomy of doctrine This assertion is one of the most lasting legacies of Clausewitz, which is firmly consented to even today. Crucially, no one would say such a thing about the affairs of the classic professions. To maintain that High Mass, the public health service, or court rulings are merely the continuation of politics, or even policy, with other means is both absurd and reprehensible, at least in a liberal democracy. To claim that ‘[t]he art of war is a civilian task’ makes sense,21 but to declare that the art of medicine is the medical amateur’s task does not. Hence, there is no such thing as autonomous military professionalism, which, therefore, ‘gives the lie to any neat demarcation between the two spheres [because] fusion between soldier and politician has been more common than separation’.22 Consequently, ‘the theory of objective control does not suffice as a description of either what does occur or what should’.23 This does not imply that generals should refrain from arguing with politicians. We saw, for instance, in the last chapter, how Wesley Clark refused to be part of an army of yes-men. The military man must not shy away from telling the politicians about military power’s character and limits: In the same way as a man who has not fully mastered a foreign language sometimes fails to express himself correctly, so statesmen often issue orders that defeat the purpose they are meant to serve. Time and again that has happened, which demonstrates that a certain grasp of military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy.24 Moreover, the German army’s biggest crime during the Second World War was not to dethrone Hitler while they had the chance. On the other hand, politicians must also be willing to ‘push back’. A short conversation during the tension over Berlin in 1961 between President John F. Kennedy and his foremost military adviser, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Lyman Lemnitzer, indicates that the ‘political dynamic’ infuriating General Clark can be badly needed sometimes. After a briefing, the President asked the general, ‘Why do we hit all those targets in China, General?’ China had little to do with the Berlin issue, and had no nuclear weapons. The only answer the general could give the President was a meek: ‘It’s in the plan, Mister President’.25 Kennedy’s ability to resist military experts’ advice became, of course, legendary during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. If a nation is blessed with both generals that dare to air their opinions and with politicians that dare to argue sincerely with experts, the virtuous dialogue may occur: What occurred between president or prime minister and general was an unequal dialogue – a dialogue, in that both sides expressed their views bluntly, indeed, sometimes offensively, and not once but repeatedly – and unequal, in that the final authority of the civilian leader

Authority 135 was unambiguous and unquestioned – indeed, in all cases stronger at the end of a war than it had been at the beginning.26 Political influence can also be a bit more indirect than Kennedys’ ‘no’ to General Curtis LeMay in 1962. A case in point is Liddell Hart, who was arguably one of the most influential military theorists in the Western world in the twentieth century.27 Many have criticised him for balking at the thought of modern war’s ghastly butcher’s bill, and, by that, fooling people into believing that manoeuvre war could be virtually bloodless. However, what was the alternative? Liddell Hart’s theories have often been dismissed wryly on the grounds that he advocated wars without the spilling of blood. Yet the profound reaction in the West to the casualty list of the First World War signalled a new and ultimately much enhanced unwillingness on the part of individuals and society as a whole to accept the sacrifice of life in war. Indeed at the turn of the twenty-first century this has become an overwhelming social imperative and a reality which no government in any advanced society can ignore.28 So far, we have looked at the dialogue and haggling between experts and political non-experts. In the next section, we will look at another, and more subtle and devious, way in which non-cognitive authority can impinge on military thinking and doctrine making.

Military Lysenkoism So far, we have seen why direct political influence has a greater impact on, and larger ramifications for, military matters than in most other fields of human activity. In the following, it will be argued that non-cognitive authority, i.e. authority not based on relevant skill or knowledge, can have leverage even within the professional discourse. Even in laboratories, the very heart of natural science, it can be hard to separate clearly between cognitive authority and other kinds of authority: These investigations hinted at the idea that here was no fundamental epistemic difference between the pursuit of knowledge and that of power, and that much of what happened epistemologically in a lab was due to complicated negotiation procedures that also involved technical, social, economic, and political aspects.29 Lysenkoism is the label often used to describe a particularly pernicious kind of non-cognitive influence on professional and technical debates, where political authorities actively censor and prosecute those people with banned opinions. However, there are also milder and more subtle forms

136 The anatomy of doctrine of Lysenkoism. A case in point is J. F. C. Fuller’s condemnation of strategic Lysenkoism as he saw it, even if he, for obvious reasons, did not use that particular term. In The Foundations of the Science of War, Fuller launched a broadside against the civilian control of the military in Great Britain in the 1920s: To-day every other man (and still more so during war-time) is an amateur strategist and tactician; the House of Commons is full of such folk. No politician would be considered sane if he told a chemist or an astronomer what to do, but he considers it his right to tell the soldier, sailor, and airman what to do, and even how to do it; and if his words are not based on a true understanding of war they are based on a false understanding, for there can be no middle course.30 According to Fuller, the officers’ argumentative power vis-à-vis politicians was weak because their theoretical credibility was non-existent: ‘It is because the soldier is ignorant of his profession’.31 Hence, Fuller’s aim was to remedy this by applying ‘the method of science to the study of war’, something never done before, allegedly.32 The ‘authority of assumption’ should be replaced by the authority of reason.33 It had to be based on the best method of science, since ‘[s]cience aims at establishing the highest authority’.34 Consequently, it was on such authority that even doctrine had to be based: ‘[W]e must discover and establish a common doctrine by a universal method. My object is, therefore, not to destroy authority, but to chasten it. Method creates doctrine, and a common doctrine is the cement which holds an army together.’ 35 Even if Fuller’s suggestions are out of step with both today’s strategic culture and strategy’s epistemological possibilities, he, nonetheless, pointed at the perennial social quandary that the one with the most knowledge about a subject and the best ability to justify his beliefs, gets the short end of the stick. Even today, and even in the world’s most proficient military force, you will find Lysenkoism, or politically biased beliefs in what works in war. Even now people with power, but without much knowledge, can have a considerable influence on debates between professionals. For instance, shortly after 9/11, Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld stated: The Germans saw that the future of war lay not with massive armies and protracted trench warfare, but in small, high-quality, mobile shock forces, supported by airpower, and capable of pulling off ‘lightening strikes’ against the enemy. They developed the lethal combination of fast-moving tanks, motorized infantry and artillery, and dive-bombers, all concentrated on one part of the enemy line. The effect was devastating.36

Authority 137 What Rumsfeld says here has been said many times before. Nonetheless, it is totally wrong. It was Stalin’s giant Red Army and big battalions that smashed the Germans. You cannot get much more massive armies than those Stalin mustered to crush Germany’s mobile shock force literally to scrap. The effect was, indeed, devastating, but in the complete opposite way to that described by Rumsfeld. Nonetheless, the fact that it is the Secretary of Defense (and in this particular case an extremely popular one at the time) who makes such a statement about the mobile shock forces gives it a persuasive power that it does not deserve. The intention of Rumsfeld was presumably not to take issue with military historians and proclaim a new winner of the war, but to project his own favoured scheme for transforming the American forces back into history in order to make the basis of his policy irrefutable. The fate of the ensuing Operation Iraqi Freedom indicates convincingly that not even Rumsfeld’s shock forces could do much more than just knock down the Iraqi door, so to speak. To change the regime and rebuild the Iraqi state took a lot more, something the Army Chief of Staff, General Eric Shinseki, tried (in vain) to convey to his political masters. This does not mean, of course, that it was a straight line from Rumsfeld’s unsubstantiated thoughts about the Second World War to the realities on the ground in Iraq.37 The point is that Rumsfeld had few qualms lecturing military experts about things of which he knew far less than they did. If Lysenko’s success in the Soviet Union can ‘serve for many generations to come as another reminder to the world of how quickly and easily a science can be corrupted when ignorant political leaders deem themselves competent to arbitrate scientific disputes’,38 Rumsfeld’s dabbling can perhaps serve as a reminder that within such a complex and indeterminate field as strategy, wishful political interfering in the professional discourse is perhaps easier to understand, but still extremely problematic. Still, Rumsfeld was a politician and his right to mould the US Forces and strategy was legitimate, even if some of his arguments were bogus. However, if we move closer to Rumsfeld’s advisers and supporters, we find Lysenkoism in a pure form. When political scientists and trained historians tell their sponsors and employers exactly what they want to hear, we are pretty close to Lysenkoism proper: [A]s strategic theories move further away from the historically verifiable, they move closer to the methodological trap into which defense intellectuals are prone to fall. That is, the tendency to project into the past the preferred doctrines of the present, and thereafter to read them out of history as lessons applicable to future warfare.39 So far, we have investigated how non-cognitive authority can impinge on military thinking and doctrine making at two different levels, i.e. direct political instructions and politically biased influence on the scientific

138 The anatomy of doctrine arguments. In the following section, we will examine different ways to handle this ‘interference’ from above in doctrinal matters.

Rules of doctrinal engagement Both authority and civil–military relations have been a topic for thinkers and commentators for almost as long as people and politics have been around. The ‘civil-military problematique’ is generic to all times and societies: ‘[B]ecause we fear others we create an institution of violence to protect us, but then we fear the very institution we created for protection’.40 However, we have to wait until the inter-war years to find a more focused interest in military organisation.41 Karl Demeter’s Das deutsche Heer und sein Offiziere (1935) and Alfred Vagts’s A History of Militarism (1937) became the pioneers in the field and the prototypes for studies to come. The most renowned of the second generation of theorists of civil–military relations in the Western world were Huntington, his bête noir Morris Janowitz, who wrote The Professional Soldier (1960), and S. E. Finer, the writer of The Man on Horseback (1962). None of these theorists gave doctrine centre stage in their studies, but they had, nonetheless, views on doctrinal matters that point out different ways to pass the Scylla of political entanglement and the Charybdis of militarism. As I interpret Alfred Vagts, a military doctrine ought to be sanctioned by civilian powers. One tragic example of the opposite was the suffering instigated by the French military before it eventually lost the right to run the First World War the militaristic way: The offensive à outrance doctrines of Foch, overworked if possible by his successors at the Ecole de Guerre and by the Command, lost France 664,000 dead in the sixteen months from August 1. . . . After the offensive policy had had its full tryout – ‘glorious to us but without great profits’, as the conventional French historians write about it – soldiers mutinied and civilians and nonprofessionals reclaimed direction of the war in 1917.42 Consequently, civilians and non-professionals ought to keep doctrine development under close scrutiny. If doctrine development is left to semiscientific and religious officers, for instance the ‘devout Catholic Foch’, doctrine development can be a powerful militaristic asset in the struggle against society at large.43 If Alfred Vagts was cautious about too much military authority, Huntington was afraid of the opposite. Certainly, the military profession should be controlled by the civilians, but one should be careful not to let this political urge to control subvert the military’s ability to resist external threats: ‘The military institutions of any society are shaped by two forces: a functional imperative stemming from the threats to the society’s security

Authority 139 and a societal imperative arising from the social forces, ideologies, and institutions dominant within the society.’ 44 If the military was too tied up, it would be of no use against an enemy. Obedience is the supreme military virtue, even for Huntington, but occasionally conflicts occur between military obedience and professional competence. A subordinate may receive an order that he thinks will lead to a military disaster if carried out. In principle, the subordinate should, according to Huntington, have the right to disobey, as Lord Nelson famously did when he followed the orders he imagined his superiors would have given him if they had known what was going on under his nose. According to Huntington, however, the disobedient person should be careful: ‘Normally the disruption of the military organization caused by disobedience to operational orders will outweigh the benefits gained by such obedience.’ 45 To illustrate Huntington’s point, we can look at a particularly sad incident in the Royal Navy’s history when, in June 1893, HMS Camperdown collided with HMS Victoria.46 The latter, which was the flagship, sunk and 358 officers and men died, including the admiral. Without going into details, the catastrophe happened because Admiral Sir George Tryon, on Victoria, gave a fatally flawed order. Virtually everyone present knew immediately that if carried out, the ordered manoeuvre would end in a collision. Nonetheless, after serious hesitation, Rear Admiral Albert Markham on the Camperdown executed the manoeuvre as ordered and violently rammed the flagship. Most people’s moral gut feeling would be that the admiral is, of course, the prime culprit for giving, and even repeating, the fatal order. However, none of his subordinates, whether on his own ship or on Camperdown, are completely blameless for robotically executing an apparently insane order. One should expect from senior officers that they recognise a suicidal order when seeing one, and that they, in the best interests of the Queen, the Service and the men, should refuse to carry out a blatantly ruinous order. However, that is not the way the military chain of command works, and the verdict of the ensuing court-martial completely vindicates Huntington’s message. You should have very good reasons indeed to put your own professional judgement above the imperatives of the military command: The Court strongly feels that, although it is much to be regretted that Rear-Admiral Albert H. Markham did not carry out his first intention of semaphoring to the Commander-in-Chief his doubt as to the signal, it would be fatal to the best interests of the Service to say he was to blame for carrying out the directions of the Commander-in-Chief present in person.47 Apparently, the right to disobey should thus be restricted to genuinely exceptional cases. It is presumably the same with doctrine:

140 The anatomy of doctrine The authority of superior officers is presumed to reflect superior professional ability. When this is not the case, the hierarchy of command is being prostituted to nonprofessional purposes. Yet the subordinate officer must tread judiciously in pushing doctrines which seem to him to be manifestly superior to those embodied in the manuals. In particular, the subordinate must consider whether the introduction of the new technique, assuming he is successful in his struggle, will so increase military efficiency as to offset the impairment of that efficiency caused by the disruption of the chain of command. If it does, his disobedience is justified. Ultimately, professional competence must be the final criterion.48 This dilemma occurs in all kinds of bureaucracies where the bureaucrats always have to be ‘on guard against the temptations of impetuosity and heart-led enthusiasm’ in order not to disrupt the overall governability.49 In Huntington’s world, as I understand it, doctrine should preferably be written within the military chain of command and by the most competent agency. Politicians must be given their due, but if the societal imperative threatens the functional imperative and the military’s ability to perform its defining task of defence, the doctrine maker must follow the professional voice of his conscience. S. E. Finer, who wrote about the military’s inclination to intervene in politics, was not so sure that collisions between military competence and political authority would be as exceptional as Huntington suggested: ‘The reason is that the very nature of the professionalism on which Huntington sets such store and which he regards as “politically sterile”, in fact often thrusts the military into collision with the civil authorities.’ 50 With Huntington’s separation of the military from the civilians, collisions were not only unfortunate, they were inevitable. Janowitz was not particularly worried about the formal mechanism of civilian control. The kind of stovepipe control that Huntington preferred was long gone: ‘There has been a change in the basis of authority and discipline in the military establishment, a shift from authoritarian domination to greater reliance on manipulation, persuasion, and group consensus.’ 51 In this Weltanschauung, it would seem pretentious to launch a formal doctrine and expect that everyone would go along with it, without being persuaded and convinced. Moreover, in order to raise doctrinal issues above the background noise and general clamour surrounding military activity, doctrinal ideas can be lost or at least severely distorted: Since elaborate public statements on military doctrine do not produce headlines, the three services seek to exploit military demonstrations, especially of new weapons. Military doctrine is debated by means of ‘propaganda stunts’. General ‘Billy’ Mitchell’s famous boast that the airplane could sink a battleship led to a trial demonstration, in which

Authority 141 evaluation of the effectiveness of air power in repelling a sea-borne invasion became hopelessly entangled in press reports about the dramatic spectacle.52 This is an important point. Particular doctrines are always produced and written in order to serve particular needs and interests. The national interests are only one of them. Even if Janowitz doubted the feasibility of Huntington’s stovepipe control, he recognised that due to combat’s extreme demands and the fact that military combat formations must function as an ‘integrated whole under unified command’ in order to fulfil their primary mission, military commanders must have stronger means of control than chief executives and business managers. They need a different ‘authority equilibrium’ than that which applies in commercial companies.53 Nonetheless, one should not overstate the ability to dictate to professional soldiers. The ideal is, thus, somewhere between strict military authority and occupational incentives: ‘The professional soldier must develop more and more skills and orientations common to civilian administrations. Yet, the effectiveness of the military establishment depends on maintaining a proper balance between military technologists, heroic leaders, and military managers.’ 54 A related question is thus: how can doctrine makers pay necessary attention to the imperatives of both war and bureaucracy? Military forces, at least in the Western world, have a distinct dual nature. On their ‘inside’, armed forces are expected to be extremely bureaucratic in the sense that they are a ‘distinctive form of social organization which exists to increase the predictability of government action by applying general rules to specific cases’.55 On their ‘outside’, though, armed forces must be able, if needed, to behave aggressively and unpredictably in order to subdue an opponent. Modern armed forces in the Western world are, thus, expected to be both as docile and predictable as a turtle and as lethal and agile as a rattlesnake.56 They have to be both dangerous and controllable. Any viable doctrine has to find a balance between those two considerations; between two horses that do not necessarily pull in the same direction.

Doctrine making: the art of the possible Most bureaucracies have a set of goals that legitimate their existence and the use of their sponsors’ money. However, these goals are not always relevant for soldiers in harm’s way, as indicated in this quote from the Korean War: No one knew why we were here and, although the policy makers in Washington had published statements of policy that might be acceptable to the party supporters at home, I knew that the same statements

142 The anatomy of doctrine would sound mighty hollow in this valley where the smell of death was so heavy.57 Similarly, the goal of the Norwegian Armed Forces is to be ‘[a] Defence for the protection of Norway’s security, interests and values’.58 Presumably, few people would disagree with such goals. On the other hand, though, to what extent are such statements relevant to a Norwegian soldier patrolling a village in a faraway corner of the world? In bureaucratic organisations, such as the military (where it is hard, or even impossible, to transform formal goals into unambiguous operational ones) the operators have, instead, to benchmark their performance against something less formal. Indeed, situational factors can be so powerful ‘as to make formal organizational goals all but meaningless’.59 Consequently, in public bureaucracies, the tasks of key operators are likely to be ‘defined by naturally occurring rather than by agency-supplied incentives’.60 According to James Q. Wilson, we find, among these naturally occurring incentives: the imperatives of the situation (especially important when clients are subjected to unwanted controls in low-visibility circumstances, as with the police, mental hospital attendants, and schoolteachers, or when the organization has embraced a dominant technology, as has been the case with some military organizations) and the expectations of peers (especially important when the organization exposes its members to dangerous circumstances, as is the case with miners, narcotics investigators, and combat soldiers).61 In other words, military activity is prone to be governed by practical circumstances and not by government-endorsed goals and methods. Apparently, doctrine makers should, therefore, listen more to practitioners with fresh experience from the field than to people with formal authority, for the simple reason that a combat soldier has much more circumstantial and local knowledge than civilians and military bureaucrats back home. However, if a doctrine is reduced to a military how-to-do-guide or a catalogue of cunning tricks of the trade, it is no longer a doctrine in this study’s sense, but a manual or handbook. The Net can obviously be used adavantageously to gather information and stimulate debate. The US Army had, for instance, a pilot programme where it encouraged its personnel, ‘from the privates to the generals’, to collaboratively rewrite field manuals on the Net using the same software as Wikipedia. The goal was to ‘tap more experience and advice from battletested soldiers rather than relying on the specialists within the Army’s array of colleges and research centres who have traditionally written manuals’.62 However, someone with proper authority has still to separate and endorse the doctrinal wheat from all the surrounding chaff. If not, it

Authority 143 is not a doctrine but a blog or an electronic bulletin board. Colonel Paparone (retired) also warned against too great expectations: ‘The field Army is very busy and many who are out there “operating” do not necessarily see much usefulness in doctrine anyway (except maybe as a start point to improvise from and something taught at our Army schools)’.63 If you let the pendulum swing too far in the other direction and let doctrine be reduced to a mere colporteur of formal goals and political correctness, it severely reduces its practical utility. What is more, it can, by default, tear the armed forces in two, where one part is dressed up for accomplishing the formal goals, while the other part has to answer, to the best of its ability, the imperatives of the situation. According to some, the US Army has, in periods, been seriously thwarted by such organisational schizophrenia. In 1989, Daniel P. Bolger claimed that it was the ‘display army’ in Europe that was the source of the ‘army’s doctrine, its procurement programs, and its vision of war’.64 The ‘fighting army’, on the other hand, which was continuously engaged in contingencies worldwide, had to ‘hobble along with borrowed display army doctrine, organizations, and weaponry’.65 To encapsulate so far: a doctrine too heavily reliant on politically important, but (perhaps, in practice) meaningless goals is in danger of becoming a doctrine for window dressing only. If the doctrine, instead, is too reliant on the practical tasks and concrete circumstances, it is in danger of fostering militarism. A doctrine writer has to find the right balance between the discourse and the realities of war. Another way to handle the conflict between political ideology and military practicalities is to create a ‘neutral’ room separating political and military logic. For instance, after Vietnam, where the ‘military had allowed strategy to be dominated by civilian analysts’,66 it was tempting to try to seal off politics from proper soldiering. Waging war would hopefully become less complicated if politics was held at arm’s length. An important spin-off from the US Army’s revival after the Vietnam War was, thus, that both the Americans and the British (re)introduced a new conceptual level of war. The US Army’s performance in Vietnam had showed that it was possible, at least in theory, to have impeccable tactics, but still lose the war due to faulty strategy. The pertinent question became: ‘How could we have done so well in tactics but failed so miserably in strategy?’67 Instead of picking a fight with the strategy itself, as Clausewitz would have done, presumably, the US Army reinvigorated ‘grand tactics’ and called it the operational level of war, which linked ‘the setting of military strategic objectives and the tactical employment of forces on the battlefield’.68 The operational level should be like the hand, connecting the strategic arm with the tactical fingers.69 What is more, it should give professional knowledge greater leverage: ‘The operational level of war appeals to armies: it functions in a politics-free zone and it puts primacy on professional skills.’ 70

144 The anatomy of doctrine Unfortunately, this move had some repercussion of its own: ‘The consequence of politicians pretending that policy is strategy and of soldiers focusing on operations has been to leave strategy without a home.’ 71 In reality, then, the doctrinal introduction of the operational level of war did not pull strategy any closer to tactics; on the contrary. But, in theory, the US Army had apparently solved the puzzle of how it was possible to win all the battles and still lose the war. It was the lack of operational art.72 What about alliances? Can alliances, or coalitions for that matter (where the political authority is fragmented) have doctrines? Evidently, some alliances can, given NATO’s impressive doctrinal library, but such doctrines tend to be rather superficial and fluffy, or, at least, the capstone documents are. It is an inherent feature of alliances that they cannot resolve their disputed questions by ‘autocratic use of state power’, unless they are alliances bordering on imperialism or a master–vassal relationship. This separates allied warfare, and allied doctrine making, from the unilateral approach to doctrine. Alliances and coalitions are thus (even more) forced to reach consensus by agreement and toleration. Hence, a ‘method of avoidance’ is a supreme military skill in alliances, but one that is rarely appreciated. The philosopher John Rawls says little about military alliances and coalition’s doctrine writing, but his ideas about justice as fairness give us a broad view of a method of avoidance that is relevant even for doctrine writers: [W]e try, so far as we can, to avoid disputed philosophical, as well as disputed moral and religious, questions. We do this not because these questions are unimportant or regarded with indifference, but because we think them too important and recognise that there is no way to resolve them politically. The only alternative to a principle of toleration is the autocratic use of state power. Thus, justice as fairness deliberately stays on the surface, philosophically speaking. . . . The hope is that, by this method of avoidance, as we might call it, existing differences between contending political views can at least be moderated, even if not entirely removed, so that social cooperation on the basis of mutual respect can be maintained.73 Radical and ground-breaking doctrines are hard to forge by the method of avoidance. However, if real danger lurks, one is often willing to overlook serious flaws in one’s partner, as Churchill (for instance) did, comparing Stalin and the devil: ‘If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.’74 As long as, for instance, Napoleon, Der Kaiser, or Hitler posed a deadly threat, very odd alliances, indeed, could forge a common policy; but as soon as the guns of the enemy became more muted, the pendulum swung towards greater divergence.

Authority 145 Even if doctrine writers receive political guidelines for their work, either directly through instructions, or indirectly through White Papers and political speeches, they still need a certain degree of political awareness and Fingerspitzengefühl. As stated by Bernard Brodie, one has to take into account the ‘orders that the President is likely to give the military during a crisis, as distinct from those he may have promised in some general fashion to give’.75 In alliances, this kind of political musicality is even more crucial. Political awareness and a constant readiness to compromise politically on technical questions are crucial military qualities, even though they are not high on the agenda in military education or a dominant part of the military self-image. The other side of the coin is obviously that officers should not be too willing to be submissively co-opted if they want to be of service to their country and not only to the petty interest of the reigning government. This unassuming view of allied doctrine must not persuade us to forget an extremely important effect of such documents, namely their ability to streamline language. When, let us say, twenty eight different states unite to plan and conduct military operations, it is crucial that they use words and concepts that people comprehend in roughly the same way. This is a point we will return to again in Chapter 8. A similar kind of logic as that found in alliances and coalitions governs the relationship between the services of a single nation as well. The cooperation between the US services, for instance, has, according to Winnefeld and Johnson, been at its best when there was a definite chance of losing; as, for example, in the air war against Japan in the Second World War.76 By contrast, during the operation against Milosevic in 1999, NATO solidarity was put under severe strain because the direct threat to NATO members was far from tangible. Even within individual member states, for instance the USA, it was extremely hard to follow the military ideals of unity of command: For whatever reason, there appeared to be a far higher degree of ‘leadership by committee’ than existing U.S. legislation requires. In practical terms, this seemed to constrain my ability to act every bit as much as any transatlantic difference ever did.77 As alluded to above, anyone wishing to understand or explain a particular doctrine has to realise that a doctrine is much more than just the net result of available technology and potential foes. To conclude this chapter about political authority’s influence on doctrine making: doctrine makers can be empowered or emasculated according to strategic culture and constitutional ground rules. Doctrine is just a means to an end, among many others, which can be emphasised or deemphasised according to need. Doctrine can be important documents

146 The anatomy of doctrine giving impetus and direction to the organisation, or it can merely act as a weathercock signalling the present state of affairs. Sometimes the unequal dialogue can approach a genuine dialogue, on other occasions a monologue. There is, therefore, nothing inherently important about a military doctrine, but it can become important if the necessary authority is bestowed on it: [M]ilitary thought and doctrine are not synonymous. The first is personal, the latter institutional. A military thinker may inspire admirers to emulate or implement his ideas; but this can never be a substitute for institutional acceptance. Those who listen (or read) the works of any thinker are free to reject as much or as little as they choose from the corpus of his works.78 Doctrine is not necessarily a mere description of how things are done by professionals, but a prescription saying how things should be done. Moreover, a doctrine can make us think differently by making us comprehend things in new ways. In short, doctrines are texts approved by agencies with the power of command to do so. Doctrine development is deeply enmeshed in both the ‘civil-military problematique’ and in different kinds of ‘iron laws’ that, to a varying degree, characterise institutions and bureaucracies. Exactly how policy is funnelled into doctrine in different political systems and strategic cultures warrants a study of its own. How, for instance, National Socialism influenced the doctrinal discourse in Germany in the 1930s, compared with the deliberation in liberal democracies, is an interesting and still-open question, but beyond the scope of this book. In this particular book, it makes little sense to dig further into the peculiarities of such circumstances. Here, we will only state unequivocally that anyone trying to write a doctrine, or write about doctrine, overlooks political considerations and non-cognitive authority at his or her peril. To define doctrine as ‘the best available thought that can be defended by reason’ can give the impression that military reason is all there is to it.79

Part III

Why doctrine?

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8

The utility of doctrine

In the previous parts of this book, we have investigated the nature of doctrines and, particularly, the props and justifications you can expect to find in them. In this part, we will round it all off by trying to justify the need to have doctrines at all. The arch-question in the philosophy of military doctrine making is whether doctrine’s upside compensates for its downside. This predicament is captured by a strict formula (that is probably etched, in one form or another, in every military doctrine in the world), which says that doctrine is ‘authoritative but requires judgment in application’.1 For the individual decision maker, however, the message sounds suspiciously like a catch-22, a cyclical conundrum, where you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.2 Evidently, given the plethora of doctrines in the Western world, doctrinal quandaries have not put states off at least trying to develop feasible doctrines, in one way or another. Why? There are several plausible explanations: • • • •

The conventional explanation: war making is complicated and in order to succeed we ought to think systematically through and deliberately perpetuate the beliefs we have about what works in war. The institutional explanation: others have one; hence, we ought to have one as well. The sociological explanation: doctrines legitimise the ‘authority, power and privilege of elites’.3 The strategic- advantage explanation: doctrine is ‘an intangible asset that must be cultivated in order to gain a rare and valuable source of competitive advantage’.4

The first bullet point is presumably the least controversial, but the second is perhaps closer to reality, especially for smaller countries that fight their wars in coalition with big partners, and for the individual services in their battle for funding and political support. For a minor coalition partner, the choice can, in reality, be whether to produce a make-believe doctrine, or

150 Why doctrine? to go without it entirely; overtly or covertly resting on the coalition or alliance’s doctrines. To Frederick the Great and Moltke, on the other hand, it is presumably the fourth point that best explains their intentions, while, for the French after 1870, their work must also be seen in the light of the third bullet point. While recognising that in real life all four explanations must be given their due, this study will argue that the seriousness of war, nonetheless, warrants a systematic contemplation of its means as well as its ends; and if done properly, doctrine can turn out to be a ‘valuable source of competitive advantage’. In the first chapter of this study, we presented a number of arguments against doctrine; in the following, we will give a number of arguments in support of it, and conclude that the weighing up of doctrine’s pros and cons ends up in favour of having it, notwithstanding all its shortcomings.5 The list of objections to doctrine presented in the introduction to this study implies, in a nutshell, that the attempt to crystallise ‘the spirit of war’ into a written doctrine can cause the death of that spirit and not its preservation: The history of the world reveals this cycle—the birth of a spirit; the promulgation of that spirit, the crystallizing of that spirit into doctrine; the glorification of the doctrine at the expense of the spirit; eventually the destruction of the spirit in the life of doctrine.6 The first response from doctrine’s advocates to those sceptical of doctrine is that the question is not whether the armed forces should have a doctrine or not, but whether or not to be frank about it. Doctrines exist; it is only their status and uses that vary.7 Doctrines will crop up elsewhere if they are suppressed at the top level. If the doctrinal need is not filled by official doctrine, it is filled by something, or someone, else: Doctrine should not be, and is not designed as a substitute for thought. Yet it must be said that on occasions, especially during the Second World War, an ill-designed and sometimes confused appreciation of certain ideas drawn from progressive military theory, rushed to fill the doctrinal vacuum with disastrous results.8 Hence, even if doctrine is no universal remedy, the alternative is worse. If you think that a doctrine may lure you into preparing your force to face the wrong enemy, not to prepare at all is presumably not the answer. Making a doctrine is, thus, a question of prudence. The second argument in favour of doctrine is that science and systematic thinking do not necessarily converge towards unambiguousness. On the contrary, increased knowledge can point in new and different directions. Hence, in situations involving collective action it is necessary that

The utility of doctrine 151 someone is both able and empowered to draw some practical conclusions. In 1988, the Soviet colonel general, Makhmut Gareev, delivered a speech in London where he carefully explained the point: Why, together with military science and military theory, does there exist such a concept as military doctrine? The fact is that in the field of science differing views may exist on individual issues concerning a country’s defence and its military affairs. From the theoretical point of view this is even a good and necessary thing because it is in the very process of comparing opinions that the truth emerges and well-founded conclusions are developed. Practical work, however, demands certain common, unified views on the fundamental problems of the development and training of the armed forces. Military doctrine is not simply the sum total of theoretical views on these issues. It is a system of tenets which, firstly, reflects officially adopted views which are mandatory for military personnel; and secondly, military doctrine does not embrace the entirety of military-political and military-technical knowledge but only the most important fundamental views which determine the main lines of development and training of our armed forces.9 Even as early as Steuben’s ‘Blue Book’ was this need recognised. Several other military theorists claimed that they had a better system for war than Steuben, and Washington’s answer to one of them is noteworthy: ‘I do not perceive any utility that could be derived from encouraging the competition you seem to desire between you and the Gentleman who has already been appointed to superintend the instruction of the army.’ 10 In other words, theoretical discussions ought to be open, creative, and undogmatic, but when the doctrinal drawbridge is raised, the discussion should preferably end and only be kept alive at military schools and think tanks until the next doctrinal fork in the road.11 Raymond Aron’s tenet, that he wanted the theory without the doctrine,12 is fine in the lecture halls and in the doctrine maker’s workshop, but not when acquiring new fighter bombers or deciding a cadet’s curriculum. Then someone has actually to make an authoritative decision: ‘Doctrine is a matter of choice. Someone ultimately has the authority to choose between alternatives.’ 13 Mere theory can be sufficient for individual contemplation, but not for collective action. Third, in all wars, indeed in most human activities, there will inevitably pop up a number of rules of thumb, such as ‘do not cross open fields in daylight’, ‘no children in the street indicates an impending ambush’, and so on. Even rules at a more abstract level regularly occur, such as ‘major successes help bring about minor ones’.14 The question is not whether such heuristics exist, they do: We, members of the human variety of primates, have a hunger for rules because we need to reduce the dimension of matters so they can

152 Why doctrine? get into our heads. Or, rather, sadly, so we can squeeze them into our heads.15 However, whether such rules ought to be formalised and endorsed in a doctrine is another matter. Is it wise to squeeze military ‘folksy’ knowledge into some kind of authorised scientific expertise? Yes, it is. In the following, we will see why. The ability to muddle through to enlightenment is usually regarded as a good thing at lower command levels, but it may become a liability if the situation demands dramatic changes from above. For instance, it could be argued that the British Army, compared with the German, was particularly hard to change from above when the situation forced it to shift from the offensive to the defensive on the Western Front in the spring of 1918: ‘What was lacking was what military men called “doctrine”. . . . As a result everything had to be learnt during a never ending battle in which many of those best qualified to analyse events were lost.’ 16 The Germans had a more explicit kind of military knowledge than the British.17 Even a world war later, the British still lacked both a feasible conceptual toolbox and an adequate language to capture their thoughts about war: Of course, all armies adjust their conduct in accordance with the lessons of campaigns just fought. But it was significant that Montgomery had to do more than adjust the details; he had to lay down a solid framework. In large part this was due to a lack of central direction and co-ordination of doctrine and the multiplicity of agencies involved in its formulation.18 The compartmentalisation caused by the regimental system of the British Army also hampered the free flow of competence within the force as such.19 Julian Corbett was a theorist who saw the value of clear concepts and adequate language clearer than most. Eric Grove has pointed out that Corbett’s conception of theory resembles the modern conception of doctrine.20 To Corbett, ‘theory’ had a more normative ring to it than it has today. Hence, his defence of theory can serve as a rather astute defence of the value of modern-day doctrine at the strategic level of war. In Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, published in 1911, Corbett did something quite unusual for a military theorist. Echoing Clausewitz, he analysed the value of military theory itself. The first sentences of his book read: At first sight nothing can appear more unpractical, less promising of useful result, than to approach the study of war with a theory. There seems indeed to be something essentially antagonistic between the habit of mind that seeks theoretical guidance and that which makes for the successful conduct of war.21

The utility of doctrine 153 According to Corbett, the chief reason behind the mistrust of theory is that people expect wrong things from it: ‘Theory is, in fact, a question of education and deliberation, and not of execution at all.’ 22 Theory is not a substitute for experience and judgement, but a fertiliser of them both.23 The main contribution of theories and academic systems is to stimulate our thinking, not guide our way of acting. Theory’s approach to practice is indirect, not direct. The aim of theory is, thus, to enable us to think more sharply and to express our thoughts more precisely: [Theory is] a process by which we co-ordinate our ideas, define the meaning of the words we use, grasp the difference between essential and unessential factors, and fix and expose the fundamental data on which every one is agreed. In this way we prepare the apparatus of practical discussion. . . . Without such an apparatus no two men can even think on the same line; much less can they ever hope to detach the real point of difference that divides them and isolate it for quiet solution.24 Even in the passage above, ‘theory’ could just as well be substituted by ‘doctrine’.25 Theory, and doctrine we may add, are there to ensure that the commander’s words have ‘the same meaning for all’ and ‘awake in every brain the same process of thought’.26 Previous military catastrophes had occasionally been caused by a commander’s conceptions that had been ‘unintelligible to anybody but himself ’.27 Evidently, theory also enables a learned discussion between the commander and his political chiefs in order to find a viable balance between political ends and military means. It facilitates and fine tunes the unequal dialogue, to borrow a central concept from the last chapter. Especially in an empire like the British Empire, the ability to negotiate between different interests, different services, and with other powers was paramount: Conference is always necessary, and for conference to succeed there must be a common vehicle of expression and a common plane of thought. It is for this essential preparation that theoretical study alone can provide; and herein lies its practical value for all who aspire to the higher responsibilities of the Imperial service.28 Neither the importance of conferences, nationally or internationally, nor the frequency of them has decreased since the days of Corbett. Hence, the ability to be both unambiguous and deliberately ambiguous, according to the situation, is still a valuable military skill. To encapsulate this point about the value of formally systematising and endorsing rules of thumb through an unambiguous language: a ‘wise lady’ may sometimes be more successful than a medical doctor in treating certain kinds of ailments, but it would be a waste of time to invite her to a

154 Why doctrine? medical conference to discuss the pros and cons of different medical approaches. An important part of medical expertise is to be able to talk proficiently about it. Bassim Nicholas Taleb makes a similar point about the economy: Traders, bottom-up people, know its wrinkles better than academics by dint of spending their nights worrying about their risks, except that few of them could express their ideas in technical terms . . . as if birds had to study (bad) engineering in order to fly.29 Even Napoleon had his own personal twist to the same observation: ‘In war, as in prostitution, the amateur is often better than the professional.’ 30 However, to trust practices and tacit knowledge only and refuse to bring to light the hidden assumptions of our thoughts and actions may cause tacit stupidity and prejudicial blinkers rather than deftness and mental dexterity. Uniformed reason is certainly preferable to uninformed reason. Moreover, and most important here; in order to disseminate best practice in a huge organisation, one must be able to talk efficiently about it. We will still appreciate the skills of a world class sniper, even if he is unable to put his practice into words, but in order to produce a huge number of efficient snipers, someone must be able to put the art in words, at least parts of it. Furthermore, if we are able to talk efficiently about sniping, we can also develop and change the art more efficiently, if necessary. Doctrine development, therefore, does not automatically spur buzzwords, catchphrases, and glib talking, or substitute analysis with slogans. It does not have to end in ‘gibberish’ as we referred to in the opening chapter of this study. It can, instead, provide a stern buffer against it: ‘[W]e should be aware that the lack of a fundamental, doctrinal framework of understanding has contributed to a tendency towards superficial fads and failure to understand the reality behind certain terms.’ 31 Hence, a painstaking hammering out of doctrine can give more reliable concepts and a better base for learning, but also ‘a common vocabulary that helps to clarify the nature of disagreements’.32 This is particularly important in an alliance, such as NATO. It is important, however, to avoid the ossification of theory and doctrine into rustic relics of a distant past. The job done by Clausewitz, and later by Corbett, has to be done again and again: [N]o ‘theory of war’ exists accurate enough to enable precise and unemotional communication and criticism where matters of military controversy arise. Even the terminologies of Clausewitz and Jomini, of Mahan and Douhet, are now to some extent obsolete; they carry residues of ancient meaning no longer accurately applicable. When they are given an overlay of jargon misapplied from the physical sciences and social studies, confusion becomes even worse confounded.33

The utility of doctrine 155 The fourth argument for keeping doctrines is the reverse of a previously presented counter-argument. Instead of causing rigidity, doctrine can provide stability and purpose. Instead of being a mere straw, a doctrine can be an immovable rock to cling to in rough weather: ‘People need to make decisions in the face of uncertainty about the future, and consequently they need appropriate concepts and foci for information to maximize the quality of those decisions.’ 34 According to Corbett, theory and thus (implicitly) doctrine, can assist a capable man to acquire a broad outlook whereby he may be the surer his plan shall cover all the ground, and whereby he may with greater rapidity and certainty seize all the factors of a sudden situation’.35 Doctrinal structuring of thinking can free our minds to do other business. This is not a particularly military consideration: ‘The fundamental reason for pursuing abstruse philosophy is, in the end, to free ourselves of the need to do so.’ 36 The situation is the opposite of that portrayed by the doctrinal sceptics: it is not doctrines that make us think uniformly, we think in ways that are all too stereotyped and homogeneous as it is. Instead, we need a doctrine, a solid foundation, a totem, in order to be creative: Those who are possessed of a definite body of doctrines and of deeply rooted convictions based upon it will be in a much better position to deal with the shifts and surprises of daily affairs than those who are merely taking short views, and indulging their natural impulses as they are evoked by what they read from day to day.37 Doctrine can provide a steady platform for improvisation and the use of professional judgement: ‘doctrine doesn’t tell the commander what to do; it tells him how to do what he wants to do’.38 The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual also grasps the point: ‘These paradoxes are offered to stimulate thinking, not to limit it.’ 39 We will also add a fifth and perhaps a rather cunning reason for keeping doctrines. This reason is for those strategic cultures that do not take written doctrine too seriously. Such doctrines can, if used wisely and perhaps deviously, serve as a pit for academic cockfights. As General Donn A. Starry concluded during the debate following Field Manual 100–5 in 1976: It’s safe to say that no Army manual has ever been so widely commented on, debated and, to a large extent, misunderstood. It is indeed out of the ordinary for a field manual to generate such wide discussion. I’m not quite prepared to say why the discussion developed in this case – but develop it has.40

156 Why doctrine? It is probably not too impertinent to suggest that a number of the field manual’s critics joined the mêlée just to show off rather than introducing new ideas with any realistic hope of influencing the Army’s way of operation. Doctrine had an extraordinary appeal to opinionated and selfappointed experts. The solemnity of doctrine, compared with mere theorising, may be tempting. Especially during long periods of peace, good performance in scholastic mud-wrestling may be more important for your career than your skills in the field. Consequently, to criticise doctrine for not having any impact on the real world may be totally misplaced. Doctrine’s main virtue can be precisely its disconnected immateriality.41 Like the picture of Dorian Gray, the doctrine takes the wear and tear of life and leaves the force itself unscathed. It can even give the military a refreshing feeling of progress. Indeed, William Lind suggested that the new doctrine that came into effect in 1976 offered nothing more than ‘nostrums to an army so weak that it could only rely upon slogans to encourage a “can-do” attitude among the doomed’.42 That said, however, to use doctrine as a sham and a mock manual can, of course, be dangerous in a strategic culture that takes doctrine seriously. In the United States, for instance, it can be hard to tell where the buzzwords end and the seriousness starts. So far, we have investigated a number of reasons for having a doctrine, despite the fact that it is no panacea. The reasons given have been rather general, covering all sorts of military doctrine. However, after justifying the need for doctrine, we also need to decide what kind of doctrine we need.

o To lo e ng ha fc

To ol of co mm an d

Authority (subordination)

Doctrine

Rationality (theory)

A-rationality (culture) Tool of education

Figure 8.1 The doctrinal utility span.

The utility of doctrine 157 To qualify as a doctrine in this study, a document has to be authoritative, it has to contain theory, and it has to reflect the culture of the organisation issuing it. It says ‘why and how we do our business’.43 The main point in the following is that the balancing of the three elements can be done in different ways, and by doing so produce three ‘ideal types’ of doctrine: doctrine as a tool of command, doctrine as a tool of change, and doctrine as a tool of education. As a tool of command, doctrine says authoritatively what to do; as a tool of change, it says authoritatively what to be; and, as a tool of education, it says and explains why we do what we do and are who we are for the time being. In the following, we will look a bit closer at each of the three ideal types, which are rarely found in a pure form, based on cases and issues highlighted in previous chapters.

Doctrine as a tool of education Doctrine as a tool of education can be both a provider of identities and a prescription for action. It can say who we are (culture) and what to do (theory) by explaining the goals, identifying the tasks, and shaping the conceptual tools of the organisation.44 Some would perhaps maintain that education and indoctrination are two very different things. Military doctrines can indeed be conveyed by indoctrination, and some see great significance in the etymological connection between indoctrination and doctrine.45 However, doctrine that is conveyed without closing the mind of the receiver, and where the non-rational means employed, such as culture, are used in harmony with rationality and not in contradiction to it, is not an instance of ‘bad’ indoctrination, which entails that the indoctrinator causes ‘someone to have unshakable belief in what are in fact unprovable propositions’.46 The French belief in attaque à outrance before 1914 is perhaps the closest we come to bad military indoctrination in the Western world, in the sense that its core tenets could not be demonstrated to be true, those who were to execute it were not encouraged to make up their own minds, and the sales pitch was beyond argument and rested instead on willpower and dash. The first of the three elements, lack of irrefutable truths, is common to all doctrines, but not the latter two. Moreover, the basic indoctrination of military ways and values taking place at boot camps does not say very much about the general doctrinal leeway of the force as such. By analogy, basic musical skills can presumably be indoctrinated just as efficiently into a future jazz musician as they can into a future member of a philharmonic orchestra, even if the jazz artist will base much more of his or her professional performance on improvisation and personal creativity than the one playing in the orchestra. Likewise, even if all military organisations are based on some form of individual drill and mechanised action, doctrine, wisely written, can open up considerable leeway for military creativity and judgement. The presence of a doctrine

158 Why doctrine? does not, therefore, exclude education: ‘[I]ndoctrination differs from education not because it involves trafficking in doctrine but because it . . . involves lack of respect for an individual’s rationality.’ 47 In summation: a doctrine serves corrupt indoctrination only if it makes you believe things without paying proper attention to your rationality. It is educational if it appeals to your rationality, even if you don’t agree with everything you read, and, even if you are obliged to act according to a doctrine you do not wholeheartedly support. In the words of Huba Wass de Czege: ‘Sound and useful doctrine is anything but doctrinaire’.48 Among the proto-doctrines we have encountered in earlier chapters, de Gheyn’s The Exercise of Armes was educational, as the main target audience were ‘novices and yonge souldiers’. Baron von Steuben’s ‘Blue Book’ also had the elements of a textbook: To experienced commanders, such procedures might not have required explanation, but then, Steuben was not writing for them. His intent was to provide novice commanders with a time-tested set of tactical instructions. By ensuring that all commanders would approach similar problems in the same way, little was left to chance.49 It is also presumably fair to say that most British doctrines are formally authorised schoolbooks.50 The promulgation of the seminal British Military Doctrine in 1989 is a case in point. In 1988, the Chief of the General Staff, Field Marshal Sir Nigel Bagnall, presided over the formation of a Higher Command and Staff Course (HCSC), whose ‘purpose was to educate the senior commanders at the operational level of command’.51 The course needed a curriculum: ‘As the Army had no suitable NATO or British doctrine to use as a general teaching manual for operational and military-strategic thinking, the idea emerged to write one as a matter of urgency.’ 52 The raison d’être of the document could be easily encapsulated: ‘Put most simply, doctrine is what is thought.’ 53 As a small digression: even this document tried to lower the British guard against doctrine: There may be some who say that laying down doctrine like this is not the British way. To them I would say that as a nation we have had no shortage of original military thinkers. Also, the modern battlefield is not a place where we could hope to succeed by muddling through.54 Even most NATO doctrines can be read as tools of education, or rather tools of standardisation and interoperability. To dig a bit deeper into doctrine as a tool of education: in principle, we can distinguish between two different approaches to using doctrine in this way, namely the Jominian approach and the Clausewitzian approach. These labels are a bit unfair because the difference between the two strategists is

The utility of doctrine 159 not that great after all, especially not at the practical level of war. However, on the ‘sublime’ level of war, the difference between them is sufficient to allow this labelling.55 In the Jominian way of thinking, to be a bit irreverent to the Swiss strategist, a document with doctrinal aspirations, as we understand it today, resembles a map with route descriptions explaining what to expect along the way and which road to take at each crossroad in order to reach the destination.56 The pivotal element in this type of navigation is the map makers’ ability to produce good maps. The contribution of the map user is merely the ability to apply the map to the particular circumstances. Doctrine, as described by Jeffrey S. McKitrick and Peter W. Chiarelli in Chapter 1 of this study, is constructed along such lines. There is, of course, a plethora of military documents related to education of some sort, but Jominian doctrine, as it is called here, is elevated from those in several ways. First of all, doctrine as a Jominian tool of education is distinguished from other educational material in the sense that it is mainly directed towards the force as such, and not towards individual readers. Moreover, a doctrine presents ‘essential knowledge’, i.e. knowledge that everyone within a given branch of a military service is expected to possess. It is a formal validation of the most salient parts of the vast ocean of information surrounding military activity. In an air force, a pilot knows and reads a lot that a mechanic does not, and vice versa, but both have to relate to a common core of basic knowledge in order to function well together, i.e. a doctrine. Even if education is mostly meant for new members of an organisation, doctrine, as a tool of education, can also be used to address more experienced people who need an update on current military affairs. The long wars in Afghanistan after 2001 and Iraq after 2003, for instance, increased the demand for new and more efficient ways to fight insurgents. Doctrines could, thus, be an important way to promulgate a sanctioned theory for victory to all troops. Jominian doctrine can also be made to provide a template for common education and to certify its quality instead of trusting the training of troops to the whim of strong individuals. The Russians, for example, realised this the hard way during the shocking defeat against Japan in 1905: Our troops had been instructed, but what they had learned varied according to the personal idiosyncrasies of this or that district commander. The stronger the officer commanding a district, the less did he feel bound to abide by the authorised method of instruction and training laid down in the existing drill books.57 Hence, military doctrines used as a tool of education can address the way war ought to be taught and not only the way war ought to be fought. Foch addressed the issue in his Principles of War:

160 Why doctrine? Putting an inscription on the wall had not sufficed to create a real War School. Where was the difficulty? Did it reside in the question how to determine the subject to be taught, the true theory of war; or in the manner of teaching that theory once it had been established?58 In our own days, the multicultural aspects of contemporary coalition operations emphasise even further doctrinal regulation of education.59 Had Clausewitz embarked on writing a doctrine for the sublime level of war, it would presumably have been substantially different from a ‘Jominian doctrine’ as described above. In the Clausewitzian way of thinking about these matters, without suggesting that the master himself would necessarily agree, a doctrine at the sublime level of war can be compared to a travelogue not necessarily providing maps and routes at all, but focusing instead on certain salient features and characteristics of the area of interest. For the traveller, such a book is more inspirational than informational. It influences the readers’ way to comprehend the experiences of the trip, rather than showing the way: We might list the most important moral phenomena in war and, like a diligent professor, try to evaluate them one by one. This method, however, all too easily leads to platitudes, while the genuine spirit of inquiry soon evaporates, and unwittingly we find ourselves proclaiming what everybody already knows. For this reason we prefer, here even more than elsewhere, to treat the subject in an incomplete and impressionistic manner, content to have pointed out its general importance and to have indicated the spirit in which the arguments of this book are conceived.60 Importantly, this ‘rhapsodisch’ way of thinking can go hand in hand with Clausewitz’s attempt to provide clearer concepts and more precise language.61 As alluded to then, the four generals’ biographies that were dealt with in Chapter 6 can be read as such ‘Clausewitzian doctrine’, Jackson’s more than Smith’s. To sum up this section about doctrine as a tool of education: a military’s day may be filled with a mixture of tame, wicked, and critical problems.62 For all the tame problems of military life, a Jominian doctrine will do the trick; for the wicked and critical problems, however, the primacy will be put on resolute action, virtue, and a more comprehensive approach à la Clausewitz. A Clausewitzian doctrine addresses how to think and feel about the terrain, so to speak, not how to traverse it.63 Consequently, instead of seeing Clausewitzian doctrines as an alternative to Jominian doctrines, the combination of the two constitutes the most viable doctrinal contribution to military education. People heading for an adventurous vacation should bring both the (Jominian) guidebook, telling how to get from A to B, and the (Clausewitzian) travelogue, describing mores, scenery and culture.

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Doctrine as a tool of command Even if doctrine as a tool of education has a long history, being a tool of command is usually regarded as doctrine’s core function. The essence of command can be roughly summarised as follows: The chief difficulty encountered in the exercise of command is that resulting from a critical situation which imposes upon subordinate commanders the necessity of deciding for themselves the action to be taken, and of carrying their decisions into execution, before reference can be made to higher authority.64 Doctrine’s main aim as a tool of command is, thus, to enhance military cohesion while simultaneously reducing the need for military commanders to issue detailed instructions: In the absence of orders and in the absence of communications, subordinates who act in accordance with military doctrine are very likely to be conforming with their superiors’ wishes. In a chaotic combat environment, doctrine has a cohesive effect; it offers mutually intelligible terminology, relationships, responsibilities, and processes, thus freeing the commander to focus on the real job – combat itself.65 Frederick the Great’s Instructions for His Generals had similar ambitions. Instructions was not a textbook for the inexperienced, but guidelines for officers ‘whom the King considered models of their profession’.66 In order to establish Prussia as a Great Power, Frederick had to do things more cleverly than his opponents and in that regard a common approach to operations was crucial.67 Although Frederick gave, for instance, a rather detailed list of rules for choosing ground for camps, the point was not that he had a unique knowledge of these things, or that he prohibited alternative ways. The rules were there for coordination and for those who needed some assistance in picking out the important elements in a given terrain, but not everyone did: ‘Those who have a military eye for the terrain and knowledge of war will see it without me designating it more precisely.’ 68 In the following, we will have a closer look at a particularly important coordination device; something we will call pegs for convention, which is an important doctrinal means for reaching a common approach to military operations. No one in particular gains anything by the rule that all cars have to be driven on one particular side of the road, but it is rational that they do so, because everybody loses if everyone drives on the side they personally prefer. It is equally so with collective actions in general. Some solutions are neither right nor wrong in themselves, but become right or wrong

162 Why doctrine? depending on what other people do. Hence, in order to reach coherent collective actions, a huge number of decision makers have to interpret the situation more or less along the same lines. This is particularly important in so-called coordinating problems. A common coordinating problem occurs when a telephone call is abruptly cut off. How can the call be reconnected? If both try to reestablish it, both will get the busy signal, and if both expect the other to call again, they will both wait in vain. According to David Lewis, such coordinating problems can be solved in three different ways.69 The first solution is simply to reach an agreement. For instance, one of the speakers can tell the other that since the line is bad they must be prepared to be cut off, and, if so, he will call back. The second way is to solve the problem by salience. Is there anything in the situation that makes one particular solution stand out? For instance, if the person receiving the call does not know the caller’s number, the solution is given. The third way is by precedent. How have such coordinating problems been solved in the past? Perhaps both speakers expect the caller to call again, since it is good manners to let the one who originally made the call pay for the remainder of it. If both parties know how such problems have been solved in the past, and if both expect the other to keep to that practice, we have a convention.70 Usually, a simple agreement is the most effective way to solve coordinating problems, but in situations such as war, where things can happen fast and involve many people, agreement may be out of reach. Thus, we have to opt for a tacit agreement: It turns out that sophisticated subjects in an experimental setting can often do very well – much better than chance – at solving novel coordination problems without communication. They try for a coordination equilibrium that is somehow salient: one that stands out from the rest by its uniqueness in some conspicuous respect. It does not have to be uniquely good; indeed, it could be uniquely bad. It merely has to be unique in some way the subjects will notice, expect each other to notice, and so on. If different coordination equilibria are unique in different conspicuous ways, the subjects will need to be alike in the relative importance they attach to different respects of comparison; but often they are enough alike to solve the problem.71 The point here is that a doctrine can facilitate fast conventions in the heat of battle by prearranging salience and distinguishing relevant precedents. A doctrine may, in a way, encourage a constructive kind of groupthink: ‘The purpose of doctrine is to unify or harmonize the individual efforts of members of an organization in the performance of their collective tasks.’ 72 If everybody, almost instinctively, comprehends the situation similarly (i.e. has a common situational awareness), knows how to handle a situation,

The utility of doctrine 163 and trusts everyone else to know it as well, measures can be taken more swiftly. Hence, Nelson’s colloquiums and Frederick’s Instructions were primarily concerned with getting the commanders to think, if not similarly, at least along the same lines. Since you could not expect them to do this by themselves, they needed a helping hand and a navigational star: A perfect general, like Plato’s republic, is a figment. Either would be admirable, but it is not characteristic of human nature to produce beings exempt from human weaknesses and defects. The finest medallions have a reverse side. But in spite of this awareness of our imperfections it is no less necessary to consider all the different talents that are needed by an accomplished general. These are the models that one attempts to imitate and which one would not try to emulate if they were not presented to us.73 Again, we are balancing on the horns of the basic doctrinal dilemma. If our troops act like robots or mindless imitators, their performance will be judged outstanding in a military tattoo, but it can be pretty easy for an opponent to outsmart us since ‘too much predictability can work to the enemy’s advantage’.74 Even Frederick was painfully aware of this quandary: ‘It is absolutely necessary to change your methods often and to imagine new stratagems. If you always act in the same manner your methods soon will become known.’ 75 This caveat looks perhaps like a good reason for Frederick not to issue the Instruction for His Generals. However, that would be to choose the greater of two evils. By nature, it is difficult to anticipate what the adversaries will do, but a common doctrine makes it, at least, easier to guess what our own guys will do. Hence, a ‘doctrine of no doctrine’ will import into the problem ‘fresh unknown factors – viz. the unknown minds of subordinate commanders’.76 Thus, if you discard a formal doctrine in order to make your troops inventive, all you accomplish is the invitation of a multitude of unknown doctrines in through the backdoor: Instead of a General Staff doctrine, held in common with comrades and chiefs, each commander will have his own doctrine. . . . In short, adherence to the ‘doctrine of no doctrine’ intensifies the difficulty of transferring the mind of the commander to the minds of his subordinates, a difficulty which it is the object of all training and teaching to overcome.77 Doctrine is not brainwashing or a screenplay telling you how you should act in any given situation, any more than conventions in general are: ‘No convention determines every detail of behaviour, [it] restricts behaviour

164 Why doctrine? without removing all choice.’ 78 As we have already quoted, according to the father of modern American doctrine, General William E. DePuy, ‘doctrine doesn’t tell the commander what to do; it tells him how to do what he wants to do’.79 It is strategy and operational art that translate political aims into military tasks. However, without a doctrine (without a grammar so to speak) such translation becomes difficult. The grammar is not there to restrict your eloquence, but to make you understandable to those around you. Doctrine makes it possible to act ‘independently and yet in unison’.80 Doctrine does not ‘replace or alter a commander’s authority and obligation to determine the proper course of action under the circumstances prevailing at the time of decision’,81 but the more a commander can leave to conventions, the better: If a commander at any level is improvising and orchestrating battle actions over the command nets, that should be interpreted as prima facia evidence that the commanded forces were not properly prepared for the circumstances they actually encountered in battle.82 A doctrine is not a plan telling us what to do at a given place and time, but a sounding board for coordination, comprehension, and decision making: ‘A service doctrine commits the entire service to the same rules, principles, and standards for the conduct of war. It explains what military problems must be solved and how they should be solved.’ 83 Doctrine is not about ossified habits that make you predictable and sluggish, but about a springboard to bounce off: ‘doctrinal methods are mere points of departure for adaption’.84 And under no circumstances should the authority of a doctrine be allowed to preclude the use of common sense, even if history knows instances of exactly that: ‘By the late 1930s, French military doctrine had moved from the ideal of being the basis of military education to the unfortunate status of being an inflexible prescription.’ 85 An argument often employed, especially in Great Britain, that doctrine destroys the creativity and flexibility needed for imperial policing and COIN can, thus, be turned on its head. Indeed, if any nation could have used a doctrine, it was Great Britain: The task of training the great armies of the Continent is child’s play compared with the severe and intricate problem which is imposed upon our General Staff by the geographical distribution of the units which compose the British Army. . . . That the task of ensuring unity of effort from men trained under such diverse conditions is insuperable unless their minds are guided and bent in some one definite direction by the assimilation of a common doctrine is recognised by the General Staff.86

The utility of doctrine 165 The French counter-insurgency theorist, David Galula, pointed in the same direction: Whatever system is chosen, however, the best organization is only as good as its members. Even with the best conceivable organization, personality conflicts are more than likely to be the order of the day . . . how is the disjointed, mosaic effect of their operations to be avoided? If the individual members of the organizations were of the same mind, if every organization worked according to a standard pattern, the problem would be solved. Is this not precisely what a coherent, wellunderstood, and accepted doctrine would tend to achieve?87 There is often an inexplicable assumption that any given armed force can only have one doctrine. On the surface, such an assumption is obviously wrong, given the fact that there exist a multitude of different doctrines within a particular service, for instance the US Army. Below the surface, however, one could suspect that a given force follows its modus operandi regardless of a whole library of different doctrines. It could be like a piper who knows only one tune, and simply varies its pace and rhythm. That may certainly be the case regarding doctrine as well, but it does not have to be that way. Just as it is totally conceivable that a person can be both a parish priest and rugby player without ever mixing the two, it is just as conceivable that an armed force can do two completely different things, i.e. that the following statement is more than spin doctoring: ‘U.S. military forces are vastly capable. Designed primarily for conventional warfare, they nonetheless have the capabilities essential to successfully conduct COIN operations.’ 88 Hence, having more than one doctrine is not doctrinal cheating, it is a doctrinal necessity. This necessity is made even more acute in our own time, when armed forces are expected to be much more than just the continuation of security policy by other means. Armed forces are sometimes developmental aid by other means, and even disaster relief by still other means. Even if doctrine can be an important tool to aid command, in the sense that subordinate commanders can be given freer rein to use their own judgements under the auspices of doctrine, it is still crucial to know its major risks. During Moltke’s operations in 1866 and 1870, for instance, it was notoriously difficult to conduct subtle manoeuvres because everyone marched as expected to the sound of the guns. The empowerment of subordinate commanders also carried the risk that the man on the spot made a decision that was wrong when seen from the Royal Headquarters. This tension, between the ground truth and the big picture, is a quandary people tend to overlook when extolling German military prowess: Many point to the concept of Auftragstaktik (or ‘flexible command’) as a key to the victory, but that is hard to accept. The Bohemian

166 Why doctrine? campaign was an example of Auftragstaktik only if having subordinate commanders ignore your directives, march south when you’ve distinctly ordered them to march east, and treat you with barely disguised contempt are truly a form of ‘flexible command’.89 Consequently, dysphasia appeared when microbattles fought by ‘lower level commanders under the principle of Selbstandigkeit (independence of initiative) warped operations out of alignment with the intent of higher commanders and staffs’.90 Arguably, both the opening and closing phases of the Great War were threatened on the German side by subordinate commanders who ‘ran away’ with German strategy, if there ever was one. Despite the inherent risks, many countries were, nonetheless, inspired by the German practice of giving general orders and letting lower-echelon commanders choose their own methods of executing them under the guidance of an approved doctrine.91 Inevitably, such imitation is hazardous: ‘Moltke is not a general to copy but to study. His reckonings were wonderful, yet his risks against an able opponent might easily have proved damnable; for he was apt to be run away with by his subordinates.’ 92 Has, perhaps, the ‘the double-edged sword of initiative’ been blunted,93 or at least made more controllable by modern information technology? Some would claim that the supreme commander has not only regained his Feldherrenhügel with the aid of modern information technology, but has become virtually omnipresent: By 2010 – and earlier if we accelerate the current rate of research and procurement – the U.S. military will be able to ‘see’ virtually everything of military significance in and above such an area [40,000 square miles] all the time, in all weather conditions, and regardless of the terrain. We will be able to identify and track – in near real time – all major items of military equipment, from trucks and other vehicles on the ground to ships and aircraft. More important, the U.S. military commander will understand what he sees.94 This prophecy has, of course, turned out to be too good to be true. And it should not surprise us. This military omnipotence, brought about by new technology, is an old dream indeed. Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen saw for instance great military advantages in the telegraph and the new gadgets of war: No Napoleon, surrounded by a glittering suite, will make his appearance on a height overlooking the battlefield. Not even the best telescope will enable him to distinguish much. His palfrey will form too easy a mark for the fire of countless batteries. The warlord will be located farther in the rear, in a house with spacious offices, where wire and wireless, telephone, and signalling equipment are available.

The utility of doctrine 167 Hordes of lorries and motor vehicles, fitted out for the longest journeys, there await their marching orders. There, seated on a comfortable chair, in front of a large desk, the Modern Alexander will have the entire battlefield under his eyes on a map. From there he telephones inspiring words, receives the reports of army and corps commanders, captive balloons, and dirigibles, which all along the front watch the enemy’s movements and register his positions.95 Let us, for the sake of argument, presume that new information technology one day will realise Schlieffen’s dream. If the supreme commander sees everything, understands everything, and has the opportunity to tell his subordinates everything, doctrine as a tool of command seems superfluous. If your boss knows a lot more than you do about the situation you are in, he will certainly not leave it to your discretion, however much doctrine assists, to sort out the situation. However, to pour all available information onto the executive’s desk will drown him. Too much information limits our ability to make decisions: ‘extra information is more than useless. It’s harmful. It confuses the issues. What screws up doctors when they are trying to predict heart attacks is that they take too much information into account’.96 War is not heart surgery, and some questions are best solved with all available information on the table, but an abundance of information is evidently not necessarily a good thing: ‘Information proved to be toxic. I’ve struggled much of my life with the common middlebrow belief that “more is better” – more is sometimes, but not always, better.’ 97 Hence, the profusion of information can be a reason not for finally getting rid of doctrine, but a new reason for having it. Countless decisions have still to be made by other people than the supreme commander, and they all occasionally need some pegs for convention. This does not mean, of course, that military command should be left untouched by modern information technology. In the ‘old economy’, information was a scarce commodity and hierarchical organisation was a means to provide important information to the most significant decision makers, and a way to disseminate the decisions taken to the working level. However, such hierarchies came at a price: Hoarding information and exploiting its scarcity have been the norm for some time. . . . These behaviours can no longer be tolerated because the economics of information have changed. With the cost of information and its dissemination dropping dramatically, information has become a dominant factor in the value chain for almost every product or service.98 Even military forces can use cheap access to information to gain the edge on their competitors, and so-called network-centric warfare is the

168 Why doctrine? most elaborate attempt to do so: ‘Network-centric warfare enables warfighters to leverage this information advantage to dramatically increase combat power through self-synchronization and other network-centric operations.’ 99 In order to exploit the increased flow of information, bureaucratic hierarchies have, apparently, to be consigned to the dustbin of history. Initially, such a move seems somewhat unlikely in military matters: ‘Doubtless to many, the elimination of intermediate control conjures up the image of an aimless, unruly armed mob. This is certainly not the intent, and this is where modern technology and small unit initiative provide the solution.’ 100 Modern information technology can provide all basic action units with a ‘common view of the situation’.101 This, together with doctrine, will ensure unprecedented speed in the decision loop: ‘Coherence is achieved because all the units share a common doctrine, a common goal, and a common view of the situation. In this case: Common Doctrine + Common Goal + Common View = Common Solution.’ 102 However, the most euphoric prophets still have reasons to be disappointed about network-centric warfare. It is hard to turn the technological superiority of Western forces into strategic victories. Even in the civilian world, modern information technology has not yet rendered hierarchy superfluous.103 The trend has been the opposite of that indicated by the network (ec)centrics: ‘To sum up, empirical studies of changes reveal relatively modest changes in structural terms, and where change has taken place in some spheres it is in the direction of more rules, hierarchy and centralization.’ 104 The need to coordinate actions along time and space will presumably never disappear, and hierarchy and bureaucracy still seem to be the best way to do it: ‘Bureaucracy is the best way of getting work done because it is the only form of organization that deals with size, complexity, and the need for accountability.’ 105 To conclude: when the digitised battlefield enables the President to virtually monitor the heart rate of any given GI, the temptation for strategic micromanagement may become irresistible. However, this temptation, at all command levels, can also be subject to doctrine, a doctrine not primarily for the boots on the ground, but for the executives, for those holding ‘the long screwdriver’. Doctrine can be a way to handle not too little information, but too much. Perhaps the most pressing doctrine in the future might be that which tells the commanders to do less. As such, doctrine can make a dramatic u-turn, in the sense that while its original raison d’être was to be a beacon for military commanders operating in the informational darkness, it can now become a floating device for use in the tremendous ocean of information made possible by modern information technology.

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Doctrine as a tool of change A doctrine can act like a weathervane, revealing tendencies and policies it is ultimately unable to do anything about. Some commentators claim that this is the normal situation, especially at the strategic level: ‘One fact of national life seems immutable; military concepts and doctrine cannot change, substantially, political ideas and attitudes concerning national defence.’ 106 Even at the more practical level, some seriously doubt doctrine’s ability to influence its surroundings: It is not enough to write new doctrine, if the purpose is to change the way an army will fight. Ultimately, an army’s behaviour in battle will almost certainly be more a reflection of its character or culture than of the contents of its doctrine manuals. And if that culture – or mindset, if you will – is formed more by experience than by books, then those who would attempt to modify an army’s behaviour need to think beyond doctrine manuals.107 I agree, but only to a point: ‘[C]hange of doctrine cannot be entirely ignored, for adopting a new doctrine can result in substantial changes in the practices and structure of a military organization.’ 108 Obviously, doctrine writers have to take all sorts of considerations into account. A military force that contains a single brigade needs a different doctrine from that of a force containing a carrier fleet and a space programme. Such tangible assets are, to a large extent, given when the doctrine is put into print, but one objective for doctrine may still be to induce organisational, material, and conceptual changes. Hence, a third ideal type of doctrine is doctrine as a change maker: ‘[D]octrine—operational concepts for battle fighting—must drive all else; doctrine is the keystone of military architecture, the engine of change, the “first and great commandment” ’.109 In the following section, we will argue that doctrine development can, if it has powerful enough sponsors, influence a wide spectrum of activities, such as procurement, fighting, planning, and training. It can even change culture, albeit arduously.110 So, when commentators claim that change to an organisation’s culture is a ‘precondition for doctrinal change’,111 I beg to differ. Changing the doctrine can change the culture, at least under favourable circumstances: ‘[P]rofessionally generated doctrine can have a great impact on society and culture; one need look no further than the consequences of military practice at the onset of World War I.’112 Western military forces are bureaucracies par excellence, and, just like other bureaucracies, they are more or less inevitably antagonistic towards changes, at least radical and sweeping ones. To change a bureaucracy’s foundations presumably takes an earthquake and a threat to its very survival.113 Accordingly, doctrine as a tool of change has been most in

170 Why doctrine? demand in the wake of military disasters, as we have seen previously in the case of the Franco-Prussian and the Vietnam Wars. There can, of course, be more mundane reasons for changing military doctrines, for instance new experiences, new or changing defence commitments and resources, new technology, new threats, research, development, and experiment, but ‘deep’ change usually requires something momentous. It could be tempting here to say something general about whether losers learn more from a defeat than winners do from a victory, or whether a shortage makes for more imaginative thinking than an abundance. That complacency leads to some kind of decline is a rather common assumption, but a question too big for the scope of this study. Crucially, however, ‘[c]hange does not follow automatically in the wake of shock’,114 something, or someone, has to seize the opportunity offered by the breakdown of old ways and habits and intentionally establish new norms and standards. Significantly, doctrine can be a particularly vigorous way to do so. This does not, of course, mean that change is an unqualified good thing. Indeed, it is possible to change too much: In fact it is not the case that the only real risk is to underinnovate in the face of technological progress, or that the main challenge is simply to induce unwilling organizations to change. While there are historical examples of militaries that adapted too slowly, there are also examples of ones that changed too fast or too much.115 In the following, we will see how doctrine was utilised as a tool of change in a particularly volatile period, i.e. the two decades sandwiching the turn of the millennium. Our aim is not to assess the need for change in those decades, or unravel the driving forces behind it, but to illustrate how doctrine can serve as an agent of change. In the 1990s, two, or perhaps three, ‘revolutions’ occurred simultaneously, or at least became prominent among theorists. First of all, the West’s victory in the Cold War and the ensuing collapse of the Iron Curtain prompted a revolution in strategic affairs (RSA).116 This RSA changed the relations between the major players in international society. Simultaneously, a revolution in military affairs (RMA) also occurred. Modern information technology promised radically enhanced situational awareness and precision. Additionally, the Western world was beset by a third revolution, a revolution in business affairs (RBA). This signified new ways of procurement and logistics, giving armed forces a significantly smaller ‘footprint’ in the theatre of operations. Regardless of whether these changes were truly revolutionary or not, together they forced the military not only to change, but to transform; a particularly sweeping form of change. As US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld had been bent on transformation long before September 2001, but the Pentagon’s willingness to

The utility of doctrine 171 transform was more muted than his hopes. A sudden and humiliating defeat in the shape of foreign hijackers gave Rumsfeld the leverage he needed. Instead of waiting for the next wake-up call, the armed forces should, from then on, actively forestall the next violator by being ‘proactive’. Rumsfeld’s article, ‘Transforming the Military’, in Foreign Affairs (spring 2002) did much to introduce the concept of military transformation to a wider audience, and to highlight that transformation was about much more than technology: ‘All the high-tech weapons in the world won’t transform the U.S. armed forces unless we also transform the way we think, train, exercise, and fight.’ 117 Accordingly, transformation in the context of NATO was defined as ‘a continuous and pro-active process of developing and integrating innovative concepts, doctrines and capabilities in order to improve the effectiveness and interoperability of military forces’.118 In this context, whether transformation has been a success or not is beside the point. What is important here is that the idea of transformation gave new currency to the concept of doctrine, even outside the USA: Doctrine itself does not provide the answers or solutions to the riddles of conflict but displays possible ways to find them. The evolution of Britain’s military-strategic doctrine after 1989 suggests that Britain’s Armed Forces have placed doctrine at the core of their transformation. They have come to understand the process of doctrine in its fundamental meaning – as a never-ending pursuit of conceptual excellence.119 By being doctrinally imaginative, the risk of being caught on the wrong foot again would hopefully be reduced. The most tangible sign in NATO of the importance of transformation, and subsequently doctrine development, was the establishment of Allied Command Transformation on a par with Allied Command Operations. Initially, in the 1990s, doctrine making had, as a rule, taken place in peacetime, which can be very different from that of war. Doctrine development in the trenches can be very different from doctrine development in lecture halls, for the simple reason that the feedback loops are very different. In war, they are shorter and often less ambiguous than in peace. Doctrine is perhaps both needed most and carries most risk when one does not practice war continuously: ‘This is not to argue that military innovation is dependent on war alone; it is to suggest that to prevent doctrine from becoming dogma is a singularly challenging task under all conditions short of major war.’ 120 Andrew Gordon underscores the point: ‘Every service has its tribal enclaves, each with its own agenda and its own interest in steering doctrine. And in periods of peace there are no empirical checks and balances to test their doctrinal claims.’ 121

172 Why doctrine? In principle, a military doctrine is made at three different places: ‘initially in the field where it is taking shape, tested and finalized; then in a staff where it is formalized and further developed; finally in a school known as a war school where it is taught and criticized’.122 The point here is that the three places can carry different weight depending on the situation. During wars, for instance the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, people with personal experience from the field tend to talk with greater authority than those people who never leave the libraries, and vice versa. Another pertinent question related to doctrine as a maker of change is: who should formulate doctrine and who should eventually sign it? Kjell Inge Bjerga at the Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, and one of Norway’s leading experts on the practicalities of doctrine making, differentiates between four archetypes of doctrine writing: (1) top-down, i.e. the writers’ job is to formulate, strengthen, and communicate to the forces the doctrinal message from the top brass; (2) bottom-up, i.e. the writers’ job is to collect and convey the troops’ experiences to the top brass for endorsement; (3) inside-out, i.e. the writers are the experts and convey their own educated opinions to both the top brass and to the practitioners in the field; and, finally, (4) outside-in, i.e. the doctrine writers struggle to keep afloat in a flurry of inputs from all directions, and the final production is little more than the least common multiple.123 Who should formulate doctrine and who should eventually sign it was a pertinent question even in the early infancy of modern doctrine making: ‘The means by which the supreme commanding authority should disseminate his doctrine is an interesting and profitable study for us all.’ 124 To a certain degree, that determines what can be expected from the finished product. If the doctrine is intended as a tool of change and of cultural engineering, and not just to verbalise existing military practice, it is paramount that it has strong support from the highest military levels; those which not only sign the doctrine, but also unambiguously and overtly believe in it. To have enough leverage to overcome organisational inertia, it is imperative that a commander with an already-established reputation assures and promotes the document and sometimes even stands as a ‘principal author’, as is often done in the USA; for example by General Frederick M. Franks, Jr., in 1993, and Petraeus in 2006. Military ‘mavericks’ with brilliant ideas may be an important part of the doctrinal development process, but they will never, in most strategic cultures, have the necessary organisational power that respected senior military officers have.125 The commitment of the last category is the sine qua non of doctrine as a change maker. But their attention is a precious commodity and should preferably not be drawn on excessively. If the aim of the doctrine is merely to serve as a textbook in military education, it is perhaps wiser that the doctrine is written by ‘thinking majors’ and officers with fresh experience from the field. For instance, in the late 1960s, when the Norwegian Air Force developed a doctrine-like

The utility of doctrine 173 document called Air Operations, the idea was, according to Lieutenant General Wilhelm Mohr (retired), to give the younger officers an opportunity to lecture their military seniors on how air operations actually were conducted.126 Such kinds of doctrines can, nonetheless, be signed by flag officers, but the actual involvement of the senior level is of less importance. Indeed, too much involvement from the ‘top brass’ may cause the doctrine to be too polished to be of any use in education, both ‘upwards’ and ‘downwards’. Sometimes, as, for instance, with the nearly legendary American AirLand Battle doctrine (1982), it is a combination of personally involved generals and exceptional officers of lower rank that creates the final product. Huba Wass de Czege, one of two authors of the AirLand Battle doctrine, writes perhaps a bit ostentatiously: In retrospect, the job required officers who were self-confident professionals and open-minded critical thinkers with an imagination, a standard I strove for and [Leonard D.] Holder achieved easily. We had strong combat records, were proven writers, had advanced degrees from Ivy League schools and had served on the West Point faculty in the Departments of History and Social Science.127 If the most important readers of the doctrine are outside the military, for instance politicians and journalists, the writing of the doctrine should perhaps be given to defence intellectuals, military or civilian academics, specially designated staff elements, or civil contractors.128 Even here, it can be important that the top brass do not actually participate, making it easier to shoot down futile doctrinal trial balloons without the danger of celebrity casualties. For most members of NATO, it would be somewhat hard to imagine fighting a war single-handedly. Hence, a doctrine can also be the product of a process of multinational consensus, as touched upon earlier. In COIN, it is also paramount that all actors, governmental and nongovernmental alike, sing from the same hymn sheet: ‘If other actors operate according to different principles, they can undermine even the most scrupulous regular military force efforts to implement a civiliancentred approach to COIN.’ 129 Hence, a doctrine can sometimes be of greater concern for the Prime Minister than the Minister of Defence. To recapitulate this section about doctrine and change: to significantly change huge organisations takes years and, usually, enormous effort. Given the difficulties, we should perhaps move away ‘from trying to change organizations and instead look at how we might help them become ready for change’.130 An important element in that process will be some sort of consciousness-raising activity, such as verbalising and publishing a doctrine: ‘Surfacing and critiquing the “taken-for-granteds” is important if the organization is not to find itself out of tune with its environment.’ 131 If

174 Why doctrine? you succeed, doctrine can become ‘a key weapon at the disposal of [military] leadership to steer their organisation through an era of uncertainty and sustained change’.132

A fourth generation? Broadly speaking, the art of war has been through three distinctive stages in the last two centuries. The first stage was characterised by the supreme commander’s presence on the battlefield. The next stage occurred when Helmuth von Moltke left the Feldherrenhügel for good. The third, and present stage, started with the end of the First World War, when air power and increased firepower turned the battlefield into a three-dimensional battle space. The introduction of new technology and the radical improvement of the old, forced even military theorists to change their ways of thinking and, according to Biddle, the mental aftermath of the Great War is still with us: [The First World War] introduced the central problem of modern warfare: how to conduct meaningful military operations in the face of radical firepower. And by the end of the war, an answer appeared that has remained central to great power military doctrines through more than eighty years of subsequent warfare.133 Does that mean that we have seen the end of doctrinal history? Presumably not. A ‘fourth generation doctrine’ is budding, which does not have its most important readers in the armed forces, but is tailor-made for spectators and bystanders.134 That military doctrines have been issued with an eye to how they would be read by adversaries and opponents is nothing new. That is part of the basic doctrinal dilemma. However, in an era characterised by wars of choice, what our own politicians, voters, and taxpayers think about the armed forces is becoming increasingly important. And new doctrines are important ways to tell them: In fact, the British Army’s interim doctrine on Wider Peacekeeping (1995) was designed to caution policy-makers and the public about the costs of using force in peacekeeping (unusually for military doctrine, a glossy version was on sale at bookstores).135 Doctrine is in danger of becoming an advertising leaflet, a facade, and a smokescreen: We should feel uncomfortable about this [external] role for ‘doctrine’, because it gives it a sheen of disrepute, as if doctrine is merely a public gambit, and not something to be taken seriously by the ‘in the

The utility of doctrine 175 know’. . . . Public relations is next door to media manipulation, which marches with propaganda, which is not a million miles from fraud.136 Propaganda was once a rather neutral term, denoting ‘any institution or scheme for propagating a doctrine or system [and] effort directed systematically toward the gaining of public support for an opinion or a course of action’.137 Indeed, whether propaganda was good or bad depended ‘upon the merit of the cause urged, and the correctness of the information published’.138 Rightly used, propaganda could thus be used for the benefit of all.139 However, now, and especially after the downfall of Joseph Goebbels’ Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, propaganda is something that other people do. If you like to call a spade a spade though, a modern doctrine can be propaganda as good as any. The Royal Navy, for instance, the British service most reluctant to adopt a formal doctrine, realised in the 1990s that the ‘other services were gaining considerable advantages present both within and without Whitehall’.140 The Royal Navy was also intimidated by the threat of a joint doctrine: ‘the development of joint doctrine was only a matter of time and it was crucial that the Navy [had] a document “on the table” when such a development began’.141 Hence, in order not to lose the turf war and the battle for funding, even the Royal Navy had to produce a doctrine. A service usually survives defeat in war, but not the loss of political support. General Anthony C. Zinni, US Marine Corps, was quite forthright about where the real ‘war’ was waged: We teach our ensigns and second lieutenants to recognize that sister Service as the enemy. It wants our money; it wants our force structure; it wants our recruits. So we rope ourselves into a system where we fight each other for money, programs, and weapon systems. We try to outdoctrine each other, by putting pedantic little anal apertures to work in doctrine centers, trying to find ways to ace out the other services and become the dominant service in some way. These people come to me and the other CinCs and ask, ‘What’s more important to you—air power or ground power?’ Incredible! Just think about it. My Uncle Guido is a plumber. If I went to him and asked, ‘What’s more important to you—a wrench or a screwdriver?’ he’d think I’d lost my marbles.142 A contemporary case of a suspected fourth generation doctrine made for pleasing the public opinion and not winning wars is The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. When Operation Iraqi Freedom almost foundered under the weight of hapless political leadership and the misconduct of military and civil contractors, as in Abu Ghraib and Fallujah in 2004, and in Haditha in 2005, something had to be done to keep afloat. The U.S. Army Field Manual No.

176 Why doctrine? 3–24 can, thus, be read as a rather thick brochure assuring Americans that their sons and daughters overseas were fighting a fair fight for a just cause. Apart from the military promulgation, the doctrine was issued in 2007 by the University of Chicago Press, and can be bought in commercial bookstores. The publisher itself indicates the problem. If doctrines are made to look good to modern liberal consciences, then they can send completely the wrong message to the warriors: The opposing school of thought wants to save the Army from its new doctrine. Instead of worrying that the manual will not be put into practice, these critics worry that it will be. One strand of this argument assumes that the only way to win against barbaric insurgents is to unabashedly adopt harsh means.143 Ralph Peters has the same message, but has given it a more eye-catching spin. Peters refers to a doctrinal discussion in the US Army in which he had participated: The draft manual he produced was utterly out of touch with reality. Its irrelevance was the topic of our meeting. Confronted with the utter nonsense the manual propounded, the officer was challenged to defend his winning-hearts-and-minds, don’t-shoot, negotiate-with-the-sheikhand-don’t-hurt-his-feelings approach to defeating insurgents. Pressed, the officer admitted, in front of several of his peers, that the most effective technique employed by the unit with which he had served in Iraq wasn’t handing out soccer balls, but strapping dead insurgents across the front of their tanks and driving around for the locals to get a good look – after which the relatives had to come to the military base to ask for the bodies. ‘Well, why isn’t that in the manual, if that’s what worked?’ I asked. It was a rhetorical question. The manual in question wasn’t about defeating insurgents, but about political correctness.144 Edward Luttwak has a similar fear, but put a bit less provocatively: Consequently, for all the real talent manifest in the writing of FM 3–24 DRAFT, its prescriptions are in the end of little or no use and amount to a kind of malpractice. All its best methods, all its clever tactics, all the treasure and blood that the United States has been willing to expend, cannot overcome the crippling ambivalence of occupiers who refuse to govern, and their principled and inevitable refusal to outterrorize the insurgents, the necessary and sufficient condition of a tranquil occupation.145 The point here is not whether out-terrorising the terrorists is a solution, however harsh. The point is that if the discrepancy between operational

The utility of doctrine 177 needs and the political salonfähig becomes significant, it can cause insurmountable strategic problems. The problem is also that the discussion about the manual’s content can draw the attention away from the strategic goal of the operation and to its means. What the American forces do can become more important than why they do it. More generally, in the absence of strategy, doctrine tends to loom too large.146 To what extent a given doctrine is actually used or not by the practitioners in the field is a research project of its own. It would obviously not suffice just to ask a number of prominent officers whether the doctrine is a vital tool in the field or just a window dummy. An important part of the doctrinal window dressing would obviously be to give the impression that the doctrine is anything but window dressing. For instance, in the introduction to the University of Chicago Press edition of The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, Sarah Sewall asks rather rhetorically: ‘First, is the manual insincere, cynically promising better counterinsurgency only to placate the public, and perhaps the military, conscience?’147 If she thought the answer to that question was yes, the University of Chicago Press would hardly have bothered to publish it. It is important not to overstate the point about fourth-generation doctrines, particularly if it is connected directly to The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. According to Stephen Biddle, The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual was in use in Iraq, but not always in a way that we would recognise: ‘In fact, Iraq is among the cases that fit the manual’s assumptions poorly – which has led actual U.S. strategy in Iraq to diverge from the manual’s prescriptions in ways that are not always fully appreciated in the public debate.’ 148 Crucially, this is not doctrinal cheating, but military prudence: ‘To the credit of General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, they have proven able to improvise and innovate under fire, departing from the manual to take advantage of unexpected trends.’ 149 Thomas Ricks supports the view that the manual really made a difference: The new counterinsurgency manual was officially issued only in December 2006, but within months it was being implemented on the streets of Baghdad. That was a sharp contrast to the first years of the war, when every unit pursued its own fight, often in very different ways. . . . ‘The biggest difference is, we have doctrine now.’150 And how bad would it actually be if future doctrines are for window dressing and not for war fighting? According to General Sir Rupert Smith, it is not enough to win the war in the field if you lose it at the news desk: If you are fighting for the will of the people, however many tactical successes you achieve they will be as naught if the people do not think

178 Why doctrine? you are winning. It is by communication through the media that this understanding is in large measures achieved.151 The media and war correspondents have been a nuisance to military commanders ever since they entered the battlefield in the nineteenth century, but, in our own era of hypermedia, public relations has become a crucial aid to victory. The media has become an important player in its own right. Indeed, according to General Smith, with forty years’ experience of military operations along the entire intensity scale, the news desk is almost as important as the battlefield itself: ‘Whoever coined the phrase “the theatre of operations” was very prescient. We are conducting operations now as though we were on a stage, in an amphitheatre or Roman arena.’ 152 Moreover, the media is not only an important arena of the fight, but one of the main weapons as well: ‘[T]he media is a crucially useful element in modern conflicts for attaining the political objective of winning the will of the people.’ 153 A doctrine in itself does not tell whether you are winning or losing, but it gives an impression of whether you fight honourably and win decently, important aspects in wars of choice. It is thus of interest to note that there were journalists, human rights advocates, and academics among the staff which developed The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.154 In almost mischievous ways, fourth-generation doctrines may, thus, turn out to be war-winning instruments precisely because they address the home front and not the soldiers in the field. However, such double communication can be self-defeating (as has been argued previously) if there are significant discrepancies between the doctrinal message and the actual modus operandi in the field, especially if the soldiers start to live by the doctrine. If you have to lose the war in the field in order to win it at the news desk, you may be worse off than you were when you won the shootout, but lost the argument. Consequently, it could be tempting to make one unofficial doctrine for internal use and an official one for window dressing, but even such a scheme can obviously backfire. It was perhaps easier during the Cold War to retain doctrines nobody actually believed in because the major war that could have called the bluff never materialised. Double standards are more difficult if the doctrine is put to the test each and every day, and especially so if many people wander from one realm to the other, i.e. from the battlefield to the newsrooms. Whistle-blowers, who by their own experience know how things actually work in the field, may ruin the showpiece completely. To sum up this discussion about the four generations of doctrine: firstgeneration doctrines, or rather, doctrine-like documents, such as the Royal Navy’s Fighting Instructions and Frederick the Great’s Instructions for His Generals, were made for forces where the supreme commander fought along with his men, either in front of them or close behind. In the second generation of doctrines, the supreme commanders had left the battlefield.

The utility of doctrine 179 The third-generation doctrines followed the commanders and left the battlefield as well, and tried, instead, to orchestrate a three-dimensional space and the entire range of combat capability, including physical, moral, and mental domains. The fourth generation of doctrines is in danger of leaving even the war. To sum up this chapter about doctrines’ future and versatility: the presence of future doctrines can be justified within the armed forces in, principally, three different ways. We keep doctrines because they make us better war fighters through educating the force, guiding the decision makers, or changing the force to cope with new challenges. Externally, we keep doctrines in order to communicate to friends and foes alike what we are up to.

9

Summary and conclusion

Everyone thinks they know what the oldest profession in the world is, but the second oldest is more disputed. Without claiming any unique ancestry, it is quite obvious that martial skills have been in great demand from time immemorial: Ever since there were wars to win, the question of what decides the victor has been a matter of far more than academic speculation. Rulers, generals and their chroniclers have always raked through the ashes of past conflicts to divine lessons for the future. Sometimes their thoughts were passed on to help the next generation, as well as to celebrate their own achievements.1 For those who have possessed war winning skills in ample amounts, there have been no limits to the heights they could reach and there have been no limits to the misery that might befall them if they fell behind in the military competition. Here, the survival of the fittest has to be taken literally. Hence, ways to improve and cultivate military prowess have always been of paramount interest to reigning and aspiring powers. Many of these ways seem strange to modern minds, and many fall outside the scope of this study. Our concern here has been a rather modern invention, namely written military doctrines. The word doctrine ventured irrevocably into the military vernacular of the Western world in the aftermath of the French disaster in 1870. How could France, still riding high on the legacy of Napoleon, be beaten so devastatingly by the Prussian upstart? Old explanatory variables, such as numbers and national wealth, cut conspicuously little ice. Not even modern variables, such as weaponry and military technology, can explain the catastrophe.2 It had to do with mental and organisational issues. It was something to do with the ability and willingness to fight that separated the Prussians from the French. This something was baptized la doctrine, which, more or less, deliberately rested on the word’s religious origin and theological baggage. The difference between formal and informal doctrine, bordering on ethos of some sort, has usually been played down in the academic treatment of

Summary and conclusion 181 doctrine. General William E. DePuy, for instance, gave doctrine a rather loose definition: ‘Its most accurate definition is that doctrine is simply the way things are done by most of the commanders most of the time.’ 3 It can, therefore, be seen as a matter of taste whether to issue a formally authorised doctrine in addition to the informal one, which apparently will always be present in any well-run organisation. Contrary to this, I find the difference between an ‘official doctrine, complete with authenticating imprimatur and published in a manual’ and the ‘unofficial doctrine in the minds of men’ rather more important and fundamental.4 Doctrine is something we can do something about, while ethos and other similar concepts are beyond practical reach. Doctrine is something we can write and print, while genuine ethos is not verbal, but a collective sentiment. One of doctrine’s main aims is to sustain ethos, but there is no directly manipulative causality between them. This study has argued that all doctrine makers have to, or rather ought to, take theory, culture, and authority into consideration when they produce doctrines. If they fail to do so, the result will not be a military doctrine, but something else. By varying the balance between their three constituting elements, doctrines can be made to do different things. In the following, we will recall the most pressing issues within each of these three elements. The main theoretical challenges a doctrine maker faces can be summed up in four words: reflexivity, complexity, controversy, and extremity. Reflexivity is a feature of all social sciences, military strategy included. Social sciences’ objects of study are able to negate the result of the investigations in a very different way to that of natural sciences’ objects.5 The complexity of social sciences is also of a different nature to that of physical science. The artificial isolation of mechanisms does not have the same utility in social science as in physical science. The controversy of theoretical concepts is also more tangible in social science than in physical science. A physical scientist is rarely afraid of stigmatising his objects of investigation. The extremity of war may entail that any knowledge about war not earned in war’s own carnage is a mere chimera, or at least extremely suspect. Owing to these epistemological challenges, military scepticism is almost as ancient as war itself. From at least the classical Greek period until today, people have wondered what on earth men with pencils could do for men with swords. Nevertheless, there has always been a small caste of warriors, either with pens or swords, or rather both, who have promoted the military value of words and coherent arguments. This lineage of military alchemists, and later theorists, hit a fork in the road in the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the Napoleonic Wars. The two towering figures in modern military theory making were standing on the same giants’ shoulders, but they saw very different things. Antoine-Henri de Jomini out-enlightened the Enlightenment so to speak, in the sense that he brought proto-positivistic military thinking to its

182 Summary and conclusion pinnacle. He wrote for the growing number of military professionals who wanted a systematic and passable route to military knowledge. His main rival, Carl von Clausewitz, on the other hand, tried to break free from the mental limitation of the past and attempted to catch those aspects of war that had slipped through the fingers of the military philosophes. That made his works more appealing to officers of a philosophical bent, but less helpful to more pragmatically minded people, who, after all, make up the majority of those drawn to the military vocation. Apparently, Clausewitz pulverised Jomini in their competition for posterior fame, but behind the headlines and catchphrases the Jominian approach is still going amazingly strong. Both Jomini and Clausewitz, like most of those who preceded them, saw history as a crucial laboratory for military theory making, but the Great War changed that considerably. The First World War was fateful and ground-breaking in many different ways, but in this context its most important effect was that military thinkers lost some of their previously overwhelming interest in history. The new technologies of war, and the vast numbers and distances involved, threw a veil of suspicion over the utility of the past. Could anything that was done with a sword on horseback be of any practical value after the invention of aircraft and tanks? History’s strong hold on military imagination was further undermined by the invention of the nuclear bomb, which caused havoc in systematic military thinking. Indeed, was there anything in the military profession at all that prepared officers to grasp the political and military significance of the bomb? Consequently, much nuclear strategy and theory making was done by civilians, and much of it felt rather outlandish to the common military man. Furthermore, it was not only the potential use of such unprecedented super-weapons that caused concerns, but even the fact that the presence of such bombs apparently eradicated conventional wars between major powers. If great wars, la grande guerre, had vanished forever, what did that mean for the military profession and military theory making? Should the military caste resort to carrying out peacekeeping and COIN operations only? Are military officers nothing more than inflated constables? Military thinking, and thus doctrinal development, was virtually lost in the fog of peace. While the theoretical part of doctrine rests on reason and ideally on the power of the best arguments, doctrine’s cultural, or a-rational part, rests on something else. What that something else actually is, and how it has influenced military thinking, is hard to pin down. However, if all attempts to explain a political decision or a particular military outcome have failed, culture may be of some help. Why Finland, for instance, almost managed a stalemate with the Soviet Union in 1939, against very bad geostrategic odds, and while Norway (which had a considerably better geostrategic starting point than Finland) lost against Germany, may have many explanations, but different strategic cultures in the two Nordic countries could

Summary and conclusion 183 be one of them. What you lack in material and geostrategy can, at least to a certain extent, be compensated for by a more potent strategic culture. Finland had won their independence through a terrible civil war, while Norway had won their independence without firing a shot. The utility of military force was obvious for the Finns, not so for the Norwegians. It is not only different strategic cultures at the national level that have been of interest to military theorists, but also different cultures within particular military forces. For several generations, the military spirit ingrained in Germany’s land forces apparently survived both revolutionary upheavals and societal breakdowns in its mother country. This has caught the interest of many doctrine writers. Was German military professionalism, which threatened its neighbours in two world wars, exportable to more democratic and benevolent powers? And, if so, could the importation be done by doctrine? And, if so, why did the German naval doctrine not cope just as well? Was Germany’s transformation to an extremely peaceful nation after 1945 also the result of a new doctrine? While pondering on such questions, it is, however, important not to give culture too ubiquitous a quality. If ‘culture’ is given too broad a definition, it may become conceptually bulimic and thus too unwieldy for practical use. Conversely, if it is defined too narrowly, the whole purpose of culture’s complexity may be lost. Nonetheless, in spite of culture’s unruly nature and perforated edges, doctrine’s main contribution may, in the future, be cultural in nature. Our ingrained thirst for meaning may partly be met by doctrine, which can provide the badly needed ‘whys’ to all the military ‘hows’. A doctrine writer has not only to take professional arguments and culture into consideration; he also has to take account of authority.6 Doctrine makers have to know how authority works. A military force must be strong enough to deter an enemy and win the war if necessary, but it cannot be so strong that it threatens its societal obligations. Pertinent questions for a doctrine maker, therefore, include: how ‘civilised’ can the military be and still keep its military punch? How much political meddling must a military expert actually put up with? And how unequal can the dialogue between generals and politicians be before it turns into a monologue? Presumably, we ought to end this study with a verdict. Has military doctrine been a success or not, historically speaking? As an opening remark, it can be established that, during the centuries, different military doctrines have been cultivated along all three ideal types, i.e. a tool of command, a tool of education, and a tool of change. As a longue durée, however, different geostrategy has influenced the importance attached to the command side of the triangle. Countries with homogenous strategic challenges, (for instance Germany) have, over time, tended to use doctrine as a tool of command, while those with heterogeneous and shifting strategic contexts, such as the United Kingdom and the USA, have tended to use doctrine mainly as a tool of education. In addition to such

184 Summary and conclusion deep-rooted historical structures come more abrupt events, such as a shocking defeat or an astonishing victory. Such strategic and political earthquakes may bring disaster, but they can also be golden opportunities for change. Indeed, some of the most fertile doctrinal discussions have occurred in the wake of such upheavals. Great Britain puts less faith in doctrine than the USA, France, and Germany, at least in a historical light, and is a master of ‘muddling through’. What is more, it rarely loses wars. Hence, Great Britain should perhaps be regarded as the litmus test revealing that doctrine is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for military victory. A closer look, however, suggests that such a conclusion would be too hasty and that the British approach to doctrine is, in fact, rather more complicated. As argued in Chapter 2 in this book, one of the main raisons d’être of modern doctrines is the limited opportunity to learn from our own mistakes due to the lethality of modern weapons: ‘Today the US Army must, above all else, prepare to win the first battle of the next war. Once the war is upon us, we shall aim at emerging triumphant from the second, third, and final battles as well.’ 7 What characterised Great Britain’s entrance into both world wars was exactly that its fortuitous geostrategic position allowed it time to learn. Both wars, especially the second, started with appalling military setbacks. Hence, the price of doctrinal neglect was astonishing defeats in the opening phase of the war. Great Britain needed time to set the gears in motion; time they actually had. Subsequently, Anthony Eden had some advice to give people with military ambitions: I would strongly advise them against holding a high military command in the first two years of any war in the British Army. Better to wait until the stuff begins to come along. Which, I am afraid, in the last two experiences [by which he meant the two world wars] was after the third year or later.8 In a modern war, however, against a technologically equivalent opponent, there is no reason to think that Great Britain would have any respite due to its fortunate geostrategic position. Hence, even British doctrine makers have to ‘be nearly right to begin with’.9 Second, the British Army traditionally plucked its leaders from a rather narrow stratum of Britain’s manhood, which also often had extensive experience of protracted imperial war at various levels and intensity; this produced a reasonably homogenous officer corps. Hence, the British Army almost got its ethos and ‘gentlemanly qualities’ for free: The lack of difference was so extreme that for some activities, such as officer appointments, there was an institutional sense that ‘one Englishman is about as good as another’ and that selection need not to be a difficult or troubling task.10

Summary and conclusion 185 Nelson’s way of recruiting subordinates, as we saw in the introduction to this study, was perhaps not that astonishing after all. Now, however, the heterogeneity, multiculturalism, and sheer size of modern forces make such doctrinal laissez-faire more dubious. Now, the cultivation of an ethos requires both a strong general staff and a formal doctrine, supported by considerable paperwork. Finally, not all observers have seen Britain’s lack of doctrine as a relative advantage, but as a liability that had to be overcome, again and again. According to Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham, the lack of doctrine has not been a blessing: The British Army is not an institution able to express views and to propose decisions on professional grounds alone, allowing the politicians both the right and the responsibility of disposal. To that extent, despite its achievement and reforms since 1906, the Army remains what it was then, sans doctrine and an unprofessional coalition of arms and services.11 As long as we cannot celebrate the era of eternal peace, the need to carefully and honestly codify, store, and distribute military knowledge, in one way or another, seems to be with us for some time, even if it is impossible to know with certainty what the future will bring for conflicts and crises. It will be equally important to be able to authoritatively hone the armed force’s culture in advantageous ways. A carefully thought-out doctrine can be of great help in that regard, even if it is not a panacea: ‘Doctrine itself does not provide the answers or solutions to the riddles of conflict but displays possible ways to find them.’ 12 If doctrine is the bridge between thought and action, we owe it to those in harm’s way to make the bridge as secure as we can possibly make it.13 Moreover, what we can strive for is a coherent doctrine, not a flawless or impeccable one. This study has argued that doctrine can serve several different purposes, and that ‘the trick is clearly to get the mix right. For doctrine to reinforce uniformity but not stifle initiative; for it to be relevant but not a brake to innovation’.14 In Chapter 1, we stated the main arguments against the idea of doctrine, here follow the main arguments in favour of doctrine, as we investigated in Chapter 8: • • •

An effective doctrine reduces the effect of Clausewitzian friction. Doctrine- like patterns of thought and cultural idiosyncrasies pop up and flourish whether we like it or not. By developing doctrine formally, we get a kind of control. Sometimes, systematic strategic thinking does not point unambiguously in one direction, and we therefore need a deliberate and approved choice as our bedrock for planning, procurement, and collective action.

186 Summary and conclusion • • •

The process of making and issuing doctrine can sharpen our language and clarify our concepts. (This is particularly important for alliances and coalitions). A doctrine can provide a steady platform for improvisations. A doctrine can, in given strategic cultures, serve as an academic punch bag.

Doctrinal sceptics seem anxious that formal codification of knowledge and cultural values, via doctrine, will serve as a Procrustean bed and emasculate experts and masters of the military trade who, ostensibly, are forced to sink to a mediocre level in order to heed the doctrine. However, the idea of doctrine is to accomplish exactly the opposite; not to pull the experts down, but to push the novice up. A doctrine is like a life jacket. You will not win an Olympic medal by using it, but that is not an argument to get rid of it all together, because there are situations where floating devices can be life saving. Moreover, whether a doctrine is stale or obsolete is usually a matter of degree, not of either-or. Hence, sharing knowledge and experience will enhance the efficiency of the organisation, even if they are not 100 per cent relevant for the case at hand. The same goes for standardisation of military vernacular at the joint level of war, i.e. across the services’ boundaries. If a soldier, for instance, reads the same into the term ‘close air support’ as an airman does, that is a good thing. Obviously, we also need someone who can break the pattern when necessary, and think ‘outside of the box’, but that necessitates a pattern to break. Doctrine facilitates both ‘intelligent obedience’15 and ‘loyal and proper disobedience’.16 Properly written, doctrine can light your way, ease your progress, train your judgement, and help you to avoid pitfalls.17 Or, perhaps, be ‘like the needle of the compass in the storm-tossed ship’.18 Alas, it cannot do wonders: ‘reiterations of doctrine cannot transform human nature or “change cockroaches into butterflies” ’.19

Notes

Introduction 1 Martin van Creveld (2000) The Art of War: War and Military Thought, London: Cassell, p. 126. 2 This metaphor is Theo Farrell’s. 3 This definition is my own, but resembles one by James C. Bradford stating that military doctrines are a ‘generally accepted method of performing military tasks and functions from an institutionalized viewpoint’. James C. Bradford (ed.) (2006) International Encyclopedia of Military History, New York: Routledge, p. 396. Throughout this study, we will encounter a number of other definitions highlighting different aspects of doctrine. 4 G. F. R. Henderson (1913) The Science of War, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., p. 7. 5 Note that in this study ‘strategy’ is also used as a generic term for the field of knowledge that deals with military matters more broadly. ‘The word strategy is of Greek origin. It originally meant the art of military leadership, but later came to include statecraft, to the extent that it was military in nature’. Trevor N. Dupuy (1993) International Military and Defense Encyclopedia, vol. 5, Washington, DC: Brassey’s (US), Inc, p. 2573. 6 Carl von Clausewitz (1976) On War, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 128. When not otherwise stated, this is the edition of Clausewitz’s On War referred to in this study. 7 In current theology, ‘doctrine’ has become a generic term for the theoretical component of religious experience. The New Encyclopædia Britannica (1974) vol. 17, Macropædia, 15th edn, London: Encyclopædia Britannica Company, p. 394. 8 Robin Barrow and Ronald Woods (2006) An Introduction to Philosophy of Education, 4th edn, London: Routledge, p. 73. 9 A more comprehensive description of the constituent parts of military doctrine is given in the opening section of Chapter 3. 10 ‘Scholars and military practitioners approach doctrine largely on the intuitive level, and there is no single approved definition. In practice, definitions follow institutional or personal whim and vary between individuals, services, nationalities and time periods’ (Palazzo, 2008). See Albert Palazzo (2008)From Moltke to Bin Laden: The Relevance of Doctrine in the Contemporary Military Environment, Australian Government, Department of Defence, Land Warfare Studies Centre, p. 6. Just for the record, the vagueness of central terms and the imprecision in terminology are frequent in most fields of knowledge. Johan L. Tønnesson (2008) Hva er Sakprosa, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, p. 85. 11 Bert Chapman (2009) Military Doctrine: A Reference Handbook, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Security International, p. 2.

188 Notes 12 Chaim Perelman quoted in Wayne C. Booth (2004) The Rhetoric of RHETORIC: The Quest for Effective Communication, Oxford: Blackwell, p. 73. 13 Aristotle (2001) Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Joe Sachs, Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, p. 2. 14 Clausewitz, On War, p. 193. 15 Ted Honderich (1995) The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 870. 16 Julian Lider (1983) Military Theory: Concept, Structure, Problems, Aldershot: Gower, p. 14. 17 Andrew Gordon (1997) ‘The Doctrine Debate: Having the Last Word’, in Michael Duffy, Theo Farrell, and Geoffrey Sloan (eds) Doctrine and Military Effectiveness, University of Exeter, Strategic Policy Studies, p. 47. 18 ‘Cognitive authority is, in these terms, an oxymoron. If you have knowledge, one need not have authority’. Stephen Turner, (2006) ‘What Is the Problem with Experts?’ in Evan Selinger and Robert P. Crease (eds) The Philosophy of Expertise, New York: Columbia University Press, p. 165. 19 In this study, ‘authority’ is simply defined as ‘the right to influence the behaviour of others on the basis of an acknowledged duty to obey; authority may be traditional, charismatic or legal-rational’. Andrew Heywood (2007) Politics, 3rd edn, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 445. 20 Karl Popper (2002) Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, London: Routledge, p. 95. 21 Epistemology is a concept that carries heavy philosophical baggage, but, in this book, we will use it in a rather non-technical way, and give it a somewhat informal definition, i.e. ‘the study of our right to the beliefs we have’. Ted Honderich, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, p. 245. 22 Peter Burke (2005) History and Social Theory, 2nd edn, Cambridge: Polity press, p. 3. 23 Ibid., p. 2. 1 Outlines and sidelines 1 Andrew Gordon (2000) The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command, London: John Murray, p. 158. 2 Richard Holmes (ed.) (2001) The Oxford Companion to Military History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 262. 3 ‘Doctrine is the cement that binds a military organization into an effective fighting unit.’ General George H. Decker (1961), quoted in Asa C. Clark, Peter W. Chiarelli, Jeffrey S. McKitrick, and James W. Reed (eds) (1984) The Defense Reform Debate: Issues and Analysis, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 85. 4 James Gordon Finlayson (2005) Habermas: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 43. 5 ‘Well conceived doctrine acts as a force multiplier and can provide a combatant with an advantage over an opponent – even one that is similarly armed and organised or which possesses greater mass and resources.’ Palazzo From Moltke to Bin Laden, p. 1. 6 T. N. Dupuy (1987) Understanding War: History and Theory of Combat, New York: Paragon House Publishers, p. 281. 7 Tolstoy, for instance, used the placeholder ‘X’ to refer to this unquantifiable factor of war: ‘In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass and some unknown x’. Leo Tolstoy (1993) War and Peace Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics, p. 849. Tolstoy, who we will meet again, is not an entirely reliable historical source, particularly due to his rather biased vindication of

Notes

8

9 10

11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21

22

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Kutuzov and the Russian people. However, as a philosopher of war, or rather, as a commentator of war, he is splendid. Rear Admiral J. H. S. McAnally, ‘The Purpose and Benefits of Doctrine: Why Go to All the Trouble of Having One?’ in Michael Duffy, Theo Farrell, and Geoffrey Sloan (eds) Doctrine and Military Effectiveness, University of Exeter, Strategic Policy Studies, p. 8. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (2007) Allied Doctrine for Joint Operations AJP-3(A) Brussels: July, pt. 0001. Jeffrey S. McKitrick and Peter W. Chiarelli (1984) ‘Defense Reform: An Appraisal’, in Asa A. Clark, Peter W. Chiarelli, Jeffrey McKitrick and Reed (eds) The Defense Reform Debate: Issues and Analysis, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 323. Gordon, ‘The Doctrine Debate: Having the Last Word’, in Duffy et al. (eds), Doctrine and Military Effectiveness, p. 46. Richard Overy, ‘Doctrine Not Dogma: Lessons from the Past’, in Duffy et al. (eds), Doctrine and Military Effectiveness, p. 34. General J. F. C. Fuller, quoted in S. L. A. Marshall (1947) Men against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, p. 107. Williamson Murray and Major General Robert H. Scales, Jr. (2005) The Iraq War: A Military History, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, p. 75. North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO (2008) Allied Joint Doctrine for Air and Space Operations, AJP-3.3(A), Brussels, pt. 0114 (Iraqi Freedom was an Americanled operation, not a NATO operation, but the American and NATO doctrine is congruent on this point. See ‘Strategic Attack’ in US Air Force Basic Doctrine 2003, available online at: www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/service_pubs/afdd1.pdf (accessed 15 January 2009). Wayne P. Hughes (1995) ‘The Power in Doctrine’, Naval War College Review, vol. 48, no. 3 (Summer), p. 11. McKitrick and Chiarelli, ‘Defense Reform’, p. 324. Frederick the Great (2005) Instructions for His Generals, trans. Thomas R. Phillips, New York: Dover Publications, p. 24. Matt M. Matthews (2008) We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War, quoted in ‘Assessment of Effects Based Operations’, Memorandum for U.S. Joint Forces Command, 14 August. ‘Assessment of Effects Based Operations’ (2008) Memorandum for U.S. Joint Forces Command, 14 August. Major General J. F. C. Fuller, The Reformation of War (1923), quoted in Charles Grant, ‘The Use of History in the Development of Contemporary Doctrine’, in, John Gooch (ed.) (1997) The Origins of Contemporary Doctrine, Occasional Paper no. 30, Camberley: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, p. 7. While this paper does not identify doctrine’s replacement, it does stress the need for military organisations to seek an alternative, modern, intellectual structure, one with greater applicability to the rapidly evolving and complex nature of the wars of the present and the future. (Palazzo, From Moltke to Bin Laden, p. 3)

23 Thomas E. Ricks (2007) Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, London: Penguin Books, p. 322. 24 L. H. R. Pope-Hennessy (1912) ‘The Place of Doctrine in War’, The Edinburgh Review, vol. 215, no. 439 (January), p. 21. (For the record, this was not PopeHennessy’s own view, as we will see in later chapters.) 25 This is more than mere semantics: ‘Indeed, this “how to think” versus “how to

190 Notes

26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

do” dichotomy appears to underlie the whole of the doctrinal debate’. Clark et al. (eds), The Defense Reform Debate, p. 86. McKitrick and Chiarelli, ‘Defense Reform’, p. 324. Ibid., p. 325. Simon Blackburn (2000) Ruling Passions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, , p. 31. The Norwegian Defence Command and Staff College (2007) Norwegian Armed Forces Joint Operational Doctrine, Oslo: The Defence Staff, p. 160. Mark Blaug, quoted in Roger E. Backhouse (ed.) (1994) New Directions in Economic Methodology, London: Routledge, p. 3. Norwegian Armed Forces Joint Operational Doctrine, pt. 0622, p. 162. ‘One simple proof of the rudimentary state of knowledge is that practically any statement can be made without fear of decisive contradiction.’ Quoted in Stephen Peter Rosen (1991) Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 41. Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom (2006) Why Truth Matters, London: Continuum, p. 154. ‘Assessment of Effects Based Operations’ (2008) Timothy T. Lupfer (1981) The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine during the First World War, Leavenworth Paper no. 4, Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute, July, p. 56. Overy, ‘Doctrine Not Dogma’, p. 44. Brian Holden Reid (1988) A Doctrinal Perspective, 1988–98, Occasional Paper no. 33, Camberley: The Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, p. 12. Clausewitz, On War, p. 88. Gordon, ‘The Doctrine Debate’, p. 50. Roger Beaumont (1994) War, Chaos, and History, Westport, CT: Praeger, p. 36. Robert Doughty (1985) The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919–1939, Hamden, CT: Archon Books, p. 12. ‘War’ has many of the characteristics of an ‘essentially contested concept’, i.e. ‘concepts the proper use of which inevitably involves endless disputes about their proper uses on the part of their users’. W. B. Gallie (1956) ‘Essentially Contested Concepts’, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 56, London: Harrison & Sons, p. 169. Clausewitz, On War, p. 75. Harry G. Summers, Jr. (1995) On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, Novato, CA: Presidio Press, p. 1. Michael Howard, quoted in Robert Mandel (2006) The Meaning of Military Victory, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, p. 14. Clausewitz, On War, p. 127. Keith Grint (2008) Leadership, Management and Command: Rethinking D-Day, New York: Palgrave, pp. 11–12. The following section is based on the chapter ‘Problems, Understanding and Decision-Making’ in Grint’s book. Ibid., p. 11. Haridimos Tsoukas (2005) Complex Knowledge: Studies in Organizational Epistemology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 85. Matthias Kaiser (2000) Hva er vitenskap?, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, p. 156. ‘[N]ot theorizing is an act [while] theorizing can correspond to the absence of willed activity, the “default” option.’ Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2007) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, New York: Random House, p. 64. José Fernández Vega (2007) ‘War as “Art”: Aesthetics and Politics in Clausewitz’s Social Thinking’, in Hew Strachan and Andreas Herberg-Rothe (eds) (2007) Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 124.

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53 Charles Reynolds (1978) ‘Carl von Clausewitz and Strategic Theory’, British Journal of International Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, p. 184. 54 Ibid., p. 185. 55 North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO (2007) Allied Joint Doctrine (AJP-01), Brussels, pt. 0261. 56 Gordon, ‘The Doctrine Debate’, p. 46. 57 This definition is based on NATO’s current definition from 1973: ‘Fundamental principles by which the military forces guide their actions in support of objectives. It is authoritative but requires judgement in application.’ NATO, Glossary of Terms and Definitions (AAP-6), available online at: www.nato.int/ docu/stanag/aap006/aap6.htm. 58 John Scott and Gordon Marshall (2005) Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 133. 59 Mats Alvesson (2002) Understanding Organizational Culture, London: Sage Publications, p. 54. 60 Albert Palazzo (2000) Seeking Victory on the Western Front: The British Army and Chemical Warfare in World War I, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, p. 9. 61 Julian Lider (1983) Military Theory: Concept, Structure, Problems, Aldershot: Gower, p. 312. 62 Allan D. English (2004) Understanding Military Culture: A Canadian Perspective, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, p. 23. 63 Theo Farrell, ‘Making Sense of Doctrine’ p. 3. 64 ‘It was victory that gave Blitzkrieg the status of doctrine.’ Hew Strachan (1983) European Armies and the Conduct of War, London: Routledge, p. 163. This verdict is not shared by all, however: ‘The conception and execution of German operations in the early war years − operations that came close to bringing the Germans victory in World War II − were entirely within the intellectual framework laid out by German doctrine’. Williamson Murray (1999) ‘Leading the Troops: A German Manual of 1933’, Marine Corps Gazette, (September), p. 97. 65 ‘Retrospectively, one may deduce an army’s implied doctrine from how it organises, disposes, trains and equips itself ’. Roger J. Spiller (1997) ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon: Doctrine and the US Army after Vietnam’, RUSI Journal, vol. 142, no. 6 (December), p. 41. 66 Marshal V. D. Sokolovsky (ed.) (1963) Military Strategy: Soviet Doctrine and Concepts, London: Pall Mall Press, p. 42. 67 Palazzo, Seeking Victory on the Western Front, p. 17. 68 ‘There is an argument that attempting to codify doctrine leads to rigidity of thought and even dogma’. D/CGS/50/8 (1996) Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine, prepared under the direction of the Chief of the General Staff, London: HMSO. 2 A history of military doctrine 1 Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’, p. 41. 2 In this context, ‘procedural knowledge’ covers varying combinations of ability and folksy knowledge. 3 Stephen Morillo with Michael F. Pavkovic (2006) What Is Military History?, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 24. 4 Hans Delbrück (1990) History of the Art of War: The Barbarian Invasions, Vol II, 1921, repr. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1990, p. 202. 5 Ibid. 6 The products of ‘private’ writers, such as, for instance, Vegetius, will not qualify as a doctrine in this study because they lack official doctrinal imprimatur.

192 Notes 7 Peter Burke (2000) A Social History of Knowledge from Gutenberg to Diderot, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 119. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., p. 16. 10 Bas Kist (1999) ‘Introduction’, in Jacob de Gheyn, The Exercise of Armes, ed. Bas Kist, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, pp. vi and viii. 11 Geoffrey Parker, ‘Dynastic War, 1494–1660’, in Geoffrey Parker (ed.) (1995) The Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare: The Triumph of the West, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 155. 12 ‘[Elizabeth] Eisenstein suggests how difficult it is today to imagine earlier cultures where relatively few persons had ever seen a physically accurate picture of anything’. Walter J. Ong (2002) Orality and Literacy, London: Routledge, 2002, p. 125. 13 Julian S. Corbett (1904–1905) ‘Fighting Instructions, 1530–1816’, Navy Records Society, vol. 29, p. 95. 14 Ibid. 15 Fredrick the Great, Instructions for His Generals, p. 80. 16 Ibid., p. 21. 17 Ibid., p. 11. 18 Ibid., p. 78. 19 Ibid., p. 9. 20 Quoted in Julian Jackson (2003) The Fall of France: The Nazi Invasion of 1940, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 24. 21 Frederick the Great, Instructions for His Generals, p. 27. 22 Paul Lockhart (2008) The Drillmaster of Valley Forge: The Baron De Steuben and the Making of the American Army, New York: HarperCollins, p. 19. 23 Publisher’s note in Baron von Steuben’s (1985) Revolutionary War Drill Manual, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications (first pub. 1794). 24 Franz Fabian (1996) Steuben: Ein Preusse in Amerika, Berlin: Vision Verlag, p. 256. The bluff was not only of Steuben’s own making: ‘The act of deception was not actually Steuben’s but, rather, a team effort in which all his promoters—Vergennes, St. Germain, Beaumarchais, Deane, and Franklin—took part.’ Lockhart, The Drillmaster of Valley Forge, p. 44. The reason for the deception was that Congress had become rather weary of foreign soldiers of fortune and, consequently, they had to smarten Steuben up considerably in order to get him a commission. 25 Linguistically, Steuben was helped out by good friends: ‘My dear Duponceau come and swear for me in English, these fellows won’t do what I bid them.’ Quoted in Lockhart, The Drillmaster of Valley Forge, p. 103. 26 ‘In a mere 150 pages of text and plates, the Baron had created one of the most significant and enduring documents in American military history’. Ibid., p. 191. 27 Steuben to Henry Laurens, April 1778, quoted in ibid., p. 116. 28 John L. Romjue (1997) American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War, Fort Monroe, VA: Military History Office, p. 11. 29 Baron von Steuben’s Revolutionary War Drill Manual. 30 The American revolutionary armies had not enough officers and experienced non-commissioned officers to be able to emulate fully the tactical proficiency of their German friends or British rivals, but that is another story. See Russell F. Weigley (1973) The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, p. 4. 31 Steuben to a Prussian after the war. Lockhart, The Drillmaster of Valley Forge, p. 104. ‘It was a Prussian officer, Steuben, who laid down the fundamental principle that an American army must understand the rational bases of discipline

Notes

32 33 34

35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50

193

and action.’ Edward Mead Earle, ‘Introduction’, in Edward Mead Earle (ed.) (1944) Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. vii. Yuval Noah Harari (2008) The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450–2000, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 177. Dudley W. Knox (1915) ‘The Role of Doctrine in Naval Warfare’, United States Naval Proceedings, vol. 41, no. 2 (March–April), p. 341. ‘To-day, the Commander-in-Chief cannot sum up everything in his own person. . . . Managing an army is too complex for a single man’. Colmar von der Goltz, quoted in Ferdinand Foch (1920) The Principles of War, London: Chapman & Hall (first pub. 1903), p. 20. Hajo Holborn, ‘The Prusso-German School: Moltke and the Rise of the General Staff ’, in Peter Paret (ed.) (1986) Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, , p. 288. Ibid., p. 291. As a small word of caution: Napoleon’s way of war is, of course, a huge subject with many sprawling interpretations. Holborn, ‘The Prusso-German School’, p. 291. ‘A mistake in the original concentration of the army can hardly be rectified during the entire course of the campaign’. Moltke, quoted in Gunther E. Rothenberg, ‘Moltke, Schlieffen, and the Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment’, in Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 300. J. F. C. Fuller (1957) A Military History of the Western World, vol. 3, New York: Da Capo Press, p. 134. Ladislaus Herbert Richard Pope-Hennessy (1911) ‘The British Army and Modern Conceptions of War’, The Edinburgh Review, vol. 213, no. 436 (April), p. 329. David K. Lewis (2002) Convention: A Philosophical Study, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers (first pub. 1969), p. 35. Moltke, ‘Instructions for Large Unit Commanders’, in Daniel J. Hughes (1993) Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings, New York: Ballantine Books, p. 171. Article 1.5 in 1869, ‘Instructions for Large Unit Commanders’, in ibid., p. 175. Rothenberg, ‘Moltke, Schlieffen, and the Doctrine of Strategic Envelopment’, p. 301. Ibid., p. 302. General Sir Rupert Smith (2005) The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, London: Penguin, p. 96. ‘Moltke rationalised the complexities of his age by institutionalising a selfreplicant system of interpretation and action that contemporary military professionals would identify as the first articulated doctrine of war’. Palazzo From Moltke to Bin Laden, p. 17. Clausewitz, On War, pp. 140–41. Carl von Clausewitz (1832) Vom Kriege, Berlin: Ferdinand Dümmler, pp. 126 and 128. A comparison of the ancient military institutions of Rome with those of Russia and Prussia is a subject worthy of serious attention; and it would also be interesting to contrast them with the doctrines of modern theorists, [les doctrines des utopistes modernes] who declare against the employment of officers of the army in other public functions. ( Jomini, 1992)

194 Notes

51 52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

See Antoine-Henri de Jomini The Art of War, London: Greenhill Books (first pub. 1838), p. 61. (The French phrase is from the edition of Précis de l’art de la guerre from 1855. Le Baron de Jomini, Précis de l’art de la guerre, ou Nouveau tableau analytique des principles combinaisons de la stratégie, de la grande tactique et de la politique militaire [Paris: Ch. Tanera, 1855], p. 139). The Encyclopædia Britannica (1910) 11th edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The nickname referred to a French religious order founded in 1592. Ibid. A small warning: To expect to find exactly who coined ‘doctrine’ in military matters is perhaps to expect too much: ‘[I]n most cases tracing the source of broadly shared ideas is a fool’s errand. Many ideas are so much a part of the general culture that specifying a particular textual influence is impossible.’ Gordon S. Wood (2008) The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History, New York: The Penguin Press p. 29. Antulio J. Echevarria II (2000) After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers before the Great War, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, p. 58. Ardant du Picq (1904) Etudes sur Le Combat: Combat Antique et Combat Moderne, Paris: Librairie Militaire R. Chapelot et Vo, p. 140. Ardant du Picq (1947) Battle Studies, trans. John N. Greely and Robert C. Cotton, Harrisburg, PA: The Military Service Publishing Company, pp. 179–180. Du Picq, Etudes sur Le Combat, p. 200. Azar Gat (2001) A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War, Oxford: Oxford University Press p. 309. Ibid., p. 307. Pope-Hennessy, ‘The British Army and Modern Conceptions of War’, p. 333. Christon I. Archer, John R. Ferris, Holger H. Herwig and Timothy H. E. Travers (2002) World History of Warfare, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, p. 420. Anonymous (1917) A General’s Letters to His Son on Obtaining His Commission, London: Cassell and Company, p. 90. Quoted in Brigadier General T. Capper’s (1912) ‘Lecture to the Members of the Royal Military Society of Ireland, Dublin on 29th February 1912’, in Capper 214/4, London, Kings College: Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, p.7 Lieutenant Colonel Bonnal, quoted in Douglas Porch (1981) The March to the Marne: The French Army, 1871–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 57. Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1968) A History of Warfare, London: Collins, p. 436. Pope-Hennessy, ‘The British Army and Modern Conceptions of War’, p. 322. Jan Bloch, quoted in Michael Howard, ‘Men against Fire’, in Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 512. Quoted in Gabriel Darrieus (1908) War on the Sea, trans. Philip R. Alger, Annapolis, MD: The US Naval Institute, p. 253. General H. Langlois (1909) Lessons from Two Recent Wars: The Russo-Turkish and South African Wars, translated for the General Staff, War Office, London: HMSO, p. 145. Foch, The Principles of War, p. 7. Ibid. The French phrases are from Maréchal F. Foch (1918) Principes de la guerre, 5th edn, Paris: Berger-Levrault, p. 7. Le Général Bonnal (1902) De la Méthode dans les Hautes Études militaires en Allemagne et en France, Extrait de Minerva, du 1er octobre 1902, Paris: Albert Fontemoing, p. 11. (‘A doctrine, however perfect, has only effect through the

Notes

72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80 81 82

83 84

85 86

87 88 89 90

195

man who is convinced and persuasive enough to make it penetrate the spirit of the followers.’) Gat, A History of Military Thought, p. 415. Ibid. Foch, The Principles of War, p. 18. Langlois, Lessons from Two Recent Wars, p. viii. ‘Too much emphasis has been placed on the importance and influence of Foch as a military theorist. He did no more than echo views very generally held, not only in the French army, but in others as well.’ Howard, ‘Men against Fire’, in Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 514. Porch, The March to the Marne, p. 214. Darrieus, War on the Sea. Ibid. Gabriel Darrieus (1911) Sjökriget, dess Strategi och Taktik, trans. Erik Wrangel, Stockholm: Marinlitteraturföreningens Förlag, p. 280. Oscar Wilde (1998) The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oxford: Oxford University Press (first pub. 1891), p. 148. Spenser Wilkinson (1895) The Brain of an Army, a Popular Account of the German General Staff, new edition, Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co, p. 204. Importantly, given the theory that doctrine is a French ‘invention’, the passage quoted here is a citation from Revue militaire de l’Étranger, vol xxxii. p. 261. The Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. (1910). T. E. Lawrence (1997) Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Classics of World Literature (first pub. 1935), p. 179. It would take more research, but it is presumably not too speculative to assume that neither ‘doctrine’ nor ‘Foch’ was part of Lawrence’s vocabulary before 1916, Spencer Wilkinson notwithstanding. Gat, A History of Military Thought, p. 309. ‘In fact, the old Prusso-German army had no concept of doctrine in the modern American and Western sense. That army used the term Lehre rather than Doktrin to describe the concepts in its official manuals.’ Hughes, Moltke on the Art of War, p. 174. Porch, The March to the Marne, p. 238. Otto Ruge (1929) ‘Operative systemer – Unité de doctrine’, Norsk Militært Tidsskrift, vol. 92, Oslo, p. 46 (my translation). Ibid., p. 37. Ibid., p. 38. This phenomenon is known from other areas of life as well: This is more or less how Hegel viewed the history of the world. It may seem pretty meaningless while we are living it, but for Hegel it all makes perfect sense when, so to speak, the Zeitgeist looks back over its shoulder and casts an admiring eye upon what it has created. Terry Eagleton (2007) The Meaning of Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 80

91 ‘Although senior officers in the British army were willing to accept the need for common doctrine on a theoretical level, they shared a pervasive British distaste for allowing their actions to be dictated by abstract ideas.’ David French (2000) Raising Churchill’s Armies: The British Army and the War against Germany, 1919–1945, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 21. The impression that military doctrine is still a rather un-British term is further amplified by the fact that you find ‘military drum’ in the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1998), but not ‘military doctrine’. 92 Michael Howard, ‘The Liddell Hart Memoirs’ (1966), quoted in Colin

196 Notes

93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106

107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115

116 117

McInnes and John Stone ‘The British Army and Military Doctrine’, in Duffy, Farrell, and Sloan (eds), Doctrine and Military Effectiveness, p. 16. Andy Simpson (2006) Directing Operations: British Corps Command on the Western Front, 1914–18, Stroud, Gloucestershire: Spellmount Ltd., p. xvi. Pope-Hennessy, ‘The Place of Doctrine in War’, p. 29. G. F. R. Henderson paraphrased in Hew Strachan (ed.) (2006) Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the 20th Century, Abingdon: Routledge, p. 4. Ken Booth (1979) Strategy and Ethnocentrism, New York: Holmes & Meier, p. 16. Pope-Hennessy, ‘The Place of Doctrine in War’, p. 24. As we will see in Chapter 8, Pope-Hennessy did not buy the ‘doctrine of no doctrine’ and its premises, for good reasons. Brian Holden Reid, ‘Introduction: Is There a British Military “Philosophy”?’ in J. J. G. Mackenzie and Brian Holden Reid (eds) (1990) Central Region vs Out-of-Area: Future Commitments, London: Tri-Service Press, p. 1. Pope-Hennessy, ‘The British Army and Modern Conceptions of War’, p. 321. Ibid., p. 324. Jean Colin (1912) The Transformation of War, London: Hugh Rees, p. xv. Ibid., p. 338. Field Service Regulations, Part I: Operations, 1909, repr. with amendments, London: HMSO, p. 13. John Terraine (2000) Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier, London: Cassell & Co. (first pub. 1963), p. 43. Haig in a response to Henry Wilson, 20 September 1918, quoted in ibid., p. 43. Andy Simpson, ‘British Corps Command on the Western Front, 1914–1918’, in Gary Sheffield and Dan Todman (eds) (2004) Command and Control on the Western Front: The British Army’s Experience, 1914–18, Staplehurst, Kent: Spellmount Ltd., p. 99. John Terraine (2000) Douglas Haig: The Educated Soldier, London: Cassell & Co. (first pub. 1963) p. 42. Haig at the General Staff Conference at the Staff College in January 1907, quoted in ibid. ‘It is difficult to see how FSR could be applied at all, as trench warfare rendered redundant most of its assumptions about an attack.’ Simpson, ‘British Corps Command on the Western Front, 1914–1918’, p. 101. Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective, p. 14. McInnes and Stone, ‘The British Army and Military Doctrine’, p. 18. ‘The Army will be trained in peace and led in war in accordance with the doctrine contained in this volume.’ Quoted in ibid., p. 20. Jomini’s interpretation of Napoleon’s way of war had had a huge impact on American military thinking. Gat, A History of Military Thought, p. 289. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War, p. 12. The Instructions for the Government of Armies in the Field (General Orders No. 100 or The Lieber Code of 1863) issued during the Civil War is sometimes held up as ‘the closest approach to a doctrine of war [the US Army] had until 1905’. Brian McAllister Linn (2007) The Echo of Battle: The Army’s Way of War, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 44. However, granting the code certain doctrinal elements, it is a document more important in the history of martial law than in the history of military doctrine. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War, p. 13. Holmes, The Oxford Companion to Military History, p. 299. This was the final stage of a very long process:

Notes

197

In 1775/76 the volunteer army of New England was the first army in history in which most privates could read and write. Around the same time it was apparently expected of every sergeant in the Russian, Austrian and British armies, and even of most corporals, to be able to read and write. (Harari, The Ultimate Experience, p. 192) 118 Hew Strachan (2003) The First World War, London: Simon & Schuster, p. 302. 119 Shelford Bidwell and Dominic Graham (2004) Fire-Power: The British Army Weapons and Theories of War, 1904–1955, Barnsley: Pen & Sword (first pub. 1982), p. 3. 120 Jay Luvaas (1986) ‘Some Vagrant Thoughts on Doctrine’, Military Review, (March), p. 56. 121 William Mitchell (1921) Our Air Force: The Keystone of National Defense, New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, p. 15. 122 Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’, p. 41. 123 James A. Blackwell, ‘Professionalism and Army Doctrine: A Losing Battle?’ in Don M. Snider and Lloyd J. Matthews (eds) (2005) The Future of the Army Profession, 2nd edn, Boston: McGraw-Hill, p. 325. 124 Colonel Van Martin (2004) ‘Doctrine, Training and Military Education in the U.S. Army’, Doctrine: General Military Review, no. 2 (March) (issued by C.D.E.S, French Army Doctrine and Higher Military Education Command), p. 28. 125 Unfortunately, I am not in a position to say much about the relation between Russian and French thinking regarding doctrine, other than pointing out the strong relations between the two countries, as, for instance, encapsulated by Jomini’s long involvement with the tsar. Hence, the question of whether the French and Russian doctrinaires are two branches of the same tree or two separate trees, I have to leave to others. I am not even tempted to speculate about a possible common propensity for doctrinal thinking within Bolshevism and Catholicism. 126 Richard W. Harrison (2001) The Russian Way of War: Operational Art, 1904–1940, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, p. 123. 127 Trotsky, ‘Military Doctrine or Pseudo-Military Doctrinairism’ (5 December 1921), in Leon Trotsky (1971) Military Writings, New York: Pathfinder, p. 44. Just for the record, the Eastern front line was not as ossified as the Western front, and the Russian Civil War and the Russian war against Poland in 1920 gave rather different lessons than the Great War. William C. Fuller, Jr., ‘What Is a Military Lesson?’ in Thomas G. Mahnken and Joseph A. Maiolo (eds) (2008) Strategic Studies: A Reader, 2003; repr. London: Routledge, 2008, p. 49. 128 Trotsky, ‘Military Doctrine or Pseudo-Military Doctrinairism’, p. 37. 129 Ibid., pp. 82 and 84. 130 Ibid., p. 55. 131 Ibid., pp. 47–48. 132 Quoted in Condoleezza Rice, ‘The Making of Soviet Strategy’, in Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 657. 133 Aleksandr Andreevich Svechin (1992) Strategy, ed. Kent D. Lee, Minneapolis, MN: East View Publications (first pub. 1927), p. 62 and 76. 134 Trotsky, ‘Military Doctrine or Pseudo-Military Doctrinairism’, p. 85. 135 Holmes, The Oxford Companion to Military History, p. 339. 136 Sokolovsky (ed.), Military Strategy, p. 41. 137 Lider, Military Theory, p. 306. 138 Willard C. Frank, Jr., and Philip S. Gillette (eds) (1992) Soviet Military Doctrine from Lenin to Gorbachev, 1915–1991, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, p. 2. 139 Overy, ‘Doctrine Not Dogma’, p. 45. 140 Henri Kissinger, quoted in Dag Henriksen (2007) NATO’s Gamble: Combining

198 Notes Diplomacy and Airpower in the Kosovo Crisis, 1998–1999, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, p. 66. 141 Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’, p. 42. 142 H. P. Willmott92002) When Men Lost Faith in Reason: Reflections on War and Society in the Twentieth Century, Westport, CT: Praeger, p. 201. 143 Even before, and during, the Vietnam War, the US Army, at least important parts of it, saw countering insurgents as beside the point: The professional standards that led the army to develop innovative doctrine for the European theatre also led senior army leadership to see counterinsurgency as a ‘fad’ to which it should give minimal effort so as not to “ruin” the army for serious war. (Avant, 2007)

144 145 146

147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

160 161 162

See Deborah Avant, ‘Political Institutions and Military Effectiveness’, in Risa A. Brooks and Elizabeth A. Stanley (eds) (2007) Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, p. 92. Robert Coram (2002) Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, p. 370. Shimon Naveh (1997) In Pursuit of Military Excellence, London: Frank Cass, p. 251. John A. Nagl (2005) Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 206. This doesn’t mean of course that everyone within the US Army forgot all about counterinsurgency, but that the Army did so at the institutional level. Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 197. ‘We started out ignoring it; it just was not an issue.’ William E. DePuy, TRADOC’s first commander, quoted in Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’, p. 45. Ibid. This was not the case in Continental Europe, where, for instance, the July crisis in 1914 was distinguished by the adversaries’ fear of being caught on the wrong foot. James F. Dunnigan and Raymond M. Macedonia (1993) Getting It Right: American Military Reforms after Vietnam to the Gulf War and Beyond, New York: William Morrow and Company, p. 27. E. S. Quade (ed.) (1964) Analysis for Military Decisions, Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, p. 1. This conclusion did not necessarily follow directly from the actual outcome of that particular war. In fact, Israel was taken by surprise, but still managed to recoup. Dunnigan and Macedonia, Getting It Right, p. 28. John R. Elting (1987) The Superstrategists, London: W. H. Allen, p. 245. FM 100–5: Operations (Washington, DC: HQ, Department of the Army, 1 July 1976), pp. 1–1. Ricks, Fiasco, p. 131. Quoted in ibid., p. 302. The quotation is from Michael J. Eisenstadt and Kenneth M. Pollack, ‘Armies of Snow and Armies of Sand: The Impact of Soviet Military Doctrine on Arab Militaries’, in Emily O. Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason (eds) (2003) The Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, p. 76. DePuy, quoted in Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’, p. 46. Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 202. Henry G. Gole (2008) General William E. DePuy: Preparing the Army for Modern War, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, p. 240.

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163 Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’, p. 46. 164 For the record, another reason for rethinking doctrine was the ending of the draft in 1973. Chapman, Military Doctrine, p. 17. 165 Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’, p. 52. 166 John I. Alger (1982) The Quest for Victory: The History of the Principles of War, London: Greenwood Press, p. 164. 167 Quoted in Gole, General William E. DePuy, p. 258. 168 From Starry’s ‘Reflections’, in George F. Hofmann and Donn A. Starry (eds) (1999) Camp Colt to Desert Storm: The History of U.S. Armored Forces, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, quoted in Gole, General William E. DePuy, p. 265. 169 Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’, p. 48. 170 Ibid. 171 Ibid., p. 44. 172 See, for instance, Gole, General William E. DePuy. Importantly, the other military services in the USA had their own ways to doctrinal maturity, but those stories are intentionally left out of this study due to consideration of space. 173 Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’, p. 51. 174 Nils Marius Rekkedal (2004) Modern Krigskonst: Militärmakt i förändring, 3rd rev. edn, Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan, p. 131. 175 Naveh, In Pursuit of Military Excellence, p. 251. 176 Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’, p. 51. 177 Ibid., p. 52. 178 Ibid., p. 42. 179 Quoted in Harry G. Summers, Jr. (1992) A Critical Analysis of the Gulf War, New York: Dell Publishing, p. 7. 180 Guenter Lewy (1978) America in Vietnam, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 138. 181 ‘After the Vietnam War, we purged ourselves of everything that had to do with irregular warfare or insurgency, because it had to do with how we lost that war. In hindsight, that was a bad decision.’ General Jack Keane, quoted in John A. Nagl (2007) ‘Foreword to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, in The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. xiv. 182 Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 129. 183 Hew Strachan, ‘The British Way in Warfare’, in David G. Chandler and Ian Beckett (eds) (1994) The Oxford History of the British Army, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 411. 184 Ibid. 185 D/CGS/50/8 (1989) Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine. 186 See Farrell, ‘Making Sense of Doctrine’, and Palazzo, From Moltke to Bin Laden, p. 19, for a number of different candidates. 187 Overy, ‘Doctrine Not Dogma’, p. 34. 188 Colin McInnes (1996) Hot War, Cold War: The British Army’s Way in Warfare, 1945–95, London: Brassey’s, p. 71. 189 It is worthy of note that Field Service Regulations (1909) could, in fact, be bought from booksellers for one shilling. 190 BR 1806 (1947) Naval War Manual, 47, London: HMSO. 191 This section about declassification of British doctrines is based on an e-mail correspondence with Brigadier (ret.) Tom Longland, 13 and 15 December 2006. 192 The Freedom of Information Act, which was passed in 2000, made the classification of such generalised material almost impossible.

200 Notes 193 Sarah Sewall, ‘Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, in The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, p. xxi. 194 The field manual was reviewed by several Jihadi websites, and has also been found in Taliban training camps in Pakistan. Nagl, ‘Foreword to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, p. xvii. 195 This section on the American policy on the availability of doctrine is based on an e-mail correspondence with Lieutenant Colonel Tohmas Brevick at Allied Command Transformation, Norfolk, Virginia, in December 2006. 196 The USA also passed the Freedom of Information Act, but this had presumably little impact on the availability of the field manuals since they were already, to a large extent, unrestricted and available. 3 Military thinking: an elusive undertaking 1 Plato, Phaedrus, 253d, in Plato (1997) Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, p. 531. 2 Ibid. 3 The two horses have also been seen as good and evil. That reading of the metaphor is not very relevant to our case. 4 Clausewitz, On War, p. 89. 5 Thomas E. Ricks (2009) The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008, New York: The Penguin Press, p. 307. 6 Andrew J. Bacevich (2005) The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. xii. 7 Clausewitz, On War, p. 89. 8 J. F. C. Fuller (1926) The Foundations of the Science of War, London: Hutchinson & Co., p. 51. 9 Clausewitz, On War, p. 89. 10 US Army Regulation 320–5, Dictionary of Army Terms (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1965), quoted in Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’. 11 Elizabeth Kier (1997) Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine between the Wars, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 165. For the record, Palazzo connects doctrine exclusively to rationality, and ethos exclusively to a-rationality: unlike doctrine, which is an intellectual construct that a military organisation deliberately fabricates to meet a particular need, ethos is a cultural construct that is intimately woven into the fabric of a military institution’s spirit, history and tradition, and which infuses its members with a shared understanding, conception and perspective of war. (Palazzo, From Moltke to Bin Laden, p. 43)

12 13 14 15 16 17 18

If you make that distinction, however, you lose doctrine’s gist as it evolved after 1870. Paul Johnston (2000) ‘Doctrine Is Not Enough: The Effect of Doctrine on the Behaviour of Armies’, Parameters, vol. 30, no. 3 (Autumn). J. C. Wylie (1967) Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, p. v. Ibid. Jim Storr (2005) ‘A Critique of Effects-Based Thinking’, RUSI Journal, vol. 150, no. 6 (December), p. 33. Honderich, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, p. 245. Karl Popper (2002) The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge, 2002) (first pub. 1957), p. 11. Steven Bernstein, Richard Ned Lebow, Janice Gross Stein and Steven Weber

Notes

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32 33

34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

201

(2000) ‘God Gave Physics the Easy Problems: Adapting Social Science to an Unpredictable World’, European Journal of International Relations, vol. 6, no. 1 (March), p. 47. Ibid. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, p. 7. Ibid., p. 14. Blackburn, Ruling Passions, p. 15. Edward N. Luttwak (1987) Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, p. 4. Colin S. Gray (1999) Modern Strategy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 42. Sir Michael Howard (2004) ‘Military History and the History of War’, Occasional Paper no. 47, Shrivenham: The Strategic and Combat Studies Institute, p. 53. Basil Henry Liddell Hart (1967) Strategy, 2nd rev. edn ,1967; repr. London: Meridian, 1991, p. 396. Ibid. Montecuccoli, writing in the seventeenth century, had, in fact, a more realistic take on the reflexivity of war than his younger colleagues: ‘The same principle is observable in fencing: whoever anticipates his partner is the victor although in theory an adversary could always do the same.’ Raimondo Montecuccoli, Sulle Battaglie [Concerning Battle], in Thomas M. Barker (1975) The Military Intellectual and Battle: Raimondo Montecuccoli and the Thirty Years War, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, p. 144. Basil Henry Liddell Hart (1932) The British Way in Warfare, London: Faber & Faber, p. 304. Raimondo Montecuccoli, Sulle Battaglie, in Barker, The Military Intellectual and Battle, p. 166. Jomini, The Art of War, p. 325. Ibid., p. 349. Ibid., p. 169. ‘No matter how complex any theory may appear, mankind is infinitely more inventive, more inspired, and more mischievous than any theoretical approach can accommodate.’ Ralph Peters, ‘The West’s Future Foes: Simplification and Slaughter’, in Michael Evans, Alan Parkin, and Russell Ryan (eds) (2004) Future Armies, Future Challenges: Land Warfare in the Information Age, Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, p. 18. ‘For example, there can be political or public relations consequences of the analysis itself. More general knowledge of the true costs of war can make public approval more difficult.’ Francis A. Beer (2001) Meanings of War & Peace, College Station, TX: A&M University Press, p. 7. George R. Lucas, Jr. (2009) Anthropologists in Arms: The Ethics of Military Anthropology, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., p. 7. Patrick Porter (2009) Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes, London: Hurst & Company, p. 26. Harari, The Ultimate Experience, p. 10. Corbett, ‘Fighting Instructions’, p. x. Stephen E. Toulmin, The Uses of Argument, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 162. Ibid., p. 91. British Defence Doctrine (1996) Joint Warfare Publication 0–01, London: MOD, p. 4.13. Ibid., p. 4.12. Stephen Toulmin (2001) The Uses of Argument, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 91. Gat, A History of Military Thought, p. 65.

202 Notes 45 Ibid. 46 Alger, The Quest for Victory, p. 38. 47 Montecuccoli, Della Guerra col Turco, quoted in Rothenberg, ‘Maurice of Nassau, Gustavus Adolphus, Raimondo Montecuccoli, and the “Military Revolution” of the Seventeenth Century’, in Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 62. 48 Lord Wavell to Liddell Hart, quoted in Colonel B. P. McCoy (2007) The Passion of Command: The Moral Imperative of Leadership, Quantico, VA: Marine Corps Association, p. 1. 49 W. K. Naylor, ‘The Principles of War (Part I)’ (1922), quoted in Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 130. 50 Lloyd J. Matthews, ‘Anti-Intellectualism and the Army Profession’, in Snider and Matthews (eds), The Future of the Army Profession, p. 61. 51 Ibid., p. 62. 52 Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective, p. 32. This attitude can have deep roots: The officer corps was traditionally conservative and often anti-intellectual, in line with Edwardian upper-middle class prejudices, and this is reflected in a typical, although not total, rejection of doctrine. This antiintellectualism had something to do with class attitudes, something to do with Social Darwinism, something to do with Victorian empiricism, and something to do with nineteenth-century colonial warfare. (Travers, 1987)

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

See Tim Travers (1987) The Killing Ground: The British Army, the Western Front and the Emergence of Modern Warfare, 1900–1918, London: Allen & Unwin, p. 38. Quoted in Matthews, ‘Anti-Intellectualism and the Army Profession’, p. 62. Ibid. Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, 17 April 1987, quoted in ibid., p. 71. Ralph Peters (2007) ‘Learning to Lose’, The American Interest, vol. 2, no. 6, (July/August), p. 25. Ibid., p. 26. Ibid., p. 27. Grant, quoted in Alfred Vagts (1959) A History of Militarism, 2nd edn, London: Hollis and Carter, p. 28. Gat, A History of Military Thought, p. 332. Moltke, ‘Instructions for Large Unit Commanders’, in Hughes, Moltke on the Art of War, p. 174. Ibid., p. 172. Foch, The Principles of War, p. 6. Ernest Sosa, ‘The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge’, in Ram Neta and Duncan Pritchard (eds) (2009) Arguing about Knowledge, London: Routledge, p. 290.

4 Doctrinal foundationalism 1 John Shy, ‘Jomini’, in Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 144. 2 Crane Brinton, Gordon A. Craig, and Felix Gilbert, ‘Jomini’, in Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, pp. 79 and 89. This makes Jomini into the instigator of a Kuhnian paradigm, where the paradigm provides scientists ‘not only with the map but also with some of the directions essential for map-making’. Thomas S. Kuhn (1996) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd edn, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 109. 3 Jomini, The Art of War, p. 323. 4 Brinton, Craig, and Gilbert, ‘Jomini’, p. 91.

Notes

203

5 ‘I have no doctrine, for I believe in none. Every concrete case demands its own particular solution. . . . If there is a doctrine at all then it is common sense, that is, action adapted to circumstances.’ J. F. C. Fuller (1914) ‘The Tactics of Penetration: A Counterblast to German Numerical Superiority’, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, vol. 59 (August–November), p. 389. 6 Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War, p. 21. 7 Ibid., p. 46. 8 ‘This view implied that scientific theories, if they are not falsified, for ever remain hypotheses or conjectures’. Karl Popper (2002) Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography, London: Routledge Classics (first pub. 1974), p. 88. 9 Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War, p. 13. 10 Ibid., p. 27. 11 Antoine-Henri Jomini is undoubtedly the individual whose thought and writings most profoundly contributed to the emergence and growing popularity of the idea that a small number of principles guide the commander in his quest for success on the battlefield . . . but the claim that he provided the first list of principles of war cannot be supported. Like his eighteenthcentury predecessors, he was not consistent in his methodology or in his definitions. . . . Even in his last major work, it is not clear what Jomini meant by ‘general principles’. (Alger, The Quest for Victory, pp. 18–19) 12 Ibid., p. 121. 13 ‘The British army, at the urging of J. F. C. Fuller, was evidently the first to codify an official list of principles, which it did in 1920; the US Army followed one year later.’ Antulio J. Echevarria II (2007) Clausewitz and Contemporary War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 174. 14 Alger, The Quest for Victory, p. xi. For the record, Fuller eventually grew more sceptical of the utility of the principles of war. ‘The British theorist, J. F. C. Fuller, purportedly abandoned his quest to develop principles of war because the British army began treating them as prescriptive rules.’ Echevarria II, Clausewitz and Contemporary War, p. 156. 15 See, for instance, General David Petraeus’ list of principles in Ricks, The Gamble, Appendix D. 16 ‘Jomini identified the trees of war. Clausewitz not only knew the trees; he saw the forest’. Dupuy, Understanding War, p. 13. 17 Ibid., p. xxv. 18 Ibid., p. 13. 19 P = combat power, N = number of troops, V = variable circumstances affecting a force in battle, and Q = quality of force. Ibid., p. 30. 20 Dupuy, Understanding War, p. 30. 21 Clausewitz, On War, p. 152. 22 Beaumont, War, Chaos, and History, p. 173. 23 Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 204. 24 Paul Boghossian (2006) Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 14. 25 Guilio Douhet, quoted in K. Booth(1972) ‘History or Logic as Approaches to Strategy’, Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, vol. 117, no. 667 (September), p. 38. 26 ‘Happily, it is not necessary to rely upon argument alone in order to prove the worth of doctrine. History furnishes a number of illustrations from which a good estimate of its value may be made.’ Knox, ‘The Role of Doctrine in Naval Warfare’, p. 340.

204 Notes 27 Fredrick Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1998) (first pub. 1911), p. iii. 28 Ibid., p. iii and iv. 29 Ibid., p. iv. 30 Dudley W. Knox (1915) ‘The Role of Doctrine in Naval Warfare’, United States Naval Proceedings,vol. 41, no. 2 (March–April) p. 326. 31 Ibid. 32 This was a view not shared by all American officers. According to Brian McAllister Linn, there exist in America ‘three distinct, and often antagonistic schools of thought’, i.e. the Guardians, Heroes, and Managers. Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 234. The Heroes never gave up the belief in the great captain. 33 Quade (ed.), Analysis for Military Decisions, p. 2. 34 Ibid., p. 3. 35 Michael E. O’Hanlon (2009) The Science of War, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 248. O’Hanlon defines ‘the science of war’ as ‘a structured, analytical, often quantitative, often rather technical side to prepare for combat’. Ibid., p. 1. 36 ‘Sublimity’ is a challenging concept and we will not delve into its complexity here. The point of using the concept in this study is that it was particularly important in Clausewitz’s era and denoted phenomena that transgressed and overwhelmed our normal mindset and preconceptions, but which could still be coped with by our reason and ethical commitment: Humans discover that despite the fragility of their body and the narrowness of their imagination, their reason and their ethical judgment are divine sparks that are superior even to the breathtaking vistas of the Alps, to the raging ocean, or to the terrors of the battlefield. (Harari, The Ultimate Experience, p. 152) Even to Kant, war had an element of sublimity: War itself, provided it is conducted with order and a sacred respect for the rights of civilians, has something sublime about it, and gives nations that carry it on in such a manner a stamp of mind only the more sublime the more numerous the dangers to which they are exposed, and which they are able to meet with fortitude. (Kant, 1973)

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

See Immanual Kant (1973) Critique of Judgment, trans. James Creed Meredith, Oxford: Clarendon Press, book 2, section 28, p. 112. Risa A. Brooks, ‘Introduction’, in Brooks and Stanley (eds), Creating Military Power, p. 6. Tom Siegfried (2006) A Beautiful Math: John Nash, Game Theory, and the Modern Quest for a Code of Nature, Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, p. iv. André Corvisier (ed.) (1994) A Dictionary of Military History, and the Art of War, English edition ed. John Childs and trans. Chris Turner, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, p. 98. Bülow, quoted in Gat, A History of Military Thought, p. 84. Clausewitz, On War, p. 86. Richard Mankiewicz, The Story of Mathematics (London: Cassell & Co., 2000), p. 160. John McDonald, ‘A Theory of Strategy’, Fortune, in John von Neumann and Oscar Morgenstern (1949) Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, SixtiethAnniversary Edition, repr. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 693. Jomini, The Art of War, p. 323. Neumann and Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, p. 3.

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46 Ibid., p. 2. 47 Philip D. Straffin (1993) Game Theory and Strategy, Washington, DC: The Mathematical Association of America, p. 27. For the record, others, such as Bernard Brodie, were more sceptical of this approach to war: ‘I do not share their conviction that their theory could be directly and profitably applied to problems of military strategy.’ Bernard Brodie, ‘Strategy as a Science’ (1949) in Thomas G. Mahnken and Joseph A. Maiolo (eds), Strategic Studies: A Reader, London: Routledge, p. 20. 48 ‘A young scientist attached to the Air Force’, quoted in John McDonald, ‘A Theory of Strategy’, Fortune (1949), reprinted in Neumann and Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, p. 692. 49 Straffin, Game Theory and Strategy, p. 3. 50 Neumann and Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, p. 13. 51 Quade (ed.), Analysis for Military Decisions, p. 2. 52 Richard Mankiewicz (2000) The Story of Mathematics, London: Cassell & CO., p. 163. 53 Bruce Kuklick (2006) Blind Oracles: Intellectuals and War from Kennan to Kissinger, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 24. 54 Amir D. Aczel (2004) Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market, and Just About Everything Else, New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, p. 94. 55 Jim Baker (2006–2007) ‘Systems Thinking and Counterinsurgencies’, Parameters, vol. 36, no. 4 (Winter), p. 42. 56 Kuklick, Blind Oracles, p. 20. 57 Beaumont, War, Chaos, and History, p. 138. 58 Philip Ball (2004) Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another, London: William Heinemann, p. 508. 59 Kuklick, Blind Oracles, p. 35. 60 Siegfried, A Beautiful Math, p. 103. 61 Ibid., p. 111. 62 Ariel Rubinstein, ‘Afterword’, in Neumann and Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, p. 634. 63 Ibid. 64 Ian Hacking (1999) The Social Construction of What?, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 93. 65 Neumann and Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, p. 14. 66 Philip Ball (2004) Crtical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another, London: William Heinemann, p. 242. 67 T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, p. 183. 68 Alan Beyerchen ‘Clausewitz and the Non-Linear Nature of War: Systems of Organized Complexity’, in Hew Strachan and Herberg-Rothe (eds) (2007) Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 47. 69 Vince Lombardi, quoted in Baker, ‘Systems Thinking and Counterinsurgencies’, p. 42. 70 McDonald, ‘A Theory of Strategy’, p. 710. 71 ‘If an optimal strategy is ever found chess will become as trivial as noughts and crosses [tic-tac-toe]. Was there an optimal strategy for nuclear weapons?’ Mankiewicz, The Story of Mathematics, p. 163. 72 Annual Report of the Commandant U.S. Infantry and Cavalry School (1906), quoted in Alger, The Quest for Victory, p. 85. 73 According to British Maritime Doctrine, ‘[d]octrine has its foundation in history; the study, analysis and interpretation of experience’. The Fundamentals of British Maritime Doctrine (1806) (1995) London: HMSO, p. 12. 74 Fuller, quoted in Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War, p. 1. 75 Markus Mäder (2004) In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence: The Evolution of British

206 Notes

76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

Military-Strategic Doctrine in the Post–Cold War Era, 1989–2002, Studies in Contemporary History and Security Policy, vol. 13, Bern: Peter Lang, p. 310. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, p. 41. Alexander Ross, The History of the World (1652), quoted in Beverley Southgate (1996) History: What & Why? Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Perspectives, London: Routledge, p. 141. William C. Fuller, Jr., ‘What Is a Military Lesson?’ in Mahnken and Maiolo (eds), Strategic Studies, p. 36. Gray, Modern Strategy, p. 1. Clausewitz, On War, p. 515. This comparison between Gray and Clausewitz is perhaps not entirely fair because Gray talks about strategy and Clausewitz about war, but they both convey a kind of perenniality in such matters. Ibid., p. 389. John A. Warden III (1998) The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat, rev. edn, San Jose, CA: toExcel, p. 4. Michael Howard, ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History’, in Sir Michael Howard (1983) The Causes of Wars and Other Essays, 2nd edn London: Temple Smith, p. 188. From Leopold von Ranke, Geschichte der romanischen und germanischen Völker (1824), quoted in Inga Floto (1996) Historie: En videnskabshistorisk undersøgelse, Købenehavn: Museum Tusculanums, p. 24. Howard, ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History’, p. 189. C. P. Ankersen (1998) ‘Learning from Mistakes? The Use and Abuse of History in Decision Making’, The RUSI Journal, vol. 143, no. 5, (October), p. 53. Howard, ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History’, p. 191. Ibid., p. 195. Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars, p. 18. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, p. 3. Ankersen, ‘Learning from Mistakes?’ p. 51. Brodie, ‘Strategy as a Science’, p. 10. That expectations often outstrip the pace of technological development is not necessarily a thing of the past: I could not begin to estimate how many helicopters or light armoured vehicles a submarine carrier might handle. But rule of thumb extrapolation from various known points suggested that a battalion group’s worth of either type of force would be a realistic cockshy, perhaps a conservative one. (Simpkin, 1985)

94 95

96 97

See Richard E. Simpkin (1985) Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty-First Century Warfare, London: Brassey’s Defence Publishers, p. 159. Twenty-five years later, this does not seem like a particularly conservative estimate. Quoted in Gunnar Åselius, ‘Why Military History?’ in Klaus-Richard Böhme and Gunnar Åselius (eds) (2000) Why Military History?, Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan, p. 2. ‘[T]hey knew that nuclear war must be a terrible event, one literally without historical precedent in degree of awfulness. But, they did not know what such a war would be like, beyond the fact that it would be catastrophic.’ Colin S. Gray (2005) Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, p. 366. Sir Michael Howard (2006) Captain Professor: A Life in War and Peace, London: Continuum, p. 162. Bernard Brodie, quoted in Kuklick, Blind Oracles, p. 57.

Notes

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98 Ibid., p. 35. 99 Gwynne Dyer (2005) War: The Lethal Custom, rev. edn New York: Carroll & Graf, p. 331. 100 Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May (1986) Thinking in Time: The Use of History for Decision-Makers, New York: The Free Press, p. xxi. 101 ‘Ultimately history is about asking questions before it is about finding answers.’ Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars, p. 17. 102 ‘[I]t must never be forgotten that the true use of history, military or civil, is, as Jacob Burckhardt once said, not to make men clever for next time; it is to make them wise for ever.’ Howard, ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History’, p. 197. 103 Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 237. 104 Brodie, ‘Strategy as a Science’, p. 11. 105 Stephen Toulmin (2001) Return to Reason, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. l3. 106 [W]e can no longer satisfy ourselves with a monolithic treatment of the scientific way of warfare since the ideas and principles promulgated under it have fluctuated considerably as a result of both changes internal to science and war as well as to wider socio-cultural transformations’ (Bousquet, 2009)

107 108 109 110 111 112 113

114 115

116 117 118

See Antoine Bousquet (200) The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity, London: Hurst & Company, p. 235. Jon Elster, ‘A Plea for Mechanisms’, in Peter Hedström and Richard Swedberg (1988) Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 45. Ibid., p. 49. Ibid. Ibid. Jon Elster (1989) Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 9. Foch, The Principles of War, p. 17. Napoleon, Correspondence, X, no. 8209, quoted in Alger, The Quest for Victory, p. 17. As a small digression, Clausewitz would probably not have supported the idea that principles mark the outer bounds of adequate reasoning or should be treated as a slide calliper: ‘Theory cannot equip the mind with formulas for solving problems, nor can it mark the narrow path on which the sole solution is supposed to lie by planting a hedge of principles on either side.’ Clausewitz, On War, p. 578. For instance, two of Euclid’s axioms are ‘[t]hings which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another’ and ‘[i]f equals be added to equals the wholes are equal.’ Euclid (1933) Elements, London: Everyman’s Library, p. 6. Montgomery was of a similar opinion: ‘We are very apt in our army to start by becoming immersed in detail without being clear about the fundamentals on which all detail is based. Our training pamphlets err badly in this respect.’ Quoted in Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective, p. 26. Basil Henry Liddell Hart (1920) ‘The “Man-in-the-Dark” Theory of War: The Essential Principles of Fighting Simplified and Crystallised into a Definite Formula’, The National Review, (June), p. 473. Liddell Hart, The British Way in Warfare, p. 302. Joseph C. Myers (2006–2007) ‘The Quranic Concept of War’, Parameters, vol. 36, no. 4 (Winter), p. 109.

208 Notes 119 Brigadier S. K. Malik (1986) The Quranic Concept of War, New Delhi: Himalayan Books, p. 6. 120 Ibid., p. 3. 121 Ibid., p. 1. 122 Deuteronomy, 20:10–13. 123 Trotsky, Military Writings, p. 10. 124 V. D. Sokolovsky (1975) Soviet Military Strategy, ed. Harriet Fast Scott, New York: Crane Russak & Company, p. 6. 125 Jomini, The Art of War, p. 325. 126 Alger, The Quest for Victory, p. 4. 127 Ibid., p. xvii. 128 Brodie, ‘Strategy as a Science’, p. 9. 129 Ibid., p. 10. 130 Hjalmar Erickson, ‘The Doctrine of War and of Training’, lecture delivered at the US Army General Staff College, 17 April 1921, quoted in Alger, The Quest for Victory, p. 137. 131 Brodie, ‘Strategy as a Science’, p. 10. 132 Alger, The Quest for Victory, p. 122. 133 E. S. Hughes, ‘Principles of War?’ quoted in Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 130. 134 ‘[M]ost commentators shared the opinion that its great danger was that “the young should take it seriously” ’. Alger, The Quest for Victory, p. 124. 135 J. E. Edmonds’ review of Fuller’s Foundation of the Science of War, Army Quarterly, vol. 12, (1926), quoted in Christopher Bassford, ‘The Primacy of Policy and the “Trinity” in Clausewitz’s Mature Thought’, in Strachan and HerbergRothe (eds), Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century, p. 79. 136 Gray, Modern strategy, p. 20. 137 Robin Neillands (2005) The Dieppe Raid: The Story of the Disastrous 1942 Expedition, London: Aurum Press Limited, p. 4. 138 Hacking, The Social Construction of What? p. 34. 139 Jeremy Black, ‘What Wins Wars?’ in Harriet Swain (ed.), Big Questions in History (London: Vintage Books, 2006), p. 144. 140 Steven Shapin (1996) The Scientific Revolution, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 140. 141 Clausewitz, On War, p. 169. 142 Donald A. Schön (1991) Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions, San Francisco: Jossey-Brass Publishers, p. 3. 5 Doctrinal coherentism 1 Richard Rorty (1979) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 9. 2 Clausewitz, On War, p. 71. 3 H. Rothfels, ‘Clausewitz’, in Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 100. 4 Clausewitz, On War, p. 140. 5 Translated subtitles, such as ‘A Positive Doctrine Is Unattainable’ and ‘Theory Should Be Study, Not Doctrine’, enforce that impression. Cf. Chapter 2 of this study. 6 Clausewitz, On War, p. 153. 7 Ibid., p. 153. 8 Ruge, ‘Operative systemer’, pp. 50 and 52. 9 Clausewitz, On War, p. 132. 10 Hew Strachan, ‘Clausewitz and the Dialectics of War’, in Strachan and HerbergRothe (eds), Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century, p. 17.

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11 Hew Strachan (2007) Clausewitz’s On War: A Biography, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, p. 26. 12 Clausewitz, On War, p. 517. 13 ‘[T]heoretical results must have been derived from military history or at least checked against it.’ Ibid., p. 144. 14 Carl von Clausewitz (1976) On War, trans. Colonel J. J. Graham, London: Penguin Classics (first pub. 1908), p. 208. 15 Ibid., p. 210. 16 Jon Tetsuro Sumida (2008) Decoding Clausewitz: A New Approach to On War, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, p. 146. 17 Clausewitz, On War, p. 141. 18 Fritz Ringer (1992) Fields of Knowledge: French Academic Culture in Comparative Perspective, 1890–1920, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 304. 19 Ibid., p. 2. 20 Clausewitz, On War, p. 148. 21 ‘Wilhelm von Humboldt put things more succinctly when he said that war is “one of the most beneficial phenomena for the Bildung of mankind” ’. Harari, The Ultimate Experience, p. 198. 22 Clausewitz, On War, p. 154. 23 The ponderous tomes of Clausewitz are so solid as to cause mental indigestion to any student who swallows them without a long course of preparation. Only a mind developed by years of study and reflection can dissolve the solid lump into digestible particles. (Hart Lidell, 2007) As quoted in Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War, p. 16. 24 Jomini, The Art of War, p. 325. 25 Raymond Aron (1983) Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, p. 237. 26 John R. Searle (1995) The Construction of Social Reality, London: Penguin Books, p. 33. 27 Hacking, The Social Construction of What? p. 6. 28 Tolstoy, War and Peace, p. 76. 29 Clausewitz to Marie v. Brühl, 29 September 1806, about Scharnhorst’s working conditions on the eve of the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt. Quoted in Peter Paret, Clausewitz and the State: The Man, His Theories, and His Times (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 124. 30 Clausewitz, ‘Unfinished Note’, in On War, p. 71. 31 Cf. ‘folksy knowledge’ in Chapter 1. 32 ‘[W]here there is no place for a justificatory answer, we can only switch our answers on to the biographical plane.’ Toulmin, The Uses of Argument, p. 225. 33 Evan Selinger and Robert P. Crease, ‘Introduction’, in Selinger and Crease (eds), The Philosophy of Expertise, p. 2. 34 Julian S. Corbett (1972) Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, London: Longmans, Green and Co (first pub. 1911), p. 2. 35 Jerker J. Widén (2007) ‘Sir Julian Corbett and the Theoretical Study of War’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 30, no. 1 (February), p. 113. 36 Robert Fogelin (2003) Walking the Tightrope of Reason: The Precarious Life of a Rational Animal, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 161. 37 Ibid., p. 82. 38 Richard Rorty (1999) Philosophy and Social Hope, London: Penguin Books, p. xxiii. 39 Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, quoted in Jonathon W. Moses and Torbjørn L.

210 Notes

40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63

64 65 66

Knutsen (2007) Ways of Knowing: Competing Methodologies in Social and Political Research, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 23. Simon Blackburn (2006) Truth: A Guide for the Perplexed, London: Penguin Books, 125. Ibid., p. 126. Friedrich V. Kratochwil, ‘Evidence, Inference, and Truth as Problems of Theory Building in the Social Sciences’, in Richard Ned Lebow and Mark Irving Lichbach (eds) (2007) Theory and Evidence in Comparative Politics and International Relations, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 41. Colin S. Gray (2003) Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History, London: Frank Cass, p. 18. Toulmin, The Uses of Argument, p. 120. Richard Rorty, ‘Dismantling Truth: Solidarity versus Objectivity’, in Louis P. Pojman (ed.) (2006) Philosophy: The Quest for Truth, 6th edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 230. Geoffrey Till (2004) Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty-First Century, London: Frank Cass, p. 33. See, for instance, Arne Røksund (2007) The Jeune École: The Strategy of the Weak, Leiden: Brill. Till, Seapower, p. 61. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 39. Cass R. Sunstein (2006) Infotopia, How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 56. Toulmin, The Uses of Argument, p. 229. Toulmin, Return to Reason, p. 214. Martijn Blaauw and Duncan Pritchard (2005) Epistemology A–Z, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, p. 51. ‘Social science has yet to provide a single perfect methodology; each of the major research traditions has important shortcomings taken alone.’ Stephen Biddle (2004) Military Power, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 9. ‘Each method thus has strength and weaknesses. None would be sufficient alone, yet each offers something unique and important.’ Ibid., p. 11. Ibid., p. 10. Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett (2004) Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 18. Jay Luvaas (1999) Napoleon on the Art of War, New York: The Free Press, p. 41. Clausewitz, On War, p. 578 (if coup d’oeil, or ‘stroke of the eye’, sounds a bit outdated, then ‘sense making’ is its contemporary equivalent). See, for instance, Derek Mi-Chang Yuen (2007) ‘Linking the East and West: In Search of a General Theory of Strategy’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Reading. Carl von Clausewitz (1843) The Campaign of 1812 in Russia, trans. Francis Egerton, Third Lord Ellesmere, 1843; repr. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995, p. 41. Honderich, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, p. 410. Richard D. Hooker, Jr. (ed.) (1993) Maneuver Warfare: An Anthology, Novato, CA: Presidio, p. 1. Toulmin, Return to Reason, p. 47. ‘Universal economic theories have too often led economics to overlook “non-economic” factors.’ Ibid., p. 64. The same could be said about Jomini and his fellow foundationalists’ isolation of the battlefield from non-military factors. H. R. Winton (2011) ‘An Imperfect Jewel: Military Theory and the Military Profession’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 34, No. 6 (December), p. 853. Clausewitz, On War, p. 158. Blackburn, Truth, p. 151.

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67 Popper, Unended Quest, p. 270. 68 Sir Michael Howard, paraphrased in Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective, p. 54. 69 Sir Michael Howard, ‘Military Science in the Age of Peace’, quoted in English, Understanding Military Culture, p. 149. 70 Huba Wass de Czege, ‘Army Doctrinal Reform’, in Clark, Chiarelli, McKitrick, and Reed (eds), The Defense Reform Debate, p. 105. 71 Peter Winch, paraphrased in Benson and Stangroom, Why Truth Matters, p. 36. 72 The term rationally suggests a demonstration that can proceed from premises acceptable to all human beings, regardless of the cultural or historical location. There are no such demonstrations. But their absence does not matter. It is still rational to try to persuade our children to love what we have loved, admire what we admire. (Rorty and Mendieta, 2006) See Richard Rorty and Eduardo Mendieta (2006) Take Care of Freedom and Truth Will Take Care of Itself, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press p. 97. 6 On enculturation 1 Terry Eagleton (2000) The Idea of Culture, Oxford: Blackwell, p. 1. 2 Scott and Marshall, Oxford Dictionary of Sociology, p. 133. 3 Indeed, cultural issues have been a question from the time of Thucydides onwards, but we have to leave the really long lines of cultural thinking to another occasion. 4 Ann Swidler, ‘What Anchors Cultural Practices’, in Theodore R. Schatzki, Karin Knoor Cetina, and Eike von Savigny (eds) (2001) The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, London: Routledge, p. 75. 5 Eagleton, The Idea of Culture, p. 57. In the words of T. S. Eliot, ‘[c]ulture may even be described simply as that which makes life worth living’. Quoted in Eagleton, The Idea of Culture, p. 112. 6 Eagleton, The Idea of Culture, p. 59. 7 Theo Farrell (2005) The Norms of War: Cultural Beliefs and Modern Conflict, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, , p. 1. 8 Kenneth N. Waltz (1959) Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis, New York: Columbia University Press, p. 50. 9 Kenneth Waltz (1979) Theory of International Politics, New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 121. 10 The quotation is from Alastair Iain Johnston (1995) Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 3. 11 Jack Snyder, ‘The Concept of Strategic Culture: Caveat Emptor’, in Carl G. Jacobsen (ed.) (1990) Strategic Power: USA/USSR, New York: St. Martin’s Press, p. 3. 12 Thomas C. Schelling (1980) The Strategy of Conflict, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980 (first pub. 1960), p. 17. Schelling distinguishes games of strategy from games of skill and games of chance, where games of strategy are those in ‘which the best course of action for each player depends on what the other players do’. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, p. 3. 13 Richard Ned Lebow (2003) The Tragic Vision of Politics, Ethics, Interests and Orders, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 35. 14 Porter, Military Orientalism, p. 56. 15 Robert M. Citino (2005) The German Way of War, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, p. xiv.

212 Notes 16 Eagleton, The Idea of Culture, p. 38. 17 Jack L. Snyder (1977) The Soviet Strategic Culture: Implications for Limited Nuclear Operations, R-2154-AF, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, p. 4. Snyder defines ‘strategic culture’ as ‘the sum total of ideas, conditioned emotional responses, and patterns of habitual behaviour that members of a national strategic community have acquired through instruction or imitation and share with each other with regard to nuclear strategy’. Ibid., p. 8. 18 Johnston, Cultural Realism, p. 5. 19 Ibid., p. 11. 20 Ibid., p. 22. 21 Robert M. Cassidy (2004) Peacekeeping In the Abyss, British and American Peacekeeping Doctrine and Practice After the Cold War, London: Praeger, p. 14. 22 Gray, Modern Strategy, p. 129. 23 Johnston, Cultural Realism, p. 5. 24 Snyder, ‘The Concept of Strategic Culture: Caveat Emptor’, p. 4. 25 Lawrence Sondhaus (2006) Strategic Culture and Ways of War, London: Routledge, p. 4. 26 Colin Gray (1999) ‘Strategic culture as context: the first generation of theory strikes back’ Review of International Studies Vol. 25, no. 1, p. 49. 27 Ibid., p. 50. 28 Ibid., p. 51. 29 Johnston, Cultural Realism, p. 5. 30 Alastair Iain Johnston (1995) ‘Thinking about Strategic Culture’ International Security, vol. 19, no. 4 (Spring), p. 45. 31 Kier, Imagining War, p. 164. 32 Ibid., p. 5. 33 Theo Farrell (1998) ‘Culture and Military Power’, Review of International Studies, vol. 24, no. 3 (July), p. 409. 34 Edward Lock (2010) ‘Refining strategic culture: return of the second generation’ in Review of International Studies vol. 36, no.3 (July), p. 691. 35 Ibid., p. 701. 36 Johnston, Cultural Realism, p. 5. 37 John A. Lynn (2004) Battle: A History of Combat and Culture, Cambridge, MA: Westview, p. 363. 38 Jeffrey S. Lantis (2005) ‘Strategic Culture: From Clausewitz to Constructivism’, Strategic Insights, vol. 4, no. 10 (October), available online at: www.ccc. nps.navy.mil/si/2005/Oct/lantisOct05.asp (accessed 9 February 2009). 39 Kier, Imagining War, p. 146. 40 Porter, Military Orientalism, p. 15. 41 Porter, Military Orientalism, p. 81. 42 Williamson Murray (1999) ‘Does Military Culture Matter?’ Orbis, vol 43 no.1 (Winter). 43 Gray, Strategy, p. 137. 44 Anthony Downs (1967) Inside Bureaucracy, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, p. 195. 45 Jack Snyder (1984) The Ideology of the Offensive: Military Decision Making and the Disasters of 1914, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, p. 27. 46 Lynn, Battle, p. 300. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid., pp. 284–285. 49 James Stuart Bell and Jeanett Gardner (2008) Living the Serenity Prayer: True Stories of Acceptance, Courage and Wisdom, Littleton Avon, MA: Adams Media, p. 2. 50 Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism, p. 16.

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51 Farrell, ‘Culture and Military Power’, p. 412. Indeed, new institutionalism suggests that normative isomorphism is mostly a one-way street, with ‘the poor and weak and peripheral copy[ing] the rich and strong and central’. Small states seek the prestige attached to greatpower military symbols, as well as the certainty provided by great-power scripts for military action. (Farrell, 2007)

52

53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61

62 63 64 65 66 67 68

See Theo Farrell, ‘Global Norms and Military Effectiveness: The Army in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland’, in Brooks and Stanley (eds), Creating Military Power, p. 141. The evolution of the Irish Army after 1921 is a particular conspicuous case. See also, Farrell, The Norms of War. ‘The German military style reflected a national attitude that took war very seriously – a predilection inspired by the numerous invasions that German states had suffered over the course of centuries.’ Murray, ‘Does Military Culture Matter?’, p. 30. Ibid. According to Alan Macmillan and Ken Booth, at least five major problems remain with the concept of strategic culture: the problem of actually identifying strategic culture, the problem of explaining strategic culture, the problem of establishing causal links between culture and policy, the problem of referent groups, i.e. whose culture is it really?, and the problem of expertise, i.e. who are theoretically equipped to do research on this wide-ranging topic? (Alan Macmillan and Ken Booth, ‘Appendix: Strategic Culture: Framework for Analysis’, in Ken Booth and Russel Trood (eds) (1999) Strategic Cultures in the Asia-Pacific Region, London: Macmillan Press, p. 365. Lantis and Howlett’s essay, ‘Strategic Culture’ (2007), shows that little has changed in this regard in the last decade.) Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen (2005) ‘What’s the use of it’ in Cooperation and Conflict vol. 40 (March), p. 71. Barry Barnes, ‘Practice as Collective Action’, in Schatzki, Cetina, and Savigny (eds) The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, p. 19. Ibid. Swidler, ‘What Anchors Cultural Practices’ in Schatzki et al. (eds) The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory, p. 75. Eagleton, The Meaning of Life, p. 13. Swidler, ‘What Anchors Cultural Practices’, p. 75. John Sommerville ‘Ideas of War’, The London Review of Books, 27 October 1988, quoted in Richard M. Swain (1990) ‘The Hedgehog and the Fox: Jomini, Clausewitz, and History’, Naval War College Review, vol. 43, no. 4 (Autumn), p. 103. Clausewitz, On War, p. 168. Roger Beaumont (1986) The Nerves of War: Emerging Issues in and References to Command and Control, Washington, DC: AFCEA International Press, p. 72. Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars, p. 6. Quoted in Ian Beckett, ‘Low-Intensity Conflict: Its Place in the Study of War’, in David Charters, Marc Milner, and J. Brent Wilson (eds) (1992) Military History and the Military Profession, Westport, CT: Praeger, p. 121. Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 212. Army Doctrine Publication, vol. 5: Soldiering: The Military Covenant (Army Code 71642) DGD&D 2000, pt. 0106, available online at: www.abnetwork.org/ articles/military-covenant/( accessed 25 April 2009). ‘As every good operational commander knows, in the military art one can “trade down”, but one can never “trade up” ’. Michael Evans, ‘Military Theory and the Future of War’, in Mahnken and Maiolo (eds), Strategic Studies, p. 383.

214 Notes 69 See, for instance, ‘Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency Operations’, in The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (U.S. Army Field Manual No. 3–24, para. 1–1 48. 70 Quoted in Beckett, ‘Low-Intensity Conflict’, p. 121. 71 Ricks, Fiasco, p. 310. 72 Dyer, War, p. 268. 73 Mark M. Lowenthal, ‘Grant vs. Sherman: Paradoxes of Intelligence and Combat Leadership’, in Richard K. Betts and Thomas G. Mahnken (eds) (2003) Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence, London: Frank Cass, p. 191. 74 Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff (2002) The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, p. 14. 75 Michael C. Desch (1998) ‘Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies’, International Security, vol. 23, no. 1 (Summer), p. 147. 76 Roy F. Baumeister (1991) Meanings of Life, New York: The Guilford Press, p. 15. 77 Ibid., p. 16. 78 Chris Barker (2003) Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice, 2nd edn, London: Sage, p. 176. 79 Victor E. Frankl (2004) Man’s Search for Meaning, London: Rider (first pub. 1959), p. 109. 80 Myriam Anissimov (2006) Primo Levi: Tragedy of an Optimist, London: Little Books, p. 15. 81 Christopher Coker (2001) Humane Warfare, London: Routledge, p. 128. It is worthy of note that this was written before the outbreak of the ‘War on Terror’. 82 Earle, ‘Introduction’, in Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. vii. 83 ‘Report of the Somalia Commission of Inquiry’, Executive Summary, www. forces.gc.ca/somalia/vol. 0/v0s1e.htm, accessed 26 September 2008. 84 Duty with Honour: The Profession of Arms in Canada (2003), Kingston, ON: Canadian Defence Academy – Canadian Forces Leadership Institute, available online at: www.cda.forces.gc.ca/cfli-ilfc/doc/dwh-eng.pdf (accessed 4 July 2009). What the doctrine offers is more precisely: Chapters One and Two address the profession of arms in theoretical terms and articulate a full statement of the Canadian military ethos. These sections describe the professional attributes of responsibility, expertise, identity and military ethos, in particular the special role of the military ethos as a unifying force or spirit. The remaining parts of Duty with Honour explain how the profession of arms is practised on a day-to-day basis and frame the attributes of the profession in a strictly Canadian context. (Ibid) 85 Richard Dawkins (2006) The God Delusion, London: Bantam Press, p. 347. 86 I. B. Holley, Jr. (2004) Technology and Military Doctrine Essays on a Challenging Relationship, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, p. 15. 87 Darren Moore (2009) The Soldier, a History of Courage, Sacrifice and Brotherhood, London: Icon Books, p. 121. 88 Mary Catherine Bateson, quoted in Stephen Denning (2005) The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, p. 3. 89 Ringer, Fields of Knowledge, p. 2. 90 Rob Johnson, Michael Whitby, and John France (2010) How to Win on the Battlefield: The 25 Key Tactics of All Time, London: Thames & Hudson, p. 17. 91 Honderich, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, p. 900. 92 Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood (2007) Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 67.

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93 Clausewitz, On War, p. 188. Clausewitz himself uses the term kriegerische Tugent des Heeres for military virtues in this particular section. 94 ‘Yet however indispensable it is in practice, the whole enterprise of casuistry lost its theoretical respectability and its good name some three hundred years ago.’ Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin (1988) The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, p. 10. 95 Ibid., p. 3. 96 Ibid., p. 7. 97 Ibid., p. 13. 98 Jon Tetsuro Sumida (2008) Decoding Clausewitz a New Approach to On War, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, p. 19. 99 ‘Detailed context is also important to enable the listeners to conduct casebased reasoning, that is, determine whether it is appropriate to reason from prior examples or case to a new context.’ Stephen Denning, The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling, p. 188. 100 Guy Claxton (1988) Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: Why Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, London: Fourth Estate, p. 173. 101 Gordon, The Rules of the Game, p. 157. 102 Smith, The Utility of Force, p. ix. 103 The trends are: (1) the ends for which we fight are changing, (2) we fight amongst people, (3) our conflicts tend to be timeless, (4) we fight so as not to lose the force, (5) on each occasion new uses are found for old weapons, and (6) the warring parties are mostly non-state. Smith, The Utility of Force, p. 17. 104 Smith, The Utility of Force, p. 393 and 397. 105 Ibid., p. 347. 106 Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, p. 310. 107 McInnes, Hot War, Cold War, p. 109. 108 Colin L. Powell (2012) It Worked for Me, In Life and Leadership, New York: HarperCollins, p. 201. 109 Colin L. Powell (1995) My American Journey, New York: Random House, p. 302. The reason why this doctrine sails under both the banner of Weinberger and of Powell is that Powell was a senior military assistant to Weinberger during the conception of the doctrine in the early eighties, and that Powell was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the doctrine was at its zenith during the Gulf War in 1991. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., p. 303. 112 Ibid., p. 434. 113 He returned, of course, as Secretary of State, but that is another story. 114 Powell, It Worked for Me, p. 278. 115 Wesley K. Clark (2007) A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, p. 108. 116 Ibid., p. 115. 117 ‘As the NATO Supreme Allied Commander, and the person inside the alliance who had spent the most time with Milosevic, I had unique responsibilities here, too.’ Ibid., p. 211. 118 Ibid., p. 217. 119 Ibid., p. 223. 120 Ibid., p. 224. 121 This would not have come as a surprise to Clausewitz: We argue that a commander-in-chief must also be a statesman, but he must not cease to be a general. On the one hand, he is aware of the entire political

216 Notes situation; on the other, he knows exactly how much he can achieve with the means at his disposal. (Clausewitz, On War, pp. 111–112) 122 Clark, A Time to Lead, p. 230. 123 Wilhelm Dilthey, quoted in Harari, The Ultimate Experience, p. 145. 124 Sewall, ‘Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, in The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, p. xxxvi. The other one was Lieutenant General James N. Mattis. 125 Thomas E. Ricks, for instance, calls Petraeus and Mattis ‘two insightful generals who saw better ways than most to operate in Iraq’ (from a caption in Fiasco between p. 178 and 179). Petraeus, in particular, turned into a military celebrity and his military feats are further portrayed in Ricks’ The Gamble. 126 An Ivy League doctorate is not necessarily an advantage among traditionalists: ‘General Petraeus was successful not because of, but almost despite, his Ph.D. from Princeton’. Lt. Col. Suzanne Nielsen, quoted in Ricks, The Gamble, p. 20. 7 Authority 1 Nils Roll-Hansen (2005) The Lysenko Effect: The Politics of Science, New York: Humanity Books, p. 299. 2 The term ‘unequal dialogue’ is Eliot Cohen’s: ‘Civil-military relations must thus be a dialogue of unequals and the degree of civilian intervention in military matters a question of prudence.’ Eliot A. Cohen (2002) Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, New York: The Free Press, p. 12. 3 Anna Bolin (2004) Political-Military Relations: An Introduction to a Field of Study, Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan, p. 12. 4 Frank Fischer (2009) Democracy and Expertise: Reorienting Policy Inquiry, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 137. 5 Turner, ‘What Is the Problem with Experts?’, in Selinger and Crease The Philosphy of Expertise, p. 159. 6 Quoted in John A. Tirpak (1999) ‘Short’s View of the Air Campaign’, Air Force Magazine, vol. 82, no. 9 (September). 7 Wesley K. Clark (2001) Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat, New York: Public Affairs, p. 427. 8 J. Glenn Gray (1998) The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press (first pub. 1959), p. 143. 9 James Q. Wilson (2010) Bureaucracy: What Government Agencies Do and Why They Do It, New York: Basic Books (first pub. 1989), p. 60. 10 Ibid. 11 Selinger and Crease, ‘Introduction’, in Selinger and Crease, The Philosophy of Expertise, p. 1. 12 This distinction is based on Alvin I. Goldman’s claim: ‘Not every statement that appears in an expert’s argument need be epistemologically inaccessible to the novice. Let us distinguish here between esoteric and exoteric statements within an expert’s discourse.’ Alvin I. Goldman, ‘Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust?’ In ibid., p. 22. 13 Taleb, The Black Swan, p. 147. The military profession is obviously a member of this group that deals with the future and bases studies on the non-repeatable past: ‘wars are fundamentally unpredictable (and we do not know it)’. Ibid., p. xx. 14 Brodie, ‘Strategy as a Science’, p. 9. 15 Quoted in Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. vii. 16 This citation is often attributed to Georges Clemenceau. Antony Jay (2001) The

Notes

17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

217

Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 89. The Soldier and the State has ever since set the terms of debate about civilmilitary relations in this country [USA]. A simplified secondhand version of the book has come, in fact, to be commonly viewed as the “normal” theory of civil-military relations—the accepted theoretical standard by which the current reality is to be judged. (Cohen, Supreme Command, p. 226) Samuel P. Huntington (1985) The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil–Military Relations, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, p. 83. Ibid., p. 56. Clausewitz, On War, p. 87. Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War, p. 5. Hew Strachan (1997) The Politics of the British Army, Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 43. Cohen, Supreme Command, p. 229. Clausewitz, On War, p. 608. James Carroll (2006) House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 270. Cohen, Supreme Command, p. 209. Martin van Creveld calls The Decisive Wars of History (1929), which later was reissued as Strategy: The Indirect Approach, ‘the most influential military study of the twentieth century’. Martin van Creveld (2000) The Art of War, London: Cassell, p. 176. Bidwell and Graham were not that sure, however, ‘[i]n the upshot he achieved little except, eventually, fame’. Bidwell and Graham, Fire-Power, p. 4. Gat, A History of Military Thought, p. 827. Julia Evetts, Harald A. Mieg, and Ulrike Felt, ‘Professionalization, Scientific Expertise, and Elitism: A Sociological Perspective’, in Karl Anders Ericsson, Neil Charness, Paul J. Feltovich, and Robert R. Hoffman (eds) (2006) The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 116. Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War, p. 17. Ibid. Ibid., p. 18. In many ways, this project had certain similarities with Clausewitz’s, a century earlier. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid., p. 36. Ibid., p. 35. Donald H. Rumsfeld (2002) ‘Transforming the Military’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 81, no. 3 (May/June).

The issues surrounding the debates over a “new way of war” are serious, as are any major force-planning decisions. Personalizing a possible nondebate with no specifics around personal doctrines that neither Secretary Rumsfeld nor Secretary Powell have openly articulated in a contradictory form serves little purpose. (Cordesman, 2003) See Anthony H. Cordesman (2003) The Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics, and Military Lessons (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), p. 165. 38 Martin Gardner (1957) Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., p. 151.

218 Notes 39 R. Hobson (2010) ‘Blitzkrieg, the Revolution in Military Affairs and Defense Intellectuals’ in The Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 33 (August), p. 628. 40 Peter Feaver, quoted in Bolin, Political-Military Relations, p. 9. 41 Ibid., p. 13. 42 Vagts, A History of Militarism, p. 351. 43 Vagts divided the military world in two: ‘Every war is fought, every army is maintained in a military way and in a militaristic way. The distinction is fundamental and fateful.’ Ibid., p. 13. In the military way, the armed forces are preparing for wars instigated not by themselves, but by the civilian powers of the state. The military is a means, not an end. In the militaristic way, however, this is turned upside down; here, the military is an end in itself. 44 Huntington, The Soldier and the State, p. 2. 45 Ibid., p. 75. 46 This section is based on Andrew Gordon, The Rules of the Game. 47 Quoted in ibid., p. 274. 48 Huntington, The Soldier and the State, p. 75. 49 Paul du Gay, ‘Bureaucracy and Liberty: State, Authority, and Freedom’, in Paul du Gay (ed.) (2005) The Values of Bureaucracy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 57. 50 S. E. Finer (1962) The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, London: Pall Mall Press, p. 25. 51 Morris Janowitz (1960) The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait, Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, p. 8. 52 Ibid., p. 397. 53 Ibid., pp. 423–24. 54 Ibid., p. 424. 55 Wilson, Bureaucracy, p. xvii. 56 ‘Maintaining an appropriate balance between the Army’s two natures is thus ever elusive; at any time, bureaucracy can come to predominate over profession.’ Don M. Snider, ‘The U.S. Army as Profession’, in Snider and Matthews (eds), The Future of the Army Profession, p. 15. 57 Addison Terry in Moore, The Soldier, p. 14. 58 St. prp. nr. 48 (2007–2008) ‘Forsvarets grunnleggende funksjon er å beskytte og iverata Norges sikkerhet, interesser og verdier’(Proposition to the Storting, no. 48, 2007–2008). 59 Wilson, Bureaucracy, p. 38. 60 Ibid., p. 49. ‘When goals are vague, circumstances become important’. Ibid., p. 36. 61 Ibid., p. 49. 62 Noam Cohen (2009) ‘Care to Write Army Doctrine? With ID, Log On’, New York Times, 13 August 2009, available online at: www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/ business/14army.html?_r=1&th&emc=th (accessed 18 August 2009). 63 Ibid. 64 Linn, The Echo of Battle, p. 219. 65 Bolger, quoted in ibid. 66 Harry G. Summers Jr. (1984) On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, New York: Dell Publishing, p. 72. 67 Ibid., p. 129. This view, that the tactics were spot on, is not shared by all, however. 68 D/CGS/50/8 Design for Military Operations, pp. 4–11. The publication of the new FM 100–5 in 1986 in the USA also inspired the incorporation of the operational level of war into the British Army’s doctrine in 1989. B. J. C. McKercher and Michael A. Hennessy (eds) (1996) The Operational Art: Developments in the Theories of War, London: Praeger, p. 17.

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69 Ricks, Fiasco, p. 225. 70 Hew Strachan (2006) ‘Making Strategy: Civil–Military Relations after Iraq’, Survival, vol. 48, no. 3 (Autumn), p. 60. 71 Ibid., p. 61. 72 To be sure, there are other explanations of why the operational level of war occurred. See, for instance, Robert M. Citino (2004) Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. 73 J. Rawls (1985) ‘Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 14, no. 3 (Summer), pp. 230–31. 74 Nagorski, Andrew (2007) The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow that Changed the Course of World War II, New York, Simon and Schuster, p.151. 75 Bernard Brodie (1959) Strategy in the Missile Age, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 260. 76 ‘Never before and rarely since has there been the same degree of cooperation, coordination, and willingness to put service interests aside in prosecuting an air campaign.’ J. A. Winnefeld and D. J. Johnson (1993) Joint Air Operations: Pursuit of Unity in Command and Control, 1942–1991, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, p. 34. 77 Clark, Waging Modern War, p. 451. 78 Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective, p. 13. 79 Quoted in Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon’. 8 The utility of doctrine 1 Department of Defense DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, available online at: www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/data/d/01744.html (accessed 13 April 2009). 2 The tension between liberty and cohesion is pertinent to social life in general: ‘[H]ow can we combine that degree of individual initiative which is necessary for progress with the degree of social cohesion that is necessary for survival?’ Bertrand Russell (1949) Authority and the Individual, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., p. 11. 3 Brad Jackson and Ken Parry (2008) A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Leadership, Los Angeles: Sage Publications, p. 9. 4 This table is inspired by John Storey’s explanation of leadership programmes. John Storey ‘Changing Theories of Leadership and Leadership Development’, in John Storey (2004) (ed.) Leadership in Organizations: Current Issues and Key Trends, London: Routledge. 5 ‘Military doctrine is neither ideal nor universal; it is historically specific and in flux, and the best doctrine reflects that reality’. Overy, ‘Doctrine Not Dogma’, p. 45. 6 Thomas Capper, quoted in Palazzo, From Moltke to Bin Laden, p. 42. 7 McInnes and Stone, ‘The British Army and Military Doctrine’, p. 25. 8 Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective, p. 13. 9 Colonel General Makhmut Gareev (1988) ‘Soviet Military Doctrine: Current and Future Developments’, RUSI Journal, vol. 133, no. 4 (Winter), p. 5. 10 Washington to William Galvan, quoted in Lockhart, The Drillmaster of Valley Forge, p. 189. 11 However, in real life it is exactly when the doctrine is published that the real discussion starts, as illustrated by the American doctrine FM 100–5 published in 1976.

220 Notes 12 What attracted me initially [about Clausewitz] was the philosophical problem, the effort required to grasp the nature of war, to formulate a theory which would not be confused with a doctrine, in other words which would teach the strategist to understand his task without entertaining any absurd claim to communicate the secret of victory. (Aron, Clausewitz, p. viii) 13 Richard M. Swain, ‘AirLand Battle’, in Hofman and Starry (eds), Camp Colt to Desert Storm, p. 361. Importantly, this quandary was not that pressing during Clausewitz’s time, i.e. before the high tide of the Industrial Revolution and the ensuing acceleration of the arms race. 14 Clausewitz, On War, p. 71. 15 Taleb, The Black Swan, p. 69. 16 Bidwell and Graham, Fire-Power, pp. 2–3. 17 ‘Methodology was a factor in German success. No tactical concept remained in the isolation of pure theory.’ Lupfer, The Dynamics of Doctrine, p. 55. According to Lupfer, the German Army managed to change its tactical doctrine significantly on two occasions during the Great War: in the winter of 1916–1917, to adopt an elastic defence-in-depth, and in the winter of 1917–1918, in order to acquire a new offensive capacity (p. vii). To change doctrine during war is extremely difficult, but the German Army was, according to Lupfer, in a class of its own: ‘In the development and application of new tactics for their army, the Germans generally displayed superior ability.’ Ibid., p. 55. 18 Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective, p. 25. 19 ‘At its best the regiment fostered change; at its worst it prevented the dissemination of best practice throughout the army.’ Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars, p. 8. 20 ‘Clearly Corbett’s “theory” is much like the conception of “doctrine” that BR1806 would later promulgate.’ Eric Grove ‘The Discovery of Doctrine’, in Geoffrey Till (ed.) (2006) The Development of British Naval Thinking, London: Routledge, p. 184. 21 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, p. 1. 22 Ibid., p. 3. 23 Ibid., p. 8. 24 Ibid., pp. 4–5. 25 This does not mean that doctrine is a synonym for theory, but that Corbett put more into ‘theory’ than mere theory. Cf. Eric Grove’s point in footnote 20. 26 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, pp. 4–5. This agenda was not unique to Corbett and other strategy theorists, but a concern to social science in general, where, for instance, Emile Durkheim complained that words from sociological terminology were ‘freely employed with great assurance, as though they corresponded to things well known and precisely defined, whereas they awaken in use nothing but confused ideas’. Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, quoted in Moses and Knutsen, Ways of Knowing, p. 35. 27 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, p. 3. 28 Ibid., p. 5. 29 Taleb, The Black Swan, pp. 279 and 282. 30 Quoted in Michael Korda (2004) Ulysses S. Grant, New York: HarperCollins, p. 26, and Taleb, The Black Swan, p. 279 and 282. 31 Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective, p. 28. 32 Bernstein, Lebow, Stein, and Weber, ‘God Gave Physics the Easy Problems’, p. 71.

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33 Reginald Bretnor (1969) Decisive Warfare: A Study in Military Theory, Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, p. 16. 34 Bernstein, Lebow, Stein, and Weber, ‘God Gave Physics the Easy Problems’, p. 52. 35 Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, p. 2. 36 Fogelin, Walking the Tightrope of Reason, p. 167. 37 Winston Churchill, quoted in Chas W. Freeman, Jr., The Diplomat’s Dictionary (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001), p. 127. 38 Gole, General William E. DePuy, p. 264. 39 The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, pt. 1–148, p. 48. 40 Donn A. Starry (1978) ‘A Tactical Evolution – FM 100–5’, Military Review, vol. 58, no. 8 (August), p. 3. 41 ‘Changes in the formal doctrine of a military organization [may] leave the essential workings of the organization unaltered.’ Farrell and Terriff, The Sources of Military Change, p. 4. 42 William Lind, quoted in Rekkedal, Modern Krigskonst, p. 131. 43 Foreword by Admiral Sir Jock Slater (1995) in The Fundamentals of British Maritime Doctrine (BR 1806). 44 Dennis Drew (1982) ‘Of Trees and Leaves: A New View of Doctrine’, Air University Review, vol. 33, no. 2 (January), p. 43. 45 Barrow and Woods, An Introduction to Philosophy of Education, p. 74. 46 Ibid., p. 76. 47 Ibid., p. 81. 48 Huba Wass de Czege (2006) ‘Lessons from the Past: Making the Army’s Doctrine “Right Enough” Today’, Landpower Essay no. 06–2, Association of the United States Army’s Institute of Land Warfare, p. 13. 49 Lockhart, The Drillmaster of Valley Forge, p. 194. 50 Traditionally, British officers did not care about intellectual debate and felt deep reluctance towards any formal writings. At best, some sort of doctrine existed as tactical instruction manuals. However, they were considered to be something for the classroom but irrelevant in the field. (Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, p. 22) 51 52 53 54 55

Ibid., p. 88. Ibid., p. 98. Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine (1989), p. 3. Ibid., p. vii. Jomini’s educational credo we have already seen: It is true that theories cannot teach men with mathematical precision what they should do in every possible case; but it is also certain that they will always point out the errors which should be avoided; and this is a highlyimportant consideration, for these rules thus become, in the hands of skilful generals commanding brave troops, means of almost certain success. (Jomini, The Art of War, p. 323)

We have also seen Clausewitz’s credo several times: It [theorie] 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, On War, p. 141)

222 Notes 56 ‘The work Jomini did was in effect scientific pioneering – not the first daring penetrations of an unknown country, but the first really good map making.’ Brinton, Craig, and Gilbert, ‘Jomini’, in Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 85. 57 General Kuropatkin, ‘The Russian Army and the Japanese War’, quoted in Pope-Hennessy, ‘The British Army and Modern Conceptions of War’, p. 323. 58 Foch, The Principles of War, p. 2. 59 ‘Since military missions of today to a vast degree are trained, planned, executed and evaluated as multinational forces one or just a few nations developing their own basic pedagogical frameworks will not suffice.’ Glenn-Egil Torgersen, ‘The Idea of a Military Pedagogical Doctrine’, in Tone Kvernbekk, Harold Simpson and Michael A. Peters (eds) (2008) Military Pedagogies and Why They Matter, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, p. 56. 60 Clausewitz, On War, p. 185. 61 ‘Rhapsodisch’ is Clausewitz’s own word for ‘impressionistic’. Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, p. 213. 62 Cf. Keith Grint’s typology referred to in Chapter 1 of this study. 63 Thus, the Army’s doctrine and doctrine process have never served the warfighter better. They do an outstanding job of teaching soldiers how to fight. But professional doctrine must do more than that. It must also educate soldiers on how to think about how to fight. (Blackwell, ‘Professionalism and Army Doctrine’, p. 325) 64 Knox, ‘The Role of Doctrine in Naval Warfare’, p. 330. 65 James J. Tritten (1995) ‘Naval Perspectives on Military Doctrine’, Naval War College Review, vol. 48, no. 2 (Spring), p. 35. 66 Frederick the Great, Instructions for His Generals, p. 9. 67 Even if he had the fourth largest army in Europe, Frederick’s Prussia was only twelfth when it came to size and population. Thomas E. Griess (ed.) (1984) The Dawn of Modern Warfare, Wayne, NJ: Avery Publishing Group, p. 100. 68 Frederick the Great, Instructions for His Generals, p. 41. 69 Lewis, Convention, p. 36. 70 Ibid., p. 42. 71 Ibid., p. 35. 72 Swain, ‘AirLand Battle’, p. 361. 73 Frederick the Great, Instructions for His Generals, p. 53. 74 Farrell, ‘Making Sense of Doctrine’, p. 3. 75 Frederick the Great, Instructions for His Generals, p. 55. This advice is still valid: ‘More than anything else, the Afghans capitalized on consistent patterns that made the Soviets predictable. “Habits kill” ’. Craig M. Mullaney (2009 The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier’s Education, New York: The Penguin Press, p. 204. 76 Pope-Hennessy, ‘The Place of Doctrine in War’, p. 27. 77 Ibid., pp. 26–27. 78 Lewis, Convention, p. 51. 79 Gole, General William E. DePuy, p. 264. 80 Bing West, ‘Introduction’, in McCoy, The Passion of Command, p. x. 81 NATO, Allied Joint Doctrine Development AAP-47, pp. 1–9. 82 Carl H. Builder, Steven C. Banks, and Richard Nordin (1999) Command Concepts: A Theory Derived from the Practice of Command and Control, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, p. 122. 83 Milan Vego, ‘Operational Art and Doctrine’, in Anthony D. McIvor (ed.) (2005) Rethinking the Principles of War, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, p. 176.

Notes 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98

99 100

101 102 103

104 105 106 107 108 109

223

Wass de Czege, ‘Lessons from the Past’, p. 17. Doughty, The Seeds of Disaster, p. 12. Pope-Hennessy, ‘The Place of Doctrine in War’, p. 29. David Galula (2006) Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice, Westport, CT: Praeger, pp. 64–65. The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, pt. 2–19, p. 60. Citino, The German Way of War, p. 170. Beaumont, War, Chaos, and History, p. 9. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the Germans did not use the concept ‘doctrine’, but modern observers would recognise it as doctrine nonetheless. Fuller, A Military History of the Western World, p. 134. Pope-Hennessy, ‘The Place of Doctrine in War’, p. 16. Admiral Bill Owens (2000) Lifting the Fog of War, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, p. 119. Martin van Creveld (1985) Command in War, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 153. Malcolm Gladwell (2005) Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, New York: Back Bay Books, p. 141. Taleb, The Black Swan, p. 145. David S. Alberts and Richard E. Hayes (2003) Power to the Edge: Command and Control in the Information Age, US Department of Defense Command and Control Research Program, p. 73, available online at: www.dodccrp.org/files/ Alberts_Power.pdf (accessed 19 August 2008). John J. Garstka (2008) Network Centric Warfare: An Overview of Emerging Theory, available online at: www.mors.org/publications/phalanx/dec00/feature.htm (accessed 19 August 2008). Gary A. Vincent (1993) ‘A New Approach to Command and Control: The Cybernetic Design’, Airpower Journal, vol. 7, no. 2 (Summer), available online at: www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj93/sum93/vincent. htm (accessed 19 August 2008). Basic Action Units are the unit level at which ‘things get done, as for instance an individual ship’. Ibid. Ibid. ‘More sophisticated IT systems facilitate rather than remove managerial power.’ Paul Thompson and Mats Alvesson, ‘Bureaucracy at Work: Misunderstandings and Mixed Blessings’, in du Gay (ed.), The Values of Bureaucracy, p. 101. Ibid., p. 103. Elliot Jaques paraphrased in ibid., p. 91. It is important to underscore that bureaucracy is not a homogenous entity but comes in different forms of hybrids. Douglas L. Bland, ‘Canada’s Officer Corps: New Times, New Ideas’, CDA Institute XVth Annual Seminar 1999, available online at: http://cda-cdai.ca/ seminars/1999/99bland.htm (accessed 25 January 2009). Johnston, ‘Doctrine Is Not Enough’. Farrell and Terriff, The Sources of Military Change, p. 5. Hofman and Starry, Camp Colt to Desert Storm, p. xiv. See also Sarah Sewall: ‘Doctrine, organization, training, material, leader development, personnel, and facilities (cleverly abbreviated “DOTMLPF ”) are the key elements of the institutional military. In theory, doctrine jumpstarts the other “engines of change” ’. Sarah Sewall, ‘Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, in The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, p. xxxv.

224 Notes 110 [M]ilitary culture obviously changes over time in response to changes in a society’s culture, the advance of technology, and the impact of leadership. As one senior marine has noted, military cultures are like great ocean liners or aircraft carriers: they require an enormous effort to change direction. (Murray, ‘Does Military Culture Matter?’) 111 Cassidy, Peacekeeping in the Abyss, p. 8. 112 Lynn, Battle, p. 362. 113 The questions about why and how organizations change are big and complicated, which are only superficially scratched in order to highlight certain aspects of doctrine. 114 Farrell, The Norms of War, p. 15. 115 Biddle, Military Power, p. 206. 116 Lawrence Freedman (1998) The Revolution in Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper 318, London: IISS. 117 Rumsfeld, ‘Transforming the Military’. The article was based on the speech ‘21st Century Transformation of U.S. Armed Forces’, which Rumsfeld held at the National Defense University, Fort McNair, Washington, DC, 31 January 2002, avaialable online at: www.defense.gov/speeches/speech. aspx?speechid=183 (accessed 13 May 2010). 118 NATO AAP-6 (30/6/05). 119 Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, p. 311. 120 Overy, ‘Doctrine Not Dogma’, p. 40. 121 Gordon, ‘The Doctrine Debate’, p. 49. 122 Major General Eric de La Maisonneuve (retired) (2004) ‘What Aim for Higher Military Education?’ Doctrine: General Military Review, no. 2 (March), p. 37. 123 From a workshop at the Norwegian Staff College, 8 October 2009. See also Kjell Inge Bjerga and Torunn Laugen Haaland (2010) ‘Development of Military Doctrine: The Particular Case of Small States’, The Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 33, no. 4 (August). 124 Langlois, Lessons from Two Recent Wars, p. 145. 125 Rosen, Winning the Next War, p. 21. 126 Conversation with Lieutenant General Wilhelm Mohr (retired), 25 August 2006. The document was called HFL 95–1: Luftoperasjoner. Prinsipielle retningslinjer for bruk av luftstridsmidler (June 1969). 127 Wass de Czege, ‘Lessons from the Past’, p. 6. 128 Matthews, ‘Anti-Intellectualism and the Army Profession’, p. 69. 129 Sewall, ‘Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, in The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, p. xxxv. 130 Richard Seel, quoted in Linda Holbeche (2006) Understanding Change: Theory, Implementation and Success, Oxford: Elsevier, p. 195. 131 Ibid. 132 Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, p. 293. 133 Biddle, Military Power, p. 29. 134 Readers familiar with COIN-literature, such as Thomas X. Hammes The Sling and the Stone, will presumably recognise the concept ‘fourth-generation warfare’, or rather ‘4GW’. It is, however, important not to mix 4GW with fourth-generation doctrine, but they have certain things in common. Hammes states that ‘Unlike previous generations of warfare [4GW] does not attempt to win by defeating the enemy’s military forces. Instead, via the networks, it directly attacks the minds of the enemy decisions makers to destroy the enemy’s political will.’ (Thomas X. Hammes (2006) The Sling and the Stone,

Notes

135

136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154

225

St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, p. 2.) Fourth-generation doctrine is likewise about much more than the enemy’s military forces, and is also about influencing decision makers, but not necessarily the enemy’s. Theo Farrell, ‘Humanitarian Intervention and Peace Operations’, in Baylis, Wirtz, Gray, and Cohen, Strategy in the Contemporary World, p. 315. According to Mäder, Wider Peacekeeping’s main function was to serve as a ‘generator of debate’. Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, p. 151. Gordon, ‘The Doctrine Debate’, p. 47. Edward Bernays (2005) Propaganda, New York: IG Publishing (first pub. 1928), p. 49. Ibid., p. 48. ‘Fortunately, the sincere and gifted politician is able, by the instrument of propaganda, to mold and form the will of the people’. Ibid., p. 109. Grove, ‘The Discovery of Doctrine’, p. 183. Ibid. General Anthony C. Zinni, US Marine Corps retirement speech, available online at: www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/empire.html (accessed 19 May 2009). Sewall, ‘Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, in The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, p. xxxvi. Peters, ‘Learning to Lose’. Edward Luttwak (2007) ‘Dead End: Counterinsurgency Warfare as Military Malpractice’, Harper’s Magazine (February), available online at: www.harpers. org/archive/2007/02/0081384 (accessed 13 March 2009). Professor Hew Strachan, seminar on ‘The Changing Character of War’ at the Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy, 25–26 May 2009. Sarah Sewall, ‘Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, in The U.S. Army – Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, p. xxxiii. Stephen Biddle (2008) ‘The New U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual as Political Science and Political Praxis’, Perspectives on Politics, vol. 6, no. 2 (June), p. 348. Ibid., p. 350. Col. James Rainy in Ricks, The Gamble, p. 201. Smith, The Utility of Force, p. 391. Smith, The Utility of Force, p. 284. Ibid., p. 286. Nagl, ‘Foreword to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, p. xvi. Thomas Ricks is, thus, tempted to state that ‘[i]t was instantly clear that this wasn’t going to be the standard Army manual written by two tired majors labouring in a basement somewhere in Fort Leavenworth’. Ricks, The Gamble, p. 24. Although not very far from the mark, this account is a bit unfair on the ‘DePuy revolution’ and the work with the doctrines Active Defense (1976) and AirLand Battle (1982), as dealt with in Chapter 2 of this study.

9 Summary and conclusion 1 Commentary by Steve Farrar in Harriet Swain (ed.) (2006) Big Questions in History, Vintage Books, p. 149. 2 One of Biddle’s main arguments is that, even after 1900, observers have, as a rule, given such material factors too much explanatory leverage: ‘technological superiority is no better than a coin flip for predicting victory and defeat’. Biddle, Military Power, p. 24. 3 William E. DePuy (1988) ‘Concepts of Operation: The Heart of Command, the Tool of Doctrine’, Army, vol. 38, no. 8 (August), p. 31.

226 Notes 4 The full quotation is: ‘Apart from an official doctrine, complete with authenticating imprimatur and published in a manual, there also exists an unofficial doctrine in the minds of men based on experience and tradition.’ Lider, Military Theory, p. 309. 5 ‘Once a social “law” is known to human actors, they turn to exploit it in ways that can undermine its law-like features.’ Moses and Knutsen, Ways of Knowing, p. 11. 6 To reiterate: doctrine is defined as an authoritative document military forces use to guide their actions containing fundamental principles that require judgement in application. 7 FM 100–5: Operations (HQ, Department of the Army, 1 July 1976), pp. 1–1. 8 Quoted in Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective, p. 29. 9 Wass de Czege, ‘Army Doctrinal Reform’, p. 105. 10 Palazzo, From Moltke to Bin Laden, p. 46. 11 Bidwell and Graham, Fire-Power, p. 294. This verdict was reached in 1981. 12 Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, p. 311. 13 The picture of doctrine as a bridge is from John Gooch’s ‘Introduction’ in Gooch (ed.), The Origins of Contemporary Doctrine, p. 5. Mäder uses the same picture more specifically: ‘Military-strategic doctrine, as its highest level, provides the conceptual bridge between national security strategy and the military instrument.’ Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, p. 309. 14 Farrell, ‘Making Sense of Doctrine’, p. 3. 15 Fuller, quoted in the foreword to Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine, D/CGS/50/8 (1989). 16 Joel Hayward (2003) For God and Glory: Lord Nelson and His Way of War, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, p. 191. 17 The phrase is Clausewitz’s ‘[t]heory then becomes a guide to anyone who wants to learn about war from books; it will light his way, ease his progress, train his judgment, and help him to avoid pitfalls.’ Clausewitz, On War, p. 141. 18 Clausewitz, quoted in Rothfels, ‘Clausewitz’, in Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, p. 112. 19 S. L. A. Marshall, quoted in Luvaas, ‘Some Vagrant Thoughts on Doctrine’, p. 60.

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Index

Page numbers in bold denote figures. Afghanistan 61, 132, 159, 172, 222n75 air campaign 219n76; American 12 aircraft 17, 22, 166, 182; carriers 72, 224n110; Douglas Aircraft project 75 Alger, J.I. 203n11, 203n14, 207n113, 208n134 Allied Command Transformation 171, 200n195 anti-intellectualism 64–5, 202n52 Arabs 11; Muslim-Arabs 25 ArabIsraeli war 11, 47 Aristotle 3, 130 Aron, R. 94, 151, 220n12 art of war 35, 70, 73, 90, 99, 101, 123, 134, 174, 193n50, 196n86, 217n27 artillery 17, 136; anti-air 73; crew drills 114; German 33 Auerstedt 95, 209n29 authority 1, 10, 27–8, 55, 56, 57, 66, 99, 109, 119, 128–9, 134, 136, 138, 146, 149, 151, 156, 181, 183, 188n19; cognitive 132, 135, 188n18; commanding 164, 172; established 98; formal 23, 36, 142; higher 161; military 138, 140– 1; non-cognitive 4, 129, 135, 137, 146; political 22, 132, 140, 144–5 Avant, D. 198n143 Beirut 124 Biddle, S. 100, 174, 177, 210n54, 225n2 Bidwell, S. 185, 217n27 Bildung 37, 93, 120, 209n21; Bildungsroman 123, 126 Bjerga, K.I. 172, 224n123 bomb 22, 72–3; atomic 74, 82; bombing 12; dive-bombers 136; fighter bombers 151; nuclear 182

Booth, K. 213n54 Brenckenhoff, L.von 63 Brinton, C. 202n2, 222n56 British 38–40, 46, 52, 99, 109, 116, 123, 143, 152, 184, 195n91; 1st Armoured Division 124; Defence Doctrine 62; doctrine 39, 51, 124, 158, 184, 199n191; Empire 153; language 36; troops 11; un-British 38, 41 British Army 39–42, 51, 116, 152, 164, 184–5, 191n60, 195n91, 203n13, 203n14, 222n57; Design for Military Operations 51, 191n68, 226n15 British military 38; conservatism 116; thinking 50; British Royal Navy 175; naval supremacy 98; Naval War Manual 51 Brodie, B. 145, 205n47 brute facts 17, 20, 87, 94, 132 bureaucrats 12, 106, 140, 142 buzzwords 1516, 112, 154, 156 Canada 3, 118–19, 214n84; Canadian Forces 118–19, 214n84; Defence Academy 214n84; Duty with Honour: The Profession of Arms in Canada 118, 214n84; military ethos 214n84 Chapman, B. 3, 199n164 China 3, 134 civilian control of the military 133, 136, 140 Clark, A.C. 188n3, 189n25 Clark, W.K. 124126, 131, 133134 Clausewitz, C. von 3, 32, 37, 44, 55–6, 67, 69–70, 73–4, 80–2, 88–96, 101– 2, 114, 121–3, 125, 133–4, 143, 152, 154, 160, 182, 187n6, 203n16, 206n80,

250 Index Clausewitz, C. von continued 207n113, 209n23, 209n29, 210n59, 215n93, 215n121, 220n12, 221n55, 222n61, 226n17 Claxton, G. 122 Cohen, E.A. 216n2, 217n17 combat 18, 28, 33–4, 85, 120, 125; capability 179; casualty 126; demands 141; effectiveness 11, 113; environment 161; experience 81; military 69, 141; performance 116; power 168, 203n19; prepare for 204n35; records 173; theory 70; victory in 31 combatants 34, 188n5; combat soldiers 142; combat units 11 command 4, 18, 20, 26, 29, 63, 69, 124, 138, 146, 164, 167; bunkers 82; chain of 98, 131, 139–40; divisional 30–1; flexible 1656; high 32, 64, 122; levels 152, 158, 168; military 50, 72, 121, 123, 184; operational 30, 213n68; tool of 4, 157, 161, 183; unified 141, 145 commanders 11, 91–3, 116, 168, 179, 181; British 40; corps 167; divisional 30; field 76; military 26, 38, 48, 50, 64, 102, 141, 161, 168, 178; Red 43; senior 31, 158; subordinate 31, 161, 163, 165–6; supreme 178 commitment 17, 22, 35, 99, 172; ethical 204n36 communist 43–4 community of thought 9; band of brothers 27, 123 constitutive 21; rules 94 Corbett, J. 26, 61, 96, 152–5, 220n25, 220n26 Cordesman, A.H. 217n37 counterinsurgency (COIN) 13, 46, 50, 69, 164–5, 173, 177, 182, 198n143, 198n146, 224n134; operations 14 Creveld, M. von 217n27 culture 4, 10, 16, 27, 29, 55, 56, 57, 103, 112, 114, 116–17, 127, 128, 156, 160, 181, 192n12, 194n52; corporate 110; French political 37; generation 112–13; influence of 105, 107, 109; military 110–11, 113, 115, 183, 185, 213n52, 224n110; non-strategic 108; organisation 157, 169; strategic 22, 24, 82, 104, 106– 9, 130, 136, 145–6, 155–6, 172, 182–3, 186, 213n54 Darrieus, G. 36

Dawkins, R. 119 defence / defense 72, 46, 140, 142, 151–2; analysis 88, 98; Canadian Defence Academy 214n84; commitments 170; debate 51; Department of Defence 187n10; funding 75; intellectuals 98, 137, 173; Minister of Defence 118, 173; national 169; Secretary of Defense 124, 136–7, 170 Denning, S. 214n88, 215n99 DePuy, W.E. 47–9, 164, 181, 198n148, 199n172, 225n154 Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine 51, 191n68, 199n185 doctrinaires 16, 32–3, 43, 111; Continental 40; French and Russian 197n125; military 44 doctrinal 5, 10, 15, 25, 33, 41, 46, 49, 51, 65, 91–3, 99, 142, 151, 154, 157, 161, 171, 173–4, 177, 185, 196n115; activity 24; anti-doctrinal 16; argument 62; aspirations 159; authority 28; beliefs 110, 126; change 169; cheating 165, 177; coherentism 4, 63, 65–6, 90, 94–5, 98; debates 14, 16, 50, 190n25; development 172, 182; dilemma 12, 14, 26, 44, 52, 125, 163, 174; discourse 66, 146; discussion 176, 184; engagement 138; factions pro and anti 43; foundationalism 3, 63, 65–7, 69–70, 71, 87–90, 94–5, 97; heap 21; ideas 140;imprimatur 191n6; inadequacies 124; interest 125; introduction 144; issues 140; justification 4, 86; matters 20, 33, 66, 96, 120, 138; maturity 199n172; means 3–4, 161; message 123, 172, 178; methods 164; need 150; publications 48; quandaries 149; regulation 160; scepticism 11, 63, 89, 101; sceptics 65, 155, 186; significance 127; statements 71; thinking 3, 50, 155, 197n125; triangle 56, 103, 173; utility span 156 doctrine 14; American 2, 47, 164, 219n11; arguments against 9, 150, 185; daydreaming 1415; prescriptive 12, 70, 203n14 du Picq, A. 33, 194n54 Dupuy, T. 10, 69–70, 89, 95, 133, 187n5 Eagleton, T. 195n90, 211n5, 232 Earle, E.M. 192n31, 202n2, 222n56

Index Echevarria, A.J. II 203n13, 203n14 education 4, 43, 64, 83, 173; formal 131; general 101, 153; military 42, 63, 88, 145, 160, 164, 172; self 93, 221n55; tool of 156, 157–61, 183 Egyptian 60, 111; military 48; Sovietstyled 47 Elster, J. 84, 207n107 Encyclopædia Britannica 37, 187n7, 194n51 establishment 11; military 2, 22, 38, 79, 140–1; peacetime 46 ethos 21–4, 38, 41, 49, 180–1, 184–5, 200n11; Canadian military 214n84 Euclidian axioms 85, 207n114 Europe 29, 33, 222n67; Allied Air Forces Commander 130; Central 39, 46; Continental 38, 198n150; display army 143; Eurocentric 20; Greater 20; southern 130; Supreme Allied Commander 126; Western 39 European 64; Armies 38, 164, 191n64; paper state 26; theatre 50, 198n143; thinkers 40; war 46, 65, 68 Evans, M. 201n33, 213n68 Farrell, T. 213n51, 221n41 Feldherrenhügel 30, 166, 174 field manual 5, 22, 175; Marine Corps Counterinsurgency 52, 127, 155, 175, 177–8, 199n181, 214n69, 216n124, 223n109; Operations 49, 70, 155, 198n156: see also manuals Field Service Regulations 22, 40–2, 68–9, 196n109, 199n189 Finer, S.E. 138, 140 flagship 9, 139 Flanders 42–3 flexibility 13, 27, 31, 44, 83, 120, 164 Foch, F. 35–8, 64–5, 84, 138, 159, 193n34, 195n76, 195n84 Fogelin, R. 96, 209n36 France 3, 17, 32–4, 36–8, 42, 52, 64, 98, 138, 180, 184, 194n71; FrancoPrussian War 33, 170: see also French Frankl, V.E. 117, 214n79 Franklin, B. 28, 192n24 Frederick the Great 13, 27–30, 38–9, 65, 87, 93, 96, 150, 161, 163, 178, 189n18, 222n67, 222n75 French 1, 27, 29, 32–4, 38–9, 52, 65, 150, 157, 195n82; Allies 42; Army 33, 36, 195n76; attitude 64; counterinsurgency theorist 165; culture 110;

251

disaster 180; doctrine 2, 37, 190n41, 197n124, 197n125; historians 138; mathematician 74; nickname 194n51; officers 36, 64; phrase 193n50, 194n70; political manipulation 109; prisoner of war 93; Revolution 24, 29, 131; soldiers 34, 115; soup 48–9 French military 33, 138; doctrine 164; theorists 36; thinking 40 Fuller, J.F.C. 56, 67–9, 81, 88–9, 101, 132, 136, 197n127, 203n5, 203n13, 203n14 Galula, D. 165, 223n87 Gareev, M. 151, 219n9 Gat, A. 196n113 generalship 16, 34, 60, 101 geostrategy 10, 183; geostrategic 10, 37, 182, 184 German 27, 42, 90–1, 166, 192n30; Armed Forces 118; artillery 33; blitzkrieg 23; counter-Enlightenment 73; doctrine 37, 191n64; general staff 37, 195n82; officer 34; operations 191n64; Prusso-German army 195n86; soldier 11, 34; states 213n52; success 220n17; tradition 26; way of war 32 German military 10, 39, 134, 152, 220n17; organisations 113; professionalism 183; prowess 165; style 213n52; thinking 31 German navy 113; naval doctrine 183 Germany 3, 10, 37–8, 51, 68, 137, 146, 182–4, 195n91 Gheyn, J. de 26, 28, 158, 192n10 goal 44, 109, 118, 133, 141–2, 157, 218n60; common 38, 168; formal 143; objective 35; strategic 177 Gordon, A. 171, 188n17 Gray, C.S. 80, 106–7, 127, 206n80, 206n95, 212n26 Great Britain 3, 40, 50–1, 64, 164, 184; civilian control of the military 136; United Kingdom 38, 41, 124, 183 Grint, K. 18, 190n47 Grove, E. 152, 220n20 Hackett, J. 15 Hacking, I. 95, 205n64 Hammes, T.X. 224n134 Harari, Y.N. 197n117, 204n36, 209n21 Hart, B.H. L. 60, 81, 85, 95, 135, 207n116, 209n23

252 Index Hezbollah 13, 16 Higher Command and Staff Course 124, 158 Hofman, G.F. 220n13, 223n109 Howard, M. 32, 102, 187n6, 190n45, 195n76, 207n102 Hughes, D.J. 193n42, 195n86, 202n61 Huntington, S.P. 138–41, 217n18 indoctrination 1, 13, 49, 157; corrupt 158 infantry 33; Drill Regulations 42; motorized 136 information technology 9, 112, 166–8, 170 initiative 12, 15, 166, 168, 185; individual 24, 219n2; intelligent 31; revolutionary 44 institutional 70, 94, 98, 146, 149, 184, 187n10; institutionalism 15, 112, 213n51; isomorphism 112; level 198n146; military 223n109; needs 5; wreck 46, 50 institutionalised 48, 193n47; beliefs 1–2, 117; imperatives 10; viewpoint 187n3 Iraq 47, 50, 55, 61–2, 99, 116, 127, 132, 137, 159, 172, 176–7, 216n125; Iraqi insurgents 52; Operation Iraqi Freedom 12, 137, 175, 189n15 Israel 3, 198n153; ArabIsraeli wars 11, 47; Defense Forces 13, 111; Hezbollah-Israeli War 189n19; Israeli general 13, 60; Israelis 48, 111 Jackson, M. 124, 160 Janowitz, M. 138, 140–1 Jena 33, 93, 95, 209n29 Johnston, A.I. 106–7, 113, 211n10 Jomini, A.-H. 32–3, 42, 60, 67, 69–71, 74, 87–90, 93, 95, 101, 132, 154, 158, 181–2, 193n50, 196n113, 197n125, 202n2, 203n11, 203n16, 210n63, 221n55, 222n56; Jominian doctrine 159–60 Kant, I. 204n36 Kier, E. 108–9, 127, 200n11 knowledge 19; doctrinal 99; folksy 152, 191n2 ; tacit 154 Knox, D.W. 71, 193n33, 203n26 Kuhn, T.S. 202n2; Kuhnian paradigm 98 language 17, 23, 109, 114, 134, 145,

186; abstruse 132; adequate 152; ambiguous 2; British 36; consistent 96; French 32; mathematical 76, 100; precise 160; symbolic 75; unambiguous 153 Lantis, J.S. 109, 212n38, 213n54 Lawrence, T.E. 37, 78, 195n84 leadership 48, 73, 119, 124–6, 224n110; Canadian Forces Institute 214n84; by committee 145; enemy 12; French 34; military 35, 174, 187n5; political 16, 175; programmes 219n4; reliable 91; senior army 198n143; text 18, 20 Lewis, D. 162 Lider, J. 226n4 Linn, B.M. 196n115, 204n32 Lock, E. 109, 212n34 Lockhart, P. 192n24, 192n25, 192n31, 219n10 Lupfer, T. 220n17 Luttwak, E.N. 59, 176 Lysenko, T.D. 129, 137; Lysenkoism 129, 135–7 Machiavelli, N. 74, 193n31 McKitrick, J.S. 11, 159, 188n3 Mäder, M. 221n50, 225n135, 226n13 Mahnken, T.G. 197n127, 205n47, 213n68 Malik, S.K. 86, 208n119 manipulation 122, 140; media 175; political 109 manipulative 11, 109–11; causality 181; culture 128 Mankiewicz, R. 205n71 manuals 22, 42, 97, 115, 140; doctrine 169; field 22, 142, 200n196; illustrated 26; military 25; official 195n86; operation 32; tactical instruction 221n50 Marxism 38, 44, 86; Marxist-Leninism 86 Matthews, L.J. 197n123, 218n56 Mattis, J.N. 16, 216n124, 216n125 meta-doctrinal challenges 18; discussion 43 military 2, 4, 11, 140; establishment 22, 38, 79, 141; operations 1, 24, 27, 58, 60, 77, 119, 145, 161, 174, 178; power 12, 73; virtue 1415, 104, 121, 139 military doctrine 1–5, 9, 11, 14, 17, 20, 22–4, 50, 52, 76, 87, 91, 98, 103, 121, 123, 128–9, 138, 140, 146, 151, 156–7, 159, 161, 172, 181, 183, 187n3,

Index 195n91, 219n5; British 51, 115, 158, 191n68, 200n11; central element 29; first 27; changing 170; constituent parts 29, 187n9; develop 65, 95, 108; divine 86, 120; formal 64; French 164; great power 174; history of 196n115; leverage of 97; makers 105, 110; making 4, 15, 20, 52, 59, 66, 119, 129–30, 149; modern 32, 42; Naval Perspectives 222n65; precluded 13; pros and cons 2, 150; salient aspects 57; sources 25; Soviet 45, 198n159; texts 3, 44, 104, 122, 180; unified 43 military theory 3–4, 22, 48, 58–61, 65–6, 70–1, 74, 85, 101, 132, 151, 213n68, 226n4; foundation 74, 86–7, 98, 100; making 78, 83–4, 100, 129, 133, 181–2; outcome 96; progressive 150; theorists 3, 20, 32, 36, 60, 70, 79, 81, 89, 135, 151, 174, 183; value of 152 Mitchell, W. 42, 140 Moltke, H. von 30–2, 34, 37–8, 65, 150, 165–6, 174, 193n38, 193n42, 193n47 Montgomery of Alamein 34, 57, 132, 152, 194n64, 207n115 Moses, J.W. 220n26, 226n5 Mullaney, C. 127, 222n75 Murray, W. 110, 189n14, 191n64, 213n52, 224n110 Nagl, J.A. 198n146, 199n181, 200n194, 225n154 Napoleon 1, 18, 29–31, 33–5, 37, 39–40, 65, 71, 85, 87, 95, 101, 144, 154, 166, 180, 207n113; Napoleonic wars 82, 181; post-Napoleonic writers 131; way of war 193n36, 196n113 Nassau 26, 28, 202n47; Exercise of Armes 26, 28, 158 Naval War Manual 51, 199n190 neighbours 13, 39, 183; European 64; neighbourhood 84 Nelson, Lord 9, 27, 81, 122–3, 139, 163, 185; band of brothers 9, 27, 123; Victory 122 Neumann, J. von 74, 77, 204n43, 205n48 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 11, 22, 47–8, 154, 171, 189n9, 189n15, 191n55, 191n57; doctrinal library 144; doctrine 48, 144, 158; members 51, 145, 173; Supreme Allied Commander Europe 126, 215n117; transformation 171

253

Norway 182–3; Air Force 172; Armed Forces 142; Joint Operational Doctrine 15, 190n29; military scholar 91; officer 38; Staff College 224n123 nuclear 81–2, 182; age 106; policy 52; strategy 212n17; wars 206n95; weapons 47, 75, 106, 134, 205n71; O’Hanlon, M.E. 204n35 obedience 65, 139, 186 observers 12, 39, 88, 104, 185, 225n2; French 34; modern 223n91 offensive 43–4, 69, 152; capacity 220n17; à outrance 138, 157 On Strategy 18 operational 22, 79, 164; analysis 72; commander 213n68; command level 30, 158; concepts 38, 98, 169; decision-making 122; doctrine 32, 51, 109; effect 76; goals 142; level of war 50, 111, 143–4, 218n68, 219n72; needs 116, 176–7; orders 139; procedures 21; research 114; thought 11, 51, 158 operations 14, 16, 22–3, 27, 31, 38, 43, 45, 50, 144, 161, 166; air 130, 173, 219n76; Allied Command 171; Canadian Forces 118; coalition 160; COIN 165, 182; effects based 13, 16, 189n19; German 191n64; joint 11, 189n9; major 115; military 1, 4, 11, 24, 27, 58, 60, 77, 119, 145, 161, 174, 178; network-centric 168; nuclear 106, 212n17; peace 13, 225n135; research 71–3, 75, 82; theatre of 121, 170, 178 organisation 1, 22–4, 110, 112, 117, 146, 154, 157, 174, 181, 186; hierarchical 167; military 138, 200n11; new members 159; research 75 ossification 2, 12–13, 23, 197n127; habits 164; military culture 115, 154 Overy, R. 219n5 Palazzo, A. 32, 187n10, 188n5, 189n22, 193n47, 199n186, 200n11 paperwork 26, 101, 185 Paret, P. 187n6, 193n38, 195n76, 202n47, 209n29 persuasiveness 35, 62; privileged 10 Peters, R. 64–5, 176, 201n33, 222n59 Petraeus, D.H. 127, 172, 177, 216n125, 216n126

254 Index Plato 56–7, 130, 200n1 politics 4, 74–5, 107, 130–1, 134, 138, 140, 143; balance-of-power 105; international 82 Pope-Hennessy, L.H.R. 40, 196n97 Popper, K. 5, 58–9, 68, 99, 203n8 Porter, P. 105, 109 Powell, C.L. 125, 215n108, 217n37; Doctrine 124, 215n109 prefabricated 12, 16, 39 President 145, 168; Bush 50; Clinton 126; John Jay 28; John F. Kennedy 134 Principles of War 35–6, 50, 159, 193n34 principles of war 67–9, 84–5, 87–8, 95–6, 132, 203n11, 203n14 Proposition to the Storting 218n58 Prussia 2, 13, 33–4, 193n50, 222n67; Great Power 161; Prussian 33, 65, 180, 192n31; Prussian Army 28, 65, 93, 95; defeat 37; generals 93; general staff 31; military professionalism 32, 39, 42; PrussoGerman 195n86; regulations 29 RAND Corporation 75–6, 212n17 Rawls, J. 144, 219n73 regulations 21, 25, 28–9, 34–6, 41, 44, 91, 97; Infantry Drill 42 Reid, B.H. 202n52, 207n115 religious 144, 194n51; aspects of war 85; Catholic 36, 138; Catholicism 197n125; connotations 36–7; experience 187n7; officers 138; origin 180 renaissance 25, 32 revolution 49, 225n154; in business affairs 170, 218n39; French 24, 29, 131; Industrial 81, 220n13; in military affairs 170; Russian 43, 46; scientific 89; in strategic affairs (RSA) 170; training 47 revolutionary 26, 43–4, 170, 183; armies 192n30; War Drill Manual 192n23 Ricks, T.E. 55, 177, 216n125, 216n126, 225n154 Rorty, R. 20, 102, 211n72 Rothenberg, G.E. 193n38, 202n47 Royal Navy 9, 98–9, 139, 175; Fighting Instructions 26–7, 178 Ruge, O. 38, 91, 195n88 Rumsfeld, D. 136–7, 170–1, 217n37, 224n117 Russia 3, 43, 93, 193n50; Moscow 20, 30: see also Soviet Union

Russian 11, 39, 45, 159; army 196n117, 222n57; Civil War 197n127; conventional warfare 48; doctrinal debate 46; military institutions 193n50; people 188n7; Revolution 43; thinking 197n125 Scharnhorst 37, 209n29 Schelling, T.C. 105, 127, 211n12 Schlieffen, A. von 38, 166–7, 193n38 Schön, D.A. 89, 208n142 Schwarzkopf, N. 124 scientist 96, 129, 202n2; natural 84; physical 181; political 5, 137; scientific expertise 1920, 152; social 5, 76–7, 107; young 205n48 second-guess 10, 12, 130 Secretary of Defense 124, 136–7, 170 Selinger, E. 188n18 Sewall, S. 177, 200n193, 216n124, 223n109 shock forces 136–7 Shy, J. 67, 202n1 Simpkin, R.E. 206n93 Simpson, A. 196n106, 196n109 Smith, R. 32, 123–4, 177–8, 215n103 Snider, D.M. 197n123, 218n56 Snyder, J.L. 105–7, 127, 212n17 Somalia 50, 118–19; Report of the Somalia Commission of Inquiry 118, 214n83 Sosa, E. 66, 202n64 South Africa 3, 46 Soviet Union 3, 45–6, 137, 182; congress 44; Iron Curtain 170; military doctrine 45, 198n159, 219n9; Red Army 43–5, 48, 77, 137; The Soviet Strategic Culture 106, 212n17 Spain 26; Spanish Inquisition 11 Spiller, R.J. 49, 191n65, 198n148, 200n10 Starry, D.A. 48, 155, 199n168, 220n13, 223n109 Steuben, F.W. von 28–9, 42, 192n24, 192n25, 192n31; Blue Book 28–9, 151, 158 Storey, J. 219n4 Strachan, H. 190n52, 191n64, 196n95, 205n68, 207n101, 209n23, 220n19 strategy 1, 3, 12, 27–8, 39, 43–4, 59, 80–1, 84, 102, 105, 107, 116, 133, 136–7, 144, 164, 177, 187n5, 206n80; faulty 143; games of 74, 76, 211n12; German 166; in Iraq 177; making 94; maritime 152; mathematical

Index approach 74–5; military 58, 181, 205n47; modern 67; national 21, 46; nuclear 182, 212n17; optimal 78, 205n71; principles of 63, 105; science of 73; security 45, 226n13; teachings of 65; texts 18, 57, 60, 152; theorists 220n26; theory 3, 63–4, 191n53 Sumida, J.T. 122, 209n16 Summers, H.G. 18, 190n44 Sunstein, C.R. 99, 210n50 Svechin, A. 44, 49, 81 Swain, R.M. 213n61, 220n13 Swidler, A. 127, 211n4 tactics 1, 22, 43, 47, 63, 74, 78, 111, 143–4, 176, 218n67, 220n17 Taleb, N.N. 154, 190n51, 216n13 tame problems 1819, 160 tanks 27, 116, 136, 176, 182 Taylor, F. 71, 204n27 team 9–10, 32, 34, 106; effort 192n24; interdisciplinary 82 technological 80; developments 42, 206n93; dimensions of war 111, 184; indicators of power 73; know-how 72; optimism 75; progress 170; superiority 168, 225n2 technology 10, 33, 46, 48, 89, 108, 171, 224n110; dominant 142; harmonizing 111; military 81, 180; modern 75, 98, 168; nanotechnology 87; new 72, 166, 170, 174 Terraine, J. 40–1, 196n104 terrorists 176; 9/11 61, 136; War on Terror 214n81 The Fundamentals of British Maritime Doctrine 205n73, 221n43 theory 3, 5, 10, 27, 29, 32, 35, 37, 55, 57, 64, 82, 92, 97–8, 104, 109, 113–14, 128, 143–4, 151, 156, 157, 181, 201n27, 201n33, 205n47, 220n12, 220n17; abstract 99; advanced 93; Clausewitz 133; of combat 70; Corbett 152–3, 155, 220n20, 220n25; ethical 121; formal 100; game 71, 73–8, 85, 105, 205n47; high 89; making 19, 79, 182; Man-in-the-Dark 85, 207n116; middle-range 100, 102; normal 133, 217n17; objective control 134; political 130; scientific 69, 90; strategic 3, 63–4, 191n53; utility of 100; for victory 60, 159; of war 35, 56, 70, 86, 89–91, 98, 102, 154, 160, 207n116; working 96

255

Till, G. 98, 220n20 Tolstoy, L. 95; War and Peace 188n7 Toulmin, S. 61, 102, 209n32, 210n63, 215n94 Travers, T. 202n52 Trotsky, L. 43, 197n127 Turner, S. 188n18, 216n5 Unité de doctrine 38, 195n88 upheavals 24, 184; revolutionary 183; strategic 81 US 3, 64, 82, 107, 171–2, 187n5; Congress 28; Department of Defense Command 223n98; government agencies 52; Naval Institute 194n67; policy makers 46; Secretary of Defense 170; unity of command 145; Washington 20, 28, 76, 141, 151 US Air Force 51, 75; Basic Doctrine 189n15 US Army 46–7, 49–50, 69, 125, 143–4, 184, 200n10, 208n130; army doctrine 42, 47–8, 50, 183–4; civil- military relations 217n17; counterinsurgency 198n143, 198n146; doctrine 28, 42–3, 165, 176, 191n65, 196n115; pilot program 142; principles 203n13; School of Advanced Military Studies 115; Training and Doctrine Command 46 U.S. Army Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual 52, 127, 155, 175, 177–8, 199n181, 216n124, 223n109, 225n148 US Marine Corps 16, 64, 115, 175, 225n142; Small Wars Manual 115 US military 46, 61; Armed Forces 52, 99, 137; doctrine 82, 99; field manuals 200n196, 218n68; services 199n172; Vagts, A. 138, 202n59, 218n43 victory 10, 34, 85, 98, 126, 159, 165, 178, 184, 191n64; in combat 31; German 38, 191n64; Great War 41, 60; Gulf War 49, 62; military 75, 184; precariousness 88; Western 170 Vietnam War 2, 43, 46, 50, 116, 125, 143, 198n143, 199n181; North Vietnamese 18, 116; South Vietnamese army 116; Vietcong 116 Waltz, K. 105, 127

256 Index war 1–3, 5, 17; big 116; Cold 4, 50–1, 170, 178; Great 34, 37, 41–2, 50, 60, 69, 81, 115, 166, 174, 182, 197n127, 220n17; Gulf 49–50, 62, 70, 118, 124, 215n109; inter-war years 17, 67, 138; modern 13, 39, 47, 71, 135, 174, 184; prepared for 91, 115, 218n43; prisoner of war 93; small 115– 16; war and peace 10, 133; what works in war 104, 114, 117, 129, 136, 149; winning 4, 18, 47, 87, 99, 175: see also World Wars Washington, G. 20, 28, 151 Wass de Czege, H. 158, 173, 211n70, 221n48

Weinberger, C. 124–5; Doctrine 45, 215n109 Wellington, Lord 15, 30, 63 West Point 76, 127, 173 Wilde, O. 36, 195n81 Wilkinson, S. 36, 195n82, 195n84 Wilson, J.Q. 142, 216n9 Winnefeld, J.A. 145, 219n76 World Wars 10, 46, 113, 152, 183–4; World War I 42, 116, 169; World War II 72, 114, 117, 191n64 Wylie, J.C. 57–8, 200n13