Category: American Strategy

On Doctrine – Harry G. Summers Jr.

Synopsis:

In his analysis of the Vietnam War, Harry G. Summers Jr. advances the notion of American strategy as doctrinally deficient via a cloud of confusion. Following the Korean War, the definition of limited war became increasingly fluid. In this way, means and ends became confused – which tended to influence all levels of war.

Excerpts:

“In World War II this linkage dropped out of our war theories, for the national aim was no longer forcing the enemy ‘to sue for peace’ but rather his unconditional surrender. The destruction of the enemy’s armed forces were therefore no longer means to an end so much as an end in itself.

“The U.S. strategy in Korea after the Chinese intervention was not so much one of limiting the means as it was one of tailoring the political ends so that they could be accomplished within the military means that our political leaders were willing to expend.

“Defining victory only in terms of total victory, rather than more accurately as the attainment of the objectives for which the war is waged, was a strategic mistake.

“But even though we dropped victory as an aim in war, the overall doctrinal effects of our Korean war experience were beneficial. As a result of that war we shed our World War II delusions about total war.

“In like manner the polarity with China was also weakened by our publicly expressed fears of becoming involved in a land war in Asia. This lack of polarity was to lead us into an untenable strategic position where the enemy’s territory was inviolable while the territory of our ally was open to attack.

*All excerpts have been taken from On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, Presidio Press.

Presidential Power – Richard Nixon

Synopsis:

Diplomacy signals the sine qua non of Richard Nixon’s vision of presidential power. Within Nixon’s diplomatic power construct, unpredictability, informal negotiations, as well as so-called linkage tend to sub-unify and amplify presidential power-projection vis-à-vis international politics. Similarly, Nixon advances ten diplomatic guide-posts to anchor presidential power.

Excerpts:

“When saying ‘always’ and ‘never,’ always keep a mental reservation; never foreclose the unique exception; always leave room for maneuver. ‘Always’ and ‘never’ are guideposts, but in high-stakes diplomacy there are few immutables. A President always has to be prepared for what he thought he would never do.

“Diplomacy often requires a delicate and intricate balancing of ambiguity and straight talk, the unpredictable and the very predictable. A complex game is played out between adversaries, a game that involves, or should involve, the least amount of guesswork on the part of the other side.

“The United States is an open society. We have all but one of our cards face up on the table. Our only covered card is the will, nerve, and unpredictability of the President – his ability to make the enemy think twice about raising the ante.

“Diplomacy can be used either as a sword or as a needle – as a weapon or an instrument of union. In dealing with allies the President is chiefly engaged in mending tears and strengthening seams.

“The difference between meeting with friends and meeting with adversaries can best be summarized this way. When you talk to your adversaries you learn about them. When you talk to your friends you learn from them.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Real War, Warner Books Inc.

Military Policy – Antoine-Henri Jomini

Synopsis:

Institutions, systems, as well as enduring strategic principles tend to define the Jominian approach to military policy. In this way, Jomini’s tri-causal formula endeavors to allay the development of ineffective military policy via a systematic application of known effective military practices. Further, Jominian institutions – and systems – operate top-down as well as bottom-up to increase strategic effectiveness across a broad spectrum.

Excerpts:

“Military policy may be said to embrace all the combinations of any projected war, except those relating to the diplomatic art and strategy.

“Experience has constantly proved that a mere multitude of brave men armed to the teeth make neither a good army nor a national defense.

“A good army commanded by a general of ordinary capacity may accomplish great feats; a bad army with a good general may do equally well; but an army will certainly do a great deal more if its own superiority and that of the general be combined.

“Strategy alone will remain unaltered, with its principles the same as under the Scipios and Caesars, Frederick and Napoleon, since they are independent of the nature of the arms and the organization of the troops.

“If the prince has not a military education it will be very difficult for him to fulfill his duty in this respect. In this case – which is, unfortunately, of too frequent occurrence – the defect must be supplied by wise institutions, at the head of which are to be placed a good system of the general staff, a good system of recruiting, and a good system of national reserves.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Art of War, BiblioBazaar.

Dollar Diplomacy: 1919-1932 – Herbert Feis

Synopsis:

Examinations of so-called ‘dollar diplomacy’ usually concentrate on American foreign policy before World War One, but Herbert Feis deviates from convention by analyzing the interwar period’s dollar diplomacy – and how such diplomacy influenced the emergence of World War Two. Dollar diplomacy during the interwar period began with private investment as its prime mover, but gradually became more government directed. According to Feis, failure to synergistically fuse credible military deterrence with dollar diplomacy tended to amplify the weaknesses of the policy.

Excerpts:

“The prevailing view was that the American citizen should not be taxed and the American Government should not borrow in order to lend abroad; that foreign seekers of capital should go to the private American investor for it; that he could make his decisions and arrange his deals on a paying business basis while the Government could not.

“The officials concerned were guided more by theory and principle – right or wrong – than by strategy. The theory, derived from domestic finance, was that investment was a private business. The principle was that we sought little from the outside world, save that it be peaceful and pay its debts.

“A substantial fraction of our loans served merely to enable foreign borrowers to pay older or other obligations. Thus, we supplied the means by which Germany paid reparations, thereby indirectly supplying the means whereby our Allies paid debts to the American Treasury and interest on earlier loans made by private American lenders.

“We mistook the good that could have come under the circumstances from sending our capital abroad; and then spoiled the chance of doing any lasting good because other branches of our foreign policy were so defective. After our attempt to organize peace on the basis of treaties failed, we strove to be neutral, isolated, and unoffending.

“It is essential to maintain constant and coherent connection between the diplomacy of the dollar, our domestic and foreign economic policies, our political relations, and our military effort. Each must serve the others and be adjusted to the others.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Diplomacy of the Dollar: 1919-1932, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

American Strategy in Vietnam – Bruce Palmer Jr.

Synopsis:

As a member of the American high command in Vietnam, Bruce Palmer Jr. offers his analysis on the shortcomings of American strategy in the war. According to Palmer, influence from initial assumptive errors menaced the efficacy of ways/means vis-à-vis American ends. By comparison, North Vietnamese strategic assumptions cohesively synthesized with desired ends.

Excerpts:

“The United States was overconfident in believing that superior U.S. technology, Yankee ingenuity, industrial and military might, modern military organization, tactics, and techniques, and a tradition of crisis solving in peace and war would surely bring success in Vietnam where the French had failed.

“The limitation of the war zone meant that there was no practical way to stop the infiltration of men and materiel into South Vietnam. Air interdiction throughout North Vietnam and in the panhandle of Laos could inflict personnel and materiel losses, but predictably could not stop the flow. South Vietnam was virtually impossible to seal off.

“President Johnson beginning in 1965 let it be known to North Vietnamese leaders that the United States did not intend to invade North Vietnam or otherwise try to bring down the Hanoi government. Thereafter U.S. actions without exception reaffirmed that impression of U.S. intent. This practically sealed South Vietnam’s doom, for it allowed Hanoi complete freedom to employ all its forces in the South.

“Perhaps most serious was that, engrossed in U.S. operations, we paid insufficient attention to our number one military job, which was to develop South Vietnamese armed forces that could successfully pacify and defend their own country… By the time the United States changed direction and gave South Vietnamese forces top priority, it was too late. American popular support had been frittered away.

“The question for Hanoi was whether to continue to seek a quick collapse before the Americans could turn the South Vietnamese around, or to settle down for a more protracted struggle. Hanoi’s answer appears to have been to plan and prepare for a long war but at the same time to be ready to exploit any possibility of early success. At the heart of the subversion in the South was a healthy political structure, the shadow government of the Viet Cong, operating at every level.

*All excerpts have been taken from The 25 Year War: America’s Military Role in Vietnam, Da Capo Press.

The Architecture of Theories – Charles Peirce

Synopsis:

American philosopher Charles Peirce advanced a formulaic approach to language – which elevated linguistic clarity as a keystone of theory construction. With its emphasis on systematic language, modern analytic philosophy sustains a measure of kinship with Peirce’s ideas. Likewise, American operational – as well as strategic – doctrine features components of Peirce’s formulaic methodology by stressing representational language.

Excerpts:

“Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted for. That a pitched coin should sometimes turn up heads and sometimes tails calls for no particular explanation; but if it shows heads every time, we wish to know how this result has been brought about. Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason.

“The one primary and fundamental law of mental action consists in a tendency to generalization. Feeling tends to spread; connections between feelings awaken feelings; neighboring feelings become assimilated; ideas are apt to reproduce themselves. These are so many formulations of the one law of the growth of mind.

“The remaining systems of philosophy have been of the nature of reforms, sometimes amounting to radical revolutions, suggested by certain difficulties which have been found to beset systems previously in vogue; and such ought certainly to be in large part the motive of any new theory.

“A modern physicist on examining Galileo’s works is surprised to find how little experiment had to do with the establishment of the foundations of mechanics. His principal appeal is to common sense and il lume naturale. He always assumes that the true theory will be found to be a simple and natural one.

“The great attention given to mechanics in the seventeenth century soon so emphasized these conceptions as to give rise to the Mechanical Philosophy, or doctrine that all the phenomena of the physical universe are to be explained upon mechanical principles.

*All excerpts have been taken from Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Dover.

American Strategic Culture – Colin S. Gray

Synopsis:

Published in 1988, Colin Gray’s The Geopolitics of Super Power examines the cultural and political dimensions of late Cold War era American geostrategy. Context, as well as comparison guide Gray’s analytical framework – which synthesizes geography and history. According to Gray, political geography catalyzes a vital feature of national strategic culture.

Excerpts:

“It is commonplace to observe that dictatorships maintain systemic political strength only in the context of a public aura of success; that is, given that it is the lot of all governments to receive and be responsible for both good and bad news, a dictatorship dares not admit that it has failed.

“The roots of American strategic culture lie in a frontier tradition, an experience and expectation of success in national endeavors, experience with an abundance of resources for defense, a dominant political philosophy of liberal idealism, and a sense of separateness – moral and geostrategic – from the evil doings of the Old World.

“But statecraft is at least as much a matter of discovering and exploiting effective ‘work-arounds’ for national weaknesses and vulnerabilities as it is of exploiting national strengths. Substantially, though not exclusively, the effectiveness of a particular security community in defense of its interests is a function of the quality of strategic guidance provided for sustained collective action.

“Strategic culture – the socially transmitted attitudes, habits, and skills of a community in its approach to issues of national security – is very much the product of geopolitical factors as they are locally interpreted.

“Technical fixes in defense organization, and even changes in military tactics and at the operational level of war, will be unlikely to have the desired effects if they affront important strands in American culture.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Geopolitics of Super Power, The University Press of Kentucky.

The Confusion Between Tactics and Strategy in Vietnam – Harry G. Summers Jr.

Synopsis:

The American affection for the operational art vis-à-vis warfighting became obvious during the Vietnam War. Without the strategic character of the conflict rightly defined, military planners – as well as policy makers – tended to confuse the strategic dimensions of ways, means, and ends. In his book on the conflict, Harry G. Summers Jr. analyzes the initial assumptive error, as well as the corresponding strategic confusion which followed.

Excerpts:

“Instead of orienting on North Vietnam – the source of war – we turned our attention to the symptom – the guerrilla war in the south. Our new ‘strategy’ of counterinsurgency blinded us to the fact that the guerrilla war was tactical and not strategic.

“Basic to the success of a strategic defensive in pursuit of the negative aim, therefore, is the assumption that time is on your side. But the longer the war progressed the more obvious it became that time was not on our side.

“Because it did not focus on the political aim to be achieved – containment of North Vietnamese expansion – our so-called strategy was never a strategy at all. At best it could be called a kind of grand tactics.

“Since the insurgency itself was a tactical screen masking North Vietnam’s real objectives (the conquest of South Vietnam), our counterinsurgency operations could only be tactical, no matter what we called them.

“Our failure as military professionals to judge the true nature of the Vietnam war had a profound effect. It resulted in confusion throughout the national security establishment over tactics, grand tactics and strategy, a confusion that continues to this day.

*All excerpts have been taken from On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, Presidio Press.

The Strategic Dimension – Colin S. Gray

Synopsis:

Colin Gray’s analysis of the so-called strategic dimension of conflict is a multilayered approach – which recognizes at least seventeen dimensions of strategy. According to Gray, the essentials of human culture animate the vital center of the strategic dimension. Further, Gray’s strategic dimension synthesizes with John Keegan’s cultural prime mover of strategy notion for a more refined recognition of how assumptions influence strategic thinking.

Excerpts:

“Politicians and their advisers are experts at crafting policy, just as soldiers have traditionally been viewed as the professionals in ‘the management of violence.’ Who is it, though, that patrols the no-man’s land between politics and military force? That is the realm where strategists should roam.

“Although it may appear unduly pessimistic, even uncharitable, to say it, the evidence of history strongly suggests that we will fail to anticipate the strategic ideas some of our enemies will employ. As a result, we will be embarrassed and, possibly, even defeated occasionally. Such is strategic history.

“Those theorists and officials who persistently confuse the character of war, which is always changing, with the nature of war, which cannot alter, are responsible for creating confusion and raising false expectations.

“Americans must be true to their culture. The conduct of a technological style of warfare is mandated by American circumstances and preferences: It is what Americans do well, and it is usually sensible to go with one’s strengths. The danger is that America’s romance with high technology might distort its understanding of war and strategy.

“In the twentieth century, Germany proved itself to be exceptionally good at fighting. But it repeatedly fell in its inability to translate that combat prowess into an ability to win wars. A world community uneasily dependent upon America’s strategic performance as sheriff has to hope that their guardian state will not reveal any like tendency to win battles but lose wars. That community must also hope that America will remember that the purpose of war is not victory, but the achievement of a condition of peace with security superior to the pre-war context.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Sheriff: America’s Defense of the New World Order, The University Press of Kentucky.

Oil, and the Evolution of Islamism in the Middle East – Michael A. Palmer

Synopsis:

Michael A. Palmer chronicles the rise of twentieth century Islamism – i.e. the militant politicized form of Islam – in his book the The Last Crusade, and finds its origins in the myriad failures of Arab nationalism. According to Palmer, local nationalism was inspired by European geopolitics in the region, and Islamism by the waning of such nationalism following episodes of Arab weakness vis-à-vis the West – particularly concerning Israel.

Excerpts:

“The Americans gained their first penetration into the Middle East oil market in 1928, although at the cost of abandoning its Open Door principle. On July 31, 1928, British, Dutch, French, and American oil companies signed the famous ‘Red Line Agreement,’ establishing a cartel controlling oil exploration and production in the region.

“From 1920 to 1939 oil production had increased dramatically, by 900 percent, largely because of American involvement. Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain had joined Persia as major producers. In 1920 the United States produced about 95 percent of the world’s oil; by 1939 that number had fallen to about 86 percent.

“Nixon shaped a policy that would avoid committing American forces, most especially ground troops. His Nixon Doctrine turned responsibility for regional defense to local states. In Indochina this policy became known as ‘Vietnamization’; in the Persian Gulf it took the form of the ‘Twin Pillars,’ or a reliance on Iran and Saudi Arabia.

“After 1975 no one viewed Lebanon as a template for sectarian coexistence. The Lebanese experiences also marked the shift in the nature of terrorists acts – from those employed by a ‘national liberation front’ organization, such as the PLO, to those employed by Islamic fundamentalists.

“Arafat had supported Hussein and the invasion of Kuwait, and with the Iraqis’ collapse the Palestinians were persona non grata in many of the gulf states, especially Kuwait. The first Intifada, which had begun in 1987, came to an abrupt end in 1991.

*All excerpts have been taken from The Last Crusade: Americanism and the Islamic Reformation, Potomac Books, Inc.