Echevarria’s Critiques of the American Way of War

Warfare Studies
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Warfare Studies
TOWARD AN AMERICAN WAY OF WAR
Antulio J. Echevarria II
March 2004
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR
ANTULIO J. ECHEVARRIA II, an Army lieutenant colonel, currently is assigned as the Director of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1981, was commissioned as an armor officer, and has held a variety of command and staff assignments in Germany and Continental United States; he has also served as an Assistant Professor of European History at the U.S. Military Academy; Squadron S3 of 3/16 Cavalry; Chief of BN/TF and Bde Doctrine at the U.S. Army Armor Center at Fort Knox; as an action officer at the Army After Next project at HQ TRADOC, Ft. Monroe, VA; and as a speechwriter for the U.S. Army Chief of Staff. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College, and the Army War College, and holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in History from Princeton University. Lieutenant Colonel Echevarria is the author of After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers before the Great War, published by the University Press of Kansas (2001). He also has published articles in a number of scholarly and professional journals to include the Journal of Military History, War in History, War & Society, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Parameters, Joint Force Quarterly, Military Review, and Airpower Journal.

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TOWARD AN AMERICAN WAY OF WAR
Serious inquiry into the American approach to waging war began in the early 1970s with the publication of Russell Weigley’s The American Way of War.1 Examining how war was thought about and practiced by key U.S. military and political figures from George Washington to Robert McNamara, Weigley concluded that, except in the early days of the nation’s existence, the American way of war centered on the pursuit of a crushing military victory―either through a strategy of attrition or one of annihilation―over an adversary.2 U.S. military men and political leaders typically saw the destruction of an opponent’s armed might and the occupation of his capital as marking the end of war and the beginning of postwar negotiations. Thus, Americans―not unlike many of their European counterparts―considered war an alternative to bargaining, rather than part of an ongoing bargaining process, as in the Clausewitzian view. In other words, the American concept of war rarely extended beyond the winning of battles and campaigns to the gritty work of turning military victory into strategic success. Consequently, the American approach to war was―to take the liberty of rephrasing Weigley’s argument―more a way of battle than an actual way of war. Unfortunately, despite the existence of a theoretical foundation and a vast transformation effort that is gaining considerable momentum, the American way of battle has not yet matured into a way of war.
The phrase “way of war” as it is used here refers to general trends in the conduct of, and preferred modes of thinking about, war.3 Specifically, in an American context, it reflects the fundamental ideas and expectations, albeit modified in practice, that the U.S. military profession and U.S. political leadership have, or have had, about war, and their respective roles in it. These ideas and expectations, in turn, contribute to the assumptions that inform political and military decisionmakers in matters of strategic planning, budgeting, and concept and doctrine development. Assumptions currently underpinning Defense Transformation, for example, appear to be aimed at developing an ever exquisite grammar that quite overlooks the centrality of war’s logic.

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A Way of War Uniquely American?
Much of what Weigley said about the American way of war would apply to the German, French, or British methods of warfare as well. The German way of war as thought about and practiced by the elder Helmuth von Moltke, Chief of the Prusso-German General Staff from 1857-88, for example, shares much in common with the American approach described by Weigley. Moltke equated grand strategy with policy―which he considered the discrete province of statesmen―and insisted that, while policy had the right to establish the goals of a conflict, even changing them when it saw fit, it had no right to interfere with the conduct of military operations.4 In Clausewitzian terms, then, Moltke acknowledged the initial importance of the logic of war, but insisted that its grammar took precedence during the actual fighting. This kind of reasoning also existed in many of the French and British military writings published during Moltke’s time and into the late 20th century.5 Hence, despite some evident exceptions, Moltke’s segregated, grammarian approach to war―rather than Clausewitz’s view of policy and war as a logical continuum―seems to bear the greater resemblance to the American tradition of warfare.6
Accordingly, while one might expect to see more differences than similarities in national styles of war, in the Western context at least, the opposite is true. American, British, French, and German military writers all studied the campaigns of Napoleon, and later of Moltke, drawing many of the same lessons from those studies. They saw battles and campaigns in a similar light, believing, for instance, that winning wars meant winning battles, and that doing so would accomplish most, if not all, of one’s wartime objectives. They also faced many of the same fiscal, manning, and organizational challenges, nurtured similar traditions regarding the warrior spirit, and kept comparably abreast of new developments in military technology, tactics, and operational concepts. While Western military establishments occasionally adopted different strategies, tactics, or operational paradigms, particularly in the period of reorganization before World War II, they did so mainly in response to the specific challenges of their geo-strategic and socio-political situations.7 In terms of seeing the fundamental object of war as the destruction of

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the enemy’s armed might by the best possible route, however, they were largely of one mind.
Such common denominators support the case for the existence of a larger Western way of war. Noted authors, such as Victor Davis Hanson, in fact, have made such a case. In Carnage and Culture, published in 2001, Hanson argued that some of the underlying values of Western culture, namely, its traditions of rationalism, individualism, and civic duty, led not only to a decided technological dominance, as eminent historians such as Geoffrey Parker have contended, but also to significant―even decisive―advantages in military “organization, discipline, morale, initiative, flexibility, and command.”8 These advantages made Western armies and navies more successful in combat than their counterparts in other cultures. To his credit, Hanson does not insist that Western values have survived unadulterated over the years or that military cultures perfectly mirror the cultures of their parent civil societies. Rather, he persuasively maintains only that in each of the clash of cultures that he examines―such as Cortйs’s conquistadors versus Cuauhtйmoc’s Aztecs in the battles that took place for the city of Tenochtitlбn (1520-21)―those values were more evident in the Western force than in that of its adversary. To be sure, Western military cultures often campaigned vigorously against the spread of free thinking or individualism―the underpinnings of initiative and flexibility, for example―because they were thought to undermine a soldier’s corporate identity and his will to fight.9 Nonetheless, U.S. and European military institutions were influenced more by such ideas than were their foes.
Significantly, Hanson also demonstrates the predominance of the concept of annihilation―which he defines broadly as the idea of “head-to-head battle that destroys the enemy”―in each of the clashes of arms he examines and, by extension, in Western military thinking in general. Like Weigley, he also underscores the view that Westerners saw war principally as a means of “doing what politics cannot.”10 Hanson thus agrees with Weigley that, in most of Western strategic thought, politics brought war into being, but war existed as a violent alternative to politics, rather than as its logical extension. Hence, the commonalities that the American style of warfare shares with the Western way of war show that Weigley’s

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interpretation, though flawed in some respects, is―to take minor license with a celebrated German motto―“greater than it seems.”11
Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that Weigley’s description of the American approach to warfare is marred by shortcomings in at least two respects: in the errors he makes in military terminology; and in his tendency to oversimplify the complexities of American military thinking, though generalizations are to be expected in a work that spans the better part of 2 centuries. With regard to terminology, he incorrectly defines the strategies of annihilation and of attrition, describing the former as seeking the complete “overthrow of the enemy’s military power” and the latter as pursuing lesser objectives by means of an “indirect approach,” which he mistakenly says is characterized primarily by the gradual erosion or exhaustion of an opponent’s  HYPERLINK "https://forces.12" forces.12 His misuse of military terminology caused some readers to conclude, incorrectly, that the American approach to warfare was characterized by applying overwhelming “mass and concentration” in a slow, grinding strategy of attrition as General Ulysses S. Grant did in the Civil War.13
Regarding his errors of oversimplification, Weigley overlooked the considerable amount and variety of American thinking concerning the importance of deterring an invasion of the continent, which played a key role in the development of U.S. coastal artillery and provided a rationale for the long-range bomber, and which both reflected and reinforced U.S. attitudes toward isolationism into the early 20th century. These criticisms, however, do not substantively undermine Weigley’s thesis―that Americans saw the primary object of war as the destruction of an opponent’s armed might rather than as the furtherance of political objectives through violent means―so much as they qualify it. They merely highlight the exceptions that ultimately prove the rule.14 Weigley’s view thus remains a valid way of looking at the American style of war as it was thought about and practiced for nearly 2 centuries.
However, one recent counterargument to his thesis deserves consideration. Max Boot’s Savage Wars of Peace, published in 2002, contends that, whatever their preferences, American military and political leaders have actually practiced more than one way of war.15 Boot maintains that U.S. involvement in history’s “small wars”―such as the Boxer Rebellion, the Philippine Insurrection,
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and contemporary interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Somalia― actually outnumbers its participation in major conflicts and is, therefore, deserving of inclusion in any description of the American style of warfare. Between 1800 and 1934, for example, U.S. Marines made 180 landings on foreign shores, more than one per year. During roughly the same period, the U.S. Army deployed numerous small contingents in actions virtually all over the globe. Likewise, the U.S. Navy, though small, was involved in many actions at sea over the same time span that, both directly and indirectly, assisted the British Royal Navy in keeping the oceans open for commerce.
Boot also maintains that the U.S. military became involved in such small-scale actions not to protect or advance vital interests, but for lesser reasons that centered on inflicting punishment, ensuring protection, achieving pacification, and benefiting from profit- HYPERLINK "https://making.16" making.16 For example, the armed expedition launched in 1916 by President Woodrow Wilson to capture Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa was clearly punitive in nature. The U.S. Navy’s involvement in the Barbary Wars (1801-05, and 1815) provides an illustration of wars fought for protection, in this case to ensure the protection of American merchantmen sailing along the coast of North Africa. U.S. interventions in Haiti (1915-34) and the Dominican Republic (1916-24) represent attempts at pacification, or modern-day nation-building, but they also furthered America’s policy of dollar  HYPERLINK "https://diplomacy.17" diplomacy.17 Finally, U.S. participation in a multinational expedition to Peking during the Boxer Uprising (1900) was as much about liberating captive emissaries as it was protecting America’s small, but growing economic interests in China from European colonial ambitions.
Furthermore, Boot contends that these small-scale conflicts― which he also calls “imperial wars”―contributed significantly to the rise of the United States as a world power, even though they did not directly involve vital interests.18 Hence, he not only calls for the recognition of a hitherto uncelebrated small-war tradition in U.S. military history, he insists that the American military embrace this tradition in an effort to prepare for the wars of the present and of the  HYPERLINK "https://future.19" future.19 In the final analysis, Boot augments Weigley’s thesis rather than overturning it; he thus rounds out the picture of the American way of war, which―after combining both interpretations―looks much like the proverbial coin with two sides.
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A Way of Battle.
In some respects, these two faces are at diametrical odds with one another. One side of the coin―Weigley’s interpretation―helps explain the intellectual background that ultimately gave rise to the Powell doctrine, which, briefly stated, holds that wars should be fought only for vital national interests and must have clear political objectives and popular support. It further emphasizes that the military should be allowed to use decisive force and that the political leadership must have a sound exit strategy for bringing the troops home.20 Put simply, the Powell doctrine tends to constrain how and why political leaders employ military force. Some might argue that this approach leaves the grammar of war to dictate its logic, a clear perversion of one of Clausewitz’s key dictums. Others would maintain, as Powell himself does, that use of such a doctrine as a form of wartime grammar makes perfect sense; the point of grammar, after all, is to ensure that the logic behind the message is conveyed intact (how it is perceived is another  HYPERLINK "https://matter).21" matter).21
In contrast, Boot’s interpretation describes a way of war that runs completely counter to the principles of the Powell doctrine: America’s involvement in the so-called savage wars of peace rarely concerned vital interests, clear political goals, popular support, or overwhelming force, and routinely required committing U.S. troops abroad for extended periods of time.22 Unfortunately, the track record of such interventions―despite Boot’s attempt to prove otherwise―is not encouraging. The United States had to occupy the Philippines, Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic many times, and for many years at a time, in order to impose any kind of lasting stability. Sometimes, even after long occupations as in Haiti (1915-34) and the Dominican Republic (1916-24), stability quickly collapsed after U.S. forces departed. Thus, while the U.S. military’s preference for fighting major wars may have compromised its ability to succeed in small ones, it is also clear that the nation-building tasks it was typically asked to perform tended to prove too complex for the military tool alone.
The approach that Boot advocates―in which potential interventions are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and which claims that no alternative to the Powell doctrine is “possible or desirable”―
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comes close to dismissing the grammar of war altogether.23 To be sure, the Powell doctrine imposes constraints on the use of military force. However, the absence of a doctrine brings problems of its own. A strategic doctrine sends messages both domestically and abroad about the extent to which the United States will go to protect its interests, vital or  HYPERLINK "https://otherwise.24" otherwise.24 A critical part of that domestic audience is, of course, the military itself. Certainly, the Powell doctrine sends the message that the military need only concern itself with major wars: it will not have to do “windows,” or nation-building, for example. However, the absence of a doctrine suggests that the political leadership does not know what it is about―where it is headed or what its priorities are. Without such priorities to guide it, the military will most likely default into preparing only for the kinds of wars it prefers to approach.27 Boot claims, moreover, that the new American way of war makes it possible for the United States to wage the “savage wars of peace” more effectively and more efficiently, thereby enabling it to enlarge its “empire of liberty”―by which he means the “family of democratic, capitalist nations” that benefit from America’s largesse. This expansion, in fact, the United States is morally obligated to do because of its tremendous military and economic  HYPERLINK "https://might.28" might.28
The characteristics that Boot describes bear a conspicuous resemblance to the qualities of “speed, jointness, knowledge, and precision” that underpin the model of the new American way of war currently championed by the Office of Force Transformation (OFT) and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).29 This model reflects a crude blend of terminology extracted from Complexity theory and air-power theory, particularly John Warden’s notions about launching a series of precise, parallel strikes at an adversary’s so-called centers of gravity in order to inflict a certain strategic paralysis on him.30 Its origins seem to stem from the initial spate of ideas that emerged after Operation DESERT STORM, and gained considerable momentum through the 1990s, about America’s new style of warfare. These ideas highlighted an air-centric approach that appeared to promise quick results with minimal cost in friendly casualties and collateral damage. Noted defense analyst, Eliot Cohen, pointed out that the potency of contemporary American air power gives the American way of war a certain “mystique” that U.S. diplomacy would do well to cultivate, though he cautioned that air power was hardly a silver  HYPERLINK "https://bullet.31" bullet.31 However, his warning did little to curb the enthusiasm of air-power zealots, such as one-time historian at the Smithsonian Institute, Richard Hallion, who claimed that the results of Operation DESERT STORM proved that U.S. air power had literally―and almost single-handedly―revolutionized HYPER13 HYPERLINK "https://warfare.32" warfare.32 Indeed, according to some briefings circulating in the Pentagon at

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the time, air power was not only America’s asymmetric advantage, it was the future of warfare. Thus, for a time, the new American way of war seemed to involve only one service.
Shortly after the end of the conflict in Kosovo, Cohen summed up the salient impressions circulating among defense intellectuals about the new American way of war. With views similar to those of Weigley and Boot, Cohen saw the traditional U.S. approach to war as characterized by a certain aggressiveness or desire to take the fight to the enemy, by the quest for a decisive battle, by an explicit dislike of diplomatic interference, and by a low tolerance for anything but clear political objectives. In contrast, the new style of warfare reflected a decided aversion to casualties, typified by a greater preference for precision bombing and greater standoff, and it seemed willing to step away from the restrictive Powell doctrine and to participate more in coalitions, even those created only to address humanitarian concerns. The reduced risk of U.S. casualties, in turn, made such wars for less-than-vital interests more palatable. Cohen also expressed concern, however, that this new way of war increased military authority at the expense of civilian control by permitting the combatant commander, in this case General Wesley Clark, to become the focal point for strategic  HYPERLINK "https://decisionmaking.33" decisionmaking.33
Critics quickly responded that, in its most important aspects, this new style of war was already passй―operating in a world where its premises were “no longer valid.”34 In light of the thousands of lives lost on September 11, 2001, Americans seemed willing to return to an aggressive style of warfare and to bear whatever costs were necessary, even in terms of significant U.S. casualties. Indeed, the U.S. military’s campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq were to prove that the capability for waging the close fight, even if based more on precision than mass, remained indispensable for achieving favorable combat  HYPERLINK "https://outcomes.35" outcomes.35 Those campaigns also demonstrated that civilian control over the military was alive and well when a strong civilian personality, like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has the helm.
The major differences between the new American way of war as understood by defense intellectuals and that conceived by OSD lay in the latter’s emphasis on the characteristics of jointness and knowledge, which the former regarded as little more than rhetorical excess. Defense intellectuals preferred to see the new U.S. way

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of war in terms of how it played itself out within the context of modern conflict, while OSD tended to project a list of desired (some would say ideal) capabilities into the future. This is not to say that OSD’s model was entirely divorced from current events, for it later morphed to accommodate the Bush administration’s emerging doctrine of strategic  HYPERLINK "https://preemption.36" preemption.36 OSD now asserts, for example, that future military operations overall will have to “shift from being reactive (i.e., retaliatory and punitive) to largely preventative.”37
The chief similarity in the views of defense intellectuals and OSD resides in the lack of emphasis on the end game, specifically, on the need for systematic thinking about the processes and capabilities needed to translate military victory into strategic success. As retired U.S. Marine General Anthony Zinni remarked, the U.S. military is becoming more efficient at “killing and breaking,” but that only wins battles, not wars.38 OSD’s model acknowledges the importance of “interagency constabulary forces,” for instance, but it does so not with the intent to achieve a better result in the end game, but with the goal of freeing up “elite forces” for further combat  HYPERLINK "https://operations.39" operations.39 Consequently, the new American way of war seems headed for the same trap that snared both the Weigley and Boot versions of the traditional one, that is―it appears geared to fight wars as if they were battles and, thus, confuses the winning of campaigns or small-scale actions with the winning of wars.
However, if the history of strategic thinking is any guide, this trajectory is not necessarily inevitable. After reaping the fruits of its so-called golden decade, and after years of self-examination in the wake of Vietnam, for instance, U.S. strategic thought generally acknowledged that, in the long run, the winning of battles counts for much less than the accomplishment of one’s strategic  HYPERLINK "https://objectives.40" objectives.40 U.S. Army Colonel Harry Summers’ account of his conversation with a North Vietnamese Army (NVA) colonel has been cited often― and with good reason―to illustrate the point that winning battles does not suffice for winning wars. When Summers confronted his counterpart with the fact that the NVA had never defeated U.S. forces on the field of battle, the NVA colonel replied, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.”41 Summers’ account, of course, maintains that American soldiers did their job, but U.S. political leadership failed to do its. In other words, the grammar was right, but the logic was

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wrong. Almost in spite of itself, however, the account also reinforces the point that accomplishing one’s strategic objectives serves as the ultimate measure of success in war.
A debate of sorts that took place from the 1950s to the 1970s over the practicality of using military force as a rational extension of policy actually foreshadowed this  HYPERLINK "https://point.42" point.42 Robert Osgood, perhaps America’s leading theorist of limited war during this period, maintained that, even in an age laboring under the shadow of nuclear escalation, the use of military force as a rational extension of policy still had a place, providing one measured success “only in political terms and not purely in terms of crushing the enemy.”43 Osgood also warned that, to approach the use of force in this way, Americans would have to overcome some strong tendencies in their traditional way of war, the most important being the bifurcation in strategic thinking that separates the spheres of “power and policy.”44 Similarly, Thomas C. Schelling, a leading theorist of the nascent concept of coercive diplomacy, argued that one could apply military force not just to achieve the complete overthrow of an opponent as in World War II, but in more controlled and measured ways―to coerce, intimidate, or deter an adversary―and thereby to accomplish any number of aims short of total victory.45 Both theorists thus contributed to shifting the general thinking about war toward strategic objectives, that is, away from a predominant focus on grammar and toward broader concepts of logic.
On the other side of the debate, decorated military commanders, such as Admiral J. C. Wylie, countered that war creates new political dynamics that change the diplomatic landscape and generally render prewar policy “invalid.”46 In a book entitled, Military Strategy, he underscored the difference between the terms “policy” and “politics,” which confused many who attempted to use Clausewitz’s model of political primacy, and contended that war may indeed be an extension of politics―meaning the perpetual struggle for power―but it was not really the “continuation of policy.”47 In actuality, the very fact that war has broken out usually means that one policy has collapsed, and another must take its place. Failure to adjust policy according to the changing circumstances of conflict, Wylie maintained, can lead to defeat as well as other negative consequences.

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Although a practical military man, Wylie actually succeeded in developing a general theory of military strategy that centered not on the pursuit of decisive victory, but on the idea of employing military force in ways that would exert “control” over what he termed the “centers of gravity” (critical aspects) of any particular conflict, and thereby compel an opponent to comply with one’s strategic  HYPERLINK "https://objectives.48" objectives.48 American strategic theory had thus begun to move beyond battles, per se, to explore other ways of using force to serve policy effectively. Thus, both civilian and military theorists, though divided on some issues, came to similar conclusions about the imperative to measure ...