dissertation help please! US military culture and small wars.

[Ken White]

reinventing the wheel -- that's due to massive egos and arrogance "I don't need help, I have all the answers" is as American as the proverbial apple pie. We're arrogant twits at times...

On the fads, that's our short attention span and constant search for quicker and better ways to do things (never cheaper...).

War is a very human endeavor; the attitudes and proclivities of people permeate it and will influence the way they go about it. While people are people the world over, Americans are rather different from Europeans in many aspects of collective psyche.

[selil]

As a person working on my PhD dissertation I would mention to the council in general that there is an underlying push to make the dissertation a book. It is all about the book. If you don't have a book when you are done you can't get the faculty job. I already have the vaunted tenured faculty job so I've told THREE book publishers no. BEFORE the dissertation is even done. I don't agree with the pressure for the book but I do understand where the pressure is coming from.

For the record my dissertation is a "sample" of the work I've done in the area. Right now I'm writing the methods section and really really really (x10K) struggling with an a-typical approach to reversing a representational model which is non-empirical.

Xander, there are a variety of resources published by Air University at Maxwell in the 1980s. The books are all about low-intensity conflict and perceptions post Goldwater-Nichols Act on how small wars can be fought. You can get them for.... FREE... via PDF or postage if you can find their resources person.

[Entropy]

You might also want to do some searches of the DTIC archive as part of your literature review if nothing else.

[John T. Fishel]

and for Sam, I believe that Taylor & Francis (who bought out Frank Cass) the publisher of LIC&LE and Small Wars & Insurgencies would reproduce all the articles in these journals (and their others) for a price. I do suspect that the UK libraries will have the journals. In the US, I am sure that the libraries of the military graduate schools have these journals - CARL at CGSC (Leavenworth), the AWC, the NDU library. All work with interlibrary loan. Indeed, that is probably the best way to go (but you may have to tell your librarians where to look.

Cheers

JohnT

[Bill Moore]

xander day wrote,

The thesis of my dissertation is that the culture of the American military prevents it from fighting small wars effectively. The overarching focus of the essay will be upon how the U.S. Army’s preference for conventional warfare weakens significantly both their capacity to fight small wars, and their willingness to do so.

xander, like the others I applaud your efforts, but find your thesis statement flawed.

First, when you state that the American military has difficulty fighting small wars, that implies that other nations don't and are actually good at it. I would argue that most modern countries (especially democracies) have major difficulties waging small wars, especially small wars that endure over a long period. I'm sure you can list many failed European attempts to hold onto their colonies.

Furthermore, the recent trend to compare Malaysia to Vietnam is shamefully deceptive and unproductive. Put the Malysian Emergency in perspective, it was a British colony, and the Brits defined the rules, which gave them considerable freedom of movement. And while the emergency was serious, it paled in comparison to the problem set in Vietnam. As Owen stated the Vietnam War was not just a small war, combat with NVA regulars was as conventional as it got, and it was the conventional fight in the end that was decisive when NVA regulars rolled into Saigon.

Concurrently there was an insurgency, and some criticism directed against the U.S.'s early COIN efforts in Vietnam is deserved (although it frequently over hyped in my opinion). However, what seems to be overlooked is our many successes in Vietnam against both the NVA and the insurgency. GEN Abrams developed an appropriate COIN strategy, so we did learn, and we did concurrently while waging a conventional fight, and in a country where we didn't write all the rules. When we pulled out the VC were largely contained, at least to the point that they were not a vital threat to S. Vietnam, and the NVA was back in their box.

There are some new historical books coming out without the political agendas of the past, that shine a new light on our conflict in Vietnam. By all means criticize our shortfalls, but please keep it in perspective. If you want to compare America's performance to Europe's colonial wars, then I recommend you look at our conflict in the Philippines. We adapted rather quickly and in most respects did better than other modern countries.

Second, since your thesis is focused on the American Military's shortfalls, which there are many, but I think Ken put in perspective well when he explained the political and social factors on our homefront that shape our military policy and strategy.

I have to thank William Owen for this statement,

When left to their own devices, the US are actually pretty/very good. ...and they do learn fast, and there is ample material to support this, but what they learn the do seem to forget. Why they do, may be worthy of some study.

We do have the doctrine for small wars, and we had it long before the new COIN manual came out a couple of years ago. Why we failed to adapt to the situations we were in sooner still confounds me, but we do adapt.

My final point is that some small wars are not winnable for America or anyone else because the objectives are too lofty, too expensive and take too much time, which means the social and political factors that Ken addressed will preclude success. That is not a problem unique to America.

[selil]

The thesis of my dissertation is that the culture of the American military prevents it from fighting small wars effectively. The overarching focus of the essay will be upon how the U.S. Army’s preference for conventional warfare weakens significantly both their capacity to fight small wars, and their willingness to do so.

I wouldn't call the above a thesis but more of a research motivation. On the social side of things there is a lot of academic literature that says we don't fight wars very well at all. That body of work tends to make the militant military types very uncomfortable because in reality what does a good war look like? Sun Tzu and Clausewitz both would say the one you don't have to fight.

Here are a few you could look up. None are going to have "THE ANSWER" I've found some value in reading them.

Barno, D. (2006). Challenges in fighting a global insurgency. Parameters(Summer), 15-29.

Dunlap, C. (1997). 21st century land warfare: Four dangerous myths. Parameters, Autumn, 27-37.

Fleming, B. (2004). Can reading Clausewitz save us from future mistakes. Parameters, 2004(Spring), 62-76.

Hooker, R. D. (2005). Beyond Vom Kriege: The character and conduct of modern war. Parameters, 2005(Summer), 4-17.

Meigs, M. C. (2003). Unorthodox thoughts about asymmetric warfare. Parameters, 2003(Summer), 4-18.

Szafranski, R. (1990). Thinking about small wars. Parameters(September), 39-49.

Gross, L. (1948). The Peace of Westphalia, 1648-1948. The American Jouranl of International Law, 42(1), 20-41.

Brubaker, J. R. (2005). Low-intensity cultural conflict: Critical art, terrorism and the neurolinguistic environment. Anthropology of complex societies, 2005(Spring), 1-7.

Low-intensity conflict and modern technology. (1986). Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press.

Blank, S. (2003). Rethinking asymmetric threats. Carlisle, PA: Stategic Studies Insitute U.S. Army War College.

Blank, S., Grinter, L. E., Magyar, K. P., Ware, L. B., & Weathers, B. E. (1990). Responding to low-intensity conflict challenges. Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press.

Dean, D. J. (1986). The Air Force role in low-intensity conflict. Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press.

Echevarria, A. (2005). Fourth-generation war and other myths. Strategic Studies Institute: United States Army War College.

[Schmedlap]

The Utility of Force by General Rupert Smith