The John Boyd collection (merged thread)

[TT]

William F. Owen asked: As concerns how the USMC came to adopt MW, I would love to know. Any sources of information you could suggest (other than the Boyd Biographies) would be gratefully accepted.

The simple answer with respect to how the Corps came to adopt MW is ‘Vietnam’. Sort of.

It is possible to identify three strands of ‘sources’ (I am using ‘sources’ here fairly loosely and being 'academic'), all of which can be directly or indirectly linked to Vietnam.

First, the first public discussion of MW emerged as a consequence of the ‘heavy upping’ debate within the Corps in the middle to late 1970s. The short explanation of this debate is that Marines were debating how they should go about preparing to fight the Soviets or Soviet military clones, probably outnumbered. This a post-Vietman re-orientation. This debate and the emergence of MW is detailed in ‘“Innovate or Die”: Organizational Paranoia and the Origins of the Doctrine of Manoeuvre Warfare in the US Marine Corps’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3 (June 2006) pp. 475-503 (sorry, no link, but if you want a copy, PM or email me).

Second, was the Defence Reform movement, which first started to emerge in the mid-1970s and really started to gain political traction in Reagan’s first term. This encompassed a rather broad spectrum of people, but notably included Sen. Gary Hart, Boyd, and Lind. The Defence Reform Movement (though not Boyd in and of himself and his evolving thinking) stems indirectly from Vietnam.

Third, and finally, any number of Marine officers emerged from Vietnam with a view that there had to a better way to fight (ie than methodical warfare). There is no way of knowing how many such officers there were, but those that were so interested were probably very diffused across the Corps. Among the more prominent of such officers were Col. Michael Wyly and Gen. Al Gray (there were others who also fit, more or less, such as Lt. Gen. Paul van Riper who were not vocal – ie writing in the Gazette – proponents of MW).

To keep a long story reasonably short, two of these three ‘strands’ come together, serendipitously, in 1979 and 1980, while the third becomes really apparent in and around 1982/83. To explain, the first mention of ‘MW’ comes out in a two part article (Oct and Dec, 1979) in the Gazette. The article(s) acknowledge a range of actors, from Genghis Khan to Hannibal, among others, but also Boyd. One can semi trace the emergence of the thinking of the author of these pieces (a Marine Capt who disappears a year later) and it is extremely reasonable to assume that he at least heard Boyd give one (or more?) of his famous presentations probably sometime in late 1978 or early 1979 (but the historical record is silent on what other contact he may have had).

Pretty much at the same time as these articles were published, Wyly met Lind at an event (conference?), and Lind then subsequently introduced Wyly to Boyd (who taught at least one seminar of Wyly’s at the C&SC, thereby influencing a group of young officers - among whom were then Capt, now Col., GI Wilson, one of the original authors of 4GW in 1989). A number of these young officers started to meet with Lind to discuss MW (Col. Wilson was one of these). Lind published an article on what was MW in the Gazette in March 1980, thus starting what was referred to in the Corps as the ‘maneuvrist vs attritionist’ debate (publicly played out in the Gazette, though most of the articles were pro-MW). So that is two strands.

The third strand – at least in my thinking – centers on Gray and ‘practice’. Gray was an autodidact who read military history voraciously, and based on his experience and his reading was moving in the direction of MW. Sometime in the second half of the 1970s he met Boyd (I am aware that Gray listened to Boyd give his growingly long presentation at least three times). By 1982 Gray, commanding 2 Marine Division at Lejeune, had made MW the warfighting doctrine for the Division, invited Boyd down many times to give talks (and Lind to do so as well) and formed the MW Board (which generated a reading list of relevant articles and was crossed fertilized by some of the young Marine officers converted by Boyd, Wyly and, yes, Lind). Mostly importantly, he instigated free form, free intelligence, training exercises that converted a great many of his officers to the merits of MW (one example is Lt. Gen. Ray ‘E-Tool’ Smith, who served under Gray and subsequently applied the MW philosophy when he commanded the Marines in Grenada in 1983). Worth noting re the training exercises was that at the end of day there was a discussion of what had happened during the days exercise, with all and sundry able to ask questions, with the emphasis being on what were you thinking and why (Lind was often a participant). In sum, there was a developing practice within the ‘East Coast’ Marines of learning and applying MW. As a consequence of Gray’s efforts, there was at least some diffusion of MW through the Marine Corps by way of the officers who had served under Gray.

But all that said and done, the ‘reason’ why the Marine Corps eventually did adopt MW as its overarching warfighting philosophy was that Gray was unexpectedly (and I mean extremely unexpectedly) named as Commandant in 1987 by then SecNavy James Webb (yes, that James Webb). Webb had asked around about which Marine general who was a ‘warfighting’ general and Gray was named to him. Webb probably fits with those Marines who left Vietnam believing there had to be a better way to fight, for his fiction novel, Fields of Fire, among other things encompasses a critique of the way the Marines fought in that conflict (this book is still on the Commandant’s reading list, but not, I think, because of the critique). The rest, as they say, is history.

This is a very, very rough and ready overview of the ‘sources’ - it is a bit more complicated than I have outlined above.


s

elil posted: If I remember right the maneuver warfare doctrine for the Marine Corps! was changing as the MEU concept was unfolding.

Well remembered! You are thinking of the MEU (SOC). Under Gray the Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) was renamed the Marine Expeditionary Unit (which is what it had been pre-Vietnam) and the Marine Corps, in order to forestall Marines being transferred to Special Operations Command, started giving MEU units Special Operations training (so SOC = Special Operations Capable). Of course, today, Marines have been transferred to Sp Ops Command……

William F. Owen posted: If enough USMC officers had read Du-Picq, Foch, Clausewitz, and even the awful Liddell-Hart, I don't think they'd even picked up the Manoeuvre Warfare handbook.

The Marine Corps Association bookstore in Quantico always has copies and seem to sell a fair few of the same. Whether young Marine officers truly understand the MW philosophy is another matter.

Steve Blair posted: One thing I did like to see out of the USMC along with the maneuver warfare doctrine was a renewed interest in studying war in all its aspects in general. You started seeing the Commandant's reading list about that time, if memory serves, and the MCDP 1 series, which was more how to think about war than actual prescriptive doctrine.

Your memory serves very, very well!. (There is obviously hope for me yet, apparently). Although there are one or two public mentions of a Marine Corps reading list in the mid 1980s (sorry, can’t remember exactly when but I remember one suggestion authored by some obscure Marine officer named TX Hammes ), the Commandant’s Reading List was initiated officially under Gray in 1990 in support of the promulgation of Fleet Marine Force Manual 1 (FMFM-1), Warfighting (as it was then known – now MCDP -1, which was rewritten in 1996-7). The Commandant’s reading list was part of a push to get Marine officers, at least, to read more military history (and also to undertand the 'why' of adopting MW), and as part of this through 1990-91 they revamped the curriculum at the C&SC (and indeed, created the MC University) with the emphasis being on infusing military history throughout the courses taught (see, for example, Paul K. van Riper, The relevance of history to the military profession: an American Marine’s view’, in Williamson Murray and Richard Hard Sinnreich, eds., The Past as Prologue, Cambridge University Press, 2006).

selil posted: It was pointed out to me recently that the Marines! though more than willing to move fast and light have taken armor to tiny Pacific islands, Vietnam, and in general like high speed maneuver warfare as much as any cavalry/armor army guy. I just think that they like big guns that go BOOM. Well to be more succinct I always appreciated big guns that made "other things" go BOOM.

I am tempted to say something here in response but one thing I have definitely learned is that the Marine Corps does do more than beaches…….

Cheers

TT

[William F. Owen]

Third, and finally, any number of Marine officers emerged from Vietnam with a view that there had to a better way to fight (ie than methodical warfare). There is no way of knowing how many such officers there were, but those that were so interested were probably very diffused across the Corps. Among the more prominent of such officers were Col. Michael Wyly and Gen. Al Gray (there were others who also fit, more or less, such as Lt. Gen. Paul van Riper who were not vocal – ie writing in the Gazette – proponents of MW).

Having met, corresponded, and broken bread with Van Riper, I have the utmost respect for the man. He is truly impressive.

... and like Riper, the USMC created the likes of Evans Carlson, Sam Griffiths and a bunch of other gifted officers, with a clear understanding of effective methods of fighting. Raiding is the acme of MW is it not? Translations of Mao, and Sun-Tzu?

Obviously there was a need to do things better and do better things, so why didn't the project start with the aim of researching this?

Why were concepts, some flawed, grouped together as MW, without someone saying "hold on a god**m second!", and re-write its doctrine emphasising what the historical and operational record told them, as being useful?

[William F. Owen]

.

1. Back in 1989, at the very heart of the 4GW concept what their argument that the state would face a growing crisis of legitimacy, which would increasingly weaken its authority over social organization and its monopoly on the use of force.

2. Proponents of this theory identified (with hindsight, reasonably accurately) the blurring nature of future conflict, especially the blurring of war and peace, the blurring between combatants and non-combatants, and the blurring of what constitutes the battlefield (the collapse, or compaction, of the strategic/operational/tactical levels of war), with conflict being non-linear and unbounded (by this I mean that such entities will use techniques and approaches – such as terrorism – not used by formal military organizations and that there are no front and rear – our societies and our beliefs are immediately pertinent targets)

Very useful summation TT. Many thanks.

1. Legitimacy. Exactly. Mao wrote about it. The Legitimate use of force is the essential under-pinning of all else. I don't think the state has a crisis in using force, IF it is used legitimately - which is the challenge. Why don't 4GW people just emphasise this without constructing all the 4GW stuff?

2. Why future conflict? Based on that description we had 4GW back in the Hussite Rebellion, the various and very annoying Welsh, Irish and Scottish rebellions and the actions of the secessionist living in His Majesties Colonies in the Americas. . Look at how the French kicked the British out of medieval France. The Indian Mutiny?

...so being that this is all fairly fundamental stuff, how can it get called 4GW, and who benefits from doing so?

[Ski]

You are missing the point on legitimacy, I think. It's about the legitimacy of the state to exist as a state - the failure to provide services, to provide security, the intrusion of the state into people's lives via high taxes, etc...it has nothing to do about using force, or the application of the military. It has everything to do with the state losing power and legitimacy in the eyes of its own people.

4GW is a return to pre-Treaty of Westphalia warfare in many aspects - due to the fracturing of the nation-state, the rise of non-state/sub-state actors, but with the added aspects of cheap global communications systems (the Internet/cell phones) and the dominance of the 24/7 media cycle where there is no filter for what is defined as "news".

I look at the state as being slowly stretched apart from two directions - economic globalization is degrading the state from above, and the rise of non/sub-state actors are degrading it from below. The larger, more resiliant states will survive and can possibly thrive. The smaller, weaker states often break due to these stresses - Somalia, Afghanistan, Haiti - and we've seen how difficult it is to rebuild states with the Iraqi adventure.

Very useful summation TT. Many thanks.

1. Legitimacy. Exactly. Mao wrote about it. The Legitimate use of force is the essential under-pinning of all else. I don't think the state has a crisis in using force, IF it is used legitimately - which is the challenge. Why don't 4GW people just emphasise this without constructing all the 4GW stuff?

2. Why future conflict? Based on that description we had 4GW back in the Hussite Rebellion, the various and very annoying Welsh, Irish and Scottish rebellions and the actions of the secessionist living in His Majesties Colonies in the Americas. . Look at how the French kicked the British out of medieval France. The Indian Mutiny?

...so being that this is all fairly fundamental stuff, how can it get called 4GW, and who benefits from doing so?

[tequila]

Of possible relevance to the whole "fracturing of the state" thing idea - Bolivia.

Four of Bolivia's richest departments Monday said they will put their autonomy hopes to referendum votes, as President Evo Morales called for talks with the country's nine governors in a bid to defuse rising tensions.

The energy-rich eastern departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando announced signature drives to get the legal quorum of 8.0 percent of their local populations behind referendums to approve their quest for greater autonomy, officially declared by state officials on Saturday.

The governors of Cochabamba and Chuquisaca have also announced similar aspirations, as Bolivia's three remaining western departments -- La Paz, Oruro and Potosi -- stand firmly behind Morales in the biggest challenge yet to his socialist reform movement.

Morales, the country's first indigenous president, has alienated the country's rich lowland regions, who populations are largely ethnically European and mixed, by pushing his plan to redistribute the country's wealth to the poor natives in the mountains ...

[William F. Owen]

You are missing the point on legitimacy, I think. It's about the legitimacy of the state to exist as a state -

"At the heart of this phenomenon, Fourth Generation war, is not a military but a political, social and moral revolution: a crisis of legitimacy of the state. All over the world, citizens of states are transferring their primary allegiance away from the state to other things: to tribes, ethnic groups, religions, gangs, ideologies and so on. Many people who will no longer fight for their state will fight for their new primary loyalty." FMFM-1A

By G*d Sir! You are right. I did a txt search on the legitimacy on the use of force, and nada. - obviously Mao missed the point, just like I did.

Many thanks

[TT]

William F. Owen posted: Raiding is the acme of MW is it not? Translations of Mao, and Sun-Tzu?

Sometimes, when raiding is appropriate to the situation and the desired ends, and sometimes not.

William F. Owen posted: Obviously there was a need to do things better and do better things, so why didn't the project start with the aim of researching this?

Project?? Sorry if I mislead you with my simplified explanation, but the introduction of MW into the Corps was not a ‘project’. I think I am not too far wrong when I suggest that rather than it being a project, that it was more of a ‘fight’ than anything else. MW was very controversial, and strongly resisted in many parts of the Corps, for a variety of reasons (if you are interested in some of the reasons I can do a ‘cut and paste’ - heck if Steve Metz can do that, smart person that he is, then so can I ).

So let me elaborate a bit more on the ‘it was more complicated than this’ part of my previous failed attempt to explain.

The so-called ‘maneuvrist vs attirionist’ debate, which I mentioned above, rolled in public along from 1980/81 to late 1984, at least in the pages of the Gazette (it does not vanish, only fades a fair bit) but I expect it continued in the places where most of that debate occurred – the officers mess, officers club, bars, street corners, training exercises, and so on. Moreover, the hierarchy of the Corps, particularly from 1983 (Commandant Kelly) was broadly resistant to adopting MW. Pressured by the Defence Reform Caucus in Congress, the Corps allowed that MW was amongst its repertoire of warfighting approaches, but there is real sense that this ‘admission’ was grudgingly given at best. I do not think that had one of the Marine Generals that were seen as one of the likely ‘next possible Commandant’ that the Corps would not have eventually moved to adopt MW (if only because the Army had adopted its version earlier) but certainly it was the surprise appointment of Gray (who was not seen by anyone as one of the ‘next possible commmandant’) that meant that it happened when it did.

(Worth mentioning as an aside is that while there certainly were interconnections and cross fertilization between various communities with in the Corps that were advocating MW, these communities can not be seen as being unified. Rather they were disparate communities that over time might be said to have become a ‘movement’ in support of MW.)

With Gray’s appointment, the old debate over MW vs methodical battle (ie 'attrition' was the derogatory term for this) erupted in to the public sphere again. Gray, in part as he was preoccupied with other issues (some stemming from the Corps having suffered due to Lebanon and the Moscow Marine security guards) but also in part because he did not think that the Corps needed an official MW document/doctrine, only in early 1989 started to move to generating what was to become MCDP-1, Warfighting. I believe I am on reasonably firm ground when I suggest that a reason, though certainly not the only one, for this decision to move to promulgate MW officially as the Marines warfighting doctrine, was concern by his staff at the degree of institutional push back on MW.

Indeed, such was the push back that it took at least until 1993 before it was possible to say, as a Marine officer did in the pages of the Gazette that year, that the Corps had finally accepted MW (Commandant Mundy continued to drive the institutionalization of MW). So, no, not a project - more of a fight.

William F. Owen posted: Why were concepts, some flawed, grouped together as MW, without someone saying "hold on a god**m second!", and re-write its doctrine emphasising what the historical and operational record told them, as being useful?

I confess that I am not entirely sure what you are getting at here. Certainly Gray, van Riper (who supported MW), Wyly and other Marines based their thinking on their reading of military history and their operational experiences. All three of these named officers were very well read – and that probably grossly understates how well read they were – in military history, and this along with their own experiences was the basis of their developing perspectives on ‘a better way to fight’. Gray in his thinking and indeed practice (of his commands) was well on his way towards MW by 1976 (or thereabouts), and all three had adapted in Vietnam in ways that also pointed them towards MW. It is Boyd, obviously, who crystallizes MW into a more systematic body of thought, and he certainly influenced these gentlemen, and others, but not because what he was saying was stunningly new to them, rather because Boyd’s conceptions pulled together what they had been thinking and learning from their reading of history and their own operational experience. And Boyd, if this needs to be said, read and based his thinking on mil history, and then read even more widely to flesh this out.

If you are referring to Lind’s Maneuver Warfare book, this is based largely as far I can tell on Lind’s focus on the German military. Lind is an aficionado of the German military (of yore) even to this day, but to be fair the Wehrmacht did seek to systemize MW (or what the Allies termed Blitzkrieg) and applied terms to aspects of it. So in explaining MW there is a tendency, probably understandable, to use the German terms even though any number of them do not really translate to English, simply because there is no analogous English-language term or concept. But, and I think this is a big ‘but,’ MCDP-1, Warfighting and Lind’s book are not the same.

MCDP-1 was written by Capt John Schmitt, under the immediate direction of Gray (apparently many half day and full day one-on-one sessions, with the Cols, etc, sitting in the background), with Gray indicating to Schmitt what he thought, usually expressing concepts and ideas by way of personal operational examples (or those of other Marines) and references to military history. Schmitt further read and included Clausewitz and Sun Tzu (and others) and consulted with a select number of other Marines in writing MCDP-1, including van Riper (Schmitt, in passing, rewrote Warfighting it in 96/97, under the direction of Gen. Krulak, and Lt. Gen. van Riper, in 96-97). Interestingly, while Schmitt sent Boyd copies for comment, Boyd was preoccupied and did not get any comments back to Schmitt. MCDP-1 was meant to be a description of a way to think about war and warfare, not a prescription about how to fight (where Lind’s book is more the latter).

So while many Marines (and Army and other national) officers almost certainly do speak in terms of ‘you do push-pull recon’, etc, and so on (I have talked with officers who talk in this way about MW), that was not what was intended. Sometimes push-pull recon works and is required, other times it is not. To repeat, MW, as laid out in MCDP-1, was meant to be a philosophy or mindset for thinking about war and how best to fight. The Marine’s breaching the Iraqi fortified border defences in GW1 is an example of the MW ‘mindset’ being applied during Gray’s commandancy (see Gen. J. Michael Myatt, ‘Comments on maneuver’, Marine Corps Gazette, Vol. 82, Iss. 10, Oct. 1998, p. 40ff; and and Lt. Col. G.I. Wilson, ‘The Gulf War, Maneuver Warfare, and the Operational Art’, Marine Corps Gazette, Vol.75, Iss. 6 June 1991, p. 23ff.).

That is the best answer I can give at the moment, for in the end I really do not understand your question: ‘Why were concepts, some flawed, grouped together as MW, without someone saying "hold on a god**m second!", and re-write its doctrine emphasising what the historical and operational record told them, as being useful?’. Certainly over time there is tendency (and a very real one at that) to take ‘concepts’ articulated under the umbrella MW and think that these should always be applied – that is, to see them as ‘prescriptive’.. But that is not how Gray and others intended MW to be understood.

To conclude my overly long disquisition….

William F. Owen posted:... and like Riper, the USMC created the likes of Evans Carlson, Sam Griffiths and a bunch of other gifted officers, with a clear understanding of effective methods of fighting.

Yes, but…… Absolutely critical is getting these ‘effective methods of fighting’ institutionalized. You will find lots of lots of reasons profered on many different threads on this board for why institutionalizing such is usually very, very difficult (see above for one example ), and why such attempts to do so often fail outright.


Cheers

TT

[TT]

Ski posted: You are missing the point on legitimacy, I think. It's about the legitimacy of the state to exist as a state - the failure to provide services, to provide security, the intrusion of the state into people's lives via high taxes, etc...it has nothing to do about using force, or the application of the military. It has everything to do with the state losing power and legitimacy in the eyes of its own people.

Like Ski said! My explanation, in trying to be succinct, was obviously not clear. Thanks, Ski, for clarifying!

Ski posted: 4GW is a return to pre-Treaty of Westphalia warfare in many aspects - due to the fracturing of the nation-state, the rise of non-state/sub-state actors, but with the added aspects of cheap global communications systems (the Internet/cell phones) and the dominance of the 24/7 media cycle where there is no filter for what is defined as "news".

I look at the state as being slowly stretched apart from two directions - economic globalization is degrading the state from above, and the rise of non/sub-state actors are degrading it from below.

Well explained! If anyone is interested, James Rosenau's Turbulence in World Politics, Princeton Uni Press, 1991, argues this in great detail. It is a thick, hard to read book, but he develops the argument that Ski succinctly makes in horrifying empirical detail (rather a ponderous read). Rosenau's argument was that what we were starting to see emerge was what he called the 'bifurcation' of world politics, an international system comprised of the sovereign bound (states) and the non-sovereign bound (both sub state and supra or trans state actors), and that stemming from the transfer of individuals loyality away (either 'upwards' to supra state actors or 'downwards' to substate actor from a 'state' that increasingly cannot meet adequately all the competing demands of its multitudinous citizens, and these substate and suprastate actors will compete and cooperate amongst themselve as well as with states. (and I have no doubt butchered this explanation as well ). Rosenau also identifies a range of drivers for this trend, ones that are consistent with SKi's explanation.

Rosenau's book is, of course, dated now but his basic argument still more or less holds.

As a passing aside observation, Rosenau (yes, a political scientist, nothing to do with 4GW) was largely ignored for a number of years by the academic community but somewhere around 1993/94 or thereabouts, you suddenly could not find an academic conference that did not have one or more roundtables dedicated to discussing his argument and its implications.

TT

[William F. Owen]

TT, whoever you are.

A heartfelt thanks for your explanation. I feel no better towards MW but at least I now understand the why and the how, and I really appreciate your efforts. Again, many thanks.

[TT]

William F. Owen posted: Why future conflict? Based on that description we had 4GW back in the Hussite Rebellion, the various and very annoying Welsh, Irish and Scottish rebellions and the actions of the secessionist living in His Majesties Colonies in the Americas. . Look at how the French kicked the British out of medieval France. The Indian Mutiny?

As Granite State rightly noted,

‘A point a lot of people forget is that it's "Four Generations of Modern War."

As I noted above, what they (the original developers of 4GW) said would be ‘new’ would be ‘who fights’ and ‘what they fight for’ – not necessarily how they fight. And they did not focus on insurgencies or guerrilla warfare (or what ever term you wish you use) – Hammes does this in The Sling and the Stone, which ‘popularized’ 4GW. They did not, and never have, argued that their ‘generational’ framework works across all of history.

As to why ‘future conflict’, they were making the point that war ‘always evolves and changes’. They very specifically were intent on poking the US military, which by 1989 had pretty much adopted ManWar (with Gray as commandant of the Corps, that the Corps would was taken as written – which was not entirely correct), suggesting that it should not be complacent, should not rest on its laurels. Their concern was one that is frequently noted here on the boards, which is that US military historically has tended to focus on being able to fight that last war better or to focus one form of warfare, and so are often unprepared for the next war they find themselves engaged in.

As for why specifically ‘future’ war, they contended that the shift from one generation to the next is evolutionary, a process that takes decades (upwards of 50-70 years) to occur. Such a shift does happen suddenly, all at once, rather it emerges slowly, by fits and starts, going backwards and forwards, over a long period of time before there is something clearly different (from decades before) - and also that there will characteristics that carry on from one generation to the next. The later arguments in the 1990s about how past RMA’s occur is broadly consistent with what they were arguing in terms of time frames and why such shifts occur - ie tech, social, economic, political, etc reasons, not just because of a change in one factor (as was the case re tech in the RMA debate of the 1990s). As I noted earlier, the original core writers on 4GW perceive elements of what are witnessing today as part of this evolution to 4GW, not that it means that 4GW has ‘arrived’ and is the only form of war out there.

William F. Owen posted:...so being that this is all fairly fundamental stuff, how can it get called 4GW,

They used the generational framework solely to simplify. They simplified due to space restrictions - their 1989 and 1994 articles are only around 2,500 to 3,000 words in length -- and in order to achieve clarity in reaching out to the US military. In short, they thought that the generational framework would make it easier for the US military to understand their argument that warfare ‘will’ change in time (the first three gens match reasonably well the evolution the US militaries – among other militaries - changing approaches to warfare in the ‘modern’ era.) And having identified three gens, the next evolutionary stage becomes by default the fourth one. 4GW is very inelegant and misleading as a term (a view which I suspect at least some of the originators would agree with these days), just like ‘maneuver warfare’ is a very inelegant and misleading term for an approach to warfighting (makes people think MW is about movement/maneuver – which of course it is not; movement is only one of a host of techniques). But like it or not, that is the term that we are stuck with (which is why Hammes, if I remember correctly used it in his book – not because he liked the term or thought it a particularly good term).

William F. Owen posted: and who benefits from doing so?

This is a very post-positivist, social constructivist question . Their answer would be the US, for they were making an effort to convince the American military to pay attention to how warfare was evolving so that it would not be caught out down the road by changes (so to speak), lest being caught out (ie defeated) harm the security and interests of the US.

I should probably mention that I am usually referring to the main core of those who have been arguing about 4GW. Post 9/11, 4GW emerged from the margins where it had resided through the 1990s and a lot of other people jumped onto its particular bandwagon. And as is always the case, there has occurred all sorts of drift in how and to what ends various people try to use the concept (and this usually happens to any concept). So while the core writers see aspects of 4GW emerging, others argue that 4GW is here, now (perhaps a subtle difference, nevertheless……).

Cheers

TT

[TT]

William F. Owen: A heartfelt thanks for your explanation. I feel no better towards MW but at least I now understand the why and the how, and I really appreciate your efforts. Again, many thanks.

My pleasure. And no worries about your view of MW - I have not been trying to convince you of its merits (or demerits).

William F. Owen: whoever you are.

Now that is a difficult question to answer!

The short answer is a hippy academic. A somewhat longer answer can be found on the boards 'Tell us who you are' thread, on this page:
http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...?t=1441&page=9

Though I doubt what you will find is anymore enlightening

[Ski]

A few other points about Lind's involvement in the Marine Corps development of maneuver warfare in the 1980's. I've written a Master's degree paper about the Military Reform movement and one cannot forget Lind's influence as a key defense staffer for Hart and Taft (although that was in the 1970's).

Lind was able to convince a number of key politicians that Grey was the right choice to be the next commandant. This may have been important, it may have been destined to occur without any influence from Hill anyway. The Defense Reform Caucus was quite large in number although there was a small core of about a dozen politicians who were really active in pushing military reform at any chance.

Lind also had some influence to maneuver warfare because he was an unofficial advisor to Grey, and Lind also helped push the MCDP manuals (this is all according to an interview I had with Bill Lind - have not been able to verify from another source, so I have to take this point as a maybe) to be written and disseminated.


As TT stated, the problem with getting any doctrine introduced into the US military is how to get it institutionalized. It's usually tied back to resourcing - all American military services care about two things - force structure and resources (the two are tied together). Doctrine helps drive force structure, which in turn drives resourcing.

From what I have seen from the Marine Officers, Lind is either seen as a mad genius or he is just plain mad. Lind also disagrees with some of Hammes conclusions about 4GW, including the influence of Mao...

The one aspect of Lind that I find fascinating is his ability to influence military thought and doctrine over a 30 year period as being either a civilian (and not a military civilian, like a Department of the Army civilian) or a defense staffer. When I was researching the Master's paper I mentioned earlier, he literally launched a blitzkrieg of articles and letters to every major military magazine - the Marine Corps Gazette, Military Review, Parameters, Air University Review, Proceedings - it was absurd how much the guys wrote in the 70's and 80's - and it was a credit to all the services that they allowed him to voice his opinion in their service manuals. There was a lot of looking inward because of Vietnam, and Lind, for better or worse, was one of the main contributors in helping develop post-Vietnam doctrine for the Marine Corps, and to a lesser extent the Army. The Air Force and Navy ignored him (the Navy because he helped get a number of ships scuttled due to his influence on Capitol Hill).

[William F. Owen]

I have to say I find this immensely depressing. MW, EBO and 4GW are all the product of the same two men, with a few acolytes, and supporters.

I see very little merit in any of these ideas, and much that is both confusing, nonsensical and even harmful.

So here is something I don't understand. If MW was developed as a product of the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War contained a very high degree of insurgency, how come MW is utterly silent on COIN?

[Steve Blair]

So here is something I don't understand. If MW was developed as a product of the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War contained a very high degree of insurgency, how come MW is utterly silent on COIN?

The Marine version of MW was 'utterly silent' on COIN because the Marines felt they already had a working model in place (starting with the Small Wars manual and working up through the CAP-style efforts in Vietnam).

I think another thing that seems to be missing from the discussion is that Gray, Van Ripper, and others in the MC were interested in MW partly because it made people think about how they conducted war and examine their original positions. My take on it has always been that they saw MW as a piece of the puzzle, not the single solution that some seem to want to make it. TT's summation of how the Corps came to adapt MW is good, and it does have its roots in Vietnam. In part I think it spoke to those things they wanted to do there but could not do for a number of reasons (lack of air mobility until 1969 being part of it).

[TT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by William F. Owen
So here is something I don't understand. If MW was developed as a product of the Vietnam War, and the Vietnam War contained a very high degree of insurgency, how come MW is utterly silent on COIN?

Steve Blair Posted : The Marine version of MW was 'utterly silent' on COIN because the Marines felt they already had a working model in place (starting with the Small Wars manual and working up through the CAP-style efforts in Vietnam).

Steve's observation is, I think, pretty much correct. To add to it, MW initially emerged into public discussion as the USMC was facing from the mid-1970s onward (ie post-Vietnam) the prospect that they might have to fight Soviet or Soviet clone military forces, comparatively outnumbered and out armoured, and probably seriously so. MW provided an approach that held out hope that, should such a battle occur, the USMC would hold its own or be able to win (how this might occur is laid out in the two papers I mentioned above, in Oct and Dec 1979 Gazette, and it these two articles that first introduce publicly MW – though the author does not use this specific term).

Toward the end of the 1980s there was a growing view in the US military (not necessarily a prevailing view, mind) that, based on Lebanon and many other small conflicts in the 1990s, that the US military likely would very possibly be faced with being engaged in small wars in the 1990s (this was all derailed by GW1). The Corps reissued their Small Wars Manual in 1990 (I think this date is correc but I would have to check my notes), as part of a general reissue of a number of older manuals, and one can also see an increased interest in small wars/counterinsurgency, especially if one accepts that an increase in the number of articles published on COIN in the Gazette, starting in late 1988 (ie pre the first 4GW article) reflects such interest. The sense one gets is that because of the Corps ‘small wars’ history, coupled with the success of their approaches in Vietnam (ie CAPs, among other approaches), which they thought was the right approach and blamed Westmoreland for pushing them away from, that they thought they could manage small wars very well.

But perhaps somewhat at odds to what Steve suggests, my reading is that 'part' of the reason why MCDP-1 is silent specifically on small wars/COIN is that many Marines at the time believed that the philosophy/mindset of MW was as applicable to COIN as to force-on-force conflict. Certainly these days I have met Marines who believe that the MW ‘mindset’ (not the dogmatic aspects) is applicable to COIN and even to ‘4GW type’ conflicts. I cannot fault their reasoning on this (but then I am a civilian, so what do I know). It seems to me where a central problem with MW is that it has become prescriptive, dogmatic and doctrinaire for many officers, rather than simply being what they intended to be – a way of 'thinking about war'.

This perspective is consistent with Steve’s point, which I wholeheartedly agree with:

Steve Blair posted: I think another thing that seems to be missing from the discussion is that Gray, Van Ripper, and others in the MC were interested in MW partly because it made people think about how they conducted war and examine their original positions.

This astute point of Steve’s is at the core of the ‘fight’ I outlined earlier.

Steve Blair posted: In part I think it spoke to those things they wanted to do there but could not do for a number of reasons (lack of air mobility until 1969 being part of it).

Again, Steve is right (you are on roll, Steve . Again, to add to this, for many of the MW advocates who had fought in Vietnam as Lts and Capt, MW also fit what they experienced and learned at the tactical level. Today these might seem simple things, but their experience was that they way they had been taught to fight and trained to fight did not work very well in Vietnam. As a couple of simple tactical level examples, many learned that rather than bombarding a target for a long a period of time to kill as many of the enemy as possible, they learned it was better to use indirect fire to suppress the enemy before an immediately ground attack, or rather than forced marched with flanking patrols, the later which reduced their speed and allowed word to get back to their objective before they arrived, it was better, albeit potentially more risky, to not to use flanking patrols so that they catch the enemy at the objective by surprise. These changes reflect a more maneuverist approach, as opposed to the methodical battle approach the Marine Corps trained and educated for.

And MW also connected the tactical level to the operational level, as many Marines in Vietnam could not see the connection between what they were being asked to do, and were doing, on the ground, and what the US was seeking to achieve in the conflict.

[Steve Blair]

But perhaps somewhat at odds to what Steve suggests, my reading is that 'part' of the reason why MCDP-1 is silent specifically on small wars/COIN is that many Marines at the time believed that the philosophy/mindset of MW was as applicable to COIN as to force-on-force conflict. Certainly these days I have met Marines who believe that the MW ‘mindset’ (not the dogmatic aspects) is applicable to COIN and even to ‘4GW type’ conflicts. I cannot fault their reasoning on this (but then I am a civilian, so what do I know). It seems to me where a central problem with MW is that it has become prescriptive, dogmatic and doctrinaire for many officers, rather than simply being what they intended to be – a way of 'thinking about war'.

Agreed. I believe Gray (and others) specifically cautioned against MW becoming "just another doctrine" (that's not a direct quote from Gray...more a paraphrase of what I feel was his original intent with MCDP-1). One of the key points behind Gray's push for MW as a system of thinking (flexibility, use of commander's intent, delegation of as much as possible to subordinates) was that it could be adapted for almost any conflict situation. If you look at the developing Commandant's Reading Lists from that period (and continuing through to today) you see a fair number of books that stretch beyond the conventional conflict framework.

Looking at Vietnam, the Marines always resented being chained to the DMZ in a fixed defense mode. It didn't square with their doctrine at the time, and the impact of the 1st Air Cav's Operation Pegasus on their understanding of air mobility is also important to understand. The Marines saw that, and begin adjusting their use of air assets to allow a much wider application of air mobility within the I Corps CTZ. I think a fair amount of that "stuck" with future MC leaders and made them more receptive to the idea of MW. But, in typical fashion, they adjusted it to fit their needs.

[Granite_State]

TT,

Thanks for all of this, it's interesting stuff. A couple questions when you get a second:

I do not think that had one of the Marine Generals that were seen as one of the likely ‘next possible Commandant’ that the Corps would not have eventually moved to adopt MW (if only because the Army had adopted its version earlier)

They did? Is this AirLand Battle doctrine, or something else? I thought Maneuver Warfare was such a big deal partly because the Marines were well ahead of the curve here, Lind certainly bangs on about that, calling the U.S. Army a "second generation force" all the time.

(Worth mentioning as an aside is that while there certainly were interconnections and cross fertilization between various communities with in the Corps that were advocating MW, these communities can not be seen as being unified. Rather they were disparate communities that over time might be said to have become a ‘movement’ in support of MW.)
....
Indeed, such was the push back that it took at least until 1993 before it was possible to say, as a Marine officer did in the pages of the Gazette that year, that the Corps had finally accepted MW (Commandant Mundy continued to drive the institutionalization of MW). So, no, not a project - more of a fight.

Is it just me, or does this not sound a bit like how the German Army adopted stormtroop tactics in 1917-1918? Innovation at lower levels, a battle against resisters in higher command (albeit a much quicker battle for the Germans), someone at the top fortuitously seeing and agreeing with the new ideas (Webb/Gray vs. Ludendorff)?

If you are referring to Lind’s Maneuver Warfare book, this is based largely as far I can tell on Lind’s focus on the German military. Lind is an aficionado of the German military (of yore) even to this day, but to be fair the Wehrmacht did seek to systemize MW (or what the Allies termed Blitzkrieg) and applied terms to aspects of it.

Did they? Can you provide info on this? My own understanding, based on some relatively light reading as an undergrad, was that blitzkrieg warfare was evolutionary, organic, arguably rooted in traditional German operational doctrine, and got its real base during the Reichswehr years. Do you mean being codified by Seeckt in the training and operations manuals of the day?

[TT]

Granite State posted: They did? Is this AirLand Battle doctrine, or something else? I thought Maneuver Warfare was such a big deal partly because the Marines were well ahead of the curve here, Lind certainly bangs on about that, calling the U.S. Army a "second generation force" all the time.

Yes, FM-100-5 (1982) first brought MW into Army doctrine, and is, as you say, essentially AirLand Battle (and if I am wrong on this someone please jump in to correct me). There are real differences between the Army’s and the Marine’s approach to MW – between FM 100-5 and MCDP-1 Warfighting- however. Lind’s view was the Army approach was nowhere near what it should have been (he gave up trying to convert the Army to focus on the Corps), whereas his view was (and is) the Marine’s approach was the right way to go. To oversimplify, greatly, FM 100-5 (1982) is a 'how to manual' and MCDP-1 is a philosophy or 'how to think' manual, which makes the Army from his perspective a 2nd Gen force. This difference is why the Marines are seen by some as being well ahead of the curve. As Gray observed in a meeting in early 1989 (as reported in the minutes of the meeting), to quote, ‘‘We can’t let the Army be perceived as the front runners in tactical thinking with their FM 100-5. They have a book and can’t do it, we can do it but don’t have a book’. I would add that the first sentence reflects to a degree the USMC cultural trait (as I deem it) of ‘organizational paranoia’.

Granite State posted: s it just me, or does this not sound a bit like how the German Army adopted stormtroop tactics in 1917-1918? Innovation at lower levels, a battle against resisters in higher command (albeit a much quicker battle for the Germans), someone at the top fortuitously seeing and agreeing with the new ideas (Webb/Gray vs. Ludendorff)?

Yes, ‘a bit like’ is about right. There is a degree of innovation at lower levels, for Gray was using MW when he was commanding at Lejeune (though he was a GO). But for the most part, what happens is officers from Capts through to Cols are advocating that the Marine Corps adopt MW as a better way to fight than through ‘methodical battle’. They are not really innovating per se, for Boyd provided them with MW (and Lind did as well – Lind was, as Ski noted above, a very central actor in all of this), as did their reading of military history, so they are rather, me being an academic, 'agents of change or innovation'. Another aspect where your ‘a bit like’ observation holds, I would argue, is that MW is what can be termed a ‘bottom-up’ driven process of innovation (as opposed to a top down process (driven either a senior officer or civilian leadership) and certainly the Germans got to MW through a bottom up approach. The process transforms into a top down process, of course, when Gray is appointed Commandant. But as one officer involved back then that I interviewed observed, ‘we never thought that one of us would be become commandant’.

Granite State posted: Did they? Can you provide info on this? My own understanding, based on some relatively light reading as an undergrad, was that blitzkrieg warfare was evolutionary, organic, arguably rooted in traditional German operational doctrine, and got its real base during the Reichswehr years. Do you mean being codified by Seeckt in the training and operations manuals of the day?

I have to plead guilty here to overstating the case when I used the term ‘systematized’. I used that term mainly because it was the only one that occurred to me at the time. Probably a 'coherent concept of' would be, and have been, better. Certainly the Germans had a terminology for aspects of MW (don’t ask what they are off the top of my head). I have a number of books on the German development of MW in my ‘would like to read pile’, which is somewhat higher than my huge ‘need to read’ pile. I am sure, however, someone here on the boards can provide a more specific answer.

My ignorance admitted, yes, my understanding from what I have read is that your point that the German’s development of MW was evolutionary is correct, starting with their development of infiltration tactics on the Central Front and developing thereafter (as you say in particular during the Reichstag era), whereupon the Allies saw it in full flower in the 1939 and 1940 (the Sedan, in particular) German campaigns. I confess that I am not sure whether they ‘codified’ it, or when, not least as ‘codifying’ MW seems to me to be at odds with MW being a mindset or philosophy (which is what MCDP-1). And yes, my use of ‘systematize’ is equally problematic for the same reason.

As you mention Seeckt, as an possibly interesting aside, I am sitting here trying remember if it was him, or another German general, that Gray brought over to solicit his views on and understanding of MW. I think it was when Gray was in command at Lejuene in the early 1980s but I honestly cannot remember if this is correct right now - it is somewhere in my copious notes (that I am still adding to) and it would take me a while, probably long while to find these (so sorry, but thought you might find the latter day connection to the Germans of passing interest).

[Granite_State]

As you mention Seeckt, as an possibly interesting aside, I am sitting here trying remember if it was him, or another German general, that Gray brought over to solicit his views on and understanding of MW. I think it was when Gray was in command at Lejuene in the early 1980s but I honestly cannot remember if this is correct right now - it is somewhere in my copious notes (that I am still adding to) and it would take me a while, probably long while to find these (so sorry, but thought you might find the latter day connection to the Germans of passing interest).

Thanks for the answers. Wouldn't be Seeckt though, he died not long after Hitler came to power, 1935 or 1936. Maybe Hermann Balck or F.W. von Mellenthin, but those are more or less guesses.

[TT]

Granite State posted: Thanks for the answers. Wouldn't be Seeckt though, he died not long after Hitler came to power, 1935 or 1936. Maybe Hermann Balck or F.W. von Mellenthin, but those are more or less guesses.

Glad to be of help, such as it was. Well, definitely it was not Seeckt I think it was not von Mellenthin, so maybe Balck (?). But as I said, I really would have root around in my notes to get the specific details of precisely who and when. It is one of those small details in a much bigger analytical narrative I am working on, so what is left of my memory put the specifics aside knowing I have it on paper somewhere.