dissertation help please! US military culture and small wars.

[William F. Owen]

Xander Day,

Having read what you have provided, I think you may be making a number of assumptions about the UK and COIN that are simply not supported by the historical and operational record.

Comparing US and UK performance, with reference to the US conduct of the Vietnam War(S) and UK colonial anti-terrorist operations is, in my opinion, an intellectual dead end. There are no useful grounds for comparison, bar that which is simplistic.

Why the US does not actually practice it's own doctrine and listens to the wrong folks may be a subject worthy of examination. IMO, US military thought is only applicable to the US and does not travel well.

However the same could be asked of the UK. Our post 1945 performance being far from stellar.

Having said that, well done for studying war and hopefully warfare as well.

[xander day]

Mr Owen, could you go into more depth as to what parts of my planning are incorrect. From what you said it seems like you know a lot of information that I would find very helpful, and it seems as though I might have missed these ideas in my reading!
Thanks!
Xander

[William F. Owen]

Mr Owen, could you go into more depth as to what parts of my planning are incorrect. From what you said it seems like you know a lot of information that I would find very helpful, and it seems as though I might have missed these ideas in my reading!

A.) call me Wilf and B.) I may not know more than you, however...

'How Does the Culture of the American Military Prevent Them From Waging Small Wars Effectively?'

I would suggest that in order to progress this effectively, you have to define small wars, and a measure of effectiveness.

A lot of criticism of the US conduct of Vietnam is based on the "if my mother had wheels, she would be a bus," line of thinking.

...but Vietnam was not a small war. It covered the whole spectrum of warfare from 1950 to 1979, and the US was only really there from 65-73 (well 56-75 for some!!)

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.

I think a lot of US guys here would agree that they are constantly re-inventing the wheel and coming up with some very dubious concepts to support the latest fad, so that may be worth looking at.

Comparing the US to everyone else may not be useful and may be misleading. - but that's just my opinion.

[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