dissertation help please! US military culture and small wars.

[Ken White]

2. Ken, must disagree on one point. Throughout the 19th century, the officers who fought the big wars (1812, Mexico, Civil, and Sp-American) were mainly veterans of the Indian Wars or went on to fight in the Indian Wars. this same trend continued into the 20th century. The problem was that few of those officers internalized the lessons from their small wars or internalized the wrong ones. This is reflected today in the Nagl-Gentile debate (which never would have happened in any open and transparent way at any other time).

I'm not sure we have a disagreement. I agree with your statement above except that last sentence. That only because I can recall similar debates in the old Armed Forces Journal (less assertive in tone, to be sure) and the Cavalry and Infantry Journals. That's a minor quibble, I agree with you that the 19th (and early 20th) Century folks did swap back and forth. My point was that even so, the gear switching was obvious in the minor glitches that occurred and we have, in every war; Mexican, Civil, Spanish American, World Wars I and II, Korea, Viet Nam and today had an initial period of major and minor errors. You can even toss in Grenada and Panama, Small Wars with many errors -- that's not a knock; error is inevitable in war -- my comments were aimed at the 'why' they are inevtiable

I meant to apply my problem of generational dissension and "The problem is skill decay from non use between wars, varying opponents who suffer from the same problems and adopt different fixes for them thereby confronting us with different TTP / Operational methods and the (probably necessary) Momization, my term for excessive niceness, in civil society between wars" mostly to the post WW I Army and I'm remiss in not being clear on that.

I did slightly better with the one year tours for Korea and afterwards...

[John T. Fishel]

quite the dinosaur I imagined. The earlier journal arguments were before my time and I did not do the historical research. My reading of military journals began in the 70s with Military Review which rarely got into the kind of controversy that, say, Marine Corps Gazette regularly promotes. Still, I wonder if the openness of the e-world hasn't really made debate more transparent and been, as suggested by others here, more successful in making lessons learned as opposed to merely recorded.

Cheers

JohnT

[marct]

Hi John,

Still, I wonder if the openness of the e-world hasn't really made debate more transparent and been, as suggested by others here, more successful in making lessons learned as opposed to merely recorded.

I suspect that it isn't more "transparent" per se - just more widely spread . If anything, I suspect that the debates are less transparent now that, say 100 years ago, simply because of a) the size of the populace involved in them and b) a greater technical specialization creating independant "semi-disciplinary" languages that have different assumptions.

In odder werds, t'er ontologies don't mesh !

[John T. Fishel]

Let's just drop back a generation. The MR, Parameters, Proceedings, Gazette audience was pretty narrow. Mostly, it was service specific and sometimes even rank specific. (Majors and below tended to read MR; COL tended toward Parameters in the Army - not perfectly correlated....) Then, this stuff was available by subsription, military library, military distribution, and in some civilian research libraries. Today, it is nearly all available online as well as in all the traditional places. Here, in SWJ, we debate pretty esoteric stuff and, as we all know, have made the Rolling Stone Hot List as well as Foerign Policy online. Indeed, all our stuff is transparent in ways that it never was before. The interested population has expanded at a rate, I would hypothesize, much greater than the population as a whole.

Cheers

JohnT

[marct]

Hi John,

I think we're saying pretty much the same things, at least as far as the general readership is concerned, and you've certainly illustrated the spread as a result of 'net technologies. My point, and it is related, is that more people in the general population are now tossing around parts of the debate with little or no understanding of it, and for totally different (usually political) purposes. While I would agree that sites such as SWJ/C and the CAC blog have increased the "transparency", I suspect that once it hits the 'political' (loosely construed) audience, it gets increasingly misunderstood and manipulated.

Cheers,

Marc

[John T. Fishel]

The interesting aspect of your comment is what happens when the hoi poloi get hold of it. Of course, boobs make hay for political purposes which cheapens the debate. But other new players are not part of the boobocracy - they are serious amateurs and even professionals in realted fields. I wonder if we would have found you a couple of decades ago, assuming you were olde enough to play at that time. More to the point, do the serious new players ourweigh the boobs?

Cheers

John

[Sigaba]

My point, and it is related, is that more people in the general population are now tossing around parts of the debate with little or no understanding of it, and for totally different (usually political) purposes. While I would agree that sites such as SWJ/C and the CAC blog have increased the "transparency", I suspect that once it hits the 'political' (loosely construed) audience, it gets increasingly misunderstood and manipulated.

The interesting aspect of your comment is what happens when the hoi poloi get hold of it. Of course, boobs make hay for political purposes which cheapens the debate. But other new players are not part of the boobocracy - they are serious amateurs and even professionals in realted fields. I wonder if we would have found you a couple of decades ago, assuming you were olde enough to play at that time. More to the point, do the serious new players ourweigh the boobs?

I don't know if there's ever been a time in American history where the lines of debate were not blurred, the topics not bowdlerized, and the facts not manipulated for one political purpose or another. Americans' hostility towards professionals is as old as America itself.

Were I more articulate, I'd describe concisely the debate as taking place in four interlocking/overlapping spheres.

• strategic culture--which includes civilian policymakers, actively involved law makers (i.e. those who sit on relevant committees), academics, and civilian experts (e.g. members of think tanks). This concept is borrowing from a formulation offered by Michael Geyer, a historian, but I'm offering the following nuance by suggesting a distinct sphere for:
• service culture--which includes professional servicemen and women up and down their respective chains of command (in this model, each service has its own sub culture and each sub culture is broken down into other spheres such as branch of service)
• political culture--this would be the sphere John T. Fishel and marct discuss in their posts quoted above.
• popular culture--this sphere includes products mass produced by the entertainment industry but also other popular cultural practices as well (e.g. the gaming community, the re-enactment community, and so on).

MOO, present-day debate over national security policy works better when the first two spheres exert the majority of the influence shaping the discussion. However, my reading of history suggests instances where the debate has been reshaped by the latter two spheres.

Sometimes, this reshaping has proven disastrous. The "longing" anticipation with which many Europeans viewed the approaching storm clouds of World War I is a good example. One might also point to America's experience in Vietnam where the political and popular debate negatively impacted opportunities for more careful debate and, perhaps, victory.

At other times, the reshaping has proven quite timely and ultimately beneficial. For instance, historians of the American Civil War have begun to focus on the role African Americans played in reshaping the nature of that conflict. These arguments political and popular in nature, meant that a war that began to preserve the union ended up being a war fought for more profound goals.

Returning to the OP.

Xander Day, I respectfully suggest that the conversation about your topic is a strong indication that your dissertation would greatly benefit from a clearer definition of terms, terms of debate, and refinement of your topic.

This suggestion is not meant as a criticism. On the contrary, it is to your credit that you can pose a question that can lead to such a sprawling discussion. [And wouldn't it be something if Xander Day never returns to this BB.]

But take it from one who knows--narrowing your focus and clarifying your terms can make your project more manageable.

My specific suggestions are:

• Define an interval for your study.
• Pick one armed service and one armed service only.
• Look before you leap. When considering your time period and service, do some advance research to gauge the availability of primary source material.
• Define your terms. What do you mean when you say "culture"? What is your vision of "effectiveness"? (On this last point, you may the three volume work Military Effectiveness edited by Millett and Murray useful--if you can find a copy. On the former point, volume 57, no, 5 of The Journal of Military History may help shape your thoughts on culture and war. [The issue in question is has a section devoted to that topic.]
• Define what you mean by "small wars." I think most members of this board understand what you mean, but will your audience? The U.S. has fought eleven wars. (Twelve, if you include the Indian Wars, and not everyone does.) How many of these conflicts were actually "big wars"? Who decides which war is big and which war is small?
• Look at other factors besides culture. As has been suggested above, an armed force's preferred method of fighting often takes a distant back seat to the direction of civilian leaders. If these considerations trump the board, does culture even matter? Or are we talking about a contest of cultures (as my four sphere model suggests)?
• Change your question. This suggestion is especially worthy of your consideration if you're writing in the field of history or you have historians in your audience. In its current configuration, your question suggests that there were clear answers at the time that the U.S. Army needed to do certain things and they didn't. This teleological approach is an open invitation for grumpy historians to play "stump the band" with you. If you don't know already, take my word that that's not a fun game to play when you're the stumpee.
• Document your sources and cite your references until your HDD and your committee screams "ENOUGH." At that point, do more documentation. Liddell Hart has made a terrible mess of things for those who study war. A part of cleaning up that mess means we've got to dot every "i" and cross every "t".
• Don't worry if it is right, just write. (This suggestion is from the do as I say, not as I do category.)
  
  HTH