Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

calculation, based on the assumption that indeed it was possible to make some prettyaccurate predictions concerning the nature of combat engagements with future foes. Therewas a distinct overvaluation of systems analysis in stategic debate and defence policy, Brodieobserved in 1973 99 .Colin Gray offers additional insights into the strategic and military cultural moodthat characterized this period, and against which Boyd and the Reform Group railed. Fromthe early 1950s to the late 1980s, the dominant school of strategic theory followed anahistorical, apolitical method of calculating purportedly correct “answers” to defenseproblems. Both liberal and conservative analysts in the defense community showed a naivefaith in the tradition of Baron Henri de Jomini. The American engineering spirit sought toreduce strategic problems to equations. A tendency existed to seek refuge in technology fromhard problems of strategy and policy. The American way in defense preparation as well aswar has emphasized the technical and logistical rather than the well-informed andoperationally agile.Moreover, change in the military was determined by organizational interests. Theroots of modern American military strategies lie buried in the country’s three most powerfulinstitutions: the army, the navy and air force. Though many people outside the militaryinstitutions, including academics and presidents may propose military strategies andconcepts, these can be implemented only if and when military institutions accept and pursuethem. The environments (land, sea and air) largely determine the technologies, the tactics,and the character of the operational goals 100 .As James Fallows (an associate of Boyd) warned in 1981, this approach to defenseplanning and war manifested a neglect of the “intangibles” of war, such as leadership,doctrine, morale, personal skills, combat experience, tactical ingenuity, information andstrategy. It ignored or dismissed the fundamentally uncertain nature of war. Not surprisinglyBoyd’s work focused exactly on those intangibles and critiqued the managerial mindset,which he equated with the attritional style of warfare that employed predictable linear tacticsand numerical superiority to bleed to enemy to death 101 . Boyd, in a series of of profoundbriefings, began to remind everyone: ‘Machines don’t fight wars. Terrain doesn’t fight wars.Humans fight wars. You must get into the minds of humans. That’s where the battles arewon’. This aspect had been totally missing from the debates in the Pentagon 102 .There were various programs ongoing in the different services to improve militaryhardware, to introduce more realistic training and to update military doctrine so as to reflectthe nature of operational challenges US military units would face outside of the confines ofthe Cold War. Still, the strategic discourse during the Vietnam War was dominated bynuclear strategy. In the development of strategic theory the period of the mid-fifties to midsixties of the twentieth century is sometimes referred to as the ‘golden age’ of contemporary99 Brodie (1973), p.473.100 See Colin Gray, ‘Strategy in the Nuclear Age’, in Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox and AlvinBernstein, The Making of Strategy, Rulers, States, and War, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,1994), pp.587-593.101 See James Fallows, National Defense (Random House, New York, 1981), pp.15-17. For detaileddiscussions and sometimes overt defence of the prevailing defence planning system see for instanceLee D. Olvey, Henry A. Leonard and Bruce E. Arlinghaus, Industrial Capacity and Defense Planning(Lexington Books, Lexngton, Massechussets, 1983), which interestingly includes a foreword by aleading defence company.102 Burton, p.43.66