The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Bounding the Possible 43
continent’s earliest settlers: Intrepid enough to brave life in the New World,
they exhibited an optimism that became a national brand. Within the “religions
of economic and political optimism,” he observed, “dissent, especially
continuous pessimistic crabbing,” was “near to treason.” 41 Writing in 1955,
Cora du Bois observed American optimism undiminished; she highlighted
“effort optimism” as a focal value of American culture—a trait that continues
to be emphasized by scholars of American culture today. 42 Applying
these findings to the subject of warfare, Gray notes that “it is quintessentially
American to be optimistic and to believe that all problems can be
solved, if not today, then tomorrow, and most probably by technology.” 43
America’s optimism informs its expectations about economics, politics, and
foreign relations. Expectations for success permeate US national security
documents. 44 The historical result, Gray cautions, is an American way of
war that is not easily discouraged once invoked: “The problem- solving
faith, the penchant for the engineering fix, has the inevitable consequence of
leading US policy, including its use of armed force, to attempt the impossible.”
45 Consequent failures, however, tend to be explained in the American
mind as products of insufficient resources or insufficient human will, not as
a result of attempting the impossible. 46
As dedicated problem- solvers, Americans expect to be able to shape
the “foreseeable future.” 47 The future is perceived as foreseeable because, as
linear thinkers dedicated to causal chains, Americans tend to see the world
as a set of isolated, solvable problems rather than a complex web of historical
relationships. 48 This comfortable fiction allows Americans a stronger
sense of control over their own world and a sense of independence from the
decisions and actions of others, a sometimes strategically fatal perceptual
lens when applied to counterinsurgency contexts. 49 The result in counterinsurgency
operations has tended to be an American cognitive and planning
pattern that focuses on host government institutions as items to be built or
problems to be solved, with little acknowledgment of the potential limits of
a foreign entity in doing so. A premium is placed on an infusion of resources
and proper training as a panacea to the ills of indigenous institutions. When
host institutions fail to perform adequately, American problem- solving
agents dressed in military uniforms begin to step in and do it for them.
Unsurprisingly, economic, material, and political transformations made
during these eras of hands- on military administration often meet with quick
reversal once US troops are withdrawn.
A decided problem- solving approach, combined with an action orientation
emphasizing efficiency, means that Americans are repelled by
time- consuming or sociohistorically complex diagnoses of problem sets
and may be more likely than others to fall prey to single- solution concepts.
50 Americans possess a near obsessive regard for deadlines as a means
for increasing efficiency and accelerating progress and expect the same