The Marines, Counterinsurgency, and Strategic Culture

Identity and Role 77
fashion; they simply believe “that such scenarios are not amenable to military
intervention and that these contingencies should not be the focus for
American strategy or its military.” The future conflicts worth fighting, they
argue, will be conventional in nature. 141
The third school, “Full Spectrum Operations,” is the doctrinal form of
the day among a critical mass of American ground force commanders (Army
included). 142 This school is willing to accept that no one specialty may be
optimized in an effort to train and supply for the full range of conflict contingencies
but argues that an effort toward multicapable flexibility is as good
as it gets. Commandant Conway’s “medium weight” force concept—“being
heavy enough to sustain expeditionary warfare and light enough to facilitate
rapid deployment” 143 —falls along these lines. This school takes Marine
Corps versatility at its word and hedges risk by investing in the quality,
education, and mental agility of forces.
Finally, Hoffman sees a “Division of Labor” camp, which advocates
that some forces train, are equipped, and are organized into force designs
specifically for irregular warfare, while the larger part of the force maintains
focus on conventional training and armament. In this, the Division of Labor
adherents reject the sort of hubris demonstrated by some members of Corps
leadership in the pre- 9/11 era who dismissed anything short of conventional
combat as a general category of “other” and assumed that the Marine Corps
“generally know[s] how to do [evacuations of noncombatants], nationbuilding,
counterinsurgency, and several other peripheral operations associated
with [operations other than war].” 144 Division of Labor advocates
agree with the Small Wars School that “regular and conventional warfare
are markedly different modes of warfare” than irregular enterprises and
therefore must be trained toward in genuinely distinctive ways. In addition
to placing priority on preventative mechanisms that include stability
operations, Division of Labor advocates would mandate highly specialized
training for irregular scenarios in order to avoid being the jacks- of- all- trades
who are masters of none. 145
If historical pattern and organizational culture are sound indicators, the
Corps will tumble about in this irregular- versus- regular discussion but will
inexorably move toward a role distinction emphasizing conventional competence
launched from the sea. In the meantime, the Marines are maintaining
that theirs is a domain void of domain. The Corps is a general- purpose
force that lives in the “seams”—a role posture defined within the Marine
Corps Operating Concepts:
The Army, Navy, and Air Force enjoy the clarity of focusing on the
domains of land, maritime, and air. Their ties to these domains have
naturally led to their individual and distinctive cultures, philosophies,
and doctrines. . . .