The History of American Military. Richard W. Stewart
thus represent histories in themselves and reflect other changes in the nature of warfare, technology, and a country’s internal development and external responsibilities. A shift in one component will inevitably have an impact on the institutional structure. For example, a fundamental change in weaponry, equipment, or technology, be it the adoption of gunpowder, the rifled musket, the airplane, the tank, the atomic bomb, night-vision devices, or precision-guided munitions, will inevitably affect the traditional modes of fighting and reverberate throughout the institutional framework. The phenomenon of cultural lag evident in other human institutions also applies to military organizations, and some armies have been slower to adopt changes than others, often with fatal results in the test of battle.
While the U.S. Army as a social entity has evolved to meet its primary mission—to fight—in its American institutional context military history must also treat the Army as a social force in peace. From the beginning the Army has played a role in developing the country: in exploring, guarding the frontier, and constructing roads; in engineering, transportation, communication, sanitation, and medicine; and in flood control. At the same time the Army has served as a vehicle for social mobility of certain disadvantaged groups, for example, European immigrants in the nineteenth century, African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, and Hispanic Americans today. The mixture of the European legacy, native environment, democratic ideals and values, and national experience in war and peace have combined to mold the Army into a distinct institution in American life, a unique blend of professional and civilian elements. Indeed, as Russell F. Weigley, a student of the Army’s institutional history, has well expressed it, the story of the American Army is really a history of “two armies”: “a Regular Army of professional soldiers and a citizen army of various components variously known as militia, National Guards, Organized Reserves, selectees.”
It has been said that every generation rewrites its history. Its own needs and problems inevitably make it take fresh looks at its own past for light, understanding, guidance, and alternative courses of action. Nowhere is this necessity more evident than in the field of American military history today—broadly conceived. During most of the national existence of the United States the liberal democratic tradition and geographic isolation combined to subordinate in the public mind the role of force and military institutions in its history. Blessed by relatively weak neighbors on the north and south and safe behind its ocean barriers, the United States could define its security in terms of its own boundaries and frontiers. The military factor in its heritage, birth, and development tended to be discounted. But when scientists began to conquer space and time in the twentieth century and the European system that had maintained order in the nineteenth century began to crumble under the impact of two world wars, Americans began to find their security bound up with the fates of other countries. The nation that began the twentieth century with a strong sense of security by mid-century began to feel insecure. George F. Kennan, former director of the Policy Planning Staff of the Department of State, elaborates, “A country which in 1900 had no thought that its prosperity and way of life could in any way be threatened by the outside world had arrived by 1950 at a point where it seemed to be able to think of little else but this danger.” The Cold War and then our involvement in the Global War on Terrorism put an end to America’s lingering beliefs in isolation and safety. Not since the era of the founding fathers has survival in a dangerous world become such an urgent issue and the foundations of national security of such concern. An essential element of maintaining that national security must be the study of war in theory and practice. Both the theory and the practice of war must be analyzed together to gain the fullest perspective.
Theory and Practice of War
One question that has long interested students of the theory and practice of military affairs is whether war is an art or a science. This is no small question in an age when the lure of technology seeks to reduce so much of human behavior to scientific principles or mechanistic templates. In the eighteenth century, the age of enlightenment, when the systematic study of war began, military theory regarded warfare as mathematical and scientific. A general who knew mathematics and topography, the theorists optimistically maintained, could conduct campaigns with geometrical precision and win wars without bloody battles. In Europe, the violent shock of Napoleonic warfare brought a rude end to the notion of war as a purely scientific or mathematical game. But insofar as the application of physical pressure upon the enemy involves the use of mechanical tools under certain predictable or calculable conditions, it is possible to speak in terms of military science. The systematic application of science to the development of weapons and to technology in general is a comparatively recent development. Since World War II, techniques of research and analysis have been enlisted from scientific fields to make calculations and choices among complex weapon systems and in the management of huge defense programs more exact. Over and above the techniques, the successful conduct of war at all levels of command requires assessing unpredictable variables and taking calculated risks under circumstances for which no precise precedent exists. Since the “fog of war” still holds and wars involve men as well as machines, warfare remains in many ways what it has always been essentially—an art.
Military theorists have long searched for the principles underlying the art of war. They have sought to distill from the great mass of military experience over the centuries simple but fundamental truths to guide commanders through the fog of war. They have evolved lists of principles from an analysis of the campaigns and the writings of the great captains of war, such as Julius Caesar, Frederick the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Helmuth von Moltke. Occasionally the masters have provided their own set of precepts. Foremost among the analysts have been Henri de Jomini, Carl von Clausewitz, Ardant du Picq, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Ferdinand Foch, Giulio Douhet, Basil H. Liddell Hart, J. F. C. Fuller, and Sun Tzu. The axioms range from the Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan B. Forrest’s oft-misquoted advice, “Git thar fustest with the mostest men,” to Napoleon’s 115 maxims. The lists differ in emphasis as well as in number. Some theorists have stressed that the battle is all and the defeat of the enemy’s armed forces the correct objective, others that the best path to victory is by indirect methods and approaches that avoid confrontations and rely upon maneuver and psychological pressure.
Today, all great nations recognize principles of war and incorporate them in one manner or another into military doctrine. The lists vary from nation to nation. In the modern dress of the Western world, the accepted principles are essentially a post-Napoleonic conception, advanced by Clausewitz, the great Prussian philosopher of war of the early nineteenth century, and his contemporary, Jomini, the wellknown French general and theorist. Since the United States shares a common military heritage and a common body of military thought with Europe, American students of war have also sought to reduce the conduct of war to certain essential premises. The U.S. Army recognizes nine such principles: objective, offensive, maneuver, mass, economy of force, unity of command, security, surprise, and simplicity. The proper application of these principles is still essential to the exercise of effective military operations. First, let us define them.
Objective. Direct every military operation toward a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable objective. The ultimate military objective may be the complete destruction of an enemy’s armed forces and his will to fight. The wider political objective may be the complete defeat and reconstruction of an enemy nation that will involve regime change and political, economic, and social reshaping. Each intermediate objective must have the precise mix of force applied to it to attain decisive results. Every commander must understand the overall military and political objectives of the application of force and how his element will contribute to attain those goals. The principle of objective, with a series of intermediate objectives, helps all elements of an operation focus on what must be done and by whom.
Offensive. Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative. In order to achieve victory, a commander must undertake offensive operations. Offensive operations make the enemy react to your moves and keep him on the defensive and off balance. Offensive permits the commander to retain the initiative. This does not mean that defensive operations have no place on the battlefield. Going onto the defensive can conserve forces, allow for a logistical pause, or force