Civil-Military Relations From Vietnam To Operation Iraqi Freedom

Civil-Military Relations From Vietnam To Operation Iraqi Freedom PDF

Author: Major Brandon L. DeWind

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 92

ISBN-13: 1786250071

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The end of the Cold War did not bring about the grand peace that was hoped for during four decades. Instead, the world has become more dangerous, with multiple complex problems. Military institutions worldwide must learn to adapt to the ever-changing face of the threat to fight the Global War on Terror. Services can no longer look within their own ranks to accomplish the mission; all operations must be joint in order to succeed in the contemporary operating environment. This monograph traces the thread between civil-military relations during two times of war for the U.S. The military must know what the civilian leadership requires and must, in return, articulate a clear path to achieve it, if feasible. The U.S. military never lost a battle in Vietnam and yet that conflict is looked upon as an American defeat. The war in Iraq began to look like a repeat performance. The military was clearly winning engagements on the battlefield but the talk at home, in the media, was of a “quagmire” and “stagnation” (two terms used to describe Vietnam) and ultimately, of defeat. Although this monograph uses two snapshots in time of civil-military relations, the significance of its findings apply, in general, to all students interested in civil-military relations, as well as decision making. Whether looking at times of war or peace, civil-military relations play a significant role in all matters pertaining to the running of our military; the decisions made by our civilian leadership can influence even the smallest facets of military life.

Managing Transitions

Managing Transitions PDF

Author: U. S. Military

Publisher:

Published: 2017-02-14

Total Pages: 87

ISBN-13: 9781520599083

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This excellent report has been professionally converted for accurate flowing-text e-book format reproduction. This study provides a comparative analysis of the US Army's post-Vietnam transformation with an examination of the Army's recent transformation during the initial phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The research will identify those senior leaders whose constructive and positive civil-military relations enabled their service in managing transformation, which created agile and adaptive teams that were capable of adjusting to change. Additionally, effective transformation was built with sound doctrinal underpinning that informed the organizational structure and training initiatives that endured through the next war. The results of this monograph will show that the senior leaders who managed the post-Vietnam transformation were more effective in managing the reform efforts than the leaders who managed the defense transformation efforts in the early part of the Twenty-first Century. The post-Vietnam reform was developed with a solid doctrinal underpinning that informed the organizational structure and training initiatives that endured through the duration of the transformation and were implemented during the next war. The initiatives were built in a mutually supporting manner, which reduced multiple adjustments and kept the cost down as the Army completed the transformation. In contrast, the defense transformation of 2003 contained dysfunctional civil-military relations that consisted of micromanagement and an over-reliance to transform at all cost. In that environment, the Army failed to refine the capabilities-based network-centric doctrine to reflect the changing nature of war in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. The flawed doctrine contributed to the continued investment and mismanagement of reforms like Future Combat System (FCS), Modularity and Army Force Generation (ARFORGEN). The impact of the mismanagement of the recent transformation led to the Army paying a 400 percent increase in readiness and a loss of $480 billion dollars from FCS cancellations, and oscillations of force structure within the modular design.

Military Advice and Civil-Military Relations

Military Advice and Civil-Military Relations PDF

Author: Douglas W. Bennett

Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub

Published: 2012-09-16

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13: 9781479329472

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As the United States leads the world into the 21st Century, military leaders must gain and maintain the trust of the President and the Secretary of Defense by understanding and influencing the manifold variables that affect the civil-military relationship in order for their advice to be considered towards the goal of maximizing the security of the nation. This monograph examined three of the variables that impact the civil-military relationship with regard to understanding how military advice is received by civilian leadership – combat military experience of civilian leaders, political expertise of military leaders, and service parochialism –and examined them in the context of the Vietnam War and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The lack military experience of civilian leaders did not detract from the military security of the nation with respect to operational combat, and by extension, from the health of civil-military relations. The conclusion about political expertise in military leaders is not as definitive and is dependent on the characterization of the conflict involved. Service parochialism is a factor of the civilian leaders' receptiveness to military advice. The military leaders need to be aware of this factor in order for their advice to be heard and considered in the formulation of national policy for military operations. In the aggregate, politicians will only hear and listen to military leaders if several things manifest themselves simultaneously. First, regardless of the civilian leadership's experience in the military, the political administration must respect military culture as suggested by Herspring. Second, military leaders must have political experience to understand the ancillary functions of irregular warfare as recommended by Janowitz. Finally, there must exist a service culture that is divided enough to offer different opinions and alternatives, but not so divisive that it appears ineffectual and incoherent as indicated by Feaver.

War and Media Operations

War and Media Operations PDF

Author: Thomas Rid

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-02-15

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 1134116861

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This is the first academic analysis of the role of embedded media in the 2003 Iraq War, providing a concise history of US military public affairs management since Vietnam.In late summer 2002, the Pentagon considered giving the press an inside view of the upcoming invasion of Iraq. The decision was surprising, and the innovative "embedded media prog

Civil-Military Relations in the United States

Civil-Military Relations in the United States PDF

Author: Richard Kohn

Publisher:

Published: 2014-05-31

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780415711654

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This volume comprises the best essays of Prof. Richard Kohn focusing on civilian control of the military in American history and contemporary national security affairs. One of the oldest problems of human society has been preventing armies from overthrowing their governments. From ancient times to the present–from Caesar crossing the Rubicon to Egypt's army hovering in the in the background as the ultimate arbiter of power to newly-installed Chinese leader Xi Jinping taking control of China's military instead of leaving that to his predecessor as was practice for nearly forty years–civilian control of the military has been crucial to political life. The founders of the United States certainly understood this principle. They wrote explicit provisions into the first state and federal constitutions to assure it. For over two centuries, American security has rested on the foundation of military subordination to civilian authority, with little worry about a coup or even an attempt. Yet the relationship between the most senior military officers and the political leadership have been anything but smooth, and in recent years the chains of civilian control have weakened – not to the point of direct challenges to civilian authority, but in the relative influence of the military in policy and decision making, the deference of politicians to generals, and a growing belief that the relationship has been so filled with tension and distrust as to endanger the country's security. This book will be of much interest to students of US politics, American history, civil-military relations and military studies in general.

Success and Failure in Limited War

Success and Failure in Limited War PDF

Author: Spencer D. Bakich

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-03-20

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 022610785X

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Common and destructive, limited wars are significant international events that pose a number of challenges to the states involved beyond simple victory or defeat. Chief among these challenges is the risk of escalation—be it in the scale, scope, cost, or duration of the conflict. In this book, Spencer D. Bakich investigates a crucial and heretofore ignored factor in determining the nature and direction of limited war: information institutions. Traditional assessments of wartime strategy focus on the relationship between the military and civilians, but Bakich argues that we must take into account the information flow patterns among top policy makers and all national security organizations. By examining the fate of American military and diplomatic strategy in four limited wars, Bakich demonstrates how not only the availability and quality of information, but also the ways in which information is gathered, managed, analyzed, and used, shape a state’s ability to wield power effectively in dynamic and complex international systems. Utilizing a range of primary and secondary source materials, Success and Failure in Limited War makes a timely case for the power of information in war, with crucial implications for international relations theory and statecraft.

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