Download or read book Civil Military Relations From Vietnam To Operation Iraqi Freedom written by Major Brandon L. DeWind and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book New Civil Military Relations written by John P. Lovell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-17 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2018. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.
Download or read book Military Advice and Civil Military Relations written by Douglas W. Bennett and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2012-09-16 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book A Clash of Cultures written by Orrin Schwab and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2006-08-30 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vietnam War was in many ways defined by a civil-military divide, an underlying clash between military and civilian leadership over the conflict's nature, purpose and results. This book explores the reasons for that clash—and the results of it. The relationships between the U.S. military, its supporters, and its opponents during the Vietnam War were both intense and complex. Schwab shows how the ability of the military to prosecute the war was complicated by these relationships, and by a variety of nonmilitary considerations that grew from them. Chief among these was the military's relationship to a civilian state that interpreted strategic value, risks, morality, political costs, and military and political results according to a different calculus. Second was a media that brought the war—and those protesting it—into living rooms across the land. As Schwab demonstrates, Vietnam brought together two leadership groups, each with very different operational and strategic perspectives on the Indochina region. Senior military officers favored conceptualizing the war as a conventional military conflict that required conventional means to victory. Political leaders and critics of the war understood it as an essentially political conflict, with associated political risks and costs. As the war progressed, Schwab argues, the divergence in perspectives, ideologies, and political interests created a large, and ultimately unbridgeable divide between military and civilian leaders. In the end, this clash of cultures defined the Vietnam War and its legacy for the armed forces and for American society as a whole.
Download or read book Iraq and Vietnam written by Jeffrey Record and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book War and Media Operations written by Thomas Rid and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-02-15 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book An Army Transformed written by Suzanne C. Nielsen and published by Strategic Studies Institute. This book was released on 2010 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 2 decades preceding the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. Army went through tremendous reform and rejuvenation. In explaining this important case of military change, this paper makes four central arguments. First, leaders within military organizations are essential; external developments most often have an indeterminate impact on military change. Second, military reform is about more than changing doctrine. To implement its doctrine, an organization must have appropriate training practices, personnel policies, organizations, equipment, and leader development programs. Third, the implementation of comprehensive change requires an organizational entity with broad authority able to craft, evaluate, and execute an integrated program of reforms. In the case of the U.S. Army in the 1970s and 1980s, this organization was the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC). To an unprecedented degree, TRADOC was able to ensure that changes in personnel policies, organizations, doctrine, training practices, and equipment were integrated and mutually reinforcing. Fourth and finally, the process of developing, implementing, and institutionalizing complementary reforms can take several decades. While today's demands differ from those of the past, this report suggests questions that may be useful in thinking about change today. Knowing the answers to these questions would enable informed judgment about the prospects for the successful implementation of a program of reforms. The consequences, for good or for ill, could be quite significant in terms of resources, lives, and the national interest.
Download or read book Avoiding Vietnam written by Conrad C. Crane and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As American operations against terrorism spread around the globe to places like Afghanistan and the Philippines, an increasing tendency has been for commentators to draw parallels with past experience in Vietnam. Even soldiers on the ground have begun to speak in such terms. The author analyzes the Army's response to that defeat in Southeast Asia and its long-term impact. Contrary to the accepted wisdom that nations which lose wars tend to learn best how to correct their mistakes, he argues that Americans tried to forget the unhappy experience with counterinsurgency by refocusing on conventional wars. While that process eventually produced the powerful force that won the Persian Gulf War, it left an Army with force structure, doctrine, and attitudes that are much less applicable to the peace operations and counterterrorism campaign it now faces. The author asserts that the Army must change in order to operate effectively in the full spectrum of future requirements, and it is time to reexamine the war in Vietnam. He also draws attention to the service's "Lessons Learned" process, and provides insights as to how the experience gained in Operation ENDURING FREEDOM should be analyzed and applied.
Download or read book A Clash of Cultures written by Orrin Schwab and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2006-08-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vietnam War was in many ways defined by a civil-military divide, an underlying clash between military and civilian leadership over the conflict's nature, purpose and results. This book explores the reasons for that clash—and the results of it. The relationships between the U.S. military, its supporters, and its opponents during the Vietnam War were both intense and complex. Schwab shows how the ability of the military to prosecute the war was complicated by these relationships, and by a variety of nonmilitary considerations that grew from them. Chief among these was the military's relationship to a civilian state that interpreted strategic value, risks, morality, political costs, and military and political results according to a different calculus. Second was a media that brought the war—and those protesting it—into living rooms across the land. As Schwab demonstrates, Vietnam brought together two leadership groups, each with very different operational and strategic perspectives on the Indochina region. Senior military officers favored conceptualizing the war as a conventional military conflict that required conventional means to victory. Political leaders and critics of the war understood it as an essentially political conflict, with associated political risks and costs. As the war progressed, Schwab argues, the divergence in perspectives, ideologies, and political interests created a large, and ultimately unbridgeable divide between military and civilian leaders. In the end, this clash of cultures defined the Vietnam War and its legacy for the armed forces and for American society as a whole.
Download or read book US Defence Strategy from Vietnam to Operation Iraqi Freedom written by Robert R. Tomes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-12-13 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the thirty-year transformation in American military thought and defence strategy that spanned from 1973 through 2003.
Download or read book Success and Failure in Limited War written by Spencer D. Bakich and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book New Civil Military Relations written by John P. Lovell and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Civil Military Relations in the United States written by Richard Kohn and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-31 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Pentagon and the Presidency written by Dale R. Herspring and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2005-03-04 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While presidents have always kept a watchful eye on the military, our generals have been equally vigilant in assessing the commander-in-chief. Their views, however, have been relatively neglected in the literature on civil-military relations. By taking us inside the military's mind in this matter, Dale Herspring's new book provides a path-breaking, utterly candid, and much-needed reassessment of a key relationship in American government and foreign policymaking. As Herspring reminds us, that relationship has often been a very tense, even extremely antagonistic one, partly because the military has become a highly organized and very effective bureaucratic interest group. Reevaluating twelve presidents-from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush-Herspring shows how the intensity of that conflict depends largely on the military's perception of the president's leadership style. Quite simply, presidents who show genuine respect for military culture are much more likely to develop effective relations with the military than those who don't. Each chapter focuses on one president and his key administrators--such as Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, and Donald Rumsfeld-and contains case studies showing how the military reacted to the president's leadership. In the final chapter, Herspring ranks the presidents according to their degree of conflict with the military: Lyndon Johnson received exceedingly low marks for being overbearing and dismissive of the armed forces, further aggravating his Vietnam problem. George H. W. Bush inspired respect for not micromanaging military affairs. And Bill Clinton was savaged both privately and publicly by military leaders for having been a "draft dodger," cutting Pentagon spending, and giving the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" tag an unnecessarily high profile. From World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Herspring clearly shows how the nature of civilian control has changed during the past half century. He also reveals how the military has become a powerful bureaucratic interest group very much like others in Washington-increasingly politicized, media-savvy, and as much accountable to Congress as to the commander-in-chief. Ultimately, The Pentagon and the Presidency illuminates how our leaders devise strategies for dealing with threats to our national security-and how the success of that process depends so much upon who's in charge and how that person's perceived by our military commanders.
Download or read book Decisionmaking in Operation Iraqi Freedom written by Steven Metz and published by Strategic Studies Institute. This book was released on 2010 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this second volume of the series, Dr. Metz looks carefully at the 2007 decision to surge forces into Iraq, a choice which is generally considered to have been effective in turning the tide of the war from potential disaster to possible, perhaps probable, strategic success. Although numerous strategic decisions remain to be made as the U.S. military executes its "responsible withdrawal" from Iraq, Dr. Metz has encapsulated much of the entire war in these two monographs, describing both the start and what may eventually be seen as the beginning of the end of the war. In this volume, he provides readers with an explanation of how a decision process that was fundamentally unchanged, with essentially the same people shaping and making the decision, could produce such a different result in 2007. As the current administration tries to replicate the surge in Afghanistan, this monograph shows the perils of attempting to achieve success in one strategic situation by copying actions successfully taken in another, but where different conditions applied.--
Download or read book The Challenge of Nation Building written by Rebecca Patterson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-09-17 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last decades, the United States Army has often been involved in missions other than conventional warfare. These include low-intensity conflicts, counterinsurgency operations, and nation-building efforts. Although non-conventional warfare represents the majority of missions executed in the past sixty years, the Army still primarily plans, organizes, and trains to fight conventional ground wars. Consequently, in the last ten years, there has been considerable criticism regarding the military’s inability to accomplish tasks other than conventional war. Failed states and the threat they represent cannot be ignored or solved with conventional military might. In order to adapt to this new reality, the U.S. Army must innovate. This text examines the conditions that have allowed or prevented the U.S. Army to innovate for nation-building effectively. By doing so, it shows how military leadership and civil-military relations have changed. Nation-building refers to a type of military occupation where the goal is regime change or survival, a large number of ground troops are deployed, and both military and civilian personnel are used in the political administration of an occupied country, with the goals of establishing a productive economy and a stable government. Such tasks have always been a challenge for the U.S. military, which is not normally equipped or trained to undertake them. Using military effectiveness as the measurement of innovative success, the book analyzes several U.S. nation-building cases, including post World War II Germany, South Korea from 1945-1950, the Vietnam War, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. By doing so, it reveals the conditions that enabled military innovation in one unique case (Germany) while explaining what prevented it in the others. This variation of effectiveness leads to examine prevailing military innovation theories, threat-based accounts, quality of military organizations, and civil-military relations. This text comes at a critical time as the U.S. military faces dwindling resources and tough choices about its force structure and mission orientation. It will add to the growing debate about the role of civilians, military reformers, and institutional factors in military innovation and effectiveness.
Download or read book American Civil Military Relations written by Suzanne C. Nielsen and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2009-10-05 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: politics, and national security policy.--John R. Ballard "On Point"
