I'm looking forward to the new 3-0. Hopefully, LTG Caldwell will continue posting here, I for one am deeply appreciative of his effort.

Reading the list of pre-9/11 parameters, I was struck by several things.

1. The organizational structure was based on the division as the key warfighting element.

True, even though most of our combat from WW II forward has seen employment of RCTs, CbtCmds or Bdes. Only in 1942-3 North Africa and in the last two wars -- all desert theaters -- have we really been able to fight as Divisions. One wonders why we were still so oriented for so long. The thing that concerns me is that we often let the stock conservatism that I understand any military force has to have -- with lives at stake, untried ideas are and should be suspect -- and other factors intrude on needed doctrinal changes. Hopefully, we realize we're entering an era where a 20 year gestation period for doctrine or equipment is not sustainable.

2. Stability operations were considered – but were treated as a symptom of “mission creep.”

True. There were those in the Army in the 1975-2001 period who advocated otherwise, some fairly senior. They were shunted aside. Regrettably. One hopes that will not again occur. I don't think we can afford target fixation today and it appears that the leadership today believes that we must be -- and can be -- a full spectrum force. I've always believed that most units can do more and better then they were normally expected to do.

3. Talk about the “peace dividend” due to a “strategic pause” was driving our acquisition process to potentially “skip a generation” of equipment.

True and understandable -- not totally a bad idea but the urge to tinker and continually revise the specifications unduly extended the RDA process. Fortunately, we seem to have outgrown that. The spiral process seems to be working well.

4. There was still a strong tendency towards risk aversion due to Southern Watch, Bosnia, Beirut, and even to some extent Viet Nam.

True and again, understandable. That was also partly due, I think, to a misreading by many people of the American public -- most of whom expect and will accept casualties but want rapid success (and unlike politicians who will object or support on a partisan basis). One hopes that over concern is disappearing, though, to cite one example, the insistence on the troops being encased in Armor and trying to chase lightly armed and equipped fighters, particularly in Afghanistan, is mildly bothersome. Still, most reports I've seen and most people I've talked to are positive on the fact that we are delegating beyond the point of comfort. That's great.

All in all, I'm inclined to see the changes promulgated in the new 3-0 as less revolutionary and more as return to basic principles that work. That's even more great.

Gen Caldwell's assertion that "Other aspects are revolutionary (stability operations co-equal with offense and defense, emphasis on information engagement, requirements for leaders to be competent with both lethal and non-lethal (soft power) applications of combat power)," is not appropriate. "Full Spectrum Operations" was evident in the 2001 edition of FM 3-0. I do not see a revolution here with this impending version. Additional emphasis on STABOPS is evolutionary in my opinion.

I also take issue with his statement, "the 'whole of government' approach – inherent in all of our operations – requires not only a change in the military but also in the interagency process." Hmm, the "interagency" represents the executive branch. The General's idea that an interagency message is a unified US government message is a fallacy -- the USG consists of three branches -- how are the legislative and judicial branches involved in this process? In addition, state and local governments also make up the whole of the US governmental system. The latter have a clear stake in homeland security & defense.

Finally, he alludes to a unification of the interagency...not so fast. Congress would not permit the idea of a more unified executive branch and for good reason. Our founding fathers envisioned checks and balances that made Congress an equal power. The Congress controls the executive branch through law and appropriations. They have not allowed the DOD to fully unify under one secretary (money still goes to the services); why should we think they would allow the rest of the branch to unify? This could conceivably be worse than the "Seven Days in May" scenario (with the President playing Burt Lancaster's role.

Sorry General, I disagree with your premises and conclusions in these areas.

Revolution vs. Evolution

We often try to classify events in military affairs across the DOTLMPF spectrum in terms of “evolution” or “revolution”, but the results are often disputed, why is that? It may be worth considering the two classifications as terms, the ways in which we normally employ them, and their historical uses in order facilitate discussions on the matter.
Evolution has a biological feel to it. For me, it immediately brings to mind Charles Darwin & the Origin of Species. Evolution also has the mark of change over time, a kind of gradual adaptation of something to the environment (or changes within the environment) which allows it to succeed where others may not. Its presence is probably not immediately felt, and the exact causal nature is often blurred by the non-linear nature of its change. Certainly we have some cases where a species makes an evolutionary leap in a great enough magnitude, and in a manner that seems absent from other causal relationships that we think we can attribute it to specific events, but I think this is the exception and not the rule. Most evolution would seem more “geologic” on its time scale to us with our linear framing of time, seasonal rotations and relatively short life (and professional and political life) spans.

Revolution has a political feel to it. It goes to the notion of “upset” by the group of the accepted status quo. It plays to the idea of abrupt change, “the new sheriff in town” to the concept of youthful values taking hold in a “cultural revolution”. It has also been used in a business sense, “this product will revolutionize “X” – which is often reduced – either when its introduction is tempered by other less malleable environmental factors, or over time as the environment adapts and the product is reduced to evolving in conjunction with its environment. It would seem that while an act or event may be seen as revolutionary, it must also be considered within the greater context of its environment.

Compare the verb forms of the two words: “to revolt” vs. “to evolve”. The former seems very active, while the latter seems more passive. Revolution raises images of abrupt and often violent change to something, while evolution seems far less risky, almost congruent with events. I think evolution gets to the concept of the golden mean – the idea that by maintaining balance and consistency, you don’t get it “too far” wrong so fast you can’t recover from it – or risk that you make change at such a pace that you inadvertently break things unknowingly that played an important but unpublicized role; but you also probably don’t get them too far right either – meaning the optimal solution would be reached in optimal time. There are advantages and disadvantages to both I think.
Consider the historical ideas of revolution and evolution where policy objectives have called for the use of military force to achieve them, its hard to make sense of them if isolated from the broader themes in History.

Would the “American Revolution” make sense divorced from the context of Neo-Classicism & the philosophy of Hume, Locke, Smith and others, the literature of Swift, or the science of Newton? What foundations did the Founding Fathers draw upon for the rationale for a new form of government? What is the political context of the use of military force by the American Colonies to achieve independence from England?

What about the Civil War, WWI, WWII and other “large” wars that have long standing significance on our historical self-image? What about the Small Wars: the Banana Wars, our involvement in the Philippines, Punitive expeditions – what is their legacy and why? What about the ones not so easy to classify such as Korea and Vietnam? How do these wars look divorced of their political context? How does the course of military affairs look different under the context of its use to achieve the respective political objectives? While our use of military force may be more broad along the “small wars” spectrum, how do you weigh it against the deeper channels of use of military force in “big wars”? Does the political objective (real or perceived) define the classification of the use of military force from small to big, or is it the size of the sacrifice? Do the two go hand in hand?

How about 9/11? How does 9/11 differ from say Pearl Harbor? What was it about the Japanese and Nazi Germany that galvanized the United States populace and made them largely unswerving in the war’s prosecution? We often point to the promotion of many a new WWII general and the dismissal of many others – what made that possible – there had to be a political context to it. While consideration of the inter-war period generally points toward an evolution (see Murray & Millet’s Military Innovation in the Inter-War Period) of military affairs – the political event of replacing a chunk of the General Officer corps could be seen as revolutionary.

Consider the Clausewitzian observation that War Is Never an Isolated Act (section 7, Ch. 1, Book 1 – Howard & Paret ed.), “War never breaks out wholly unexpectedly, nor can it be spread instantaneously. Each side can therefore gauge the other by large extent by what he is and does, instead of judging him by what he, strictly speaking, ought to be or do.” Later in Section 23, Clausewitz considers the evolutionary nature of the policy objective in relation to the means which are available to carry it through, “If we keep in mind that war springs from some political, it is natural that the prime cause of its existence will remain the supreme consideration in conducting it. That, however, does not imply the political objective is a tyrant. It must adapt itself to its chosen means (Rob’s note- I think he means the use of war and the consequences and non-linear effects that accompany it as a chosen means to achieve the political objective), a process that can radically change it; yet the political aim must remain the first consideration.”

I chose these two pieces from “On War” because they offer some insight into how military affairs change. If you consider the political context of change – which some event creates a policy objective, or emphasizes it because enmity (political reason in a pragmatic sense – or interest) is overrun by passion (the domestic call for action due to fear, honor ref. Thucydides) it is still constrained by the lack of commensurate change in the realm of military affairs – the DOTMLPF arena. So while policy might call for strategic options, and may broaden the range of what is suitable the strategy itself must be feasible based on the means and ways available. In this model, military affairs must evolve to meet its new environment.

This takes you down the path of accepting risk in terms of understanding the changes in the environment – are they both broad and deep so as to be enduring and on a scale that requires large scale change, or does it only appear to be broad and is actually shallow so as to be temporary and potentially a diversion from the more pressing threats. Certainly, this is a question we see theorists, planners and leaders wrestling with – how many F-22s, CBGs, submarines or BCTs? How much GPF (General Purpose Forces) and how much specialization? How much do we turn the rest of our DOTMLPF gears to produce evolutionary change that matches our perception of the environment?

These last two questions are also subjective, because the answers are not so clear cut as they might seem – technology and a professional volunteer military have changed perceptions about the requirements for certain tasks, and how much additional investment is justified.

I think although the important ideas we’ve come upon may seem revolutionary in scope and potential, the actual implementation of these ideas will be evolutionary. First I’d say from a broad historical perspective, conditions, along with problems and solutions may have called for similar revolutions/evolutions not only in our own military past, but within the greater human military history. I’d add that what may be unique is the context of where we are along our own political development and the consequences (could be good, could be not so good) of the adaptation of these ideas in the long run – the only thing certain in my opinion is that where there is political interaction there are degrees of instability and there is change. Second, because of the nature of change – and the resistance to it (the fear of deviation fro the golden mean due to the real possibility of getting it too far wrong), change will evolutionary where we have the ability to make it so – meaning that divorced from irresistible outside stimuli- there is what the Prussian referred to a “natural tendency toward moderation”.

Thornton's underlying theme in his above treatise is that we are making progress as a human race (this is the assumption of the theory of evolution). Is this a fact or a potential fallacy?

Consider these:

--History is 50% romantic (Santayana said this).
--History should be treated like a hypothesis (not as fact or prediction of what's ahead).
--Interpretations of history (a la Clausewitz) exaggerate human control over events (we over-attribute as a culture).
--Solutions look for problems (rarely the other way around).
--As Soldiers/Marines we choose to argue from our sense of identity than from a sense of reality (we must seem Quixotic at times to outsiders).
--Hypocrisy can a means for introducing real revolution/transformation (do we need more hypocrites for revolutions?).
--In the face of ambiguity and complexity, poetry is more valuable than rationality (yet we tenaciously stick to MDMP).
--We are romantics (should we be better poets?).

Many if these ideas come from an interesting short book by James G. March and Theirry Weil, "On Leadership."

Well I guess it is in the interpretation. The way I see Clausewitz – he argues for the opposite – that while we may choose to view History in a linear, deterministic fashion – the opposite is true – it is non-linear and contingent. Given the level of inter-action, trying to est. a mono-causal relationship in complex environs is a bridge too far.

The underlying theme I was getting at is that to try and judge something apart from the context in which it takes place can set you up for some bad decisions. The second thing is that it takes time to discern the values of the most important causal relationships - some you may know about, some you may not. Knowing this, has over time created a culture of moderation where possible (but it isn’t always – sometimes our emotions overrun our common sense.)

Best, Rob

Concur and I like your obvious well-developed view of complexity and the idea of mutual causality.

Unfortunately (returning to the General's piece above), FM 3-0 (and JP 3-0) has not yet crossed the threshhold into complexity theory or other more useful paradigm. Our bases for doctrine still lies in the "old science" of causality.

With my admiration, Papdogg

hey, do any of you know if FM 3-0 has been released publicly? I'm trying to find a copy for my thesis research.

I have just discovered a significant change (I am not convinced a good one) in FM 3-0. In past editions (to include JP 3-0) there has always been a separation between levels of war and levels of organization. In other words, levels of organization should not be confused with levels of wa -- the latter pertaining to impact of activity, not where the activity takes place in the hierarchy. This change is significant because now there is explicit reference (pages 6-1 and 6-2) to levels of corresponding hierarchy in organization to levels of war. So how do we discuss strategic impact of activities that do not occur at high levels in the organization?? The manual fails to respond to this adequately. Is this a major setback in doctrinal conceptualization of operational art and the three levels of war?? I argue it is a mistake...and I speculate -- perhaps legitimizing the power structure in organization rather than the professional considerations involved in operational artistry,