U.S. CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS:

STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT THEORY AND THE INVASION OF IRAQ

by

Eric de Roos

Graduate Program in Political Science

A Master Research Paper submitted in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts – Political Science

The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies

The University of Western Ontario

London, Ontario, Canada

© Eric de Roos 2015

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Abstract

Civil-military relations is an interdisciplinary subject that examines the how the

institutions of a state’s armed forces interact with its political leadership. Although a relatively

modern discipline of political science, the literature on civil-military relations has proliferated to

encompass many different sub-sets. One specific theory – Risa Brooks’ theory of strategic

assessment – argues that the quality of a state’s civil-military relations directly affects the quality

of strategy produced during inter-state conflict.

By applying this theory to the case of the Iraq War, the goal is to find out how U.S. civil-

military relations affected the major decisions made in prosecuting the war. Examining the first

year of the war, as well as the year directly preceding it, reveals significant defects in strategic

assessment. The focus centres on how Donald Rumsfeld and the Office of the Secretary of

Defense interacted with the U.S. military in producing the strategy that was ultimately used to

invade and occupy Iraq. Particular attention is given to an aspect of strategic assessment

excluded from Brooks’ analysis: structural competence. Ultimately, the empirical evidence

demonstrates there were severe defects in strategic assessment, stemming from problems in both

the military and civilian institutions.

Keywords:

Civil-Military Relations, Iraq War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Invasion of Iraq, U.S. military,

U.S. Army, Strategic Assessment Theory, Theoretical Civil-Military Relations, Risa Brooks,

Structural Competence, Donald Rumsfeld, Tommy Franks, Ricardo Sanchez, David McKiernan,

Paul Bremer, Doug Feith, George W. Bush, David Petraeus, Revolution in Military Affairs,

Counterinsurgency.

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Dedication

Dedicated to the memory of

Second Lieutenant Mark Daily, U.S. Army, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment

Whom I never knew, but still miss.

Your cause of sorrow

Must not be measured by his worth, for then

It hath no end.

-William Shakespeare, Macbeth, V.viii.44-46.

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Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Peter Ferguson, for all the

support and encouragement he showed me throughout this project. Our working relationship, which

spanned three years, both inside and outside of this paper has always flourished. Along with this

paper, our work in building the Leadership and Democracy Lab from its inception have been my

proudest achievements of my time at Western. He has been indispensable to me as a teacher, mentor,

and friend. Despite his poor choice in football teams, his advice and judgment have always been

incalculably useful and greatly appreciated.

A quality graduate education is dependent on both quality professors and students. I was

privileged to have been in the company of both throughout this program. To my professors: Dr.

Abelson, Dr. Anderson, Dr. de Clercy, Dr. Harmes, and Dr. Mansur, thank you for taking the utmost

professionalism to your classes. As educators, you were all incredibly helpful in and out of the

classroom. I would not have developed the passion I have for political science without all of you.

Moreover, I would like to thank my cohorts in the MA program. I learned a lot from all of you, the

effort, intellect, and insight you all brought to this program motivated me to push myself as a student.

I would like to acknowledge my best friend Jeremy Roberts. His help – both formally in editing

and informally in our many chats – proved immensely helpful. To him, I owe an intellectual debt that

I fear I will never be able to repay. Also, I would like to specifically thank Chantel MacLeod, Craig

Moorhead, Richard Schuett, and Matt Smith, for their help in editing this paper.

Finally, to my Mom and Dad, I would like to thank you for your unwavering support

throughout my research. You have never doubted my ability to succeed at anything I have put my

mind to. That is a gift I could never put a price on; I could not have done it without you.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... ii

Dedication ...................................................................................................................................... iii

Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ iv

List of Abbreviations and Nomenclature ...................................................................................... vii

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1

Part I: Theoretical Approaches to Civil-Military Relations ..................................................... 6

Chapter One: Classical Theories of Civil-Military Relations ................................................... 7

Samuel Huntington: Institutional Theory ................................................................................ 7

Ideal Military Professionalism and Objective Control ............................................................ 8

Civilian Ideology and the Cold War ...................................................................................... 13

Morris Janowitz: Convergence, Pragmatism, & the Constabulary Force ............................. 15

Pragmatism as Professionalism and Moving Towards Convergence .................................... 16

Military Professionalism and the Constabulary Force .......................................................... 18

Chapter Two: Criticisms of Classical Approaches & Post-Cold War Theory ........................ 21

Responses to Huntington and Janowitz ................................................................................. 21

Schiff and Concordance Theory ............................................................................................ 25

Desch and Structural-Threat Theory ..................................................................................... 26

Feaver and Agency Theory .................................................................................................... 29

Chapter Three: U.S. Civil-Military Relations & The Vietnam War ...................................... 31

Krepinevich and Vietnam: Unwelcomed Criticism ............................................................... 32

Petraeus and Vietnam: the Problem with Drawing Lessons from History ............................ 33

McMaster: Dereliction of Duty and the Ensuing Debate ...................................................... 36

Chapter Four: Strategic Assessment Theory .......................................................................... 43

Part II: U.S. Civil-Military Relations & Operation Iraqi Freedom ....................................... 50

Chapter Five: Civil-Military Relations pre-9/11: Rumsfeld & Transformation ..................... 53

The Revolution in Military Affairs: Transformation and Bush’s Candidacy ........................ 54

Pre-9/11 Civil-Military Relations under Rumsfeld ............................................................... 56

9/11 and the Rumsfeld Doctrine ............................................................................................ 65

Chapter Six: Planning the Invasion of Iraq and Phase IV ....................................................... 68

Existing Contingency Plans to Invade Iraq ........................................................................... 69

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The Debate over Troop Numbers .......................................................................................... 71

Phase IV Planning: A Lack Thereof ...................................................................................... 76

Chapter Seven: Assessing the Results of OIF in 2003 ............................................................ 84

The Invasion of Iraq .............................................................................................................. 84

Cutting Off Forces ................................................................................................................. 89

Institutional Problems with Phase IV .................................................................................... 92

De-Baathification and Disbanding the Iraqi Army ................................................................ 95

The U.S. Military’s Occupation of Iraq ................................................................................. 99

Chapter Eight: Revisiting Strategic Assessment Theory ...................................................... 103

Brooks’ Conclusions and the Need to Revisit Structural Competence ............................... 103

Structural Competence of the U.S. Military ........................................................................ 107

Concluding Remarks ........................................................................................................... 114

Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 119

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List of Abbreviations and Nomenclature

AO: Area of Operations.

ARVN: Army of the Republic of Vietnam. The ground forces of the South Vietnamese military.

ASD: Assistant Secretary of Defense. Fourth highest ranking position in the OSD.

Brigade: A military formation of roughly 3,000 soldiers. Usually commanded by a colonel.

C4ISR: Stands for command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and

reconnaissance. A synonym for transformation.

CENTCOM: United States Central Command. A unified area command that includes the

Middle East.

CFLCC: Coalition Forces Land Component Command (sif-lick). The command structure

responsible for ground forces within CENTCOM.

CIA: Central Intelligence Agency.

CJCS: Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff.

CJTF-7: Combined Joint Task Force-7.

COIN: Counterinsurgency.

CPA: Coalition Provisional Authority.

DoD: United Sates Department of Defense.

DSD: Deputy Secretary of Defense. The second highest position in the OSD.

General: A four-star general officer. It is the highest rank in the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and

Air Force (Navy equivalent is admiral). The rank is required to hold to hold a position on the

JCS or as a combatant commander.

ISAF: International Security Assistance Force. The name given to the NATO-led command

structure in Afghanistan from 2001-2014.

JCS: The Joint Chiefs of Staff. The principle decision-making body of the U.S. military,

including: Chairman, Vice-Chairman (after 1987), Chief of Staff of the Army, Chief of Naval

Operations, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and Commandant of the Marine Corps.

ID: Infantry division. A formation of roughly 18,000 soldiers. Usually commanded by a major

general (two star). Can be designated as “light” or “mechanized” based on the number of heavy

equipment assigned to it.

Lieutenant General: A three-star general officer. It is the highest rank in the U.S. Army, Marine

Corps, and Air Force (Navy equivalent is vice-admiral). Usually held by corps commanders,

deputy commanders to four-star commands, or high-ranking officials on the Joint Staff.

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MACV: Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. The name of the U.S. military command

during the Vietnam War.

MNF-I: Multi-National Forces-Iraq.

MOOTW: Military Operations Other Than War (moot-wa).

OIF: Operation Iraqi Freedom. The American military name for the Iraq war.

OPLAN: Operation Plan.

OSD: The Office of the Secretary of Defense. Referring to the civilian staff in the Department of

Defense.

The Pentagon: The building that houses DoD headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Used

metonymically to refer to the DoD.

ORHA: Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs. The institutional predecessor to the

CPA.

Phase I-IV Operations: Phase I: build up; Phase II: air strikes/special operations; Phase III:

combat operations; Phase IV: post-combat operations.

RMA: Revolution in Military Affairs. A military strategy that places its emphasis in

technological warfare. Coined by Andy Marshall, Director of the Office of Net Assessment

(1973-2015).

TPFDL: Time-Phased Force and Deployment List (tip-fiddle).

USD: Under Secretary of Defense. The third-highest rank in the OSD.

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Introduction

On March 19th, 2003 President George W. Bush ordered Secretary of Defense1 Donald

Rumsfeld to commence Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), beginning what would become a nearly

nine year-long conflict.2 There is little question that the Iraq War has dwarfed all other events of

the younger Bush’s presidency, becoming its defining feature, and thus the focal point of much

political analysis. The War’s lasting legacy still remains clouded by temporal proximity to its

conclusion. Presently, the debate still continues over whether or not the United States was best

served by Bush’s fateful decision. However, this debate ostensibly remains one of historical

hypotheticals or predictions of the road not traveled. Moreover, the decision to invade Iraq

remains a politically and emotionally charged issue for many, especially those with a personal

connection to the conflict. With these difficulties in mind, analysis of the conflict as a whole – its

legacy, its broader impact on American society, and even its impact on political science – is

nearly impossible to carry out effectively. However, when parsed effectively, study of the Iraq

War can benefit political science; there exists certain aspects of the Iraq war that presently merit

further academic examination.

Even among the most stalwart proponents and defenders of Bush’s decision to invade

Iraq there is a tacit, if not explicit, acknowledgement that the Iraq War was marred by a host of

ineptitudes and transgressions in its prosecution.3 This acknowledgement creates a paradox that

1 For the remainder of this paper the word “defence” will herein follow the American spelling with an “s” as

opposed to the British spelling with a “c”. The frequent references to proper nouns that include the American

spelling (ex. Department of Defense, Secretary of Defense, etc.) make for the adoption of the American spelling of

defense, however undesirable, a more consistent application of spelling. 2 George W. Bush. Decision Points (New York, NY: Broadway Paperbacks, 2010), 223. 3 See: Max Boot, “No Need to Repent for Support of Iraq War,” Commentary, March 18, 2013; David Frum, “The

Speechwriter: Inside the Bush Administration During the Iraq War,” Newsweek, March 19, 2013; Joshua

Muravchik, “The FP Memo: Operation Comeback,” Foreign Policy, October 16, 2009.

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surely enters the mind of even the most casual observer of America’s 21st century foray into

Mesopotamia. As a nation at the apex of its international hegemony following the dissolution of

the Soviet Union, the early years of the Iraq War showed perhaps the nadir of America’s ability

to transfer this tangible hard power into favourable political results.

The failure to achieve its stated goals through the use of force appears inexplicable

considering its colossal advantage in crucial areas of economic wealth and military capabilities.

Many are content to attribute any and all failures of the U.S. in Iraq to Bush’s original decision to

invade – this viewpoint recently resurfaced in the wake of the ten year anniversary of the war in

2013.4 To adopt this view, however, would be as unfair as it is simplistic. Assuming that the

events of the war were inevitable from the moment the initial decision was made, discounts a

host of important decisions made by various actors and institutions thereafter; much can be

gained from analyzing these decisions. In order to address the apparent paradox listed above, one

must move past the reiteration of the merits of Bush’s decision. Scholars wishing to answer this

question must focus on broad aspects of power, use of force, and theoretical approaches to

international relations. To best answer the question at hand, however – why America failed to

achieve its political goals in the Iraq War – a more narrow academic focus is needed. One

possible explanation for the above-stated paradox is an examination of U.S. civil-military

relations.

Civil-military relations is an interdisciplinary area of study that concerns itself with the

relationship between the military and civilians within a state. It is not difficult to see how civil-

4 See: Hans Blix, “Iraq War was a Terrible Mistake and Violation of U.N. Charter,” CNN, March 19, 2013;

Dillingham, “Stop Defending the Iraq War,” Salon, March 27, 2014; Thompson, “Iraq: The Biggest Mistake in

American Military History,” Forbes, December 15, 2011; Walt, “Top 10 Lessons of the Iraq War,” Foreign Policy,

March 20, 2012.

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military relations can span into different disciplines of study. For example, sociologists have

often sought to examine how the military affects society at large, or vice versa; political

scientists tend to focus on the institutional relationship between the military and the government.

Unsurprisingly, like other academic topics, theory plays a large role in civil-military relations.

The different theoretical approaches provide the rationale for the assumptions upon which key

conclusions can be drawn. Assumptions vary widely from theory-to-theory, which can result in

different conclusions. Of wider variance than assumptions, is the inherent focus of different

theories. While traditional civil-military relations is focused on questions of maintaining civilian

control over the military and guarding against potential coups, this does not realistically apply to

the American case. As Peter Feaver points out, a large portion of civil-military relations

scholarship looks at the U.S. in terms of “no coup, no problem.”5 There are, however, theoretical

approaches that are applicable to the proposed question.

This paper will be divided into two main parts. The first part will deal with theoretical

approaches to civil-military relations. An extensive literature review will be conducted regarding

some of the main theories of civil-military relations. First, Samuel Huntington (1957) and Morris

Janowitz (1960), whose inaugural contributions to civil-military relations theory cannot be over-

stated (and, consequently, never are) will be presented. Next, the resurgence of theory following

the end of the Cold War will be discussed. Many of these theories sought to mend the apparent

contradictions that emerged when Huntington and Janowitz’s theories failed to explain the

changes that took place following the Cold War. While this is an enormous body of literature,

three distinctive theories will be discussed (Schiff, 1995; Desch, 1998; Feaver, 2003). Before

5 Peter D. Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 2003), 11.

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turning to Iraq, it is useful to revisit how civil-military relations scholarship is applied to a

singular case. Probing into some of the key discourses on civil-military relations during the

Vietnam War (Krepinevich, 1986; Petraeus, 1987; McMaster, 1997) serves a few useful

purposes as to how scholars have observed civil-military relations in the context of a solitary

case study. Finally, Risa Brooks’ theory of strategic assessment (2008) – which argues that civil-

military relations, “shape the institutional processes in which leaders evaluate their strategy in

interstate conflicts”6 – will be discussed in detail. Compared with previous theories explained, it

will be shown why Brooks’ theory will be adopted going forward and why it is the most

beneficial to answering the question at hand.

Part two will deal the empirical side of the analysis regarding U.S. civil military relations

during the initial year of the Iraq War using strategic assessment theory. First, an extensive

empirical analysis will be given regarding civil-military relations prior to 9/11; civil-military

relations during the planning process for the Iraq War; and of how the U.S. military’s strategy

fared during the invasion and the initial months of the invasion. Next, Brooks’ examination of

civil-military relations and postwar planning of the Iraq War will be discussed. While Brooks’

analysis is, for the most part, correct, I argue that Brooks overstates the quality of U.S. civil-

military relations by not giving proper attention to one of her four key attributes – structural

competence. Finally, some brief policy recommendations will be offered that seek to improve

civil-military relations and strategic assessment going forward. The main finding of this paper is

that scholars should remain cautious when using the Iraq War as evidence in arguing for more or

less civilian control of the U.S. military. Ultimately, the lead-up to the invasion of the Iraq was a

6 Risa A. Brooks, Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 2008), 2.

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complex process, aspects of which still remain somewhat opaque. What becomes clear through

an extensive analysis of the current literature is that there were clear problems with both military

and civilian institutions and leaders which plagued the quality of strategic assessment. The result

is that a simple prescription of more or less civilian control would not have had a significantly

positive impact on civil-military relations at the time.

Frank Hoffman, a Senior Research Fellow at the National Defense University, wrote,

“War is an audit of national will and capacity, but it is also a test of institutions and leaders.”7

While the U.S. may have had fulfilled the requirements to meet the former, the Iraq War remains

a tragic failure regarding the latter. If nothing else, a comprehensive study of the Iraq war shows

the need for the continued study of civil-military relations. This can often lead to difficult

discussions regarding a society’s relationship with their military and the military’s relationship

with the civilian government. However, as the military historian Thomas Ricks argues, “If you

are comfortable with your strategy, you may not be making very good strategy.”8 This maxim

holds true for civil-military relations as well. If states shy away from the uncomfortable

questions of civil-military relations, they do so at their own peril.

7 Frank G. Hoffman, "Dereliction of Duty Redux?: Post-Iraq American Civil-Military Relations," Orbis, 52, no. 2

(2008), 235. 8 Ricks, Thomas E. Ricks, “If you are comfortable with your strategy, you may not be making very good strategy.”

Foreign Policy, January 24, 2014.

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Part I: Theoretical Approaches to Civil-Military

Relations

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Chapter One: Classical Theories of Civil-Military Relations

Samuel Huntington: Institutional Theory

Seldom does academic literature on civil-military relations exclude a section devoted to

reiterating and analyzing Samuel Huntington’s seminal work The Soldier and the State (1957). It

would be difficult to argue that any other piece of work has had a larger impact on the discipline.

Frequently, Huntington is lauded by his contemporaries with the informal title as the “dean of

civil-military relations.”9 However, The Soldier and the State has certainly not been immune to

substantial criticisms from both Huntington’s contemporaries and modern scholars, yet it

remains crucial to any discussion of theoretical civil-military relations. As Peter Feaver points

out, “Each time, the Huntingtonian civil-military distinction has survived, only to be ‘slain’ a

few years later, often in nearly identical language and rarely with any reference to the earlier

Huntington-slayers.”10 Therefore it is important to examine Huntington’s theory and why, as

Feaver acknowledges, it remains pervasive to the study of civil-military relations despite vast

criticism.

Huntington’s work on civil-military relations must be viewed within the context of the

Cold War. The chief concern of The Soldier and the State is how the United States will survive

the long-term external threat of the Soviet Union while maintaining adequate civilian control

over the military,11 a situation Huntington notes is alien to the American experience, which has

9 Michael C. Desch, “Soldiers, States, and Structures: The End of the Cold War and Weakening U.S. Civilian

Control,” Armed Forces & Society, 24, No. 3 (1998), 390; Peter D. Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique:

Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control,” Armed Forces & Society, 23, No. 2 (1996), 166. 10 Feaver, Armed Servants, 8. 11 Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 150.

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been largely free of external threats.12 Huntington’s goal is to solve the classic civil-military

problematique – “how to reconcile a military strong enough to do anything the civilians ask them

to with a military subordinate enough to do only what civilians authorize them to do”13 – within

the new Cold War paradigm.14 While not the first scholar to attempt do so,15 Huntington makes a

radical departure from previous works on civil-military relations by arguing for an ideal division

of institutions using deductive logic from democratic theory.16

Ideal Military Professionalism and Objective Control

For Huntington, civil-military relations is the competition between two institutions – the

military (representing the armed forces) and the civilians (representing the government, who in a

democracy represent the polity) – for power, which he defines as, “the capacity to control the

behavior of other people.”17 In attempting to explain the ideal relationship between the two

institutions, Huntington first outlines the ideal type of each institution. It is here that Huntington

spends the majority of his time. In short, the main factors affecting each institution –

professionalism for the military and ideology for the civilians – become the independent

variables. The dependent variable is the resulting level of civilian control.18 To find the ideal

type of civilian control then, the logic follows, Huntington must define his ideal type of military

professionalism and civilian ideology, which he devotes ample space to.

12 Ibid, 54. 13 Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique,” 149. 14 Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 457. 15 See: Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism: A Romance and Realities of Profession (1937); Louis Smith,

American Democracy and Military Power (1951). 16 Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 61. 17 Ibid, 80, 84. 18 Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique,” 159.

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Military professionalism is at the core of Huntington’s argument. A large portion of The

Soldier and the State seeks to define the aspects of a profession, apply it to the military, in order

to evaluate its level of military professionalism. By professional, Huntington is not referring

simply to the dichotomy of paid versus amateur. Rather, he defines professionalism as the

embodiment of three characteristics that are necessary to perform the task: expertise,

responsibility, and corporateness.19

Expertise requires both education and experiences in order to fill the requirement to be

considered a profession. Said expertise, Huntington states, must be reasonably applicable

irrespective of time and place. In order for one to achieve expertise worthy of a profession both a

general education (i.e. liberal arts) and a technical education are necessary.20 It is the requirement

of expertise which excludes the enlisted man from Huntington’s analysis.21 Further, the enlisted

man performs mechanical crafts, rendering the needlessness of the aforementioned education.22

Borrowing from Harold Lasswell, Huntington uses the definition, “the management of violence,”

to describe the peculiar skill of the military officer.23

Responsibility is the notion that society is a direct stakeholder of the profession. This

notion is perhaps best defined as offering expertise to a sole client and concerned with one

segment of activities, “to the exclusion of all other ends.”24 In the same way a defense lawyer is

responsible to do his utmost to achieve the favourable verdict for the indicted and the doctor

must aid the infirm above all else, the military must procure security for its client – the state.25

19 Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 8. 20 Ibid, 9. 21 Ibid, 11. 22 Ibid, 13. 23 Ibid, 11. 24 Ibid, 15. 25 Ibid.

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To ensure such standards, professions necessitate a monopoly by the state governing its practice

in order to protect society.26

Corporateness requires, “that members of a profession share a sense of organic unity and

consciousness of themselves as a group apart from laymen.”27 Or more formally, “where a legal

right to practice the profession is limited to members of a carefully defined body.”28 Applying

these three characteristics, Huntington concludes that the military officer, like the doctor and

lawyer, is a profession.29 Moreover, he concludes that the military maximizes its effectiveness

the closer it approaches the professional ideal.30 Confirming this conclusion with an exhaustive

analysis of military professionalism in Britain, Prussia, and France through the 19th & early 20th

centuries, Huntington moves to explain the political ramifications of military professionalism.31

Here, Huntington seeks to move from the more abstract characteristics that define

professionalism toward the practical functions of military professionalism.32 While this would

appear extremely difficult, Huntington maintains, “People who act the same way over a long

period of time tend to develop distinctive and persistent habits of thought… The continuing

objective performance of the professional function gives rise a continuing weltanschauung or

professional mind.”33 In an effort to simplify this rather abstract theoretical concept, Huntington

defines it as an ethic, explaining, “Obviously, no one individual or group will adhere to all the

26 Ibid. 27 Ibid, 10. 28 Ibid, 16. 29 Ibid, 11. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid, 19-58. 32 Ibid, 59. 33 Ibid, 61.

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constituent elements of the military ethic… any given officer corps will adhere to the extent that

it is professional.”34

The aim of defining this “professional military ethic” is to predict the actions of a

military that exhibits the three characteristic of professionalism. Specifically, elaborating on this

professional military ethic concerning relations of the military to: “basic values and perspectives,

national military policy, and the relation of the military to the state.”35 Of chief concern here is

the third relationship. Drawing from conclusions of his historical analysis, Huntington argues the

professionalism that first appeared in the 19th century rejected the established unity of military

science and politics, replacing it with a new dichotomous relationship, with militaries seeking to

separate themselves from politics.36 This new found separation of the military and the state is the

linchpin of professionalism, as Huntington elaborates: “the participation of military officers in

politics undermines their professionalism, curtailing their professional competence, dividing the

profession against itself, and substituting extraneous values for professional values.”37

Essentially, involvement in the political sphere is antithetical to military professionalism,

therefore professionalism precipitates the strict dichotomy of the two institutions – the soldier

and the state.

Huntington’s application of professionalism to civilian control makes up the final crux of

his theory. Having devoted a substantial space detailing the ideal military type, Huntington turns

to the question of, “how military power can be minimized.”38 First, the distinction is made

between two different types of civilian control: subjective and objective. Subjective civilian

34 Ibid. 35 Ibid, 62. 36 Ibid. 37 Ibid, 71. 38 Ibid, 80.

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control simply refers to maximizing civilian power, which would logically minimize military

power.39 Until recently, it is noted, subjective control was the only type of civilian control that

could exist because “it is the only form of civilian control possible in the absence of a

professional officer corps.”40

In the presence of a professional officer corps, however, there exists the possibility of

objective control. Subjective control, indeed, creates problems if one accepts Huntington’s

premises. Intrusion by the state into military affairs to expand civilian power has the opposite

effect in establishing civilian control.41 Any attempt to civilianize the military undermines

professionalism, creating a military more susceptible to intervening in the affairs of the state.42

Objective control, then, seeks to achieve the opposite of subjective civilian control; rather than

maximize civilian power, objective control looks to maximize military professionalism.43

Arguing that objective control is the favourable form of civilian control leads to a rather

paradoxical conclusion, but logically follows Huntington’s theoretical premises. If

professionalism requires institutional autonomy from the state, and participation in politics is

adverse to professionalism, then the best way for the state to ensure civilian control is to

maximize professionalism.44 Huntington argues that subjective control presupposes military

involvement in politics by denying institutional autonomy, thus undermining professionalism

and actually weakening civilian control. Herein lies the first major conclusion of institutional

theory. When the state seeks to apply civilian control by violating the institutional division, it has

39 Ibid. 40 Ibid, 81. 41 Ibid, 83. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid.

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the opposite effect, creating a military more likely to intervene in the political affairs of the

state.45

Civilian Ideology and the Cold War

The second major theoretical conclusion concerns the second independent variable

Huntington argues affects civilian control: ideology. Concerning ideology, Huntington narrows

his focus to the United States. Acknowledging that the military can never be completely

autonomous from the society it protects, Huntington states that militaries must balance functional

imperatives (national security) with societal imperatives (the prevailing ideology of the state). In

the case of ideologies that are inherently hostile to the professional military ethic, the military

must make concessions in professionalism in order to gain power.46 In the context of the Cold

War, Huntington is concerned that such concessions could prove disastrous.47

Referring to ideology in the broadest analytical sense, Huntington is primarily concerned

with liberalism and conservatism48 and their respective effects on American civil-military

relations. Liberalism is inherently opposed to many of the tenets of the professional military

ethic, which more closely resembles conservatism.49 The United States is heavily rooted in a

tradition of liberalism, more so than the European powers, which is why Huntington argues that

the former lagged behind the latter in development of professional militaries.50 Enjoying the

security brought about by its geographical location, the U.S. never faced the level of external

45 Ibid, 85. 46 Ibid, 94. 47 Ibid, 455. 48 Here, Huntington defines liberalism as, “referring to the philosophy of John Locke… rooted in individualism.

Emphasizing reason and moral dignity.” Conservatism is defined as, “referring to the philosophy of Edmund

Burke,” concerning the preservation of society and the state, not laissez-faire capitalism. (Huntington 90-91, 93) 49 Ibid, 94. 50 Ibid, 143.

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threats that European powers faced through the 19th century.51 Huntington notes that liberal

societies can mobilize to meet large threats on behalf of universal principles for limited periods

of time, as occurred during the Civil War and WWII, but he believes the Cold War creates a

situation far different.52

Noting that the Cold War is likely to be a permanent fixture of the post-WWII

international system, the U.S. will face a prolonged external threat for the first time in its history,

something Huntington believed the present-day civil-military relations were unfit to meet. The

stress a permanent threat places on American society could “be relieved only by the weakening

of the security threat or the weakening in liberalism.”53 With the weakening of the former being

unlikely, Huntington’s conclusion is that “the requisite for military security is a shift in basic

American values from liberalism to conservatism.”54 The danger of America continuing on the

same path of its past, is that liberalism will not permit the conditions for an adequate level

military professionalism, “without which society cannot endure.”55

In the final section of the Soldier and the State, Huntington illustrates the distinctions in

ideological values between the military and American society, contrasting the daily life of the

United States Military Academy at West Point with the nearby village of Highland Falls in

upstate New York.56 This portrait attempts to convey that the shift in values Huntington calls for

is perhaps not as radical as it appears:

West Point embodies the military ideal as its best: Highland Falls the

American spirit at its most commonplace. West Point is a gray island in a many

colored sea, a bit of Sparta in the midst of Babylon. Yet is it possible to deny that

51 Ibid, 150. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid, 456. 54 Ibid, 464. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid, 464-465.

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the military values – loyalty, duty, restraint, dedication – are the ones America

most needs today?57

Understanding that a change in fundamental values of a society is a harsh prescription,

Huntington nonetheless believed it necessary to survive the Cold War. Perhaps this final analogy

serves to articulate that such a shift could be beneficial to society in more ways than one.

Morris Janowitz: Convergence, Pragmatism, & the Constabulary Force

Huntington’s invaluable contribution to civil-military relations in The Soldier and the

State was articulating an overarching theory that served to both predict and prescribe. Morris

Janowitz’s book, The Professional Soldier (1960), published three years after Huntington’s, was

not the first to rebut Huntington’s theory, but it was the first to construct an over-arching

competing theory. The differences between the two theorists in their scope, methods, and

conclusions are palpable, though there are areas of concurrence. Comparing and contrasting

Huntington and Janowitz speaks to the inter-disciplinary nature of civil-military relations. The

former a political scientist by trade, the latter a sociologist, show how competing academic

lenses can be useful to the student of civil-military relations.

The Professional Soldier is inherently less abstract than The Soldier and the State,

drawing from empirical data to address a number of working hypotheses. Unsurprisingly, the

sociological approach is concerned with trends in the composition of the military vis-à-vis

society.58 In terms of civil-military relations, the goal is to unearth both the growing differences

(gaps) and similarities (convergences) between the two institutions, and the possible

ramifications they hold. Janowitz organizes this goal into five hypotheses, concerning: (1) a

57 Ibid, 465. 58 Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: a Social and Political Portrait (New York, NY: Free Press, 1960), 7.

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changing organizational authority; (2) a narrowing skill differential; (3) a shift in officer

recruitment; (4) a significance of unconventional career paths; (5) and trends in political

indoctrination.59 Drawing on both historical biographical records of past military officers, survey

data, and intensive interviews of current ones, Janowitz finds that there is an increasing

convergence between the military and society,60 with the former becoming increasingly similar

to the latter in its organizational tendencies.61

Pragmatism as Professionalism and Moving Towards Convergence

Like Huntington, Janowitz is interested with the notion of military professionalism.

Unlike Huntington, however, Janowitz does not construe professionalism as a fixed ideal.

Rather, in his mind, professionalism is dynamic, changing in response to different sets of

conditions.62 This view of professionalism is not grounded in a series of theoretic steps, it simply

reflects the observation of a changing military structure over the last fifty years. Two integral

examples that represent this changing professionalism are: the supremacy of the “pragmatist”

school of thought over the “absolutist” school of thought within the military, resulting in the

emergence of “constabulary” tendencies of the military.

One of the many ways Janowitz sought to examine the changing nature professionalism

was to examine how the officer corps approached the use of force. One of these approaches was

termed the absolutist school of thought, which Janowitz describes as the belief that: “Warfare,

actual or threatened, is the most fundament basis of international relations. Since the political

objectives of warfare are gained by victory, the more complete the victory, the greater the

59 Ibid, 8-12. 60 Ibid, 423-429. 61 Ibid. 62 Mackubin Thomas Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain (New

York, NY: Continuum, 2011), 24.

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possibility of achieving political goals.”63 Contrary to the absolutist school, lies the pragmatist

school, ascribing to the belief that: “Warfare is but one instrument of international struggle. The

political objectives of warfare are gained by adapting the use of threat of violence to the

objectives to be achieved.”64

Indeed, this dispute over the relationship between military force and political goals was

quite germane to the political climate in which Janowitz was writing. President Eisenhower’s

“New Look” policy was a de facto embracement of the absolutist school, focusing on retaliatory

nuclear capabilities, while cutting conventional forces needed to make limited responses.65 The

pragmatist school found its home in the Democratic Party, resulting in the Kennedy

Administration’s renewed funding of Special Forces and Secretary McNamara’s tit-for-tat

approach to Vietnam, both emphasizing flexible responses as an essential part of defense

policy.66

Janowitz foresaw this impending shift towards the pragmatist school and argued it would

have consequences for the military. The absolutist school’s reliance on nuclear weapons was ill-

suited to meet the demands of U.S. foreign policy. Moving towards a pragmatist school would

affect changes in the concept of professionalism. Observing how the military’s natural resistance

to change often results in obsolete organizational structure, Janowitz argues that the military will

adopt more civilian tendencies towards its management and bureaucracy in order to meet the

demands of pragmatism,67 resulting in the narrowing of the differences between civilian and

63 Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 264. 64 Ibid. 65 Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11, 98. 66 Charles A. Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians: US Civil-Military Relations under Stress (New York, NY:

Routledge, 2006), 159. 67 Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 22-23.

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military occupation.68 This convergence, brought on by pragmatism, would lead to a military

with a more constabulary outlook.69

Military Professionalism and the Constabulary Force

The term constabulary forces is used by Janowitz to describe the change professionalism

brought about by a pragmatist outlook on force.70 Pragmatism leads to a decrease in what

Janowitz terms “upper end” violence – nuclear weapons or overwhelming force – and an

increase in “lower end” violence like peacekeeping or counterinsurgency.71 Janowitz argues that

an entirely different kind of professional is needed for managing lower end violence as opposed

to higher end.72 The professional military officer of the constabulary force cannot be severed

from the political nature of their task, and therefore must be more attune with civilian values.73

Essentially, the opposite of Huntington’s recommendation for military effectiveness.

Such a change in the military’s self-conception of professionalism would be incredibly

difficult to implement and would occur incrementally.74 There is no question the military view

themselves closer to the Huntingtonian idea of professionalism and are quick to distinguish

themselves from any kind of policing function.75 Janowitz, despite stating that his concept of the

constabulary force does not refer to any kind of policing function, nonetheless predicted the

68 Ibid, 424. 69 Ibid, 418. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid. 72 Ibid, 419. 73 Ibid, 420. 74 Morris Janowitz, “Toward a Redefinition of Military Strategy in International Relations,” World Politics, 26, No.

4 (1974), 499. 75 Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 419.

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military would be resistant to any change.76 The ultimate policy recommendations that Janowitz

makes reflect this.

Janowitz’s prescriptions are most concerned with how to encourage the convergence of

the military toward society and how to stem growing gaps. One such gap of concern is the

deterioration of the citizen-soldier. Since pragmatism makes lower end engagements more likely,

mass participation would no longer be necessary for war to occur.77 While Huntington would see

little problem with a professional volunteer force isolated from society, Janowitz believes that

the concept of the citizen-soldier is a normative good that serves to strengthen democratic

values.78 This gap, produced by the deterioration of the citizen-soldier ideal, however, could be

offset by a convergence of the officer corps.79

One way to cultivate the fledgling citizen-soldiers ideal is to refocus the education of the

officer corps. The data Janowitz examined showed the process of convergence of the officer with

civilian occupations was already evident in areas of authority, organization, and administrative

functions.80 To further aid this process, Janowitz argued for changes in military education policy,

specifically, for a focus on political-military education in the initial years of an officer’s

education (as opposed to postponement until the middle of a career).81 Moreover, a closer

integration with civilian universities is beneficial, as Janowitz finds the monopoly military

academies enjoy over education troubling to the notion of convergence.82

76 Ibid, 420. 77 James Burk, “Theories of Democratic Civil-Military Relations,” Armed Forces & Society, 29, No. 1 (2002), 11. 78 Ibid, 12. 79 Ibid. 80 Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 423-424. 81 Ibid, 426. 82 Ibid.

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The rise of a “distinct and visible” type of officer Janowitz terms the “military

intellectual” since WWII is indicative of convergence.83 Future viability of convergence

depends, to an extent, on the further growth of military intellectuals within the officer corps.

Officers who focus their advanced education on the social sciences – particularly international

relations – rather than the traditional focus on engineering, and who do so at civilian universities,

are the ideal future leaders of a constabulary force.84 For convergence to be successful, Janowitz

further asserts that the military needs to place greater value on career paths that are more

amenable to the military intellectual.85 In short, while Huntington saw the ideal military officer

of the Cold War as one who would voluntary exclude himself from the political sphere,

Janowitz’s ideal officer was particularly adept when it came to political-military concerns.

The maintenance of adequate civilian control over the military is reliant upon the

evolution of the constabulary force to ensure professional competency and prevent military

frustration.86 Under a constabulary force, Janowitz argued, military professionalism would

flourish because of a closer relationship with civilian society,87 not, as Huntington would surely

argue, in spite of it. For Janowitz, the constabulary officer submits himself to civilian control

because, “he is integrated into civilian society [and] shares its common values.”88 The

Professional Soldier’s conclusion offers a near opposite prescription to the one put forth in The

Soldier and the State to solve the civil-military problematique.

83 Ibid, 433. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid, 425. 86 Ibid, 435. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid, 440.

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Chapter Two: Criticisms of Classical Approaches & Post-Cold War

Theory

Responses to Huntington and Janowitz

Having overviewed the main arguments put forth by Huntington and Janowitz, it is

important to address some of the objections scholars have made regarding their work. To do so,

this section will briefly outline some key modern theorists of civil-military relations (Schiff,

1995; Desch, 1998; Feaver, 2003), united by their attempts to revisit U.S. civil-military relations

following the end of the Cold War – called the Post-Cold War School. Allotting less space for

these theories is not intended to imply their inferiority to Huntington and Janowitz. Rather,

providing more extensive analyses to these two classic theorists serves two purposes. First, many

of these scholars distinguish themselves through specific disagreements or agreements they have

with Huntington and Janowitz. Second, having a conceptual understanding of the classical

theorists before examining more modern theories gives the reader a sense of the chronological

evolution of civil-military relations scholarship.

In introducing The Soldier and the State’s contributions above, there were two references

made which are relevant when discussing criticism of Huntington: the invocation of “radical” to

describe Huntington’s theory, and Feaver’s remark on the consistency with which academics

criticize his work. Radical is indeed an apt description of Huntington’s theory for the time he

was writing. Huntington’s book was initially deemed so controversial that he was denied tenure

at Harvard the year following its release, and subsequently moved to Columbia University with

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his colleague Zbigniew Brzezinski.89 Four years later, with the book moving toward prominence,

Harvard hired Huntington back with full tenure.90

Such controversy erupted because of Huntington’s swift departure from the status quo.

Previously, literature on U.S. civil-military relations had been rooted in the long-standing

American tradition of viewing standing militaries as a threat to civil society,91 best characterized

by Lasswell’s garrison state concept (1941).92 Looking at the increasing militarization of the

world’s major powers, Lasswell argued that the increasing power of the military would probably

lead them to subsume the functions of civilian governments, resulting in a government

dominated by unchecked military power, termed the garrison state.93 While Lasswell was correct

in predicting that as the military grew it would take over civilian functions of government (which

frequently occurred during WWII), he was wrong in predicting the military would not

voluntarily demobilize.94

Huntington viewed Lasswell’s failed pessimistic prediction of the U.S. military as a

prime example of the prevailing liberal hostility towards the military.95 Consequently, he used

this wrong assumption as a basis for his provocative challenge to the state of civil-military

relations theory. Unsurprisingly, critics were quick to pounce on the flaws of Huntington’s

theory, namely, the tautological nature of Huntington’s concept of professionalism. Morris Jones

notes that the concept of professionalism is a “tight-rope,” with, “no real world [figure] who

89 Robert D. Kaplan, “Looking the World in the Eye: Profile of a Harvard Professor,” The Atlantic, December 2001. 90 Ibid. 91 Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11, 13. 92 Lasswell first articulated the garrison state concept in 1937 in reference to the rise of military power in Japan.

1941, however, was when he applied it to the United States. 93 Harold D. Lasswell, “The Garrison State,” American Journal of Sociology, 46, No. 4 (1941), 456-458. 94 Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 348-350. 95 Ibid, 350.

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passes this test.”96 S.E. Finer, perhaps the most vehement contemporary critic of Huntington,

echoes Morris Jones, referring to the concept of professionalism as “essentialist,” explaining: “If

soldiers are observed to act in ways inconsistent with these concepts of professionalism and the

military mind, so much the worse for the soldiers; they are not completely professional, not

purely military.”97 Moreover, Finer’s comparative analysis finds that Huntington’s theory is

simply inconsistent with the histories of multiple states.98

While early critics of Huntington focused their criticism on the logical premises of his

theory, post-Cold War theorists, with the benefit of hindsight, can assess the predictive elements

of his theory. Recall the core prediction of Huntington’s theory that comes with his final

conclusion – if the U.S. fails to adopt a more conservative ideology and objective control then it

will not produce the adequate military effectiveness to survive the Cold War. Peter Feaver sets

out to methodically test whether Huntington’s predictions can hold up to historical analysis.

Since it can be reasonably concluded that the U.S. won the Cold War, either one or both of two

things needed to occur in order for Huntington’s theory to be considered partially correct. The

U.S. either became more conservative ideologically or it exhibited objective civilian control (i.e.

less civilian intrusion in military affairs).99 Feaver’s extensive analysis of both indicators,

however, shows the opposite clearly occurred.100 The myriad of problems with Huntington’s

theory has led to its amending by scholars hoping to create conceptual clarity through similar

assumptions.

96 W. H. Morris Jones, “Armed Forces and the State,” Public Administration, 35, No. 4 (1957), 415. 97 Samuel E. Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics (London, UK: Paul Mall, 1962), 22. 98 Ibid, 21. 99 Feaver, Armed Servants, 36. 100 Ibid, 38.

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Criticism of Janowitz’s work has been much more muted for a variety of reasons. To

begin, the actual thesis of his theory is much more reserved than Huntington’s. James Burke

points out that Janowitz states problems to which he offers limited to no solutions.101

Furthermore, Feaver argues that the lack of criticism toward Janowitz is unfair, as Janowitz

essentially falls back on the Huntingtonian argument that professionalism will maintain civilian

control (however, he disagrees with Huntington on how to maintain professionalism).102 Indeed,

when Janowitz was criticized by Charles Moskos, who argued convergence theory did not go far

enough in describing the “civilianization” of the military, Janowitz responded, in rather

Huntingtonian fashion, that the military’s uniquely professional nature ensures its distinctiveness

from civilian occupations.103 Moreover, Janowitz’s sociological approach is inherently less

concerned with arguments about civilian control – arguably the most contentious issue facing

civil-military relations – and more concerned with the societal similarities and differences

between the military and civilians.104 Therefore, it is predictable that scholars focusing on

civilian control will, as Feaver pointed out, consistently address Huntington.

The early post-Cold War years in the U.S. sparked a major revisiting of civil-military

relations theory focusing on two issues. First, the problem of how to reconcile the lack of a major

external threat with a large standing army.105 And second, how to deal with the perceived

weakening of civilian control, leading many scholars to term the state of U.S. civil-military

relations as “in crisis.”106 This sentiment was so wide-spread that an army officer published a

101 Burk, “Theories of Democratic Civil-Military Relations,” 13-14. 102 Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique,” 165. 103 Morris Janowitz, “From Institutional to Occupational: The Need for Conceptual Continuity,” Armed Forces &

Society, 4, No. 1 (1977), 55. 104 Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique,” 166. 105 Peter D. Feaver, “Civil-Military Relations,” Annual Review of Political Science, 2, No. 1 (1999), 230. 106 Desch, “Soldiers, States, and Structures,” 389; Feaver, Armed Servants, 185-188; Kohn, “The Erosion of Civilian

Control of the Military in the United States Today,” 10; Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians, 194.

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hypothetical essay in the U.S. Army’s journal Parameters outlining how the U.S. military could

institute a coup by 2012.107 While scholars disagree over the indicators of weakening civilian

control,108 they near-uniformly address similar issues that renewed cause for concern over post-

Cold War civilian control: (1) The effects of the Goldwater-Nichols reforms (1987) that

strengthened the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), resulting in a military

with concentrated influence over policy;109 (2) The election of President Clinton, for whom

Richard Kohn stated military issues were a “third rail;”110 (3) The divergence in opinion on use

of military force between the military and civilians.111 It is under the pretense of these growing

issues that scholars sought to redefine civil-military relations theory.

Schiff and Concordance Theory

Rebecca Schiff was one of the first of many whose theoretical work aimed to provide an

alternative to the perceived prevalence of institutional theory. Deriding both its grounding in a

specifically American historical experience and its exclusion of cultural factors to its analysis,

Schiff lays out an alternative: concordance theory.112 Instead of focusing simply on safeguarding

civilian control through a separation of military and civil institutions, Schiff argues that

agreement on, “separation, integration, or some alternative,” between the “military, political

leadership, and the citizenry,” contingent on the cultural conditions, best preserves civilian

107 Charles J. Dunlap, “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012,” Parameters (Winter 1992-93), 2-20. 108 Feaver, Armed Servants, 185-188. 109 Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York, NY: Free

Press, 2002), 189-190. 110 Richard H. Kohn, “The Erosion of Civilian Control of the Military in the United States Today.” Naval War

College Review, 55, No. 3 (2002), 12. 111 Peter D. Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of

Force (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 54-55. 112 Rebecca L. Schiff, “Civil-Military Relations Reconsidered: A Theory of Concordance.” Armed Forces & Society,

22, No. 1 (1995). 11.

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control.113 Unique is its acknowledgement of the citizenry (i.e. the general populace) on equal

terms to the military and civilian elite, with Schiff terming the three as “partners.”114 In essence,

concordance theory allows for different ways of finding agreement between these three partners.

Although Schiff allows for a more flexible prescription for civilian control compared to

institutional theory, nonetheless a theory requires a uniform method to consistently evaluate

varying conditions of civil-military relations. There are four conditions that Schiff uses as

indicators for concordance between the three partners: social composition of the officer corps,

political decision-making process, recruitment method, and military style.115 As evidence, the

comparative case studies of Israel and India are employed to show that institutional theory fails

to explain how two states with immeasurably different approaches to civil-military relations both

enjoy stable civilian control.116 More recently, Schiff has intriguingly argued that the adoption of

a “targeted partnership” between military and civilian decision-makers would have resulted in a

more effective implementation of counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq.117 Critics maintain that

concordance theory’s flexibility obscures its ability to establish between “good” and “bad” levels

of civil-military integration.118 Despite concerns regarding its universal applicability,

concordance theory can be valuable in examining niche topics of civil-military relations; the

formulation of counterinsurgency strategy is a particularly useful example of this strength.

Desch and Structural-Threat Theory

113 Ibid, 12-13. 114 Ibid, 13. 115 Ibid, 14-16. 116 Ibid, 21. 117 Rebecca L. Schiff, “Concordance Theory, Targeted Partnership, and Counterinsurgency Strategy,” Armed Forces

& Society, 38, No. 2 (2012), 30. 118 Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11, 33.

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Taking a slightly more limited scope, Michael Desch amends the institutional approach to

reflect changes in international threats on civil-military relations – called structural-threat

theory. Similar to Huntington, Desch challenges the intuitive premise put forth by Lasswell’s

garrison state theory. However, not quite the part Huntington challenged. Lasswell argued that

the greater the international threat to a state was, the harder the military would be for civilians to

control.119 Following this logic, the U.S. should enjoy equal, if not greater, harmony in its civil-

military relations following the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a substantial external threat.

Desch posits this is not the case.120 To mend this apparent contradiction, Desch proposes a theory

which encompasses how “variation in international and domestic threats affect the strength of

civilian control as well as the role that military doctrine plays in strengthening or weakening

civilian control.”121 For Desch, the best indicator of the strength of civilian control is rather

straight-forward. Simply put, civilian control, the dependent variable, is best measured by:

“[whoever] prevails when civilian and military preferences diverge. If the military does, there is

a problem; if civilians do, there is not.”122

The two independent variables for Desch’s model are external (international) and internal

(domestic) threats, which vary between high and low intensity; the dependent variable is strength

of civilian control.123 Two independent variables, each with two variations, result in four possible

levels of civilian control. Ranking from strongest to weakest levels of civilian control the

combinations of threats are: (1) high external/low internal, (2) low external/low internal, (3) high

external/high internal, and (4) low external/high internal.124 Internal threats are threats from

119 Desch, “Soldiers, States, and Structures,” 389. 120 Ibid, 390. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid, 391. 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid, 393.

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society towards the military, and likely result in coups, making the two possibilities with high

internal threats the de-facto lowest two levels of civilian control.125 In regard to external threats,

Desch asserts that civilian control is stronger when the external threat is high for a plethora of

reasons. First, high external threats make it more likely a civilian leadership with national

security expertise will be brought to power; Second, it unifies the military towards an outward

threat, away from domestic politics; Third, external threats tend to create high levels of popular

support for the military; Further, civilians will rely more on objective methods of control in the

face of external threats.126

Military doctrine makes up the second part of Desch’s theory and represent a problem

uniquely highlighted by post-Cold War events. When there is a split in variance (ex. High/low or

low/high), Desch states that the structural environment are more determinate than if there is no

split variance (ex. Low/low or high/high).127 When the type of structural threat is indeterminate

a good indicator for civilian control is control over military doctrine.128 A historical analysis

shows that throughout the Cold War military doctrine was firmly dominated by civilian control,

for many of the same reasons listed above.129 Desch concludes that what explains the weakening

in U.S. civilian control is its move from a high external/low internal environment, to a low/low

environment. Moreover, within this newly formed environment of indeterminate threat, the

military has gained substantial influence over the formation of military doctrine, as displayed

through the Powell Doctrine.130 Desch’s theory is an example of how Huntington’s approach can

125 Ibid, 391. 126 Ibid, 392-393. 127 Ibid, 395. 128 Ibid. 129 Ibid, 397. 130 Ibid, 398.

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be altered to fit the changing dynamics of civil-military relations. The next theorist follows this

style, albeit, at a more comprehensive level.

Feaver and Agency Theory

Agency theory is Peter Feaver’s answer to the inability of Huntington’s institutional

theory to explain U.S. civil-military relations throughout the Cold War. Although Feaver devotes

ample time to disproving the theory of his former dissertation supervisor at Harvard, he

nonetheless agrees with its core tenets. Specifically the theoretical starting point that civil-

military relations are best explained through the relationship between two institutions – civil and

military.131 Within agency theory, the former is termed the principal (the boss) and the latter the

agent (the employee). The goal of agency theory is to interpret the strategic interplay between

two rational actors that ensues when the principal attempts to make the agent do something.

What results is the agent choosing to work, “doing something to the principal’s satisfaction,” or

shirk, “not doing something to the principal’s satisfaction.” Feaver borrows this concept from

microeconomics and offers modifications to create compatibility with the distinct nature of civil-

military affairs.132

The key variables that Feaver believes affects whether or not the military chooses to work

or shirk are the ability of the principal to “punish” the agent and the costs associated with

monitoring the agent. Punishments imposed on the military can range from imposing oversight

or slashing budgets all the way to forced retirements or legal action.133 While punishing refers to

when the preferences of principal are not met, monitoring refers more to the preferences of the

131 Feaver, Armed Servants, 10. 132 Ibid, 55-63. 133 Ibid, 91-94.

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agent. Monitoring, which can be intrusive or nonintrusive, is subject to a cost imposed on the

principal. The higher the cost of monitoring the less intrusive it is likely to be. Here, Feaver

concludes that two best indicators of whether the military will work or shirk is the cost of

monitoring which in turns affects the likelihood that military will be punished for shirking.134

Similar to Desch, Feaver states that there are four main patterns produced by his framework: “(1)

civilian monitors intrusively, the military works (Huntington’s crisis, subjective control); (2)

civilian monitor intrusively, the military shirks (extreme civil-military friction); (3) civilian does

not monitor intrusively, military works (Huntington’s prescription, objective control); and (4)

civilian does not monitor intrusively, military shirks (Lasswell’s garrison state).”135

Having constructed his theory, Feaver then embarks on the task of determining whether it

will succeed where institutional theory failed, namely in explaining the Cold War. He concludes

that pattern #1 best describes the Cold War. In short, the lowered cost of intrusive monitoring for

civilians brought on by technology and the high threat of punishment – which Feaver argues

derived from Truman’s firing of General Douglas MacArthur in 1951 – allowed civilian control

to remain strong.136 The post-Cold War years, Feaver finds, more closely resemble pattern #2.

Examining military action in the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo, Feaver

discovers that although monitoring remained intrusive, there was an evident increase in shirking

because there was a decrease in the expectation of military punishment.137 For Feaver, this most

recent pattern is a troubling one, concluding: “History shows that the military is not as ‘right’ in

civil-military disputes as the military triumphalists might suppose. But even when the military is

right, democratic theory intervenes and insists that it submit to the civilian leadership that the

134 Ibid, 63-65. 135 Ibid, 120. See: table 5.1. 136 Ibid, 129, 151-152, 157. 137 Ibid, 280.

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polity has chosen… The republic would be better served even by foolish working than by

enlightened shirking.”138 Regardless of its more limited scope than the two previous theories

examined, agency theory’s main contribution is addressing the most problematic areas of

Huntington’s theory.

Concordance theory, structural-threat theory, and agency theory show how wide different

approaches to civil-military relations can range. Each theory attempts to address the short-

comings of classical theories, specifically their inability to make sense of the Cold War and post-

Cold War changes. Each theory, however, espouses a different way to do so. Schiff’s focus on

culture and society, Desch’s on threats and doctrine, and Feaver’s institutional interaction, all

have their strengths and weaknesses, and make valuable theoretical contributions. The

importance of including numerous theories is to show how theories of civil-military relations are

tools. In examining specific cases, as is the focus of this paper, there can be more than one tool to

complete the task, but often certain tools work better than others. One of the main challenges

facing civil-military relations involves finding the theory that best explains a particular event as

part of a larger pattern.

Chapter Three: U.S. Civil-Military Relations & The Vietnam War:

Analyzing a Case Study

One of the most formative events in recent history for the U.S. military was their

experience during the Vietnam War, an event that exacted such a heavy toll on the military itself,

and certainly had a lingering effect on civil-military relations. I will therefore briefly examine

some of the academic conclusions that have been drawn regarding U.S. civil-military relations

138 Ibid, 302.

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and the Vietnam War as a prelude to turning to the Iraq War. While the goal of this paper is not

to recount the similarities and differences of the two conflicts, nor to relitigate the shortcomings

of Vietnam, it is nevertheless valuable to re-examine the approaches scholars used to view the

implications of a singular event on civil-military relations. In doing so, there can be important

patterns, decisions, and figures that prove applicable to modern civil-military relations.

The following section will address four academic works on the Vietnam War and U.S.

civil-military relations (Krepinevich, 1986; Petraeus, 1987; McMaster, 1997; Cohen, 2002).

There exists a propensity within the military, like many organizations, to selectively ignore

unsavoury elements of its past. The first three of these authors are rarities because they are all

Army officers who studied Vietnam, while the Army had long-since moved to forget the conflict.

As such, the Vietnam War school of civil-military relations offers a much-needed introspective

analysis. Specifically, H.R. McMaster’s Dereliction of Duty, will be examined in respect to the

continuous academic debate regarding its implications. Showing the importance of history to

civil-military relations, scholars continue to invoke Dereliction of Duty as evidence for their

arguments regarding the Iraq War. However, there exists considerable disagreement over the

proper implications which should be drawn from the Vietnam War and civil-military relations.

Therefore it is important to wade into this debate.

Krepinevich and Vietnam: Unwelcomed Criticism

Upon its publishing in 1986, The Army and Vietnam by Andrew Krepinevich, became a

widely read book. Its impact can be attributed to its counterintuitive thesis. Andrew Krepinevich,

an Army major who had been researching his Ph.D. at Harvard, used access to newly

unclassified documents to assess the Army’s record in prosecuting the Vietnam War. He noted

that on multiple occasions the Army rejected a more nuanced strategy involving

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counterinsurgency and pacification, and unabashedly pursued the only war they knew how to

fight: one with overwhelming firepower and large unit movement.139 These successive strategic

and tactical blunders, Krepinevich argued, were what lost the war, not over-intrusive civilian

control or a lack of domestic support.140 This conclusion was tantamount to an unprecedented

devastating critique of the Army’s record in Vietnam.

Almost immediately the same commanders Krepinevich criticized in his book launched

their own attacks in response to his arguments. One prominent general, writing in Parameters,

maintained Krepinevich’s work, “[lacked] historical breadth and objectivity,” and chastised his

“abrasive tone.”141 The public backlash against Krepinevich by the top Army brass effectively

ended his career. Banished from speaking at West Point and exiled to obscure staff positions,

Krepinevich would leave the Army four years later.142 Nonetheless, many of Krepinevich’s harsh

criticisms remain salient, and have been vindicated by military historians.143 The Army and

Vietnam, and the story of its subsequent fallout, shows a few important broader points. The

military is not generally receptive to pointed forms of intellectual dissent. With this in mind, it is

not hard to see why many in the military are apprehensive about pursuing minority or unpopular

decisions. This lack of self-criticism can have seemingly adverse effects on civil-military

relations.

Petraeus and Vietnam: the Problem with Drawing Lessons from History

139 Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986),

258-259. 140 Ibid, 270-271. 141 Quoted in, Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (New

York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 33. 142 Ibid, 34. 143 Thomas E. Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today (New York, NY:

Penguin Press, 2012), 260-265.

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David Petraeus is more famously recognized today as the commander of MNF-Iraq

during the surge, commander of ISAF during the Afghanistan surge, and Director of the CIA.

Much has been written about his career as he became the most high-profile military officer of the

21st century.144 Less well known, however, is his academic work on civil-military relations,

completed while pursuing a Ph.D. at Princeton in the mid-80s. Despite the urging of his

supervisor, Petraeus chose not to publish his dissertation, The American Military and Lessons of

Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era, fearing the

same career repercussions that Krepinevich faced the prior year.145 The lack of a publisher

certainly limited the public reach of its findings, however, his work remained far from obscure

today. Petraeus’ dissertation remains frequently quoted in journals and books regarding U.S.

civil-military relations.146

The American Military and Lessons of Vietnam is an analysis of the nature of influence

top military decision-makers have had in respect to the top civilian decision-makers. Particularly,

assessing whether or not the Vietnam War had any impact on the nature of said influence.

Through examining all instances of uses of military force, Petraeus found that the military has

become more cautious and skeptical than their civilian counterparts on questions of using

force.147 This more conservative nature of the officer corps closely resembled Huntington’s ideal

military professional.148 Regardless of a military more hesitant to use force, the U.S. continued

144 See: Robinson, 2008; Ricks, 2009; Cloud and Jaffe, 2009; Broadwell, 2012; Kaplan, 2013. 145 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 34. 146 See bibliographies for: Feaver, 2003; Stevenson, 2006; Owens, 2011. 147 David H. Petraeus, The American Military and Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of

Force in the Post-Vietnam Era, Ph.D. Dissertation (Princeton University, 1987), 240. 148 Ibid, 263.

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frequent uses of force post-Vietnam.149 Petraeus argues that what explains this is a marked

decline in direct military influence – "leverage which flows from formal and explicit military

recommendations” – following Vietnam.150 The military has thus resorted to focusing on indirect

military influence, which uses its control over doctrine and contingency planning to influence the

environment within which decisions are made.151 The main lesson the Army learned from

Vietnam was “recognizing the perishability of public support for military action abroad…

[regarding] time as the principal limit in limited wars."152 Concerned that the Army’s use of

indirect influence to reinforce this lesson would have adverse effects on civil-military relations,

Petraeus offered recommendations for the future of the Army.

What troubled Petraeus about his findings was that lessons from Vietnam would become

so internalized by the top-military decision makers that they would be wrongly applied to other

situations.153 Further, he argued that the distrust of civilian officials by the military that arose out

of Vietnam was severely straining any political-military integration.154 Concluding that the Army

was more likely to fight small wars (i.e. insurgencies) in its future than large state-to-state

conflicts, Petraeus saw closer political-military integration as a prerequisite to success in these

conflicts. Despite running contrary to the lesson the Army internalized from Vietnam, Petraeus

argued that the military needed to prepare for small, protracted, counterinsurgency campaigns.155

To achieve the political-military strategic integration needed for success in small wars, the Army

149 Such uses of force include: The Yom Kippur War Alert (1973), The Mayaguez Incident (1975), The Korean

DMZ Incident (1976), Horn of Africa Crisis (1978), Iranian Hostage Crisis (1979-1980), Lebanon Peacekeeping

Mission (1982-1984), Grenada (1983), Central America Policy (1981-1987), Persian Gulf Deployment (1984),

TWA Flight 847 Hijacking (1985), and Libya (1986). (Ibid, 137-293) 150 Ibid, 244. 151 Ibid, 247. 152 Ibid, 241. 153 Ibid, 298. 154 Ibid, 302-303. 155 Ibid, 303.

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needed to shed the lesson they took from Vietnam, which reinforced their desire for autonomy.156

Petraeus saw that the Army would likely have to fight these type of conflicts whether they

desired to or not. Drawing on experiences of the Army in Central America in 1980s, he wrote:

“[T]he reluctance to get involved in Central America with U.S. troops was translated into

military reluctance to develop plans for such potential operations, based apparently on the theory

that if one has no plans, they cannot be executed.”157 It is this last conclusion that makes

Petraeus’ work especially pertinent to the current debate over civil-military relations. The issue

of control over strategy between civilian and military spheres has become a chief concern facing

civil-military relations.

McMaster: Dereliction of Duty and the Ensuing Debate

By the 1990s, criticism of Vietnam had become less reprehensible within the Army as the

top commanders associated with the war began to retire. This allowed H.R. McMaster, an

armour officer who played an integral role during the decisive Gulf War battle of 73 Easting,158

to publish his confrontationally named book Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert

McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, parlayed from his

dissertational work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The book details how the

decisions regarding the gradual escalation of Vietnam (specifically from 1962-1965) were made.

Focusing on the role, or lack thereof, that the JCS played in the implementation of gradual

escalation, McMaster identifies the key systemic failures within the decision-making process.

Among these failures are: the unwavering loyalty of top military officers to Johnson and

156 Ibid, 305. 157 Ibid, 287 (footnote 35). 158 For an in-depth account of McMaster’s actions at 73 Easting see: Tom Clancy, Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of

an Armored Cavalry Regiment (New York, NY: Putnam, 1994), 256-262.

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McNamara (particularly in wake of the Truman-MacArthur affair); strong inter-service rivalry,

ensuring JCS members, “compromised their views on Vietnam in exchange for concessions to

their respective services;” top military commanders lied to both the public and Congress for the

sake of the executive; and the appointment of pliable military commanders by CJCS Maxwell

Taylor (1962-1964).159 What differentiates McMaster from Petraeus and Krepinevich, however,

is that McMaster does not provide any overt remedies or recommendations in terms of civil-

military relations. Dereliction of Duty is first and foremost a historical portrait of the JCS and the

Vietnam War. In light of this, there has been considerable debate over the proper “lesson” one

should deduce from the book, if any.

It should be first noted that upon its release, the book became widely popular within the

military, earning a spot on CJCS Hugh Shelton’s (1997-2001) public reading list.160 The reason

McMaster received the exact opposite reception that Krepinevich received, despite launching

substantial criticism of the military in Vietnam, was the nature of such criticism. While

Krepinevich and Petraeus attacked strategic and tactical incompetence, many within the military

saw McMaster’s book as a call for military officers to stand up against overbearing civilians.

This kind of criticism is much more in line with the predisposition the military has toward its

own autonomy.

In 2007, Foreign Affairs magazine published a series of essays from prominent scholars

debating over how to characterize the previous six years of U.S. civil-military relations. One

such topic that arose within the debate was over the implications drawn from Dereliction of

159 H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies

That Led to Vietnam (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1997), 330-331. 160 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 168; Hugh Shelton, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior (New

York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011), 320.

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Duty. The aforementioned Michael Desch penned an article arguing the paltry state of civil-

military relations was caused by the Bush administration’s, “determination to reassert civilian

control,” adding that, “administration officials were even willing to immerse themselves in

operational issues.”161 Approvingly quoting Dereliction of Duty to reinforce his point, Desch

states, “The implicit message of McMaster’s military bestseller is that unqualified allegiance to

the commander in chief needs to be rethought.”162 Later, he continues that the Bush

administration had strayed too far from Huntington’s objective control (More on this debate will

be discussed in Chapter Eight). Instead, adopting a more intrusive policy of civilian control

derived from Eliot Cohen’s book Supreme Command (more on Cohen’s thesis will be addressed

below).163 Others, however, do not see eye-to-eye with Desch on his interpretation of Dereliction

of Duty, and consequently argue it provides a different lesson to apply to civil-military relations.

Prominent civil-military relations scholar Richard Kohn, coauthoring a piece with CJCS

Richard Myers (2001-2005), argued in response Desch, that whatever the faults of Bush-era

civil-military relations, said faults would be significantly exacerbated if Desch’s advice was

taken.164 Further, they argue that Dereliction of Duty asserts that military leaders be candid in

private, and to Congress, and nothing more (it is worth noting that Kohn was McMaster’s Ph.D.

supervisor).165 In a more adept response, Mackubin Thomas Owens argues that Desch is simply

overstating the faults of one-half of the civil-military equation. Essentially, he states that Desch

is in danger of falling in the same trap many did after Vietnam – ignoring the short-comings of

161 Michael C. Desch, “Bush and the Generals,” Foreign Affairs, 86, No. 3 (2007), 105. 162 Ibid, 99. 163 Ibid, 106. 164 Richard H. Kohn and Richard B. Myers, “Salute and Disobey: The Civil-Military Balance, Before Iraq and

After,” Foreign Affairs, 86, No. 5 (2007), 149. 165 Ibid, 148.

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the military by focusing on the faults of civilians, when both matter.166 Notably, the crux of

Desch’s argument – that “civilians [should] give due deference to military professional advice in

the tactical and operational realms”167 – is attacked by Owens, who argues this does not stand up

to the historical record put forth by Cohen in Supreme Command.168

Eliot Cohen’s above-mentioned book Supreme Command essentially makes the case that

political leaders in times of war should intervene in the management of conflict. An academic

with a focus on military history by trade, Cohen argues that Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill, and

Ben-Gurion all achieved great military success because they operated intrusively over their

commanders.169 This flies in direct contrast to what Cohen calls the “normal” theory of civil

military relations – the overriding consensus that there “should be a limited degree of civilian

control over military matters.”170 Indeed, in defending his crusade against the “normal” theory,

Cohen devotes substantial time to drawing his own corresponding conclusions from Dereliction

of Duty. He goes so far as to argue, “the fault in Vietnam was a deadly combination of inept

strategy and excessively weak civilian control.”171 While Kohn and Myers wrote that Desch was

simply extrapolating too far from McMaster’s findings, Cohen argues the direct opposite. To

arrive at a conclusion similar to Cohen’s requires a very selective reading of Dereliction of Duty.

Selective reading is the most apt phrase to describe Cohen’s description of Dereliction of

Duty. Had one not read the book itself, Cohen’s summary and subsequent conclusions, might

appear conceivable. However, the problem with Cohen’s analysis is that he draws on the latter

166 Mackubin Thomas Owens, “Failure’s Many Fathers,” Foreign Affairs, 86, No. 5 (2007), 150-151. 167 Desch, “Bush and the Generals,” 98. 168 Owens, “Failure’s Many Fathers,” 150. 169 Cohen, Supreme Command, 5. 170 Ibid, 4. 171 Ibid, 185.

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chapters of McMaster’s book, which focus on the bureaucratic inertia of the JCS, while ignoring

the earlier chapters that meticulously detail the political decisions responsible for creating such

an environment. For example, Cohen argues, “the military system had brought to the top

generals like Maxwell Taylor and Earle Wheeler, who were either politically too close to the

civilian leadership to offer it real alternatives.”172 McMaster’s portrayal of history shows, in fact,

the opposite. Both Generals Taylor and Wheeler, were hand-picked for the role of CJCS contrary

to military convention – which follows that the role of CJCS should rotate between services –

Kennedy and Johnson appointed a second, and then third Army general to the position.173 Taylor

was brought back from retirement – an extremely rare occurrence in the military – to serve in a

newly created military position as an advisor to Kennedy.174 Further, much of the Joint Chiefs

were then in-turn chosen by Taylor, a staunch ally of the administration on Vietnam.

Next, Cohen explains that the top military commander in Vietnam, General William

Westmoreland, had nearly no civilian oversight from Johnson or McNamara.175 This is true, but

it does not mean that Westmoreland did not have any civilian oversight. By the time

Westmoreland was appointed to MACV, the ambassador plenipotentiary in Vietnam was none

other than Maxwell Taylor, perhaps one of Johnson’s closest confidants and allies on Vietnam

policy.176 Tellingly, Westmoreland was chosen by Taylor because of his compliant nature.177

Indeed, Dereliction of Duty provides a particularly damning account of Taylor’s role as the de-

facto intermediary between Johnson and the military.

172 Ibid, 180. 173 McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 22, 108. 174 Ibid, 9-12. 175 Cohen, Supreme Command, 182. 176 McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 104-106. 177 Ibid.

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Cohen’s contention that the mistake during Vietnam regarding civil-military relations

was weak civilian control is more than a stretch, particularly when his main evidence is a book

that can only be construed as arguing the contrary. That said, Michael Desch probably goes too

far in arguing the opposite of Cohen. Studies like Krepinevich’s shows that the military hardly

had a firm grasp strategically, thus showing that military autonomy would not have been a

solution. Do these historical arguments even matter to civil-military relations regarding the Iraq

War? Indeed, it is frequently brought up that Supreme Command was read by Bush, Rumsfeld,

and other top administration officials (Cohen himself, would join the administration in 2007 as a

counselor to the Secretary of State),178 which some argue led them to repeat the mistakes of

Vietnam.179 The reality is far more complex. There were clear problems with how both civilian

and military leaders viewed the conflict irrespective of their relationship with each other; this

relationship, however, as McMaster tells us, was equally problematic. Nonetheless, Vietnam,

like Iraq, is a complex topic. It is folly to apply a historical analogy as some sort of ‘silver bullet’

solution to the civil-military shortfalls that occurred in respect to Iraq.

The Vietnam War continues to occupy a significant space in how Americans view use of

force. No aspect more so than its strategic futility. Colin Powell writes of a prescient anecdote in

his memoirs regarding his 1963 tour in Vietnam. Assigned to advise an ARVN battalion, his

mission was to protect their outpost. Upon questioning why the outpost was there, Powell was

told by his Vietnamese counterpart that the outpost was there to protect the airfield. The role of

the airfield: to resupply the outpost.180

178 Desch, “Bush and the Generals,” 107; James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: the History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New

York, NY: Viking, 2004) 196-197; Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American

Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 (New York, NY: The Penguin Press, 2009), 19. 179 Desch, “Bush and the Generals,” 107. 180 Colin L. Powell, My American Journey (New York, NY: Random House, 1995), 81.

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Tempting as it may be to compare Iraq and Vietnam, there are far more differences than

similarities.181 Falling into the trap of historical relativism can often skew conclusions. The four

scholars examined here all provide insight on civil-military relations during the Vietnam War.

With respect to applying this to Iraq, the most valuable conclusions come from Petraeus, who

warned that historical analogies over-generalize and are often employed notwithstanding

context.182 As will be shown in the case of Iraq, one of the problems with civil-military relations

was not that the lessons of Vietnam were ignored, but that civilians and military leaders alike

adhered to certain mentalities born out of Vietnam. The conflicts themselves, however, were

very different. This is precisely what Petraeus warned of in his concluding policy

recommendations.183

What the Vietnam War can conclusively show is that civil-military relations can have a

profound effect on how a war is prosecuted. This is something that all four of the scholars

discussed would surely agree with. Particularly, Dereliction of Duty shows that personal

relationships, personnel changes, and professionalism, are integral to evaluating civil-military

relations directly influence the policy-making process. During times of conflict, the policy-

making process is responsible for linking political goals to the strategy and consequent tactics

employed. McMaster’s work, does not construct a theoretical framework to examine the role

civil-military relations plays in the process of creating strategy. Others, however, have

constructed such a framework. It is here where our attention must turn in order to find the apt

approach to evaluating civil-military relations during the Iraq War.

181 Jeffrey Record and W. Andrew Terrill, “Iraq and Vietnam: Differences, Similarities, and Insights,” Strategic

Studies Institute, May 2, 2004; Dimitri K. Simes, “Don't Compare Iraq to Vietnam,” The National Interest, January

16, 2007. 182 Petraeus, The American Military and Lessons of Vietnam, 295. 183 Ibid, 303-304.

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Chapter Four: Strategic Assessment Theory

Analyzing just part of the vast literature covering theoretical civil-military relations

provides academic utility in a few areas. First, it shows that the goals, in general, of theoretical

civil-military relations are either to be predictive (i.e. what will happen or what should happen),

proscriptive (i.e. what ought to have happened), or both. As the focus here is on analyzing a case

study there is an inherent proclivity toward the proscriptive elements of theory. Second, sifting

through the different theories shows variances in approaches to analysis. As Feaver points out,

there are three main categories which these approaches fall into: “normative,

empirical/descriptive, and theoretical.”184 The theories that have been examined thus far seldom

fall neatly into one of these categories. Rather, they often encompass elements of all three with

an emphasis on one or two. A theoretical approach most conducive to a proscriptive approach of

a case study should involve normative claims (i.e. what kind of civil-military relations are most

advantageous to achieving “x”). Third, one of the main differences found between the numerous

theoretical approaches was in their scope. Often, the primary question that theorists seek to

answer is how to achieve an appropriate level of civilian control over the military in a

democracy. This leads theorists to develop broad indicators, such as professionalism or

international threats. Here, the concern is markedly narrower: how civil-military relations

affected the prosecution of a singular conflict. Therefore, a theoretical approach that can best

explain civil-military relations in the context of the Iraq War should meet these three criteria.

Risa Brooks’ theoretical approach of strategic assessment firmly fulfills all three criteria.

Outlined in her book Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment,

184 Feaver, “Civil-Military Relations,” 216.

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Brooks puts forth a theory which seeks to explain how “domestic relations between political and

military leaders shape the institutional processes in which leaders evaluate their strategies in

interstate conflicts.”185 In essence, Brooks’ theory shows how civil-military relations can affect

the formulation of military strategy. To understand the effect U.S. civil-military relations had on

the Iraq War, the process that formulated said strategy cannot be ignored. The failure of the Bush

administration and the U.S. Armed Forces to develop a coherent military strategy in prosecuting

the Iraq War points to a grave shortcoming in civil-military relations. Applying strategic

assessment theory allows for the most accurate conclusions to be drawn in determining the role

civil-military relations played during the Iraq War. Before delving into the events and individuals

that shaped the American military undertaking in Iraq, it is important to first explain Brooks’

strategic assessment theory in-depth in order to conceptualize the specific indicators that link

civil-military relations and the formulation of strategy.

Strategic assessment theory shares both similarities and differences with the previous

theories discussed. Borrowing from elements of both institutional theory and agency theory,

Brooks explains that her theory is based on the premise that “because institutions shape

outcomes, conflict over desired outcomes should revert to conflict over the institutions that

support the emergence of one outcome over another.”186 Also like Feaver, Brooks is interested in

the interaction between civilian and military leaders, while assuming these institutions are in the

pursuit of efficiency.187 However, unlike agency theory, strategic assessment theory allows for

fluctuation in the relative power between civilian and military leaders in formulating strategy.188

185 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 2. 186 Ibid, 16-17. 187 Ibid, 19. 188 Ibid, 21.

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Just like Feaver and Desch, strategic assessment theory amends institutional theory to fit

key variables which in-turn produce patterns or types of civil-military relations. The two

variables for strategic assessment theory are the configuration of power between political and

military leaders and the level of divergence over policy preference between them. Both of these

variables “shape the properties of the policymaking environment that emerges from their

interactions.”189 Regarding the policy making environment, Brooks argues there are three

possible configurations of power between the two actors: political dominance, military

dominance, and shared power. Measured by: “the military establishment’s position in domestic

society and its ties to influential constituencies; its senior officers’ internal unity; and the

expansiveness of the political leader’s own base of civilian support.”190 The second independent

variable, intensity in preference divergence, simply refers to the level disagreement on relevant

policy between political and military actors. Varying intensity is coded as either high or low

divergence. Low divergence is when there is “little evidence of recurring, systematic cleavages

over security goals, military strategy/policy, or corporate issues.”191 High divergence is simply

when evidence exists that there are “deep, enduring cleavages” over the issues listed above.192

Together, these two variables create the institutional environment that affects the quality of

strategic assessment.

The dependent variable is strategic assessment, which Brooks defines as, “the process

through which relations between state’s political goals/strategies and military strategies/activities

are evaluated and decided.”193 Herein lies another key difference of Brooks’ approach to other

189 Ibid, 17. 190 Ibid, 29. 191 Ibid, 25. 192 Ibid. 193 Ibid, 34.

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theories – its focus on the military policy decision-making process. Strategic assessment clearly

encompasses complex issues that fall within the military and political realm. Therefore, there are

multiple indicators employed to better explain how civil-military relations affect strategic

assessment. Brooks divides strategic assessment into four attributes: information sharing,

strategic coordination, structural competence, and the authorization process.194 Each of these

attributes are affected by the two independent variables. When these attributes are “good” so too

is strategic assessment as a whole.

Beginning with information sharing, Brooks defines this aspect of strategic assessment as

simply the sharing of information between top political and military leaders. To measure

information sharing, Brooks says one must look at not only the quantity (is the proper amount of

information being shared), but also the quality, meaning, military leaders make a substantial

effort to provide alternative or contrary information, as well as provide candid and objective

representations of information.195 Strategic coordination is the overall process of assessing

different military plans or strategies. It covers the notion that both political and military concerns

must be integrated in decisions regarding military strategy, operational plans, and tactics.196

Brooks notes that this is not an easy task and that substantial disagreements should occur.197

Rather, the key to evaluating strategic coordination is looking at how healthy the dialogue

between civilian and military leaders on this issue. If one side is dominating the other, either the

political goals or military concerns will be underrepresented in the results.198

194 Ibid, 35. 195 Ibid, 35-36. 196 Ibid, 37. 197 Ibid, 38. 198 Ibid, 37-38.

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Structural competence refers to what Brooks terms “internal monitoring,” or, “the quality

of organizational structures and conventions devoted to self-critical analysis and evaluations of a

military’s own activates.”199 Not concerned with tangible calculations, like weaponry or troop

numbers, but more so with issues of, “the skill and quality of troops, morale, and rigor of

training, leadership, and doctrine.”200 In evaluating this attribute one must look at how an

organization values critical information, as well as how they treat individuals who think

critically. Moreover, Brooks lumps in intelligence capabilities under this attribute. Specifically,

whether or not intelligence resources will put quality above political criteria in promoting

viewpoints or estimates.201

Finally, authorization process looks at the actual mechanisms in place regarding

decision-making. The importance of this attribute is not only to safeguard proper civilian control

is in place, but also ensure there is a clear chain of command or hierarchy. Brooks points out that

strategic assessment suffers greatly in situation where it is unclear who answers to whom,

especially in areas of appointments and dismissal.202 Authorization process is not as applicable to

the mature democracies, such as the United States, where civilian control has been long

internalized by the military.

To find out which patterns of civil-military relations create environments conducive to

these four attributes—and thus strong strategic assessment—Brooks aims to find what

combinations of the independent variables allow for the emergence of the four attributes, as

shown in Figure 1. For example, Brooks maintains that the worst pattern of civil-military

199 Ibid, 38. 200 Ibid. 201 Ibid, 39. 202 Ibid, 40-41.

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relations is when the balance of power is shared and preference divergence is high, undermining

all four attributes, creating an environment poisonous to strategic assessment.203 Conversely, the

best pattern emerges when there is political dominance and divergence is low, resulting in all

four attributes being good.204 In between these two extremes are political dominance with high

divergence, resulting in fair strategic assessment (the second best), as well as shared power with

low divergence, producing poor strategic assessment.205 When strategic assessment is fair, only

strategic coordination is poor, while the other three attributes remain adequate.206 Lastly, Brooks

finds that situations of military dominance will generate fair strategic assessment regardless of

preference divergence.207

Figure 1: Brooks’ Hypotheses on Strategic Assessment, with cases.208

Fair

Egypt, 1970-81

U.S., 2002-03

Worst

Pakistan, 1997-99

Egypt, 1962-67

Britain, 1914-18

Fair

Turkey, 1996-99

Best

Britain, 1902-14 Poor

Germany, 1890-1914

Using historical case studies that vary across location and time, Brooks seeks to find

different examples of these patterns of civil-military relations and their subsequent effects on

strategic assessment. Unsurprisingly, the case studies unanimously deal with situations facing

interstate conflicts, where strategic assessment becomes the most crucial to the state. In each of

203 Ibid, 45-46. 204 Ibid, 42-44. 205 Ibid, 46-50. 206 Ibid, 53. 207 Ibid. 208 Ibid, 57.

Preference

Divergence

High

Low

Political Dominance Shared Power Military Dominance

Balance of Power

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the cases Brooks sifts through the relevant information to find evidence with which to evaluate

the four attributes, and ultimately strategic assessment as a whole. Of chief concern here is

Brooks’ case study on “Post Conflict Planning for the Iraq War.”

The proceeding section will layout the case Brooks makes for characterizing civil-

military relations in the first half of the Bush Administration as one of political dominance and

high preference divergence, resulting in “fair” civil-military relations. It will be shown that while

Brooks’ analysis is correct in its account of three of the four attributes, she overestimates the

level of structural competence within the U.S. military from 2001 to 2003. The result, is that

Brooks paints a more optimistic portrait of civil-military relations than the evidence suggests.

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Part II: U.S. Civil-Military Relations &

Operation Iraqi Freedom

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Having outlined the main assumptions and arguments of strategic assessment theory the

remainder of the paper will concern itself with examining how U.S. civil-military relations

functioned during the invasion of Iraq and its immediate aftermath. A wholly unadulterated

account of the Iraq War is beyond the scope of this paper. Moreover, an analysis focusing on

strategic assessment and civil-military relations would be unserved by such an eclectic approach.

The following four chapters will focus on specific aspects of U.S. civil-military relations from

2001-2003. In examining the decision-making process behind the formulation of the plan to

invade Iraq, there are a few striking features that stand out. How long the entire process was

(almost 18 months); how little attention was given to post-combat (Phase IV) operations; and the

tortuous role played by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) under Rumsfeld.

After presenting the empirical evidence explaining civil-military relations during this

period, the conclusion will be put in the context of strategic assessment theory. Risa Brooks

argues in her case study on the same topic that the invasion planning for Iraq – specifically citing

troop levels and Phase IV planning – was a prime example of insufficient strategic coordination

(i.e. the quality of debate over strategy formulation).209 While Brooks is correct in this respect,

she fails to properly address another one of her four attributes: structural competence (i.e. the

quality of a military’s self-critical analysis). In doing so, Brooks inflates the level of strategic

assessment. My analysis will seek to shed more light on the military side involving the planning,

arguing that it was not just inadequate strategic coordination responsible for the failure to

produce a coherent strategy.

209 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 241.

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The empirical analysis that follows will not differ from the method Brooks uses to

analyze case studies using strategic assessment theory. She states that qualitative methods are the

most appropriate to draw an educated view of the historical record needed to evaluate strategic

assessment and civil-military relations.210 There is no shortage of information and analysis on the

Iraq War. Both primary sources, mainly memoirs (Franks, 2004; Feith, 2008; Bush, 2010;

Rumsfeld, 2011; Shelton, 2011; Nagl, 2014), interviews, and speeches, as well as secondary

sources, such as books (Woodward, 2002; Hersh, 2004; Mann, 2004; Woodward, 2004;

Bacevich, 2005; Gordon and Trainor, 2006; Ricks, 2006; Woodward; 2006; Allawi, 2007;

Bacevich, 2008; Brooks, 2008; Herspring, 2008; Stevenson, 2008; Robinson; 2008; West, 2008;

Cloud and Jaffe, 2009; Dobbins et al., 2009; Egnell, 2009; Freedman, 2009; Ricks, 2009;

Woodward, 2009; Owens, 2011; Broadwell, 2012; Ricks, 2012; Boot, 2013; Herspring, 2013;

Kaplan, 2013), journal articles (Diamond, 2004; O’Hanlon, 2005; Owens, 2006; Desch, 2007;

Kohn and Myers, 2007; Owens, 2007; Pfiffner, 2007; Hoffman, 2008; Kohn, 2008; Schmidt and

Williams, 2008; Pfiffner, 2009, Dyson, 2010/2011; Feaver, 2011), and essays, make up the bulk

of the research used. By drawing on historical accounts from both the top civilian and military

leaders involved with the decision-making process an accurate portrait can be painted of what

occurred. Through a thorough analysis of the evidence that explains how and why key decisions

were made, it becomes possible to characterize the state of civil-military relations and

subsequently evaluate its quality using the framework of strategic assessment theory.

210 Ibid, 55.

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Chapter Five: Civil-Military Relations pre-9/11: Rumsfeld &

Transformation

In H.R. McMaster’s analysis of civil-military relations during Vietnam, the years prior to

the major escalations of late-1964 and 1965 are shown to have been crucial in shaping later

decisions. Earlier events, such as the Bay of Pigs invasion and Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as

presidential appointments of like-minded individuals – none more so than General Maxwell

Taylor, seen as personally loyal to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson – had adverse effects on

civil-military relations during the Vietnam War.211 Similarly, military historian Thomas Ricks,

writes in his analysis of U.S. civil-military relations during WWII that the most consequential

decision President Roosevelt made came two years before Pearl Harbour. In 1939, Roosevelt

appointed a dark horse candidate, General George Marshall, as Chief of Staff of the Army (then

the highest rank in the Army in the absence of the JCS), despite Marshall’s willingness to voice

his considerable disagreements over defense policy.212 Roosevelt’s ability to condone candid

military advice that was at odds with his own views, Ricks argues, not only ensured the U.S.

would be better prepared when war broke out (due to Marshall’s hawkish views on mobilization

and armament), but also set the stage for a professional relationship between civilian and military

leaders that would be crucial to winning the largest conflict in the history of the world.213 What

these two examples show is that to understand civil-military relations, often, one must examine

the roots of the relationship. What follows will be an analysis of the backdrop to civil-military

relations before the Iraq war. The rationale behind Donald Rumsfeld’s appointment and

211 McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 61, 331. 212 Ricks, The Generals, 27-28. 213 Ibid, 30-31.

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understanding his background is necessary to evaluate civil-military relations during his tenure

as secretary of defense.

The Revolution in Military Affairs: Transformation and Bush’s Candidacy

When Texas Governor George W. Bush was mounting his campaign to seek the

Republican nomination for president, foreign and defense policy were far down his list of

priorities.214 Although it may seem counterintuitive that the son of a WWII war hero, U.S.

Ambassador to both China and the United Nations, Director of the CIA, Vice President, and

President would have a limited interest in areas of security policy, it soon became apparent that

the younger Bush was far from the aficionado his father was in terms of international affairs.215

However, no matter how uninterested a candidate for president of the United States may be in

these areas, they are simply too important and complex to be ignored throughout the campaign.

Bill Clinton learned this lesson the hard way. Following his successful 1992 campaign in which

defense policy – the noted strength of the incumbent opponent – was downplayed, Clinton spent

the first 100 days of his presidency bogged down by attempting to repeal the ban on

homosexuals in the military.216 He ultimately failed to do so and the failed initiative became a

defining feature of his first two years in office.217 Bush would not make the same mistake.

Having assembled a well-regarded team of foreign policy advisors, who termed

themselves the Vulcans,218 Bush sought to shore-up his lack of interest and background by

214 Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 255. 215 Ibid. 216 Dale R. Herspring, Civil-Military Relations and Shared Responsibility: A Four-Nation Study (Baltimore, MD:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 58-59. 217 Feaver, Armed Servants, 211-214. 218 The term is derived from the Roman god Vulcan, who represents fire, the forge, and metalwork. There is a fifty-

six foot statue of Vulcan in Birmingham, Alabama, the hometown of Condoleezza Rice. (Mann, x)

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surrounding himself with experts who were his polar opposite in these respects.219 These experts,

who were all veterans of the executive branch of government, had no easy task ahead of them.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Republican Party had struggled to reinvent themselves as

something other than anti-communist. On September 23rd, 1999, Governor Bush announced his

new defense policy in a marque speech at the South Carolina military college, The Citadel. The

speech was a departure from previous policy. In the words of one of the chief authors of the

speech, future Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, he did not want to rehash the typical

Republican mantra of, “more is better and the generals know best,” when it came to defense.220

In the speech, Bush laid out, among other things, the policy of “transformation,” which

would become the main focus of the Pentagon during the first seven and a half months of his

presidency. Transformation – often referred to as the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) –

was based on the notion that because the United States enjoyed a large gap in areas of

technology, focusing funding on technology then would maintain, and even enlarge, this

capabilities gap without having to spend exorbitant amounts of money on personnel-based

forces.221 As Governor Bush explained in his speech: “Power is increasingly defined, not by mass

or size, but by mobility and swiftness. Influence is measured in information, safety is gained in

stealth, and force is projected on the long arc of precision-guided weapons.”222 Specifically,

mobility and swiftness were considered a core tenets of transformation. Bush further elaborated:

“The Gulf War was a stunning victory. But it took six months of planning and transport to

219 Herspring, Civil-Military Relations and Shared Responsibility, 64-65. 220 Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians, 177. 221 Owens, Civil-Military Relations After 9/11, 107. 222 George W. Bush, “A Period of Consequences,” Speech, The Citadel, South Carolina, September 23, 1999.

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summon our fleets and divisions and position them for battle. In the future, we are unlikely to

have that kind of time.”223

Transformation was not by any means a fringe idea. Many of the top defense experts had

endorsed such an approach in the 1990s, which was often called C4ISR, for its focus on

command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.224

In 1996, the Senate Armed Services Committee had created a National Defense Panel to review

the Gulf War and make recommendations for future defense policy.225 The Democrats appointed

Andrew Krepinevich to the panel, the Republicans: Richard Armitage.226 The result of their

study, Transforming Defense: National Security in the 21st Century, provided an official policy

foundation upon which the Bush administration could place themselves.227 Proponents of

transformation set their sights high. Indeed, the hope was that transformation would result in the

U.S. military effectively skipping a generation of technology, creating an insurmountable gap

between themselves and other nations.228 Essentially, the initial goals of the RMA in the 1990s

were to maintain American military hegemony by ensuring that the military could conceivably

fight two simultaneous wars despite post-Cold War budget cuts.229 Proponents argued that the

logical conclusion to the RMA would be the end of the fog of war.230 Finding an idea for defense

policy, however, would prove much easier than implementing it.

Pre-9/11 Civil-Military Relations under Rumsfeld

223 Ibid. 224 Owens, Civil-Military Relations After 9/11, 107. 225 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 51. 226 Ibid. 227 Ibid. 228 Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians, 178. 229 Ibid. 230 Ibid, 179.

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Following Bush’s victory, the first priority when it came to the Pentagon was who to

appoint to its helm. There was initial speculation that Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) – a tireless advocate

for transformation – would be tapped for the position.231 Instead, Bush picked Donald Rumsfeld,

whom the press had speculated was the likely choice for CIA Director.232 Rumsfeld, would

become the first person to serve in the position twice, as well as the youngest and oldest (upon

his resignation) secretary of defense.233 A former Navy fighter pilot, Rumsfeld was elected as a

Republican to the House of Representative at the age of thirty in 1962, going on to serve four

terms.234 Following President Nixon’s election, Rumsfeld was asked to serve as head of the

Office of Economic Opportunity and a year later, as head of the Cost of Living Council.235 After

disagreements arose with those in Nixon’s inner-circle, Rumsfeld was appointed US Ambassador

to NATO, saving him from the taint of the Watergate scandal.236

President Ford, upon assuming office, appointment Rumsfeld as his chief of staff. 237 In

1975, Rumsfeld was appointed the youngest secretary of defense in history, in what was referred

to as the “Halloween Massacre,” resulting in many of Rumsfeld’s political allies being put into

important positions (ex. Dick Cheney as chief of staff) and his enemies being isolated (ex. Bush

as CIA director).238 Following Ford’s defeat in 1976, Rumsfeld would move to the private sector

to become CEO of a pharmaceutical company.239 He would return to government service to serve

as special envoy to the Middle East, following the Beirut barracks bombing in 1983.240 During

231 Robert D. Kaplan, “What Rumsfeld Got Right,” The Atlantic, July 2008. 232 Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 262. 233 Thomas P.M. Barnett, “Old Man in a Hurry.” Esquire, July 1, 2005. 234 Donald H. Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2011), Chapters 5-6. 235 Donald H. Rumsfeld, The Unknown Known, Documentary (Directed by Errol Morris, 2013), 28-29min. 236 Ibid. 237 Ibid, 31-32min. 238 Ibid, 39-41min. 239 Ibid, 49-50min. 240 Ibid.

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the Iraq-Iran war, Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein, then a U.S. ally.241 In a cable written by

Rumsfeld to assess U.S. policy in the Middle East, titled ‘The Swamp,’ Rumsfeld wrote:

I suspect we ought to lighten our hand in the Middle East. We should move

the framework away from the current situation, where everyone is telling us

everything is our fault and angry with us. To a basis where they are seeking our

help. In the future we should never use U.S. troops as a peacekeeping force… and

keep reminding ourselves that it is easier to get into something than it is to get out

of it. I promise you, you will never hear out of my mouth the phrase: the U.S. seeks

a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. There is little that is just and the only

things I have seen that are lasting are conflict, blackmail, and killing.242

The impressive CV attained over decades of high-level government service showed that

he was picked in an attempt to reign-in and steer the vast Pentagon bureaucracy towards

transformation.243 This would prove to be easier said than done. Rumsfeld would spend his first

seven months in office waging, what appeared to be, an up-hill battle with the military over

transformation. The Army leadership, in particular, were the most opposed to transformation

initiatives. As opposed to their counterparts in the Navy and Air Force, the Army had little to

gain from or contribute to a push towards high-tech and mobile hardware.244

Compounding this policy disagreement was a notion held by many Bush appointees,

including Rumsfeld, that there had been a lack of civilian control throughout the Clinton years,

which warranted a curbing of the powers of the top military officers.245 This viewpoint was not

unfounded or irrational. A number of scholars had published articles arguing a deterioration of

professionalism indicated by an increasing willingness of officers to insert themselves into the

241 Ibid, 53-54min. 242 Ibid, 50-52min. 243 Dale R. Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars: The Arrogance of Power (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press,

2008), 1-5. 244 Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq

(New York, NY: Pantheon, 2006), 8. 245 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 228; Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 6; Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians, 180.

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partisan arena.246 Moreover, extensive survey research at the time showed that a large majority of

officers viewed their civilian counterparts as, “ignorant of military affairs,” and that there was an

overwhelming self-identification with the Republican Party.247 While one might have assumed

that an incoming Republican administration would produce a more harmonious relationship, this

was not the case. Indeed, Rumsfeld’s first meeting as Secretary of Defense excluded any military

officers from attending,248 setting an ominous tone for the relationship to come.

An area where Rumsfeld took a particularly unorthodox approach was in military

promotions. While the final say on the promotion of general and flag officers does reside with

the secretary of defense and the president, traditionally, with the exception of the top four-star

positions, prerogative power is exercised by the CJCS and the respective services heads for

promotions.249 Instead, Rumsfeld began to directly involve himself in promotion decisions at the

two-star and three-star level.250 Dale Herspring argued that this intrusion “sent a clear message

throughout the military: either play ball with Rumsfeld or face the prospect of not being

promoted.”251 Even through promotions at the highest level, Rumsfeld was able to use personnel

changes as an indirect means of communicating a particular viewpoint; in this case, his

dissatisfaction with the Army’s resistance to transformation.

There are three main personnel changes Rumsfeld made – or in some cases attempted to

make – that speak to the renewed antagonism with the military that he brought to the office. The

first of these was concerning Marine Lieutenant General Gregory Newbold, the J-3 (Director of

246 Hoffman, "Dereliction of Duty Redux?," 220. 247 The survey research referenced is the "Project on the Gap between Military and Civilian Society" by the Triangle

Institute for Strategic Studies. Quoted from in Ibid, 221. 248 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 12. 249 Ibid, 13. 250 Ibid. 251 Ibid.

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Operations) of the JCS, a position that holds considerable bureaucratic clout.252 Newbold, after

becoming frustrated by the JCS being sidelined from the planning process on the Iraq war,

resigned in June 2002.253 In 2006, Newbold would become one of the first recently-retired

generals to publicly call for Rumsfeld’s removal.254 When choosing the succeeding J-3,

Rumsfeld vetoed the proposed replacement – Lieutenant General Ronald Keys – put-forth by the

military, demanding someone more closely to “his liking.”255 This ensured that the best

positioned to demonstrate influence for the military in any planning scenario would see eye-to-

eye with Rumsfeld. Indeed, “Rumsfeld succeeded in replacing those officers in senior Joint Staff

positions who challenged his view,” to the point that, by 2003, all the top Joint Staff officers had

been handpicked by Rumsfeld.256

Another antagonist to Rumsfeld was the Army Chief of Staff, Eric Shinseki. In an

attempt to render Shinseki a “lame duck”, Rumsfeld leaked the name of his successor fourteen

months before his term was due to expire.257 When it came time to replace Shinseki, the

previously named successor, General Jack Keane, was not appointed.258 Instead, Rumsfeld took

the unprecedented action of appointing a retired general, Peter Schoomaker, to the role.259 Such

an appointment effectively sent the message that all currently serving three-star and four-star

Army generals were unsuitable to Rumsfeld for the position.260 The most important appointment,

however, came with the position of Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff (CJCS).

252 David Margolick, “The Night of the Generals.” Vanity Fair, April 2007. 253 Ibid. 254 Gregory Newbold, “Why Iraq Was a Mistake,” Time, April 17, 2006, Vol. 167, no. 16. 255 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 238; Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 6. 256 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 238. 257 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 46. 258 Ibid. 259 Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11, 111. 260 Ibid, 111; Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 238; Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 60; Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians,

191.

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Following the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act, the position of the

CJCS was elevated to become the centralized military advisor to the Secretary of Defense and

the President, weakening the service chiefs with the goal of subduing interservice rivalries.261

The significance of these changes would be difficult to overstate. Where previously the CJCS

was a single vote among equals on the JCS, the CJCS could now offer independent advice to the

President and the Secretary of Defense.262 (Figure 2)

Figure 2: Organization of the Department of Defense, 2012263

261 Feaver, Armed Servants, 82; Herspring, Rumsfeld’s War, 12. 262 Herspring, Civil-Military Relations and Shared Responsibility, 48. 263 United States Department of Defense.

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Moreover, combatant commanders of the geographic areas now reported directly to the

Secretary of Defense and the CJCS rather than through the JCS.264 Furthermore, the position’s

new institutional powers were immediately highlighted by Colin Powel’s high-profile tenure as

the first post Goldwater-Nichols CJCS.265 While academics continue to debate the overall effects

of Goldwater-Nichols on civil-military relations, there exists consensus that it elevated the power

of the CJCS and combatant commanders – for better or for worse.266 The elevated stature of these

positions means that civil-military balance is now more contingent on the relative strength of the

individuals within these positions.267

When General Hugh Shelton’s term as CJCS expired in October 2001, Rumsfeld

nominated Air Force General Richard Myers to the role.268 There are two discernable reasons as

to why Rumsfeld selected Myers. The first was that Myers was a strong proponent of

transformation; hailing from the branch of the military that stood to gain the most from

transformation and having previously served in technologically-heavy positions as commander

of U.S. Space Command and NORAD, Myers’ background was tailored to the outlook of

transformation.269 The second reason was that Myers’ personality was one that would draw little

contention with Rumsfeld. Historian Thomas Ricks refers to Myers as “pliable.”270 While

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said he was “incapable of expressing an independent view,”271 and

264 Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11, 75. 265 Desch, “Soldiers, States, and Structures,” 398; Kohn, “The Erosion of Civilian Control of the Military in the

United States Today,” 16-18, 32. 266 Cohen, Supreme Command, 229; Feaver, Armed Servants, 82; Engell, Complex Peace Operations and Civil-

Military Relations, 51-53; Hoffman, "Dereliction of Duty Redux?” 231-232; Kohn, “The Erosion of Civilian

Control of the Military in the United States Today,” 33-36; Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11, 74-54;

Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians, 175-176. 267 Hoffman, "Dereliction of Duty Redux?,” 231-232. 268 Ricks, Fiasco, 89. 269 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 40; Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 237. 270 Ricks, Fiasco, 89. 271 Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 46.

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White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card referred to him as an echo of Rumsfeld.272 Moreover,

Rumsfeld’s appointment to the position of Vice Chairman, Marine General Peter Pace, was also

considered a “Yes-Man.”273 The result of the appointment of Myers as CJCS was that the

military position most apt to balance a strong secretary of defense would be filled someone who

acted most often in deference to Rumsfeld.274

Though antipathy toward the military was apparent in personnel changes, there existed

considerable tangible disagreements over policy as well. Despite its rhetoric during the campaign

that “help was on the way” to a military that had struggled with several years of successive

budget cuts, the Bush Administration made their first priority the passage of a $1.3 trillion tax

cut.275 Meaning, there would be no new increases in defense spending for the fiscal year of 2001

and Rumsfeld would receive less than half of the increases in spending he requested for the

following year.276 This lack of funding meant that if Rumsfeld wanted to pursue transformation

he would have to find money by cutting other existing areas.277

The combination of a pre-existing skepticism on the part of Rumsfeld and an impending

bureaucratic battle over the implementation of transformation created a strained relationship

between the Secretary of Defense and the JCS. General Hugh Shelton, who served as the CJCS

for the first eight months of the administration, called his relationship with Rumsfeld as one

defined by “a sense of distrust.”278 What resulted was a sense of duplicity towards Rumsfeld by

not just the senior military leaders, but also prominent conservatives who held hawkish views on

272 Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 72. 273 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 41. 274 Herspring, Civil-Military Relations and Shared Responsibility, 65. 275 Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, 290. 276 Ibid. 277 Ibid. 278 Hugh Shelton, Without Hesitation, 408.

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defense spending. Rumsfeld, doing little to quell this acrimony, began challenging the status-quo

in areas that bordered on the frivolous. For example, he changed the title of area commanders

from CINC (Commander-in-Chief) to combatant commander, lest the role be conflated to that of

the president’s.279 By the summer of 2001, many pundits believed Rumsfeld would be the first to

leave the Bush Cabinet, while many prominent neoconservative commentators were openly

calling for his resignation.280

Nonetheless, Rumsfeld doubled down on his efforts for transformation; consequently

ramping up his battle for efficiency to funding. One profile of Rumsfeld shows him responding

to funding requests from military subordinates with bombastic tirades regarding pre-existing

inefficiencies that caused unnecessary funding.281 Apparently, such occurrences were common

enough to warrant its own term among staff – “wire brushing.”282 Rumsfeld applied ardent

skepticism to Army policies, resulting in considerable disagreements with Army Chief of Staff

General Eric Shinseki and Secretary of the Army Thomas White over the Crusader artillery

program, the Comanche helicopter, and overall number of personnel.283 On September 10th,

2001, Rumsfeld delivered a speech at the Pentagon, railing against the bloated size and stasis of

the Pentagon bureaucracy.284 In the speech, Rumsfeld called the Pentagon bureaucracy “a serious

threat, to the security of the United States of America.”285 This blistering reproach doubled as an

apt summary of Rumsfeld’s tenure.

279 Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 24-25; Shelton, Without Hesitation, 417. 280 Robert Kagan and William Kristol, “No Defense,” The Weekly Standard, July 23, 2001; Businessweek, “Why the

Hawks Are Carpet-Bombing Rumsfeld,” Bloomberg, August 5, 2001. 281 Barnett, “Old Man in a Hurry.” 282 Ibid. 283 Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians, 191. 284 Donald H. Rumsfeld, “Bureaucracy to Battlefield,” Speech, The Pentagon, September 10, 2001. 285 Ibid.

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9/11 and the Rumsfeld Doctrine

The abrupt shift to war-footing due to the events of the following day had a few major

consequences on Rumsfeld’s relationship with the generals. First, many of the budgetary

tensions that existed before 9/11 became largely moot because of the impending increase in

defense funds. Second, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq would serve as opportunities for

Rumsfeld to bypass the Pentagon bureaucracy and implement transformation by micro-managing

operational issues. Brooks argues that the planning process for the invasions of Afghanistan and

Iraq became entangled in the bureaucratic battle over transformation.286 Following the initial

success of the invasion of Afghanistan in toppling the Taliban, Rumsfeld’s transformation

strategy appeared validated.287 In May 2002, following in the tradition of Weinberger and

Powell, Rumsfeld authored an article in Foreign Affairs offering his own “six-step strategy” that

should guide the use of America’s military. These six-steps make up the Rumsfeld Doctrine:

(1) To protect the U.S. homeland and our bases overseas… (2) To project

and sustain power in distant theaters… (3) To deny our enemies sanctuary, making

sure they know that no corner of the world is remote enough… to protect them

from our reach… (4) To protect our information networks from attack… (5) To use

information technology to link up different kinds of U.S. forces so they can fight

jointly… (6) To maintain unhindered access to space, and protect our space

capabilities from enemy attack.288

The goal of the Rumsfeld Doctrine was to apply aspects of transformation to fit within

the post-9/11 ideological security landscape. Of the six steps, the first three reflect the changing

dimension of security, in line with the Bush Doctrine, while the last three reference elements of

transformation. In the Foreign Affairs article, Rumsfeld uses the invasion of Afghanistan to extol

286 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 242. 287 Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11, 110. 288 Donald H. Rumsfeld, “Transforming the Military,” Foreign Affairs, 81, No. 3 (2002), 26.

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the virtues of transformation as having been vindicated by the swift success of the Taliban

overthrow.289 Tactically, the invasion of Afghanistan showed the utility of combining special

operations forces with precision airstrikes.290 In the Gulf War, nine percent of the bombs dropped

by the U.S. were new laser-guided smart bombs, costing $250,000 each.291 By 2001, the military

had begun using the more accurate JDAMs,292 which cost only $25,000 each.293 The

technological advancement that had occurred since the Gulf War in this respect was remarkable;

as Fred Kaplan elaborates: “The total time that elapsed – from the officer [on the ground]

punching in [GPS coordinates] to the pilot dropping the bomb – was nineteen minutes. A decade

earlier, the sequence would have taken three days.”294 Throughout 2002, the Bush Administration

shifted its focus from Afghanistan to Iraq. Here, too, Rumsfeld had the opportunity to “lay bare

the logic of transformation, [meaning] that Iraq would be used as a proving ground for his

concept of warfare.”295

Moreover, the Rumsfeld Doctrine can be defined as advocating a neoconservative

approach to U.S. foreign policy. Indeed, the first three steps of Rumsfeld’s strategy assumes that

the U.S. is a hegemonic power that will act unilaterally without hesitation. These assumptions

are termed as “key elements” of neoconservatism by Brian Schmidt and Michael Williams.296

This allows neoconservatives to place a much greater belief in the utility of military force than

289 Ibid, 21-24. 290 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 54. 291 Ibid, 50, 54. 292 JDAM (pronounced jay-dam), or Joint Direct Attack Munition, is a smart bomb that operates using GPS

coordinates rather than a laser-guidance system. Kaplan explains how JDAMs much more accurate that the

previously-used laser-guided bombs because the latter’s “laser beams tended to reflect or refract in the face of dust

and smoke (common conditions on a battlefield).” (Ibid, 50) 293 Ibid, 54. 294 Ibid. Author’s italics. 295 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 242. 296 Schmidt and Williams, “The Bush Doctrine and the Iraq War,” 198.

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realists.297 From here, it is easy to see why neoconservatives were some of the earliest proponents

of the RMA, resonating with Bush’s earliest foreign policy advisors. The Rumsfeld Doctrine

essentially represents the connecting point between the RMA and the Bush Doctrine. It outlines

how the former can abet the latter. The Bush Doctrine recognizes U.S. hegemony, pre-emptive

force, and unilateralism as its core principles, all of which stand to be strengthened by support

for the RMA.298 This logical connection is best explained by Schmidt and Williams, who argue

that “given their penchant for unilateral action, fascination with military power, and faith in the

RMA to achieve political objectives, it is hardly surprising that neoconservatives were confident

that the United States could quickly, efficiently, and affordably achieve regime change in

Iraq.”299

While the events of 9/11 dwarfed the significance of Rumsfeld’s earlier bureaucratic

battles, they remain significant regarding the context of civil-military relations directly preceding

and during the Iraq War. Furthermore, it is impossible to understand the struggle over the

planning process that would ensue outside of the struggle over transformation and the antipathy

between the OSD and the military. Notable from this time period is Rumsfeld’s strict application

of civilian control over the top generals. Significant, is the power Rumsfeld wielded over

personnel decisions. This created an institutional culture that shunned dissent and competing

opinions, ensuring those who agreed with Rumsfeld’s beliefs populated key positions. As the

next chapter will explain, the push for transformation enveloped itself in the planning for the Iraq

War, carrying a significant impact on the resulting conflict. The ensuing wars would provide

Rumsfeld with the testing-ground for his overarching vision of the future of warfare. However,

297 Ibid, 199. 298 Ibid. 299 Ibid.

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this would put him at considerable odds with a military establishment that, historically, has

shown aversion to such un-tested changes in doctrine.300 By mitigating the views of dissenting

military officers and promoting those whose views were favourable, Rumsfeld guaranteed that

whatever pushback against him could be swiftly overcome.

Chapter Six: Planning the Invasion of Iraq and Phase IV

Having provided a condensed background to the early conditions of civil-military

relations during the Bush administration, we can turn to the planning process for the invasion of

Iraq and its aftermath. The goal of this chapter is to evaluate Brooks’ concept of strategic

coordination against two aspects of this process. First, the planning process for the invasion of

Iraq – named Cobra II – will be outlined to understand what the significant disagreements

between military and civilian officials were, and how they were resolved. Second, the planning,

or lack thereof, for Phase IV301 of the Iraq War will be discussed. Attempts at competent Phase

IV planning were marred by bureaucratic in-fighting between Defense and State. Moreover, the

military, intent on focusing on combat operations, was more than happy to relinquish planning

on Phase IV to civilian counterparts. The irony, of course, was that the military would be

involved in Phase IV operations, whether they wished to or not (more on this point will be

addressed in Chapter Eight regarding structural competence). Overall, as consistent with Brooks’

conclusion, this process demonstrates that Rumsfeld’s overbearing approach compromised

healthy strategic coordination.302 Before he left the Cabinet in 2004, Secretary of State Colin

Powell remarked to President Bush that the “national security decision-making process was

300 Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 54. 301 Phase IV is a part of military jargon which divides operations into four phases: “Phase I: build up; Phase II: air

strikes/special operations; Phase III: combat operations; Phase IV: post-combat operations.” (Stevenson, 183) 302 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 236.

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broken.”303 Examining strategic coordination in this process will help show how the process was

broken and why.

Existing Contingency Plans to Invade Iraq

The Taliban Government in Afghanistan had just been overthrown by U.S. forces when

the plans for the invasion of Iraq began to be revisited. Immediately following September 11th,

President Bush was shocked to find that no contingency plans existed within U.S. Central

Command (CENTCOM) – the geographic command responsible for the Middle East – to strike

Taliban and Al Qaeda assets in Afghanistan.304 Rumsfeld and General Tommy Franks, the

Combatant Commander for CENTCOM, were determined to avoid making the same mistake

twice in the case of Iraq, should the situation arise. Fortunately for Franks, the military did have

a plan for invading Iraq in place; unfortunately, it was ill-suited to the constraints of Rumsfeld’s

vision for transformation.

This initial plan, titled OPLAN 1003-98, was a product of Franks’ predecessor, Marine

General Anthony Zinni – who would later go on to call Rumsfeld, “incompetent strategically,

operationally, and tactically.”305 Following the 1998 extended bombing campaign of Iraq, Desert

Fox, CENTCOM began planning for the possibility of an invasion to decapitate Saddam’s

regime. Zinni’s plan called for a minimum force of 380,000 soldiers to invade Iraq, almost half

of the size of the Desert Storm invasion force.306 Following the Gulf War, as well as the Desert

Fox bombing campaign, Saddam’s army was a shell of the force it was in the 1980s, and

303 Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 39. 304 Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 43. 305 Mackubin Thomas Owens, “Rumsfeld, the Generals, and the State of U.S. Civil-Military Relations,” Naval War

College Review, 59, No. 4 (2006), 70. 306 Seymour M. Hersh, Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (New York, NY: HarperCollins,

2004), 181.

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therefore not nearly the same number of U.S. troops would be needed.307 However, Zinni’s plan

acknowledged that more, not less, troops would be needed following the invasion, and that any

occupation would last for at least ten years.308 These last two considerations would be discarded

in the 2003 invasion.

The war in Afghanistan had provided Rumsfeld with an opportunity to showcase his

policy of transformation in action. Relying heavily on airpower and special operations forces,

Franks was able to topple the Taliban using a minimal number of troops working with the

Afghan resistance. In an article published in Foreign Affairs shortly-thereafter, Rumsfeld used

Afghanistan as proof that the same strategy would be successful if applied to Iraq.309 However,

Afghanistan was far from the shining example of military success that was portrayed by

proponents of transformation. The failure to deploy a large number of troops in the initial

Afghanistan invasion allowed Osama Bin Laden to escape into Pakistan through the mountains

of Tora Bora.310 A similar mistake was made in March 2002 during Operation Anaconda, when

Franks declined deploying artillery, allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda hold outs to retreat into

Pakistan.311 From Pakistan, the Taliban would form the base of the insurgency which would later

develop.312 Franks explained the rationale for these decisions as an attempt to follow the

guidelines for limited troop numbers set out by Rumsfeld.313 Thomas Ricks argues that these

failures under Franks’ command did not receive as much scrutiny as they normally would have

warranted, due to the planning for Iraq already being underway.314

307 Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 26-27. 308 Ibid. 309 Rumsfeld, “Transforming the Military,” 21-24. 310 Ricks, The Generals, 399. 311 Ibid, 400. 312 Ibid. 313 Ricks, Fiasco, 41. 314 Ricks, The Generals, 401.

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Regarding the plan for Iraq, Rumsfeld hoped to employ similar methods. When Franks

pitched his first plan for invading Iraq in December of 2001, it essentially used the base numbers

from Zinni’s 1998 plan.315 Determined to whittle down the troop numbers, Rumsfeld took the

usual step of dispatching two OSD staffers from the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Doug

Feith’s office to work with CENTCOM in the planning process.316 Moreover, it is during this

time that Rumsfeld sent Franks a study titled, by the now infamous phrase, “Shock and Awe.”317

The study argued that rapid, simultaneous, attacks at an enemy’s command structure would

result in immediate, “paralysis” and “capitulation.”318 Pressure, both implied and overt, was now

on Franks to come up with a plan using far less soldiers than had previously been thought

possible.

The Debate over Troop Numbers

The ensuing year of planning, meticulously catalogued in Michael Gordon and Bernard

Trainor’s book, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, was one of a

constant back-and-forth between CENTCOM and OSD over troop levels for Phase III and Phase

I speed.319 Regardless of these two contentious issues, there were areas covered by all proposed

plans that sought to modernize the Gulf War invasion. Specifically, it was decided that the

invasion of Iraq would be a rolling start – meaning the attack would commence before all the

forces were in place – and that the air and ground attacks would occur simultaneously.320

Ultimately, by mid-2002, two plans were proposed: Generated Start and Running Start. As their

315 Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 28. 316 Ibid, 32. 317 Ibid, 35. 318 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 52. 319 Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 93. 320 Ibid, 36.

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names suggest, the former involved a more substantial build up (60 days) before attacking, while

the latter would start immediately with airstrikes, and a smaller number of ground troops

invading 25 days later.321 Neither plan, however, would be adopted.

Each plan had their respective deficiencies. While a more robust build-up clashed with

Rumsfeld’s calls for a leaner force, Running Start created a number of operational concerns. To

mend the deficiencies of either extreme, a compromise plan named “Hybrid” was proposed in

August 2002.322 The job of finalizing Hybrid would fall to Lieutenant General David McKiernan,

commander of Coalition Forces Land Component Command (CFLCC, pronounced – sif-lick),

who would be in charge of all ground forces during the invasion. McKiernan’s staff at CFLCC

saw the problems of Hybrid as a double-edged sword. If the invasion were to achieve rapid

success, not enough forces would be in place to control Iraq.323 Conversely, should any set-backs

arise, supply lines would be vulnerable due to lack of troops to secure the terrain covered; this

was a particular concern repeatedly raised by Secretary of State Colin Powell, a long-time

advocate of overwhelming force.324

CFLCC was ultimately successful in bulking up Hybrid to address the above concern.

The final plan, renamed Cobra II,325 would most closely resemble Generated Start.326 Although

Rumsfeld, who had at one point proposed an invasion with 4,000 soldiers and topping off at

70,000, acquiesced to many of the military’s concerns, he had succeeded in producing a much

more limited plan than the initial revised-OPLAN 1003-98 proposal of 385,000.327 McKiernan’s

321 Ibid, 37, 50. 322 Ibid, 68. 323 Ibid, 87. 324 Ibid, 70. 325 The name Cobra II was chosen by Lieutenant Colonel Evan Heulfer, a planner at CFLCC, in reference to George

Patton’s 3rd Army breakout across France in 1944, named Cobra. (Ibid, 77) 326 Ibid, 88-89. 327 Ibid.

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Cobra II plan would begin with a force of 145,000 soldiers and with follow-on reinforcements

topping out at 275,000.328 However, Rumsfeld remained skeptical that such a large amount of

reinforcement was necessary. As his logic flowed, any decision on reinforcements should be

withheld until it could be discerned how strong the opposition to U.S. forces would be. To do so,

Rumsfeld, on objection from McKiernan, took control of the Time-Phased Force and

Deployment List (TPFDL, pronounced tip-fiddle), which managed what units were sent to war

and when.329 The TPFDL, normally acts as an automated system that ensures logistical

requirements for deployments are met.330 However, it would be replaced by individual “requests

for forces,” that had to be approved by Rumsfeld.331 This debate over troop levels was not simply

confined to internal interagency disputes.

While the debate within Congress over the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002 was

somewhat muted considering the gravity of the vote, the most memorable discourse came after,

regarding troop numbers.332 In February 2002, during testimony with the Senate Armed Service

Committee, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, responding to a question about troop

levels for the impending occupation, stated that, “something on the order of several hundred

thousand soldiers, are probably, you know, a figure that would be required.”333 This was

significant because it amounted to a public repudiation of the military’s plans, which Shinseki

was surely privy to. Shinseki publically stated that he thought that more than double the number

of troops planned (a number Rumsfeld already thought was too high) would be required. This

was not well-received by the Bush Administration. Moreover, as Andrew Bacevich argues, since

328 Ibid. 329 Hersh, Chain of Command, 250. 330 Ibid. 331 Ibid, 251. 332 Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians, 187-188. 333 Ricks, Fiasco, 97.

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the troop levels Shinseki was calling for were not logistically plausible, his comments were

tantamount to implying that the invasion would not succeed.334 The response to Shinseki’s

testimony by Administration officials was a swift and public rebuke. Two days later, Deputy

Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz stated in his testimony to the same committee that

Shinseki’s comments were, “wildly off the mark,” saying it would be, “hard to imagine,” such a

scenario.335

Strikingly absent from the intense debate over troop numbers is President Bush. Although

Bush’s memoirs, Decision Points, devotes abundant space to Iraq,336 the President’s narration of

the internal debate over Iraq only briefly touches on the specificities of troop numbers. While

Bush recounts dozens of meeting with Generals Franks and Myers, these focused more on

ensuring contingency planning for certain political ramifications (ex. a counter-attack on Israel

or if Iraq used of chemical weapons on U.S. forces).337 The closest Bush gets to discussing troop

numbers is his recounting of the inaugural meeting on planning for Iraq in December 2001,

where Franks and Rumsfeld argued that less troops than had previously thought to invade Iraq

(OPLAN 1003-98) would be necessary.338 Also, Bush fleetingly mentions Powell’s

aforementioned concerns with the number of troops, writing, “I was pleased when [Powell] told

me he had shared his concerns about the plan with [Franks]… and I was confident [Franks]

would take his input seriously.”339

334 Quoted in Ibid, 98-99. 335 Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians, 189. 336 Written in a thematic rather than chronological style there is a chapter devoted to the decision to invade Iraq and

another chapter on the decision to implement the surge; the chapter on the invasion is the longest of the book. (Bush,

Decision Points, see: chapters 8 & 12) 337 Ibid, 234-237. 338 Ibid, 234. 339 Ibid, 251.

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Such a statement, when viewed in the context of the intense bureaucratic battle – between

both the military and civilians within the Pentagon, and between Defense and State – outlined

above, shows that the President was detached from the specifics of the planning process. The

quotation referencing Powell’s concerns gives the appearance that Bush thought there was a

united front on the invasion plans, or at the very least, that any disagreements that existed were

minor. This inference of Bush’s role in the process is in line with Bush’s management approach

to the military. James Pfiffner, a professor of public policy, noting that Bush is the first president

to hold a business degree, refers to Bush’s management style as the “CEO President.”340 Bush’s

management style during his presidency sought to reflect the role of the role of the President as

the head of a large corporation, thinking of “himself as tough minded and able to make decisions

quickly and leave the details up to his team.”341 In his autobiography published before he became

president, Bush explains his management philosophy: “My job is to set the agenda and tone and

framework, to lay out the principles by which we operate and make decisions, and then delegate

much of the process to them.”342 Despite a propensity to delegate details, Bush always ensured

that he drove the direction of policy and maintained responsibility for big decisions.343

When dealing with the military, however, Bush’s inclination to delegate details was far

greater than in other policy areas. There are a few explanations for this. Frank Hoffman notes

that Bush “admitted to being ‘a product of the Vietnam world’ and loathe to influencing

decisions about the use of the military… [Recognizing] that there is a very fine line between

340 James P. Pfiffner, “The First MBA President: George W. Bush as Public Administrator,” Public Administration

Review (January/February 2007), 7. 341 Ibid. 342 Quoted in Ibid. 343 Lawrence Freedman, A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East (Toronto, ON: Anchor Canada,

2009), 375.

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setting strategy and micromanaging combat.”344 Indeed, he was conscious about constraining the

ability of the military.345 This presidential approach, however, was ill-suited given the state of the

civil-military balance at the Pentagon. Bush assumed that deference to Myers and Franks

constituted a hands off approach to civil-military relations, but since Rumsfeld ensured strict

civilian control over the top brass of the military, it was anything but a hands-off approach. The

evidence from Bush’s memoirs, coupled with evidence of a philosophy of “hands off” control of

the military, shows that he was likely unaware of the level of authority Rumsfeld exerted over

the military during his tenure.

Phase IV Planning: A Lack Thereof

Such a back-and-forth, and indeed the entire process regarding troop numbers would be

seldom remembered, nor discussed, had troop levels not been a contributing factor to the turmoil

which followed this invasion. This, however, was not the case. While the invasion of Iraq

achieved its initial goal of toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime with minimal setbacks,346 the

events of the summer of 2003 and onwards would prove the U.S. was woefully unprepared for

the substantial problems they faced. Examining Phase IV planning of the Iraq invasion will

demonstrate how a lack of preparedness resulted in serious missteps by both military and civilian

leaders alike. Moreover, that these missteps were either caused, or further exacerbated, by a lack

of troops in the combat theatre.

344 Hoffman, "Dereliction of Duty Redux?,” 221. 345 Ibid. 346 For an excellent account of the unexpected challenges faced in the first few weeks of OIF see Cobra II, chapters

12-15 (Gordon and Trainor, 244-346). Particularly, their account of the Battle of Nasiriyah serves as a useful

example in showing how coalition forces were marred with poor communication, logistical shortfalls, and faulty

intelligence.

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Whereas the process in planning for the invasion was drawn out over the span of a little

over a year, the opposite is the case when concerning planning for Phase IV. While the above

focused applying transformation to Phase II (air strikes) and Phase III (combat operations)

planning, the OSD also played a substantial role in the planning involved for Phase IV

operations. Here, the lead role within the OSD was left to USD Doug Feith – the head

administrator for policy formulation.347 It was in the planning for Phase IV operations that

tension between the OSD and CENTCOM staff led to a lapse in institutional authority that would

plague the eventual transition from invasion to occupation. The two factors that need to be

discussed within the context of Phase IV planning are the relationship between Franks and Feith

and the inter-agency rivalry between the Department of Defense and the Department of State.

Both of these help explain why Phase IV plans were unprepared for the trials and tribulations of

the Iraq War.

The historical record of the planning process for Phase IV of the invasion of Iraq is one

that is well documented. Partially due to the scrutiny that the process would receive following its

implementation, and partially due to the effort of many involved in the situation to ‘set the record

straight.’ What becomes quickly apparent is that the planning process was marked by the disdain

between Franks and Feith. The tension between the two appears significant. In Franks’ memoirs

– the earliest primary account published by a senior government official involved with the Iraq

invasion – Franks felt it necessary to include a passage where he refers to Feith as “the dumbest

fucking guy on the planet.”348 Feith too is critical of Franks in his memoirs – albeit in less coarse

terms – writing that their relationship was congenial, “despite the impatience he showed me…

347 Douglas J. Feith, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism (New York, NY:

HarperCollins, 2008), 291. 348 Franks, American Soldier, 362.

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[and his] occasional snappishness.”349 The divide between the two, however, was part of a deeper

issue than simply incongruent personalities.

Their relationship reflected the fundamental divide between civilian and military policy

makers during this time. The former, under Rumsfeld, were concerned with implementing

transformation as a guiding strategy for the military to follow and, in particular, how Phase IV

would be implemented.350 Whereas the latter were more focused on the logistics surrounding

Phases II and III (Phase I had been settled in the debate over troops numbers discussed earlier).351

It was here that the combination of institutional and individuals personalities clashed. With

regard to policy, Franks viewed Feith “as a theorist whose ideas were often impractical.”352

Indeed, Franks’ memoir presents a general condescension toward the academic-minded figures

that made up the political appointments within the OSD, whom he mockingly labels as “fifty-

pound brains.”353 It is this aloofness toward intellectually rigorous policy debates that has led

some to criticize his abdication in Phase IV planning.

For example, military historian Thomas Ricks, writes: “[historically,] thinking about war

and then arriving at conclusions that can be implemented has been the core task of generals. Yet,

in a bizarre mutation of military thought, Franks seemed to believe that thinking was something

others did for generals.”354 Ricks goes on to say that while “Franks insisted he did a lot of hard

thinking about postwar Iraq, there was nothing to support that claim.”355 In CENTCOM, under

Franks, there was a general disinterest in Phase IV planning, a disinterest that would become

349 Feith, War and Decision, 291. 350 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 90-91, 113. 351 Feith, War and Decision, 291. 352 Franks, American Soldier, 330. 353 Ibid, 362. 354 Ricks, The Generals, 401. 355 Ibid, 403.

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overt after Franks’ resignation only six weeks after U.S. forces took Baghdad.356 Political

scientist Dale Herspring states that “Franks was aware of the problems associated with Phase IV,

[but assumed] that the Department of State would be closely involved in Phase IV operations.”357

This omission of Phase IV planning by Franks proved devastating, as the head of the RAND

Corporation wrote in a memorandum to Rumsfeld, military planning on “post conflict

stabilization and reconstruction were addressed only very generally, largely because of the

prevailing view that the task would not be difficult.”358 If the military was content to relinquish

Phase IV planning, a civilian agency would have to fill the void. However, this would prove to

be a convoluted task.

Rumsfeld reflects in his memoirs that “the postwar planning for Iraq exposed a gap in the

way the United States government is organized.”359 Given this, Rumsfeld set out to create an

office that could integrate civilian and military leadership in a way that had not been done in the

past.360 The result was the creation of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance

(ORHA) in January 2003.361 Jay Garner, a retired lieutenant general who had experience

assisting the Kurds follow the Gulf War, was tapped by Rumsfeld to run the ORHA.362 The

office was finalized January 20th, 2003 and given a budget of $15 million.363 Robert Engell, a

political scientist who focuses on the civil-military relations of stability operations, notes that

“this was a very late start for serious planning of post-conflict reconstruction and security.364

356 Feith, War and Decision, 291. 357 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 104. 358 Ricks, The Generals, 404. 359 Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 487. 360 Ibid. 361 Ibid. 362 Ibid, 487-488. 363 Robert Engell, Complex Peace Operations and Civil-Military Relations: Winning the Peace (New York, NY:

Routledge, 2009), 76. 364 Ibid.

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Garner’s task appeared monumental from the start. However, it would further be marred

by bureaucratic in-fighting. Although the earliest planning for post-Saddam Iraq was conducted

by the State Department in April 2002, under the ‘Future of Iraq’ project, the ORHA would fall

under the jurisdiction of the Defense Department, which discarded the work done at State.365

Specifically, the ORHA was administratively part of the Pentagon’s policy department, which

meant Garner’s immediate superior was Doug Feith.366 What was clear from the start was that

Rumsfeld wished for ORHA to remain under the purview of the OSD. In this respect, Rumsfeld

went so far as to veto Garner’s personnel choices who worked for the State Department.367

Moreover, Garner had difficulty getting authorization to hire military officers for his staff – as

the military assumed its planning people would be coordinating with State not with the ORHA.368

This demarcation between State and Defense over control of the ORHA stemmed from the larger

debate over whether or not to invade Iraq in the first place.369 Journalist Bob Woodward writes

that Rumsfeld opposed the involvement of the State Department in post-war planning because

“the work had to be done by those who were truly committed to [regime change in Iraq].”370 The

fact that the ORHA became embroiled in these larger institutional conflicts, would severely

hinder its ability to function in its mandate in Iraq. Brookings Institution scholar Michael

O’Hanlon summarizes the Phase IV planning for Iraq well, saying, “invading another country

with the intention of destroying its existing government yet without a serious strategy for

365 Ibid, 75. 366 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 119. 367 Ibid. 368 Ibid, 120. 369 Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 283. 370 Ibid, 284.

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providing security, thereafter, defies logic and falls short of proper professional military

standards of competence.”371

Following the fall of Baghdad, the ORHA immediately ran into organizational problems.

On May 1st, 2003, President Bush, at the behest of General Franks, delivered his now infamous

“Mission Accomplished” speech announcing the end of combat operations in Iraq;372 a speech

that Bush admits in his memoir “was a big mistake.”373 Regardless, the focus of the Iraq War, in

the view of the Pentagon, had now shifted from Phase III to Phase IV operations.374 The initial

observations within the OSD was that the ORHA was unfit for the task at hand.375 None of this

was the particular fault of Garner or his staff, whom Rumsfeld praises in his memoirs for their

work.376 Rather, the inability of the ORHA to function was the result of the divide between the

military and the OSD, as well as discontent between State and Defense. For example, Engell

argues that the convoluted chain of command immediately following the invasion led to the

inability of the ORHA to effectively implement policy.377 Moreover, Herspring explains how

because Phase III planning was kept separate from Phase IV planning, many of the assumptions

that the ORHA were operating under (such as the presumption of an intact Iraqi military and

civil bureaucracy) were flawed.378 For example, the ORHA assumed that certain Iraqi

government ministries would remain intact, while the military plans called for the elimination of

these ministries in the invasion.379

371 Quoted in, Engell, Complex Peace Operations and Civil-Military Relations, 77. 372 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 134. 373 Bush, Decision Points, 257. 374 Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 502. 375 Ibid. 376 Ibid. 377 Engell, Complex Peace Operations and Civil-Military Relations, 79. 378 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 132. 379 Ibid.

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The result of the ORHA’s slow start as the administration responsible for the

reconstruction of Iraq began to put pressure on the Pentagon – especially after Bush’s premature

speech. To placate the critics of the muddled effort to organize the reconstruction of Iraq, the

Bush Administration would drastically change their institutional structure. President Bush

appointed L. Paul Bremer III as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) – an agency

authorized by the United Nations as the governing authority of Iraq.380 Bremer was a career

foreign service officer and counterterrorism expert.381 Notably, however, Bremer lacked direct

experience with Iraq; he previously served as an assistant to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger

(1972-76), deputy chief of mission in Norway (1976-79), and as ambassador to the Netherlands

(1983-86).382 Since then, he had become involved in private sector crisis management consulting,

including with Henry Kissinger’s consulting firm, Kissinger and Associates.383

While some within the State Department384 saw Bremer’s appointment as an institutional

victory over Defense, Rumsfeld maintains that he was one of the first to recommend Bremer for

the position and the CPA would still remain under the authority of the Pentagon.385 Bremer’s

appointment may have been an attempt to quell the bureaucratic infighting between Defense and

State. Ali Allawi explains that Bremer “straddle[d] two antagonistic camps – the realists and the

neoconservatives,” and that “he appeared to have been selected precisely because of his lack of

prior involvement in the Iraq crisis.”386 Bush officially appointed Bremer as head of the CPA on

380 Bush. Decision Points, 258. 381 Ibid. 382 Ali A. Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (New Haven, CT: Yale University

Press, 2007), 107. 383 Ibid. 384 In his memoirs, Rumsfeld blames Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage for leaking reports to the media

that Rumsfeld opposed Bremer’s appointment. Rumsfeld maintains Armitage’s alleged assertion was false.

(Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown,503) 385 Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 503-505. 386 Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 107-108.

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May 9th and Bremer arrived in Iraq three days later.387 Despite the enormity of the task ahead,

Bremer nonetheless relished the role, writing in his memoirs that his assignment “combine[d]

some of the vice-regal responsibilities of General Douglas MacArthur, and of General Lucius

Clay.”388 Indeed, the stasis that marked the tenure of the ORHA would not hold back Bremer and

the CPA. Rather, Bremer utilized his plenipotentiary power to its full might.

There are a few trends that become apparent in a reading of the history of the planning

process for the Iraq War. These trends help inform the third-party observer of the dynamics that

underpinned the civil-military relationship during this time. As outlined in Chapter Five,

Rumsfeld’s initial mission as secretary of defense was to reform the military around the

philosophy of transformation, and to reign-in the power of the military with respect to civil-

military balance in the Pentagon. With the sudden shift to war following the 9/11 attacks, both

Rumsfeld and the military brass stood to benefit in a certain respect. The latter from an increase

in funding and the former from a chance to hasten the implementation of transformation policy.

In the planning process for the invasion of Iraq, Rumsfeld pushed for the least amount of troops

possible. The result was an invasion force that was far smaller than what military planners

initially sought. Moreover, Rumsfeld centralized control over the TPFDL, in his office, rather

than leaving it in the hands of the operational commanders. With respect to planning for Phase

IV operations, more effort was put into ensuring the State Department remained removed from

the process than there was actually formulating a coherent strategy after the invasion.

Compounding the problem, was that the military voluntarily remained absent from Phase IV

387 Feith, War and Decision, 425. 388 Quoted in Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown, 508.

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planning as well. The gaping hole in this process was revealed when the ORHA was found to be

institutionally unable to function. In its place, the hastily formed CPA, under Bremer, took over.

Chapter Seven: Assessing the Results of OIF in 2003

Now that civil-military relations at the onset of the Bush Administration and throughout

the planning process have been presented, the following chapter will examine tangible

consequences of the strategies implemented and the decisions made during the initial months of

the war. To do so, first, a brief summary of the events of the invasion and successes and setbacks

of the Cobra II plan will be examined. Next, the transition to Phase IV operations will be

discussed, focusing on the effects of the main decisions made by the CPA, as well as the

relationship that existed between the CPA and the U.S. military. Specifically, the case of the

101st Airborne Division, operating in Mosul will be examined to show the evident disconnect in

strategy between the CPA and the military. From here, it will be shown how the actions of U.S.

occupying forces during 2003 set the stage for the ensuing insurgency that would come to define

the conflict for the next eight years.

The Invasion of Iraq

Despite the protracted give and take that characterized the planning process for the

invasion, the result was Cobra II, a plan that compromised on issues of troop levels and Phase I

speed. While the strength of the invasion force was less than half of what the military had

initially hoped for, military officials had held firm against some of Rumsfeld’s more drastic

proposals. Nonetheless, Rumsfeld’s active interest in the invasion would continue past the

planning process as he remained in control of the TPFDL, meaning that military units could not

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be deployed without his expressed permission. This would allow Rumsfeld to renege on certain

concessions made during the planning process as circumstances changed.

One example of this was when the plan for a two-front invasion was taken off the table.

On March 1, 2003, the Turkish Parliament voted to prohibit U.S. forces from invading Iraq from

the north through Turkey.389 The U.S. invasion was highly unpopular in Turkey, due to both anti-

American and anti-Kurdish sentiments.390 Originally, the plan was for the 4th Infantry Division

(ID) – which was the most mechanized and most technologically advanced division in the

Army391 – to invade Iraq from the north, forcing Saddam to split his defensive forces north and

south of Baghdad.392 Without the threat of an invasion from the north, Saddam could simply put

all his defenses to the south, potentially prolonging the conflict. Already with less troops than

desired, General Franks, recommended to postpone the invasion until the 4th ID could be

repositioned to join the invasion from the south.393 However, he was overruled by Rumsfeld and

Bush.394 One of the reasons they were eager to invade was so the invasion would not extend into

the Iraq’s hot summer.395 Secretary of the Army Thomas White also stated that the decision to

invade without the 4th ID was based on concerns of a missile strike by Saddam on the idle U.S.

forces waiting in Kuwait.396 Thus, U.S. forces crossed from Kuwait into Iraq on March 20th

without the 4th ID, who would not enter Iraq until April 9th.397

389 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 71. 390 Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 88. 391 Todd Purdum, “The Invasion of Iraq: An Oral History,” Interview, Frontline, PBS, February 26, 2004. 392 Freedman, A Choice of Enemies, 426; Hersh, Chain of Command, 252. 393 Hersh, Chain of Command, 252. 394 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 71. 395 Ibid. 396 Thomas White, “The Invasion of Iraq: An Oral History,” Interview, Frontline, PBS, February 27, 2004. 397 Ricks, Fiasco, 117.

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Both of Lieutenant General McKiernan’s aforementioned reservations about troop levels

that arose during the planning process proved true to a certain extent, though neither resulted in

immediate catastrophe. The first of McKiernan’s concerns: that the U.S. forces were not large

enough to dominate the territory they conquered while driving toward Baghdad, leaving supply

lines and logistical units vulnerable, proved to be well-founded. Indeed, supply lines would be

particularly susceptible to attacks because of a severe lapse in intelligence. Iraq, for a stretched-

thin U.S. intelligence community, had been relegated to a “tier two” priority country since the

Gulf War.398 Preoccupied with where Saddam would place and utilise his elite Republican Guard

divisions, U.S. forces gave little concern to the actual heart of Iraq’s defense plan, titled the,

“Baath Emergency Plan.”399 The Baath Emergency Plan, created in fear of Shiite uprisings in the

south, relied on a quasi-national guard of regime loyalists called the Fedayeen, who would use

guerrilla tactics to paralyze Shiite cities.400 Gordon and Trainor call the U.S. military’s oversight

of the Fedayeen in their intelligence briefs, “a striking omission given the visibility of the

Fedayeen in Iraqi towns and cities and the vital importance of the Fedayeen to the regime.”401

The result of this oversight was an underestimation of the opposition that coalition forces

would face in predominantly Shiite Iraqi cities. Without knowledge of the Fedayeen presence,

U.S. forces assumed that an absence of Iraqi military forces in Shiite cities would mean an

absence of any substantial resistance. This would hardly be the case. In the predominantly Shiite

cities of Samawah, Nasiriyah, and Najaf, U.S. forces became bogged by Fedayeen fighters

during the invasion.402 This prompted Lieutenant General William Wallace, one of the two corps

398 Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 80. 399 Ibid, 62. 400 Ibid. 401 Ibid. 402 Ibid, 104.

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commanders leading the invasion, to state to the media that “The enemy we are fighting is a bit

different than the one we war-gamed against.”403 Indeed, the most high-profile setbacks of the

invasions involved logistical problems regarding supply units. Most famously, this resulted in the

capture of Private First Class Jessica Lynch, whose support convey took a wrong turn, entering

Nasiriyah, which had yet been taken by coalition forces who had stalled outside the city.404

Nonetheless, these stumbles remained minor in the larger scheme of the invasion, which was

quickly pushing towards Baghdad from both sides of the Euphrates River.

McKiernan’s second main concern with the smaller than preferred invasion force was

that rapid success would leave U.S. forces responsible to a territory too vast to control before the

follow-on forces would arrive. Such concerns became apparent immediately following the

capture of Baghdad. Military planners assumed that the Baghdad would be well defended and

result in prolonged urban warfare to control the city.405 However, elements of the 3rd ID

(mechanized), who controlled Baghdad International Airport on the western outskirts of the city,

initiated a series armoured thrusts deep into the city, termed, “thunder runs.” The goal of these

raids, in the words of the commanding officer, Colonel David Perkins, was to “create as much

confusion as I can inside the city… it was an attempt to create as much chaos as quickly as I can

throughout as wide an area as I can.”406 The result of the thunder runs was that what little Iraqi

defenses existed inside Baghdad, were quickly punctured, putting Saddam’s forces into disarray.

In what was assumed would be the heaviest fighting of the war, would end in less than a week

(the same length of time it took to take Nasiriyah). Notably, at the time Baghdad fell, there were

403 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 106; Hersh, Chain of Command, 255. 404 Ricks, Fiasco, 119. 405 David D. McKiernan, “The Invasion of Iraq: An Oral History,” Interview, Frontline, PBS, February 27, 2004. 406 David Perkins, “The Invasion of Iraq: An Oral History,” Interview, Frontline, PBS, February 26, 2004.

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only 143,000 coalition troops in Iraq – less than a third of the number of troops that served in the

Gulf War.407 However, the feeling of a decisive victory would prove short-lived.

Following the earlier than expected fall of Baghdad, the city of more than five million

people plunged into anarchy. With only roughly 30,000 troops on scene, the aforementioned 3rd

ID to the west and the 1st Marine Division to the east, U.S. forces could not have maintained

order in the city of over five million people if they tried. But they did not try, as no such orders

existed for the 1st Marines and 3rd ID to attempt to impose order or defend businesses and

homes.408 The result was mass-scale looting, most prominently from the National Museum and

the University of Baghdad. This vast disorder led to the rather credulous remark from Rumsfeld

that “freedom’s untidy.”409 In the same press conference, Rumsfeld maintained the existence of a

plan to deal with Phase IV.410

Despite the above setbacks, the invasion itself was an overall success. In a little over

three weeks, coalition forces had removed Saddam’s regime from power in less time while

sustaining fewer casualties than in the 1991 Gulf War.411 A report produced by the RAND

Corporation outlines the main reasons why the invasion was so successful against Iraqi

resistance. The report attributes the invasion’s categorical success more to Saddam’s

incompetence rather than a flawless U.S. strategy.412 For example, Saddam and his sons were

giving confusing and contradicting orders to their military commanders, all while forbidding

407 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 131. 408 Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 94; Michael E. O’Hanlon, “Iraq Without a Plan,” Policy Review, 128,

(December 2004/January 2005), 36. 409 Donald H. Rumsfeld, “DoD News Briefing,” Speech, The Pentagon, April 11, 2003. 410 Ibid. 411 Freedman, A Choice of Enemies, 426. 412 Bruce R. Pirnie and Edward O’Connell. Counterinsurgency in Iraq (2003-2006) (Santa Monica, CA: RAND

Corporation, 2008), 7.

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Iraqi military commanders from exercising initiative in choosing defensive positions.413

Moreover, Saddam kept the elite Republican Guard Divisions around Baghdad, rather than

within the city.414 Meaning there would be none of the brutal urban conflict that the coalition was

expecting. As military historian Lawrence Freedman elaborates, “[the] thunder runs would have

been foolhardy against opponents who were properly trained for urban warfare and knew how to

direct their fire more accurately.”415 However, in the face of these immediate favourable results,

those who had argued for the transformation approach of less troops appeared vindicated.

Cutting Off Forces

One area during the planning process that became a point of contention between the OSD

and some within the Army was over the number of troops that would be needed specifically for

Phase IV operations. The view put forth by OSD officials – in particular DSD Wolfowitz and to

a lesser extent Rumsfeld – was that less and not more troops would be needed following the

invasion. In a meeting shortly before the invasion, Wolfowitz stated, “I don’t see why it would

take more troops to occupy the country than to take down the regime.”416 This logic rested on the

belief that the Iraqi people would largely support the coalition forces. Army leaders, however,

were skeptical that this would be the case. Thomas Ricks explains why the Army specifically

was concerned in this respect: “The Army especially, going in, had the concern that they were

going to be left holding the sack. You know, the Navy comes in, steams around for a while. The

Air Force comes in and drops a few bombs. The Marines comes in and fight for 30 days. They

413 Ibid. 414 Ibid. 415 Freedman, A Choice of Enemies, 426-427. 416 Ricks, Fiasco, 121.

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all go home. The Army has seen this before, in Bosnia and Kosovo. Everybody has their little

war. The Army is stuck occupying.”417

A consequence of Wolfowitz’s belief was the decision to cancel the planned follow-on

deployment. As part of the rolling start concept that Rumsfeld had pushed for in the planning

phase, the 1st Cavalry Division along with the 1st Armored Division had been slated to enter Iraq

immediately following the invasion to aid with the occupation.418 Rumsfeld and the OSD pushed

for the cancellation of the 1st Cavalry’s deployment, arguing it was unnecessary. Although

several officers on the CENTCOM staff, including McKiernan disagreed.419 General Franks –

who would retire within a month – agreed with the decision.420 On April 21, the decision was

made to cancel the deployment.421 Of this decision, McKiernan would say in his official

debriefing to the Army in June 2003: “While we might not have needed [the 1st Cavalry] to

remove the top part of the regime, and to get into Baghdad, we needed [them] for everything

after that. It would have been nice to have another heavy division. Well, it would have been more

than nice – it would have been very, very effective to have another heavy division fresh going

into the fight.”422

Ultimately, after the initial success of the invasion in defeating the Iraqi Army and

capturing Baghdad, Rumsfeld chose to cancel the deployment of the 1st Cavalry Division, which

would have added 17,500 soldiers to the occupying force,423 leaving the occupy force levels

instead at just 145,000.424 This left forces within Baghdad stretched thin. Max Boot, an academic

417 Thomas E. Ricks, “The Invasion of Iraq: An Oral History,” Interview, Frontline, PBS, February 26, 2004. 418 Ricks, Fiasco, 121. 419 Ibid, 122. 420 Ibid. 421 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 251. 422 Ricks, Fiasco, 122-123. 423 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 251. 424 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 128.

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serving as an embedded journalist in south Baghdad at the time, recalls a Marine corporal

handing him a sidearm and asking him to cover a detained prisoner because the Marines lacked

the manpower to do so.425 Though more importantly, Rumsfeld’s push for the minimum number

of troops would prove costly in the grand scheme of the war. Military historian Thomas Ricks

explains that the lack of coalition troops was one of the major causes of the insurgency that later

developed.426 The U.S. military did not have the manpower to secure abandoned Iraqi Army

weapon depots or Iraq’s borders with Syria and Iran.427 Furthermore, Dale Herspring argues that

U.S. forces did not have the strength to maintain order in Baghdad following the invasion.428 Nor

could they occupy strategic cities like Fallujah and Ramadi (where early insurgents flocked to)

until weeks after the invasion.429 Most importantly, Herspring asserts, the inability of the U.S. to

maintain order “led to the perception [among Iraqis] that the U.S. was weak… that they could

stand up to the Americans.”430 However, the cut off of follow-on forces at the end of the invasion

would be just one of the many poor decisions that the United States made in prosecuting the

occupation of Iraq.

On May 1st, 2003 President Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier to

deliver what would become one of the most infamous moments of his presidency – the Mission

Accomplished Speech. Just as President Jimmy Carter never actually uttered the word that

adorns the title of his fateful address to the nation, Bush never said, “Mission Accomplished.”

While the point of his speech was to announce that major combat operations in Iraq had ceased, a

425 Max Boot, Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to the Present (New

York, NY: Liveright, 2013), xxviii. 426 Ricks, Fiasco, 191. 427 Ibid. 428 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 130. 429 Ibid, 131. 430 Ibid, 130.

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prominently displayed banner behind the President proclaimed, “Mission Accomplished.” This

public relations blunder became a symbol of how woefully unprepared and detached the

administration appeared for the coming years in Iraq. However, as one observant Army Major

begrudgingly pointed out, “the Mission Accomplished banner [was right]: The mission, as

defined for the military as getting rid of the regime, had indeed been accomplished.”431 The

speech remains for many a symbol of incompetence, but viewed in light of the above comment,

the speech represents a broader institutional failure than simply a premature proclamation of

victory.

Institutional Problems with Phase IV

The rather haphazard shift from the ORHA to the CPA, as outlined in the previous

chapter, was the beginning of Paul Bremer’s tumultuous reign as the head U.S. administrator in

Iraq. What characterized the CPA’s almost-fourteen month rule of Iraq can only be described as

a mixture of ineffectiveness and incompetence. This ineffectiveness stemmed from the inability

of the CPA to coordinate and cooperate with the U.S. military; despite being under the umbrella

of the DoD, the CPA and CJTF-7432 operated under parallel command structures. (Figure 3)

However, the CPA, as the governing authority of Iraq, had the power to issue edicts – called

“CPA Orders” – which governed the actions of the U.S. military.433 Due to the parallel command

structures, this authority over the military was indirect.434 The result was that the CPA often

431 Ricks, Fiasco, 135. 432 The command structure of U.S. military force in Iraq underwent three different names. Beginning with CFLCC

during the invasion, it was retitled “Combined Joint Task Force 7” (CJTF-7) after the invasion, and then finally

named “Multi-National Forces - Iraq” (MNF-I) in early 2004, which remained for the rest of the war. (Gordon and

Trainor, Cobra II, 557-559) 433 James Dobbins et al., Occupying Iraq: A History of the Coalition Provisional Authority (Santa Monica, CA:

RAND Corporation, 2009), 17. 434 Gordon and Trainor, Cobra II, 502.

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proclaimed policy they had no power of enforcing, leading many within the military to comment

that the CPA stood for “can’t produce anything.”435

Figure 3: CPA Organization Chart, July 2003436

Bremer’s military counterpart during his tenure was the commander of CJTF-7

Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. Irrespective of the coordination problems that arose with

the CPA, Sanchez proved a problematic pick as the top military officer in Iraq for a number of

different reasons.437 At the time of his selection for commander of CJTF-7, Sanchez was the most

junior three-star general in the Army, being promoted only weeks earlier.438 This was a

significant increase in responsibility; Sanchez went from commanding 20,000 soldiers to

commanding a multi-national contingent of 200,000 soldiers occupying a nation of 25 million

435 Ricks, Fiasco, 203. 436 Dobbins et al., Occupying Iraq, 21. 437 For an analysis of Sanchez’s tenure as CJTF-7 Commander see: Ricks, The Generals, chapter 28. 438 David Cloud and Greg Jaffe, The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United

States Army (New York, NY: Three Rivers Press, 2009), 128.

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people.439 From the start of his command, Sanchez was understaffed, unprepared, and

underqualified for the task at hand. Despite having less than half the headquarters staff needed –

particularly in areas of intelligence – Sanchez was not a strong advocate to his superiors in

asking for more help.440

On top of the problem Sanchez had as a military commander, there were a multitude of

problems that characterized the relationship between the CPA and CJTF-7 at this time. First, it

was widely known that Bremer and Sanchez disliked each other and rarely spoke.441 On one

occasion, Sanchez refused on principle to share with Bremer the military plans to attack Shiite

militia in Najaf.442 Their staffs frequently clashed over jurisdiction and policy.443 The parallel

chain of command resulted in confusion over who had authority over whom.444 What resulted

was that both institutions began to function autonomously – creating an environment that was

anathema to pacifying Iraq.445

Moreover, Sanchez lacked a unifying military strategy for Iraq – a shortfall left over from

Franks – resulting in devolution of military strategy and tactics to the various division

commanders in Iraq at the time.446 This meant that the different divisions in various areas in Iraq

were operating in very different ways – sometimes in a counterproductive, indiscriminate, or

illegal manner.447 Jeffrey White, a Middle Eastern affairs analyst for the Defense Intelligence

Agency, commented, “Some observers feel that the various U.S. divisions in Iraq have thus far

439 Ibid. 440 Ricks, The Generals, 412-413. 441 Ricks, Fiasco, 324. 442 Ricks, The Generals, 411-412. 443 Dobbins et al., Occupying Iraq, 17. 444 Ibid. 445 Pirnie and O’Connell, Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 36. 446 Ricks, Fiasco, 226. 447 Ricks, The Generals, 414.

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waged more or less independent campaigns.”448 The sense that Sanchez was unable to exert

centralized control over the military in Iraq registered following the Abu Ghraib scandal, in

which Sanchez denied any knowledge of the affair.449 This, at best, made him appear detached –

and at worst, criminally negligent – showing Sanchez had a precarious grasp on his role as

commander.

It remains to be seen exactly which actors within the government chose Sanchez to lead

the military in Iraq. General Franks, against the objection of his deputy, Lieutenant General John

Abizaid, was the one who initially put Sanchez’s name forward.450 In his memoirs, Rumsfeld

states that he was unaware of Sanchez’s selection and that this is what caused him to start

micromanaging promotion decisions going forward.451 This claim does not hold up against the

empirical record, which shows Rumsfeld micromanaging promotions long before 2004.452 More

probable is that Rumsfeld erred in judgement in the promotion of Sanchez. It is highly unlikely

that a position of this importance would not have been approved in Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, where

strong civilian oversight was the norm.

De-Baathification and Disbanding the Iraqi Army

Neither the CPA nor the CJTF-7 benefited from exceptional leadership, while at the same

time operating under an institutional adhocracy that linked military and civilian command in

Iraq. It is under this context that two of the most disastrous decisions of the war were made. The

first was CPA Order no. 1, titled the “Implementation of De-Baathification.”453 Essentially, it

448 Thomas E. Ricks, “General Failure,” The Atlantic, November 2012. 449 Hersh, Chain of Command, 42-43. 450 Cloud and Jaffe, The Fourth Star, 128. 451 Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown¸ 501-502. 452 Herspring, Rumsfeld’s Wars, 13. 453 Coalition Provisional Authority, Order Number 1, Implementation of De-Baathification, Baghdad, May 16, 2003.

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outlawed former members of Saddam’s Baath Party from being involved in any kind of

government employment.454 It remains unclear exactly who issued CPA Order 1; Feith and

Bremer each blame each other,455 while journalist Bob Woodward has maintained that

anonymous sources have asserted the policy came from the White House.456 The goal of such a

policy was to placate the hatred that many Shiite and Kurdish Iraq had toward the institutions

that had oppressed them for many decades. As Bremer elaborates, the goal was to “make it clear

to everyone that [the United States] means business: that Saddam and the Baathists are

finished.”457 The rationale of the OSD’s policy office was to emulate the policy of de-

Nazification in Germany.458 However, this cookie-cutter approach to occupation strategy would

prove ill-advised.

Compounding CPA Order no. 1 was CPA Order no. 2. This second order, titled the

“Dissolution of Entities,” mandated the disbandment of the Iraqi Army.459 While Order no. 1

gave many Sunnis the motive to oppose the American presence, Order no. 2 provided the means.

The policy to demobilize the Iraqi Army was proposed by Feith and Rumsfeld before the

invasion, who convinced President Bush to support it, however this decision was not shared with

the military.460 At the time of the order, many U.S. military officers were in the process of

negotiating with Iraqi Army veterans to employ their help in maintaining security.461 The ORHA

had already registered 137,000 former Iraqi soldiers to join the payroll of the occupation and

454 Ibid. 455 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 74; John A. Nagl, Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice (New

York, NY: Penguin Press, 2014), 64. 456 Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War Part III (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 196-197. 457 Ibid, 437. 458 Cloud and Jaffe, The Fourth Star, 113-114. 459 Coalition Provisional Authority, Order Number 2, Dissolution of Entities, Baghdad, May 23, 2003. 460 Dobbins et al., Occupying Iraq, 52-53. 461 Nagl, Knife Fights, 63.

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Lieutenant General Abizaid had met with several former Iraqi generals to lead these soldiers.462

When Order 2 was announced, Abizaid was furious, as Franks’ deputy he registered his

disapproval to his immediate superior, but had no line of communication to Rumsfeld or Bush;463

Garner, on his way out of Iraq, pleaded with Bremer to reject the order to no avail.464

The most immediate consequence of Order no. 2 was the sheer number of Iraqis put out

of work, with estimates reaching as high as 400,000 people.465 Many Iraqi veterans who had

obeyed American messages to desert their units during the invasion, under the assumption they

would be turned to work for the coalition following the regime change, felt betrayed by this

decision.466 Many, now with nowhere to turn for a source of livelihood, had little choice but to

now resist the coalition, even if they had supported the overthrow of Saddam.467 Freedman

explains this phenomenon well, stating that, “ignoring some 250,000 former soldiers, leaving

them feeling discarded, without income but with weapons, meant that they were natural recruits

for the insurgency and the militias.”468 This perfect storm that arose from disbandment of the

Iraqi army was predicted by the State Department, the Army War College, and the Center for

International and Strategic Studies before the invasion.469 Moreover, due to lack of troops to fully

occupy Iraq at Rumsfeld’s insistence, the alienated Sunni population – who now had the motives

and the means – could not be contained by the coalition forces.470 While Order no. 2 added fuel

462 Dobbins et al., Occupying Iraq, 58. 463 Cloud and Jaffe, The Fourth Star, 123. 464 Dobbins et al., Occupying Iraq, 56. 465 Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 157. 466 Ibid, 158. 467 Gareth Stansfield, “The Transition to Democracy in Iraq: Historical Legacies, Resurgent Identities and

Reactionary Tendencies,” in Alex Danchev and John MacMillan (eds.), The Iraq War and Democratic Politics

(New York, NY: Routledge, 2005), 141. 468 Freedman, A Choice of Enemies, 437. 469 James P. Pfiffner, “The Contemporary Presidency: Decision Making in the Bush White House,” Presidential

Studies Quarterly, 39, No. 2 (2009), 378. 470 Ricks, Fiasco, 191.

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to the fire for an insurgency, Order no. 1 tied the hands of military commanders trying to

extinguish it.

The main problem with Order no. 1 was that, under Saddam, Iraqis needed to join the

Baath party to achieve any mid-to-high ranking public sector role, including most university

faculty as well as many local and regional politicians.471 Indeed, while the goal of De-

Baathification was to cut out the top 1 percent, unbeknownst to Bremer, Saddam had inflated the

military grades of Baath Party officials to an extent that high ranks were needed to run mediocre

positions.472 Initially, although only 50,000 Iraqis were immediately affected by De-

Baathification, these were key officials needed to cobble together any semblance of civil

society.473 The larger problem arose in August 2003 when the De-Baathification process was

handed over to Iraqi Governing Council. Now headed by Ahmad Chalabi and future Prime

Minister Nouri al-Maliki, De-Baathification took a harder line, banning former low-ranking

Baath Party members from holding any position within civil society,474 including the press and

media.475 What resulted was a minority group in the newly formed Iraq who felt they would have

no place in the newly formed Shiite-dominated government.476

The problems that arose from De-Baathification were far-reaching. Ricks argues that the

policy of De-Baathification led to the alienation of Sunnis from the new Iraqi institutions,

resulting in the defection of many to insurgent groups.477 Feith, who was one of the strongest

advocates for this policy, concedes in his memoirs that while the policy was, in theory, correct, it

471 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 74-75. 472 Bing West, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq (New York, NY: Random House,

2008), 6. 473 Ibid, 75. 474 Larry Diamond, “What Went Wrong in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, 83, No. 5 (2004), 43. 475 Dobbins et al., Occupying Iraq, 117. 476 Ricks, Fiasco, 191. 477 Ibid.

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was implemented poorly.478 The problem with CPA Order no. 1, Feith argues, is that the policy

was delegated to the Iraqis too quickly, which was then used as a pretext by the Shiites and

Kurds to persecute Sunnis.479 Gareth Stansfield goes further, writing that Orders no. 1 and no. 2:

“released the patrimonial and coercive pressure which had successfully kept Iraq’s fractious

communal ‘mosaic of discord together. Without these consolidating and centripetal features of

the Saddam era, political authority became localized overnight, facilitating the resurrection of

socio-political forces previously subdued by the combined effects of state patronage and state

coercion.”480 By February 2004, according to John McLaughlin, deputy director of the CIA,

former Baath Party loyalists led 90 percent of insurgents.481 Overall, there exists a strong

consensus that these two policies contributed greatly to the deteriorating security of Iraq.

The U.S. Military’s Occupation of Iraq

Following the invasion, Major General David Petraeus’ 101st Airborne Division was

responsible for controlling Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest city, located north of Baghdad. Petraeus

had instituted policies in Mosul that worked to integrate former Baathists into the new state by

quickly setting up local governments and rebuilding institutions.482 This approach was vastly

different from how other division commanders were operating in Iraq; while Petraeus focused on

traditional counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics, such as protecting the population and building civil

society, most division commanders focused on conventional kill and capture operations of

insurgents.483 During the first months of the occupation the 4th ID and the 82nd Airborne Division,

478 Feith, War and Decision, 430-431. 479 Ibid, 431. 480 Stansfield, “The Transition to Democracy in Iraq,” 141. 481 West, The Strongest Tribe, 28. 482 Paula. Broadwell, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus (New York, NY: The Penguin Press, 2012),

190-191; Cloud and Jaffe, The Fourth Star, 131; Kaplan, The Insurgents, 75-76. 483 Cloud and Jaffe, The Fourth Star, 131-132; Ricks, The Gamble, 20-21.

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operating in the Sunni Triangle,484 relied on conventional tactics that had little effect on the

emerging insurgency. A RAND Corporation study on COIN in Iraq explains:

[U.S. forces in the Sunni Triangle] prevailed in most traditional tactical

engagements, but the insurgency continued unabated because the insurgents

continued to regenerate and replace their losses from within Iraq and outside Iraq.

Moreover, these tactical, kick-down-the door operations often increased hostility

to U.S. forces among Sunni Arabs, who saw themselves as oppressed by a foreign

occupation.485

Moreover, Ricks argues that the tactics used by the 4th ID, under Major General

Raymond Odierno, in 2003 were particularly detrimental to the pacification of Iraq.486 The 4th ID

“earned a reputation as heavy-handed, kicking in doors and rounding up tens of thousands of

military-aged males.”487 This policy of detention en masse led to the Abu Ghraib abuses – where

one of the causes of prison abuse found was the over-crowding of the prison.488 Petraeus’

relatively successful application of COIN theory in Mosul was indeed the outlier of how U.S.

forces were conducting themselves in 2003.

When CPA Orders no. 1 and no. 2 were announced, however, they had the potential to

terminate Petraeus’ initiatives, as many of the local institutions set up in Mosul were run by

former Baath Party members, who would be forced out if Order no. 1 was implemented.489

Moreover, a disproportionate amount of soldiers in the Iraqi Army resided in Mosul, resulting in

mass rioting with the announcement of Order no. 2.490 Petraeus immediately went to Baghdad to

protest these decisions to Bremer. He was successful in procuring exemptions for his AO (Area

484 A name given the geographic area in Iraq in between the cities of Ramadi (to the west), Tikrit (to the north), and

Baghdad (to the east). Mostly populated by Sunnis, this area quickly became the focal point of the Sunni insurgency

and the most dangerous area for coalition forces. (Kaplan, The Insurgents, 79) 485 Pirnie and O’Connell. Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 37. 486 Ricks, The Gamble, 107-109. 487 Ibid, 107. 488 Ibid, 108. 489 Mark Bowden, "The Professor of War," Vanity Fair, May 2010. 490 Allawi, The Occupation of Iraq, 157.

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of Operations) from Orders no. 1.491 Through the summer of 2003, as the insurgency began to

grip other parts of Iraq it remained at bay in Mosul.492 Despite overwhelming success in

pacifying the area relative to other parts of Iraq, applying theories of COIN that stressed securing

the population and giving them all (including the Sunnis) a stake in the new regime, Petraeus’

tactics were not replicated elsewhere in Iraq.493

Ultimately, Bremer’s authority would trump Petraeus’ and Order no. 1 was implemented

in late 2003, undoing much of the progress achieved in Mosul.494 Frustrated, Petraeus told one of

Bremer’s assistants that the “CPA’s policies are killing our troopers.”495 Indeed, by late 2003, it

was clear that the seeds of an insurgency had been sown, as coalition casualties continued to

climb in 2004, despite a drawdown of troops in Iraq. (Figure 4)

Figure 4: Hostile Fatalities Sustained by Coalition Forces, Iraq 2003-2004496

Little progress had been made throughout the occupation in 2003. A poll conducted over

the winter of 2003-2004 found that 49% of U.S. troops in Iraq described their unit’s morale as

491 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 77. 492 Ibid, 75-76. 493 Cloud and Jaffe, The Fourth Star, 139. 494 Ibid, 140-142. 495 Nagl, Knife Fights, 77. 496 Data used from: Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. “Iraq Coalition Casualties: Fatalities by Year and Month.”

http://icasualties.org/Iraq/ByMonth.aspx.

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low.497 In December 2003, the final nail in the coffin for the 101st Airborne’s progress in Mosul

came when their tour ended. The 17,000-strong division was replaced with a force of just 8,000,

a force that implemented the widely-used conventional tactics, resulting in Mosul disintegrating

into violence in 2004.498 This was part of the first troop rotation – the largest since WWII – of the

Iraq War, which took place over the first few months of 2004. It replaced all 130,000 combat

troops in Iraq with 110,000 fresh troops.499 On top of a reduction of quantity, there was also a

reduction in quality. The out-going force contained twenty-five percent reservists, whereas the

in-coming force contained forty percent reservists.500 An Army War College study would later

report that “Rotating nearly the entire force at once degraded capabilities… [and that] may have

contributed to the loss of control over several cities in the Sunni Triangle.”501

The situation in Iraq deteriorated into 2004 and 2005 as coalition forces failed to break

the insurgency. What is clear from a thorough examination of the first year of the war was that

there are many decisions that gave way to the rise of the insurgency. The lack of troops in the

invasion to begin with was compounded when follow-on forces (the 1st Cavalry Division) were

cancelled at the behest of the OSD. Moreover, the lack of a coherent strategy for Phase IV

resulted in the hastily-created CPA run by Paul Bremer. The inability of the CPA to coordinate

with the military as well as the State department led to the implementation of disastrous policies

of de-Baathification and disbandment of the Iraqi military. Finally, the inability of Lieutenant

General Sanchez to provide an over-arching strategy or to recognize successful application of

COIN tactics over conventional tactics characterized a military command structure of inertia and

497 Ricks, Fiasco, 309. 498 Linda Robinson, Tell Me How This Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search For a Way Out of Iraq (New

York, NY: Public Affairs, 2008), 72. 499 Esther Pan, “Iraq: U.S. Troop Rotation,” Council on Foreign Relations, February 2, 2004. 500 Ibid. 501 Quoted in Ricks, Fiasco, 323-324.

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aloofness. The question remains, what conclusion of civil-military relations can be drawn from

this period. To do so, we must turn to the concepts of strategic coordination and structural

competence, as laid out by strategic assessment theory.

Chapter Eight: Revisiting Strategic Assessment Theory

Risa Brooks’ theory of strategic assessment, outlined in chapter four, provides a

theoretical framework with which to evaluate a state’s civil-military relations and how it affects

the quality of strategy created during a conflict. This chapter will conclude part two by applying

the empirical analysis of civil-military relations during the invasion of Iraq and the initial months

of the occupation, presented in the previous three chapters, to strategic assessment theory. To

achieve this, first, Brooks’ conclusion from her own case study on the same topic will be

examined. Next, an objection to the classification of one of the attributes by Brooks – structural

competence – will be offered. Overlooked in Brooks’ analysis was the inability of the U.S.

military to function self-critically and to adapt, resulting its failure to identify the impending

insurgency in Iraq and to meet it with appropriate strategy and tactics. This objection ultimately

shows that the conclusion to draw from Iraq is not simply that overbearing civilians caused all

the defects regarding civil-military relations. Rather, there were problems regarding the U.S.

military’s conduct as well. It is important to flesh out these shortfalls in structural competence in

order to provide accurate conclusions and prescriptions concerning civil-military relations.

Finally, concluding remarks will be given regarding thoughts and observations on U.S. civil-

military relations.

Brooks’ Conclusions and the Need to Revisit Structural Competence

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One of the case studies that Risa Brooks applies strategic assessment theory to is “Post-

Conflict Planning for the Iraq War.”502 Brooks offers a circumspect analysis of civil-military

relations in the run-up to the Iraq War and its initial phases. The main conclusions of Brooks’

case study on US civil-military relations theory is that it can best be characterized as a one of

political dominance and high preference divergence.503 This is in line with the empirical analysis

of chapters five, six, and seven offered above; Rumsfeld exerted strict civilian control all whilst

attempting to implement a policy at considerable odds to the military. With respect to evaluating

strategic assessment, Brooks concludes that this type of civil-military relations led to sufficient

information-sharing and authorization processes.504 The deficiency in strategic assessment lies

with poor strategic coordination – a result of Rumsfeld’s inability to manage dissent, which

created a planning process that lacked meaningful debate, by discounting competing views.505

Brooks offers three main conclusions in explaining why strategic assessment during Iraq was

insufficient as a whole:

First, individuals with knowledge of the postwar situation were not

rigorously engaged in consultative processes, and those who might have offered

alternative perspective faced significant incentives to engage in self-censorship…

second, as a result of unquestioned assumptions and Rumsfeld’s efforts to make

the war plan conform to his concept of transformation, civilian officials did not

press their military subordinates to emphasize the postwar situations… Finally,

the absence of constructive dialogue generate incentives for Rumsfeld to resort to

other methods to persuade his critics of his war-fighting philosophy.506

This is, indeed, an apt summary of some of the problems that plagued civil-military

relations, and thus, strategic assessment during this period. However, notably absent from

Brooks’ analysis on Iraq is any examination of structural competence during this period. Recall

502 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, Chapter 7. 503 Ibid, 233-235. 504 Ibid, 235-236. 505 Ibid, 237-251. 506 Ibid, 252.

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that structural competence is the attribute within strategic assessment that includes a military’s

“quality of organizational structures and conventions devoted to self-critical analysis and

evaluations of a military’s own activities.”507 Moreover, that structural competence involves

assessing intangible factors, such as, “skill and quality of troops, morale, and the rigor of

training, leadership, and doctrine.”508 The only reference to structural competence in the chapter

on Iraq comes in footnote number 23, where Brooks writes:

With regard to structural competence, I predicted in chapter 2 that,

independent of the military’s absolute level of competence, political dominance

and high preference divergence allow for improvements in internal monitoring and

in intelligence analysis of foreign military capabilities. While there may have been

improvement, there is not clear evidence to support or disprove this in the U.S. as

of this writing. Consistent with the parameters for the shorter studies laid out in

chapter 2’s research design, I emphasize the attributes that seemed most

significant in the case – in this one, strategic coordination.509

There are a few issues that merit discussion here. It appears that Brooks excluded

structural competence from her analysis for a few reasons. First, she theorizes that improved

structural competence would not have made a significant difference in strategic assessment given

the civil-military pattern. Moreover, she cautiously states that at the time of her writing, 2006-

2007,510 there is a not enough evidence to support an increase in structural competence in the

U.S. military. And furthermore, an analysis of structural competence is beyond the confines set

out in her research design.

While Brooks is correct in stating that under the theoretical parameters of strategic

assessment theory, improved structural competence will have little effect on strategic assessment

507 Ibid, 38. 508 Ibid. 509 Ibid, 236. 510 While the book was published in 2008, it is safe to assume its writing was concluded at some point in 2007,

likely written throughout 2006. There are no sources used from 2008 and the only sources cited from 2007 are from

Brooks’ own work. The rest of the sources used are from 2006 or earlier.

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as a whole under political dominance and high preference divergence, she fails to reference the

possibility of poor structural competence. Indeed, strikingly, Brooks assumes, without

explanation, that structural competence in the U.S. military had improved during this time. This

is a vital omission. I disagree with the assertion that structural competence of the military was

adequate during this period. The fact that the U.S. military failed to predict and – when it

occurred, identify – an insurgency in Iraq, represents a failure of structural competence.

Moreover, the length of time it took to correct this error speaks further to this point. Since,

Brooks’ writing, there is now an adequate amount of clear evidence that makes it possible to

assess structural competence.

Chapter Three argued that Andrew Krepinevich’s book The Army and Vietnam – which

argued that some of the blame for losing the Vietnam War lay with the military – ended his

military career. The point of including this anecdote was to show the military’s insular and

conservative nature can often make it impermeable to self-criticism. But, as time passed, more

criticism of Vietnam-era generals arose, and it became more acceptable for those within the

military to criticize the military’s role during Vietnam (i.e. H.R. McMaster’s Dereliction of

Duty). This same phenomenon is slowly occurring with respect to the Iraq War, which would

explain why an insufficient amount of evidence existed when Brooks was writing the case study.

Therefore, it is important to revisit the concept of structural competence of the U.S.

military during this time period. This is important to the larger question of civil-military relations

because, leaving structural competence untouched – as Brooks does – can vastly affect the

conclusions drawn from civil-military relations during the Iraq War. While Brooks’ conclusions

regarding strategic coordination and her rightful criticism of many of Rumsfeld’s policies and

decisions stand up to empirical rigor, the exclusions of structural competence from her overall

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analysis misses half of the civil-military equation. Moreover, this conclusion glosses over some

of the significant missteps made by the military during this time. Although a thorough audit of

the record of civilian decision-makers was given, missing is the same attention given to the

military. From here, a more circumspect conclusion can be made regarding what the main

impediments were to healthy strategic assessment during this time. In analyzing structural

competence, the goal is not to mitigate the severity of deficiencies in strategic coordination that

existed. Rather, the hope is that a more thorough understanding of the civil-military relationship

during this time can be provided.

Structural Competence of the U.S. Military

Drawing from Brooks’ aforementioned definition of factors pertinent to assessing the

quality of structural competence, this section will look at the rigor of training, leadership, and

doctrine of the U.S. military at this time. Examining these areas reveals that there were problems

within the military in all three of these components of structural competence, which had a

detrimental effect on the military’s ability to prepare for an insurgency, detect an insurgency, and

adapt to properly combat an insurgency. Specifically, the problems regarding these three factors

all speak to the propensity of the U.S. military to focus too much on its efforts to fight

conventional wars. This is problematic for structural competence in the post-9/11 era, where the

two wars fought were of an unconventional nature. Together this demonstrates that there were

pathologies, not only within both the civilian OSD, but also within the military. By parsing

through these three factors, it can be better discerned how exactly structural competence had

adverse effects on the overall strategic assessment. Finally, a conclusion will be offered with

respect to how the inclusion of structural competence affects Brooks’ overall conclusion of

strategic assessment for this case.

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Concerning training, the main deficit that exists within the U.S. military is that they train

for the war they are best at fighting rather than training for the war they are most likely to fight.

In David Petraeus’ dissertation, he lamented the military refusing to prepare for

counterinsurgency and low-intensity combat operations, under the logic that if the military was

incapable of intervening in these types of conflicts, they would not be ordered to.511 What

characterized the post-Vietnam era was a newfound reluctance to get involved in another

insurgency war and thus to focus on what U.S. military excelled at – conventional warfare.512

This focus throughout the late-70’s and 80’s proved useful during the Gulf War, in which the

U.S.-led coalition eviscerated the Iraqi Army in less than 100 hours. This success led to the

creation of the Powell Doctrine, which sought to enshrine this focus on short, decisive, and

overwhelming engagements as rules for deploying force.513 While many within the military were

content to focus on what they had succeeded in – i.e. Desert Storm-like engagements – others

saw that this type of warfare was unlikely in the future. Indeed, this type of thinking was what

drove the push behind the RMA (see Chapter Five).

John Nagl, who commanded an armour platoon to great success in the Gulf War, noted

shortly thereafter: “The rest of the world had seen the ease with which America’s conventional

military forces cut through the Iraqi military. They would have to be crazy to fight us that way

again.”514 This proved an apt prediction, as throughout the 1990s the U.S. military engaged in

multiple unconventional conflicts, such as Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. Nonetheless, the

sentiment that this type of conflict should not be a top priority remain in the military. In the

1990s the Army began to term these types of conflict, formerly known of low-intensity or

511 Petraeus, The American Military and Lessons of Vietnam, 287. 512 Ricks, The Generals, 339-340. 513 Colin L. Powell, “U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead,” Foreign Affairs, 71, No. 5 (1992), 38-39. 514 Nagl, Knife Fights, 30.

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irregular conflict, as military operations other than war (MOOTW, pronounced moot-wah).515

This nomenclature was adopted derisively, in order to ensure COIN, peace-keeping, and nation-

building types of operation not be confused with the Army’s primary task. In the mid 1990’s, the

CJCS, General John Shalikashvili, was widely known to have said, “Real men don’t do moot-

wah.”516

This wide-spread sentiment in the military – particularly in the Army – had a marked

adverse effect on training. In the late-1990s top generals demanded that the army field manual

omit instruction on MOOTW, meaning Army units could only train for these type of mission

after it was decided they would be deployed to them.517 The type of training missions that the

military mainly conducted operated on strict parameters of conventional warfare. For example, in

July 2002, the U.S. military conducted a large-scale war game to simulate a conflict with Iraq.518

In the exercise, a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General, Paul Van Riper, commanded the Red

Force (i.e. the opposition force) to fight against the Blue Force (the U.S.).519 Van Riper used

unconventional tactics – characteristic of what insurgents would go onto use in Iraq– to handily

defeat the Blue Force.520 However, the managers of the exercise, restarted the game and wrote

his tactics out of the rules of the game, thus ensuring a Blue Force victory.521 Even after Iraq, not

much had changed in military training. Nagl, who deployed Iraq in 2004 as operation officer for

a tank battalion,522 noted that his soldiers and staff had absolutely no training in the type of tasks

515 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 45. 516 Ibid. 517 Ibid, 45-46. 518 Fred Kaplan, “War-Gamed,” Slate, March 28, 2003. 519 Ibid. 520 Ibid. 521 Ibid. 522 For an account of the challenges Nagl faced on this tour see: Peter Maass, “Professor Nagl’s War.” New York

Times Magazine, January 11, 2004.

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they were about to undertake.523 Moreover, Nagl notes that mere months before their deployment

they were still training in tank-to-tank combat.524 In 2005, artillery officers being sent to Iraq

were being trained in use of mortar fire, despite the fact that such a tactic was inconceivable to

use in urban warfare among civilians.525 This disconnect between the U.S. military’s training

regimen and the war they would fight Iraq undoubtedly contributed the inability to quell the

insurgency in the early months of the occupation.

While the problems that mired training adversely affected many of the rank-and-file

soldiers themselves, there existed problems too with the top leadership in the U.S. military. In

Chapters Six and Seven, which focused on the events leading up to the invasion and the

subsequent occupation, two specific military leaders were examined: Tommy Franks and

Ricardo Sanchez. Their short-comings as leaders were indeed conspicuous. Franks’ lack of

attention given to Phase IV planning as well as Sanchez’s inability to work with the CPA and

provide a central military strategy for the occupation, show just two examples of failed

leadership – these two examples are of central leadership positions which speaks to the larger

problem within the military. A question that should be asked within the context of structural

competence is: what do these two examples say about U.S. military leadership in a broader

sense? Neither of these leaders were removed from their positions, on top of the fact that they

were selected for some of the most important military commands in the first place. What are

some possible explanations for this deficiency in an area that the military places heavy emphasis

on?

523 Nagl, Knife Fights, 69. 524 Ibid, 66, 74. 525 Kaplan, The Insurgents, 132.

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One explanation is provided in Thomas Ricks’ book The Generals: American Military

Command from World War II to Today. In it, Ricks argues that there has been a decline in the

quality of leadership of the U.S. Army’s general corps.526 Perhaps the main reason for this, Ricks

argues, is that the Army abandoned a policy of relieving generals for inadequate leadership

during combat.527 In World War II, relief of a commanding general was common practice, since

then it has become extremely rare, to the detriment of accountability for generals.528 Another

explanation comes from an article by Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling, who published a

scathing criticism of U.S. generalship in Iraq in the Armed Forces Journal – which ultimately

ended his career in the Army.529 Yingling criticized U.S. military generals for a host of failures

regarding Iraq, including a failure to: press for more troops; plan for post-combat stabilization;

adapt to the demands of an insurgency; and for not accurately portraying to war to the public and

Congress.530 Moreover, Yingling argues along the same line as Ricks that there exists inadequate

accountability of generals, saying, “As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far

greater consequences than a general who loses a war.”531 Further damaging its future prospects,

the military has failed to reward its officers that engage in critical thinking about warfare with

promotions, resulting in a ‘brain drain’ in its officer corps.532

Leadership within the U.S. military was evidently far from flawless. Analyzing doctrine

serves as a connection between training and leadership. Doctrine is set by the leadership and has

a direct impact on training. Therefore, unsurprisingly, the shortfalls in training and leadership

526 Ricks, The Generals, 447. 527 Ibid, 451-452. 528 Ibid. 529 Nagl, Knife Fights, 146-148. 530 Paul Yingling, “A Failure in Generalship,” Armed Forces Journal, May 1, 2007. 531 Ibid. 532 David Barno, “Military Brain Drain,” Foreign Policy, February 13, 2013; Darrell Fawley, “A Junior Officer's

Perspective on Brain Drain,” Small Wars Journal, June 17, 2013.

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outlined above, point to problems with doctrine as well. The most glaring error in terms of

military doctrine was the lack of an up-to-date field manual for counterinsurgency. What this

meant was that even those military commanders who did recognize an insurgency existed in Iraq

did not have any tangible guidelines or rules to implement counterinsurgency strategies. The

Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine had not been updated since 1982.533 It was not until the end

of 2006 that the Army finally republished a new COIN doctrine, under the leadership of David

Petraeus.534 The fact that it took a full three years into the Iraq War before the strategy of how to

fight an insurgency was codified to meet modern demands, speaks to lack of adaptability of the

U.S. military.

Finally, it is worth touching on the more practical aspect of structural competence,

meaning the actual tangible strength of the military. Brooks notes that part of structural

competence is that militaries have an accurate understanding of their capabilities relative to an

opponent or task.535 Here too, there was a lack of clear thinking by some within the U.S. military.

In Chapter Six, Andrew Bacevich was quoted as saying that General Shinseki’s testimony, which

stated several hundred thousand troops were needed for occupying Iraq, amounted to a criticism

of the invasion because these troops simply did not exist. In an analysis of the size of the U.S.

military with respect to deployment, Bruce Berkowitz calculates, the U.S. Army could only

maintain a force of 85,000 soldiers in Iraq.536 Berkowitz explains that this number can be

expanded by: “stretching deployments, increasing their frequency, or reducing time to reset.

533 Cloud and Jaffe, The Fourth Star, 217. 534 West, The Strongest Tribe, 120-121. 535 Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 38-39. 536 Bruce Berkowitz, “The Numbers Racket,” The American Interest, 2, No. 1 (2006).

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None alters the basic mathematics, and each carries a cost.”537 In the course of the war the

military would have to engage in all three to meet the demands of the war.538

What is clear from a brief analysis of the training, leadership, and doctrine of the U.S.

military during this time period is that serious defects existed in all three. As strategic assessment

theory outlines, these are key components to evaluating the level of structural competence in a

military. Thus, it is safe to conclude that there were significant issues facing the quality of

structural competence of the U.S. military directly preceding and during the Iraq War. The trend

common in all three of the factors discussed is that U.S. military was simply inflexible in

adapting to the evolving insurgency. A lack of adequate training that reflected the combat

environment, leaders that could provide a guiding principle, and a functional doctrine that could

be used, all resulted in the military failing to meet the demands of the Iraq War. This inability to

adapt is perhaps one of the most crucial aspects that underpins the concept of structural

competence. Military historian Sir Michael Howard once wrote, “in structuring and preparing an

army for war, you can be clear that you will not get it precisely right, but the important thing to

ensure is that it is not too far wrong, so that you can put it right quickly.”539 Evidently, the U.S.

military in Iraq was prepared far too wrong, and failed to put it right quickly enough.

Accounting for structural competence would not greatly alter the main findings of

Brooks’ case study on Iraq. Nonetheless, excluding it paints a more optimistic picture of strategic

assessment than the empirical record shows. The characterization of political dominance and

high preference divergence still remains as the most apt characterization of civil-military

537 Ibid. 538 Bob Woodward, The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster,

2009), 65-67, 341. 539 Nagl, Knife Fights, 37.

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relations. Nonetheless, an exclusion of structural competence from an analysis of strategic

assessment at this time leads to a conclusion that skews the blame too far toward the civilians.

An inclusion of structural competence allows for a more measured conclusion in what went

wrong with civil-military relations during this time. Putting the sole blame on Rumsfeld and the

OSD, is indeed a convenient narrative because it has a very simple solution – a change of an

administration would constitute a fix to civil-military relations. However, when structural

competence is taken into account, the fix becomes less simple.

Concluding Remarks

It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to draw singular lessons or rules of civil-

military relations from the case of the U.S. military and Iraq. There are a few limitations that

must be acknowledged when attempting synthesize the conclusions of a single case. First, neither

the civilians nor the military should be seen as monolithic institutions. This can easily lead to

overgeneralizations of the overall positions of the institutions. Second, individual agency

matters. Certain decisions can be narrowed down to certain individuals, meaning the result of

these decisions should be seen as simply the consequence of that individual. Third, the black box

of decision-making clouds our ability to completely understand what occurred. Although the

records and evidence that exists on Iraq is substantial, we must still be wary of holes in the

information. Fourth, it is important to remember the individual context of a case study.

Replicating laboratory-setting that can control all variables that affect civil-military relations is

near-impossible. It is easy of falling into the trap of viewing a case study simply within narrow

temporal boundaries, however, historical context is extremely important to a reasoned analysis.

Together, these show that civil-military relations is a complex affair. Conclusions drawn from a

single case should be nuanced in attempting to argue a particular prescriptive solution.

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The issue of drawing a correct conclusion is important for civil-military relations because

it is common to use historical analogies to justify a position. For example, Michael Desch used

the pathologies of the initial years of the Iraq War as evidence that civilians should adopt a more

hands off approach to the military.540 However, Peter Feaver has argued the exact opposite,

stating that the prosecution of the war only improved following the Surge decision, which was a

result of strengthened civilian control.541 Moreover, Feaver explains how there are two camps of

U.S. civil-military relations: the “civilian supremacy” school (i.e. Feaver, Cohen, Hoffman, and

Owens) and the “professional supremacy” school (i.e. Huntington, Desch, and Herspring).542 The

former argues for more civilian control of the U.S. military and latter argues for less. Each side

has attempted to claim the Iraq War as evidence to vindicate their arguments.543 This

disagreement resulted in a heated correspondence between Feaver and Desch in the journal

International Security over this topic.544 Richard Kohn notes that even outside of academia, the

narrative that “The U.S. military did everything it was supposed to in Iraq [and] the rest of the

U.S. government didn’t show up,” is becoming more popular, both inside the military and in the

public.545

This dichotomous debate over which school of thought can claim the Iraq War as

evidence runs contrary to my above-stated concerns in drawing conclusions. Each side can point

to particular pieces of evidence regarding Iraq. The professional supremacy school certainly has

grounds in arguing that the overbearing approach by Rumsfeld and others within the OSD

540 Desch, “Bush and the Generals,” 108. 541 Peter D. Feaver, “The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision,” International

Security, 45, No. 4 (2011), 90. 542 Ibid, 89-90. 543 Ibid. 544 Richard K. Betts, Michael C. Desch, and Peter D. Feaver, “Civilians, Soldiers, and the Iraq Surge Decision,”

International Security, 36, No. 3 (Winter 2011/2012), 179-199. 545 Richard H. Kohn, "Coming Soon: A Crisis in Civil-Military Relations," World Affairs, 170, no. 3 (2008), 73.

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contributed to many of the setbacks during the war. Conversely, the civilian school can

successfully argue that there were serious problems that lie solely within the military at this time.

My analysis, using strategic assessment theory, is that the evidence shows that any

comprehensive conclusion must straddle both aspects of these schools. With respect professional

supremacy school, it is clear that there is considerable danger to centralizing authority within the

OSD and sidelining the concerns of the JCS. However, I remain unconvinced that an application

of more objective civilian control over the military during this period would have solved all the

deficiencies in the strategies assessment. Moreover, while this paper focused solely on Iraq with

respect to Rumsfeld’s tenure, there were other policy areas where his management-style

excelled.546

Although this mediation between the two schools may seem frustrating to some, it is the

conclusion that best holds up to academic scrutiny. Moreover, there are still arguments that can

be made as regards prescriptive solutions for civil-military relations, but said solutions must

move passed the debate over more or less civilian control. There are three lessons that can be

drawn from an analysis of the strategic assessment process. First, the military must be prodded to

prepare for the types conflict they are likely to face. Iraq will forever be marked as a conflict that

caught U.S. military woefully unprepared to fight a counterinsurgency campaign. As Andrew

Bacevich argues, the question of what to prepare for cannot be left entirely up to either civilians

or the military, as the answer to this question can have a profound effect on the future of U.S.

foreign policy.547 Second, Iraq shows the importance of a healthy relationship between the CJCS

and the secretary of defense. The strength of the positions are largely contingent based on the

546 Robert D. Kaplan, “What Rumsfeld Got Right,” The Atlantic, July 2008. 547 Andrew J. Bacevich, “The Petraeus Doctrine,” The Atlantic, October 1, 2008.

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individuals who hold them. General Richard Myers’ pattern of deference to Rumsfeld was a

major impediment to the formulation of a quality strategy in Iraq. Presidents should be wary of

allowing the secretary of defense to shut out the military from the most important decisions. In

the future, more due diligence must be considered in appointment to both these positions;

particularly by Congress, who has the power to confirm appointees of both these roles. Third, is

that there needs be more explicit debates over matters of civil-military relations within

administrations. Whatever the chosen delineation between civilian and military is, it must be

clear and justified to the specific context.

Within the larger political context in the U.S., the Iraq War remains anathema to

politicians of all stripes. At the time of this writing, the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign is

embroiled with questions whether or not prospective candidates would have invaded Iraq

knowing what we now know.548 The only politically reasonable answer appears to be a

categorical no.549 However, presidents never have the benefit of hindsight, and if the Iraq War

shows anything it is the importance of foresight. It is essential that questions regarding civil-

military relations enter the political discourse.

Presently, civil-military relations remains a pertinent topic in American politics. As the

post-9/11 wars wind down it is clear that U.S. civil-military relations is at a cross-roads. There

has been recent resurgence of debate over civil-military relations in popular media. Significantly,

prominent commentators and academics have written essays arguing that substantial cleavages

548 Peter Beinart, “The Problem With Asking Republicans, Would You Have Invaded Iraq?,” The Atlantic, May 18,

2015. 549 Ibid.

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exist in American society about the role the military should play politically.550 However, the

debates needed to answer questions of civil-military relations remain politically problematic for

politicians. Nonetheless, it is crucial that these debates occur, lest the mistakes of the past be

repeated. These mistakes should not be taken as literal rules to follow from past cases. Rather,

the lesson-learned must be that civil-military relations matters. Particularly during times of

conflict, because producing a quality strategy is often contingent on quality civil-military

relations. Predicting when the next war is or how it will be fought is difficult; what is certain is

that there will be another war. Although it is not an easy debate to have, it remains a critical one

to ensuring the U.S. military will be successful in future endeavors.

550 See: James Jay Carafano, “Memo to the President: How to Transform Civil-Military Relations,” The National

Interest, April 24, 2015; James Fallows, “The Tragedy of the American Military,” The Atlantic, January/February

2015; Harvey M. Sapolsky, “What Americans Don’t Understand About Their Own Military,” Defense One, May 6,

2015; Stephen M. Walt, “Two Chief Petty Officers Walk Into a Bar,” Foreign Policy, April 7, 2014.

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