In the current war on terrorism, the President of the United States has specifically identified two former wartime enemies of the United States as members of an evil axis. The regimes ruling these two states (North Korea and Iraq) are the same ones...
This monograph analyzes the American practice of the operational art during the Vietnam War. It focuses on Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) from 1965 to 1968. This question provides valuable relevant lessons to current military operations...
Limited war and its emphasis on the deliberate limitation of the objectives sought in a conflict differs sharply with its counterpart total war, which demands unlimited objectives. The distinction between these two forms of war can be traced...
The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon left the American public in a state of anguish and anger. With the debris still smoldering in the streets of New York, Bush stated that the United States and all those who want global peace...
This monograph examines the role of the operational level of war to translate strategic objectives into tactical missions. Evidence exists in both the joint and specific service doctrines which suggests that there is a lack of commonality in the...
This monograph highlights the lack of a doctrinal course of action development process for creating campaign plans. Such a process is needed due to the inexperience of both senior leaden and middle-grade staff officers with the operational level of...
This monograph discusses the role of intelligence in support of operational art. Intelligence support at all levels of war is critical for the commander to successfully apply force to achieve the established goals and objectives. This is...
Soon after the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, the Kurdish people of northern Iraq rebelled against the regime of Saddam Hussein. The rebellion was violently crushed by the Iraqi military resulting in over 1 million Kurdish refugees throughout...
History provides many examples of tension between operational and tactical commanders. Not all of these conflicts can be dismissed as matters of personality or competency. An alternative explanation is that the distinct perspectives of those...
The United States conducts Host Nation Police Advisory (HNPA) missions, as a subset of Security Sector Reform (SSR), to improve the rule of law and legitimacy of failing and failed states. To develop a more effective HNPA program, the U.S....
Sanctuary has been a factor in war throughout history. The availability of sanctuary to an enemy can often limit the ability of friendly forces to achieve tactical success in military operations. Prior to the advent of airpower, combatants could...
This monograph discusses five considerations for campaign planners to use in planning attacks on an enemy's command and control (C2) system. Development of the considerations focuses on the top military and political leadership as the most...
This monograph explores the strategic dilemma facing the Australian Strategic Planning System in the post Cold War environment. Previously the Australian Government and Australian Defense Organization produced Defense White Papers to provide an...
The marked changed in the types of wars fought over the last ten years in Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated the need for commanders at echelons below the campaign level to develop and continuously refine operational approaches to guide their...
This monograph addresses the issue of Intervention Exit Strategies for U.S. Army forces. U.S Army forces are as of April 1999, involved in Peace Enforcement Operations in Bosnia. It is an open ended operation with no declared termination strategy....
This paper addresses the current misunderstanding surrounding the term known as strategic maneuver. Strategic maneuver is considered many different things to include: preclusion operations, moving units from theater to theater, and the use of...
With the introduction of new capstone doctrine, the U.S. Army should invest more time in the formal education of future leaders. This study demonstrates the importance of operational art, the theory used to develop campaigns and major operations in...
Throughout history, targeting in military operations has been a critical function in achieving victory on the battlefield. The process of identifying, prioritizing, and attacking targets in accordance with the commander’s intent becomes even more...
First introduced into U.S. Army doctrine in 1982, the operational level of war developed to remove politics from an inherently political process. American writers absorbed Soviet writing on the subject and translated it into existing doctrine...