#Caspar weinberger the next war pdf full

Ticker tape parades may make great theater, but they do not offer the marked distinction of the right wars to be fought. Simply put, there is no decisive engagement that can permanently secure interests.

Second, decisive engagement is not always an option, and even if it is achieved, success is not the painful-but-final victory its proponents believe it to be.

#Caspar weinberger the next war pdf full

First, the statesman is never endowed with sufficient information to determine endstates with full clarity. The victory-defeat approach makes two errors in its underlying assumptions. It is distinct from the victory-defeat approach whereby successful strategy identifies political endstates and then achieves these goals via decisive engagement. Instead, decisionmakers should conceive of the use of national power in terms of advancing interests at acceptable costs. This view perpetuates a false dichotomy between clear goals that yield victory, on the one hand, and muddled pursuits that are inconclusive or end in defeat, on the other. However, the failure to recognize the limits of this doctrine persists and has led to confusion and frustration by citizens and policymakers alike.Īmericans are inheritors of this distinctly Western strategic culture marked by both an optimism in the ability to foresee endstates and an emphasis on the binary distinction between victory and defeat. This tradition draws its roots from the military revolution of the Napoleonic era, and it remains a valuable foundation for strategic thought. This is not a new articulation of strategy but, rather, sustains a storied tradition dating back centuries-namely, effective strategy is that which promotes clear desired endstates and then pursues these goals through decisive engagement. 4 Scarred from the mixed results of the post-9/11 wars, many Americans would prefer a ticker tape standard: unless troops can return as victors in a welcome home parade, the war should not be fought. 3 Polls indicate that most Americans have soured on what politicians and pundits on both sides of the political spectrum derisively term forever wars. The Weinberger Doctrine continues to figure prominently in considerations of strategy today. Bush gleefully declared, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.” 2

In the aftermath of the Gulf War, President George H.W. Today, this way of thinking is known as the Powell Doctrine, in reference to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell. triumph in the Gulf War as a vindication of this doctrine. 1 Moreover, the use of force must meet six criteria: vital national interests, wholehearted commitment, clearly defined political and military objectives, congruent ends and means, domestic support, and last resort. The Secretary argued that combat forces should be deployed resolutely with “the sole object of winning” in cases where vital national interests are at stake. Perhaps most central to Secretary Weinberger’s speech was the Vietnam War, an event that two decades later still struck deep into the institutional fabric of the U.S. In Lebanon, however, the bombing of a Marine Corps barracks complex in Beirut killed 305 troops and civilians, including 241 Americans, and led to the withdrawal of the multinational peacekeeping force months later. An invasion of the small West Indies country of Grenada wrested regime control from the one-party socialist People’s Revolutionary Government in favor of a relatively stable democracy. On November 28, 1984, then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger appeared before the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to deliver a speech titled “The Uses of Military Power.” The previous year had brought mixed results in the deployment of U.S.