PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE, LOOKING TO THE PAST: HISTORY, THEORY, AND DOCTRINE IN THE U.S. ARMY

The Army is in transition reflecting on the experiences from recent combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan while preparing for “evolving threats.” This is not a new predicament. In the past, the Army has been able to effect change by drawing lessons from its experience, from theory, and articulating institutional ideas about the nature of future warfare in doctrine. The most recent evolution of the Army’s operations doctrine is Unified Land Operations; however, this doctrine does not explicitly identify a clear threat focus and does not appear to have an explicit overarching theory of war. Without a clear threat focus or an overarching theory of war this raises concerns about the Army’s readiness to face future threats. At the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, officers receive instruction on a viable relationship between history, theory, and doctrine. However, a clear-cut relationship between history, theory, and doctrine development is not evident. In fact, the relationship between history, theory and doctrine development for the U.S. Army operations doctrine today is an iterative, organic process that has not yielded an overarching theory of war.
Analysis of the U.S. Army’s FM 100-5 development from 1976 to 1986 illustrated that historically key individuals have influenced the Army’s operations doctrine. Often the ideas developed by the key individuals emerged from study of military history, warfare theorists, personal experiences, and lessons learned. The dynamic interactions amongst the diverse sources of influence gave rise to an iterative, organic process similar to Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm shift where new paradigms replaced old ones. In the iterative and evolutionary process, history, theory, personal experiences, and lessons learned interacted to create the new paradigm. Once the Army accepted the new paradigm, a rewrite of the doctrine ensued. In rewriting the Army’s operations doctrine, FM 100-5, the Army leadership explicitly demonstrated that they knew “why, when, and how” to change to insure the Army remained effective.
In 2013, after eleven years of war against an unanticipated unconventional adversary, the Army once more finds itself debating and theorizing on needed change to face future threats. Because the Army’s concept for future warfare does not identify either an explicit threat focus or theory, does not imply the Army will be ill prepared to meet future challenges. The Army will need to assume risk commensurate with the requirements levied against it. No matter what the Army prepares for it will be wrong because of the usual dynamics of friction and chance in warfare. The Army’s challenge is to not to be so wrong that it cannot quickly adapt. The Army’s operations doctrine must strike a balance such that military professionals can effectively interpret events, guide action and connect tactical actions with strategic purposes to continue to achieve positions of relative advantage.