ABSTRACT
The US pattern of civil-military relations has an impact on the conduct and effectiveness of operations by affecting the organization, culture and doctrine of the armed forces. This chapter, therefore, examines these features, grouped into the concept of the ‘American way of war’. Emphasis is placed on the cultural aspects of the US defence establishment. The relatively extensive inclusion of doctrine in this chapter denotes the importance that some scholars attach to this variable when explaining operational conduct. The central questions of this chapter concern the functional imperative of the US defence establishment: What is considered to be the main role of the armed forces, and the preferred way of fighting wars? To what extent have the armed forces adjusted to that imperative? Finally, in relation to the contemporary strategic context of complex peace operations, are the US armed forces prepared for the type of conflicts they are likely to find themselves involved in? ‘We fight the wars but we don’t do peacekeeping’, is a comment from President George W. Bush that has bewildered scholars around the world. It is moreover commonly supported and expressed within the US military which has been notorious for its dislike of operations other than war. The author acknowledges that speaking in terms of ‘the US military’ implies great generalizations that fail to recognize the different service cultures of the US military. There is, in other words, a need to continue this research by breaking down the US armed forces into smaller units of observation. Regarding the tasks of nation building, Bush argued during the 2000 presidential campaign: ‘I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and, therefore, prevent war from happening in the first place’ (cited in Holt 2003). Moreover, the then National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, declared that the US military, as the world’s stabilizing force, was meant only for war-fighting: it is ‘lethal’, she said, ‘it is not a civilian police force. It is not a political referee. And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society’ (cited in Hirsh 2003). At first glance, the US approach to complex peace operations seems to be, ‘we don’t do it’. This is obviously perplexing since these forms of operations are precisely what the US armed forces have increasingly been doing since the end of the Second World War, and even more so since the fall of the Berlin Wall, an argument well made by Max Boot (2002).
