ABSTRACT
The purpose of doctrine is 'to establish the framework of understanding of the approach to warfare in order to provide the foundation for its practical application'. The formulation of Doctrine should follow three evolutionary stages, namely debate, decision and execution. Although the British Army had the tradition of doing 'what we thought', a great deal of doctrinal guidance was to be found in what were the building blocks of military doctrine, namely the training manuals. The reason the British and French approaches to low level conflict are fundamentally different from that of the Americans is that the latter became the world's pivotal, though not fully hegemonic, power without the experience of policing an empire. The traditional function of America's armed forces has been to fight America's wars or, more precisely, two Major Regional Conflicts. Conceptually, America intended to concentrate upon fighting the nation's wars and tried to resist forays into expeditionary conflict.
