Between 1991 and 1993, the Army formulated a fighting doctrine recast to fit the power demands of a new strategic world. This new power-order replaced the Army's earlier "AirLand Battle" doctrine, first issued in 1982. This monograph addresses several questions revolving around the rapid replacement, less than 2 years after its success in the desert war, of a recognized and successful fighting doctrine. Discusses the roots of U.S. Army doctrine and the antecedent developments leading to the Army's recasting of its key battle doctrine. Examines the mechanism of the process of change, the effects of the new doctrine and how it was implemented.

This paper focuses on the formulation of doctrine since World War II. In no comparable period in history have the dimensions of the battlefield been so altered by rapid technological changes. The need for the tactical doctrines of the Army to remain correspondingly abreast of these changes is thus more pressing than ever before. Future conflicts are not likely to develop in the leisurely fashions of the past where tactical doctrines could be refined on the battlefield itself. It is, therefore, imperative that we apprehend future problems with as much accuracy as possible. One means of doing so is to pay particular attention to the business of how the Army's doctrine has developed historically, with a view to improving methods of future development.

After the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army considered counterinsurgency (COIN) a mistake to be avoided. Many found it surprising, then, when setbacks in recent conflicts led the same army to adopt a COIN doctrine. Scholarly debates have primarily employed existing theories of military bureaucracy or culture to explain the army’s re-embrace of COIN, but Peter Campbell advances a unique argument centering on military realism to explain the complex evolution of army doctrinal thinking from 1960 to 2008. In five case studies of U.S. Army doctrine, Campbell pits military realism against bureaucratic and cultural perspectives in three key areas—nuclear versus conventional warfare, preferences for offense versus defense, and COIN missions—and finds that the army has been more doctrinally flexible than those perspectives would predict. He demonstrates that decision makers, while vowing in the wake of Vietnam to avoid (COIN) missions, nonetheless found themselves adapting to the geopolitical realities of fighting “low intensity” conflicts. In essence, he demonstrates that pragmatism has won out over dogmatism. At a time when American policymakers remain similarly conflicted about future defense strategies, Campbell’s work will undoubtedly shape and guide the debate.

American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War is an important record of how the Army and its Training and Doctrine Command developed the post-Cold War military operational doctrine in response to the geopolitical shift that introduced a new strategic era. John L. Romjue methodically details the overarching concerns of senior leaders, acutely aware of radically altered security assumptions that demanded a revised and broader doctrine by which American land forces could respond to diverse global missions. It is enlightened reading for Army educators, trainers, doctrine planners, and combat developers involved in the ongoing Army Transformation.

For more than 40 years, U.S. defense policy and the design of military capabilities were driven by the threat to national security posed by the Soviet Union and its allies. As the Soviet Union collapsed, analysts wondered what effect this dramatic change would have upon defense policy and the military capabilities designed to support it. Strangely enough, this development would ultimately have little effect on our defense policy. Over a decade later, American forces are a smaller, but similar version of their Cold War predecessors. The author argues that, despite many suggestions for significant change, the bureaucratic inertia of comfortable military elites has dominated the defense policy debate and preserved the status quo with only minor exceptions. This inertia raises the danger that American military capabilities will be inadequate for future warfare in the information age. In addition, such legacy forces are inefficient and inappropriately designed for the demands of frequent and important antiterrorist and peace operations. Lacquement offers extensive analysis concerning the defense policymaking process from 1989 to 2001, including in particular the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. This important study also provides a set of targeted policy recommendations that can help solve the identified problems in preparing for future wars and in better training for peace operations.

As entrenched bureaucracies, military organizations might reasonably be expected to be especially resistant to reform and favor only limited, incremental adjustments. Yet, since 1945, the U.S. Army has rewritten its capstone doctrine manual, Operations, fourteen times. While some modifications have been incremental, collectively they reflect a significant evolution in how the Army approaches warfare—making the U.S. Army a crucial and unique case of a modern land power that is capable of change. So what accounts for this anomaly? What institutional processes have professional officers developed over time to escape bureaucracies' iron cage? Forging the Sword conducts a comparative historical process-tracing of doctrinal reform in the U.S. Army. The findings suggest that there are unaccounted-for institutional facilitators of change within military organizations. Thus, it argues that change in military organizations requires "incubators," designated subunits established outside the normal bureaucratic hierarchy, and "advocacy networks" championing new concepts. Incubators, ranging from special study groups to non-Title 10 war games and field exercises, provide a safe space for experimentation and the construction of new operational concepts. Advocacy networks then connect different constituents and inject them with concepts developed in incubators. This injection makes changes elites would have otherwise rejected a contagious narrative.