‘Innovate or die’: Organizational culture and the origins of maneuver warfare in the United States Marine Corps

Abstract

The purpose of this article is twofold. First, this article contributes to the understanding of the origins of maneuver warfare as the capstone doctrine of the Marine Corps. It does so by identifying a second source that fostered change in the Marine Corps – one in addition to disquiet about the conduct of the war in Vietnam – which stemmed from the challenges posed by the United States' post-Vietnam strategic and military reorientation. And second, this article examines the influence of organizational culture, or identity, on innovation in the Marine Corps. A critical strand in the growing literature on military innovation focuses on organizational culture and how it influences the behavior and responses of particular military organizations. This article contributes to this literature by analyzing the influence of the organizational culture of the Marine Corps in shaping what was deemed an appropriate response to the challenges it confronted in the 1970s.

Key Words:

• Marine Corps
• military innovation
• military change
• culture
• identity
• maneuver warfare
• warfighting
• post-Vietnam

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank very much Theo Farrell and the anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to extend my sincerest appreciation to General Charles C. Krulak and the great many other Marines, both serving and retired, for their time and consideration in not only sharing with me their experiences but also in helping me to understand the character and culture of the Marine Corps. I would also like to express my appreciation to William S. Lind for sharing with me his experiences and perceptions of the debate examined here. Many thanks are also due to the staff in the Library and Archives of the General Alfred M. Gray Research Center, Quantico, Virginia, for their cheerful help in accessing and locating information, as well as for the hospitality they extended. Finally, I would like to thank very much the Economic and Social Research Council (United Kingdom) ‘New Security Challenges’ Programme for providing funding support for my project on military change in the Marine Corps, without which this research could not have been conducted.

Notes

¹The phrase ‘innovate or die’ is taken from the heading used for a letter to the editor of Marine Corps Gazette. This heading was undoubtedly appended by the editor or someone else who worked for the Gazette. See Capt. Edwin W. Besch, USMC (Ret.), ‘Letters: Innovate or Die’, Marine Corps Gazette, 62/2 (Feb. 1978), 10.

²See Terry C. Pierce, Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies: Disguising Innovation (London and NY: Frank Cass 2004), 85–103; and Maj. Kenneth F. McKenzie, ‘On the Verge of a New Era: The Marine Corps and Maneuver Warfare’, Marine Corps Gazette 77/7 (July 1993), 63 ff. McKenzie identifies three phases in the Marine adoption of maneuver warfare, the first which he claims begins in 1980. Also see Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot who Changed the Art of War (Boston: Little, Brown 2002), esp. Ch. 27 and 28; John G. Burton, The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1993), 54–55; and Grant T. Hammond, The Mind at War: John Boyd and American Security (Washington DC and London: Smithsonian Institute Press 2001), 154. Coram, who provides the most extended examination of the influence of Boyd on the Marine Corps, starts his account in early 1980 when Boyd meets Lt. Col. Michael Wyly, a key figure in the subsequent debates within the Corps on maneuver warfare. Burton makes the same connection.

³The starting point of this debate, sometimes referred to as the ‘maneuverist vs attritionists’ debate, is seen as the article by William S. Lind, ‘Defining maneuver warfare for the Marine Corps’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/3 (March 1980), 55–58.

⁴Capt. Steven W. Miller, ‘Winning through maneuver: Part I – Countering the offense’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/10 (Oct 1979), 28ff; and ‘Winning through maneuver Conclusion – Countering the defense’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/12 (Dec. 1979), 57ff. The significance of Miller's argument was recognized by Col. John Greenwood (USMC ret.), the Editor of the Gazette, who included an addendum to the McKenzie article that listed the most significant articles on maneuver warfare, a list which starts with Miller's two articles. Marine Corps Gazette 77/7 (July 1993), 63ff.

⁵Jeffrey W. Legro, Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint During World War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1995).

⁶Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2005).

⁷Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars (Princeton: PUP 1997), esp. 39–88; and Kier, ‘Culture and military doctrine: France between the wars’, International Security 19/4 (Spring 1995), 65–93.

⁸Kier, Imagining War, 89–139.

⁹Jennifer G. Mathers, ‘Reform and the Russian Military’, in Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff (eds.), The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2002), 161–84.

¹⁰Legro, Cooperation under Fire.

¹¹Peter J. Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military Power in Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1996), 18–19.

¹²Ronald Jepperson, Alexander Wendt and Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Norms, identity and culture in national security’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia UP 1996), 54.

¹³Ann Swidler, ‘Culture and social action’, in Philip Smith (ed.), The New American Cultural Sociology (Cambridge: CUP 1998), 172.

¹⁴Robert Axelrod, ‘An Evolutionary Approach to Norms’, American Political Science Review 80/4 (1986), 1095–1111; Aaron Wildavsky, ‘Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation’, American Political Science Review 81/1 (1987), 3–21.

¹⁵James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions (New York: Free Press 1989).

¹⁶Lynne G. Zucker, ‘The Role of Institutionalization in Cultural Persistence’, in Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio (eds.), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press 1991), 103.

¹⁷Tom Clancy with Gen. Tony Zinni (ret.) and Tony Koltz, Battle Ready (NY: G.P. Putnam's 2004), 142.

¹⁸Lt. Gen. Victor H. Krulak, USMC (ret.), First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1984).

¹⁹Lt. Gen. Krulak will be consistently identified as ‘Victor Krulak’ to avoid any confusion with Gen. Charles C. Krulak, his son, who was Commandant of the Marine Corps from July 1995 to June 1999.

²⁰Allan Millet, Semper Fi: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York: The Free Press 1980, 1991), 582–83.

²¹See Krulak, First to Fight, 67–110.

²²Clancy, with Zinni, Battle Ready, 142–43.

²³Krulak, First to Fight, 37. Elsewhere, he notes some 15 occasions in which only the vigilance of the Congress preserved the Marine Corps, 13.

²⁴For a detailed analysis of these debates, see Gordon W. Keiser, The US Marine Corps and Defense Unification, 1944–47 (Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation Publishing 1996).

²⁵Personal Correspondence between Gen. Randolph McC. Pate, Commandant, and Brig. Gen. Victor Krulak, Oct. 1957, reprinted in Krulak, First to Fight, xiii and xiv.

²⁶Ibid., xiv. Emphasis in the original.

²⁷Krulak, First to Fight, 3.

²⁸Ibid., 15.

²⁹Gen. Charles C. Krulak told the author in an interview that the first thing the author needed to understand about the Marine Corps was that it was ‘paranoid’. Interview with Gen. Charles C. Krulak, USMC (ret.), 10 March 2004.

³⁰As Millet notes, with the success of its amphibious campaigns in the Pacific theater, ‘the Marine Corps emerged from World War II with an institutionalized sense of self-importance … . The Corps had made a major contribution (perhaps the major contribution) to creating an essential Allied military specialty, the amphibious assault against a hostile shore.’ Semper Fi, 459. Emphasis in original.

³¹Quoted in Michael A. Hennessy, Strategy in Vietnam: The Marines and Revolutionary Warfare in I Corps, 1965–72 (Westport, CT and London: Praeger 1997), 181.

³²Capt. R.J. Dalton, ‘The Village’, Marine Corps Gazette 56/6 (June 1972), 10.

³³As indicated earlier, however, the ‘semi-official proscription’ on discussing and examining Vietnam did not mean that officers simply forgot about that war or did not believe that there were no lessons to be learned. Many officers, including such as Col. Michael Wyly and Gen. Alfred M. Gray, devoted considerable study and thought during the 1970s to understanding what the Marine Corps had done wrong, and what was a better approach to fighting.

³⁴One issue, one much debated and argued over but not relevant to this study, was how to redress the ill-discipline, use of drugs and racism that permeated the organization. This was a significant problem for the Corps, and one that Gen. Robert Cushman, the first post-Vietnam Commandant, devoted considerable effort to address.

³⁷Col. Paul E. Wilson, USMC (ret.), ‘U.S. Marine Corps: separate, but not equal’, Marine Corps Gazette, 63/1 (Jan. 1979), 20.

³⁵A small number of Marines did remain in Vietnam as, for example, military advisors to the South Vietnamese Marine Corps until 1973, and it was the Marine Corps which conducted the evacuation of Saigon in 1975.

³⁶Gen. Robert E. Cushman, ‘A Weapon System Defined’, Leatherneck 55/6 (June 1972), 14ff.

³⁸Col. Lee R. Bendell, ‘An alternative proposal’, Marine Corps Gazette 55/9 (Sept. 1971), 51. For a similar argument, see Col J.B. Soper, USMC (ret.), ‘By forcible entry’, Marine Corps Gazette 56/8 (Aug. 1972), 18.

³⁹Maj. Perry M. Miles, ‘Finding better use for the USMC than commitment to NATO’, Marine Corps Gazette 61/12 (Dec. 1977), 31.

⁴⁰See, for example, F.J. (Bing) West, ‘The case for amphibious capability’, Marine Corps Gazette 58/10 (Oct. 1974), 18.

⁴¹Maj. E.E. Price, ‘Letters: Not in NATO’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/4 (April 1978), 11.

⁴³Col. Ernest Brydon, USMC, ‘Letters: No tanks in Europe’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/11 (Nov. 1976), 12.

⁴²Frank Uhlig Jr., ‘Assault by sea’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/6 (June 1976), 18.

⁴⁴For two good analyses of the 1973 war by Marine officers, see Capt. John E. Knight Jr., ‘The Arabs and Israel in perspective The October war and after’, Marine Corps Gazette 58/6 (June 1974), 34ff; and Col. Gerald H. Turley, ‘Time of change in modern warfare’, Marine Corps Gazette 58/12 (Dec. 1974), 16ff.

⁴⁵Anthony Binkin and Jeffrey Record, Where Does the Marine Corps Go From Here? (Washington DC: Brookings Institution 1976), 82–86.

⁴⁶Ibid., 30–41, esp. 41.

⁴⁷Binkin and Record, Where Does the Marine Corps Go From Here? 71–81.

⁴⁸West, ‘The case for amphibious capability’.

⁴⁹Kenneth E. Estes, Marines Under Armor: The Marine Corps and the Armored Fighting Vehicle, 1916–2000 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 2000), 180.

⁵⁰Capt. Maxwell O. Johnson, ‘Tank Company FMF’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/6 (June 1976), 33ff.

⁵¹See, for example, Col. Ernest Brydon, ‘Letters: No tanks in Europe’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/11 (Nov. 1976), 12.

⁵²Maj. Ray Stewart, ‘Letters: An eye for tanks’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/11 (Nov. 1976), 12. It is worth noting in passing that this statement contains an oblique allusion to the Marine Corps' self-identify as ‘fighters’ or ‘warriors’, in the phrase ‘bayonet clutched between his teeth’.

⁵³Johnson, ‘Tank Company FMF’.

⁵⁴William S. Lind, ‘A proposal for the Corps: Mission and force structure’, Marine Corps Gazette 59/12 (Dec. 1975), 12ff.

⁵⁵See Brydon, ‘Letters’, 10.

⁵⁶William S. Lind, ‘Letters: Mechanization is needed’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/8 (Aug. 1976), 12.

⁵⁷Col. Richard S. Taber, Sr., ‘One reason why the Marines should be in NATO’, Marine Corps Gazette, 61/12 (Dec. 1977), 34ff.

⁵⁸Wilson, ‘U.S. Marine Corps: separate, but not equal’.

⁵⁹Quoted in Taber, ‘One reason why the Marines should be in NATO’.

⁶⁰Capt. Mark F. Cancian, ‘NATO: obsession to the Corps’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/6 (June 1979) p.24ff.

⁶¹Lt. Col. Gerald L. Ellis and Maj. Gerald J. Keller, ‘No doubt; the U.S. needs amphibious forces’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/2 (Feb. 1978), 27ff. The Collins Plan referred to above was an obvious attempt to eviscerate the Marine Corps and divvy up its capabilities, along with its roles and missions, among the other three services.

⁶²Capt. Edwin W. Besch, USMC (ret.), ‘Armored and other mechanized forces can be successfully adapted to amphibious operations’, Marine Corps Gazette 61/4 (April 1977), 42ff.

⁶³Capt. Edwin W. Besch, USMC (ret.), ‘Letters: Innovate or Die’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/2 (Feb. 1978), 10.

⁶⁴Capt. Stephen W. Miller, ‘Marine: a question of identity’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/1 (Jan. 1978), 14ff.

⁶⁵2nd Lt. Jonathan J. Mott, USMCR, ‘Going the mechanization route’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/10 (Oct. 1978), 17ff.

⁶⁶See, for example, Lt. Cols. Ray M. Franklin and John G. Miller, ‘Modern battlefield technology calls for reinvention of the longbow’, Marine Corps Gazette 61/10 (Oct. 1977), 41ff.

⁶⁷William S. Lind, ‘Marines don't write about warfare’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/2 (Feb. 1978), 14ff.

⁶⁸Ibid.

⁶⁹See Lt. Col. Jack D. McNamara, ‘Seek new tactics for the battlefield’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/3 (March 1978), 19ff. McNamara was responding not to Lind's article, but to Franklin and Miller's article, ‘Modern battlefield technology calls for reinvention of the longbow’, fn 86.

⁷⁰William S. Lind, ‘Proposing some new models for Marine mechanized units’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/9 (Sept. 1978), 34ff.

⁷¹His point was that wheeled armored carriers were up to 75 percent lighter than tracked vehicles and were thus suitable for expeditionary warfare.

⁷²Capt. Stephen W. Miller, ‘It's time to mechanize amphibious forces’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/6 (June 1978), 39ff.

⁷³Capt Stephen W. Miller, ‘Letters: Defining mechanization’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/2 (Feb. 1979), 12.

⁷⁴Capt. Stephen W. Miller, ‘Winning through maneuver: Part I – Countering the offense’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/10 (Oct 1979), 28ff.

⁷⁵Miller uses the term ‘maneuver warfare’ only in the final paragraph of the second article, instead more commonly using the term ‘maneuver doctrine’ to describe the concept. Seemingly the first use of the term ‘maneuver warfare’ is by Lind, in a letter in the Oct. 1979Gazette, coincident with Miller's first article. See William S. Lind, ‘Letters: Only a beginning’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/10 (Oct. 1979), 12.

⁷⁶Capt. Stephen W. Miller, ‘Winning through maneuver Conclusion-Countering the defense’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/12 (Dec. 1979), 57ff.

⁷⁷The move by the Marine Corps to acquire LAVs came in early in 1980, when the Research and Development Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee asked the Marine Corps if it would be interested in procuring LAVs to enhance its Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) capability, if extra funding was provided for this purpose. The Marine Corps quickly determined that it was interested, and established the Light Armored Vehicle Directorate, in the Development Center at Quantico, on 2 Sept. 1980, to start the process of evaluating various LAV with the aim to procure some 400–600 vehicles, sufficient to assign to a RDF Marine Corps unit. See Col. Larry R. Williams, ‘Acquiring new armored vehicles & weapons’, Marine Corps Gazette 64/12 (Dec. 1980), 28ff.

⁷⁸Miller subsequent to the publication of his two articles in 1979 was not an active participant in the debates on maneuver warfare; as he disappears from the public record by the end of 1980, he likely completed his tour in the Corps and left for civilian life.

⁷⁹Brig. Gen. F.E. Sisler, Deputy Commander, Training and Education, ‘Memorandum for the Record’, 15 July 1988, 2; Gen. Alfred M. Gray Papers; Studies and Reports – PME, 1979–89, Box 6; File, Meeting with CMC on 8 July 1988, Concerning Officer Education and Training, 15 July 1988.

⁸⁰Interview with senior Marine officer (ret.), June 2004.