What is Doctrine?

Abstract

‘Doctrine’ has been part of military vernacular for at least a century. Nonetheless, it is a concept which is rather under-explored. The aim of this article is thus to break doctrine down into its component parts in order to grasp what a military doctrine actually is. Thereafter, the article points out different ways to utilise doctrine as a military devise. A doctrine cannot be, or rather should not be, all things to all men. On the contrary, doctrine can be a tool of command, tool of education or a tool of change. The main upshot of the article is that the future of doctrine is far brighter than its critics want us to believe.

Key Words:

• Military Doctrine
• Applied Philosophy
• History of Military Ideas

Notes

¹AAP-6 NATO Glossary of Terms and Definitions.

²Ladislaus Pope-Hennessy, ‘The Place of Doctrine in War’, Edinburgh Review (Jan. 1912), 21.

³Ken Booth, Strategy and Ethnocentrism (New York: Holmes & Meier 1979), 16.

⁴Markus Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence: The Evolution of British Military-Strategic Doctrine in the Post-Cold War Era, 1989–2002 (Bern: Studies in Contemporary History and Security Policy Vol. 13, 2004), 137.

⁵Pope-Hennessy, ‘The Place of Doctrine in War’, 29.

⁶‘Scholars and military practitioners approach doctrine largely on the intuitive level, and there is no single approved definition. In practice, definitions follow institutional or personal whim and vary between individuals, services, nationalities and time periods.’ Albert Palazzo, From Moltke to Bin Laden, The Relevance of Doctrine in the Contemporary Military Environment (Canberra: Australian Government, Department of Defence, Land Warfare Studies Centre 2008), 6.

⁷Gen. Sir Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Penguin 2005) 96.

⁸‘Moltke rationalised the complexities of his age by institutionalising a self-replicant system of interpretation and action that contemporary military professionals would identify as the first articulated doctrine of war.’ Palazzo, From Moltke to Bin Laden, 17.

¹¹Robert M. Citino, Blitzkrieg to Desert Storm: The Evolution of Operational Warfare (Lawrence: UP of Kansas 2004), 34.

⁹‘In fact, the old Prusso-German army had no concept of doctrine in the modern American and Western sense. That army used the term Lehre rather than Doktrin to describe the concepts in its official manuals.’ Daniel J. Hughes, Moltke On the Art of War: Selected Writings (New York: Ballantine Books 1993), 174.

¹⁰The closest Clausewitz got to our concept of doctrine was presumably ‘Methodismus’: ‘Officers whom one should not expect to have any greater understanding than regulations and experience can give them have to be helped along by routine methods tantamount to rules [Methodismus]. These will steady their judgment, and also guard them against eccentric and mistaken schemes, which are the greatest menace in a field where experience is so dearly bought.’ Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton UP 1976), 153. However, as the level of war rises, method's utility ‘will decrease to the point where, at the summit, it disappears completely. Consequently, it is more appropriate to tactics than to strategy’ (Ibid).

¹²Stephen Biddle, Military Power (Princeton UP 2004) 20.

¹³Ladislaus Pope-Hennessy, ‘The British Army and Modern Conceptions of War’, Edinburgh Review (April 1911), 322.

¹⁴Gen. H. Langlois, Lessons From Two Recent Wars, The Russo-Turkish and South African Wars. Translated for the General Staff, War Office (London: HMSO 1909), viii.

¹⁵‘Doctrine will extend itself to the higher side of war, owing to the free development given to your minds by a common manner of seeing, thinking, acting, by which everyone will profit according to the measure of his own gifts; it will nevertheless constitute a discipline of the mind common to you all.’ Ferdinand Foch, The Principles of War [1903] (London: Chapman & Hall 1920), 7.

¹⁶Charles Reynolds, ‘Carl von Clausewitz and Strategic Theory’, British Journal of International Studies 4 (1978), 184.

¹⁷Ibid., 185.

¹⁸US Army Regulation 320-5, Dictionary of Army Terms (Washington DC 1965), quoted in Roger J. Spiller, ‘In the Shadow of the Dragon: Doctrine and the US Army after Vietnam’, RUSI Journal 142/6 (Dec. 1997), 41.

¹⁹In this chapter the word ‘war’ is used as it is in ordinary language rather than in a strict legal or political sense. It is not central to the main arguments whether the war is large or small, legal or illegal, etc.

²⁰‘Epistemology’ is rather broadly defined in this chapter and denotes ‘the study of our right to the beliefs we have’. Ted Honderich, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: OUP 1995), 245.

²¹John Scott and Gordon Marshall, Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (Oxford: OUP 2005), 133.

²²Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Oxford: Blackwell 2000), 57.

²³Ibid., 59.

²⁴Paul Johnston, ‘Doctrine is Not Enough: The Effect of Doctrine on the Behaviour of Armies’, Parameters 30/3 (Autumn 2000).

²⁷Brian Holden Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective 1988–98, Occasional Paper No. 33 (Camberley, UK: Strategic and Combat Studies Institute 1998), 13.

²⁵Eugene Garver, Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character (University of Chicago Press 1994), 109.

²⁶Geoffrey Till, Seapower – A Guide for the Twenty-First Century (London: Frank Cass 2004), 33.

²⁸‘[T]he politicians should get what they ask for, even if it is not what they really want. In other words, the politicians have a right to be wrong.’ Anna Bolin, Political-Military Relations: An Introduction to a Field of Study (Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan 2004), 12.

²⁹A Bildungsroman is usually a portrait of a young man and ‘how he enters life in a happy state of naiveté seeking kindred souls, finds friendship and love, how he comes into conflict with the hard realities of the world, how he grows to maturity through diverse life-experiences, finds himself, and attains certainty about his purpose in the world’. Wilhelm Dilthey quoted in Yuval Noah Harari, The Ultimate Experience: Battlefield Revelations and the Making of Modern War Culture, 1450–2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2008), 145.

³⁰‘[M]ilitary doctrine carries a number of risks. These derive from the basic doctrinal dilemma: doctrine must be explicit and specific to achieve useful empirical content; to the degree that this occurs, however, dogmatism and doctrinal righteousness too often prevail. Efforts to avoid this pitfall often result in doctrine that is so abstract as to be of no value in the field.’ Jeffrey S. McKitrick and Peter W. Chiarelli, ‘Defense Reform: An Appraisal’ in Asa A. Clark et al. (eds), The Defense Reform Debate, Issues and Analysis (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP 1984), 324.

³¹Pope-Hennessy, ‘The Place of Doctrine in War’, 24.

³²G.F.R. Henderson, paraphrased in Hew Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars, The British Army and the Lessons of War in the 20th Century (Abingdon, UK: Routledge 2006), 4.

³³Pope-Hennessy, ‘The Place of Doctrine in War’, 29.

³⁵Ibid., 26 and 27.

³⁴Ibid., 27.

³⁶‘One fact of national life seems immutable; military concepts and doctrine cannot change, substantially, political ideas and attitudes concerning national defence.’ Douglas L. Bland, ‘Canada's Officer Corps: New Times, New Ideas’, CDA Institute 15th Annual Seminar 1999, <http://cda-cdai.ca/seminars/1999/99bland.htm>.

³⁷‘[C]hange of doctrine cannot be entirely ignored, for adopting a new doctrine can result in substantial changes in the practices and structure of a military organization.’ Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, The Sources of Military Change, Culture, Politics, Technology (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner 2002), 5.

³⁸‘Aiming was in any case forbidden since it would slow the rate of fire – at most, the men were told to point their weapons waist-high.’ Peter Paret, Yorck and the Era of Prussian Reform 1807–1815 (Princeton UP 1966), 15.

³⁹Roger Parkinson, Clausewitz – A Biography [1971] (New York: Cooper Square Press 2002), 124.

⁴⁰The Army Chief of Staff Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan ordered TRADOC in the early 1990s to ‘develop doctrine as the ‘engine of change’ in an effort that would be both ‘process and product’. John L. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War (Ft Monroe, VA: Military History Office 1997), 3.

⁴¹Guenter Lewy, America in Vietnam (New York: OUP 1978), 138.

⁴²Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press 2006), 347.

⁴⁵Sir Michael Howard, ‘Military Science in the Age of Peace’, quoted in Allan D. English, Understanding Military Culture, A Canadian Perspective (Montreal/Kingston: McGill-Queen's UP 2004) 149.

⁴³Richard Seel, quoted in Linda Holbeche, Understanding Change: Theory, Implementation and Success (Oxford: Elsevier 2006), 195.

⁴⁴Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, 293.

⁴⁶‘[World War I] introduced the central problem of modern warfare: how to conduct meaningful military operations in the face of radical firepower. And by the end of the war, an answer appeared that has remained central to great power military doctrines through more than 80 years of subsequent warfare.’ Biddle, Military Power, 29.

⁴⁷Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, US Marine Corps retirement speech <www.jerrypournelle. com/reports/jerryp/empire.html>.

⁴⁸John A. Nagl, ‘Foreword to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, xvi.

⁴⁹Sarah Sewall, ‘Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition’, in The US Army/ Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (US Army Field Manual No. 3-24, Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3-33.5), xxxvi.

⁵⁰‘In fact, Iraq is among the cases that fit the manual's assumptions poorly – which has led actual US strategy in Iraq to diverge from the manual's prescriptions in ways that are not always fully appreciated in the public debate.’ Stephen Biddle, ‘The New US Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual as Political Science and Political Praxis’, Perspectives on Politics 6/2 (June 2008), 348.

⁵¹Ibid., 350.

⁵²Theo Farrell, ‘Humanitarian Intervention and Peace Operations’, in John Baylis, James Wirtz, Colin Gray and Eliot Cohen, Strategy in the Contemporary World, 2nd ed. (OUP 2007), 315. According to Mäder, Wider Peacekeeping's main function was to serve as a ‘generator of debate’. Mäder, In Pursuit of Conceptual Excellence, 151.

⁵³Honderich, Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 870.

⁵⁵Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective 1988–98, 13.

⁵⁴Colin McInnes and John Stone, in Brian Holden Reid, A Doctrinal Perspective 1988–98, 6.

⁵⁶‘Not theorizing is an act [while] theorizing can correspond to the absence of willed activity, the “default” option.’ Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable (New York: Random House 2007), 64.

⁵⁷The phrase is Clausewitz's ‘Theory then becomes a guide to anyone who wants to learn about war from books; it will light his way, ease his progress, train his judgment, and help him to avoid pitfalls.’ Clausewitz, On War, 141.

⁵⁸S.L.A. Marshall quoted in Jay Luvaas, ‘Some Vagrant Thoughts on Doctrine’, Military Review (March 1986), 60.