Theory of Study versus Theory of Doctrine

John Kuehn Blog Post

Handgrenade of the Month April 2017

By John T. Kuehn

As one of my intellectual heroes wrote:  "Theory should be study, not doctrine." (Book 2:Chapter 2, ON War, Carl von Clausewitz with Marie von Clausewitz.)*

He might have written that "Theory should be study, not emotional outbursts."

Oh wait, he did write something about that entitled "Other Emotional Factors."  And just a few pages prior.

" In considering emotions that have been aroused by hostility and danger as being peculiar to war, we do not mean to exclude all others that accompany man throughout his life.  There is a place for them in war as well. It may be true that many a petty play of emotions is silenced by the serious duties of war.... The higher a man [or woman] is placed the broader [should be] his point of view." 

 (Book Two: Chapter 2)

Going back to a theory of study, not a theory of doctrine, what are the practical implications for the conduct of warfare?  In the past?  IN the 21st Century, today?  How does military history tie into this sort of study. Is it critical, or nice to have?

*this is a hand grenade, a sub-munition if you will, within a hand grenade.  I think it time, based on Vanay Eftimova Bellinger’s fine scholarship[1], to recognize the feminine hand of Marie von Clausewitz, nee Grafina von Bruhl, in the authorship and publication of the book a bit more overtly.  I did not use AND, which indicates equal co-authorship, but she deserves at least a “with.”

[1] Marie von Clausewitz: The Woman behind the Making of On War, by Vanya Eftimova Bellinger.

(Oxford Univ. Press, 2015).

16 Replies

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I am somewhat loathe to post a response to my own handgrenade, but my questions were not rhetorical.

Any takers?

John T. Kuehn, Fort Leavenworth

OK, let me take a swing at it. For doctrine to be immutable in the face of passing time and the march of human progress, it must be extremely broad, general in nature. It must be a procrustean bed into which present circumstances may be crammed. Does not Vom Krieg, by our old friend and mentor Clausewitz (ably seconded by his wife), meet this test? By, say, a 60-40 consensus of historians?

When I worked on the Air Staff as a reservist, back in the 1990s, the Directorate of Plans had a Doctrine Division. I always wondered what those guys did.

Ralph, right on, to use a tired baby-boomer phrase of encouragement.
I hope its more than 60-40 with historians, at least as far as military historians are concerned. I suspect most "historians," and I include the union card carrying D.Phil.s and Ph.D.s, have never even read Vom Krieg/On War, in any of its various translations. Although I suspect some have heard the name.

As for theory as study, that has always resonated with me in my historian identity. For history to be valuable to one, one must study and think about. For military theory to be useful, the problems it raises for doctrine must be studied. But I have always thought of doctrine in two ways. First, as you note, it is temporal to a great degree, and secondly, as you also note, it should serve as a framework.

or as one of my longtime mentors here, Bob Baumann, said to a class of pre-SAMS" students once, "yes, so the consensus is that doctrine is really just a framework from which we always depart."[ca. 1997]. I have always liked that definition. So theory provides the framework upon one can build the more temporal frameworks of military doctrine. I suppose Michael Howard applies here, too (re: his famous Chesney lecture reprinted in RUSI Journal in 1974).

best, John
*SAMS=School of Advanced Military Studies, located at Fort Leavenworth Kansas. The students mentioned were for the "majors" course (lieutenant commander in my case), AMSP, advanced military studies program. Acronym training for the day is complete.

Hi Shawn, Nice post at the link you gave us. A sophisticated argument, if we think it "art" why do we study it so little? because it is not quantifiable, and thus reducible to our empirical methods...which btw have served us so well the last 16 years.

If we could only find the right metrics we can win, right? No, wrong.

best, John

Fort Leavenworth, KS,
where what my department attempts is theory as study...and that includes military history broadly conceived and taught.

Not sure I can do this, but I tweeted Shawn's link @jkuehn50

r, John T. Kuehn

Not sure I can do this, but I tweeted Shawn's link @jkuehn50

r, John T. Kuehn

I think much of the problem in determining the timelessness, or not, of doctrine/theory, etc., is that most people slinging the terms around don't really have a good definition of them themselves and so think they are interchangeable. I will confess to harboring the same lazy attitude until a few years ago, when my instructor in a course on military thought and theory laid it out in a way that has greatly altered my perspective on it.

Those unfamiliar with the dissertation "The Complex Web of Western Military Theory" by Dr. Charles Oliviero should read it to see how he lays out his own structure of military theory. I will try to do justice to his ideas briefly. In his model, what we call "Military Theory" is really a conceptual pyramid going from the broad to the narrow. Philosophy is the foundation of theory; theory is the foundation of strategy; strategy is the basis of tactics, techniques, and procedures.

These terms themselves are often blurred or used interchangeably, and therein lies the perpetual confusion over what is timeless and what changes from war to war. Oliviero defined philosophy as the underlying sets of beliefs upon which a society, including its armed forces, bases all that it does. It is the most timeless, with changes measured in centuries or more. Theories are compilations of principles and premises to aid in understanding. Strategies are plans of action to achieve goals. TTPs are the lowest level, the means of achieving those goals on a given battlefield. They are the most changeable and change from war to war, or even inside one war.

Oliviero further explained that confusion also arose from, again, lazily interchanging the big names in military discourse as strategists, theorists, etc., without properly understanding the level each operated at. He made clear distinctions in who was who. Sun Tzu was a philosopher, as the broad scope of his work discusses not only battle but the very ideas that bind a society - not just its army, but its ruler and ruled - together in harmony. Clausewitz was a theorist. De Saxe, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon were strategists, certainly intelligent in their own realms but generally bounded by a focus of effort that did not extend beyond their own national goals.

My point in laying all this out is that debating the values of doctrines and theories, and identifying where the American military succeeds or fails at them, requires a better definition of each concept than is currently held in most of the military establishment. With that, I don't think doctrine can be timeless, precisely because it is often tied to specific times, places, and battlefields, and necessarily needs to be changed to ensure that the troops on the ground are doing the most effective things to achieve national goals. With few exceptions - such as FMFM-1/MCDP-1 Warfighting in the Marine Corps - most of what is called "doctrine" is really TTPs for different levels of command (I think Warfighting falls somewhere between theory and philosophy, and was sold as doctrine to make it more palatable).

Theory can be more enduring, as it normally draws from the very broadest ideas of the society and societies tend to manifest change more slowly. I think the best philosophies and theories of war are those focused on the human aspect, as the nature of man over the millennia has changed very little.

The American military does, at most, strategy and TTPs. Again, with a handful of exceptions like John Boyd, it has not ventured into the realm of developing a true American military theory or philosophy, instead preferring a pick-up-game-like mash-up of battlefield concepts that are generally adapted to success at the end, but normally only after the nation receives an initial bloody nose. I don't know why that's the case. There's no lack of intelligent American commanders in the nation's history, nor certainly any lack of practice on a vast variety of battlefields. So why does theory continue to elude us?

Here’s a couple of simple observations on this topic.

I agree with Shawn Woodford’s argument regarding the ‘lip service’ given to military history education, at least as I experienced it in the Army. I taught ROTC for several years. Military history is a “check-the-box” requirement. Each Cadet is to either take a university-taught class that the Professor of Military Science believes satisfactorily covers US military history or take a military history class taught by an Army school-trained cadre member. One staff ride is also required, but some schools have better opportunities than others do to visit a good site / battle to examine. The one history-related sophomore –level class analyzing Chancellorsville was removed several years ago. In short, the curriculum does not integrate military history or theory well.

Maybe it is the way that I am wired, but On War clicked with me. Like the conceptual pyramid that Ian Brown discussed, I see Clausewitz’s ideas providing a framework that one can develop coherent ideas and doctrine for the conduct of war given the technology and challenges facing a military at any particular time. I was a major when my formal military education first introduced me to Clausewitz. Maybe his strategic concepts cannot be fully appreciated the early in one’s career, but I think studying his description of the nature of war can stimulate and facilitate professional growth and performance early on. Boyd’s theories can also provide a foundation and his ideas may resonate more readily for some people than Clausewitz does. Unfortunately, military history and theory are a minor part of many junior officers’ education.

Is that due to the lack of appreciation of military history and theory by officers who were never exposed to the value of these topics? Do these now senior officers then fail to require these subjects in the officer education curricula for the junior officers behind them to learn, thus institutionalizing ignorance? Or is the emphasis on what is expected of a junior leader changed? Has Be-Know-Do been replaced with just DO? Is “Know” now limited to mechanical operations of tools, weapons, and TTPs without understanding the why behind every action? "Limited time" is often cited for cutting topics. But wouldn't the study of history and theory maximize that limited time?

I see value in studying military history and theory throughout one’s education. Moreover, it should be more than reading materials in the current Chief of Staff reading list – if one feels like it. It should be more structured. Gaining experience indirectly through past lives can provide the building blocks for future solutions. In his presentation Strategic Game of ? and ?, COL Boyd had the audience first imagine four different scenarios – being on a ski slope, riding in an outboard motorboat, riding a bicycle, and noticing a child in a store fascinated by the tractors or tanks with rubber caterpillar treads – then take an item from each – skis, motor, handlebars and treads and ask what can you then make? (A snowmobile). We all derive answers from what we know within the context of our worldview. If our military leaders at all levels only know what they have directly experienced and never accessed the experiences of others, then they will only be able to create limited solutions.

I teach a couple of course on the military history of the Middle East, one a freshman course running from the rise of Islam to the present and the other an upper-level undergraduate/MA level course on World War I in the Middle East. Generally, my focus is on war as a manifestation of political and cultural factors rather than on tactics and strictly military strategy. I get away with teaching this because I am in a Near Eastern languages department, not a history department, so it is a service course for me. As I explain to my students in the introductory lecture, historians are uncomfortable with military history because it implies that the course of history can be changed just because somebody forgot to post his cavalry in the right place.

While I leave the tactical and operational aspects of military history to proper experts, I am genuinely alarmed by the ignorance of the political/strategic aspects of military history among generals and policymakers. I was chair of my department in 2004-7 when we started getting frantic calls from mid-level officers asking for language and culture training. No one in the US government seemed aware of the difficulties faced by the British in their occupation of Iraq in the aftermath of World War I--let alone the Battle of Carrhae, the defeat of Julian the Apostate, or the difficulties faced by the Umayyads in managing Iraq. The Bush administration could not understand why the Iraqi government would not agree to extraterritoriality for US troops in 2008, in ignorance of the fact that capitulations, as such agreements were known in the colonial period, were a major grievance affecting the Ottoman decision to support Germany in World War I and were a significant grievance leading to the Iranian Islamic Revolution.

Now a significant amount of the blame also goes to the schools of political science and public affairs, which also blithely assume that history can be ignored, but there was no excuse for American generals going into Iraq totally ignorant of the relevant history.

It looks like I will have fifteen or twenty ROTC students in my World War I class this fall, so perhaps one or two of them will be general officers by the time we next decide it's a good idea to invade a Middle Eastern country.

Great discussion, and I certainly echo what John Walbridge said. Looking back at the bloody 19th and 20th centuries, I believe that the highest realm of strategy has too often proved absent from the minds of otherwise intelligent and experienced soldiers. Generals and future generals urgently need to understand that some apple carts ought not, under any circumstances, to be upset; that even a fragile peace is preferable to the unpredictability -- or, in some cases, the absolute predictability -- of war.

Consider the Germans, those much-admired masters of warfare, who with hardly a second thought twice -- twice! -- added the United States to their already-long list of adversaries. The absence of any entry in General Franz Halder's War Diary for December 11th, 1941, the day Germany declared war on the United States, speaks volumes.

John Walbridge wished, with fingers crossed: “It looks like I will have fifteen or twenty ROTC students in my World War I class this fall, so perhaps one or two of them will be general officers by the time we next decide it's a good idea to invade a Middle Eastern country.”

I would like to stir the cauldron: Or; conversely and hopefully, they will have reached the cognitive maturity to understand it is a bad idea to decide a military invasion of a Middle East country and find oneself in an inextricable quagmire, and perhaps achieve the Enlightenment (a mutation if you will) that winning them over, instead of an invasion, is the best option for the benefit of all.

Some worthy thoughts for more thought.

Bülent Yilmazer,

If future General officers have the "maturity" to recognize that invading and occupying Middle Eastern countries is a bad idea, this will not alter the fact that the decision to do so will not be up to them any more than the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was up to the Generals of that time. Certainly none of my military acquaintances in the 2002-2003 period thought that invading Iraq was a great idea and would be easy. The attitude was more one of resignation; "this makes no sense but those are the orders from the top".

The people who most need educating about the limitations of military force and the need to relate ends and means are not future officers, but future politicians - most of whom lack military experience. Today, so far as I can tell, the enthusiasm for more invasions is far greater among non-uniformed think tank/pundit folks than among uniformed military folks.

As for "winning over" Middle Eastern countries, Western efforts to win over Saddam Hussein in 1979-1980 and 1988-1990 didn't work out so well. How one "wins over" a ruthless thug like Saddam is an interesting question, given their propensity to regard overtures of friendship as weakness or as a green light for their aggressive plans.

James Perry

Thank you Mr. Perry for adding some more spice to the cauldron.

Resignation! Don’t they teach, that is supposed to be bad manners among staff officers? Especially, if we are talking about the top brass in the Executive Office of the President. An attitude of resignation results in billions of tax payer’s US Dollars spent or hundreds of sons, daughters, fathers and mothers of the US armed forces killed or maimed, ruthlessly, because someone, with the authority and the responsibility, did not make the stand for them! May I add: Resignation does not shed off responsibility.

Does not military history teach a lesson about ends and means? Just take a look at Winston Churchill and the War Office in late 1914-early 1915. They did not consult the general staff when their hammer fell on the decision to attack Dardanelles. The top brass members (e.g. Lord Fisher) of the War Office preferred an attitude of resignation instead of gallant objection. The end, in number of Britons and their allies who lost their lives and those maimed in that epic front is already recorded in history.

As for winning over; isn’t it already apparent that everybody, and taking Mr. Perry’s lead, especially the politicians need to be very well versed in game theory. You do not win over by carrot and stick policy; eventually the donkey will tire out and kick back in frustration, despite the stick. If you can take an impartial look, you will see that’s what happened in the case of Saddam; and that is what is currently happening in this part of the world where I have to survive. I do not wish to go into local politics, but would like to remind the recent and continuing tension between USA and Turkey (winking an eye at the current head of the ruling party when it provided material support to “the enemy”, so that the beast could continue to tread heavily; arresting of “the trader” and “the banker” who are only the ticks, when the beast decided to tread its own path). I refrain from going into details (may have already said too much) about that, which is already available in the media, for the fear that I may be arrested in a jiffy and held away without trial at some obscure jail and lose the freedom to enjoy this forum (and its estimable quality for freedom of thought and speech) for the rest of my life!

Who will kick back; the leader or the populace of the nation, is the (should be the) toughest dilemma to ponder by both the non-uniformed and the uniformed. History is full of examples where a leader (and his inner circle) was bought over but the populace did not take the deal!

It (winning over) has to be a win-win, where everybody acknowledges the fact that this is possible only through compromise. Once again I find myself asking for a mutation; and no one likes mutants, right? I must hastily admit, with head bent and eyes cast down, that I am in no position to suggest what scale of compromise for whatever.

How did I get here? Military history education, human aspect, political and cultural factors, not quantifiable for empirical methods; these were the catch words that allured me to put pen to paper. Because they are the core elements of my lectures and my dissertation. However; my understanding of Clausewitzian trinity or the “secondary trinity” is only self-taught. I am sorry if I have soured the soup, maybe I should not have attempted to stir the cauldron in the first place.

Prof.. Yilmazer's last point is well taken. Equally so, the last 2 points made by James Perry.

Political direction of warfare is critically important. Insistence in the West for centuries has been that civilian control is needed, to determine many dimensions of warfare and its conduct. Never has this been more true than in the nuclear age. Too many political incompetence are allowed to run loose and amuck among so many govts. Of course, naming them does nothing more than create more differences or commonalities depending upon once choices of politics and policies, as well as governments. Statesmen/Generals have been found far too often, to few and far between.

Traditionally, the velvet glove was extended with an iron hand within it. Democracies have learned and forgotten some very difficult and hard lessons. Some practicioners just are incompetent, for lack of a better description.