Why was the Navy ready to clear the skies over the Persian Gulf, yet surprised by the mines laid under it? Why is it that the Army is always prepared for war in Europe, but was caught off guard in Korea and Vietname? And why is the Air Force indifferent to "Star Wars"? In The Masks of War Carl H. Builder asks what motives lie behind the puzzling and often contradictory behavior of America's militay forces. The answer, he finds, has little to do with what party controls the White House or who writes the budget. Far more powerful-and glacially resistant to change-are the entrenched institutions and distinct "personalities" of the three armed services themselves. The Masks of War explains why things sometimes go wrong for the American military. It also explains why things will always go wrong for the military reformers. Changes in the military's strategic thinking have come only in the wake of full-blown disaster-Pearl Harbor, for instance. Today's nuclear world can't afford such lessons.

Challenging several longstanding notions about the American way of war, this book examines US strategic and operational practice from 1775 to 2014. It surveys all major US wars from the War of Independence to the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as most smaller US conflicts to determine what patterns, if any, existed in American uses of force. Contrary to many popular sentiments, Echevarria finds that the American way of war is not astrategic, apolitical, or defined by the use of overwhelming force. Instead, the American way of war was driven more by political considerations than military ones, and the amount of force employed was rarely overwhelming or decisive. As a scholar of Clausewitz, Echevarria borrows explicitly from the Prussian to describe the American way of war not only as an extension of US policy by other means, but also the continuation of US politics by those means. The book’s focus on strategic and operational practice closes the gap between critiques of American strategic thinking and analyses of US campaigns. Echevarria discovers that most conceptions of American strategic culture fail to hold up to scrutiny, and that US operational practice has been closer to military science than to military art. Providing a fresh look at how America’s leaders have used military force historically and what that may mean for the future, this book should be of interest to military practitioners and policymakers, students and scholars of military history and security studies, and general readers interested in military history and the future of military power.

In this authoritative and controversial study, Russel F. Weigley traces the emergence of a characteristic American way of war - in which the object of military strategy has come to mean total destruction of the enemy, first of his armed forces, often of the whole fabric of his society.

The purpose of the report is to provide the way and the means by which out military will advance out enduring national interest as articulated in the 2010 National Security Strategy and to accomplish the defense objectives in the 2012 Quadrennial Defense Review. The Goldwater-Nichols Reorganization Act of 1986 charges the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff with the Responsibility of assisting the President and the Secretary of Defense in providing strategic direction for the Armed Forces. In consultation with the geographic and finctional Combatant Commanders and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we prepared the report to provide my best military advice.

The existence of a national style of warfare, an American Way of War, has been used to characterize fundamental elements of American military strategy. During his tenure as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell became the proponent for a strategic framework to guide the consideration of how military forces should be used to support national policy objectives. His framework was reflected in the Chairman's National Military Strategy published in early 1992 after Desert Storm under a concept titled Decisive Force. This book traces the development and evaluates the merits of a New American Way of War embodied in the Decisive Force concept. Military attitudes and lessons about the utility of force are drawn from four recent conflicts.