US Intervention Policy and Army Innovation: From Vietnam to Iraq

After the Vietnam War the US Army had to rebuild itself while the US government had to reconsider its military intervention strategy. This book examines how it was done and how this has affected US intervention policy, from the victory of the Gulf War to the failure of Somalia, before examining the Bosnian and Kosovo interventions. This volume sets out to analyze the changes in US military intervention strategy by examining two separate issues: the nature of the US Army as it rebuilt itself after the Vietnam War, and the attempts by the US to establish criteria for future military interventions. Richard Lock-Pullan first argues that US strategy traditionally relied upon national mobilization to co-ordinate political aims and military means; he subsequently analyses how this changed to a formula of establishing militarily achievable political objectives prior to the use of force. Drawing on a vast body of strategic culture and military innovation literature, the author demonstrates that the strategiclessons were a product of the rebuilding of the Army's identity as it became a professional all-volunteer force and that the Army's new doctrine developed a new 'way of war' for the nation, embodied in the Air Land Battle doctrine, which changed the approach to strategy. The book finally gives a practical analysis of how the interventions in Panama and the Gulf War vindicated this approach and brought a revived confidence in the use of force while more recent campaigns in Somalia, Kosovo and Bosnia exposed its weaknesses and the limiting nature of the Army's thinking. This book will be of interest to students of strategic studies, international relations and American politics as well as to military professionals.

Richard Lock-Pullan is a Roberts Research Fellow in the Department of Political Science and International Studies and the Centre for Studies in Security and Diplomacy at the University of Birmingham.