The United States has been at war for nearly a decade and a half, and although American military forces achieved tactical success in Iraq and Afghanistan, they have not been able to convert military victory into political success. This failure to consolidate military gains into stable order has cost both American lives and treasure, not to mention American credibility.
This failure to translate military success into a favorable political outcome is the subject of Nadia Schadlow’s important new book. Why have our civilian and military leaders consistently failed to devote appropriate attention and resources to organizing for the political requirements of military intervention? The problem is not a new one. Afghanistan and Iraq are not aberrations.
Indeed, the requirement for American military governance goes back, at least, to the Mexican War. And the necessity for military governance is not limited to “small wars” or counterinsurgencies. Our most successful military governance operations were executed after World War II in Japan, Germany, and Italy.
But due to what Schadlow calls the “American denial syndrome,” policymakers have consistently rejected the idea that governance should be a formal part of military operations. That “the United States continues to lack the operational capabilities to consolidate combat gains in order to reconstitute political order” she attributes to a combination of history and culture.
The first cause of the denial syndrome is concern about the appropriate role of the military in the American republic, according to which it is dangerous to give the military a role in governance, even abroad. Thus, despite the fact that the Army has been the only organization with the resources to midwife the transition from war to something like peace, both civilian leaders and the military have been reluctant to make that service the main agency of governance in a combat theater during an intervention.
A second cause of the reluctance to plan and organize for military governance is the ambivalence of Americans concerning “governing others,” a legacy of popular opposition to colonialism.
A third cause is the belief that civilians should be taking the lead in governance during wartime. The result has been the worst of both worlds: a failure to develop an institutionalized capacity for governance within the Army while simultaneously failing to allocate the resources necessary to create an effective standing civilian capability within the State Department or other nonmilitary departments and agencies.
The fourth reason has to do with the service culture of the United States Army: a focus on the operational level of war, which the eminent British military writer Hew Strachan has called a “politics-free” zone. This emphasis on operational excellence can be traced to Clausewitz’s distinction between “preparations for war” and “war proper,” and to Samuel Huntington’s description of the “expertise” of the military professional as “the management of violence.” But this focus goes against the grain of Clausewitz’s reminder that war is a continuation of politics “by other means.” In other words, wars are not fought for the sake of fighting itself but in order to achieve a political goal. If the objective of war is not a better political outcome, then war is simply a destructive act.
War and the Art of Governance comprises three parts. The first section describes governance operations themselves, summarizing the tensions that have shaped the conduct of governance-related tasks. The second section provides a historical overview of the debates and challenges that characterized governance operations in Mexico, California, New Mexico, the American South after the Civil War, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, the Rhineland after the First World War, and, of course, the occupations of the onetime Axis powers after World War II.
Schadlow argues that despite the successes of the post-World War II military governments, the United States had done little to institutionalize approaches to the consolidation of political order following combat operations, the consequences of which manifested themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan. The last section offers her conclusions and recommendations.
First, she argues, both military and political leaders need to accept that the political dimension is an integral part of war. Shaping the postwar political order should not be an afterthought: For one thing, combat and governance operations often occur simultaneously. Second, given the centrality of politics to war, unity of command is essential not only to operational but also strategic success in war. Third, “although civilians formulate and drive policy,” the Army must have operational control over governance operations in war. Fourth, the military must resist the comfortable fiction that it can achieve policy ends by “kinetic” means launched at a distance. As T. R. Fehrenbach observed in This Kind of War (1963), his classic study of the Korean conflict:
Moreover, part of the task is not just to kill the enemy but to make sure that such killing serves policy ends.
Finally, the United States, especially American armed forces, must have standing organizations and capabilities prepared to conduct governance operations. The U.S. Army, especially, must see military governance as part of its core competence. The description of the Army’s professional expertise must expand beyond Huntington’s “management of violence.”
Schadlow is no advocate of “nation-building” as a goal of American foreign policy, but she contends that if the United States is going to use force, it must think things through to the end. As Clausewitz observed, “no one starts a war—or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so—without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it.” Thinking about the desired end state is inseparable from the use of force; war divorced from political goals is merely an act of wanton destruction.
Of course, one response to the American failure to achieve our goals in Iraq and Afghanistan has been the comfortable idea that the United States can simply avoid the use of military power. But this is a chimera. As Schadlow argues, “the messy interplay of what Thucydides called the ‘fear, honor, and interest’s that combust into war” is likely to remain beyond the control of leaders who would prefer to avoid the use of force. Political leaders will always face the decision to employ force in defense of American interests, and part of that decision is how to achieve a favorable political end.
This is an important work. Nadia Schadlow has been working on this topic for a long time, pointing out again and again in her work that winning battles and winning wars are not the same thing. And the book’s influence may well be enhanced by Schadlow’s recent appointment to the National Security Council staff, serving under Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster, a remarkable officer who has demonstrated his understanding of the principles Schadlow espouses here.
The United States is hardly obligated to “[go] abroad in search of monsters to destroy,” or to democratize the world by means of nation-building. But the chances are that we will have occasion to employ our military forces in defense of American interests. Policy-makers should pay close attention to War and the Art of Governance. Whether we like it or not, war is a part of international politics, and if the United States is to avoid the errors of Iraq and Afghanistan, those responsible for American policy—military and civilian alike—are well advised to take Nadia Schadlow’s observations to heart.
Mackubin Thomas Owens, dean of academics at the Institute of World Politics in Washington and editor of Orbis, is the
author of US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain.
