The last war we liked: American political culture and small war aversions

This research explores the sources that shape content, continuity, and change in U.S. foreign policy from the period of 1968 through 2006 with a focus on American Army doctrine, and specifically the tension between counterinsurgency and more traditional forms of warfare. Unlike previous assessments, I argue that although international, organizational, and bureaucratic contexts of action are important to understanding the origins of doctrine, they are insufficient without reference to policymakers’ understandings of dominant views of the American way of war in the public mind. And where analysts have examined continuity under a bipolar international system as well as organizational culture, I trace the origin of policymakers’ ideas and their assessments of domestic political and cultural contexts of action against the backdrop of external threats to the state and dominant groups within the Army. Consequently, this study argues that the American experience in war does not readily fit the maxim that armies tend to fight the next war as they did the last, rather the American historical context suggests we fight the next war as the last war we liked. Last, this study equally concerns itself with the responsibility of policymakers to articulate to the American public the nature of the international environment and the required means to achieve policy ends.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesby David Michael Duda