Military Organizations and Military Innovations;

Or, How the Armed Services Can Be

The Vanguard of the Revolution (in Military Affairs)


Erica D. Borghard
Mini-APSA, Columbia University
edb2002@columbia.edu
April 30, 2010
1
Abstract:
Revolutions in how states organize and employ their forces to fight wars have important
systemic effects. This paper seeks to contribute to a longstanding debate in the literature
on what drives innovation in military organizations. What are the sources of military
innovation? What external factorstechnology, war outcomes, balance of power
dynamicsshape the decisions of military and civilian leaders to innovate? When
innovation occurs, is it the product of interference by civilians in the military
establishment, or can it emerge from within the military organization? Specifically, this
paper hopes to resolve the existing debate on the sources of military innovation by
applying new case studies of innovation to elucidate crucial points of contention between
scholars of innovation

The paper will focus on US military doctrine for the 2003 invasion and occupation of
Iraq. The US implemented two decisive doctrinal shifts in the context of the Iraq war,
one originating largely from within the civilian establishment, and the other from within
the military establishment: the Rumsfeld invasion plan (a major divergence from the
1990 Powell Doctrine), and the shift to a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy beginning
on a limited scale in 2004.

The paper addresses four areas of contention regarding the sources of military innovation:
the role of civilian involvement in military affairs; recent military defeat; the balance of
power; and the role of technology. The case studies show civilian-based innovation was
driven by beliefs about technology and the strategic environment, while military-based
innovation was driven by changing events on the battlefield, attempts to reconcile prewar
plans with realities on the ground, and the militarys imperative to secure its forces and
achieve the mission. Furthermore, the findings of the paper contradict traditional
bureaucratic organizational arguments about the military.
2
Introduction

Revolutions in how states organize and employ their forces to fight wars have
important systemic effects. Change is risky and, when applied to war fighting, can be
quite costly if unsuccessful. Therefore, some states are slow to create new strategies and
doctrines that change the structure of their armed forces.
1
However, at decisive moments
in history innovative militaries have employed new modes of war fighting in ways that
dramatically shift the balance of power and have a lasting impact on how states fight
wars.
2
This paper seeks to contribute to a longstanding debate in the literature on what
drives military innovation. What are the sources of military innovation? What external
factorstechnology, war outcomes, balance of power dynamicsshape the decisions of
military and civilian leaders to innovate? When innovation occurs, is it the product of
interference by civilians in the military establishment, or can it emerge from within the
military organization? Specifically, this paper hopes to resolve the existing debate on the
sources of military innovation by applying new case studies of innovation to elucidate
crucial points of contention between scholars of innovation.
3

The primary puzzle motivating this paper is the apparent absence of a real
strategic Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) in the United States despite its monopoly
over new and potentially groundbreaking technologies of warfare.
4
The post-Cold War
era ushered in a sense of optimism in US military and policy circles, with many pointing

1
Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 54-5.
2
For example, German Blitzkrieg doctrine fundamentally reshaped how states employed tanks and how the conceived
of rapid maneuver. Hew Strachan, European Armies and the Conduct of War (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983).
Walter Goerlitz, History of the Germany General Staff (New York: Praeger, 1953). Bryan Perrett, A History of
Blitzkrieg (London: Robert Hale, 1983). Larry H. Addington, The Blitzkrieg Era and the German General Staff, 1865-
1941 (New Brunswicks, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1971).
3
The vast bulk of the literature on military innovation is centered on the time period spanning the Napoleonic Wars
through Desert Storm. Rather than re-inventing the wheel, the paper will focus on more recent innovations.
4
Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2004), chap 10.
3
to Desert Storm as the harbinger of a new era of war fighting, driven by changes in
information, communications, and weapons technology.
5
Yet the two major military
interventions pursued by the US following the first invasion of IraqAfghanistan in
2001 and Iraq in 2003bore little resemblance to Desert Storm.
6
However, US military
doctrine did change significantly and in innovative ways in the lead up to the invasion of
Iraq in 2003 and then changed, again, in the middle of the war. This paper will focus on
doctrinal innovation, which is an efficient way to track the development of learning in
military organizations; changes in doctrine are prima facie evidence of military
learning.
7
The US implemented two decisive doctrinal shifts in the context of the Iraq
war, one originating largely from within the civilian establishment, and the other from
within the military establishment: the Rumsfeld invasion plan (a major divergence from
the 1990 Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force), and the shift to a counterinsurgency
(COIN) strategy beginning in a limited scale in 2004 and slowly gaining steam until it
was officially implemented in 2007. These two doctrinal shifts raise important questions
about what drives military innovation: When militaries innovate from within, what types
of innovation do they prefer? When civilians push militaries to innovate, what types of
innovation do they prefer? Do the answers to the former questions differ? In addition to
the questions posed by the two doctrinal shifts outlined above, the Iraq war provides
another empirical puzzle relating to the debate on innovation: the doctrinal change
inducing the most upheaval, the shift to a COIN strategy in the middle of a war, appears

5
Eliot A. Cohen, A Revolution in Warfare, Foreign Affairs 75:2 (March/April 1996). Lawrence Freedman, A
Theory of Battle or a Theory of War? Journal of Strategic Studies 28:3 (June 2005), pp. 426-7. Michael Horowitz and
Stephen Rosen, Evolution or Revolution? The Journal of Strategic Studies 28:3 (June 2005). James R. Fitzsimonds
and Jan M. Van Tol, Revolutions in Military Affairs, Joint Force Quarterly (Spring 1994). Andrew F. Krepinevich,
Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolution, National Interest 37 (Fall 1994). William J. Perry, Desert
Storm and Deterrence, Foreign Affairs 70:4 (Fall 1994).
6
Biddle 2004, chap. 10.
7
John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 8.
4
to be unrelated to major advances in technology. In fact, the implementation of a
population-centric strategy represents a repudiation of one of the key implications of
RMAthe idea that technology allows modern military forces to pare down manpower
in exchange for increased precision and firepower.
8
When does technological change
support innovation, and when does it hinder it?
In addition to responding to the literature on innovation, this paper represents a
response to two more general, well-established literatures in international relations
theory. First, following in the tradition of many who have written on the domestic
sources of international relations,
9
this paper seeks to refute the Waltzian claim that
constituent units of the international system cannot alter the structure of the system
itself.
10
In fact, through radical change in doctrine and force employment, states
through their military organizationscan dramatically alter the prevailing conceptions of
war fighting and can ultimately change the balance of power.
11
Military doctrines
espoused by states can exacerbate the security dilemma and increase the danger of arms
races or war.
12

Second, this paper is a response to offense-defense theory, specifically, to how the
theory conceptualizes the relationship between technology, doctrine, and the offense-
defense balance. The fundamental premise of offense-defense theory is that the diffusion

8
This was the logic underlying the Rumsfeld Doctrine.
9
For just a few examples, see: Jack Snyder, The Ideology of the Offensive (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984);
Jack Snyder, Myths of Empire; Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991);
James D. Fearon. Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes, The American Political
Science Review 88:3 (September 1994), pp. 577-92; James D. Fearon, Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying
Hands versus Sinking Costs, Journal of Conflict Resolution 41:1 (February 1997), pp. 68-90; Michael W. Doyle,
Liberalism and World Politics, The American Political Science Review 80:4 (December 1986), pp. 1151-1169; Jack
S. Levy, Domestic Politics and War, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18 (Spring 1988), pp. 653-73.
10
Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
11
For example, Blitzkrieg had a lasting impact on the international system, not only in terms of the response it
provoked from the Allies during WWII, but also in terms of its replication by other states, notably Israel and the US, in
the post-WWII era.
12
Posen 1984, pp. 15-6. Robert Jervis, Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma, World Politics 40:2 (January
1978), pp. 167-214.
5
of technology across the international system can have a major impact on whether
offensive or defensive strategies are dominant.
13
By implication, this has an important
effect on warfarethe types of wars states fight, who is favored to win, and other key
aspects of conflict. Yet offense-defense theorists have erroneously conceptualized
technology as a systemic variable.
14
Unpacking the relationship between technology and
strategy, this paper argues that technology matters in the context of force employment
the same technology can be used offensively or defensively.
15
Even nuclear weapons, the
quintessential defense dominance weapon
16
, could be employed offensively, as
evidenced by attempts by US strategists during the early days of the Cold War to find a
way to conventionalize nuclear weapons.
17
Furthermore, the given state of technology in
the world might matter little for asymmetric conflicts where that some states are better
than others at employing technologies in revolutionary ways, and this can have important
systemic effects.
18
Offense-defense theorists may be correct in asserting that at different
points in time technology may favor the offense or the defense, but this paper will argue
this is only because innovative militaries found a way to transform strategies or doctrines,
thus changing the balance of the international system.

13
Jervis 1978. Jack Levy, The Offensive/Defensive Balance of Military Technology: A Theoretical and Historical
Analysis, International Studies Quarterly 28:2 (June 1984), pp. 219-238. Stephen Van Evera, Offense, Defense, and
the Causes of War, International Security 22:4 (Spring 1998), pp. 5-43. Charles L. Glaser and Chaim Kaufmann,
What is the Offense-Defense Balance and Can We Measure it? International Security 22:4 (Spring 1998), pp. 44-82.
Stephen Van Evera, Causes of War, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).
14
Biddle 2004, pp. 15-6.
15
For example, tanks were used defensively in WWI and offensively in WWII.
16
Van Evera codes the Cold War as defense dominant: The nuclear revolution gave defenders a large military
advantageso large that conquest among great powers became virtually impossible.Defenders could secure
themselves merely by maintaining a second-strike capability.The characteristics of nuclear weaponstheir vast
power, small size, light weight, and low costensured that a first-strike capabilities would be very hard to reach, while
a second-strike capabilities could be sustained at little cost. Van Evera 1999, pp. 177-8.
17
Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Furthermore, until
just recently, the US maintained a first use policy regarding nuclear weapons.
18
As Horowitz and Rosen point out, Biddle makes a similar argument: Technological advances by themselves [do]
not produce lopsided military outcomes. It [is] only new technology plus a new force employment conceptthat
produce[s] a Revolution in Military Affairs. Horowitz and Rosen 2005, p. 440.
6
Additionally, this paper hopes to fill a gap in international relations literature on
the role of force employment in war. In general, the role of doctrine and force
employment is under-theorized.
19
Furthermore, Stephen Biddle argues international
relations theorists mostly ignore force employment in measures of state power and
capacity, which leads to erroneous empirical results.
20
Theorists measure military power
either in terms of preponderancebasic bean countingor blithely assuming states will
use materiel optimally.
21
Opening the black box of military power, Biddle makes a
significant contribution to the literature by assessing the effect of the modern system of
force employment on war outcomes.
22
Taking Biddles observation that the same type of
forces employed in distinct ways can have vastly different consequences as a starting
point,
23
this paper treats force employment (re-conceptualized as innovative doctrine) as a
dependent variable and seeks to identify its determinants.
The primary purpose of the paper, however, is to shed light on competing theories
of the sources of military innovation. The hypotheses outlined below reflect the
outstanding disputes in the literature on innovation and illustrate how a more nuanced
theoretical approach to the sources of military innovation could provide much-needed
complexity to a stark debate.
Definitions, Hypotheses, and The Innovation Debate
In what contexts does military innovation emerge from within the military, and in
what contexts does it come from civilian leadership? What kinds of external events

19
Posen 1984, p. 39.
20
Biddle 2004, p. 18.
21
Ibid. For just a few examples, see Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, 6
th
ed. (New York: McGraw Hill,
1985), pp. 141-2; Klaus Knorr, Military Power and Potential (Lexington: D.C. Heath, 1970), pp. 119-36; also see
footnote 4.
22
Biddle 2004, pp. 2-4, 18.
23
Biddle 2004, p. 3.
7
defeat in war, the balance of power, technologyshape innovation? Which kinds of
external events are more likely to affect civilian leaders, and which are more likely to
affect the military? This paper will test several hypotheses about the sources of military
innovation. First, however, it is important to distinguish between technology and
doctrine, and to define innovation. As explained above, much of the IR literature
collapses technology and doctrine into a rough measure of military power or state
capacity. This paper is premised, however, on a clear differentiation between the two. It
advances the claim that technology can only be significant in terms of how it is usedit
has no a priori, independent effect on the international system. Thus technology, broadly
conceived, is the full array of materiel states can employ in the conduct of war. Doctrine
is how states and their military organizations answer the questions: What means shall be
employed? and How shall they be employed?
24
More specifically, the US Army
defines doctrine as the concise expression of how Army forces contribute to unified
action in campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements.Army doctrine
provides a common language and a common understanding of how Army forces conduct
operations.
25
This paper focuses on innovation at the level of doctrine, not technology.
It is motivated by the question of what causes military organizations to be innovative
their employment of military technology, not in their invention of the technology itself.
26

Rosen defines major innovation as, a change that forces one of the primary combat arms
of a service to change its concepts of operation and its relation to other combat arms, and

24
Posen 1984, p. 13.
25
Headquarters, Department of the Army, Field Manual 3-0, Operations (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing
Office, 2001), I-46 and I-46.
26
For technological innovation in the military see, Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race, (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1988); Michael OHanlon, Technological Change and the Future of Warfare (Washington,
D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2000); Steven T. Ross, From Flintlock to Rifle (London: Frank Cass, 1979); Major
General JF.C. Fuller, Armament and History (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1945); Bernard Brodie, From
Crossbow to H-Bomb (Bloomington, I.N.: Indiana University Press, 1973).
8
to abandon or downgrade missions.
27
It is important to note that innovation does not
carry any normative implications and does not always lead to military successit is not
always good to be an innovator, as the case studies will demonstrate. Though the
hypotheses articulated below include sub-state and supra-state variables, the unit of
analysis is the military organization, which includes the military chain of command as
well as civilian leadership.
Drawing on a large literature on military innovation, this paper weighs in on
several unresolved debates about what drives militaries to innovate. The goal of this
paper is to assess whether the contemporary historical record of the two major doctrinal
shifts of the current Iraq war supports one body of literature over another, or allows one
to draw some conclusions about under what conditions one might expect one variable or
combination of variables to explain innovation outcomes.
Debate 1: Civilian Involvement in Military Affairs
States with greater civilian involvement in military decision-making are more
likely to be innovators. This hypothesis stems from a large body of literature on civil-
military relations and also has roots in organization theory, which posits that military
organizations prioritize bureaucratic interests and this can cause them to be slow to
adapt.
28
It is also conceptually related to Samuel Huntingtons depiction of the military
mind, and of military organizations inherently tendency toward conservatism and
preference of certain victory to risky ventures, which embodies the philosophy of

27
Stephen Peter Rosen, New Ways of War: Understanding Military Innovation, International Security 13:1 (Summer
1988), p. 134.
28
Deborah D. Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 4-5.
Also see Graham Allison, Essence of Decision, (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971); John Steinbruner, The Cybernetic
Theory of Decision, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974); Morton Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign
Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1974); Morton Halperin and Arnold Kanter, The Bureaucratic Perspective, in
Robert J. Art and Robert Jervis, eds., International Politics: Anarchy, Force, Political Economy, and Decision Making,
2d ed. (Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1985), p. 444.
9
conservative realism.
29
Militaries are more likely to favor the maintenance of strong,
diverse, and ready military forces[and] to oppose the extension of state commitments
and the involvement of the state in war except when victory is certain.
30
Militaries
eschew doctrinal innovations because they increase operational uncertainty.
31

Innovation is therefore more like when civilians, who generally lack Huntingtons
conservative realism approach to war fighting, exert greater control over military
affairs.
32
Similarly, Barry Posens finding on innovations in France, Britain, and
Germany in the interwar period supports Huntingtons premise that organizational
characteristics of military organizations impede innovation. Posen argues that the British
RAF Fighter Command and the Blitzkrieg doctrine were both innovations that required
civilian intervention.
33
A classic example of how bureaucracy can impede innovation is
Edward L. Katzenbachs analysis of how organizational incentives led to the perpetuation
of cavalry regiments in European and American armies despite their inapplicability to
modern warfare. Katzenbach concludes that civilian intervention in military affairs is
necessary to achieve change in the military organization.
34
Analogous to arguments
about the organizational and bureaucratic structure of the military as impediments to
change, theories of the strategic culture of organizations also suggest militaries can
develop unique cultures that circumscribe how they perceive their roles and identities and

29
Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 1957), chap. 3, p. 79.
Also see Kurt Lang, Military Organizations, in James G. March, Handbook of Organizations, (Chicago: Rand
McNally, 1965), p. 857.
30
Huntington 1957, pp. 65, 69.
31
Posen 1984, p. 55, 46.
32
Posen 1984, p. 57.
33
Posen 1984, p. 225.
34
Edward L. Katzenbach, The Horse Cavalry in the Twentieth Century: A Study in Policy Response, Public Policy
(1958), pp. 120-49.
10
therefore limit their abilities to innovate.
35
If Army possesses a particular strategic
culture whereby it perceives the essence of the American army [to be]ground combat
by organized regular divisional units, this could prevent the emergence of doctrines that
run counter to the strategic culture.
36

States with greater civilian involvement in military decision-making are not
necessarily more likely to be innovators. Instead, innovation can come from within
military organizations. Challenging Posen, Stephen Rosen argues that military
mavericks are not likely to be successful promoters of innovation because their
behaviorarouse[s] the hostility of the military establishments, which therefore
[become] less receptive to change.
37
Rosen criticizes the conventional conceptualization
of military organizations as monolithic unit[s], instead depicting military organizations
as complex political communities that can produce innovation from within through an
ideological struggle when top military leaders champion new methods of war fighting
and civilians play a supporting role.
38
Kimberly Zisk argues that militaries innovate in
response to perceptions of external threat, specifically the doctrines of other states, and
that this does not require intervention by civilians.
39
However, as Deborah Avant points
out, both Rosen and Zisk cannot escape the underlying assumption that military
organizations are inherently slow moving and resistant to innovation. Avant makes the
stronger claim that innovation within military organizations does not have to be the result
of an ideological struggle; structural incentives to innovate can promote innovation

35
Alastair Iain Johnston, Thinking About Strategic Culture, International Security 19:4 (Spring 1996), pp. 32-64.
Theodore G. Stroup, Jr., Leadership and Organizational Culture: Actions Speak Louder than Words, Military Review
LXXVI, No. 1 (January/February 1996), p. 45. Elizabeth Kier, Culture and Military Doctrine: France Between the
Wars, International Security 19:4 (Spring 1995), p. 66.
36
Nagl 2005, p. 6.
37
Rosen 1988, p. 139.
38
Rosen 1988, pp. 140-3.
39
Kimberly Marten Zisk, Engaging the Enemy: Organization Theory and Soviet Military Innovation, 1955-1991
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
11
without significant resistance.
40
In a similar vein, Williamson Murray and Barry Watts
argue that military leaders at the higher echelons of command are integral to promoting
innovation from within the military organization; when leaders are responsive to and
accept new ideas innovation is more likely to occur.
41

Evidence from the 2003 Iraq war indicates innovation sometimes comes from
within the military establishment, while other times is imposed by civilian leaders.
Clearly, the debate is more nuanced than whether the former or the latter is more likely to
occur. The more interesting questions, then, is: Why does innovation come from the
military in some contexts and from civilians in others? This approach is similar to that
taken by Ricky Lynn Waddell, who incorporates elements of the Rosen and Posen
models to explain change in US doctrine for low intensity conflicts from the 1960s to the
1990s. Waddell argues that both civilians and members of the military organization
helped produce innovation.
42
This paper will show that, in the case of Iraq, civilian
innovation was driven by beliefs about technology and the strategic environment, while
military innovation was driven by changing events on the battlefield, attempts to
reconcile prewar plans with realities on the ground, and the militarys imperative to
secure its forces and achieve the mission. Moreover, this paper will argue that the
militarys bureaucratic organizational impediments to innovation may have played a role
during the lead up to war, while the same impediments did not hold once war
commenced.
Debate 2: The Role of Military Defeat

40
Avant 1994, pp. 15-6, chaps. 2, 4, 5.
41
Williamson Murray and Barry Watts, Innovation in Peacetime, in Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, eds.,
Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 409. Also see
Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, Military Effectiveness (London: Allen & Unwin, 1988).
42
Ricky Lynn Waddell, The Army and Peacetime Low Intensity Conflict, 1961-1993: The Process of Peripheral and
Fundamental Military Change (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1993).
12
States that recently suffered a military defeat are more likely to be innovators.
Organization theory posits that lumbering, change-averse organizations such as the
military will only innovate in response to major failure, especially defeat in war.
43
Such
states are more likely to have lost the old guard of leaders who might have been more
resistant to change. Furthermore, military defeatthe inability of the military
organization to realize its paramount objectivemight induce leaders to reexamine their
basic doctrinal preferences, making them more willing to take risks and think
differently.
44
For example, the British Army dramatically changed its procedure for
assigning officer positions, moving away from the Purchase System, due to considerable
failures of the officer corps in the conduct of the Crimean War.
45
More dramatically,
German defeat in World War I was instrumental in prompting the German General Staff
to reevaluate its approach to Continental warfare, leading to the innovations in speed and
maneuver that became the Blitzkrieg doctrine.
46
It could also prompt institutional
learning, which involves the recognition of shortcomings in organizational knowledge
or performance[and] searching for and achieving consensus on the right solution for
the shortcomings to the adoption and dissemination of the modified doctrine.
47

Institutional learning can lead to changes in doctrine, as well as changes in the curricula
of military schools and training institutions, in the structure of military organizations, in

43
For literature on innovation in firms in response to failure see, Richard Cyert and James March, A Behavioral Theory
of the Firm, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1963), pp. 278-9. For innovation in military organizations in
response to defeat see, Jay Luvaas, The Education of an Army: British Military Thought 1815-1940 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1964), p. 43.
44
Posen 1984, p. 57. Steven Van Evera, Why Cooperation Failed in 1914, in Kenneth Oye, ed., Cooperation Under
Anarchy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Stephen Van Evera, The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins
of the First World War, International Security, 9:1 (Summer 1984), pp. 58-107. Jack Snyder, Civil-Military
Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984, International Security 9:1 (Summer 1984), pp. 108-46.
45
Nagl 2005, pp. 8-9.
46
Addington 1971, pp. 28-31. Richard A. Preston and Sydney F. Wise, Men in Arms (New York: Praeger Publishers,
1970), pp. 295-302. James S. Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg (Lawrence, K.S.: University Press of Kansas, 1992), pp.
1-25.
47
Nagl 2005, p. 6.
13
the creation of new organizations to deal with new or changed situations, and in myriad
other institutional responses to change.
48
Military organizations that are more flexible
are more likely display signs of institutional learning.
49

Innovation can occur in response to or in the wake of military victory. Stephen
Rosen argues that recent military defeat is not a necessary condition for military
innovation and that innovation often occurs after military victory.
50
In addition to
Rosens case studies of states that innovated in response to victorythe RAF in Britain,
the movement from battleships to aircraft carriers in the US Navy, and the shift to
amphibious assaults in the US MarinesRosen cites the examples of the Russian army
after the Russo-Japanese War and the US after Vietnam as cases where states failed to
innovate in response to defeat.
51

This paper will argue that framing the debate in the stark terms of innovation in
response to defeat versus innovation in response to victory does not provide much
theoretical leverage or nuance. As the empirical record demonstrates, there are copious
examples of innovation in response to both victory and defeat. Therefore, this paper will
examine how shifts in local dynamics on the ground during warfare can lead to new
doctrines. Outright defeat in war is not a necessary condition for doctrinal change.
Instead, the loss of significant battles during war or the failure of armed forces to
adequately respond to challenges posed by the adversary can lead to innovation during
the course of war. Historical examples of doctrinal shifts during war exist: in World War
I the German Army found a way to break through the stalemate created by trench warfare

48
Nagl 2005, p. 7.
49
Nagl 2005, p. 7.
50
Rosen 1988, pp. 135, 138.
51
Rosen 1988, pp. 135 (footnote 3), 143, 151.
14
by combining infantry and artillery to break through the trenches
52
; the British Army
devised innovative and successful COIN tactics after years of setbacks against the
insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s.
53

Debate 3: Balance of Power
States innovate in response to changes in the balance of power. This hypothesis
is consistent with traditional realist accounts of balance of power politics, where states
respond to changes in the distribution of power, which can include shifts to/from offense
or defense dominance and exacerbations of the security dilemma.
54
Posen argues in
times of threat across the international system, states in general are more likely to
innovate than in times of relative international calm.
55
Given this hypothesis, one
would expect a higher level of innovation by all states in times of crisis compared to
times of stability.
States tend to innovate in periods of stasis in the distribution of power, not just in
periods of change. Contrary to the expectations of organization theory, Rosen examines
cases of military innovation during peacetime, when the balance of power has already
settled.
56
Perhaps because innovation is risky during times of war, militaries might be
more inclined to explore new ways of organizing fighting forces during peacetime.
Furthermore, peacetime allows militaries to analyze and improve upon the mistakes of
the previous war and anticipate future threats, which could lead to innovative doctrines.
Similarly to the first two debates, the more interesting question to consider that is
not captured by the debate on the role of the balance of power is whether balance of

52
Timothy T. Lupfer, The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine During the First World
War (Fort Leavenworth, K.S.: Combat Studies Institute, 1981).
53
Nagl 2005, pp. 59-107.
54
Morgenthau 1985; Jervis 1978.
55
Posen 1984, p. 40.
56
Rosen 1988, pp. 134-5.
15
power considerations impact potential innovative actors in different ways. As Deborah
Avant points out, balance of power explanations for military doctrines always predict
success and are not sufficient to explain variation in outcomes.
57
In any given
historical time period, some states respond in an innovative manner to changes in the
distribution of power in the international system, or in response to a perception of an
external threat, while others continue to apply doctrines of the previous war to the current
situation. Therefore, considering the impact of balance of power dynamics at a level
below that of the state, it is more compelling to probe whether concerns about the balance
of power are more likely to push civilian or military leaders to innovate. The case studies
examined in this paper suggest civilian leaders respond to balance of power concerns
both perceptions of change in the balance of power and desires to maintain the current
balance of powermore than the military. This is not surprising; one would expect
civilian leaders in the defense establishment to be attuned to the relative power position
of the state in the international system.
Debate 4: The Role of Technology
Innovation is more likely in times of technological change than technological
stasis. This hypothesis embodies the notion that innovation inheres in technology; in
other words, technological change drives innovation, regardless of institutions and
organizations.
58
This implies if a state acquires a new military technology, one would
expect to see radically different doctrine. Offense-defense theorys conceptualization of
technology supports this claim, asserting technology has inherent offensive or defensive

57
Avant 1994, p. 5.
58
Evangelista 1988; OHanlon 2000; Ross 1979; Fuller 1945. This logic also underlies the proponents of RMA, who
assert that rapid change in weapons and communications technology should necessarily lead to reevaluation and
innovation in US grand strategy and doctrine, see Cohen 1996.
16
properties that affect the behavior of states. Robert Jervis treatment of technology does
not take into account that technology employed in different ways can lead to different
outcomes. Rather, Jervis conceives of technology as an objective variable.
59
Van Evera
claims to improve upon the extant literature on offense-defense theory (notably, Jervis)
by considering a variety of causes of the offense-defense balance, including both
technology and doctrine. However, Van Evera posits a muddled conception of the
relationship between technology and military doctrine and ends up arguing technology
can have independent offensive or defensive properties that shape the structure of the
international system.
60

Technological change is not a necessary condition for military innovation.
Biddle implicitly argues that one cannot establish a relationship between technological
change and innovation. In fact, the introduction of new or improved technologies does
not necessarily lead to innovation, and innovation can occur in times of technological
stasis. Since 1918, Biddle asserts, technology employed in warfare has changed
significantly, yet there has not been a corresponding change in force employment. He
argues the modern system of force employment continues to be the primary means of
organizing modern military forces, despite increase in lethality, range, and precision of
weapons.
61
Furthermore, perhaps one of the greatest doctrinal innovations, Napoleons
levee en masse, occurred in the absence of any major technological advancement.
62

Case Selection

59
Jervis 1978.
60
Van Evera 1998, pp. 16, 18.
61
Biddle 2004, pp. 52-3.
62
Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 75-93.
17
Given the exhaustive literature on historical cases of military innovation, this
paper confines its analysis to the most recent examples of innovation to contribute to the
debate on the sources of innovation. Specifically, the paper will focus on the US
militarys two doctrinal innovations in the 2003 Iraq war: the Rumsfeld Doctrine and
COIN. This allows for considerable variation across the four areas of debate: the roles of
civilian versus military sources of innovation, recent military experiences, technology,
and balance of power concerns. While limiting the analysis to the US controls for the
international balance of power (unipolarity), the local balance of power in Iraq varied
significantly over time. Similarly, while the cases control for recent military defeat (US
won the Persian Gulf War), military experiences on the ground changed dramatically,
allowing wins and losses during the war to create a recent historical memory for the
military organization. The US experience in Iraq also displays variation in terms of the
role of technology, with technology serving as a central component of Rumsfelds
invasion plan while being less relevant to the COIN strategy that was later implemented.
Finally, Iraq involves doctrinal innovation from within the military organization and from
the civilian establishment. Limiting the scope of the cases to the most contemporary
comes with some drawbacks. It does not allow for generalizations about trends over time
or even across different states. However, this case selection method comports with the
aspiration of this paper, which is to contribute new empirical analysis to a series of old
debates.
The Rumsfeld Doctrine: Innovation from Without
In many ways, the story of the Rumsfeld Doctrine and its implementation in the
invasion of Iraq in 2003 is a paradigmatic example of military innovation being imposed
18
by civilians on a lumbering, conservative-minded military establishment.
63
The
Rumsfeld Doctrine contains a variety of components, but its fundamental mission is to
transform the organization of the US military establishment to be more responsive to a
fluid, asymmetric strategic environment. The 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review
explicitly asserts that the US defense establishment should change its strategic orientation
from a threat-based one to a capabilities-based oneshifting from planning against a
known adversary to planning against any potential adversary.
64
This involves the
creation of a Future Force which can be ready to engage any kind of adversary anywhere
in the world.
65
The logic behind such a shift is rooted in the assertion that the US cannot
know with confidence what nation, combination of nations, or non-state actor will pose
threats to the US or its allies, but that the US can anticipate the capabilities that an
adversary might employ against the US and its interests.
66
This necessitates paring
down the size of the armed forces and replacing lumbering might with lighter units that
can deliver greater amounts of firepower (such as the Strysker Brigades), more joint
operations and use of special forces. Campaigns will be organized around fast, decisive
blows to an enemy regime.
67

The organization most resistant to Rumsfelds plan was the Army, which
questioned not only the specifics of the invasion plan, but also the prudence of the war
itself.
68
The military establishment bristled against the level of civilian involvement in

63
Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco, (New York: Penguin Books, 2007), p. 68.
64
Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Department of Defense, September 30, 2001, p. iv.
65
Peter A. Wilson, John Gordon IV, and David E. Johnson, An Alternative Future Force: Building a Better Army,
Parameters (Winter 2003-04), p. 19.
66
Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Department of Defense, September 30, 2001, pp. 13-4.
67
William R. Hawkins, Iraq: Heavy Forces and Decisive Warfare, Parameters (August 2003), pp. 61-7.
Interestingly, despite the apparent similarities of this kind of fast maneuver to Blitzkrieg, Hawkins argues that the
reliance on technology to destroy enemy forces before actual troops move in more closely resembles the tactics of
World War II, where the artillery conquers, the infantry occupies.
68
Ricks 2007, pp. 40, 68.
19
the planning, as well as civilian attempts to severely limit the size of the force (especially
attempts to establish a ceiling on the number of troops).
69
This certainly comports with
a bureaucratic organizational storythe Army has an incentive to request as many troops
as possible to ensure military action is as costless as possible. Yet, this same inclination
to conservative estimates in the lead up to war does not necessarily translate into an
inability to react to changing realities on the ground once troops have entered
Clausewitzs fog of war.
70
In fact, the tendency to protect ones troops can produce
conservatism and resistance to change in settled times and in the lead up to war, but
openness to innovation during war, which will be discussed in the subsequent section.
This is the opposite prediction of bureaucratic organization theory, which asserts in a
time of crisis or instability organizations will stick to standard operating procedures
(SOP) because change is risky. Instead, diffusion of hierarchy on the battlefield and the
imperative to protect forces and achieve the mission can push members of the military at
varying levels of command to innovate.
While innovation as the product of civilian interference in military affairsthe
basic storyline of the adaption of the Rumsfeld Doctrine to the invasion of Iraqappears
to confirm a bureaucratic organization interpretation of innovation in the military, that
interpretation cannot explain innovation by the civilian establishment. The Department
of Defense (DOD) is as bureaucratic and complex as the military. Therefore, what is the
source of civilian innovation? The implementation of the Rumsfeld Doctrine illustrates
how civilian-based innovation is driven by technological and strategic concerns.
Rumsfeld and many others in the civilian establishment believed changes in technology

69
Ricks 2007, pp. 41-3.
70
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). For a discussion of friction in war see
pp. 119-21.
20
should drive changes in doctrine. Therefore, given all of the developments in precision-
guided munitions (PGMs), information and communications technology, and other
weapons technology, Rumsfeld considered a massive fighting force outdated.
Furthermore, the strategic environment, especially the Bush administrations belief that
the Clinton Presidency did not adequately reorganize US fighting forces for a unipolar,
yet uncertain, strategic environment, played a major role in its approach to the Iraq war.
These beliefs were voiced by civilian leaders to the military even before September 11,
2001, and were only reinforced by the terrorist attacks on the US homeland.
71

This section will also consider whether technological and strategic drivers of
innovative doctrine are likely to be successful, and will argue that the Rumsfeld Doctrine
illustrates how these sources of innovation are misapplied to doctrine. Rather, doctrine
should be fundamentally informed by assessments of the enemy with whom the military
plans to interact.
72
This can incorporate strategic and technological concerns, but the
latter should not be the sole sources of doctrinal change because it cannot capture the real
purpose of doctrine, which is to stipulate how ones military forces should be organized
to defeat an adversary. Considering ones own technology is not interactive and does not
take into account how it might fare against ones adversary. Similarly, strategic concerns
are a level of analysis above doctrine, and may not comport with local dynamics and
interactions. This suggests the militarywhich confronts more directly the armed forces
of the adversarymay be better equipped to formulate doctrine and its innovation.
Civil-Military Relations in the Planning Stages

71
John Ehrenberg, J. Patrice McSherry, Jos Ramn Snchez, and Caroleen Marji Sayej, eds., The Iraq Papers,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 52-7. Condoleezza Rice, Remarks on Terrorism and Foreign Policy,
Johns Hopkins University, April 29, 2002, and George W. Bush, Graduation Speech at West Point, June 1, 2002, in
Ehrenberg et al, 2010, pp. 63-7. Josef Joffe, Of Hubs, Spokes and Public Goods, The National Interest (Fall 2002),
pp. 17-8.
72
Sun-Tzu, The Art of Warfare (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), p. 113.
21
Even before the planning for Iraq began, tension between the Army and civilian
officials at the Pentagon boded for a contentious relationship. Civilian officials began to
intimate to military leaders in August 2001 that the Secretary of Defense sought to trim
the size of the Army from ten to eight active divisions. After September 11, 2001 and the
beginning of the Afghan campaign, members of the Army felt Afghanistan was being
poorly executed with little strategic conception of the nature of the war there.
73
Similar
issues would arise regarding Iraq. Furthermore, President George W. Bush came into
office strongly supportive of the idea that the military needed to be reorganized, and that
Persian Gulf-era fighting forces were unreasonably large given the major technological
advantages of the past decade. As a result, he gave Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld significant authority to impose new strategic and operational concepts on a
potentially recalcitrant military organizationwhat Rumsfeld termed transformation.
To do so, Rumsfeld believed he had to exert his authority over potential dissenters,
especially the Joint Chiefs. Therefore, the plans for the invasion of Iraq involved an
extraordinary level of civilian involvement in military planning.
74
Throughout the
planning for the invasion there was conflict between Rumsfeld and the Army over the
benefits of transformation and the number of troops needed for any major engagement.
Many elements of Army leadership accepted the idea that increasing the speed of troops
and developing the capabilities to deploy troops to a variety of contingencies were
important improvements for a modern fighting force, which was encapsulated in a study
by the Joint Chiefs called Operational Availability conducted in the spring of 2002.
However, the Joint Chiefs did not believe advances in technology could not compensate

73
Ricks 2007, pp. 69-71.
74
Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II, (New York: Vintage Books, 2007), pp. 5-11. Ricks
2007, p. 76.
22
for a preponderance of troops, which is a position has been widely accepted in the Army
since the Civil War.
75
All of these factors boded for contentious relations between
civilian and military leadership.
General Franks, the head of Central Command (CENTCOM), initially found
himself positioned between Rumsfeld, who was pushing for a smaller fighting force, and
Army officers, who wanted a larger force more in line with General Anthony Zinnis
plans for Iraq (Desert Crossing), which had been developed over the course of the 1990s
(Zinni was Clintons head of CENTCOM). Over time Franks began to shift his position
closer to that of Rumsfeld, while the many elements of the Army remained concerned
about the number of troops apportioned for the invasion.
76

CENTCOMs existing plan for a military confrontation with Iraq, OPLAN 1003-
98, involved a massive invasion force totaling up to 500,000 men and women.
77
In the
months after the beginning of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 Rumsfeld began to
push for a reorganization of US military contingencies for a war with Iraq. Intent on
reducing the number of personnel required for US ground operations while increasing the
employment of ever more lethal and precise weaponry, Rumsfeld believed OPLAN 1003-
98 called for unnecessarily large numbers of troops. Instead, Rumsfeld pushed
CENTCOM and Franks to devise an invasion plan involving only 125,000 troops.
78

Memory and lessons learned from the Clinton administration may also have played a
role in the push for smaller forces. Plans for the first Iraq war grossly overestimated US

75
Gordon and Trainor 2007, p. 60.
76
Ricks 2007, pp. 33-4.
77
Gordon and Trainor 2007, pp. 27-30.
78
Gordon and Trainor 2007, pp. 3-5.
23
casualties. This time around it was going to be a cakewalk because it was a cakewalk
last time.
79

The iterated contest between Rumsfeld and the military leadership involved
multiple rounds of negotiations, with Rumsfeld insisting each time that the militarys
plan involved too many troops. CENTCOM leadership was responsive to Rumsfeld
insistence on pushing for a complete paradigm shift on Iraq. Franks, in a series of
meetings with Rumsfeld in December of 2001, significantly reshaped OPLAN 1003-98
(renamed Generated Start) to reduce the number of troops to an initial deployment of
145,000, increasing to a maximum of 275,000. Franks also drastically cut estimates for
the length of combat operations to 135 days. Despite this, Rumsfeld continued to press
for even shorter deployment phases and even smaller numbers of troops.
80
Franks new
plan, Generated Start, also contained two tactical innovations that were necessarily a
function of having a significantly reduced number of troops. First, it would involve
beginning the forward attack before all of the reinforcements had time to get to the
staging area in Kuwait, maximizing the element of surprise. Second, it called for a
synchronized air and ground attack, in a departure from the traditional ordering of a
preparatory air strike followed by a ground invasion (which is what occurred in Desert
Storm).
81

In May of 2002 Franks began to devise a different war plan, called Running Start,
which involved an immediate air attack against Iraq lasting 45 days, during which time
the US would build up ground troopsan Army and a Marine divisionto launch an

79
Ricks 2007, p. 36.
80
Gordon and Trainor 2007, pp. 31-35.
81
Gordon and Trainor 2007, p. 41
24
invasion after the air strikes.
82
In August 2002, under continued pressure from Rumsfeld,
Franks and CENTCOM devised a new invasion plan, called Hybrid, which combined
elements of Generated Start and Running Start. The plan involved a very short
mobilization period (5 days), followed by a shorter air campaign than that envisioned by
Running Start, and then around 18,000 ground troops would begin a ground assault while
the large majority of troops were still entering the region. Hybrid also involved
significant joint operations between the Marines and the Army. This plan was well-
received by the administration, despite reservations by Secretary of State Colin Powell,
who feared the plan was overly concerned with reducing troop levels and deployment
times and insufficiently focused on what would come after the invasion.
83

General David McKiernan, who was promoted to head the land command for the
Iraqi invasion in September of 2002, had some reservations about the Hybrid Plan,
believing the Pentagon and administration were too quick to accept the plan without
considering its implications. McKiernan was especially concerned that the small number
of combat troops planned for the initial phase of the land invasion would actually draw
out the war by giving Iraqi forces some time to regroup before the full US invasion force
could enter the country. McKiernan also worried that, if the plan were successful, a very
small number of troops would be in Iraq to control the turmoil resulting from the toppling
of Saddam Husseins regime. McKiernan believed had a small window of time in which
he could push for an alternative war plan due to the breathing room provided by the
administrations decision to take the Iraq issue to the United Nations.
84


82
Gordon and Trainor 2007, pp. 57-8.
83
Gordon and Trainor 2007, pp. 76-8, 80-1, 86-7.
84
Gordon and Trainor 2007, pp. 86-9, 99-101. Ricks 2007, p. 75.
25
McKiernan met with Franks and Rumsfeld in December 2002 and managed to
convince Rumsfeld to support McKiernans ground invasion plan, called Cobra II, which
hearkened back to the original Generated Start plan and involved a larger initial invasion
force of 86,000 troops, with total troop levels reaching up to 250,000 men and women.
Tension between Army leadership and Rumsfeld simmered over logistical planning and
the Armys fears that the Pentagon would cut off reinforcement troops if the invasion
force proceeded relatively successfully, thus leaving the invading troops stranded, and
over Rumsfelds intimate involvement in the Armys plans for troop deployment and his
questioning of the Armys logistical planning. Struggles between the Army and the
Office of the Secretary of Defense had important effects on some of the biggest mistakes
made by the US military in Iraq. Disorganized troop deployment and logistical planning
led to disarray and confusion on the ground once troops were deployed and even
contributed to the Abu Ghraib scandal.
85
Concerns within the Army over the number of
troops apportioned for the invasion were publically articulated in February 2002 when
General Eric Shinseki testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that a war
with Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops, far exceeding DOD plans.
86

Reading Rumsfelds Mind: The Sources of Civilian Innovation
The evolution of a plan for the invasion of Iraq described above illustrates the
central goals of the Rumsfeld Doctrine, which are to make the US military leaner, more
lethal, and more rapidly deployed, all of which involved significant changes to how the
US military traditionally approached war fighting. In this way, the Rumsfeld Doctrine is
an example of innovation being imposed on the military from civilian leadership. What

85
Gordon and Trainor 2007, pp. 109-15. The relationship between disorganization and Abu Ghraib was documented
by a commission headed by the Former Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger.
86
Gordon and Trainor 2007, p. 117.
26
are the sources of this kind of innovation? This section will argue that Rumsfelds
transformation agenda, of which Iraq represented a crucial test, stemmed from two key
sources: the administrations belief about the nature of the strategic environment, and its
beliefs about the role of technological change in innovation.
87

The 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), produced shortly after September
11, encapsulates the Department of Defenses approach to 21
st
century warfare and
illustrates how the civilian leaderships approach to Iraq fits in as part of a broader
discourse on how the US military should operate in the world. The 2001 QDR isolates
two fundamental changes that should drive US defense planning for the transformation
of its military forces, which represents the cornerstone of the QDR: the fluid nature of the
strategic environment, where the US does not face a peer competitor but is challenged by
asymmetric threats stemming from terrorist organizations, non-state actors, and weak
states; and changes in military technology, including how the ongoing revolution in
military affairs could change the conduct of military operations.
88
Transformation
involves maintaining global US military dominanceeffectively, the maintenance of
unipolarityagainst all known and unknown threats.
89
As Rumsfeld himself articulated
in a speech at National Defense University on January 31, 2002, the post-Cold War
strategic environment necessitates innovation:
An ability to adapt will be critical in a world where surprise and
uncertainty are the defining characteristics of our new security
environment. During the Cold War, we faced a fairly predictable set of
threats.But the Cold War is overand with it, the familiar security

87
Wilson et al 2003-04, p. 22.
88
Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Department of Defense, September 30, 2001, pp. 4-7. David Jablonsky,
Army Transformation: A Tale of Two Doctrines, Parameters (Autumn 2001), pp. 43-62.
89
Transformation Planning Guidance, Department of Defense, April 2003, p. 4.
27
environment to which our nation had grown accustomed.
90


Interestingly, one of the goals of transformation is to create a permissive
environment for innovation so that the US can more flexibly respond to unanticipated
challenges to its security.
91
Such a transformation involves moving from building a
military force around fighting two major theater wars (MTW) to maintaining the ability
to defeat aggression in two critical areas in overlapping timeframesacross the spectrum
of possible conflict. Reorganizing the US military from being centered around a two-
MTW fighting force to one involved in a variety of different operations, including
defending the homeland, forward deterrence, war fighting missions, and the conduct of
smaller-scale contingency operations necessarily involves a resized (smaller), more
forward deployed, and specialized force.
92
Operational goals involve increasing
deployment rates so that a brigade can reach any theater of operations within 96 hours,
with the rest of the division arriving within 120 hours.
93

New technologies play a large role in this transformation, especially information
and communications technologies that allow for more integrated, joint forces and
superior situational awareness, as well as stealth platforms, unmanned vehicles, and
smart submunitions.
94
The first sentence of the introduction to the 2003 Transformation
Planning Guidance (TPG), a DOD publication directing the course of transformation,
highlights the central role new technologies play in the transitioning from an industrial

90
Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Defense University, Fort McNair,
Washington, D.C., Thursday, January 31, 2002. http://www.defense.gov/speeches/speech.aspx?speechid=183 (accessed
4/9/10).
91
Transformation Planning Guidance, Department of Defense, April 2003, p. 8.
92
Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Department of Defense, September 30, 2001, p. 18.
93
Wilson et al 2003-04, p. 21.
94
Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Department of Defense, September 30, 2001, pp. 30-1, 41.
28
age to an information age military.
95
According to the 2003 TPG, change in information
and other technologies is the most important stimulant of US military innovation. The
TPG asserts the US military will be at a disadvantage if it does not innovate doctrinally
and strategically in response to technological innovations. The nature of warfare, in this
model, is driven by changes in technology. Revolutions in information technology
prompt a reorganization of forces from platform-centric to network-centric; allow
increased levels of information sharing between units; augment the ability of
commanders to make real-time decisions and make the fog of war a little less foggy.
96

Success or Failure?
Depending on how success is defined, the Rumsfeld Doctrine as applied to Iraq
was a stunning success or a miserable failure. On the one hand, the US military
successfully routed Saddam Husseins military and quickly toppled the regime. On the
other hand, civilian planners were unprepared to wage war against the true adversary of
the conflict, both Sunni and Shia insurgents, which prompted a major reevaluation of US
doctrine as will be described in subsequent sections. The glaring failure that stands out in
the empirical analysis presented above is Rumsfelds one-sided approach to doctrine.
The 2001 QDR articulated the goal of dissuading future military competition,
97
yet this
objective is inherently non-strategic because it does not specific a particular adversary or
challenger against whom the US must defend. A blanket prescription to maintain US
dominance is not a substitute for strategic thinking. Rumsfeld is not entire to blame for
this failure; the unique nature of unipolaritythe absence of a peer challengermakes it

95
Transformation Planning Guidance, Department of Defense, April 2003, p. 3.
96
Transformation Planning Guidance, Department of Defense, April 2003, pp. 4-5, 10.
97
Quadrennial Defense Review Report, Department of Defense, September 30, 2001, p. 12. The same sentiments
are repeated in Bushs 2002 National Security Strategy, see The National Security Strategy of the United States,
September 2002, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/nss.pdf (accessed 4/18/10).
29
difficult to innovate in truly strategic terms. Furthermore, failure to anticipate the enemy
against whom the US was going to fight led to an emphasis of technology ill-suited to a
counterinsurgency war.
Implementing COIN: Innovation from Within
Unlike the Rumsfeld Doctrine which, as evidenced by its name, is an example of
innovation imposed on the military by civilian leaders, COIN
98
is an example of how
innovation can emerge endogenously from within the ranks of the military and
completely transform how the military employs its forces in Iraq (eventually spilling over
into Afghanistan). The case of COIN implementation in Iraq runs counter to the
predictions of bureaucratic organization theory and other debates regarding military
innovation in many respects. First, the impetus for COIN came not only from the
military (which itself is a repudiation of theorists who argue the military is immune to
innovation) but, further, came from soldiers at multiple levels of command. Additionally,
lower-ranked members of the military were able to have a dramatic effect on
policymaking for the military at the highest levels of command, which refutes the notion
that the militarys hierarchical structure impedes innovation. In fact, this section will
argue that precisely because the military is organized around force protection and mission
accomplishment, rigid hierarchical structures that exist in peacetime become more
decentralized and, therefore, more amenable to change from below, in wartime as
military leaders become more sensitive to discrepancies between plans for war and the
actual conditions on the battlefield. Furthermore, innovation occurred during a time of
war, when change is supposedly risky and when bureaucratic organizational theorists
predict reversion to SOP rather than innovation. Historically, innovation has occurred in

98
This paper will focus on the dynamics of COIN implementation rather than the content of COIN.
30
response to changing strategic dynamics on the ground, most notably the case of World
War I, where European armies entered the battlefield favoring infantry as part of the cult
of the offensive and then, in response to the horrendous slaughter of modern warfare,
shifted to emphasizing artillery over infantry, and eventually created the combined
artillery and infantry maneuvers that broke the trench stalemate and ended the war.
99

This sheds light on the debates regarding the role of recent military defeat and the
balance of power in that local balance of power dynamics and unsuccessful military
experiences in the initial stages of the war prompted innovation from within. Finally, the
implementation of COIN illustrates how innovation can occur in the absence of
technological change or innovationindeed, how advanced technology can be irrelevant
or even detrimental in situations of asymmetric conflict.
COIN represents an innovation for the US military because it involved a complete
shift in how and against whom US military forces were organized
100
: moving from
organizing and deploying large conventional forces to fight a conventional army to
fighting an asymmetric opponent with smaller, more mobile forces while trying to protect
the local population.
101
The paradoxes of COIN, outlined in a 2006 DOD paper
102
,
illustrate how the requirements for COIN run counter to how the US military traditionally

99
Howard 2009, pp. 94-115. Michael Howard, Men against Fire: The Doctrine of the Offensive in 1914, in Peter
Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1986), pp. 510-26. Van Evera 1984. Snyder 1984.
100
There is a debate in the literature on whether and to what effect COIN tactics were employed during the Vietnam
War, see Harry G. Summers, Jr., On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War, (New York: Random House,
1982); Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., The Army and Vietnam, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).
Despite this, COIN was still innovative for the 21
st
century US military.
101
U.S. Department of Defense, FM3-24, Counterinsurgency Final Draft, June 16, 2006, in Ehrenberg et al, 2010,
pp. 226-33. Multi-National ForceIraq Commanders Counterinsurgency Guidance, June 21, 2008, in Ehrenberg et
al, 2010, pp. 233-6. Ricks 2009, p. 26.
102
David Kilcullen also discusses the paradoxes of COIN in David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small
Wars in the Midst of a Big One, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
31
fights wars and, therefore, why COIN represents such a dramatic and innovative shift for
the military. These paradoxes are:
1. The More Your Protect Your Force, the Less Secure You Are
2. More Force Used, the Less Effective It Is
3. The More Successful COIN is, the Less Force That Can be
Used and the More Risk That Must Be Accepted
4. Sometimes Doing Nothing Is the Best Reaction
5. The Best Weapons for COIN Do Not Shoot
6. The Host Nation Doing Something Tolerably Is Something
Better Than Us Doing It Well
7. If a Tactic Works This Week, It Might Not Work Next Week;
If It Works in This Province, It Might Not Work in the Next
8. Tactical Success Guarantees Nothing
9. Most of the Important Decisions Are Not Made by Generals
103


Each of these paradoxes represents a profound challenge to bureaucratic arguments about
the militaryespecially those involving decentralization of the military hierarchyas
well as to arguments about the militarys reliance on technology and overwhelming force.
Grassroots Movement: Sources of Military Innovation
The war against Iraq that began on March 20, 2003 had all of the trapping of a
conventional war, beginning with airstrikes against Dora Farms (where the CIA received
intelligence, later proven to be erroneous, that Saddam Hussein was bunkered there) and
then an initial ground invasion force of three Army divisions, one Marine division, and
one British division.
104
Yet, even in the opening moments of the war, there was an
immediate indication that the war the military was planning to fight may not be the war it
would actually fight. Instead of being met with resistance by Iraqi tanks, US forces
suffered some of their first casualties at the hands of Fedayeenirregulars in civilian

103
U.S. Department of Defense, FM3-24, Counterinsurgency Final Draft, June 16, 2006, in Ehrenberg et al, 2010,
pp. 230-2. Also see Kilcullen 2009.
104
Ricks 2007, pp. 116-7.
32
clothing.
105
Yet serious assessments of where the US military had gotten wrong in its
assumptions about what the invasion and occupation of Iraq would be like and what
could be done to reverse what appeared to be fast-approaching US defeat did not begin
until 2005, around the time of the brutal massacre of civilians by Marines at Haditha.
Three major figures stand out in the push toward implementing COIN: retired General
Jack Keane, General Raymond Odierno, and General David Petraeus. At the same time,
ad hoc attempts by military leaders at lower levels of command to grapple with the twin
challenges of insurgency and civil war produced a grassroots evolution of support for
COIN tactics. All of the available evidence indicates innovation came from within the
military organization and, for a long period of time, civilian leaders at DOD and the
White House were resistant to calls for a major reorientation of the USs approach to
Iraq.
106

Even in the early weeks of the invasion, service members in the field began to
realize the war they were fighting was not one they had planned for. In response, a
diverse group of units station in various regions of the country began to shift to COIN-
based tactics that were less reliant on aggressive firepower and more focused on securing
the population and garnering support from local leaders. Colonel James K. Greer
described the evolution of COIN operations in the Multi-National Security Transition
Command, where he is Chief of Staff. As early as 2003 and 2004 battalions and smaller
units were carrying out the bread-and-butter offensive COIN operationcordon and
search.
107
Greer descries how during Operation Knockout, conducted in November
2005 against insurgents in Baqubah, Coalition and Iraqi forces captured 377 suspected

105
Gordon and Trainor 2007, pp. 219-20, 222, 236-7.
106
Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble, (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), pp. 8-15.
107
Colonel James K. Greer, Operation Knockout: COIN in Iraq, Military Review (November-December 2005), p. 16.
33
insurgents without destroying one house or harming one civilian; nor did they kill any
friendly or enemy combatants, and stresses the importance of winning over the local
population.
108
Similarly, in 2005 Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, of the British Army,
who served with Coalition troops from 2003 to 2004, expressed frustration with
inadequate planning on the part of US civilian leadership for post-invasion Iraq; lamented
the failure of civilian leaders and Coalition troops to control the insurgency, asserting
permissive Rules of Engagement (ROE) and a proclivity for offensive operations
worsened the situation for Coalition troops; and called for the implementation of a COIN
campaign.
109
General George Casey, Jr., promoted to top commander in Iraq in 2004,
began to experiment with a protean form of COIN to overcome lack of success on the
ground, creating a counterinsurgency academy in Taji and requiring everyone under his
command to attend a weeklong-course on the importance of protecting the civilian
population and ensuring sufficient care is taken to prevent unnecessary harm to people
and property.
The First Marine Division, which was redeployed to Iraq in 2004, also instituted
COIN-based tactics in their efforts to suppress the insurgency in Anbar Province. In
March of 2004 the situation did not bode well for US forces, who were suffering
significant losses and trying to grapple with an expanding insurgency with an insufficient
number of troops and questionably competent and trustworthy Iraqi Security Forces
(ISF). Al Anbar was an insurgent stronghold, with some of the greatest threats emanating
from cities in the province, especially Haditha and Fallujah. Before deploying, Major
General James N. Mattis studied the history of the French in Algeria in the 1960s,

108
Greer 2005, pp. 16-7.
109
Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations, Military Review
(November-December 2005), pp. 2-15.
34
specifically the 10
th
Parachute Division, to understand the tactics they employed to stop
the cycle of violence and cut off the National Liberation Front (FLN) from the
population, and also worked with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to
understand how to conduct policing, as opposed to combat, operations.
110
Mattis told
Marines to focus on not allow[ing] a single innocent person to be injured and to
remember to employ the three Ps of counterinsurgency: patient, persistent,
presence.
111
Marine units were able to adapt and quickly shift to nonlethal
activities.
112

Despite this shift in approach, events in Al Anbar proved to be especially
challenging for Marines, especially the First Battle of Fallujah, Operation Vigilant
Resolve, in the spring of 2004, which opened with the murder of Blackwater personnel
on March 31 by insurgents and the parading of their burned bodies through the streets.
Marines were unable to successfully take control of the city and withdrew, but made a
second attempt in November 2004, this time methodically clearing the city of insurgents
block by block. Having secured control of the city, the Marines then worked to build
relationships with local Iraqis and transition to Iraqi control.
113
In this case, persistent
setbacks on the ground prompted a reevaluation of the approach of US forces. Colonel
Michael M. Walker, the Commanding Officer of the 3
rd
Civil Affairs Group, I Marine
Expeditionary Force (MEF), described the reaction of the Marines to the devastating
losses early on in Fallujah: So now what do you do? Well, now you better start thinking

110
Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams and Lieutentant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler, eds., Al-Anbar
Awakening; U.S Marines and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, 2004-2009 (Quantico, V.A.: Marine Corps University Press,
2009), pp. 21-6.
111
McWilliams and Wheeler 2009, pp. 26, 29.
112
McWilliams and Wheeler 2009, p. 33.
113
Bruce R. Pirnie and Edward OConnell, Counterinsurgency in Iraq (2003-2006), RAND Counterinsurgency Study
(Santa Monica, C.A.: RAND Corporation, 2008), pp. 38-9.
35
out of the box, because weve got a mess on our hands. We threw our campaign plan
away.What are we going to do since were not going to go in militarily? So we started
opening up lines of communication
114
This required non-traditional skills and non-
traditional operations. Major General Richard C. Zilmer, Commanding General of I
MEF, explained how the ideal characteristics of a Marine serving in Fallujah are not
those one might typically associate with the armed forces:
Its not the guy who finishes number one at The Basic School.Its not
the guy that is six feet, two inches, 300 PFT [physical fitness test] guy.
The people that come out here, their greatest gift is communications, and
if they cant do that, if they cant immerse themselves with the Iraqi
people,they will not be effective.
115


An example an out of the box response is the creation of the Fallujah Brigade in 2004,
which involved handing over control of Fallujah to an Iraqi brigade in exchange for
withdrawal of the Marines to the periphery of the city. The MEF also worked to
rejuvenate Fallujahs local economy by establishing inter-Arab relationships with liaison
officers in Kuwait and Jordan, and bringing local leaders to surrounding Arab countries
to cultivate business relationships with other Arab businessmen, with the understanding
that economic success is a necessary condition for the creation of a secure
environment.
116
Brigadier General David G. Reist, Deputy Commanding General of I
MEF, recognized that economic development is the silent hand that needs to happen that
will turn events andprove to be the tipping point.
117
Reist successfully garnered
support from expatriate communities in Jordan to invest in local businesses. Priority was
given to ensuring the delivery of essential services, such as electricity, water, trash

114
McWilliams and Wheeler 2009, p. 62.
115
McWilliams and Wheeler 2009, pp. 147-8.
116
McWilliams and Wheeler 2009, pp. 63-5.
117
McWilliams and Wheeler 2009, p. 154.
36
collection, and job creation.
118
Brigadier General Robert B. Neller, Deputy Commanding
General of I MEF, also recognized how building close relationships with local sheikhs
would be instrumental to the development of effective ISF units.
119

Obviously, implementation of COIN by Marines was not perfect and not always
successful, as evidenced by the 2004 massacre of Iraqi civilians by Marines in Haditha,
the destruction of large parts of Fallujah in the second push to control the city, and the
sustained losses suffered by US troops in multiple battles for control of the province.
However, the evidence does indicate that quite early on into combat operations various
units realized the tactics they had been implementing were not working, and individually
converged upon proto-COIN tactics. The efforts by the MEF in Fallujah described above
represent innovative responses by local commanders to changing dynamics on the
battleground that differed drastically from the more permissive ROE laid out in the
original mandate for the invasion.
A similar example of successful implementation of COIN from the ground up
occurred in Tal Afar in May 2005, spearheaded by Colonel H.R. McMaster, Commander
of the 3
rd
Army Cavalry Regiment which took over Ninawa Province in the spring of that
year.
120
In 2004 Tal Afar was home to a large cadre of insurgents who slipped through
the Iraq-Syria border and turned the town into a major operations base for insurgents and
the suicide bombers they trained. At the same time, McMaster and the 3
rd
Armored
Cavalry Regiment (ACR) approached Tal Afar with a COIN strategy which diverged
significantly from the previous units approach there. McMaster inculcated in his
subordinates the importance of respecting Iraqis, establishing relationships with local

118
McWilliams and Wheeler 2009, pp. 143-4
119
McWilliams and Wheeler 2009, pp. 163-4.
120
Pirnie and OConnell 2008, p. 39.
37
clerics, and understanding the local power dynamics.
121
McMaster describes the initial
American approach to Iraq as though we were in a dark room, stumbling around,
breaking china.
122
Rather than continue operating under directives that were clearly
failing, McMaster, in line with COIN doctrine, interspersed members of his unit
throughout the city in 29 different outposts and worked with ISF to conduct clear-and-
sweep operations throughout the city.
123
This was the opposite approach of previous
units, which kept the regiment in larger groups and stationed along the periphery of the
city.
124
To better manage the flow of persons to and from the city, the ACR created a
berm around Tal Afar and then launched an assault on the city in August 2005,
systemically clearing the city of insurgents. The ACR reinforced its hold over the city by
augmenting the size of the Iraqi police and troops in the area and devoting its energy
toward reconstruction of critical infrastructure and provision of crucial services. To
ensure continued control of Tal Afar, the 5
th
Special Forces Group created patrol bases
consisting of small groups of US and Iraqi soldiers to maintain continuous contact with
the local population.
125

Colonel Sean MacFarland repeated the successes of Tal Afar in Ramadi in 2005,
which eventually became the template for the Baghdad surge of 2006, marking the
beginning of the official implementation of COIN. When MacFarland entered Ramadi it
was essentially governed by al Qaeda fighers who had taken over the city in 2005 after
assassinating 12 sheikhs, presenting a significantly greater challenge than Tal Afar,
which at least enjoy a relatively functioning government. Despite protests and doubts by

121
Pirnie and OConnell 2008, p. 40.
122
Ricks 2009, pp. 59-61.
123
Pirnie and OConnell 2008, p. 40. Ricks 2009, pp. 60-1.
124
Ricks 2009, pp. 60-1.
125
Pirnie and ODonnell 2008, pp. 40-1.
38
more senior commanders, MacFarland reached out to sheikhs that had suffered the most
from al Qaeda attacks and made ensuring the security of government leaders and
essential priority. Replicating McMasters work in Tal Afar, MacFarland dispersed
troops throughout the city and used snipers to establish control over buildings in an effort
to signal to al Qaeda and local leaders that US troops were committed to staying the
course in Ramadi and would not be leaving anytime soon. Instead of remaining isolated
in forward operating bases (FOBs), American soldiers lived with Iraqi soldiers and
established a visible presence in the city. Over time, this approach created a snowball
effect as increasing numbers of sheikhs began to ally themselves with US troops rather
than al Qaeda in the summer of 2006. In an attempt to distill the basic tenets of his
successful strategy to higher levels of command, MacFarland instructed Captain Travis
Patriquin to draw up a brief to summarize the approach using stick figures and simple
language.
126

Despite considerable improvement in the security situation in areas that had
implemented COIN tactics, not all of the officers at higher levels in the chain of
command supported of these efforts, especially Casey and General John Abizaid at
CENTCOM. These generals prioritized reducing US presence in Iraq and transitioning to
ISF as fast as possible, which was in direct opposition to the tents of COINincreasing
troops contact with the local population and taking a population-centric approach.
127

Petraeus, however, recognized the incompatibility of current US doctrine with what
troops were encountering on the battlefield. This was exacerbated by the fact that the
armys most recent field manual dealing with counterinsurgency was written more than

126
Ricks 2009, pp. 62-8.
127
Ricks 2009, pp. 60-1.
39
twenty years ago, leaving soldiers in the current war with little doctrinal guidance.
128

Petraeus himself was involved in efforts to implement COIN tactics in the early years of
the war. As commander of the 101
st
Airborne Division in 2003, Petraeus was responsible
for the governance of Mosul, where he instituted population-centric policies.
129
Petraeus
began planning for a dramatically different approach to the war in October 2005 at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, where he assembled an eclectic group of Army officers, historians,
and professors to devise a COIN-based doctrine for the reorientation of US forces in Iraq,
beginning with the creation of a new Army and Marines field manual, FM 3-24.
130
In
February 2006 a group of 135 experts on COIN from a variety of disciplines convened at
Fort Leavenworth to work on the new manuals. The meeting was unique for a variety of
reasons, especially the large number of academics and experts from a non-military
background playing a key role in the formulation of military doctrine, as well as overt
critiques of how the war had been handled. The manual was a direct response to the
challenges the services were experiencing on the ground in Iraq.
131

It took almost all of 2006 for Petraeus to convince the civilian leadership that US
conduct in the war thus far was putting it on a path to failure and that a dramatically
different approach was imperative. The necessity of change was solidified with the
bombing of the Golden Dome Mosque in Samarra in February of 2006 by Sunnis, which
ignited a spate of brutal violence between Sunnis and Shia and represented in stark terms
the failure of the US military to prevent sectarian fighting and exert control over the

128
John A. Nagl, Foreword to the University of Chicago Press Edition, in The U.S. Army Marine Corps
Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. xiv.
129
Nagl 2007, p. xv.
130
Ricks 2009, pp. 17-9. Lieutenant General David H. Petraeus, Learning Counterinsurgency: Observations from
Soldiering in Iraq, Military Review (January-February 2006), pp. 2-12. The U.S. Army Marine Corps
Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
131
Ricks 2009, pp. 24-33.
40
situation in Iraq. Sectarian violence, as well as violence against US soldiers, continued to
increase in the months following Samarra.
132
With the help of Keane and Odierno, who
waged a guerrilla campaigninside the U.S. military establishment, taking their claims
directly to the Joint Chiefs instead of working their way up through the ranks, Petraeus
was able to convince the President and the Joint Chiefs that a dramatic redirection of US
doctrine was imperative to any semblance of success in Iraq. After the midterm
Congressional elections in the Fall of 2006, Bush replaced Rumsfeld with Robert
Gates.
133
Simultaneously, from November to December 2006 the National Security
Council (NSC) convened on a daily basis to review to status of the Iraq war and
determine whether a new approach was warranted. Proponents of a surge included the
Deputy National Security Advisor, J.D. Crouch, and the Deputy National Security
Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, Meghan OSullivan. On the military side, the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Peter Pace, convened a group of 16 colonels who
had experience fighting in Iraq to assess the status of the war and potential avenues for
change. The group eventually agreed upon a recommendation, to increase the number of
troops in Iraq, but did not address how the troops would be employed.
134
In December
2006 at a meeting convened by the NSC a group of academics, including Stephen Biddle
and Eliot Cohen, as well as Keane and others, addressed the President and Vice President
on the status of the situation in Iraq. Keane argued for sending an additional five
brigades and two marine regiments to Iraq, and stressed that they should be engaged
differently. Specifically, Keane stressed the importance of employing COIN operations
in the ethnically mixed areas of Baghdad, which represented the critical terrain of the

132
Ricks 2009, pp. 24-33.
133
Ricks 2009, pp. 74-9, 91-4, 98-104.
134
Linda Robinson, Tell Me How This Ends (New York: Public Affairs, 2008), pp. 25-7.
41
war.
135
The other generals present at the meeting argued for a different approach
involving a combination of drawing down troop levels and increasing the responsibilities
of the ISF. However, both Cohens and Biddles perspectives paralleled Keanes. All of
the attendants pushed for Petraeus to replace Casey. The push toward a dramatically
different approach to the Iraqi war was solidified when President Bush publically
announced the surge in January of 2007.
136
Thus, over the course of a few years and in
response to dynamics on the battlefield, the combination of top-down and bottom-up
initiatives within the military establishment led to a radical change in the US militarys
approach to the Iraq war.
Conclusion
The extant debates in the literature on the sources of military innovation
civilian- versus military-initiated innovation, the role of technology, the balance of
power, and military defeatare lacking in complexity, and the historical record contains
sufficient evidence to support both sides. Therefore, this paper sought to use the recent
case studies of the implementation of the Rumsfeld and COIN doctrines in the 2003 Iraq
war to answer a series of more nuanced questions inspired by the four debates in the
literature: In what contexts does military innovation emerge from within the military, and
in what contexts does it come from civilian leadership? What kinds of external events
defeat in war, the balance of power, technologyshape innovation? Which kinds of
external events are more likely to affect civilian leaders, and which are more likely to
affect the military? Evidence from the analysis of the Rumsfeld and COIN doctrines
indicates that doctrinal innovation as a product of civilian interference in military affairs

135
Robinson pp. 30-3.
136
Robinson pp. 34, 42-4.
42
is more likely to be shaped by perceptions of technological change, as well as strategic
concerns such as the balance of power; doctrinal innovation emerging from within the
military establishment is a function of balance of power dynamics on the battleground
attempts by military leaders at various levels of command to respond to developments in
the field. Rather than encourage innovation, advanced technology proved to be an
impediment to the implementation of COIN in Iraq, as massive firepower is
counterproductive to a population-centric approach.
The scope of this paper was confined to analyzing two recent case studies in one
country and one historical time period. An immense task for future research exists: to
reassess the historical record in light of the more nuanced questions raised in this paper
about the context in which we are more likely to see civilian versus military innovation.
Furthermore, future researchers might want to consider the counterfactual posed by the
initial empirical puzzle: Why has the US not experienced strategic innovation in the post-
Cold War era? What do the findings regarding the contexts in which innovations are
more or less likely to occur at the doctrinal level predict about innovation at the strategic
level?
43
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