The Journal of Strategic Studies

Vol. 29, No. 3, 475 – 503, June 2006

ARTICLES

‘Innovate or Die’: Organizational

Culture and the Origins
of Maneuver Warfare in the
United States Marine Corps

TERRY TERRIFF
University of Birmingham, UK

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is twofold. First, this article contributes
to the understanding of the origins of maneuver warfare as the capstone doctrine of
the Marine Corps. It does so by identifying a second source that fostered change in
the Marine Corps – one in addition to disquiet about the conduct of the war in
Vietnam – which stemmed from the challenges posed by the United States’ post-
Vietnam strategic and military reorientation. And second, this article examines the
influence of organizational culture, or identity, on innovation in the Marine Corps.
A critical strand in the growing literature on military innovation focuses on
organizational culture and how it influences the behavior and responses of particular
military organizations. This article contributes to this literature by analyzing the
influence of the organizational culture of the Marine Corps in shaping what was
deemed an appropriate response to the challenges it confronted in the 1970s.

KEY WORDS: Marine Corps, military innovation, military change, culture,

identity, maneuver warfare, warfighting, post-Vietnam

In 1989 the US Marine Corps, at the direction of Commandant, General

Alfred M. Gray, promulgated Fleet Marine Force Manual 1 (FMFM-1),
Warfighting.1 The document presents an understanding of war and the
concept of maneuver warfare that arguably is unique to the Marine
Corps within the wider US military establishment. As its capstone

1
The phrase ‘innovate or die’ is taken from the heading used for a letter to the editor of
Marine Corps Gazette. This heading was undoubtedly appended by the editor or
someone else who worked for the Gazette. See Capt. Edwin W. Besch, USMC (Ret.),
‘Letters: Innovate or Die’, Marine Corps Gazette, 62/2 (Feb. 1978), 10.

ISSN 0140-2390 Print/ISSN 1743-937X Online/06/030475-29 Ó 2006 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/01402390600765892
476 Terry Terriff

doctrine, FMFM-1 Warfighting has informed all subsequent Marine

Corps doctrine and operational concepts. Unlike the case of the US
Army and its development of its version of maneuver warfare as
embodied in AirLand Battle, the adoption of maneuver warfare by the
Corps has been little examined. The few analyses that partially address
or touch on the adoption of FMFM-1 by the Marine Corps identify,
correctly, a crucial source of the Corps interest in maneuver warfare as
being its combat experiences in Vietnam and a resultant view held by
many Marine officers that there must be a better way to fight. These
analyses generally hold or imply that the idea of maneuver warfare was
initially introduced to the Corps in 1980 when those convinced that
there was a better approach to warfighting started to advocate the ideas
being developed by Colonel John Boyd.2 Identifying 1980 as the
particular beginning of the Marine Corps’ road to FMFM-1 is natural,
as this coincides with the rise in prominence of Boyd’s ideas and the start
of a public discussion of the merits of the concept of maneuver warfare.3
To begin with the onset of this particular debate in the 1980s,
however, overlooks that the concept of maneuver warfare had begun to
emerge, if somewhat tentatively, from another, preceding debate within
the Corps that was more about its post-Vietnam role than about its
experiences in Vietnam. Through the 1970s the Marine Corps was
confronted by the clear need to adjust to the post-Vietnam refocusing of
US strategic and military policy to the defence of Europe, the changing
character of the modern battlefield and the prospect of engaging in
combat with Soviet or Soviet-client state conventional military forces.
The problematic nature of how the Marine Corps should respond
resulted in a sustained debate within the Corps about the measures it
should take. The first tentative steps toward maneuver warfare emerged

2
See Terry C. Pierce, Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies: Disguising Innovation
(London and NY: Frank Cass 2004), 85–103; and Maj. Kenneth F. McKenzie, ‘On the
Verge of a New Era: The Marine Corps and Maneuver Warfare’, Marine Corps Gazette
77/7 (July 1993), 63 ff. McKenzie identifies three phases in the Marine adoption of
maneuver warfare, the first which he claims begins in 1980. Also see Robert Coram,
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot who Changed the Art of War (Boston: Little, Brown 2002), esp.
Ch. 27 and 28; John G. Burton, The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old
Guard (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1993), 54–55; and Grant T. Hammond,
The Mind at War: John Boyd and American Security (Washington DC and London:
Smithsonian Institute Press 2001), 154. Coram, who provides the most extended
examination of the influence of Boyd on the Marine Corps, starts his account in early
1980 when Boyd meets Lt. Col. Michael Wyly, a key figure in the subsequent debates
within the Corps on maneuver warfare. Burton makes the same connection.
3
The starting point of this debate, sometimes referred to as the ‘maneuverist vs
attritionists’ debate, is seen as the article by William S. Lind, ‘Defining maneuver
warfare for the Marine Corps’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/3 (March 1980), 55–58.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 477

in the context of this debate in a very nascent form as early as 1975, with
the debate itself all but culminating with a two part argument by Marine
Captain Steven W. Miller, published in late 1979, in which he argued that
the concept of maneuver warfare furnished a practical answer to the
problems the Corps were debating.4 Evident in this particular debate is
that a common concern underlying the various points of view were
questions of the survival of the Marine Corps as a distinct service
stemming from a cultural characteristic of ‘organizational paranoia’,
which shaped what was perceived as an acceptable response.
The purpose of this article is twofold. First, this article contributes to
the understanding of the origins of maneuver warfare as the capstone
doctrine of the Marine Corps. It does so by identifying a second source
that fostered change in the Marine Corps – one in addition to disquiet
about the conduct of the war in Vietnam – which stemmed from the
challenges posed by the United States’ post-Vietnam strategic and
military reorientation. And second, this article examines the influence of
organizational culture, or identity, on innovation in the Marine Corps.
A critical strand in the growing literature on military innovation focuses
on organizational culture and how it influences the behavior and
responses of particular military organizations. This article contributes to
this literature by analyzing the influence of the organizational culture of
the Marine Corps in shaping what was deemed an appropriate response
to the challenges it confronted in the 1970s.
This article starts with a review of the role of organizational culture
in military change, followed by an examination of the Marine Corps
organizational culture, specifically on the cultural attribute of
organizational paranoia. Finally, an analysis is made of the debate
within the Marine Corps in the aftermath of Vietnam that culminated
in Capt. Miller’s two articles, in which he argued that the concepts of
what has become known as maneuver warfare was a way to address the
concerns inherent to the different positions in the debate.

Organizational Culture
Military culture is most often employed to examine a military
organization’s approach to or understanding of organizational ways

4
Capt. Steven W. Miller, ‘Winning through maneuver: Part I – Countering the offense’,
Marine Corps Gazette 63/10 (Oct 1979), 28ff; and ‘Winning through maneuver
Conclusion – Countering the defense’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/12 (Dec. 1979), 57ff.
The significance of Miller’s argument was recognized by Col. John Greenwood (USMC
ret.), the Editor of the Gazette, who included an addendum to the McKenzie article that
listed the most significant articles on maneuver warfare, a list which starts with Miller’s
two articles. Marine Corps Gazette 77/7 (July 1993), 63ff.
478 Terry Terriff

of war, with the aim being to explain anomalous behavior. A number

of studies have shown how military culture, or organizational culture,
may influence the perceptions and behaviour of a military organization.
Jeffrey Legro, for example, has argued that during World War II the
different organizational cultures of the German and British militaries
influenced their perceptions of the acceptability of submarine attacks
against civilian ships, strategic bombing of civilian targets and chemical
warfare, and how this in turn shaped national priorities for limiting the
use of force during that ‘total’ war.5 In contrast, Isabel V. Hull has
argued that embedded assumptions and practices of the military culture
of the German Imperial Army led it increasingly to seek the utter
destruction of its enemies, including the annihilation of civilians, in the
decades leading up to World War I.6
In these two studies, military culture furnishes an explanation for why
particular military organizations conducted war they way they did,
which in one case resulted in limitation in the use of force while in the
other it led to extremism in the use of force. Elizabeth Kier has demon-
strated how military culture conditioned the French military’s choice of
a defensive doctrine in the interwar period that was inconsistent with the
emerging technical and operational realities of the time, and which thus
had disastrous consequences for France.7 Kier further has argued that
the gentleman-officer culture of the British regimental system in the
1930s resulted in resistance to the potential of massed armor,8 while
Jennifer Mathers has examined how the military culture of the Russian
military made it reluctant to undertake clearly needed reform in the
post-Cold War era.9 Organizational culture thus can provide a compell-
ing explanation for why specific military organizations may continue to
pursue ways of warfare that are incompatible with emerging or
prevailing strategic and operational realities, or why they resist change.
Organizational culture can be broadly defined as the symbols, rituals,
and practices which give meaning to the activity of the organisation.
A focus on cultural norms, those beliefs which prescribe action for

5
Jeffrey W. Legro, Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint During World
War II (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1995).
6
Isabel V. Hull, Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in
Imperial Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2005).
7
Elizabeth Kier, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the
Wars (Princeton: PUP 1997), esp. 39–88; and Kier, ‘Culture and military doctrine:
France between the wars’, International Security 19/4 (Spring 1995), 65–93.
8
Kier, Imagining War, 89–139.
9
Jennifer G. Mathers, ‘Reform and the Russian Military’, in Theo Farrell and Terry
Terriff (eds.), The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology (Boulder,
CO: Lynne Rienner 2002), 161–84.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 479

organizational actors, helps in understanding culture as a cause of

organizational action.10 Peter Katzenstein distinguishes between consti-
tutive norms, that ‘express actor identities’, and regulatory norms, that
‘define standards of appropriate behaviour’.11 These norms together
‘establish expectations about who the actors will be in a particular
environment and about how these particular actors will behave’.12 In
essence, ‘culture influences action not by providing the ultimate values
toward which action is orientated, but by shaping a repertoire or ‘‘tool
kit’’ of habits, skills and styles from which people construct ‘‘strategies
of action’’’.13 In other words, regulatory norms shape action by fur-
nishing actors with ways of defining problems and responding to them
appropriately, while constitutive norms shape action by enabling actors
to construct identities which give meaning to their actions and the
actions of others. By providing identities and prescribing actions, norms
shape the way actors define their interests and form preferences, as well
as suggesting what they should do. Simply put, in terms of change in
organizations, culture, as norms, condition what is deemed acceptable.
Highly institutionalized cultural attributes are transmitted from one
individual to another in an organization as being ‘this is how things are
done’. Actors may adhere to ‘how things are done’ through two different
logics. First, an actor will follow norms due to a ‘logic of consequen-
tialism’. Norms in this logic are held to by actors as it benefits them to do
so or as they are constrained to do so by sanctions.14 Second, an actor
will adhere to cultural norms due to a ‘logic of appropriateness’. In this
logic an actor has been socialised into complying with certain values,
routines and roles. And as these values are internalised, they are
accepted uncritically and are instinctively acted out.15 Lynne Zucker
contends that, ‘the greater the degree of institutionalization, the greater
the generational uniformity of cultural understanding, the greater the
maintenance without direct social control, and the greater the resistance
10
Legro, Cooperation under Fire.
11
Peter J. Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military
Power in Postwar Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1996), 18–19.
12
Ronald Jepperson, Alexander Wendt and Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Norms, identity and
culture in national security’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National
Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia UP 1996), 54.
13
Ann Swidler, ‘Culture and social action’, in Philip Smith (ed.), The New American
Cultural Sociology (Cambridge: CUP 1998), 172.
14
Robert Axelrod, ‘An Evolutionary Approach to Norms’, American Political Science
Review 80/4 (1986), 1095–1111; Aaron Wildavsky, ‘Choosing Preferences by
Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation’, American
Political Science Review 81/1 (1987), 3–21.
15
James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions (New York: Free
Press 1989).
480 Terry Terriff

to change through personal influence’.16 Her point is that weakly

institutionalized culture will not persist, it will change or disappear in
the face of change, whereas strongly institutionalized culture will
persist. Strongly institutionalized, cultural attributes thus will not only
be resistant to change, but will, as suggested above, strongly shape
identities and prescribe actions that are seen as appropriate.

Organizational Culture of the US Marine Corps

The culture of any military organization will certainly be complex, with
a great variety of mutually reinforcing and contradictory aspects.
Military organizations are well known to be deeply steeped in tradition,
constituted by a plethora of symbols, rituals and practices that give
meaning to their uncommon profession of war and to the sacrifices of
individuals that this profession entails. The US Marine Corps certainly
has a storied history, and hence a complex tradition, which is reflected
in its own symbols, rituals and practices. As General Tony Zinni USMC
(ret.) has noted, its history and traditions are ‘part of the essence of the
Marine Corps’.17 An important issue is how and in what way to
delineate those aspects of the Marine Corps culture that are relevant to
questions of change and innovation.
A critical starting point for the analysis of the Marine Corps is First to
Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps, by Lieutenant General
Victor H. Krulak, USMC (ret.). Lieutenant General Krulak’s book,
while broadly historical in its development, is broken out into six main
sections: The Thinkers; The Innovators; The Improvisers; The Penny
Pinchers; The Brothers; and The Fighters.18 Victor Krulak’s19 ‘inside
view’ of the Marine Corps is particularly relevant because, as Allan
Millet in his institutional history of the USMC has noted, his fingerprints
are to be found on many of the Marine Corps key innovations over a
30-year period, starting with its adoption and implementation of
amphibious warfare in the late 1930s and early 1940s, through its
innovative exploration of helicopter based military operations in the

16
Lynne G. Zucker, ‘The Role of Institutionalization in Cultural Persistence’, in Walter
W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio (eds.), The New Institutionalism in Organizational
Analysis (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press 1991), 103.
17
Tom Clancy with Gen. Tony Zinni (ret.) and Tony Koltz, Battle Ready (NY: G.P.
Putnam’s 2004), 142.
18
Lt. Gen. Victor H. Krulak, USMC (ret.), First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S.
Marine Corps (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1984).
19
Lt. Gen. Krulak will be consistently identified as ‘Victor Krulak’ to avoid any
confusion with Gen. Charles C. Krulak, his son, who was Commandant of the Marine
Corps from July 1995 to June 1999.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 481

early 1950s to the USMC’s counterinsurgency approaches in Vietnam in

the 1960s.20 The cultural attributes of the Marine Corps identified by
Victor Krulak are, in Katzenstein’s nomenclature, constitutive norms, in
that they express critical elements of deeply felt understandings of what
it means to be a Marine. To put it another way, the characteristics he
distinguishes are a set of core, shared social knowledge that substan-
tially constitute the identity of the Marine Corps as a distinct service.
Only one of the six characteristics of the Marine Corps discussed by
Victor Krulak – The Thinkers – is central in the following analysis. Four
of the characteristics that he identifies as attributes of the Marine
Corps – the Improvisers; the Penny Pinchers; the Brothers; and The
Fighters – may manifest themselves in various ways in the discourse of
the Marine Corps, and influence perceptions and processes within the
Corps. But these four characteristics have no discernible influence on the
particular issue examined here and hence are not addressed. A few brief
words need to be said about his characterization of the Marine Corps
identity as ‘innovators’ given that this analysis addresses innovation in
the USMC. Victor Krulak argues that the Marine Corps is a military
service that is innovative by nature. He points to the USMC’s
conceptualization, development and adoption of amphibious warfare,
with the consequent development of weapons platforms to enhance its
capacity to conduct amphibious operation, and its early conceptualiza-
tion and development of heliborne military operations, as evidence of
this attribute.21 General Zinni echoes this theme, stating that, ‘[w] have
a reputation for innovation’, and having noted the above innovations
undertaken by the Corps, concludes, ‘[w]e’ve always gone after
innovations like these.’22 It is clear that the Marine Corps perceives
itself as a military service willing and able to innovate, and this aspect of
its organizational identity is reflected in a minor way in the debate
analyzed. This perception also serves as an ‘environmental’ backdrop to
the analysis, for the Marine Corps self-identification as being innovative
implies that Marines should be receptive at least to considering
significant proposed changes.

Organizational Paranoia (The Thinkers)

Victor Krulak’s study of the character of the USMC, titled ‘The
Thinkers’, focuses on the various political struggles of the Marine
Corps to survive as a separate military organization within the greater

20
Allan Millet, Semper Fi: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York:
The Free Press 1980, 1991), 582–83.
21
See Krulak, First to Fight, 67–110.
22
Clancy, with Zinni, Battle Ready, 142–43.
482 Terry Terriff

US military establishment. The Marine Corps began during the

Revolutionary War as a small force whose role was to protect US
naval ships, as ship guards while in port and as anti-ship forces to
protect ships from being boarded by the enemy while at sea. From this
small and inauspicious beginning, a beginning which now is almost
service myth, the Marine Corps has developed in competency and roles,
and grown in scale and scope, into a combined air-ground military
force that is formidable in its own right. Yet the survival of the USMC,
as Victor Krulak argues, was never assured. Writing in the early 1980s,
he notes that through its history the Marine Corps has been faced with
five serious attempts, and a number of minor attempts, to disband it,
emasculate it, or to fold it, in whole or in part, into one or another of
the other US services,23 efforts that if successful would have meant the
end of the USMC at least as a significant military organization.
Victor Krulak provides a historical examination of several of these
attempts but primarily focuses on the debates that resulted in the
creation of the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in
the aftermath of World War II. In part his emphasis on this seminal
political event stems from his being very much personally involved in
the debates on behalf of the Marine Corps; in part because the
internecine political fights were illustrative of efforts by other services
and other actors to do away with the Corps; and in part because the
success of the Marine Corps in fending off these efforts resulted in
Congress first writing into law specific roles and missions for the
USMC. Central, however, is that in the debates over the 1947 National
Defense Act there is clear public evidence that both the Army and the
Air Force were intent on seeing the Marine Corps disbanded so that
they could absorb respectively the ground and air elements of the
USMC and the attendant roles and missions.24
The inherent problem for the USMC is that, as a combined air and
ground military force that operates from the sea, from a functional
perspective its activities overlap with those of the Army and Air Force.
Indeed, the Marine Corps arguably is a direct competitor with the
Army as they are both ground fighting forces even though the Marine
Corps is ostensibly a seaborne force. In 1957 General Randolph
McC. Pate, then Commandant, asked Victor Krulak, ‘Why does the U.S.
need a Marine Corps?’ Victor Krulak’s response was that he ‘would
find it most difficult to prove, beyond question, that the United States

23
Krulak, First to Fight, 37. Elsewhere, he notes some 15 occasions in which only the
vigilance of the Congress preserved the Marine Corps, 13.
24
For a detailed analysis of these debates, see Gordon W. Keiser, The US Marine Corps
and Defense Unification, 1944–47 (Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation Publishing 1996).
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 483

does truly need a Marine Corps’.25 He further openly acknowledged

that the Army and the Air Force could carry out the roles and missions
of the USMC equally well, and more tellingly, that this was true even in
the case of amphibious landing operations for which the Marine Corps
claim to have, in his words, ‘mystical competence’.26 Not to put too
fine a point on it, the Marine Corps arguably does not necessarily
provide any particularly unique military function and, as a conse-
quence, it is confronted with competition from both the Army and Air
Force for roles and missions, as well as for resources.
The understanding that the other services, particularly the Army and
Air Force, could fulfill the same functions, is deeply inculcated in the
thinking of the Marine Corps, as is the knowledge that these services
have in the past sought to undermine or terminate the USMC. It is
shared social knowledge that is perceived as fact, and hence it is a core
aspect of the organizational culture of the Marine Corps. As Victor
Krulak puts it, the Marine Corps sees itself with respect to the American
military establishment as ‘perennially the smallest kid on the block in a
hostile neighborhood’.27 Past experience has resulted in the Marine
Corps being extremely wary of the aspirations of the other services when
it comes to its survival. As Victor Krulak notes, ‘[b]eneficial or not,
the continuous struggle for a viable existence fixed clearly one of
the distinguishing characteristics of the Corps – a sensitive paranoia,
sometimes justified, sometimes not’.28 The Marine Corps sense of
organizational paranoia is not only firmly fixed in its organizational
culture, a critical aspect of its identity, it arguably is one of the, if not
the, dominant organizational cultural artifact that exerts an influence on
other key organizational cultural attributes of the Corps.29
That the Marine Corps, as the smallest of the US military services,
should be attentive to sustaining their assigned ‘roles and missions’ and
its minimum share of the annual US defense budget, is natural given the
intense interservice rivalries among its larger sister services. Yet the
‘paranoia’ of the Marine Corps is not simply that they might lose some
of their budget share per se, rather that losing some of their budget
share, or an element of its assigned ‘roles and missions’, is or could be a
harbinger of the end of the Corps as it understands itself. From the

25
Personal Correspondence between Gen. Randolph McC. Pate, Commandant, and
Brig. Gen. Victor Krulak, Oct. 1957, reprinted in Krulak, First to Fight, xiii and xiv.
26
Ibid., xiv. Emphasis in the original.
27
Krulak, First to Fight, 3.
28
Ibid., 15.
29
Gen. Charles C. Krulak told the author in an interview that the first thing the author
needed to understand about the Marine Corps was that it was ‘paranoid’. Interview
with Gen. Charles C. Krulak, USMC (ret.), 10 March 2004.
484 Terry Terriff

Marines’ perspective, the historical record furnishes plenty of evidence

that someone had indeed been out to get them, and this lends credence
to an enduring perception that someone is still out to get them. What
distinguishes the organizational paranoia of the Marine Corps as a
cultural trait, rather than simply a reasonable response to environ-
mental conditions, is its pervasiveness and persistence, even when there
is no one out to get the Corps, and the propensity it creates to perceive
any and all challenges, real or imagined, significant or insignificant, as
putative threats to the very survival of the Corps as a service and to
react accordingly in a forceful manner.
This organizational paranoia essentially manifests in three ways.
First, the Corps is perennially wary of the implications for its organiza-
tional survival of external pressures for change. Second, it is perennially
vigilant to the ramifications of change in the strategic, military environ-
ment, lest a failure to adjust make it appear effectively irrelevant as a
distinct organization. And third, the Marine Corps is perennially
concerned that in adjusting to environmental changes or to pressures to
change, that it not be seen to be encroaching on the functions of the
other US military services, or, worse, to be perceived as becoming little
more than another version of another US military service, particularly
the US Army, lest this create the perception that it provides a redundant
military capability.
Victor Krulak, in his section titled ‘The Innovators’, links the efforts by
the Marine Corps from the early 1920s to the early 1940s to formulate a
plausible doctrine for a successful amphibious landings and to procure
the equipment necessary actually to conduct such operations, to this
sense of organizational paranoia. The Corps pursued this course even
though other military organizations, including the US Army, had
concluded that the 1915 fiasco at Gallipoli made clear that large-scale
amphibious landings in the face of an entrenched enemy could never be
successful. One of the driving forces behind the Marine officers who
relentlessly pursued the idea of amphibious landings was a desire to carve
out a unique role for the Corps as a sea-based force. The success of the
Marine Corps amphibious missions in the long and terrible Pacific island
campaign during World War II consolidated this ‘unique’ mission, and
hence a distinctive role for the Corps within the US military establish-
ment.30 It is little wonder that the Marine Corps claims, as Victor Krulak
puts it, a ‘mystical competence’ in amphibious warfare.

30
As Millet notes, with the success of its amphibious campaigns in the Pacific theater,
‘the Marine Corps emerged from World War II with an institutionalized sense of self-
importance . . . . The Corps had made a major contribution (perhaps the major
contribution) to creating an essential Allied military specialty, the amphibious assault
against a hostile shore.’ Semper Fi, 459. Emphasis in original.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 485

This organizational paranoia is deeply institutionalized within the

Marine Corps, to the point that it furnishes a cornerstone of its self-
identity. Thus it should shape the way Marines define the interests and
preferences of their service as well as suggesting what they should do.
Inseparable to its organizational paranoia is the cultural artifact of its
assertion that it is uniquely a seaborne, amphibious force, for this role
and mission is perceived as being effectively synonymous with the
Marine Corps, both in the perceptions of Marines and in the
perceptions of the society they serve.

Amphibious Warfare, the Central Front and Heavy Metal

Concern about what lessons the Marine Corps might or should draw
about strategy and tactics from its experiences in Vietnam was largely
absent from public debate in the 1970s. With the withdrawal of major
Marine forces from combat in Southeast Asia in 1971, then
Commandant General Leonard F. Chapman observed that ‘we got
defeated and thrown out, the best thing we can do is forget it’.31 The
Marine Corps was afflicted by what one Marine officer termed a ‘forget
Vietnam syndrome’.32 Public debate within the Corps on Vietnam, on
what had gone wrong and what lessons there were to be learned, was
effectively absent until the end of 1970s and early 1980s.33
Public debate within the Marine Corps about its future in the years
after Vietnam instead focused on several different issues.34 One
important issue for many in the Marine Corps was the need to reassert
its capacity as a seaborne force that specialized in amphibious warfare.
This particular strain of argument emerged immediately in the
aftermath of Vietnam and was to be a persistent theme that permeated
and intertwined with two other important issues of concern to the
Marine Corps. The first of these two other issues was what should be the

31
Quoted in Michael A. Hennessy, Strategy in Vietnam: The Marines and Revolu-
tionary Warfare in I Corps, 1965–72 (Westport, CT and London: Praeger 1997), 181.
32
Capt. R.J. Dalton, ‘The Village’, Marine Corps Gazette 56/6 (June 1972), 10.
33
As indicated earlier, however, the ‘semi-official proscription’ on discussing and
examining Vietnam did not mean that officers simply forgot about that war or did not
believe that there were no lessons to be learned. Many officers, including such as Col.
Michael Wyly and Gen. Alfred M. Gray, devoted considerable study and thought
during the 1970s to understanding what the Marine Corps had done wrong, and what
was a better approach to fighting.
34
One issue, one much debated and argued over but not relevant to this study, was how
to redress the ill-discipline, use of drugs and racism that permeated the organization.
This was a significant problem for the Corps, and one that Gen. Robert Cushman, the
first post-Vietnam Commandant, devoted considerable effort to address.
486 Terry Terriff

role of the Marine Corps in the defense of Europe? After Vietnam, and
certainly by the mid-1970s, particularly under the direction of Defense
Secretary James Schlesinger, the US turned away from Southeast Asia to
focus on Europe and the confrontation with the Soviet Union in that
most important theater. And second, what steps should the Marine
Corps take given that there was a reasonable probability that it would
be tasked to fight against a superior Soviet military force in the
European theater, or even against a potentially Soviet-style force fielded
by a state in another theater such as the increasingly tumultuous Middle
East? This analysis to a degree treats each of these three issues in turn as
separate strands, and in doing so misses some of the nuances, but it
nonetheless captures the essence of the main themes.
Almost immediately after the Marine Corps had effectively with-
drawn completely from Vietnam in 1971,35 it publicly sought to return
to its role as a seaborne, amphibious fighting force. As then Com-
mandant, General Robert E. Cushman, stated in April 1972: ‘we are
pulling our heads out of the jungle and getting back into the
amphibious business . . . we are redirecting our attention seaward and
re-emphasizing our partnership with the Navy and our shared concern
in the maritime aspects of our national strategy’.36 For the Comman-
dant of the Marine Corps to make such a pointed statement is
indicative of how strongly the Corps felt about this issue. The Corps
experience in Vietnam posed a dilemma, for in that conflict,

as in many past wars, Marines had primarily been engaged in

ground warfare, which is basically an Army business. It had not
been by design, but it had happened. Literally thousands of men
who called themselves Marines hadn’t the slightest brush with
soldiering at sea. Those few who participated in the amphibious
operations along the coast never got to see the entire spectrum of
an amphibious assault . . . . The Marines simply did not do the role
for which they had been created and trained.37

In the wake of that difficult experience, as one USMC officer put it, the
Corps could not ‘treat our Marine mission and organization as exactly
the same as any other infantry (e.g. Army) unit. Our recent Vietnam

35
A small number of Marines did remain in Vietnam as, for example, military advisors
to the South Vietnamese Marine Corps until 1973, and it was the Marine Corps which
conducted the evacuation of Saigon in 1975.
36
Gen. Robert E. Cushman, ‘A Weapon System Defined’, Leatherneck 55/6 (June
1972), 14ff.
37
Col. Paul E. Wilson, USMC (ret.), ‘U.S. Marine Corps: separate, but not equal’,
Marine Corps Gazette, 63/1 (Jan. 1979), 20.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 487

experience may also cause us to think only in terms of land warfare, a

tendency we should assiduously avoid unless we want to be charac-
terized as duplicating the functions of another service.’38 Thus, for the
Marine Corps there was an early perceived desire to reassert the
mission that most clearly distinguished it from the Army – its capacity
and indeed identity as a special force capable of effecting a forcible
entry from the sea.
As the US shifted its attention away from Southeast Asia to focus
more on Europe in the early to mid-1970s, the initial question for the
Marine Corps was whether and what role it should play in that theater.
The growing emphasis within the US military establishment on
bolstering the European theater created a problem for the Marine
Corps; should it or should it not bend to this trend by taking on a formal
role in the defense of Europe? The Corps, unlike the Army, had no
elements forward deployed in Europe, hence it would most likely be
only deployed once conflict had erupted. In short, any role it undertook
would almost certainly involve being used to reinforce North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) forces.
One line of argument was simply that the Corps need not, and indeed
should not, take on a formal role in Europe, for any war there likely
would end, for better or worse, before the Marines could even get there.
Thus, to assume a formal role in the defense of Europe would needlessly
detract from the Marines Corps’ core mission – expeditionary amphi-
bious warfare.39 Nonetheless, many within the Corps perceived that
determining a viable role in the defense of Europe had some urgency, for
with the US focusing intently on that continent, a failure to carve out a
clear role and mission there could leave the Marine Corps, at worst,
open to the predations of the other services or, at best, faced with
reduced resources.40 Others, however, warned that the Corps should
not focus on fulfilling a role in Europe to the exclusion of other roles and
missions, as this would lead to the abandonment of its expeditionary
distinctiveness and thus would be to travel down the road to ‘extinc-
tion’.41 The growing general view, then, was that the Corps had to find a
practicable role in Europe, but not to the exclusion of its other missions,
particularly its unique expeditionary amphibious role.

38
Col. Lee R. Bendell, ‘An alternative proposal’, Marine Corps Gazette 55/9 (Sept.
1971), 51. For a similar argument, see Col J.B. Soper, USMC (ret.), ‘By forcible entry’,
Marine Corps Gazette 56/8 (Aug. 1972), 18.
39
Maj. Perry M. Miles, ‘Finding better use for the USMC than commitment to NATO’,
Marine Corps Gazette 61/12 (Dec. 1977), 31.
40
See, for example, F.J. (Bing) West, ‘The case for amphibious capability’, Marine
Corps Gazette 58/10 (Oct. 1974), 18.
41
Maj. E.E. Price, ‘Letters: Not in NATO’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/4 (April 1978), 11.
488 Terry Terriff

In spite of this apparent tightrope the Corps had to walk, the

perception that the survival of the Corps might be at stake meant it was
widely recognized that the important choice confronting the Corps was
not whether it should be involved in Europe, rather it was ‘[s]hould the
Marines be used to augment the NATO armies in Central Europe, or
should they be employed on the flanks?’42 The prospect of a designated
role of fighting on the Central Front posed a dilemma for the Corps. As
one Marine officer made clear in 1977, the survivability of a Marine
force deployed to the Central Front was in serious doubt:

The Corps should have profited by the many lessons learned in the
last war in the Middle East. As for the Marines operating in
Central Europe, I truly feel this would be an exercise in futility and
downright suicidal taking into consideration the mass of troops,
tanks and artillery the enemy would have, plus short routes of
communication for reserves and logistic support.43

The inherent concern was that any Marine force, as an amphibious

oriented force, was in effect ‘too light’. The 1973 Arab–Israel War had
demonstrated that the modern battlefield would be a very lethal
environment due to the extensive presence of armor in the form of
tanks and armored personnel carriers and the emergence of effective
modern light anti-armor and light anti-aircraft weapons.44 To accept a
mission of fighting on the Central Front would be an unwise sacrifice of
Marines, and the clearly questionable capability of the Corps to fulfill
such a mission would raise questions about its utility.
This concern was made manifest in a study published by the
Brookings Institution in 1976, which received widespread publicity.
The study, Where Does the Marine Corps Go From Here?, questioned
the feasibility of a Central Front mission for the Corps as it was
currently constituted. The authors of the study suggested that to have
any future role in the defense of Europe the Corps would need to
transform itself into a force organized and equipped primarily for
sustained inland combat alongside the US Army in Europe.45 To accept

42
Frank Uhlig Jr., ‘Assault by sea’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/6 (June 1976), 18.
43
Col. Ernest Brydon, USMC, ‘Letters: No tanks in Europe’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/
11 (Nov. 1976), 12.
44
For two good analyses of the 1973 war by Marine officers, see Capt. John E. Knight
Jr., ‘The Arabs and Israel in perspective The October war and after’, Marine Corps
Gazette 58/6 (June 1974), 34ff; and Col. Gerald H. Turley, ‘Time of change in modern
warfare’, Marine Corps Gazette 58/12 (Dec. 1974), 16ff.
45
Anthony Binkin and Jeffrey Record, Where Does the Marine Corps Go From Here?
(Washington DC: Brookings Institution 1976), 82–86.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 489

such a proposed change would obviate its distinctive mission as an

amphibious force, as to bolster its capability to fight and survive on the
Central Front would transform any designated Marine force into a
second land army.
For the Corps, the most favored designated role in Europe was to
reinforce NATO’s flanks. Such a mission would provide the Corps with
a formal and necessary mission in Europe, and do so while sustaining its
expeditionary amphibious character. But the official acceptance of an
amphibious reinforcement role on the flanks of Europe ultimately did
not remove the core dilemma of ensuring the future of the Marine
Corps. The aforementioned Brookings Institution study, for example,
challenged both the usefulness and the feasibility of amphibious
operations in view of the emergence of long range, highly lethal and
accurate weapons, which the Soviet military had in abundance. The
Brookings study concluded that the Marine Corps as an amphibious
force was primarily suited for small-scale amphibious operations in
underdeveloped nations and that the probability of conducting this type
of operation was rapidly diminishing.46 The Marine Corps thus found
itself in the difficult position of having its effectiveness as a fighting force
in Europe, and thus its future as an effective and distinct fighting force,
being challenged by outside sources even when it sought to adhere to its
preference of being deployed as an expeditionary amphibious force.
Internally, Marine officers were fully aware of this problem, and in
response there emerged a growing argument that the Corps should
‘heavy up’. That is, the Corps needed to increase the presence of
mechanization and armor in its tables of organization if it was plausibly
to fight in Europe, even if it was to do so as an expeditionary amphibious
force operating on the flanks. The concern was that if the Marine Corps
could not adopt appropriate measures of battlefield effectiveness, even
in amphibious warfare, then the strong emphasis within the US military
establishment on Europe and the need to offset Soviet conventional
superiority could very well result in the Corps being relegated to
marginal roles and missions, and hence increasingly be starved of
resources. This concern was evident in the much publicized and
discussed Brookings Institution study, which as well as suggesting an
unacceptable role for Europe, suggested three other alternatives: the first
was to sustain only a minimum amphibious capability and involved the
partial disbandment of the Corps; the second was to give the Corps a
role solely in the Asia theater even as the US was shifting its focus to
Europe; and the third was to make it the sole US quick reaction force by
creating an airborne Marine force.47
46
Ibid., 30–41, esp. 41.
47
Binkin and Record, Where Does the Marine Corps Go From Here? 71–81.
490 Terry Terriff

Anyone of these alternatives would fundamentally change the nature

of the Corps, change which could for all intents and purposes result in
its effective demise. Thus, some officers argued that only way to
demonstrate the Corps’ continued military effectiveness was to signifi-
cantly increase mechanization and heavy armor, even if this meant
weakening or even giving up its unique, and defining, character as an
amphibious landing force.48
Those arguing for increasing the mechanization and armor of the
Corps were few, but they were noisy.49 There were two main strands to
their arguments. The first strand emphasized that the Marine Corps had
to improve its survivability and firepower capability. This contention
flowed from a view that the Corps had to focus on the nature and
capabilities of the likely adversary, rather than focus on itself. As one
advocate put it, as good as the modern Marine was, ‘on the modern
battlefield he is facing potential adversaries who possess an over-
whelming inventory of sophisticated, powerful and usually mechanized
weapons. Indeed, it can be reasonably predicted that were a BLT
[Battalion Landing Team] to engage a Soviet bloc or Soviet client
brigade in head-to-head combat, the BLT would most probably be
wiped out.’50 Other advocates argued that this problem applied with
equal or even greater force in the Middle East,51 another theater where
the Marine Corps could reasonably expect to fight. One Marine,
apparently serving there at the time, wrote that in considering a Marine
force fighting without armor in that region, ‘I could only imagine how
ludicrous would look the BLT commander sitting in the middle of mile-
upon-mile desert expanse with nothing between him and the enemy but
the bayonet clutched between his teeth.’52 In the eyes of advocates,
unless the Corps improved significantly its survivability and firepower,
which translated to increasing its number of tracked armored personnel
carriers (APCs) and tanks and developing new concepts of mechanized
warfare, ‘it will be quite difficult to continue to justify our existence as
America’s force in readiness’.53
48
West, ‘The case for amphibious capability’.
49
Kenneth E. Estes, Marines Under Armor: The Marine Corps and the Armored
Fighting Vehicle, 1916–2000 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 2000), 180.
50
Capt. Maxwell O. Johnson, ‘Tank Company FMF’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/6 (June
1976), 33ff.
51
See, for example, Col. Ernest Brydon, ‘Letters: No tanks in Europe’, Marine Corps
Gazette 60/11 (Nov. 1976), 12.
52
Maj. Ray Stewart, ‘Letters: An eye for tanks’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/11 (Nov.
1976), 12. It is worth noting in passing that this statement contains an oblique allusion
to the Marine Corps’ self-identify as ‘fighters’ or ‘warriors’, in the phrase ‘bayonet
clutched between his teeth’.
53
Johnson, ‘Tank Company FMF’.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 491

The second main strand of argument in favour of greater mechaniza-

tion was an increased stress on the need for improved mobility. Among
the proponents of ‘heavying up’ there slowly emerged an argument that
emphasized mobility more than survivability and firepower, with the
line of reasoning for more mobility being virtually inextricably
intertwined with discussions of survivability and firepower. Mechan-
ization and armor, via the procurement of more APCs and tanks, would
furnish the former attribute as much as the latter two. One of the first
such arguments was William S. Lind’s first interjection into debates
amongst Marines. In 1975 he proposed a revised force structure, one he
argued would provide ‘the capability to task organize a substantial
Marine Corps mechanized force’, and would make the Corps a projec-
tion force that was ‘strategically mobile, insertion-capable, tactically
mobile, and heavy’.54 Lind, in subsequently responding to several
critiques of his proposed force structure and his emphasis on cost-
effectiveness,55 contended that these critics ‘fail to appreciate the point
in my article . . . that mechanization is needed to increase Marine Corps
tactical mobility, not just firepower’. Lind went on to argue, ‘mobility
can be used not only as a means of bringing firepower to bear, but as a
weapon in itself. The basis of the Blitzkrieg concept is the use of rapid
and unexpected maneuver to paralyze the mind and will of the opposing
command, not to kill large numbers of enemy troops.’56
This particular perspective was echoed by Colonel Richard S. Taber,
Sr. in late 1977, who argued that the purpose of tanks was not so much
to fight other tanks, rather that ‘[t]he more sensible roles for tanks in
this era of the smart weapon are for shock action, mobility and
firepower.’57 The emphasis on the utility of mobility generally tended
to be woven delicately through the debate, little explicated or explored
beyond what Lind provided in his rejoinder. Hence, the germ of an idea
to come that inhered to the concept of mobility was overshadowed, if
not lost, in the much more forceful arguments about the threat posed by
Soviet conventional forces and the need for a heavier Marine Corps –
and the arguments against such a move.
For those arguing for the ‘heavying up’ of the Corps ran into stiff
resistance. One major reason for this resistance to augmenting the
amount of heavy armor was that it would have the effect of making the

54
William S. Lind, ‘A proposal for the Corps: Mission and force structure’, Marine
Corps Gazette 59/12 (Dec. 1975), 12ff.
55
See Brydon, ‘Letters’, 10.
56
William S. Lind, ‘Letters: Mechanization is needed’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/8
(Aug. 1976), 12.
57
Col. Richard S. Taber, Sr., ‘One reason why the Marines should be in NATO’,
Marine Corps Gazette, 61/12 (Dec. 1977), 34ff.
492 Terry Terriff

Corps look more and more like the Army. Marine Corps ‘ventures into
mechanized warfare are clear evidence to some that the Corps is
encroaching on Army responsibilities’.58 Indeed, the evidence by 1977
that the Marine Corps was improving its capability to operate in an
armor-heavy combat environment, including a degree of increased
mechanization, led to questions exogenous to the Corps about whether
it was becoming like the Army. The Commandant, in an apparent
effort to forestall such a perception being used against the Corps,
publicly stated, ‘We have no desire to be a second land army.’59 Thus,
seemingly even in the highest echelons of the Corps there was concern
that to be perceived as becoming another land army was to put greatly
at risk its organizational survival.
A second reason for opposition to ‘heavying up’ the Corps stemmed
from concern about the implications for its distinguishing amphibious
mission. As one officer argued:

[f]rom the Marine Corps’ perspective, the concept of a mechanized

division is incompatible with that of amphibious operations.
Mechanized units are too heavy to conduct amphibious assaults.
Their main combat power is concentrated in heavy units, tanks and
APCs, which must be landed administratively. They are incapable
of vertical envelopment and are extremely limited by terrain. Their
fundamental value is in sustained operations ashore.60

Critics of the ‘heavying up’ school were concerned that to do so could

well result in the demise of the Marines’ amphibious capability. In
1978, two officers observed that:

We have witnessed recently a renewed attack on the Marine

Corps, its mission and purpose. While these attacks have not been
as direct as the Collins Plan of 1946–47, they have suggested that
the Corps’ primary mission, amphibious warfare, is neither a
required nor a viable military capability. Critics have developed
sophisticated analyses in an effort to demonstrate that an
amphibious capability is an expensive luxury that the U.S. can
ill afford in these days of the dwindling budget.61

58
Wilson, ‘U.S. Marine Corps: separate, but not equal’.
59
Quoted in Taber, ‘One reason why the Marines should be in NATO’.
60
Capt. Mark F. Cancian, ‘NATO: obsession to the Corps’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/6
(June 1979) p.24ff.
61
Lt. Col. Gerald L. Ellis and Maj. Gerald J. Keller, ‘No doubt; the U.S. needs
amphibious forces’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/2 (Feb. 1978), 27ff. The Collins Plan
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 493

For opponents, then, to significantly mechanize and armor the Corps

would make its signature amphibious operations even more imprac-
tical, and could end it as a distinctive military service.
Armor proponents, however, argued that making amphibious opera-
tions unworkable was not their intent. Their view was that armor and
mechanization were not incompatible with amphibious operations. As
one advocate cogently argued,

the Warsaw Pact’s mechanized marines and their respective Navies

have already shown that armored and mechanized infantry forces
can be adapted to amphibious operations successfully. Mechanized
marines are not merely a potential threat to be countered, but their
sea-launched mobile warfare capabilities should be adopted and
improved upon by the U.S. Marine Corps to fulfill its own role in
future amphibious operations and subsequent land campaigns.62

Such arguments, however, did little to sway opponents. A year after

making the above argument, the same advocate, in seeking to remake
his point and seemingly frustrated by the opposition to armor, went
so far as to claim, ‘[m]any Marines seem to be using the words
‘‘amphibious operations’’ . . . in the same manner as a Transylvanian
might wave a crucifix to ward off vampires’.63 His metaphor, perhaps
inadvertently, was very apt, for in the eyes of opponents a ‘heavying up’
of the Corps would be to drain away its life blood. Or to reflect the
increasingly theological nature of the debate, the metaphor unwittingly
captured the concern of opponents that to ‘heavy up’ the Corps would
have the concomitant result of devaluing, indeed making untenable, its
amphibious capability, something that in their perspective was akin to
the Marine Corps losing its soul.

Innovate or Die
Thus, by the second half of the 1970s, the Marine Corps was
confronted with the dilemma of ‘innovate or die’. The debate within the
Marine Corps over how to respond to the perceived threats to its
military effectiveness and survival seemingly had reached an impasse, a

referred to above was an obvious attempt to eviscerate the Marine Corps and divvy up
its capabilities, along with its roles and missions, among the other three services.
62
Capt. Edwin W. Besch, USMC (ret.), ‘Armored and other mechanized forces can be
successfully adapted to amphibious operations’, Marine Corps Gazette 61/4 (April
1977), 42ff.
63
Capt. Edwin W. Besch, USMC (ret.), ‘Letters: Innovate or Die’, Marine Corps
Gazette 62/2 (Feb. 1978), 10.
494 Terry Terriff

stalemate that was characterized by considerable ‘sturm und drang’. No

matter which direction it might move, the Corps’ survival appeared to
be at risk. This sense of organizational paranoia expressed itself differ-
ently through the Corps. To some the Marines had to undertake a clear
mission in Europe lest they be become marginalized. But this direction
raised questions about both the Corps’ capability to operate in the new,
increasingly lethal combat environment and its amphibious identity. To
some this meant that they had to ‘heavy up’, or again be marginalized
as a fighting force. Yet to others, to ‘heavy up’ would make them more
like the Army, and worse, undermine the Corps ‘mystical competence’
in amphibious warfare. As Captain Steven W. Miller astutely noted in
early 1978, ‘[i]n recent years, while the Marine Corps’ existence is
being questioned from without, many of its members are experiencing
an identity crisis of their own.’64 Virtually at every turn of the debate
the potential for the survival of the Corps to be jeopardized appeared to
loom ominously. The dilemma it faced increasingly appeared to be not
simply ‘innovate or die’, but ‘innovate and die’.
The nature of this multi-level dilemma was increasingly inescapable
by 1978, with arguments that the Marine Corps needed to find a
solution to mechanizing without losing its amphibious character. As
one officer contended:

The challenge is clear: to mechanize in a way not inconsistent with

the traditional Marine role as light infantry nor with our mission
as the United States’ force in readiness. Mechanization with
imagination can add to Marine capabilities and flexibility.
Mechanization the Army way is a guarantee of organizational
obsolescence or extinction.65

The officer’s view was that the challenge could only be met if Marines
were ‘alert to new and innovative solutions’.
The potential solution to the dilemma the Marine Corps faced
emerged slowly in the latter part of the 1970s on the margins of the
main debates. There were a few instances of arguments put forth that
the Corps needed to develop new tactics to incorporate and utilize new
technologies in creative ways.66 William Lind, however, very directly

64
Capt. Stephen W. Miller, ‘Marine: a question of identity’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/1
(Jan. 1978), 14ff.
65
2nd Lt. Jonathan J. Mott, USMCR, ‘Going the mechanization route’, Marine Corps
Gazette 62/10 (Oct. 1978), 17ff.
66
See, for example, Lt. Cols. Ray M. Franklin and John G. Miller, ‘Modern battlefield
technology calls for reinvention of the longbow’, Marine Corps Gazette 61/10 (Oct.
1977), 41ff.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 495

pointed out in the Gazette that ‘[w]hat rarely appears is an article

proposing a new tactical or operational concept’.67 The main
thrust of Lind’s article was that Marines needed to study history more
rigorously and critically in order to develop a capability to think
theoretically about war. Seemingly cognizant of the deeply rooted
cultural nature of the debate, he concluded his argument by challenging
Marines’ own sense of themselves: ‘If the United States wins its next
war, it will only be because Americans developed new, better concepts
of tactics and operations. It is time for Marines to rediscover their own
intellectual heritage and begin to do the kind of innovative thinking
about tactics and operations that once characterized the Corps.’68
Lind’s cri de coeur generated a number of responses over the next
year, some supporting his argument for teaching history and creative
thinking on tactics, some questioning aspects of his argument. There
were also other, seemingly unrelated, calls for the Corps to develop new
tactics.69 What it did not immediately generate was any specific theoriz-
ing on new concepts. Even Lind’s next interjection, which he based on
the observation that there was need ‘to mechanize some portion of the
Marine Corps’, examined several models of mechanization, rather than
developing or presenting a new conceptual or theoretical approach for
the conduct of war, other than some historical allusions to German
forces and their development of Blitzkrieg.70 Rather it was Captain
Stephen Miller who started to develop a delineated thread of
argumentation, based on the concept of mobility and maneuver. In
the June 1978 Gazette he published an article, boldly yet diplomatically
titled ‘It’s time to mechanize amphibious forces’, in which he argued
that it was time that the Corps became a total mechanized force. What
distinguishes his argument from earlier pro-heavy armor arguments
was that, while he did not ignore tanks per se, his discussion focused on
the need for mobility and, to achieve this quality, for obtaining
comparatively ‘light’ wheeled armored carriers.71 The basis of his
argument was that the Marine Corps, ‘configured as a high mobility

67
William S. Lind, ‘Marines don’t write about warfare’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/2
(Feb. 1978), 14ff.
68
Ibid.
69
See Lt. Col. Jack D. McNamara, ‘Seek new tactics for the battlefield’, Marine Corps
Gazette 62/3 (March 1978), 19ff. McNamara was responding not to Lind’s article, but
to Franklin and Miller’s article, ‘Modern battlefield technology calls for reinvention of
the longbow’, fn 86.
70
William S. Lind, ‘Proposing some new models for Marine mechanized units’, Marine
Corps Gazette 62/9 (Sept. 1978), 34ff.
71
His point was that wheeled armored carriers were up to 75 percent lighter than
tracked vehicles and were thus suitable for expeditionary warfare.
496 Terry Terriff

mechanized force with a substantial antiarmor and antiair capability,

used in a high speed amphibious assault could have a pronounced
impact on [the European] battlefield’.72
Miller returned to the theme of mobility and maneuver in a letter in
the Gazette in which he used the term ‘maneuver operations’, arguing
that ‘the nomenclature ‘‘mechanized’’ needs not be restricted to a force
composed of main battle tanks, tracked armored vehicles and tracked
self-propelled guns.’ After again pointing out the potential usefulness of
light wheeled armored carriers, he argued that ‘being ‘‘mechanized’’ is
less a function of equipment – as important as that may be – as it is a
tactical concept, a method of operations and a state of mind’.73
Miller subsequently laid out his conceptual thinking in his two part
series on how the Marine Corps could use maneuver warfare to defeat
the enemy. In the first article, he rooted his thinking in history, noting
that ‘[t]hroughout history commanders have won battles with limited
resources by out-maneuvering the enemy on his own battlefield.’ He
then proceeded to examine Soviet doctrine (the superior enemy) and
then described how a mechanized Marine amphibious force (limited
resources) could attack, counter and defeat the Soviet forces. As he
concludes, ‘[t]hrough the high tempo of operations, constant shifting of
forces and fluid, flexible action by ground and air elements working in
close harmony, the Soviet-styled enemy will rapidly lose control,
cohesion and momentum.’74 In the second article, published two
months later, Miller again describes a battle between the Marine Corps
and the Soviet opponent, this time in terms of how the Marines could
use maneuver warfare concepts to defend against a Soviet opponent
conducting a counterattack. All the elements of maneuver warfare are
there in his description of both fights.
In the concluding paragraph of the second article Miller observes
that ‘maneuver doctrine’ was not new, referring to a range of past
practitioners and writers of the concept, with a final acknowledgement
to ‘Col. John Boyd, USAF (Ret.)’. Contending that maneuver warfare75

72
Capt. Stephen W. Miller, ‘It’s time to mechanize amphibious forces’, Marine Corps
Gazette 62/6 (June 1978), 39ff.
73
Capt Stephen W. Miller, ‘Letters: Defining mechanization’, Marine Corps Gazette
63/2 (Feb. 1979), 12.
74
Capt. Stephen W. Miller, ‘Winning through maneuver: Part I – Countering the
offense’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/10 (Oct 1979), 28ff.
75
Miller uses the term ‘maneuver warfare’ only in the final paragraph of the second
article, instead more commonly using the term ‘maneuver doctrine’ to describe the
concept. Seemingly the first use of the term ‘maneuver warfare’ is by Lind, in a letter in
the Oct. 1979 Gazette, coincident with Miller’s first article. See William S. Lind,
‘Letters: Only a beginning’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/10 (Oct. 1979), 12.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 497

could and should be applied to amphibious operations, Miller

concluded his second article arguing that ‘[m]aneuver doctrine can
propel the Marine Corps into the 21st century where it will again, as in
World War II, provide the leadership to this revolution in warfare.’76
What Miller was proposing was that the concept of maneuver warfare
furnished a way for the Marine Corps to improve its combat effective-
ness while retaining its distinctive amphibious warfare role, and it
could do so without having to become overburdened with ‘heavy metal’
and thereby being transformed into little more than a second army. In
hindsight, it is probably not surprising that it was an officer that ini-
tially entered the debate with an observation about the role of identity
in an increasingly theological debate, suggesting that he was sensitive
and possibly even sympathetic to the force of cultural norms, who first
put forward a way to cut the Gordian knot confronted by the Marine
Corps. The essence of his proposal was that the Marine Corps use ideas
so that it could ‘innovate and not die’.

Conclusion
Miller’s proposal that a combination of some mechanization by
incorporating wheeled armored vehicles married with a new opera-
tional concept offered a plausible solution to the issues confronting the
Corps did not definitively end the debate. But it did effectively mark the
high-water mark of the debate, with the issues and surrounding
controversy starting to fade toward the middle of 1980. A significant
reason for the petering out of the controversy was the decision in the
first part of 1980 by the Marine Corps to investigate the acquisition of
a light armored vehicle (LAV) capability,77 the end result of which was
the procurement of the Canadian-built wheeled LAV. Another reason
for the demise of this debate was that it became overshadowed by the
growing discussion, both public and private, of the merits of the
concept of maneuver warfare. Miller’s argument, along with Lind’s
76
Capt. Stephen W. Miller, ‘Winning through maneuver Conclusion-Countering the
defense’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/12 (Dec. 1979), 57ff.
77
The move by the Marine Corps to acquire LAVs came in early in 1980, when the
Research and Development Subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee
asked the Marine Corps if it would be interested in procuring LAVs to enhance its
Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) capability, if extra funding was provided for this
purpose. The Marine Corps quickly determined that it was interested, and established
the Light Armored Vehicle Directorate, in the Development Center at Quantico, on 2
Sept. 1980, to start the process of evaluating various LAV with the aim to procure some
400–600 vehicles, sufficient to assign to a RDF Marine Corps unit. See Col. Larry
R. Williams, ‘Acquiring new armored vehicles & weapons’, Marine Corps Gazette 64/
12 (Dec. 1980), 28ff.
498 Terry Terriff

article three months later that clearly defined the concept of maneuver
warfare, effectively forms the starting point of this particular debate in
public forums.78
The significance of Miller’s argument is that the idea of maneuver
warfare did not just suddenly erupt in late 1979 and early 1980, rather
it initially emerged tentatively and episodically from several antecedent
debates reflecting concerns other than disquiet about the conduct of the
war in Vietnam per se. The initial public germ of the idea came from
Lind in 1975, with his reference to mobility and the German Blitzkrieg,
but it was Miller who, acknowledging the influence of Colonel John
Boyd, ultimately first provided the public description showing how the
concepts of maneuver warfare could furnish the Marine Corps with the
means to defeat a putative superior enemy. These early debates about
pressing concerns for the Marine Corps thus are one source for the
succeeding debates about, and eventual adoption of, maneuver warfare
as the Marine Corps’ overarching doctrine.
The analysis of the debate in the 1970s demonstrates that the Marine
Corps organizational culture, specifically its organizational paranoia,
increasingly shaped how it perceived and responded to the issues it
faced. One issue the Corps confronted was the growing US emphasis on
the defense of NATO while at the same time defense budgets were declin-
ing and the American military was being downsized. The second issue
was the changing character of the modern battlefield stemming from
new weapons technologies and increased mechanization. If the Marine
Corps was to ensure its share of available resources it had to undertake a
formal role in the defense of Europe and it had to renovate its measures
of military effectiveness. The Marine Corps, influenced by its organiza-
tional culture, opted not to take on a role in the Central Front, but rather
to take on the role of reinforcing NATO’s flanks. This response can be
seen to be consistent with its organizational culture, particularly its
unique identification with amphibious warfare. Norms, in this case
expressed as organizational paranoia, and its self-identity as an
amphibious force, shaped the Corps preference for the role it undertook.
The decision to serve, in effect, as a strategic reserve force to be
utilized to reinforce NATO’s northern flank sustained the distinctive
amphibious character of the Marine Corps, but it left unresolved the
hard question of how it should meet the demands of the modern,
mechanized battlefield, particularly given that it might be fighting
outnumbered. If it was to remain an effective fighting force on the

78
Miller subsequent to the publication of his two articles in 1979 was not an active
participant in the debates on maneuver warfare; as he disappears from the public
record by the end of 1980, he likely completed his tour in the Corps and left for civilian
life.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 499

modern battlefield, most specifically if (and when) up against superior

Soviet forces, a rational and pragmatic response by the Corps would be
to ‘heavy up’ its Table of Order. Put another way, these arguments
were that the Marine Corps, in order to be effective on the modern
battlefield, should emulate the Army in substance, that the Marine
Corps should be become more like the Army, so that it could sustain its
legitimacy as a fighting force. Such arguments made by a small faction
of Marines were contrary to the Corps sense of self-identity. The
proposal that the Corps should ‘heavy up’ was met by concern that to
do so would make the Corps too much like the Army. More tellingly,
opponents were anxious that any move to being a heavy armor force
would seriously and dangerously undermine its capability to effect an
opposed amphibious landing successfully, to the point of making
amphibious operations untenable. The constitutive norm represented
by the Marine Corps’ organizational paranoia shaped what was
deemed to be an acceptable response, and the condition was that any
answer had to ensure that the Marine Corps retained its signature
amphibious warfare capability and hence its unique identity.
The deeply institutionalized cultural attribute of paranoia, manifest
in resistance to the devaluing or even loss of the Corps’ defining cultural
characteristic of being a seaborne, amphibious force, shaped what was
considered to be viable responses to the perceived requirement to take
on a formal role in Europe. It proved stronger than pressures to become
a heavy force like the US Army (and indeed many of its potential
battlefield opponents). Stemming from its organizational paranoia, the
concept of the Marine Corps as being a premiere seaborne, amphibious
combat force is a cultural artifact that is extremely central to its sense
of self-identity. In the end, the dominant view was that the Marine
Corps, if it was to survive, had to remain unique within the US military
establishment. This meant remaining first and foremost an amphibious
warfighting force. Miller’s particular role was to show how the Corps
could square the circle of the debate, by demonstrating that the use of
maneuver warfare concepts could permit the Marine Corps to sustain
its amphibious warfare character while making it effective, or legiti-
mate, on the modern, more lethal battlefield, as exemplified by the
perceived superiority of the Soviet military, without becoming like the
US Army. Simply put, the Marine Corps’ organizational paranoia as a
constitutive norm conditioned how it responded to pressures to adopt
new missions, and impeded the adoption of the specific approach of
adding more armor and tanks that was being advocated by some as the
best means to enhance its capability to fight on the modern battlefield.
The influence of the organizational culture of the Marine Corps, in
particular its organizational paranoia, was a prevailing influence that
shaped the outcome of the debate in the 1970s. The Marine Corps’
500 Terry Terriff

organizational culture constrained and foreclosed some plausible

responses to the problems it faced, leaving it with few options other
than to change its organizational way of warfare. The persistence and
influence of its organizational paranoia remained authoritative, to leap
ahead of the story analyzed here, even as the Corps generated and
promulgated FMFM-1, Warfighting, at the end of the 1980s. In 1988,
in a memorandum of a meeting with General Gray, the Commandant is
quoted as saying: ‘We can’t let the Army be perceived as the front
runners in tactical thinking with their FM 100-5. They have a book and
can’t do it, we can do it but don’t have a book.’79 Further, when Gray
was presented in 1989 with a final draft of Warfighting, he reportedly
read the draft with a copy of the Army’s doctrinal manual FM 100-5 to
hand, to ensure that the Marine Corps’ interpretation of maneuver
warfare was different, and indeed better, than that of the Army.80
These two vignettes reflect the persistence of the abiding concern that
the Corps had to seen to be as effective a fighting force as the Army, if
not more effective a force, and that it not be perceived as doing little
more than imitating the Army, that it not be seen to be little more than
a second land force. The Marine Corps’ cultural characteristic of
paranoia thus persisted even as it was instituting a profound change –
the persistence of culture meant that, above all else, the Marine Corps
even when it was changing perceived, rightly or wrongly, that if it was
to survive it had to be seen to be, and indeed had to be, unique.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank very much Theo Farrell and the
anonymous referees for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this
article. I would also like to extend my sincerest appreciation to General
Charles C. Krulak and the great many other Marines, both serving and
retired, for their time and consideration in not only sharing with me
their experiences but also in helping me to understand the character
and culture of the Marine Corps. I would also like to express my
appreciation to William S. Lind for sharing with me his experiences and
perceptions of the debate examined here. Many thanks are also due to
the staff in the Library and Archives of the General Alfred M. Gray
Research Center, Quantico, Virginia, for their cheerful help in
accessing and locating information, as well as for the hospitality they

79
Brig. Gen. F.E. Sisler, Deputy Commander, Training and Education, ‘Memorandum
for the Record’, 15 July 1988, 2; Gen. Alfred M. Gray Papers; Studies and Reports –
PME, 1979–89, Box 6; File, Meeting with CMC on 8 July 1988, Concerning Officer
Education and Training, 15 July 1988.
80
Interview with senior Marine officer (ret.), June 2004.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 501

extended. Finally, I would like to thank very much the Economic and
Social Research Council (United Kingdom) ‘New Security Challenges’
Programme for providing funding support for my project on military
change in the Marine Corps, without which this research could not
have been conducted.

Bibliography
Axelrod, Robert, ‘An Evolutionary Approach to Norms’, American Political Science Review 80/4
(Nov. 1986), 1095–1111.
Bendell, Col. Lee R., ‘An alternative proposal’, Marine Corps Gazette 55/9 (Sept. 1971), 51.
Besch, Capt. Edwin W., USMC (ret.), ‘Armored and other mechanized forces can be successfully
adapted to amphibious operations’, Marine Corps Gazette 61/4 (April 1977), 42ff.
Besch, Capt. Edwin W., USMC (ret.), ‘Letters: Innovate or Die’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/2
(Feb. 1978), 10.
Binkin, Anthony and Jeffrey Record, Where Does the Marine Corps Go From Here? (Washington
DC: Brookings Institution 1976).
Brydon, Col. Ernest, USMC, ‘Letters: No tanks in Europe’, Marine Corps Gazette, 60/11
(Nov. 1976), 12.
Burton, John G., The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard (Annapolis, MD:
Naval Institute Press 1993).
Cancian, Capt. Mark F., ‘NATO: obsession to the Corps’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/6
(June 1979), 24ff.
Clancy, Tom with Gen. Tony Zinni (ret.) and Tony Koltz, Battle Ready (New York:
G.P. Putnam’s 2004).
Coram, Robert, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot who Changed the Art of War (Boston: Little, Brown
2002).
Cushman, Gen. Robert E., ‘A Weapon System Defined’, Leatherneck 55/6 (June 1972), 14ff.
Dalton, Capt. R.J., ‘The Village’, Marine Corps Gazette 56/6 (June 1972), 10.
Ellis, Lt. Col. Gerald L. and Maj. Gerald J. Keller, ‘No doubt; the U.S. needs amphibious forces’,
Marine Corps Gazette 62/2 (Feb. 1978), 27ff.
Estes, Kenneth E., Marines Under Armor: The Marine Corps and the Armored Fighting Vehicle,
1916–2000 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 2000).
Franklin, Lt. Col. Ray M. and Lt. Col. John G. Miller, ‘Modern battlefield technology calls for
reinvention of the longbow’, Marine Corps Gazette 61/10 (Oct. 1977), 41ff.
Hammond, Grant T., The Mind at War: John Boyd and American Security (Washington DC:
Smithsonian Institute Press 2001).
Hennessy, Michael A., Strategy in Vietnam: The Marines and Revolutionary Warfare in I Corps,
1965–72 (Westport, CT: Praeger 1997).
Hull, Isabel V., Absolute Destruction: Military Culture and the Practices of War in Imperial
Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2005).
Jepperson, Ronald, Alexander Wendt and Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Norms, identity and culture in
national security’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and
Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia UP 1996), 33–72.
Johnson, Capt. Maxwell O., ‘Tank Company FMF’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/6 (June 1976), 33ff.
Katzenstein, Peter J., Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military Power in Postwar
Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1996).
Keiser, Gordon W., The US Marine Corps and Defense Unification, 1944–47 (Baltimore: Nautical
and Aviation Publishing 1996).
Kier, Elizabeth, ‘Culture and military doctrine: France between the wars’, International Security
19/4 (Spring 1995), 65–93.
502 Terry Terriff
Kier, Elizabeth, Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars
(Princeton: PUP 1997).
Knight Jr., Capt. John E. ‘The Arabs and Israel in perspective The October war and after’, Marine
Corps Gazette 58/6 (June 1974), 34ff.
Krulak, Lt. Gen. Victor H., USMC (ret.), First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1984).
Legro, Jeffrey W., Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint During World War II
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1995).
‘Letters’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/4 (April 1976), 10.
Lind, William S., ‘A proposal for the Corps: Mission and force structure’, Marine Corps Gazette
59/12 (Dec. 1975), 12ff.
Lind, William S., ‘Letters: Mechanization is needed’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/8 (Aug. 1976), 12.
Lind, William S., ‘Marines don’t write about warfare’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/2 (Feb. 1978),
14ff.
Lind, William S., ‘Proposing some new models for Marine mechanized units’, Marine Corps
Gazette 62/9 (Sept. 1978), 34ff.
Lind, William S., ‘Letters: Only a beginning’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/10 (Oct. 1979), 12.
Lind, William S., ‘Defining maneuver warfare for the Marine Corps’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/3
(March 1980), 55–58.
March, James G. and Johan P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions (New York: Free Press, 1989).
Mathers, Jennifer G., ‘Reform and the Russian Military’, in Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff (eds.),
The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, Technology (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner
2002), 161–84.
McKenzie, Maj. Kenneth F., ‘On the Verge of a New Era: The Marine Corps and Maneuver
Warfare’, Marine Corps Gazette 77/7 (July 1993), 63ff.
McNamara, Lt. Col. Jack D., ‘Seek new tactics for the battlefield’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/3
(March 1978), 19ff.
Miles, Maj. Perry M., ‘Finding better use for the USMC than commitment to NATO’, Marine
Corps Gazette 61/12 (Dec. 1977), 31.
Miller, Capt. Stephen W., ‘Marine: a question of identity’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/1 (Jan. 1978),
14ff.
Miller, Capt. Stephen W., ‘It’s time to mechanize amphibious forces’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/6
(June 1978), 39ff.
Miller, Capt. Stephen W., ‘Letters: Defining mechanization’, Marine Corps Gazette 63/2
(Feb. 1979), 12.
Miller, Capt. Steven W., ‘Winning through maneuver: Part I – Countering the offense’, Marine
Corps Gazette 63/10 (Oct. 1979), 28ff.
Miller, Capt. Steven W. ‘Winning through maneuver Conclusion-Countering the defense’, Marine
Corps Gazette 63/12 (Dec. 1979), 57ff.
Millet, Allan, Semper Fi: The History of the United States Marine Corps (New York: The Free
Press 1980, 1991).
Mott, 2nd Lt. Jonathan J., USMCR, ‘Going the mechanization route’, Marine Corps Gazette
62/10 (Oct. 1978), 17ff.
Pierce, Terry C., Warfighting and Disruptive Technologies: Disguising Innovation (London: Frank
Cass 2004).
Price, Maj. E.E., ‘Letters: Not in NATO’, Marine Corps Gazette 62/4 (April 1978), 11.
Soper, Col. J.B., USMC (ret.), ‘By forcible entry’, Marine Corps Gazette 56/8 (Aug. 1972), 18.
Stewart, Maj. Ray, ‘Letters: An eye for tanks’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/11 (Nov. 1976), 12.
Swidler, Ann, ‘Culture and social action’, in Philip Smith (ed.), The New American Cultural
Sociology (Cambridge: CUP 1998), 171–87.
Taber Sr., Richard D., ‘One reason why the Marines should be in NATO’, Marine Corps Gazette
61/12 (Dec. 1977), 34ff.
 Organizational Culture and the USMC 503
Turley, Col. Gerald H., ‘Time of change in modern warfare’, Marine Corps Gazette, 58/12
(Dec. 1974), 16ff.
Uhlig Jr., Frank. ‘Assault by sea’, Marine Corps Gazette 60/6 (June 1976), 18.
West, F.J. (Bing), ‘The case for amphibious capability’, Marine Corps Gazette 58/10 (Oct. 1974),
18.
Wildavsky, Aaron, ‘Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of
Preference Formation’, American Political Science Review 81/1 (Feb. 1987), 3–21.
Williams, Col. Larry R., ‘Acquiring new armored vehicles & weapons’, Marine Corps Gazette
64/12 (Dec. 1980), 28ff.
Wilson, Col. Paul E., USMC (ret.), ‘U.S. Marine Corps: separate, but not equal’, Marine Corps
Gazette 63/1 (Jan. 1979), 20.
Zucker, Lynne G., ‘The Role of Institutionalization in Cultural Persistence’, in Walter W. Powell
and Paul J. DiMaggio (eds.), The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago:
Univ. of Chicago Press 1991), 83–107.