Echevarria’s Critiques of the American Way of War

Warfare Studies
Author’s Name
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Course Name
Instructor’s Name
Date
Warfare Studies
TOWARD AN AMERICAN WAY OF WAR
Antulio J. Echevarria II
March 2004
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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR
ANTULIO J. ECHEVARRIA II, an Army lieutenant colonel, currently is assigned as the Director of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute. He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1981, was commissioned as an armor officer, and has held a variety of command and staff assignments in Germany and Continental United States; he has also served as an Assistant Professor of European History at the U.S. Military Academy; Squadron S3 of 3/16 Cavalry; Chief of BN/TF and Bde Doctrine at the U.S. Army Armor Center at Fort Knox; as an action officer at the Army After Next project at HQ TRADOC, Ft. Monroe, VA; and as a speechwriter for the U.S. Army Chief of Staff. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College, and the Army War College, and holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in History from Princeton University. Lieutenant Colonel Echevarria is the author of After Clausewitz: German Military Thinkers before the Great War, published by the University Press of Kansas (2001). He also has published articles in a number of scholarly and professional journals to include the Journal of Military History, War in History, War & Society, the Journal of Strategic Studies, Parameters, Joint Force Quarterly, Military Review, and Airpower Journal.

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TOWARD AN AMERICAN WAY OF WAR
Serious inquiry into the American approach to waging war began in the early 1970s with the publication of Russell Weigley’s The American Way of War.1 Examining how war was thought about and practiced by key U.S. military and political figures from George Washington to Robert McNamara, Weigley concluded that, except in the early days of the nation’s existence, the American way of war centered on the pursuit of a crushing military victory―either through a strategy of attrition or one of annihilation―over an adversary.2 U.S. military men and political leaders typically saw the destruction of an opponent’s armed might and the occupation of his capital as marking the end of war and the beginning of postwar negotiations. Thus, Americans―not unlike many of their European counterparts―considered war an alternative to bargaining, rather than part of an ongoing bargaining process, as in the Clausewitzian view. In other words, the American concept of war rarely extended beyond the winning of battles and campaigns to the gritty work of turning military victory into strategic success. Consequently, the American approach to war was―to take the liberty of rephrasing Weigley’s argument―more a way of battle than an actual way of war. Unfortunately, despite the existence of a theoretical foundation and a vast transformation effort that is gaining considerable momentum, the American way of battle has not yet matured into a way of war.
The phras...