From counterinsurgency to stability and support operations: The evolution of United States military doctrine for foreign internal conflict, 1961--1996

Since its inception, the United States has been engaged in low-level or "small wars," and has contested irregular or guerrilla forces in each. But the end of World War Two ushered in what has since become known as the "counterinsurgency era," its genesis arguably the containment strategy of the Truman Doctrine of 1947, upon which policy-makers and military planners constructed rudimentary counterinsurgency doctrine for combatting the communist guerrillas in Greece. Since that time, doctrine for foreign internal conflict has risen and fallen according to the perceived threat to the national security of the United States, concurrent with the success or failure of small wars doctrinal proponents in persuading the national security bureaucracy to make qualitative changes in doctrine and force structure for limited war.In that light, the purpose of this study is to develop a framework for understanding the evolution of U.S. military doctrine from "counterinsurgency," to "low intensity conflict," "military operations other than war," and "stability and support operations," concluding with an analysis of the strategic implications for future military doctrine for foreign internal conflict in the post-Cold War era.The study is topical in organization as opposed to linear, although chronological in the larger historical context, and begins with a short review of the history and nature of irregular warfare, followed by an equally brief discussion regarding revolutionary and counterrevolutionary theory, necessary to set the stage for examining the development of counterinsurgency doctrine in the early 1960s. Succeeding chapters examine the strategic context in which each doctrine emerged as well as the doctrine itself and analyses by different authorities on the subject.On the basis of this examination, this study seeks to analyze the implications for limited warfare doctrine in the post-Cold War arena. Given the diverse nature of such conflicts and their seeming intractability, the prospect for future conflict at a level less than "general war" remains a major challenge for the national security bureaucracy of the United States. Through this examination of doctrinal evolution, the author seeks to arrive at a better understanding of emergent U.S. military thought and doctrine in the 1990s and beyond.