Reengineering institutional culture and the American way of war in the post-Vietnam U.S. Army, 1968-1989

This dissertation examines the reinvention of U.S. Army institutional culture after the Vietnam War. Utilizing new conceptual paradigms about organizational culture and overlooked archival sources, this dissertation challenges the prevailing top-down focused, myopically military-centric, unambiguous explanations of the U.S. Army's transformation after Vietnam. It details how the U.S. Army responded to the collapse of the American `way of war' in Vietnam and the transition to an all-volunteer force by exploring alternative formulations of institutional culture during the 1970s, including `civilianizing' institutional practices and reorienting the Army towards the man-machine interface. By the late 1970s, Army senior leaders perceived the Army was threatened by civilian encroachments to its autonomy, unable to fight and win the next war, and foundering under institutional malaise. Several circles of mid-level reformers coalesced during this period who were disenchanted with the Army's direction and strident in their private and public dissent. They pressed for radical change to institutional practices for organizational climate and leadership, collective training, and tactical and operational warfighting. When the Vietnam generation ascended to senior leadership of the Army in the late 1970s, they sought out, co-opted, and collaborated with these circles of reformers to construct a new vision of a modern, professional army that matched the American democratic-capitalist, high-technology milieu and an emerging conservative counter-culture. The Army deliberately reengineered its institutional culture to produce high-performing combat units by developing human capital (particularly non-commissioned officers), ruthlessly focusing unit practices on battle, and constructing cohesive unit communities. The Army intended to win future wars rapidly and decisively through the tactical excellence of highly motivated, active duty combat units, in order to bypass the need for popular mobilization or civilian decision-maker strategic acumen. They implemented the reengineered institutional culture through a web of initiatives designed to emplace the `right kinds' of people, controls, and internal relationships in combat units. Change in the Army's institutional culture in the 1980s had consequences for the broader American polity and public, as the Army sought to remake its relationships with the state, other services, and society to conform them to its new vision of itself.;By examining all the facets of Army institutional change in the 1970s and 1980s, this dissertation finds that the key military innovation was the calculated reengineering of institutional culture. This military innovation was as much a response to social, economic, and political change in America as it was to technological change. This dissertation argues that change in the post-Vietnam U.S. Army involved significant internal debate and missteps before settling on a path that combined top-down leadership and bottom-up innovation. The "training revolution" and "doctrinal renaissance" were important, but other changes in day-to-day practices and micro-social life of small units in the 1980s proved to be just as critical, as the Army achieved unmatched capabilities in conventional warfare but became increasingly separated from American society. Finally, I argue that the Army's refashioned institutional culture produced a new American `way of war' and was the leading edge of a grander global military revolution changing the nature of war.