Essays on Land Warfare

The AUSA sponsors a series of Land Warfare Papers. Here are some of the more interesting ones currently archived at their site.

Anatomy of a Failed Occupation: The U.S. Army in the Former Confederate States, 1865-1877
by Louis A. DiMarco (Land Warfare Paper No. 66W, November 2007) discusses post-Civil War Reconstruction, its mismanagement and the resulting failure or subversion of most of its strategic political objectives. After the war, the Confederate capital and most of its major cities were under U.S. control, but a vicious insurgency, shrewd political maneuvering, partisan domestic politics, insufficient resources and a lack of political, military and popular will resulted in the failure of U.S. postwar policy. Today's Army must learn from the lessons of this occupation; if the Army is to win the nation's wars, it must have a robust post-conflict capability.

Military Intervention in Iran: Why and How
by Stephen Blanchette, Jr. (Land Warfare Paper No. 62W, March 2007, PDF 140K)
Discusses the current conflict the United States faces with Iran's nuclear enrichment program, a crisis that is making many nations nervous. Israel and the United States have strong motives to strike unilaterally against Iran's nuclear facilities, but unilateral action presents many risks while offering less than certain outcomes. This Land Warfare Paper argues that multinational military intervention will be required to resolve the situation. Military intervention has its limits; such actions would be difficult, says the author, but preferable to nonmilitary alternatives that are likely to fall short of U.S. goals.

The Texas Militia: National and Local Implications
by Bruce L. Brager
(Land Warfare Paper No. 61W, January 2007, PDF 592K) Examines the origins of the Texas Militia as a National Guard unit to better understand the National Guard's federal and state roles in current operations. Historically, the question was how to raise a large force on short notice to defend the country while adapting to the traditional opposition to a large standing army. Today, the opposition has long since disappeared, but a major element of the ongoing debate over U.S. military policy is the balance among regular, National Guard and Reserve troops and how best to use them. Both the need to plan for a future that can never be fully predictable and the need to have a military able to meet expected and unexpected realities and challenges existed in the 19th century when the Texas militia was established, and those issues are still with us in the 21st century.

Defining Asymmetric Warfare
by Major David L. Buffaloe
(Land Warfare Paper No. 58, September 2006, PDF 490K) Surveys some of the history and literature of asymmetric warfare, citing and critiquing some of the best attempts to define the terms. The author adds his own discussion of the term, its concepts and its implications, and proposes his own definition in an attempt to resurrect the term before it becomes completely obsolete. America’s sole-superpower status forces us to continually engage in asymmetric warfare since no force can win a traditional war against us. Even traditional wars today—such as the first phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom—and in the future will have many asymmetric elements and implications, especially after the traditional war has been won.

By: Brant