Us Military Force and Operations Other Than War

Strategic decision makers have long recognized the paramount importance to the state and to the people of decisions for war or peace. Such decisions must be taken with utmost deliberation. Careful evaluation of a specific situation against rigorous criteria should always precede each decision to employ US military force (e.g., combat force in a hostile environment). As a minimum, these criteria must establish for the strategic decision maker an assessment of acceptability--political support of our leadership and eventually our populace, feasibility--appropriate levels of forces and resources, and suitability--well-defined objectives matched by an effective plan. Current US Strategy for Engagement and Enlargement recognizes the importance of such criteria but fails fully to develop rigor in its application. The rejected Weinberger Doctrine may have been too restrictive for strategic decision makers in the rigor of its acceptability test. We mustdevelop comprehensive acceptability, feasibility, and suit-abilitycriteria that correct these polar deficiencies or risk strategic failure by incorrectly determining the kind of "war" on which we are embarking. Nowhere is this risk greater than in operations other than war. The military missions disguised by this misleadingly benign rubric must be carefully analyzed for potential risk of combat. When measured against threat to sovereignty and hostility of environment, the 28 doctrinal military missions of OOTW clearly demonstrate a broad range: high risk (category I), clearly combat missions; moderate risk (category II), benign intent but significant combat potential; low risk (category III), clearly humanitarian missions. Each of these categories possesses its own unique acceptability, feasibility, and suitability challenges; however, unless the specific use of combat force or military mission is critically examined, a political ends to military means dysfunction can occur.