MILITARY DOCTRINE

'Military doctrine' is the concise expression of how military forces contribute to campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements. It is a guide to action, not hard and fast rules. Doctrine provides a common frame of reference across the military. It helps standardize operations, facilitating readiness by establishing common ways of accomplishing military tasks. Doctrine links theory, history, experimentation, and practice. Its objective is to foster initiative and creative thinking. Doctrine provides the military an authoritative body of statements on how military forces conduct operations and provides a common lexicon for use by military planners and leaders.

Contents

Relationship between doctrine and strategy

Sources of United States doctrine

Military Doctrine in the Soviet Union

British Army doctrine

See also

References and links

Relationship between doctrine and strategy

Strategy is a prudent set of ideas for employing the instruments of national power in a synchronized and integrated fashion to achieve national or multinational objectives. Warfare is conducted on three levels: strategic, operational, and tactical. The strategic level of war is that which a nation or group of nations determine national or multinational strategic security obectives and guidance, and develops and uses national resources to achieve these objectives. National leaders translate national interests and policy into national strategic objectives. Military commanders base their theater or campaign planning on these objective. At the operational level of war a campaign is a series of related military operations aimed at accomplishing a strategic or operational objective within a given time and space. Operational art determines when, where, and for what purposes commanders employ major forces. Actions at the operational level usually involve broader dimensions of time and space than tactical actions do. Tactics is the employment and ordered arrangement of forces in relation to each other. It includes the ordered arrangement and maneuver of units in relation to each other, the terrain, civil considerations, and the enemy to translate potential military power into successful operations.

Sources of United States doctrine

The United States Constitution invests Congress with the powers to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States and to raise and support armies. Title 10, U.S. Code states what Congress expects the Army, in conjunction with the other Services, to accomplish. This includes: Preserve the peace and security and provide for the defense of the United States, its territories and possessions, and any areas it occupies; Support national policies; Implement national objective; Overcome any nations responsible for aggressive acts that imperil the peace and security of the United States.
Most Modern US doctrine is based around the full spectrum operations. Full spectrum operations combine offensive, defensive, and stability or civil support operations simultaneouly as part of an interdependent joint or combined force to seize, retain, and exploit the initiative. They employ synchronized action--lethal and nonlethal--proportional to the mission and informed by a thorough understanding of all dimensions of the operational environment.
Offensive operations defeat and destroy enemy forces, and seize terrain, resources, and population centers. They impose the commander's will on the enemy. Defensive operations defeat an enemy attack, gain time, economize forces, and develop conditions favorable for offensive or stability operations. Stability operations encompass various military missions, tasks, and activities conducted abroad to maintain or reestablish a safe and secure environment, provide essential governmental services, emergency infrastrucure reconstruction, and humanitarian relief. Civil support operations are support tasks and missions to homeland civil authorities for domestic emergencies, and for designated law enforcement and other activities. This includes operations dealing with the consequences of natural or manmade disasters, accidents, and incidents within the homeland.
The Department of Defense publishes Joint Publications which state all-services doctrine. The current basic doctrinal publication is Joint Publication 3-0, "Doctrine for Joint Operations.
Headquarters, United States Air Force, publishes current USAF doctrine. The lead agency for developing Air Force doctrine is Headquarters, Air Force Doctrine Center; the Air Staff International Standardization Office works on multinational standardization, such as NATO Standardization Agreements (STANAGs), and agreements between the American, British, Canadian, and Australian Armies and Navies (ABCA) that affect the Air Force. Currently the basic Air Force doctrinal documents are the 10-series of Air Force publications.
The United States Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) is responsible for developing Army doctrine. TRADOC was developed early in the 1970s as a response to the American Army's difficulties in the Vietnam War, and is one of the reforms that improved Army professionalism. Currently the capstone Army doctrinal document is Field Manual 3, "Operations".
The Naval Warfare Development Command (NWDC) Doctrine Department coordinates development, publication, and maintenance of United States Navy doctrine. Currently the basic unclassified naval doctrinal documents are Naval Doctrine Publications 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6. NWDC is also the United States Navy lead for NATO and multinational maritime doctrine and operational standardization.
Headquarters, United States Coast Guard, published Coast Guard Publication 1, ''U.S. Coast Guard: America's Maritime Guardian'', which is the source of USCG doctrine.

Military Doctrine in the Soviet Union

The Soviet meaning of military doctrine was much different from U.S. military usage of the term. Soviet Minister of Defence Marshal Grechko defined it in 1975 as 'a system of views on the nature of war and methods of waging it, and on the preparation of the country and army for war, officially adopted in a given state and its armed forces.' In Soviet times, theorists emphasised both the political and 'military-technical' sides of military doctrine, while from the Soviet point of view, Westerners ignored the political side. However the political side of Soviet military doctrine, Western commentators Harriet F Scott and William Scott said, 'best explained Soviet moves in the international arena'.^[1]
The Soviet Army, especially during and after World War II had the commissar system in place. Any mid-level to senior officer would be paired up with a commisar, or ''zampolit'' of the same rank who could countermand any of the officer's orders. (This is clearly depicted in the book Hunt for the Red October in which the commander of the submarine Marko Ramius is forced to work with, but later kills his commissar equivalent Political Officer Ivan Yurevich Putin.)
These men ensured the military was under the thumb of the Party, but they also provided a serious tactical liability due to the fact they had no real military ability. Zampolits also worked directly for Moscow and the Kremlin so they were not held responsible for military failure the way the actual commander would be.
Another function of comissars was to enforce Soviet will on the soldiers.
Soviet military doctrine could be flexible and original, but the large numbers of conscripts and the casualties of World War II often led to an inflexibility of tactics.

British Army doctrine

British Army doctrine is prepared under the supervision of the Chief of the General Staff. Currently the basic doctrinal document is ''Design for Military Operations: The British Military Doctrine'', published in 1996.
== Military doctrine of the People's Republic of China ==
According to French newspaper Le Monde, the Chinese military doctrine is to maintain a nuclear force allowing it to respond to a nuclear attack. However, new evolutions show that China could allow use of its nuclear arsenal in more situations.^[2]

See also

★ Military strategy

★ Military tactics

★ National Security Strategy of the United States

★ foreign policy doctrine

References and links

1. Scott and Scott, 1979, p.37,59
2. Les Etats-Unis inquiets du développement de la capacité nucléaire chinoise. In Le Monde, 25 May 2007 [1]


★ Scott and Scott, The Armed Forces of the USSR, Westview Press, Boulder, Co., 1979

★ Joint Electronic Library

★ Military Analysis Network

★ British Military Doctrine accessed July 28, 2006

★ Air War College accessed September 27, 2006 - literally 'thousands' of online texts and links to off-site sources

★ General Gareyev: Russia changing its military doctrine accessed January 18, 2007.