Once Burned,Twice Cautious: Explaining the Weinberger-Powell Doctrine

Abstract

The Pentagon's reluctance to use force in recent conflicts in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Rwanda stems ultimately from the organizational trauma the U.S. military suffered in Vietnam. The near total disintegration of the military in the early 1970s created an organizational survival imperative that produced the military's lessons of Vietnam and its doctrine on the proper use of force. This Weinberger-Powell Doctrine, despite frequent criticism, has steadily gained legitimacy over the years since Vietnam and is preeminent today in the American foreign policy community. Military leaders, by applying the doctrine, have succeeded in avoiding new Vietnam-type quagmires by constraining the imperial impulses of the presidency, but the inherent ambiguity of international conflict in the post-Cold War era will make it more difficult for the promulgators of this doctrine to continue to negotiate the fine line between quagmires and appeasement in the twenty-first century.