Fighting right.(The Echo of Battle: The Army's Way of War)(Book review)

The Echo of Battle: The Army's Way of War, by Brian McAllister Linn (Harvard, 320 pp., $27.95)

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THE idea of an "American way of war" gained currency in 1973 with the publication of Russell Weigley's book of the same name, which contended that wartime experiences had generated a distinctly American "strategic culture." For Weigley, U.S. military policy, strategy, and doctrine had been forged in the crucible of combat, as practiced by the likes of Washington, Lee, Grant, Pershing, MacArthur, and Curtis LeMay.

In his important new book, The Echo of Battle, Brian McAllister Linn, professor of history at Texas A&M, takes issue with the idea that "ways of warfare" arise primarily from the experience of war itself. He argues instead that the concepts of war that have shaped the American military experience are less the result of actual combat than of ideas that have arisen during long periods of peace. Thus, when it comes to the way Americans have thought about war, "military intellectuals" such as Joseph Totten, Emory Upton, and Donn Starry have played a more important role in establishing an American way of war than practitioners such as Grant or MacArthur.

Looking specifically at the U.S. Army, Linn argues that for two centuries the American defense debate has been shaped by three intellectual constructs of warfare. While they have evolved over time, their underlying assumptions and concepts have remained remarkably consistent: "Like a braid, each strand will, for a time, be visible on the surface and at other times will disappear, only to emerge farther down the braid. At times, the strands are so closely knit as to be indistinguishable; at other times they practically pull apart."

Linn calls proponents of the oldest Army school of thought the Guardians. This tradition, which manifests itself today in concerns about homeland security and ballistic missile defense, is best understood as an engineering approach to war. For the Guardians, war was and is both an art and a science, "the former consisting largely of the application of the latter." The Guardians have reduced war to scientific laws and principles, which if applied properly allow practitioners to anticipate and predict the outcome of conflict.

The earliest manifestation of the Guardian tradition was the creation of a system of coastal fortifications to repel sudden naval raids. Guardians envisioned the employment of the newest weaponry manned by a "small, elite corps of military specialists supported, if necessary, by masses of patriotic citizen-soldiers." Such a system, the Guardians contended, provided a cheap means of deterrence. One manifestation of the Guardian tradition today is what I have called "technophilia"--a conception of war that is linear, mechanistic, technocentric, and wholly disconnected from what our adversary may think, want, or do.