The Operational Commander and War Termination: Assessing the Bridge from War to Peace
Abstract
War termination is a subject to which students and practitioners of the operational art of war are devoting increasing attention, but finding scant guidance in current doctrine. This paper addresses that doctrinal gap by outlining a framework which an operational commander might use in analyzing whether a plan for a campaign's final phase is likely to result in successful war termination. The paper's limited scope precludes an exhaustive examination of all aspects of war termination, but rather concentrates on how a commander might evaluate a war-termination plan in the broadest sense. It finds that since tactics and operations may be most closely linked to strategy in the final phase of a campaign, the commander might analyze his war-termination plan using the same criteria used to evaluate strategy itself: political effectiveness, feasibility, cost effectiveness, appropriateness, consequences, and alternatives. Historical examples illustrate the most important of these criteria, political effectiveness and feasibility, in the war termination plans of operational commanders in the Franco Prussian War and Korean Wars.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 17, 1993
- Accession Number
- ADA266580
Entities
People
- C. L. Scovel Iii
Organizations
- Naval War College