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weighed and are considered acceptable. 52 Thus, the president s efforts
to improve UN peacekeeping through increased U.S. assistance had ef-
fectively morphed into a set of rules designed to limit U.S. military in-
volvement in operations other than war. Although PDD-25 re: ected the
administration s determination to take peace operations more seriously,
interagency efforts to address both the lessons learned from the Somalia
tragedy and the associated pathologies that had developed in the Amer-
ican psyche from Vietnam to Somalia meant that PDD-25 laid the foun-
dation for (or simply documented) what Richard Holbrooke would label
the Vietmalia syndrome.
In practice, Vietmalia meant that every mission would be con-
ducted in an effort to avoid the traumas suffered in these two previous
events. As Colin Powell had written in his memoir, we [the U.S. military]
would not quietly acquiesce in half-hearted warfare for half-baked rea-
sons that the American people could not understand or support. 53 For
Powell s generation of military leaders, only real war, de9 ned by the
use of overwhelming force against a peer competitor, could qualify as
not being half-hearted or half-baked. Peace operations, nation build-
51. Clinton Administration Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations
(PDD 25), Executive Summary (Bureau of International Organizational Affairs: U.S. De-
partment of State, February 22, 1996); Clinton, Presidential Decision Directive-25.
52. Clinton Administration Policy on Reforming Multilateral Peace Operations
(PDD 25), Executive Summary.
53. Colin Powell, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995).
Vietnam to Iraq " 85
ing, counterinsurgency, and every military operation other than war in
between simply could not qualify and were therefore suspect. Never
mind that many military analysts and most military of9 cers felt that big
war would be the least likely threat in the post Cold War era.54
MOOTW were an inappropriate use of the U.S. armed forces and were
to be avoided the U.S. military s mission was to 9 ght.
The Real Mission, 2-MTW, and the Readiness Debate
The military s cultural penchant for big war, reinforced by the Viet-
malia syndrome, informed the decade s security strategy and the mili-
tary s de9 nition of readiness. Being ready meant that the United
States could respond with overwhelming force to one con: ict without
leaving itself vulnerable to attack elsewhere. Planners scanning the globe
identi9 ed two potential regions where such capabilities existed to chal-
lenge U.S. might: the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula. While plan-
ners were cognizant of other unstable and dangerous areas of con: ict,
they felt that compared to the sizes of the militaries and the potential
hostilities toward the United States in Korea and the Persian Gulf, other
regions presented smaller, less signi9 cant threats. Thus, as the 1993
Bottom-up Review stated, U.S. forces will be structured to achieve de-
cisive victory in two nearly simultaneous major regional con: icts and to
conduct combat operations characterized by rapid response and a high
probability of success, while minimizing the risk of signi9 cant American
casualties. 55 This became known as the two major theater war (2-
MTW) strategy.
Throughout the 1990s, every important of9 cial strategic document
issued by the White House or the Pentagon clearly reinforced the focus
on 2-MTW. Even PDD-25, the era s 9 rst document on peace operations
policy, made a point to highlight the 2-MTW strategy. As speci9 ed in the
Bottom-up Review, it stated, the primary mission of the U.S. Armed
Forces remains to be prepared to 9 ght and win two simultaneous re-
gional con: icts. 56 Likewise, although President Clinton s National Se-
curity Strategy (NSS) consistently promoted peace operations as an im-
portant component of our strategy, each version of the administration s
NSS was also careful to point out that the primary mission of our Armed
54. Deborah Avant and James Lebovic, U.S. Military Attitudes towards Post-Cold War
Missions, Armed Forces and Society 27, no. 1 (2000).
55. Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, Bottom-up Review (Washington, DC, October
1993).
56. Ibid.
86 " lifting the fog of peace
Forces is not peace operations; it is to deter and, if necessary, to 9 ght and
win con: icts in which our most important interests are threatened. 57
Thus the message for military planners became a bit muddled. Peace-
keeping was important but not a priority. The resulting Quadrennial De-
fense Review (QDR) and National Military Strategy (NMS) documents
clearly re: ected the DoD s understanding that peace operations were
something the military would do if so ordered but not something for
which they must signi9 cantly change their force posture or strategic
planning.58
This dichotomy was reinforced in the independent Commission on
Roles and Missions (CORM), established by the National Defense Au-
thorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994. The focus of the CORM was on eval-
uating the joint interoperability of the services since the 1986 Goldwa-
ter-Nichols Act. It was to review the allocation of roles among the services
and make recommendations for changes to current structure and
processes that would enhance effectiveness. The CORM was signi9 cant
for its emphasis on improving service responsiveness to the regional
commanders in chief (CINCs) during real-world operations. Many of its
recommendations were written into law (including the requirement to
conduct the QDR). With respect to peace operations and MOOTW, how-
ever, the CORM report stated the following:
Peace Operations. Currently, DoD regards peace operations as a sub-
set of the broad category of operations other than war. However,
peace operations hold the prospect for preventing, containing or
ending con: ict. They have the potential to preclude larger, more
costly U.S. involvement in regional con: icts. We recommend differ-
entiating peace operations to give them greater prominence in con-
tingency planning.
OOTW. In addition, we must be prepared to engage in the wide
range of remaining OOTW tasks, such as humanitarian assistance
57. William Jefferson Clinton, A Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement (Washington,
DC: White House, February 1996).
58. White House policy is formally articulated in the annual National Security Strategy
(NSS), which in turn (in theory) informs the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) pub-
lished by the Of9 ce of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the National Military Strategy
(NMS) published by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The requirement to publish an annual NSS
was written into law by the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, while the QDR requirement was
written into law by the Military Force Structure Review Act of 1996 following the recom-
mendations of the 1995 Commission on Roles and Missions. The Bush administration s
Base Force report and the Clinton administration s Bottom-up Review, both voluntarily
accomplished by OSD during these two administrations, served as a model for the QDR
concept.
Vietnam to Iraq " 87
and disaster relief. For these, we recommend limiting the use of mili-
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