Sam’s call that the so called ‘small war'school within the US military is in ‘ascendency’ because of the recent publication of US Army Field Manual (FM) 3-07 Stability Operations is overstated. One of anything is not ascendency. When put into the context of the literally hundreds of doctrinal publication issued annually every year by the US military, it is not even a weak trend.
Consider this: in the six years since the US became heavily involved in ‘stability’ operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has issued only two major pieces of doctrine dealing specifically with the subject – FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency and FM 3-07 Stability Operations. Such is the US military’s doctrinal response to an enterprise that has cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars.
I wonder what people would consider as failure for both the ‘small war' school and the ongoing efforts to describe and understand what is occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan if two publications in six years constitute an ‘ascendency’ of thought.
