United in Fact? A Critical Analysis of Intent and Perception in the Application of American and British Army Doctrine

In the complex modern environment, the importance of doctrine to a single national service is obvious. In the opinion of the author, those closest of military allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, commonly believe their military doctrines to be fundamentally similar to each other. This observation is based upon his experience of fifteen years in the British Army and latterly two years spent as a student at the United States Command and General Staff College. This is not surprising, perhaps as, after all, they emerged from the same chrysalis the threat posed by numerically superior forces of the Soviet Union in Central Europe during the Cold War. Since then United States and United Kingdom forces have deployed together in high intensity conflict, on complicated peace enforcement and peace keeping operations and, of course, recently to Afghanistan and Iraq. This monograph asks whether perception of a common understanding of military doctrine really does exist in practice. Its relevance is fundamentally important to how the partners should view one another's approach to future coalition operations. The primary research vehicle for this work was a survey conducted amongst American officers attending the US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, and UK Army officers at their Joint Service Command and Staff College, Watchfield. The study examined the two armies respective approaches to some fundamental components of operational design, asking whether their perspectives betrayed physical or conceptual foundations. The responses to this survey were set against the intent of respective capstone doctrinal publications, both of which are entitled Operations. While confirming the nesting of British Army doctrinal intent and understanding the results of the survey sound an alarm bell for US Army operational doctrine.