Description
First introduced into U.S. Army doctrine in 1982, the operational level of war developed to remove politics from an inherently political process. American writers absorbed Soviet writing on the subject and translated it into existing doctrine without a complete understanding of the intellectual history underpinning the Soviet concept of operational art. The U.S. Army adopted the operational level in response to professional drift after Vietnam, concern over the Soviet Union, and a desire to limit political interference at the tactical level. Specifically, U.S. innovations sought to remove politics from the application of military means as a way of professionalizing the Army officer corps by following Huntington’s approach to civil-military relations. Since its inception, the operational level has failed to perform this basic function — to filter political interference at the tactical level. Therefore, it has created an unreasonable expectation among Army officers that political leadership will refrain from injecting themselves into tactical actions. Additionally, U.S. writers viewed operational art and the operational level of war as interchangeable. This clouded the importance of operational art to the conduct of war regardless of echelon. Therefore, operational art retains its relevancy with or without the operational level of war. U.S. Army doctrine writers have a unique opportunity to correct a mistake from twenty years ago as they rewrite the Army’s capstone document, FM 3-0. Serious consideration needs to be given the utility and relevance of the operational level to how the U.S. Army conducts war. Removing the operational level from doctrine will reestablish the link between tactics and strategy and generate increased understanding of the impact of tactics on strategy across the force.
