In the early 1990s, General Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented a vision of military action based around using overwhelming force as a last resort to achieve attainable goal of vital national security interest, all with a clear exit strategy. Called the Powell Doctrine, it has shaped American use of force for twenty years. Now, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has outlined a new doctrine for the use of the military in international affairs. Spencer Ackerman calls it the Mullen Doctrine:
Perhaps Mullen’s most provocative “principle,” as he called it in the speech, is that military forces “should not – maybe cannot – be the last resort of the state.” On the surface, Mullen appeared to offer a profligate view of sending troops to battle, contradicting the Powell Doctrine’s warning that the military should only be used when all other options exhaust themselves. Powell’s warning has great appeal to a country exhausted by two costly, protracted wars, one of which was launched long before diplomatic options had run out.
But Mullen’s aides said the chairman was trying to make a subtler point, one that envisioned the deployment of military forces not as a sharp change in strategy from diplomacy but along a continuum of strategy alongside it. “The American people are used to thinking of war and peace as two very distinct activities,” said Air Force Col. Jim Baker, one of Mullen’s advisers for military strategy. “That is not always the case.” In the speech, Mullen focused his definition of military force on the forward deployment of troops or hardware to bolster diplomatic efforts or aid in humanitarian ones, rather than the invasions that the last decade saw.
“Before a shot is even fired, we can bolster a diplomatic argument, support a friend or deter an enemy,” Mullen said. “We can assist rapidly in disaster-relief efforts, as we did in the aftermath of Haiti’s earthquake.”
Christopher R. Albon is a political science Ph.D. specializing in armed conflict, public health, human security, and health diplomacy.
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Quite intriguing, and indeed a little known speech outside of the military blog circles. Thanks for sharing this!
That’s why I like your blog, Chris. It fills the gap between the mil/international relations blogs and the health/international relations blogs and makes for a nice mil/health/IR three legged stool.
Cheers TEJ!
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