Colin Powell: “U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead”

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

At the time he wrote his article “U.S. Forces: Challenges Ahead” for Foreign Affairs, published in the winter 1992/1993 issue, Powell was credited with formulating the “Powell doctrine,” but this was a term created primarily by journalists and one he did not use himself. It was a strategy for warfare largely based on principles held by the former secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger, to whom Powell reported during the Reagan administration. Its essential principles are that military action should be a last resort, that the war must be justified by a clear risk to national security, that the military force used should be decisive and overwhelming, that there must be public and international support for the use of force, and that there must be a clear exit strategy from the conflict. The doctrine was also influenced by Powell's own wartime experiences in Vietnam—a war fought without a clear objective or a clear exit strategy and, most significantly, with rapidly eroding support at home. The doctrine was further influenced by the disastrous 1983 action by U.S. Marines in Lebanon, sent there by President Ronald Reagan as part of an international peacekeeping force to help stabilize a new Lebanese government in a situation highly muddled by warring factions. These troops were then hastily withdrawn when it became clear that they were more targets than peacekeepers, especially after a terrorist truck bomb killed more than two hundred Marines and other service personnel on October 23, 1983. Conversely, the success of the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War in liberating Kuwait after an unprovoked invasion by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein became his model for a war with clearly defined objectives.

In his autobiography My American Journey, Powell recalled being upbraided by then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney after raising questions during an early meeting about the Gulf War: “Before we start talking about how many divisions, carriers and fighter wings we need, I said, we have to ask, to achieve what end?” (p. 465), adding that he was seeking to avoid the docility the Joint Chiefs showed during the Vietnam War. “I was not sorry … that I had spoken out at the White House. What I had said about giving the military clear objectives had to be said” (p. 466). Years later, in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq war, Powell and others faced more intense criticism about why they had not pursued Iraqi forces to Baghdad and unseated Saddam in 1991. Powell's defense in his 1992 article was that removing the dictator would have created instability in the region and forced U.S. involvement for years to come. After the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, the second Bush administration came to view that involvement as an acceptable risk.

Powell opens his Foreign Affairs article by quoting one of his heroes, Abraham Lincoln, who, in his annual message to Congress in 1862, described America as “the last best hope of Earth.” Lincoln's words became even more prescient following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the cold war. America found itself the world's only superpower, and Powell found himself in charge of a reduced military force. He shaped a new national military strategy based on a “change from a focus on global war-fighting to a focus on regional contingencies.” He could not foresee where U.S. forces would be needed next, but he notes hot spots and disputes, including the contentious relations of different ethnic groups on the borders of the old Soviet empire and the civil war in Somalia. This view of warfare was in part a result of an altered geopolitical landscape. Throughout most of the twentieth century, war planning was based on the use of massive armies, armed with heavy equipment and supported by air cover, to seize and hold territory. Later, nuclear weapons gave new meaning to the phrase “total war.” Powell recognized that in a nuclear age it was highly unlikely that military planners would be called on to engage in the kind of war fought during World War II, particularly with the recent breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe. Rather, the U.S. military would more likely be asked to fight limited wars in regional conflicts, requiring the use of more agile, quick-response forces.

Powell lays out the heart of his doctrine, which is based on questions that must be answered before the nation resorts to military force. “Relevant questions include: Is the political objective we seek to achieve important, clearly defined and understood? Have all other nonviolent policy means failed? Will military force achieve the objective? At what cost? Have the gains and risks been analyzed?” And then, crucially, Powell raises the question of an exit strategy:“How might the situation that we seek to alter, once it is altered by force, develop further and what might be the consequences?” If the political objective is sufficiently justified, risks are deemed acceptable, and if diplomatic and economic policies are insufficient alone, he writes, the decision to use military force must be accompanied by “clear and unambiguous objectives … given to the armed forces.” When force is used, it must be overwhelmingly decisive, he adds, denouncing the idea of “surgical bombing or a limited attack.”

Powell then turns to a summary of the new structure of a post–cold war military. Its focus, he writes, would be a “new emphasis on capabilities as well as threats.” He means that forces should be sufficient to meetobligations around the globe, not one single threat from a superpower. He advocates a “Base Force” focused on the Atlantic and Pacific regions as well as a “contingency force” based in the United States, capable of responding to crises anywhere on the globe at a moment's notice. Nuclear capabilities, while greatly reduced, must remain in order to deter the use of nuclear force by other countries, he adds. Finally, Powell calls America's status in 1992 its “fourth rendezvous with destiny,” borrowing a phrase Franklin D. Roosevelt had used in World War II. The first rendezvous was the American Revolution, the second was the Civil War, the third was World War II and the subsequent cold war, and the fourth, according to Powell,was the era of American military and economic leadership following the end of cold war, “a time of immense opportunity—an opportunity never seen in the world before.”