Winfield Scott's 1847 Mexico City campaign as a model for future war

Joint Force Quarterly, Oct, 2009 by Daniel T. Canfield

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Our fixation with conventional battle tends to undervalue the increasing potential of stability operations to decide the political outcomes of military campaigns and clouds our perceptions regarding both the purpose and utility of force. (1) This article uses an abbreviated examination of Winfield Scott's Mexico City campaign to provide perspectives on both the evolving character of warfare and the preeminent challenge confronting America's contemporary operational planners--that is, how to translate ascendancy on the conventional battlefield into achievable and enduring political success. While not dismissing the possibility of traditional, high-intensity, interstate warfare, this article argues that both the character and conduct of America's future conflicts will, in all likelihood, more closely resemble those of Scott's campaign than the black and white political and military paradigms of a bygone era where industrialized nation-states waged near-total wars of annihilation.

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If the United States hopes to consummate military success with enduring political victory in the 21st century, it will need to reconcile the American way of war with the realities of the contemporary operating environment. While offering no clairvoyant panacea, Scott's campaign provides valuable perspective on how to do so. Operating 156 years before the American invasion of Iraq, Scott prosecuted a bold and imaginative campaign that carefully balanced military means with political ends. His skillful integration of anti-guerrilla, stability, and high-intensity combat operations precluded the eruption of a widespread, religious-based insurgency and consummated his tactical victories with enduring political success. In the future, as in the past, it will not be enough to simply destroy or defeat the enemy's armed forces; the American military will have to be able and ready to win the peace within the construct of an overarching campaign design focused on securing a definitive political, not just military, victory.

Future Conflicts

In the warm afterglow of Operation Desert Storm, our infatuation with technology and its seemingly unbounded potential to revolutionize armed conflict fueled illusions of military supremacy. In reality, however, Desert Storm did not cement our invincibility; it only demonstrated to our adversaries that the means and methods for confronting the United States would have to change. As 9/11 and our protracted conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have so painfully illustrated, we cannot expect our enemies to play to our strengths or otherwise conform to our notions of warfare. Rather, they will continue to develop and utilize means that exploit our critical vulnerabilities and give them the best chance to win. With a joint force so dominant in the conventional application of force, do we really think our current or future adversaries will do us the favor of engaging in a traditional combined arms contest?

Wars and military forces are reflections of the societies and cultures that produce them. (2) While technology, firepower, and the relentless quest to destroy an adversary's armed forces won the battles of the 20th century, they may not, in and of themselves, be enough to win the wars of the 21st century. In many ways, the evolution of the character of warfare could be seen as unwinding in the aftermath of the apogee of World War II and the introduction of nuclear weapons. One only need look at the decidedly mixed record of conventionally superior forces in the post--World War II era for evidence of this counterintuitive phenomenon. The apparent decoupling of traditional military force from the ability to achieve enduring political success is a function of an increasingly proliferated, politically complex, and globally integrated world. These trends will only accelerate in the years ahead. The preeminent challenge for American defense planners, therefore, will be to reconcile an American way of war that is almost totally predicated on the conventional application of combat power directed at the destruction of an adversary's armed forces with the reality that our future opponents, fighting among their own people and buoyed by increasingly sophisticated technical capabilities, will turn to a hybrid combination of regular and irregular methods to secure a definitive political rather than a military victory.

Given the distinct possibility of conflict in places such as Iran, Pakistan, Cuba, Venezuela, sub-Saharan Africa, or, lest we forget, the Korean Peninsula, we should expect America's future wars to more closely resemble the Southern Campaign in the American Revolution, albeit from the British perspective, or Scott's drive on Mexico City rather than the tidy and concise military and political paradigms of a bygone era when industrialized nation-states waged near-total wars of annihilation. Our future commanders will be called on to do much more than simply defeat an adversary's armed forces; they will also be expected to operate among a hostile or ambivalent population whose political will to fight does not necessarily reside in the army or the state. For American military power to be decisive, it will have to do much more than fight its way in. It will, in all likelihood, also need to be capable of winning the peace by rapidly securing the local population, establishing acceptable levels of political legitimacy, and ensuring American war aims and long-term political objectives are achieved amid the social chaos inherent in the wake of any sizable military intervention. Ironically, the way ahead may look quite similar to the not-too-distant past.