Abstract
Until 1991 the theory of limited war was shaped by the experience of two critical conflicts — Korea and Vietnam. Korea was responsible for a concept geared to an east-west confrontation and dependent on the limitation of objectives in order to have any realistic hope of limiting means. Vietnam introduced a pessimism with regard to the possibility of limiting means, by drawing attention to inherent tendencies of escalation. By the time of the Gulf War, therefore, limited war was seen to require a commitment to controls on both ends and means. The consequence of this experience may be to loosen past restraints on the limitation of objectives in armed conflicts even while those on means are being tightened.
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Notes
G. van Bentham van der Bergh, entry on ‘Limited War’ in Ervin Laszlo and Jong Youl Yoo, World Encyclopedia of Peace, Vol. I, (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1986) pp. 541–42.
Address by Secretary John Foster Dulles, The Evolution of Foreign Policy, Speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, New York, January 1954. Reprinted in Philip Bobbitt, Lawrence Freedman and Gregory Treverton, US Nuclear Strategy: A Reader (London: Macmillan, 1989).
Michael Howard and Peter Paret, (eds), On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
On the relevance of Clausewitz for contemporary limited war theory see Michael Howard, Clausewitz (Oxford: Oxfoid University Press, 1983), p. 46.
See Brian Bond, Liddell Hart: A Study of his Military Thought (London: Cassell, 1977).
Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959).
Morton Halperin, Limited War in the Nuclear Age, (New York: John Wiley 1963).
William Kaufmann (ed.), Military Policy and National Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).
Henry Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper, 1957).
Robert Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).
Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966).
The Joint Chiefs of Staff: Dictionary of United States Military Terms for Joint Usage (Washington DC, August 1968), p. 124.
Bernard Brodie, ‘More about Limited War’, World Politics, (1957) p. 112.
Bernard Brodie, ‘More about Limited War’, World Politics, (1957) p. 112. See also the definition in Jeffrey Elliot and Robert Reginald, The Arms Control, Disarmament, and Military Security Dictionary, (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1989):
Robert Osgood, Limited War Revisited, (Boulder: Westview Press, 1979) pp. 3,10.
The idea of proportionality can be traced to the ‘Just War’ tradition that has been extremely influential in Western thinking about war. See William O’Brien, The Conduct of Just and Limited War, (New York: Praeger, 1981).
William W. Kaufmann, ‘Limited Warfare’, in William W. Kaufmann (ed.), Military Power and National Security (Princeton University Press 1956), p. 112.
In 1959 Bernard Brodie in Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, Princeton University Press) wrote that the danger that limited wars may develop explosively into total wars leads one to consider whether the net effect of readiness to adopt limited war strategies is to increase the probability of total war… (p. 349).
The most elaborate version of this theory was provided by Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios, (London: Pall Mall, 1965).
Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960) pp. 193–4,208.
Robert Osgood, ‘Reappraisal of Limited War’ in Alastair Buchan (ed.), Problems of Modem Strategy (London: Chatto & Windus, 1970), p. 109. See also his Limited War Revisited.
Stephen Rosen, ‘Vietnam and the American Theory of Limited War’, international Security 1 (1982) pp. 83–113.
Theodore Draper in Richard Pfeiffer (ed.), No More Vietnams (New York: Harper & Row, 1968) p. 34.
Alexander Haig, Caveat, (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984) p. 125.
Tribune, December 1–2 1990. Inevitably much (though not all) of the material on the Gulf is drawn from Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict, 1990–91: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (London: Faber & Faber, 1993).
Washington Post, 7 January 1991. See William Arkin, Joshua Handler, Damian Durrant, U.S. Nuclear Weapons in the Persian Gulf Crisis, (Washington DC: Greenpeace, 1991).
Michael Howard, ‘Clausewitz: Man of the Year?’, New York Times, 28 January 1991.
Stephen R. Graubard, Mr Bush’s War: Adventures in the Politics of Illusion, (New York: Hill & Wang, 1992).
Jean Edward Smith, George Bush’s War (New York: Henry Holt, 1992).
Representative Les Aspin, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, ‘The Military Option: The Conduct and Consequences of War in the Persian Gulf’ (8 January, 1991), reprinted in House of Representatives, 101st Cong., 2nd sess., Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, Crisis in the Persian Gulf: Sanctions, Diplomacy and War (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1991) p. 916. The formal Congressional Resolution authorizing the use of United States Armed Forces explicitly related this to ‘implementation’ of the relevant Security Council resolutions. In a statement on the relevance of this resolution for War Powers legislation, Representative Dante Fascell observed that: The strength and wisdom of the War Powers Resolution is that it established procedures and a process by which Congress can authorize the use of force in specific settings for limited purposes short of a total state of war. We find ourselves in such a situation today where H.J. Res 77 [the Joint Resolution] authorizes the use of force under the specific conditions cited. It is not an unlimited, unconditional authorization of the use of force, nor is it a formal declaration of war. Representative Dante B. Fascell, Statement on War Powers, 22 January 1991. Reprinted in US House of Representatives, 102nd Cong., 1st sess., Report prepared by the Subcommittee on Arms Control, International Security and Science of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, The Persian Gulf Crisis: Relevant Documents, Correspondence, Reports, (Washington DC: US GPO, 1991), p. 134. To all intents and purposes the war was also localized in the Gulf area. It should be noted that on 21 January President Bush issued an Executive Order, stating that, as of 17 January 1991: I hereby designate… the following locations, including the airspace above such locations, as an area in which Armed Forces of the United States are and have been engaged in combat:
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Freedman, L. (1994). The Theory of Limited War. In: Danchev, A., Keohane, D. (eds) International Perspectives on the Gulf Conflict, 1990–91. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23231-4_9
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