Between threats and war: U.S. Discrete Military Operations in the post-Cold War world

This dissertation evaluates if America's use of limited military force since the end of the Cold War has achieved its intended military and political objectives. It is an important question since the United States has been the dominant international actor, its decisionmakers increasingly used limited force against other states or non-state actors, and advances in military's capacity to conduct precise military strikes make it likely that the limited force will be a persistent feature in the future. This dissertation introduces the concept of the Discrete Military Operation (DMO): "a single or serial physical use of military force to achieve a defined military and political goal and that does so by inflicting casualties or causing destruction, but does not aim to conquer an opposing army or to capture or control territory." Through research and interviews with civilian and military officials, the universe of cases of U.S. DMOs from 1991 through June 2008--- twenty-nine---are coded for success or failure of their military and political objectives. The evidence demonstrates U.S. DMOs achieved all of their military objectives forty-five percent of time, and political objectives only seven percent. Although DMOs have been relatively unsuccessful, they are enthusiastically proposed by U.S. decisionmakers because of divergent opinions between senior civilian and military officials over the utility of limited force. In the United States, the military is responsible for planning and executing DMOs, but only at the authorization of the President. As a general proposition, senior civilian officials support DMOs, while senior military officials do not. To narrow the civil-military gap over opinions of DMOs: civilian officials must listen to the concerns of their military counterparts, reframe their intended political objectives, and adjust their desired end state, when requesting limited military options; military officials, to offer options most useful for civilian decisionmakers, should provide politically-aware advice without adopting the preferences of the civilians they serve; and, because DMOs are usually planned secretly without outside examination, civilian and military officials must have a clear dialogue about what DMOs can do to resolve a particular foreign policy problem.