do with effectiveness. Art is, by definition, creative; but appreciating it is merely a
matter of taste. For parts of the twentiethcentury, Americanoperational art was little
more than the relentless application of superior force; but it proved effective. In
contrast, American operations in Afghanistan in 2001–2 and Iraq in 2003 amounted
to an exquisite application of force in terms of speed, knowledge, and precision;
however, these principles failed to produce an overall victory. US operational
planning and execution focused too much on war’s first grammar, which is why
the classicdefinition of operational art is also problematic. It is not enough merely to
‘design’ and ‘link’ operations, as the classic definition holds, with only one grammar
in mind. Contemporary operational art requires mastering two grammars.
NOTES- Daniel Moran, ‘Operational Level of War’, in Richard Holmes (ed.),Oxford Compan-
ion to Military History(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), is an excellent
summary. - Carl von Clausewitz,Vom Kriege, Book VIII, ch. 6B, 991.
- Brig. Justin Kelly and Michael James Brennan,Alien: How Operational Art Devoured
Strategy(Carlisle, PA: US Army War College, 2009), offer the classic definition: the
‘skillful design and execution of operations’, with operations confined within the
context of the campaign plan. Cf. John English, ‘The Operational Art: Developments
in the Theories of War’, in B. J. C. McKercher and Michael A. Hennessy (eds.),The
Operational Art: Developments in the Theories of War(Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996),
7–28, which suggests ‘ifstrategyis the art of war andtacticsthe art of battle, then
operationsis the art of campaigning’.
4.http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/doddict/data/o/index.html, accessed October
2009. - Whether that remains true is another matter; some argue that operational art must
now be developed at battalion headquarters. Huba Wass de Czege, ‘Systemic Opera-
tional Design: Learning and Adapting in Complex Missions’,Military Review, vol. 89,
no. 1 (January–February 2009), 2–12. - Richard M. Swain, ‘Filling the Void: The Operational Art and the U.S. Army’, in
Operational Art, 147–72. - Kelly and Brennan,Alien.
8.American Military History(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1989), 343–57;
James E. Hewes, Jr.,From Root to McNamara: Army Organization and Administration,
1900–1963(Washington, DC: GPO, 1975). - William A. Kobbe,Notes on Strategy and Logistics(Ft. Monroe, VA: Artillery School
Press, 1896), 17; Henry L. Scott,Military Dictionary(New York: D. Van Nostrand,
1864), 574; cf. BG (ret.) Harold Nelson, ‘The Origins of Operational Art’, in Michael
D. Krause and R. Cody Phillips (eds.),Historical Perspectives of the Operational Art
(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 2005), 333–48. - Philip A. Crowl, ‘Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval Historian’, in Peter Paret (ed.),
Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age(Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1986).
American Operational Art, 1917–2008 161