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Introduction

In America’s First Battles, 1776–1965, Charles E. Heller and William A. Stofft argue that, “With little prior warning, the Army must be capable of fighting in a variety of geographic locales against any one aggressor or a coalition of potential aggressors in joint and combined formations.”¹ Since 1986, when these lines were written, the US armed forces have had to shift from peace to war a number of times. The need to enter a conflict rapidly is an enduring global demand and, given today’s dynamic geopolitical environment, has become more relevant than ever.

The ability to transition swiftly from peace, or from a prolonged lowintensity conflict (LIC), to the high-intensity conflict (HIC) of war and to succeed in the initial engagements is usually discussed in terms of readiness, capability, and capacity, which are related to materiel, personnel, doctrine, and training. Every security establishment—whether state or nonstate—is familiar with these aspects. This book, however, deals with the other complementary, important, but generally neglected “soft” aspects of moving from peace to war: the mental ability to shift from peacetime to wartime, the challenge of consolidating a coherent doctrine when war erupts in the midst of an ongoing peacetime conceptual-doctrinal debate, and the difficulty of achieving proficiency on short notice when new weapons systems become available at the last minute (or even after units have deployed).

The initial phase of hostilities may seem unimportant from a broad perspective when considering prolonged conflicts such as World War I, World War II,² Vietnam, Afghanistan, and others, but in fact, these initial battles are more crucial than ever for a number of reasons. First, as John Shy contends, “The results of the first battle play a crucial role in strategy.”³ It can be argued that this is also the case in prolonged conflicts, but more importantly, “All wars involve a high level of ignorance and uncertainty … but it is the very beginning of war when lack of knowledge or confidence may dominate the situation, before commanders can assess the results of their first realistic test of estimates, assumptions, guesses, predictions, hopes and fears.”⁴ This means that, practically speaking, first battles are experiments and thus play an essential role for military organizations that are trying to be receptive and adaptive to change.

Second, in comparatively short and intense wars (like the kind Israel fights), early engagements shape the physical and mental conditions for the engagements that follow. This was the case at the beginning of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat based his 1973 campaign on the assumption that the initial battles would be of supreme importance: “We should have the upper hand in the first twenty-four hours of fighting, because, I said, he who wins the twenty-four-hour encounter will surely win the entire war. Our plan and method of execution should be based on the kind of action designated to tip the balance in our favor within the initial twenty-four hours.”⁵

In late 2001–early 2002, at the peak of the Palestinian suicide bomber offensive against Israel, senior Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers believed that fighting the terrorists inside the refugee camps would result in hundreds of IDF casualties. The first successful attacks in February 2002 in the Balata refugee camp outside Nablus by an IDF paratrooper brigade and in the Jenin refugee camp by the Golani Brigade, restored the confidence of Israel’s political and strategic policymakers in combating terror in densely populated urban areas. The success of these initial engagements enabled the order to be given a week later to occupy the major cities in the West Bank as part of Operation Defensive Shield.

The 1976 version of the US Army’s operations doctrine, FM 100–5, focuses on a central European scenario similar to the Yom Kippur War and states: “The first battle of our next war could well be our last battle…. The United States could find itself in a short intensive war—the outcome of which may be dictated by the results of the initial combat.”⁶ Winning the first battles is also important for the expeditionary units that are the first to fight. During and after the Cold War, US Army doctrine emphasized the importance of force projection and, later, the expeditionary forces’ mental and cognitive challenge. The 1993 edition of FM 100–5 states:

Force projection usually begins as a contingency operation—a rapid response to a crisis. Alert may come without notice, bringing with it tremendous stress on soldiers and systems, accompanied by pressure from the media for information….

Force-projection operations will challenge Army leaders. Early critical decisions set against a backdrop of uncertainty and friction, will be required at every level—strategic, operational, and tactical—in war and in operations other than war. The commander and the force will routinely be required to plan and execute multiple concurrent activities. Decisions made early will begin to set conditions for successful mission accomplishment.⁷

Regarding expeditionary forces, the US Army’s 2008 FM 3–0 states:

Future conflicts will include incomplete planning information, rapid deployments with little or no notice, and sustained operations in austere theaters….

Expeditionary capabilities are more than physical attributes; they begin with a mindset that pervades the force. Soldiers with an expeditionary mindset are ready to deploy on short notice. They are confident that they can accomplish any mission. They are mentally and physically prepared to deploy anywhere in the world at any time in any environment against any adversary. Leaders with an expeditionary mindset are adaptive. They possess the individual initiative needed to accomplish missions through improvisation and collaboration. They are mentally prepared to operate within different cultures in any environment. An expeditionary mindset requires developing and empowering adaptive thinkers at all levels, from tactical to strategic.⁸

The US Army’s future concept of “multidomain battle” (see chapter 5) assumes that “adversaries can conduct armed conflict via regional campaigns with limited warning to seize limited strategic objectives and consolidate gains within days or weeks.” Therefore, “Multi-Domain Battle requires a dynamic mix of forward presence forces, expeditionary forces, and partner forces to deter an adversary and, if required, to defeat his plan within days and not months.”⁹

It is important to note that American military thinkers also stress the need for a rapid reaction capability by newly organized expeditionary forces, and they suggest a combination of organizational, technological, training, educational, and career management changes to achieve the necessary transformation. For example, Douglas Macgregor, in his book Transformation under Fire, suggests three modes of operation for these new forces: rapid intervention with minimal or no alert in places where the United States or its allies do not have a presence but, for strategic reasons, need to intervene; a constant presence in key areas in peripheral parts of the globe to enable a rapid reaction against emerging threats to US interests; and a constant presence to support the stability of important countries and prevent regional crises.¹⁰ In a later book, Macgregor restricted his suggestions for future American intervention but still emphasized the need “to maintain powerful force-in-being—forces designated to win the first fight, because we may not get the second chance to win a second.”¹¹ Others, such as Eliot Cohen in The Big Stick, suggest that decision makers in Washington should prepare the US Army for much wider intervention scenarios than those implied by the current post-Iraq and Afghanistan conventions.¹²

Third, in the oversaturated media environment that armies fight in, first impressions—on all sides—are more important than ever. Two decades ago, news reports on war would encompass a combination of initial failures and follow-up successes in a way that softened the former and highlighted the latter. Today, online news of initial failures might bring the war to an immediate halt.

Fourth, the growing ambiguity surrounding the political definition of conflict and the determination of success makes the transition from peace to war more difficult. In the Yom Kippur War, for instance, it was quite clear that the situation at hand was war. It was much harder to define the situation at the beginning of the Vietnam War or Israel’s military engagement in July 2006 that, a year later, would officially be called the Second Lebanon War. The growing military literature on “understanding” attests to this challenge.¹³ One could claim that in the Vietnam War or the Second Lebanon War the problem was not that the war was unrecognizable as such or that its character was unexpected but that the political and military leadership failed to sustain the readiness of the force. Be that as it may, in the end the challenge fell—and, due to the inherent political difficulties of declaring war, will probably continue to fall—on the shoulders of the military commanders who had to make the quick shift to war. These commanders are the target audience for this book.

Framing the Issue

Just as the professional conduct of war requires many kinds of transitions, success in first battles depends on many conditions. A short discussion of both issues will clarify this book’s focus.

The ability to identify and adapt to a new situation is the basic and essential test of competency of every commander and every unit. The classic mode of transition is a switch between offensive and defensive operations and vice versa. This kind of transition involves changes in almost every aspect of warfare—different methods of combat, organization, mindset, and so forth.¹⁴ Another set of transitions is implied by the American concept of “phasing”—that is, the shift from “shape” (phase 0) through “stabilization” (phase IV).¹⁵ For example, the challenge of identifying the need to adapt to changing circumstances at the end of the successful ground invasion of Iraq in 2003 can be described as a “failed transition” between phases III and IV.¹⁶ This book addresses a specific kind of transition—the rapid shift from peace or LIC to HIC (war).

A successful transition depends on many variables that are usually covered by the term “readiness.” During the Cold War, discussions about readiness were based mostly on the American experience in the two world wars and, later, the Korean War. Planners drew on the lessons learned in those wars to prepare a force buildup strategy for American and allied mobilization in the event of war between NATO and Warsaw Pact forces in Europe. The literature dealing with readiness for the transition from peace to war focused on the size, organization, and mobilization of forces and their training. The outcome of this effort was research-based decisions on factors such as the industrial infrastructure needed to accelerate the production of weapons and ammunition, the ratio between regular and reserve units, the reserve component’s level of competency, the time required for mobilization in Europe and the United States and deployment from the United States to Europe, and so forth. The creation of the Mobilization Concept Development Center and the publication of books such as NATO–Warsaw Pact Force Mobilization exemplify the response to such needs at the time.¹⁷ Probably the best analysis of readiness is Richard Betts’s 1995 book Military Readiness.18 Betts surveys the readiness traditions up to and during the Cold War, praises the readiness that enabled the relatively short (in American terms) force buildup that led to victory in Iraq in 1991, and provides guidelines for the future. After the Cold War, attention shifted to quick-reaction forces or rapid-deployment forces that could deploy worldwide as an initial force for a larger, heavier presence. In these scenarios, the main issues were (and still are) transportation assets for rapid deployment and the integration of multinational coalition forces, or the numbers and types of forces stationed around the world.

Although these are essential issues, this book does not deal with the size of armed forces, their level of training, transportation assets for deployment, or the stationing of units around the globe for immediate intervention. Assuming that all this has been accomplished, I argue that to conduct a successful transition from peace to war, other “softer” aspects of readiness, such as cognitive and mental flexibility, must be addressed.

The concept of “adaptation” is usually related to change during war, as discussed in the growing literature on the subject, which includes Williamson Murray’s Military Adaptation in War, with Fear of Change and my own On Flexibility: Recovery from Technological and Doctrinal Surprise on the Battlefield.¹⁹ The rapid transition from peace to war generally requires a much faster recognition of the new situation and a much more extensive change in force employment compared with adaptation during war. This aspect of adaptation is not part of the current literature. As Murray points out, adaptation “is a phenomenon of indeterminate length, which presents the opportunity for the contestants to adapt to their enemy’s strategy, operations and tactical approach.”²⁰ In the case of the transition from peace to war, the interval is much shorter compared with the case studies presented in the literature. For example, in his book on the US military in Iraq, Chad Serena describes an adaptation that took years.²¹

In addition to the short time available to adjust, another difference between battlefield adaptation and the rapid transition from peace to war involves the unique combination of changing one’s mindset (peace versus war), which is a cognitive-mental process, and dealing with the professional challenges of improvisation, such as assimilating new weapons or tactics or consolidating an unvalidated concept. Probably the worst case is encountering the combination of both challenges in the event of a surprise attack, as occurred in the Yom Kippur War.

A few other cognitive-mental challenges exist when making the rapid switch from peace to war, as opposed to battlefield adaptation. For example, there is the need to define the new situation as war (which sounds easy but is not), the need to persuade one’s superiors in the rear that there is a war on the front, and the need to revise the basic mode of action from the one used and assimilated in peacetime and routine security missions.

This book’s aim is to fill the existing gaps in the literature. To that end, I identify four main challenges when making a successful transition from peacetime to wartime. First, there must be a successful mental transition from peacetime or routine security activities to a higher-intensity mode of action for combat. This is an enduring human and organizational challenge that stems from the need for preconceptions and organizational stability.

Second, if prewar debates over concepts and doctrine are still unresolved when war breaks out, these issues must be quickly resolved. Peacetime conceptual and doctrinal debates are essential for the healthy development of a military force’s fighting ability. As General Donn Starry, commander of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), noted in the 1970s: “Operational concepts are the stuff on which armies feed and nurture themselves. And so a dialogue about them is essential to the Army’s well-being.”²² But continuing the debate into actual combat operations can be disastrous. This is mainly a leadership challenge. The ambiguity concerning where, when, and against whom the next conflict will take place, as well as that conflict’s shape and form, is becoming a prominent challenge.

Third, new weapons systems—those delivered at the last minute before hostilities begin or even while the conflict is ongoing—must be integrated and employed. This challenge increases as the pace of technological change creates more opportunities.

Fourth, there must be a balance between the need to win every tactical engagement in LICs (which often call for mindsets, organization, and doctrines different from those needed in HICs) and the preparation of forces for a war scenario.

Why Does Israel’s Experience Matter?

In World War I, World War II, and the Gulf Wars, the United States had remarkable strategic depth in time and space. In Israel, neither exists. For most of its modern history, the major threat to Israel has been land invasion, similar to the situation of other countries whose land borders have been threatened, such as Finland, West Germany, Poland, and South Korea. Each country solved its own challenge with a unique solution by combining organization (Finland’s reserve system), physical obstacles (South Korea’s Demilitarized Zone), doctrine (American active defense and, later, the air-land battle of the 1980s and 1990s), allied support (the American air defense systems in eastern Europe), and the like.

Today, the strategic threat from Hamas and Hezbollah rockets nullifies even the pre–Yom Kippur War presumption of a forty-eight-hour early warning. Except for a short period (in Sinai), Israel has always lacked tactical depth. Israel’s wars occur on its borders and in the vicinity of Israeli civilians. Because they usually erupt in a matter of hours to days, Israel’s wars demand a very rapid transition from peacetime deployment to full-scale mobilization and wartime deployment. Israeli military history therefore exemplifies the worst-case scenario: the need for a rapid transition from peace to war. Furthermore, Israel’s experience in making the transition is more complex than that of most armies because of the inherent contradictions between the methods and mindsets required in longterm routine security activities and those required for a rapid escalation to high-intensity warfare. This is complicated by the possibility that the escalation in hostilities might be only a temporary spike within the lower-intensity warfare framework. During the first ten to twelve hours of the Yom Kippur War, for instance, many Israeli commanders thought they were facing raids and artillery bombardments of the kind often encountered in the War of Attrition rather than an invasion. Many Israeli tactical decisions were compromised due to this misunderstanding.

The Israeli worst-case transition scenario provides valuable lessons for countries such as South Korea, the Baltic States, and Finland, as well as for US Army forces in Europe and other first-reaction forces. Although there are strategic cultural and structural differences between the United States and Israel (such as the fact that 70 percent of IDF ground forces are reserve units), I believe that many Israeli lessons are applicable to the United States.

Organization of the Book

The book is arranged according to the four abovementioned challenges. Chapter 1 looks at the challenge of incorporating new equipment into existing units when war is in sight or already in progress. Unlike the material challenges of accelerated research and development, production, and delivery of new machinery or software, the issues here are fast learning and implementing the new asset so that it becomes part of the existing fighting machine. The cases analyzed are the 1956 Sinai War and American aid to Israel during the Yom Kippur War.

Chapter 2 discusses a major obstacle in a successful transition: prolonged low-intensity or counterinsurgency (COIN) operations.²³ The effect of such operations on the ability to shift rapidly to high-intensity war was a concern during the US Army’s decade in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel’s experience prior to the Yom Kippur War and the Second Lebanon Wars is presented here.

Chapter 3 analyzes the situation of an ongoing peacetime conceptual or doctrinal debate that continues during war. Here, the challenge lies in identifying gaps between commanders or forces and bridging them in ways that enable coordinated action yet give commanders enough space to function independently. The chapter opens with a detailed discussion of Israel’s experience in the Yom Kippur War and continues to the Second Lebanon War. The focus is not on whether the concept or doctrine was suited to the military’s needs but on its acceptance throughout the force so that coherent and synchronized action in a multiechelon and joint-force military organization could take place.

Chapter 4 assesses the cognitive and mental challenge of recognizing a given situation as war and then pushing this understanding up and down the echelons of command to implement a change in the mode of action. The case studies of the Yom Kippur War and the Second Lebanon War show how difficult this seemingly simple task can be.

Chapter 5 describes the global, persistent nature of the phenomena discussed throughout this book by providing brief US Army historical anecdotes. It examines the current challenges for the US Army’s rapid transition to war in Europe and concludes with specific recommendations for overcoming these challenges. Most of the historical examples are at the tactical level, but in a few cases they reach the strategic and operational echelons.

The conclusion offers a few broad suggestions for improving military organizations’ ability to successfully transition from peace or LIC or COIN operations to war.