THE MANEUVER WARFARE CAMPAIGN PLAN

By William S. Lind and LtCol Greg Thiele, USMC (Ret.)

Between 2015 and 2017, the Marine Corps’ Training and Education Command (TECOM) conducted three workshops with the purpose of reinvigorating maneuver warfare in the Marine Corps through education and training.  These workshops resulted in few discernible changes.  After the second workshop, the authors developed a Maneuver Warfare Campaign Plan which identified actions to take to truly institutionalize maneuver warfare in the Marine Corps.  Events within the Marine Corps and in the outside world indicate the time is right for the Marine Corps to reexamine maneuver warfare.

The TECOM conferences on reinvigorating maneuver warfare had a promising start, but progress quickly petered out.  The first workshop ended with most participants in agreement that the Marine Corps did not “do” maneuver warfare.  The second workshop was meant to generate ideas TECOM could implement, but few substantive recommendations resulted.  At the conclusion of the second workshop, Bill suggested we write a campaign plan of our own.  We completed the draft plan before the third (and final, as far as we know) conference in 2017.  Greg circulated the draft campaign plan at the third workshop, but again no real changes occurred.  Sensing maneuver warfare was dead in the Marine Corps, we filed away our plan.  We believe now is the time to share the campaign plan with a wider audience if the Marine Corps is to remain relevant.  

Force Design and its evil twin Joint Multi-Domain Operations (JMDO) destroyed any real interest in maneuver warfare in the Marine Corps.  As the United States pivoted to the Indo-Pacific, Marines pondered what role the Corps should play, particularly considering amphibious shipping challenges.  Force Design 2030 (now simply Force Design) began as an effort to ensure the Marine Corps remained relevant.  Unfortunately, Force Design has had two negative outcomes: it optimized a significant part of the Marine Corps to deter China (a war which would be catastrophic for both nations) and crippled the Corps’ ability to respond to other crises.  The Marine Corps could once provide task-organized forces capable of deploying quickly and conducting a range of missions from humanitarian relief to fighting a high-intensity war utilizing combined arms, but the Corps’ focus on China has seriously compromised its capabilities.  The Marine Corps’ misguided quest for relevance has left it both less capable and less relevant. 

Force Design envisions Marines containing the Chinese in the Indo-Pacific as part of a joint force.  Marines have embraced Joint Multi-Domain Operations (JMDO) as part of the effort to integrate with the joint force in the Pacific.  JMDO is little more than a fig leaf for methodical battle, a firepower-focused style of war which U. S. forces first learned from the French during World War I.  It is old wine in a new bottle.  JMDO simply updates the concept to take advantage of modern technology.  

JMDO has resulted in a de facto abandonment of the central concepts of maneuver warfare.  The other services are proponents of a firepower-attrition style of war.  Under the cover of JMDO, the Marine Corps has raced to conform with unseemly haste.  Interest in maneuver warfare in the Marine Corps, often on life support, now seems little more than a historical footnote.

From Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States continues to fight and lose wars, but no one asks why this occurs.  The simple answer is that U. S. forces focus on attrition at the tactical level and this does not work.  General Al Gray, the Marine Corps’ 29th Commandant, understood this.  Under his leadership, the Marine Corps adopted maneuver warfare as doctrine.  To truly institutionalize maneuver warfare, the Corps also required changes to the personnel system.  These changes never occurred.  Today’s Marine Corps can talk about maneuver warfare but cannot actually do it.

The U. S. military continues to lose wars due to poor military thinking.  The U. S. military is the most lavishly resourced in history.  This largesse has produced leaders who focus on overwhelming U. S. strengths in technology and firepower.  American units have become mesmerized with destroying enemy combatants and equipment at the tactical-physical level in the misguided belief that this will result in victory.  

Americans should have learned the bankruptcy of this approach in Vietnam, yet it is playing out again in real time in Iran.  During the Vietnam War, President Lyndon Johnson once complained that all his generals knew how to do was, “Bomb!  Bomb!  Bomb!”  Little has changed.  Intellectual thought about war has atrophied almost to the vanishing point.

Reinvigorating the study and institutionalization of maneuver warfare is more important than ever.  Many Marines are awakening to the error of Force Design and the strategic dead-end it represents.  Others have demonstrated concern about the Marine Corps’ decreasing relevance and importance to national defense.  Surprisingly few have complained about the lengthening list of failed wars — so far, but Iran may change this.  

A real effort to institutionalize maneuver warfare in the Marine Corps promises a more effective warfighting organization.  The Maneuver Warfare Campaign Plan provides a blueprint for the changes necessary for the Marine Corps to conduct maneuver warfare rather than just talk about it.  If the Marine Corps is to survive, it must be relevant and provide a unique and valuable contribution to the national defense.  We offer the Maneuver Warfare Campaign Plan with this goal in mind.