The mere fact that the Office of Force Transformation in the Department of Defense would have funded a contest as well as several conferences about whether the principles of war have changed now that the world has entered the twenty-first century says much about the “American way of war” – and not necessarily in a positive vein. It is not that I am against the idea of conferences or intellectual argument. Indeed, I am delighted to praise the office for its effort to spark intellectual debate in a town (Washington) of contentless briefs and irrelevant joint concepts.

Let me begin with the question as to whether there is any validity to the remake or even to the concept of what has traditionally been termed the “principles of war.” The “principles” have been around as a plaything for military academics and theorists for at least two hundred years. They have littered the landscape of supposed intellectual discourse about the employment of military forces for that entire time. Every military organization has possessed its own slightly different set of principles. Not surprisingly, generals have added their two cents to the discussion. Even that severe critic of military orthodoxy and iconoclast, the British general and pundit in the period between World War I and World War II, J.F.C. Fuller, could not resist the opportunity to come up with his own set of principles.