The Marine Corps Way of War: The Evolution of the U.S. Marine Corps from Attrition to Maneuver Warfare in the Post-Vietnam Era

摘要

Despite battlefield success in both Iraq and Afghanistan over the past fifteen years, the threat environment confronting the United States and its Marine Corps only has grown more dangerous. The United States now confronts a variety of challenges both old and new, including the return of great-power conflicts in the Asia-Pacific and Europe; operating in (what until recently has been called) an antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) battle space; nuclear proliferation; and navigating the effects of global climate change on military operations. Such an environment calls for both refining old solutions and thinking in new, bold ways to ensure that the U.S. military-and especially, for purposes of this review, the Marine Corps-is ready to meet, fight, and defeat any future threats. Author Anthony Piscitelli leverages his years of State Department and academic experience to map the evolution of the Marine Corps's approach to war in the post-Vietnam War era, all the while highlighting the personalities involved in that process. Piscitelli's work ultimately is most useful, though, not for reviewing why the Marine Corps adopted maneuver warfare but for providing a model for instituting structural changes at the service level necessary for future battlefield success.