The Powell-Weinberger Doctrine

The sensitive passing of General Colin Powell marks the loss of a great soldier, U.S. military strategist, National Security Advisor (1987-1989), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-1991), and Secretary of State (2001-2005). Perhaps his greatest doctrinal contribution is the so-called Weinberger-Powell Doctrine (Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense, and Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces). This doctrine—developed and articulated in the late 1980s and early 1990s—expresses the lessons learned from the Vietnam War regarding the use of force by the U.S.

The six essential tenets that define it are as follows:

1. The United States should not commit forces to combat abroad unless the occasion is deemed vital to the national interest of the United States or its allies.
2. If it is decided to employ combat troops in a given situation, it must be done with full conviction, overwhelmingly, and with the clear intention of achieving victory.
3. If the use of forces to combat abroad is resolved, both the political and military objectives must be clearly defined.
4. The relationship between our objectives and the forces we have committed, their size and composition, must be continuously reevaluated and adjusted as necessary.
5. Before the U.S. commits combat forces abroad, there must be some assurance that we will have the support of the American people and their elected representatives in Congress.
6. The commitment of U.S. forces to combat should be a last resort and must include a clear exit strategy.

In summary, the doctrine was realized in the Gulf War of 1991, which is regarded as the model of the doctrine in question, as it generally expressed its six essential tenets. The use of force was resolved, with well-defined political and military objectives, overwhelmingly in a war whose actions lasted 100 hours, with full support from public opinion and the U.S. Congress.

Furthermore, General Colin Powell was the first African American Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Despite being one of the most influential generals of recent decades, he faced one of the most challenging moments of his career due to his controversial presentation in 2003 before the UN Security Council, where he defended military intervention in Iraq by asserting that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, mirroring what Adlai Stevenson (U.S. Ambassador to the UN) did during the Cuban missile crisis (1962) with photographic evidence of Soviet missile launch sites in Cuba.

John Griffiths
Head of Research, AthenaLab
October 19, 2021