An Army Transformed The U.S. Army's Post-Vietnam Recovery And The Dynamics Of Change In Military Organizations

It is common to hear the argument that military organizations are incapable of reforming themselves. In this paper, Lieutenant Colonel Suzanne Nielsen takes the opposite position. It is not only possible for senior military leaders to change their organizations, it is also necessary since only these leaders are likely to be able to do it.

To explain what it takes, she examines the transformation of the U.S. Army as it went from being an institution in distress in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the Vietnam War, to being the organization that demonstrated tactical and operational excellence in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. While this paper does not examine the causes of success or failure in these two wars, which clearly exist on multiple levels, it does argue that the U.S. Army that fought in the latter was a very changed organization.