Spirits of War: A Field Manual

Military doctrine is a system of knowledge disseminated and communicated through field manuals. This article analyzes the form and content of United States (US) military doctrine through the study of three manuals: the joint US Army and Marine Corps' Counterinsurgency (COIN) Field Manual (FM 3-24) (2007), the US Army's Stability Operations Field Manual (FM 3-07) (2008), and the US Marine Corps' Small Wars Manual (SWM) (1940). It explores and demonstrates the discursive and cognitive restraints of such military handbooks through imitating their form. In regard to content, it argues that the contemporary "spirit of war" is characterized by the organizing concepts of "culture" and "network"-seeing like a military in the twenty-first century is seeing a world of networks.