Casualty Aversion and Force Protection: The Shaping of American Strategy and Military Doctrine

At the turn of the last century, military analysts began to notice U.S. strategy selection seemed driven by casualty risk, with optimal strategies being those that yielded the fewest potential killed, wounded, and missing. In other words, the military yield of a strategy was subordinated to casualty considerations and these considerations appeared exaggerated, if not outlandish at the time. Have Iraq and Afghanistan moved us away from subordinating strategy to casualty worries or is this argument worth revisiting? This collection includes the views of Jeffrey Record, Karl P. Mueller, Charles K. Hyde, and Richard A. Lacquement, Jr. These pieces originally appeared in military publications of the U.S. governmentand mark the high tide of our national casualty phobia debate.