Customer Reviews

Limits of Air Power

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On one level, Mark Clodfelter's "The Limits of Air Power" is a learned assault on the myopia of Air Force commanders and the canonical vision that political constraints doomed the military to defeat in Vietnam. On another, more important level, it is a thoughtful analysis of the classic Clausewitzean dictum that "war is politics by other means," which has implications far beyond the air campaigns against North Vietnam.

Clodfelter uses a simple, but effective framework to examine political efficacy of three major air campaigns against North Vietnam: Rolling Thunder (March '65 to October '68), Linebacker I (April '72 to October '72), and Linebacker II (December '72). For each campaign, he assesses to what extent the bombing helped achieve the civilian leadership's "positive political objective" (i.e. what political purpose the US was trying to achieve by the use of force). At the same time, he identifies and assesses the various "negative political objectives" that put constraints on the use of force (i.e. what political purposes were endangered or aggravated by the use of force). Finally, he considers other factors that could constrain the use and effectiveness of air power, such as doctrine, weather, technology, personnel, etc.

The author's conclusions are persuasive, although not exactly groundbreaking in their originality. In short, Clodfelter argues that Linebacker II (aka "Christmas Bombings"or "Eleven Day War") was a more effective political tool not because air power was finally unleashed with a fury against Hanoi as Air Force planners had been calling for all along, but rather because the positive and negative political objectives of December 1972 were so less ambitious and less constraining from those of pre-1968. Nixon's primary positive objective was to secure the continued withdrawal of US combat troops while not abandoning South Vietnam to an imminent communist take-over. Détente and Kissinger's diplomacy ensured that China and the Soviet Union would not intervene, and Nixon's landslide re-election the month before removed major domestic issues from the equation. Moreover, the conventional nature of the March '72 Easter Offensive exposed the North to punishing air attacks on their major combat units that seriously endangered their ability to defend themselves. Thus, the pain Linebacker II inflicted led Hanoi to agree to terms that gave the US "peace with honor" but left them able to fight another day. President Johnson's more sweeping positive objective (i.e. "a stable, independent, non-communist South Vietnam"), along with his many negative objectives (a legitimate concern of superpower escalation, a desire to protect his domestic Great Society Program and win support for the US abroad), and fundamental disagreement among his advisors on the chief objective on the air campaign, all combined to undermine Rolling Thunder's utility as a political tool.

Is Clodfelter's work - and particularly his framework - relevant to the international security questions of today? Absolutely. And not just from the perspective on air power. What are the United States' positive political objectives in the War on Terror? What are the concomitant negative objectives that will constrain how that war is waged? A critical inquiry of these questions will reveal that US political objectives and constraints are far more ambitious than those of the Johnson Administration, let alone Nixon. The ability of force to achieve those objectives by themselves is, for all intents and purposes, impossible.

Clodfelter is a political scientist and this book is pure political science, so for those interested in war stories and the like, this book most definitely isn't for you. However, if you are looking for a cogently argued and thoroughly researched assessment of the use of force for political purposes, this book is not to be missed.

This book isn't perfect. Several times I found myself thinking 'hmm, I don't think that's a fair conclusion', mainly because of the author's occasional unsustained assertion, hyperbole or sweeping generalisation. But heck, this book deals with a very contentious topic, so the author isn't going to please everyone anyway.

The research is good, the argument compelling (even if not always agreeable) and the prose clear and engaging. In short, this is a good book. It's certainly much better than the anonymous reviewer from Montgomery, AL, suggests.

I teach airpower, and I encourage my students to read this book. They shouldn't swallow it all hook, line and sinker, but they SHOULD read it.

It is an article of faith to many airpower advocates that the "politicians" kept the military from winning, put too many restrictions on operations in Vietnam, kept them from hitting targets, and meddled in operational and tactical actions. Mark Clodfelter, who is a military historian at the National War College, shows that this view is wrong in a big way. He explains why the U.S. Air Force failed and then later succeeded is its strategic bombing campaigns in the skies over Vietnam. He focuses his account on Operations: ROLLING THUNDER, LINEBACKER and LINEBACKER II. ROLLING THUNDER failed for a number of military, strategic, and political reasons. The civilians in the Johnson administration failed to set clear strategic goals. Air Force generals designed their operations as if they were trying to destroy the industrialized economy of Germany fielding hostile conventional ground forces instead of what they were facing: a lightly supplied, indigenous insurgency in a third world country with an agrarian economy. In short, the U.S. Air Force brought a sledgehammer to a knife fight.

President Lyndon Johnson did interfere with operational decisions, picking targets at his famous or infamous (depending on your perspective) Tuesday Luncheon meetings. For months there was no military representative at these meetings, and no minutes were taken. National Security Advisor Walt Rostow once told me that these gatherings were a lot like academic seminars in their tone, and with that in mind, it is hardly surprising that Clodfelter finds that participants often left the meetings with entirely different ideas on what had happened in them. Yet, he argues that better strategic direction would have made no difference, since the Americans brought the wrong tools to Southeast Asia.

During Nixon's time in office, the nature of the war changed. Coldfelter's recognition that the war shifted with events is a major strength of this book and shows sophisticated analysis. After the Tet Offensive destroyed the Viet Cong, the Communists turned to conventional operations. The 1972 Easter invasion was an attempt to finish off the southern regime once and for all. This time the targeting criteria that Air Force and Navy planners used made sense, as conventional operations were far more susceptible to the type of air campaign the Americans wanted to wage. Weapons technology had changed significantly between the mid-1960s and the early 1970s. "Smart bombs" allowed the United States to do more with less. The Nixon administration, also had more limited goals in 1972 when it ordered LINEBACKER II compared to those of the Johnson White House during ROLLING THUNDER. Bombing to blunt the other guy is different from bombing to win.

This is an important and broadly focused book. Clodfelter gives not only gives a good account of military developments, but he also shows how and why the diplomatic and strategic goals of the United States changed between the two presidents and why air power was more effective under one than the other. Simply put, Clodfelter shows that bombs were not enough.

An associate professor of history at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Mark Clodfelter displays a huge knowledge of facts and figures as concerns the American bombing of North Vietnam. He masterly shows the connection between political and military factors conducive first to the failure in saving South Vietnam as an independent country, and later to helping the United States save their face when getting out of the trap. What is no less interesting from an up-to-date standpoint, the book also helps understand why the war of Kosovo was won by air power, and why not just so according to the three-day schedule envisaged by the NATO's high command.

Mark Clodfelter's "The Limits of Air Power" is an interesting book that explains the development and deployment of strategic air power during the Vietnam War. The book is based on excellent research and provides a good overview of all of the political and military nuances that guided the application of strategic bombing above the 20th parallel.

Clodfelter falls short in his conclusion that the war as fought by the communists was primarily a guerilla war prior to TET 1968, and that strategic air power would not have provided the same results in 1965-66 as did Operations Linebacker I and II during 1972. The primary combatants until 1968 were the Viet Cong but they were supplied with arms and material by the North Vietnamese. Although they did not require food from NVN for their subsistence, they sure needed arms and ammo. Surprisingly, Clodfelter overlooks this obvious point.

I believe the application of an intense strategic bombing campaign in 1965-66 -- as conducted during Linebacker II might have produced the results that were achieved during December 1972. Instead of being so certain about his conclusion -- maybe he should simply let the reader decide.

Great book....its a shame I got it via mail long after I needed it for my report. I had to use on=line resources to complete my report because there was no way to get the book faster. Also the seller was no help..they responded to none of my e-mails.

Amazing how Mark Clodfelter, a School for Advanced Airpower Studies graduate, could draw the conclusion he did if he really did the research and understood combat air operations. The Vietnam War stopped being a simple insurgency by 1967 and became a full conventional war by 1968, with North Vietnamese Regulars doing most of the fighting, and requiring conventional artillery, rockets, automatic weapons, and armored vehicles. To think that we could not have very quickly put North Vietnam on the full defensive at the beginning of 1968, had we followed Curtis LeMay's counsel to prosecute attacks on the 74+ strategic targets, particularly when North Vietnam had no significant air defenses, defies comprehension. The results from Linebacker I/II (in the face of one of the world's densest and most lethal air defense systems) proves the point. When the war was run by a competent president (Nixon) instead of an incompetent buffoon like LBJ (read Dereliction of Duty for details) the Air Force could bring Hanoi to its knees within weeks and could have saved tens of thousands of Army and Marine lives--the terrible hemorrage American families still feel to this day. It is abominable that instructors at Maxwell read and believe this garbage and then teach it to Air Force officers going through courses at Air University.