Recent technological advances evidenced during the recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have indicated to some that there is new way of waging war in the United States. However, scholars do not seem to have reached a consensus on what a new way of waging war would represent for the United States. Their beliefs, researchers say, are supported by the U.S. ability to wage war with highly interconnected, agile, precise, and extremely damaging methods, or by the fact that the United States is capable of waging war with a small, focused footprint. special forces. Other scholars argue that there is no new way of waging war in the United States because traditional methods remain necessary in many types of conflicts. Scholars who address this question focus on conflicts that they view as important indicators of how the United States will act in the future, but they neglect the forest behind the trees. The choice of a particular fighting method in a given war is not the result of a national tendency, but rather the result of the desired political objective. The political object is the ultimate arbiter of choice of war strategy, and this is certainly not new to the way the United States wages war. Whether there is a new American way of waging war depends on what the term "way of waging war" really means. means in the first place. When researchers argue for one solution or another, they don't seem to be on the same page when it comes to defining the term. This is problematic because each side seems to speak over the other when making their respective appeals. Frederick Kagan points out that most often what is meant by "way of war" is the choice of a particular form of "combat". This definition is insufficient because it is clearly true that new forms of combat continually appear...... middle of paper ..., none is sufficient to be useful in all circumstances. Therefore, although there is disagreement over whether or not there is a new way of waging war in the United States, the entire argument is not based on solid foundations. The United States does not wage war today, or in the past, with a specific method of fighting. Furthermore, those who persist in making this claim despite this fact misrepresent both how recent conflicts have been fought and how the political purpose of a war affects the way wars are fought. There is therefore not a new American way of waging war, but rather a new, perhaps ephemeral, political object present in recent wars. It is a serious mistake to pigeonhole American military policy and tactics. Such an attempt ignores the different circumstances surrounding each individual war – and therefore the need to adopt different means in each...