There are people who feel that the doctrine of the Army is too defensive, Gen. DePuy notes — in 1979, while facing a potential Soviet invasion of Europe:
They feel that success in battle only comes to the attacker. And, they are disturbed about the amount of time, effort, and concentration that we now have on the defense. I agree with all of that. I think it is too bad. I don’t think it is a formula for winning the war. At best, it is a formula for a stalemate or for deterrence. Unfortunately, however, the facts of life in NATO, and the correlation of forces as the Soviets call it, are such that we do not have a general offensive capability in Europe. If you ask the Germans why they defended for two and one half years in France during World War I they would tell you because the forces were almost equal, and they used the rest of their forces to defeat the Russians. If you ask the Germans why they defended in Russia for two and one half years after their initial attack in World War II, they would say because the ratio of forces, the resources and the means of war dictated that. I once discussed this with General Haig. He accosted me with the fact that he thought we were concentrating too much on the defense. I replied that I wasn’t concentrating on the defense, he was. I pointed out to him that in FM 100-5, we had one chapter on the offense and one chapter on the defense, and that he was the one who turned to the chapter on the defense and for very good reasons — because he has to defend. The correlation of forces is such that he must. I said, “If, on the other hand, you prefer to attack, go back to Chapter 1. It tells you how to do that. But, I notice that you are spending all of your time on Chapter 2.”
So, this causes the Army some moral anguish. It hurts the feelings of soldiers to always be talking about the defense; there is a yearning to attack and to counterattack. Incidentally, the counterattack to destroy an enemy force which has been stopped by defensive fires is the essence of the “active” defense. But, the counteroffensive — to do that you need the forces, you need the resources, you need the ammunition, and you need the ability to sustain it. It is my judgment that the man who writes the doctrine doesn’t decide how to fight any particular campaign; rather, the man who decides which part of the doctrine he is going to use is the operational commander and he decides how he is going to fight in whatever theater of war he happens to be in at the time. Presently, it is Haig and Blanchard. At one time it was Pershing, and at another time it was Eisenhower. They all acted in accordance with the relative strength of the forces opposing them and their mission.