astropolitics.org Blog » Strategy

Go Figure … Army NOT Broken After All

dolman — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 18:44:08 +0000

Well, I’ll be … After reporting ont he Army’s perpetual problem with breakage (see Scales’ Lament, below), it seems that Fox News is reporting we were wrong. The Army is just fine.

U.S. Army Isn’t Broken After All, Military Experts Say

I may refrain from jumping on the band wagon just yet. By the way, I had suggested in this blog and several other venues that the so-called surge, which was supposed to help the army reduce casualties, among other fabulous things, had some serious logical flaws. The parallel lament, the Army is broken and its because there aren’t enough troops to do the job, was the primary justification for the increase in theater called for in the recent surge. At the time, I suggested more troops meant more targets, and more–not fewer–casualties.

Since the surge began, we have had 900 US personnel killed (a toss away statistic overshadowed by the news this morning that the magic number of 4,000 KIA in the Iraq war occurred over the weekend, a figure Dick Cheney said “might” be a significant psychological threshold for Americans). 4,000 dead in just over six years of operations in Iraq, but 22.5% of that number in the last 9 months (12.5% of the duration). The KIA rate appears to me to be four times the average for the whole war–a number that astonishes me. Where am I messing up my numbers? When do we count the start of the surge?

A New Art of War?

dolman — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:54:27 +0000

Thought this one was worth posting. Looks like General Chilton might be coming around to a warfighter’s view of space. Not a bad thing to have happen to a former Shuttle astronaut now in charge of the nation’s Strategic Command. And Mike Vickers always knows what he is talking about.

The New Art of War By Walter Pincus

Washington Post, Monday, March 3, 2008; A15 If there were any doubts that the United States is preparing for war in space and cyberspace, testimony before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee last week would have wiped them away.

According to Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, head of U.S. Strategic Command, “our adversaries understand our dependence upon space-based capabilities, and we must be ready to detect, track, characterize, attribute, predict and respond to any threat to our space infrastructure.”

Although space threats have received much attention in the past, it was the possibility of cyberspace warfare that was given new emphasis at the hearing.

Chilton described cyberspace as an “emerging war-fighting domain.” He said that “potential adversaries recognize the U.S. reliance on … [its] use and constantly probe our networks seeking competitive advantage,” providing the reasons for developing defensive and offensive systems in this area.

U.S. cyberspace, in Pentagon terms called the Global Information Grid, serves as “a conduit that links human activity and facilitates the exchange of information,” Chilton said.

Michael G. Vickers, assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities, who also testified, told the panel: “Threats to our computer networks are real and growing,” and attacks and attempted intrusions come “on a daily basis.”

Strategies and institutions have been created for the war to protect cyberspace. There is, for example, the classified 2006 National Military Strategy for Cyberspace Operations, which concludes that “offensive capabilities in cyberspace offer both the U.S. and our adversaries an opportunity to gain and maintain the initiative.”

Strategic Command, working with Joint Chiefs of Staff personnel, is developing contingency plans and carrying out operations that protect the government’s computer networks through detection and coordinated counterattacks against intruders. This often involves other Pentagon and interagency elements, according to Chilton.

Capabilities are being developed “to operate, defend, exploit and attack in cyberspace,” he said.

Here are a few of the units that Chilton said have been enlisted to prepare for cyberspace battles:

The Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations in Arlington directs operations and defense of the worldwide Defense cybernetwork in real time at strategic, operational and tactical levels. It is involved in fighting, intelligence gathering and conducting normal business.

The Joint Functional Component Command for Network Warfare is led by the director of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade. This group manages the cooperative arrangements for defending national computer operations and for carrying out network warfare against adversaries. In an article on the command three years ago, Wired magazine reported: “It could best be described as the world’s most formidable hacker posse.

Ever.”

The Joint Information Operations Warfare Command, located at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, integrates elements of electronic warfare, military deception, operations security and strategic communications to ensure that cyberspace is controlled and available to friendly forces for offensive and defensive uses.

When it came to space vulnerabilities, Chilton and Vickers both pushed for “prompt global strike” capability. That refers to an intercontinental ballistic missile with a conventional warhead or another type of delivery system that could reach anywhere in the world within an hour, programs that are being researched today.

The threat was described to the panel by Vickers, who said, “Our space capabilities face a wide range of threats such as radio frequency jamming, laser blinding and anti-satellite systems,” including the “anti-satellite capability demonstrated by China last year.”

Asked by Rep. Terry Everett (R-Ala.) what could be done if the Chinese continued to “dazzle” U.S. satellites with lasers, Vickers referred to that same type of prompt global strike concept.

“We believe we need that capability now,” Vickers said.

Dolman Speaks (too)

dolman — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:02:00 +0000

Jeremy Hsu of Imaginova penned an article for Space News: “Space Arms Race Heats up Overnight.” A few choice bits (my emphases):

“It was an unfortunate choice by the United States that seems to have been unnecessary. The fact is that satellites fall from space all the time and the risk of it was fairly minimal,” said Stephen Young, the senior analyst in Washington, D.C., for the Union of Concerned Scientist’s Global Security Program. “But the implications of the satellite shootdown could be very severe. We’re talking about a potential arms race in space.”

“It’s a step backward in terms of weaponization of space because whatever the U.S. government’s official stance is, the world perception is that this was an ASAT test,” said Phil Smith, assistant director for Research and Planning for the Secure World Foundation.

“This is obviously being hailed as a victory both politically, because the [U.S.] administration can claim there was no loss of life, and technically because it worked,” said Theresa Hitchens, Center for Defense Information director. “It helped the [U.S.] Navy demonstrate the capabilities of its missile defense system.”

“Since China did their ASAT [anti-satellite] test and got into political hot water, there’s been debate in China about whether to go forward,” Hitchens said. “This would seem to give PLA [People's Liberation Army] hardliners more ammunition for their argument, and also gives other nations the signal that it’s okay if you test this technology if it’s done safely.”

Another expert saw China’s internal debate differently, even as China asked for more information about the U.S. satellite shootdown.

“Their concern is not whether they should continue with their military space program,” said Everett Dolman, a professor of comparative military studies at Maxwell Air Force Base.

Dolman added that much of the international outcry over China’s test was over the large debris field left in orbit by the Chinese satellite’s destruction, and so the Chinese were likely discussing how to prevent such international condemnation in future tests. He sees the continuing weaponization of space as almost a certainty, particularly as the U.S. and China continue jockeying to maintain and increase their global power.

“If there is going to be a big conflict between the U.S. and China, it’s likely the first salvoes will be in space because the security needs of the U.S. and China are incompatible there,” Dolman said.

At least one expert saw the demonstration as a crucial step by the U.S. to ensure its military and political dominance if a space arms race becomes inevitable.

“This was in my view a very positive move by the U.S. for stability,” said Dolman. “The fact that you’re using a Navy ship and a fairly standard weapon to do this is really ratcheting up the technology curve.”

NAVY Shoots Back!

dolman — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:13:26 +0000

It doesn’t get any better than this. Whyis the Navy going to shoot down an inoperable American spy satellite? Lots opf reasons come to mind, very few of which jive with the official version that it is an issue of pubic safety. Our friend Jim Oberg has, as usual, the most scientifically sound and logical responses–but even he misses the geopolitical context (can you say Ina-Chay?). Read more here.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23166344/

Is this how we should be teaching Strategy to our future military leaders?

dolman — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:54:20 +0000

The following appeared in Of Interest, a Strategic Studies Institute publication, 8 November 2007. There is mch to like, and as much to dislike:

THE STRATEGY OF TEACHING STRATEGY IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Gabriel Marcella

The U.S. Army War College Experience.1

There is nothing equal to the intellectual delights of mutual discovery via the Socratic give-and-take in seminars at the U.S. Army War College (USAWC). Much like their counterparts in the various war colleges (Navy, Air Force, National, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, and Marine Corps), the students are accomplished, demanding, talented, and interesting. We have great colleagues teaching, writing, and interacting with the policy-strategy communities. The civil-military quality of the faculty is a model of professional collaboration. The personal and professional rewards are incalculable; so is the opportunity to contribute to our nation’s defense. The USAWC has become a center of academic excellence, enriched by numerous initiatives, such as the International Fellows Program, the increased rigor of the master’s program, the growth of a professional faculty, and the productivity of scholars whose publications reach the national and international marketplace of strategic studies and the highest levels of our government. Deservedly, the USAWC has become the destination of academic pilgrims from all over the world.

The Challenge of Teaching Strategy in the 21st Century.

The USAWC is a great institution. Nonetheless, we need to do a much better job at the core mission of teaching strategy. We teach about strategy, we don’t teach how to develop strategy. We teach leadership and management, explore theories of war and strategy, budgeting, the national security decisionmaking process, the instruments of power, and current and future threats. We acquaint students with various national strategy documents, and teach joint processes and campaign planning. We offer a menu of electives that expand intellectual horizons, including a good dose of understanding foreign cultures.

We teach well, and innocently assume that these sequential efforts will synergistically yield strategists. Some students will put this learning together and become better strategists. Despite the excellence, our efforts at teaching the normative

concept of strategy in the complex political-military national and international contexts are timid. Understandably, the tyranny of time forces us to make triage within the 10 months. We skim over what ought to be the central component of the curriculum with the linear definition of strategy as “the calculated relationship between ends, ways, and means.” This elegant equation is good for framing the kinds of macro questions we need to answer to arrive at strategy, but it doesn’t tell us how to calculate. It might help allocate resources in the era of industrial warfare, but strategic pedagogy must include the human dimensions of the dynamic, multivariable, nonlinear interaction of opposing wills in the complex political-psychological realm of asymmetric 21st century conflict, where state and nonstate actors collide “under the critical gaze of global public opinion.”2 Moreover, the “long war” will require a new kind of leader, intellectually agile and able to correlate the various instruments of national power. The parsimonious ends-ways-means continuum can default to a mechanical process where tangible resources dominate the intellectual effort, instead of the more subtle dimensions of the craft of strategy. Thus, it has the tendency to predispose budding strategists to rely on kinetics, which is what they know best. Our teaching may reinforce the student proclivity to view strategy as the application of resources, therefore equating strategy to power. Strategy is a multiplier that adds value to power, some scheme to link political ends with the use of power. According to Richard Betts, strategy is the essential ingredient for making war either politically effective or morally tenable. Without strategy, war is mindless.3 David Jablonsky, prolific writer and brilliant instructor for a generation of USAWC students, cautioned: “. . . students weaned on the structural certitude of the five-paragraph field order and the Commander’s Estimate naturally find . . . structure comforting when dealing with the complexities of strategy.” He advised: “In an ever more interdependent world in which variables for the strategist within the ends-ways-means paradigm have increased exponentially, strategists are no nearer to a ‘Philosopher’s Stone’ than they ever were. Strategy remains the most difficult of all art.”4 Calling it art recognizes the inherently messy nature of the process in a democracy, with its multiple epicenters of influence deriving from personality, domestic politics, institutional agendas and culture, group think phenomena, opportunity, and the demands of the international environment on American leadership and power.5 Moreover, as Churchill once said: “even the best strategy must take the enemy into account.” We should add coalition partners, circumstances, will, resources, and the infinity of variables in human psychology.

Cumulative tactical and operational experience does not produce strategic acumen. Mastering the employment of force at the lowest levels and at the level of state power are often mutually exclusive skills.6 Sun Tzu admonished that tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Strategists must understand more than the efficient application of force. Accordingly, we don’t do well in teaching students how to translate policy guidance into military strategy. To aid this process, Colin Gray echoes Clausewitz in advocating a permanent dialogue between policymaker and soldier.7 Former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe General John R. Galvin urged: “We owe it to those who follow us to educate them and prepare them to assume the heavy responsibility of

providing military leadership and military advice in the service of the state; in other words, to make them (some of them, the best of them) military strategists.”8

Recommendations: Linking Theory to Strategy.

There is no doctrine for making strategists. Pericles, Bismarck, Churchill, and their like possessed innate genius, seasoned by experience (to include failure) and self-study, especially at the grand strategy level.9 The American way of war, which historically relied on plentiful resources, technology, kinetics, and geographic cushioning, predisposes us against strategic creativity.10 In fact, in the past our enormous advantage in resources masked flaws in strategy. Neither kinetics nor resource superiority will win future wars, while geography will no longer secure us. We, in this great schoolhouse, must do a better job of making the intellectual link between the theory of strategy and the making of strategy. There is, frankly, very little literature on this. The available doctrine has to do with leadership, organization, logistics, intelligence, and operations, but nothing on the making of strategy.11 The ongoing “transformation,” with its emphasis on the sinews of military power, has further orphaned strategy. Our experience in Iraq verifies this hard truth. Most of the literature leaves us with a rich lode of theory and military history. Thus, we must rely on proven pedagogical techniques, such as case studies that deal with both success and failure, mentoring from senior leaders known for their strategic creativity, self-study, and writing. At the same time, there is the terminological challenge of distinguishing grand strategy, military strategy, theater strategy, and strategic planning. While theory may be the coagulant common to all four, they are not the same. Grand strategy governs military strategy, which governs strategic planning and theater strategy. All of them should constantly hold operations accountable to political purpose. The future strategist must understand the three interrelated realms. Because of the revolution in communication technology and the 24-hour news cycle, in the 21st century it will be increasingly difficult for soldiers on the ground to differentiate operations from strategy; tactical operations can have dramatic strategic implications. Indeed, Clausewitz’s remarkable trinity of the people, armed forces, and the government now engages the global community.

USAWC students are, by virtue of having commanded units and managed great resources, passionate about synthesis, of putting everything together to solve the problem. Because of that experience, pedagogical theory holds that adult professionals need to see the application of learning. Moreover, learning is a social activity. Learning is also contextual, we learn based on what we know, believe, and fear.12 Finally, we understand organizing principles better as we use them. Steve Fought, former professor at the Naval War College and dean at the Air War College, argues that war college students are impatient with theory. Therefore, they should confront problems to solve early in the curriculum:

They want the problem–now. So begin with a problem that stretches their capabilities, and let them flail. As flailing becomes failing, offer up theory to get them back on track. At some point, sometimes after they have hosed up the exercise completely, one of them will sheepishly ask: Has anybody ever done this before? . . . Talented, experienced adults are aggressively impatient. They demand proof of relevance. The best method of proof is not to “show them” but to have them convince themselves. The roadmap is application-theory-history, offered in seminar environment, through real-world cases, accompanied by active student participation in both the learning and teaching processes.13

Note that Fought advocates reversing the sequence of theory-history-application, the order which dominates how we teach at the USAWC. Such radical thinking may lift sensitive eyebrows among traditionalists wedded to the building block approach that begins with theory, proceeds to case study, and application. We must find a worthy balance between the two approaches. The goal is the same: to produce better strategists. Integrative learning is the key.

Below are 10 remedies, some short term and some longer term. They should be taken in toto as a comprehensive approach to pedagogy and strategy.

1. Develop an integrated strategy model as a pedagogical tool that can be applied to illustrate how all the instruments of national power are fused in the development and implementation of strategy at the various levels of peace and conflict. This should not be a mere chart on the wall, but rather fully developed writing on how strategy is made, in order to illustrate the nonlinear intellectual, human dimensions. We need to teach the DIME (diplomatic, informational, economic, and military) as integrated strategy, not as discrete elements simply tossed into the crucible when the military instrument is found wanting. To achieve these goals, we should summon the best minds on the teaching of strategy in the 21st century.

2. Develop strategy components in the core curriculum, where students would be required to develop strategy for contemporary national security and military problems. Students should develop a national security strategy, followed by a military strategy that would have to be budgeted and then applied to the real world. The intellectual challenge of developing grand national security strategy engenders the skill of thinking holistically, a talent which can be transmitted to developing military strategy. If students simply analyze current strategy documents written by professionals schooled in statecraft, they are spared the pedagogical rewards of having to grapple with the challenge of thinking and writing strategically. We deprive them of the benefits of their own creativity, the fruit of trying labor. Let us recall that the 1930s generation of students at the USAWC produced the Rainbow Plans. According to Henry Gole, another distinguished USAWC instructor of the 1990s: “The work produced by the students, staff, and faculty beginning in 1934 at the Army War College anticipated the very conditions faced by the United States in 1939-41.”14 In those simpler days of yore, Major (later General) Albert C. Wedemeyer in 1941 wrote the victory plan for World War ll.15 We should take note of the wisdom of that “greatest generation.” To improve competence in strategy, students should write a paper on grand strategy and another on military strategy. They would accordingly learn the value of connectivity and constant

two-way feedback between the higher and lower realms of strategy, as well as the integration of the instruments of national power with military strategy.

3. Mine extensively the case study method so that students understand how to make strategy. Case studies are among the most effective tools for adult learning, they force students to become intellectually engaged in confronting the dilemmas of decisionmakers. In-depth case studies should be interwoven throughout the curriculum, not simply appended here and there, so that students fathom the correlation of theory with facts. The success of the Vietnam case study as well as the NSC 68 case study testifies to the pedagogical value of case studies. Possibilities abound: the decision to go to war, conflict termination, and post-conflict reconstruction and stabilization. There are some case studies available from Harvard and Georgetown, but they do not address gaps in strategic pedagogy. We should develop our own, tailored to the learning objectives we want to achieve, such as the appropriate strategies for the levels of war. For example, the USAWC should develop a companion text of case studies akin to the excellent Army War College Guide to Policy and Strategy. Such case studies should demonstrate the integration of national security strategy and military strategy, at all levels in the spectrum of conflict and phases of war, in addition to the instruments of national power. Faculty members should be given incentives to write the chapters.

4. Emphasize “total strategy,” the integration of the instruments of national power, in regional studies courses. Competence in strategy requires a sophisticated understanding of the state’s and society’s sources of power, strategic culture, and the employment of national and international resources to achieve the ends of policy. Since the United States is a global power with regional security responsibilities across the spectrum of conflict, students need to have some understanding of how to create and balance priorities within competing global, regional, functional requirements, and the interagency dimensions of these responsibilities. Regional studies are a fine vehicle for teaching about how the interagency works, of bringing to bear the kinetic and nonkinetic elements of power. Understanding the interagency synergy adds immensely to the kit bag of the budding strategist. Regional studies, along with case studies, are the best way to study and learn “total strategy” of the kind contained in NSC 68, the kind required by today’s complex unconventional challenges to national security.

5. Send faculty to periodic professional development tours in the policy and strategy communities to gain experience and confidence in strategizing, in making the link between policy, strategy, and operations. Such tours would also benefit the agency, bureau, or office in which the tours take place, thereby projecting the prestige of the USAWC. The payoffs in faculty development are extraordinary. They will learn how to link strategic theory with practice.

6. Change the content and pace of courses to emphasize problem solving, to include the writing of strategy, something not done much in the current curriculum except in the interagency focused National Security Policy Program. This approach would require that students have more time to analyze and write. Of all the forms of learning, writing is second only to actual experience. As mentioned above, the problem-solving

tasking should be introduced early in the curriculum and completed at logical intervals along the way. For example, students could be tasked to develop strategy for war termination and post-conflict reconstruction. The intellectual challenge and reward would have them evaluate and apply the gamut of strategic principles, from realism to idealism, the center of gravity, just war, war as policy by other means, the integration of the instruments of power, and many more.

7. Modify the calendar so as to allow maximum time for faculty and student preparation for problem-solving learning. For example, a crowded course schedule suboptimizes faculty preparation (such as maintaining familiarity with the policy and strategy communities and professional development) and student learning because of quick turnarounds, multiplicity of requirements, and competing nonacademic requirements.

8. Invite creative strategists to make presentations to students on the intellectual process for making strategy in given historical circumstances.16 Currently, such presentations by senior officials address more the “what” (often very operational in orientation) rather than the “how” of strategy. A supplement could be to create something along the lines of “seminar affiliates” for retired and perhaps even active duty senior officers, military and civilian, who would provide mentoring on how to make strategy. For senior leaders, the occasional immersion in a USAWC seminar would help acquaint them with the successor generation of officers. 9. Develop a Ph.D. program in strategy. Despite the excellence of American graduate education and various distinguished doctoral programs in history, political science, and international relations with emphasis on security studies, few deal with strategy. Strategy is many disciplines fused into art and science, with emphasis on the former. It is worth noting that the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, has a superb Ph.D. in War Studies.17 The USAWC has the mandate, the resources (such as faculty and library), and the potential market to put together a small high quality doctoral level program in strategy, which would capture the principal disciplines that we deal with in the curriculum. Such a program would engender a level of academic excellence that the faculty would aspire to, as well as attract scholars of high quality to the faculty. Because 3 years are normally required to complete the Ph.D., which is very difficult for military careerists to accommodate, the program could recruit civilian students on a tuition basis. The program would fill a serious void in American graduate education. Finally, because the various war colleges have unique resources and similar mandates, they could creatively combine efforts into a consortium to support the Ph.D. program.

10. The last recommendation may be the most challenging: modifying the culture of the USAWC. The seminar-centric model of pedagogy has great rewards. It promotes bonding and mutual learning, qualities essential to cohesive military organizations. Interactive learning can bring out the best among seminar mates. But the seminar may not be the best mode for learning strategy. The USAWC should rebalance the seminar-based pedagogy with scheduled time for individual study. This would bring it closer to the academic culture of a graduate level institution.

6 7

These are potentially revolutionary initiatives. Implementing them will require a different approach to the curriculum and a different form of faculty preparation, because the pedagogical emphasis would be on analyzing problems and developing strategy while maintaining a sufficient foundation in theory. Such an approach to teaching would be very demanding on the faculty’s creativity because it is a different way of imparting learning. Accordingly, it would require moving away from a curriculum sequence that is heavy in continuous seminar instruction and student recitation. Because of the 10-month master’s program, the faculty maintains a relentless pace. The pace is hard to sustain, notably for new instructors who must quickly master a vast amount of multidisciplinary material to be effective in the classroom.

The USAWC is a great institution whose potential we have not fully tapped. We need to retire old approaches gracefully, move forward creatively, and become the nation’s preeminent center for teaching strategy. This paper urges that the USAWC and the strategy community writ large begin a much needed dialogue on the making of strategy for the 21st century. It would be well to revisit the dialogue on a regular basis lest we become comfortable in our academic citadels.

ENDNOTES

1. The author thanks USAWC faculty colleagues for their insights, comments, and provocations: Mike Matheny, Antulio Echevarria, Doug Johnson, Tami Biddle, Nate Freier, Clair Gilk, and Mike George.

2. David J. Kilcullen, “New Paradigms for 21st Century Conflict,” EJournalUSA, p. 2, in usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/0507/1jpe/kilcullen.htm, accessed September 11, 2007.

3. Richard Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion?” International Security, Fall 2000, pp. 5-50. 4. David Jablonsky, “Why Is Strategy Difficult?” in Boone Bartholomees, ed.,

U.S. Army War College Guide to Policy and Strategy, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, July 2004, pp. 143, 153. According to alchemy, the philosopher’s stone would turn base metal into gold. 5. Michael D. Pearlman, Warmaking and American Democracy: The Struggle Over Military Strategy, 1700 to the Present, Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 1999.

6. Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Freier, “Learning for Adaptation,” unpublished manuscript, U.S. Army War College.

7. Colin Gray, Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy: Can the American Way of War Adapt? Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, March 2006, p. 6. 8. John R. Galvin, “What’s the Matter with Being a Strategist?”

Parameters, Summer 1995, p. 161.

9. To be fair to the historical record and to the difficulty of the art of strategy, they also made mistakes, Pericles and Churchill notably.

10. See the writings of Samuel Huntington, Russell Weigley, Antulio Echevarria, Colin Gray, and Nigel Aylwin-Foster on the American way of war and strategy.

11. The volume edited by Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox, and Alvin Bernstein, The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, is an excellent comparative study of how nations and statesmen approached the making of grand strategy.

12. George E. Hein, “Constructivist Learning Theory,” Institute for Inquiry, www.exploratorium-edu/ifi/resources/constructivistlearning.html, accessed October 13, 2007. 13. Steve Fought, “The War College Experience,”

Academic Exchange Quarterly, June 24, 2004, pp. 1, 2, www.the freelibrary.com/The+war+college+experience-0121714082, accessed October 7, 2007.

14. Henry Gole, The Road to Rainbow: Army Planning for Global War, 1934-1940, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003, p. 31. 15. Charles E. Kirkpatrick,

An Unknown Future and a Doubtful Present: Writing the Victory Plan of 1941, Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1992. 16. Candidates include Major General David Huntoon, who as Major David Huntoon planned Just Cause. Similarly, General David Barno and General Fred Woerner, respectively, for Afghanistan and Central America. On the civilian side, John Finney and Len Hawley are recommended.

17. The RMC has a master’s level program and a Ph.D. program. The latter includes such fields as international relations, war, defense economics, diplomatic history, strategic planning, intelligence, ethics, civil-military relations, World War II and total war, armed forces and society, interagency process, modern warfare, insurgency and terrorism, conflict termination, and reconstruction.

*****

The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. This paper is cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

*****

More information on the Strategic Studies Institute’s programs may be found on the Institute’s homepage at www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil

A Response to Bob

dolman — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:48:53 +0000

Our friend in Washington is the de facto interim editor. I am publishing his quick take on the Scales article preceding as I received it–a great read:

Well, there he goes again. Here’s another propaganda piece (attached) from Bob Scales concerning the need for the nation to concentrate on how to perform close combat better—and get this—with less loss of life. His answer? FIRST, we need better troop-carrying vehicles, to get more of our young people INTO the close fight faster. Second, we need more robots—that’s right, robots—things the infantry can control so that we get into close combat faster. Third, we need more airplanes to perform the logistics mission to support those troops and the vehicles taking them to the close fight. Ah, but first a little “history” of warfare, in which no airplane is mentioned. It is as if they never existed. In fact, the fulcrum of all military history apparently is the infantry! Amazing. The closest to modernity he gets is blitzkrieg, which for some reason has become “tank-on-tank” warfare in Scale’s sanctified imagination of warfare history…so, warfare has lurched between infantry dominance and ground mobility (horse or tank) dominance. And, as luck would have it, in his mind we are back to an infantry-dominated world! (For those of you keeping score at home, I will say it again, “Historians reflexively neglect and denigrate airpower.” Scales is no different, he’s just more of a pure proselytizer for his faith than your average civilian historian.)

But, before we get too far into that theological discussion, let’s take a look at the Army’s favorite game—the blame game. Apparently, the Army and Marine Corps bear no responsibility for what Scales identifies as a terrible national neglect of emphasis on close combat. After all, they are the keepers of the infantry flame, right? If that is the choir you are preaching to, it would be bad form to put any blame on them, so it must be someone else. Right. And they are, of course, the usual suspects. First, you have the American people, who by some sort of historical or hereditary oddity, do not like their young people dying in combat, like, say, the Germans or Islamic radicals or Vietnamese did. Oh, that pain of not having been born in a more courageous, manly society that really, really FAVORs their young dying in combat! Lacking that, we must, in an odd turn of logic, blame them for death itself. So, after a long, extended discussion about death, which is important because it weakens the audience to your point, even if your point now concentrates on dying rather than war, he gets to the other evils—aircraft and ship programs, and the evil contractors and lawmakers whose coffers bulge with big dollars from those programs, robbing the infantry of its due. So, the American people stab the infantry in the back, abetted by evil corporations, the airmen and naval officers who feed them lies, and the lawmakers who only know dollars, not war.

What a terrible, terrible situation we have created for our infantry and the glorious services who speak for them! How do we fix it? What is the goal? To achieve the same kill ratios we have achieved in air-to-air combat—you know, because we’ve given the air guys so much money and attention, and that’s all it takes. Although the cost per infantry soldier has increased exponentially, some orders of magnitude over the past several years, he doesn’t bring that fact to bear, because all the facts do not matter. Only the casualty facts matter when you’re beating someone with your bloody scarf.

The real problem is that if Bob got his wish, and we really did allow our navies and air forces to atrophy so we could concentrate on REAL men—the infantry—he’d lose the game he loves so well. Then, he’d have nobody else to blame for the fact that close combat still kills too many Americans—or that it doesn’t kill enough, and that would take all the fun out of it. When you can be as irresponsible as the Army in neglecting counterinsurgency or even the infantry themselves in THEIR OWN SERVICE, and still successfully blame everyone else—EVEN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE—you are sitting in a place too pretty to be interrupted by accountability. No, Bob, you love things just as they are—you’re making too much money and having too much fun being a Jesuit for your religion to have it all ruined by empiricism or actually seeing dramatic decreases in death from close combat. That would suck the air right out of your system of demagoguery.

I would ask you to consider, based on this tract, why Airmen were placed in such a land as America? Was it to create a world safe for infantry close combat as Scales suggests? He LOVES airpower—you know, drones and airlift and A-10s buzzing over the close combat killing fields, and Airmen to blame after every battle. Given this sort of advocacy environment, what is an Airman to do? To join him? To go with the flow? If war is all about the close fight, then you would be right to take the easy road. But, if it isn’t, and in fact, if close combat actually is something to avoid due to our national humanitarian culture, then what is our role? Bob’s fans are sucking this stuff up—in fact, I got it sent to me by people gushing about how great it is. This article should be a way of examining just what war is, and how America should wage it. The infantry is here to stay, and airpower has a tremendous role in precluding close combat to the extent it can be—when it cannot, airpower has a tremendous role in dominating that environment and extricating the infantry as rapidly as possible from no-win situations. Someone must speak FOR the American people on this issue, not against them. That might be YOUR role.

Best,

Tom

Bob Rides Again!

dolman — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:45:29 +0000

AMERICAN INFANTRY AND NATIONAL PRIORITIES

Armed Forces Journal December 2007

By Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales (Ret.)

The progress of war, like other forms of human endeavor, is defined in terms of epochs, cycles of periodic change that sweep through and shape the course of Western civilization. Political scientists recount the advance of governance in terms of theocracy, monarchy, autarky and democracy. The history of science and culture measure the advance of Western civilization in terms of three grand epochs: the agrarian, machine and information ages. Economists speak of the evolution from barter to mercantile to market to global economies.

Military historians define the grand epochs of war in terms of formations, tactics and weapons that dominated battle at the time. Battles are the signposts that illuminate the paths through and between epochs. Rifts that separate epochs are defined by seismic rends in the fabric of war caused principally by social, geopolitical and technological change. Epochal rifts occur infrequently. There have been only four. The period between shifts continually shortens as the pace of demographic, social and technological change accelerates. A study of contemporary battles suggests that we are in the midst of another seismic event only a half century after the last.

FROM INFANTRY TO MOUNTED WARFARE

The first epoch belonged to infantry. It began in the farthest recesses of antiquity and lasted for several millennia culminating in the remarkable and deadly proficiency of the legion. For more than 500 years, Roman infantry dominated the battlefield with their discipline and ability to win in any terrain and against any enemy. The signpost that signaled the end of the age of infantry was the Battle of Adrianople in 378 AD. There, mounted Gothic horsemen demonstrated how to defeat the legion by combining shock effect and superior long-distance mobility of the horse. For the next 1,000 years, the desert cavalry of the Saracens, the steppe cavalry of Genghis Khan and the heavily armored European horsemen determined who would conquer and rule.

The battle of Pavia in 1525 fought between the mounted blue bloods of France and the common-born infantry of Spain heralded the next epochal rend in the fabric of war. The awakening of the classical era allowed the Europeans to rediscover from Roman literature the war-fighting power of infantry when placed in massed, disciplined formations. Technology in the form of the first efficient gunpowder weapons proved too powerful for even the most expensive, heavy and constrictive plate armor. For 500 years, from the Reformation to the end of European Empire, the common foot soldier from Spain, France, Germany and England proved the ultimate arbiter of success in peer warfare, European vs. European, and in asymmetric warfare, European vs. American Indian, African, Asian and Islamic.

THE ARMORED PHALANX DOMINATES AGAIN

The second age of infantry died in the trenches of the western front. The appearance of the small-bore rifle and the machine gun, as well as rifled artillery, ushered in the first precision revolution in warfare that made the battlefield too lethal for infantry to cross. The signposts of battles that preceded this third seismic rending in the fabric of war were unambiguous. The slaughter of the American Civil War and ominous indicators from South Africa and Manchuria at century’s end provided more than enough evidence that the day of unprotected infantry assault was over. But soldiers then, as now, are a conservative lot, and only the deaths of millions sufficed to make the point.

After World War I, the Germans combined the internal combustion engine and the radio to reinvent heavy mounted warfare and introduce the world to tank-on-tank blitzkrieg during the Battle for France in May 1940. This fourth rending in the fabric of warfare came at a cost, however. The race to win on the armored battlefield was predicated on the ability of armies to build larger and more complex fighting machines to best the machines of the opposition. As weapons grew larger, heavier and more complex, they became less able to fight effectively outside the narrow battlefields of the industrial world. This frenetic rush toward gigantism and overcapitalization is leading to the premature demise of the blitzkrieg epoch. And in a curious twist of historical irony, the forces accelerating this demise are former victims of the colonized world that western armies defeated so easily only a century ago.

SIGNPOSTS OF A NEW AGE

The battlefield signposts that point to the end of the blitzkrieg epoch are as numerous and unmistakable as those that appeared a century ago to signal the end of the second age of infantry. The problem is that since World War II, a period some term the “American era of war,” our military has been caught in an ambiguous epochal crease that has drawn us in conflicting directions — between blitzkrieg-age wars we fight well and post-blitzkrieg-era wars that we would prefer not to fight.

The laboratory of contemporary battle provides ample evidence to make the point: Whenever former colonial states choose to fight Western armies, Western style, they lose: Four blitzkrieg-style Arab Israeli wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973) ended well for the Israelis and badly for the Arabs; five American wars (Panama, 1989; Desert Storm, 1991; Kosovo, 1999; Afghanistan, 2002; the march to Baghdad, 2003) proved conclusively the dominance of American techno-centric warfare. In contrast, whenever many of these same antagonists choose to fight Western armies their way, the outcomes reverse: against us in Vietnam, Korea, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq; against the French in Indochina and Algeria; twice against the Israelis in Lebanon; and against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

All of these contemporary failures have characteristics that collectively add up to a fifth crease in the fabric or war. Connect the dots from the viewpoint of successful actions by our enemies during the past half century, and the argument for a return of infantry dominance goes from obvious to compelling. Their success comes from the enemy’s ability to offset our big-machine advantage with advantages of their own: masses of infantry, with enthusiasm to sacrifice that offsets skill at arms; an ability to learn quickly and adapt so that technological innovation can be offset by clever adaptations of existing technologies. The enemy has evolved a new strategy learned from past masters such as Mao and Ho Chi Minh that seeks to win by not losing. His is a global scheme in which the strategic object is merely to kill Americans until we lose the will to carry on. His geostrategy is founded on the principle of distance. Find a battlefield least conducive to long-term commitment, in inhospitable places such as cities, jungles and mountains where he can reduce the effectiveness of our machines and thereby increase the odds of defeating us with infantry alone.

A WINDOW ON THE FUTURE

Conclusive proof that another epochal shift had occurred came last year during a “Pavia moment” in the small village of Bint Jbiel, just over the Israeli-Lebanon border and nearby in the defile of Wadi Saluki, where Hezbollah fighters ambushed and destroyed a battalion’s worth of Israel’s blitzkrieg heavy tanks. The story of Bint Jbiel and Wadi Saluki not only provides a prescient window on the future, but also serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of dismissing the signposts of epochal change. Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the first Air Force officer to be appointed head of the Israeli Defense Forces, said he believed that the American experience in Kosovo demonstrated that a carefully planned, orchestrated and technologically precise air campaign could collapse Hezbollah’s ability to threaten Israel.

Hezbollah had a different take. The subsequent parallel disasters of Bint Jbiel and Wadi Saluki became laboratories for teaching how a well-trained insurgent force exhaustively drilled, carefully dug in, camouflaged and armed with the latest precision anti-tank weaponry could utterly devastate a modern, technologically superior Cold War armored force, even if that force commanded the air absolutely. Just as the first precision age doomed the last age of infantry, both of these battles strongly suggest that weapons from the second precision revolution in the hands of diabolically skilled infantry will eventually make heavy, mounted warfare a relic of the machine age.

The successes of Hezbollah, al-Qaida and other new-age infantry forces tell us that we must find a way to counter this 21st-century corollary to the dilemma faced by 16th-century France. The enemy chooses to fight as infantry because he can win the infantry fight. Our own experience in Iraq and Afghanistan tells us that we have no choice but to meet him on his terms, on the ground in the close and all too often fair fight.

A UNIQUELY AMERICAN PROBLEM

But America can’t fight fair because a fair fight costs too many lives. This conundrum leads to the core of the greatest challenge of 21st-century American warfare. How will the armed forces of the U.S. prevail in this new age of infantry if the cost of infantry fighting is too high? Let’s begin by confessing how high the cost of the close fight really is. During wars in the American era, four out of five combat deaths have been suffered by infantry soldiers, principally dismounted (foot) infantry. In practical terms, this means that an overwhelming preponderance of deaths occur among a population that comprises less than 4 percent of all the uniformed population of the Defense Department. Anyone not an infantryman in contact stands a far greater chance of dying from disease or accidents than from an enemy bullet.

Of particular interest is how these close-combat soldiers die. Virtually all deaths at the hands of the enemy are suffered within a mile or less from contact with the enemy. About 52 percent die trying to find the enemy, either as scouts, on point or in ambushes. Once in contact, the close fight generally goes in our favor if the enemy can be engaged far enough away to employ superior American firepower. Put a close-combat soldier in a fighting vehicle of any sort, and his chance of surviving contact with the enemy increases about an order of magnitude. This fact flies in the face of popular perceptions drawn from battlefield footage in places such as Chechnya that show soldiers roasting in burning panzers. Most of our Cold War armor was designed to take a head-on shot from a Soviet tank. Thus, most of an American tank’s armor protection is concentrated in its front 60 percent of obliquity. Again, the irony of real combat takes over the story by confessing that all of this frontal armor has saved few lives because American armor has never faced a serious enemy tank threat. Since the beginning of the American era, only eight tank crewmen have been killed by enemy tanks — all of them in the Korean War.

In contrast to mounted combat, the statistics for infantry deaths in close combat are troubling. A comparison of kill ratios between infantry and air-to-air combat is instructive. In World War II, the kill ratio in the Pacific campaign was about 13 enemy to 1 American; in Europe against the Germans, the ratio was about 11 to1; in Korea, 13 to 1. Since the end of the Cold War, the kill ratio for the F-15 series of fighter aircraft flown by American and Israeli pilots is about 107 to 1. During the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004, the ratio between enemy and American infantry deaths was about 9 to 1 within fifty meters. For soldiers and Marines fighting inside buildings, the ratios were, tragically, much closer to parity.

Then there is the Jessica Lynch factor. The enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan realizes that he can best achieve his goal by killing those least able to protect themselves, principally logistical and support soldiers. It should come as no surprise to discover that almost four out of five casualties — killed and wounded — in Iraq have been suffered by these soldiers.

INFANTRY AS A FUNCTION

Infantry is a function, not a service or branch of service. The infantry function includes Army, Marine Corps and Special Forces troops who occasionally share the close-combat space with like-minded specialists such as tankers, military police and artillerymen. Two tasks define the function. First is intimate killing. Killing close is the essence of what it means to be an infantryman. Others on the battlefield, such as pilots and artillerymen, kill — but they kill at a distance. Killing, to them, is detached, antiseptic. After a mission, a pilot may feel remorse at the realization that the bomb he dropped at some distant target killed someone. But an infantryman sees his target die. He watches the life drain out of an enemy who chances across his sights. To be sure, soldiers other than infantrymen may occasionally stumble upon the enemy. These are incidental fighters, occasional victims of war who die in ambushes, roadside bombings and assassinations. But only an infantryman goes out every day with the intention of taking another human life in face-to-face intimate combat. It is his skill at this method of killing that wins contemporary wars.

The infantryman’s second task is to make other infantrymen. Teaching others to fight as infantry is a competency that the Army and Marine Corps have perfected over more than a century of practical experience, beginning with the creation of the Philippine Scouts before World War I and continuing with distinction to Greece and Israel immediately after World War II. The Army learned to build armies while fighting in such disparate places as Korea, Vietnam and El Salvador, and most recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.

GETTING BETTER: THE HUMAN DIMENSION

Dominance in the close tactical fight is dependent as much on human as technological factors. Dominance depends on creating world-class small units, superbly selected, trained and psychologically inoculated to endure the stress inherent in the act of intimate killing. Small-unit leaders, sergeants and lieutenants, must be found, nurtured and taught to make life-or-death decisions in the heat of the close fight. Think of a tactical, small-unit version of the Navy’s Top Gun or the Air Force’s Red Flag exercises, in which small-unit leaders and their soldiers would have the luxury harnessing training technology to get better bloodlessly.

The lesson from recent wars is that serving as a close-combat soldier is far more difficult and hazardous than serving in any other military specialty. The act of intimate killing takes a toll on even the most emotionally hardened close-combat soldier. Likewise, humping a 150-pound rucksack in 130-degree heat takes a toll on the body of even the most fit. Bureaucratic institutions and personnel polices at the Defense Department must be changed to reflect the unique requirements for making world-class infantrymen. Pay scales should be changed such that infantrymen are compensated for risk, as well as skills. They should be allowed to retire earlier in their careers before the stress of close combat scars them emotionally and physically. Small units should be staffed with greater numbers and higher ratios of leaders to followers to compensate for the inevitable attrition that comes from the tactical fight.

History teaches the same lesson over and over. Mature, intelligent, well-led, trained and motivated soldiers are far more effective in the close fight and far less likely to die. More pay, greater numbers and less combat stress should allow an all-volunteer military to select and promote those who demonstrate the tactical right stuff. Only the best and brightest among all those brought into the military should be allowed to join this elite band of brothers.

TECHNOLOGY AND THE CLOSE FIGHT

Our military has a history of waiting until soldiers start dying before applying technology to the close fight. The often-told story of body armor and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles in Iraq needs no re-telling here. Part of the problem is that until recently, the technology to enhance the tactical fight has been developed and acquired incrementally in programs too small to compete with aircraft and ship programs. Big-ticket items tend to capture the attention of the big machine makers and the lawmakers who support them. Another problem is the lack of silver bullets such as stealth or precision strike that have proven so decisive in air-to-air combat. Real dominance in the infantry battle will demand a new approach and a new set of developmental and acquisition priorities. Instead of fixating on a few big-ticket platforms, the Defense Department must focus on developing a set of smaller complementary capabilities, the sum of which would offer the infantry true dominance in the close fight. First priority should go to those technologies that are most likely to lessen the cost of infantry combat. We know that mounted fighting diminishes the cost by an order of magnitude. The problem today is that our Cold War armored fleet carries too few infantry. Our vehicles are optimized for warfare in developed regions where weight, complexity and fuel efficiency are not impediments to tactical success. In the future, the fleet must be modernized to allow more infantry to fight mounted in distant places for extended periods, to keep them under armor longer and to allow infantry to remain protected until very close to the enemy.

If more than half of all infantry deaths occur finding the enemy, then unmanned surrogates such as low-flying aerial drones or unmanned ground robotic vehicles are needed to perform this most dangerous task. If most soldiers die within a mile of the front, a place soldiers call the “red zone,” then we must find the means to keep infantry outside the red zone long enough to destroy as many enemy infantry as possible with precise, discrete and immediately available killing power.

More than two-thirds of Marine Corps, special operations and Army infantry fight on foot. So the second greatest challenge is to develop every technological advantage to make dismounted infantry more lethal and less vulnerable. Clearly, the greatest need is for light body armor impervious to high-velocity projectiles and artillery fragments. Soldiers fighting on foot must solve the problem of touch in the close fight. A soldier’s greatest fear in the close fight is the fear of fighting and dying isolated and alone. As bullets fly, he looks constantly about for reinforcement from his buddies. Experience in all recent wars tells us that these soldiers are far more effective if they can maintain voice and visual contact with their buddies. Surely telecommunications technology has advanced far enough to enable every soldier to “see” and “talk” to everyone in his squad using an individual audio and video connection?

Finally, back to Jessica Lynch. The need to deliver ammunition, spare parts, fuel and water exposes support soldiers to the tender mercies of the enemy along the line of communications. Tomorrow’s infantry must be able to fight supported by a much smaller and much less vulnerable logistical umbilical cord. The only sure way to eliminate our logistical vulnerabilities would be to supply the close fight predominantly by air.

A MATTER OF PRIORITIES

The U.S. has practiced the infantry arts in peace and war since the American Revolution, but only recently has the art taken center stage. The enemy knows that dead soldiers are our greatest vulnerability. So winning quickly at least cost becomes more than a moral necessity. It is now a national strategic imperative. The challenge for the future is to do it better and at less cost in human life. Getting better is culturally averse because we don’t like to fight this way. We would prefer to kill from a distance, but our enemies won’t let us off the hook. They are leading us where we are reluctant to go. But contemporary history and the shrewd actions of our enemies now compel us to change our priorities. Our presence in this new age of infantry demands that making better infantry is no longer an Army or a Marine Corps problem. It’s a national problem. And the challenge is not just to get incrementally better, but also to dominate our enemies in the close fight, to achieve the same kill ratios on the ground that we have achieved recently in air-to-air combat.

Future presidents must have the latitude to send armies to distant places where the enemy has the home field advantage. Our infantry will never be able to get to these places and stay there unless it has the protection and lethality to dominate a determined and diabolical enemy in waiting. If these reforms sound as if they will break the bank, remember that if all the infantry in all the services were collected together in one place, they wouldn’t fill an NFL stadium. The next administration must realize that when entering a new epoch of warfare, all past habits are suspect. It’s time that our priorities — our national priorities — change to meet the realities of the war we will be fighting for generations.

For strategists in Iraq…

Eros Pace — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:44:28 +0000

Here’s a penetrating strategic assessment on Iraq by Bartle Bull (of Prospect). Bull’s essay, “Mission Accomplished,” is long, but it’s reasoned, articulate, and extremely well-supported. I’m serving it up here on astropolitics.org blog not to open an argument about the Iraqi question, but to offer a quality litmus test to those Iraq-focused strategists out there who are (or will be) working at either the national or operational level of strategy development. If you’re on your game, my sense is that Bull’s argument will speak clearly to you, whether you find yourself in agreement or not. If this essay loses you, then you’ve got a good guidepost for the degree of understanding you’ll want to drive toward in honing your effectiveness. – Eros (Thanks for the keys, Ev.)

Geopolitical Diary: Strategy and Process

dolman — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:57:13 +0000

This was posted on IntelliBriefs Blogspot a few days ago. The tag line is superb: “Strategy is to process as Clausewitz is to a PowerPoint.” Read on …

The executive summary of a report by the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General was declassified and released on Tuesday. Originally published in 2005, the report states that senior CIA officials “did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner” when dealing with the al Qaeda threat prior to 9/11. It recommends that the CIA consider disciplining then-Director George Tenet and other senior CIA officials. The recommendation was rejected by Porter Goss, who was director of the CIA in 2005, when the report was produced. That rejection was reaffirmed Tuesday by Michael Hayden, current head of the CIA, who also objected to the report’s declassification.

The Office of the Inspector General is an organization internal to the CIA whose task it is to investigate failures and misconduct within the agency. It is the internal watchdog. It was rumored that the inspector general had issued a blistering report on the CIA’s pre-9/11 performance, but it was not known (at least to us) that disciplinary action had been recommended. There is always tension between any federal agency and its internal investigations unit, but generally investigators are gentler than a congressional committee — especially on senior management’s execution of its job. To recommend discipline for the top officials of the agency is a pretty startling step.

The heart of the report levels this criticism at Tenet: that a strategy for fighting al Qaeda was needed but that it didn’t exist, and that Tenet “bears ultimate responsibility for the fact that no such strategic plan was ever created.” The report also criticizes the CIA for failing to maintain an effective watch list of potential terrorists, making it impossible to screen threats. It also says that Tenet diverted money allocated to counterterrorism programs for other intelligence uses unrelated to terrorism.

The most important criticism, of course, is the lack of a CIA strategy for combating terrorism. Over the years, the CIA had become driven by process. Obviously process is an important aid in achieving goals — but in some organizations, and it would appear in the CIA, process stops being a tool and becomes an end in itself. What that means, in practical terms, is that getting the wrong answer became tolerable at the CIA, so long as the process was followed. Getting the right answer was unacceptable if it did not follow the process. One obvious problem is that gut insights do not map well to processes, but it is frequently those insights that get you where you need to go in intelligence.

The problem being raised here is the tension between process and strategy. Process is designed to serve as a template for recurring events — so the same thing is done the same way each time. You can’t generate a strategy via a process. Strategy, the broad approach to a problem, doesn’t turn into a process because — at least in intelligence — every case is so different. Using the same process to mount an intelligence operation against the Soviet Union and to deal with al Qaeda makes little sense.

The CIA under George Tenet didn’t search for a strategy for defeating al Qaeda. It didn’t take apart al Qaeda, identify its weak point and systematically attack it. Rather it tried to create a process for dealing with terrorism. In trying to build a replicable, definable process, it failed to understand its enemy and therefore never created a strategy.

Strategy is to process as Clausewitz is to a PowerPoint. It is not clear whether the U.S. intelligence community or the military has learned this lesson. Understanding the nature of strategy is difficult, disorderly and can’t be reduced to three bullet points. Process is easier, orderly and can be briefed in 15-minute sessions. Tenet rejected the charges in the inspector general’s report. He had built sophisticated processes. But as the report said, he never built a strategy.

Defining Strategy

dolman — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:45:38 +0000

There appear to be as many definitions of strategy as there are legitimate strategists. The following is a list of better known Formal Definitions of Strategy:

Simplistic:
“… the art of making war on a map.” Baron de Jomini
“… the art of the dialectics of will that use force to resolve their conflict.” Andre Beaufre
“A system of expedients.” Helmut von Moltke
“… the art of bringing forces to the battlefield in a favorable position” Archibald Wavell
“… the diplomacy of violence.” Thomas Schelling
Clauswitzian
“… the use of engagements for the object of war.” Karl von Clausewitz
“… the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfill the ends of policy.” Basil Liddell Hart
“… the use of armed force to achieve the military objectives, and by extension, the political purpose of the war.” Peter Paret
“… the application and maintenance of force so that it contributes most effectively to the achievement of political objectives.” Alastair Buchan
“the use made of force and the threat of force for the ends of policy.” Colin Gray
Synthesis:
“… a system of scientific knowledge dealing with the laws of war as an armed conflict in the name of definite class interests.” V. D. Sokolovsky
“… a plan of action designed in order to achieve some end; a purpose together with a system of measures for its accomplishment.” J.C. Wylie
“… the conduct and consequences of human relations in the context of possible or actual armed conflict.” Edward Luttwak
“… a general plan for the creation, deployment, and employment of coalition and national armed forces to achieve war aims by destroying the enemy’s will and ability to wage war.” Williamson Murray and Allan Millett
“… the science and art of employing the political, economic, psychological, and military forces of a nation or group of nations to afford the maximum support to adopted policies in peace or war.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary
“… the art of controlling and utilizing the resources of the nation-or a coalition of nations-including its armed forces, to the end that its vital interest shall be effectively promoted and secured against enemies, actual, potential, and, merely presumed.” E.M. Earle
“… the nations’ plan for the coordinated use of all the instruments of state power-nonmilitary as well as military-to pursue objectives that defend and advance its national interest” Terry Deibel
Process:
“Strategy … is devoted to discovering how the resources of a nation, material and human, can be developed and utilized for the end of maximizing the total effectiveness of the nation in war.” Bernard Brodie
“… a process, a constant adaptation to shifting conditions and circumstances in a world where chance, uncertainty, and ambiguity dominate.” Williamson Murray and Mark Grimsley
“… the art of controlling and utilizing the resources of the nation – or a coalition of nations – including its armed forces, to the end that its vital interests shall be effectively promoted and secured against enemies, actual, potential, or merely presumed.” Edward Meade Earle
“… the art and science of developing and using political, economic, psychological, and military forces as necessary during peace and war, to afford the maximum support to policies, in order to increase the probabilities and favorable consequences of victory and to lessen the chances of defeat.” DoD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms
“… a complex decisionmaking process that connects the ends sought with the ways and means of achieving those ends.” Donald Snow and Dennis Drew
State-of-the-Art:
“A plan for continuing advantage.” Everett Carl Dolman, Pure Strategy