On Values

Late last week the WaPo ran a series of opinions regarding U.S. intervention in Syria. The battle lines were as well drawn as they are on the blogosphere and Twitter. I don't intend to rehash the specifics of Syria this morning and instead want to dial in on the last paragraph of Anne-Marie Slaughter's contribution.

She begins her conclusion with the statement: "President Obama believes in sovereignty as responsibility." I can't disagree with the sentiment, but this sentence fills me with an unnamed dread. As she discussed in the previous paragraph, this position has been accepted by the UN as an emerging international norm. There seems to be a lot of variance around the terms included in "responsibility", especially with regard to war crimes and civil wars. That's not to say the United States isn't sure about those definitions, but certain other countries are allowing broad definitions based on their own self-interest and in order to maintain maneuver space in case they run into the same problems later. Therefore, as sovereignty as responsibility is technically codified as an international value it is nearly impossible to determine when that responsibility is violated based on the many possible interpretations of definition.

This discussion leads to Slaughter's second sentence of that paragraph: "Standing up for that principle will result in a world that will be more stable, prosperous and consistent with universal values - the values Americans know as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."  There are two problems with this statement. First is that standing up for the principle of sovereignty as responsibility means that those with more liberal interpretations of responsibility are in conflict with those who have more archaic (by Western standards) views on responsibility or view each contentious situation through the lens of their own self-interest beyond the responsibility issues at hand. This conflict can be seen in any location where sovereigns have abjured or violated their responsibilities: Syria, China, Pakistan, Burma, Mali, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, just to name a few. Standing up for the principle of responsibility means standing against other powers who view responsibility differently. This is not a path to stability or prosperity, it is a path to political, economic, or military conflict. Syria is the cause du jour, but how many violations of the American sense of responsibility to we ignore out of our own interests? Some of the places I mentioned are allies or partners of ours because of some other strategic interest. Universally standing for this principle may be the right thing to do morally, but disabuse yourself of the notion that it leads to more stability or that liberal-minded nations even have the power to affect change.

The second problem with this statement is obvious if you read the words. Standing up for responsibility, according to Slaughter, will result in a world consistent with universal values. Which universal values? Why American values! A professional of Dr. Slaughter's caliber must know that defining universal values is nearly impossible. She must also know that American values are not universal. And yet American values are the values she suggests we act to preserve in the name of universality. As a great power, the United States is prone to act as other great powers have in promoting its own values globally. But do not believe for a second that our values are universal. We may think other countries are wrong or even evil for what they do to their people, but that is through our lens, by our measures.

This is not to excuse atrocities which are universally wrong. And I believe that what is happening in Syria should be considered wrong universally. But we are not yet at a point in human existence where this is the case and we need to recognize that. Not excuse regimes who have different values from our own, but recognize when this occurs. And recognize that often the United States does excuse regimes violating their responsibilities because it benefits our other interests, much as China and Russia do. How would we react if these two stalwarts of obstinacy decided to take Saudi Arabia to task for its treatment of women? Are their liberties not impeded?

Values are important to every nation. Some values are universal, but that list may extend only to sovereignty and life. And even these are negotiable depending upon with whom you are talking. Outside of the most egregious cases, most violations of universal values occur in the margins where values can be contested and especially where they intersect or diverge from interests. I'm also wary of a world where nations go to war to uphold their values beyond their borders. Such a world is fraught with nationalistic militarism more reminiscent of the early 20th Century instead of the 21st. I'm also wary of a world that except in the most exceptional cases uses war - the purposive taking of life - in order to protect life. There is a contradiction in the American use of lethal force to promote our values for human life and I'm not sure that parts of the world understand that. The potential for even greater suffering contrary to universal values is not only significant, it is likely. I am with Dr. Slaughter in her disgust for the Syrian regime for what they are doing to their own people. I agree that they have violated their responsibilities as leaders. But I hesitate to support the use of American military force to wage war in an action that is likely to result in the deaths of more civilians than the regime's current actions. Values are an American interest, but are they worth war without overwhelming support from the rest of the globe? I don't think so. Values are a great reason to flex the United States' ample diplomatic and economic capabilities as this approach is more in line with our values.

Grand strategy: good but unlikely

I really enjoyed this post by the always excellent Daveed Gartenstein-Ross as a counter to anti-interventionists with regard to Syria. Daveed lays out arguments made by wunderkind Dan Trombly and his posts against intervening in Syria; mainly that acting in Syria does not further American interests, that non-interventionists need to prescribe alternative methods of dealing with the situation, and (getting to this post I wrote earlier) that a grand strategy would help the United States determine trades more effectively when deciding to intervene.

Frankly, I don't disagree with any of that and I'm not sure Daveed characterizes my post and position on grand strategy most accurately. Which is why I don't disagree with him. My writings on grand strategy have focused until recently upon the need for a grand enemy to formulate a strategy of equal magnitude. That is not the same as saying we only need grand strategies for grand enemies. Rather, the political entities that craft grand strategies tend to permit strategic drift in a state void of a grand enemy. Grand enemies serve as a beacon or focal point for strategy development. In the absence of such enemies, nations have difficultly determining their role in the world and focusing their resources and efforts because of such increased uncertainty. Therefore, grand strategy is not and should not be dependent upon a grand enemy, but grand strategy is less likely to exist without a grand enemy to drive its formulation.

That said, my post did not argue against a grand strategy for the United States or that it would not be a good thing, but rather that policy-makers have no interest in developing a grand strategy with the intricate and elegant statements of purpose we would expect from such a document. Such a document is what I considered a pipe dream. Elucidations of the nation's challenges, foreign and domestic, that require action by the Government could compel the Government to take action in situations where action may be unwarranted, immoral, or simply not in our interest regardless of what was written on a piece of paper. And no policy-maker wants to be compelled into a situation they think is unwise, even if the folly of the act only affects domestic political capital.

The Syria conundrum is indicative of this. One of the enduring American interests listed in the National Security Strategy (and the QDR and QDDR) is "respect for universal values at home and around the world."  For policy-makers, this is perfectly worded because it leaves them a maneuver axis 10 divisions wide. What are universal values? There's an entire focus of philosophy dedicated to studying and arguing for or against the existence of universal values. Are there values that the preponderance of the human race could probably agree are valid? Of course. But using a (non-) term such as universal values, as yet undefined, allows us to act to protect certain values when we can and want and not protect them when we can't or won't. The United States has intervened in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia (1990s), and Libya because of values and because we thought we might be successful. We didn't in Rwanda, Uganda, and as of yet Syria in spite of our values. One could argue that we had no strategic interest in the former group and yet intervened because of values and yet acted. We had equal strategic interest in the latter yet intervening would have been coherent with our values. Why the difference?

In a word: flexibility. The first group above were deemed more achievable than the latter group. While there is a significant strategic calculus to determine that the United States should only act when it thinks it can be successful (a moral imperative even), our description of interests is so broadly defined as to allow politicians to pick and choose what are vital American interests. Values are among the squishiest interests we have, enigmatic wisps of emotion couched in strategy. This is not to say that defense of values does not constitute a strategic interest, but it's impossible to define. Would Presidents Bush and Obama agree on what our values are? Or what values are worth defending? That Venn diagram probably has a lot of overlap, but it wouldn't be one circle.

Because of this, there is no constituency to create a grand strategy that may compel politicians to act when they don't want to - for whatever reason. An amorphous role in the world benefits the political class. Someone with moral certainty who can attain high levels of power, Anne-Marie Slaughter for example, could certainly add the protection of civilians against murderous regimes to the list of universal values for which the United States would go to war. Would a subsequent administration want to be held to that standard? How would they remove such an item from their list of values? What if that value is believed to be valid but compels the United States into a conflict it cannot win? How does a president explain that even though our values are worth defending, we just really, really can't in a specific case?

There is a lot of goodness to a grand strategy. It would help the United States understand the myriad challenges it faces and draw lines in the sand that would help it determine its role in the world more clearly for ourselves, our allies, neutral parties, and our adversaries. It would help us conduct the trade-off calculus to determine whether or not to intervene in most situation. I would love to see such a grand strategy. But I just don't see it happening. Daveed and I are both interested in avoiding foreign policy mistakes, but both paths (with and without grand strategy) are fraught with potential mistakes. In the current situation politicians have a freer hand to make those mistakes instead of possibly being forced into them. They have no impetus to change this condition.

The grand strategy pipe dream

Grand strategy in this era and political climate in the United States is a pipe dream. The idea of a unifying, coherent set of statements that declare what the U.S. believes is its overarching role in the world sounds great and could then drive our actions across the globe. So we're all on the same page, I'm going to borrow a definition of grand strategy from Peter Feaver:

the collection of plans and policies that comprise the state's deliberate effort to harness political, military, diplomatic, and economic tools together to advance that state's national interest. 

Does the United States have a grand strategy? Well, not as such. We have a National Security Strategy which broadly defines American interests:

• The security of the United States, its citizens, and U.S. allies and partners;
• A strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity;
• Respect for universal values at home and around the world; and
• An international order advanced by U.S. leadership that promotes peace, security, and opportunity through stronger cooperation to meet global challenges. 

It's not much, but it's all we have. It's a far cry from the Churchill description of Great Britain's grand strategy for 400 years. The problem is that, barring a grand enemy to drive a more specific grand strategy (more on that in a bit), the political class of the U.S. has no interest in defining a grand strategy to any greater depth. Much like the all-volunteer force is convenient to wage wars of interest without involving the people, a vague grand strategy allows the U.S. to define its interests as it wishes. Security of the United States, etc., could be interpreted in any almost any way no matter how tenuously connected to actual existential security of the nation. We are still in Afghanistan ostensibly because doing so protects the security of the United States, but is that really true? Some say yes, others say no. What matters is that the politicians in power say yes and use the cover story of security to maintain forces there. Is Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons a threat to the United States? A lot of people think so, but the current administration does not seem to think so enough to use military force at this point. China falls into this category as well.  Vague grand strategic statements provide the political class the flexibility to determine interests ad hoc which suits their domestic political needs. Occasionally it suits the security of the United States, but our actual physical security as a nation has rarely been challenged. 

While I had posited some time ago that a grand enemy was required for a grand strategy (see link to Churchill above), I now do not believe that a grand enemy* is any more useful to drive a coherent global policy than the vague statements above. In theory the United States had a grand strategy to prevent the spread of communism. And yet it did not prevent us from the folly of the Vietnam War and other activities across the globe for which we are still feeling the effects today (such as arming the mujaheddin in Afghanistan).  So maybe grand strategy isn't the panacea we hope it to be. 

The final reason I can identify that makes grand strategy unlikely is that political discourse is so dichotomous to prevent a grand strategy from ever being realized. Iran, China, Libya, Syria are all good indicators that the United States cannot self-formulate its role in the world without the opposition party tearing that grand strategy to shreds, negating its impact and utility. A grand enemy may help overcome this last reason, but we do not have one at the moment (in spite of attempts of giving China that role). The current version of our grand strategy is watered down because (except for maybe the last one) everyone can agree on them. 

Grand strategy is an aspirational chimera that we are unlikely to see. While policy-makers seem to want to do best for the nation, you cannot ignore the impact of domestic politics. Just as Francis Urquhart wanted his Falklands, politicians have always been more than willing to flex America's military muscle for domestic audiences (see: R2P and why we do it in some places but not others). Grand strategy in its current form allows them to do just that while maintaining a modicum (veneer?) of coherence with the national interests, broadly defined as anything they have a pet issue with that is at least palatable to some Americans. While we should continue to study grand strategy, let's not hold our breaths that it is achievable or desirable to those that would form it.

*The original version of this post had "it" as an ambiguous pronoun instead of "grand enemy" - the change was made for clarification. 

Defense budget preview: Schoenbaum and Mearsheimer, 1982

This morning, I happened across quite a prescient exchange of letters (pdf, $) from an old issue of International Security. In it, David Schoenbaum and John Mearsheimer discuss and debate various conclusions of the latter man's 1981 review of Brian Bond's British Military Policy Between the Two World Wars, a book that was thought to have been particularly relevant to the force structure and defense budgeting debate of the early 1980s. I hope to spend a great deal more time on this subject in the future (oh boy!), but for now I just want to reproduce a few excerpts that I think might interest you on the day the Secretary of Defense previews the new defense budget.

First, Schoenbaum prompts a wry smile:

If America now [in 1982], like Britain then, has a stake in Middle Eastern stability, it also enoys some non-military options unknown to British governments in the 1930s—a political solution of the Palestinian problem, for instance, or a genuinely conservative national energy policy. (225)

Plus ça change, etc. Divestment from Arab oil through national conservation or alternative fuels suggested 30 years ago!

Next, on the pitfalls of prognostication—good strategists aren't necessarily good grand strategists:

The problem of the British Army in the 1930s was not so much that British governments failed to build forces appropriate to their view of the world, but that their view was wildly askew. (226)

Influenced by Basil Liddell Hart and other proponents of the maritime strategy, British governments spent most of the interwar period building forces appropriate to naval supremacy and homeland defense, wishfully thinking that France could stand up to Germany and prevent continental hegemony.

Schoenbaum faulted his contemporaries for quite a different failing: they debated the best means to produce military power without considering the uses of that power.

Attrition vs. maneuver, the draft vs. the volunteer force or tanks vs. precision-guided missiles can also be debated on their abstract merits. In fact, they generally are. But these are not really abstract issues. On the contrary, they presuppose and only make sense with respect to real adversaries in real places and circumstances. What is regrettably missing in far too much of the current debate is the fundamental question of force, and forces, as means, rather than as ends in themselves. (226)

Quite.

Mearsheimer's historical analysis doesn't differ dramatically from Schoenbaum's.

The first lesson is than an insular power with worldwide defense commitments must involve itself in European politics to insure [sic] that no state becomes master of that continent. (227)

Of course, there are different ways to involve oneself in European politics: alliances and forward posturing of forces are not the only solution. And Mearsheimer would no doubt admit as much – he has argued that NATO is obsolete in the modern day – while confidently asserting that those were the appropriate answers in the 1980s.

Britain had failed to draw the proper conclusions about its necessary involvement on the continent until quite late in the 1930s, but the government did eventually revise its view and change course. Even then, military preparations were limited by other factors; as Mearsheimer notes, "military strength is largely dependent on economic strength."

Now that the British archives for that period have been opened, a clear-cut consensus is emerging that the ultimate failure of British policy in the 1930s had much less to do with political will and more to do with the large gap between her resources and her commitments. (228)

That sounds familiar, eh?

The implication [by those bemoaning insufficient political will] is that the solution to America's problems is largely of a political nature. In other words, there is a desperate need for vigorous and forceful leaders who will not be afraid to deal with threats to U.S. interests. Although it is hard to disagree with the need for determined leadership, this line of argument misses the more important point, which is that America's future as a great power will be determined largely by economic and not political factors. The ability of the United States to meet its worldwide commitments in the 1980s will be more a function of the economy's capability to generate the necessary military power than of any infusion of political will at the upper levels of government. (228, emphasis mine)

Let me go even a step further and say that the misguided "infusion of political will" in the form of expensive, strategically nonsensical military actions and ill-advised, cripplingly high defense spending is in fact a brake on our capacity to meet real our very real commitments.

Despite this military rationale for a powerful economy, large-scale increases in military spending are often detrimental to a healthy economy. (229)

And to close with yet another moment of déjà vu:

Recently [remember, this is 1982], Wassiliy Leontief, the Nobel Laureate in economics, warned that using scarce capital to support massive increases in defense spending "will starve the rest of the economy of the investment it desperately requires to remain competitive in the tightening worldwide market." (229)

Kill 'em all, and let the Keynsians sort 'em out.

The Powell Doctrine's fundamental flaw and the administration's dithering

I was going to write (yet another) post on intervention in Libya - specifically that the proponents of intervention, particularly a no-fly zone, are conducting their "planning process" backwards. They are starting with the tool they want to use and then backpedaling to find an interest to substantiate U.S. involvement (anywhere from human rights to the imminent threat Quaddafi poses). I was going to show how the process is supposed to work, starting with a grand strategy (or at least regional strategy) and then define the problem, what assets you have, etc. And then I was going to point out that the interventionists are correct on one thing: that President Obama is dithering. But not on what they think he is dithering on. The reason we don't know what to do with the Arab uprisings is that we don't have a coherent strategy to drive our policies and operations in the region - we don't know what we want out of all of this. That's where the administration is dithering, not in not blindly acting as to be seen as doing something.

The reason the previous paragraph wasn't turned into a full post of its own is because as I was about to go through the Powell Doctrine line-by-line, I noticed it, too, has a gaping strategic hole. And I thought that was more important than restating with an example that the U.S. has still not developed coherent regional or global strategies. Anyway, here's the hole: it doesn't account for the existence of any sort of greater strategy. The problem with the Powell Doctrine is the first question (the remaining questions address the operationalization of the intervention), which is the only question to address the reason for intervening. But it merely asks if a vital national security interest is threatened. The current situation in Libya is showing that without a strategic framework that elucidates what is a vital national security interest, when faced with a decision to intervene it can be very difficult to determine the answer to the first question.

As the administration has not yet said what they would want out these uprisings or a more general strategy in North Africa and the Middle East, we can speculate as to what those interests are. Some have argued that protecting the rebels in the east is a vital national security interest because failing to help them will have long term credibility consequences in the region. Others have argued that Quaddafi presents a threat to the United States (I think this is tenuous at best, but it is an argument being made). Or our oil interests in the region. Non-interventionists have argued that none of these are vital national security interests and therefore we shouldn't be involved. So who's correct?

The inaction of the administration (which most of you are aware that I support) indicates that they (and mainly the President) do not feel that any of these things are threats to vital national security issues. But they haven't said so and have been involved in interminable "discussions". These uprisings have been going on for nearly two months now and the administration has yet to define their stance on how to react to them. There is still no strategy, which would tell the U.S. government, the U.S. people, and the citizens and governments of Arab states what we consider to be our vital national security interests. Instead we're in a position where the administration doesn't know what to do, Arab leaders don't know what we're going to do, and the Arab people don't know what to expect from us. This can be a very dangerous situation with so many different expectations on what the U.S. can and should do.

The utility of the Powell Doctrine has been widely debated and untested, but now we're seeing that without a strategic framework to guide decision-makers in determining our vital national security interests, it doesn't much help us in deciding to intervene. It does provide a useful checklist for policymakers before intervening, but not whether or not to intervene. It appears we're getting past the point of useful intervention in Libya, but that doesn't mean the administration shouldn't still develop a strategy (or policy at least) to describe what it wants out of the region. If our current strategic incoherence continues, we are going to constantly revisit the intervention question and still not be able to intelligently address that question. Now would seem like a good time to finally developing viable strategies instead of putting out fires as they arise.

How the dialogue about "progressive national security strategy" is destructive both to progressives and national security

Several different discussion threads have been kicking around in my mind in recent weeks and have lately converged around the question of how security policy is and ought to be informed by politics. Jason’s been writing here about grand strategy and peer competitors; the SECDEF’s statement last week on budget efficiencies sparked conversations about the big-picture strategic implications of various defense spending philosophies; and a number of commentators have touched on what it means to advocate for “progressive national security policy.” Robert Farley has taken up this latter question at Lawyers, Guns, and Money, and he’s made what I think is a meaningful contribution to the discussion.

I also happen to think he’s very wrong.

Farley and I had an extended exchange about this on Twitter on Friday night (look at @drfarls and @InkSptsGulliver on 7 Jan, if you're interested. There's probably some easier way to do this, but I don't know what it is), and he basically cleaned my clock. (I’d excuse my poor performance by noting A) that we were jumping around on a number of different lines of inquiry, and B) that most of the conversation took place during my commute home on public transportation.) Rob is undoubtedly correct to say that politics plays a role in basically every aspect of security policy and national security strategy – that is, in everything from the way we conceptualize the values we’re trying to defend to the formulation of the policies and strategies we use to defend them… at least so long as we’re willing to stipulate that a fundamental belief in the importance of physical security and territorial integrity is a matter of political ideology. I’ll concede that there may be instances where a state (or a political actor within that state) is willing to bargain things that most people consider to be foundational national interests in order to achieve gains in other areas, but I think it’s also fair to say that there’s a well-nigh overwhelming socio-political consensus in the U.S. about the importance of those fundamentals. Even the most ardent libertarian would grant that defense against invasion is a legitimate constitutional prerogative of the federal government. But as I’ve alluded to in the comments on this post, political philosophy as concerns the appropriate relationship between government and governed and one’s interpretation of the social contract will certainly inform the way that individual citizens think about grand strategy (though less so, I believe, those citizens’ interpretation of vital national interests).

All of which is really a digression on the point that I really want to make, which is this: I think that it’s senseless and even counterproductive to try to talk about a “progressive approach to national security,” whether that means the conception of a “progressive” grand strategy or the construction of “progressive” policy options. Rob argues that progressives too often cede ground unnecessarily to conservatives when it comes to foreign and security policy, and he may be right about this. But that’s a political problem, not a policy problem. And “conceding ground” in a political debate may negatively impact policy formation, but only if your bad/good spectrum is built on fundamentally progressive metrics. That means you’ve got a tautology on your hands: progressive policies are good because they secure progressive goals, i.e. progressive is good because it’s progressive. So yeah, by that logic, any time progressives lose a debate to conservatives, it’s bad.

Here’s the problem with that, though: most people, when they think about national security, aren’t particularly concerned with labels like “progressive” or “conservative.” If they’re particularly broad-minded and forward-thinking, they might evaluate policy based on whether or not they think it’s consistent with their own personal views of what America is all about; that is, whether it’s consistent with their worldview and their grand strategic preferences. But most people don’t look at things like that – they just ask whether a policy “makes us safer” or not, and on this question they’re subject to the explanatory rationale provided by national security analysts – or more often, if we’re being realistic, to the bullshit spin provided by politicians and politically-minded pundits.

Farley recognizes this, and it’s central to his warning to progressives not to absent themselves from discussions of policy, strategy, doctrine, budgeting, and so on. Heritage and AEI understand that security policy is contested politically just the same as domestic policy, he says; why can’t the left recognize this and engage on those terms? If the conversation is being shaped by political hackery, then progressives need to hack harder! But this approach overlooks an important truth: conservative think tanks don’t explicitly advocate for conservative security policy – they argue for “good” security policy! They argue as if any policy but their chosen course imperils American lives! That’s why open advocacy for “progressive security policy” – either for progressive ends or progressive means – is necessarily counterproductive: because it emphasizes ideology and explicitly recognizes the primacy of the political. (What right-minded non-political national security pragmatist wants to self-identify with “progressive” or “conservative” policy prescriptions? It’s the rhetorical equivalent of the Bush Doctrine – a quest to accumulate enemies through inelegant phrasing and forced decisions.) Heritage cares just as much about Republican wins, sure, but they’ve developed a grammar of national security that doesn’t openly politicize it. If the public thinks you’re willing to prioritize political advantage ahead of effective policy, then they’ll doubt – with good reason! – your commitment to real security.

Paul McLeary has a great piece today that bears on this subject, entitled “Progression through unlearning.” In it, he highlights the way that conservative “defense defenders” are spinning Secretary Gates’ budgetary announcements to suggest that austerity measures will imperil our security and fundamentally alter America’s role in the world. Tom Donnelly, Mackenzie Eaglen, and Jamie Fly did exactly that in the National Review. But their piece is instructive: nowhere do the authors suggest that cuts are bad for conservative policies or conservative grand strategy. They merely beg the grand strategic question, proceeding as if global dominance is the only means with which to ensure American security. And then there’s the magic bullet for those who seek to privilege the defense budget in a time of sweeping cuts: an appeal to the social compact.

Gates’s argument is that defense dollars are not “sacred.” That is true, but that is also to trivialize the fact that national defense is different — a qualitatively different obligation of government than providing social services, health care, “internal improvements,” or economic development. And there is a moral dimension to defense spending, especially when only a few do the fighting and dying for the many.

It is ironic that the White House chose to announce defense spending cuts just as the House, by its public reading of the U.S. Constitution, tried to call the federal government back to its first principles. If there was one thing the Framers understood, it was that security was the first priority of the national government.

Now this is where Farley’s vision of “progressive defense theory” can come in handy! One can contest this reading of the obligations of government. But even more importantly (and probably more easily), one can contest this definition of security, instead elaborating the ways the modern threat environment has changed the way we understand this concept and must necessarily impact the means we employ to ensure it. This is where you talk about the whys and wherefores of your grand strategic concept, where you explain that “security” ain’t just about force-on-force anymore. This is where you get into human security, the “three Ds” (with emphasis on diplomacy and development), an intelligence- and policing-based paradigm for counterterrorism, and the many other elements that could make up whatever it is we want to call a “progressive approach to national security.” But for God’s sake, don’t use that term! Call it a modern approach. Call it a nontraditional approach. Call it an updated approach! But whatever you do, don’t use the language of domestic politics – it cedes the moral high ground, turns off the audience, and implies all the very worst things conservatives want people to believe about the way progressives/liberals/Democrats/non-neocons look at defense.

Grand enemies and grand strategy - Part II

Over a month ago I wrote a post asking the question: is a grand enemy necessary for a grand strategy? I had intended to get back to this since about a day after I posted and clarify and change some things, but alas here we are much later than that. In the meantime, Adam Elkus wrote a post on this topic which was followed by Zenpundit. They're both interesting reads, so check them out. I am especially interested by Adam's discussion of aggregating information and Mark's discussions on the impact of "systems" and that grand strategy is driven not by policy, but that it drives the development of policy. I will be drawing on these points later.

I will start this by saying that I worded the original post to ask a more fundamental question than I intended. I did not mean to pose the question so explicitly, but instead was trying (inelegantly) to ask the question: do those that develop grand strategy need to have a grand enemy, or the probability of a grand enemy forming, in order to focus their minds towards strategy development?

As Adam points out, the world is a highly complicated place with infinite data points and nearly as many networks. Without an enemy or adversary, how does a powerful nation mold its international activities to achieve its global ambitions? I don't know, because I'm not sure we've seen it done effectively. Yet. I get, and buy into, offshore balancing, but it is hardly something that permits the creation of coherent grand strategy. One need look no further than U.S. activities in South Asia as an example of incoherence that this type of strategy can lead to. The United States cannot, still, state whether it supports Pakistan or India in their conflict (that seems oh, so important to Afghanistan), whether or not Iran is being helpful or not with regard to Afghanistan (seems to be a bit of columns A and B), or if we prefer the company of the Central Asian states or cooperation of Russia. While the Afghan conflict is the biggest one we have at the moment, it has been a prime candidate for offshore balancing and a dismal failure in execution. The United States has no idea what regional powers to enable to assist itself without pissing off the other powers it may care about on other issues. (Let's face it, Afghanistan isn't the biggest strategic issue the U.S. faces at the moment, even if it is the biggest hot war going). This is one strategic problem that we have been thinking about for 10 years about one country and still haven't a clue on where to begin.

Mark is right that great powers seek to force their will upon rivals and others within a "system" defined by international norms and mores. What to do about Afghanistan is another example on how without a great rival, great powers don't know how to do this. In fact, offshore balancing is working the system - but we still don't know how to because we can't predict or understand 2d, 3d, Nth order effects of a system consisting of the aforementioned infinite data points and networks. We simply can't figure this out; a vestige our now-realized failed attempts at using the mujahideen to our own ends, ignorant of future threats of doing the same. I can't readily say I'm on the Boyd bandwagon (can't say I'm off either, I'm still trying to figure out the "so what" of it all), but if one were, with so many data points OODA loops for offshore balancing would be so numerous and of such short flash-to-bang intervals that the strategist would be overwhelmed by sensory overload.

I'm also with Mark on this business of grand strategy driving policy. But policy drives strategy (sans "grand"). Afghanistan is a strategic fight in my view, not grand. It is a war waged against an enemy that presents no existential threat to the U.S. or even significant threats to the national "interests" put forth in the National Security Strategy (talk about misnomers). It is, however, a case study in the failure of grand strategy development by powers with no real threats to itself. We can't tell up from down or whether we're coming or going. That's not the fault of the strategists - it is the realistic chaos of the world which I feel may be less than enough to focus the activities and expenditure of valuable resources of a powerful state with nebulous ambitions other than its own prosperity.

At this point I will cede that I have not yet made the case that a grand enemy can provide that focus that cuts through the information overload, but that there is a good case that the absence of one does not provide the focus necessary. So let's call this post one of at least a few on this topic, sequels to follow as time and brain waves allow.

Is a clear and equal enemy necessary to develop a valid grand strategy?

In times where powerful nations have had clear, and often equal, enemies, developing a real and viable grand strategy has usually happened. Necessity has dictated this requirement. One could argue that we have a clear enemy - al Qaida, terrorism, whatever - but is it really? We can't find their leadership (well, other than their #3 man repeatedly) or them massed on the battlefield which we could then use our military against. So it's not really clear. And it's certainly not equal. While today's enemies could hurt us, they are by no stretch of imagination an existential threat to the United States or any other western nation.

This question came to me after reading the passage I'm about to quote at length. It is from Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm and in it Sir Winston is quoting an address he gave in March 1936 (it's on page 207 for those of you with the 1948 U.S. edition).

For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent, and particularly to prevent the Low Countries falling into the hands of such a Power. Viewed in the light of history, these four centuries of consistent purpose amid so many changes of names and facts, of circumstances and conditions, must rank as one of the most remarkable episodes which the records of any race, nation, state, or people can show. Moreover, on all occasions England took the more difficult course. Faced by Philip II of Spain, against Louis XIV under William III and Marlborough, against Napoleon, against William II of Germany, it would have been easy and must have been very tempting to join with the stronger and share the fruits of his conquest. However, we always took the harder course, joined with the less strong Powers, made a combination among them, and thus defeated and frustrated the Continental military tyrant whoever he was, whatever nation he led. Thus we preserved the liberties of Europe, protected the growth of its vivacious and varied society, and emerged after four terrible struggles with an ever-growing fame and widening Empire, and with the Low Countries safely protected in their independence. Here is the wonderful unconscious tradition of British foreign policy. All our thoughts rest in that tradition today. I know of nothing which has occurred to alter or weaken the justice, wisdom, valour, and prudence upon which our ancestors acted. I know of nothing that has happened to human nature which in the slightest degree alters the validity of their conclusions. I know of nothing in military, political, economic, or scientific fact which makes me feel that we might not, or cannot, march along the same road. I venture to put this very general proposition before you because it seems to me that if it is accepted, everything else becomes more simple.

Observe that the policy of England takes no account of which nation it is that seeks the overlordship of Europe. The question is not whether it is Spain, or the French Monarchy, or the French Empire, or the German Empire, or the Hitler regime. It has nothing to do with rulers or nations; it is concerned solely with whoever is the strongest or the potentially dominating tyrant. Therefore, we should not be afraid of being accused of being pro-French or anti-German. If the circumstances were reversed, we could equally be pro-German and anti-French. It is a law of public policy which we are following, and not a mere expedient dictated by accidental circumstances, or likes and dislikes, or any other sentiment.

There's more if you want to read it, but that is the most coherent grand strategy I've ever read. Once could conjecture that the menace of Soviet communism was a strong and potentially dominating tyrant on the Continent. So this policy, this strategy, continued for another 50 years after this speech was given. Now there were no more threats to the peace and stability of Europe - and certainly none to the Low Countries. No wonder the UK National Security Strategy was so vapid. The strategy that had been used for 450 years until what is comparatively just recently became somewhat useless.

What about the United States? I wouldn't say that we've had the same strategy for 200 some odd years. At least I wouldn't say we've had a coherent one - possibly to improve our status in the world or our economic condition or something else so nebulous as to be of no value. But we did spend the first hundred years "taming" the land and consolidating the government's power over it. After that things get a little messy except for the World and Cold Wars (the latter of which I would argue was the longest we've ever gone with a single grand foreign strategy). So now what?

Are the UK and US unable to make a strategy because the thing that worries us most (an existential threat) just doesn't exist anymore? When we had enemies with grand strategy, we countered with a grand strategy (or in the quote above have an overarching grand strategy that most everything else fits in). But now we have an enemy that uses a strategy of tactics, which we've met with a strategy of tactics. Having an enemy whose abilities we exaggerate doesn't help - we create operational plans for tactical gains but just come up empty with grand strategy. Is that because we just haven't done it yet, that it's too hard, or that there just isn't one to be had? Why don't we have some overarching theme to our foreign policy like the Brits did for 450 years(!)? Once we get past the platitudes we usually use maybe we'll get there, but I'm not holding my breath. But we need to get there soon, because for the past 100 years in the US and the past 20 years in the UK, we've been letting our enemies dictate the level and validity of our strategic thinking - or even dictate that we shouldn't use strategy at all. I can only imagine what Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, PC, DL, FRS would think of that. I'd guess not much.

Recommended reading on strategy and an administrative note

In case you've missed these (and I nearly did), I wanted to recommend a couple of pretty good papers on strategy development. The first, from Small Wars Journal, is titled Looking for the Hedgehog Idea and was written by Justin Kelly and Mike Brennan for the Australian Army Journal. Very interesting read. The second is a UK Parliament committee document titled Who does UK National Strategy? It's a good question. It's still a good question if you substitute "US" for "UK" (thanks to Aaron Ellis for sending me the link). I'm not sure much of it is applicable to a US audience, but it gets at some of the root causes for why the UK isn't very good at developing grand strategy. I'm sure a lot of those causes are similar on this side of the pond.

Now for the administrative note. As you can see, I've dropped the Gunslinger handle. It served me well for a year now, but I think it's causing more confusion than it's helping. First, on the rare occasions that other blogs cite my posts, it is sometimes with my name and sometimes with Gunslinger. Second, with so many similar letters and the nature of auto-complete, Gunslinger and Gulliver have been mixed up a few times. I'm not trying to distance myself from Gulliver's writing or any such thing, but I think this will help everyone get the right one of us. Lord knows, he probably wants to distance himself from my writing! For a totally lazy reason, I don't like handling two gmail accounts - especially one so little used as my Gunslinger account. You can reach my regular email at the "email us" link on the right of the page. And finally, I think putting my name on these posts will help keep me honest on what I write and avoid any personal attacks on other people.

As I bid farewell to this nom de plume, I'll let you all in on why I chose it. My first platoon - 4th Platoon, A Troop, 3d Squadron, 7th U.S. Cavalry - was a tank platoon known as the Gunslingers. Since this was the platoon I led through the invasion of Iraq, using Gunslinger was my homage to them. But enough about me - go read those two papers!

UPDATE: Based on some comments I've received via email, please don't take my comments as a condemnation on anonymous blogging - especially my comment on honesty. I fully support anonymous blogging - without it we would lose the great thoughts of many smart people who aren't able to write under their own names for very valid reasons. Such as the rest of the Ink Spots team and many of our readers who comment and have their own blogs. Using a pseudonym doesn't decrease their honesty at all and in many cases allows them to be more honest than they would be otherwise. I just think it will help me to not be partially anonymous anymore to keep my blogging at a tone and level that I want my blogging to be. That is all I meant by that.

For all the talk about strategy this week, we're not any closer to doing this right (updated)

Boy, oh boy, that ASG report has stirred up a hurricane of debate. I won't even link to all of the great posts on this discussion because there are too many and I'd probably leave quite a few out - and readers of Ink Spots probably already follow and read most of them anyway. And before I go on, I acknowledge that I am not an expert on Afghanistan or the conflict there. But my current problems with the Afghanistan conflict and how it is being waged - as well as my issues with the critiques of the strategy - has little to do with Afghanistan itself but in our discussion of strategy.

I have not yet seen a viable or coherent discussion on strategy in terms of ends, ways, means. I find a lot of commentators pay lip service to this form of strategic development, but I find the arguments lacking because they're too often narrowly focused on each writer's interests and biases. Even within the government where the strategy is determined, the logic of connecting ends, ways, means has been lazy at best to meet domestic political imperatives. While these imperatives are important in a democracy, they should inform and not skew the logic of strategy development. We, and our NATO allies, are wealthy countries full of really smart people with access to vast amounts of data and information. We should be able to do this correctly, if only because we've done it correctly(ish) before. So here's how I'd like to see our strategy in Afghanistan developed - irrespective of what that strategy ends up being.

1. Posit the importance of defending the United States against al Qaeda versus all of the other threats that face the United States. Somehow, 9 years on we still haven't done this. AQ is still a looming bogeyman and policymakers have yet to articulate what kind of threat they pose and what would be considered acceptable. You know, because total security is not possible. We need to be realistic about this. As defeating AQ is the stated central purpose of our operations in Afghanistan - and they're not exclusively in the AfPak region - I would think that realistically framing our intended ends via AQ (globally - not just what we want to do to them in Afghanistan) would be the first step. If, after careful deliberation, it's determined that we have specific objectives against AQ (and figured out what we're willing to do and what to do it with) then we can move to step 3 after considering step 2.

2. Define our objectives in the AfPak region - and not just about AQ. I don't need to belabor this point, but we simply lack any real regional strategies anywhere on the globe. It's a large, populous place where the United States has many interests. Many interests. But regionally we're incoherent and that needs to change. No, we're probably not going to solve India/Pakistan or Pakistan's internal problems or Iran any time soon. But we can develop a coherent strategy based on our policies towards all of these problems. These objectives need to be balanced with our other global objectives so that we can really determine what we're willing to do there.

3. Determine how Afghanistan fits into 1. and 2. and define our objectives there as they nest with our global and regional objectives. Wars that escalate into behemoth operations with no end in sight do so because we too often look at them as ends in themselves. But they shouldn't be - they need to be weighed against all of the other objective the United States has all over the world. Many pundits are for or against the war for a number of reasons, but I've heard little of reasons other than for monetary reasons (means by the way - not ends) or ends about Afghanistan itself devoid of grand (or at least grander) strategy.

I'm not going to hold my breath that this will ever actually happen or any variation of this. Even if it did, there would still be plenty of debate on the assumptions and data underpinning our stated ends at each point - such is the nature of politics and there is nothing wrong with that. But we don't have strategy - I'll refer you back to my posts from a couple weeks ago about this - we have operational art masquerading as strategy. Wars are too expensive in so many ways for too many people to continue to wage it in the way we have been.

UPDATE: Here's a good list of links about the ASG report.

John Nagl is a really smart guy, but this is just goofy excuse-making

Josh Rogin got his hands on an advance copy (pdf) of the Final Report of the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, the group of bipartisan defense experts charged by Congress with Monday-morning quarterbacking DoD's work in writing the official QDR. The panel was composed of a whole bunch of big names in the field, including Stephen Hadley, William Perry, Richard Armitage, Jack Keane, Eric Edelman, John Lehman, Jim Talent, and John Nagl.

The report is broadly critical of the QDR, which puts Nagl in the uncomfortable position of having to defend the work of his colleagues while not being too rough on the woman who founded the think tank where he's now president, former CNAS pooh-bah and current Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy. This is even harder than eating soup with a knife!

Nagl ... told The Cable in an interview that his panel's report doesn't necessarily contradict Flournoy's document.

"The QDR was a very good product and did a good job of focusing on the wars we're in, but was unable to focus on the far out, which is was congressionally mandated to do. Plus the panel could look at things that were outside the Department of Defense," he said. "We also have the luxury of thinking deeper and seeing some troubling trends."

Who else thinks that saying you're "unable" to do something that's required by law is a tolerable excuse? I mean, seriously, that's your excuse? They were unable to do what Congress has mandated they do because there was some other stuff going on? Can you imagine trying that one at work (or on the IRS)?

Ok, so the panel had some luxuries, like not fighting a war at the same time as trying to accomplish its goal. (The Defense Department also has something like a squillion more people to devote to the task than the QDR Independent Panel, but whatever.) And I know how hard it is to develop a massive document like this, especially one that's consensus-built. But there is really no excuse for failing to do what's directed.

Oh, wait. Yes there is.

One of the problems with the QDR was that it came out before President Obama's National Security Strategy and therefore couldn't be properly aligned with the overall vision, Nagl said. "The entire process is not as tightly organized as we would like to see it and it doesn't cascade down from the top as we'd like it to."

Yeah. That is a problem.

As I've told you before, the way we formulate national strategy is all kinds of effed up right now. The QDR should really be informed by a National Military Strategy that's nested within a National Defense Strategy that's nested within a National Security Strategy, all of which should coherently articulate American interests, strategic objectives, means, choices, and associated risk. But let's be clear: the QDR is not a strategy, per se; it's a strategic review. The QDR is overlaid on the various strategies, articulating how the various tools of national power housed in DoD will be applied to threats and strategic challenges. The NSS hadn't yet been published when the QDR came down the pike, and that's a problem. (Of course, the NSS sucks so badly that it wouldn't have helped to produce a better QDR anyway, so I've always found the bleating on that note to be sort of silly.)

All of this is a long way of saying that I agree with the Independent Panel report's general conclusions about the shortcomings of the QDR, as outlined in the introduction:

The initial Bottom-up Review [the QDR's predecessor] was considered a success. Of course there was much debate about the conclusions, but Congress thought the process was worthwhile and mandated that it be repeated every four years. Unfortunately, once the idea became statutory, it became part of the bureaucratic routine. The natural tendency of bureaucracy is to plan short term, operate from the top down, think within existing parameters, and affirm the correctness of existing plans and programs of record.That is exactly what happened to the QDR process. Instead of unconstrained, long term analysis by planners who were encouraged to challenge preexisting thinking, the QDRs became explanations and justifications, often with marginal changes, of established decisions and plans.

I'm not going to get into the specific recommendations made by the panel in the sections of the report that amount to a re-do of the QDR (but suffice it to say that it's definitely informed by the now-published NSS, and amounts to something like "more of EVERYTHING, wwwhhhheeeeee!!!!"). But the fact of the matter is that the QDR needs to be focused on the big picture, on strategic evolution, and on reconceptualizing the way that the nation's military tools can be applied to the task of achieving our strategic goals -- not our intermediate operational objectives. I didn't hate the document as much as some people did, but the Independent Panel got this part right.

The 2010 National Security Strategy sucks, and I'm gonna tell you why

The 2010 National Security Strategy was published by the White House yesterday. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but it sucks.

On the bright side, so has pretty much every other version of the NSS. The fundamental imperative for any strategic document, I think, can be summed up in the guidance my favorite sports-talk station gives to listeners before they call in: "have a take and don't suck." The problem with a document like this is that it's developed by consensus, by innumerable chops back and forth among a bunch of different stakeholders, so just about everyone with a "security" issue gets to wedge in his or her "priority." You end up with something that's comprehensive rather than assertive, and so the NSS is often more remarkable for what it chooses not to focus on than for what it includes. That's not to say that there needs to be some controversial core argument, but rather that the guidance should lay out some clearly-defined vision rather than cobbling together every possible "threat" and "challenge" imaginable in the future security environment.

Now on the other hand, this NSS sucks especially bad. And I'm going to argue that it sucks in ways that are not only disappointing, but actually sort of pernicious. But we'll get to that later. To start off with, let's talk about what's wrong:

1. It's a statement of principles, not a strategy.

It's no coincidence that the writer of the NSS is Ben Rhodes, previously the president's national security speechwriter, now Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications. Stuff like this is normally drafted by speechwriters, so it's not exactly a departure from the norm. But as others have already argued, this "strategy" reads more like a State of the Union than anything that would go by that name in the Pentagon. The document does a fantastic job of laying out just "what America is about," what we value, and how we'd like the world to be if we could draw it up from scratch, but without the connective tissue of prioritization and resource choices, none of that is really what strategy is about.

2. It doesn't know what it wants...

The "Overview" section at the beginning of the NSS tries to tell us what the whole thing is about:

Our national security strategy is, therefore, focused on renewing American leadership so that we can more effectively advance our interests in the 21st century.

"National security" is construed so broadly as to incorporate basically every element of American political, economic, and military strength. "American interests" are defined in such a way that they're nearly unintelligible. Here's what the NSS has to say on page 17:

To achieve the world we seek, the United States must apply our strategic approach in pursuit of four enduring national interests:

• Security: The security of the United States, its citizens, and U.S. allies and partners.
• Prosperity: A strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity.
• Values: Respect for universal values at home and around the world.
• International Order: An international order advanced by U.S. leadership that promotes peace, security, and opportunity through stronger cooperation to meet global challenges.

But are these really our "enduring national interests"? If so, why? Is a stable international order actually a core national interest, or is it merely a means to ensure security, prosperity and respect for universal values? Is "security" really a desired endstate, or is it simply a means to ensure both liberty and prosperity?

One of the novel areas of focus in this version of the NSS is domestic economic strength.

At the center of our efforts is a commitment to renew our economy, which serves as the wellspring of American power. The American people are now emerging from the most devastating recession that we have faced since the Great Depression. As we continue to act to ensure that our recovery is broad and sustained, we are also laying the foundation for the long term growth of our economy and competitiveness of our citizens. The investments that we have made in recovery are a part of a broader effort that will contribute to our strength: by providing a quality education for our children; enhancing science and innovation; transforming our energy economy to power new jobs and industries; lowering the cost of health care for our people and businesses; and reducing the Federal deficit.

Each of these steps will sustain America's ability to lead in a world where economic power and individual opportunity are more diffuse.

And so there we are: back to the "ability to lead," and to global primacy. So our objective is "leadership," right? And we get leadership by... assuring our security? And enhancing and sustaining our economic prosperity? But wait, aren't those the interests that we're trying to advance through leadership? See how this gets circular? We need to be strong so that we can be secure so that we can lead so that we can advance our interests in being strong and secure and prosperous and... leading? It all ends up as a meaningless tautology.

3. ...And so it wants everything.

Political pressures and limitations mean that the truly important, defining questions that should inform American grand strategy are elided through a sort of assertive question-begging: the Obama administration, knowing that even to engage in a public consideration of whether American global "leadership" is still necessary or desirable -- whether the benefits of unipolarity are worth the costs -- would give rise to the sort of Democrats-as-defeatist criticisms to which they are already so vulnerable, simply ignores the question. The administration assumes, as has every other post-Cold War presidential administration, that the most appropriate remedy to a staggering array of global threats is simply to pursue or retain the power to do everything.

Here are a few of the things the document suggests are "priorities:"

pursuit of a nonproliferation agenda/security weapons of mass destruction; disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qaeda and Associated Movements; succeeding in the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan; denying extremists safe haven in Pakistan; transitioning full responsibility for Iraqi security to that nation's sovereign government; comprehensive peace settlement between Israel and tis neighbors (to include creation of a Palestinian state with contiguous territory); engagement with Muslim communities around the world; rebuilding American economic strength; pursuit of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements; support for individual opportunity and state capacity abroad; promotion of "universal values" (er, but just by example), to include global equality for women; the shaping of a just and stable international order "capable of addressing the problems of our time."

And no joke, all that's just [paraphrased] from the section entitled "Advancing Top National Security Priorities."

The thing about priorities is that if you have a whole bunch, you don't have any. What are these objectives and mission sets prioritized against? What else is the nation interested in accomplishing or effecting that does not constitute a "priority"?

4. Unfortunately, what's missing is any idea of how to get there from here... if we can even figure out where "there" is.

Strategy is fundamentally about prioritization and resourcing. The National Security Strategy is meant to provide the broad, overarching strategic concept for ensuring the nation's security, within which the Defense Department will nest its National Military Strategy and the QDR. While the DoD is obviously responsible for identifying which parts of the NSS require the application of military means, this particular NSS does nothing to suggest which mission sets or objectives are more important than the others. It does nothing to answer questions of how budgets and authorities should be balanced between various departments -- meaning that it's essentially silent on the question of resources, or means -- or how what the military would call the defense, diplomacy, and development Lines of Effort should be blended across the various ways available to us to effect our desired endstates.

When the QDR was published several months ago, you had a great many budget hawks saying things like "how can we write a QDR and plan defense budgets when we don't even know what missions the Defense Department will be asked to perform by the national leadership??!" Most of these folks were just bent out of shape that the SECDEF was going to cancel programs they deemed necessary, holding out hope that the President's NSS would show just exactly how necessary their big industrial pet project was to national defense. (To be fair, though, the QDR really should be about understanding the ways in which the Department is working and must work in the future to execute the National Military Strategy, which of course ought to be nested within the NSS.) Well, let me ask you this: do we have any better idea about that now? Did this publication shed any light on whether the Department is asking itself the right questions, or answering them the right way in the QDR? Is there a single program decision from either the QDR or the budget announcement that makes more or less sense on account of this NSS?

In short, the document completely fails to provide any strategic leadership. It's the same old laundry list of "priorities" and "requirements" that the DoD and the services are criticized for providing when asked about programming and budgets for the future.

Reforming our national security apparatus is a process that must be led from outside and above the departments. It can't be done by DoD, no matter how often Secretary Gates says we need a rebalancing of the instruments of national power, and no matter how many times Admiral Mullen speaks on the Hill to ask that the foreign assistance budget be fully funded. This is exactly the sort of thing that requires Presidential leadership. Because without a strategic vision that's articulated outside the Department, you'll continue to see our foreign and security policies be dominated by defense considerations.

If the White House or the National Security Staff were to really engage in the preparation of strategy, it would go like this:

1. Identify enduring U.S. interests in a clear and comprehensive way
2. Determine what strategic endstates would ensure the advancement and protection of those interests
3. Develop the ways by which those endstates can be realized, how efforts must be channeled and directed, what levers and mechanisms must be manipulated
4. Create or modify the means the government requires to influence the environment and enable its lines of effort, which is to say figure out what kind of tools you need beyond a hammer, and then figure out how to budget and program for them

That's how strategy's developed: working back from endstates through ways/LOEs to means/tools, and then enacting measures to use the tools you've created along the ways you've identified to achieve the endstates necessary for the advancement of your interests.

AND SO BUT WHY THIS IS ALL SO VERY SCREWED UP:

For one thing, the NSS's abdication of responsibility for true strategic leadership aggravates the tensions in civil-military relations that so many people have been lately bemoaning. With a lack of clear guidance about our true national priorities, the Defense Department is left to the only thing it knows how to do: advocating for the centrality of problems it knows how to solve, slinging that hammer over the shoulder and heading out in search of a nail. In other words, you're going to have generals and senior DoD civilians doing the sort of high-level strategic freelancing you don't want, determining United States foreign policy from the perspective of the U.S. military. (Note: this is not the way this country is meant to run.)

BUT REALLY WHAT SEEMS LIKE ALMOST DEFINITELY THE MOST PERNICIOUS AND DESTRUCTIVE AND JUST REALLY NOT-COOL PART OF ALL THIS:

By writing a National SECURITY Strategy that completely fails to explain to people exactly what is meant by "security," and by pursuing a circular strength-means-leadership-means-security-means strength strategic logic, and by thus determining that essentially every political, cultural, social, and economic aspect of American life helps to define just exactly how "secure" we Americans are, this administration has cannily and basically without objection used rhetoric to establish every single one of its domestic political priorities -- "complete and competitive education for every American; a transformation of the way that we produce and use energy; ... access to quality, affordable health care; ... the responsible management of our federal budget; ... comprehensive immigration reform"; [you forgot "fat kids"!]; etc. -- as germane to national security.

And I'll just leave the interpretation of that part up to you.

The LDCOA and Strategic Planning

I am currently reading through CSBA's Regaining Strategic Competence (boy that Dr. K is a smart guy). I hope to do a longer analysis of it when I'm done, but thought it prudent to discuss some of the earlier points in it - especially as some of it has been bothering me for a while.

The premise of the monograph is to demonstrate America's waning ability to competently think about and plan strategy - and not because of Iraq alone (which might be proof enough). Additionally, while the authors believe that some organizational changes are required, the organization of the national security apparatus is not the core problem with our strategic deficiencies. It is more about process.

From a military standpoint, planning is a fairly set process in how it is done. I was not a strategic planner in the Army, but from the ones that I know, it isn't terribly different than planning at the operational or high-tactical level - from a process point of view. It is a balancing of your own resources and capabilities versus those of your adversary towards some desired endstate. Pretty straightforward, right?

It seems not. Krepinevich and Watts lay out a list of strategic performance pitfalls. While they all seem valid to me, two jump out immediately. Check out numbers 9 and 10. First, there are few people who have the natural acumen for strategy (which I hope to address later) and second is the failure to understand the adversary (which we'll talk about here).

In standard military planning, on top of templating the enemy (equipment and disposition), the intel planner should lay out two very specific things that are somewhere between extremely educated guesses and wild assed guesses: the enemy's Most Dangerous Course of Action (MDCOA) and Most Likely Course of Action (MLCOA). The former is if everything went right for the enemy and is a worst-case scenario for your side. The latter is what the enemy is probably going to do. The command needs to be aware of the MDCOA and hopefully have branches of the plan to address it. But the plan should generally be built around the MLCOA. Simple, right?

Except lately, at the strategic level, we've completely ignored the MDCOA. I'm not sure why this is: optimism or ignorance I imagine. Had that analysis been done correctly, we probably wouldn't have gotten as mired in Iraq and Afghanistan as we are now because we would have had viable plans years ago. But it gets worse. That same optimism/ignorance has degraded the MLCOA so it doesn't even come close to reality. Iraq and Afghanistan (and arguably Kosovo before it) were plans based on the Least Dangerous Course of Action (LDCOA - my invention and not in FM 1-02 or whatever it's called these days) - that is if the enemy did everything you wanted it to so as to make quick work of your operation. Why wouldn't the enemy do everything in it's power to destroy itself in our interests?

Assuming (or really hoping) that things will get better or just betting that whatever you and your allies do, in a vacuum separated from the enemy's resources and capabilities, will bring about victory is just stupid. A platoon leader would be fired for doing that - why shouldn't a G/J staff? Or some of the NSC? Intellectual laziness, ideology, and just downright stupidity have no place in the framing and planning of the nation's strategy.

I would argue that most of the evidence I've seen thus far in the monograph is not new. Putting it all together to frame our ability (or lack of ability) to effectively plan at the strategic level is new. Please go read this paper - it is worth your time.

We've got our best man on it

John Donnelly does a good job for CQ (subscription only; the link I've provided is to the Early Bird, so it works if you're on a DOD server) of giving context on the development of the QDR, echoing many of the themes expressed by Andrew Krepinevich (in Foreign Affairs) and the Flournoy/Brimley team (in Proceedings). Here's my favorite snip:

Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, and other war planners support Gates’ effort to overhaul the military’s two-conflict strategic doctrine. But they concede the effort is still a work in progress, with no clear picture of what the new strategy will be.

“What do you change it to?” Casey said. “That’s the hard part.”

Glad to know he's thought this one through. But seriously, Secretary Gates nails it here:

“I think we’re trying to capture not just . . . how many things — the numbers issues — but the diverse range of . . . challenges we may be called on to deal with at one time,” Flournoy said.

Gates echoed that view in a separate session with reporters last month: The rethinking of conventional two-war strategies, Gates explained, “derives from my view that the old way of looking at irregular warfare as being one kind of conflict and conventional warfare as [another] discrete kind of warfare is an outdated concept.”

And not to worry, partisan hacks: Tom Donnelly of AEI keeps fighting the good fight for you guys, suggesting that any alleged strategic rethink is really just a ninja way of justifying defense budget cuts and leaving America at the mercy of the treacherous Chinese:

[He] argues that Gates is largely making a show of strategic rethinking to justify the reordering of the Pentagon budget he announced in April and other adjustments that are expected to fall in fiscal 2011. “They’ll produce a QDR that’s strategic lipstick on a budgetary pig,” he said.

In any event, a worthwhile read if you can access it (even if it is probably more informative for those who don't really follow this debate).

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything

"Today, despite growing evidence that a wide array of U.S. military capabilities are depreciating in value, many remain reluctant to engage in the hard thinking necessary for anticipatory transformation -- preparing for emerging challenges by identifying new capabilities to offset or replace those that are progressively wasting."

This charge forms the core of a thoughtful and forward-looking article by Andrew Krepinevich in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs. If it sounds familiar, it should -- Bob Gates has been saying basically the same thing for the last two years.

Much to the dismay of critics like Gian Gentile, Krepinevich remains one of the most influential voices in the American strategic debate, particularly on the subject of force structure. "The Pentagon's Wasting Assets" isn't comprehensive and it isn't perfect, but it's an essential exploration of the myriad ways that asymmetric threats challenge America's standing in the world and a primer on the sort of thinking required to combat those threats.

Perhaps the most significant (and frequent) error made by strategic planners is to assume that future threats must necessarily take the same shape as current ones, differing only in quantity or strength. That sort of thinking dominates both sides of the present debate about the most appropriate force structure for the future (and the attendant choices about spending): we're asked to decide between a force optimized for counterinsurgency and what was once called Low Intensity Conflict, or one built to confront conventional threats, armed and equipped for major combat operations (MCO) against some future great power challenger.

While American military planners consider how to best confront budgeting challenges and resource constraints to deliver the capabilities our political leadership needs, we have to be realistic about how much change is possible. Congressional opposition, competing power bases in the services, and disparate viewpoints about the nature of future threats all conspire to limit the scope of any possible Departmental transformation. Whatever we imagine to be the likely future threats to our national security, we have to appreciate that we're not starting with a blank slate: we have to get to the force we need in the future from the force we have now. And we need to do so while appreciating that our greatest concern may be neither "next-war-itis" or "last-war-itis," but rather the assumption that future war will closely approximate any past wars.

Krepinevich cuts through the COIN/MCO divide, looking at current U.S. force structure and power projection capabilities through the eyes of our adversaries: where are our weak points? How can the enemy work to limit and restrict what we can do now? By answering these questions, we're best able to determine what capabilities are necessary to maintain the influence we currently enjoy while building a long-term strategy for American engagement in the world as that supremacy inevitably wanes.

So what are these challenges? What are "the Pentagon's wasting assets"? First and foremost we'll need to understand the effect of what may in the future be substantially constrained access to the global commons. After the fall of the Soviet Union, "the United States' ability to project military power was effectively unconstrained." Economic dominance and the absence of peer competitors allowed for a proliferation of expeditionary missions throughout the 1990s.

Understanding that this freedom of movement is essential to the projection of American power, U.S. adversaries and competitors are developing a number of anti-access weapons and tactics in response.

China is working to combine Western technology with Eastern stratagems, aiming to be able to seize the initiative in the event of a conflict by exploiting the element of surprise. The Chinese approach would entail destroying or disrupting the U.S. military's communications networks and launching preemptive attacks, to the point where such attacks, or even the threat of such attacks, would raise the costs of U.S. action to prohibitive levels.

(As an aside, the Chinese call this suite of capabilities "assassin's mace," which I've just got to say is an extremely badass name.)

Krepinevich also highlights a favorite example among critics of DoD long-term planning: a war game called Millennium Challenge 2002.

[The war-gaming exercise] pitted the United States against an "unnamed Persian Gulf military" meant to be a stand-in for Iran. The outcome was disquieting: what many expected to be yet another demonstration of the United States' military might turned out to be anything but.

The "Iranian" forces, led by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, successfully countered the U.S. forces at every turn. The U.S. fleet that steamed into the Persian Gulf found itself subjected to a surprise attack by swarms of Iranian suicide vessels and antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs). Well over half the U.S. ships were sunk or otherwise put out of action in what would have been the United States' worst naval disaster since Pearl Harbor.

The conclusion? "[P]rojecting power into an area of vital interest to the United States using traditional forces and operational concepts will become increasingly difficult." These examples serve to capture the true essence of asymmetric warfare: turning the enemy's strengths into weaknesses.

Which brings us back to today: how do we ensure that our strengths remain strengths, and that our adversaries aren't able to force us to give away those capabilities too cheaply? This very struggle is playing out today in Afghanistan, where questions mount about the utility of air power. Taliban information operations (IO) have been extremely effective in demonizing coalition airstrikes, casting American forces as indifferent to civilian casualties while drawing attention away from the insurgents' own atrocities. "The inability to discern the presence of civilians and assess the potential collateral damage of those strikes is inconsistent with the U.S. government's objective of providing security and safety for the Afghan people," said a recent CENTCOM report. This is certainly true, but how do we make sure we don't abandon an extremely useful capability for the purpose of rhetorical consistency?

(On a related note: I am far from Charlie Dunlap's biggest fan, but he published a very good discussion of "lawfare" in the most recent issue of Joint Force Quarterly. Take a look.)

Krepinevich gives some suggestions (or, in his words, "modest proposals"; I couldn't fail to mention this Swiftian allusion) for how the Defense Department should invest in future capabilities, and he expresses support for the cancellation of the DDG-1000 and Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) programs. His ideas are sensible, though they seem perhaps slightly out of place in a big-think piece like this one.

This scant criticism accompanies a slightly larger complaint: while noting that "before questions about how to adapt military capabilities to future requirements can be considered coherently, there must be a new strategic framework," Krepinevich mostly fails to provide us with one. He does suggest that the U.S. "must pursue a more modest strategy... one that reflects a better balance between goals and resources, features a reduced emphasis on wasting assets, and involves the vigorous identification, development, and exploitation of new areas of advantage." It's difficult to disagree with this assertion, and in future posts I'll try to elaborate my ideas for what shape such a grand strategy would take.