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Bill Moore
04-05-2016, 07:56 AM
After finally finishing the book, "Strategy: A History" by Lawrence Freedman

http://www.amazon.com/Strategy-History-Lawrence-Freedman/dp/0199325154/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1459839763&sr=1-1&keywords=History+of+Strategy

I feel compelled to start a threat on strategy in the 21st Century to explore want remains constant and what has changed. The intent to share what I took from this book, and then explore other areas, with the hope others will dive in to seriously explore this important topic. The ability to develop good strategy is essential for national security. Most seem to agree that something is off kilter since 9/11, and I suggest if we fail to identify and fix it we are putting our nation in peril.

Like many of you, I'm extremely busy, so I'll start with a few areas I intend to explore in more depth later. Of course, remaining true to form, I intend to be provocative.

Freedman's book (over 700 pages) addresses he early origins of strategy, military strategy, radical and revolutionary movements, business strategies, and interdisciplinary theories of strategy.

While Freedman appears to respect Clausewitz's deep insights on the nature of war, he doesn't fall into the trap of hero worshipping him and points out some flaws in his theory.

- He challenges CvC's duel between two opponents (the wrestling match) as being overly simplistic due to the nature of coalitions, which makes it much more complex than a dual between them and us.

- I tend to agree with his criticism of the center of gravity concept. CvC borrowed terms from the physics of his day, like COG and friction. Friction of course makes sense as a metaphor, but a COG only made sense if the enemy could be viewed holistically, so that an attack on one point were it all came together would throw it off balance or cause it to collapse (the fallacy of systems thinking). In the 80s, new thinking encouraged the belief that the COG was something that led to the enemy's brain, then using maneuver warfare (older concept, but embraced again in the 80s) seeking to dislocate him psychologically.

In practice the COG concept caused confusion and disagreement, it would have been easier if they adapted Jomini’s concept of the decisive point (not the doctrinal decisive point tied to a COG) to avoid the burden of an inappropriate metaphor. COGs have historically wasted planner’s time, and usually who won out was the strongest personality, not the best analysis. The real problem was the COG has been expanded to the point of meaninglessness. It encouraged the expectation that there could be a very specific set of operational objectives that would produce the desired political effect if attacked properly.

The idea that societies and their associated military systems might be comprehended as complex systems encouraged the view, reflected in the perplexing searches for enemy COGs, that hitting an enemy system in the exact right place would cause it to crumble quickly, as the impact would reverberate and affect all the interconnected parts.

The frustration of the search was a result of the fact that effects would not simply radiate out from some vital center. Societies and armies could adapt to shocks. As systems, they could break down into more subsystems that are viable, establish barriers, reduce dependencies, and find alternative forms of sustenance. CvC’s theory of decisive victory required reassessment based on the emergent political situation. CvC recognized it as it he started to relook limited war before he died, but the concept of a decisive battle retained its powerful hold over the military.

Bill Moore
04-05-2016, 08:09 AM
For me, I actually found the business strategy more interested. I have read volumes on military strategy, but after reading Freedman's description of strategy evolution in business I found myself seeing how it impacts military strategy, normally in a negative way.

He started off by discussing Taylorism, who focused on identifying how workers could be used more efficiently. In his view, a doer would not be able to understand the principles of management science either because of a lack of education or insufficient mental capacity, so they would have to be guided by the educated. It required people to work smarter but not by being smart themselves. I equated this to robotics before we had robots. The more the worker could be treated as an unthinking machine the better because without the complication of independent thought it would be possible to calculate how best to extract optimal performance. I can see the logic in that, but people are not robots, and one can see how this mentality led to significant labor unrest.

Lenin pronounced Taylorism as exploitive, yet he adapted the methodology. It was easier to push this form of management in the USSR where opposition could be crushed than the U.S.

He discussed McNamara at sufficient length. He was brought into to the SECDEF from Ford Motor Co. by JFK. He strengthened OSD, challenging the services to justify their budgets and programs in the face of intensive questioning by the whiz kids, mostly from RAND. It had a major impact on the management of the military programs and the conduct of operations, especially Vietnam. By the time he left OSD in 1968, his approach was derided for its relentless focus on what could be measured rather than what actually needed to be understood. (We still suffer the curse of measuring, and only having SMART objectives so they can be measuring, and still managing to lose, because as stated above we ignore what can't be measured).

Then a great discussion on planning that is very applicable to the military. Planning cycles came to dominate corporate life, with everybody waiting for a formal document that would tell them how to behave. Politically, the result was to strengthen the center at the expense of alienating those responsible for implementation, who were apt to become cynical in the face of meaningless targets.

The long-range forecasts upon which they depended were inherently unreliable, and the organizational inform was often dated, collected haphazardly into inappropriate categories and taking little account of cultural factors. These structures risked paralyzing decision-making and came at the expense of flexibility.

The success of planning depended on the ability to control the future consequences of present actions. This meant controlling the decisions of many people, with different interests and purposes, so as to secure a premeditated effect. Some causal theory must connect the planned actions with the desired future results, and then the ability to act on this theory.
By the 1980s, strategic planning was losing its luster. The planning departments became large and expensive, the next cycle began as soon as the previous one finished, and the outputs were ever more complicated. .

As in the military, the business world lost confidence in models based on centralized control, quantification, and rational analysis left an opening for alternative approaches to strategy (design?). Whether a superpower corporation or country, as the environment became less manageable, the cumbersome processes the model demanded became less dysfunctional and unresponsive.

In the 1980s, Harvard business professors complained managers abdicated their strategic responsibilities. They sought short term gains rather than long term innovation. The problem’s root was managers increasingly relying principles that prize analytical detachment and methodology over insight.

This part was enlightening to me, he described the folly of confusing rank with expertise. The idea that any General, regardless of background, would be capable of leading a combat or stability operation, based on management or military principles is dangerous.

Freedman wrote, "A false and shallow concept of the professional manager had developed. Such people were pseudoprofessionals who had no expertise in a any particular industry or technology but were believed to be able to step into an unfamiliar company and run it successfully thru strict application of financial controls, portfolio concepts, and a market-driven strategy."

The good news is the military seems to be increasingly recognizing these problems. Next thoughts on hyper competitiveness.

Bill Moore
04-05-2016, 08:15 AM
Final post tonight, and perhaps for a few days. After which I want to start addressing strategy in the 21st Century, as it contrasts with traditional or legacy strategies.

Freedman's discussion on competition between businesses has equal merit between nations conducting competitive strategies short of war.

The Japanese managed to combine lower cost and superior quality and then imitated each other, which meant the approach was bound to be subject to diminishing marginal returns as it became harder to squeeze more productivity out of existing factories and others caught up with the efficiency of their operations. Cutting costs and product improvements could be easily emulated and so left the relative competitive position unchanged, In fact, hyper-competition left everyone worse off (except perhaps the consumers). A sustainable position required relating the company to its competitive environment. Outperformance required a difference that could be preserved.

Note our national security documents frequently refer to the eroding U.S. technological competitive advantage due to the rapid proliferation of military related technology. So along comes the Red Queen Effect.

The problems facing companies trying to maintain a competitive advantage when everyone was trying to improve along the same metric was described as the Red Queen Effect. By focusing solely on operational effectiveness the result would be mutual destruction, until somehow, the competition stopped, often through mergers. Hopeless firms were likely to be those competing w/o end in the red oceans, instead of moving out to the blue oceans where they might create new market space. (21st century military implications?)

davidbfpo
04-05-2016, 12:05 PM
Bill,

There are a mass of previous threads where 'strategy' features in the title and not all of them relate to President Obama.

It may help to return to the 2014 thread 'The Understanding and Meaning of Strategy has been lost', which IMHO touched upon the same issues; it was based on a book written by the British academic Hew Strachan:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=19848

I attended a local lecture given by Lawrence Freedman, part of the publication process and unlike previous talks he'd given on non-strategy subjects he was not persuasive, indeed it was all too overpowering.

Bill Moore
04-05-2016, 03:15 PM
David,

I appreciate the thought, but that isn't the direction I want to take this thread. I'm not convinced the meaning of strategy has been lost. The idea that strategy only belongs in the realm of the military has been outdated since Kings quit leading their armies into battle. For me, Freedman touched on a number of issues I can relate to from personal experience. However, I only used Freedman to start the thread. It isn't about him, it is about identifying what has changed and what remains the same regarding strategy and strategic factors in the 211st century.

AmericanPride
04-11-2016, 12:55 AM
Interesting topics Bill. One thought that immediately comes to mind: I think the U.S. suffers in this regard in part due to the barrier constructed between military strategy and political strategy, often leaving both military officers and political officials confused or frustrated with the other. This barrier has become increasingly destructive because of the intensification of 'political warfare' (a term I use broadly here to describe all the non-military activity taken by states to compel other states to change behavior). So, what element that has changed is that military strategy is most directly and strongly connected with political strategy than in previous generations.

Bill Moore
04-11-2016, 06:44 AM
Interesting topics Bill. One thought that immediately comes to mind: I think the U.S. suffers in this regard in part due to the barrier constructed between military strategy and political strategy, often leaving both military officers and political officials confused or frustrated with the other. This barrier has become increasingly destructive because of the intensification of 'political warfare' (a term I use broadly here to describe all the non-military activity taken by states to compel other states to change behavior). So, what element that has changed is that military strategy is most directly and strongly connected with political strategy than in previous generations.

Some would argue that our current operational art, despite claims to the contrary, are increasingly disconnected from political aims. I agree with that, how many times have you seen a senior officer state he or she just wants a clearly defined military objective or end state, so they can say they did their part? How many appreciate the complexity of strategy from the start and accept it is interactive, and that we must interact with all elements of national power and allies to pursue shifting political aims? I will never forget the claim from senior military officers in Baghdad in APR 2003 that they won the war and it is time to go home. If you only looked at from a military perspective their argument may have made sense. This is why you increasingly see a push to get military officers to start thinking strategically again. We have dumbed down the force with our mindless focus on task, condition, and standard, and it has percolated to the top ranks in many cases.

I just started reading "Toward a New Maritime Strategy," by Peter Haynes. So far I would give 5 out of 5 stars, but will offer a more thorough review later. He hooked me in the introduction, where he made an argument that the Navy had become too focused on threats, operations, and war fighting at the expense of thinking strategically. He reviewed the history of cold war strategy and post-cold war navy strategy. Of note, he made the point that civilian strategists in the early years of the Cold War (still a problem in my opinion) we hyper rational, ahistoric, and apolitical. He also noted strategy goals shifted from winning to deterrence and all that implies (I won't repeat it here).

Since we were freed from the concept of winning, the Depart of Defense focused on program management instead of winning strategies. Using best business practices to ensure we had sustainable positive balance of power (off set strategies, metrics, centralized decision making, McNamara's budgeting process, etc.). I'm still wrestling with all the implications, since deterrence is still a needed mainstay of our strategy, but it shouldn't be the sole aspect.

He argues, and I agree, that the military (he focused on the Navy) seems content focusing on threats, and largely ignoring opportunities to advance interests that are not relative to known threats. Haynes argues that instead we should be focused on vital strategic interests, which in the view of the Navy is protecting the U.S. international system (economic and political), which is what the U.S. derives most of its power from. If we focus on our vital interests, then we can put threats in perspective and that would seem to open a host of opportunities that we may be missing now.

More to follow, but overall I think the military strives to be apolitical and misguidedly focus solely on military objectives as though they can be extracted cleanly from political, economic, and information objectives. What we seem to be missing, and of course this is not a fresh insight, is whole of government integration.

Bill Moore
04-25-2016, 06:19 AM
Expanding on the desired ends or conditions as it relates to strategy, I found this article of interest.

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/04/america-cant-do-much-about-isis/127644/?oref=defenseone_today_nl

America Can’t Do Much About ISIS

That leaves patience, containment, and humanitarian aid as the least-bad policies while waiting for this awful war to play itself out.

After an explanation of why wars like this drag on for years and why ISIL won't be defeated by some proxy conquering Raqqa and pulling down their flag, though we still have many conventional thinkers in the military to include SOF who continue to buy into the curse of Clausewitz, his center of gravity, while ignoring his true wisdom about understanding the nature of war you're about to engage in. The authors focus on how to answer GEN Petraeus's famous question, "Tell me how this ends?"


In practical terms, the answer to Petraeus’s famous question is thus relatively insensitive to U.S. policy. If this war plays out the way so many others have, its end will come not through an allied offensive to conquer a capital city but through the mutual exhaustion of multiple actors with multiple, often wealthy outside benefactors. This will eventually happen—but it will likely take many years yet. U.S. efforts won’t change these fundamentals much absent a major stabilization and nation-building effort that few Americans now support, or some diplomatic breakthrough that assuages Iranian, Russian, and Saudi long-run security concerns. And that leaves Americans with patience and containment as the least-bad policy while waiting for this awful war to play itself out.

One of the explanations on why this conflict will likely continue for years, even if the actors change their names (ISIL becomes ?) is the about of external support the various combatants are receiving, and the failure of West to address the humanitarian crisis that is destabilizing the region (beyond the conflict zones) and Europe. Same as it ever was, or have strategic factors in the 21st Century resulted in new conditions that strategy must adjust to? A little or a lot of both I suspect. Maybe the nature and character of these conflicts haven't changed, but we changed as a nation and are no longer capable of developing effective strategy based on our current ideology, which includes the false dichotomy between war and peace, which results in a failure to recognize the risk of not acting short of traditional war, or trying to solve a problem using traditional war where it is an inappropriate response.

The latest National Military Strategy and subsequent articles indicate that military strategy remains threat centric. The military discusses 4 potential state actors plus VEOs as the plus one. Is it incorrect for the military to be threat centric? If you don't anticipate who you may have to fight and understand their capabilities and doctrine, how to do you project future force requirements?

http://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Publications/2015_National_Military_Strategy.pdf

On the other hand, Haynes in his book, "Toward a New Maritime Strategy," argues the value of having a strategy that is focused on our national interests. I don't think he stated or implied that threats were irrelevant, but rather if you understood your interests, then you can place threats in the correct context. What U.S. interests does ISIL or the Islamic State threaten?

I think there are several starting with destabilizing the region beyond the current conflict zones, which could put a good part of the global oil supplies at risk with significant impact on the global economy, which will impact the U.S. If the U.S. continues to fail to lead in a meaningful way, it will undermine the U.S.'s ability to protect the largely U.S. led international order that has provided for our security and prosperity for several decades now. Arguably it has provided the same for our allies and partners. ISIL presents a persistent threat to the homeland and U.S. lives globally, probably not a large scale, but with 24hr news, even small attacks take on strategic significance beyond the personal tragedies suffered. Finally, and perhaps this is tied to maintaining the international order (not rigidly maintaining, but adapting it according to set rules), are promoting the values we stand for a nation. Do we have a responsibility to protect? If we don't what are the consequences from a strategy perspective (humanitarian crisis with significant second order effects) and on our character or identity as a nation?

Bill Moore
04-25-2016, 06:45 AM
With all that said in the previous post, what can we actually do to protect our interests in a way that is sustainable economically and politically? This is where we repeatedly seem to fail. If we anticipate this conflict will continue for years, how do we contain it and manage its effects short of waging a traditional conventional war that will likely drag us into another quagmire with no feasible end other than pulling out when we lose the political will to stay? Furthermore, taking such as approach will harm our economy further, and create opportunities for other adversaries and potential adversaries to seek a position of advantage globally relative to the U.S. Anther perceived loss will also weaken our standing is a perceived leader.

It reminds me of Kissinger recognizing the limits of U.S. power, and the fact that U.S. could not afford a protracted war in SE Asia AND maintain it more vital interests. He recognized the world's power balances were shifting, and new forces would challenge the domains of superpowers. There were already multiple economic centers, and economic power is the key to other forms of power (The Rise and Fall of Great Nations, Kennedy).

Haynes talked about the primacy of economic power in his book also. Any strategy that fails to consider the risk to the U.S. economy over time puts the nation at long term for short term goals. We have been fighting the war on terror, arguably poorly, for close to 15 years now with little to show for it but set back after set back. We can't afford to sustain large occupations, and those who argue FID and UW are the answer, while logical from an economic standpoint tend to dismiss that our partners frequently don't have the will to engage in these fights. Meanwhile, Russia, China, and North Korea have become increasingly dangerous and confident to challenge us. Our ability to deter them has eroded. Why? Excessive focus on the war on terror? Maybe, but I suspect the reality is the diffusion of power is creating opportunities in a globalized world like never before. Opportunities best exploited for advantage by effective whole of government approaches where the military is only one tool in the strategy toolkit. Our almost total focus on winning decisive battles that don't create favorable political conditions/advantages will soon drive us into the ranks of second ranked nations. A superpower that has squandered its power in a global war of the flea. A superpower that failed to used all its tools in a synchronized manner to advance its interests.

davidbfpo
04-30-2016, 08:55 PM
Bill,

I thought this short article was helpful, even if USA-centric:http://www.thestrategybridge.com/the-bridge/2016/4/30/leading-into-the-abyss-a-reflection-on-strategic-failure-great-leadership

The author's very slim bio on Twitter:
British / Australian mil officer + strategist. Conducting the 'Helmand Project' @ ANU Bell School; six year exploration of US, UK + Talib strategy in Afghanistan

He blames quite a few players:
Who is responsible for this absence of strategy? The sad fact is that all those who have participated in the Global War on Terror must share the blame. Politicians have certainly been central, mis-reading Clausewitz, seeing war as a simple extension of politics and ignoring its true nature, and hubristically believing their stated intentions of policy could pass for true strategy. The military also played its role, and is guilty of inflating both threats and capabilities for its own internal agendas, and fostering a conspiracy of optimism that removed failure (or even strategic withdrawal) as an option. Even the eternally well-meaning non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are not immune to criticism as they were slaved to the thriving, billion-dollar industry of international aid and reconstruction funding governments used to excuse their lack of strategic thought.

Bill Moore
05-01-2016, 07:13 AM
Bill,

I thought this short article was helpful, even if USA-centric:http://www.thestrategybridge.com/the-bridge/2016/4/30/leading-into-the-abyss-a-reflection-on-strategic-failure-great-leadership

The author's very slim bio on Twitter:

He blames quite a few players:

David,

This article is certainly relevant to the thread and points to a shared frustration about something that I also struggle with identifying exactly what is wrong. I agree with the author's argument that many of us own the blame for our collective shortcoming when it comes to strategy. We confuse McChrystal's Team of Teams as strategy, when instead it is an appropriate management/operational approach for employing forces to counter a networked threat. Warden's Five Rings have been confused as strategy, instead of a paradigm for targeting that is only applicable in select situations. We also confuse Jomini's lines on the map as strategy instead of operational maneuver. Add to this more great works emerging on how to fight in the cyber and space domains, competing in the human domain, and so forth. All interesting and valuable in their own, right, but ultimately of little value if they don't support a higher strategy that provides context, meaning, and purpose to the why of what we do beyond achieving a tactical success.

While much of what the author touches upon is well known, even if not well understood, by a select community of interest, I still found his focus on jus ad bellum very relevant and a factor that has been previously under appreciated.

Bill Moore
05-01-2016, 08:01 AM
An interesting article on competitive mobilization in preparation for a great power war, but does it hit the mark?

http://warontherocks.com/2016/03/competitive-mobilization-how-would-we-fare-against-china/

Competitive Mobilization: How Would We Fare Against China?


Defining mobilization
Mobilization entails the substantial and exceptional displacement, through either government conscription or bidding, of a country’s labor and productive capacity that would otherwise naturally go to civilian purposes.

Referencing another article, he quotes:


Their stimulating essay identified six gaps — munitions, weapons platforms, manpower, planning, technology, and stamina — that a big war against a peer competitor could reveal.

Is the legacy assumption still valid?


Manpower and production mobilization are likely to provide a competitive advantage for one side during a conflict

He argues that the side (comparing the U.S. to China) that can mobilize forces/power for the air and space domains will have the competitive advantage. He also points out that if policy denies kinetic attacks against China and we engage in a military force versus military force war that attrition will play a greater role, resulting in the growing importance of mobilization.

He ends with this:


Mobilization is a competition. But dominating a mobilization competition is not enough. A player still needs a complete strategy with a sound theory of success and operational concept in order to succeed.

Finally, decision-makers should incorporate mobilization into their overall concepts for deterrence. This will mean communicating competitive strategies for mobilization both to internal audiences and to allies and adversaries. Mobilization plans aren’t just for war — they should be a component of peacetime competitive strategies.

Overall a good article that is effectively argued, and probably does a flaw in our strategy if national leaders have failed to develop meaningful and realistic plans for mobilization. People is one thing, I suspect that despite the political liabilities associated with that, it will be worked out.

However, with the impact of globalization resulting in massive outsourcing of our manufacturing, or the inability to compete in basic areas such as the steel industry in a global market, does the U.S. have a sufficient infrastructure to quickly produce arms, ships, war planes (especially based on today's technical requirements)?

The author focused on the air and space domains, but what about the cyber domain? Do we have effective operational concepts for fighting in this domain? What does that mean? Would we have to rapidly recruit geek battalions or contract out an organization like Anonymous (which is multinational and reportedly mostly composed of French)? What if great powers leverage the human domain, like Russia did in the Ukraine, and Iran in Yemen? What does mobilization mean in that context? What does it mean beyond the military? USAID? State Department? etc.

Mobilization must be tailored to the conflict at hand or the projected conflict, and future wars will probably look increasingly different with more drones and other robotics playing a more predominant role. SOF, cyber, and other elements will most likely play increasingly important roles, but they will be employed differently than they are now.

Bill Moore
05-31-2016, 12:33 AM
I’ll be the first to argue that the modern world has always been complex, but I also agree that complexity is increasing and this has significant implications for those developing or executing grand strategies. I found an article recently that provides a concise description of the emergent challenges due to information technology enabled globalization. Like many SWJ readers, he too was frustrated with the use of complexity as a cliché, with little explanation on what it actually implied.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-complexity-challenge-the-us-governments-struggle-keep-13698


“The Complexity Challenge: The U.S. Government’s Struggle to Keep Up with the Times”“The world is complex’ is the U.S. government’s greatest strategic cliché and--paradoxically—its greatest strategic challenge.” By Josh Kerbel

Kerbel correctly points out that complexity is about interconnectivity and interdependence, both of which has been and continues to be greatly accelerated by globalization, and in the virtual world via information technology. Kerbal argues this is creating a world where it increasing difficult to find strategic mooring points. In other words it isn't simply Russia and China, or violent extremists, as Joshua Ramo stated in his book, "The Age of the Unthinkable," the global order is undergoing its most significant change since the Westphalia order was created.

Kerbel then looks at U.S. government leaders and points out they do not want to face this fact. They rather dismiss the obvious by making half true claims such as the world has always been complex, and globalization has been in existence for well over 300 years. He writes, this means the real world is
increasingly at odds with traditional government thinking and organizations. He states this “more than just disturbing—it’s terrifying.”

He makes the following arguments:

1.
Complex issues cannot be looked at as discrete pieces. Everything is interconnected—and interdependent—and there are ever fewer issues solely in the portfolio of a single department or agency. Consequently, the traditional government organizational constructs—ossified and stove-piped hierarchies—simply don’t work as they impede the ability to form the necessarily holistic perspectives and approaches. For the military, this implies there is much more to cross domain operations than simply focusing on the traditional physical domains and cyber, the human domain and its many dimensions (identity, economics, influence, political, etc.) increasingly will be decisive. Although joint doctrine addresses Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIIM) operations, and refreshingly developed a relevant joint operations concept focused on adapting to globalization called "globally integrated operations," and they're working on an emerging concept tied to campaign planning that addresses the gray zone, the reality is in practice we are not able to effectively implement these concepts. Why? Legacy systems and bureaucratic infighting between various U.S. government interagencies. As Kerbel stated, most problems today require the synchronized approach of multiple agencies.


2. Complexity defies the desire for clear and identifiable cause-and-effect dynamics.

I'm back on my center of gravity soapbox, Kerbel points out our reductionist thinking leads us astray, and I argue our center of gravity of concept is a symptom of that mindset.


3. Complex situations are very prone to emergent macro-behaviors—cascades, bubbles and crashes, etc.—that are discontinuous and can abruptly deviate from past patterns.

We have seen this repeatedly in recent history, no need to further elaborate.


4. Increasing complexity means that already-extreme volatility is only going to get worse.

This is what I believe is the biggest so what for strategists. We could never truly afford the luxury of focusing on one threat, e.g. the USSR or Al-Qaeda. That is more true today, and increasingly so tomorrow. While the department of defense is now focused on the 4+1 threat set, which expands our myopic focus from Islamic Extremists to legacy and emerging adversary states, it still misses the larger picture in my opinion. Instead of focusing on what type of force we need based on today's threats (that must be done, hear me out), we should have a think-tank like organization focus on what type of government we need to effectively advance and protect our interests in an increasingly globalized world. Once the larger picture is understood, we can focus on the type of security forces we need to mitigate threats to U.S. interests globally. I suspect part of that security force will look constabulary like (land forces with Coast Guard like law enforcement authorities), not to mention pulling our heads out of our butts when it comes to cyber.

OUTLAW 09
05-31-2016, 05:42 AM
I’ll be the first to argue that the modern world has always been complex, but I also agree that complexity is increasing and this has significant implications for those developing or executing grand strategies. I found an article recently that provides a concise description of the emergent challenges due to information technology enabled globalization. Like many SWJ readers, he too was frustrated with the use of complexity as a cliché, with little explanation on what it actually implied.

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-complexity-challenge-the-us-governments-struggle-keep-13698


“The Complexity Challenge: The U.S. Government’s Struggle to Keep Up with the Times”“The world is complex’ is the U.S. government’s greatest strategic cliché and--paradoxically—its greatest strategic challenge.” By Josh Kerbel

Kerbel correctly points out that complexity is about interconnectivity and interdependence, both of which has been and continues to be greatly accelerated by globalization, and in the virtual world via information technology. Kerbal argues this is creating a world where it increasing difficult to find strategic mooring points. In other words it isn't simply Russia and China, or violent extremists, as Joshua Ramo stated in his book, "The Age of the Unthinkable," the global order is undergoing its most significant change since the Westphalia order was created.

Kerbel then looks at U.S. government leaders and points out they do not want to face this fact. They rather dismiss the obvious by making half true claims such as the world has always been complex, and globalization has been in existence for well over 300 years. He writes, this means the real world is

He makes the following arguments:

1. For the military, this implies there is much more to cross domain operations than simply focusing on the traditional physical domains and cyber, the human domain and its many dimensions (identity, economics, influence, political, etc.) increasingly will be decisive. Although joint doctrine addresses Joint, Interagency, Intergovernmental, and Multinational (JIIM) operations, and refreshingly developed a relevant joint operations concept focused on adapting to globalization called "globally integrated operations," and they're working on an emerging concept tied to campaign planning that addresses the gray zone, the reality is in practice we are not able to effectively implement these concepts. Why? Legacy systems and bureaucratic infighting between various U.S. government interagencies. As Kerbel stated, most problems today require the synchronized approach of multiple agencies.



I'm back on my center of gravity soapbox, Kerbel points out our reductionist thinking leads us astray, and I argue our center of gravity of concept is a symptom of that mindset.



We have seen this repeatedly in recent history, no need to further elaborate.



This is what I believe is the biggest so what for strategists. We could never truly afford the luxury of focusing on one threat, e.g. the USSR or Al-Qaeda. That is more true today, and increasingly so tomorrow. While the department of defense is now focused on the 4+1 threat set, which expands our myopic focus from Islamic Extremists to legacy and emerging adversary states, it still misses the larger picture in my opinion. Instead of focusing on what type of force we need based on today's threats (that must be done, hear me out), we should have a think-tank like organization focus on what type of government we need to effectively advance and protect our interests in an increasingly globalized world. Once the larger picture is understood, we can focus on the type of security forces we need to mitigate threats to U.S. interests globally. I suspect part of that security force will look constabulary like (land forces with Coast Guard like law enforcement authorities), not to mention pulling our heads out of our butts when it comes to cyber.

Just a side comment to the cyber threat....the core problem with the US IT world right now is that utter believe the US is the greatest IT giant and others cannot match our abilities.

Right now I see daily nation state Russian, Iranian, Chinese hackers and their related IT crime gangs doing things that major US IT companies cannot even come close to doing...

Simply put we have been left standing still in the dust on that 21st century IT highway.....we urgently need to wake and smell literally the coffee before we become "the toast".....

As a cliché..."our IT ego experts are writing checks they cannot cash and they are trying to convince they can"....

OUTLAW 09
05-31-2016, 07:47 AM
Finnish power companies targeted by hacking attempts. Specifically going after critical electrical distribution systems (!)
https://twitter.com/akihheikkinen/st...15290158759938 …

Russian cyber espionage in Finland, targeting media and @bellingcat:
http://yle.fi/uutiset/russian_cyber-espionage_group_hits_sanoma/8919118 …

Bill Moore
07-04-2016, 07:55 AM
An interim report that came out in FEB 2016, titled,
"Thinking the Unthinkable: A New Imperative for Leadership in the Digital Age"

http://www.thinkunthinkable.org/


“The rate of change we are going through at the moment is comparable to what happens in wartime …yet we think we are at peace. The global pace of change is overcoming the capacity of national and international institutions”
Chris Donnelly,
Director, Institute for Statecraft

This report is directed at the top levels of executive management, whether in government or business. I think they overstated some arguments, but they're still very much relevant. The authors assert that the rate of change is faster than most are prepared to concede, or respond to. They argue it is imperative we overcome our bias towards conformity if we hope to adapt to the new world that is rapidly emerging. The authors are British, so that should help explain this statement:


We heard similar concerns from someone currently at the heart of policy making: “On major foreign policy issues such as Russia and Islamic State, we are working with a set of leaders in Whitehall, in the European Union, who have no adult experience of harm affecting the homeland”. The official added: “Our leadership is strategically fatigued. I’m talking about
politicians and most of the Whitehall village. And also much of British society. The Twitterati for sure. But the world is changing. The world may bring harm to you in ways you cannot imagine and ways you cannot manage. There is a resilience deficit, a lack of understanding of the scale of emerging threat”. This makes identifying ‘unthinkables’, then taking action to prevent or pre-empt them ever more problematic and unlikely.

This seems to be a prevalent line of thinking throughout Western Europe (much less so in Eastern Europe). Wish problems away until it is no longer possible to do so. This goes back at least as far Chamberlain's refusal to see the obvious and instead of countering seek to appease Hitler. The alternative was unthinkable, or as the authors argue, even when it wasn't unthinkable it was undesirable; therefore, people tend to ignore it and hope it goes away.

When leaders are blindsided, it is often due to their biased information sources, as explained here (think about Trump defeating the Republican establish and Brexit passing, both a surprise to the so-called experts).


“[In a] world where more and more people are connecting … [where there is] greater fragmentation, but you’re also seeing greater connectivity … leaders are not very good at actually interpreting the messages that are out there from people who are not connecting through formal institutional mechanisms”, one former senior international official admitted. But this is the new reality. “Technology and the new politics are changing the relationship between leaders and those they lead”, said Sir John Sawers, former head of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, in his first speech since leaving
Vauxhall Cross.

How this disrupts legacy forms of governance:


Governments will have to address super-complex issues such as mass
migration, climate change, population increase, rising urbanisation, ageing and the attendant huge resource questions. This is at a time when its legitimacy is being publically challenged.

Later in the report the authors state the ministers in Whitehall have relied on, and gotten away with, the tactics of delay and prevarication because they have worked. Of course those ministers have good company in the U.S. Congress and other countries.

Part 2 follows:

Bill Moore
07-04-2016, 08:12 AM
I loved this quote:


“You cannot know any more as a leader. Therefore, your role as a leader has changed to becoming the one figuring out what the best way is to frame problems, what the most important questions are to be asked.”
Patricia Seemann, founder, the 3am Group

The level of knowledge between leaders and followers are often equal, and in some cases, especially technical, the follower will have more knowledge. The leaders role is to lead the group in framing the problem to enable the group to address it. Our as Patricia stated, to ask the right questions.


What must be regarded as the pre-2008 and pre-2014 ‘old think’ now has to be viewed as no longer fit for purpose and in large part redundant. Past beliefs and assumptions must be jettisoned. They need to be replaced by a pragmatic realisation that such old ways of thinking carry not just a high price but an even higher cost. “What you need to think about are the necessary structures and tools that the business must employ to try and minimize conformity and cognitive bias”, said a leading consultant.

In my view, we have creative people in the military, at least in the special operations world, but that creativity, that ability to think in ways that doesn't conform to engrained ways are thought, are difficult to act upon when our bureaucratic systems tend to oppose implementing ideas that do not fit into existing processes and the existing timelines (The situation on the ground could change 5 or more times, by the time a change is implemented. Thus, when it is implemented, it is no longer suited for the current situation).


In all of this there is one major hang up. Many leaders don’t feel comfortable believing in strategic thinking anyway. In fact, many military leaders brag about not thinking strategically and just acting. They embrace tactics, the illusion of short term success, while losing strategically. They system rewards this behavior.


Short-termism is the inevitable reality both in the public and private sector. “Strategic thinking is something which doesn’t happen very often, even when people say that they take time out to do strategic thinking. In my experience, not a lot of that goes on. And without strategic thinking, and without some imagination, then it’s easy to understand why people don’t think the unthinkable, because they haven’t thought of all of the possibilities that could face them in the future”, as one former security specialist now in the corporate world told us.

Getting back to understanding the world we live in, I found the following comments of interest. This type of understanding may have led to different decisions in Vietnam and elsewhere.


An insight by Professor Ngaire Woods of Oxford University is especially intriguing. “If you want to get a sense of what kinds of social change are likely to happen in a country, or what the extremes might be, look to the film makers of that country. Look to the people who are documenting the experience of communities and people. My prime example would be of an Egyptian film – Heya Fawda? [Is This Chaos?]53 which was made several
years before the Arab Spring, and completely predicted [it] theme-by-theme.


“I'm not saying, ‘read any old film like the weather forecast’. But I’m just saying: look for who the social commentators in a society actually are. The artist, the filmmakers – whatever – are usually telling you about something that you’re not seeing through the eyes of government analysts and advisors and academics and social scientists and such like”.
These rather unexpected pointers are a sobering reality check of what is possible when it comes to spotting, then identifying both ‘unthinkables’ and ‘unpalatables’.


There is an imperative to change fundamentally organisational systems: “The way we are structured, organised, the way we share information, the way we process information, the way we reward people, the way we take risk and analyse risk. The way we organise what is up, what is strategic, what is not, what is tactical. Who has the right to do what, what type of control”, said one exceptional leader currently in the throes of a top-to-bottom refit of an organisation distinguished by its extraordinary complexity.

Part 3: What to do, next post

Bill Moore
07-04-2016, 08:28 AM
Greater, urgent understanding of the extraordinary scale of transformation needed for contemporary organisations and the implications for their leadership is now essential.

I noted earlier that the authors may be overstating the speed of change. There was significant and rapid change in the world just prior to and after WWI, and of course after WWII. Then we settled into a Cold War, which created the illusion of time standing still, because we only focused on one strategic issue, our competition with the USSR. Today, everything is increasingly connected, so almost any change anywhere tends to ripple across borders and often has a global impact, so change may be more frequent and it may be happening faster. I'm not sure how you would measure that, but suffice to say, change is happening, and when change happens you adjust or face set backs relative to your competitors.

Step one in my view is identifying what interests we must protect, until we do that, it will impossible to identify what is truly strategic and must be addressed. Step two is to frame the problem accurately. We'll be unlikely to do that at first go, so as designers say, we have to reframe constantly, the only thing that will remain relatively static are those national interests we are hoping to protect or advance.


Therefore, your role as a leader has changed to becoming the one figuring out what the best way is to frame problems, what the most important questions are to be asked”.


Patricia Seemann agrees. “How the hell do you design a strategy in today’s world? You used to be able to do one for three or five years. You can’t anymore. You can set the general direction and then you try things out, and you constantly re-frame and re-frame etc.” She says that the ‘coping’ strategy involves “A huge amount of iterative experimentation”. As a result, she said: “The critical thing is to have an organization that can learn incredibly quickly, faster than its competitors. Now, the 1990's theme of ‘learning organisation’ is coming back with a vengeance”.

The paper ends with the following, which reminds me of McCrystal's "Team of Teams."


The imperative is to change fundamentally organisational systems. Capability can be achieved by linking together people, process, leadership, technology and culture in order to focus them on one thing, such as decision making. Engaging staff in decision-making requires the removal of obstacles to internal communications, and shattering cultural barriers that lead to conformity. It also means having direct access to the widest possible number of sensors and analysts, however unorthodox they might be. “The way we are structured, organised, the way we share information, the way we process information, the way we reward.

We're into the second decade of the 21st Century, and we are adapting, but it isn't clear if we're adapting quick enough, or even adapting correctly. Technology is important, but technology doesn't replace the necessity for strategic thinking. Perhaps strategy in the 21st Century will be less about ends, ways, and means, and more about understanding what our interests really are, what is happening the environment, and how we describe and evaluate risk. Strategy should facilitate mid and long term views, but more than ever our processes for acting must be increasing agile so we can act fast to capitalize on an opportunity based on our understanding and sensing the environment. These processes also need to allow us to rapidly divest and reinvest elsewhere based on our improved ability to learn and adapt.

davidbfpo
07-04-2016, 08:33 AM
This little known and discreet "think tank" has some excellent members, two of them are good friends and I've met a couple of others. Chris Donnelly is a former USSR military expert, based at Sandhurst and then a Soviet Studies team - which IIRC was disbanded as a cost-cutting measure.

Their website:http://www.statecraft.org.uk/

Bill Moore
10-31-2016, 06:47 AM
The October 2016 issue of the Joint Force Quarterly has some articles that shine some light on how our current Department of Defense leadership is looking at aspects of strategy for a 21st Century.

First, From the Chairman: Strategic Challenges and Implications

http://ndupress.ndu.edu/JFQ/Joint-Force-Quarterly-83/Article/969623/from-the-chairman-strategic-challenges-and-implications/

The Chairman identified 4 strategic implications:


1. The first one is foundational. We need a balanced inventory of joint capabilities that allow us to deter and defeat potential adversaries across the full range of military operations.

Not a new challenge, but it remains a significant challenge, more so tighter restrictions on the purse strings. The ability to wage non, unconventional, conventional, and nuclear warfare (I'm lumping cyber under non-conventional for now). While hybrid threats also are not new, it is still a useful concept for reacquainting the force with the totality of warfare. Before 9/11 is was conventional warfare centric, no need to worry about unconventional adversaries, after 9/11 the force swung in the other direction. Need to get after those terrorists, there will never be a conventional war again. We have started, and need to continue, to stop treating wars like Military Occupational Specialties (MOSs). One soldier specializes in conventional warfare, while another specializes in unconventional, and treat warfare more like liberal arts, than a technical trade school.


2. The second implication is the need for us to more effectively employ the military instrument of national power to address the challenges Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea present. Each of these nations, in different ways, fully leverages economic coercion, political influence, unconventional warfare, information operations, cyber operations, and military posture to advance their interests. This is competition with a military dimension that falls below the threshold that would trigger a traditional and decisive military response. And since these countries compete in ways that mute our response, they continue to advance their interests at the qualitative and quantitative expense of our own. Back to the gray zone, a zone we compete in, but not as effectively as our adversaries.

3.
The third implication, and to me one of the most significant, is that we have a mandate to keep pace with the character of war in the 21st century. Short discussion on multi-domain and rapid pace of change.

4.
Therefore, the fourth implication is the need for greater strategic integration in the future, both in our strategy development and in our decision making processes. The intent is to build a framework within which we can address these 4+1 challenges across the five operational domains with which we are dealing and the many associated functions.

This one worries me, because it is ahistorical and far being strategic as written. It continues to push the military-industrial-complex myth that if our technology enables us to dominate the 5 "recognized" domains, we will prevail strategically.

I did like the closing though:


What drives me, and what motivates our Joint Staff team, is the changing character of war. How do we get more agile? How do we frame decisions for our senior leadership in a more effective way? Just like every other endeavor in our profession, it begins with a common understanding of the threat, and a common appreciation for the capabilities and limitations of the Joint Force, and then a framework within which we could make real-time decisions that will most effectively employ that force.

Bill Moore
10-31-2016, 07:07 AM
Other articles of interest in the OCT 16 JFQ

Fast Followers, Learning Machines, and the Third Offset Strategy


It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. . . . This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.

—Isaac Asimov

A perfect quote to sag way into a discussion on strategy for the remainder of the 21st Century.


In 1993, Andrew Marshall, Director of Net Assessment, stated, “I project a day when our adversaries will have guided munitions parity with us and it will change the game.”2 On December 14, 2015, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work announced that day’s arrival when arguing for a Third Offset during comments at the Center for a New American Security.

The article gives a good run down on what the 3rd Off Set Strategy is all about (whether one agrees or disagrees with it logic). Unlike other articles I have seen, it also presented a list of risks associated with this strategy. One that I found compelling, but not compelling enough to stop the forward march of technology is:


A New Fog of War. Lastly, the advent of learning machines will give rise to a new fog of war emerging from uncertainty in a learning machine’s AI programming. It is a little unsettling that a branch of AI popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s was called “fuzzy logic,” due to an ability to alter its programming that represents a potential loss of control and weakening of liability.

The article ends with:


However, pursuit of game-changing technologies is only sustainable by breaking out of the increasingly exponential pace of technological competition with Fast Followers. A Third Offset Strategy could do this and could provide the first to adopt outsized advantages. Realistically, to achieve this requires integrating increasing layers of autonomy into legacy force structure as budgets align to new requirements and personnel adapt to increasing degrees of learning machine teaming. The additive effect of increasing autonomy could fundamentally change warfare and provide significant advantage to whoever successfully teams learning machines with manned systems. This is not a race we are necessarily predestined to win, but it is a race that has already begun with strategic implications for the United States.

The next article starts to address the missing link in the 3rd Off Set Strategy, which is how will we employ all these capabilities? The author makes a strong argument for leveraging wargaming.

Wargaming the Third Offset Strategy


It is not only technology but also how new capabilities are employed that produces military power.13 A new capability is more than just a new technology. It requires new concepts for employing the systems and training on how to operate them as part of a larger joint fight. The strategy is unlikely to reach its full potential until the joint community develops new operating concepts.

In conclusion:


Officers should take an active role and imagine future battlefields as part of their JPME experience and field exercises, learning to analyze the art and science of military practice. The joint community can work with the individual Services and integrate Third Offset wargames with JPME curriculum. Officers and the civilian academics who work in JPME should be incentivized to research and critique alternative operating concepts that emerge from the wargames.

Pursued along these lines, the net benefit of wargaming the Third Offset could well be to empower a new generation of military leaders to take ownership of intellectual development in the profession of arms.

Bill Moore
10-31-2016, 07:24 AM
The other article worth considering for future strategy from the JFQ OCT 16 is:


Global Power Distribution and Warfighting in the 21st Century


The U.S. national security community needs to focus more on the driving forces and likely associated consequences that will influence warfighting in the 21st century. A disproportionate amount of effort is spent by national security experts on narrow problem and solution spaces without an adequate appreciation of broader trends and potential shocks that could dramatically change U.S. national security perspectives. By largely ignoring these longer term factors, the U.S. military is unlikely to develop the needed national defense capabilities to deal effectively with critical threats in this emerging environment.

I agree with the argument, the focus on the 4 + 1 is too narrow in scope, and the assumption that if we can deter/defeat these threats we'll be capable of managing other threats may prove to be dangerously misleading.

The author identified four crucial threat concerns.

1.
trend toward a more disorderly world, should it happen, would be largely driven by the rise of malevolent nonstate actors, reduced authority and legitimacy of nation-states in many regions, and decreased ability to provide effective global governance.

2.
the further rise of regional hegemons of revisionist powers such as China, Russia, and Iran, whose objectives often clash with U.S. national interests

3.
super-empowered” individuals and groups capable of levels of violence formerly only within the purview of nations.

4.
greatly increased level of nuclear proliferation beyond the gradual erosion of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons that we see today.

Closed with this:


A properly designed, bifurcated military approach that is employed effectively in coordination with other components of national and international power would support these objectives. Focusing on major power wars and treating other national security challenges as lesser included cases, however, would not. U.S. decisionmakers in charge of developing an effective military approach to counter the emergent threats outlined herein need to choose wisely—U.S. national security and global international security in the 21st century could depend on it.

Unfortunately, in my view the rest of the article pretty much promoted what is already happening with the 4+1 (how to deal with state and non-state actors) within DoD circles; however, the author did make one clear distinction that I agree with, and that is non-state actors must be treated with the same level of effort as state efforts. While the author didn't write it, I'll expand the argument that our focus on non-state actors must move beyond VEOs or Islamic extremists. Non-state actors come in all forms, and can wage various forms of warfare at the strategic level, increasing so with the proliferation of technology.

Bill Moore
05-06-2017, 09:19 PM
As this thread matures I want to further explore the impact of changes in policy, technology, adversary stratagems, and environmental factors that will, or should, drive changes in our national strategy. Starting 2017 with an excellent study by Hal Brands that addresses the reality of the impact of our allies and partner's decline relative to our competitors, and his proposed changes to mitigate the negative impact of this trend.

It is important, because we too readily assume allies and partners will share more of our collective security burden, but as he points out they are increasingly unable to do so. One of the few bright points is Australia's increasing contributions, while one of the darker points is the special relationship between the UK and U.S. is risk based on UK's lack of defense capacity. The reality of these changes mandate changes in our assumptions, which in turn will change our strategy.

The first link is an article that summarizes the report (shamelessly stolen from the news roundup on SWJ today)

http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2017/05/americas-allies-are-decline-heres-how-us-should-adjust/137608/

America’s Allies Are in Decline. Here’s How the US Should Adjust


Times change, however, and so has the global distribution of economic and military power. America’s closest and most powerful allies have seen their shares of global GDP and military power fall since the mid-1990s, due to slow or stagnant growth and—in Europe especially—prolonged disinvestment in defense. More broadly, U.S. allies in both Europe and the Asia-Pacific have seen their economic and military power decline relative to Russia and China, America’s most prominent rivals.


To be clear, this decline is no reason to abandon or deliberately undercut America’s alliances. Given the vital role that those alliances have long played in U.S. statecraft, this “cure” would be far worse than the disease. What the United States must do, rather, is to adapt its approach to alliance management in ways that mitigate the geopolitical effects of allied decline and bolster the global order that Washington has long used those alliances to uphold.

The article summarizes several key points, but I still recommending reading the entire report for those interested in the topic. It can be found at this link:

http://csbaonline.org/uploads/documents/ALLIES_in_DECLINE_FINAL_b.pdf

Bill Moore
07-17-2017, 07:55 AM
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-case-for-a-grand-strategy-of-responsible-competition-to-defend-the-liberal-internationa

After reading Octavian's interview of the author who wrote, The Case for a Grand Strategy of Responsible Competition to Defend the Liberal International Order, on the SWJ Journal at the link above it invoked more thoughts on the relevance of assumed truths when it comes to strategy thought. The argument that follows is based on the assumption that a rules based international order is essential for maintaining an acceptable level of security and opportunity for continued prosperity for most of the developed world.

If the above assumption is valid, then it calls into question the wisdom of the adage of, he who defends everything, defends nothing. This is certainly true for the military at the tactical and operational levels; however, at the strategic level a violation of international law anywhere is a threat to the international order everywhere. Failure to defend the international order in the so called areas of peripheral importance creates an environment for revisionists and anarchists create a norm where it is acceptable for a growing number of actors to challenge the order without paying a price for their transgressions. Furthermore, in an increasingly interconnected, hype globalized world local threats are increasingly transnational and often transregional.

Challenges to the international order do not include every internal issue between a populace and its governance, but it does include state aggression upon another state that fails to meet the generally accepted reasons to wage war. It does include significant transnational crime, such as cyber crime, human and other illicit trafficking, China's production of counterfeit medication to sell to developing countries, terrorism, illicit/illegal expansion of one's territory, major environmental crimes (such as China's overfishing of areas well outside of China's EZZ, crimes against humanity such as genocide, etc. Failure to ignore these and allow them to fester and expand creates a world where a rules based international order exists in name only.

This does not imply that the U.S. military needs to respond to every violation, that is simply not sustainable, but it does beckon back to a recent past prior to the attacks on 9/11 where the U.S. did a respectful job of helping others help themselves, and supporting coalitions of the willing to address threats to instability and the rules based international order. Whether we were left of bang, or at the early stages of bang, these actions helped shape the world overall in a positive direction. It is past time to determine how we can return to an acceptable balance of effort, an effort that recognizes the U.S. military has important roles outside of the Middle East that have been neglected too long. That neglect has empowered actors intent on reshaping the world order in a way that will only benefit regional hegemons, which in turn will lead much greater instability, as nations will resist falling under their sway.

davidbfpo
07-19-2017, 03:51 PM
An article by Dan Byman & Will McCants 'Fight or Flight: How to Avoid a Forever War against Jihadists' (11 pgs) in The Washington Quarterly and here is a selected passage that makes me think it fits here!

We argue, however, that this fear of safe havens and the politics that under gird it are misplaced. Safe havens can be dangerous, and at times it is vital for the United States to use force, even massive force, to disrupt them. Yet not all safe havens and not all the groups in the havens are created equal.Their new rules:
First, no militant group should be allowed to build a foreign operations cell that targets the United States....Second, no militant group should be allowed to take over a major city in acountry vital to American interests. Third, no militant group should be allowed to ethnically cleanse an entire people.Link:https://twq.elliott.gwu.edu/sites/twq.elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/TWQ_Summer2017_Byman-McCants.pdf

Bill Moore
07-21-2017, 07:00 PM
An article by Dan Byman & Will McCants 'Fight or Flight: How to Avoid a Forever War against Jihadists' (11 pgs) in The Washington Quarterly and here is a selected passage that makes me think it fits here!
Their new rules:Link:https://twq.elliott.gwu.edu/sites/twq.elliott.gwu.edu/files/downloads/TWQ_Summer2017_Byman-McCants.pdf

He makes an important and needed argument, but I disagree that we should publically debate our red lines on when we should intervene. That gives VEOs freedom of movement in the area below the red line. At the same time we can't afford to chase every terrorist that raises a black flag somewhere. Decisions on responding must be based on threats to our priority interests.

Bill Moore
09-18-2017, 03:33 AM
http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-new-era-of-non-state-actors-warfare-and-entropy

The New Era of Non-State Actors: Warfare and Entropy by Jason Thomas

This article appears to be identical to the one that SWJ published on 12 SEP 17, and in sum it argues that the West must prepare for a significant increase in threats posed by non-state actors, to include states actors sponsoring non-state actors to threaten our national interests. Of course this isn't new, but perhaps the means and ways that state actors can leverage non-state actors has changed enough to warrant serious reflection.


The difference now is that instead of seeking to overthrow the established authority of Western governments, the modus operandi has shifted to penetrating deep within all layers of a Western country’s government, economic, cyber security, media and civil society in order to subvert and influence.

Unfortunately, the author didn't explain why these threats would expand and more importantly he didn't offer suggestions on how the West should prepare. Instead he provides a list of non-state actors and then various legacy theoretical frameworks for consideration that are largely based on COIN theories developed during the Cold War. However, his reference to how Clausewitz's writings may have limited the West's view of strategy. An assertion worth exploring as the Trump Administration works on its first National Security Strategy (NSS). However, with McMaster as his National Security Advisor, I see little hope that the strategy team will look far beyond the influence of Clausewitz. Furthermore, it isn't Clausewitz's writings that are limiting our imagination and strategic theory, it is our interpretation of them and what the West has chose to focus on. Principally the deeply flawed center of gravity construct.


One of the most modestly insightful military-academics, Dutch Air Commodore Dr Frans Osinga (2006), argues that “the current Western mode of thinking and waging war, which is founded on Clausewitzian principles, is giving rise to non-Clausewitzian styles of warfare, with obvious consequences for the state of strategic theory.” An attachment to Clausewitz has not benefitted Western strategic approaches to what William Lind (1989) described as “fourth generational warfare” against technologically weaker, non-state actors. This Clausewitzian mindset may have resulted in the slow recognition by governments of alternative conflict paradigms, whereby the predominant game has been the physical destruction of the enemy.

It seems the administration's national security team is focused largely on state-actors, and have limited their focus on non-state actors to ISIS. There are a lot of significant non-state actors that threaten our interests beyond ISIS, and strategy should not focus on the only on the current shinny object, but that is the nature of how we do strategy in the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks. The issue is identifying how the world is changing and what changes we want to promote, and what changes threaten our interests we need to defend ourselves from. It is a complex task, and based on the rate of change, one that is bound to produce a flawed product, yet a strategy is still needed to drive unity of effort across the whole of government and ideally unify the West (loosely defined) in a way that the West cooperates to defend common interests. This will require policy founded on empirical data and critical thinking, not simply stating China is a threat or ISIS needs to be defeated. Everything is increasingly connected (see next post), and these challenges cannot be viewed in isolation. How we approach them will impact other strategic factors that will impact our longer term security.

Bill Moore
09-18-2017, 03:58 AM
https://www.brookings.edu/research/crafting-trumps-first-national-security-strategy-what-it-could-be-and-why-it-might-not-matter-anyway/

Crafting Trump’s first National Security Strategy: What it could be—and why it might not matter anyway by Tarun Chhabra


In the White House’s rosiest scenario, Trump truly embraces the core elements of his NSS—but probably not for long. The impulsiveness that defines his highly personalized style also defies the essence of policy, which generally consists of depersonalized, empirically-informed principles for guiding deliberate decisions and rational outcomes.

The article goes on to discuss trade, Russia, China, Asia, Middle East, Technology Trends, and the international order. I'll only touch on a couple of the topics. First off Asia, the global economy depends upon stability in the region and it is increasingly at risk due to China, North Korea, Russia, and increasingly ISIS. One can add climate change, food and water security, major natural disasters, etc. if they want a greater appreciation of all the significant factors impacting the region and our interests.

Where are we in regards to strategy in the region?
The White House has yet to offer a major statement of its Asia policy. In fact, the only significant administration statement to date has been Mattis’ apologetic “bear with us” speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in June, which promised continuity with Obama’s Asia policy, and promised to “reinforce the international order” and “maintain stability”—commitments that many leaders in Asia have yet to hear from the White House.

Actions and rhetoric to date have done little to dissuade or deter China's regional coercion or North Korea's provocations. To be fair, neither have the actions of previous administrations. The question though is do we intend to continue to underwrite regional security or do we pull away and let Asia drift into a new order without our influence?

Closer to home and sadly not often considered a national security threat is our own internal stability. Beyond universities becoming a breeding ground for a new breed of fascist, which Americans are increasingly aware of, there are significant threats to our economy posed by emergent technology. This is the first time in history that new technology has resulted in less jobs.


Reports by two of the world’s leading management consulting firms have warned their clients in unusual terms that current technology trends, coupled with stagnant social policy, could undermine the social contract in Western democracies.

One report argues:


“fears of unequal gains and potential job losses” cannot be “answered … with historical analogies purporting to demonstrate that everything will work itself out in the end,” and concludes with a dark warning that “it does not require a degree in modern history to imagine the ends that await us” if economic dislocation and deepening political polarization become “the new normal.

The vast areas of challenges, both internationally and domestically, calls for a national security strategy that accurately describes the collective challenge to our national security interests, and prioritizes those interests based on a longer view than the 24 hour news cycle or two year election cycle. While some argue we should prioritize threats and take them in order, I think this argument is deeply flawed. First off, we can't afford to neglect any significant threat, while we focus on defeating another (ISIS for example). Furthermore, this approach assumes we actually defeat a threat, when instead our the most likely and best reasonable outcome is to effectively manage that threat. This leads to the second issue, any strategy must be fiscally sustainable (dropping million dollar missiles on pick up trucks piloted by terrorists is not sustainable) and politically sustainable (U.S. leaders must promote a narrative that explains why we must continue to engage that resonates with the American people. Third, since prioritizes threats is probably a fools errand in the long run, we need to develop a strategy and associated capabilities that enable the U.S., the West, and its allies / partners elsewhere in the world to defend our interests against wide range of threats.

This wouldn't be an easy task if we had political unity, it may be an impossible task without it. Leadership that unites will be decisive.

Bill Moore
12-04-2017, 03:21 AM
The Reagan National Defense Forum has been annual event for the past few years where several leaders in national security come to share their ideas. This year NSA McMasters provided an overview of the tenants of President Trump's emerging National Security Strategy (NSS), which is anticipated to be signed and published within the new few weeks.

The following article captures some of the key points that LTG McMasters shared with the audience.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Article/Article/1386467/national-security-advisor-hints-at-basis-of-trumps-national-security-strategy/

National Security Advisor Hints at Basis of Trump’s National Security Strategy

He drew an interesting parallel to President Reagan vision of renewing America's confidence to address our national malaise after the Vietnam War, and subsequent retreat from the world stage under President Carter (my view). McMaster asserts the Trump administration will do the same, and the NSS will enable this moral factors recovery.


Confidence in the United States and the nation’s influence abroad were at a low point, McMaster said. “The Soviet Union appeared to be on the rise and America, it seemed, was in decline,” he said. “President Reagan ushered in a dramatic rethinking of America’s role in the world and a dramatic renewal of American confidence. America would not only triumph in the Cold War and beyond but reach a new height of influence and prosperity.”

It was also fitting to discuss the Trump administration’s national security strategy, which will be released shortly, since Reagan signed the first national security strategy in 1987, the general said.

The key threats identified in McMaster's speech were the existing 4+1 (China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Violent Extremists), and he emphasized that North Korea was the most immediate threat to U.S. interests.

As during Reagan's time, McMaster emphasized the need to dramatically rethink national security based on these threats and our core interests.

He identified the four core national interests as:

1. Defending the homeland (traditionally this includes U.S. citizens overseas and our allies, not sure if that will be the case in this NSS)
2. Prosperity (you can't be a superpower without super economy, he emphasized fair trade)
3. Preserving peace through strength (ensuring a rules based international order, it is also worth noting we can't sustain economic growth without a rules based international order.)
4. Increasing U.S. influence (discussed the importance of our values, but not imposing our way of life upon others).

I like that he addressed the importance of understanding the dynamic and competitive nature of the security environment. He also noted that with competition comes interaction and change, so we must be prepared to change. That tells me we need to shed some our legacy views of the world.

This introduction to the draft NSS leaves many questions, and it appears it will continue to cling to the key tenants of previous NSSs, but pursue our aims more aggressively than President Obama's approach, but not as idealistically based as the Bush administration. In short, we'll regain our confidence to the shape the world, and in so doing, our allies and partners will be assured that we intend to protect our core interests (which more often than not are shared interests with our allies).

It still begs the question how we can afford this? Even in the unlikely event the proposed tax cuts generate more tax income for the government due to greater productivity of the U.S. economy we still have a massive and growing national debt. We are still facing a government shut down this month if Congress doesn't pass a budget or a continuing resolution. DoD is challenged to address force modernization due to budget uncertainty. The military requires a significant increase in its budget to rebuild its force, and simultaneously it will have to sustain it global war on violent extremists. How we continue to wage this war and how we modernize the force both need to be relooked if we're going to arrive at feasible solution for resourcing the NSS.

The rebuilding of the defense force can't simply consist of repairing broken legacy equipment (tanks, plans, helicopters, vehicles, etc.). Instead, DoD must build a 21st century force that can defend our interests from 21st Century threats. These threats range from cyber, WMD, and advanced weapons systems that may neutralize many of our current capabilities. Does more ships for the Navy matter if our adversary increasingly has the means to put them at the bottom of the ocean? Can a J35 defend us against an UAV swarm? Do we really have the means and policies to protect ourselves from sophisticated cyber attacks against our infrastructure? A cyber expert earlier in this thread points out we don't.

Developing what we hope will be a feasible strategy is extremely difficult, and implementing it will be harder. Rice bowls will need to be broken, bureaucratic processes re-wickered, the budget must be aligned to support the strategic means, and many people in key positions who can't adapt to the new strategy will need to be sidelined.

slapout9
12-04-2017, 04:47 PM
I Think #4 is questionable. That needs to be refined or eliminated. Spot on As far as we need To Redesign our National Weapon Systems based upon today's threats.

Bill Moore
12-04-2017, 05:43 PM
I Think #4 is questionable. That needs to be refined or eliminated. Spot on As far as we need To Redesign our National Weapon Systems based upon today's threats.

Slapout,

You have a lot of company in this belief, but I think it is essential. I'll debate it with you later, but food for thought now. We have allies and partners, which shapes the balance of power to shape the international order because most nations and most people in the world generally agree with our values (not all of our values, but broadly speaking). Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea do not have allies, because they all pursue self interests at the expense of others. If we fall into that camp, we'll find our effort to increase our prosperity and security much more challenging, if not impossible. Furthermore, our values define who we are as a nation, as a people, it provides us the necessary moral factors to sustain the fight. We can differ on this view, but I don't see how we could increase our influence without them?

Azor
12-04-2017, 08:01 PM
Thanks for the posting, Bill.

Here are my thoughts…

McMaster:
The Soviet Union appeared to be on the rise and America, it seemed, was in decline…President Reagan ushered in a dramatic rethinking of America’s role in the world and a dramatic renewal of American confidence. America would not only triumph in the Cold War and beyond but reach a new height of influence and prosperity.

The operative term here is: “appeared”. This perception was not shared in the Soviet Union, which became concerned by the late 1970s that the “correlation of forces” were advantaging the United States and disadvantaging them. Reagan certainly accelerated improvements in U.S. conventional capabilities that had begun under Carter, but overall he was the beneficiary of events beyond his control, in sharp contrast to Carter. The “dramatic renewal of confidence” that McMaster refers to was domestic, and did not have any bearing on the Soviet Union’s decline and eventual collapse. We cannot mistake popular or lay American perceptions with geopolitical reality. In fact, under Carter, the U.S. was far more confident in confronting the Soviet Union than it had been under Nixon and Ford.

McMaster:
We would no longer confuse activity with progress [in South Asia]…Our military efforts and operations in the region combined with the efforts of our partners would focus on what brought us to Afghanistan in 2001 -- to deny terrorists safe havens that they could use to threaten America and threaten our allies.

Yet this trend had begun during Obama’s tenure, during which comprehensive state construction and a permanent presence were jettisoned for containment and attrition.

The most intriguing part of McMaster’s discussion was his focus on “fair” economic competition. Although it is true that the U.S. has permitted certain allies and partners to hold unfair trading advantages, the fact is that only American advances in innovation and productivity will enable the U.S. to expand its share of total world trade. Moreover, as Adam Smith noted, if countries use subsidies and tariffs to grow and protect their own industries, this only saps those countries’ national wealth by imposing costs on consumers. What the U.S. truly requires is greater public investment in R&D (military and civilian), K-12 education, STEM higher education, and infrastructure (including telecommunications such as Wi-Fi).

Having said this, the U.S. effectively leads the OECD in terms of gross and net national income, and has a very high share of GDP devoted to R&D (2.8%). Although Chinese industrial espionage is a persistent problem, China’s share of R&D has expanded from 0.73% of GDP in 1991 to 2.10% in 2015, meaning that the Chinese are using their own resources to fuel innovation and productivity (Source: OECD). I would like to see Federal R&D spending rise to above 1.20% of GDP to late 1970s/early 1980s levels (https://www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/RDGDP;.jpg).

CORRECTION: in terms of R&D spending as a share of GDP PPP, Israel is 1st, the U.S. is 11th (still the largest spender in absolute terms), and China is 17th (2nd-largest absolute spender).

Bill Moore:
It still begs the question how we can afford this?

The American want public goods and services, but do not want to pay for them. It is that simple. All Reagan did was borrow instead of raising taxes.

slapout9
12-04-2017, 10:22 PM
Excellent article from OTH we lack of understanding in our language. Nobody knows what anybody is talking about anymore.


https://overthehorizonmdos.com/2017/12/04/fifth-generation-warfare-and-other-myths-clarifying-muddled-thinking-in-our-current-defense-debates/

Bill Moore
12-05-2017, 02:45 AM
Excellent article from OTH we lack of understanding in our language. Nobody knows what anybody is talking about anymore.


https://overthehorizonmdos.com/2017/12/04/fifth-generation-warfare-and-other-myths-clarifying-muddled-thinking-in-our-current-defense-debates/

A good article, but perhaps misplaced here. I didn't hear McMasters use any buzz phrases, and the ideas he promoted for this NSS are built around enduring principles in U.S. strategy. McMasters, perhaps more than anyone else I heard speak, is believer in the enduring nature of war.

It is refreshing to hear an Air Force officer address the limitations associated with clinging to new technology as a replacement for strategy. Our adversaries have already developed new gray zone strategies to negate our technical advantages. If we end up getting in a high intensity conflict, it is doubtful that any of these technologies will be decisive.

The former SecDef and his deputy were the advocates the 3rd Off-Set Strategy, not the current regime. Although I suspect the 3d Off-Set effort will continue. As I noted earlier in this thread, after WWII strategy was no longer focused on winning, it became focused on deterrence. That lead DoD to focus on programs to develop the means to deter adversaries. We see the services compete for funding for their latest toy, often with little idea of how it will enable execution of a viable strategy to win. Of course, if you only want it for deterrence, I guess winning is a secondary thought?

Having read Boyd's biography, I think his initial ODAA loop was about decision speed to determine the out come of a dog fight between fighter aircraft. However, as Boyd moved beyond tactical to strategic he adapted the ODAA loop, and the article provides a good description of the strategic ODAA loop. Arguably a weakness in our ranks.


But what Boyd was getting to with his actual OODA loop diagram – which is considerably more nuanced than the simple one referred to in most instances – was that there is not just one cognitive process in play here, and that it does not just work on one direction since orientation also influences observation. Competitive advantage is gained by leveraging all of the mechanisms available to you across the physical, mental, and moral levels of interaction, but first, you have to understand what they are, and improve your orientation while seeking to influence the cognitive processes of your adversary.

This understanding is critical to strategists. Without it we simply react.

slapout9
12-05-2017, 07:14 AM
A good article, but perhaps misplaced here. I didn't hear McMasters use any buzz phrases, and the ideas he promoted for this NSS are built around enduring principles in U.S. strategy.



I thought the thread is about 21st Century Strategy. The article seemed to fit that General discussion, but it's your thread if you don't like it ask David to move it somewhere else.

Bill Moore
12-05-2017, 07:20 AM
I thought the thread is about 21st Century Strategy. The article seemed to fit that General discussion, but it's your thread if you don't like it ask David to move it somewhere else.

You're right, I thought it was specifically in response to the NSS comments, so my response was a crude way of asking for clarification. It is very relevant to the thread. Actually one of the more relevant ones.

Bill Moore
12-05-2017, 08:54 AM
The author asserted he was going to challenge or clear up the imprecise language, unqualified assumptions, and outright myths that muddles DoD's thinking. That is an ambitious agenda for a short article.

For the most part he makes traditionalist arguments tied to the enduring nature of war. The author also revisits the frequent critique of DoD (especially the civilian leadership) trying to hyper rationalize war and the folly of this tye of thinking. Then he points out we generally tend to use buzzwords to describe what appears new to us. This comment is interesting and has merit. A lot of things in our security ecosystem appear new because we have embraced an ahistoric view of war and competition. This is true, but an argument can be made that the use of buzzwords can help illuminate areas we have been blind too. It doesn't mean they are identifying anything new, but they are identifying areas we have neglected like irregular warfare. Clearly not new, but to long neglected in favor of a preferred war (Desert Storm) scenario that is more predictable.

The idea of multidomain battle isn't really new either, but it does possibly offer a corrective to the situation we find ourselves in. Our services through their various programming efforts have created functional stove pipes by domain that had little to do with the reality of war, but everything to do about protecting rice bowls. If the concept of multidomain battle facilitates greater functionality and jointness I am a fan.

Sometimes muddling has a purpose, paraphrasing Bruce Lee, "When I first started martial arts training a punch was just a punch, then the more I practiced it became a complex series of moves, and when I mastered it, a punch once again was just a punch." In sum, much of what we're doing is relearning the basics that we somehow lost.

Azor
12-12-2017, 03:27 AM
Source: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017-12/cant-kill-enough-win-think-again

By Lts. Col. Bolgiano and Taylor (Ret.), Proceedings Magazine, December 2017, U.S. Naval Institute


Those given the awful task of combat must be able to act with the necessary savagery and purposefulness to destroy those acting as, or in direct support of, Islamic terrorists worldwide. In 2008, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Admiral Michael Mullen said, “We can’t kill our way to victory.” Ever since, many have parroted his words. But what if Admiral Mullen was wrong? The United States has been at war with radical Islamists four times longer than it was with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in World War II. And those previous enemies were far more competent and aggressive than the terrorists. It is time to kill a lot more of them.

Key Arguments:


U.S. ROEs are too restrictive and JAGs are incompetent
"It takes killing with speed and sustained effect to win wars"
The First Gulf War was bloody, but for the Iraqis
The Civil War was a war of attrition
The U.S. used strategic bombing against civilians and combatants in Germany and Japan, including the use of nuclear weapons
Edward Luttwak was right in 1999 ("fighting must continue until a resolution is reached. War brings peace...")

Bill Moore
12-12-2017, 06:54 AM
Azor,

Thanks for posting, I was going to do so this weekend. The oft repeated phrase that you can't kill your way to victory is another example of misguided group think. People simple repeat these quotes as though they're facts that can't be challenged. If we opt to use military force to achieve an object, then we must use sufficient force to compel a decision. Failure to do so will result in prolonged conflicts with no winner.

Other group think quotes that should be considered assumptions instead of fact include: by, with, and through is always the best strategy; the center of gravity in COIN is always the population; all politics are local; it takes a network to defeat a network; it is the lack of economic opportunity that creates terrorists; and so forth. Any of the above may be true in a specific instance, but they are not universal laws.

Bob's World
12-12-2017, 02:45 PM
Certainly one can kill their way to victory in war, it just depends on what type of victory one seeks.

But if the war is an internal one, this is likely to be a pyrrhic victory.

The "American Way of War" remains a valid model for state on state warfare. Defeat the military, government and population of one's opponent completely; and then be generous in peace with broad reconciliation in peace, avoiding overly corrupting the perceived self-determination of the new governance that emerges, and remember that the defeated state will tolerate much more "influence" over their future if one is perceived as lessor of two evils (i.e., US presence in Germany, South Korea and Japan prevented much harsher occupations from impacting those places and people. We tend to forget that).

When one stops the war when the opposing government capitulates, but their military and population are not defeated, it is still a win, but not one that validates treating the affected nation and people as "defeated" (i.e., Germany post WWI, and equally Russia post-Cold War).

What Luttwak advocated for in "Give War a Chance" was the importance of letting political conflicts play out. When an external power intervenes to force a winner through the application of their power, it corrupts the legitimacy of the victory. The loser will always rationalize "but for...". This is when external power comes in as arbitrator. I believe increasingly external power should come in as mediator. Not to pick winners and losers; but to use their power to force the internal parties to the table and address issues that the current government would prefer to ignore. Like mediation in a failing marriage, terms developed and agreed to by the parties are more palatable and durable than those imposed by a judge.

The nature of war is not much changed by the modern strategic environment, but as power shifts to populations relative to governments it is highlighting that political conflict within a single system is not the same as that between two or more systems. War is the final argument of Kings; but revolution is the final vote of the people.

Bill Moore
12-12-2017, 04:49 PM
Bob,

Where we sometimes disagree is over the following statement.


The nature of war is not much changed by the modern strategic environment, but as power shifts to populations relative to governments it is highlighting that political conflict within a single system is not the same as that between two or more systems. War is the final argument of Kings; but revolution is the final vote of the people.

Some the VEOs are waging a war within a single political system, many are waging a global jihad with ambitions to change political systems external to their country. To your point about power shifting between states, and power shifting to super empowered individuals and groups, I agree. Some of these non-state groups are waging war against the U.S. and our allies. Attempting to solve this challenge by addressing local governance issues will not work. We have to recognize the type of conflict we're in, and not confuse everything with traditional Cold War COIN/FID models. At the same time, we can't paint with too broad of brush, because not every group employing terrorism if part of this global jihad movement.

Azor
12-12-2017, 05:00 PM
Moral Repugnance: A Response to ‘Can’t Kill Enough to Win? Think Again’ – Foreign Policy (December 11, 2017)

By Lt. Col. Dan Sukman, U.S. Army

Source: http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/11/moral-repugnance-a-response-to-cant-kill-enough-to-win-think-again/

Introduction:
There are multiple ways to describe retired Lt. Cols. David Bolgiano and John Taylor’s article in the December issue of Proceedings magazine. Rather than call a spade a spade in an ad hominem-type attack, it is worth the time to deconstruct their argument bit by bit, and then to offer an alternative position.

Key Points:


Bolgiano and Taylor blame JAG advisors for overly restrictive ROEs, but the ROEs are the responsibility of commanders, the staff leads are J3 and J5, and staff JAGs merely assist. The authors provide no evidence of JAG incompetentence but rely upon “ad hominem attack” and “wholesale slander”.

Comparing conventional past inter-state warfare with present operations against non-state actors is a logical fallacy

Bolgiano and Taylor ignore that precision-guided munitions were not available in the 1940s-1950s, necessitating indiscriminate strategic bombing with an added objective of demoralization. Ironically, civilian morale was only bolstered by the bombing of Germany, Japan and Britain.

The authors attribute high PTSD and suicide rates among veterans to a lack of victory parades; again, without any evidence.

The authors refer to Luttwak’s 1999 essay, “Give War a Chance”, without reflecting on its logical conclusion that, “nations would be part of a never-ending global conflict lasting for centuries until one nation prevailed above all others.”

Bolgiano and Taylor make “bizarre” claims that the Cold War was won entirely by the U.S. defeating the Soviet Union, despite many “competing theories as to why the Soviet Union collapsed”, and dismiss humanitarian missions as “new missions to justify force structure”, when in fact, “these types of missions have been a staple of the U.S. military” e.g. the Berlin Airlift.


The authors’ insistence that the way to win wars is through attrition lacks an intellectual foundation. It is understood that conflict is about achieving a political aim. The well-known strategic theorist Sun Tzu wrote that the ultimate skill for a general is to win without fighting. Moreover, another well-known theorist named Clausewitz wrote, ‘As War is no act of blind passion, but is dominated by the political object, therefore the value of that object determines the measure of the sacrifices by which it is to be purchased.’ People who are serious about warfare understand that war, although characterized by violence, is about attaining a political objective. Nations can achieve this through ways and means other than attrition.

Conclusion:
Wars are not lost because a nation does not kill enough people, or kill enough of the enemy. Wars are lost when nations find themselves in strategic drift. Wars are lost when nations send men and women into combat without any clue to why they are sending them there. Without any clear strategic objectives or end state, nations will fight endless wars with nothing to show for it. Finally, we lose wars when we lose our moral compass. The instant we become a monster to slay a monster, war is lost.

No, We Can’t Kill Our Way To Victory Despite What 2 Misguided Lieutenant Colonels Might Think – Task & Purpose (December 8, 2017)

By Adam N. Weinstein, U.S. Marine Corps. (Reserves)

Source: http://taskandpurpose.com/no-cant-kill-way-victory-despite-2-misguided-lieutenant-colonels-might-think/

Introduction:
Back in 2008, Adm. Michael Mullen, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made what seemed like a self-evident observation, seven years into the Afghanistan war and five years into Iraq: “We can’t kill our way to victory.” Nine years and nearly 2,000 U.S. combat deaths later, the U.S. Naval Institute has published Can’t Kill Enough to Win? Think Again, an op-ed by two retired lieutenant colonels who charge that Mullen was dead wrong, in thrall to a culture of weakness that has permeated and hamstrung the U.S. military. The USNI is a serious outlet for professional military thought; the authors of this particular piece, David Bolgiano and John Taylor, are former paratroopers and JAGs. This article is serious but sorely misguided, another reminder that the military is slow to adapt and has never fully adjusted to counterinsurgency.

Key Points:



Consider the war in Afghanistan. Kabul still can’t control large swaths of its territory and doesn’t even enjoy legitimacy. The biggest impediment to defeating the Taliban, a fractious and far-flung enemy, has never been an inability to kill its fighters, which U.S. forces still excel at; the problem has been figuring out what comes next, after the killing. The Afghan National Army is still plagued by rampant corruption and ethnic cleavages in Afghan society still hinder a strong national identity. All of these obstacles are compounded by the fact that Pakistan, Iran, and India all have interests in Afghanistan that clash with those of the United States…Despite these complexities, Bolgiano and Taylor assume that overwhelming death and destruction will fix it.


The urge to have a clear, massive victory is understandable — but it’s never proven effective in a battlespace where multiple insurgencies are occurring at once and in competition with one another…it requires the building of central governments with legitimacy…The U.S. military has vastly superior firepower compared to its enemies, but insurgencies can still kill with ease and relative efficiency.


Conclusion:
It is important never to confuse tactics with strategy or the immediate firefight for the desired long-term outcome. What could have been an interesting critique of U.S. military tactics at the operational level by Bolgiano and Taylor instead became a disjointed bravado-filled tirade that reeks of a longing for a time when war was simpler. The U.S. Naval Institute can do better.

Bob's World
12-12-2017, 09:06 PM
Bob,

Where we sometimes disagree is over the following statement.



Some the VEOs are waging a war within a single political system, many are waging a global jihad with ambitions to change political systems external to their country. To your point about power shifting between states, and power shifting to super empowered individuals and groups, I agree. Some of these non-state groups are waging war against the U.S. and our allies. Attempting to solve this challenge by addressing local governance issues will not work. We have to recognize the type of conflict we're in, and not confuse everything with traditional Cold War COIN/FID models. At the same time, we can't paint with too broad of brush, because not every group employing terrorism if part of this global jihad movement.


Bill, I suspect we disagree less than you might imagine on this. Obviously we do not live in a black and white world. Rare is the conflict that is purely "within" or "between." Most are a fusion of both. And yes, this new breed of VEO that the core groups for ISIS and AQ are prime examples of, conduct global UW campaigns in very state-like ways (but without the burden of state-like vulnerabilities).

Many in recent years have conflated these UW campaigns by slapping AQ or ISIS prefixes onto dozens of disparate revolutionary movements around the globe. That totally confuses the nature of those individual movements, as well as the character of the overall campaign. That is why I have long advocated for abandoning the reactive, symptomatic logic of CT and adopting a C-UW approach that focuses on the strategies, campaigns and alliances of these organizations.

By recognizing that the drivers of resistance insurgency are unique from the nature of the drivers of revolutionary insurgency it allows us to design more comprehensive campaigns that recognize that distinction and are designed to address both from the top down (as well as dealing with the UW efforts of state and VEO actors seeking to leverage both to their advantage).

Many have argued in places like Afghanistan that the problem must be solved from the bottom up. The problem is, that at the "bottom" there is no way to know the motivations of the fighter before you. Also, most of these places are broken from the top down through bad policies and poor governance.

Historically, when state power could routinely trump and suppress popular power, there was little need to make a distinction between revolution and resistance. After all, the "win" was defined as the state remaining uncoerced and the insurgent defeated. That was no true win then, and is even less of a win today. Time to put a finer point on our thinking.

Bill Moore
12-13-2017, 06:44 AM
Moral Repugnance: A Response to ‘Can’t Kill Enough to Win? Think Again’ – Foreign Policy (December 11, 2017)

By Lt. Col. Dan Sukman, U.S. Army

Source: http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/12/11/moral-repugnance-a-response-to-cant-kill-enough-to-win-think-again/

Introduction:

Key Points:


Bolgiano and Taylor blame JAG advisors for overly restrictive ROEs, but the ROEs are the responsibility of commanders, the staff leads are J3 and J5, and staff JAGs merely assist. The authors provide no evidence of JAG incompetentence but rely upon “ad hominem attack” and “wholesale slander”.

Comparing conventional past inter-state warfare with present operations against non-state actors is a logical fallacy

Bolgiano and Taylor ignore that precision-guided munitions were not available in the 1940s-1950s, necessitating indiscriminate strategic bombing with an added objective of demoralization. Ironically, civilian morale was only bolstered by the bombing of Germany, Japan and Britain.

The authors attribute high PTSD and suicide rates among veterans to a lack of victory parades; again, without any evidence.

The authors refer to Luttwak’s 1999 essay, “Give War a Chance”, without reflecting on its logical conclusion that, “nations would be part of a never-ending global conflict lasting for centuries until one nation prevailed above all others.”

Bolgiano and Taylor make “bizarre” claims that the Cold War was won entirely by the U.S. defeating the Soviet Union, despite many “competing theories as to why the Soviet Union collapsed”, and dismiss humanitarian missions as “new missions to justify force structure”, when in fact, “these types of missions have been a staple of the U.S. military” e.g. the Berlin Airlift.



Conclusion:

No, We Can’t Kill Our Way To Victory Despite What 2 Misguided Lieutenant Colonels Might Think – Task & Purpose (December 8, 2017)

By Adam N. Weinstein, U.S. Marine Corps. (Reserves)

Source: http://taskandpurpose.com/no-cant-kill-way-victory-despite-2-misguided-lieutenant-colonels-might-think/

Introduction:

Key Points:







Conclusion:

I would have been surprised if there wasn't a self righteous backlash to the think again article. The think again article was partially flawed by comparing the war against Japan and Germany with the war on terror. Despite this error there were a lot of uncomfortable truths in their thought piece that didn't settle well with critics, yet the counter arguments they presented are not supportable. See follow on post for examples.

Bill Moore
12-13-2017, 07:16 AM
First, the Moral Repugnance response in Foreign Policy. The author's argument that commander's own the ROE, therefore, it wasn't the lawyers who hampered operations. Partially true, but commanders at what level? The tactical commanders slugging it out with the jihadists had the overly restrictive ROE imposed upon them by higher echelons of command far removed from the fight, who developed ROE based on their COIN Zen readings. I could provide multiple examples, but will simply remind those of the ridiculous escalation of force ROE for challenging a suspicious vehicle approaching your vehicle. First use a laser to get their attention, then small arms warning shots, and then if you're not destroyed by the IED, employ your 50 cal. There were certainly times when this was permissible and prevented innocents casualties, yet when a vehicle charges across the medium at you, and you have seconds are less to act, you won't survive the escalation ROE proscribed.

Second, I agree with the critique that comparing today's conflicts with WWII and even DESERT STORM is false argument. However, the author's argument weakens when he asserts without any supporting evidence that the military can achieve its political object without attrition. That may be true sometimes, but it does apply in all cases. Going back to the false comparison as an example, the Japanese and Germans during WWII were hyper-nationalistic, and to break their will it was necessary to kill and destroy in large measure. Bringing it back to the reality of civil wars, insurgency, and countering terrorists, it still depends upon multiple factors. When the interests of both belligerents are so strong that political settlement is not feasible, then one side must apply sufficient force/violence to compel the other side to bend to their will. One relatively case in point was the civil war in Sri Lanka, the Tamils and Singhalese were not going to comprise with one another, and the war dragged on for years due to the West pushing the Sri Lankan government to take half steps. When the Sri Lankans were resourced (by the Chinese) and they took the gloves off, they finally defeated the Tamil Tigers. They were condemned by the Western media for so called war crimes, yet there was no context, such as was the peace that followed for both sides worth it, or would it be better to drag the fighting for an additional decade?

The author's point about Vietnam and Afghanistan were also flawed. While we certainly killed a lot of people in Vietnam, we didn't sustain the pressure (I'm not arguing that we should have, just questioning the author's assertion that killing doesn't work). In Afghanistan, we haven't killed that many, but more importantly the Taliban production factory in Pakistan is seldom ever touched, so we're not killing them at a sufficient sustained effort to break their will. Again, that may or may not be the preferred the course of action, but it is misleading to assert that killing our way doesn't work based on that example.

To his point about Iraq, having been there in 2007, where the strategy was to kill our way out of the seemingly uncontrollable chaos, it actually worked at the tactical and operational level. However, we didn't tie the killing to a political object beyond buying time for some magic to happen at the political level, which of course never materialized. The author is correct that we were strategically adrift.

To his final comment, "The instant we become a monster to slay a monster, war is lost." That is an opinion, arguably a nave one that has no historical support whatsoever. War is repugnant period, but allowing war to drag on endlessly with no end in sight because we think we can win it with half measures is a sin.

Bill Moore
12-13-2017, 07:38 AM
The Task and Purpose critique was better, I think the author hit the nail on the head with this comment.


The biggest impediment to defeating the Taliban, a fractious and far-flung enemy, has never been an inability to kill its fighters, which U.S. forces still excel at; the problem has been figuring out what comes next, after the killing.

So even we do apply sufficient violence to clear an area of the Taliban, we can consolidate our tactical win into a political win. The reason in my view is our failure to understand the local dynamics, and we attempt to impose a Western idea solution that will never work, or at least for the foreseeable future. We need to adjust our ends, or we'll be in Afghanistan forever.


Long-term success in places like Afghanistan and Iraq requires a credible alternative to insurgency and sectarian conflict; it requires the building of central governments with legitimacy. This feat that has so far eluded the United States and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan. Killing many, and often, hasn’t helped.

This feat will continue to elude the U.S. and its allies, so is it really a feasible course of action to achieve a win (however we ultimately define that)? This is simply COIN Kool-Aid, one size fits all, no analysis on feasibility required. All we have to do is establish a democratic government, provide some economic aid, and presto we'll achieve our ends.

However, this critique was much better argued than the previous one. It is unfortunate that the authors of the "Think Again" piece weakened a needed argument that questioned the conventional wisdom with unneeded bravado.

Bill Moore
12-13-2017, 07:41 AM
Ultimately, I do not desire to dilute this thread with an argument on whether we're applying enough violence to compel an adversary to bend to our will, but if we're going to honestly relook strategy in the 21st Century, it is important to challenge existing beliefs to see if they're enduring myths or facts, or more likely if they're applicable in one situation and not in another. In that case we confuse appropriate behavior in one situation as a principle that applies to all situations.

Bob's World
12-13-2017, 01:00 PM
Strategy is rooted in principles and framed by human nature. That is why Sun Tzu, Thucydides and Clausewitz endure to serve as strategic guides. Good strategic understanding is the Appreciation of what makes different types of political conflict distinct; and equally what the common elements are within those types.

To skip or disavow this step is to be forever mired in the emotion and character of the moment, where one has no idea where they are going, but often draws comfort from the fact that they are making good time...

Bill Moore
12-13-2017, 05:07 PM
Strategy is rooted in principles and framed by human nature. That is why Sun Tzu, Thucydides and Clausewitz endure to serve as strategic guides. Good strategic understanding is the Appreciation of what makes different types of political conflict distinct; and equally what the common elements are within those types.

To skip or disavow this step is to be forever mired in the emotion and character of the moment, where one has no idea where they are going, but often draws comfort from the fact that they are making good time...

Well said, and it isn't so much the COIN or FID mindset that matters as much as our tendency to reflexively apply doctrinal recipes for UW, COIN, FID, or high end war without gaining understanding first of the strategic ecosystem and identifying achievable politic objects, and how the military can be employed to help achieve those objects. We're enamored more with 12 step programs, or process over substance. Since 9/11 we have repeatedly failed to align our ends, ways, and means effectively.

slapout9
12-13-2017, 07:27 PM
IMO The larger problem since we entered the nuclear age at the end of ww2 is that no one talks about the fact that strategy and policy have merged into a new and distinct entity! The world was changed forever that day, but our thinking and our framework concepts have not. So in the end our judgement is flawed......And we fail.

Just look at the nuclear proliferation that is all around us but we spend unbelievable amounts on so called counter terrorism. One of the primary directives of the Constitution is to preserve a "Future" for our next generation, that flat out requires some type of plan! Where is it? We have lost our since of priorities,which in someway is a key component to any future plan.

Bill Moore
12-14-2017, 09:05 AM
IMO The larger problem since we entered the nuclear age at the end of ww2 is that no one talks about the fact that strategy and policy have merged into a new and distinct entity! The world was changed forever that day, but our thinking and our framework concepts have not. So in the end our judgement is flawed......And we fail.

Just look at the nuclear proliferation that is all around us but we spend unbelievable amounts on so called counter terrorism. One of the primary directives of the Constitution is to preserve a "Future" for our next generation, that flat out requires some type of plan! Where is it? We have lost our since of priorities,which in someway is a key component to any future plan.

We all tend to have negative views of the world based on the "if it bleeds, it leads" media news standard; however, I think we would be hard pressed to make a case that the U.S. has not relatively consistently improved the standard of living for its citizens since the end of WWII. There will of course be cyclic ups and downs in the economy, but the overall trend remains positive. Whether by plan or by chance we seem to be something right despite the bitter divides in our political system.

Critical to sustained improved standard of living for the next generation is revamping our education system, fixing the infrastructure that our economy is dependent upon, and forcing the extreme right and left elements in our political structure out of the system, so the real politicians can work on solving problems through the age old and tested compromising process that is the foundation of a democratic system.

The one issue we concern ourselves most with on SWJ is national security. I'm eager to see the final National Security Strategy, and the subordinate strategies developed to implement it. The new administration has hit the refresh button, but I do have concerns that it may be excessively focused on preparing to go to war with near peer state actors at the expense of other threats we face now and will face in the 21st Century.

You pointed out one, the proliferation of WMD. The proliferation of WMD probably can't be stopped any more than the illegal drug trade, but it can disrupted, degraded, delayed, or pick your other D word. The insurmountable problems are the expanding black, gray, and white globalized markets where the components of WMD systems can be purchased, and the inability to prevent WMD knowledge proliferation via the internet. Assuming I'm right, where does that leave us? On one hand, if we modernize our nuclear force, we can probably deter so called rational state actors from using WMD, just as they can deter us. On the other hand, it is unlikely that suicidal jihadist organizations can be deterred from using WMD, which will most likely be the use of chemical weapons in the near term. How do we adapt to manage that challenge?

Moving back to the threat of state actors challenging our interests globally. This threat undermines both our economic and security interests, but they are doing this now in the gray zone, so are we addressing the gray zone gap? While we certainly need a military that can prevail in a high end conflict in case we stumble into one, does it make any difference if we have a compelling conventional and nuclear military advantage if our adversaries are still achieving war like objectives short of war, and we have no idea of how to counter it? Are we hamstrung by outdated concepts and laws that do not hinder our adversaries? Do we have the wherewithal to change, or will we slowly retreat?

Back to your original point, we won't preserve a future for the next generation with outdated ideas and concepts. We have to adapt or strategy to deal with the world we have, not the one we want. We seem to want a world where a large conventional force can ward off the evils that threaten us. I for one, think that is an outdated idea that has already been proven to have no legs. It is one leg of a three legged stool at best.

You also point out the disconnect between policy and strategy, an argument I partly follow, but hope you can expand upon it a little to clarify. Another issue is we live in a world of programs and programming, and programs are what the services compete for, not war winning strategies. How do we fix this legacy mindset?

The good news is we're, at least in theory, an open society that is willing to identify, expose, and then fix our problems. That is a competitive advantage that is hard to beat when we come together as a nation to meet the challenge of the day. Hopefully we can do so before the next Pearl Harbor or 9/11 attack.

davidbfpo
12-16-2017, 06:05 PM
I spotted this WoTR article awhile ago and kept it back: 'The War on Terrorism as Imperial Policing' by Joshua Rovner.

It struck me that it has application here, although the USA has been wary of being labelled an imperial power and following British practices - in this context the imperial era tactic of air policing.

Citing the last two paragraphs:
Great Britain’s imperial grand strategy ended when it could no longer afford an empire. Two world wars and a series of postwar economic disasters forced it to retrench. The United States is much wealthier (https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/logan-friendman-obis-spring-2012.pdf) than pre-war Britain, and its relative advantages are enduring (https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8784.html), even after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Moreover, there is little sustained domestic opposition to a strategy focused mainly on intelligence, special operations, and drone strikes (https://www.cnas.org/publications/reports/u-s-public-support-for-drone-strikes). As long as there are no serious economic or political pressures to exercise restraint, we can expect more of the same: an imperial-style counterterrorism campaign waged by a country without imperial aspirations.
Link:https://warontherocks.com/2017/11/the-war-on-terrorism-as-imperial-policing/

Bill Moore
12-21-2017, 05:48 AM
The President released his National Security Strategy on 18 December 2017, and it is largely consistent with previous strategies with some key differences.

The NSS summary can be found at the following link:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-announces-national-security-strategy-advance-americas-interests/


Strategic confidence enables the United States to protect its vital national interests. The Strategy identifies four vital national interests, or “four pillars” as:

I. Protect the homeland, the American people, and American way of life;
II. Promote American prosperity;
III. Preserve peace through strength;
IV. Advance American influence.

The Strategy addresses key challenges and trends that affect our standing in the world, including:

•Revisionist powers, such as China and Russia, that use technology, propaganda, and coercion to shape a world antithetical to our interests and values;

•Regional dictators that spread terror, threaten their neighbors, and pursue weapons of mass destruction;

•Jihadist terrorists that foment hatred to incite violence against innocents in the name of a wicked ideology, and transnational criminal organizations that spill drugs and violence into our communities.

The entire NSS can be found at this link:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905-2.pdf

Somewhat surprising after the campaign rhetoric, the new NSS still upholds our values, and describes the increasingly competitive strategic environment as fundamentally contests between those who value human dignity and freedom and those who oppress individuals and enforce uniformity.

Will revisit this the NSS later.

Bill Moore
12-21-2017, 06:18 AM
I spotted this WoTR article awhile ago and kept it back: 'The War on Terrorism as Imperial Policing' by Joshua Rovner.

It struck me that it has application here, although the USA has been wary of being labelled an imperial power and following British practices - in this context the imperial era tactic of air policing.

Citing the last two paragraphs:
Link:https://warontherocks.com/2017/11/the-war-on-terrorism-as-imperial-policing/

David,

Think the following paragraph contrasts the difference between the British and U.S. approach at the strategy level.


The air policing analogy is far from perfect. Great Britain was pursuing an imperial grand strategy, supported by an imperial service. The United States does not have imperial aims or an imperial constabulary. Instead, its grand strategy is meant to sustain a liberal international order backed by a conventional military capable of rapid power projection. Washington seeks to solidify its power position by spreading American values, especially free trade and democracy, while ensuring that it can respond quickly in the event of regional instability.

We focused on sustaining the liberal international order and spreading our values, while the Imperial British focused on sustaining its power by using air power as a weapon of terror. Regardless of how you use air power, the promises associated it have always proven to be false promises. Furthermore, employing air power today is not a cheap option, a single bomb could cost over a million dollars. The Air Forces has priced themselves out business in many respects.

To the author's point of the necessity of developing a sustainable approach to our war on terror, I agree strongly. We don't need to employ 2 and 3 star headquarters and the associated staff to manage these security challenges in most cases. We certainly don't need high end aircraft designed to fight against a peer competitor. However, the lighter approach comes with its own risks as we saw in Niger.

davidbfpo
12-26-2017, 02:40 PM
Could the difficulty over strategy not also reflect public trust in the USA? I found this New Yorker article fascinating; it starts with and my emphasis added:
Gallup has been polling Americans annually about their confidence in their country’s institutions—the military, the Supreme Court, Congress, the Presidency, organized religion, the health-care establishment, and public schools, among others. Over all, the project describes a collapse in trust over time, even though the surveys started amid the disillusionment of Watergate and the failed war in Vietnam. In 1973, more than four in ten Americans had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress. This year, the figure was twelve per cent. Trust in churches and other religious institutions has fallen from sixty-five per cent to forty-one per cent in the same period. Confidence in public schools has dropped from fifty-eight per cent to thirty-six per cent. The loss of faith in the “medical system” has been particularly dramatic—a decline from eighty per cent in 1975 to thirty-seven per cent this year. There are a few exceptions to the broad slide. Confidence in the police has held steady at just above fifty per cent. Confidence in the military has increased, from fifty-eight per cent in the aftermath of the Vietnam War to seventy-two percent this year.
Link:https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-distrust-that-trump-relies-upon?

I had not seen such figures on the decline in trust in public and other institutions for the USA.

There is a recent opinion poll on trust in the professions here and that found 'Government Ministers and politicians are again the least trusted', with 19% trust Ministers and 17% trust politicians more generally. Alas the armed forces are not included and I would expect trust in them to be high.
Link:https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/politicians-remain-least-trusted-profession-britain (http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/: https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/politicians-remain-least-trusted-profession-britain)

Bill Moore
01-20-2018, 09:57 AM
I recently read two excellent books. The first was A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order, by Richard Haass that provides a view on challenges to the World Order, and proposals for meeting that challenge. The second book, which is the topic of this post is The World America Made, by Robert Kagan. This book also provides a view deeply informed by history on the world order that America made, the challenges that order faces, and the risk associated with what follows. A lot of strategists have different views of what is most important when it comes to strategy, but I think all strategy is worthless if the nation doesn't have the political will to execute it. This book provides a well reasoned argument on why America must stay engaged in the world.

What follows are some key points in the book:

1. Every international order in history has reflected the beliefs and interests of its strongest powers and every order has changed when power shifted to others with different beliefs and interests. The better idea doesn't win just because it is the better idea, it requires great power to champion it.

2. He provided historical examples when democracy rose and fell as a prevailing political idea, emphasizing that orders are not self-sustaining. What has enabled the prolonged success of democratization the last quarter was the world's greatest power reflected this norm. The U.S. didn't pursue a persistent policy of promoting democracy, in reality the military was employed out principle only twice to install democratic governments (Panama and Haiti). Rather it was the norms that America established. The strategic, economic, political, and ideological were inseparable. If nations wanted to be part of NATO, and later the EU, they had to present democratic credentials.

3. A Chinese strategist argues that the U.S. created “an institutionalized system of hegemony” by “establishing international norms” according to U.S. principles of behavior. Once these norms are accepted by the majority of countries, U.S. hegemony becomes legitimized. Of course we did this while the Chinese were killing millions of their own country men, and putting the rest of them in reeducation camps. If you want a voice in the world, don't be excessively stupid.

4. Kagan warns that we are dazzled by democratization, globalization, and interdependence. We tend to believe these developments have made our world so different. But these trends have been flowing for more than a century, and they have not prevented catastrophic wars. He reminds us that prior to WWI, economic interdependence and the belief that no one would go to war over land prevailed. The outbreak of WWI revealed failed imagination. Today we suffer from similar lack of imagination. Even the arguments are the same.

5. All great powers respond to opportunities and constraints in the international system. It is remarkable (unprecedented) that the U.S. superpower, for all its flaws, its excesses, and its failures has been accepted and tolerated by much of the world to such a degree. It has been more than tolerated, others have encouraged it, joined it, in formal and less formal agreements.

6. International order is no an evolution; it is an imposition.

7. He reminds us of the limits of our power, and when he puts it in historical context, we're really not as weak as we tend to believe. He writes, it is true the U.S. is not able to get what it wants much of the time. But then, it never could. Our image of the past is an illusion. For every great accomplishment during the Cold War, there was at least one equally fundamental set back. Mao winning China, N. Korea's attack on the South, couldn’t stop European allies from recognizing China. Our foreign policy created hatred for the U.S. As a result of 3d world animosity, and the U.S. steadily lost influence in the UN after 1960 (read The Brothers if you want to understand this point, the CIA and its unnecessary unconventional warfare efforts were occasionally successful operationally, but a major strategic failure). Late 60s, Kissinger wrote, “increased fragmentation of power, the greater diffusion of political activity, and the more complicated patterns of international conflict and alignment had sharply reduced the capacity of both superpowers to influence.

The point of all this is we don't see a trend until it is in our rear view mirror, so the new we're dealing with has been around for some time.

8. Many countries looked to the U.S. for leadership and protection throughout the Cold War and in the 1990s. The point is the U.S. was the predominant power in the world, it wielded enormous influence, and it accomplished much, but it was NOT omnipotent—far from it.

Continued

Bill Moore
01-20-2018, 10:10 AM
9. How can we measure if the U.S. is in decline? To compare American influence today with a mythical past of overwhelming dominance can only mislead us. While the U.S. government can exercise more influence on the behavior of more actors with respect to more issues than any other government can, it does not mean it can determine all other nations’ behavior on all issues or even on most issues.

10. The measure of the order’s success is not whether the U.S. can tell everyone what to do. It is whether the order itself—expansion of democracy, prosperity, and security is sustained. The greater freedom and independence of Brazil in foreign policy, although they disagree with us, can be a sign of the order’s success. The greater freedom of Iran to build a nuke can be a harbinger of its failure.

11. This point was made toward of the end of the book, but in my opinion it was the motivation for the author writing the book. If Americans had a clearer picture of what might come after the American world order, they would be more inclined to continue struggling to preserve the order they made, or at least ensure changes to the system to not undermine the order from which they, and others, have so greatly benefited. (He writes earlier in the book, fighting to sustain the current order as is will be an act of futility, but we need to lead and shape the emerging order).

What happens when autocracies shape the international order? We see China sustaining dictatorships in Burma and North Korea, and Russia’s obstruction of democratic pressures on regimes in Belarus, Armenia, and Central Asia. Since this is true today, in a world dominated by democracies, imagine a world in which the autocratic powers were stronger than the democratic powers. It might be enough to reverse liberal democratic order again.

He adds, one key element of the liberal economic order over the past two centuries has been control over the seas. What if the U.S. ceased to carry this burden? China is using its growing naval power not top open, but to close international waters offers a glimpse into the future where the U.S. Navy is no longer dominant.

12. What has made America most attractive to much of the world has not been its culture, its wisdom, or even its ideals alone. At times these have played a part; at times they were irrelevant. More consistent has been the attraction of America’s power, the manner in which it uses it, and the ends for which it has been used. What is true since the time of Rome remains true today; there can be no world order without power to preserve it, to shape its norms, uphold its institutions, defend the sinews of its economic system, and keep the peace.

13. He closes with thoughts on change and continuity. In the international realm, the distribution of power among nations, and between nations and non-state actors, is constantly in flux. It is both foolish and futile to try to hold to the past and to believe that the old ways are always going to be sufficient to meet new circumstances. However, we cannot be so entranced by change, that we fail to recognize some fundamental and enduring truths about power, about human nature, and about the way beliefs and power interact to shape a world order.

Continued

Bill Moore
01-20-2018, 10:21 AM
My initial thoughts on implications related to Kagan's book are a combination of revisionist history, the prevailing dumbing down of the West due the toxic impact of social media, and the deliberate actions of Russia and others to undermine our institutions and values has blinded a significant portion of the West's population to the dangers that lurk around the corner if we fail to maintain a leadership role in shaping the international order and frankly imposing norms that facilitate security and prosperity. I'm not arguing that our history should not be critical of our past, frankly we have an ugly past when he compare our actions to the ideas we promote. History and the media should hold us accountable; however, there is a larger context that gets lost in our excessive self-criticism. It would be a hell of lot of worse of Putin, Xi, Castro, Maduro, or some Iranian Supreme leader was guiding the international order.

U.S. power is not declining so much as other powers are increasing their power relative to the U.S., so our ability to impose and shape the order is increasingly limited, UNLESS our allies and partners stand with us to protect and advance common interests. Admittedly, the strategic error of invading and occupying Iraq has cost us considerable credibility and influence. While we must learn from that event, it is not an excuse for us to retreat from the world, or our allies and partners not stand with us against significant and growing threats to the international order that benefit our interests. Communicating the risk of failure to do so is imperative.

Another complication is the administration's America First national strategy theme. Every nation looks after its interests first, but the way this is communicated calls into question our will to police and enforce the order. If we don't, no one else will, but other powers will establish regional hegemonic influence and impose their own order increasing the risk of conflict and economic disruption. If you get past the rhetoric, it is clear the U.S. is still leading, but we need our words to align with our actions.

Bill Moore
02-03-2018, 10:09 PM
A decent summary of the U.S. National Defense Strategy 2018.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/01/21/how-to-read-the-2018-national-defense-strategy/

Order from Chaos, How to Read the 2018 NDS.


Remarkably, the NDS manages to be both pithy and blunt.


While the U.S. military faces five major challenges in line with American national security interests—China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and terrorists—countering the first two across the spectrum of conflict, including at the high-end and in the gray zone, are prioritized in this strategy.


The NDS’s bumper sticker, “Compete, Deter, and Win,” should be viewed through the lens of major competitors, and the emphasis on lethality/modernization and readiness should be understood as helping the U.S. military regain its advantage over China and Russia. According to this strategy, prioritizing preparation for tomorrow and next week’s conflicts will come at the expense of fighting today’s wars against violent non-state actors.

As the author identifies, funding to implement the NDS still remains in question. It isn't wise to develop a fall back plan for Congress that costs less because they'll choose butter over guns if given the chance. It is wise to consider options if it doesn't get funded. The alternative strategy will probably nest in this section:


In the often-orphaned issues category, the NDS tackles two topics worth highlighting: operational concepts and professional military education. The inclusion of both issues underscores that fighting and winning in the future must not simply be about the right materiel solution, but also about how the U.S. military employs what it already has—above all, its people.

AdamG
02-04-2018, 04:03 PM
Three Steps to Avert an Accidental Nuclear War
Human error, cyberattacks and Cold War postures are increasingly likely to set off a global disaster.
by Ernest Moniz and Sam Nunn

Some salient points -

American leaders have been warned more than once of incoming Russian missiles -- in each case, it was a false alarm resulting from technical or human error. Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin was mistakenly alerted to a possible U.S. missile strike after the launch of a Norwegian scientific rocket.


The risks of human error involving nuclear weapons are compounded by the potential for deliberate cyber-threats to warning and command-and-control systems. Hackers could insert a false warning of a nuclear attack into national warning and alert systems and falsely attribute that attack to an innocent country. At a time of heightened global tensions -- with too little communication or cooperation between nuclear rivals, and only minutes of decision time -- how would leaders of states with nuclear weapons respond?

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-01/three-steps-to-avert-an-accidental-nuclear-war

AdamG
02-06-2018, 12:16 PM
Bloomberg Q&A with Hugh White, a former top Australian official who feels Beijing has already filled the U.S. leadership void.


White put these thoughts to paper and pixel with a much-debated essay in the Australian publication Quarterly Essay. "Without America" envisions a Situation Room scene where a fictitious U.S. president decides that, even with America's superior conventional military, the risk of a confrontation with China just isn't worth it. Even if the U.S. prevailed, all China would need to do would be to inflict a couple of glancing blows and it would, politically, have triumphed.

For context, White is no raging left-wing academic. He has worked for Bob Hawke, a former Australian prime minister, and Kim Beazley, Hawke's defense minister. Both politicians were among the most pro-American figures in the Australian Labor Party. Beazley subsequently served as Australian ambassador to Washington from 2010 to 2016.

White's opinions have not gone unchallenged -- among others, frequent Bloomberg View contributor Hal Brands took a few shots.Link to Q&A:https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-03/what-happens-when-china-eclipses-the-u-s-in-asia

davidbfpo
02-06-2018, 01:10 PM
There has been a series of articles on WoTR over Hugh White's views and I have read a few. See:https://warontherocks.com/index.php?s=hugh+white

From this faraway spot I rely on this website for Australian input on strategy and to say the least there is an exchange there - a development I expect accelerated by President Trump holding office.
Link:https://www.lowyinstitute.org/issues/defence-security

Bill Moore
02-10-2018, 07:05 PM
Seems much of our strategy and planning frameworks are informed by legacy thinking and doctrine, and have little to do with the real world. Strategies, campaign plans, and contingency plans take months to years to develop unless their a crisis, and then we develop uninformed responses based on limited understanding of the environment and the second, third, etc. of our actions.

I'm not overly concerned with our strategy framework of ends, ways, means, and risk mitigation if they're not taken to literally. Whether we're implementing strategy during competition or war, we're interacting with competitors or adversaries, while simultaneously shaping and responding to changes in the strategic ecosystem. The most important element of strategy is developing a holistic understanding of the strategic ecosystem so our leaders can make informed decisions.

What about ends? We need aim points, otherwise we are simply treading water, but the ends can't be overly specific. Rather they need to be broad goals, and for the most part national level strategies address ends broadly. Another consideration for ends is clearly articulating what we can't accept, because it presents a significant risk to our national interests. Ends combined with strategic understanding enables decision makers to better recognize challenge and opportunities; thereby, enable them to direct responses more intelligently than say quickly flexing military forces to every location where some crazy is waving a black flag.

Ways and means should provide a broad view of we envision competing or fighting, but not be overly prescriptive. The world is changing too fast, but our thinking on strategy is overly informed by the historical aberration of the Cold War, where we were locked into a bipolar competition for decades that informed our strategic decisions. That myopic focus caused us to either miss or ignore the rise of radical Islam which started on industrial scale in 1979, while our recent focus on terrorism blinded us to the threat of Russia and China's gray zone strategies. Our current focus on Russia and China could blind us to other threats, which is why ends should be focused on interests, not adversaries. Ways should be focused on protecting interests from multiple challenges based on our evolving understanding of the strategic ecosystem. Otherwise we once again engrain the political and military-industrial bureaucracy to develop the wrong means. Agility at the strategic level is as important as agility at the tactical level.

Our outdated campaign and contingency planning construct as described in joint pub 5-O is most concerning. The changes the Chairman is trying to inject to fix very real problems he and others have identified, has mostly resulted in additional staff work that simply distracts from the deep thinking required to clearly define the problem and appropriate response. Clearly this wasn't the intent, but new planning guidance doesn't replace the old, rather it is additive, so it simply piles on more requirements upon existing requirements this is the unavoidable result. The result is planners must produce more and more within the same timeframe, so planners cut and paste from old plans and color between the lines. Developing deep understanding and creative solutions takes time, often our most precious resource.

Finally, a short comment on so-called SMART objectives and assessments. SMART objectives are appropriate for business practices, but have limited application for strategy and plans. I don't want to overstate this, because some objectives can be SMART, but for our assessment process we need to inject more art than science. As stated above, we're interacting in an ecosystem, hopefully responding smartly to emerging challenges and opportunities as we attempt to navigate toward or desired goals or prevent what we need identified to be unacceptable. The military tends to cling to outdated measuring/assessing SMART objectives, while failing to realize we have in many cases lost our strategic position of advantage, and even if those objectives would change, our adversaries have developed strategic approaches that negate their value.

Simply food for thought.

davidbfpo
02-19-2018, 09:08 PM
A commentary 'This Too Shall Pass: Remarks to the Camden Conference on The New World Disorder and America’s Future' by Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.).

Here is a taster:
For more than two centuries, American exceptionalism had appealed to the angels of humanity’s better nature. But, as the 21st century advanced, foreigners began to see American claims to political privilege and demands for legal immunity as instances of assertive irresponsibility. The result is steadily reduced foreign support for the hegemonic privileges and double standards to which Americans had come to feel entitled. Today, the American conviction that other countries should be grateful to us and supportive of our continuing global primacy clashes with the preference of every other great power for a multipolar world order in which there is no single world policeman.The author's very slim bio:
Ambassador Freeman chairs Projects International, Inc. He is a retired U.S. defense official, diplomat, and interpreter, the recipient of numerous high honors and awards, a popular public speaker, and the author of five books.Link:http://chasfreeman.net/this-too-shall-pass/

Bill Moore
02-22-2018, 07:12 AM
A commentary 'This Too Shall Pass: Remarks to the Camden Conference on The New World Disorder and America’s Future' by Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.).

Here is a taster:The author's very slim bio:Link:http://chasfreeman.net/this-too-shall-pass/

Interesting article David, but it may be premature to claim American global dominion is receding into history. Maybe wishful thinking on my part, but he points to the very reality of what the world will look like if that happens. To sustain a rules based international order, America's allies and partners will have to stand with us to defend collective interests. An unstable international order, where war becomes the norm again is not in our interest. However, preventing this scenario from continuing to play out will require a concerted effort and more sacrifice. For that to happen we'll need credible political leaders that mobilize their countries to rise to the challenge.


Now, as American global dominion recedes into history, we can begin to see some elements of what is to come. If the 20th century was America’s, the 21st will be nobody’s. We are witnessing a return to a world based on regional, not global, balances of power. “America First” invites “China first,” “India first,” “Japan first,” “Pakistan first,” “Russia first.” Maybe “Europe first,” if there is a Europe. Great power rivalries are back, some of them between nations with nuclear weapons. None wants to shoulder the burdens of global hegemony on the American model. None seeks to impose its own model on the world. But all are arming to preserve their sovereignty, often against the perceived threat of American attempts at regime change.


War is back as an accepted means of adjusting the policies, borders, and international alignments of nations. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria have been thrust into anarchy by foreign intervention. Israel is swallowing all of Palestine. Serbia has lost Kosovo; Ukraine has lost the Crimea. A Saudi-led Arab coalition is devastating Yemen. International law has been reduced to an instrument of accusatory diatribe. It no longer regulates national behavior.

Like many other strategists he also points out what should be obvious, until we get our own house in order we will be ineffective in projecting power/influence on the world stage.

Bill Moore
04-15-2018, 09:05 PM
Since the new Blog makes it difficult to start a conversation, the next two posts will be posts I published to the SWJ Blog. Following up here to hopefully see if others agree or disagree with my thoughts.

First one.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/cnas-releases-new-report-building-future-force-guaranteeing-american-leadership-contested

CNAS Releases New Report “Building the Future Force: Guaranteeing American Leadership in a Contested Environment”

My response:

Special operations remain an afterthought in much of the Department of Defense and the services, and that shortfall is all too often reflected in papers like these. The utility of special operations doesn’t rhyme with America’s preferred way of war, which is seeking rapid victory through decisive battle. The military strategy this future force is designed to support is a strategy that emphasizes finding, fixing, and finishing faster than the adversary. These are capabilities we should desire and aspire towards, but it is hardly a holistic description of an ideal future force based on our current and projected threats.

Since Dave Maxwell already addressed the special operations gap, I’ll focus my comments mostly on other areas. To clarify my position, the technical challenges this study addresses are very real and must be addressed. We haven’t seen the end of war, so like Dave, I am a supporter of rebuilding the readiness and capabilities of our conventional forces to prevail in future wars. However, what this paper fails to do in my view is one of the paper’s stated aims, “imagine ways of fighting that may defy conventional wisdom.”

The focus on building a more resilient and faster find, fix, and finish (F3) capability and capacity, apparently at the expense of everything else, implies the underlying strategic assumption is that future wars will be fought according to U.S. morals, where every effort will be made by both sides to limit collateral damage to non-military targets. Yet, most of our adversaries throughout modern history (WII and beyond) have proven quite capable of deliberately committing atrocities to achieve their ends. Whether it was Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or more recently Russia’s support of Assad in its deliberate targeting of medical facilities and conducting chemical attacks on civilians in Syria. The asymmetry is that we are focused on counter force targeting, while our adversaries are focused on counter force and counter value targeting as means to an end. Considering our adversaries have multiple means and ways, multidomain and multifunction if you will, to attack our homeland, then that must be a focus area. These means and ways range from cyber, space, conventional fires, special operations, to active measures in the human domain to undermine our political cohesion and national will. It would seem appropriate to address a substantial portion of any future force discussion on requirements to protect the homeland. It can no longer be considered a sanctuary when the boys march to fight a war on a foreign land.

As we have seen with Crimea, the ability to F3 faster doesn’t overcome the challenges of interior lines our strategic competitors and North Korea enjoy. Even with state of the art ISR capabilities, decision space for leaders to respond will be limited, and adversaries will likely establish facts on the ground before we can generate the political will to act. At that point, gaining the political will needed to project enough force to conduct a military operation to reverse this situation will prove challenging due to the expense involved and the risk poised advanced anti-access / area denial capabilities. Would be worthwhile if the future force had other options to offer our national leadership? Unconventional warfare could be one such option.

The feasibility of the 3rd Off-Set Strategy (3OS) is highly questionable. The assumption is our strategic competitors can keep pace with us, or in some areas even out match us in technical innovation, so the pursuit of the 3OS may prove more burdensome than our economy can bear over time. This begs the question, have we seriously imagined alternative ways of fighting future conflicts? The paper points out that technological innovation is happening quicker than anticipated. This shouldn’t be surprising, technology begets technology, each advanced technology is the son or daughter of previous technology, whether it is tying a stone to club, or interconnecting sensors with advanced weapon systems. It is the nature of technological evolution to increase in momentum.

Finally, a hat tip to Dave Maxwell for calling out gray zone competition, which by description means our competitors are achieving war like objectives short of traditional armed conflict using innovative strategy more so than innovative technology. The take away from this point is that even if we did achieve the aims of the 3OS strategy, we would still be missing a critical piece of our future force design if we didn’t address how we intend to confront this challenge.

Bill Moore
04-15-2018, 09:07 PM
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/united-states-preparing-wrong-war

The United States is Preparing for the Wrong War

My response

Max Boot is partially right, but a more accurate assessment would be our obsession with the war on terror for 15 plus years to no discernible end enabled our strategic competitors to become near-peer or peer competitors militarily. We lost numerous FID missions around the world, and it had little impact on U.S. security and prosperity over time. Losing a war with China or Russia could be devastating. Also Max got Vietnam wrong, but so does the majority of Americans who achieved their education in a liberal university. The U.S. won the small war in Vietnam, the insurgency was soundly defeated. A large and well armed conventional force from North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam, not hybrid warfare. I'm not down playing hybrid warfare, obviously the way the Russians are employing it today presents a strategic threat.

Finally, his point of the Italian elections demonstrate a lack of understanding of what drove the Italian people to this point. The far left in Italy left its economy and security in shambles. The scale of the illegals that have moved into Italy from the Middle East and Africa present an existential threat to their culture, which understandably has generated a right wing backlash. Recent shootings of immigrants alarms me, this can quickly spiral out of control. The EU did little to help Italy with this challenge, even though it is a threat common to most countries in the EU, Italy was left with the bill. Not unlike recent U.S. elections, people had to choose the candidate(s) they disliked the least. Did this benefit Russia? Certainly, but if Max wanted to make a point, it should have been that EU created an opportunity for Russia due to their inability to manage these challenges. This resulted in a right wing backlash in many countries in the EU, and Russia is opportunistic.

davidbfpo
04-16-2018, 08:22 AM
Bill,

An attempt to reply to your two posts - before reading the linked articles (terrible I know).

The Middle East has long been a focal point for US strategy, many argue that it has not been very productive when one considers the national resources committed. Plus the irregular comment that one opponent, Iran, has been the main beneficiary. I read the linked article below yesterday, which is the latest comment I've seen and the title 'The Fruits of Iran’s Victory in Syria'.
Link:https://lawfareblog.com/fruits-irans-victory-syria

I do wonder if we (US & UK) look too much at what we have done and not what our opponents have done.




(https://lawfareblog.com/fruits-irans-victory-syria)

Bill Moore
04-19-2018, 08:46 AM
I do wonder if we (US & UK) look too much at what we have done and not what our opponents have done.

David, I tend to think that is a given. Our assessments over the 15 past years for our operations in the Middle East generally indicate we're winning, and every year is the pivotal year that will result in an enduring victory. Of course that has proven to be complete nonsense, and now it is laughable when you hear it. Some assessments are dishonest, but in most cases they're simply focused on what we have done, and if you look at through that lens we're generally making progress. On the other hand, if you conduct a net assessment and compare our gains relative to our adversary's it paints a very different picture. It also paints a different picture if you assess strategic gains versus fleeting operational level gains, all too often disconnected from strategy, because either there is no strategy, or military campaigning no longer effectively achieves strategic ends for various reasons. One can argue, and you may be making this point, that our 15 plus years of tactical and operational success have resulted in a global strategic for us relative our more important strategic competitors, Russia and China. They have invested in developing advanced war fighting capability and made significant progress using so-called gray zone strategies while we're undermining our military readiness and ignoring what is really important because we're mired down in the Middle East. Only now we're beginning to see this, and even if our national leadership understands this we have a military culture that seems dependent upon continued rotations into the Middle East because that defines who we are.

Bill Moore
04-19-2018, 09:00 AM
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2017/10/31/disruptive-technologies-to-upend-rules-of-war

Disruptive Technologies to Upend Rules of War


New technologies promise an alternative. Robotics, cyber and space weapons can reduce the size of ground forces needed to wage war. They can withdraw human soldiers from the battlefield while making attacks more precise and deadly. They can allow nations to coerce each other without inflicting the same level of casualties and destruction as in the past. They can reach far beyond borders to pick out terrorists or selectively destroy WMD sites. They can reduce the costs that discourage western nations from stopping humanitarian disasters or civil wars. While armed conflict will continue as a feature of the human condition, it might now come at lower cost, for a shorter time, and with less violence.

Maybe, but I suspect Colin Gray's argument about "Another Bloody Century" is more accurate. As the character of warfare changes based on automation and robotics, which arguably results in smaller military forces, do we really think these weapons will simply be directed against so-called legitimate military targets? It makes little sense, since destroying an adversary's robotic military would do little to compel a state or its population to bend to our will, or vice versa. For an opponent to impose one's will on another through this form of warfare would most likely require applying it against the opposing government and civilian population to force compliance.

There seems to be a line of thinking in the high tech world that if my robot can beat our robot we win. I don't see how this form of warfare would result in achieving political ends with military power. It may serve as a deterrent, but most understand winning wars requires more than winning battles.

Bill Moore
09-03-2018, 11:01 PM
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/future-warfare-irregular-29672

The Future of Warfare is Irregular
These realities suggest that competition between the United States and its main adversaries will likely be irregular—not conventional.
by Seth Jones


America’s adversaries are unlikely to compete with the United States directly in a series of set-piece battles. Instead, they will likely continue to engage in cyber, proxy and information campaigns. Thus far, the United States has failed to compete effectively in this field, except for some efforts by U.S. special operations forces. Washington has been far too reactive, defensive, and cautious—not to mention discordant among multiple U.S. government agencies. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have embraced irregular warfare. But the United States has not. It isn’t too late to adjust course.

It has been awhile since I provided an update to this, and Seth Jones’ recent article provides an opportunity to reopen the discussion. Jones argues our adversaries / competitors will likely continue to resort to irregular or more accurately non-conventional strategies to pursue their strategic aims, while our current focus on building a superior conventional and nuclear capability fails to address the gaps in our ability to protect our interests in competition short of traditional armed conflict, also known as the gray zone. He is not opposed to a conventional force build up and modernizing our nuclear forces, but correctly points out our adversaries can still defeat us (undermine our strategic interests) if we fail to address their use of what we call irregular warfare.

While Jones did a good job of advocating for the U.S. to enhance its irregular warfare (IW) capabilities throughout the military (especially SOF), the CIA, and other government agencies, he fails to identify how these capabilities would be used to achieve desired ends. He clearly is talking about a much more comprehensive form of IW, than the narrow view of conceived in response to our protracted conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. He is focused on the full range of irregular or unconventional activities (what Kenan calls political warfare) that can be executed unilaterally and through proxies. Unfortunately, he fails to describe how these capabilities and ways would be employed to achieve strategic ends. While old time SOF operators would say it is obvious, the articles is focused on convincing conventional military leadership on the need to ramp up our IW capabilities, not downsize them.

He recommendations include the need to educate our public on how our adversaries use irregular warfare. Presumably this will enhance our resilience and generate the political will to counter it once it is recognized as a strategic threat. Second, professional education at military schools need to add more irregular warfare topics to the curriculum. In my view, most military education in this area is tied to faulty strategic approaches for counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. One is focused on the non-strategic tactical approach of find, fix, finish to defeat terrorism, where we have 17 plus years of tactical success and strategic failure, and the other naively assumes the center of gravity is always the local populace to defeat an insurgency. That view was questionable during Cold War, and even more so now when various external actors can continue to leverage proxies strategically regardless of the populace’s leanings. For great power competition, the educational curriculum needs to address unconventional warfare, foreign internal defense, cyber, and other topics at the strategic level, which was actually his third recommendation (reduce the focus on counterterrorism).

It is a good article, but one that I hope he follows up on with an article on how the U.S. government and military would employ irregular warfare to achieve strategic ends in the 21st Century. We can’t repeat the Cold War, the strategic environment has changed too much. We’re now in a multipolar world that is increasingly interdependent economically, which results in more limitations, but perhaps also more opportunities.

Bill Moore
09-15-2018, 05:10 PM
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/09/weaponization-everything/151097/?oref=defenseone_today_nl

This short article is the most concise, yet comprehensive description of the gray zone or competition short of armed conflict that I have seen.


augmenting their substantial political, economic, military, and commercial capabilities, Beijing and Moscow are mastering the “weaponization of everything” to achieve exploitable hypercompetitive advantages vis-à-vis the United States. Their “hammers” range from political coercion, predatory economics and strategic extortion, to information warfare and subversion, covert action, and overt disregard for international norms.

We need to expand our view of multi-domain warfare to address other domains beyond the doctrinal ones and compete in those domains short of armed conflict. These strategies are hardly new in the historical sense, but the U.S. has become an astrategic nation. As the article states, we have failed to adapt to a post U.S. primacy world. I would add we subconsciously cling to the "End of History" myth and over emphasize the value of soft power as a means and way to an end.

Our adversaries decisively and deliberately maneuver and compete in domains beyond maritime, land, space, air, and cyber to achieve their policy aims over time (extended battles that require strategic patience). In contrast, the U.S. military national defense strategy narrowly focuses on improving lethality in the doctrinal domains, while our adversaries execute sophisticated whole of society campaigns to achieve their ends that largely neutralize our conventional military power.

The article accurately points out we are not even on the defense, much less the offense. However, once we wake up to the growing threat presented by these competitors to our way of life and internal stability, I believe we have the ability to prevail in this competition, yet time is not on our side.


As warlike behavior migrates into new competitive spaces – strategic influence, commerce, culture, domestic politics, cyberspace, space, and the electromagnetic spectrum — the U.S. government and private sector must recognize the far-reaching and growing hazards of hypercompetition and rival gray-zone strategies. The boundaries between war and peace, battlefield and market, and adversary and competitor are dissolving. If the United States is to effectively compete for position and influence in this turbulent and dangerous environment, it requires an urgent meeting of the minds to bring a more collaborative stance to hypercompetitive great-power rivalry.

davidbfpo
01-17-2019, 07:17 PM
This is an article by Professor Anatol Lieven, Kings War Studies, which appeared in my electronic reading list today, but was published pre-Xmas in The National Interest, so some may have read this before.
The sub-title says:
In their enthusiasm for a new cold war against China and Russia, the western establishments of today are making a mistake comparable to that of their forbears of 1914.
He opens with:
This year saw the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, in which some 16 million Europeans died, two great European countries were destroyed, and others crippled. This year may also be seen by future historians as the last year of the period between the cold wars, when after 29 years of relative quiet, the world's major powers once again moved into positions of deep and structural mutual hostility.
Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/anatol-lieven/can-we-please-learn-from-history? (https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/anatol-lieven/can-we-please-learn-from-history?utm_source=Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d6dd65c541-DAILY_NEWSLETTER_MAILCHIMP&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_717bc5d86d-d6dd65c541-407365113) or The National Interest:https://nationalinterest.org/feature/western-nations-are-repeating-mistakes-1914-39522?page=0%2C1

Bill Moore
01-20-2019, 02:56 AM
This is an article by Professor Anatol Lieven, Kings War Studies, which appeared in my electronic reading list today, but was published pre-Xmas in The National Interest, so some may have read this before.
The sub-title says:
He opens with:
Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/anatol-lieven/can-we-please-learn-from-history? (https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/anatol-lieven/can-we-please-learn-from-history?utm_source=Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d6dd65c541-DAILY_NEWSLETTER_MAILCHIMP&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_717bc5d86d-d6dd65c541-407365113) or The National Interest:https://nationalinterest.org/feature/western-nations-are-repeating-mistakes-1914-39522?page=0%2C1

David,

I read this guy's bio and it is impressive, but his article is a bunch of hyperbole that suggests we bury our heads in the sand. The U.S. has no enthusiasm for a new Cold War, and I suspect Western Europe would prefer to avoid one also. In fact, both the U.S. and Western Europe went out of their way to accommodate China. The Russia situation is more complex, but the U.S. extended multiple olive branches. Based on Xi's increasing aggression, and Russia's military aggression and increasing gray zone interference in the internal affairs of western nations, we had to respond. To do otherwise would be to repeat the same mistake Chamberlain made prior to WWII.

We are waging a competition as a distraction from our internal troubles, and the one thing Anatol got right is we have a lot of internal troubles that have resulted in significant economic, social, and cultural insecurity leading to a higher death rate and addictions. This is exactly the reason we don't desire a new Cold War, they're expensive and distract from the work we need to do at home. If it was a distraction it certainly failed, because both Americans pay little attention to this competition. Many American college kids can't identify where the U.S. is on a globe, but they'll tell you white males destroyed the world, yet be unable to defend their position in a debate.

Here are some of his hyperbole comments:

Murderous Filipino populists? I suspect many Filipinos would take issue with this broad characterization. The Philippines has had insurgencies and high crime for the past 150 years, but they have also made significant progress and the vast majority of the population are good people.

Apparently according to the author, India is ruled by Hindu Fascists. I'm amazed that India exists as a country at all with 13 official languages and its various ethnic groups, insurgencies, separatists groups, economic disparity, etc., the fact that it does is admirable.

Millions of people from Central America fleeing to the U.S., millions? Really?

Unfortunate, but not surprising that another academic is polluting our youth's minds with with anti-Western, anti-democratic, and the West is always wrong diatribe.

Bill Moore
01-22-2019, 03:43 AM
From the SWJ Journal: THE NATIONAL DEFENSE STRATEGY A YEAR LATER: A SWJ DISCUSSION WITH ELBRIDGE COLBY

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/national-defense-strategy-year-later-small-wars-journal-discussion-elbridge-colby


Principled realism focuses through a realist lens on building a free, open, and dignified political order within the international system. The logic is that America needs to play power politics so that we don’t live in a power politics world. Principled realism accepts that power and especially the agglomeration of power determines international outcomes. But it seeks to adapt that reality in service of positive ends.

Throughout the interview, he limits his view of power to brute military force, both conventional and nuclear. While these elements will remain relevant for a nation-state vying for power on the world stage, other actors, including non-state actors that Colby largely dismisses, have demonstrated they have considerable power to influence states and their populations.


What’s wrong with the “international rules-based order” language is that rules per se do not define international order. “Rules based order” sounds like conceiving of or attempting to turn the international environment into a domestic environment. But a domestic environment requires the preponderance of power by a sovereign, which is incompatible with the preservation of meaningful state sovereignty. The other problem with the “rules-based order” phrase is that it tends to focus people on violations of the “rules” rather than the real issue, which is power. My favorite example is the South China Sea. If the Chinese could create artificial features, militarize them, and achieve military dominance in the South China Sea – and do this all legally – we would still have a problem with it.

I don't see how you can have a free and open international system that isn't based on rule and norms. Those that adhere to the rules and norms develop a shared trust in these rules and processes, that equates to a higher degree of stability in the international system. Those who violate the rules and norms destabilize the system, and it is the violation of these rules that give us some degree of legitimacy to act.


Generally, the NDS emphasizes that we need to have a theory of victory that is able to beat their theory of victory. Their theory of victory is the rapid seizure of allied territory that presents the perception through nuclear or conventional coercion that the costs and risks of ejecting the them from their seizure would be too great and too daunting to be contemplated because such action could split the alliance or at the minimum tame our response sufficiently to negate its effectiveness.

Colby is viewing the world through one soda straw instead of a more holistic kaleidoscope. He fails to adequate address competition short of armed conflict, or gray zone competition when he refers to China and Russia seeking to expand their territory and shift the preponderance of power through small, limited wars. This implies that China and Russia must conduct strategic preparation of the environment to set conditions for quick, decisive wars to achieve limited objectives. A recent example is Russia's aggression against Crimea. After seizing the territory, Russia and China will then attempt to normalize it politically in hopes that others, especially the U.S., will not seek to dislodge their military and paramilitary forces. In many ways, while Russia still controls Crimea, it was a loss for Russia strategically. In the far east, the Chinese using a strategy of incrementalism have achieved a degree of success in the South China Sea. Their activites change the facts on the ground, or blue soil, without triggering a military response. However, it now viewed as naked aggression and coercion by many countries, so this strategy is gradually backfiring.


This is largely about deterrence, not assurance. The point is to develop combat-credible forces forward (whether American or allied) that can blunt the adversary’s aggression so that they cannot consummate the fait accompli, so that they cannot seize territory or hold on to it. Ideally the alliance will deny the adversary their attempt at localized aggression so the adversary cannot achieve the fait accompli.


People tend to bifurcate political influence and military force. Of course, the real objective of having a military advantage is to develop political influence without having to use military force or using it in a very efficient way. Influence comes from the understanding that if you challenge the other side you will lose. If the states of the East are under the shadow of Russian power, including their A2/AD capability, and they perceive that the U.S. and the rest of the Alliance don’t have a credible and plausible way of defending them, then they will face strong pressure to defer to or even bandwagon with the Russians.

Deterrence hinges on a favorable balance of power, and for us that requires allies and partners who are assured we will honor our commitments before they commit to theirs. To do otherwise could prove suicidal.

This interview sidesteps the reality of gray zone competition, although it is addressed in the National Defense Strategy. Simply relying on an improved conventional and nuclear force posture will not deter these sophisticated political warfare tactics. It is not a lesser threat either, assuming a national interest is worth fighting for based on our expensive forward posture, then it is a logical assumption if that interest is threatened short of traditional armed conflict and we do not have a strategy to counter it, then we have a significant gap in our strategy. A significant gap that the Chinese have effectively exploited much more effectively than the Russians.

AdamG
03-14-2019, 03:26 PM
Ongoing Conflicts as of 2019 (source unknown)
https://i.imgur.com/VXKGHh3.png

Bill Moore
03-17-2019, 12:11 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUNm852We0o

The Sublime: Is it the same for IBM and Special Ops?

The enclosed link is to a YouTube video where LTC Grant Martin shares his view on design. It may seem out of place in a forum focused on Strategy in the 21st Century, but in my view, we need hybrid strategy/campaign plans that facilitate learning and adaption. Design thinking even the Army /Joint Operational design process that some seem to look down their nose at, is a process to facilitate this type of strategy/campaign development and continuing refinement.

My response to the YouTube video follows:

An interesting presentation and I admire Grant’s passion. You can’t move mountains or create what Kun refers to as a Paradigm Shift without passion and the continuing accumulation of evidence that our current processes and beliefs are no longer adequate. My thoughts on this presentation are both supportive and critical. I wouldn’t dismiss the term design but focus on what you’re ultimately trying to achieve. In my opinion, it is creating a process to facilitate continuous learning and adaption, and ultimately develop a learning organization.
MDMP and JOPP do not facilitate effective learning and adaption to an ever-evolving ecosystem. As you stated, linear military processes are O.K. for short duration operations with limited objectives. However, beyond short duration operations, this linear process has limited utility. It partly explains why the American way of war is apolitical, acultural, ahistoric, and non-strategic. In response to some comments by the attendees, MDMP/JOPP didn’t get us to where we are with Syria or China. Those were policy decisions well above the military planning level. The military develops strategy and operational approaches to achieve policy aims, and if we’re in a state of policy confusion, then obviously our plans/designs will fall short. Place the issue squarely where it fits.

Design thinking could lead to gaining a greater understanding over time as we interact with multiple variables (not just the adversary) in the strategic ecosystem. To be effective, it needs to facilitate a common understanding, but not groupthink, from the NSC to tactical formations. I have met several very creative Generals and Admirals (older gentlemen), but their staffs frequently resist change, most commonly at the O-6 and GS-15 levels. Why? Their bureaucratic expertise is in the current system, and they fear they’ll lose influence if they expand into new territory. Age is a variable, but it is only one variable, so judge each individual on his or her individual merit, not their age, color, religion, education, etc.

I hope this idea of design thinking will bring back the art of war and reintegrate into policy. Even the old dogs you frequently criticize would value this. Clausewitz fully recognized we cannot reduce the complexity of war to a scientific method, so in some respect, there is already buy-in from some noted experts in the study and practice of war. I valued Grant’s comments on our deeply flawed assessment process where we foolishly attempt to apply business metrics to great power competition, counterinsurgency, and traditional war as though we can reduce it a math problem. McNamara pushed this on DOD during the Vietnam War, and it continues to have toxic effects to this day. The feedback we need for our OODA loop (tactical through strategic) differs depending upon our aims, but it is nonsense that every objective must be scientifically measurable. Very few objectives will fall into this realm. I think there is an awakening across the force that our current assessment processes need to change. Assessments are critical, but the most valuable assessments are more art than science. It is not about measuring whether we have increased our earning fiscal quarter to fiscal quarter.

I’ll refute Grant’s point that SOF was first to human domain. In WWII conventional forces used anthropologists to gain an understanding of different populations because they realized it was critical to achieving strategic effects. The Navy used anthropologists throughout the SW Pacific, and MacArthur understood the necessity of working within Japanese cultural norms to achieve our political ends. That may have been the last time that the U.S. truly integrated the military to achieve strategic political ends instead of standalone military objectives. If SOF continues to pursue its aim to make all SOF global instead of maintaining its deep regional expertise, SOF will no longer have a competitive advantage in the human domain over conventional forces or our adversaries.

Finally, comments about the young being more creative or equally unsubstantiated we need to recruit and put kids with noserings in charge of the information domain because they know how to operate in the Cyber domain get a little tiresome because they are meaningless. They are little more than statements expressing frustration. Even if the cupcake with a nose ring is a great hacker, he or she won’t make any more difference than a great rifleman if they operate in a strategic void. Furthermore, studies prove these are false assertions. A recent study shows young people today want more precision than previous generations. They’re not comfortable operating in gray areas or complexity. The study is ongoing to further examine why, but it points to the likely factor being the impact of the digital age and how it shapes their thinking (or lack of). Another study states physicists today make their most significant discoveries at 48 and explains why this wasn’t true a century ago. The bottom line is it is more personality dependent than age dependent. I have met several very creative Generals and Admirals, but their staffs effectively resisted change, most commonly at the O-6 and GS-15 levels. Age is a variable, but it is only one variable. When I asked a variety of people to review a non-doctrinal plan I received significant pushback from those under 35 and general support from those over 35. Why? The young know what they learned in school and probably don’t have the confidence to buck the system yet. The older ones know our current processes are falling short based on hard-earned experience.

Bill Moore
03-31-2019, 08:12 AM
https://nsiteam.com/social/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Layton-Grand-Strategies-Final-16Mar19R.pdf

Grand Strategy Alternatives 2019

This study focuses on Great Power Competition with China, and less so with Russia. Since it is competition the grand strategy focuses on developing a strategy to build a better future short of traditional armed conflict. The author states grand strategy includes diverse means (DIME), adds building the means, and has expansive ends. He provides readers with what he calls a diversity of strategic options for consideration. Grand strategy focuses on building a better future based on relationships with specific states and non-state actors conceived in terms of an international order,
John Ikenberry useful defines as: “a political formation in which settled rules and arrangements exist between states to guide their interaction.” Types of international order possible include balancing, a concert of powers, democracy, economic interdependence, and hegemony.

He provides an admittedly simplistic way to frame our view of a grand strategy to help policymakers think about grand strategy in broader terms while avoiding cognitive overload.


There are three fundamental ways of changing an existing relationship between two or more entities: stopping another doing something, working with another, or trying to change anotherÂ’s mind. Adding international relations theoretical perspectives then leads to a grand strategy typology of denial, engagement, and reform.

He goes on for 16 pages of easy, yet informative reading on the varying aspects of each of the three grand strategy typologies to include their pros and cons, plus feasibility considering the actors involved. If you're interested in grand strategy, then you find this a valuable read.

A couple of personal thoughts. I think he makes a hollow argument when he states national interests are astrategic because they only address one country in a bilateral or multilateral situation. That is only true if the strategist only considers one view; most strategic analysis I have seen include convergent and divergent interests of all known actors involved. Yet at the end of the day, we do have interests that we're pursuing.

Nowhere in his writing did he state we can only use one grand strategy, but he also didn't point it out. In fact, we generally use denial (balance of power, hegemonic stability, etc.), engagement (interdependence, institutionalist, etc.) and reform (build more favorable norms, change minds) grand strategies simultaneously with the same actor to ultimately get to the desired relationship. We can put resources into the approach that gains the greatest traction.

He argues, probably correctly, that both Russia and China fear color revolutions so much that have dedicated considerable resources to prevent them, so it is infeasible we could generate one. Yet it is helpful for them to believe we can because the resources dedicated to internal security diverts resources from conventional military build-ups. For Russia, he argues if Putin shifts more resources to focus on improving the lives of individual citizens he become less aggressive. Yet, this is China's focus, and it has made them more aggressive because global expansion is critical to sustaining their economic growth.

It is the nature of American strategy to myopically focus on major threat while managing others, but I wonder is that approach is sustainable in a post-American world that is increasingly multipolar. We need new models for assessing risk and opportunity that are global in perspective and not narrowly focused on one of our two known adversaries.