Indirect and Direct components to strategy for the Long War
Some time ago I began to consider how our various efforts in the Long War are linked. Many on the SWC have slogged through this with me on threads such as the “Stability Operations vs. IW”, and many other threads in which we try to establish the linkages between Strategy to Operations to Tactics, or in which we consider policy.
Part of what a “strategist” (and I use the term loosely!) tries to do is to understand and relate the writing, speeches and statements of our elected and appointed officials to our efforts – or how our policy objectives get implemented into some type of action to realize them. Army strategists are taught the Ends, Ways & Means formula, but they are also taught to consider other perspectives on strategy such as if a strategy is complete, feasible, acceptable, and suitable. This is important, because the strategist must consider if the actions or “ways” to achieve the “ends” are within the bounds of our strategic culture, if they do more harm then good, if they are suitable in terms of balancing our foreign policy goals with our ability to sustain domestic will, are the ways supported by the means, etc.? These are all important questions when it comes to devising strategy. A SWC member who has written a great deal about this is Dr. Steve Metz.
At the last SWC get together her at Leavenworth, SWC member “Hacksaw” brought up an interesting point. He posited we were on the “Strategic Defensive” (and you guys thought all we did at the non-virtual get togethers was drink beer!). I chewed on that yesterday, as I thought it provided me an angle I had not considered. He’d also referenced Clausewitz as having stated that the “Defense is the stronger form of warfare” – which also was worth chewing on. While after thinking and talking about it some more, I don't agree with Hacksaw in total, but I do think there is there is merit to the notion of the rationale for pursuing aspects of an indirect approach which coincide with the scale of our policy objectives, and the means available to pursue them . A related discussion was why one goes on the defensive – e.g. because they have momentarily culminated, or in order to be decisive in other theaters or Lines of Operation. This is probably where I disagree with the idea of a strategic defensive – I think a case can be made that BPC (Building Partner Capacity) as an indirect approach is more suitable to the nature of countering instability and insurgencies which take root there, then a direct approach, put more simply, BPC may be more suitable to the nature of the larger war, and offer more opportunity to seize and retain the initiative then a direct, and purely military approach. BPC has some warts when we start to look at against the criteria I’d mentioned for evaluating ways, e.g. it takes time, and sustained political commitment (commitment which is effected by domestic will among other things) - but it may be a more feasible COA given the nature of the enemy and the conditions which he may advantage himself to.
This is not to say we are not capable of, nor should we have elements of "direct" strategy where possible, and where suitable, just that we don't have the resources to be decisive everywhere. Nor does the subjective nature of this war and the nature of our objectives support a purely military strategy. The challenge I’ve been working through is trying to work through the inter-relationships between a “direct approach” and an “Indirect Approach”, and frame the scope of BPC, so I can get an idea of some of the contingent ideas, and the interdependencies which effect the operationalization of these ideas. This is related to another project I’m working on which is a Case Study on SFA (Security Force Assistance) to show the complexity and friction of conducting BPC activities while conducting simultaneous combat operations (incidentally this also gets to the highlighted change in U.S. Army Doctrine as articulated by FM 3-0). However, this idea of grand strategy that employs all the elements of national power in the Long War, and across the breadth of the places where stability is challenged is tough to get our arms around, particularly when it comes to synchronizing and deconflicting efforts on the ground to achieve unity of effort. That is part of the challenge, but so is framing the context in which they might be employed to achieve a purpose beyond just saying we need more of "X" and less of "Y".
Here is the link to the 5 slides I’m using as a framework. Slide 1 speaks specifically to SFA Scope. Slide 2 considers the “Indirect” component of a larger strategy. Slide 3 is about operationalizing an Indirect Strategy. Slide 4 shows how an Indirect component works with a Direct component to achieve the greater political end. Slide 5 talks about why we might have an Indirect component. Caution, these ends, ways and means are not directly drawn from existing documents, and are not policy – they are theory, that reflects some of our actions and efforts, discussions and dialogue – and most importantly they are up for debate!
My reason for posting here is as usual not to present something as complete and final, but to foster intelligent discussion abut the way forward and what are the implications associated with ideas and actions. We’ve got an intelligent CoP here on the SWJ and SWC, it is diverse and articulate, and we should always leverage its strength to inform the greater community and benefit from the experiences and ideas of the community. I’d encourage our community to interact.
Best Regards, Rob
Possibly acpocryphal anecdote follows
Will Rogers was asked how he would defeat the Nazi U-boat menace. "Simple", he said, "just raise the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean to the boiling point." The reporter agreed this would destroy all the enemy submarines, but wondered how Will would heat up the ocean. With his famous self-deprecating grin, Will replied, "I'm a concept man, not a detail guy."
It is hard to find anything objectionable in your indirect approach. In some ways it is a larger version of classic COIN strategy - dry up the sea that the insurgent fish swim in and they will be, at the least, inconvenienced. And while we have been doing some version of this for decades, our modern system of combatant commands should facilitate a measured, consistent, long-term approach to applying such a strategy. Finally, world-wide stability in the most basic sense - i.e., the absence of violence in normal civil society - is a goal only various lunatic fringes would oppose.
A couple of questions arise.
First, I wonder if there is a direct link between failed or vulnerable states and terrorism. Taking a long view, some of the most persistent, dangerous terrorist movements arise from stable, powerful, even enlightened states. Japan, Spain, Germany, and the UK have all generated significant home-grown terrorist threats. No one can accuse Saudi Arabia of being enlightened or, in most senses, modern, but it does have a pervasive and stable security apparatus. Yet as a society it supplied money, leadership, organization, motivation, and recruits to our current set of foes. I guess there is some harm done and mischief generated in places like the Horn of Africa and parts of Central Asia, but it seems to me that their importance as training bases and sanctuaries are overblown. Terrorists (as opposed to your garden-variety insurgents) have access to sufficient training, money, and weapons within modern stable states; they don't need secret bases in some God-forsaken hellhole. In fact, I suppose, one could argue that terrorism is a peculiarly modern product of increasing stability. It is a tactic of last resort when you have no other outlet, or when your cause is so unpopular you can never gain support for it through legitimate means. Is it possible to imagine that, were Saudi Arabia a participatory democracy, Osama would be running for office rather than running for his life?
Secondly, in your slides you show SFA as nested within larger political and economic efforts. One could argue that it would, in many areas of the developing world, be working at cross-purposes rather than supporting the other elements of national power. In essence, as presented we would be strengthening security forces in societies that are otherwise undergoing radical political, cultural, and economic changes. It seems to be a Metternichian approach to preserving order.
Now for a totally outrageous post...
Hi Rob,
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rob Thornton
how do you better leverage existing, and naturally occurring "means" that result from some of the factors I mentioned in the post above? For example, if technology and interconnectedness are more frequent, is it possible to apply the same philosophical tenets of "by", "with", "through" to people engaged in inter-communications?
The short answer is yes and no, the long answer is much longer.
Basically, the form of the modern bureaucratic state is predicated on two things: control over access to scarce resources and control over information. Given the radical changes in productive and distributive technologies, the states have been loosing control over the access to resources part of their power base for years. The deployment of interactive communicative media exemplified by the 'Net, cell phones, IM systems, etc. has pretty much smashed their second power base.
This leaves them with a "brute force" approach to maintaining power, and that can be economic (e.g. government spending and manipulation of markets), ideological (i.e. trying to control the symbol system rather than the means of communication), or overt force. The problem is both perceptual and ideological. On the perceptual level, how many people actually "trust" politicians and bureaucrats to be working for them? On the ideological level, what individual "good" does the state provide to its citizens and how much actual power does it have to do so?
Let me toss some of his in an historical context. 100 years ago, most people in Canada and the US were pretty blase about their governments - they didn't "get in your face" too much and, I suspect, that Joe Public was quite happy with a minimalist government were most social services were provided by "intermediate organizations" (ref to Durkheim's Division of Labour in Society, 2nd edition in the preface). Governments were, on the whole, viewed as a necessary component of maintaining general order and keeping the social system running by making sure people "played by the rules" (hooray for the Scottish Enlightenment ;)).
After the Collapse in '29, the state moved more and more to replace these intermediate structures in the provision of social services - basically, they were "buying" public support while, at the same time, creating public dependencies (think Rome in the late Republic). Increasingly, the State in the West as a whole worked its way more and more into the lives of individuals gaining power and control by appearing to be a "fair broker" for scarce resources and, also, by indirectly (or directly) controlling information media. In part, actually a large part, this was because of a shift towards centralized broadcast media technologies (Paul Levinson's The Soft Edge does a great job of detailing this shift). And, as long as things were generally perceived as "okay", people accepted that.
Now, what does this have to do with "by", "with" and "through"? Simple, the modern bureaucratic state is based on a very specific form of social relation: it's a modification of the Authority Ranking form (cf Alap P. Fiske on Human Sociality). The "social contract" or, rather, the structure of the social contract for this social form is based on the right to "command" held by the State and the right to receive "benefits" held by the people - in its extreme form, we get the "Nanny State". Part of the effect of this is a sub-conscious assumption about technique - the "by", "with" and "through" that you talk about. In its simplest form, it frequently takes the expression of "The Government needs to DO something!" (often said in a whiny voice :D). When enough people say things like that, politicians listen and the pressure to "DO" something is immense, even if what they do is idiotic.
The problem with "doing" something is that it's form is predicated on the assumed technique, so when a modern bureaucratic state "does" something, it is always in a manner that follows that technique. Before about 1985 or so, that technique mandated some new government regulation or agency, while after that it could be either an new regulation or agency or hiring private organizations to fulfill the perceived need (it was actually a rather slow shift in frequency distribution between the two options from about the end of 1968 when the bubble burst to today).
Now, both of these assumed techniques are "adaptive" for bureaucratic organizations: the first extends the bureaucracy, while the second extends their resource base while, at the same time, giving them a whipping boy if the effort fails. What is not adaptive for bureaucratic organizations is the technique that underlies and informs the primary social relationship inherent in highly interactive technologies: reciprocity.
Let me expand on this a bit. If we look at the job search situation in North America for the past 40 years, we can see that organizations used the techniques of bureaucracy to hire people (i.e. increasing regulation and standardization and outsourcing of hirings). There are very good reasons why this happened, but I won't get into them here (I've written them up elsewhere). What happened was that individuals got increasingly frustrated with these two techniques and learned how to bypass them using a third technique - "networking" (BTW, the same thing happened on the other side). As a technique, networking is based on information reciprocity and information sharing. "Power" in this technique derives from the provision of information and the provision of a community "space" for information exchange. You can imagine how this was speeded up with the deployment of the interactive 'Net technologies :cool:.
Once we move into the current world of high interactivity, we have a real problem for many bureaucrats as bureaucrats (not as individuals): "power" as information, flows freely between members of the populace without bureaucratic control over any of it. Needless to say, this is not a technique that is adaptive for bureaucratic organizations. This tends to lead to an increasing perception that first, they are not as efficient as the networking system and, later, they are a parasitic drain on the social system. It's that "everyday life" effect - if the Government can only help me find a crap job and it takes them 50 weeks to do so, and I can get a good job in 5 weeks using my network contacts, which do you think I am going to use and what technique will I place my trust in?
This "everyday life" effect has a spreading effect out into their areas of lived experience as well. If, for example, I need ideas and information fast will I use the bureaucracy or will I use my network? The more I bypass bureaucratic technique, the more likely I am to bypass or discount things associated with it. Which brings me to your next comment...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rob Thornton
but by and large I think there is room to create a narrative or policy in which our actions fall within the narrative - we just need to be very clear about our narrative, and we need to be engaged in strategic (inter) communications.
In my view this can occur by more leaders (uniformed, government civilian, religious, academic and private sector) being more engaged with both each other, and the general public.
One of the properties of an information reciprocity system is "trust" in the validity of the information (and the person providing it), including statements about the limits of that information. Part of this is, as you note, combining action with story.
The question of "leaders" is an interesting one. At present, I would tend to agree with you about increased engagement. At the same time, many of these leaders are "leaders" solely by virtue of offices held within a bureaucratic system, so the level of "trust" in the individual and the information they provide is often related to the level of trust in the organization they represent. With the rise in interactivity, we are also seeing a concomitant rise in "information leaders" (for want of a better term) who operate outside of formal bureaucratic organizations. A really good example of this is in the open source software community. This means that, in the interactive environment, you have differing types of "leaders" operating based on differing assumptions of technique, which brings us to
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Rob Thornton
Certainly there are also the more accepted and very important components of "by, with, through" as they relate to BPC, but to build capacity (and in some cases capability ) in our available means commensurate to the scale and scope of the "end", and means that help us put into action our desired, or optimal "ways", we need to explore how the enemy is leveraging existing means, and in some cases tempting us to use our own weight/strengths against ourselves (I've heard it described as "cultural judo"). Does that make sense?
Yup, it does make sense. One of the key ways that our opponents are practicing cultural judo is by pointing to the problems in everyday lived experience as they are being articulated in our own societies. They are leveraging a reciprocity technique against us by supporting the many narratives that oppose the bureaucratic techniques (e.g. globalization = job loss, etc.), and there is not really much "trust" at home in the bureaucratic narratives.
Anyway, I did tell you it would be a long answer :D.
Marc
Worthy of discussion & maybe its own thread
Hacksaw - good catch,
Quote:
As I continue on this stream of consciousness... I heard rumor (probably in this forum) that ADM Mullen proposed as food for thought that we ought to have an Info Order with an OPS Annex as opposed to the other way around. There is probably way too many cultural hurdles to scale with that idea, but that is the kind of big idea that I expect from a CJCS. If you get past your initial gut reaction, you can easily so why that is a far more useful mental construct. Unfortunately it took a squid... god help us if they are going to do all our thinking.
I did not want to lose that thought you had in the post, it also deserves to be talked about - and gets to the question of narrative and actions very well.
Best Rob