I was not sure how to write this and then came to the conclusion that the best place to start is at the beginning

So here we go. The class was taught in two parts the first was SMART WARS and the second was SMART STRATEGIES.

The smart wars part was the a new part of Warden's writings that I had never seen before. So what is a smart war? It is one that you know you will win, before you start it. To do this a war decision calculus was introduced.

1-Is winning the war Achievable?
2-What is the reward you will receive?
3-What is the cost you must pay,$ and lives ?
4-What is the risk of loosing or damaging other relationships.


Only four questions but very tough questions. These were meant to be answered by the government. It is the level of Grand Strategy. Which was used to guide the level of Military Strategy

Once this was explained to us we looked at a number of historical wars and in retrospect stated why we thought they were or were not smart wars.


I through out two zingers. One was the Dominican Republic Crisis of 1965 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The Cuban Crisis received a fair amount of discussion.

The Missile crisis was a failure at the military level for the USSR but at the Grand Strategic Level it was a success. A pledge by the US not to invade and accept a Communist regime in our western hemisphere.

This emphasized the importance of the Grand Strategy level....it must be right to start with or you end up with a situation you don't like regardless of the military conflict.

From here we were told to act as the Government of Turkey and prepare a military solution for the PKK. This is when we moved to the SMART STRATEGIES part of the course.

I will leave this up for a while for your comments and questions and then post the SMART STRATEGY process.