Strategy in the 21st Century

[Bill Moore]

A decent summary of the U.S. National Defense Strategy 2018.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order...ense-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]

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/artic...al-nuclear-war

[AdamG]

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/artic...he-u-s-in-asia

[davidbfpo]

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]

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]

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]

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.