Strategy in the 21st Century

[Bill Moore]

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]

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/