Quote Originally Posted by John T. Fishel View Post
Today, everybody and his dog is a strategist. But, in government, only the military does it well - and not all the time.
Personal observations, if I may:

1. The Military are good (often excellent) at Campaigning, not Strategy. Strategy (especially in a democracy) should be set by the civilian Government not by Servicemen, whose role is to implement that Strategy through military means in conjunction with other policy instruments (Diplomacy/Economics etc).

2. Terminology can be confusing. For 'Strategy' regularly read 'Plan'. The phrase 'Grand Strategy' might reinforce a point that Strategy should be at the top of the food chain, but it paradoxically encourages the use of 'Strategy' at lower levels. The previous UK position outlined in 'British Defence Doctrine' (Oct 01) of having a 'Grand Strategic' level and a component 'Military Strategic' level has been removed by JDP-01 (Mar 04), with both terms replaced by 'Strategic level'.

3. It seems beyond degate that progress has to be made in Iraq beyond the security arena. But the time required to achieve that progress is greater than the political cycle in Western democracies. Perhaps a reasonable strategic move would be to focus on economic progress before political. It might happen sooner and would tangibly benefit more of the Iraqi population than political developments. Improved/ing lives may secure continued investment in security.

4. We can't take a graph with Time on one axis and Progress on the other and draw a line on it which is the model solution against which assessments of progress should be made. If nation building and/or COIN take decades to resolve then how can we make judgments on success or failure after only 5 years?

PS