Michele Flournoy on strategy

[John T. Fishel]

Michele Flournoy will be one of those who will be responsible for a strategy - a POLITICAL military strategy to help the Iraqis do what is in their own interest...

My point was that until the new president takes office this adminsitration will be responsible and afterwards the new one. In any case, I don't see President Bush, McCain, Clinton, or Obama pointing his/her finger at someone and saying you're my guy and everybody else works for you. Hope I'm wrong but as GEN Gordon Sullivan said, "hope is not a method."

Cheers

JohnT

[Ken White]

Wolfotwits...

As for:

...a POLITICAL military strategy to help the Iraqis do what is in their own interest...

Uh, which subset of Iraqis? Not a snark, a serious question. And is that what they think is in their own best interest or what we think?

My point was that until the new president takes office this adminsitration will be responsible and afterwards the new one. In any case, I don't see President Bush, McCain, Clinton, or Obama pointing his/her finger at someone and saying you're my guy and everybody else works for you.

'fraid not. Not the American way.

...Hope I'm wrong but as GEN Gordon Sullivan said, "hope is not a method."

Gordy was right but that, regrettably, does not change the fact that IS the American way. Again, no snark, serious point. As you said above in your starting post:

"...My only caveat is that while strategy is conceptually easy, doing it well is hard. And executing it is harder still. Today, everybody and his dog is a strategist. But, in government, only the military does it well - and not all the time."

All too true -- and while we do it more and better if not perfectly, we end up doing a lot that is outside our purview. Which, if it falls apart, lets the hammer fall on not necessarily the right person.

Be that as it may, the point is that strategy IS hard -- and it becomes devilishly hard when you have to do it in conjunction with another government whose goals differ radically from yours (or with people in your own government to whom that comment also applies). Even harder when you have few folks who really understand the host country culture and those that do tend to fall into various and differing ideologically based schools of thought on what needs to happen.

Really superior strategists have floundered on those rocks for a great many years. Regardless of who was in charge...

[John T. Fishel]

with you on all this.

Consider this one: John Abizaid knows the culture of the region as well or better than any military or foreign service officer. Yet, his regional strategy as applied to both Iraq and Afghanistan was seriously flawed.

Charles Lindblom, an economist who was also President of the American Political Science Association, wrote a classic article called "The Science of Muddling Through" which states American (Western) policy reality as well as it has ever been stated. Just when we think we really know how to do something we often find that muddling through is the best we can do. It's just that some folk do it better than others...

Cheers

JohnT

[Ken White]

with you on all this.

Penalty of being (a) old; and (b) cynical. Or is that sinnable...

Consider this one: John Abizaid knows the culture of the region as well or better than any military or foreign service officer. Yet, his regional strategy as applied to both Iraq and Afghanistan was seriously flawed.

Funny you mention that. Great minds. I was thinking about him and that earlier when I posted. I agree with that statement -- and I've long wondered why it's true. My suspicion is that he was constrained by high order National or Army politics but I can't figure out all the factors. I think it will come out eventually but I do know that not only I but several others who knew him when were really surprised at his near invisibility.

He wasn't a micromanager which is good but he was really unusually quiet and unassertive during his Tampa tour.

Charles Lindblom, an economist who was also President of the American Political Science Association, wrote a classic article called "The Science of Muddling Through" which states American (Western) policy reality as well as it has ever been stated. Just when we think we really know how to do something we often find that muddling through is the best we can do. It's just that some folk do it better than others...

Unfortunately. The domestic political process is of course the big impactor and our venal and corrupt political parties which used to care at least a little bit about the Nation have, IMO, converted to solely focusing on their wants and hopeful primacy; that worsened the already disruptive four / eight year cycle.

Correct on the some do it better than others and our penchant for changing people in jobs so frequently means that it's really hard to figure out where the better muddlers are -- and when you do find one or two, they move...

Thanks for mentioning the article -- I'll track it down

[slapout9]

Hi John (I think you know this guy),It's on here somewhere but I can't remember where but it is a handbook for planning Operations by Dr.Jack Kem...who I think is SWC Dr. Jack. Anyway in his handbook he says in there somewhere that Strategy is often expressed as Ends, Ways and Means but it is often understood better as Ends+Means then develop the Ways. I probably screwed that all up but it is a better way to say and understand it. And not to disappoint anybody also in the handbook is a great section about using Wardens Rings from an Army point of view. which also works when you are doing Grand Strategy.

[SteveMetz]

Hi John (I think you know this guy),It's on here somewhere but I can't remember where but it is a handbook for planning Operations by Dr.Jack Kem...who I think is SWC Dr. Jack. Anyway in his handbook he says in there somewhere that Strategy is often expressed as Ends, Ways and Means but it is often understood better as Ends+Means then develop the Ways. I probably screwed that all up but it is a better way to say and understand it. And not to disappoint anybody also in the handbook is a great section about using Wardens Rings from an Army point of view. which also works when you are doing Grand Strategy.

Let me throw in my two cents worth (which, at current global exchange rates, is worth about 60% of that).

I've always felt that the "ends, ways, means" construct (which, the best I can figure, was devised by Art Lykke at the Army War College, but was based heavily on longstanding ideas) is useful but incomplete. In particular, it doesn't account for expected costs and risks.

I think that was EXACTLY the flawed strategic thinking that led us into Iraq. The logic went something like this: "Saddam Hussein is a threat, therefore he should be removed." The strategic logic should have been: "Saddam Hussein is a threat but in order to decide how to address that threat, we must weigh the extent of the threat against the expected costs and risks of various methods of addressing it."

What the administration and its supporters did (and continue to do today) is simply focus on the extent of the threat and suggest that it's self evident that a threat should be addressed by the most effective method available rather than by the method that makes the most strategic sense. In other words, we distorted the logic of strategy and are paying the price for it.

Let me elaborate with an analogy: if I decide I want a new car, the most effective way of getting one is to pay full sticker price and put it on my American Express card. But given the expected risks and costs of this technique, it is not the one that makes the most strategic sense.

Break, break. As Monty Python often said, "Now for something entirely different." On the uber theme of this thread--I think the only logical locus for grand strategic thinking and planning is the National Security Council. Problem is, since Kissinger, the NSC has evolved into a current ops organization rather than a strategic planning one. My belief is that it both needs to revive its capacity for long range strategic planning, to include development of its own think tank to develop "whole of government" strategic concepts.

[Dr Jack]

Hi John (I think you know this guy),It's on here somewhere but I can't remember where but it is a handbook for planning Operations by Dr.Jack Kem...who I think is SWC Dr. Jack. Anyway in his handbook he says in there somewhere that Strategy is often expressed as Ends, Ways and Means but it is often understood better as Ends+Means then develop the Ways. I probably screwed that all up but it is a better way to say and understand it. And not to disappoint anybody also in the handbook is a great section about using Wardens Rings from an Army point of view. which also works when you are doing Grand Strategy.

Thanks for the advertisement... here's a link to the book:

http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cgi-bin/show...11&CISOPTR=377

I'm overdue for a rewrite -- for the next edition I'll include MOE/MOP and expand the wargaming section.

[Rob Thornton]

Hi John,
Michele Flournoy was one of the panelists here for the SFA Symposium. I was not here (I was TDY), but I recently watched all the videos from it as part of a review of a forthcoming product from the symposium. Mrs. Flournoy's thoughts were articulate and complete on the topic, and you could tell she'd served as a DAS-D, I believe Mrs. Celeste Ward has the same job currently, she was also here (incidentally her recorded remarks are also articulate and concise). While Mrs. Flournoy could move into a direct position to affect U.S. Grand Strategy if a Democrat enters office, I think its fair to say that she and many others are already having an indirect effect of a substantive nature, and I see many similarities between how OSD under Secretary Gates and the various "think tanks" are looking at things. I don't think that's bad, in my opinion it gives the direction more validity as people with differing opinions on domestic policy reach similar perspectives on foreign policy. It also creates more synergy and dampens friction some.

SWC Member Old Eagle showed me a piece yesterday from CNAS I'm reading now by Shawn Brimley and Vikram Singh. "Stumbling Into the Future? The Indirect Approach and American Strategy", and of course there is also the current piece at the top of the SWJ Blog by Brimley, "A grand Strategy of Sustainment". They all interest me because of my interest in SFA and how it fits within our broader strategy.

I think we've talked about it before here, but to me this is part of an evolution in better understanding things and how they relate. Most of the ideas (SFA, RoL, BPC, Direct and Indirect) may not be new from the vast historical perspective that in the West goes at least back to the Greeks (they've had different names and been described in manners that fit the times), but the relationship between the context of the ideas as they relate to political ends, the way we think about the use of various means, and how we implement ways would seem to be new for Americans.

I think there is a challenge in reconciling how we see the world from the inside looking out, how the world sees us from the outside looking in, and the interactions that take place from the variance in perspectives and interests. These interactions I think are political by nature, but their impetus may be idealogical, economical, social etc. and the consequences of those actions are increasingly intertwined with other areas, and touch a broad international audience in ways that are often undervalued.

Over time I think this is a discussion that has to be pitched to the U.S. public in a manner that illustrates why its in their interest that the United States remains engaged over an indefinite period on a scale that appears at odds with who we'd prefer to be. If that sounds a bit counter-intuitive, I think its may be because the vast majority of Americans only see the products of globalization that effect them as an individual, be it the products that wind up on the shelf at the Wal-Mart, the outsourcing or off-shoring of jobs and activities, or the new faces and places that move into their cities, but as a whole we don't consider the causes and inter-actions that generate those effects and why those should interest them until something dire and unavoidable enters the discussion. Such an effort has to go beyond a State of the Union, or an occasional speech, it must be part of a cultural shift and the mechanism for implementing such a narrative must be enduring and woven throughout the "whole of government" because such is the growing degree of "inter-connectedness".

The second tier of education I think needs to occur is the education of our children toward understanding the world as it is, and what it may become, and what that means for them in terms differentiating the lives their parents led, and better prepares them for the future. Our children are going to communicate, cooperate, inter-act, collaborate on a scale I think that is hard for most of us to imagine (its hard for me anyway). Part of what a "grand strategy" should do for us is look out over the horizon some and help put us in a better position by shaping what can be shaped in a manner that when something occurs it is not a complete surprise, and we are better prepared to meet the challenges posed then if we had done no planning. A grand strategy must accommodate some vision and imagination to frame it broadly enough to account for change over time (since resources have their own cycle), but it should also be firm enough to stand on enduring principles and interests which sustain and conserve what is best about us for our posterity while dealing with immediate and identified challenges.

Best, Rob