Ken,

I didn't catch the symbolism, but I thought the author's use of Sun Tzu for this article was spot on:

The victorious strategist seeks battle only after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.

—Sun Tzu
It appears to me that we repeatedly throw together military plans in support of often poorly articulated policy, and then after the plan is formed we "socialize" it with the interagency and then start the tweaking process, and really end up with something that is sub standard.

I definitely think our strategy and planning process "would" work better if the Pentagon developed the strategy at their level with the National Security Staff (informed by the GCCs and Services), and THEN and only THEN would it be pushed down to the GCCs to develop and execute operational level plans. GCCs have a large strategy role down (some of it is appropriate), but this approach fails to explore how problems can be solved indirectly or if war is a necessity how to wage it "most effectively", because the strategy is largely confined by defined boundries.

It may be even more important to return to pre 1947 now based on greater global integration. For example, assume we're planning a defensive war against country Y in name your theater. If you leave it to the theater the strategy will be focused within that geographical space, yet country Y as financial, military, diplomatic and other vulnerabilities that we could pressure in three different theaters with a whole of government approach. Having participated in GCC level planning you may see this discussed, but rarely is it pursued because there isn't a mechanism compel others to act outside your theater. If the Pentagon was empowered once again to perform this role (there would be painful growing pains) then they could compel the global force to act, and work more effectively with the interagency through the National Security Staff to get the various agencies to support the strategy (USG strategy, not just a military strategy).

We have seen global plans, and we have seen various tasks given to various agencies to execute, but the ability to compel action (operationalize the plans) is clearly missing, and actual execution of these plans is spotty at best.

There are other shortfalls with our current methodology, but just wanted to try to get the conversation back on track.