Elkus on Science, Defense and Strategy
My amigo Adam Elkus has an excellently constructed and well researched article up at OpenSecurity where he advances a Boydian critique for what ails us:
…Contemporary American strategic problems flow from the fact that we cannot adjust the ossified thinking of Washington D.C. to the constantly shifting observed reality of the outside world. A failure to match concepts to observed reality has amplified the already formidable entropy of the American political system. The corresponding failure to make strategy results in a search further inward towards the “science” of war. Better strategy will come about only when the process by which strategy is made becomes supple, flexible, and less dominated by sacred cows and special interests.
Critics of American foreign policy often undermine their own case with conspiracy theorizing about the “military-industrial complex.” The real problem, however, is not James Bond villain-style secret plans and hidden agendas but basic human frailty. A largely homogenous group of people is not going to have all the answers to questions of war and peace because they are necessarily limited by their experience, specialization, and biases.
Nice work by Adam, read the whole thing here.
We face a number of problems when it comes to formulating strategy and grand strategy. Not least is that, whatever the shortcomings on that score within America’s officer corps, there is a yawning gap of comprehension between the senior brass and most of the civilian “influencer” elite in and out of government. Most of the latter tend to think in terms of a few simple paradigms into which they force-fit each new foreign policy problem – generally, everything is conceived either as appeasement at Munich or the quagmire of Vietnam. This tiresome dichotomy is the strategizing of simpletons.
The arch-Clausewitzians in the national security community fall down here. It is not enough to think of strategy in purely military terms. America is not Sparta or even the Roman Republic where politicians vied for a chance field command. The civilians here are masters of policy and the military are its servants – and are but one kind of servant among many in the DIME spectrum. Statesmen and general officers need to be speaking with a common vocabulary and have a shared understanding of what strategy is if we are to formulate effective ones.
There is a deficit of knowledge among the class of officials and staff members with the authority to make or not make the most critical decisions in matters of peace and war. It cannot be remediated by an uncertain and unhealthy dependency on the Pentagon’s advice and a frustrating dialogue where civilian and soldier talk past one another.
ADDENDUM:
Adam gets a nod from our friends on the Left at Newshoggers.com
January 8th, 2010 at 4:55 am
Wouldn’t a true arch-Clausewitzian not think of strategy in purely military terms?
January 8th, 2010 at 5:02 am
Touche Fouche! LOL!
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Yes, but in practice – or at least the online discussions I have had with them – they like to discuss the purely military aspects of strategy and eschew the messy domestic part. Well the latter is what screams out for improvement and the breakdown/disconnect occurs between military operations and national security strategy while grand strategy is AWOL.
January 8th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
A very well argued piece by Adam!
January 9th, 2010 at 12:21 am
I like the Elkus piece a great deal.
Zen, I would argue that the senior leaders of the military recognize that the other elements of national power are equally if not more important that military strength, but they cannot influence them (outside of the Federal Budget). Because of the diffused nature of the Federal/State/Local governments, it is extraordinarily hard to produce a single scope strategy much less a grand strategy.
The paradox – to me – is that by increasing the size of governmental structures, they become more unwieldy, less responsive and in the long run can suffer from ossification because they have had the budgets to support their internal cultures.
Just sumthin’ to chew on.
January 9th, 2010 at 4:29 am
Hi Ski,
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I agree and don’t really blame military leaders for the situation. The problem is on the civilian side and the deficit of folks who attack problems from a systemic perspective vs. whatever small, compartmentalized, policy niche they picked up at Georgetown, the Kennedy School of Government or Yale law ( because being an attorney makes you universally qualified to run any department or agency regardless of its mission). These people are very smart but their prep is to be narrow technocrats and not statesmen.
January 9th, 2010 at 5:44 am
"Remember, this Al Qaeda crap comes not out of Palestine. We’ve got three big Asian democracies, one Christian—the Philippines—one largely Sufi Indonesia, and one Hindu—India. The attempts of Al Qaeda in each case is to create a separate state, to wrench one out of the territories of these three, which would lead to more chaos and war and misery than you can imagine. The reason I’m an optimist is because if we can manage to create alliances with these three large prosperous multicultural democracies, and say that we understand the attempt by radical Islam—again, I correct myself. I should say reactionary Islam. " – Christopher Hitchens, interview part I with Michael Totten (via Instapundit).
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The other day, SWJ linked to a talk by Robert Kaplan (I think?) and the Indian Ocean and navies, and all that (sorry, I don’t feel like tracking it down right now and may not have it entirely correct) and he said something like, "all we need is for India to sort of exist and it works in our favor." So, I was thinking about that in the context of strategy, Grand Strategy, and the bureaucratic ‘corps’ that exists in Washington. If something only has to exist – to "be" – and the main connections come about through the private sector, then what is there for the bureaucrats to do? Maybe that’s a part of the bias, too, that for a better Grand Strategy they don’t necessarily need to be involved, or their role is largely secondary. It may be hard to acknowledge – not in any kind of malicious way, but just that it’s human nature to look for where you fit in, not where you ought to bow out or be more humble. I don’t know. This is all impressionistic rambling… .
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Oh, and yeah, that’s a good article.
January 9th, 2010 at 7:01 pm
OPS, what Kaplan meant was that we can rely on India to be a political and military balancer to China, simply by India serving its own interests. As a result, the USA is in the enviable position of being able to, to a limited degree, "free ride" on India in the Indian Ocean, and not have to bear the military, economic and political costs of confronting China there ourselves. We did this with Britain and Germany, too. Let them fight the first few years, expend themselves militarily and financially, wear down the enemy at their own expense, then come in at the end, dominate the winning alliance, be the creditor to the other victors, and be the primary victor. We botched the endgame in World War I, but we won hands-down in World War II, defeating the Germans the Japanese, and the British Empire all at once, though the Brits were technically on "our side." The British had done this for centuries, using various Continental powers as cannon fodder against the Spanish or French, with British finance and someone else’s blood. It must have been galling to have the Americans do the same thing to them. The smart ones knew it, too. Keynes said in 1946 that the Americans are treating us as a defeated enemy. International politics is the hardest of all forms of hardball.
January 9th, 2010 at 7:33 pm
Goes to show that the dominant American strategy is still "Have Atlantic and Pacific Oceans".
January 10th, 2010 at 8:06 am
[…] In strategy making, A.E.’s original problem that required “suppleness” and “flexibility” while avoiding “special interests” and “sacred cows”, sortitioned juries could be used for alternative intelligence analysis, as judges for simulations and wargames, as red teams, and as brainstormers. Jurors could be selected from the wider defense and intelligence communities, laymen and area experts, civilians and military personnel of all ranks, and even throw in the random man off the street for variety. The results of such experiments is uncertain. However, it is guaranteed, at the very least, to generate diversity within a system that is harder to gum up with political sclerosis than pure meritocratic systems that predominate today. That will certainly widen “the circle of discussion” and bypass “an uncertain and unhealthy dependency on the Pentagon’s advice and a frustrating dialogue where civilian and soldier talk past one another” (as ZenPundit puts it). […]
February 6th, 2010 at 9:15 am
[…] disconnected from the reality of violence. Lions wait in the wings willing to teach. As Zenpundit wrote: We face a number of problems when it comes to formulating strategy and grand strategy. Not least […]