Recommended Reading to Provoke
Special edition, derived from the always steady stream (at times, geyser) of articles, PDFs and book recs coming through the Warlord Loop:
The Atlantic Parag Khanna America’s Non-Grand Strategy
….Grand strategy should be about connecting ends and means on a global scale that transcends administrations and their peculiar obsessions and preoccupations, whether it be Iraq, Afghanistan, or China. It is about more than reacting to immediate events. In the age of globalization, grand strategy must take into account the financial crisis, Middle Eastern instability, Asia’s hunger for commodities, nuclear proliferation, technological disruptions, and trans-regional terrorist networks — all at the same time. Unfortunately, U.S. foreign policy over the last two decades has been characterized more by, to borrow the great historian Arnold Toynbee’s terms, alarmism and reactiveness than the necessary foresight and adaptation. From Afghanistan to Iraq to the Arab Spring, the U.S. has been either over-confident, caught off guard, or behind the curve. In all cases, it still lacks a coherent vision grounded in a realistic grand strategy.
….During the Clinton administration, Henry Kissinger quipped about then-National Security Advisor Sandy Berger, “You can’t expect a trade lawyer to be a grand strategist.” Today again, foreign policy is overseen by lawyers such as Tom Donilon and Hillary Clinton who give advice on specific events and problems but not guidance on the bigger picture. As a result, Obama’s speeches remain mellifluous but no longer really register abroad, other than to frustrate for their lack of clear purpose. As Kissinger wrote, “A statesman’s job is to resolve complexity, not just contemplate it.”
Having been beating the “we don’t have a grand strategy” drum for some time, I don’t find this to be controversial but opinions vary.
RUSI Anne-Marie Slaughter The End of Twentieth Century Warfare
….From the vantage point of 2011, however, it is far more likely that historians will see 9/11 as the catalyst for the end of twentieth-century warfare: large-scale, multi-year deployments requiring the conquest, control and long-term stabilisation and reconstruction of foreign territory. The nuclear weapons that ended the Second World War ended great power war. The fall of the Soviet Union ended great power proxy war among current great powers, although Pakistan certainly thinks it is fighting India in the valleys and cities of Afghanistan. The second Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan are ending boots-on-the ground wars of counter-insurgency and regime change.
The great power wars of the twenty-first century will be fought by special forces: specialised in combat against pirates, terrorists and global criminal networks; in focused search and rescue and search and destroy missions; and in civilian protection units capable of disabling but not destroying an enemy. They will be fought by cyber-warriors, skilled in manipulating unmanned weapons and in deterring and responding to system-wide cyber-attacks. And they will be fought in multilateral coalitions aimed at stopping the wars that criminal governments wage against their own people and bringing individual leaders and their coterie of high-level supporters to justice.
Somewhere…someplace….the head of Colin Gray is exploding. 🙂
The problem here is one of simplifying overstatement, not in getting the trends wrong. Dr. Slaughter is largely correct because currently a) the US lacks a true military peer and is absolutely dominant in a head-on, conventional clash and b) 4GW/irregular warfare is comparatively cheap way to attrit your foe, disrupt their systems and corrupt their OODA Loop.
However, we are very early in the 21st C. to call this trend as lasting for twenty, thirty or fifty years. Deliberately eviscerate America’s conventional warfare assets, as the UK has just done to the Royal Navy and British Army, and the geopolitical calculus will change in a hurry with great power war becoming more probable again and second tier interstate war becoming likely.
AFJ Bernard Finel The failed secretary
….Civil-military relations under Gates were more dysfunctional than any time since the early days of the Civil War. Though it may seem hyperbolic to some, the reality is that the accumulated transgressions of civil-military norms by senior military leaders far outstrip the misconduct of Gen. Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.
During the Gates years, senior military leaders intervened in domestic politics; actively lobbied for policy preferences; waged sophisticated information operations against the American public; blocked the development of alternative options requested by the president and sought to punish those in uniform who were willing to respond to presidential requests; and created command environments in which contempt for civilian leaders was widespread. And Gates was either absent or an accomplice in most of these transgressions.
….The main problem with Gates was his tendency to see his job as that of quartermaster or personnel chief. Instead of providing high-level leadership, he tended to see his job as intervening at lower levels to solve specific problem. Soldiers are killed by improvised explosive devices? He worked to get more MRAPs into theater. Units not having enough time to rest, refit and train between deployments? He signed off on temporary force-size increases. Various programs overbudget or facing technical challenges? Gates was willing to kill them to fund more pressing priorities. But in all of this, where was the strategic leadership we expect from our senior leaders?
The problem is that “winning the wars we’re in” is an appealing mantra. It sounds tough and hands-on. But except in the rare circumstance of total war, the “wars we’re in” must always be balanced against the threats and challenges we may face in the future. This is particularly true when our current conflicts are, essentially, sideshows, wars of choice in strategic backwaters. The notion that American national security strategy ought to be subservient to the short-term demands of Iraq or Afghanistan is obviously flawed. Instead, those conflicts must be waged with an eye to making them consistent with long-term national security requirements. In a fundamental sense, Gates consistently put the tactical/operational cart before the strategic horse. That is an understandable flaw for a theater commander, but it is precisely the sort of mistake we expect a good secretary of defense to avoid.
I am a fan of former SECDEF Robert Gates, Dr. Finel is not and I offer his vigorously argued op-ed in the spirit welcoming contrasting views. Many of the Gates critics seem to be unhappy with his attitude toward the USAF/Navy “Big War” positions and weapons platforms as well as Gates having focused on the wars of today ( the Pentagon is a planning agency for the wars we fight tomorrow).
That’s it.
September 6th, 2011 at 4:15 am
The government of these United States has a grand strategy. As observed yesterday:
"we now have the emergence of a transnational generational clique that see themselves as entitled to rule and impose policies that comport with their social prejudices, economic self-aggrandizement and ideological fetishes, whether the people support them or not. A vanguard attitude, if not an organizational vanguard.Wikileaks and other devices operating in shadowy undercurrents are their form of liberum veto against the rest of us in the instances where they are not completely in control, thus migrating political power from responsible state institutions to the social class that currently fills most of the offices and appointments. So far, their actions have been largely cost-free because their peers in government, however irritated they may be at the effects of Wikileaks, are loath to cross the Rubicon and hammer these influential conspirators with whom they went to school, intermarry, do business, live amongst and look out for the careers of each other’s children the way they have hammered Bradley Manning."and earlier in the week:
"R2P will require the imposition of policy mechanisms that will change the political community of the United States, moving it away from democratic accountability to the electorate toward “legal”, administrative, accountability under international law; a process of harmonizing US policies to an amorphous, transnational, elite consensus, manifested in supranational and international bodies. Or decided privately and quietly, ratifying decisions later as a mere formality in a rubber-stamping process that is opaque to everyone outside of the ruling group."
There is a definite grand strategy at play. It’s not a grand strategy many Americans would agree with but that’s feature not a flaw. The purpose of this grand strategy, after all, is a world where the agreement of many Americans is irrelevant.
September 6th, 2011 at 4:45 am
I would say "Touche, Fouche!" except that is a grand strategy of a social class of governors, not the government, with which the governors have increasingly diverging interests and are quite willing to injure, if they can still prosper. You are right though, it *is* a grand strategy and so far, it is working and subjecting us is the objective.
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If they saw their interests as being synonymous with promoting those of the USG, we’d be in slightly better shape
September 6th, 2011 at 11:51 am
I’ll throw one more topic in the loop as it is one I’ve been bouncing my head against the wall with lately- Labeling our current wars as occupations, militaristic foreign policy, evidence of empires, or eras of persistent conflict.
Do the labels really matter or are they irrelevant?
Ultimately, where the rubber meets the road, one common thread that is found in these conflicts (Vietnam, Iraq, Iraq, Afghanistan, Philippines, El Sal, Guatemala, Mexico, Bosnia, Kosovo, etc) over the past sixty years is an American (CIA, State, Army, Marine, SF) in a village trying to work with an elder to shape, influence, or coerce towards following the US-backed government.
Rory Hanlin’s One Teams Approach to Village Stability Operations is the latest snapshot of where the theory meets the practice.
September 6th, 2011 at 1:36 pm
I don’t know if you recall this, Mark, but the thesis of the professor who taught the full year U. S. diplomatic history course I took in college (when dinosaurs ruled the earth) was that the U. S. had no grand strategy. I argued with him for a full year about this. If I were to phrase my position using more contemporary diction I’d say that U. S. strategy is an emergent phenomenon of the several forces that comprise U. S. public opinion and that, unfortunately for would-be Talleyrands, in this grand strategy the White House, State Department, and U. S. military are just instruments, not the conductor.
September 6th, 2011 at 1:54 pm
"Deliberately eviscerate America’s conventional warfare assets, as the UK has just done to the Royal Navy and British Army, and the geopolitical calculus will change in a hurry with great power war becoming more probable again and second tier interstate war becoming likely."
I think we should absolutely set aside more funds for the navy and air force. However, as for the Army, I really can’t see massive ground campaigns being at all relevant to US vital interests again. That’s not to say that we should disband the Army, but massive cuts are certainly in order.
September 7th, 2011 at 5:16 pm
hi gents,
September 7th, 2011 at 8:32 pm
That said, doesn’t the US have a grand strategy. It comes mostly from the right (Christianity). This leaves the left offering decentralization, into a global world (Neo-con), and isolation from conservatives, which is based on past honor (the American Orientation). This leaves liberals with only the ability to promote some past liberal strategy of the Constitution of the USA (anti-religious) and the accompanied Bill of Rights (anti-centralization), which the conservatives agree with.