Strategy and Perception, Part II.
To continue, my last post was inspired by analysis by Jason Fritz at Inskspots and I would like to continue to use excerpts from his post as a foil to ruminate about strategy:
Delicate strategic balancing: perception’s role in formulating strategy
….We have a whole suite of problems with our strategy in Afghanistan, foremost of which are a failure to state specific and achievable ends as well as a misalignment of ways and means to achieve the pitifully-described desired ends we have written down. But if our strategic success now depends upon selling to the Afghans that we mean well and that they are now more skeptical than not of us, well we have a very, very serious problem. Balancing the Say-Do equation is an imperative. However, if public perception is that mistakes and crimes committed by individual U.S. service members is indicative of U.S. policy or strategy, then public communications begins to drive strategy instead of the other way around.
Incidentally, I agree completely with Jason’s emphasis that we do not have the fundamentals right on strategy and Afghanistan. To an extent, worrying about “Perception” when you do not have Ends, Ways and Means in sync is akin to fretting about the paint job and waxing of your automobile while the battery is dead, the engine is shot and your car is up on blocks with the tires stolen. Nevertheless, perception will always be at least a contingent factor in strategy, affecting the friction of your diplomatic and theater environment, the attitude of the home front and the political will of elite decision makers.
The classic example of perception having a strategic impact is the Tet Offensive and the effect it had on America’s Eastern Establishment political elite and the Johnson administration directing the war in Vietnam. While Tet was a debacle militarily for the southern Communist cadres that composed the Viet Cong, the offensive struck the American political center of gravity hard. SECDEF McNamara resigned, the antiwar movement was energized and Tet indirectly contributed to the primary results in New Hampshire that caused President Lyndon Johnson to withdraw from the race for president in 1968 and subsequently order a halt to bombing North Vietnam. The mighty Democratic Party, which had dominated American politics since 1933, was riven by an ideological civil war that played out in the streets of Chicago. Had Hanoi been prepared to seek a negotiated settlement, Johnson likely would have given away the store (a TVA on the Mekong!) to secure peace.
….Public communications and information operations to influence perceptions are ways, but the U.S. keeps falling into the trap of making perceptions ends in themselves. If our ends, ways, and means were better formed and aligned, I suspect that the “Do” side of the equation would be solid enough to negate the affects of mistakes. But this is not the situation in Afghanistan where continued programs of questionable efficacy, strategic drift with regard to ends (compare this and this for instance), andcontinued support for an illegitimate and ineffectual government abound. If ways and means are not succeeding (to what ends?!?) or are the wrong ways and means entirely then your strategy rests in total upon Afghan perception that you’re making a difference instead of in part, which amplifies individual disasters such as we’ve seen of late. While it is unlikely that the United States will change course at this juncture, we need to start paying attention to this phenomenon now and avoid it in the future so we can avoid codifying perceptions as ends and put influencing them back where they belong: as ways. A successful strategy would go a long way to restoring this balance. Once again, maybe in the next war.
Page 1 of 2 | Next page