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Adam Elkus<\/a><\/strong> alerted me to an insightful op-ed by Dr. Antulio Echevarria<\/strong> of SSI<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Op-Ed: Is Strategy Really A Lost Art?<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n ….\u00a0Instead, we need to rediscover the value of strategizing relative to the outcome, the product, an individual strategy.\u00a0The hard truth is that policy does not always need strategy to get what it wants.\u00a0We have used military force plenty of times in our history without the guiding logic of strategy, and\u2014though critics do not like to admit it\u2014we have made it work often enough for it to be taken seriously.\u00a0Sometimes what policy wants most is not to be tied to something inflexible, particularly something as inflexible as our strategic process.\u00a0It is the proverbial machine that goes of itself, and it takes, or almost does, the preparation for and direction of war out of policy\u2019s hands.\u00a0The question modern-day Clausewitzians really have to answer is whether war has its own logic after all, a logic provided by the dictates, the processes, and the dynamics of making strategy.<\/strong><\/p>\n .\u00a0 \u00a0 If the art of strategy is truly lost, perhaps it is because\u2014despite our rhetoric to the contrary\u2014we really wanted it to be a science all along.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In all the online debates and blog sites concerning strategy, one theme is constant: we call strategy an art, but approach it as a science.\u00a0We praise creative thinking, but assess our strategies with formulae: strategy = ends + ways + means (the\u00a0ends\u00a0we want to achieve + the\u00a0ways\u00a0or concepts + the availablemeans).\u00a0This formula is as recognizable to modern strategists as Einstein\u2019s equation E=mc2\u00a0<\/sup>is to physicists.\u00a0Each defines its respective field.\u00a0Like all good math, good strategies consist of balanced equations.\u00a0As our variables change, we merely rebalance our strategy: scale down the ends, increase the means, or introduce new ways.\u00a0Like any good equation, our strategy remains valid so long as we keep one half equal to the other.\u00a0This is a far cry from when military strategy meant the \u201cart of the general\u201d and, by extension, grand strategy meant the \u201cart of the head of state.\u201d<\/strong><\/div>\nSeveral comments….<\/div>\n.<\/div>\nFirst, Echevarria is correct that it is certainly possible to win ugly, win lucky, win through the other side imploding for internal reasons that have nothing to do with us or to win by unimaginatively, but steadily bludgeoning a much weaker opponent to death while employing a bad strategy or no strategy at all. Finland’s Marshal Mannerheim<\/strong>, for example, repeatedly humiliated Stalin’s<\/strong> immensely larger but poorly led Red Army<\/strong> in the Winter War<\/strong> <\/a>but the end was never in doubt if Stalin chose to press the issue. \u00a0An effective strategy and a Red Army officer corps that were more than lackeys and thoroughly terrorized purge survivors<\/a> would have markedly improved the USSR’s abysmal military performance, but it would not have changed the longitudinal equation that Stalin had thousands of tanks and planes and potentially millions of soldiers and the Finns did not. The asymmetry between the Soviet Union and Finland was too great; Mannerheim played a weak hand with great skill against an enemy leader whose basic foreign policy outlook was opportunistic yet risk averse ( as Stalin understood the situation at least. He was also a great miscalculator).<\/div>\n.<\/div>\nWhen \u00a0however that Echevarria writes “Sometimes what policy wants most is not to be tied to something inflexible” he is certainly correct, but the real crux is that it is politicians who want and policy that bends to their desires. Flexibility can be a virtue when a situation is new, has not yet risen to open hostilities or a hedge is required against many dangers. Raised to systemic practice, “flexibility” -meaning a conscious avoidance of the “strategic process – really means that we have embraced an astrategic culture and accepted not just greater political behavior, but elevated the minutia of domestic politics and cynical careerism to displace strategy as the primary calculus for making decisions of war with unsurprisingly poor results<\/a>.<\/div>\n