Why Strategies Fail

Washington, D.C. is a town that loves strategies.  When I was at the Office of National Drug Control Policy, we devoted lots of resources to drafting a Congressionally mandated "Annual Strategy" (even though my boss, Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey noted that anything done annually cannot be a strategy.  In the Pentagon, I participated in lots of strategic exercises.  As Rand's Raphael S. Cohen (a former Army officer) notes, these exercises are almost very disappointing in a must read post at Lawfare. 

So why do so many strategies disappoint? As Cohen explains, they disappoint because they fail to make tough choices--which is the very point of any strategy:

Finally, good strategies need to be substantive. Somewhat ironically, given how much criticism it received at the time, two decades later, the 1993 Bottom-Up Review is the strategy that is most often used as a baseline for subsequent major defense reviews. There are plenty of reasons for this, but one of them is its analytic transparency. Of all the attempts at national security strategy over the past quarter century, the Bottom-Up Review perhaps makes the clearest argument about linking threats to a force-sizing construct and to procurement decisions—in other words, linking ends, ways, and means together in a transparent fashion. Too often strategies instead devolve into platitudes, leaving strategy’s three major components disconnected and, at times, incoherent.

More often than not, the lack of succinctness, sharpness, and substance in strategies is just a symptom of the deeper reason why the strategy-making process so often yields lackluster results. They fail because leaders are unwilling to make difficult decisions—to focus on one threat as opposed to another, prioritize resources accordingly, and then explain their decisions publicly—at risk of being wrong. Instead, they prefer to delegate the process to the bureaucracy, which lacks the institutional power and the incentive to make decisions.

This may be why so many congressional attempts to reform national security strategies have come up short over the years: The real problem is not process; it is the aversion to making decisive and perhaps irrevocable choices. What makes this aversion all the more vexing is that, from the standpoint of some, it is entirely logical. Decisive choices can make enemies within the bureaucracies, lead to congressional scrutiny, and, perhaps most importantly, risk assuming blame for potential catastrophes when decisions prove wrong. Moreover, the benefits of getting strategy “right” are sometimes only visible long after the policymaker leaves office. Far better to settle for mediocrity and play it safe.

Read it all here. A strategy is a document that guides the tough choices we will make given the constraints in the environment.  If it fails to even recognize that there are choices to be made, it will fail.

Women in Combat: "Shoot Like a Girl"

One of the many changes made during the Obama Administration was the end to most restrictions on women in ground combat roles.  To the Air Force, this was not a issue.  women had been in all air combat roles for years.  Indeed, when I was General Counsel of the Air Force, the commander in Afghanistan made this point by having all-female air combat crews in the air one day.  The big change was in ground combat.

One of the factors that lead to the change in policy was a lawsuit by several active women service members who challenged the policy of exclusion. One  plaintiff, Air Force Major Mary Jennings Hager, who flew medivac helicopters has a new book Shoot Like A Girl that describes her experiences in Afghanistan.  NPR has a great interview with her.  Here are some highlights:

In 2009, Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar was shot down by the Taliban in Afghanistan while co-piloting an Air National Guard medevac helicopter. Though she was wounded in her rifle arm, Hegar managed to return fire while hanging onto a moving helicopter, which saved the lives of her crew and her patients.

At the time, the Department of Defense allowed female soldiers to participate in air combat, but forbade women from ground combat positions. Hegar tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that the rule was often circumvented, which meant that women who served on the ground did not receive credit for combat duty.

.  .  .

On the unofficial ways in which women served in combat in the past

The Marine Female Engagement Team is a great example of that, where they go out and they're the ones who talk to the female locals and have to pat them down if they're going through a checkpoint. That's not something that the culture would allow our male soldiers to do, so there's a need for women in those roles. But because of the policy, they couldn't be assigned to [combat] units, which caused all sorts of problems. ...

They would be what we call "attached" to the unit. They wouldn't get to train with the unit, they wouldn't go home and stay at the same base with the unit, they wouldn't get to know them, they wouldn't get a chance to bond with them. The unit cohesion wouldn't get a chance to form.

On some of the arguments against women serving in combat

They range from concerns that are very legitimate and need to be carefully considered to concerns that are absolutely ridiculous. I think the No. 1 thing that pops up in people's mind is the physical strength issue and whether or not women are physically strong enough to be in combat, which I answer with a couple things: First of all, we've already disproven that that's an issue because there are women serving successfully in combat. Most combat is not a hand-to-hand knife battle that the person who can do the most push-ups is going to end up winning. That's just not the face of modern warfare right now. 

Read it all here.

Why Winning Wars Requires Soft Power

President Trump has announced an increase in the Defense budget, and reportedly, will help pay for this increase with sizable cuts in the State Department and foreign aid budgets.  Apparently, President Trump has not listened to the views of his own military leadership, who have repeatedly explained that winning our current wars will require a "whole of government" approach that includes significant work by the Department of State.  Gayle Tzemach Lemmon of the Council on Foreign Relations explains:

“This plan is a political-military plan; it is not a military plan,” said Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “In the development of the plan, we have been completely engaged at every level with the State Department…Not only will it be a whole-of-government approach,” Dunford said, it’s “about a trans-regional threat.”

.  .  .

“The grievances of the civil war have to be addressed, the safety and humanitarian assistance that needs to be provided to people have to be addressed, and the multiple divergent stakeholders’ views need to be addressed,” Dunford said. “We do need to have a vision of how our military actions set conditions on the ground that actually then become the platform from which Secretary Tillerson goes to Geneva to come up with a political solution.”

 .  .  .

“Many policymakers, intelligence analysts, and academics believe expelling the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from Mosul and Raqqah is the key to the terrorist group’s defeat and the destruction of its self-declared caliphate. This is only partially correct,” said Gen. Joseph Votel in a paper he co-wrote for the Center for New American Security.  “The United States must develop a long-term strategy that focuses on both the top-down and bottom-up pressures that have created this unique threat. This strategy must include unprecedented intergovernmental cooperation and coordination as well as close collaboration with foreign partners, nongovernmental organizations, and private industry…Regionally-led and U.S.-backed reconstruction efforts and initiatives to strengthen government institutions are a critical component of this strategy. Reconstruction also may contribute to increased opportunities for employment and education.”

Read it all here.

As I explained in a previous post, the importance of State Department was previously emphasized in previous remarks by Secretary Mattis and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.  As Mattis put it, "“If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately."

The Advantages and Limits of Air Power Against ISIL

For years, there was an intellectual battle within Defense and military circles about the effectiveness of air power.  Some (predominately Air Force, of course), have argued that Air Power alone is capable of achieving  military goals in many conflicts.  Others, have taken the view that Air Power is really only another form of artillery, and that Air Power is only marginally useful as an adjunct to maritime and ground forces.

As with most such debates, the truth is in the middle.  Air Power is not a silver bullet.  It is most often most effective when used in joint actions with ground and maritime forces.  Yet, there are examples, where Air Power alone did achieve objectives.  And this is a view shared by most Air Force leaders.  Indeed, former Air Force Chief of Staff General Norty Schwartz and I made this argument together in an article in Aviation Week (sadly behind a paywall) refuting a book that argued that the Air Force should be disbanded.  We said:

Farley offers an incomplete history of the effectiveness of combat air power in recent conflicts.  He is certainly correct that early optimism about airpower as a panacea for modern warfare has proven misplaced.  The strategic bombing campaigns during World War II did not have the decisive effect that early airpower advocates envisioned.  And, Farley is also correct that the bombing campaigns in Vietnam failed to accomplish their goal.  But Farley’s unstated assumption that airpower can never be decisive apart from support for ground troops cannot be reconciled with history.  As even Farley admits, without the NATO air offensive in Kosovo, Serbia would have been unlikely to come to the table.

 There are other, more recent examples as well.  While the intensive bombing campaign against Iraq known as Operation Desert Fox in 1998 was heavily criticized at the time as ineffective, we have since learned that the operation was largely responsible for Saddam Hussein’s decision to end his WMD efforts.   U.S. military operations in Afghanistan in 2002 and in Libya in 2011 were largely exercises in air power.  And had we intervened in Syria, the focus of our efforts would have been on the use of air power.  Simply put, airpower is not a panacea that can replace the need for ground and naval forces–history has made that point abundantly clear–but in some circumstances, combat air power is an indispensable tool of national power.

I was therefore fascinated to find a great analysis of the power, and limits, of the use of Air Power in the war against the Islamic State, by Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institute.  First, Byman notes that Air Power has been effective in degrading the capability of terrorist organizations.  In addition to killing leaders, Byman notes that the use of Air Power limits a terrorist organizations capability:

Training on a large-scale is harder, if not impossible, as large gatherings can be lethal. Group leaders’ influence wanes, as they must hide or remain incommunicado. Trying to organize a kids’ soccer game, let alone a global terrorist network, becomes almost impossible if you can’t use phones or the Internet regularly. The indirect effects also matter. Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been laying low since U.S. military operations began, diminishing his charismatic presence from Islamic State propaganda and, presumably, disheartening his beleaguered troops. Abu Mohammad al-Adnani, the spokesman who headed the group’s external operations, was also charismatic and inspired terrorists around the world to attack—and eventually the United States tracked him down and killed him in an airstrike.

Yet, in this context, Air Power has a serious limit.  We can degrade and destroy the enemy, but unless we address governance issues that allowed ISIS to arise in the first place, we can prevail in the battle and still lose the war:

Nor does air power address the biggest long-term challenges in fighting the Islamic State: governance. The United States has proven again and again that it can dislodge terrorists, insurgents, and forces loyal to local despots. Filling the vacuum so that they don’t return is much harder. The terrorists often come back, or, at times, chaos rules. Neither outcome is an improvement for locals, and new terrorist groups can breed if there is no government to keep them down. You can’t provide that governance with a drone.

Moreover, for air power to be effective, you need capable local allies. Their forces can provide the necessary intelligence to find and target Islamic State fighters. In addition, when they advance, they force Islamic State forces to mass—making them vulnerable to air power. If Islamic State fighters stay dispersed and hidden, then forces on the ground can root them out. Local forces can also fill the vacuum after victory, ideally establishing a legitimate government and preventing the terrorists from returning or new extremist groups from arising.

The article is well worth reading.  You can find my own expanded thoughts on the uses and limits of air power, in this book review.

 

Lt. Gen H.R. McMaster's Selection as National Security Adviser is a Surprisingly Good Choice

Since Trump was inaugurated, my twitter feed (which is largely made up of both Republican and Democratic national security types) has largely been filled with outraged commentary from all sides about the disastrous national security and foreign policy decision-making coming out of this Administration.  Until now.  To say that the selection of Lt. General H.R. McMaster as National Security Adviser has been applauded would be an understatement.  The reaction has been uniform: shock and surprise that Trump would make such a great choice, and genuine enthusiasm at the selection.

Andy Exum, a former Army officer and former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle East policy, offers this assessment:

Let me be as clear as I can be: The president’s selection of H.R. McMaster to be his new national security advisor is unambiguously good news. The United States, and the world, are safer for his decision.

.  .  .

[H] e earned his Ph.D. in history and wrote a best-selling book, Dereliction of Duty. With great foresight, I neglected to read it until three months ago, so the book remains fresh in my memory today. One thing that stands out in the book is the way in which McMaster criticized the poorly disciplined national security decision-making process in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and especially the way in which the Kennedy administration made national-security decisions by a small group of confidants without a robust process to serve the president.

Like Ben Bernanke, a student of the Great Depression brought in to lead the Federal Reserve immediately prior to the Great Recession, McMaster comes to his job having carefully studied and criticized the national-security decision-making process for which he will now be responsible.

I have known McMaster for over a decade and cannot imagine a more decent man in his position today. This job is going to drive him crazy, because he does not suffer fools gladly. Unless he has been given some assurances about both staffing and process, he will struggle in a competition to influence the president—to be the last man in the room when the president makes a key decision.

Read it all here.  General McMaster, by the way, is not just some pointy-headed intellectual General that policy wonks like because he wrote a great book.  His leadership of an armored calvary troop in the Gulf War at  the Battle of 73 Easting is still studied today.