Volume 2, Issue 2, Spring 2012
Infinity Journal
Page 8
success is not established ahead of time, the utility of war
plainly requires a high measure of risk tolerance. By analogy,
the strategist seeks to purchase a ‘good’ (strategic effect)
of price unknown and unknowable, incurring the uncertain
transaction costs inalienable from the employment of a
military instrument that has unknown combat prowess.
Indeed, it must be said not only that strategy is not a
science, but also that its status as a social science has to
be judged fragile. The purposes of these sceptical remarks
is not to damn the strategy project, but rather to highlight
its challenges and perhaps encourage some sympathy for
those who strive heroically against the odds to design and
practice it competently.[xvii]
Decisions to fight:
In practice it is usual, not extraordinary, for politicians to
decide to go to war without examining closely the availability
of the military story that they need.Often, the decision to fight
is believed/felt to be a political (even a moral or a personal)
necessity, leaving the military rationale largely in the realm
of hope. Politicians tend to assume that the warfare they are
licensing and sponsoring will turn out alright in the event,
somehow. More often than not, the military is not asked for
its honest opinion about the prospects for victory/success.
And bear in mind that all decisions for war are a leap in the
dark,which has to mean that even honest military judgments
are likely to be wrong (“war is the realm of chance”, as the
great man wrote).[xviii] It is hard to be expert on future wars,
because the future is not foreseeable.
Since strategists are required to prescribe contingently for the
use of force in a future that at best can only be anticipated, it
follows that their duties oblige them to operate on the basis of
assumptions rather than facts.When assumptions are tested
in the laboratory of history’s actual strategic narrative and are
verified adequately by events, they cease to be assumptions
and instead are established as facts. Although assumptions
necessarily play a critical role in defence planning, as a
vital category of working and contingent beliefs they are
greatly under-examined and under-theorized. However,
it would be a serious mistake to believe that assumptions’
fragility can be usefully much reduced by a more rigorous
planning methodology. The beginning of wisdom should be
frank, if unwelcome, recognition of the fact that by definition
assumptions transcend proof;if they did not they would cease
to be assumptions. It is easy to understand why strategists
typically need the reassurance of a truly unjustifiable faith
in their assumptions, in order to cope with the moral and
other burdens imposed by objectively irreducible ignorance
about the future. Assumption generation is improvable, and
testing by a “Red Team” may be heuristically useful, but the
strategist leaning forward into the future with assumptions
about future war is always going to be leaping in the
dark. He cannot know, for example, just how much pain
will need to be caused for North Vietnam for it to call off its
extant campaign against the South. As much to the point,
the American strategist cannot be certain that any level
of coercion against North Vietnam that is tolerable to U.S.
domestic opinion, would suffice to deliver a fair facsimile of
political victory. It is commonplace to refer to the calculations
of statesmen and strategists. But, it is a fact that decisions
to fight, or to fight harder, cannot be made on the basis of
metric calculation.There are and can be no verified numbers
that a brilliant methodology could convert into clear answers
to such questions as “should we fight?” and “how expensive
would victory (defined carefully) be?” Notwithstanding
these rather negative thoughts, strategists have to practice
strategy, even though their assumptions must leave much
to be desired. Ignorance cannot be allowed to promote the
paralysis of policy and strategy, when “something has to be
done” (e.g. over Iran’s nuclear weapons’ programme).
Policy is not always rational and reasonable:
Not only is policy the product of politics – meaning the
outcome of a balance of power that is ever shifting – also it
is the result of personality and the processes of government.
Scholars can err in assuming wholly rational decision-
makers, just as they err if they assume that military experts will
be uniformly expert because they are licensed as such, in
the context of any particular war. Each war involves warfare
whose character will be in some measure unique.Experience
is useful, but generic military expertise needs to be adapted
for, and applied sensibly to, the unique case at hand.
It is important to remember three limitations in particular
on the expertise of professional military experts. First, the
uniqueness of each conflict demands some translation of
the expert’s general expertise for its better fit with the needs
of the local place and current moment. Second, each war
is unique not in the sense that “it” is what it is as something
different fromother wars,but rather that it is ever in the process
of being created by the competing strategic endeavours
of the belligerents.[xix] The strategic historical entomologist
may be able to classify every war by claimed categorization,
but the real-time narrative will be one of unpredictable
creation. Third, the uniqueness and novelty in the character
of each conflict demands that the strategist adapts in the
application of his expertise.[xx]
Dilemma of ignorance:
When a war appears not to be progressing well, what does
one do? Can one identify the problem? Should we redouble
our military effort,try harder with more means,or does that risk
the reinforcement of failure? When should we change course
strategically? Are we trying to do the wrong things? In which
case our strategy is asking too much of our operations,which
in turn necessarily asks too much of our tactical effort – all
because politics has demanded that policy instructs strategy
Strategy: Some Notes for a User’s Guide
Colin S. Gray
More often than not, the military
is not asked for its honest opinion
about the prospects for
victory/success.
Not only is policy the product
of politics, also it is the result of
personality and the processes
of government
