Infinity Journal Volume 2, Issue 2, Spring 2012 - page 8

Volume 2, Issue 2, Spring 2012
Infinity Journal
Page 6
force”. Precise wording is less important than is clarity on the
essential difference between force and policy. Purpose and
instrument must not be confused. Policy, strategy, and tactics
are different in nature and they answer different questions.
Policy decides why and what; strategy decides how; and
tactics do it.When politicians fail to understand this, one is in
trouble.To set policy goals has nothing necessarily to do with
strategy. Strategy, at best, can be an afterthought! How will
we try to do it, whatever “it”may be?
Political desiderata packaged as policy is not strategy. To
identify the former is not to register a strategic achievement.
Policy is not usually that hard to decide. The difficulty lies
more in finding affordable yet effective ways to pursue the
policy goals preferred.The command performance required
of a strategist at the highest level is one that truly bridges
what can be a yawning gap between political wishes and
military, inter alia, capabilities. Political desires and their
expression as policy are likely to be mere hopes vanity if they
are not disciplined by prudent guesswork about feasibility.
But, looking at the other end of the strategic bridge, a military
establishment and its professional behaviour as a military
instrument that virtuously abjures all intervention in the policy
process, which means politics, may well condemn itself to
militarily impossible tasks gifted by political guidance naked
of strategic understanding.
Understanding the problem
(e.g. how to defeat Germany, transform Iraq, transform
Afghanistan). Again, let us turn to the great Prussian. He
advises, in much quoted wise words: “The first, the supreme,
themost far-reachingact of judgment that the statesman and
commander have to make is to establish by that test [fit with
policy goals] the kind of war on which they are embarking,
neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that
is alien to its nature”.[vii] In the main this is right, though it is
potentially misleading. Unfortunately, our policy goals will not
dictate the kind of war on which we embark,because war is a
project that we play with others; also, contingency,which is to
say chance, rules (or can do so).When you roll the iron dice
you are signing on for a mystery tour.[viii] Not all politicians
know this (nor all soldiers, apparently). Did our policymakers,
or our soldiers, understand the kind of war they were getting
into in Iraq and Afghanistan (or in 1914 or 1939)? Are we not
usually surprised by what strategic history throws at us?
Where Clausewitz probably errs seriously in the familiar
persuasivewords quotedabove,is in his apparent assumption
that a particular war must be one of a distinctive kind that
has a fixed character, expressed by him here as “nature”. His
point is harassed by, if it does not founder on, the historical
reality that the belligerents in any war are engaged in a
unique dynamic creative act.The war’s course and outcome
is produced by combined behaviours and its course reflects
a single collective net strategic effect. The strategic effort of
each combatant combines as both cause and effect for
a grand effect that cannot be predicted in detail. In other
words, it is not sensible to assume that a possible war has a
nature (really meaning character) that can be predicted with
confidence. Not only is there policy logic to wars, in addition
there is grammar to warfare that is ever ready to show its
indifference to politics and policy, and instead encourage its
servants to wage more warfare more effectively.
The currency conversion problem:
The basic challenge in (military) strategy is the need to
convert military power into political effect (by the agency of
strategic effect).[ix] The exchange rate is neither stable nor,
as a consequence, reliably predictable. Put directly, “how
hard must we fight to achieve the political ends that justify
the harm that is the violence?” Politics and military power
are different currencies. In 1999 NATO expected that it would
need to apply only four days of aerial bombardment against
Serbia to coerce Milosevic into compliance. In fact, the air
campaign (to dignify what happened) lasted 78 days, and
we still are not entirely certain why the Serbs said “we quit”.
The heart of the challenge with strategy is that it calls for
skills that are neither military nor political, but must embrace
both (at a minimum). To be a good soldier, or politician, is
not necessarily to be a good strategist, because strategy is
about neither military effect nor politics, rather is it about the
political effect of military use and threat.
Strategy-making:
Strategy should be made by a civilian-military partnership,
with the civilians/politicians on top in the “unequal
dialogue”.[x] Typically it is made, if and when it is, which can
be unduly rare, in a committee process and by negotiation.
And because policy is also politics, strategy is always liable
to alteration, to needful adaptation to often-unanticipated
circumstances.
Because strategic history is a creative team project (with
enemy participation!) influenced by many factors other than
the prior intentions reflected in prepared plans, strategic
practice must always be obedient to tactical realities.Tactical
success or failure is the arbiter of operational and strategic
opportunity.Tactics cannot substitute for strategy, but it must
enable it and therefore it shapes it, sometimes profoundly. If
the troops cannot or will not do it, strategy will be reshaped.
In the words of Charles E. Callwell: “Strategy is not, however,
the final arbiter in war. The battlefield decides”.[xi] He is not
claiming that tactics matter more than strategy, only that the
latter is wholly dependent upon the former. This connection,
in my opinion, is so intimate and literally essential that one
should understand tactics as strategy being practiced.
When there is no coherent purposeful strategy informing the
fighting, a common enough condition, as argued already
the tactical effort must have strategic consequences.
Purpose and instrument must not be
confused. Policy, strategy, and tactics
are different in nature and they
answer different questions.
Strategy: Some Notes for a User’s Guide
Colin S. Gray
Tactics cannot substitute for strategy,
but it must enable it and therefore it
shapes it, sometimes profoundly.
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