Policy is the behaviours or conditions sought by politics. The conduct of any government or ruling body is a function of seeking to change conditions or behaviours to make their political group, nation or entity safer, more powerful or more prosperous. Policy is what you want.
Strategy is using engagements for the war, or more correctly, the removal of the armed objector to your policy. There are only doubtful reasons to use armed force if there is no armed objector. Wars start and continue because one or both parties have not reached the condition they sought in terms of policy. If you don’t think Hamas is destroyed, you will want to continue fighting, but it is rarely, if ever, that simple. It doesn’t matter if you are a mature democracy or a one-party state with a dictator. Political reputations are bound to the outcomes of wars.
We are living in an age where there is little to no strategic uncertainty. It is as uncertain as it ever was, but policy seems to fluctuate, and nowhere does that appear more out of balance than the United States. This is not a political criticism of the current administration, but certainty or at least confidence demands a degree of prediction, as to current and foreseeable policies of administrations. If policy fluctuates, strategy becomes impossible, like you can’t drive to an ever-changing destination.
Einstein famously said that God does not play dice, but Clausewitz observed that chance, reason, and enmity were the factors that drove the critical decision-making processes of leadership. Harold McMillan further observed that even the soundest government decision could be upended by “events,” as in those unforeseen and unforeseeable occurrences that drive human action.
Yes, the future will always be uncertain, but objectives should not be. If you don’t know what you want and have no real idea of how to get it, then leadership and public service are not for you. Even the most abhorrent men in history, from Napoleon, Hitler and Stalin, all had varying ambitions for themselves and their people.
A clear, simple, and explainable policy is that from which all else is likely to succeed. No policy, no strategy. A policy that alters with its objectives before any plan can be decided is no policy at all. Policy should only change when the conditions on which it was predicated have changed. In a world driven by one-hour news cycles from broadcasters with agendas, X, Facebook, Grindr and countless other sources of information, it might be that policy has less of a firm foundation than in the past. But is that really true?
Real leaders are not swayed by the transitory nature of public opinion or its diverse expressions. Bad policy means bad strategy, and bad policy is usually a product of bad leaders.
William F. Owen
Editor, Military Strategy Magazine
Volume 10, Issue 2
May 2025