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A Primer In Strategy
Col Mike Walker
There has been a lot of talk about military strategy lately and much of that focused on ISIL – too much in my opinion – but that is not the issue at hand.
The problem is that the discussions are just plain goofy.
Tactics, opinions, management techniques, what have you, are debated as strategy. They are NOT and selling them as such is a sign of failure. So here are some basics for all the “armchair quarterbacks.”
Military strategy begins with an “endstate,” or where you want to be when the fighting ends. That must come from the big boss.
Once that is grasped, the next job is to understand the enemy, in this case, ISIL. In its simplest form, ask: What is its aim, its resources and over what battlespace is it fighting?
While identifying ISIL’s strengths and weaknesses are important, understanding its motivations and endstate are more so and that demands hearing things you may not want to hear. In other words, go in with your eyes wide open.
Cold calculating objectivity is the ideal. Any other approach is both dishonest and dishonorable to the American men and women who execute the missions.
Next come the stepping-stones to get from where you are to where you want to be: the endstate. These are called “strategic objectives.”
The final step in developing a strategy is to identify the lines of operations needed to obtain the strategic objectives and endstate. Unfortunately, lines of operation do not combine to follow a linear course but form a complex multi-dimensional network of nodes and pathways.
As a rough rule, a comprehensive strategy against ISIL would include a number of lines of operations aimed at security, governance and economics.
In competent militaries, it is understood that nothing goes exactly to plan unless you are walking into a trap. The adage is “expect the unexpected.”
To cope with uncertainty, sub-plans, called “branches” and sequels” are developed, refined and added to as needed.
Dealing with uncertain complexity requires a unified political-military vision both within our ranks (civil and military) and with our allies. It is a demanding task as executing each line of operation requires detailed planning and that is where tactics comes in.
Tactics realize strategic objectives and make the endstate possible. Unlike strategy that is driven by the endstate, “mission statements” drive military tactics.
Tactical plans deal with things like the use of naval, air and ground forces, the conduct of cyber-warfare and unconventional operations like psychological warfare or special operations. They also include less conventional plans like training allied security forces or carrying out humanitarian operations.
The job of the big boss and his staff is never tactical.
Their job is to design and assess metrics that measure the effectiveness of the boss’s strategy, i.e. are we nearing the endstate or was the identified strategic objective attained as planned?
If yes, carry on. If no, where are we lagging? Along which line or lines of operation? Then comes the “why?” with the really big job for the boss and his staff: What needs to be done to get on back on the road to our endstate?
Five signs of trouble for the big boss:
Are the metrics working? Do they tell us where we are and where we are going? If not then the staff is failing.
If there are no “branches and sequels” to deal with the unexpected or they prove inadequate then the staff is not doing its job.
As a corollary, good bosses can deal with bad news, what they hate are surprises. If the boss is surprised then his subordinates failed.
If the staff is getting into tactics then you have a malfunctioning staff. If the boss ever needs to “go tactical,” fire the subordinate commander and get back to being a strategist immediately. If members of the boss’s staff “go tactical,” fire them and get strategists (by the way, strategists are a lot harder to come by than tacticians).
If the endstate is not clearly understood by all participants – from top to bottom – then the strategy will fail…at that point hope for blind luck.
Semper Fi,
Mike
