September 2009

I’m a bit late to comment on this, but Starbuck of Wings over Iraq has a great post on the use of Operational Design principles to conceptualize the Afghan campaign. Through problem-framing, one can conceptualize the problem to be solved through planning-a process that occurs intuitively but is brought to the fore by the specific planning methodology developed by TRADOC. However, one of the more interesting things about Starbuck’s op-ed is that he is applying the TRADOC methodology–meant for campaign planning as well as echelons below–to strategic questions:

Any ‘solution’ to the Afghanistan problem must be well-thought out, and operational design gives us a framework for examining problems of this nature. I’d like to invite everyone to not only debate the merits of further involvement in Afghanistan, but also to participate in the Army’s new operational design framework as a process for solving problems as complex as the ones we will face in small wars.

      The verbiage he quotes from the Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Designall relate to strategic concerns. Questions such as “are national interests and ideals at stake?” are by definition questions of foreign policy. As Milan Vego noted in his critique, operational design “builds an artificial bridge to the strategic level.” Grounding in strategic concerns, however, is not necessarily a weakness. The operational level implements strategic objectives, and “campaign design,” by definition, must be rooted in a solid understanding of strategic questions even if strategic decisions have already been made by civilian policymakers. As Starbuck argues, however, the “design” framework can be used in framing strategic problems as well.

Over the weekend, I finally read Eric Frank Russell’s 1957 science fiction novel Wasp, which, incidentally, appears on the RTJ book list. It’s an easy, entertaining read featuring the cunning off-world exploits of Earth agent James Mowry.
      Realizing that they can’t win a war of attrition against the numerically superior forces of the Sirian Combine, Earth strategists plant lone agents on Sirian planets. The agents’ shared mission is to sow fear, incite discontent, and cause the Sirians to dissipate their strength behind their own lines.
      In his attempt to achieve spectacular non-linear effects, Mowry is spectacularly lucky and spectacularly effective. It is the Holy Grail of every new generation of strategists, and Mowry lives it.
      Rather than address Wasp as an analogy for this or that case, I want to consider the goal of achieving non-linear effects consistently. Does it work in the real world? Sometimes it does, certainly, but for all the papers and presentations trumpeting the advantages of non-linear strategies, my sense is that consistent success remains elusive. This is despite the fact that current U.S. strategists and leaders have been raised on complexity, systems perspectives, RMA, transformation, and effects-based operations.
      I would guess that for every thousand strategists who read Sun Tzu, fewer than a hundred can implement the principles effectively and consistently outside of the classroom. Why? Good strategy is never a checklist exercise. Context counts, and it changes. Even the best strategist is susceptible to biases. Incomplete information, deception, the fog of war–the list of challenges is long and daunting. It’s no wonder that the kind of success James Mowry achieves in Wasp reads like fiction; after all, that’s exactly what it is.
      So, what’s the answer? What can we do that we’re not doing already to generate better real-world strategies?

With George Will’s call for a drawdown of US forces in Afghanistan, expect to hear many variations on this concept:

“America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.”

      Will is describing offshore balancing, a strategy principally employed by the British. Up to World War II, the British largely adopted a largely hands-off policy towards the continent, intervening with men and material largely to influence events on the ground and prevent the rise of a continent-wide hegemon able to threaten the British isles. Realists often reference this idea favorably in reference to Iraq and Afghanistan. While appealing in theory, offshore balancing does have some significant drawbacks.
      NATO airpower, even under the new guidance issued by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has spurred controversy about target selection accuracy and civilian casualties. It is likely that some residual force will remain even in the event of a significant drawdown, but advocates of an offshore balancing approach need to clarify how the US will generate intelligence for targeting and direct action raids. Furthermore, the 2006 Lebanon War and the 1999 Kosovo conflicts are evidence of the unpleasant fact that airstrikes and standoff fires are not necessarily decisive instruments, especially against opponents skilled in the use of camouflage, dispersal, and military deception. Drones have proven more deadly because of their pervasive surveillance of the battlefield, lessening the ranks of al-Qaeda and Pakistani Taliban commanders. If Will and other advocates of the offshore approach are planning a more expansive covert war on the border with direct action raids the methodology and political aims of such a campaign should be clarified. Offshore raids and airstrikes are not going to prove much more successful than the US’s current campaign without a defined political aim for Pakistan policy.
      Drawdown and offshore balancing also lessens the ability of the United States and its allies to exert influence in Afghanistan itself, especially if forces are consolidated into a series of super-Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) or in major cities. A capability for strategic raids may create a deterrent option, but a focus on kinetic deep raids such as the Marine Corps’ Operational Maneuver from the Sea is not currently being emphasized by defense policymakers. Such a weakness may come back to haunt the US should the consequences of drawdown prove dire. “Offshore” balancing without credible forcible entry operations will not work. On the other hand, it is plainly clear that US force has not bought political influence or control even over clients such as the Afghan president Hamid Karzai.
      Offshore balancing and drawdown may be the best options for current US strategy, but they must first be developed into viable proposals for action. At present they are just as nebulous as everything else in the current Afghanistan/counterinsurgency debate.

Patrick Porter argues against what he views as a “glib” point made by many pundits that the idea of victory has no place in today’s supposedly more complex conflicts:

“Victory has not gone away any more than defeat has. Victory is the securing of desired, or desirable political outcomes from a conflict. It will change its face and its character according to context. Sometimes it will look like parades, formal surrenders and declarations, sometimes it will be a more diffuse and unspectacular process of handing self-government over to an ally whose state one has helped build. The process of translating military breakthroughs into long-term political gains has never been straightforward and has often threatened to break down. While it is possibly harder to achieve in extremely difficult wars of armed nation-building, that doesn’t mean the concept itself has no coherence.”

      Porter has hit the nail on the head. Victory has rarely been decisive or lasting in any form of warfare, hence Clausewit’z dictum that “in war the result is never final.” But this very simple idea is incredibly difficult for many to accept. The profound murkiness of conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq is putting this basic truth into sharper view.