Commentary

A guiding assumption of strategic writing since the late Cold War era is that strategy is getting more complex. Enough ink has been spilled on the debate over whether today’s world is more or less complex that I can hardly add anything new to the discussion. But it may be that complexity requires greater simplicity. [click to continue ...]

Having discussed red-teaming with RTJ Advisory Board member Robert Bunker and his colleague (and my frequent co-author) John P. Sullivan frequently, I was very interested in seeing Bunker’s new book with Stephen Sloan, Red Teams and Counterterrorism Training. [click to continue ...]

Red teaming, by its very nature, can be antagonistic to policy. The purpose of a red team is to challenge official TTPs, plans, and estimates. So it is no surprise that a red team report by Jeremy Bordin on the growing distrust between Afghan soldiers and NATO is causing such a stirrup.

The killings of American soldiers by Afghan troops are turning into a “rapidly growing systemic threat” that could undermine the entire war effort, according to a classified military study.The study by Jeffrey Bordin, a political and behavioral scientist working for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, warns that the magnitude of the killings “may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern history.” Based on interviews with some 600 Afghan troops, the report concludes that there is a dangerous “crisis of trust” between Afghan forces and American soldiers that is being ignored by top commanders. …Mr. Bordin and other similar researchers, part of a so-called Red Team within the military, are tasked with finding weaknesses and shortcomings that the enemy may exploit.

      Red teaming is not a search for a worst-case scenario, but rather a look at the role of assumptions. Some assumptions can prove to be valid if accurately defended. Others are not.
       One red team study I’d like to see on Afghanistan would be on the feasibility of the emerging “Biden-plus” consensus. While the flaws of the current policy have been detailed, I have yet to see a substantial look at the assumptions of the lighter footprint model.

The recent al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) threat to bleed the West with “a thousand cuts” clarifies at least one dimension of our adversary’s strategy. The recent uproar over airport screening underscores the questionable nature of ours.
      The AQAP strategy is simple and direct, and it comes as no surprise. The beauty of the strategy (from the AQAP perspective) is that it is almost guaranteed to succeed. Even failed and foiled attacks trigger a reaction–a reaction that will cost us dramatically more than the attacker’s cost to implement the attack. [click to continue ...]

As a follow-up to my recent post on Gettysburg, I went on another staff ride, this time to Chancellorsville. The ride was not entirely an Ender’s Game-style free-play decision game, but participants on both teams had to discuss and formulate decisions on the spot. Although the historical context was obviously important, it took a back seat to operational and tactical decision-making. It was more important, in essence, to do what we thought was right to try to mimic history. Although I was not personally familiar with the specifics of the Chancellorsville operation and purposefully kept myself ignorant in order to get the best benefits out of the exercise, I did re-read my copy of Edward Bruce Hamley’s The Operations of War (1909 edition). Hamley’s book represented the British Army’s consensus view of operations during the high point of the 19th century, with some discussions of Civil War and Russo-Japanese War operational history and lessons. I also read more of Archer Jones’ book Civil War Command and Strategy, which gave me a grounding in the importance of the strategic turning movement in Civil War operations. Finally, I also brushed up on the basics of operational maneuver in Milan Vego’s book Joint Operational Warfare: Theory and Practice. [click to continue ...]

When I launched Red Team Journal in 1997, the U.S. military was still savoring its Desert Storm victory. The largely self-congratulatory concept of the revolution in military affairs dominated U.S. military thought, and no “peer” competitor was anticipated for many years. 1997 also marked an increasingly mad rush toward the dot-com bust of 2000. Even Chicken Little was feeling safe and making money.
      Back then, we needed red teaming to remind us that our forces were not invincible, that not every dot-com wonder would make it big, and that clever and determined bad guys still planned to do us harm.
      Thirteen years later, we are (or should be) greatly humbled. We all remember the events of 9/11, but it’s becoming difficult to ignore our eroding financial position, our fractured polity, and the success our adversaries enjoy in eluding and circumventing our military forces. Today, Chicken Little frets about a dystopian future in which the United States is broken and broke.
      We no longer need red teaming to remind us we’re mortal; we know we are. Today we need red teaming to remind us we’re neither as rich nor as smart as we think we are. [click to continue ...]

Having recently made a trip to Gettysburg, I decided to bury myself in Civil War-related reading surrounding the battle and its relationship to the larger strategy of the conflict. I picked up Edward Coddington’s Gettysburg: A Study in Command, along with Donald Stoker’s new book The Grand Design as well as Archer Jones and Herman Hattaway’s How the North Won. Also useful were some scholarly articles by Archer Jones and Arthur V. Grant’s chapter in the US Army compilation Historical Perspectives on the Operational Art. While the popular interpretation of Robert E. Lee’s campaign was that it was solely a failed effort to influence the North’s political calculus by inflicting a decisive defeat on enemy soil, Stoker and others outline a different and more complex calculus that took into account Lee’s need for a better logistical situation, a desire to spoil upcoming Union moves against Richmond, throw the Army of the Potomac out of Virginia, threaten two large Northern cities, and other operational objectives. [click to continue ...]

The idea that one should study warfare and national security history, theory, and “science” in order to make instruments of national security more effective is so accepted within government and the military that is banal. In academia, it is substantially more controversial. Without giving into stereotypes of “tenured radicals” that are less valid today (a time of heightened cooperation between academics and the government on national security), it is eminently justifiable to point out that the intimate connection between government and academia fostered during World War II and the early years of the Cold War is a thing of the past. Moreover, the idea that the study of warfare in order to make one’s nation more effective at the winning of military operations, campaigns, and wars is vastly more controversial today than it has been in the past. However, it shouldn’t be–and enabling one’s forces to win is a noble goal for research and analysis. [click to continue ...]

There’s a new article in Joint Forces Quarterly on the perennial issue of the American interpretation of Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity (COG). The article makes the point that the definition of the COG in Joint Publication 5-0 (as well as the general American interpretation of the COG) is incoherent and proposes a new operational definition: “The center of gravity is the primary entity that possesses the inherent capability to achieve the objective.” The author also argues that a slavish devotion to the COG definition originally laid down by Carl von Clausewitz is inappropriate. [click to continue ...]