On Strategy and Strategic Planning: Repairing America's Strategic “Black Hole”

On Strategy and Strategic Planning: Repairing America’s Strategic “Black Hole” Mackubin Thomas Owens trategy has long been the subject of schol- • Ends (the goals or objectives that the stra- Sarly study and policy analysis. Historians tegic actor seeks to achieve); and social scientists alike have written widely about strategic thought, process, and practice. • Means (the resources available to the Scholars continue to dissect the meaning of strategic actor); and strategy.1 War colleges teach courses on the subject, as do civilian colleges. Yale Universi- • Ways (the strategic actor’s plan of action ty, for instance, has a well-regarded program for utilizing the means available). on grand strategy, and other universities have followed suit. In essence, any strategy worth the name Strategy and strategy-making are complex should articulate a clear set of achievable phenomena, not reducible to a simplistic me- goals; identify concrete threats to those goals; chanical process, and the making of strategy and then, given available resources, recom- deserves more study than it often receives. mend the employment of specific instru- In many respects, U.S. strategic planning has ments to meet and overcome those threats. been rendered nearly useless because the pro- A good strategy also seeks to minimize risk cesses have become routinized and thereby by, to the extent possible, avoiding mismatch- trivialized. Legislatively required documents es between strategy and related factors. For such as the National Security Strategy and the instance, strategy must be appropriate to the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) initially ends as established by policy. Strategy also re- may have been useful but now are merely pe- quires the appropriate tactical instrument to riodic bureaucratic exercises. implement it. Finally, the forces required to The result is what Colin Gray calls “a black implement a strategy must be funded, or else hole where American strategy ought to re- it must be revised. If the risk generated by such side.”2 What the United States needs is a re- policy/strategy, strategy/force, and force/bud- turn to the long-range strategic planning pro- get mismatches cannot be managed, the vari- cess that it implemented during the Cold War. ables must be brought into better alignment. History clearly teaches that the develop- On Strategy and Policy ment of a coherent strategy is absolutely es- When all is said and done, strategy is ul- sential to national security in times of both timately best understood as the interac- war and peace. In the absence of a coherent tion of three things, all within the context of strategy, non-strategic factors such as bureau- risk assessment: cratic and organizational imperatives and the The Heritage Foundation | heritage.org 51 vicissitudes of domestic politics will fill the physical security of their lives, property, and void to the detriment of national security. way of life from external military attack and Modern strategic studies can be said to domestic insurrection.”7 For our purposes, begin with the division of the art of war into “policy” refers primarily to such broad national the theory of “the use of engagements for the goals as interests and objectives, and “strategy” object of the war” (strategy) and “the use of to the alternative courses of actions designed armed forces in the engagement” (tactics) by to achieve those goals, within the constraints the great interpreters of Napoleonic warfare, set by material factors and geography. Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini and Carl von In general, strategy provides a concep- Clausewitz.3 As the latter wrote: tual link between national ends and scarce resources, both the transformation of those Strategy is the use of the engagement for the resources into means during peacetime and purpose of the war. The strategist must there- the application of those means during war. As fore define an aim for the entire operational such, it serves three purposes.8 side of the war that will be in accordance with its purpose. In other words, he will draft the plan of the war, and the aim will determine the • Strategy relates ends or the goals of policy series of actions intended to achieve it: in fact, (interests and objectives) to the limited shape the individual campaign and, within means available to achieve them. Both these, decide on the individual engagements.4 strategy and economics are concerned with the application of scarce means to These 19th century writers originated the achieve certain goals, but strategy implies modern conception of strategy as the art of an adversary who actively opposes the assembling and employing military forces in achievement of the ends. time and space to achieve the goals of a war.5 While such writers normally limited their • Strategy contributes to clarification of use of “strategy” to mean the application of the ends of policy by helping to estab- military forces to fulfill the ends of policy, it lish priorities in the light of constrained is increasingly the practice today to employ resources. In the absence of established the term more broadly so that one can speak priorities among competing ends, all in- of levels of strategy during both peace and terests and all threats will appear equal. In war.6 Accordingly, more often than not, strat- the absence of strategy, planners will find egy now refers not only to the direct applica- themselves in the situation described by tion of military force in wartime, but also to Frederick the Great: “He who attempts to the use of all aspects of national power during defend too much defends nothing.” peacetime to deter war and, if deterrence fails, win the resulting conflict. • Strategy conceptualizes resources as a This more expansive usage of strategy in- means in support of policy. Resources are evitably overlaps with the common meaning of not means until strategy provides some “policy,” which is defined as the general overall understanding of how they will be orga- goals and acceptable procedures that a nation nized and employed. Defense budgets and might follow and the course of action selected manpower are resources. Strategy orga- from among alternatives in light of given con- nizes these resources into divisions, wings, ditions. In their military history of the United and fleets and then employs them to deter States, Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski de- war or to prevail should deterrence fail. fine defense policy as “the sum of the assump- tions, plans, programs, and actions taken by The first two functions make it clear that the citizens of the United States, principally a broad national strategy must shape strat- through governmental action, to ensure the egies for various regions and theaters by 52 2017 Index of U.S. Military Strength prioritizing them. In terms of warfighting, major role in the development and implemen- the national strategy establishes the desired tation of each geographic command’s Theater goals in a theater, linking operational consid- Security Co-operation Plan. erations to the requirements established by The final function of strategy is to serve as national authorities. Based on guidance from a guide to force planning. In theory, the strate- higher authorities, the theater commander gy–force planning process is logical. The plan- determines the desired outcome within his ner first identifies national interests and the area of responsibility. The staf then devel- objectives required to achieve those interests. ops war plans based on an array of plausible The planner then conducts a net assessment scenarios. Using various force planning mod- in order to determine the ability of adversar- els and war games to determine force size ies to threaten those interests or to interfere and mix, the theater commander’s staf then with the achievement of national objectives. derives the force necessary at the outset of a These represent the “operational challenges” campaign to achieve the desired outcome. that U.S. forces must surmount in order to im- In addition to determining the required plement the strategy. Next, the planner forges force, stafs at all levels also determine the a strategy to overcome operational challenges schedule for deploying forces from out of the- and a budget to fund the capabilities and op- ater. Part of this determination is establish- erational concepts that are needed to implement of the Time-Phased Force Deployment ment the strategy. Line, designating in a detailed manner the The execution of any chosen strategy re- timeline for forces to be deployed to the the- quires the fulfillment of certain strategic re- ater. The higher-level strategies also establish quirements. These requirements determine priorities among the various theaters, indi- the necessary military capabilities and op- cating which will be the site of the main efort erational concepts, which in turn drive the and which might be designated “economy of acquisition of forces and equipment. Thus, if force” in the event that crises occur in more there is a strategic requirement for a particu- than one theater simultaneously. lar capability, the forces or equipment needed National strategy thus guides “force ap- to provide that capability presumably should portionment,” the distribution of existing be obtained. To overcome these operational forces among the various theaters. During challenges and confront plausible future ar- World War II, national strategy dictated a pol- eas of military competition, the United States icy of “Europe first.” During the Cold War, U.S. must develop new operational concepts.9 strategy dictated a focus on Europe followed Although strategy can be described as the by the Asia–Pacific and finally by the Greater conceptual link between ends and means, it Middle East. cannot be reduced to a mere mechanical ex- Of course, warfighting and war planning ercise. Instead, it is “a process, a constant are only part of the theater commander’s job.

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