What’s the Matter with Being a Strategist (Now)?
American strategic competence is in decline. Twenty years after victory in the Cold War, a victory brought about by the shrewd use of state power and alliances while ably balancing international and domestic pressures, the United States now is struggling to find the right balance of military force and other forms of power in its current wars, while peering into an uncertain future. Commenting on American strategic competence, noted defense analyst Barry D. Watts argues, "US performance in Iraq provides ample evidence that it has been declining for some time."l This line of thought typically asserts that American strategic competence reached its apex between the victory in World War II; implementation of ASC 68, a 1950 report advocating ends, ways, and means of countering communism; and President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Solarium project, a 1953 evaluation of national security policy regarding the Soviet Union. Somewhere between the death of Josef Stalin and the rise of an era of limited war, the United States lost its strategic way. Given the diverse nature of today's threats, many observers look back with nostalgia on the clarity of the Soviet threat and the quality of the strategic thinking and planning that countered it. Rash comparisons between Cold War challenges--remembered as clearly identified, existential, and countered with bipartisan political support--and today's stew of pandemics, loose nuclear weapons, hackers, and undergoverned territories deserve closer scrutiny. Despite stark differences between the eras, there may be merit to the rising claim of strategic incompetence. From the Bay of Pigs to Vietnam to the inconclusive ceasefire terms at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, there is evidence that the strategic skill of the United States has been found wanting. If Watts is correct, that it is America's strategic competence that demands repair, then perhaps the effort to slow the erosion has already begun. A reversal of that trend is taking place, one that has gone unnoticed and will likely remain underappreciated for years to come--the return of the Army strategist. It would be ideal if this progress could be announced with the flamboyancy of a John Williams score in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, but in reality this reversal is subtle, bureaucratic, and over a decade old. The US Army currently has more than 400 military strategists serving in the grades of captain to colonel, diligently assisting commanders from division to combatant command level. Strategists occupy key positions within the broader defense community, serving on the National Security Council, Joint Staff, Army Staff, Office of the Secretary of Defense, and recently at the Treasury and State Departments. In a number of ways, these strategists owe their development, education, and assignments to a vision articulated more than 20 years ago. In 1989, General John R. Galvin, the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and Commander-in-Chief, US European Command at the time, argued for the return of uniformed strategists in his article, "What's the Matter with Being a Strategist?" After succinctly defining the attributes of military strategists, General Galvin suggested that key elements of their development included advanced schooling, operational experience, and lifelong development. (2) His influential and timely argument helped stimulate a review of the requirement for military strategists conducted by the Army's Officer Personnel Management System Task Force XXI/3 in the late 1990s. This review resulted in the creation of the functional specialty supporting Army strategists, technically recognized as Functional Area (FA) 59, Strategic Plans and Policy officers. Despite the number of strategists and the breadth of their assignments, this functional specialty is still a relatively recent development. Since 1999, the Army has gradually formalized the development of the specialty and expanded the number of strategists. …
Brigade Combat Teams: Designed to Design
Abstract : Should the U.S. Army allocate an Advanced Military Studies Program (AMSP) graduate to the Brigade Combat Team's plans cell in light of a decade of doctrinal changes and modularity? This monograph analyzes a decade's worth of change in the U.S. Army, post September 11, 2001. Ten years of combat operations and Army modularity has not only changed the way the Army fights, but how it must think. This monograph presents four recommendations for the Army to consider to close the operational planning gap in the BCT plans cell: (1) expand the AMSP to provide one operational planner per BCT, (2) reallocate the current annual AMPS graduates to provide one per BCT, (3) incorporate the Army's design methodology instruction into the Command and General Staff School curriculum, and (4) provide an operational planners course mobile training team to deploying BCTs.
SENIOR OFFICER EDUCATION, TODAY AND TOMORROW
Abstract : Ten years ago the first President of the National Defense University, Vice Admiral "Duke" Bayne, wrote an article highlighting the importance of senior service school education for our rising military leaders. He drew special attention to the role of the war college experience in strengthening the civil-military partnership that has built and protected this nation for more than two centuries, and that forms the centerpiece of our national security posture today. From my own perspective as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I see that partnership operating at several levels, every day: in the National Security Council arena, civilian and military leaders work together to make top-level security policy; in the Department of Defense, civilian and military personnel are concerned with preparing our forces for combat and with directing them in war; and in our society at large, mutual understandings between citizens and their defenders put down the roots needed to sustain any military establishment over the long haul. When the American civil-military partnership has been united, with each element conscious of its utter dependence on the other, it has been unbeatable. But when its bonds have weakened, the nation's defenses have withered, and our course on a troubled globe has wavered dangerously. All Americans have a vital interest in the nurturing of the cooperative venture -- the civil-military team -- that keeps this nation strong and effective on the world scene. Admiral Bayne's point about military education was that the central meeting ground for the elements of that team is in the mind. Our war colleges play a pivotal role in preparing rising professionals throughout the national security community to find that common ground. A decade later his observations still aptly describe the large-scale challenge addressed in the senior service schools. In this article, I would like to elaborate on that theme, and to outline my own views on the challenge as I now see it.