re: "8 myths about American grand strategy"

Peter Feaver at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") thinks about grand strategy (so you don't have to).

Money quote(s):

"Grand strategy appears to be the flavor of the month in the strategic community. I have planned or been invited to numerous conferences looking at the topic and the debates on this topic are as lively as I can remember in a long time. Just recently, I gave a talk to a grand strategy conference at NDU on the myths that afflict the field."

Mr. Feaver listed eight myths; CAA has selected his favorite three for your consideration.

"Myth 1: The U.S. can't do grand strategy

Many critics claim that the United States is simply too disorganized to do strategy on a grand scale.

In fact, we had a coherent grand strategy during the 19th century build around the Monroe Doctrine. We had a coherent grand strategy during WWII built around winning in Europe first. And we had a coherent grand strategy during the Cold War built around the idea of containment." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"Myth 3: A grand strategy has to have a 3-syllable label that rhymes with "ainment"

This gets to the heart of why you get the odd argument that we had a grand strategy during the Cold War but we haven't since. When critics say that we haven't had a grand strategy since the end of the Cold War, what they really mean is that we haven't had a label like "containment" that enjoys widespread popularity. This is true, but trivial.

In fact, since the fall of the Soviet Union a 5-pillar grand strategy has been clearly discernible:

Pillar I. The velvet covered iron fist. Iron fist: build a military stronger than what is needed for near-term threats to dissuade a would-be hostile rival from achieving peer status. Velvet covered: accommodate major powers on issues, giving them a larger stake in the international distribution of goodies than their military strength would command to dissuade a near-peer from starting a hostile rivalry.

Pillar 2. Make the world more like us politically by promoting the spread of democracy.

Pillar 3. Make the world more like us economically by promoting the spread of markets and globalization.

Pillar 4. Focus on WMD proliferation to rogue states as the top tier national security threat.

Pillar 5 (added by George W. Bush). Focus on terrorist networks of global reach inspired by militant Islamist ideologies as another top tier national security threat, i.e. co-equal with WMD in the hands of rogue states. The nexus of 4 & 5 is the ne plus ultra threat.

No administration described the strategy in exactly these terms. Every single president succumbed to the political temptation to product differentiate and especially to describe one's own actions as a bold new departure from the "failed" efforts of his predecessor. Yet a fair-minded reading of the core governmental white papers on strategy, especially the National Security Strategy reports prepared by each administration, as well as the central policy efforts each administration pursued, reveals a broad 20-year pattern of continuity.

All post-Cold War presidents championed the first 4 pillars. The last two presidents (Bush and Obama) adopted the last 2. And the major grand strategic moves of the period derive from one or more of these pillars: eg. The outreach to India derives from Pillar 1, the invasion of Iraq derives from Pillars 4 and 5, and so on.

Obama campaigned as if he was going to make a grand strategic innovation by adding a 6th pillar: elevating climate change to be co-equal with WMD and terrorism. But he chose to do health care instead." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

&

"Myth 7: A grand strategy requires an existential threat

It may be easier to describe the grand strategy when there is an overarching existential threat to concentrate the mind. But as the post-Cold War has shown, it is possible to have a coherent grand strategy even when the threats are dispersed and less-than-existential.

The Cold War was not a time when everything was simple or when everyone knew priorities or everyone agreed on the threat. And it sure wasn't "a time of great stability and security unlike these really dangerous times today," -- a curious view that I hear most often from students who never lived through the Cold War era.

But it was a time when the much more obvious, and by the late 1950's possibly existential threat posed by the nuclear confrontation overlaid on top of a global ideological contest with the Soviet Union circumscribed strategic thinking in a way that is not the case today.

Compared to the Cold War period, we have more slack in our security environment and that introduces a certain amount of indeterminacy in the strategic debate."

Having "won" (i.e., we survived, Russia survived to become, er, Russia, Eastern Europe survived to become "Central Europe," and Western Europe survived to become the Eurozone) the Cold War, it's fun (for values thereof) to see so many latter-day Reaganites coming out of the woodwork to pretend that all along they'd meant to " jump on the team and come on in for the big win ."

11/23

re: "Five myths about the policy-academy gap"

Peter Feaver at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") got to the nuts and bolts of the town vs. gown policy gap.

Money quote(s):

"(A) topic near and dear to my heart: the gap between academic political science and the policy world. This is a longstanding concern that has been the subject of much talk and some action my entire professional life. Since I am also a card-carrying yakademic (a term one of my National Security Council colleagues introduced to me back when I worked in the Clinton White House -- he always smiled when he said it so I am sure it was a term of endearment), I sympathize with much of what they and numerous others (see here and here) have to say."

"(Y)akademic." I love it!

"In my experience, academics are just as biased as, and in some cases more biased than, policymakers. Policymakers have a partisan bias, a worldview bias, and a policy commitment bias (eg., if a policymaker advocated for a policy initially he may be predisposed to support it despite evidence that it is faltering, and vice-versa).

Academics also have a partisan bias and a worldview bias. The chief difference is that academics tend to give jargon terms to their worldviews and they tend to reinforce them with an additional layer of method bias -- that is, viewing the world primarily through the narrow lens of whatever methodological tool they have mastered in the academy. Academics also have policy bias -- if they supported or opposed a policy" (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

Everyone has biases. Academics as much as policy-makers; nobody gets to pretend to an utterly detached and "objective" opinion. Good intelligence analysts identify their biases upfront.

"Academics have a further source of bias that is not as prevalent in the policymaker world: a skewed marketplace of ideas where the people they spend the most time arguing with come from a very narrow slice of the ideological spectrum."

The non-diversity of worldviews in academia has been done to death in certain circles. Which doesn't mean it isn't real.

"(M)ost of my academic international relations/security colleagues (that is people who do not focus on a specific country or region) do not have any firmer grasp on factual knowledge than the best people I have worked with in government; indeed, for reasons I get to below, they might even have less. What they can bring to the table, however, is a rigor that comes from making theoretical claims explicit and using appropriate methods to evaluate them. The very best academics also can bring to the table a healthy respect for the limits of their methods, and thus for the limits of the claims they and others can make. The chief difference in this regard between policymakers and academics is that policymakers use theory and method implicitly whereas academics use them explicitly (or at least they should)."

The line between academics and policymakers isn't as bright and shining as some would have you believe. Most policymakers, even if they were not tenured professors or even successful grad students, were at least trained by academics at the undergraduate level (or beyond).

And if they lack academic rigor and methodology, exactly whose fault is that?

"Academic research is a good contribution to the policy debate, but it hardly settles the matter (and, in this case, it would hardly surprise the policymaker who knows full well that Iran is unlikely to capitulate through economic sanctions alone). Policymakers have to factor in many more considerations than even very thorough academic research tends to weigh, such as: the need to cultivate political support for a policy line; the need to demonstrate that all avenues, even unpromising ones, have been explored; the need to sequence and/or link measures that an academic study might treat in isolation (or try to "hold constant" in the analysis); the need to consider the possibility that the immediate case might be the exception rather than the rule; and so on." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

7/25

re: "Can Obama claim we're leaving Iraq more responsibly than we entered?"

Peter Feaver at The Shadow ("Notes from the Loyal Opposition") drew some parallels.

Money quote(s):

"I haven't seen many attempts to document the ways that the exit is resembling the entry.

A few caveats are worth mentioning up front. The exit is still a work in progress and so there is plenty of time for things to go better (or worse) than might be forecasted now. Any judgment I or anyone else makes on the subject is provisional at best. Moreover, most of the critiques of the entry into Iraq owe more to partisan (or academic) mythology than to actual fact. But they have wide currency -- indeed, in some quarters, they are accepted as self-evident truths -- and so it is worth investigating the extent to which they might apply to the exit."

Mr. Feaver wrote and posted this a month ago (Nov. 7), so the exit has now been completed. And conditions have become, to put it diplomatically, a mite bit shaky, virtually since the moment the withdrawal of combat troops was accomplished.

"At a time when the economy is suffering from some of the worst years since the Great Depression, the echo is unmistakable, and many critics believe that the Iraq decision was dictated by the 2012 election calendar."

Might could be. I did notice that the last of the troops to be pulled out crossed the border into Kuwait before Christmas; it's possible they were even "home before Christmas." Which is a cliché guaranteed to trigger laughter in a military crowd.

"If you find it plausible that Bush let the difficult economic circumstances and the 2002 electoral calendar shape his approach to entering Iraq, shouldn't you find it more plausible that Obama has let his far more daunting economic troubles and the higher stakes 2012 electoral calendar shape his Iraq exit?"

Do electoral politics have an influence on the timing of decisions made by elected politicians? Disbelieving such a thing is beyond CAA's poor powers of naïveté, no matter which party a politician hails from. The better question is to what degree, how much weight such considerations have. Somewhere there's a bright line on this that separates the politicians from the statesmen.

"(T)here is the charge that President Bush put in place the wrong team to handle his Iraq policy and these early failures doomed the effort. Even Secretary Rumsfeld concedes in his memoir that picking Lt.Gen Ricardo Sanchez to head up the military side was a bad choice and Rumsfeld's critique of the civilian head, Ambassador Bremer, is scathing. The team struggled to work together and to understand the situation in Iraq. The crucial early period was squandered, sowing the seeds that reaped the bitter fruit of the sectarian violence of 2004-2006. By all accounts, the Bush administration finally got the right personnel in place when the President tapped General Dave Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker to implement the new surge strategy and their ability to achieve unity of effort contributed considerably to the surge's success."

How long did it take Pres. Lincoln to settle on the Meade/Grant command team?

"Midway through his first term, Obama may have finally assembled a solid team with General Ray Odierno and Ambassador Jim Jeffrey. But he started out with a choice that left many people, including myself, scratching our heads: picking Chris Hill to be the Ambassador. Ambassador Hill certainly had a distinguished career, but he had no direct experience with Iraq and so was starting from square one. Sure enough, within months credible reports were circulating about the poor civil-military coordination on the ground. Perhaps the nadir was the description from one of his former subordinates of Ambassador Hill's alleged wasteful distraction to grow a lush lawn on the embassy compound. Perhaps the complaints were petty, but the more fundamental charge that the Obama team squandered valuable time that undermined future success rings nonetheless." (Bold typeface added for emphasis. - CAA.)

CAA has, in his own career, noted an occasional but remarkable ambassadorial preoccupation with issues of lawncare, landscaping, and décor. It seems to be symptomatic of micromanagers or, to put it more charitably, of the detail oriented.

If it weren't for the fact that sod and such had to be convoyed under armed guard at risk of IED attack all the way into Baghdad, it would be farcical. As it was, it indicates a dangerous disconnection with reality.

11/7

re: "Is Obama doubling down on a risky gamble in Iraq?"

Peter Feaver at Shadow Government ("Notes from the Loyal Opposition") had questions about that murky interface between military and national strategy, where political leaders do their decision-making.

Money quote(s):

"According to several unnamed sources, military commanders are "livid" with President Obama's decision to authorize a plan that is resourced at a fraction of the level that the military considered to be the minimum -- and even that minimum would only work "in extremis." Obama's approach appears to involve several multiples of risk beyond what the military consider prudent. Reportedly, even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued for a level of resources above what Obama appears to have authorized.

Reasonable people can disagree whether it makes national security sense for Obama to adopt such a risky path. For my part, I wish he had invested more effort in the Iraq file, especially working more closely with Prime Minister Maliki to push the process towards an outcome that is more favorable to American (and, I would argue, Iraqi national) interests.

The part that mystifies me is why his team thinks it makes political sense to have taken this course. His administration has already pocketed as much political benefit as there is to be wrung from Bush's surge -- and the media has generously refrained from pointing out that whatever positive developments came in Iraq came because of policies Obama and Biden tried strenuously to thwart in 2007. Given that the administration has already claimed Iraq as a great achievement, why take so risky a course now, one that could result in a great unraveling during the presidential campaign?"

The subtext here is the assumption that elected political leaders (or at least this elected political leader) make their big decisions based upon their personal calculus of electoral politics; rather than, say, the national good.

"The cost savings of denying the military the resources they say they need is trivial compared to the stakes. For that matter, the amount of time and effort it would have taken Obama to invest in Iraq policy so as to achieve greater progress with Maliki was probably trivial, too. Yet it seems that when it comes to Iraq, Obama is determined to do whatever is less than the minimum. "

Bug? Or feature?

9/7

re: "Obama's Afghanistan strategy and the right to be wrong"

Peter Feaver at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") considered the U.S. civil-military relationship.


Money quote(s):


"(F)rom the parochial perspective of civil-military relations theory, Obama is within his rights to make the decision in the way that he did, and so far, the senior military have behaved in an exemplary fashion."

That's a good BLUF ("bottom line up front"). Mr. Feaver then ratchets up his granularity a bit.


"(N)ot only will the coalition have fewer forces than the generals believe they require to implement the overall strategy effectively -- probably much fewer, as our allies respond to the dog whistle "retreat" sounding from the president's decision and accelerate their rush to the exits -- but those forces will be facing an enemy that has good reason to believe that time is on its side. The military brass report that the new course just might work, but it will be a very close run thing."

Nobody, least of all our allies, wants to be the last ones on the ground within a shrinking operational footprint. Still, we have the best troops in the world, capable of winning even when resourced to fail.

"Since the military logic of the move is so weak, one naturally looks for some other explanation, such as a political angle. The president's decision to interrupt next summer's fighting season makes no military sense whatsoever; better to let the troops finish the fighting season and come home in the late fall or winter. But that would be after the election. So far as I have been able to determine, that is the only explanation of the timeline that makes sense, but I am open to hearing a convincing counterargument. I am very reluctant to charge a president with elevating domestic political interests over national security ones because I remember how unfairly Democrats made that charge against President George W. Bush -- and that was on a much more flimsy evidentiary basis."

Civility. Accusing a sitting president of playing politics with U.S. soldier's lives is serious business. Sadly, better presidents than this one have done it before.

"(T)here is one aspect of the decision that is legitimate and one that may even warrant praise. The legitimate aspect is that, notwithstanding a torrent of leaks, the decision-making process seems to have conformed more or less to democratic civil-military norms. The military presented a range of options, including options that it did not want to execute; it would have been inappropriate of Gen. David Petraeus to tie Obama's hands by only providing a narrow range of options, minor variants of the military's preferred plan. He didn't do so; instead, he and the rest of the military leadership have saluted and are obeying, and such professionalism is very definitely worthy of praise. To be sure, the military gave its best personal judgment as to the risks inherent in those plans. Obama was fully aware of the military's judgment, and the public, through Congress, is also aware of that judgment. But it is the president's job to balance the risks of battlefield failure against other risks. The military gets to say this is a high-risk plan. The president gets to say that he will accept this risk and impose it on them.

Accept it and impose it he did. That has important political consequences. Before, one could say that he merely chose General Stanley McChrystal and General Petraeus's strategy. Now it is unmistakably President Obama's strategy. It is his war. But he will be ordering others to fight his war, which brings me to one bit of unfinished civil-military business."

So there's ownership of the outcome here, however it turns out. And we should all wish our commander-in-chief's plan every success in the world.

"I have been thinking of the troops that will remain. They are locked in the fight of their lives, and they (or at least their commanders) probably paid more attention to the president's speech than did most other Americans. Did the president give them a convincing rationale for continuing to risk their lives? Did he convince them that the stakes were worth it, that the prospects for lasting success good enough? Do they believe that their commander in chief is as committed to the war effort as he is asking them to be? Only when those answers are answered satisfactorily will Obama have fulfilled the dictates of democratic civil-military theory."

That's a real question asked by real troops on the ground. I know I asked it myself and, during the previous administration, I often found various civilian and military officials to be, shall we say, insufficiently serious about their commitment.

"From a civil-military perspective, the president has the right to be wrong. He might well be wrong this time, and if so, that may be evident to all by next fall. In that case, democratic theory points to the duty of others: the voters."

In the democratic model of civil-military relations, the voters get the final word on a commander-in-chief's fitness to lead the nation, to say nothing of the military. However it should never be forgotten that in other lands, at other times, a commander-in-chief's errors have been so serious as to take the civil-military relationship right out of the democratic context. The history or literary-minded will recall "It Can't Happen Here" was a warning, not a promise.

re: " diminished president, a diminished global power"

Peter Feaver at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") shared some observations from Singapore.

Money quote(s):

"Traveling abroad is a great opportunity to look at American foreign policy and politics with fresh eyes. And this time, with the debt ceiling debate receiving prominent attention in every corner of the globe, the effect was especially vivid."

How so?

"(W)hen I talk with government insiders, people with actual experience dealing with the U.S. government (as opposed to watching it on BBC and the Daily Show), there is often a quietly expressed nostalgia for earlier administrations -- even, gasp, the Bush administration. A grudging consensus appears to be emerging"

How can this be?

"(Interestingly, my interlocutors are much quicker to give Secretary Clinton strong marks. They seem to attribute any good things to her and any bad things to the president.)

Yet the parameters of the debate were further damaging to our global leadership. The choice appeared to be between, on the one hand, joining the ranks of bankrupt failed states who default on their financial obligations or, on the other hand, drastically slashing those parts of the government budget that are most crucial to our global role (defense and international operations). There were few voices, on either side of the aisle, making the case for adequately funding these key pillars of American power and the inference that many would draw seems inescapable: Americans are heeding the siren song of isolationism and global retreat. No one I talked to wanted to see the United States walk any further along this path. But few were confident we could or would reverse course soon."

It's fascinating how Sec. Clinton (or "S" in FSO-speak) has politically managed to both be part of the administration and not tarred with the brush of its problems. My admiration for her political chops increases nearly daily.

re: "The right to be wrong, but not the right to lie"

Peter Feaver at Shadow Government ("Notes From The Loyal Opposition") walks us through the action.

Money quote(s):

"At issue is the extent to which the senior commanders endorsed the option that President Obama selected: truncating the surge and rushing the withdrawal in a fashion that interrupts the 2012 fighting season (but dove-tails with the 2012 presidential campaign season)."

The president is the commander-in-chief. He gets to decide these things and, within the legal and Constitutional limits of their oaths of office, the generals and admirals have to salute smartly and carry out his instructions.

"(T)he White House sought to depict the president's decision as one well within a range of options developed by the military."

Quite possible, depending upon the meaning of the word "within."

"(T)he option Obama picked was not on the menu. Obama's plan -- presumably the arbitrary summer 2012 deadline and perhaps also the numbers involved -- was apparently devised elsewhere, perhaps by White House advisors."

So. Perhaps "within" means something like dates-and-figures-not-matching-anything-on-the-menu-but-somewhere-inside-the-outlying-dates-and-figures.

"Hayes emphasizes that President Obama over-ruled Petraeus's advice, which is true but, as I have argued, he was well within his rights as commander-in-chief. On this, I point to no less an authority than General Petraeus himself. From a civil-military point of view, it is important to know whether or not the military refused to even present this as an option: it would have been inappropriate if they had tried to tie the hands of the president in that fashion. But if they did in fact present a range of options that included ones they thought too risky, and then President Obama chose yet another still-riskier option, that would not constitute a civil-military foul by either side. It is worth knowing whether the military endorsed the option, but that should not be viewed as the dispositive factor.

To me, the most important part of the Hayes story is that, if accurate and complete, it means the White House did not tell the truth about the military advice it received. Rather than admit that the president listened carefully to his generals and then chose something that they did not recommend, someone at the White House tried to pretend that the president simply chose among a range of options endorsed by the military. This is a subtle difference, but in civil-military terms it is a profound one. Civilians do not owe the military prerogatives over policy choices; they do owe the military a decision-making process in which the military voice can be heard and in which military views will be faithfully described to those authorized to hold the president accountable on these decisions, namely us.

If the president wants to elicit from the military an option and an endorsement of an option that the military does not initially prefer, as President Bush did with his Iraq surge, then he must engage in the lengthy back-and-forth that President Bush engaged in, cajoling the military into something resembling a consensus. The president does not have to do that -- he can simply decide, as President Obama did -- but he owes the military (and the voter) to tell the truth about what he did."

Dealing with policy-level decision-makers is touchy business, exacerbated by the tyranny of PowerPoint (TM), which can force briefers into limiting the range of options to that which can be displayed (and explained) on a single briefing slide.

I'm not actually suggesting this is what happened, but the phenomenon extends well beyond actual PowerPoint (TM) briefings as it seems to have measurably reduced the capacity for those being briefed to hold onto things like facts and figures.

"(T)he White House has just replicated the Johnson-McNamara error that was at the heart of H.R. McMaster's influential Dereliction of Duty account of the Vietnam War. Although many read McMaster's book as accusing the senior generals of dereliction for going along with Johnson's decision to escalate the war more gradually than they thought prudent, in fact McMaster's primary point was that the generals were derelict in going along with Johnson and McNamara's willful misrepresentation to Congress and the American people about the content of the military advice. What McMaster wanted the generals to do was simply tell Congress what their advice had been, correcting the record that Johnson and McNamara had muddied by pretending that their Vietnam decisions were consonant with military counsel."

Read the whole thing here.