Webb. Jim, Broadway Books, NY
111 Capter 7 “Strategy Is Not A Board Game”
Strategy is a much-beleaguered word these days, often used so carelessly that it has lost much of its academic meaning. In very general terms, a strategy is a comprehensive plan of long-term action, while tactics involve the specifics of how that plan is actually implemented. In military terms, a strategy lays out the commanding general’s (or admiral’s) overriding goals, concept of action, and the end point the military action is designed to achieve. In the American military, such a strategy must begin with the goals and the specific direction of our national political process, which under our Constitution is the precursor for setting military action into motion.
A clearly articulated, agreed-upon national strategy can be difficult to obtain in a democracy. This is particularly true here in the United States, where we rightly value our constitutional system of checks and balances, as well as the open arena of free debate. Presidential administrations come and go, bringing with them new teams of national security advisers and differing economic priorities. The makeup of the Congress constantly changes, not only between political parties but also in its leadership, which puts into play different personalities and sometimes alternative views of America’s role around the world. A freewheeling media often forces sensitive deliberations into public debate. Well-financed think tanks bankroll the careers and publications of resident scholars, who inundate the process with adversarial arguments. And just as important, this nation derived from many nations is itself constantly in a state of competitive abrasion when it comes to where our national resources should best be placed.
But without a clear national strategy our system is capable of manipulation, and the result can be the misguided use of military force, in a way that does not advance our national interest.
Historically, the concepts of a nation’s “grand strategy” has been used to lay out its interests around the world, and to offer a framework with which to both protect those interests and encourage their growth. Grand strategy involves far more than military power. In fact, the investment that a democracy makes in it military is but one small part of a properly constituted grand strategy, something of a insurance policy designed to ensure that a nation’s overall well-being is not interrupted by those who wish it ill.
The first requirement of a grand strategy is that a nation’s leaders carefully define its economic, cultural, political, and security interests around the world. The second challenge is to examine the threats to those interests, both real and potential, and the threats to the vital interests of other countries with whom a nation has developed alliances. And the final step is to develop a formula that will advance the nation’s interests on all fronts. This step includes trade policies and agreements, bilateral security arrangements, membership in international compacts such as the United Nations, NATO, the Association of South-east Asian Regional Forum (ASEAN), and the World Trade Organization, to name a few, along with a national security program that includes a military system capable of both deterring hostile activities and counteracting them if they do occur.
127 Chapter 8 “The Armpit of the World” (overview of recent history)
152 “How Not to Fight a War” (9-12-01 Journal editorial not published but on Jim Webb’s web site
156 With many key people in this administration wanting a war from the outset, and soon convincing the President himself of the validity of their views, there were few tools to be used from outside the process to stop them. The great failure of our endeavor in Iraq, other than that it should never have taken place at all, was that the debate occurred in the absence of a declared strategic vision. The national transition away from Cold War thinking was partially to blame, but a greater aspect of that failure was deliberate. Absent an agreed-upon strategy, the intellectual advocates for war in Iraq were able to push a long-held agenda into the vacuum. Tellingly, as the movement toward war gained momentum, the President and his administration never clearly defined the strategic objectives that were calling for war, and never outlined a firm set of benchmarks that, once obtained, would bring an end to the fighting, including a withdrawal of our military from Iraq.
In other words, we were moving cavalierly toward a war that could change our entire geopolitical focus, without a clearly articulated worldview, without specific, long-term guidance e from which the military could properly define a war strategy, and with no clear referent from which h the American political process could garner a sense of predictability about the war’s outcome. In the congressional hearings that led us into war, the President’s witnesses, particularly among the political appointees at the Department of Defense, were repeatedly asked how long we would be in Iraq if we invaded. They repeatedly answered, in an arrogant, prerehearsed litany, that we would be in Iraq “as long as it necessary, and not one day more.”
For the average soldier, this meant three months. For the average neoconservative, this meant fifty years or perhaps forever.
On the back of the book jacket:
The one connecting dot in all of my experiences has been a passion for history and a desire to learn from it. Not the enumeration of monarchs and treaties that so often passes for academic knowledge, but the surging vitality from below that so often impels change and truly defines cultures. The novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote vividly about war and peace, showing us the drawing rooms and idiosyncrasies of Russia’s elite. But in reality, he was telling us that great societal changes are most often pushed along by tsunami-deep impulses that cause the elites to react, far more than they inspire them to lead. And this, in my view, is the greatest lesson of political history. Entrenched aristocracies, however we may want to define them, do not want change; their desire instead is to manage dissent in a way that does not disrupt their control. But over time, under the right system of government, a free, thinking people have the energy and ultimately the power to effect change.
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