Tag Archives: Strategy

History, Theory

PTP Response: Levels of Interaction, the Historical Approach and the Public Mind

1 Comment

This post was provided by Dr. John T. Kuehn in response to the series on CIMSEC and The Bridge, Personal Theories of Power. Dr. Kuehn is a member of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College faculty and the author of Agents of Innovation: The General Board and the Design of the Fleet that Defeated the Japanese Navy and A Military History of Japan: From the Age of the Samurai to the 21st Century.

It is just here that the Institute might render important service to the profession by enlightening the public mind of the Navy on this subject, through the medium of essays and frequent discussions. — Admiral Stephen B. Luce, 1888, annual address as President of the U.S. Naval Institute

My personal theory of power, at least for the moment, has two parts. The first part comes from an idea broached by Mark Mandeles known as “levels of analysis.” The second part has to do with my own approach to exercising such power in ethical and, hopefully, altruistic ways in my own life through education, specifically educating minds to include the historical perspective. In other words, the theory followed by its application and execution in my own case.

Levels of Power — An Analysis

First, levels of analysis describe human interactions in terms of relationships. Generally, these levels fall into three groups: the individual, organizational, and institutional. Institutions are near the very top of social hierarchies and, in the words of Douglass North are, “society’s rules of the game.”[i] Translating this to a personal level, each human interaction occurs within these sorts of contexts and, therefore, for each of us, each interaction—as an individual, as a member of an organization or small cohesive team, and as a member of a larger institution—is pregnant with both possibility and limitation, occasionally leading to brilliant success or utter catastrophe. We influence others, wield our power as it were, in these situations and in different ways. Most interactions are at the personal level, but within teams and organizations, we behave a bit differently based, again, on the possibilities and limitations of our personal influence in that particular context. For example, parents exercise individual level power all the time with their children. At the organizational level we often think of our team, unit, or organization associated with employment. As one’s responsibility increases, so does the level of interaction and the ability to exercise personal power at the organizational level. However, for the audience that is probably reading this, we have folks who occasionally (or more often) exercise their power within institutional settings, as leaders of powerful institutions—for example Admiral Jonathan Greenert exercising his influence and authority as the US Navy service chief or David Petraeus when he was director of the CIA.

Education of the Historical Perspective

Back in the turbulent 20th Century an American historian named Thomas Bailey wrote A Diplomatic History of the American People. Bailey argued that the American people, through the power of public opinion, have always (one might say traditionally) exerted a profound influence on the foreign policy of the United States.[ii] This raises the issue of how does one influence the public opinion of the American people? N.A.M. Rodger dealt extensively with how the public mind is influenced by historical narratives and myths. He found that, contrary to perhaps conventional wisdom, Americans do use history to inform their public thinking, but that most of this history is flawed, wrong, or obscures what might have value coming to grips with the human past.[iii] I contend that the historical approach to influencing the public mind is not something that needs doing, rather it is something that needs doing correctly.

For Clausewitz and Mahan theory literally was study.

Minds as different and culturally divergent at Carl von Clausewitz, A.T. Mahan, and Mao Zedong all shared one trait in common when it came to military theory—theory should include study and when it came to war that study should be military history. For Clausewitz and Mahan theory literally was study.[iv] It is all well and good for the military professional to create his or her own theory by doing this (precisely what this series of articles is doing, after all), but how does this translate in power and influence? One means is through education, and not just military professionals or governmental elites, but the public. They get a vote.

For me it involves teaching, engaging if you will, with history as a means to educate the public mind—with individuals, groups, and in larger settings, at all levels. And so I teach primarily military and political history—at Fort Leavenworth, for Norwich University, at University of Kansas, for the Naval War College fleet seminar program, and frankly at any opportunity I get.

A theory is useless unless one employs it in a practical and daily manner.

[i] Friedman, Mandeles, and Hone, American and British Aircraft Carrier Development, 5-6. These authors cite Nobel Laureate Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance (New York, 1993.) More recently, Mandeles acknowledges the role of Jean de Bloch’s pioneering analyses in The Future of War: Organizations as Weapons (Washington, DC, 2005) as contributing to his inspiration for the “levels of analysis” approach.

[ii] Thomas Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People, Tenth Edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980).

[iii] N.A.M. Rodger, “The Perils of History,” Hattendorf Prize Lecture, Naval War College Review (October 2011): 8-15

[iv] Carl von Clausewitz said this literally in Book 2 on military theory of On War, trans. Peter Paret and Michael Howard (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 141-142; Jon T. Sumida emphasizes this aspect of both Mahan’s and Clausewitz’s theoretical approaches in Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command: The Classic Works of Alfred Thayer Mahan Reconsidered (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1997) and Decoding Clausewitz (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2008), especially chapter 1. For Mao see John Shy and Thomas Collier, “Revolutionary War” in Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986): 815-862.

Global Analysis

Nuclear Weapons: A Personal Theory of Power

2 Comments

This essay is part of the  Personal Theories of Power series, a joint Bridge–CIMSEC project which asked a group of national security professionals to provide their theory of power and its application. We hope this launches a long and insightful debate that may one day shape policy.

Matthew Hallex and Bruce Sugden are defense analysts in Northern Virginia. Their opinions are their own and do not represent those of their employer or clients.

Harold Winton suggests “strategic theory has one foot in reality and another in concepts.”[1] Strategic thinking about nuclear weapons, as practiced in the United States, certainly has one foot in concepts, but its grounding in reality is much shakier. Nuclear thinkers had no data-rich nuclear history to work from and so they built their theory upon deductive models. The result is a body of thought that reflects less an understanding of the worth of nuclear weapons for military practitioners than a collection of elegant models and American preferences that are confused with universal truths. In addressing the topic of nuclear weapons and strategy, we attempt to offer not a novel construct for thinking about nuclear weapons, but to highlight some of the shortcomings of the dominant approach to thinking about strategy and nuclear weapons and to suggest some guideposts to improve strategic thinking.

What’s the use of strategic theory?

Strategic theory should assist the strategist in formulating an effective strategy and should shed light on the proper use of force.[2] The primary take-away a strategic theory should offer the military practitioner is not a collection of lessons that will lead to victory, but, as Frans Osinga stated in his study of John Boyd’s strategic thinking, an illumination of guideposts or “things that need thinking about. It must provide insight and questions, not answers.”[3] This echoes Clausewitz’s observation that theory is a guide to self-education.[4] It is about creating the proper cast of mind to think about the use of force in a particular strategic environment and to consider the relationships between ends, ways, and means within that context.

What is wrong with the dominant U.S. approach to thinking strategically about nuclear weapons?

Lawrence Freedman makes a useful distinction between strategists and the group of “nuclear specialists” who arose in the early days of the Cold War when the insights of classical strategy seemed inadequate to the challenge posed by nuclear weapons.[5] These specialists developed nuclear thought into a technical discipline that relied on deductions and models and grew insensitive to the operational and political challenges of nuclear use — the challenges that a strategic theory must address if it is to be useful for practitioners.

The escalation ladder is one example of the work of nuclear specialists. While the 44 rungs of Herman Kahn’s ladder, covering all states of conflict from peace to Armageddon, has value as an analytical heuristic, its value for military practitioners is less clear. As Colin Gray points out “because one can conceive of thresholds for thought, it does not follow that those thresholds in fact exist. An escalation ladder, in the minds of a harassed policy maker, may offer an illusion of control…that is likely to be negated by the systemic nature of conflict. In the mind of the adversary, some of the rungs may be missing.”[6]

To wit, the ladder metaphor has never fit well with the Russians’ view of escalation. While the American approach to escalation, which often times is incremental and gradual, was reflected in the linear concept of the escalation ladder, Russian strategic thought has seemed to have at its core the idea of “rapid, large-scale escalation.” In the 1960s, Russian strategists expected intercontinental nuclear strikes between the United States and the Soviet Union to occur at the same time as, or precede, major combat in the theaters bordering the Soviet Union.[7] Furthermore, as Stephen Meyer showed in his study of Soviet doctrinal writings, the “destruction of military-industrial targets in the strategic rear (i.e., in the US and Britain) would have taken place during the initial stages of the conflict.”[8] In the 1990s, former Soviet military officers and defense officials revealed to DOD contractors that in the 1970s the Soviets did not think of “managing a nuclear war by climbing a ladder of escalation . . . .”[9]

Since 2000, in the wake of U.S.-NATO military operations against Serbia, Russian strategists have been speaking of “de-escalation of military operations” with an eye on deterring the intervention of the West into conflicts within Russia’s “Near Abroad.” In other words, they are thinking about employing nuclear weapons to compel a strong opponent to de-escalate and lower tensions on terms favorable to Russia.[10] Russian military exercises and simulations have included “limited” nuclear strikes against military targets in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and in the continental United States using long-range air-launched cruise missiles.[11]

Contemporary American strategic dialogue has done little to address the inadequacies of “golden age” nuclear thinking. Rather, it has abandoned serious thinking about the role of nuclear weapons in strategy. A tremendous amount of ink is spilled discussing the characteristics and strategies of a conflict between China and the United States, for example, with almost no thinking about the role of nuclear weapons aside from a generalized desire to “control escalation” and remove the prospect of nuclear use from consideration in that envisioned great power war. The discussion of the role of nuclear weapons in the national security of the United States is reduced to determining the smallest number targets to be serviced rather than engaging with the strategies and doctrines embraced by our potential adversaries.[12]

These decades-spanning problems with the U.S. approach to thinking strategically about nuclear weapons have a common problem: they confuse U.S. preferences and experiences with universal insights into the nature of nuclear weapons. For the early nuclear thinkers it was a product of lacking insight into what Russia and other nuclear states thought about nuclear weapons and how they developed their strategies and doctrines. In the face of incomplete information, the early thinkers extrapolated from U.S. nuclear thought. Contemporary U.S. thinkers, broadly speaking, have decided that nuclear use is impossible or at least serves no military ends, and therefore it is simply unnecessary to engage as seriously with nuclear weapons as their Russian and Chinese counterparts continue to do.

How to improve strategic thought

How then should we think strategically about nuclear weapons? Strategic thinking needs to be liberated from dense prose and a fondness for systems analysis and game theory (as useful as they are in their own right) in looking at particular military problems and made accessible to practitioners. Nuclear thought that would be useful for military practitioners will have three features:

1. Placing nuclear weapons in the broader strategic context. “Nuclear strategy” is not a separate beast from “strategy.” While the technical implications of nuclear weapons were significant they did not truly change the nature of war, nor did they change the ways by which we should think about it. Strategic designs and campaign plans ultimately act upon human minds to shape decision-making, but because we cannot know with certainty how adversary decision makers will develop their own strategies and react to our strategy and threats, even a strategy of deterrence has to have at its core war-making capabilities.[13] Plain and simple: a strategy designed to deter nuclear weapons use might fail, and so the United States might have to employ nuclear weapons to achieve its war aims. If nuclear strategy is to be useful it must be grounded in the broader strategic discussion focused on human psychology, decisions, and action. Thucydides and Clausewitz are no less useful in the nuclear age, and nuclear weapons and operations should be integrated into this deeper conversation about the ways U.S. means could be employed to achieve political ends.

2. Nuclear thought has national character. U.S. thinking about nuclear weapons must be responsive to foreign ideas about nuclear use if it is to be relevant to military practitioners. Furthermore, most bodies of military theory reflect the contributions of thinkers from different national and strategic contexts, addressing different geopolitical and military challenges and different technical environments. Mahan and Corbett offer different and often contradictory approaches to addressing seapower but make the discussion richer for it. In the contributions of the U.S. thinkers of the Cold War, we may have our nuclear Mahan. Now we need to be on the lookout for a nuclear Corbett among the thinkers of Russia, China, and other nuclear powers.

3. Thinking about nuclear weapons and strategy should be military minded. Nuclear weapons are not an abstraction; they are weapons. If strategy is to be serious it must grapple with this fact directly. Taking a lesson from Russian strategic thinking and nuclear war planning, we need to think about how countries might employ nuclear weapons in conjunction with other means to achieve their ends, and how the United States might have to threaten to use or actually employ nuclear weapons to achieve its war aims, especially if preferred conventional military means turn out to be inadequate to the military tasks at hand.[14] U.S. policies can change quickly in a crisis or a conflict when the president determines that vital U.S. interests are at stake, and U.S. military practitioners need to be ready to apply all the military tools at the disposal of the president.

 

Global Analysis, Theory

A Personal Theory of Strategy

Leave a comment

This essay by Nick Prime is part of the Personal Theories of Power series, a joint Bridge–CIMSEC project which asked a group of national security professionals to provide their theory of power and its application. We hope this launches a long and insightful debate that may one day shape policy.

“The primary aim of the strategist in the conduct of war is some selected degree of control of the enemy for the strategist’s own purpose; this is achieved by control of the patterns of war; and this control of the pattern of war is had by manipulation of the center of gravity of war to the advantage of the strategist and the disadvantage of the opponent.”[i]

This theory of control, whereby the aim of war is some measure of control over the enemy, and the achievement of this degree of control is the purpose of strategy, was most cogently expressed by Admiral J.C. Wylie. Its origins however date back to the early 1950s. When Wylie, along with Admiral Henry Eccles and German-American historian Dr. Herbert Rosinski, developed a general theory of strategy around this central concept of ‘control’. While each of the three men’s conceptions of this theory reflected variances in nuance and expression. All three sought to understand the interplay between politics, power, and control. The focus herein will be on the value of this theory as a means to understand strategy as something which exists and is practiced both in the physical and cognitive domains.

Understanding the Terms

A half century ago Wylie remarked that the study of strategy lacked a clear and consistent vocabulary, a statement that is as true today as it was then.[ii] In addition to the many definitions of strategy itself, there are as yet no established definitions for the terms and concepts which serve as the foundational elements for our understanding of strategy. It is important then to provide, in brief, a working conception of these terms so that their interplay can be shown in each domain.

Perhaps the most simple and practical definition of politics is that provided by Harold Lasswell who defined it as “the way people decide who gets what, when, where, how, and why”.[iii] Here we see the first unstated but unmistakable emphasis on choice as critical to understanding the concept. Another unstated but clear emphasis is on the role of authority, a crucial element in the practice of politics. As Lawrence Freedman has noted there is a critical interplay between power and authority, with a great deal of debate being had as to whether the two concepts are exclusive or extensions of each other.[iv] Freedman’s discussion of power in a strategic sense (what he dubs ‘strategic power’) also emphasizes a duality between physical and cognitive. Though he makes clear distinctions between the physical expression as force (or the capability to use force) and the cognitive expression, what he sees as its perception in the mind of the ‘target’ or ‘beholder’. While his focus on strategic power is largely on ‘coercive capacity’ the important term there is capacity.

Wylie saw politics as “the allocation, use, transfer of power” a conception which echoes both the interplay between power and authority, while also reflecting an emphasis on capacity.[v] Power then could perhaps best be thought of as energy, capable of existing in various forms such as watts of electrical charge or calories of food. Politics then is the means by which the power of a group, institution, or nation state is marshalled, allotted, and/or directed. Strategy then should be viewed as the mechanism by which the capacity (power) created through politics, is applied towards the aim of a given policy. The assertion of authority or more appropriately, control. Herein lies the subtle but distinct difference between Freedman’s conception of strategy and that of Wylie, Eccles and Rosinski. Freedman defines strategy as “the art of creating power to obtain maximum political objectives using available military means.”

Rosinski, whose understanding of strategy resembles that previously quoted by Wylie, defined strategy as the comprehensive direction of (military) power, applied through tactics, for the purpose of control.[vi] The difference between Freedman’s theory and the control theory is subtle but significant. By placing the emphasis on strategy’s purpose as being (some measure of) control, they are focusing on the application of power, in contrast to Freedman’s focus on the creation of power.

Control as Cognitive & Physical

In developing their theories of strategy both Wylie and Rosinski placed the bulk of their emphasis on control in the physical domain or ‘field of action’. As the intention was to establish control as a general theory of strategy, it was critical that theory bear equal relevance to each of the commonly identified ‘domains’ of conflict (land, sea, and air). In each of the respective domains the relevance and contribution towards control was measured when contrasted against destruction. The importance of this distinction is simple but significant. Destruction serves strategy only insofar as it contributes towards the achievement of control.

Implied in this emphasis on control, as opposed to an emphasis on destruction, is the focus on economy of force. By limiting the destruction and focusing it towards asserting a ‘selected degree’ of control over ‘key centers of gravity’ and/or ‘lines of communication’, control seeks to solve the challenge posed by strategy in the most economical means possible.[vii] Many theories of strategy lack this critical balancing. Favouring an emphasis on destruction, which can and often does become counterproductive. Strategies premised first on destruction emphasize as the primary means the use of (or through coercion, the threat to use) force. These strategies fail to account for the myriad of other means through which some measure of control, or contributions toward it, can be achieved. Such as political or economic pressures which can contribute towards control, adding to coercion, while curbing destruction only to that which is necessary. As Lukas Milevski noted, “control and coercion run along a single set of tracks: only the living can be threatened and consequently controlled, but they can only be so if, due to the expected cost or due to fear, the choice of continuing is less palatable than that of accommodating.”[viii]

Wylie and Eccles also provide valuable and insightful observations on the cognitive aspects of control. For Wylie, the manipulation of the physical centers of gravity would, through its effect on the “equilibrium” of the conflict, effect the “critical decisions” of the adversary.[ix] According to Rosinski, strategy became a means of control by taking “into account the multitude of possible enemy counteractions.”[x] Eccles, in expanding on the point made by Rosinski, stressed the importance of a clear understanding of both the strategist’s own objectives and those of his adversary. He viewed this as crucial to the holistic formation of sound strategic action. Understanding that objectives (both the strategist’s own, and those of his adversary) were a critical expression of both the actions and choices, which one had to control through strategy.[xi]

This emphasis on choice is critical, as Wylie noted, with respect to deterrence-based strategies predicated on the threat to use force. As the coercive effect of this threat to use force is itself a degree of control.[xii] The ability to control by dictating, limiting, or removing the choices of the opponent, is then implicit in the cognitive side of the control theory.

Why It Matters

There is a great deal of value to be derived from understanding this control theory of strategy. This understanding of the control theory allows the strategist to perceive, under the same conceptual framework. Both those physical strategies which utilize and rely on the direct application of force and destruction, to achieve the desired political ends. As well as those strategies of coercion and deterrence, reliant upon other measures to achieve that selected degree of control required for the desired ends of policy. Violence is inherent in the nature of war, but not in the nature of strategy (broadly defined), and certainly not in the nature of conflict.

The character of contemporary conflicts whether diplomatic or political, as illustrated by recent events in both the South China Sea and the Ukraine, has shown that power can be created and the aims of policy can be achieved through more than the simple application of force. In this regard a framework that applies the same understanding of strategy to achieve a policy through brinkmanship, economic coercion, or the use of military force, is of significant utility.

[i] J.C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (Annapolis, 1989), 77-78.

[ii] Wylie, Military Strategy, 11.

[iii] H. Lasswell, Politics: Who gets what, when and how? (New York, 1958)

[iv] L. Freedman, ‘Strategic Studies and the Problem of Power’ in T. Mahnken & J. Maiolo ed., Strategic Studies: A Reader, (New York, 2014), 13.

[v] Wylie, Military Strategy, 90.

[vi] H. Rosinski, ‘The Structures of Military Strategy’ (1956), 18-19

[vii] Wylie, Military Strategy, 77-78; H. Rosinski, ‘New Thoughts on Strategy’ (1955), 2.

[viii] L. Milevski, ‘Revisiting J.C. Wylie’s Dichotomy of Strategy: The Effects of Sequential and Cumulative Patterns of Operations’, Journal of Strategy Studies, 35:2 (2012), 231.

[ix] Wylie, Military Strategy, 75-76.

[x] H. Rosinski, ‘New Thoughts on Strategy’ (1955)

[xi] H.E. Eccles, Logistics in the National Defense (Newport, 1997), 25-27; H.E. Eccles, Military Concepts and Philosophy (New Brunswick, 1965), 51.

[xii] Wylie, Military Strategy, 88.

Podcast, Seamanship and Leadership, Strategic Outlook

Sea Control 35 – RADM Foggo and Developing Strategic Literacy

1 Comment

seacontrol2RADM Foggo, Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Operations, Plans and Strategy, joins us to discuss the creation of strategic literacy within the Navy’s officer corps. discusses the Current Strategy Forum, a strategy sub-specialty, education, and the mentors that engaged his interest in strategy.

DOWNLOAD:
Sea Control 35- RADM Foggo and Developing Strategic Literacy

Remember, subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher Stream Radio. Leave a comment and rate five stars!