® National Security Policy Survey of the Literature STRATEGY & STRUCTURE Robert David Steele OSS CEO [email protected] Updated 19 August 2002.

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National Security Policy Survey of the Literature

STRATEGY & STRUCTURE

Robert David SteeleOSS CEO

[email protected]

Updated 19 August 2002

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Plan of the Brief

• You have 150 books in the lecture handout.

• Will only cover 50 or so of them now.

• Complete text reviews for over 350 books are at OSS.Net, at Amazon, and in the red and green books

• Information• Intelligence• Emerging Threats• Strategy & Structure• Blowback, Dissent &

International Relations• US Politics, Leadership

& the Future of Life

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Relevant Readings onStrategy & Force Structure

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Durants on Lessons of History

• Geography matters• Inequality is natural• Famine, pestilence, and war

are Nature’s way of balancing the population

• Birth control or not has strategic implications

• History is color-blind• Morality is strength

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Luttwak on Levels of War

• War (and friction) occurs at four multiple interacting levels:– Strategic, Operational

– Tactical, Technical

• MCIA model & test determined that threat changes depending on the level of analysis

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Gray on Modern Strategy

• Technology is not a substitute for strategy

• War is about getting your way, not about combat

• Time matters--use or lose• Over time strategic culture

is more important than arms or money.

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Brzezinski on Grand Strategy• Europe, Russia, and Eurasian

“stans” are the hearth of 21st century opportunity and threat

• Core new players are Turkey and Indonesia

• Iran is more stable, and China less of a threat, that conventional wisdom says

• Geopolitics more important than technology

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Kagan & Kagan on Warning & Will

• Will not have warning in time to build capabilities

• Must be ready for world war challenge overnight

• Power is irrelevant and ineffective without the will to act and use that power

• Early intervention is cheaper and easier than war

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Kupchan on Failure of Empire• Strategic cultures resist incoming

information and suffer from “adjustment failure”

• Foreign internal instability merits rapid intervention with strong economic incentives

• Failure to intervene early will lead to emergence of aggressors that are difficult to defeat once out of the box.

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Shultz et al on Complexity

• “Most policymakers do not fully realize the dynamics of the world we live in.” (Graham Fuller)

• History and culture are vital to security policy

• Non-military operations are as important as military operations at all times

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Cimbala on Friction

• Friction is real and is destroying our ability to match ends with means

• We don’t have a strategy; we don’t try to understand the strategies of others; we do not have unity of effort across the diplomatic-defense-justice continuum

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Gordon on Rules of the Game• Peacetime breeds poor

warriors, bad systems, and marginal doctrine

• Technology is most dangerous when adopted under peacetime conditions as it will not stand the test of war and robs humans

• C4 undermines doctrine

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Simpson on Speed

• C4I and Rotary Wing are vital to future flexibility--eyes on target and boots on the ground matter more

• Secret C4I is largely counterproductive

• Out of area operations are now the norm--must cast an equally wide intelligence net

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Owens on System of Systems

• Best manifesto for “system of systems”

• Oblivious to the fact that predominance of relevant information is not available through the existing ISR system

• Technophilia at its most dangerous

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O’Hanlon on RMA

• C4I is the only arena where technological advances are truly revolutionary

• Existing and planned ISR systems are incapable against many forms of denial and cannot keep up with needs of our firepower systems

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Revolutions Not Technical

• Concepts, not technology, are revolutionary

• Best revolutions are actually incremental and simple

• Technology is not a substitute for strategy

• Current & planned arsenal distantly related to real needs

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O’Hanlon on Aid Spending

• We spend half as much on aid as do most of the other developed countries

• Foreign aid in its current form is not preventing conflicts

• Best investment world-wide is in education of women, this cascades across issue areas

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Oakley on Police Peace Operations

• Failed states present us with a global problem that requires an international law enforcement reserve

• UN police often cannot read or drive a car and do not have doctrine

• Constabulary forces are different from small war forces

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UN Envoy on Preventive Diplomacy• UN has no intelligence, weak

memory, no accountability, and a culture of inefficiency and luxury

• We rely too much on military intervention

• Humanitarian assistance has negative unintended consequences

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Halberstam on Fortitude

• If you don’t react when others bomb your Embassies, they assume you are weak & vulnerable.

• America is slow to anger--he has confidence that we will rise to the challenges of terrorism

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Bowden on Manhunts• Timing is everything--we

let the thugs amass billions before we go after them

• We are weak in tactical intelligence against non-traditional (e.g. individual) targets, especially in cities

• It can be done--but is almost impossible to do well if host state is in chaos

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Warfare in the Third World

• Subjective factors including pain threshhold determinant

• Training absorbtion much more important that arms supplies

• Third World combat is both unconventional and never ending…

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Third World War

• Spreading insecurity is directly related to protracted conflict among societal groups

• Incompetent interventions make matters much worse

• Violence can be predicted• Once begun, the violent will

not listen to reason...

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Clark on Modern War

• White House does not listen to early warning

• Army doesn’t do mountains, tries not to use Apaches etc.

• Air Force doesn’t do strategic mobility, needs 24 hours to redirect TACAIR

• Technology loses to weather, lacks intelligence

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Smart Holistic Strategy

• End state must be legitimate governments everywhere

• Ultimate investment is educational, both at home and abroad

• Must do inter-agency holistic planning, apply all the instruments of national power all the time

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The Tunnels of Cu Chi

• Never underestimate the enemy