Military Strategy Research Paper

The U.S. Constitution provides power to the President and Congress to develop and enact national security policy (Ulrich, 1). As such our civilian leaders have the right and responsibility to maintain oversight of the military. Two civil-military relations theories, Normal and Clausewitzian, offer competing views. The Normal theory suggests officers are professionals and interference from civilian leaders is inappropriate (Cohen, 4). The Clausewitzian theory contends the statesman may inject himself in any aspect of military strategy since

As a young officer bitter over the Vietnam War, Powell pondered “the what went wrong syndrome … which created a lively ferment.”2 He disagreed with how the war was run and often struggled with “looking to the other for answers that never came conundrums.”3 As a rising strategic leader, Powell was beginning to understand the “implications of the advice given … and the propensity for operating comfortably at the joint, interagency, intergovernment, and multinational levels.”4 He was also starting to grasp from “personal experience; cultural awareness”5,6 the importance of understanding what military objectives are, who sets them and why.

Originally influenced by the strategic events seen throughout the Napoleonic Wars in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the nine principles of war derived from the United States’ Army’s “Principles of War and Operations” outline a basic strategic guide on waging war. Shortly before the military adopted these guidelines, however, the United States of America saw civil unrest as the Southern states seceded to form the Confederate States of America. As the Union Army of the North battled the Confederate Army of the South, strategic principles similar to those outlined in the U.S. Army’s doctrine began to appear on the battlefield. Although the armies of the Union and the Confederacy both utilized strategic elements outlined in the United States’ Army’s “Principles of War and Operations”, the Union army’s stricter adherence to certain strategic principles resulted in their ultimate success.

The transregional, multi-domain, and multi-functional (TMM) environment we face today requires strategic direction and guidance from the President (POTUS), Secretary of Defense (SecDef), and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) to allow the Combatant Commander (CCDR) of the United States European Command (USEUCOM) to employ his Theater Campaign Plan (TCP) across the conflict continuum. In the following paragraphs, the above statement will be supported by the USEUCOM CCDR’s operational approach of developing broad strategic and operational concepts into specific mission tasks to show his TCP is linked to and supports U.S. national interests. To do so, examples of U.S. strategic guidance documents incorporated within the linkage will be presented. Lastly, a current engagement activity that is linked to a U.S. national interest in Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey (GAAT) will be discussed to express the range of military operations USEUCOM faces.

Over the course of history, the strategic environment has changed rapidly and is now more complex than ever before – it is currently characterized by unpredictability and disorder, and may yet manifest itself in the collapse of nuclear armed nations, destabilizing conflict in geo-politically vital regions, and humanitarian crises. A world of disparate actors – not all nation states – now exists. Unpredictable events will continue to cause strategic surprise. The widespread effects of past conflicts such as World War II, Vietnam and the Iraq war are still being felt and have created significant strategic repercussions. The failures of these conflicts are the result of our military and political leaders’ failure to quickly adapt to wartime conditions. This occurs because of a general refusal to commit to a military culture of learning that encourages serious debate, critical assessments of our military operations, and challenges to our doctrine in the face of emerging change. Additionally, leaders have struggled with the critical responsibility of forecasting and providing for a ready force, one that is well-resourced and prepared to conduct future operations. It is the responsibility of our military and political leaders to send our military to war with a ready force, and a strategy that will ultimately result in victory. But understanding war and warriors is critical if societies and governments are to make sound judgments concerning military policy.

These failures ensured a gap between the POTUS’s strategic ends and CENTCOM’s ways and means, this invited strategic risk as defined in JP-5-0. These initial planning deficiencies centered around Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) Donald Rumsfeld and CENTCOM commander General Tommy Franks. Franks ignored the operational environment addressed in General Anthony Zinni’s OPLAN 1003-98. Zinni and his planners clearly recognized sectarian strife in a power vacuum as a potential Iraqi post invasion problem. , Franks instead relied on Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s “slices” which, though operationally useful, provided very little strategic value to guide his planners or insight on Bush’s National Strategic Objectives or the needed military end-state to support them. Franks never constructs his own OIF operational design. Without his own original operational design Franks could not refine or develop his own commander’s operational approach. He and his CENTCOM planners never analyzed the elements of operational approach necessary to frame the operational environment or define the problem. These elements included, military end-states, termination, and the center of gravity. Without an original or comprehensive operational approach, neither Franks nor his CENTCOM planners produced a complete or coherent plan that “promoted mutual understanding and unity of effort through out the echelons of command and partner

Strategy is about the creation and allocation of right resources, to the right place, in the right way over time.

Giulio Douhet, in his seminal treatise on air power titled The Command of the Air, argued, “A man who wants to make a good instrument must first have a precise understanding of what the instrument is to be used for; and he who intends to build a good instrument of war must first ask himself what the next war will be like.” The United States (US) military establishment has been asking itself this exact question for hundreds of years, in an attempt to be better postured for the future. From the Civil War, through the American Indian Wars, and up until World War II (WWII) the American military’s way of war consisted of fighting traditional, or conventional, wars focused on total annihilation of an enemy. Since that time, there has been a gradual shift from the traditional framework towards one that can properly address non-traditional, or irregular wars. While the US maintains a capability to conduct conventional warfare, the preponderance of operations where the US military has been engaged since WWII have been irregular wars. Therefore, this question articulated by Douhet, as to understanding the character of the next war in order to properly plan, train, and equip, is certainly germane to the current discussion of regular war versus irregular war. In today’s fiscally constrained environment, the questions remains, which will dominate the future and therefore, garner further funding and priority. Based on the current threats and the US role as a superpower, the US

“Strategy is the integrated set of choices that positions the business in its industry so as to generate superior financial returns over the long run.“ – Professor Jan W. Rivkin (lecture 1)

A strategy is said to be a plan that is made for the long term success of a product or brand. It is extremely important to have a strategy in order to figure out a direction towards which any company is able to focus all its resources efficiently and achieve desired outcomes. Formulating effective strategies is a considerably long process in itself that combines analysing several factors, situations and issues that are already present in a company and looking to improve on them alongside trying to implement various innovations and ideas to collectively create a direction towards which they can move and direct the resources available to them.

Alfred Chandler(1963) defines strategy as ‘ the determination of the long-run goals and objectives of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals’. And Michael porter(1996) sees it as ‘Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value’.

Since the Cold War, scholars utilizing a military and state centric approach to the study of regime security such as Paul Williams, Joseph Nye and Sean Lynn-Jones, and Stephen Walt have made significant contributions to the literature on security studies. While these authors present unique viewpoints, they all tend share the perspective that major international conflict has been a key factor in the development of this field. Stephen Walt pointed out that the idea of security studies first emerged as a result of “civilians becom[ing] extensively involved in military planning for the first time during World War II.” This surge in civilian interest during the war led to an era of security studies known as the “Golden Age” during which Paul Williams indicated that “civilian strategists enjoyed relatively close connections with Western governments and their foreign and security policies.” The enthusiasm for this area of study was maintained for a substantial amount of time due to what Joseph Nye called the “unprecedented nature of security problems confronting the United States”, which were mostly brought about by the advent of the atomic age. Several forces however, would eventually counteract the uptick in interest; principle among them was the negative perception of the Vietnam War. Walt highlighted this idea stating “the debacle in Indochina … made the study of security affairs unfashionable in many universities.” Fortunately for the progression of the field, this

As the case studies of the Civil War, WWII, Containment, and the Gulf War demonstrate strategies conceived with clear objectives, with political and popular will, multi-laterally, with the intangible elements of strategy in mind and proper whole of government resourcing, outcomes are successful. In contrast, those strategies undertaken without the elements above and devoid of understanding the culture, geographic, and ideological factors may win tactically but will probably fail strategically. Howard sums best with, “it was the inadequacy of the sociopolitical analysis of the societies with which we were dealing that lay at the root of the failure of the Western powers to cope more effectively with the revolutionary and insurgency movements that characterized the postwar era, from China in the 1940s to Vietnam in the 1960s” and I submit this same weakness cripples the US strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan

At the outset of the course on the making of strategy we were asked to define strategy. This attempt early on showed the complexities of defining strategy as is evidenced by the opening quote from the book. The process grew rapidly more complex as more readings and perspectives were added. However, approaching the end of the course a handle appeared that would at least allow the student to grasp the basics and speak intelligently in defining strategy.

This project is about why it is important to apply the strategic management process to business and at the same time will be discussing the importance of strategy for business. This paper will continue to explain the concept of the strategic management process, and will discuss the importance of having a future oriented plan, the organization’s vision, mission, purpose, philosophy, or goals, and the strategic process as input for future decision making. The information gathered will be provided from the ebook, Strategic Management, 12th Edition, Authors, John A. Pearce, II, Villanova University