U.S. Army The Trouble with Strategy: Bridging Policy and

No subject generates more concernwithin the military than strategy. Yetpolicymakers are often indifferent toit. Some find the demand for more

and better strategy to be naive resistance to in-evitable ad hocery. Why is the subject never set-tled enough to allow leaders to get on with otherbusiness? Why do senior officers insist on clearstrategy more than do civilian officials?

Everything in WarWhat Clausewitz said of friction in war ap-

plies to strategy: it “is very simple, but the sim-plest thing is difficult.”1 The trouble begins withthe term strategy which is a buzzword that coversa multitude of sins. Many were content with alimited conception in earlier times—planningand directing large-scale military operations.Clausewitz, however, injected politics when hedefined strategy as “the use of an engagement forthe purpose of the war.”2 This wedge properlypushes the concept to higher levels. But some us-ages of the term become so broad that they aresynonymous with foreign policy.

Autumn/Winter 2001–02 / JFQ 23

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The Trouble with Strategy:Bridging Policy and OperationsBy R I C H A R D K. B E T T S

Richard K. Betts is the Leo A. Shifrin professor of war and peace studiesat Columbia University and the editor of Conflict After the Cold War:Arguments on Causes of War and Peace.

Atlee, Truman, andStalin at Potsdam.

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■ T R O U B L E W I T H S T R A T E G Y

Military professionals tend to handle the am-biguity by differentiating between national andmilitary strategy. The first is supposed to drive thesecond. This division is reasonable in some waysbut on balance creates as many problems as itsolves. It evokes a fundamental tension in civil-military relations. What is called national strategyin the Pentagon and grand strategy by many his-torians and theorists so overlaps policy that it ishard to distinguish them. The difference betweenends and means becomes muddled from the out-set. To keep concepts clear, it is less useful tothink of three realms—policy, strategy, and opera-tions—than to think of strategy as the bridge be-tween policy and operations. A bridge allows ele-ments on either side to move to the other. As aplan that bridges the realms of policy and opera-tions, effective strategy must integrate politicaland military criteria rather than separate them.

Resistance to this notion has recurred fre-quently, especially among military leaders whoseek to keep policy and operations in separatecompartments. The objection is exemplified byHelmuth von Moltke (“the Elder”): “Strategyserves politics best by working for its aim, but byretaining maximum independence in theachievement of this aim. Politics should not in-terfere in operations.”3 This is a common viewamong those in uniform, but it puts strategy on aslippery slope and tends to shove it downward,subordinating it to operations—the pathologythat made Moltke’s successors complicit in thedestruction of their own country as well as muchof Europe as they piled up tactically brilliant suc-cesses at the price of strategic catastrophe in twoworld wars. When the integration of policy andoperations is not resisted in principle, it is oftenresisted in practice, with the ends of the bridge—policymakers and military operators—each be-lieving that strategic integration means simplydoing it their way.

Civilian leaders rarely give consciousthought to whether objectives and operationsshould be integrated or separated. Some arehappy to accept the view prevalent in the mili-tary that political decision and military imple-mentation should be discreet functions, sequen-tial and independent, so leaders can pronouncewhat they wish and unleash soldiers to do asthey see fit. This is consistent with the Moltkeview. Such an approach eases civil-military fric-tion and sometimes works, but it risks rude sur-prises. Others believe in integrating political andmilitary decisions but without grasping the rami-fications for their own responsibilities. Politicalleaders who do justice to the view of strategy asintegration must understand a fair amount about

military operations in order to judge what de-mands can reasonably be made. Hardly anypoliticians have such knowledge or the time andwillingness to acquire it.

The Body PoliticMilitary and civilian leaders have different

expertise and duties. Professional soldiers oftensee politicians as irresponsible when policymakersprescribe strategy in a way that meddles in opera-tional plans. The complexity of modern militaryoperations evokes an engineering mentality—acompulsion to find formulas and axioms so thatstrategy can be carried out, in a sense, by thenumbers. This is a natural urge in a businesswhere mistakes from playing fast and loose canget people killed.

Formulaic strategy, however, is effectivelyantipolitical. It aims to nail things down andclose options, while politics—especially in ademocracy—strives to keep options open andavoid constraints. Politicians seek ways to keepdivergent interests satisfied, which means avoid-ing difficult commitments until absolutely neces-sary and being ready to shift course quickly. Thusat its core, the notion of strategy by formula,strategy set in advance and buffered against de-mands to change course, is as naive as unin-formed politicians acting as armchair generals.

Keeping national and military strategy indiscreet compartments can become an excuse toavoid making real strategy. Such a split makes onepart much the same as policy and the other muchlike doctrine and operations. This leaves open thegap between policy objectives and militaryplans—the gap that should be bridged by strate-gic calculation for exactly how to use force to pro-duce a desired political result rather than just amilitary result.

This confusion is common. A military strat-egy that efficiently destroys targets is successful inoperational terms but a failure in policy if it doesnot compel an enemy government. Or when pro-fessionals speak of a “strategy/force structure mis-match,” they usually mean a gap between forcesand preferred operational plans rather than be-tween capabilities and the purpose of a war. Rela-beling policy and operations as national strategyand military strategy, and dividing responsibility,can leave the strategic gap unfilled while pretend-ing something is there.

For a superpower like the United States, astrategic gap sets up the conditions for the lamentthat we won the battles but lost the war. The logi-cal hierarchy of policy and operations all too eas-ily becomes inverted when integrated strategy isabsent or fails to provide a plan that works as itsplanners expect. Operations come to drive policyinstead of serving policy. This inversion has by no

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means been unusual. Historian Russell Weigleyconcludes that it has become typical, writingdarkly that war has ceased to be the extension ofpolitics and that it creates “its own momentum”and undermines the purposes for which it islaunched, and that instead of the servant of poli-tics, war has become master.4

There can be no easy formula for turningmilitary action into political outputs. The pur-pose of war is to impose one’s will on an enemy.It is about who rules when the shooting stops.This is closely related to victory in military opera-tions but is not the same. Unless one completelyconquers an enemy’s territory, extinguishes itsgovernment, and rules directly as an occupyingpower, it is not a straightforward matter to trans-late operational success into desired enemy be-havior in the postwar world.

From a Different ViewDespite the prevalent tendency of war to

take on a life of its own, most still think of theclassic model of a hierarchy of functions whichproceed in sequence from one level to the next,from prewar planning, through wartime execu-tion, to postwar activities (with policy governingstrategic plans) which in turn drive operationsand tactics, which win battles and campaigns—and finally produce victory and the policy objec-tive. This standard conception might be calledthe linear model of war. The alternative is a cir-cular model, where events in each phase gener-ate feedback, altering the other functions. Re-sults and unforeseen requirements of operationsalter strategy, and changed requirements ofstrategy reshape political objectives. The circularmodel has more in common with chaos theory


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than with the engineering orientation reflectedin the linear model.

Practitioners usually think of strategy interms of the linear model, but actual war usuallyresembles the circular. At its worst, straight-linethinking puts the operational cart before the po-litical horse. Some divergence from the linearmodel is inevitable and sometimes has positiveeffects by allowing sensible adaptation to circum-stances. In general, however, curtailing the degreeto which the circular model takes over—limitingthe extent to which military requirements over-ride or deform initial political aims—is the meas-ure of good strategy.

The U.S. Constitution is fundamentally anti-strategic. Strategy implies coherence, consistency,and direct translation of preferences and calcula-tions into plans and action: decide what youwant, figure out how to get it, and do it. TheConstitution, in contrast, fosters competition andclashes among preferences, estimates, and plans.Through the separation of executive and legisla-tive powers, it provides a structure of governmentthat blocks any center of authority from impos-ing a coherent plan if the others disagree. This inturn encourages compromises that fudge choicesand move in different directions at once.

The Constitution also ensures that politicalleadership will turn over frequently on the execu-tive level while the agencies and services below re-main in place. Bureaucracies have both longertime horizons and narrower conceptions of inter-est than Presidents, making them more orientedto pondering a limited range of concerns andcommitting to firm plans, while political leadersare more general in how they think and more ad

hoc in how they operate.All of this improves con-trol in the sense of checksand balances, but not inconsistency of action. Itfosters the circular modelonce war is underway.Civilian politicians tendto operate instinctively bythe circular model. They

are accustomed to managing competing con-stituencies, building consensus, stitching togethercontradictory goals, and reacting to demands thatemerge as policies unfold. Creative inconsistencyis their stock in trade and they are adept at forgingcomplicated alliances. They are not skilled attranslating aims into outputs. That is why gaps be-tween decision and implementation are chronicnot just in the realm of defense policy butthroughout the business of government.

Military leaders who rise to the top in Wash-ington inevitably get exposed to these realitiesand resign themselves to them. But they do notlike them because political chaos is antithetical tothe military ethos, the engineering instinct, andthe hierarchical essence of military organization.Unlike politicians, the military sees the politicalconfusion of war not as the essence of democraticgovernment but as an aberration that should becorrected so government can get back to orderlyways of doing business. It is temperamentallynatural for professionals to see hierarchy, clarity,simplicity, precision, and sequencing—the thingsthat make operational planning and executionwork in their business—as the way things shouldwork in the national security system as a whole.

Between Discipline and InstinctIn many respects a rational sequence is possi-

ble. The National Security Council (NSC) wasoriginally designed to address these problems andenforce more order on the process of creating de-fense policy. Even this body, however, reflects thereality that political leaders who focus on objec-tives and military leaders who focus on opera-tions pull strategy in two directions.

The council as we know it today is quite dif-ferent and is in some respects opposed to what itwas meant to be. In James Forrestal’s original con-ception, it was designed to discipline the Presi-dent by forcing him to systematically considerthe views of the principal departments instead ofrunning around in an ad hoc manner givingwhatever orders struck his fancy. The main pointof NSC was to provide a forum for strategic delib-eration to inform the President and bring to-gether the disparate strands of bureaucracy andexpertise in State, Defense, the Joint Chiefs ofStaff, and the intelligence community.

The National Security Council itself still doesthis but it is not actually what we have come tothink of as its role. The body technically consistsof four members: the President, Vice President, andSecretaries of State and Defense (with the Directorof Central Intelligence and Chairman as statutoryadvisers). This unit is hardly what is most signifi-cant anymore. Rather, many think the acronymNSC is not the council but its staff and, above all,the Assistant to the President for National SecurityAffairs. These barely existed until more than adecade after the National Security Act was passed.They make the council in the minds of most not aforum to constrain the President but rather hisarm to enforce his will on the departments.

Disparities have been more obvious at sometimes than others. They were most evident inthe administration of Richard Nixon, when thePresident ignored the Department of State andran foreign policy out of the White House, using


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Henry Kissinger as his point man. Such strongdirection from the top is certainly conducive tothe linear model of strategy, and that vision inthe Nixon period saw dramatic breakthroughs indétente with Moscow and rapprochement withChina that would probably never have devel-oped as decisively or quickly if pursued throughthe normal process of political pulling and haul-ing and second guessing.

Strong direction from the top did not pro-duce serious civil-military tensions because thePresident’s tight control of diplomatic initiativeswas not paralleled by similar direction of the mil-itary. The White House and the Secretary of De-fense, Melvin Laird, afforded the Joint Chiefs ofStaff and the services great latitude in chartingtheir own courses within the general guidelinesof foreign policy and budget ceilings. This fol-lowed the civil-military friction of the 1960s,when Presidents John Kennedy and LyndonJohnson, along with their Secretary of Defense,Robert McNamara, controlled military operationsto a degree that the Navy and Air Force consid-ered outrageous interference.

Under both the Democrats in the 1960s andthe Republicans in the 1970s, the policymakingsystem aimed at hierarchy and sequence, impos-ing strong direction from the top. The differencewas that in the second case the White House didnot work as hard at integrating military opera-tions with policy direction, allowing more of adivision of labor and separation of the twophases. But in the Nixon period, with few excep-tions, the crucial strategic breakthroughs were inbasic foreign policy. They did not involve mili-tary operations.

The White House acted differently when itcame to strategic integration between foreign pol-icy and diplomatic operations. In that realmNixon and Kissinger showed even more disrespectfor professional diplomatic expertise and preroga-tives than Kennedy, Johnson, and McNamara hadtoward the military. The status of the Departmentof State was never more marginal than underWilliam Rogers. Veteran diplomats saw the free-wheeling interference from the White House as


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no less irresponsible than the military consideredthe picking of bombing targets by Johnson andMcNamara. Gerard Smith, the U.S. representativeto the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, railedagainst Kissinger for engaging in secret backchannel negotiations with Moscow that undercutthe official delegation and, due to ignorance ofcertain technical details, nearly stumbled into anagreement that would have precluded the Min-uteman III modernization program.5

The question is not just whether a classicalmodel of sequential progression from policy tostrategy to operations is practical. The point isthat it is difficult to integrate policy and opera-tions rather than separate them without havingone side take over the whole show. Integrationmeans blending two very different sets of con-cerns, orientations, and priorities, but officials ateither end of the bridge are likely to see that asmeaning the other side must accommodate. Inshort, defining strategy as the integration of pol-icy and operations is a prescription for civil-mili-tary tension.

Friction can be avoided by accepting separa-tion in the way Moltke advised—a division oflabor in which policy or national strategy is set,

then the military takes over,genuflects to the guidance, andfocuses on the appropriate mil-itary strategy. This can work,especially when either civilianor military leadership is partic-ularly gifted. But it raises theodds that the linear sequence

of decision will yield to a circular quality of im-plementation because operational requirementsare more likely to ramify politically in unantici-pated ways.

Balancing Act What is a good example of strategymaking?

The performance of the Bush administration inthe Persian Gulf War comes closest if we includeonly the period following Iraq’s invasion ofKuwait. The full crisis combines evidence of boththe best and the worst. Policy and strategy beforethe invasion were an abysmal failure. Bush madeno serious attempt to deter Saddam Hussein fromdeciding to invade. If Ambassador April Glaspie’slast meeting with Saddam was not a green light,it was barely a yellow one. Had the administra-tion performed half as well in that phase, theremight have been no war.

If we begin the assessment after August 1990and assume that the objectives of Desert Stormwere to expel Iraq from Kuwait and cripple Bagh-dad’s ability to undertake aggression again, theBush strategy worked effectively and efficiently.Iraq was routed at minimal cost to Washington,

and the United States and United Nations sub-jected it to unprecedented requirements for in-spection and destruction of its weapons of massdestruction. American political and military lead-ership worked well together in integrating politi-cal aims and military requirements.

The administration did not make cavalierand inconsistent demands on the Joint Chiefsand U.S. Central Command, nor did it micro-manage operations; but neither did it give themilitary carte blanche. Secretary of DefenseRichard Cheney was as intrusive as McNamara,closely assessing operational plans and disciplin-ing those in uniform who strayed from his viewof proper behavior. He fired General MichaelDugan, Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force, for indis-creet public comments that represented far lesschallenge to civilian authority than the near in-subordination of Admiral George Anderson, Chiefof Naval Operations, during the 1962 Cuban mis-sile crisis. The Assistant to the President for Na-tional Security Affairs, Brent Scowcroft, was alsoinstrumental in rejecting the initial straight upthe middle plan of General Norman Schwarzkopffor attack into Kuwait. Although some criticizedGeneral Colin Powell for being too politicized,the close relationships he had in both directionsof the chain of command facilitated communica-tion, deliberation, and planning.

Many believed the dictator could not survivethe crushing military defeat, but they werewrong. Yet it is reckless to flunk the Bush strategyon those grounds. A strategy that would haveguaranteed the ouster of Saddam would havebeen far riskier. Its costs would have risen as theodds of success fell. American forces would havehad to take Baghdad, which in turn would havedramatically raised the probability of overshoot-ing the culminating point of victory. Instead offewer than two hundred U.S. combat fatalities, aninfinitesimal number for a war of that scale,vastly more would have been likely. The tentativeand fragile political coalition of the United Statesand Arab nations would have frayed if not col-lapsed. And there is no guarantee that a victorythat got rid of Saddam Hussein would not havecreated new and equally troublesome politicaland diplomatic problems in the region. Most im-portantly, had Saddam been pushed to the wall,he might have resorted to employing chemicaland biological weapons.

Choices and ConundrumsThere are two basic challenges in devising

strategy. The first is how to use force to achievethe political objective—how to get from the oper-ational side of the bridge to the policy side. The


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second is how to do so at acceptable cost. Thefirst, while daunting, is easier for a superpowerthan for most countries. The handy thing abouthaving surplus power is that you can be carelessand still get where you want to go. Efficiency andeffectiveness are not the same.

Effectiveness, however, is not the only test ofstrategy. Clausewitz made that point when hewrote something seemingly obvious but oftenforgotten: “Since war is not an act of senselesspassion but is controlled by its political object,the value of this object must determine the sacri-fices to be made for it in magnitude and also induration. Once the expenditure of effort exceeds

the value of the political object, the object mustbe renounced and peace must follow.”6

The United States could in theory have pur-sued a strategy that would have won in Vietnam.It could have sent a million troops, invaded andoccupied the North, imprisoned or killed thecommunist cadre in the North and the South andall who sympathized with them, and destroyedevery uncooperative village to, as Tacitus put it,make a desert and call it peace. But such an effec-tive strategy was never considered by any but afew fanatics because the price was unacceptable.As it was, American strategy worked as long as theUnited States was willing to stay at war; it just didnot offer a way to peace without defeat.

In cases such as Kosovo, muddled policy ob-scures the line between a strategy’s success or fail-ure. NATO obviously won the war against Serbiain some important senses, but at the price of com-promising its objectives and boxing itself into apostwar occupation with no ready way out. Theagreement that ended the war accepted Milose-vic’s condition that Kosovo remain under Bel-grade’s sovereignty. Combat was terminated byleaving NATO with three unpalatable choices: in-definite occupation of Kosovo; giving Kosovo in-dependence, thus violating the peace agreement;or giving Kosovo back to Yugoslavia, betraying theAlbanians for whom the war was fought in thefirst place. Should a military campaign that leavesthis political result be deemed a strategic success?

GuidelinesRecommendations for good strategymaking

are offered more easily than they are carried out.Nevertheless, it is striking how rarely policymak-ers and commanders put their heads together onthese points explicitly, let alone carefully. But ifthey can get at least that far, there are steps thatmight shave down the likelihood of failure.

Estimate the culminating point of victory. InKorea in 1950 the culminating point was proba-bly the Inchon landing and restoration of SouthKorea up to the 38th Parallel, before the march tothe Yalu and Chinese intervention. In Iraq in1991 it was not far beyond where policymakersdecided it was—although breakdowns in commu-nication in the field and between the field andWashington prevented coalition forces from clos-ing the gate and destroying the Republican Guardbefore the ceasefire.

Determine an exit strategy. This is not to beconfused with an exit date. By what criteria willwe know when the mission is accomplished, andhow are operations designed to meet them? Themost recent example of failure in this respect isthe occupation of Bosnia.


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Decide the ceiling on acceptable costs and link itto the exit strategy. Too often, as with bidders at anauction, policymakers pay more than they in-tended. They make the irrational but understand-able mistake of letting sunk costs rather thanprospective additional costs induce them to upthe ante. The limit of reasonable costs in Vietnamwas probably reached no later than 1963.

Such guidelines are easy to proclaim, butstrategic decisions are made by harried officialswho do not always consult Clausewitz. Politicianshave to juggle conflicting concerns and are moreaccustomed to compromise and near-term solu-tions than to following checklists of general prin-ciples. Commanders easily get swallowed up inthe business of keeping the military machine run-ning rather than cogitating about vague mattersof state. All these guideline tasks should be car-ried out, but only extraordinary people do manyof them at a given time, and none do all of themall the time.

Stating guidelines is ineffectual unless theycan be worked into standard procedures for themilitary side and comfortable political modes of

operation for the policyside. But it is often notclear that either good orbad strategic behavior canbe attributed to theprocess—that is, the waythe NSC system func-

tioned and civil-military interaction proceeded.Perhaps procedures in the Bush system were bet-ter than under Johnson, but this is not obvious.There is no reason to believe that anything in theBush process, had it been in place in the 1960s,would have saved the day in Vietnam. Indeed, itwas largely that experience which provided themindsets and checklists that the Bush administra-tion carried into the crisis of 1990–91. And it wasthe luck of facing an enemy utterly vulnerable tomodern conventional military power that ac-counted for most of the difference in outcome be-tween the Bush and Johnson strategies.

Problems of strategy are not due to the struc-ture of the current system nor even to the consti-tutional dispersion of power. They originate inthe convictions of powerful individuals and thetemper of the times—hubris and ambition in pe-riods of great national success and pessimism inperiods of failure. Regarding the power of specificpeople, no prescribed process can prevent a Presi-dent and his closest advisors from becoming vis-cerally committed to a particular course unlessthere is strong disagreement on the part of the

larger body politic. Success and hubris, however,foster permissive consensus and overconfidence.This cuts off the most important chance to avoidfailure. Pessimism poses different risks. It may letpass opportunities that should be exploited. Butat least it fits well with the recognition that instrategy “the simplest thing is difficult.” JFQ

N O T E S

1 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translatedby Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Prince-ton University Press, 1976), p. 119.

2 Ibid., p. 177.3 Helmuth von Moltke, Moltkes Kriegslehren, ex-

cerpted from War, edited by Lawrence Freedman (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 219.

4 Russell F. Weigley, “The Political and Strategic Di-mensions of Military Effectiveness,” MilitaryEffectiveness, volume 3: The Second World War, edited byAllan R. Millett and Williamson Murray (Boston: Allenand Unwin, 1988), p. 341.

5 Gerard Smith, Doubletalk: The Story of SALT I (NewYork: Doubleday, 1980), pp. 413–17.

6 Clausewitz, On War, p. 92.


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Documents

U.S. Army The Trouble with Strategy: Bridging Policy and