“…on these complex cardinal questions, answers are won precariously and intermittently, in the course of hard empirical inquiry…”
-Albert Wohlstetter

Sonny weighs in with some good thoughts on the role of theory in strategy:

One of the things that can weigh us down in dealing with today’s conflicts is an unnecessary attachment to a single theory or doctrine of war, be it EBO, NCW, or 4GW. No single theory or perspective can explain the totality and all the phenomena associated with what is perhaps the most complicated of human endeavors: war…

Neither 4GW, NCW, or EBO deserve a blanket disapproval. Each perspective offers something useful in understanding certain, but not all, aspects of warfare.

Recognizing the uses and limits of a theory remains a challenge for surprisingly many thinkers. I see the uses and limits of 4GW, NCW and EBO as follow:

4GW
-use: recognizes the power of insurgency and unconventional warfare in a globalized environment
-limit: does not consider the relative vulnerability of non-state actors vs. states

NCW
-use: recognizes the importance of common orientation in military capability
-limit: is all too often is used to reduce war to a technological/operations research challenge

EBO
-use: intelligent targeting of structurally complex systems to generate cascading failures. This enables one to disrupt adversary systems with low costs, producing very high returns on investment.
-limit: not applicable to interactively complex systems, i.e. adversaries as a whole.

I like that Sonny characterizes these theories as tools that warfighters use as appropriate to adapt and overcome unexpected challenges. We naturally understand that tools have uses and limits. Theories, on the other hand, tend to activate our combative tendancies. To point to a theory’s limits often provokes the irate defense of its advocates. More theories mean more tools for the warfighter, and I say bring them on.

The next question becomes how do we make sure that officers (and NCOs!) are getting the opportunity to study these theories? Are we leaving it as yet another task for them to take care of in their ever-shrinking free time? Some feel that the problem is systemic, such as Williamson Murry. Writing in the Spring of 2001 he opined that

…it is virtually impossible for young officers to find time and opportunity to attain the broad spectrum of historical knowledge, language training, and cultural awareness that the twenty-first century is going to demand. The officer corps of the U.S. armed services are therefore likely become ever more narrowly technological and less capable of adapting and innovating in the face of diverse threats and emerging challenges.

Thomas Hammes raises similar concerns in last Fall’s Marine Corps Gazette, and offers some ideas for fixing the system.

Ultimately the need is to produce strategic thinkers, something that Gregory Foster believes the US military establishment fails to do:

By the time officers reach senior rank, they have been thoroughly schooled in what to think, yet poorly prepared in how to think. And if they have spent the staff time expected of most officers by this stage in their career, they will
have fully internalized distinctly antirational thought processes of successful bureaucratic and political advocacy.

How do we change the system so that it helps to create more officers like Sonny? Foster says more emphasis on ideas, developed through a proper grounding in classic liberal arts skills such as writing and research. Murry also emphasizes ideas, though he focuses on studying history and encouraging vigorous debate. Hammes, as befits a Marine, focuses on practical and realistic changes in training and promotion guidelines. But the aim is the same.

Stephen Biddle (late of the Army War College, now on the Council on Foreign Relations) writes in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs that Iraq isn’t Vietnam.

…if the debate in Washington is Vietnam redux, the war in Iraq is not. The current struggle is not a Maoist “people’s war” of national liberation; it is a communal civil war with very different dynamics. Although it is being fought at low intensity for now, it could easily escalate if Americans and Iraqis make the wrong choices.

Biddle argues that most thinking on Iraq miscategorizes the conflict. Strategies appropriate for countering a Maoist “people’e war” are potentially disasterous if applied to a communal civil war, due to the differences in the fundamental dynamics of these two different types of conflict.

Biddle argues that since sectarian violence is the greatest danger the US faces in Iraq, Iraqification is a very dangerous strategy:

…many of the policies dominating the debate are ill adapted to the war being fought. Turning over the responsibility for fighting the insurgents to local forces, in particular, is likely to make matters worse. Such a policy might have made sense in Vietnam, but in Iraq it threatens to exacerbate the communal tensions that underlie the conflict and undermine the power-sharing negotiations needed to end it.

Biddle offers is a refreshingly orthoginal perspective on the state/non-state debate that has been raging between the 4GWers and their critics. Sidestepping any claims about the global backdrop for the Iraq war (and whether or not it is characterized by an ephocal decline of state power), he focuses on the nature of civil wars and challenges posed by them. He seeks to describe what is, attempting to look hard and see well. It reminds me of Kent’s admonation to Lear to “see better” (I.i.160). This is the ultimate job of the analyst, and one at which Biddle consistently excels.

The White House released the new National Security Strategy (NSS) today.

The NSS is a big deal. It frames the work of the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the DoD. It drives the SECDEF’s National Defense Strategy (NDS), which in turn drives both the Chairman of the Joint Chief’s National Military Strategy (NMS) and the Strategic Planning Guidance (SPG), which in turn drives the entire DoD budgeting process. And the arm bone is connected to the collarbone which is connected to the…

I haven’t had time to read it in full yet, but from what I can tell from the press releases, there isn’t anything radically new. The strategy seeks to “protect the American people, advance American interests, enhance global security, and expand global liberty and prosperity” through two pillars:

The first pillar is promoting freedom, justice, and human dignity – working to end tyranny, to promote effective democracies, and to extend prosperity through free and fair trade and wise development policies.

· The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

· In the world today, the fundamental character of regimes matters as much as the distribution of power among them. Free governments are accountable to their people, govern their territory effectively, and pursue economic and political policies that benefit their citizens. Free governments do not oppress their people or attack other free nations. Peace and international stability are most reliably built on a foundation of freedom.

The second pillar of the strategy is confronting the challenges of our time by leading a growing community of democracies.

· Many of the problems we face – from the threat of pandemic disease, to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to terrorism, to human trafficking, to natural disasters – reach across borders. Effective multinational efforts are essential to solve these problems. Yet history has shown that only when we do our part will others do theirs. America will continue to lead.

The first pillar echos Bush’s second inaugural, while the second pillar strikes me as a very direct effort to counter the criticisms of the 2002 NSS’s “preemption” doctrine. It is very satisfying to see the sub- and trans-national dangers of our world being recognized as our major dangers. Hysterical China fears were kept to a minimum; a quick search finds most references to China regarding economic integration and cooperation. The worst it gets is this:

China’s leaders must realize, however, that they cannot stay on this peaceful path while holding on to old ways of thinking and acting that exacerbate concerns throughout the region and the world.

I am pretty satisfied that the strategy recognizes that China is currently on a peaceful path, so I’m not going to get bothered by this right now.

Iran, on the other hand, doesn’t get off so easy. In the equivocating, group-think tone of bureaucratic prose, the NSS states that “[w]e may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran.”

More to come as I get the chance to read the strategy in its entirety.

A must-read TPMB review of Chet Richard’s must-read Neither Shall The Sword. I haven’t had a chance to post regarding Richard’s book yet, so I’ll just piggyback Barnett’s conclusion:

“…this is a strategic-education-in-a-box book.”

Bingo! That’s my kind of book.

In the vein of accurately evaluating threats to the United States, I’m going to address some important articles I have read recently regarding China.

Starting with Miinxin Pei’s recent article in Foreign Policy, we get a reminder of the precarious nature of the Chinese economy - particularly the banking sector:

Its banking system, which costs Beijing about 30 percent of annual GDP in bailouts, is saddled with nonperforming loans and is probably the most fragile in Asia…
According to official data for 2003, the state directly accounted for 38 percent of the country’s GDP and employed 85 million people (about one third of the urban workforce)…
China is the only country in history to have simultaneously achieved record economic growth and a record number of nonperforming bank loans.
The Chinese central bank’s research shows that politically directed lending was responsible for 60 percent of bad bank loans in 2001–02. The problem persists today.

This is a danger I have been following with Stratfor for more than a year now; it is good to see it picked up on a non-subscription article. Now, Barnett counters that any market economy (especially an emerging market economy) will have some sort of unsettling stats like this. He wants to see context. The context, of course, of the elite’s interest in keeping the gravy train running because it is the only thing assuring their hold on power now that Maoism has been dropped. The question isn’t whether economic reforms will make the ruling elite willing to part with power, as Pei implies, but whether economic reforms will empower a population sufficiently to push the ruling elite out of power. This is the key assumption of the “markets lead to democracy” claim. China may be richer (at nearly $1500 per capita income) than many poor democracies, but is there a per capita income that cannot be exceeded without becoming a democracy? That is the key question.

Jumping over to Robb for a moment, he interprets the evidence in Pei’s article as a sign that China is extremely vulnerable to systems disruptions. This implies that Taiwan could use system disruptions as a way to counter an attempted invasion across the Taiwan Straight. In a peculiar way, this dovetails with Barnett’s argument that we ought to drop our security guarantee with Taiwan because it is the only remaining flash point that could draw us into a military conflict with China - who we ought to be developing a strategic partnership with instead (just like we are with India). If Robb is correct, then Taiwan doesn’t need the American security guantee anymore for its own safety, making the strategic trade-off even easier.

But would the Chinese government recognize Taiwan’s ability to counter military force with system disruptions? Which brings us to the old question of what is really going on in heads of Chinese policy makers. There are some who feel that China is developing an entire range of sha shou jian (roughly “assassin’s mace”) weapons to counter high tech militaries. But towards what end would China use these weapons? Enter David Lai’s excellent article, “Learning from the Stones: A Go Approach to Mastering China’s Strategic Concept, Shi.” Lai argues that in order to better understand the Chinese, and to improve our own military capabilities, we ought to study the ancient game of go.

The question is whether the Chinese way is worth learning. After all, as a popular saying in the West goes, with a superior force, a lousy general can win a war. As long as the United States and the West maintain their capability edge, they have nothing to worry about. The answer from this author, as this monograph has built the case, is a resounding yes.
…ever since warfare came into being… it has been a contest of physical force as well as wits. In the evolution of warfare, the battle of wits has become more important than the actual use of force to achieve war aims (political goals). Today, we call the battle of wits, “strategy.” It is about the ways to use force. The United States is the most powerful country in force capability terms, but less so in resourcefulness. The Chinese way of war and diplomacy can be a great suppliment to American power. If one looks at American power as the yang (the upfront force) and the Chinese strategems as the yin (the behind-the-scenes wits), it is only natural that the two should complement each other. The Chinese are determined to improve their capabilities; American should improve their strategies and strategems.

I like that Lin is able to consider the differences between Western and Eastern perspectives without flying into vague assertions of “Chinese strategic secrets” or the inscrutable nature of the Eastern way of war. I started playing go precisely because I wanted to develop my strategic thinking and the attrition-centric perspective of chess was insufficient. I highly encourage you to read Lai’s article in its entirety, it is exactly the kind of concrete, insightful and balanced perspective we need when considering China.

Personally, I feel that Barnett’s “strategic partnership” route is the proper way to go. It does not have to start off as an explicit, written partnership, just as the UK-US partnership that began after the War of 1812 was tacit. In fact, the UK’s post-1815 response to rising American power serves as an excellent reference point in considering how to respond to China’s rise. We ought to avoid hyperbole and paranoia and stop using China as the neo-USSR bogeyman who justifies buying high tech weapons. In order to do this we need to see clearly and understand the Chinese, and playing go is a great way to get started. Find your local chapter of the American Go Association and go to a beginner’s night. You’ll probably have some good fun. And as you learn, you’ll start referring to go as a metaphor for strategic interactions, just as Americans commonly use poker, chess and football.