Tom Grant has posted an
interesting series of articles on strategy:
Nearly every book about the Vietnam War written in the last twenty years includes the following exchange between Harry Summers, an Army colonel, and one of his counterparts in the North Vietnamese Army. "You know, you never defeated us on the battlefield," Summers said. The North Vietnamese colonel tartly replied, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant."
The fact that the United States won all the battles it fought, but still lost the Vietnam War, was the inspiration for Summers to write
On Strategy, a Clausewitzian critique of US strategy in the war. This observation about the Vietnam War is also an inspirational point for starting a discussion of the levels of strategy. As in Vietnam, what we're doing today in Iraq and Afghanistan may be successful at one level, but a complete disaster at the higher levels--the ones that ultimately determine whether we win or lose...
The levels of strategy are...
- Grand strategic.
- Theater.
- Operational.
- Tactical.
- Technical.
...For now, keep in mind the following point: the difference between victory and defeat often turns on whether efforts at one level actually contribute to the other levels.
Grant argues that the United States is performing very well at the Technical and Tactical levels, but that our Operational level is failing because of inappropriate choices at the Tactical level. He also argues that our Theater and Grand Strategic strategy conflict. It's a good analysis by somebody who's spent a lot of time thinking about military history.
So after reading through all of Grant's material, I'm not feeling so great about the American political scene.
Here's what scares me: I can't tell where Democratic politics ends and Democratic military strategy begins. If we're to achieve any kind of semi-satisfactory outcome in Iraq, we need to dramatically improve our strategy. But majority of the Democratic establishment argued that Bush should be allowed to go into Iraq. This leads me to one of three unsavory conclusions:
- The Democratic establishment was unable to see the flaws in the adminstration's military strategy.
- The Democratic establishment did not recognize that the Bush adminstration was too corrupt and incompetent to execute the strategy successfully.
- The Democratic establishment saw supporting the war as a no-loose political proposition: If Bush succeeded, then they could claim to have supported him all along. If Bush failed, the Democrats could criticize Bush for getting our soldiers killed.
I hope (3) is false--it may be politically savvy to gamble with the lives of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians, but it's morally abhorent. I guess (2) might be tolerable; the Bush administration has turned out to be remarkably incompetent, even given Bush's dimsal history as a governor and coporate toad. But I'm fearful of (1): perhaps the Democratic establishment is morally innocent but militarily incompetent.
None of this is any argument against voting for Kerry--Bush is a proven disaster, and Kerry is highly unlikely to be even nearly as bad. But I think voters really need to think about our after-election plans carefully. What strategy should the US pursue? And what political strategy should we pursue to after the US's actions, if any?