Strategy (IV): a new definition

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Thursday, September 10, 2009 - 5:49 PM Share

My subway companions Krepninevich and Watts offer up a startling new definition of strategy in their essay about how to regain strategic competence. I am all for a new definition, because I think the ways-means-ends stuff they teach at the war colleges is not helpful. That is just not the way I have seen strategic decision-making occur. Their definition focuses on identifying asymmetrical advantages:

What, then, is strategy? In light of these various observations and insights, a pragmatic characterization is as follows:
Strategy is fundamentally about identifying or creating asymmetric advantages that can be exploited to help achieve one's ultimate objectives despite resource and other constraints, most importantly the opposing efforts of adversaries or competitors and the inherent unpredictability of strategic outcomes.
This is not, of course, the usual definition of strategy. However, it has the considerable merit of applying as readily to chess or a business firm competing against other firms for profits and market share as it does to military competition during peacetime or war. More importantly, it goes beyond the traditional definitions of military strategy by indicating how one actually goes about doing strategy. At its core, strategy is about finding asymmetries in competitive situations that can be exploited to one's advantage.

This definition strikes me as better than the ways-means-ends device, but still a bit narrow, and perhaps too focused on the enemy. I think strategy is more about defining who we are, what we are trying to do, and how we are going to try to do it. But these are smart, insightful writers, so I am going think long and hard about it before rejecting their definition.

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TOM RICKS

6:47 PM ET

September 10, 2009

Comment from uber-hawk Tom Donnelly

My friend Tom Donnelly of AEI fame comments:

Was good today, I thought: you hit on one of the critical weaknesses of the
Krep/Barry/net assessment approach to things: they fail to begin with an
appreciation of what our geopolitical goals are. There's nothing wrong with
"creating an asymmetrical advantage" per se, but I think that it's
distorting (in the extreme) to try to fit US strategy for World War II, to
take one example, into that paradigm. In one sense our size, industrial
wealth and distance gave us an asymmetrical advantage over the Germans and
the Japanese, but it's not as though those were small or backward nations
and being distant cut both ways: it was hard for them to get at us but also
hard for us to project power into the heart of Europe or across the Pacific.
It seems to me the war is better understood as an exercise in tenacity than
cleverness, to be reductive about it. Or perhaps more precisely:
qualitatively, the combatants were symmetrical (and of course in some
categories, like tank-on-tank, German tanks were always superior - unless
you take the ability to mass produce into account), but quantitatively
asymmetrical.

Ends-ways-means may be a bit mechanical, especially when taught as doctrine
- professional military education I often devoid of, well, real education -
but at least it starts in the right place. ONA-ness is superb at
identifying operational challenges, like "access denial" in East Asia, but
much less good at figuring our what to do strategically

COW COOKIE

4:06 AM ET

September 11, 2009

To argue your reductive point, ...

[quote] It seems to me the war is better understood as an exercise in tenacity than cleverness, to be reductive about it. [/quote]

I'd counter that warfare is better understood as an exercise in process than either tenacity or cleverness. Tenacity and cleverness have their maximum utility at the tactical and operational levels.

(If national tenacity is so important, why could an unpopular government ramp up participation in an unpopular war? My guess is that the public's lack of interest and an unresponsive government have weakened the importance of the "society" portion of the Clausewitzian trinity. Thus, attacking the military and state becomes more important for enemies. It sounds counter-intuitive for a supposedly casualty-averse society. But again, consecutive administrations have proved able to prosecute lengthy, unpopular wars without serious resistance.)

By contrast, solid processes that link lower-level actions to strategic goals are the essence of a good strategy. These are where the asymmetric advantages are maximized - be they qualitative or quantitative, tactical or strategic.

What are Iraq and Afghanistan if not doctrinal failures? By not having a suitable doctrine, we allowed strategic mission creep in Afghanistan and sought over-ambitious strategic goals in Iraq (which we later narrowed, as Ricks pointed out in "The Gamble").

That being said, I believe it was Rupert Smith who said this was a peculiarly American way of looking at war.

As for whether the authors' new definition is right: If only a small portion of the population can think strategically anyway, I'd think that population is pretty likely to grasp the various nuances of "asymmetric."

7:06 PM ET

September 10, 2009

goals

Re Tom Donnelly's comments, it is worth noting that NSC 68 said that the primary goal of U.S. strategy was to foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish, which was something we would do even without the communist threat. OF course, this is a strategic goal rather than a strategy but it does illustrate the point that strategy is also about creating something that prevents enemies from arising at all.

One other point, I've always found Barry Posen's definition of grand strategy to be helpful although it is missing from the Krepenvich/ Watts essay. In his Sources of Military Doctrine book, he argues that grand strategy is a state's theory of how to cause security for itself. Not a complete definition but useful.

SJH71

9:13 PM ET

September 10, 2009

distractions...

I actually think it hurts the act of making strategy to introduce unnecesary concepts like "assymetric" into it. The challenging part of strategy is accurately and clearly assessing what your goals are (e.g., What consitutes a realistically achievable victory in Afghanistan? -- or even harder, in the case of grand strategy, What is required for U.S. national security?) and then devising a plan to meet those goals that uses the tools realistically available and starts from your current position/condition.

"At its core, strategy is about finding asymmetries in competitive situations that can be exploited to one's advantage" -- I totally disagree with this statement. The core of strategy is to develop appropriate plans and methods to get from where you are to your end-state goals. If you find some assymetries along the way, more power to you. But let's not confuse the issue. We have a hard enough time as it is.

JALEFKOWIT

1:43 AM ET

September 11, 2009

Strategy is fundamentally

Strategy is fundamentally about identifying or creating asymmetric advantages that can be exploited to help achieve one's ultimate objectives despite resource and other constraints, most importantly the opposing efforts of adversaries or competitors and the inherent unpredictability of strategic outcomes.

Somewhere, William Strunk is reading this and weeping.

AWR

3:09 PM ET

September 11, 2009

approval

I wish I had the wit earlier to have written this observation

PHIL RIDDERHOF

2:18 AM ET

September 11, 2009

Simple, yet most difficult...

Even though ends-ways-means can be a very simple way of describing strategy, I am surprised at how many "strategies" fail to include all three. Most are just listings of goals, without real reference to resources.
What I see in the CSBA product is not necessarily a description of strategy, but by their own grammar, what strategy is "about." It is their opinion of what good strategy should be. That is a different debate from what strategy fundamentally is.
Going into it, strategy in the generic sense is just ends-ways-means and can be aplied to about anything. its only in the national security sense (or more strctly, in the military doctrinal sense), that we place the "strategy" on a certain level, followed by operational, with tactical at the bottom. In a sense, they are all about ends-ways-means, its just a matter of what level of ends-ways-means you are talking about.
Back to the simplicity piece, to paraphrase good ole Sun Tzu, these may be only three conceptual terms, but the variations and combinations are endless.

ADMIRAL

5:45 PM ET

September 12, 2009

Criminal Minds

"But these are smart, insightful writers, so I am going think long and hard about it before rejecting their definition."

They are very clever in drafting strategy to murder innocent people and steal their property. They may be smart and clever, but not wise. Most of them would be better off in prison for plotting aggresive war.