A Quintessential Factor in Strategy Formulation: The Unequal Dialogue
Arnel P. David - Joint Advanced Warfighting School, USA
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect any official capacity or position.
“At the summit, true strategy and politics are one.”
—Winston Churchill
Strategy formulation requires the full engagement and involvement of political authority to bound policy effectively. Policy frames objectives, but the constant interplay of myriad forces create strategy. Strategy remains the mediating implement to connect national instrument (diplomatic, military, informational, economic) objectives to political ends. What has been described as an “unequal dialogue” is a quintessential factor in developing strategic ends (i.e., a nation’s policy).[ii] In the U.S., elected leaders solicit input across the interagency and the military to determine the nation’s ends, but ultimately, civilians make the final decision. The dialogue across the national security apparatus is both essential and, purposefully, unequal. This article argues the relevance and critical relationship of Carl von Clausewitz’s theory of war with Cohen’s unequal dialogue to illustrate how a republic can create an environment where strategy emerges from the interactive participation of its leaders. Historical and contemporary examples are woven throughout to support this argument.
Analyzing On War, Brodie describes Clausewitz’s desire of statesmen to understand the language of war to ensure its proper execution.[iii] Expressed this way, it is political leaders, who must influence the direction of war. There has been a negative perception that political influence in war is wrong. Set the policy and let the generals fight the war some have said.[iv] If there are issues, military leaders have wrongly argued, it is the level of political influence to blame.[v] However, it is not the statesman’s influence but the policy itself requiring a re-examination. This responsibility is not the statesman’s alone; repeated attempts to divorce war from its political primacy have been costly. Take the experience of Vietnam, for example.
Books on Vietnam remind of this error where military professionals did not judge the true character of the war, articulate it to civilian decision-makers, and offer appropriate strategies to iterate on.[vi] Remembering this lesson, Casper Weinberger developed a doctrine aimed to guide future policy on war, to forever leave behind the specter of Vietnam.[vii] He argued that US forces should only be used to achieve clear policy objectives and he went so far as to make additional conditions that were not very Clausewitzian.[viii] Weinberger argued, and Colin Powell would later enforce, that military forces should not deploy without overwhelming force and the ‘exit strategy’ must be crystal clear.[ix] Powell, using this script, would later evoke this doctrine to argue against the use of military forces in Bosnia.
https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/a-quintessential-factor-in-strategy-formulation-the-unequal-dialogue/
