Strategic Agility Needed as Nature of Warfare Shifts
Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, U.S. Army retired
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
War and the use of force have revealed significant shifts over the past several decades. The importance of acknowledging and understanding these shifts is far from merely an academic issue for our political and military leaders.
As Eliot Cohen and John Gooch point out in their book Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War, some failures can be catastrophic. Think of France in 1940 and the collapse of the French army. This disaster resulted from a combination of failures to anticipate, learn and adapt. The French, the authors write, “built up a picture of what a future war would and should be like as a result of a selective view of the past … They also failed to anticipate the future on the basis of available evidence [and] it was a failure to act speedily and effectively enough†on what they did know.
U.S. military leaders pay close attention to many of war’s shifts, but their attention focuses mostly on tactical and operational employment of force. Such attention is necessary, and the nation is well served by its military services and joint headquarters, whose job it is to attend to this aspect of using force. But military attention is insufficient.
https://www.ausa.org/articles/strategic-agility-needed-nature-warfare-shifts
