Strategy, Tactics and War
In January 1947, Gen. George C. Marshall, whom Winston Churchill called the “organizer of victory” in World War II, became the first career military officer nominated as Secretary of State. Confirmed rapidly, Marshall immediately had to confront the fact that, two years after the end of the war, Europe was still in shambles. The Soviet Union was making inroads in Western Europe. One hundred million Europeans were nearing starvation levels and democracy seemed to offer little hope. With most U.S. forces already home, Soviet divisions dominated the military landscape in the region.
One of Marshall’s first decisions was to set up a long-range, strategic planning unit at State. “I had no planning section,” he later told his biographer, Forrest Pogue, “and you can’t operate and plan at the same time.” To this new unit, the Policy Planning Staff, Marshall gave the task of crafting an approach to save Europe from communism. The result was the Marshall Plan, which earned this military officer the Nobel Peace Prize.
Since the U.S. drone attack that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani, media, public, and political commentary has been intense. Almost all of it has focused on such questions as: What will Iran do next? How will we respond to further Iranian actions? Will this lead to war? How should U.S. forces be deployed, and how do we protect our military, diplomatic, and commercial assets and personnel?
These are, to use Marshall’s framework, operational questions. They involve tactics, not strategy. They’re important, to be sure, but Marshall also told Pogue, about the conflict between operations and plans (strategy), “one or the other is going to suffer . . . as the operation is a forcing procedure . . . the result is that the other suffers.”
If we are on the cusp of yet another Mideast war, the conversation ought to include far more attention to strategy. What is our strategic goal? What steps will we need to take and what responses can we anticipate to in achieving that strategic intent? What support will we need from the American people, Congress, our allies? What will it cost, in lives and treasure – and how will we pay for it? How does America go to war with the consensus, commitment, and sacrifices needed to pursue it successfully? Dictators can launch and pursue wars as they choose; leaders of constitutional democracies must not.
Without such conversation, especially within the Executive Branch and with the Congress as the people’s representatives, we risk stumbling into a deadly, costly, endlessly long, politically disruptive, and unsuccessful operational misadventure.
The invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 removed the Taliban in a matter of weeks, yet nearly two decades later, we are still fighting them. That nation knows neither peace nor stability. Post-invasion analyses of our war to remove Saddam Hussein revealed that more attention had been paid to tactics than strategy. The military invasion of Iraq was rapidly successful. Restoring peace and building a functioning democracy received scant thought prior to the invasion and still eludes us. Wishes, such as the belief in an Arab-spring spread of democracy in the Middle East, are not enough. Truman wanted a peaceful, democratic Europe. But that wish, without the strategy of the Marshall Plan and the appropriate tactics to make it work, was hope not a method. As Sun Zu put it: “Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy assembled a group of military and civilian advisers, which was called ExComm, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. The initial option for how to respond to the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba was military – bombing the missile sites. Dean Acheson, Truman’s Secretary of State after Marshall, concurred. In a 2002 conference, Ted Sorensen, one of Kennedy’s closest advisers, described what happened next. Acheson, he said, was asked:
"Well, what would the Soviets do in response?" "Well," he said, "I know them pretty well. They will all feel compelled to bomb U.S. or NATO missile sites such as those in Turkey."
"Well, then, what will we do?"
"Well, under the NATO Agreement, we would then be required to bomb Soviet sites, inside the Soviet Union."
"Well, then what will they do?"
"Then we would hope by that time cooler heads would prevail."
This was a conversation about tactics that revealed a serious lack of a well-thought out strategy. Kennedy demanded ExComm generate other options. Eventually, a diplomatic approach coupled with a naval quarantine and a deft reply to Khrushchev’s messages resolved the crisis without war.
Cooler heads in Washington and Tehran cannot be assumed. We cannot count on the Iranians to have them. Given the conversation of recent days in America, we cannot count on our leaders either.
The financier and confidant to President Roosevelt, Bernard Baruch, rightly labeled Marshall “the world’s first global strategist.” We are in dire need of strategic thinking now. What is a robust strategy for dealing with Iran and securing peace in the region? Tit for tat military responses are tactics that cannot substitute for strategy. They can, however, lead to wider war.
Photo Credit: Department of Defense
