The great strategy is the thing of great power. This is the generation, organization and implementation of huge funds to pursue high strategic goals. There was a time when pursuing a great strategy was so second-rate to the British elite that it didn’t even have a name.
As Britain’s relative resources are withdrawn – power is always relative – so is the culture of great strategy at the heart of government. What is worse is that the link between strategy and tactics is hopelessly broken, undermining the most important mechanism for implementation through goals, ways and means.
Britain after Brexit is trying to revive such a culture through the mantra of “Global Britain”. From my own command experience, restoring the great strategy as a “doctrine” of power at the heart of government will be difficult.
Playful slogans are a useful indicator of intent, but developing and then consistently implementing a strategy to achieve it is a completely different matter. I saw first-hand how short-term goals were a priority over long-term strategy: unfortunately, the problems I have faced throughout my career are now clearly visible again in our approach to the conflict in Ukraine.
In 2003, during the Second Gulf War, as Assistant Chief of Staff and occasional member of the Committee of Chiefs of Staff, I observed Western political leaders in a fairly close neighborhood.
Both President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair had a relatively clear strategy for Iraq in 2003, but their tactics were (not for the first time) hopelessly wrong. There were also clear limits to Britain’s influence. For example, I visited Ambassador Paul Bremer, the American head of the coalition’s interim body in Baghdad. My instructions from London were to try to overturn US decisions on the status of the Ba’ath party and the dismantling of the Iraqi army and police. The situation is only now improving, but the failure in 2003 to properly understand reasonable targets and the best ways and means to seek them has led to a very long and tragically lengthy process. This was the slowest possible path to what some say now seems like a strategically successful outcome.
As Commander of the International Security Assistance Force, like my successors in the United States, I have been forced to repeatedly question the strategy and tactics of NATO and the United Kingdom in Afghanistan, but with little effect.
Although they accepted the logic of my arguments, politicians in Washington, London, and elsewhere never took ownership of the campaign, with the profound consequences that goals, ways, and means were never in sync.
Last summer, the campaign reached its strategic juncture and chaotic retreat. Even then, political leaders focused on and sometimes seemed to enjoy a tactical retreat, ignoring the hard truth – complete strategic failure. Withdrawal is possible only with the cooperation of an “enemy” who has killed and maimed thousands of allied soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
Good strategy involves difficult choices
In 2011, as Chief of Staff of the United Kingdom’s Defense Staff, I disagreed with Prime Minister David Cameron on the strategy for Libya. Publicly, I was adamantly opposed to regime change because of the long-term strategic consequences for a country that was inherently unstable.
Like many politicians, Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, aided by strategically detached President Obama, have confused politics, strategy and tactics. They were too focused on the short-term and tactical, and their respective political needs must be seen as heroic victors in war.
Good strategy involves difficult choices. As Chief of Defense, my outstanding team has developed a coherent strategy for Syria that, according to independent experts, has a good chance of leading to a successful strategic outcome.
Once again, political leaders were unwilling to agree on goals, ways, and means with Washington, to the point of saying that “the general’s plan is more than the market can bear.” What “market”? Therefore, my advice was to let Assad win quickly and stop encouraging and providing opposition groups with insufficient support to ensure their success. The cost of deaths, destroyed lives and destroyed cities would be too great and a huge strategic failure for the West. Russia already felt the opportunity, and it turned out.
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