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Why is America Tactically Terrific but Strategically Slipshod?

September 30, 2015

American forces' tactical proficiency has repeatedly earned the United States gains on the battlefield. But those gains have too often been mitigated by a lack of comparable strategic proficiency.

Our men and women in uniform have made enormous sacrifices implementing the policies developed at the highest levels of our government. But those policies and the strategies to implement them have too often not measured up.

How can we do as well on the strategic level as our military units do on the tactical level? This is a puzzle I have always wondered about since I was a lieutenant on my first Vietnam tour and experienced consistent strategic failures through the several desert wars. How come the finest fighting force on the planet seems to be strategically bereft? In retrospect, we are always tactically overwhelming and strategically underwhelming.

The question was most recently forced on me by Sean Naylor’s detailed descriptions of the often brilliant performance of our special operations forces in Relentless Strike. In a sense, tactics are straightforward — and our military has done tactics well, whether in taking down the Taliban, ousting Saddam, killing Osama bin Laden, or taking out any number of other high-level terrorists. By contrast, getting the overarching political–military strategy right seems to have been much harder.   Strategy requires hard thinking at the highest levels and is a serious “team sport,” encompassing not just the military, but multiple other departments and agencies, as well as, in many cases, partner and host nations. There’s nothing easy about that, and the challenges have been evident in a number of cases where significant initial successes by our military and partner nation forces have not been seen through.

Our record in the strategic arena since Korea has been spotty. From the Vietnam War to the present day, we have amassed a mixed record of results with some successes, some failures, and plenty that fall somewhere between those two categories. The cost in lives has been high. We should be able to do better.

Grenada and Panama were clear military and political successes. They were short, sharp, and definitive. The same, generally, was true of Operation Desert Storm. Bosnia and Kosovo were arguably political successes after some fits and starts, and each required significant military action, albeit with no serious casualties, despite an extensive air campaign for Kosovo. Operation Iraqi Freedom started out as a stunning success, evolved into a desperate situation, was dramatically retrieved by the “surge” and subsequent operations, and then went into a death spiral after the departure of U.S. combat forces in late 2011. Afghanistan was another dramatic success at the outset. However, it went slowly but steadily downhill. In Iraq, it was temporarily retrieved by the surge, but less successfully in Afghanistan where things are now shaky after the significant drawdown of U.S. and coalition forces. The campaign against al Qaeda’s senior leaders has seen considerable achievements. And, meanwhile, smaller overt and covert operations in Central and South America, the Philippines, and the Middle East (Yemen, Somalia, Libya, etc.) have also seen frequent tactical achievements, but a mix in outcomes.

In a number of cases, our inadequate strategic concepts and campaigns have failed to capitalize on initial tactical successes. To be sure, there are numerous factors seemingly beyond our control at the strategic level: less than ideal host nation leaders and partners (think Afghan President Karzai, Iraqi PM Maliki, and various South Vietnamese leaders, among others), resilient enemies that enjoy sanctuaries outside the countries in which we are allowed to operate (e.g., the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network), and other factors at the strategic level that make some endeavors just plain hard. Those realities notwithstanding, we owe those carrying out these campaigns better thought at the strategic level than has often been the case.

So, why can’t we get it right more consistently? What has gone wrong between day one and day last? Was there not a viable strategy at the national level? Understandably, the strategic level is much more complex than the tactical level, at least against the enemies we’ve tended to fight, though many have, indeed, been very tough, determined, and adaptive. To be sure, conditions and issues do change as situations evolve, and strategies require comprehensive activities that involve the so-called “whole of government” — and, indeed, the whole of other governments, too. Naylor’s book underscores our ability to achieve tactical successes – indeed, sometimes apparent but dubious strategic successes (like the killings of Osama bin Laden, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, and Anwar al Alawki). And the same often has been true of our general-purpose forces such as during the fight to Baghdad, the takedown of the Taliban, and so on. But our record at the strategic level has not equaled that at the tactical level.

There is plenty of blame to go around, especially among civilian leaders who have committed our nation to poor strategies dictated by misguided policies. This is not intended to give our senior flag officers a pass, however. They, better than their civilian counterparts, understand the truths of combat and the need for adequate strategies. In too many cases, we have attacked with impressive skill and achieved initial success. Then the bad guys fall back, watch, study, re-organize under our noses, and come at us in unconventional ways. And the blame has to rest at the feet of some of those in uniform who commanded those endeavors, in addition to the corridors of civilian power in Washington.

In some cases, it appears that commanders either bought into or were “troop led” to accept intelligence analysis that did not bear out as fact. In others, commanders clung too long to strategies that clearly were not achieving the intended outcome. The greatest example of the latter was the extended period of a failed conventional force application before Gen. David Petraeus’ counterinsurgency approach was undertaken with transitory success.

Since the beginning of U.S. operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, both our intervention in Libya and our non-intervention after declaring redlines in Syria offer still more concerning commentary on our strategic calculus. In Libya, we were willing to bomb but not to invade, begetting civil war in the wake of operational success. Still worse, in Syria, expansive declaratory policy backed by no action at all has bred a catastrophic civil war, a humanitarian disaster, and a country in free fall, spewing instability, refugees, and extremism over the entire region and beyond.

Of course, outcomes are never guaranteed in war, and the day-to-day conduct of combat is subject to “friction” of all kinds. However, the fact that our tactical ability has yielded only spotty strategic outcomes since the Korean conflict ended more than 60 years ago indicates a dire need for a better grasp of strategy and the utility of armed force from our uniformed and civilian leaders. Both our warfighters and a war-weary public deserve better than more tactics without strategy — what Sun Tzu called “the noise before defeat.”

Quality “strategy” is indeed hard, requiring a rigorous, clear-eyed interagency appraisal of reality on the ground and a hard-nosed determination of the ends, ways, and means that will be the foundation of the ultimate strategy. And too often, our efforts in such endeavors just have not measured up. We tend to focus at high levels too much on tactics and operations and not enough on the hard work required to develop the whole of government strategic concepts and plans and to then oversee the execution of those plans. We ought to be able to do better.

Those at home in the United States have had the privilege of distancing ourselves from the realities of war in recent decades. 9/11 was the only significant introduction into the reality of war that we have seen up close and personal within our shores and with engaged non-combatants. Beyond that, war has been something in which others engage.

In that regard, it is good that our national leadership resides within sight of Arlington Cemetery, the wall of the names of those killed in Vietnam, and other memorials to those who have fought and died in our nation’s wars. These reminders of the cost of war should be a constant reminder of the imperative of getting not just the tactics and operations right, but also getting the strategies right. Yes, strategy ranks with the hardest of tasks for our national leadership, but we clearly owe more than we have provided to those who ultimately ruck up and turn policy and strategy into reality on the ground.

 

Col. (Ret) Keith Nightingale commanded four rifle companies, three Airborne and Ranger Battalions and two brigades. He was a member of the Iran Rescue Task Force and a founding cadre member of the 1-75th Rangers. He had two tours in Vietnam, was an assault force commander in Grenada and had several deployments to the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. He presently acts as a consultant to several Fortune 500 companies on SOF-related issues.

 

Photo credit: U.S Army

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17 thoughts on “Why is America Tactically Terrific but Strategically Slipshod?”

    1. I agree — George W. Bush’s oil experience was only in getting the payoffs from his oil business going out of business, and his role as “president” of the Texas Rangers was simply as meeter-and-greeter of important people. And you see what that got us in Afghanistan and Iraq! Let us hope for no more Bushes as U. S. President!

  2. In Vietnam, the civilian leadership committed our forces to a mission in which they were forbidden from fighting to win. Our forces were restricted in what they could do and where they could go. With the heart of the opposition in NVN, they were forbidden to go after it and that same opposition was allowed virtual free rein in sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos.

    Which highlights another problem in our subsequent adventures. The author mentions the Haqqani Network. Yet how much of the opposition in Afganistan is funded, trained, supported, and protected by Pakistani ISI? It is notable that when Mullah Omar’s death was announced two years after the fact, the choice of his successor was widely believed to be that favored by ISI, strongly hinting that our true enemies were not those we were fighting.

    Which is also very similar to Iran’s role in Iraq. How many Americans are dead by Iranian action, yet they pay no price.

    One can argue that we fail to succeed strategically because we are not ruthless enough, being too reluctant to hit those who seek to hurt us but hide behind subterfuge and legalities they themselves do not respect.

    1. In particular regarding Iran, was that course of action actually a strategic mistake? Someone in the Pentagon/CIA/White House had to consider the risks of retaliating against Iran for their support of the insurgency in Iraq and decided it was not a good idea.

  4. I think you’ve made one mistake in your analysis. That is, you assume the automatic and default strategy of the governing elite of any democracy facing a war is to try to win it as fully and as fast as possible. In actuality, as long as that war doesn’t present an existential crisis to the governing elite, their response is to adopt a strategy calculated to get them through the next electoral cycle still in power.

    You and I know the optimal way to do that would be to win the war in quickest and most absolute way possible. From the view of the politicians, however, they fear calling forth that amount of effort from the populace might in turn set in motion social forces at home that will work to unseat them from power despite having won the war. (Consider the changes in US society and economics brought by the two World Wars.) That kind of unintended outcome at home is more scary for governing elites than is failure in a limited war.

    By extension, then, neither is mastery of strategy a prerequisite for success as a high-ranker in the militaries of democracies. (Note how our various service academies continue to concentrate on engineering and tactical/operational concerns rather than teaching strategy.) In fact, military strategists tend to be viewed with suspicion even within their own service branches.

    All that means there IS a deliberate — though unarticulated — policy of substituting tactical excellence and operational efficiency for good strategy.

    1. My concern is a bit deeper-we rarely go into recent conflicts with some form of reasonably achievable end state defined and muddle through the execution because we don’t want to quit but we can’t define “win” either. When we have an idea initially, we seem to change it as time marches leaving the outcome even more ambiguous. I guess what I am saying is that committing our troops ought to be an “all in” program or not at all.

      1. Even if our political leaders elect to go “all in,” we will strategically fail should we invade and occupy a land with a resistant population. Nationalism has taken hold around the globe and those of once easily dominated populations are willing to pay the price in lives and economic benefit to draw the U.S. forces into a protracted war — from which we withdraw after admitting / suffering strategic failure.

  5. The reason that the U.S. strategically fails so often, particularly when this nation elects to commit its military on a large scale to achieving political goals in a given (often distant) geographical area is that we continue to fail to appreciate the social, political, and culture change which took hold around the globe beginning around the First War and one cemented into place following the Second World War.) Prior to that time essentially tactically proficient Western Militaries that were well armed could generally defeat foreign forces even in their homelands, often because foreign people’s identified themselves by tribe, not nationally. Their tribal leadership cared about their personal wealth rather than having freedom from foreign domination.

    After WWII nationalism firmly took hold around much of the world. Native populations were now willing to make the human and economic sacrifices needed, whatever the cost, to no longer be politically subservient to once dominating Western Nations.

    Their leaders, often having spent time in the West, appreciated American and European industrial power and grasped the fire power of Western Military organizations far exceeded that of their own forces. Their tactical response, their key to strategic success, was to develop and implement a way of warfare that totally nullifies the weaponry advantages and tactical efficiency of Western forces. These Nationalistic governments and movements realized that WWII, due to its horrendous costs,would be the last time a Western military could direct its massive fire power onto another group or land and destroy it. Therein after, they realized, Western forces would be limited by political considerations on the amount of firepower they could bring to bear on a problem.

    Their solution to combating Western forces was not to take us on by conducting warfare on our terms, but instead to engage our intervening (primarily ground) forces on a protracted basis giving the West their sought after tactical victories, but never surrendering to them, — albeit perhaps withdrawing from the fight for a time, but always returning even following defeat after defeat.

    They are doing to the American Military precisely what Colonial Americans did to the British Red Coats. And, it is bringing them strategic success. When General Matthew Ridgeway advised President Eisenhower not to get the U.S. involved in Indochina, one major reason was his concern for our opposing a Nationalistic Movement. Similarly General George Decker (CoS Army) when he advised President Kennedy the U.S. would loose if it got involved in a major war in Vietnam.

    Most of Americans political and military leadership still believe this nation has the right to dictate political, social, and cultural standards of behavior to peoples in distant lands, failing to recognize their leaders have developed culturally based methods enabling them to successfully combat our military based efforts at dominating their lands.

    Whether we like it or not the Taliban, the North Vietnamese, the Shiites, the Sunnis, the Kurds, and others including ISIS were / are Nationalistic Movements. They will all outlast our tactical efforts to defeat them — and strategic disaster always accompanies out efforts when we commit ground forces to the fight against such Nationalistic based movements and their military (guerrilla style) forces.

    And, the U.S. COIN Doctrine is nothing more than a failed tactical procedure for attempting to impose U.S. rule on a foreign nation. It will not work . The Insurgent is not those fighting to control their lands, whether we in the West appreciate their cultural standards or not, instead the Insurgent if the American or European Occupier. If we continue to fail to recognize that fact / that truth, this nation will continue to strategically fail at the cost of thousands of American lives and trillions of our dollars.

    Our only future military successes at the strategic level (and that is all that counts) will come from assisting nations in border wars such as in The First Gulf War or in the Balkans, from invading small countries to rescue citizens or to conduct a punishing raid and then immediately withdrawing, from fighting against piracy, from providing anti-missile protection to a country, from protecting the flow of oil through the Persian Gulf, and other similar military activities. The days of American successfully invading and occupying resistant countries, after defeating their conventional forces, and dominating an accepting population are over.

    World War II was the last time a Western Military (its ground forces) from a Democratic Nation will successfully invade a land with a resistant population and successfully occupy it. and the last time we will be able to use our Navy and Air Power to dominate the distant Seas adjoining a foreign land such as in the South China Sea. Unless America’s political and military leadership recognizes this truth, we are doomed to suffer one strategic loss after another. The U.S. needs to throw out the World War II Playbook and redefine victory to accommodate the political and “Nationalistic Realities” of the 21st Century.

    1. Mr. Bomba et al make excellent points in that an electoral democracy is a very poor form of government for fostering strategic excellence. In particular, the American system, which tends to place in charge a succession of rapidly changing, politically appointed amateurs whose primary objective is helping to keep their equally amateurish political bosses from losing office.

      Overall, a talent for strategic excellence is a rare quality, as witnessed by the vanishingly small number of master strategists whose campaigns are so carefully studied by war colleges the world over. A feature of a military system that favors bureaucracy over excellence is that the poor strategist is rarely fired, and a great strategist is rarely noticed and promoted, not least because the top civilian command lacks the power and the incentive to do so. A Zhukov or a Rokossovsky would not emerge under such a system, not least because their rather less competent superiors would remain frustratingly unshot.

      Separately, I must disagree with Cliff B and the other commenters who aver the impossibility of winning wars against nationalist forces — there are simply too many counterexamples. Even if we set aside the Mongols and their epigones, we still have examples stretching back to the Persian empire, as well as much more modern ones, to wit: the British conquest of India following the Mutiny, the Russian subjugation of Central Asia, the Chinese takeover of Tibet, the Turkish dominance of Kurdistan, as well as many others. In all these cases the occupying power faced a nationalist opposition and prevailed, and in the case of Britain, prevailed without enjoying force adjacency. The reason they have prevailed is simple: they were not concerned with local casualties or “hearts and minds” and were prepared to make and break alliances of convenience with local power brokers whenever it was expedient. To extend Mao’s metaphor, they drained the ponds in which guerrillas swim.

      The lack of stomach for atrocity is another key reason why democracies are bad at war — in fact whenever they excelled at it, it was at the cost of their most cherished self-conceipts, such as the willingness to intern their own citizens, restrict freedoms of expression and criminalize dissent.

      1. The above facts are accurate, however, democracies such as the U.S. will not apply the brutality (level of killing and destruction) needed to successfully subdue the resisting guerilla forces of a Nationalistic movement, nor should we. As to whether the forces of lesser democratic nations can succeed rests on logistical and geographical cosiderations, as the Russian failure in Afghanistan and their (more or less) success in Chechnya demonstrates.

        In India the British were forced to depart by a Nationalistic Movement”s use of non-violent tactics against which the British had no acceptable post WWII response. That forced departure deprived them of the Colonial Forces they used to do their dirty work and take the casualties. When English Boys had to do the fighting and dying in the Jewish part of their Colony of Palestine the people at home were unwilling to pay the price in lives to sustain the Empire. The Brits succeeded temporarily in Malaya because only the Chinese there fought against them, and they eventually had to withdraw from that colony. Strategic failure comes in many forms.

        In Kurdistan the population has yet to rise in mass against the Turks. Should they, the Turks could find themselves cut off from much of the world which would cripple their economy, and perhaps the Russians in Syria would provide weapons to the Kurds. The Turkish Army consists primarily of short term draftees who would have little heart for dying to sustain Erdogan ‘s folly, should that occur.

        ISIS would like nothing better than to see American (or Russian) ground forces opposing them.

        We estimate half of the 3 million dead the North Vietnamese state they lost in order to drive a 500,000+ U.S. force from “their” land.

        While there are historical facts otherwise, lessons from history need to be tempered by changes over time, lest one find themselves (like Mc Arthur) assuring all that the Chinese Army wasn’t capable of crossing the Yalu River and conducting operations in Korea, like Westmoreland assuring the President American fire power could kill enough NBA / VC in about 6 months they would retreat, and like Motor Mouth Mattis telling the world just how fearsome his men were implying they would clearly scare away any Iraqi guerrilla fighters.

  7. I wouldn’t say the US is strategically “slipshod” as much as strategically absent. When we fight operations–where the military operational objectives align with the political ends so the only strategy we need is operational excellence–we do phenomenally well. Unfortunately, military and civilian leadership that does strategy well is the exception rather than the rule. The weakness of strategic thinking in the civilian government is not the fault of the military, but we (the military) are still stuck with it, so we’d better figure out a way to fix it.

    That brings us to the question of why our general officers are so bad at strategy. My best theory so far is that they spend too long internalizing the operational doctrines of their specific services, and they continue these mindsets when forced into joint roles, as modern wars all are.

    Army and Air Force generals are the starkest contrasts: in Kosovo, we had an Army general (Wesley Clark) demanding that NATO put much of its effort into bombing the Yugoslav Army as if we were planning to invade on the ground, but we had no ground forces to do so. Air Force generals go the exactly opposite direction, acting as if there is never an army on the ground, and trying to re-fight the Combined Bomber Offensive of World War II. These extreme intellectual stove-piping also gets you the Air Force’s repeated attempts to kill the A-10, because the idea of “flying artillery” doesn’t fit in their world-view.

    If any service can claim intellectual flexibility, it is probably the Marines, because while definitely a land force, they truly integrate aircraft and amphibious craft into an air-land-sea force, and that force has traditionally been involved in a broad spectrum of operations, so their historical experience is much broader than other services.

    I don’t have any great solutions to the narrow minds of our general officers, but one solution is to speed up promotion for flag-caliber officers with potential as strategic thinkers, with a slower track for those officers who are strong but inside-the-box thinkers.

  8. A couple of disconnected thoughts: 1) US involvement in Afghanistan did not have a strategically decisive mission with accompanying metrics beyond overthrow of the Afghan tribal political/military status quo – which was irrelevant to the motivating force of the entire enterprise, US response to the 911 attacks. Failed states attract non-state actors chiefly because they cannot control their territory. Supplanting the existing tribal authority/ies with a nation state construct in order to preclude future use of Afghan territory by al Qaeda was then, and remains, a losing proposition that revealed US State Dept. (and Bonn Conference attendee) counter-party bias more any realities on the ground in Afghanistan. 2) Frankly, we need a US Dept. of Tribes to deal with Central Asia and MENA, as their nation state bureaucracies are mostly veneers to allow for international commerce and communications harmonization more than as a viable means of internal social and political organization; 3) Most of our current and future interventions should not involve conventional forces. The agency problems internal to conventional forces, for example, getting promoted from Colonel to Brigadier General is maximized by leading US forces in combat, not indigenous forces, is counter-productive to the mission, and vastly more expensive. Green Berets leading indigenous forces supported by air power have been shown as a cost and force efficient means of projecting power in areas like Afghanistan. The question is what do you do when you overthrow the current status quo? I’ve published some thoughts on this question at the Middle East Quarterly back in 2011 at http://www.meforum.org/2881/afghanistan-village-war

  9. Reading back through all these posts, I’d rate this article as having not only been excellent in itself, but it also inspired a fine post-publication discussion. Further in that regard, I’ve been studying the art and craft of strategy for almost have a century now. I’ve boiled it down to the following precepts.

    Strategy Defined
    A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim, and having to be achieved in the face of opposition from others.

    Laws of Strategy
    1. Know your own capabilities.
    2. Know your opponent’s capabilities.
    3. Seek to pit your strengths against your opponent’s weaknesses.
    4. Seek to prevent your opponent from pitting his strengths against your weaknesses.
    5. Never pit your strengths against his strengths.
    6. Maintain a reserve of five to 25 percent of your total strength.
    7. Keep in mind your desired end-state: only launch operations that move you closer to it.
    8. Never repeat an already failed strategy with the expectation of this time getting a better result from it.
    9. The overarching object of your strategy should be is create a state of operative surprise in your opponent. That uncertainty will delay, and otherwise make less efficient, his countermoves. That works as a force multiplier for you.

    Most Common Reasons for Strategic Failure
    1. Overconfidence due to previous successes.
    2. Analyzing information only after sifting it through the filter of dogma.
    3. Operating with insufficient reserves.
    4. The problem of “mirror imaging” – using one’s own rationales to interpret the actions or intentions of one’s opponent – is the most fault among strategic decision makers.

    Tactics Defined
    An action planned to achieve a specific end, conducted while in battlefield contact with the enemy.

    Laws of Tactics
    1. Always seek to control the local high ground (and/or its aerial and/or space equivalent).
    2. Move in short bounds from cover to cover so as not to be caught in the open by your opponent.
    3. Maneuver so as to engage your opponent on his flank or from behind, and so as to prevent him from being able to do that to you.

    Juncture of Tactics & Strategy
    Your superior strategy can make up for your poor tactics; however, your superior tactics will not make up for your poor strategy.

    Sun Tzu
    “Good strategy without good tactics is the slowest route to victory; good tactics without good strategy is just so much noise before your final defeat.”

    Three Grand-Strategic “Don’ts” for Planet Earth
    1. Don’t invade China.
    2. Don’t invade Russia.
    3. Don’t make the Jews your enemy.