Strategic Competence in a Dangerous World

- We are in a period of significant danger because we had that period of overconfidence that was a setup for those, those, those disappointments of the unanticipated length and difficulty of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. How's everybody doing? Good. Hey Scott, thanks for the opportunity you, for you and for you and Josh for the opportunity to be with all, all of this great group here. And congratulations all of you for, for being a part of this program. And, and it's a tough act to follow, you know, professor Kin and kind of Lisa Rice, you know, but I'll try, I'll try to, I'll try to keep up the pace here and I'm actually here what's on your minds as well. So I'll try to be brief here, but, but I think, you know, there, part of the conventional wisdom you hear a lot about today is that we're in a dangerous period of time. And, and I think it's true, and I think it's true because when I look back to kind of across my career, when I came into the military, it was in, in the middle of the Cold War. And, and I had the opportunity to serve in Germany, and I was in Germany in 1989 when, when East Germany lifted travel restrictions to the West. And our regimen was actually patrolling the East West German border on that day in November of 1989, staring down East German border guards one day. And then in the next moment, at one moment, and in the next moment seeing the, seeing the barriers opened and then tens and then hundreds and then thousands, and then tens of thousands of East Germans pouring across the border. There were Bo they were, they were bringing bottles of wine and, and bouquets of flowers to give to our troopers. There were hugs and tears of joy and the Cold War ended right, without us firing a shot, right? So that, that was a, a momentous occasion. And, and, and, and, and really a, a source of confidence for us, right? Confidence in, in our future. The post Cold War period seemed to be a period of peace. And, and that was followed, of course, though, by a hot war very soon after the end of the Cold War, once Saddam Hussein decided to invade, invade Kuwait in, in August of, of, of 1990. And that same cavalry troop that was staring down these German border guards one moment and then getting swamped by people, hugging them the next moment, deployed to Saudi Arabia and participated in Operation Desert Storm, which was a, an a lopsided victory over the fourth largest army in the world. And those two twin events, I think the end of the Cold War, that lopsided victory in Operation Desert Storm ushered in as, as I mentioned, a period of confidence, right? Confidence in, in really three critical areas, confidence in, in this idea that, that the arc of history had guaranteed the primacy of our free and open societies over closed authoritarian systems. Related to that was this, the idea that great power competition, great power rivalry was a relic of the past. And then particularly based on the, the, the lessons or maybe the wrong lessons of, of the Gulf War, there was a, a belief that our technological prowess or technological military prowess would guarantee our security well into the future. And in the 1990s, I think that that confidence became overconfidence and maybe even a kind of a touch of hubris in that period of time. And we vacated critical arenas of competition based on this belief in, in our primacy well into the future. I mean, there were some, some people at the time in the 1990s were saying, Hey, you know, don't, don't, don't buy any of these assumptions. Charles k Crowder, for example, wrote a great essay called The Unipolar Moment. And it's like we forgot the moment part of that, you know, I thought it was just gonna be a unipolar world. And I think this was a setup. This overconfidence was a setup, it was a setup for a series of shocks and disappointments in the two thousands. Of course, you know, foremost among them, the mass murder attacks of September 11th, 2001 when terrorists used box cutters and, and airplanes to bypass our, our military paras and conduct the most destructive terrorist attack in, in history. And then what followed that I think was, you know, were, were the unanticipated length and difficulty of the wars in Afghanistan and, and in Iraq. And of course, a lot of people always still want to de debate, should we have done it, it being the invasion of Iraq in 2003. I think we should spend some more time discussing, Hey, you know, who the heck thought it would be easy? And, and I think, I think some people thought it would be relatively easy to do regime change in Afghanistan or, and, and especially in, in Iraq, based on some of the wrong lessons learned from that 1991 Gulf War. And I think what people forgot about that Gulf War is that the objective in that war was very narrowly circumscribed. It was just, Hey, give Kuwait back to the Kuwaits. Go back to status quo, ante. But then changing the Iraqi government was much more complicated than that. And, and I think also what fed into this idea that that wars could be fast, cheap, and efficient, was this belief, again, in our military prowess, our technological military prowess. And so we had flawed ideas about the nature of war. We talked ourselves into believing that the consolidation of military gains to get to sustainable political outcomes was kind of an optional phase of war. And so what I'd like to talk with you about is how do we regain confidence after that period of overconfidence followed by strategic shocks and disappointments in the two thousands, confidence in our ability to compete effectively in national security and to fight and win in, in wars. And so I think what you can do as, as part of this bootcamp, and then in, in your, in your future studies and your reading and thinking, is really think about how do you develop your own theory of strategic competence? What are the components of strategic competence? Because I'm, as I mentioned at the outset, we are in a period of significant danger because we had that period of overconfidence that was a setup for those, those, those disappointments of the unanticipated length and difficulty of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, maybe a lack of confidence. And I heard Professor Kin talking about this and confidence in who we are as Americans, our common ident as Americans in the same period of time in the early two thousands, big transitions in the global economy are happening, right? Especially associated with China's entry into World trade organization, a loss of manufacturing jobs, especially in, in the Midwest. And, and in, in the so-called rust belt, people felt like they were left behind. How about, you know, how about a financial crisis, right? 2008, 2009 toss in a opioid epidemic? And then how about the effects of social media and, and how social media really exacerbates people's sense of disenchantment disenfranchisement and get, and, and in pursuit of, of more advertising dollars gives people more and more extreme content to get more and more clicks, right? So we've had all these effects that have really affected our confidence. So that overconfidence of the nineties, I think now has led us to really a period of pessimism, disenchantment and a lack of confidence. So how do, how do we get our confidence back in our ability to achieve favorable outcomes? And I think we have to do it by, by really focusing on competence and competent foreign policy and, and approaches to national security. And it is, of course, it's, it's a pressing issue because as, as I mentioned, you know, that post Cold War unipolar moment is, is long passed. And what we're facing now is a period in which we're seeing in axis of aggressors coalesce. And, and what I'm referring to is really two revist revisionist powers on the Eurasian landmass of China and, and Russia who have pulled into the fold, the only, you know, the, through a theocratic dictatorship in, in Iran and the only hereditary communist dictatorship in the world, in, in North Korea. And what we're seeing is an unprecedented degree of, of, of these, this axis aiding embedding each other's efforts. And we can talk more about that in q and a if you'd like to, but you know, what about strategic competence? And I think, I think what, as you develop your theory, you want to, you really wanna think about what, what Klaus Woods said about theory. It's not to accompany you to the battlefield and help you make the specific decisions for you, but it it ought to help you think clearly about complex problems. And I think the young kitz would fit really well in this group here. You know, he, he knew a lot about, about war because he went to work at the age of 14 and then had the opportunity to, to reflect on, on, on his experiences and, and write the book, write the book on war. But so what is your foundation understanding of strategy? And, and you should think about that. What are the components of strategy? Give you some ideas and then we can talk more about it. These are def definitions of strategy. And, and of course, you know, the, the military definition really has to do with ends, ways and means and, and how you apply means to achieve your ends. And there should be a logical connection between them. I think it's important to, to look at what we're doing today in the world and to, to ask you what is the strategy to achieve a, a well-defined goal or, or an objective. Oftentimes you can't figure it out and there's a problem. It's probably because there's a, a lack a lack of strategy. I think in the military, even the true test of strategy is if a platoon leader or a company commander can explain to his or her soldiers how the risk that they're gonna take on an operation and the sacrifices they may be called on to make are, are, are in service of achieving an outcome that's worthy of those risks and, and, and worthy of those sacrifices. So I mentioned this a a little bit. You know, we, we in the 1990s, I believe, focused almost exclusively on change changes in the geopolitical environment and, and changes in technology that had given us these tremendous military advantages. And what we neglected in that period of time were continuities continuities that we can, we, we can learn from history. And I know Secretary Rice talked to you about this and Professor Kin did. And the importance really to, to really understand, you know, how the recent past produced, the present as the first step in trying to anticipate that the future. And, and when we're looking at war and warfare and strategic competence as it relates to war. I, I think you can't go wrong if you apply the method that, that Sir Michael Howard recommended to us in terms of how to study history in which, in which, in a great essay that I recommend to all of you called, called the use and abuse of, of military history. And so we should study military history in width, in depth, and in context and in width across a broad scope of time. So you can, excuse me, identify changes in the character of war, the character of warfare, but also so you can be sensitive to, to those, to, to those continuities. And and I would recommend that there are really maybe four fundamental continuities in the nature of war that we neglect at our, at our own peril. And the first of these is, you know, war's an extension of politics, okay? It's like, that's like the Geico commercial man. Everybody knows that, right? Klaus Wood said, you know, war war's an extension of, of politics, but war is political. And what that means is that that war should be aimed at achieving a sustainable political outcome. And again, that also means that if you're going to war, the consolidation gains to get to that political outcome is not an optional phase. And if you look even at ongoing conflicts today, that's where the problem is, right? How do you get to a sustainable political outcome in Gaza for, for example, how do you create space for an to, for Hamas to emerge such that there can be some kind of a political settlement because you're not gonna get it with an entity like Hamas, a terrorist organization like Hamas that is committed to destroying Israel and killing all the Jews, right? So how do you get to a different political order in, in Gaza, you hear, of course a lot about wanting to end the war in Ukraine, but the war in Ukraine is, is essentially being fought over territory, populations and resources. How do you get to a, a political end to that war? Well, I, I don't think you get to one really, until Vladimir Putin concludes that he can't continue the war at an acceptable cost and and risk essentially concludes that he could be losing, because of course you can't disconnect the political outcome that you want from what you're doing militarily. And I think in recent conflicts, we've actually done that in, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. I mean, if you think back, as we're about to get to the fourth anniversary of the disastrous, I would call it self-defeat and humiliating, a deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan. You know, what we were doing in Afghanistan was a completely disconnected of what we're doing militarily from what we're trying to achieve politically. This is going back even to the Obama administration. When we stopped designated the Taliban as an enemy, for example, we're not fighting them actively. 'cause we convinced ourselves in a delusional way that really the problem was with Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda in Pakistan, our problem really wasn't with the Taliban. We, we, we created the enemy we would've preferred in Afghanistan by assuming that, that the Taliban was completely separate from other jihadist terrorist organizations in including Al-Qaeda. And, and so we diluted ourselves so we could have this, we could pursue the strategy we wanted, which was talking to the Taliban in, in Doha gutter, for example, the Taliban political Council, which we stood up while we stopped actually going after the Taliban, you know, aggressively, what was the incentive for the Taliban? We, we announced years in advance the, you know, our schedule for withdrawal out of Afghanistan. And of course what we're doing militarily was doing nothing to, to, to incentivize the Taliban to come to what we would regard as a, as a, as an acceptable political settlement. War is human is the second continuity. People fight for the same reasons that Thucydides identified 2,500 years ago. Fear, honor, and interest. So if your strategy doesn't address the political dimension of war, how to consolidate gains doesn't address really what are the emotions and ideology that are driving conflict. That strategy is going to fail. I would say the third continuity is that war is uncertain. War is uncertain because it's impossible to plot out what you wanna do linearly in war because war is, as clouds would said, a continuous interaction of opposites interaction with you and your enemies and, and, and in this complex environment. And so your enemy has a say in the future course of events, your enemy has authorship over the future. And so progress is never gonna be linear. But again, you know, how do we get to the point where we're, we're announcing years in advance exactly the number of troops we're gonna have on the ground and so forth. It's, we're cutting against the nature of war. And then finally, war is a contest of, of wills. You have to be able to sustain your will. And I think for, for in our recent wars, we have been unable to do that. And, and we've, we sort of succumbed to a mantra of ending endless wars and so forth in large measure because a series of American presidents did a poor job of, of explaining to the American people what the American people need to know, which is what is at stake, you know, what is at stake in this war, and then what is the strategy that can deliver a, a favorable outcome at an acceptable cost and risk.