A final barrier involves the tendency to ignore the limits that scarce resources impose on strategy. Were resources unlimited, there would be no need for strategy, since one could pursue all possible courses of action to the maximum extent possible. Of course, this has never been the case, and never will be.

Unfortunately, the Defense Department's approach to planning and budgeting actually encourages the military services to ignore budgetary constraints. They use "cut drills," which are intended to reconcile the gap between any given defense program and defense resources. In a cut drill, the service that has thought through how to apply limited means to achieve its assigned mission-keeping its program in line with anticipated resources-is likely to be penalized, while a service whose program is substantially short of the resources needed for its execution is rewarded with additional funds. This is because the tendency on the part of the department's senior leaders is often to assist the services most in need-whose "requirements" most exceed the resources projected to meet them. The lesson for the military services is clear: put in for as large a program and force structure as you can, and hope to sustain as much as you can in the cut drill. While this may make sense from a narrow, bureaucratic perspective, it hardly makes for sound national strategy.

Again, the problem is not limited to the military. The Bush administration's goal of creating a stable, democratic Iraq greatly underestimated the enormous resources-in time, treasure and blood-that would be required to achieve such a goal. Making matters worse, in 2005 President Bush declared "Our strategy can be summed up this way: As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down." This statement repeated the already-familiar mistake of conflating a desired end-shifting the burden of fighting the terrorists and insurgents to the Iraqis-with the strategy by which it might be achieved. At the time, the army's strategy in Iraq still focused on killing the enemy, a strategically flawed approach to the conflict. It would not be until 2007 that General David Petraeus would begin implementing a comprehensive strategy focused on providing security to the Iraqi population as a means of isolating the insurgents from their source of support.

Even if senior national-security decision makers believe in the value of strategic competence, and understand the role that limited resources must play, they confront yet another, quite formidable barrier in the form of the bureaucracy. Bureaucracies tend to have their own agendas, which typically offer stiff resistance to leaders' attempts to enact change. In the Defense Department alone, the effort to develop strategy has become so cumbersome and convoluted that it is accepted by the Pentagon itself to be one of "increasing complexity, undocumented change, unaligned processes, [and] ad hoc solutions." The Defense Department's approach to developing and executing strategy involves a cast of hundreds if not thousands of individuals, often working diligently in the absence of any serious form of strategic guidance-let alone active participation-by the Pentagon's senior leadership, the National Security Council or the president.

 

WHAT SHOULD be done? How can the decline in U.S. strategic competence be reversed? To begin, the president must be convinced of the value of well-thought-through strategy. The active involvement of the nation's commander in chief and chief diplomat is essential to overcoming the barriers discussed. Failure of the president to take an active role can cause-and increasingly has caused-strategic planning to fall prey to narrow bureaucratic or organizational interests, leading to suboptimal strategies or no strategy at all.

If President Obama is willing to take an active role, he and his top national-security decision makers could benefit from the successful example of President Eisenhower's NSC structure, which provided strong incentives to engage in serious discussions of strategy. Under this structure, the president chaired the NSC meetings and, in leading the discussion, made a point of bringing out conflicts and differences by having everyone air their opinions. Attendance was mandatory. During the nearly four-year period when Robert Cutler was Eisenhower's special assistant for national-security affairs, the president missed only six of 179 NSC meetings. To ensure a rich discussion, Eisenhower strictly limited the number of individuals who could participate, typically to eight. This meant there were no "backbenchers" feeding position papers to their principals.

To support the president and the other NSC principals, Eisenhower created a Planning Board, which developed policy papers to be considered by the NSC. The reason for the board, he explained to the NSC members, was that:

You Council members . . . simply do not have the time to do all that needs to be done in thinking out the best decisions regarding the national security. Someone must therefore do much of this thinking for you.3

The Planning Board's members were nominated by the NSC principals and appointed by the president. And to ensure that the Planning Board members were not beholden to their departments or agencies, Eisenhower made it clear that their mission was not "to reach solutions which represent merely a compromise of departmental positions."⁴

At Eisenhower's direction, Cutler organized "study groups" of senior strategists to include those who had served in the Truman administration, such as Paul Nitze. These groups provided individual and collective advice, while also reviewing past NSC papers, hearing the testimony of experts and soliciting memoranda from experienced leaders with knowledge of strategy like George Marshall, Chip Bohlen and Robert Lovett.

To prevent talented staff from being drawn into day-to-day operations, and to prevent the board from devolving into a compiler of information as opposed to a thinking body focused on strategic insight, Eisenhower employed such means as prohibiting its members from accompanying their principals on overseas trips except when absolutely necessary.

And to ensure that NSC decisions based on the Planning Board's efforts were implemented, Eisenhower established the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB). If the bureaucracy is unable to advance its own agenda during strategy formulation, it will often seek to enforce its will in strategy execution. To prevent this freelancing, the OCB would, at regular intervals (three to six months), prepare progress reports for review by the NSC. Its members included the under secretary of state for political affairs, deputy secretary of defense, the directors of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), and the special assistants to the president for national-security affairs and security-operations coordination. The NSC's action papers were assigned to an OCB team for follow-up.

 

IF PRESIDENT Obama is serious about getting strategy right, he would benefit by adopting something akin to this NSC model characterized by the persistent involvement of the president and his senior decision makers, supported by a smart, tight-knit group of strategists able to tap into a team of dedicated and informed subordinates and advisers. Reestablishing a Planning Board could, along with direct and determined presidential involvement in the formulation of strategy, go a long way toward improving the quality of U.S. strategy. As former-National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski observed in a 1997 meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations:

The Planning Board was a very important instrument, the elimination of which has handicapped the U.S. government ever since then. Because the consequence is that we don't have overall national security planning.

The individuals comprising a reconstituted Planning Board should be senior officials who are competent strategists, since they are, in effect, the people tasked with identifying the insights upon which asymmetric advantages are derived and strategies formed. For example, the Defense Department might assign the director of its Office of Net Assessment, while the State Department might designate the head of its Policy Planning Staff. The quality of the information and analysis they present to the NSC will greatly influence that body's ability to make good strategic decisions.

To ensure the Planning Board has access to the best information and the best minds, both in and out of government, it should be able to task any department or agency for information, and have the capacity to reach outside of government for expert advice and support. What it should not do is outsource its critical thinking and analysis. It may be prudent to establish temporary advisory boards to address specific issues of great importance to support the Planning Board's work. If so, these supporting groups should be comprised of individuals who are among the most eminent in their fields.

Aaron Friedberg's suggestion that these revived boards be placed under the direction of a national-security adviser for planning and coordinating makes great sense, given that the modern-day national-security adviser has become enmeshed in the day-to-day activities of government. We would only add that an Operations Coordinating Board to ensure strategy implementation throughout the government would also be a wise idea.

 

THE BARRIERS to developing sound strategy are many, and they are formidable. An argument can be made that the U.S. government not only has lost the ability to do strategy well, but that many senior officials do not understand what strategy is. Despite these barriers, the benefits of crafting good strategies are so great-and the potential risks posed by ignoring strategy so deleterious-that a strong push by senior U.S. national-security decision makers, the president above all, to overcome them seems increasingly urgent and long overdue. Revitalizing strategic planning at the highest levels of the government with a contemporary version of Secretary of State George Marshall's Policy Planning Staff and President Eisenhower's NSC model, to include the Planning and Operations Coordination Boards, would be an important first step toward achieving this end.

Essay Types: Essay