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Survival

Global Politics and Strategy

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The Uncertainties of Strategy

H.R. McMaster

To cite this article: H.R. McMaster (2015) The Uncertainties of Strategy, Survival, 57:1, 197-208,
DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2015.1008323

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2015.1008323

Published online: 05 Feb 2015.

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Review Essay

The Uncertainties of Strategy


H.R. McMaster

Strategy: A History
Lawrence Freedman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
25.00. 751pp.

In Strategy: A History, Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at


Kings College London and author of many books, asks rhetorically, can
the same word apply to battle plans, political campaigning, and business
deals not to mention means of coping with the stresses of everyday life
without becoming meaningless? (p. x). In The Direction of War, historian
Hew Strachan provides an answer: the word strategy has acquired a uni-
versality which has robbed it of meaning, and left it only with banalities.1
This is not merely an academic problem; it is a danger. Incomplete
plans disconnected from the problems they are ostensibly meant to address
masquerade as strategies and establish a deceptive rationale for folly. Loss
of precision in the word strategy has encouraged in the West a narcissistic
approach to national security; strategies are frequently based on what
the purveyor prefers rather than what the situation demands. Although
Lawrence Freedmans effort at an account of the most prominent themes
in strategic theory might compromise precision for comprehensiveness,
readers should not be disappointed. Freedmans discourse, organised
into five parts, spans the early history of strategy, military affairs, radical
and revolutionary movements, business and interdisciplinary theories of

H.R. McMaster is IISS Consulting Senior Fellow and a Survival Contributing Editor.

Survival | vol. 57 no. 1 | FebruaryMarch 2015 | pp. 197208DOI 10.1080/00396338.2015.1008323


198 | H.R. McMaster

strategy. The ability to craft and execute effective strategy is increasingly


vital to national and international security because, as Henry Kissinger
observes in the introduction to World Order, we may be facing a period
in which forces beyond the restraints of any order determine the future.2
Freedman has provided readers with a valuable resource for engaging with
a vital subject in an increasingly complex and dangerous world.
Readers may wish to bring their own definitions of strategy to Freedmans
book as an aid to engaging his work purposefully and, perhaps, selectively.
Those reading from the perspective of diplomacy and international security
might consider the simple definition taught in the US militarys professional
education system: strategy is the intelligent identification, utilisation and
coordination of resources (ways and means) for the successful attainment
of a specific objective (end). However, as Beatrice Heuser points out in her
seminal work, The Evolution of Strategy, strategy depends on variables
ones own political aims, the enemys political aims and others, all partly
interconnected, making the whole equation even more complicated.3 As
Tami Davis Biddle teaches students at the US Army War College, a failure
to consider the variables that complicate the linkage between ends, ways
and means risks producing little more than an organizational mantra, an
overly-optimistic assertion about the ability of a particular instrument of
power to effect a specific outcome, or a facile claim about opportunities pre-
sented by an adversarys presumed weaknesses.4

Elements of strategy
Armed with a definition of the core concept and an appreciation for vari-
ables that affect success or failure, readers will be prepared for Freedmans
discussion of strategys elemental factors. Freedman begins as Quincy
Wright began his 1942 magnum opus, A Study of War, with warfare between
animals. His analysis of that topic as well as strategy depicted in the Bible,
John Miltons epic poem Paradise Lost and the writings of ancient Sun Tzu
and Niccol Machiavelli leads him to observe that deception, coalition for-
mation and the instrumental use of violence are features endemic to strategy.
For Freedman the point about Sun Tsu was not that he offered a winning
formula for all situations but that he offered an ideal type of a particular
The Uncertainties of Strategy | 199

sort of strategy, based on outsmarting the opponent rather than overwhelm-


ing him with brute force (p. 46). From his discussion of Machiavelli in the
sixteenth century to his critique of William H. Rikers twentieth-century use
of social-choice theory to understand political coalitions, Freedman empha-
sises understanding each partys interests as essential to coalition cohesion.
Interests determine how coalition members will use violence or the threat
of violence in combination with other means to achieve desired outcomes.
Readers might use these enduring elements to reflect on contemporary
strategies. They might question, for example, the contemporary practice of
announcing the details of military strategies and resources applied to those
strategies publically and years in advance. Readers
might also consider how a better understanding of the
interests of the various parties to conflicts, such as those
in the greater Middle East, could establish the founda-
tion for a more coherent multinational approach to
regional problems. And Freedmans analysis might also
inspire contemplation of apparent disconnects between
the instrumental use of violence and objectives in recent
and ongoing conflicts.
Part Two of the book begins with an analysis of
Napoleonic warfare, and the nineteenth-century writings
of Carl von Clausewitz and his French rival, Antoine-Henri Jomini. It ends
with a critique of those who in the late 1990s and early 2000s promoted con-
cepts such as the revolution in military affairs and fourth-generation warfare.
Across that broad sweep Freedman emphasises the centrality of politics.
Observing that both Jomini and Clausewitz understood that the objective of
war came from outside the military sphere, Freedmans examination of strat-
egies of force reveals that if the broader political consequences of war were
difficult to anticipate, then the military was likely to be left exploring its own
tangible goals without regard to the broader context (p. 95). The neglect of
the political nature or context of war is a common cause of strategic failures
as well as a common flaw in theories that often contribute to those failures.
Freedman draws out the need for strategy to be consistent with the endur-
ing nature of war. He focuses on Clausewitzs theory of war, especially the
200 | H.R. McMaster

need for strategy to be grounded in wars political nature and to regard war
fundamentally as the continuation of policy by other means. A grounding in
clear political objectives is essential if strategy is to impose a semblance of
rationality on war (p. 86). But Freedman also acknowledges wars resistance to
rationality, and its tendency towards uncertainty. Uncertainty in war is based
on interactions between opposing wills that, when combined with violence,
chance and emotion, make the future course of events impossible to predict.
Strategy, therefore, must adapt to changing conditions. His point is consist-
ent with Strachans observation in a 2008 Survival essay that what begins as
one sort of war can turn into another.5 Although Freedmans Clausewitzian
emphasis on politics and uncertainty in war is not novel, his argument is
important because it serves as a corrective to a contemporary failing spe-
cifically, the tendency to assume that enemies and adversaries will cooperate
with plans and thereby ensure linear progress toward strategic objectives.
The book gains contemporary policy relevance in revealing how a neglect
of these factors can undermine both strategy in war and defence planning for
future armed conflict. In Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, gaps between
prior visions of future warfare and the nature of the eventual wars themselves
complicated efforts to adapt strategy over time. Minimalist, linear plans in
place at the outset of both wars were disconnected from the ambition of
broader policy objectives and the complexity of the operating environment.
Indeed, recent war plans have, at times, been essentially narcissistic, failing
to account for interactions with determined enemies and other complicating
variables. In extreme cases, plans were based on the assumption that a war
would end with the disengagement of one party to the conflict.
Neglecting the political dimension of war ignores the need to consolidate
military gains and reduces war to a targeting exercise. It also undermines
defence planning, building vulnerabilities into future armed forces such
that those forces are unable to either prevent conflict or respond to threats
to national security. As Colin Gray has argued, only after embracing the
political nature of armed conflict as well as the lack of evidence about the
future from the future can planners begin to plan defence intelligently.6 In
short, Freedmans analysis builds on Clausewitzs advice that strategists not
try to turn war into something that is alien to its nature.7
The Uncertainties of Strategy | 201

Freedman highlights Clausewitzs genius in understanding the limita-


tions of rational policy and sound strategy as they compete with the blind
natural forces of violence, hatred and enmity to shape the future (p. 94).
These natural forces relate to other important continuities in the nature of
war: the human dimension, and war as a contest of wills. Successful strategy
depends on a sustained act of will, required in order to master its terrible
uncertainties and resulting from human frailties and the capricious impact
of chance (p. 92). Freedman uses the Athenian statesman Pericles to empha-
sise that the ability to persuade not only ones people but also allies and
enemies was a vital attribute of the successful strategist (p. 23). He describes
Napoleon as the leader who, in the modern era, unleashed popular passion
in the conduct of war (p. 70).
Here, readers might reflect on how the lack of popular emotion towards
or even interest in contemporary wars may place at risk the effective-
ness and integrity of the military instrument in the service of strategy. As
Christopher Coker wrote in The Warrior Ethos, If we become what we sing,
today we sing in minor key. The muse is beginning to fail us.8 It seems pos-
sible that the Wests lack of passion for its wars not only risks separating
society from those who fight in its name, but also risks undermining the
warrior ethos of shrinking professional militaries. Freedman quotes Tolstoy
to make the point that it is not only the decisions of leaders or the strength
of military forces, but also the sum of individual wills that determine the
outcome of war (p. 99). In Part Three, Freedman considers the importance
of popular will in sustaining strategies for achieving political and social
change over time. He describes efforts to influence popular thought and
behaviour through mass media, propaganda of the deed and, today, social
media and the Internet. His focus on the role of popular will in strategy
reflects Richard Betts observation that:

Strategy is the essential ingredient for making war either politically


effective or morally tenable. It is the link between military means and
political ends, the scheme for how to make one produce the other. Without
strategy, there is no rationale for how force will achieve purposes worth
the pride in blood and treasure.9
202 | H.R. McMaster

It is in their inherent moral components that recent Western strategies


may be deficient. What percentage of the populations in countries engaged
in the 14-year effort in Afghanistan could even name the three main Taliban
groups with whom their soldiers have been engaged? The professed war-
weariness among populations who have sent only a small percentage of
their sons and daughters to fight in recent wars may derive from a failure to
communicate effectively what is at stake in those wars and explain why the
efforts are worthy of the risks, resources and sacrifices necessary to sustain
the strategy.

Art not science


Freedman uses Winston Churchills war leadership to reinforce the impor-
tance of sound strategy and clarity of purpose in sustaining such popular
will. Aware of the political and human nature of war, Churchill regarded
strategy as an art rather than a science, observing that there must be an
all-embracing view which presents the beginning and the end, the whole
and each part, as one instantaneous impression retentively and untiringly
held in the mind (p. 141). A clearly defined objective or goal is essential if
leaders are to communicate an all-embracing view of strategy. Strategic
goals in recent wars, however, have been ambiguous. This ambiguity is due,
in part, to a belief that one can achieve acceptable outcomes in war without
a commitment to winning. Because war is a competition a competition
involving life and death, and in which the nations security or vital national
interests are at stake it seems obvious that establishing an objective other
than winning may not only be counterproductive and wasteful, but also,
under certain circumstances, unethical. Winning, however, does not require
commitment to unconditional surrender, or the lifting of all restrictions
on force applied or resources committed. What winning must entail is a
rational determination to achieve a sustainable outcome, usually a political
outcome, consistent with vital interests.
Thus, working out how to achieve sustainable favourable outcomes is
also critical to thinking about future armed conflict, as becomes clear from
Freedmans discussion of strategic concepts from the American Civil War to
the Second World War. The First World War, for example, is used to high-
The Uncertainties of Strategy | 203

light the danger of military operations becoming disconnected from policy


in the pursuit of decisive victory. Freedman observes that it was one thing
to have a strategy for swift military action that would deal the enemy a
knockout blow. But if the enemy survived then there were no compelling
strategies for what came next (p. 115).
Such insights may prove helpful in avoiding the mistakes of the 1990s,
when defence planners once again promised swift military victory because
they confused emerging military technologies with strategy. As the US
Department of Defense pursues an offset strategy designed to develop
asymmetric advantages through the development of advanced technolo-
gies (such as robotics and system autonomy, miniaturisation, big data,
unmanned autonomous strike aircraft, a next-generation bomber and
undersea warfare systems), it seems particularly important to keep in mind
continuities in the nature of war, and lessons from successes and failures in
previous attempts to enhance future security.
Freedmans discussion of geopolitics further emphasises the need for
defence strategy to consider political interactions between states in the
context of the enduring features of their environment. He contrasts the naval
doctrines of the late eighteenth century of US admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan
and Julian Corbett, a civilian lecturer at the Royal Navy staff college. Mahan
argued that the principal role of navies was to compete for command of the
sea. Corbett argued that because strategy should focus on the purpose of
the war, naval and land forces must be employed in a complementary way;
land forces should control territory and naval forces should control lines of
communication at sea. Freedman approvingly quotes Corbett (p. 119):

Since men live on the land and not upon the sea, great issues between
nations at war have always been decided except in the rarest cases
either by what your army can do against your enemys territory and
national life, or else by fear of what the fleet makes possible for your
army to do.

The geographer, adventurer and politician Halford John Mackinder,


writing after the First World War, was concerned with what today would
204 | H.R. McMaster

be referred to as the anti-access/area-denial capabilities of Germany and


Russia, were these nations to become hostile and gain control of the Eurasian
landmass. Mackinders argument that land and sea must be understood as
parts of one system seems applicable to defence planning today (especially
if one adds the air, space and cyberspace domains). Freedman observes that
Mackinders theory of geopolitics moved strategy to a higher plane than
one which concentrated solely on the operational art, and cautions against
strategic concepts that slight geopolitics or fail to attend to the wider politi-
cal context (p. 122).
Freedmans critique of early efforts to use airpower as a strategy in iso-
lation echoes Tami Davis Biddles argument in Rhetoric and Reality in Air
Warfare that the theory of airpower failed to connect its employment to
the achievement of a satisfactory political end.10 Freedman observes that
strategic-bombing theory assumed that if the right points could be found
whether in industrial production, political control, or popular morale the
system as a whole could be brought down (p. 129). Despite its deficiencies,
strategic-bombing theory has proven resilient, reinventing itself periodi-
cally under new guises. In a recent manifestation, it was foundational to the
orthodoxy of the revolution in military affairs in the 1990s.
This orthodoxy possessed an unreal quality because it promised certain
and easy victories by ignoring the physicality of war and wars tenden-
cies to violence and destruction (p. 219). Freedmans critique supports
Williamson Murray and Macgregor Knoxs observation that strategic-bomb-
ing dogma reduces strategy to mere targeting based on the belief that a
generic technological superiority rather than any searching ongoing reas-
sessment of strategic, operational, and conceptual possibilities is the key
to the future.11 Murray and Knox warn that so-called revolutions in military
affairs should not be regarded as a substitute for strategy. Today the latest
version of strategic-bombing theory threatens to undermine defence strat-
egy with renewed promises that technology will, in the next war, permit
advanced Western militaries to operate at stand-off range and escape the
complications associated with the realities of politics, geography and the
human dimension. Freedmans analysis reveals that neglecting continuities
in war could turn the well-meaning attempt to create an offset strategy
The Uncertainties of Strategy | 205

into an anti-strategy that drives the development of unbalanced forces and


flawed military doctrine.
Freedman acknowledges that technological advantages are important,
but points out that creative enemies can fashion strategies to avoid those
advantages. In his section on asymmetric warfare, he identifies measures

that the weak could adopt against the strong: concentrating on imposing
pain rather than winning battles, gaining time rather than moving to
closure, targeting the enemys domestic political base as much as his
forward military capabilities, and relying on an unwillingness to accept
extreme pain and a weaker stake in the resolution of the conflict. In short,
whereas stronger military powers had a natural preference for decisive
battlefield victories, the weaker were more ready to draw the civilian
sphere into the conflict while avoiding open battle (p. 220).

While Western governments seem keen to avoid repeating recent (and


ongoing) experiences with protracted counter-insurgency and counter-
terrorism campaigns, Freedmans analysis raises the prospect that
advanced military technologies may drive future enemies off conventional
battlegrounds and make those kinds of campaigns more likely.
Strategy must account for technology, and since the 1950s Western
defence strategists have had to accommodate nuclear weapons and address
the danger of unthinkable destruction.Yet, while acknowledging the con-
tributions of scientific method, quantitative analysis and economics to
defence strategy in the nuclear era, Freedman highlights the limitations of
rational-choice theory and game theory as applied to war. In this sense he
concurs with Colin Grays description of rational-choice theory as armchair
strategy based in the unrealistic belief in a value-free, universally rational,
strategic theory.12 In Part Five, Theories of Strategy, Freedman provides a
useful summary of rational-choice and behaviouralist theories as well as a
critical view of the rise of quantitative political science in the latter half of
the twentieth century.
In Part Four, readers may find useful, according to their particular inter-
ests, Freedmans survey of business-management theory and his argument
206 | H.R. McMaster

that early management theory reflected contemporary social theory, evolving


from autocracy to paternalism to, in the period of the Industrial Revolution,
intellectual constructs that had to account for broader social and economic
change. He charts the beginning of business strategy in the early twentieth
century, tracing the rise and fall of theories that touted centralized control,
quantification, and rational analysis (p. 504). It was during the latter half of
the twentieth century, Freedman observes, that business began to look at
military history for models of success. He asks whether the two activities
were sufficiently similar for military strategy to work in a business context
(p. 511). He argues the affirmative case due to the requirement, in business
as in war, to manage the complex interaction of internal organisation with
a competitive external environment. A chapter on economics addresses the
latter, and a chapter on sociology addresses the former. Many of the theories
categorised by Freedman as strategy from above possess useful insights
that apply to political and military strategy, such as the need to foster learn-
ing organisations that can adapt under conditions of uncertainty, the need
to ground strategy in a fundamental understanding of complex situations
and the need to establish clear objectives.

* * *

Strategy: A History might be considered as a book to be used rather than


a book to be read through. It will help those who spend time with it to
mature their own theories of strategy while reflecting on its historical
realities. The books broad scope is conducive to the study of strategy in
the way that Michael Howard recommended studying history: in width,
depth and context. It might be read alongside Howard, Strachan, Heuser,
Murray and Knox, and Gray. Although the reward for the time invested
may not be immediately apparent, to paraphrase Clausewitz on military
theory, Freedman likely meant his latest work to educate and help guide
the reader in self-education, not necessarily to accompany him or her to
the Pentagon, Whitehall or the corporate boardroom. After full considera-
tion of strategy and what it takes to become a successful strategist, some
may judge it an impossible art. But the stakes are indeed high for those
The Uncertainties of Strategy | 207

charged with charting the course of war or developing defence strategies


to shape security environments, prevent conflict and, when necessary,
respond to threats to national and international security. Engaging the
subject and engaging Strategy: A History takes considerable effort. That
effort, however, is worthwhile.

Notes
1 Hew Strachan, The Direction of War: Press, 2014), p. 191.
Contemporary Strategy in Historical 7 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited
Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge and translated by Michael Howard and
University Press, 2013), p. 28. See also Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Hew Strachan, The Lost Meaning University Press, 1976), p. 89.
of Strategy, Survival, vol. 47, no. 3, 8 Christopher Coker, The Warrior Ethos:
Autumn 2005. Military Culture and the War on Terror
2 Henry Kissinger, World Order: (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p. 15.
Reflections on the Character of Nations 9 Richard K. Betts, Is Strategy an
and the Course of History (London: Illusion?, International Security, vol.
Penguin, 2014). 25, no. 2, Fall 2000, p. 5.
3 Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of 10 Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality
Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British
to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge and American Ideas about Strategic
University Press, 2010), p. 17. Bombing, 19141945 (Princeton, NJ:
4 Tami Davis Biddle, Strategy and Princeton University Press, 2002).
Grand Strategy: What the National 11 Williamson Murray and Macgregor
Security Professional Must Know, Knox (eds), The Dynamics of Military
unpublished paper. Revolution, 1300-2050 (Cambridge:
5 Hew Strachan, Strategy and the Cambridge University Press, 2001),
Limitation of War, Survival, vol. 50, p. 192.
no.1, FebruaryMarch 2008, p. 50. 12 Colin S. Gray, The Strategy Bridge:
6 Colin S. Gray, Strategy and Defense Theory for Practice (Oxford: Oxford
Planning (Oxford: Oxford University University Press, 2010), p. 58.
208 | H.R. McMaster

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