DRAFTING STRATEGY

‘War is too important to be left to the generals’

- Georges Clemenceau[1]

1. The quote above was made during World War-I but has been ingrained into the discourse of civil-military relations both in war and peace. Each side of this argument over the last 100 years has calcified and the twain is most unlikely to meet. While it’s not right to comment upon the machinations on the other side of the bridge, it may be worth the while to introspect as to what ails the military domain. Indian military thinkers are breaking free from the shackles of counter insurgency and counter terrorist operations which had occupied the mind space for last forty years. Actions along LAC and recalibration of the putative adversary has forced Indian Armed Forces to think of conventional conflict and the ongoing Russo-Ukraine conflict has further accentuated the need to think differently. While the nature of war has not changed but character of war has metamorphosed while Indian Armed Forces were kept engaged in sub-conventional war by the Western Adversary.

2. Catalysts for the inquiries on strategic thinkers within Indian Armed Forces and how to make them can be made from hindsight of errors of strategy and campaigning by USA in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as Russia in Ukraine. Challenge for military leaders is to reconcile strategy with the policy goals set out for the military instrument of CNP. Cold Start Strategy or its offspring Proactive Strategy were ever a war-fighting strategy or a strategy of deterrence; the jury is out. One observation that emerged from recent conflicts is that a singular focus on tactics may get you success in engagements and battles but not in war. Conflict termination, on the other hand, highlighted the broader role of the military instrument of national power at the strategic level, where success in combat operations is only a transition to establishing a more stable set of conditions after combat nominally ends.

3. Strategy formulators are trained, educated and experienced in the competencies of thinking; visualizing and acting at the strategic level are an important part of the formulation of military strategy in both operational and institutional settings. Military strategists provide a capability that officers who trained in tactical methods, operated in tactical domain and succeeded in it while conducting counter terrorist operations alone cannot provide. The requirement is to formally designated officers by career field for such duties. Future commanders will need development as strategists. Strategic Art: The New Discipline for 21st Century Leaders is a monograph authored by Lt Gen Richard A. Chilcoat in 1995.[2] The article is most likely penned in aftermath of Op DESERT STORM as the author has lamented that a nation cannot afford discord in various vectors of CNP leading to barriers and dissonance in thought and actions by each stake holder. He coined the word ‘strategic art’; ‘the skillful formulation, coordination and application of ends, ways and means to promote and defend national interests.’[3]

4. Strategic genius of yesteryears like Gen Eisenhower or for that matter even Field Marshall Manekshaw would have struggled in their individual capacity to grapple with all vectors of national power in a diffused and expanded battle space where the distinction between combatant and non-combatant is so blurred that to identify Centre of Gravity (CoG) would be a chimera. Military leaders in the strategic domain need to develop a pragmatic understanding of complex interagency structures of national security is mandatory for leaders today which would need both effort and time which in the present system of career progression is not possible. Understanding nuances of how to build organizational trust and development of strategies bereft of political isolationism, military protectionism and false emotional baggage is key to success in future engagements along the C-5 continuum. Gen John Galvin another US infantry general officer in his article, “What’s the matter with being a strategist”[4] defines a military strategist as an “an individual uniquely qualified by aptitude, experience, and education in the formulation and articulation of military strategy (making strategy and articulating strategy are equally important). He understands our national strategy and the international environment, and he appreciates the constraints on the use of force and the limits on national resources committed to defense. He also knows the processes by which the United States and its allies and potential adversaries formulate their strategies.” Combat operations since 1999 Op VIJAY offer examples of shortfalls in policy, strategy and operational art, one of the most disastrous was related to use of aerial vector or delay in use of it. In the absence of a central agency to control air and land operations Corps HQ responsibilities spanned theater strategy, operational art and tactics. Instead of the bevy of talent that had been provided for its previous higher headquarters at Northern Command, the Corps HQ was heavily under-resourced with structure and personnel. In absence of Theatre Commands, we are bound to make the same mistakes again in future too. While some of the blame may be apportioned to drastic failures of policy, a cultural bias on tactical operations within the armed forces delayed the adaptation to the circumstances that occurred then.

5. A RAND Corporation study, led by Linda Robinson, identified a number of lessons that explicitly highlighted general shortcomings in strategic art during Op IRAQI FREEDOM which offer us insights as well; not the least of which was that the failures of understanding and applying strategic art occurred across the entire U.S. government. Ends, ways and means did not align, and in the study’s words, “the strategies typically failed to envision a war-ending approach and did not achieve declared objectives in a definitive or lasting manner.”[5] Another one of its observations was that there was no established civilian-military process that would rigorously identify assumptions, risks, possible outcomes and second order effects. In essence, a rigorous method for strategic planning was lacking. Another observation specifically highlighted a failure to think in terms of the political aspects of a conflict, and desired outcomes of a conflict that are inherently political in nature. Errors of strategy are not limited solely to operational settings. The inappropriate application of tactics to strategic problems also occurred within institutional settings. Officers with responsibilities for Defense Acquisitions, Human Resource Planning and Budgeting make decisions uninformed by any appreciation by strategy and based primarily on short-term tenure based, tactically parochial or solely fiscal considerations. Creation of IBGs is caught in Red Tape and effective responses delayed.

6. A military strategist has obligations reaching both higher and lower, neither of which can be performed in isolation from each other. First, a military strategist must be able to interpret policy into strategy; the domain of strategic art, which imparts rigor to policy.[6] Tacticians can artificially separate themselves from policy considerations; military strategists cannot. Second, a military strategist must turn that strategy into purposeful action into the domain of operational art, which bridges strategy and tactics. Those who only deal with policy do not directly face that challenge; military strategists ignore that challenge at their peril. Expressed another way, the conduct of competent operational art requires understanding strategy for its rationale. The informed conduct of strategic art requires knowing the tactical implications of that strategy to properly balance ends, ways, means, and risk. That relationship can be described as three general competencies of a military strategist:

(a) Provide military advice to policymakers to inform their understanding of the military instrument of national power and its relationship to policy goals and other instruments of national power[7].

(b) Formulate strategy, through the practice of strategic art, informed by policy guidance and assessment of strategic ends.

© Implement strategy through campaign planning to guide tactical action in the pursuit of strategic ends.

7. It is critical to distinguish between training and education, a distinction that certainly receives little attention in Indian Armed Forces. Training emphasizes the employment of established procedures and skills that are applied against circumstances that are usually known. Not surprisingly, training is seen to have immediate utility and is easy to justify, especially when resources are constrained. In contrast, education emphasizes the application of intellectual and cognitive skills to address circumstances that training cannot. In contrast to training, education often appears to have little direct relevance to immediate demands and is sometimes seen as an ornament. In general, tactical operations can succeed with training while the demand of strategy rests heavily on education to address the unknown.

8. Development of a military strategist normally rests upon three foundations: civilian education, professional military education and relevant experience.[8] The three complement each other in providing the intellectual and experiential basis for greater facility with military strategy. Civilian education is foundational knowledge for a military strategist. It provides the intellectual basis to address the unknowns that training, doctrine or experience cannot answer. Professional military education contextualizes civilian education in a common framework for application. Finally, relevant experience is the crucible for a military strategist’s application of civilian education and professional military education. It is where the theory and practice come together in the application of military strategy. Without the foundations provided in civilian education and professional military education, relevant experience is brittle, with little utility outside its immediate circumstances. It is for that reason that experience exclusively at the tactical level is not always relevant, and may even be counterproductive in the conduct of policy, strategy or operational art.

9. Despite the constant metastasis of security challenges Indian Armed Forces, preparation of military strategists has remained elusive. There is a need to groom officers trained and educated in strategic art who will become the ones charged with making decisions that reach into future decades. The identification of military strategists by milestone offers two benefits, one inward, one outward. Internally, this framework can guide the individual career development of those officers who will be responsible for the planning and conduct of policy formulation, strategy development, or campaign planning, whether they occur in an institutional or operational setting. Looking outwardly, that framework can provide a resource to enable the employment of the military instrument of national power in a manner that is strategically effective. Ultimately, building true military strategists cannot occur overnight, and certainly not through the hasty application of tactical reasoning by analogy. While the skillful practice of policy guidance, strategic art, and operational art is no guarantee of strategic success, the absence of such competent practice virtually guarantees that the military instrument of national power will not best serve its nation’s interests and will not be heard in the correct perspective on the high table of decision making.

[1] https://allauthor.com/quotes/245540/ accessed on 09 Apr 23.

[2]https://press.armywarcollege.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1227&context=monographs accessed on 08 Apr 23.

[3] Ibid, pg-4

[4] https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA528295.pdf accessed on 09 Apr 23.

[5] Robinson, Linda, Paul D. Miller, John Gordon IV, Jeffrey Decker, Michael Schwille, and Raphael S. Cohen, Improving Strategic Competence: Lessons from 13 Years of War. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2014. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR816.html accessed on 09 Apr 23.

[6] Lt. Gen. Richard A. Chilcoat, Strategic Art: The New Discipline for 21st Century Leaders (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 1995), pg 1–6.

[7] Galvin’s description: “The strategist in uniform provides advice to political authorities in the development of national policy (what is to be achieved) and national strategy (how to achieve it). He has a role in forming national strategy and policy by explaining military capabilities, the limits of armed force, and how military power can be used as an element of national power. He conveys to his political leaders his sensing of what is achievable and what is not achievable by military means.” https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA528295.pdf accessed on 09 Apr 23. Pg 4.

[8] https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/a-framework-for-developing-military-strategists/ accessed on 03 Apr 23.