The challenges of the future will include feeding the hungry, maintaining law and order, and building basic services. Radically different strategies will be required if the armed forces are to be successful in responding to these missions.
At the 1994 Naval Institute and Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association conference, Admiral David Jeremiah, then-Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called on U.S. military strategists to do some original thinking for the post-Cold War world. He stated.
In a perfect world, the strategist lays down the way the world should be . . . the policy that guides the movement of nations. From that policy flows the requirements, the doctrine, the technology, the resources, and the tactics for deployment and employment of forces. . . . But after 38 years in the Navy, many of them in Washington, 1 believe that in reality ... it goes the other way. . . . technology drives doctrine and tactics and, to a major degree, drives strategy.1
Whether strategy drives technology and procurement or available technology drives strategy probably is the most fundamental question in national security. In a time when joint and combined warfare have become a requirement, the question has become even more compelling, because today’s strategies and technology are crossing previously immutable boundaries.
Admiral Jeremiah further observed that “we have grown a little lazy over the last 40 years because we haven’t had to do very much original thinking. The technologist provided the tools that changed the nature of war, and perhaps the nature of deterrence and the nature of peace.”2 If the admiral is correct and we are in a strategy malaise, ill-equipped to handle the demands of future conflicts and nontraditional roles, what challenges now face joint planners? The Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act mandated specific actions by the Department of Defense to enhance joint interoperability. Clearly, the improved warfighting capabilities and economic benefits of cooperation are persuasive, but perhaps our herculean efforts to achieve jointness limit our joint strategists, who are too accustomed to technology-driven doctrine systems to clearly view the world of tomorrow.
To achieve the cooperation, interoperability, and integration mandated by Goldwater-Nichols, the services had to review their various doctrines, weapon systems, training, and command-and-control capabilities. The weakness of this approach is that it forced the separate services to concentrate their efforts by integrating their current systems. A start-from-scratch approach was not only unaffordable but also unthinkable while we still faced the Soviet bear. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this approach proved to be an Achilles’ heel for strategic planners. Faced with a known foe, pushed by technological change, strategic planners continued to plan for familiar contingencies while striving to go joint.
Joint warfighting is not a bad thing. Operation Desert Storm is a shining example of joint doctrine put into practice. The operation in Panama, however, does not stack up as well in terms of protecting national interests in a joint manner. There has been much debate about the effectiveness of that operation, but there is considerable evidence that pursuing that objective through joint planning and execution had little value.
If the nature of future conflict has changed, and Somalia and Bosnia are the harbingers of challenges to come for U.S. military forces, what role will joint strategic planning play?
Strategic planning is not the same as strategic thinking. Henry Minteberg carefully draws the distinction:
Planning has always been about analysis—about breaking down a goal or set of intentions into steps, formalizing those steps so that they can be implemented almost automatically and articulating the anticipated consequences or results of each step. Strategic thinking, in contrast, is about synthesis. It involves intuition and creativity. The outcome of strategic thinking is an integrated perspective of the enterprise. . . . Such strategies often cannot be developed on schedule or immaculately conceived.3
The business world is replete with examples in which strategic thinking rescued a corporation from the almost certain disaster that mere long-range planning or forecasting failed to anticipate. One of the more well-known examples is Royal Dutch Shell Corporation, which was unique among major oil companies in predicting and reacting to the 1973 oil crisis and subsequent industry aftershocks. Prior to the crisis. Shell had gamed a number of possible scenarios and responses—including one similar to what actually transpired (a cartel controlling production and driving up prices). Other oil companies had never considered that scenario in their planning and thus were not agile enough to adapt. As a result, Shell moved from being the smallest of the major oil companies to the dominant position in the industry by the mid-1980s.
If Admiral Jeremiah’s observation that joint planners “are too busy fighting current world issues, and are only able to plan in the short run or react to the crisis du jour” is correct, then opportunities to think strategically are minimal.4 Such a situation, within a paradigm that stresses jointness, appears to guarantee a bitter brew in the days ahead.
The solution to the problem of planning effectively for an uncertain future may lie in reorienting joint planners’ priorities. Instead of planning jointly while simultaneously trying to play catch-up with joint doctrine, planners must begin to think strategically. Strategic thinking, in turn, may open up new approaches.
Within the Joint Staff, the strategic planning directorate has made great headway in institutionalizing joint strategic planning; however, the framework of joint cooperation may not be the most fertile ground for strategic thinking. In fact, fully institutionalized strategic thinking may not be attainable within the Joint Staff without a fundamental change in organization.
For the challenges of the future, conflict resolution will include feeding the hungry, maintaining law and order, and building basic services, in addition to command-and-control, logistics, and combined-arms responsibilities. Radically different strategies will be required if successful responses are to be made to future Somalias or Bosnias. To form these strategies will require more than joint planning and forecasting. Intuition, innovation, creativity, and risk taking also may be needed to plan and execute military intervention effectively. We must be willing to change the way we think about the problem.
If joint planners are too burdened to respond to the challenge of incorporating strategic thinking without neglecting our day-to-day warfighting responsibilities, then we must employ and empower strategic thinkers with access to the highest levels of the Joint Staff. Those who view the future with genuine strategic vision—and who are unencumbered by the need to monitor and control day-to- day events—should develop the strategic scenarios that guide our use of joint resources.
How will we develop such visionary strategic thinking? The two most important ingredients are intellectual resources and opportunity. Currently, all the services have in place excellent procedures to send their best and brightest performers to a wide variety of programs designed to challenge and develop intellectual discipline, curiosity, and creativity. Too often, however, upon completion of service colleges, fellowships, and executive training programs, these officers—who are intellectually primed to question conventional thinking and view the world with candor—are transferred to operational or joint assignments, where they typically are assigned to carry out routine tasks.
In part, this situation is driven by highly compressed, highly competitive military careers, and it may squander some of the services’ most valuable resources—their best creative thinkers. The intellectual capacity groomed by the services will provide strategic results only if we bring about synergy of thought and experience. There are many standing study groups and think tanks that advise the Joint Staff, but their information frequently is filtered and often is considered arcane or not relevant for day-to-day strategic planning.
Clearly, strategic thinking and planning need to be separate evolutions within the Joint Staff, if there is to be a real opportunity to capitalize on our intellectual resources. A permanent or at least long-term group of talented officers must be committed to this task on a full-time basis. Strategic thinking is more than a philosophical concept; it is the link to strategic planning for the challenges of an uncertain future.
1 Adm. David Jeremiah, USN, Inside the Navy, vol. 8, no. 3 (17 January 1994).
2 Ibid.
3 Henry Minteberg, “The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning.” Harvard Business Review. January-February 1994. p. 108.
4 Jeremiah. Inside the Navy.
Captain Galdorisi is Chief of Staff for Cruiser Destroyer Group Three, embarked in the Carl Vinson (CVN-70). He has commanded LAMPS Mk III squadrons HSL-41 and HSL-43, the Cleveland (LPD-7), and Amphibious Squadron Seven.
Captain Curtis is Chief Operating Officer for Primary Provider Management Company in San Diego. Prior to his retirement in September 1995. he commanded HS-2 and Weapons Training Group, San Diego.