Military Review English Edition January-February 2017 | Page 32
do not see value in such hypothetical planning and resist
military efforts to prod them in that direction.
Consequently, because of the disparity in capacity and culture between the military and other
nonmilitary agencies that would have to be involved
to achieve long-term political objectives associated
with a potential conflict, the military deliberate war
planning community finds itself operating in a vacuum. Thus, when left alone, interagency bureaucratic
politics degrade the dimension of value-added deliberate war planning. This is reflected adversely in the
emergence of a dysfunctional bias toward the use of
military force in planning for situations where other
value-added tools might generate better outcomes.
Furthermore, the formidable expertise that resides in
the intelligence community to guide planning is often
left largely untapped.
Individual planners’ initiative and major interagency organizational reform might help on the margins to
resolve such friction, but attempts to achieve improvement through organizational reform have been
mixed or even counterproductive. Therefore, what is
important here is to understand and acknowledge the
inescapable effect of interagency bureaucratic politics
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President Barack Obama meets with combatant commanders and
other military leadership 12 November 2013 in the White House
Cabinet Room. (Photo by Pete Souza, White House)
and use that understanding to design a more effective
theoretical framework to mitigate the most adverse
political tendencies of the process.
Deliberate war planning is a mechanism that offers
great promise to connect individuals across stovepiped organizations into a multifunctional community of practice. The challenge becomes one of promoting a broad understanding of the magnitude of these
intangible benefits and utilities among those involved
in planning. Positing such a framework to overcome
this challenge will be a contribution of this article.
With such an understanding, deliberate war planning
can be carried out in a manner that increases its value
to the national security community.
Civil–Military Relationship Tensions
Civil–military relations are another source of tension
that influences the strategic value offered by deliberate
war planning. The relational dynamics between the
officials in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and
January-February 2017 MILITARY REVIEW