Military Review English Edition July-August 2014 | Page 59

STRATEGIC SUCCESS

What is the Solution?
The Army must learn how to adopt genuine
strategic thought. It will need to figure out how to
apply strategic thinking in institutional and operational settings and at different echelons. It will need to
determine ways to use strategic thinking to enhance
time-constrained decision making during operations as
well as to develop strategic policy guidance as part of
the professional requirement to give advice to civilian
leaders. Army senior leaders will apply strategic thinking differently than mid-level commanders, staffs, or
soldiers on the ground.
The Army already has a good start on some initiatives that will improve its ability to use qualitative
analysis. One example is improving cultural awareness through regionally aligned forces. The Army can
further improve its use of qualitative analysis in three
broad ways:

•

Encouraging deep familiarity with the social science
theories and debates that drive policy making by sending
more officers to top-rated university doctoral programs,
Increasing the emphasis on teaching the Army design methodology in professional military education, and
Encouraging questioning during educational
experiences and during staff planning.
The future is filled with complex political-military
conflicts. Only an Army culture steeped in the ethos of
strategic thinking and the qualitative approach that
supports it will succeed in connecting military victory
to long-term strategic success. This was the tradition of
the Army at its finest, under Washington, Grant,
Marshall, and Eisenhower—who were among the finest
strategic and qualitative thinkers of their time. The
conflicts of the 21st century will demand the same of
today’s Army. There is no reason that challe nge cannot
be met and every reason it must be.

•
•

NOTES
1. The phrase “political, economic, psychological, and military
forces” comes from a definition of strategy that appeared in the
1964 edition of the Dictionary of United States Military Terms for
Joint Usage, as quoted in Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic
of War and Peace (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1987).
2. Thanks to my student Eric Fowler for inspiring these examples. See Eric Fowler, 2012. Will-to-Fight: Japan’s Imperial Institution and the U.S. Strategy at the End of World War II. Monograph
for the School of Advanced Military Studies, Fort Leavenworth, KS.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a566721.pdf.
3. Merriam-Webster.com, s.v. “context,” accessed 23 June 2013,
http://www.merriam-webster.com/.
4. Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges, Narratives in Social Science
Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004).
5. Martin E. Dempsey, 2012. Gen. Martin E. Dempsey
Speaks at Duke University. Lecture, Ambassador S. Davis Phillips Family International Lecture Series, Durham,
NC, 12 January, http://www.dvidshub.net/video/134841/
gen-martin-e-dempsey-speaks-duke-university.
6. Antoine Bousquet, The Scientific Way of Warfare: Order
and Chaos on the Battlefields of Modernity (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2009).
7. William DuPuy quoted in William J. Mullen and Ronnie L.

MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2014

Brownlee, Changing an Army: An Oral History of General William
DePuy, USA Retired (Carlisle, PA: Army Military History Institute,
1986), 183.
8. For an overview of the “revolution in military affairs” debate,
see Tim Benbow, The Magic Bullet?: Understanding the Revolution
in Military Affairs (London: Brassey’s, 2004).
9. Steven Weinberg, “What Science Can Explain,” New York
Review Books, 20 September 2001, http://www.nybooks.com/
articles/archives/2001/sep/20/what-science-can-explain/.
10. Leslie P. Hartley, The Go-Between (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953).
11. Rick “Ozzie” Nelson, Nathan Freier, and Maren Leed,
“Iraq Versus Afghanistan: A Surge is Not a Surge is Not a Surge,”
the Center for Strategic and International Studies website, blog
entry posted on (23 October 2009), http://csis.org/publication/
iraq-versus-afghanistan-surge-not-surge-not-surge.
12. Merriam-Webster.com, s.v. “strategy,” accessed 23 June
2013, http://www.merriam-webster.com/.
13. Bent Flyvbjerg, “Social Science That Matters,” Foresight
Europe, no. 2 (October 2005-March 2006): 38.
14. Everett C. Dolman, Pure Strategy: Power and Principle in the
Space and Information Age (New York: Frank Cass, 2005).
15. Deborah A. Stone, “Causal Stories and the Formation of
Policy Agendas,” Political Science Quarterly, 104(2)(1989): 281-300.

57