Military Review English Edition July-August 2014 | Page 57
STRATEGIC SUCCESS
or the rank order of values and interests changes,
the strategic proposition itself changes. Victory is a
changeling mirroring the shifts in values and interests
of those who have the power to define it.
Moreover, because the nature of strategic thought
requires thinking about systemic (interrelated) conditions over time, quantitative measures are of limited
use. Most important, strategic thinking is less a discrete
activity than a habit. Developing the habit of thinking
strategically after assimilating a professional culture
focused on quantitative measures of tactical proficiency
is extraordinarily difficult.
This is not to say that quantitative measurement
does not have its place in military science. There are
good reasons quantitative measures are preferred in
the military. Skills such as hitting a target with a bullet
decisively and repeatedly are properly assessed with
quantitative measures. As soldiers advance in their
Army careers, the dominant evaluation method they
are exposed to is quantitative. The issue for leaders and
planners is knowing which approaches to evaluation
suit each situation. Each approach represents a different way of knowing about the world; neither is perfect
or foolproof. The quantitative approach supports strategic thought but is not sufficient to ignite or sustain it.
When making decisions, commanders frame
questions as problems to be solved. This is the language
of quantitative algebra. Let us suppose that to counter
a certain threat, U.S. forces were considering invading Country Y. Strategic thinking would ask about
metaproblems, such as—
What would an invasion gain for us?
How long would this gain last?
Would it be worth the cost to invade Country Y?
Is there a better alternative such as bombing or
letting a partner take action?
What might be the unintended consequences of
invading?
What would happen after the invasion?
How would invading qualitatively change our
situation?
Quantitative analysis can inform this decision-making process, but quantitative analysis still
depends on making subjective judgments about what
constitutes success. Every measure of effectiveness
requires a standard to be established against which actions will be measured. Do you measure if a military
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MILITARY REVIEW July-August 2014
action is worth the cost in terms of causalities, money,
or both? Does worth the cost mean achieving territorial
or political gains? Could the action in question simply
be a moral imperative and thus be outside the standard cost-benefit discourse? That is, even when strategists use quantitative methods, they must be aware
that they reflect a value judgment from a subjective
perspective—that of their bosses, themselves, the enemy command, the enemy population, and so on. In
military planning, even the standards used in quantitative analysis need to be framed from the perspective
of the key actors in the conflict.
What is the Context?
Every measure, quantitative or qualitative, should
be interpreted in context. By their nature, qualitative
measurements presuppose the kind of theoretical
frameworks essential for strategic thought (a theory
must exist to justify the measure). Though qualitative
methods certainly can be used to generate quantitative-looking measures of effectiveness, categorizing
focus-group information into numerical scores, for
instance, would require an explicit causal framework
as a basis for the categorization. Since there would be
many different contexts for causal frameworks—national culture, the professional cultures of the military services or the government, or the view from
partner nations—no single result would be definitive.
Moreover, time as a variable would complicate the
articulation of context. Thinking in terms of the
interrelated nature of variables across time is thinking
about context.
One of the biggest challenges to implementing
the strategic landpower concept will be embracing
qualitative analysis. The culture of the U.S. Army
still tends to discount its value. Army commanders’
institutional norms enable a can do attitude based on
an institution-wide overconfidence in the ability of
analytical methods to provide understanding of cause
and effect. However, the idea that the quantitative
scientific methods with which Army professionals are
comfortable will be adequate for strategic landpower
undermines real strategic thought by upholding the
false objectivity of quantitative measures.
Operations are, and always have been, too complex to reduce to supposed scientific analyses. Even if
politics and warfare were hard sciences, the reliable
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