,
26 tweets,
4 min read
Read on Twitter
It's been interesting to process the outcry over this tweet, and especially the phrase "open-ended, affordable strategy for not losing." People are losing their minds. But this is, I think, the crux of the matter. A thread. 1/24
Strategy, as I'm coming to understand and teach it, is about making a whole series of choices about your goals, priorities, resources, and risk-tolerance. Sometimes these choices will be less-than-optimal. 2/24
You have to consider the consequences of any choice you make - and you have to deal with the consequences of past choices, which you can no longer change. In Afghanistan, as Haass writes, neither winning, nor negotiating, nor leaving seem like real or good options. 3/24
There's been a lot of consternation at the prospect of designing a strategy for the explicit goal of "not-losing. But perhaps this is precisely what is required. Maybe the goal can only be as ambitious as "make it suck just a little less tomorrow than it does today. 4/24
And damn, that's unsatisfying. 5/24
I keep returning to @emile_simpson's definition of "strategy" in War From the Ground Up - (I'm paraphrasing, I think) - that strategy is the dialogue between the desirable and the possible. Think about that. 6/24
What the US *wants* may not be possible at a price it's willing to pay. What the US is willing to pay (in time, blood, treasure) depends, in part, on what it wants. 7/24
Add on top of this complexity the problem of even defining what "winning" (much less "victory") in Afghanistan might look like. . .and you've got a mess. 8/24
So strategy is where you deal with the mess. All of our insistence on talking about and defining strategy in terms of "endstates" and "ends" and "objectives" has, I think, blinded us to the fact that strategy is iterative and ongoing. It doesn't end. 9/24
Wars, on the other hand, do end. (Fred Ikle's brilliant book Every War Must End should find its way onto every strategist's bookshelf. Marie Kondo and her 30-book-rule be damned. It's a little tiny tome.) 10/24
But strategy and war are not synonymous. Nor are "war" and "the use of military force." An "open-ended, affordable strategy for not-losing in Afghanistan" may involve the use of military force, but it shouldn't be just that. And the military may do a host of missions. 11/24
(So there's one more reason that all of the talk about increasing "lethality" being the primary goal of the military concerns me. Militaries (and military personnel) do lots of things that aren't killing. But that's probably another thread.) 12/24
When we think about "war" and "endstates" and "victory" "enemies" and "winning," we rely on language that is linear and absolute. It turns big, conventional wars into the ideal type. 13/24
And it suggests that if we aren't "winning" - that perhaps we don't care enough, that we don't value the lives of military servicemembers, that the nation is confused, or that the US suffers from a great strategic deficiency, or that it's distracted and stretched too thin. 14/24
If we use medical or biological metaphors, wars that have clear endstates and objective and which produce victories might be thought of as the eradication of a disease. Killing off a virus. Developing immunity. War is acute. Its onset is sudden and its consequences severe. 15/24
You treat the problem swiftly and with everything you've got. 16/24
But what if we switch the metaphor, and think instead about *chronic* illness? 17/24
Chronic illnesses develop over time. Of course, chronic conditions may cause acute conditions, and you'd respond appropriately. But chronic conditions - asthma, diabetes, osteoporosis, even AIDS now - are *managed,* not vanquished (although we continue to research a cure). 18/24
Would you prefer NOT to have the chronic condition? Sure. Do you ignore it and hope it goes away? Well, you probably shouldn't. Do you imagine "winning" and risk your health in other areas with drastic and untested treatments? I hope not. 19/24
Instead, you continue to treat it in consultation with medical professionals. You ratchet up treatments when symptoms flare. You back off when things are in remission. You keep an eye on it. You maintain a testing regime. You stay abreast of changes and new research. 20/24
But you might never win. You might never feel 100%. It may be extraordinarily costly and time consuming and depressing. It may prevent you from doing other things you'd rather be doing. Such is the nature of the beast. 21/24
(Of note: there's some interesting work about how military and combat metaphors have seeped into (especially Western) thinking and language about medicine. The docs and medical professionals find some danger there, too.) 22/24
And so, in Afghanistan (in Syria, in Iraq) - perhaps the best we're going to do (for now) is not lose. Perhaps the best we can do is to manage costs and risk. We can think wisely about the resources we have (military and not) and how to use them to achieve effects. 23/24
And if we do it well (strategizing, that is), we may just be able to live with the world we've helped to create for a while. Fin.
Addendum: if I've messed up the medical analogizing here, please forgive me (then help me fix it. . .) I'm not that kind of doctor.
Addendum 2 (afternoon edition): There's also a chance that this (Afghanistan) is a terminal illness--maybe another metaphor to explore later.
