Strategic Studies and Public Policy

The American Experience

Colin S. Gray

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813181981
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Controllo degli armamenti

Strategic studies as a field of civilian scholarship has developed along distinctive lines in the United States since World War II. The rapid proliferation and increasing sophistication of weapons technology have required constant revision of strategic theory, while the shifting political climate, both internationally and in the United States, has had an equally powerful impact.

One of the field's leading theorists now examines the history and development of American strategic studies, the varied roles assumed by civilian strategists, and their relationship with those charged with developing and carrying out American military and diplomatic policy. This provocative book clearly demonstrates the importance of a sound strategic theory if America is to survive in an age of high arms technology and increased world tensions.

INTRODUCTION

1

Catalysts of Inquiry

The problems of the 1980s speak eloquently to the relevance of strategic studies. Fundamental questions of strategic theory and strategic policy remain to be resolved by Western defense communities. Strategic problems comprise a moving target and require a constant renewal of intellectual attention. The content and character of the field are specific as to time and place, but the need for the study of strategy is implicit in the very nature of international life.

This book endeavors to “tell the story” of the American experience with strategic studies since 1945. Although I have strong opinions on particular contemporary policy questions, such advocacy as there may be in this book is strictly secondary to the book’s major purposes—to record and interpret the evolution of the field of strategic studies in its relation to public policy, and to provide some understanding of the degree to which strategists may legitimately be held accountable for the actions and inactions of states.

The strategic studies profession in the United States is an integral part of general intellectual history. The genesis and evolution of a civilian strategic studies profession was a particularly, indeed virtually uniquely, American response to the demands of nuclear-age international politics. After 1945, for the first time in its history, the United States was obliged to think long and hard in peacetime about strategy—that is to say, about the relationship between military power and political purpose. The United States is the only country that has come to enjoy the benefits, for good or ill, of a sizable extra-official community of strategic theorists and genuinely expert defense policy commentators. The explanation is not difficult to find. Only in the United States, with its firm tradition of open government, have officials been willing to share their secrets with “outsiders.” Furthermore, only in the United States is it possible for individuals, with relative ease, to have “mixed careers” involving occasional periods of official service, university teaching (or affiliation, at least), “think tank” research, private consulting, and possibly employment in defense industry. This freedom of individual career movement, with expertise quite well dispersed, has made for a richness of community embracing a diverse set of complementary institutions which does not exist elsewhere.

In attempting to assess the achievements of strategic studies, explicit attention must be given to the problem of values. One man’s exciting and creative study is another man’s manual for mass slaughter, or at least for living dangerously. There is an inescapable tension between the perspective of the scholar and the perspective of the policymaker. In exaggerated phrasing, one may discuss the enduring presence of two ideal types, which helpfully identify the dualism that permeates much of strategic studies. The scholar asks of his product, “Is it true?” and “Is it interesting?” The policymaker asks, “Is it useful?” Despite this in-built tension in scholar/policymaker relations, a prime thesis of this book is that many of the grounds of mutual complaint are in fact formed upon misunderstanding.

To adopt William T.R. Fox’s distinctions, strategic studies should be thought of as being “policy-relevant” rather than “policy-oriented.”¹ The former is knowledge that should prove useful to a policymaker in the diagnostic and search phases of his grappling with a policy problem, and should contribute to better comprehension of the nature of that policy problem. “Policy-oriented” study implies a framework of scholarly reference closely geared to the principal constraints as felt by responsible policymakers. The danger of the prostitution of strategic scholarship, reardless of motive, is a serious one. Contrary to the implications of many critics of academic (employed pejoratively) strategic studies, the scholarly strategist is unlikely to produce creative work of value to the community if he is not true to himself as a scholar.

Commentators reared in a culture that expects and reveres progress, and that takes the evolutionary paradigm to be a law governing intellectual as well as biological phenomena, find it all too easy to compartmentalize their historical subject matter into periods. Instead of viewing strategic ideas as a near-constant stock, some of which are dusted off and repackaged for the debate of the moment, it is fairly common to discern innovation. The view is just sustainable that there are no new ideas in strategic studies. The determined antiquarian can trace almost all of the strategic concepts in contemporary use to the practice and thought of periods long past. Similarly, even within the nuclear age, one can argue that ideas have not developed in any very meaningful sense. The fact remains that to many of the postwar students of strategy their ideas were new. Similarly, although strategic debate seems to have registered a cyclical path in the past decade and a half, many of the contemporary students of strategy are unwilling to repeat the often very relevant thoughts of their strategic forebears. In short, knowledge may to all intents and purposes be lost; it may remain largely unread on library shelves.

A subsidiary purpose of this book, implicit in the above, is to suggest the continuity of strategic and international political thought and practice across the boundaries that conventionally demarcate historical periods. Without embracing the notion that the unchanging paradigm for international politics should be a totally Gothic model of a Hobbesian world order (or disorder), the understanding of the enduring features of statecraft to be gleaned from a Thucydides is no less impressive than is the collective product of many modern scientific investigations.² This book explores the history of modern strategic studies and the character of the strategic studies profession—an exploration designed to enable consideration of the record of scholarly achievement in expanding knowledge, and the record of contribution in terms of utility to public policy. From this exploration recommendations for the future course of professional activity are derived.

All strategic scholars approach each problem in the light of their general understanding of the nature of contemporary international politics, their very personal, often extrarational, predispositions, their own past public record on related problems, their understanding of the judgment of professional peers, and their assessment of the ambiguous evidence. All strategists acquire what may be termed a strategic ideology. Whatever the issue may be, no strategist simply appraises the facts. What is important is that strategists be as explicit as possible concerning their attitudes toward their subject matter.

A number of the less restrained critics of strategic studies confuse medicine with disease. If war, the threat of war, and arms competition constitute a disease endemic in the inter-state body politic, then strategic studies is essentially prophylactic. It is commonplace to assert that students of strategy attend only to the symptoms of potentially fatal disorders, and that the net effect of their endeavors is to contribute to maintaining an international (in)security system which has built into it the risk of war and the cost of arms races. This judgment touches upon fundamental questions pertaining to proper research objectives. Suffice it to say that one must beware of the scholarly fallacy: the notion that the truth will set us free. There is no reason, for example, to presume that even were scholars able to solve the problem of war and to explain (and hence predict) which combination of variables tended to produce warlike outcomes, wars would cease to occur.³

There is no necessary relationship between good theory and good policy. Even if a theory of war causation satisfied all scholarly criteria, it could still be very difficult to demonstrate the appositeness of the theory to a group of policymakers confronting a particular problem. Also, it does not necessarily take two or more to precipitate a war. The monumental and sophisticated Study of War project led by Quincy Wright and concluded during World War II,⁴ had no impact whatever upon the propensities of states to settle their differences by armed combat.

The study of strategy should not be categorized as an idle intellectual pursuit supportable by an affluent society, as the study of Latin poetry or Byzantine mosaics may easily be defended. The study of strategy, if it is apposite to enlightened public policy need, might make the difference between wise and foolish policy decisions. There is no guarantee that strategic studies either have made or will make such a difference, but that possibility is sufficient justification for the enterprise. It can be and has been argued that the net consequences of the study of strategy may be negative for human welfare.⁵ This pessimistic thought suggests that a highly intellectualized approach to the problem of nuclear war may mislead policymakers into believing they will have more control over events than in fact is likely to be the case. A primitive and undifferentiated approach to strategy may lack subtlety, and may, perhaps usefully, serve to paralyze political will, but it may also focus the policymaker’s imagination upon the specter of nuclear war writ large and thereby incline him to pursue tactics that will minimize risk.

The individual strategist need not approve, but the world to which his analysis must apply is structured in an even more anarchic fashion than it was in immediate prenuclear days (because of the effectiveness of nationalism in the so-called Third World). Moreover, despite the obvious constraints imposed by the development and spread of nuclear weapon technology, the great powers still have no choice but to play modern variants of the balance-of-power game. For the present and the foreseeable future, students of strategy must take account of the grim characterization attributed by Thucydides to the Athenian representatives in their explanation of the immutable drives behind international behavior: “Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men leads us to conclude that it is a general necessary law of nature to rule where one can. This is not a law that we made ourselves, nor were we the first to act upon it when it was made. We found it already in existence, and we shall leave it to exist for ever among those who come after us.”⁶

Following Raymond Aron’s terminology, and in some contrast to the more crusading of the “realist” texts on international politics, the student of strategy is likely to endorse prudence as the cardinal virtue for the conduct of statecraft.⁷ One does not assume, as did Thucydides’ Athenians, that states will always do their worst, but one prepares for the possibility that they may.

TERMINOLOGY

Strategy is the art of employing or of threatening to employ force for political ends. It follows that military strategy is the art of employing, or of threatening to employ, military force for political ends. The less specific formula is to be preferred both because of the ambiguity of the term military, and because strategists concern themselves with questions which often are only tangential to the threat or use of military force. A more inclusive phrasing that may offend some is that strategy is the art of employing or of threatening to employ coercion for political ends. Coercion embraces force but admits of policy instruments that have not received extensive treatment in the literature generally regarded as strategic. What is important in a definition is that it clearly identify the core region of concern. The core concern of those who study strategy and of those who apply it is force.⁸

Those who study strategy are variously termed strategists, civilian strategists, academic strategists, defense intellectuals, strategic theorists, private nuclear strategists, or, pejoratively, new civilian militarists or neo-Clausewitzians. The term strategist has the signal virtue that it does not muddy the waters of understanding with a qualifying partial truth, but the disadvantage that commentators and practitioners are not distinguished. In mitigation, it might be observed that the bulk of the uniformed men who, in principle, devise and apply strategy are involved overwhelmingly in tactics, not in strategy.

The terms strategic theorist and strategic theory pose problems because of the many meanings that may legitimately be attached to the word theory.⁹ For the purposes of this book, I endorse a very relaxed understanding of the attributes of theoretical activity. Most of what passes for strategic theory is really better identified as a set of strategic theorems. A theorem is a proposition that is proved by means of a chain of reasoning. A theory, on the other hand, strictly understood, comprises a set of integrated explanatory statements that may be expressed in the form of hypotheses whose validity may be tested by controlled experimentation. If a theory is so treated and is found to provide a satisfactory explanation, then it ceases to be a theory. We can then speak, to use examples from this field, of the laws of arms competition or the laws of deterrence.

The term strategic theory refers merely to work which tends to be abstract, which strives for generalization, and which is speculative, in a systematic fashion. Strategic theory is divisible into four parts. First, there is empirical theory, which involves a search for regularities, or patterns, in the actual activities of political actors. Given the weakness of much of the data base (e.g., there have been no nuclear wars, and there is, as yet, only one nuclear arms race), and given the unwillingness of many strategists to contemplate seriously the possibility that the prenuclear era might yield comparable examples (thereby providing more data), it is hardly surprising that a great many of the more creative works in strategic studies have enjoyed only the most tenuous connections with empirical reality.

Second, there is normative theory. This has not been a major preoccupation in postwar strategic literature. Normative theory, in common with the other nonexclusive categories discussed here, is something of a portmanteau term. It incorporates the disciplined analysis of alternative futures to be attained within different time-frames, as well as commentaries upon the ethical dilemmas of the individual strategist and the community which he serves. Normative theory addresses questions of values. Criticism of strategic studies has been particularly virulent in the region of normative theory.

Third, strategic theory takes the form of policy science, a term understood here to refer to strategic studies consciously designed to be of service to the community in its collective necessity of framing and executing strategic policy. More and less rigorous statements of the requirements for policy science development are currently under active discussion. I am indebted to the careful though ambitious analyses of Richard Smoke and Alexander George, of Yehezkel Dror and Harold Lasswell, but I find myself closest to the largely implicit policy science formulation presented by Robert Rothstein.¹⁰ Briefly, in its relation to a client (target audience), which may comprise the public at large or particular office-holders in government, the policy science orientation requires the scholar to perform functions that the client is unlikely to be able to perform for itself. For example, the strategist as policy scientists should help to define the problem under discussion and to explain, as far as possible, the relationships between means and desired ends. As Smoke and George have argued, policy science may be value-neutral in the sense that it should be able to offer “contingent advice: if you want to accomplish x, do y in your policy.”¹¹ Similarly, without necessarily expressing a substantive policy preference himself, the policy scientist may present “contingent predictions: statements of the form means x will best serve ends y, or ‘if you do x the result will be y.’”¹² Such contingent prediction and contingent advice would rarely if ever correspond to the aspirations of Smoke and George as quoted here.

Fourth, strategic theory may appear in the form of speculative theory. Either lacking appropriate empirical data, or disinclined to gather such data, the strategic theorist will construct taxonomies, theorems, and systems of interesting generalizations that contain their own logical validation. In short, one elects either to accept particular great chains of reasoning or one does not: the reasoning may be tested for its internal but not for its external validity. Such “theory” can be neither true nor false; those terms are irrelevant. Many of the most interesting and influential landmark works in postwar strategic studies are of this character. To assess Herman Kahn’s book On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios,¹³ for example, one must ask such questions as: Is it internally consistent? Does it provide a framework for disciplined thought? Is it plausible? and so on.

Strategic studies probably has benefited from the fact that it is not conducted by specifically licensed practitioners, as is the case with medicine, law, or architecture, for example. Not merely does strategic studies lack a professional regulatory/promotional body, it also lacks specific and licensed courses of professional training. Strategic studies is viewed by those few institutions of higher education which accord it any attention as being a field of specialization within political science, economics, history, law, operations research, or systems analysis. Nevertheless, it is still meaningful to talk of a profession of strategic studies. There is a transnational community—a term which may be preferred to profession—of men and women whose nearly full-time preoccupation is with questions that pertain to the development of capabilities for the threat or employment of force.

CATALYSTS OF INQUIRY

It is safe to predict that strategic studies will enjoy a long and healthy future. Those scholars who believe that, in all save rococo variations, nearly the last important word has been written on issues of interest to strategists, may confidently be proclaimed to be in error. Very much to the point is the skepticism expressed by Hedley Bull. “In recent years there has been an impression that such theoretical work as needs to be done on the implications of nuclear weapons and related technology has now been done. It is true that the creative period in the development of this area of strategic studies was over by the mid-1960’s, and t...