Military Strategy, Joint Operations, and Airpower

An Introduction

Ryan Burke, Michael Fowler, Kevin McCaskey, Ryan Burke, Michael Fowler, Kevin McCaskey

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781626166233
• eBook ISBN: 9781626166240
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

An ideal textbook for classes on modern airpower and joint operations.

PART I

AN INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY STRATEGY

Introduction to Part I

Kevin McCaskey

Welcome to Military Strategy, Joint Operations, and Airpower: An Introduction. This book focuses purposefully on contemporary considerations in military strategy rather than general strategy (business, sports, and economic strategies, among others) and the security studies discipline as a much broader academic subfield that includes public policy, international relations, political economy, history, and others. It is designed to modernize and operationalize the theory, context, and application of military strategy by focusing on the operational level of war, that which resides between grand (or national) strategy and tactical-level engagements.

While the discipline of security studies occasionally delves into a consideration of the operational level of war, military strategists have recognized the importance of studying the operational level from the interwar years through the present, even when military terminology had no word to describe the gap. Edward Luttwak’s definition of the operational level of war as “the level that embraces battles in their dynamic totality, in which generic methods of war are developed, debated, and applied” is useful for contextualizing this book, which addresses contemporary methods of war, debates the merits of legacy constructs, and attempts to apply new language to military strategy.¹ One example of inserting new language into discussions on military strategy is the phrase “profession of effects” found throughout this book rather than the more common “profession of arms” used when discussing the military. Often associated with Samuel Huntington’s description of the military as a profession whose “primary function is the application of violence,” the term profession of arms fails to accurately describe the contemporary military, which is far less likely to be engaged in the application of violence for destructive purposes than it is to be used for the creation of effects, which can be constructive or destructive in nature, and are often achieved through nonviolent means.² Holistically, then, this book argues that contemporary military strategy is about creating desired effects, which when aggregated at the operational level of warfare help lead to the desired military end state and, ultimately, can achieve political objectives.

DEFINING STRATEGY, THEORY, DOCTRINE, AND OPERATIONAL ART

One of the primary challenges to inserting new concepts and language into military strategy is the variation associated with the term “strategy,” the activity itself that encompasses nearly any competitive endeavor in any field. An additional challenge arises from the often entrenched views on how strategy relates to doctrine and theory and what role operational art plays in the success of campaigns. Lawrence Freedman’s conception of the realm of strategy as including “bargaining and persuasion as well as threats and pressure, psychological as well as physical effects, and words as well as deeds” is an apt description that includes actions that will appear in chapters throughout this book.³ Freedman also notes that while no single definition of strategy is accepted unilaterally, a general consensus exists that strategy involves the balance between ends, ways, and means.⁴ Interestingly for our purposes, Freedman correctly attributes this description to Arthur F. Lykke’s 1989 work Toward an Understanding of Military Strategy. For Lykke, military strategy is defined as the “ways to employ means to achieve ends” (emphasis in original), which has since been modified in various ways to stand as an acceptable definition of the generic term strategy.⁵ Importantly, while Lykke noted that this general formula could be used for any type of strategy, he drew a distinct difference between military strategy and national (grand) strategy, making clear that while the former is subject to the latter, they are not the same thing and should not be confused.⁶

From Lykke’s generic formulation, strategists can adapt the definition according to their pursuits, and occasionally the same strategist might adapt the construct in different fashions according to the needs of an article, chapter, book, and so forth. For an example of the latter, one can look at how Colin Gray’s own works define strategy differently. In 1999’s Modern Strategy, Gray wrote, “By strategy I mean the use that is made of force and the threat of force for the ends of policy.”⁷ In 2015’s The Future of Strategy, the definition was modified slightly to “the direction and use made of force for the purposes of policy as decided by politics.”⁸ Eventually dropping the term “force” altogether in 2016’s Strategy and Politics, he wrote, “Strategy is understood to refer to the direction and use made of (any) means by chosen ways in order to achieved [sic] desired political ends.”⁹ Because an agreed-on definition is aggravated by slight differences in verbiage, resorting to the shorthand “ends-ways-means” becomes the least likely to engender debates over phraseology. The important thing to recognize is that the expression “War is a mere continuation of policy by other means” frames the basis for contemporary military strategy, expressed in the shorthand ends-ways-means, and that military strategy is a component of, but not the same as, national strategy.

In addition to military strategy, grand (or national) strategy consists of other instruments of national power, which also vary according to author, time periods, and schools of thought. These other sources of national power typically include some combination of political, economic, diplomatic, information, psychological, or moral components. Chapter 2 discusses how different strategists have viewed these components.

Occasionally strategists will espouse and emphasize a certain way of warfare that can be considered a military theory. Theories such as scorched earth, daylight high-altitude strategic bombing, and command of the seas each represent an articulation of a particular strategy. Military strategists become military theorists when they advocate for a particular (often normative) style of warfare, occasionally to the exclusion of other styles of warfare. Chapter 2 also discusses prominent military theorists.

Whereas military theory advocates a general approach to warfare, military doctrine codifies and standardizes the approach. Doctrine explains how a theory is employed and includes considerations of timelines, assets, planning, deployment, training, exercises/simulations, and a host of other factors, including historical outcomes from previous conflicts. Doctrine varies by state, service branch, and service components, while also evolving according to various aspects of the character of war, including technology, sociopolitical considerations, resource availability, and competence, as well as the various missions that a state expects a military to be able to perform.

Finally, operational art is the application of the art of warfare at the operational level. Yet another term with no agreed-on definition, the art of warfare can be considered the study and application of all aspects of war, from logistics to engagements, administration to training. The art of warfare occurs across levels of war, from the strategic to the operational and down to the tactical. According to Russian strategist Aleksandr A. Svechin, operational art takes tactical creativity and strings actions together to create an operation—the purposeful direction of military assets toward a “certain intermediate goal in a certain theater of military operations.”¹⁰ Not only does Svechin’s definition capture what operational art is, but it also provides clear confirmation that military strategists have long recognized the importance of an operational level of warfare. It is with this focus in mind that Military Strategy, Joint Operations, and Airpower begins.

OUTLINE OF PART I

Military strategy is inherently interdisciplinary, and so too is this book. This book draws initially from the field of political science, searching for causality, testable propositions, and predictive value. The contemporary context is modern operations, framed largely by the post-9/11 international security environment of emerging threats, emerging locations, and emerging capabilities. That being said, military strategy must always be framed by an appropriate historical context, in part because many hypotheses regarding military strategy (and especially airpower) cannot be tested in laboratories, thereby leaving history as the primary source for evidence.¹¹ Additionally, as the maxim that “war is an extension of politics by other means” makes clear, military strategy resides firmly in the realm of public policy. Finally, application of military strategy requires experience and understanding in the nature and character of war but also in the employment of the weapons of war. That is, the application of military strategy requires military experts, typically found in the form of commissioned and noncommissioned officers in the armed forces.

Because the theory, context, and application of contemporary military strategy require contributions from political science, history, public policy, and military experience, this book assembled authors from an array of scholarly and professional backgrounds, providing the reader with diverse views from academic experts and combat veterans alike. In many cases, this work’s authors are both academics and practitioners. Part I reflects this unique blend of academia and military experience, with authors from the political science, history, and public policy realms who have direct military experience in the Cold War, the post–Cold War era from the Gulf War to 9/11, and the post-9/11 era.

In chapter 1, political scientist Tom Drohan recommends an alternative approach to defining military strategy, challenging the field to move beyond notions of the military as a profession of arms and combined-arms warfare in favor of a profession of effects and combined-effects warfare. Drohan frames effects along two spectrums, the physical and the psychological, and contends that each is subject to military action in order to achieve desired effects and accomplish military objectives. This chapter serves as the cornerstone for the rest of the book, which then takes Drohan’s conception of strategy and the profession of effects and extends it to air, space, and cyber power as we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I. An Introduction to Contemporary Strategy
• Part II. Airpower Strategy and Levels of Effects
• Part III. Air, Space, and Cyber Effects
• Part IV. Defense Organization and the Joint Operating Environment
• Part V. Contemporary Challenges in the Application of Strategy
• Conclusion
• List of Contributors
• Index