Entertaining lecture by Lawrence Freedman (he being the boss, I would say that), at Oxford’s Changing Character of War programme last week. The podcast is here, along with all their other stuff from Michaelmas term.
Strategy, Sir Lawrence argued, should best be conceived as the creation of power, in the moment. I riffed off that interesting thought in my latest piece over at the estimable Current Intelligence:
Freedman sees strategy not as a plan – an a,b,c connecting goals and ends. That is the conventional understanding of strategy. How do I get from where I am to where I want to be, using military force. This traditional view falls down because it makes insufficient allowance for ambiguity and unknowns. What will our power be able to achieve? Against whom?Instead Freedman sees strategy as crafted in the moment, amidst great uncertainty: strategy for him is simply the creation of power. And power is not a material, but a psychological variable. The thin red line held an empire together by force of mind, as much as force of arms. So how strategic are we in this sense of the term?
Not particularly, I reckon. If strategy is the construction of power, one doesn’t necessarily do that by having aircraft carriers without aircraft to fly off them. Or by demonstrating a huge disparity between aspiration and ability in nation-building. I remain a dedicated liberal hawk, but I blanch at JDP 3-40’s understanding of ‘influence’ and our ability to achieve it. Not much evidence of that capacity to influence emerged in the Wikileaks cables on Britain in Afghanistan.
Seen as the construction of power, strategy is an acknowledgment of uncertainty – uncertainty about our own future goals, uncertainty about the effectiveness of our means of achieving them. And yes, uncertainty about threats. Making power in the moment, for the moment, is not a recipe for over-extension, but pragmatism balanced with great decisiveness.
The podcast is not online yet, it seems. If anybody has it, I would appreciate if you could post the link here (or send the file to me, so I can post it …).
‘Making power in the moment’? This sounds dangerously like ‘strategy is simply a system of expedients’, an idea that has very rarely worked for anybody, ever. It is also a meaninglessly circular argument, because it immediately prompts the question as to what one is making power FOR? What object is one trying to affect? With what end in view? In short, it isn’t an answer at all, since it gets you back in short order to the traditional trinity of ends, ways and means. Moreover it’s a positively dangerous attitude to have, because it assumes that the status quo, i.e. the existing security architecture (which has now grown to gargantuan proportions compared to, for example, the Ancient Greeks-see the other post above) is somehow politically neutral. In fact, a massive and entirely self-contained component of strategy nowadays is dealing with the fact that this security architecture is NOT politically neutral or benign, but rather riddled with it’s own agendas and designs and desperate to perpetuate itself for the sake of perpetuating itself. And no, I don’t mean in some kind of shadow-state or conspiracy-theorist way of who-shot-JFK, but in the more everyday way that procurement contracts are drawn up, massively expensive foreign bases are maintained, and weapons of global reach retained by states that can no longer honestly claim to be financially or morally capable of defending and maintaining global interests. I mean it therefore in the simple way first identified by that great REAL conservative, Dwight Eisenhower.
As a second to the above comment, I don’t see that the podcast posted either? You scroll down and find the lecture but not the link.
(That is not a complaint given that this website is plenty educational as it is….)
I confess, I’m confused. Do you mean societal will? Societal desire?
The thin red line held an empire together by force of mind, as much as force of arms.
Doesn’t this require a culture that views its own attributes as great enough (and moral enough) to create? I’m afraid I see a bit of a crisis of confidence in the “Anglosphere” world, so to speak, and two very different competing cultural narratives:
1. We should step back from the world and tend to our own house properly. We are a pox on the world.
2. If only we’d tend to our own house, we could step out into a more proper place in the world. The world will burn less if we rightly engage.
Hmmm….there is something wrong with my argument, isn’t there?
Madhu – as usual, I think there’s nothing wrong with your thought provoking arguments. That’s the dilemma for American foreign policy alright – just as it’s always been.
This traditional view falls down because it makes insufficient allowance for ambiguity and unknowns.
This much is true, and here is my take on it: the traditional view of Strategy falls down because it does not take the motion of conflict into account. Sir Lawrence is right in the sense that Strategy is not a Plan – as an abstract, Strategy is the process of vectoring (providing velocity to) Will.
By determining my preferred solution, I provide a starting location, direction, speed and duration to my Will: ‘I want to be there!’ or ‘I want this to be the outcome!’. My opponent vectors his Will in the same manner.
My Strategy is therefore the method by which I convert and adjust my force potential (my latent means) into actual (or kinetic) energy in a direction, at a speed and for a duration that will create an offset on my opponent’s vectored Will so that the sum of the two will be equal my political goal. It is the same as steering a boat across a river: I know where I want to land on the other side, but I have to take the direction and strength of the wind and currents into account if I’m to have any chance of hitting that spot.
So how does Sir Lawrence fit into all of this? Power is the ability to do work, to bring about an effect, to implement a change – and/or the application thereof. In short, having the ability to apply force or the application of force. So it is all force down there. The force of my Will is applied and adjusted to my force potential to convert some or all of it into a force manifestation which is applied to the opponent’s force potential or manifestation, and thus impact the force of his Will in a direction, speed and duration of my intent.
There is a subtlety though. All of these forces are applied – they are not static. Even my force potential is constantly being manipulated and enhanced to improve that potential. These forces have start locations, direction, speed, duration. It is force in motion. And Force in Motion is: Momentum.
Apparently I am on a trajectory (see below) to disagree with every one of the very knowledgeable and worthy commentators here, from whom I have learned much. So be it.
I am presently reading Leonhard’s “Art of Man[o]euvre”. In it, he makes reference to some very questionable physics analogies: momentum, force, mass, velocity, acceleration. I wish that people would stop using bad physics analogies. It illuminates nothing, and impresses only the deeply ignorant.
By the way, force in motion (as in, F x v) is in fact power. You’re welcome.
I wish that people would stop using bad physics analogies
Granted…
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