FOREWORD
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Karl von Clausewitz occupies a place of honor among military strategists and practitioners of warfare. His treatise On War is a staple in the education of virtually all American officers. It is discussed, read, and studied (often in that order) at the intermediate and higher levels of professional military education. Debates over the nuances of 'coup d'oeil' or 'center of gravity' resound in college academic halls and the headquarters of military units at all echelons of command. Quite frankly, in military circles you cannot go wrong introducing a paper with a quote from Dead Karl, or cleverly inserting a term like "schwerpunkt" to sway opponents to your way of thinking. There is good reason for this, and in no way is it meant to detract from the great Prussian. The foundational tenets of Clausewitzian thought, that war is the extension of policy by other means, or that warfare itself is an illogical thing whose outcome rests on the relationship between the State, the military, and the people, are as close to timeless wisdom as exist in the literature.
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Clausewitz's ideas hold considerable appeal to the Western mind and have had a huge impact on our way of war. His emphasis on focusing against an opponent's source of strength, on the critical need to maintain popular support in war, even his prescriptions for victory where they can be found or extrapolated, align well with our desire for rationality in a fundamentally irrational endeavor. Taken in isolation, they provide much wanted guideposts to victory, even as we struggle against the fog and friction of warfare that the author himself warned us against.
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In dominating the landscape of our thinking about war, Clausewitzian thought crowds out alternate approaches to both military strategy, and perhaps more importantly, to the way we as a nation conceptualize and employ the vast arsenal of tools at our disposal in the pursuit of national goals and objectives. We sometimes forget that Clausewitz the man is not wholly represented in his seminal work, or that he might have expanded upon the role of economics, intelligence and statecraft had he not died as a result of battlefield service at the age of 51. On these topics and others, On War is silent, while Clausewitz the man likely was not.
Dr. Juliana Pilon challenges us to address these biases in our thinking, breaking the conceptual chains that bind us to a rigid strategic approach that has not delivered lasting results. In this ambitious work, she reintroduces us to a thinker of equal renown, the inimitable Sun Tzu. Whether his writings on strategy are the work of a single author or the distillation of centuries of wisdom by many, they encourage us to think differently, to approach strategy and warfare from a different perch that is arguably higher in altitude and broader in vision than that offered in Clausewitz's sole unfinished work. The approach taken here is complementary, opting against the "either this or that" approach so prevalent in our rationalist approach to strategy making. Instead, it asks us to hold two countervailing positions simultaneously, to acknowledge that the complexity of the real world, whether in politics or at the end of a gun, can rarely be reduced to a cost-benefit equation.
At a practical level, this work begins to address the yawning gap so painfully exposed by the soldiers of this generation. For almost 16 years, we have fought a series of campaigns against seemingly intractable enemies. To be sure, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq delivered an almost unblemished record of success at the tactical level. Given a mission, we have proven time and again that we have the ability to take any hill or hold any piece of ground. Against enemies unconstrained by concerns over innocent life, we have demonstrated a near-surgical level of precision and reduced collateral damage to negligible levels. For all this success in the field, however, we have very little to show for our efforts.
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Despite an immense expenditure, measured not only in dollars, but in American lives, we need turn no further than the evening news to see that there is no stable government in Iraq; no denial of safe havens in Afghanistan; and Islamic radicalism has spread across the continent, swallowing up competing groups as they pledge allegiance to the entity we know as the Islamic State. While we might debate whether or not this presents an existential threat to our nation, it is undeniable that our tactical military dominance has not produced lasting strategic results. This despite the best efforts of countless Americans, in uniform and out, totally committed to the task. The question is, why?
As a career soldier of 25 years with combat deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan, and most recently commanding a brigade in Operation Inherent Resolve, hard experience offers insights but no answers. As a people, we don't seek to truly understand our enemy, or at times ourselves. Good intentions, whether in the form of liberating a village or building a million-dollar reconstruction project, run aground when they are uninformed by the constraints of local politics, unsustainable in a faltering economy, or cut short and abandoned because they don't immediately deliver results. We can and must do better.
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Further, there has been no real distinction in recent years between national and military strategy. Because of its exceptional capabilities, we have turned to our military to address our greatest foreign policy goals, from building democracy in the Middle East to destroying a rising global terrorist threat. In doing so, we blur the lines between what we as a nation can do and what we should.
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As a function of these first two, we have allowed perhaps our once greatest components of national power, from statecraft to economic influence, to atrophy. Development work is done by Soldiers in the field, 'heroic amateurs' who lack critical skills and experience necessary for these efforts but are frequently the only ones available to perform them. Diplomacy, when it is practiced, is far more likely to be conducted by a General Officer than an Ambassador, whose movements in a conflict zone are limited and whose culture favors the gravitational pull of the Embassy over meeting tribal leaders in the hinterlands. In the area of Strategic Communication, our country has all but given up, gutting organizations like Voice of America, whether in pursuit of cost savings, or mired by bureaucratic processes, so that we consistently lag behind the news cycle – that is, if we attempt to inform local peoples at all.
This slow, steady decline in our national capabilities has created the perfect vicious circle. When presented with problems of a strategic nature, most viable tools left at our disposal reside within the military. Limited options drive us towards a military solution, not because it is the best way, but frequently the only way to bring national power to bear. In short, we have perfected the world's greatest hammer, and soon enough every problem starts to look like a nail. What we have found as a nation over sixteen painful years of war is that achieving lasting strategic outcomes, much like building a house, requires more than a hammer and a bag of nails.
Fortunately, Dr. Juliana Pilon is perfectly positioned to provide a clear and convincing way ahead. Bringing both formidable academic experience and a professional career spent in the field, she is that rare scholar-practioner who speaks with equal credibility to our national leaders and the Soldier guarding a lonely outpost in mountains of the Hindu Kush. In The Art of Peace, Juliana sheds light on the shortcomings in our thinking about strategy, at the same time demonstrating that things were not always this way. More importantly, they need not remain so in the future. As one who has seen firsthand the tragedy of war, this work could not come soon enough.
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COL Michael R Eastman
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Colonel Michael R Eastman has been the Executive Officer to the Commanding Officer of the Army Cyber Command for the past year. Having served as Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the Army from 2012-2013, he assumed command of the 75th Field Artillery Brigade in June 2013, and deployed to the United Arab Emirates in support of Operation Spartan Shield. His distinguished career includes: serving simultaneously as Deputy Brigade Commander for Civil Capacity, coordinating all military participation in economic, political, and civil reconstruction operations across 4 southern Iraqi provinces; as Commander of an 1800-Soldier Field Artillery Brigade deployed in support of Operation Inherent Resolve, being responsible for all aspects of training, operations, logistics, and leader development while providing command and control over multiple elements deployed across the Middle East; and in Afghanistan, serving as Special Assistant to the Commanding General of the Office of Military Cooperation.
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He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in International Relations from West Point, a Masters of Military Art and Science from the Command and General Staff College, and a Master of Science and PhD (ABD) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Political Science and Security Studies. Having been deployed to both Afghanistan and Iraq, his awards include two Bronze Stars and seven Meritorious Service Medals.
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