PREFACE
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The euphoria brought on by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War led many in the Department of State and Congress to believe that the primary threats to U.S. diplomacy and security had largely vanished. Republican and Democratic Congressmen, as well as political commentators, spoke of a “peace dividend,” and one scholar claimed it was “the end of history.”
History of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the U.S. Department of State, 2015
The American tends to be an extremist on the subject of war: he either embraces war wholeheartedly or rejects it completely. This extremism is required by the nature of the liberal ideology.
Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Practice of Civil- Military Relations, 1957
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After the rapid implosion of the Soviet Bloc, the Reluctant Superpower,[1] incontestably the strongest yet also least belligerent state ever known, felt triumphant. Scarcely noticing the insidious rise of radical Islam, Americans never expected to suffer the most devastating attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor a mere few months into the new millennium. The experience stunned us; offended to the quick, we reacted fiercely. It was a rude awakening: evil had proved, once again, ineradicable. The nation’s leadership showed itself more decisive than either well-informed or wise.
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Two costly and inconclusive wars, billions of wasted dollars, and countless lost lives later, much has been learned, but too little implemented: “America’s way of war,” wrote the pre-eminent British strategist Colin Gray a few years ago, continues to be “apolitical; astrategic; ahistorical; culturally challenged; technology dependent; focused on firepower; large-scale; impatient.”[2] The freest and most generous nation in history appears bumbling, about to squander its enormous moral and natural resources, with no one to blame but itself, lost without a compass in a complex world.
Having now seen two different approaches to the New World Disorder, George W. Bush’s and Barack Obama’s, we are no wiser. For one thing, they have been misrepresented. The first, accused of favoring “unilateral militarism” over diplomacy and development, was in practice not much different from the latter, which has rhetorically supported the converse, arguing for patient diplomacy over military action. So concludes U.S. Army War College professor John R. Deni: "[d]espite unambiguous rhetoric, official pronouncements, and policies all aimed at rebalancing toward diplomacy and development and away from defense, in fact, there is much evidence to indicate that U.S. foreign and national security policy remains militarized, perhaps overly so."[3]
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We might as well take a deep breath and get used to it. For “[r]egardless of whether militarization is good or bad, the fact that U.S. foreign policy is likely to remain militarized, even beyond the Obama years, carries major implications for the U.S. military as well as for those in the executive and legislative branches that would seek to wield it.”[4]
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But do we really have to resign ourselves to this situation? The relatively short answer is: not unless Deni is correct that the Obama years have truly given “diplomacy and development” a chance, and it proved not to work. In truth, that simply isn’t so. For with the exception of a modest increase in State Department personnel, the Obama administration has most certainly not undertaken a serious rebalancing the national security establishment structure. To be fair, neither has any of his predecessors. The Art of Peace is not even taught, let alone practiced.
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Instead, Americans have increasingly turned to the military at the expense of civilian instruments of power: "[S]everal factors point to a continued militarization of U.S. foreign policy, including funding levels, legal authorities, and the growing body of evidence that civilian agencies of the U.S. Government lack the resources, skills, and capabilities to achieve foreign policy objectives. Continued reliance by senior decisionmakers at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue on the U.S. military in the development, planning, and implementation of U.S. foreign policy has significant implications. Foremost among them is the fact that the military itself must prepare for a future not terribly unlike the very recent past."[5]
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This is very disturbing, not only because the military cannot be expected to do the work of civilians, but because it shouldn’t be. Hard power is expensive, inefficient, and ultimately self-defeating. Though seemingly easy to understand, it is also easy to misunderstand. The best solutions to a conflict, in fact, often turn out to be a matter of dollars and sense - of the common sense variety: cheaper may not be faster, but may last longer, and actually deliver the desired results. David’s slingshot prevailed over the dumb giant knight’s shining armor. Let’s lose the shine, and get more smarts.
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The threat of American “militarism” is actually rather misleading. Defined as ”the tendency to regard military efficiency as the supreme ideal of the state and to subordinate all other interests to those of the military,”[6] it does not describe the United States so much as Germany before World War II. True, Deni is simply describing a fact, namely, that decisionmakers rely more heavily on military than on civilian instruments of power in dealing with international problems. But there can be little doubt that unless we learn, or re-learn, the Art of Peace, the only thing left is the Art of War. That shouldn’t have to be. As it happens, Sun Tzu would heartily agree – as would America’s Founders.
Whence this book. The nation is not unlike a sick patient who turns to drugs to address his aches and pains: sometimes drugs are the only sensible option, but drugs don’t necessarily work, and even when they do, seldom do they work alone - they need to be supplemented by other remedies. (Not to mention that prevention is the best choice of all.) The military, even if indispensable to national security, as a deterrent no less than as the most radical weapon, should not be the only - or even main - branch of government required to prepare itself for future threats. For, like it or not, the need for diplomatic and other non-hard-power tools of statecraft has not diminished; on the contrary, the steep rise in unconventional conflict has raised their importance.
We face challenges that simply will not allow us the comfort of relying on lethal weapons, however superb; and not even the best, culturally savvy warriors-with-PhDs can make up for an atrophied, sclerotic civilian sector. Nor is it just a question of appropriating adequate resources (although there’s that); as importantly, the people working in the civilian agencies have to be equipped with ideas that enable them to succeed. In that, the academy is failing us all, abysmally.
It’s wake-up time. America can no longer afford to sit on the proverbial three-legged (“military, diplomacy, development”) national security stool where one leg is a lot longer than either of the other two. We aren’t so much becoming militarized as decivilianized (with apologies to Spellcheck).
Though absent from school curricula, the Art of Peace is not a new discipline. Nor is there a dearth of data documenting what plagues our non-military or civilian[7] approach to foreign policy, with plenty of recommendations for how to address the appalling weaknesses in the non-defense sector. There is no paucity of smart people thinking about conceptual models, though some of their theories are admittedly esoteric, if not outright inscrutable, making it that much harder to bring them to the attention of policymakers. And while true that bureaucrats have traditionally been more worried about their pensions than about the national interest, no one wants to do a lousy job - it’s demoralizing, after all. Even the most mercenary of pencil-pushers would profit from more efficient interagency coordination, a better allocation of resources, appropriate training, and applying lessons-learned to avoid repeating mistakes that cost lives and money.
No one needs to be reminded that new dangers to the United States and to world peace continue to accumulate with alarming rapidity. But while a conceptual as well as structural reappraisal of America’s strategic direction has long been considered overdue, little has happened. Partly to blame is the toxic partisan dialectic pitting hawks against doves, that seems only to get worse with time. So long as the shouting match that passes for a national conversation is reduced to pelting interlocutors with bumper-sticker labels intended as expletives, the chances for a rational national discourse on American foreign policy are minuscule. I suggest it will take a radically new approach – or rather, a radical old one that we can no longer afford to forget.
For starters, to avoid the familiar food fight between the two sets of avian rivals, who each cite the “data” that best seems to support their respective prejudices, oversimplification and easy “isms” must be shunned. For a realistic rebalancing of America’s foreign policy to be implemented in fact, not merely in rhetoric, the current dysfunctional strategic culture must be faced head-on. What has to go first is a risibly simplistic hard vs. soft power dualism, which leaves out a wide variety of weapons available in both the private and public sectors. Equally obsolete is a definition of victory in overly narrow military terms. Though “winning the peace is harder than winning the war” has become a veritable cliché, it doesn’t say much and can be misleading. Acknowledging that winning battles isn’t everything doesn’t imply that hard power should be shunned – far from it. Instead, the notion of peace must be reassessed, and peace-faring taken seriously as a tool not antithetical to warfare but complementary. Sun Tzu will help in that endeavor.
For many reasons, which we will explore in depth, America’s non-military capabilities are in deep trouble. Secretary Robert Gates summarized the problem succinctly: "if we are to meet the myriad challenges around the world in the coming decades, this country must strengthen other important elements of national power both institutionally and financially, and create the capability to integrate and apply all of the elements of national power to problems and challenges abroad. In short, based on my experience serving seven presidents, as a former Director of CIA and [later] as Secretary of Defense, I am here to make the case for strengthening our capacity to use 'soft' power and for better integrating it with 'hard' power."[8]
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Though he was speaking in 2007, he could have uttered these words yesterday. Our intelligence system suffers from overdependence on technology at the expense of human intelligence, known as HUMINT. The notoriously ineffectual foreign aid industry continues to flounder, rudderless. Public diplomacy[9] has been all but abandoned by the State Department, and strategic communication (as explained in chapter 6) remains MIA (Missing in Action). Most alarming, the traditional beliefs in individual liberty and free trade have eroded, even as political correctness dominates the academy. What does America stand for? Its leadership seemingly incapable of formulating strategy, the citizenry is confused about its own direction and identity. Which is one reason why we must revisit our Founders, their ideas and practices.
The United States has slowly become a victim of its great military and economic power, which permits us to flounder for quite some time without dire immediate consequences. (Winston Churchill is reputed to have said that Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.[10]) We would be well advised to remember that our Founding Fathers had no such luxury; though uncompromising in their principles, they had to make up in savvy realism for what they lacked in money and hardware. The upstart republic that improbably gained its independence from the mightiest empire of the day was lucky, for its great strategos,[11] the incomparable warrior-farmer and spy-master George Washington, shared the national vision of Alexander Hamilton, benefited from Franklin’s knowledge of human nature, along with John Adams’s tenacity, Sam Adams’s talent for political warfare, Thomas Jefferson’s erudition, and James Madison’s political acumen. Together they understood that to win, Americans had to be smart, nimble, brave, yet cautious. And they recognized that peace is predicated on power - hard or otherwise.
The continued relevance of the Founders’ thinking is explained by David Abshire: “In effect, Washington and his successors implemented the three principles of classical strategy: unity of effort, freedom of action, and strategic proportionality.”[12] General Washington, meet Sun Tzu.
Though blatantly anachronistic, this is not as far-fetched as it might seem. In his dissertation published by the Strategic Studies Institute, for example, Major Kris J. Stillings observes: "Over 2500 years ago, the great Chinese military philosopher, Sun Tzu wrote, ‘The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy.’ Some twenty-three centuries later at the outset of the American Revolutionary War, General George Washington unknowingly adopted Sun Tzu’s advice as he struggled to create an effective strategy for fighting the British."[13]
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Stillings is right that Washington could only have adopted Sun Tzu’s advice unknowingly. But looking back, it is worth noting what the ancient Chinese strategist who founded the discipline (even without naming it) shares with America’s greatest hero. What links them - and all good strategists, for that matter - is the fact that basic principles of war and peace are transcendent, notwithstanding the great variety of international conflicts across space and time, in different ages and throughout the globe. In this book, I plan to show how Sun Tzu’s insights as applied, however unconsciously, by America’s main Founders, fit today’s challenges. Entitled The Art of War, his great epic explored strategy in peace no less than war. For unless the peace is won, wars will necessarily be lost. Moreover, it is during peace that wars have a chance to be prevented.
It should not surprise that many of Sun Tzu’s key strategic principles were in use at America’s founding, since they possess a timeless validity, applicable once again in the current, admittedly exceedingly complex, national security environment. What the Chinese sage shared with Washington and the other Founders was a keen appreciation for grand strategy and specifically for the role of non-lethal power, infelicitously dubbed “soft” by modern-day political scientists.
What they all grasped is the centrality of cultural intelligence and the need for a realistic, accurate assessment of the total, albeit fluid, environment of every conflict, anywhere. That fluidity, in turn, necessitates adapting to constantly changing circumstances. But contrary to self-styled pragmatists, proponents of power politics, and demagogues who pay lip service to ideals while ruthlessly ignoring them, genuine peace cannot be attained without commitment to a moral outlook, nurtured within a culture of trust, and a sense of common purpose.
The book is focused on the strategic deficit disorder afflicting American foreign policy, which in the aftermath of the Cold War and 9/11 has been caused in part by deep confusion about the nation’s values and conception of peace, exacerbated by ignorance and misunderstanding of history and tradition. That tradition, however, which dates from the Revolutionary Era, defines who we are and what makes this country special, whether or not divinely “chosen,” as a beacon of freedom.
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“Strategy” may not have been in the vocabulary of the nation’s Founders, but it was evident in how they conducted themselves. As Colin Gray points out, “our whole human history,” and hence specifically our own, “is a protracted strategic narrative, regardless of what it was called and how it was defined at the time.”[14] We must seek to learn from it. Fortunately, as Gray also notes, “strategy has not changed as a broad function through the ages;”[15] Sun Tzu is now as relevant as ever. His wisdom is thus reexamined, assisted by new studies of his thought, in part I of this book: his discussion of intelligence and influence operations; the need for alliances; the importance of recalibration and flexibility; and the primacy of morality and leadership, team-building, and a strong national ethos.
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The Revolutionary era is the subject of part II, which examines the philosophical principles rooted in classical liberalism that guided the nation’s architects, which included an almost religious trust in the peaceful effects of global free trade. Principles aside, their mastery of strategic communication or “influencing” was exceeded only by their self-confident resilience and adaptability. Though America’s Founders were not saints, their strategic acumen and keen appreciation for the critical importance of using every tool of power at their disposal is a legacy worth adopting and applying to current conditions.
Part III describes the strategic deficit syndrome afflicting the United States. We talk about “development and diplomacy” as being on a par with “defense” but we don’t know how to synchronize them, nor what goals a national strategy is supposed to advance. It doesn’t help that Americans are not just ignorant about their own origins, they are often misinformed. Alas, when popular ignorance is too pervasive, and exacerbated by bias in both the media and the academy, leadership is sorely undermined. The intelligence agencies are also deficient, and overly reliant on technology. Good intelligence takes considerable cultural knowledge; and there is no substitute for old-fashioned human intelligence. Another deficiency is the inability to synchronize all the elements of power, the inability to wield so-called “soft power” (an especially ill-defined concept).
Part IV centers on the conceptual building blocks of a realistic yet moral, hard-nosed yet compassionate, foreign policy without illusions, committed to engagement guided by our national interest, which cannot be divorced from the natural rights of men and women throughout the world. None of which implies that America should take upon itself the role of hegemon or empire, no matter how benign: for not only is that impossible but self-defeating. Such concepts are simple enough to articulate, but it will take patience, honesty, and a renewed appreciation for America’s commitment to individual liberty and the generosity of its spirit, for us to preserve the peace with liberty for which the nation was founded, and hope that it extends as widely as possible.
Finally, a few specific recommendations are advanced to achieve a strategic “reboot” to win the peace. Few if any of the suggestions are new; none should surprise. But revisiting Sun Tzu and the legacy of our Founders should provide added conceptual ammunition for a rational and productive conversation. The national dialogue must transcend partisanship, with due regard for fiscal and other constraints, yet in a spirit of commitment to America’s original ideals, dispensing with self-righteous rhetoric.
The book’s intended audience is anyone interested in national security, and everyone who isn’t but should be. Impatient readers might dislike my forays into etymology and the occasional biblical reference, but these do offer invaluable glimpses into our cultural DNA, so please grin and bear it. Those who trust hard power to solve most problems, and are allergic to all the talk of non-lethal peace-fare, might come to change their minds. So might the soft-hearted, who think hard power inherently jeopardizes peace rather than help win and prevent wars. My hope is that we can all transcend ideological tribalism and find better ways to maintain peace or, when lost, to win it back.
America is the most peace-loving nation in history, but over the course of the past two centuries we seem to have misconstrued, if not forgotten altogether, what our Founders knew too well. They loved peace, but knew that securing it meant not to forget war’s potential resurgence at any time, which requires constant vigilance and doing everything possible to try to prevent it, excluding engagement in wishful thinking. General George Washington as president advised his nation to avoid foreign entanglements; yet in his First Annual Address before both Houses of Congress, he warned that “to be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.”[16] Complacency invites attack; and peace can never be assumed to be permanent.
Today General H. R. McMaster speaks for all those in leadership position who understand that such preparation requires adequate weapons, effectively synchronized, “capable of operating in sufficient scale and ample duration to win, [or else] adversaries are likely to become emboldened and deterrence is likely to fail.”[17] But, he continues, military preparedness is hardly sufficient. Whether “preparing effectively for war to prevent conflict, shape security environments, [or, should war become necessary] win in armed conflict [always] requires clear thinking.”[18] General Stanley McCrystal underscores as well the need for a “shared consciousness”[19] by an entire network, a team of teams that must learn to work together against agile enemies in highly complex settings.
Clear thinking is exactly what Sun Tzu had prescribed, since he believed that the acme of leadership consists in figuring out how to subdue the enemy without fighting. But war is best avoided when the nation possesses both the ability and willingness to use all available instruments of power in peace as much as in war. To that end, self-knowledge is as important as knowledge of one’s enemy: for if you know neither yourself nor the enemy, you will succumb in every battle. Alarmingly, we are deficient on both counts. And though we can stand to lose a few battles, the stakes of losing the war itself in this age of nuclear proliferation are too high to contemplate. We are certainly strong; but to avoid becoming a hapless Goliath, whose physical strength renders him overconfident, let us recall what we knew when our nation had the energy and savvy of a David, when our superiority lay not in hardware but in political acumen, intelligence, and devotion to ideals that are still relevant today, if only we would remember.
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Notes
[1] The term was coined by P.F. Holt in his book The Reluctant Superpower: A History of America's Economic Global Reach (Kodansha Amer Inc, 1995).
[2] Colin S. Gray, Irregular Enemies and the Essence of Strategy: Can the American Way of War Adapt? Strategic Studies Institute, (SSI, March 2006) p. 30.
[3] John R.Deni, The Real Rebalancing: American Diplomacy and the Tragedy of President Obama’s Foreign Policy (Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College, October 2015), p. 2.
[4] Ibid.,
[5] Ibid.
[6] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/militarism
[7] Not an ideal word; but “non-military” seems to imply its absence, or hostility to the military, while “trans-military” carries a peculiar connotation of transcendence. I am simply referring to complementarity. Semantics is never “mere.”
[8] Robert M. Gates, Landon Lecture, 11-26-07 https://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/landonlect/gatestext1107.html
[9] The State Department’s mission of “influencing and informing foreign publics.” http://www.state.gov/r/
[10] https://richardlangworth.com/americans
[11] Greek, meaning “general.”
[12] David Abshire, in Forging an American Grand Strategy: Security a Path Through a Complex Future, Selected Presentations from a Symposium at the National Defense University, by Sheila R. Ronis, ed. (Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press, October 2013).
[13] Major Kris J. Stillings, USMC, General George Washington and the Formulation of American Strategy for the War of Independence, Marine Corps Command and Staff College, April 2001. http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA401347
[14] Colin S. Gray, The Future of Strategy, (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Books, 2015) p. 10.
[15] Ibid., p. 11.
[16]http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals/inaugtxt.html
[17] H.R. McMaster, “Discussing the Continuities of War and the Future of Warfare: The Defense Entrepreneurs Forum,” Small Wars Journal, Oct 14 2014 http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/discussing-the-continuities-of-war-and-the-future-of-warfare-the-defense-entrepreneurs-foru
[18] Ibid.
[19] General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussel, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (New York: Penguin Group, Portfolio, 2015), esp. Ch. 6, pp. 115 ff.
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