Sunday, June 11, 2017

How Strategic Errors At The Presidential Level Can Result In Military Failures


Mark Moyar, Hoover Institute: The White House’s Seven Deadly Errors

Strategic defeat often results from an accumulation of tactical failures. Repeated battlefield setbacks can destroy an adversary’s capabilities, as befell Napoleonic France, or its will, as befell Britain in the American War of Independence. In such cases, military organizations may deserve at least some of the blame for the strategic loss, because in most countries the military leadership bears primary responsibility for training, equipping, and commanding armed forces, functions that are fundamental to tactical effectiveness. Military strategy, by contrast, is often set by civilian leaders, and in the case of the United States it is the statutory prerogative of the civilian commander in chief.

Read more ....

WNU Editor: The above post is from last year and it was written when President Obama was in office. The "Seven Deadly Errors" are ....

1. Excessive Confidence in Democratization
2. Poor Selection of Local Allies
3. Haste in Counterinsurgency
4. Over-reliance on Surgical Strikes
5. Refusal to Commit a Military Footprint
6. Refusal to Maintain a Military Footprint
7. Signaling of Retrenchment

President Bush was guilty of the first three points. President Obama was guilty of the last 4 points .... but in his last year as President he certainly did shift his strategy to correct these points .... a policy shift that (so far) President Trump and the Pentagon are continuing in Iraq and Syria. As for Afghanistan .... I would not be surprised if this strategy (of avoiding these Seven Deadly Errors ) will also me adopted to a larger degree than what is being done now.

On a side note .... from what I know .... I would say that the Kremlin and the Russian military have also adopted a strategy that avoids these "Seven Deadly Errors" in the Syrian conflict.

Hat tip Prairie Pundit.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Rolling Thunder by LBJ