Quite fortuitously, the Strategic Studies Institute has placed in the public domain a superb monograph by Justic Kelly and Mike Brennan on ALIEN: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy (september 2009).
It is a very good read, along with our summary of the failed 2008 Whole of Government conference that SSI sponsored, which followed the failed 1998 Strategy Revision conference–failed for not being heard.
We were all right then, we are still right now, but unless General James Jones, USMC gets himself a deputy that is grounded in strategy & integrity, this Administration is toast, in part because there is NO DIFFERENCE among the apparatchiks that trade places within the two-party system. They ae ALL out of touch with strategy, and hence reality.
We like to paraphrase Trotsky on war by saying “You may not be interested in reality, but reality is surely interested in you.” Reality is about all ten high-level threats, all twelve harmonzied policies, and respect for the either demographic challengers that must now be our center of gravity.
Below are just a tiny handful of the many headlines all saying the same thing: no strategy, no point, no go.
Illusions of Victory: There's No Strategy To Win in Afghanistan by Douglas Macgregor
It's Not Retreat: Facing Facts on Afghanistan, by Ralph Peters
Bitter Fruits of Mideast Wars by Patrick J. Buchanan, October 02, 2009
