Secretary of State-designate Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged Tuesday to use “smart power” to reduce the military’s role in U.S. foreign policy and put a “civilian face” on America’s role abroad after the Bush administration’s heavy reliance on the use of force.
In a Wednesday night interview, Defense Secretary Gates discusses several topics, including how national security policy may change in the Obama administration, and events in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.
DEFENSE SECRETARY ROBERT GATES: My biggest concern in Afghanistan is the history of foreign armies in Afghanistan going back to Alexander the Great. As long as the Afghan people see us as their friend and ally, as long as they see us as in this fight for them, as well as for ourselves, then I think we’ll be okay. But if we get too many forces in there, if they come to see us as in it for only ourselves and not as their ally and they turn against us, then I think we cannot be successful.
He has argued for a U.S. military that better integrates diplomacy and soft power with hard power. Under his watch, Iraq has become a more stable place, a new U.S.-Iraq security agreement requires U.S. combat troops to withdraw by the end of 2011, but the war in Afghanistan has intensified.
…The initiative was spurred by the success of a joint team of Treasury and Special Forces that has been operating in Iraq since 2005 and it reflects the renewed emphasis under Defense Secretary Robert Gates to improve capabilities in irregular warfare, said Edward Frothingham, who directs counter-narcotics operations for the Pentagon.
The military for years has enlisted anthropologists, depending on their expertise to write up analyses of distant places and cultures.
At the just-concluded American Anthropological Association meeting here, the question of whether anthropologists should take part in military operations took the stage, though not for the first time. In 2007, the AAA’s executive board expressed “disapproval” of anthropologists’ work in Afghanistan and Iraq, arguing that they helped in “identifying and selecting specific populations as targets of U.S. military operations.”
“All anthropologists are working to make the world a better place,” said panelist Brian Selmeski, a professor of anthropology at the Air Force’s Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. He quoted an infantry officer who told him, “We don’t need your help to break things. We need your help so we don’t have to break things.”
Defense Secretary Robert Gates agrees.
“It is an unfortunate reality that many people believe there is this sharp divide between academia and the military — that each continues to look on the other with a jaundiced eye,” he said in May. “Challenges facing the world require a much broader conception and application of national power than just military prowess.”
Note that Secretary of Defense Gates is referencing “Defense” strategy – a balanced concept is also needed for the National Security Strategy that would more effectively integrate the “whole-of-government” approach.
ESSAY: A Balanced Strategy, Reprogramming the Pentagon for a New Age, Robert M. Gates From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2009
The defining principle of the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy is balance. The United States cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything. The Department of Defense must set priorities and consider inescapable tradeoffs and opportunity costs.
The strategy strives for balance in three areas:
— between trying to prevail in current conflicts and preparing for other contingencies,
— between institutionalizing capabilities such as counterinsurgency and foreign military assistance and maintaining the United States’ existing conventional and strategic technological edge against other military forces, and
— between retaining those cultural traits that have made the U.S. armed forces successful and shedding those that hamper their ability to do what needs to
What is dubbed the war on terror is, in grim reality, a prolonged, worldwide irregular campaign — a struggle between the forces of violent extremism and those of moderation.
The Armed Services provide one of the better examples of a learning organization which is demonstrated by the current debate in Parameters, on the concept of Effect-based Operations (EBO) to include my response via a letter to the editor.
Many of the modern day quality improvement methods were pioneered by the War Department during WWII and evolved into programs/initiatives that have included zero-defects/six sigma, just-in-time/lean, quality circles, Total Quality Management, Capability Maturity Model Integration, Business Process Reengineering and now Continuous Process Improvement.
Smart Power would include the application of the foundation principles for leaders to optimize all the elements and instruments of national power (also referred to as the “whole-of-government” approach) to help prevent/deter conflict and if deterrence fails, to resolve the conflict quickly and decisively with a minimum amount of resources.
The application of this technology is supported throughout the world by the American Society for Quality.
Acronyms: EBO – Effect based Operations; ONA – Operational Net Assessment; SoSA – System of System Analysis, CPI – Continuous Process Improvement.
ARTICLES: Parameters, US Army War College Quarterly, Autumn 2008
Effects-based Operations: More Important Than Ever, by Tomislav Z. Ruby
USJFCOM Commander’s Guidance for Effects-based Operations” by James N. Mattis.
To the Editor,
The Autumn 2008 issue of Parameters included two excellent articles on the Future of Effects-based Operations that illustrate a “clash of paradigms.” I agree with both authors on the points that “EBO is more important than ever” and that “underlying principles associated with EBO, ONA and SoSA are fundamentally flawed.”
In May 2008, the scope of DoD’s guidance on Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) was appropriately expanded to include combat organizations and will inevitably be applied to combat operations. The CPI concept also provides proven and complementary approaches to improve effectiveness as well as efficiency.
The way ahead is neither to abandon the EBO concept, nor to consider CPI as irrelevant nor to rely solely on traditional approaches, but rather to recognize and build upon foundational principles that effective leaders have intuitively applied when developing optimal strategies that synchronize a systems-of-systems approach with the more traditional and “time-honored principles and terminology.” Stakeholders, systems, variability, knowledge, planned change and people (1) are the key components that provide the underlying principles for both traditional methods as well as emerging methods such as CPI, EBO, ONA, and SoSA. In a non-military application, the framework is applied to improve capabilities and in a military context, they are applied to reduce an adversary’s capabilities. Of the six principles, the concept of variability is the “what’s new?“ and most critical.
Variation is a law of nature that states that no two people or things will ever be exactly alike. Everyone and everything varies. In the 1920’s, Walter Shewhart developed the new but still relatively unknown paradigm for managing variation that has typically been defined using a scientific or statistical frame of reference.
In March of 2006, the American Society for Quality embraced a broader description of the concept to support more universal awareness and application. To summarize, variation represents the difference between the ideal situation and actual. An ideal represents a standard of perfection uniquely defined by the stakeholders that one can strive for but never achieve; a fact that makes continual improvement possible. Improving efficiency and/or effectiveness has always been achieved by reducing variation.
Ideal or perfect outcomes are defined as those benefiting everyone (win/win). Non ideal outcomes are those that result in zero-sum, somebody wins/somebody loses. Preventing war requires the most optimal (win/win) of approaches; war-fighting is all about optimizing the suboptimal.
Shewhart concluded that although everything varies and individual things are unpredictable, groups of things from a constant system of causes tends to be predictable within a range In other words, if you always do what you always did, on average, you will usually get what you always got. The variation principle is at the heart of military art and science that must address both chaos and order; chaos defined as order without predictability.
The application context for the foundation principles includes the strategic, operational and tactical levels. The distinctions between levels include scope, position of the primary stakeholders, required leadership competencies, degree of influence-direct vs. indirect, and time expected for achieving expected results—long-term, mid-term, short-term.
1. Stakeholders include individuals and groups that are affected by the respective situation in the short, mid and long term. Stakeholders, to include allies, adversaries or competitors, have needs, desires/wants and expectations that are met, or not met, by products/services that in military terms include the full spectrum of military operations. Stakeholder categories would include Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure, and Information (PMESII).
2. Systems transform inputs into outputs (products/services) to achieve the outcomes expected by stakeholders. Outputs and Outcomes are results that are produced through action. Actions or tasks (collective and individual) are accomplished through processes. A process is a series of actions taken to achieve a result. A system is a collection of processes with a common aim or purpose.
The term process and system are often and correctly used interchangeability depending upon the context. Systems determine 85-98% of the result. Consequently, a “systems-of-systems approach” to build or reduce capability has always been the required strategy for achieving the best results.
3. Variation is inherent in every system and an assessment of variation is how stakeholders keep score, e.g., determine if things got better or worse. Shewart identified two causes of variation (common and special) and two types of systems/processes (stable and unstable).
Common cause is variation that can be expected and predicted within a range. Special cause is unusual or unexpected. Systems/processes consisting of all common causes are considered stable or more predictable; systems/processes containing both common and special are more unstable or unpredictable.
Given the variation principle, a problem is never solved because variation is never eliminated (and gets worse if improvement is not continual). A solved problem represents an acceptable degree of variation; a problem is an unacceptable degree of variation. Stakeholders take action based on their assessments as to the “acceptability” of the variation.
4. Knowledge of variability leads to better results. Feedback to include the qualitative, quantitative, statistical, notional and intuitive leads to information, information to potential knowledge and knowledge to potential wisdom. Knowledge and wisdom are gained through action and assessment to include after action reviews, lessons learned and captured in doctrine, and identification of the right way (s) forward.
5. Planned Change requires the application of problem solving and decision processes that are applied simultaneously at the three levels of warfare (strategic, operational, tactical) and tailored to three general categories: Maintain/sustain the situation, incremental improvement and/or radical improvement. The appropriate level strategic plan provides the context needed to balance and align ends, ways, and means.
6. The People principle includes learning and applying a basic knowledge of the behavior of individuals and groups to include their respective cultures and capabilities.
The foundation principles for leaders provide underlying principles that effective leaders have always intuitively applied to improve upon traditional methods as well as assessing the quality of what may perceived as new methods. New methods in this case being CPI applied to combat operations, the EBO concept, ONA, and SoSA. A more conscious awareness and understanding of the variation principle may help resolve the “clash of paradigms” with the effect being obtaining better results with fewer resources.
(1) Principles derived from Foundation for Leaders, PQ Systems, Dayton, OH. The term Stakeholder substituted for the term Customer.
For the past two years at U.S. Southern Command our approach to security cooperation with the 45 nations and territories of Latin America and the Caribbean has been simple — “real and vibrant partnership for the Americas.”
So, is there a real and vibrant partnership for the Americas? As we learn together from each training exercise and every cooperative opportunity, this partnership will only get stronger, more capable and more diverse. Are there disagreements and controversies? Of course. But together, all the nations of this region can continue to forge a true ”Partnership for the Americas” in the years ahead.
Admiral James Stavridis is commander of the U.S. Southern Command.
The elements of national power within the U.S. are categorized into four areas: Diplomatic, Informational, Military and Economic (DIME). Soft power is Diplomatic, Informational and Economic. Hard power is Military.
Soft power is best used to prevent conflict and Hard power (military) provides the credibility that Soft power needs to be effective. The United Nations for example, is limited to employing Soft power.
The optimum application of “Smart Power” requires Quality Leadership.
The Focus Is On ‘Soft Power’, (Philadelphia Inquirer)…Trudy Rubin
At first glance, President-elect Barack Obama’s new national-security team of experienced heavyweights may not look like a change-oriented bunch. Look again. Robert Gates, the current and future defense secretary, and former NATO commander Gen. James L. Jones, Obama’s pick for national security adviser, advocate sweeping change in the way America pursues its security interests.
For example, the United States has more members of military marching bands than Foreign Service officers. Gates also noted that the number of Foreign Service officers was frozen as the number of embassies grew after the Soviet Union breakup. Meantime, “the United States Agency for International Development saw deep staff cuts … and the U.S. Information Agency was abolished.”
These were steps taken by the Clinton administration under pressure from Jesse Helms, the late Republican senator who chaired the Foreign Relations Committee.
The extent of the problem was described graphically in a report on the crisis in diplomatic readiness recently released by the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Stimson Center (available at www.academyofdiplomacy.org). The report details the shortage of Foreign Service officers, and particularly of those with training in critical languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Hindi and Urdu.
Chertoff, Shifting Views On Security, Pushes Use Of ‘Soft Power’, (Wall Street Journal)…Cam Simpson
The Bush administration’s point man in protecting America against terrorism says U.S. investments in safety should not be restricted to airport screening machines or border fences. Michael Chertoff says the U.S. also should spend more on foreign-aid programs, scholarships for foreign students and other tools of so-called soft power.
Cartwright: Afghanistan War Tougher Than Iraq
(ArmyTimes.com)…Rick Maze
The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs warned Monday that U.S. troops and their families should not expect to relax if operations in Iraq wrap up soon. Marine Gen. James Cartwright, speaking Monday in Arlington, Va., before a symposium sponsored by the Military Officers Association of America, predicted the situation in Afghanistan won’t be resolved as easily or quickly as was the case with creating a semblance of political stability in Iraq.Taliban Says No To Karzai On Offer Of Peace Talks
(Washington Post)…Associated Press
Taliban insurgents rejected an offer of peace talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, reiterating Monday their position that there would be no negotiations until foreign troops leave Afghanistan.Taliban Threatens Attacks In Paris
(Washington Times)…Unattributed
The Taliban threatened to launch attacks in Paris unless France withdraws from Afghanistan, in a video aired by Al Arabiya television on Monday.
Shultz: Bush Defense Policy Should Stay…Donald Lambro, Nov 18, 2008.
Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz says President-elect Barack Obama should practice President Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive defense against terrorism that has kept the country safe since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Shultz credited Mr. Bush with pushing “a controversial but important idea” he said has made the U.S. a harder target when other nations were being hit by terrorists.
“That is, that in this age where there are people who want to do damage to us through terrorist tactics, you want to be aggressive in trying to find out what might happen before it happens, and then stop it from happening; that is, take preventive action,” he said in an interview with The Washington Times in his office at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
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