Assessing the Strategic Impact of Service Culture on ...

Final Draft
<strong>of</strong> sound scholarship, it is also dangerous to <strong>the</strong> extent that policy makers and strategists rely on
scholarly study <strong>of</strong> strategic phenomena in order to improve performance. The admonition toward
scrupulous introspection is at least as old as Sun Tzu:
And so in <strong>the</strong> military—
Knowing <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r and knowing oneself,
In one hundred battles no danger.
Not knowing <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r and knowing oneself,
One victory for one loss.
Not knowing <strong>the</strong> o<strong>the</strong>r and not knowing oneself,
In every battle certain defeat. 2
Most <strong>of</strong> those who recite <strong>the</strong> “know thyself and know thy enemy” catechism today do so with <strong>the</strong>
second half <strong>of</strong> Sun Tzu’s admonition in mind. A few, including Colin Gray, recognize chronic deficits <strong>of</strong>
<strong>the</strong> first order. Gray insists that any would-be strategist must know his enemy, certainly, but must also
know himself --recognizing his domestic strategic domain as a distinctive community with component
parts that may champion divergent service cultures: “When one begins to take seriously <strong>the</strong> proposition
that soldiers, sailors, and air persons (inter alia) may have worldviews sufficiently distinctive as arguably
to merit description as cultural, insight should be gained on some <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> endemic problems in combined
arms and joint warfare.” 3 He is joined by strategic historian Beatrice Heuser who points out that
[i]n addition to <strong>the</strong> competition between rivaling ministers, interservice rivalry in societies with
armies and navies may well have existed in some modest form for centuries. All <strong>of</strong> this, taken
toge<strong>the</strong>r under <strong>the</strong> heading <strong>of</strong> bureaucratic politics, has become ever more pronounced and is
crucial to any understanding <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> configuration and equipment <strong>of</strong> armed forces, [and may well
risk] leaving…Strategy, let alone any grand strategic concept, well behind. 4
Disparate service cultures provide obvious challenges for joint strategy, but even when deployed
individually may pose challenges for operation types for which <strong>the</strong>y are not a good fit. The warfare
action <strong>of</strong> concern here, counterinsurgency, may be particularly problematic for most service cultures.
August Ruhle von Lilienstern, penning small wars doctrine as early as 1817, noted challenges found in
exceptionally acute form in unconventional war: “What may also have contributed to giving Small War
so little acceptance…is <strong>the</strong> fact that is some respects it is more difficult to wage than Major War, as it
2 Of <strong>the</strong> several worthy translations <strong>of</strong> Sun Tzu’s work that exist, this one was selected based on <strong>the</strong> efforts <strong>of</strong> its
authors to preserve <strong>the</strong> rhythm and structure <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> original Chinese. The Denma Translation Group, The Art <strong>of</strong>
War: A New Translation, (Boston: Shambhala, 2001): 12. A more typical translation reads “If you know <strong>the</strong> enemy
and know yourself, you need not fear <strong>the</strong> result <strong>of</strong> a hundred battles. If you know yourself, but not <strong>the</strong> enemy, for
every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know nei<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong> enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in
every battle.” Sun Tzu Wu, The Art <strong>of</strong> War, trans. Lionel Giles, (Harrisburg, PA: The Military <strong>Service</strong> Publishing
Company, 1949): 51.
3 Colin S. Gray, Perspectives on Strategy, forthcoming: 199.
4 Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution <strong>of</strong> Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to <strong>the</strong> Present, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010): 493.
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