LESSONS ENCOUNTERED

Hoffman and Crowther
tions forces with general purpose units, and materiel changes such as enhanced
body armor and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles. 22 There were also
doctrinal adaptations including the rapid development of appropriate COIN
doctrine. But this project and chapter are focused at the higher level of strategy.
This chapter’s definition for adaptation is based on that of Theo Farrell, a
leading scholar on military change. He defines adaptation as “change to strategy,
force generation, and/or military plans and operation that is undertaken in
response to operational challenges and campaign pressures.” 23 The two Surge
decision cycles examined herein certainly meet this definition for changes to
strategy, the Services that generated forces, and military plans.
Analytical Framework
For an analytical framework, we modified Risa Brooks’s four attributes of strategic
assessment and adapted them to this study. 24 To extend her attributes to
incorporate the strategic changes generated by the assessment, we added a fifth
element. The five factors are defined as follows:
n Performance assessment mechanisms capture the quality of
institutional structures and processes devoted to evaluations of
our intelligence of enemy capabilities and capacities, as well the
evaluation of our own political and military activities and progress.
Due to the political-military character of irregular conflicts,
such mechanisms must also include a capacity to assess the interdependent
political, diplomatic, and developmental activities
consistent with effective counterinsurgency.
n Collaborative information-sharing environment describes the
routines and conventions of dialogue associated with exchanging
information at the apex of decisionmaking. Key to information-sharing
is the degree of openness and how forthcoming participants
are about options and assessments not favorable to their
preferred policy outcomes. Collaborative does not mean that all
participants were comfortable. But the process should allow perspectives
to be shared in a climate where parties are free to explore
options, test assumptions, and debate merits of options.
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