Army - Stimulating Simulation

South Korea. These two aims differ
from enforcing the Dayton Accords in
Bosnia or sustaining a free, democratic
and non-Communist South Vietnam—
and all differ from the aim of destroying
al-Qaida or the Islamic State group. As
military strategist Carl von Clausewitz
explains in On War, “The smaller the
penalty you demand from your opponent,
the less you can expect him to try
and deny it to you; the smaller the effort
he makes, the less you need to make
yourself. … The political object … will
thus determine both the military objective
to be reached and the amount of effort
it requires.”
Producing decisive results—whether
at the tactical, operational or strategic
level—differs according to the war’s aim,
as do the elements necessary to produce
those results. Different aims also require
adjustments to methodologies and organizations
necessary to understand, decide,
act and adapt.
Period of War
Wars have a beginning, middle and
end, and decisiveness changes at each
point. The Iraq War provides a good example.
The actions necessary to produce
decisive results at the beginning of the
war, which was the period focused on
removing the Saddam Hussein regime,
changed when that task was accomplished.
The Surge of 2007–08 provides
another good example. The mix of
forces—military and nonmilitary—that
were tactically and operationally decisive
could not be decisive strategically. Yet
because many leaders equated war with
fighting, the belief was that the war was
over when the fighting seemed to be
mostly over.
This false belief was fed by at least
three intellectual errors: not recognizing
that tactical and operational decisiveness,
in this case, meant only that
the conditions were set for strategic
decisive action; not recognizing that
tactical and operational decisive action
closed the middle of the war, but not
the end; and not recognizing that to
achieve decisive action strategically and
end the war, both the mix of forces and
how they would be used should have
changed.
Having the right mix of military and
nonmilitary forces is one thing; proper
use—in other words, using them well—
is quite another. Whether at the tactical,
operational or strategic level, using forces
involves at least three dimensions.
The first is an intellectual dimension.
Here, the task is to align the objective
with the ways and means that success at
attaining that objective requires. The
second, an organizational dimension,
recognizes that plans have to be turned
into action and thus, includes the need
for proper organizations and methodologies
for understanding, deciding, acting
and adapting. Execution matters,
and unity of effort in execution does not
happen by chance. War is dynamic at
each of its levels so regardless of level,
having systems and organizations in
place that will allow continual realignment
of ends, ways and means and sufficiently
cohesive action throughout increases
the probability of success.
Last, proper use includes the dimension
of moral and social legitimacy. Americans
hold soldiers and their leaders responsible
for the decisions and actions they take
March 2016 ■ ARMY 15