The Fog Of Peace And War Planning

How do we plan under conditions of uncertainty? The perspective of military planners is a key organizing framework: do they see themselves as preparing to administer a peace, or preparing to fight a future war? Most interwar volumes examine only the 1920s and the 1930s. This new volume goes back, and forward in time, to draw on a greater expanse of history in order to tease out lessons for contemporary planners. These chapters are grouped into four periods: 1815-1856, 1871-1914, 1918-1938, and post-Second World War. They progress from low-tech to high-tech concerns, for example, the first period examines armies, while the second period examines navies, the third asseses navies combined with air forces, and finally for the Kaiser chapter explores nuclear issues and decision-making.

This study addresses the effects of Operation JUST CAUSE in Panama. It raises questions about where post-conflict activities belong in the planning and execution processes. The author demonstrates the interaction of the Active Components and the Reserve, both day-today and in extraordinary circumstances. He explores the interagency arena and uncovers the weakness of the interaction between the military and other government agencies. While he shows that the Unified Command system is eminently well adapted to achieving operational success, he points out that, in the complex post-cold war world, it is not adequate to the task of independently effecting strategic success. The study challenges the military reader to look beyond the purely military in seeking ways to apply military resources effectively to the termination of conflict. It challenges the civilian reader to see military resources as among the tools available to the U.S. Government during the transition from war to peace as well as in the twilight world of low intensity conflict. Finally, the study demonstrates that post-conflict activities are perhaps the critical phase of the military campaign. In that case, achieving the strategic political-military objectives will depend on the extent of integrated, effective interagency planning for the conduct of the war and the associated civil-military operations. Panama; Operation JUST CAUSE; post-conflict activities; civil-military operations.

As the U.S. experience in Iraq following the 2003 invasion made abundantly clear, failure to properly plan for risks associated with postconflict stabilization and reconstruction can have a devastating impact on the overall success of a military mission. In Waging War, Planning Peace, Aaron Rapport investigates how U.S. presidents and their senior advisers have managed vital noncombat activities while the nation is in the midst of fighting or preparing to fight major wars. He argues that research from psychology—specifically, construal level theory—can help explain how individuals reason about the costs of postconflict noncombat operations that they perceive as lying in the distant future. In addition to preparations for "Phase IV" in the lead-up to the Iraq War, Rapport looks at the occupation of Germany after World War II, the planned occupation of North Korea in 1950, and noncombat operations in Vietnam in 1964 and 1965. Applying his insights to these cases, he finds that civilian and military planners tend to think about near-term tasks in concrete terms, seriously assessing the feasibility of the means they plan to employ to secure valued ends. For tasks they perceive as further removed in time, they tend to focus more on the desirability of the overarching goals they are pursuing rather than the potential costs, risks, and challenges associated with the means necessary to achieve these goals. Construal level theory, Rapport contends, provides a coherent explanation of how a strategic disconnect can occur. It can also show postwar planners how to avoid such perilous missteps.

A stimulating new inquiry into the fundamental truth of strategy - its purpose, place, utility, and value. This new study is animated by a startling realization: the concept of strategic victory must be summarily discarded. This is not to say that victory has no place in strategy or strategic planning. The outcome of battles and campaigns are variables within the strategist's plan, but victory is a concept that has no meaning there. To the tactical and operational planner, wars are indeed won and lost, and the difference is plain. Success is measurable; failure is obvious. In contrast, the pure strategist understands that war is but one aspect of social and political competition, an ongoing interaction that has no finality. Strategy therefore connects the conduct of war with the intent of politics. It shapes and guides military means in anticipation of a panoply of possible coming events. In the process, strategy changes the context within which events will happen. In this new book we see clearly that the goal of strategy is not to culminate events, to establish finality in the discourse between states, but to continue them; to influence state discourse in such a way that it will go forward on favorable terms. For continue it will. This book will provoke debate and stimulate new thinking across the field and strategic studies.

Strategy and Defence Planning: Meeting the Challenge of Uncertainty explores and examines why and how security communities prepare purposefully for their future defence. Professor Gray argues that our understanding of human nature, of politics, and of strategic history, does allow us to make prudent choices in defence planning.

How can countries decide what kind of military forces they need, if threats are uncertain and history is full of strategic surprises? This is a question that is more pertinent than ever, as countries across the Asia-Pacific are faced with the military and economic rise of China. Uncertainty is inherent in defence planning, but different types of uncertainty mean that countries need to approach decisions about military force structure in different ways. This book examines four different basic frameworks for defence planning, and demonstrates how states can make decisions coherently about the structure and posture of their defence forces despite strategic uncertainty. It draws on case studies from the United States, Australian and New Zealand, each of which developed key concepts for their particular circumstances and risk perception in Asia. Success as well as failure in developing coherent defence planning frameworks holds lessons for the United States and other countries as they consider how best to structure their military forces for the uncertain challenges of the future.

This book examines the subject of strategy and its relationship with politics. Despite the fact that strategy is always the product of political process, the relationship between the two concepts and their ancillary activities has scarcely been touched by scholars. This book corrects that serious deficiency, and explains the high relevance of political factors for matters of general defence. Each chapter aims to show how and why strategy and politics interact and how this interaction has had significant consequences historically. Neither strategy nor politics can make sense if considered alone. Strategy requires direction that can only be provided by political process, while politics cannot be implemented without strategy. In summary, this volume will explain: what strategy is (and is not) why strategy is essential what strategy does and how it does it how strategy is made and executed Written by a leading scholar and former practitioner, this book will be essential reading for all students of military strategy, strategic studies, security studies and war and conflict studies.

For the paperback edition, the author has written a new preface about the Bush administration's attitudes toward military reform.