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This is the second in an analytical series on joint issues. It follows the authors' U.S. Department of Defense Strategic Planning: The Missing Nexus, in which they articulated the need for more formal joint strategic plans. This essay examines the effect such plans would have on joint doctrine development and illustrates the potential benefits evident in Australian defense planning. Doctrine and planning share an iterative development process. The common view is that doctrine persists over a broader time frame than planning and that the latter draws on the former for context, syntax, even format. In truth the very process of planning shapes new ways of military action. As the environment for that action changes, planners address new challenges, and create the demand for better methods of organizing, employing and supporting forces. Evolutionary, occasionally revolutionary, doctrinal changes result. The authors of this monograph explore the relationship between strategic planning and doctrine at the joint level. They enter the current debate over the scope and authority of joint doctrine from a joint strategic planning perspective. In their view, joint doctrine must have roots, and those roots have to be planted firmly in the strategic concepts and plans developed to carry out the National Military Strategy. Without the fertile groundwork of strategic plans, the body of joint doctrine will struggle for viability.
Over the past decade, ?jointness? has become a paean in the quest to improve the effectiveness of the U.S. armed forces, and justifiably so. Recent military operations have demonstrated a high correlation between joint operations and success on the battlefield. Consequently, the trend toward increased ?jointness? is not likely to abate. The congressional perception of the importance of joint operations by the U.S. armed forces was underscored by the passage of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act (?Goldwater-Nichols Act?), the most significant reorganization and redistribution of authority and responsibilities within the Department of Defense since 1958.1 In an effort to assure more effective joint operations, Congress increased the powers of the combatant Commanders-in-Chief (CINCs), made the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) the principal military advisor to the National Command Authorities (NCA), and assigned the CJCS specific responsibilities in the areas of strategic planning, joint training and joint doctrine. Additionally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff lost their baronial influence and the Joint Staff was reoriented to serve the CJCS, vice the corporate Joint Chiefs of Staff.2 This does not suggest that this seminal legislation has overcome all the institutional impediments to raising, training and employing joint forces. Problems remain; one of which is the focus of this essay. Difficulties in the development and implementation of sound joint doctrine have been caused, in large measure, by the systemic gap in the existing strategic planning process. The absence of a direct link between the strategic direction of the U.S. armed forces and the operational planning for their employment has hindered the development of coherent and integrated joint doctrine. Also, this situation has not provided effective incentives for the services to embrace joint doctrine, in total. These limitations point to a common solution. They illuminate a missing link in strategic planning for the U.S. armed forces that would connect the National Military Strategy (NMS)3to key joint planning documents. Filling this strategic planning void would enhance the development and implementation of sound and comprehensive joint doctrine. In short, there is a needfor a coherent, traceable, and accountable connection between the NMS and the body of joint doctrine developed to support it.
The Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 is the most important legislation to affecting U.S. national defense in the last 50 years. This act resulted from frustration in Congress and among certain military officers concerning what they believed to be the poor quality of military advice available to civilian decision-makers. It also derived from the U.S. military's perceived inability to conduct successful joint or multi-service operations. The act, passes after four years of legislative debate, designated the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the principal military advisor to the President and sought to foster greater cooperation among the military services. Goldwater-Nichols marks the latest attempt to balance competing tendencies within the Department of Defense, namely centralization versus decentralization and geographic versus functional distributions of power. As a result of the Goldwater-Nichols Act, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has achieved prominence, but his assignment is somewhat contradictory: the spokesman and thus the advocate for the Commander in Chief, while simultaneously the provider of objective advice to the President. While the act did succeed in strengthening the CINCs' authority and in contributing to the dramatic U.S. achievements in the Gulf War, the air and ground campaigns revealed weaknesses in the CINCs' capability to plan joint operations. In addition, the increased role of the military in ad hoc peacekeeping operations has challenged the U.S. military's current organizational structure for the quick deployment of troops from the various services. Rapid technological advances and post-Cold War strategic uncertainty also complicate the U.S. military's organizational structure.
Can America continue to maintain its military commitments without conscription?
The effects of the information revolution are particularly profound in the realm of national security strategy. They are creating new opportunities for those who master them. The U.S. military, for instance, is exploring ways to seize information superiority during conflicts and thus gain decisive advantages over its opponents. But the information revolution also creates new security threats and vulnerabilities. No nation has made more effective use of the information revolution than the United States, but none is more dependent on information technology. To protect American security, then, military leaders and defense policymakers must understand the information revolution. The essays in this volume are intended to contribute to such an understanding. They grew from a December 1999 conference co-sponsored by the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute and the University of Pittsburgh Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies. The conference brought together some of the foremost members of the academic strategic studies community with representatives of the U.S. Government and U.S. military. As could be expected when examining a topic as complex as the relationship between the information revolution and national security, the presentations and discussions were far-ranging, covering such issues as the global implications of the information revolution, the need for a national information security strategy, and the role of information in U.S. military operations. While many more questions emerged than answers, the conference did suggest some vital tasks that military leaders and defense policymakers must undertake.
In war, there are always differences between the opponents. At times these are insignificant, passing disparities with no bearing on the outcome. At other times, the differences between opponents are important, placing one in a position of advantage, the other at a disadvantage. This is a very simple observation, but from it flows one of the pressing issues faced by the United States today: strategic asymmetry. Strategic asymmetry is the use of some sort of difference to gain an advantage over an adversary. It is an idea as old as warfare itself, appearing under a number of guises. Among strategic theorists, Sun Tzu placed great stock in psychological and informational asymmetry, writing that: All warfare is based on deception. When confronted with an enemy one should offer the enemy a bait to lure him; feign disorder and strike him. When he concentrates, prepare against him; where he is strong. avoid him.
. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.