Action, Inaction, and Incompetence

>> H.R. McMaster: I believe that we are potentially on the precipice of a world war. And you might think that sounds kind of alarmist, but I think what we're seeing today is the coalescing of what you might call an axis of aggressors. So this is one of my favorite things at Hoover is to be with all of you and I really look forward to hearing what's on your minds and where you'd like to take the discussion.

But what I'd like to do is just provide a few framing comments to pick up on what Scott said. The world really is on fire. I believe that we are potentially on the precipice of a world war. And you might think that sounds kind of alarmist, but I think what we're seeing today is the coalescing of what you might call an axis of aggressors.

And axis of aggressors who are operating in each other's interests because their interests are overlapping. And they entail really tearing down the existing international order and replacing it with a new order that is sympathetic to their authoritarian model of governance. And especially in China's case, it's status mercantilist economic model.

And that axis of aggressors won't surprise anybody. That's the two revanchist powers on the Eurasian landmass, Russia and China. But also it involves Iran the theocratic dictatorship there that is determined to extend hegemonic influence across the Middle East and destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. That's really what their objective is.

And North Korea, whose objective it is to reunify the peninsula under the so-called red banner. What's concerning about both North Korea and Iran is they're both on their way to becoming nuclear powers as well and to be able to threaten the world with the most destructive weapons on earth.

So all of these problems and this axis of aggressors and the way that they're acting in concert with one another, supporting one another's efforts, in very material ways, right? We have Kim Jong Un shipping millions of artillery shells to Russia. Russia is in turn providing technical assistance with their missile programs and testing out their missiles as they continue their onslaught against, against the Ukrainians.

And you have Iran, very material support, important material support to Russia as well, with the Shahed drones, for example, and more missiles. You have China, who is really insulating Russia from a great deal of the economic and financial pressure that Russia's been. That we put on Russia after the reinvasion of Ukraine and you have Russia, that's providing China with energy and cheap energy and so forth.

So all of this synergy here is significant because there's that material support, but there's also a great deal of diplomatic and informational support that they're giving one another. And we could talk more about that but what this does is it puts a premium on strategic competence. And that's what I'd like to talk with you about.

I think all of you should be working on what is your theory of strategic competence? What do you think it entails? And every washed up general's got to quote Clausewitz. It's kind of mandatory. But Carl von Clausewitz is somebody worthy of study because I think what he combined was not just knowledge, an academic depth of knowledge, but really practical experience.

He was first in battle when he was 14 years old. So he understood essentially,, the role of military theory, but how it applied in practice. And this is what he says about military theory. It's not to accompany you to the battlefield, tell you exactly what to do, but your theory of strategic competence will help you think clearly about complex problems.

Apply kind of design thinking to the most significant national security and foreign policy and defense related challenges we're facing. And to understand better really how to integrate efforts, integrate elements of national power, right? Military, diplomatic, law enforcement, financial, economic elements of power and efforts of like minded partners to advance your objectives and advance your critical your national interests.

So I think can't go wrong studying Clausewitz. But I think these are the questions you can ask yourself what is your foundational understanding of strategies meeting and its essential elements. And when you think about successes and failures in foreign policy and military strategy in war, you ought to think what you try to break down that outcome into kind of its constituent elements.

What explains that success or failure. These are just some definitions of strategy. I like the third one there because it has a moral dimension as well. And I think one of the price of incompetence is oftentimes paid in blood. And for example, I would say that in Ukraine today there is the lack of clarity about what the objective is.

In Ukraine, I think we had that same lack of clarity in Afghanistan, that same lack of clarity in Iraq, for example. And what happens is if you don't have a clear objective, you give your enemy an advantage over you in war. Because in war each side tries to outdo the other and what did we hear about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Oftentimes we had timelines for withdrawal, we had troop caps. Nobody was talking about winning, Right. They were talking about a responsible end to those wars. What the heck does that mean, right? I used to box in college and admittedly at a much lower weight class but I never got in the ring and said, I just want to bring this match to a responsible end.

And the reason is you would get your ass kicked. Right, if that's the way you want it, because each side tries to outdo the other and the stakes, of course, in war are much higher. What I like about the bets definition is he brings in this moral dimension, as Thomas Aquinas taught us about just war, that having a just end in mind is one of the criterion for a just war.

So the price of incompetence is often paid in blood. And without an effective strategy, that strategy is counterproductive, but it could also be unethical. So I think that what I'd like to do now is just go through some of the pitfalls and strategy and give you a couple of examples.

Okay, so this is kind of predictable from a historian that I would say, hey, it's important to pay attention to continuities. As Americans, we're predisposed to thinking about change more than continuity. Especially we tend to be enamored with technological change. What you often hear is, hey, really? Really, the next war is going to be fundamentally different from all those that have gone before it.

But actually, when you look at war across the sweep of history, you see that wars resemble each other more than they resemble any other human activity. And when we try to take lessons from just technological development in the civilian sector, like Moore's Law and computing power, for example.

And apply it to war and assume that, hey, what this means is there's going to be a revolution in military affairs. Next time you hear that, the revolution military affairs, you look for the exits because something bad's about to happen. It's a setup for problems and strategy and problems in war.

And an example of this is in the 1990s. And it's associated really with the over optimism associated with America's technological prowess and technological military prowess as demonstrated in the 1991 Gulf War. A war in which we had achieved a lopsided victory over the fourth largest army in the world and a victory at very low cost, in contravention to a lot of the predictions of large casualties in that war.

And so the assumption in the 1990s was that this combination of technologies, space related technologies, surveillance. Balance capabilities, big data analytical capabilities, and the precision revolution in terms of precision strike capabilities had revolutionized war. And the next war could be waged quickly, cheaply, and efficiently at standoff range.

The language associated with that became the orthodoxy of the revolution military affairs was quite hubristic, right? Everything was about full spectrum dominance based on this idea that you would have dominant battle space knowledge, you would know everything about your enemy, where they were, how they were disposed. And then war would just become kind of a big targeting exercise.

And you had phrases like rapid, decisive operations was a concept. Okay, are you gonna be against that? Are you for ponderous, indecisive operations, I mean, so it actually was a setup. I think, for a lot of the frustrations and the difficulties that we had consolidating military gains to get to sustainable political outcomes in Afghanistan and in Iraq in the 2000s.

The assumptions was that we would be able to just take what anybody still watch Seinfeld here in this group? Anyway, okay, so the idea was we would take the George Costanza approach to war and just leave on a high note, and we didn't consider that war is political, right?

And of course, I'm not thinking everybody knows that, right? It's like the Geico commercial. Clausewitz said war is an extension of politics, but what that means is the consolidation of military gains to get sustainable political outcomes. It's never been an optional phase in war. You just don't get to leave on a high note.

Another continuity that was neglected is that war is human. People fight for the same reasons Thucydides identified 2,500 years ago, fear, honor, and interest. A great book that I recommend, really a collection of essays by Don Kagan. It's called on the Origins of War and Prospects for Peace.

And it goes from the Peloponnesian War to the Cuban Missile Crisis. And it gives you a sense, in a practical sense, of continuities in the nature of war, particularly that war is political and war is human, but also a continuity is that war is uncertain, right? War is uncertain because that continuous interaction of opposites, right.

You and enemies, maybe multiple enemies in a conflict and so progress of war is never linear. When you announce years in advance exactly the number of troops you're gonna have in a conflict and what they're gonna do and what they're not, how does that make sense to anybody, right?

Doesn't the enemy have a say? Doesn't the enemy have a degree of authorship over the future. So I think it's really important to recognize war's political war's human war is uncertain and then another continuity obviously is war is a contest of wills. And I think that political leaders in recent years have done a poor job, presidents, across multiple administrations, of explaining to the American people what they need to know to sustain their will to prevail in war.

And that's essentially, what is at stake in the war and what is a strategy that will achieve an acceptable, favorable outcome to Americans at an acceptable cost and risk. And I think that's been absent from public discourse and again, it's associated with neglect of continuity in the nature of war.

Another, again, predictable for a historian to say, hey, if you don't pay attention to history, you're gonna make mistakes. And I think that has been the case in many conflicts and also in foreign policy in general. So, hey, what have you heard over so many administrations, really, going back to George W Bush, going back through the Obama administration, going through the Trump administration and the Biden administration was on Russia.

Really what we just need to do is allay Putin's security concerns so we can get to some kind of an economy accommodation. Putin will change his behavior. Remember, George W Bush looked into Putin's soul, right? President Obama had the reset policy and Hillary Clinton even brought like a reset button to that odious person Lavrov in Geneva.

President Trump thought he could just have a big deal, big understanding with Putin. President Biden, went to Geneva, met with Putin in a way that I think was humiliating to President Biden. And then listed all the things he wouldn't do to support Ukraine, laid out his red lines supposedly there, which for Putin means that's a green light to do anything.

But that withdrew our ships from the Black Sea and withdrew our advisors did all sorts of things to allay Putin's security concerns. But what was neglected was the history of what Putin has been up to since 2000. And even what he said he was going to do going back to a Munich speech in the year 2000, after which he launched the denial of service attacks on Estonia.

He invaded Georgia in 2008. We could go on with the assassinations, the invasion of Ukraine in 2014. Allaying Putin's security concerns doesn't work. What Putin responds to and what he's encouraged by is the perception of weakness. It's only strength that deters him. But I think a neglect of even the most proximate history.

I could use the example of Iran as well. I mean, I think what's happening in the Middle East, I think there's a great deal of continuity and we can learn from the history of what Iran has been doing in the region since 1979. We can talk more about that if you'd like.

But also, you get the abuse of history. You have the use of analogies that maybe won't be relevant. Remember, how often did you hear that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires, right? And that colored a lot of the thinking about Afghanistan and led to sort of the mantra of ending the endless wars and so forth.

So we could talk more about that as well and I recommend this book by Margaret McMillan. It's a quick, short read. It's called Dangerous Games about the abuse of history. But I think this is really probably the biggest pitfall that I've encountered over and over again in my career, which is unrealistic and implicit assumptions.

And what's dangerous about implicit assumptions is they don't get challenged, right? Because they're implicit and just think about in recent years, our approach to key elements of our foreign policy. I mentioned one already, right? That what we really need to do with Putin is just delay his security concerns and he'll be nicer to everybody and he'll recognize his futures with Europe and so forth, rather than with China.

And how about on China itself, right? China, having been welcomed into the international order, would play by the rules. And as China prospered, it would liberalize its economy and liberalize its form of governance. How about with Iran and the efforts to accommodate the Iranians over multiple administrations going back to the Carter administration?

And what we can do is if we just engage in a meaningful way with Iranian leaders, we welcome them back into the international order. The internal the internal contest between the Republicans and the revolutionaries in Iran, will bolster the Republicans and they'll moderate their. I mean, how's that working out?

It doesn't work, right? I mean, actually, the revolutionaries won in Iran. They're in charge. And that theocratic dictatorship is hostile to the great Satan us, the cancerous boil Israel and is engaged in an effort to keep the Arab world perpetually weak by keeping the Arab world enmeshed in conflict.

Zachary Shore is a good friend of mine. He's a fantastic historian. I recommend all of his books. This quotation is from A Sense of the Enemy, where he argues that a lot of the implicit assumptions are flawed because they kind of mirror image your adversary. And you assume that your adversary is driven and constrained by the same factors that drive and constrain us, right?

And we neglect oftentimes the ideology and the emotions that drive and constrain the other. I could talk a lot about this, but there are some really ludicrous examples of this In the decisions that led to an American war in Vietnam in which those who were charged with that planning effort actually wrote a memo at the time called the Good Doctor Memo.

And in this Good Doctor Memo, the argument was that, hey, America doesn't need to worry about trying to win the war in Vietnam. We just need to be seen as the good doctor who's done all it could for the patient who dies of intractable disease. As part of this argument, they make an argument to establish a common law pattern of bombing against North Vietnam under the idea that Ho Chi Minh would be like the reasonable man in English, common law, and will respond that way.

So, again, just a brazen and just an extreme example of the neglect of the emotions, the ideology, the aspirations that drive and constrain the other. Some of those aspirations sound crazy to us, but they believe it, right? Some of them sound like, you know, Dr. Evil Esque or something, you know, but, but, but, you know, but the supreme leader in Iran really does want to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews, and we should take him at his word for that.

And, and, and respond accordingly also, you know, optimism bias, right? You know, hey, the Taliban, right, The Taliban, they're going to be different than they were last time, right? They're gonna share power, they're gonna treat women better. And, you know, they're separate. They're separate from all those other terrorist organizations, right?

I mean, that was ludicrous from the beginning, but it became an orthodoxy even within our intelligence community. When I got the first framing paper for an assessment of our strategy in South Asia and in the Afghanistan war from our intelligence agencies, I wrote across the top of it in a black Sharpie marker.

Did we outsource this paper to the Taliban? I mean, it was. I couldn't believe it. And when I was in Afghanistan commanding a task force there, I received, I think, what is maybe one of the most flawed strategic documents in American history. And that's, that's a pretty high bar.

And it was Afghanistan 2015 what the vision would be, and this was 2012. And it had absolutely nothing to do with the actual situation in Afghanistan or, you know, understanding of what drove and constrained our enemies there, including Pakistan and Pakistan's ISI. So we can talk more about that if you like.

But then also there's this tendency to contrive consensus in Washington. And, you know, it's because people look out for bureaucratic prerogatives. You know, they, they engage in satisficing behavior most of the processes in Washington are actually bottom up. You know, so what you get is what's called, oftentimes a policy coordinating committee.

At the Assistant Secretary level, there's very little framing of challenges to national security. And before these discussions, they get together and you have the equivalent of like Iran discuss, right? And they discuss, they come up with some kind of a paper. That paper gets watered down through the whole process due to satisficing behavior and lowest common denominator approaches to it.

And what you get is just policy pablum, like meaningless policy papers. So I think it's really important for the cabinet officials, right? The President's National Security Council, the principals committee of the National Security Council, to frame these complex challenges together and to provide kind of top-down guidance. In the military we would call this a mission analysis briefing, but the commander would be intimately involved in this and be providing guidance.

And I could give more examples of that. But also, I think what happens oftentimes in Washington is people are paralyzed by risk. And it's often very easy to see what the risk of action entails, but it's very difficult to identify the risk of passivity or inaction. And one of the things I tried to do as National Security advisor is whenever we brief the President to, to obviously talk very clearly about what we think the risks of action are, because it's important to think about what happens next.

Your enemies, your adversaries, your rivals, they respond to what you do. And you have to think into the future and understand that interaction. But also what we tried to do is have a discussion of the risk of inaction. And one of the examples I would just tell you is that when we talked with President Trump in the first week of April of 2017 about responding to the mass murder attacks, using nerve agent, one of the most heinous weapons on earth, to mass murder civilians in Syria.

And President Trump decided to respond to that militarily. We talked to him about the risk of acting, but we also talked about the risk of not acting. A risk that was quite apparent because after the unenforced red line in Syria under the Obama administration, it had been clear by that point that that has simply emboldened the Assad regime to continue to use chemical weapons to commit mass murder against, against civilians, and was at risk at that period of time of normalizing, again, 100 years after World War I, you know, the use of the use of chemical, chemical weapons.

And again, this is the book I recommended by Don Kagan, fantastic book. He was a wonderful human being and a, and a great, and a great historian. Okay, so how do you avoid these pitfalls? I don't wanna give you a military checklist, okay? But what I want you to do is think about how do you frame complex problems.

The first thing you have to do is you have to really apply design thinking, ask first order questions. What is the nature of this challenge to national security? And then, it's really important these days in particular when people are skeptical even about a sustained approach to foreign policy and diplomatic efforts abroad.

Let alone sustain military commitments abroad. You have to identify what's at stake, what's the, so what, what are our vital interests? And then when you view that complex challenge through the lens of your vital interests, then you can craft an overarching goal and more specific objectives. And then, what you can do with that once you have that challenge framed is to make explicit the assumptions on which this policy planning effort is based, right?

How do you think our adversaries or rivals or allies will respond to what we do? Well, what kind of resources do we have available, for example. What are the factors that are driving and constraining the other, you know, the adversary? And then of course, I think you have to try to place it in context of history.

I can tell you more of a story about this later, but I'll just kind of summarize this quickly. When I came into the job as national Security Advisor, you know, we had this, this overarching assumption that, you know, that China would, would liberalize, China would play by the rules, China would liberalize its form of governance.

And recognize that a free market economic model was better for it than its mercantile statist economic model. And what I asked is I asked our historian on the NSC staff to get all the previous policy papers about China starting from the end of the Cold war in the 1990s.

And I read through all of those and I brought with me to a new meeting that we established for the principals, which is the President's cabinet, cabinet officials and other heads of departments and agencies who have a foreign policy or national security portfolio. And this new meeting was called a principal small group framing session where we discuss a five page paper that we developed along the lines that I've already discussed, a paper that we had a couple of paragraphs on the nature of the challenge, identified our vital national interests that were at stake, drafted overarching goals and more specific objectives, identified the assumptions and then identified the obstacles to progress we were encountering that would make it difficult for us to get from where we are today to the goals and objectives that we define in the paper.

And what were the opportunities? What are the opportunities that we could take advantage of through the integration of all elements of national power and efforts of like-minded partners? And then the paper stopped. And to start the discussion on the China strategy, I read an excerpt from the Obama administration strategy, but it was representative of previous administrations prior to that.

And, I observed that we're about to affect the biggest shift in U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War because we put into place these new assumptions in contrast, really diametrically opposed 360 degrees out of the assumptions that existed before. And these are just a summary of these.

These are actually available in a declassified document that was declassified in February of 2020 called the Indo-Pacific Strategy. If you're interested in kind of what a framing document like that looks like. Okay, so this is what I'd like to leave you with. But what I really want to do is take the discussion in any direction you'd like about strategy, about examples that illuminate some of the pitfalls about the process of, you know, of that you can put in place to improve our strategic competence or really anything that's going on in the world today, anything that's on your minds.

So thank you.