Defense strategy has become a booming enterprise, yet its core themes often boil down to a single word—or just a few. Donald Rumsfeld’s tenure in the Pentagon was defined by “transformation,” while Lloyd Austin’s strategy emphasized “campaigning” and “integrated deterrence.” Robert Gates captured his focus succinctly when he warned that the Defense Department was plagued by “next-war-itis”: prioritizing future conflicts over the wars it was already fighting. In the first Trump administration’s defense strategy, Jim Mattis emphasized increasing lethality in the U.S. military, and the return of long-term strategic competition with Russia and China, which came to be known as “great power competition”—or GPC for short—from a single mention in the 2017 National Security Strategy. The 2018 defense strategy does not use the term at all in its unclassified summary.
Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon is gearing up to develop its own defense strategy after issuing a classified interim strategic guidance document this spring. The word or phrase that will come to characterize the new defense strategy will emerge soon enough. Crafting good strategy, however, is about more than catchy labels or bumper stickers. It requires carefully written strategic guidance that leaves little room for ambiguity. A good defense strategy provides clear direction to the department’s many components, including the military services, the combatant commands, and myriad agencies.
Some labels tend to take over while simultaneously losing their meaning. In the early 2000s, it seemed just about every program had a “transformation” label slapped on it to align with Rumsfeld’s vision. The Army called its Crusader self-propelled artillery program transformational, even though at a projected 70 tons, the civilian leadership of the Pentagon saw it as more of a legacy program. Integrated deterrence under Secretary Austin suffered from a lack of focus and definition, leading to jokes that briefings on the 2022 National Defense Strategy should have included “stay tuned for more details” as placeholder slides. These examples highlight how quickly a defense strategy’s key term can move from a rallying cry to an ineffectual catch phrase.
To overcome over-labeling in defense strategy it is important to remember that defense strategy serves multiple purposes: it provides direction to the DoD on priorities for planning and investments; reinforces collective defense with partners and allies; and it tries to influence adversaries. Collectively, this is a tall order, and defense strategy language is important both in terms of the specific words chosen, and how they are used. For example, as the principal author of Robert Gates’ defense strategy, I discovered after its publication in May 2008 that partners and allies counted how many times their country appeared in the document to determine where they fall on the list of U.S. priorities. Each word should have meaning, and those writing defense strategy need to think through how the guidance will be read and acted on, both inside the Pentagon and beyond.
Defense strategies have suffered from a lack of precision and the use of filler words that are intended to imply strength or focus but rarely provide much clarity or meaning. “Robust” is a particular favorite. But if a defense strategy calls for “robust partnerships” or “robust defenses,” what is the reader supposed to infer from that? Some partnerships are just for show and some defenses are expected to fail, while others are not?
In project management, objectives are supposed to be crafted in a SMART way: specific, measurable, achievable, resourced, and timebound. Using SMART objectives for priority objectives can help constrain what I call the “zone of reasonable interpretation” in strategic guidance. As guidance, “develop rapid deployment capabilities for the Indo-Pacific theater” leaves much for interpretation. A more focused guidance could be: “By 2027, Indo-Pacific Command, in coordination with the Department of State, will agree with Japan, Korea and Australia on access and facility construction to support deployment and forward basing of a fighter wing of 5th-generation aircraft that can also support nextgeneration aircraft when available.” It says who should do what and by when.
Not all guidance needs to be written with such specificity, nor should it be for two reasons. First, it would create a defense strategy of immense length that would be challenging to coordinate and gain buy-in from key components of the bureaucracy. Second, it would quickly be overtaken by events. Luckily, the DoD does not lack for subordinate guidance, but that guidance must not only remain consistent with the tenets of the defense strategy; it must provide additional direction commensurate with the intended audience and focal areas.
Consistency across strategic guidance is often surface-level; strategic guidance documents will repeat words and phrases from the defense strategy, but not always provide any more detail. And sometimes subordinate guidance will drop ideas or concepts the defense strategy called for. Some of these changes may reflect deliberate changes in thinking on the strategy, but more often it has to do with who is writing these different guidance documents and what they see as their priorities.
The Secretary of Defense should drive the key priorities for the department, and a lot can be done through force of personality and through having other leaders “singing from the same hymn sheet.” Priorities can include who the United States is most concerned about (China, most likely), what capabilities are most important to develop, where the United States needs to ensure greater readiness and modernization, and where to take risk.
Strategy is about choices. Poorly written strategy can confuse and allow for too much business as usual. (“Slap that label on the program and call it good!”) Well-written strategy won’t cure all the ills but will give the secretary and his leadership team the yardstick by which to measure decisions.
Quentin E. Hodgson is a senior international and defense researcher at RAND. He previously was a civil servant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense in a variety of policy positions and was the principal author of the 2008 National Defense Strategy.
Read the full article here
