Patton once argued that ‘[g]ood tactics can save even the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy even the best strategy.’ While General Patton had many strengths, this particular statement falls short. Without first defining strategy, employing effective tactics to reach a desired end state is not possible. Strategy is the first step in campaign planning that provides tactical leaders a blueprint to formulate action plans that are informed and synchronized.
Sun Tzu was correct when he wrote, ‘Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.’[i] In other words, strategy first and tactics second. Before considering tactics, campaign managers must first develop a strategy that: defines the desired outcome, improves situational awareness, identifies adversaries’ potential strategies, defines a winning coalition, and creates a strategic communications plan. From there, a final strategy is decided and then specifics tactics are selected to support applicable lines of effort. Additionally, Allan Millett and Williamson Murray concluded an essay on the ‘Lessons of War’ with the line, ‘Mistakes in operations and tactics can be corrected, but political and strategic mistakes live forever.’[ii]
Since the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, we have relayed on emotions and tactics (noise before defeat). The 2003 invasion of Iraq triggered a sectarian civil war, inside an incipient region-wide schismatic conflict, wrapped in a global insurgency that is clearly a strategic debacle for the major Western powers, not to mention those living close to or in the Middle East. Islamic State, a particularly hideous foe to arise from this bloody cauldron, has been beaten back, but no doubt a successor will emerge—assuredly more virulently righteously deranged.
The West’s almost two decades long adventure in Afghanistan has been a colossal waste of blood and treasure.[iii] The country remains near the very bottom of the international human development index and at the top of the international perception of corruption rankings. In August 2021, concerns that the Afghan police and army couldn’t effectively police the country or hold their own against a resurgent Taliban became a reality.
The obvious question, then, is ‘why?’ How did this happen? What is it which has made our strategic efforts so fruitless? It is often supposed that the problem is a lack of strategy—or a plethora of bad strategy. Another variant of this thesis holds that the West is tactically proficient but strategically deficient.[iv] That would be bad, if true, albeit putting us in good company; after all, Livy records even Hannibal the Great being rebuked by his lieutenant Maharbal after the Carthaginians wiped out a Roman army at Cannae, 216 BC for the same sin. ‘You know how to win victory’, he said, ‘[but] you do not how to use it.’[v]
Consider, post-conflict scenarios. If your adversary has suffered a thousand tactical defeats, yet is best suited to seize power when you leave. Who has won the conflict?
References
[i] The oft-quoted line does not appear in the most common translation by Thomas Cleary of Art of War. See Cleary, Classics of Strategy and Counsel, Vol. 1, (London: Shambhala Press, 2000). How it entered into the popular lexicon in this way, it is particularly beloved in the business management literature, is a mystery to us. The principle it expresses though of the primacy of strategy over tactics is certainly apparent throughout the work, and specifically for e.g., on p. 56. ‘The one with many strategic factors in his favour wins, the one with few strategic factors in his favour loses—how much the more so for one with no strategic factors in his favour.’
[ii] Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray, ‘Lessons of War’, The National Interest (Winter 1988), p. 94.
[iv] Thomas Jocelyn made this point in ‘The Afghanistan War is Over. We Lost’, The Weekly Standard (18 October 2018).
[iii] See the debate ‘Whiteboard: Is the US Tactically Proficient but Strategically Deficient?’, War Room (US Army War College, (17 August 2018), https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/special-series/whiteboard/wb03-strategic-proficiency-1
[v] Titus Livius (Rev. Canon Roberts, trans., Ernest Rhys, ed.), History of Rome, Book 22, Para. 51, http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/txt/ah/Livy/Livy22.html