Dr. Metz wrote a first rate examination of the nature of national strategy in a heterogeneous, democratic society. But that probably would have put off the people who most desperately need to read this.
What I got out of this book:
Other countries have a few legitimate issues with U.S. national strategy; it changes at least with every president, and usually more frequently, and that the U.S. doesn't have a coherent national strategy. The changing strategy is a reflection of the heterogeneous and democratic nature of the U.S. It must be very frustrating to national leaders in other countries to think that after three and a half years they've developed an understanding of what the U.S. is aiming for, only to have the carpet pulled out from under their feet at the next election. More so in a totalitarian state where they've had the same government and grand strategy for over a decade. The heterogeneous nature of the U.S. the diverse competing perspectives and interests is reflected in the implementation of our national strategy resulting in apparently contradictory intentions. To compound the problem, the U.S. often has leaders who are idealists, who see the world as they wish to see it rather than as it is, and build a national strategy around how they believe it should be rather than how it can be.
This last point; the idealistic attitudes of U.S. leadership manifests itself in many ways. One of the most destructive to U.S. policy is the divide between the mavens of diplomacy in the Department of State (DoS) and the warfighters in Department of Defense (DoD). This internal conflict is has prevented the U.S. from implimenting a comprehensive and cohesive strategy.
And the media. Media pundits have power without accountability, and the U.S. government hasn't gotten a handle on this and its impact on national strategy and exercise of power.
Where I disagree:
Only in a couple of relatively minor points.
-Dr. Metz doesn't get air power. He's on the faculty of the U.S. Army War College, so this isn't too surprising, but he asserted that it was the threat of ground invasion that made Japan surrender in WWII, and he trivialized the impact of the air campaigns in Viet Nam, Serbia, and Iraq 1991. Air power isn't the magic wand of military power, but trivializing it is profoundly ill-considered.
-For all the discussions of threats to national security and national strategy, there was no discussion of national interests. To attempt to discuss a threat is incoherent without identifying what is threatened. If a thing threatened is irrelevant to interests, the threat is irrelevant. So a discussion of threats without identified interests is an appeal to fear. To be fair, trying to clearly identify U.S. vital interests rapidly degenerates into squabbling over idealistic goals versus pragmatic needs, and sputtering over how there is no need to explain the importance of an ill-defined and intangible interest. I can see why he passed on going there, but I think the absense of the discussion on interests and the U.S. problem with clear definition and identification of interests has contributed to the chaotic approach to strategy.
Despite these lesser points of contention, this is an excellent and important work and should be read by any student of government, so-called political science, diplomacy, U.S. history, or strategy.
E.M. Van Court
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