Politics and the American Way of War (and Strategy)
Politics and the American Way of War (and Strategy) by Frank Hoffman, War on the Rocks.
… American strategic culture, including its form of government, makes strategy particularly complicated. Our policymaking community must “craft and implement national strategy within a political system in which power is shared, authority is fragmented, and strategic consensus only rarely achieved.” This two-decade old assessment from David Jablonsky is especially poignant given recent events in our nation’s capital.
This is a complication, but it should not be an excuse for artificially trying to isolate politics from policy and strategy development. No true Clausewitzian would or should accept that. Yet as General David H. Petraeus wrote in his Princeton dissertation, “Though most military officers quote flawlessly Clausewitz’ dictum that war is a continuation of politics by other means, many do not appear to accept fully the implications of his logic.”…
