Journal ArticleDOI
Is Strategy an Illusion
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The notion that effective strategy must be an illusion emerges cumulatively from arguments that: strategies cannot be evaluated because there are no agreed criteria for which are good or bad; there is little demonstrable relationship between strategies and outcomes in war; good strategies can seldom be formulated because of policymakers’ biases; if good strategies are formulated, they cannot be executed because of organizations' limitations; and other points explored below Unifying themes include the bar-level assumptions.Abstract:
Strategy is the essential ingredient for making war either politically effective or morally tenable It is the link between military means and political ends, the scheme for how to make one produce the other Without strategy, there is no rationale for how force will achieve purposes worth the price in blood and treasure Without strategy, power is a loose cannon and war is mindless Mindless killing can only be criminal Politicians and soldiers may debate which strategic choice is best, but only paciasts can doubt that strategy is necessary Because strategy is necessary, however, does not mean that it is possible Those who experience or study many wars and strong reasons to doubt that strategists can know enough about causes, effects, and intervening variables to make the operations planned produce the outcomes desired To skeptics, effective strategy is often an illusion because what happens in the gap between policy objectives and war outcomes is too complex and unpredictable to be manipulated to a speciaed end When this is true, war cannot be a legitimate instrument of policy This article surveys ten critiques that throw the practicability of strategy into question It pulls together many arguments that emerge in bits and pieces from a variety of sources Some are my own formulation of skepticism implicit but unformed in others’ observations; few analysts have yet attacked the general viability of strategy head-on The notion that effective strategy must be an illusion emerges cumulatively from arguments that: strategies cannot be evaluated because there are no agreed criteria for which are good or bad; there is little demonstrable relationship between strategies and outcomes in war; good strategies can seldom be formulated because of policymakers’ biases; if good strategies are formulated, they cannot be executed because of organizations’ limitations; and other points explored below Unifying themes include the bar-read more
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‘Alignment’, not ‘alliance’ – the shifting paradigm of international security cooperation: toward a conceptual taxonomy of alignment
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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
The Science of "Muddling Through"
TL;DR: Lindblom, C.E. as mentioned in this paper discussed the science of "muddling through" in the context of monetary policy. But he did not consider monetary policy with respect to inflation.
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Chaos: Making a New Science
TL;DR: The chaos theory as mentioned in this paper is an extension of classical mechanics in which simple and complex causes are seen to interact, and the implications are staggeringly universal in all areas of scientific work and philosophical thought.
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Rationalist explanations for war
TL;DR: The authors show that there will exist negotiated settlements that rational states would mutually prefer to a risky and costly fight under very broad conditions, under the assumption that states have both private information about capabilities and resolve and the incentive to misrepresent it.
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Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis
Ole R. Holsti,Graham T. Allison +1 more
TL;DR: The second edition of the Essence of Decision as discussed by the authors was published in 2003 and is 78 pages longer than the original and is illustrated with up-to-date examples from the Clinton and Bush administrations.
Journal ArticleDOI
Bounded Rationality and Organizational Learning
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that without working toward a higher level of consistency in terminology than prevails in organization theory today, it will be difficult or impossible to cumulate and assemble into a coherent structure the knowledge we are gaining from individual case studies and experiments.