TRANSFORMATION AND STRATEGIC SURPRISE

Colin S. Gray

April 2005

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FOREWORD

 The possibility of achieving decisive results from short warning attacks 

appears to have improved greatly with technological advances. Indeed, 

strategic surprise offers both golden opportunities and lethal dangers, so it 

attracts much attention in today’s world. 

 In this monograph, Dr. Colin Gray takes a broad view of strategic 

surprise, and relates it to the current military transformation. He argues 

that the kind of strategic surprise to which the United States is most at 

risk and which is most damaging to our national security is the deep and 

pervasive connection between war and politics. Although America is 

usually superior at making war, it is far less superior in making peace out 

of war. Dr. Gray concludes that the current military transformation shows 

no plausible promise of helping to correct the long-standing U.S. weakness 

in the proper use of forces as an instrument of policy.

 This monograph was written under the Strategic Studies Institute’s 

External Research Associates Program (ERAP). It is intended to stimulate 

debate on the role of policy in the exercise of war.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 
iv

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR

COLIN S. GRAY is Professor of International Politics and Strategic Studies 

at the University of Reading, England. He worked at the International 

Institute for Strategic Studies (London), and at Hudson Institute (Crotonon-Hudson, NY), before founding a defense-oriented think tank in the 

Washington area, the National Institute for Public Policy. Dr. Gray served 

for 5 years in the Reagan administration on the President’s General Advisory 

Committee on Arms Control and Disarmament. He has served as an adviser 

both to the U.S. and the British governments (he has dual citizenship). His 

government work has included studies of nuclear strategy, arms control 

policy, maritime strategy, space strategy, and the use of special forces. Dr. 

Gray has written 19 books, most recently The Sheriff: America’s Defense of 

the New World Order (University Press of Kentucky, 2004), and Strategy 

for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History (Frank 

Cass, 2002). In 2005 he will publish Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare 

(Weidenfeld and Nicolson), as well as a diverse collection of his writings 

on strategy. Dr. Gray is a graduate of the Universities of Manchester and 

Oxford.
v

SUMMARY

 Though discounted by Clausewitz in the circumstances of his era, 

strategic surprise has enjoyed considerable popularity over the past 

century. The possibility of achieving decisive results from attacks launched 

on short, or zero, warning has appeared to improve greatly with advances 

in technology. It follows that surprise has been recognized as offering 

what seem to be both golden opportunities and lethal dangers. Since 

surprise is an ironbound necessity for the tactical success of terrorism, it 

is understandable that it attracts a major degree of attention today. There 

is no real novelty about this. After all, for 40 years the United States and 

its North Atlantic Treaty Organizatiion (NATO) allies perpetually worried 

about surprise attack on the Central Front in Europe, as well as about a 

surprise first strike designed to disarm the United States of its ability to 

retaliate with its strategic nuclear forces.

 As a general rule, this monograph does not repeat or attempt to second 

guess the existing scholarship on how to correct bureaucratic and other 

pathologies in the world of intelligence. Furthermore, it does not contest 

the declared purposes or the details of the Army’s radical transformation 

plan, both of which it judges to be admirable. It is not that kind of analysis. 

Instead, this discussion takes an unusually broad view of the problem, 

actually the condition, of strategic surprise, and relates it to the process 

of military transformation that currently is still in its early stages. The 

analysis has a strong thesis and conclusion. Specifically, it argues that in 

period after period, and with few exceptions in war after war, the kind 

of strategic surprise to which the United States is most at risk, and which 

is most damaging to U.S. national security, is the unexpected depth and 

pervasiveness of the connection between war and politics. Americans 

usually are superior in making war: they are far less superior in making 

the peace that they want out of the war that they wage.

 The monograph argues that the current military transformation, though 

certainly welcome, cannot itself correct the long-standing U.S. weakness in 

the proper use of force as an instrument of policy. The discussion claims 

that, notwithstanding its probable virtues in the enhancement of military 

prowess, the current military transformation bids fair to be irrelevant to 

America’s really serious strategic problem or condition. What the global 

superpower needs is a military establishment that it can use in ways 

conducive to the standards of international order it seeks to uphold, and 

with the political consequences that U.S. policy intends. Whether that 

establishment is more, or less, network-centric, or has, more or less, on-call 

precision firepower, truly is a matter of less than overwhelming importance. 
vi

Politics rules! More accurately phrased, perhaps, policy should rule! War is 

political behavior that must serve policy. Since the conduct of war should 

not be a self-regarding apolitical activity, preparation for it in peacetime, 

as well as its exercise in anger, needs to be suffused with the sense of 

purpose that is provided only by the realm of policy. To summarize: this 

monograph has taken no issue with the grand design of the transforming 

Army, rather the salient topics are the use made of the Army by American 

policymakers, and the way that the Army chooses to behave, both in 

combat and afterwards.

 The argument unfolds cumulatively with seven points presented in all 

but self-explanatory, descriptive language.

Bureaucratic Reform.

 1. Reorganization of intelligence bureaucracies can be useful, but is only of 

marginal importance for reduction in the risks of strategic surprise. 

 There is always room for bureaucratic improvement. But every 

reorganization for reform brings its own pathologies. If we are looking for 

areas of behavior wherein truly significant improvement can be made in 

meeting the challenge of potential strategic surprise, bureaucratic reform 

is not among them. Of course, there are administrative reforms that do 

make a difference; for example, those that affect career and promotion 

patterns, and hence shape the traffic flow of high talent. However, defense 

against the kind of strategic surprise to which the United States is most 

vulnerable, the unexpected political consequences of military behavior, is 

best provided by strategic education, not reorganization.

Understanding the Condition.

 2. Surprise effect, not surprise, is the challenge. 

 The problem is not surprise. Surprise happens!—to adapt the common 

exclamation. Rather the problem is the effects of surprise. Surprise, by 

definition, is in the hands of our enemies who are attempting to paralyse 

the dialectic of war. But the effects of surprise, by and large, are in our 

hands. We cannot aspire to be surprise-proof. We can, however, aim to be 

proofed against many, perhaps most, of the malign effects of surprise.

 3. Some unpleasant surprises should be readily avoidable. 

 War and warfare tend to be confused one with the other. The fact 

that there is much more to war than the waging of warfare is the core of 

the American difficulty in using its military power for desired political 
vii

outcomes. Better understanding of the connection between war and peace, 

and between the waging of warfare and the kind of postwar settlement 

intended, would hugely reduce the incidence and severity of unpleasant 

strategic surprise for U.S. statecraft. The relationship between policy 

and military action inherently is a tense one. They are distinctive realms, 

commanded technically by different rules and values. Nonetheless, 

the conduct of warfare must be guided by policy, though policy must 

be prepared to be disciplined by military practicalities. Poverty in the 

necessary dialogue between policy and the military helps produce, indeed 

all but guarantees, adverse strategic surprise. 

Levels of Analysis.

 4. The geopolitical context is the most important.

 Strategic surprise is the product, ultimately, of a particular geopolitical 

context. Technological surprise is improbable, though the use of 

internationally common technologies in surprising ways is a near certainty. 

Diverse strategic and military cultures, reflecting their unique geopolitical 

circumstances, will adapt new technologies and ideas to fit their distinctive 

needs. The threat or use of force is a political act deriving from a political, 

or geopolitical, context. At root, such threat or use is not a technological or 

cultural action. Strategic surprise may well have a technological dimension, 

but it will not be the product, or the expression, of technology. By way 

of contrast, such surprise is certain to have a cultural dimension, in the 

sense that culture must contribute to the making and the content of policy. 

Statecraft, and war as one of its agents, are political behaviors, conducted 

for policy ends. No matter how prominent the technological or cultural 

factors appear to be, the behaviors are political. They are intended to have 

geopolitical effect.

Conclusions: Implications for the Army.

 5. Do not exaggerate the dangers from surprise.

 Surprise, even strategic surprise, is not a panacea solution to the 

uncertainties of war, or the strengths of the enemy. History records few 

cases where decisive victory was achieved as a result of the achievement 

of successful strategic surprise. Even when surprise is secured, so what? 

What are its strategic benefits, its effects? If we are alert and flexibly 

adaptive, we should be able to ensure that no enemy who catches us by 

strategic surprise would profit by the deed. That said, it is possible that 

the unprecedentedly interconnected world of the 21st century is, as a 
viii

consequence, unprecendentedly vulnerable to the ripple effect of strategic 

surprise. What once were local events now can have a global resonance. We 

are respectful of this view, but not thoroughly persuaded that it accurately 

expresses a historical change of great moment for our argument.

 6. Minimum regrets must be a guiding principle.

 Defense planners cannot aspire to design and procure the uniquely 

“right” force posture for the future. They can and should, however, aim 

to get the really Big Things right enough. The most suitable blessing for a 

defense planner is, “may all your errors be small ones.” In transforming the 

Army for the 21st century, the appropriate ambition is to design a posture 

that will never be the cause of major regrets for “might and should have 

beens.” The Army’s transformation plan, privileging flexibility and agility, 

should minimize the danger of being caught on the wrong side of truly 

major decisions.

 7. The operational level of warfare is not the whole of war. Is the U.S. Army 

pursuing the most appropriate vision in its transformation?

 The transformation needed most urgently in the Army is in its 

suitability as the primary policy instrument of the sheriff of world order. 

The transformation now underway in all of the Armed Forces, including 

the Army, necessarily has as a prominent feature, the further leveraging 

of information technology (IT) so that the troops can do even better what 

they do superbly well already. America’s most pressing strategic problem, 

really a condition so persistent, is that time after time military prowess is 

not employed as effectively as it should be in the service of policy. This is 

the zone of strategic surprise that potentially could prove fatal to America’s 

role as the principal ordering agent that the world requires. The challenge 

is partly for the Army to be adaptable to diverse political contexts, and to 

be able to undertake missions that transcend traditional warfighting. With 

its planned transformation, the Services would seem to have recognized 

these challenges and to have stepped up boldly to remake themselves to 

meet them. Just how successful the Army will prove to be in its proclaimed 

goal of changing its culture remains to be seen. The greater challenge, 

however, is for America’s policymakers to understand: (1) the strengths and 

limitations of the military instrument that they are using; (2) the nature and 

character of war; and (3) the cultural attitudes both of our enemies and of 

ourselves. Transformation is most needed in an enhanced adaptability for 

effectiveness in different political circumstances. Policymakers must only 

resort to force with a careful regard to the desired political consequences 

and with a sustained will to license the actions necessary to achieve them.
1

TRANSFORMATION AND STRATEGIC SURPRISE

Just when we found the answer, they changed the question.

Anonymous

We judge the unknown to be unlikely.

 

S. Douglas Smith, 20041

It is impossible to predict the future, and all attempts to do so in any 

detail appear ludicrous within a few years.

 

Arthur C. Clarke, 19622

INTRODUCTION

 As a highly pragmatic discipline, strategic studies follows events, 

both those that are actual and those that are widely anticipated. The 

concept of surprise is intellectually fashionable today. However, it is not 

at all self-evident what the practical implications are or ought to be. In 

common with its conceptual stablemate, asymmetry, surprise defines 

a content-free zone. It has no inherent meaning, save with respect to 

its logical opposite. Surprise and asymmetry must be defined solely 

with reference to what they are not. This rather unhelpful, academic 

seeming, point happens to have major real-world implications. The 

defense community has signed on for yet another big idea that it is ill 

equipped to pursue purposefully, if indeed such pursuit is feasible at 

all.

 Historically, American strategic theorists and defense analysts 

have taken their cues from the signals of concern transmitted by 

officials. Those official signals typically have been triggered by events. 

For example, the entire conceptual edifice of the theory of stable 

mutual deterrence was created in the 1950s, following the first public 

explanation of a coherent U.S. nuclear strategy by the Eisenhower 

administration in 1953-54.3 The administration was seeking to 

incorporate nuclear weapons into national strategy, in the context of 
2

the lessons of the war just concluded, at least frozen by an armistice, 

in Korea; the development of fusion weapons; the expansion of the 

nuclear stockpile; and, of course, the growth of the Soviet nuclear 

threat in quantity and quality.4 In the mid 1970s, there was a brief flurry 

of analytical interest in the problems of surprise attack, with specific 

reference to the possibility of Soviet forces in Europe catching the 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) unawares on the Central 

Front of the inner-German border.5 Moving fast-forward to today, a 

U.S. defense community, civilian and military, that traditionally has 

been all but comprehensively uninterested in irregular warfare, now 

has rushed predictably to where the policy action is most lively, and 

the money is most readily accessible.

 Only a few years ago, the writing of books and other studies on 

terrorism was a distinctly minority pursuit in the intellectual wing 

of the defense community. Today, such an endeavor is virtually 

mandatory if one aspires to be a part of the fashionable, and funded, 

crowd. Whereas even in the 1990s, let alone during the Cold War 

decades, experts on terrorism and other forms of irregular warfare 

were exceedingly thin on the ground, now they are truly abundant. 

Indeed, today it is rare to find a defense expert who does not claim 

counterterrorist competency in his or her portfolio of professional 

skills.

 A problem with intellectual fashion is that, by its very nature, it must 

change. In the case of national defense, it will change as policymakers 

react to the circumstances that beset them. The official, and attendantdependent, worldview moves on, leaving in its wake yesterday’s Big 

Idea. In the field of war and strategy, there are no new ideas. Rather 

there is a storehouse of concepts and theories which are the products 

of two and a half millennia of intellectual and pragmatic rumination 

on strategic experience. “Ideas persons,” intellectual leaders perhaps, 

for the U.S. defense community go to that storehouse periodically 

and rediscover the high merit in some well-known, but probably long 

neglected, notion. This is how it is with strategic surprise and, indeed, 

with its conceptual fellow traveller, the asymmetric threat.6

 Lest some readers believe that this author has strayed into 

exaggeration with his claims for the contemporary authority of 

the notion of surprise, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld can 

be quoted to settle the issue. Aside from the swipe at the previous 

administration, the Secretary’s words express a view that now is 
3

consensual across the political spectrum. In his Annual Report for 2002 

he advised as follows:

Well before the events of September [2001], senior Defense Department 

officials, through the vehicle of the Quadrennial Defense Review, determined 

that contending with uncertainty must be a central tenet in U.S. defense 

planning. Too much of the Department’s planning over the decade of the 

1990s had focused on a few familiar dangers rather than the broad array 

of potential challenges of consequence to U.S. interests and the nation’s 

inherent vulnerability to asymmetric attacks. They concluded that U.S. 

defense planning must assume that surprise is the norm, rather than the 

exception. Adapting to surprise―adapting quickly and decisively―must 

be a hallmark of 21st century defense planning.7

 Since terrorism has been identified as the defining threat of this era, 

and since it can only succeed by surprise, it has to follow, syllogistically, 

that surprise is a, if not the, master strategic concept or principle of 

our time. Unfortunately, surprise, along with such other Big Ideas 

as asymmetry, uncertainty, and friction, for a few examples, is not 

easy to operationalize outside a narrow band of tactical parameters.8

The superpowers could, and did, procure and operate diverse and 

complex strategic force postures which were designed to deny success 

to a would-be surprise attacker. The military challenge was eminently 

quantifiable, at least it appeared to be so. But, what is one to make of, 

let alone do with, the official advice that surprise is the norm? That 

sensible sounding declamation is about as useful as the oxymoronic 

maxim to “expect the unexpected.”

 The purpose of this monograph is to make a modest contribution 

to improving understanding of strategic surprise, especially with 

reference to the process of military transformation. I believe that 

the idea frequently is wrongly conceptualized, that errors in basic 

understanding can promote undue pessimism on our part, and that 

the whole subject is overdue for a complete review. With a mind, 

ultimately, to the implications of my argument for the armed forces 

in general, and the Army in particular, this monograph attempts to 

stimulate and contribute to just such a review.

 The discussion is organized into subjects which accommodate a 

total argument with seven points, three of them serving as conclusions. 

As a roadmap to what follows, I will close this introduction with a 

summary of the major points explored and advanced below.
4

Bureaucratic Reform.

 1. Reorganization of intelligence bureaucracies can be useful, but 

is only marginally important for reduction in the risks of strategic 

surprise.

Understanding the Condition.

 2. Surprise effect, not surprise, is the challenge.

 3. Some unpleasant surprises are reliably avoidable.

Levels of Analysis.

 4. The geopolitical context is the most important.

Conclusions: Implications for the Army.

 5. Do not exaggerate the dangers from surprise.

 6. Minimum regrets must be a guiding principle.

 7. The operational level of warfare is not the whole of war. An 

attractive and persuasive vision of a transformed Army, though an 

essential forward step, in itself is no guarantee of military behavior 

strongly supportive of political goals.

 These seven points cumulatively expose the nature of the problem, 

or condition, of strategic surprise. They are guided by a sustained focus 

upon an attempt to improve the Army’s appreciation of the challenge 

of strategic surprise. From that appreciation should flow an improved 

understanding of how it may need to behave with its transformed 

force so as to be more responsive to the demands that policy may send 

its way.9

 To launch the substance of this enquiry in the appropriate spirit, 

we will quote the immortal wisdom of Yogi Berra. Yogi offered advice 

for the ages when he said, or is reported to have said, “prediction is 

difficult, particularly about the future.”
5

Bureaucratic Reform.

 1. Reorganization of intelligence bureaucracies can be useful, but is only 

of marginal importance for reduction in the risks of strategic surprise. There 

is always a case for some bureaucratic reorganization intended to 

achieve the kind of reform that should lead to improved performance. 

But historical experience and common sense tell us that the intelligent 

and praiseworthy urge to reorganize for reform is near certain to 

disappoint. Whereas, on the one hand, better organization should 

yield a better intelligence product, on the other, such improvement 

is more likely to be only of marginal value. Bureaucratic reform 

endeavors typically are motivated more by the political necessity to 

be seen to be doing something about a recent intelligence failure, than 

they are by a serious and sincere determination to make a difference. 

The truth is that there are systemic reasons why bureaucratic reform, 

no matter how well designed and executed, is close to irrelevant to 

the problem of coping with strategic surprise, particularly the kind of 

political surprise that is the focus of this monograph.

 This is not to deny that suitable reforms should treat a few of the 

endemic pathologies of the intelligence and warning community, at 

least for a while. Certainly it is possible that a reformed intelligence 

community could save the country grief on occasion;10 indeed, the 

Central Intelligence Agency was designed with just such a purpose 

in mind. Such a community would be so structured as to encourage 

both information sharing and competitive assessments, as well as to 

ensure a proper professional separation between the producer and 

the user of information. This monograph is not at all hostile to the 

reform of the intelligence community. I do insist, however, that the 

preferred pathway to coping with the difficulties of surprise does not 

lead through bureaucratic reform.

 As this inquiry will make all too plain, bureaucratic reform 

simply cannot address the real problems. Those problems, and such 

solutions and alleviation as we can identify, are beyond the reach of 

administrative reshuffles. They have to do with the very nature of 

the subject of surprise and the reasons why it can be so dangerous. 

Also, they derive from the facts that, for good and ill with regard to 

intelligence, our analysts must function culturally as Americans within 

the embrace of a hugely decentralized structure of central government. 
6

It is worth noting that those latter potential hindrances are relatively 

minor when compared with the point registered previously. The 

true source of difficulty lies with the nature of the subject of strategic 

surprise.

 For laudable reasons, politicians and officials are always in 

search of ways to control events. The adoption of stable deterrence 

as the jewel in the crown of America’s Cold War strategic policy is 

a classic example of this desire made into policy. Today, although 

deterrence has lost some of its former glitter,11 the U.S. Government 

is still very much in the would-be control business. Strategies of 

prevention and preemption are examples of ideas for the physical 

control of the military capabilities of polities judged to be threatening. 

Alas, preemption, understood correctly as attacking first in the last 

resort, requires a thoroughly reliable quality of warning that rarely 

is attainable. Even forcible prevention, which translates as shoot on 

strong suspicion, could be held to demand an improbable measure 

of certainty about intelligence information. The uncomfortable fact is 

that until an enemy actually initiates an attack, a decision to beat him 

to the punch, by minutes, days, or months and years, unavoidably has 

to be based on a leap of faith. No scheme to reorganize and reform the 

intelligence bureaucracies can alter that fundamental reality. 

 Today it is orthodox to condemn the intelligence community for 

relying too heavily upon technology in its information gathering. That 

criticism is well-justified, provided it is not allowed to feed another 

error. Human intelligence is not a panacea solution to the problem of 

deficient information. Those who would engineer, or “fix,” America’s 

intelligence and warning difficulties by shifting the balance between 

machines and people in favor of the latter, need to be reminded of 

some inconvenient facts. To cite but a few:

 • People take years to train, and many more years to penetrate an 

alien society and secure positions of trust in which they might 

learn useful things.

 • People, especially if recruited locally, will often be the subject 

of some residual suspicion as to their loyalty.

 • The possibility of the U.S., and Allied, intelligence community 

having the right people in the right places at the right time, is 

something of a long-shot.
7

 The U.S. Government may be told what historical records later 

reveal to have been the truth, that an enemy had the intention of 

attacking. But would policymakers in Washington either distinguish 

the “signals” from the “noise,” or have sufficient confidence in the 

“signals” that were recognized as such to take preventive action?12

Until an attack actually unfolds, one can always hope that the warning 

signs do not really mean what they appear to indicate. Also, one can 

choose to “go the extra mile for peace,” albeit in the teeth of apparent 

evidence of malign intent, and hope that something will turn up to 

divert the would-be attacker from his course. Perhaps he is bluffing!

 Critics are right. For at least 30 years the United States has 

overvalued the technical means of information gathering, at the 

expense of the human. The critics would not be correct, however, 

were they to try to insist that a major rebalancing of effort in favor 

of human spies would have a truly significant consequence for the 

country’s ability to avoid, prevent, or preempt strategic surprise.

 American culture, including its strategic and military culture(s), 

has long been highly machine-minded. It is attracted to the definition 

of conditions as problems that lend themselves to assault by the 

Yankee know-how that produces the “engineering fix.” In many 

cases, this national self-confidence, determination, and optimism 

achieves wonders. But, there is a banal sounding yet profound maxim 

before the wisdom of which even a proud superpower is compelled to 

bow: “the impossible really is impossible.” Reform of the intelligence 

community and its ways of doing business might be of some marginal 

utility, though it is well to heed the caveat that such reform has a 

way of balancing the improvements that it implements with new 

bureaucratic pathologies. One should never forget the authority of the 

law of unintended consequences. Purveyors of bright new, or old but 

refurbished, ideas to improve intelligence as a barrier against strategic 

surprise might with profit heed these words by philosopher John Gray: 

“The history of ideas obeys a law of irony. Ideas have consequences; 

but rarely those their authors expect or desire, and never only those. 

Quite often they are the opposite.”13

 From Carl von Clausewitz to Rear Admiral J. C. Wylie, USN, great 

strategic theorists have pointed to control as being the essence of the 

practical object in war, the purpose of strategic effect.14 The subject of 

this monograph, at root, is how better might we control the dangers 

that imperil our security. Because of its current, partial hegemonic, 
8

status as well as for reasons of its national culture, strategic and 

military inter alia, the United States is especially vulnerable to 

seduction by unsound ideas. A democratic country burdened with 

great security tasks will never find itself short of advice. The market 

for palliatives is open for trading. Its global responsibilities, and the 

vulnerabilities that attend them, as well as its traditional problemsolving optimism, mandate great caution in approaching the challenge 

of strategic surprise. Wishful thinking and ethnocentrism conflate 

potently to mislead. Unfortunately, it is one thing to recognize the 

unhelpful influence of national culture, it is quite another to identify 

practical ways to correct for that source of pervasive bias. We are what 

we are. The U.S. Government can reorganize itself in any way that 

the political process will tolerate, but it must continue to be operated 

by those who are culturally American. One senses that possibly the 

authors of the U.S. Army’s excellent design for radical transformation, 

including the commitment literally to “transform its culture,” may 

need to take more account than they anticipate of their national 

proclivities.15

 Strategic surprise can, with some good fortune, be controlled in its 

consequences, as this monograph will reveal and argue. However, that 

control cannot be advanced significantly by the “fix” of bureaucratic 

reorganization and reform. Indeed, as we have suggested already, new 

organizational and command structures in the intelligence world are 

likely to generate new difficulties that will offset much of the benefit 

anticipated to flow from the reforms. 

 The producers and the consumers of intelligence need to keep their 

distance, if the product is not to be contaminated by the beliefs and 

concerns of policymakers. In principle, the intelligence product can 

be protected from policy bias. But in practice, it is close to impossible 

to avoid the shaping and coloration of intelligence both by the policy 

of the moment and, no less significantly, by the assumptions that 

are current and authoritative within the defense community as a 

whole. And that is to ignore the phenomenon of deliberate attempts 

by policymakers to encourage the delivery of an intelligence product 

supportive of their beliefs and intentions. Human nature and the 

political process usually triumphs over organizational reform.

 If strategic surprise is defined as a problem in want of “fixing,” 

then the mission is indeed beyond rescue. Some readers may believe, 

or suspect, that strategic surprise as a problem really can be hugely 
9

alleviated, if not definitively solved, by the right mix of technical 

or administrative advances. To answer those optimists, I offer an 

historical observation. A century of cumulatively monumental change 

in technology and governmental organization has had no appreciable 

effect upon the U.S. ability to eliminate the danger of strategic 

surprise. 9/11 speaks for itself. The prosecution rests.

 Fortunately, though, the mission of coping well enough with 

strategic surprise is far from hopeless, always provided it is 

conceptualized properly and approached with due respect for its 

nature. That optimistic judgment, aspiration perhaps, leads directly 

to the next section.

Understanding the Problem.

 2. Surprise effect, not surprise, is the challenge. Surprise happens! To 

adapt the vulgar bumper sticker message. History’s nonlinearities, 

acts of God, the transmutation of familiar trends into something quite 

different, the “normal accidents” that afflict all complex systems,16 and 

the cunning plans of devious foes, all can surprise us. But surprise is 

not really the problem. In fact, surprise is not a problem at all, rather a 

condition of the insecurity in which we must live. By analogy, superior 

intelligence, per se, is toothless, because there has to be someone at the 

sharp end to use it to inflict pain on the enemy. Similarly, surprise, 

per se, is of little, if any, value. The question is always, “what are 

its consequences?” In a quite brilliant brief analysis, James Wirtz 

penetrates much of the way to the heart of our subject. He explains 

that,

Surprise temporarily suspends the dialectical nature of warfare (or any 

other strategic contest) by eliminating an active opponent from the 

battlefield. Surprise turns war into a stochastic exercise in which the 

probability of some event can be determined with a degree of certainty 

or, more rarely, an event in which the outcome can be not only known in 

advance, but determined by one side in the conflict.17

 Surprise attack has the potential to suspend war’s nature as a duel, 

by eliminating its dialectic. Thus might Clausewitz be confounded. In 

practice, though, it is exceedingly rare for a belligerent to be eliminated 

totally as a consequence of surprise. Ideally, a surprise assault would 

render its target enemy an all but helpless victim, unable to recover 
10

from the initial disadvantage in which it was placed. Theoretically, 

this idea is more than faintly reminiscent of the basic idea behind John 

Boyd’s observation, orientation, decision, action (OODA) loop.18 By 

a surprising speed in our OODA cycle, we will begin, and remain, 

within the action or reaction time of the like cycle of the enemy. He 

will never be able to recover. So much for theory and high aspiration. 

Boyd extrapolated from tactical air combat into the far more rarefied 

zones of strategy and policy. A belligerent may be tactically, even 

operationally, vulnerable to surprise, yet still be strategically highly 

resilient. Witness the grim experience of the Soviet Union in 1941. A 

theory that is sound at the tactical and operational levels, is apt to be 

thwarted by the factors of time, distance, and scale, at the strategic.

 By definition, surprise is controlled by the enemy. He has the 

initiative. If this were not so, the events in question would not be 

surprises. But, the consequences of surprise are controlled by us, not 

the enemy. Only in the rarest of cases is a strategic or operational level 

surprise itself so damaging that the defender is rendered incapable 

of recovery. Whether or not recovery is possible must depend upon 

both moral and physical factors. In 1940 and 1941, both Britain and the 

Soviet Union would have fallen along with France, had their national 

geographies not gifted them the barriers of water or sheer distance 

which provided time for recovery.

 It is understandable, and indeed necessary, for the intelligence 

community to strive as best it is able to prevent our being surprised by 

malevolent foes. After all, if there is no surprise, there can be none of 

surprise’s potentially harmful, even deadly, consequences. However, 

surprise prevention, though an important goal, is mission impossible, 

at least it is if we harbor absurd ambitions to inhabit a risk-free security 

environment. It must follow that the defense community as a whole 

has no practical choice other than to accept that surprise happens; it 

is a condition of doing national security business. This is not a feature 

unique to the contemporary world. Surprise has always been an actual 

or potential characteristic of warfare. This has to be so because since 

“[w]ar is nothing but a duel on a larger scale,” in the ageless words of 

the Prussian master.19 Clausewitz explains that “[c]ountless duels go to 

make up war, but a picture of it as a whole can be formed by imagining 

a pair of wrestlers. Each tries through physical force to compel the 

other to do his will.” Duelling enemies must ever be motivated to try to 

behave in a manner that “eliminates war’s dialectic.”20 The feasibility 
11

of surprise at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels of conflict 

will shift with technology, but in theory at least its attractions remain 

constant. We should hasten to add that its potential disadvantages 

also persist through time. This is not the right juncture at which to 

pursue in detail the possible downside of surprise. Two maxims will 

suffice for now to convey much of that downside: “nothing is so apt to 

fail as incomplete success”; and “you need to kill a king, not offer him 

insult and injury.”

 Basil Liddell Hart stated the vital distinction that I am emphasizing 

in his analysis of the British victory in the Battle of Messines on 

June 7, 1917. The British assault was anything but a surprise. “The 

bombardment and wire-cutting’ began on May 21st, were developed 

on May 28th, and culminated in a 7-days’ intense bombardment, 

mingled with practice barrages to test the arrangements.”21 General 

Plumer’s Second Army had virtually sent the Germans an invitation 

to the fight. But, as Liddell Hart explains,

The consequent forfeiture of surprise did not matter in the Messines 

stroke, a purely limited attack, in contrast to that at Arras, where it had 

been fatal to the hope of a breakthrough. For although there was no 

surprise there was surprise effect . . . produced by the mines [19 of them!] 

and the overwhelming fire. . . and this lasted long enough to gain the 

short-distanced objectives that had been set. The point, and the distinction 

between actual surprise and surprise effect, are of significance to the theory of 

warfare.22

 The distinction advertised so clearly by Liddell Hart is indeed 

of great significance. The effects of surprise were limited severely in 

1917 by the technological deficiencies of the day. Because they lacked 

mobility, armies were unable to exploit tactical success rapidly for 

operational advantage. Also, generals were hampered fatally by 

the absence of reliable real-time communications. By the time of the 

second great war of the 20th century, technology and doctrine had 

largely alleviated those inhibitors of 1917.23

 I am suggesting strongly that our problem is not surprise and its 

frustration. Indeed, it is more sensible to regard surprise as a condition 

rather than a problem. Instead, our problem is to cope well enough 

with the effects of those surprises that we are bound to fail to prevent. 

It is important to add that the challenge of surprise effect includes the 

case addressed in the quotations from Liddell Hart. Even when we 
12

are not really surprised by, for example, the failure of an attempt to 

dissuade, deter, or coerce short of the use of force, still we could be 

hugely surprised by the actions the enemy takes and, above all else, 

by their effects.

 Notwithstanding the contemporary prominence accorded what 

is misnamed as preemption, it is a near certainty that, as a general 

rule, the United States and its friends and allies will not often be 

the initiators of military action. Of course, in theory at least there is 

a class of strategic challenge that points the other way. In its Final 

Report, the 9/11 Commission offered the following as the first of its 

recommendations:

The U.S. Government must identify and prioritize actual or potential 

terrorist sanctuaries. For each, it should have a realistic strategy to keep 

possible terrorists insecure and on the run, using all elements of national 

power. We should reach out, listen to, and work with other countries that 

can help.24

 Those ambivalent words appear to advise sending U.S. marshals 

(and bounty hunters?) into bandit country to get the bad guys. But 

also they seem to reflect some reluctance to “do the business,” to find 

and kill terrorists. Even the mighty United States cannot flout the 

lore of war and strategy with impunity. Strategists of many nations 

have sought the silver bullet, the magic formula, truly the all purpose 

panacea, that should deliver certain victory. Did not the Baron Antoine 

Henri de Jomini promise victory to the army that behaved according 

to the correct principles, especially according to his great principle?25

Recall that in 2003 the U.S. attack on Iraq was anything but a surprise. 

However, there were those in Washington who believed, at least 

seriously entertained the hope, that an opening “shock and awe” 

bombardment from the air, would have the surprise effect of rendering 

the enemy either incapable of resistance or unwilling to resist.26 It 

failed. Moreover, it was thoroughly misconceived as an approach 

to a conflict wherein the United States was seeking to liberate and 

not to conquer. The belief in panacea solutions to war’s inconvenient 

complexities and complications is apparently eternal. Neither the 

killing of terrorists largely by our unilateral efforts, nor reaching out, 

listening, and working with allies, will function as a wonder drug. 

However, both are needed.
13

 Conceptually, we have stressed the need to distinguish between 

surprise and surprise effect. In a more practical vein, we will offer the 

reminder that, prominent among the strategist’s analytical weapons, 

should be a skeptical mindset and a readiness to pose the challenging 

question, “so what?” To be caught by surprise is no disgrace for a 

superpower that has accepted a global domain for its security interests 

and therefore responsibilities.27 Some of the surprises in America’s 

future will be agreeable, many will be of no particular consequence, 

while a few, inevitably, will bear upon issues of significant, even vital, 

national concern. The challenge to the defense planner and strategist 

is not to avoid being surprised. Rather it is to plan against some of the 

more dire potential effects of surprise. 

 The logic of the argument is inexorable. Since surprise cannot be 

prevented reliably, there is simply no alternative to our focusing upon 

its potential consequences. Fortunately, though, with the noteworthy 

exception of a nuclear attack on a large scale, it is highly improbable 

that strategic surprise would achieve useful, let alone conclusive, 

strategic ends for its perpetrator. It has to follow that our attention 

should be drawn far more to the possible consequences of surprise, 

than to a forlorn hope to frustrate its achievement. The U.S. Army 

cannot transform itself precisely into the “right” force for a future that 

we know must contain many surprising duties. But, that Army can 

transform itself so that it is “right enough,” which is to say sufficiently 

adaptable, to cope well enough with the effects of a genuinely wide 

range of demanding missions. Of particular importance is the need 

for the Army to consider the surprising effects of its own action, and 

inaction, in the actual conduct of war. As this monograph develops 

later, the possible surprise effects that should be of most concern 

are political in nature. Waging warfare is political behavior, albeit 

with military tools. Policy is not the responsibility of the Army, but 

the ways in which the Army fights must have profound political 

consequences.

 3. Some unpleasant surprises should be reliably avoidable. Clausewitz 

tells us that “[n]o other human activity [than war] is so continuously 

and universally bound up with chance. And through the element 

of chance, guesswork and luck come to play a great part in war.”28

Because “[w]ar is the realm of chance,”29 meaning that uncertainty is 

apt to rule, it is essential that we eliminate such among the risks as lend 

themselves to accurate assessment. Most important of all is the need 
14

to correct avoidable ignorance. The enemy may well surprise us, with 

both his initiatives and their effects, but if we fail to grasp the nature 

and purpose of war, we are guilty of inflicting the severest penalties 

on our forces. If the nature of war is not understood correctly, then 

policy, which is to say the purpose of it all, is likely to be frustrated, 

and lives and treasure will be sacrificed in vain.

 This section of the analysis levels a charge at, and poses a 

question to, the U.S. Armed Forces. The charge is that war and 

warfare not infrequently have been confused, with the result that 

Antulio J. Echevarria II highlighted in his study, Toward an American 

Way of War. Building on Russell Weigley’s respected work on The 

American Way of War, Echevarria brings the American story up to 

date.

Their [the Americans in Weigley’s book] concept of war rarely extended 

beyond the winning of battles and campaigns to the gritty work of turning 

military victory into strategic success, and hence was more a way of battle

than an actual way of war. Unfortunately, the American way of battle has 

not yet matured into a way of war.30

 There is, of course, another and contrasting American way of war, 

as Echevarria correctly notes. In its extensive historical experience of 

irregular warfare, which is to say of warfare against irregulars, the 

U.S. Armed Forces were rarely able to defeat their enemies by decisive 

maneuver and conclusive battle.31 There is no doubt, though, that 

the Napoleonic ideal of successful warmaking has been iconic. It is 

uncontentious to claim, by analogy, that in the 20th century, Germany 

proved exceptionally competent in the bloody trade of fighting, yet, 

fortunately, outstandingly incompetent at making war. To lose one 

world war in a 30-year period might be attributed to bad luck, but 

to lose two requires a more systemic explanation. The United States 

betrays some disturbing elements of the problems that Germany failed 

to recognize and correct. Tersely put, the United States has been better 

at waging warfare than it is at conducting war for its only legitimate 

purposes, which must be political.32

 I will brave the possible ire of some readers by going further than 

does Echevarria in his persuasive critique. He charges the dominant 

American way of war, past and present, with resting on a concept of 

war that fails to make the necessary connection between military 

and strategic success. That charge is well made, but it does not go 
15

far enough. The purpose of war is not strategic, rather it is political, 

success. Moreover, the object of war, as Liddell Hart insisted, should 

be “a better peace.”33 He was expressing the core rationale of the 

long traditional religious concepts of Jus ad bellum and Jus in bello. In 

other words, war is about the peace that follows. Necessarily, in this 

perspective, warfare must be waged with a mind to the character of 

the postwar settlement that is sought. 

 This section levels one charge and poses one question. The 

charge, that war and warfare are apt to be confused by the U.S. 

Armed Forces and by the civilians who oversee and direct them, is 

somewhat controversial. By contrast, my question may attract an 

answer that is controversial in the extreme. Stated bluntly: “Is the 

U.S. defense establishment insufficiently committed to effecting the 

right transformation?” Appearances to the contrary, perhaps, this is 

not to criticize the Army’s transformation plans, still less the sensible 

words, even near revolutionary sentiments, with which those plans 

are explained. Rather, their cause is to worry lest a more agile and 

adaptable Army will be employed in such a way that it commits old 

sins against the political-military lore of war in more effective ways. 

I suggest that the impressive Army transformation that is underway, 

particularly its determination to alter the mindset in favor of Joint and 

Expeditionary campaigning,34 is not really the transformation most 

needed by the country. What the American sheriff requires most is 

a transformation in its ability to threaten or employ force to advance 

its political goals. It is difficult to avoid noticing that the various 

“roadmaps” to transformation, not excluding the claimed Strategic 

Approach of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Office of Force 

Transformation, provide no very convincing linkage between military 

excellence and ultimate political benefit―or even just recognition that 

such linkage is of the utmost importance.35 In fact, it is precisely and 

strictly that linkage that legitimizes and gives meaning to military 

behavior. A cynic, perhaps a skeptic, might be excused observing that 

the U.S. military is in the process of improving its ability to do that 

which it already does well. That military is unsurpassed in decisive 

maneuver and the delivery of precise firepower. And those abilities 

really matter, one must hasten to add. Moreover, it is probable that a 

transforming Army will be more capable of waging war both against 

irregular enemies, as well as against regular foes who are obliged by 

America’s material strengths to behave in an irregular mode. But, the 
16

conduct of war is not the issue here, it is not what war is all about. 

Historian Peter Browning provides some useful clarification, beyond, 

that is, the bedrock of Clausewitz’s dictum that “[w]ar, therefore, is an 

act of policy.”36 Browning explains that “[w]arfare is the act of making 

war. War is a relationship between two states or, if a civil war, two 

groups. Warfare is only a part of war, although the essential part.”37

 The United States has some history of being unpleasantly 

surprised: in minor key by its difficulty in translating military success 

into strategic success; and in major key by the problem of turning 

strategic success or advantage into a political victory that can be 

expressed in a desirable postwar settlement. The United States has 

been surprised in war after war, and in imbroglios great and small, 

to discover that somehow, somewhere, it had misplaced the glue that 

should connect its undoubted military prowess with its anticipated 

political reward. This surprise, notwithstanding its magnitude, in 

theory at least is eminently avoidable. All that is required is a sound 

strategic education. Unfortunately, though, the principal source of the 

problem lies not with particular officials, who can be easily replaced, 

but rather with national strategic and military cultures that approach 

warfare and politics as unduly distinctive behaviors.

 My charge is that the United States has favored a way of war, more 

aptly perhaps a way with war, which has deprived its warriors, and 

the country, of political rewards earned and deserved by their blood. 

Given that our subject is the superpower guardian of world order, this 

allegation is no small matter. We must not exaggerate. There have been 

politically effective exercises of U.S. military power. By far the most 

impressive example was the Civil War. But, alas, we cannot count on 

having an Abraham Lincoln on hand when we need him. There have 

been too many cases, both great and small, when American military 

effort was not directed, or exploited, effectively for the political, and 

other (e.g., humanitarian), purposes of the enterprise. Those cases 

include World War I; World War II in Europe; the worst phases of the 

Korean War; Vietnam, of course; Lebanon; Iraq in 1991; Somalia in 

1993; Kosovo in 1999; Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003. Military 

victory is always important, nay vital. But it is no guarantor of policy 

triumph. It is not as yet clear to this commentator that the undoubtedly 

worthy and worthwhile momentum of military transformation is 

going to feed very usefully into the transformation that the United 

States needs most urgently. Above all else, the United States needs 
17

a transformation in its ability to wield the sword with political skill. 

There is a word for this function, it is strategy.

 It is not very helpful to criticize American society, and by 

extension its armed forces, for being and acting as they have to be 

and do. Nonetheless, with appropriate acknowledgement to Sun-tzu, 

it should be useful to remind people that accurate self-knowledge 

is at least as important as is knowledge of the enemy.38 In its more 

technological variants, the contemporary American process of military 

transformation rests heavily upon, indeed requires, “information 

dominance.”39 The Army’s vision is more sophisticated, as one would 

expect, given its focus on the warriors rather than their tools.40 But it has 

yet to be demonstrated that a transforming force will strive as seriously 

to understand the enemy as it will to locate him for his obliteration. I 

suggest that there is inadequate appreciation of the apolitical bias in 

American strategic thought and action. The information dominance 

that is the ambition of some “transformers” is apt to be too narrowly 

military in conception. The U.S. way in warfare systematically 

prejudices its policy goals. The revolution in approach that is needed 

may prove to be beyond attainment by a nonpermissive American 

culture. Although Americans are justly proud of their adaptability, 

that useful virtue is constrained by culture.

 On a slightly brighter note, it is worth saying that the beginning 

of the process of identifying answers has to be discovery of the right 

questions. Frank, if uncomfortable, recognition that the United States 

has systemic difficulty translating military excellence into political 

results can be the beginning of a broader approach to transformation. 

We shall return to this central matter in a later section.

Levels of Analysis.

 4. The geopolitical context is the most important. Most analyses of 

surprise distinguish strategic, operational, and tactical levels of 

concern, while some extend their reach to encompass the technological 

also. Those studies are drawn inevitably into the on-going and longrunning debate over intelligence and how to improve it. That literature 

is mature and useful in its way, but, nonetheless, typically it misses the 

level of analysis that should be accorded logical and practical priority. 

Namely, the literature on surprise, strategic and other, is not rich in 

its treatment of geopolitical context. Since all our strategic concerns, 
18

including anxieties over surprise attack, flow ultimately from the 

character of their historical context, this neglect, even omission, is as 

strange as it is unfortunate.

 Context, from the Latin contextere, has two meanings. It may refer 

to “that which surrounds,” which now is its everyday meaning, while 

also it can mean “that which weaves together.”41 When we worry about 

strategic surprise, especially in connection with a long-term program 

of military transformation, the enquiry should begin with geopolitical 

contextual, rather than strategic, operational, or tactical uncertainties. 

Problems at those levels derive basically from the political context 

which gives them meaning. In case the trajectory of this monograph 

seems to have strayed into remote terrain, I will state my purpose here 

in the most direct manner possible. It is of the utmost importance to 

address the question of the character of the global environment for 

which we are transforming the Armed Forces. Surprise at this level of 

concern has a way of triggering traumatic consequences. The familiar 

kinds of analyses which treat strategic, operational, and tactical 

surprise, do not usually raise their sights to consider the context for it 

all. Lest inadvertently I am sending the wrong message, I must rush 

to declare my enthusiasm for measures judged useful to reduce the 

possibility of our being caught by strategic, operational, and tactical 

surprise. I am far from dismissive of the importance of that perpetual 

endeavor. However, this analysis takes a different tack, one which 

approaches military transformation more from the perspective of the 

source of challenges to its adequacy and appropriateness. To fit what 

kind of a world is the Army transforming itself? What range, quantity, 

and intensity of duties will, or plausibly might, U.S. foreign policy lay 

upon the Army?

 It would not be wholly unreasonable to argue that the questions 

just posed are neither researchable nor answerable. After all, the 

future has not happened, and the planned transformation does 

not, to the best of my knowledge, carry any promise of time travel. 

Unfortunately, my questions are neither merely rhetorical, nor are 

they academic in a pejorative sense. DoD is committed to a long-term 

process of transformation which must shape military capability, and 

hence its utility as an instrument of policy, for decades ahead. What 

does the Army know, or think it knows, about the world of 20 or 30 

years hence for which it is now in the process of transforming itself? 

Of course, there is an obvious sense in which the answer to such a 
19

question is above the paygrade of military professionals. We hire and 

fire politicians to decide such things. Nonetheless, there is a great 

chain of reasoning which connects the Army’s transformation plans, 

dynamic as they must be, to working assumptions about the contexts 

for which those plans will need to be well enough suited. That “great 

chain” comprises the latest National Security Strategy (2002), Quadrennial 

Defense Review (2001), The National Defense Strategy (2005), and National 

Military Strategy (2004) documents, which provide guidance for the 

Army Campaign Plan, a design which specifies the assumptions on 

which it is based.42 Fortunately, we are far from blind when peering 

into the future, even without the benefit of crystal balls or time travel. 

As a practical matter, whether one is optimistic or pessimistic about 

defense planners’ abilities to “get it right enough” for the mediumterm future, those responsible officials have no choice but to do 

their best from a situation of irreducible fundamental uncertainty. A 

scholar, supposedly expert, can make faulty predictions, and move 

on to the next project with no apparent adverse consequences. The 

rare exception would be the “expert” who enjoyed a quality of access 

to policymaking that enabled him to infect that process with his 

erroneous guidance.

 The news is by no means all of doom and gloom, as the next section 

makes suitably plain. There are ways to minimize the risk that the 

Armed Forces will transform themselves into a military instrument 

significantly unsuited to the world in which they must operate. For 

now, however, it is necessary to highlight, explain, and illustrate 

historically, the primacy of context.

 The context for U.S. national security truly is a unity. Each relevant 

dimension impinges upon, and interweaves with, the others. However, 

it is convenient and useful to identify three contexts, never forgetting 

that this trinity is compatible with the essential unity referred to above. 

The contexts which will fuel strategic surprise are the geopolitical, 

the cultural, and the technological. These are not neatly distinctive, 

fenced-off realms. Furthermore, the geopolitical is by far the most 

important of the three.

 Politics is about power. War is about politics. If organized violence 

is not politically motivated, it is not war. It has to follow that war, 

strategy, and defense preparation, including military transformation, 

of course, also are about power. But what is the power, really the relative 

power, story for which the Army is in the process of transforming 
20

itself? Rephrased, what should today’s transformers understand, and 

assume, about the relevant geopolitical future? Errors committed at 

this most elevated level of analysis could literally lose us the country. 

We might choose to recall a comment by one of Hitler’s intimates, 

shortly before his meeting with destiny at Nuremberg. Field Marshall 

Keitel, not a man generally known for his wisdom, observed that 

errors in tactics and operations can be corrected in a current war, while 

mistakes in strategy can be corrected only in the next. One should add 

that Germany failed to abide by that principle. The higher the level 

of concern, the more serious the stakes. The level of concern for our 

contemporary transformers does not come any more elevated than 

the geopolitical context.

 Tectonic, apparently nonlinear, shifts in the geopolitical context 

happen. In fact, they happen not infrequently. Consider the differences 

in the U.S. geopolitical context between the 1900s and the late 1910s, 

the 1930s and the early 1940s, the mid-1940s and the Cold War decades, 

and the 1980s and the 1990s. In the 1980s, for excellent reasons, the 

U.S. Armed Forces prepared for a geopolitical context that was to 

vanish in less than a decade. One might add that the preparation was 

not wholly unconnected with the geopolitical revolution in question.43

The 1990s, the post-Cold War era, was a no-name decade that had 

no dominant organizing geopolitical feature. American primacy was 

recognized, but not really articulated or very productively exercised. 

9/11 changed all that. 

 Is the Army transforming itself for a geopolitical context wherein the 

United States will long, indeed indefinitely, remain the unchallenged 

military hegemon? Does it need to adjust, albeit painfully, to a world 

wherein it will not require the ability to wage “heavy” combat against 

major states, and perhaps not against states at all? Should it “lighten 

up,” perhaps “down,” and become ever more Special Forces (SF)-like 

in order to fit suitably into a geopolitical context wherein America’s 

enemies are variably, but emphatically, irregular? The answers to 

questions such as these are of the highest importance for the shape and 

direction of the long process of military transformation. Fortunately, it 

is possible to provide answers in which at least some confidence can 

be placed. On the evidence available at present, the Army is adapting 

itself prudently for a future that may include combat against both 

regular and irregular enemies. Moreover, the Army recognizes that 

even regular adversaries are likely to rely heavily on “asymmetric 
21

means” so as “to mitigate their relative disadvantage.”44 It is reassuring 

to note the Army’s explicit recognition that “[t]hreats from potentially 

hostile regional powers remain.”45

 Strategic surprise on the greatest of scales occurs as a result of 

changes in the contexts for national security. Although we identified 

a contextual trinity of politics, culture, and technology, as the prime 

sources of strategic upheaval, we also insisted that politics, rephrased 

as the geopolitical for its relevance to war and strategy, is the driver 

among those contexts. For example, by far the most significant systemic 

shock to U.S. national security over the past 20 years was the abrupt 

retirement of the Soviet enemy from the geopolitical field of honor. 

This was one of history’s rarities, a benign great strategic surprise. The 

information revolution and the consequent debate about revolution 

in military affairs (RMA) and military transformation appear to many 

people to register high on the Richter scale of strategic importance. 

Nonetheless, the issues in those debates pale into near insignificance 

compared with the impact of the alteration to the geopolitical landscape 

caused by the reduction of the superpower column from two to one.

 Although one could attempt to consider the contexts―geopolitical, 

cultural, and technological―as independent variables, indeed many 

studies do so, that approach is not favored here. Turning first to the 

cultural context for national security as a possible source of strategic 

surprise, I am not persuaded that it is a context superior to, or greatly 

influential over, the geopolitical dimension.46 And I say that as a long 

time advocate of the necessity for cultural study in strategy.47 At 

least, that is what I believe about the United States. My claim is that 

American culture, insofar as it bears upon attitudes towards national 

defense and war itself, is far more shaped by, than shaping, the 

geopolitical context. This is not claimed as an eternal, let alone a 

universal truth. It is, however, a claim with a powerful reach. For 

example, it appears to be the case that, for a variety of historical 

reasons, “Old Europe” has entered what amounts to a post-modern, 

post-military era. Many of the societies of “Old Europe” have become 

thoroughly debellicized.48 This commonly noted phenomenon 

expresses: reactions to the bloody history of Europe in the 20th century; 

the strategic fact that those societies have been security wards of the 

U.S. superpower for more than 50 years; and a perilous assumption 

that good security times are here to stay, irreversibly and therefore 

indefinitely. The anti-military culture of “Old Europe” is the product 
22

primarily of its currently permissive geopolitical context. Europeans 

have discerned no need to take their own defense seriously. It is a 

logical next step to convert a necessity into a virtue. They appear 

not to have noticed, or perhaps have chosen to ignore, the several 

signals from Moscow indicating an intention to restore some of its 

global status and influence, probably in loose strategic and economic 

association with a rising China.

 In the American case, culture is not plausible as a potential source 

of strategic surprise. Although culture, by definition, must reflect 

deep-seated attitudes and habits, it is also very much a living context, 

subject to influence by reactions to unfolding events. That claim 

presumes that American culture is fundamentally permissive of a 

wide range of foreign and defense policy behaviors, depending upon 

circumstances. It is always possible that some populist politician might 

appeal successfully to the isolationist strain in American society. If that 

were to happen, the strategic surprise effect upon the national military 

posture could, indeed should, be profound. However, this enquiry is 

not persuaded that that event is at all likely. It is judged improbable 

even if the country, performing as global sheriff, suffers much pain 

and disappointment and, as a consequence, becomes seriously 

resentful at the ingratitude of what, not without irony, is referred to 

as the international community.49 This may not be true for all time, 

but at least for now it is reasonably clear that the cultural context for 

U.S. national security is a variable dependent upon perceptions of the 

country’s geopolitical context. In the 1990s, American society did not 

much care about the Balkans or the Horn of Africa, hence the spate 

of writings on the need for a “post-heroic” American style in war.50

There are, of course, demographic and other sociological explanations 

for a potentially policy– and strategy-enervating societal aversion to 

the suffering, or even infliction, of casualties. But, on balance, both 

careful study and experience tell us that the claim for an extreme U.S. 

casualty aversion is a myth, provided Americans really care about the 

mission in question.51 What American society will not tolerate is the 

conduct of hostilities in a half-hearted manner by an administration 

that seems to have no notion of, or serious commitment to, victory. 

American society is not likely to provide the kind of unpleasant 

strategic surprise which would inhibit or prohibit perilous geopolitical 

behavior. Culture follows politics, at least usually it does so.
23

 The third context potentially of importance for strategic surprise 

is the technological. I will declare boldly, perhaps rashly, that 

technological surprise is not a likely strategic problem for the U.S. 

military. The depth, breadth, and consistency of the U.S. commitment 

to military technological excellence, backed up by a civilian sector 

technologically of the first rank, all but guarantee against the surprise 

emergence of a technological shortfall potentially lethal to national 

security. In fact, the news is even better than that. So many and various 

are the possible ways in joint warfare, so diverse and complex are 

today’s tools of the military trade, that it would be highly implausible 

to anticipate strategic disaster for reason of a particular technological 

failing. That is the good news. The less good news is that the prudent 

focus for concern is not so much upon new technologies, but rather 

upon how other countries’ or groups’ ways of war might chose to 

employ them. Some American commentators, reasonably, but alas 

incorrectly, believe that, in its information-led RMA/transformation, 

the U.S. defense establishment is simply leading the way in the 

modern way in warfare.52 Given the global diffusion of information 

technology (IT), and given a presumed universal military meaning 

to common technological knowledge, it should follow that to know 

the American way is to know the future for all who aspire to master 

the state of the art in military affairs. Unfortunately, the world does 

not work like that. The reasons why it does not are both geopolitical 

and cultural. Geopolitically, America’s rivals will pick and choose 

from the technological menu so as to privilege their unique strategic 

advantages and hopefully to compensate for their deficiencies. Also, 

it so happens that there is not and never has been a truly common 

“grammar” of war.53 Different belligerents will have their own views 

on how a basically common technology should be exploited. An 

outstanding recent collection of essays on the impact of local culture 

upon the consequences of the diffusion of technology and ideas offers 

these cautionary words among its findings:

One of the central contributions of this volume is to alert practitioners to be 

cautious in their expectations that the spread of new military knowledge 

is easy or straightforward. It cannot be easily controlled, nor held back 

indefinitely. This is so for several key reasons. First, culture will continue 

to shape the development and diffusion of military knowledge, producing 

indigenous adaptations that will be difficult to predict. True emulation is rare, 

implying that others will probably not leverage the IT-RMA the same 

way as the United States.54
24

 In a small gem of a book, Paul Hirst makes much the same point, 

only more broadly. He advises that “[w]ar is driven by ideas about 

how to use weapons and military systems almost as much as it is 

by technical and organizational changes themselves. Ideas are thus 

crucial . . .”55

 To summarize the argument of this section: technology does not 

pose a significant threat of strategic surprise; rather does the challenge 

lie in the unexpected uses that other strategic cultures may choose to 

make of it. Overall, such uses would constitute grave threats to U.S. 

national security only because of a geopolitical context characterized 

by notable rivalries. Technology and culture and the strategic surprises 

to which they might be crucial are strictly dependent variables. They 

depend upon the political context for their strategic meaning.

 Probably the most telling illustration of my argument that the 

geopolitical context is king is to suggest a not entirely fanciful future 

wherein the United States finds itself opposed not by mere “regional 

powers,” but instead by what could amount to a “bloc” of states led 

by a Sino-Soviet axis. There are many reasons why this may not occur, 

but the prospect of the emergence of an effectively global superpower 

adversary is a distinct possibility. The point here is not to suggest its 

likelihood, but rather to indicate that such an unwelcome development 

would have the most serious implications for U.S. defense plans 

and posture. The Army’s transformation design favors agility and 

adaptability, and seeks to be capable of achieving full spectrum 

dominance in combat. All of which is admirable. However, the return 

of what would amount to geopolitical bipolarity, most probably with 

Europe striving to be neutral, would have to mean the maturing of 

a quality, quantity, and variety of strategic challenge beyond the 

scope of current policy assumptions. This hypothetical case is cited 

not as a prediction, but rather, to repeat, as an illustration of relative 

importance of the geopolitical context.

Conclusions: Implications for the Army.

 Thus far the monograph has taken the problem, actually the 

condition, of future strategic surprise exceedingly seriously. That 

attitude, of course, is mandated by the nature of the subject; the stakes 

may be high. However, we are far from helpless in the face of strategic 

history’s potential to ambush us. At least, we are far from helpless 
25

if we keep our balance, respect what history can teach us if we so 

allow, and if we take sensible precautions. Each of the three points of 

the argument presented here as “Conclusions” are constructive and 

fundamentally optimistic. 

 5. Do not exaggerate the dangers from surprise. The now distant, but 

still culturally potent, example of Pearl Harbor, the trauma of 9/11, 

and the rediscovery of the ancient attractions of preemption have 

served to elevate awareness of surprise attack in official and public 

consciousness. There is no denying that attacks apparently “out of the 

blue” can wreak severe damage. The tactical success of such attacks 

generally is attributable to the facts that ample signals of intention 

were lost amidst the noise, or that policymakers chose not to believe 

what their intelligence arms were trying to tell them. The pathologies 

of intelligence gathering, assessment, and use, for policy, have been 

well-explored by scholars, as well as revealed by retired officials, 

and need no further comment here. But how important is strategic 

surprise? More precisely, how significant might be its effects? During 

the Cold War, no clever briefing team in either capital stood much of a 

chance of persuading political leaders that a massive surprise nuclear 

attack could succeed in disarming the enemy, or otherwise rendering 

him incapable of retaliation. This is not to deny, however, that a 

cool appraisal of the possible danger did not always triumph over 

a predisposition to believe the worst.56 Obviously, surprise, or very 

short warning, nuclear attack was possible, and its effects must have 

been close to, if not actually, history-ending for both parties, as well 

as many others. From the mid 1960s at least, it was never plausible 

to anticipate comprehensive success from a would-be disarming first 

strike. In principle, the peril of large-scale nuclear attack remains 

today. For now, though, the geopolitical context renders the danger 

strictly notional, since the only possible candidate for the role of 

villain-disarmer, the Russian Federation, lacks the necessary political 

motivation, at least so far as we can tell.57 As we keep insisting, the 

condition of potential strategic surprise is driven by the geopolitical 

context, not by technology, culture, or clever briefers.

 History is our only guide to the future.58 It never repeats itself in 

detail, but the problems and opportunities it reveals from the past 

do not alter generically. That is the basic reason why the writings of 

those contemporaries, Thucydides and Sun-tzu, and their even more 

brilliant distant successor, Clausewitz, still speak to us meaningfully. 
26

The feasibility of strategic surprise assuredly has increased with 

the advent of air power, ballistic missiles, and the exploitation of 

computers in war. But history alerts us to the fact that surprise is 

no panacea solution to war’s imponderables. As a matter of record, 

surprise attacks rarely have the effects that lead their perpetrators to 

gain decisive victory. The law of unintended consequences strikes 

ruthlessly. If anything, the surprise attacker, trusting in deception and 

cunning to offset real weaknesses, is wont to begin a conflict that it 

cannot finish.59 When great faith is placed in the presumed potency of 

strategic surprise, the failure, or only partial success, of that “Plan A,” 

is likely to leave the aggressor unprepared with a suitable “Plan B.” 

Indeed, most likely it is the infeasibility of any attritional “Plan B” that 

drives the choice for a “Plan A” designed to paralyse the foe’s power 

of resistance and thereby register instant success.

 The peril of strategic surprise is a condition of international and 

national security. The danger is real, particularly for a militarily 

hegemonic superpower that is acting in the role of sheriff of world 

order. America’s enemies are all but obliged to seek to suspend the 

dialectic of war, to quote Wirtz again. Only by seizing and keeping 

the initiative, by paralyzing America’s ability to act effectively, can 

materially weak enemies aspire to win. Exactly what would be won, 

and for how long, are, of course, highly salient questions. As was cited 

earlier, one must ask the most characteristic of strategist’s questions, 

“So what?” So what that the United States might be surprised 

strategically? A superpower with a global security remit cannot 

anticipate or prevent surprise attacks of all kinds, in all places, at all 

times. But what really would be at risk? What would be the effect of 

surprise, not only upon the victim, but also upon the policy, strategy, 

and behavior of the assaulted superpower?

 Strategic surprise is not a metaphorical “silver bullet.” Its attempt 

is more likely to prove ultimately self-defeating than to be the high 

road to decisive victory. Competent, or better, armed forces are alert 

to the perils of surprise attack, just as they themselves must be ready 

to undertake such a task if so directed by policy. We have argued that 

the problem is not surprise per se, it is the effect of surprise. And that 

effect is easy to exaggerate. Our global media are in the entertainment 

business. They thrive on the musings of the “threat of the month” 

club. Since strategic surprises do happen, as 9/11 reminded us, and 

their effects can be extremely damaging, governments and their 
27

armed forces are obliged to concede the reality of potential peril. The 

fact that the risks and even the prospective effects of strategic surprise 

are readily exaggerated, does not remove the official obligation to be 

prepared. But, how does one prepare for surprise and its effects? It is 

to this practical matter that we now must turn.

 6. Minimum regrets must be a guiding principle. The Army cannot 

transform itself by targeting the particulars of future strategic 

surprise. Recall the mantras: the unknown is unknown, and the 

impossible is impossible. Those truisms duly granted, fortunately 

the strategic future is far from a closed book. Thanks primarily to the 

great Prussian, we are blessed with an excellent, empirically founded, 

theory of war. That theory is of universal and permanent validity 

in its essentials. Clausewitz argued persuasively that “[a]ll wars are 

things of the same nature.”60 So although transformation will change 

some of the equipment, organization, doctrine, and generally perhaps 

the military culture as a whole, though that has to be less certain, it 

will not change the nature of war, at least not the “objective” nature.61

Certainly, military transformation may well alter the character of the 

warfare we wage, war’s “subjective” nature as Clausewitz expressed it, 

though we dare not forget the inconvenient fact that enemies will have 

something to contribute to that character. However, war’s changing 

character is hardly a fact of profound significance for national security 

with respect to the challenge of strategic surprise.

 The proud contemporary American military establishment has 

to be careful lest its commitment to a politically somewhat, indeed 

necessarily, unfocused process of transformation obscures the 

prospect of fighting on terms that it will not prefer. The Army 

recognizes this problem, and talks sensibly about adaptive adversaries 

who will seek and “discover niche conventional and unconventional 

capabilities.”62 It is one thing to say that in all sincerity. It is something 

else again to have the mindset able to cope with the unexpected. That 

is a matter of military culture. We have emphasized the inevitability 

of strategic surprise, the need to recognize that the problem lies 

mainly with surprise effect, and the overwhelming importance of the 

geopolitical context. That context is literally unknown and unknowable, 

but prudent guesswork is both necessary and feasible.

 The U.S. military knows that it must be prepared for combat 

with both regular and irregular enemies. Moreover, it knows also 

that even future regular enemies are near certain to conduct warfare 
28

somewhat irregularly, asymmetrically if one prefers. They will need 

to do so if they are to evade and offset America’s great strengths 

in regular conventional combat. One should not make too much of 

the mystery that surrounds future strategic history. For example, as 

was outlined illustratively above, it is possible, even probable, that 

there will be a radical change in the geopolitical context characterized 

most significantly by a return of active great-power rivalry. In that 

event, China, with or without a Russian consort, is by far the leading 

candidate to play the starring role in opposition to the U.S. hegemon. 

Predictable capabilities support this view, as does an unsentimental 

appreciation of China’s political and strategic culture. Some among us 

believe that China will mature in its modernization into a contented 

and generally cooperative, profit-maximizing trading partner in a 

U.S. policed world order. People of that opinion would do well to 

ponder these words written by the eminent cultural historian, Adda 

B. Bozeman:

[I]t is noteworthy that the Chinese themselves have traditionally 

conceptualized the Middle Kingdom not as one bounded state in the 

company of others, but as a civilization so uniquely superior that it 

cannot be presumed to have frontiers. This self-view spawned China’s 

insistently Sinocentric worldview; sanctioned imperial schemes of 

military and political expansion; and sustained several politically and 

culturally potent ideas of imperial administration, chief among them the 

notion of the emperor’s “heavenly mandate” and the concept of a family 

of unequal and inferior nations held together by the “Imperial Father”―

images persuasively concretized throughout the centuries by the tribute 

system and the well-organized dependence on hedge-guarding satellites 

and surrogates.63

 The inalienable uncertainty over the timing and character of future 

policy demands for their services compels the U.S. Armed Forces to 

adopt an approach to their transformation best understood as one of 

minimum regrets. Rephrased, it has to be the goal of defense planners 

to make only minor errors in their planning. For example, one might 

well come to regret having fewer batteries deployed for the purpose 

of national missile defense than events demonstrate to be desirable. 

However, such regret would likely be as nothing compared with the 

regret one might have were the country to deploy no such missile 

defense at all, and were an unsporting enemy to notice and exploit 

that strategic vacancy. The great challenge in defense planning is to 
29

design and execute a surprise effect-tolerant military posture. The 

surprise in question could take the form of an unanticipated character 

of demand by U.S. foreign policy for strategic support, in addition to 

unexpected unpleasantness initiated from abroad.

 Success for defense planners, including those currently driving 

the process of transformation, can be explained in the vernacular as 

getting the big things right enough. Phrased as a blessing for such 

people, we would say, “may our future regrets over your decisions 

be only minor.” As a pervasive attitude, a determination to strive for 

a military condition of minimum regrets helps usefully to counter 

undue enthusiasm for a focus on the threat of this month or year.

 7. The operational level is not the whole of war. Is the U.S. Army 

pursuing the most appropriate vision in its transformation? In war 

after war, the U.S. military has been surprised to learn, actually 

relearn, that there is far more to war than warfare. In addition, it is 

apt to forget that war is about peace, it is not a sporting event wherein 

performance is measured by its own endogenous rules and metrics. 

America’s professional military culture has been deeply hostile to 

any blurring of the line between politician and soldier. Peace is the 

business of civilians, while the waging of war is the business of 

military professionals.64 There is much to commend that culture. 

Unfortunately, though, the way in which the soldier approaches and 

performs his expert military duty can, indeed almost invariably must, 

have profound political implications. In practice the realms of policy 

and warfare influence each other continuously, even in areas that 

appear to be strictly political or strictly military. The outcome to World 

War I, and the manner of its termination by an armistice (contrary 

to General Pershing’s preference, we must add), taught a valuable 

lesson about the connection between the waging and conclusion 

of war, and the provision of political fuel for a follow-on event.65

The U.S. part in the defeat of Germany in World War II revealed to 

many people the umbilical tie between the conduct of war and the 

character of the succeeding peace and international order. For at least 

the last 18 months of the war, Stalin was fighting more for the peace 

settlement that he wanted than for the most efficient demise of German 

military power. The United States, in contrast, was fighting almost 

strictly with reference to the course of the war. Moreover, America’s 

impatience to transfer all its military effort to the war in the Pacific was 

decidedly unhelpful in its conduct of the closing phases of the war in 
30

Europe. Over Korea, the United States learned that its enemies were 

conducting grand strategy, not military strategy. The Chinese fought 

and negotiated seamlessly. Mao-Tse tung, we know, was an admiring 

student of Clausewitz.66 The core of my residual uneasiness about the 

current process of U.S. military transformation, despite the admirable 

sentiments expressed in its guiding documents, lies in these words by 

the Prussian:

Once again: war is an instrument of policy. It must necessarily bear the 

character of policy and measure by its standards. The conduct of war, in 

its great outline, is therefore policy itself, which takes up the sword in 

place of the pen, but does not on that account cease to think according to 

its own laws.67

 To continue the history lesson, in Vietnam the Military Advisory 

Command Vietnam (MACV), though admittedly not the Marines, 

waged the war ineffectively in at least two major respects. The nature 

of the conflict was misunderstood, with the result that a military 

solution was sought to what, fundamentally, was a political challenge 

that could be met effectively only by local indigenous effort. As if that 

were not damaging enough, even the military dimension of the war 

was conducted in good part inappropriately, because MACV did not 

comprehend, let alone favor, counterinsurgency, and in particular 

failed to give first priority to the provision of security to the bulk of 

the population.68

 More recently, the two wars against Iraq again revealed repeatedly 

that American military prowess was not cashed at close to its full value 

in political returns. This was unfortunate because those anticipated 

returns were, after all, what the fighting was all about. It may seem 

that these critical observations are unfair. One might object on the 

grounds that: I exaggerate the extent of the divorce between U.S. 

military strategy and operations and U.S. policy; and that I lay fault 

on the Armed Forces, when, if fault there be, it lies principally with 

civilian policymakers. In reply, I would deny exaggeration, but agree 

that the ultimate responsibility for the American way of war and its 

performance as an instrument of policy certainly rests with civilians 

rather than soldiers.69

 The concluding argument of this monograph, the one that binds 

together all that has gone before, is that there has been, and remains, 
31

all too consistently, a principal weakness in the American approach to 

war and peace. That weakness is a failure to regard and employ force 

as political behavior for political purposes, which is to say for policy. 

Time after time, the American problem with the permanent condition 

of possible strategic surprise has stemmed from unpreparedness for 

the political consequences of military action. The American practical 

divorce of military and political behaviors creates a vulnerability 

to being surprised by the actions of enemies and allies who do not 

maintain that separation. In addition, the political consequences of 

American military action frequently have been unanticipated.

 The argument here is not a criticism of the contemporary process 

of military transformation. On the contrary, it is supportive and 

complementary. But it does reflect the judgment that the planned 

transformation needs to be conducted with even greater awareness 

than is evidenced already of the indissoluble connection between 

military behavior and political consequences. The U.S. Armed Forces 

today are committed to a long-term process of cumulatively radical 

change which should enable them to be even more proficient in the 

waging of a style of high technology warfare in which they are already 

the world leader by a country mile and more. In addition, American 

forces should be more capable of meeting irregular foes on appropriate 

terms. There is no denying that, in common with the German Army in 

both world wars and the Israeli Defense Forces since, the U.S. Army 

today and tomorrow is most adept both tactically and especially in 

the conduct of deadly joint warfare by superior operational skills. All 

of which is highly praiseworthy, at least up to a point. The history 

of German, Israeli, and American operational dexterity reveals, 

however, admittedly what everybody knows, that there is a lot more 

to war than the operational level. Undoubtedly the Germans were 

proficient at operations, just as today the U.S. Armed Forces are lethal 

with their operational skill in decisive maneuver facilitated by precise 

firepower, delivered largely from the air.70 But why it is that all three 

countries have had monumental difficulties functioning competently 

at the strategic and grand strategic levels of war? Of course, one can 

argue that the current transformation, with its goal of providing truly 

agile and adaptable forces for all contingencies, should make a large 

difference for the better in the fit of American military power with 

the demands of policy. However, a little reflection raises the thought 
32

that the transformation may not really reach the principal zone of U.S. 

weakness, which is the no-man’s land of strategy that has to connect 

the political to the military.

 The evidence provided by U.S. experience in and after recent wars 

suggests strongly that the process of military transformation, though 

desirable in itself, focuses attention on a relatively minor problem, 

while leaving the major challenge unaddressed and perhaps even 

unrecognized. Through transformation, the Army, for example, should 

improve its ability to defeat both regular and, hopefully, irregular 

enemies. Those who believe that much of the Army can become 

SF-like in response to a changing strategic context are, alas, fooling 

themselves. Not only must the Army remain capable of defeating 

any and every regular foe in heavy combat, it also has growing need 

of SF truly worthy of the name. Immature young soldiers are not 

appropriate SF material. At least they are not for so long as the SF are 

not so expanded, coopted, and eventually melded into the rest of the 

Army that they lose much of their distinctive quality.71

 By all means, let the Armed Forces innovate and improve their 

fighting power. That is not at issue. I am in full agreement with the 

writer for The Economist who observed recently that, “[s]uccess in 

battle, according to one military maxim, may not, on its own, assure 

the achievement of national security goals, but defeat will guarantee 

failure.”72 What is at issue is whether the process of transformation 

is in danger of fostering a military culture that values military skills, 

especially combat skills, almost for their own sake. For once, history 

reveals a clear lesson to those Americans willing to learn. It tries to tell 

us that by far the most serious inhibitor of U.S. strategic effectiveness 

is a seemingly systemic difficulty in employing military force in ways 

that promote the chosen political goals. The strategic surprises that 

have ambushed U.S. national security performance overwhelmingly 

have been political, not military, in kind. Military transformation is 

close to irrelevant to the real problem that persistently constrains the 

value of U.S. strategic prowess.

*****

 War is about peace. Peacetime preparation is about being able to 

conduct the wars that might erupt in a manner that serves political 

ends, or, more valuable still, it is about deterrence. To repeat the 
33

familiar refrain, there is more to war than warfare. Above all else, 

war is about the kind of peace that should follow. As a consequence, 

war needs to be waged in a way that does not compromise political 

interests. Recognition of the importance of these elements of the lore 

of war and peace is the high road to achieving a marked reduction 

in the incidence and severity of unpleasant strategic surprise. Of 

course, there is everything to be said in favor of a U.S. Army that can 

transform itself into becoming all that it can be. Would that that were 

the primary challenge. Unfortunately it is not, as this monograph has 

sought to argue.

ENDNOTES

 1. S. Douglas Smith, book review, Naval War College Review, Vol. LVII, No. 1, Winter 

2004, p. 147.

 2. Arthur C. Clarke, quoted in Primo Levi, The Search for Roots―A Personal Anthology,

London: Allen Lane, 2001, p. 188. I am grateful to John B. Sheldon for bringing this wise 

judgment by Clarke to my notice.

 3. Colin S. Gray, Strategic Studies and Public Policy: The American Experience, Lexington: 

University Press of Kentucky, 1982, chs.3-4; Saki Dockrill, Eisenhower’s New-Look National 

Security Policy, 1953-61, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996; and Lawrence Freedman, The 

Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, 3rd edn., Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, ch. 6.

 4. U.S. strategic offensive force loadings increased from 330 warheads in 1950 to 1,418 by 

1954. Natural Resources Defense Council, “Table of US Strategic Offensive Force Loadings, 

1945-75, 1976-2012,” August 21, 2004, http://nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab1.asp. Estimates for 

the Soviet Union remain uncertain. See Thomas B. Cochran and others, Nuclear Weapons 

Databook, Vol. IV: Soviet Nuclear Weapons, New York: Harper and Row, 1989, p. 25; and Pavel 

Podvig, ed., Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004.

 5. See Richard K. Betts, Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning, Washington, DC: 

Brookings Institution, 1982, chs. 6-9; and John J. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence,

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983, ch. 6.

 6. Roger W. Barnett, Asymmetrical Warfare: Today’s Challenge to U.S. Military Power,

Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2003, is particularly useful.

 7. Donald H. Rumsfeld, Annual Report to the President and the Congress, Washington 

DC: Department of Defense, 2002, pp. 10-11, http://www.defenselink.mil/execsec/adr2002/index.

htm. 

 8. For example, in his pathbreaking study of friction, Barry D. Watts concedes: “The 

objection, which has been consciously ignored to this point, is that the unified concept of 

general friction (Gesamtbegrift einer allgemeinen Friktion) embraces so much of war that it does 

not provide a very precise instrument for analyzing the phenomena at issue.” Clausewitzian 

Friction and Future War, McNair Paper 52, Washington, DC: National Defense University, 

October 1996, p. 122.

 9. Politics and policy are not deployed interchangeably in this monograph. Definitions 

of these key concepts are notoriously contestable. The German politik conveniently conflates 
34

the two, but in English we are obliged to be careful. Politics is about government, broadly 

understood. It is about power. In the words of the classic formula, politics is about who 

gets what, when, and how. We should appreciate that that claim includes the domain of 

ideology: whose ideas shall rule? Policy is formulated by policymakers and is the product 

of a political process. It is political purpose, stated in the barest of terms. By and large, 

policy is regarded only as the declarations of intention by policymakers, but a wider view 

is defensible. It can be argued that policy comprises capabilities and actions, as well as 

declarations. Recall the maxim, “show me your programs and I will tell you your policy.”

 10. I am grateful to a Strategic Studies Institute reviewer for the important example of 

the Central Intelligence Agency. An outstanding analysis is Michael I. Handel, “Intelligence 

and the Problem of Strategic Surprise,” in Richard K. Betts and Thomas G. Mahnken, eds., 

Paradoxes of Intelligence: Essays in Honor of Michael I. Handel, London: Frank Cass, 2003, pp. 

1-58.

 11. See Keith B. Payne, The Fallacies of Cold War Deterrence and a New Direction, Lexington: 

University Press of Kentucky, 2001; and Colin S. Gray, Maintaining Effective Deterrence, 

Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, August 2003.

 12. Roberta Wohlstetter introduced the vital distinction between “noise” and “signals” 

in her tour de force on Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision, Stanford: Stanford University 

Press, 1967.

 13. John Gray, Al Qaeda and What It Means to be Modern, London: Faber and Faber, 2003, 

p. 27.

 14. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter Paret, trans., Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 75 (hereafter cited as Clausewitz); and J. C. Wylie, 

Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1989, 

pp. 77-78.

So it is proposed here that a general theory of strategy should be some development 

of the following fundamental theme: The primary aim of the strategist in the 

conduct of war is some selected degree of control of the enemy for the strategist’s 

own purpose; this is achieved by control of the pattern of war; and this control 

of the pattern of war is had by manipulation of the center of gravity of war to the 

advantage of the strategist and the disadvantage of the opponent.

 15. U.S. Army, Army Campaign Plan, Washington, DC: Office of the Deputy Chief of 

Staff, U.S. Army, April 12, 2004, p. 10. Other official Army documents studied for this 

analysis include: U.S. Army, 2004 Army Transformation Roadmap, Washington, DC: Office 

of the Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Army Operations, Army Transformation Office, July 

2004; U.S. Army, The Way Ahead, Washington, DC: U.S. Army, Spring 2004; and U.S. Army, 

Serving a Nation at War, Washington, DC: Army Strategic Communications, U.S. Army, 

Summer 2004.

 16. See Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons,

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

 17. James Wirtz, “Theory of Surprise,” in Betts and Mahnken, eds., Paradoxes of Strategic 

Intelligence, p. 103.

 18. John R. Boyd, “A Discourse on Winning and Losing,” briefing, August 1987; 

David S. Fadok, “John Boyd and John Warden: Air Power’s Quest for Strategic Paralysis,” 

in Phillip S. Meilinger, ed., The Paths of Heaven: Airpower Theory, Maxwell Air Force Base: 

Air University Press, 1997, pp. 357-98; Grant T. Hammond, The Mind of War: John Boyd and 
35

American Security, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001; and Robert Coram, 

Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War, Boston: Little, Brown, 2002.

 19. Clausewitz, p. 75.

 20. Wirtz, “Theory of Surprise,” p. 103.

 21. B. H. Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, London: Pan Books, 1972, p. 325.

 22. Ibid., (emphasis added).

 23. See Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War To Be Won: Fighting the Second 

World War, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000, chs. 2-4.

 24. National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, The 9/11 

Commission Final Report, New York: W. W. Norton, 2004, p. 367.

 25. Baron Antoine Henri de Jomini, The Art of War, repr. of 1862 edn., London: Greenhill 

Books, 1992, p. 70.

 26. Harlan Ullman and James Wade, Jr., Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance,

Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1996.

 27. See Colin S. Gray, The Sheriff: America’s Defense of the New World Order, Lexington: 

University Press of Kentucky, 2004.

 28. Clausewitz, p. 85.

 29. Ibid., p. 101.

 30. Antulio J. Echevarria II, Toward an American Way of War, Carlisle, PA: Strategic 

Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, March 2004, p. v. (emphasis in the original). 

Also see Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of U.S. Military Strategy and 

Policy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973.

 31. See Sam C. Sarkesian, America’s Forgotten Wars: The Counter-revolutionary Past and 

Lessons for the Future, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984; and Max Boot, The Savage Wars 

of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, New York: Basic Books, 2002. American 

experience in waging war against irregulars was distilled in the U.S. Marine Corps, Small 

Wars Manual, 1940, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1940.

 32. Today, some would argue that it is legitimate to wage war for humanitarian goals. I 

am skeptical of the practicality, though not the desirability, of this. Recall the aphorism that 

no good deed shall go unpunished.

 33. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy: The Indirect Approach, rev.edn., London: Faber and 

Faber, 1967, p. 366.

 34. U.S. Army, Serving a Nation at War, p. 5.

 35. A. K. Cebrowski, Military Transformation: A Strategic Approach, Washington, DC: 

Department of Defense, Fall 2003.

 36. Clausewitz, p. 87.

 37. Peter Browning, The Changing Nature of Warfare: The Development of Land Warfare 

from 1792 to 1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 7.

 38. Sun-tzu, The Art of War, Ralph D. Sawyer, trans., Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 

1994, p. 179.

 39. See Stuart E. Johnson and Martin C. Libicki, eds., Dominant Battlespace Knowledge,

rev. edn., Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, April 1996.
36

 40. U.S. Army, The Way Ahead, p. 1.

 41. See Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, ch. 5, 

“Strategic Culture as Context.”

 42. U.S. Army, Army Campaign Plan, pp. 2-6.

 43. Norman Friedman, The Fifty-Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War,

Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2000, is fairly persuasive on the U.S. contribution to the 

fall of the USSR.

 44. U.S. Army, Army Campaign Plan, p. 3.

 45. Ibid.

 46. The literature on strategic culture is small but growing. See Ken Booth, Strategy and 

Ethnocentrism, London: Croom Helm, 1979; Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic 

Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995; 

Michael C. Desch, “Culture Clash: Assessing the Importance of Ideas in Security Studies,” 

International Security, Vol. 23, No. 1, Summer 1998, pp. 141-70; Victor Davis Hanson, Why the 

West Has Won: Carnage and Culture from Salamis to Vietnam, London: Faber and Faber, 2001; 

John A. Lynn, Battle: A History of Combat and Culture, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003; 

and Jeremy Black, Rethinking Military History, London: Routledge, 2004, especially ch. 9. 

For a helpful comparative discussion of the important idea of military culture, see Allan D. 

English, Understanding Military Culture: A Canadian Perspective, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s 

University Press, 2004.

 47. Colin S. Gray: Nuclear Strategy and National Style, Lanham, MD: University Press of 

America, 1986; and Modern Strategy, ch. 5.

 48. Robert Kagan, Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order,

London: Atlantic Books, 2003, overstates a fundamentally sound argument.

 49. See Andrew J. Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. 

Diplomacy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002; Gray, The Sheriff; and Niall 

Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, London: Allen Lane, 2004.

 50. Edward N. Luttwak, “Toward Post-Heroic Warfare,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 3, 

May/June 1995, pp. 109-122.

 51. See Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, eds., Soldiers and Civilians: The CivilMilitary Gap and American National Security, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001, p. 467.

 52. “[T]echnology is driving everyone, terrorist and armies alike, to the same tactics. 

What is more, most of the technology is commercially available . . . . As we have seen, the 

United States and Al Qaeda took the same approach to war. That is because many groups 

can now compete at the same level as many nation-states, and everyone is adopting similar 

methods, because that is what works.” Bruce Berkowitz, The New Face of War: How War Will 

Be Fought in the 21st Century, New York: Free Press, 2003, pp. 16, 18. While there is some 

merit in Berkowitz’s claims, his general assertion of tactical commonality is a dangerous 

fallacy.

 53. Clausewitz, p. 605.

 54. Emily Goldman and Andrew L. Ross, “Conclusions: The Diffusion of Military 

Technology and Ideas―Theory and Practice,” in Goldman and Leslie C. Eliason, eds., The 

Diffusion of Military Technology and Ideas, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003, p. 390 

(emphasis added).
37

 55. Paul Hirst, War and Power in the 21st Century: The State, Military Conflict and the 

International System, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001, p. 9.

 56. In the early 1980s, when the creaking leaders of the USSR persuaded themselves 

that the tough talk of the Reagan administration signalled more than mere rhetoric, the 

USSR reflected an intention to act, even at the highest level of violence. See Ben B. Fischer, 

A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 War Scare, CSI 97-10002, Washington, DC: Center for the 

Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, September 1997; and Peter Vincent Pry, 

War Scare: Russia and America on the Nuclear Brink, Westport, CT, Praeger Publishers, 1999, 

Part. 1.

 57. In contrast to the illustrative hypothetical case in the text, in decades to come, Russia 

might decide that China is its principal foe, and that the United States would be an ideal 

ally. At present, however, Vladimir Putin’s Russia seems bent upon strutting its stuff rather 

more forcefully on the global stage, a determination that fits well enough with China’s 

careful policy of opposition to American dominance.

 58. This claim is explained and defended at length in my book, Another Bloody Century: 

Future Warfare, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, forthcoming.

 59. Wirtz is convincing when he argues that “[r]elying on the element of surprise, 

however, is extraordinarily risky.” “Theory of Surprise,” p. 105. Surprise may not be 

achieved. Even if the enemy is caught unawares, the anticipated effects of the surprise 

might well prove disappointing. If the attacker was driven to resort to surprise by an 

awareness of his inferiority in a war of attrition, any measure of surprise effect short of 

decisive victory should mean a war that could not be won. Had the attacker not succumbed 

to the temptation to gamble on surprise, he would not have dared to take the initiative. 

Such, of course, should be true for a rational and reasonable leadership. It so happens that 

risk assessment and risk tolerance can vary dramatically from person to person and regime 

to regime.

 60. Clausewitz, p. 606 (emphasis in the original).

 61. Ibid., p. 85. Clausewitz’s distinction between war’s “objective” nature, which 

is unchanging, and its “subjective” nature, which is ever on the move, is well-deployed 

and explained in Antulio J. Echevarria II, Globalization and the Nature of War, Carlisle, PA: 

Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, March 2003. Clausewitz’s concept of 

the subjective nature of war is identical in meaning to our contemporary reference to the 

character of war.

 62. U.S. Army, Army Campaign Plan, p. 2.

 63. Adda B. Bozeman, Strategic Intelligence and Statecraft: Selected Essays, Washington, 

DC: Brassey’s, 1992, p. 197.

 64. The classic explanation is Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory 

and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, New York: Vintage Books, 1964, ch. 1. For a bold 

challenge to the classic view, see Cohen, Supreme Command.

 65. Historians disagree, as is their wont, on whether or not the manner of war termination 

in 1918 and the character of the Versailles settlement, rendered a “second round” inevitable. 

Nothing is strictly inevitable, but the facts that German society did not feel defeated, the 

homeland did not suffer damage, the army returned generally in good order and bearing 

arms, and the terms imposed at Versailles were deemed universally to be outrageously 

unjust, manifestly comprised potent fuel for possible exploitation by the unscrupulous in 

the future. The Great Depression provided the additional push which was needed, on top 
38

of the failings of the unloved Weimar Republic and the desire for revenge over 1918-19, for 

Germans to gamble on the Nazi experiment.

 66. Beatrice Heuser, Reading Clausewitz, London: Pimlico, 2002, pp. 19, 138-142, is 

especially helpful.

 67. Clausewitz, p. 610.

 68. From the burgeoning, forbiddingly large literature on Vietnam, see particularly 

Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 

1986; and C. Dale Walton, The Myth of Inevitable U.S. Defeat in Vietnam, London: Frank Cass, 

2002. The latter demonstrates how well the United States performed in Vietnam, at least 

as measured by anxieties in Hanoi, despite its commission of gross political, strategic, and 

military errors.

 69. On the important issue of whether war is too serious a business to be left to the 

generals, or alternatively, too serious to be left to the politicians, see Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme 

Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, New York: Free Press, 2002.

 70. For the latest scholarly word on the sources of high military performance, see 

Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, Princeton: 

Princeton University Press, 2004. Biddle is first-rate, but he does not attempt to address the 

problem that dominates my text. Modern battle is not the American challenge. Rather, the 

difficulty lies in waging war effectively for desirable political ends.

 71. See Colin S. Gray, Explorations in Strategy, Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998, 

ch. 7, “The Nature of Special Operations.”

 72. The Economist, April 3, 2004, p. 94.