The complex COIN campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have caused some to question if the U.S. Military can still conduct Major Campaigns. Can the U.S. military (or the government for that matter) develop and conduct a sustained campaign, on the size of World War II for example, with all the trappings of the hybrid threats that became evident in the recent U.S. campaigns and the earlier Israeli versus Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon. While all eyes in the military seem to be turned toward the lower-spectrum of conflict operations, some members of the Department of Joint, Interagency, and Multinational operations (DJIMO) have taken a decidedly contrarian look-one more inclusive of the full range of potential military campaigns in areas that might not be expected. It is a similar reflection to what some strategic British military thinkers took prior to World War I, while their empire was ensconced in the doctrine of the empire maintenance through protracted counter insurgency campaigns.
Under the guidance of the Director of DJIMO, the uniformed and retired Army Strategists on DJIMO’s faculty have formed an informal study group, tentatively entitled (somewhat tongue in cheek) The League of Extraordinary Strategists (TLES). The purpose of this organization is to expand the understanding of the US Military’s ability to design, plan, and execute major campaigns in the current and future operating environments and prevent a myopic approach of warfare or strategy from overshadowing the military’s ability to win its nations wars. The scope of the organization’s initial study has been major combat operations. Specifically, TLES has been tracing the evolution of the European Theater of Operations from WWII as a case study on which to base future studies. However, as the question in the opening paragraph suggests, the scope includes campaign development for the full spectrum of operations, not just combat operations.
While the organization currently appears small and insular – only including strategists from the faculty of DJIMO mostly due to self selected volunteers- I believe the Director’s vision is to make it an inter-disciplinary organization that includes interested academics and practitioners from across all of CGSC and even the greater military and government community. One way to realize this vision could be to start an online, or virtual, center for the study of the campaign design, planning, and execution.
Why create a center for campaign design, planning, and execution? The short answer, is why not? If the military is good at planning and executing large complex operations, an accolade attributed to the military by not just the military, but by other government organizations as well, then why don’t we have a center to ensure that we can continue what it is that we do best? We seem to have a center for just about everything else…ethics and leadership are two examples that come to mind. The proposed purpose of this virtual center would be to give the participants (defined as contributing members or individuals that take information from the center) an understanding of the state of knowledge in the field the operational process and campaign development for use in teaching, scholarship, or professional practice. It would aspire to bring insight to designing, planning, and executing the future campaigns that the U.S. may have to embark on. It should allow for the inclusion of diverse perspectives, to publish the highest quality work, and to engage the security practitioners in the military, government, and NGOs in thought provoking discourse. Further, it should strive to inform the curriculum of not only Command and General Staff College, but other professional education institutes that service military and national security professionals.
The center could serve to develop strategic/operational campaign theory, practices, and pedagogy and provide a forum for strategic/operational educators, scholars, and practitioners to present results from their teaching, research, and practices that advance the profession. It would further serve the mission of the Command and General Staff College by promoting education, research, service, and outreach in the United States military and government. But beyond that, and probably more useful, the center would serve as a bridge builder of dialogue between theorist and practitioners in the military, and between disparate organizations in the military, government, academia, and civil society that use or could use campaign planning to assist in their missions.
At least one of the tangible products it could provide would be publications. Since CGSC already has a publication outlet, Military Review, the center could use that as a vehicle for publication, but it should still seek other diverse publication outlets that deal with decision-making and campaign plan development. Examples not only include Joint Forces Quarterly, but could also include PRISM, Public Administration Review, the Journal of Planning Literature, the Journal of the American Planning Association, the Journal of Planning Education and Research (the journal from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning), Projections ( the Journal of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning), or Judgment and Decision Making ( the journal of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and the European Association for Decision Making) just to name a few.
By making the center virtual, it could leverage CGSC’s access to technology to support hosting online Webinars, or video teleconference on campaign design, planning, and executions and draw in diverse views and interests in design and planning. An additional benefit of making it a virtual center would be its ability to harness the networking power of the internet in order to assist its bridge building function.
Finally yet importantly, the center could serve for a vehicle for researchers to seek grant funding for research in the field of campaign planning, or other decision-making research activities. It is not unfathomable to think that part of the charter for the center could be to engage standing foundations for research grant money, such as the Hewitt foundation, since this planning and resolving major conflicts are of the same type of activities that the military shares in common with other organizations that seek funding to support their activities in the spectrum of conflict.
Is the Command and General Staff College the intellectual center of the U.S. Army? It’s a good bumper sticker, but some could argue that we definitely are not. However that doesn’t mean we can’t take steps toward that direction. One such step would be to build on what we do best, and that is to study and share our understanding of the operational process and how to develop and execute major campaigns in the full spectrum environment. The first step could be to start a center for the study of campaign design, planning, and execution. Perhaps, we could make a bumper sticker, or slogan to read: “The U.S. Army Center for Campaign Design, Planning, and Execution – run by the Extraordinary League of Thinkers – Stay thoughtful, my friend!”
Len Lira, LTC and assistant professor, DJIMO.
3 Comments on "A Center for the Study of Campaign Design, Planning, and Execution?"
I think it would be great for a new center on campaign design, planning, and execution to include a larger focus on phase V operations. I believe successfully disengaging from a conflict is an area which is largely overlooked in operational planning. Many of the combatant and component commands are already working around the clock on campaign plans, OPLANS, TPFDDs, etc; however, it seems most planners are so fixated on how to get into a fight they forget to think about how to get out of one. I believe it would help if we could train leaders how to design and execute exit strategies, and how to look for “off ramps” or even create them. I think we should teach strategists and planners not only how to fight and win, but also how to preserve the force, and how to recognize, avoid, or escape quagmires.
October 10, 2010 8:33 PM Ken Long said:
It seems to me that we have several Joint centers for Campaign planning right now: the planning staffof geographic combatant commanders; we’d be doing ourselves a service to be more tightly integrated into their current theater engagement plans and try harnessing the collective brainpower and souls of several thousands of students and faculty into understanding their situations and grappling with things where they feel a need for support, offering them some deliberate critical and creative thinking. if the output of our efforts were judged to be of value to them, then I think we’d have a case for establishing the value of our curriculum
September 16, 2010 2:19 PM Col Phillip Ridderhof USMC said:
This sounds good, but I thought campaign design, planning and execution was the core subject of almost every War College, and to a degree, the Command and Staff colleges (obviously different service and joint schools come at it from different perspectives).
Since no campaign will be just an Army campaign, why don’t you also focus “outreach” to other service schools?