Executive summary

Joint Force Quarterly, April, 2009 by D.H. Gurney

The first duty of the grand strategist is ... to appreciate the commercial and financial position of his country; to discover what its resources and liabilities are. Secondly, he must understand the moral characteristics of his countrymen, their history, peculiarities, social customs and systems of government, for all these quantities and qualities form the pillars of the military arch which it is his duty to construct.

--J.F.C. Fuller

Since the November 2008 election in the United States, a great deal of ink has been spilled over grand strategy, the process by which all instruments of national power are orchestrated to realize the policy of the United States in a dynamic global competition of state and nonstate actors. A successful grand strategy must assign roles and missions, determine methods to make these assignments mutually supporting, and identify areas of potential conflict and cooperation, both domestic (interagency) and with foreign allies and other partners. Beyond executing military operations and strategies, joint Service professionals play an important role in providing advice to policymakers; contributing to a grand strategy that connects ends, ways, and means; and supporting other Federal agencies as they bring to bear diplomatic, informational, and economic support strategies of their own. To do this effectively, an understanding of the global environment of competition and cooperation is indispensible. In this issue, Joint Force Quarterly explores important contextual elements against which U.S. grand strategy is devised, restrained, and inevitably revised.

The Forum begins with current trends in the economic dimension of national power, with dovetailed essays by Ellen Frost, William Overholt, and James Lacey and David Asher addressing this most puissant and fundamental instrument of power from a broad strategic perspective. The key theme of this survey is the global redistribution of economic power, a power that can be thought of as the ability to resist external control or influence. Just as globalization has altered the content of economic power, so has it limited the sovereignty associated with it. Despite the fact that Asian countries now hold roughly two-thirds of the world's foreign exchange reserves, the majority of it is denominated in dollars, and consequently these governments have a large financial and commercial stake in the health of the American economy. Nevertheless, huge trade and budget deficits, heavy dependence on imported oil, record-high consumer debt, and rising levels of protectionism undermine U.S. influence abroad. Sustained economic power is at the root of sustainable military power. Strategic planners need to overcome stovepipe thinking that consigns economic and security issues to different mental boxes. Global economic trends must be understood and incorporated as a core element of strategic analysis. As Cicero pointed out some 2,000 years ago, the key to success in war is "endless streams of money."

In our second Forum installment, Michael Moodie extrapolates conflict trends by addressing three dimensions: the nature of conflict, why conflict occurs, and how conflict is waged. Major power competition has a military dimension, even if it is not prominent at the moment. Future conflicts between states are less likely to be motivated by political ideology than they are by the age-old goal of control--of territory, resources, or political, economic, and social power. Conflicts are increasingly between "communities" that are defined by ethnicity, religion, language, or some self-defined criteria. The characteristics of these community conflicts are that they involve failed or failing states, they do not involve classic military confrontations, they are hard to end, and they are localized. Many contemporary conflicts are made possible by the exploitation of illicit activities that involve what some analysts call "dark networks." Such networks facilitate conflict in two ways. First, they provide a source of income that funds both acquisitions and operations. Second, they provide operational support, such as exploitation of a globalized financial system to manage monetary assets. Mr. Moodie concludes with the prediction that most future conflicts will not be America's wars or even America's conflicts. The U.S. military response to these future conflicts shall require careful calibration.

The third Forum entry calls for an "all-of-society" response to transnational movements and terrorism. After identifying Salafi jihadism as the most prominent threat, within which al Qaeda is the standard bearer, Mark Stout, Thomas Lynch, and T.X. Hammes compare its strengths and weaknesses, trends and goals. Ultimately, the objective is to see the West evacuate the Muslim world as a step toward toppling corrupt regimes and hastening the beginning of the caliphate. In organizational and strategic terms, al Qaeda has suffered substantial setbacks in recent years, but it is adaptable. In alliance with young and highly militant Pakistani-Pashtun collaborators, al Qaeda has overthrown most of the tribal elder system in western Pakistan and embarrassed the Pakistani military. It has tried to formalize relationships with all forms of regional Salafi jihadist and insurgent activity and to extend access to underdeveloped recruiting networks in North Africa and Western Europe. Salafi jihadism remains dangerous. It is irregular in nature, but easy to understand because it is an open mass movement with universal aspirations. The key issue for developing all-of-society defenses against various threats is developing the rule sets that allow all elements of society to participate without having any specific individual or agency in command.