“Why do strategies almost always fail to live up to expectations?” Raphael S. Cohen poses this question in his Lawfare blog article “Why Strategies Disappoint—and How To Fix Them”. A regular Benari blog reader sent Cohen’s blog post to me with a note saying, “I thought of you as I read this piece.”
Is my skepticism about such things so obvious? Indeed, I am fully in agreement with the military leaders Cohen quotes who decry the uselessness of so many of the strategic documents the United States military produces. My favorite comment comes from former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy, who “lamented that the major defense strategy – the Quadrennial Defense Review – had devolved into ‘a glossy coffee table brochure.’”
