American War Strategy: Restoring Coherence and Unity of Effort

The modern American approach to developing and implementing war strategy has not achieved coherence and unity of effort and has thus far proved insufficient in the wars of the 21st Century. The approach suffers from insufficient interagency dialogue, excessive hierarchy, redundancy, complexity, and flawed practices. Such defects pervade grand and military strategy, and are most pronounced in the attempts to develop strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq. This multidimensional problem is compounded by the pervasive forces of the political-military-industrial complex, legislative incongruity, the mutating character of war, military transformation, and flaws in the War Powers Resolution.