Simpson’s 'WFTGU' (IV and last): What a strategic narrative is -- and how to use it

The last two chapters
of Emile Simpson's War
From the Ground Up
offer some of the best things I have read on strategic narrative. They also may be the most
significant part of the book, because I think he breaks some new trail here.

His point of
departure, as you might have noticed in his piece for Best Defense on Friday, is
that narrative is a key element of strategy. "Strategy does not merely need to
orchestrate tactical actions (the use of force), but also construct the
interpretive structure which gives them meaning and links them to the end of
policy." (P. 28) That is, it offers a framework into which participants and
observers can fit the facts before them. "Strategic narrative expresses
strategy as a story, to explain one's actions." (P. 233)

This aspect of
strategy is both more important and more difficult now than in the past, he
argues, because of the global information revolution, which means more
audiences must be involved in one's strategic deliberations. When military
action not only serves political ends (as in classic war) but must be judged in
political terms to determine who is prevailing (as in our current wars), he
argues, constructing a persuasive narrative becomes key to success.

You run into trouble
when your "strategic narrative does not correspond to the reality on the
ground," he warns. (P. 125) That phrase evoked for me the Bush administration's
rhetoric about Iraq in 2003-05 -- first insisting that there was no insurgency,
then claiming it was "a few dead enders" and that steady progress was being
made.

It also made me think
about the fundamental contradiction of the Bush administration embracing
torture as part of an effort to defend rights and freedoms it held to be
universal. As Simpson warns, "The moral high ground, once evacuated, is very
hard to regain." (P. 209) That admonition should be remembered by anyone
devising a strategy in the 21st century.

So, he advises, "The
key in counterinsurgency is to match actions and words so as to influence
target audiences to subscribe to a given narrative." (P. 154)

Strategic narrative
must not only be rational but also have an emotional component, he says. "War
is as much a test of emotional resistance as a rational execution of policy."
(P. 193) Nor does the need for it go away. "The requirement is to maintain the
narrative -- perpetually to win the argument -- is enduring, not finite." (P.
210)

Helpfully, he cites the Gettysburg Address as an example of the
presentation of a strategic narrative. I think he is correct in that
insight. He also invokes Kennedy's inaugural address. I think he is correct
that it indeed was a presentation of a narrative -- but I think that JFK's "bear any burden" narrative was
incorrect, and would be proven so a few years later in the jungles and villages
of Vietnam.