Before the First Shots Are Fired: How America Can Win or Lose Off the Battlefield

by Anthony C. Zinni

We cannot arrogantly write the doctrine and totally take over the mission to transform a society, then push the mission off on a poorly prepared local force when we tire of it.

They forgot that politics and policy must be aligned with the strategy, and the strategy must be aligned with the operational design on the ground. And that operational design must be aligned with the actions of the troops all the way down to the lowest tactical level.

The price for confused

direction is always paid for in the foxhole.

Before the first shot is fired, we must be sure everything we have analyzed, planned, and decided—every possible scenario we have tried to anticipate—puts that lance corporal in the best position to succeed. His battlefield should be shaped to give him every advantage before he steps onto it.

the absence of a clear looming threat like

The work they produce is not intended to be propaganda; it is developed to counter the propaganda, misinformation, and misperceptions.

Combat power counts less, the narrative counts more.

We have rules. The enemy doesn’t. Victory is elusive, ill-defined, and non-traditional; measuring success or failure is difficult.

“COIN campaigns are often long and difficult. Progress can be hard to measure, and the enemy may appear to have many advantages.” It should have added that they can be expensive in treasure and casualties, require large numbers of troops, fall on an unreceptive populace, and fail to implant permanent change. Buyer beware!

Of course, if elements in a society threaten us, and if the society is unable or unwilling to deal with these threats themselves, we reserve the right to eliminate them. But reshaping societies cannot be an automatic byproduct of every decision to take care of a threat.

“American aid workers came here several years ago to help us improve our economy. When they asked about how we made our living, we explained that our primary source of income was raising pigs for sale. So they established a program to help us produce more and better pigs. They built very nice pig sties. They were better than our homes, so we moved into them.”