The next level down in the strategic hierarchy is the theater level. What defines this level is the overall choice of targets: a particular geographical region, or a particular opponent who, in some cases, might not be bound by geography.
Anyone familiar with the history of World War II instantly recognizes theater level strategy for what it is. The United States had a grand strategy--defeat the Axis powers--and to achieve this goal, it fought in the European and Pacific theaters. Nazi Germany had its own theaters: the Western Front, the Eastern Front, and the Mediterranean. Britain fought in Western Europe, North Africa, and Asia. The USSR's main theater was in Eastern Europe, but it also fought smaller skirmishes with the Japanese in the Far East.
Normally, theater level strategy isn't too hard to craft--at least, in figuring out who your friends and enemies are. Military history is often marked by rare occasions, though, when theater level strategy seems dangerously out of whack with grand strategy. One of the great controversies among aficianados of Napoleonic history, for example, is whether France ever needed to invade Russia. Was Napoleon knocking out a powerful opponent before the Russians could cement an alliance with Britain, or was he disastrously jumping the gun?
Just as Napoleon may have overestimated the Russian threat, creating a need for a theater level strategy that didn't serve French grand strategy, other combatants have at times underestimated threats. The classic example is Chamberlain's appeasement policy--at least, in the traditional view that he was hoodwinked by Hitler's promise of peace. Recently, some historians have been arguing that Chamberlain was simply buying time, since Britain in 1938 wasn't ready yet for an unavoidable conflict with the aggressive Nazi regime.
Theater level strategy demands more than just the identification of an opponent and an area of operations. Combatants also need to determine, in broad brushstrokes, how to defeat their opponents. The debate over the Vietnam War often focuses on this aspect of theater strategy. Should the United States have just pursued the Westmoreland attrition strategy more aggressively? Would an invasion of the North brought victory? Would a focus on a different approach to counterinsurgency given the South Vietnamese government enough breathing room to stand on its own, even in the face of its hostile Communist neighbor? How, in any case, would the United States have been able to use its power and leverage to put an end to South Vietnam's political troubles, which threatened to make any military strategy moot?
This leads us to the third aspect of theater level strategy: a definition of victory. Was victory in the Vietnam War the preservation of South Vietnam, mirroring the defense of an independent South Korea? Was it the preservation of US credibility, regardless of the consequences? Was it simple containment? The eradication of any threat from the North? Often, people with opposing views on what went wrong in Vietnam are talking past each other, since they're assuming different definitions of victory in the Asian theater of containment.
One more point is worth making before leaving this summary of theater strategy: what defines the theater for one combatant may not fit anyone else's involved in the conflict. Asia was, for the United States, one of several theaters in the Cold War. What happened in Vietnam may or may not have been important in the Asian theater, but it was small compared to the global objectives of the United States. The Vietnam War was certainly unrelated to the goal of nuclear deterrence. However traumatic the American defeat may have been, in reality, all the United States did was to redraw the perimeter of containment after Saigon fell.
In contrast, there was only one theater for the North Vietnamese regime: South Vietnam. Laos and Cambodia were part of this theater to the extent that they factored into North Vietnamese operations against the South (the course of the Ho Chi Minh trail being one such consideration). Victory or defeat in that single theater was absolute for the North Vietnamese.
Not surprisingly, therefore, many interpretations of the Vietnam War cite the mismatch of wills between North Vietnam and the United States as a critical element. From the perspective of theater level strategy, this insight makes perfect sense. It's an observation worth noting in other situations, such as the history of colonial wars in the 19th and 20th centuries, and even our own War of Independence. For the "locals," there always is just one theater--and, to go back to our discussion of power and leverage, that fact gives the locals considerable leverage over their more powereful enemies.
The essence of theater strategy, therefore, often boils down to choices about this war, at this time, against this foe, with these forces, fought in this general way.
It may seem odd to describe counterterrorism as a theater level strategy, but that's effectively what it is. If the United States is now in mortal combat with al Qaeda, that group becomes one of our theaters of operations. Al Qaeda fighters may move from Afghanistan to the Philippines to New York, but wherever they are, they've become an important theater-level concern. Put in the simplest terms, American grand strategy demands the protection of defines life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Al Qaeda threatens broadly threatens all three sacred elements of the American way of life.
What makes much less sense, of course, is how Iraq became an important part of our theater level strategy. The most generous argument someone can make includes one or both of the following points:
- 9/11 was bad enough, but an al Qaeda attack with nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons would have been far worse. Therefore, we have to work on two tracks simultaneously: (1) defeat al Qaeda and any other groups like it; (2) shut down secret weapons labs, restrict access to WMD technology, and do everything else necessary to eliminate anyplace terrorist might acquire WMDs. If the terrorist and WMD tracks ever do intersect, we'll have failed in our post-9/11 counterterrorist effort.
- Virulent anti-Western Islamist movements in the Middle East attract new adherents every day. So far, we've only affected Middle Eastern politics at the fringes. If we really want to shut down terrorist groups, we may need to take a bold stroke that re-defines the political equation in not jus a single country, but the entire region. In fact, we can't stop at one country, since such a masterstroke could turn into a terrible blunder if the backlash radicalizes more Muslims to join groups like al Qaeda.
Even in this generous interpretation of the Bush Administration's theater strategy in the Middle East and Central Asia, it has turned out to be a catastrophic failure so far. The invasion of Afghanistan made perfect sense. "Going downtown" (to borrow a phrase from the Vietnam War) meant invading to crush both the Taliban and al Qaeda so that Afghanistan could never become a terrorist base again. Many (myself included) have been critical of American follow-through in the Afghan operation. It's understandable that it will take time to stabilize the situation, given the ethnic, sectarian, and tribal conflicts in the country. No one expects an end to warlordism overnight--as President Kharzai readily admits. Victory in Afghanistan will take patience, resources, political skill, relentless pursuit of the Taliban and al Qaeda remnants, and time. However, the United States has done far less than it needed (and promised) to do in Afghanistan--in no small part because the Bush Administration was in a hurry to invade Iraq.
The Administration made an excessively risky bet in Iraq and lost. The WMDs weren't there. (By now, the looping strands of the "not finding WMDs isn't evidence that they don't exist" argument have completely unravelled.) There wasn't even an active WMD program, despite Bush's revisionist claim of "weapons of mass destruction-related programs."
There was no connection between the Baath Party and al Qaeda. The group to which Secretary of State Powell pointed as "proof" of the al Qaeda connection, Ansar al-Islam, was in fact a mortal enemy of Saddam Hussein. Since the post-war plans proved to be threadbare or non-existent, we've created many more enemies in Iraq than we should have.
The regional backlash many feared has in fact happened. The invasion gave anti-Western demagogues the chance to depict US soldiers as crusaders in new uniforms. The Abu Ghraib photos, the siege of Fallujah, American running battles with Sadrist forces, and related events have, needless to say, made a bad situation worse. (Bush's loose tongue about his fundamentalist Christian beliefs haven't helped either.)
Every day, American soldiers who had been safely based in Europe, the United States, or elsewhere in the Middle East are now dying in Iraq. American grand strategy, to the extent that it will eventually require shifting of resources out of Iraq to meet other threats, has also been crippled by the botched occupation. Facing down the North Koreans, who actually do have nuclear weapons, is now much harder, given the self-inflicted wound in Iraq. And we've helped make one terrorist group, Ansar al-Islam, more powerful than it once was--including the power to kill Americans.
Unless there's a dramatic change in fortune, the Iraq War will become the defining example of failed theater strategy for generations to come. The Baath regime was effectively contained, according to experts like former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and General Anthony Zinni, the former CENTCOM commander. Theater strategy in the Middle East was working, to the extent that Iraq posed little or no threat. Saddam Hussein had no WMDs to hand over to terrorists or launch against Tel Aviv. We may have been frustrated with Hussein's continued survival, and he certainly was the nastiest of tyrants. He wasn't, however, a factor in our war with al Qaeda--the part of American grand strategy that shot to the top of our post-9/11 priorities.
Not only didn't the Iraq War contribute to our grand strategy, but US plans (such as they were) didn't even bring real victory in the Middle East or other theaters. As billions of US dollars flow into Iraq to keep the situation from disintegrating further, real priorities--such as the surviving threat of the Taliban, or the frightening revelation that the Libyans received nuclear technology from North Korea--suffer.
The wrong war, against the wrong opponent, fought the wrong way, at the wrong time for our war against al Qaeda. The more you view current events through the clarifying lens of grand and theater strategy, the more obvious and profound the failure appears.