Daily Times

London: At the time of writing I am getting ready to address the Royal United Services Institute’s Land Warfare Conference, hosted by the UK’s army chief, General Sir Nick Carter. The title of the talk is ‘An effective brains based strategy for the 21st century’ to which has been added ‘and what the (UK) army can do about implementing one’.
Those who keep up with defence issues know that concern has been registered by a number of senior US officials, in and out of uniform, about the UK’s military and the impact of (severe) budget cuts on its ability to wage and deter war. The army that defeated Napoleon and Hitler is down to about 82,000 or about half the size of the US Marine Corps. The royal navy that once ruled the waves now numbers a handful of major warships and the royal air force, the victor of the Battle of Britain, will muster just seven squadrons worth of aircraft.
While US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey observes that this year’s proposed US defence budget of what will be well over $ 600 billion is “the ragged edge”, the UK’s spending this year on its military of about 43 billion pounds or $ 70 billion is almost a 10th of the Pentagon’s. And only by creative accounting will that spending amount to two percent of the GDP, the minimum level set by NATO (of which only five of its 28 nations will meet). Further cuts will turn the UK military into a variant of the dreaded ‘hollow force’ that plagued the US after the Vietnam War.
What to do since more money for UK defence is unlikely to be forthcoming is to follow the advice offered by Sir Winston Churchill. “Now that we have run out of money,” Churchill opined, “we will need to use our brains to think our way clear of danger, or thoughts to that effect.” A brains based approach is one way to follow Sir Winston’s lead.
Now it is clear that no sane or sensible person would attempt to deny the use of brains and intellect in creating any strategy whether for defence or business yet the nature of politics, ideology, short-term thinking, bureaucratic and constituent interests, laziness, and deferring tough choices often overwhelm brains and intellect. Hence, in the case of the US, we could invade Iraq in 2003 without answering the “what next?” question or mistakenly shift the mission in Afghanistan in 2001 from destroying al Qaeda to rebuilding a broken country.
In my view, a brains based approach to strategy consists of three parts. The first is the recognition that strategy must be structured on intimate knowledge and understanding of the tasks at hand, what is required to attain those tasks, the impediments and obstacles, the alternatives, the needed resources and the consequences of various courses of action. Second, this approach must incorporate a mindset for the 21st century, which is far different from what drove strategic thinking in the 20th century.
Third, this approach must be directed at affecting, influencing and controlling the will and perception of the adversary or adversaries.
Regarding knowledge and understanding, what is needed is a 21st century version of the Bletchley Park code breaking teams of World War II relying instead on social media and public technologies such as Google Earth to derive intimate knowledge and understanding of adversaries. Searching the Internet and sites such as YouTube and Facebook, it is amazing how much information can be turned into actionable intelligence. And the cost is far less than the hundreds of billions that have gone into high-tech satellite and other detection systems.
Regarding a mindset, what distinguishes today is the empowerment of individuals, transnational groups and non-state groups at the expense of states and the linkages between and among many crises from Ukraine, Russia and Europe to the Middle East, Maghreb and Persian Gulf. It is these linkages that must form the sinews for strategy. Finally, strategy must be about getting people to do what we wish and stop doing what we find objectionable. Force may or may not always be necessary. It is not always sufficient however in today’s more complex and interdependent world.
Of course, brains cannot always substitute for an absence of resources but brains can help devise new strategies that take into account the lack of money to make most effective use of what is available. And brains can always be useful in informing the elected political leadership what it may not wish to hear about what consequences lay ahead when intellect can take one only so far.

The writer is chairman of the Killowen Group that advises leaders of government and business and senior advisor at Washington DC’s Atlantic Council. His latest book, due out this fall, is A Handful of Bullets: How the Murder of an Archduke a Century Ago Still Menaces Peace Today