Mac-Coleman

5 June 2014 –

Incredible Incompetence

Our focus in this recent prisoner exchange debacle should be on the President’s track record of foreign policy failure.  I’ll try to explain it using the military planning model of vision, strategy, operational planning, tactical execution, and replanning.  

President Obama’s foreign policy vision is blurry at best, fundamentally flawed at worst.  Most Americans rightfully believe that our nation is exceptional and should lead the world.  But, during crises, President Obama fails to speak in a way that enlists the support of most Americans; leading from behind and being one among equals does not create a winning team in the U.S. or among international friends.  His naïve, shallow vision weakens the United States by opposing a world order that he inherited from his more able predecessors.

A strategy consists of goals and objectives that should fulfill a president’s vision.  To build their foreign policy strategies, previous presidents in both political parties selected far more competent staffs and foreign policy advisors than has President Obama.  Most past presidents have demanded that their staffs carefully draft and mercilessly vet their foreign policy strategies for the clear and common sense goals that encourage at least a modicum of bipartisan support from Congress.  President Obama has yet to do so.  Therefore, he has no goals or objectives to refer to when confronted with a decision.   He also fails to demand factual accuracy from his senior advisors’ public statements defending his decisions.  But, I suppose that accuracy is irrelevant when one’s target is beyond one’s vision.   

My experience says that most of the world sees the U.S. as exceptional.  Yet, Team Obama’s “make-it-up-as-we-go-along” strategists display ordinary weakness and ignorance to our friends and enemies.  The President either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care that leading the world with clear vision and strategic commitment enables our friends to close ranks with us, causes our enemies to fear us, and maintains peace.  But, our confused and reticent president has caused our friends to hedge their bets to protect their own interests.  He also enabled Russia to take the Crimea, China to bully our Pacific allies, and the Taliban to control the tempo of the war in Afghanistan—Obama’s War.  The Taliban has now orchestrated an embarrassing prisoner exchange when there was no compelling reason for the U.S. to participate. 

   

An operational plan based on a blurry vision and a nonexistent strategy is impossible to maintain.  Professional planners in the Departments of State and Defense, therefore, have little to work with when to try to clarify missions, build operational-level plans, and justify congressional funding.  Diplomatic negotiations become meaningless.  Justification for military manpower, training, and equipment levels becomes impossible.  It is proven, however, that a military organization and culture, adrift without a clear mission, becomes an enticing petri dish for progressive social engineering, further eroding our ability to pursue U.S. foreign policy objectives when responding to a crisis.  

   

A clear vision, a sensible strategy, and well-rehearsed operational plans set the conditions in which flexible, tactical commanders successfully plan the actual fight.  Tragically, Team Obama’s failure to provide these building blocks has created battlefield irrelevance.  Tactical victories by our military forces and by our local diplomats, without a clear strategy, only forestall defeat.  In a real sense, our more-focused enemies now control the tempo of their campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa.  They may indeed enable their victory as well.        

“The plan is nothing; planning is everything.”  When the shooting starts, wartime planners rely on a clear vision and a well-thought-out strategy to adjust actions in the battlespace.  Today, our diplomats and soldiers struggle because Team Obama has yet to produce them.  In every international crisis, President Obama challenges adversaries then backs off.  He misreads or ignores critical events worldwide.  He whimsically adjusts, if forced to, and then fails to clarify.  He organizes nothing.  He continues to ignore this portion of the planning process with which conflicts are won or lost.   

    

Finally, Team Obama’s incredible misread of everyone’s response to its recent prisoner exchange is a mistake of strategic proportions.  The exchange violated well-proven policy, probably exacerbated conditions in Afghanistan, and upset both opponents and supporters in Congress.  No crisis compelled President Obama to act on the edges of his authority and release dangerous prisoners from Guantanamo Prison.  What is compelling, however, is that for the last four years, the Taliban have dictated the timing and tempo of the war and of the negotiations for prisoner exchange. They had a plan.  Our commander-in-chief did not.  In the words of the great sage and prophet, Bugs Bunny, “What a Maroon!”