Is our love of the buzzword-of-the-month, the concept-of-the-quarter, and always chasing the next best thing actually counter productive?
ML Cavanaugh zeros in on the “Third Offset” and makes an effective argument that everyone should just step back and think a bit deeper;
We’re past idea, beyond buzzword, and have shot right past cliché—overuse and overapplication has rendered the phrase “Third Offset” effectively meaningless. When I hear the term used, it’s akin to the dashboard warning light in my aging car, letting me know I’m approaching a serious deficiency. The fault is geographically diverse; in recent assignments from West Point to Korea to Space and Missile Defense, I’ve heard well-meaning military professionals automatically apply “Third Offset Strategy” as a solution for just about everything, from military education to Kim Jong Un to the Russians and Chinese. But a solution everywhere is a solution nowhere—the Third Offset faithful routinely misunderstand and misrepresent this otherwise valuable weapons and concept development program as a true strategy that will win the next war. That mistake is as dangerous as it is wrong.
Do we really enhance national security by using the tools of the marketing profession? By using terms as if they are some talisman – simply by mentioning them a magic force of superiority comes around the idea or system associated with the person using it – are we just deluding ourselves that we actually producing something substantial, unique, or effective?
While speeches make obligatory nods to “balancing ways and means,” the action, emphasis, and (importantly) spending on technology in the Third Offset is so tilted toward “means” that we’ve effectively built a one-legged stool. An implied, false promise emerges: if you buy or build this advanced technology, then you will either win the next war or the next war will be comfortably easy. This unbalanced approach reduces war to an R&D exercise or shopping trip, and such a pleasant fiction has been tried before and failed: recall purported superweapons like crossbows, dynamite, and nukes. A superweapon does not a strategy make or a victory guarantee.
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Strategy aside, the bigger problem is that strategists seem to have fallen for the seductive promise of yet-unrealized game-changing tech breakthroughs. But technological superiority alone does not win wars, either in general or for the United States in particular. Recent history demonstrates that capabilities aren’t everything: “Davids” beat “Goliaths” nearly two-thirds of the time in the modern era. And it certainly did not guarantee victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. We had all the better guns and more money and superior computers and it still didn’t matter. Nothing replaces human strategic judgment. So why would anyone think such a shiny new program would ensure next-war victory?
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It is not just mistaken, but dangerous, to place so much faith in technology. George Orwell reminded us way back in 1946 that we’ve got to think hard and think critically, because “sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield” (if only that quotation would flash like a caution light every time “Third Offset Strategy” is raised in a Pentagon PowerPoint presentation). Technology may be necessary to compete, at times, but it is not and never will be sufficient for success in a human-driven endeavor like war. Weapons procurement policies do not make strategy or win wars. People do. Invest accordingly.
That which is sexy does not necessarily mean it is the most substantial.
