Strategic Theory and Practice: A Critical Analysis of the Planning Process for the Long War on Terror

摘要

The strategic performance of the United States and its allies in the Long War has been uneven over the past eight years. Important successes against al-Qaeda and other Salafist groups have been scored, but the overall approach adopted by the American government in its publicly available strategy documents and in at least some of its actions failed to tackle the problem in a manner that is in accordance with the classical understanding of strategic theory. If the Long War will be the main security challenge for the United States over the next several years, and there are very good reasons to believe that it will, it is important for the Obama administration, together with its NATO partners and other allies, to pay more careful attention to some of the main tenets of strategic theory.