Strategic Knucklehead

摘要

On March 16, 2011, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contract employee Raymond Davis was released from jail in Lahore, Pakistan, after payment of monetary compensation (diyya) to the families of two Pakistani citizens shot to death by Davis, acting in what he describes as self-defense, and a third Pakistani killed by an American government vehicle responding to the scene of the shooting. Davis is out of jail, the families are satisfied, the courts are relieved to be rid of the case, Pakistani protests have been relatively mild, and the U.S. and Pakistan governments can dial the tenseness of their bilateral relationship back from 'critical' to its normal level of 'very serious.' Crisis averted. Not so fast. In reality, the actions and failures of a relatively modest number of actors committing very serious lapses of judgment changed the strategic balance between the U.S. and Pakistan. In 1999, Marine Corps Commandant General Charles Krulak popularized the term 'the Strategic Corporal.' The term captured in shorthand the concept that in the emerging 'complex, high-stakes, asymmetrical' security environment of instant communications (and now social media), nonlinear conflict, irregular and hybrid warfare, urban settings, and distributed operations, the actions of small-unit tactical leaders (Strategic Corporals) and even individuals (e.g., Strategic Privates) can have strategic effects. Gen. Krulak was almost certainly focused on the positive aspects of the small unit leader's actions -- by applying judgment, leadership, decisiveness, and moral courage, small unit leaders, such as corporals and sergeants, could make rational and correct decisions about how best to manage and lead in tactical events. Of course, the inverse is also true -- an absence of judgment, leadership, decisiveness, and moral courage can produce outcomes or reactions that have a negative strategic effect. It is clear that Strategic knuckleheads were at work in the Davis affair . leaders wh.