The U.S. Military Thinks Missiles And Bombs Work Better With A Strategy, Too



After 15 years of bloody, inconclusive war in Iraq and Afghanistan, experienced military officers are looking to President Donald Trump not just to pull the trigger on military action when needed. They’re looking for a coherent statement of American goals and a coordinated strategy that combines military force with economic, political, diplomatic, cyber and media power ― and doesn’t leave the war to the military alone.

“There is a limit, I think, to what we can do,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said this week at a Pentagon news conference, when asked about next steps the military might take in Syria following the April 7 missile attack.

Mattis, a retired Marine four-star general with years of warfighting experience, indicated that he’s in no rush to send U.S. forces into combat as the sole instrument of American power.

In a book he co-authored with Hoover Institution scholar Kori Schake last year, Mattis argued that the public and politicians are “implausibly expecting military force to produce sophisticated political, economic and cultural outcomes.” That’s not the military’s job, but “inherently a political undertaking.”

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