Defence Planning, Surprise, and Prediction
By Colin S. Gray
As a professor with a doctorate I am a card-carrying intellectual, an ascription that is not usually employed in Britain with approval, but I need to warn you of the dangers in over-intellectualising strategic matters. Learned disputes among gifted defence experts can lead theorists to be too clever. It is possible to lose the essentials of the plot in politics and strategy by excessive analysis.
As a general warning, be very careful of the concept of the day, the newly fashionable big idea, because: (a) there really are no new ideas in strategy; (b) prophets are apt to fall in love with their message, and unintentionally take their self-critical faculty off the field of play; and (c) the popularity of a notion is no guarantee of authentic merit.
Our mission cannot simply be a search for strategic truth, because we need our truth to be a useful truth. The truth about the future is that it is deeply uncertain, it cannot be predicted or even anticipated with any confidence, let alone reliably. It is not foreseeable, so do not refer to ‘the foreseeable future’.
So, what broad principles might we adopt to help shape our defence choices? My master guiding principles are the following:
(a) Try to get the big things right enough.
(b) Acknowledge that you will make many mistakes, but strive to restrict the inevitable errors to relatively minor matters.
(c) Recognise that you and your successors will be surprised many times in the future, so that your challenge is to plan with consequences that are surprise-tolerant. You will be surprised, but you need not be disabled by the effects of surprise.
(d) Plan flexibly, adaptively, and inclusively. This is what is meant by prudent defence planning.
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