The_Strategic_Assessment_Model_Stratam_Studying_an.pdf - 1...

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Hans-Joachim Klaus Ruff-Stahl, LtCol in the Political Directorate at the
German Ministry of Defence and Asst. Professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical
University
    
   
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Keywords
Operational art, strategy, organizational failure
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to introduce the Strategic Assessment Model
(STRATAM), a model designed to assist in the prevention of strategic failure.
STRATAM aids firstly in the assessment of a strategy, as well as its crafting and
evolution; secondly, it aims to enable and possibly streamline civil-military
strategic debates on military operations. It is argued that strategic blunders in
many cases result from latent organizational failures on one’s own side.
Therefore, STRATAM combines Clausewitz’ theory of war and strategy with
organizational failure theory. To demonstrate the use of this model, this paper
uses Operation Cast Lead (or the Gaza War) of 2008-2009 as a case study. The
paper’s findings include that the ultimate reasons for strategic failure were on
one hand Clausewitzian; on the other hand, the Israeli Defense Force’s failure
in organizational learning from a previous war two years earlier. The timely,
strategic assessment and an effective civil-military debate about the effects of
ongoing military operations might have prevented this failure. STRATAM would
have provided the necessary language, structure, and relevance to identify
actual and potential strategic failures with the goal to evolve the strategy.

In recent decades, the West – including Israel – has not been particularly
successful in winning wars. Small wars such as the 2008-2009 Israeli Operation
Cast Lead have proven to be an extremely tough strategic challenge. Often,
strategic failure has been attributed to the actions of an asymmetrically fighting
enemy or more recently, to “reasons of complexity”. Yet in contrast to this view,
DOI 10.1515/jms-2016-0192
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strategic failure may in fact be caused by one’s own flawed organizational
processes and human factors. Clausewitz’ notion that “everything in strategy is
very simple, but that does not mean that everything is very easy,” (Clausewitz,
1976: 178) may already be read in this way: while a strategy should not be
overcomplicated, human error prone and thus a set up for failure, strategic
success, in turn, depends on an effective organization including leaders, who are
cognizant of human factors and are able to timely assess and adapt a strategy if
necessary.
So far, the impact of human and organizational factors has been thoroughly
investigated and widely understood in other complex socio-technical endeavors
such as aviation, but its impact on strategy has been overlooked. In military
history, there are multiple and very diverse examples of organizational and
human factors caused failures that have originated at the level of strategic
leadership. Roughly seventy years ago, Winston Churchill observed that