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Strategy is one of the most misused words in the contemporary English language. You hear the word used by journalists and news anchors alike. Politicians invoke the word in disparaging terms to denigrate their opponents lack of clearly delineated policy direction. Pentagon officials use it to denote the desired or undesired outcomes of a military operation or campaign (a series of battles or operations sequentially connected to achieve an overall military aim). Market strategists use it to describe someone who is able to ascertain or render judgments on the ups and downs of the economy. Strategy is also quite often used in a title with a qualifier, such as political strategist, a Wall Street strategist, or a military strategist. But where did this notion of strategy and strategist begin? It is perhaps one of the earliest crafts put to use by kings, queens, princes, princesses, viceroys, archdukes, dukes, marquises, counts, and earls. Frequently strategists were counselors, visors, courtiers, etc.

Strategy by definition was commonly viewed as the employment of all means available to a ruler to advance the interests of his principality. When we think of strategists from antiquity we might think of Sun Tzu, Julius Cesear, Machiavelli, Adolphus Gustavus, Fredrick the Great, Napoleon, Wellington, Lord Nelson. In contemporary times we might think of such greats as Woodrow Wilson, Churchill, George C. Marshall, Eisenhower, George Kennon, and the list goes on. Strategists however can arguably be broken down into two categories, the men of action and the “Captains”. Men of Action are those characters who utilized their intellectual capacity to advance our understanding of warfare and strategy such as Sun Tzu and Machiavelli. The captains are those great “geniuses” (a moniker applied by Karl von Clausewitz to great commanders like Fredrick the Great) who wrote history by their decisions and actions on the battlefield or in directing war making efforts, the former akin to Julius Cesear and later like George C. Marshall. Both categories of strategist are essential to warfare. Strategy can also be the domain of diplomats like George Kennan who gave us the Soviet Containment Strategy.

But what is strategy? And furthermore, how does it apply to the common man? Strategy is the application of national aims (ends), objectives (ways), resources (means), and risk. Ends, in the case of a nation like the United States, are those terminal outcomes that support our vital and important national interests. Vital national interests or only vital is their absence causes the State to cease to exist, such as freedom of navigation on the high seas that enables uninhibited commerce and trade or freedom from coercion of other nations or non-state actors (terrorist groups or proxies of a nation state). These ends require objectives that allow us to measure our stated actions in relation to the desired outcome. Objectives are goals that will if achieved allow us to realize our ends, although some ends can be perpetual. These in turn require discreet resources that include among other things people, systems, equipment, programs, and money. Inherent in any strategy is risk, those possibilities that could derail our strategy and require us to reframe our approach in order to get to our desired state or end.

Military strategy frequently refers to strategy as the three-legged stool. National Security makes up the seat of the stool and the legs are ends, way, and means. This visualization is important because it helps us understand the relationship between the elements of strategy. But what’s the link to the common man you might ask? We all have a strategy whether we realize it or not. All of us have an end state in mind, stated or not, for our life, our business, our family, our home, and our children. In some cases, it is an emergent strategy–we are developing it as we go along. We have ways or objectives, whether stated or not, that will get us from A to Z. And we have resources, often more constrained than we might like, but hopefully we have money in savings or investments, a pension, a home and an investment or rental property, and we have more fungible items with transient values like cars, motorhomes, trailers, boats, etc. The question is where are you headed? Do you have a clearly defined strategy and how can Lyykes three-legged stool help you develop your own personal strategy?

But that is just one purpose of this post. The second is to introduce myself and tell you what this blog is all about. I’m a retired military Strategist. Strategist is a specialization and a relatively new career field. In fact, I was fortunate enough to be in one of the initial cohorts of Strategist. The career field was fairly undeveloped and career progression was not determinative. The career field had three general “baskets” of practice, strategy, policy, and plans. Today these three areas are more developed, and I would argue Strategist are encouraged by their seniors to become experts in one of these areas, practitioners in another, and gain exposure to the third. I was fortunate to spend time in all three as one of the initial cohorts. Am I an expert at all three, by no means? I would say I’m a practitioner in Strategy and Policy and an expert in Plans. It is this later distinction that makes me a pedestrian Strategist. Planners are the blue collar works of our career field. They labor to operationalize or bring strategy life and more often than not are constrained by policy.

White-collar Strategist are those who work for Secretaries of Defense and the Services or on the National Security Council. They write papers that help formulate strategy and policy. They principally work in Washington, D.C., although some may work in Brussels at NATO HQs as well (a pleasure I’ve experienced). They frequently hold a doctorate or PhD in history, political science, or international relations. They are frequently published authors. Those of us who are blue collar Strategist are not uneducated, rather under-educated in many cases. We hold master’s degrees in fields similar to the white-collar Strategist, because our career field demands it. But we are on the practitioner end of the scale.

So, what can I offer you, the reader, as a blue-collar Strategist? I can offer you my experience and my insight into strategic thought. I’ve been fortunate to find myself at the cusp of several inflection points strategically and to influence the direction of our military and ultimately our (if you’re an American) nation. These experiences have sharpened and honed my strategic senses to a degree. And this is what I hope to share with you dear reader. Case in point, “and there I was”, as we say at the start of a war story. I was in Baghdad in October 2006 when the cycle of violence between the Shia and Sunni was spiraling out of control. I was on the advanced party of our three-star headquarters, positioned in the plans shop of the outgoing command. They were focused on making the argument for an organized turn-over and withdraw from Iraq. I was an observer at this point. However, one afternoon, the Chief of Plans came out of his cubicle and tossed some papers on my desk in disgust and said, “this is your problem”. As I glanced at what was clearly a military order, I immediately recognized they were from the Joint Staff. It was the Iraq Surge orders.

I was the first in my command to receive these orders to my knowledge and they became my very existence as a planner for the next fifteen months as I worked with our Commander to develop a plan to end the cycle of violence and provide the Government of Iraq a chance to find a political solution and bring stability to the country. In 2009, I asked to be assigned to United States Northern Command in Colorado Springs. It was there we started developing in earnest a theater strategy for a changing Arctic and worked with the Office of the Secretary of Defense to develop a DoD Arctic Strategy. In 2013-2014 I was at a Numbered Fleet where I was able to see that organization re-missioned from a force-generation headquarters to a warfighting one, arguably representing a major shift in strategy. In 2015-2017 I was at an Army headquarters where I stood up a new and innovative organization that operationalized an emerging concept for the Indo-Asia Pacific. And from 2017-2018, I was on the forefront of leading planning for contingency operations on the Korean peninsula. In all these cases I found myself at the forefront of change. There was little in the way of established precedence to guide me. I was the lead sled dog.

So, I hope that my perspective as a maker of strategy will help to illuminate some of the more challenging situations facing our country and the international community. If that is what interests you, this is the place for you. Join the discourse.