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Strategy or Alibi? Obama, McChrystal and the Operational Level of War
Abstract
Obama’s decision to dismiss McChrystal from his post as commander of ISAF in June 2010 has been interpreted as a clash at the interface of civil–military relations. But it has more profound underpinnings which reach into understandings of what strategy is and how it is made. Since the 1980s the armed forces both of the United States and its NATO allies have focused their intellectual attentions on the operational level of war. During the Cold War, the focus lay on the relationship between operations and tactics, not least because the Cold War itself defined the strategic context. After the end of the Cold War, the framework provided by strategy weakened, and the operational level of war assumed strategic significance, not least in the development of counter-insurgency theory. McChrystal’s behaviour is only the most obvious manifestation of the military frustrations that follow when strategy is unclear.
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“This means that presumed 'silver bullets' like 'strategic bombing', 'network-centric warfare' and also 'hybrid warfare' are not a strategy in themselves, but merely means to an end (Strachan 2010, p. 158-9).”
From Russia and ‘hybrid warfare’ (2016) · cites this paper as Strachan 2010
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Renz, B. (2016) · Contemporary Politics · doi:10.1080/13569775.2016.1201316 · Cited by 156
“This means that presumed ‘silver bullets’ like ‘strategic bombing’, ‘network-centric warfare’ and also ‘hybrid warfare’ are not a strategy in themselves, but merely means to an end (Strachan, 2010, pp. 158–159).”
BackgroundParadoxes of Professionalism: Rethinking Civil-Military Relations in the United States
Brooks, R. A. (2020) · International Security · doi:10.1162/isec_a_00374 · Cited by 153
In Search of the ‘X’ Factor: Morale and the Study of Strategy
Fennell, J. (2014) · Journal of Strategic Studies · doi:10.1080/01402390.2013.846856 · Cited by 41
Fault Lines of the American Military Profession
Crosbie, T. A., & Kleykamp, M. A. (2017) · Armed Forces & Society · doi:10.1177/0095327x17715437 · Cited by 40
Frock Coats against Brass Hats? Politicians, the Military and the War in Afghanistan 2001–2014
Dixon, P. (2019) · Parliamentary Affairs · doi:10.1093/pa/gsz015 · Cited by 25
Metadata
- Authors
- Strachan, H.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Strachan, Hew
- Venue
- Survival
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2010-09-29
- Volume
- 52
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 157-182
- ISSN
- 0039-6338 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2699
- OpenAlex
- W2033678518
- Cited by
- 76
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 1 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 1 · 2014: 1 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 10.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Survival (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Military History and Strategy
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Control and Systems Engineering › Military Strategy and Technology
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Military and Defense Studies
- Keywords
- operational level of war, civil-military relations, Obama administration, ISAF, counterinsurgency theory, military strategy, strategy making
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Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
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- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Strategy or Alibi? Obama, McChrystal and the Operational Level of War. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/00396338.2010.522104
- The paper
- Strachan, H. (2010). Strategy or Alibi? Obama, McChrystal and the Operational Level of War. Survival. https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2010.522104
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
