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Cited by 76Military History and StrategyMilitary Strategy and TechnologyMilitary and Defense Studies

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Strategy or Alibi? Obama, McChrystal and the Operational Level of War

Strachan, Hew·2010·Survival
DOI 10.1080/00396338.2010.522104
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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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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
DOI
10.1080/00396338.2010.522104
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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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.