Don’t get us wrong. We don’t mean to imply that tactical excellence (as the United States had in Vietnam) is unimportant. It’s essential, but it should be within the context of a clear overall vision. Vision, then strategy, then tactics.

Clausewitz insisted on aggressively following up after concentrating force at the decisive point. Any strategy that doesn’t account for how to exploit victory is incomplete, inadequate. “What remains true under all imaginable conditions,” he wrote, “is that no victory will be effective without pursuit; and no matter how brief the exploitation of victory, it must always go further than an immediate follow-up.

It contended, “All too much of what is put forward as strategy is not. The basic problem is confusion between strategy and strategic goals.

Reading the documents referenced, I had to agree. They presented a plethora of broad goals and affirmations of values such as democracy and economic well-being. But there was little guidance as to how to actually deal with the national security situation.

A great deal of strategy work is trying to figure out what is going on. Not just deciding what to do, but the more fundamental problem of comprehending the situation.