Making strategy: Civil–military relations after Iraq

The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have revealed the problems that both the United States and Britain confront in formulating strategy. In part this problem is intellectual: strategy is not just about the unilateral implementation of policy, it is also a process applicable in the dynamic and multilateral context of war. However, the difficulties are also institutional. Encumbered with unrealistic models of civil–military relations, the United States and the United Kingdom have allowed their machineries for the making of strategy to atrophy.