Home › Video › Foreign Affairs Focus: Stanley McChrystal on U.S. Military Strategy

Foreign Affairs Focus: Stanley McChrystal on U.S. Military Strategy

Stanley McChrystal and Gideon Rose
February 20, 2013
Article Summary and Author Biography

Editor Gideon Rose interviews General Stanley McChrystal about the transformation of U.S. military strategy.

See video
Print Email
Author Interview
Generation Kill

The former Afghanistan and special forces commander talks frankly about his accomplishments, his mistakes, his lessons learned, and the future of the new American way of war he helped create.

Gideon Rose, editor of Foreign Affairs, interviews General Stanley McChrystal on the transformation of U.S. military strategy to focus on counterterrorism and to increase contextual awareness throughout the ranks. General McChrystal discusses the changes he initiated to make special operations more cohesive and effective, and argues that counterinsurgency allows for sustainable results, as opposed to direct action raids, which can create an illusion of progress while masking deeper problems.

Terms of use: 

We or our licensors own all content and materials on ForeignAffairs.com, including, without limitation, all trademarks, service marks, trade names, trade dress, and copyrights. You agree not to sell or modify such content or materials or reproduce, display, publicly perform, distribute, or otherwise use such content or materials in any way for any public or commercial purpose, in connection with products or services that are not those of CFR, in any other manner that is likely to cause confusion among consumers, that disparages or discredits us or its licensors, that dilutes the strength of our or our licensor’s property, or that otherwise infringes our or our licensor’s intellectual property rights.

Terms of use

Related

Essay, Apr 1944
America at War: The Climactic Year Begins
Hanson W. Baldwin

FOR the American forces in Europe the winter just past was a time of dogged though indecisive fighting, but even more a time of preparation, a preface to the great campaigns of 1944. In the Pacific, the major strategic offensive by the United States which started with our move into the Gilbert Islands in November recorded its first great advance in February with the capture of the Marshall Islands, an operation which will long be studied as a model of amphibious action.

Read
Essay, Jul 1944
America at War: The Crisis
Hanson W. Baldwin

THE spring of 1944 has been a time of preparation. Now the preparations are to be put to the test. The invasion of western Europe, an operation of such size and peculiar complexity that there is probably no analogy to it in military history, is imminent as these lines are written. By the time they are published, the Allies may be engaged in the furious battles which will decide at the minimum the duration of the war, at the maximum its outcome.

Read
Essay, Jan 1944
America at War: The End of the Second Year
Hanson W. Baldwin

THE United States ended two years of war confident that the last phase of the struggle in Europe was starting. The protracted retreat of the German Army on the eastern front, the increasing tempo of Allied air raids on the Reich, the continuing failure of the German submarine war, the invasion and collapse of Italy, and particularly the Moscow conference justified that assumption. The Moscow Declaration that Britain, Russia and the United States would fight the war to unconditional surrender weakened Germany's hope of retrieving victory from defeat by political means.

Read