When it comes to civil-military relations, can Obama articulate a coherent Mideast strategy?

Two civil-military squibs caught my eye this morning and are worth noting:

Civil-military tension has contributed to the Obama administration’s inability thus far to forge a coherent Middle East strategy, or so the Wall Street Journal seems to say. Perhaps the president’s major speech today will reveal the contours of a coherent regional strategy that observers have missed in the past few months. Or at a minimum, perhaps the speech will lay out such a strategy that will guide policy from here on out. But one reason the administration has struggled, according to this report, is because of a basic tension between civilian advisors who have pushed for a more forward-leaning posture in the Middle East and military advisors who have pushed a more cautious "stability" agenda. Such tensions have a long pedigree in American foreign policy, and so there is nothing surprising or discrediting that it shows up now. How President Obama manages the tension, however, does matter. I don’t expect him to address the civil-military tension head-on in the speech, but it is something to look for in the coming months of implementation.

The military believes civilian advisors have been too loose-lipped in bragging about the bin Laden raid. That seems to be the gist of comments by Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen, as reported in the Washington Post and New York Times. Gates specifically worried about how all of the extensive media backgrounding poses risks to the families of the elite units that conducted the raid. He also indicated that the White House did not honor a promise it made to the military to guard the operational information closely in exchange for getting unusual visibility into the operation as it unfolded in real time. For my part, I have been a bit nonplussed by the granularity of operational and intelligence-related detail that has leaked into the media coverage, all of which will make it that much harder to do another mission like this if the need arises again. But the comments from Gates and Mullen point to another consequence: There may well be a bit less trust between the military and the White House whenever the next sensitive mission arises. This would be an ironic and unfortunate consequence because during the pre-op phase President Obama and the White House handled the national command authority duties superbly and that likely built up civil-military trust. If today’s reports are accurate, some of that progress has been lost in recent weeks.