Strategic Empathy: An Imperative for the Intelligence Warfighting Function

Introduction

During the military planning process, intelligence professionals represent an uncooperative enemy commander. The intelligence staff (G‑2/S‑2) is responsible for articulating the capabilities and intent of the threat. The U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence (USAICoE), as the proponent for the intelligence warfighting function, is responsible for training intelligence professionals to articulate the capabilities and intent of the threat. By extension, USAICoE is responsible for developing the doctrine and educational frameworks that enable commanders to understand not just threat capabilities, but also their perspectives and intent. Applying strategic empathy enables intelligence professionals to move from describing threat capabilities to forecasting enemy decisions; it improves their ability to see the battlefield from an enemy’s perspective, helps answer intelligence requirements, and supports anticipating enemy actions. At the strategic level, commands spend considerable time and resources understanding the motives, mindsets, and intentions of threats. The intelligence warfighting function must, therefore, incorporate strategic empathy into its doctrine and training to facilitate the perspective-taking necessary to achieve the Army’s mission.

Seeing through the Enemy’s Eyes

Lieutenant General (retired) H.R. McMaster defines strategic empathy as “the skill of understanding what drives and constrains one’s adversary.”¹ McMaster asks warfighters to focus on the sociological characteristics that differentiate militaries from each other. Understanding the range ring of weapon systems is important, but understanding how the adversary’s doctrine and mentality impact the employment of those systems can be the decisive edge leading to victory.

McMaster’s definition aligns with tactical intelligence field manuals. Tactical intelligence must not only represent the enemy commander’s capabilities but also capture the enemy’s thought process: “thinking red is seeing the battle from the enemy’s viewpoint.”² Seeing the battlefield from the enemy’s perspective is not moral approval or agreement. It is understanding how history, culture, incentives, and psychology affect decision-making.

Meeting Intelligence Requirements

Seeing the battlefield from the enemy’s perspective aids warfighters in answering intelligence requirements:

• Is the enemy prepared for a long fight or a short one?
• Does the enemy have the support of the local population?
• What does victory look like for the enemy?
• What level of risk is the enemy willing to take?
• What does enemy doctrine prioritize?
• How does the enemy like to fight?

Mirror-imaging bias (also known as cultural bias) assumes the enemy will act in the same way a friendly commander would.³ This assumption makes it difficult to answer these questions accurately, because it inserts biases and expectations into the process of developing an accurate threat picture. Afghanistan is the canonical example.

Afghanistan and Pakistan have a tribal culture that values local control. As stated by Pakistani Pashtun Wali Khan in support of this way of life: “I have been a Pashtun for 6,000 years, a Muslim for 1,300 years, and a Pakistani for 25 [years].”⁴ Throughout history, Pashtuns have clearly expressed this cultural preference against occupying forces that failed to respect their autonomy, not just through diplomacy but through direct violence as well. The British, among other foreign powers that preceded the United States mission in Afghanistan, used their knowledge of this tribal culture to their advantage.

The United States own experience in Afghanistan illustrates the cost of ignoring this lesson. In February 2010, General Stanley McChrystal, commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, took an approach devoid of strategic empathy. McChrystal viewed the populace as key terrain to be captured rather than an independent people who could govern themselves. American forces tested McChrystal’s novel approach in the Taliban stronghold of Marja. Behind a combined American and Afghan force was an Afghan government and police establishment to deliver services to the community. General McChrystal called it “a government in a box.”⁵ This was not only a large footprint, but the government in a box was composed of non-Pashtuns from the northern provinces. Adding insult to injury, the operation was named “Moshtarak,” meaning “unity” in Dari (one of Afghanistan’s two official languages), not Pashto, the local population’s own language.⁶

A month after Operation Moshtarak began, the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) interviewed 400 men from the Marjah District. ICOS polling of the local population revealed that “Operation Moshtarak has contributed to high levels of anger among local Afghans: 61% of those interviewed feel more negative about NATO forces than before the military offensive.”⁷ Rather than improving American forces’ ability to collect intelligence against the Taliban, this operation led to additional resentment and, according to the ICOS polling, increased membership in the Taliban.⁸ General McChrystal, who at one point referred to Marjah as a “bleeding ulcer,” would eventually concede failure.⁹

In 1880, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, Kandahar Garrison Commander Lieutenant General Frederick Roberts noted that “it may not be very flattering to our amour propre, but I feel sure I am right when I say that the less the Afghans see of us the less they will dislike us.”¹⁰ One need not have any sympathy for the Taliban, but a little bit of empathy might have gone a long way in Marjah.

Understanding the historical and cultural lens highlighted by Wali Khan and Lieutenant General Roberts gives G‑2s and S‑2s the ability to decipher events on the ground to answer intelligence requirements more fully. When strategic empathy is applied effectively, intelligence professionals act as soothsayers by accurately predicting how the enemy will react to friendly actions on the battlefield.

Forecasting Enemy Courses of Action

Strategic empathy helps G‑2s and S‑2s forecast enemy actions by putting the U.S. Army in the enemy’s shoes, while avoiding mirror-imaging bias. In any conflict, enemy actions can be broadly categorized as offensive, defensive, or retrograde operations, each with numerous variations. By adopting the enemy’s perspective, warfighters can better determine how the enemy’s doctrine or honor culture might lead them to take actions under unfavorable conditions that American forces would not consider.

In the run-up to the 2026 Iran War, a decapitation strike against Iran’s leadership was proposed, based on the premise that removing the regime’s senior leaders would quickly coerce Tehran into compliance or precipitate its collapse. This premise rested on an assumption that strategic empathy would have challenged: that the Iranians, who have a resilient history of staring down powerful rivals, would not bounce back from regicide.

Even in defeat, Iran represented power and prestige. When Alexander the Great defeated Darius III and conquered Persia, he became the “King of Asia” and “the King of Kings.”¹¹ After Alexander’s death, Persia would become a great empire again and go on to deliver many massive defeats to the Roman Empire, including—

• Mark Antony’s defeat in the Atropatene campaign in 36 BC.¹²
• Emperor Gordian III’s defeat and death in 244 AD.¹³
• Emperor Valerian’s capture in 260 AD.¹⁴
• Emperor Julian’s defeat and death in 363 AD.¹⁵

Iran is not an artificial recent construction; it is an ancient society with history that creates a sense of pride in both its elites and ordinary people. A dispassionate assessment of the Iranian perspective allows intelligence planners to provide decision makers with the information they need to forecast adversary actions accurately.

The Way Forward for Professional Military Education

Empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feeling of another.”¹⁶ Understanding is critical to the warfighting role of intelligence professionals; however, it is also important not to allow “sharing feelings” with the enemy to lead to dual loyalty, “going native,” or developing an oversensitivity to the enemy’s perspective. Too much empathy can undermine the warfighter’s ability to engage and defeat the enemy on the battlefield. Dr. Allison Abbe, a professor of organizational studies at the U.S. Army War College, argues that “perspective-taking” is the preferred method for gaining the benefits of strategic empathy without its potential pitfalls.¹⁷ Perspective-taking allows intelligence professionals to step into the adversary’s mindset, while ensuring they retain American beliefs and loyalties.

Dr. Abbe and Dr. Olenda Johnson, professor of strategic leadership studies at the U.S. Naval War College, have already created a framework for incorporating perspective-taking into professional military education via “Perspective Papers.”¹⁸ Perspective Papers require military students to examine a problem from multiple perspectives and write a one-page analysis for each of the relevant players in a given scenario. This exercise enables students to put themselves in the adversary’s shoes. This exercise builds the skill that tactical intelligence demands most: understanding enemy intent. The Army intelligence warfighting function should incorporate it into its professional military education without delay.

Sun Tzu’s principle still rings true: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”¹⁹ Strategic empathy allows intelligence professionals to understand and predict the human dimension of warfare, and it must be incorporated into the professional military education at USAICoE as a core analysis topic.

Epigraph

T.E. Lawrence to B.H. Liddel Hart, letter, June 26, 1933, Liddell Hart Papers 1927-1969, Basil Liddel Hart Archives.

Endnotes

1. H.R. McMaster, Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World (HarperCollins Publishers, 2020), 16.

2. Department of the Army, Field Manual 34-3, Intelligence Analysis (U.S. Government Publishing Office [GPO], 1990 [obsolete]), 5-6.

3. Department of the Army, Army Techniques Publication 2-33.4, Intelligence Analysis (U.S. GPO, 2020), B-8.

4. Hilary Synnott, Transforming Pakistan: Ways Out of Instability (Taylor & Francis Group, 2017), 107.

5. Dexter Filkins, “Afghan Offensive Is New War Model,” World, Asia, New York Times, February 12, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/world/asia/13kabul.html.

6. Scott Horton, Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017), 171.

7. SWJ Staff, “Afghanistan: Operation Moshtarak Lessons Learned,” Small Wars Journal, May 12, 2010, https://smallwarsjournal.com/2010/05/12/afghanistan-operation-moshtarak-lessons-learned/.

8. Ibid.

9. Lyse Doucet, “The End of Team McChrystal,” BBC News, June 23, 2010, https://www.bbc.com/news/10390435.

10. HL Deb. (3rd ser.) (28 Jan. 1881) (257) cols. 1594-1621, https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1881-01-28/debates/3e59c2be-e5b9-4b29-a9a8-730bd724e22a/LordsChamber.

11. Adrian Goldsworthy, Philip and Alexander: Kings and Conquerors (Basic Books, 2022), 378.

12. Ibid., 120–127.

13. Ibid., 256–257.

14. Ibid., 266–269.

15. Ibid., 319–323.

16. Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “empathy,” accessed March 23, 2026, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy.

17. Allison Abbe, “Understanding the Adversary: Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking in National Security,” Parameters 53, no. 2 (2023), https://doi.org/10.55540/0031-1723.3221.

18. Olenda E. Johnson and Allison Abbe, “Developing Strategic Empathy and Perspective Taking in Military Leaders,” Journal of Military Learning 9 (2025), https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Journal-of-Military-Learning/Journal-of-Military-Learning-Archives/JML-2025/Strategic-Empathy/.

19. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Lionel Giles (1910); repr. (Project Gutenberg, 2024), EPUB, https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/132.

References

Goldsworthy, Adrian. Rome and Persia: The Seven Hundred Year Rivalry. Basic Books, 2023.

Jones, Seth G. In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan. Norton, 2010.

LTC Joshua VanBuskirk is an instructor at the Army War College teaching the Defense Strategy Course and Defense Strategy Foundation Course. LTC VanBuskirk is a tactical intelligence officer and served as the brigade S‑2 for the Force Field Artillery Headquarters during Operation Inherent Resolve in 2016. He has degrees from both Cornell University and American Military University.