POLICY, POLITICS, WAR, and MILITARY STRATEGY by Christopher Bassford National War College Revised 2006

TABLE OF CONTENTS

POLICY, POLITICS, WAR,
and MILITARY STRATEGY
by Christopher Bassford

INTRODUCTION: THE STUDY OF STRATEGY

CHAPTER 1. THE ENVIRONMENT WITHIN WHICH
MILITARY STRATEGY IS MADE

The Nature of Politics and War
Defining War
The Nature of States and Other War-Making Political Entities
War and the State System
The Balance of Power Mechanism
Environmental Dynamics
Summary: The Trinity

CHAPTER 2. STRATEGY AS A CONCEPT

Means and Ends in Military Strategy
The Adaptation of Ends to Means, and Vice-Versa

CHAPTER 3. WARFIGHTING STRATEGIES

Political Objectives
Sources of Ambiguity in Political Objectives
Military Strategic Objectives
The Relationship Between Political and Military Objectives
Distinguishing Between Erosion and Annihilation Strategies
Practical Military Objectives, Centers of Gravity, and Critical Vulnerabilities
"Limited War"

CHAPTER 4. SIX MORE SETS OF STRATEGIC OPPOSITES

Defensive and Offensive Strategies
Strategy by Intent or by Default
Iterative or Tailored Strategies
Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Strategies
Deterrence: Strategies of Reprisal or of Denial
Reconciling What Is Necessary with What Is Just

CHAPTER 5. THE MAKING OF STRATEGY

Who Makes Strategy?
Strategic Panaceas
The Bureaucratic Solution
Strategic Analysis
Paralysis and Action

CONCLUSIONS

A SHORT GUIDE TO FURTHER READING ON STRATEGY

NOTES

The Study of Strategy
 

"A nation that draws a demarcation between its thinking men and its fighting men will soon have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.”

—Sir William Francis Butler

This apparent simplicity is a cruel illusion. Warfare is in fact an extraordinarily complex phenomenon. The word "war" itself is nearly impossible to adequately define. States, empires, whole societies and civilizations have gone down in bloody ruin because they failed to master this inherently difficult subject.

Our point here is not that these societies were defeated by outsiders because of military ignorance or incompetence, although that has occasionally happened. Rather, many societies—sometimes embodied in a single political structure, sometimes in a multi-member system—have destroyed themselves through internal warfare. The problem is twofold. Warfare is often used in attempts to resolve problems that simply are not susceptible to a military solution. At the same time, there are always elements in any human society who are willing to use violence to impose their will on others and whose ambitions can be thwarted only via violent means. Accordingly, responsible political leaders must neither overuse nor underuse the military instrument. Either error can cause a society to sink into warlordism or simple anarchy. The fatal step onto the road to self-destruction is as likely to result from an over-reliance on violent solutions as from moderate elements' failure to use force when it is necessary—a classic example of the latter being the Western powers' appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938.

Oddly, we sometimes fail to consider the vast social importance of military success, thinking of  military victory and defeat as abstractions of importance only to soldiers and politicians. Aside from the obvious dangers faced by a society overrun and conquered by invaders, consider the more subtle social divisions and loss of national self-confidence engendered by the American failure in Vietnam. Those problems were comparatively mild. The French Revolution was preceded by losses in a series of wars—failures that destroyed both the prestige and the finances of the royal government. The Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 were both the consequences of military defeat, as was the German revolution of 1918. These revolutions eventually brought us Hitler and Stalin. It is clear that defeat in Afghanistan was a catalyst leading to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We stress these consequences of war in order to remind the reader that war is brutally dangerous. This is true, not merely for the combatants and the innocent bystanders caught in the war zone, but for the larger societies they represent. War means social disruption and the breaking of moral bonds. It breeds hatred, bitterness, and more war. Defeat in war breeds revolution. The path of revolution—however justified the overthrow of the old ruling class, however superior the new society that may eventually emerge—usually passes through a great deal of turmoil, terror, internal strife, and external warfare. It usually leads to dictatorship.

Military events trigger powerful feelings of group identity. They have a disproportionate political impact because of the emotional impact of violence across group boundaries. The political sensitivity of all things military is becoming more obvious, however, because of the high visibility given to such matters by modern news coverage. All personnel must understand that the "distance" between local or tactical actions and the strategic or political level may be very short indeed, and that this distance is highly variable depending on the larger political context. They must adjust their behavior accordingly.

This study is therefore designed to give national security personnel a solid, deep, and common understanding of the fundamental problem of military strategy at the highest level: What is the role of organized violence in the pursuit of our political goals? In other words, how can we most effectively integrate military means—force or the credible threat of force—with the other elements of our power in order to attain our political ends? This study provides conceptual tools that help us to understand both our own and our enemies' political and military objectives, the relationships among them, and thus the unique nature of any particular conflict. Although it gives some consideration to matters of long-term national policy, it focuses primarily on strategies for the fighting of particular wars—that is, on thinking about how to favorably conclude individual episodes of organized political violence. Such episodes are always unique and demand a unique response. A common conceptual understanding helps make possible the flexible, fluid adaptability to such challenges that our strategic concerns demand.

Just as military tacticians need to understand terrain and weather, and pilots need to understand not only the machines they fly but the air currents they move through, military strategists need to understand the fundamental nature of the political and psychological environment in which they operate. Accordingly, this study on strategy reflects war's inherent complexities. It is not designed to provide easy answers. Neither does it seek to provide rigid doctrinal guidelines that offer psychological comfort or legalistic excuses in the event of military failure. Rather, it is aimed at sharpening the judgment of serious national security professionals who understand the heavy burden of strategic responsibility in an uncertain world. National security personnel of every rank should seek to understand its concepts, even though studying war at the political and strategic level may seem irrelevant to their day-to-day duties. There are at least three reasons to make such a study:

The American national security community is a team. Junior personnel may find themselves working for senior leaders who participate directly in the strategy-making process. Such senior leaders need subordinates who understand their concerns and their intentions.

It takes time to develop a sophisticated grasp of strategic problems. By the time an individual has assumed strategic responsibilities, it is too late to start studying the basics.

By the very nature of their profession, all national security personnel are engaged in the execution of strategic policy. Any individual, of any rank, may suddenly find him- or herself in a situation in which his own actions or those of his organization or unit have a direct strategic impact. Therefore, every individual needs to understand how and why this is true.

Even in traditional, conventional-style combat, commanders at the tactical level may find that political awareness has a strategic payoff. As late as January, 1991, for example, the Saudi Arabian government refused to commit its forces to join in the imminent Desert Storm offensive. The Saudi forces lacked self-confidence and were wary of being seen as junior partners to the Americans. When Iraqi troops seized the Saudi border town of Khafji, the Saudi-American military relationship faced its first serious test. Even though an American reconnaissance team was trapped inside the Iraqi-held town, the U.S. commander on the scene encouraged his Saudi counterpart to take the lead in the town's recapture. By limiting his own unit to supporting actions, the American commander emphasized the role of Saudi forces—and helped them win a dramatic victory over superior numbers of Iraqi troops. This victory boosted Saudi self-confidence and helped inspire the Saudi government to commit its forces to join in the allied offensive.*1

Because of the uniqueness of every strategic problem, it is just as important to understand what this study does not seek to do. It is not concerned with details of current American doctrine or with techniques and procedures for handling military forces in prosecuting a war. That would be a matter of campaign and operational design. It does not prescribe any particular system, intellectual or organizational, for the making of strategy. It does not prescribe any particular strategy or any particular kind of strategy. "Theory," as the great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz said of his own work, "is meant to educate the mind of the future commander, or, more accurately, to guide him in his self-education, not to accompany him to the battlefield."*2

Further, despite its general focus on the overall strategy of individual wars, this study is not limited exclusively to any particular "level" of organization or action. Its message is that strategy is fundamentally continuous and indivisible: continuous through peace and war, indivisible from the actions of the squad leader to those of the highest command authority.

This examination of military strategy does not assume that war or military strategy is exclusively a matter of "international" or "interstate" behavior. Therefore, unless referring specifically to states, it uses the more inclusive term "political entity." It does not dwell narrowly on uniquely American strategic issues, but instead emphasizes that strategic thinkers must take into account the strategic concerns and solutions of all the participants in any conflict.

Organizationally, this study proceeds from the general to the specific:

Chapter 1 examines the psychological environment within which strategists operate. It considers the fundamental nature of power, of politics and policy, of human political organization, and of war and its impact on politics and human history.

Chapter 2 offers a broad definition of military strategy. It also examines the relationships among the various "levels" of strategy and considers precisely what it means to discuss the "strategic level of war."

Chapter 3 is, in a sense, the core of the study. It defines the key concepts of limited and high-end political and military objectives, explores the two fundamentally different warfighting strategies, and discusses the concepts of limited war—that is, war in which the opposing leadership can reasonably expect to politically survive our victory—and war intended to “disarm” the enemy—“to render him politically helpless or militarily impotent."*[Clausewitz, On War, Book One, Chapter Two]

Chapter 4 expands our basis for strategic analysis by examining six pairs of strategic opposites: offensive and defensive strategies; strategies by intent and by default; iterative and tailored strategies; symmetrical and asymmetrical strategies; denial and reprisal in deterrence strategies; and the difficulty of reconciling what is strategically necessary with what is just.

Chapter 5 examines the actual process of making strategy. It considers the various factors that make it difficult to maintain a clear focus on strategic issues and discusses the process of strategic analysis using the concepts in Chapters 3 and 4.

The Environment
Within Which
Military Strategy
Is Made
 
 

[The word] war and the -wurst in liverwurst can be traced back to the same Indo-European root, wers-, `to confuse, mix up.'

—The American Heritage Dictionary

Strategy is essentially a matter of common sense. At its most basic, strategy is simply a matter of figuring out what we need to achieve, determining the best way to use the resources at our disposal to achieve it, then executing the plan.

Unfortunately, in the practical world of politics and war, none of these things are easily done. Our goals are complex, sometimes contradictory, and many-sided. They often change in the middle of a war. The resources at our disposal are not always obvious, can change during the course of a struggle, and usually need to be adapted to suit our needs. And the enemy is often annoyingly uncooperative, refusing to fit our preconceptions of him or to stand still while we erect the apparatus for his destruction.*3
 

THE NATURE OF POLITICS AND WAR

Before we can usefully discuss the making and carrying out of military strategy, we must understand the fundamental character of politics and the violent expression of politics called war. Let us start by analyzing one of the best known, most insightful, and least understood definitions of war ever written.
 

Note that this definition is presented here in two significantly different forms. Most readers have seen it before, in one form or the other. Most military professionals accept this famous aphorism—albeit sometimes reluctantly—as a given truth. And yet, the words "policy" and "politics," as we use them in the English language, mean very different things. The choice of one of these words over the other in translating Clausewitz's famous definition of war reflects a powerful psychological bias, a crucial difference in our views of the nature of reality. We must understand both relationships—between war and policy, and between war and politics. To focus on the first without an appreciation for the second is to get a distorted notion of the fundamental character of war.

War is a social phenomenon. Its logic is not the logic of art, nor that of science or engineering, but rather the logic of social transactions. Human beings, because they are intelligent, creative, and emotional, interact with each other in ways that are fundamentally different from the ways in which the scientist interacts with chemicals, the architect or engineer with beams and girders, or the artist with paints or musical notes. The interaction we are concerned with when we speak of war is political interaction. The "other means" in Clausewitz's definition of war is organized violence. The addition of violence to political interaction is the only factor that defines war as a distinct form of politics—but that addition has powerful and unique effects.*5

The two different terms we have used, policy and politics, both concern power. While every specific war has its unique causes, which the strategist must strive to understand, war as a whole has no general cause other than mankind's innate desire for power. Thucydides, the ancient Greek historian of the disastrous Peloponnesian War, recounted an Athenian statement to that effect.

We have done nothing extraordinary, nothing contrary to human nature in accepting an empire when it was offered to us and then in refusing to give it up. Three very powerful motives prevent us from doing so—security, honor, and self-interest.*6  And we were not the first to act in this way. Far from it. It has always been a rule that the weak should be subject to the strong; and besides, we consider that we are worthy of our power.*7

Power is sometimes material in nature: the economic power of money or other resources, for example, or possession of the physical means for coercion (weapons and troops or police). Power is just as often psychological in nature: legal, religious, or scientific authority; intellectual or social prestige; a charismatic personality's ability to excite or persuade; a reputation, accurate or illusory, for diplomatic or military strength.

Power provides the means to attack, but it also provides the means to resist attack. Power in itself is therefore neither good nor evil. By its nature, however, power tends to be distributed unevenly, to an extent that varies greatly from one society to another and over time.

Because of its many forms, different kinds of power tend to be found among different groups in most societies. Power manifests itself in different ways and in different places at different times. In Tokugawa Japan, for example, "real" political power was exercised by the Shogun, formally subordinate to the emperor. Later, senior Japanese military leaders were for a time effectively controlled by groups of fanatical junior officers. King Philip II of Spain, whose power was rooted in a hereditary, landed, military aristocracy, launched the famous Spanish Armada against England in 1588. Driven to bankruptcy by his military adventures, he was surprised to discover the power that Europe's urban bankers could exercise over his military strategy. American leaders were similarly surprised by the power of  the disparate political coalition that forced an end to the Vietnam War. The resort to violence frequently creates more problems than it resolves: the leaders of the southern Confederacy hardly intended the total destruction of their own way of life when they ordered the shelling of Fort Sumter in April 1861. Two of the major problems of strategy, therefore, are to determine where and in what form "real" power lies at any particular moment and to identify those relatively rare points at which military power can actually be used to good effect.

Power is often a means to an end, perhaps to carry out some ideological program: to create a "workers' paradise," a "place in the sun" for a particular nationality, a "Godly community," a "world safe for democracy." It is also often an end in itself, power for the sake of the prestige, pleasures, or security it brings.

"Politics" is the process by which power is distributed in any society: the family, the office, a religious order, a tribe, the state, a region, the international community. The process of distributing power may be fairly orderly—through consensus, inheritance, election, some time-honored tradition. Or it may be chaotic—through assassination, revolution, and warfare. Whatever process may be in place at any given time, politics is inherently dynamic and the process is under constant pressures for change.

The key characteristic of politics, however, is that it is interactive—a competition or struggle. It cannot be characterized as a rational process, because actual outcomes are seldom (if ever) what was consciously intended by any one of the participants. Political events and their outcomes are the product of conflicting, contradictory, sometimes compromising, but often antagonistic forces. That description clearly applies to war.

"Policy," on the other hand, can be characterized as a rational process. The making of policy is a conscious effort by a distinct political entity to use whatever power it possesses to accomplish some purpose—if only the mere continuation or increase of its own power. Policy is the rational subcomponent of politics, the reasoned purposes and actions of the various individual actors in the political struggle. War can be a practical means, sometimes the only means available, for the achievement of rational policy aims, i.e., the aims of one party in a political dispute. Hence to describe war as an "instrument of policy" is entirely correct. It is an act of force to compel our opponent to do our will.

However, to call war a "mere continuation of policy," the most common translation of Clausewitz's famous sentence, has always provoked objections on two different but equally valid grounds. First, ethical observers object to the amoral implication that violence should be regarded as a routine tool of governments or, even worse, of political factions. Second, experienced practical soldiers and politicians correctly object that any resort to political violence is fraught with difficulty, danger, and uncertainty. It is hardly the convenient, reliable tool that many quoters of this line clearly mean to imply. Both of these objections are aimed at the suggestion that war is a purely "rational" prescription to cure political ills.

Do not, however, confuse "rationality" with either intelligence, reasonableness, or understanding. Policies can be wise or foolish: They can lead towards their creators' goals or unwittingly contradict them. They can be driven by concern for the public good or by the most craven, selfish reasons of interest groups, bureaucrats, ideologues, politicians, or rulers. "Rationality" also implies no particular kind of goal, for goals are a product of emotion and human desire. A political entity's policy goal may be peace and prosperity, national unity, the achievement of theological perfection, or the extermination of some ethnic minority or competitor. No policy-making group enjoys perfect comprehension of the situation, and the best available information (or, at least, the information that policy makers choose to believe) may be completely erroneous.

Remember too that policy, while it is different from politics and is a product of rational thought, is produced via a political process. Even the most rational of policies is often the result of compromises within the policy making group. Such compromises may be intended more to maintain peace or unity within the group than to accomplish any particular purpose. They may, in fact, be irrelevant or contrary to any explicit group goal.

Policy is therefore often ambiguous, unclear, even contradictory. It is subject to change—or to rigidity when change is needed. This lack of clarity may be the result of poor policy making. On the other hand, a vague policy may represent the only way to avoid an awkward or dangerous fracturing of the policy-making group. Ambiguity may be needed to delay some dubious course of action advocated by a powerful sub-group, one that cannot be overtly overruled. Or the lack of clarity may be a way for leaders to keep their subordinates and potential rivals weak and disunited, without siding clearly with any of them.

Such internal political struggles exist within any political entity, even those that outwardly appear to be monolithic. Many brilliant political leaders—queens, popes, dictators, presidents, clan elders, guerilla chiefs—have been masters of ambiguity. This is not a character flaw, although it may appear so to military professionals.*9  Rather, it is a political necessity. It is also, of course, a potential vulnerability.

Clausewitz's reference to war as an expression of politics is therefore not a prescription but a description. War is a part of politics. It does not replace other forms of political intercourse, it merely supplements them. It is a violent expression of the tensions and disagreements among political groups, simply what happens when political conflict reaches an emotional level that sparks organized violence.*10  And violence in turn evokes powerful emotions, perpetuating a vicious circle. Thus war—like every other phase of politics—embodies both rational and irrational elements. Its course, however, is the product not of one will but of the collision of two or more wills.

To say, then, that "war is an expression of both politics and policy with the addition of other means" is to say two very different things to strategy makers. First, it says that strategy, insofar as it is a conscious and rational process, must strive to achieve the policy goals set by the political leadership. Second, it says that such policy goals are called into being, exist, and can be carried out only within the chaotic, emotional, contradictory, and uncertain realm of politics.

Therefore, the soldier who says, "Keep politics out of this: Just give us the policy and we will take care of the strategy," does not understand the fundamental nature of the business.*11  Military strategists must function within the constraints of policy and politics, however awkward this may become. The only alternative is for military strategy to perform the functions of policy and military leaders to usurp political power, for which they are totally unsuited. Soldiers are by nature servants of their societies and make very poor masters. Virtually every attempt by military leaders to subordinate policy and politics to purely military requirements has ended in disaster.
 

DEFINING WAR

Acknowledging that war is an expression of politics and of policy with the addition of violent means is extremely important. Still, it does not fully define war.

One serious error frequently made in defining war is to describe it as something that takes place exclusively between nations or states. First of all, nations and states are different things. The Kurds are a nation that has no state. The Arabs are a nation with several states. The Soviet Union was a state whose citizens represented many different nationalities. Second, many—possibly most—wars actually take place within a single nation or state, meaning that at least one of the opponents was not previously a state. Civil wars, insurrections, wars of secession, and revolutions all originate within a single political entity, although they also tend to attract external intervention. Wars sometimes spill across state borders without being interstate wars, as in the Turkish conflict with the Kurds.*12

Thus, although we tend to think of war as typically involving one state against another, in fact such wars are unusual. On the one hand, many wars are fought by competing factions within a single state. Most interstate wars, on the other hand, are fought not by individual states but by coalitions. Such coalitions often involve non-state actors. Therefore, any attempt to list different "types" of war or "types" of participants would soon grow too long and complex to be worthwhile. For example, the French state has fought wars against other states, coalitions of states, French Catholic peasants, French Protestant town-dwellers, elements of the French army, and the city of Paris—its own capital.*13

The American military has come to define war as "sustained, large-scale military operations." This approach lumps all other forms of what Clausewitz (and this study) would call war, and some events that are clearly not war, under catch-all headings like "Low Intensity Conflict" and "Military Operations Other Than War." While that approach has its uses, we are concerned with war in all its many guises.

In its broadest sense, war refers to any use of organized force for political purposes, whether that use results in actual violence or not. For a state, the simple act of raising and maintaining military forces has political effects and implications. Increasing the military budget, raising recruitment, signing military alliances, the movement of ground forces or the repositioning of an aircraft carrier, all are implicit threats of military force. The same can be said of non-state political entities. The creation of militias or guerrilla bands is a political use of force whether or not these forces are actually employed in combat. Such non-violent uses of force are as much tools of political and military strategy as any other.

When we speak of actual warfare, however, we almost always mean genuine violence of some considerable scale that is carried out over some considerable period of time. A single assassination, while certainly a violent political act, does not constitute a war.

On the other hand, large-scale, long-term violence alone still does not necessarily mean war. Political violence may be endemic in a society. The point at which people begin to apply the word war to describe it is unpredictable. Mass murder or genocide, for instance, unless they are violently resisted on a large scale and in an organized way, are crimes, not war.

To take a different example, 76 persons were killed in Northern Ireland in 1991, out of a population of 1.5 million. That same year, there were 472 killings in Washington, D.C., out of a population of .6 million. The former situation is widely recognized to be "war," while the latter situation is not. The difference would appear to be a matter of organization. The perpetrators, victims, and targets of the violence in Northern Ireland reflect comprehensible political distinctions between ethnic groups. The violent death rate in Washington, D.C., roughly sixteen times higher, seems to reflect random violence—a sign of social dysfunction rather than of some purposeful movement toward any group's goal.

Because the word war itself has political implications, political leaders are often reluctant to use it. During the Suez crisis in 1956, the British prime minister, Anthony Eden, took refuge in a euphemism and said, "We are not at war with Egypt—We are in a state of armed conflict." Perhaps the decision not to call the Washington, D.C., situation a war is "a continuation of politics by other means": Some would argue that the violence in America's inner cities is a manifestation of class warfare and that "police" SWAT teams are actually specialized military units.

From all this, we can say that war is:

- organized violence

- waged by two or more distinguishable groups against each other

- in pursuit of some political end (i.e., power within some social construct)

- sufficiently large in scale and social impact to attract the attention of political leaders

- over a period long enough for the interplay between the opponents to have some impact on events.

THE NATURE OF STATES AND OTHER WAR-MAKING POLITICAL ENTITIES

Military professionals often seek a "scientific" understanding of war. This approach is appealing because the human mind tends to organize its perceptions according to familiar analogies and metaphors, like the powerful images of traditional Newtonian physics.*14  Such metaphors can be very useful. Our military doctrine abounds with terms like "leverage," "center of gravity," and "mass."

Useful as it is, the attempt to apply this particular kind of "scientific" approach can result in some very unrealistic notions. For example, one widely read military historian recently tried to reduce military power to a simple and, he argued, reliably predictive equation: P=NVQ (where P = combat power, N = numbers of troops, V = "variable factors," and Q = quality of troops).*15  In practice, of course, strategists must seek some understanding of all of these factors. However, even an accurate figure for N is surprisingly difficult to find, while V and Q are impossible to reliably quantify (except through ex post facto number-juggling). This kind of mathematical approach, even though it reflects some important truths, cannot serve as a practical basis for strategic analysis and prediction.

Similarly, many political scientists treat political entities as "unitary rational actors," the social equivalents of Newton's solid bodies hurtling through space. Real political units, however, are not unitary. Rather, they are collections of intertwined but fundamentally distinct actors and systems. Their behavior derives from the internal interplay of both rational and irrational forces, as well as from the peculiarities of their own histories and of sheer chance. Strategists who accept the unitary rational actor model as a description of entities at war will never understand either side's motivations or actual behavior. Such strategists ignore their own side's greatest potential vulnerabilities and deny themselves potential levers and targets—the fault-lines that exist within any human political construct. In fact, treating an enemy entity as a unitary actor tends to be a self-fulfilling and counterproductive prophecy, reinforcing a sense of unity among disparate elements which might otherwise be pried apart.

Fortunately, the physical sciences have begun to embrace the class of problems posed by social interactions like human politics and war. Therefore, "hard-science" metaphors for war and politics can still be useful. The appropriate imagery, however, is not that of Newtonian physics. Rather, we need to think in terms of biology, particularly ecology.*16

To survive over time, the various participants in any ecosystem must adapt—not only to the "external" environment but to each other. These agents compete or cooperate, consuming and being consumed, joining and dividing, and so on. In fact, from the standpoint of any individual agent, the behavior of the other agents is itself a major element of the environment. The collective behavior of the various agents can even change the nature of the "external" environment. For instance, certain species, left unchecked, can turn a well-vegetated area into a desert. Such changes in the environment will, in turn, necessitate and reward adaptive changes elsewhere in the system. And, of course, the environment can also be changed by the intrusion of external factors, setting off yet another round of adaptations.

A system created by such a multiplicity of internal feedback loops is called a complex adaptive system. Such systems nestle one inside the other, constructing, interpenetrating, and disrupting one another across illusory "system boundaries." Any individual member of a plant or animal species, for example, is a complex adaptive system made up of cells. Its protective skin or shell encloses an environment quite different from that outside the system the cells collectively have created. That individual, in turn, is part of larger complex adaptive systems. It is part of a local breeding population that is part of a species, both of which have an existence above and beyond the individual organism. Both the individual and the species it is part of belong to another order of complex adaptive system, the local ecosystem. And so on.

Such systems are inherently dynamic. Although they may sometimes appear stable for lengthy periods, the complex network of interconnected feedback loops demands that its subcomponents constantly adapt or fail. No species evolves alone; rather, each species "co-evolves" with the other species that make up its environment. The mutation or extinction of one species in any ecosystem will have a domino or ripple effect throughout the system, threatening damage to some species and creating opportunities for others. Slight changes are sometimes absorbed unnoticed by the system. Other slight changes—an alteration in the external environment or a local mutation—can send the system into convulsions of growth or collapse. Sometimes both simultaneously.

One of the most interesting things about complex adaptive systems is that they are inherently unpredictable. It is impossible, for example, to know in advance which slight perturbations in an ecological system will settle out unnoticed and which will spark catastrophic change. This is so, not because of any flaw in our understanding of such systems, but because the system's behavior is generated according to rules the system itself develops and is able to alter. In other words, a system's behavior may be constrained by external factors or laws, but is not determined by them. Every system evolves according not only to general laws but to local rules established by evolution, accident, and happenstance—or, if an intelligent agent is involved, through conscious innovation or intervention.

Another characteristic of complex adaptive systems is that the system itself exhibits behaviors and creates structures which are utterly different from those of the individual agents which create it. Extrapolating from the individual properties of gas molecules, for instance, we could not predict the existence or features of a tornado. Similarly, no individual termite intentionally sets out to build a ten-foot-tall structure that functions as an air-conditioner, yet such hives are common in some areas.*17

For all of these reasons, systems starting from a similar base will come to have unique individual characteristics based on their specific histories. Science can describe and often explain the evolution and behavior of a complex adaptive system, but cannot predict it. Oftentimes, however, the chain of events is so subtle and convoluted, and the evidence so fragmentary, that the sequence of events and the web of causation can never be satisfactorily understood, even in retrospect. Like the tornado's, their behavior cannot be predicted based on an understanding, however detailed, of the individual agents they comprise: We must always consider the system as a whole rather than as a collection of independent parts.

The reason we dwell on the complex adaptive system is that it provides so much insight into human political constructs. Any group of humans who interact will, over time, form a unique system broadly similar to the ones we have described. Humans build all sorts of social structures and engage in complex behavior. Human structures include families, tribes, clans, social classes and castes, secret societies, street gangs, armies, feudal hierarchies, commercial corporations, church congregations, political parties, bureaucracies, criminal mafias, states of various kinds, alliances, confederations, and empires. These structures participate in distinct but thoroughly intertwined networks we call social, economic, and political systems. Those networks produce markets, elections, and wars.

Such networks and structures create their own rules, and are thus fundamentally unpredictable. Economic and political events can be subjected to rigorous analysis before and while they occur, and can be described and often plausibly explained afterwards. Nonetheless, as any regular watcher of the evening news has long since discovered, they cannot reliably be predicted. Indeed, both evolutionary scientists and historians of human events find steady employment in seeking better ways to "postdict" the past, which can be just as puzzling as the present or future. We can certainly see "patterns" in human history, yet history does not repeat itself. "Victory" goes, not only to those participants who learn the existing rules, but also to those who succeed in making new ones.

When we say that politics and war are unpredictable, we do not mean that they are sheer confusion, without any semblance of order. Intelligent, experienced military and political actors are generally able to foresee the probable near-term results, or at least a range of possible results, of any particular action they may take. Broad causes, such as a massive superiority in manpower, technology, economic resources, and military skill will definitely influence the probabilities of certain outcomes. Conscious actions, however, like evolutionary adaptations, seldom have only their intended effects. As many political scientists and historians have wryly observed, there is an unremitting "law of unintended consequences." As the ripples from any one action spread out, their effects unpredictably magnify or nullify the ripples from other actions. Thus actions that seemed at the time to have great importance may prove to lead nowhere, while actions so minor as to escape notice may have tremendous consequences.

Further, human systems are "open" systems, without any clear boundaries. Events wholly outside the range of political and military leaders' vision can have an unforeseen impact on the situation. New economic and social concepts, new religious ideas or the revival of old ones, technological innovations with no obvious military applications, changes in climatic conditions, demographic shifts, all can lead to dramatic political and military changes.

The cumulative effect of all these factors is to make the strategic environment fundamentally uncertain and unpredictable. The onset of war merely intensifies this effect. Enemy actions, friction, imperfect knowledge, low-order probabilities, and sheer random chance introduce new variables into any evolving situation. Events begin to spin out of control. History is too full of examples of great states defeated by seemingly inferior powers, of experienced leaders and armies overthrown by inexperienced newcomers, to believe that politics and war are predictable, controllable phenomena.

Thus it is seldom enough to set a good strategic course and follow it through. As the great German military leader Helmuth von Moltke said, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy." Effective strategists must have a feel for the nature of this environment and be prepared for both the unexpected setbacks and the sudden opportunities it is certain to deliver.*18  Military strategy demands a capacity for both painstaking planning and energetic adaptation to unfolding events.
 

WAR AND THE STATE SYSTEM

All of the social structures described above—including commercial corporations and church congregations—have engaged in warfare. Nonetheless, we tend to associate war with the state and to blame it on the essentially anarchic nature of the international state system. It is certainly true that the state form of organization has been effective in all forms of politics, including war. It has been so effective, in fact, that virtually all of the world's land surface and its people are now recognized as belonging to some more or less effective territorial state.

As we have already indicated, however, it is wrong to think that war is something that occurs exclusively between states, or that it is a product of the state or of the state system. While it has correctly been said that "War made the state, and the state made war,"*19  even that formula acknowledges that warfare was a pre-existing condition. The anthropological evidence for large-scale human-on-human violence in non-state societies is overwhelming.

The wars waged among primitive peoples tend to look "unmilitary" to modern Western eyes because they seldom involve open battle. They rely on guerrilla techniques, ambush, and frequent but small-scale massacres. However, non-state societies lack the political mechanisms to stop the local feuds, vendettas, and vicious cycles of revenge-killing that plague them. Therefore, such warfare is endemic. It has sometimes proved capable of wiping out whole societies. In a recent survey comparing the rates of warmaking and lethal violence in modern states on the one hand, and historical and still-existing primitive societies on the other, a prominent anthropologist found that:

Historic data on the period from 1800 to 1945 suggest that the average modern nation-state goes to war approximately once in a generation. Taking into account the duration of these wars, the average modern nation-state was at war only about one year in every five during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even the most bellicose, such as Great Britain, Spain, and Russia, were never at war every year or continuously (although nineteenth-century Britain comes close). Compare these with the figures from the ethnographic samples of nonstate societies discussed earlier: 65 percent at war continuously; 77 percent at war once every five years and 55 percent at war every year; 87 percent fighting more than once a year; 75 percent at war once every two years. The primitive world was certainly not more peaceful than the modern one. The only reasonable conclusion is that wars are actually more frequent in nonstate societies than they are in state societies—especially modern nations.*20

Therefore, it would be equally accurate to say that "War made the state, and the state made peace."*22  The modern European state system originated in an effort (the Peace of Westphalia) to put an end to one of the bloodiest fratricidal conflicts in Western history, the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). Although warfare between states continued, successful states were able to control the ultimately more costly endemic local warfare typical of non-state societies. To suggest, as one writer hostile to the state recently has, that "the state's most remarkable products to date have been Hiroshima and Auschwitz.... Whatever the future may bring, it cannot be much worse,"*23  is to miss this vital point about the actual role and function of the state.

The state is a stabilizing force in other important respects as well. For example, no territorial state has an interest in seeing nuclear war actually occur. Its own territory and population are hostages. Non-territorial—and thus non-state—political entities, which typically possess no assets targetable by nuclear weapons, are much more likely to actually use any nuclear device that falls into their hands.

The state has not, however, been able invariably to maintain its desired monopoly on the legitimate—that is, the socially sanctioned—use of violence. Entities other than the state make war—most often on each other, but sometimes on the state itself. In either case the state will become involved, either in self-defense or to assert its monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. The monopoly on violence cannot be preserved by an entity unwilling to use violence effectively. Should it fail to involve itself in the struggle, the state will lose a major justification for its existence and will likely find that existence challenged. If the state fails to meet this challenge, it will likely be destroyed, or taken over by some new entity willing and able to take on this fundamental function. This new entity may be another state, or possibly a supranational entity like NATO or the United Nations. Or it may be a new revolutionary government evolving out of what formerly was a non-state entity.

Thus we see that states exist within a rather precarious zone between order and chaos. They are created and maintained by the interaction of various other, hopelessly intertwined but essentially autonomous systems. Leaders and governments have various levers to influence events, but they do not truly "control" their political entities so much as they more or less skillfully "ride the wave." If they impose too much order the system will stagnate and die, like the Soviet Union. If they cease to provide enough coherence, the system will fly apart.

Therefore, we need a mental image of the state more useful than the Newtonian billiard ball model. States (and most other political entities) are tenuous assemblages of disparate, interdependent organisms, conducting an elaborate mating dance along the skeins of an intricate spider web. A tug anywhere on the web affects the whole web, where our patchwork entities occasionally entangle one another, fusing, losing and trading components, and frequently disintegrating.

Perhaps such an image of states and of the international system seems unduly fragile and chaotic. Consider, then, that the United States, which sees itself as a "young" nation, in fact has the oldest constitutional system on Earth. The People's Republic of China is barely 50 years old. Many people alive today were born when most of Europe was actually ruled by kings or emperors. Powerful states and ideologies, commanding formidable and sometimes fanatically loyal military machines, have entered and left the world stage while those people grew up. The Soviet Union, one of the most powerful political-military entities in human history, covering a sixth of the world's surface and encompassing hundreds of millions of human beings, lasted less than a single human lifetime. Responsible strategists therefore sometimes have to think in terms of awkward timespans, which seem beyond the range of practical concern—that is, beyond the current crisis and even the next election—but which they and their children will have to live through.

On the other hand, the sub-components of warmaking entities like states can be remarkably tough and enduring. For example, the British and Japanese monarchies have survived (albeit with radically changing roles) for over a thousand years. The Sicilian Mafia has survived since the 13th century. The origins of the Jews, Germans, Poles, Armenians, and Vietnamese are lost in the mists of antiquity, but they have retained their nationhoods even through periods in which they possessed no states. The state itself can transcend nationality and endure as an idea: The Roman state existed as a distinct entity for nearly 2000 years—but the last government to legitimately call itself Roman existed in another city (Constantinople), worshipped a different religion (Orthodox Christianity), spoke a different language (Medieval Greek), and was based on a political concept altogether different from that of the early Roman Republic. In yet another guise, Imperial Rome lives on today as the Roman Catholic Church. The Church has in its time maintained armies, secret services, and a powerful bureaucracy. It has fought wars, and in some cases initiated them. This Rome is no longer a state (although it runs a state of its own in the Vatican), but no one would deny that it remains a powerful political entity.

Our point is that, despite the persistence of some political forces and entities, the political movements and individual states and governments that wage wars are remarkably changeable and often fleeting things. In other words, there is nothing permanent about any particular political entity. A state or political movement exists only so long as it serves some powerful set of human needs. Ultimately, its creation, existence, and disappearance depend entirely on its population's willingness to sustain belief. Radical changes in the distribution of power can occur in remarkably short periods.

In 1480, Spain was a collection of little kingdoms, as eager to fight each other as to defend their common interests. Twenty years later Spain held title to half the globe. In 1850, Germany was little more than a geographical expression, a no-man's land between the territories of the great powers. By 1871, Germany was the dominant force in Europe. In 1935, with no armed forces to speak of and an economy in decline, the United States wanted nothing more than for the world to leave it alone. Within ten years, flush with victory, economically prosperous, and in sole possession of the atomic bomb, the United States had become the single most powerful nation on Earth.*24

THE BALANCE OF POWER MECHANISM

One of the most useful approaches to understanding the behavior of political entities is the concept of a balance of power. This concept is a tricky one, however, for the term is used to mean a number of quite different things. In fact, it has no widely agreed-upon meaning. It is nonetheless useful to examine some of the different, often contradictory, ways in which the phrase "balance of power" is used. These contradictions themselves reveal a lot about the nature of politics and the role of war. The balance of power is "at once the dominant myth and the fundamental law of interstate relations."*25

The term balance of power is usually used in reference to states, but it is applicable to any system involving more than one political power center. The phrase can mean any of the following:

1. The actual distribution of power, however unequal that may be.

2. A situation in which two or more entities or groups of entities possess effectively equal power.

3. A system in which entities shift alliances in order to ensure that no one entity or group of entities becomes preponderant.

For our purposes, the most useful meaning of the term is the last given. Balance of power systems have appeared frequently in world history. Normally, such a system is created when several entities vie for supremacy ("hegemony"), yet none individually has the power to achieve it alone. All are suspicious of any potentially hegemonic power, for fear of being swallowed up. Historically, most societies have viewed this as an abnormal situation—the traditional Chinese ideal of uniting "all under heaven" is typical, as was the medieval European ideal of a universal church and empire. After all, there can be only one "best" solution, and that solution logically should apply to all of mankind. Most civilizations have ultimately achieved such unity—and paid for it with stagnation.

Only in the modern European world did the concept of a balance of power gain widespread recognition as a desirable state of affairs. This occurred when it became apparent that no one government or ideology had the power to unite Western civilization by force. Attempts to do so had become so costly and disruptive that they threatened social stability and the dominance of ruling classes everywhere. Gradually, the ideal of a stable system of independent states took hold. After the Peace of Westphalia (1648), most European wars were fought either to maintain the rough equality of the "great powers" or to contain or destroy the occasional "shark" who sought to overthrow the system and impose its hegemony. The object of the system was not peace, but rather the security, freedom, and independence of the participating states.

One of the great debates over the nature of the state system is over whether all states are by nature sharks who would consume their neighbors given the opportunity, or if instead most states are content to coexist peacefully and sharks are the exception to the rule. That debate is essentially unresolvable. It is clear, however, that the periodic arrival of an undeniable shark led to a steady decrease in the number of independent states even in Europe. Even unaggressive states were forced to annex their smaller neighbors as a means of increasing their own powers of self-defense.

Sharks seek to overthrow the balance of power system. Their strategy is to eliminate all competitors (within a state, a region, or world-wide). In the West as a whole, this goal has frequently been attempted but never achieved. Such an effort tends to be disastrous, since it means taking on multiple enemies. Ambitious powers must always be wary of what Clausewitz called the "culminating point of victory."*26  This is the point at which one competitor's success prompts its allies and other potential players to withdraw their support or even throw their weight against it.

Even if successful, the hegemonic solution has its limits. A political entity with no peer competition will most likely stagnate—a case of "nothing fails like success."*27  Because of the internal dynamics of any human system, it is difficult for such a winner to maintain its military edge for long. For example, the reservoir of military experience inevitably ages (with all of the changes in attitude and values that this implies) and eventually dies off. Almost equally inevitably, a new enemy will arise, either from within via civil war or revolution, or from off-stage. World historians have suggested that it was the success of hegemonic states in the Middle East, India, and China that left them so vulnerable to the emerging West, in which there remained the stimulus of furious internal political, economic, and military competition.*28

The conservative strategic solution is to know when and where to stop, i.e., to understand the meaning of the culminating point of victory and to live within the balance of power system. Entities pursuing this strategy are not necessarily altruistic or unambitious. They simply recognize the nature of the system and use it to enhance their own positions.*29  They draw strength from the other members of the system and benefit from the errors committed by sharks. Knowing where to stop, in both their internal and external political struggles, has been a major factor in the consistent strategic success of powers like Great Britain and the United States. The greatest individual practitioner of this strategy was probably the Prussian/German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. In three short wars (1864, 1866, and 1870-71), Bismarck disrupted the European balance of power by unifying most of the small German states into a single, powerful German Empire. Rather than use this power in a dangerous attempt to unify all of Europe, however, he used it to make Germany the new balancing power, working tirelessly to maintain peace among the great powers. His successors, by overplaying their hand, destroyed both Germany and Europe.

Sharks (e.g., Napoleonic France, Imperial and Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union) represent an obvious class of threats to a balance of power system. Less well understood, however, is another kind of threat, the "power vacuum." A power vacuum occurs when there is no authority capable of maintaining order in some geographic area. (We have already discussed this problem in a different context, that of the state unable or unwilling to maintain its monopoly on the use of violence.)

Power vacuums are disruptive to the balance of power in two distinct ways. First, the disorder in the vacuum tends to spread as violent elements launch raids into surrounding areas or as fanatics and criminal organizations commit other provocative acts. The disintegration of Soviet power in the early 1990s has provided many examples of this sort. Another example is the disintegration of Yugoslavia, which drew a reluctant NATO intervention force into Bosnia. Second, the power vacuum may attract annexation by an external power.*30  If this act threatens to add substantially to the annexing entity's power, other states will become concerned and may interfere. Many Russians saw NATO's intervention in Bosnia in this light. NATO's agreement to Russian participation in that mission represented an attempt to mitigate such concerns.

There have been examples of surrounding states peacefully cooperating to ensure that a power vacuum is eliminated in a manner that leaves the balance of power unchanged. For example, Prussia, Austria, and Russia had fought a series of exhausting balance-of-power wars in the 18th century. A new problem arose when Poland, bordered by these three states, became a power vacuum due to its own internal political failures. Eager to evade a new struggle, the three states avoided war by cooperating in three successive partitions of the Polish state. Sometimes, neighboring entities are unwilling to take responsibility for maintaining order in a disrupted area. In that case, they will normally assist some local element to achieve sufficient power to reestablish order.*31

Another example of the problem of power vacuums also helps demonstrate the usefulness of the state form of organization. As a result of the Palestinian Intifada in the Israeli-occupied territories, a de facto power vacuum developed. Israel could prevent the Palestinians from developing their own government, but it could not impose order. Israel had already discovered the difficulties of dealing with a disembodied, non-state terrorist organization, the PLO. Neither problem had proved soluble through military means. Israel has attempted to solve both problems by creating what is, in effect, a Palestinian state. This state can claim legitimacy in the occupied territories and can, in theory at least, be relied upon to put a stop to the turmoil there.

Perhaps more important, a territorial Palestinian state, simply because it is a state and therefore shares certain inevitable characteristics with Israel, is vulnerable to the kinds of pressure Israel can bring to bear. A hit-and-run terrorist organization is responsible only for waging war; the new Palestinian authority is also responsible for picking up the garbage and seeing that the electricity is turned on. In practice, the Palestinian entity is virtually forced to be an Israeli ally against Palestinian elements who want to continue the terrorist campaign.

Thus we have the seemingly paradoxical case of a state helping its enemies to create a state of their own. There is, however, no paradox. Although Israel would no doubt prefer that no Palestinian entity exist at all, in practice that option has proved unattainable. An effective Palestinian state would be easier to deal with than the demonstrated alternative. Resolution of the power vacuum in Palestine would remove a disturbing factor and permit a more stable balance of power system to evolve in the Middle East. Effective strategists must be prepared to acknowledge such realities and to see such possibilities amid the complexities of politics.

However, because the Palestinian proto-state is not a "unitary rational actor," but rather a particularly anarchic example of a complex adaptive system, the greatest threat to both Israel and the new Palestinian authority itself comes from dissident members of the Palestinian nation. Similarly, the greatest threat to the success of this Israeli strategy comes from elements inside Israel.

Strategists must be keenly aware of the dynamics of the various balance of power systems that are involved in any given strategic problem. First, our own strategy will be affected to some significant extent by the internal balancing that takes place between political parties and branches of government, and between various agencies, departments, and services. It takes strong leadership and willpower to prevent the bureaucratic balancing instinct from dominating the strategy-making process.

Second, neutral powers and our allies will be affected by balance of power concerns. The United States is not immune to the culminating point of victory. Many participants in the coalitions we assemble are only temporary comrades in arms, with long-term goals that may diverge widely from ours. Even some of our customary allies have long traditions as great powers and have not necessarily forgotten their own ambitions.*32  Thus our allies' attitudes toward American power are complex. Consequently, a particular victory or setback may either weaken or strengthen our alliances, dependent on the specific circumstances of the conflict.

Third, the balance of power mechanism is operating within the enemy camp as well. During the early stages of World War II, for example, much of Italy's behavior was driven by concerns about her German ally's successes. The resultant Italian actions caused great problems not only for the Western allies but for Germany as well. During the Gulf War, American policy was very concerned about the internal balance of power within a defeated Iraq. The United States desired the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, but not if the result was the ascendancy of a radical new Shiite regime.

Like the "invisible hand" of market economics, the balance of power mechanism is always at work, regardless of whether the system's participants actively believe that it is a good thing.*33  It will always influence events, but does not predetermine them. Balancing tendencies can often be overcome by strong leadership, by common interests, by a powerful threat from outside the system. They occasionally break down completely, and a single dominant power emerges. Thus the concept of a balance of power is a useful basis for strategic analysis, and the balancing mechanism is often a useful strategic tool.
 

Environmental Dynamics

Despite the recurrence of various underlying strategic patterns, the strategic environment can take dramatically different forms depending on what Clausewitz called "the spirit of the age." World War I occurred in a multipolar world dominated by powerful, militarized nation-states vying for national glory. The Cold War, utterly different in character, took place between vast coalitions in a bipolar world riven by the ideological competition of Communism and Liberal Democracy. The superpowers strove to repress or contain local conflicts everywhere, for fear they might lead to global war. In the post-Cold War world, we see a global balance of power that is unipolar—dominated by the United States and its Western or Westernized allies—and largely free of fundamental ideological disputes, save in some cases religion.

While a unipolar global balance of power seems simple in theory, politics did not stop with America's victory in the Cold War. Regionally, we see an extremely complex strategic environment emerging. A great many power vacuums have been created by the collapse of governments once legitimized by the twisted dream of Communism. Other vacuums have been created by the West's abandonment of repressive regimes no longer needed as allies against a global enemy. A lucrative worldwide drug trade flourishes, financing criminal organizations that undermine or even seek to destroy legitimate governments. Burgeoning populations, especially in the littoral regions, threaten to overwhelm the abilities of corrupt or incompetent governments to provide justice and other vital services. Environmental disasters and disputes over resources as basic as water raise regional tensions.

Consequently, we see a host of new conflicts and new kinds of conflicts—new, that is, to a world grown used to the "long peace" imposed by the long stalemate of the Cold War. Long-suppressed ethnic, religious, regional, and even personal hatreds can trigger large-scale violence. The result is often terrorism, civil war, secession, and sometimes the total breakdown of order. In Somalia, for example, the state completely disappeared, swamped by warfare between local clans and gangs.

No longer guided by the Cold War's overarching strategic concept of "containment," American strategists are puzzled by this new strategic pattern. The United States finds itself drawn into local, regional, and transnational conflicts by a mixture of internal pressures, economic self-interest, humanitarian impulses, and balance-of-power concerns.

Efforts to adjust to this smaller-scale warfare must, however, be tempered by concerns about the possible emergence of a new peer competitor or some other strategic surprise. However clear the general pattern of conflict may be in any era, there are always exceptions. The pattern can always change, with little or no warning. As we demonstrated earlier, radical changes in the distribution of power can occur in remarkably short periods.
 

SUMMARY: THE TRINITY

In any particular strategic situation, we can discern certain consistent patterns—like the balance of power mechanism—and use them as a framework to help understand what is occurring. At the same time, we must realize that each strategic situation is unique: In order to grasp its true nature, we must comprehend how the characters and motivations of the antagonists will interact under specific, often new, circumstances. Summarizing the environment within which war and strategy are made, Clausewitz described it as being dominated by a "remarkable trinity,"

composed of [1] primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; [2] of the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; and [3] of [war's] element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason.

The first of these three aspects concerns more the people; the second more the commander and his army; the third more the government.

These three tendencies are like three different codes of law, deep-rooted in their subject and yet variable in their relationship to one another. A theory that ignores any one of them or seeks to fix an arbitrary relationship between them would conflict with reality to such an extent that for this reason alone it would be totally useless.

Our task therefore is to develop a theory that maintains a balance among these three tendencies, like an object floating among three sources of attraction.*34

Note that technology is not a part of Clausewitz's trinity. It is politics, not technology, that determines the character and intensity of war. Modern technology, with its awesome killing power, may be applied with great restraint, depending on policy objectives and political constraints. At the same time, in a conflict propelled by powerful ethnic hatred and fear, half a million people can be slain in a few days with machetes—as happened in Rwanda in 1995.

Thus the strategic environment is always defined by the character of politics and the interactions among political entities. This environment is complex and subject to the interplay of dynamic and often contradictory factors. Some elements of politics and policy are rational, that is, the product of conscious thought and intent. Other aspects are governed by forces, like emotion and chance, that defy any purely rational explanation. The effective strategist must master the meaning and the peculiarities of this environment.*35

Strategy as a Concept
 

You [military professionals] must know something about strategy and tactics and logistics, but also economics and policy and diplomacy and history. You must know everything you can about military power, and you must also understand the limits of military power.. You must understand that few of the problems of our time have been solved by military power alone.

—John F. Kennedy

In this book, our interest in strategy is of course largely restricted to its applications in war. Even then, however, if we think of strategy in its generic sense of interrelating ends and means, virtually everybody at every military echelon is a "strategy maker." Therefore, to impose some analytical order on our consideration of military strategy, military theorists have developed a set of conceptual "levels" of war: the tactical level, the operational level, and the strategic level. The tactical level is the province of forces conducting actual combat engagements and battles. The operational level encompasses the actions of military forces at a larger scale, coordinating and giving coherence to various subordinate tactical actions. The strategic level of war is the level at which military activities have a direct impact on politics and policy.

The division of warlike activities into tactical, operational, and strategic levels, while useful, still leaves us with many ambiguities. The levels of war clearly overlap. The customary graphic depiction of the interrelationship between the levels shows three interlocking rings. (See Figure 2-1.)

This image is often roughly accurate when it is used to describe traditional, large-scale warfare between the conventional armies of opposing states, particularly when the warring parties' political goals require the actual destruction of their opponents' military power. It is not very useful, however, in describing the dynamic relationship among the three levels over the wider spectrum of conflict with which military organizations actually have to contend.

This is so because, in practice, the tactical, operational, and strategic levels of war overlap to an extent that varies greatly depending on the scale of military operations and on the specific political context. In some forms of warfare—particularly in terrorism, in insurgency and other forms of internal conflict, and in nuclear war as well—tactical actions often have a direct, immediate political (i.e., strategic) impact. Thus we need to alter Figure 2-1 to reflect this variability in the relationships between the levels of war. (See Figure 2-2.) (This illustration is a FLASH animation--you may need to modify your browser settings in order to see it.)

Figure2-1	Figure 2-2

We often talk about the "tactical level of war" and the "strategic level" as if they were inherently separate spheres of action. They are not. All tactical actions—every firing of a bullet, every occupation of a position—are taken in pursuit of some strategic object. A strategic effect is achieved when a tactical action or the cumulative effects of many tactical actions results in a perceptible influence on the political leadership of either side. The number of intervening "levels of war" is a management issue, merely an organizational response to the particular "distance" between tactical action and political effect in any specific struggle. This is primarily a matter of scale, in terms of time, space, and numbers of people involved. In a general conflict such as World War II, it took a great many tactical actions to have any noticeable political effect. At times, even the entry of an entire nation into the war was of limited, local interest. Military events with significant political impact generally occurred at the level of fleets and armies—or even army groups. In a struggle of smaller scale, strategic/political influence can be exerted by small units or even individuals. A single tactical defeat or an individual atrocity, for example, will have limited political effect in a general war situation but powerful repercussions in a more localized scenario. In World War II, a skirmish killing 18 soldiers would normally have had no political impact whatsoever. In the 1993 Somalia campaign, however, the loss of 18 soldiers had a direct impact on the political fortunes of the administration in Washington. Had the small American-led operation achieved its purpose, the capture of a local warlord, political events might have taken a very different direction. Thus the skirmish must be seen as a tactical operation conducted directly at the strategic level of war.

In peacetime, during the transition from peace to war, or in internal wars where the political meaning of violent events is readily apparent to the "man in the street," individual violent events can have a vast impact. Nineteen-year-old terrorist Gavrilo Princip's assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 triggered the process that brought on World War I. Such small-scale actions usually have relatively much more modest effects during a large-scale war. Similarly, in a very limited nuclear exchange, the detonation of a single nuclear weapon on an enemy city would no doubt have a direct strategic effect. In a general nuclear exchange, the same bomb on the same city might have no perceptible political effect whatsoever. Thus both pistol bullets and thermonuclear bombs can be "strategic weapons." The actual conduct of combat with either is a matter of tactics. Their strategic effect depends on the political situation.

Ideally, in any particular conflict, our warfighting organization should reflect the level at which combat will have a political impact. The organizational pyramid needs to be as flat as possible, for every layer of command adds to friction and uncertainty. Multiple layers of military command serve to insulate soldiers from the political consequences of their actions. When individual tactical events cannot be expected to have any direct political ramifications, tactical leadership can be left in the hands of tactically proficient but politically naive junior leaders. When the political consequences of tactical events are likely to be larger, we must either send more experienced senior political and military leaders and keep them closer to the fight, or make strenuous efforts to select, educate, empower, and trust more politically conscious junior commanders and even individual soldiers.

"Small" wars can have a great impact on the political process. Vietnam began as a small war: It brought down at least one American administration and divided the Nation for a generation. The Reagan administration was seriously challenged over its conduct of a small war in Central America. The Soviet Union was severely damaged by its defeat in a small war in Afghanistan. American military organizations, however, have evolved for the purpose of fighting global wars. Consequently, lesser conflicts tend not to attract the undivided attention of sufficiently high-level military and political leaders—until they present us with a major embarrassment. This was the case with Vietnam, which was generally viewed by America's high military leadership as a distraction from the real strategic problems of the Cold War. It turned out to be a distraction that severely damaged American military institutions and crippled the Nation's political leadership. The constraints on organizational flexibility have lately been lessened by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent unlikelihood of global war. Unfortunately, organizational structures, which are built in adaptive response to events, take on a life of their own. They become agents in the larger complex adaptive systems to which they belong. They struggle to survive whether or not they are appropriate to a new, evolving strategic environment. Overcoming the organizational legacy of the Cold War will require strong leadership and a determination to adapt to new realities.
 

ENDS AND MEANS IN MILITARY STRATEGY

Any discussion of ends and means in war must begin with two basic points. First, war is an expression of politics: It is about power. The ends or goals of any party waging war—even though those goals may be social, economic, religious, or ideological in nature—are by definition political goals. Second, wars are fought, not by the abstract models of political scientists, but by real political entities which have unique characteristics and often very dissimilar goals and resources. We must explore the ways in which the means and ends of warfighting political entities may vary.

The only means of a purely military strategy is combat—physically attacking the enemy or defeating his attacks upon us. Because war is the continuation of politics with the addition of organized violence, however, war is not limited to purely military means. In fact, military means are only one element of our political effort in war—an element that varies greatly in its relative importance, depending on the nature and the particular circumstances of the struggle. All of the elements of our power—diplomatic, economic, and psychological, as well as military—must be brought to bear and exploited to the full in war.

These elements of power overlap and interconnect, of course. Our diplomats' power to sway other governments is dependent to a great extent on those governments' awareness of our economic and military power, and on their assessment of our willingness to use that power to their benefit or detriment. Our economic power is bolstered by our military power to defend our economic interests. Our military power is sometimes dependent on our diplomats' ability to gain basing rights and overflight permission from other countries, or to enlist them in alliances and coalitions; it is directly dependent on the financial and technological strength of our economy.

Our psychological power involves all of these factors, including the awe, fear, or admiration that our physical power inspires. Our psychological power also involves the world's perception—among the American and foreign publics as well as among political and military leaders—whether we are supporting or threatening the balance of power. It includes the sympathy or antipathy inspired by our culture, our ideas, our values, and the immediate cause for which we are fighting. The tools of psychological power include propaganda and press releases, information and personalities, food drops and medical care for refugees and POWs—in other words, anything that affects the rational or emotional components of the human mind. Psychological power may seem the "fuzziest" of all the elements we have discussed, but it is at least as important as the other three, and political entities make huge efforts to increase it. As Napoleon said, in war, the moral is to the physical as three to one. On the conventional battlefield, at the tactical level, this observation applies narrowly to the morale of soldiers. At the strategic level, it must be applied to the psychology of larger, more complex societies.

Military professionals naturally concentrate on the military means of strategy, but they should nonetheless be conscious of the other means that can and must be exploited (and defended against) in the larger political struggle of which their operations are only part. Most importantly, they must understand that military force is an inappropriate tool for the solution of most political difficulties. Force is at best a necessary means for clearing obstacles to more peaceful solutions. This appreciation of the role of force is a vital component of military professionalism, for military leaders have a responsibility to insure that political leaders understand the nature of the military instrument—both its capabilities and its limitations.

In appraising the relationship between the military and nonmilitary elements of our power in any given situation, we must be prepared to ask:

- How can our military capabilities complement or assist our nonmilitary efforts in achieving our political goals?

- How can the nonmilitary elements of our power aid our military efforts?

- How might our uses of force impede or imperil the achievement of our political goals?

There are only two fundamental military strategic goals: survival and victory. These two overarching goals encompass all of the specific aims that we may pursue in any particular conflict. The effective strategist must strive to understand what survival and victory mean in the specific situation at hand and to each of the struggle's various participants. The relationships among the opponents' respective definitions of survival and victory provide the structure of the conflict.

Survival is the first and usually the irreducible minimum goal for both opponents. Logically speaking, survival is a prerequisite for victory and must take priority. If the goal of surviving comes to conflict with the pursuit of victory, then—it would seem—one must accept stalemate or even defeat.*36  For the defender, survival and victory sometimes amount to the same thing. In any case, political leaders will often seek to convince their people that this is the case and that failure to achieve the policy goal they advocate equates to a fate worse than death. Sometimes, of course, that argument is correct.

Most of the time, strategic survival means the continued existence of the political entity which is at war. Political entities are seldom if ever unitary, however, and it is often useful to consider how the various influential sub-elements on each side see their survival interests affected by the conflict. In the case of a state, for instance, its ruling class and its present administration or regime are usually determined to remain in power. However, other classes and potential leadership groups not currently in power also wish to survive. The state's institutions seek to survive as institutions. The individuals comprising the leadership and these other classes and institutions are, of course, interested in their own personal as well as political survival. The extent to which individuals are willing to risk their own survival for the sake of larger institutions or entities varies greatly. It is often useful to create an obvious conflict in the survival of these various elements. In fact, the fundamental purpose of using force is to convince the enemy entity's constituent members that their personal survival depends on submission to our political will.

Sometimes the survival of a particular individual, group, party, or class, perhaps the military institutions themselves, will actually take practical priority over the interests of the political entity as a whole. For example, many historians would argue that Germany did not go to war in 1914 because of any real or imaginary security problem faced by Germany as a whole. Rather, the traditional ruling class needed a victorious war in order to justify and sustain its social position in the face of challenges by more modern, emerging elites. This desire for class survival not only led to the war but made the German leadership unwilling to negotiate peace on any basis other than total military victory. Pursuing its own interests, this class led the German state to destruction.*37 Similar concerns often drive dictators or totalitarian ruling parties. In such a case, strategies which seek to compel submission by threatening the interests of the state or of its people may have little direct impact. We must determine the operative interests of our enemies' actual decision makers, not assume that they are simply the mirror image of our own.

Using tools like subversion, economic blockades, bombing campaigns, and other forms of pressure, it may be possible to place the enemy's population under so much stress that it will demand changes in policy or even attempt to replace its leadership through revolution. For example, there were several revolutions in the closing phases of World War I, and they played a great role in ending the war. The Germans purposely facilitated Lenin's return to Russia, hoping that his revolutionary activities would disrupt the Russian war effort. The Western allies demanded the overthrow of Germany's Kaiser as a precondition for peace. Similarly, the Americans sought (or at least expected and hoped for) a revolution in Iraq during and after the Gulf War. Strategists who hope to create and use revolutionary pressures must keep in mind two realities. First, such revolutions take a very long time to germinate. This is because the general population is by habit dependent on its established political leadership to coordinate its actions. The evolution of a new leadership class is slow and painful, and its members are always in danger from the existing rulers. Second, should we succeed in provoking revolutions, we will have to live with the resulting chaos or with new and revolutionary regimes, which tend to become dangerously radical.

In seeking to understand an enemy's concept of survival, the strategic analyst should consider the spirit that motivates the entity and underlies its claim to legitimacy in the eyes of its population. Some entities grow naturally out of a common or national interest. Others reflect the interests of a single class, the ideological concepts of an elitist ruling party or religious sect, or the ego, dreams, or delusions of a single individual. States that represent the common interests of their many constituent elements are likely to act in a manner that we consider "rational." That is, such a state will usually act in ways consistent with the best interests of the broad society it represents. Political entities that represent more narrow interests may also act rationally, but unless we understand the actual interests they represent, we will find them highly unpredictable. The Iraqi state under Saddam Hussein, for example, does not act in the interests of Iraqi society, but in the personal interests of Saddam Hussein. Terrorist groups may act in what they conceive to be the interests of a larger society, like the organizations that fought for the establishment of Israel. Or they may fight in pursuit of some ideological abstraction unique to a small group of fanatics, or in the interests of their financial backers.

The motivating spirit of a political entity can change dramatically and suddenly. For example, Louis XIV, king of France (1661-1715), expressed the spirit of his age in his famous declaration, "I am the State." According to the political theory of the "divine right of kings," Louis's power flowed, not from a social contract with his people, but from God. In practice, his France was essentially a family business—a dynastic state held together not by national or ideological ties but by the loyalties of local elites to a patronage-bestowing royal institution at the center. His wars were fought primarily to enhance Louis' social prestige among his fellow princes. The French Revolution of 1789 changed the focus of the French state from the king and nobility (essentially territorial landlords whose nationality was irrelevant) to the ethnic nation: Napoleon was titled emperor, not of France, but "of the French." The Revolution sought to legitimize itself by invoking a radical spirit of democracy.*38  The wars that revolutionary France imposed on Europe between 1793 and 1815 were fought for a variety of reasons, which changed over the political course of the Revolution: to insure the political survival of the series of new regimes that took power in Paris; to spread the ideology of the revolution; to uphold the glory of the French nation; to further the personal and dynastic ambitions of Napoleon. The changed nature of the French state permitted it to tap energies and physical resources that the previous regime could not. These newly available resources included the personal talents of members of the middle and lower classes and vast reserves of money and manpower.*39  The greatest strategic problem that revolutionary France's enemies faced was understanding and adapting to the practical military implications of this radical change in the nature and motivations of the French state.

The motivating spirit of a political entity is therefore important. It affects its strategic behavior and the nature of the wars in which it engages. A feudal society or a territorial empire may regard the loss of a small slice of its land as acceptable, to be won back later or compensated for elsewhere. The states of 18th century Europe saw lands and populations as fungible commodities that could be traded back and forth. Therefore wars could be limited affairs fought for marginal gains in resources and prestige. To a true nation-state, however, the size, location, and specific value of any particular piece of the national territory is irrelevant. The seizure of territory is seen as an attack on the whole nation and must be reversed. This is an attitude likely to breed "total wars" like those of the first half of the 20th century.

However, an entity's motivating spirit is seldom pure (there are other, sometimes conflicting motivations at work) and it is always accompanied by the personal motivations and interests of the leadership. For example, the motivating spirit of the modern revolutionary Iranian state is both religious and ethnic-nationalist, but Iran's behavior is also strongly determined by its quasi-democratic political system and the competition of various leaders for votes. As another example, World War II was primarily a war of competing nationalisms. Nonetheless, somewhere between one and three million non-Germans volunteered to fight for Hitler, driven by ideological or more personal motives.

To complicate things still further, some entities have interpreted survival in ways that distort the usual meaning of the term. Some states or ideological movements are willing to fight on until their own utter destruction. Their hopes of "survival" lie in leaving behind a heroic legend or in making some other kind of lasting statement—to man or to God. Religious and other ideological movements have been known to seek martyrdom, sometimes as a means to a worldly end, sometimes as an end in itself. Some leaders prefer to die rather than accept humiliation—and, like Hitler, they are often willing to take large numbers of their countrymen with them. Clausewitz himself called for Prussia to rise against Napoleon in 1812, even though he understood that this would almost certainly result in Prussia's destruction. He believed that the honor of the state demanded it—i.e., that weak-kneed submission to Napoleon would fatally weaken the Prussian state's justification for independent existence. Only a heroic resistance could provide the necessary conditions for Prussia's eventual resurrection. Similar considerations moved much of the Japanese military leadership to fight on long after it was clear that Japan had been defeated in the Pacific War.

"Survival" can therefore mean different things to different elements. It is our task to isolate those elements of the enemy political system, if any, whose survival is intolerable to us. We must provide credible reassurances to the rest of the population that our aims do not threaten their survival. If our aim is not the enemy's complete destruction, he must be made to understand why submission to our demands will not be fatal. Even if our aim is truly the elimination of an enemy entity, it is not necessarily wise to advertise that fact. A threat to its survival will provoke an entity to maximum resistance. A prior commitment to its eradication is wise only if that expressed goal is necessary in order to motivate our own people and allies.

Not only do different entities define survival in different ways, they also tend to define their enemies' survival in ways parallel to their own. This can lead to a profound misunderstanding of the strategic situation. The Confederate leadership in the American Civil War saw their goal, secession, as a purely defensive act that posed no threat to the survival of the northern Union. The Union leadership saw things differently. As Lincoln indicated clearly in his Gettysburg Address, the sundering of the original Union called into question the validity of democratic institutions. National institutions that cannot maintain the integrity of the nation are by definition fatally flawed. Were the South's secession accepted, there would be no logical basis on which to maintain the cohesion of the remaining states. Thus the Union would not survive secession, nor would the American dream of self-sustaining republican government "of the people, by the people, for the people." Nor, for that matter, would the Lincoln administration itself survive defeat. The titanic Union war effort cannot be understood on any other basis.

One might similarly argue that the Communist but nationalist leadership of North Vietnam, whose legitimacy was based on a dream of national unity, could not envision surviving its acceptance of a permanent division of the Vietnamese nation. Thus it is not surprising that the United States was unable to pressure the North Vietnamese government into such a deal.

Sun Tzu wrote that "To a surrounded enemy you must leave a way of escape."*40  This admonition reflects the importance of an enemy's desire for survival as a consideration in our own military strategy. The practical implications of Sun Tzu's observation, however, are ambiguous. Some would argue that Sun Tzu was merely recommending mercy for a beaten enemy, so that he will not be embittered and will accept his subjugation. To others, Sun Tzu appears to be pointing out that a cornered rat will fight furiously. Therefore we should be satisfied to negotiate an advantageous peace with our defeated foe, rather than seeking total victory through his utter destruction. Or perhaps Sun Tzu was suggesting that we give the enemy the illusion of a way out: Wait until his forces lose cohesion in a frantic race for the escape hatch, then take advantage of their disarray to destroy them at low cost to ourselves. None of these interpretations offers definitive guidance. We should be prepared to follow whichever course offers the greatest advantages, depending on the specific situation.

Victory can be as hard to define as survival. At the strategic level, victory ultimately requires an end to the war and the reestablishment of peace. Logically speaking, victory in a strategic sense should mean the accomplishment of the specific political aims of the entity at war. In practice, however, the resort to war is often a mistake from which neither side truly benefits. In such cases, victory may mean merely ending the war on terms less unfavorable to oneself than to the enemy.*41

A major problem with "victory" as a goal is that it is an emotion-laden word. Emotionally, "victory" calls for the enemy's complete destruction, or at least his thorough humiliation. The accomplishment of limited military and political aims which do not satisfy the emotions or seem to justify the costs of the war may not feel like victory. This can breed a cynicism that weakens us for the future. On the other hand, to gain victory in its emotional sense may require actions that would be counterproductive in the longer run. The end of the 1991 Gulf War provides an excellent example: It would have been much more satisfying to the American public to have eliminated Saddam Hussein. The actions necessary to insure that outcome would have been costly, would have alienated America's Arab allies, would have disrupted the regional balance of power, and would have left the United States responsible for the administration and postwar recovery of Iraq. In such cases, wise strategists accept "mission accomplishment" without seeking a form of victory that satisfies the emotions.

Because war is so dangerous and destructive, even to the victor, the only sensible goal of war is the establishment of a peace more favorable to an entity's interests than could have been gained without recourse to warfare. Initial calculations may be proven erroneous by events, however. If the costs of continuing a military struggle come to exceed the value of the goal, meaningful victory is unattainable. As Clausewitz put it,

Since war is not an act of senseless passion but is controlled by its political object, the value of this object must determine the sacrifices to be made for it in magnitude and also in duration. Once the expenditure of effort exceeds the value of the political object, the object must be renounced and peace must follow.*42

THE ADAPTATION OF ENDS TO MEANS, AND VICE-VERSA

When we discuss strategy in the abstract, we often treat means and ends as fixed. In practice, however, we constantly adjust both. Our ends have no natural upper limit, save the limits imposed by our material and psychological means. There is a bottom limit to our aims, however, defined by our conception of survival. The events of war—our own successes and failures, the lessons we learn, new ideas, chance events, the entry of new contestants—cause both our means and our goals to shift. As our resources increase, as we gain confidence in our abilities, as we find our enemy more vulnerable than we had imagined, we tend to expand our goals. A pejorative term for this process is "mission-creep," but it would be foolish to ignore new opportunities simply because they were not covered in our original planning. On the other hand, when we find our resources or abilities inadequate, we cut our ambitions to match.

Fortunately, the means to achieve our goals can be developed, given time, determination, and creativity. Means are adjustable to some degree at every level, and our ends can affect the means available to us. For example, war aims that evoke popular enthusiasm can give leaders access to resources otherwise unavailable. The emotions created by violence can help war to feed itself, as it energizes people to greater efforts and sacrifices than are otherwise obtainable.

We need to be sure that the emotions of war do not benefit the enemy more than ourselves. For example, a people fighting for its homeland will often be willing to pay a higher price to save it than an aggressor will to take it. Similarly, many revolutionary movements start out weak and gain strength as their pinpricks provoke disproportionately violent counterstrikes from the entrenched authorities. In this way the revolutionaries allow their enemies to supply t