The rapid evolution of war, or as Carl Von Clausewitz describes it, “politics by other means,” is reaching a point where “soldiers no longer have a monopoly on war,” as two People’s Liberation Army colonels wrote in the late 1990s. In their book Unrestricted Warfare, they predicted that the “boundaries lying between the two worlds of war and non-war, of military and non-military, will be totally destroyed” so that even the “rules of war may need to be rewritten.” Their notion of soldiers losing their monopoly on war emerged shortly after one of the US Army’s greatest triumphs, the defeat of Iraqi forces during Operation Desert Storm. In the decades since, our adversaries have covertly manipulated the boundaries between war and nonwar to shape the future battlefield. For much of that period, the US Army was largely preoccupied with counterterrorism and the post-9/11 wars. More recently, it has turned its focus to preparing for large-scale combat operations, but this focus avoids actually envisioning this battlefield. Instead, it envisions a one slightly altered from the battlefield experienced during Operation Desert Storm.
There have been a few, important voices calling for change. General Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seems to recognize the blurring of boundaries between war and nonwar and an evolving battlefield where the soldier is not the primary participant. In February, he signed the Joint Concept for Competing, which warns the joint force about the risks of relinquishing strategic influence, advantage, and leverage while preparing for a war that never occurs, as well as the potential to “lose without fighting.” In other words, the US Army risks losing its current contest by preparing to fight on the wrong battlefield, and even worse, failing contribute to the contest all together. To address this risk, the Army must reimagine how it understands war and the modern battlefield—which Milley describes as vast, amorphous, and an undefined competitive space. More specifically, it must redefine how it conceptualizes tactical actions and how it connects those actions to strategic objectives.
The primary concept for bridging tactical actions and strategy is known as operational art. Current US Army doctrine outlines two imperatives for operational art. The first is to actively create the most advantageous tactical conditions possible. And the second is to ensure that military operations align with and directly support strategy. In order to be prepared for the vast, amorphous new battlefield, the US Army must embrace the Joint Concept for Competition’s central idea and “expand its competitive mindset,” starting with its conceptualization, definition, and understanding of operational art. This cognitive evolution must proceed through three steps: (1) acknowledging the limitations of the historical conceptualization of operational art for today’s strategic environment; (2) embracing the multiplicity of warfare perspectives, specifically the different ways our adversaries understand warfare; and (3) redefining operational art and the application of the military instrument of national power across the competition continuum.
No Longer Fit for Purpose
A binary construct of war and peace limits the potential application of operational art. The Army’s current definition—“the pursuit of strategic objectives, in whole or in part, through the arrangement of tactical actions in time, space, and purpose”—traces back to the nineteenth century with Antoine Henri Jomini’s writings on strategy. Jomini’s description of strategy closely resembles how current doctrine defines operational art, which involves “making war on a map” and “mass[ing] an army, successfully, upon the decisive points of a theater of war.” Or in today’s terms, creating the most advantageous tactical conditions possible to bring about a decisive battle that ends the war and grants policymakers their desired political outcome.
However, the progression of weapons and tactics has transformed warfare, which Soviet military theorist Mikhail Tukhachevsky noted nearly a century ago had consequently rendered it “an impossible matter to destroy the enemy’s manpower by one blow in a one day battle.” Both the US Civil War and World War I served as demonstrations of this, revealing the futility of seeking a single decisive battle. Russian theorists recognized this shift and evolved the concept of operational art to tackle the challenges it posed. For the Russians, the “central challenge” of operational art transitioned “from enveloping linear maneuver to the deep frontal penetration.”
This shift in understanding reimagined enemy forces as systems and, according to retired Israel Defense Forces brigadier general and director of Israel’s Operational Theory Research Institute Shimon Naveh, demanded elaborate operations to disrupt the enemy’s functionality in terms of “depth, continuity, synergism, and wholeness.” Instead of adhering to Jomini’s strategy of “making war on a map,” operational artists shifted their focus to making war on the complex adaptive system of the enemy. To successfully conduct war on a complex adaptive system, it is necessary to target critical nodes and disrupt system functions, to create opportunities to defeat enemy militaries in detail. Systems theory, according to Naveh, became the new foundation for conceptualizing and understanding operational art. And it is systems theory that will prove critical to unlocking the future potential power of operational art for fulfilling the Army’s requirements within both the current and future strategic environments.
The current, but limited, US Army understanding of systems theory sees war as the confrontation between two open systems or militaries. According to Field Manual (FM) 3-0, Operations, systems warfare is about attacking critical components of the enemy system while protecting your own. In this construct operational art serves to harness the power of the system’s various means to link battles and operations as ways to achieve “the isolation or destruction of critical subsystems,” disrupt the effectiveness of the “opponent’s overall system,” and then “[exploit] the resulting freedom of action” to annihilate the operationally paralyzed enemy and achieve specified ends, which is the main idea of the new FM 3-0. Enemy systems exist across the five domains and three dimensions through a series of interdependent links and nodes. The links and nodes then must be disrupted through multidomain operations to create opportunities to exploit with ground maneuver. FM 3-0’s concept makes sense. It’s how the Army contributes to large-scale combat operations. But alone it is not sufficient to produce the expanded military mindset necessary or optimized for the current strategic environment and evolved battlefield. Operational art, as written, prepares for a war that may never occur, to create advantageous tactical conditions on a battlefield that isn’t being fought on.
What is required can be discerned by examining the evolved nature of warfare birthed by Desert Storm. The globalization of warfare and the interconnection of nation-states around the world have changed the battlefield from an area where two independent systems are in confrontation into a global ecosystem. The warring nations are two interdependent variables in competition for relative advantage. Consider the premise of Unrestricted Warfare, which saw in Desert Storm “a war which changed the world [and] ultimately changed war itself” and concluded that warfare “can no longer be carried out in the ways with which we are familiar.” However, the US Army seems to only want to envision warfare in ways with which it is familiar, seeing the application of the military instrument of national power focused on warfare between military systems in conflict and not as variables in competition to alter the greater system and to create relative advantage.
Embracing All Perspectives
To expand its military mindset, the Army, as an organization, must study the competing conceptions of warfare. Two post–World War II conflicts serve as indicators of the expanding context of warfare and, consequently, operational art: the 1973 Arab-Israeli War and Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. These two conflicts demonstrate a widened application of military force that transcends force-on-force land engagements.
Both the Egyptians in 1973 and the Russians in 2014 employed their military forces not to secure a traditional victory in war but to induce changes within the international system. Despite the Egyptian military’s loss, it achieved many of its desired strategic outcomes, including increased diplomatic and economic partnerships with the United States and the eventual return of, and demilitarization of, the Sinai. On the other hand, in 2014, the Russians executed their seizure of Crimea without direct combat, successfully restoring Vladimir Putin’s position in the Russian political hierarchy and retaining the strategically important port of Sevastopol. These examples illustrate the ability to achieve political aims within the international system without achieving a decisive military defeat of an adversary on a traditional battlefield.
Similarly, Unrestricted Warfare, as mentioned earlier, provides us with insights into China’s war concepts. These concepts aim for, as the Joint Concept for Competing describes it, “conflict without combat” and seek ways to “alter the current international system.” Colonels Liang and Xiangsui extensively discuss nonmilitary war operations and nonwar military operations, including trade war, financial war, terror war, ecological war, psychological warfare, drug warfare, network warfare, technological warfare, fabrication warfare, cultural warfare, and international law warfare. In fact, the same concepts continue to be promoted in People’s Liberation Army (PLA) literature, including the 2020 version of “The Science of Military Strategy,” published by the China’s National Defense University, as highlighted by a Center for Strategic and International Studies 2023 report on Chinese political warfare.
By integrating the ideas from Unrestricted Warfare with insights from 2018 and 2020 RAND studies on the operational concepts of the People’s Liberation Army, one can better comprehend the perspective of Chinese military strategists on warfare. According to their perspective, the “combat space,” representing the realm of kinetic military conflict, is shrinking, while the “war space,” encompassing the broader realm of conflict, is expanding. This operational concept, within a broader conceptualization of warfare, remains grounded in systems theory and system confrontation. However, Chinese military strategists acknowledge the necessity of waging “comprehensive competition in all domains” to alter the relative power and capability of the confronting systems.
A useful way of encapsulating (a) the limitations of current US conception of operational art are no longer fit for its purpose and (b) the need the US to embrace all perspectives of warfare is by imagining a football team. The current US Army doctrinal construct for operational art generates a team focused exclusively on X’s and O’s. This focus visualizes success accruing to the readiest and most adaptable team system, combined with having the best trained and conditioned players. However, an overemphasis on readiness, on X’s and O’s, narrows the competition to the playing field, which is inadequate for modern conflicts.
Our adversaries see a larger competitive space, or battlefield, encompassing not just the field of play but the whole league, the stadium, the media, the players association, and more. The Joint Concept for Competing urges us to adopt a similar view, with a much larger understanding of “competitive space” and critical “sub-areas” of competition. Our adversaries are gaining relative advantage through various activities off the field and outside of game time. While we prepare players for next Sunday’s game, our adversaries are using cyber warfare to infiltrate local traffic systems to prevent fans from being able to attend the game and thus negating homefield advantage. They are embedding personnel within our medical staff to prevent player readiness or within the coaching staff to gain a cognitive advantage. They are using media warfare to plant or leak various stories about racial or other schisms prevalent within the organization that will deter future free agents from signing with the team. They are conducting legal warfare, lobbying the league to change on-field rules in ways that favor their team system. The list of examples is endless, but the analogy’s core idea is to encourage contemplation of what else the US Army should contribute within the broader realm of competition. This calls for a reimagining of how the US Army should define and apply operational art to effectively manage this expanding war space.
Toward a New Definition
The US Army must undertake the task of redefining, in doctrine, operational art and the application of the military instrument of national power across the competition continuum. This redefined foundation necessitates a rescaled understanding of systems theory, acknowledging the Army’s role as a variable within these complex systems. The redefined foundation must, as the esteemed international relations theorist Robert Jervis describes, recognize that any interaction with a system will have “chains of consequences [that] extend over time and many areas.” Therefore, Army operational art must prioritize adaptability.
John Boyd, a renowned military theorist, extensively explored this concept. His well-known OODA loop illustrates how individuals or systems “learn and adapt [their] mindset to an ever-changing environment amid unavoidable uncertainty.” For the military, the key lies in adapting to environmental changes faster and more effectively than adversaries. The same principle applies to the Army in the new strategic environment, where adaptability becomes paramount.
Sensemaking and feedback are critical components of operational art. Moreover, the objectives of interacting with a system are to alter the interrelationships between variables and the behavior of various components. A significant part of influencing behavior is rooted in psychology, narrative, and context. When identifying elements to focus on for generating system changes within the expanded war space or competition, both narrative and node-link interdependence emerge as crucial factors. Lastly, the joint elements of direct and indirect effects must be added to the Army’s elements of operational art to help drive broad coherent strategy supporting operations.
The future application of operational art will focus more broadly outside of armed conflict and more predominately within the expanded war space, or competition space. As such the Army institutionally must accept premise that Milley articulated in his foreword to the Joint Concept for Competing—that “remain[ing] fully prepared and poised for war,” on its own, “will be insufficient to secure [our] strategic objectives and protect [our] freedoms.” Redefining operational art and its elements is just one step of expanding the Army’s mindset, although it is a crucial one. The new definition must include focus on continuous interaction with the greater operational environment, condition shaping, sensemaking, exploitation, and interrelationship across myriad of interdependent variables. Having more skilled and trained football players won’t be sufficient to retain an advantage, and the football field is only one of many areas of competition.
Change does not come easy to large institutions, but the US Army must adapt to the evolving nature of strategic competition by embracing irregular and nonlethal methods. Theater campaigns in the twenty-first century should utilize operational art’s system perspective to employ military forces in ways that alter the interaction of variables within the greater geopolitical system, ultimately supporting US strategic objectives. As strategic competition becomes a persistent and long-term struggle, one that defines the operating environment, the United States must reconceptualize its application of the military instrument of national power.
Given this overarching imperative, the following proposed redefinition of operational art captures the specific requirements facing the US Army:
Operational art is the organization’s continuous interaction with its operational environment that is focused on shaping conditions (through strategies, campaigns, and operations) and adapting to changes (through sensemaking and feedback) to exploit opportunities (both tactical and strategic) more effectively than an adversary.
Operational art offers the Army a framework to organize and employ military forces below the threshold of armed conflict, supporting strategic objectives. In the twenty-first century, armed conflict against peer adversaries may become less common with the dominant context within which operational art is applied becoming strategic competition. Consequently, the United States will call upon its Army to help achieve its strategic objectives in constructs short of armed conflict. Therefore, operational art must evolve to prioritize creating changes to the international system and generating strategic relative advantage for the United States through campaigns within competition.
David C. Clouse, is a US Army information operations officer, is a graduate of the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS), and has extensive operational planning experience from his tenure at the United States Army Pacific. His knowledge of Army operations in competition and systems theory is largely informed by his master’s degrees in military operations and project management, earned from SAMS and the University of Kansas, respectively.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Image credit: Sgt. Timothy Hamlin, US Army
Fantastic and thought provoking article. The Army’s concept of a bifurcated war and peace is changing with the acknowledgement of the conflict continuum. However, this is insufficient in (1) understanding adversary actions and (2) designing shaping operations. It seems to express an acceptable level of adversary action and how the Army should respond to deter escalation.
This approach is too reactionary. Proactive operational art is necessary to set conditions for all elements of national power and the joint force. Fantastic and thought provoking article. As an institution, the Army must rethink its theories of both war and victory.
This is really good. A refreshing perspective on warfare today that truly accounts for how our adversaries are seeking to change the global system.
From our article above:
Our adversaries see a larger competitive space, or battlefield, encompassing not just the field of play but the whole league, the stadium, the media, the players association, and more. The Joint Concept for Competing urges us to adopt a similar view, with a much larger understanding of “competitive space” and critical “sub-areas” of competition. Our adversaries are gaining relative advantage through various activities off the field and outside of game time. While we prepare players for next Sunday’s game, our adversaries are using cyber warfare to infiltrate local traffic systems to prevent fans from being able to attend the game and thus negating homefield advantage. They are embedding personnel within our medical staff to prevent player readiness or within the coaching staff to gain a cognitive advantage. They are using media warfare to plant or leak various stories about racial or other schisms prevalent within the organization that will deter future free agents from signing with the team. They are conducting legal warfare, lobbying the league to change on-field rules in ways that favor their team system. The list of examples is endless, but the analogy’s core idea is to encourage contemplation of what else the US Army should contribute within the broader realm of competition. This calls for a reimagining of how the US Army should define and apply operational art to effectively manage this expanding war space."
I note that, in the analogy above, ALL of the means/measures used by our adversaries; these, from a Western perspective, might fall under the heading of something like "unethical conduct," and/or, "conduct which violates the rules of the game."
From that such perspective, it would seem that our adversaries have no great interest in the "legitimacy" argument that we hear so much about here in the U.S./the West and which, thus, (a) shapes and determines our actions and (b) binds only our hands in this competition?
Just watch Russia manipulate things like the EU via Orban and the USA via the republicans . 🙂 Its happening in real time now
Again considering the quoted analogy, found in my initial comment above, should we consider that:
a. If our opponents (those both here at home and/or there abroad) thought — and/or knew — that they had a much better "team" than we had,
b. Then it is likely that these such opponents (those both here at home and there abroad) would not feel the need to engage in unethical and/or unusual conduct; this, as their "compensating" mechanism?
As to this such understanding, how does this effect what the U.S./the West should do — and should not do — in these such circumstances?
The U.S. must not retain a finite perspective of the game or it risks disadvantaging itself throughout the game’s evolution. The only thing that is constant is that nothing is constant. The over emphasis on LSCO and traditional combat readiness as deterrence will not be sufficient to deter adversary activities that will change the global order/system. If the Army’s purpose is to defend the nation and win its wars then it best understand what the nation's wars are and will be, not just what they were.
So what do you think the Army's role is in trade war, financial war, terror war, ecological war, psychological warfare, drug warfare, network warfare, technological warfare, fabrication warfare, cultural warfare, and international law warfare (and throw migration warfare in there while you're at it)? The US military is directly involved in or provides support for several of these activities, no doubt, but it certainly doesn't (and arguably shouldn't) have an active role in all of them. The US government clearly needs to be actively engaged on all of these fronts, but do we want further dilute the purpose of the US Army to make it a player in every facet of DIME? The Active Component has legal restrictions for their employment and the National Guard is already bleeding readiness for their actual mission sets by being committed to support activities beyond their intended use. I'm not sure what your intention is with this, but should the time come that we need exercise the "the big M", our military had better be ready to do what it is intended to do: deploy on short notice to wherever it is needed around the globe and achieve the military objectives set for it by our civilian leadership as part of the bigger picture that you are describing. Over the course of the past few decades, we forgot the the purpose of the US Army is not to rebuild nations, it is to destroy them if called upon to do so. Spending resources to do or focus on anything else will further weaken our already undersized and stretched military's ability to perform their core mission.
Indeed. One of the biggest lessons of the war in Ukraine has been the inability of cyber or info ops or economic sanctions, or tech blockades to decisively affect the battlefield. They all have a supporting role, but Ukraine's government and sovereignty survived because armed Ukrainians continue to Russians. We were told Russian cyber power was going to shut down the Ukrainian government and economy. Erm.. apparently not. Western sanctions would strangle Russia's economy. Not so much, it turn out. Russia's population, living in a world of ubiquitous information, would force Putin to give up his war. Not yet!
The other big reality check is that it turns out there are in fact some enormous differences between war and peace. In the absence of large-scale combat operations (the guy on the street just calls that situation 'peace') you may be competing aggressively in all the DIME dimensions, but you are not taking casualties or expending munitions in any significant way. Those differences are so huge, with the attendant implications for the mobilization of society, that its almost like we need special words to describe the two conditions. Who knew?!
The problem set facing an army in large-scale combat operations (most people would just say 'war') is completely different from that of an army in peacetime. And the stakes are much higher. Ukrainians are not 'competing' with Russia like its some kind of market-development opportunity, They are literally fighting for their existence.
This is why we maintain very expensive armies even when lots of people are not using weapons to kill each other. After all, if below-the-threshold folks could win wars on their own, we could save a lot of money on equipping and training combat forces. But when the killing starts, no other skill set will do. If you don't have it – lots of it – your capital is captured, your government replaced, or your people just murdered.
As individuals and as organizations our ability to master anything is finite. There are only so many penguins you can fit on the ice flow. Once its full, if you add another penguin, somewhere, another penguin falls off. You cant be good at everything. The job of the army is to be good at battle. Leave the other forms of competition to the folks whose job is to be expert at them.
The answer to your question of the US Army's role in those forms and flavors of war is part of the rub, isn't it?
I, for one, don't know. Are these "wars" within the present purview of the institution? Does that purview need to be expanded to allow for legal or "legitimate" army participation in those areas? Or do other organizations or institutions need to be created or brought adjacent to the army to facilitate coordinated, whole-of-government efforts as demanded by concepts like the NDS's "integrated deterrence."
All good questions.
But I'd argue that the author's larger point stands strong: "war has changed" and the army must maintain the cognitive and institutional agility to change to meet emergent responsibilities and reassess the relevance of legacy theories, models, and methods. The army must continue to strive to be learning organization.
Chaos theory, complexity theory, quantum theory, systems theory… the expanding accessibility of the space domain and the emergent technological and human consequences of the synthetic domain (cyberspace)… all of these concepts and phenomena challenge traditional worldviews and offer alternative perspectives.
In response, we must question our own frameworks and definitions. Doing so with a concept as important, if contested, as operational art is a priority.
It is not surprising the PLA embraced total war. People tend to forget they are Commies. We in the enlightened democracies should not give our strategic planning over to total war enthusiasts because the inevitable result is our countries will be on a constant state of total war. On a lighter note, how many things are happening right now because people are testing their total war tactics and strategy? You can't have it both ways.
B.C., what an awesome analogy and it ties into the tenets outlined in Unrestricted Warfare as stated in the article; unfortunately, most don’t realize this is ongoing, systemic, and currently destroying the nation from within.
Every institution has those “embedded” disruptors. In education those embeds declared a war on STEM for being racist, therefore it must be eliminated from the curriculum. Company HR departments have embedded disruptors whose sole goal is to selectively hire additional disruptors, ensuring the new product is the current social issue vice a quality product. Law enforcement and the judicial system seem to pick and choose who to arrest/prosecute based on socioeconomic factors and ideology vice law. Elected officials parrot their lobbyist’s desires rather than their constituents; it is inexplicable that they’d rather send billions to other countries rather than maintain/improve domestic infrastructure at home. They have become facilitators of deindustrialization, property tax shake down artists and their constituents, particularly in the cities, have become drugged out zombies living in the streets with seemingly no hope for the future. I’m like the kid in the movie The Sixth Sense – I see disruptors, everywhere.
DoD is not immune to these embedded disruptors, retention and recruitment are a testament to that fact. There certainly are a lot of patriots and smart folks looking at the challenges this article outlines, but at some point in the near-future we are going to approach a mathematical singularity where domestic policy decisions, based on the desires of these embedded disruptors, will not allow the DoD to maintain pace with our adversaries.
Wow. Very thoughtful article. I have been struggling with this idea for the last couple of years.
How does US Army exploit and defend in the non-war competitive space?
Great job tackling the broad strokes on operational art with a systems approach.
This is one of the best articles I have read in sometime on the threat posed by China. I am based in Europe/Brussels & in my view, the Europeans don’t even know that they are at war with China. The paragraph which outlines “conflict without combat” was of particular interest.
Picking three: First: financial warfare. Both the Fed and in Europe the ECB have decided to inflict high interest rates on US and EU companies. Chinese companies suffer from no such disadvantage the Chinese central bank does what Xi tells it. Second: Trade war linked to tech’ war – China has a dominant position in, for example: photovoltaic panel fabrication (supported by ultra-low interest rates). This makes the USA and EU dependent on China for these. Electric vehicles will be next. Third: Drug warfare – there is a vast number of Chinese container ships – from an EU perspective, the question is: how many stop in the Caribbean before moving to the EU i.e. Hamburg and Antwerp which are the main transhipment centres for cocaine.
I can confidently state that most EU politicians will be wholly unaware of the current situation. I’d be happy to engage with the author and I am in a position to pass the points made in the article to people within various EU institutions. Indeed, on this subject, the EU and the US should be working closely together.