categorical confusion? the strategic implications of recognizing challenges either as irregular or...

8/2/2019 Categorical Confusion? The Strategic Implications of Recognizing Challenges Either as Irregular or Traditional

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CATEGORICAL CONFUSION? THE

STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS OF

RECOGNIZING CHALLENGES EITHER

AS IRREGULAR OR TRADITIONAL

Colin S. GrayU.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

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Strategic Studies Institute Monograph

CATEGORICAL CONFUSION?THE STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONSOF RECOGNIZING CHALLENGES

EITHER AS IRREGULAR OR TRADITIONAL

Colin S. Gray

February 2012

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FOREWORD

Strategic theory is necessary and should be useful,which is just as well because it is also unavoidable.Practical problem-solving soldiers do theory whenthey design plans that explain how particular meansand ways should achieve the desired and intended re-sults. But, like medicine, theory is not always bene-cial. The long familiar division of American securitychallenges and threats into two categories, irregularor traditional (regular), is seriously misleading empir-ically. However, alternative efforts at categorization(e.g., adding a hybrid category), are not a signicantimprovement.

In this monograph, Dr. Colin Gray argues that as-sertions of categories of challenge do more harm thanbenet to American strategic understanding. He pos-

its that the conceptual approach least prone to wreakdamage on our grasp of the problems of the day is toabandon broad categorization altogether. Instead, hends and advises that the general theory of strategy(and of war and warfare) should be regarded as au-thoritative over all challenging episodes, while onlyfoundational recognition allows safely for case-specif-ic strategic theory and practice.

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR. Director Strategic Studies Institute


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COLIN S. GRAY is Professor of International Poli-tics and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading,England. He worked at the International Institute forStrategic Studies (London) and at Hudson Institution(Croton-on-Hudson, NY) before founding the Na-tional Institute for Public Policy, a defense-orientedthink tank in the Washington, DC, area. Dr. Grayserved for 5 years in the Reagan administration onthe Presidents General Advisory Committee on ArmsControl and Disarmament. He has served as an ad-viser to both the U.S. and British governments (he hasdual citizenship). His government work has includedstudies of nuclear strategy, arms control, maritimestrategy, space strategy, and the use of special forces.Dr. Gray has written 24 books, including: The Sheriff:

Americas Defense of the New World Order (UniversityPress of Kentucky, 2004); Another Bloody Century: Fu-ture Warfare(Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005); Strategyand History: Essays on Theory and Practice (Routledge,2006); Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, andStrategy (Potomac Books, 2009); National Security Di-lemmas: Challenges and Opportunities (Potomac Books,2009); The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (OxfordUniversity Press, 2010); and War, Peace, and Interna-tional Relations: An Introduction to Strategic History, 2ndEd. (Routledge, 2011). His next book will beAirpowerfor Strategic Effect. Dr. Gray is a graduate of the Uni-versities of Manchester and Oxford.


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SUMMARY

Strategic concepts and the theories they encour-age and enable are discretionary intellectual construc-tions. Strategic concepts are not dictated to us; rather,we choose them and decide how they can serve asbuilding blocks for the edice of theory we prefer.When strategic theory is confusing, misleading, andnot t for its practical purposes of education and evenadvice, then it is akin to bad medicine that we takein the mistaken belief that it will do us good. Unfor-tunately, it is necessary to alert Americans to the in-advertent self-harm they are causing themselves bythe poor ways in which they choose to conceptualizestrategic behavior.

A quadripartite argument serves to summarizeboth what is causing confusion, and how much of the

damage can be undone and prevented from recur-ring. First, it is an error amply demonstrated by his-torical evidence to divide challenges, threats, war, andwarfare into two broad, but exclusive categoriesir-regular and traditional (regular, conventional). Theproblems with this binary scheme are both logical andhistorical-empirical. Challenges and wars tend not tofollow the optional purity of strictly irregular or tradi-tional characteristics.

Second, it is not a notable advance to add a thirdarguably exclusive category, hybrid, to the now long-standing two. The hybrid concept is useful in that italerts people to the phenomena of strategic occurrenc-es and episodes that have mixed-species parentage,but on reection this is a rather simple recognition of

what has been a familiar feature of strategic historyuniversally and forever. Strategic big-game hunterswho sally forth boldly in search of hybrid beasts of


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war can be certain to nd them. But having foundthem, the most classic of strategists questions begs in

vain for a useful answer. The question is so what?while the answer does not appear to be very useful.

Third, by analogy with systems analysis in contrastwith operations research, the wrong question inexora-bly invites answers that are not t for the real pur-pose of theory. The right question is not, How shouldwe categorize the wide variety of strategic phenom-ena that may be challenges and threats? Instead, thequestion ought to be, Should we categorize strategicchallenges at all? The most persuasive answer is thatwe should not conceptually categorize challenges andthreats beyond their generic identication as menaces(and some opportunities). The general theory of strat-egy provides the high-level conceptual guidance thatwe need in order to tailor our strategic behavior to the

specic case at issue.Fourth, our strategies for coping with particular

challenges will be effective only if they are conceivedand implemented in the context of the authority ofstrategys general theory. They should not be de-signed to t within the conceptual categorical cagesof irregular, traditional, or hybrid (inter alia) theories.When considering the American need to be ready tomeet, or choose not to meet, what may be challengesand threats, it is important to appreciate the saliencyof these caveats: (1) the identication of phenomena aschallenges (threats or opportunities) unavoidably re-quires substantial guessworkwhen is a challenge/threat not a challenge/threat; (2) the rank-orderingand prioritization of challenges is more an art than a

science, even a social science; (3) challenge labeling byexclusive categories frequently harms understanding;and, (4) the United States should not gratuitously sur-

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render political and strategic discretion by boundingits challenge-spotting needlessly with self-constructed

intellectual barriers that by implication narrow therange of appropriate U.S. response choices.

Careful consideration of the categorization of chal-lenges yields the following conclusions and recom-mendations, both explicit and implicit:

1. Clarity and logical integrity in the denition ofkey concepts is vital. Both elements are necessaryone does not want to be clearly wrong.

2. Denitional encyclopedism should be resisted.Efforts to be fully inclusive are well-intentioned, butalmost always a mistake. Typically, more is less.

3. Ideas matter, because they help educate for ac-tion. Strategy is a practical endeavor, which is whystrategic theorizing ultimately is only about strategicpractice.

4. The general theory of strategy (and of war, andstatecraft) so educates practitioners that they shouldbe t enough to craft and execute specic strategiesdesigned to meet particular strategic historical chal-lenges.

5. The categorization of challenges and threats isregrettable, but the damage that it might promote canbe reduced and limited if it is done in the authoritativecontext of general strategic theory.

6. A major practical reason to resist the tempta-tion to categorize challenges is that the effect of suchconceptual all-but enculturation is to encourage usto respond in categorywhich must involve somegratuitous surrender of the initiative on our part.


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CATEGORICAL CONFUSION?THE STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS

OF RECOGNIZING CHALLENGESEITHER AS IRREGULAR OR TRADITIONAL

Theory should cast a steady light on all phenomenaso that we can more easily recognize and eliminate theweeds that always spring from ignorance; it shouldshow how one thing is related to another, and keepthe important and the unimportant separate.

Carl von Clausewitz, 1832-4; 19761

Curiously, among the various characteristics scholarshave postulated as belonging to American strategicculture or way of war, one in particular has been over-looked, the American penchant for theorizing when itcomes to military affairs.

Antulio J. Echevarria II, 20112

Confronted with tactics radically different from ourown standard tactics, analysts created a new category,irregular warfare, to describe the security challengewe face. In creating a new category, they created moreconceptual mischief than they resolved. Irregularwarfare as a term conates tactical asymmetry withstrategic difference. While the tactics employed by thebelligerents may be different, the strategic objective isthe same.

W. Alexander Vacca andMark Davidson, 20113

INTRODUCTION AND ARGUMENT

Much of what passes for American strategic think-ing today is a confused jumble of briey fashionablebuzzwords of uncertain authority or merit. This con-


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fusion of ideas rests and is promoted by a confusionof alleged categories of wars and types of warfare. In a

widely praised book published in 2007, Brian McAllis-ter Linn offers the following uncompromisingly nega-tive judgment on the conceptual health of recent andcurrent defense debate.

Even before GWOT [Global War on Terror], the de-fense community was in the midst of a vibrant debateover whether the nature of war itself had changed.

Advocates offered the prospect of a glittering futurethrough a Revolution in Military Affairs, Mili-tary Transformation, and a New American Wayof War. But their voices were only some, if perhapsthe most strident, in a much larger discussion. Oth-ers defended the relevance of military philosopherssuch as Henri Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, whilestill others advocated what General Wesley K. Clarktermed modern warlimited, carefully constrainedin geography, scope, weaponry, and effects. The de-bate, like the defense community, overowed withbuzzwordsasymmetric conict, fourth-generationwarfare, shock and awe, full spectrum dominancemany of which quickly became pass. And with somesignicant exceptions, much of this debate conneditself to the relative merits of weapons systems, and tonew tactical organizations.

This failure of military intellectuals to agree on aconcept of war might seem surprising, given thatvirtually everyone in the armed forces claims to be awarghter and every few years at least one of theservices proclaims its intention to make each membera warrior.4

So much for the bad news that Linn delivers per-suasively. Fortunately, the bad news of concept fail-ure can be retired as yesterdays headline, because this


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failure, though serious, can be readily corrected. Atleast, that ought to be true, should key opinion leaders

prove re-educable. The twin purposes of this mono-graph are to diagnose the, or at least a, sufcient causeof Americas contemporary conceptual confusion, andto move on and identify a no-less-sufcient solution.My argument is summarized in the following fourlinked propositions:

1. It is a mistake to categorize challenges, wars, orwarfare as being either irregular or traditional (regu-lar). The error is both conceptual and empirical, and ithas far-reaching harmful consequences.

2. Having committed the original sin of the simplebinary categorical distinction between irregular andtraditional challenges, wars, or warfare, the error ismagnied by the consequential elaborate theorizationdevoted exclusively to the false categories.

3. The one truly fatal error that reduces strategicconceptualization to the chaotic state of ungoverned,indeed ungovernable, intellectual space is the failureto recognize the conceptual authority of the singlegeneral theory of strategy over all strategic phenom-ena, no matter the preferred choice in categorization.The unied general theory of strategy is mature andby and large accepted to a degree far beyond the gen-eral theories of statecraft and of war (and peace), andcommands understanding of the eld.5Different warsmay be perceived to be of different kinds, but they areallof them different kinds.

4. There is an essential unity to all of strategic his-tory, which is to say of history as it was inuencedby the threat or use of force. It is only safe to theorize

about perceived subspecies of strategy, war, and war-fare, if one is crystal clear on the point that the con-ceptual context for subspecies theory (for example, to


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explain irregular war or counterinsurgency [COIN]warfare) is the theory that provides the understanding

for explanation of the whole species. Granular concep-tualization and analysis may or may not be wise, but itshould never be undertaken in the absence of the clearcomprehension that it entails the characterization ofphenomena that are grains of something else thatis much larger, indeed, all-inclusive. What happenswhen imprudent categorization seems to license cre-ative theory development, is that the new theorizationis in fact rogue, because unwittingly it has proceededignorant of, or indifferent to, the discipline that shouldbe provided by recognition of the authority of a moreinclusive category.

Each of the four elements of the argument just spec-ied is important, as are the connections among them.The skeleton methodological key that opens the door

to the clarication that sweeps away confusion couldhardly be simpler. It is the simple recognition that instatecraft, war, strategy, and warfare, one is dealingwith phenomena that are universal and eternal, andare both singular and plural. It is all too easy to beoverwhelmed by ones ignorance of vital detail abouta new development, say, cyberpower, or a local insur-gency somewhere that one has difculty even locatingon the map. But it should be of inestimable politicaland strategic value to know for certain that the novelsource of current bafement already is covered quiterobustly by a time-tested, experience-based generaltheory. Assertions will always be made claiming thatthis event, episode, or capability is different, per-haps radically so, from all that has gone before. What

is more, such claims may well be objectively true; as-suredly they will be plausible to many people. How-ever, the historical uniqueness in detail of political


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events with strategic implications cannot be permittedto obscure their species membership. For example, the

differences are stunningly obvious between such epi-sodes in world politics as the rivalries between Britainand Germany before World War I, the United Statesand the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and the UnitedStates and China today in the 21st century. But whilewe must be careful to avoid undue capture by peril-ous analogy, it has to be helpful to understanding thenature of Sino-American relations today to recognizethat historical perspective on this emerging, but un-avoidable, rivalry is easily accessible.6

For another historical example in illustration of myargument, the several wars waged for inuence in, orcontrol over, Afghanistan, by Britain in the 1840s, the1870s, the 1920s, and 1930s, then by the Soviet Unionin the 1980s, followed by the United States (and some

North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] allies)in the 2000s, were waged in very different politicaland strategic contexts. And yet, differences granted,the continuities connecting all of the wars and theirwarfare in Afghanistan require recognition as provid-ing an essential unity that is understandable throughexplanation of a single general theory of strategy. I amalert to the possible perils that may follow from theassertion of the essentialist argument that lends itselfto misrepresentation as reductionism. It needs to besaid that general theory does, indeed has to, reducethe authority of conceptualization developed in aid ofunderstanding particular strategic phenomena. His-torical case-specic theory is always likely, thoughnot certain, to be wrong if it appears to threaten the

integrity of general theory. However, in the socialsciences, theory aspires modestly only to providemost-case understanding for explanation. Exceptions


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are permissible, but they are seriously embarrassingonly to arrogant and incompetent theorists.7It has to

be noted, though, that if highly plausible exceptionsproliferate, then theory should be reconsidered and, ifneed be, rewritten.

To summarize the argument exercised in thismonograph, contemporary American defense debateshows abundant evidence of confusion, poor deni-tions of key terms and, as a consequence, undisciplinedconceptualization. The result of this poor conceptualgovernance is the suffering of gratuitous damage toU.S. national security. Whatever the strength in themoral and material components of American ghtingpower, the conceptual component is weak; indeed, itis far weaker than it could and should be, which is thereason for this report and its argument.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

Poor strategic theory is a self-inicted wound thattypically has expensive and harmful consequences.This monograph examines and tests the hypothesisthat the American cultural proclivity to theorize aboutmilitary affairs, to which Antulio Echevarria refersplausibly in the second epigraph above, is provingcostly to national and international security. Becausethis theorization is signicantly cultural in an Ameri-can context, it rests upon, indeed is legitimized by, thecultural assumption that such an activity inherentlyis benecial. The problem with this assumption is notany basic fallacy; far from it. Rather, the difculty liesin the amount of theory that is built, and also with

its character. The familiar claim that quantity has aquality all its own tends to apply pejoratively with re-gard to American debate. Regardless of the particular


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subject of American debate, for example, pertainingto issues of nuclear deterrence in the Cold War, to

revolutions in military affairs (RMA) and military andstrategic transformation in the 1990s, and to COINand counterterrorism (CT) in the 2000s, approximate-ly the same dynamics operate. For reasons of profes-sional career advancement, of the inherent debatingfuel in contending ideas, the sheer logic and grammarof competition, and the scale of the particular nationalcontext for intellectual argument, in recent times (post1945) American strategic theoretical debate habituallyhas proceeded too far, too fast, and with inadequatereference to what could and should be gleaned fromhistorical experience. The debate needs gleaning, andsuch gleaning requires the services of strategic theoryt for the purpose, since the past does not supply itsown meaning for us.

It is all too easy to be critical of poor strategic the-ory, let alone of an absence of theory worthy of thelabel. But my purpose here is not simply to criticize;rather, it is to be constructive in identifying the kindand character of theory that should perform its properrole and serve its needed function well enough. It isan objective feature of America, one from which muchthat is cultural derives, that its sheer size brings intoplay the aphorism cited already that alleges a quali-tative consequence to sheer quantity. As Samuel P.Huntington once observed, America is a large countrythat does things in a large way.8Whereas most coun-tries have defense and national security communitiesof distinctly modest size, if that, the United States ispeopled abundantly and beyond by military and stra-

tegic theorists, naturally occupying the full spectrumof competence. The American marketplace for stra-tegic, military, and other security ideas is very much


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larger than anywhere else on the planet. There aremore strategy-related jobs and career paths in America

than elsewhere; there is more money available to fundresearch and writing; and because of Americas globalstrategic status and role, there is more about which totheorize that plainly has relevance for national publicpolicy. The American cultural proclivity to theorizeabout strategic affairs is, in principle, a source of na-tional advantage. The rst of the epigraphs that headthis text, by Carl von Clausewitz, tersely explains why.Theory, including strategic theory, sorts out what is inneed of being sorted. As observed already, in the so-cial sciences theory provides most-case explanationsof phenomena. In order to be able to explain whathas happened, or is happening, or why a particularchoice of, say, military ways and means, organizedand directed by a plan, will cause what we want to

happen, we need to understand the subject of strat-egy. Theory does not make strategy work, but when itis well crafted, it educates practicing strategists so thatthey are enabled to understand what they are doing,and why.9Readers are warned, perhaps gratuitously,that because I am a strategic theorist, my argumentmight appear biased in praise of my trade. I make ex-plicit mentions of my personal commitment to theoryfor strategy, because there is a theme in the argumenthere that is strongly critical of (largely) American stra-tegic theorizing, and I cannot deny some small mea-sure of responsibility for the ill condition with whichI must nd fault. I have been not merely present as anobserver at the scene of conceptual crime; I have beenan actively contributing participant also.10

Specically, I will argue that while some strategictheory is good, indeed is essential, a lot of strategictheory is not necessarily better, while a great deal of


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strategic theory is apt to be positively harmful. A real-istic grasp of the American context for this discussion

is literally vital. Most countries do not have a publicstrategic debate, or even much of an ofcial one so faras one can tell. Of course, it may be claimed that mostcountries have little if any need of a national strategicdebate. Although all polities with military and othersecurity agencies have to engage in defense planningkeyed in good part to a scal narrative, American ac-tivity in this regard is unique in quantity and quality(referring to its character, not to its normative merit).National culturespublic, strategic, militarydoalter, but this less than dazzling historical insightshould not obscure the force of cultural inertia, whichis to say of continuity over change.11For the particularpurpose of this enquiry, it is important to accept theUnited States as being what it is, especially because

my argument does lend itself to some misrepresenta-tion as a nave and impractical suggestion for concep-tual reform.

Critics of cultural-leaning arguments are able toscore points by highlighting the many serious weak-nesses in cultural analysis, but in their eagerness todamage unsound social science theory, they canmiss much of the plot.12 Historians severely criticalof Britains strategic performance in World War Isometimes seem barely able to conceal their annoy-ance at the undeniable fact that the excellent GermanArmy somehow managed to lose the war. For goodand substantial reasons, Americas strategic and mili-tary beliefs, attitudes, and habits are what they are,and they are worthy of the cultural label. American

society is inclined to excess. Most U.S. features arelarger than their functional equivalents abroad, typi-cally by a wide margin. Of particular relevance to this


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discussion is the sheer size of the American nationalsecurity effort, one that helps dene a scale of human

and institutional domain that is unique. Although thismonograph is about theory for strategy, it is largelyempirical, not deductive, in the evidential base forits argument. One does not aspire to spark concep-tual revolution or, being realistic, even substantialreforms. But one can hope to encourage some modestimprovement in the way that strategy is theorized bythose accessible to the possibility of inuence. This is arole for the strategic educator; as Clausewitz claimed,at least one should be able to label as harmful someof the weeds of ignorance that inhibit strategic under-standing.

The principal cost of an oversupply of poor-to-mediocre strategic theory is that its customers havedifculty identifying and holding onto the strategic

plot. As new, or more usually old, ideas are coined orrediscovered, and as they proliferate promiscuously,the core meaning of the subject of strategy can slipaway. It is less exciting than are the typically ratherelusive ideas expressed in new jargon created by theintellectual pathnders of contemporary strategicdebate. To be professionally expert is to be skilledand current in the use of the buzzwords that todayare selling well in the marketplace of ideas. Food ofa healthy kind is good for us, but even healthy foodconsumed in excess ceases to be benecial. A coun-try with global ambitions and responsibilities needs alively public debate on strategy, but that debate has adynamic of its own, far beyond the fuel of real-worldanxieties, that sparks it episodically. The demand for

strategic theory, which is to say for explanation as anaid to understanding, creates the provision of its sup-ply, but the supply takes off on a path of more than


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marginally self-sustained growth, with theory servingthe narrow needs of theory rather than those of policy

and strategy in practice. It is worth noting that just astheory about war fuels yet more theory about war, soClausewitz appears to warn that it is the nature of warto serve itself. Politics may be the purpose of war, butit is certainly not its nature.13

A cast of thousands of variably talented Americanscompete for attention and rewards in the fairly openmarketplace where ideas about policy, strategy, secu-rity, and every aspect of military affairs are debated.These competitions are going to produce successivewaves of concepts and proposals, as the hot topicsof the day rise, peak, decline, and then all but van-ish from sight until they reappear in somewhat dif-ferent garb a few years later. Since the 1950s, strategicadvice has long been a business in the United States.

This industry, with its think tanks, centers, institutes,councils, forums, and the rest, feeds on public anxiety,actual and plausibly anticipated. Both intellectual andcareer dynamics reward novelty. And happily for thetheorists of national security, at least in matters of de-tail, every development that might warrant identica-tion as a challenge truly is different. However, unlikeevery student at school in Lake Wobegone, not all ofour strategic theorists are above average. Rather moreto the point, many of the ofcial and other customersfor supposedly expert strategic theory and advice willnot be able to tell which of the glittering conceptualproducts on offer are the genuine articles in strategicwisdom.

To summarize the problem that this monograph

addresses: The U.S. extended-defense community isimpoverished in its grasp of the countrys strategicchallenges and of sound ways to meet them by the


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poverty in the quality (not quantity) of the concep-tual education and advice that should provide un-

derstanding for explanation. A major source of theproblem is structural to the United States; really, itis existential. The strategic concepts industry is bothadequately funded to support research of every qual-ity, and has long matured into near self-sustainingintellectual orbit. The focus of this discussion is onthe often contrasted alleged alternatives of irregularand traditional challenges, but the very recent andstill somewhat current, if now tiring and soon to beexhausted, strategic debate about COIN and CT needsto be regarded in the historical perspective of othergreat and not-so-great strategic debates. Leading ex-amples of such debates include those over strategy fornuclear weapons, RMA and transformation, and nowthe still emerging contention over the strategic mean-

ing of cyberpower.The master argument of this report, the intellec-

tual center of gravity of all else, holds that the U.S.defense community typically overintellectualizes thechallenges (problems/opportunities) that it perceives.With a culture that privileges theory-building throughdisaggregation by categorical exclusivity, whole sub-ject areas are conceptually deconstructed and reas-sembled for neater granular treatment. The big picturetends to be off stage, replaced by creative construc-tions of allegedly particular forms or aspects of thatwhole conception. Unfortunately, the actual and po-tential benets of theoretical exclusivity are more thanoffset by the transaction cost in the loss of context. Forexample, when one theorizes about what was thought

of as limited war, a conceptual staple of the 1950s andearly 1960s, it matters vitally whether one is coininga concept expressed in two words of approximately


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equal weight, or rather a concept of war with an adjec-tival modier.14This issue could be regarded as mere

academic pedantry, but its resolution had immensepractical implications for strategy.15

When scholars are unleashed without political con-straint to try to understand a subject with which theyare unfamiliar, they will proceed whither their imagi-nation takes them. When real-world experience is ab-sent, logic unharried by empirical evidence will haveto sufce to explain the structure of a subject. Whenlogic rules, the creative energy of highly intelligentpeople will produce impressive intellectual artifactsthat are both monuments to reason, and offensive tothe reason inherent in common sense. Herman Kahnsescalation ladder with its 44 steps offered an impres-sive tool to assist understanding of the structuraldynamics of conict.16Kahn was not confused about

the imagined, which is to say constructed, characterof his theoretical ladder, but one cannot say as muchwith condence for many of his readers and briefees.In the praiseworthy quest for deeper understanding,scholars can hardly help but succumb to the tempta-tion to reach out for more, only to nd that the resultof their efforts inadvertently is some notable loss ofcomprehension of the phenomenon that needs to beapproached as a whole. Metaphorically expressed,there is a fog of theory.

This monograph proceeds by focusing attention onthe still popular grand distinction between irregularand traditional challenges to national security, andon whether this familiar binary opposition is sensi-ble. The discussion then seeks to identify the ways in

which strategic theory can help understanding as anenabling educator for sound practice. The monographconcludes by offering specic recommendations inaid of U.S. national security policy and strategy.


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CHALLENGES: NOT A SIMPLE SPECTRUM

Given the fecundity of conceptual error, the would-be policeman for useful theory has difculty knowingwhich ideas to arrest and incarcerate rst. Empiricalinvestigation of the historical experiential base for theproposition that the United States faces two catego-ries of challenge, irregular and traditional, easily re-veals the fallacy in this popular claim. However, theprocess of investigation into the merit in the masterbinary thesis uncovers, as it were serendipitously, afallacy even more fundamental and therefore moredeadly than the erroneous idea that challenges comefairly neatly in only two major variants or baskets ofsubvariants. To hazard a notably reductionist simpli-cation in the interest of clarity, recent American stra-

tegic debate, inclusive of the argument in this report(see Option 3 below), offers in the main three concep-tual choices covering the subjects of challenges, war,warfare, strategy, and tactics. These are itemized andexplained in such a way as to facilitate debate, not asclaimed paraphrases of the theses of particular strate-gic theorists.

Option 1.

The U.S. national security and defense planninguniverse is quite tidily binary. Challenges (or threats)come in just two admittedly uncomfortably inclusivevarieties, irregular or traditional (or regular). Thesetwo huge conceptual tents purportedly cover, if not

quite shelter, the entire range of menacing actualitiesand possibilities. Irregular challenges are understoodbroadly to emanate from nonstate political actors,


27/7415

while traditional ones are those posed by states. Thecharacter of threat is dictated very largely by the na-

ture and characteristic capabilities of its perpetrator.The signature military style of irregular belligerents isguerrilla tactics privileging a hit-and-run, which is tosay raiding, style in warfare.

Option 2.

The challenge or threat environment for the Unit-ed States does not divide neatly into menaces readilyand unambiguously classied as either irregular ortraditional. Instead, following the trinitarian lead setby Julius Caesar, with his famous claim that Gallia estomnia divisa in partes tres(Gaul is entirely divided intothree parts), as have so many strategic thinkers downthe centuries, we may choose to recognize that todays

challenges need to be classied as irregular, or hybrid,or traditional (regular, conventional).17This trinity ofpostulated types is believed by its proponents to pro-vide the additional, third, large conceptual tent that isnecessary in order to cover and capture the full spec-trum of perils.

Option 3.

It is not self-evident that the invention, the concep-tual constructionor should one say, the discoveryof a third category of challenge (hybrid) is a signicantadvance over the binary distinction it may replace.In the process of analyzing the relative merit in thehybrid postulate one realizes, unsurprisingly, that the

recordeven the recent and contemporary recordofstrategic historical experience can support plausibleclaims for more categories than three. It dawns onthe scholar as a less-than-startling epiphany that the


28/7416

hybrid thesis is not wrong, but rather is so fundamen-tally correct that it dees robust concept containment

in its own allegedly distinctive tent.18

In common withasymmetry, hybridity does indeed characterize chal-lenges. But the problem for the construction of usefulstrategic theory is that some hybridity and asymme-try are not exactly a rare exception in strategic history;rather, they are such typical features in strategic rivalrythat there appears to be a fatal aw in the propositionthat there are distinctively hybrid challenges, wars,strategies, and styles of warfare. Hybridity is not hardto nd; in fact, it is too easy. Ironically, the recogni-tion that hybridity is a conceptual vessel that holdstoo much water to be analytically useful, triggers theepiphany identied here as Option 3: the seeminglyunimaginative proposition that the popular, and in-deed ofcial, system(s) of challenge categorization is

probably fundamentally unsound. There are not two,or three, or 23 categories of challenges, wars, strate-gies, and kinds of warfare. Instead, there is only onecategory of challengemeaning that categorization,no matter how well intended, is more likely to confusethan it is to enlighten. Far from producing a conceptu-ally undisciplined homogenization of possible men-ace, an insistence that challenges, wars, strategies, andwarfare should be corralled inclusively at a high levelof generality as notably like, even common, phenom-ena, provides the intellectual discipline and guidancethat enables forensic historical case-specic under-standing and strategic practice. To illustrate: COIN ismore prudently and certainly effectively prosecutedin its needful aspects as violent sociology and armed

anthropology, if those worthy population-centric en-deavors are pursued by a grand strategy that is notconfused about the facts that the political and strategic


29/7417

context is one of war with some more, or less, activewarfare.19Excessive categorical creativity has the ef-

fect of encouraging thinking about COIN that spinsaway from the military context, while some claim thatleading brands of COIN theory and practice are sys-temically unfriendly to strategy.20This is a plausiblecharge, though it tends to be overstated as stridencytends to grow with repetition of argument, and asser-tion rises in reaction to criticism (I do not exempt my-self from this charge).

The austere typology above can be summarizedas a conceptual choice among postulated schemas forchallenges that offer two categories (Option 1: irregu-lar and traditional), three categories (Option 2: irregu-lar, hybrid, and traditional) and one category, whichmeans no category (Option 3: threat categorization is

rejected). This refusal to categorize strategic challeng-es rests upon the conviction that the making of dis-tinctions between allegedly radically different speciesof menace has the intellectually fatal unintended con-sequence of gratuitously weakening conceptual graspand grip. For a defense community that has a history ofpoor understanding of strategy, a poverty repeatedlylamented by would-be reformersnot withstandingthe communitys proclivity to theorizeany concep-tualization that positively encourages unsound stra-tegic ideas should be stamped on without mercy.21Ofcourse, we lack historical perspective on the 2000s, butfrom todays vantage point it seems unlikely to thisauthor that Americas strategic performances in Iraq,Afghanistan, and overall in the long war against the

abstract noun terror warrant a passing grade forcompetence in concept and practice.


30/7418

Because many personal defense professional ca-reers, records, and egos may seem to be placed at

some risk by the argument in this text, it is unusuallyimportant that I should not be misunderstood. It canbe a hard sell to try to persuade professional strategictheorists that less theory is likely to help explain morestrategic phenomena than is more theory. It is essen-tial to theorize, as Clausewitz argued persuasivelyfor all time, but sharply diminishing returns to extraeffort are soon recorded in the conceptual space oc-cupied and colonized by strategic theory.22Even if itis appropriate to claim, with Brian Linn, that militaryintellectuals have failed to secure a convincing anduseful conceptual grip on contemporary war, it doesnot have to follow that more theory is the answer.23A lack of historical perspective and career dynamicstend to lead defense professionals both to rediscover

what long has been known, albeit often forgotten, andto be attracted to claimed conceptual novelty. Theproblem for U.S. national security that is dominantlythematic for this discussion is not strategic theory perse. Absent strategic theory, one would lose the abil-ity to comprehend strategic history. Theory and itsconceptual tools are vital to the search for solutions tothe challenges perceived as posed to national security;at least, they can be. This analysis seeks to contributeto better theory. Because ideas can be a potent sourceof inuence over strategic behavior, it is important,even if they are less than obviously brilliant, that theyshould do little if any harm. The medical analogyhere is a compelling one. A serious difculty for well-meaning strategic theorists frequently lurks often

under-recognized in their sparkling prose and aston-ishing graphics. Specically, strategy is not about el-egance of language, ingenuity of method, or creativityof concept. Rather, strategy is an eminently practical


31/7419

project. In much the same way that a technically supe-rior weapon can be unt for its purpose in the eld if

it requires skills to maintain and use that exceed thoseowned by its average military user, so strategic andmilitary theory can be lethally unt for its practicalpurpose. An ancient military maxim springs to mind:Nothing is impossible to the man who does not haveto try to do it.

A four-fold argument serves to capture the coreof what needs to be said about meeting challenges tonational security, with particular reference to the con-tribution that should be made by strategic theory.

1. Challenge identication and measurement is notalways obvious. Where you stand, when you standup, and what you do next, depends critically on whereyou believe you sitto misquote and expand uponthe long-standing central proposition of the theory

of bureaucratic politics.24

This enquiry does not havea vacuum at its heart, but certainly it is potentiallyblighted by the concept that fuels itthe idea of chal-lenges to national security. The question of when isa challenge not a challenge, but something else, andif so, what?begs enticingly for scholarly attention.Fortunately, there is no strict obligation placed uponthis analysis to identify challenges, current or argu-ably anticipatable in the future. It sufces for this textto assist with education in strategic thought. None-theless, I would be severely remiss in my duty herewere I simply to assume that the challenges central tomy mission comprised phenomena of a species that isreliably detectable by a faultless challenge-detectionmonitoring machine.

Even when an act occurs that is unmistakably chal-lengingSeptember 11, 2001 (9/11), for exampleitmay not be entirely self-evident quite what the chal-lenge means. The United States has been challenged,


32/7420

but over what and to do what? And if the answers tothose questions have to be provided substantially by

us, the targeted victims, then the strategic context ofdecision is substantially different from one whereinthe challenge essentially is existential. It is worth not-ing that even existentially explicit challenges, such asthose issued to the United States by Imperial Japanand Nazi Germany in December 1941, still may wellleave Washington with a great deal of room for discre-tion over strategy, if not much over policy guidance inthose extreme cases.

The popular concept of challenges to nationalsecurity can be sliced and diced forensically as pre-ferred. But, as indicated above, the more exclusiveof the larger claimed species (or subspecies) irregu-lar, hybrid, and traditional or regularare not veryhelpful. Leaving aside the categorization issue for the

moment, consider the ever-potential fragility of thechoice of word for the central concept. Challenges tonational security compete with the following possiblealternatives: threats, dangers, risks, perils, menaces,anxieties, and concerns for some candidate substituteson the negative side. Considered positively, nationalsecurity challenges may well lend themselves persua-sively to identication as opportunities. And, to mud-dy the water noticeably, many challenges appear to befraught with peril while also containing the promiseof possible signicant reward. Risk and cost-free chal-lenges-as-opportunities are few and far between instrategic history. The word or words chosen to denea happening, actual or anticipated, can shape percep-tion. Also, languages differ markedly in the range of

conceptual menace and the subtlety that their vocab-ularies offer to their users. By way of sharp contrastwith Pearl Harbor and 9/11, there is Nazi Germanys


33/7421

reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, or the lesson ingreat-power prerogatives (and the prudence in very

small power acquiescence)when Russia in 2006 in-structed Georgia in the matter of geopolitical realities.In these latter cases, the character of the event is notquite so easy to identify; hence, the character of mostsuitable response is debatable.

If one likes spectrums for the classication of stra-tegic happenings, how should the concept of challengebe assayed? The possibilities are many. The moreobvious spectrums are those attempts to classify by:type (e.g., irregular, hybrid, traditional); seriousnessof potential consequences, scale of potential danger,degree of risk; likelihood of occurrence; time frame(e.g., current, imminent, medium-term, distant); andcomprehension (e.g., believed to be understood in de-tail, understood genericallyknown unknown, sus-

pected, truly unknown unknowns but feared for theirmystery).25There is always plenty to worry about, butthe vital issues of how great a worrywhen, exactlywhat, and then what to do about itrarely lend them-selves to clear and compelling answers.

2. The rank-ordering of challenges (and their re-spective risks) to national security is an art, not ascience (not even a social science), and typically iscontestable. One would have to be extraordinarilynave to believe that challenges to national security,however, or indeed even if, categorized by character(irregular and so forth), may convincingly be rank-or-dered on a single scale. Only on the political campaigntrail or in the mass media, with their frequent disdainfor context and historical perspective, should one ex-

pect to nd challenges, usually portrayed as threatsrather than opportunities, conveniently weighed and


34/7422

arranged in descending order of seriousness. From thelate 1950s to the present day, there has never been any

question about the challenge, if understood either asexplicit and overt or latent but existential, that posesthe greatest threat to the security of Americans. Thatthreat, of course, resided and resides in the nuclear-armed strike capabilities of the Union of Soviet So-cialist Republics (USSR)/Russia and (after 1964) thePeoples Republic of China (PRC). As ideas tend todominate over mere military muscle, so politics is he-gemonic over strategic history.26But national securitychallenges, to be plausible candidates for Americanidentication as such, usually require some inferablyhostile intentions as well as the physical means to doharm. When enemy identication falters and then ei-ther dies or at least is in semi-retirement, as was thecase in U.S.Russian political and strategic relations

in the 1990s and 2000s, the latent but still objectivemenace in nuclear strike forces is greatly reduced bythe absence of a subjective, convincingly perceived,threat. The contemporary PRC is more easily antici-pated as Americas superpower enemy from hell inthe 21st century than careful strategic net assessmentsuggests probable. The PRCs relative weakness ineach geographical domain of the global commonsair, orbital space, and possibly even cyberspaceinthe context of global security geopolitics and geostrat-egy, suggests strongly that China, though predictablyformidable, is unlikely to resemble the USSR as a full-service challenge.27

Ironically, it is a matter beyond historical disputethat the most frequent, persistent, and therefore, in an

obvious sense, regular and traditional, of Americasnational security challenges have been irregularatleast as characterized in common linguistic usage. The


35/7423

waging of warfare against non-state foes has rarelybeen a popular activity, but repeatedly it has been

the military action of the day.28

Public enthusiasm forCOIN and CT has not been the typical domestic politi-cal context for U.S. strategic behavior, but time aftertime the country has risen to what its leaders choseto dene as a military-strategic challenge. Repeatedly,Washington has had difculty coping in domestic pol-itics with the apparently objective facts that the extantchallenges, if they should be identied as such, werenot those most dangerous to national security. Septem-ber 11, 2001, was tactically extraordinary, but in com-mon with nearly all acts of terror, it had a complete in-ability to effect strategic change, unless the Americanresponse elected to fuel a course of events that mightdo so. The knock-on effects of mass-destruction ter-rorism can only be lethal to the economic and political

stability of the targeted populace if those victims pan-ic and in imprudent response bring down their ownpolitical house. The immense damage suffered by theU.S. economy over the past decade was not the directresult of brilliance in the grand strategy of al Qaeda.Rather, it was the product of poor American (inter alia)nancial governance, and a lack of competent politicalleadership. The damage that al Qaeda and its afli-ates could do to America and the international orderfor which America was, and remains, the hegemon,was minor compared with Americas capacity for self-harm. This is less than a deep insight, because in mostconicts the victors require notable inadvertent assis-tance from their enemies. What I have just describedis not intended as an indictment; it is a reminder of the

normal context of strategic history. Competent stra-tegic theory and prudent practical strategies do notignore the awed nature of human actors and the in-


36/7424

stitutions and processes they employ; they accept theenduring realities of ubiquitous human imperfection,

as well as the permanency of contingency and friction.Errors in policy and strategy over challenges that

appear in what typically are categorized as irregu-lar form are apt to be tragic only on a minor scale,when considered coldly at the society-wide level. Incontrast, policy mistakes and strategic imprudencewith respect to threat events usually categorized astraditional, most especially those that appear with anuclear signature, would almost certainly have con-sequences fatal to Americas futureexistentially inboth physical and political senses. It will not have es-caped readers notice that nuclear warfare conductedon any scale and guided in accordance with any strat-egy would be a highly unusual, indeed an extraordi-nary, military activity. However, whether or not war

with nuclear weapons should be categorized as irreg-ular is a matter of conceptual and political discretion.The employment of a few nuclear weapons for theprimary purpose of inducing fearthe most classicdening characteristic of terrorismcertainly renderssuch use a candidate for irregular status. Moreover,simply the extreme rarity of nuclear use could supporta common sense case for its categorical irregularity.But common usage, arguably as opposed to commonsense, typically assigns nuclear warfare to the highesthigh-end position on the favored conict spectrum.Nuclear war would be big war, as contrasted withsome understanding of small war (e.g., that classi-ed by Charles E. Callwell and later by the U.S. MarineCorps), even though it cannot be entirely reasonable,

let alone logical, to term a postulated activity regular,when it has not occurred for 66 years.29


37/7425

For a while in the early 1950s, leading Americanstrategic theorists, and certainly the U.S. armed ser-

vices, believed that atomic weapons should be regard-ed as regular and possibly as having both honoraryand practical status akin to their being traditional andconventional.30 If nearly all cases of future warfareare expected to have an active, not only a deterrent,atomic dimension, then it is logical to regard atomicweapons as conventional. It is worth noting that inthe 1950s, the atomic and irregular ends of the conictspectrum were somewhat combined in a shotgun stra-tegic marriage. The atomic battleeld was expected tooblige armies to wage land combat in a guerrilla style,in order to deny lucrative concentrated targets to theenemys atomic weapons. The second nuclear revolu-tion, that which enabled the weaponization of atomicfusion rather than atomic ssion alone, changed the

terms of strategic argument. Thermonuclear weaponsarrived in the mid-1950s, just when Soviet technologi-cal prowess was beginning to render nuclear deter-rence inconveniently mutual. It is not unreasonable toclaim that the U.S. Armys temporary infatuation withan agile, guerrilla-raiding style of atomic land war-fare, warrants retrospective designation as a hybridconcept. Guerrilla style warfare with nuclear weaponsis surely such a concept, if anything is.

There may well be some classication schemas forwar and for types of warfare that identify categoriesof phenomena sufciently robust in their distinctive-ness as to have high utility for policy and strategy.But, I must report that the more closely I look at popu-lar and ofcial categories of conicts, wars, strate-

gies, and tactics, the less convincing, indeed the moremisleading, they seem to be. The launch pad for thisanalysis, as noted already, was the realization that


38/7426

our now long-standing strategic theoretical efforts tocategorize and subcategorize conicts, wars, types of

warfare, strategies, and even tactics, were seriouslyawed systemically. But the urge to categorize andclarify, after the fashion of Victorian entomologistsidentifying new species of insects, is irresistible andin some respects praiseworthy in its quest for greateruseful understanding. It follows that the only practi-cable mission now is one of damage limitation, andthis is where the general theory of strategy must playa vital educational role.

Accepting some risk of overstatement, it is neces-sary at least to consider the proposition that many ofthe larger conceptual categories in our intellectualarsenal are perilously porous and substantially mis-leading. Prominent examples include: limited war,irregular war, regular war, hybrid war, and conven-

tional deterrence. Each of these offerings by way ofillustration has a more-than-marginal capacity to en-courage fallacious thinking. However, the difcultylies not so much, if at all, with the concepts themselvesin their core meaning. Rather, the problem lies in themisunderstanding of these concepts, as they becamedecontextualized through familiarity. By way of terseexplanation:

Limited wardescribes all war in its character aspolitically motivated behavior. But it is also inthe nature of warfare to provide its own (mili-tary) meaning; in other words, literally to beself-serving. The claim that there are limitedwars implies logically that there could be unlim-ited ones. This is misleading on several counts,

but primarily because such a description en-courages the fallacy that some wars inherentlyare political, whereas in reality all wars serve


39/74


40/7428

liable assumptions. No matter how conven-tional a war is expected to be or remain in its

now long traditional meaning of non-nuclear,if it is waged by one or more belligerents whoare nuclear-armed, or between belligerentswith nuclear-armed close friends abroad, thereis always going to be a nuclear dimension tohostilities, actual or potential. When there is anuclear context, albeit a currently inactive one,the integrity of the concept of conventional warhas to be at risk. In such circumstances, conven-tional war is not a strategic truth and shouldnot be a matter of faith alone; rather, it is anaspiration whose existentiality may need to befought for, carefully. The strategic literature ofthe late 1950s and the early- to mid-1960s, de-bated this matter exhaustively. Could NATO

and the Warsaw Pact have successfully wageda non-nuclear war in Europe? Happily, we shallnever know. But what we do know for certainis that the integrity of the conceptual categoryof conventional war(s) between nuclear-armedpolities has to be problematic in the extreme.32Bernard Brodies period piece, Escalation and theNuclear Option (1966), continues to have meritfor the discipline it encourages among ourmore constructivist and optimistic theorists.33

3. The adoption of exclusive categories of challengedoes gratuitous damage to prudent defense planning.It is hard to prepare adequately to meet challengesthat comprise known unknowns, but it is even harder

to prepare to meet the challenges that are unknownunknowns (to borrow from the wit and wisdom at-


41/7429

tributed to the ever-quotable Donald H. Rumsfeld).For the purposes of the discussion immediately above,

it was assumed conveniently that the content of thechallenges, threats, opportunities, and risks of thefuture pose no insuperable difculties to competentfuture-leaning strategic analysts and theorists. Rath-er, the issue was one of categorization of empiricallylargely unproblematic phenomena. It is necessary forthis discussion to break ranks briey from the expedi-ent assumption that future challenges are sufcientlyknown or knowable as to allow elevation to concep-tual classication over particular future historicaldevelopments. It is not my position to argue that theparticular course that global strategic history will takein the 21st century is important for the design of ourstrategic conceptual apparatus; how could it be, sincewe have no map of that future course? Since this text

privileges the value of general strategic theory, andis suspicious, at least, of challenge categorization, itis useful to remind readers of what they know anddo not know about the strategic phenomena that con-stitute the ultimate content for this examination. Thecategorization issue concerning future challenges hasa major bearing upon the tness for their purposes ofAmericas armed forces. Two principal uncertaintieshave to be aggedone of which can be minimized,but not eliminated.

The rst uncertainty was targeted conceptually bythen-Secretary Rumsfeld; the known unknowns andthe unknown unknowns. To his two classes of igno-rance, it is advisable to add a possibly more potentthirdthe knowns that are falsely classied as such.

Some of what we believe we knowmeaning that wethink we understand and can explaintime will re-veal we did not in fact know. These three sources of


42/7430

ignorance constitute a powerful trinity indeed. Whenthey are mobilized to impose restraint on the con-

dence we place in defense planning, their dangerousimplications become all too easy to identify. All meth-odologies for the improvement of national securityand defense planning aspire either to achieve, or tocompensate for, the impossibility of knowing thatwhich is not knowable. Everyone knows that the fu-ture is blank until it happens, and, of course, it nevercan happen, because in its nature, the future movesahead of us as we ourselves move forward in time.And yet, despite some average or better competencein physics, defense professionals persist in referringto the foreseeable futurea term that describes ascientic impossibility. Lest there be any inadvertentambiguity, it needs to be understood that the future isnot, has never been, and cannot be, foreseeable. This

is not to say that the future of interest to strategists isa mystery; fortunately, it is anything but. However,future events are not reliably predictable, foreseeable,or even anticipatableas particular events. Ignoranceof future historical detail, even major detail, typicallyis not usefully reducible by better means and methodsof intelligence gathering and subsequent analysis. Thecourse of history is too richly populated with play-ers and possible circumstances to be modeled for thepurpose of prediction. Even if some readers are will-ing to place more faith in social scientic theory thanam I, the most-case generalizations of that theory areapt to founder on the rocks of the several classes ofunknowns cited above. But, happily, all is not lost,and the dangers that lurk in the strategic history of

the future can be minimized, though certainly noteliminated or condently evaded. And an importantsafety measure that the United States can apply to its


43/7431

many perils is the subject of this enquiry. This mea-sure can be summarized in the two words: conceptual

prudence.The second uncertainty about challenges (threats,

dangers, risks, opportunities, and so forth) beyond,but derivative directly from, the rst uncertainty dis-cussed alreadylack of knowledgeis how to cat-egorize or classify them. How should we think about,understand, approach, and therefore logically beprepared to meet the challenges of this new century?Should we be unifying, combining, and assemblingaggregations of challenges? Or, should we proceed fo-rensically to distinguish, dissect, and identify the manykinds of menace and opportunity that future strate-gic history may well throw our way (including thosetroubling unknown unknowns that we would worryabout if only we knew what they were)? To cut to the

chase: Is it possible or desirable to categorize futureanticipated challenges to the United States as eitherirregular or traditional? Is it a notable improvement toexpand challenge categorization to a triad includinghybrid phenomena? And is it feasible or sensible toconduct defense planning in tailored preparation forthe conceptually, and possibly eventually empirically,distinctive categories? One has to ask the classic strat-egists question, even if particular happenings appearto pose challenges of an irregular, traditional, or hy-brid kindSo what? It is fundamentally unsoundto assume that in order to meet challenges effectively,American action would need to be of a similar kind.Asymmetric war can work for all belligerents in itsadversarial nature as conict. It cannot be sensible to

adopt such exclusive categories of challenge as irregu-lar, traditional, and hybrid, because these intellectualboxes tend to achieve a conceptual creep with unfor-tunate imperial consequences.


44/7432

The two or three categories simultaneously are tooexclusive to capture the complexity and richness of

strategic historical experience, yet more than sufcientto mislead the unwary into falling victim to severalpowerful fallacies. For example, a challenge posed byirregular means and methods (though most probablyfor regular goals),34need not translate as an irregularwar. We have a vote on how and by what means theconict is conducted.35 All sides are not required toemploy only the same means and methods. War andwarfare in the 21st century do not follow a chivalrousdueling code. Without neglecting considerations oflaw and the applied morality in strategic ethics, it isimprudent to think that there are characteristically ir-regular, traditional, or hybrid challenges. Such catego-rization must privilege strategic and military special-ization at the expense of adaptability for fungibility.36

The categorization of challenge criticized here lay-ers a needless burden of understanding on an Ameri-can national security community that already has dif-culties enough deriving from the unforeseeability offuture strategic history. Not only are our defense plan-ners required to try to know that which is unknow-able because there can be no specic evidence for it;in addition, the categorization at issue would requirethem to classify that which they do not know into con-ceptually and imprudently exclusive baskets of cases.Looking to possible practical implications, it is likelythat a defense community willing to sign on for twoor three conceptual categories of challenge would bea community likely to pick one such category as itsbest buy for now, peering into an allegedly foresee-

able future. Defense preparation would lean towardreadiness to prosecute conicts in the winning cate-gory of challenge, inevitably at the cost of lesser readi-


45/7433

ness for those challenges that are not anticipated to beprobable events.

The ill consequences of categorization are as pre-dictable as they would be unanticipated by a defensecommunity unduly condent that it was riding thewave of a sufciently foreseen strategic future. There isa way in which the United States can prepare prudent-ly for a strategic future that it cannot foresee in detail,but that way does not require, indeed should not en-tail, exclusive selection from the conceptual catalog ofchallenges. The United States requires a holistic visionof its strategic context in all senses, and should seekthe adaptability it will need to meet unique challengesfrom its truly common basket of grand strategic, in-cluding military, strengths. However, the argumentfor coherence and unity in U.S. national security anddefense policy has to be prefaced by an appreciation

of the nature of American competitive (grand) strate-gic performance.

4. The United States has a vote in strategic compe-tition. Although challenges (or threats) will be guidedby strategy enabled by tactics, they should not be de-ned by the forms that they take in military action.When considering the concepts as irregular and tradi-tional (and hybrid) challenges, it is easy to forget thatboth the noun and the adjective are seriously prob-lematic. To clarify: Whether or not a challenge trulyis such is by no means an obviously objective matter;subjectively, the United States usually has some dis-cretion over challenge identication. Turning fromthe noun to the adjectives, irregular and traditional(and hybrid) characterize tactical choices by the ad-

versary. The United States is under obligation neitherto dene foreign menace or action as a challenge, nor,


46/7434

should it elect to respond, to do so in a like tacticalstyle. The proposition that the future holds both ir-

regular and traditional challenges encourages thefallacy that one needs two kinds of armed forcesre-ally two armiesoptimized for military effectivenessagainst each species of challenge. This is nonsense,but unfortunately, it is seductively persuasive. Theconceptual error from which can ow a deadly streamof strategic and tactical mistakes is the fundamentalcategorical misidentication of the problem. Giventhat every challenge, threat, or opportunity will beunique in many important details, still each and everyone of them must in the rst instance be consideredas a policy issue for statecraft, which means for grandstrategy. Should politics determine a policy that mayrequire prosecution by armed force, then that grandstrategy must encompass a military dimension to the

whole project. The point in need of emphasis is thatirregular, traditional, or hybrid challenges have to beapproached as political challenges, then as grand stra-tegic challenges, before one joins the imminent adver-sary in the conduct of military operations in a tacitlyagreed-upon common style. COIN and CT, as obviousexamples, can be met in more than modestly mirror-imaging ways tactically. Given the typical asymmetryin assets between insurgents and counterinsurgents, itcannot be prudent to construct a conceptual redoubtthat must discourage consideration of bold tactical op-tions that are unavailable to the enemy.

There is everything to be said in praise of SunTzus insistence upon the value of understanding theenemy.37He also insisted that it is no less important

to know oneself. The categorization that I am criti-cizing encourages tactical thinking and practice thatis focused upon the enemys way of ghting, ratherthan upon strategic effectiveness in the conict as a


47/7435

whole. To quote the Ancient Chinese sage yet again,Sun Tzu advised that the enemys strategy should be

the preferred target of our effort, not his forces perse.38The insurgents and terrorists-in-arms are merelythe means to enable the enemys strategy to securethe political effectiveness required for his victory. Histactical defeat is vitally important to us, but at best itis a maximally expensive and lengthy strategic pathto victory, while at worst it may not be achievable attolerable cost.

This monograph should not be misinterpreted asrecommending, a fortiori, that the United States neces-sarily should conduct conicts in ways that are asym-metric to those of our adversaries, only that we shouldbe prepared to do so. In point of fact, we ought not toapproach a (grand) strategic problem challenge, threat,or opportunity within a binary or triadic conceptual

framework that assumes the case in point is primar-ily irregular, traditional, or hybrid. The categoricalconfusion that is produced by the irregular and tradi-tional conceptual baskets encourages poor tactics. Airpower, especially kinetic air power, frequently is dis-counted as allegedly being of only modest value in aCOIN campaign, while heavy armor is deemed inap-propriate for deployment in urban areasto cite justtwo instances of categorically inuenced prejudicesthat have been demonstrated by recent events to beunsound.39

My argument is not that a common style of com-bat, employing most kinds of military assets, can tall strategic challenges. Rather, I am arguing that weshould not adopt conceptual categories of wars, strat-

egies, and challenges that encourage formulaic doc-trinal responses keyed to the tactical character of theenemys chosen behavior. Far from suggesting that


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the United States should be inclined to employ dis-proportionate force, for example, in response to a ter-

rorist outrage or two, I would argue that there can bechallenges expressed in terroristic violence to whichthe American reply should be almost wholly politi-cal. U.S. tactics must be case-specic and selected by agrand strategy in enablement of our particular politi-cal goals. Lest I be misread, there are circumstances,such as Pearl Harbor and 9/11, in which the Americanpublic demands that the enemy ought not only to bethwarted, but should be punished, preferably dispro-portionately. Clausewitz was right to include popularpassion (primordial violence, hatred, and enmity)in his trinitarian theory of war.40 Statecraft can onlybe conducted on the basis of public consent, and thatconsent usually requires that the second item in theThucydidean trinity of fear, honor, and interest be

respected.41

Strategic ethics must have a moral foun-dation.42When a public feels itself seriously wronged,there is apt to be potent normative fuel pushing forstate action to restore the nations affronted honor.

To conceive of the strategic world as one that willpose irregular, traditional, or hybrid, challenges is tooverprivilege a categorically conceptual context thatis unsound. If one postulates a strategic future in theconceptual context of the categories discussed here, itis all but inevitable that the intellectually constructedcontext is allowed a dominance over that which iscontextualizedin this case, the United States andits responses to challenges. For many years, I havesought to argue for the importance of context, but Ifear that I may have been dangerously indiscriminate

in my thesis.43 With reference to Americas nationalsecurity policy, grand strategy, military strategy,and tactics, the international context(s) of challenge


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are not entirely givens. The United States cannotmake its own preferred context for national security

the world is too complex and contingency-prone forthatbut neither is it the passive victim of historicalcircumstance. It is my contention that to think of thefuture as a source of challenges, however they may becategorized, is to risk inadvertently biasing ones anal-ysis against making due recognition of the U.S. abilityto inuence the context that gave birth to perils andopportunities. As conceptual context, the ideationalcategories of irregular, traditional, and hybrid chal-lenges act like the gravitational force of black holes,consuming the identity and creative initiative of thechallenged polity.

PREVENTING AND AVOIDING CATEGORICALCONFUSION: HOW CAN STRATEGIC THEORY

HELP?

The Winton Criteria.

Dependence on theory is not discretionary. Allplans are theories because they purport to explainhow cause is intended to produce desired effect. In therealm of national security, strategic plans, so-called,may in fact fail the acid test to qualify as being worthyof the adjective, should they not rest persuasively onexplanations of why particular military meansem-ployed in chosen waysshould result in the strategiceffect or political effect that alone can justify the ef-fort proposed or ordered. In other words, strategy isnot simply a matter of having ends, ways, and means;

rather, the existential test for strategy is a consciouseffort to connect the three elements in the strategictrinity. The strategic function, considered simply as


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a method, applies to all human activity (and eventhe human qualier really is unduly exclusive). The

mantra of ends, ways, and means, is fundamental, butit might be improved by the addition of a fourth ele-ment, assumptions, were that conceptual category notso difcult to corral and capture in practice. There isa majorone is tempted to say, transcendentaldif-culty in the practice of military strategy that cannotbe avoided, regardless of the problems that it brings tothe strategists table. Specically, because the endsin the ends, ways, and means triad ultimately have tobe political, the elementary logic of the strategy triadis in reality anything but elementary. The difcultyin question is almost so obvious and yet very oftenseemingly so far from military behavior, that it is ne-glected. Also, it must be noted that inadvertently andinnocently Clausewitz contributes to the problem. To

recap, the problem is the distinctive natures of warand politics. A too-rapid acquaintance with the Prus-sians great book, possibly in more or less severelybowdlerized form, can mislead people into believ-ing that On Warcompounds war and politics. This isa terrible mistake. Indeed, misunderstanding of theconnections between war and politics is a notable con-tributor to what Michael I. Handel somewhat mistookas the tacticization of strategy. In point of fact, when(tactical) military activity itself is confused with its po-litical purpose, strategy (though not strategic effect) isabsent, not tacticized.44

It should never be forgotten that Clausewitz dis-tinguished with the utmost clarity between militarypower and its political purpose. This is not a pedantic

academic matter. From Hannibal in the Second PunicWar, through Napoleons adventurous military ca-reer, and more recently in repeated German, Israeli,


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and American malpractice, the high importance of thedistinction between warfare and its purpose has been

amply evidenced. Antulio J. Echevarria has summa-rized the issue neatly by contrasting the concepts of away of war with a way of battle.45It is easy to seewhy so many people are confused. After all, Clause-witz certainly and emphatically connects war withpolitics. War is violence, but it is violence as legitimateforce applied by and for politics (or policy). However,to say that war is about politics is not to claim that itis politics. Even if one dares, probably overboldly, toargue that war is armed or violent politics, still oneis not quite asserting a fusion of the two. When con-sidering Clausewitzs wondrous trinity, one needs tobe careful not to permit the third element, reason, tooimperial a signicance. While war assuredly is aboutpolicy, it is also about the passion of the people and

the skill and luck of the military instrument and itscommanders. Not infrequently, policy reason has lessresponsibility for decisions to ght or ght on, thando domestic public emotions of anger and sometimespity.

When composed carefully, strategic theory canhelp the practitioner understand his role and providetests for the structural adequacy of his strategy. Ofcourse, only experience in the eld truly will revealwhether the pertinent assumptions, political ends,and (grand) strategy ways and means were sufcient-ly mutually enabling. A ne explanation of the natureand functions of (strategic) theory has been providedby former Green Beret ofcer Harold R. Winton.46The tasks that he species for theory are exception-

ally useful as a contribution to conceptual good order.Winton argues that theory should: dene the subject;categorize, which means break the eld of study intoits constituent parts; explain, which is the soul of


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theory; connect the eld of study to other relatedelds in the universe; and, nally, anticipate, not

predict, the future. It is instructive to apply Wintonsve criteria for theory to the issues discussed in thisstudy. I suggest that his criteria, though not a volley ofsilver bullets, when viewed and employed as a wholeprovide a heuristically invaluable conceptual tool asan aid to help avoid categorical and other confusion.Theory should dene its subject, but this is not quiteas straightforward a task as one might suppose. Forexample, in a thoughtful and strongly argued study,Frank G. Hoffman prefaced his Introduction with thefollowing bold and far-reaching claim:

The state on state conicts of the 20thcentury are be-ing replaced by Hybrid Wars and asymmetric contestsin which there is no clear-cut distinction between sol-diers and civilians and between organized violence,terror, crime and war.47

Hoffman is certainly partially correct. But, as healso recognizes, hybridity is not exactly a novel char-acteristic of conict. The trouble with the hybrid warconcept is that it encourages the innovative theorist toventure without limit into the swamp of inclusivity,

indeed of a form of encyclopedism. We learn that:

Hybrid Wars incorporate a range of different modesof warfare, including conventional capabilities, ir-regular tactics and formations, terrorist acts includingindiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminaldisorder.48

All of this is empirically true, albeit conceptuallycategorized by constructive invention. When possiblysuffering from intellectual indigestion, one pauses


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to ask the rather important bottom-line question,What are we talking about? the answer appears to

be potentially everything other than pure criminal ormilitary behavior, to the degree to which even thesesupercially distinctive activities are unambiguouslydistinguishable. Hoffman and others persuaded ofthe virtues in the hybrid designation for some warsare not so much wrong as

categorical confusion? the strategic implications of recognizing challenges either as irregular or...

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