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Strategic Studies Institute Monograph

CATEGORICAL CONFUSION?

THE STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS

OF RECOGNIZING CHALLENGES

EITHER AS IRREGULAR OR TRADITIONAL

Colin S. Gray

February 2012

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ISBN 1-58487-520-8
iii

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 when 

they design plans that explain how particular means 

and ways should achieve the desired and intended results. But, like medicine, theory is not always beneficial. The long familiar division of American security 

challenges and threats into two categories, irregular 

or traditional (regular), is seriously misleading empirically. However, alternative efforts at categorization 

(e.g., adding a hybrid category), are not a significant 

improvement.

In this monograph, Dr. Colin Gray argues that assertions of categories of challenge do more harm than 

benefit to American strategic understanding. He posits that the conceptual approach least prone to wreak 

damage on our grasp of the problems of the day is to 

abandon broad categorization altogether. Instead, he 

finds and advises that the general theory of strategy 

(and of war and warfare) should be regarded as authoritative over all challenging episodes, while only 

foundational recognition allows safely for case-specific strategic theory and practice.

 

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 

v

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COLIN S. GRAY is Professor of International Politics and Strategic Studies at the University of Reading, 

England. He worked at the International Institute for 

Strategic Studies (London) and at Hudson Institution 

(Croton-on-Hudson, NY) before founding the National Institute for Public Policy, a defense-oriented 

think tank in the Washington, DC, area. Dr. Gray 

served for 5 years in the Reagan administration on 

the President’s General Advisory Committee on Arms 

Control and Disarmament. He has served as an adviser to both the U.S. and British governments (he has 

dual citizenship). His government work has included 

studies of nuclear strategy, arms control, maritime 

strategy, space strategy, and the use of special forces. 

Dr. Gray has written 24 books, including: The Sheriff: 

America’s Defense of the New World Order (University 

Press of Kentucky, 2004); Another Bloody Century: Future Warfare (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005); Strategy 

and History: Essays on Theory and Practice (Routledge, 

2006); Fighting Talk: Forty Maxims on War, Peace, and 

Strategy (Potomac Books, 2009); National Security Dilemmas: Challenges and Opportunities (Potomac Books, 

2009); The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice (Oxford 

University Press, 2010); and War, Peace, and International Relations: An Introduction to Strategic History, 2nd 

Ed. (Routledge, 2011). His next book will be Airpower 

for Strategic Effect. Dr. Gray is a graduate of the Universities of Manchester and Oxford.

vii

SUMMARY

Strategic concepts and the theories they encourage and enable are discretionary intellectual constructions. Strategic concepts are not dictated to us; rather, 

we choose them and decide how they can serve as 

building blocks for the edifice of theory we prefer. 

When strategic theory is confusing, misleading, and 

not fit for its practical purposes of education and even 

advice, then it is akin to bad medicine that we take 

in the mistaken belief that it will do us good. Unfortunately, it is necessary to alert Americans to the inadvertent self-harm they are causing themselves by 

the poor ways in which they choose to conceptualize 

strategic behavior.

A quadripartite argument serves to summarize 

both what is causing confusion, and how much of the 

damage can be undone and prevented from recurring. First, it is an error amply demonstrated by historical evidence to divide challenges, threats, war, and 

warfare into two broad, but exclusive categories—irregular and traditional (regular, conventional). The 

problems with this binary scheme are both logical and 

historical-empirical. Challenges and wars tend not to 

follow the optional purity of strictly irregular or traditional characteristics.

Second, it is not a notable advance to add a third 

arguably exclusive category, hybrid, to the now longstanding two. The hybrid concept is useful in that it 

alerts people to the phenomena of strategic occurrences and episodes that have mixed-species parentage, 

but on reflection this is a rather simple recognition of 

what has been a familiar feature of strategic history 

universally and forever. Strategic big-game hunters 

who sally forth boldly in search of hybrid beasts of 
war can be certain to find them. But having found 

them, 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 contrast 

with operations research, the wrong question inexorably invites answers that are not fit for the real purpose of theory. The right question is not, “How should 

we categorize the wide variety of strategic phenomena that may be challenges and threats?” Instead, the 

question ought to be, “Should we categorize strategic 

challenges at all?” The most persuasive answer is that 

we should not conceptually categorize challenges and 

threats beyond their generic identification as menaces 

(and some opportunities). The general theory of strategy provides the high-level conceptual guidance that 

we need in order to tailor our strategic behavior to the 

specific case at issue.

Fourth, our strategies for coping with particular 

challenges will be effective only if they are conceived 

and implemented in the context of the authority of 

strategy’s general theory. They should not be designed to fit within the conceptual categorical cages 

of irregular, traditional, or hybrid (inter alia) theories.

When considering the American need to be ready to 

meet, or choose not to meet, what may be challenges 

and threats, it is important to appreciate the saliency 

of these caveats: (1) the identification of phenomena as 

challenges (threats or opportunities) unavoidably requires substantial guesswork—when is a challenge/

threat not a challenge/threat; (2) the rank-ordering 

and prioritization of challenges is more an art than a 

science, even a social science; (3) challenge labeling by 

exclusive categories frequently harms understanding; 

and, (4) the United States should not gratuitously surviii
ix

render political and strategic discretion by bounding 

its challenge-spotting needlessly with self-constructed 

intellectual barriers that by implication narrow the 

range of appropriate U.S. response choices.

Careful consideration of the categorization of challenges yields the following conclusions and recommendations, both explicit and implicit:

1. Clarity and logical integrity in the definition of 

key concepts is vital. Both elements are necessary—

one does not want to be clearly wrong.

2. Definitional encyclopedism should be resisted. 

Efforts to be fully inclusive are well-intentioned, but 

almost always a mistake. Typically, more is less.

3. Ideas matter, because they help educate for action. Strategy is a practical endeavor, which is why 

strategic theorizing ultimately is only about strategic 

practice.

4. The general theory of strategy (and of war, and 

statecraft) so educates practitioners that they should 

be fit enough to craft and execute specific strategies 

designed to meet particular strategic historical challenges.

5. The categorization of challenges and threats is 

regrettable, but the damage that it might promote can 

be reduced and limited if it is done in the authoritative 

context of general strategic theory.

6. A major practical reason to resist the temptation to categorize challenges is that the effect of such 

conceptual all-but enculturation is to encourage us 

to respond “in category”—which must involve some 

gratuitous surrender of the initiative on our part.

1

CATEGORICAL CONFUSION?

THE STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS

OF RECOGNIZING CHALLENGES

EITHER AS IRREGULAR OR TRADITIONAL

Theory should cast a steady light on all phenomena 

so that we can more easily recognize and eliminate the 

weeds that always spring from ignorance; it should 

show how one thing is related to another, and keep 

the important and the unimportant separate.

Carl von Clausewitz, 1832-4; 19761

Curiously, among the various characteristics scholars 

have postulated as belonging to American strategic 

culture or way of war, one in particular has been overlooked, the American penchant for theorizing when it 

comes to military affairs.

Antulio J. Echevarria II, 20112

Confronted with tactics radically different from our 

own standard tactics, analysts created a new category, 

“irregular warfare,” to describe the security challenge 

we face. In creating a new category, they created more 

conceptual mischief than they resolved. “Irregular 

warfare” as a term conflates tactical asymmetry with 

strategic difference. While the tactics employed by the 

belligerents may be different, the strategic objective is 

the same.

W. Alexander Vacca and 

Mark Davidson, 20113

INTRODUCTION AND ARGUMENT

Much of what passes for American strategic thinking today is a confused jumble of briefly fashionable 

buzzwords of uncertain authority or merit. This con-
2

fusion of ideas rests and is promoted by a confusion 

of alleged categories of wars and types of warfare. In a 

widely praised book published in 2007, Brian McAllister Linn offers the following uncompromisingly negative judgment on the conceptual health of recent and 

current defense debate.

Even before GWOT [Global War on Terror], the defense community was in the midst of a vibrant debate 

over whether the nature of war itself had changed. 

Advocates offered the prospect of a glittering future 

through a “Revolution in Military Affairs,” “Military Transformation,” and a “New American Way 

of War.” But their voices were only some, if perhaps 

the most strident, in a much larger discussion. Others defended the relevance of military philosophers 

such as Henri Jomini and Carl von Clausewitz, while 

still others advocated what General Wesley K. Clark 

termed “modern war”—limited, carefully constrained 

in geography, scope, weaponry, and effects. The debate, like the defense community, overflowed with 

buzzwords—asymmetric conflict, fourth-generation 

warfare, shock and awe, full spectrum dominance—

many of which quickly became passé. And with some 

significant exceptions, much of this debate confined 

itself to the relative merits of weapons systems, and to 

new tactical organizations. 

This failure of military intellectuals to agree on a 

concept of war might seem surprising, given that 

virtually everyone in the armed forces claims to be a 

“warfighter” and every few years at least one of the 

services proclaims its intention to make each member 

a “warrior.”4

So much for the bad news that Linn delivers persuasively. Fortunately, the bad news of concept failure can be retired as yesterday’s headline, because this 
3

failure, though serious, can be readily corrected. At 

least, that ought to be true, should key opinion leaders 

prove re-educable. The twin purposes of this monograph are to diagnose the, or at least a, sufficient cause 

of America’s contemporary conceptual confusion, and 

to move on and identify a no-less-sufficient solution. 

My argument is summarized in the following four 

linked propositions:

1. It is a mistake to categorize challenges, wars, or 

warfare as being either irregular or traditional (regular). The error is both conceptual and empirical, and it 

has far-reaching harmful consequences.

2. Having committed the original sin of the simple 

binary categorical distinction between irregular and 

traditional challenges, wars, or warfare, the error is 

magnified by the consequential elaborate theorization 

devoted exclusively to the false categories.

3. The one truly fatal error that reduces strategic 

conceptualization to the chaotic state of ungoverned, 

indeed ungovernable, intellectual space is the failure 

to recognize the conceptual authority of the single 

general theory of strategy over all strategic phenomena, no matter the preferred choice in categorization. 

The unified general theory of strategy is mature and 

by and large accepted to a degree far beyond the general theories of statecraft and of war (and peace), and 

commands understanding of the field.5

 Different wars 

may be perceived to be of different kinds, but they are 

all of them different kinds.

4. There is an essential unity to all of strategic history, which is to say of history as it was influenced 

by the threat or use of force. It is only safe to theorize 

about perceived subspecies of strategy, war, and warfare, if one is crystal clear on the point that the conceptual context for subspecies theory (for example, to 
4

explain irregular war or counterinsurgency [COIN] 

warfare) is the theory that provides the understanding 

for explanation of the whole species. Granular conceptualization and analysis may or may not be wise, but it 

should never be undertaken in the absence of the clear 

comprehension that it entails the characterization of 

phenomena that are “grains” of something else that 

is much larger, indeed, all-inclusive. What happens 

when imprudent categorization seems to license creative theory development, is that the new theorization 

is in fact rogue, because unwittingly it has proceeded 

ignorant of, or indifferent to, the discipline that should 

be provided by recognition of the authority of a more 

inclusive category.

Each of the four elements of the argument just specified is important, as are the connections among them. 

The skeleton methodological key that opens the door 

to the clarification that sweeps away confusion could 

hardly be simpler. It is the simple recognition that in 

statecraft, war, strategy, and warfare, one is dealing 

with phenomena that are universal and eternal, and 

are both singular and plural. It is all too easy to be 

overwhelmed by one’s ignorance of vital detail about 

a new development, say, cyberpower, or a local insurgency somewhere that one has difficulty even locating 

on the map. But it should be of inestimable political 

and strategic value to know for certain that the novel 

source of current bafflement already is covered quite 

robustly by a time-tested, experience-based general 

theory. Assertions will always be made claiming that 

“this” event, episode, or capability is different, perhaps radically so, from all that has gone before. What 

is more, such claims may well be objectively true; assuredly they will be plausible to many people. However, the historical uniqueness in detail of political 
5

events with strategic implications cannot be permitted 

to obscure their species membership. For example, the 

differences are stunningly obvious between such episodes in world politics as the rivalries between Britain 

and Germany before World War I, the United States 

and the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and the United 

States and China today in the 21st century. But while 

we must be careful to avoid undue capture by perilous analogy, it has to be helpful to understanding the 

nature of Sino-American relations today to recognize 

that historical perspective on this emerging, but unavoidable, rivalry is easily accessible.6

For another historical example in illustration of my 

argument, the several wars waged for influence in, or 

control over, Afghanistan, by Britain in the 1840s, the 

1870s, the 1920s, and 1930s, then by the Soviet Union 

in the 1980s, followed by the United States (and some 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] allies) 

in the 2000s, were waged in very different political 

and strategic contexts. And yet, differences granted, 

the continuities connecting all of the wars and their 

warfare in Afghanistan require recognition as providing an essential unity that is understandable through 

explanation of a single general theory of strategy. I am 

alert to the possible perils that may follow from the 

assertion of the essentialist argument that lends itself 

to misrepresentation as reductionism. It needs to be 

said that general theory does, indeed has to, reduce 

the authority of conceptualization developed in aid of 

understanding particular strategic phenomena. Historical case-specific theory is always likely, though 

not certain, to be wrong if it appears to threaten the 

integrity of general theory. However, in the social 

sciences, theory aspires modestly only to provide 

most-case understanding for explanation. Exceptions 
6

are permissible, but they are seriously embarrassing 

only to arrogant and incompetent theorists.7 It has to 

be noted, though, that if highly plausible exceptions 

proliferate, then theory should be reconsidered and, if 

need be, rewritten.

To summarize the argument exercised in this 

monograph, contemporary American defense debate 

shows abundant evidence of confusion, poor definitions of key terms and, as a consequence, undisciplined 

conceptualization. The result of this poor conceptual 

governance is the suffering of gratuitous damage to 

U.S. national security. Whatever the strength in the 

moral and material components of American fighting 

power, the conceptual component is weak; indeed, it 

is far weaker than it could and should be, which is the 

reason for this report and its argument.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

Poor strategic theory is a self-inflicted wound that 

typically has expensive and harmful consequences. 

This monograph examines and tests the hypothesis 

that the American cultural proclivity to theorize about 

military affairs, to which Antulio Echevarria refers 

plausibly in the second epigraph above, is proving 

costly to national and international security. Because 

this theorization is significantly cultural in an American context, it rests upon, indeed is legitimized by, the 

cultural assumption that such an activity inherently 

is beneficial. The problem with this assumption is not 

any basic fallacy; far from it. Rather, the difficulty lies 

in the amount of theory that is built, and also with 

its character. The familiar claim that quantity has a 

quality all its own tends to apply pejoratively with regard to American debate. Regardless of the particular 
7

subject of American debate, for example, pertaining 

to issues of nuclear deterrence in the Cold War, to 

revolutions in military affairs (RMA) and military and 

strategic transformation in the 1990s, and to COIN 

and counterterrorism (CT) in the 2000s, approximately the same dynamics operate. For reasons of professional career advancement, of the inherent debating 

fuel in contending ideas, the sheer logic and grammar 

of competition, and the scale of the particular national 

context for intellectual argument, in recent times (post 

1945) American strategic theoretical debate habitually 

has proceeded too far, too fast, and with inadequate 

reference to what could and should be gleaned from 

historical experience. The debate needs gleaning, and 

such gleaning requires the services of strategic theory 

fit for the purpose, since the past does not supply its 

own meaning for us.

It is all too easy to be critical of poor strategic theory, let alone of an absence of theory worthy of the 

label. But my purpose here is not simply to criticize; 

rather, it is to be constructive in identifying the kind 

and character of theory that should perform its proper 

role and serve its needed function well enough. It is 

an objective feature of America, one from which much 

that is cultural derives, that its sheer size brings into 

play the aphorism cited already that alleges a qualitative consequence to sheer quantity. As Samuel P. 

Huntington once observed, America is a large country 

that does things in a large way.8

 Whereas most countries have defense and national security communities 

of distinctly modest size, if that, the United States is 

peopled abundantly and beyond by military and strategic theorists, naturally occupying the full spectrum 

of competence. The American marketplace for strategic, military, and other security ideas is very much 
8

larger than anywhere else on the planet. There are 

more strategy-related jobs and career paths in America 

than elsewhere; there is more money available to fund 

research and writing; and because of America’s global 

strategic status and role, there is more about which to 

theorize that plainly has relevance for national public 

policy. The American cultural proclivity to theorize 

about strategic affairs is, in principle, a source of national advantage. The first of the epigraphs that head 

this text, by Carl von Clausewitz, tersely explains why. 

Theory, including strategic theory, sorts out what is in 

need of being sorted. As observed already, in the social sciences theory provides most-case explanations 

of phenomena. In order to be able to explain what 

has happened, or is happening, or why a particular 

choice of, say, military ways and means, organized 

and directed by a plan, will cause what we want to 

happen, we need to understand the subject of strategy. Theory does not make strategy work, but when it 

is well crafted, it educates practicing strategists so that 

they are enabled to understand what they are doing, 

and why.9 Readers are warned, perhaps gratuitously, 

that because I am a strategic theorist, my argument 

might appear biased in praise of my trade. I make explicit mentions of my personal commitment to theory 

for strategy, because there is a theme in the argument 

here that is strongly critical of (largely) American strategic theorizing, and I cannot deny some small measure of responsibility for the ill condition with which 

I must find fault. I have been not merely present as an 

observer at the scene of conceptual crime; I have been 

an actively contributing participant also.10

Specifically, I will argue that while some strategic 

theory is good, indeed is essential, a lot of strategic 

theory is not necessarily better, while a great deal of 
9

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

is literally vital. Most countries do not have a public 

strategic debate, or even much of an official one so far 

as one can tell. Of course, it may be claimed that most 

countries have little if any need of a national strategic 

debate. Although all polities with military and other 

security agencies have to engage in defense planning 

keyed in good part to a fiscal narrative, American activity in this regard is unique in quantity and quality 

(referring to its character, not to its normative merit). 

National cultures—public, strategic, military—do 

alter, but this less than dazzling historical insight 

should not obscure the force of cultural inertia, which 

is to say of continuity over change.11 For the particular 

purpose of this enquiry, it is important to accept the 

United States as being what it is, especially because 

my argument does lend itself to some misrepresentation as a naïve and impractical suggestion for conceptual reform.

Critics of cultural-leaning arguments are able to 

score points by highlighting the many serious weaknesses in cultural analysis, but in their eagerness to 

damage unsound social science theory, they can 

miss much of the plot.12 Historians severely critical 

of Britain’s strategic performance in World War I 

sometimes seem barely able to conceal their annoyance at the undeniable fact that the excellent German 

Army somehow managed to lose the war. For good 

and substantial reasons, America’s strategic and military 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 are 

larger than their functional equivalents abroad, typically by a wide margin. Of particular relevance to this 
10

discussion is the sheer size of the American national 

security effort, one that helps define a scale of human 

and institutional domain that is unique. Although this 

monograph is about theory for strategy, it is largely 

empirical, not deductive, in the evidential base for 

its argument. One does not aspire to spark conceptual revolution or, being realistic, even substantial 

reforms. But one can hope to encourage some modest 

improvement in the way that strategy is theorized by 

those accessible to the possibility of influence. This is a 

role for the strategic educator; as Clausewitz claimed, 

at least one should be able to label as harmful some 

of the weeds of ignorance that inhibit strategic understanding.

The principal cost of an oversupply of poor-tomediocre strategic theory is that its customers have 

difficulty identifying and holding onto the strategic 

plot. As new, or more usually old, ideas are coined or 

rediscovered, and as they proliferate promiscuously, 

the core meaning of the subject of strategy can slip 

away. It is less exciting than are the typically rather 

elusive ideas expressed in new jargon created by the 

intellectual pathfinders of contemporary strategic 

debate. To be professionally expert is to be skilled 

and current in the use of the buzzwords that today 

are selling well in the marketplace of ideas. Food of 

a healthy kind is good for us, but even healthy food 

consumed in excess ceases to be beneficial. A country with global ambitions and responsibilities needs a 

lively public debate on strategy, but that debate has a 

dynamic of its own, far beyond the fuel of real-world 

anxieties, that sparks it episodically. The demand for 

strategic theory, which is to say for explanation as an 

aid to understanding, creates the provision of its supply, but the supply takes off on a path of more than 
11

marginally self-sustained growth, with theory serving 

the narrow needs of theory rather than those of policy 

and strategy in practice. It is worth noting that just as 

theory about war fuels yet more theory about war, so 

Clausewitz appears to warn that it is the nature of war 

to serve itself. Politics may be the purpose of war, but 

it is certainly not its nature.13

A cast of thousands of variably talented Americans 

compete for attention and rewards in the fairly open 

marketplace where ideas about policy, strategy, security, and every aspect of military affairs are debated. 

These competitions are going to produce successive 

waves of concepts and proposals, as the hot topics 

of the day rise, peak, decline, and then all but vanish from sight until they reappear in somewhat different garb a few years later. Since the 1950s, strategic 

advice 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 and 

career dynamics reward novelty. And happily for the 

theorists of national security, at least in matters of detail, every development that might warrant identification as a challenge truly is different. However, unlike 

every student at school in Lake Wobegone, not all of 

our strategic theorists are above average. Rather more 

to the point, many of the official and other customers 

for supposedly expert strategic theory and advice will 

not be able to tell which of the glittering conceptual 

products on offer are the genuine articles in strategic 

wisdom.

To summarize the problem that this monograph 

addresses: The U.S. extended-defense community is 

impoverished in its grasp of the country’s strategic 

challenges and of sound ways to meet them by the 
12

poverty in the quality (not quantity) of the conceptual education and advice that should provide understanding for explanation. A major source of the 

problem is structural to the United States; really, it 

is existential. The strategic concepts industry is both 

adequately funded to support research of every quality, and has long matured into near self-sustaining 

intellectual orbit. The focus of this discussion is on 

the often contrasted alleged alternatives of irregular 

and traditional challenges, but the very recent and 

still somewhat current, if now tiring and soon to be 

exhausted, strategic debate about COIN and CT needs 

to be regarded in the historical perspective of other 

great and not-so-great strategic debates. Leading examples of such debates include those over strategy for 

nuclear weapons, RMA and transformation, and now 

the still emerging contention over the strategic meaning of cyberpower.

The master argument of this report, the intellectual center of gravity of all else, holds that the U.S. 

defense community typically overintellectualizes the 

challenges (problems/opportunities) that it perceives. 

With a culture that privileges theory-building through 

disaggregation by categorical exclusivity, whole subject areas are conceptually deconstructed and reassembled for neater granular treatment. The big picture 

tends to be off stage, replaced by creative constructions of allegedly particular forms or aspects of that 

whole conception. Unfortunately, the actual and potential benefits of theoretical exclusivity are more than 

offset by the transaction cost in the loss of context. For 

example, when one theorizes about what was thought 

of as limited war, a conceptual staple of the 1950s and 

early 1960s, it matters vitally whether one is coining 

a concept expressed in two words of approximately 
13

equal weight, or rather a concept of war with an adjectival modifier.14 This issue could be regarded as mere 

academic pedantry, but its resolution had immense 

practical implications for strategy.15

When scholars are unleashed without political constraint to try to understand a subject with which they 

are unfamiliar, they will proceed whither their imagination takes them. When real-world experience is absent, logic unharried by empirical evidence will have 

to suffice to explain the structure of a subject. When 

logic rules, the creative energy of highly intelligent 

people will produce impressive intellectual artifacts 

that are both monuments to reason, and offensive to 

the reason inherent in common sense. Herman Kahn’s 

escalation ladder with its 44 steps offered an impressive tool to assist understanding of the structural 

dynamics of conflict.16 Kahn was not confused about 

the imagined, which is to say constructed, character 

of his theoretical ladder, but one cannot say as much 

with confidence for many of his readers and briefees. 

In the praiseworthy quest for deeper understanding, 

scholars can hardly help but succumb to the temptation to reach out for more, only to find that the result 

of their efforts inadvertently is some notable loss of 

comprehension of the phenomenon that needs to be 

approached as a whole. Metaphorically expressed, 

there is a fog of theory.

This monograph proceeds by focusing attention on 

the still popular grand distinction between irregular 

and traditional challenges to national security, and 

on whether this familiar binary opposition is sensible. The discussion then seeks to identify the ways in 

which strategic theory can help understanding as an 

enabling educator for sound practice. The monograph 

concludes by offering specific recommendations in 

aid of U.S. national security policy and strategy.
14

CHALLENGES: NOT A SIMPLE SPECTRUM

Given the fecundity of conceptual error, the wouldbe policeman for useful theory has difficulty knowing 

which ideas to arrest and incarcerate first. Empirical 

investigation of the historical experiential base for the 

proposition that the United States faces two categories of challenge, irregular and traditional, easily reveals the fallacy in this popular claim. However, the 

process of investigation into the merit in the master 

binary thesis uncovers, as it were serendipitously, a 

fallacy even more fundamental and therefore more 

deadly than the erroneous idea that challenges come 

fairly neatly in only two major variants or baskets of 

subvariants. To hazard a notably reductionist simplification in the interest of clarity, recent American strategic debate, inclusive of the argument in this report 

(see Option 3 below), offers in the main three conceptual choices covering the subjects of challenges, war, 

warfare, strategy, and tactics. These are itemized and 

explained in such a way as to facilitate debate, not as 

claimed paraphrases of the theses of particular strategic theorists.

Option 1.

The U.S. national security and defense planning 

universe is quite tidily binary. Challenges (or threats) 

come in just two admittedly uncomfortably inclusive 

varieties, irregular or traditional (or regular). These 

two huge conceptual tents purportedly cover, if not 

quite shelter, the entire range of menacing actualities 

and possibilities. Irregular challenges are understood 

broadly to emanate from nonstate political actors, 
15

while traditional ones are those posed by states. The 

character of threat is dictated very largely by the nature and characteristic capabilities of its perpetrator. 

The signature military style of irregular belligerents is 

guerrilla tactics privileging a hit-and-run, which is to 

say raiding, style in warfare.

Option 2.

The challenge or threat environment for the United States does not divide neatly into menaces readily 

and unambiguously classified as either irregular or 

traditional. Instead, following the trinitarian lead set 

by Julius Caesar, with his famous claim that Gallia est 

omnia divisa in partes tres (Gaul is entirely divided into 

three parts), as have so many strategic thinkers down 

the centuries, we may choose to recognize that today’s 

challenges need to be classified as irregular, or hybrid, 

or traditional (regular, conventional).17 This trinity of 

postulated types is believed by its proponents to provide the additional, third, large conceptual tent that is 

necessary in order to cover and capture the full spectrum of perils.

Option 3. 

It is not self-evident that the invention, the conceptual construction—or should one say, the discovery— 

of a third category of challenge (hybrid) is a significant 

advance over the binary distinction it may replace. 

In the process of analyzing the relative merit in the 

hybrid postulate one realizes, unsurprisingly, that the 

record—even the recent and contemporary record—of 

strategic historical experience can support plausible 

claims for more categories than three. It dawns on 

the scholar as a less-than-startling epiphany that the 
16

hybrid thesis is not wrong, but rather is so fundamentally correct that it defies robust concept containment 

in its own allegedly distinctive tent.18 In common with 

asymmetry, hybridity does indeed characterize challenges. But the problem for the construction of useful 

strategic theory is that some hybridity and asymmetry are not exactly a rare exception in strategic history; 

rather, they are such typical features in strategic rivalry 

that there appears to be a fatal flaw in the proposition 

that there are distinctively hybrid challenges, wars, 

strategies, and styles of warfare. Hybridity is not hard 

to find; in fact, it is too easy. Ironically, the recognition that hybridity is a conceptual vessel that holds 

too much water to be analytically useful, triggers the 

epiphany identified here as Option 3: the seemingly 

unimaginative proposition that the popular, and indeed official, system(s) of challenge categorization is 

probably fundamentally unsound. There are not two, 

or three, or 23 categories of challenges, wars, strategies, and kinds of warfare. Instead, there is only one 

category of challenge—meaning that categorization, 

no matter how well intended, is more likely to confuse 

than it is to enlighten. Far from producing a conceptually undisciplined homogenization of possible menace, an insistence that challenges, wars, strategies, and 

warfare should be corralled inclusively at a high level 

of generality as notably like, even common, phenomena, provides the intellectual discipline and guidance 

that enables forensic historical case-specific understanding and strategic practice. To illustrate: COIN is 

more prudently and certainly effectively prosecuted 

in its needful aspects as violent sociology and armed 

anthropology, if those worthy population-centric endeavors are pursued by a grand strategy that is not 

confused about the facts that the political and strategic 
17

context is one of war with some more, or less, active 

warfare.19 Excessive categorical creativity has the effect of encouraging thinking about COIN that spins 

away from the military context, while some claim that 

leading brands of COIN theory and practice are systemically unfriendly to strategy.20 This is a plausible 

charge, though it tends to be overstated as stridency 

tends to grow with repetition of argument, and assertion rises in reaction to criticism (I do not exempt myself from this charge).

The austere typology above can be summarized 

as a conceptual choice among postulated schemas for 

challenges that offer two categories (Option 1: irregular and traditional), three categories (Option 2: irregular, hybrid, and traditional) and one category, which 

means no category (Option 3: threat categorization is 

rejected). This refusal to categorize strategic challenges rests upon the conviction that the making of distinctions between allegedly radically different species 

of menace has the intellectually fatal unintended consequence of gratuitously weakening conceptual grasp 

and grip. For a defense community that has a history of 

poor understanding of strategy, a poverty repeatedly 

lamented by would-be reformers—not withstanding 

the community’s proclivity to theorize—any conceptualization that positively encourages unsound strategic ideas should be stamped on without mercy.21 Of 

course, we lack historical perspective on the 2000s, but 

from today’s vantage point it seems unlikely to this 

author that America’s strategic performances in Iraq, 

Afghanistan, and overall in the “long war” against the 

abstract noun “terror” warrant a passing grade for 

competence in concept and practice.
18

Because many personal defense professional careers, records, and egos may seem to be placed at 

some risk by the argument in this text, it is unusually 

important that I should not be misunderstood. It can 

be a hard sell to try to persuade professional strategic 

theorists that less theory is likely to help explain more 

strategic phenomena than is more theory. It is essential to theorize, as Clausewitz argued persuasively 

for all time, but sharply diminishing returns to extra 

effort are soon recorded in the conceptual space occupied and colonized by strategic theory.22 Even if it 

is appropriate to claim, with Brian Linn, that military 

intellectuals have failed to secure a convincing and 

useful conceptual grip on contemporary war, it does 

not have to follow that more theory is the answer.23

A lack of historical perspective and career dynamics 

tend to lead defense professionals both to rediscover 

what long has been known, albeit often forgotten, and 

to be attracted to claimed conceptual novelty. The 

problem for U.S. national security that is dominantly 

thematic for this discussion is not strategic theory per 

se. Absent strategic theory, one would lose the ability to comprehend strategic history. Theory and its 

conceptual tools are vital to the search for solutions to 

the challenges perceived as posed to national security; 

at least, they can be. This analysis seeks to contribute 

to better theory. Because ideas can be a potent source 

of influence over strategic behavior, it is important, 

even if they are less than obviously brilliant, that they 

should do little if any harm. The medical analogy 

here is a compelling one. A serious difficulty for wellmeaning strategic theorists frequently lurks often 

under-recognized in their sparkling prose and astonishing graphics. Specifically, strategy is not about elegance of language, ingenuity of method, or creativity 

of concept. Rather, strategy is an eminently practical 
19

project. In much the same way that a technically superior weapon can be unfit for its purpose in the field if 

it requires skills to maintain and use that exceed those 

owned by its average military user, so strategic and 

military theory can be lethally unfit for its practical 

purpose. An ancient military maxim springs to mind: 

Nothing is impossible to the man who does not have 

to try to do it. 

A four-fold argument serves to capture the core 

of what needs to be said about meeting challenges to 

national security, with particular reference to the contribution that should be made by strategic theory.

1. Challenge identification and measurement is not 

always obvious. Where you stand, when you stand 

up, and what you do next, depends critically on where 

you believe you sit—to misquote and expand upon 

the long-standing central proposition of the theory 

of bureaucratic politics.24 This enquiry does not have 

a vacuum at its heart, but certainly it is potentially 

blighted by the concept that fuels it—the idea of “challenges” to national security. The question of “when is 

a challenge not a challenge, but something else, and 

if so, what?”—begs enticingly for scholarly attention. 

Fortunately, there is no strict obligation placed upon 

this analysis to identify challenges, current or arguably anticipatable in the future. It suffices for this text 

to assist with education in strategic thought. Nonetheless, I would be severely remiss in my duty here 

were I simply to assume that the challenges central to 

my mission comprised phenomena of a species that is 

reliably detectable by a faultless challenge-detection 

monitoring machine.

Even when an act occurs that is unmistakably challenging—September 11, 2001 (9/11), for example—it 

may not be entirely self-evident quite what the challenge means. The United States has been challenged, 
20

but over what and to do what? And if the answers to 

those questions have to be provided substantially by 

us, the targeted victims, then the strategic context of 

decision is substantially different from one wherein 

the challenge essentially is existential. It is worth noting that even existentially explicit challenges, such as 

those issued to the United States by Imperial Japan 

and Nazi Germany in December 1941, still may well 

leave Washington with a great deal of room for discretion over strategy, if not much over policy guidance in 

those extreme cases.

The popular concept of challenges to national 

security can be sliced and diced forensically as preferred. But, as indicated above, the more exclusive 

of the larger claimed species (or subspecies) irregular, hybrid, and traditional or regular—are not very 

helpful. Leaving aside the categorization issue for the 

moment, consider the ever-potential fragility of the 

choice of word for the central concept. Challenges to 

national security compete with the following possible 

alternatives: threats, dangers, risks, perils, menaces, 

anxieties, and concerns for some candidate substitutes 

on the negative side. Considered positively, national 

security challenges may well lend themselves persuasively to identification as opportunities. And, to muddy the water noticeably, many challenges appear to be 

fraught with peril while also containing the promise 

of possible significant reward. Risk and cost-free challenges-as-opportunities are few and far between in 

strategic history. The word or words chosen to define 

a happening, actual or anticipated, can shape perception. Also, languages differ markedly in the range of 

conceptual menace and the subtlety that their vocabularies offer to their users. By way of sharp contrast 

with Pearl Harbor and 9/11, there is Nazi Germany’s 
21

reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, or the lesson in 

great-power prerogatives (and the prudence in very 

small power acquiescence)—when Russia in 2006 instructed Georgia in the matter of geopolitical realities. 

In these latter cases, the character of the event is not 

quite so easy to identify; hence, the character of most 

suitable response is debatable.

If one likes spectrums for the classification of strategic happenings, how should the concept of challenge 

be assayed? The possibilities are many. The more 

obvious spectrums are those attempts to classify by: 

type (e.g., irregular, hybrid, traditional); seriousness 

of potential consequences, scale of potential danger, 

degree of risk; likelihood of occurrence; time frame 

(e.g., current, imminent, medium-term, distant); and 

comprehension (e.g., believed to be understood in detail, understood generically—known unknown, suspected, truly unknown unknowns but feared for their 

mystery).25 There is always plenty to worry about, but 

the vital issues of how great a worry—when, exactly 

what, and then what to do about it—rarely lend themselves to clear and compelling answers.

2. The rank-ordering of challenges (and their respective risks) to national security is an art, not a 

science (not even a social science), and typically is 

contestable. One would have to be extraordinarily 

naïve to believe that challenges to national security, 

however, or indeed even if, categorized by character 

(irregular and so forth), may convincingly be rank-ordered on a single scale. Only on the political campaign 

trail or in the mass media, with their frequent disdain 

for context and historical perspective, should one expect to find challenges, usually portrayed as threats 

rather than opportunities, conveniently weighed and 
22

arranged in descending order of seriousness. From the 

late 1950s to the present day, there has never been any 

question about the challenge, if understood either as 

explicit and overt or latent but existential, that poses 

the greatest threat to the security of Americans. That 

threat, of course, resided and resides in the nucleararmed strike capabilities of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)/Russia and (after 1964) the 

People’s Republic of China (PRC). As ideas tend to 

dominate over mere military muscle, so politics is hegemonic over strategic history.26 But national security 

challenges, to be plausible candidates for American 

identification as such, usually require some inferably 

hostile intentions as well as the physical means to do 

harm. When enemy identification falters and then either dies or at least is in semi-retirement, as was the 

case in U.S.—Russian political and strategic relations 

in the 1990s and 2000s, the latent but still objective 

menace in nuclear strike forces is greatly reduced by 

the absence of a subjective, convincingly perceived, 

threat. The contemporary PRC is more easily anticipated as America’s superpower enemy from hell in 

the 21st century than careful strategic net assessment 

suggests probable. The PRC’s relative weakness in 

each geographical domain of the global commons—

air, orbital space, and possibly even cyberspace—in 

the context of global security geopolitics and geostrategy, suggests strongly that China, though predictably 

formidable, is unlikely to resemble the USSR as a fullservice challenge.27

Ironically, it is a matter beyond historical dispute 

that the most frequent, persistent, and therefore, in an 

obvious sense, regular and traditional, of America’s 

national security challenges have been irregular—at 

least as characterized in common linguistic usage. The 
23

waging of warfare against non-state foes has rarely 

been a popular activity, but repeatedly it has been 

the military action of the day.28 Public enthusiasm for 

COIN and CT has not been the typical domestic political context for U.S. strategic behavior, but time after 

time the country has risen to what its leaders chose 

to define as a military-strategic challenge. Repeatedly, 

Washington has had difficulty coping in domestic politics with the apparently objective facts that the extant 

challenges, if they should be identified as such, were 

not those most dangerous to national security. September 11, 2001, was tactically extraordinary, but in common with nearly all acts of terror, it had a complete inability to effect strategic change, unless the American 

response elected to fuel a course of events that might 

do so. The knock-on effects of mass-destruction terrorism can only be lethal to the economic and political 

stability of the targeted populace if those victims panic and in imprudent response bring down their own 

political house. The immense damage suffered by the 

U.S. economy over the past decade was not the direct 

result of brilliance in the grand strategy of al Qaeda. 

Rather, it was the product of poor American (inter alia) 

financial governance, and a lack of competent political 

leadership. The damage that al Qaeda and its affiliates could do to America and the international order 

for which America was, and remains, the hegemon, 

was minor compared with America’s capacity for selfharm. This is less than a deep insight, because in most 

conflicts the victors require notable inadvertent assistance from their enemies. What I have just described 

is not intended as an indictment; it is a reminder of the 

normal context of strategic history. Competent strategic theory and prudent practical strategies do not 

ignore the flawed nature of human actors and the in-
24

stitutions and processes they employ; they accept the 

enduring 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 irregular form are apt to be tragic only on a minor scale, 

when considered coldly at the society-wide level. In 

contrast, policy mistakes and strategic imprudence 

with respect to threat events usually categorized as 

traditional, most especially those that appear with a 

nuclear signature, would almost certainly have consequences fatal to America’s future—existentially in 

both physical and political senses. It will not have escaped readers’ notice that nuclear warfare conducted 

on any scale and guided in accordance with any strategy would be a highly unusual, indeed an extraordinary, military activity. However, whether or not war 

with nuclear weapons should be categorized as irregular is a matter of conceptual and political discretion. 

The employment of a few nuclear weapons for the 

primary purpose of inducing fear—the most classic 

defining characteristic of terrorism—certainly renders 

such use a candidate for irregular status. Moreover, 

simply the extreme rarity of nuclear use could support 

a common sense case for its categorical irregularity. 

But common usage, arguably as opposed to common 

sense, typically assigns nuclear warfare to the highest 

high-end position on the favored conflict spectrum. 

Nuclear war would be “big war,” as contrasted with 

some understanding of “small war” (e.g., that classified by Charles E. Callwell and later by the U.S. Marine 

Corps), 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
25

For a while in the early 1950s, leading American 

strategic theorists, and certainly the U.S. armed services, believed that atomic weapons should be regarded as regular and possibly as having both honorary 

and practical status akin to their being traditional and 

conventional.30 If nearly all cases of future warfare 

are expected to have an active, not only a deterrent, 

atomic dimension, then it is logical to regard atomic 

weapons as conventional. It is worth noting that in 

the 1950s, the atomic and irregular ends of the conflict 

spectrum were somewhat combined in a shotgun strategic marriage. The atomic battlefield was expected to 

oblige armies to wage land combat in a guerrilla style, 

in order to deny lucrative concentrated targets to the 

enemy’s atomic weapons. The second nuclear revolution, that which enabled the weaponization of atomic 

fusion rather than atomic fission alone, changed the 

terms of strategic argument. Thermonuclear weapons 

arrived in the mid-1950s, just when Soviet technological prowess was beginning to render nuclear deterrence inconveniently mutual. It is not unreasonable to 

claim that the U.S. Army’s temporary infatuation with 

an agile, guerrilla-raiding style of atomic land warfare, warrants retrospective designation as a hybrid 

concept. Guerrilla style warfare with nuclear weapons 

is surely such a concept, if anything is.

There may well be some classification schemas for 

war and for types of warfare that identify categories 

of phenomena sufficiently robust in their distinctiveness as to have high utility for policy and strategy. 

But, I must report that the more closely I look at popular and official categories of conflicts, wars, strategies, and tactics, the less convincing, indeed the more 

misleading, they seem to be. The launch pad for this 

analysis, as noted already, was the realization that 
26

our now long-standing strategic theoretical efforts to 

categorize and subcategorize conflicts, wars, types of 

warfare, strategies, and even tactics, were seriously 

flawed systemically. But the urge to categorize and 

clarify, after the fashion of Victorian entomologists 

identifying new species of insects, is irresistible and 

in some respects praiseworthy in its quest for greater 

useful understanding. It follows that the only practicable mission now is one of damage limitation, and 

this is where the general theory of strategy must play 

a vital educational role.

Accepting some risk of overstatement, it is necessary at least to consider the proposition that many of 

the larger conceptual categories in our intellectual 

arsenal are perilously porous and substantially misleading. Prominent examples include: limited war, 

irregular war, regular war, hybrid war, and conventional deterrence. Each of these offerings by way of 

illustration has a more-than-marginal capacity to encourage fallacious thinking. However, the difficulty 

lies not so much, if at all, with the concepts themselves 

in their core meaning. Rather, the problem lies in the 

misunderstanding of these concepts, as they became 

decontextualized through familiarity. By way of terse 

explanation:

• Limited war describes all war in its character as 

politically motivated behavior. But it is also in 

the nature of warfare to provide its own (military) meaning; in other words, literally to be 

self-serving. The claim that there are limited 

wars implies logically that there could be unlimited ones. This is misleading on several counts, 

but primarily because such a description encourages the fallacy that some wars inherently 

are political, whereas in reality all wars serve 
27

both politics and their own dynamics, and the 

two are apt to prove antagonistic. Also, because 

war is a duel (at least), it will have a character reflecting the interactive outcome of two or 

more belligerents, with the whole combined 

endeavor, or chaotic imbroglio, fueled by the 

dynamic nature of warfare itself.31

• Irregular, regular, and hybrid war are more problematic than not; in too many historical cases 

they are not reliably useful for understanding. 

These concepts are not empirically wrong—

quite the reverse. Depending upon the definitions preferred, some unmistakable evidence of 

irregularity, regularity, and hybridity is unlikely to be absent from many, if not most, wars. 

From the perspective of a defense planner today, it is seriously unhelpful, and most probably, is potentially misleading in a fatal way, 

to hypothesize that in the 21st century America 

needs to be ready to fight irregular, regular, 

and hybrid wars. It is a modest intellectual 

improvement to argue that America should be 

able to wage warfare irregularly, regularly, or 

in a hybrid manner. Nonetheless, this postulate 

encourages the unsound conviction that future 

wars and their dominant characteristics can 

be regarded as fixed and given by others. For 

a global superpower, this is not a strategically 

healthy belief, nor is it plausible.

• Conventional deterrence, in common with conventional war in a nuclear context, is a dangerous idea that is always in peril of empirical 

falsification. Of course, the idea is strategically 

meaningful: The problem is that it is an idea 

that must rest upon potentially highly unre-
28

liable assumptions. No matter how conventional 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 who 

are nuclear-armed, or between belligerents 

with nuclear-armed close friends abroad, there 

is always going to be a nuclear dimension to 

hostilities, actual or potential. When there is a 

nuclear context, albeit a currently inactive one, 

the integrity of the concept of conventional war 

has to be at risk. In such circumstances, conventional war is not a strategic truth and should 

not be a matter of faith alone; rather, it is an 

aspiration whose existentiality may need to be 

fought for, carefully. The strategic literature of 

the late 1950s and the early- to mid-1960s, debated this matter exhaustively. Could NATO 

and the Warsaw Pact have successfully waged 

a non-nuclear war in Europe? Happily, we shall 

never know. But what we do know for certain 

is that the integrity of the conceptual category 

of conventional war(s) between nuclear-armed 

polities has to be problematic in the extreme.32

Bernard Brodie’s period piece, Escalation and the 

Nuclear Option (1966), continues to have merit 

for the discipline it encourages among our 

more constructivist and optimistic theorists.33

3. The adoption of exclusive categories of challenge 

does gratuitous damage to prudent defense planning. 

It is hard to prepare adequately to meet challenges 

that comprise known unknowns, but it is even harder 

to prepare to meet the challenges that are unknown 

unknowns (to borrow from the wit and wisdom at-
29

tributed to the ever-quotable Donald H. Rumsfeld). 

For the purposes of the discussion immediately above, 

it was assumed conveniently that the content of the 

challenges, threats, opportunities, and risks of the 

future pose no insuperable difficulties to competent 

future-leaning strategic analysts and theorists. Rather, the issue was one of categorization of empirically 

largely unproblematic phenomena. It is necessary for 

this discussion to break ranks briefly from the expedient assumption that future challenges are sufficiently 

known or knowable as to allow elevation to conceptual classification over particular future historical 

developments. It is not my position to argue that the 

particular course that global strategic history will take 

in the 21st century is important for the design of our 

strategic conceptual apparatus; how could it be, since 

we have no map of that future course? Since this text 

privileges the value of general strategic theory, and 

is suspicious, at least, of challenge categorization, it 

is useful to remind readers of what they know and 

do not know about the strategic phenomena that constitute the ultimate content for this examination. The 

categorization issue concerning future challenges has 

a major bearing upon the fitness for their purposes of 

America’s armed forces. Two principal uncertainties 

have to be flagged—one of which can be minimized, 

but not eliminated.

The first uncertainty was targeted conceptually by 

then-Secretary Rumsfeld; the known unknowns and 

the unknown unknowns. To his two classes of ignorance, it is advisable to add a possibly more potent 

third—the knowns that are falsely classified as such. 

Some of what we believe we know—meaning that we 

think we understand and can explain—time will reveal we did not in fact know. These three sources of 
30

ignorance constitute a powerful trinity indeed. When 

they are mobilized to impose restraint on the confidence we place in defense planning, their dangerous 

implications become all too easy to identify. All methodologies for the improvement of national security 

and defense planning aspire either to achieve, or to 

compensate for, the impossibility of knowing that 

which is not knowable. Everyone knows that the future is blank until it happens, and, of course, it never 

can happen, because in its nature, the future moves 

ahead of us as we ourselves move forward in time. 

And yet, despite some average or better competence 

in physics, defense professionals persist in referring 

to the “foreseeable future“—a term that describes a 

scientific impossibility. Lest there be any inadvertent 

ambiguity, it needs to be understood that the future is 

not, has never been, and cannot be, foreseeable. This 

is not to say that the future of interest to strategists is 

a mystery; fortunately, it is anything but. However, 

future events are not reliably predictable, foreseeable, 

or even anticipatable—as particular events. Ignorance 

of future historical detail, even major detail, typically 

is not usefully reducible by better means and methods 

of intelligence gathering and subsequent analysis. The 

course of history is too richly populated with players and possible circumstances to be modeled for the 

purpose of prediction. Even if some readers are willing to place more faith in social scientific theory than 

am I, the most-case generalizations of that theory are 

apt to founder on the rocks of the several classes of 

“unknowns” 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 not 

eliminated or confidently evaded. And an important 

safety measure that the United States can apply to its 
31

many perils is the subject of this enquiry. This measure 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 first uncertainty discussed already—lack of knowledge—is how to categorize or classify them. How should we think about, 

understand, approach, and therefore logically be 

prepared to meet the challenges of this new century? 

Should we be unifying, combining, and assembling 

aggregations of challenges? Or, should we proceed forensically to distinguish, dissect, and identify the many 

kinds of menace and opportunity that future strategic history may well throw our way (including those 

troubling unknown unknowns that we would worry 

about if only we knew what they were)? To cut to the 

chase: Is it possible or desirable to categorize future 

anticipated challenges to the United States as either 

irregular or traditional? Is it a notable improvement to 

expand challenge categorization to a triad including 

hybrid phenomena? And is it feasible or sensible to 

conduct defense planning in tailored preparation for 

the conceptually, and possibly eventually empirically, 

distinctive categories? One has to ask the classic strategist’s question, even if particular happenings appear 

to pose challenges of an irregular, traditional, or hybrid kind—“So what?” It is fundamentally unsound 

to 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 its 

adversarial nature as conflict. It cannot be sensible to 

adopt such exclusive categories of challenge as irregular, traditional, and hybrid, because these intellectual 

boxes tend to achieve a conceptual creep with unfortunate imperial consequences.
32

The two or three categories simultaneously are too 

exclusive to capture the complexity and richness of 

strategic historical experience, yet more than sufficient 

to mislead the unwary into falling victim to several 

powerful fallacies. For example, a challenge posed by 

irregular means and methods (though most probably 

for regular goals),34 need not translate as an irregular 

war. We have a vote on how and by what means the 

conflict is conducted.35 All sides are not required to 

employ only the same means and methods. War and 

warfare in the 21st century do not follow a chivalrous 

dueling code. Without neglecting considerations of 

law and the applied morality in strategic ethics, it is 

imprudent to think that there are characteristically irregular, traditional, or hybrid challenges. Such categorization must privilege strategic and military specialization at the expense of adaptability for fungibility.36

The categorization of challenge criticized here layers a needless burden of understanding on an American national security community that already has difficulties enough deriving from the unforeseeability of 

future strategic history. Not only are our defense planners required to try to know that which is unknowable because there can be no specific evidence for it; 

in addition, the categorization at issue would require 

them to classify that which they do not know into conceptually and imprudently exclusive baskets of cases. 

Looking to possible practical implications, it is likely 

that a defense community willing to sign on for two 

or three conceptual categories of challenge would be 

a community likely to pick one such category as its 

“best buy” for now, peering into an allegedly foreseeable future. Defense preparation would lean toward 

readiness to prosecute conflicts in the “winning” category of challenge, inevitably at the cost of lesser readi-
33

ness for those challenges that are not anticipated to be 

probable events.

The ill consequences of categorization are as predictable as they would be unanticipated by a defense 

community unduly confident that it was riding the 

wave of a sufficiently foreseen strategic future. There is 

a way in which the United States can prepare prudently for a strategic future that it cannot foresee in detail, 

but that way does not require, indeed should not entail, exclusive selection from the conceptual catalog of 

challenges. The United States requires a holistic vision 

of its strategic context in all senses, and should seek 

the adaptability it will need to meet unique challenges 

from its truly common basket of grand strategic, including military, strengths. However, the argument 

for coherence and unity in U.S. national security and 

defense policy has to be prefaced by an appreciation 

of the nature of American competitive (grand) strategic performance.

4. The United States has a vote in strategic competition. Although challenges (or threats) will be guided 

by strategy enabled by tactics, they should not be defined by the forms that they take in military action. 

When considering the concepts as irregular and traditional (and hybrid) challenges, it is easy to forget that 

both the noun and the adjective are seriously problematic. To clarify: Whether or not a challenge truly 

is such is by no means an obviously objective matter; 

subjectively, the United States usually has some discretion over challenge identification. Turning from 

the noun to the adjectives, irregular and traditional 

(and hybrid) characterize tactical choices by the adversary. The United States is under obligation neither 

to define foreign menace or action as a challenge, nor, 
34

should it elect to respond, to do so in a like tactical 

style. The proposition that the future holds both irregular and traditional challenges encourages the 

fallacy that one needs two kinds of armed forces—really two armies—optimized for military effectiveness 

against each species of challenge. This is nonsense, 

but unfortunately, it is seductively persuasive. The 

conceptual error from which can flow a deadly stream 

of strategic and tactical mistakes is the fundamental 

categorical misidentification of the problem. Given 

that every challenge, threat, or opportunity will be 

unique in many important details, still each and every 

one of them must in the first instance be considered 

as a policy issue for statecraft, which means for grand 

strategy. Should politics determine a policy that may 

require prosecution by armed force, then that grand 

strategy must encompass a military dimension to the 

whole project. The point in need of emphasis is that 

irregular, traditional, or hybrid challenges have to be 

approached as political challenges, then as grand strategic challenges, before one joins the imminent adversary in the conduct of military operations in a tacitly 

agreed-upon common style. COIN and CT, as obvious 

examples, can be met in more than modestly mirrorimaging ways tactically. Given the typical asymmetry 

in assets between insurgents and counterinsurgents, it 

cannot be prudent to construct a conceptual redoubt 

that must discourage consideration of bold tactical options that are unavailable to the enemy.

There is everything to be said in praise of Sun 

Tzu’s insistence upon the value of understanding the 

enemy.37 He also insisted that it is no less important 

to know oneself. The categorization that I am criticizing encourages tactical thinking and practice that 

is focused upon the enemy’s way of fighting, rather 

than upon strategic effectiveness in the conflict as a 
35

whole. To quote the Ancient Chinese sage yet again, 

Sun Tzu advised that the enemy’s strategy should be 

the preferred target of our effort, not his forces per 

se.38 The insurgents and terrorists-in-arms are merely 

the means to enable the enemy’s strategy to secure 

the political effectiveness required for his victory. His 

tactical defeat is vitally important to us, but at best it 

is a maximally expensive and lengthy strategic path 

to victory, while at worst it may not be achievable at 

tolerable cost.

This monograph should not be misinterpreted as 

recommending, a fortiori, that the United States necessarily should conduct conflicts in ways that are asymmetric to those of our adversaries, only that we should 

be prepared to do so. In point of fact, we ought not to 

approach a (grand) strategic problem challenge, threat, 

or opportunity within a binary or triadic conceptual 

framework that assumes the case in point is primarily irregular, traditional, or hybrid. The categorical 

confusion that is produced by the irregular and traditional conceptual baskets encourages poor tactics. Air 

power, especially kinetic air power, frequently is discounted as allegedly being of only modest value in a 

COIN campaign, while heavy armor is deemed inappropriate for deployment in urban areas—to cite just 

two instances of categorically influenced prejudices 

that have been demonstrated by recent events to be 

unsound.39

My argument is not that a common style of combat, employing most kinds of military assets, can fit 

all strategic challenges. Rather, I am arguing that we 

should not adopt conceptual categories of wars, strategies, and challenges that encourage formulaic doctrinal responses keyed to the tactical character of the 

enemy’s chosen behavior. Far from suggesting that 
36

the United States should be inclined to employ disproportionate force, for example, in response to a terrorist outrage or two, I would argue that there can be 

challenges expressed in terroristic violence to which 

the American reply should be almost wholly political. U.S. tactics must be case-specific and selected by a 

grand strategy in enablement of our particular political goals. Lest I be misread, there are circumstances, 

such as Pearl Harbor and 9/11, in which the American 

public demands that the enemy ought not only to be 

thwarted, but should be punished, preferably disproportionately. Clausewitz was right to include popular 

passion (“primordial violence, hatred, and enmity”) 

in his trinitarian theory of war.40 Statecraft can only 

be conducted on the basis of public consent, and that 

consent usually requires that the second item in the 

Thucydidean trinity of “fear, honor, and interest” be 

respected.41 Strategic ethics must have a moral foundation.42 When a public feels itself seriously wronged, 

there is apt to be potent normative fuel pushing for 

state action to restore the nation’s affronted “honor.”

To conceive of the strategic world as one that will 

pose irregular, traditional, or hybrid, challenges is to 

overprivilege a categorically conceptual context that 

is unsound. If one postulates a strategic future in the 

conceptual context of the categories discussed here, it 

is all but inevitable that the intellectually constructed 

context is allowed a dominance over that which is 

contextualized—in this case, the United States and 

its responses to challenges. For many years, I have 

sought to argue for the importance of context, but I 

fear that I may have been dangerously indiscriminate 

in my thesis.43 With reference to America’s national 

security policy, grand strategy, military strategy, 

and tactics, the international context(s) of challenge 
37

are not entirely “givens.” The United States cannot 

make its own preferred context for national security—

the world is too complex and contingency-prone for 

that—but neither is it the passive victim of historical 

circumstance. It is my contention that to think of the 

future as a source of challenges, however they may be 

categorized, is to risk inadvertently biasing one’s analysis against making due recognition of the U.S. ability 

to influence the context that gave birth to perils and 

opportunities. As conceptual context, the ideational 

categories of irregular, traditional, and hybrid challenges act like the gravitational force of black holes, 

consuming the identity and creative initiative of the 

challenged polity.

PREVENTING AND AVOIDING CATEGORICAL 

CONFUSION: HOW CAN STRATEGIC THEORY 

HELP?

The “Winton Criteria.”

Dependence on theory is not discretionary. All 

plans are theories because they purport to explain 

how cause is intended to produce desired effect. In the 

realm of national security, strategic plans, so-called, 

may in fact fail the acid test to qualify as being worthy 

of the adjective, should they not rest persuasively on 

explanations of why particular military means—employed in chosen ways—should result in the strategic 

effect or political effect that alone can justify the effort proposed or ordered. In other words, strategy is 

not simply a matter of having ends, ways, and means; 

rather, the existential test for strategy is a conscious 

effort to connect the three elements in the strategic 

trinity. The strategic function, considered simply as 
38

a method, applies to all human activity (and even 

the human qualifier really is unduly exclusive). The 

mantra of ends, ways, and means, is fundamental, but 

it might be improved by the addition of a fourth element, assumptions, were that conceptual category not 

so difficult to corral and capture in practice. There is 

a major—one is tempted to say, transcendental—difficulty in the practice of military strategy that cannot 

be avoided, regardless of the problems that it brings to 

the strategist’s table. Specifically, because the “ends” 

in the ends, ways, and means triad ultimately have to 

be political, the elementary logic of the strategy triad 

is in reality anything but elementary. The difficulty 

in question is almost so obvious and yet very often 

seemingly so far from military behavior, that it is neglected. Also, it must be noted that inadvertently and 

innocently Clausewitz contributes to the problem. To 

recap, the problem is the distinctive natures of war 

and politics. A too-rapid acquaintance with the Prussian’s great book, possibly in more or less severely 

bowdlerized form, can mislead people into believing that On War compounds war and politics. This is 

a terrible mistake. Indeed, misunderstanding of the 

connections between war and politics is a notable contributor to what Michael I. Handel somewhat mistook 

as the “tacticization of strategy.” In point of fact, when 

(tactical) military activity itself is confused with its political purpose, strategy (though not strategic effect) is 

absent, not “tacticized.”44

It should never be forgotten that Clausewitz distinguished with the utmost clarity between military 

power and its political purpose. This is not a pedantic 

academic matter. From Hannibal in the Second Punic 

War, through Napoleon’s adventurous military career, and more recently in repeated German, Israeli, 
39

and American malpractice, the high importance of the 

distinction between warfare and its purpose has been 

amply evidenced. Antulio J. Echevarria has summarized the issue neatly by contrasting the concepts of a 

“way of war” with a “way of battle.”45 It is easy to see 

why so many people are confused. After all, Clausewitz certainly and emphatically connects war with 

politics. War is violence, but it is violence as legitimate 

force applied by and for politics (or policy). However, 

to say that war is about politics is not to claim that it 

is politics. Even if one dares, probably overboldly, to 

argue that war is armed or violent politics, still one 

is not quite asserting a fusion of the two. When considering Clausewitz’s wondrous trinity, one needs to 

be careful not to permit the third element, reason, too 

imperial a significance. While war assuredly is about 

policy, it is also about the passion of the people and 

the skill and luck of the military instrument and its 

commanders. Not infrequently, policy reason has less 

responsibility for decisions to fight or fight on, than 

do domestic public emotions of anger and sometimes 

pity.

When composed carefully, strategic theory can 

help the practitioner understand his role and provide 

tests for the structural adequacy of his strategy. Of 

course, only experience in the field truly will reveal 

whether the pertinent assumptions, political ends, 

and (grand) strategy ways and means were sufficiently mutually enabling. A fine explanation of the nature 

and functions of (strategic) theory has been provided 

by former Green Beret officer Harold R. Winton.46

The tasks that he specifies for theory are exceptionally useful as a contribution to conceptual good order. 

Winton argues that theory should: define the subject; 

categorize, which means “break the field of study into 

its constituent parts”; explain, “which is the soul of 
40

theory”; connect “the field of study to other related 

fields in the universe”; and, finally, anticipate, not 

predict, the future. It is instructive to apply Winton’s 

five criteria for theory to the issues discussed in this 

study. I suggest that his criteria, though not a volley of 

silver bullets, when viewed and employed as a whole 

provide a heuristically invaluable conceptual tool as 

an aid to help avoid categorical and other confusion. 

Theory should define its subject, but this is not quite 

as straightforward a task as one might suppose. For 

example, in a thoughtful and strongly argued study, 

Frank G. Hoffman prefaced his Introduction with the 

following bold and far-reaching claim:

The state on state conflicts of the 20th century are being replaced by Hybrid Wars and asymmetric contests 

in which there is no clear-cut distinction between soldiers and civilians and between organized violence, 

terror, crime and war.47

Hoffman is certainly partially correct. But, as he 

also recognizes, hybridity is not exactly a novel characteristic of conflict. The trouble with the hybrid war 

concept is that it encourages the innovative theorist to 

venture without limit into the swamp of inclusivity, 

indeed of a form of encyclopedism. We learn that:

Hybrid Wars incorporate a range of different modes 

of warfare, including conventional capabilities, irregular tactics and formations, terrorist acts including 

indiscriminate violence and coercion, and criminal 

disorder.48

All of this is empirically true, albeit conceptually 

categorized by constructive invention. When possibly 

suffering from intellectual indigestion, one pauses 
41

to ask the rather important bottom-line question, 

“What are we talking about?” the answer appears to 

be potentially everything other than pure criminal or 

military behavior, to the degree to which even these 

superficially distinctive activities are unambiguously 

distinguishable. Hoffman and others persuaded of 

the virtues in the hybrid designation for some wars 

are not so much wrong as misguided. The concept is 

both too inclusive to be analytically useful, yet also 

too suggestive of some exclusivity—to warrant the 

hybrid badge—to accommodate the rich complexity 

of historical reality. In his major study of the subject 

of hybrid wars, Hoffman rightly points to the flaws 

and fallacies in some of the leading recent alternative 

efforts at conflict categorization (e.g., compound wars, 

fourth-generation wars, new wars, unrestricted war, 

and I must add my current favorite, difficult wars).49

After some years of struggle to see merit in the 

trickle of creative newly constructed categories of 

conflicts and wars, belatedly I realized that each of 

the new conceptualizations had some value. None 

of them were entirely wrong. In fact, each did have 

some unique worth as an aid to understanding. But 

the well-intentioned quest after a better grasp on the 

ever-changing characteristics of conflict misled our 

strategic theoretical entomologists. What they claim 

to have done is to discover new species of strategic or 

strategically relevant behavior, when what they have

done is to erect conceptual constructions that, in their 

empirically better evidenced aspects, really are only 

subspecies, or variants of the one species that is war. 

If war is defined as the use of organized violence for 

political purposes, one does not eliminate all grounds 

for argument (e.g., how much organization?—what 

is, and what is not, a political purpose?), but there is 
42

a useful balance between inclusivity and an exclusivity keyed to a conceptually plain enough core meaning—the connection between politics and purposeful 

violence.

Quite rapidly, the effort to make strategic theory 

more helpful as an explanatory tool exceeds its useful 

reach; more, rapidly becomes less. The problem lies 

in unhelpful—one need not say false—conceptualization. By far the most important function of strategic 

theory is to help the strategic practitioner understand 

his subject. The theory yields explanation based on 

understanding at a general level. Significantly, the 

theory accommodates an almost-infinite granular diversity of detail from historical episode to episode, but 

each episode is only one in a population of variants of 

a single species. Metaphorically expressed, war is but 

one elephant, though it may appear in mixed hybrid, 

compound, irregular, traditional, inter alia forms—depending upon one’s view of it. There is everything to 

be said in praise of efforts to comprehend each violent 

episode on its own terms—let the local cultural terrain 

mapping proceed50—always provided one does not 

forget that the particular conflict at issue fits, however 

uncomfortably, under the very big single tent that is 

war and strategy conducted by statecraft for politics. 

No matter whether a conflict is more irregular or more 

traditional in the means and methods employed, if it 

fits the Clausewitzian (or any near-Clausewitzian) 

definition of war, then it is a war. Furthermore, the 

general theory of strategy has authority over all conflicts, whatever their typological specificity, including 

their cultural topography.

These fairly elementary points, elemental perhaps, 

are critically important because they mean that there is 

a discipline upon military and other violent behavior 
43

that, metaphorically speaking, is in their very DNA as 

their nature is understood, defined, and explained by 

their general theories. To illustrate, while, of course, 

one must adapt one’s strategic effort to meet effectively the distinctive challenge of the day, irregular wars, 

hybrid wars, and others are still wars, and they have 

to be waged strategically. Fortunately, there is extant 

a reasonably mature and persuasive general theory of 

strategy for our education. It should so educate as to 

enable us to invent or rediscover particular strategies 

to defeat particular enemies.

It is relevant to mention that the theory of war is 

not in as healthy a condition as is the theory of strategy. Despite some guilt by association, theoretical 

writings on strategy have not attracted the quantity 

and ferocity of normative ire that, understandably 

but unfortunately, has hindered the understanding 

and explanation of war. Scholars occupy bookshelves 

with learned tomes on all aspects of the subject, but 

on the historical evidence it would appear to be undeniable that war is a near-universal constant actuality or possibility, episodically punctuating the human 

narrative.51 However, the undoubted constancy in the 

threat or reality of organized violence assuredly is 

teamed with a high variability in means and methods. 

One can go further and claim plausibly that not only 

have the material means and conceptualized ways of 

war evolved radically, but so also the politically determined policy ends sought in conflict have changed 

over millennia. Nonetheless, as was suggested earlier, 

the Thucydidean trinity of “fear, honor, and interest” 

locates the eternal causes of war well enough, despite, 

or perhaps because of, the parsimony in its extreme 

reductionism.

Securely founded on a general theory of strategy 

that constantly is subject to refinement, though on the 
44

evidence thus far, not substantial alteration for improvement, American strategists today can develop 

the functional, regional, and local strategies that high 

policy requires. Each and every one of these partial 

strategies must be developed in the conceptual context 

provided, and existentially in reality enforced, by the 

whole single and unified concepts of statecraft, war, 

strategy, and warfare. This conceptualization helps 

protect our bolder theorists from themselves, lest they 

strain too hard to explain what is distinctive about hybrid war, warfare in space, war with nuclear weapons, 

and the rest. By analogy, our military specialists have 

their particular specialisms, but they are all of them 

American soldiers.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This has been a conceptual analysis, which means 

that it has confined its attention to the intellectual ordering of the strategic universe in aid of the understanding necessary for a convincing explanation. Nearly all of the claims in this text are for logic, plausibility, 

and utility, not for empirical correctness. For example, 

there are no scientific laboratory tests for hybrid war, 

any more than there are for the imminence or actuality of RMA. How hybrid does a war need to be for it 

to merit candidate status for inclusion in the hybrid 

list, or how radical a change in military affairs should 

be demanded before developments deserve inclusion 

on the honor roll of RMAs? We are in the realm of 

logic, reason (as in “it stands to reason that . . .”), and 

persuasively plausible argument—with some empirical illustration—not empirical proof. But, the fact that 

this analysis has been about conceptual construction 

does not mean that its inherently immaterial subject 

is unimportant. The subject is nothing less than the 
45

way in which we conceive of the strategic world and, 

as a consequence, the intellectual order we choose to 

impose. Such conceptualization and ordering play a 

critical role in our education for strategic action.

At the outset of this enquiry a four-part master argument was advanced for examination. Specifically, it 

was argued that: (1) it is a mistake to categorize challenges as either irregular or traditional; (2) the addition of a third large basket of strategic phenomena, 

termed hybrid challenges and wars, is not a significant improvement on the original “big two”; (3) the 

path to strategic conceptual health leads back to unified theory covering statecraft (challenges), war, and 

strategy; and, (4) theory construction for particular 

strategic challenge (by geography, technology, intensity, inter alia) can only be undertaken in relative—and 

downstream, consquently practical—intellectual safety when it is conducted under the overall authority of 

the single general theory (e.g., of strategy).

The argument has been considered in some detail, 

and occasionally pressed dangerously close to its limits in the interest of clarity. Given that much of the text 

has had to be theoretical, even rather abstract and apparently ethereal, it is appropriate that I should make 

some effort to offset the unavoidable abstraction thus 

far, by offering conclusions and recommendations 

that are as specific and unambiguous as this conceptual subject permits.

1. Clarity in definition matters greatly. It may be 

fashionable and expedient to deploy fuzzy blurring 

descriptors like “complex” or “limited,” but the price 

one pays in confusion for such apparent sophistication is likely to be heavy. More or less, complexity is 

a structural reality in all strategic endeavors, but does 

it assist the understanding of war? The use of popular 
46

adjectives demonstrates the currency of one’s professional expertise, but typically it risks blurring that 

which ought to be clear. Whatever the politicians may 

be claiming, if the bad guys are shooting at me, then I 

am engaged in warfare, which is prima facie evidence 

for my involvement in a war.

2. The virus of encyclopedism in definitions should be 

recognized and resisted. There is a role and a place for 

illustrative detail, but that role and place is not in a 

definition. Social science is content to tolerate exceptions to its theories—it is satisfied with explanations 

covering most cases, not each and every one. In the 

definition of strategic concepts, more detail inevitably 

promotes less clarity and therefore less understanding. 

William of Occam should be regarded as the patron 

saint of wordsmithing for strategic conceptualization.

3. Ideas matter: Concepts for theory have practical 

consequences. The way in which we behave strategically is not dictated strictly by the way in which we 

conceptualize its challenges and intellectually order 

our possible responses, but our concepts educate our 

perception and interpretation of events, and they find 

expression in the doctrine that shapes our behavior.52

Of course, strategic behavior should be adaptable to 

unanticipated events, but frequently it is not. Strategic 

and military culture can and does change, but at any 

one time it is going to help mold action now in ways 

organized doctrinally in the light shed by authoritative strategy concepts.

4. General theory educates for the sound construction 

of particular theories. The general theory of strategy 

(and of statecraft and war) provides the conceptual 

foundations upon which particular theories (e.g., for 

COIN, CT, air power, cyber power, inter alia) can be 

constructed. COIN practitioners strive to do COIN in 
47

ways and with means suitable to the case at issue, but 

their efforts are located conceptually in the context of 

general theory. Conceptual efforts focused on Afghanistan should be able to draw upon theory and its wisdom from other cases of strategic endeavor, including 

but not confined to COIN. With some persuasive justification, it can be claimed that there are no new stages 

upon which strategic history is played; there is only 

one, with the furniture endlessly rearranged. I suspect 

that actors and even plots also have more continuities 

than are perceived in journalistic judgments that are 

light on historical perspective. While the detail of strategic history is always in motion, its grander narratives are not. This is why Sun Tzu, Thucydides, and 

Clausewitz, remain the basis of a sound education in 

statecraft and strategy.

5. The categorization of challenges according to taste 

and fashion may be regrettable, but if in practice it is unavoidable, its potential to cause harm can be minimized by 

contextualization. To illustrate: Today there is an evermore-urgent need for cyberpower to be understood 

so that it can be explained to those who must use it 

strategically. However, the necessary understanding 

of the digital realm cannot be achieved wholly selfreferentially. The theory needed for cyberpower must, 

simultaneously, be fully respectful both of the evolving “grammar” of cyber- and cyber-enabled warfare, 

as well as of the authority of the general theory that 

governs all strategic endeavors.53 Air power, cyber 

power, special operations forces, and arguably even 

nuclear weapons, have not compelled a rewriting of 

the general theory of strategy (or of statecraft or war). 

For each individual strategic historical case — Korea, 

Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, inter alia — there has to be 

particular adaptable evolving strategies that are mani-
48

festations of a general understanding and explanation 

of strategic history that draws upon the evidence of 

the ages.

6. Unwise categorization encourages the tacticization, 

which means the neglect, of strategy. Exclusively packaged categories of perceived strategic challenges or 

threats have the nontrivial potential to mislead us into 

fighting the wrong war in the absence of functioning 

navigation aids. If we sally forth to wage traditional 

war, we can find—indeed, recently have found—that 

there are nontraditional kinds of warfare that our initial victory, alas, did not cover. If we organize and 

deploy to conduct irregular war, we find our troops 

exposed in unduly widely distributed small packets 

to traditional forms of assault by enemies seeking victories in combats of modest scale. And if we organize 

and deploy for hybrid war, prudently we are ready 

for what should comprise the full range of menaces 

available to our foes. But this category of war, or warfare, is not sufficiently and meaningfully distinguishable from war and warfare conceived and approached 

as a whole. If the defense community is educated as 

it should be conceptually and historically to understand that war and warfare are rarely option-pure by 

exclusive intellectual type, it is difficult to see what 

the hybrid concept contributes that is useful. Since 

categorical creativity is unstoppable in a community 

peopled by gifted theorists with careers to advance, at 

the least we can strive to limit the self-harming consequences of imprudent conceptualization by insisting upon the contextual discipline of general theory. 

Soldiers should understand that occasionally they will 

be sent to war on behalf of the nation. The fact that 

some of our theorists wish to classify this or that case 

as being mainly irregular, or asymmetric, or hybrid, 
49

or compound, or anything else of like ilk, ought not to 

be allowed to impede our strategic efforts. We should 

seek to avoid being taken hostage by our own problematic concepts in a grim intellectual facsimile of the 

Stockholm Syndrome.

7. Because all manner of challenges/threats are possible 

and even probable in the future, it cannot be prudent for 

Americans to employ a strategic conceptual structure that 

could well result in the limiting of their ability to understand and respond effectively to under-anticipated events. 

To identify authoritatively by doctrinal fiat that challenges come in two, three, or more categories, which 

is to say classes, of events sufficiently exclusive as to 

justify distinctive labeling, is to construct conceptual 

walls that are certain to be substantially fictitious. 

A mind educated in strategic and other history and 

that is steeped in the general strategic theory that has 

stood the test of time—including shifting intellectual 

fashion, events, and focused criticism—does not need 

to be guided by categorical conceptualization. When 

we choose to fight, we fight in attempt to win the war, 

not the irregular, traditional, hybrid, or asymmetrical war. Furthermore, our military effort has to be 

conceived as a component of grand strategy, with its 

many extra-military elements. And that grand strategy 

is an exercise in continuing statecraft, which includes 

the necessity to ensure adequate domestic support. 

The particular character of grand strategic and military effort that is required to meet a unique strategic 

challenge will depend in good part on the U.S. policy 

determination that action is desirable. In many cases, 

the character of the challenge perceived by American 

policymakers will not dictate the full character of the 

American response; at least it should not do so.
50

The core of the argument of this monograph is expressed—certainly it is suggested—in the following 

words by Antulio J. Echevarria that I am pleased to 

deploy as my Parthian shot:

The many definitions of types of war and the various 

descriptors we attach to the term “war” suggest we 

have not yet transitioned from a way of battle to a way 

of war. We still have difficulty thinking of war holistically as something multifaceted and dynamic.54

ENDNOTES

1. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Michael Howard and Peter 

Paret, eds. and trans., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 

1976, p. 578.

2. Antulio J. Echevarria II, “American Strategic Culture: Problems and Prospects,” in Hew Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers, eds., 

The Changing Character of War, Oxford, UK: Oxford University 

Press, 2011, p. 438.

3. W. Alexander Vacca and Mark Davidson, “The Regularity 

of Irregular Warfare,” Parameters, Vol. XLI, No. 1, Spring 2011, p. 

18.

4. Brian McAllister Linn, The Echo of War: The Army’s Way of 

War, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007, pp. 1-2. 

Some helpful explanation for the recent and current conceptual 

confusion can be found in Paul K. David and Peter A. Wilson, 

Looming Discontinuities in U.S. Military Strategy and Defense Planning: Colliding RMAs Necessitate a New Strategy, Occasional Paper, 

Santa Monica, CA: National Defense Research Center, RAND, 

2011.

5. I endeavor to present and explain the general theory of 

strategy in The Strategy Bridge: Theory for Practice, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010.
51

6. It is a general rule that recent and current events appear 

far more novel at their time of occurrence than they do when the 

passage of years enables their assessment in some historical perspective. If a defense community is not inclined to be respectful 

of historical narratives, it maximizes the prospects of its failing 

to contextualize new developments usefully. In strategic matters, 

there is little that is genuinely new beyond the details. Nearly all 

contemporary strategic phenomena have analogically helpful historical near precedents.

7. The British soldier-theorist Charles E. Callwell famously 

wrote in his classic study of “small wars” that “[t]heory cannot 

be accepted as conclusive when practice points the other way; the 

objections of the square are manifest, but it has scores of times 

fulfilled its purpose.” Small Wars: A Tactical Textbook for Imperial 

Soldiers, 1906; Novato, CA: Presido Press, 1990, p. 270. Callwell 

noted that the infantry “square,” providing all-round defense in 

close order, was an essential tactical option as late as the 1890s in 

some colonial warfare.

8. “The United States is a big, lumbering, pluralistic, affluent, 

liberal, democratic, individualistic, materialistic (if not hedonistic), technologically supremely sophisticated society. Our military 

strategy should and, indeed, must be built upon these facts. The 

way we fight necessarily will reflect the way we live.” Samuel 

P. Huntington, American Military Strategy, Policy Papers in International Affairs, No. 28, Berkeley, CA: Institute of International 

Studies, University of California, Berkeley, p. 13. 

9. I develop this and other relevant ideas about education in 

strategy for strategic practice in my Schools for Strategy: Teaching 

Strategy for 21st Century Conflict, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, November 2009.

10. With specific reference to the focus of concern in this 

analysis, I have been guilty of endorsing the still-quite-popular 

and distinctive binary categorization of warfare into allegedly 

regular and irregular boxes. I can claim some prescience when I 

wrote that “[t]he first feature [about future warfare] we can predict with high confidence is that there is going to be a blurring, 

perhaps we should say a further blurring, of warfare categories. 

The convenient binary distinction between regular and irregular 
52

warfare frequently is going to be much less clear in practice than 

it is conceptually or in law.” Colin S. Gray, Another Bloody Century: 

Future Warfare, London, UK: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005, p. 

199. What I should have said is that warfare should be treated 

as a unified body of phenomena with a single defining concept, 

not as comprising a number of categories, no matter how allegedly blurred. It is worth noting that my tentative reaching in 2005 

for a way to express the porosity of the regular (traditional) and 

irregular categories would seem to have been not dissimilar in 

nature and character from those of Frank G. Hoffman in the same 

period. Hoffman embraced and developed the concept, now familiar, of hybrid wars and warfare, which I do not endorse on the 

terms that he has advanced, but we appear to have shared a root 

epiphany. See Frank G. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century: The 

Rise of Hybrid War, Arlington, VA: Potomac Institute for Policy 

Studies, December 2007. I found Hoffman’s work outstandingly 

thoughtful and useful, even though I do not endorse the hybrid 

label for reasons made explicit in my text here.

11. For the persuasive and useful concept of cultural inertia, 

I am grateful to Jeannie L. Johnson and Matthew T. Berrett, “Cultural Topography: A New Research Tool for Intelligence Analysis,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 55, No. 2, Extracts, June 2011, p. 1. 

On the cultural dimension to strategy, see Lawrence Sondhaus, 

Strategic Culture and Ways of War, Abingdon, MA: Routledge, 2006; 

Jeannie L. Johnson, Kerry M. Kartchner, and Jeffrey A. Larsen, 

eds., Strategic Culture and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Culturally 

Based Insights into Comparative National Security Policymaking, New 

York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009; Echevarria, “American Strategic Culture”; and Colin S. Gray, Perspectives on Strategy, Chap. 3, 

forthcoming.

12. Patrick Porter, Military Orientalism: Eastern War Through 

Western Eyes, London, UK: C. Hurst, 2009; and Echevarria, “American Strategic Culture.” Both shoot a few innocents in their tough 

critiques, but overall they are fair.

13. This is a reasonable interpretation of Clausewitz, On War, 

especially p. 77.

14. See Robert E. Osgood, Limited War: The Challenge to American Strategy, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1957; 
53

Robert E. Osgood, Limited War Revisited, Boulder, CO: Westview 

Press, 1979; and Morton H. Halperin, Limited War in the Nuclear 

Age, New York: Wiley, 1963.

15. See Steven Peter Rosen, “Vietnam and the American Theory of Limited War,” International Security, Vol. 7, No. 2, Fall 1982, 

pp. 83-113.

16. Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios, New 

York: Praeger, 1965.

17. Clausewitz’s liking for trinities is well noted in Hew 

Strachan, Clausewitz’s On War: A Biography, New York: Atlantic 

Monthly Press, pp. 85-87. In The Strategy Bridge, I offer an Appendix D, “Potent Trinities: Fourteen Skeleton Keys of Theory for the 

Strategist,” pp. 278-283.

18. Frank G. Hoffman’s recent writings provide the best entrée into the strategic conceptual world of postulated hybridity. 

From a healthy choice of offerings, see his Conflict in the 21st Century, and for a more recent venture, “Future Threats and Strategic 

Thinking,” Infinity Journal, No. 4, Fall 2011, pp. 17-21. Both neologisms and cross-disciplinary borrowings of key defining concepts 

need to be received with caution—the latter, in particular—because ideas borrowed from one discipline and for their merit in 

another can carry some baggage of popular meaning that may 

mislead. Overall, there is the peril of anachronism. Hybridity is an 

entirely respectable idea in biology and zoology; it refers to mixed 

parentage (different species) resulting in a new species of plant or 

animal. When transferred to strategy in the case of interest here, it 

means a war and its warfare with mixed parentage among types. 

Dictionaries do not specify required percentages of distinctive 

strains of provenance for new speciation. This seemingly pedantic 

point may matter for strategic studies, given that many conflicts, 

at any one time, will show activity heavily favoring only one or 

two, among a theoretical range of choices including at least several more types of warfare. My point is that dictionaries provide 

quite permissive definitions of hybridity. This could be important 

if one seeks to argue for this concept having seriously exclusive 

defining potency and therefore practical utility.
54

19. See the somewhat autobiographical writings of Australian 

anthropologist-soldier and COIN theorist-practitioner, David J. 

Kilcullen, especially his “Counter-Insurgency Redux,” Survival, 

Vol. 48, No. 4, Winter 2006-07, pp. 111-130; and The Accidental 

Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One, London, 

UK: C. Hurst, 2009. Kilcullen strays occasionally, though understandably, into undue enthusiasm for anthropology in relation to 

COIN, but on careful reading his theorizing and advice are tolerably well hedged and nuanced.

20. Gian P. Gentile is the leading proponent of the thesis that 

the basic direction taken by American COIN theory and much 

COIN practice in the second half of the 2000s has been either 

astrategic or even inadvertently anti-strategic. See Gian P. Gentile, 

“A Strategy of Tactics: Population-centric COIN and the Army,” 

Parameters, Vol. XXXIX, No. 3, Autumn 2009, pp. 15-17; and “The 

Death of American Strategy,” Infinity Journal, No. 3, Summer 

2011, pp. 14-16.

21. For an enlightening recent major report on American professional military education, see U.S. House of Representatives, 

Committee on Armed Services, Subcommittee on Oversight and 

Investigations, Another Crossroads? Professional Military Education 

Two Decades After the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the Skelton Panel, 

Committee Print 111-4, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 2010, especially pp. 49-93 on “Developing Strategists.”

22. Clausewitz, On War, Chap. 2, “On the Theory of War.”

23. Linn, The Echo of Battle, pp. 1-2, 233-243.

24. For a classic treatment, see Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, Washington, DC: The Brookings 

Institution, 1974.

25. Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, New 

York: Sentinel, 2011, pp. xiii-xv, is essential, as well as amusing.

26. John A. Lynn advances the claim for the superiority of 

mind over muscle convincingly in his Battle: A History of Combat 

and Culture, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003; a position endorsed in Gray, Perspectives on Strategy.
55

27. Notwithstanding its Rimland geopolitical position, meaning that it is not easily landlockable as was both Germany (twice) 

and then the late and unlamented USSR, the PRC today and even 

tomorrow is all but hopelessly overmatched in maritime, especially naval, strength by its possible enemies. The potential globality of Chinese power and influence is highly vulnerable to hostile 

maritime effort. This is not a particularly fashionable view today, 

but then neither is geostrategic analysis as a necessary partner to 

geopolitical considerations. On the subject of the Eurasian Rimland, the founding text is Nicholas J. Spykman, The Geography of 

the Peace, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1944.

28. Regarding America’s internal frontier, there was an exception to the unpopularity of warfare against nonstate foes. Unsurprisingly, Americans living precariously within combat reach of 

their sometimes bellicose Native American neighbors were rarely 

seriously averse to (strategically effective) warfare against nonstate enemies. The relevant literature is huge, but I have found the 

following works especially helpful: Reginald C. Stuart, War and 

American Thought: From the Revolution to the Monroe Doctrine, Kent, 

OH: The Kent State University Press, 1982; Armstrong Starkey, 

European and Native American Warfare, 1675-1815, Norman, OK: 

University of Oklahoma Press, 1998; William B. Kessel and Robert Wooster, eds., Encyclopedia of Native American Wars and Warfare, New York: Checkmark Books, 2005; Pekka Hamalannen, The 

Comanche Empire, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008; 

and Nathaniel Philbrick, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the 

Battle of the Little Big Horn, London, UK: The Bodley Head, 2010.

29. “Small war is a term which has come largely into use of 

late years and which is admittedly somewhat difficult to define. 

Practically it may be said to include all campaigns other than 

those where both the opposing sides consist of regular troops.” 

Callwell, Small Wars, p. 21. In its doctrinal manual of 1940, the 

U.S. Marine Corps advised that: 

The term “Small War”is often a vague name for any 

one of a great variety of military operations. As applied to the United States, small wars are operations 

undertaken under executive authority, wherein military force is combined with diplomatic pressure in 

the internal or external affairs of another state whose 

government is unstable, inadequate, or unsatisfactory 
56

for the preservation of life and of such interests as 

are determined by the foreign policy of our Nation. 

U.S. Marine Corps, Small Wars Manual, United States 

Marine Corps, 1940, Manhattan, KS: Sunflower University Press, no date given, p. 21. The official American 

tendency to indulge in definitional prolixity is all too 

evident in this quoted cultural gem.

30. See John P. Rose, The Evolution of U.S. Army Nuclear Doctrine, 1945-1980, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1980; Andrew J. 

Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army between Korea and Vietnam, Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1986; 

and especially Linn, The Echo of Battle, Chap. 6.

31. Clausewitz in On War can be interpreted in different ways, 

depending upon the part(s) of the book most favored for one’s 

purpose, and the choice of translation. Also, it needs to be said 

that although Clausewitz should be treated with more respect as 

a theorist of war than any of his competitors down the ages, the 

goal is not to secure the most accurate grip upon Clausewitz’s 

meaning writing in the 1820s, but rather to achieve understanding for explanation for us today, with such helpful guidance as we 

can reasonably draw from On War. Clausewitz distinguishes between absolute and limited wars (p. 489), and indeed he suggests 

that two kinds of limited war are possible: “offensive war with a 

limited aim, and defensive war” (p. 602). While he emphasizes the 

difference between wars with the character of those waged by Napoleon for clear decision via the enemy’s military overthrow and 

wars with more limited aims, one should not make too much of 

that distinction. When Clausewitz writes about absolute war, he 

can be referring to wars of maximum strategic ambition, or, confusingly to the unwary, to war’s inherent dynamically reciprocal 

violent nature. He knew, and said, that every age had its own limiting conditions. What we should take from On War in this central 

matter is that all wars have some potential to spiral violently in 

obedience to their own conflictual logic and grammar, while it 

is sensible to recognize that every war will in several senses be 

limited; it is a question of degree. “Limited” is a notably inclusive 

adjective. The proposition that wars occur in two forms, absolute 

or limited, is not a safe or intelligent reading of Clausewitz. Porter, Military Orientalism, is excellent on war having “a discipline 

of its own,” and—following Clausewitz, who better!—in noting 
57

that “as a duel there is the reciprocal competitive nature of war 

itself,” pp. 65, 170. 

32. See John Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence, Ithaca, 

NY: Cornell University Press, 1983.

33. Bernard Brodie, Escalation and the Nuclear Option, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966. Brodie sensibly poured 

cold strategic water on the prospects for a non-nuclear defense 

of NATO-Europe that was popular at his time of writing in the 

mid-1960s.

34. Insurgents who are out of power, but wish to be in power, 

are certainly stateless at present, but they are usually classed as 

irregular combatants even though their political ambition is thoroughly regular, to achieve power and then authority in a state.

35. An interesting examination of a relevant though problematic concept is Roger W. Barnett, Asymmetrical Warfare: Today’s 

Challenge to U.S. Military Power, Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2003.

36. Colin S. Gray, “Strategic Thought for Defence Planners,”

Survival, Vol. 52, No. 3, June-July 2010, pp. 159-178, argues for the 

prudence in adaptability.

37. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Samuel B. Griffith, trans., Oxford, 

UK: Clarendon Press, 1963, p. 84.

38. Ibid., p. 77.

39. See Colin S. Gray, Understanding Airpower: Bonfire of the Fallacies, Research Paper 2009—3, Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air 

University, Air Force Research Institute, March 2009, pp. 45-51; 

David E. Johnson, M. Wade Markel, and Brian Shannon, The 2008 

Battle of Sadr City, Occasional Paper, Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 

Arroyo Center, 2011, p. 18, makes a persuasive case for the high 

military utility of “Heavy forces—i.e., tanks and infantry fighting 

vehicles” as “key elements of maneuver in complex terrain [e.g., 

urban areas]; they are survivable, lethal, and precise.” 

40. Clausewitz, On War, p. 89.
58

41. Thucydides, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive 

Guide to The Peloponnesian War, Robert B. Strassler, ed., New York: 

The Free Press, 1996, p. 43.

42. See A. J. Coates, The Ethics of War, Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997; and Christopher Coker, Ethics and 

War in the 21st Century, Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2008.

43. I was particularly insistent on contextual analysis in my 

Another Bloody Century, Chap. 2.

44. Michael I. Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic 

Thought, 3rd Ed., London, UK: Frank Cass, 2001, pp. 353-360.

45. Antulio J. Echevarria II, Toward an American Way of War, 

Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 

2004.

46. Harold R. Winton, “An Imperfect Jewel: Military Theory 

and the Military Profession,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 

34, No. 6, December 2011, pp. 853-877. 

47. Hoffman, Conflict in the 21st Century, p. 11.

48. Ibid., p. 14.

49. Emily Spencer, The Difficult War: Perspectives on Insurgency 

and Special Operations Forces, Kingston, Ontario, Canada: Canadian Defence Academy Press, 2009. The “difficult war” is more than 

casually reminiscent of Max C. Manwaring’s edited book, Uncomfortable Wars: Toward a New Paradigm of Low Intensity Conflict, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991. I predict with high confidence that 

neither difficult war theory nor uncomfortable war theory either 

have, or should have, a future. They fail every test for a useful 

strategic concept, except that of being memorable.

50. See Montgomery McFate, “The Military Utility of Understanding Adversary Culture,” Joint Force Quarterly, No. 38, 3rd 

quarter, 2005, pp. 42-48; and Johnson and Berrett, “Cultural Topography.”

51. Historian John France advances this argument in his Perilous Glory: The Rise of Western Military Power, New Haven, CT: 
59

Yale University Press, 2011. The theory that man is evolving psychologically with a changing mental condition ever less inclined 

toward violence is a popular a fallacy because it lacks empirical 

traction in both scientific physical and historical evidence.

52. Lynn, Battle, is particularly helpful on the importance of 

ideas as an influence on behavior.

53. Clausewitz, On War, p. 605.

54. Antulio J. Echevarria II, Preparing for One War and Getting 

Another, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War 

College, September 2010, p. 25.

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