Special Commentary:

“Hole” of Government: What COVID-19 

Reveals about American Security Planning

May 06, 2020 | Dr. Isaiah Wilson III

Novel Coronavirus, COVID-19.

Almost no more need be said. This is not the traditional “monster” America prepared to 

destroy. But, it is the monster we face.

The coronavirus, COVID-19, typifies the “compound” nature of today’s security threats. This 

deadly adversary is inimical to accepted international laws and conventions regarding warfare 

and human security protections. It is a true omnivore, respecting no borders and consuming all 

classes, genders, races, and faiths. This adversary has driven mass societal disruption and

managed in about four months’ time to infect over 1.2 million (confirmed cases) with nearly 

72,000 deaths, in the United States alone. Worldwide economic recession, even depression,

seems likely and national publics now question their governments’ capacity and will to contain 

the adversary. Should governments fail to do so (most experts agree that the opportunity to 

contain COVID-19 is lost), big-data computer projections predict as many as 173,000 could die

in the United States by the end of May 2020. The yet untold damage from such a toll across all 

sectors—political, economic, and societal—is incalculable. The potential for a global paradigm 

shift in the way we should perceive these threats is real. 

Some may ask, why speak of combatting a global pandemic as though we are waging an 

epochal war? This moment takes the popular fashion of war rhetoric beyond the metaphorical: 

We are at war against this virus...or at least we should be. We should regard this threat and its 

compounded implications as the security issue it is. COVID-19 is indicative of the changed 

nature of many of today’s threats.

COMPOUND SECURITY THREATS: A NEW COMPOUND SECURITY DILEMMA

The COVID-19 pandemic is an exemplar of the new, complex, and most dangerous periods 

in our Nation’s history. What makes it so uniquely “dangerous” is the changed nature of the 
threats. They have all compounded largely because the root causes and underlying conditions 

have been allowed (passive voice is intentional here) to go for so long, unaddressed or underaddressed. The security dilemma of the 20th century international environment–defined 

primarily by material-based security threats of a military nature–has now given way to a new 

21st century security dilemma: the “compound security dilemma.” 

By “compounded” I am referring to “the increased interaction–interconnectedness and 

collision–of otherwise once separate policy issues reflective of this new, post-Cold War (and now 

post-9/11) international security environment.” These issues include economic imbalances, 

sectarian conflict, massive and sudden demographic shifts due to regional conflict, climate 

change, loss of trust in governing institutions, and border concerns inextricably tied to identity. 

The repercussions of these compound threats multiply exponentially rather than add linearly as 

would traditional threats. Another distinguishing aspect of the compound threat is its very 

multi-compositional and boundaries-spanning nature. These characteristics dramatically alter 

the calculations of risk and reward so critical to strategy planning and policy decision-making. 

The new compound security dilemma questions the old logic of the traditional security 

dilemma and issues a clarion call for an entirely new governing logic. Both harmonize on the 

core questions of scale (and economies and diseconomies of scale) and legitimacy (of preferred 

unilateral policy approaches over multilateral options). Both center on the issue of instrumental 

solvency as well as ideational sovereignty. Global health pandemics are a clear expression of the 

compound security dynamic and the new security dilemma it manifests.

These compound threats are incredibly complex. They transcend the traditional boundaries 

of the foreign versus domestic, public versus private, government versus private sector, and 

military versus non-military. These new compound threats are nearly impossible to contain and 

especially so by traditional means. They are transnational and transregional, with the potential 

for metastasizing into big compound “contagion events” (including compound wars) with 

potential for big global-wide disruptions. These are the hard lessons of COVID-19. PostWestphalian threats are currently defeating ineffectual Westphalian treatment approaches. 

Central to this compound security dilemma is the tragedy of scales problem. Exponential 

contagion spread outpaces traditional governmental and public-private service capacities 

calibrated to efficient response-mitigate-recovery public policy approaches. Compound threats

generate simultaneous and overlapping waves of instability through the interaction between 

countless variables. This interaction is multiplicative, not additive, in nature.

Conventional Paradigm Compound Security Paradigm

Threat Calculation A + B + C A x B x C

Threat Manifestation Divergent or Convergent Convergent

Figure 1. Multiplicative Dynamics of "Compound Threats"
Similar to the paradox of the “wicked problem,” under-treatments and late treatments only 

cause compound security threats to metastasize. This dynamic is just as apt to the COVID-19

pandemic as it is to numerous other “nexuses of conflict” such as the rise of ISIS, the crises in 

the Middle East, the compound threat in Venezuela, and others that manifest at geopolitical 

flashpoints. These threat trends often converge at key geographic locations that happen to reside 

at major seams—political, cultural, ethno-sectarian divides—at or near key states (“strategic 

pivot states”) at the nexuses of our current geographic combatant command Unified Command 

Plan boundaries.

Another challenge exacerbating the compound security phenomenon is the disjointed

culture and architecture of our US national security and defense enterprise. This has been 

evident in the tardy public health response to COVID-19. Planners at the regional (theater) 

strategic level seek to contain and reverse adversaries and macro threat trends that threaten to 

“break” nation-states. Yet the operational and tactical level is faced with adversaries and threats 

that are increasingly asymmetric and operate simultaneously on noncontiguous battle fronts—

physical, virtual, and ideational. These compounded threats often present themselves at 

thresholds of dangers falling short of traditional war, via direct and indirect actions. 

These “threat nexuses” are clear challenges, but they also present big opportunities. 

Sharpening our focus and applying our resources in more precise and creative ways, 

simultaneously, at decisive locations can achieve overmatching compound wins.

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STRATEGIC APPLICATION OF “LAND-FORCE”

Compound Threats Demand Compound Treatments, For Compound “Wins”

Strategic level whole-of-government approaches to planning and decision-making can help 

devise better strategies and optimize resources. Redesigning ourselves for more integrative ways 

for thinking, planning, and acting anew is mandatory if we are to achieve true competitive 

engagement national capacity. Only this will preserve and defend our Nation from the perils of 

this new compound operating environment. As the last few decades of counterinsurgency and 

stabilization demonstrated, only the synthesis of various lines of effort can create opportunity 

for sustainable change and threat resolution. A similar approach is necessary for compound 

threats, but at a vastly different scale and delivery. So it is with countering COVID-19.

Our existing structures and processes for planning and analysis are not sufficient for today’s 

and tomorrow’s needs. Increasingly adversarial relationships with a wide array of “2 +3” 

threats—Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and the self-declared Islamic State—demand major 

strategic shifts in policy, war plans, planning architectures, and approaches. Our current

systems do not adequately account for these compounding dynamics. The United States’ former 

top general, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford, agrees: “Our 

traditional approach where we are either at peace or at war is insufficient to deal with that 

dynamic.” 
Moreover, Dunford recognized the state of “adversarial competition with a military 

dimension short of armed conflict,” what military and security studies scholars and practitioners 

have come to label “gray-zone” conflict. This particular description, which in many ways 

answers the key questions of whether and how the character of geopolitical competition has 

changed, now represents an increasingly resonant line of inquiry in defense circles. 

These so-called gray zone conflicts are nothing more than manifestations of the compound 

security dilemma. Yet, a compound security dilemma is partly an artifact of limitations in how 

we view and approach security problems: what constitutes security versus non-security (an 

ideational blinder), our institutional structures for planning, decision-making, and 

implementation (an organizational flaw), and how we prioritize an issue (an organizational

cultural dynamic). All three affect our behavior. 

In the face of compound threats, and the new compound security dilemma, these three 

factors have eroded the solving power of our traditional policy and strategy planning, decisionmaking, and operations. No longer is it acceptable to solve one simple problem. Now we must 

resolve multidimensional, multifunctional puzzles. Sadly, our legacy organizational and process 

designs are not up to 

the challenge. They 

permit far too much 

“lag” in risk 

assessments to deal 

with new trans-regional

compound security 

threats. Some degree of 

lag is natural in 

analytical processes 

that must follow behind 

real-time change.

However, today’s lags

have become 

dangerously wide and 

must be fixed. They 

discount, or outright 

ignore, compounding 

and convergence 

effects, and the 

exponential dynamics 

of simultaneity.

Figure 2. What We Must Now Reconcile
America Can No Longer Go It Alone . . . And Shouldn’t.

The United States power problem today is one of insufficient power in both type and kind. 

The United States has insufficient capacity to sustain the power required to meet contemporary 

missions and insufficient capability to convert power into effective policy and strategies. Again, 

the anemic public policy handling of the COVID-19 pandemic is a sad testimonial to the fact. 

America remains an exceptional nation in terms of its relative capabilities and capacity and in 

her ability to project power globally. Yet, the United States has reached the limits of its real, 

unilateral power. Like a tall, aging boxer, the tale of the tape for the United States today might 

read: “Great reach, but poor endurance in the latter rounds.”

Frequently that reach wields the wrong kind of instrument, brings too little of the rightfitting solution set, and applies it too late—a worrisome, if not tragic, combination. There is a 

point of diminishing return that all great power nation-states (empires) must face in relation to 

the power available to expand, manage, and govern over its imperial dominions. As historian 

Paul Kennedy noted:

Nations project their military power according to their economic resources and in 

defense of their broad economic interests. But, the cost of projecting that military 

power is more than even the largest economies can afford indefinitely, especially 

when new technologies and new centers of production shift economic power away 

from established Great Powers – hence the rise and fall of nations.

We still live in an international relations paradigm that privileges the sovereignty of 

individual nation-states and the right to make their own policy choices. However, exercising that 

sovereign right to determine one’s own “art of the possible” does not always alter the nature of 

threats nor the character of change in global geopolitical, geo-economic, and geostrategic 

competition. If the policy choice is unilateralism and self-help, appropriately, the risk 

calculations must be measured against the changed and changing environment so that they do 

not become more the stuff of gamble. 

What might come with an “America First” US foreign policy? The lessons of history provide 

many examples: uncertainty, strategic miscommunications and misreads, and illiberal solutions 

and outcomes. While unilateral approaches may appear to secure short-range strategic goals,

they lack a moral footing and ultimately are insufficient to secure a durable, legitimate peace.

IMPLICATIONS FOR MILITARY STRATEGY AND FORCE PLANNING?

Compound security threats represent a change in the character, scope, and scale of 

challenges to our common defense and public welfare. While their hybrid nature is part of the 

equation, compound threats dramatically alter our public policy and force planning, sizing, and 

shaping calculations and algorithms. Under compound conditions, threats are not additive; they 

are multiplicative and, in many cases, exponential. 
As former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said, “As you know, you go to war 

with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”

Unfortunately, these remarks echo our reality today, a reality largely of our own making. At the 

same time, we too often hear this expression offered as an epiphenomenal excuse for failures of 

imagination, anticipation, forecasting, and planning, and for our under-preparedness for the 

fullness of contemporary public policy puzzles. These shortcomings are not epiphenomenal. 

They are the outcomes and consequences of our own agency and policy choices. 

Addressing these failures will require choice on all our parts, demanding our entire national 

security enterprise come to grips with a recurring set of behaviors that cuts across our checkered 

performance against compound threats:

• The phenomenon and paradox within the social constructions of the meanings of war 

and peace, the issues of security and non-security, and the tendency to win a war but to lose the 

intended peace, as evidenced by our decades-long anabasis in Iraq.

• The false distinction between national security and human security issues, as 

demonstrated by US-led military-humanitarian interventions in the 1990s, which addressed 

only symptoms but not root causes (e.g., Somalia, Kosovo, Haiti).

• The persistence of chronic, civil-societal, government-society structural inequalities that 

go unaddressed or under-addressed for many reasons, yet remain the common denominator of 

rebellions, insurrections, and insurgencies (e.g., Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, the Arab Spring). 

• The tendency to declare false or premature victories while a conflict is evolving, not 

ending; the “mission accomplished” paradox that results in undercounts in risk assessments and 

capability requirements calculations (e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, COVID-19)

If the power equation, under compound security dynamics, can no longer muster and 

sustain the type, quality, and quantities of “force” needed to overmatch threats before they 

compound, then society may simply need a whole new equation. This might be the paradigm 

shift that many within military and public policy circles have debated, even promoted, for at 

least the last three decades. The 2020 Novel Coronavirus pandemic may be its herald. But, will

we recognize it, and heed its clarion call for whole-cloth change as it faces us? Will we?

*****

The views expressed in this Special Commentary piece are those of the author and do not 

necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department 

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