Fall 2008

Journal of the

Joint and Combined Warfighting School

CAMPAIGNING
 

 Fall 2008 

ii

History 

In the 1930s, few officers were qualified, either by training or experience, to engage in 

joint operations. The demands of World War II brought out the urgent need for joint 

action by ground, sea, and air forces. To alleviate the friction and misunderstanding 

resulting from lack of joint experience, the Joint Chiefs of Staff established an Army and 

Navy Staff College (ANSCOL) in 1943. ANSCOL conducted a four-month course that 

was successful in training officers for joint command and staff duties. 

After the war, educational requirements for the armed forces were fully examined. 

Although thorough contingency planning was recognized as essential for waging war on 

a joint and combined scale, ANSCOL, which had been established to meet the immediate 

needs of war, was discontinued. A joint committee was appointed to prepare a directive 

for a new school. This directive, which was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 28 

June 1946, established the Armed Forces Staff College (AFSC). 

Responsibility for the operation and maintenance of its facilities was charged to the Chief 

of Naval Operations. Following a temporary residence in Washington, D.C., AFSC was 

established in Norfolk, Virginia, on 13 August 1946. The site, formerly a U.S. Naval 

Receiving Station, was selected by the Secretaries of War and Navy because of its 

immediate availability and its proximity to varied high-level military activities. 

There were 150 students from all Services in the first class. They assembled in converted 

administration buildings on 3 February 1947 to be greeted by the first commandant, Air 

Force Lieutenant General Delos C. Emmons. The faculty officers came from joint 

assignments in all theaters of World War II. 

With the construction of Normandy Hall in 1962, AFSC completed its transition from a 

temporary to a permanent institution. AFSC was assigned to the National Defense 

University on 12 August 1981. In the summer of 1990, AFSC changed from an 

intermediate joint professional military education school to an institution where Phase II 

of the Chairman’s Program for Joint Education is taught. 

In 2000, the AFSC was renamed the Joint Forces Staff College (JFSC). The Joint and 

Combined Warfighting School proudly traces its origin back to the Army Navy Staff 

College. Today’s JCWS educates over one thousand senior military officers from the 

United States and International countries as well as civilians from the interagency. We 

are proud of our heritage and anticipate a bright future for this great institution. 
 

 Fall 2008 

iii

 

 

 

JCWS Mission 

The Joint and Combined Warfighting School (JCWS) 

produces graduates capable of creatively and effectively 

planning operational level warfighting for joint and 

combined military forces while integrating the effects of 

the United States Government, non-governmental 

organizations, and international organizations to ensure the 

success of Combatant and Joint Task Force Commanders 

operating within an uncertain operating environment. 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this journal are those of the authors and do not represent

the views of the Joint Forces Staff College, National Defense University or the Department of

Defense.
 

 Fall 2008 

iv

Welcome to the Fall edition of your quarterly journal, Campaigning! We have been fortunate to 

have many gifted authors provide thought-provoking articles on topics of interest to warfighters 

and those involved in supporting with the planning and executing for the defense of our Nation. 

Before I provide an overview of this edition of Campaigning, I would like to say a few words 

about our Joint and Combined Warfighting School (JCWS). To date there have been over five 

hundred and forty Flag and General officers who are among the esteemed graduates of our 

institution. Our alumni serve at the highest levels of government in both the United States and 

foreign nations. As alumni, you should take pride in your association with this school and the 

laudable contributions it has made since its inception in 1946. The current class of the JCWS 

marks a substantial milestone; it is our 200th class. We look forward to the next 200 classes and 

our continued contribution to national defense and international stability. 

As we prepare for the future, the JCWS is at the cutting edge of transformational joint education 

for the 21st Century. Some of the recent accomplishments to achieve this objective are the reorganization of the school, implementation of a new curriculum, fielding of the eBook 

(electronic book) system and re-publication of Publication 1, also known as the “Purple Book”. 

We have established a curriculum development branch within the school to ensure our school is 

the best multidimensional campaign planning course available. We will ensure that planning for 

the integration of joint and combined military forces, as well as United States and international 

agencies are the core areas of our curriculum. We are in the process of designing a new 

curriculum that will be implemented in January of 2009. It is our goal that every graduate of the 

JCWS will be able to lead an Operational Planning Team in the development of theatre plans and 

strategies at the combatant command or joint task force level. To ensure we maintain the ability 

to integrate new doctrine and concepts rapidly into our curriculum, we are fielding the eBook. 

The Electronic Book (eBook) will store the full program of study and allow our curriculum 

developers to integrate, in-stride, evolving doctrine and concepts. The JCWS is also republishing our renowned “Purple Book”. The purpose of this publication is to reinforce the 

JCWS curriculum and is designed as a helpful, future reference tool for graduates. These are just 

a few of the exciting events taking place at JCWS. 

A major component of our schools outreach is the Campaigning Journal. Friends and alumni are 

strongly encouraged to submit articles for publication. The lifeblood of a vibrant, relevant 

publication is the quality and breadth of its contributors as demonstrated in this edition. This 

current issue of Campaigning features publication of the address on The Long War and the 

Future Joint Force by General James N. Mattis, Commander, United States Joint Forces 

Command; given to the Joint Symposium on Strategic Re-Assessment at the National Defense 

University in June of this year. Our steadfast supporter and great friend, Dr. Milan Vego, has 

provided an article that addresses Objectives of Land Warfare; while Mr. Michael Collender and 

Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Deller have written a thoughtful piece titled Scoping Complex 

Systems for the Joint Task Force Commander. Commander Thomas A. Zwolfer, Lieutenant 

Colonel Jim Januszka, Major Dennis S. Rand and Mr. Steve Engler have provided their JCWS 

award winning paper titled A Proposal for the Realignment of the Department of State and 

Department of Defense Areas of Responsibility. 
 

 Fall 2008 

v

In addition to our featured articles, this issue of Campaigning contains an update of the activities 

taking place at the Joint Forces Staff College. 

Finally, I would like to thank Seaman Jania Battles. Seaman Battles is truly my right-hand for 

without her support, the publication of Campaigning would not be possible. 

Craig L. Bollenberg 

Colonel, USA 

Dean 

Joint and Combined Warfighting School 
 

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vi

Index

1 The Long War and the Future Joint Force, Address to the Joint 

 Symposium on Strategic Re-Assessment 

 General James N. Mattis and Dr. Dave Fautua

11 Objectives of Land Warfare 

Dr. Milan Vego 

37 Scoping Complex Systems for the Joint Task Force Commander 

Mr. Michael Collender and Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Deller 

82 A Proposal for the Realignment of the Department of State and 

Department of Defense Areas of Responsibility

Commander Thomas A. Zwolfer, Lieutenant Colonel Jim Januszka, Major Dennis S. 

Rand and Mr. Steve Engler 

98 College Happenings 
 

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The Long War and the Future Joint Force 

 Address to Joint Symposium on Strategic Re-Assessment 

National Defense University 

By 

General James N. Mattis 

Introduction 

By 

Dr. David Fautua 

Introduction 

After seven long years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the question may rightly be asked by Joint 

and Coalition warriors: what have we learned? Answer: plenty; and ironically, little that we 

didn’t already know. That’s the sense the commander of U.S. Joint Forces Command General 

James Mattis conveyed this past summer in his address to the Joint Symposium on Strategic ReAssessment at the National Defense University. If anything, warfare over these last seven years 

has been less a showcase of American technological might than a re-education on the savagery 

of close-in battle. In places like Fallujah, Mosul, Tal Afar, Shahi Khot and Kandahar, armored 

divisions, nuclear-powered warships and supersonic fighter aircraft seem not to matter as much 

as individual valor, skill craft and ingenuity among joint and coalition warriors at the squad 

level. How did this happen? What changed? 

The undertone of GEN Mattis’ words convey the sense that perhaps the military inadvertently 

“dumbed” itself down by an overreliance on advanced technologies, which, paradoxically, was 

supposed to make it “smarter.” The “science of war” was trumping the “art of war” with the 

consequence being the fighting force was unprepared for the fight that was looming. The enemy, 

meanwhile, saw its opportunity. They changed the operational conditions of warfare from the 

predicable patterns of the Cold War to the terrifying randomness of irregular warfare. They 

redefined the battlefield away from the open plains of Europe to the jammed-packed cities, 

towns and villages of the Middle East. Innocent civilians were used as shields; women as suicide 

bombers; markets, restaurants and schools as primary targets. All of this was done, in part, to 

blunt the technological superiority of the West that some futurists promised would ensure 

“information dominance.” Instead, the conditions on the ground resembled something out of the 

Thirty Years War of Medieval era; warfare at the level of building-to-building, room-to-room, 

hand-to-hand. The attack against the U.S. homeland on “9/11” was hatched, planned and 

executed not by a Leviathan nation-state that planners in the early 1990s envisioned but rather by 

a cell of fiercely committed violent extremists operating in a backwater country half a world 

away. That “cell” has grown into a transnational and global network. 

It is perhaps a testament to the extraordinary professionalism of the fighting force that our Joint 

and Coalition warriors are turning the tables on the enemy. Al Qaeda is being decimated in Iraq 

and Afghanistan. The Anbar Awakening signals as much a turn in mindset as it is a turn in the 
 

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corner for quelling the violence. And the political ground favors a chance for peace that was 

thought impossible just a year ago. But this “transformation” has come at a steep cost. The joint 

force continues to learn and evolve, adapting new techniques and developing a cognitive 

frequency to sense for nuances in cultural and tribal customs, practices and history. What should 

we learn from this? Mattis’ message is straightforward: refocus on the warrior. Enabling 

capabilities that represent the “science of war” should do just that: enable the warrior; or to be 

precise, empower the commander. Training regimes must be devised where joint warriors can 

still “sense” the battlespace despite degraded ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) 

technologies and where the power to act is delegated down the ranks to the point of discomfort 

for the higher ups. This type of battlecraft represents the new standards for a competent joint 

force of today and tomorrow. 

For as much attention the JFCOM Commander places on the warrior ethos, he reveals a depth of 

understanding on the nature of war that goes beyond the battlespace. The “power of inspiration” 

is more important than the “power of intimidation,” he warns; and if planners can factor that 

insight into their strategies the U.S. would fight “fewer wars.” The General talks about the 

“narrative realm,” “values realm” and “information realm” as though they were vital weapon 

systems. And he states that “jointness is not a natural state” and that understanding “coalition 

warfare” is “10 times more difficult.” Had these insights come from a diplomat, the audience 

(and reader) might excuse its loftiness. These thoughts emanate instead from a confessed warrior 

monk who has thought on the nature of war over a lifetime. 

GEN Mattis heads the Combatant Command that is the Department of Defense’s proponent not 

only for joint training, force providing and joint command and control but also joint 

transformation. How the joint community positions itself for the fight against global terrorism 

intellectually and morally will be as important, if not moreso, as it’s organizational and 

technological advancement. For these reasons alone, General Mattis’s thoughts about where the 

joint force is headed is worthy for inclusion in this issue and your considered attention. 

 Dr. Dave Fautua is the Joint Forces Command Academic Chair at the Joint Forces 

Staff College. 
 

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General James N. Mattis 

The Long War and the Future Joint Force 

Address to the Joint Symposium on Strategic Re-Assessment 

 National Defense University 

5 June 2008 

This officer has great potential for advancement with that sort of judgment. Well done, young 

man. Well done. And all of you – I know we’re starting a little bit early. The purpose is to 

make certain that we have plenty of time for questions. Ladies and gentlemen, my strategist, 

Admiral John Richardson has been here and said this is not a shy group this time, so I want to 

leave plenty of time for Q&A. But, it is Washington, D.C., I got a free lunch – I feel somewhat 

obligated to at least say something to you all as a gesture of thanks for feeding me here today. 

The subject I was given was about creating tomorrow’s joint forces. And guess what? 

Tomorrow’s here, isn’t it? I mean, we’ve had to create them on the fly by painting a subway 

train as it goes by, trying to make it look good in the midst of a pretty fast orbit there on the 

Metro. And I think what I would do is just discuss a few things. I’ll try to throw out enough that 

you can challenge me or go after me or question me and save most of the time for questions here. 

But if at any point any one of you – we’ll act like this is a patrol in Indian country – if anybody 

sees something they don’t like, they can stop the patrol – private, general, it doesn’t matter. 

So if anyone here gets bored, raise your hand, I will stop, and we’ll go to Q&A. How’s that? It 

is a democracy and we’ll give that rule of the road a shot here. And please, I’m serious, feel free 

to do it. I’d much rather have been here for the last couple of days with you and when I come in 

like this and I haven’t had a chance to do that, I’m always amazed when I get to sit through a 

conference how some speakers come in, they repeat things that have already been decided, they 

don’t address things that are contentious, and I’d really rather get to your ideas. 

The operating environment that you all know for our forces has changed – the threats have 

changed. We know our strategy must change and our forces have got to change as well. I think 

that right now there’s no denying that more and more people in the world, more and more 

groups, are turning to violence. Maybe it’s just we have the 24 hour news cycle that it seems to 

me that we are going to deal with an increasing amount of violence in the world as the old rules 

of civilization seem to get frayed and people who have, for one reason or another, no desire to 

reconcile or compromise on any issue, are going to continue to dominate the initiatives in the 

world. And I say that because although I recognize some people want to say, look let’s hold our 

breath, the irregular world will go away and we can get back to good old soldiering again. 

Unfortunately in war, the enemy gets a vote. And for us to opt out, we have seen the Western 

democracies opt out once before in the last century and we watched the result of it and we paid 

millions of lives in this world in order to stop what we had allowed ourselves to be fooled about. 
 

 Fall 2008 

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So I don’t think you can ignore the enemy’s choices in this world and say somehow we’re going 

to use only our symmetric advantages, we just won’t fight in other areas. 

I think that a nation state in conventional war is certainly in a period of perhaps hibernation. I 

don’t think it’s gone away, but the most likely threats probably today are not going to be 

conventional or from another state. Now recently – I’m going to just speak to it right up front – 

Secretary Gates has warned us to avoid that trap of next war-itis and I could not agree with him 

more. Now let’s be very clear about the message and let’s accept it. He’s a rather intellectual 

man who knows the world better than many. 

His target audience, I think in this case, are those who would refuse to recognize the challenge of 

our current fight. Those who do want to wait until we can get back to good old soldiering, iconic 

weapon system against iconic weapon system – this is just an interlude right now. This is not an 

interlude and he’s quite right to say we are going to focus on it. But at the same time, I have no 

doubt we will look at the future. He expects us to look at the future. We will not allow our 

enemies to steal a march on us and be prepared to conduct a different style of war that we have 

not yet prepared for. 

So the answer, I believe, ladies and gentlemen, is we take a balanced approach. We accept 

there’s a certain amount of conventional and state-on-state warfare that’s in hibernation. It’s 

going to come back again. We assume that. For one thing, if we don’t want to have it happen, 

we have to be ready for it. But at the same time, we marry our time. We don’t deny the reality. 

As I was reading here very recently about “shock and awe,” there’s still at least one believer, 

still, in shock and awe, believe it or not. He had not read the front page of The New York Times

in six years, I’m convinced, but he’s still holding out for shock and awe. And I just suggest to 

you that the reality is one that we have got to address and not keep painting bumper stickers up 

there that sound good and that we can gain a certain amount of traction with people who don’t 

study what war is all about. 

We are working to articulate this vision for the future. And I think you may have heard some of 

this, so Wilbur, if you would hit the first slide for a minute. And what we’re talking about here 

is in the Joint Operating Environment, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to describe what we 

think are the alternative futures and those military implications. As difficult as it is to forecast 

the future, we know that we’ve got to study this, because if we don’t, we certainly will be caught 

flat-footed. That’s all there is to it. 

Now, none of us have a crystal ball, but history’s a pretty big help. And when you look at 

Bosnia, you look at Chechnya, you flash forward to Iraq and Afghanistan, and especially 

something we are focusing on heavily right now with some of our friends in NATO and 

elsewhere, is what happened in the second Lebanon war. The dim signposts are starting to come 

sharply into focus. And as they come into focus, we have to remember we’re always looking 

backwards somewhat, but that is the best possible signpost we can find. Then we apply our 

military judgment, our study, our experimentation, our concept development, in order to flesh it 
 

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out and determine if this is really where we need to go. Is the joint operating environment really 

going to look like this in the future? 

We’re going to take that vision of the future and we are going to then turn around and say, “OK 

what about it”? It’s going to be the intellectual underpinning for the Capstone Concept for Joint 

Operations. And this is how we are going to articulate how the joint force will operate and fight 

in the future. And one point again, I want to reiterate here; I’m not sure what we want to call it. 

We’ll use irregular war for this talk because in here, we are going to articulate some of those 

terms. You may not be interested in irregular war, to paraphrase Trotsky, but irregular war is 

very interested in you. And so, it will be key to the Capstone Concept on Joint Operations. 

What we’re going to use is an evidence-based approach. It’s going to consider history, including 

the current operations, war-gaming, and experimentation. An example for you, ladies and 

gentlemen, if you look back at the Germans’ Condor Legion in Spain, during the Spanish Civil 

War, where basically the Germans put what you and I would call a brigade combat team into 

Spain with air support, an air/ground team, Stukas overhead, and they experimented. They 

harvested a lot of results. They found one good thing. Put a radio in the tank, talk to the airplane 

overhead, you get a lot more than one plus one operating separately. You get synergy. 

Our Condor Legion right now is run by a guy by the name of Dave Petraeus, it’s a heck of an 

experiment. It’s much better than some of the experiments we’ve run down in Norfolk in the 

past and we’re going to harvest those lessons. We’ve got a specialized team that’s been flown 

into Baghdad with his full support here about four months ago. And it is sending back to us what 

we need to change in terms of joint doctrine and this sort of thing. 

My point to you is the lessons are out there. Are we going to look at them? Are we going to 

study them and do something about it? This is the process. I hate getting into process, but I 

think in this case it might give you a certain amount of confidence that we do have an 

intellectually sound way to harvest those lessons, study what’s going on, take them forward, and 

form how we will fight and operate the force in the future. 

We know we’re not going to get this exactly right. Our intent is not to get it completely wrong. 

If you were in my office in Hampton Roads, 200 years ago today, and we were scratching our 

heads, and we’re all pretty bright folks and we’re trying to figure out where are we going to fight 

next, say in the next ten years, nobody anticipated that the Royal Navy was going to sail right up 

past my office and burn this town to the ground. They were not dumb people. They had created 

a country, they had beaten the Redcoats, who had beat Napoleon a few years later. They had 

written a Constitution that stood the test of time. They were not dumb people. Surprise will 

remain a primary factor in national security affairs and if anything, those who think that the fog 

and friction of war was going to disappear because of American technology, if they haven’t been 

convinced otherwise by now, all we can do is send them off to the old folks home and get them 

out of the way because they are out of touch with reality. 
 

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A point I would make here is that we’re going to have to define, here in the joint operating 

environment and carry it forward to the CCJO, what is the problem we’re trying to solve? Every 

force that’s transformed – Where’s Wick Murray? I read your book – every force in history that 

has transformed has done so based on a clear identification of what is the problem we’re trying 

to solve. 

The Germans in World War I were tired of putting their boys against barbed wire and machine 

guns and getting them blown away. The wanted to restore maneuver to the battlefield. They 

started with storm troops and 20 years later with what we call Blitzkrieg, they unleashed hell on 

Europe. U.S. Navy could not, in its war games, beat Japan in what they thought was coming in 

the ‘20s and ‘30s, a fight across the Pacific. In those days, we didn’t do demonstration of 

American might, we really did experiments and war games, unlike today. And in those cases, 

they eventually created fast carrier strike forces and amphibious troops and logistic capability 

and they started winning their war games. They identified a problem and they solved the 

problem. It goes back to Alexander’s day, by the way. I think you get the idea. 

That same Navy missed a problem. They didn’t figure out how to conduct long-range submarine 

operations and they lost an enormous number of our lads because they didn’t figure out the 

problem and solve it. So you’ve got to get this part straight or I don’t care how short you 

Marines cut your hair or how fast you run your three miles, you’re going to waste your boys. 

And if you sign up for the wrong concept – ask Israel after the second Lebanon war, who had 

rushed headlong into effects-based ops, you can get your people blown away for the silliest, 

stupidest, reasons imaginable if you don’t have some degree of intellectual underpinning to what 

you’re doing. 

Just to give you an idea of where we’re going with this: When we get done with this, we’re 

going to have a constellation of three additional Joint Operating Concepts. And these three are 

looked at, ladies and gentlemen, because nuclear, conventional, and irregular are significantly 

different in their character. They are all war. I don’t get into a whole lot of definition other than 

pointing out where the character of war is sufficiently different that you have got to have a 

different concept to fight nuclear war than you have to have to fight irregular war or 

conventional war. Conventional war – conventional in terms of legal rules about war, in terms of 

the kind of systems, the weapon systems we use, and of course there are a lot of people out there 

who decide that’s good, you mastered that. You dominate that, so I won’t fight you there. I’ll 

go over here in the usual paradox of war. 

Now what does this mean to you and I? It means to be a leader in the world, whether you want 

to be or not – I just came back from three days in Walla Walla, Washington, my hometown. And 

while I was out there, there are very few Americans who think that we have a need to be the 

leader militarily in the world. I’ll tell you, we have done such a poor job of explaining why we 

have a responsibility here that there is very little grassroots support, from my perspective on this. 

Part of this will allow us to inform the public policy people, the new administration, our own 

officer corps, our coalition allies on whom we are so dependent, how we see ourselves fighting. 
 

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Nuclear is different, conventional, and of course this irregular thing. Those are three very 

different types of war. Here’s the problem. There’s another guy sitting back here who wrote an 

article about hybrid war. And the enemy is very likely, from what we saw in the second 

Lebanon war, to say ‘I’ll take one of those, I’ll pull one from over here, and we’re going to put it 

all together into a nice tapestry of conflict.’ And if you try to set up – I heard the question by the 

young lady as she was designated, the lady in glasses, but she asked what should we have – I 

think two different forces. Someone asked about two different forces to do this fighting. 

A guy out in Lawton, Kansas by the name of Rich Sinnreich just wrote an article on this. It’s 

very well done, by the way. And he said “you know, the British Empire did not take two 

different kinds of forces to do its fighting against conventional enemies and do its internal 

policing.” The Roman Empire didn’t do it. And I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, if you look 

at the agility – and let’s just take the U.S. Army over the last, say from Bosnia on, look at what 

they did in Bosnia with a Cold War force, fast forward to Afghanistan, a very different kind of 

war. Go into Iraq, watch that war morph, and look at Afghanistan today. Anyone who has been 

reading enough self-critical stuff about this country’s military’s inability to adapt is going to be 

looking back at history some day and saying, in a matter of those few years, the U.S. Army 

wound its way through all those things and did very, very well. 

And you can sit back and say well, they could have done better. Yes, they could have. And 

anyone who’s studied history knows that everybody could have done better except for the person 

who was there at that moment who was doing the best they could. So I think this is the right way 

to go right here. It’s going to be a persuasive view of future military operations and it’s going to 

provide the broad description. And it’s not going to tell you how to do everything. It can’t be 

everything to all people. It’s going to have to be something much broader than that. We’ll get 

into a little more detail with the next three and we’ll use these for what capstone concepts should 

be, not trying to make them detailed primers for how to do everything. 

It will help us to build this balanced force and the security challenges, as I see them right now, 

it’s still in process here. You’ve got this conventional war, you’ve got irregular war, you’ve got 

peacetime engagement, which I believe includes deterrence, and then you’ve got stabilization, 

which includes reconstruction. 

This is, I think, one of the best statements I’ve seen yet by certainly one of the most thoughtful 

people. (Makes reference in the presentation to a quote by Colin Gray: "Defence planning 

should seek to achieve and sustain a military posture that is flexible and adaptable, and not 

geared to a single, preclusive vision/doctrine of future warfare."

But notice he said it’s got to be flexible and adaptable of military posture. It cannot be geared to 

a single – and look at that word – preclusive. Preclusive. If we go preclusive, the paradox of 

war means what? That’s exactly where the enemy goes to. So let’s not be foolish and all run to 

the other side of the boat here, say it’s all irregular warfare now, and tip the boat over and 

wonder why we’re all in water angry about one another saying again, in this remarkable country, 
 

 Fall 2008 

- 8 -

who messed it up. We’re great at that, but why don’t we just anticipate it and say we’re not 

going that far. 

Dr. John Hamre said something interesting, too, recently. He said there is no country that’s more 

capable of using the powers of inspiration. Something to think about before we use the powers 

of intimidation. Remember that we’re working a strategy here and the ultimate use of strategy 

has to do with reducing the number of fights you have to go through. I mean, if you sit back and 

say what do you really want your strategy to do, you want to fight fewer wars. Because you 

have a strategy that works. You checkmate the enemy. Your narrative beats the enemy’s 

narrative. You create friends and coalition partners because you allow yourself to be persuaded 

by others, not always dictating. And by the time you’re done, you’ve woven a tapestry of shared 

interest to a point that you create a more peaceful world. 

Now, do you have to have the sword ready to go? Believe me, I’ve not gone soft-hearted. I 

believe there are some people who need to be whacked. I’ve been quite blunt about it; I’ve never 

withdrawn that statement. But between two irreconcilable world views, when you are up against 

people, who in a false religious garb decide women have no human rights, and remember they 

don’t just talk about it, they mean it, I believe we’ve got to be able to go after them. And we’ve 

got to be able to defend the realm. And the realm today, it’s a narrative realm. It’s an 

information realm. It’s a values realm. It’s not a physical realm. And if we cannot do that, if 

the military cannot do that, if it can not adapt so that our policy makers can use this military, if it 

insists on doing things that internally make it feel good, and are not useful to the policy makers, 

then we will become dominant and irrelevant at the same time. And we don’t need that sort of a 

military. And the American people are not dumb. They will relieve us of the awful burden of 

keeping a military like that. So either we adapt to our times, or we become irrelevant. We’re 

going to adapt, and we’re going to improvise and overcome. 

Jointness is not a natural state. I don’t know, Bob, (LTG Bob Wood, USJFCOM deputy 

commander) if you used it earlier. Jointness is not a natural state for military officers. We are 

brought up, and I’m very comfortable leading a rifle platoon through a tree line at night. I know 

friends who can take off from carrier decks at night, find their way back, and land on that little 

postage stamp. There are people who can do low level flying, and there are tank commanders in 

the army who can take a tank battalion through any enemy, and those formative years are very, 

very influential on you. So you have to fight after that to always bring others into your thinking, 

and that’s a good thing. Diversity is good even in the military, despite some people wanting 

jointness to be some communist manifesto that we all sign up for, we start teaching army 

privates the value of Air Force B-52s or something like that. 

But at the same time, when you go to coalition warfare – and here is a point I want to make very 

strong of the American officers, wearing my NATO hat now – if joint warfare is difficult, 

coalition warfare is a factor of 10 times more difficult. And we have got to find a way to use 

everybody who comes to the fight. I had breakfast this morning with former Gen. George 

Joulwan, and he was explaining that Iceland didn’t have a military, but at one point going in to 

Bosnia was willing to give four doctors for the effort. He got on his airplane, flew to Iceland to 
 

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thank them personally. If we don’t have officers who can create harmony and trust across the 

coalition battlefield, their leadership is obsolete. I don’t give a damn how tactically brilliant they 

are, I want them to go home right away. We don’t need them. I’d rather have someone more 

junior, more plastic, more flexible in their approach, who can bring people on board and create a 

sense of teamwork. And that’s the sort of force we’re going to have to turn out. 

What that means is, when the CCJO is done, for those of you in this room who are working on it, 

and the JOE itself, it is going to prioritize things like training, and education beyond what it has 

ever been given in terms of a priority in the past. That is where we’re going to adapt to this war. 

It’s not a new tank, not a new airplane. It’s a new way to think, and it’s a more inclusive way of 

going after the enemy. 

There is a value I think that we can never forget, to the dominant U.S. conventional, and NATO 

conventional forces. There are things in this world, nations in this world that are not part of 

NATO, not even perhaps friends of the United States, that are relieved from fear of conventional 

war because of U.S. conventional dominance and nuclear dominance. We do not want to give up 

those kinds of advantages, and then wonder why we created another problem. As expensive as it 

is, it is nowhere near as expensive as fighting a conventional war. And I think especially as we 

try to – with a new administration coming in, we try to perhaps get a fresh start on some things. 

Every new administration gives us this opportunity; we’re going to have to use a more 

persuasive narrative ourselves, in the American side that does not rely on technology to solve a 

human problem, a social problem that needs human solutions. That problem is war. We’re 

going to have to be more willing to be persuaded by our friends, and create common cause with 

people, and recognize that history is still on our side. 

The nations that grew out of the enlightenment, mostly out of Europe and certainly America, 

Canada, each nation has a dominant position in terms of the radical ideas of this world, and we 

should never be conservative or shy about standing up for them. We should use our powers of 

inspiration, and we should make certain people know in history, nothing is new under the sun. 

The first time I could find the jihad word by the way, in American political papers, comes, 

believe it or not, from two guys by the name of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. And one 

was the ambassador to France, one was the ambassador to England. But basically they were 

writing about the Barbary pirates, and talking about how jihad’s a pretty crummy excuse to 

enslave free seamen on the high seas. And for those of you in the Marine Corps, you got “to the 

shores of Tripoli” in your hymn, some 17 years after it was used in 1786 for the first time. 

So we actually have in many cases opportunities given us by history, and by the enemy, to create 

friendships. I’ll give you an example. When those school children, hundreds of Russian school 

children were murdered in Southern Russia, why didn’t we have the director of Scotland Yard, 

and the director of FBI on the next plane to Moscow to say we know you’re proud, we know you 

don’t want our help right now because you’re angry, but we’re going to give you every bit of 

help we can to hunt these guys down to the ends of the Earth and kill every one of them? There 

are opportunities the enemy will give us, to make friends with people we have not been friends 

with before. The question is, will we be willing to do so? Will our military be constructed for 
 

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the joint fight of the future in a manner that will permit us to fight non-military forces. You 

cannot say, “Sorry, I only fight someone who looks like me, organized like me, and equipped 

like me.” 

On that, I hope I’ve said enough to at least insight some degree of skepticism and challenge, so 

let me open it to questions please. Thank you. 
 

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Objectives of Land Warfare 

By 

Dr. Milan Vego 

There are many good generals in Europe, but they see too much at the same time. As for me, I 

see only one thing, and that is the masses of men. I seek to destroy them, because I am certain 

that with that everything else falls at the same time. 

Napoleon I 

The outcome of any war is decided by the accomplishment of the military strategic objectives on 

land. Hence, the objectives in land warfare are invariably the most critical for the successful war 

effort whether in offense or defense. At the strategic level, the war’s objectives are determined 

by the top national or alliance/coalition leadership. In the modern era, the accomplishment of the 

ultimate objective on land in a high-intensity conflict largely depends on one’s ability to achieve 

the required degree of the control in the air and at sea. The determination of the militarily 

achievable objectives in land warfare can be a difficult and time-consuming process because 

numerous aspects of the factors of space, time and force on both the enemy’s and friendly side 

must be properly evaluated. 

In a high-intensity conflict, the objectives of war on land depend on the scope and content of the 

political strategic objectives, which in turn depend mainly on whether one’s political strategic 

objective is limited or unlimited; offensive or offensive; or low or high-intensity. It also depends 

on the size and characteristics of the physical features of terrain and weather/climate, nonmilitary 

aspects of land theater, and the size and composition of the opposing ground forces. In general, 

the objectives in land warfare can include destroying or annihilating the enemy army; 

temporarily or permanently seizing some piece of land, dominant geographic position, or 

critically important economic area; destroying the enemy’s will to fight; or trying to win the 

ultimate victory without fighting (see Figure 1). Obviously, the objectives on land in a low 

intensity conflict such as counterinsurgency are very much different from those in a highintensity conflict. Among other things, control of the population and enhancing the legitimacy of 

the indigenous government is generally much more important than the destruction of the 

insurgents. Yet the political objectives of a counterinsurgency campaign simply cannot be 

achieved without providing a secure environment within which all the nonmilitary objectives can 

be accomplished. Likewise, the objectives on land in peace operations are much more limited 

because the predominant aspects of the political objective in such operations are nonmilitary. 

This, in turn, requires much more careful and judicious employment of one’s ground forces. 
 

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Here, the main focus will be on the objectives on land in a high-intensity conflict. 

 

Figure 1 Objectives of Land Warfare 

Destroying the Enemy Army

In the past, most successful commanders focused a major part of their efforts on destroying the 

enemy army. They intuitively understood that by destroying an enemy’s main source of power, 

all other objectives in war would be accomplished. With the destruction of the enemy army as 

the focus, capturing the territory and seizing the enemy capital is the last and highest objective of 

the war.1 For example, Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) in all his campaigns invariably tried 

first to destroy the enemy’s army. He led his forces toward the enemy, overcame terrain 

obstacles, secured his base of operations and his communications, gave due considerations to his 

supplies, waited until the preparations and equipping were completed, went on the attack, and 

pursued the enemy until the point of the most extreme exhaustion of his own forces.2 For 

example, his objective was not to bring the Persian king Darius III Codomannus (Old Persian 

Dârayavauš) (380-330 BC) to terms; it was to appropriate his empire. However, he had not only 

PRIMARY 

OBJECTIVE 

DESTRUCTION/ 

ANNIHILATION 

OF THE ENEMY 

ARMY 

AVOIDING 

ENCOUNTER 

WITH ENEMY 

FORCES

SEIZING 

LARGE 

URBAN AREAS 

CAPTURING 

THE 

ENEMY 

WINNING 

WITHOUT 

FIGHTING 

SEIZING 

OPERATIONALLY 

IMPORTANT 

POSITIONS

SEIZING 

LODGMENT 

ON THE ENEMY 

SHORE 

SEIZING 

ECONOMICALLY 

IMPORTANT 

AREAS

SEIZING 

ENEMY 

TERRITORY 
 

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to defeat the Persian army but also to win acceptance in the eyes of the Persian people. Hence, 

there was no question of suing for peace, which, after his crushing defeat at Issus in November 

333 BC, Darius vainly tried to do. Alexander the Great intended to achieve his objective with the 

minimum employment of his forces and the least dislocation of and damage to the Persian 

Empire. His aim was to achieve, as far as it was possible, a bloodless conquest so he drew a 

distinct line between the Persian army and the Persian people. Expressed differently, defeating 

the enemy army was Alexander the Great’s strategic objective; winning over the Persian 

population was his political objective. The first was the means to attain the second, because as 

long as the Persian army held the field, there was no certainty that the people would willingly 

accept him.3

The Carthaginian general Hannibal (247–182 BC) in the Second Punic War (218–202 BC) 

attempted primarily to destroy the Roman army, not to capture territory. Likewise, the Roman 

statesman—and one of the great military captains—Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) in his numerous 

conquests invariably tried to destroy his enemies. However, when in difficulties he also 

sometimes resorted to a policy of moderation in dealing with the subjected population.4

The Italian general Raimondo Montecuccoli (1609–1680), in the service of the Holy Roman 

Empire (800-1806), was one of the ablest military commanders during the Thirty Years’ War 

(1618-1648) and against the Ottomans in Hungary. He was also one of the leading military 

intellectuals of his era. Montecuccoli wrote that “whoever believes he can make progress without 

battles and can conquer anything worthwhile contradicts himself or at least expresses such a 

fantastic opinion that he evokes ridicule.” In his view, “whoever wins a battle wins not only the 

campaign but also a large piece of territory.”5

Frederick the Great (1712–1786) is considered by many historians to be one of the firm 

proponents of the war of annihilation. In his General Principles of War (General-Prinzipien vom 

Kriege), written in 1748, Frederick the Great noted that “battles decide the fate of a nation. When 

one wages war, one must, of course, come to decisive moments, either to withdraw from the 

embarrassment of the war, or to place his enemy in similar embarrassment, or to settle the 

quarrels which would otherwise never come to an end.”6

 Prussia was much smaller than its main 

opponents, the Austrian Empire, France, and Russia. For their country to survive as a state, the 

Prussians were forced to focus the major part of their efforts on defeating their enemies’ armies, 

not seizing parts of enemy territory.

Frederick the Great generally tried to exploit the superior mobility, discipline, and firepower of 

his army by throwing the weight of his force against a portion—usually a wing—of the enemy 

line of battle.7

 One of his maxims was that for an offensive war the commander should formulate 

ambitious plans so that if they succeed they will produce really significant results; hit the enemy 

hard, and do not be content merely to harass him on his frontiers. For Frederick the Great, the 

only purpose of war is to force the enemy to concentrate to an advantageous place as soon as 

possible; one should never lose sight of this idea.8

 However, he was more ambivalent about what 

should be the principal objective in war than many of his biographers and theoreticians indicate. 

In his observations on the military talent and character of the Swedish king Charles XII (1682–
 

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1718) in 1759, he wrote that “there are, of course, situations where one has to fight, but one 

should decide to do this only if one has less to lose than to win, if the enemy either in his camps 

or on his marches is negligent, or if one can force him by a decisive blow to accept peace. While 

many generals let themselves be easily drawn into a battle, they resort to this solution only 

because they do not know what else to do. Far from considering this as a credit to them, we 

regard it rather as the sign of a lack of genius.”9

During the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) the Austrian emperor Francis I intuitively realized 

that the main objective in war was the destruction of the enemy army. He wrote to his brother, 

Charles of Lorraine, on 31 July 1757, “we must not think of the conquest of land but only of the 

destruction of his [Frederick the Great’s] army, for if we can ruin his army, the lands will 

automatically fall to us.”10

The Prussian general and theoretician Georg Heinrich von Berenhorst (1733–1814), in contrast 

to many of his contemporaries, called for a more determined conduct of war. He had little 

patience with the battle-avoiding maneuvers advocated by the leading proponents of the socalled geometrical school of warfare. Berenhorst wanted one’s army to march straight at the 

enemy and beat him, in order to terminate the war with a single blow. Once the enemy was 

brought in, his army must be destroyed. Berenhorst’s emphasis was on the short war and the 

battle of annihilation.11

The armies of the ancien régime (the political and social system that existed in France before the 

Revolution of 1789) were too small and had low mobility. They were unable to maneuver 

quickly because they had to carry rations with them. They could not protect large areas, and they 

could not guard and secure lines of communications with their base under all circumstances.12

The entire situation changed dramatically with the French Revolution and Napoleon I (1769-

1821). War’s aims became unlimited, because the French tried to destroy the enemy armies, 

occupy the enemy’s territory, and change the enemy’s social system. Hence, wars were fought to 

the finish. 

Napoleon I almost invariably directed all his efforts against the enemy army. He based 

everything from the start not only on attacking the enemy army but on destroying it.13 The legacy 

of Napoleon I was that the objective in warfare was not a province or the enemy’s capital, but the 

enemy army. War had to be conducted offensively, thereby preserving one’s own freedom to 

act.14 For Napoleon I everything was subordinate to tactical victory on the battlefield.15 He 

believed that the enemy must be attacked everywhere he is encountered. In his view, “to imagine 

that it is possible to perform great military deeds without fighting is just empty dreams.”16

Although he did not invent pursuit, he systematized it. Pursuit of the defeated opponent was an 

integral part of Napoleon I’s way of warfare.17

The Napoleonic Wars (1804-1815) amply demonstrated that the defeat of the enemy army and 

even the occupation of his country will not result in a final peace agreement as long as the enemy 

government and population have the will to go on fighting. Hence, under most circumstances the 
 

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destruction of the enemy army and the occupation of his country will bring the enemy to the 

negotiating table.18

The Austrian general and military thinker Archduke Charles (1771–1847) wrote that major 

objectives may be achieved only by decisive attacks. Therefore, the most important art of a 

general consists of correctly determining the moment when and points where such decisive 

attacks can be delivered with the greatest probability of favorable results.19

The Prussian general and military reformer Gerhard Johann David von Scharnhorst (1755–1813) 

was also a staunch proponent of destroying the enemy army as the principal objective in a war. 

He demanded more determined preparation and campaigning; as a necessary concomitant of 

universal conscription, the martial spirit of the population should be aroused. Like Frederick the 

Great, Scharnhorst insisted that the beaten enemy must be pursued and routed.20

Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) is widely considered one of the strongest proponents of the 

battle of annihilation. He observed that “one succeeds by defeating the enemy army; destroying 

the enemy forces’ ability to function properly eliminates what stands in the way of military 

victory. Victory on the battlefield renders attainment of the political objective possible, 

triggering and sustaining the conflict.”21 Clausewitz wrote in his On War that no matter what 

may be the central feature of the enemy’s power—the point on which your efforts must 

converge—the defeat and destruction of his fighting forces remain the best way to begin and, in 

all cases, the most important part.22 The destruction of the enemy army is the purpose of any 

operation.23 Clausewitz insisted that the enemy armies must be destroyed. They must be put in 

such a condition that they can no longer carry on the fight. This must be followed by the 

occupation of the enemy’s territory; otherwise, the enemy could renew hostilities in the interior 

of the country. Clausewitz considered breaking the enemy’s will to continue fighting to be the 

most important factor. 

In Clausewitz’s view, “the first and the most important [principle] is to employ all the forces that 

can be made available with the utmost energy. The second is to concentrate one’s force at the 

point where the decisive blows are to be struck, even at the risk of being at a disadvantage at 

other points, in order to make sure of the result at the decisive point. Success at the decisive point 

will compensate for all defeats at secondary points. The third principle is not to lose time. By 

rapidity many measures of the enemy are nipped in the bud, and public opinion is gained in one’s 

favor. The fourth is surprise—the most powerful element of victory. The fifth is to follow up the 

success one gains with the utmost energy.” For Clausewitz, pursuit of the enemy when he is 

defeated is the only means of consolidating the fruits of victory.24

Clausewitz observed that nonviolent methods can succeed only if the enemy also intends to rely 

on a similar strategy; otherwise, the advantage will always accrue to the side that is, or at least 

appears to be, ready to do battle despite the high cost in lives and resources. In his view, one’s 

desire to win without bloodshed only emboldens one’s enemy. In war, an effort that is too small 

can result not just in failure but in positive harm, where each side is driven to outdo the other, 
 

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which sets up a chain reaction.25 Clausewitz conceded that it is possible to win without combat, 

but he considered that possibility to be so remote that it can be relegated to the realm of theory.26

Despite the claims of his critics, Clausewitz was not a rigid advocate of annihilation. Among 

other things, he wrote that the aim of disarming the enemy is in fact not always encountered in 

reality and need not be fully achieved as a condition of peace. Outright defeat of the enemy is not 

always necessary to subdue him. Yet Clausewitz insisted that if the military clash becomes 

unavoidable, then it should be clear that the primary object of great battles must be the 

destruction of the enemy forces. He also did not carry this thought to the other extreme. 

Clausewitz duly took note of the negative side of the destruction of the enemy forces—the 

preservation of one’s forces. While the effort “to destroy the enemy forces has a positive purpose 

and leads to positive results, whose final aim is the enemy’s collapse, it is obvious that pressing 

our own forces has a negative purpose—it frustrates the enemy intentions.”27

General Antoine Henri de Jomini (1779–1869), another great interpreter of Napoleon I, was also 

a proponent of the destruction/annihilation of the enemy army as the main objective in war on 

land. He included among his principles of war the need to maneuver so that one’s main forces 

operate only against units of the enemy army.28 He insisted that one’s forces should be employed 

with the utmost determination against the enemy army. The first principle for a general is that he 

must seize the initiative and thereby force the enemy to conform to his actions. Annihilation of 

the hostile army in battle and pursuit were the only focus for all his military thinking. He 

contended that in an attack on enemy communications the objective should be to cut off enemy 

supplies and enemy lines of retreat, beat the enemy, and thus completely annihilate, capture, or 

disperse him.29

In the American Civil War (1861–1865), the most successful commanders, notably generals 

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885), William Tecumseh Sherman (1820–1891), Phillip Henry 

Sheridan (1831–1888), and Confederate General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870), all directed their 

efforts to the destruction of the opposing armies. Lee, as the commander of the most important 

Confederate army, the Army of Northern Virginia, remained devoted to offense, always 

searching for that elusive battlefield opportunity to destroy the enemy.30

After being appointed General-in-Chief of all the federal armies in the early 1863, General Grant 

at once decided to use the greatest number of troops practicable against the armed force of the 

enemy. The cardinal principle with which he began his campaigns as General-in-Chief was to 

employ all the force of all the armies continually and simultaneously, so that there should be no 

recuperation on the part of the rebels, no rest from attack, no opportunity to reinforce first one 

and then another point with the same troops at different seasons. Grant’s central idea was the 

concentration of his forces, from which he intended to conduct a ceaseless offensive against the 

enemy armies and the resources of the Confederacy’s morale.31 President Abraham Lincoln 

(1809–1865), although without professional military experience, clearly understood that the 

strength of the rebellion was its military—its army—and not its capital, its territory, or even its 

population. He adhered to this view consistently, beginning with his insistence on operations 
 

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against the Confederate army around Manassas in the summer of 1861 and continuing to the end 

of the war.32

The Prussian chief of the general staff, Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke, Sr. (1800–1891), like 

Napoleon I, was a firm adherent of the idea that the principal military objective is the destruction 

of the enemy army. He insisted that one must distinguish between the object of the war and the 

object of the operation. The former is not the army but the landmass and the enemy’s capital, 

and, within them, the resources and political power of the state. It comprises what one desires to 

hold or that for which one will subsequently trade. The object of an operation is the hostile army, 

insofar as it defends the object of the war. This condition can cease if the defensive army is 

shaken by combat, if it is too weak, or if it stands too far away to be of effect or in terrain that 

precludes offensive action. In such a case, a piece of terrain or the capital may gain greater 

importance than even the hostile army; this means that as far as the attack is concerned, war and 

operations objectives are one and the same thing.33

In the Austro-Prussian war against Denmark in 1864, Moltke, Sr., learned the difficulty of 

achieving the political objective—the defeat of Denmark—without accomplishing what he called 

the operational (actually military strategic) objective—the destruction of the Danish army.34 The 

main difficulty was that Prussia had to defeat Denmark quickly before either the Eider River 

(Ejderen in Danish; flows south of Kiel for about 120 miles to the North Sea) or Schleswig, 

which was key to intercepting the retreating army. The war with Denmark started in February 

1864. Moltke, Sr., was not sent to the field but remained in Berlin. His plan was improperly 

executed, and the Danes managed to escape to their fortresses of Dueppel and Fredericia. Each 

of these fortresses controlled communications to an island. Dueppel was taken by a ground 

assault, while Fredericia was abandoned by the Danes. However, the Prussian and Austrian 

armies were checked, because the Danish army retired further to the islands of Alsen and 

Fuenen, as Moltke, Sr., had feared they might do.35 

By the end of April 1864, Moltke, Sr., took to the field as the chief of the combined PrussianAustrian forces. After the landing on Alsen the Danes evacuated the island. Moltke, Sr., next 

planned to land on Fuenen. However, that action proved to be unnecessary, because the Danes 

decided to sue for peace.36

Moltke, Sr., wrote that victory in a decisive battle is the crucial moment in a war. “Victory alone 

breaks the will of the enemy and compels him to submit to our will. It is not the occupation of a 

stretch of a land or conquest of a fortified stronghold; it is the destruction of the enemy armed 

forces alone that, as a rule, will decide war’s outcome.”37 Passive waiting will not achieve a 

war’s purpose.38 The objective of war is not an enemy province or capital city, but the enemy 

army. War must be conducted offensively to preserve one’s freedom to act. For Moltke, Sr., the 

first question is where the enemy is, what he is going to do, and where one’s main weight (focus) 

of effort (Schwerpunkt) will be. This is the key for correctly handling the enemy.39 The 

operational objective is to achieve the decision of breaking the will of the enemy. This, in turn, 

will then serve the needs of strategy.40
 

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Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen (1833–1913) was also a firm believer that the principal 

objective in a war is the destruction or annihilation of the enemy army. He wrote in 1909 that the 

battle of annihilation alone is the desirable battle. Based on his interpretation of the battle of 

Cannae of 216 BC in the Second Punic War (218-202 BC) Schlieffen rather dogmatically 

believed that one’s attack against the enemy flank is the essential substance of the whole history 

of war. The complete destruction of the opponent is always most advantageous, because it sets 

the whole of the victor’s forces free for other duties, and that really counts in a war on two 

fronts. Schlieffen believed that the best way to achieve the enemy’s annihilation is encirclement 

and attack in the rear; while enveloping both wings demands large forces, a small force may be 

satisfied with action against only one wing. An ordinary victory over one of the opponents is not 

enough. Complete destruction is necessary in order to prevent, once and for all, the opponent’s 

recovery and the possibility of a rush to his ally’s aid.41

The Soviets and all other communist-ruled regimes embraced Clausewitz and his ideas on the 

nature of war and the relationship between policy and strategy. Vladimir Ilych Ulanov Lenin 

(1870–1924), like Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), was fascinated by 

Clausewitz and his On War. He agreed with Clausewitz that war is a means of policy. War 

belongs to the province of social life. It is an expression of the conflict of the ideas, objectives, 

and way of life of an entire society with those of some other society. Yet while Clausewitz never 

questioned that morality, as understood by civilized peoples, was a factor of social life, Lenin 

completely ignored it. He in fact reduced war to a purely animal struggle. Lenin wrote, “We 

repudiate all morality derived from nonhuman and class concepts; we say that it is deception, a 

fraud in the interests of landlords and capitalists; we say that our morality is entirely 

subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat; we say morality is what 

serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all toilers around the proletariat, which is 

creating a new communist society; we do not believe in eternal morality.” Lenin wrote in his 

“Advice of an Onlooker” on 21 October 1917 that in fomenting and executing an insurgency 

“you must concentrate a great superiority of forces at the decisive point; otherwise the enemy has 

the advantage of better preparation and organization. Once the insurrection [has] started you 

must take the offensive. You must take the enemy by surprise and seize the moment when his 

forces are scattered.”42

According to Marxist theory, “war” and “revolution” are interchangeable terms. The MarxistLeninists aimed to transform what they called an imperialist conflict into civil war, that is, a war 

in which the enemy destroys itself. The aim of these conflicts was to make them the “midwife of 

revolution by unceasing political and psychological attack; by systematic propaganda, the 

fomenting of strikes, mass fraternization, and by stimulating mutiny and desertion.” The Red 

Army was trained from the very beginning as not only a military but also a revolutionary 

instrument.43 The Soviet strategy was offensive, and its focus was on attacking the enemy’s 

weaknesses. It entailed extensive maneuvers to deliver the main blow at a weak point in the 

enemy’s defenses or upon the flanks or rear of the defender. The Soviets emphasized speed, 

surprise, and maneuver more than massive numerical superiority. The fundamental aim was to 

kill or capture the enemy troops and to destroy or seize their equipment, within the assigned area 

and within a stated period.44
 

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Avoiding the Enemy’s Army

The proponents of the so-called “geometrical” school of warfare in the late eighteenth century 

asserted that in order to win a war it was necessary only to conduct skillful maneuvers to put the 

opponent in a hopeless position. Because war was supposed to be conducted by maneuvering, 

principles, rules, and recipes were sought for this art. Geographical studies were made to 

determine where positions could be found that were difficult for the enemy to attack and at the 

same time readily accessible for bringing up necessities for one’s own army. Fortresses were 

considered the key for the country.45 The leading advocates of such an approach to land warfare 

were the British general and theoretician Henry H. E. Lloyd (1729–1783) and the Prussian 

theoretician Adam Heinrich Dietrich von Buelow (1757–1808). 

Lloyd suggested avoiding decisive battle in conducting warfare. He based this suggestion on his 

observation that the tactical weaknesses of contemporary armies and the inherent shortcomings 

of linear tactics made battles costly and rarely decisive.46 In Lloyd’s view, wise generals will 

always prefer to base their actions on knowledge of terrain, of the science of fortifications, camp 

craft, and marches, rather than allow matters to depend on the uncertain outcome of battle. He 

who has an understanding of these things can initiate military operations with geometric 

strictness and can constantly wage war without ever being forced to fight.47 

Buelow wrote that the campaign objective should be a geographic point. The bases of operations 

had to be chosen in a way that would threaten enemy communications without endangering one’s 

own. Buelow, like Lloyd and some other theoreticians of his era, wrote that battle should be 

replaced by superior maneuver against the enemy lines of supplies. He also incorporated the 

French corps system: an army should advance with three corps on a broad frontage in order to 

protect the lines of communications and outflank the enemy.48 Buelow insisted that the real aim 

of strategy is to gain the object of war without bloodshed. In his view, “one ought to avoid battle 

and have recourse to maneuvering. If one is obliged to fight a battle, mistakes must have been 

committed previously. One can neutralize every victory by operating strategically against the 

flanks and rear of the enemy; those examples, however, show how ineffective victorious battles 

are against superior numbers, how indecisive they mostly are in latter wars.”49 Buelow drew the 

ultimate conclusion that the objective of operations was not the enemy army but his supply 

depots. These depots are the very heart of an enemy army; hence, by strategic maneuvering on 

the flanks and in the rear of the enemy, one can neutralize any victory the enemy might win with 

weapons.50

Seizing the Enemy Territory 

Sometimes the principal objective in war on land was to occupy territory instead of focusing the 

major part of one’s effort on defeating the enemy army. Such a course of action is generally 

justified in the conduct of major amphibious operations, when the most critical initial objective is 

to seize major ports or the lodgment ashore or in the interior of the enemy territory.51

In the eighteenth century the prevalent view in Europe, with the exception of Prussia, was that 

the main objective in a war was to seize the enemy’s territory rather than destroy the enemy’s 
 

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army. The French campaign plans, in contrast to those of Frederick the Great, did not envisage 

the pursuit of decisive battle. Strategic conditions did not force France to risk the loss of its 

irreplaceable soldiers. Instead, the French called for slow, systematic advance, taking every 

fortress on the way and turning it into a supply depot. The war would be won by steadily 

expanding control of the enemy’s territory and resources rather than by the destruction of the 

enemy army. Another reason for the focus on control of territory was that no coalition member 

was willing to sacrifice his own soldiers for the benefit of the other members of the coalition.52

In the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, the Russian army command made a (wrong) decision 

to focus on the geographic points—capturing the Balkan crossings instead of defeating the 

enemy army first. The original Russian plan envisaged the mobilization of about 300,000 men, 

organized in seven corps, for a fast advance from southwestern Russia directly to 

Constantinople, without disposing of substantial Turkish forces on both flanks. The Russian 

troops would cross Romania, force the Danube River somewhere along its middle flow, throw up 

defensive cordons east and west to cover a race for the Balkan divide, and then move through the 

mountains past Adrianople to threaten the Turkish capital. In the secondary theater, the 

Caucasus, the Russians planned to concentrate sufficient force to tie down additional Turkish 

troops and prevent their incursions into the steppes of southern Russia.53

The execution of the Russian campaign plan did not go as well as the planners had intended. The 

Russians used much smaller forces—only four army corps, three less than originally intended. 

The remaining mobilized troops were deployed in Russia proper and unavailable for the 

campaign. The Turks concentrated approximately 160,000 men in the Balkans and about 60,000 

men in the Caucasus.54 In the first phase of the campaign, (12 April-3 July 1877, the Russians 

with the permission of the government in Bucharest deployed four army corps from Bessarabia 

to Wallachia. They successfully crossed the Danube and established a secure lodgment in 

Bulgaria. In the second phase) 4 July -10 December), the Russians found themselves bogged 

down fighting Turks entrenched in the fortress of Plevna.55 Osman Pasha of Vidin seized and 

fortified Plevna close to the planned Russian advance. This forced the Russians to lay siege to 

Plevna instead of advancing to Constantinople.56 In the third phase (11 December-19 February 

1878), the Russians finally succeeded in breaking the Turkish defenses and advanced in the 

direction of Constantinople.57

The war ended with the Russians imposing the San Stefano Treaty on Turkey on 19 February 

1878. Instead of the originally planned campaign of only several months, the war had lasted 47 

weeks. The reasons were the surprisingly stiff Turkish resistance, the Russian failure to order full 

mobilization, inept planning, miscalculations of the distances to be traversed, and lack of good 

access to their own lines of supply. For example, the distance from the Russian staging area 

around Kishinev (Chişinău today), Moldavia, to San Stefano via Shipka Pass in Bulgaria was 

620 miles, and it had to be transited all on foot and in bad weather. An extraordinarily wet spring 

made movement of the Russian troops on the Romanian roads very difficult. Also, the rivers and 

streams were excessively high for weeks.58
 

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The Allied commanders and their planners in the European Theater in World War II repeatedly 

focused on seizing physical objectives, specifically ports or large cities. They gave little or no 

thought or effort to how best to defeat the bulk of the German army. The Allies’ basic intent in 

the European theater was to overrun land and liberate cities. The main reason for the Allied 

emphasis on seizing territory rather than destroying enemy forces was the experience of the 

horrendous losses suffered on the western front in World War I. The Allied top generals also had 

a profound lack of confidence in the capabilities of their forces. Hence, to avoid large losses the 

Allies opted for a slow, time-consuming, but largely low-risk advance toward large cities and 

capitals to liberate populations from the German occupation. In general, they avoided taking high 

but prudent risks that could be decisive if successful but painful and humiliating if 

unsuccessful.59

In the invasion of both Sicily in July 1943 and Italy’s mainland in September 1943, the Allies 

also focused predominantly on seizing territory instead of defeating the German armies. In the 

aftermath of the capture of Sicily, two Allied armies invaded Italy. They spread across the foot of 

the Apennine Peninsula, took their initial objectives, and struggled northward. The U.S. Fifth 

Army seized Naples, a major port on the west coast, while the British Eighth Army captured an 

airfield cluster nearby Foggia; both objectives fell into Allied hands on 1 October 1943. 

Afterward, the major objective was to seize Rome. 60

Seizing the Lodgment Ashore

Normally, in any opposed amphibious landing, the initial and most important objective should be 

seizing the lodgment on the enemy’s shore to allow the arrival of follow-on combat forces and 

their supplies. However, after the end of the amphibious phase, the most important operational 

objective should be the destruction of the enemy forces, not seizing as much territory as possible. 

The Allies in the European theater in World War II repeatedly focused the major part of their 

efforts on seizing the enemy’s controlled territory as quickly as possible instead of on 

confronting the Axis forces. For example, in preparing the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, the 

Allies regarded the island not as a place to defeat the Axis defenders but rather as a steppingstone to southern Europe.61 The U.S. generals in Sicily were for some reason fixated on the 

names of places.62 No one seemed interested in trapping and eliminating the Axis forces in 

Sicily. To block the Axis escape from the island, the Allies had to reach and capture Messina 

before the Axis forces departed. The Allies had two options, either to land as close to Messina as 

possible or to land on the eastern and northern shores and drive on converging lines to Messina. 

Instead, they chose to come ashore with two armies massed around Sicily’s southeastern tip, as 

far away from Messina as possible. After some 38 days of heavy fighting, the Allies overran the 

island but failed to trap significant numbers of Axis troops. Three small Allied landings on the 

northern coast and one on the eastern coast were designed to speed up the advance to Messina, 

but all failed in that purpose. The Allies were unable or unwilling to interfere with the Axis 

evacuation across the 1.9- to 10-mile wide Strait of Messina. Allied airpower and seapower 

remained strangely distant or even absent from what might have been a decisive stroke.63 By the 

time the Allies reached Messina, some 60,000 Germans and 70,000 Italians had escaped to the 

mainland with most of their heavy equipment.64 
 

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In the Normandy invasion (Operation Overlord), the Allies initially had to capture a large part of 

Normandy to serve as an intermediate base of operations for their subsequent advance across 

France. The main factor for selecting Normandy as the lodgment area was a number of large 

ports that could be used for building up forces and supplies for future operations. These included 

Cherbourg on the Cotentin Peninsula, and the ports of Brittany, especially Brest and Lorient. The 

Seine ports of Le Havre and Rouen were better, but both sides of the river had to be controlled, 

which would split the planned beachhead into two parts.65 

The planned lodgment in Normandy encompassed a rather large area; to the Seine River in the 

east and the Loire River on the south, the Normandy province west of the Seine, all of Brittany, 

and parts of the ancient provinces of Anjou and Maine. The Caen-Falaise area would provide 

direct access to the Seine River and Paris, as well as to the ports of Honfleur, Rouen, and Le 

Havre. Initially, the Allied forces would capture the lodgment encompassing the Caen area and 

seize the port of Cherbourg. In the second phase, the lodgment would be enlarged to encompass 

Brittany Peninsula, all ports south to the Loire River, and the area between the Loire and Seine 

rivers. Within three weeks of D-day, the Allies moved one million men and 500,000 tons of 

supplies ashore. The beachhead was small and congested. Instead of the planned 62 air 

squadrons operating on 27 fields, only 30 squadrons operated from 17 strips. The Allies brought 

more combat troops but were short of service units. The Allied planners envisaged that the 

lodgment area being captured within 90 days after the initial landings.66 However, it took the 

British and Canadians 33 days to seize Caen. Cherbourg was captured 21 days after the initial 

landings. Rouen was not captured until 30 August, and Le Havre not until 12 September 1944. 

Because of their almost-exclusive focus on enlarging the lodgment after the main landings in 

Normandy, the Allies failed to take full advantage of an inviting opportunity to encircle and 

destroy two German field armies. They failed twice to block the German escape—first in early 

August at Mortain-Falaise pocket, and then at the German withdrawal across the Seine River. 

About 250,000 Germans escaped in the last 10 days of August, only to turn and erect a defensive 

barrier barring the Allies entrance into Germany. Had the Allies concentrated on destroying the 

German forces shortly after the landing at Normandy, they might have won the war in the west in 

the fall of 1944.67

Seizing Large Urban Areas

The importance of seizing control of the enemy’s cities was recognized in the ancient era. 

However, the Chinese general and theoretician Sun Tzu (circa 554–496 BC) observed that the 

lowest realization of warfare was to attack cities.68 He wrote that enemy cities are the least 

desirable and most costly objective. In his view, the worst policy is to attack cities; they should 

be attacked only when there is no alternative.69 The French marshal Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne 

Turenne (1611–1675), one of the most successful commanders in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–

1648), also advised Louis II de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, that it was better to harm the enemy 

in the field by many fights than to besiege and capture cities.70 

Some of the most important battles in military history took place either in the proximity of or 

within cities. For example, the Persian efforts in war against Greek city states focused on seizing 
 

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control of Athens. The Greeks eventually succeeded in defending Athens by fighting several 

brilliant battles. 

Wars for cities became a dominant feature of warfare in Europe in the medieval era. In 1453, the 

Ottoman Turks seized Constantinople and thereby ended Christian efforts to dominate the 

Middle East.71 If the Byzantines had been successful in defending their capital, the history of the 

Middle East and the Balkans might have been entirely different than it was. 

Large cities, the capitals in particular, were often selected as among the most important military 

objectives for one’s army. Struggles for large cities and capitals in general have been standard 

occurrences in most wars of the modern era. Large cities and their suburbs generally contain 

disproportionately large segments of the country’s industry and services. They also have large 

populations. 

In general, urban terrain greatly favors the defender. The attacker must commit much larger 

forces in order to occupy a city, and his mobility is greatly reduced. The more firepower the 

attacker uses, the more advantages the defender accrues. Also, in prolonging his resistance, the 

defender can gain from the rubble the attacker creates. A defender will often deploy forces in an 

urban area if their capabilities are inadequate for offering strong resistance on the open field.72

Capital cities are usually large in terms of physical extent and population. They are the centers of 

the country’s political, economic, and cultural life. They are the seat of government. Many 

capitals and their suburbs are sources of their country’s economic strength. They are the hub of 

the country’s transportation system. Capitals also exert significant psychological and symbolic 

influence on both the country’s population and the enemy’s. Hence, one’s attack on the enemy’s 

capital would often result in the enemy’s decision to concentrate his strongest available forces in 

its defense. In other words, the enemy’s army will inevitably be drawn into the fight to protect its 

country’s capital. 

For Jomini, all capitals are what he called “strategic points” because they are not only centers of 

communications but also the seats of power and government. He wrote that in strategy, the 

object of the campaign determines the objective points. If that aim is offensive, the point will be 

the possession of the hostile capital, or a province whose loss would compel the enemy to make 

peace. In a war of invasion, the capital is ordinarily the objective point.73

In strategic terms, capture or defense of the capital usually constitutes a major part of the 

political or economic or psychological objective, as did the Soviet capture of Berlin in May 1945 

or the coalition capture of Baghdad in April 2003. In purely military terms, a capital is normally 

an operational objective to be captured or defended. The reason is that no enemy’s capital can 

possibly physically include the enemy’s entire armed forces, or even most of the ground forces. 

Therefore, defeat of the enemy forces defending the capital (and most other large cities as well) 

would normally amount to the accomplishment of an operational objective that in some 

situations could have strategic consequences for the war’s outcome. The exception is only if the 

capital contains within its limits the major part of the defender’s forces—a highly unlikely event. 
 

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Very often the attacker might decide to put the major part of his efforts into seizing the enemy 

capital as the best way of ending the war. The political and psychological importance of capitals 

can vary greatly. In general, the significance of the capital is much higher for countries that are 

traditionally highly centralized, such as France or Russia, than for countries that are relatively 

new national states. Yet that does not necessarily mean that the defender would cease his 

resistance, as the examples of Berlin in 1760 and in 1806, Moscow in 1812, and Mexico City in 

1847 illustrate.74 Also, Vienna was seized by Napoleon I in 1805 and 1809 but the Austrian army 

continued its resistance for some time. Yet in both cases, the loss of Vienna made the Austrians’ 

strategic situation much more unfavorable than it had been before.75 A protracted and successful 

defense of one’s capital, such as the Soviet defense of Moscow in the winter of 1941, could well 

have a major political and/or psychological effect on the course of a war. 

The importance of the capital in a country already occupied by enemy forces is usually much 

lower than at the outset of hostilities, as the example of the Allied capture of Rome in June 1944 

shows. The Allied invasion of Anzio in January 1944 (Operation Shingle) was planned to greatly 

accelerate the Allied advance to the German-occupied Italian capital. However, the Germans 

reacted smartly and penned the Allied forces at Anzio’s bridgehead. The Germans did not 

abandon the Gustav Line. For the Allies, there were then de facto two fronts in Italy instead of 

one. The Allied advance toward Rome bogged down. General Mark Clark, the Fifth Army’s 

commander, was directed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and General George Marshall to 

take Rome as quickly as possible, and in any event before the planned Normandy landing. The 

Allied troops entered Rome on 6 June 1944, the same day the Allied forces landed in Normandy. 

Yet the capture of Rome had little significance for the course of the war. It was newsworthy and 

provided great excitement, it allowed the Italian government to be established there and become 

a cobelligerent, and it secured several nearby airfields. It probably gave the Allies some 

emotional and psychological advantages, but nothing more.76

Often military necessity may require direct or indirect attack on a large city to destroy enemy 

forces deployed within the city itself or in its proximity. Attack on the enemy capital would most 

likely force the defender to draw a large part of its army to reinforce the forces already deployed 

in the vicinity of the capital. In 1812, the Russians choose Borodino, some 70 miles southwest of 

Moscow, as the place most favorable for the defense of the capital of Moscow. Although 

Napoleon I suffered relatively large losses in that battle, he forced the Russian army under Field 

Marshal Mikhail I. Kutuzov (1745–1813) to retreat and entered Moscow. In other cases, the 

defender might decide to make the city a battleground and thereby put the attacker at a great 

disadvantage. The defender might choose to rely on urban fortifications not to defeat but to delay 

the enemy until better conditions occur.77

Sometimes the military position the city occupied is the main reason for attacking it, as the case 

of General Grant’s attack on Vicksburg in May 1863 shows. In other cases, the capture of an 

urban center might facilitate future operations. For example, in 1758, the English army under 

Jeffrey Amherst captured the French fortress city of Louisburg, situated on Cape Breton Island, 

Nova Scotia. That city was an important base for the fleet and facilitated the blockade of French 

Canada. Its capture also greatly inhibited operations of the French fleet in North America.78
 

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The attacker might sometimes attempt to starve the enemy population in order to bring about the 

city’s surrender. For example, one of the aims of the German 900-day siege of Leningrad (8 

September 1941–18 January 1944) was to starve out the city’s population. In other cases, the 

mere threat of an attack on the capital has forced the enemy to surrender. Attack on the enemy 

capital may not be necessary if the attacker succeeds in seizing positions controlling the 

approaches to the city. For example, British general James Wolfe captured the French city of 

Quebec without attacking it by landing at night and scaling the supposedly inaccessible Heights 

of Abraham in September 1759.79 The Germans laid siege to Paris (19 September– January 28, 

1871) during their war with France but did not attack the city. 

One alternative to not fighting in the cities is to avoid them. Yet this is often not possible if the 

defender has deployed a large force in the cities. Such a case would require the attacker to 

contain the threat that the enemy’s force poses to his rear and lines of supplies. For example, the 

mounted Mongol forces that invaded the northern part of the Chinese Chin Empire in 1211 were 

not skillful in besieging cities. Thus, they bypassed large cities in the province. This, in turn, 

allowed the Chins to resist the Mongols, preventing them from consolidating control for almost 

20 years. The Mongols finally established that control in 1234, but only after a Chinese general 

and some Chinese troops skillful in siege warfare defected to the Mongols. An attack on a large 

urban center usually requires disproportionately larger forces, special equipment, and more time 

than operations on open terrain. Napoleon I estimated that in attacking a city the attacker must 

have numerical superiority of four to one. Such attacks also require large and extensive logistical 

support and sustainment. The morale and will of the attacking forces must be high; otherwise, 

success cannot be achieved.80 

In their eventually unsuccessful siege of Vienna in July–August 1683, the Turkish forces under 

Grand Vizier Kara Mustafa (1634-1683) numbered about 200,000 men. The city was defended 

by a force of some 11,000 Christians (including 3,000 militia). During the siege, a multinational 

force of some 76,000 men and 170 guns and led by the Polish king Jan III Sobieski (1629–1696) 

was brought in to defend Vienna. In the successful siege of the Turkish-held city of Belgrade (29 

June–18 August) in 1717, the Austrian commander Prince Eugene de Savoy (1663–1736) had 

about 100,000 men, while the Turkish defenders under Mustafa Pasha had only 30,000 men, 600 

cannon of various calibers, and 70 boats.81 

In attacking the Confederate fortress of Vicksburg, General Grant deployed 80,000 men while 

the defenders had 47,000 men.82 In the attack on Warsaw (8–28 September 1939), the Germans 

employed 175,000 troops, while the Polish defenders had 120,000 men. In the siege of Leningrad 

1941–1944, the Germans employed some 725,000 troops while the Soviet defenders numbered 

some 930,000 troops. In their attack on Budapest, which led to some of the bloodiest fighting of 

World War II, the Soviets used more than one million men. The Germans and the Hungarians 

defended the city with only about 70,000 men. The Soviets massed some 2.5 million men, 6,250 

tanks, 7,500 aircraft, and 41,600 artillery pieces in their final assault on the Nazi capital of Berlin 

in April–May 1945. The Germans defended the city with about one million men, 1,500 tanks, 

and 3,300 aircraft.83
 

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During their ultimately successful attack on the city of Vukovar, eastern Slavonia in 1991, the 

Serbs concentrated two tank brigades and six mechanized brigades plus some paramilitary units, 

some 37,000 to 44,000 men, against some 2,000-2,300 Croatian defenders (but reportedly only 

400-500 effective fighters).84 In their attack on the Chechnyan capital Grozny in 1994–1995, the 

Russians never had sufficient forces. They initially used only some 20,000 men to seize the city, 

which had a population of 400,000 and stretched over 100 square miles.85

Sieges of large cities, especially capital cities, are usually long-drawn-out affairs. For example, 

the successful defense of Vienna in 1683 lasted about 60 days (14 July–12 September).86 In 

World War II, defense of large cities was almost invariably protracted. For example, it took the 

Germans 20 days (8–28 September) to seize Warsaw in September 1939. The Warsaw uprising 

in 1944 took the Germans 63 days (1 August–2 October) to eliminate. The Soviets defended 

Stalingrad for about 76 days and Leningrad for about 28 months (8 September 1941–18 January 

1944). The Germans defended Budapest for 34 days (29 December 1944–13 February 1945), 

Vienna for 31 days, and Berlin for 23 days. The Croatian city of Vukovar fell to the Serbs only 

after 87 days (25 August–18 November 1991) of strong resistance. 

Attacks on cities also result in large losses of men and material on both sides. For instance, the 

Austrians suffered 5,400 casualties in their attack on Belgrade in 1717, while perhaps as many as 

30,000 men died from illnesses. The Turkish defenders had 5,000 killed and wounded out of 

total casualties of 20,000.87 

The German losses in the attack on Warsaw in September 1939 amounted to 1,500 dead and 

5,000 wounded, while the Polish defenders had some 6,000 dead (plus 25,800 civilians) and 

16,000 wounded solders. About 100,000 Polish defenders went into captivity. Polish losses in 

the Warsaw uprising in 1944 amounted to 17,200 (10,200 killed 7,000 missing) and, 12,000 

wounded, plus 15,900 captured. In addition, an estimated 200,000 to 250,000 Polish civilians 

were killed and 700,000 evacuated during and in the aftermath of the uprising. German casualties 

were also high: 10,000 killed, 7,000 missing, and 9,000 wounded.88 

In the defensive phase of the battle for Stalingrad, the Soviets had an estimated 324,000 dead or 

missing and 320,000 wounded and sick, or 5,100 casualties per day. In the offensive phase of the 

battle, they had 155,000 killed or missing and 330,000 wounded or 6,400 casualties per day on 

average.89 In the siege of Leningrad, the Soviets claimed to have lost 670,000 men. Some 

independent historians estimate their losses from 700,000 to about 1.5 million, and most 

estimates cite 1.1 million. This included 300,000 military casualties (plus 16,500 civilians from 

enemy bombing). The German losses in the siege of Leningrad are not known. The German 

losses during the battle for Budapest were 47,000 dead, while their Hungarian allies had 55,000 

dead. In addition, the Germans’ attempts at relief efforts in the defense of Budapest cost them 

about 80,000 dead and 240,000 wounded. The Soviet casualties in Budapest were estimated at 

about 320,000.90

 In the last phase of the battle for Berlin (16 April–8 May 1945) the Soviet losses amounted to 

78,000 dead or missing and 274,000 wounded, or 15,300 casualties per day on average.91 Other 
 

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sources claim that the Soviet losses in that battle amounted to 81,000 dead or missing and 

280,000 sick or wounded, or total casualties of about 361,000. The German losses were 

estimated at 150,000 to 173,000 killed, 200,000 wounded, and 134,000 captured. In addition, 

152,000 German civilians were killed.92 During the siege of Vukovar, the Croatian casualties 

were 1,500, including 450 killed in action. In addition about 1,130 civilians were killed and 

2,600 were reported missing. The unofficial estimate of Serbian losses was 1,180 dead and 

2,500 wounded. 93 

Seizing Large Economically Important Areas

In some cases, control of an important industrial or agrarian area or oil-producing area might 

become the principal objective of a campaign, at least in its initial phase. In planning for the 

invasion of Russia in 1941, General Franz Halder, chief of the army’s general staff (OKH), 

believed that the main operational objective of the campaign should be Moscow because its 

capture would mean the elimination of the political and administrative center of the Soviet 

communist regime. It was also the hub of the Soviet transportation system. However, Hitler 

intended to seize Leningrad and link up with the Finns and destroy the Soviet position in the 

Baltic. In the south, Hitler wanted to capture all important industrial and raw material areas of 

the Donets Basin (Donbas) and the Caucasus and destroy Soviet bases in the Black Sea area, 

which posed a threat to the Germans’ oil supplies from Romania.94 In Hitler’s view, the Soviet 

will to continue the war would be crushed by the loss of its important economic and industrial 

regions.95 Hitler and the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW) initially agreed that the 

objective should be the destruction of the Soviet armed forces. However, they put less emphasis 

on the need to capture Moscow soon. For them the most urgent problem was seizing the Baltic 

ports, the grain-producing areas of the Ukraine, and the Caucasian oil fields.96 

In planning and executing the invasion of Soviet Russia in June 1941 (Plan Barbarossa), Hitler 

made the costly mistake of not making a clear decision whether the initial German objective 

should be to destroy the Soviet army or to seize a large section of the European part of Russia. 

The Germans’ ultimate military strategic objective was to occupy the European part of Soviet 

Russia along the Volga River and thence along a general line extending northward toward 

Archangelsk. By seizing the European part of Soviet Russia, the Luftwaffe would be able to 

strike Soviet industrial centers beyond the Urals and prevent the Soviets from recovering the lost 

territory. At the same time, the Soviet bombers would be unable to attack the German industrial 

centers and the Romanian oil fields.97

On 7 August 1941, Halder tried through General Alfred Jodl, chief of the operations department 

of OKW, to convince Hitler that the Germans should first destroy the Soviet army rather than 

pursue economic objectives. Jodl informed Halder that in Hitler’s view both objectives could be 

accomplished simultaneously. Halder’s argument—that the offensive against Moscow could be 

successful only if all forces were directed toward that objective and that no peripheral objectives 

should be pursued—was ultimately rejected by Hitler. On 12 August 1941, Hitler directed that 

the most important objective before the onset of winter was, not Moscow, but the Crimea and 

Donets industrial areas and Leningrad.98
 

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Another of Hitler’s major mistakes on the eastern front was his objectives for the resumption of 

the German offensive in the summer of 1942 (Operation Blue). He then decided to pursue mainly 

economic objectives in southern Russia. In his directive Number 41 of 5 April 1942, he stated 

that, “our aim is to wipe out the entire defense potential remaining to the Soviets and to cut them 

off, as far as possible, from their most important centers of war industry.”99 To make things 

worse, Hitler also intended to seize Leningrad in order to join hands with the Finns. The capture 

of the Soviet capital Moscow was no longer attempted or even considered. Strategically, the 

Germans fragmented their efforts in Russia in two opposing directions.100 Halder believed in the 

summer of 1942 that the Caucasus was an urgent necessity, as that region had about the same 

importance for Germany as Silesia once had for Prussia. In his view, only the control of the 

Caucasus would enable Germany to hold the territory it had conquered during the war.101 

Hitler’s objective to seize the Caucasian oil fields in the summer of 1942 was based on some 

hard economic facts. In 1942, out of the total Soviet oil production of about 22 million tons, 

some 80 percent came from the Caucasus. Hence, the capture of the Caucasian oil fields would 

present a mortal threat to the Soviet regime. The most important oil center was Baku, some 745 

miles away from the southernmost part of the German front. Another problem was that the oil 

fields must fall undamaged into German hands. The Germans also had to assign forces to the 

newly conquered areas and to prevent the western Allies from shipping oil to the Soviets. For 

these reasons it was necessary to prevent shipping traffic on the Volga River.102 This was one of 

the reasons for Hitler’s decision to also seize Stalingrad. 

Seizing Geographic and Economic Areas 

Sometimes a land campaign can be aimed to capture both geographic and economic areas, as the 

Germans tried to do in their ultimately unsuccessful invasion of Soviet Russia in June 1941. 

Hitler defined the major operational objectives of the Barbarossa campaign as the capture of 

Leningrad, Moscow, the Ukraine, and the Caucasian oil fields. Ultimately, the Germans intended 

to capture the European part of Russia up to the general line of Volga-Arkhangelsk and thereby 

prevent the Soviet long-range bombers from reaching the heart of Germany. They believed that 

by reaching that line, the last remaining industrial areas of Russia in the Urals could, if 

necessary, be eliminated by the Luftwaffe. Hitler’s strategic objectives in Russia were 

preponderantly political and economic. He considered Leningrad the important objective as a 

link with the allied Finns, for obtaining mastery of the Baltic, and as the cradle of Bolshevism. 

The Donets Basin in the Ukraine was important for Germany’s economy on account of its 

industries and ores. The conquest of the Caucasus was critical for Germany’s control of oil 

sources. By acquiring these areas Hitler hoped to paralyze the Soviet war economy. The German 

army’s general staff acknowledged the importance of these objectives but insisted that prior 

annihilation of the Red Army was the most important objective. Hence, the most important 

operational objective was seizing Moscow, because the mass of the Red Army would be 

encountered on the way to the Soviet capital. Moscow was the hub of Soviet power. The Soviet 

leaders could not risk losing Moscow. The capital was also a vital center of the war industry and 

the central junction of the Russian railroad network.103
 

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Winning Without Fighting

Throughout military history, there have been many attempts to secure victory in war without 

actually employing one’s land forces in combat. By far, most such attempts failed, because the 

opponent, no matter how weak, decided to resist the demands of the stronger side. Despite this 

poor record, winning without fighting remains, in the minds of many, an attractive solution to the 

complexities and dangers of modern warfare. Sun Tzu was one of the best-known proponents of 

this school of thought. He believed that a force should be used sparingly and as a last resort. For 

Sun Tzu, the greatest achievement was to win without fighting, to convince the enemy’s forces 

to yield and if possible switch sides rather than be annihilated.104 He wrote that in the practical

art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy country whole and intact. To shatter and 

destroy it is not so good. So, too, is it better to capture a regiment, a detachment, or company 

rather than to destroy them. The skillful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting. 

He captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without 

lengthy operations in the field.105 

Sun Tzu’ emphasis on using one’s forces only as a last resort reflects the Confucian idealism and 

the Chinese political culture of his era. He shared the early Confucian assumption of the primacy 

of mental attitudes in human affairs. Confucius did not glorify physical coercion and warfare. He 

believed that the superior man, extolled in the classics as the highest product of self-cultivation, 

should be able to attain his ends without violence.106 Sun Tzu advised that battles are not 

necessarily the proper means to accomplish national objectives while keeping one’s victories 

intact—for him, it was better to win without fighting. Thus, those skilled in war subdue the 

enemy army without battle; they capture his cities without assaulting them and overthrow his 

state without protracted operations; they conquer by strategy. This can be achieved through the 

use of political, economic, psychological, and moral means prior to resorting to military efforts, 

and then through the use of wise strategy when military means are called upon. The latter entails 

not just seeking to fight battles but utilizing intelligence, deception, surprise, speed, and other 

methods either to outmaneuver the enemy or to ensure that any battles will end in victory. Sun 

Tzu wrote that the objective of strategy is to achieve the nation’s aims through controlling or 

affecting its sphere of influence, but to do so without resort to fighting. When one is weaker than 

the enemy, avoiding a decisive battle and going on the strategic defensive until the situation 

improves are another means of winning without fighting. Unfortunately, that strategy is not 

always followed.107 Therefore, the highest realization of warfare is to attack the enemy’s plans; 

next is to attack his alliance; next is to attack the army; and the lowest is to attack the fortified 

cities. Cities should be attacked only when it cannot be avoided. Hence, one who excels at 

employing the military subjugates other people’s armies without engaging in battle, captures 

other people’s fortified cities without attacking them, and destroys other people’s states without 

prolonged fighting; he must fight under heaven with the paramount aim of preservation.108

In the modern era there have been few examples of achieving victory without actual fighting. 

Perhaps the best such cases were a string of Hitler’s political and diplomatic victories that led to 

the reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936 without a shot being fired; the annexation 

(Anschluss) of Austria in March 1937; the annexation of Sudetenland in September 1939; and 

the final dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Neither the Austrians nor the 
 

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Czechs offered any resistance to Hitler’s demands. Based on the secret clauses of the SovietNazi Non-Aggression Pact (or Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) of August 1939, the Soviet troops 

entered all three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) in June 1940 and formally 

annexed them in August 1940. Based on the secret clauses of the same pact, the Soviets also 

occupied Romania’s part of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina in July 1940. 

Conclusion 

The objectives of land warfare should be within the framework dictated by policy and strategy. 

The highest national or alliance/coalition leadership normally determines the political strategic 

objective in the employment of one’s armed forces. Based on these objectives, the operational 

commander and his staff should derive the ultimate military or theater-strategic objective. The 

objectives on land in operations short of war and in a war differ greatly because of considerable 

differences in the scope and the content of the ultimate strategic objectives. In general, the more 

the strategic objective is political, the less the need for, and the more difficult is the employment 

of, one’s ground forces. Clausewitzian and Moltkean adherents firmly believe that the main 

purpose of employing one’s military sources of power is to destroy the enemy’s army. Other 

theoreticians and practitioners believe that capturing the territory and the enemy’s nation capital 

might be a better way of accomplishing the ultimate objective on land. In modern era, there is 

also a school of thought, as exemplified by Hitler in his conduct of war against Soviet Russia, 

that control of the most important economic or industrial areas offers the best chance of ultimate 

success on land. 

Experience shows that the best and the quickest way to force the enemy’s surrender is to destroy 

his army in the field. However, this is not always the case in a defensive campaign, where 

attriting the enemy’s forces and retaining sufficient territory to prosecute war is the only 

militarily achievable option. Also, in conducting a major amphibious landing, it is normally 

necessary to seize the lodgment ashore or some major ports/airfields and only then focus one’s 

efforts on destroying the bulk of the enemy’s army. In short, it is usually a bad decision to 

embrace rigidly what the proper objective on land should be. Hence, the mission received from 

the higher political authority or commander and the situation should be the main determining 

factor for the operational commander and his staff in the selection of the ultimate objective on 

land; the destruction of the enemy’s physical capacity to wage war should be the principal 

objective. The key is to avoid having a rigid view of whether the enemy army or the enemy 

territory or economic area should be the first and most important objective. This determination 

should not be solely based on the military situation; political, diplomatic, and other nonmilitary 

aspects of the situation must be taken fully into account. 

Copyright©2008 

 Dr. Milan Vego serves as a professor with the Naval War College Joint Military 

Operations faculty which he joined in August 1991. He is the author of Operational 

Warfare and Joint Operational Warfare as well as numerous books and articles published 

in professional journals and magazines. 
 

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Notes 

1

 Carl von Egger, Die Strategie. Mit Berucksichtigung der neuen Kriegsmittel (Basel: Schweighauserische 

Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1870), p. 10. 

2

 Hans Delbrueck, History of the Art of War, Vol. 1, Warfare in Antiquity, translated from the German by Walter J. 

Renfroe, Jr. (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), p. 231. 

3

 J. F. C. Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, paperback reprint of 

1960 edition), pp. 284, 286. 

4 Ibid., p. 319. 

5

 Hans Delbrueck, History of the Art of War, Vol. 4, The Dawn of Modern Warfare, translated from the German by 

Walter J. Renfroe, Jr. (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), p. 308. 

6

 Ibid., pp. 310–11. 

7

 Jay Luvaas, ed. and trans., Frederick the Great on the Art of War (New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 1999), p. 13. 

8

 Hans Delbrueck, History of the Art of War, Vol. 4, The Dawn of Modern Warfare, translated from the German by 

Walter J. Renfroe, Jr. (Lincoln/London: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), p. 310. 

9

 Delbrueck, History of the Art of War, Vol. 4, The Dawn of Modern Warfare, pp. 311–12. 

 

10 Ibid., p. 314. 

11 Claus Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740–1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon (London: 

Frank Cass, 2005), p. 52. 

12 Delbrueck, History of the Art of War, Vol. 4, The Dawn of Modern Warfare, p. 421. 

13 Ibid., p. 422; cited in James N. Wasson, Innovator or Imitator: Napoleon’s Operational Concepts and the 

Legacies of Bourcet and Guibert (Fort Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military Studies, United States Army 

Command and General Staff College, May 1998), p. 21. 

14 Erich Brandenberger, Der Deutsche Generalstab, ZA/1 1879, P-031a, 30, Teil Studien der Historical Division 

Headquarters, United States Army Europe, Foreign Military Studies Branch, Bundesarchiv/Militaerarchiv (BAMA), Freiburg i.Br., p. 90. 

15 Delbrueck, History of the Art of War, Vol. 4, The Dawn of Modern Warfare, p. 421. 

16 Cited in V. E. Savkin, The Basic Principles of Operational Art and Tactics (A Soviet View) (original Osnovnye 

Printsipy Operativnogo Iskusstva i Taktiki) (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1972); translated and published under the 

auspices of the United States Air Force (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1972), p. 19. 

17 J. F. C. Fuller, The Conduct of War 1789–1961 (New York, NY: Da Capo Press reprint of 1961 edition), p. 49. 
 

 Fall 2008 

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18 Cited in Michael I. Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought (London: Frank Cass, 3rd rev. and 

expanded ed., 2001), p. 203. 

19 Ibid., p. 20. 

20 Cited in Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740–1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon, p. 53. 

21 Martin Blumenson, “A Deaf Ear to Clausewitz: Allied Operational Objectives in World War II,” Parameters

(Summer 1993), p. 16. 

22 Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege, edited by Dr. Werner Hahlweg (Bonn: Ferdinand Duemmler Verlag, 16th 

edition, 1952), p. 875. 

23 Guenther Blumentritt, “Die Gedanklichen Grundlagen des Alten O.K.H.,” in O.v. Natzmer, Die Gedanklichen 

Grundlagen des OKH und deren Auswirkungen auf seine Organisation. Ein Schlusswort zur Gesamtarbeit “OKH,”

December 1949, ZA/1 1935, P-041kk, BA-MA, p. 11. 

24 Cited in Fuller, The Generalship of Alexander the Great, p. 287. 

25 Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, pp. 151–53. 

26 Ibid., p. 144. 

27 Cited in Jehuda L. Wallach, The Dogma of the Battle of Annihilation: The Theories of Clausewitz and Schlieffen 

and Their Impact on the German Conduct of Two World Wars (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986), p. 17. 

 

28 Savkin, The Basic Principles of Operational Art and Tactics (A Soviet View), p. 21. 

29 Rudolph von Caemmerer, The Development of Strategical Science During the 19th Century, translated by Karl 

von Donat (London: Hugh Rees, 1905), pp. 28-29. 

30 Peter S. Carmichael, ed., Audacity Personified: The Generalship of Robert E. Lee (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana 

University Press, 2004), p. 1. 

31 John F. C. Fuller, The Generalship of Ulysses S. Grant (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1958, 

reprinted by Krausreprint, Milwood, NY, 1977), pp. 209–10. 

 

32 Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York, NY: Free 

Press, 2002), p. 31. 

33 Daniel J. Hughes, ed., Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings, translated by Harry Bell and Daniel J. Hughes 

(Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1993), p. 93. 

34 Michael D. Krause, “Moltke and the Origins of Operational Art,” Military Review 9 (September 1990), p. 31. 

35 Ibid., “Moltke and the Origins of the Operational Level of War,” in Roland G. Foerster, ed.,

Generalfeldmarschall von Moltke. Bedeutung und Wirkung (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1991), p. 146. 
 

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36 Ibid., p. 147. 

37 Hughes, Moltke on the Art of War: Selected Writings, p. 130. 

38 Helmuth von Moltke, Sr., Ausgewaehlte Werke, Vol. 1, Feldherr und Kriegslehrmeister (Berlin: Verlag von 

Reimar Hobbing, 1925), p. 259. 

39 Brandenberger, Der Deutsche Generalstab, pp. 90, 103. 

40 Krause, “Moltke and the Origins of the Operational Level of War,” p. 150. 

41 Wallach, The Dogma of the Battle of Annihilation: The Theories of Clausewitz and Schlieffen and Their Impact 

on the German Conduct of Two World Wars, pp. 41–42, 47. 

42 Fuller, The Conduct of War 1789–1961, pp. 205, 202–03, 207. 

43 Ibid., p. 204. 

44 Cited in William P. Baxter, The Soviet Way of Warfare (London: Brassey’s, 1986), pp. 91-92. 

45 Delbrueck, History of the Art of War, Vol. 4, The Dawn of Modern Warfare, p. 388. 

46 Cited in Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740–1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon, p. 24. 

47 Cited in Delbrueck, History of the Art of War, Vol. 4, The Dawn of Modern Warfare, p. 388. 

48 Cited in Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740–1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon, p. 54. 

49 Caemmerer, The Development of Strategical Science During the 19th Century, p. 3. 

50 Delbrueck, History of the Art of War, Vol. 4, The Dawn of Modern Warfare, p. 389. 

51 Egger, Die Strategie. Mit Berucksichtigung der neuen Kriegsmittel, p. 18. 

52 Cited in Telp, The Evolution of Operational Art, 1740–1813: From Frederick the Great to Napoleon, p. 19. 

53 Bruce W. Menning, Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861–1914 (Bloomington and 

Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992, paperback reprint, 2000), pp. 52–55; P. A. Rotmistrov, ed., et al., 

Istoryia Voyennogo Iskusstva, Vol. 1 (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1963), p. 223. 

54 Ibid., p. 223. 

55 Menning, Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861–1914, p. 53. 

56 H. M. Johnstone, The Foundations of Strategy (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1914), p. 101. 
 

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 57 Menning, Bayonets before Bullets: The Imperial Russian Army, 1861–1914, p. 53. 

58 Ibid. 

59 Blumenson, “A Deaf Ear to Clausewitz: Allied Operational Objectives in World War II,” ), pp. 16–17. 

60 Ibid., p. 21. 

61 Ibid., pp. 19–20. 

62 Brian Holden Reid, “The Italian Campaign, 1943–45: A Reappraisal of Allied Generalship,” in John Gooch, ed., 

Decisive Campaigns of the Second World War (London: Frank Cass, 1990), p. 136. 

63 Blumenson, “A Deaf Ear to Clausewitz: Allied Operational Objectives in World War II,” pp. 19–20. 

64 Reid, “The Italian Campaign, 1943–45: A Reappraisal of Allied Generalship,” p. 136. 

65 A. Harding Ganz, “Questionable Objective: The Brittany Ports, 1944,” Journal of Military History 59 (January 

1995), p. 78. 

66 Martin Blumenson, “The Emergence of Infrastructure as a Decisive Strategic Concept,” Parameters (Winter 

1999–2000), pp. 43, 41. 

67 Blumenson, “A Deaf Ear to Clausewitz: Allied Operational Objectives in World War II,” p. 24. 

68 Cited in Lou Di Marco, “Attacking the Heart and Guts: Urban Operations Through the Ages,” in William G. 

Robertson and Lawrence A. Yates, Block by Block: The Challenges of Urban Operations (Fort Leavenworth, KS: 

U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Press, 2003), p. 1. 

69 Cited in Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, p. 58. 

70 Delbrueck, History of the Art of War, Vol. 4, The Dawn of Modern Warfare, p. 308. 

71 Di Marco, “Attacking the Heart and Guts: Urban Operations Through the Ages,” pp. 1, 4. 

72 Ibid., p. 5. 

73 Cited in Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, p. 57. 

74 Egger, Die Strategie. Mit Beruecksichtigung der neuen Kriegsmittel, p. 18; Di Marco, “Attacking the Heart and 

Guts: Urban Operations Through the Ages,” p. 4. 

75 Wilhelm Stanger, Grundzuege der Lehre von der Strategie. Studienbehelf fuer die K.K. Kriegschule, Vol. 1, 

Theorie mit Kuerzeren Beispielen (Vienna: Verlag der K.K. Kriegschule, 1884), p. 72. 

76 Blumenson, “A Deaf Ear to Clausewitz: Allied Operational Objectives in World War II,” pp. 22–23. 
 

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 77 Di Marco, “Attacking the Heart and Guts: Urban Operations Through the Ages,” pp. 2, 7. 

78 Ibid., p. 5. 

79 Ibid., pp. 7, 6. 

80 Ibid., pp. 6-8. 

81 David G. Chandler, Atlas of Military Strategy: The Art, Theory and Practice of War 1618–1878 (London: Arms & 

Armour Press, 1996), pp. 55, 57. 

82 Di Marco, “Attacking the Heart and Guts: Urban Operations Through the Ages,” p. 8. 

83 Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millet, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, MA: 

Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 482.

84 Central Intelligence Agency, Office of the Russian and European Analysis, Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military 

History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1990-1995, Vol. II (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, October 2003), 

pp. 192, 196. 

85 Anatol Lieven, “Lessons of War in Chechnya 1994–96,” in Michael C. Desch, ed., Soldiers in Cities: Military 

Operations on Urban Terrain (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, October 

2001), p. 60. 

86 Chandler, Atlas of Military Strategy: The Art, Theory and Practice of War 1618–1878, p. 56. 

87 Ibid., p. 57. 

88 J.K. Zawodny, Nothing but Honour: The Story of the Warsaw Uprising, 1944 (Stanford, CA; Hoover Institution 

Press, 1978), pp. 210-11. 

89 Cited in Gerhard L. Weinberg, “Stalingrad and Berlin: Fighting in Urban Terrain,” in Desch, ed., Soldiers in 

Cities: Military Operations on Urban Terrain, pp. 24–25. 

90 Krisztián Ungváry, The Siege of Budapest: One Hundred Days in World War II, translated from the Hungarian by 

Ladislaus Löb (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2005), pp. 374, 378–89. 

91 Weinberg, “Stalingrad and Berlin: Fighting in Urban Terrain,” p. 25. 

92 Murray and Millet, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, p. 482. 

93 Central Intelligence Agency, Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1990-1995, Vol. 

II, pp. 204-05 

94 Cited in Bernd Wegner, “The Road to Defeat: The German Campaigns in Russia 1941–43,” Gooch, ed., Decisive 

Campaigns of the Second World War, pp. 111–12. 

95 Rolf-Dieter Mueller, “Von den Wirtschaftsallianz zum kolonialen Ausbeutungskrieg,“ in Horst Boog et al., eds., 

Der Angriff Auf Die Sowjetunion, Vol. 4, Der Deutsche Reich Und Der Zweite Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Deutsche 

Verlags-Anstalt, 1983), p. 143. 
 

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 96 Cited in John D. Johnson, Sequencing Operations: Considerations for the Operational Planner (Fort 

Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military Studies, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 20 May 

1991), pp. 16–17. 

97 David J. Bongi, Operational Logic and Identifying Soviet Operational Centers of Gravity During Operation 

Barbarossa 1941 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: School of Advanced Military Studies, U.S. Army Command and General 

Staff College, 25 May 1994), pp. 24–25. 

98 Alfred Philippi and Ferdinand Heim, Der Feldzug Gegen Sowjetrussland 1941 bis 1945. Ein operatives 

Ueberblick (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1962), pp. 69–70. 

99 Cited in Matthew Cooper, The German Air Force 1933–1945: An Anatomy of Failure (London: Jane’s 

Publishing, 1981), p. 245. 

100 Wallach, The Dogma of the Battle of Annihilation: The Theories of Clausewitz and Schlieffen and Their Impact 

on the German Conduct of Two World Wars, pp. 277–78. 

101 Cited in Wegner, “The Road to Defeat: The German Campaigns in Russia 1941–43,” p. 118. 

102 Heinz Magenheimer, Kriegswenden in Europa 1939–1945: Fuehrungsentschluesse, Hintergruende, Alternativen

(Munich and Landsberg am Lech: Guenter Olzog Verlag, GmbH, 1995), p. 100. 

103 Cited in Wallach, The Dogma of the Battle of Annihilation: The Theories of Clausewitz and Schlieffen and Their 

Impact on the German Conduct of Two World Wars, pp. 269–70. 

104 Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, p. 22. 

105 Thomas R. Phillips, ed., Roots of Strategy: A Collection of Military Classics (Harrisburg, PA: Military Service 

Publishing, 1940), pp. 26–27. 

106 Cited in Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought, p. 136. 

107 Mark McNeilly, Sun Tzu and the Art of Modern Warfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 18–19, 

25. 

108 Sun-tzu, The Art of War, translated with introduction and commentary by Ralph D. Sawyer, with the 

collaboration of Mei-chün Lee Sawyer (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994), p. 177. 
 - 37 - 

Fall 2008 

Scoping Complex Systems for the Joint Task Force Commander 

By 

Michael Collender 

And 

Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Deller 

As to Peace and War, [the man who would understand war] must know the extent of the 

military strength of his country, both actual and potential, and also the nature of that 

actual and potential strength; and further, what wars his country has waged, and how it 

has waged them, He must know these facts on only about his own country, but also about 

neighboring countries; and also about the countries with which war is likely, in order 

that peace may be maintained with those stronger than his own, and that his own may 

have power to make war.... 

 Aristotle c. 340 BC 

Aristotle and Alexander 

Before there were military analysts, there were philosopher warriors. Alexander of Macedon 

was arguably the most successful multi-theater commander in the history of the world. Not only 

did he conquer more territory than anyone else, he successfully practiced siege war, Napoleonic 

style total war and counterinsurgency in the varying geography of the Middle East, in what is 

today Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Alexander demonstrated a clear knowledge of how to 

reorganize the systems of his own military force to meet changes in the terrain and the 

organization of his enemy, and he demonstrates this ability after taking Susa, the Persian 

administrative capital.1 At that time he began a process of reorganizing his forces to deal with 

guerrilla fighting after he had beaten the Persian emperor’s massive army. This ability to move 

between force arrangements would be a distinguishing mark of Alexander’s great campaign.2

 He 

also demonstrated remarkable skill in gaining victory in the cognitive domain, winning the 

respect and admiration of his enemies, even turning them into friends and supporters.3

 He was 

able to establish the justice of his cause4

, so much so that Darius, even as he lay dying from a 

mortal wound, honored Alexander for his good conduct towards him.5

Those interested in training commanders and their staffs may find themselves asking, “How did 

Alexander learn to do this?” Clearly Alexander had great natural gifts, but history preserves for 

us that Alexander’s father, Philip, saw his son’s promise, and paid handsomely to hire the 

philosopher Aristotle to teach his son. Aristotle came to the Macedonian court after many years 

of studying the operation of what we today might describe as the physical and cognitive 

domains. His biological systems theory and his study of the psychology of persuasion seem to 

have been of great interest to Alexander. Throughout Alexander’s campaigns he continued to 

send specimens of new organisms back to Aristotle. Also telling is Alexander’s reaction when he 

learned that Aristotle had published much of what he had taught Alexander. Alexander, in Asia, 

wrote frankly: 
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Fall 2008 

 Alexander to Aristotle, greeting. You have not done well to publish your books of oral 

 doctrine; for what is there now that we excel others in, if those things which we have 

 been particularly instructed in be laid open to all? For my part, I assure you, I had 

 rather excel others in knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power 

 and dominion. Farewell.

6

What Alexander had learned from Aristotle, he wanted hidden for his own use—and if so, this 

knowledge must have been valuable. 

To understand the mind of a great author requires more than just reading that author’s books. 

One must read the books he read. Likewise, to understand the mind of a great military 

commander, one must not merely study his battles, but study what he studied in order to win 

those battles. It should be no surprise to find a connection in the ancient Greek world between 

successful philosopher warriors and the philosophers who trained them. Xenophon, who led the 

Ten Thousand who fought their way out of the heart of Persia, was a student of Socrates. It 

would seem at least some ancient philosophers had taught their students to take power over 

complex systems. 7

“Modern” Wicked Problems 

This article speaks to our ongoing problem of modeling the complexity in war that is associated 

with “wicked problems.” However, it is clear that complexity is nothing new, as military history 

demonstrates. The ancients considered the question of complexity, as evidenced from the work 

of Aristotle, perhaps the first complexity theorist in the western world, and that of Thucydides, 

historian of the Peloponnesian War, a war so complex it can serve as an archetype for all of the 

types of complexity that one encounters in warfighting. In contrast, current complexity 

literature may mislead one into thinking so-called wicked problems are in some way new, 

seemingly unsolvable problems requiring new methods of analysis. But in truth war has long 

been a complex business, which even the earliest theorists understood. 

Ultimately, all war is waged in the cognitive domain as the enemy's collective will-to-fight 

resides there. When, then, should a military conflict be viewed as a wicked problem? Robert 

Horn, a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and 

Information, who is known for the development of Information Mapping, describes complexity 

in social terms: “a Social Mess is a set of interrelated problems and other messes. Complexity—

systems of systems—is among the factors that makes Social Messes so resistant to analysis and, 

more importantly, to resolution.”8

 Wicked problems in the military context have in fact become 

synonymous with operations where mastery of the collective (social) cognitive domain plays a 

dominant role in the outcome of the conflict. Simply put, whenever the plan concerns itself with 

the collective cognitive domain, the operational planner is likely facing a wicked problem with 

its corresponding complex systems that will require analysis. 

Using this definition, we find three wicked problems that face the modern warfighter with 

associated complex systems that challenge our operational-level planners. The first stems from 

stability and reconstruction with the associated counterinsurgency mission. By now, we are well 
 - 39 - 

Fall 2008 

familiar with this problem from our ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we find 

ourselves tasked with “earning the trust and confidence” of a population. The second is the 

generational “Long War,” a global “war on terror” involving the direct participation of 

international bodies, judged by international audiences, and calling on all elements of national 

power. The third is the Hybrid War, gaining new attention from the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah 

conflict, in which the defense force of a traditional nation-state faced an “unconventional” enemy 

shielded within the trappings of a host state. 

How are the Joint Task Force (JTF) staff and its commander to understand wicked problems in 

prosecuting these conflicts, and solve them? The answer to this question is of critical importance 

to the contemporary warfighter. In this article, we will accomplish two tasks: First, we will 

provide a careful critique of the System of Systems (SOS) approach which has powerfully 

influenced the critical mission analysis phase of the Joint Operational Planning Process (JOPP). 

This critique will analyze the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict, to identify precisely why SOS 

failed to meet Israel’s needs in that war. Furthermore, we will critique the current emphasis on 

(not the need for) metrics. Second, we will present a methodology for scoping complex 

problems, called a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Complex Systems (HPCS). This approach 

draws on the approach to the physical and cognitive domains taught to Alexander of Macedon by 

Aristotle. We will argue that natural language is the encompassing model for complex systems, 

and that this approach will permit us to identify the usefulness of mathematical modeling which 

uses a formal symbol based language. The HPCS then permits traditional strategic thinking 

reflected in Sun Tzu, Alexander, Clausewitz, and Col. John Boyd to some degree, to speak to 

Network Centric Warfare (NCW) and SOS. This is possible because the HPCS was originally 

developed to address problems in cognitive science, which also happen to be conceptually 

related to the problems in NCW and SOS. We will conclude with recommendations for the JTF 

staff on how to scope complex systems; since we define complexity in social terms, many of our 

recommendations are also social in nature. 

Israel’s Faulty Targeting 

The 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war provides a useful example of a complex system problem. An 

excellent reference source for all of the facets of this conflict can be found in JCOA’s 2007 

Winter Journal9

, and we will use their analysis as a basis for our discussion. However, in pursuit 

of our understanding of complexity, our focus will be on those specific failures that speak to the 

relationship between the physical and cognitive domains in war. 

In July of 2006 there was a war between Israel and Lebanon over Hezbollah. The methodology 

of the war on Israel’s side was to inflict physical damage on Lebanon with the objective of 

getting Lebanon to evict Hezbollah. The desired effect in support of this objective was a 

cognitive one--to undermine Hezbollah’s popular support. To accomplish this goal Israel 

targeted Lebanon’s physical assets, and in terms of metrics Israel inflicted a greater casualty 

count and greater infrastructure damage. However, the international community perceived Israel 

as having lost even though by every metric Israel should have been recognized as victor. So in 

the end Hezbollah was granted the victory. How did this happen? 
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Fall 2008 

To grasp what happened one must distinguish between two domains of war, the physical and the 

cognitive, and then apply this distinction to the traditional nation-state construct. Physically, we 

have states with associated infrastructure, services, and closed system boundaries. Cognitively, 

we have nations (keeping with the ancient Greek word for nation, ethnos, the root for the English 

word “ethnicity,” to describe a nation). Israel is both a state and a nation. As a state, it is 

defined by the boundaries and infrastructure in which it exercises its sovereignty. As a nation, it 

has both a cultural archaeology and eschatology to envision a destiny that is Israel. When 

challenged this destiny defines a model of victory (MOV) to which the nation can rally and 

which it can use to guide its strategy. 

On the contrary, the Lebanon of 2006 had neither a sense of nationality nor accompanying 

destiny. It performed the functions of a state, and claimed such status, but it was in fact a shell. 

The JCOA analysis shows how decades of civil war and infiltration of external agents from Iran, 

Syria and Palestine weakened any collective will to the point of inaction. This allowed 

Hezbollah to usurp the state services and protections of Lebanon toward Hezbollah’s objectives. 

Hezbollah’s concept of nationality is made clear in its 1988 manifesto10 as published in Israeli 

newspapers. In their manifesto they define their identity as “the sons of the umma (Muslim 

community) - the party of God (Hizb Allah) the vanguard of which was made victorious by God 

in Iran.”11 They describe their goal as the defeat of Israel, the US, and France with the defeat of 

Israel being viewed as both a decisive point and objective: “our struggle will end only when this 

entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, 

whether separate or consolidated.”12 Thus their MOV over time is consistent and recognizable 

as the destruction of Israel. Clearly, both their sense of identity and corresponding MOV were 

external to the state of Lebanon.13

The question that Israel then faced was how to target such an entity? Israel in fact used the SOS 

construct to empower an effects based approach that targeted the Lebanese government’s 

physical infrastructure for the purpose of creating a cognitive effect in the minds of the Lebanese 

people. Let us therefore consider those people; for many of them Hezbollah’s Leader Nasrallah 

was a beloved and trusted defender. Was their admiration successfully targetable by the weapons 

of the physical domain? Or would they still remain defiant after all physical resistance had been 

crushed? Once the nation state is analyzed in terms of the physical and cognitive domains of war, 

it becomes clear if one aims at the state’s physical infrastructure, one only targets the advancing 

enemy nation in an indirect and imprecise manner. This category mistake is evident in the minds 

of both Commander of the IDF Dan Halutz and Prime Minister Olmert. General Halutz said in 

2001: 

 Victory means achieving the strategic goal and not necessarily territory.... 

 Victory is a matter of consciousness. Airpower affects the adversary’s 

 consciousness significantly.14 

General Halutz’s first and second sentences are correct; however, the inference is suspect. The 

Prime Minster also confirms the same kind of confusion when he stated upon launching Israel’s 
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Fall 2008 

initial air strikes that the events which precipitated the war were “not a terror attack, but an act 

by a sovereign state which attacked the state of Israel without reason or provocation.”15

Lieutenant General Halutz went on to become the Commander of the IDF for the 2006 conflict. 

It is germane to the problem before us that General Halutz saw a direct correlation between the 

system’s infrastructure being targeted and a strike against the cognitive domain. This is the 

direct result of misapplied metaphor and led to disastrous results. Ironically, by publicly 

embracing the system of systems construct to target the cognitive domain, Israel ceded the 

initiative to Hezbollah. From the JCOA report it is clear that Hezbollah deliberately presented 

Israel with no targetable physical nodes. They were brilliant in their use of the tunnel system and 

in their ability to slip into the population and disappear. Rocket launch times were measured in 

seconds, well within Boyd’s Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loop of the Israelis. In total, 

there were no targets presented that might be vulnerable to a systems-of-systems based doctrine. 

Tragically, faulty targeting went beyond operational difficulties to contribute to an unwinnable 

situation from the outset. 

Israel’s strategic MOV ultimately is one of continued survival. However, in the 2006 operational 

context, the stated end state given by the political leadership was threefold: return the hostages, 

destroy Hezbollah, and compel the Lebanese Government to take control of their country. 

Tactically, the methods used were not well executed, nor could they have accomplished these 

results even if they had been successful. Additionally, as stated, their end state had the character 

of a static complaint against Hezbollah with the hostage condition added on to give the 

appearance of addressing the current situation. 

This three-way mismatch of capabilities, tactics, and objectives, did not go unnoticed by the 

international community which perceived no immediate existential threat to Israel beyond the 

established norm of raids and hostage exchanges.16 However, a perceived existential threat was 

politically necessary for the Israeli leadership to seat the operational end state of the destruction 

of Hezbollah (with massive correlative damage to Lebanon) within the Israeli MOV of continued 

survival. Without this threat, Israel’s political leadership was unable to justify a response greater 

than the established norm, causing that response to be viewed as disproportionate and misguided 

by the international community which would eventually act as the jury to decide the victory.17

This mismatch also gives operational relevance to Hezbollah Leader Nasrallah’s surprise as 

stated in an interview with Lebanon’s NTV Television Station: 

 We did not think, even one percent, that the capture would lead to a war at 

 this time and of this magnitude. You ask me, if I had known on July 11... 

 that the operation would lead to such a war, would I do it? I say no, absolutely not.18

Conversely, Hezbollah’s desired end state was diachronic (changing through time) and 

appropriately nested within its MOV. It was also dramatically affected by Israel’s method of 

execution. The massive bombardment of Lebanese infrastructure and subsequent ground 

offensive combined with the stated Israeli objectives to make this a clear existential threat. 

Israel’s disproportionate method of execution moderated Hezbollah’s desired end state from its 
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standing objective of the destruction of Israel to one of pure survival. This allowed Hezbollah to 

effectively weaponize their stated objective through a ceasefire process that allowed them a say 

in the timing of the actual end state; Israel did not counter this move effectively. Hezbollah and 

Israel both responded favorably to UN Security Council Resolution 1701 on 11 August. As they 

did, IDF forces conquered the high ground where they had been bogged down in the Wadi Saluki 

and were to initiate an armored push to the Litani River on 13 August. At this point, both sides 

claimed victory: 

 We are facing a strategic and historic victory. This is no exaggeration. 

 This is a victory for Lebanon—all of Lebanon—for the resistance, and 

 for the entire Islamic nation. 

Hezbollah Secretary General Nasrallah19

 IDF soldiers dealt a severe blow, the dimensions of which are not yet 

 publicly known, to this murderous organization, its military and 

 organizational infrastructure, its long term ability, the huge weapons arsenal ... 

 and also the self confidence of its people and leaders. In every battle, 

 in every encounter with the Hezbollah terrorists, the fighters of the IDF had 

 the upper hand—of this there is not doubt. 

Prime Minster Olmert20

Prime Minister Olmert is correct for the most part in his metric assessment of the battle; 

nevertheless, the victory was still granted to Hezbollah, and rightfully so, if the cognitive domain 

is taken into account. It is difficult to appeal to public judgment by insinuating a private victory. 

Enter complexity: if applying Clausewitzian standards of perfection, the execution of total war 

leading to the destruction of the host would have been the preferred option for Israel. Instead, 

Israel found itself executing in the same complex operational environment observed by 

Clausewitz: 

 We must, therefore, be prepared to develop our concept of war as it ought to be 

 fought, not on the basis of its pure definition, but by leaving room for every sort of 

 extraneous matter. We must allow for natural inertia, for all the friction of its parts, 

 for all of the inconsistency, imprecision, and timidity of man; and finally we must 

 face the fact that war and its forms result from ideas, emotion, and conditions 

 prevailing at the time—and to be quite honest we must admit that this was the case 

 even when war assumed its absolute state under Bonaparte.

21 

To successfully prosecute the conflict, Israel had to recognize that there was a system change 

ongoing throughout the conflict within the cognitive domain as a result of Israel’s unexpectedly 

aggressive reaction. However, Israel’s envisioned operational end state was static while 

Hezbollah’s was diachronic. Furthermore, the models of victory for the combatants were 
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Fall 2008 

inverted. Israel had a MOV of survival with an embedded operational desired end state of 

destruction of Hezbollah, while Hezbollah had a MOV of destruction of Israel and a desired end 

state of survival. Hezbollah’s publicly stated goals for the 2006 conflict were well understood by 

domestic and international audiences and matched the conditions on the ground; Israel’s did not. 

Therefore, in the minds of the people of Lebanon and Israel, and on the global stage, Hezbollah 

was victorious and Israel had some explaining to do. 

System of Systems Limitations in the Cognitive Domain 

In the previous section, we used the cognitive domain and specifically the goal directedness of 

both Israel and Hezbollah to emphasize aspects of the war which could not be accounted for 

through metrics of targetable physical assets. It is well accepted that Israel’s failure was the 

result of their adopting US joint doctrine to include the system of systems construct and thought 

derived thereof (net-centric warfare, effects based operations, operational net assessment, etc.). 

In US joint doctrine, SOS has become the lens of choice for us to prepare for the mission 

analysis portion of the Joint Operational Planning Process (JOPP) (Fig. 1) by becoming the 

foundation for Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment (JIPOE), a key 

input to the Mission Analysis step. This relatively recent infiltration to the JOPP has negatively 

affected its overall perceived effectiveness. However, the JOPP continues to be a successful tool 

for application of analytical thought by the operational level planner. Its proven success is due to 

its inheritance of centuries of wisdom from the successful prosecution of wars, captured in the 

elements of operational design. 

 

Figure 1 

How did this infiltration of doctrine by system of systems theory occur? There is a good reason 

for it, at least initially. The original aim was to use complexity theory to understand these 

systems and at the time cognitive science’s neural network theory and associated designs seemed 
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the best resources available. The metaphor of physical network architecture seemed to explain 

other domains that aren’t necessarily physical per se, representing a social extension of the 

human mind. However, cognitive theory has evolved and so must our doctrine. 

The mission analysis framework which presently supports the JOPP uses the analogy of a 

network to model systems in the operational environment, and NCW has grown and evolved into 

our current notion of the SOS approach which treats the operational environment as a network of 

networks. These subsystems, or networks, have been categorized under a number of different 

constructs, the most current iteration, reflecting Joint doctrine, being the PMESII construct.22

Clearly there are many systems in this world which do work together, and study of them can be 

distinguished from the SOS network model which has been used for EBO. 

Unfortunately, as General Mattis’ 14 August EBO Assessment makes clear, this system approach 

uses the template of a closed system to then interpret an open system so that one is led to believe 

targeting an open system is done in the same manner as one would target a closed system.23 

From the diagram taken from Joint Publication 5-024 (Fig. 2), one can see that the relationship 

between the social, the economic, and the political systems are presented as similar to the 

network of the actual physical infrastructure of the target system. One aims at nodes which are 

clearly defined as physical things. 

 

Figure 2 

Under the current framework as defined in joint doctrine25, “A system is a functionally related 

group of elements forming a complex whole” (JP-5 III-17). These systems are made of nodes

which are “the tangible elements within a system that can be ‘targeted’ for action, such as 

people, material and facilities” (JP 3-0, IV-4). However these tangible elements, or nodes, must 

be connected to one another, else there would be no system. These connections which unite the 

nodes into a system are links which are elements of the system that represent a behavioral, 

physical or functional relationship between nodes (JP 5-0, III-18). JP 5-0 goes on to explain the 

different things which constitute these links: 
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Fall 2008 

 

 such as the command or supervisory relationship which connects a 

 superior to a subordinate; the relationship of a vehicle to a fuel source; 

 and the ideology that connects a propagandist to a group of terrorists. 

 Links establish the interconnectivity between nodes that allows them to 

 function as a system—to behave in a specific way (accomplish a task or 

 perform a function). Thus, the purpose in taking action against specific 

 nodes is often to destroy, interrupt, or otherwise affect the relationship 

 between them and other nodes, which ultimately influences the system 

 as a whole (JP 5-0, III-18). 

Two important implications need to be drawn from this discussion of nodes and links. First, in 

the network model, the links hold the nodes together; therefore, the systemic nature of the nodes 

is in their links, not in themselves. Second, nodes are targeted in order to affect links, because 

links are not targetable. Since they are not physical items, they cannot be directly affected by 

force. 

Furthermore, the network model is used to model not only the military and industrial complexes 

of an operational environment, but also the economic, political, and social environments. For the 

network model to be useful then at least if a node is being used in the same sense as the stated JP 

5-0 definition, the nodes of the other networks of PMESII (or additional systems if one wishes to 

add them) must also be understood in terms of nodes and links. One must also discern the links 

between the nodes of various sub-systemic networks. 

Several significant problems result from this network model. On the doctrinal network model 

one can only apply force to nodes.26 If a system is a network of nodes, and nodes are not nodes 

unless they are connected by links, it follows that what makes the system is not the nodes, but the 

links between the nodes. The implications of this situation are obvious enough. On the terms of a 

SOS approach, a network model approach, one is never actually targeting the system, only parts. 

This unfortunate state of affairs is built into the very notion of “node” and “link” as defined in JP 

3-0 and JP 5-0. Thus, the attaching of metrics to targets does not actually measure campaign 

health, only the health of nodes. It follows that SOS obscures correct interpretation of the system. 

In addition, the network model inhibits system analysis, the analysis of how systems relate to one 

another. We are not taking to task the use of the metaphor of a “network” to understand a given 

system. It would be appropriate to talk about Al Qaida and Hezbollah as networked terrorist 

organizations, or the DOD computer system as a network that must be protected. What we are 

criticizing is the use of the network model as the mission analysis construct for campaign design. 

The PMESII construct and those like it may be useful for highlighting the interrelationships 

between economic systems and military systems, but it requires the systems links be seen in 

terms of relationships between physical objects which can be targeted. Such a model becomes 

unwieldy when used to understand political or economic systems and becomes very challenging 

when dealing with informational, social, and cultural systems. A commander must be free to 

assess the strategic value of all parts of the operational environment. However, if the systems 
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must be defined in terms of tangible nodes which can be targeted, and links which cannot be 

targeted, then information is being lost. 

Furthermore, there is a time element to system development in the operational environment. If 

mission analysis analyzes a system in terms of nodes and links, and one defines nodes as “the 

elements within a system that can be targeted for action, such as people, material, and facilities” 

(JP 3-0) and links as behavior functional relationships between nodes, then it is clear that a SOS 

mission analysis is not studying the system diachronically, in terms of system changes over time. 

Its system analysis will only be synchronic, examining the system in its current or near future 

iterations. Since war is about achieving victory, and victory requires a change in states from a 

state of potential success to actual victory, it is clear that mission analysis is both synchronic and 

diachronic. Unfortunately, the SOS approach provides mission planners a synchronic construct 

for diachronic work. 

Even from the outset, the system of systems approach is affecting our understanding of the 

operational design process. Accompanied by the National Strategic Endstate, SOS 

understanding is the model to which all of our operational art is applied (figure 1). Presented in 

isolation, the national strategic end state is entirely notional. It is impossible to come to a 

strategic end where our nation is safe. 27 However, it is compatible with the systems of systems 

approach, where targeting is a design of metrics. The holdover from this application is a 

misapplied construct. 

What does this do? It creates artificial constraints to mission analysis. The notion of a linear 

efficient cause and effect chain in which one traces a desired effect from other necessary effects 

is very familiar. SOS sets up a certain anticipation of how that is supposed to occur. It also 

creates fixed objectives that an enemy can target and use against us. One sees this play out in the 

Israel-Hezbollah war. Also, there is a simplistic elimination of complexity as one moves closer 

to the tactical level; one may think things are getting simpler as one gets closer to the tactical 

level, but the same complexity is still retained in the operational environment. Can one escape 

the need to simplify during planning and execution one’s tactical actions (tasks)? No, and it 

should be that way—we need a planning process to identify clear actions that align with our 

operational objectives which lead to our desired strategic ends. Not doing so leads to operational 

paralysis. The problem comes in measuring our “effect” utilizing an information-reducing SOS 

approach where one is blinded to the actual information in the system necessary to set correct 

measures of effectiveness. 

Therefore, we are not criticizing end states that describe a physical set of required conditions 

necessary to recognize achievement of the commander’s objectives. The problem comes when 

one meshes the MOV and a specific operational end state where the MOV becomes the end state 

and one can’t actually change the end state in accordance with the MOV. When modeling 

complex systems for operational level planning, a static friendly desired end state never exists in 

isolation from the enemy’s desires or environmental conditions, and should not be pursued. 

Instead, a broad understanding of the competing models of victory for the prosecution (offensive 

forces), defense (defensive forces), and the jury (international community) is required. 
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Thus, planners who have been tasked with EBO and instructed to use NCW and SOS for mission 

analysis should not be blamed for misunderstanding all the complexities of the system; rather, 

they should be permitted to use a different approach for scoping complex systems. A movement 

in that direction is the goal of this article. 

Cognitive Modeling 

NCW and SOS, for their failings, recognize one important point. The warfighter needs a single 

model for understanding the interpretive interrelation of the cognitive and physical domains. So 

what alternative models exist to help us successfully prosecute conflicts in the face of 

complexity? The strategic purpose of modeling an operational environment must necessarily be 

victory. One may state this purpose in other more innocuous terms; “containment” perhaps, or 

“maintaining the balance of power.” Nevertheless, the modeling of systems for the purpose of 

warfighting must always remain focused on the task of targeting, a task which also implies a 

great many other tasks, but tasks which are goal directed. Even the term “operational 

environment”, changed in doctrine from the earlier “battlefield”, puts distance from the cold 

reality that such models are made to understand the proper application of force to change 

systems for strategic ends. Victory is the achievement of those ends. Whether it is the 

achievement of international goodwill, the unseating of a dictator, the destabilizing or stabilizing 

of an economy for the purposes of US national security, or maintaining a balance of power in a 

region, the goal is victory. 

It follows that a model of systems which obscures targeting information is a strategic liability, 

and needs to be augmented to the point which it no longer obscures targeting information. If the 

flaw is at the heart of the system itself, and cannot be fixed by more qualification or 

modifications, then action to solve the problem should strike at the source of the problem itself. 

To illustrate, consider Islam as one of the links between the targetable nodes which one could 

use to neutralize Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon. Through HUMINT a commander could learn 

which leaders are critical to the functioning of Hezbollah as an enemy of US national power, and 

effectively target them. However, Islam, which links the nodes of Hezbollah, is more than a set 

of links in a military system, or a social, or informational, or cultural system. There are systems 

which exist to serve a particular vision of Islam, just like other systems which have served 

ideological purposes. To try to model those systems simply in terms of nodes and links is to 

prepare to fail, because it removes necessary information about the systems being studied.

The Incompleteness of Math Based Modeling 

Given the problems that arise out of the definitions of node and link in the SOS and PMESII 

network model, one may wish to retain SOS as a tool for mission analysis, because the 

definitional precision of the SOS regarding nodes and links permits planners to quantify the 

effects they wish to produce on those parts of a systems that can be targeted. It produces 

categories to which one can apply metrics, objective measures of assessment. Furthermore, it 

follows what can be measured can also be modeled mathematically. So complex equations, the 
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most famous being the Lanchester Square Law, process data in carefully crafted computational 

models which aim to model the operational environment. 

However, history teaches us that human nature does not change; neither have traditional 

motivators of human character and human relationships changed. The traditional lessons of 

Thucydides, Sun Tzu, and Clausewitz are just as valuable today. Recent history is also helpful in 

showing us how incomplete our mathematical models can be. 

Millennium Challenge 2002 was constructed as the nation's largest joint warfighting experiment 

to date, incorporating “elements of all military services, most functional/regional commands and 

many DoD organizations and federal agencies, using the largest computer simulation federation 

ever constructed for an experiment of its kind.”28 The model served to both train the involved 

live forces and evaluate conventional warfighting doctrine. However, during execution, the 

model broke down. The Red team, commanded by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul 

K. Van Riper, introduced complexity into the model through multiple initiatives to take 

advantage of limitation of US doctrine and capabilities. The following details come from Sean 

D. Naylor of Army Times, Wikipedia, and Thom Shanker of The New York Times.

 [LtGen] Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders, negating Blue’s 

 high-tech eavesdropping capabilities ... when the Blue fleet sailed into the Persian 

 Gulf early in the experiment, Van Riper’s forces surrounded the ships with small 

 boats and planes sailing and flying in apparently innocuous circles. When the Blue 

 commander issued an ultimatum to Red to surrender or face destruction, Van Riper took 

 the initiative, issuing attack orders via the morning call to prayer broadcast from the 

 minarets of his country’s mosques. His force’s small boats and aircraft sped into 

 action.

29

 They also used a fleet of small boats to determine the position of Blue's ships without 

 being detected. In the early days of the exercise, Red launched a massive salvo of cruise 

 missiles, overwhelming the Blue forces' electronic sensors, destroying sixteen warships. 

 The equivalent of this success in a real conflict would have resulted in the death of over 

 20,000 servicemen and servicewomen. Soon after that offensive, another significant 

 portion of Blue's navy was "sunk" by an armada of small Red boats carrying out both 

 conventional and suicide attacks, able to engage Blue forces due to Blue's inability to 

 detect them as well as expected.”30

 General Van Riper recalled that his idea of a swarming attack grew from Marine Corps 

 studies of the natural world, where insects and animals — from tiny ant colonies to wolf 

 packs — move in groups to overwhelm larger prey. “It is not a matter of size or of 

 individual capability, but whether you have the numbers and come from multiple 

 directions in a short period of time,” he said. 31

This example showed the US military that force on force battle simulations lack the complexity 

of our contemporary operational environment. General Van Riper later expressed concern that 
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Fall 2008 

the war game would serve to merely reinforce an increasing notion of infallibility within the U.S. 

military rather than serve as a learning experience.32 General Van Riper’s concern may still be 

valid as Hezbollah successfully used a similar “swarming” technique against the IDF in the land 

battle in Lebanon. Today’s information rich operational environment challenges us to ask if a 

math based, effects based approach to modeling offers the wisdom necessary for campaign 

design. 

It would seem that the precision of math would be an ace for the warfighter, but for all its 

impressive power, mathematics actually reduces complexity—that is, after all, why we use it to 

model the natural world. It does this by a simple cognitive procedure, so simple we forget that 

we do it. The strange language of mathematics is actually natural human language being 

employed in a way that removes information for the sake of quantificational clarity. This feature 

was observed over 100 years ago by Frederick Hovenden who writes: 

 Numbers are adjectives, and are senseless without the nouns. If a person says or 

 Writes “one” the answer comes “one what?” Or if he in like manner expresses 

 “good,” the reply comes “what is good?” It is wonderful that physicists cannot 

 see this important truism.

33 

Mathematics is a useful deception. All mathematics is built on taking quantitative adjectives and 

using them, predicating with them, as though they were nouns. Mathematics tricks us with its 

magic to believe adjectives can become things (what nouns refer to) such that their operations 

inform us of the behavior of the real world. This is especially the case with metrics used today in 

Iraq and Afghanistan to measure campaign health. One hundred years later, cognitive science is 

vindicating Hovenden’s hunch. Contemporary research points to metaphorical mapping of 

embodied conceptual schemas on to one another in order to generate mathematics.34 When one 

takes adjectives and treats them like things it only follows that the body would map adjectival 

content on to the brain’s knowledge of its own embodiment. It should be no surprise that both 

Plato and the Pythagoreans who pioneered much of the early philosophy of mathematics 

believed that numbers had to be a kind of abstract immaterial thing of some sort, although both 

Plato and the Pythagoreans gave different accounts for the nature of mathematical entities. 

To understand how the brain maps one schema onto another, take the metaphor: A man is a 

wolf. Although this metaphor is overused, it still demonstrates one thing being mapped onto 

another. To understand this sentence, one must first understand what a man is, and also what a 

wolf is. This fellow is understood as being wolf-like. It could be his character, his appearance, 

his moral disposition. We don’t know at this point. It could be all of them. We do know that what 

is discoursed about this man is that he is a wolf. 

What is happening cognitively is that the schema of “man” and the schema of “wolf” are being 

mapped onto one another such that the one becomes the other. This happens all the time, and is 

the bases of conceptual model making, even scientific model making. The result is a new 

concept, or way of seeing things—a new gestalt, a mental arrangement of the particulars. This 

happens in models used in war. John Warden’s Rings make the war planner see his enemy in 
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terms of a concentric ring model. Clausewitz’s Newtonian metaphor of “centers of gravity” uses 

the metaphor of physical gravitation to understand the behavior of system parts upon one 

another. This same process of conceptual metaphorical mapping appears to be at the heart of 

mathematics as well. 

That is what mathematics is; a metaphorical conceptual construction. But it is a particularly 

interesting metaphorical construction in that instead of opening up feeling and emotions, as in 

poetry, it is actually designed to remove information. If one models using a fundamentally mathbased approach, one removes necessary information, which, in a warfighting situation, could be 

catastrophic. At the same time, mathematics is unlike poetic metaphor in that it is purposefully 

designed to limit the possibility of interpretation. The mapping of adjectives, onto the domain of 

nouns, of things (and then treating numbers as though they were collections of objects, or angles, 

or lengths), removes the extra information which comes with dealing with a real objects. It 

distances one from the filth of the real world, sometimes literally. Archimedes, the famed Greek 

mathematician, never bathed because the material world was not important. His wife, who was 

made of matter, was more in favor of him bathing. 

SOS is not the only project where formal mathematical or symbolic computation has failed to 

model the natural world. Keith Devlin , senior researcher at Stanford University’s Center for the 

Study of Language and Communication, chronicles the failure of artificial intelligence (AI) 

which promised big, but never came through on those promises.35 Devlin traces the maturation of 

AI from the early developments of symbolic logic in the latter part of the 1800’s. Symbolic logic 

was developed specifically to remove ambiguity through rigid definitions of symbols and the 

operations which they could perform. Symbolic computation was then picked up by one of the 

conceptual fathers of modern computing, Alan Turing, who developed the conceptual model of 

the Turing Machine. Turing’s thought experiment suggested that any symbolic computation 

could be performed by a machine which could read and print on a strip of paper. Any 

computable problem should be solvable with a finite amount of time, even if it took a billion 

years to run the tape through the Turing Machine. Turing’s thought experiment became a basis 

for the development of the modern computer, but it also gave a way for understanding the 

computational resources necessary to solve formal symbol system problems, which includes 

mathematical operations and the applications of symbolic logic, the building blocks of the 

quantitative modeling which the military now uses in warfighting analysis. 

By the late 1980s, it was clear that AI had failed. Turing had suggested what would eventually 

come to be known as the Turing test. He suggested that a computer would actually be intelligent 

when a human could sit in front of one and talk or type with it and not know whether a human or 

a computer was on the other end of the computer interface. No computer has ever passed the 

Turing test. 

Why? Because humans use language in ways that appreciate the polysemy of words. Polysemy 

is the interesting property of words that permits them “the possibility for a name to have more 

than one meaning.” 36 AI showed that to model complexity even simple expressions of natural 

language required enormous aggregate sets of rules to explain semantic behavior in natural 
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human language. Humans are able to understand the meaning of a word because of its context in 

a sentence, but also because of the context of its utterance. Human language reveals the 

complexity of the human mind, in that it permits rich information to communicate economically. 

If human language did not employ polysemy, it would be necessary to have an infinite 

dictionary, with a word for every item, every possible difference, or situation, which could some 

how affect that item, and who could remember all that information? Polysemy of natural 

language permits a human to use a finite number of words with an infinite number of possible 

utterances. In English, this includes everything from the most common English sentence (“I 

see.”) to the least common English sentence (“Where is the banjo player’s Porsche?”). 

It would appear that symbolic computation would be more mathematical and precise, and 

therefore it would be more exact and intelligent, but exactly the opposite proved true. The 

symbols of symbolic logic are univocal; they have only one use. But words in natural language 

have many meanings or uses in sentences. When one uses univocal symbols to model something 

plurivocal, one might multiply rule on rule, metric on metric and never accurately model that 

plurivocal subject. 

Returning to the topic of mission analysis for operational planning, one can see that a similar 

problem encumbers the joint operational planner. JOPP requires that campaign plans build in 

some kind of assessment to judge campaign health, and clearly campaign assessment is a 

necessary and critical part of conducting a campaign. However, assessment can only be made 

wisely if prudent campaign design and mission analysis have been accomplished (what SOS 

inhibits). Only then can one understand what metrics should be applied to the campaign, or 

whether use of quantitative metrics is the best way to measure immediate campaign success. 

Since the failure of AI to model natural language and the failure of SOS to scope complex 

operational problems seem to both find their root in a misaimed metric precision, we propose 

using natural language as the encompassing model for complex systems. 

Natural Language is the Encompassing Model of Complex Systems 

We begin the primary discourse of this paper with a parable. Imagine that you are on a ski slope 

skiing down a mountain...retain this image. Now imagine that you are in sunny Florida riding an 

outboard motor boat...retain this image. Imagine that you are riding a bicycle on a nice spring 

day...retain this image. Imagine that you are a parent taking your son to a department story and 

that you notice he is fascinated by the toy tractors or tanks with rubber caterpillar treads...retain 

this image too. Now imagine that you: Pull the skis off the ski slope; discard and forget the rest 

of the image. Pull the outboard motor from the motor boat; discard and forget the rest of the 

image. Pull the handlebars off the bicycle; discard and forget the rest of the image....What do 

you have? A snowmobile.

This illustration, word for word, comes from John Boyd’s unpublished manuscript, A Discourse 

on Winning and Losing;

37 Boyd used this parable to define a loser and a winner. For Boyd a 

loser is someone (individual or group) who cannot build snowmobiles when faced uncertainty 

and unpredictable change whereas; a winner is someone (individual or group) who can build 
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snowmobiles, and employ them in appropriate fashion, when facing uncertainty and 

unpredictable change. 

The warfighter must be able to model complex systems in a way that permits him or her to make 

snowmobiles. SOS, NCW, and metric first38 approaches seem to inhibit the ability to model 

complex systems in this way. Furthermore, they remove the agility of mind reflected in Boyd’s 

understanding of a winner, which seems to adequately identify Alexander of Macedon. 

We propose that natural language model complex systems because, unlike formal symbolic 

languages or network architecture, it has the both the complexity and the simplicity to open the 

complex operational environment of the warfighter to the achievement of victory. Here’s what 

we propose: 

 When facing wicked problems, the goal of mission analysis is to envision 

 the polysemy of function of friendly forces inseparably from that of the 

 enemy and the operational environment, while distinguishing teleologies 

 of agents which bear upon the question of victory. 

The rest of this article will give the metadata to make sense of this sentence. In short, we want to 

give a framework for making snowmobiles out of wicked problems. The framework for doing 

this is the Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Complex Systems (HPCS). By applying the HPCS to 

war, we aim to ready the minds on the JTF Staff to be able to take things apart and rearrange 

them functionally into new configurations as required, within a complex environment. That 

ability is at the core of modeling complex systems. It is also at the core of strategy and war. 

• To introduce the HPCS, it will first be necessary to define hermeneutic phenomenology, 

complex system, model, and representation—since models represent things. 

• We will then introduce the model of the text of natural language, showing how natural 

language functions. In the process we will discuss the concepts of langue, discourse, the 

reconfiguration of langue, and distanciation. 

• After that, we will explain Aristotle’s System Theory (AST), defining and explaining the 

key concepts of potentiality, actuality, substance, meros, the five causal model, and 

teleology. 

• Then we will bring natural language and AST together to develop the concept of the 

polysemy of function, which permits the modeling of systems in such a way that 

snowmobiles can be made, by careful planning. This section will show how natural 

language models physical systems. 

• Finally, the concept of gestalts will be introduced. This concept will be related to how 

one understands a system within a system. This will bring us full circle to the relationship 

between Hezbollah and Lebanon, and Israel’s wicked problem in dealing with Hezbollah. 
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The article will conclude with key takeaways, which summarize the application of this article 

for the JTF Commander. 

The Hermeneutic Phenomenology of Complex Systems – Key Terms 

Hermeneutic phenomenology (HP) refers primarily to the philosophical project of the late French 

philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) who aimed to study the phenomena of lived human 

experience on the model of the written text. The name for his philosophical project brings 

together two concepts, hermeneutics and phenomenology, which would not necessarily seem to 

go together. Phenomenology broadly understood, is a school of thought developed by Edmund 

Husserll (1859-1938), which carefully defines the essences of mental relationships to objects of 

human consciousness, and also “ inquires into the structures formed by essences.”39 As a school 

of thought, phenomenology tends to define mental experience carefully, and some proponents of 

phenomenology stop with these definitions of appearances. On the other hand, Hermeneutics is 

the art of interpretation. “Interpretation” is used in a variety of contexts, but generally deals with 

the interpretation of language, narratives, symbols, signs and other cultural productions. 

Phenomenology and hermeneutics would seem to be staunch rivals, but when they join forces, 

they become powerful co-belligerents and combined offer the resources to overcome many 

problems. HP aims to interpret phenomena as one would read a text, a written discourse; thus, 

HP permits text to be used as a model to understand phenomena understood by human minds. 

Ricoeur’s HP is also helpful because it is developed to hermeneutically deal with the problems 

created by the notion of “symbol” as construed by symbolic logic and computational modeling. 

It is also necessary to define complex systems. According to systems researcher Paul Cilliers, a 

complex system consists of (1) large number of elements, (2) the large number being necessary 

but not sufficient, (3) interacting richly, (4) and non-linearly, (5) generally in short-range 

interactions, (6) with interaction loops. These systems are (7) open, (8) operating under 

conditions far from equilibrium, (9) with a history, and (10) each element in the system being 

ignorant of the behavior of the system as a whole.40 The model of the text can be applied to 

complex systems because natural language meets all aspects of this definition.41 Another reason 

for using this definition is to dialogue with the current state of complex systems studies. Like 

other works on complex systems, Cilliers emphatically denies that complex systems have 

purpose, and that lack of goal directedness is apparent in his definition. Though this definition is 

specific enough to help bring complex systems and natural language into dialogue with one 

another, it also helps to highlight one overwhelmingly needed construct for scoping complex 

systems problems for the warfighter, that of teleology, or goal-directedness. As we proceed, the 

need for teleology in campaign planning will become evident. The HPCS is rigorous enough to 

deal with the current state of discipline of complexity theory. 

Since HP uses the model of the text it is also necessary to define “model.” We define42

 a model 

dialectically – in two ways that are not intelligibly separable. A model is simultaneously a thing 

and an action. First, a model is a thing, whether mental or physical, that humans use to represent 

other things, generally things we desire (1) to become, (2) to understand, or (3) to have or 

accomplish. Second, a “model is not simply the entity we take as a model but rather the mode of 

action that such an entity itself represents. In this sense, models are embodiments of purpose 
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and, at the same time, instruments for carrying out such purposes.”43 Models fail as models if 

they do not stand for something one wishes to become, understand, or do. A model, to be a 

model, must have a goal. Models are tools. They embody a purpose. In short, and for now, 

models are both representations of human actions and modes of human action, namely goaldirected representations. 

The term representation in this definition also needs further elaboration. Philosophers of science 

throughout the 20th Century have come to see a strong relationship between metaphor and the 

scientific model. Mary Hesse describes the process of model making in theoretical explanation 

“as metaphorical redescription of the domain of the explanandum.” 44 Hesse argues convincingly 

for an interaction view of metaphor by first specifying a “primary” system, which she calls “the 

domain of the explanandum,” and a “secondary” system, “described either in observation 

language or the language of a familiar theory, from which the model is taken” .45 The interaction 

between the two systems produces a kind of meaning different from literal meaning– a 

“metaphorical” meaning. These conjoined systems are, of course, not compressed into one 

another so that the metaphorical meaning becomes the literal meaning. Rather, this is a fictional 

conjunction, or according to Hesse, a “redescription.” To use the example of Warden’s Rings, 

the enemy’s actual system to be targeted is the primary system. The five rings comprise the 

secondary system, but the enemy system does not turn literally into five rings. Somehow, the 

human mind is able to “see” the enemy as the rings while also seeing them as clearly not the 

rings. The making of a metaphor assumes that the mind is able to hold both mental orientations, 

and gestalts, together at the same time. Thus "Warden’s Rings" is the work of a secondary 

system, the rings, redescribing a primary system. 

Notice here that according the definition of model which we propose, models are not imitations! 

The goal of a model is not to reproduce, or duplicate, the phenomena under consideration, but to 

understand it. Not all models lead to understanding, for example the SOS/PMESII network 

model actually redescribes a system in such a way that it obscures and removes information 

necessary for faithful application of the JOPP. 

Introduction to Natural Language and the Model of the Text 

The HPCS uses the model of the text to model complex systems, so it will be important to 

explain the operation of natural language to then make the application to complex systems. 

Natural language is the cultural artifact which permits humans to speak to each other about the 

world. Humans do this using (1) words, which comprise (2) sentences, which then (3) refer to 

things. By following this process humans reconfigure their own language, producing new ways 

to use words, to make new sentences, to refer to new things, or things talked of before in new 

ways. It will be important to grasp this model of the text first before going to its application in 

understanding complex systems, because if the stage wherein gaining this understanding is 

skipped, the integration of the latter theory with the JOPP will be lost, or at best obscured. 
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Figure 3

Natural language has two different types of signification, that of langue and that of discourse. In 

the field of linguistics Langue refers to the system of signs and their interrelations as understood 

by a community of speakers. This body of knowledge is the thing recorded in a dictionary or 

lexicon. Langue makes no reference to the world outside the language, only to other signs inside 

the language itself. Langue then makes a self-enclosed, closed system. When a word is spoken or 

written outside of a sentence, it has no specific meaning, but many potential meanings. Take the 

word “dog.” Dog could refer to a domestic pet, a member of a sports team, a pant-sagging young 

urbanite, or a person unpopular with the speaker. This quality of words to have multiple uses 

within the system of langue is called polysemy (discussed above). 

The potential significance of langue is remarkably different from that of discourse. Discourse is 

not the abstract network of interrelated signs in the mind of competent language speakers, but the 

actual event of communication. Discourse unites at least one subject with one predicate, into a 

sentence. The subject gives the what of a sentence, but the predicate identifies the time and 

nature of the event. Take the sentence: Saddam invaded Kuwait. “Saddam” is the noun. There 

are many Saddam’s, but the rest of the sentence makes clear who this Saddam is. The verb 

“invaded” in langue means46 “to enter forcefully as an enemy” or to “go into with hostile intent” 

(dictionary.com). This verb also has a time element to it; it is past tense. If the sentence were 
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Saddam will invade Kuwait, then the sentence is false. By the publication of this article, 

September of 2008, Saddam has been executed by hanging. Putting this sentence into the future 

tense would make it false; therefore only sentences can be true or false, because they both 

designate time, and they are spoken in time. Sentences are discourse events which refer to events. 

“Kuwait” is a noun, but in this sentence, the noun “Kuwait” is the direct object of the verb 

“invaded.” The truth value of the sentence depends on the whole of the sentence; thus, its 

function in discourse cannot be reduced to less than the single sentence. 

The third aspect of natural language to be addressed is its referential nature. While langue does 

not refer to things, discourse does. It is because a statement has a referent that is has meaning. 

Thus, sentence meaning is teleological (from the Greek word telos, meaning “end” or “goal”). 

Discourse has a purpose, in that it refers to things. This aspect of natural language is absolutely 

critical to understanding it. Much confusion in the philosophy of language has arisen because 

researchers have mistaken the two different significations of natural language, criticizing 

discourse as though it were only langue and visa versa. 

This third aspect also leads to a fourth: the purpose of discourse (to produce an event of 

meaning) has an affect on langue. As speakers communicate with one another, they inadvertently 

end up reconfiguring langue in the mind of the speakers of the language. Words take on 

additional meanings. This happens through deviant predication, as in the making of metaphors, 

metonymies. Metaphorical predication is one of the clearest ways to communicate; while it may 

seem imprecise, it is actually information rich in a way that “literal” predication is not, which is 

why military culture makes quick use of metaphors. One could say that a person advocates a 

certain message or program because it’s their way of making an income. But simply saying “It’s 

his rice bowl.” is much clearer. Through metaphorical predication word meaning is stretched and 

new meanings are added. It is this flexibility of reconfiguring langue, rooted in the context of 

lived human embodiment, which is so difficult for computers to emulate. 

Finally, natural language also exhibits the quality of distanciation. Because discourse is an event, 

it occurs in time, and as an event in time it has effects. These events cascade in time, and cause 

things which are unexpected, but which are not inconsistent with the nature of the discourse 

event. Distanciation is the distancing of the meaning of discourse from the original intent of the 

author. This happens all the time, with both aural and written discourse. Perhaps the best written 

textual example of distanciation is Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, which he posted on a church door 

in Wittenburg, on 31 October 1517. As it so happened, the following day was all Saints Day, and 

visitors from around Europe saw his theses, copied them down, took them back to their home 

countries, translated them, and printed them. Luther was surprised to discover a few months later 

that he was well known throughout Europe as the leader of a cause to reform the Catholic 

Church. Information moves even faster in the 21st Century. 

Also noteworthy, is the way actions can distanciate from initial events and have unintended 

meanings. For example, a number of actions were performed recently which led to a US bomber 

accidently having nuclear bombs loaded and flown across the US without the knowledge of the 

flight crew. Each of the participants in this event foolishly committed actions which led to a 
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profound combined effect. The meaning of this event distanciated itself to the highest levels of 

Air Force command, and contributed to the decision for corrective action by Secretary Gates. 

But one must be careful here. Distanciation is not a denial of authorial intent. Rather, it is the 

recognition of a very important quality of discourse; when discourse actualizes the potential 

meaning of langue, the produced event has meaning of its own. Therefore, an author must be 

responsible to say what he or she intends. If an author is not responsible, then he or she will 

manufacture a product which does not represent the author’s intent. Luther intended to provoke 

debate in Wittenburg over indulgences; instead his text identified issues which the broader 

popular audience had with the late medieval Catholic Church, and ended up moving history in a 

new direction. 

Paul Ricoeur uses this model of the text to develop a hermeneutic phenomenology which can 

explain human actions and cultural symbols as though they were text, and to accomplish this he 

uses the concepts we have introduced, namely langue, discourse, the teleology of referent, the 

reconfiguring work of the actuality of discourse reconfiguring the potentiality of langue in the 

creative production of referential discourse (generally through metaphorical predication), and 

finally distanciation. Aristotelian philosophy is a strong source of inspiration and instruction for 

Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology, so it is necessary to introduce AST in detail. 

Aristotle’s Systems Theory 

The opening of this paper introduced the strong intellectual relationship between Alexander and 

Aristotle. Alexander’s desire to preserve the advantage of Aristotle’s ideas should motivate the 

campaign planner to understand what Aristotle the philosopher made available to Alexander the 

warfighter. That subject we will now address.

The critical concept to understanding all of Aristotle’s philosophy is his notion of actuality and 

potentiality. Aristotle uses these two concepts to understand the whole physical world. Wood is 

potentially kindling for a fire, or material for a chair. It is potential fire or potential furniture. 

Once fire is actualized and let to run its course, the wood cannot go back to being a chair. Nature 

is constantly moving according to these system states, constantly changing but in structured 

ways. Aristotle’s approach is specifically helpful in biology, but one of the things that this does 

is make one realize there are not just events which then have effects. The campaign planner is 

actually dealing with an initially structured world, in which potential conditions make possible 

certain things, but not others, which could lead to other things and so on. One sees this 

relationship of potentiality and actuality in the way the actuality of discourse then reconfigures 

the potentiality of langue. One can actually say sentences which add to the meaning of words. 

(This is one reason why language is so effective in modeling complex systems; it is actually 

doing what complex systems do.) We see the same relationship between potentiality and 

actuality even in the physical world. Aristotle attempted to explain the phenomenon of change in 

the world, and he came to see that natural processes in the system of nature move from states of 

potentiality to actuality. Bird seed is potential energy for a bird. Pizza is potential energy for 

Americans. When food is consumed, that energy becomes actualized. 
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Aristotle developed a systematic philosophy out of the concepts of potentiality and actuality. One 

can see the relationship of potentiality and actuality is more organic, when compared with the 

brute mass on mass approach of Newtonian physics. (For reasons we will discuss later, it will be 

helpful for the warfighter to see complexity as organism.) Aristotle thought that organisms had a 

teleology, a state of maturity toward which they were growing. Once an organism reached 

maturity or adulthood, it would begin to decrease in strength and eventually decay. When this 

feature of systems is considered in light of military planning, it suggests when something 

actualizes, it changes the potential end states requiring a reevaluation to make end states 

diachronic in nature, subject to the maturation of conditions in the operational environment. Such 

a change does not logically flow from simple Newtonian force on force mechanics. 

Based on this notion of potentiality and actuality, Aristotle developed a theory of four causes. 

For Aristotle, the word cause has a different meaning from its use today. Our contemporary 

notion of cause is rooted in a Newtonian reduction of causality to physical mechanical cause and 

effect: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. One material event physically causes 

another event, and so on.47 The Newtonian notion of causation is a significantly stripped-down 

version of the Aristotelian causal model. Over the course of the 20th Century, the incompleteness 

of Newtonian physics became more readily apparent through the work of Einstein as well as the 

various researchers in quantum mechanics. The final straw came in the development of nonlinear 

science over the last three decades. Nonlinear science is the nexus of related disciplines which 

study complex phenomena. Under the heading of nonlinear science, one finds the study of 

nonlinear dynamical systems, chaos theory, complexity theory, Artificial Life/agent research, 

cellular automata, fluid dynamics, weather modeling, and contemporary combat modeling. The 

increasing importance of understanding the complex nexus of causal relationships has reinstated 

the utility of Aristotle’s philosophy to contemporary science. At the beginning of the 20th

Century, Aristotle was ridiculed by many noted philosophers of science, including eugenicist 

Karl Pearson and the analytic philosopher Bertrand Russell. At the beginning of the 21st, things 

have changed. Alwyn Scott writes in the introduction to the Encyclopedia of Nonlinear Science, 

published in 2005: 

 Twenty-four centuries ago, Aristotle described four types of cause (material, efficient, 

 formal, and final), which overlap and intermingle in ways that were often overlooked in 

 20th century thought but are now under scrutiny.

48 

Deconstructing an Aircraft Carrier 

How do we understand these four causes today? Let’s use the example of an aircraft carrier to 

try to understand them. The formal cause would be the plan that the designers used to construct 

it. The blueprint written by the naval architects is the formal cause, the shape of it by design. 

The material cause would be the actual steel, glass, etc. used to make it. The efficient cause is the 

Navy, the congress, the builders who put it together. And finally we have the teleology, which is 

its goal, or ultimate purpose. That is what Aristotle called the teleological cause. 
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Aristotle refined this notion of teleology further. The teleological cause is the “end” of a thing. 

The word “end” (telos in Aristotle’s Greek) has at least three different senses, and all of them are 

helpful in this discussion. The first sense is end in the sense of a terminus, as in a retirement 

ceremony, or the tip of a gun barrel. However “end” can also refer to the end state of a process. 

When a soldier is learning how to disassemble and reassemble an M-16, the finished weapon is 

the end state of that process. The soldier will know he is done when the gun is put together, and 

all the parts are assembled toward that end. In the same way human adult maturity may be 

viewed as the end of the growth process. However, there is a third sense of “end,” the purpose 

for which a thing is done. The goal of the aircraft carrier is to be an instrument of US national 

power, to function as a tool to help the president defend the constitution, mostly from foreign 

enemies. The “end” of an M-16 is to kill people with bullets, and that purpose helps it and the 

carrier to fulfill another “end,” namely to give the State Department leverage for diplomatic 

negotiations. Thus, the purpose of some things facilitates the purposes of others, a point we will 

develop at length below. Something that can be understood in terms of the four causes is called a 

substance, which is an organized whole assembled in such a way that it has a function. 

Planning and Targeting the Instrumental Cause 

If one takes the four causal models and applies it to a complex system, one ends up with a fifth 

cause, the instrumental cause. That is all of the causes working together to explain how things 

work together inside of a complex system. Aristotle explains this basic concept in Book 1 of On 

the parts of animals49 (PA). Aristotle adds a new notion to his idea of substance, that of a meros

(Greek plural: meroi) meaning “part.” The English word “part” does not get at what Aristotle is 

getting at, and a better gloss for the term would probably be organ. But since organ has a 

distinctly medical connotation to it, this article will instead use the original Greek term meros

and define it afresh in terms of Aristotle’s thought. A meros is like a substance within a 

substance. All the four causes relate to every meros possessed by the substance. Were one to 

consider the substance of the human body, the scale of meroi would descend from the largest 

organ of the body, the skin, all the way to the smallest organelle of cells, and even farther to 

hormones and the brain’s neurotransmitters. 

What one discovers is that elements, the meroi, within a complex system end up doing multiple 

things because, within a complex system, the teleology of a thing ends up, possibly, producing 

the material cause for something else, which then becomes the formal cause for something else. 

This quality of having multiple teleologies within a system we are calling polysemy of function, 

since the notion connects with the idea of word polysemy in Ricoeur’s HP. We see this in the 

human body. The bones provide structure to the body but also produce white blood cells. 

Polysemy of function. The lungs bring oxygen into the blood stream, but they also purge the 

body of CO2. Neurotransmitters in the brain can also function as neuromodulators, regulating the 

behavior of the brain’s neural networks.50 DNA contains the information to bring organelles into 

being, yet while cells contain the plans to make more cells, organelles must rely on an 

informational cause which is separate from themselves, which also shows how DNA is in one 

sense a formal cause, and in another sense an efficient cause. Furthermore, DNA also replicates 

itself, so it is both its own formal cause and efficient cause, and this fact makes cancer so 

dangerous. If we understand the natures of the individual parts, it is possible to understand how 
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they interrelate, but they do so in dynamic ways. This means that meroi can and often do have 

multiple teleologies,51 though Aristotle, to our knowledge, never suggests that things have 

multiple teleologies. The substance of the body is the interrelations of the meroi fulfilling a 

teleology, and some even multiple teleologies. In doing so, they actually produce the life of the 

body, by fulfilling the teleological cause. 

Aristotle’s notion of substance and meroi would be lost if we instead replaced them with nodes 

and networks, because Aristotle’s systems theory accounts for diachronic nature of systems. He 

gives a practical account of how systems are constantly growing, changing, maturing, and dying, 

while also accounting for the structure within the system. It follows that his system is useful for 

the warfighter, because one can target a meros and be targeting the system directly. This process 

of change does not reduce itself completely to mathematics, but it does offer a structure for 

developing sound metrics. 

Furthermore, we must clarify what makes the correct interpretation of system function possible. 

The instrumental cause is important for understanding how certain internal system relationships 

are different from the kind of simple applications of the four cause model that one can use on the 

outside of a substance. Instrumental cause is critical for properly interpreting the causal 

relationships inside the substance. It is also critical to understand that a different relationship 

exists between the teleology of the meros and the teleology of the substance. The teleology of the 

heart is to pump blood. The teleology of the intestines is to digest food. For Aristotle, the 

purpose of the whole human organism is to live toward a flourishing happiness, not unlike the 

life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness claimed by the US Declaration of Independence. 

Whether right or wrong, Aristotle’s suggested purpose of human life will at least help us 

distinguish between the teleology of the part and the teleology of the whole. If a human’s heart 

were to seek its own happiness, move to Italy, buy a Tuscan villa and start making wine, that 

human would be very sad. The way that the organs of the body become “happy” is by not trying 

to be happy themselves but instead by serving the body in which they find themselves. The 

meroi do not have the same teleology as the whole. They have a different teleology, but not 

wholly different. While it is true that the meroi have different teleologies from their substance, 

those teleologies are not accurately interpretable without viewing them in terms of the whole. 

It is also possible to think in terms of the whole without understanding the nature and teleology 

of the parts. Silly illustrations are sometime the clearest. Consider a dentist who replaced the 

baby teeth of children with implants. The surgery would do more harm than good. Why? 

Because as humans mature toward adulthood, they get another set of teeth. The foolish dentist 

illustration shows that one cannot think of the whole without understanding the way in which the 

parts develop within the system.

Therefore Aristotle’s Systems Theory traces the interrelationships of a substance and its meroi, 

using the five (material, efficient, formal, teleological, and instrumental) causes. In doing so it 

shows that meroi can often have multiple teleologies and function in a variety of ways. Through 

the five causal models, these relationships can be interpreted correctly.
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To conclude this introduction to AST: While we were first presenting the example of the aircraft 

carrier to the faculty of the Joint Forces Staff College in July, an astute instructor observed that 

we neglected to discuss its purpose. “How does one use it? Where is the owner’s manual?” The 

answer brings us back to the JOPP: if one uses this causal reference during mission analysis, the 

owner’s manual becomes the end product of the Joint Operational Planning Process, be it a plan 

or an order. It ascribes purpose to the substance according to the plan; the JTF Staff applies 

analytical thought to determine how to use it, to discern which of its polysemy of functions it 

should fulfill. An aircraft carrier can (and does) fulfill many different functions: it can be the 

base from which planes conduct strikes. It can also be used for humanitarian purposes. It is also 

a show of power to effect bargaining for diplomats. It is also simply an extension of US 

sovereignty. It has multiple teleologies but it achieves those by being what it is, an aircraft 

carrier. The instrumental cause then becomes central to friendly planning and enemy targeting, 

ascribing value to each meros through understanding the function it provides to the whole. 

The Model of the Text with Aristotle’s Systems Theory 

Now that the model of the text and Aristotle’s Systems Theory have been explained, all the tools 

are available to move toward interpreting complex systems through the model of the text. This 

explanation is considerably streamlined; a careful point by point defense of each move in this 

assembly is presented elsewhere.52 

This move is based on the analogy of teleology in both discourse and system. It is beyond the 

scope of this paper to make a full defense of this point, but stated simply, HPCS assumes that 

function is the teleology of process as meaning is the teleology of discourse. If it is true that 

teleology is present in both process and discourse, which seem on the surface to be true, then 

what follows? It seems that in both situations, the knowledge of teleology results from a 

judgment call, an interpretation. This interpretation is not unwarranted. A competent speaker of 

English will have a good idea of what another speaker of English means. Furthermore, someone 

who lives in this spatial-temporal universe will readily interact with in the objects around him, in 

natural things. Thus, one must be very careful not to claim an absolute knowledge of causation, 

but one must also not pretend as though the finite knowledge of causal relationships absolves 

humans from making sound judgments about what causes what. 

For example, the British empiricist philosopher David Hume argued that one could not 

empirically verify causal relationship. He argued that what humans call causal relationships are 

merely the constant conjunctions of various phenomena in time, which humans associate 

together and call causal relationships. Hume was emphatic in saying that humans could never 

know causation. Early 20th Century philosophy picked up Hume’s battle standard against 

knowledge of causal relationships. Pearson and Russell, mentioned above, drew inspiration from 

Hume and castigated knowledge of causal relationships—and their voices joined with many 

others to minimize discussion of causal relationships and instead emphasized research into 

probability and statistics. What is so fascinating about this move, especially in Russell, is that in 

an attempt to argue against Aristotle in favor of “science,” early 20th Century philosophy of 

science eradicated the only remaining cause, efficient cause. 
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If the analogy between the teleology of process and the teleology of discourse holds, it follows 

there is a work of interpretation occurring in the understanding of causation and purpose in 

physical things as well as in the events of human discourse, and this interpretation is on going. 

One does not stop and leave a conversation to decode human language, and then return once one 

understands the meaning. Interpretation is an on-going process of situational awareness which 

permits a conversational OODA loop. The same applies to the interpretation of teleology and 

purpose in system. In the work of national defense and diplomacy, the analogy between the 

realms of process and discourse hold so closely that the two blend together and co-mingle—

though the US Government has different departments to handle each. The foreign implications of 

the teleology of discourse are addressed by the State Department, and the foreign implications of 

the teleology of systems (particularly when their teleology is hostile to national security) are 

addressed by the Department of Defense. This is why the “Global War on Terror” has forced 

these two departments to work together in an unprecedented manner at the operational and 

tactical level. 

The analogy between the teleologies of systems and discourse permit each to open up insights 

into the other. First, one may notice that langue and the meroi both exhibit polysemy. In the way 

that words can have multiple potential uses in sentences, meroi may have multiple potential uses 

in substances. This plurality of functions in meroi may then be called a polysemy of function, a 

concept already introduced, but here will be more adequately developed. 

Second, discourse and substance both have similar qualities, in that they have a distinct teleology 

separate from and irreducible to their parts, yet one in which the parts contribute to the work of 

the whole. Thus, one cannot say that the meaning of a sentence is in the sum of all the words. As 

mentioned earlier the smallest unit of discourse is a sentence. Therefore, discourse wears a 

different signification from langue. So does substance wear a different function and teleology 

from the parts, but one in which the parts participate actively and decisively. Furthermore, meroi

can be made of other meroi, thus the same relationship between substance and meroi may hold 

between higher level meroi-- we will call them arch-meroi--and the meroi they contain. 

Furthermore, the relationship of actuality and potentiality plays out in the relationship between 

substance and meros as it does between discourse and langue, in that the work of the system to 

perpetuate itself continues to develop the system and reconfigure the parts of the system. 

However, notice—this is critical—that the development and reconfiguration of the system is the 

product of moving toward a teleology, and that work occurs through other systemically related 

teleologies. The continuing complex reconfiguration of the system occurs because of the system 

aiming toward its teleology. If someone were merely to examine the changing relationships of 

langue without taking the second, separate signification of discourse into account, one would 

view (and some have) the constant flux of langue as unintelligible, as though meaning is 

somehow impossible because resources of langue reconfigure through time. However, the 

second signification of substance (toward a teleology) makes possible an understanding of the 

complex interrelationships of the meroi which inhabit it. 
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Third, the ability of the human mind to look at a word and see its various meanings also carries 

over to the understanding of physical systems. Humans are able to take a word and flip it over in 

their mind to see double meanings and puns. The same is the case with physical systems. 

Neuroscience provides ample evidence of physical systems which perform one function which 

can then reorient to perform another function. However the human mind can “look” at the 

physical system of the brain and see how one set of pathways can be used for one purpose and 

then “see” how they can be used for another. (John Boyd was fascinated by this, and saw some 

analogy between his “snowmobile” and neural plasticity. It is this latent connection which we are 

making clear, explicit, and systematic through the HPCS. 53) The process of “flipping” 

assemblies to new orientations in the mind, called a gestalt change, is well studied. Figures 4 and 

5 are images which illustrate the mind’s ability to perceive one orientation and then through a 

gestalt change see the elements of the image with another form. 

 Figure 454 Figure 555

Figure 4 is equally both a duck or a rabbit. Figure 5 is equally both an old woman or a young 

lady. Rather than merely seeing this ability as a neat psychological curiosity, an HPCS can put 

this natural human ability to use. Inside complex systems one finds meroi and arch-meroi with 

multiple teleologies. What PMESII aims to address is the interrelationships of the various 

systems. Several of a nation state’s systems are in fact the whole system. Take a state’s 

economy: the economy is everything in the state that can be valued by purchasers and listed as 

either personal or government property, anything for which a monetary transaction can occur; 

thus, a state’s economy is made up of every person and every thing in the country. A similar 

point could be made about a political system. What is required to understand systems is the 

mental ability to flip substances and meroi over in one’s mind to see how they function in one 

arch-meroi, and again in another. Leaders who lack the ability to do this will take one action 

which is good according to one system gestalt, but not good according to another. They will 

make decisions with bad ramifications, and not be able to account for why their actions led to 

bad results. The model of the text, through the notion of polysemy helps to explain why this is 

the case. 
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Also, since the human mind seems to orient itself with only one gestalt at a time, one who wishes 

to accurately model and interpret complex systems must learn the skill of seeing the causal 

interrelations of the various meroi in relationship to one another and then change gestalt 

orientation in order to “see” the way in which that part functions with respect to other aspects of 

the system. This is absolutely critical to learn in the case of arch-meroi, because they have 

internal meroi, but also connect to other meroi within the substance. However seeing this in 

one’s mind is not easy, and only comes with thought and practice. It also follows that since the 

human mind can only form one gestalt at a time, the understanding of complex relationships 

inside a system is best done by multiple minds or over time by one very agile mind which can 

move through multiple system gestalts. Since the human mind is also teleological, and has 

intentionality (it “points” at things) it is very difficult to do this, which is why circumspectual 

understanding for most people must develop over time. Recall at the beginning of our discussion 

that models were linked to metaphor building. That discussion will be helpful here. Metaphors 

assemble multiple domains into a plurivocal referential discourse which still makes reference to 

things. Metaphor, and thus conceptual model building, has the capacity of uniting multiple 

gestalts into one. Conceptual model making is therefore very helpful for overcoming the problem 

of uniting multiple systemic gestalts, for it is possible to build models which assemble referential 

gestalts into a single unified model. Aristotle’s four causal model, as well as the five causal 

model presented above, the model of the text, and the HPCS are each such models which do just 

this. Of course metaphor is a kind of discourse, thus it follows that discourse is a special tool for 

the construction of system models accurate enough to recognize the various system gestalts 

necessary to accurately identify the relationships between the meroi and the various arch-meroi

they form. 

But note that teleology is the precondition to both the interpretation of systemic relationships and 

also the ability to model (redescribe) them. We now turn to the discussion of teleology and the 

making of snowmobiles. 

An HPCS for the Warfighter 

Teleology has been a suspicious concept in systems study at certain points in history; for 

example, Isaac Newton does not invoke teleology in his Principia Mathematica. Evolutionary 

biology has not invoked teleology to explain the origin and development of organisms, though 

biological textbooks are replete with teleological discourse, describing things in terms of 

purpose. Some researchers of complex systems attempt to model evolution by natural selection, 

and Artificial Life/agent simulation research has included these types of projects. Thus, one 

should not be surprised to find analogous discourse creeping into military discussions of 

complex systems.56 The operational environment is discussed in terms of things just evolving or 

“emerging” out of complex interrelationships in the world. Teleology is left out of the 

discussion, and readers of complexity literature are left to trudge through these overly complex 

books on complexity, marvel to themselves on how complex the world is, and perhaps impress 

colleagues by ill-formed impressive sounding terminology. The opaque books on complex 

systems theory can turn the world of systems into a foreign country, where the human mind can 

visit but never learn the language or the customs. 
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But the warfighter must recognize he or she has a different purpose than that of the researcher 

whose practical concerns are often only grants and tenure. War is a human business, in a human 

world. There may be interesting patterns which statistics and data collecting can gather, but all 

the complex statistics and data-mashing will never remove the humanness of people. Humans are 

teleological. We want things. We go to war and prosecute wars because we desire, be it 

rationally or irrationally. We act out of “[H]onour, fear, and self-interest.”57 Wars occur because 

people want things, and other people are in the way of acquiring those things. 

While a complex systems researcher may flinch at using teleology to sort out the morass of 

confusion in complexity studies, nothing prevents the warfighter or the diplomat from employing 

teleology to interpret the relevance of intelligence, as well as discern how to sift and prioritize 

what information in a complex system is most helpful. Without teleology, it is not possible to 

trace the polysemy of function of the meroi in a complex system. It also is not possible to 

distinguish the separate teleologies of substance, arch-meroi and meroi from one another. It is 

not possible to assemble the five causes into a single model, nor can the analogy meaning and 

function hold. Moreover, the mental use of gestalt changes will have no hooks upon which to 

reliably distinguish purposeful system parts. Put bluntly, systems become just a bunch of stuff, 

moving in unrecognizable patterns, emerging. Wisdom can do nothing but stare vacantly into the 

void. 

Since computational resources have been the primary tools for the study of complex systems, it 

should be no surprise that added information which comes from interpreting causal phenomena 

through the causal model of Aristotle is now back on the warfighter’s table. The use of 

mathematics is helpful for some kinds of analysis, but it easy to forget that the information to 

interpret the numbers is often not in the numbers. Economics presents an excellent analogy to 

strategy in this regard. 

Economics is a field which employs mathematics as part of its mechanics of operation; prices 

and price calculation are critical to the functioning of an economy. The market price is the 

numerical point at which the seller and buyer actually meet price agreement. However the price 

actually has a polysemy of function in the economy. For the seller, the price is that amount of 

money which is worth more to him than the good he wishes to sell. Likewise, for the buyer, the 

price is that amount of money which is worth less to him than the good he wishes to buy. This 

relationship between buyer and seller is the mechanism which sets prices, but it would not exist 

if not for the distinct teleologies of the buyer and seller acting in the market. The discourse of the 

price58 depends upon a hermeneutics of the market environment (substance) and the meroi

(goods, buyers, sellers, currency standards, etc.) The numerical price is the quantitative point 

where two disparate teleologies meet. One cannot understand prices without that information, 

but that information is not contained in the numbers. It requires a hermeneutic phenomenology 

of those numbers to look through them into their context and understand what is going on, and 

that is how one comes to understand the market. 

We suggest the same thing is the case in war. One must not go first to metrics, then to effects 

and begin measuring. Rather the numbers must actually be generated through an understanding 
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of the system itself, through a hermeneutics of systems. Only the involved nations can weigh the 

cost and related gain of the transaction.59 For the planner, the understanding of the system is a 

necessary precondition to setting those numbers. Likewise the number sets, the metrics of war 

must be set by an understanding of the operational environment, and the teleology of the systems 

in play. This understanding begins with the recognition that war involves conflict between 

people. People want things, and compete with each other for those things. In the way that a price 

is set in the market between a buyer and seller, the metrics of war for the US are set by an 

enemy’s threat relationship to us. Therefore, our metrics of war need not be identified in terms of 

nodes as defined JP 3-0 and JP 5-0. The HPCS opens the information needed for understanding 

enemy systems, but not from an “objective” viewpoint. Recall above, model was defined 

dialectically as both a things and an action. This definition applied here shows that the HPCS 

must be applied, not for identifying and categorizing exactly which feature of the respective 

meroi fits each of the five causes; each meros likely acts as at least one of the five causes for 

some other part of the system. The point is to use the five causes to understand the relationships 

within the system, to trace the necessary polysemies of function which must be explained in the 

system, for that system to be understood. In this way the five causes open a system to 

interpretation. 

In addition, the theory of substance and meros permits the defining of legitimate boundaries for 

the scaling (not the simplifying) of complexity. Not all complexity is equally complex, though it 

will be without the framework opened by the notion of teleology. Consider Thucydides’ 

narration of the complex operational environment of the Peloponnesian War. Through teleology, 

Thucydides is able to distinguish between the positions of the Athenians and the Melians in the 

Melian Dialogue. He is able to show the hopes and aspirations of the Athenian body politic on 

the eve of the expedition to Syracuse. 

In the same way, the HPCS becomes an explanatory framework for John Boyd’s fluid command 

and control in Blitzkrieg warfare. Instead of a rigid top down command and control structure like 

that used by Napoleon, Boyd recommends a more fluid approach in which commanders with 

more tactical functions were permitted the freedom to make decisions based on a thorough 

understanding of the mission statement. These commanders were then able to more readily go 

through their OODA loop cycles and prosecute their portion of the battle more effectively. One 

would expect that the same style of organization would have to have been in place to some 

degree in the Greek phalanx, which acted as a structured arch-meroi within the substance of the 

army of both Xenophon and Alexander. Because complexity is scalable, it is possible to manage 

the unmanageable-ness of it. General Van Riper’s use of “swarming” would also be an example 

of this. 

HPCS and the JOPP 

Not only does an HPCS account for the possibility of scaling complexity, it also accounts for the 

point made in Army TRADOC Pamphlet 525-5-500, Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign 

Design regarding the need to assess wicked problems with a discourse. Because of the polysemy 

of function of the meroi and arch-meroi in complex systems, and the necessity of the human 

mind to retain only one gestalt at a time, or make new gestalts from others through conceptual 
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mapping, it is clear that scoping wicked problems through a JTF staff is necessary. At the same 

time, the JTF staff must have teleology itself, or it does not possess the requisite hermeneutical 

position needed to “see” the information which can become the metrics of planning as discussed 

above. Since discourse is itself a complex system, with an attendant teleology and a 

reconfiguring relationship between the actuality of discourse and the potentiality of langue, 

discourse can be used to bring a JTF staff of people with multiple perspectives to a common 

systemic understanding, to a common pluriform model, and the distinct functional polysemic 

relationships interior to the conceptual model of the operational environment will be retained by 

the group tasked with addressing the wicked problem. An excellent example of this 

hermeneutical principle at work is the joint interagency taskforce in Iraq, led by COL Mathew 

Bogdanos, which assembled personnel who could discourse on the wicked problems presented 

by the ransacking of the Iraqi Museum.60 Not only did the group have excellent professional 

knowledge, but their past experience enabled them to discourse together to understand wicked 

problem interrelationships, properly interpret causal relationships of items and situations 

exhibiting a polysemy of function with respect to multiple larger contexts, and, where possible, 

employ rational plans to meet the needs of the joint interagency mission. 

At the opening of this paper we introduced the historic example of Aristotle and Alexander as an 

illustration of how prudent philosophy benefits the warfighter. It would seem Alexander applied 

what Aristotle taught him in the prosecution of his campaigns. He was able to assess the 

substance and meroi of his force, as well as that of his enemy, make a successful plan, and win. 

Many have done what Alexander did. We would suggest that the HPCS describes what good 

commanders have always done and always will do. The HPCS then defends traditional strategic 

wisdom while appreciating contemporary complexity theory and wicked problems. It permits the 

warfighter to sift through the contemporary complexity of the operational environment to know 

what to look for, and to know what questions to ask in the process of campaign design. 

Alexander was able to use systems theory to analytically plan warfighting. 

As we mentioned earlier: When facing wicked problems, the goal of mission analysis is to 

envision the polysemy of function of friendly forces inseparably from that of the enemy and 

the operational environment, while distinguishing teleologies of agents which bear upon the 

question of victory. Now this thesis can be understood clearly. Mission analysis should consider 

the polysemy of function of the meroi of one’s own force, among the meroi of the enemy 

(enemies) and those of the operational environment. The ability to see the various system gestalts 

necessary to recognize these various system relationships must be formed the way they have 

always been informed, through good intelligence informed by knowledge of war and peace, 

national defense, economic ways and means, legislation, and imports and exports, things which 

Aristotle taught almost 2400 years ago. However, the utility of the concept of polysemy of 

function is only valuable when it is considered in light of the enemy’s force and teleology, its 

model of victory (MOV), and possibly the latent MOV of agents in the operational environment. 

This permits one to understand the teleologies of the various agents and locate the most useful 

assembly of function available given the polysemy of function of system meroi. 
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The JOPP is an analytical planning construct which has proven itself successful in many 

campaigns. Some have asked whether the JOPP is adequate in the face of the increasing 

complexity of the operational environment. However, forces have met in complex chaotic 

conditions for millennia. What has changed? Teleology and the wise interpretation of systems 

have been obscured by the view that complex system change cannot be understood. This view of 

complex systems is a liability for the campaign planner, because it turns the warfighter into a 

spectator. By believing complex system change cannot be understood, the planner increases the 

fog of war for himself and those for whom he plans. However, the five causes, the hermeneutics 

of systems, and theory of substance and meros open an enemy system to being understood. 

Careful use of the HPCS in discourse by a commander’s staff with respect to the operational 

environment provides the guidance to ask the right questions, and understand how the enemy 

system operates, behaves, and changes over time. Where a system is dynamically changing, the 

HPCS provides categories to ask why it is changing. It helps the planner recognize where he is 

ignorant. It also shows him what parts to target, and shows him what parts of his own system he 

should use to target them. 

Returning to Boyd’s injunction to make snowmobiles, it is now clear how teleology opens the 

parts of a system to clear and correct interpretation. A JTF commander can use the HPCS to 

understand the interrelation of the various meroi within a system, and employ his own force 

potential to defeat the enemy system or change the operational environment to facilitate victory, 

which may mean simply the preservation of national security. While a fixed template will not 

work for every situation, the HPCS approaches the needs of mission analysis as John Boyd’s 

manual Aerial Attack Study approached aerial combat, not as a step-by-step procedure, but as a 

road map of potential tools, which the responsible party must put into action wisely. Now, the 

enemy systems and meroi are at least made visible to the JTF staff in a way that provides much 

more information than SOS and NCW. Furthermore, the same HPCS tools permit the command 

staff to scope the available friendly forces and their force potentials. Not all instruments of 

national power need to be used as one would expect. A carrier could be sent to an operational 

environment to attack, or make a show of force, or to support a humanitarian mission if it 

required a flight deck at sea. Or one could use the carrier for humanitarian aid while showing 

force (a strategic pun). One finds then the assets organized through application of the JOPP are 

also properly understood through an HPCS. 

An unanswered question remains as to how discourse bridges the gap between the planner’s 

language and the language of the enemy. How can staffs who think in English understand 

cultures that think in languages that may be very alien? Does that not automatically alter the 

outcome of staff planning? This would in fact be the case if discourse were not referent. People 

discourse towards, or by way of, physical references; this is what makes it possible to learn the 

languages of other people. Culture takes place in the world, as Leonidas replies to Xerxes’ 

cultural overture in the movie 300, “We’ve been sharing our culture with you all morning.”61

Human language, human conception, and human needs rely on human embodiment for 

maturation and articulation. This means that the natural and social worlds act as a check, and the 

human body acts as our universal language base from which we form our concepts. Therefore, 

language does not exist in the abstract; there is actually a physical field from which we have to 
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develop our concepts. That is why we find community in language formation across the 

languages; as a general statement, every language as discourse may have variations on the 

potential resources (langue) they have available to form the single signification of discourse, but 

in the end, every language permits discourse toward a referent. We can and we do understand 

other cultures all of the time; anyone who has learned more than one language knows this. As 

we engage with others and dialog with them we are able to come to terms with another group’s 

symbol system that portrays their culture. Regardless of sentence structure, it is the whole 

sentence token that behaves in similar ways. This is why recent experience has shown that staffs 

at all levels benefit from local speakers, sociologists, anthropologists, etc. 

Thus the HPCS is a construct which applies to the analysis of one’s enemy, and the analysis on 

one’s own resources. The mutual application of the HPCS is possible because of the notion of 

the model of victory (MOV), the teleology of each force in the operational environment. This 

MOV can also be seen as a picture or a story of what its final victory will entail. It is absolutely 

critical to discern the MOV for the relevant players, because that model will provide the 

teleological cause which permits the interpretation of the other causes in a complex system. To 

understand the Israeli/Hezbollah hybrid war of summer 2006, one must understand the MOV (or 

lack thereof) for the various parties involved. This model may be an end state, but it generally is 

multifaceted and is better identified in a narrative. The narrative elements of the MOV mean that 

a MOV can change, in order to win. Such a change suggests that the enemy force has a new 

situational awareness, a fact which should then lead the campaign designer to maneuver 

accordingly. A healthy enemy will always move toward its MOV, and the MOV is also 

instrumental for the enemy leadership’s own explanation of itself and its enemies. The MOV is 

also instrumental in maintaining force cohesion. If one understands the system requirements for 

maintaining force cohesion, and one can anticipate how a certain MOV will encounter 

debilitating friction, one can use that knowledge to anticipate the enemy’s grand strategy and 

subvert their adjustments. 

It is also the case that the internal parts to an enemy also have MOVs, which make possible the 

realization of the systems MOV. Furthermore, it is possible for a part of a system to have a MOV 

contrary to the teleology of the system, and encounter system friction because its own MOV is 

thwarted by the whole. The realization of the MOV also necessitates that some meroi will be 

more decisive for the effort, a fact which guides the correct identification of centers of gravity 

(COG). 

Operational end states are different from MOVs. Returning to the initial discussion of teleology, 

an operational end state is the conclusion of an action when all of its tasks have been completed, 

the action has accomplished the measure of the objective. MOVs, however, are system purposes. 

They are not measureable; they are the criterion by which one judges whether a metric is useful. 

One curious feature of the Israeli/Hezbollah war of 2006 is that Hezbollah was able to acquire 

victory by correctly choosing the time for the end state in a way consistent with their model of 

victory, but not consistent with Israel’s model of victory. 
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Performing Brain Surgery on a Crab 

So how does one apply the HPCS to understand the odd relationship between Israel, Lebanon, 

and Hezbollah? By applying the entire conceptual armature introduced above. One can consider 

the interrelations between the various substances and meroi and how each relates to one another, 

understand the interrelationship in terms of arch-meroi. Because the hermeneutic 

phenomenological element to HPCS is more than appropriate to use a metaphorical construct to 

identify system boundaries, it seems to us that the available intelligence on Hezbollah points to 

the following analogy:

The crab depicted in figure 6 has been infected with the Sacculina parasite. The Sacculina 

parasite is a variety of barnacle that can locate the chinks in a crab’s exoskeleton and inject itself 

into the crab through the exposed joint. Once inside, it moves to wrap tendrils around the crab’s 

nervous system from the limbs to the eyestalks, eventually controlling the crab’s actions. At this 

point, the crab forgoes actions that would benefit it at the expense of providing nutrition for the 

parasite, which include molting, growing, and replacing lost limbs. By placing itself where the 

egg sack would normally appear, Sacculina also causes the crab (whether male or female) to 

nurture the parasite while it usurps the reproductive function.62 The overall effect is that the 

crab’s will is removed to the detriment of the crab but in service to the parasite. 

Figure 663

 
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 Is it now time that the Lebanese Army, which is there, acted in order to 

 rid itself of the very beast which is bringing this horror and this destruction 

 upon its people?64

 Israeli Representative to the UN Security Council 

Hezbollah is a crab parasite. Hezbollah injected itself cognitively and physically into southern 

Lebanon, siphoned nutrition off the infrastructure, and used the state to exercise its will towards 

the destruction of Israel. The parasite’s sense of identity and corresponding model of victory 

were external to (and detrimental to) the growth and nourishment of the state of Lebanon. By 

2006, the crab was too weakened and the adult parasite too entrenched to be mortally wounded 

without causing the destruction of the crab itself.65

Israel was forced to decide from without whether it could simply kill the host or perform a more 

intricate operation to excise the parasite. If Israel did not care about the fate of the crab, there 

would be no complexity to the conflict as the role of the cognitive domain would be minimized. 

However, with the international and domestic audiences evaluating the operation, a sort of 

Hippocratic Oath was held as the standard, such that Israel must work for the “benefit of [her] 

patient, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.”66 As it turns out, the Israelis 

ended up targeting the crab physically in an attempt to cause the crab to turn against the parasite. 

In doing so, they failed to achieve even the desired first order cognitive effects on either the 

parasite or the crab, while producing undesired cognitive effects among their own population and 

the international community. Therefore, the operation was found to be a failure. We can thus say 

that the Israeli staff would have done well to discourse on “How does one perform brain surgery 

on a crab?” 

Key Takeaways and Implications for the JTF Staff 

The JOPP remains integral to the application of analytic thought to wicked problems. 

Wicked problems and their associated complex systems have not changed strategy. The JOPP 

continues to be a successful tool for application of analytical thought by the operational level 

planner. Its proven success is due to its inheritance of centuries of wisdom from the successful 

prosecution of wars. Superior military commanders have for millennia made good campaign 

plans in complex operational environments, in multi-layered and unstable political environments, 

charged with religious tensions. These commanders quite often succeeded not because of 

superior weapons, superior numbers, or superior alliances; victory can be found with the lack of 

each of these. However, in each case one factor always remains: wisdom. This wisdom, captured 

in the elements of operational design, provides the foundation for successful application of the 

analytic construct. 

Ultimately war is waged in the cognitive domain, a domain where the system of systems 

construct does not work. If complexity is cognitively based, then, using a metaphor from the 

language of mathematics, individuals are the “fractals” (more completely viewed as meroi) that 

retain the complexity of the operational environment. What permits this fractal replication to 

exist? Natural language unites minds so that the complexity retained in each member of the staff 
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can reconfigure itself about the teleology of the mission in a complex operating environment. 

Therefore, natural language used by humans in community is the encompassing model of 

complex systems. This is the reason why humans using language have been able to discourse 

about complexity for millennia. The operational environment is not a list of emerging variables; 

rather, JTF staffs must deal with people who have intentions, who have wills, so that teleology is 

involved. The Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment is best 

accomplished and understood through observation described in natural language rather than 

attempts at simplification.

Teleology is the critical concept for understanding complexity. Teleology opens complexity 

to being understood without simplifying it. In the snowmobile example, the human mind is able 

to take the teleology of each of these individual things, remove a part from it, understand it, and 

from that teleology understand another whole item. There are problems with understanding 

systems which stem from an unwillingness to look at teleology. The warfighter does not have 

this luxury and cannot look at an emerging world while in a state of inaction as a spectator. We 

are a nation, a sovereign people, with enemies who desire hegemony over us. This instills 

meaning to the numbers and identifies a purpose to which the parts of the whole may be directed. 

How does one avoid imposing one’s thoughts on one’s operational environment or enemy? 

Keep in mind, a model is both a thing and an action. Thus, the modeler performs an action with 

an associated teleology. An understanding of teleology allows us to separate the model from the 

intent used to build it. One cannot use the same model in the same way to train a warfighter and 

model the outcome of his upcoming battle. We need to take care not to misunderstand the 

purpose of our own models, therefore deceiving ourselves as to what we can rightfully expect.

Action officers and commanders need the ability to recognize gestalt changes. This is done 

by the individual to benefit the staff (and campaign) as a whole. Although the JOPP has been 

viewed as a linear process, we see that from the cognitive domain perspective, it is anything but 

linear; it is socialized at every step. Therefore, scoping complex systems is something that must 

be done by a group of people, preferably with as diverse a set of backgrounds (academic, 

cultural, etc.) as practical. This allows for multiple gestalts looking at the wicked problem in 

different ways, within the minds of everyone present. The result is the creation of a model that is 

a more accurate replication or portrayal of the actual world. 

Discourse is the encompassing model for complexity. Humans model complexity as we speak. 

Discourse presents one with a single surface; a single unit of meaning that through it reveals 

incredible complexity of langue and the discourse context. This helps to identify the problem 

with math-based computer modeling; namely, those systems do not reflect the complexity of the 

environment they are used to model. However, a more accurate human discourse model can 

better aim computer-based modeling by getting closer to the way natural language operates. 

Mathematical modeling requires the reduction of information to computational symbols. A 

formal system requires metadata attached to each of those symbols in order to explain it. Humans 

deal with their environment the same ways humans always have. Our limited ability to discourse 

through the digital collaborative environment is currently a barrier but will not be for future 
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generations. Their development of langue and discourse will increasingly become more adept at 

including the medium of the computer. For the foreseeable future, the computer and human 

interaction through computational symbol systems will continue to be a part of war, and will help 

to increase the power of our ability to sense and know, but it will not replace the mind of the 

commander. All the same skills of generals are as necessary today as they were in the time of 

Alexander; interpretation still requires human wisdom. Natural language is transparent; you can 

“see” into it. Natural language operates in an environment where discourse is a window which 

“simplifies” without removing complexity. It is the surface through which you can see the deep. 

The job of the JTF staff is the cultivation of wisdom. The cognitive model presented in 

Commander’s Appreciation and Campaign Design will greatly assist commanders and staffs in 

designing, planning, and executing military campaigns. JTF staff officers need to discourse in 

such a way that they can share information simply and can correct course as more knowledge 

comes into that system. Successful staffs require a system of people who are able to think and 

dialogue about the system changes as they occur. Therefore, the different ways that people think 

are important to harness and develop and cultivate. One can develop techniques for how to 

accomplish that better, but there is not an addendum that creates a fixed process that one must go 

through every time. Commanders require staffers who understand how to apply the analytical 

process and how to develop a team to scope system problems and plan prudently. The 

commander who interacts with this process of socialization requires exceptional abilities to 

recognize and interpret system implications from that socialization, no matter how informal. To 

find those with this ability, we appeal to the knowledge of the process of orientation and 

interpretation experienced in military leadership, for every experience yields a “secondary 

system” which may be applied to the wicked problem “primary systems” under JIPOE analysis. 

A wise commander with a knowledgeable and responsive staff, able to socialize problems and 

then apply analytic thought towards solutions, will succeed where others fail.

 Michael Collender is a lecturer of Philosophy at Gonzaga University in Spokane, 

Washington, and has been a visiting fellow at the Philosophy Institute of Catholic 

University in Leuven, Belgium. He can be reached at StAnnesPub@aol.com 

 Lieutenant Colonel Matt Deller, USAF, is a faculty member at the Joint and Combined 

Warfighting School of the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia where he also 

serves as the USJFCOM liaison officer. He can be reached at dellerm@ndu.edu 
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Glossary of Terms 

Actuality: paired with potentiality, the maturation of potential conditions, materials, etc., in an 

event, or product, which develops from those conditions. 

Arch-meros: see meros. 

Diachronic: having to do with a thing (especially a system) over a span of time. 

Discourse: referential communication which has meaning. Generally discourse is either written 

or spoken referential communication in language composed of sentences that either have or 

imply subjects and predicates. 

Distanciation: the quality of discourse which permits it to mean something different to an 

audience beyond the audience intended by the author or speaker. In warfighting, distanciation is 

analogous to third and fourth order effects; however distanciation is different in that it assumes a 

natural structure in the discourse event (or warfighting situation) and the environment which 

makes the new meaning possible before a new audience. 

Gestalt: an orientation of particulars as one unified whole. In this article, the term appropriately 

refers to either the way the mind organizes a collection of particulars in a unity (a mental gestalt), 

or as an orientation of particulars in nature which have a systemic or functional relationship 

(system gestalt), such that they can designated separately from neighboring particulars. 

Hermeneutic phenomenology: the use of the model of the text as a tool for understanding the 

world as though it were a text. The term is comprised of two other terms. Hermeneutics is the art 

of interpretation. Phenomenology is the accurate description of essences, and has generally been 

used to refer to the studies of essences of cognitive structures, hence its application to war in the 

cognitive domain. 

Langue: the signs in a sign system (generally a natural language), which can potentially mean 

some thing if used in discourse. 

Meros, (pl. meroi): A structured part of a substance which supports the work of the substance 

through its own work according to the five-causal model. An arch-meros is the same, only it also 

has meroi within it which also function according to the five causal models. 

Polysemy: the quality of a word which permit it to have multiple meanings, depending upon its 

uses in discourse (see the definition of “discourse”). 

Polysemy of function: the multiple teleologies, both actual and potential, which a meros or 

arch-meros demonstrates in the dynamics of a substance. 
 - 75 - 

Fall 2008 

Potentiality: the quality of resources which makes them ready to be used toward the product or 

event of actuality. 

Substance: A functional whole, which has at least one purpose, and possibly several. 

Synchronic: having to do with the state of a thing (especially a system) at a point in time. 

Teleology: a thing’s “end” in the sense of (1) its terminus in time or space, (2) its end state if the 

thing is a process, or (3) its purpose, what a thing aims ultimately to accomplish. A meros, an 

arch-meros and a substance each have their own teleologies which open the respective 

interrelationship of the parts 
 - 76 - 

Fall 2008 

Bibliography 

Aristotle. "On the Parts of Animals." In Clarendon Aristotle Series, ed. J. L. Ackrill and Lindsay 

Judson, xvi-404. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. 

Arrian. "Anabasis Alexandri." In Loeb Classic Library, ed. G. P. Gould. Cambridge (Mass): 

Harvard, 1976. 

Bogdanos, Matthew, William Patrick. Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine's Passion to Recover the 

World's Greatest Stolen Treasures. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006. 

Boyd, John. A Discourse on Winning and Losing: Unpublished manuscript, 1987. 

Brown, Theodore L. Making Truth: Metaphor in Science. Urbana and Chicago: University of 

Illinois press, 2003. 

Cilliers, Paul. Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems. London and 

New York: Routledge, 1998. 

Clausewitz, Carl Von. On War. Translated by Peter Paret Michael Howard. Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 2007. 

Collender, Michael. "Complexity and Hermeneutic Phenomenology." Doctoral dissertation, The 

University of Stellenbosch, 2008. 

Devlin, Keith. Goodbye, Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of 

the Mind. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997. 

Grossmann, Reinhardt. "Phenomenology." In The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, ed. Ted 

Honderich, 658-660. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 

Hammond, G. T. . The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security. Washington: 

Smithsonian Books, 2001. 

Hesse, Mary B. Models and Analogies in Science. Notre Dame (Indiana): University of Notre 

Dame Press, 1966. 

Hippocrates. "Hippocratic Writings." In Great Books of the Western World, ed. Mortimer Adler. 

Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1993. 

Hizballah. "An Open Letter: The Hizballah Program." JCOA Journal X, no. 1 (2007): 9-12. 

Hovendale, Frederick. On False Education. London: Watts & Co., 1905. 
 - 77 - 

Fall 2008 

Joint-Center-for-Operational-Analysis. JCOA Journal X, no. 1 (2007). 

Kline, Morris. Mathematics and the Search for Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 

1985. 

Kreps, Sarah E. "The 2006 Lebanon War: Lessons Learned." Parameters, no. Spring (2007). 

Lakoff, G., and R. E. Nunez. Where Mathematics Comes From: How the Embodied Mind Brings 

Mathematics into Being. New York: Basic Books, 2000. 

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its 

Challenge to Western Thought New York: Harper Collins, 1999. 

Mathews, M. M. We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War. Long War 

Series Occasional Paper. Fort Leavenworth, (Kansas): US Army Combined Arms Center, 

Combat Studies Institute Press, 2008. 

Mattis, General James N. "Memo for USJFCOM, Assessment of Effects Based Operations .” 14 

August 2008. 

Naylor, Sean D. "War Games Rigged?: General Says Millennium Challenge 02 ‘Was Almost 

Entirely Scripted’." Army Times, August 16, 2002. 

Plutarch. "Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans." The Great Books of the Western 

World, ed. Mortimer Adler, 13. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1993. 

Ricoeur, Paul. The Conflict of Interpretation: Essays in Hermeneutics. Translated by Multiple 

Translators Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential 

Philosophy. Evanston (Illinois): Northwest University Press, 1974. 

Scott, Alwyn. "Introduction." In Encyclopedia of Nonlinear Science, ed. Alwyn Scott, vii-xi. 

New York and London: Routledge, 2005. 

Shanker, Thom. "Iran Encounter Grimly Echoes ’02 War Game." The New York Times, January 

12, 2008. 

Snyder, Zack. "300." Warner Bros. Pictures 2006. 

Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Charles Foster Smith. 4 vols. The 

Loeb Classic Library. Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press, 1928. 
 - 78 - 

Fall 2008 

U. S. Department of Defense. Joint Publication 3-0: Joint Operations. Washington, D.C: 

Defense Technical Information Center, 17 September 2006, Incorporating Change 1, 13 

February 2008. 

U. S. Department of Defense. Joint Publication 5-0: Joint Operational Planning. Washington, 

D.C: Defense Technical Information Center, 26 December 2006. 

USJFCOM, Frequently Asked Questions, “What is Millennium Challenge 2002?” 

http://www.jfcom.mil/about/experiments/mc02/faq. 

Wartofsky, Marx W. Models: Representation and the Scientific Understanding. Vol. Volume 

XLVIII Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, ed. Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. 

Wartofsky. Dordrecht: Holland/Boston: USA and London: England: D. Riedel publishing 

Co., 1979. 

Watts, B. D. Clausewitzian Friction and Future War McNair Paper Series. Washington D.C.: 

National Defense University, 2004. 

Wikipedia. "Millennium Challenge 2002." In Wikipedia: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, July 

2008. 

Wikipedia. "Optical Illusion." In Wikipedia: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, July 2008. 

Wikipedia. "Sacculina." In Wikipedia: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, July 2008. 

Wikipedia. "Wicked Problems." In Wikipedia: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, July 2008. 
 - 79 - 

Fall 2008 

Notes

 

1 See the conclusion of Book 3 and following of Arrian, "Anabasis Alexandri," in Loeb Classic Library, ed. G. P. 

Gould (Cambridge (Mass): Harvard, 1976). 

2

 See the detailed account of the campaign in Ibid. 

3

 The illustrating of how Alexander did this is a primary focus of Plutarch’s narrative entitled “Alexander” in 

Plutarch, "Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans," in The Great Books of the Western World, ed. 

Mortimer Adler (Chicago: Encyclopeadia Britannica, Inc., 1993). 

4

 See Book II, 14.4-9 in Arrian. 

5

 Plutarch, 561-562. 

6

 Ibid., 543. 

7

 Not all philosophers have equal skill. Plato’s students were known for their hostility to real world systems study. 

Alexander also invited the philosopher Callisthenes on his campaign who turned out to lack the practical wisdom of 

Aristotle and plagued everyone with his stupidity. 

8

 Wikipedia, "Wicked Problems," in Wikipedia (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2008). 

9

 Joint-Center-for-Operational-Analysis, JCOA Journal X, no. 1 (2007). 

10 Hizballah, "An Open Letter: The Hizballah Program," JCOA Journal X, no. 1 (2007). 

11 Ibid. 

12 Ibid. 

13 This causes us to respectfully depart from JCOA’s characterization of Hezbollah as a “state within a state”.13 

Instead, we view Hezbollah as a parasitic nation within a state, using the resources of the host state for external 

purposes. 

14 Sarah E. Kreps, "The 2006 Lebanon War: Lessons Learned," Parameters, no. Spring (2007). 

15 Joint-Center-for-Operational-Analysis: 15. 

16 As chronicled in M. M. Mathews, We Were Caught Unprepared: The 2006 Hezbollah-Israeli War, Long War 

Series Occasional Paper (Fort Leavenworth, (Kansas): US Army Combined Arms Center, Combat Studies Institute 

Press, 2008), 94. 

17 Joint-Center-for-Operational-Analysis: 21. 

18 Joint-Center-for-Operational-Analysis: 13. 

19 Ibid: 22. 

20 Ibid. 

21 Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Peter Paret Michael Howard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 225. 

22 The PMESII construct models an operational environment according to at least six identifiable 

subsystems/networks, namely the political, military, economic, social, infrastructure and information systems. 

23 GEN James N. Mattis, "Memo for USJFCOM, Assessment of Effects Based Operations." (14 August 2008). 

24 U. S. Department of Defense, Joint Publication 5-0: Joint Operational Planning (Washington, D.C: Defense 

Technical Information Center, 26 December 2006). 

25 U. S. Department of Defense, Joint Publication 3-0: Joint Operations (Washington, D.C: Defense Technical 

Information Center, 17 September 2006, Incorporating Change 1, 13 February 2008). 

26 JP-3 IV-4 makes a reference that can be interpreted at encouraging the targeting of links. “After appropriate 

analysis, certain nodes and the links between them can be identified as key to attacking or otherwise affecting 
 - 80 - 

Fall 2008 

 operational and strategic COGs.” But that statement must also be taken along with the definitions of node and link 

presented in JP-5. Links are affected by the action taken upon nodes, and thus system change is affected indirectly. 

27 John Boyd makes a similar point in saying that national security has no end state but rather is a continual OODA 

loop process. See G. T. Hammond, The Mind of War: John Boyd and American Security (Washington: Smithsonian 

Books, 2001). 

28 USJFCOM Online, Frequently Asked Questions, “What is Millennium Challenge 2002?”, July 2008. 

29 Sean D. Naylor, "War Games Rigged?: General Says Millennium Challenge 02 ‘Was Almost Entirely Scripted’," 

Army Times, August 16, 2002. 

30 Wikipedia, "Millennium Challenge 2002," in Wikipedia (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2008). 

31 Thom Shanker, "Iran Encounter Grimly Echoes ’02 War Game," The New York Times, January 12, 2008. 

32 Wikipedia, "Millennium Challenge 2002." 

33 Frederick Hovenden, On False Education (London: Watts & Co., 1905), 13. 

34 For more discussion on this point see G. Lakoff, and R. E. Nunez, Where Mathematics Comes From: How the 

Embodied Mind Brings Mathematics into Being (New York: Basic Books, 2000). Their thesis has merit, but the 

metaphysical interpretation they give at the end of the book, arguing for complete mathematical constructivism 

without being able to give an account for the universal applicability of mathematics to the physical universe or 

answer Morris Kline’s famous question “Why does mathematics work?” See Morris Kline, Mathematics and the 

Search for Knolwedge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 210-227. 

35 Keith Devlin, Goodbye, Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind (New 

York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997). 

36 Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretation: Essays in Hermeneutics, trans. Multiple Translators, Northwestern 

University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston, Illinois): Northwest University Press, 

1974), 68. 

37 John Boyd, A Discourse on Winning and Losing (Unpublished manuscript, 1987). 

38 Again we are not challenging the usefulness of good measurements of campaign health. 

39 Reinhardt Grossmann, "Phenomenology," in The Oxford companion to philosophy, ed. Ted Honderich (Oxford 

and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 659. 

40 Paul Cilliers, Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems (London and New York: 

Routledge, 1998), 3-5. 

41 One could go through and carefully show that each of these points applies to natural language, but such 

elaboration is beyond the scope of this article. 

42 This definition is quoted word for word from Michael Collender, “Complexity and Hermeneutic Phenomenology” 

(Doctoral dissertation, The University of Stellenbosch, 2008). 

43 Wartofsky, Marx W. Models: Representation and the Scientific Understanding. Volume XLVIII Boston Studies 

in the Philosophy of Science, ed. Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartofsky (Dordrecht: Holland/Boston: USA and 

London, England. D. Riedel Publishing Co., 1979) 147. 

44 Mary B. Hesse, Models and Analogies in Science (Notre Dame (Indiana): University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 

171. The meaning of “explanandum” is something that requires explanation (including the word itself). 

45 Ibid, 158. 

46 “Means” here does not suggest that words can have meaning outside of discourse. Words only mean something in 

sentences, but in langue words retain potential meaning. Those potential meanings are what is recorded in a lexicon. 

So the better word to designate this quality is use, but English lacks an easy clear convention for expressing this. 
 - 81 - 

Fall 2008 

 47 This assumption is at the heart of the PMESII process which treats the other systems of the operational 

environment as related in a network with the same causal relationships as the nodes (tangible targetable physical 

points) of a military system. 

48 Alwyn Scott, "Introduction," in Encyclopedia of Nonlinear Science, ed. Alwyn Scott (New York and London: 

Routledge, 2005), vii. 

49 Aristotle, "On the Parts of Animals," in Clarendon Aristotle Series, ed. J. L. Ackrill and Lindsay Judson (Oxford: 

Clarendon Press, 2001). 

50 It is Michael Collender’s position that the brain is best seen as an instrumental cause of instrumental causes, but 

put in structural terms; this refers primarily to the brains networked neurons. He would argue that the brain should 

be seen as a complex single neural network, not an aggregate of multiple networks. 

51 The following illustrations are taken from chapter 5 of Collender. Here these examples are treated in greater 

detail. 

52 See chapters 6 and 7 of Ibid. 

53 See Hammond, 156-157. 

54 Wikipedia, "Optical Illusion," in Wikipedia (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, as viewed in July 2008). 

55 Ibid. 

56 For a representative example see “Evolutionary Biology as an Exemplar” B. D. Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and 

Future War, McNair Paper Series (Washington D.C.: National Defense University, 2004), 49-55. 

57 Book 1.75 of Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. Charles Foster Smith, 4 vols., The Loeb 

Classic Library (Cambridge (Mass): Harvard University Press, 1928), Vol. 1, p.129. 

58 For a discussion of why prices are discourse and not langue, see Complexity and Hermeneutic Phenomenology. 

59 Or third party analysis must operate within the models of victory used by the respective parties involved in the 

conflict. Outcomes must be measured in terms of those models, even by third party analysts. 

60 See Matthew Bogdanos, William Patrick, Thieves of Baghdad: One Marine's Passion to Recover the World's 

Greatest Stolen Treasures (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2006). 

61 Zack Snyder, "300,” (Warner Bros. Pictures 2006). 

62 Zimmer, Carl (August 2000). "Do Parasites Rule the World?" Discover. Accessed via Wikipedia. Photo from 

Wikipedia. 

63 Wikipedia, "Sacculina," in Wikipedia (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2008), as viewed in July 2008. 

64 Joint Center for Operational Analysis: 22 

65 In May of 2008, Lebanon did in fact attempt to rid itself of “the beast” by denying Hezbollah access to a landline 

telephone network that it used to communicate. Hezbollah turned on its host and the Lebanese government was 

forced to back down. 

66 Hippocrates, "Hippocratic Writings," in Great books of the western world, ed. Mortimer Adler (Chicago: 

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1993), xiii.
 

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82

A Proposal for the Realignment of the Department of State and 

Department of Defense Areas of Responsibility 

By 

Commander Thomas A. Zwolfer 

Lieutenant Colonel Jim Januszka 

Major Dennis S. Rand 

Mr. Steve Engler 

The events of September 11, 2001, fundamentally changed the way the United States perceived 

threats to its national security. Non-state actors, such as Al Qaeda, Abu Sayyaf, and Asbat alAnsar, have taken a place alongside nation states as entities capable of influencing our actions 

and threatening our way of life. As a result of this shift, effective execution of the US national 

security strategy requires an unprecedented level of integration of all instruments of national 

power. While national leadership has issued policy reflecting this new reality, implementation of 

that policy has progressed slowly. One area in which immediate progress could be made is 

improved coordination between the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of State 

(DOS) in developing regional strategies. The DOD’s Regional Combatant Commands 

(COCOMs) and DOS’s Regional Bureaus have roughly analogous functions but significant 

differences in their organization, leading to inefficient communication and reduced cooperation. 

In order to facilitate interagency coordination, the President of the United States should direct the 

DOD and DOS to align their regional areas of responsibility (AORs) into a more logical and 

consistent construct. 

The Need for Improved Interagency Coordination 

National-level policy documents clearly state the need for improved interagency coordination. 

The nation’s top strategic document, the 2006 National Security Strategy (NSS), recognizes 

today’s complex global security environment and outlines a strategy founded on two pillars: (1) 

promoting freedom, justice, and human dignity, and (2) leading a growing community of 

democracies.1 Achieving these goals will require effort spanning many disciplines, implying that 

an integrated application of all instruments of national power is necessary. This fundamental 

need for interagency cooperation is reinforced and defined at the strategic level in National 

Security Policy Directives (NSPD). For example, NSPD-1 establishes Policy Coordination 

Committees to conduct the day-to-day interagency activities concerning national security,2

 and 

NSPD-44 directs the DOS to harmonize their reconstruction and stabilization efforts with the 

military plans and operations of the DOD.3

 

While coordination between all agencies is necessary, effective cooperation between DOS and 

DOD is especially essential in today’s strategic environment. According to Secretary of State 

Rice, transnational threats that fall outside of traditional military or diplomatic bins require a 

combination of instruments of national power for resolution, and that the DOS should have the 

leadership role in these efforts: 
 

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83

“We will not meet the challenges of the 21st century through military or any other 

means alone. Our national security requires the integration of our universal 

principles with all elements of our national power...and it is the State 

Department, more than any other agency of government that is called to lead this 

work.”4

However, DOD is frequently given tasks that should properly be led by DOS. For example, 

DOD manages over $30 billion worth of reconstruction contracts in Iraq,5 a job for which DOS 

is best qualified.6

 This is primarily due to the relative sizes of the organizations—the annual 

DOD budget dwarfs that of the DOS ($593.8 billion vs. $15.4 billion in FY 2008)7

—and DOD’s 

global reach. The disconnect between the agencies that should handle and actually do handle 

these tasks leads to an incoherent application of national strategy. Improved coordination 

between DOD and DOS is an obvious remedy for this problem. 

Barriers Impeding DOD and DOS Cooperation 

While national policies mandate strategic interagency coordination, they do not dictate how this 

is to be accomplished at the COCOM and Regional Bureau levels of the DOD and DOS, 

respectively. This is the level at which regional strategies are developed to implement national 

goals, but it is also the level at which daily coordination is relatively infrequent. Effective 

cooperation between DOS and DOD is impeded by two major factors: (1) misalignment of their 

respective geographic responsibilities, and (2) obstacles to cooperation inherent in their 

organizational structures 

. 

Misalignment of Regional AORs 

In broad terms, the DOS and DOD have similar approaches to assigning regional 

responsibilities.8 The Department of State divides the world into six operating regions, assigning 

responsibility for each to a Regional Bureau:9

1) Bureau of African Affairs (responsible for sub-Saharan Africa) 

2) Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs (Europe, Russia, and Greenland) 

3) Bureau of South and Central Asia (responsible for the area encompassing 

Kazakhstan to India) 

4) Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (responsible for the area 

encompassing Mongolia to New Zealand) 

5) Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (responsible for the Middle East and North 

Africa) 

6) Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs (responsible for North and South 

America) 

Each Bureau is headed by an Assistant Secretary who is responsible for providing political 

advice to the Under Secretary of Political Affairs and overseeing diplomatic operations 

conducted within their assigned jurisdiction.10
 

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84

The Department of Defense’s approach to assigning regional responsibilities was mandated by 

the National Security Act of 1947 and refined by the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, which 

directed the creation of a single centralized focal point for joint combat operations in a given 

theater. The DOD currently has six geographical Combatant Commands, as outlined in the 

Unified Command Plan: 

1) US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM, responsible for North America) 

2) US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM, responsible for South America) 

3) US European Command (USEUCOM, responsible for Europe, Greenland, and 

Russia) 

4) US Central Command (USCENTCOM, responsible for the Middle East) 

5) US Africa Command (USAFRICOM, responsible for Africa) 

6) US Pacific Command (USPACOM, responsible for the area encompassing 

Mongolia to India, including China, Korea, Japan, New Zealand, and 

Madagascar) 

The Combatant Commands are led by Combatant Commanders, who report directly to the 

Secretary of Defense and exercise unified command and control of all missions within their areas 

of responsibility. 

Although the DOS and DOD regional assignments are similar in broad terms, they differ 

significantly in the details (see Appendix A, Figure 1 and Table 1). This misalignment of AORs 

creates coordination gaps between DOS and DOD, impeding effective interagency cooperation 

and the development of synchronized regional strategies. Two key examples are USCENTCOM 

and the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. USCENTCOM’s AOR is comprised of 

countries that fall under two Regional Bureaus,11 thus forcing it to coordinate its regional plans 

with two DOS organizations instead of with a single focal point. This is especially detrimental 

to USCENTCOM’s stability operations in Iraq (Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs) and Afghanistan 

(Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs), which require close coordination between DOD 

and DOS. Similarly, the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs includes both Pakistan and 

India within its AOR, while those countries are assigned to USCENTCOM and USPACOM 

respectively. DOS efforts to stabilize conflicts between Pakistan and India must be coordinated 

with two COCOMs instead of only one. 

Organizational Barriers 

In addition to the differences between their AORs, various aspects of the DOD and DOS 

organizational structures reduce their ability to coordinate effectively. Two of these barriers are 

found at the national leadership level. First, COCOMs and Regional Assistant Secretaries have 

different levels of reporting authority. COCOMs report directly to the Secretary of Defense, 

while the Assistant Secretaries report to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, two 

levels lower than the equivalent Secretary of State.12 Second, neither the Secretary of Defense 

nor the Secretary of State has established clearly delineated lines of coordination between 

COCOMs and Regional Bureau Secretaries, a task which is certainly within their ability to 

accomplish. This lack of guidance results in the majority of policy coordination occurring at the 
 

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85

National Security Council level, which in turn causes inefficiency in developing courses of 

action, and reduces the nation’s ability to rapidly respond to changing conditions.13 

Another organizational barrier to effective cooperation is found in the office that DOS uses for 

interagency interaction. The DOS maintains a single bureau through which they coordinate with 

the DOD, the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs (POLMIL). POLMIL has the primary 

functions of providing policy direction in the areas of international security, security assistance, 

military operations, defense strategy and plans, and defense trade,14 and consequently is heavily 

involved with the regional plans of the Regional Bureaus. However, POLMIL is operated 

separately from the Regional Bureaus, and reports to the Under Secretary of State for Arms 

Control, instead of the Under Secretary of Political Affairs (who oversees the Regional 

Bureaus).15 This creates an additional layer of bureaucratic separation between the Regional 

Bureaus and the COCOMs, and can lead to conflicting guidance given to the COCOMs by 

POLMIL and the Regional Bureaus. 

Aspects of the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (OCR&S) within 

the DOS also impede effective coordination between DOD and DOS. OCR&S, created as a 

result of NSPD-44,16 is charged with coordinating all United States Government (USG) activities 

related to planning and preparing for reconstruction activities.17 While the OCR&S improves 

coordination on activities that lay within its specific scope (reconstruction and stabilization 

activities), the narrow focus of that scope means, over the course of an operation, coordination 

authority shifts between various organizations. This fragments the overall coordination of an 

operation as a whole. Additionally, the OCR&S does not provide a regional level avenue 

through which a COCOM and a Regional Bureau can interact on the development of regional 

strategies. 

In 2002, DOD attempted to improve interagency coordination with the implementation of Joint 

Interagency Coordination Groups (JIACGs), full-time, multi-agency advisory groups that reside 

on each Combatant Commander’s staff. The JIACG’s primary purpose is to facilitate 

information sharing throughout the interagency community, acting as the COCOM’s advocate 

across federal, state, and non-governmental agencies.18 Unfortunately, according to the 2008 

Report to Congress from the Project on National Security Reform (PNSR), JIACGs have had 

limited success with improving interagency coordination,19 a failure that has been variously 

attributed to limited resources, legislated organizational boundaries, and interagency rivalries.20 

The formation of USAFRICOM will test a new method for improving DOD and DOS 

coordination. The USAFRICOM staff will include personnel from outside agencies as 

permanent members of the command staff, formally embedded into the organizational structure 

at a very high level (the Department of State, for example, will hold a Deputy Commander 

position).21 This military-civilian hybrid staff is an intriguing proposal that takes the basic 

premise of the JIACG to the next logical step. While its success will not be known for a number 

of years, one potential flaw is that the embedded personnel will become too closely identified 

with USAFRICOM, losing their connections and effectiveness with their home agencies. For 

example, the Department of State Deputy Commander will hold no formal authority over the 
 

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86

Country Teams and is not in the chain of command of the Regional Bureau, thus reducing that 

position’s effectiveness in developing regional policies for the DOS.22 

Recommendation for Aligning the Regional AORs 

DOS and DOD have significant issues to address in order to improve their mutual coordination. 

The problems caused by their organizational issues will take a relatively long time to solve, as 

drastic change at that level of bureaucracy is unlikely to happen quickly and would probably 

require a legislative solution from Congress. Hence, fixing the problems with JIACGs and 

OCR&S, aligning the Secretaries to whom COCOMs and Regional Bureaus report, and 

reorganizing POLMIL and the Regional Bureaus under a single lead should be considered longterm goals; other efforts to improve interagency coordination should be pursued in the shortterm. 

Realigning the COCOM and Regional Bureau geographic AORs, on the other hand, is a feasible 

short-term goal. It represents a comparatively minor change that would provide immediate 

tangible benefits (e.g., improving DOD and DOS coordination in stability operations in Iraq and 

Afghanistan), and would serve as the catalyst for future initiatives to improve interagency 

coordination. This change could be effected by the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense 

acting in concert, and would probably require direction from the President of the United States to 

initiate the process. If the changes to the current responsibilities were minimal, such as in the 

proposal below, the realignment could be effected in as little as six months, followed by an 

approximately five year period during which existing plans were updated to reflect the new 

structure. This process would also provide the Secretaries of State and Defense the opportunity 

to address one of the organizational flaws identified above: the lack of clearly delineated lines of 

coordination between COCOMs and Regional Bureau Secretaries. 

Proposed AOR Realignment 

One potential alignment is presented in Appendix A, Table 2. It was constructed with two 

guiding criteria. First, regions were selected so that likely conflicts (stemming from economic, 

ideological, or historical causes, as described below) would tend not to cross regional 

boundaries. While this obviously represents an ideal and not an unbreakable rule—threats are 

global in nature, and there are few sharp lines worldwide across which conflicts will definitely 

not occur—attempting to follow this guideline resulted in a proposal that increases efficiency by 

reducing the need for inter-theater coordination. Second, as a pragmatic consideration, regions 

were selected with a preference for the status quo. This guideline minimized the amount of 

change required, increasing the ease of implementation for the proposal. 

In broad terms, the proposed realignment retained the six current DOD COCOM AORs, with 

significant modifications to USCENTCOM’s region, and the DOS Regional Bureau AORs were 

redefined to match the DOD COCOM AORs. The Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs was 

divided into two Bureaus: one for North American (aligned with USNORTHCOM) and one for 

Central and South America (aligned with USSOUTHCOM). The Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs 

was eliminated, and its AOR was divided between the Bureau of African Affairs (Morocco, 
 

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87

Libya, Algeria, and Tunisia; aligned with USAFRICOM) and the Bureau of South and Central 

Asian Affairs (the remainder; aligned with USCENTCOM). This change also included the 

reassignment of Israel, who had been assigned to the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, from 

USEUCOM to USCENTCOM. Countries who are currently assigned to USPACOM and the 

Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs—Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, and 

Sri Lanka—were also reassigned to USCENTCOM. The rationale for these divisions is 

discussed below. 

Cultural and Economic Considerations 

In the past, the world has been divided into areas primarily on the basis of geography. While 

geography is a natural starting point for realigning the DOS and DOD areas of responsibility, 

recent history has shown that nation states are not necessarily the fundamental source of conflict: 

 

“The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will 

be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, 

but...the clash of civilizations will dominate global politics.”23

Geographic factors must be tempered by cultural and economic considerations in order to avoid 

creating AOR boundaries that lie along “fault lines,” which would increase the chance of 

conflicts that span AORs. This will also help to ensure that conflicts involving transnational 

communities, which are not necessarily constrained by political boundaries, are contained within 

a single AOR. 

Political conflicts often have their root causes in cultural conflicts. Cultural identities can cross 

national boundaries and are defined by a combination of factors such as history, language, 

traditions, and religion. While cultural differences do not always result in open conflict, the 

conflicts they do generate have historically been the most violent.24 Accordingly, the potential 

for cultural conflict should be a driving factor when defining an AOR. For example, Egypt is 

geographically located in Africa, but is more culturally similar to the Arab countries in Central 

Asia; hence, Egypt is assigned to USCENTCOM and the Bureau for South and Central Asian 

Affairs. Likewise, Southern and Central American countries were placed in a separate AOR 

from the North American countries due to cultural differences. 

Religion is one of the most significant causes of cultural conflict. Religious identities are often 

more significant and divisive than ethnic and national identities,25 and numerous conflicts across 

the world today have religious undertones. The struggle between Hindu and Muslim is evident 

in the current rivalry between Pakistan and India, Al-Qaeda’s justification for its actions is the 

continuation of a 1300-year-old conflict between Christianity and Islam, and civil strife in Iraq is 

caused in large part by a schism between the Shiite and Sunni factions of Islam.26 These 

examples demonstrate the range of conflicts (inter-, trans-, and intra-national) that can be fueled 

by religious differences, emphasizing their importance when assigning AORs. Accordingly, the 

proposed realignment includes India and Pakistan in the same AOR (due to the potential for 

religious conflict), and Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka are included with 

India (due to their religious similarities). In a similar manner, Israel was assigned to the same 
 

 Fall 2008 

88

AOR as the surrounding Muslim countries, so that a single team can develop regional strategies 

to handle potential future conflicts. 

Economic factors are another key consideration. Analysis of world economies reveals a 

correlation between instability and having a weak economy, providing an indicator of possible 

conflicts.27 Conflicts can also erupt over competition for scarce natural resources, such as 

petroleum in the Middle East and water in Africa. Additionally, regional economic blocks, such 

as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), tend to shape the actions of countries 

within that block. For these reasons, any assignment of AORs must consider the economic 

situation and motivation of its prospective countries. In the proposed realignment, the shared 

economic interests between Canada, Mexico, and the United States, as expressed through 

NAFTA, was a significant factor in keeping the North American AOR distinct from the 

South/Central American AOR. While China has overtaken Japan as the leading economy in 

Asia, the commonalities and economic competition amongst the other countries in the East Asian 

region create an economic block that is reflected in the proposed East Asian and Pacific AOR. 

 

Preference for the Status Quo 

The second overarching guideline was a preference for making the minimum number of changes 

that resulted in aligned DOS and DOD AORs. Large bureaucratic institutions are resistant to 

change, and too radical of a proposal would be met with heavy resistance from both DOD and 

DOS.28 The ease of implementation for any reorganization is inversely proportional to the 

amount of reorganization required. 

Three fundamental models for the reorganization were evaluated with this guideline in mind: (1) 

using DOD as a baseline, with the preponderance of changes made to the existing DOS AORs, 

(2) using DOS as the baseline, with the preponderance of change on the DOD side, and (3) 

starting with a blank baseline, creating new AORs without regard to current AOR number or 

composition. Using the six DOD AORs as the baseline for the realignment was selected as the 

model that could be implemented with the least overall impact. The construction of an entirely 

new set of AORs was initially proposed as the solution; however, the effort required to enact that 

solution was deemed disproportionate to the incremental improvement in efficiency over using 

an existing AORs as a baseline. The decision between using DOD or DOS for the baseline was 

close, but DOD was selected for two reasons. First, DOD owns more equipment and materiel 

that would require movement in an AOR shift, meaning that changes to the DOD structure would 

have a larger logistical impact than analogous changes to DOS. Second, the changes indicated 

by the first consideration (potential sources of conflict) tended to impact DOS instead of DOD, 

making the use of DOD as the baseline the de facto choice. 

Further Actions 

After the bureaucratic process of realigning the DOS and DOD AORs is complete, three 

immediate actions should be taken to ensure that the change results in a functioning construct 

that enables interagency coordination. First, COCOMs and Regional Bureaus will need to 

review existing operations, logistics, and communication plans, updating them when necessary in 
 

 Fall 2008 

89

order to reflect the new AOR divisions. This may be handled during the normal plan revision 

process or as a unique post-reorganization planning period. 

Second, DOS and DOD will need to set up a periodic review process to ensure that the division 

of AORs reflects the current global environment. Conflict areas will shift with the emergence of 

new threats and with changes in the global political and economic environment, and a 

mechanism to reflect these shifts must also be in place. This is counterbalanced against the 

stability required for strategic planning; rearranging the AORs too frequently will have a 

negative impact on the ability of COCOMs and Regional Bureaus to implement long-range 

plans. A review process on the order of seven to ten years seems appropriate, with the 

expectation that not every review will result in a shift of AORs. One notable area that will 

require review is India, Pakistan, and China. India has the potential for conflict with both 

Pakistan and China; India was assigned to Pakistan’s AOR because conflict with Pakistan seems 

more likely today, but this situation (and India’s assigned AOR) could change in the future. 

Third, the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense should take this opportunity to delineate 

clear lines of communication between the COCOMs and Regional Bureaus; as they would then 

share the same AORs, this process would be straightforward. Taking these three actions will 

ensure that the realignment of the AORs had a positive impact on interagency coordination. 

Conclusion 

In order to effectively promote US national strategy in today’s nebulous global threat 

environment, the Departments of State and Defense must coordinate their planning and 

operations to an unprecedented level. Both national leadership and the Departments are aware of 

this need and have made progress towards improving the interagency cooperate process. 

However, certain characteristics of their respective organizational structures and flaws in the 

constructs used to implement coordination have reduced the efficiency of cooperation between 

the two Departments. One problematic aspect is the misalignment of the DOD COCOM and 

DOS Regional Bureau AORs. Aligning the AORs as recommended would be feasible with 

Presidential guidance to the Secretaries, and would provide immediate and tangible 

improvements in the coordination between DOD and DOS. 

Commander Thomas A. Zwolfer, USN is assigned to the Department of the Navy 

Office of Process and Program Appraisal in Washington, DC. 

 Lieutenant Colonel Jim Januszka, USA is serving as the Assistant Fire Support 

Coordinator for 3d Marine Division, 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force in Okinawa, Japan. 

 Major Dennis S. Rand, USAF is assigned to US Strategic Command as an Operations 

Analyst. 

 Mr. Steve Engler is serving as Program Analyst for the Command, Control, 

Communications and Computer Systems Directorate in US Transportation Command at 

Scott AFB, Illinois. 
 

 Fall 2008 

90

 

1

 The White House, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America”, Executive Summary, March 16, 2006. 

2

 The White House, “Organization of the National Security Council System,” February 13, 2001. 

3

 The White House, “Management of Interagency Efforts Concerning Reconstruction and Stabilization,” December 7, 2005. 

4

 Condoleezza Rice, Remarks on Transformational Diplomacy, Gaston Hall, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 2008. 

5

 US Government Accountability Office, "Rebuilding Iraq: Reconstruction Progress Hindered by Contracting, Security, and 

Capacity Challenges," February 15, 2007, 5. 

6

 Dale, Catherine, et al., “Organizing the US Government for National Security”, April 18, 2008. 

7

 The White House, “The Budget for Fiscal Year 2008, Historical Tables”, Table 5.2, available at 

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/pdf/hist.pdf, accessed May 19, 2008. 

8

 US Government, Strategic Studies Institute, “Turning on the Dime: Diplomacy’s Role in National Security,” October 2007 . 

9

 US DOS, available at http://www.state.gov/t/pm/c17251.htm, accessed May 19, 2008. 

10 US DOS, available at http://www.state.gov/p/, accessed May 19, 2008. 

11 US DOS, available at http://www.state.gov/t/pm/c17251.htm, accessed May 19, 2008. 

12 US DOS, available at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/DOS/7926.htm, accessed May 19, 2008. 

13 Oakley, Robert B. and Michael Casey Jr, The Country Team, Restructuring America’s First Line of Engagement, Washington 

DC, National Defense University, 2007, 1. 

14 US DOS, available at http://www.state.gov/t/pm/, accessed May 19, 2008. 

15 US DOS, available at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/rls/DOS/7926.htm, accessed May 19, 2008. 

16 The White House, “Management of Interagency Efforts Concerning Reconstruction and Stabilization,” December 7, 2005. 

17 Bersahel, Nora, Organising for Nation Building, Survival, 49:2, 44. 

18 US Joint Forces Command Joint Warfighting Center, “Commander’s Handbook for the Joint Interagency Coordination 

Group,” March 7, 2007. 

19 Center for the Study of the Presidency, “The Project for National Security Reform: Report to Congress,” April 2008. 

20 Dale, Catherine, et al., “Organizing the US Government for National Security”, April 18, 2008. 

21 US House of Representative, Committee on Armed Services, “Initial Perspectives”, January 2008. 

22 US DOS, Press Release, October 29, 2007, available at http://www.america.gov/st/washfileenglish/2007/October/20071029124738SztiwomoD0.5084345.html, accessed May 21, 2008. 

23 Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations, Harvard University, 1993, 1. 

24 Huntington, 17.

25 Huntington, 5.

26 Ghosh, Bobby, Why They Hate Each Other, Baghdad, 2007, 32. 

27 Barnett, Thomas, “It Explains Why We’re Going to War, and Why We’ll Keep Going to War”, Esquire, March 2003, 130. 

28 Kotter and Schlesinger, “Six Change Approaches,” 1979. 
91

Appendix A. Figures and Tables 

Figure 1. Current COCOM and Regional Bureau Geographic AORs 
- 92 -

Table 1. Current Alignment of COCOM and Regional Bureau Geographic AORs

US NOR THC OM US S OUTHC OM US AF R IC OM US C E NTC OM US E UC OM 

United S tates Antigua and Barbuda Algeria A fghanis tan Albania 

C anada Argentina Angola Bahrain Andorra Mexico Bahamas, The Benin Djibouti Armenia 

Barbados B otswana E gypt Aus tria Belize B urkina F aso Iran Azerbaijan Bolivia B urundi Iraq Belarus B razil C ameroon J ordan Belgium C ayman Islands C ape Verde K azakhs tan B osnia 

C hile C entral African R epublic K uwait B ulgaria 

C olombia C had K rygyzs tan C roatia C osta R ica C omoros Lebanon C yprus 

Dominica C ongo Oman C zec R epublic Dominican R epublic C ôte d'Ivoire P akis tan Denmark 

E cuador Democratic R epublic of the C ongo Qatar E s tonia 

E l S alvador Djibouti S audi Arabia F inland 

G renada E quatorial G uinea S udan F rance G uatemala E ritrea S yria G eorgia G uyana E thiopia Tajikis tan G ermany 

Haiti G abon T urkmenis tan G reece Honduras G ambia, T he U.A.E . G ibraltar 

J amaica G hana Uzbekis tan G reat B ritain Nicaragua G uinea Y emen G reenland Panama G uinea‐Bissau Hungary P araguay Kenya Iceland 

P eru Lesotho Ireland S t. K itts and Nevis L iberia Italy 

S t. L ucia L ibya Is rael 

S t. Vincent and the G renadines Madagas car Hercegovinia 

S uriname Malawi Latvia T rinidad and T obago Mali L iechtens tein 

Uruguay Mauritania L ithuania Venezuela Mauritius L uxembourg 

Morocco Macedonia Mozambique Malta Namibia Moldova 

Niger Monaco 

Nigeria Montenegro R wanda Netherlands S ão T omé and P ríncipe Norway 

S enegal P olandS eychelles P ortugal

S ierra Leone R omania

B ureau of Near E as tern A ffairs S omalia R us sia

B ureau of A frican A ffairs S outh A frica S an Marino

Bureau of East Asian and P acific A ffairs S udan S cotland

B ureau of S outh and C entral Asian A ffairs S waziland S erbia

B ureau of E uropean and E urasian A ffairs T anzania S lovakia

B ureau of Wes tern Hemis phere A ffairs T ogo S lovenia

T unisia S painUganda S wedenZ ambia S witzerlandZ imbabwe T urkey

UkraineY ugoslavia
- 93 -

Table 2. Proposed Realignment of COCOM and Regional Bureau Geographic AORs

US NOR THC OM US S OUTHC OM US AF R IC OM US C E NTC OM US E UC OM 

B ureau of Wes tern Hemis phere B ureau of Wes tern Hemis phere B ureau of S outh and B ureau of E urpopean B ur

(North Americ a) (S outh Americ a) C entral As ian Affairs and E uraisian Affairs an

United S tates Antigua and Barbuda Algeria A fghanis tan Albania Aus tra

C anada Argentina Angola Bahrain Andorra B rune

Mexico Bahamas, The Benin Bangladesh Armenia B urma

Barbados B otswana B hutan Aus tria C ambBelize Burkina F as o Djibouti Azerbaijan C hina

B olivia B urundi E gypt Belarus C omoB razil C ameroon India Belgium F ijiC ayman Islands C ape Verde Iran B osnia Indone

C hile C entral African R epublic Iraq B ulgaria J apan

C olombia C had Is rael C roatia K iribatC os ta R ica C omoros J ordan C yprus LaosDominica C ongo K azakhs tan C zec R epublic Madag

Dominican R epublic C ôte d'Ivoire K rygyzs tan Denmark Malays

E cuador Democratic R epublic of the C ongo K uwait E s tonia Mars h

E l S alvador Djibouti L ebanon F inland Maurit

G renada E quatorial G uinea Maldives F rance Micron

G uatemala E ritrea Nepal G eorgia MongoG uyana E thiopia Oman G ermany NauruHaiti G abon P akis tan G reece New Z 

Honduras The G ambia Qatar G ibraltar North 

J amaica G hana S audi Arabia G reat B ritain P alau

Nicaragua G uinea S ri L anka G reenland P apua 

Panama G uinea‐Bis sau S udan Hungary P hilipp

P araguay K enya S yria Iceland S amoa

P eru L es otho T ajikis tan Ireland S ingapS t. K itts and Nevis L iberia T urkmenis tan Italy S olom

S t. L ucia L ibya U.A.E . Hercegovinia S outh S t. Vincent and the G renadines Madagascar Uzbekis tan L atvia T hailaS uriname Malawi Y emen L iechtens tein T imor‐

T rinidad and Tobago Mali L ithuania T onga

Uruguay Mauritania L uxembourg T uvaluVenezuela Mauritius Macedonia Vanua

Morocco Malta VietnaMozambique MoldovaNamibia MonacoNiger MontenegroNigeria NetherlandsR wanda NorwayS ão Tomé and P ríncipe P olandS enegal P ortugalS eychelles R omaniaS ierra Leone R us siaS omalia S an Marino

No C hange S outh A frica S cotland

C hange for DOS S udan S erbia

C hange for DOD S waziland S lovakia

C hange for DOS and DOD Tanzania S lovenia

T ogo S painT unisia S wedenUganda S witzerlandZambia T urkeyZ imbabwe Ukraine

Y ugoslavia

B ureau of African Affairs
- 94 -

Appendix B. List of Acronyms 

AOR Area of Responsibility 

COCOM Combatant Command 

DAF Department of the Air Force 

DOD Department of Defense 

DOS Department of State 

JIACG Joint Interagency Coordination Group 

NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement 

NSPD National Security Policy Directive 

NSS National Security Strategy 

OCR&S Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization 

PNSR Project on National Security Reform 

POLMIL Bureau of Political-Military Affairs 

UAE United Arab Emirates 

US United States 

USA United States Army 

USAF United States Air Force 

USAFRICOM United States Africa Command 

USCENTCOM United States Central Command 

USEUCOM United States European Command 

USN United States Navy 

USNORTHCOM United States Northern Command 

USPACOM United States Pacific Command 

USSOUTHCOM United States Southern Command 
- 95 -

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Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Beyond Goldwater-Nichols: US Government 

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Dale, Catherine, Nina Serafino, and Pat Towell. “Organizing the US Government for National 

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Oakley, Robert B. and Michael Casey, Jr. “The Country Team, Restructuring America’s First 

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Georgetown University, Washington, DC, February 12, 2008, available at 

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Schake, Kore and Bruce Berkowitz. “National Security: A Better Approach,” available at 

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US Department of Defense. “Area of Focus - US Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM),” US 

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- 98 -

College Happenings 

Distance Learning Center Dedicated to Jeremiah Denton 

JFSC dedicated the Jeremiah A. Denton, Jr. Distance Learning Center Wednesday, 13 August. 

Denton was a Naval Aviator during the Vietnam War. Shot down July 18th, 1965, he was held as 

a POW for the next seven and a half years. On May 2nd, 1966, he was forced to take part in a 

taped interview. During the interview Denton blinked his eyes in Morse code to spell out the 

word “T-O-RT-U-R-E" to communicate that his captors were torturing him and his fellow 

POWs. He was also questioned about his support for the U.S. war in Vietnam, to which he 

replied: "I don't know what is happening now in Vietnam, because the only news sources I have 

are Vietnamese. But whatever the position of my government is, I believe in it, I support it, and 

I will support it as long as I live." Released from captivity in 1973, he became the Commandant 

of the (then) Armed Forces Staff College the following year. RADM Denton is also a retired 

United States Senator from the State of Alabama. RADM Denton spoke about the JFSC motto 

“That All May Labor As One”. Recalling his years of captivity, he said all the POWs had to 

work as one in order to survive. He thanked the Staff College by saying he would remember this 

day for eternity. 

JFSC Welcomes New Commandant 

Brigadier General Katherine “Kate” Kasun, USAR, became the 28th Commandant of the Joint 

Forces Staff College on Monday, September 15th. The President of the National Defense 

University, Marine LtGen Frances Wilson, officiated at the assumption of command ceremony. 

BG Kasun thanked LtGen Wilson “for selecting me to this incredible position. I am very excited 

to be here.” BG Kasun told the audience “This opportunity will allow me to apply my 

interagency experience and expand the positive connections between governmental agencies and 

other organizations with JFSC. Most of the linkages are already in place but I want to increase 

the bandwith and frequency of our coordination and interaction with agencies with a special 

focus on our international partners. JFSC has an outstanding reputation worldwide. I just 

returned from CAPSTONE and met many senior leaders in Australia, Malaysia, Nepal and 

Thailand...several of whom are graduates of either JFSC or NDU. I was so proud! As JFSC’s 

chief advocate, I plan to continue this great collaboration.” BG Kasun graduated from Western 

Carolina University, in Cullowhee, NC, in 1979 with a BS in Criminal Justice and Law 

Enforcement. Prior to becoming the JFSC Commandant, BG Kasun was the Deputy 

Commanding General, US Army Intelligence Security Command (INSCOM), Fort Belvoir, VA. 

JFSC Alumni and Ambassador to Djibouti visits JFSC 

Stuart Symington, U.S. Ambassador to Djibouti and JCWS Alumni, recently visited JFSC. 

Ambassador Symington began the day by addressing the first interagency conference of the 

Maritime Civil Affairs Group. He then spoke to JCWS, JAWS, and AJPME students. Symington 

called on students to act jointly across agency and service lines and in concert with the private 

sector and other nations. All of you are "ambassadors for America and for our nation's 

principles," he told them. Walking among the students, shaking hands and thanking them for 

their service, the Ambassador cautioned “there is no exit strategy from the globe. Without the 
- 99 -

help of partners and allies around the world we cannot succeed in ensuring our own safety. With 

such help -- and a lot of continuing U.S. effort -- we will not fail.” In September, Ambassador 

Symington will take up his new post as U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda. He was the State 

Department Chair here at JFSC in 2005-2006. 

JCWS Class 08-04 Graduation 

The Joint and Combined Warfighting School (JCWS) Class 08-04 graduated 29 August. It was 

the 112th Phase II class to graduate since adoption of the phased JPME model. Major General 

David Edgington, USAF, JFCOM Chief of Staff, was the graduation speaker. Significantly, 

JCWS Class 08-04 had the largest international fellow population of all of the classes since 

JCWS became a Phase II institution in 1990. Class 08-04 had 28 international fellows 

representing 20 nations from around the globe. They, and their fellow 222 American officers, are 

the 199th class that can trace their origins back to Class 1 which graduated in 1947. 
- 100 -

The Joint and Combined Warfighting School Crest

The Mermaid holds multiple symbolic references to the Joint and Combined Warfighting School. 

The mermaid symbolizes eloquence in speech, applicable to the graduates of the school, but in more 

familiar terms, the Mermaid signifies the school’s strong bond and heartfelt association with Norfolk, 

Virginia. 

The Mermaid is colored purple to represent the combination of all colors of the Military Forces of the 

United States. Green for the Army, Navy Blue for the Navy, Ultra-Marine Blue for the Air Force and 

Cardinal and Gold for the Marine Corps. 

The Torch she carries symbolizes liberty, truth and intelligence, the keystones of genuine Education. 

Her flowing hair, the hallmark of the Mermaid’s vanity, reflects the Service colors of the Joint and 

Combined military services that attend the school. 

Her scales represent the armor protection provided by the synergistic combination of the joint forces 

working together. 

The shaft of the Spear she brandishes represents the supreme force of National Power. The mantle 

that connects the shaft to the four tines represents the inter-agency coordination that bolsters the 

strength of those four tines. Each of the tines represents the four Branches of the Military Arm of 

national Power. 

 
 

 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this journal are those of the authors and do not represent 

the views of the Joint Forces Staff College, National Defense University or the Department of 

Defense.