The essence of Chinese strategy consists of waging complex wars that exploit opponents’ expectations of warfare. The operational design creates preventative and causative effects that blend confrontation with cooperation, imposing dilemmas on opponents. Such asymmetric effects win wars via information that changes opponents’ behavior.
We are well into complex, hybrid, grey zone warfare that dynamically blends confrontation with competition. Victory in the form of relative advantages tends to be temporary, requiring a systematic yet supple all-domains all-effects approach. We have to be able to produce all of types of effects and in superior combinations to compete against other relatively-great powers.
We must also seek solutions that limit the effects of disinformation. This effort starts with leaders recognizing and publishing Russian exploits as they are discovered. Overt exposure of Russian methodology goes a long way in limiting the effectiveness of false narratives. Investigations should identify who is targeted in hacks, why they were chosen as targets, what information has been stolen, and the extent of related penetration.
The question of what and whom to trust applies to all situations because uncertainty is pervasive. In the information environment (IE), the overriding context of trust is that it’s contested. Actors fight for the kind of information and people they need to compete and prevail. Four types of competition become apparent when we consider four contested purposes of strategic and anticipatory analysis:
As a follow on to The US National Security Strategy Needs Combined Effects, this paper recommends combined-effects thinking applied to the US National Defense Strategy (NDS) as well. The reason for considering combined effects in the US National Security Strategy (NSS) is to enable consideration of more ends, ways and means than the default method of separately constructed effects.
The Trump administration’s apparently contradictory actions this week toward Iran are not contradictory if we look at cooperation and confrontation as a strategy of combined effects. That is, we need to consider the full range of effects created by our activities, not just those bought or wrought by a simplistic “on-off” switch of cooperation or confrontation. So what’s happening?
In response to chronic shortcomings, the President, Congress, and senior leaders of our intelligence agencies and service components demand original, prescient and accurate analyses. This is not the first time leaders have sounded an alarm.
Since 9/11 intelligence analysis and its shortcomings have been widely discussed. Military Services increased the amount of training in critical thinking and structured analytic techniques. The Army and Air Force created Advanced Analysis courses and OUSD(I) created the Information Environment Advanced Analysis course. All of this is good for moving toward the goal of improving the skill sets and capabilities of military intelligence analysts. But, more fundamental to an increase in courses and techniques, what is required to achieve a breakthrough in advanced analysis is a new or renewed mindset and an environment created to execute advanced analysis.
Information-Related Capabilities abound in doctrine-approved professional communities of practice. Unfortunately, doctrine always lags reality. Especially reality that takes the form of a proactive competitor. We tend to label such intellectually self-imposed surprises as black swans.
We tend to mirror image our competitors by using clock-world analogies that apply less and less to today’s cloud-world. Especially in the information environment, where the clock-like physical determinism critiqued by Karl Popper is notso relevant.
How should the US compete under the restraint of using armed force as a last resort against Iran, an authoritarian pseudo-democratic theocracy that routinely wages complex warfare in ways the US eschews? This Paper answers the question from a perspective of complex competition and complex warfare (see Paper #1), but restrained by a widely accepted definition of armed conflict: states using armed forces against one other; or states and non-states using violence against one another.
The Iranian regime’s shoot-down of an unmanned, non-stealth, hyper-expensive US reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace today was a highly anticipate-able event. One of the challenges we have in trying to think and act strategically is that we regard ourselves as either at peace or at war. Legal authorities and bureaucratic permissions reflect this perception. The reality is that we live in a competitive world of combined effects that blends these two ideal types. Authoritarian states tend to confront and cooperate at the same time. There is no on-off switch of peace or war, or use of force as a last […]
The first plenary of the US National Defense University’s Asia Policy Assembly today noted the tendency of US grand strategy to react to threats. We can’t seem to mobilize sufficient political will until after big shocks. Reacting too late or with a short-sighted view (even if long-term) is particularly dangerous given the accelerating pace and broadening space of our strategic environment. Complex threats abound. Plenary discussants pointed out US vulnerabilities such as extended supply chains and undefended intellectual property. They called for policy makers to support market innovations, diplomatic adroitness, investments in education and defense-related technologies and competencies. Recognizing the […]
Previous notes introduced the idea of combined effects strategy for complex competition and warfare. Let’s consider this type of competition and warfare as sophisticated forms of conflict. Combined effects arise from four distinctions, degrees to which an actor decides to: (1) cooperate or confront(2) prevent or cause behavior(3) influence will or capability(4) do the above psychologically or physically OK, but how are combined effects better than singular effects? In other words, what can these distinctions or choices enable combined effects to do that simpler approaches to conflict cannot? In answering this question about complex competition and warfare, let’s take cooperation […]
Winning is not a static end-state. It’s a continuous process of gaining and maintaining advantage through combinations of effects. The competition to produce superior effects involves relationships that are both cooperative and confrontational. Applying such a “coop-frontation” lens to Russia, North Korea, China and Iran enables reveals strategies that seek to persuade, compel, induce, deter, defend, and coerce. In authoritarian states, confrontation tends to not be a last resort, but rather an integral part of cooperation. We can understand this aspect of complex warfare and complex competition in terms of different types of effects. In planning to win with superior […]
While teaching proactive sense-making in the information environment, I developed previous work on complex warfare to apply combined-effects analysis in regions beyond my comfort zone of East Asia. Russia is a critical and interesting case — a declining nuclear power using bold strategy to regain a perceived loss of prestige. It may come as a shock to some that superior political-economic systems do not automatically produce better security strategies. Perhaps all political systems self-regard themselves as superior anyway, depending on who gets to control that narrative.
Pyongyang’s firing off of two more short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan, and the seizure of the Wise Honest vessel, beg the following question. How do North Korean and US strategies compete against one another?
Strategic leaders blend theoretical and applied thinking to realize goals. Competitive strategy is a creative process, one that rearranges ways and means to achieve desired ends. Superior strategy combines interactive effects. The National Security Strategy of 2017 (NSS) calls for such innovation. This Paper proposes a combined effects approach to complex competition and warfare. I begin constructively by interpreting the NSS primarily as a competitive security strategy rather than a political posture.
Too easy? It’s too easy to get distracted from thinking about how to lead the development of strategy, so let’s focus on two fundamentals of strategy. First, two definitional assumptions about strategy and leadership: (1) strategy is a process that links ends, ways and means at multiple levels of activity; (2) leadership is getting others to do what they otherwise would not do.
Winning complex competition and warfare requires both theoretical and applied thinking. Thinking critically about assumptions, logic and evidence helps frame and anticipate threats to security. Particularly for adaptive threats that target vulnerabilities of thought such as entrenched assumptions, flawed cause-and-effect logic, and “not in my lane” job execution.