Western military campaigning frameworks can successfully co-exist with political agendas so long as we are flexible and responsive in adapting to the fluid nature of political warfare.

Western military campaigning frameworks: Are they sufficient for contemporary political warfare?

In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, Western militaries have demonstrated strengths and exposed vulnerabilities that allowed numerous state and non-state actors to sidestep their conventional power. The 1990s saw a range of peacekeeping and peace enforcement operations. Then, the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 opened a two-decade chapter of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. During this time, al-Qaeda would ebb, but not disappear, and give way to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. These endeavours, in particular the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, showed the west’s adversaries how to fight.^[1] State actors including Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran have all exploited the strategic space while the west has focused elsewhere or struggled to recognise and respond to these adversaries’ various actions. Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and China’s military and economic expansion enabling coercive activities in the South China Sea and elsewhere, are notable. These actors’ common thread is that they have all adapted by avoiding the west’s strength and exploiting its weakness. None of this is new, as Sun Tzu from antiquity wrote of avoiding strength, observing vulnerability, and exploiting weakness.^[2]

Meanwhile, Western military doctrine and operational art has transitioned through concepts of 1980s Air-Land Battle against the former Soviet Union, through the 1991 Gulf War and Kosovo with effects-based operations, into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with network-centric warfare, and more recently multi-domain operations. Western militaries have sought to adapt doctrine to enable them to meet the strategic objectives set by their political leadership. Undoubtedly, so too have the west’s adversaries. General James Mattis wrote that ‘doctrine is the last refuge of the unimaginative’, but also that it has a valuable place when surprise strikes.^[3] Mattis’ purposeful statement challenges military professionals to recognise that there is a valuable place for doctrine, but it should be a handrail, not for blind adherence. It is worth considering whether the west has been too ignorant of history and naïve about their adversaries’ recent relative success in political warfare.^[4]

This essay will argue the Western theoretical and procedural frameworks for planning and conducting military campaigns are sufficient if they are applied with flexibility and fungibility to the continually evolving character of political warfare. But the issue of effective application is contingent on military leaders’ education and the civil-military nexus at the strategic level. First, the concepts of doctrine and operational art will be explored to reveal their importance in providing a methodical and repeatable framework. Second, education of military history will demonstrate the potential to enhance operational art by recognising continuities and changes in war’s nature and character. Finally, political warfare is analysed to demonstrate where education and the civil-military coordination of national power represent the enablers from which frameworks can be effective handrails to political warfare adaptation.

Operational Art and Doctrine

Operational art is a foundational element of the Western military framework. Operational art is a ‘cognitive approach … to develop strategies, campaigns, and operations to organise and employ military forces’ that relies upon ‘skill, knowledge, creativity, and judgement’.^[5] Operational art’s purpose seeks to translate strategy into tactical action through means of operational design, which provides the analytical framework for planning.^[6] These concepts form part of the handrail for military leaders to apply sound cognition to political leadership’s applicable strategic objectives and convert them into the ways and means that can achieve those strategic ends. The military leader’s imagination represents the factor that stands to make these elements greater than its parts. But imagination is not born without inspiration, and so the knowledge through education, skill and judgement of military leaders gained through their careers makes such inspiration possible. Imaginative and creative military leaders are not the default condition for any military, the western kind being no different. Beyond the immediate campaign or operation, such imagination is necessary for doctrine to come into being. ‘Doctrine seeks general principles and engages with strategic theory to find continuities’ that build a further handrail.^[7] From Mao’s revolutionary war principles to the US Army’s Air-Land Battle formed in the 1970s-80s, there are endless examples of military minds the world over that have recognised profound ideas about war and sought to adapt.

Operational art has broadly been accepted by Western militaries as part of their doctrine. But according to Kelly and Brennan, it is quite possible that operational art has generally come to hinder the conduct of war by sidelining strategic leadership. They offer that the originating Soviet invention of operational art was nested within the context of campaigns that were arrived at by strategy. However, in the Western context it encompasses the ‘design, planning, and conduct of campaigns’ and operations.^[8] But the examples in the introduction suggest the answer is not so clear. Martin van Creveld contends that Western military operational art is at a critical point following a strategic bewilderment after the end of the Cold War, 9/11, and the Iraq and Afghanistan journeys. The expertise to match strategy with tactics is founded in education along with the skills and experience discussed earlier.^[9] It may be that the imagination and creativity discussed earlier is owed to education that enhances the skills and experience of a military professional’s career.

Education of military history offers to enhance military leaders’ professional excellence, cognition for operational art, and contribution to strategy with the political leadership. The purposeful use of history is to enlighten with wisdom from which creativity and imagination can be harnessed. Michael Howard proposed the idea that width, depth, and context are important to the military professional. Width requires appreciation of warfare over a long period to see what does not change through recognising what does change. Depth requires thorough education of past histories and campaigns to yield insight to where skill, planning, and chance played a role. Finally, context of events and campaigns in terms of the societies engaged in conflict reveals the ‘roots of victory and defeat’.^[10] Howard wrote of these ideas forty years ago when military history education faced topical questions in Western military academies and institutions. Some of these questions focused on primacy of science over art and the suitable place of each within Western military institutions. Contemporary reflections on Western military education offer similar warning signs. According to Murray and Sinnreich, the search for certainty and unambiguous conclusions about history to be applied to the future can tend to creep into professional military education. The balance of science ahead of art can ‘predispose military professionals toward simplicity and precision in learning’.^[11] Michael Evans suggests a danger if thinking about ‘technology, rather than the anatomy of war’.^[12] Personal experience of two decades military service biases the author to conclude much truth in this assertion. Previous moments in history suggest that military leaders can be seduced by the panacea of certain technologies, which has played into past doctrine. General James Mattis has written of the fatality of doctrine such as effects-based operations, in which he concluded that its efforts to provide ‘mechanistic certainty’ is at odds with reality, bound to lead to paralysis, and see the adversary adapt first.^[13] The irony for military leaders is that, as they progress in seniority and gain more thirst for education and enlightenment, their available time is less. Western militaries have invested significant time in education, but arguably the responsibility rests equally with the individual military leader to harness that education and their own pursuit of professional excellence. Education represents the catalyst for imaginative strategy, operational art, and the continuous development of doctrine to meet adaptive demands. Education that balances art with science is an enduring challenge for Western militaries that spans whole careers.

Pursuing military history education must be done in a cautious manner to avoid misuse through insufficient knowledge or ignorance of theory and military history. Howard’s paper cautioned the danger of anachronistic conclusions. In Western militaries the works of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu are oft cited with varying context of military and general history.^[14] Mindful and cautious with such knowledge enables military leaders the chance of inspired operational art and the fungible application of power. David Baldwin recognised that there is a ‘distinction between putative and actualised power [of which there is a] frequent failure to convert the former into the latter’. Baldwin’s summation is that fungibility suggests the application of power in one situation can be irrelevant or ineffective in another.^[15] Applying Howard’s width, depth, and context in conjunction with Baldwin’s fungibility can potentially enhance operational art. To do so requires insight to what remains constant or changes in war.

War’s nature and character demonstrate respective continuity and change that must be understood if it is to be effectively exploited. Adversaries will naturally seek comparative advantage with strength being leveraged and applied to perceived weakness. War’s nature is bounded by opponents trying to impose their will on each other by various means available, defined by their own cultural and ethical frameworks.^[16] Colin Gray offers that ‘nothing of fundamental importance is new in modern war …[as] the human, political, and strategic plots remain familiar’.^[17] In this assertion he includes cyber, space, and information. Conversely, Emile Simpson suggests that war’s character continues to be change by the globalised world and information revolution.^[18] War’s character changes by two main categories; ‘firstly, how wars are fought (ways), and, with what wars are fought (means)’.^[19] The value of recognising continuity and change is that the former helps preparation for the unpredictable, while the latter makes estimation possible. Even the various types of warfare, which are obviously changing, demonstrate a temporal continuity. New technologies offer comparative advantage to those that possess it, but it is never permanent as adversaries catch up or find alternatives and asymmetries.^[20] Thus, the changing characteristics of war will dictate the best ways and means. Arguably, Russia exploited this in Crimea through hybrid warfare, while China did so in the South China Sea with grey-zone warfare. Yet the west is not always being sidestepped. US Air-Land Battle doctrine of the 1980s was an effective adaptation coupled with the other elements of US national power against the Soviet Union. So too, the application of the US-led coalition’s overwhelming technological superiority in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. Hence, the nature and its human elements are constant in terms of strategy and calculation. Whereas the character through changes such as technology results in evolution of the ways and means.

From the military campaigning perspective, any framework must be sufficiently flexible and adaptable, or it risks failing the fungibility test. Simpson’s writing on contemporary strategy suggests that ‘war from a military perspective, [when] isolated from social and political context, leads to false conclusions and poor strategy’.^[21] The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is demonstrative of this context with technological changes representing the latest alteration of war’s character. There is an increasing interconnection across the world between economics, security, and societies that makes the modern strategic environment more uncertain.^[22] The exploitation of digital information warfare and cyber warfare are examples of the more recent additions to warfare that must be considered alongside more traditional warfare domains. These changes suggest the nexus for effective Western military campaigning lies at the crossroads of the civil-military relationship and strategy. This is where political warfare is shaped. The problem for Western militaries is that their role is not clearly defined, and success depends on coordination and synergy of military and other elements of national power.^[23]

Political Warfare

Understanding the scope of political warfare provides insight into the complexity and ambiguity that challenges western militaries to effectively campaign. Political warfare suffers from definitional problems that challenge any wide consensus. A modern western perspective can be traced to George Kennan in 1948, who wrote that ‘political warfare is the employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives’.^[24] Several Western academics have suggested refinement of the term ‘political warfare’ is necessary. Frank Hoffman has proposed use of ‘hybrid warfare’, while Paul Smith focuses on ‘psychological warfare’.^[25] Conversely, some Chinese authors have coined the term ‘unrestricted warfare’, while Russian interpretations have offered ‘soft power and new generation warfare’.^[26] All of these are generally attempting to make sense of similar or overlapping warfare concepts. But arguably they are all reinventions due to war’s changing character.

A broad definition of political warfare is necessary to adequately capture its complexity. Robinson et al offer that political warfare can involve overt, covert, or clandestine measures across the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic spectrum (DIME), but outside of traditional war.^[27] While this definition of political warfare described it as up to but not including traditional war, it is fair to argue that political warfare would continue to be part of the grand strategic process during times of war. Either way, the definition places political warfare in the realm of grand strategy and strategic art. Therefore, the military element is only one part and cannot be considered in isolation. Military leaders are challenged to navigate the uncertain boundaries of their responsibilities and the civil-military divide with their political leaders. Responsibilities and civil-military relationships are complicated by western liberal democratic vulnerabilities, including accountabilities to parliaments and legislatures, which can lead to relative self-restraint.^[28] Freedom for Western militaries to effectively operate within their frameworks relies upon trust and willingness of the political leadership, underpinned by sound strategy, as well as synergy of the uncertain boundaries with non-military elements of national power.

Western misconceptions about the spectrum of conflict can lead to wayward strategy and impede operational art. Peace and war are not discretely delineated and political warfare applies across various aspects of the spectrum of competition, contestation, and conflict. Lawrence Freedman has suggested that governments have been prone to ‘disguising [conflict] using euphemisms’ such as operations, campaigns, humanitarian interventions, peacekeeping and so on. Conversely, both governments and the commentariat at times use the term ‘war’ for various other policies and actions.^[29] These conceptions result in a blurring of any commonly understood line between traditional war and other forms of state action. Such thinking has confused Western approaches to war and peace, which manifests in contemporary descriptions including hybrid, grey-zone, and cyber warfare.^[30]  With this in mind, Colin Gray points out that we must clearly ‘recognise the variety of forms that war and warfare can take’ across the spectrum and the political purpose behind it, and be prepared to shift the emphasis when circumstances require.^[31] Such strategic adaptation is made more difficult if the realisation of an adversary’s sidestep is realised late or not at all.

Coercion and deterrence are essential in continuous political warfare. Strategising for decisive victory fails to recognise that the end-state is constantly evolving, the sidestepping of adversaries, and that competition is the norm between states. Confused ideas about war and peace undermine strategy, doctrine, and operational art because they fail to recognise the extent of adversaries exploiting their comparative advantages, and the appropriate levers of national power to coerce or deter. Donald Stoker asserts that this confusion has militarised grand strategy in the west, leading to bad strategy and policy. He cites American approaches in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and China’s militarisation of the South China Sea as examples that are not unique in history.^[32] These examples were coercive strategies below the traditional threshold of war that were reinforced by technological progress and advantage.^[33] For doctrine and operational art to adapt to political warfare, strategy cannot be clouded by confusion in the theoretical understanding of the conflict spectrum. Russia and China have been more willing to take both strategic and operational risks than Western states have in response.^[34] Such circumstances point to the primacy of strategy before operational art as both the problem and solution for Western states. It may be that any focus on Western frameworks is considering the effect, when in fact the cause lies in the realm of grand strategic and strategic art guiding these frameworks.

Both political and military leaders need clarity about the spectrum of conflict to understand context and be adaptable with clear-minded strategy. For operational art and effective campaigning to be possible in political warfare, there must ideally be the cognition at the grand strategic and strategic levels that can combine military and non-military levers of national power. Often, Western frameworks can focus on decisive outcomes, but this misses political warfare’s continuity. Clausewitz asserted that war’s outcome is never final, with the losing side logically prepared to find the right political conditions in future to press their advantage.^[35] Mahnken et al highlight that authoritarian countries like Russia and China see ‘political warfare campaigns as permanent features of their strategic posture’.^[36] Political warfare should thus be treated no differently with Western states seeking to adapt their next steps to the evolving environment and anticipating so far as practical. Military campaigning ideally needs military and non-military elements of national power more fungibly and coherently applied, rather than narrowly militarising grand strategic problems. Hence, Western frameworks are no better or worse for campaigning, and adaptation to political warfare as the answer is more closely associated with the strategic level and synergy in components of national power. From a military campaigning and planning point of view, Trent Scott suggests upwards leadership and management might help. Sound strategic art is a prerequisite to sound operational art, but the latter can iteratively enhance the former.^[37] Indeed, military capabilities offer deterrent and coercive potential, but there are some political warfare problems that require other solutions, or wholistic DIME solutions. Scott’s argument is logical and suggests that the current Western framework is sufficient because existing doctrine, coupled with operational art, and enhanced by mindful education offers the potential for military leaders to find innovative solutions to strategic problems that either address the strategic objective or help political leadership find alternative solutions.

In conclusion, the existing Western frameworks for planning and conducting military campaigns are sufficient to support adaptation to political warfare. Those frameworks provide a guiding handrail so long as their outputs are applied flexibly and fungibly in response to the changing character of war and warfare. Flexible and fungible application relies upon effective education and the civil-military nexus at the strategic level. Education of military leaders in military history offers insight to the width, depth, and context of war that can help imaginative cognition in the process of operational art and evolving doctrine. Such education helps to balance art versus science. But this process must be cautious to avoid anachronistic conclusions and enable that fungible application of operational art. Cautious education into war’s nature and character can reveal those continuities and changes that are profound for political warfare, just as it is for war and warfare writ large.

On political warfare, it is described from many differing perspectives, which highlights the inherent problem for Western militaries due to the unclear boundaries between military and non-military elements of national power. Unclear boundaries are further complicated by western misconceptions about the conflict spectrum that can lead to wayward strategy and impede operational art. This situation is where adversaries become successful in sidestepping western states in political warfare, Russia and China being two modern examples. Hence, Western operational art and campaigning must rely on clear-minded strategy with harmonised cognition between the military and civilian leadership to apply the levers of national power. Campaigning frameworks have all the potential for effective adaptation, but must be released by good strategy. Political warfare will never reach a finality and neither can strategy, regardless of where on the conflict spectrum a Western state perceives itself to be. Military leaders have a responsibility to help their civilian leadership through effective contribution to the civil-military nexus at the strategic level to find imaginative solutions. Ignorance of history and strategic naivety of adversaries is the biggest risk to western frameworks being sufficiently adaptable to modern political warfare.

Bibliography

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Bartholomees Jr, J Boone. "Continuity and Change in War." In Us Army War College Guide to National Security: Theory of Strategy and War, edited by J Boone Bartholomees Jr, 79-90, 2012.
Campbell, Angus. "You May Not Be Interested in War…but War Is Interested in You." ASPI International Conference - ‘War in 2025’, Canberra, Australia, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 13 June 2019.
Echevarria, Antulio II. Operating in the Gray Zone: An Alternative Paradigm for Us Military Strategy. Army War College-Strategic Studies Institute Carlisle United States (2016).
Evans, Michael. "The Closing of the Australian Military Mind: The Adf and Operational Art." Security Challenges 4, no. 2 (2008): 105-31.
Freedman, Lawrence. "Defining War." In The Oxford Handbook of War, edited by Yves Boyer and Julian Lindley-French, 2012.
Goh, Evelyn. "The Asia Pacific's" Age of Uncertainty" Great Power Competition, Globalisation, and the Economic-Security Nexus."  (2020).
Gray, Colin S. The Future of Strategy. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016.
———. "War—Continuity in Change, and Change in Continuity." The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 40, no. 2 (2010): 5.
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Hoffman, Frank. "On Not-So-New Warfare: Political Warfare Vs. Hybrid Threats." (28 July 2014). Accessed 02 Oct 2021. https://warontherocks.com/2014/07/on-not-so-new-warfare-political-warfare-vs-hybrid-threats/.
Howard, Michael. "The Use and Abuse of Military History." The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 11, no. 1 (1981): 16.
Käihkö, Ilmari. "The Evolution of Hybrid War: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession." Parameters 51, no. 3 (2021): 115-27.
Kelly, Justin, and Mike Brennan. Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy. Strategic Studies Institute, 2009.
Kilcullen, David. The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Mahnken, Thomas, Ross Babbage, and Toshi Yoshihara. Countering Comprehensive Coercion. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (Washington DC, United States: 2018).
Mattis, Jim, and Bing West. Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2021.
Murray, Williamson, and Richard Hart Sinnreich. The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Robinson, Linda, Todd C Helmus, Raphael S Cohen, Alireza Nader, Andrew Radin, Madeline Magnuson, and Katya Migacheva. Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses. Rand Corporation (Santa Monica, CA: 2018).
Scott, Trent. The Lost Operational Art: Invigorating Campaigning into the Australian Defence Force. Canberra, Australia: Land Warfare Studies Centre, 2011.
Simpson, Emile. War from the Ground Up : Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics. Oxford, United States: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2012. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=4704139.
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Stoker, Donald, and Craig Whiteside. "Blurred Lines: Gray Zone Conflict and Hybrid Warfare - Two Failures in American Strategic Thinking." Naval War College Review 73, no. 1 (2020): 1-37.
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Van Creveld, Martin, and John Andreas Olsen. "The Evolution of Operational Art: From Napoleon to the Present." New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
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Footnotes

^[1] David Kilcullen, The Dragons and the Snakes: How the Rest Learned to Fight the West (Oxford University Press, 2020), 8.

^[2] Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 5, 23.

^[3] Jim Mattis and Bing West, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2021), 85, 99.

^[4] Angus Campbell, 'You may not be interested in war … but war is interested in you', (ASPI International Conference - ‘War in 2025’, Canberra, Australia, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 13 June 2019).

^[5] Joint Staff Headquarters, Joint Publication 5-0, Joint Operation Planning, 3-4, IV-1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2011).

^[6] Michael Evans, 'The Closing of the Australian Military Mind: The ADF and Operational Art,' Security Challenges 4, no. 2 (2008): 108.

^[7] Hew Strachan, The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 221-2.

^[8] Justin Kelly and Mike Brennan, Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy (Strategic Studies Institute, 2009), 2-3.

^[9] Martin Van Creveld and John Andreas Olsen, 'The Evolution of Operational Art: From Napoleon to the Present,' (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 224.

^[10] Michael Howard, "The Use and Abuse of Military History," The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 11, no. 1 (1981): 14.

^[11] Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich, The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

^[12] Evans, 'The Closing of the Australian Military Mind: The ADF and Operational Art," 120-1.

^[13] Mattis and West, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, 216.

^[14] Donald Stoker and Craig Whiteside, 'Blurred Lines: Gray Zone Conflict and Hybrid Warfare - Two failures in American Strategic Thinking,' Naval War College Review 73, no. 1 (2020): 38.

^[15] David A Baldwin, 'Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies,' World Politics: A Quarterly Journal of International Relations  (1979): 165, 70.

^[16] J Boone Bartholomees Jr, 'Continuity and Change in War,' in US Army War College Guide to National Security: Theory of Strategy and War, ed. J Boone Bartholomees Jr (2012), 79.

^[17] Colin S Gray, 'War—Continuity in Change, and Change in Continuity,' The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters 40, no. 2 (2010): 11-12.

^[18] Emile Simpson, War from the Ground Up : Twenty-First Century Combat As Politics (Oxford, United States: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2012), 228. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/anu/detail.action?docID=4704139.

^[19] Bartholomees Jr, 'Continuity and Change in War,' 83.

^[20] Bartholomees Jr, 'Continuity and Change in War,' 83, 87.

^[21] Simpson, War from the Ground Up: Twenty-First Century Combat As Politics, 228.

^[22] Evelyn Goh, 'The Asia Pacific's "Age of Uncertainty": Great Power Competition, Globalisation, and the Economic-Security Nexus,'  (2020): 1.

^[23] Ilmari Käihkö, 'The Evolution of Hybrid War: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession,' Parameters 51, no. 3 (2021): 119-25.

^[24] Linda Robinson et al., Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses, Rand Corporation (Santa Monica, CA, 2018), 1.

^[25] Frank Hoffman, 'On Not-So-New Warfare: Political Warfare vs. Hybrid Threats,' (28 July 2014). https://warontherocks.com/2014/07/on-not-so-new-warfare-political-warfare-vs-hybrid-threats/; Paul A Smith Jr, On political war, National Defense University (Washington DC, United States, 1989), 3.

^[26] Robinson et al., Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses, xiv.

^[27] Robinson et al., Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses, 7.

^[28] Thomas Mahnken, Ross Babbage, and Toshi Yoshihara, Countering Comprehensive Coercion, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (Washington DC, United States, 2018), 5-8.

^[29] Lawrence Freedman, 'Defining war,' in The Oxford Handbook of War, ed. Yves Boyer and Julian Lindley-French (2012), 19-20.

^[30] Stoker and Whiteside, 'Blurred Lines: Gray Zone Conflict and Hybrid Warfare - Two failures in American Strategic Thinking,' 17.

^[31] Colin S Gray, The Future of Strategy (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016), 66.

^[32] Stoker and Whiteside, 'Blurred Lines: Gray Zone Conflict and Hybrid Warfare - Two failures in American Strategic Thinking,' 31-6.

^[33] Antulio II Echevarria, Operating in the Gray Zone: An Alternative Paradigm for US Military Strategy, Army War College-Strategic Studies Institute Carlisle United States (2016), xi.

^[34] Mahnken, Babbage, and Yoshihara, Countering Comprehensive Coercion, 97.

^[35] Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 80.

^[36] Mahnken, Babbage, and Yoshihara, Countering Comprehensive Coercion, 58.

^[37] Trent Scott, The Lost Operational Art: Invigorating Campaigning into the Australian Defence Force (Canberra, Australia: Land Warfare Studies Centre, 2011), 77.