Operational art works as an adaptive framework only for those who see the environment for what it is, rather than what they want it to be.

Introduction

In 2016, General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, decried the West’s inability to follow Russian, Chinese and Iranian examples. He observed how they could ‘integrate the full range of capabilities their states possess to advance their interests’ with far greater purpose than the Western example.^[1] Dunford succinctly described a practice often labelled ‘political warfare’, an advanced state of competition between strategic actors. Political warfare achieves strategic objectives, but wavers unnervingly close to Western conceptions of war and challenges the traditional models for applying military force. However, contemporary Western applications of military force, emphasising conventional tools and models, have frequently failed to deliver lasting political objectives. This suggests a shortfall exists in the use of armed force, requiring adaptation. Some argue that existing military procedures are ill-suited for political warfare, too disconnected from strategy, and that new frameworks are required.^[2] What is actually required are military practitioners capable of both critical and creative thought about the utility of force. Such practitioners are well-served by existing tools. This paper contends that Western military planning and campaign frameworks are inherently adaptable, but limited by how their practitioners think about military action. This is because Western military tradition has focused upon the use of force artificially separated from politics, rather than as an instrument of national power.

This essay is in four parts. The first part establishes how ‘political warfare’ is effectively a practice of grand strategy and is far from novel. It argues that Western militaries have failed to retain a clear-sighted understanding of the utility of force in conjunction with other tools of statecraft. Part two examines how Western military practices of operational art and design are inherently adaptable but require practitioners to conceive of the broader uses of military force. The third part conducts a brief historical survey of Western military practices throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It argues that a fixation with battle and the cognitive separation of military practices from political practices challenges the readiness of Western militaries to contribute to political warfare. The final section offers recommendations to support adaptation, requiring military practitioners to learn meaningful options outside of battle within a whole-of-government conceptual framework.

Part 1: Political Warfare and the Adaptation Problem

The concept of ‘political’ warfare is a controversial subject, debated among Western military and academic circles. The term was popularised in Western strategic thinking by American diplomat George Kennan at the beginning of the Cold War. ‘Political warfare’ was ascribed to the ‘employment of all the means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives’.^[3] However, using predominantly non-violent means to achieve political objectives more accurately describes the competitive statecraft employed extensively throughout human history. For example, the writings of Sun Tzu—overcoming the enemy without fighting—and Thucydides’ account of Athenian diplomatic and military balancing, espouse the virtues of combining military force with other tools.^[4] Political warfare is, therefore, remarkably similar to an expression of ‘grand’ strategy: the coordination of all national resources in pursuit of political objectives, and a framework for foreign policy.^[5] However, labelling the practices of statecraft as ‘warfare’ challenges typical Western conceptions of war and the military’s role.

Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz taught that war is ‘a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means’.^[6] Within this framework, violent means are the primary form of achieving political objectives.^[7] This is a clear domain for military power. However, even in war the use of force occurs in concert with other tools of national power. By occurring ‘short’ of war, political warfare emphasises the employment of diplomatic, informational and economic power above military instruments. Accordingly, political warfare is a predominantly non-military challenge, led through a whole-of-government framework.^[8] However, this change in emphasis does not remove the obligation for military integration with all tools of power, while maintaining care to avoid politicising the military. Nor does it exclude the use of military force in a coercive or threatening manner. Adapting to the practices of political warfare demands a broader understanding of the integration between the tools of power and finding new ways to retain the utility of military force outside of ‘traditional’ war.

The failure to appreciate that war and political warfare are distinct, but complimentary, manifestations of grand strategy is highlighted in Western thinking by attempts to fuse military and non-military dimensions in new, but unnecessary concepts. Various theoretical models such as ‘subversive warfare’ and ‘revolutionary war’, espoused by French theorists Roger Trinquier and Charles Lacheroy respectively, describe the phenomenon of employing military force in concert with other tools.^[9] Frank Hoffman’s ‘hybrid war’ is a similar exposé.^[10] The contemporary notion of a ‘grey zone’ is the latest attempt to illustrate to both political and security communities that statecraft requires unity of effort across all tools of power.^[11] The continued endeavour to label the time-honoured practices of grand strategy, however, suggests that Western military—and political—thinking about integration is inadequate. What is missing is the recognition that both war and peace are a clash of wills. The difference between these states is that within peacetime—the domain of political warfare—the military plays a contingent role more frequently than a determinant role.^[12] The difficulty of recognising this dynamic has hampered Western responses when political warfare activities are confronted by modern practitioners across whole-of-nation representation.

In contrast to Western conceptual difficulties, major Western competitors and adversaries have not lost their understanding of grand strategy, becoming well-practised at it. Russia and China are often held as standout examples of political warfare practitioners in the contemporary world. Both nations have pursued their political objectives with the extensive employment of non-military tools, effectively ‘weaponising’ usually non-threatening activities in pursuit of clear and deeply-held political objectives.^[13] Typical examples include Russia’s engagement in Ukraine employing powerful narratives, cyber-enabled interference and extensive combined arms. China has employed economic power coercively alongside state-controlled fishing ‘militias’ and conventional military force within the South China Sea.^[14] Each example demonstrates the combination of non-military and military methods. These examples highlight that each actor has adapted traditional frameworks to employ new means and technologies, particularly those enabled by the ‘digital revolution’.^[15] More significantly, they reinforce that their militaries have adapted to perform supporting roles in broader statecraft. As a measure of success, Russia and China have integrated their militaries into their practices of political warfare so well that they resemble well-sequenced and comprehensive ‘military’ campaigns.^[16]

Western militaries possess the tools to contribute to political warfare but tend to lack the mental models necessary to adapt widely or question their core assumptions about warfare.^[17] Assumptions emphasising theoretical barriers to the use of force or the character of contemporary warfare hamper adaptation against adversaries who do not share the same limitations. In some specific cases, Western militaries are well-prepared to support political warfare campaigns, particularly within Special Forces and intelligence communities.^[18] Furthermore, conventional military forces underwrite the other tools, as the Russian and Chinese examples demonstrate. Conventional deterrence, escalation dominance and limited decisive action all feature in the political warfare toolkit.^[19] This suggests that the adaptation problem for Western militaries is a cognitive one—thinking about how to employ force—rather than technical or structural. While there are also political challenges, particularly in maintaining an appropriate distance between Western militaries and the practice of politics, democratic government can employ military instruments with careful management. The West has a storied past of practising political warfare techniques, notably through the Cold War, including finding utility for military forces.^[20] Fortunately, Western militaries possess inherently adaptable theoretical and procedural frameworks to integrate into a larger view of warfare. The challenge is using them appropriately.

Part 2: Operational Art Enables Adaptability

Western military concepts of military plans and campaigns emphasise pursuing political goals through clear and logical sequencing. Colin S. Gray wrote of this ‘enduring logic’ as the coherent linking of political ends with appropriate strategic ways and means, now well-ensconced in Western military education and thinking.^[21] For Western military practitioners, the connective tissue between strategy and tactics lies in the process of operational art. Considered the ‘skilful employment of military forces to attain strategic goals through the design, organisation, sequencing and direction of campaigns and major operations’, operational art requires creative inputs rather than a mechanistic arrangement of forces and actions.^[22] It is operational art that provides the overarching framework for planning and employing military power. Good operational art provides coherency to the military force, considering achievable steps to meet political objectives.^[23] However, the effectiveness of operational art depends upon developing a clear understanding of the nature of the military and non-military aspects of a problem, achieved through effective operational design.

Operational design aids in defining the utility of military force in complex problems, making it essential for identifying where a military solution may or may not exist. The fundamentals of operational design emphasise critical thinking, understanding the broad operational environment and a continuous process of framing and re-framing problems—also known as design thinking.^[24] Effective operational design in a military context, therefore, ensures the application of military tools to solving the ‘right’ problem. Furthermore, by emphasising a detailed and complex understanding of the operational environment, design thinking encourages as complete an understanding as possible of oneself and one’s opponent within their current context. Such a foundation enables a deep understanding of competitive wills, both in peace and war.^[25] By understanding an adversary’s will in peace, it is possible to design more appropriate counter-strategies that account for both peacetime and war. Design thinking has expanded within the planning frameworks of Western militaries since the late 2000s, indicating a pursuit of a culture of adaptation for complexity.^[26] However, despite possessing the frameworks for adaptation, Western militaries are inherently limited by the capacity of their people to consider different perspectives. An inability to think broadly inhibits both operational art and design, potentially leading to inappropriate applications of military force.

Criticisms of operational art tend to identify its propensity to become synonymous with the operational level of war, artificially disconnected from strategic concerns.^[27] This would suggest that operational art runs counter to the requirements of political warfare as a practice of grand strategy. Drawing upon Soviet theorists Aleksandr Svechin and Mikhail Tukachevsky, operational art originated with attrition and the notion of ‘deep battle’, combined-arms operations in sufficient depth to disrupt adversary reserves and support functions.^[28] It is, therefore, easy to confuse the process of operational art solely with fighting. Modern Western military interventions that emphasised the heavy use of conventional military force increase the confusion.^[29] However, the true intention of operational art is to link tactical actions with strategic objectives. The Soviet General Staff Academy recognised this, extending its curriculum on operational art to understand ‘politico-strategic’ situations as well as fighting.^[30] Consequently, the framework has a longstanding tradition of considering the military’s role as an instrument of grand strategy and hence, is adaptable to political warfare. Ignoring this, as Richard Dickson argues in his study of operational art, is indicative of insufficient consideration and debate of operational art within Western military thought.^[31]

In practice, operational art can and should account for the employment of military tools in a framework of political warfare. Waging political warfare—and harnessing grand strategy—both require clearly defined political objectives connected with the resources necessary to meet this end state.^[32] That the same logic applies to military strategy indicates operational art is inherently compatible with the tools of political warfare. Furthermore, as a long-term undertaking, political warfare is more closely aligned with campaigning than short, decisive action.^[33] The shortcoming is partially a ‘peacetime’ problem, where military planning can become disconnected from the dynamic aspects of political planning more visible during war. However, operational art’s focus upon establishing logical lines of operation sequenced into campaigns remains of inherent utility. This should imply that adaptation is a natural process for militaries employing operational art. However, while the framework provided by operational art is inherently adaptable, maximising its utility requires practitioners capable of thinking both critically and creatively about military force. Doing so encourages developing different potential ways and means of achieving political objectives. However, operational art works as an adaptive framework only for those who see the environment for what it is, rather than what they want it to be.^[34] Unfortunately, Western military tradition is chequered in its realisation of this fundamental requirement.

Part 3: Why Western Militaries Struggle to Adapt to Political Warfare

The Western military tendency to pursue decisive military results, rather than integration with other tools of statecraft, is observable in key conflicts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Despite enthusiasm for Clausewitz’s maxim of war as the continuation of politics, Western militaries have fostered an artificial segregation of their actions from political impetuses, eschewing drawn-out campaigns where possible.^[35] Such thinking has deep roots in Prussian strategic culture, characterised by Field Marshall Constantin von Lossau’s writings that once politics ‘ceases to have its effects, war starts’.^[36] Artificial separation continued in German military attitudes through to its disastrous application in the First World War. General Erich von Falkenhayn’s uncharacteristic insight that the military could create favourable, but not final conditions for a diplomatic solution was quickly swept aside by Prussian military traditions.^[37] While the German practice pre-dates the concept of operational art, it warned of the dangers of pursuing military action without regard for whole-of-nation circumstances that Germany would repeat in the Second World War.^[38]

Far from being constrained to the German experience, major Western military actions have demonstrated the tendency to focus on military operations at the expense of political integration. By thinking only about the application of violence and decisive action, Western military thinking is constrained, as Cathal Nolan argues, by the ‘allure of battle’.^[39] French interventions post-Second World War in Indochina and Algeria focused, unsuccessfully, on military solutions to political disputes.^[40] Notably in Algeria, the French military moved away from the civil-military teachings of the ‘Gallieni-Lyautey’ method of pacification, increasingly viewing the political warfare methodology of ‘negotiation, moderation and accommodation’ as guarantors of French defeat.^[41] The United States-led war in Vietnam is perhaps the archetype of a war fought with insufficient reference to its political characteristics, producing an acrimonious divide between soldiers and politicians.^[42] Writing in 1979, Sir Michael Howard highlighted the continual fault line in Western military thinking—the ideas of wars ‘won militarily but lost politically’, ignoring the interdependency between these dimensions.^[43] This tendency extends beyond ‘irregular’ wars. For example, confusion over the long-term objectives of the Korean War produced a stalemate and war of attrition, rather than a meaningful political settlement.^[44] By remaining fixed upon battle, Western military thinking fails to account for the broader context of the problem and alternative or complementary solutions, as required by effective operational art and design.

However, it is in the post-Vietnam era that the intellectual schism between Western militaries and political calculations becomes particularly stark. Two significant factors illustrate this. Firstly, the advent of ‘AirLand Battle’ doctrine, focused upon the operational level of war as a solely military domain, effectively revived Prussian thinking: ignoring the interplay between war and politics.^[45] The ‘Powell Doctrine’ extended this further, by emphasising the idea that military intervention would only occur where military action would be decisive.^[46] Such conceptions undermine military preparations for political warfare, with its emphasis upon gradualism and limited military action. Secondly, the military success during the Gulf War, spurred by precision-guided weapons, created a misguided validation of ‘decisive’ Western military practices, including the interpretation of operational art. While the military victory was unquestionably impressive, its ambiguous settlement failed its test of achieving clear political objectives, demonstrated by Saddam Hussein’s equal claim of victory.^[47] The endorsement of the form of operational art practised during the war reinforced the separation of military thinking from political imperatives in Western military planning. Furthermore, the military prowess demonstrated to would-be adversaries that to attempt a similar action against Western nations was ill-advised, prompting extensive re-evaluations.^[48] Contemporary political warfare practices, finding ways and means of avoiding such confrontations, arguably have their roots in this realisation.

The chief concern is that Western military application has become conceptually focused upon using precision weapons to produce quick victories, with insufficient regard for achieving lasting political objectives. Similar shortfalls are evident in Iraq and Afghanistan, and shorter interventions in Libya and Syria, where tactical successes did not translate into strategic outcomes.^[49] Such thinking in isolation is ill-suited to the protracted and gradual techniques of political warfare. More significantly, it reinforces that a preference exists among Western militaries for employing tools such as operational art and design in a limited, military-only fashion. However, it is not entirely the fault of military leaders. Western political appetite for the use of force has changed the exercising of military power to one of ‘risk management’, rather than as part of a suite of tools to win wars.^[50] At present, changing this paradigm would likely require the West to face an existential threat—something both Russia and China avoid deliberately.^[51] Adapting this perspective requires a deeper appreciation of the messy reality that is war, but also its distinction from competitive statecraft, overcoming narratives of Western decline. It also requires militaries capable of thinking about Clausewitz’s rationalisation of war beyond the narrow emphasis on violence.^[52]

Part 4: Changing Conceptions for Adaptation

Military thinking about war needs to escape its boundaries to understand how and when it can contribute to grand strategic activity. That this may occur outside the traditional Western conceptions of war, led by different arms of government, does not prevent military forces employing their existing procedural frameworks meaningfully. The basic principles of strategic analysis—defining objectives and understanding both self and adversary—remain essential to ‘solving’ the problem of political warfare.^[53] From his extensive review of military adaptation, Murray demonstrated that success is contingent upon commanders and staffs asking the ‘right’ questions.^[54] Operational design readily provides such a structure if its practitioners can think critically and creatively, rather than procedurally. Considering the problem of political warfare, Antulio Echevarria highlights how militaries can design campaigns around a coercive or deterrent framework in peacetime.^[55] That such actions could include normal military mobilisation and demonstrations, occurring in concert with non-military actions such as economic inducements, only emphasises that the existing practices of operational art and campaigning remain relevant. The difficulty imposed by political warfare remains cognitive and requires greater interpretive thinking.

Structural changes are only a partial solution to the adaptation problem faced by Western militaries when confronting political warfare. While some argue for the creation of specialised political warfare ‘response structures’, militaries must be cautious of attempting to demonstrate ‘utility’ through changing structures outside of conflict.^[56] Conventional military capabilities and practices remain relevant. More important is relearning different forms of military force and knowing how and when to apply them in concert with other tools of national power. This requires going beyond a theoretical understanding of non-military factors in competition and conflict.^[57] Achieving such change requires an extensive focus upon fostering the intellectual qualities of military leaders to understand the political as well as operational dimensions of conflict and competition, without becoming political actors themselves.^[58] By doing so, Western militaries can employ their existing theoretical and procedural frameworks as they were intended—as adaptable tools to ensure the utility of military force in pursuit of political objectives. Given the longstanding practice of grand strategy, and political warfare as one such approach, learning from history is an important start to restoring lost knowledge.

Conclusion

Countering—or waging—political warfare requires military tools applied in concert with other non-military capabilities. In this regard, political warfare is akin to a form of grand strategy, and is necessarily a whole-of-government problem. While the emphasis between these tools differs in competition short of war, the practice of unifying them is no different in principle to the requirements of war. Western militaries already possess the right theories and procedures to adapt to this change in emphasis through operational art and operational design. However, Western militaries and political establishments have allowed an artificial separation to come between them. This is reinforced by historical experiences and spurred by a preference for the short and decisive use of military force. Not only does this run counter to the demands of political warfare as a unified activity, it also demonstrates a failure to apply operational art. Fundamentally, this is a failure of the creative and critical thinking necessary to recognise where military force can—and cannot—achieve strategic goals. While there is cause for caution surrounding some integration—politicising the military is not the proposed solution, some change is required. To adapt to the demands of contemporary political warfare, Western militaries need to refocus on how they think about problems of grand strategy, statecraft, and competitive will, alongside other agencies. Only then can they apply operational art in the truly unified manner needed for adaptation.

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Footnotes

¹ Colin Clark, 'CJCS Dunford Calls For Strategic Shifts; "At Peace Or At War Is Insufficient"', Breaking Defense, 2016, accessed 17 October, 2021, https://breakingdefense.com/2016/09/cjcs-dunford-calls-for-strategic-shifts-at-peace-or-at-war-is-insufficient/.

² Justin Kelly and Michael James Brennan, Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College (2009).; Robert T. Foley, 'Operational Level and Operational Art: Still Useful Today?', Defence-in-Depth, King's College London, 2015, accessed 17 October, 2021, https://defenceindepth.co/2015/09/14/operational-level-and-operational-art-still-useful-today/.

³ George F. Kennan, The Inauguration of Organized Political Warfare [Redacted Version],  (1948).

⁴ Sun Tzu, 'The Art of War', ed. Tom Butler-Bowdon (Chichester, West Sussex: Capstone Publishing, 2010)., Chapter 3; Thucydides, 'The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War', ed. B. Strassler (New York: The Free Press, 1976)., 61-63, 79-80

⁵ Basil Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1967)., 321; Hal Brands, What Good is Grand Strategy?: Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (New York: Cornell University Press, 2014)., 3

⁶ Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976)., 86

⁷ Nicholas Bosio, 'What Is War? Defining War, Conflict and Competition', Land Power Forum, Australian Army Research Centre, 2020, accessed 10 October, 2021, https://researchcentre.army.gov.au/library/land-power-forum/what-war-defining-war-conflict-and-competition.

⁸ Linda Robinson et al, Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses, RAND Corporation (California, 2018)., xxi-xxii

⁹ Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency, trans. Daniel Lee (London: Pall Mall Press, 1964).; Colonel Charles Lacheroy, quoted in Michael P.M. Finch, 'A Total War of the Mind: The French Theory of la guerre révolutionnaire, 1954–1958', War in History 25, no. 3 (2018)., 416-417

¹⁰ Frank Hoffman, 'On Not-So-New Warfare: Political Warfare vs. Hybrid Threats', War on the Rocks, 2014, accessed 10 October, 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2014/07/on-not-so-new-warfare-political-warfare-vs-hybrid-threats/.

¹¹ Van Jackson, 'Tactics of Strategic Competition: Gray Zones, Redlines, and Conflicts before War', Naval War College review 70, no. 3 (2017)., 39

¹² Albert Palazzo, Planning to Not Lose: The Australian Army's New Philosophy of War, Australian Army (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2021)., 42

¹³ Ross Babbage, Winning Without Fighting: Chinese and Russian Political Warfare Campaigns and How the West Can Prevail, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (2019)., 27-28

¹⁴ Babbage, Winning Without Fighting., 45-47; Sean Monaghan, 'Countering Hybrid Warfare: So What for the Future Joint Force?', Prism 8, no. 2 (2019)., 85

¹⁵ Robinson et al, Modern Political Warfare., 32-34

¹⁶ Michael J. Mazarr, 'Struggle in the Gray Zone and World Order', Commentary, War on the Rocks, 2015, accessed 10 October, 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2015/12/struggle-in-the-gray-zone-and-world-order/.

¹⁷ David H. Ucko and Thomas A. Marks, 'Violence in Context: Mapping the strategies and operational art of irregular warfare', Contemporary Security Policy 39, no. 2 (2018)., 206-207

¹⁸ Babbage, Winning Without Fighting., 39, Hal Brands, 'Paradoxes of the Gray Zone', E-Notes, Foreign Policy Research Institute, 2016, accessed 10 October, 2021, https://www.fpri.org/article/2016/02/paradoxes-gray-zone/.

¹⁹ Babbage, Winning Without Fighting., 39

²⁰ Robinson et al, Modern Political Warfare., 15-16, 23-27

²¹ Colin S. Gray, The Future of Strategy (Chicester: Polity Press, 2015)., 2; Elizabeth G. Troeder, A Whole-of-Government Approach to Gray Zone Warfare, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College (2019)., 26

²² Department of Defence, ADDP 3.0 Campaigns and Operations,  (Canberra: Department of Defence, 2012)., 1-15

²³ Trent Scott, The Lost Operational Art: Invigorating Campaigning into the Australian Defence Force, Land Warfare Studies Centre (Canberra, 2011)., 66-68

²⁴ Edward C. Cardon and Steve Leonard, 'Unleashing Design: Planning and the Art of Battle Command', Military Review 90, no. 2 (2010)., 33-34

²⁵ Palazzo, Planning to Not Lose., 42

²⁶ Notable examples include the incorporation of operational design principles in United States and Australian Joint Doctrines. See Cardon and Leonard, 'Unleashing Design: Planning and the Art of Battle Command'. . Also see Scott, The Lost Operational Art., 101-103

²⁷ Chad Buckel, 'A New Look at Operational Art: How We View War Dictates How We Fight It', Joint Force Quarterly, no. 100 (2021)., 95-96; Maryanne Kelton et al, 'Australia, the Utility of Force and the Society-Centric Battlespace', International Affairs 95, no. 4 (2019)., 873

²⁸ Ronald Sprang, 'Russian Operational Art, New Type Warfare, and Reflexive Control', Articles, War on the Rocks, 2018, accessed 16 October, 2021, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/russian-operational-art-new-type-warfare-and-reflexive-control.

²⁹ For example, the 2003 Iraq War and Afghanistan, see Charles T. Cleveland et al, An American Way of Political Warfare: A Proposal, RAND Corporation (California, 2018)., 3

³⁰ Richard E. Simpkin and John Erickson, Deep Battle: The Brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevskii, 1st ed. (London; Washington, D.C;: Brassey's Defence, 1986)., 45

³¹ Richard N. Dickson, Operational Art in a Middle-Power Context: A Canadian Perspective, Army Command and General Staff College (Fort Leavenworth, 2004)., 1

³² Palazzo, Planning to Not Lose., 34

³³ Robinson et al., Modern Political Warfare., 244

³⁴ Buckel, A New Look at Operational Art'. , 100

³⁵ Kelly and Brennan, Alien: How Operational Art Devoured Strategy., 66

³⁶ Constantin von Lossau’s thoughts were expressed by successors, including the elder Helmuth von Molkte during the German Wars of Unification. See Constantin von Lossau, cited in Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking war from antiquity to the present (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010)., 16

³⁷ Robert T. Foley, 'What's in a Name?: The Development of Strategies of Attrition on the Western Front, 1914-1918', The Historian (Kingston) 68, no. 4 (2006)., 730, 738-741

³⁸ Williamson Murray, Military Adaptation in War: With Fear of Change (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011)., 281-282; Scott, The Lost Operational Art., 32

³⁹ Cathal J Nolan, The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)., 12

⁴⁰ Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)., 200; Martin Alexander and J. F. V. Keiger, 'France and the Algerian War: Strategy, Operations and Diplomacy', Journal of Strategic Studies 25, no. 2 (2002)., 20-22

⁴¹ Christian Tripodi, The Unknown Enemy: Counterinsurgency and the Illusion of Control (Cambridge University Press, 2020)., 91

⁴² Donaldson D. Frizzell and W. Scott Thompson, The Lessons of Vietnam (St Lucia: University Of Queensland Press, 1977)., 42, 45

⁴³ Michael Howard, 'The Forgotten Dimensions of Strategy', Foreign Affairs 57, no. 5 (1979)., 981

⁴⁴ Carter Malkasian, A History of Modern Wars of Attrition, ed. Jeremy Black, Studies in Military History and International Affairs, (Westport: Praeger, 2002)., 120, 125

⁴⁵ Robert H. Scales, Certain Victory: The US Army in the Gulf War (Leavenworth: US Army Command and General Staff College Press, 1993)., 14, 26; Lukas Milevski, 'Strategy and the Intervening Concept of Operational Art', Infinity Journal 4, no. 3 (2015)., 21

⁴⁶ Hew Strachan, The Direction of War: Contemporary Strategy in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)., 55

⁴⁷ Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, The Generals' War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf, 1st ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995)., 466, 470

⁴⁸ Murray, Military Adaptation in War., 556

⁴⁹ Ucko and Marks, 'Violence in Context'. , 210

⁵⁰ Donald Stoker and Craig Whiteside, 'Gray-Zone Conflict and Hybrid War-Two Failures of American Strategic Thinking', Naval War College Review 73, no. 1 (2020)., 38

⁵¹ Antulio J. Echevarria, 'How Should We Think About "Gray-Zone" Wars?,' Infinity Journal 5, no. 1 (2015)., 18

⁵² Ilmari Käihkö, 'The Evolution of Hybrid Warfare: Implications for Strategy and the Military Profession', Parameters 51, no. 3 (2021)., 121-122

⁵³ Stoker and Whiteside, 'Gray-Zone Conflict and Hybrid War-Two Failures of American Strategic Thinking'. , 28; Adam Elkus, '50 Shades of Gray: Why the Gray Wars Concept Lacks Strategic Sense', Commentary, War on the Rocks, 2015, accessed 10 October, 2021, https://warontherocks.com/2015/12/50-shades-of-gray-why-the-gray-wars-concept-lacks-strategic-sense/.

⁵⁴ Murray, Military Adaptation in War., 552

⁵⁵ Echevarria, 'How Should We Think About "Gray-Zone" Wars?' , 17

⁵⁶ Cleveland et al, An American Way of Political Warfare: A Proposal., 2-4

⁵⁷ Ucko and Marks, 'Violence in Context' , 213-214

⁵⁸ Murray, Military Adaptation in War., 556