It is time to kill the sacred cow of the Centre of Gravity and bring clarity and simplicity to the ADF operational framework.

Introduction

Napoleon stated that, ‘The secret in war does not lie in the legs; it resides in the brain and sets the legs in motion’.^[1] The theoretical and procedural frameworks for planning and conducting military campaigns are the tools that military planners use to solve complex problems that a military must confront. If these theories and frameworks are not fit for purpose, then military planners and commanders are disadvantaged. In order to maintain an intellectual edge, it is necessary to regularly review these frameworks and ensure they are fit to tackle the challenges of the modern operating environment.    

This essay will argue that contemporary political warfare is the catalyst to discard the Centre of Gravity (CoG) construct. In its place it is proposed that a systems approach combined with pathfinding theory offers a more appropriate framework for the planning and conduct of military campaigns. This proposition will be discussed specifically in the context of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and its doctrine and will be explored in three parts. First, the origins of political warfare will be discussed outlining what has changed in the contemporary era. The role of the military in political warfare will then be discussed, showing that it is a challenge that cannot be ignored and must be addressed. Next, the existing frameworks for planning and conducting military campaigns will be explored. Particular focus will be given to the CoG and its role in military planning. The CoG will be shown to be unsuitable in the contemporary political warfare operating environment due to the complex adaptive nature of the environment, as well as its redundancy in achieving meaningful planning outputs. Lastly, an alternative approach will be offered, taking inspiration from systems and pathfinding theory. This alternate pathfinding approach will propose the conception of multiple ‘ways’ to achieve each operational decisive point, hence creating a matrix of possible courses of action to select in real time as an operating environment evolves.

The role of the military in political warfare

Political warfare is not new; however, it has taken on new characteristics enabled by the ubiquitous nature of the information domain in modern society. The term ‘political warfare’ was popularised by the US diplomat George Kennan during the 1940s from his discussion surrounding the threat posed by the Soviet Union.^[2] He defined it as, ‘The employment of all means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives. Such operations are both overt and covert'.^[3] While the term itself may have been popularised by Kennan, the concept was not new. Sun Tzu’s writings as early as 500 BC illustrate that achieving a nation’s objectives without fighting was a worthy goal; stating, ‘Subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is the true pinnacle of excellence’.^[4] The key aspect that categorises modern political warfare is the vastness and prevalence of the modern information environment in which tools and methods such as cyber operations, artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation make modern political warfare far-reaching, low-cost and impactful.^[5]  The rapid development and evolution of technologies in the information environment, coupled with societies’ reliance upon it, means that nations must come to grips with how they handle this new era of political warfare.^[6] Despite being an old concept, the recent renewed interest is still clouded in confusion.   

The confusion around the status and categorisation of political warfare stems from the awkward position it occupies on the spectrum between peace and violent conflict. Western militaries appear to be at unease with this uncertainty, however, nations such as China and Russia have military cultures which expect it. This is typified by the Chinese Three Warfares concept. The Three Warfares concept is a political warfare concept that seeks to use psychological warfare, media warfare and legal warfare to achieve political aims without engaging in violent confrontation.^[7] The PLA is directly tasked with executing Three Warfares during peace and war and they can be implemented at the strategic, operational and tactical levels.^[8] While the contiguous nature of political warfare through peace and war is clear for the PLA, it is less clear for Western militaries such as the ADF. It has been highlighted that, in general, Western societies and their militaries tend to have a narrower conception of war than that of more authoritarian states such as Russia and China.^[9] This leads to questions such as, what is the role of the military in political warfare and is this the same at peace as it is during war?

In order to address this question, it is useful to return to Kennan’s definition which outlines that political warfare is the ‘employment of all means at a nation’s command, short of war, to achieve its national objectives’.^[10] If that definition is subscribed to, then it may be natural to conclude that the military will have a limited role, as the military’s primary function is to engage in warfare.^[11] However, even if this holds true it does not mean that, because political warfare is an activity short of war it will cease upon the outbreak of war. That is to say that political warfare could be conducted prior to the commencement of hostilities (as is suggested by the definition) but will also continue during war. So then, at least in part, the military will need to concern itself with political warfare during the conduct of war. Returning once again to Kennan’s definition, the phrase ‘all means at a nation’s command’ highlights another factor to consider:  that elements of national power extend beyond that of the military. To use a popular metric, diplomatic, informational, military and economic are often listed as elements of national power. If political warfare also uses diplomatic, informational and economic means, the military cannot be expected to wield these elements of national power either in peace time or in war. Granted, it is reasonable to expect the military to contribute towards aspects such as diplomacy through regional engagement and perhaps some portions of the informational sphere. However, the military cannot truly command all aspects of national power, even in the extremes of wars of survival. It can at best be a tool of political warfare and contribute to other elements of national power. It is for this reason that the literature regarding political warfare frequently emphasises that a whole-of-government response is required.^[12]

A whole-of-government approach to political warfare is necessary to coordinate all elements of national power. Indeed, a whole-of-society approach may be required if considering the problem from a national resilience perspective.^[13] However, this still leaves the question of what role the military should play. In the very least it can be expected that the ADF will be required to operate within a political warfare operating environment. This could be during war or at peace whilst conducting any number of operations along the conflict continuum spectrum. Secondly, the military is a key component of national power and as such is a tool of political warfare during war and potentially during peacetime.^[14] Given this reality, the ADF must consider if its existing theoretical and procedural frameworks for planning and conducting military campaigns enable it to adapt to the demands of contemporary political warfare. With that goal in mind, it is worth examining the current ADF planning frameworks. 

The existing framework and its unsuitability

The ADF campaigning and operational planning and execution frameworks are contained within ADF joint doctrine; primarily ADDP 5.0 – Joint Planning, ADDP 3.0 – Campaigns and Operations and ADFP 5.0.1 – Joint Military Appreciation Process. These documents describe a six-step campaign cycle consisting of gaining situational understanding, planning, preparation, execution, assessment and adaptation.^[15] The first two steps of this cycle constitute campaign design, which is primarily achieved using the Joint Military Appreciation Process (JMAP). Following campaign design, the remaining steps constitute campaign management. Campaign management entails a handover from planning staff to operations staff, preparation activities for the operation and executing and monitoring the plan. Adaptation is achieved through the maintenance of situational understanding and the use of the commander’s decision points to execute branch or sequel plans if the situation requires.^[16] If the situation or operating environment changes substantially enough then the cycle is recommenced during the operation with campaign design and responsive planning.^[17] One of the key driving concepts within the JMAP is the CoG concept. Due to its central role in operational planning it naturally also drives the execution of operations as well as an ability to adapt when revised during responsive planning. In order to better understand the CoG role in planning and execution, the concept will now be explored further.

The CoG as a military planning concept originated with Clausewitz in his book On War. He used the Newtonian concept to articulate his ideas regarding a belligerent’s dominant characteristics and a ‘hub of all power’ from which they derived strength. Subsequently, if a concentration of force can be directed at that CoG, then the enemy will lose its fighting power.^[18] Since the writing of On War, the concept has been revisited and revised, most notably by Dr Joseph Strange and Richard Iron who proposed a model for understanding the CoG which could be incorporated into military planning.^[19] It is through these developments that the current concept and processes that exist in ADF doctrine came about. The CoG is defined as, ‘The primary entity that possesses the inherent capability to achieve an objective of the desired end state’.^[20] The current model breaks down the CoG into three subordinate components. These components are ‘critical capabilities’, ‘critical requirements’ and ‘critical vulnerabilities’.  The critical capabilities are the ‘primary abilities that enable a CoG to achieve its desired end state’.^[21] The critical requirements are the resources that allow the CoG to perform its critical capability. Then the critical vulnerabilities are those critical requirements that are inherently targetable and if exploited will undermine the CoG.^[22] It is the critical vulnerabilities which are then transitioned into decisive points that are executed during the conduct of the operation. This is the mechanism by which CoG translates into actions during an operation.  

In the context of modern political warfare, the CoG concept is unsuitable for several reasons. The first is that the modern operating environment and modern adversary cannot be broken down into simple components that can be targeted with an expectation this will undermine the entire system. The reason for this is that the modern political warfare operating environment is a complex interactive system. This means that actors in that system, including friendly forces and adversaries, will change and adapt as the system is influenced. Intuitively, this seems a reasonable proposition and is even acknowledged within ADF doctrine.^[23] What this means for the CoG is that every time an adversary is affected or influenced, their CoG and critical vulnerabilities will also change. That is the nature of a complex adaptive system.^[24] Unless every actor has their CoG reassessed following every change to the environment or every action taken by a belligerent, then it will no longer be relevant or accurate to the new system which has evolved.  To go even further, others such as Lawrence Freedman have suggested that the CoG does not exist at all.^[25] Freedman suggests that the notion of CoG is flawed due to the assumption that a complex system cannot adapt and regenerate, and that the tendency for the CoG construct to target an adversary military ignores the fact that this may not be required in order to achieve the political aims of a campaign, especially in cases short of conflict.^[26]

The second reason the CoG concept is not suitable in the context of modern political warfare is a simpler and more pragmatic one; that is, that it places unnecessary mental roadblocks in operational planning. This fact has already been illustrated, in part, through the explanation of the current CoG process leading to decisive points. The only necessary output from the CoG process is the critical vulnerabilities. It is not necessary to cascade from CoG through critical capabilities and critical requirements to arrive at an adversary’s vulnerabilities. A planner need only spend time to consider what an adversary’s vulnerabilities are, or alternatively, what their strengths and weaknesses are. This approach also has the benefit that it does not create convergent thinking focused around a CoG, rather it encourages divergent thinking to consider all possible sources of vulnerability that an adversary may have. This is especially important in a political warfare context where effects may be informational rather than physical, and sources of strength distributed amongst the cyber domain. Lastly, the CoG is a mental roadblock for whole-of-government input into military planning. As an abstract and non-intuitive concept, the CoG limits the input that whole-of-government planners might have towards military planning groups. If collaborative planning is to be achieved, then the planning frameworks need to be accessible to all involved.

An alternative approach to operational planning and execution

There are alternative ways to conduct planning and execution of operations which do not rely on the CoG construct. It is time to kill the sacred cow of the CoG and bring clarity and simplicity to the ADF operational framework. Taking inspiration from systems theory, and specifically the Cynefin framework, thinking has already been done on how complex problems can be managed. The Cynefin framework suggests that in a complex system an actor is required to probe, sense and respond in order to navigate through it.^[27] This approach accounts for changes that occur to the system as inputs are made. In this way actions are appropriate to the context of the system as it exists at that moment before taking further actions and understanding their effects. Taking further inspiration from pathfinding theory, a method of operational planning and execution can be formulated. Pathfinding theory has its origins in mathematics and computer science with particular applicability to artificial intelligence (AI). Pathfinding is the process of optimal navigating between a start and end point whilst conforming to set parameters.^[28] This concept is a logical and useful analogue in a military context where an understanding of the current situation and required end-state are familiar parameters. Further, decisive points as already described are existing waypoints in operational design which can be aligned with the systems theory and pathfinding models.

In the proposed  alternative approach, the decisive points of an operation remain valid and can be derived without the CoG as already described by simply applying divergent thinking to consider what an adversary’s  or system’s vulnerabilities may be. When the decisive points of an operation are conceived, planners then formulate multiple different ‘ways’ to achieve each of the decisive points. Each of these different ‘ways’ then constitutes a matrix of possible courses of action from the beginning of the operation towards the end-state, moving through each of the decisive points. For example, each decisive point may have three different ‘ways’ to achieve it. An operation may be executed selecting the second ‘way’ for the first decisive point, the first ‘way’ for the second decisive point and so on. Each ‘way’ is selected by the commander during the execution of the operation and, and through this process, the commander navigates through each of the decisive points selecting the most appropriate ‘way’ depending on the state of the system at that time. Following the achievement of a decisive point the system can be assessed and the next ‘way’ selected based on a judgement of which ‘way’ will move the system towards the desired end-state in the most efficient way. Through this method the commander can apply operational art.  

This approach has several benefits. The first is that it acknowledges that the modern operating environment is a complex system and takes an approach that is designed to cope with it by design. In addition, adaptation is a feature of the approach and it does not rely on simply starting the process again to cope with changes in the system. By using this method there are significantly more courses of action available to the commander, rather than only one course of action with pre-planned branches or sequels. For example, if there are  10 decisive points and there are three ‘ways’ to achieve each, then there would be close to 60,000 possible iterations of that operation to select from. This may go some way to retiring the age-old tradition of the commander combining the leading two courses of action following the conventional course of action development step. This approach heeds the advice that no plan survives past H-hour—and it embraces the guidance from Eisenhower, who remarked: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable’.^[29] Rather than a rigid plan, this approach produces a menu of options to navigate through a complex system towards a desired end-state. Lastly, updating the ADF’s conceptual models of how to think about problems brings thinking forward, away from simplistic Newtonian-based concepts towards more appropriate systems and computer science concepts. If this transition is made, the ADF will be better positioned to transpose these models when technologies such as AI-assisted decision making and automated systems become prevalent in the military planning discipline. It is this very shift in AI and automation being seen now in the execution of modern political warfare that began this discussion of the theoretical and procedural frameworks. This once again reinforces the impetus to update the ADF’s thinking in order to adapt to the evolving operating environment.

Conclusion

The modern information environment has spawned a new cyber domain, challenged military thinkers and enabled new means of conducting political warfare with greater reach and impact than ever before. This paper has sought to contribute towards the discussion by examining the nature of contemporary political warfare, showing that although the concept is not new it has taken on a new characteristic enabled by the modern information environment. The role of the military in political warfare has been explored through a discussion on the Western concept of war and the need for a whole-of-government approach. Ultimately, the military must operate within a political warfare environment regardless of its role in contributing to it. Understanding that fact, the theoretical and procedural framework for the conduct and execution of military operations has been outlined with an overview of the campaign cycle and planning process, with particular note of the CoG concept. The CoG concept has been shown to be unsuitable in a modern political warfare environment due to the complex adaptive nature of the operating environment, as well as its redundancy in achieving meaningful planning outputs. Lastly, an alternative approach is proposed, taking inspiration from systems and pathfinding theory. This alternative pathfinding approach proposes a new concept of multiple ‘ways’ to achieve each operational decisive point, hence creating a matrix of possible courses of action to select in real time as the operating environment evolves. The CoG construct has been a useful tool for military planners in the past, however it can no longer be revised to make it suitable for today’s modern operating environment and the challenges posed by contemporary political warfare. 

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Footnotes

¹ JFC Fuller, The Foundations of The Science of War (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1926).

² Kerry Gershaneck, Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to 'Win without Fighting' (Quantico: Marine Corps University Press, 2020), https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2021.1958710. 14

³ Gershaneck. 14

⁴ Ross Babbage, 'Winning Without Fighting', Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments I (2019). 3

⁵ Alina Polyakova and Spencer P Boyer, 'The Future of Political Warfare: Russia, the West, and the Coming Age of Global Digital Competition', Brookings, no. March (2018): 1–24. 1

⁶ Linda Robinson et al, Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2018). 229-233

⁷ Stefan Halper, 'China: The Three Warfares' (Washington D.C, 2013). 11-3

⁸ Sangkuk Lee, 'China’s "Three Warfares": Origins, Applications, and Organizations', Journal of Strategic Studies 37, no. 2 (2014): 198–221, https://doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2013.870071. 204

⁹ Angus Campbell, 'Australian Strategic Policy Institute International Conference — "War in 2025",’ in Australian Strategic Policy Institute International Conference - War in 2025 (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2019). 2

¹⁰ Gershaneck, Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to 'Win without Fighting'.” 14

¹¹ Christian Tripodi, 'The Soft Power Army of the 2020's: An Alternative Approach', Wavell Room, 2020, https://wavellroom.com/2020/09/01/the-soft-power-army-of-the-2020s-an-alternative-perspective/.

¹² See Robinson et al, Modern Political Warfare: Current Practices and Possible Responses; Linda Robinson et al, 'The Growing Need to Focus on Modern Political Warfare', The Growing Need to Focus on Modern Political Warfare, 2019, https://doi.org/10.7249/rb10071; Babbage, 'Winning Without Fighting'; Gershaneck, Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to 'Win without Fighting'; Polyakova and Boyer, 'The Future of Political Warfare: Russia, the West, and the Coming Age of Global Digital Competition'.”

¹³ Katherine Manstead, 'Activating People Power to Counter Foreign Interference and Coercion', National Security College: Policy Options Paper, no. 13 (2019): 1–4.

¹⁴ Heather M Bothwell, 'Gray Is the New Black: A Framework to Counter Gray Zone Conflicts', Joint Force Quarterly 101 (2021): 25–31. 26

¹⁵ Australian Defence Force, 'ADDP 5.0 - Joint Planning', (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2018). 16

¹⁶ Department of Defence, 'ADDP 3.0 - Campaigns and Operations', 2012. 141-4

¹⁷ Australian Defence Force, 'ADDP 5.0 - Joint Planning'.  18-9

¹⁸ Jonathan Klug et al, Addressing the Fog of COG: Perspectives on the Center of Gravity in US Military Doctrine, ed. Celestino Perez (Kansas: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2012), http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/download/csipubs/COG.pdf. 2

¹⁹ Joseph Strange and Richard Iron, 'What Clausewitz Really Meant', Joint Force Quarterly, no. 35 (2004): 20–27.

²⁰ Australian Defence Force, 'ADDP 5.0 - Joint Planning'.  27

²¹ Australian Defence Force, 'ADFP 5.0.1 - Joint Military Appreciation Process', Australian Defence Force Procedures (Canberra: Department of Defence, 2019), http://www.defence.gov.au/ADFWC/Documents/DoctrineLibrary/ADFP/ADFP_5.0.1.pdf. 102

²² Australian Defence Force. 102

²³ Australian Defence Force, 'ADDP 5.0 - Joint Planning'.  25

²⁴ Helen Hasan and Alanah Kazlauskas, 'The Cynefin Framework: Putting Complexity into Perspective', Faculty of Business - Papers (Wollongong, 2014). 55

²⁵ Lawrence Freedman, 'Stop Looking For the Center of Graivty', War on the Rocks, June 2014. 2

²⁶ Freedman. 3

²⁷ Cynthia Kurtz and David Snowden, 'The New Dynamics of Strategy: Sense-Making in a Complex and Complicated World', IBM Systems Journal 42, no. 3 (2003): 462–83. 469

²⁸ Guni Sharon et al, 'Conflict-Based Search for Optimal Multi-Agent Pathfinding', Artificial Intelligence 219 (2015): 40–66, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artint.2014.11.006. 40

²⁹ Australian Defence Force, 'ADDP 5.0 - Joint Planning'.  12