Introduction

Like the rest of the US Government, the United States military is navigating challenging transformations in the international strategic security environment. These challenges include great power competition, terrorism, and the assertiveness of rogue states like Iran and North Korea. One of the many ways that the US military tries to posture itself better to address these challenges is through changes in doctrine. The US Joint Doctrine on campaigning is one clear example of doctrine needing further development. Starting in 2017, the United States created a suite of new campaigning doctrine and theory to reflect changes in the strategic environment and national security strategy. However, shortcomings in theoretical development and minimal guidance for operationalization prevent this doctrine from maintaining its relevance and viability.

This essay examines the United States military’s most recent doctrine on campaigning and assesses its efficacy and future relevance. First, it analyses the various campaigning doctrine documents in the context of larger US government strategy. It finds that most updates to the doctrine are adjustments to the lexicon and theoretical concepts that support whole-of-government approaches in operations short of armed conflict, although this requirement is nothing new. Next, it assesses whether this doctrine will remain applicable to the US military in the near future. It finds that the concepts provided in the doctrine will remain relevant, but there are still barriers to their manifestation. It concludes by providing a few recommendations in doctrine and elsewhere to overcome these barriers.

Analysis

There are a few key documents that make up the US campaigning doctrine. The foundational doctrine is the Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning (JCIC)^[1], published in 2018. This is the most recent update to campaigning doctrine since the Joint Doctrine for Campaign Planning (JP 5-00.1)^[2] was published in 2002. The JCIC is supplemented by Joint Doctrine Note 1-19 – Competition Continuum (JDN 1-19^[3]), published in 2019, and the Joint Concept for Competing (JCC), published in 2023^[4]. Analysing the context in which the most recent campaigning doctrine was written provides insights into American strategic trajectories and challenges.

The JCIC and JDN 1-19 were written during a strategic pivot to ‘Great Power Competition’ in US foreign policy. The 2017 National Security Strategy introduced many of these ideas about competition. The document uses ‘competition’ 25 times throughout and ‘competitive’ 22 times^[5]. It explains that ‘competition does not always mean hostility, nor does it inevitably lead to conflict …’ but is ‘the best way to prevent conflict’^[6]. Likewise, the 2018 National Defense Strategy references ‘long-term strategic competition’ that ‘spans the entire spectrum of conflict’, which requires ‘seamless integration of multiple elements of national power’.^[7] Concepts including spectrum of conflict/competition, whole-of-government integration, and long-term approaches have entered US campaigning doctrine.

The ideas presented in the JCIC and JDN 1-19 are nested within these critical concepts from the NSS 2017 and NDS 2018. The JCIC ‘foundational idea’ introduces an alternative to the ‘obsolete peace/war binary’, replacing it with a ‘competition continuum’^[8] building off the expanded spectrum of conflict ideas in strategic documents. JDN 1-19 further builds the idea of the competition continuum^[9]. It does so by paying close attention to whole-of-government approaches, claiming that the concept improves alignment between military and non-military efforts between the Joint Force and other inter-organisational efforts^[10].

These documents also attempt to address the long-term nature of competition mentioned in strategic guidance by adopting a ‘specific lexicon … necessary to capture the complexities of changing conditions over time^[11]’. One of these changes is to the definition of campaign itself. The Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning, defines a campaign as:

A framework to orchestrate and synchronize simultaneous activities and operations (major or otherwise) aimed at accomplishing or enabling policy aims; the joint forces’ intellectual guide and construct for the informed application of force; the aggregate contribution to a policy regarding armed conflict, competition, and cooperation.^[12]

The 2002 Joint Campaign Planning defines a campaign as ‘a series of related military operations to accomplish a strategic or operational objective within a given time and space’^[13]. Compared to the 2002 definition, the recent lengthy and multidimensional definition reflects the complexity of the environment it is designed for. At the same time, the weightiness of the definition risks diluting its meaning.

Another change in the lexicon is the substitution from ‘campaign’ to ‘campaigning’.^[14] The preference for a verbal noun was an attempt to infuse flexibility into what are otherwise rigid campaign plans. It recognises that all operations ‘should be continually adapted in response to evolving strategic conditions and policy objectives’.^[15] These changes in lexicon are a response to the large-scale shifts in approach and mindset written into strategic documents.

The Joint Concept for Competing, published in 2023, builds on the ideas presented in the JCIC and JD 1-19 and the most recent National Security and Defense Strategies. Like the 2017 NSS, the 2022 US National Security Strategy also focuses heavily on strategic competition^[16]. It introduces ‘integrated deterrence’, defined as ‘the seamless combination of capabilities to convince potential adversaries that the costs of hostile activities outweigh the benefits’.^[17] Its prescription for the military is a ‘campaigning mindset’.^[18] Similarly, the 2022 National Defense Strategy sees ‘campaigning, integrated deterrence, and actions that build enduring advantage’ as how the Department will advance its priorities^[19]. These strategic documents maintain continuity and build off the ideas presented in predecessor documents.

Like the JCIC and JDN 1-19, the Joint Concept for Competing (JCC) both nests within higher-level strategic guidance and further develops the concepts from that guidance. Compared with the shorter JCIC^[20] and JDN 1-19^[21](48 and 25, respectively), the JCC^[22] (at 71 pages) attempts to achieve the depth necessary for the Joint Force to initiate action on new ideas. The primary way it tries to do this is through including a methodology for strategic competition. It also describes the Joint Force's contribution to strategic competition^[23]. This includes placing the Department of Defense (DoD) in a supporting role in this part of the spectrum of competition and experimenting with the idea of using military capabilities in different and non-traditional ways.

The JCC states that its ‘central idea’ requires the force to ‘expand its competitive mindset and approaches’.^[24] This falls squarely within strategic guidance from the 2022 National Security and Defense Strategies. However, part of this competitive mindset change includes ‘accepting the joint force’s critical but supporting contribution to strategic competition’,^[25] an element missing in the National Defense Strategy. This demonstrates a level of awareness on the part of the DoD that it does not own all the authorities or capabilities essential for competition. It also signals the requirement for a cultural shift in the DoD and across the US Government enterprise.

Another important new idea presented tasks the Joint Force with identifying ‘approaches that enable it to apply its military capabilities proactively, and differently in some cases, to gain influence, advantage, and leverage over adversaries …’^[26]. This idea of using military capabilities ‘differently’ is bold and potentially controversial. The US military is the only organisation with the capability and authority to use lethal force on behalf of the US Government. The document addresses this concern in its risk section through the provision of mitigation strategies.

Altogether, the suite of US campaigning doctrine documents, the JCIC, JDN 1-19, and the JCC, are nested within higher-level strategic documents. This makes them effective extensions of national strategic priorities. They also provide a novel and logical approach to campaigning across the competition continuum. However, while the JCC develops these ideas to a level commensurate with the potential for operationalization, campaigning doctrine after 2017 remains highly theoretical. Therefore, assessing the continued applicability of these concepts and the doctrine itself for the future is worthwhile.

Current and Future Relevance

It is essential to assess the applicability of concepts provided in the new campaigning doctrine against contemporary trends in the international environment. The trend most essential to the United States is the preference for actors to compete with the United States through actions short of conventional war using a combination of military and non-military means. Campaigning doctrine does well to feature this issue. However, shortfalls in the development of the theory limit its usefulness and applicability of this new doctrine without further refining and development.

The increasing preference for actors to compete with the United States short of conventional war is a significant trend noticed by many contemporary academics and military leaders. First coined as grey zone theory, Michael Mazarr hypothesised in 2015 that this type of ‘conflict represents an identifiable and intentional strategy for several states’, inducing the requirement for the US to ‘become adept at operating in this environment’.^[27] Likewise, Nadia Schadlow argues that the ‘United States vacates the space between war and peace’ due to limited linkages between military operations and policy, making this a desirable space for adversaries to operate^[28]. Frank Hoffman argues that adversaries recognise they can exploit the fact that American strategic culture ‘conceptualises war and peace as two distinct conditions’^[29]. These voices clarify this trend’s importance and the critical gap in American ability to operate in this grey zone.

Even if the theoretical concepts presented in these new campaigning approaches and doctrines are appropriate for operating in the grey zone, their applicability hinges on their effective operationalization across the military audience they seek to guide. This requires both the development of valid theories and prescriptive plans for their operationalization. As we’ll see below, current theoretical approaches require further development.

The suite of new campaigning doctrine fills the gap through the theoretical expansion of the ‘spectrum of competition’ in JDN 1-19 and its development of a Concept for Competing that focuses on the grey zone’. However, there are some issues with the theoretical development of ideas like the ‘spectrum of conflict’, which unnecessarily dilutes the complexity of these operating environments. This includes using the spectrum of conflict metaphor and failing to address stakeholders other than the enemy. These elements are problematic because they constrict thinking about complex problem sets common to the competition space.

The spectrum of conflict, recently changed to the spectrum of competition metaphor, acknowledges the ‘gray zone’ between war and peace, which eludes a binary delineation between the two. The doctrine breaks this continuum into three sections: armed conflict, competition below armed conflict, and cooperation^[30]. According to the JCIC, this ‘competition continuum’ intends not to substitute the two-part war and peace dichotomy with a three-part model. but to account for a complex reality^[31]. However, maintaining the linear spectrum metaphor makes it challenging to visualise this complexity^[32]. For example, this visual metaphor doesn’t have a way to depict that different types of competitive relationships can coexist at the same point in time against different actors.

The limited utility of natural science metaphors like the competition continuum applied to complex societal phenomena like conflict and competition has been noticed by many others. A paper on the use of metaphor in military doctrine argues that ‘the dynamics of complex systems require complex theories to explain them’ and that simple metaphors can be overly reduced^[33]. This reduction is undoubtedly evident in the continuum of conflict metaphor because it fails to account for the diversity of actors and competing interests in any instance of cooperation, competition, or armed conflict. Similarly, Ben Zweibelson, a proponent of design thinking, questions whether humans understand the electromagnetic spectrum the same way we should interpret the wide range of warfare and security activities^[34]. While trying to illuminate complexity beyond a peace/war binary, the spectrum of competition metaphor paradoxically reduces it to a linear spectrum.

Another way the current campaigning doctrine could fail in applicability is its lack of attention to the diversity of other stakeholders in the operational environment during competition. These stakeholders have the agency to impact regional and global dynamics. For example, small countries can wield power by forming votingblocs in international institutions and making choices about access to their strategic locations. Like the reductionist nature of the competition continuum, one author argues that the Clauswitzean wrestling match metaphor used to explain competing forces ‘reduces any third parties to permanently uninvolved, irrelevant observers or participants eventually subsumed into one side of the equation or the other’^[35].

Campaigning doctrine focuses myopically on the enemy in the same way traditional campaign plans are designed for warfighting scenarios. One author highlights, ‘When considering campaigning, the adversary-focused, force-centric approach embedded in operational planning must take a back seat and make room for an interest-focused, alignment-centric approach to take hold.’^[36] Considering these stakeholders only through their relationship with an adversary limits a military planner’s ability to understand the operating environment and campaign within it entirely.

These failures to articulate the complexities of the current operating environment through effective metaphors or inclusion of other stakeholders in a complex competition environment limit the ability of campaigning doctrine to influence operational design. This is evidenced in the fact that the Joint Operations Doctrine 3-0, published in 2022, fails to adopt any of the new changes provided in the JCIC. Given that operations are defined in JP 3-0 as the ‘primary building block of a campaign’,^[37] this doctrine should nest within the concepts provided in the most recent campaigning doctrine. In reality, JP 3-0 lacks compatibility with the concepts presented in the JCIC in various areas.

A final way that current campaigning doctrine could fail in its applicability is its lack of tangible prescriptions for operating in the grey zone. The JCC offers an entire ‘Operationalizing the Concept’ chapter, including a six-step strategic competition methodology^[38]. The document acknowledges the lack of pre-existing strategy development for strategic competition compared to deterrence and warfighting^[39]. It also acknowledges that a structured approach that is ‘systemic, comprehensive, and repeatable’ is a prerequisite for absorbing these ideas into the Joint Force^[40]. This puts the document on the right trajectory for operationalization, but it still has shortcomings. A Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) analysis of the report argues that it still focuses too much on theory and fails to ‘propose a functional approach to implementation’.^[41]

Instead of providing actionable guidance, campaigning doctrine reiterates many of the broad prescriptions for addressing the grey zone provided in academic articles by think tanks. For example, many of the prescriptions offered for this type of competition include integrating and leveraging all elements of national power to counter adversarial efforts. While the need for the whole-of-government integration is mentioned, there is little development in the doctrine that explains how to realise that integration. A CSIS report on the JCC confirms this shortfall, highlighting that the ‘authors never really studied the challenges in creating an integrated whole-of-government approach’.^[42] Given the highly bureaucratic nature of the DoD, a set of principles paired with a technical plan for achieving that idea is necessary.

Conclusion

The suite of new campaigning doctrine reflects United States national strategic guidance. It addresses historically underappreciated yet essential concepts like whole-of-government approaches and operations other than war. It also meets the theoretical needs of the day by minding the grey zone. However, it requires further development in its theoretical approaches and prescriptions for operationalization for it to maintain its viability. Simply writing these concepts into doctrine does not guarantee operational manifestation. Without the effective development of theory and guidance on operational approaches to match the nature of the problem, doctrine lacks the power to drive fundamental changes in operational decision making and processes.

One recommendation is to develop a concept of whole-of-government integration that specifies how the DoD envisions its role in working with each different part of the government on different aspects of competition. Another recommendation is to further develop a theory around the competition space, expanding it to reflect the multidimensional and complex nature of the grey zone. Building on this, the DoD can refine its operational doctrine to expand the scope of attention to critical stakeholders beyond its current myopic adversarial focus. It can also work to build new doctrine compatible with the unique competition operating environment described in joint doctrine.

Overall, the spirit of the United States DoD campaigning doctrine places the US Government on the right trajectory to excel in the current operational environment. With continued attention to developing appropriate theories to operationalize these concepts, this doctrine has immense potential for future applicability, making it compelling and instructive enough to drive new approaches.