A Short View on Modern Military Strategy

Military Strategy

Carl von Clausewitz defined the modern military strategy as "the employment of battles to gain the end of war." B.H. Liddell Hart extended the definition to “military means” and “to fulfil the ends of policy.”  Lenin and Trotsky understood the strategy as the art of conquest, i.e., seizure of power as they diminished the boundaries between war and peace in the struggle of classes. 

It seems natural that military strategy is subordinate to national strategy, being it’s military pillar. The U.S. defines the national strategy as: “The art and science of developing and using the political, economic, and psychological powers of a nation, together with its armed forces, during peace and war, to secure national objectives.”

Environment of Military Strategy

Essentially, military strategy is all about using armed power in a confrontation between two or more societies. Call these societies either nations, states, coalitions, enterprises, or groups. Previously the escalated confrontation ended to war between states, but nowadays we have different continuum of conflicts. Wars are seldom declared since military strategies seek more clandestine ways to wield power. In Ukraine, Russia never admitted involvement but used their conventional forces without insignia and mercenaries or voluntary groups, i.e., little green men to man Crimea and Eastern parts of Ukraine. This is called as the hybrid conflict in western military strategies. The most likely conflicts are called non-state, which mean smaller units loosely networked each other and coordinate their utilisation of power to undermine, gain control or create terror.

Figure 1: Continuum of conflict according to US Military Strategy 2015 © U.S.DoD

Operational and Force Development Strategy

There are two types of military strategies: operational and force development strategy. The operational strategy uses existing military capabilities to achieve the political aims. The force development strategy aims to meet the requirements of future threats and objectives stated by political analysis.

Operational strategy is one element in a four-part structure.

• First are the political ends to be obtained. 
• Second are the strategies for obtaining them, the ways in which resources will be deployed. 
• Third are tactics, the ways in which resources that have been deployed are used or employed. 
• Fourth and last are the resources themselves, the means at our disposal. 

Thus, operational strategy and tactics bridge the gap between ends and means. Operational strategies are attrition, annihilation, exhaustion, Fabian strategy or any variation and combination of these four:

• Attrition seeks to gradually erode the combat power of the enemy's armed forces. The perfect example of this is WWI. 
• Annihilation seeks the immediate destruction of the combat power of the enemy's armed forces. Napoleon is considered a perfect example of this strategy as he was seeking a single massive battle which won the war all at once. When Russian denied this, he was not able to achieve his political goals.
• Exhaustion seeks the gradual erosion of an enemy nation's will or means to resist. Here, one is pursuing an indirect objective, using military power not against the enemy's armies or navies, but against the things that make him capable of fighting at all. The U.S. led coalition used this strategy of not hitting the enemy's combat forces directly but making them irrelevant by destroying their industrial base, logistics, and Command and Control in The First Gulf War.
• Fabian Strategy seeks to avoid the conflict if possible to survive while gaining more time and resources to switch to other strategies.

Within these strategies, the tactics may include Deter, Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, or Defeat as called in US integrated approach 2015.

Force development strategy can be presented using Gattorna’s strategic posture analysis in Figure 2. Military strategies can be analysed from four postures: 

• lower risk strategies of Evolutionary and more proactive Protective or 
• higher risk strategies of reactive Operational and Pathfinder.

Most of the European militaries develop their forces in Evolutionary posture. This means that they are continuously but carefully improving their forces with available technology and copying tactics from other forces they benchmark. This is a low-risk approach but for example, NATO was caught by surprise when Warsaw Pact disintegrated, and it took a long time from NATO to react to fulfil new expectations in 1990’s and 2000’s. The Russian operations in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria again caught NATO countries unprepared, and now they are busy reacting and countering currently emerged old threats of conventional forces.

The Warsaw Pact and China in their northern borders developed their forces in Operational posture. Since they did not have the latest technology, but they were rich in population and strong in industrial manufacturing, they developed massive armies using conventional technology at the elevated level of operational efficiency.

The U.S. Armed Forces have been sliding between Pathfinder and Protective strategy. They have two times tried to gain strategic advantage being a Pathfinder in developing the newest technology. First, the Strategic Defence Initiative in early 1980’s, which, although being only information operation, helped to exhaust the resources of Soviet Union. Second, the Network Centric Warfare initiative, which gave them an upper hand in Gulf Wars annihilating twice the military might of Saddam Hussein. Mostly and currently, U.S. has been applying Protective posture trying to prevent other nations from copying their advanced technologies.

Figure 2: Strategic postures for military development strategies CC BY Juha Mattila 2016

Samples of Current Military Strategies

The United States of America

The recent U.S. National Defense Strategy 2018 differs from its predecessor 2015 in recognising China and Russia the higher national threats. The strategy realises that fast-developing commercial technology is available both to state and non-state actors thus eroding the Protective posture the US has enjoyed previously.  The strategy emphasises the sustaining US strengths in the lethality of their forces, strong alliances, technological innovation and culture of performance, which create the advantage against their opponents in confrontations. However, the US strives for Operational superiority by improving their operational dynamism, Interagency integration, and building a more lethal force for performance but within limits of affordability. Furthermore, the intention to “field a lethal, resilient, and rapidly adapting joint force” and the statement that “size matters” hints for traditional Attrition as the operational strategy. Only the statement that “advanced autonomous systems are invested broadly” tells of efforts to gain back the long-term strategic Pathfinder advantages.

The United Kingdom

The U.K. National Security strategy 2015 recognises that, besides non-state actors, there is a rise in Russian state born confrontations. Also, the cyber environment is perceived as a new dimension for confrontation and conflicts requiring improved defensive capabilities together with national resilience. Armed Forces are required to increase its manpower and create Joint Force 2025 to project hard force abroad. The Joint Force is demanded to be bigger (50 000) and agiler to tackle a wider range of more sophisticated adversaries together with security and intelligence agencies. The UK is following the Evolutionary strategy of increasing and developing its conventional force. However, the request for further agility proves a hint of towards Operational superiority. In conclusion, the more military might employed in an agile manner using joint and interagency effects indicates attrition/exhaustion types of operations.

Finland

The Government’s Defence Report in Finland 2017 recognises the deteriorated security situation after the occupation of Crimea, conflict in eastern Ukraine, and rising tension in the Baltic Sea region. They recognise that cyber and psychological operations are signs of Russian ability to wield “a wider range of instruments in pursuing its objectives.” The increased challenge for Finnish defence is reduced early-warning, a wider range of instruments (military and non-military) used against military, government and population through all five dimensions of operation (space, air, land, maritime and cyber). The clause of “Finland must be able to resist military pressure and a rapidly escalating military threat and repel a large-scale attack” may indicate to a degree of Fabian strategy to gain time for allied forces to come and strengthen the defence. Therefore, the Finnish strategy aims to build the resiliency of forces, government, and society. Subsequently, they seek better ability to provide and receive military assistance and raise the threshold effect of armed forces in preventing the escalation of the conflict. Further, the force utilization is described as “forces are divided into manoeuvre (operational), regional and local forces. The regional forces are used for creating regional defence coverage. The manoeuvre forces create the centre of gravity of the defence and fight the decisive battles. The local forces participate in the battle and provide security, surveillance, and support to the manoeuvre and regional forces in their area and assist them in maintaining contact with the other authorities.” 

The development strategy sustains the long legacy of evolutionary posture as the strategic capability programmes remain at the level of replacing dated platforms with new but similar. The strategy writers have seen it necessary even to defend the posture with “It is not possible to substitute the Hornet fleet’s capability with GBAD systems or with any unmanned aerial vehicles already in operational use or on the design board; they would cover but a part of the Hornet fleet’s capability.”