What is a Modern Military Strategy?
Definition for a Military Strategy
National-related strategy is comprehensive, provides direction, has a purpose of control, and is fundamentally concerned with applying power in achieving national goals. (Eccles, 1958) Current national-level strategic thinking assumes that states and other competitive entities have interests they will pursue to the best of their abilities. Interests may be realised in end states like survival, economic well-being, and enduring national values. A good strategy is never developed in isolation. The following figure illustrates one view of the strategic horizon. (Yarger, 2006)
Figure 1: A comprehensive strategy view
Carl von Clausewitz defined the military strategy as "the employment of battles to gain the end of war." (Clausewitz, 1984) B.H. Liddell Hart extended the definition to "military means" and "to fulfil the ends of policy." (Liddell Hart, 1967) Lenin and Trotsky extended the strategy towards the art of infinite conquest by diminishing the boundaries between war and peace in the struggle of classes. (Strachan, 2008)
It seems natural that military strategy is subordinate to national defence strategy, being its military pillar. The US defines 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." (Mattis, 2018)
An Environment for Military Strategy
From the strategic survivability viewpoint, a state may perceive threats as existential, global/regional, and intra-state threats. Military force may be required to mitigate threats in all of these categories, for example, taking care of flows of immigrants fleeing changing climate and withering resources, deterring the violence spreading caused by the clash of ideologies, or preventing the alienation of the nation's youths. These state strategic goals are not close to military ways of using controlled violence but can be assigned to the Armed Forces. Therefore, a military strategy is always a part of state security and defence strategies.
Figure 2: A generic threat environment from a state security view (Mattila, 2022)
Strategic Horizon - Finite or Infinite - for a Military Strategy
Military strategy is all about using armed power in a confrontation between two or more societies. (Gray, 1999) Call these societies nations, states, coalitions, enterprises, or groups. Previously, the escalated confrontation ended in war between states, but nowadays, we have a different continuum of conflicts. (Carse, 2013) 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 insignias and mercenaries or voluntary groups, i.e., Little Green Men, to occupy Crimea and Eastern parts of Ukraine in 2014. (Wikipedia, 2024) Phenomena is called a hybrid conflict in the Western military-strategic thinking. (Hybrid CoE, 2024) Since the Westphalian world order is no longer valid, the military needs to think of strategy as part of an infinite game with various actors through the entire spectrum of relationships.
Figure 3: Continuum of conflict according to US Military Strategy 2015 © U.S.DoD
Lines of Power Projection in a Confrontation
Traditionally, militarised violence has changed social behaviour by causing material and human attrition in the physical realm. Survivors of the violence have forwarded information about horrors to other people, whose feelings and beliefs are altered based on the received information. (US DoD, 2018) People may change their behaviour when these new feelings and beliefs are confirmed within the social construction. (Zuboff, 2019, ss. 93-97) That is the simple, linear approach. Whereas, in many revolutions, a force captures control over broadcasting services, starts distributing their information and changes the behaviour of society. Besides, social media has enabled terrorists to distribute videos of their physical violence to a broader audience, thus extending the impact of fear and terror. (Kaldor, 2012) Furthermore, the art of strategy (Sun, 2014, ss. 92-93) aims to conquer or suppress the adversary without fighting by indisposing the adversary's plans and preventing the junction of its forces. The physical attrition on the battlefield, especially against prepared positions, is perceived as the worst scenario. Figure 4 illustrates that cyberspace gradually extends towards the physical, information and cognitive realms and subsequently opens new avenues to create impact and change human behaviour.
Figure 4: A wider view of lines of military power projection (Mattila, 2022)
An Operational Military Strategy
There are two types of military strategies: operational and force development strategy. The operational strategy uses existing military capabilities to achieve political aims. (Smith, 2008) The force development strategy aims to meet the requirements of future threats and objectives stated by political analysis.
The operational strategy is one element in a four-part structure: (Gray, 1999)
- First are the political ends to be obtained.
- Second are the strategies for obtaining them, and how resources will be deployed.
- Third are tactics, how 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, for example, 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 WW I (Wikipedia, 2024) and seemingly, the recent Russian Spring 2024 effort against Ukraine. (Institute for the study of war, 2024)
- 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. (Wikipedia, 2024) When Russia denied this opportunity, Napoleon was not able to achieve his political goals of annihilating Russian Forces and gaining a surrender.
- 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. (Chun, 2010) Another example is the US waged wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan. In both cases, the US popular opinion was exhausted with negative information coming from the front. (Kimmit, 2009)
- Fabian Strategy (named after the Roman dictator Quintus Fabius trying to avoid direct confrontation with Hannibal in the 2nd Punic War) seeks to avoid the conflict and, if possible, to survive while gaining more time and resources to switch to other strategies. The approach was used by Tsar Alexander against Napoleon’s Grand Armeen attack when scorching resources from their avenue of approach, George Washington in the American Revolutionary War against English forces, and Viet Minh using hit and run against French forces. (Wikipedia, 2024)
These strategies may include deterring, denying, disrupting, degrading, or defeating, as called in the US DoD integrated approach 2015.
A Military Force Generation Strategy
The Force generation strategy can be presented using Gattorna’s strategic posture analysis (Gattorna, 2010) in Figure 5. 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 an Evolutionary posture. Evolutionary means that they continuously but carefully improve their forces with available technology and copy tactics from other forces they benchmark. Posture is a low-risk approach, but for example, NATO was caught by surprise when the Warsaw Pact disintegrated, and it took a long time for NATO to react to fulfil new expectations in the 1990s and 2000s. The Russian operations in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria again caught NATO countries unprepared, and now they are busy reacting and trying to address old threats of peer-level or dominant conventional forces.
At their northern borders, the Warsaw Pact and China developed their forces in an operational posture. Since they did not have the latest technology but had a willing population and strong 2nd and 3rd generation armament manufacturing, they developed massive armies using conventional technology at an elevated level of operational efficiency.
The US Armed Forces have varying Pathfinder and Protective strategies. They have tried to gain strategic advantage two times by being a Pathfinder in developing the newest technology. First, the Strategic Defence Initiative in the early 1980s, which, although only an information operation, helped to exhaust the resources of the Soviet Union. (Wikipedia, 2024) Second, the Network Centric Warfare initiative (US DoD, 2001), which gave them an upper hand in the Gulf Wars, succeeded in annihilating twice the military might of Saddam Hussein. The US has been applying a protective posture to prevent other nations from copying their advanced technologies by controlling high-tech exports to China. (Eitel, 2024)
Figure 5: Strategic postures for military development strategies (Mattila J. K., 2020)
Samples of Current Military Strategies
The United States of America
The US National Defense Strategy 2018 (Mattis, 2018) differs from its predecessor, 2015 (U.S. DoD, 2015) in recognising China and Russia as the higher national threats. The strategy realises that fast-developing commercial technology is available to state and non-state actors thus eroding the Protective posture the US has previously enjoyed. The strategy emphasises sustaining US strengths in the lethality of their forces, strong alliances, technological innovation and culture of performance, which create an advantage against their opponents in confrontations. However, the US strives for Operational superiority by improving its 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 at traditional Attrition as the operational strategy. Only "advanced autonomous systems are invested broadly," tells of efforts to regain long-term strategic Pathfinder advantages.
The United Kingdom
The U.K. National Security Strategy 2015 (UK MoD, 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 and national resilience. Armed Forces are required to increase their manpower and create Joint Force 2025 to project force abroad. The Joint Force is demanded to be bigger (50,000) and more agile to tackle a broader range of more sophisticated adversaries together with security and intelligence agencies. The UK follows the Evolutionary strategy of increasing and developing its conventional force. However, the request for further agility proves a hint of Operational superiority. In conclusion, the military might be employed agilely using joint and interagency effects, indicating the operations' attrition/exhaustion types.
Finland
The Government's Defence Report in Finland 2017 (PM of 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 and a more comprehensive range of instruments (military and non-military) used against the military, government and population through all five dimensions of operation (space, air, land, maritime and cyber). The clause "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, 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 utilisation is described as "forces are divided into manoeuvre (operational), regional and local forces. The regional forces are used to create 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 ones. 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."
