Lawrence M. Doane
In 2018, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs released the Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning (JCIC). Three years in the making, this document outlined a paradigm for use of the military, particularly below the threshold of armed conflict, to address broader national security objectives. Heavily influenced by H.R. McMaster’s work at the Army Capabilities and Integration Center, the Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning was principally inspired by the rise of so-called gray-zone challenges and the need to develop a military framework to meet adversary actions below the threshold of war.[1] The authors of the Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning also sought to close the perceived gap between America’s military successes on the battlefield and more lasting, strategic success. The solution proposed was a deviation from the rigid, structured tools of operational planning and the adoption of an approach capable of countering more opportunistic, fluid adversaries. A year later, Joint Doctrine Note 1-19 expanded upon the Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning and underscored the importance of viewing competition as a continuum of degrees of conflict, ranging from cooperative relations to outright combat. Most recently, the Joint Concept for Competing (JCC) was signed in February 2023, cementing a call for an expansion of the Joint Force’s mindset to encompass all aspects of competition into the foundation of future doctrine. Each of these documents seek a departure from a binary formulation of being at war or peace and to shift thinking to a more amorphous view of competition.
Yet, while this new emphasis on campaigning rather than campaigns, and continuous competition instead of finite operations, is a helpful step forward, it is not enough. U.S. doctrine, to include the new Joint Concept for Competition, are overly focused on adversaries—nations against whom U.S. policymakers can envisage using force. However, for the U.S. and its military to truly compete in all arenas short of war, it must recognize that integrated campaigning requires not just a different mindset and toolkit, but an entirely new perspective. 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.
An Innovation Inflection Point
Warfare, and its planning, is inherently conservative. The deadly consequences of error in the conception and execution of war tends to breed caution in its practitioners. Innovation and adaptation in both the theory and practice of war is uneven, often requiring jolts from outside forces or events to dislodge the orthodoxy.[2] Yet, when the conditions demand, vast doctrinal and theoretical shifts are possible. The development of operational art, adoption of the idea of a deep battle, and the concept of targeting an enemy as a system of systems all grew out of a period of shifting military technology and political demands.[3] While still controversial in some circles, the departure from a linear battlefield, defined by engagements along a frontline, to a conception of a deep battlefield with interlinked actions across distance and time drove much of the American military’s change in the 1980s. Concurrently, development of weapons such as the Army’s Big 5 or precision strike weapons for the Navy and Air Force made implementing the theory of deep battle or effects-based targeting possible.[4] Politically, the Goldwater-Nichols act drove doctrinal and policy reforms necessary to harness these new systems. In many ways, this process culminated in the sweeping victory of Operation Desert Storm. While some have seen Desert Storm as the opening war in a new era of history, it may be more useful to see it as the final battle in America’s last great period of military innovation.
The limits of the last innovative era are approaching. Evolutionary changes in the reach and precision of weapons continue, but more revolutionary changes in the way nations compete strain the current system’s ability to keep up. While operational art was developed to meet the increased physical reach and power of military formations, the very success of that formulation drove opponents to consider new ways of warfare.[5] While the idea of competition below the threshold of armed conflict is not new, the emergence of the so-called gray zone as a pivotal battlefield harkens back to the emergence of the deep battlefield’s rise in the development of operational art. Instead of new military hardware, it is the rise of social media, cyber warfare, and the blurring of combatants through the use of unmanned or unacknowledged forces that characterizes much of gray-zone warfare. Operational art’s development acknowledged the shift in international struggle from a linear, border-focused battle to a much larger battlefield, characterized by deep strikes and attacks on an enemy’s systems of command and control. Today’s challenge expands that struggle beyond even the confines of traditional warfare or even declared hostilities to encompass tactics such as information strikes against an opponent’s very culture and attacks on a nation’s cognition.[6]
Meeting the challenge of the gray zone and great power competition will require a return to innovation. Some of this work has already begun under the guise of integrated deterrence, but there is still far to go. As in the last great period of innovation, a wholesale reexamination of America’s way of war is needed. The culmination of the 1990s was the embrace of jointness, but the joint force, and the entire national security enterprise, must now lift its eyes to the horizon. The field of competition has expanded beyond where current conceptions of force can win the day. To meet these new challenges, America must embrace the challenge of a new innovative era, find what lies beyond Joint, and, most importantly, craft the tools we will need to get there.
Adversary-Focused, Force-Centric vs. Interest-Focused, Alignment-Centric
An adversary-focused, force-centric approach is vital to proper operational planning. It is impossible to develop a plan to defend Korea, for example, or restore access to the Persian Gulf without a clear focus on the likely adversary. This type of thinking is fundamental to good operational design, military campaign planning, and, to some extent, force design and budgetary formulation. This type of thinking generates a myriad of operational plans, base estimates, and other documents that detail how the United States will prepare for and fight its adversaries. While the nation has found long-term strategic gains elusive, the force-centric approach has proved remarkably effective at fielding a military that has dominated battlefields since the 1990s. As such, adversary focus and centrality of force are correctly at the core of joint planning and underpin much of the work at both the Defense Department and within the combatant commands.
Yet, an adversarial focus has its limits. When considering improving America’s overall security, a force-centric, deterrence-focused model may paradoxically reduce American security. The Clausewitzian conceptualization of warfare as a violent struggle between opposing parties is a valuable tool for understanding war, and by extension, the deterrence of war. The Clausewitzian analogy of a wrestling match provides the proper logical framework for force-centrism, placing primacy on gaining positional, temporal, or material advantage to win a fight, or, in the case of deterrence, showing an opponent they could either never win or only win at an unacceptable cost. Yet, this formulation reduces any third parties to either permanently uninvolved, irrelevant observers or participants eventually subsumed into one side of the equation of the other. While this may be a generally accurate view during armed conflict, applying this force-centric lens to relationships outside of open warfare may preclude a more nuanced approach.
In contrast, an interest-focused approach considers particular issues as problems to be solved. Rather than a wrestling match, the interest-based approach sees all parties as facing a problem together, such as disputed boundary lines in the South China Sea.[7] This is not to say that an interest-based approach equates to a cooperative approach. Some parties, antagonists, will be opposed to the preferred outcome of the United States. Other nations, protagonists, will be in support of the preferred outcome, but still may differ in approach or levels of interest. Interestingly, countries normally thought of as either allies or adversaries may be either protagonists or antagonists to a U.S. position, depending on the issue. The two statuses are not intrinsically linked.
Unlike the force-centric approach, using an interest-based model leads to an alignment-centric approach. The binary dichotomy of the wrestling match, so central to the effective use of force, gives way to a game of many players. In this multi-party game, the U.S. goal is to shift the environment to increasingly align other nation’s interests with the U.S. position. While force, or the threat of force, may play a role, the importance of a wider variety of techniques takes hold. Ultimately, the key to the interest-based model is acceptance that the United States and its security interests are not at the center of other nations’ decision making. Where the adversary-focused model distills struggles down to an “us vs. them” formulation, the interest-based approach leaves room to acknowledge and shape the varied interests of each party on their own merits, rather than as an eventual counterweight to deter a potentially shared adversary.
It is on this front that the Joint Concept for Competing may be most in need of improvement. The Joint Concept for Competing explicitly states that its precepts apply only to competition with nations that are potentially hostile and against whom the use of force may be envisaged, parties defined as adversaries in Joint Doctrine.[8] Yet, competition is not a binary state, nor limited to just two-party contests. Nations compete with each other in nearly all they do, from establishing trade agreements to setting immigration policy. Constraining the military’s mindset to considering only adversarial relationships in relation to competition is unhelpful and antithetical to the concept of integrated campaigning. When facing the need to either use or deter the use of force, the joint force must rightly adopt the adversary-centric approach. But, if integrated campaigning, which is to say the integration of the military instrument alongside all others, is to succeed, it must do so from an interest-centric perspective.
The Tools of Force vs. The Tools of Interest
As previously noted, when facing conflict, adversary-centrism works. While varying approaches are available, from center-of-gravity tactics to the never-ending search for the decisive point, an adversary-centered mindset is the foundational intellectual framework behind military success on the battlefield. At its core, adversary-centrism hones tactical logic, or the logic one uses to develop plans that gain decisive positional, material, or temporal advantage for the use of force on an enemy.
It is important to note that the term tactical, often used somewhat pejoratively in certain circles, does not imply a lower or less difficult form of intellectual endeavor. The use of tactical logic at the theater scale, such as War Plan Orange or Desert Storm, requires massive skill and military genius. Indeed, some have referred to the practice used to develop plans at this scale with terms such as military strategy or operations to delineate them from “simple tactics.”[9] Clearly, the practice of tactical logic at the theater or global scale is the province of only the most experienced, educated practitioners. While orders of magnitude more difficult and broader in scale than small unit tactics, however, the core logic behind these massive operations is not different. Each plan, fundamentally, sought to defeat an adversary through gaining positional, material, or temporal advantage.
Even at timescales that stretch decades, as envisioned by the adversarial competitions described in the Joint Concept for Competing, tactical logic may still be employed. Fundamentally, the Joint Concept for Competing describes strategic competition as a quest for competitive advantage. This advantage is framed through the net assessment of each party’s strengths and weaknesses with a goal to exploit or protect associated vulnerabilities.[10] Many geographic combatant commanders have come to see the competition phase as “setting the theater,” or seeking advantage for the eventual execution of an operational war plan. While at a generational timescale and operating below the threshold of armed conflict, strategic competition as envisioned by the Joint Concept for Competing is still threat-centric and uses tactical logic to understand its goals.
This tactical logic informs nearly all that the Department of Defense does. The adversary-centric model generates the operational plans that defend the nation, the raison d’etre of the combatant commanders. In turn, these plans also inform the force design and allocation process, each built upon mitigating the risk between budget allocations and the requirements derived from operational plans. The entire joint planning process is built with tools based on tactical logic, designed to deliver the needed advantages for the successful defeat or deterrence of an adversary. While defense cooperation, theater security plans, and campaign plans at both the theater and global level exist, they are still constructed with the end goal gaining competitive advantage to set the theater in preparation for the execution of an operational plan. Partners and allies are a means to an end.
By contrast, the interest-centric approach does not seek to directly achieve advantage over an adversary. Rather, this approach seeks to align interests with other nations where possible and, over time, to apply national power to create a situation where an increasing number of interests coincide. The core assumption of this approach is the more nations share interests, the more secure each will be. Fundamentally, countries with aligned interests do not tend to go to war with each other and are more likely to support each other’s perspective in international disputes.[11] Developing these relationships requires strategic logic, or the logic one uses to shape an environment through the application and arrangement of instruments of power. It is often characterized by indirect methods, rather than direct engagements. While the ends-ways-means paradigm is the most familiar expression of this framework, it is not the sole formulation.[12] What is fundamental is that strategic logic weaves together all instruments, to include the military, towards a realignment of interests.
An interests-based approach shifts the United States from an unrelenting focus on an adversary to viewing country and regional campaigns on their own terms. This has a two-fold benefit. The first is that such an approach will inevitably engender greater cooperation from other nations, even potentially hostile ones. While gains will be meager to non-existent for the most intransigent states, an interest-based approach, rather than a focus on a great power adversary, provides room for fence-sitting countries to find areas of potential cooperation. By not framing relationships through the sole lens of deterrence and threats, traditionally non-aligned nations such as Indonesia or most of Africa may be more open to areas of cooperation. Even staunch U.S. partners, like Singapore, blanch when the United States publicly trumpets combined military operations in deterrence of China.[13] The United States already uses this interest-based approach in much of its statecraft, particularly in the diplomatic and economic realm. To achieve integrated campaigns, the military must be able to do the same.
Beyond Joint is Integrated
Achieving integrated deterrence will require a period of innovation echoing the development of purported revolution in military affairs of the 1980s and 1990s. As then, a three-pronged approach is needed. The development of capabilities to meet gray-zone threats is already underway. The term harnessing, rather than development, may be more appropriate as the rapid rise of cyber and information tools, social media platforms, and unmanned systems is driven more by private sector advancements than those identified by military requirements. Indeed, the tools most powerful in the gray zone may not be traditional military capabilities at all.
Alongside new capabilities must come the doctrine and theory behind their use. As this paper has detailed, the most fundamental challenge facing national security leaders is finding a way to both maintain deterrence and overmatch against adversaries while ensuring other nations are not pushed into zero-sum “us vs. them” games. While the Department of Defense has made strides in recognizing the need to compete below the threshold of armed conflict and integrate itself into a whole-of-government approach, this is incomplete. Integration is not possible without adopting a new set of intellectual tools and frameworks. The Department of Defense’s challenge is finding a way to balance warfighting and deterrence-based doctrine with a new doctrine of interest alignment. The cornerstone of the Department is its already established potent and effective warfighting capability. The logic and toolset that creates this capability must be preserved. Yet, the Department must prove it can walk and chew gum at the same time and develop an alternative set of concepts. These concepts aligned along strategic logic, interest alignment, and long-term shifts in cooperation and competition must be additive to the Department’s existing capabilities.
This imperative to expand beyond the adversary-centric point of view is driven by budgets as much as by logic. In 2019, the U.S. government spent 900 billion dollars on the national security enterprise.[14] Of those funds, more than 80% was directly appropriated to the Department of Defense. Yet, Department leadership and planning cadre have fought to narrowly define their role as threat-based and military oriented. As previously discussed, this is a necessary stance to create deterrence, but should budgets continue to be highly skewed towards the “M” of DIME (Diplomacy-Information-Military-Economy), the Department of Defense will have to either expand its thinking to encompass an interest-based approach or continue to be an anchor on the way of thinking in the national security enterprise.
Finally, and perhaps most difficult, integration will require structural reform beyond the Department of Defense. Where Goldwater-Nichols ushered in an era of jointness and its myriad benefits, a new Goldwater-Nichols will be needed to create the era of integration and the harnessing of all of government to pursue national security and prosperity in this age. The details of such an act are far beyond the scope of this paper, or the skill of its author, but the broad outlines of reform are clear.
Interagency experience, both within the Department of Defense and other U.S. government and other entities, must become statutorily valued in the same way that joint experience is. Senior leaders, be they ambassadors, undersecretaries, or flag officers must come to the table with the network, experience, and tools to build unity of effort across the U.S. government. While many senior personnel already have these skills, formalizing this requirement will encourage more junior officers and officials to seek out and engage with interagency partners earlier in their careers. Organizations will also be pressed to find opportunities and resources to provide the most promising talent as they prepare them for future service. Congressional requirements, and resources, for this endeavor will be vital.
Alongside experience, a form of the joint professional military education model should be propagated across the national security enterprise. While all joint professional military education institutions have requirements for a varying number of interagency attendees, the institutions are still largely owned by the military. Beyond the mission of educating middle- to senior-grade officials, these institutions, and their envisioned interagency counterparts, should also be charged with researching innovative ways to apply their particular instrument of power to national security problems. Expansion of this culture of life-long learning, and placing the resourcing and funding behind it, will provide the foundation for creating integration, much as the original Goldwater-Nichols reforms in professional military education laid the groundwork for jointness.
Finally, any legislative reform must recognize that building budgets for deterrence does not yield the funds or systems needed for campaigning. Campaigning needs a separate appropriation, coordinating the wide variety of funding streams currently in use. Counter-narcotics trafficking funding, foreign military sales and financing, and development aid are all examples of the panoply of funding streams that weave together when campaigning. Yet, while these funding streams are often used towards the same strategic ends, their appropriation sponsors are disparate. Further, the sponsoring departments often see these funds as secondary to their primary missions of diplomacy, defense, or law enforcement. Creating a single umbrella appropriation and, more importantly, bringing these streams together under the oversight of a single appropriations sub-committee could vastly improve coordination and orchestration.
When General Dempsey pondered what comes after jointness, he was trying to see over the horizon towards our next era of struggle. That era has come. From the levée en masse to mechanized warfare and the advent of the networked world, social and technological revolutions have underpinned the great conflicts of the past. Another such inflection point looms. Gray-zone warfare, the blurring line between war and peace, and the boundary-erasing zeitgeist of social media all point to a rapidly changing security environment. The joint force must not wait to be dragged into the future, but rather act as the vanguard of change. Recognizing the paradox that increased deterrence can result in decreased security will be key. The U.S. cannot survive without the underlying doctrine and forces that ensure deterrence. But, in an era of persistent, unrestricted competition, deterrence will not be enough. Victory in the next era of competition will not come to the side with the most imposing forces, but to the nation best able to gather partners and allies motivated not by the shared threat of a common adversary, but on the alignment of mutual interest.
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