Deterrence is only one of eight basic effects in the combined effect influence strategy, but we cling to it as if it were the only one. Here’s the problem. We intend to deter armed conflict by denying benefits and imposing punishing costs on adversaries, but authoritarians wage effective warfare that we don’ recognize as warfare. They achieve effects that otherwise require armed conflict.

How?

By integrating influential information into competitive operations that do more than deter armed conflict.

How do they do that?

By influencing the will and capability of their selected targets to coerce while they deter, induce while they defend, persuade while they secure, and so forth.

We might understand all that but still focus on deterring armed conflict. As if that approach wins the raging competition and warfare that’s setting conditions for armed conflict. Our prevailing logic of Cold War coercion theory has deterred nuclear conflict so far, but not information and AI age threats.

China’s coercive seizure of territory by maritime construction in disputed waters is a prime example. Prepped by decades of effective warfare at home and abroad, the Chinese Communist Party-government timed its spate of invasions to coincide with perceived U.S. weakness. US policy doesn’t regard those territorial seizures as warfare. US and allied freedom of navigation operations that sail by and fly over have not deterred them, either. Some leaders even call the artificial constructions “islands,” which helps China legitimize their faits accomplis as legal entities.

Here’s a More Competitive Strategy

Strategic competition is more complex than just deterring violent aggression. Real competition and warfare in today’s interconnected environment include at least eight basic effects (“ends”) across three basic dimensions of strategy. The combined effect influence strategy (CEIS) visualizes these dimensions as spectra with extreme endpoints. In between the endpoints are mixtures of the extreme ends. This diversity is what we see in a broad competition that contests the ends, ways, and means of strategy. All intelligent agents (human and artificial) fight with combined strategies that cooperate and confront, prevent and cause, psychologically and physically:

The three spectral lines reveal psychological and physical, preventive and causative, and cooperative and confrontational ends, ways, and means. That synthesis is how we find combinations of effects that compete better against adversaries.

Visualizing Strategy in Three Dimensions

“Combined effect influence strategy” focuses on the ends of strategy that become ways and means for other ends. The strategy consists of “combined strategies” that integrate dimensions (psycho-physical, preventive-causative, and coop-frontational) and elements (ends, ways, and means). Operators need a mission focus, so combined effect influence conveys that.

3-D visualization helps show where these strategy dimensions and elements intersect. So, we get combinations like a causative cooperative psychological strategy to effect “compellence.” So, to compel means to cause a behavior cooperatively and psychologically. Those dimensions could even be indicators of compellence when we try to attribute intent. The eight cubes in this cuboid represent the eight basic effects we get by combining the three dimensions with the three strategy elements. Here’s the simple view of a combined strategy cuboid:

Here’s the filled-in cuboid with the eight effects and how to generate each one by influencing will and capability:

Why look at the dimensions and elements of strategy in this inscrutable way? Because it’s not inscrutable to authoritarian competitors and adversarial AI. It’s relatively simplistic. Strategists in democracies must master combining different effects to prevail in broad competition because they can impose effective dilemmas. That’s a good strategy. A helpful analogy is a combined arms maneuver, where artillery or infantry fixes the enemy in place, and airpower or armor cuts off their retreat. The enemy faces a dilemma of staying in place and being destroyed or moving and being destroyed. Combined arms require 3-D innovation, too.

What are the desired combined effects of the combined arms maneuvers above? For an instrumental (not existential) strategy, it must be more than destruction for its own sake or to reinforce an identity. The answer could be to coerce a retreat and compel surrender. More broadly, might seek to coerce the destruction of enemy forces, induce economic hardship on elites with sanctions, compel decision-makers to comply with targeted information and sanctions, and dissuade domestic influencers from supporting their government’s campaign.

Seeing Strategy Gaps

These effects require persistent campaigning and adjusting strategy to stay competitive in the effects that matter most. Just as a one-time military strike usually is not decisive for effects aligned in a hierarchy of the impact. Such a hierarchy of effects (“effort” in joint doctrine) consists of activities or tasks that help establish end-states that support objectives and advance strategic priorities. A well-executed kinetic strike might appear to be successful, but what are its criteria for success?

Our strategic cross-check must include all instruments and effects to see what success requires. If we fixate on deterring armed conflict, it is not a strategy we can achieve with military power alone. The instruments of power are interconnected, so we must consider all effective options. If we only integrate deterrence, we lose against effects that circumvent our deterrence or shape various favorable conditions. Authoritarians have been doing this for a long time, with and without outright military coercion. They compete with all-effect, all-domain strategies, including but also beyond deterrence.

In contrast, democracies tend to regard pairings of preventive effects as more acceptable. Who could argue against the two cooperative preventive pairings: dissuasion and security? Even the two confrontational preventive ones–deterrence and defense–don’t sound as aggressive as the causative ones–coercion and compellence.

The confrontational pairings sound like warfare to most democracies: coercion and compellence. We tend to portray those as deterrence and defense. Coercion theory, the dominant security paradigm in democracies since the 1960s, presents deterrence and compellence as forms of coercion. The alternatives to using “brute force” are coercive deterrence and coercive compliance. Most elected leaders drop “coercive” to sound less warlike. A planner, however, must distinguish among desired effects to design assessable operations to achieve objectives. Doing that persistently requires influential combinations of effects beyond deterrence. To repeat, our Cold War-era coercion theory regards deterrence as coercive. Today, that’s a narrow approach to achieving national security.

Operations must consider all relevant effects to compete against today’s adversaries. Various schoolhouses, of course, teach more effects than these eight basic ones, but the definitions sometimes overlap, are vague, or justify themselves. Such as “disrupt” and “delay,” “initiative” and “stability,” and “destroy and “offense,” respectively.

Joint and Service military doctrines at least define “information” now. Information is data assigned meaning in context. With this definition of information, we should be able to assess effective operations and adjust them during a campaign. Why? Because we can identify what information is not. It’s not data without meaning or not put into context. Have you ever gotten an intelligence briefing that didn’t venture to offer what the information means in the context at hand? What does that mean for the commander?

Influential operations must integrate information that’s meaningful and fits the context. Otherwise, we can easily operate without producing competitive effects. What effects do we integrate? Look at the hierarchy of effects to determine what will win advantage. Deterring armed aggression is necessary but insufficient to compete with adversaries who can achieve their goals with other effects.

How to Operationalize Influential Effects

Putting competitive effects into practice must overcome two obstacles undermining adaptive military doctrine. And there are two big catches.

First, military doctrine is implemented too narrowly compared to the effects that military ways and means are supposed to help generate in a whole-of-government effort. The Department of Defense Strategy for Operations in the Information Environment (SOIE) calls explicitly for integrated deterrence, campaigning, and enduring advantages that support strategic outcomes.

The catch is that enduring advantages include but extend well beyond deterring armed conflict.

Second, the U.S. policy approaches warfare from a mindset of non-violent peace vs. violent war. This idealistic separating state-of-peace and state-of-war has led to two naive cliches: we fight “when deterrence fails,” and avoiding armed conflict is “winning without fighting. The SOIE calls for integrating informational and physical power beyond a “combined arms approach.” Furthermore, the SOIE advocates planning military objectives to influence relevant actors’ behaviors directly and indirectly.

The catch here is that the United States must compete with adversaries’ broad warfare without going to war. War, that is, according to our narrower conception.

Strategists can overcome these challenges by treating the information environment as an operating environment. Information operates in cycles of input-change-output as systems. In this operating environment, combined effects are the purpose of combined arms, and concepts of influence explain how concepts of operations plan to achieve desired effects.

Creating and destroying information is a competitive process that puts data into meaningful context. In our digitized and interconnected world, information generates physical and psychological energy. For instance, rearranging 1’s and 0’s can create new physical elements (radiation), software (zero-day exploits), and neural networks (generative AI). The tangible and cognitive combined effects of such interactions among information define technological, economic, and political-military advantages. We must look for, analyze, and synthesize information to see it. We must compete with it to win.

Somewhere, operations that seek advantage must include how they achieve desired effects. Concepts of influence do this. They specify how activities affect will and capability for particular effects. They inform concepts of operations and force us to think about information operating in cycles. The cycles contest influence. How competitive is yours?

A policymaker, manager, commander, strategist, or planner should ask, what combined effects and concepts of influence are most competitive for my problem? Let’s clarify how influential combined effects help operations compete better.   

Case: the Senkakus in the East China Sea

Consider the US-Japan alliance’s challenge in territory disputed by China: the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea.

Note: the Senkakus don’t belong to China because they sit in the “East China Sea,” just as all islands in the Gulf of Mexico don’t belong to Mexico.

US policy is to defend Japan from an armed attack on its territory when deterrence (of what we regard as an attack) fails. At the same time, the US government takes no position on these competing claims between Japan and China. Unfortunately, this policy’s strategic effects are often too narrow compete against broadly integrated effects. US strategy should support the Japanese government’s diplomacy and include any narrative, economic initiatives, and social activities related to the dynamic situation. Granted, that whole-of-government feat is much more politically challenging than military defense. We must not fail because the Chinese Party-government targets the entire range of US-Japan alliance vulnerabilities. 

How close is US-Japan agreement on diplomatic policy, informational public diplomacy, military defense, economic activities in the East China Sea, and social relationships that affect this situation? An excellent example of diplomatic-and-more agreement is the US-Japan Security Consultative Committee. Its joint statements take a broad view of security, including democracy, economic prosperity, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, human rights, and a rules-based international order. A combined effect influence strategy could operationalize feasible lines of effort to achieve shared interests. Lines of effort can also exchange different interests.

China’s strategy exploits several US-Japan vulnerabilities. Here are a few. The US is not part of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), as is Japan and other US allies. The US initiated the TPP under the Obama administration (2009), then pulled out of the agreement under the Trump administration (2017), prompting the other signatories to establish the CPTPP. The Biden administration’s replacement for the CPTPP is the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, which focuses on standards, rules, and supply chains rather than market access. The Government of Japan still uses the seal of the Toyotomi clan. This practice undermines relations with the Koreas in favor of China due to Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s brutal invasions of Choson (Korea, 1592-1598). Chinese and Korean forces eventually caused Hideyoshi to retreat. Military exercises can be an operational success but a regional failure if they include photos of Japanese warships flying the kyokujitsu-ki (rising sun flag of imperial Japan). Such operations’ informational output reduces Korean support and strengthens Sino-Korean ties. 

How does China exploit such economic, political, diplomatic, and military vulnerabilities? By operating with integrated information that competes better against US and allied strategies.

All operations’ effects must have an informational impact, or they lose. A bilateral communique that fails to cite common policies is less compelling. Public diplomacy that fails to message social media about common values is less persuasive. Military exercises can successfully practice joint functions, but they also should promote mutual commitment to security that works for each partner. The US-Japan Trade Agreement of 2020 provides mutual economic benefit, but the informational influence has been divisive. The agreement was touted in the US as a Japanese concession. In Japan, the deal is compared to the CPTPP, another US “reverse course” in policy.

When we analyze the US-Japan and China strategies regarding combined effect influence, the US-Japan security strategy is more passive than China’s. Let’s see how.

China and Japan’s Combined Effect Strategies

The basic combined effects of China and Japan’s strategies favor China as long as the US-Japan alliance focuses narrowly on deterrence and defense.

China’s combined effect strategy is to persuade the American public and decision-makers of its claims and the Japanese public against Japan’s use of force; dissuade and deter US military support of Japan; induce Japan to recognize the existence of a dispute; and compel and coerce Japan into humiliating inaction or use of force. This combination is more than deterrence.

Japan’s strategy is to persuade Japanese and American public opinion to support Japan’s sovereignty, induce US military activities to support Japan, and deter and defend against China’s intrusion and occupation of Senkaku territory. The combination also is more than deterrence. In Japan, all that must be related to self-defense due to constitutional restraints.

The components of the two overall combined effects are primarily psychological— dissuasion, deterrence, persuasion, inducement, and compellence. Only one component in each strategy is a physical effect—China’s coercion and Japan’s defense.  These effects compete against each other. China’s strategy is superior because it integrates influential effects that present a dilemma to Japan: compliance or risk of overreacting or recognizing that the dispute exists. 

Any operation is effective to the extent it influences will and capability to create competitive effects. Just creating deterrence against coercion is way too narrow to out-compete a well-coordinated broader strategy. Given the volume and pace of information at hand, effective strategy must create, rearrange, and integrate information into operations. 

An effective US-Japan counterstrategy must contest each component of China’s strategy, exploit the vulnerabilities, or asymmetrically target China’s critical vulnerabilities. The Communist Party’s systematic deception of its citizens is a glaring societal vulnerability. When we look at actual US diplomatic, informational, military, economic, and even social activities toward our ally Japan, the US government is already generating effects beyond deterrence. However, official policy touts integrated deterrence against armed conflict as its main security and defense strategy, leaving the rest unintegrated and ad hoc. Adversaries exploit this gap opportunistically.

Opportunistic Combined Effects 

Combined effects create agility for competitive strategies by providing more pathways to achieving objectives and goals. For example:

• Islamic extremists’ 9/11/01 attacks provoked and activated the longest war in US history that ended with the US and allies’ withdrawal on Taliban terms
• Putin Russia’s complex warfare against Ukraine invaded, seized, and annexed Crimea, then launched a full-out invasion of Ukraine, an ongoing war that tests the determination of democracies to defend a NATO partner (not member)
• Xi China’s maritime constructions seized, militarized, and continue to hold disputed maritime territory 

Successful outcomes are not an automatic result of a well-designed strategy. Uncertainty is ubiquitous. All sorts of variables influence the application of strategy. Adaptive execution is always important. We must design, plan, and adjust combined effect influence strategies that compete across the entire competition continuum.

Recommendations

The following recommendations expand the US government’s deterrence-centric approach to warfare by integrating influential information and combining superior effects. A profession of effects beyond the profession of arms could help institutionalize this broader identity. Competitors are already achieving effects beyond deterrence while shaping the terms of armed conflict.

• The US national security community should integrate competitive influence into operations to expand the nation’s truncated version of security and defense strategy. Operations must produce more effects than deterrence to be competitive.
• The whole-of-government effort should develop activities that (a) influence will and capability better than our competitors and (b) produce superior combined effects, including deterrence. Concepts of influence must explain how activities plan to achieve desired effects.
• US national security strategy should apply across the competition spectrum of cooperation and confrontation. Within existing policy constraints, analysts, planners, and operators must be aware of the full range of competition, not just deterring one of its extremes. 
• The US government should consider expanding shared information across alliances and partners to better source influence that generates and sustains superior combined effects. Discussions should include any different meanings of information in context to inform feasible superior strategy.