Fighting to win takes many forms, not just violent conflict. It always has, but technology increasingly empowers more types of fighters with more types of weapons. Accordingly, focusing on conflict loses the wars that adversaries wage in ways we don’t regard as fighting. Broader competition exploits narrower-minded beliefs and identities that fighting only applies to lethal conflict. We must win high-end fights. However, clever competitors are fighting to win with superior effects all the time, not just when deterrence of armed conflict fails. They shape the terms of competition from cooperation to confrontation, including conflict.

Old and new examples include:

• Ideologues inspire social movements for religious or secular goals.
• Revolutionaries exploit grievances to overthrow vulnerable regimes.
• Influencers polarize contentious debate to de-legitimize governance.
• Cybercriminals steal, ransom, and reuse intellectual property for profit.
• State or proxy hackers attack critical infrastructure to deny essential services.
• Invaders seize territory by constructing artificial land claimed as sovereign “islands.”

The reality of our “glocally” interconnected environment is persistent, holistic competition in multiple dimensions of strategy.

Fighting to Win Requires Competing in 3-D

Strategic competition, in its many forms, involves thinking and fighting for desired outcomes. We need broad definitions to account for broad competition:

• “Strategic” refers to arranging ends, ways, and means. Strategic does not refer to the range or yield of a weapon or a level in an organization.
• “Competition” includes all efforts to gain something. This broad scope provides for mutual agreement (cooperation), disagreement (confrontation), and use of violence (conflict).
• “Fighting” means actively confronting a threat, ranging from “coop-frontation” to armed conflict. Fighting is not restricted to violence. It’s competitive in three strategic dimensions: psychological-physical, preventive-causative, and cooperative-confrontational.
• “Conflict” involves the actual use of violence, as in lethal confrontations and most wars.
• “Wars” involve direct and indirect violence. Examples include the Cold War active measures (Thomas Rid), wars of brains and wisdom (Narushige Michishita, xxvi, 186), and ideological struggles (see Patricia Kim’s insightful article).

These three dimensions of strategy are not the natural terrain features or human-made cyber environment you might be thinking of. They are strategic conditions we can influence to compete more effectively. Here they are, expressed as opposites for clarity. They merge in most situations.

Fighting to Win in the Psychological-Physical Dimension

Foremost is the physical and psychological dimension. This dimension resides in any sentient being’s brain and nervous system. Fighting to win advantage must recognize how we’re wired for feelings. Physical force or psychological trauma is sensed and transmitted by neurons as electrical impulses. Knowing this matters for effective operations. Activities that consider neurocognitive influence are more effective than those that ignore it (see Ian McCulloh’s TedTalk on social networks).

Fighting to Win in the Cooperative-Confrontational Dimension

The second dimension of competition is cooperative and confrontational. These conditions describe agreement and disagreement. This dimension relates to the first one because it’s inherently psycho-physical. Those conditions can change. Adversaries fight to win here by combining cooperation with confrontation. For instance, complying with confrontation can, over time, fool us into thinking that we’re cooperating. (see Madison Vickery on cooperation and compliance). Physical conditions also influence how cooperative and confrontational we feel, which also relates to the previous dimension.

Fighting to Win in the Preventive-Causative Dimension

Third, competition involves preventing and causing something. Adversaries fight for some aspect of the status quo or to change it. Once again, the conditions are fundamentally psycho-physical, then cooperative-confrontational. Our goals and objectives make us compete for resources, representation, power, and other interests or values. We agree and disagree on what to prevent and cause, which leads to cooperation and confrontation. This dimension of strategy helps us identify ends that become ways and means for other ends. For instance, causing someone to accept a belief can get them to prevent or cause a behavior.

How Cooperation Includes Fighting to Win

How is cooperation fighting? Let’s consider threat-based and rules-based cooperation.

Mutual agreement to cooperate is a competition against common threats. The threat might be an actor like a territorial predator, or a condition such as rising sea levels. Pure cooperation that doesn’t include disagreements is rare. Actively fighting for one’s point of view emerges in most cases.

Cooperation permits such fighting based on accepted rules. As conditions change, mutual agreement must include processes or procedures to accommodate competing interests and values. That willingness and ability to compromise can test a cooperative relationship. Cooperative relationships rest on legitimate competition.

Take markets, which change all the time. Even highly competitive markets have rules to regulate trade and finance.

Or, look at democratic politics based on representation. Principles and mechanisms for achieving compromise are baked into many national constitutions. A balance of power among government branches also regulates fighting for freedom and order without civil war.

Even dictatorships must claim to have cooperative rules so they can rule. Consider an extreme case: North Korea. Each successive autocrat has forced compliance based on national self-reliance (juche), a false cooperative cover for totalitarian rule. “Constructive cooperation” is possible, but it comes with confrontation, not without it.

We cooperate against threats like economic depression, severe inequality, lack of opportunity, natural disasters, and invasions. Some threats are mutually agreed upon, as in most formal alliances. More complex cooperation includes exchanging different interests, which I argued was the original basis of the U.S.-Japan security bargain.

Fighting to Win by Manipulating Information

Claims of cooperation cloak most confrontations. Coop-frontation is the usual concoction. Fighting to win advantage includes manipulating information. Dis-, mis-, and mal-information distort meaning or context, as shown in Figure 2 from Redalyc:

(Source: https://www.redalyc.org/journal/147/14768130011/html/)

Most governments want to avoid violent conflict, an extreme form of confrontation. Adversaries exploit this fear. We can best manage those threats by preparing for conflict and shaping its conditions. How? By recognizing cooperation and confrontation as competitive. 

Fighting to Win by Blending Cooperation with Confrontation

Competitors blend cooperation with confrontation. They gain market share, brutalize political opponents, and seize territory by artificial constructions. We do recognize armed conflicts like outright military invasions. We should expect opponents to be selective in cooperating and confronting while deterring our use of force. They seek to shape the conditions of conflict by building supply chains with partners we won’t attack, suppressing domestic opponents we won’t support, and occupying territory we don’t effectively contest. Such coop-frontation works as long as we fail to compete.

If we myopically focus on a continuum of conflict that wages warfare only when deterring conflict fails, we “lose without fighting.” Or, as I prefer, opponents “win by fighting in ways we don’t recognize as fighting.”

Again, we lose that fundamental fight when we fixate on armed conflict. 

It follows that we must compete across the entire spectrum of competition, from cooperation through confrontation, including conflict, psychologically and physically, to prevent and cause actions. To visualize that, let’s use our fist.  

Visualize Fighting to Win in 3-D

Make a fist with your right hand and look at the top. See your fist as a cube with six sides. Use figures 3-8 as a guide.

Front:

Back (ok, your wrist is in the way):

Left:

Right:

Top: 

Bottom:

That’s seeing in 3-D. Now let’s name each side an effect:

Front: Prevent

Back: Cause

Left: Psychologically

Right: Physically

Top: Cooperate

Bottom: Confront

Next, move your fist in the following directions to help memorize (or program) which 3-D effect each side represents. Each X, Y, and Z axis corresponds to a dimension. Your fist can maneuver in each axis.

Slide it forward or back along the x-axis (like a throttle).

Yaw left or right along the z-axis (like a rudder).

Elevate up or down along the y-axis (like a vertical control stick).

Imagine an object hovering straight in front of you. It’s approaching you now, but you have a 3-D effects cube.

What can you do with your fist in three dimensions? The object is still advancing toward you. 

Slide forward to prevent the object from moving. 

Slide your fist backward to cause the object to move. 

Yaw, it left to prevent or cause object movement psychologically.

Yaw it right to prevent or cause object movement physically. 

Elevate it up to prevent or cause object movement cooperatively.

Lower it to prevent or cause object movement confrontationally.

Visualize Fighting to Win with 3-D Effects

Now, you can visualize fighting to win with 3-D effects. Remember, effects can be preventive-causative, psychological-physical, and cooperative-confrontational simultaneously. Each EFFECT (capitalized in the next paragraph) has three dimensions. 

For instance, you can psychologically and cooperatively cause behavior through PERSUASION. When you prevent a behavior psychologically and cooperatively, that’s DISSUASION. Do that confrontationally, and instead of persuading, you’re COMPELLING. Confrontational Dissuasion becomes DETERRENCE. If you prevent behavior physically and confrontationally, you are DEFENDING. When you cause a behavior physically and confrontationally, you are COERCING. 

Fighting to Win Eight Basic Effects

We get 2x2x2 = eight different effects when we add all these combinations. 

That’s why your fist is so handy.

Your cube is technically a “cuboid” of eight smaller cubes. 

Fighting to Win in All Three Dimensions

We must compete in these three dimensions by fighting for advantage. The very interconnectedness of our environment that provides benefits also presents plenty of attack surfaces. Resilience is essential, but we need to be proactive, too.

A continuum of conflict ignores six of the eight cubes in this cuboid. It’s more effective to think of a competition continuum (Figure 1). That continuum is typically defined by the mix of cooperation and confrontation, as rendered in 2-D. A 3-D rendering is even more effective once you get used to thinking in multiple dimensions. AI can already do this (see what Kineviz can do).

See how far we’ve come? Your 3-D fist can do what Figure 10 does. The effects cuboid is a more accurate competition model than the 2-D line of Figure 1. Bonus: if you have an extraordinarily square fist, you might even be able to visualize your eight cubes. No, I haven’t drawn those on my fist, but if you do, don’t use a permanent marker.

Remember, each cube represents one of those eight effects. Such as forward-left-up is prevent-psychologically-cooperate. That effect is Dissuasion.  

In case you are wondering, eight different effects are more than the six sides of your cuboid. That’s because you have three choices between two opposite effects. So you get three multiples of two: 2x2x2. Eight. 

See the Gist with your Fist

These exercises represent powerful options for fighting to win with competitive tactics, operations, and strategies. I hope this provides a memorable way to think about the three basic dimensions of any strategy.

There are other dimensions, too. You can add constraints–budget, time, timing, and impact on climate or other environmental considerations. See the gist of fighting to win during pre-deployment, deployment, in-place operations, or any phase of a business model. Just ask the same three questions: what to prevent and cause, how psychologically and physically, and how cooperatively or confrontationally?  

If you remember those three questions, your portable cuboid can explore what matters most in strategy. Effective strategy is holistic, agile, and asymmetric. You can explore those characteristics, too.

Fighting to Win with Holistic Effects

The whole is more significant than the sum of its parts. Your cuboid combines three dimensions simultaneously for a more holistic impact than a one-dimensional continuum. Soon, you’ll see how combining any or all of the eight basic 3-D effects can create an even more holistic strategy.

Fighting to Win with Agile Effects

You can instantly switch between different effects with fist gestures. Start with forward and back to decide on what to prevent (fist forward) and what to cause (fist backward). The movements are forward-left-down, forward-left-up, forward-right-down, forward-right-up, backward-left-down, backward-left-up, backward-right-down, backward-right-up. How fast and efficiently can you do that? Change the order of each movement to show which dimension you decide on first. All that represents agility.

Fighting to Win with Asymmetric Effects

To create asymmetric effects, you need to know your opponent’s effects. Asymmetry is based on comparing differences. Create an advantage with different effects than your opponent’s. Generally, strength against weakness works, but you must focus on superior effects, not just superior ways and means. You can win all the battles and lose the war if you ignore differences in significant effects.

For instance, despite their superior firepower and mobility, the British in Malaya defeated the communist insurgency (1948-1960) after they changed their goal from preserving colonial rule to supporting an independent Malaya (1957). Independence was a persuasive and compelling narrative that competed well against the insurgents’ promise of an independent but communist-controlled Malaya.

Select effects that fit the context and out-compete your opponents’ effects. Coercion might defeat Dissuasion in the short term, but you need longer-term effects to sustain desirable conditions you created through physical or psychological destruction. You also need non-coercive effects.

Holistic, agile, and asymmetric effects don’t just happen automatically. Leaders must fight to win in this manner. A commander’s intent aligned with other efforts and permitting freedom of action can create and sustain success.

Fighting to Win with Combined Effects 

You can create two different effects in all three dimensions using both fists. Effective commanders will find many “arms” to prevent and cause behaviors simultaneously, in sequence, and alternately to develop favorable conditions.

Commander’s Intent

A commander’s intent can empower planners and operators to design and execute combinations of effects. Mindful of risk and trust, a commander can distribute desired effects across units and individuals. 

Examples include kinetic combined arms maneuvers to fix the enemy in place. Such as causing an engagement that prevents the enemy from moving forces to defend a flank where we’ve maneuvered forces to destroy them. What could be a combined effect of these combined arms? Options include (a) confrontational-psychological effects that prevent and cause behavior–deterrence and compellence, and (b) confrontational-physical effects that prevent and cause behavior–defense and coercion. Keeping the desired combined effect in mind is vital in maneuvers to find, fix, track, target, and engage will and capability, then assess the results.

You can mix and match effects to see what works best or doesn’t fit the context. You can even shape the use of force, which is only one type of coercion, with other effects. Persuasion and inducement can strengthen coercion when your opponent’s politics or economics are vulnerable. They can even replace coercion.

That’s what China’s strategies do—winning in ways we don’t always recognize as fighting. So they produce faits accomplis like seizing territory without provoking armed conflict.

To expand and focus on all relevant options, we can distill them into the three basic choices:

What do we intend to prevent or cause, and shall we do it psychologically or physically, cooperatively or confrontationally? Answering these questions produces inexhaustible possibilities.

Cognitive Maneuver

The ability to gain contextual awareness of the operational environment and apply appropriate combinable effects for advantage is our only limit. My colleagues Randy Munch and Sohail Shaikh call this broad approach, “cognitive maneuver.”

Cognitively, we can maneuver to influence any agent’s will and capability to elicit each effect–even the physical ones.

We can make choices in all three dimensions to increase competitiveness and effectiveness. 

For example, prevent one action while causing another and do it with psyops and kinetics that cooperate and confront simultaneously or in sequence, whichever fits the context.  

Smart Fists Use Concepts of Influence

Ok, but more specifically, how does your fist influence the object? In other words, how do we target to produce the effects we want?

We influence will and/or capability for each effect. With eight basic effects, 16 concepts of influence make your cuboid effective. 

Here they are in 3-D: 

Our cuboid now includes concepts of influence that action will and capability to achieve their effects. Compare this to a concept of operation (CONOP). The concept of influence is more specific and assessable than the CONOP because it explains how an activity or operation influences behavior to create an effect.

Any activity is probably inefficient, ineffective, or irrelevant if it doesn’t produce influence.

The cuboid has eight cubes, one for each effect. Now, you can see the verbs that act on will and capability in each cube. Intimidate will, exercise capability, assure will, deny capability, etc. Next, think of activities or tasks that operationalize those verbs. 

Come up with your own— the eight effects and the 16 concepts of influence that produce them come from asking the three basic questions. They’re systematically defined by the intersection of the three dimensions. U.S. joint and service doctrines include some of these and offer more. The various communities of practice teach more.

Fighting to Win in Perpetual Competition

Fighting to win in perpetual competition sounds daunting, even depressing. No nation-state can afford all desired effects by itself. However, we can be more effective by expanding strategy to consider more options than fighting when deterrence of armed conflict fails.

Competitive strategy is imperative. We must think and act strategically to influence and defeat opponents with superior effects. Doing that takes joint and whole-of-government collaboration, then extending the effort approach to allies and partners. They will have particular constraints, too.

Cooperation and confrontation can achieve the same effects as conflict by setting conditions with broad strategies. Obviously, we still need dominant forces in armed conflict. But we squander them unless we fight with superior effects in broad competition. Competitive concepts of influence enable superior effects.

Democracies have abundant influence. To keep it, we must fight in perpetual competition, not perpetual conflict.