We must set priorities among our desired ends, ways, and means to achieve meaningful advantage in the information and operational environment. Three reforms can improve the effectiveness of tactics, operations, and strategy against human and AI competitors:
- Align our ends in desired cause-and-effect relationships
- Note: basic strategy consists of interactive ends (the why—goals), ways (the how—methods), and means (the what—resources)
- Define (redefine) our Industrial-Age ways and means to produce superior information effects
- Combine our desired ends to create a synergistic advantage
Align Ends
Specify priorities and adjust how to achieve them as conditions change. Using the language of joint US military doctrine (approved practices), a strategist can align activities in a hierarchy of ends: activities, effects, objectives, end states, and strategic priorities.
For example, activities must use competitive tactics to produce specific effects that set end-state conditions for broader objectives aligned with strategic priorities. This hierarchical alignment of efforts is necessary to manage highly competitive, dynamic cause-and-effect relationships. Doing so requires more than a “that’s outside my job jar” Orientation (as in John Boyd’s OODA Loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act).
To prevail in the AI Age, we must generate superior information in joint operations (see JP 3-04, Information in Joint Operations) that supports national priorities. This broad perspective requires accountable leadership in whole-government-plus collaboration. Enter the hierarchy of ends, a shared understanding that can align strategy’s purposes. In the language of joint doctrine, our ends go from effects to strategic priorities.
Create a Hierarchy of Ends
The hierarchy of ends is a contested process; we fight to shape the future. Competitors are doing the same. Xi Jinping accuses the United States of Cold War-style containment. The Communist Party’s media outlets portray US activities as containing China…without admitting, of course, that the PRC has been expanding its claims and seizing territory around its periphery since 1950 (and before that, imperial dynasties did the same). Xi’s Foreign Minister (the Party controls the government) uses the same deception to present China’s support of Russia as peaceful, in contrast to the West arming Ukraine.
Both examples align in a hierarchy of ends backed by narrative warfare. The overarching narrative is one of a historically victimized, benign, and blameless People’s Republic righteously liberating lost territories. The narrative operates several themes backed by messaging, such as: “Have the courage to fight as the country faces profound and complex changes in both the domestic and international landscape.”
Rather than blaming politics or retreating into being non-political, strategists need to clarify ambiguous ends such as “stability.” Specify what those terms mean in context (the definition of information in JP 3-03) for operations. Such informatized operations must support strategic priorities or become irrelevant and lose wars.
National strategic priorities include democratic political values—freedom, equality, and representative government—and those fundamental values are professionally apolitical. In other words, expressing such Constitutional values does not favor one political party over another. They are not non-political. We support and defend the Constitution of the United States, which is filled with national political values. The chain of command should coordinate invoking those ends to compete against Xi’s calls for Chinese citizens to have the courage to fight for national liberation and sovereignty.
Specify Your Desired Ends
When we fail to specify the meaning of ends such as “stability,” “security,” or “balance of power” in the context of operating in the information environment (OIE), we truncate strategy. How? We focus on self-justifying ways and means without creating competitive ends. Our themes that justify what we do are “in my lane” service identities: boots on the ground, semper fi, semper fortis, and fly and fight.
We need motivational identities to maintain our fighting spirit. However, our pride can develop into an existential narrative that justifies itself unless we use our ways and means to be instrumental elements of national power. Like instrumental narratives, tactics, and operations must achieve advantages that advance strategic priorities.
We must acknowledge and honor the hard-won identities to inspire will and sacrifice. But our effort should not end there. We mean to win wars, not just battles. So, we must define excellence and success in terms of competitive results, from tactics to operations to strategic priorities.
Success in one engagement should support the hierarchy of ends. Strategy must specify what ends to prevent and cause, then how to do so. The ends outside one’s job jar require collaborating with those with the relevant permissions and authorities, not avoiding them.
DefineTactic, Force, Operation, Strategy, Tactical, Operational, and Strategic as Results, not Organizational Levels
We must stop equating tactics with tactical, operations with operational, and strategy with strategic levels of war. Why?
Such “levels of war” don’t fit into a more fluid, interconnected information environment. A tactic can be strategically significant. We know this, but we perpetuate organizational identities by highlighting the tactics of our weapons. More than that, we must innovate superior tactics, operations, and strategies together, even if that means transforming the meaning and content of a unit’s identity.
US Army cavalry is a positive example of preserving the spirit and sacrifice of a mobile force while innovating beyond horses to include aviation, armor, remotely operated vehicles, and info-intel-electronic warfare-space (I2CEWS). An I2CEWS task force identity should focus on multi-domain effects that contribute to the hierarchy of ends.
We win battles with human and technological advantages that, in turn, depend on information advantage. How so?
Ukraine outcompeted Russia’s victimization narrative in the first month of Putin’s invasion. This fundamental advantage built Ukraine’s resolve and secured international support, enabling Ukraine’s defense and counteroffensives so far. The IE contest is perpetual. Authoritarian China is changing the geography in the South China Sea with artificial constructions democracies have not effectively contested. While changing that fundamental determinant, Beijing simply lied about its blatant militarization and can issue a territorial ultimatum once it achieves conventional and nuclear parity, if not sooner.
Too often, we win narrower battles and lose broader wars. Why? Look at how we define and apply DoD definitions of tactic, operation, and strategy.
Tactic — the employment and ordered arrangement of forces in relation to each other. See also procedures; techniques (CJCSM 5120.01).
We must apply this definition broadly, using more than military forces and beyond any single job jar. If we fail to apply tactics against diplomatic, informational, military, economic, and social (DIMES)-wide, all-effects competitors, we cannot defeat authoritarian actors for long. They adapt.
Tactics must include lethal and non-lethal capabilities that “force” (change the status quo) new behavior by the best acceptable means. A sniper kills the target; a bomb destroys all or a selected function of the target; an EMP generates voltage/current to destroy or damage electronics; a viral story stirs emotions in a target audience, which leverages statecraft, and so on. The best sniper, bombing, EMP, narrative, and diplomacy depend on your target’s vulnerabilities and what you intend to cause or prevent. Success demands a strategy that outcompetes an adversary for significant results, such as undermining a hostile narrative and building an integrated coercive presence in disputed territory.
Tactics employ and arrange forces in relation to other “forces,” but the best advantage is the most significant one, not necessarily the most immediate.
Force— an aggregation of military personnel, weapon systems, equipment, and necessary support, or combination thereof. 2. A major subdivision of a fleet (JP 1).
This definition is too narrow to compete in an all-inclusive IE.
The IE is stuffed with more-than-military forces. We must see “force” as more than lethal or kinetic energy to recognize them as potent forces. Let’s specify what force means in terms of its effects.
Those effects are broader than destruction. Causative force can physically coerce and induce, and psychologically compel and persuade. Preventive forces can physically defend and secure, and psychologically deter and dissuade. Notice that these definitions are more precise and collectively broader than coercion theory. In real competition and warfare, we see combinations of coercion, inducement, compellence, and persuasion. It’s not all coercion, as coercion theory frames it.
When actual tactics engage, combatants use any available means to gain an advantage. Tactics create relationships and exploit ideas, such as a target’s expectations. They can have strategic significance or none for the results hierarchy. For example, a soldier clearing a building can perform that tactic perfectly but fail to advance strategic priorities if it’s the wrong building or time.
Likewise, depending on the context, failing to remove or protect a corrupt relative of a host country leader can undermine common strategic priorities. Such decisions are political and require a whole-of-government effort. Our strategy needs to speak this language in a way that is relevant to glocal (global and local) contexts. We cannot compete against ruthless adversaries with only military tactics unless we are prepared to destroy targets, and that destruction secures the strategic priority. Our efforts need to be DIMES-wide, bigger than “M.”
Operation— a sequence of tactical actions with a common purpose or unifying theme (JP 1). 2. A military action or the carrying out of a strategic, operational, tactical, service, training, or administrative military mission (JP 3-0).
This definition is ambiguous when there is no assessable definition of “tactical” in US joint military doctrine. Instead, we have circular definitions such as: “tactical intelligence — Intelligence required for the planning and conduct of tactical operations. See also intelligence. (JP 2-01.2).” The definition is also inaccurate because tactical actions may be simultaneous, not sequential.
Since tactical intel is defined by tactical ops, and there is no falsifiable definition of “tactical,” the term “tactical” has no assessable meaning. “Tactical” usually reinforces a warrior identity, such as marines mastering the tactical. “Strategic” is an insult…a desk warrior. That perspective reinforces a war-fighting identity essential to winning kinetic engagements but insufficient to win the aftermath of engagements and persistent wars.
“Fight to win” needs to mean winning in the context of a hierarchy of effort.
Strategy — a prudent idea or set of ideas for employing the instruments of national power in a synchronized and integrated fashion to achieve theater, national, and/or multinational objectives (JP 3-0).
This definition does not recognize strategy as a process of ends, ways, and means. Instead, the definition says to employ instruments of national power to achieve objectives defined in geographic and state-centered terms: theater, national, and multinational. However, this definition does not compete to win for two reasons.
First, instruments of power are more than national. Private power is influential, such as Elon Musk’s Starlink network, which enables Ukraine to resist Putin’s invasion. Another example is Intel Corporation, a decade ahead of US Cyber Command R&D.
Second, objectives are greater than our doctrinal definition permits. “Theater” objectives are geographically defined, which omits global objectives. “National and/or multi-national objectives” exclude transnational organizations that must deal with the Chinese Communist Party demanding foreign companies divulge data, the EU demanding protection of individuals’ information, and US administrations alternating between CCP and EU-style demands.
Now, let’s consider the DoD’s definitions of tactical, operational, and strategic. You would think these would describe the characteristics of a tactic, operation, and strategy, but they do not. Why?
Redefine “Tactical, Operational, Strategic“
There is no official DoD definition of tactical, operational, or strategic. Like “information” before the latest JP 3-04 finally defined that term, doctrine describes tactical/operational/strategic this, and tactical/operational/strategic that. As mentioned earlier, for tactical, these terms define themselves. So, how can we assess tactical/operational/strategic progress or regress when no falsifiable definitions exist? We can’t. Like a religion, we are supposed to believe in what we do.
As a result, elected officials debate what forces to fund and authorize for what purposes, but without any scientifically grounded method to disprove defense budget effectiveness. We must test our assumptive tactics, operations, and strategies against specific effects supporting desired ends. If we do that, we can better determine whether our objectives and strategic priorities are feasible in a given context.
What can we do? We can and must align our tactics, operations, and strategies in a hierarchy of ends. Tactical refers to tactics, operational refers to operations, and strategic refers to strategy, which works in the IE. However, to regard tactical, operational, and strategic as levels of war or levels of significance is too restrictive. The IE permits tactics conducted by any unit using any range or yield of weapon to be strategically significant or not. The interconnection of causes and effects is multi-level and all-domain.
Compete by Rearranging the Elements of Strategy
To prevail in the AI Age, we must rearrange the basic elements of strategy: ends, ways, and means. We must focus on the ends. This priority requires aligning, defining, and combining a hierarchy of activities, effects, objectives, end states, and strategic priorities. To determine how to achieve meaningful advantages in a competitive environment, we must consider all domains and all effects.
The combined effect strategy and influence model helps us specify what to prevent and cause, how to cooperate and confront, and when to use psychological and physical ends, ways and means. We can expand and specify our strategy language to make our efforts more competitive.
To paraphrase Sunzi and Clausewitz, we need a broadly combinable strategy to win advantage:
- Sunzi: there are no more than ‘surprise’ and ‘straightforward’ operations, yet in combination, they produce inexhaustible possibilities.
- Clausewitz: sooner or later, someone will come along with a sharp sword and cut off our arms.
