Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 9

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

their unit’s actions contribute to the accomplishment
of campaign objectives. Senior officers draw on their
understanding of war to provide the best military
advice to civilian leaders. Every Army leader uses his or
her vision of future conflict as a basis for how he or she
trains soldiers and units. Every commander understands, visualizes, describes, directs, leads, and assesses
operations based, in part, on his or her understanding
of continuities in the nature of war and of changes in
the character of warfare.
A failure to understand war through a consideration of continuity and change risks what nineteenth
century Prussian philosopher Carl von Clausewitz
warned against: regarding war as “something autonomous” rather than “an instrument of policy,” misunderstanding “the kind of war on which we are embarking,” and trying to turn war into “something that
is alien to its nature.”1 In recent years, many of the
difficulties encountered in strategic decision making,
operational planning, training, and force development
stemmed from neglect of continuities in the nature
of war. The best way to guard against the tendency to
try to turn war into something alien to its nature is to
understand four key continuities in the nature of war
and how the U.S. experience in Afghanistan and Iraq
validated their importance.

First, War is Political
Army forces are prepared to do more than fight and
defeat enemies; they must possess the capability to translate
military objectives into enduring political outcomes.

—The U.S. Army Operating Concept2

In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War, defense
thinking was dominated by theories that considered
military operations as ends in and of themselves rather
than essential components of campaigns F