Military Review English Edition May-June 2016 | Page 22

address these kinds of wicked complex threats.
Traditionally, the United
States (as well as other
Western nation-states) has
chosen to treat war as a specific action governed by a
specific system of laws, mores, and norms. Strategists
do not explicitly disconnect
war from the political ends
it is intended to achieve.
Implicitly, however, war is
often disassociated from
the whole-of-government
approach needed to achieve
political goals; consider the
differences in the apparatuses of the Departments
of State and Defense, and
the often-used diplomatic,
informational, military, and
economic (DIME) model of
national power. This treatment of war as a specific,
governable activity disguises
the essence of war—the organized violence of human
beings killing each other. In
different words, the United
States believes that all war is
organized violence, but not
(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
all organized violence is war. The Return of the Prodigal Son (1668), oil on canvas, by Rembrandt.
On the other hand, if it is
accepted that all war is politically motivated, then all
organized aggression with the intent to harm—physiorganized violence or aggression could also be considcally violent actions or otherwise—on behalf of political
ered politically motivated. However, this would mean
agendas, the aperture for understanding what war is
that organized violence, without formally “going to war,” opens wider. Denying that all violence or aggression in
advances a political agenda just as a conventional war
service of an agenda is war limits strategic approaches to
might. Limiting the concept of what constitutes a war
engaging enemies.
limits the ability of the United States to understand its
A U.S. Army Special Operations Command 2015
enemies. For example, it is very likely that some U.S.
white paper, Redefining the Win, depicts a spectrum
enemies believe they are already in a state of war—being of conflict (see figure on page 22).10 Using that specthat U.S. enemies have selected to use a level of orgatrum, the paper describes unconventional warfare in a
nized violence to achieve an essentially political goal.
nebulous gray area of not quite being “political warfare”
When leaders stop considering war as only a violent
but also not quite being war. The implication is that in
action of the state, and they start considering it as any
an intermediate, undefined area of “unconventional
20

May-June 2016  MILITARY REVIEW