Military Review English Edition May-June 2016 | Page 24

Interagency
capabilities
Emerging Army
special operations
capabilities
State-based
competition for
influence

Political warfare

Army
conventional forces
core competency

Army special
operations forces
core competency

Unconventional warfare,
counterterrorism, and
counterproliferation

Range of diplomatic
and political action

Counterinsurgency, security force
assistance, and foreign internal defense

Combined arms maneuver

Traditional range of
military operations

Figure. Spectrum of Conflict from a U.S. Army Special Operations
Command White Paper (Modified)
Asian cultures, people tend to be more comfortable
with negative space.
Negative space, in artistic terms, means the space
not consumed by the primary subject matter in a
work of visual art.13 In the West, negative space represents a dilemma for the artist. Does the artist fill
the space with substance, or does the artist leave the
space empty? Cultural biases in traditional Western
visual art usually induce the artist to fill the negative
space with something of substance. For example,
Rembrandt filled the negative space of the background in Prodigal Son with darker shades of objects
in shadow. The shading is so dark that the objects are
nearly indiscernible.
In contrast, according to Seong-heui Kim, traditional East Asian visual art celebrates the emptiness of
negative space not as lacking substance, but rather as
emptiness being “the latent form before the realization
and … the potentiality of all existence.”14 For example,
Kim describes how the “potentiality” in negative space
can be seen in Guo Xi’s landscape scroll painting Early
Spring, completed in 1072 (see page 24), where in the
fore, middle, and background, the mountain’s traits
are implicitly, rather than explicitly, represented. The
background is left absent of objects or shades.
Kim also explains how in Cui Bai’s Magpies and
Hare (see page 25), negative space, or emptiness, and
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positive space, or substance, wrestle while coexisting
in oneness with the universe as chi (vital energy, spirit, or natural force). East Asian artists also express
“the interchange and vibrancy of [chi].”15 From a
philosophical perspective, chi is “a biological phenomenon revealed in the field of exchanging experience between our body and the world.”16 To depict
the movement of chi, East Asian art emphasizes the
mechanics of “line.”17 A line’s mechanics integrate and
intuitively depict the natural world “as an endlessly
circulating and changing flow which humans had to
become one with.”18
A 2002 Department of Defense annual report
on China’s military power describes China’s broad
strategy for building national strength by balancing
“comprehensive national power” (elements of national
power such as DIME) and a “strategic configuration of
power.”19 The report interprets the strategic configuration of power, which encompasses “unity, stability, and
sovereignty,” as shi—which it calls an “alignment of
forces, … propensity of things, … or potential born of
disposition … that only a skilled strategist can exploit
to ensure victory over a superior force.”20
The similarity is that both chi and shi celebrate
the “notion of a situation or configuration (xing),
as it develops and takes shape before our eyes (as a
relation of forces) … and counterbalancing this, the
May-June 2016  MILITARY REVIEW