Military Review English Edition May-June 2016 | Page 26

strategist trying to
analyze objects isolated from their synergy
would see friction in
that negative space.
Seeing negative space
as friction can impede
painting an appropriate strategic response
to threats because no
amount of analysis can
accurately predict what
the “painted line” of
action—the input of a
lever of national power—will do to synergize
outcomes in a complex
world. Yet, confronted
with negative space, U.S.
military and state leadership feel compelled to
do something, because to
the United States a goal
unattained is as unnerving as a painting that
seems half-painted.

Modernity
Defies
Conventional
Perspectives

Early Spring (1072), ink and light colors on silk, by Guo Xi.

The ill-defined area on the U.S. Army Special
Operations Command’s spectrum of conflict—
where conflict is not politics but is not war—represents a complex adaptive system that is a kind of
negative space. In this negative space, the East Asian
military strategist would see the vibrant interchange
of the potential born of disposition. The Western
24

The strategic challenge to the United
States is to innovate,
adapt, and adopt unconventional warfare
through a broad strategic
approach rather than
(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
sustaining its current
view of a tactical capability for a niche mission. This
approach would address the needed fusion of diplomatic and military actions.
Mode rn art began as a reaction to the limitations
traditional Western artworks imposed on the artist’s
desire to represent the world.34 Modern art has since
demonstrated a fusion of the principles of Western
art with modern implements and unconventional
May-June 2016  MILITARY REVIEW