The military’s ever-expanding role in the emerging operational environment risks failure to deliver a coherent definition and conception of strategy for practitioners. The debate over the term and the ideas employed to craft workable strategy is healthy, if  inconclusive. The Department of Defense defines strategy as prudent ideas used to employ the elements of national power to achieve objectives. Notably, the definition leaves open the methods and models available to formulate such prudent ideas. Recently, military practitioners and professors have criticized traditional models of military strategy, like the Lykke Model’s use of an ends, ways, and means framework as being overly formulaic and “too narrowly construed.” Others have offered more abstract and varied discussions of strategy as a theory of success—aiming only to articulate strategy as the cause of success.[1] Still other scholars have recently encouraged the military to broaden the dimensions of strategy to include formal training in the social sciences. Current professors of military strategy have noted they do not teach a “single definition as the right answer,” thus giving students an opportunity to construct and explain their own models of military strategy.[2] This abstract and varied approach to defining military strategy arguably accommodates the complexities of the emerging 21st-century battlefield and encourages adaptive, creative thinking from military officers. Certainly, holding ideas with a loose grip, as these approaches suggest, prevents dogma while allowing for the healthy circulation of new ideas.

But a loose grip can result in no grip, and correct ideas require a mechanism for retention. Without it, concepts fail to serve the military practitioner employed to craft strategy: what the strategist gains in creative flexibility may be lost in coherence. The potential collateral damage from holding overly broad and varied concepts of military strategy represents a two-fold tragedy. Not only do military practitioners lack a reliable and/or workable definition for strategy, but, given the perceptions of a rapidly changing threat environment that has dramatically shifted the military’s focus from counter-terrorism to great power competition, they do so at precisely the time they need it most.

This article offers a re-balanced definition of strategy that uses classical metaphysics to ground the term in an implementable framework. In leaving the methods for generating prudent ideas for strategy open, the Department of Defense definition has perhaps invited an over-reliance on postmodern ideology that neglects objective concepts and objective reasoning. Postmodern thought emphasizes subjectivity in creating conditions for creativity to flourish. Classical metaphysics, on the other hand, emphasizes objective truths about mankind and reality. In suggesting appropriate boundaries using classical metaphysics, the proposed definition preserves the creative flexibility demanded in the emerging operational environment and championed by postmodern thought that rightly—if perhaps inordinately—impacts the current discussion on military strategy. With a grounded yet flexible conception of strategy, military practitioners can better approach the emerging threat environment and craft workable, coherent strategies that deliver military success.

The Metaphysics of Strategy 

As such, it is useful to return to the Classical period in human history, which emphasized and relied on objective, absolute conceptions of the human condition and experience. In debating the essential terminology of the human experience—terms like justice, morality, and goodness—philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates contemplated the metaphysics of human nature. Metaphysics, as understood in the Classical period, examined the origins of things—especially humans—their forms, and their causes. In applying metaphysics to the nature of mankind, Thomas Aquinas, for example, examined the human decision-making capacity to act in response to environmental stimuli. As outlined in his seminal work Summa Theologica, the metaphysical connection that Aquinas established between the concept of self and free will enabled him to produce a five-step model for the innate human decision-making process.[3]

In the first step, the human intellect forms an intent to achieve a desired end. In step two, the intellect decides if the end is achievable. If deemed achievable, step three involves internal deliberation over the ways to achieve the desired end and consideration of possible alternatives, a process of deliberation Aquinas calls the soul’s counsel.[4] In the fourth step, the intellect decides on the best means to achieve the ends and, in the concluding fifth step, the intellect spurs action to execute the task. According to Aquinas, this decision-making model is the actuator of all humans’ free will.

Aquinas’ decision-making model should strike a familiar chord with military practitioners of strategy. The ends, ways, means terminology used by Aquinas—with deliberation standing in for military risk analysis—aligns with Lykke’s Model and definition for strategy. Aquinas demonstrates how the fundamentals of Lykke’s Model relate to innate human functions and reinforces Lykke’s conception of strategy as primarily an exercise in decision-making. If the Classical philosophers and Aquinas are correct, then something about the metaphysical ends, ways, means depiction of decision-making provides a continuous thread of understanding into mankind’s primal functions and should persist through, and in spite of, the passage of time and changing modes of warfare.

Metaphysical Form and Flexibility

The postmodern worldview, by contrast, rejects absolute values and objective conceptions of reality. It emphasizes each individual’s agency in determining truth and thus assumes a more subjective and relativist position on many of the foundational concepts of reality, morality, and thought. In light of an individual’s capacity to determine their own truth, some scholars have noted the negative impact of such views on the consensus building activities required in liberal democratic institutions.

This current postmodern worldview has infused aspects of the current intellectual debate regarding military strategy. Postmodernism jettisons objective conceptions of strategy—like Lykke’s Model—in favor of more abstract models like the aforementioned  theory of success approach to strategy. Clearly, the theory of success concept gives the military strategist tremendous freedom to visualize what success looks like and to develop individual theories of how to arrive there. However, if the freedom to visualize comes at the expense of defining objective ends and clear purposes, then perhaps such concepts inefficiently harness and apply the creative gains of these approaches.

Adherents of the abstract approach to strategy criticize the means-based approach to strategy in Lykke’s model as too narrow and constrictive for creativity. They argue that taking inventory of the means available to achieve an end, as Lykke and Aquinas both suggest, is not useful in strategy-making because good strategic processes, in accordance with the ideological emphasis of postmodern thought, are not about defining but creating. Desiring to encourage such creative flexibility in the complex operating environment, instructional approaches to teaching military strategy may unintentionally undermine consensus building by suggesting there is no single answer to crafting good strategy. Good strategy, teachers of military strategy seem to say, is in the eye of the beholder. But however noble the modern strategic imperative of flexibility is, it relies on the metaphysical premise of form. In the physical world, objects flex commensurate with their physical form. Lacking the concept of form, the concept of flexibility makes little sense. Similarly, ideas about strategy can only flex if the concept itself carries some objective meaning to serve as the point of departure for flexible and creative thinking. Conceptions of strategy overly influenced by the postmodern worldview risk losing this connection.

Re-balancing Strategy 

Presumably, no scholar approaches the issue of defining strategy with the intent of offering a concept that will produce bad results. For this reason, the primary work of this article is not to refute or re-invent conceptions of strategy but rather, after assessing the prominent contemporary ideas in the debate, to synthesize the most useful elements of each concept and to re-balance the term to best serve military practitioners. Visualizing a see-saw helps to illustrate the method. As the plank on one side of a see-saw grows longer, it requires more weight on the shorter side to maintain balance. Likewise, as the current postmodern worldview gives greater emphasis to flexible creativity in the conception of military strategy, more weight is required on the objective metaphysical side to keep conceptions balanced and grounded. Too much weight on the metaphysical side yields rigid and unresponsive strategic formulas. But too much weight on the postmodern side yields open-ended conceptions that lack a grounded coherence.

Balancing these two ideas requires a recognition of how the positive contributions inherent in each worldview impact military strategy to combine them in ways that mitigate their countervailing weaknesses. Accordingly, current postmodern conceptions of military strategy, like the abstract theory of success or the varied approaches to strategy taught in current professional military education, correctly emphasize subjectivity in an effort to harness creativity and flexibility in a changing and complex environment featuring a broad set of actors. But such conceptions risk forsaking the metaphysical grounding of military strategy, like the Lykke Model, in objective concepts that reflect the innate intellectual processes required to strategize in the first place. These truths provide a continuous thread of understanding about the primal function of decision-making in strategy.

To re-balance the term and give it proper grounding, consider the following definition of strategy: a theory of successful decision-making in a given environment. To see how this definition achieves balance while re-incorporating contributions derived from different worldviews, it is useful to break down the definition into its four terms.

First, theory acknowledges the scientific approach to uncertainty that senior military leaders have articulated since 2010 as a necessity in strategic thinking, warranting new scientifically-based frameworks for military problem solving. The adjective successful accounts for the postmodern requirement for creativity and flexibility in deriving strategy. As an open-ended term that invites individual interpretations, invoking success allows practitioners to remain free to invent and conceive of a wide range of dimensions that help cover all the possible complexities of a changing operating environment. In short, it provides a near-boundless freedom to service postmodernism’s emphasis on individual creativity. Critically, decision-making grounds the conception of strategy in the metaphysical truths articulated by Classical philosophers. It gives the term some boundaries—ends, ways, means—that intuitively resonate with mankind’s primal decision-making capacity in general and with military practitioners in particular. Finally, “in a given environment” connects the metaphysical boundaries to Aquinas’ notion of individual or self. While the postmodern influences on concepts of strategy seem to reject or reduce the requirement for means-based analysis, establishing strategy as relevant in a specific environment reaffirms the importance of context. That is to say that strategy, while perhaps aimed at creating a new environment, should reflect an understanding of the existing individual environment pertaining to its intended use.

Conclusion 

An old mariners’ adage for navigating the seas states that “those who obey the laws of the stars will have the freedom of the ocean.”[5] Likewise, conceptions of strategy grounded in the metaphysical laws of the Classical period give military practitioners the freedom to explore the vast dimensions of creativity emphasized in postmodern thought and required in the complex operating environment—provided the two ideologies are in the proper balance and harmony. Objective metaphysical principles do not limit creativity; rather they give creativity its coherence. A counter-intuitive principle of research states that researchers will generally achieve better results by narrowly tailoring research questions in broad fields of study.[6] Similarly, in a military environment that reflexively seeks to broaden conceptions of strategy to meet complexity, metaphysics constructively grounds the term to elevate the prospects of its successful execution. In its definition of strategy, the Department of Defense gives great latitude for practitioners to define the methods and concepts used to produce the necessary and prudent ideas for the employment of elements of national power and achievement of objectives. As a response to the complexity of the emerging operational environment, postmodern thought has overly infiltrated the operation of this definition. Strategy defined as a theory of successful decision-making in a given environment enables military practitioners to implement grounded intellectual processes while maximizing creativity in today’s complex operating environment.

Scott J. Harr is a U.S. Army officer and holds an undergraduate degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point in Arabic Language Studies, a Masters degree in Middle Eastern Affairs from Liberty University, and is currently a PhD candidate in Foreign Policy at Liberty University. The views expressed are the author’s alone, and do not reflect those of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Notes:

1.   Miller, G. D., Rogers, C., H Park, F.,J., Owen, W. F., & Meiser, J. W. (2017). On Strategy as Ends, Ways, and Means. Parameters, 47(1), 125-131.

2. Ibid, Miller et al.

3. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica . Westminster, Md: Forgotten Books, 2008. Print.

4. Hill, J.  (2016).  After the Natural Law: How the Classical Worldview Supports Our Modern Moral and Political Values.  San Francisco: CA.  Ignatius Press

5. Author encountered this quote of unknown origin at a lecture for military officers circa 2012.

6. Gump, S.E. (2019).  Kate L. Turabian.  A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations: Chicago Style for Students and Researchers.  Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 51(1), 99-104.