Military Strategy and the Political Dynamics of War

Colin Gray, the late scholar of strategy, was correct — politics is master. War is a political event. Although this observation is most often attributed to Carl von Clausewitz, it can be traced back to Cicero. It can also be found in the military texts of ancient China.[i] Nonetheless, the political dynamics of war often fail to be fully appreciated by military strategy. This condition helps explain a recent inability on the part of nations to wield military force to secure their political objectives. It suggests a need for military strategy predicated on a more nuanced understanding of the political dynamics of war.

War is a simultaneous collection of political and military events. The political milieu that catalyzes war shapes the belligerents’ strategic centers of gravity and forges the strategic logic of the war. However, the political dynamics responsible for war continue after the exchange of fire. Military events and their interpretation continue to affect political dynamics, which in turn affects military efficacy. Military strategy must appreciate — and be responsive to — these recursive relationships. The consideration of political dynamics cannot be cleaved from military strategy without placing the objective of the war in serious jeopardy.

This article posits the following argument: military strategies must fully appreciate the political dynamics of war. To be clear, political dynamics are not synonymous with political conditions. It would be difficult to find practitioners or scholars arguing that military strategy need not consider the political context. It would be equally difficult to find examples of military strategy devoid of political considerations. Yet, what is often missing is consideration of the evolving recursive relationships — the political dynamics — that exist between the political and military aspects of war.

Sequential versus Simultaneous Views of War

At the crux of this argument is a latent debate as to whether the political and military aspects of war are sequential or simultaneous events. Observed behaviors among Western militaries suggest that the predominant view is that they are sequential (i.e., linear). From this perspective: political events spark decisions to go to war, then military events produce a willingness to accept a political resolution. A more accurate conceptualization of war — especially in a globalized world in which strategically significant audiences often watch and interpret events in real time — would hold that the political and military aspects of war are simultaneous events. From this perspective: decisions to go to war are informed by political and military events, political events shape military efficacy, military events affect political will, and the willingness to accept political resolutions emerges from the interaction of political and military events.

Figure 1

The sequential view comes from a belief that it is possible to tease apart the political and military aspects of war, allowing one to hold constant political conditions while solving the military problem of how to defeat the enemy. Western attempts to separate political dynamics from military strategy appear to begin with Clausewitz’s 19th century contemporary — Antoine-Henri Jomini. Jomini held that the art of war was independent of political or moral concerns and that it could be distilled into five basic principles.[ii] His argument attempts to lift military strategy (and warfare) out of the political dynamics of war. In the 20th century, Jomini’s view became intertwined with Samuel Huntington’s arguments regarding professional militaries and civil-military relations. In the minds of many, Huntington solidified the notion that once war looms — governing officials ought to set the political objective and then relinquish to military leaders the pursuit of said objective.[iii] The arguments of Jomini and Huntington provide the foundation for the idea that military strategy can treat the political context of a war as a constant.

During the second half of the twentieth century, the appeal of the sequential view gave rise to a centurion mindset among national armed forces — especially within Western countries where domestically apolitical militaries are of normative value. This mindset stresses the importance of mastering the tactical and operational levels of war. It inadvertently neglects strategic level political dynamics.[iv] As a result, the centurion mindset fosters the development of military doctrines predicated on the assumption that battlefield victories will naturally and inevitably produce political success. Given the role of doctrine in training and developing the force, this creates a self-reinforcing loop that protects the dominance of the sequential view. Evidence of this mindset and the predominance of the sequential view can be found in the publications of Western militaries, including (but not limited to) the United States Army’s concept for Unified Land Operations, South Korea’s 2022 Defense White Paper, and the German Bundeswehr’s approach to multi-domain operations.[v]

On balance, Western doctrine presents a theory of how to win wars predicated on the sequential view. Enemy forces will be located, battlefields shaped to the advantage of friendly forces, and the processes of enemy forces will be overwhelmed.[vi] It is predicated on the assumption that military events will produce political capitulation and secure the political object of the war. The contextual validity of said assumption and causal logic of why and how military events will affect political events often remains unexplored. The centurion mindset puts such questions beyond the purview of military strategists.

Recent history demonstrates the risks that accompany mindsets and doctrines that emphasize tactical and operational tasks and behaviors — without sufficient consideration of how they may affect or be affected by the potential political dynamics of war. During the American war in Afghanistan, the failure to appreciate the simultaneous nature of war prevented the development of a military strategy capable of generating the political consequences necessary for securing the United States’ political objective. During its most recent war in Iraq, the US essentially fought two wars — a conventional war and an insurgency. Although American military strategy led to the defeat of the Iraqi military, the failure to factor in the political dynamics at work left the US unprepared to leverage its military success to achieve its political objective (a stable democratic Iraq).[vii] As a result, the US found itself fighting an insurgency. During the insurgent war, General David Petraeus’ military strategy provided a better, yet limited, accounting of the war’s political dynamics. This allowed the US to stabilize the conflict’s military and political domains. Nonetheless, Petraeus’ strategy was unable to secure the political objectives articulated by Washington at the start of the war.[viii]

Current events also illustrate why military strategy must fully appreciate the political dynamics of war. Consider events in Gaza. There are reasons to be concerned that Israel’s military strategy in response to Hamas’ barbaric attacks of October 2023 may be failing to properly account for the political dynamics of the war. Even if Israel destroys Hamas — a military event that would benefit humanity — its current strategy may yield a pyrrhic victory. It may fail to achieve the political objective of securing Israel from future attacks.[ix] The interpretation of observed military events by strategic audiences outside Israel may leave Israel less secure. The Russo-Ukrainian War also demonstrates the importance of factoring political dynamics into military strategy. For close to three years, the recursive effects of the war’s simultaneous military and political events have been on display. Battlefield outcomes in Ukraine have generated political decisions regarding the provision of financial assistance. They have also generated political decisions regarding the supply and employment of weapons systems. Those political events, in turn, affected military efficacy and produced military events. They blunted Russia’s offensive, facilitated Ukraine’s counteroffensive, and kept Kyiv in the fight.

Political Function and Strategic Form

The ultimate function of military strategy is to produce political victory. War is a violent contest over a political objective. Success is measured by nations and their leaders in political terms, not military ones. The famous April 1975 exchange between US Army Colonel Harry Summers and his North Vietnamese counterpart, Colonel Tu, illustrates this point. When Summers quipped, “You know, you never beat us on the battlefield” — Tu responded, “That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.”[x] The North Vietnamese achieved their political objective. The Americans did not. Successful military strategy must be predicated on, and tailored to, the political dynamics of the war.

Understanding the political dynamics of a war begins with an exploration of its proximate cause. Scholars as far back as Thucydides have sought to identify why political leaders choose war. Fear, honor, and interests. God, gold, and glory. The anarchical nature of the international system, the balance of power, and the distribution of culture. Each of these, and others, have been cited as causes of war. Although they may represent underlying causes, they cannot explain a specific decision to go to war. Nor are they something upon which military strategy may be fashioned. Successful military strategy requires an understanding of the political dynamics that generate the proximate causes of a specific conflict.

Clausewitz’s dictum that war is the continuation of politics provides a start point for understanding the importance of proximate causes. Within all nation-states, domestic political events — including domestic interpretations of international events — create desired political objectives. Domestic events bestow relative value upon these desired ends, crafting a hierarchy of political objectives. Domestic events also generate the means for pursuing objectives and select the ways by which they will be sought. If the prioritized political objectives sought by nations are antithetical to one another, the political dynamics at work generate different poles — antithetical ideational and/or behavioral domains — in active opposition to one another. From such political events, the proximate causes of war emerge.

Some practitioners and scholars appear to interpret Clausewitz’s dictum to mean that war is simply another instrument, or perhaps an escalation of, the political or policy process.[xi] Such interpretations reinforce the sequential view of war and the idea that military strategy may be cleaved from the political dynamics of war. A different interpretation of Clausewitz is possible.

Throughout On War, Clausewitz repeatedly references war’s nature as a collection of simultaneous political and military events. Clausewitz discusses the political objective as the cause. He also argues that the use of force is a mechanism for affecting the relative value of political objectives. Clausewitz notes that war is never an isolated event and that war is not limited to militaries — he writes that when nations go to war, the whole population goes to war. Clausewitz expressly addresses how the political value of military targets ought to factor into strategy.[xii] Clausewitz gives voice to the fact that military events recursively affect the relative value of political objectives. This creates a strategic logic in which military events affect political dynamics that affect military decisions — including the decision to keep fighting. Clausewitz’s argument captures war’s simultaneous nature. War is the continuance of politics, with the addition of armed force.

Because war is the continuance of politics, military strategy must account for political dynamics. Political dynamics shape the belligerents’ (and potential belligerents) will and effort — in other words, their strategic centers of gravity. This point can be found in the writings of practitioners and scholars. It undergirds the arguments of the famed Russian strategist Aleksandr Svechin. Svechin argued that every war is unique and that military strategy must be tailored to — and exploit — its political dynamics.[xiii] It is why J.C. Wiley argued that military strategy ought to be the concern of those outside the military and why Bernard Brodie argued that military strategy should not be left solely to the military.[xiv] It is also why Eliot Cohen argued — in direct challenge to Huntington — that political leaders must insert themselves into military strategy and operations to ensure military leaders remain focused on the political objective.[xv]

Political Dynamics and the Strategic Center of Gravity

Political dynamics shape the strategic centers of gravity in war. Political dynamics are the basis of the willingness to fight. They are the foundation of the effort. As a result, political dynamics provide war with a strategic logic that goes beyond the sequential view. The political dynamics of war create conditions in which victory may be achieved not just by defeating the enemy force, but by striking the basis of the enemy’s will and/or the foundation of their effort.

The causal logic of striking an enemy’s strategic center of gravity is based on the assumption that the will to fight and the nature of the effort (its degree and form) are a product of the relative value of the political objective contested by war. Yet, nations have multiple political objectives, each with intrinsic and relative value. The distribution of the costs and benefits of pursuing one objective over others affects levels of political support, which affects policy choices — including decisions to fight, how hard to fight, and with what to fight. Furthermore, effort is a product of decisions regarding which instruments to employ, how to employ them, and in pursuit of what effect. Such choices are the result of political dynamics internal and external to the belligerents. How these choices align against the choices of the enemy shapes each side’s relative strategic stature — their ability to influence the situation such that they achieve their political objective.[xvi]

Because political dynamics affect will and effort, military strategies must account for them. If political events result in broad support for the political objective at stake — because it is widely seen as having high relative value — resource intensive military strategies are possible. If, however, political events generate limited support — military strategies will face resource constraints. Similarly, if a military strategy produces battlefield successes that are seen as increasing the odds of political success — national leaders likely will make resource allocation decisions supportive of the existing military strategy and effort. The converse also applies. If battlefield events are seen as insufficient for political success — leaders likely will make resource decisions that require changes in military strategy or effort.

As Antulio Echevarria noted twenty years ago, the center of gravity concept refers not to a belligerent’s sources of strength, but to the elements or forces that generate effort. This presents a tantalizing opportunity for strategists. If the enemy’s center of gravity can be targeted sufficiently to disrupt those elements, their ability to generate effort would collapse.[xvii] During decades of heated debate about whether or how military strategy might achieve this, most of the attention focused on operational level centers of gravity.[xviii] Military strategies predicated on the simultaneous view of war presents opportunities for considering how one might target the recursive relationships between an adversary’s political and military elements to collapse their efforts. The current Russo-Ukrainian War illustrates what this might look like.

The Political Dynamics of the Russo-Ukrainian War

The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War exemplifies war’s simultaneous nature. It illustrates the recursive relationship between political and military events. In doing so, it shows how political dynamics affect the strategic logic of a war — and underscores why military strategy must fully appreciate, and factor in, the specific political dynamics of a given war.

Russia’s desire to reduce Ukraine to the status of a vassal state and Ukraine’s desire to maintain its sovereignty are the proximate causes of this war.[xix] With these political objectives in mind, Russian military strategy was initially predicated on the assumption that Ukraine’s military represented its strategic center of gravity.[xx] That assumption proved invalid. In the hours following the invasion, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy emerged as Ukraine’s strategic center of gravity. Zelenskyy’s actions — his refusal to be evacuated, his defiant videos — rallied his countrymen and inspired strategic audiences in the West.[xxi]

Russian military strategy attempted to adjust for this political event. Russia increased efforts to kill or capture Zelenskyy.[xxii] Nonetheless, Moscow’s military strategy failed to get ahead of political dynamics that increased the value of Ukrainian sovereignty relative to the other political objectives of Western nations — including the relative value of comity with Russia.

As the relative value of Ukrainian sovereignty increased, Western nation-states decided to increase their financial and military support for Kyiv. This increased the effort with which Ukraine was able to resist Russian military advances.[xxiii] Moscow responded by increasing the ferocity of its military operations, hitting civilian targets in the apparent hope that the Ukrainian people represented a potential strategic center of gravity and that the attacks might break their will and collapse Ukrainian resistance.[xxiv] Once again, Russian military strategy failed to account for the political dynamics of the war. In that moment, Ukrainians continued to value their sovereignty and national identity more than their safety.

Over the course of the war, political dynamics modified Ukraine’s and Russia’s strategic centers of gravity. As Russian military strategy sought to deplete Ukraine’s means of resisting, Western governments decided to match, and then overmatch, Moscow’s efforts. This allowed for a Ukrainian counter-offensive. Kyiv’s military efforts were the product of political events — the willingness of its people to fight and the willingness of Western populations to supply Ukraine with increasing means to fight. Russia’s strategic center of gravity was initially a product of the relative value of rendering Ukraine a vassal state and the efficacy of its armed forces. As Russia depleted its stocks of key munitions, Moscow tapped into an international political dynamic based on anti-Western sentiment and opposition to the liberal international order. This produced decisions on the part of China, North Korea, and Iran to supply Russia with increased means.[xxv] Although Moscow is less dependent on material support from foreign powers than Ukraine, both belligerents have leveraged political events to sustain military effort.

The political dynamics of the Russo-Ukrainian War affected, and will continue to affect, each sides’ military efforts and efficacy. Nearly three years into the war, Ukraine and Russia continue to pursue their political objectives because other nations assign relatively high value to them. Whether that continues is an open question. That suggests a strategic logic in which, under these conditions, victory or defeat is dependent on maintaining the relative value of the political objectives among key strategic audiences inside — and outside — Russia and Ukraine.

Conclusion

In a short article, it is impossible to fully examine — or perhaps even adequately articulate — the importance of factoring political dynamics into military strategy. It is equally difficult to give fair treatment to referenced examples of the risks and opportunities that respectively accompany a sequential or simultaneous view of war. Nonetheless, even a cursory examination of recent history and current events suggests that to achieve their political objectives, modern nations need military strategies that do more than target enemy forces. To achieve their political objective, they need military strategies that collapse their enemy’s will and/or efforts by accounting for the recursive relationships that exist between military and political events. To achieve its purpose, military strategy must fully appreciate the political dynamics of war.