What is ‘Strategic’? The Who, What, When, Where, and Why of Strategy

What is “Strategic?”

In the realm of strategy, the word “strategic,” carries many meanings. It suggests that events, actions, or ideas are potentially life-changing, risky, critical, dangerous, or significantly more important than everyday matters. It is a word that evokes an emotional response, setting a context for what follows. It is used in relation to more than just the “ends, ways, and means” of strategy, or the “strategy bridge” that links the people, the government, and the military together when it comes to using force to achieve political objectives.[i] Indeed, Colin Gray himself mused about the way people employed the word “strategic,” that is, as “a heavyweight term implying relatively high importance, relating to something allegedly Big!” He also observed that, “When thus used without linguistic discipline the concept loses all value and hinders intelligent debate.”[ii]

Although assessing the psychological and emotional impact of the word “strategic” is valuable, here we are more concerned about the use of the word to convey meaning in discussions of military operations, weaponry, international competition, and war. This is no pedantic endeavor; techno-political developments now seem to demand the broader use of the word “strategic” in military affairs. The rise of new domains of warfare (space, cyberspace, artificial intelligence) and new weapons (hypersonic vehicles, autonomous systems and weapons, nanotechnology) all promise to produce “strategic” effects. In the future, more weapons and operations will be considered as game-changing, creating an even greater need for clarity in determining which issues or capabilities merit the label “strategic.”[iii] This article is written from an American perspective; yet the issue applies to all countries. Defining the word “strategic” is a universal task that strategists must address when developing their approach to national security.

This developing situation is reflected in the Joseph Biden administration’s 2022 National Security Strategy. The document uses the term in a traditional manner, to refer to nuclear issues specifically. For example, it highlights U.S. “conventional and strategic capabilities” and the importance of a nuclear force that “undergirds our defense priorities by deterring strategic attacks.”[iv] It also uses the term more broadly, however, referring to strategic competition, rivals, engagement, assets, advantage, approach, environment, challenges, and failures. In these cases, the meaning of “strategic” clearly extends beyond the nuclear domain. Yet, its precise scope remains uncertain. Similarly, the National Defense Strategy highlights the importance of deterring “strategic [nuclear] attacks,” but also notes that “a wide range of new or fast-evolving technologies are complicating escalation dynamics and creating new challenges for strategic stability.”[v]

This ambiguity carries over into the Biden administration’s concept of “integrated deterrence,” which seeks to synchronize new capabilities with existing nuclear, conventional, economic, diplomatic, and soft power instruments to create a whole-of-government and intra-alliance approach to deterrence. Integrated deterrence was introduced in the National Security Strategy and provided a central organizing theme in the follow-on National Defense Strategy, which defined it as “working seamlessly across warfighting domains, theaters, the spectrum of conflict, all instruments of US national power, and our network of Alliances and partnerships… it applies a coordinated, multifaceted approach to reducing competitors’ perceptions of the net benefits of aggression relative to restraint.”[vi] Like its nuclear predecessor, integrated deterrence seems most concerned with capabilities that produce strategic effects. But what makes a problem, operation, capability, or even a specific organization “strategic” (See Figure 1). For instance, what makes a strategic weapon “strategic”? Why are some forms of deterrence deemed “strategic” while others are not? If the term “strategic deterrence” has traditionally meant nuclear deterrence, why do we use the term “strategic nuclear deterrence”? And, if things don’t work out, how do we define “strategic deterrence failure”?

Figure 1

A concise definition of the term “strategic” remains elusive, although most descriptions of the concept involve the effects an action can create, especially the impact those actions will have on a military organization or society. Contemporary observers have also used the word “strategic” in reference to efforts to disengage from the tactical contest along the forward edge of the battle area; to alter operational and political realities by using long-range weapons, such as bombers and missiles; to sever the link between leaders and the broader population (Douhet); or to destroy critical logistical, communication, or command nodes to paralyze wan opposing military (Mitchell). Others suggest that “strategic” attacks are those that can devastate an opposing society by engaging in a diplomacy of violence using fusion weapons (Schelling) or through more traditional means such as high-explosives, incendiary devices, starvation, and disease (Trenchard, Le May, Gallant).[vii]

This article proposes more systematic criteria for determining when to apply the “strategic” label: the “who, what, when, where, and why” of strategy, or the “five-W framework.” Our focus is on the use of the term within the Department of Defense (DoD); our goal is to facilitate the term’s extension beyond the nuclear realm, without diluting it so much that it becomes analytically meaningless.[viii] To situate our approach, the article first explains why this issue has emerged and why its emergence is important. It then sketches out the five-W framework we propose to characterize and classify issues as “strategic” in our discourse about contemporary military affairs. It concludes by assessing how our current undisciplined use of the term “strategic” can impede efforts to integrate deterrence to achieve a whole-of-government approach to national security.

To be clear, this article addresses the meaning of the word “strategic,” not “strategy” or “grand strategy.” The definition of strategy is well understood. Strategy is about ends, ways and means. It is about the art of devising a plan to use the resources at one’s disposal to achieve objectives. Grand strategy incorporates the pursuit of vital national security interests: that is, the “conditions that are strictly necessary to safeguard and enhance the well-being of Americans in a free and secure nation.”[ix] In the United States, those vital interests typically include the protection of American territory, its citizens, its constitutional form of government, and its economic well-being.[x] More specific goals come and go depending on the international situation. Nonetheless, the general understanding of grand strategy as “the capacity of the nation’s leaders to bring together all of the elements, both military and nonmilitary, for the preservation and enhancement of the nation’s long-term (that is, in wartime and peacetime) best interests” is consistent.[xi] In contrast, our use of the term strategic is evolving—and increasingly obscure.

Why Does this Matter?

Why does the term “strategic” matter? It matters because there are important bureaucratic and policy ramifications that follow when something takes on strategic significance. Like the word “security,” “strategic” conveys a sense of importance and urgency.[xii] Strategic issues, to an even greater degree than security issues, empower—if not compel—the state to intercede. “Strategic” implies the engagement of the national government, often including its security and defense establishment, in some ongoing issue or event. Nevertheless, the components of the defense establishment that should be involved in strategic activities have become less obvious since the end of the Cold War.

Our collective thinking has not kept pace with the changes wrought by the information revolution, the rise and decline of the global war on terror, the emergence of great power competition, and even great power war by proxy. Instead, our concepts and words reflect a Cold War reality when much of what was considered strategic was based in the nuclear age. From this perspective, anything strategic is inextricably linked to nuclear weapons. Strategic Air Command was stood up in the late 1940s to deal with the Soviet threat but quickly morphed into the de facto “U.S. nuclear command,” responsible for most nuclear weapons, their delivery means, and fundamentally, the entire deterrence mission through the Cold War. The association between “nuclear” and “strategic” persisted when U.S. Strategic Command was created in 1992. Nuclear weapons continue to hold a strategic connotation for most military personnel and civilian analysts today.

Nevertheless, the strategic label is now applied to many non-nuclear military, economic, diplomatic, space, cyber, and informational activities. For a time, the space and cyber domains were temporarily associated with U.S. Strategic Command, but they have since morphed into U.S. Cyber Command and a new service, the U.S. Space Force. The tendency to label everything as somehow strategic thus touches upon a fundamental shortcoming not only in our understanding of basic concepts related to strategy or deterrence but in our ability to adapt our theories to today’s technical and geopolitical realities as well. Our thinking has not been updated to accommodate new technologies and their effects or how those effects interact with each other to create credible deterrent threats. No one really understands how all these new capabilities will work together in a crisis, or how to keep these new effects from spiraling out of control.

This ambiguity will hamper the effectiveness of the new U.S. concept of integrated deterrence contained in the Biden administration’s National Defense Strategy. The lack of a proper U.S. grand strategy and a limited consensus about what capabilities are strategic have put the United States in a position where there is no lead integrator, no true whole-of-government approach to deterrence. Instead, there is uncertainty within government agencies about how they are supposed to contribute to this new deterrent posture. Responsibility for integration is shared among too many players, and the rule book is vague about who oversees what.[xiii] This bodes poorly for a synchronized approach to a world that appears to be growing increasingly dangerous and conflict prone. Understanding which issues qualify as “strategic” can offer a starting point for the distribution of responsibilities when it comes to devising whole-of-government deterrence policies.

The Five-W Framework

Gray was correct when he observed that the word strategic is used to signify something “Big!” Nevertheless, it is possible to characterize the term more precisely. In examining the various ways that observers have used this label, we have observed five common themes, which we identify as the who, what, when, where, and why of strategy. By applying these questions to a specific problem, operation, capability, or organization, we can determine whether it merits the label “strategic.” This approach stops short of providing an exact definition of the term. Nevertheless, it functions as a winnowing device, by establishing limiting parameters for what does or does not qualify as strategic.

Who: The Entire National Defense Establishment

Strategic operations are supported by the entire Defense Department, and often other government agencies. (See Figure 2) Whole-of-government efforts are required to provide the operational, logistical, and political support to achieve objectives that are broad in nature and possibly global in outlook. Strategic operations can also support the entire U.S. defense establishment by providing critical services that enable many kinds of activities on a theater-wide or global scale. The decision to label an individual command or commander as “strategic” therefore depends on the scope of a specific mission’s requirements and the breadth of its potential impact on the U.S. national security and defense establishment, as well as the range of actors involved.

Figure 2

Although strategic operations have discernable implications for the entire defense establishment, they are nonetheless undertaken in specific domains, such as nuclear, cyber, space, or artificial intelligence. They are also undertaken by specific commands, organizations, or commanders. High-ranking officers and senior government officials are the ones who most often wield strategic instruments of power, although responsibility for strategic missions is not limited to senior officials, specific commands, or only a few government agencies. Relatively junior officers, for instance, were in charge on the ground in Abbottabad during the raid to neutralize Osama bin Laden, placing them in operational command of a mission of enormous political and strategic consequence. A U.S. Navy captain aboard a nuclear-powered ballistic missile-carrying submarine also goes to sea with the capability, if not the authority, to produce strategic effects that can barely be imagined.[xiv] A strategic operation will implicate a nation’s entire military and security establishment, regardless of the rank of those in command or the domain in which it is undertaken.

What: Direct Attempt to Achieve Objectives

Strategic measures aim to directly shape the battlespace by attacking the material capacity of the opponent to engage in hostilities or to shape an opponent’s politics to win or deter a war. (See Figure 3) Strategic operations and capabilities are rarely directed at the forward edge of the battle area in tactical engagements – such use of “strategic” assets is often criticized by the commands or services that possess them. For instance, U.S. Army Air Corps officers objected to the diversion of long-range bombers to isolate the Normandy beaches, preferring to instead concentrate on industrial targets deep inside Germany.[xv] Of the five criteria, the notion of “what” is most directly connected to the noun “strategy,” because it describes the operations that an actor undertakes, using the resources at its disposal to achieve objectives. Strategic efforts may directly shape politics by eliminating or degrading a large share of an adversary’s manufacturing, transportation, or communication capabilities by destroying key nodes or choke points represented by military, economic, or even population targets. These direct efforts may also focus on reducing an opponent’s will to continue to prosecute a conflict, often by inflicting large-scale damage. This is why the word “strategic” is often associated with nuclear weapons. War-winning campaigns, approaches, or weapons can all merit the label “strategic.” This may be the definition of the term “strategic” that drives the way the term is used in modern discussions of strategy — strategic systems, weapons, operations, and effects aim to advance national political objectives by dealing with an opponent’s military, political, and economic capabilities directly.

Figure 3

When: Critical Timing

The timing of a political initiative or a military operation can also be described as “strategic.” (See Figure 4) Strategic actions are timed to create maximum impact on the diplomatic or military setting or to have some sort of non-transitory effect, especially one that alters the political status quo. Moves that exploit fleeting sets of circumstances to one’s advantage are often described as strategic because of the inherent risks they run and the potentially large gains that they offer.

Figure 4

For instance, actors sometimes launch strategic surprise attacks at the outset of hostilities with an eye towards severely damaging the opponent’s capability to resist, or to create a fait accompli, to upend an opponent’s deterrent strategy, or to cause the opponent to reconsider going to war given new political-military realities. The timing of the attack catches the opponent by surprise, which enables the attack to achieve its strategic impact on the ground. In wartime, a force movement also is deemed strategic when its timing catches the opponent in an especially vulnerable state. An operation’s timing can create cascading effects that can lead to strategic consequences across an entire theater of operations. Timing is strategic when an operation must catch an opponent by surprise to succeed, or when an operation unfolds at a moment when its effects are amplified geographically, politically, or militarily. Decisions to engage in preventive war or to launch a pre-emptive attack would both be strategic, because their timing dictates an approach to the threat of conflict that shapes the way that conflict unfolds.

Where: Unconstrained by Geography

If something is strategic—be it a weapon, a national goal, or a specific mission to achieve a goal—it is often not bound by geography and sometimes operates in the virtual world of cyberspace and information operations. Strategic effects are usually not limited to the forward edge of the battle area, as are most non-strategic weapons or operations. (See Figure 5)

Figure 5

Instead, they can extend beyond the front lines, into the heart of a nation. During the Cold War, long-range bombers and ballistic missiles that were typically armed with nuclear weapons held targets at risk at intercontinental ranges. Now, a much wider range of strategic capabilities can reach beyond the front lines or even beyond the immediate theater of operations – space, cyber, and artificial intelligence activities can influence events globally. In most circumstances, however, global operations require global logistical, communications, and other types of support. These activities often transcend regional military commands and even different cabinet departments. Many systems require bases and operational support from allies around the world, although these sorts of logistical concerns rarely seem to garner much attention in the discussion of the global reach of “strategic” capabilities.

Why: Transformative Objectives

The “strategic” label implies expansive or transformative effects. (See Figure 6)

Figure 6

For example, anything that could fundamentally change the nature of a country or how things work is deemed to be strategic. Similarly, any action that threatens a country’s vital national security interests merits the label. Effects that are non-transitory, or an impact that prevents a return to the status quo, are considered strategic. Although this quality immediately raises the specter of nuclear war, over the last decade or so, other systems – cyber, space, artificial intelligence – have been identified as having these game-changing capabilities and therefore qualify as strategic weapons. Strategic effects reshape a country’s military, political, or economic systems, with the potential to change the essence of the nation profoundly and irreversibly. At their most extreme, they put national or even human survival at risk. Strategic issues therefore introduce an existential element that is often associated with the term “security,” especially when used in reference to national survival. Even if a country survives a strategic attack, its nature, along one and possibly many economic, social, or political dimensions of national life, will be altered across at least a generational timespan. This is also where the term strategic intersects most closely with grand strategy since a country’s core national security concerns are at stake.

Bureaucratic Implications beyond DoD

Given its wide-ranging use, how does the term “strategic” play out across the DoD and its multiple organizations regarding their understanding of command roles in dealing with strategic issues? It is unlikely that only one military command could deal with all the types of strategic attacks and strategic effects in different systems, operations effects, and domains. Strategic means more than nuclear, and DoD is slowly adjusting to that change in the international security environment. Although most government organizations are quick to claim that they play a strategic role, they have not come to terms with the need to coordinate their decisions with their colleagues across government. The ultimate center of control for strategic issues is the White House, yet the National Security Council does not have a director for strategic matters or the current U.S. policy for implementing integrated deterrence. This creates an even greater challenge for the United States in assessing, managing, and responding to strategic threats.

The difficulties of coordinating a whole-of-government approach to any strategic goal have been well known for decades. The Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1987 was one attempt to correct this challenge and various efforts were made again in the late 2000s and 2010s. The rationale for coordinating or integrating its efforts is well known regarding regional commitments. As a 2014 study noted, “The United States faces increased risks and missed opportunities to advance US interests… if it continues to focus on the military as the primary government instrument working with allies and partners on a regional scale.”[xvi] This report went on to highlight the same problem that faces integrated deterrence today: “At present, there is no mechanism in place to integrate activities of all US government departments and agencies in key regions.”[xvii]

The definition and use of “strategic” reflects the institutional perspective of each organization that has a role to play in managing strategic affairs, including integrated deterrence. There is no “sort-of” strategic—it either is, or it isn’t. Applying the term to everything that seems important to the user dilutes the term and confuses the issue, as well as the organizations that are designed to deal with it.[xviii] The declaration of integrated deterrence as national strategy is a current example of this danger. In the first place, integrated deterrence is not a strategy—it is a means, an approach, a policy. It is aspirational. Furthermore, the uncertainty over the lead integrator for U.S. defense and deterrence requirements reflects a traditional American political approach to issues, which relies on common sense and ad hoc solutions to deal with crises as they arise. This is made even more challenging by the lack of precision over what is strategic, as opposed to what is merely important but not existential.

What is needed is a more rigorous approach, one with more clarity in leadership responsibilities and defined missions for each element of government, including the military structure. As it stands now, government entities are uncertain about who is in charge when a truly strategic issue arises. To achieve whole-of-government success in implementing integrated deterrence, DoD will need to work closely with other U.S. cabinet departments that have strategic responsibilities, including State, Treasury, Homeland Security, and potentially other organizations, depending on the scenario.

Conclusion

Strategic means many things. But its primary purpose is to serve as an adjective that illuminates those matters that are truly the most important issues strategists must deal with. In the national security realm, this means those adversaries, weapons, targets, or effects that have the potential to change our country and our way of life. Applying the term to lesser issues dilutes the value of strategic as a guidepost to the most important issues of the day. For the U.S. government, this implies a need to consider carefully when to call something strategic and how to respond to those categories. This means government agencies need better coordination, communication, and comprehension of which definition of strategic is at play, and to ensure that when we say something is strategic, we really mean it—and act accordingly.