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. The current article begins to address the substance of maneuver
warfare theory, starting at the beginning, with the definition and description
of war. If you were to ask which is the most important chapter in MCDP 1,
Warfighting, most Marines would probably say Chapter 4, “The Conduct of
War.”
This makes sense; after all, it is Chapter 4 that actually explains maneuver
warfare—introducing key concepts like mission tactics, commander’s
intent, main effort, and surfaces and gaps. We submit, however, that Chapter 1,
“The Nature of War,” is the most important because it captures the
problem, commonly agreed upon by all Marines, to which maneuver warfare is the
logical solution. And reaching a common and compelling understanding of the
challenge facing the organization is critical to meeting that challenge.
Maneuver warfare theory starts with a clear-eyed look at the nature of war as
it exists in reality and from there proceeds logically to develop a philosophy
designed to deal specifically with that true nature. Arguably, the single
greatest effect Warfighting has had is to establish a common understanding
among Marines of the nature of and the challenges posed by war. We suggest that
in an era of growing homogeneity among the services, this distinct
understanding of the nature of war may be one of the key factors that today
distinguishes the Marine Corps. While other services may talk about fog and
friction, for Marines these qualities are articles of faith that inform our
every decision.
Framing the Problem:
At the risk of getting a bit philosophical, problems do not actually exist in
the world. What exist in the world are situations or, in the words of systems
thinking pioneer Russell Ackoff, “messes.”1 A mess only becomes a
problem when someone, with a particular perspective and set of interests, looks
at the mess and decides it is unacceptable. “The Problem” is a
framework that we impose on the mess, and the way we choose to frame that
problem matters significantly. In the words of Nobel laureate Herbert A. Simon
in The Sciences of the Artificial, his classic book on complexity and design,
“solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution
transparent.”2 In other words, the way you formulate the problem points to
the solution. If you can develop a clear and compelling understanding of the
problem facing you, the solution becomes self-evident. Frame the problem in the
same old way, and you will get some variation of the same old solution. If you
want a new solution, find a new way to frame the problem. We believe this is
the fundamental value of Warfighting—it framed the problem in a new (at
the time) way that pointed to a new way of operating.
One of the early criticisms of FMFM 1 was that it was merely common sense. The
argument was that the maneuver warfare concepts described in Warfighting were
nothing more than any Marine with common sense would come up with on his or her
own. But if maneuver warfare were merely common sense, military organizations
the world over would have adopted it spontaneously—but they have not. We
do agree, however, that there is a certain apparently simple reasonableness to
Warfighting’s argument. We suggest that is mainly because the manual
depicts the challenge—that is, frames the problem—in a way that is
clear, compelling, and rings true. Maneuver warfare per Warfighting only seems
like common sense because it is the logical solution to the problem described
in Chapter 1. What is that problem?
The Zweikampf Dynamic:
Warfighting starts with an essential definition of war: a violent struggle
between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills each trying to
impose itself upon the other by force. Of note, FMFM 1 defines war in terms of
a clash between nations. MCDP 1 expands that definition to the more general
“political groups,” acknowledging that the belligerents may not be
nation-states (as historically they often have not been). In fact, throughout
history state-on-state conflict has been the exception and nonstate warfare the
rule, whether the belligerents were intrastate factions, multinational
coalitions, or surprastate organizations such as the United Nations or al
Qaeda. Both FMFM 1 and MCDP 1 use the phrase “between or among” to
acknowledge that there may be more than two belligerents to any conflict. This
again has often been the case, although we note that multiple belligerents have
tended to align into two opposing camps out of strategic expediency, even if
only reluctantly, partially, and temporarily.
MCDP 1 adopted the Clausewitzian term Zweikampf (literally
“two-struggle”), which was absent from the original FMFM 1.3 The
dynamics of the Zweikampf may be the single most important idea in Warfighting.
The concept of the deeply interactive struggle of two hostile, interlocked
wills may seem obvious today, but during the post-Vietnam era it represented a
dramatic shift in thinking. (Recall that Clausewitz was only emerging from
obscurity at the time.) The prevailing mindset, on full view during the Vietnam
War and strongly influenced by operations research methods, tended to see war
as a fixed engineering problem rather than as a dynamic, interactive struggle
between two opposing wills. Some operational concepts still take that
fixed-problem approach today.
To make his point, Clausewitz likened war to a pair of wrestlers locked in a
hold, each attempting to gain leverage over the other and together achieving
contortions that neither could achieve alone.4 It is not the characteristics of
the individual contestants that give war its essential nature but the
interaction between them. In this sense, war is what complexity theory calls an
emergence, a whole that is the product of the interaction of its parts but
whose nature is not inherent in any of those parts. As historian Alan Beyerchen
pointed out in his seminal article “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the
Unpredictability of War,” Clausewitz provides an image that brings to mind
a great deal of nonlinear interaction (more about which in a later paper) and
the possibility of sudden reversals.5 In recognition of this truth, Marines are
fond of acknowledging that “the enemy gets a vote.” This adage is
good as far as it goes, but it does not capture the full extent of the
Zweikampf dynamic because the interaction of the two competing wills can yield
results that neither belligerent intended. Something altogether different and
unexpected emerges.
That is the Zweikampf dynamic. It is the various patterns and
sequences—give-and-take, initiative-and-response,
action-reaction-counteraction—that result from the direct, intense
interaction between the two hostile wills. These patterns are highly nonlinear,
which here refers not to positions on a battlefield but to the dynamics of
cause and effect in a system. A nonlinear system has two basic properties.6
First, a system is nonlinear if causes and their effects are disproportionate.
Second, a system is nonlinear if the whole does not equal the sum of the parts.
Minor efforts, made at the right time and place, can have outsized
effects—think of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., in which 300
Spartans (with allies, it must be said) famously held off an advancing Persian
army of over 100,000 men. Conversely, massive expenditures in men and materiel
can produce little—think of almost any offensive on the First World War
Western Front.
Nonlinearity is a primary quality of the Zweikampf dynamic, and from that
nonlinearity directly flow other attributes such as friction, uncertainty,
disorder, and fluidity. As examples, each belligerent’s attempts to
disrupt the enemy’s plans and actions generate friction, while each
belligerent’s efforts to appear inscrutable and to actively mislead the
enemy produce uncertainty.
At its roots, a big part of the maneuver warfare mindset consists of
finding/creating and ruthlessly exploiting favorable
nonlinearities—critical vulnerabilities, decisive points in time or space,
capability mismatches, or other advantages that, if exploited, offer a
disproportionately large payoff for the effort invested. In contrast, some
other doctrinal approaches through history have amounted to attempts to
“linearize” war in an effort to make its results predictable.
One lesson for today: This discussion should serve as a reminder of war’s
fundamental unpredictability, a trait we tend to forget in the pursuit of
battlefield certainty through the latest technological advancement. Information
technology can help reduce a lot of unknowns, but we suggest it cannot
eliminate the uncertainty that is at the very heart of the Zweikampf.
Attributes of War:
After establishing the essence of war, Warfighting goes on to present a set of
attributes that are direct products of the Zweikampf dynamic and that together
describe the environment within which the warfighter must operate. FMFM 1 lists
friction, uncertainty, fluidity, disorder, and violence and danger.
To that list, MCDP 1 adds complexity. Warfighting then continues with a
discussion of another set of attributes that, if not outputs of the dynamic
itself, influence the unfolding of the dynamic within that environment: War is
a social interaction reflecting human nature in all its complexities and
vagaries. War has physical, mental, and moral/psychological dimensions—in
fact, it presents the most physically, mentally, and morally demanding
challenge known to humankind. War includes some aspects that are timeless and
others that are changeable. Within the context of competing wills, warfare
involves the application of both art (i.e., intuition and creativity) and
science (analysis and calculation).
The Timeless and the Changing :
Warfighting attempts to describe war in timeless terms. While it recognizes
that some aspects of war are changeable, it does not address those aspects. It
urges Marines to be alert to those changes, but it leaves it up to them to
identify what those changes are. While most of the time only war’s outward
forms will change, occasionally more profound changes to war’s deeper
character can occur as the result of dramatic political, societal, or
technological developments. Examples of such developments include national
conscription, the invention of gunpowder, the introduction of aviation, and the
invention of nuclear weapons. Emerging developments that some expect to change
the character of war in the near future include robotic systems, artificial
intelligence, machine learning, and the militarization of space. In contrast,
tactics and techniques evolve constantly due to mutual adaptation between
enemies—in yet another manifestation of the Zweikampf dynamic.
Changes to the character of a conflict tend to have greater repercussions than
mere changes to its form, but the former is usually much harder to appreciate
than the latter. In either case, as Warfighting says, it is important to stay
abreast of the process of change, for the belligerent who first exploits a
development in the art and science of war can gain a significant advantage,
while the belligerent ignorant of the changing character or forms of war may
end up unequal to its challenges.
In Conclusion:
Synthesizing the above discussion, the problem is: How to prevail in a clash
between independent, hostile, and irreconcilable wills each trying to impose
itself upon the other through force in the dynamic of the Zweikampf? The
dynamic unfolds in an environment dominated by friction, uncertainty, fluidity,
disorder, complexity, and violence and danger—even as it creates that
environment. It is informed by the various traits of human nature. It requires
acting in the physical, mental, and moral dimensions. It demands the ability to
understand and balance factors both timeless and changing. And it involves the
interplay of art and science. This is the challenge that Warfighting sets for
itself. It proposes that the answer to this challenge is maneuver
warfare—as described in Warfighting, a “philosophy for action”
that better equips Marines to survive and prevail in the Zweikampf and in the
conditions it presents—as we will discuss in subsequent papers.
Notes:
Russell L. Ackoff, Redesigning the Future: A Systems Approach to Societal
Problems (New York, NY: Wiley and Sons, 1974). Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences
of the Artificial, 3rd edition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and ed. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Pronounced “tsvai-kampf.” “Zweikampf.”
On War. Alan D. Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the
Unpredictability of War.” International Security, (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, Winter 1992). Ibid.
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