ABSTRACT
When considering strategy it is useful to be reminded of what we are talking about and the parameters of discussion. Strategy is of course a contested concept. However, definitions abound and the British/American strategist, Colin S. Gray, has recently written that:
The complexity of strategy and war - conflict on land, at sea, and in the air, and in space and cyberspace - is modest compared with the complexity of the dimensions, factors, or elements that interactively comprise their nature. 1
He describes ‘seventeen dimensions’ that are clustered into three categories. The first category, ‘People and Politics’, comprises people, society, culture, politics and ethics. The second category, ‘Preparation for War’, includes economics and logistics, organization (including defence and force planning), military administration (including recruitment, training and most aspects of armament), information and intelligence, strategic theory and doctrine and technology. The final category, ‘War Proper’, is composed of: military operations, command (political and military), geography, friction (including chance and uncertainty), the adversary and time. 1
It is this holistic approach to understanding the complexity of modern conflict and the formulation of strategy that is necessary, according to Gray. He warns that ‘Strategy is seriously incomplete if considered in the absence of any one of them’. Gray argues that the preference for the technological persuasions of the revolution in military affairs (RMA) should be put in the context of such dimensions because, by its nature, the RMA leads ‘to persuasion by unsound theories of miracle cures for strategic ills’ . 2
This approach to understanding strategy is similar to Michael Howard’s four dimensions - social, logistical, operational and technological. 3 Both authors draw heavily on Clausewitz who described a typology of strategy
in the ‘elements of strategy’ which includes moral, physical, mathematical, geographical and statistical aspects. This is important because RMA discussions, as will be outlined below, often emphasize one dimension, the technological, to the detriment of the complexity of strategy and modern conflict itself. Thus one question for consideration might be whether RMA discussions reflect the complexity of strategy and conflict or whether they over-rely on the importance of technology?
