Chapter I
I-2 JDN 1-17
(1) At multiple levels from international (e.g., United Nations, North Atlantic
Treaty Organization, European Union, African Union, Association of Southeast Asia
Nations, et al) to local and regional non-state actors;
(2) With respect to different instruments of national power (e.g., traditionally
aligned in the ‘DIME’ model of diplomatic, informational, military, and economic); but
also includes financial, intelligence, rule of law, and development.
(3) For a variety of objectives, from shaping the global security arena to dealing
with a specific security challenges.
d. Practitioners. The highest political and military officials (the President, Secretary
of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and combatant commanders) develop
and implement strategy. In addition to strategic leaders, US military strategists includes
theorists and planners who are not only officers and civilians within the Pentagon, but also
members of the staffs of the Services, combatant commands, subordinate unified
commands, joint task forces, and combat support agencies.
3. Policy, Strategy, and National Power
a. National policy articulates national objectives. National policy is a broad course of
action or guidance statements adopted by national governments in pursuit of national
objectives. While policy is different from politics, it is produced via a political process,
and is usually the result of compromises among the political leadership. National strategy
orchestrates the instruments of national power in support of policy objectives.
b. Politics concerns power. Power can be material in nature, e.g., possession of
money, or resources, or weapons and armed personnel. Power also can be psychological
in nature: legal, religious, or scientific authority; intellectual or social prestige; a
charismatic personality able to excite or persuade; or a reputation for diplomatic or military
skill. Politics deals with how power is distributed and used in a society. The process of
distributing power may be peaceful and orderly, or it may be violent and chaotic.
c. Politics is inherently dynamic, both because the process for distributing power is
under constant pressure for change and because it is interactive—a simultaneously
cooperative and competitive process. Political events and their outcomes are the product
of reinforcing, conflicting, contradictory, sometimes compromising, and often adversarial
forces. This complex political process is neither a linear nor a wholly predictable process.
Actual outcomes often differ from what the participants intended. The addition of violence
into the political process frequently serves to amplify problems controlling, or even
predicting, its ultimate course.
d. Thinking usefully about making and carrying out strategy requires an
understanding of the fundamental nature of politics and the violent expression of politics
called warfare. An understanding of warfare must start with the assertion by the early
nineteenth century Prussian general and military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, that warfare
is the continuation of politics by other means. Clausewitz teaches that warfare is a social
phenomenon and its logic driven by more than just scientific principles and engineering as