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Grand strategy described the setting of national objectives and the surrounding statecraft while strategy concerned arranging the instruments of national power into supporting objectives, all aimed at the achievement of the national objectives. This broke these two broad categories into two further subsets, yielding a construct of grand strategy, strategy, grand tactics, and tactics. While the fundamental division of kind between tactical and strategic actions remained valid, the changes brought through industrialization and the nation in arms necessitated a division of scale. Changes in technology and society, embodied broadly by the industrial and French revolutions, expanded the scale and complexity of planning and conducting war. Rather than semantic changes adjusting Army doctrine, resolving this dilemma requires a good herbicide aimed at Joint doctrine and the removal of the very concept of an operational level of war.īefore the introduction of the operational level of war, US doctrine typically divided the study of warfare into either strategy or tactics. Colonel Eikmeier’s suggestion that the Army use the term ‘tactical art’ in lieu of ‘operational art’ may address the discrepancy in doctrine but it does little to address the underlying weed of misunderstanding. Thus, misunderstandings, like weeds, demand attention and wholesale removal from the intellectual garden lest one ignore Clausewitz’s further dictum to keep the important and unimportant separate. Misunderstandings, like weeds, crowd out space for healthy, more desirable ideas to take root moreover, their existence is mutually exclusive to the development of a deeper understanding of a topic. In this circumstance, the metaphor is most appropriate as it describes the danger inherent from misunderstandings of theory and suggests the way forward upon their discovery.

Carl von Clausewitz, in his discussion of theory, aptly noted that the weeds of misunderstanding always grow from ignorance. Such a misunderstanding between doctrinal concepts is rightly dangerous and worthy of address. Miller: And then that big boat home.ĭale Eikmeier, in his recent article in this journal, argued that the Army’s concept of the operational art as it pertains to the operational level of war is disharmonious with Joint doctrine. Hamill: Valognes, you got Cherbourg.Ĭapt.

Miller: Well, we've got the beachhead secure, problem is Monty's taking his time moving on Caen, we can't move out 'til he's ready.Ĭapt.

Hamill: What've you heard? How's it all falling together?Ĭapt. It’s Just Tactics: Why the Operational Level of War is an Unhelpful Fiction and Impedes the Operational Artįrom Saving Private Ryan – An example of operational art in the trenches.Ĭapt.