Chapter 11

Power Strategy

by Hugh M. Lewis

While evolution of strategic emphasis of power strategy has been dependent on and concurrent with the evolution of force strategy, its direction has followed an inverted course, from increased centralization of power toward decentralization, resulting from the over dependence on force strategy. The dead end of force strategy is reflected in the subtle shift of strategic emphasis toward power strategy. There exists three elementary power strategies, which are in order of strategic emphasis the strategy of nationalism, revolutionary strategy and the strategy of terrorism. Power strategy is founded on the premises that control over human will is derived from the power of balancing human valuation with destructive force neither one necessarily being preclusive of the other determinant. The strategy of nationalism aims at augmenting and centralizing power, derived both from destructive force potential and primarily human valuation, as a means of attaining ultimate world domination under a central national authority power structure. The strategy of nationalism still holds force as subordinate to valuation except on the occasion of war. Revolutionary strategy aims at changing and replacing national power concentrations with new form. Its goal is change by subsequent decentralization of the whole world's power structures. With revolutionary strategy the value of balance and force is in continual flux, on a teeter-totter of change. It is primarily concerned with political revolution, yet revolution occurs in many different aspects: cultural, spiritual, economics etc. The strategy of terrorism is founded on the value of force. It aims not at making or changing existing power structures but at destroying them. Terrorism derives power primarily from force while value is always subordinate. It is the unconscious power strategy underlying all force strategy. It derives power as the means rather than as the end of strategy. The means of force are the ends in the strategy of terrorism. It is fundamentally irrational.

National strategy, too long taken for granted by strategic attention, too obvious to achieve its deserved recognition, in part due to the subjective human inability to describe the forest because of the trees, has been and will continue to be the most important and prevalent elementary strategy existing. Since the beginning of classical history the known world has been divided into city-states, kingdoms, empires, nations which has been unified by a common infrastructure of a common economy, language, morality, heritage of tradition and culture and of foremost importance political sovereignty. These social systems, their evolution from small and simple to large and complex, the rise and fall of vast empires, has been the central thesis of the history of human civilization.

"Nowhere in all the complexities of the modern world are the contradictions and paradoxes more evident than in concepts of power and force.

Power is exerted both by attraction and by pressure. The existence of a situation that meets the aspirations of other people attracts, while pressure is exerted by the creation of situations that induce fear of consequences of not conforming to them. Military force is the ultimate form of pressure.

In a general sense a great power exerts influence by its very existence and general attitude. This power can be very real even when it is not consciously directed to any particular or clearly defined purpose. Such power and influence can be both economic and ideological.

In a specific sense a nation can exert influence by the conscious and planned use of many elements of power: political, economic, military and ideological."

National strategy is the comprehensive direction of all elements if national power: economic, military, moral and cultural, and political in order to attain objectives and support policies. It is comprised of national interests which are highly generalized abstractions reflecting basic needs and wants. Interests are difficult to identify and are rarely clear cut. They intertwine and overlap, all bearing on the concept of national security. Security implies defense by military force, but actually has much greater depth and dimension of connotation. The basis of security is survival of the state; a collectivization of individual minds, will powers, energies with an acceptable degree of independence. It also implies territorial integrity, traditional lifestyle, and fundamental institutions of value intact. The inputs of national strategy are political, military, economic, social, psychological and technological. These are represented by diverse expressions of power: national institutions, armed forces, geography, natural resources, industrial capacity, commerce, population, national 'character', morality, science and technology, the humanities, and leadership, which are molded into national interests, objectives, policies and commitments which constitutes the ends of national strategy.

National security interests rarely exist in a vacuum of neutrality; one is either for or against them. International coalitions are founded on mutual interest. Collision of interests is the basis of foreign policy problems. National security is founded on territorial sovereignty. Interests are particularly destabilizing when they demand a change in the status quo. National security interests, having political, military, economic and other elements, are the determinants of national objectives of strategy. There is a direct correlation between national objectives and the strategic center of gravity or balance. That is the point of decision that is established in international relationships, in national interests, objectives and strategies. Definition of this strategic center of gravity leads to definition of strategic objectives. There is a trade-off between attempts to maximize national security and a nationalistic preoccupation with national sovereignty that may lead to a garrison mentality--both objectives cannot always be maximized at the same time.

Understanding national objectives leads to consideration of national security policy that is usually a set of operating rules in which political policy predominates. Policy is similar to objectives and interests in that it comprises a group of considerations. Like objectives, policies can shift overnight, with the change of predominating political party, without there being any change in long range national interests. Policy is broad. Commitments pledge the parties concerned to take specific actions at specific times and places. National security interests, objectives, policies and commitments constitute the ends of national strategy. Its means are the elements of national power. Discrepancies between ends and available means create risks that are rarely easily quantifiable. Degrees of risk are relative to judgment. They can be extremely vulnerable to subjective opinion, interpretation, prejudice and persuasive influence that will reflect personality and character differences and transitory states of cognition and emotion. Interests commitments and objectives establish strategic requirements. Policies constitute the rules for meeting these requirements. The available assets are the means.

In the understanding of national strategy one must be wary of the self limiting and prejudicial influences that nationalistic biases play in clouding clear and concise thinking. Certain fundamental statements, often proffered quite unwittingly and without explicit elaboration as the absolute truth of the strategy of nationalism, automatically preclude in the collective strategic mind the formulation of any transcendent conclusions concerning the nature of national strategy.

"The only vital national security interest is survival--survival of the state, with an "acceptable" degree of independence, territorial integrity, traditional lifestyles, fundamental institutions, values and honor intact. Nothing else matters if the country is exterminated as a sovereign entity. No other end is worth risking national extinction to attain…"

In the above statement, the "survival of the state" is held as the crux of national strategy and the key to all national security interests. Such a statement begs qualification. Such a statement must be understood in context to the question "in regard to what state?" or better yet "in regard to whose state?" There are many well established nations in the world, each with an "inherent right" to survival, except when the survival of one state is to the parasitic sacrifice of any other state. Now let me ask, who has the right to say which state over any other state has exclusively that "right" to survival, in all the implied qualifications of that term, over any of the other states? Let me ask, by whose preferences must survival of any state be guaranteed? There exists in the above statement a fundamental confusion between a state's granted privilege of authority and territorial sovereignty and the peoples inherent rights to survival and freedom.

Yet even more important, it must be understood that a state is only a collectivization of its human constituency. A national government is only justifiably sovereign to the extent that is represents the security and survival of its individual constituents and adequately reflects the fundamental values of its people, especially and above all else, their human rights and independence. When national policy no longer directly and primarily serves these fundamental human valuations, its continuing justification becomes questionable. Other values such as territorial sovereignty, traditional lifestyles, fundamental institutions and especially "honor" are at best only borderline considerations in regard to the fact that they may represent more nationalistic prejudice than the express freedoms of human valuation. These quasi religious considerations, especially "honor" might better be sacrificed if that is the only means of guaranteeing the survival of the people. Further it must be questioned that if for the sake of preservation and continuance of a sovereign state is required to keep as political hostages the whole of its own and the people of other nations, and is well prepared to sacrifice the survival of a majority of humanity--and daily encroach more and more in a subtle and gradual manner upon their individual freedoms--for the "defense" of territorial integrity, basic institutions, traditional lifestyles and national "honor" (as in the case of the national policy of nuclear deterrence) then what can be the real and justifiable validity of that state? If survival of a sovereign state is worth the extinction of its people--a fundamentally irrational and self defeating policy--then how can that sovereignty justify its own continuance in blatant disregard for the survival of its people? Such is the extent of the prejudice of nationalism clouds the rationality of the collective strategic mind. A state has validity only to the extent that it realistically represents the human population contained within its territorial boundaries. Let it be understood that in the final analysis there is only one sovereign state and that is the state of the whole of humanity, world wide and world oriented, transcending all national borders, institutions and prejudices. There is only one set of values to which this ultimate sovereign state pledges allegiance and these values have best been summed up "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

Underlying the whole problem of nationalism is a central dichotomization between individual human "rights" and a state's "privileges" which eventuated in preclusive correlation in strategic thought between the personal and collective forms of expression these rights and privileges will take in the execution of policy. This is a philosophical dilemma the origin of which goes back to the Socratic sense of justice as expressed in the "Apology", "Phaedo" and "Crito" of Plato. It leads to the fundamentally erroneous conclusion that personal human rights can justifiably be sacrificed for the collective security of the whole as expressed by the diverse forms of a state's privileges. It leads to preferential and ultimately unjustifiable defense and predominance of a state's "rights" over the individual's "privileges"--an inversion of fundamental vales of human justice on the national level. What are some of the diverse forms of expression of these state's "rights". Of primary importance in context to survival of the state is the fostering of militarism in thought and in behavior, especially in the form of national conscription. Another important form is the avenue of avoidance and hindrance that is taken in the fostering of nationalism itself by educationally induced ignorance of the central problem concerned with nationalism, by enforced prejudice in all national and sub-national social institutions (which assume a quasi religious character) by pledge of allegiance, preferential treatment and membership, suppression of individual freedoms of disagreement, exclusive economic and citizenship privileges, extensive propagandization of national "imperatives", "security", "survival", "defense" and policies which lead to a third sanctified form of violation of human rights, the maintenance and improvement of a political reign of terror--holding virtually all of humanity hostage to the threat of nuclear holocaust. All these forms are interrelated and interdependent and many other special instances might be found. Yet they are all in direct and indirect violation of human rights. Human rights define the parameters of state privileges. The central problem is a crucial dilemma of human rights and nationalism, crucial to the future of human civilization. Let me ask finally, whose responsibility is the solution to this problem presented by predominating nationalistic tendencies, and from where and when will the necessary leadership come that will answer the call for justice?

"We must also reexamine our concepts of sovereignty. The present popular concepts of sovereignty and particularly the spread of aggressive nationalism, contradict the expressed desire for ultimate universal disarmament.

To sacrifice sovereignty to a United Nations today would bring an entirely new set of forces into play among a great variety of people whose concepts of law and justice do not necessarily resemble those of our free society. This emphasizes the absurdity of hoping for disarmament, peace and justice without first establishing a foundation of good faith.

Good faith is the central issue. We should realize that the communists are both expert and ruthless in exploiting the law and freedom of free nations for the purpose of destroying this law and the political moral concepts of the nations that have developed it.

While rejecting realistic measures of verification, and insisting on the troika principle of control of police forces, the communists have proposed the abolition of overt military power. They are specialists in and have great organizations for the use of covert power.

"…Thus all people may know that we are keeping every avenue of useful negotiation open. Then, if the nature and ambition of communist society should change, the work done will be beneficial. But we must be cautious and skeptical, for events repeatedly show that our boasted civilizations is still, only a veneer covering much human greed, hatred and savagery."

The foregoing statements at once touches the very heart of the problem of nationalism and yet fails in its conclusion by yielding to a subtle prejudice that is built in to the very conceptual "defense" which is employed argumentatively to rationalize the continuing perseveration of nationalistic policies to the violation of human rights. The prejudice provides a powerful impetus behind all such nationalistic tendencies and concerns primarily a related dilemma, interdependent at many levels with the dilemma of state and individual rights--the dilemma of the cold war barriers between the two current world superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, and their allies, NATO, SEATO and the Warsaw Pact respectively. In understanding of this second dilemma several valuable "caveats" of strategical importance must be defined. They are:

1. the nature by which the United States relates with the Soviet Union in politico military matters, is, by any standard, an extremely paranoid one. Paranoia in any form is essentially irrational, in both passive thought and in active behavior. The continued maintenance of such an irrationality based relationship automatically and systematically precludes the establishment of an atmosphere of mutual trust and cooperation needed before any peaceful negotiation, open communication and friendly alliance can be established between the superpowers.

2. the paranoid relationship, in both thought and deed is a reciprocal one, almost reflexive, between the governments of the two superpowers, the maintenance of which both share equally in the responsibility and liability. Hence, the continual escalation of the arms race and evolution of militarism on both sides. The potential danger of this basic reciprocity in escalating warfare beyond the nuclear threshold cannot be over stressed. In the extreme proliferation world wide of the means for making any minor incident of conflict can rapidly, uncontrollably, irrationally and inspite efforts for prevention, result in the precipitation of nuclear holocaust. With the scale so delicately balanced, complete control is only a dangerous illusion.

3. the term "communist" has an essentially derogatory connotation in the strategic thought of the United States government. This stereotype of moral inferiority and subversive indirection automatically precludes any true empathetic understanding by the leadership of the United States of the leadership of the Soviet Union, an understanding that is essential to the successful realization of any peaceful strategy.

4. the Soviet Union is a well established nation, with all the value connotations that term implies, territorial sovereignty and integrity, traditional lifestyles, "honor", fundamental social institutions and most importantly, human rights. The Soviet Union, to some relative degree adequately represents a collectivization of popular Soviet values and support by the people.

5. the people of the Soviet Union are not too dissimilar from the ordinary people of the United States. They have the same fundamental needs, aspirations, valuations, rights and privileges that are entertained as "exclusively" American.

6. just like the United States government, the principle concern of the leadership of the Soviet Union is to guarantee national security through national "defense" policies. This primary concern guarantees the same type and level of nationalistic prejudice, militaristic tendencies and policies will occur in the Soviet Union as in the United States.

7. despite almost convincingly overwhelming propaganda to the contrary, objective analysis of the evidence indicates that the United States, not the Soviet Union is the leader in the arms race all across the warfare spectrum and is the main generator of the research and development technology by which the evolution of militarism continues unhaltingly. Running a close second, so to speak, the Soviet Union is primarily concerned with "catching up" with or over compensating for, the United States military. This is in order to guarantee continuing national security from what it regards as the principle threat to its territorial sovereignty and national integrity. Hypersensitivity to its territorial integrity explains in part its aggressive policies in maintaining control over contiguous areas as a buffer and safeguard against domestic violation.

8. being "second place" in almost every aspect of its socio-technological development, the Soviet Union has had to try harder in its nationalistic and militaristic tendencies and policies, to maintain its place and to catch p with the United States, making the Soviets appear naturally more militaristic and politically aggressive that they need to be. Thus is the incentive for Soviet political persecution, extremism and more frequent disregard and violation of human rights which is apparently so exaggerated when compared to similar policies by the United States. The Soviet Union as representative of its people, cannot afford to improve its public policies when it feels compelled to compete with a more advanced United States for its very survival.

9. popular propaganda contrariwise reveals that the Soviet Union is actually more defensively oriented in its military policies and force structure all across the warfare spectrum than in the United States. To put it another way--the US Department of Defense is in actuality a pseudonym promulgated by the Pentagon propaganda machine to disguise military and political foreign policies which are in reality more offensive than if not as aggressive as similar Soviet policy, this is inspite of the widespread public opinion about the superior moral righteousness of the US foreign policy. For instance, the US maintains a greater potential for projection of conventional and special forces overseas and in the third world than the USSR does, while Soviet conventional forces are primarily defensively oriented to maintain border security.

10. any strategy of world domination purported by communist ideology is only of secondary and subsidiary importance in the strategy of the Soviet Union, which is primarily concerned with national security. Paradoxically the ideology of world capitalism and economic "freedom", supported implicitly and actively by United States foreign policy, is of primary importance to national strategy, while national security, assured by the relative isolation afforded by the wide oceans and by friendly and dependent neighbors is actually of secondary importance.

11. the principle threat in the strategic mind of the Soviet Union is actually greater than the principle threat in the strategic mind of the United States, lending to more prevalent and paranoid tendencies and irrational policies by the Soviets. The US menace is more a reality in the Soviet strategic mind than the Soviet specter is an illusion in the American strategic mind.

12. any change in the fundamentally authoritarian nature of the Soviet political structure must be initiated from within Soviet society. The principle of self determination, from which no nation is exempt, and the greater realization of human rights, must come from within infrastructure of Soviet society, from the people rather than from without by some sovereign sovereignty like the United States, which is less well understood by and therefore more threatening to--the ordinary people of Soviet society than are the Soviets understood by and threatening to the American society.

13. from the beginning of the Soviet revolution the United States national policy has always been to counter aggressively any policy supported by the Soviet Union, except in their superficial alliance against the Fascists in World War 11, and this has occurred inspite the real nature of such policies as opposed to the perceived threat, and even though such countering has often been more self defeating than helpful to US interests. In conclusion, the US has made of itself, through its aggressive "defense" policies, the principle threat to Soviet existence and has thus automatically eliminated the possibility of any peaceful negotiation and much less cooperation in its relationship with the Soviet Union.

14. the principle instigator behind the consistently "anticommunist-anti-Soviet-defense" policies by the United States has been consistently US business interests, which have always held strong influence in governmental policies, and this, paradoxically, has served to provide the necessary "credibility" over the years to the "anti capitalist pro communist" impetus underlying Soviet national strategy. It has helped more to affirm and bring resistance behind communist theory than it has helped to disprove and negate its influence.

15. the US has been more covertly involved with the politics and in the resistance to the self determination and corollary principle of non-intervention in the affairs of the people of the third world nations, than has the Soviet Union, which has helped more to support the concept of "revolution by the people". This is reflected by the fact that the S has been involved in more foreign military incidences in the third world than has the Soviet Union. The subversive nature of Soviet national strategy becomes questionable when compared to similar subversion by US "interests". Even formal attempts at arms limitation agreements between the superpowers have been compromised by such subversive tactics by the US. For instance, the attempt, wholly unacceptable to Soviet leadership, to force the Soviet nuclear forces "onto the seas" where superior US submarine capabilities would result in unquestionable S strategic superiority.

16. the US has never given Soviet society strategy and its political leadership the chance, by leaving it alone, to "make amends" and sue for cooperative peace and greater self determination.

17. popular opinion to the contrary, indications reveal that this Soviet Union, if given the chance, had been in the past and would be in the future probably and virtually more conducive and amenable than the United States to the establishment of any atmosphere of supra national cooperation, having more to gain by such changes in the long run than the United States.

Accept or reject these conclusions, they have general validity in the world strategic perspective. They are not meant to support Soviet policy, they are by no means procommunist. They do not reject or deny the popularly held notion of massive violation of human rights by the Soviet government. They are simply meant to reveal the fact that in any conflict, in any inter-human relationship there are always two sides to the story, two faces of the coin, so to speak, one of which is usually hidden from poplar view, and there is only one means of peaceful resolution, through mutual, inter-human understanding and cooperation. To even admit the slightest possibility of the efficacy of these "caveats" would mean a necessary reorientation of all nationalistic policy pursued by the United States. These observations, believed or not, true or not, speak for themselves. It is only necessary to conclude that the US has had as much, if not more, responsibility and liability in the concoction of the cold war dilemma than the Soviet "communists". It has had as much responsibility for the present reign of political terror imposed by nuclear deterrence. It shares as much, if not more, responsibility in the peaceful resolution of these interrelated and interdependent dilemmas which afflict the modern world, the dilemma of nuclear deterrence, the dilemma of the cold war barriers, and the dilemma of state rights versus individual rights. It is my personal opinion that the United States as leader of the arms race, shares more responsibility in the peaceful resolution of these dilemmas, and that there is only one means for that resolution, and that is initial unilateral arms reduction and disarmament all across the warfare spectrum by the US establishment of a supra national world government enforced by an international world police force of incontestable military superiority. If the United States had early in the American-Soviet relationship pursued a different more cooperative and peaceful policy of acceptance instead of rejection, than what might the world have been like today?

National strategy has an inherent expansionist nature. Even conservative nations who place a minimum peacetime value on centralization and on force strategy may yield great economic and moral influence and power which can be threatening to the status quo of other nations. There is a tendency for human to group for enhanced security and for their institution to acquire territorial sovereignty. This tendency is reflected by the group's acquisitive tendencies. There is a tendency for this expanding group to acquire greater means and degrees of power and control. The unity which provides the security also provides the impetus and momentum behind the acquisitive direction of growth of strategic influence which never occupies a vacuum no matter how great its displacement. The greater the degree of totalitarian centralization or of authoritarian conformity the greater is the tendency for the emphasis of direction toward force strategy.

Totalitarian objectives usually have easily recognized long-term goals since its political indicators are prone to propagandize. Open decentralized national strategies tend to minimize force potentials. Their long range objectives if there are any at all are subject to obscurity and many shifts of policy. Democratic regimes rotate frequently. Its leaders are often involved in personality contests and popularity shows. In an open society, national strategy ultimately rests on the values, education and political-social discipline of the people. Militarism is as much a socially induced phenomenon as it is an institutionalized behavior pattern. It rests ultimately in the character and collective culture of the people. A democratic political institution can be as militaristic as any totalitarian regime, only the possibilities for its tendencies to develop militaristic or authoritarian orientations is not as predominating. Militarism influences national strategy and inevitably leads to international aggression and acquisitive national policies. No national strategy, just as no society, is immune from the malign influence of militaristic orientations and dispositions.

National strategy comprises the highest level of grand strategy yet attained. Like grand strategy it contains many elements of all elementary forms of strategy. In this diversity it is difficult to unify national strategy into any comprehensive pattern. Far from being a comprehensive grand strategy it has evidenced in its strategic evolution many severe limitations and setbacks. The failings of national strategy have been derived from the limited strategic premises from which it has so far derived its power and objectives, limiting the scope of national strategy and reflected in the non-physical limitations of its theory. Its underlying presumption, formed around the basic conception of nationalism, forms the essential weakness to its comprehensiveness. It is ultimately within the human mind that the most dangerous limit to national strategy is to be found with its confining implications of national traditions and biases. National strategy, the most practiced and useful strategy of humanity, will not alone achieve world domination by its present form of ethno-nationalistic application, through the establishment of world empires by separate nations, but this world domination will only be achieved through an evolved metamorphosis of its strategy theory, that will then no longer be considered as the strategy of nationalism per se, with all its present implications and biases, but will become a supranational strategy of a completely altered and more comprehensive theoretical nature.

In spite of the unquestioned authority of national governments who wield great power worldwide, it is time to reconsider the necessity and value of nationalism. National doctrines of defense or of domestic security or for proclaimed territorial sovereignty often hide imperialist motivations and a prejudiced public attitude, cultivated by the media and propaganda institution. Any insulation through political centralization of authority breeds a common psychology among the constituents of nationalistic self righteousness and selfishness and a contempt for and neglect of other people's rights. The aggressiveness resulting from such nationalistic attitudes is usually so well hidden and disguised through manipulation of propaganda and appeals to emotionality that the people and their leadership themselves are not even consciously aware of their subsequent aggressiveness and violation of other's rights. The subjective feelings of individuals cannot be ignores in this modern world, neither when we pledge allegiance to some state or national flag or when we, in the name of some abstract illusion of threatened security violate the national security and territorial sovereignty of other peoples. To them we look more like foreign invaders than defense force of liberation. They have a common heritage to which they also pledge allegiance.

Political evolution has not seemed to keep pace with the technological evolution of the means of growth of civilization, of advanced communications, transmission and transportation systems, world wide and world integrating. There exists today capacity for extensification and intensification through integration of political power and sovereignty worldwide. Nationalism resists this evolutionary growth. Modern humanity is worldian, and not just national in character. Just as there is no need for national sovereignty and international anarchy, so there is no need for the use of destructive force in war for the implementation of national strategy. There is no longer any need for the immense ambiguity of nationalism. Power is only successful, permanent and stable when founded on mutual trust of human valuation and not on mutual fear of destructive force. All too frequently nations resort to the utilization of violence to force strategy. Aggression is the crime of national sovereignty which goes unpunished. National government's claim to sovereignty is the antiquated perseveration of institutions beyond their practicable and useful limits. They maintain political power through the cultivation of general ignorance and militarism, of nationalistic prejudice through manipulation and violation of natural human normative needs and fundamental human rights. The result is atrophied growth of the civilization of humanity, a hindered natural evolution, with much death and destruction through the continuance and evolution of militarism, for the sake of a few selfish and self proclaimed leaders who in the name of a mistaken, uneducated and ignorant people live for unjust ideals and for too much power of authority and selfish needs.

Revolution is the watchword of modern society, threatening to the very foundations of national security. Revolution knows no territorial boundary, it can be applied to all areas of the world. It recognizes no natural rights of states or privileges of national governments. Any and all means are justified to attain the ends of political revolution. For its perpetrators it is total war. Revolutionary strategy connotes conscious efforts to seize political power by illegitimate coercive means, destroying existing political and social systems and replacing them with reformed models and as such it has come to occupy a separate niche in the collective strategic mind. Revolutionary strategy is quite frequently confused as a force strategy. It is really a power strategy achieving a subtle transcendent difference over the force strategies by being more generalized form of strategy, incorporating in its theoretical foundations human value as well as force as the power determinants of strategic control of human will. It includes but is never confined to the bounds of military action. Its purpose is to destroy an existing institution and to allow replacement with a new, hopefully improved social system.

Revolutionary strategy is endowed with a dynamic dimension from which it achieves transcendence, success and attractiveness. It derives its power from its unpatterned transient nature, achieved in part from the power of guerrilla warfare and which it has in modern times often been correlated. It involves not only political revolution but a revolution in the nature of conventional warfare transcending the force strategies. Herein lies the great attraction, force and confusion of this strategy. There is complete opposition of guerrilla strategy to the continental theory of organized armies which is fundamentally sequential in its results and is the basis for all force strategy. Guerrilla warfare more resembles a type of cumulative strategy than the sequential decisive type of continental strategy. Instead of being a limiting positional battleground for fixed forces the land becomes a fluid ocean of highly mobile guerrillas. Revolutionary strategy is a Fabian grand strategy, its main weight being a cumulative effect, there being no such thing as a decisive battle until the ideal conditions are met.

The force of revolutionary strategy lies essentially in the creativity of the guerrilla.

The countryside and land becomes a sea from which the creativity of the guerrilla is cultivated. Guerrilla amateurs never trained at a military school have defeated professional regular forces. The line of expected intuition and the expression of creativity should not be drawn at the commanders, but includes all men of they are given a chance to develop their powers of creation and intuition. From bobby traps to leadership the intuitive quality of mind is the distinguishing characteristic of the guerrilla. All types of people are potentially creative when working with intense motivation and self discipline in the right environment. The guerrilla has two forms of freedom--intellectual and physical--from which his creativity can manifest itself. The guerrilla escapes the mantel of law and social restriction, a difficult burden under which to think creatively, under which most men sink into apathy "content to follow the channels of thought approved by the consensus of the omnipotent majority". Outside the law, the guerrilla gains his second form of physical freedom of movement by which he learns new and unique experiential knowledge outside the conventional soldier's realm of understanding--a virtually greater source of power. The civilian population assists the guerrilla in two ways that give life to revolutionary ideas. It gives sympathetic support, which form elements in the guerrilla subconscious that become available to be used in creation. The population is one form of the guerrilla's art material. It is also the receptive audience to which the guerrilla's creativity must sell revolutionary concepts in the form of ideological propaganda and actions which are the communication of the guerrilla's creative ideas. There is a close resemblance between the characteristics of artists and guerrillas. Creative people are non-conformists, divergent thinkers endowed with the spirit of rebellion. They are "primitive and more cultured, more destructive and constructive, and crazier and saner than the average person--"unconsciously rejecting the pressures of socialization and conformity. Motivation--a characteristic prevalent in creative people--in another factor of the guerrilla strength. Utilization of creative potential requires the capacity to work hard to achieve expression. Creativity is sustained effort toward an ideal. The earmark of the guerrilla is extreme political motivation, a dedication to see ideas verified. With initiative and intuition from the guerrilla's intellect the natural and synthetic resources about him are transformed into innovation and invention in revolution against the conformity imposed by social and political institutions.

Indeed, in a very abstract sense of rebellion against conformity of thought and behavior creation is revolution and revolution is creation. Political revolution is not excluded from this consideration but is only one form of a much more general revolutionary movement that has often dramatically, but more subtly, changed our world. Social., cultural, religious, philosophical, artistic, military--there are many forms of revolution which the history of civilization has recorded. Revolution in thought has generally preceded and stimulated revolution in action. The greatest and most prolific thinkers have been the greatest revolutionary leaders. It is when, in a state of political suppression and social repression, that there is a lack of peaceful revolutionary movement--that a stagnation of culture by failing to change with the times and when there occurs actual political reaction and social regression--that is when the forces of the multifaceted authoritarian power structures gain predominance in both mind and body, that revolution will eventuate in the form of political disintegration and social upheaval characterized by intense violence and the subsequent reign of terrorism. Just as creativity is a naturally human tendency pervading every human endeavor, so too is human revolution a naturally human function which must not be repressed or alienated from any of its forms of expression in human existence--political, social, cultural without unacceptable consequences.

Revolution can no longer be creatively constructive under the destructive interference and influence of such severe limitations of freedom and enforced dependency and conformity by authoritarian power structures, but is transformed in its very nature into creative destructiveness. If given adequate means of expression--adequately free and independent, an unprecedented and radical incorporation of the concept of creative revolution in all its forms of expression and allowed to develop of its own accord and pace--then there would be no need of mutually destructive interference in the relationship between the rigidly conformist authoritarian personality and the creative non-conforming revolutionary personality. Revolution would then proceed peacefully and constructively to the improvement of civilization. Revolution has proven historically to be continual and unstoppable.

Revolutionary strategy hinges on a fundamental military philosophy which has evaded the understanding of the military mind and the attention of the collective strategic mind, forming a nucleus from which evolved new concepts of how an inferior can defeat a superior. It is customarily interpreted as an outburst against social, political, and economic injustice and that the guerrillas extreme vehemence toward the system is the primary stimulus to confront insuperable military odds. The guerrilla phenomenon is fundamentally intellectual; putting mind before body, so to speak. Its philosophy was first formulated by T. E. Lawrence in the book "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" providing the framework for a cheap and clever military technique of forcing one's will on a physically superior opponent. Rejecting the mode of the traditional soldier system based on extermination theories that victory must be attained with blood through the process of destruction of enemy force in battle, Lawrence elucidated an abstract, intuitive and revolutionary concept of military organization and strategy. Traditional armies have to have some objective to capture, therefore, one must allow them to be objective. Military forces became an idea--something intangible without a definitive front or rear, invulnerable, permeating the whole countryside, mobile, fluid, transient avoiding direct and decisive tactical conflict. The purpose was to wear down enemy morale in a protracted guerrilla war in which the enemy will eventually give up and dismiss itself from the field of conquest. The war will end quietly without decisive results. Lawrence filled the vacuum of rejection with a solution of man himself, in his ability to improve his condition by changing his environment--in his creativity. The prime mover in war, the mind is the ultimate determiner of victory, emanating power over physical force. The innovative solution is in each man's mind, making all individuals independent military operators without the mass and inertia of structural social organization, gaining a much more transcendent power over the conventional soldier, unleashing dynamic forces which have helped to alter the face of war forever.

Because the communists have been the most prolific and successful in its publication and implementation, revolutionary strategy is purported to be of communist origin: of which Mao Tse Tung is its father and Lin Pao, Ho Chih Minh, Ho Nyugen Giap, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were its able disciples and propagators of the faith, has actually borrowed from and built upon and refined the basic philosophy of Lawrence in the generally know Mao Theory of wars of national liberation. They finalized the philosophy into practical principles for operational implementation. Russian communist theory derived from Marx, Lenin and Stalin is based on the urban proletariat, singling out the urban workers caught in the upheaval of industrial revolution, focusing on the cities as the primary means of gaining control of the centers of government in street riot type of violent revolution. Mao tried the urban type of revolution but it proved unsuccessful for an agrarian society. He reconstructed the theory using the rural peasantry as the central basis of power. This theory is principally dependent upon guerrilla warfare.

The three phase strategy of Mao has served as the general framework for modern revolutionary strategies. Phase 1 is the organization and consolidation phase of laying the political and psychological framework for growth of the incipient insurgent means of power. This is the political indoctrination of an expanding core of believers in society, capitalizing on a need of human nature to be a social animal, a conformist as well as an individualist, aiming at control of primary social groups with success resulting from a monopoly of access to the people. Phase 11 is a progressive expansion solidifying mass support and bringing pressure to bear on the enemy by expanding guerrilla warfare. It is a period of terror, sabotage and active guerrilla warfare. Phase 111 is the decision phase produced by defeating the incumbent government forces with orthodox forces on the field of battle, while the main interest remains in control of the people and not in control of the territory. The whole countryside is controlled and upset by organized violence. The government is beaten or collapses to be replaced by the revolutionary apparatus. The Mao strategy of revolution has been tested and proven to be successful under appropriate conditions.

Lin Pao's "Manifesto" represents an elaborate program of world conquest. The accomplishment of guerrilla warfare proves it is workable to a limited degree, giving credence to the Manifesto".

"The emancipation of the proletariat will have its specific expression in military affairs, creating a new specific method, a new mentality, as a new military mind giving greater dimension of expression."

World domination through revolution is an expressed, objectified form.

Revolution has assumed assorted forms in all areas of the world. To be successful revolutionary strategy has at least three prerequisites which must be fulfilled. The first is the right social atmosphere, which is difficult to theorize since revolution occur under many different circumstances. It involves social injustice and social dissatisfaction. It rarely originates spontaneously in an atmosphere of severe human misery, strife, or poverty or extreme oppression. Individuals too consumed by the daily struggle for survival have no strength nor time to foment revolution. The social circumstances where it occurs most often is where rising expectations causes impatience and friction with the existing apparatus. It occurs in the transition, the modernization from agrarian to industrialization, especially when forced or manipulated from extraneous powers. It is an expression of culture shock. Political revolution is related to the industrial revolution in an indirect sense in which people displaced by a automation encounter a new society, new values, and new means of adaptation in the face of old traditions and life styles. There does not exist a single modern society which has not come through the birth pains of revolution and the death throes of old obsolete social systems. The world is caught in the midst of a gradual transition which is subtle, accelerating, confusing and critical. More revolutions can be expected to recur especially in third world nations which will result in civil war, protracted guerrilla warfare and in periods of continual coups and unstable government. Friction of social division can be compounded by communications gaps manipulated and exploited by private interests. The second prerequisite for success is an emotional cause that is worth dying for, something political patriotism or religious fanaticism behind which the true believer can follow a system of indefinite and vague illusions of platitudes and phrases which directs and limits strategic attention giving form and meaning to revolution. The third prerequisite is organization. Leadership is a primary factor of effective institutionalization. The initial objective is to establish a dual political system, an incipient insurgent organization, just a structural framework, in a parasitical relationship with the host incumbent organization. The key to survival of the revolutionary organization is a stable dual infrastructure, an underground organization of political leadership and a military guerrilla organization.

In the face of seemingly invincible odds of materialistic superiority and in the dace of nuclear deadlock, communism has subverted revolutionary strategy as a powerful and subtle tactical and strategic weapon in a grand strategy of world domination. It has the spiritual blindness and fanaticism of a new growing religion. This is the depth of its power in the valuations of its supporters. Revolution is a direct spin-off of the evolution of technological civilization, a natural response by people who are dissatisfied with the old while recognizing the new potentials within their group, without exactly knowing how, throwing off the yoke of the old social institutions and deeding new political solutions. It is frequently proclaimed and feared to be all powerful but its threatening appearance is a sign of its inner weakness. It has its limitations in its presumptuous premises, depending ultimately on the will of the people for its execution. Revolution becomes a vicious circle of power--over dependence on the utilization of destructive force--in which old solutions to social problems are thrown out and forgotten to be replaced in the wake of political turmoil with new unresolved problems. Political privilege has a price of political responsibility. One cannot be had without paying ultimately for the other. If anything revolution leaves unpaid and disproportionate social indebtedness escalating to uncontrollable conditions in which revolution can no longer occur in a strategically functional manner. Once initiated it quickly gains momentum that is difficult to slow down and almost impossible to stop completely. To radical revolutionary change invites extreme reactionism which may cause ultimately a reversion to even more obsolescent forms of social functioning. While achieving many short term successes, the long term results might adversely aggravate the state of future stability. Revolution tends to deteriorate the very fundamental relationship upon which responsible government is based, eroding social responsibility and cohesiveness which is the moral fabric of effective leadership upon which open societies are dependent. The new regime becomes more oppressive and dissatisfactory to its constituents than the one it replaced. While the individual influence in its strategic direction is lost. Dynamic revolutionary strategy crystallizes into a stagnate national strategy of acquisition of power.

National and revolutionary strategy are complementary and interrelated overlapping at the weaknesses and limitations of each other. National strategy is subject to revolutionary change by the subversion of revolutionary strategy, and national strategy inevitably fills the void of power created in the wake of successful revolutionary strategy. Any comprehensive grand strategy must transcend the weaknesses of either strategy by incorporating both in their complementary strengths into a single integrated successful power strategy of a transcendent form.

The strategy of terrorism suffers the same problem as many other military concepts. The crux of the dilemma is a lack of systematic and comprehensive strategic mind, resulting in the misinterpretation and misapplication of many words and meanings. The meaning must be tailored to fit the term while the term must adequately represent its implications. Whatever the origins of terrorism in the psychological irrationality of man and whatever its future implications for society in general, it is nevertheless a grand strategy aiming a world domination--one which has many operating advocates. It has long been unrecognized on its own merits as a distinct elementary form of strategy, nor have its varied manifestations been consistently interrelated with comprehensive coherence. The strategy of terrorism is an elementary power strategy, fundamentally of a political nature. It is not a force strategy, even though force strategies are dependent upon its political premises. While force strategy is primarily concerned with military direction of destructive force to achieve control, the strategy of terrorism derives its power to control by the exercise of the propaganda value of threatened force. It relies on the human valuation of destructive force. It is the epitome of the indirection of force. It is political because of its motives and direction. Terrorist acts have a common political motive to overturn or radically change the established political state. While a solitary individual assassin may act only on personal (non-political) motives, people involved in terrorism have a common political motivation, organization and objective. Terrorism is politicized violence and political crime, to which international aggression and strategic bombing and nuclear deterrence are closely related. Unlike national strategy which aims at the preservation and augmentation of power of an existing state, and unlike revolutionary strategy which aims at replacing government with a new form, the strategy of terrorism is principally concerned with the downfall of the existing political structure by violent means. The means of the other power strategies are the ends of the strategy of terrorism.

"…every terrorist is an incipient revolutionary"

The small radical groups have achieved the clearest expression of the strategy of terrorism as a doctrine of grand strategy--in destroying all social institutions as part of the theory of the dagger and the philosophy of the bomb. The essential power of this strategy is the fear of the indiscriminate force involving death or the threat of death to noncombatants. The best target is the most illegitimate, the ordinary human noncombatant. Terrorism is the attempted justification and legalization of murder. Terrorists seek not to hide the responsibility of death and destruction but to advertise it, a declaration of war aimed at disturbing the state of peace. It is a form of threat involving the element of surprise against a wide choice of victims either random or incidental. Destruction is the threatened demonstration of further violence resulting in terrorization of the population at large, forcing a government to overact in attempts to control the violence. The victims are not the end. What the victims have in common is noninvolvement. They are simply means of gaining power and of conveying a political message.

While its popular connection with the radical brings to mind a small group of long hair, non-conforming and rejected bomb throwers, the strategy of terrorism is a more transcendent general formula than other power strategies, becoming inextricably interrelated with revolutionary strategy and a popular and recurrent if often officially denied policy of national strategy.

"if terrorism is a technique of war, by the same token….has in its unmistakable elements of terrorism, the casual shooting of civilians, the bombing of cities, schools and hospitals. Nevertheless the rational behind such deeds is more complex, partly because the practitioners of wartime atrocities, acting on behalf of established governments are far less clear about their motives, in public at any rate, than terrorists are."

"…the inescapable conclusion must be that those who participated in the war…were brutalized by it, made lustful for revenge and were no longer capable of distinguishing enemy combatants from innocent victims. Under conditions of desperation all members of the opposing side are seen as the active enemy, their only proper fate is to be destroyed…

"But such moral righteousness coupled with cold blooded brutality toward one's opponent , is precisely the attitude of the terrorist. As soon as the partisan reaches the stage where he can either deny the innocence of anyone who is not on his side or assert that such innocence is irrelevant to the overriding issue, which is his own side's final triumph, then he is in a psychological position to commit a terrorist act, whether on behalf of a government in the context of war or on behalf on a movement dedicated to ultimate revolution.

The contagion extends still further. If attitudes of moral superiority and belief in the necessity of violence against the innocent are shared by terrorists and governments at war, they are also appropriated by the ordinary soldier with disconcerting ease and made the basis and justification for individual forays of destruction and death. It is easy enough to see how this can happen. Through a conscious policy of dehumanizing the enemy, governments instill in citizens and soldiers alike the will to fight…"

The strategy of terrorism has achieved its ultimate expression of world domination, in a very practical sense, in the form of counter value strategy of nuclear deterrence.

The strategy of terrorism is founded on irrational premises: the neglect of the application of justice in war and in peace. Its essential irrationality is its underlying weakness as a strategy. Force breeds more force, a vicious cycle achieving only a dead end as is evidenced by the nuclear strategy of deterrence. Terrorism often solidifies and reinforces the enemy will to resist, entrenching the noncombatant into a hard fast stand of resistance. Resistance is the primary incalculable in the realization of strategy. Important to strategy of terrorism is the credibility of the threat. If it is incredible, being untimely or misplaced it may well precipitate an incalculable adverse reaction. It cultivates ill will and feelings of revenge which result in retaliation in like manner and in the mutual escalation of the reign of terror. The strategic usefulness of terrorism is dubious at best. The success of terrorism in achieving results is always difficult to accurately assess. While the strategy of terrorism may seem naïve to the point of simple irrationality it nevertheless has profound implications for the strategic future of humanity.

Power strategies have been based more on common sense, trial and error and practical experience in strategic evolution than on any truly definitive theory. They have been the most tested and variable form of strategy. They are still evolving. While power strategy achieves transcendence over force strategy, its application has been overly dependent on the irrational strategy of terrorism. While the force strategies have reached an evolutionary cul-de-sac in nuclear deadlock, power strategy inevitably reflects this condition of stagnation in the evolution of its strategic emphasis toward increased terrorism. There does not exist so far a power strategy which comprehensively transcends the limitations of the elementary power strategies. Such a comprehensive strategy must be founded on the efficacy of national strategy in an evolved global form, accepting the subversive influence of revolutionary strategy as inevitable and necessary to its continuing viability and flexibility in a changing world environment. It must recognize the essential irrationality of the strategy of terrorism and seek to minimize its influence on the strategic future of humanity. Such a strategy must seek to minimize its dependence on force strategy as a means of power control which leads to consideration of an alternative means of control, namely that of maximizing dependence of power on human valuation. This necessitates consideration of the elementary value strategies.

1. "Grand Strategy: Principles and Practices" by John M. Collins. Pages 2-5. 29, 51

paragraphs 3, 5

2. "The Art of Winning Wars" by James Mrazek . pages 129-137

3. "The Ultimate Weapon: Terrorists and World Order" by Jan Schrieber. Pages 19, 139-

141, 36

Military Dimensions