JP 1, Doctrine for the Armed Forces of the United States - Defense ...

Chapter I
f. According to Sun Tzu, war is “a matter vital to the state; the province of life or death;
the road to survival or ruin.” To assess its essentials, he suggests that one analyze it in terms
of five fundamental factors: moral influence, weather, terrain, command, and doctrine. He
further posits that “what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.”
g. Strategy in War. The two fundamental strategies in the use of military force are
strategy of annihilation and strategy of erosion.
(1) The first is to make the enemy helpless to resist us, by physically destroying his
military capabilities. This has historically been characterized as annihilation or attrition. It
requires the enemy’s incapacitation as a viable military force. We may use force when we
seek a political objective, such as the overthrow of the enemy leaders. We may also use this
strategy in pursuit of more limited political objectives, if we believe the enemy will continue
to resist as long as means to do so remain.
(2) The second approach is to convince the enemy that accepting our terms will be
less painful than continuing to aggress or resist. This can be characterized as erosion, using
military force to erode the enemy leadership’s or the enemy society’s political will. In such
an approach, we use military force to raise the costs of resistance higher than the enemy is
willing to pay. We use force in this manner in pursuit of limited political goals that we
believe the enemy leadership will ultimately be willing to accept.
(3) Particularly at the higher levels, waging war should involve the use of all
instruments of national power that one group can bring to bear against another (diplomatic,
informational, military, and economic). While the military focuses on the use of military
force, we must not consider it in isolation from the other instruments of national power.
Paragraph 9, “Instruments of National Power and the Range of Military Operations,”
discusses the instruments of national power.
3. Warfare
Warfare is the mechanism, method, or modality of armed conflict against an enemy. It
is “the how” of waging war. Warfare continues to change and be transformed by society,
diplomacy, politics, and technology.
a. Historian John Keegan offers that war is a universal phenomenon whose form and
scope is defined by the society that wages it. The changing form and scope of warfare gives
value to delineating the distinction between war and warfare.
b. Understanding the changing nature of warfare frames the context in which wars are
fought. Context helps combatants make informed choices as to such essential matters as
force structure, force preparation, the conduct of campaigns and operations, and rules of
engagement (ROE).
c. The US military recognizes two basic forms of warfare—traditional and irregular.
The delineating purpose of each is the strategic focal point of each form. As war is a duality,
warfare generally has both traditional and irregular dimensions and offensive and defensive
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