The Four Levels Of War

U.S. Navy and Chilean Air Force aircraft participate in a fly-by adjacent to the aircraft carrier USS George Washington during Exercise UNITAS 2105 in the Pacific Ocean, Oct. 20, 2015. UNITAS 2015 is the U.S. Navy's longest running annual multinational maritime exercise, and is part of Southern Seas 2015. U.S. Navy photo by Lt. j.g. David Babka

Robert Bateman, Esquire: Understanding Military Strategy and the Four Levels of War

When "strategy" gets thrown around by politicians and the media, you can bet it's being misused.

In my sustained effort to help others understand the news, there is one important area that really must be addressed, both because this is an election period and because some of these words are so widely confused and conflated in modern journalistic usage they now have little to no meaning. Specifically, I am referring to what we know as the "Levels of War," and the way that terms like "tactics" and "strategy" and "campaign" (and several other related concepts) are thrown around as though they are synonyms. They are not; and how they are used, both by reporters and the candidates themselves, appears to be a reliable way to separate the wheat from the chafe.

But why does this matter in reporting on—or in speaking/proclaiming about—news coming from the Middle East or any other conflict zone you might want to know about?

WNU editor: This reporter is critical on how Donald Trump and Jeb Bush have used the word 'strategy' in their stump speeches .... but the best line from a politician who used the word strategy has to be from both Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney when they said (at different times) that .... "hope is not a strategy".