Chapter 1.2.7: Military Theories Summary

To summarize everything from this section, John Boyd proposed the idea of the
Five Rings in order to conceptualize the best way to attack a foe. The more
centralized the ring that is targeted, the more effective the attack due to its
center of gravity. Boyd’s concept can transplanted from the military realm to the
social for application with Color Revolution information campaigns. Depending on
the civilization/culture, there are different rings for “marketing” the political
concepts to both the general society and the specific individual demographic.
With all of the rings, however, it is best to follow Liddel Hart’s indirect approach,
which upsets the pivotal OODA Loop.
Perhaps the most important innovation in warfare and the most relevant for
Hybrid Wars is Chaos Theory. The non-linear dynamics that Steven Mann
describes are the epitome of Fourth-Generation Warfare, the current amorphous
state of the field. By its nature, Chaos Theory seeks to exploit the seemingly
unpredictable, thereby making it largely indirect and fully capable of neutralizing
the OODA Loop. Constructive/creative/managed chaos occurs when there is an
attempt to harness these forces for strategic purposes. Color Revolutions and
Unconventional Warfare completely fit into this principle, thereby making them
more effective than older and more traditional regime change tactics.
Finally, the US has pioneered a new strategy for waging war in the multipolar
world, Lead From Behind. This allows the US to outsource its destabilization
operations to like-minded regional allies if the objective is deemed too costly or
politically sensitive for the US to directly and unilaterally pursue. It basically
amounts to war by proxy, with the US managing its allies’ contributions to the
effort from afar. This novel strategy is only but a few years old and is still
developing, but the instance of Turkey and Jordan’s participation in the Syrian
Crisis provides a strong template to follow for forecasting its future direction.
Additionally, Poland helped fill a similar structural role during the EuroMaidan
Coup, but since the regime change operation was successful in such a short
period of time, its full potential in destabilizing its neighbor was not actualized.

Chapter 1.3.1: Full Spectrum Dominance

On 30 May, 2000, the Pentagon released a strategic document entitled “Joint
Vision: 2020”36. It explicitly aims to achieve Full Spectrum Dominance, which it
defines as being “Persuasive in peace; Decisive in war; Preeminent in any form of
36 "Joint Vision 2020." . U.S. Department of Defense, 30 May 2000. Web. 8 July 2014.
<http://mattcegelske.com/joint-vision-2020-americas-militar…/>.
29
conflict”. The Department of Defense’s American Forces Press Service elaborates
on this goal by adding that it is also “the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone or
with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of
military operations.”37 F. William Engdahl wrote a 2009 book about this topic,
wherein he proves that the US’ main priority is to acquire full dominance over the
spheres of the conventional military, nuclear weapons, human rights rhetoric and
other norms, geopolitics, space, and communications38. In a nutshell, this is
everything and anything that can be weaponized or have some kind of
significance on the battlefield or the consciousness of its actors, and Engdahl
meticulously documents the steady progress that the Pentagon is making in
controlling it and depriving its adversaries of this crucial advantage. He also
outlines various methods, including Color Revolutions, that the US uses to try to
control Russia and China.

Chapter 1.3.2: Full Spectrum Dominance and Color Revolutions

Engdahl’s book devotes an entire chapter to the phenomenon of Color
Revolutions and how they are institutionally structured. He also provides a
detailed overview of their history, use of NGOs as front organizations, and their
deployment to secure American geostrategic energy interests. It is thus highly
recommended that the reader reference his work to gain valuable insight into
these aspects. Nonetheless, the book at hand explains the theoretical
underpinnings of Color Revolutions and how they fit into a new niche of Full
Spectrum Dominance strategy together with Unconventional Warfare, something
that is not addressed in Engdahl’s work.
The mantra of Full Spectrum Dominance to be persuasive in peace, decisive in
war, and preeminent in any form of conflict forms the backbone of Color
Revolutions. To begin with, Color Revolutions begin as information campaigns
targeting the affected population. They must be persuasive in order to reach as
wide of an audience as possible (in some cases, it may be more strategic to only
reach a certain demographic in order to have them ‘rise up’ and exacerbate
existing ethnic fractures within society, for example). This is where the author’s
variation of Warden’s Five Rings becomes relevant in effectively reaching various
societies and individuals. Innuendo and insinuation may be utilized to present an
indirect and effective approach to penetrating the rings, although this will be
discussed more in Chapter Two.
37 "Joint Vision 2020 Emphasizes Full-spectrum Dominance." . U.S. Department of Defense, 2 June 2000. Web. 8
July 2014. <http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=45289>.
38 Engdahl, William. Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order. Wiesbaden:
edition.engdahl, 2009. Print.
30
The core of Color Revolutions boils down to social dominance. The movement is
able to harness a sizeable enough amount of individuals to publicly confront the
state and attempt to overthrow it. In order to gather the recruits, ideological,
psychological, and information techniques are employed. Although it is preferred
that the movement’s ideas are the dominant stream of thought, this does not
have to be the case. Color Revolutions do not have to reach the majority of the
population in the country or the capital to be successful. All that they have to be
able to do is summon a large amount of people to create a public relations and
security challenge for the defending government. The range of individuals needed
to successfully carry out a Color Revolution can fluctuate depending on the
country, the characteristics of its leadership, and the strength of the government
and its security apparatus. Social dominance is achieved once this critical mass is
deployed against the authorities and provides the chaotic challenge that the
movement is aiming for. Color Revolutions thus try to gain dominance over such
intangible aspects as society, ideology, psychology, and information.

Chapter 1.3.3: Full Spectrum Dominance and Unconventional Warfare

The Full Spectrum Dominance goals of Unconventional Warfare are more akin to
conventional military objectives than those of Color Revolutions. The difference,
however, is that Unconventional Warfare is more irregular, indirect, and nonlinear
than regular warfare, and therefore, it has certain limits in what it can and
cannot dominate. Therefore, it is more appropriate to state that Unconventional
Warfare’s goals in relation to Full Spectrum Dominance are to gain as much
physical dominance as possible within the targeted state’s original Five Rings,
short of using committed direct intervention from an outside state or
metamorphosing into conventional warfare. In this way, Unconventional Warfare
aspires for dominance over tangible aspects of the battlefield but not in the same
manner that conventional war does.
This is not to say that Unconventional Warfare is inferior to conventional warfare
in the realm of Full Spectrum Dominance, however. It is quite the contrary, as it
actually holds some very important strategic advantages over it. For example, the
targeted state’s conventional forces can never be entirely sure to what extent or
for how long they can control and safeguard various territory or infrastructure
from attack, thus fostering uncertainty over when and where to deploy their
units. This in turn is used to affect the decision part of the OODA Loop, thereby
obstructing decisive action and hindering its effectiveness.
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Chapter 1.3.4: The Dominance of Chaotic Dynamics

Per the above two sections, it has been seen how Color Revolutions and
Unconventional Warfare occupy a specific role in overall Full Spectrum
Dominance strategy. In fact, they serve complementary purposes, as Color
Revolutions seek intangible dominance and Unconventional Warfare is used to
attain its tangible form. Both strategies are direct by-products of Fourth-
Generation Warfare, and therefore, they have the seeds of chaos sown within
them. It has earlier been explained that constructive/creative/managed chaos is
one of the tools that can be used to propel certain foreign policy objectives or
grand strategies (e.g. the Eurasian Balkans), so it is therefore appropriate that the
US would also want to dominate it in the same manner that it does space,
communications, etc.
This brings about the idea that Hybrid War, the combination of Color Revolutions
and Unconventional Warfare, fits into the Full Spectrum Dominance paradigm by
being the domination of chaotic dynamics. Those behind Color Revolutions and
Unconventional Warfare control the initiative of their coup offensive, thereby
placing the targeted state on the defensive. The chaos that comes with Color
Revolutions and Unconventional Warfare spreads throughout the enemy
“system” (as Warden views the opponent to be39) as a “virus” does a computer,
per the logic of Mann, with the eventual hope that it will result in its full
corruption and the need to initiate a “system reboot” (regime change) to remove
the threat. Unconventional Warfare adds an element of nonstop fear to the
equation, which works as a force multiplier in exacerbating the combined chaotic
effect of the destabilizing regime change operation.
Chapter 1.3.5: Full Spectrum Dominance Summary
As part of the Pentagon’s official strategy, the US military has been working
towards dominating every single facet of war-fighting capability that there is.
Hybrid War presents itself as a unique hybrid package of intangible and tangible
dominance over battlefield variables, which itself is manifested in a largely
indirect way. All in all, it is paradoxically “structured chaos” (to the extent that it
can be called that) which is being weaponized to achieve specific foreign policy
ends. This makes it both a strategy and a weapon, doubling its effectiveness in
proxy combat and equally destabilizing its target.
39 Warden, Colonel John. "The Enemy as a System." . Airpower Journal, Op. Cit.

Chapter 1.4: Chapter Conclusion

As explained through the logical progression of geopolitical thought, certain
determinants can approximate the wide field in which Hybrid Wars can be
deployed. The most important geopolitical theory influencing Hybrid Wars is
Brzezinski’s idea of the Eurasian Balkans. Since both concepts employ the use of
directed chaos, they are mutually complementary. Therefore, if the Eurasian
Balkans is the strategy, then Hybrid War is the tactic to achieve it. Military
theories provide confirmation of the effectiveness of Hybrid War’s indirect warfighting
methods. They also show that it is heavily derived from Chaos Theory and
may very well be its first patterned application. The Lead From Behind template is
the new structure that the US is using to wage Hybrid Wars and destabilize the
volatile Eurasian periphery via proxy conflict. Finally, the idea of Full Spectrum
Dominance is the end objective of all US military planning and strategy. Hybrid
War is a unique asymmetrical part of Full Spectrum Dominance that can be best
summarized as the weaponization and attempted management of chaos. It is a
new plane of warfare that transcends all others and incorporates them into its
multifaceted being.