Clarifying Relationships Between Objectives, Effects, and End States With Illustrations and Lessons from the Vietnam War - Maxwell Taylor, McNamara, von Clausewitz

This military study examines the roles and relationships of objectives, effects and end states across the strategic and operational levels of war in order to provide greater clarity for campaign planners. With its inclusion in the recently updated joint doctrine on planning, the effects-based approach to operations attempts to capture the latest insights on warfare. Unfortunately, the new joint doctrine fails to clearly articulate its advantages and scope of applicability, allows inconsistencies internal to itself and with previous doctrine to remain, and causes confusion in formerly well-understood concepts. With the goal of providing a more consistent framework than that offered by joint doctrine, this study, supported by lessons from the Vietnam War, examines why the nesting of objectives, effects and end states must be understood in order to successfully design campaigns to achieve strategic ends. This study attempts to close some existing gaps in joint doctrine. Specifically, it explores the roles and relationships of end states, objectives, and effects across the strategic and operational levels of war. It seeks to show how a more complete understanding of these roles and relationships will enhance joint operation planning, or the "planning activities associated [with] joint military operations by combatant commanders and their subordinate joint force commanders in response to contingencies and crises." Hopefully, it will serve to drive discussion and further innovation. Perhaps it might even provide some practical utility for the planners or doctrine writers who read it. However, in the end, those who disagree with its contents must articulate their counter-arguments, which in and of itself would satisfy the purpose of this study: to provide greater clarity for the military planners who must go forth and develop American military campaigns for the present and future. INTRODUCTION * Purpose * Scope * Current Doctrine * Problem * Thesis * Method * CHAPTER 1 * BACKGROUND TERMS AND CONCEPTS * Conceptual Levels of War * The Environment * Planning Frameworks and Processes * Forms of Military Action * CHAPTER 2 * CLARIFYING THE ROLE OF OBJECTIVES * Objective of War and the Military Objective in War * Objective as a Principle for the Conduct of Military Operations * Practical Conclusions about Objectives * CHAPTER 3 * CLARIFYING THE OBJECTIVE-END STATE RELATIONSHIP * Recent Confusion of End States and Termination * National Strategic End States (The Simple Case) * National Strategic End States and Termination (The Complex Case) * Military Strategic End States * CHAPTER 4 * OBJECTIVE-END STATE RELATIONSHIPS IN THE VIETNAM WAR * Nesting of Regional and Global National Strategies * The Contribution of National Instruments to National Strategies * CHAPTER 5 * INTRODUCTION OF EFFECTS INTO OPERATIONAL DESIGN * Brief History of Effects-based Approaches * Brief Summary of Current Approach * CHAPTER 6 * THE ROLE OF EFFECTS IN RELATION TO OBJECTIVES AND END STATES * The Basic Definition of an Effect * A Clear Relationship between Effects and End States * How Effects Relate Objectives to End States * Utility at the Strategic Level of War * Utility at the Operational Level of War * CHAPTER 7 * VIETNAM WAR'S LESSONS FOR END STATES AND EFFECTS * The Importance of Timing Effects * The Importance of Focusing on Conditions * The Importance of Re-evaluating End States