The Central Idea of Conflict: Will

Will is the central idea in any conflict. Let us postulate: to win any conflict, an opponent successfully imposes his will on an opponent. The nature of will in this article involves aggressive action to force an opponent to acquiesce. The recipient counters his adversary’s actions by fighting back or capitulating.

To proceed, a definition is essential:

The appearance of desire, life-force, purpose, empowered by resolve and sacrifice, perseverance and determination, yoked with strength of motive, capabilities, advantage and disadvantage, and imposing with actions, to accomplish a goal against a resisting or acquiescing recipient. The recipient of an imposition of will must have a sufficient strength of motive and capabilities to resist or capitulate.

A definition, however, doesn’t satisfy how to think about will. Even the great theorist of war, Clausewitz, dropped only tantalizing fragments of will’s meaning in On War. One fragment appears as:

War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will…to impose our will on the enemy is its [war’s] object.[2]

The word, will, appearing simple, defies a quick understanding. In any fight involving will, a person’s mind proceeds from a dream-like state of desire to active, aggressive action, to the imposition of said action. The receiver either resists or capitulates. This is the basis of will. In contests of will, Side 1 attacks to impose via action. Side 2, the recipient, declines to capitulate and resists. A struggle ensues.

Will—A Rudimentary View (Author’s Work)

The model presents fundamental activities of conflict—one side attacks, the opposite side fights back or capitulates. But what appears simple is complicated for four reasons: physical and moral domain activities influence the outcome of conflict; competition involves thinking and unpredictable adversaries; will’s intricacies prove complicated; and vagaries influence actions. Clausewitz identified examples of vagaries as friction, chance, randomness, etc. Clausewitz provides an understanding of this aspect of conflict:

No other human activity is so continuously or universally bound up with chance. And through the element of chance, guesswork and luck come to play a great part in war.[3]

But this model proves brittle because a dark cloud descends on all contexts where fights occur. What possibly could further complicate clashes of will? The dark cloud reveals the answer—intangibles, nonlinearity, friction, social media, connectedness, entanglement, culture, populace, and unexpected variations, to name only a few.

The Collision of Wills—A Dark Cloud of Complexity Descends (Author’s Work)

Penetrating the fog in the center of the figure begets more questions. They include: What motivates people to impose their desires on a resisting entity? One person covets something belonging to another. Why? An aggressor plans to seize what he desires. What is the purpose? An aggressor acts to seize what another resists. Did he anticipate resistance? Swinging from aggressor to recipient, other questions arise: Why resist? Why acquiesce? Why bide time and seek delayed retribution? A simple transaction that captures the theme inherent to conflict—“I want what you have”—collides with another equally simple—“You cannot have what I have.” It takes two or more opposing sides to fight a clash of will. Another influence on will appears and influences outcomes—duality. Clausewitz presents his version of duality as:

War, however, is not the action of a living force upon a lifeless mass (total nonresistance would be no war at all) but always the collision of two living forces.[4]

To avoid misjudging the face of will, (person, group, nation, adversary per se) opponents learn how to think about it. They always attend to opposing perspectives of will. This requires high-level mental work. To learn how to think about duality, people study history, philosophy, modernity, metacognition, and theory. Winning any conflict involves out-thinking a competing entity. Out-thinking a smart adversary takes a higher quality of thought than normal because people must think like their adversary. To develop this thinking, good thinkers must be good learners and excel at learning how to think, understand will’s theory, and use its interconnected parts.

Critics of this inquiry into will have found it to be nebulous, its definition capacious, and its intellectual foundation seemingly impenetrable. Reasons for these narrow-minded conclusions exist. Consider historical evidence. It comes from battles past, their aftermath, divulging outcomes of clashing wills. Understanding outcomes without grasping underlying causes for the outcomes—that is, effects—doesn’t expose the heart of will. Instead, learning how to think about will takes understanding possible causes, action plus rationale, for effects—that is, outcomes. Recognizing cause, link, and effect relationships provides predicates to impositions of action.

This comprehension of causes and effects triggers an epiphany: I can attack my enemy’s plans at inception.[5] A first requirement in this effort involves learning causes for a planned imposition of action and its desired outcomes. Another requirement involves anticipating future actions and divining their nature and purpose—whether tangible or intangible, visible or hidden. Another obligation involves uncovering why causes and effects prove strong or weak, well-placed or errant, and well-timed or asynchronous. To win battles of will, opponents master subjects such as causes and effects and cyclical activities such as co-evolution and adaptation to understand their opponent’s strategy, intent, and actions.[6]

Grasping success in this world of competing thoughts demands that devotees acquire thinking skills of analysis and synthesis, relationship, connectedness, integration, fragmentation and coalescence, coherence, aggregation theory and holism—all a part of the how to think family of thinking. Winning parties in conflicts must use these methods of thinking and sustain a constancy of high quality thought.

Deep thinking about this subject involves walking in a theoretical garden of knowledge. A passage of thought from On War enlightens people who stroll in this garden:

If you want to overcome your enemy you must match your effort against his power of resistance…the product of two inseparable factors, viz. the total means at his disposal and the strength of his will. The extent of the means at his disposal is a matter…of figures and should be measurable. But the strength of his will is much less easy to determine and can only be gauged approximately by the strength of the motive animating it….[7]

Clausewitz’s warning regarding an adversary’s strength of motive stimulates rumination; the result—14 essential elements of will.[8] Thinkers use this model to recognize and protect their elements of will while attacking the opponent’s.

14-Element Thought Model of Will (Author’s Work)

The model conveys dynamism; elements change in size, importance, and influence. Volatility occurs in the central eight elements of the model. Transformative motion also appears—desire into volition, volition into resolve, and resolve into life-force. Some elements float, grow, shrink, and move. Nonlinear systems and adversary actions stimulate dynamism. It appears as friction, randomness, and aggregation. Element volatility comes from colliding aims, goals, and objectives of competitors. Elements such as passion, sacrifice, perseverance, and determination change places. Sometimes elements remain still. To avoid passivity, anticipatory actions occur.[9] A master of conflict deflates the adversary’s enthusiasm to sacrifice, reverses advantages, and dampens passion via thoughtful and well-timed actions.

Opponents in clashes of will employ a scale of sufficiency while considering relative—friend and enemy, alike—capabilities, strengths of motive, impositions, actions, and potential outputs. It is an input/output or cost/benefit ratio to support decisions. Why care about the scale? The answer—to anticipate the adversary’s intent concerning imposing will, one needs a scale of sufficiency for pending impositions, choice of action models, and anticipated outcomes.

Imagine an aggressor intent upon imposing his will. Actions must occur, but not without detailed planning. This aggressor plans his actions. He uses a thought to action sequence for 1) employing a combination of capabilities, 2) assessing outcomes, 3) collecting assessment data, 4) turning assessment data into information, 5) synthesizing information into knowledge, 6) evaluating knowledge, 7) learning, 8) sharing, 9) adapting, and 10) recursing better and faster than the foe. Successful participants always use some of these steps.

Will, here, is postulated to dominate all conflict. Accordingly, leaders, strategists, planners, and intelligence professionals must learn its meaning and its intricacies to win conflicts. How to think about will implies the use of thought to outthink any adversary and thus win conflicts. This article posits a great power coming to people who understand the significance of will and learn its intricacies. This knowledge comes with learning how to think about will. The high-level of thought required to outthink opponents in conflict does not appear as an inherent capability. It is a learned skill. More specifically, decision-makers, strategists, planners, and intelligence professionals must: know will’s definition; identify and explore its inner parts; understand its theory; design effective strategies; exploit pertinent knowledge; and instantiate will’s macro system of thought.[10]

This article posits that will has 14 essential elements. This model suggests the importance of thinking about friendly and adversary essential elements of will. The middle eight elements prove intangible, sensitive, and volatile. They change, float, grow, and shrink for each side. It is wise to attack or manipulate the adversary’s elements of will and protect yours. Of interest, know that elements can reappear even when appearing inert or seem destroyed.

Enhanced, rigorous thinking empowers people to win fights against future foes in any domain at any conflict level. Warriors fight in ceaseless bouts of mental combat to win in conflicts involving competing wills. These fights occur in multiple domains, against clever adversaries using asymmetric means, including information and cognition at several levels. This position argues for acceptance of a thought—the right people and organizations must purposefully invest in improving the education of our best and brightest to raise these young and old minds to a high-level of thought. Professional military education must thoroughly immerse current and future leaders in the theory and practical use of the central idea of any conflict—will.

Wayne Michael Hall, Ed.D., is a retired U.S. Army Brigadier General. He has published four books—Stray Voltage War in the Information Age, Intelligence Analysis: How To Think In Complex Environments; Intelligence Collection: How To Plan and Execute Intelligence Collection In Complex Environments; and The Power of Will In International Conflict.

This article appeared originally at Strategy Bridge.

[1] Wayne Michael Hall, “Metacognition How To Think Redux,” Unpublished Fact Paper, 2016. How to think means—an approach to thinking generally adhering to the thought processes and practices of holism, analysis, synthesis, combination, coherence, relationship, connectedness, wholes, and synergy to 1) reason, 2) conceive new ideas, 3) form in one’s mind and then defend inferences and their derivative meaning and implications, 4) demonstrate the ability to judge via meaning, knowledge, and coherent views, and 5) communicate conclusions and recommendations defending the conception.

[2] Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 75.

[3] Ibid, 85.

[4] Ibid, 77.

[5] Sun Tzu, Sun Tzu and the Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 77.

[6] Co-evolution is the evolution of two or more species or organisms (natural or man-made) that interact closely with one another, with each adapting to changes in the other. Competing organisms in battles or any struggles of will involve co-evolution acting, assessing outcomes, and adapting.

[7] Clausewitz, 77.

[8] Ibid, 77.

[9] Wayne Michael Hall and Gary Citrenbaum, Intelligence Collection How To Plan and Execute Intelligence Collection in Complex Environments (Santa Monica: Praeger Security International, 2012), 3.

[10] Wayne Michael Hall, The Power of Will in International Conflict (Santa Monica: Praeger Security International, 2018), 1-385.