and shareholder would grant authority to the executive bodyover its contribution or
investment and confine its strategic debate to the venture’s strategic structure.
The executive authority would be responsible for confronting the opponent
and forming the link between strategy and tactics, and has authority over all
the forces and resources committed to the venture. The object is to win the
confrontation and so this authority need not be vested in a military officer,
indeed if it is he should understand he is not wielding only the military; he is
not a military commander. In many cases, forming a small committee will be
necessary; it will bring separate competencies together and may well be the only
way, for legal and political reasons, to achieve a single source of operational
direction. However, the committee will need a chairman, and he might be called
the theatre director.
Defining the theatre, or business area, may well be easier than hitherto if this
approach was adopted. Just as the relationships within the structure are decided
with the object of the venture in mind, so the overall aim would help define the
theatre. And by designating the authority to undertake the operation as a whole,
the area, both physical and functional, has to be considered.
With these essential elements decided, operational art may well flourish in the
face of that of the opponent. It will be of a different form than before, for as in art
and design form follows function.
Operational art as argued can already be understood as a combination of a free,
creative, and original expression of the use of force and forces; a design; and
direction, an expression of the character, and aptitude of the artist.
The successful operation will use forces offensively in conflict in such a way as
to dislocate the opponent’s use of force from its confrontational purpose. The
more the opponent’s military acts are interpreted as senseless, purposeless vio-
lence for its own sake, the less the linkage. Defensively, the use of force must be
firmly linked to advancing the achievement of the confrontational goals, all the
agencies, military and civil, acting to a single logic. Maintaining and strengthen-
ing this pivotal linkage, translating the currencies of firepower and information to
such effect that minds are changed, will define the acts in the theatre pit. The
creativity will be given coherence and meaning much as a drama unfolds—the
facts as displayed by all on the stage create a scene that is part of an act that leads
to other scenes and acts to a de ́nouement.
The design will have little to do with manoeuvre. The driving design logic will
be of information: information to learn the theatre and the opponent; informa-
tion, its collection, analysis, and dissemination, whether as actionable intelligence
in the conflict or in the theatre of the confrontation. Its structure will be informed
by the needs of governance, law and order, and development.
And the need for direction, calm, resolute, and constant direction, will be as
critical as before. This source of the campaign’s driving logic must have the
confidence of those at both the strategic and the tactical levels as before, but
now the greater the confidence of the people in the theatre, the greater the art.
Epilogue 243