Military Review English Edition January-February 2017 | Page 38

a larger strategy—and that the end state will
not be the political introduction of force; it will
be a political settlement. That is, the principal
reason for military intervention is to facilitate
the political objectives.3
Army Doctrine Reference Publication 5-0, The
Operations Process, indicates that commanders and staffs
must consider operational variables—political, military,
economic, social, information, infrastructure, physical
environment, and time—when conducting analysis
and planning, stating, “The operational variables are
fundamental [emphasis added] to developing a comprehensive understanding of an operational environment.”4
Consideration of just the political and social operational
variables may require staffs to evaluate up to seventeen
different subvariables.5 Quite simply, most commanders
and staffs at the tactical level are too task-saturated to
acquire the breadth