Episode 3: The Strategic (and Neglected) Priority of the Environment

The environment is both an obstacle course we must negotiate and a landscape we wish to alter via intervention. Thinking about the environment in these two ways is a priority, especially given that the U.S. military's standard frame for thinking about strategy (ends, ways, means, and risk) gives the environment rhetorical short shrift. I conclude this episode with an argument that any description of the environment must configure the things in the world (both material and immaterial) in ways that bring to the fore constraints to action and, as a result, allow opportunities for maneuver and intervention to emerge. A simple listing and description of threats, challenges, and dynamics is inadequate. Such things must be configured as it pertains to our specific focus.