Answering Ronfeldt’s Question About the Nature of Strategy

RAND emeritus scholar and co-author of the classic Netwars and Networks, David Ronfeldt asked an astute question in reaction to my post proposing a grand strategy board:

I almost always see strategy defined as the art of relating ends and means.  It’s defined that way time after time, often but not always with a few extra criteria added here and there.  Usually something about plans or resources.  But I’ve long felt that I’d prefer to define strategy as the art of positioning.  That presumes a consideration of ends and means, but in my view, it’s not as abstract a definition, and gets to the core concern right away.  In looking around for who else may favor such a definition, the best and almost only leader I find is Michael Porter and his writings about corporate strategy.  He’s says explicitly that strategy is the art of positioning – apropos market positioning in particular.  maybe in some long-forgotten moment, that’s where I got the notion in the first place.  Meanwhile, i’ve been told that, of military strategists, Jomini emphasizes positioning the most.  This is not my area of expertise.  I’d like to know more:  is the “ends and means” view so accepted, so basic, so adaptable, that it’s not worth questioning?  What’s to be gained, and/or lost, by the “positioning” view?  Is there any strategy that isn’t about positioning? 

This is a great question, because it is a clarifying question about fundamentals.

I am not familiar with Micheal Porter’s work, but Chet Richards pointed out in his excellent Certain to Win that there are some significant differences in applying strategic thinking to business compared to using strategy in war. While war and the market both represent dynamic, competitive environments which require actors to adapt to survive, war is a destructive enterprise while business is ultimately transactional, cooperative and constructive, though you may have to overcome competition and conflict first. Conflict and competition on which the state and society place tight legal constraints to which buyers and sellers must conform.  Arguably, this explains the drift toward oligopolistic competition in regulated capiltalist economies: the constraints of rule of law which govern market actors would tend to give an even greater emphasis to “positioning” in peaceful economic competition than in warfare.

What about “positioning” and strategy generally?

Strategy is indeed defined by most experts as the alignment of Ends -Ways -Means. In my opinion, it is the most practical starting point for people of any level of strategic skill to consider what is to be done in the short or medium term within a known framework ( a theater, region, an alliance system, nation-state etc.). “Positioning” falls within this trinity under “ways” – for example, something as simple as seizing the high ground or as complicated as maneuver warfare theory is, in essence, an effort to acquire a comparative advantage over your opponent. Having comparative advantages are always good but they are usually transitory rather than being something that can be “locked in” permanently ( though man has tried – ex. the Great Wall of China, Constantinople on the Dardanelles, the age of fortresses in 16th-17th C. Europe, Mercantilist Policy, Massive Retaliation etc.). Normally, you have to keep moving, tactically adjusting your position in response to your opponent’s efforts to re-balance.

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