Control, at least when explicit, is not the end goal of most human action.
Control is a means to the end. Both Clausewitz and Wylie emphasize this. Clausewitz starts On War with this definition
of war:
War is thus an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will.
Here we see three elements necessary for human action:
- Power: the “act of force”
- Control: compelling the enemy
- Purpose: “our will”
Wylie’s passage quoted above echos this definition:
The primary aim of the strategist in the conduct of war is some selected
degree of control of the enemy for the strategist’s own purpose…
Here we see the same three elements:
- Power: “the conduct of war”
- Control: “some selected degree of control of the enemy”
- Purpose: “the strategist’s own purpose”
Power and control can be the ends of human action but usually only so that
they can be converted into means for achieving a more overriding purpose...
The purpose of reconciliation, generally known as strategy,
is matching ends to means or, in a more extended taxonomy, ends to ways to means. This fit is never perfect, hence
it is a process of reconciliation rather than achieving an absolute fit. While one square peg of power may not fit another
round hole of purpose, the act of strategic control attempts to bring them into some kind of alignment, however ugly. The
possible means available for conversion into the control necessary for achieving strategic ends range from influence at one
pole to violence on the other pole. Most strategies are a smear across the spectrum of power between the two. The midpoint
is probably hurt, coercion, or “compellance” as Thomas Schelling called it. Kelly and Brennan echo similar
work as James Kiras, A. A. Svechin, and Wylie in delineating strategies of exhaustion or attrition (moral or physical),
annihilation, denial (the strategy of Pericles), and inducement. All of these are strategies of control, as Wylie postulated
back in 1967:
…the strategist needs some leverage to induce or force
the other fellow to accede, wholly or in part, to what the strategist wants.
