Released 8 April 2022.

In this podcast, strategist David Katz argues American military strategists must incorporate multidimensional power projection into their planning processes to counter adversarial actions by gray-zone actors. By developing a more complete concept of power projection, the United States can apply its resources more effectively

Click here to read the article.

Episode Transcript: Multidimensionality: Rethinking Power Projection for the 21st Century

 Stephanie Crider (Host)

Welcome to Decisive Point, a US Army War College Press production featuring distinguished authors and contributors who get to the heart of the matter in national security affairs.

The guests in speaking order on this episode are:

(Guest 1 David Katz)

(Host)

Decisive Point welcomes David Katz, author of “MultiDimensionality: Rethinking Power Projection for the 21st Century,” featured in Parameters’ Winter 2018–2019 issue. Katz works as a senior analyst at US Special Operations Command, J35 Transnational Threats Division, Counterthreat Finance. A West Point graduate, he served in the US Army as an infantry officer and Green Beret captain. He also worked as an institutional investor and advisor before founding his own firm that provided advanced analytics on more than $3 billion dollars of clients’ private equity investments.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, the US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

Your 2018 Parameters article argues that American military strategists must incorporate multidimensional power projection into their planning processes to counter adversarial actions by gray-zone actors. Let's start there. Please briefly walk us through the basic concept of your article.

(Katz)

Well, when you stand on the shoulders of giants—in this case, two senior (People’s Liberation Army Air Force or) PLA Air Force political officers who wrote Unrestricted Warfare: (Two Air Force Senior Colonels on Scenarios for War and the Operational Art in an Era of Globalization), I think we should start with that, which was published in 1999.

I think it opened up an entire, new range of military operations. In this case, it was unrestricted—hence the title, Unrestricted Warfare. So that's where I start from in order to develop multidimensionality. I think that as a critique, the US strategy community has tended to gravitate from unrestricted warfare into what they call “informationalized warfare,” where it's really the principal child, as they see it, of unrestricted warfare.

But philosophically, I think there's a profound question to consider. And that is, “What is warfare if it's unrestricted?” What isn't warfare? In fact, let me restate that. If warfare is unrestricted, as the PLA Air Force political officers, Colonel Qiao Liang (pronounced “Crow”) and Colonel Wang (Wang Xiangsui) wrote in 1999, if warfare is unrestricted, what isn't warfare? We need to consider that, which led me down a path to multidimensionality.

Now, two questions I typically get are: “What's the difference between multidimensionality and multiple-domain operations, or MDO?” And, “What's the difference between multidimensionality and concepts like (diplomatic, information, military, economic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement or) DIMEFIL?” And we'll get there. But I think let's just go down sort of the nuts and bolts of multidimensionality.

Multidimensionality is really just a strategic framework where we, as US strategists, consider every available dimension of power project...