A conflict continuum is a model or concept used by various social science researchers when modelling conflict, say from low intensity conflict, to high intensity conflict. These conceptual models facilitate discussion as in "anywhere on the conflict continuum". The mathematical model of game theory originally posited only a winner and a loser in a conflict. This model was extended to cooperation, thus setting forth an exploration of the continuum between cooperation, contest, and conflict.
Overview
By the decade of the 2010s, military planners realized that additional capabilities in communications, sensors and weapons countermeasures made it possible for competitors to react to a contestant's moves in the 'gray zone' just short of conflict. Donald Stoker and Craig Whiteside caution that for strategists, the 'gray zone' must not blur peace and war; they offer an analysis of the need for strategists to clearly distinguish peace, competition, contest, conflict, and war. In 2018 Kelly McCoy identified a continuum within competition itself, as explored in the Joint Staff's Joint Concept for Integrated Campaigning, up to the point just short of armed conflict, while noting [|Perkins' connection to deterrence] in the continuum. Standoff is the condition of deadlock between antagonists, sometimes measured by the distance between them. For antagonists in a non-zero sum game, von Neumann and Morgenstern show that this condition is equivalent to a zero-sum game with +1 antagonists, where the '+1st player' is not an entity. Rather the fictitious player represents the global profit of the players in the non-zero sum game. In Tibor Scitovsky's terminology, this global profit of the '+1st player' represents the amount that the gainers would have been prepared to pay to the losers, in order to attain a desired global policy. Overmatch is the condition where protagonist A is able to present multiple dilemmas to an antagonist E —General David G. Perkins. In other confrontations between A and the Es, deterrence can be the mutual recognition that power need not be used to destroy one another. Instead A might display or project its power to the Es as a substitute for battle with them. If A's power can remain leashed then soft power and hard power are also optional possibilities on a continuum of possible conflict between A and the Es.
Various continuum models
Elise Boulding's conflict continuum
was a Quaker sociologist influenced by the events of World War II. Examining how war becomes peace, she posited a continuum between Wars of Extermination and Transformation. This is Boulding's conflict continuum:
Andra Medea's types of conflict
Theorist Andra Medea seeks to explain how individuals, small groups, organizations, families, ethnicities, and even whole nations function when disputes arise between them. She posits that there are four types or levels of conflict, each operating under distinct rules: Each level moving from first to fourth is characterized by increasing degrees of separation from reality, and decreasing degrees of maturity, in this context, defined as the ability to control anger and settle differences without violence or destruction. Problem-solving behavior is based in reality and maturity, and is therefore more rational and mature than domination. Domination is more rational and mature than blind behavior, which is more rational and mature than the Rogue Messiah. However, each level moving from fourth to first is more capable than the one below it at forcing victory in a conflict. The rogue messiah overpowers blind behavior, blind behavior thwarts domination, and domination deadlocks problem-solving.
Perkins' continuum of conflict
Before 2017, winning a conflict was seen as the objective of the US Army. By 2018, the US Air Force showed it was important to reformulate this strategy, as part of a larger process Multi-domain operations, which involve more than an army in a theater of war. Specifically, MDO can offer options short of war which can defuse armed conflict from total war into deterrence, compromise, or cooperation between competitors. Multi-domain operations occur as overlapped, integrated operation of cyberspace, space, land, maritime, and air. A multi-domain task force was stood up in 2018 in I Corps for the Pacific. Multi-domain battalions, first stood up in 2019, comprise a single unit for air, land, space, and cyber domains. New cyber authorities have been granted under National Security Presidential Memorandum 13; persistent cyber engagements at Cyber command are the new norm for cyber operations. The new model recognizes that near-peer competitors might not actually seek conflict with the US, but perhaps merely near-term advantage in order to buy time for themselves in the face of overmatch. For example, the X-37Bspace plane can change its orbit; this capability has military applications. On 15 July 2020, Cosmos 2543 emitted a kinetic vehicle, which emitted a tertiary object. This maneuver is interpreted as a test of anti-satellite capability. Cosmos 2542 has been tailing USA 245, a KH-11. Other multi-domain operations short of war, but still escalating the conflict, might include the shooting-down of military drones as in June 2019. Other operations short of war in 2018 include undeclared conflicts, involving proxy military units funded by oligarchs, but specifically disclaimed by near-peer competitors. This is in direct response to the strategy which the US has promulgated since 1949. Destruction of infrastructure such as the energy grid, or the GPS network, or the financial markets, or confidence in national law and order may be goals for partners, competitors, or adversaries depending on where they might be in the continuum of conflict. Thus disinformation could be a tactic in the spectrum of conflict.
