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As stated by Clausewitzs, war is ultimately a political act and any strategy should
reflect the political side of your objective. What is it you really want to get and how
does that relate to ends, ways and means? In an attemp to answer this question, you
can understand the effect of your strategy on your circumstances.
The components are as follows:
Ways or strategic concepts or courses of action explain how the ends are
to be accomplished by the employment of resources.
Ends, ways, and means often get confused in the development or analysis of a specific
strategy. The trick is to focus on the questions. It is the objectives that you should
focus on when answering the questions.
Remember, concepts always explain how the resources will be used. Resources always
explain what will be used to execute the concept. Again, as with any successful system
that tries to capture the essence of a strategy, the model poses three key questions for
strategists:
What is to be done?
How is it to be done?
Attempting to answer these questions will guide you towards your ultimate effective
strategy. A strategic outcome will have a profound effect on your circumstances. It is
likely to be sudden, and will dramatically alter the state of affairs. It can change the
balance of power, who controls what, and so on. A strategic outcome represents the
ideal end-state of any action, regardless of its magnitude. For example, in the context
of Risk, a move to attack your neighbour can have huge consequences. Your neighbour
may not be pleased at all, even if the attack was insignificant. He may decide to shift
his forces towards you for a long campaign. This may not have been what you
anticipated when you attacked his small country. Hence, you always need to pay
attention to the end before you use your means, no matter what your means are.
However, there is more. Perhaps another item needs to be added to the list that glues
the three concepts together:
Risk explains the gap between what is to be achieved and the concepts and
resources available to achieve the objective. (Of course Risk represents chance
here, though you may also want to believe that the Risk game itself glues
everything together. Risk is great, isn't it!)
The system of ends, ways and means has been used in many contexts. An article on
strategy (PDF: Making Sense of War: Strategy for the 21st Century) has an
interesting analysis of the concepts and provides topical examples from the current
political climate such as the situation in Iraq. It suggests that the objectives (ends)
were not considered thoroughly in both of the Gulf Wars and forces (means) were
mobilised efficiently (ways) before a full scale analysis was carried out on the global
objective.
Are ends, ways and means applicable everywhere? An interesting example is their use
in knowledge strategies in the information age. This article suggests that the
technique should be applied to information technology as knowledge-based economies
are prospering and new methods should be employed to protect them and their new
assets (knowledge) from hostile threats. Interestingly, after a thorough analysis it
concludes that:
"In sum, it is difficult to apply the ends, ways, and means paradigm of strategy to
information age security. Unlike traditional means, knowledge is relatively cheap and
easy to balance with ends and ways. Unlike conventional ways, cyberwar defies the
military principle of mass. And its primary objectives are control and paralysis. Unlike
the clearly articulated ends of Cold War security strategies, national objectives in a
globally networked information age are more difficult to define and thus to achieve.
Clearly, we need a new framework for formulating information age knowledge
strategies."
We are moving to new paradigms and with the incredible progress of information
technology, new challenges confront us. This is a fascinating topic in which, as it has
been the case so far, it is difficult to predict the effect of free information flow on the
future of civilizations. Access to more freely available knowledge has profound social
and behavioral impacts. Nevertheless, examining the topic in detail may shed light on
future developments and needs of societies which is always an exciting topic affecting
everyone.
Even if techniques are not applicable directly, it serves us by asking the right questions
and it helps us to focus on the solutions instead. So, go ahead, use ends, ways and
means to identify your needs in the game and aim to win systematically.
http://www.totaldiplomacy.com/Home/tabid/67/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/224/En
ds-Ways-and-Means.aspx
unwilling to generate the ways and means to achieve it. If we honestly state the ways and means we
are willing and able to generate, the end they deliver may be suboptimal at best and an outright loss
at worst. Two questions then may emerge. One, do we want to lose sooner or do we want to lose
later? Two, do we want to lose big or do we want to lose small? Referencing Alexander the Great,
Britain, and Russia, Afghanistan has never provided happy endings.
http://mglaich.blogspot.com.au/2010/07/ends-ways-means.html