text: Foundations of Operations
  Conventional Warfare
  1-37. Conventional warfare is a violent struggle for domination between nation-states or coalitions of
  nation-states. Conventional warfare is generally carried out by two or more military forces through armed
  conflict. It is commonly known as conventional warfare because it means to fight enemy forces directly, with
  comparable military systems and organizations. A nation-state’s strategic purpose for conducting
  conventional warfare is to impose its will on an enemy government and avoid imposition of the enemy
  government’s will on it and its citizens. Joint doctrine refers to conventional warfare as “traditional” because
  it has been understood that way in the West since the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which reserved, for the
  nation-state alone, a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. However, irregular warfare has a longer history,
  and it has been just as common as the “traditional” method of warfare in some societies.
  1-38. Conventional warfare normally focuses on defeating enemy armed forces, enemy warfighting
  capabilities, and controlling key terrain and populations to decisively influence an enemy government’s
  behavior in favorable ways. During conventional warfare, enemies engage in combat openly against each
  other and generally employ similar capabilities. Conventional war may escalate to include nation-state use
  of weapons of mass destruction. Like the other branches of the armed forces, the Army is organized, trained,
  and equipped primarily to conduct or deter conventional warfare, especially its most lethal manifestation—
  large-scale combat operations.
  1-39. Conventional deterrence creates the paradox that although combat-ready forces reduce the probability
  of large-scale combat, they increase the frequency of adversaries pursuing irregular warfare and malign
  activity short of armed conflict to achieve objectives. The tradeoff is acceptable because conducting irregular
  warfare with forces prepared for large-scale ground combat incurs less risk than conducting large-scale
  ground combat with forces unprepared to do so.
  Irregular Warfare
  1-40. Irregular warfare is the overt, clandestine, and covert employment of military and non-military
  capabilities across multiple domains by state and non-state actors through methods other than military
  domination of an adversary, either as the primary approach or in concert with conventional warfare.
  Irregular warfare may include the use of indirect military activities to enable partners, proxies, or surrogates
  to achieve shared or complementary objectives. The main objective of irregular warfare varies with the
  political context, and it can be successful without being combined with conventional warfare (for example,
  the Cuban Revolution). While it often focuses on establishing influence over a population, irregular warfare
  has also historically been an economy of force effort to fix enemy forces in secondary theaters of conflict or
  to cause enemy leaders to commit significant forces to less critical lines of effort. Two characteristics
  distinguish irregular warfare from conventional warfare:
  (cid:122) The intent is to erode a political authority’s legitimacy and influence or to exhaust its resources
  and will—not to defeat its armed forces—while supporting the legitimacy, influence, and will of
  friendly entities engaged in the struggle.
  (cid:122) The nonmilitary instruments of power are more prominent because the military instrument of
  power alone is insufficient to achieve desired objectives.
  1-41. JFCs can employ most Army forces and capabilities during irregular warfare. Certain forces and
  capabilities are irregular warfare focused (for example Army special operations forces), in that they are
  specifically designed and organized for irregular warfare, but they can also be employed effectively in
  conventional warfare (for example as combat advisors to host-nation forces). Other forces are irregular
  warfare capable, in that they are primarily designed and organized for conventional warfare, but they can
  also be employed effectively in irregular warfare. Historically, the overwhelming majority of Army forces
  employed to conduct irregular warfare have been conventional forces.
  OFFENSE, DEFENSE, AND STABILITY
  1-42. Offense, defense, and stability are inherent elements of conventional and irregular warfare. Divisions
  and higher echelons typically perform some combination of all three elements in their operations
  simultaneously. However, the lower the echelon, the more likely it is for that formation to be focused on one
  element at a time.