text: FM 7-100.1________________________________________________________________________________
  1-24. The General Staff acts as the executive agency for the NCA, and all
  military forces report through it to the NCA. The Chief of the General Staff
  (CGS), with NCA approval, defines the theater in which the Armed Forces
  will conduct the military campaign and its subordinate operations. He de-
  termines the task organization of forces to accomplish the operational-level
  missions that support the overall campaign plan. He also determines whether
  it will be necessary to form more than one theater headquarters. For most
  campaigns, there will be only one theater, and the CGS will serve as thea-
  ter commander, thus eliminating one echelon of command at the strategic
  level.
  1-25. In wartime, the MOD and the General Staff combine to form the Su-
  preme High Command (SHC). The Operations Directorate continues to re-
  view the military SCP and modify it or develop new plans based on guidance
  from the CGS, who commands the SHC. It generates options and contingency
  plans for various situations that may arise. Once the CGS approves a particular
  plan for a particular strategic goal, he issues it to the appropriate operational-
  level commanders.
  1-26. The military SCP directs operational-level military forces, and each
  command identified in the SCP prepares an operation plan that supports the
  execution of its role in that SCP. The SCP assigns forces to operational-level
  commands and designates areas of responsibility (AORs) for those com-
  mands.
  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS
  1-27. What the State calls “strategic operations” is actually a universal stra-
  tegic course of action the State would use to deal with all situationsin
  peacetime and war, against all kinds of opponents, potential opponents, or
  neutral parties. Strategic operations involve the application of any or all of
  the four instruments of national power at the direction of the national-level
  decision makers in the NCA. They occur throughout a strategic campaign.
  The nature of strategic operations at any particular time corresponds to the
  conditions perceived by the NCA. These operations differ from the other op-
  erations of a strategic campaign in that they are not limited to wartime and
  can transcend the region.
  1-28. Strategic operations typically target elements that constitute the en-
  emy’s strategic centers of gravitysuch as soldiers’ and leaders’ confidence,
  political and diplomatic decisions, public opinion, the interests of private in-
  stitutions, national will, and the collective will and commitment of alliances
  and coalitions. National will is not just the will to fight, but also the will to
  intervene by other than military means.
  1-29. The State will employ all means available against the enemy’s centers
  of gravity: diplomatic initiatives, information warfare (IW), economic pres-
  sure, terrorist attacks, State-sponsored insurgency, direct action by special-
  purpose forces (SPF), long-range precision fires, and even weapons of mass
  destruction (WMD) against selected targets. These efforts often place non-
  combatants at risk and aim to apply diplomatic-political, economic, and
  psychological pressure by allowing the enemy no sanctuary.