Military Action

[Page 485]Military action has traditionally been an extension of the sociopolitical milieu whereby a state-owned professional or semiprofessional security provider utilizes state-regulated military force in protection of national or communal interests from external threats. Military force, namely executed combined-arms mass violence bringing overwhelming firepower to bear, is the principal means employed during military action. Military action has historically assumed a central role in political discourse and behavior. The very nature of military action has been determined by political and sociological factors, as military action is a sociopolitical phenomenon.

In accordance with Carl von Clausewitz’s definition of war as the continuation of politics by other means, military action is the achievement of strategic, political endgames through the management of force on behalf of a political institution—that is, ...