The Continuum – Jocko Willink

now we get into the continuum when i was a tradet training people i would start off by giving them a problem and then a little bit of space to work through that problem then another problem and then a little bit of space to work and physical space like okay there’s a problem that’s gonna happen before you get to the target then there’s gonna be a problem on target then there’s gonna be a problem as you leave the target then there’s gonna be a problem as you’re at your extract point and so they’re separated by time and space so i remember telling the leadership of this one task and i said now i go that did you did a pretty good job but what you’re going to see happen now is i am going to compress the time space continuum that these problems occur meaning they’re going to occur at the same time in the same location and that causes problems so the continuum that we’re talking about here this is no perfect model to use there is no perfect model to use in explaining the competition continuum the many feedback loops it contains make it very complex so models will omit some details however the models are useful because they help explain specific concepts and assist marines in building their own visual age visualization of the continuum so they they have this basically a line on the one on the one far side is pure peace the other far side is total war so it starts with pure peace then it goes to economic competition classic diplomacy and geopolitics so that’s sort of like hey we’re at peace but oh wait we’re not quite at peace anymore now we’re moving to economic competition maybe some classic diplomacy some geopolitics and then you get into this area called political warfare at the at the far end of economic competition is political warfare meaning i’m putting tariffs on you so now we’re getting more aggressive then you get to this area called the gray zone which is now maybe its sanctions and now we’re being really aggressive then you get to a hybrid war and then you get to the threat of violence and then you get to use of violence there’s a threshold and once you get past the threshold of violence you can go further right which is conventional war okay we’re gonna go to war we’re gonna have your tanks against my tanks and your airplanes against my plants and then we get to total war which is whatever it takes to survive and win no mercy of any kind so that’s a linear model of this there’s also a circular model that they have and by the way you can get this this manual you can just go on the google you know one tack four competing and you’ll find it and you can download it and print it what’s up what’s an example of total war and versus conventional war like which war was like a total war the closest i would say we got is world war ii to total to total war but we were still let’s face it we were still following the geneva convention right but imagine if things were so bad that you just were we’re just kidding let’s just outright just kill destroy and chemical weapons and just total war i mean in in world war ii you know we drop we dropped the atom bomb that’s that’s freaking straight that’s just total war right you’re you’re killing everyone yeah we firebombed dresden 250 000 civilians or 250 000 people many civilians dead an entire city destroyed go google dresden before and after i mean it’s not quite as shocking as hiroshima nagasaki before and after but it’s complete and utter devastation it’s as much devastation as we could possibly cause with the weapons we had at hand um is there like a scenario where like one side is that total war and the other side is like hey we’re going to keep this kind of conventional i mean it kind of seems like right like certain we’ll say groups whether it be nations whatever have a certain philosophy i would say that yeah i mean i think we i don’t know if we could get to where someone was at total war i mean i think the japanese were pretty close i think the nazis were pretty close to total war they would do whatever they you know they’d do whatever they could but even even um yeah they even they had limits yeah you know but i mean let’s face it they were close they were close i mean japan was doing their best to develop chemical and biological weapons that they could use that they were on that path and would if they had gotten them you think they would have done it i’m gonna say affirmative so they might have been a total war you know you can maybe look at some of these some of these non-state actors right i mean isis was isis at total war they don’t have didn’t have the capabilities or the means but if they had the opportunity to just kill indiscriminately kill as many people as they possibly could would they yeah probably yeah that’s what i mean so like yeah these groups like yeah they don’t have the physical capability but that was their approach like that they in their mind the next thing was talking about a circular model a circular model shows conflict above violence threshold and competition below it and they kind of go through these one of the things that brings up here one of the actors could be deterred so you might think you’re going towards war but then you get deterred the threat of violence could have been significant leverage and other rivals decided you know what i don’t want none of this tension recedes negotiations of some kind may have succeeded bringing the actors back from the threshold of violence these are all things that think about a uh for you as a bouncer right think about as you approach a level of like there’s a threshold of violence where someone’s taking a swing think about all the little things that could happen that could de-escalate that yeah you know maybe it’s negotiation hey look man you just need to get out of here maybe it’s hey we’re calling the cops how often does that one work pretty often yeah right yeah that there’s a when you whatever you go through this training and the that’s part of it that whole thing that escalation of force right and there’s like many thresholds you know like first it’s like straight up friendly and the better are we gonna get roadhouse quotes in here oh yeah well in roadhouse they do kind of go over it a little bit having some like real positive flashbacks about or images of you and and and what’s his name bodhi no dalton oh bodies from bodies from point breaks yeah which i respect by the way so yeah well in a way yeah because okay so dalton that wasn’t really a training that was more of a lecture and that was a very specific philosophy which was cool i dig it whatever so there’s different philosophies in the i would say the continuum of violence spectrum of the continuum yeah fully but each yeah each level has like a little threshold like i said but yes the most prominent one is like yeah and it’s kind of the same thing it reflects that total war kind of situation where you know like let’s go to that end part of the spectrum right you go like total war is like we don’t have time for the police to come we gotta like we gotta act because this person is violent towards us or whatever and then it’s a straight-up fight where you can expect like laws to be broken within that fight kind of thing and then there’s like one before where it’s like okay we gotta like put put our hands on him we gotta whether it be restrain them or whatever but we’re we’re not trying to be violent towards this person we have to use what they used to call it the minimum force necessary i use that term all the time yeah minimum force required or minimal force necessary yeah i mean i think a more appropriate term would be you know uh we’ll say an appropriate amount of force okay you know because the minimum i don’t know there’s just a lot of wiggle room for some some stuff to not go right for us you know for the good guys yeah yeah busted um you know but that’s like the conventional war kind of scenario you know and by the way you’re telling the police that the minimum force was the minimum force required was what was used yes even though you may have used the approach appropriately so there’s maybe a little linguistics jujitsu jiu jitsu happening yes because we want to you know we don’t want to see echo charles locked up no back in the day no you don’t but i mean you could it could be argued that they’re the same thing you know where it’s like an appropriate amount of force meaning like you’re not abusing this guy no matter how much he’s verbally whatever whatever drunk or whatever but yeah it’s but there is that convince those rules like yeah put your hands on them use force knock them out if you have to you know you like you can do these kind of things but you can’t be just like violating all kinds of you know situations because it’s not total war it’s not total war there’s a line in here it says there are many possibilities on how rivals can turn away from the violence threshold and return to steady-state competition and i made a note here for myself that crossing that line is almost always a tactical move a tactical meaning it is an immediate it’s solving this immediate problem but it is seldom a strategic move because think about it when if you’re in the street and you get into a fight you want to do everything you can to avoid that fight and if you have to engage in that fight it’s almost guaranteed to be a tactical win and a strategic loss now you got to go to jail now you got to pay this guy money now you got to get arrested now you got cuts on your hands you got all these little problems and it would have been infinitely better to have just said you know what this guy’s not worth it or whatever you walk away from a leadership perspective it is almost always almost always if you cross if you cross the line and there’s some gap but indirect when you go from from indirect influence to direct it’s almost always attack it might be attacked to win it’s going to be a strategic loss so the minute i say you know what dave i’m not talking about this anymore here’s what you’re going to do that’s almost guaranteed to be a tactical win because you’re going to go and execute whatever i told you to do but guess what strategically i just took a step back i took a strategic hit i’m not saying i can’t recover from it but strategically it’s a negative so we have to be careful of that