Organizing for future war and warfare: Complexity as ‘folk theory’ in NATO policy

Introduction

Within security and defence studies, there has been a significant engagement with complexity theorizing. Thus, complexity as a concept has been applied by global security governance scholars (Schmidt, 2014), peacebuilding and stabilization studies (Moe, 2016; van der Maat, 2018), environmental security studies (Cudworth and Hobden, 2013; Rothe, 2015), military sociology (King, 2019; Paparone et al., 2008) and war studies (Bousquet, 2022, 2008; Zweibelson, 2016, 2017). Indeed, several analyses in Security Dialogue have engaged with a complexity-inspired take on security matters (Krüger and Albris, 2021; Lawson, 2011; Randazzo and Torrent, 2020; Rosenow, 2012; Stern and Öjendal, 2010; Toros, 2008). The preoccupation with complexity theorizing and ideas stemming from this is a phenomenon also observable more broadly across the social sciences.

Historically, the 1960s marked a significant period for the development of conceptual and theoretical work on complexity, bringing together ideas on chaos, adaptive systems, and algorithms for analysing complexity and complex systems (see, for instance, Simon, 1969). The complexity concept emerged in social analysis during this period, partly in response to what was identified as an increasingly complex socio-economic environment for organizations and markets. The concept became increasingly popular within a number of scientific disciplines. These included systems engineering, mathematics, evolutionary biology, and organization and management studies in the late 1980s. In the 1990s, interest in the then-named interdisciplinary ‘sciences of complexity’ increased dramatically (Kauffman, 1990). In a special issue in Organization Science, Anderson (1999) described this as a paradigmatic shift in ways of thinking about how to model non-linear phenomena and surprising emergent behaviour in and between systems. Here, complexity emerged as a powerful way of thinking about organizations, their environments, and the relationship between the two. For scholars of strategic change (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997), strategic management (Stacey, 1995), innovation management (Cheng and Van de Ven, 1996) and design management (Chiva-Gomez, 2004), complexity has traction as a means to explain and theorize how organizations change and develop over time and to predict and manage changes. Indeed, there has been a simultaneous development in strategy and security studies to view the environment as complex. This is perhaps unsurprising, given the continuous interchange between the scholarly disciplines regarding perspectives on the environment and the specific organizational forms these perspectives necessitate.

Outside academia, complexity has also gained attention, reflecting managers’ and leaders’ perceptions of their working environments as disorderly and messy. The concept offers people in organizations a vocabulary to tame and manage their worldviews (Rosenhead et al., 2019).

The popularity of complexity has not only led to fresh perspectives on challenging and wicked problems but also to the later diffuse usage of the word and a lack of conceptual clarity. As Bousquet (2022: 161) notes, studies on complexity have ‘never reached consensual scientific definition and no agreement exists on the precise requirements for an object of study to be considered complex’. Indeed, what do we talk about when we talk about complexity today? Complexity refers to a wide variety of social, biological and physical phenomena. The conceptualization of all kinds of relations, connections, diversities and independencies, all forms of objects, systems, landscapes, organisms and organizations fall under the umbrella term ‘complexity’. This leaves us with the problem of definition and meaning. However, we argue that one purpose expressions of complexity fullfil is to make complexity a dominant category through which we can understand today’s world, including political and social development and human agency. By utilizing and instrumentalizing complexity we can simplify our reading of the world, and we can ultimately shape it as we see fit. Hence, rather than being primarily a scientific theory in the traditional sense, complexity’s diffusion into the broader security discourse is closer to a ‘folk theory’, entailing strong performative elements on the future organizing of war and warfare. Folk theory typically offers broad explanatory frameworks to account for disorderly and seemingly chaotic phenomena (Gelman and Legare, 2011; Halliday, 2018). One example is how influential narratives currently are shaping world politics and increasingly dominate debates over world orders (Deudney et al., 2023).

To illustrate this argument empirically, we turn to contemporary defence and security policy, more specifically to future warfighting strategy and ideas of multi-domain operations (MDO) in NATO policy. The case can help illuminate how complexity, as folk theory, is invoked through a specific vocabulary in NATO policy, reflecting both wishful thinking and a novel, innovative way of conducting warfare in relation to what is perceived as an uncertain, interconnected world. One consequence of the dominance of a complexity-inspired language in NATO policy is that complexity becomes the explanation of imaginable future states of war and warfare rather than merely one out of many explanations through which we can discuss and shape the future. In this sense, we see NATO’s use of complexity as an absolute, indisputable concept, mirroring the definitive and unquestioned nature of folk theory. Central to our discussion in this article is the performativity inherent in complexity and what it does for the framing and shaping of how we perceive and address security challenges. We begin with a description of complexity science in security literature. Next, we turn to the sociology of categorization to explain how complexity can be understood as a category of practice and ‘folk theory’. We then examine NATO’s future warfighting strategy and the alliance’s newest warfighting concept – multi-domain operations (MDO) – focusing on the NATO concept’s historical trajectory and its core diagnoses and prescriptions. We utilize Halliday’s (2018) six principles, constitutive of what makes a ‘plausible folk theory’, and demonstrate the rhetorical features and explanations of NATO MDO policy in selected documents. The subsequent discussion on the implications of how folk theory affects the organizing of future security focus on the social and practical effects of complexity categorization. The article concludes by arguing that the category of complexity is deeply entrenched ideologically, significantly influencing how we perceive and govern the multifaceted and unpredictable security challenges we face today and tomorrow. This entrenchment limits our ability to adopt a more pluralistic and humble perspective, one that acknowledges the unpredictability of the future.

What complexity?

Complexity science seems to be in vogue within security studies. Indeed, as Bousquet (2022: 151) notes in the seminal work on the interrelation between warfare and the science of chaos and complexity theory, it ‘encompasses broad interdisciplinary fields of inquiry that have left practically no area untouched and can be located within a wider cultural moment’. What is striking is the range of phenomena that can be explained by using complexity science, and for various reasons, complexity has proven to be highly resonant in the security field. This is to such an extent that it has ‘become an indispensable part of epistemology of security theory and eventually a useful instrument of security policy at the cognitive (language) level’ (Mesjasz, 2008: 175). This is perhaps unsurprising, as what the Western contemporary threat and security environment, including military battlefields, has been synonymous with is ‘complexity’ and, related to this, ‘uncertainty’ (Edmunds, 2014).

The international security environment, according to Edmunds (2014), shares many characteristics previously described in systems engineering, climate science, mathematics, and other disciplines. It comprises a diverse ‘network of risks, threats, opportunities, and actors’, many of which transcend clear organizational and national boundaries (Edmunds, 2014: 529). Central to complexity theorizing is not merely a particular vocabulary that includes notions such as ‘chaos’, ‘emergence’ and ‘nonlinear’ (Rosenhead et al., 2019) but also the idea of security and warfare, and the organization thereof, which is becoming an increasingly networked phenomenon (see for instance Whelan, 2016, 2017). For some authors, this entails ‘a perspectival shift that favors decentralized networks over centralized hierarchies in the handling of war’ (Bousquet, 2022: 152). Furthermore, contemporary challenges, such as cyber-attacks, terrorism, and the spread of new military and non-military technology, are typically complex in the sense that these challenges ‘have multiple, frequently interrelated, causes and are likely to be multi-faceted and unpredictable in their consequences, with cascading effects’ (Edmunds, 2014: 529). When it comes to uncertainty, the often-used argument is that uncertainty is an unavoidable aspect of warfare. War, because of its complex and non-linear nature, is an inherently unpredictable venture. Thus, complexity science becomes handy to describe an environment that is perceived as dynamic, unstable and unpredictable, and a place where linear cause-and-effect relationships are rare.

A central tenet in complexity-oriented security literature is an understanding of a threat environment and its associated challenges, which, it is argued, is can only be grasped through complexity:

At present it may even be stated that the new military and non-military threats to contemporary complex society, such as low intensity conflicts, regional conflicts, terrorism, environmental disturbances, etc. cannot be embraced without ideas taken from modern complex systems studies. (Mesjasz, 2008: 172)

Indeed, ‘human systems are the “complexities of complexities”’ (Mesjasz, 2008: 170). To approach the ‘growing complexity of global life’ and to ‘reengage the field of security studies in the critical observation of unfolding processes’, it takes the ‘complexification of the discourses and practices of security governance’ (Kavalski, 2008: 441, 423). Therefore, the argument here is that not only must we understand security governance through complexity, i.e. through a particular way of narrating social and political life in terms of complexity logics and assumptions, but the growing complexity of global life also requires that non-traditional means be applied – or what the quote refers to as ‘complexification’ of our analytical tools.

This means that complexity theorizing, within the framework of complexity sciences, is used both to diagnose the current security environment and as a solution to address it, such as the many not comprehensible and unexpected events taking place within this environment. Leary and Thomas (2011: 62) note that ‘[g]aining an understanding of the characteristics of complexity presents us with opportunit[ies] to harness it and use it to our advantage in strategic planning and tactical policy making’. Hence, there is inbuilt in complexity theorizing not only a descriptive but also a prescriptive call for making complexity both the analytical and practical solution for security challenges.

Complexity theorizing has also attracted interest beyond academia. Here it has become central for policymaking in institutions. Randazzo and Torrent (2020: 7, 9) argue that:

[W]orld-renowned institutions seem to be gradually acknowledging the unreachability of social processes, developing practices increasingly more sensitive to the complexity of relations between a wide range of actors in societies in which interventions has been conducted . . . the adoption of complexity-sensitive field programmes appears to be gradually settling down in UN policy frameworks.

Likewise, complexity economists suggest an alternative methodology of government policymaking in a ‘complexity-frame’ – as ‘laissez-faire activist’ governance structures and ‘catalyst policy’ (Colander and Kupers, 2014: 8; 204). This is a form of bottom-up policymaking, which takes complex dynamics into account in contrast to traditional welfare economists. The policy patterns that will follow from this approach are a list of well-known complexity theoretical phenomena: non-linearity and emergence and multiple equilibria (Colander and Kupers, 2014: 113–117). Here policymaking in a complexity regime becomes a solution to a market characterized by constant change and unfit government bureaucrats who struggle with top-down solutions and structural lock-ins. Overall, the applications of complexity science to public policy and public administration to understand policymaking in an unpredictable policy world have gained popularity (see Geyer and Rihani, 2010; Haynes, 2015; Morçöl, 2012). Though it can be said that the literature requires a complete rethinking of policy processes and thus may fuel new ways of thinking about problems, it also holds ideological connotations. Strand (2002: 165) touches upon the ideological basis of complexity use in governance, stating that ‘we cannot avoid our decisions being informed by speculative beliefs about the general workings of the world’.

Additionally, complexity approaches have become central in military organizations. In a study of systems thinking in the US Army, Thomas (2019) tracks the notion of complexity to the then US Joint Force Commander, General Mattis, who held the call sign CHAOS in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is perhaps no surprise that Mattis embraced complexity, since the US Marine Corps was one of the first to adopt complexity in doctrine. Thus, Thomas (2019: 159) finds that ‘Army Doctrine is sprinkled with words “system”, ”complex”, “chaotic” and “adaptive”’. In addition, and pertinent to our study, Thomas continues, ‘but it is not clear whether they [the words] are used as terms of systems science or in their ordinary English meaning’. What is emphasized here is the tendency to label everything from the strategic environment to the conditions of land combat, the land environment, urban environments, operations in the land domain, tasks of governance and economic development, force tailoring, and the global environment as complex. However, it is unclear when descriptions of complexity are grounded in systems science or common sense beliefs and everyday explanations.

Thomas (2019) is not the only scholar who has spotted the problematic and performative dimension of complexity. Focusing on the policy dimension, Mesjasz states that ‘Analogies and metaphors taken from complex systems studies are . . . treated as “scientific” and obtain supplementary political influence resulting from “sound” normative (precisely prescriptive) legitimacy, in any debate on security theory and policy’ (Mesjasz, 2008: 173). The policy dimension is particularly interesting because complexity is not only used to suggest how we must engage with the present or immediate future but also as a means to manage the future in the long term. Take this sentence from Blouin (2013: 30): ‘Indeed, even though weather is not fully predictable, the space of possible outcomes is still known by meteorologists.’ Although it is acknowledged that the future cannot be controlled, one can move ‘from forecasting the future to designing the future’ (Paparone et al., 2008: 436).

The problem is that neither of these more critical studies provide us with an analytical framework for understanding how surrendering to complexity comes at a cost. Here, Mesjasz (2008: 175) notes that ‘Security specialists, journalists, and politicians too often treat the complexity-related utterances as an element of the new, modern and to some extent “magic” language’. Yet, we are not provided with a detailed understanding of what features and rhetorical elements this magic language comprises, how the ‘magic’ occurs, and what possible effects it has when narrating social and political life.

Complexity as categorization and ‘folk theory’

In this section, we propose a theoretical lens through which complexity can be viewed as a practical category and folk theory. Brubaker and Cooper (2000: 4), following Bourdieu, define categories of practice as ‘categories of everyday social experience developed and deployed by ordinary social actors, as distinguished from the experience-distant categories used by social analysts’. This theoretical demarcation is helpful, because complexity as an analytical and practical category represent two different logics (Bourdieu, 1996). Indeed, it is the logic of complexity as a practical category that concerns us here (rather than potentials and problematics entailed in different theoretical takes on complexity). Our approach springs from the sociology of categorization (Bourdieu, 1991, 1996; Brubaker, 2004; Brubaker and Cooper, 2000; White, 2013) and underscores the centrality of viewing complexity as a ‘collective principle of the construction of a collective reality’ (Bourdieu, 1996: 20). In this view, then, the category of complexity is not solely a descriptive concept, but rather holds strong performative effects on the security arena. In that sense, the practical category is not neutral but is used strategically by actors to shape the collective understanding of the future in a specific manner; that is, complexity as a meta-narrative narrates future (and contemporary) security challenges. This also means that eventually actors in the security and defence arena, and not only those positioned in academia, will make ‘truth’ claims about security matters and the perceived complexity herein. Here the use of the notion of ‘folk theory’ becomes particularly relevant as a distinct way of exploring the ‘logic’ of the practical category of complexity, and how this logic is imposed on a particular context.

In line with other researchers, we understand ‘folk theory’ as existing beliefs about what a particular phenomenon is, what it does, and what it ought to do (Gelman and Legare, 2011; Halliday, 2018; Rozenblit and Keil, 2002). From this background source, people construct future action strategies. Thus, people use folk theories ‘to explain, interpret, and intervene in the world around them’ (Gelman and Legare, 2011: 379). Similar to scientific theories, folk theories have broad implications for and influence on thoughts and actions. Indeed, we argue that it functions as a heuristic that ‘folks’ use to organize the world around them. In addition, as is the case with scientific categories, folk theories seek to understand and explain causal relationships. However, the logic inherent in folk theory is a different kind of logic from the one applied in the natural sciences, from which complexity science springs. Halliday proposes that folk theory provides agents with a ‘sequence of causal links detached from time and place’ (Halliday, 2018: 957). Therefore, even though folk theories typically are fragmentary and skeletal and rarely produce complete or exhaustive explanations in a domain (Rozenblit and Keil, 2002), they provide broad frameworks that ‘attempt to uncover underlying explanatory principles to account for complex phenomena’ (Gelman and Legare, 2011: 388). Hence, folk theories create a powerful illusion of explanatory depth and provide effective causal interpretations, which help cover the inconsistencies and gaps in the theories. Interestingly, and as noted by Gelman and Legare (2011: 387), folk theory is characterized by a psychological essentialism that ‘assumes that categories are stable and immutable’. In other words, the categorization of something as ‘complex’ is absolute and not for discussion.

Based on the study of global governance, Halliday (2018: 936) has suggested that what makes a folk theory plausible is grounded in some ‘weakly founded justificatory rhetorics’. Thus, ‘plausible folk theory’ is a rhetorical device with six constitutive properties: parsimony, face validity, rhetorical compactness, ambiguity, affinity with extant beliefs, and underexamined premises. These propositions provide us with an analytical framework that paves the way for describing and understanding the preoccupation with complexity in contemporary defence and security policy and, in particular, the use of complexity in NATO MDO policy.

First, a ‘plausible folk theory’ is parsimonious in the sense that it is simplistic and that ‘tracts of behavior may be embraced by a formulation similar to the elevator speech’ (Halliday, 2018: 946). The human need for simplicity, which also characterizes scientific categories, has been noted in other work on folk theory. Hence, ‘we carve out order by leaving the disorderly part out . . . We carve out everything, just as we carve out constellations, to suit our human purposes’ (James in Gelman and Legare (2011: 382). Second, plausible folk theory is characterized by face-validity, that is, ‘instant impression of recognition, of rightness’ (Halliday, 2018: 947). In that sense, the practical category of complexity has to ‘ring true’ or be instantly recognized by practitioners. Third, plausible folk theory is rhetorically compact, observable, for example, through the use of multiple nouns, metaphors, and other ways to give the impression of density. Fourth, plausible folk theory is ambiguous. Typically, it reaches over real differences; however, its central terms or the contexts it papers over are often so indeterminate or opaque to flatten out the differences. Fifth, plausible folk theory has an affinity with existent beliefs in the sense that it allows actors with a broad set of different perspectives and interests to ascribe value to the theory. Sixth, and finally, plausible folk theory draws on unexamined premises in a scientific sense so that ‘Its ring of truth casts a veil over its assumptions, logics, and empirical support’ (Halliday, 2018: 947). From this follows that plausible folk theory is not intended to withstand inquiry or scrutiny.

In the following section, we apply the analytical framework to examine the Alliance warfighting concept for multi-domain operations and demonstrate how expressions of complexity are produced and promoted in this particular policy context. The following sections build on two main sources for textual analysis: primary sources including NATO defence strategies, strategic concept papers and doctrines; and secondary sources including NATO conference proceedings and open access discussion papers on MDO. Among the primary resources is ‘The Alliance Concept for Multi-domain Operations (MDO)’ (NATO, 2023). This is the most prominent and recent policy on multi-domain operations within NATO. The text is distinguished because it has institutional authority across the entire alliance. Less prominent, but having a large audience, are the range of texts by NATO staff and others likewise discussing the MDO concept. When analysing the texts, our focus is on expressions of complexity.

The Alliance warfighting concept for multi-domain operations (MDO)

In early 2021, the NATO leadership adopted NATO’s Warfighting Capstone Concept (NWCC) to serve as the Military North Star of the Alliance, which is a vision toward 2040 that details how NATO Allies must develop their militaries based on future warfare characteristics. The NWCC is a step toward operationalizing the 2019 NATO military strategy. Another step, just as important for what is described as NATO’s ongoing adaptation, is the Concept of the Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area (DDA) (NATO, 2022). While the former is a vision to guide long-term warfare development ‘to remain strong now and in the future’, the latter focuses on deterring and defending against threats in a multi-domain environment (NATO, 2022, our italics). According to Hall and Sandeman (2021: 8), this new focus ‘envisages the complex nature of modern warfare as a contest where deterrence must demonstrate a clear ability to defend, and where this defence is based on controlling multiple domains of warfare simultaneously’. An important part of this long-term vision is addressing five essential warfare development imperatives. The concept of MDO warfighting, which, among other things, describes how battles will be conducted in the future, forms one of the imperatives that should be integrated into NATO forces and operations. NATO defines MDO as:

Orchestration of military activities, across all domains and environments, synchronized with non-military activities, to enable the Alliance to deliver converging effects at the speed of relevance. (NATO, 2023: 1)

The traditional combined and joint domains of land, air and sea are here expanded with new operational domains and environments, such as space, the non-physical area of cyber, the electromagnetic spectrum, and the information environment. ‘The concept of multi-domain operations is an evolution of joint operations’ (NATO, 2022d, our italics). Thus, ‘joint’ bypasses the traditional perception of joint force activities and capabilities across theatres and services of a single military, instead referring to an expansion of military activities with non-military activities, focusing on the organizing within and across them. Accordingly, seamless cooperation, collaboration and integration have become key terms for successful operations such as defending national borders with multinational units and mobilizing civil populations in political-economic warfare.

NATO’s MDO definition was developed as a result of a long trip. New Alliance doctrinal concepts do not occur daily. It mainly builds upon the US Army’s conceptual work to rebuild itself for future challenges. In 2012, the US Army Capstone Project for Joint Operations introduced an approach of ‘globally integrated operations’ across domains and cross-domain synergy (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2012). The approach was developed on the background of what was understood as a new global security environment ‘distinguished by digital networks and worldwide flows of capital, material, people, and information’, leading to ‘the geography of threats and crises grow[ing] more complex’ (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2012: 9). However, the primary mission focus was terrorism, counterinsurgency and irregular warfare in the context of 9/11 and warfighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2018, the focus shifted from terrorism to competition.

We are facing increased global disorder, characterized by decline in the long-standing rules-based international order – creating a security environment more complex and volatile than any we have experienced in recent memory. Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security. (US Department of Defense, 2018: 1)

The emerging geopolitical realities posed by Russia and China set the scene for the US Army’s response in the form of multi-domain operations, used as a national doctrinal concept to defeat the enemies on a grand scale (TRADOC, December 2018).

NATO’s terminological definition of multi-domain operations expands the US Army’s conceptualization first by being more generic, meaning many different things to different alliances and people. In some ways, multi-domain operations represent a more sophisticated version of joint operations; however, the concept is also a fuzzy one in which the content, value, or boundaries of application can vary according to the context or conditions. This is further exemplified in the MDO vision, which forms the basis for the development of the MDO concept:

The Alliance’s approach to MDO will enable NATO’s Military Instrument of Power to prepare, plan, orchestrate, and execute synchronized activities across all domains and environments at scale and speed in collaboration with other instruments of power, stakeholders, and actors. (NATO, 2023: 9)

In contrast to the US Army Field Manual 3-0 that establishes the concept of multi-domain operations in the land operational doctrine (Army US, 2022), NATO’s vision places the concept in a contextual no-man’s land, detached from an actual military problem and specific strategic, operational and tactical challenges. Battlespace becomes, like the global network society, a battlespace of infinite proportions; threats are without definable referents, and the future is a long march of conflict of unlimited duration. This is an underlying logic of networking and is thus a well-established one (see, for example, Dillon, 2002).

While the US Army Field Manual’s conceptualization has been shaped by lessons learned from the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war and an occupation with the present, NATO’s MDO concept is far more fluid and future-oriented. It looks toward future competition and conflict challenges that must be handled by required evolutions in war and warfare instruments, such as yet-to-be-developed technologies, overly ambitious data-sharing platforms and novel human mind-sets.

Rhetorical features and explanations of NATO MDO policy

Departing from the theoretical framework of Halliday (2018), one can ask a simple question: What makes a theory or set of explanations plausible to the ‘folks’ involved in NATO MDO strategymaking, despite the fluid and abstract foundations upon which they rest? This section argues that the lack of specificity and contextualization is compensated by specific rhetorical features that come from a particular logic undergirding the MDO concept. This explains why ‘folks’ recognize the set of ideas (which they find plausible) and which plausibility they promote as effective means to organize and respond to future threats and conflicts.

What we find in our analysis is a loose arrangement of propositions that fall between the rigour of scientific theory and the unfolding of a meta-narrative. This takes the form of what Halliday would suggest is a plausible folk theory (Halliday, 2018).

First, empirical research on NATO MDO strategymaking indicates that it is parsimonious in the sense that it radically simplifies the extraordinary messiness of the current and future conflicts, crises and competition spectrum across military and non-military domains, sectors and actors, and accordingly, the responses to this messiness. However, because a plausible folk theory can be explained in the format of an elevator pitch, the underlying theory of MDO goes like this:

The environment NATO faces is fluid, global, and complex, and the further to the future one looks, the more uncertain it becomes . . . the Alliance needs to become more anticipatory and proactive. We need to get ahead of the ever more anticipated threat curve, or risk losing our freedom of decision and action. (Tammen, 2021)

Therefore, the Alliance needs to organize in the following manner: (1) orchestrate military activities, (2) across all domains and environments, (3) synchronize with non-military activities, and (4) enable the Alliance to deliver converging effects at the speed of relevance (NATO, 2023: 1). Notably, the plausible folk theory seldom explains the relations or interconnections between elements, their interaction effects, or the great organizational challenges that accompany ambitions of connectivity and integration. Instead, the approach to, say, collaboration is very broad in the sense that any coordinating agents or institutions are actively written out of the definition. The policy simply states that ‘many actors can collectively contribute to the military’s success’ (NATO, 2023: 7).

Second, the MDO concept represents an impression of recognition that makes sense instantly. Even though it can often be categorized as common sense, it comes as a truth. It has face validity (Halliday, 2018). A common fix point in documents concerning MDO is that the future operating environment is described as completely new. Therefore, the warfighting concept needs to be new to match the environmental changes. From this, it follows that the Alliance needs a completely new culture and mind-set that comes through fundamental cultural and mind-set changes:

The effective application of Multi-Domain Operations can only be achieved through a cultural change, by nations and NATO, from a traditional Joint approach to one that is more widely focused across all five operational domains; an essential mind-set change toward Multi-Domain Operations. (NATO, 2022c, our italics)

It is important to ensure that ‘Alliance personnel are educated, trained and equipped, and ready to fight with a multi-domain mind-set’ (NATO, 2023: 5, our italics). In the MDO policy, this is also understood as a particular creativity perspective – that is, a perspective that is ‘broader than traditional operating boundaries’ (NATO, 2023: 16). It is stated here that future operational environments and battlefields command us to think differently about them than we have done previously. We are told that we need new thought models because the bulk of our old categories and concepts related to the ‘old ways of conducting war’ do not hold true.

Implicit in this rhetorical feature is a logic of argument that is obvious in a series of steps that sooner or later produce a positive or good outcome. In the documents, radical and essential cultural and mind-set changes are assumed to be good, necessary and effective per definition. The empirical evidence for why changes in warfighting strategy can only be achieved by cultural change is missing, and persuasive arguments for how and why we need an essential mind-set change from previous experiences, knowledge and mental constructs carried about in people’s heads are not a central concern here. Neither is it a concern that ‘culture’ and ‘mind-set’ are so weakly defined that it leaves us with terms so elastic that they are not indexed on any particular individual, institutional or organizational level. From application of new ways of thinking about the operational environment, warfighting to culture and mind-set changes follows the necessity of education. This is an effective rhetorical way to link ‘common sense’ elements that constitute a path toward the higher good (radical change). No less than ‘Education of all stakeholders is key’, as stated at the NATO Multi Domain Operations Conference in March 2022 (NATO, 2022a).

Third, the plausible folk theory is rhetorically compact. Take the example of integration and interoperability, which is the logical and obvious way forward in MDO thinking, in contradiction to the lack of cooperation that pigeonholes services. One assumption that underlies MDO is the idea of complementarity (combined arms, expanded battlespace, and positions of advantage and domain interconnectedness (Lyons and Johnson, 2022). Through operations in multiple warfighting domains, MDO combines interacting effects to ‘deliver effects at a pace varying from the speed of light . . . to relevant pace’ in relation to ‘frontline fighters’ (NATO, 2023: 9). For NATO, many different factors are enumerated to explain the MDO approach. Factors listed are, for instance, ‘multi-facetted threats that occur from all strategic directions in an increasingly complex, hyperactive, urbanised and connected battlespace with no geographical boundaries and where all domains are contested across all levels of operations’ (NATO, 2023: 4). In the document, this battlespace context is simply defined as ‘this complexity’ (NATO, 2023: 4). Thus, it is an abstract, multifaceted, multi-agent, multitemporal and multiservice description surrounding MDO to which the notion responds – even to such an extent that MDO becomes self-evident. The fact that ‘integration’ and ‘interoperability’ mean many different things in different contexts is effectively ignored. It is the combination and sum of effects that is the ultimate ‘weapon’ that the enemy cannot match. Or expressed in US jargon: ‘[to] proactively project, pulse, and vacillate pressure across overlapping domains to create cascading and inescapable dilemmas for engaged adversaries’ (Taliferro and Jennings, June 18, 2021).

Fourth, NATO MDO policy is ambiguous. For instance, this means that the definition of the MDO concept and its focus on collaboration across military and nonmilitary domains, actors and stakeholders contain ambiguity and cover something opaque and indeterminate, such as the ill-explored nature of the relationships between militaries and other actors. This is not a new concern, but a growing recognition in discussions of the need for approaches that are ‘network governance’ (Rhodes, 1997), ‘whole of government’ (Christensen and Lægreid, 2007), ‘whole of society’ (Ivan et al., 2021) and ‘cross-sector collaboration’ (Page et al., 2021). The terms imply future collaboration between militaries and other public and private organizations and indicate an increased awareness of the already existing connectedness in the nexus of militaries and other parties. This is not a new orientation; however, these approaches result in a new twist. Therefore, what in the late 1990s was introduced as network operations and network-centric warfare has in NATO’s 2022 strategic concept evolved into ‘cooperative security’ (NATO, 2022b: 9). The intention of the term is to offer a new mechanism for understanding relationships not only between, and for that matter within, militaries but also across military and nonmilitary institutions and actors.

Fifth, NATO MDO policy has an affinity with extant beliefs. As previously noted, complexity is a way to impose order on the inherent uncertainty of warfare in a more networked environment. However, despite the complexity category’s call for radical and dynamic novelty, it also bears similarities with the idea of network-centric warfare. Hence, ‘Placing the figure of the network at its heart, the gathering theory of network-centric warfare (NWC) would affirm war ‘as a complex, adaptive system where non-linear variables continuously interact’ (Bousquet and Gray in Bousquet, 2022: 203). Furthermore, the complexity logic was also a way to organizationally grabble with a particular kind of uncertainty arising from the counterinsurgency focus of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (McChrystal et al., 2015). In that sense, complexity becomes the answer to a practical problem – an answer that is not radically new but rather one that holds an affinity with prior understandings of war and warfare. Hence, what the complexity category legitimizes is the perception that the security arena is increasingly networked. A perception that, because of its normative bend in folk theory, tilts toward the ideological, in terms of how to organize the future of war and warfare.

Sixth, and finally, the philosophy and value systems of MDO remain largely unexamined. This is not a big surprise, as ‘a plausible folk theory is not intended to withstand a lot of inquiry’ (Halliday, 2018: 949). Thus, the represented empirical beliefs, which are part of the MDO package, have never been tested. For instance, the basic assumption that complexity must be met with complexity is left rather unattended as a self-evident truth statement (see also Roelsgaard Obling, 2023). New geopolitical challenges are perceived as complex, in the sense that they have multiple interrelated causes and are diverse and unpredictable, with cascading and uncertain effects. However, this attempt to grapple with the contemporary problem of adaption to the fast-moving and changeable nature of the current and future geopolitical security environment does not necessarily imply that the NATO MDO response in almost every situation and circumstance must replicate the environment perception. There appears to be a mirroring of cause and effect, that is, a description of cause-and-effect relationships whose empirical foundations are flimsy or non-existent (see also Rosenhead, 1998).

Critical points in contemporary expressions of complexity

Central to our argumentation throughout this article has been that complexity can be understood as a practical category or ‘folk theory’, and that this form of theory has a strong explanatory component, positing the existence of complexity as a compelling reality. Although geopolitical and societal changes are increasingly narrated through the concept of complexity, there is little focus on the social and practical effects of this. If we view the use of complexity in security policy as holding the potential of becoming ‘doxic practice and therefore next to impossible to talk about as anything but a logic of necessity’ (Villumsen Berling, 2011: 387), it explains its legitimate position and why it is so hard to challenge. This development, which is not random, can be viewed from a sociological perspective as being strategically orchestrated by particular actors at particular moments in time to achieve certain future ends. Hence, Bourdieu (1996; see also Bourdieu, 1991) and Halliday (2018), working on practical categories and ‘plausible folk theory’ respectively, point toward categories as strategic organizing principles with particular social effects on the future state of the world. Due to the challenges entailed in contesting complexity as ‘folk theory’, ideas of complexity are akin to an ideology. As Grint (2022: 1526) proposes, ‘In short, how we see the situations is not a transparent consequence of ‘the situation’ but a translucent result of the ideological prism we inhibit’. In that sense, approaching something as complex is never solely an objective reflection of the current state of affairs in the geopolitical security arena but also a reflection of the subjective interests and strategies inhibiting this landscape. From this perspective, folk theories are more ideological engrossed than scientifically founded and are ‘designating a valorized configuration of social relationships’ (Bourdieu, 1996: 19).

Halliday finds that actors use ‘strategic ignorance, defined as a form of ignorance that can confer advantages on particular groups even if those groups have not consciously or willfully cultivated an unknown in the first place’ (Halliday, 2018: 955). A central problem here is that the ‘doxic’ elements in the strategic use of complexity do not open up for pluralistic ways into the unknown terrain of the future. It is worth noticing here, that multiple actions can be justified and that dominant actors (e.g. the state, organizations, and individuals) may have a strategic interest in shaping the future from practical categories. For example, as noted by Rosenhead et al. (2019), the Santa Fe Institute has pioneered a specific focus on complexity. The institution is currently heavily invested in the notion of complexity. Additionally, the RAND Corporation has devoted efforts to ‘complex system analysis’ (RAND Corporation, 2023). Our point here is that central to an understanding of the social workings of the practical category of complexity is a mapping of the actors embedded in the security field and their strategic interests in framing the future as complex. Taking the strategic element of the use of the complexity category seriously also entails focusing on how visions of the future are subject to negotiation and conflict. More knowledge is needed on social engagements and struggles over the right to envision the world, as well as on the social processes by which complexity becomes the primary lens for understanding it.

In addition to the inclination of contemporary security policies, particularly as evidenced in NATO’s MDO policy, to categorize reality as complex, our study also reveals insights into how the construction of reality is represented. In descriptions of an uncertain, disorderly world and the strategies for operating within it, there is a tendency to employ a form of circular argumentation where answers to questions of complexity only lead to more complexity. Hence, in these argumentations there is a circularity where the answers mirror the questions posed. To use a metaphor borrowed from the field of medicine, seemingly, it is as if the cure equates to the diagnosis. What potentially is at play here is that there has been a spillover from the ‘skeletal’ logic of folk theory to security science (see Rozenblit and Keil, 2002: 522, for further explanation of this logic). In other words, a practical category of complexity is created analytically. Another example of this confusion of practical and analytical categories can be found in the literature on network governance, security and defence studies that address the network element of complexity categorization. Here, the network is often presented as a form of organizing and innovation, which is the possible means of increasing organizational effectiveness and collaboration. For instance, when describing the relationships between domains, agencies and actors across the security field as a ‘security network’, scholars use the network concept to map the relationship between security entities (Dupont, 2006) and, to a large degree, to promote a specific research agenda. While pointing at deliberately structured platforms whereby different entities are required to work together to achieve both individual and collective goals, security analysts follow the idea that ‘it takes a network to fight networks’ (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 2001; see also McChrystal et al., 2015) – an idea that became increasingly popular after 9/11 among a cluster of commentators and military analysts (Whelan, 2016). The matter at hand is an important one, as it pertains to the capacity of security studies to provide a rich perspective on security concerns rather than simply mirroring ‘folksy’ beliefs and collective understandings. On this issue Bourdieu is very clear: ‘One is entitled to undertake to give an “account of accounts”, so long as one does not put forward one’s contribution to the science of pre-scientific representation of the social world as if it were a science of the social world’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 21). This means that we need to pay attention to how a particular concept is used and not only to the fact that a concept is used (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000), and that attention is required to the uncontrolled conflation of practical categories and analytical understandings (see Wacquant, 1997, for further description of this problem).

An alternative research avenue, grounded in the sociology of categorization, would explore the tensions that arise when new and old forms of security governance mix and meet, for instance, in security and defence policies, and how they coexist and interact. Of particular interest in this intersection would be to unfold the social mechanisms through which certain forms of security governance render legitimacy from complexity categorization and its implications for structuring the security arena. Indeed, we argue that much of the academic work has neglected empirical studies on what complexity categorization actually ‘does’ to the organization of security. In line with Rosenhead et al. (2019), there is a notable gap in research that tracks the implementation of complexity and the resultant effects and changes (see, however, Bousquet, 2022). The singular focus on networks as both practical entities and policy enablers seems too abstracted from specific organizational setups to offer a framework for analysing, for instance, the unintended consequences of the mix of governing structures and narratives, or the tensions that arise from the everyday understanding and implementation of policies.

As illustrated in this article, and in line with the critical points above, plausible folk theories are appealing because they offer easily accessible solutions. However, these solutions also come with some costs. One implication for the practice of strategy- and policymaking is that complexity, as a plausible folk theory, becomes a driver for the implementation of security initiatives. This means, for instance, that the theory lends support to resource allocation, institutional goals, personnel and technological developments within the framework of NATO MDO initiative. To address this issue, we suggest approaching complexity as only one of the many ways to perceive and understand the contemporary and future security environment. The aim of such an approach is to develop an astuteness toward using a multiplicity of perspectives on the future, which might expand future possibilities, rather than envisioning merely one future vis-à-vis the use of only one (complexity) category.

Related to this, and as we have highlighted throughout this paper, there is often a strong performative element in complexity rhetoric, which nudges strategy- and policymakers into adopting the category. It is therefore paramount for practitioners to grasp and understand the performative effects that seemingly neutral and descriptive categories have on policy. This can be honed by being aware of the rhetoric used to prescribe certain actions and the rationale underpinning them. Furthermore, being mindful of the language change from mere description to prescription (e.g. ‘ought to’ ‘have to’) can be a fruitful avenue for practitioners to explore the performativity of practical categories (see also Klitmøller and Roelsgaard Obling, 2021). This is also to say that there can be possibilities in using the complexity category as one analytical construct in strategy- and policymaking within the field of security and defence. Hence, it can be conducive for practitioners to (cognitively) explore new connections and to challenge assumptions about sequence and order. However, when invoking expressions and rhetoric of complexity, it is also important to realize that this rhetoric also changes the connections we study. Indeed, a central difference between a natural system and a social system is that the agents in the social system have the ability to reflect on the ‘laws’ (e.g. social regularities and categories) that guide behaviour and can instigate changes based on those insights (Rosenhead et al., 2019). Hence, we propose that rather than viewing complexity, one-sidedly, as an undisputed and objectively given ‘fact’, taking seriously its performativity allows practitioners to continuously evaluate the effects of complexity categorization and the extent to which it is desirable for an understanding of the future security environment.

Finally, and as noted by Halliday (2018), plausible folk theories are cost-effective. This is very much so for complexity, as it becomes an all-encompassing diagnosis and solution in one. However, while it saves both cognitive and economic resources for practitioners who can readily categorize a problem or challenge as complex, it also leaves the inner workings of a specific empirical problem somewhat in the dark. Hence, there are practical considerations for practitioners to make, which entail balancing the resources saved by using complexity in policy formulation with the potential for resources lost by the inability of the category to provide solutions tailored to the particularities of the problem.

Conclusion

This study demonstrates that the ongoing appeal of complexity as a performative meta-narrative, which has an impact on the comprehension of contemporary and future security, is not diminishing. Indeed, our exploration began by questioning what appeared to be a particular way of diagnosing current and future security challenges in contemporary NATO MDO policy in terms of complexity. Thus, it seems that complexity offers simultaneously a diagnosis and a solution to the cascade of multifaceted and unpredictable security challenges we encounter today and tomorrow.

However, as we have shown, the expressions and rhetoric of complexity, inherent in what can be understood as folk theory, follow a particular logic. Our analysis shows that the folk theory of complexity has an immediate appeal to people and is easy to adopt and implement. The category, however, is ideologically engrossed with strong social effects on the security arena and the way the future is envisioned here. Taking this perspective, we add to the existing understanding of complexity in the literature that has relied on metaphor as an explanatory device for understanding the take-up of complexity as a framework informing how we understand social and human phenomena. Here, Burnes (2005), Rosenhead (1998) and Rosenhead et al. (2019) have argued that complexity theory is being used as a metaphorical device rather than an empirically tested theory with validated prescriptive force. If so, then complexity is a folk theory with strong normative connotations of how to organize for war and warfare, grounded in a shaky empirical and conceptual foundation.

Even if we believe that the future will become increasingly complex, we are arguably better off discussing the potentials and pitfalls entailed in plural categories and how they affect the future organizing of security rather than relying on only a complexity point of view. This research agenda would be sensitive to the ideological elements of categorizations – and potentially competing categories – and how these transpire and shape social and political life.