Concepts Applied to Current Geopolitical Challenges Facing the United States
By Ken Robinson
This essay is inspired by the seminal concepts from the work of my early career mentor, Brigadier General Wayne Michael Hall, U.S. Army (Ret.), The Power of Will in International Conflict: How to Think Critically in Complex Environments. Foreword by Lieutenant General Patrick M. Hughes, U.S. Army (Ret.), Director, DIA
Opening
The most dangerous assumption in modern American strategy is not wrong. It is incomplete.
We have convinced ourselves that wars are decided by capability. If we build enough ships, field enough aircraft, deploy enough sensors, move enough data, integrate enough artificial intelligence, and spend enough money, the outcome should follow. That belief has become doctrine. It is clean. It is measurable. It is easy to brief.
It is also quietly failing.
Capability matters. No serious person argues otherwise. But capability does not decide conflict by itself.
Will does.
Always has.
Always will.
Every war, every insurgency, every maritime crisis, every economic coercion campaign, and every geopolitical contest ultimately comes down to the same question: who is willing to endure longer, adapt faster, and impose his vision more relentlessly?
That is the battlefield America keeps rediscovering after the cost has already been paid. Vietnam taught it. Iraq taught it. Afghanistan taught it. Ukraine is teaching it again, but in a new technological language. The Red Sea is teaching it in real time. Taiwan may be the place where the lesson becomes catastrophic if we fail to understand it before the shooting starts.
This essay applies General Wayne Michael Hall’s central insight to the current strategic environment: conflict is a collision of wills, and will is not a slogan. It is a system. It has origins, components, pressure points, and ways it can be strengthened or broken.
The System of Will
General Hall’s work forces a return to fundamentals. Will is not emotion. It is not morale alone. It is not simply determination. Will is the organized force that connects life-force, purpose, strength of motive, capability, action, adaptation, endurance, and sacrifice.
When these elements align, they create momentum. When they fracture, collapse follows. The contest is not merely between armies, budgets, platforms, or sanctions packages. It is between systems of human and institutional will that collide under pressure.
This is why the stronger actor does not always win.
The stronger actor may have more tools, but the committed actor may have more staying power. The better-resourced actor may dominate the first phase of the conflict, but the more adaptive actor may control the later phases. In long struggles, the decisive question is not who begins with superiority. It is who remains coherent after shock, loss, ambiguity, and exhaustion arrive.
Iran proves this point daily.
That is the point too often missing from American strategic debate. We count what is easy to count and mistake it for what matters most.
Life-Force: Where Wars Really Begin
Every conflict begins before the first shot.
It begins in the mind.
A grievance. A humiliation. A belief. A vision. A leader’s obsession. A people’s memory. A regime’s fear. A nation’s story about itself.
This becomes identity. Identity becomes purpose. Purpose becomes action. By the time we see the action, the conflict has already matured.
Modern strategy focuses on what can be seen: missile ranges, ship counts, airfields, sanctions, casualty numbers, satellite imagery, and logistics capacity. These matter. But life-force operates where it cannot be seen. It lives in the adversary’s sense of purpose, historical grievance, fear of humiliation, ideological commitment, or belief that survival itself is at stake.
If we do not understand that origin point, we target symptoms while leaving the disease untouched. Worse, we sometimes strengthen the very will we intend to break.
Duality: The Discipline We Avoid
To win, you must think like your adversary. Not as a slogan. Not as a soft exercise in empathy. As a hard discipline:
What does he believe?
What does he fear?
What is he willing to sacrifice?
What does victory mean inside his system of meaning?
Where does he think we are weak?
What does he think we think about him?
Without these answers, strategy becomes projection. Projection leads to miscalculation.
Miscalculation leads to failure.
America is often tempted to assume adversaries will calculate costs the way we do. They do not. China, Russia, Iran, and non-state actors do not operate from the same political clocks, cultural memories, institutional incentives, or thresholds of pain.
They may interpret pressure not as a reason to retreat, but as proof that their struggle is real. They may view suffering not as failure, but as validation. They may accept losses we assume are intolerable because their definition of survival is different from ours.
Current Reality Check
Recent events reinforce the point. In the Red Sea, Houthi attacks that began in late 2023 forced major shipping lines to divert around the Cape of Good Hope, with Reuters reporting in March 2026 that African bunkering hubs were benefiting as more vessels continued to reroute around Africa. Reuters This is not a great-power fleet action. It is will-driven disruption executed with missiles, drones, geography, and political intent.
In the Black Sea, Ukraine has shown that asymmetric maritime innovation can change the balance against a larger navy. Carnegie published a 2026 Ukrainian assessment arguing that Ukraine’s asymmetric approach had rendered Russia’s Black Sea Fleet functionally useless. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace That is not just a naval story. It is a strategic warning about the democratization of will.
In the Taiwan Strait, Reuters reported in April 2026 that China’s aircraft carrier Liaoning sailed through the strait, another signal of Beijing’s willingness to apply pressure without necessarily crossing the threshold of open war. Reuters This is condition-setting. It is coercion by presence. It is will expressed through disciplined ambiguity.
These are not isolated events. They are indicators of a systemic shift. Conflict is moving toward will-driven, technology-enabled disruption. The actors applying pressure do not always need to win a conventional battle. They need to raise costs, create hesitation, fracture confidence, and shape political choice.
This is fifth-generation warfare in practical form: the contest is not simply over terrain. It is over perception, cognition, endurance, legitimacy, and decision.
China: Patience as Power
China is not in a hurry. That is its advantage.
Beijing is executing a generational strategy rooted in history, identity, and restoration. The fall of imperial China, the Century of Humiliation, the Opium Wars, foreign occupation, civil war, and the trauma of national fragmentation are not museum pieces in Chinese strategic thought.
They are active memory.
The Chinese Communist Party has fused national rejuvenation with regime legitimacy. That fusion gives Beijing a powerful strategic life-force. The party does not merely govern China. It claims to be the instrument through which China returns to its rightful place in history:
China builds quietly
It probes constantly.
It adapts without announcement.
It uses economic leverage, maritime pressure, cyber penetration, industrial policy, military modernization, and narrative control as parts of one integrated effort.
While the United States debates policy cycles, China shapes long-term outcomes. That is will applied over time.
This does not mean China is invincible. It has demographic decline, financial stress, political brittleness, and growing external resistance. But strategy begins by understanding what animates the competitor. China’s will is not episodic. It is organized around restoration, control, and patience.
Russia: Endurance as Strategy
Russia does not need to win quickly.
It needs to not lose.
Its history has taught it that survival is victory. Invasion, collapse, revolution, famine, purges, occupation, and post-Soviet humiliation all feed a strategic culture organized around depth, endurance, suspicion, and control.
In Ukraine, Russia has paid enormous costs. It has lost troops, equipment, reputation, and strategic flexibility. Yet Russian will has not collapsed. That does not make Moscow wise. It makes Moscow dangerous.
Russia measures success differently than Washington. Western systems often ask whether an operation is efficient, sustainable, and politically defensible. Russian strategic culture has repeatedly shown a willingness to absorb punishment, trade lives for time, and turn endurance into leverage.
The mistake is to confuse loss with collapse. Loss can weaken will. It can also harden it if the actor believes the alternative is humiliation, regime danger, or historical defeat.
To confront Russia effectively, the United States and Europe must target not only Russian capability, but Russian confidence in eventual endurance. That means sustaining Ukraine, hardening Europe, protecting political cohesion, and denying Moscow the belief that time is automatically on its side.
Iran: The Will We Misread
Iran is not irrational. It is operating from a framework we often choose not to fully understand.
Iran sees itself not merely as a state, but as a civilization under pressure. Persian identity predates Islam and survived conquest, invasion, dynastic change, and revolution. Layered on top of that is Shia Islam, with its deep narrative of martyrdom, endurance, betrayal, and resistance against unjust power.
The 1979 revolution fused civilizational pride, religious legitimacy, anti-imperial resentment, and regime survival into a durable system of will. This does not excuse Iranian conduct. It explains why pressure often produces outcomes Washington does not expect.
Iran incorporates suffering into identity. It expects hardship. It prepares for it. It uses proxies, deniability, strategic patience, and escalation control not because it is weak in will, but because it understands asymmetry.
Pressure does not automatically break Iran. In many cases, it reinforces the regime’s internal story: that resistance is necessary because the outside world seeks submission.
Until that is understood, policy tools will continue to underperform. The question is not whether the United States can punish Iran. It can. The question is whether punishment changes Iran’s will, fractures its purpose, or merely confirms its worldview.
Ukraine: The Warning Signal
Ukraine did not just fight a war. It revealed the future.
A weaker force used drones, distributed intelligence, commercial satellite networks, battlefield improvisation, and national purpose to impose real costs on a superior military. The lesson is not that drones are magic. The lesson is that will, combined with accessible technology and adaptive learning, is now scalable.
Ukraine’s maritime drone campaign against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is the kind of strategic event that future military colleges will study for decades. It showed that a country without conventional naval superiority can still contest the sea. It showed that innovation can move faster than doctrine. It showed that teenagers, engineers, coders, soldiers, and operators linked by purpose can embarrass fleets built for another age.
This is not an exception. It is a signal.
Power is no longer exclusive to major states. Disruption has been democratized. The cost curve has changed. A cheap system can threaten an exquisite platform. A networked group can impose strategic cost. A small actor with sufficient will can shape decisions at the highest level.
The Failure
The United States is not at risk because it lacks capability. It is at risk because it too often thinks shallowly about conflict:
We have optimized for speed.
We have deprioritized depth.
We process information faster than ever, but understanding has not kept pace.
We have systems that move data, generate slides, model scenarios, and brief conclusions.
But too often those systems do not force the deeper question: what is the adversary’s will, where does it come from, and what would actually change it?
That is not an academic complaint. It is an operational weakness.
A country can possess satellites, carriers, cyber tools, and precision weapons and still misread the conflict if it misunderstands the adversary’s life-force. It can win battles and lose wars. It can punish an enemy and strengthen his purpose. It can dominate the visible battlefield while losing the contest inside the adversary’s mind.
What Must Change
The United States must relearn how to think. Deeply. Adversarially. Continuously.
This requires understanding life-force as the origin of conflict. It requires applying duality rigorously. It requires building institutions that reward deep thinking, not merely process compliance. It requires targeting adversary will, not just adversary capability. It requires operating in nonlinear environments with humility and adaptability.
American strategy must ask harder questions before action begins:
What does the adversary believe is sacred?
What does he fear losing?
What would make him stop?
What would make him double down?
What would cause his system of will to fracture?
What might we do that would unintentionally strengthen it?
The answer will not always be kinetic. Sometimes the answer is diplomatic. Sometimes economic. Sometimes informational. Sometimes covert. Sometimes military. Usually, it is a combination.
But every tool must serve a theory of will, not merely a theory of pressure.
Final Assessment
The global system is fragmenting. Power is diffusing. Technology is accelerating. Conflict is becoming less predictable and more persistent.
The actors who succeed will not necessarily be the strongest. They will be the most adaptive. The most coherent.
The most aligned in will.
General Hall provided the framework. The current world is providing the proof.
China is testing patience as power. Russia is testing endurance as strategy. Iran is testing resistance as identity. Ukraine is demonstrating the democratization of will. The Red Sea is showing how small actors can disrupt global systems. The Taiwan Strait is reminding us that coercion does not need to look like invasion to alter strategic reality.
Power builds the force. Will decides when and how it is used. And in the conflicts now unfolding across the world, that distinction will determine outcomes.
Those who understand will will shape events.
Those who do not will be shaped by them.
Power is visible. Will is decisive.
This essay is an application and integration of General Wayne Michael Hall’s concepts on will, life-force, duality, deep thinking, and complex conflict, as developed in The Power of Will in International Conflict: How to Think Critically in Complex Environments (Praeger Security International, 2018; ISBN-13: 978-1440866128; ISBN-10: 1440866120).
Formal bibliographic credit: Wayne Michael Hall, The Power of Will in International Conflict: How to Think Critically in Complex Environments, Praeger Security International, 2018. Foreword by our mentor, former Director, Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Patrick M. Hughes, U.S. Army (Ret.). Publisher reference: Bloomsbury / Praeger listing
https://grokipedia.com/page/Military_Intelligence_Hall_of_Fame
This is a very coherent and compelling read. As a China specialist back in the day, I find it especially spot on. If I were a voting member, I would certainly advocate for this. Thank you for the great read- the distillation of excellent content indeed! Well done Ken Robinson and BG Hall!