Army War College (U.S.)

Hugh F. T. Hoffman

This monograph argues that a strategic center of gravity analysis is the primary task a nation must accomplish before prosecuting a war. The author, LTC Hoffman, uses the Iran-Iraq War as a vehicle to illustrate how such a strategic analysis might be done and what happens when nations fail to make their enemy's strategic center of gravity the object of decisive action in war. In doing so, LTC Hoffman presents a holistic model for a strategic center of gravity that can be used as both an analytic and a heuristic tool. Using this model to analyze the two belligerents in this long and fruitless war, he demonstrates the thought process involved in the employment of his five necessary conditions of a center of gravity. He concludes that strategic centers of gravity are almost invariably composite systems that comprise critical subcomponents of the four elements of national power: the government, the military, the polity, and the economy.

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