Doctrines as Discursive Artefacts: Rethinking Military Intelligence Education in Norway

Introduction

Contemporary military organizations increasingly describe conflict as “ambiguous”, “dynamic”, and “complex”. Concepts such as “hybrid threats”, “irregular warfare”, and “multidomain operations” (MDO) reflect an environment in which state and nonstate actors interact across domains and where boundaries between peace and war are blurred (NATO, 2026; Wegge, 2025). Central to the MDO concept is the assumption that shared situational understanding can be generated despite this complexity (Rjaanes & Olsen, 2025). These increasing demands for shared understanding and adaptive knowledge production raise important questions about whether current intelligence education practices adequately prepare analysts for such environments.

This article examines whether contemporary military intelligence education in Norway equips students with the skills required to manage ambiguity and complexity. The analysis focuses on the Norwegian Intelligence School (NORIS), Norway’s largest intelligence education institution, and its course in intelligence support to military operations. In this course, students are tasked with analyzing a complex operational scenario and producing a Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operating Environment (JIPOE) that feeds into a joint military decisionmaking process (NATO, 2019).

NORIS’s JIPOE course relies heavily on military doctrine. Its syllabus, lectures, and group work are extensively shaped by doctrinal language, and the course broadly follows the analytical framework prescribed in these doctrines. This framework provides students with a structured means of addressing analytical problems arising in conflict environments. It requires them to consider “facts” about terrain, weather, and relevant actors, while linking these analyses to an ongoing decisionmaking process. While such standardization is necessary for joint planning in large military organizations, an analytic discourse dominated by doctrinal ontology and epistemology may not foster the analytical agility required to confront complex problems.

To address this issue, the article develops a metareflexive analytical framework that integrates insights from critical intelligence studies (CIS) and the military design literature. Although these fields rarely intersect, both interrogate how knowledge about conflict is produced, and both challenge the assumption that complex environments can be reduced to stable categories and linear causal models. By combining CIS’s epistemological critique with military design theory’s ontological pluralism, the article advances a unique theoretical and methodological lens for examining how doctrine structures analytic practice. This metareflexive approach treats doctrine not as a neutral tool, but as a set of meaningproducing practices that shape how analysts perceive, interpret, and act upon the operational environment.

Using this framework, the article critically analyses the military intelligence doctrines employed in NORIS’s JIPOE course. The analysis shows that these doctrines advance a functionalist conception of reality and knowledge (Paparone, 2013; Zweibelson, 2025), premised on the belief that the operating environment can be objectively observed, explained, and predicted. By reducing complex social dynamics to mechanistic models and privileging linear causality over emergence, the doctrines risk narrowing the epistemological space available to analysts. This has significant implications for intelligence education, as it may constrain critical reflection, creativity, and pluralism – qualities essential for navigating complex and ambiguous conflict environments (Zweibelson, 2023a).

The article proceeds in five parts. First, it briefly discusses and defines doctrine. Second, it outlines the metareflexive framework derived from CIS and military design theory. Third, it presents the methodological approach and the doctrines analyzed. Fourth, it examines the doctrines’ epistemological and ontological assumptions. Finally, it argues for a metareflexive, multiparadigmatic approach to intelligence education at NORIS.

What is Doctrine?

Individuals engaged in military activities are fully accustomed to the pervasive role of doctrine. As Harald Høiback points out, “military forces need some shared ideas about how to use them. … Doctrine is the military units’ ‘software’” – an instrument representing the codification of “institutionalized beliefs about what works in war and military operations” (Høiback, 2017, p. 1). While these propositions seem fair, and perhaps even intuitive, “nothing but codified common sense” (Sjøgren, 2024, p. 478), the concept of doctrine is surprisingly contested, suggesting that its apparent clarity conceals a far more complex conceptual landscape.

Scholars disagree on what doctrine encompasses. While there is broad agreement that doctrine consists of authoritative written documents reflecting institutionalized beliefs, views diverge on which texts qualify and how doctrine should be used (Sjøgren, 2024, p. 477). Some restrict the term to constitutive documents at the top of a hierarchy while others include a wider range of manuals and procedures (Jackson, 2025; Parton, 2008). Still others argue that doctrine extends beyond texts to what is “believed, taught, and done” (Sjøgren, 2026, p. 5). Another line of disagreement concerns applicability: Should doctrine be understood as something to adhere to, or as a point of departure (Parton, 2008; Sjøgren, 2023, 2024, 2026)? This question relates to what Høiback terms the “doctrinal dilemma”: How can one balance the need for doctrines to be “prescriptive without being constrictive” (Høiback, 2017, p. 12)? Taken together, these disagreements indicate that attempts to settle the concept through definitional precision are unlikely to succeed.

This article does not attempt therefore to construct a new, “better” or “truer”, definition of doctrine. On the contrary: by applying a discourse-analytical approach, it acknowledges the futility of such an exercise. What counts as doctrine is not, and cannot be, fixed; conceptual meaning is fluid, contextual, and subject to change over time, depending on the discourses of which the concept forms a constitutive part (Neumann, 2021). I therefore view military (intelligence) doctrines as discursive artefacts within a broader military knowledge system. As discursive artefacts, doctrines simultaneously shape and are shaped by discourse (Eliassen, 2016). Doctrines are both performative and constative: “They both describe and make the world” (Ansorge, 2010, p. 362), “actively [shaping] how solutions come into being and how military practitioners understand their world” (Sjøgren, 2023, p. 14). This discursive orientation provides the basis for the working definition employed in the analysis.

In this article, I adopt a broad understanding of doctrine as written representations of institutionalized beliefs embedded in dominant military discourse. This view is inclusive and agnostic in the sense that it encompasses all types of written manuals, whether formally labelled doctrines, manuals, procedures, or handbooks, and regardless of the level of war to which they pertain. This perspective largely reflects how military intelligence doctrines are approached in the classroom during the JIPOE course at NORIS, where a useful “handbook” or a “tier-three doctrine” is not necessarily treated as subordinate to formal “tier-one doctrines” at the top of a doctrinal hierarchy. Practical usefulness thus trumps formal authority.

Theoretical Framework: A Metareflexive Approach

Military intelligence doctrine and analysis education have received limited attention within intelligence studies, and the overlap between intelligence studies and military studies remains surprisingly small (Handel, 2005; Rietjens, 2020; Rietjens & de Werd, 2023; Spoor & de Werd, 2023; Strachen-Morris, 2024; Svendsen & Mitchell, 2025). Yet recent developments in both fields offer complementary perspectives that, when combined, provide a suitable framework for critically examining military intelligence doctrine. Drawing on insights from CIS and military design, this chapter outlines what I term a “metareflexive approach”.

The article’s metareflexive approach draws extensively on the recent and still-emerging subfield of CIS (Bean, 2018; Bean et al., 2021; de Werd, 2018; Phythian, 2021). CIS seeks to challenge normative commitments, truisms and concepts commonly taken for granted within the dominant intelligence discourse. Rather than reinforcing consensus, it aims to generate dissensus by unpacking established assumptions and widening the space for alternative ways of understanding intelligence (Bean et al., 2021).

Although CIS offers a critique of mainstream intelligence discourse, the body of literature is far from consistent in its epistemological and methodological commitments (de Werd et al., 2024). Within this diverse landscape, however, a distinct strand of CIS scholarship adopts antipositivist epistemologies that challenge traditional assumptions about how knowledge is produced within intelligence organizations (Bean, 2018; Bean et al., 2021; de Werd, 2018, 2020; Petersen & Rønn, 2025; Räsänen & Nyce, 2013; Rønn, 2022). Positivism as an epistemological position, extensively developed by the French philosopher and early sociologist Auguste Comte in the early 19th century (Lenzer, 2017), is here understood broadly, encompassing both an empiricist and a realist tradition. The empiricist position assumes that knowledge can be obtained from what is directly observable through sensory or technical collection, while the realist position extends this to include non-observable causal relations that may be inferred through systematic empirical testing (Nyeng, 2017, pp. 152–154; Steinmetz, 2005, pp. 31–34). According to such a view, observations can be perceived as objective “facts”, observational or “rational” propositions can be empirically tested and either confirmed or falsified, and it is possible to distinguish between value-laden, subjective statements and “factual” statements (Jakobsen, 2021, pp. 57–62; Moses & Knutsen, 2019, pp. 7–8).

The antipositivist strand within CIS challenges positivist claims of objectivism, understanding intelligence, rather, as socially situated and (moderately) constructed knowledge shaped by the context within which it is produced (Bean et al., 2021; Rønn, 2022). Peter de Werd (2021, p. 515) conceptualizes intelligence as a “knowledge regime”, emphasizing how this specific form of knowledge is shaped by its institutional context, its intended use, and its relationship to other knowledge regimes such as social science and news media.

Unlike other strands of CIS (Jaffel et al., 2020; Jaffel & Larsson, 2022; Newbery & Kaunert, 2023), the antipositivist strand does not necessarily question the importance of studying state intelligence organizations. Rather, it challenges the positivist view of knowledge production that dominates both intelligence practice and traditional intelligence studies, arguing that such a view may ultimately limit the effectiveness of intelligence organizations themselves. A remedy, several scholars within this strand argue, is to cultivate some level of reflexivity (Bean, 2013, 2018; Bean et al., 2021; de Werd, 2021; Splidsboel Hansen, 2012).

Hamilton Bean and his colleagues (2021) and de Werd (2021) advocate a reflexive approach in which intelligence organizations critically examine the ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions underpinning their knowledge production. This includes questioning how the analyst’s own institutional beliefs and values, foundational understandings of the object of study, and the wider context shape intelligence as knowledge. According to Bean, reflexivity at this level helps “express[ing] shared knowledge in ways that do not presume access to empirical ‘truth’ in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty” (Bean, 2013, 505).

The article’s metareflexive approach also draws heavily on another pool of literature: military design (thinking). This is a small, emerging, and critical strand situated at the margins of military studies (Jackson, 2025; Paparone, 2013; Wrigley et al., 2020; Zweibelson, 2023b). While this literature primarily focuses on military planning, it shares many of the same metatheoretical foundations as CIS. However, it goes further by elevating (meta)theoretical reflexivity to another level.

Military design literature generally interrogates and critiques the institutionalized thinking prevalent in Anglo-American military organizations, much like CIS does with intelligence organizations. These military institutions are criticized for relying on a positivist, technorationalist approach to knowledge as the primary means of understanding, explaining, and managing war and conflict. Christopher Paparone (2013) and Ben Zweibelson (2025) label this the “functionalist” social paradigm,¹ drawing on the previous work of the sociologists Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan (1979). This paradigm is characterized by extensive (over-)optimism and belief in advanced technology, an ontology that presumes an ordered world, and its positivist epistemology influenced by the natural sciences. While such a functionalist paradigm rooted in the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment and the advent of modernity has certain merits, military design proponents argue that restricting ourselves to conceiving a profoundly complex world solely through this lens risks undermining our ability to grapple effectively with the destructive capacities of the state’s instruments of war (Paparone, 2013; Zweibelson, 2025). A similar concern is also echoed within CIS (Rathmell, 2002).

To engage meaningfully with complexity, military design literature proposes, like some CIS scholars, a selfreflexive approach in which practitioners critically examine their own ontological and epistemological foundations (Gracier, 2017; Jackson, 2025). Unlike CIS, however, some military design scholars advocate that practitioners cultivate inter- or multi-paradigmatic skills. Analysts are encouraged not only to critique the limitations of their own social paradigms but also to engage creatively with insights derived from competing paradigms (Paparone, 2013; Zweibelson, 2025). For most Western military practitioners, this means stepping outside their usual functionalist paradigm and engaging, for example, with interpretivist or radicalstructuralist paradigms, within which conflict and its associated “problems” are framed and explained in radically different ways (Zweibelson, 2025). As a multi-paradigmatic practitioner, its proponents suggest, one may broaden conceptual horizons and enhance agility and creativity, thereby strengthening the military’s capacity to address the multifaceted challenges posed by contemporary, complex conflict environments (Paparone, 2013; Zweibelson, 2025).

For military intelligence analysts producing knowledge in support of planning and operations, it is vital to reflect on how a dominant functionalist paradigm shapes and limits intelligence production. Furthermore, by adopting multi-paradigmatic skills, analysts may generate alternative perspectives and understandings of the operational environment, perspectives that may prove vital for operational success.

By combining CIS’s emphasis on epistemological and ontological reflexivity with military design’s multiparadigmatic orientation, this article develops a metareflexive framework for analyzing the military intelligence doctrines used in NORIS’s JIPOE course.

Methodology: A METAREFLEXIVE Approach to Doctrine Analysis

This article employs the metareflexive approach to critically examine how NORIS’ JIPOE course prepares analysts to manage the complexity. Based on the assumption² that military doctrines, permeating the syllabus, lectures, and group work throughout the course, shape and influence future analytic thinking, the article examines and exposes the (meta)theoretical concepts and assumptions underpinning the central military intelligence doctrines actively used in the course.

Several Norwegian and NATO doctrines form parts of the underlying conceptual and theoretical institutional landscape. However, the doctrines selected for this analysis are the primary documents that dominate the course’s lectures, plenary sessions, and group work. The doctrinal documents examined here establish a framework for conceptualizing, organizing, and legitimizing intelligence practices within Norwegian military institutions. They therefore constitute a particularly relevant corpus for examining how discourse shapes the meaning and operationalization of intelligence in Norway. By approaching doctrines as discursive artefacts, the analysis highlights the ways in which institutionalized language not only reflects but also prescribes understandings of intelligence, thereby potentially influencing organizational practice and operational decision-making.

The primary emphasis of this article is to critically examine the three most prominent military doctrines employed in NORIS’s military intelligence analysis course through a meta-reflexive lens: Stabshåndbok for Hæren: plan og beslutningsprosessen (The Norwegian Staff Handbook: The Plan and Decision-Making Process) (Huse, 2021); AIntP-17: Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operating Environment (JIPOE) (NATO, 2019); Joint Publication 2-01.3: Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment (U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2014). However, the analysis also draws selectively on related NATO doctrines to contextualize and clarify key concepts that are referenced but not fully defined in the primary documents.

The Norwegian Staff Handbook occupies an official position within the doctrinal hierarchy of the Norwegian Armed Forces. As a handbook it is subordinate to other official doctrines such as Forsvarets etterretningsdoktrine (The Norwegian Armed Forces Intelligence Doctrine) (Forsvarssjefen, 2021) and Forsvarets fellesoperative doktrine (The Norwegian Armed Forces Joint Doctrine) (Forsvarsstaben, 2019). Yet like the other Norwegian doctrines, the handbook applies a normative language and aims to guide the Norwegian armed forces’ execution of their responsibilities. It is written by and for the Army, guiding its tactical military planning and operations, primarily at the brigade and battalion levels, including intelligence support. It draws extensively on central NATO documents such as the Comprehensive Operations Planning Directive (COPD), NATO AJP-5 Operational-level Planning and APP-28: Tactical Planning for Land Forces, as well as on approaches adopted by key allied nations, thereby ensuring doctrinal coherence and interoperability (Huse, 2021, p. iii).

AIntP-17: Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operating Environment (JIPOE) is an official NATO document situated within NATO’s doctrinal hierarchy. Classified as a “Joint Practical Doctrine,” it represents a third-level doctrine³ subordinate to more overarching NATO frameworks, such as AJP-2.1: Intelligence Procedures (Level 2) and AJP-5: Operational-Level Planning (Level 1). The primary purpose of AIntP-17 is to provide practical guidance for NATO forces in delivering intelligence support to operational-level planning (NATO, 2019, pp. ix–xi).

Joint Publication 2-01.3: Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Operational Environment (JP 2-01.3) is an authoritative document issued by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It provides guidance for the United States Armed Forces in the conduct of intelligence support to joint military planning and operations. Comparable to AIntP-17 within the NATO doctrinal hierarchy, JP 2-01.3 constitutes a third-level, practice-oriented doctrine. It is subordinate to higher-level doctrinal publications, including Joint Publication 2.01: Joint and National Intelligence Support to Military Operations and Joint Publication 2-0: Joint Intelligence (U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2014, p. i; U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2022).

All three documents, in this article understood as doctrines in a wide sense of the concept, prescribe how intelligence personnel should support planning through the (Joint) Intelligence Preparation of the Operating Environment (IPOE). IPOE/JIPOE provides both a stepwise process and an analytic framework for assessing terrain, weather, and actors, and for integrating these assessments into the military decisionmaking process (Huse, 2021; NATO, 2019; U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2014).

Military doctrines are comprehensive texts that draw upon a substantial body of knowledge derived from previous wars and conflicts, established best practices, and academic literature. In this article, however, only a limited number of concepts will be selected for further examination. These have been identified through a critical reading and are considered illustrative to display some of the doctrines’ foundational metatheoretical assumptions.

Doctrinal Epistemology: A Positivist World of Facts

In the subsequent two chapters the article critically examines the military intelligence doctrines under scrutiny. Drawing on a metareflexive approach the analysis explores how the doctrines are shaped by underlying metatheoretical positions. This first chapter focuses on epistemology, while the next turns to ontology.

A critical reading of the military intelligence doctrines firmly positions them epistemologically within a functionalist paradigm (Zweibelson, 2025), and displays a fundamentally positivist approach to knowledge acquisition about the operating environment. For example, in the Norwegian Staff Handbook, the term “fact” (fakta), used frequently throughout the text, refers simply to “what one knows” about the operating environment (Huse, 2021, p. 15). The term “facts”, in the Staff Handbook, is explicitly contrasted with the term “assumptions” (forutsetninger), understood as what may be hypothesized but not yet confirmed through collection efforts. This dichotomy is particularly evident in both the Norwegian Staff Handbook and NATO’s AIntP-17. Both doctrines explicitly warn analysts to maintain a strict separation between facts and assumptions, cautioning against advancing planning based on unverified assumptions. Once assumptions are empirically confirmed, however, they are reclassified as facts. As AIntP-17 notes:

Implicitly, the category of “facts” is tied to what the intelligence function can collect through its own sensors or otherwise make available to JIPOE analysts (NATO, 2020a, pp. 4:3–4:4). This includes information obtained through tasking other agencies, conventional military units, or cooperating partners (U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2014, p. VII–12). Such mechanisms reinforce the empiricist assumption that valid knowledge derives from observable inputs gathered through technical or organizational collection processes. In this view, assumptions represent provisional hypotheses that must be verified through empirical collection before they can be reclassified as facts. The Staff Handbook explicitly states that “assumptions have to, as soon as possible, be confirmed as facts. Therefore, they have to be communicated to units or functions that may provide an answer” (Huse, 2021, p. 38).

A positivist epistemology is also reflected in the doctrines’ conceptualization, and lack of problematization, of “data” as the “raw material” or basic “building blocks” of knowledge production. According to NATO AJP-2, a first level doctrine, “data are the smallest components of the information hierarchy. They are commonly presented as discrete facts or simple products of observation” (NATO, 2020a, p. B-1). Consistent with Minna Räsänen and James M. Nyce’s findings (2013), “data” are here implied to be theory-independent (Moses & Knutsen, 2019, p. 8). They are factual observations corresponding with the “real world”, assumed to exist independently of the analyst and to be available “out there” for collection.

The doctrines’ commitment to objectivity and valueneutrality also underpins NATO’s general approach to knowledge production. While some degree of subjectivity is acknowledged, for example, that “the commander’s critical intelligence requirements” guide what is collected (NATO, 2020b, p. 2-1), and that data become information through contextualization (NATO, 2020a, p. B-2), there is no recognition of how theoretical perspectives and prior knowledge shape what counts as data in the first place, or how data are transformed into information (Skjelderup et al., 2025, pp. 93–94). The doctrines thus treat subjectivity as a procedural issue rather than an epistemological one, leaving unexamined the deeper assumptions that structure the production of intelligence knowledge.

NATO’s five-step processing model, outlined in NATO AIntP-18 further illustrates how data and information, i.e., “facts”, are conceptualized within the doctrinal framework. In the context of processing and generating intelligence, these “facts” move through the sequential steps of “collation, evaluation, analysis, integration, and interpretation” (NATO, 2020b, p. 1-1), Relevant pieces of data and information are grouped and categorized, evaluated according to their reliability and credibility, reviewed to identify significant facts for later interpretation, compared and fused to reveal patterns, and finally judged in relation to established knowledge (NATO, 2020b, p. 1-1). The model thus reinforces a linear and cumulative view of knowledge production, in which objective data are progressively refined into higherorder intelligence products.

NATO AJP-2 acknowledges some degree of subjectivity in the evaluation, analysis, and integration step, describing them as “almost totally based on human judgment” (NATO 2020a, p. 4–7). Any recognition of subjectivity inherent in the processing model, however, appears to vanish in the interpretation step, the final stage in which all data and information are fused to produce new knowledge. According to AJP-2, this final step “is an objective mental process of comparison and deduction based on common sense, life experience, and military knowledge, covering both opponent and friendly forces, and existing information and intelligence” (NATO 2020a, p. 4–7). In this sense, analysts are portrayed as knowledge-producing machines that collect and systematize “raw facts” about the “real world,” identify new patterns, and incorporate these into already established truths.

Epistemological Implications for Military Intelligence Analysis

The anchoring of military intelligence doctrines in positivist philosophy is, in many respects, unsurprising. As the military design literature notes (Jackson, 2025; Paparone, 2013; Zweibelson, 2023b), military doctrines in the Anglophone world have long been shaped by functionalist approaches rooted in the epistemic legacy of modern science. With the partial exception of moments of institutional crisis and selfreflection, most notably after Vietnam, and more substantially in the wake of Iraq and Afghanistan, when experiments with alternative approaches such as military design emerged in the United States, functionalism has remained the dominant paradigm. It continues to serve as the foundational logic upon which contemporary military doctrine is built.

Beyond scenarios of “man and machine versus man and machine” in stereotypical conventional battles, however, a fundamentally positivist approach to knowledge production appears ill-suited. When addressing the complexities of war and conflict, epistemic approaches that rely on neat problem framing and strictly reductionist categories may fail to capture the dynamics at play. In a simple but illustrative example, broad doctrinal categories, such as “friend,” “neutral,” and “adversary”, in which diverse “actors” in a complex operating environment are grouped according to their assessed “desired end state” (NATO, 2019, p. 3–4), tend to break down in practice (Arjona, 2017b; Barter, 2014). As Christian Tripodi (2021, p. 197) argues, war is a complex, emergent, and unpredictable phenomenon, not easily explained through linear cause-and-effect dynamics. It is a messy human endeavor unfolding within conflicting, socially constructed discourses (Zweibelson, 2023b, pp. 93–95). For military intelligence analysts to approach such complexity through a positivist and reductionist lens, as evident in NATO and Norwegian doctrines, is analytically insufficient and fails to equip them with the necessary conceptual tools to produce nuanced and plausible intelligence (Spoor & de Werd, 2023). Two epistemological concerns arise from this positivist orientation.

The first concern is the doctrines’ absence of basic insights from hermeneutic (Gadamer, 2021), or interpretivist (Paparone, 2013), epistemology. As exemplified by NATO’s five-step processing model, the doctrines do not acknowledge the inherent interpretive process through which observations become “data.” From an interpretive perspective, data are not neutral “pieces of reality” but are constituted as data through human interpretation (Nyeng, 2017; Räsänen & Nyce, 2013; Rønn, 2022). What is perceived as data depends on the theoretical lenses applied (Johannessen et al., 2022, 36–38). Knowledge is not produced by “connecting the dots” like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle but emerges from the interaction between pre-existing knowledge, experience, assumptions, and observations. Analysts can never view the world as neutral observers but only through interpretive filters (de Werd, 2018; Moses & Knutsen, 2019, pp. 188–189; Nyeng, 2017, pp. 238–239).

A simple example illustrates this point. When sensors collect data on human activity in a village, who is perceived as “adversary,” “friend,” or “neutral”? Are all villagers adversaries simply because they reside in a hostile area, or are adversaries affiliated with specific tribes or segments of the population? Ryan Evans’s (2009) experiences in the Helmand province in Afghanistan during UK International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operations illustrate the intricacy of such relationships. Most villagers, in Evans’s account, were neither pro-Taliban nor pro-ISAF but primarily concerned with local security and everyday life. Their alignment shifted based on continuous assessments by local elites and institutions, and ISAF’s actions significantly influenced villagers’ responses. In such contexts, labeling entire villages as “friends” or “adversaries” may have limited analytical value at best, and at worst, risk transforming potential allies into adversaries.

The second concern with the doctrines’ positivist epistemology is their lack of recognition of the situated and socially constructed nature of knowledge more generally. In contrast to positivism, which assumes that “truths” about the world are built upon “neutral” observations of “facts”, constructivism posits that knowledge is socially produced through our everyday language, assumptions, narratives, and practices (Berger & Luckmann, 1991; Burr, 2003; Reckwitz, 2005; Zweibelson, 2025). This does not imply that material objects in “the real world”, as maintained by realism (Buch-Hansen & Nielsen, 2020), such as fighter jets or missile systems, do not exist independently of human perception. Rather, it implies that the meaning ascribed to such objects is inseparable from human interpretation. Analysts who disregard this insight risk believing that the intelligence their unit produces represents the singular “true” way of understanding the world, rather than one of multiple plausible representations (Paparone, 2013). Within discourses, certain problems or categories may gradually become unchallenged truisms (Neumann, 2021), potentially constraining analysis and impairing commanders’ decision-making.

In a future multidomain operations environment, for example, the challenge for military intelligence analysts is not merely the complexity of the operating space, but the epistemological limitations of the positivist framework they are instructed to apply. Analysts are expected to identify “crossdomain effects,” detect “convergence,” and map adversary activity across land, air, maritime, cyber, and space domains, as well as within the broader information environment (Gilli et al., 2025; NATO, 2026) as if these were empirically observable and ontologically stable categories. Yet much of what is interpreted as adversary activity in such environments is ambiguous, indirect, or only partially observable. Events across different domains may be unrelated, accidental, or emergent rather than coordinated. Treating them as neutral “data points” risks imposing coherence where none exists and interpreting doctrinal constructs as empirical realities. In this sense, the positivist epistemology embedded in NATO and Norwegian doctrines may leave analysts illequipped to produce nuanced assessments in environments where meaning is socially constructed, categories are fluid, and adversary behavior is not directly observable.

In sum, the doctrines’ reliance on a positivist epistemology, rooted in the dominant functionalist paradigm, reflects a belief that complex operational environments can be reduced to ordered sets of facts. While such an approach may offer utility in conventional combat scenarios, it proves inadequate when confronted with the social, discursive, and emergent dimensions of contemporary conflict. The absence of interpretive insights leaves analysts ill-equipped to interrogate how observations are constituted as data, how categories are imposed, and how these are transformed into intelligence.

Doctrinal Ontology: Between Order and Complexity

As we have seen, doctrines propagate a largely positivist epistemology anchored in a functionalist paradigm; if it follows that this orientation also carries distinct ontological commitments, it is important, then, to consider their underlying ontological assumptions.

As Zweibelson (2025) notes, the functionalist paradigm presupposes an ordered, relatively stable, and enduring world governed by universal and predefined structures. Even when war and conflict appear chaotic, this paradigm assumes that underlying laws can be discovered, and that once identified, future developments become predictable. In this chapter, I first examine the doctrines’ use of the center of gravity (COG) concept to illustrate their functionalist ontological foundations. I then turn to their incorporation of systems thinking to explore how the doctrines draw on theories that potentially challenge the functionalist paradigm.

The doctrines’ emphasis on the concept of the center of gravity (COG) offers a clear illustration of their anchoring in the functionalist paradigm. Originating in the writings of Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), at a time when the natural sciences, and particularly the discoveries of Isaac Newton (1643–1727), exerted significant influence on military thought (Bousquet, 2022; Høiback, 2021), the COG concept rests on the idea that identifying and striking an adversary’s COG enables decisive defeat. Conversely, protecting one’s own COG prevents being defeated (Echevarria II, 2003).

Reintroduced with renewed emphasis in Western doctrine after the Vietnam War, the concept now plays a central role in contemporary planning and decisionmaking processes. It functions primarily as a tool for identifying critical vulnerabilities, both defensive and adversarial. Within operational and tactical contexts, the identification of COGs is presented as essential for planning and executing military operations. In theory, operations should strike the adversary at its most vulnerable points, where attacks have maximum effect, while simultaneously safeguarding one’s own vulnerabilities. As the Norwegian Staff Handbook states, “COG analysis [is conducted] to be able to plan effective use of own assets. Both own strengths and the opponent’s”. Through this analysis, one aims to “expose the opponent’s critical vulnerabilities which can be affected by maneuver and kinetic, as well as non-kinetic means. In addition, the analysis exposes own critical vulnerabilities which have to be protected” (Huse, 2021, pp. 39–40).

The three doctrines assume that a COG, defined in JP 201.3 as “the source of power that provides moral or physical strength, freedom of action, and the will to act” (U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2014, IV–10), can be identified for all participants in war. Just as Clausewitz sought to discern the COGs of actors in the Napoleonic era, contemporary analysts are expected to identify the COGs of modern adversaries during planning. Although the COG concept has long been debated within military circles, much of this debate concerns “what Clausewitz really meant” and which method most faithfully reflects his original intent (Echevarria II, 2003; Kornatz, 2016; Smith et al., 2015; Strange & Iron, 2004), rather than whether the concept itself is ontologically tenable. The debate thus implicitly treats Clausewitz as having uncovered a universal principle or law of war.

All three doctrines of this study adopt Joe Strange’s (Strange, 1996; Strange & Iron, 2005) “critical capabilities, critical requirements, critical vulnerabilities” (CC-CR-CV) construct and his indirect approach as the foundation for their understanding of center of gravity. In NATO AIntP-17, for example, the JIPOE analyst is expected to determine an actor’s COG on the basis of “the three factors: critical capabilities; critical requirements; and critical vulnerabilities” (NATO, 2019, pp. 3–16). Central to Strange’s (Strange & Iron, 2005) framework is the idea that the COG, understood as an actor’s strength, contains inherent weaknesses that may be exploited. Critical vulnerabilities (CVs), if targeted, undermine the actor’s critical requirements (CRs), the conditions, means, or resources necessary for the COG to function. This, in turn, affects the actor’s critical capabilities (CCs) – that is, its ability to perform essential actions to achieve objectives. By targeting CVs rather than attempting to strike directly at the COG, which is assumed to be heavily protected and difficult to attack, one may circumvent the problem and still weaken the adversary’s COG. In theory, this indirect approach, grounded in the ends-ways-means logic, can defeat or at least substantially reduce the opponent’s strength.

Ontologically, however, Strange’s model presupposes that actors possess stable, internally coherent structures of power that can be decomposed into discrete components (CCs, CRs, CVs), mapped objectively, and manipulated through linear causal intervention. This reflects a functionalist worldview in which complex social and political entities are treated as ordered systems with identifiable centers, predictable dependencies, and exploitable weak points. It is precisely these underlying assumptions that also illuminate why longstanding debates about “what Clausewitz really meant” miss the deeper issue identified by military design scholars.

Zweibelson (2015, p. 9) laments that U.S. military theorists and doctrine writers continue to argue over definitions and translations rather than addressing deeper institutional concerns. He warns against treating COG as a “Holy Grail” solution that, once unlocked, would supposedly generate universal answers to military problems. From this perspective, even perfect exegetical clarity about Clausewitz would not yield a universally applicable truth. As Zweibelson (2015, p. 33) argues, COG was merely a metaphor Clausewitz employed to communicate with his contemporaries, rooted in early nineteenth century symbolizations that linked natural laws in deterministic ways. In this light, Clausewitz’s metaphors were figurative and pedagogical rather than scientific, and there is no hidden “truth” about war beneath them.

The critique of COG is not only directed at the concept alone but at the broader shortcomings of contemporary Western military discourse. As Zweibelson (2015, pp. 35–36; 2023b, 76–78; 2025), argues, the problem lies in a functionalist knowledge system grounded in technical rationalism, which misapplies doctrinal and “hard-science” models to complex social environments. COG thus serves as an illustrative case of how military doctrine mimics the natural sciences without critically reflecting on the appropriateness of such ontologies for the fluid, relational, and emergent realities of war (Paparone, 2013, p. 20; Zweibelson, 2023b, p. 87).

Systems Thinking: Challenging the Functionalist Paradigm?

While the doctrines’ reliance on the COG concept reflects a functionalist ontology, the doctrines also incorporate elements of a seemingly different ontological orientation. Across all three documents, the operating environment and its actors are described as “systems” and “systems of systems”. The U.S. JP-2-01.3 proposes a “systems perspective of the OE [operational environment which] usually provides an understanding of significant relationships and interdependencies within and between interrelated PMESII⁴ and other systems relevant to a specific joint operation” (U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2014, p. I-4). At first glance, this language suggests a move toward a more relational and dynamic understanding of war.

Early forms of systems thinking, however, were themselves anchored in a functionalist paradigm. Emerging in U.S. military thought during the first decades after the Second World War, this quantitative “closed systems” approach sought to control complex environments through computing and mathematical modelling. Its limitations became evident in Vietnam, paving the way for a more holistic and non-linear systems perspective (Bousquet, 2022; Paparone, 2013). In contrast to linear causality, where a change in one variable produces a proportionate change in another, nonlinear systems exhibit disproportionate and sometimes unpredictable effects from small initial inputs, the socalled “butterfly effect” (Jackson, 2019, p. 113). Concepts such as “complex adaptive systems,” in which agents learn and adapt through interaction (Jackson, 2019, p. 113), and “emergence,” the idea that systemlevel behavior cannot be reduced to the properties of individual components (Hoverstadt, 2022, p. 13–15), further challenge the assumption that complex environments can be predicted or controlled.

While contemporary systems thinking encompasses a wide spectrum of ontological positions, developments within complexity theory, drawing on insights from both chaos theory and postfunctionalist paradigms such as constructivism, have renewed interest in systems approaches⁵ capable of grappling with the dynamic and relational character of social and political environments (Bousquet, 2022; Bousquet & Curtis, 2011; Jackson, 2019). This development raises an important question for the present analysis: when the doctrines describe the operating environment and its actors as “systems”, what kind of ontological commitments does this language imply?

I now turn to the doctrines to examine whether their systems perspective reflects a genuinely complexityinformed ontology or whether it remains framed by the functionalist assumptions identified in the previous section.

In all three doctrines, weapons are described as “systems,” the intelligence function is treated as a “system,” and the operating environment is populated by information systems and political systems. For example, in NATO AIntP-17, JIPOE analysts are required to develop “a PMESII systems analysis”, “a systems estimate of the nodes and links within defence and political leadership [systems]”, and establish an “understanding [of] human systems” (2019, p. A-1). However, the U.S. JP201.3 stands out from the Norwegian and NATO doctrines as being more profoundly shaped by systems thinking. From the outset, JP201.3 declares that it adopts “a holistic view” of the operating environment, acknowledging that it is complex and composed of actors, relationships, physical domains, and factors linked together in overlapping systems (an example is illustrated in Figure 1). Even friendly, neutral, and adversary forces are depicted as systems and subsystems within this complex whole (U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2014, pp. I-2 – I-4, III-44). The figure below portrays the U.S. military hierarchy as a large system comprising strategic, operational, and tactical subsystems, themselves embedded within broader systems in the operating environment (2014, p. III-43).

Figure 1

JP201.3 repeatedly emphasizes the need for such a “holistic view,” arguing that the operating environment “encompasses the physical areas and factors (of the air, land, maritime, and space domains) and the information environment (which includes cyberspace). Included within these are the adversary, friendly, and neutral PMESII systems, subsystems, objects, and affiliated attributes, and their relationships and interdependencies that are relevant to a specific joint operation” (U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2014, p. I-2). This perspective aligns with the concept of emergence, a central tenet of complexity theory. The operational environment cannot be understood solely by examining each component in isolation: systems possess emergent properties identifiable only at higher levels of analysis. Such properties may include a system’s “purpose,” the effects it produces on other systems, or the ways in which systemlevel dynamics reshape the behavior of subordinate subsystems (Hoverstadt, 2022, pp. 13–21). For example, increased conflict at the state level may alter local dynamics, just as local developments may cascade upward to influence broader systemic behavior.

While JP 201.3 is most influenced by systems thinking, the Staff Handbook is the least, with AIntP17 positioned somewhere in between. Although the handbook recognizes complexity, it nevertheless upholds a functionalist ontology that seeks to “isolate empirical variables and reduce them to the point where we can label them, manipulate them, and measure the causeandeffect relationships between them” (Hoverstadt, 2022, p. 35). JP201.3, by contrast, partly acknowledges emergence, non-linearity and the presence of complex adaptive systems, and concedes that the numerous variables and causal interrelations of complex systems exceed full comprehension (Hoverstadt, 2022, pp. 38–41).

However, even JP201.3 does not fully embrace the ontological implications of post-functionalist systems approaches. For example, although complexity theory emphasizes that small changes in initial conditions may produce disproportionate and unpredictable effects elsewhere (the “butterfly effect”), JP 201.3 maintains confidence that the complexities of the operational environment can be understood and managed:

The doctrines’ engagement with systems thinking reflects an effort to grapple with the acknowledged complexity of modern operational environments. Yet while JP201.3 embraces a systems-inspired vocabulary, it ultimately retains a functionalist belief that complexity can be understood, managed, and directed toward desired outcomes. The functionalist paradigm obscures, or seeks to eliminate, the paradoxes of meaning inherent in complex social systems, particularly at lower system levels, by reducing the actions of subordinate systems to their purest form of behavioral control and compliance. This tension, between recognition of complexity and adherence to a highly functionalist approach, illustrates the limits of doctrinal systems thinking. As with the concept of center of gravity, reliance on functionalist assumptions risks oversimplifying the unpredictable and emergent dynamics of war.

The Promise of a MetaReflexive Approach for Military Intelligence Education

The preceding sections have shown that contemporary military intelligence doctrines rest on a set of metatheoretical commitments that shape how analysts are expected to understand and act upon the operational environment. Across Norwegian, NATO, and U.S. military intelligence doctrine, these commitments reflect a functionalist conception of reality and knowledge: an assumption that the world is ordered, observable, and predictable through systematic analysis. Although the doctrines acknowledge the complexity and unpredictability of modern conflict, they respond with technorationalist frameworks that manage uncertainty by reducing it to stable categories.

The implications of this doctrinal orientation are twofold. First, it shapes the analytic process by privileging certain methods and concepts, such as COG and systems analysis, while marginalizing alternative approaches that emphasize interpretation, reflexivity, and critical engagement. Analysts are trained to apply structured methodologies that promise objectivity and predictability, but which often fail to capture the social, discursive, and emergent dimensions of conflict. Second, it potentially influences the broader discourse of military intelligence analysis by institutionalizing a particular epistemological stance. By codifying positivist and functionalist assumptions into doctrine, military intelligence education institutions risk reproducing a discourse in which analytic virtues such as creativity, reflexivity, and pluralism are subordinated to imagined order and predictability. Potentially obscuring controversy, paradox, and ambiguity. This narrowing is particularly problematic in contexts of multi-domain operations and irregular warfare, or other complex conflict contexts, where linear causal models often fail to capture the dynamics at play. By privileging functionalist assumptions, doctrines risk producing knowledge that is operationally convenient but epistemologically fragile.

Within NORIS’ JIPOE course, students are expected to master doctrinal procedures and concepts and to apply them within the dominant functionalist paradigm. At the same time, NORIS emphasizes the importance of critical thinking, reflexivity, and creativity, underscoring that students should not only be able to employ doctrinal concepts, but also understand their advantages and limitations (Skjelderup et al., 2025). When the former consistently outweighs the latter, however, the effect is a narrowing of analytic imagination: students learn to operate within established doctrinal categories rather than to question, reinterpret, or reframe them.

The theoretical foundation of this study suggests that a meta-reflexive approach is needed to address the limitations of doctrinal ontology and epistemology. Especially Paparone (2013) and Zweibelson (2023b, 2025) have argued for an approach that fosters reflexivity and recognizes coexistence of multiple ontological and epistemological perspectives. Such an approach does not reject positivist or functionalist methods, but situates them within a broader analytic repertoire that also includes interpretive, constructivist, and critical perspectives.

A meta-reflexive approach acknowledges that no single social paradigm can fully capture the complexity of war and conflict. Functionalist methods may be useful for certain tasks, such as quantifying terrain or modeling logistics, but they are insufficient for understanding the social, discursive, and emergent dynamics of conflict environments. Interpretive approaches, by contrast, emphasize meaning, context, discourse (Zweibelson, 2025), and acknowledge that the social world is socially produced and contested (Berger & Luckmann, 1991), while critical approaches interrogate the power relations and institutional assumptions that shape analytic practice (Bean et al., 2021; Skrede, 2020). By being trained to approach several meta-perspectives, the analysis students may expand their epistemological and ontological understanding and foster a more reflexive and pluralist discourse.

According to Paparone (2013, pp. 161–163), a military analyst should become a multiframe applicant, a bricoleur, moving between paradigms to “see” the operational environment in different ways. This metaphor of the bricoleur captures the adaptive and creative qualities required of analysts, he proposes, in complex environments. Rather than adhering to a single paradigm, the bricoleur assembles insights from multiple paradigms, constructing analytic narratives that remain sensitive to ambiguity, paradox, and emergence.

The transition from doctrinal functionalism to multi-paradigmatic thinking is not merely a theoretical exercise: it may have practical implications for the training and practice of military intelligence analysis (Reckwitz, 2005; Zweibelson, 2025). By exposing students to multiple paradigms and encouraging them to critically reflect on the assumptions embedded in doctrine and institutionalized knowledge, education institutions such as NORIS can foster analytic virtues that go beyond methodological competence.

Such training could cultivate analysts who are epistemologically agile, capable of shifting between social paradigms depending on the demands of the problem at hand. In contexts where functionalist methods are appropriate, analysts could apply them with precision, while in contexts where interpretive or critical approaches are more suitable, they could adapt accordingly. Such epistemological agility would strengthen the resilience of military intelligence analysis, enabling it to respond more effectively to the unpredictable realities of contemporary conflict.

Conclusion

This article has examined how military intelligence doctrine shapes analytic training in Norway and shown that Norwegian, NATO, and U.S. doctrines rest on positivist and functionalist assumptions. While concepts such as center of gravity and systems thinking operate as structuring devices, they ultimately reduce complexity to mechanistic categories. Although the doctrines acknowledge that operational environments are dynamic and unpredictable, they respond with frameworks oriented toward control and prediction, narrowing the epistemological space available to analysts and risking the marginalization of reflection, creativity, and pluralism.

The article argues for a meta-reflexive and multi-paradigmatic approach in which analysts move across different epistemological and ontological perspectives. Such an approach does not replace doctrinal tools; it situates them within a broader repertoire that recognizes ambiguity, paradox, and emergence as inherent features of military practice. For NORIS, this implies cultivating ontological and epistemological awareness alongside analytic agility, enabling practitioners to interrogate doctrinal assumptions, adapt to diverse contexts, and produce knowledge that is both operationally relevant and theoretically robust.