The Return of the Cutting-Off Way

Donald Trump's administration is increasingly defined by its foreign policy adventures. To his critics these are the deadly flailings of a mad king; to his supporters these are strategic masterstrokes reshaping the globe to America's advantage. What has been missed in the partisan hullabaloo is how Trump's foreign policy actions are not in fact a result of his unique personality. They are a result of structural forces which can be observed the world over: the return of the cutting-off way.

This conceptual framework clarifies many delusions currently circulating. We are told that the rise of "drone" technology will reduce casualties in war; meanwhile, drones are used to hunt civilians from Kherson to Khartoum. We are told a great deal about how "drones" are reshaping the battlefield. Yet far less attention has been paid to how the rise of the cheap precision strike is reshaping the fundamental strategic concepts we have inherited from the past two centuries.

In a sometimes-prescient, sometimes-incredibly-wrong 2018 essay, "Raiding and International Brigandry," Michael Kofman argued that raiding strategies are adopted by weaker powers, and were made possible by the increasing interconnectedness of the modern world. "Do states truly have economic, information, or cyber borders?" he asked. 

But the rise of raiding is not driven by state weakness. Everyone loves a narrative of contemporary decadence, but that has more to do with their emotional comfort than their factual accuracy. Rather, the return of the cutting-off way is driven by three structural changes in the international situation.

The future of warfare will be defined not by war but by "neither peace nor war:" states of conflict characterized by endemic raiding, diplomatic posturing without resolution, and an increased unwillingness to distinguish between military and civilian targets.

The cutting-off way

"The cutting-off way" was the name given by English colonists to the way of warfare of various nations of the New World, which they practiced against each other and, after the arrival of those European colonists, against the newcomers. The cutting-off way of warfare was markedly different to what the colonists were familiar with from European conflicts, and they attributed these differences to differences in moral character (with theirs, of course, being superior). But as Wayne Lee demonstrates in his The Cutting-Off Way, the cutting-off way was in fact a response to fundamental logistical, demographic, and economic forces.

The long and the short of it is that these societies could only sustain military mobilization for short periods (Lee, p. 70ff.). Military manpower was a precious resource: those men were needed back home, working, and their loss—or even sustained absence—could push a society perilously close to or below the level of subsistence. Worse, given the real demographic pressures these societies were under, the large losses of manpower inevitable in sustained warfare could not easily be replaced. However, their armed forces had a great strength: they could rapidly travel long distances overland, with minimal logistical trail and very low "signature," to use modern parlance (p. 36).

The ideal form of warfare was therefore the raid, in which a force could "cut off" a fraction of the enemy's society. This primarily entailed killing or capturing individuals. The goal was to avoid pitched battle, and instead confront a portion of the enemy's strength with overwhelming local superiority. Surprise them, ambush them, arrive with a local 3:1 advantage in numbers, kill or capture them, and then depart before a response could be mobilized. 

Raiding was not defined by the size of the forces (p. 23). The cutting-off way could scale readily: four men might cut off one, or ten men three, or a thousand four hundred. These raiding forces would assemble, launch their raid, ideally achieve an objective, and then return to regular life. Sustained mobilization was not part of the deal.

From a modern perspective this all sounds like small potatoes: a few casualties inflicted here and there. But practiced as a sustained war against another society facing a similar demographic predicament, the cutting-off way could inflict unsustainable attrition on its target (p. 17). The result could be to drive the enemy society off a desired territory and thereby make it one's own, as was done to the Wendat by the Haudenosaunee in 1648–49, or in extremis, social collapse (p. 30ff.).

The targets of the cutting-off way were not "military" targets in the modern sense, not men at war in uniform. The object of war was the enemy society as a whole. Cutting off a piece was a tactic, and the strategic goal was to diminish enemy capacity to make war or even sustain themselves. In modern parlance, then, the cutting-off way was a form of total war.

It is critical to note, however, that things didn't always go as planned. What I have described is the ideal form of warfare—what they were going for. But in practice a raiding party might itself get caught out and cut off, or while they were away, cutting-off raids by the enemy might be happening in its home areas, etc. etc. A successful raid was the goal, but this does not entail that all warfare consisted of successful raids.

The recession of mass mobilization

At one time it was thought that this was all merely historical, or more pejoratively "premodern" and "uncivilized" as a form of warfare. What we should recognize is that our conceptual framework of "modern" warfare is unusual. It was built in an era of unusual war conditions—conditions which may be coming to an end.

The age of warfare from Napoleon to WWII was defined by mass mobilization. If you wanted to survive the attentions of France, you needed to become a nation capable of mass mobilization. Just ask Clausewitz.

The form of warfare itself imposed a binary on states. You were either drafting millions of young men and marching them towards the frontlines, or you weren't. Half measures wouldn't cut it. This underlying operational structure imposed a structure on the diplomatic and foreign policy terrain: declarations of war, treaties of peace, conferences and concerts that might "settle things," at least for a while.

It is those forms of thought that continue to structure our thinking in international affairs.

Yet those forms of thought are increasingly inapt for the modern world. Total war between nuclear powers is suicidal for obvious reasons. During the Cold War, the structure of the alliance systems meant that war of any kind between most major powers was equally suicidal. These alliance systems have either collapsed or come under intense strain since 1989 (a topic to which I will return).

What became obvious during WWI, which lesson was reinforced again in WWII, is that mass mobilization is also a form of national suicide, even absent nuclear weapons. Even for the victors, the resulting casualties have traditionally been catastrophic (the signal exception perhaps being the United States in WWII). The other major belligerents of the world wars lost substantial fractions of their populations. The mark of Soviet losses in WWII is still visible in Russia's population pyramid today.

These casualties have never been easily replaceable. This has become increasingly true in an era of below-replacement fertility, which currently obtains in many countries around the world, including all developed ones.

In addition to the human cost, the cost in lost economic growth is substantial. In our age, long-run national competition is defined by the ability of nations to constantly push out the general frontier of technological progress—with benefits measured in an ever-increasing standard of living for their population, economic dominance, and military power. The dislocations of a totally mobilized war economy have, historically, not been great for any of that. Time is lost pushing out the general technological frontier as resources are poured into the assembly lines of war.

It is sometimes alleged that modern states have lost the capacity for mass mobilization. That they are soft, weak, lack the will to fight, etc., etc. Of course analysts have been saying this about liberal democracies since liberal democracy was invented; it continues to be insipid. Despite it being something of a shibboleth among Western analysts that Ukraine "has had trouble mobilizing," the opposite is true: Ukraine has successfully transitioned its country to a total war economy. But shoveling more warm bodies into the trenches is stupid when you could keep those warm bodies back safe in factories cranking out materiel.

Mass mobilization, even when effective, is suicidal. The worst part about it is that your enemy will mass mobilize right back at you. The Iran-Iraq war illustrates this principle—as does, increasingly, the Russia-Ukraine war. Even victories thus become geopolitical murder-suicides. This is the fundamental reason why nations are increasingly desperate to avoid mass mobilization—not that they lack the capacity full stop, but that it is a bad strategic option, one to be embraced only when the alternative is to perish by the sword, as it is for Ukraine.

For many years, this recession in mass mobilization was a fundamental strategic pressure driving nations to avoid wars with their peers. A second and far more recent change was necessary to open up new forms of warfare and enable the return of the cutting-off way: the democratization of air power.

The Democratization of Air Power

Once, if you wanted to "raid" an enemy nation, you actually needed to send some dudes over the border. This both exposed your own raid force to getting crushed, and also promised approximately zero return, since there was likely nothing near the border worth having.

Now, however, Ukraine has demonstrated that mid-range drones, cruise missiles, and even ballistic missiles can be produced in large numbers by mid-sized countries; one should of course also put Iran in the same category. That fundamental economic-technological change will be far more consequential than the rise of first-person-view (FPV) drones.

For most of the 20th century, if you wanted to conduct a long or even medium range strike campaign against the enemy with any real degree of effect on target, you needed an air force. And as the old saying goes, "the only thing more expensive than the world's best air force is the world's second-best air force."

As the United States—and Israel—repeatedly demonstrated, first-rate air forces had a nasty habit of annihilating second-rate air forces, with the latter thus delivering little in the way of military payoff. Traditional air forces had an extremely non-linear return to quality, which made even having a basic air force something of a cost-prohibitive luxury for many nations.

Today, the democratization of air power—by which I mean, medium- to long-range precision strike—has re-introduced the possibility of raids. A motley collection of drones, cruise missiles, and the occasional ballistic missile might not look like a traditional air force, but it can get some of the same jobs done. The third-best air force, in other words, has dramatically improved on the value-for-money scale.

So what is a contemporary raid? Not three guys stalking through the woodlands with muskets. An air assault by a collection of precision strike systems, assembled in sufficient force to generate a local force superiority, which cuts off and destroys some part of the enemy nation's strength. These raids can be launched into the enemy's strategic depth, without inherently exposing your own forces to large losses. And just about any moderately developed country can build the capacity to launch such raids.

Contemporary raiding

The contemporary raid is, like its premodern predecessor, neither a tactic nor a strategy. It is an operation; it can be carried out via a variety of means, and in service of a variety of ends. Like its premodern predecessor, the contemporary raid does not aim to take and hold territory. Though the choice of targets may vary, it is never directed first and foremost at "armed forces in the field." It uses the flexibility afforded by modern air power to amass a local superiority of forces for a brief period, strikes at the bases of the opponent's social system, but avoids leaving those forces at risk via sustained presence.

The raid is not "grey zone warfare" or "hybrid warfare." (Assuming these are coherent concepts at all: as Kiran Pfitzner rightly points out, these are just operatorbrained words for statecraft.) The raid is not defined by its deniability; indeed, raids are often highly attributable. They do not sit in some dubious grey zone between mere statecraft and open conflict: they attack and destroy a piece of the enemy (or, in some cases, carry the piece off). Raiding may begin prior to full-scale war and persist during one.

The three major operations that have defined Trump's foreign policy—Operation Midnight Hammer, Operation Absolute Resolve, and Operation Epic Fury (seriously, what is up with these teenage-boy-ass codenames)—were all spectacular forms of the raid, involving unusual or exquisite capabilities possessed by few other nations. Midnight Hammer demonstrated unusually dedicated intelligence analysis, specially-designed weapons, and the extreme stealth of the B-2 bomber. The capture of Maduro demonstrated similar levels of intelligence work, professional special forces, and, if Trump is to be believed, "the discombobulator."

But the strategic logic is identical to that of those three men stalking through the woodlands four centuries ago. Acquire an overwhelming local force advantage, use violence to effect some political goal, and then go home and declare victory. There is no attempt to defeat the armed forces, occupy territory, or compel a prostrate population to do our will. These aren't "wars." Maduro's capture was—and this is still kind of laughable—billed as the enforcement of a federal warrant, of all things, hence the FBI agents along for the ride.

And, as it was for those three guys, "sometimes these things just go wrong." Sometimes your raid doesn't work. Sometimes you get stuck. Sometimes the enemy starts raiding you back. Hence the current state of the Iran war, with the United States transparently unwilling to engage in any form of mass mobilization, Iran with no reason of its own to do so, and both sides therefore content to occasionally lob some long-range strikes at each other, each trying to use raids to exert some form of coercion against ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

Sometimes, the aim of raiding is overtly political; it is meant as a kind of spectacle that coerces a political outcome. Midnight Hammer can be read in this light: it was an attempt to dissuade Iranian leadership from continuing their nuclear program, by demonstrating that that program could be attacked even in its most secure fortifications. 

Kofman is wrong, however, to conclude that this is all raiding can be. This confuses tactics for strategy. As discussed above, the cutting-off way, practiced as a sustained form of warfare, was not merely meant to coerce, but to destroy. Each individual raid may appear "small" by the standards of full-scale war, but can over time cut away at the enemy's capacity to wage war. (Somewhat amusingly, Lee (p. 17) notes that the same analytic mistake was present in previous European attempts to conceptualize Native warfare as the "skulking" way of war.)

The Ukrainian strike campaign against Russia illustrates this logic. The goal of this campaign is not to coerce, but to destroy the financial and material basis of Russia's ability to wage war. That cannot be achieved all in one go; it cannot be achieved by invading and occupying Russian territory. But Ukraine is working towards it via a sustained practice of the cutting-off way, using the inherent flexibility of air power to shift targets and exploit local weaknesses. The goal is not just to fight Russia's forces in the field, but to assemble a local superiority in power and cut off a part of what enables Russia to generate force and wage war.

One can see, unfortunately, the same logic at play in the drone terror campaigns currently being waged in Sudan, as FPV drones are used to hunt civilians in marketplaces. The cutting-off way is an operation. In the Eastern Woodlands, the strategic goals were often some combination of the killing of the enemy, territorial gain, acquisition of captives, and revenge and retaliation. In the modern age, strategic goals have shifted somewhat…but not always as much as one might think.

American abdication

Ah yes, and of course, the last factor: the United States, the leader of the free world, the global hegemon, stopped giving a shit about enforcing international law. Thanks, George W. Bush. You were given a Ferrari and you treated it like a lawnmower. 

Tempting as it is to attribute this to personal quirks of certain American presidents, at this point the acid has been at action for more than two decades. The norms and institutions that undergirded a "rules-based order" are dying. And indeed, as long as the American president's foreign policy is unconstrained by law or Congress, that trend will continue.

But that is another essay.

Neither peace nor war

I argued above that our conceptual structure for thinking foreign relations was itself built on the era of mass mobilization. The return of the cutting-off way has therefore resulted in much analytical confusion. Just as these structural forces are altering the physical terrain of warfare, they are consequently altering the analytic categories needed to understand the modern world.

First point: we should expect conflicts between nations to increasingly consist of "neither peace nor war," with wars neither declared via little-t telegram nor concluded via treaties. Instead, conflicts will consist of endemic raiding that rises and falls in intensity, generating not treaties but ever-shifting "facts on the ground" and dueling waves of poasts. This is a foreign policy world that must be "felt through the fingertips," rather than interpreted through the dry text of signed agreements.

This is why the Iran war will not end. Trump will sign no agreement; neither will his successor. There will be a status quo on the ground—some combination of bribes paid and platitudes mouthed to allow the Gulf's oh-so-valuable produce to flow through that pinched strait—interrupted by periodic raids, from one side or the other, attempting to nudge that status quo further in their direction.

Second point: with this blurring of boundaries between the state of peace and the state of war, we should also expect to see the blurring of boundaries between military and civilian targets. The era of mass mobilization aimed to directly destroy the enemy's armed forces in the field—to take the tools of violence out of their hands—occupy their territory, and impose the victor's will by force. The cutting-off way takes as its proximate target the enemy's ability to make war—largely made up of what in modern times have been labeled "soft targets." Factories. Infrastructure. "Morale." Individual human lives. 

Regardless of attempts to alter the situation via international law, we should expect this method of warfare to rise in the coming decade.

Third point: as it always has, raiding may occasionally erupt into large-scale conflict. This will not be the intended outcome of whoever launched the raid. That said, we should expect the basic logic of raiding to persist even after the conflict begins, with strike campaigns conducted not against military targets, but against whatever is considered to be the enemy society's material basis of existence—whether that is oil infrastructure or individual human lives. Every once in a while, undoubtedly, we'll return to the highway form of war, and "just drive straight you idiots" will become relevant. But we should expect this to be the exception, not the rule.

The rise of the new way of raiding entails that American war planners should begin thinking about the strategic landscape radically differently. When Western analysts game out Taiwan contingencies, they come to the following conclusion: a mass initial missile salvo, horrific losses on both sides, and an ultimate American victory over Chinese invasion forces. They then pencil in "???" at the two-month mark, because no one wants to contemplate the reality of a full-scale mass-mobilization war between the United States and China. Even without nuclear weapons, the results would be apocalyptic. 

Of course, Chinese war planners can read the white papers just as well as I can. 

We rather should expect any Taiwan contingency, for instance, to begin not with all-out war, but with attempts to "cut off" Taiwan's base of survival. This may involve a political spectacle such as the seizure of Kinmen, coercive attacks on underseas cables, or sustained yet unpredictable "inspections" of Taiwan-bound shipping, intended to squeeze the Taiwanese economy.

This, then, is our future: a world with less peace, less war, and more conflict.

In a phrase: this sucks man.

Featured image is "Geran 4," CC0 1.0 unknown author 2026.