At the most senior levels of military operations, commanders DO influence their political leadership. Every single day. The most effective plan for how they’re going to do it. They provide military impact assessments when political leaders decide to undertake a particular diplomatic course of action. They argue for resources. They propose Concepts of Operation for how to execute an op, and submit that COA to leaders along with a briefing that is designed to sway the approval authority’s opinion. The Commander who doesn’t influence his political leadership is negligent because one of his principle jobs is to utilize his many years of training and experience to ensure that the actions the military is asked to execute are feasible and nested with national security objectives. But … influencing your own political leadership (or that of allied nations) is not what IO (the military operation) is about, and that’s why this conversation keeps bouncing around so much.

IO has a pretty simple definition and is a pretty simple concept, but I guess certain concepts are more difficult for some people to grasp than they are for others. I have a hard time with non-Euclidian geometry. It’s very difficult to talk about IO intelligently when those discussing it refuse to adhere to a common lexicon. If, for example we set out to discuss "football coaches," it will prove challenging to hold an intelligent conversation if you are referring to large vehicles that carry soccer fans while I am referring to the men who are in charge of teams like the Dallas Cowboys and New England Patriots. We may be using the same phrase, but we're sure not talking about the same thing.

If the purpose of the discussion is to develop a definition for IO (as opposed to discussing an operational concept with an agreed upon definition), then the context of the discussion needs to be clarified.

IO is very difficult to execute because there are more variables in the information environment that there are on the battlefield and because there are so many amateurs employed as IO planners. Adversary, neutral, and friendly parties from around the globe have direct impact in the information environment, almost exclusive of geography; timing is critical; and the best-laid IO plans can be completely turned upside down by seemingly innocuous actions taken by people who don't intend to spoil the plan.