It avoids the Alice In Wonderland situation. If you don't know where you are going anyroad will take you there.
The most recent movie version being an excellent counter-example. The desired end-state may not be about "being anywhere", but what you believe your capability to act is when you decide to accept the role of protangonist in a confrontation. You may not have a clear understanding of what the outcome of the confrontation may be, just a moral understanding that if you do not decide to act, bad things will happen.

Warden appears to be saying that taking no action in such circumstatnces is preferrable to taking action that is not directly linked to achieving a desired end-state. In a moral vacuum this may be the most efficient, but the world does not exist in a moral vacuum.

In other words, building on your analogy (always dangerous ) the Warden theory presupposes a known destination, a map, and the existance of roads that take you from where you are to where you want to be. That is indeed one subset of military problem. But it is not the totality of military (or policy) problems in general. The paper on "mudlding through" (above) explains this quite well. Sometimes there is only a vast desert and the knowledge that if you stay where you are, you will likely die. Going ANYWHERE is preferable to going nowhere.

(with an interesting anecdote in tax policy in the case of Reagan lowering taxes and getting a beneficial economic result and Clinton raising taxes and getting a benficial economic result. One view is that the act of making a decision in each case bouyed public confidence well above what the economic mechanics of the specifc decision would indicate.)

Not sure I understand the question but it is a single process that will produce multiple Strategic options, a very good thing IMO when you are dealing with those pesky Complex systems you talk about.
The question is: "given that the 'ends drives the means' is only one of many strategic methods, why should all others be ignored?"

Other methods provide multiple options as well, arguably superior ones when the "end" or the "problem" is not clearly defined (the pesky complex or 'wicked' problems).

What evidence is there for ruling the others out?

I have been following the Design debate on the Blog. IMO they are going down the road of EBO. They will end up with something so complicated that it will end up being useless.
EBO is a direct application of Wardens methodology, though with some pathologies introduced that are not attributable to his theory.

Design theories actually leave open the possibility of applying a Warden-like methodology, if it is appropriate. The key aspect design methods add (that some argue convincingly are already a part of 'regular' mission analysis and assessment) is a thorough examination of the problem and what sort of problem-solving strategies are amenable to it. It also has a direct impact on battle rhythm that is not sufficiently articulated, and potential the "difference-maker" in its application.

Key areas where it conflicts with Warden's theory are:

Questioning the validity of assumptions and implict knowledge.

Design methods treat assumptions and implicit knowledge as variables, not constants. Warden's theory has implict roots in bayesian inference - that you can "fill in" for missing information by making assumptions and applying a beleif metric to them. If you don't know something for sure, but belive something is true, you assign a confidence level to how strongly you believe it and that you now have a substitute for actual information.

This is a planning pathology arising from the common practice of "assuming your superiors assumptions are facts" for the purpose of lower level planning. This is the number 1 problem with EVERY actual instance of EBO I've seen utilized and is "hard-coded" into most of the EBO and EBO-based assessment tools I've evaluated. A good friend of mine from the Naval War College has made great strides, particularly withthe USMC, in fixing this, but with the unfortunate result of convincing senior officers that there are times they must say "we don't know" rather than "turning the Bayesian inference crank" on numbers with meaningless confidence and presenting them as "best approximation to truth" (but essentially known to be incorrect).

The key is to accept that you don't know what you don't know, and that much of what you think you know is actually wrong. Warden's theory leads one to use what they have and act on the assumption it is true and develop a single "transfer function" from current state to a single desired end-state.


Using multiple hypotheses for how a system can change (resulting in multiple potneital endstates) rather than a single one derived from "working backwards" from a single desired endstate.

Design admits that multiple perceptions of reality exist and that multiple hypotheses (transfer functions) may act on the current state to create a multitude of possible endstates and that artificially reducing that to a single case exposes you to serious cases of unintended consequences.

This requires the identification of desirable and undesirable characteristics of possible end-states, but accepts the reality that in many cases, you do not have sufficent control over all the variables in play to drive the system to a single desired end-state. You instead evaluate a number of characterisitcs, and try t increase the desirable ones nad decrease the undesirable ones, but in most systems any action will have a mixed effect that is dynamic over time. While not random "trial and error", it similarly can't simply "dial the good up and the bad down".


The construction of a "theory of action" for how those hypotheses can be evaluated over time, potentially reducing the number of potential endstates "in play" and increasing the proability of locking out undesirable ones and locking in desirable ones.

Wardens Rings are categories of things and while it is easy to place targets into the rings categorically, it is extremely difficult to establish the realitionships between the things within a ring, and even more difficult to establlish the realtionships between rings. The construction of a "theory of action" involves looking at flows among entities - information, materiel, personnel etc. to ascertain centers of gravity not based on what ring they occupy, but what the broader realtionship within the system is. THis is indeed a more complicated thing to accomplish than simply placiing tagets in categories and looking for "weak sisters" - but it is the level of detail needed to make systems theory "actionable" in more than a broad brush way. This level of detail is what gets you from Col Warden's statement that the only way to stop Iran's nuclear program was to "shut down their electrical grid" to the Stuxtnet viirus - an extremely precisly targeted attack on a very specific "flaw in the deathstar" that somebody likely spent years developing the required information to achive.


One is constantly reavaluating the problem framework and solution space to assess whether the planning process has been "overtaken by events" and a fresh look at the situation needs to be initiated.

Rather than artificially constrain yourself to short timelines becasue "its cheaper" design approches engage a problem over time to see if the an initial desirable outcome "has legs". It helps avoid a "mission accomplished moment" that the Warden methodology of going for quick success and declaring victory leaves one open to.

That is not a desription of a wicked problem, it is a description of a mistake IMO.
It was not meant as an example of a "wicked problem" but an example of a "common problem". (in fact a realtively "simple" one - but which is still highly politically problemmatic.

No he should have said in his professional military opinion that a No Fly zone will not accomplish the mission. But if the political objective is to protect the population he would do his sworn duty and create a Strategy to accomplish that mission and present it before him when completed.
What mission? In this case establishing the no-fly zone WAS 'the mission'. That the politicians have not yet reached concensus on the 'desired endstate' is immaterial to the military which is supposed to give a "jolly aye-aye and how high" when politicians give them a job to do.

You are basically saying that the military should tell their civilian bosses to go stick it when the task they are given does not meet a very narrow set of criteria. That violates our cherished tradtion of civilian control of the military.

The response should have been "Tell It To The Marines"

Really? REALLY?!?!?