AN ARCHITECTURE OF A POST-CLASSICAL THEORY OF WAR: THE THEORY OF DYNAMIC ADAPTIVE WARFARE War Theory, Game Theory and Law

The Theory of Dynamic Adaptive Warfare (TDAW), originally formulated in Portuguese as the Teoria da Guerra Dinâmica Adaptativa (TGDA), is presented as a Brazilian post-classical theory of war whose documented research trajectory begins with a strategic and legal problem encountered in 2022, develops through a broader engagement with War Theory and Game Theory in 2024, expands across materially different forms of coercion and conflict in 2025 and reaches systematic general formulation in 2026. The theory responds to explanatory fragmentation rather than to the absence of prior strategic thought. Classical and modern theories remain indispensable, yet contemporary conflict increasingly requires force, strategic interdependence, legal constraint, economic coercion, technology, information, legitimacy, third-party support and adaptation to be examined within the same changing system. TDAW therefore integrates three intellectual foundations: War Theory, which explains organized coercion, political purpose, friction, geography and the interaction of wills; Game Theory, which explains decision under strategic interdependence, incomplete information, signaling, bargaining, deterrence, repetition and adaptation; and International Law, which is treated not merely as an external standard of judgment but as part of the strategic environment because legal status, sanctions, alliance arrangements, responsibility, legitimacy and institutional reactions can alter costs and available courses of action. These foundations later converge analytically in the force-decision-norm triad, which is an architectural synthesis rather than the historical genealogy of the theory. It conceptualizes war as a dynamic, adaptive, multidomain and legally conditioned system in which action generates response, feedback modifies subsequent choices, actors learn with unequal effectiveness and strategic pressure may be reinforced, substituted, or migrated across domains when resistance, cost, opportunity, or risk changes. Conditional predictability is developed as a method of disciplined prospective reasoning rather than deterministic forecasting. The present article deliberately explains the theoretical architecture without reproducing the complete equations, numerical metrics, scoring procedures, or operational calibration system, which are developed separately in a forthcoming and currently unpublished Volume II.