National objective isn't vague at all. A national objective is an actual mandate by the president to the Sec. of Defense for some operation to occur. For exampl

National objective isn't vague at all. A national objective is an actual mandate by the president to the Sec. of Defense for some operation to occur. For example, a national objective would be "Degrade ISIS operations in Iraq." The Sec. would take this down the chain of the DoD through all the planning (which typically involves intelligence at this point) until finally seeing bombs dropping on ISIS in Iraq. Notice your quote says "many other national objectives". Everything listed prior are national objectives set by the president.