Dr. Richards is laying out the cornerstone for a grand synthesis of strategic thinking that really needs to be considered more deeply. PNM, Boyd’s Patterns of Conflict, 4GW, NCW, Global Guerillaism all contain at least some principles that can be extrapolated to every level of the Boydian Taxonomy. Some of these theories are more versatile in this regard than others -i.e. they are more fully developed comprehensive paradigms – and most excel or exhibit greater detail at a particular level.

PNM ‘s locus is at the level of Vision and Grand strategy and grows sketchier as you move downward toward the practical, concrete, operational application in limited scenarios. Barnett is leaving an ” open system” for practitioners of warfare to fill in details by trial and error. The other theories seldom reach the Grand Strategy level, much less articulate a coherently persuasive Vision that becomes the basis of a new moral authority the way PNM/BFA does. That in essence is the ” secret” of the power behind the appeal of PNM theory; Dr. Barnett’s vision is not a recipe for blowing things up with greater efficiency than the other guy -it is a moral argument for why we should act.

The potential for finding complementary interactions here is large. And discovering the underlying dynamics that give all these theories their varying degrees of validity – which I expect we will find through a better understanding of the behavior of complex networks and in applying such principles as resilience, emergence and phase transitions to analyzing strategy.

“Iraq and the non-case for Sys Admin

Now let’s turn to the one acknowledged failure – Iraq. For Iraq not to blow his case out of the water, Barnett has to declare it a “no-test,” the term used in programs like missile defense when you don’t want an obvious disaster to end support for the project. Barnett’s explanation for Iraq is that we didn’t follow his six-step formula, so it doesn’t represent a failure of it. He is obviously correct that there was no Sys Admin (it was 2 months after the capture of Baghdad before we cut orders for the first military police unit) – but this observation is not conclusive. The fact that we had no Sys Admin and Iraq is a debacle does not imply that having such a force would have led to a more favorable outcome.

…Is there any reason to suspect that with enough troops on the ground, we couldn’t have precluded an insurgency? Against this is the argument that the occupying force itself is a catalyst for insurgency and so one of the ingredients in successful counterinsurgency is keeping as small a footprint as possible. A large Sys Admin force, particularly a multinational one with varying proficiency in handling insurgency – and comprising different ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds – adds complexity, increases the potential for misunderstandings and provocative events, and provides a target-rich environment. For these reasons, 250,000 largely non-Muslim Sys Adminers, some with experience fresh from Chechnya, might not have been the panacea Barnett claims. [And I have to admit that this is a significant change from my own critique of Map here on DNI, where I argued for such a force.] “

Well, there are a great deal of variables to play with here in terms of a thought experiment entitled ” Iraq with Ideal Sys Admin conditions”. Simple advantages in numbers do gain the security effect of proximity when you hit ” X” personnel per 100,000 – it simply becomes that much more difficult of a task to pull off insurgent attacks when occupation forces are spread ” thick” rather than thin. Higher levels of security means more basic services which in turn reduces grievances but the pivotal aspect will be the political skill with which such a larger force is employed. A considerable portion of America’s problems in Iraq are of our own making – an insurgency composed only of foreign jihadis is nothing more than the Baader-Meinhoff gang in a khaffiyeh.

Much food for thought here. A very stimulating review of a superior book.

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