Osinga Roundtable on Science, Strategy and War: The Author’s Reply
Colonel Frans Osinga, currently Associate Professor of War Studies at the Netherlands Defense Academy, agreed to give an author’s reply to the Roundtable on Science, Strategy and War at Chicago Boyz. Dr. Osinga produced an extended essay that sheds additional light on to the ideas of John Boyd and he generously included access to his doctoral dissertation from which Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd originated. It differs somewhat from the book and will be of interest to anyone who wants to dive deeper into the subjects and sources used by Colonel Boyd in formulating his strategic vision.
An excerpt:
My own view of Boyd – briefly – is that (albeit biased) he developed a very impressive, rich and coherent set of ideas, often with elements of profound novelty, with a wide range of applicability (see for instance the presentation of Chet Richard’s et al on Boyd/4GW and the Iraqi insurgency, but also the various presentations/papers on the DNI site where Boyd’s ideas are applied in an increasing number of environments). It is many things and refuses to be captured by one-liners or simple icons. In my presentation at the Boyd Conference last July I tried to convey a sense of ‘what’ Boyd’s work is in the following slide.
A Discourse is:
An epistemological investigation
A military history & search for patterns of winning and losing
An argument against:
– Attritionist mindset
– Deterministic thinking & predictability
– Techno-fetishism
A rediscovery of the mental/moral dimensions of war
A philosophy for command and control
A redefinition of strategy
A search for the essence of strategic interaction
A plea for organizational learning and adaptability
An argument on strategic thinking
It must rank among the few general theories of war. He is certainly one of the prime contemporary strategists. Sure, his is not the final word on strategy. Indeed, he left an unfinished legacy, in line with his view that understanding war – a social behaviour with evolving features – requires a constant multidisciplinary search for improved and updated insights. Moreover, one will struggle if one wants to distil from Boyd’s work distinct ‘how-to’ guidelines for campaign planning. As with all major theorists and intellectual innovators there are also distinct ‘hooks’ in his work for developing critique. But as a guide on what sort of intellectual attitude and activity is required for understanding war and strategy I’ve found him invaluable. Trying to understand him was (and remains) a challenging but equally rewarding education. It has significantly broadened my intellectual horizon. Boyd made me think. And that was his whole point because A Discourse on Winning and Losing at heart is about ‘intellectual evolution and growth’, as he wrote in the margins of a number of books.
Read the rest here.
I’d like to take a moment and thank Dr. Osinga and our reviewers – Wilf Owen, Dan of tdaxp, Dr. Chet Richards, Shane Deichman, Historyguy99, Lexington Green and Adam Elkus ( who has a post that will be up at CB soon) along with Jonathan, the site administrator of Chicago Boyz who was always at the ready with technical assistance. The roundtable was a great success because of your efforts and participation and I’ll count the experience as one of the high points of my time blogging. I would like to close this with words of wisdom from Colonel John Boyd, as recounted by Martin Edwin Anderson:
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