zenpundit.com

Nice.

Shlok posts up on the future of war in response to Lexington’s Green’s prospective speaking engagement:

The History and Future of Warfare

…..The history of warfare looks something like this cycle that repeats itself within the governance market – between an insurgent governance platform and the dominant platform of the time. Victory is gauged by market-share of each platform.

1. Tribe vs. Tribe
2. Tribe vs. State
3. State vs State
   1. Marked by the invention of the nuke.
4. Network vs State
   1. Where we are now. Networks are essentially information empowered tribes.
5. Network vs. Network
   1. When the nation-state collapses into its component resilient communities and combats the networks that won.
   2. Insurgencies and private military corporations act as governance platforms.
6. Small-Scale Networks vs Network
   1. Advanced information flows decreases mass requirements and increases decentralization.
   2. Trend continues until post-human age.
7. Small-Scale Network vs Small-Scale Network
8. Individual vs. Small-Scale Network
9. Individual vs. Individual
10. Post-human vs. Individual
    1. When the difference between man and machine is negligible.
11. ? vs Post-Human

*Acceleration really takes off when the network barrier is broken.

I like the flow in the outline. Potential countervailing trends to Shlok’s model? Here’s a couple:

• Aggressive migration/refugees-in-arms – think Hutu militiamen fleeing to the Congo from Tutsi rebels, but scaled up for a failing great or regional power.
• Rogue nuclear events will cause a countervailing, centralizing, “circling the wagons” effect that will temporarily strengthen states and allow them to “take off the gloves” against networked opponents.

From David Betz at Kings of War (hat tip to Charles Cameron)

Uk Strategy and Defence Policy, where should it go? Have your say

As many of you will know the UK MoD is at work now on the preparation of a Green Paper leading up to a full (and overdue) defence review next year. We have been discussing many of the key issues in British strategy here on this blog for two years already. I think it speaks well of the informed and thoughtful KOW readership that the MoD Strategy Unit is now reaching out to this little corner of the defence blogosphere to engage with us on such matters. Below I am posting a note from Vincent Devine, who heads the Strategy Unit, which is intended to kick off a debate here on these pages on issues of mutual concern. I am personally chuffed that we have been asked. More importantly, I welcome the spirit of openness to debate and alternative views which the gesture represents. Across the pond they have been better at this, see The Army Needs Your Help, for instance, and I think they have realized better policy and strategy in the doing. I could quote a bunch of clichés here about ‘sunlight being the best detergent’, or ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’ but, really, it’s self-evident isn’t it? Here in the UK we’ve ground to make up and not a lot of time and resource to waste and so I find this development highly encouraging.

….From here down it’s Vincent Devine talking:

I’m grateful to David Betz for letting the UK Ministry of Defence Strategy Unit engage with Kings of War to gather views about the future of the UK’s defence policy.

The Strategy Unit, which I lead, is a small team of military officers, MoD and FCO officials and international exchange officers. We are pulling together the new Defence Green Paper, which will set out some of the key defence issues before a full defence review next year.  As we prepare the Green Paper we want to take advantage of the very active academic and think-tank debate on defence issues, and ideally provoke some of this discussion ourselves.  We running a series of traditional, real-world seminars and meetings with experts. Via Kings of War we also want to plug into the informed and interested defence blogosphere, hoping to reach a wider and (possibly) fresher audience.

This is, as far as I know, the first time the Ministry of Defence has done this, and it is something of an experiment. Depending on your reactions, we plan to post on several occasions between now and the end of the year. We’d like each time to pose one of the defence policy questions we’re considering, and ask for your views. We won’t plan to respond to each comment as it comes in (though we might chip in if any particularly live discussion kicks off), but will offer a set of reactions and impressions to wrap up the exchanges after about a week. And we want to be able to share with you some of our emerging thinking.

We hope the process will mirror the overall Green Paper approach: it’s about identifying the key questions, rather than trying to answer them now; it firmly places our defence policy within our wider international and security policy; and it’s based on the assumption that we may need to make some tough choices. If you want more background about the Green Paper process, you can find the Defence Secretary’s Parliamentary statement here , and of course some of you may have heard his speech at King’s on this last week.

We have agreed with David some ground rules for our participation in KoW, intended to help keep the debate lively. We are contributing as the MoD Strategy Unit, rather than trying to speak for the Ministry as a whole – we therefore won’t need to have all our contributions chiselled in stone before we submit them. Neither the Strategy Unit nor KoW make any commitment to agree with or support the views of the other – which indeed would undermine the whole point. We (genuinely) want to encourage people to say what they think – the most useful comments will be those which are informed, grounded and focused.

Finally, I’d like to suggest an open question to start the discussion: as we look at setting our future defence policy, what are the greatest problems we need to tackle and – equally important – what are the greatest advantages we can exploit?

There’s been a lot of good writing on this recently, including of course from David himself and Anthony Cormack, and from Theo Farrell, Malcolm Chalmers, Paul Cornish, Andrew Dorman, Hew Strachan and others. They’ve looked both at tactical/operational issues and at the overall strategic picture. Some see the glass half-full, some half-empty. Some focus on the need for success in current operations, others on the state of the whole defence machine. They identify a very broad range of issues: which of these are causes rather than symptoms, and which show grounds for optimism, which pessimism?

I look forward to seeing what you have to say.

Vincent Devine

Post any useful suggestions or comments over at Kings of War.

At SWJ Blog.

The Army wants your comments on its new Capstone Concept

by Robert Haddick
Brigadier General H.R. McMaster has sent to Small Wars Journal the latest draft of Army Capstone Concept version 2.7. McMaster leads a team at TRADOC that is charged with revising the Capstone Concept, which provides fundamental guidance to the Army’s doctrine and training efforts.

By December, McMaster and his team will complete their work on the Capstone Concept. Between now and then, he wants to hear from you. So please open this file, read it, and provide your comments, either here or at the Capstone Concept comment thread at Small Wars Council. McMaster and his team will read these comments and use them to improve this important document.

(You will note that the Capstone Concept draft we received is marked “For Official Use Only.” I assure you that we received this document openly from the Army and for the purposes explained above. McMaster and his colleagues at TRADOC want Small Wars Journal‘s readers to help them improve the Capstone Concept.)

Ok. Mil/intel/strategy/national security/COIN bloggers. We’ve been blogging on the “future of warfare” for five or six or more years. Some of us have also written books and journal articles, spoken at conferences and done op-eds. Along the way, there has been periodic lamentation (i.e. whining) that the powers that be don’t “get it” and no one pays attention anyway. Well HR McMaster is asking for  input on shaping official military policy. A “put up or shut up” moment for the bloggers.

I’m in! Who else is joining the party?

The Call of Nepal: My Life In the Himalayan Homeland of Britain’s Gurkha Soldiers by Col. J.P. Cross

Nimble Books, a publisher I am proud to be associated with, is rolling out the American edition of the memoirs of the legendary COIN specialist, soldier and linguist, Colonel John Philip Cross, of the Gurkhas. Foreword by Robert D. Kaplan.  Disclosure – I had a part, albeit a small one, along with Lexington Green, in connecting Col. Cross with Nimble Books, and I could not be more pleased to see this memoir in print. Not many books these days start by announcing how modern academics will hate it.

Cross was the focus of a story by Kaplan in The Atlantic Monthly magazine in 2006.

Review soon to come….

I teamed up with Adam Elkus in an article running at SWJ/ SWJ Blog this morning. The focus is the intersection of policy and strategy at the level of senior military leader and civilian policymaker.

Theory, Policy, and Strategy: A Conceptual Muddle

It is impossible not to notice that elements of the current acrimonious debates over theory, operations, and practice are proxies for larger political differences over the use of force and its relationship to American national interests. So why are these fundamental policy disagreements being expressed through debate over technical points of military doctrine?

The answer lies in the uncertain, even negligent, muddle that has substituted for a clear paradigm to guide US grand strategy. Because policymakers have failed to define clear US interests, goals, and objectives, attempts have been made to derive grand strategic principles from theoretical debates or operational concerns. While these debates have been intellectually stimulating and often very useful to developing US national security and military doctrine, they cannot sustain US grand strategy. While strategic drift might be inevitable in country where much of strategy is determined by the cleavages of domestic politics, the cost of meandering can be measured in lost opportunities, treasure squandered, and lives lost. Policymakers must make a stand for a strong strategic paradigm to guide US operational methodologies.

Theory, Policy, and Strategy: A Conceptual Muddle (Full PDF Article)

Many thanks to Adam for pushing this project and to Dave Dilegge for publishing it.