zenpundit.com

These were too good not to share:

MilPub (Seydlitz89) –Soft Power, A Strategic Theory Perspective 

….Let’s start with the concept of power itself. Nye’s definition agrees with the realist Weberian definition of power, that being “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be able to carry out their own will despite resistance”. It is important to stress here that for me power is a social relationship of varied degree, not a state of existence, nor a physical entity. Power can exist at various levels and involve individuals or whole nations. Force, coercion, economic incentives and “attraction” or soft power, are all types of power relationships. Power is also contingent, in that that each power relationship is unique involving the history, culture and personalities of the different actors.

….Soft Power is defined by Nye as:

“the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. When our policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of others, our soft power is enhanced.”Notice the link of soft power with policy and legitimacy. Here is where a whole series of tensions are introduced to the overall concept, which are not apparent with a casual reading. Power can involve simply two individuals, whereas policy involves distinct political communities, policy being simply seen as the collective interests of the political community (see On War, Book VIII, Chapter 6B). Legitimacy would require the targeted political community seeing the actions of the soft power wielding political community as “legitimate”, which is obviously a difficult goal to achieve. This assuming of course that the policy actually reflects the national interests of the political community involved. Let’s look at the source of this tension more closely. [….]

Read the rest here.

Strongly agree with Seydlitz’s points concerning legitimacy and the need for a dedicated, culture-oriented, agency with a long-term perspective removed from the emphasis on the tactical or the immediate and transient political benefit.

Ink Spots (Jason Fritz)- I love books 

….I had been a reader from my earliest days, but school seemed to take up much of my reading time until adulthood. My mother works for the public library in my hometown in eastern Pennsylvania, forcing me to spend much of my time among many and varied volumes. In this last tour of note, she was assigned the task of ensuring I had plenty to read (my father, bless him, was tasked with keeping my humidor stocked). I sent my mother lists before and during deployment and received in return large boxes of books, through our markedly improved post. Initially, my reading interests were varied. Already well steeped in the books of my profession – Clausewitz’s On War, Jomini’s The Art of War, works by Galula and Tranquier, and a seemingly infinite suite of Army doctrine – I took interest in the books of the war of which I was a participant. Michael Gordon’s Cobra II and particularly Tom Ricks’Fiasco became influential in my thinking of the war and how I addressed my small part of it. Possibly because of this mono-topical study or possibly in spite of it, I felt I needed to widen my reading (and beyond my exhaustive collection of Hemingway that dominated my fiction shelves).

In my first major package of books of that deployment (thanks, Mum!), I received the last Harry Potter, Nietzsche, Plato, Aristotle, Mill, Kateb, Dickens, Hobbes, Thucydides, Dante, de Tocqueville, Hiaasen, Adam Smith, Arendt, Huxley, Bryson, Isaacson’s biography of Einstein, a few non-fiction adventure books (I recommend from these Rounding the Horn by Dallas Murphy and The Last Expedition by Daniel Liebowitz and Charles Pearson), and most prominently Joyce’s Ulysses.  These were the books I felt necessary to begin a study of the human condition beyond war (except the adventure books, which were wisely the purview of my mother, and the Harry Potter, which I merely enjoyed). Except for the Joyce, which I read every day and still took the entire deployment to finish, this was 6 months of reading material.  When this package of knowledge was delivered to me during duty in my brigade’s operations center south of Baghdad, another captain on the staff expressed to me, “I love books!” Meanly, I thought, “Of course you do; who doesn’t?”  At the time, I thought it a stupid thing to say.

In retrospect, I disagree with my moderately younger self and declare that I, too, love books. It is not obvious. Not everyone does. And while I may love books in a different way than our maligned captain (my agape vice her philia, if you will excuse both the probably unnecessary distinction and probable blasphemy), her sentiment is one which I have come to embrace entirely and tirelessly. I do not just love reading, I love books. I love to hold a book in my hands, to feel the binding and the paper, to smell the ink. I love the plates and pictures. I love the font and the layout of the pages, even if they include irregularities (such as my nth-hand copy of Joyce’s Dubliners, where the printing is partially smudged throughout the middle third). I suspect that many of you do as well, the military scholar being a peculiar subset of the bibliophile that tends towards bookishness and book collecting, even if said collecting extends beyond the typical cast of characters that have contributed to the art of war and warfare. My personal interactions indicate that you are a well-read and erudite community that reads compulsively on topics for which we are paid to read and topics for which we enjoy and topics we read because we believe that it makes us a better person. [….] 

Read the rest here.

I share Jason’s love of books, as probably does everyone reading this blog or Ink Spots. However there is no shortage of people in this country for whom books are as irrelevant as an Irish linen doily or a whole horizon sextant, who are not technically illiterate, but meander through the post-literate life of cultural primitives.

Top Billing! Global Guerrillas “Dronenet Series” – DRONENET The next BIG thing. , An open drone network vs. closed logistics networks, What a Dronet (a more compressed spelling?) can leverage and DRONENET How to build it 

About five years ago I did some work for a defense contractor on the potential applications of drones ($$).  One of the things I put together for them was a logistics system, using drones, for special ops teams.  It was the perfect application for keeping dozens of dispersed teams supplied in rough terrain.

Flash forward five years and I heard a presentation by Matternetat a conference called Poptech.  Matternet is a 2011 start-up that got some play at a “Solve for X” presentation at Google (solve for x is supposed to be a “think tank” for solving the worlds biggest problems).  Essentially, they were pitching the same thing the defense contractor I consulted with was interested in, except for humanitarian uses.  A logistics network that uses drones to overcome the problems of delivering supplies to small groups in harsh terrain (although the defense contractor’s drones and systems were FAR more sophisticated than the stuff Matternet is pitching 4 years later).

However, when I heard Matternet’s presentation it hit me that a closed network approach would miss the real opportunity. Here’s why….

Dr. Tdaxp – Progress, Science, and Exemplars — or — when it sucks to be young 

Some people divide the ways we know about our world into two types, Science and Inquiry. Science typically refers to using falsifiable hypotheses to make predictions about the world. Inquiry refers to any deviation or alteration of this method.

For the rest of this post I’m going to talk about fields in which the objective is tocontrol, predict, and improve the behavior of some object (cancer cell, human being, State, whatever). That is the purpose for which the tool of science is most applicable.

Some people further divide Science into two types: Normal Science and Revolutionary Science. These terms from from Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Normal Science, in Thomas Kuhn’s original model, was capable of progress but governed by religious-like “paradigms.” Revolutionary Science, likewise in Kuhn’s outdated model, was capable of freedom but incapable of progress….

Michael Yon Online – Some Thoughts About The Kingdom of Thailand 

….Some Red Shirts brought children into their camp even though bullets were flying.  It was dishonorable to bring children into a combat zone.  Images of children killed in war are branded into my memory.

Red Shirt leadership should have ordered that children be taken home.  Press members should not issue a free pass to leaders who allow kids to be brought to combat.  Any journalist who did not report on the children is professionally flawed.

This level of sustained and violent occupation would never have been permitted in the United States.   The first time that a protestor fired an M79 grenade launcher in downtown New York City, popular opinion would have demanded that the police or the Army put them down.

Occupy Wall Street is annoying, for example, but we can live with it.  If members of Occupy Wall Street fired grenades or an RPG, a final response would have been demanded.

Waging insurrection is not a constitutionally protected activity in any country. Peaceful protesting is protected in some countries, including the United States and Thailand.

Launching grenades is over the line.  Dozens of bombings, grenade attacks, and shootings were perpetrated in Bangkok during the Red Shirt protest, including a small car bomb. In addition to the protests, a steady insurrectional campaign targeting symbolic targets was waged.

Red Shirt protestors used automatic weapons, 40mm grenade launchers, bombs, firebombs, and firework rockets, not to mention slingshots and ball bearings.

Many Red Shirts were courageous and unafraid of combat.  I greatly respect Red Shirts for their courage under fire.  Much was caught on video.  I respect them though I believe that they should not have engaged in violence.

NRO –Risk, Relativism, and Resources

…. First: Progressives and those who sympathize with them are economically risk-averse compared with conservatives. As Charles C. W. Cooke recently pointed out, the terms “conservative” and “liberal” are sometimes confusing in the American context, and that is certainly true in the case of financial risk, about which conservatives are not conservative at all. As an academic study published in the American Journal of Business put it: “As the economic political orientation of the subjects in our study becomes increasingly conservative (meaning they lean more towards an economically libertarian position as opposed to an economically socialistic position), they assume significantly higher levels of risk in their investment decisions.” Other studies find similar results.

There are many ways to measure financial risk tolerance, but consider this: One of the riskiest things you can do with your money is start a business, and entrepreneurs and small-business owners skew heavily Republican. The 2011 survey from the National Small Business Association found that 54 percent of the organization’s members identified as Republicans, while only 16 percent identified as Democrats; it is significant that more small-business owners identified themselves as independents in the survey than as Democrats….

Small Wars Journal– What Caesar Told His Centurions: Lessons of Classical Leadership and Discipline for a Post-modern Military

Easily Distracted-A Mismatching of Frame and Picture

Ribbonfarm-Schumpeter’s Demon 

Gene Expression –When Rome fell civilization did decline

AFJ –WHEN THE NETWORK DIES

ForeignPolicy.com – The Art of Snore

The Telegraph – Is Slavoj Zizek a Left-Fascist?

Foreign Affairs– Chavismo After Chávez 

Scientific American – Wisdom from Psychopaths

 

Volokh Conspiracy –Assault Weapons Bans, in the Words of Some of Their Supporters 

….ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquillity of the kind enjoyed in sister democracies like Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily. It certainly cannot be done radically. It will probably take one, maybe two generations. It might be 50 years before the United States gets to where Britain is today.

Largely why gun control people want desperately to short-circuit any serious national debate of the less difficult to solve public safety problem of the small number of dangerously mentally ill people.  Emphasis on practical measures to reduce mass shootings detracts from long range aspirations to impose, not reasonable controls to keep firearms out of improper hands, but eventually de facto prohibition on private gun ownership.

Steve Metz – Strategic Horizons: The Information Battlefield of Live-Cast War

….Recent events give clear signs of this trend. In 2010, a gun camera video clip from an American Apache helicopter in Iraq, taken in 2007, was released on the Internet by the group WikiLeaks. Two journalists from the news agency Reuters had died in the attack. The U.S. military’s investigation found that the helicopter crews had followed correct procedures and had “neither reason nor probability to assume that neutral media personnel were embedded with enemy forces.” Despite this, the killings added fuel to rumors that U.S. forces in Iraq targeted journalists, further eroding the increasingly fragile public support for the war. 

While this particular tragedy involved the release of a stolen official video, the insurgents in Iraq also live-casted their operations for propaganda and training purposes. Nearly every insurgent attack was posted on the Internet within days, often within hours and sometimes even within minutes. Then the “Arab Spring” revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya saw the live-casting of violence reach new heights. Many of the battles and actions by government forces were broadcast in real time, and others were quickly uploaded to the Internet. War had become a transfixing public spectacle.

Although the live-casting of armed action has become the new norm, policymakers and military leaders have not yet adjusted. The normal American reaction when the ugliness of war becomes public is an investigation and an eventual public release of the findings. Unfortunately, the belief that truth will win out is old-fashioned, even quaint in an era of information profusion. Today explanations of events form and explode without waiting for a careful collection of the facts or even the truth to emerge. Ideas move with such rapidity and in such complex ways that it is impossible to identify or gauge the authority of their source. Information may have passed through hundreds, thousands and even millions of hands via email, online discussions, blogs, web pages, tweets and social media sites. No one knows its origin. The Internet and new media are rife with myths that sometimes subside and then reappear at unpredictable times. No idea, no matter how delusional, suffers a final death in the virtual world.

SWJ – German Counterinsurgency Operations in East Africa: The Hehe War, 1890-1898 

….The new colonial power now turned its focus to Tanzania’s interior. While the coastal regions were shaped primarily by urban culture, the central and southern parts of German East Africa, as well as the regions around the Great Lakes featured larger hierarchy-based territories. In the southern highlands, the most important ethnic groups were the Ngoni, Sangu and Hehe (Wahehe), the latter being the strongest power since the 1860s.[11] The Ngoni had migrated to Tanzania from South Africa in the 1820s after coming under pressure from the expanding Zulu[12]. By adopting the Zulu military system, the Ngoni tried to become the dominant group in the region. Their efforts were thwarted, first by the Sangu, and finally by the Hehe, who – by improving the Zulu system – became a hegemonial power in southern Tanzania. Speaking of hegemony, one has to consider that members of subjected ethnical groups were integrated into Hehe society, and that “the Hehe” themselves have to be seen as a construction of political elites; the tribal name also was a construct, applied to the Hehe by their enemies.[13] After the death of Chief Munyigumba in 1880, his son Mkwawa[14] took over as ruler of the Hehe. A survey of the conflict between the Hehe and Germany has to reconsider one important fact: one cannot apply the often-mentioned theory that African ethnic groups were just “quiet victims” of colonial powers. Of course, the Hehe can be seen as victims of European imperialism – but their war with German forces was also a clash of two territorial entities focused on expansion. East Africa had been no peaceful paradise prior to the beginning of European activities; the Hehe had been known for their aggressiveness for decades, and it was no coincidence that other tribes, already in the pre-colonial era, had begun calling Chief Mkwawa muhinja, “the butcher” 

Brown Pundits –Female polio workers targeted in Pakistan 

….But let us not compare the CIA’s perfidy with what the terrorists have done before or since.  THAT too would be to miss the point. The terrorists will do what even the CIA has difficulty imagining (and much more difficulty ever publicly admitting or supporting): kill innocent health workers to make their point. And sentence thousands of kids to paralysis or worse. And feel no regret or remorse.

btw, anti-polio vaccine propaganda did NOT start with the Bin Ladin thing. It had been reported from the frontier region (and polio teams had been attacked in that region) for many years prior to the Bin Laden raid

Dart Throwing Chimp –On the Limits of Our Causal Imagination 

The New Republic –We’re Still Paying the Price for the Borking of Robert Bork

Popular Archaeology–Archaeologists Uncover Europe’s First Civilization 

The Chronicle –This Is Not a Profile of Nassim Taleb 

That’s it.

[by J. Scott Shipman]

 

At the suggestion of Adam Elkus, we were privileged to host our first “local” Boyd and Beyond event on 15 December. We had 14 attend, and five speakers. Logistically, we turned our family room in to a fairly comfortable briefing area, using a wall with Smart Sheets as a temporary white board. In keeping with our October events, we took up a collection and had pizza delivered for lunch. Coffee, soft drinks light snacks were provided. Each speaker was allotted 50 minutes, but given the participation of the audience, most talks lasted about 90 minutes. I should emphasize to those planning one of these events, to keep a lean speaker’s list, as the Q&A and discussion can easily double the time of a presentation—-and I believe all who attended would agree the comments/discussion made already great presentations even better.

My sincere thanks go out to my wife and partner, Kristen, for making this event look easy! She was the one who made sure everything was moving along and that folks felt at home. I would encourage others around the country to schedule and hold events through the year. We’re looking to do another in March 2013.

Our speakers were:

Jim Hasik, Beyond Hagiography: Problems of Logic and Evidence in the Strategic Theories of John Boyd

Francis Park, The Path to Maneuver Warfare in the U.S. Marine Corps

Robert Cantrell,  Which Card Will You Play?

Terry Barnhart, Designing and Implementing Maneuver Strategy in Transforming Major Organizations

Marshall Wallace, Theories of Change and Models of Prediction

I led off with a few comments on the military professional and intellectual rigor. I recommended the best book I’ve read this year: Inventing Grand Strategy and Teaching Command, by Jon Tetsuro Sumida, and the challenges he suggests in the realm of intellectual rigor. He writes:

“It remains to be seen whether readers exist with the mind and will to accept his guidance on what necessarily is an arduous intellectual and moral voyage into the realm of war and politics.” (emphasis added)

I followed with the example from An Unknown Future and a Doubtful Present: Writing the Victory Plan of 1941, by Charles E. Kirkpatrick. Mr. Kirkpatrick’s little book provides an excellent primer to the formulation of the United States’ WWII strategy and a refreshing insight into the education of an master strategist, then Major Albert C. Wedemeyer, attached to the War Plans Division, the Army chief of staff’s strategic planners, who wrote the Army strategy for WWII in 90 days. (read the review here) I suggested that military professionals should start something akin to a book club, where they can discuss and debate strategic issues and concept.

Following my comments, Jim Hasik offered his critique of John Boyd’s work. Adam tweeted that we were a “tough crowd,” but Jim was able to discuss his misgivings with respect to Boyd’s work and a lively discussion got us started. For those unfamiliar, Jim is the author of a paper called, Beyond Hagiography, which generated controversy in the Boydian community following this year’s October event at Quantico. (reviewed here and at zenpundit.com) Here is a link to the paper. (see Hasik’s white board outline above).

According to Hasik, Boyd erred when extrapolating from physical processes/science to social processes. He reviewed Boyd’s use of science in his essay, Destruction and Creation, and suggested no literal correlation between Clausius’ Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy), Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and human behavior (on this I concur with Hasik, as analogy or metaphor these scientific principles enlighten).  Hasik asked if OODA scales from air-to-air combat to large scale events, and whether OODA was original (compared to PDCA, for example). One point that generated quite a bit of discussion was whether one could “like” Clausewitz or Sun Tzu and Boyd. Hasik questioned whether Boyd’s work should be judged as social science, history, or war studies, and suggested that further work was needed to fill in the gaps in his work. In October, someone suggested Boyd needed a “Plato,” someone to address Boyd’s work with less emphasis on science (as in Osinga’s book), thereby making Boyd’s work more accessible. The Strassler model was suggested; Strassler is an “unaffiliated scholar” who has written exhaustively referenced versions of Thucydides, Herodotus, and Arrian. [personal note: I believe a Strassler-like book on Boyd’s ideas would be a great resource] A great thought-provoking conversation.

 

Francis Park’s talk on on maneuver warfare, the evidence of history began with “I’m a historian and I have a problem.” The irony wasn’t lost on the audience, as Francis is an active duty Army officer, speaking on the history of the USMC’s adoption of maneuver warfare (MW). Park called the Marine Corps “the most Darwinian of the services.” The venue for for the Corps discussion between MW advocates, and the “attritionists” was the Marine Corps Gazette. This venue was “unofficial,” otherwise the debate may have never happened. The Gazette’s forward-thinking editor made space and encouraged the debate, which was a “long, bitter, and complex fight.”

Park listed and discussed the champions of MW Michael D. Wyly, G.I. Wilson, William Woods, William Lind, and Alfred M. Gray. Park recommended Fideleon Damian’s master’s thesis, THE ROAD TO FMFM 1: THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS AND MANEUVER WARFARE DOCTRINE, 1979-1989. (Adam Elkus recommended Eric Walters essay in the Small Wars Journal, titled Fraud or Fuzziness? Dissecting William Owen’s Critique of Maneuver Warfare.)

Park called the USMC adoption of MW a “confluence of fortune” that may have never happened without the vigorous efforts of proponents.

Robert Cantrell’s Which Card Will You Play? was an instructive and interactive example of Robert’s strategy cards. Cantrell has two decks of strategy playing cards, one devoted to strategy, the other to sales strategy. The user’s guide is at www.artofwarcards.com.

Robert provided examples of how the cards are used to spark strategic thought and ideas. Volunteers pulled first one, then two cards from the decks, and read aloud and commented on how the statement(s) on the cards could be used in practice. For example, “Muddy The Water To Hide the Nets” was drawn (the 8 of clubs, a bit more on card suits from Robert below). The “strategy” is to “confuse your adversary so he cannot perceive your intentions. The “Basis” is “Confused adversaries make mistakes they would not make if they grasped your intentions.”

Longtime friend of this blog, Fred Leland at Law Enforcement Security Consulting is using the cards with success. Fred’s goal is “to get cops thinking more strategically and tactically in their work. I have been pulling a card from the deck and writing my thoughts and sharing them with cops who have been passing them along to their officers.” He is using Robert’s cards for “in-service” training, and providing a low cost entry into strategic thinking.

I followed up with Robert and asked for an explanation of the card suits. Here is his response:

Hi Scott – although they are gray delineations, the Hearts are oriented on the shaping self, the Clubs on shaping the field of contest…the diamonds are isolation strategies, and the spades are elimination strategies. This is the wolf pattern on the hunt: wolf becomes all the wolf it can be, shapes the hunt, isolates a member from the heard, brings that member down. With aces high – and again also gray – the higher cards tend to be strategies used from a greater abundance of strength and the lower numbers from comparative weakness in strength. Of course from here we can talk about gaining relative advantage if we cannot have absolute advantage to gain strength for a critical moment…and so on

Terry Barnhart spoke on Boydian organizational applications in a talk called Designing and Implementing Maneuver Strategy in Transforming Major Organizations. Terry said any organizational change had to be accomplished on the realms of the moral, mental, and the physical. With that in mind, he advised mapping the social networks of the organization and speaking in “the language of the culture” and “asking for what you need” when attempting to transformation. The end goal is “aligned autonomy,” and Terry’s recommended method of choice is taken from Boyd’s Patterns of Conflict,Slide 80:

 

Search out the “surfaces and gaps”, as reference from Slide 86, POC. In Boyd’s language:

•Present many (fast breaking) simultaneous and sequential happenings to generate confusion and disorder—thereby stretch-out time for adversary to respond in a directed fashion.

•Multiply opportunities, to uncover, create, and penetrate gaps, exposed flanks, and vulnerable rears. [emphasis added]

•Create and multiply opportunities to splinter organism and envelop disconnected remnants thereby dismember adversary thru the tactical, grand tactical, and strategic levels. [emphasis added]

In Terry’s words, “be everywhere at once” and establish relationships that result in buy-in, avoiding “no,” as Terry advised it can take a couple of years to overcome an objection. As aligned autonomy is reached, word will get around about the successes, and all of sudden what was a single agent of change becomes a movement. So Terry is recommending methods in maneuver warfare as a method in transforming organization culture.

During Terry’s talk, Dave recommended Orbiting the Giant Hairball, by Gordon MacKenzie as a guide in navigating the bureaucracy and obstacles often found in large organizations.

 

Marshall Wallace’s Theories of Change and Models of Prediction was our final presentation. Marshall has emerged as one of the leading thinkers among Boydeans. Wallace said, “people are lazy” as he led off his discussion of change models. [personal note: I’ve come to refer to this laziness as “neurological economy”] His thinking was influence by Daniel Kaneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow and the Heath brother’s Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard. When change is desired, clarity is an absolute must have. Wallace offered the four models above as example of change. He said we must ask: “What is the change we want to see?” and ” What are the pre-conditions?”—instead of this model, most people begin with the idea, which more often than not, fails.

Wallace walked our group through the models and emphasized the importance of tempo and used his wife’s efforts to establish dog parks in their city. Everything in government has a process, and Wallace said in this case “going slower than the politicians” paid off. Also, for programs of change, it is best if there is 100% transparency of goals. Both Marshall and Terry recommended a book called The Progress Principle, by Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer. The most powerful model for me was the one in the lower right corner—particular the use of “more people” and “key” people in any effort to affect change.

Post meeting, Wallace posted the following to our Facebook group wall, that rounds out and expands his thinking:

I was on the plane back to Boston yesterday morning, deeply engrossed in Terry’s book [Creating a Lean R&D System] when a phrase leapt into my head: “Target the whole organism”.

As the Michaels in our lives (Moore and Polanyi) remind us, “we know more than we can say”. I feel that quite clearly and I constantly struggle with language. I am never satisfied with any presentation I give because I know that, due to failures on my part to use the perfect word at the right moment, I left some understanding on the table.

Somehow the weekend, with spectacular conversation, a good night’s sleep, the enforced idleness of air travel, and Terry’s superb book, shook something loose.

Target the whole organism.

What flashed through my mind at that moment were pieces of the talks.

Jim prompted discussion of what the next set of books about/on/adding to Boyd should look like.

Francis drew a pie wedge with “firepower” on one edge of the pie and “maneuver” on the other. He was describing two schools of thought on conflict as represented by these extremes. Everybody seemed to agree that the balance lay somewhere in the middle and was definitely related to the context.

Robert’s exercises with his strategy decks shook countless examples of strategic action and insight loose in our minds. The combination of cards, taking one from each of the competition and collaboration decks, was especially exciting.

Terry laid out his plan to blitzkrieg his company, and invited us to make it better.

I ended with a 4-cell matrix demonstrating the four basic categories under which all Theories of Change operate (more on this later). Experience has shown that most people operate out of an implicit Theory that traps them in one quadrant, whereas social change only occurs if all four quadrants are affected.

Target the whole organism.

I got home and opened up “The Strategic Game of ? and ?”. Interaction and Isolation.

Firepower and maneuver – at the same time. Competition and collaboration at the same time.

Boyd side-by-side with his sources and several commentators. CEO, discouraged middle-managers, and the line at the same time. More People and Key People at both the individual level and the structural level all at the same time.

Target the whole organism.

A force that uses maneuver to confuse and firepower to destroy will dominate. A force that can swing rapidly between extremes and also find balance is even more slippery than one that acknowledges the “necessary” balance. The two practices can be in separate parts of the battlespace (context matters), but because both are occurring, the confusion generated may well be more intense. It looks as though the force is two distinct armies and communication among the enemy may be unintelligible because the threats being faced are so different.

Bringing collaborative concepts into competitive spaces or vice versa while not abandoning the underlying logic of the space opens up more options, challenges notions, and expands horizons. Can we interact and isolate at the same time? What does that snowmobile look like?

If we want to effect social change, we need to target the whole system. We can sequence our efforts in time, though we can’t forget to move as quickly as the circumstances allow. At the same time, every effort must be connected to the whole organism.

The target is not the target. I do not aim at the eye of the fish. I don’t wan’t to hit the bullseye.

I want to pick up the whole madding crowd of intense archers, cynical kings, and wildly cheering spectators and move them.

This was the first “local” event, and based on the response, we’ll be doing these a few times a year. Many thanks to all who participated, and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to  you all!

UPDATE: Dave shared these with our group. Francis said, “We live and die by bumper stickers.” Here is a good example:

 

Here is Dave’s interpretation of the Sufi elephant:

 

 

 

Cross-posted at To Be or To Do.

SWJ Blog – The Generals… Readable but Flawed?

 

In his groundbreaking 1976 book The Face of Battle, eminent historian John Keegan argued that the history of battle should focus on more than the generals and their decisions.

Keegan had grown weary of military histories explaining the outcome of battles and wars singularly on what generals decided. Instead, Keegan emphasized the complexity of battle, its chaos, and most importantly the role contingent factors played in the outcome of battles and wars.

Keegan’s book helped popularize what would become known as the “new military history” that sought to explain and understand warfare not solely through the eyes of the general, but from myriad other military, social, cultural, and political factors.

Tom Ricks’s new book The Generals regresses from Keegan and takes us back to a less complicated form of military storytelling in which wars’ outcomes were determined solely by the performance of army commanders.

HistoryGuy99 –The Liberator: One Soldier’s 500-Day Odyssy across Nazi Europe 

A few months ago I learned that best selling author, Alex Kershaw, was about to publish a new book about World War II. Alex, had already gained a reputation for his accurate portrayal of war in three earlier best selling books. When his latest, The Liberator  arrived, it immediately went to the top of my growing must read pile. where within a fortnight; I settled down to read about one man’s 511 day and 2000 mile journey across the blood stained surface of Nazi held Europe. The story is more than one mans journey, but describes in moving detail, the men of the 3rd Battalion, 157th Regt. of the 45th Infantry Division, who fought from the beaches of Sicily, on to Salerno, and Anzio, then into the belly of Vichy France and into the deadly forests of Vosges; and finally ending inside the hell of Dachau, where to a man, they reached their breaking point.

The Glittering Eye – How Not to Negotiate 

….My understanding is that the president’s proposals rest on three legs:

1. Raise taxes on the highest income earners while leaving the remainder of the “Bush tax cuts” intact.
2. Leave Social Security and Medicare alone.
3. Make raising the debt ceiling automatic.

I wasn’t entirely surprised at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s reaction (he broke out laughing). My immediate reaction was that the president had opened with the insult price.

Milpub (Seydlitz89) –Fall 1942 – The Turning Point of the War in Europe 

….One gets the impression that the Russian Front was not seen as a single theater, but rather as five separate fronts: Finland, Army Group North facing Leningrad, Army Group Center facing Moscow, Army Group B at Stalingrad, and Army Group A in the Caucasus. Thus each individual front competed individually with those in the West and keeping Italy in the war was Hitler’s priority towards the end of 1942. This possible perspective regards only the operational decisions, not those involving logistics, production, genocides, and other matters that Hitler reserved for himself. That the situation with Army Group B was dangerous was recognized relatively early on with the 20 November order to establish Army Group Don from the staff of the 11th Army under the command of Field Marshall von Manstein to take command of Army Group B and other forces coming in. This headquarters was to be tasked with reestablishing the front on the Don/Volga. This distinction is important, it was not first to reestablish contact with Stalingrad, but to re-establish the front as it had existed prior to the Soviet offensive, it was assumed that those forces in Stalingrad would remain in place. A withdrawal from Stalingrad and the Volga was never seriously considered until it was too late. Manstein and his staff were at Vitebsk and due to the weather and rail conditions were unable to arrive in theater until 24 November.

The Committee of Public Safety –Entrails of deceit and Entrails of deceit (cont.)

 

….Whaley had written specialized studies of deception for the Central Intelligence Agency (later declassified and published as Codeword Barbarossa and Stratagem: Deception and Surprise in War) as well as books on magic (Encyclopedic Dictionary of Magic, Who’s Who In Magic). Bell was a painter and art critic who’d started writing about terrorism during the 1960s, especially as practiced by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Whaley and Bell had direct experience of fields where deception was the coin of the realm. They’d picked up more experience during their fruitless efforts to get academia and government to properly study deception.

As a side-effect of their experience as well as their target audience, Cheating and Deception discusses many of the manifestations deception can take on in everyday life. It includes specific explorations of the role of deception in magic, warfare, gambling, sports, business, science, and art. True to the spirit of their topic, Whaley and Bell even manage to sneak their more scholarly theory of deception into Chapter 2.

They claim their theory is the only general theory of deception ever devised.

Gene Expression –TreeMix: Who were the West Eurasian ancestors of Ethiopians?

 

Lions of Judah?

David Ronfeldt – Why the Republicans lost: excessive tribalism — a partial TIMN interpretation and Q’s & A’s about “TIMN in 20 minutes” (6th of 7): space-time-action (STA) orientations 

Thomas P.M. Barnett- Lesson in eBook marketing 

The Agonist (Kattenburg)-Writerly Reads

New York Times Review of Books – The Jihadis of Yemen 

The American Conservative – On the Value of Old Educational Models and Revenge of the Reality-Based Community  

The Wilson Quarterly –Bloody New World 

Scientific American– Why Is it Impossible to Stop Thinking, to Render the Mind a Complete Blank? 

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