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HAMMES ON 5GW

Colonel Thomas X. Hammes, author of the critically acclaimed The Sling and The Stone, opines on the nature of 5GW at DNI.

” Fourth Generation Warfare Evolves, Fifth Emerges ” (PDF)

After surveying the evolution of 4GW, Hammes errs on the side of caution while speculating on the possible form that 5GW might take. Like John Robb, Hammes sees the potential for superempowered groups motivated by primary loyalties; as with Fred Ikle, the proliferation of potentially deadly dual-use technologies figures significantly. Like Chet Richards and Peter Singer, Hammes is interested in the growing role of PMCs.

In terms of alternative defense thought, Hammes has put up a solid, consensus-building, article. I think however, we may be reaching the stage where we need to try and envision the unexpected, in terms of the evolution of 5GW. Extrapolating linear trajectories from current military practice has been a fertile field for 4GW theory and for visualizing 5GW . I worry however that we (“we” meaning broadly all those think and care about such matters) are unwisely crafting a box of expectations for ourselves. Narrowly framing our premises inevitably creates a lacuna of inattention to other variables.

Perhaps, we need to consider a stage of scenario exercises mixing military theorists with experts from radically different domains, perhaps alongside some horizontal thinking visionaries, futurists and science fiction writers

ADDENDUM:

*ARHERRING* has extended commentary on Hammes at Dreaming 5GW ( Thank you for the correction, Curtis. Apologies to Arherring for my mistake).

BARNETT ON GRAND STRATEGISTS

Dr. Barnett had one of his more freewheeling, “thinking out loud” posts up today, “What grand strategy is to me” that I recommend. It’s not short but Tom hits many points of interest from horizontal thinking to cultivating the mindset of a grand strategist for the need to shift persons but not the position of grand strategist from American life. Some excerpts:

“Systematic thinking about the future means you’re not “for” or “against” issues like peak oil or global warming, you just accept the dynamics implied and rank them accordingly. As such, you will always disappoint the single-issue-trumps-all crowd, because you do not subvert your entire logic to their presumed hierarchy.

….When government’s role in grand strategy is explored, its primary function is that of enabler of overriding era trends, thus grand strategy is contextualized at all times. This is crucial for someone who approaches grand strategy from the perspective of national security, because the military’s tendency–especially in the United States–is to view war strictly within the context of war (our penchant for annihilation). Thus, one great purpose of grand strategy for me is help the military come back to society

….A fundamental characteristic of grand strategy is adaptive planning according to fundamental rule sets enunciated in said strategy. Strategy is neither confirmed nor denied by events, for it is not an objective reality but a desired end state (think “Groundhog Day”).

….It is a good and worthy profession. It needs serious exploration for the purposes of rule-setting. It is too often tied to individual personalities when it needs to be a skill set that is repeatably applied as a strategic planning solution. It should not be outsourced to columnists and talking heads, but should remain organic to the field of national security. It is a skill we lost across the Cold War, primarily because of the success of the “wise men” in the late 1940s and early 1950s. But that vision no longer holds sway.”

It is a highly useful exercise, in my view, to go back and plumb the memoirs and papers of men like Churchill, Stimson, Acheson, Marshall, Nitze, Forrestal, Kennan, Dulles, Byrnes and others who were ” present at the creation”. Not all of them were, technically speaking, grand strategists and quite a few were wrong on points large and small. Some of them schemed and others curried favor, while holding their democratically elected superiors in contempt. But these were insightful, well educated, men who took the responsibility of statesmanship seriously and for whom country came before party. At least most of the time.

At times, their prose is even a pleasure to read. Acheson on the Coal and Steel community that healed 80 years of Franco-German rancor or Stimson on the art of the possible in Eastern Europe after Yalta, is a level of understanding of foreign affairs often absent in Washington today.

ON BIAS AND THINKING

I’d like to juxtapose a couple of interesting posts that I have read this week that have bearing on how we select information that subsequently shapes our thoughts.

At Complexity and Social Networks Blog, Maria Binz-Scharf asks “How does the way we process information relate to how we search for it?“. A key excerpt:

“Some days ago I attended a talk on human information processing by Thomas Mussweiler from the University of Cologne who spoke at the Columbia Business School. Mussweiler and colleagues conducted an impressive number of experiments on the mechanisms and influences of individual information processing. A simple example would be to ask you to determine your best athletic performance. You have two basic options: 1) You think of every single athletic moment in your life, i.e. you engage in absolute information processing, or 2) you compare what you recollect as some of your best performances to a given standard, e.g. a famous athlete’s performance (or a famous couch potato’s performance). Not surprisingly it turns out that comparison allows to process information in a more efficient manner.

Mussweiler went on to talk about various factors that influence the comparisons we make, most importantly the standards we employ for comparing information. His experiments used a technique called “priming” to activate certain standards – for example, subjects were asked to judge a trait in a person. The result shows that priming a trait concept (such as aggressiveness) will induce the subject to judge the target person according to that trait. In other words, once activated, standards are spontaneously compared to the target person.”

This is very interesting. “Priming” would be an efficiency mechanism for rapid mental screening of a large number of things. It is also a “bias mechanism” that would strongly predispose you to see some evidence of what pattern you are looking for, even if it does not exist. It would be very much like the ” Framing” of George Lakoff in its effect.

How to deal with that effect, our own unintentional biases or being targeted by zealous Lakoffian framers ? Metacognition might be a helpful technique, as suggested in the post “Strategic Learning: Metacognition and Metamemory” at The Eide Neurolearning Blog . The Drs. Edie write:

“High level strategic learning often requires constant self-regulation and error monitoring strategies, metacognition (thinking about the thought processes), sometimes specific memory techniques (metamemory or conscious thinking about memory).”

Such self-regulative monitoring provides a mental check against racing ahead with a dubious but attractive premise. It would also tend to derail the the likelihood of the amygdala becoming overly engaged in the heat of the argument and turning us into red-faced, sputtering, arm-waving, buffoons with a surge of emotionality.

Cross-posted to Chicago Boyz

VERTICAL EXPERTS THINKING HORIZONTALLY

I just saw this book for the first time today while reading Dr. Nexon’s post at The Duck of Minerva on the recent review in International Affairs.

Nexon and Neumann have a brilliant touchstone concept for Generation Y here. Even the students who dislike reading have read Harry Potter. A quick poll of my own students revealed a number just shy of 100% have read at least one book in the series and a slight majority have read them all. A large majority have watched every Harry Potter movie. They are saturated in all things Potter the way an earlier generation of baby boomers drank deeply of The Lord of the Rings.

SOCRATES AND THE FREE PLAY OF CIVIC MILITARISM

William Lind at DNI had an excellent article up today dedicated to the “free play” military educational program of Major Don Vandergriff. Like most things rooted in good principles, the program has broader application than where it was begun by Vandergriff. Lind writes:

“We should all therefore greatly admire those few Army officers who have tried to wake their dinosaur up. None has done more than Major Don Vandergriff. Not only has he produced two excellent books that get at the heart of the Army’s problem, its personnel system, he also led a highly successful reform of the Army’s Georgetown University ROTC program. ROTC is, for the most part, a sad joke. Vandergriff’s program was a highly demanding, creative exercise in building real leaders. Many of its graduates have gone on to outstanding performance as platoon and company commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The purpose, I would add, is not just to challenge them but to develop in them the habit of “looking up” and seeing their own situation in a larger context that is essential for mission-type orders to work.”

Those who read Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling And The Stone, may recall Hammes’ endorsement of free play training as a tool for creating an officer corps capable of handling 4GW opponents.

These sort of exercises are very powerful teaching tools because they stress a fluid combination of imaginative speculation, analysis, methodical problem-solving and drawing upon existing knowledge – and does so under the crucible of situational pressure. Some of you readers were fortunate enough to be taught in a classroom that relied heavily upon the Socratic method, which incorporates some of the same aspects, to a lesser degree, in a classroom setting (if you weren’t, then think of the Professor Kingsfield character in the movie, The Paper Chase).

Vandergriff would have the Army teach its officers a mode of thinking that ought to have been inculcated in public school so that every citizen, civilian or soldier, can think critically, independently and creatively. This is not cognitive training for war but for life.