2007 BOYD CONFERENCE
Excellent! Thanks to the kind offices of Dr. Chet Richards, I’ll be attending the Boyd Conference come July. Looks to be a stellar program of presenters on the ideas of Colonel John Boyd and 4GW theory, from whom I expect to learn a great deal.
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).
IS THE INSURGENCY OVER?
Fabius Maximus offers a contrarian argument at DNI -” The Iraq insurgency has ended, which opens a path to peace“. I found this to be one of FM’s most interesting pieces, which should be read in full; I will comment on several points that intrigued me in particular:
“Having a bureaucracy, capital, constitution, and seat at the UN does not make a government. Governments have specific characteristics. The more of these they possess, the stronger and more durable they are. The most important attributes:
Control of armed forces, or even monopoly of armed force in its borders.
The ability to levy and collect taxes.
An administrative mechanism to execute its policies.
Territory in which it is the dominant political entity.
Control of borders.
Legitimacy (not love) in the eyes of its people.
The national “government” of Iraq has, by most reports, none of these. It lives on oil revenue and US funding. Its ministries are controlled by ethnic and religious groups, parceled out as patronage and run for their “owners” benefit. The only territory it controls is the Green Zone, by the grace of the Coalition’s armed forces.”
Defining or determining the “legitimacy” of states is one of the stickiest questions in international relations and one in which statesmen, political scientists, historians and international law experts lack a consensus. De jure recognition of other states is a small substantive component but a large diplomatic one and it can matter. Having the consent of the governed, implicitly by primary loyalty or explicitly through an electoral process is critical but it can quickly be frittered away through incompetence and weakness.
“What were the Iraq elections? An expression of hope by its people, or an ignorant or delusional attempt at nation-building by America. Perhaps both.
Either way, it was a step on a path to nowhere. Athenian democracy and the Roman republic were built on a foundation of internal political machinery by which the leaders’ decisions were translated into actions. Iraq lacked that after our invasion, and we constructed the government with no supporting bureaucratic mechanisms. Voting does not magically call the necessary apparatus into existence.
The only effective political apparatus in Iraq exists at the local level. Much of that is done by the most basic form of government: only those commanding armed men have a vote.”
The democratic vote in Iraq was a historically important moment, Fabius underestimates the import. He is however, quite correct, that the moment was not capitalized upon nor did the administration even attempt to prepare the interim Iraqi government to do so. Most of the political momentum was lost and democracy as a value was depreciated in the long and mostly pointless wrangling among Iraqi parties that followed. Where was General Leonard Wood when we needed him ?
Fabius also offers some advice:
“Beyond that, there are two possible ways we can help.
First, to secure public spaces in Iraq’s major cities – a form of static defense. No longer attackers, clear to all as only temporary helpers, we might transform from targets to neutral guardians.
Second, even more important, we can secure Iraq’s borders, especially with Iran. Iraq has no Army, probably by our design to maximize their dependence on us. In this role we can relocate our forces out of harm’s way (except as needed as above). Unlike the dreams of neocons, this is probably not a long-term arrangement. If Iraq survives, eventually it will build a real army and tell us to leave.
This plan gives us a soft exit path, no matter what happens in Iraq.”
Some of this is quite sage but I’m hard pressed to see how the first part in particular is going to be different in the functional military sense from what General Petraeus is doing with the COIN surge. Different intent on FM’s part, certainly, but actions will be similar, if not identical.
Much to read in that piece.
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.
Major Vandergriff (recently retired, which illustrates why the Army is hopeless) has turned his experiences at Georgetown into a new book, Raising the Bar: Creating and Nurturing Adaptability to Deal with the Changing Face of War. Unlike most reform books, his is a book of solutions, not just problems.
Top-down reform, like the Army’s ongoing “Transformation” program, changes little but appearances. Vandergriff recognizes that real reform has to come primarily bottom-up. He writes:
After long study and analysis of the Army’s existing system, it is clear that focusing efforts on people who already have had their character defined and shaped by the antiquated personnel system, or what I refer to as today’s leadership paradigm, will be ineffective. Rather, the effective transformation of the Army requires the cultivation of a very different military mindset, starting at the cadet, or pre-commissioning, level. As one former ROTC cadet—now a captain serving with the Special Forces—recently observed: “Why not begin the reform where it all begins?”
At the heart of Vandergriff’s reforms of Army education lies a shift away from teaching officers what to think and what to do—endless processes, recipes and formulas, learned by rote—to teaching how to think, through, as he writes:
1) a case study learning method; 2) tactical decision games; 3) free play force-on-force exercises; and 4) feedback. . The academic methods employed in support of the pillars include: small group lectures, small group training exercises, exercise simulations, staff rides and private study.
…Rightly, Vandergriff rejects the “crawl, walk, run” approach now favored in American military education, which in reality seldom gets beyond “crawl.” He recommends instead what one German general called “the Hansel and Gretel approach: first you let the kids get lost in the woods.”
The POI (Program Of Instruction) begins the development of adaptability through exposure to scenario-based problems as early as possible. The POI should put students in tactical and non-tactical situations that are “above their pay grade” in order to challenge them.
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.
RECOMMENDED READING
Sunday…Sunday…Sunday….where action is the attraction…
Bruce Kesler -” Interagency Coordination Requires Dems & Reps To Come Together“
Top billing. The issue, while seemingly a dry one of inside-the-beltway bureaucratic wrangling among deputy assistant secretaries really could not be more important for increasing the resiliency of U.S. foreign policy. Why can’t the United States respond effectively to nimble 4GW groups ? Look to the lack of “operational jointness“, ” unified action” and ” System Administration” and the plethora of turf battles and bureaucratic empire building. More on this topic in the near future.
James McCormick -“Iklé — Annihilation From Within“
A deep and probing review at Chicago Boyz of an important book (I’m reading it now).
Gabriel Kolko at DNI -” The Age of Perpetual Conflict“
Kolko is the well known Marxist historian and one of the more credible scholars (i.e. he’s a real historian, not a Noam Comsky type polemicist) with an unrelentingly critical view of the United States. I’m holding this one up as a negative example; as a vigorous argument for isolationism and for a weakness of reasoning that assumes as static benefits of global interventionism ( bad actions deterred by the potential of intervention are ignored but are assumed to continue after a shift to isolationism) as a given while counting only the costs.
Catholicgauze -“Turkish Payback to Ralph Peters and Signs of Things to Come? “
I agree this is disturbing. I am no expert on Turkish politics but there seems to be an emerging strand of crypto-Islamist rejectionism of the West in Turkey that is larger than issues over Iraq. To hazard a guess, anti-Americanism is partly a safe “euphemistic” discourse to hide opposition to secularist Kemalism ( which if you oppose openly in Turkey -or even not so openly -that gets your party banned and perhaps you a jail sentence). Anti-Americanism or anti-Westernism can be presented as Turkish nationalism, even when it masks an ideology that is decidely transnationalist.
Marc Schulman – “Who Is George Soros? “
Speaking of disturbing. George Soros appears to be becoming unhinged. Does he realize that he – a major Democratic Party and liberal organization contributor – is openly suggesting introducing Kangaroo Courts to try Republicans and conservatives or is he so isolated in a bubble that he does not realize how that statement sounds to folks who are not on the MoveOn.org email list ?
How would Soros like somebody saying ” We should de-naturalize and deport politically active, authoritarian, crackpot, billionaires who violate the Logan Act ?”
Gunnar Peterson – “Protect the transaction“
System security expert Gunnar Peterson opines on Col. David Kilcullen’s post Two Schools of Classical Counterinsurgency from his professional perspective.
That’s it.
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