zenpundit.com

CREATIVITY AS THE KEY TO ESCAPING THE TYRANNY OF SELF-REFERENTIAL PARADIGMS

Only a short post for now as work is surging today – and blogging is my way of procrastinating . Actually, this post topic relates directly to my actual job, so strictly speaking, this still counts as ” work” :o)

Several things have caught my eye that relate to one another, though not in an obvious way.

First, the esteemed Drs. Eide of The Neurolearning Blog drew my attention with this post to a set of online tests by Texas Tech University that are indicators for creativity. Take a few of them as they are short. I personally like giving people the nonverbal ones best because the results do not get hijacked by idiosyncratic linguistic habits intefering with comprehension

Secondly, Art Hutchinson the strategic thinking guru and founder of Cartegic Group has a post up on his Mapping Strategy blog on ‘The Young Arab Leaders Conference’ and Scenario Planning ( For more on the conference itself, go here. For the purpose and utility of scenario exercises, go here).

Art’s comment on the Conference ( which incidentally is a good idea in my view) was as follows:

“Given the complexity of what’s going on in the region right now (Iraq being only a part), it would be a shame if the scenarios they discuss are entirely focused on oil and gas. As a tool, scenarios are deeply embedded into the planning cultures of many oil and gas companies (Shell being the most well known.) Properly applied however, they’re at least as powerful for strategic planners in other industries (including government) to holistically think through the interlocking issues (e.g., social, political, military, demographic, religious, constitutional, etc.) that the entire region is facing over the next few years. Oil and gas will be just a part of that picture – albeit a fairly big part.”

I agree. Now I will add my two cents:

In getting the participants to engage in scenarios the facilitators are going to be bumping up against a political-cultural reinforcement of the powerful human tendency to become imprisoned in self-referential paradigms. All human cultural and organizational groups are affected by this tendency to varying degrees regardless of whether we are discussing Americans, corporate CEOs, Salafis, Lawyers, String theorists, members of organized crime, Episcopalian clergy – you name it, if a collective body is at all cohesive then over time ” groupthink” emerges.

In the Arab world, you have authoritarian governmental systems, secular and religious ideologies like pan-Arabism, Anti-colonialism or Islamism and in some places the legacy of tribal societal rule-sets all converging to stifle the critical dialogue required to actually solve problems. The closest American equivalent to this effect – and it isn’t a very good analogy except insofar as it too was reinforced by the possibility of private and state violence – was the issue of race and the color line in the Jim Crow South. Attempts at rational public discussion on a whole range of policy issues were either grotesqely distorted or stymied because they might call the precepts of segregation into question. As a consequence, the South remained the most economically undeveloped region of the United States until the 1970’s when de jure segregation was dismantled.

Because the hot button issues in the Arab World are so numerous right now – Women’s rights, Israel, free-market liberalization, democracy, Westernization – the scenario facilitators might gain the most productive results from devising depoliticized hypotheticals and concentrating on horizontal thinking solutions to systems-based problems that do not easily ” fit” the shopworn but emotionally negative frames that block so much potential progress in the Mideast. If the Conference yields answers that can be expressed in a script that does not alert vested interests to mobilize to defend their broken status quo, then the ideas generated will have some chance, however slim, of being realized on the ground.

More on horizontal thinking:

“Ed DeBono ” Lateral Thinking & Parallel Thinking”

” Think Horizontally and Vertically“

” Horizontal Learning“

ROBB ON BOBBITT’S “VIRTUAL-STATE” EPOCHAL WAR

John Robb of Global Guerillas gives an endorsement to, and a sneak peak at, Philip Bobbitt’s yet to be released book, War Against Terror ( John has it :” Terror, Can We Win This War” and Amazon also lists it as just plain ” Terror” – so, the lack of a single working title indicates that we are getting a look fairly early into the publishing process – cool !). Here’s an excerpt from Robb’s post (Bobbitt quote is in italics):

” ‘…Whereas the nation-state based its legitimacy on a promise to better the material well-being of the nation, the market-state promises to maximize the opportunity of each individual citizen. The current conflict is one of several possible wars of the market-states as they seek to open up societies to trade in commerce, ideas, and immigration which excite hostility in those groups that want to use law to enforce religious or ethnic orthodoxy. States make war, not brigands; and the Al Qaeda network is a sort of virtual state, with a consistent source of finance, a recognized hierarchy of officials, foreign alliances, an army, published laws, even a rudimentary welfare system…’

This is a very useful framework by which to view the current conflict. It is also a natural compliment to Global Guerrillas — the rise of the virtual state, its new methods of warfare, and its impact on the world is a subject of my work here “

To echo the comments I left over at Global Guerillas, I much prefer Dr. Bobbitt’s shift of emphasis to ” Virtual-State” because:

a)It cuts to the heart of the conflict regarding globalization

b)”Virtual-State” as a term embraces a wide variety of non-state networks with starkly different motivations/aspirations in seeking to exercise state-like power ( Narco-State, Sharia-State, Tribal-State etc.)

c)It is an accurate structural/organizational descriptor of a networked entity.

My criticism from the other day has been pretty much rendered moot as Bobbitt is now articulating both the economic system conflict at the root of the war and the critical impact that scale free networks are having in globalization, warfare and politics.

Color me ” impressed”.

ON MUSIC AND WAR [ Updated]

This post is more of a cultural question I’d like answered from someone in the know.

If you watch the film Braveheart and you see the Scots assembling at Stirling under William Wallace to fight the dastardly English, there are of course, bagpipes playing. Loud, cacophonous and brash – before the Scots ( after the inspiring speech by Mel Gibson, of course) in age-old Celtic style, adorned with blue paint, scream horrific insults at the English and work themselves into a barbaric frenzy.

Or if you are a fan of The History Channel you can’t but help notice in their innumerable WWII documentaries the extent to which the Nazis resorted to music – Deutschland Uber Alles, The Horst Wessel Lied, Wagner, chanting or singing in unison, masses of drums or horns – to mobilize the spirit of Nazi and Wehrmacht formations right down to the rhythmic march of jackboots on pavement.

Traditional, American martial music is either religious – The Battle Hymn of The Republic – or John Philip Sousa – rousing, cheery and optimistic – or sonorous and lonely like Taps played at The Tomb of The Unknown Soldier. However, it must be noted that since at least the invasion of Panama, psychological warfare against the enemy has involved the blasting of nonstop Rock music.

So, is there a deep cultural connection between how a nation makes music and how it makes war? Are the complex symphonies of the 18th century a reflection of the exquisitely disciplined field manuevers of Europe’s small and highly-trained professional armies before the coming of the Levee en Masse ? Does music and warfare simply adapt to the spirit of the times ?

Or do they shape their time and each other as well ?

UPDATE:

Some excellent comments – in particular this one by Curtis demands attention:

“…In fact, tones can also be used metrically or rhythmically in opposition or agreement to the meters and have a way of tying content to rhythms. How long a tone is held — the length of the note in song or of the syllable in spoken languages — can point at key ideas/themes. What is particularly interesting about this is the differentiation of languages: different languages use these musical structures differently. (Some are more tone-based, some are quantitative — i.e., hold sounds for particular lengths — etc.) So, from this perspective, different types of music might be deeply related to different languages and thus to different cultures. “

Any linguists care to comment ?

Also thanks to Younghusband for the link !

WITHDRAW FROM IRAQ? RECOMMENDED READING AND COMMENTARY:

Dave Schuler of The Glittering Eye set off a blogospheric dialogue on the prospect of withdrawing from Iraq – all thoughtful and considered arguments from the participants:

“Discussing Withdrawal From Iraq” by Dave Schuler

” Thoughts on Withdrawal” by Dan Darling at Winds Of Change

“Staying the Course and Paying for it” by Jeff Medcalf at Caerdroia

“The Political Reality of Troop Withdrawals” by McQ at QandO

“Biden, Democrats Ask The Wrong Questions” by Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters

Additional Related Links:

“The Controlled Chaos Exit From Iraq” by John Robb at Global Guerillas

“Iraqi Guerillas Make Key Demands of CIA at Cairo Conference” by Juan Cole at Informed Comment

My best forecast is that the United States will make a partial withdrawal from Iraq because the U.S military absolutely requires it at the current level of force structure, regardless of the situation in the Sunni Triangle. We’ll probably do a mix of deal-cutting, unleashing of the loyalist paramilitaries and reducing to a heavy-duty ” sledgehammer” force to hang in the background and support our Iraqi allies.

The post-Cold War demobilization that occurred during the Clinton and first Bush administration set a force level that was inadequate for the United States to carry out any of its presumed global responsibilities other than short-term MOOTW operations and bombing the hell out of some rogue state by air. Never mind fighting 2.5 or 1.5 wars at once, we’re having grevious personnel rotation trouble with just one.

The mismatch of potential missions with the size of American ground forces is not accidental either but a deliberate policy of politicians from both parties who saw a pot of money in 1990 to use for other things but did not care to admit that slashing the Army from 18 to 12 active-duty divisions also meant changing our strategic expectations for using the Army. A policy of unreality cheerfully continued by the Bush administration for reasons both good ( force the Pentagon to transform) and bad ( it costs money without paying political dividends).

We forget that with an economy 25 % smaller in terms of GDP, the United States once easily afforded parking 300,000 troops in West Germany alone, a mere 15 years ago. So our current dilemma is a matter more of political choice than wallet but the problem cannot be fixed except over a period of several years, so we are left pretty much with employing the paramilitaries alongside an American counterinsurgency effort or giving up.

The loyalist paramilitaries are chomping at the bit, arguing that fire can only be fought with a fire that Washington does not have the stomach to do itself. They’re probably correct – the insurgency can be defeated militarily ( or significantly degraded) but not without getting your hands dirty by slaughtering (or at least jailing) Sunni clansmen en masse until the insurgent networks collapse. It’s a pragmatically ruthless tactic with a record of success in strangling guerilla armies that goes back to the Boer War, but it requires a Lord Kitchener type leader to carry it out and is exceedingly difficult to do and still look like you are the guy wearing a ” white hat”. (Though, perhaps if Zarqawi , whose Qaida Iraq group Juan Cole reports as being ” fabulously wealthy”, assists us by ramping up his own level of ghoulish atrocities, it isn’t impossible).

President Bush, for good or ill, is no Lord Kitchener and even winning on the battlefield this way becomes meaningless unless America also wins in the “moral” and “political” spheres in Iraq. Indeed, the Boer war was won by Great Britain militarily, British ” paramountcy” in the Cape was preserved by bringing the Afrikaaner states into the empire, but the political costs were very high. Arguably, the Boer War weakened Britain’s hold over ” the white dominions” and left the British Empire less willing or able to face up to looming strategic challenges, economic or military.

An outcome the United States cannot afford.

MARKET-STATE vs. SHARIA-STATE ?

The central hypothesis of Philip Bobbit’t’s The Shield of Achilles is that there has been an evolution in constitutional states driven by the dynamic interplay of law, strategy and history. Furthermore, accordng to Bobbitt, the era of the sovereign nation-state is passing away due to ( I reify here for brevity’s sake):

1. The Moral Claim of Human Rights
2. Nuclear Weapon proliferation
3. Rise of global and transnational threats
4. Globalization of liberal capitalist economic model
5. Rise of the global communications network

Emerging is a new constitutional form that Bobbitt calls “ The Market-State“, dedicated to ” maximizing the opportunities for its people”. For a lengthier examination of The Shield of Achilles and the ideas of Bobbitt, check out Josh Manchester’s post at The Adventures of Chester.

Using Bobbitt’s definition, should the Old and New Core manage to harmonize their rule-sets on security and transactional effciency, the entire Core could be an incipent market-state. These market-states are seemingly purer, more open-dended network structures than nation-states as Bobbitt classifies the broader Islamist, jihadi, insurgency as a market-state:

“This network, of which Al Qaeda is only a part, greatly resembles a multinational corporation but that is simply to say that it is a market-state, made possible by advances in international telecommunications and transit, rapid computation and weapons of mass destruction.” (p.820)

I have to disagree. While al Qaida and the greater Islamist-Salafi-Jihadi network of radicals and terrorists exist in this fluid, “market-state” form described by Bobbitt, the state is transient and tactical. It is quite clear from both by example and by public declarations that the Islamists have an entirely different and comprehensive alternative social contract in mind – The Sharia-State – which when they control territory they refer to as an ” Emirate” or as a “Caliphate” ( the former exemplified by Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and the latter entity encompassing the entire future territorial extent of the Ummah).

A sharia-state would begin by rejecting outright the above points 1 and 4 as these secular concepts clash with longstanding interpretations of Islamic Law and the rulers would also be compelled ideologically to severely restrict the operation of point 5. In fact, all of this occurs already in sharia-influenced nation-states like Iran and Saudi Arabia so we need only extrapolate to imagine an al Qaida Arabia or a Jihadi Egypt. The sharia to hard-core salafis is meant not as a guide but a set of divine regulations – and substantially regulations of a political nature – though competing schools of Islamic jurisprudence differ on the meaning and extent of particular interpretations.

In other words, the fundamental preconditions for a market-state would be intolerable to a sharia-state making the latter a deadly 4GW rival of the former and not, as Bobbitt maintained, a variation.