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CLAUSEWITZIAN SOCIAL SCIENCE

An interesting contextual reading of On War in Parameters. An excerpt:

“Not only was Clausewitz not the Prussian aggressor or proponent of total war as he is sometimes caricatured, but he was a genuine voice of moderation among Prussian military leaders. An example of his moderation can be found in his discussion of the balance of power in Book 6, Chapter 6. His analysis suggests that common effort and common interest ultimately maintained the balance of power rather than sheer military might—a view that in contemporary social science places his ideas closer to liberal international relations theory than to realism.11 After Napoleon’s final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo, many of Clausewitz’s contemporaries were urging revenge against France while Clausewitz resisted this temptation. Ultimately, Clausewitz’s moderation meant that he had a better grasp of the requisite conditions for a lasting peace agreement. He expressed his views in a candid letter to his wife:

In fact, Clausewitz’s moderation proved detrimental toward the end of his career because of his commitment to one of his cherished reforms—the creation of a popular militia. Clausewitz failed to appreciate the domestic political implications of a militia for Prussia, although the authorities did not. Thus, Frederick William III denied Clausewitz an appointment to a diplomatic post at the Court of St. James because he assumed that such a vocal champion of the militia would hardly be expected to be politically reliable. “

My understanding of modern German history is that Clausewitz’s classic was seldom read by the leaders of either the Kaiser’s Grossgeneralstab or Hitler’s Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. Of course, the same can probably said of the senior leaders of the U.S. Army today.

Or any army for that matter,

BARNETT REVIEWS NEITHER SHALL THE SWORD

Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett reviews Dr. Chet Richards’ tightly written tome Neither Shall The Sword. Like Chet’s book, a must read for the Mil theory addict.

ADDENDUM:

Dan’s review at tdaxp

Zenpundit review of the PPT Neither Shall the Sword Brief

RECOMMENDED READING

A short burst:

Marc at American Future has zeroed in on censorship in Britain where the MSM there is increasingly reluctant to publish criticism of Islamist extremism. Creeping dhimmitude of the postmodern, urban, intellectual.

And now for an interesting juxtaposition….

Collounsbury on “moderate Muslims” – quite accurately pointing out that what most Westerners think of as “moderate” Muslims are actually secularized ” liberals” who are a tiny minority, without much influence and who are often at odds with actual moderate Muslims who are what Gilles Kepel called ” the devout middle-class”. Non-violent but pious, orderly, socially conservative, believers.

that’s it.

DEVOLUTION AND DECENTRALIZATION: MARKET-STATE SECURITY

John Robb of Global Guerillas has an article at Fast Company entitled “ Security: Power to the People“. An excerpt:

“Warren Buffett’s NetJets–will cater to this group, leapfrogging its members from one secure, well-appointed lily pad to the next. Members of the middle class will follow, taking matters into their own hands by forming suburban collectives to share the costs of security–as they do now with education–and shore up delivery of critical services. These “armored suburbs” will deploy and maintain backup generators and communications links; they will be patrolled by civilian police auxiliaries that have received corporate training and boast their own state-of-the-art emergency-response systems. As for those without the means to build their own defense, they will have to make do with the remains of the national system. They will gravitate to America’s cities, where they will be subject to ubiquitous surveillance and marginal or nonexistent services. For the poor, there will be no other refuge.

Until, that is, the next wave of adaptive innovation takes hold. For all of these changes may prove to be exactly the kind of creative destruction we need to move beyond the current, failed state of affairs. By 2016 and beyond, real long-term solutions will emerge. Cities, most acutely affected by the new disruptions, will move fastest to become self-reliant, drawing from a wellspring of new ideas the market will put forward. These will range from building-based solar systems from firms such as Energy Innovations to privatized disaster and counterterrorist responses. We will also see the emergence of packaged software that combines real-time information (the status of first-responder units and facilities) with interactive content (information from citizens) and rich sources of data (satellite maps). Corporate communications monopolies will crumble as cities build their own emergency wireless networks using simple products from companies such as Proxim.”

Have to say right off the bat that ” Armored Suburbs” is a damn fine meme on its own.

John has his fingers on all the entropic pulses at work on the edges of the globalized Core and the evolving networks that may stitch societies and states back together in response to destructive forces or independently of them.

NEO-MAHANISM

First was Robert Kaplan’s over-the-top “ War with China” piece in The Atlantic that sparked Thomas P.M. Barnett’s infamously caustic rebuttal ( with Curzon and I exchanging supporting fire ). Now Ralph Peters has his own ” Navy” piece entitled “Waters of wealth and war ” in The Armed Forces Journal. An excerpt:

“As you read these lines, nearly 20 million shipping containers are underway around the globe — carried by fewer than 4,000 hulls. The explosion of transoceanic trade simultaneously has made that commerce more vulnerable, not only in the obvious sense that economies have grown more interdependent, but also because, even as the volume of shipped goods increased, the number of significant cargo carriers plummeted — because of the increasing size of commercial vessels, from supertankers to container ships. Far fewer transports ply the seas today than a century ago; the sinking, seizure or blockading of a small portion of the international merchant fleet could bring high-end economies to a standstill. While our Navy — the most powerful and skilled in history — focuses on grand fleet actions (or their postmodern, dispersed equivalent), the strategic weak link across the globe is trade.

And no waters are so vulnerable.”

I’m not questioning Peters facts or argument here, I’ll leave that to others to dissect, but I’m curious if this emerging Neo-Mahanist perspective is as relevant today at the start of the twenty-first century as it was at the close of the nineteenth?

I am no opponent of a large and versatile U.S. Navy. Back in the day when the Soviets had ambitions for a global power projection, I admired the Reagan administration’s plan for a 500 Ship Navy and thought that the first Bush administration’s eliminating the Iowa class battleships from active duty removed a useful arrow from the American quiver ( In fact, I still do; the battleship is a ” Leviathan in the Gap” ship if there ever was one). Credibility of American military deterrence, both conventional and nuclear, rests on the expectation of ally and foe alike that the U.S. Navy can show up anywhere and be the hammer of the American Leviathan, from the Arctic circle to the East African coast.

But spatially speaking, isn’t much of the security problem Peters describes here highly, highly, localized to a few choke points where geography and dysfunctional governance coincide ? How will the energy lifelines that China seeks to secure today look in a quarter century when natural gas and most likely, a resurgent nuclear power industry, change the global energy market profile ? Is the security problem in this region answered by massive ( physically and and in terms of investment) naval platforms or nimble littoral/amphibious assault forces, robust HUMINT and SIGINT penetration or even – looking ahead – legions of robotic naval UAV equivalents ?

There’s more here to the geostrategic picture than is dreamt of PACOM’s philosophy.

LINKS:

Younghusband’s Mahan vs. Corbett

Eddie’s post on The Shipbuilding Fantasy of the Navy