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4GW WAR OF WORDS CONTINUES

“The 4GW Scrum Gets Really Ugly” at Opposed System Design

“The Myth of Grand Strategy” by Fabius Maximus at DNI

“Repeat after Me: grand strategy is a LONG TERM pursuit” by Dr. Barnett

“All-Mercenary service?” – thread at the Small Wars Council.

Advocates of the 4GW school of thought, for all their emphasis on the superiority of a defensive posture over an offensive one, appear to be on the warpath lately.

The latest post by Fabius Maximus, while an intriguing writer to be sure, exemplifies a weakness of intellectual culture prevalent in 4GW , namely a fascination with the primarily destructive aspects of Boyd’s strategic theory and a general unwillingness ( Chet Richards excepted) to deeply contemplate the constructive aspects that are implied by Boyd’s ” theme for vitality and growth“. Their “ dialectic engine” seems to be missing a few cylinders these days. It was not always so:

“On one hand, as shown on the previous chart, the National Goal and Grand Strategy tend to be constructive in nature. On the other hand, the Strategic Aim, Strategy, Grand Tactics, and Tactics are destructive in nature and operate over a shorter time frame. In this sense, the upper two and the latter four notions. as expressed, appear to be in disharmony with one another. Yet, application of these latter four strategic and tactical notions permit real leadership to avoid high attrition, avoid widespread destruction, and gain a quick victory”

Good grand strategies are rare, admittedly, but most of those were accomplished by design rather than by default. Bismarck planned, Hitler improvised. The Founding Fathers built, the Jacobins destroyed. Moral cohesion requires more than avoidance of conflict or effective execution of military power – it demands a comprehensible and intellectually compelling vision that can pass from one generation to the next.

It requires the constructive thinking embodied by grand strategy- as Dr. Barnett is doing – and not merely anticipating the destruction of systems.

SOTU

Can’t muster the interest to watch. I may comment on some of the specific proposals.

Example:

70,000 new Math and Science teachers.

Comment:

Great idea as a concept. We sure could use them but market incentives for high level math and hard science skills trend heavily against this ever coming to pass. Engineering careers and computer fields absorb most of our native math talent. This isn’t the same thing as Clinton’s 100,000 cops – the human resource here is not as fungible , hence the shortage. We can’t even import enough immigrants with math degrees to fill our research programs in private industry and at universities, much less the k-12 public schools.

Why teach fresh out of college for $ 22 -29k when someone with a math degree can go to work in the computer industry for twice that and make a salary in four or five years with a Bachelor’s degree what they couldn’t make after 30 years in the public schools with a Ph.D ? I’m not certain how we can have brilliant math and science teachers who are also strangely unaware of basic economics.

SHAPING THE BATTLESPACE: INFORMATION OPERATIONS STRATEGY

Hat tip Rough Type:

Here is an interesting declassified DoD document from 2003 outlining ” Information Operations” a rubric under which the Pentagon has placed PSYOPS, Strategic Influence, Disinformation, Electromagnetic weapons of mass disruption, IT network defense, Cultural Intelligence, Public Diplomacy and some netwar analysis capability. Parts of the PDF are redacted but it doesn’t take too much imagination to fill in some of the blanks.

On the positive side, if you read between the lines you can see a growing familiarity with Boyd’s OODA loop on an institutional level as the Pentagon attempts to craft a coherently strategy to influence a battlespace composed of multiple audiences – elite, mass, Arab, American and European – all of whom filter media delivered information through different cognitive frames. Another positive is that obvious deficits in terms of cultural intelligence and the subsequent impact on PSYOPS are frankly admitted.

On the negative side, the document reads too much like the Pentagon is still trying to get a handle on the nature of IO itself and isn’t quite certain of the parameters here. IT network defense and cyberwarfare in general, or at least its technical and operational aspects would probably have been better served as the focus of a separate document.

Wonder what the classified follow up looks like. Particular after Titan Rain.