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A  surprise Valentine’s Day Gift from Mrs. Zenpundit to better suport my humble blogging efforts ( along with facilitating several graphics-rich gaming platforms that were stressing out my aging 1 gig PC). Currently transferring a multitude of files and reloading programs. Will return to normal blogging on Friday.

My esteemed colleague Dan of tdaxp recently suggested making use of the micropublishing service Nimble to put the Osinga Roundtable on Science, Strategy and War at Chicago Boyz  into dead-tree, published format. This was seconded via email by another blogfriend who did not participate in the roundtable but would like a hard copy for his own purposes. If I were to set about doing this, I’d envision trying to get permission to include a few related pieces from outside the scope of the roundtable contributions that would extend and enrich the reader’s understanding of John Boyd and give them a book that, while slim in size, would still be substantive and tightly focused.

Before I embark on getting the ball rolling with the  interested parties, is there a desire out there for such a book ? Assuming I get everyone’s buy-in and permission, the cost would run around $17 + , more or less, plus whatever Nimble might charge for shipping and handling. 

Dave Dilegge and Bill Nagl have announced that the already excellent, peer reviewed,  Small Wars Journal is moving on to BETA status:

What’s this BETA / interim stuff?

We have great content now from contributing authors, and it has been hanging fire for too long in the bowels of Small Wars Journal. We are still a lottery ticket and a horseshoe nail away from having the Fully New and Completely Improved SWJ Magazine. So here, as an interim solution, is the partially new and still-improving SWJ Magazine.

The articles published here have been peer-reviewed for content and quality, and accepted for publication.  We’re behind on formatting, editing, etc.  The articles are provided now “as is” because this is the way we can get their important messages out without further delay (which, in some cases, has already been substantial).  Revised versions for edits, formatting, and presentation will be posted when they are available and as site improvements are made.

Note that the individual article Titles, Permalinks, and Comments will stay stable throughout our growth, so don’t worry about us pulling that rug out from under you as you link to or comment upon these pieces.  But the links to the temporary PDF docs will change, so please don’t link straight to them

Growth pains are just a bump in the road. Congratulations on moving forward!

Colonel Frans Osinga, currently Associate Professor of War Studies at the Netherlands Defense Academy, agreed to give an author’s reply to the Roundtable on Science, Strategy and War at Chicago Boyz. Dr. Osinga produced an extended essay that sheds additional light on to the ideas of John Boyd and he generously included access to his doctoral dissertation from which Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd originated. It differs somewhat from the book and will be of interest to anyone who wants to dive deeper into the subjects and sources used by Colonel Boyd in formulating his strategic vision.

An excerpt:

My own view of Boyd – briefly – is that (albeit biased) he developed a very impressive, rich and coherent set of ideas, often with elements of profound novelty, with a wide range of applicability (see for instance the presentation of Chet Richard’s et al on Boyd/4GW and the Iraqi insurgency, but also the various presentations/papers on the DNI site where Boyd’s ideas are applied in an increasing number of environments). It is many things and refuses to be captured by one-liners or simple icons. In my presentation at the Boyd Conference last July I tried to convey a sense of ‘what’ Boyd’s work is in the following slide.

A Discourse is:

An epistemological investigation
A military history & search for patterns of winning and losing
An argument against:
– Attritionist mindset
– Deterministic thinking & predictability
– Techno-fetishism
A rediscovery of the mental/moral dimensions of war
A philosophy for command and control
A redefinition of strategy
A search for the essence of strategic interaction
A plea for organizational learning and adaptability
An argument on strategic thinking

It must rank among the few general theories of war. He is certainly one of the prime contemporary strategists. Sure, his is not the final word on strategy. Indeed, he left an unfinished legacy, in line with his view that understanding war – a social behaviour with evolving features – requires a constant multidisciplinary search for improved and updated insights. Moreover, one will struggle if one wants to distil from Boyd’s work distinct ‘how-to’ guidelines for campaign planning. As with all major theorists and intellectual innovators there are also distinct ‘hooks’ in his work for developing critique. But as a guide on what sort of intellectual attitude and activity is required for understanding war and strategy I’ve found him invaluable. Trying to understand him was (and remains) a challenging but equally rewarding education. It has significantly broadened my intellectual horizon. Boyd made me think. And that was his whole point because A Discourse on Winning and Losing at heart is about ‘intellectual evolution and growth’, as he wrote in the margins of a number of books.

Read the rest here. 

I’d like to take a moment and thank Dr. Osinga and our reviewers – Wilf Owen, Dan of tdaxp, Dr. Chet Richards, Shane Deichman, Historyguy99, Lexington Green and Adam Elkus ( who has a post  that will be up at CB soon) along with Jonathan, the site administrator of Chicago Boyz who was always at the ready with technical assistance. The roundtable was a great success because of your efforts and participation and I’ll count the experience as one of the high points of my time blogging. I would like to close this with words of wisdom from Colonel John Boyd, as recounted by Martin Edwin Anderson:

“One day you will come to a fork in the road. And you’re going to have to make a decision about what direction you want to go.” [Boyd] raised his hand and pointed. “If you go that way you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and you will get good assignments.” Then Boyd raised the other hand and pointed another direction. “Or you can go that way and you can do something – something for your country and for your Air Force and for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and you may not get the good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won’t have to compromise yourself. You will be true to your friends and to yourself. And your work might make a difference.” He paused and stared. “To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That’s when you will have to make a decision. To be or to do? Which way will you go?”

Let’s assume that Senator Barack Obama wins a narrow but clear majority of Democratic primary votes and delegates but Senator Hillary Clinton nevertheless captures the nomination by prying away just enough insider superdelegates through a series of shady, oleaginous, backroom deals.

Do African-Americans and twentysomething white liberals rebel? Do Democrats close ranks through gritted teeth ? Does Obama accept the Veep slot? Do Democratic-leaning independents go for McCain? What ?