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The rountable on Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd by Colonel Frans P. Osinga has begun at Chicago Boyz. The introductory post is up,  from which I will quote:

A tireless briefer and formidible mentor, Boyd wrote only a few papers and never attempted a magnum opus, preferring to evolve his thinking through the intellectual give-and-take of briefing sessions, deep reading, discussion and reflection. While Boyd’s slides remain readily available online at DNI and Belisarius.com, the context that Colonel Boyd created when he gave his talks are not always obvious to the viewer. As a result, a summative statement and analysis of Boyd’s strategic theory had been lacking until now. Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd by Colonel Frans P. Osinga has filled that breach.

And also introduce our roundtable of reviewers:

William F. “Wilf” Owen – A military writer and Editor of The Asian Military Review. A military theorist with a special interest in tactical doctrine. Wilf Owen served for twelve years in the British Army and is a
member of the Small Wars Council.

Shane Deichman – Former Science Adviser to JFCOM. Particle physicist. Managing Director of Operations for IATGR. Managing Director of EnterraSolutions, LLC. ORCAS (Oak Ridge). Blogger, Wizards of Oz, Dreaming 5GW.

Adam Elkus – free-lance writer for Defense & The National Interest, The Huffington Post, Athena Intelligence, Foreign Policy in Focus. Blogger, Rethinking Security, Dreaming 5GW.

Lexington Green of Chicago Boyz

“Dan of tdaxp” – Dan of tdaxp is currently working on his third advanced degree, a doctorate in psychology. Computer programmer/web designer. Lecturer. Blogger at tdaxp, Dreaming 5GW.

“Historyguy99″ – Historian. Veteran of the Vietnam War. Blogger, HG’s World.

Mark Safranski – Teacher, Educational consultant. Adviser, Conversationbase, LLC. Contributor, HNN. Member, Small Wars Council. Blogger, Zenpundit, Chicago Boyz.

We are also very pleased to have an author’s rebuttal/response at the conclusion of the reviews, from:

Dr. Frans Osinga – Colonel, Royal Netherlands Air Force. Fighter Pilot. Associate Professor of War Studies at the Netherlands Defense Academy. Formerly, of Nato’s Supreme Allied Command Transformation. Research Fellow, Clingendael Institute of International Relations. Author of Science, Strategy and War:The Strategic Theory of John Boyd.

Read the introductory post in full here.

We had the honor of having Wilf Owen give the first review of the roundtable – and he pulled few punches:

The fact that no one previously attempted such a task is to my mind indicative of John Boyd’s actual contribution to military thought. I admit to being a Boyd sceptic and this book merely confirmed all my doubts about his work, which I had harboured since reading the Coram and Hammond biographies. This book, like the biographies, is based on the premise that Boyd was an important and profound thinker on War. This is not a view I would share, but I concede he was vastly influential. Influential does not mean good. Was Boyd any good is the question the book should answer.

Read Wilf Owen’s review in full here.

Dave Schuler of The Glittering Eye tapped me with the 123 Meme. The Rules of the 123 Meme are as follows:

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Dave had a fine selection, a book`that coincidentally sits closely nearby on my own shelf. As a result, I decided to go with what was nearest in terms of the unshelved,” handy”, unread bookpile from which I pick up and read at odd moments or choose from to read seriously from start to finish. At the top of the pile is Robert Dallek’s Nixon and Kissinger:Partners in Power. The anecdote has an eerie timeless quality about it:

When Nixon and Kissinger told Hoover that the May 9 and earlier leaks”were more than damaging, they were potentially dangerous to national security,”  Hoover  began tapping the phones of three national security officials identified by Henry – Henry Davidson, Morton Halperin, and Hal Sonnenfeldt – and one other Defense Department officer, Colonel Robert Pursley, a Laird assistant. Within days, two other NSC staff members came under scrutiny as well: Richard Moose and Richard Sneider. FBI agents also began listening to the phone conversations of four journalists- Beecher and Hedrick Smth of the Times, and an English correspondent based in Washington, Henry Brandon of the Sinday Times of London, and CBS newsman Marvin Kalb.

By the power vested in me by the 123 Meme, I infect the following bloggers:

Shane Deichman of Wizards of Oz

Bruce Kesler of Democracy Project

Dave Davison of Thoughts Illustrated

Cheryl Rofer of Whirledview

Dr. Daniel Nexon of The Duck of Minerva

I’m back!

Top Billing! In honor of  Monday’s roundtable, some visualization and explanation of the intellectual journey of John Boyd from Dr. Chet Richards -“Where Boyd Got the Discourse“.

 The Lounsbury -“Dollars, Gulf Politics & MENA Economies, tip, tip toeing….”  Given the interest over the Fallows article on the Dollar-based hedge policy of China, Collounsbury weighs in Qatar trying to hedge against the dollar’s weakness and econ conditions in MENA. His remark on the 1970’s resonates for those who recall the bombshell of Nixon taking Connally’s advice to let the Dollar float and ending it’s ethereally abstract tie to gold. Nixon did so because foreign dollars reserves vastly exceeded the ratio under which the old policy had been sustainable.

John Robb – “PANDORA’S BOX”  The heterogeneity of warfare’s downward spiral in an era of interconnective globalization and state-decline.

Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett – “Barnett: Better days, just not right now”  Tom and John could go on the road as The Odd Couple of geopolitical security analysis; here Tom outlines the upsides of our current national malaise.

Jeremy Young – “Blogging and Peer Review”  Jeremy squarely hits the nail on how blogging as a platform threatens gatekeeping elites in academia and the “rule of the journals”. Let’s be honest here. Peer-review journals enforce scholarly standards in terms of form but how often have we read an article in one where the argument was so strained and intellectually shoddy, the citations weak or irrelevant that we had to wonder how in the hell it was published if not via some personal connection between author and editor? 

SWJ Blog – “Are We Ready for Hybrid Wars?” Summarizes a new argument by top level military thinker Frank Hoffman.

Swedish Meatballs Confidential puts their (meat)ball back into blogospheric play after a long holiday hiatus. Welcome back !

Matt Armstrong gets noticed.

That’s it!

I’m breaking radio silence in part because of the comment left by “Moon” and partly because I should have done this a week ago. Unfortunately, I’ve been swamped with a constellation of projects, problems and papers and I’ve had to put the blog on the backburner in a (mostly futile) effort to get caught up. Nevertheless, I’m quite pleased to offer the following information:

On Monday February 4th, Chicago Boyz will be hosting a blogging roundtable on Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd by Colonel Frans P. Osinga. Slightly over ten years since his death, the influential strategist and iconoclastic USAF Colonel John Boyd remains a subject of controversy despite the fact that ( or more likely, because) many of his ideas impacted and informed military “transformation”, Network-centric Operations and the theory of 4th Generation Warfare.

The full introductory post will be made on Monday but I am proud to say that we have a very strong stable of reviewers and that the author, Dr. Osinga has agreed to participate in the discussion.

Cross-posted at Chicago Boyz