Top Billing! “Strategy Wars” – Something must be in the water. A flame war has broken out between different strategic camps…..
In addition to the two Journal of Strategic Studies “Neo-COIN” articles on which I began commenting last week and Thomas P.M. Barnett explains today Why I largely ignore the in-the-weeds COIN debate, LTC. William Astore, USAF (ret.) wrote a completely incoherent and confused, slash-and-burn, attack, “The U.S. Military’s German Fetish” for TomDispatch.com, on a basket of strategic concepts from a variety of sources that he erroneously attributes to the influence of Carl von Clausewitz on the US military.
At Milpub, seydlitz89 correctly eviscerates Astore’s weird jihad against Clausewitz in A Reflection of the State of US Strategic Thought? but then launches a strange volley of his own, essentially blaming Col. John Boyd for George W.Bush’s invasion of Iraq (which would come as news to most of Boyd’s acolytes, almost all of whom have been militant and vocal critics of the Iraq War). Fabius Maximus, his site in re-launch, goes after Dr. John Nagl with Another sad little bit of agitprop, this time from John Nagl and is joined by Dr. Bernard Finel with The Incoherence of COIN Advocates: John Nagl Edition and Visions of Empire with Ventriloquizing Clausewitz.
Not content to allow the ground-pounders to have all of the attention, Gene Myers in Fifth sense for AFJ, bemoans the impact of COIN and ground support missions on the future intermediate range and strategic long-range capabilities of the USAF and Galrahn wonders in AirSea Battle “if the final product becomes anything more a new wine in old barrels?”. On a humorous note, Joseph Fouche, asserts that military historian Martin van Creveld would run over a kitten with his car.
TDAXP – who loves counterintuitive titles for his posts, has When Stalinism is a Good Thing:
….The Scientific management of the economy was a breakthrough, new way of organizing a country, in which a rational allocation of resources would lead to economic growth. Public education rapidly spread this method, and by the early twentieth centuries the bureaucratic power needed to fix this solution had become ingrained in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Russia, and (through educated and westernized bureaucratic elites) most countries in the world. New Deal Liberalism, Socialism, Fascism, Aryanism, and Communism were all modern ideologies that assumed a scientific approach toward growth.
The last significant attempt to turn back this tide began in 1966, during Mao’s launch of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), in which he purposefully destroyed the Party and State apparati which gave him scientific control over his country, and tried to turn back the hands of history.
John Hagel– Reinventing the Sacred:
Stuart Kauffman’s book “Reinventing the Sacred” really got me thinking about creativity and the sacred. The book is an impressive stroll by a deeply thoughtful scientist through many domains from the microscopic to the cosmic, with a particular focus on the common patterns emerging in the universe, the biosphere and human culture. Kauffman observes:
“We live in a universe, biosphere, and human culture that are not only emergent but radically creative. We live in a world whose unfolding we often cannot prevision, prestate, or predict – a world of explosive creativity on all sides. This is a central part of the new scientific worldview.”
Throughout the book he offers a sustained critique of reductionism. Instead, he stresses the importance of emergence as a way to begin to understand the dynamics that we shape – and that in turn shape us. He is also deeply skeptical of universal laws, focusing instead on understanding the situatedness of the objects under discussion. I found it refreshing that, in discussing situatedness, he puts equal emphasis on context, the surroundings at any point in time, and history, the trajectories that have been traveled by the object.
David Ronfeldt – Incidentals (1st of 5): apropos definitions of “tribes” (and TIMN) and Incidentals (2nd of 5): apropos tribes vis à vis the other TIMN forms:
….While wondering about such matters earlier in November 2009, I spotted a post at an unfamiliar blog, Strategic Social, that aspired to define a “tribe” as “any group of people united by their recognition of organizational hierarchy within their group, who share a cultural identity and make up a unique speech community.” At least this blog was trying to raise attention to the significance of tribes in various areas of society. But this definition of the concept seemed misguided, and I blurted as much:
As one who’s interested in concepts about tribes, occasionally scouts the Net to see what others are saying, and finds myself here for a change, I’d like to offer a quick passing comment:
I like the fact you recognize that tribes are a modern as well as ancient form of organization. But in my view, it’s not wise to start a definition of tribes with a reference to organizational hierarchy. That’s not what’s most important about tribes. Tribes may or may not have much hierarchy; hierarchical institutions are a later form to arise from social evolution. I’d suggest moving the other parts of your definition up front. I’d also suggest broadening the “speech” part, maybe make it “symbolic” instead.
That’s it!
