Galrahn on NCW, Corbett and Barnett
Galrahn at Information Dissemination had a great post recently that tied Naval strategist Julian Corbett in to NCW and Thomas P.M. Barnett:
The Sin That Will Sink the Strategy
….Julian Corbett believed the object of naval warfare “must always be directly or indirectly either to secure the command of the sea or to prevent the enemy from securing it.” In that spirit we observe Social Network-Centric Warfare to be the cooperative processes that mitigates the disruption of cooperative command of the sea to promote peacetime commerce. As part of a circular theory. Social Network-Centric Warfare responsibilities for the Navy exist both prior to warfare (cooperative partnerships) and after warfare (reconstitution of commerce and security), also described as the periods of time absent warfare. We observe that Social Network-Centric Warfare relies upon the application of Network-Centric Warfare to regain command of the sea when command is lost.
In a retrospective review of the seven deadly sins put forth by Thomas Barnett, we see them not as the devil’s advocate position he initially portrayed them as, rather as an antipodal point in the circular theory of warfare that the Navy is being asked to execute in strategy. We acknowledge up front that warfighting and peacemaking are not diametrically opposite, however we also observe the methods and/or intentions often are.
Read it in full here.
February 24th, 2008 at 4:41 am
Galrahn goes off in a rather different direction than Barnett..I’ve seen a lot of Barnett’s ideas with which I disagree. I fear he is mostly interested in selling the ideas that his customers want to buy..The danger is that he might fail to exercise due diligence and accidentally sell ideas that are logically fallacious..E.g. Barnett writes: "Frankly, it stretches my imagination to the limit to conjure up seriously destabilizing threats from resource-poor, small states, …" .Well, sure, the states aren’t a threat. Watch out for the Ted Kaczynskis, though.
February 24th, 2008 at 4:42 am
I really must apologize for failing to get the typesetting right.<P>test<p> Perhaps raw HTML code will work…</p>