Recommended Reading
Excellent, excellent stuff today.
Top Billing! William F. Owen (AFJ) – The War of New Words
This is a much discussed article by SWC stalwart and military consultant, Wilf Owen:
…..Hybrid threats have always existed, but previously we called them “irregulars” or “guerrillas”; both words, in this context, are more than 180 years old. The definition of hybrid threats as “a combination of traditional warfare mixed with terrorism and insurgency” accurately describes irregulars and guerrillas, both of which can be part of either an insurgency or a wider conflict. Yes, guerrillas have changed over time. So have regular forces. Armies of 1825 looked very different from those of 1925 or 1975, yet all were regular forces. Do we need a new word for regular or “conventional” forces? “Hermaphrodite” perhaps?
The most common attempt to redefine the activities of irregular forces and guerrillas has been the using the word “asymmetric,” predicated on trying to describe a dissimilar employment of ways and means that was apparently new. Yet history does not support this thesis, nor does it usefully inform thinking about the future.
The use of the word “hybrid” implies that there is some new phenomenon that requires new codification. If you want to testify before Congress that the U.S. armed forces must have the ability to confront and defeat guerrillas and irregulars, then that advice has been valid for 200 years. Why is it different today?
Those who use the word “hybrid” also tend to use the word “complex” when describing contemporary warfare. This raises the question: When was warfare ever simple? Contemporary warfare is no more complex than historical warfare.
It may be that there is a generation of serving soldiers who do not understand war and warfare as well as past generations, but that is not to say that war today is more complex. The Internet does not make warfare more complex. TV coverage does not make war more complex. Public opinion does not make war more complex. If the root of the argument is that society is becoming more complex, therefore warfare will be more complex, then 20 years from now it will become supercomplex or hypercomplex. Obviously, this is rubbish.
Wilf is an arch-Clausewitzian and he is taking his SWJ amigo Frank Hoffman to task here, along with the 4GW school, EBO advocates, Network-centric Warfare, the COINdinistas, Martin van Creveld, John Boyd, John Robb and pretty much every military theorist since maybe von Moltke the Elder. I enjoy Wilf’s commentary and he has at times, been kind enough to contribute to my projects or engage me in debate. While I can say that I have learned from his insights, on some matters he’s completely wrongheaded and we are never going to agree. Wilf is, however, a great read.
John Robb – IS THE US DoD LOCKED IN AN IVORY TOWER?
The other reason, and this explains the innovation gap, is that most commercial innovation requires an ability to: synthesize strands of complex analysis that span multiple fields of endeavor, plow through ambiguous or messy data in real-time without pause, and flexibly respond to rapidly changing events. In short, everything a PhD is trained NOT to do, at risk of professional suicide.
Yes. In fairness, I will add some caveats to John’s point. First, his argument applies most to PhD’s on the tenure track in universities or university-like settings. Secondly, there are brilliant PhD’s out there who are fantastic synthesizers and original thinkers. They just happen to drive most of their more orthodox colleagues nuts or be the notorious “black sheep” of the institution ( and they are markers for “X” number of similar iconoclasts driven out of programs or positions).
Proceedings – Col. TX Hammes, Maj. William McCallister, Col. John Collins – Afghanistan: Connecting Assumptions and Strategy
Thomas P.M. Barnett – The New Rules: Why America’s War on Drugs Will Wane and Remember, Hirohito was the bad guy, not Harry
Bruce Kesler – The Nuclear Strategy To Neuter The US
The Obama administration policy on nukes is driven by a dangerous idealism that, if carried to the logical conclusion desired by anti-nuclear activists, breaks open the Pandora’s Box of great power war that was sealed shut in the nuclear fires of 1945.
John Hagel – Pursuing Passion
Eide Neurolearning Blog – Lazy Thinkers and Dysrationalia
Network Weaving – The Power of Network Weaving
ZIA – Network Formation and Collective Action
Intelfusion – This is what fuels RF and PRC Cyber Operations
SWJ Blog – Bing West – Afghanistan Trip Report
….I’d like to share a few thoughts. By way of context, let me state my frame of reference. As a former assistant secretary of defense for international security, I am familiar with Washington dynamics; but I believe COIN is decided at the small unit level, not in national capitals. I was 18 months in Vietnam, have written five books on COIN and made 20 trips to Iraq and Afghanistan. This was my third Afghanistan visit in quick succession (April-May, June-July and October). My observations are based on forty to fifty shuras and patrols – several on extended missions – that included numerous small-arms engagements and fire missions. I talked with about 500 Marines and Afghan security forces of all ranks. The observations here are derived from that sample
West is also the author of The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq
Groupintel – Adam Elkus – Hype, Social Media, and Networked Social Movements
Adam is spot on here. Twitter v. North Korea….would not be a good ending.
Haft of the Spear – On Leaping and Looking
The voice of experience.
That’s it!
November 16th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Zen, Mr. Owen points out what many view as the devolution of language (this confounds me daily—if I hear another teenager say "awesome" over something decidedly not…but I digress). Owen is correct that our enemies are not unique in the history of warfare, but as our language changes, we develop semantic methods to convey our thoughts. I admire Owen’s pluck and ideas, but changes in language are unique to each generation even if the challenges faced are eternal..Zen, this post could subsume my day! Thanks!
November 16th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
On Robb’s comment let me say, "I resemble that remark!" And I really want to try and get him as a speaker at the Strategic Studies Institute’s 2010 annual Strategy Conference.
November 16th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
But, let me make a serious comment. I think Robb’s assertion, "The US Defense Department has a very strange approach to how it generates innovation. It, in stark contrast to the commercial world, thinks that innovation in warfare can only occur through the work of PhDs. To wit: People with these titles get the highest rates of pay afforded DoD consultants and almost all projects that attempt innovation or new thought require a PhD on the leadership team…" is balderdash. The post sounds more like a personal tantrum over some past slight than identification of a real problem.
November 17th, 2009 at 1:21 am
Mr. Metz, Your point is well taken, but how much more innovation could be achieved if we reduced the inherrent bureaucracy? We have some outstanding minds (I have The Dept of Mad Scientist in my books stacks—about DARPA) working serious problems—are we asking the question, "How can we make concept to field less painful?"I live and work in DC around DoD—so Robb’s assertion may be perceived as "tantrum" but I interpreted as pure frustration with a system of bureaucracies that rarely betry their inner innovative spirit.
November 17th, 2009 at 4:37 am
Hi gents,
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Steve – I hope that you succeed. I’ve always wanted to see somebody with a platform organize a "dream team" discussion that spans a spectrum of strong, competing, views on defense thinking and strategy. Such a discussion would draw a huge amount of attention and -hopefully – get everyone to think outside of their comfortable theoretical niches.
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I suspect John is indeed speaking from irritation here but is also trying to make a larger point regarding academic specialization being most suitable for certain kinds of problems that are in the confines of one domain rather than being complex or "wicked". I’m sure, given the massive size of the Pentagon budget, that you can point to concrete examples of areas of research/innovation where Robb was overgeneralizing.
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That said, I have seen firsthand the pressure in academic programs to make graduate and postgrad students conform to the reigning paradigm and methodology of the field, rather than question or splice in techniques from other fields in pursuit of interesting ideas. While there’s something to be said for making students internalize the rules of the field, too often they lose some of the ability to think in a consilient fashion along the way. Compared to experimentalists in the hard sciences these days, who often work in a multidiciplinary fashion, the social science researchers behave in a far more compartmentalized, hands-off way toward one another. An anthropologist, a historian and an economist do not work together on an interesting problem as often or as collegially as we might see with a genetic engineer, a particle physicist and a mathematician in a lab. We need to move more in that direction.
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Scott,
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Wilf emphasizes the continuity present in warfare (and there is substantial continuity present) and he generally sticks to military affairs and demurs at being pulled into discussions that hinge on other fields where he is not expert. In my view, this causes him to underestimate the degree to which other domains – say for example, the economics of globalization -influence warfare. In fact, he tends to dismiss these effects outright which simplifies matters but isn’t how the world actually works.
November 17th, 2009 at 11:05 am
LOL. Tantrum? Nah, not sure you understand how I write…
November 18th, 2009 at 5:25 am
[…] publication, The War of New Words by , received this overwhelmingly positive endorsement over at ZenPundit: Wilf is an arch-Clausewitzian and he is taking his SWJ amigo Frank Hoffman to task here, along […]
November 18th, 2009 at 10:26 am
My point was not that we have adequate creative thinking and innovation within defense circles. It was that to blame this on a preference for Ph.D.s is nonsense. I’ve been inside the guild for a long time and have never seen the possession of a degree determine the extent of influence over official thinking. The shortage of creativity and innovation are serious problems, but this is not the cause. I’ve never observed that a possession of a Ph.D. is either a contributor to or an impediment to creativity and innovation either. This is like saying most uncreative people are right handed, therefore we need to minimize the number of right handed people who participate in strategic thinking.
November 18th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Let me elaborate. If you take the set of "people who think about and attempt to influence strategy," the subset "Ph.D.s" is neither more nor less creative than the set as a whole. There may, in fact, be a bias toward including Ph.D.s in strategy focused working groups or commissions because of a (mistaken) assumption that they add gravitas. But I have never in my 22 years in DoD seen or heard of a policymaker giving added weight or credence to a position because it originated with a Ph.D. (with the exception of scientific or technical issues or, possibly, those rare instances where the decision maker was a Ph.D.). This is probably due to communication style: Ph.D.s tend to communicate in complex conceptual terms, which makes their positions seem further from the "real world." If anything, there is a bias in decision making AWAY from Ph.D.s and toward serving or former military (recognizing that those two sets overlap slightly).
November 18th, 2009 at 11:46 am
Sorry for the multiple posts–my intellectual style is the equivalent of human wave attacks!
November 18th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Steven Metz,"…which makes their positions seem further from the "real world." Sir, I’ve been playing in the sand box for about as long as you, and the further up the food-chain the less the real world. Gen Casey actually said that diversity was more important than the safety of troops—that’s pretty "real world." DoD is a swamp of bureaucracies so laden with oversight it is nothing short of a miracle that anything get’s done, much less innovation. Hell, the truth is, the "decision makers" can’t think innovation if you can’t put it on a power point slide and then they are challenged to stay awake.
November 18th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
J. Scott–Of course your point is on the mark. What I was taking issue with is attributing that to Ph.D.s.
November 18th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Mr. Metz, I believe the whole PhD arguement misses the mark; we lack innovation because we reward compliance more than we reward innovation/thinking—I’d rather have 100 operators thinking and innovating than a herd of theorists with letters after their names. Innovation is practiced best by giving practioners the license to think and to do.
November 18th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
That’s a strawman argument. No one ever said that we will either look for innovation from "operators" or "a herd of theorists with letters after their names."
November 18th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Poor choice of words, my apologies—argument wasn’t my point. but I stand by the remainder of the statement. There is much for DoD to learn about innovation. And since innovation is part of my business, and since I work closely with the gov’t I see how the sausage is made and it ain’t pretty in most circles. Cheers!
November 19th, 2009 at 6:16 am
Steve & Scott,
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My apologies for the lack of commenting – my sched is very, very, tight through the 1st week of December.
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Big Steve – always feel free to comment here as you please.
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I agree that PhD as a credential vis-a-vis gatekeeping, ability to think creatively or simply deliver "at the table" are different things. You wrote:
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"There may, in fact, be a bias toward including Ph.D.s in strategy focused working groups or commissions because of a (mistaken) assumption that they add gravitas. But I have never in my 22 years in DoD seen or heard of a policymaker giving added weight or credence to a position because it originated with a Ph.D. "
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John may have been complaining more about the gatekeeping aspect. Once a person gets "in" though, they would have to deliver something perceived as useful (substantively or politically). Innovation by its’ very nature, discomforts vested interests and contradicts "the way we do things". A certain amount of disruption to the normal state of affairs is probably a prerequisite for proposed innovations to take root, not just the merits of the new idea.