{"id":20818,"date":"2013-04-17T04:41:37","date_gmt":"2013-04-17T04:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=20818"},"modified":"2013-04-17T18:24:35","modified_gmt":"2013-04-17T18:24:35","slug":"please-welcome-our-new-co-blogger-lynn-c-rees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=20818","title":{"rendered":"Please Welcome our New Co-Blogger, Lynn C. Rees"},"content":{"rendered":"

On behalf of Charles Cameron<\/strong> and J. Scott Shipman<\/strong>, I would like to warmly welcome the newest co-blogger to zenpundit.com<\/strong>, Lynn C. Rees<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Rees’ blogging and insightful comments have long been enjoyed by many in this corner of the blogosphere, though some were written \u00a0pseudo-anonymously and then later circulated by third parties on private listservs. \u00a0Some samples of his writing:<\/p>\n

….If I were to draw a rough analogy between the Old Testament and\u00a0De re militari<\/em>\u00a0in Chinese history, the Old Testament would be a compilation of all the major\u00a0Spring and Autumn<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Warring States<\/a>\u2018 literature of one of the smaller\u00a0seven warring states<\/a>\u00a0(Judah<\/a>) redacted by a\u00a0Legalist-leaning<\/a>\u00a0Confucian (the\u00a0Deuteronomists<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Josiah\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0reign) right before\u00a0Chin<\/a>\u00a0(Neo-Babylonian Empire<\/a>) completed its conquest of China (Fertile Crescent) and then re-redacted by\u00a0Szma Chyan<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(Ezra<\/a>) in the early days of the\u00a0Han<\/a>\u00a0(Achaemenid<\/a>) Dynasty. The theme of the Deuteronomists (\u201cIn those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.\u201d\u00a0Judges 21:25<\/a>) is similar to a strong theme emphasized by editors of the Seven Military Classics that China had to be unified under one authority (\u201call under Heaven<\/a>\u201d (TyanSya<\/em>) to eliminate the disorder of warring states during the Warring States era. This theme was recently expertly\u00a0propagandized by the Beibing Regime in the interesting Jet Li film\u00a0Hero<\/em><\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Jau Jeng<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

De re militari<\/em>\u00a0would be a compilation of\u00a0stray\u00a0bits\u00a0of the six existing Seven Military Classics studiously assembled by a public-spirited provincial\u00a0Confucian scholar<\/a>\u00a0with no military experience and submitted as a\u00a0memorial<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0Late Han<\/a>\u00a0court in the hopes that its\u00a0ancient virtues<\/a>\u00a0would rouse the court to reverse the collapse of the dynasty.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Western strategic tradition after 1500 drew heavily on works synthesizing\u00a0De re military\u00a0<\/em>and more recent recovered works from antiquity like Polybius and especially\u00a0Livy<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

and, from another post, in a different place:<\/p>\n

….A network requires\u00a0asabiya<\/em><\/a>, that almost mystical force of network cohesion and harmony that makes the members of a group unite to fight the far enemy instead of dividing to fight the near enemy. While\u00a0asabiya\u00a0<\/em>is sometimes personified by a particular individual and their qualities, true\u00a0asabiya<\/em>\u00a0transcends the one and distributes itself across the many. But individual humans remain\u00a0asabiya\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>greatest ally and most dangerous enemy. It\u2019s appropriate to view the network immediately around particularly potent individuals as webs rather than networks. Like its namesake spider web, an individual\u2019s web places them in the center of a network. Like the spider, the web allows a supernode to detect fluctuations in\u00a0asabiya\u00a0<\/em>density before it directly encounters the source of the disturbance. The web also amplifies a supernode\u2019s reach, radiating its localized\u00a0asabiya\u00a0<\/em>through its web into the greater network, disrupting or strengthening broader network\u00a0asabiya\u00a0<\/em>as it might.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Asabiya\u00a0<\/em>separates an army from a mob.\u00a0Ardant duPicq<\/a>\u00a0observed that most of the casualties inflicted in battle up to his time happened when one side\u2019s cohesion was smashed. The enemy could then run down the disorganized stragglers as they fled the battlefield. The loss ofasabiya\u00a0<\/em>proves fatal. \u00a0Asabiya\u00a0<\/em>is the force that allows a Headless Chicken to run around without its head. The Romans, for example, lacked the magical spark of the Macedonian armies of Alexander and Pyrrhus.\u00a0Parmenio<\/a>\u00a0suggested to Alexander after the\u00a0Battle of Issus<\/a>\u00a0that he should accept\u00a0Darius III\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0offer of an alliance, the hand of his daughter in marriage, and all Asia Minor, reputedly saying \u201cIf I were Alexander, I would accept the terms.\u201d \u201cSo would I, if I were Parmenio.\u201d, Alexander replied. If Alexander had been killed at\u00a0Granicus<\/a>, Parmenio would have retreated back into Europe. It took that special insanity of Alexander to take the arms of Macedon all the way to the\u00a0Hyphasis<\/a>. In contrast, the Roman armies of the Old Republic relied on\u00a0asabiya<\/em>. They could be commanded by a mediocrity and yet pull out a victory. They could suffer a catastrophic defeat like\u00a0Cannae<\/a>\u00a0and still bounce back. They were robust against failure. In fact, the Magic Bullet was anathema to the Roman. The occasional genius who popped up, burning brightly in the firmament, the Scipio, the Marius, was pulled down by an Elder Cato or some other old senatorial blood.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But exactly who is Mr. Rees?<\/p>\n

Lynn C. Rees<\/strong> is a software engineer specializing in workflow optimization and genealogy. He is a long-time student of how human systems discover and cope with truth through (or despite) culture and politics. Lynn group blogs at Chicago Boyz<\/a><\/strong> (joining the Clausewitz<\/a>, Xenophon<\/a>, Afghanistan 2050<\/a><\/strong>, and Reagan Centenary<\/a><\/strong> roundtables along the way) and the third Committee of Public Safety<\/a><\/strong>. He also contributed to The\u00a0Handbook of 5GW<\/a><\/strong>, edited by Dr. Dan Abbott<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Welcome aboard Lynn!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On behalf of Charles Cameron and J. Scott Shipman, I would like to warmly welcome the newest co-blogger to zenpundit.com, Lynn C. Rees. Rees’ blogging and insightful comments have long been enjoyed by many in this corner of the blogosphere, though some were written \u00a0pseudo-anonymously and then later circulated by third parties on private listservs. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[129,524,894],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","category-evolution","category-lynn-c-rees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20818"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20820,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20818\/revisions\/20820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}