{"id":54104,"date":"2017-02-22T03:02:02","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T03:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=54104"},"modified":"2017-02-22T03:02:02","modified_gmt":"2017-02-22T03:02:02","slug":"chet-richards-on-who-still-reads-boyd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=54104","title":{"rendered":"Chet Richards on “Who Still Reads Boyd?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Mark Safranski<\/strong> \/ “zen<\/strong>“]<\/p>\n

Dr. Chet Richards<\/strong> <\/a>had an excellent blog post on the continuing relevance of Colonel John Boyd’s<\/strong> <\/a>strategic concepts:<\/p>\n

Who still reads\u00a0Boyd?<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Apparently the Russians. In\u00a0\u201cThe Moscow School of hard knocks: Key pillars of Russian strategy<\/span><\/a>,\u201d 17 Jan 2017, \u00a0CNA analyst and former NDU program manager Michael Kofman<\/strong>
\n offers vivid\u00a0illustrations of ideas that Boyd developed in his various papers and presentations (all available on our Articles<\/span><\/a> page). \u00a0He doesn\u2019t cite Boyd, but you\u2019ll recognize the concepts.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have no idea of how Kofman came across these ideas \u2014 Boyd has nine pages of sources at the end of Patterns of Conflict<\/em>, so he isn\u2019t claiming that he thought most of them up. Regardless of how Kofman discovered them, he establishes that they certainly do work, but unfortunately not for us.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For example, when describing Russia\u2019s overall approach to strategy, he notes that<\/strong><\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s leadership is pursuing an emergent strategy common to business practice and the preferred path of startups, but not appreciated in the field of security studies. The hallmarks of this approach are fail fast, fail cheap, and adjust. It is principally Darwinian, prizing adaptation over a structured strategy.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This should leap out at anyone even casually familiar with Boyd since\u00a0Patterns of Conflict<\/em>\u00a0cites\u00a0the theory of evolution by natural\u00a0selection as one of its\u00a0two foundations (war is the other).<\/strong><\/p>\n

Boyd\u2019s whole approach to strategy was emergent. This is clear not only from\u00a0how he uses strategy but in how he defines the term, at the end of Strategic Game<\/em>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

A mental tapestry of changing intentions for harmonizing and focusing our efforts as a basis for realizing some aim or purpose in an unfolding and often unforeseen world of many bewildering events and many contending interests.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, there is an overall objective \u2014 it\u2019s not just random actions, even very rapid actions, for action\u2019s sake \u2014 and the pattern emerges as our \u201cefforts\u201d interact with\u00a0the \u201cunfolding and often unforeseen world.\u201d You see a similar philosophy in Kofman\u2019s description of\u00a0the Russian approach:<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is confusing to follow when Russia\u2019s goals are set, and yet operational objectives change as they run through cycles of adaptation. It is also a method whereby success begets success and failure is indecisive, simply spawning a new approach.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Compare to Patterns 132: \u201cEstablish focus of main effort together with other effort and pursue directions that permit many happenings, offer many branches, and threaten alternative objectives. Move along paths of least resistance (to reinforce and exploit success).\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Why take such an approach? Right after his definition of strategy, Boyd suggests an answer:<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest here<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Mark Safranski \/ “zen“] Dr. Chet Richards had an excellent blog post on the continuing relevance of Colonel John Boyd’s strategic concepts: Who still reads\u00a0Boyd? Apparently the Russians. In\u00a0\u201cThe Moscow School of hard knocks: Key pillars of Russian strategy,\u201d 17 Jan 2017, \u00a0CNA analyst and former NDU program manager Michael Kofman offers vivid\u00a0illustrations of ideas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[337,338,91,1036,481,127,530,972],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chet-richards","category-john-boyd","category-russia","category-stratagems","category-strategist","category-strategy","category-strategy-and-war","category-war-on-the-rocks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54104","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=54104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54105,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54104\/revisions\/54105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}