{"id":8013,"date":"2012-04-17T02:59:24","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T02:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=8013"},"modified":"2012-04-17T03:00:30","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T03:00:30","slug":"recommended-reading-viewing-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=8013","title":{"rendered":"Recommended Reading & Viewing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Top Billing! Tempo Blog (Venkat Rao) –\u00a0Hacking Grand Narratives<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Trigger Narratives and the Nuclear Option<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

While both of these are thought-provoking, strategic theorist types will prefer the former while the national security\/historically minded will gravitate to the latter. An excerpt from “Hacking”:<\/p>\n

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….Going from narrative to Grand Narrative is a scaling problem. There are conceptual issues as well as pure scale issues.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I first encountered a good characterization of this individual-to-collective scaling problem in the philosophy of action\/AI literature around intentions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The classic Bratman\u00a0Belief-Desire-Intention<\/a>\u00a0model is great for thinking about individual decision makers, but there are tricky problems when you jump to collectives, especially if you are trying to define things with sufficient formal rigor to support AI projects. Here is\u00a0a good 1992 paper by Bratman<\/a>\u00a0if you want a starting point for exploration. I am sure there\u2019s been more in the 20 years since.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two solutions that have been pursued by the philosophy\/AI community (I haven\u2019t kept up) are the following. The first is to think in terms of the abstraction of \u201ccollective intentions.\u201d The second is a trickier approach that relies on the distinction between \u201cIntent To\u201d and \u201cIntent That.\u201d The former refers to intentions to be pursued by the agent holding the intention, while the latter is a sort of supporting intention. I intend\u00a0to\u00a0<\/em>make dinner tonight, I intend\u00a0that\u00a0<\/em>X is the next President.<\/strong><\/p>\n

….The problem of scaling intention theory and notions of agency to collectives is one of the conceptual challenges for a theory of Grand Narrative as well. I am inclining towards the former strategy. I think it is safe to reify \u201cnation\u201d or \u201cbusiness\u201d into collective constructs and apply archetype-thinking to them. So Uncle Sam might be the hero of the Manifest Destiny Grand Narrative that spanned the century between the Civil War and World War II. There are of course serious and tricky traps hidden in this process, but it is somewhat useful most of the time.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Foreign Policy (Olivier Roy) – The New Islamists<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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A must read piece by one of the world’s noted scholars on Islamist politics<\/p>\n

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….The debate over Islam and democracy used to be a chicken-and-egg issue: Which came first?\u00a0 Democracy has certainly not been at the core of Islamist ideology. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has historically been strictly centralized and obedient to a supreme guide, who rules for life. And Islam has certainly not been factored into promotion of secular democracy. Indeed, skeptics long argued that the two forces were even anathema to each other.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But the outside world wrongly assumed that Islam would first have to experience a religious reformation before its followers could embark on political democratization — replicating the Christian experience when the Protestant Reformation gave birth to the Enlightenment and then modern democracy. In fact, however, liberal Muslim intellectuals had little impact in either inspiring or directing the Arab uprisings. The original protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square referred to democracy as a universal concept, not to any sort of Islamic democracy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The development of both political Islam and democracy now appears to go hand-in-hand, albeit not at the same pace. The new political scene is transforming the Islamists as much as the Islamists are transforming the political scene.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

SWJ Blog<\/strong>–\u00a0Disruptive Thinkers: More Thoughts on Disruption and National Security<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Disruptive Thinkers: The PME Debate Needs More Informed Thinkers<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Disruptive Thinkers and Opportunistic Leadership<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Too much here to excerpt. Just go disrupt your thinking by reading them.<\/p>\n

AFJ<\/em> – (Robert Killebrew) –A NEW KIND OF WARFARE<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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On Jan. 16, Gelareh Bagherzadeh, a 30-year-old Iranian medical student, was shot and killed while sitting in her car outside her parents\u2019 home in Houston. Neighbors heard three quick shots in the night. Her purse and cellphone were found in the car, the engine still running.<\/strong><\/p>\n

No suspects have been apprehended and no motive for the murder has been established at this writing. But Bagherzadeh was politically active in the Iranian green movement and women\u2019s causes, and the execution-style killing of a young Iranian dissident in the U.S. should ring some alarm bells\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inkspots (Gulliver) –\u00a0The real threat of hybrid conflict<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gulliver is leveling a Clausewitzian criticism of the use of\u00a0Frank Hoffman’s<\/strong> “Hybrid” concept (though not only his use of the term) – I have some disagreements but Gulliver also makes some solid points.<\/p>\n

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Nearly all wars are a strategic hybrid: a mix of violent action, diplomacy, and messaging, combining destruction, coercion, and persuasion. The modern hybrid war construct implies that future conflict will take on a more\u00a0tactically<\/em>\u00a0hybrid character: that states will employ guerilla tactics in concert with heavy weapons, or that sub-state groups will use sophisticated weapons hand-in-hand with terrorism and insurgency.<\/strong><\/p>\n

You see, as Conrad Crane has said before (and as I love to repeat), there are only two kinds of war: asymmetric and stupid. Capable adversaries will always seek to capitalize on their own strengths and focus on our weaknesses. The hybrid concept simply tells us that violent actors will seek to diversify their capabilities and become less predictable by\u00a0employing weapons and tactics more frequently associated with different parts of the sophistication and organization spectrum.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Fast Transients<\/strong>–Boyd\u2019s Really Real OODA\u00a0Loop<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Chuck Spinney -\u201cThe Afghan Disaster \u2013 Wait Till the War Really Comes Home\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Project White Horse –\u00a0Air War Vietnam: Remembrance at 40 Years \u2013 All Days Come From One Day<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gunpowder & Lead (Diana Wueger)<\/strong>–\u00a0The Growing Threat to Saudi Intellectuals: The Case of Hamza Kashgari<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Michigan War Studies Review<\/em> –The Triple Agent: The al-Qaeda Mole Who Infiltrated the CIA<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0The Arc of War: Origins, Escalation, and Transformation<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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PARAMETERS<\/strong><\/em> – (Ralph Peters)\u00a0In Praise of Attrition<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and (Steven Metz)\u00a0New Challenges and Old Concepts: Understanding 21st Century Insurgency<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This issue of PARAMETERS is particularly good.<\/p>\n

RECOMMENDED VIEWING:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a must-watch video.<\/p>\n

Dr. Charli Carpenter<\/strong> of Duck of Minerva<\/strong> has a visually stunning presentation about the impact of social media on IR<\/strong> as a discipline, injecting a burst of creativity and relevancy into a field that can be at times – well – a little insular and arid – and made it cool. \u00a0Dr. Charli also has commentary here<\/a>. Hat tip to Dr. Drezner<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

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