July 2006 Conflict in the Years Ahead Chet Richards J. Addams & Partners, Inc. It will be...

July 2006 http://www.jaddams.com

Conflict in the YearsAheadChet RichardsJ. Addams & Partners, Inc.

It will be protracted, bloody,and horrible.

Martin van Creveld

Version 7.1 - August 2006


Purpose

To explore the course of conflict in the early-middle 21st century by comparing and contrasting the work of six of its more distinguished observers:

– Bill Lind, particularly “Strategic Defense Initiative,” and“FMFM 1-A”

– Martin van Creveld: The Transformation of War

– Col T.X. Hammes, USMC: The Sling and the Stone

– Thomas P. M. Barnett: The Pentagon’s New Map & Blueprint for Action

– Michael Scheuer (“Anonymous”): Imperial Hubris

– Antulio Echevarria: “Fourth Generation War and Other Myths”

My purpose is not to critique these works, per se, but to consider, borrow, and sometimes reject what John Boyd called “appropriate bits and pieces” for constructing strategy.


Agenda

• Boyd’s Patterns of Conflict

– Sun Tzu to the Blitzkrieg

– Attrition warfare & maneuver conflict

• OODA Loops

– What they are not (and are)

– How to accelerate OODA loops

• Moral conflict & the prism of conflict

• Guerrilla warfare

– Blitz & guerrilla: common strategy

• Generations of war

• Penetrate, isolate, subdue/subvert, reorient, reharmonize

• 4GW according to Lind, van Creveld, Hammes, Barnett, Scheuer, but not Echevarria

• Moral isolation and interaction

– Theme for disintegration and collapse

• Grand strategy

– Theme for vitality and growth

– Ends and means

– Moral leverage

– What Lind, van Creveld, Hammes, Barnett, and Scheuer say about grand strategy

• Summary

– Tables

– Issues among the authors

– Neither Shall the Sword

• If I were emperor …


Pattern

• National goal

Improve our fitness, as an organic whole, to shape and cope with an ever-changing environment.

• Grand strategy

Shape pursuit of national goal so that we not only amplify our spirit and strength (while undermining and isolating our adversaries) but also influence the uncommitted or potential adversaries so that they are drawn toward our philosophy and are empathetic toward our success.

• Strategic aim

Diminish adversary’s capacity while improving our capacity to adapt as an organic whole, so that our adversary cannot cope—while we can cope—with events/efforts as they unfold.

• Strategy

Penetrate adversary’s moral-mental-physical being to dissolve his moral fiber, disorient his mental images, disrupt his operations, and overload his system, as well as subvert, shatter, seize, or otherwise subdue those moral-mental-physical bastions, connections, or activities that he depends upon, in order to destroy internal harmony, produce paralysis, and collapse adversary’s will to resist.

• Grand tactics

Operate inside adversary’s observation-orientation-decision-action loops, or get inside his mind-time-space, to create tangles of threatening and/or non-threatening events/efforts as well as repeatedly generate mismatches between those events/efforts adversary observes, or imagines, and those he must react to, to survive;

thereby

Enmesh adversary in an amorphous, menacing, and unpredictable world of uncertainty, doubt, mistrust, confusion, disorder, fear, panic, chaos ... and/or fold adversary back inside himself;

thereby

Maneuver adversary beyond his moral-mental-physical capacity to adapt or endure so that he can neither divine our intentions nor focus his efforts to cope with the unfolding strategic design or related decisive strokes as they penetrate, splinter, isolate or envelop, and overwhelm him.

• Tactics

Observe-orient-decide-act more inconspicuously, more quickly, and with more irregularity as basis to keep or gain initiative as well as shape and shift main effort: to repeatedly and unexpectedly penetrate vulnerabilities and weaknesses exposed by that effort or other effort(s) that tie-up, divert, or drain-away adversary attention (and strength) elsewhere.

141

Positive (constructive)

elements


Pattern

141

• National goal

Improve our fitness, as an organic whole, to shape and cope with an ever-changing environment.

• Grand strategy

Shape pursuit of national goal so that we not only amplify our spirit and strength (while undermining and isolating our adversaries) but also influence the uncommitted or potential adversaries so that they are drawn toward our philosophy and are empathetic toward our success.

• Strategic aim

Diminish adversary’s capacity while improving our capacity to adapt as an organic whole, so that our adversary cannot cope—while we can cope—with events/efforts as they unfold.

• Strategy

Penetrate adversary’s moral-mental-physical being to dissolve his moral fiber, disorient his mental images, disrupt his operations, and overload his system, as well as subvert, shatter, seize, or otherwise subdue those moral-mental-physical bastions, connections, or activities that he depends upon, in order to destroy internal harmony, produce paralysis, and collapse adversary’s will to resist.

• Grand tactics

Operate inside adversary’s observation-orientation-decision-action loops, or get inside his mind-time-space, to create tangles of threatening and/or non-threatening events/efforts as well as repeatedly generate mismatches between those events/efforts adversary observes, or imagines, and those he must react to, to survive;

thereby

Enmesh adversary in an amorphous, menacing, and unpredictable world of uncertainty, doubt, mistrust, confusion, disorder, fear, panic, chaos ... and/or fold adversary back inside himself;

thereby

Maneuver adversary beyond his moral-mental-physical capacity to adapt or endure so that he can neither divine our intentions nor focus his efforts to cope with the unfolding strategic design or related decisive strokes as they penetrate, splinter, isolate or envelop, and overwhelm him.

• Tactics

Observe-orient-decide-act more inconspicuously, more quickly, and with more irregularity as basis to keep or gain initiative as well as shape and shift main effort: to repeatedly and unexpectedly penetrate vulnerabilities and weaknesses exposed by that effort or other effort(s) that tie-up, divert, or drain-away adversary attention (and strength) elsewhere.

Negative (destructive) elements


Generalization

• Need fighter that can both lose energy and gain energy more quickly while outturning an adversary.

• In other words, suggests a fighter that can pick and choose engagement opportunities—yet has fast transient (“buttonhook”) characteristics that can be used to either force an overshoot by an attacker or stay inside a hard turning defender.

4

Boyd’s study of strategy began as a fighter pilot and an instructor at the

USAF Fighter Weapons School.


Idea expansion

• Idea of fast transients suggests that, in order to win, we should operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than our adversaries—or, better yet, get inside adversary’s observation-orientation-decision-action time cycle or loop.

• Why? Such activity will make us appear ambiguous (unpredictable) thereby generate confusion and disorder among our adversaries—since our adversaries will be unable to generate mental images or pictures that agree with the menacing as well as faster transient rhythm or patterns they are competing against.

5

In other words, “faster tempo or rhythm” is not synonymous with “get inside adversary’s observation-orientation-decision-action” loop.


Human nature

Goal

• Survive, survive on own terms, or improve our capacity for independent action.

The competition for limited resources to satisfy these desires may force one to:

• Diminish adversary’s capacity for independent action, or deny him the opportunity to survive on his own terms, or make it impossible for him to survive at all.

Implication

• Life is conflict, survival, and conquest.

10

Point of Patterns of Conflict:

IF you find yourself in this situation, make sure you are the one who wins.

Point of Patterns of Conflict:

IF you find yourself in this situation, make sure you are the one who wins.


Impression

• In examining these many points of view one is bombarded with the notion that:

– It is advantageous to possess a variety of responses that can be applied rapidly to gain sustenance, avoid danger, and diminish adversary’s capacity for independent action.

– The simpler organisms—those that make-up man as well as man working with other men in a higher level context—must cooperate or, better yet, harmonize their activities in their endeavors to survive as an organic synthesis.

– To shape and adapt to change one cannot be passive; instead one must take the initiative.

• Put more simply and directly: the above comments leave one with the impression that variety/rapidity/harmony/initiative (and their interaction) seem to be key qualities that permit one to shape and adapt to an ever-changing environment.

• With this impression in mind together with our notion of getting inside an adversary’s O-O-D-A loop we will proceed in our historical investigation.

12


Historical patternSun Tzu The Art of War c. 400 B.C.

Theme

• Harmony and trust

• Justice and well being

• Inscrutability and enigma

• Deception and subversion

• Rapidity and fluidity

• Dispersion and concentration

• Surprise and shock

Strategy

• Probe enemy’s organization and dispositions to unmask his strengths, weaknesses, patterns of movement and intentions.

• “Shape” enemy’s perception of world to manipulate his plans and actions.

• Attack enemy’s plans as best policy. Next best disrupt his alliances. Next best attack his army. Attack cities only when there is no alternative.

• Employ cheng and ch'i maneuvers to quickly and unexpectedly hurl strength against weaknesses.

Desired outcome

• Subdue enemy without fighting

• Avoid protracted war

13

These represent potential asymmetries, that is, things we can exploit to gain an advantage leading to victory over our opponents.

Throughout this presentation, keep asking yourself:

• What were the asymmetries?

• How did the winning side achieve these asymmetries?

• How did they use them in order to win?

Sometimes Boyd will give you his answers; sometimes you will have to decide for yourself.

Key point: All conflict is – or should be – “asymmetric”!


Historical pattern

Early commanders

• Alexander

• Hannibal

• Belisarius

• Genghis Khan

• Tamerlane

Impression

• Early commanders seem consistent with ideas of Sun Tzu

• Western commanders more directly concerned with winning the battle

• Eastern commanders closer to Sun Tzu in attempting to shatter adversary prior to battle

* Cheng/ch'i maneuver schemes were employed by early commanders to expose adversary vulnerabilities and weaknesses (a la cheng) for exploitation and decisive stroke (via ch'i).

14

Action

Cheng and ch'i*


Historical pattern

Keeping in mind the ideas of Sun Tzu and our comments about early commanders, let’s take a look at an early tactical theme and some battle (grand tactical) situations to gain a feel for the different ways that the cheng/ch'i game has been (and can be) played.

15


Tactical theme (from about 300 B.C. to 1400 A.D.)

• Light troops (equipped with bows, javelins, light swords, etc.) perform reconnaissance, screening, and swirling hit-and-run actions to:

– Unmask enemy dispositions and activities.

– Cloud/distort own dispositions and activities.

– Confuse, disorder enemy operations.

• Heavy troops (equipped with lances, bows, swords, etc.) protected by armor and shields:

– Charge and smash thinned-out/scattered or disordered/bunched-up enemy formations generated by interaction with light troops; or

– Menace enemy formations to hold them in tight, or rigid, arrays thereby make them vulnerable to missiles of swirling light troops.

• Light and heavy troops in appropriate combination pursue, envelop, and mop-up isolated remnants of enemy host.

Idea

• Employ maneuver action by light troops with thrust action of heavy troops to confuse, break-up, and smash enemy formations.

Historical pattern

16


Battle of Arbela*October 1, 331 B.C.

Parmenio Reserve Line

Chariots

Alexander

Companions

DariusMazeus Bessus

*Also known as the Battle of Gaugamela

20


Battle of Arbela* (Phase II)

Parmenio

Reserve Line

Alexander

CompanionsDariusMazeus

Bessus

Persians FleePersians Flee

21

The heavy thrust, set up by all the other action on this page. Although outnumbered overall, at this point, Alexander manufactured a temporary but decisive advantage.

Version 1.210 March 2005


Historical patternGenghis Khan and the Mongols

Key asymmetries

• Superior mobility

• Superior communications

• Superior intelligence

• Superior leadership

Theme

• Widely separated strategic maneuvers, with appropriate stratagems, baited retreats, hard-hitting tactical thrusts, and swirling envelopments to uncover and exploit adversary vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

in conjunction with

• Clever and calculated use of propaganda and terror to play upon adversary’s doubts, fears, and superstitions in order to undermine his resolve and destroy his will to resist.

Aim

Conquest, as basis to create, preserve, and

expand Mongol nation

25

keep this in mind


Genghis Khan and Psyops

• …to play on surprise in a tortured manipulation of public fear and hope. The objective of such tactics was simple and always the same: to frighten the enemy into surrendering before an actual battle began.

• By striking deeply behind enemy lines, the Mongols immediately created havoc and panic throughout the kingdom.

• The Persian chronicler Ata-Malik Juvaini described his approach “… air black as night with the dust of cavalry, fright and panic overcame them, and fear and dread prevailed.”

Jack Weatherford,Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World,

p. 5

Added August 2006


Mongol strategic maneuver (1219-1220)

Kizyl-Kum

KhawarizmState

Bokhara

Samarkand

Caspian

Sea

Aral Sea

Genghis Khan

Chagatai Jochi

Jebe

500 miles

Oxus River

(Modern Uzbekistan)

26


? Raises nagging question ?

Even though outnumbered, why were Mongols able to maneuver in widely scattered arrays without being defeated separately or in detail?

27


Historical patternsGenghis Khan and the Mongols

Message

• By exploiting superior leadership, intelligence, communications, and mobility as well as by playing upon adversary’s fears and doubts via propaganda and terror, Mongols operated inside adversary observation-orientation-decision-action loops.

Result

• Outnumbered Mongols created impressions of terrifying strength—by seeming to come out of nowhere yet be everywhere.

hence,

• Subversive propaganda, clever stratagems, fast breaking maneuvers, and calculated terror not only created vulnerabilities and weaknesses but also played upon moral factors that drain-away resolve, produce panic, and bring about collapse.

28


Historical patternNapoleon’s art of war

Revolutionary army gifts to Napoleon

• Moral and physical energy of citizen-soldiers and new leaders generated by the revolution and magnified by successes against invading allied armies

• Subdivision of army into smaller self-contained but mutually supporting units (divisions)

• Ability to travel light and live-off countryside without extensive baggage, many supply wagons, and slow-moving resupply efforts

• Rapid march associated with “120” instead of the standard “70” steps per minute

• Discontinued adherence to 1791 Drill Regulations pertaining to the well regulated and stereotype use of column and line formations for movement and fighting

Beneficial asymmetry

• Mobility/fluidity of force dramatically better than that possessed by potential adversaries.

? Raises question ?

How did Napoleon exploit this superior mobility/fluidity of force?

33

perhaps one reason why maneuver warfare is often confused with “speed”


Strategy of envelopment(idealized schematic)

corps ofobservation

curtain ofmaneuver

stra

teg

ic b

arr

ier

line

of

de

fen

se

Ch

en

gp

inn

ing

fo

rce

ch'imaneuver force

LOCs

I. The Envelopment March

cavalry screen

corps of

observation

35

curtain ofmaneuver

stra

teg

ic b

arr

ier

line

of

de

fen

se

pin

nin

g f

orc

e

secondary attack

main attack

corps of

observation

II. The Reversed Front Battle

cavalry screen

Source: David G. Chandler, Waterloo: The Hundred Days, 1980.


Axxxx

Bxxxx

xxx

xxx

base base

Nxxxx

xxx

xxxxxx

xxxxxx

xxx

xxx

xxx

LOCLOC

I. Advance to Contact

cavalry screen

The strategy of central position (idealized schematic)

Axxxx

Bxxxx

xxx

xxx

base base

Nxxxx

xxx

xxx xxx

xxxxxx

xxx

xxx

xxx

LOCLOC

xx

II. The Double Battle

Axxxx B

xxxx

xxx

base base

xxx

xxx

I

LOCxxx

xxx

xxx

xxx

xxx

xxx

I

I

I

I

overnight forced march

III. The Coup de Grace

36

Source: David G. Chandler,Waterloo: The Hundred Days, 1980.



Early tactic

“The action was opened by a cloud of sharpshooters, some mounted, some on foot, who were sent forward to carry out a general rather than a minutely-regulated mission; they proceeded to harass the enemy, escaping from his superior numbers by their mobility, from the effect of his cannon by their dispersal. They were constantly relieved to ensure that the fire did not slacken, and they also received considerable reinforcement to increase their over-all effect … Once the chink in foe’s armour had been revealed … the horse artillery would gallop up and open fire with canister at close range. The attacking force would meantime be moving up in the indicated direction, the infantry advancing in column, the cavalry in regiments or squadrons, ready to make its presence felt anywhere or everywhere as required. Then, when the hail of enemy bullets or cannon balls began to slacken … The soldiers would begin to run forward, those in the front ranks crossing their bayonets, as the drums beat the charge; the sky would ring a thousand battle-cries constantly repeated: “En avant. En avant. Vive la Republique.”

Later tactics

“At the outset, a heavy bombardment would be loosed against the enemy formations, causing fearful losses if they failed to seek shelter, and generally lowering their power of resistance. Under cover of this fire, swarms of voltigeurs would advance to within musketry range and add a disconcerting ‘nuisance’ element by sniping at officers and the like. This preliminary phase would be followed by a series of heavy cavalry and infantry attacks. The secret of these was careful timing and coordination. The first cavalry charges were designed to defeat the hostile cavalry and compel the enemy infantry to form squares”, thereby reduce fire in any one direction and enable the columns to get to close grips before the enemy could resume his linear formation. The infantry (deployed or not) and accompanying horse artillery would then blaze a gap in the enemy formation and finally the cavalry would sweep forward, again, to exploit the breakthrough.

Essential point

Early tactics, without apparent design, operate in a fluid, adaptable manner to uncover, expand and exploit adversary vulnerabilities and weaknesses while later tactics emphasize massed firepower and stereotyped formations working formally together to smash adversary strength.

37

other words to describe this: organic, formless, reconnaissance pull, surfaces-and-gaps



Critique

• Napoleon exploited ambiguity, deception, and mobility at the strategic level,

whereas,

• He increasingly emphasized formal battering ram methods and de-emphasized loose, irregular methods (e.g. skirmishers) at the tactics level—via a return to, and increasingly heavy-handed application of, the 1791 Drill Regulations.

Why?

• Napoleon emphasized the conduct of war from the top down. He created and exploited strategic success to procure grand tactical and tactical success.

• To support his concept, he set up a highly centralized command and control system which, when coupled with essentially unvarying tactical recipes, resulted in strength smashing into strength by increasingly unimaginative, formalized, and predictable actions at lower and lower levels.

Result

Strategic maneuvers ambiguous and deceiving prior to tactical concentration; after concentration, “maneuvers” stereotyped and obvious.

hence

Tactical “maneuvers” could not easily procure the victory because of their obvious, predictable nature.

38


Technology and the art of war

• The legacy of Napoleon, Clausewitz, and Jomini’s tactical regularity and the continued use of large stereotyped formations for tactical assault, together with the mobilization of large armies and massing of enormous supplies through a narrow logistics network, “telegraphed” any punch hence minimized the possibility of exploiting ambiguity, deception, and mobility to generate surprise for a decisive edge.

• In this sense, technology was being used as a crude club that generated frightful and debilitating casualties on all sides during the:

– American Civil War (1861-65)

– Austro-Prussian War (1866)

– Franco-Prussian War (1870)

– Boer War (1899-1902)

– Russo-Japanese War (1904-05)

– World War I (1914-18)

Point

• Evolution of tactics did not keep pace with increased weapons lethality developed and produced by 19th century technology.

? Raises question ?

• Why were the 19th century and early 20th century commanders unable to evolve better tactics to avoid over a half century of debilitating casualties?

49


World War I

Action

• Offensives conducted on wide frontages—emphasizing few, rather than many, harmonious yet independent thrusts.

• Evenness of advance maintained to protect flanks and provide artillery support as advance makes headway.

• Reserves thrown in whenever attack held-up—against regions or points of strong resistance.

Reaction

• Defense organized into depth of successive belts of fortified terrain.

• Massed artillery and machine-gun fire designed to arrest and pin down attacker.

• Counter-attack to win back lost ground.

Result

Stagnation and enormous attrition since advances made generally as expected along paths of hardened resistance because of dependence upon railroads and choice of tactics of trying to reduce strong points by massed firepower and infantry.

55


World War Ia way out

56

• Infiltration tactics

• Guerrilla tactics

• Capt. Andre Laffargue

• Gen. von Hutier?

• Gen. Ludendorff

• T.E. Lawrence

• Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck

Idea Authors


World War Iinfiltration tactics

Key points

• Fire at all levels by artillery, mortars, and machine-guns is exploited to hold adversary attention and pin him down hence—

• Fire together with gas and smoke (as well as fog and mist) represent an immediate and ominous threat to capture adversary attention, force heads down and dramatically obscure view, thereby cloak infiltrators movements.

• Dispersed and irregular character of moving swarms (as opposed to well defined line abreast formations) permit infiltrators to blend against irregular and changing terrain features as they push forward.

• Taken together, the captured attention, the obscured view, and the indistinct character of moving dispersed/irregular swarms deny adversary the opportunity to picture what is taking place.

Result

• Infiltration teams appear to suddenly loom-up out of nowhere to blow thru, around, and behind disoriented defenders.

59

Note: This is the essence of maneuver warfare/3GW. Good discussions in Bruce Gudmundsson, Stormtroop Tactics, and Stephen Biddle, Military Power.

cheng

ch’i


Looming up(asymmetric fast transients)

OODA “loops” in action

The Asian soldier is a master of the approach march. His tradition is to attack out of nowhere—to suddenly appear where he is least expected.

John Poole, Phantom Soldier, 139


Creation of the Blitzkrieg

Envelopment(Leuctra, Cannae)

Flying Columns(Mongols)

Tank Attack withMotorized Vehicles

(J.F.C. Fuller)

Infiltration(Ludendorff)

Blitzkrieg(Heinz Guderian)

• Multiple narrow thrusts

• Armored recce

• Commanders forward

• Extensive communications net

• Air in lieu of (or with) artillery

84


Blitzkrieg

Action

• Intelligence—signal, photo, agent … reconnaissance (air and ground)—and patrol actions probe and test adversary before and during combat operations to uncover as well as shape changing patterns of strengths, weaknesses, moves, and intentions.

• Adversary patterns, and associated changes, are weighed against friendly situation to expose attractive, or appropriate, alternatives that exploit adversary vulnerabilities and weaknesses, hence help shape mission commitment and influence command intent.

• Mission assigned. Schwerpunkt (focus of main effort) established before and shifted during combat operations to bypass adversary strength and strike at weakness. Nebenpunkte (other related or supporting efforts) employed to tie-up, focus, or drain-away adversary attention and strength (elsewhere).

• Special seizure/disruption teams infiltrate (by air or other means) enemy rear areas where, with agents already in place, they: seize bridges and road crossings, sever communications, incapacitate or blow-up power stations, seize or blow-up fuel dumps … as well as sow confusion/disorder via “false messages and fake orders”.

• Indirect and direct air firepower efforts together with (any needed) sudden/brief preliminary artillery fires are focused in appropriate areas to impede (or channel) adversary movement, disrupt communications, suppress forward defensive fires, obscure the advance, and divert attention.

• Armored reconnaissance or stormtrooper teams, leading armored columns, advance rapidly from least expected regions and infiltrate adversary front to find paths of least resistance.

• Armored assault teams of tanks, infantry, anti-tank guns, and combat engineers as well as other specialists, together with close artillery and air support, quickly open breaches (via frontal/flank fire and movement combinations) into adversary rear along paths of least resistance uncovered by armored reconnaissance or stormtroopers.

• When breakthrough occurs, relatively independent mobile/armored teams led by armored recce with air support (recce, fire, and airlift when necessary), blow-through to penetrate at high speed deep into adversary interior. Object is to cut lines of communication, disrupt movement, paralyze command and envelop adversary forces and resources.

• Motorized or foot infantry further back supported by artillery and armor pour-in to collapse isolated pockets of resistance, widen the breaches and secure the encirclement or captured terrain against possible counter-attack.

Idea

• Conquer an entire region in the quickest possible time by gaining initial surprise and exploiting the fast tempo/fluidity-of-action of armored teams, with air support, as basis to repeatedly penetrate, splinter, envelop, and roll-up/wipe-out disconnected remnants of adversary organism in order to confuse, disorder, and finally shatter his will or capacity to resist.

70

Note: maneuver warfare does not mean leaving intact and motivated enemy forces in your rear.


What happens if we don’t probe, test, uncover and shape?

… the U.S. intelligence community missed the significance of the Fedayeen organization. It was a striking omission given the visibility of the Fedayeen in Iraqi towns and cities and the vital importance of the Fedayeen to the regime, but understandable given the CIA’s dearth of human sources … (Gordon & Trainor, Cobra II, p. 62)

… the U.S. intelligence community missed the significance of the Fedayeen organization. It was a striking omission given the visibility of the Fedayeen in Iraqi towns and cities and the vital importance of the Fedayeen to the regime, but understandable given the CIA’s dearth of human sources … (Gordon & Trainor, Cobra II, p. 62)


Which lead to:

Essence of blitzkrieg

Employ a Nebenpunkte/Schwerpunkt maneuver philosophy to generate ambiguity, realize deception, exploit superior mobility, and focus violence as basis to quickly:

• Create many opportunities to penetrate weaknesses in the form of any moral or mental inadequacies as well as any gaps or exposed flanks that open into adversary’s vulnerable rear and interior, hence-

• Create and exploit opportunities to repeatedly penetrate adversary organism, at all levels (tactical, grand tactical, and strategic) and in many ways, in order to splinter, envelop, and roll-up/wipe-out isolated remnants, thereby generate confusion and disorder, hence -

• Create and exploit opportunities to disrupt his system for communication, command, and support, as well as undermine or seize those connections or centers that he depends upon, thus shake his will or capacity to decisively commit his back-up echelons, operational reserves, and/or strategic reserves, thereby magnify adversary’s confusion and disorder and convince him to give up.

Intent

Create grand tactical success then exploit and expand it into strategic success for a decisive victory.

Implication

Blitzers, by being able to infiltrate or penetrate or get inside adversary’s system, generate many moral-mental-physical non—cooperative (or isolated) centers of gravity, as well as undermine or seize those centers of gravity adversary depends upon, in order to magnify friction, produce paralysis, and bring about adversary collapse.

87


Categories of conflict

Now looking back and reflecting upon the panorama of military history we can imagine three kinds of human conflict:

– Attrition warfare—as practiced by the Emperor Napoleon, by all sides during the 19th century and during World War I, by the Allies during World War II, and by present-day nuclear planners.

– Maneuver conflict—as practiced by the Mongols, General Bonaparte, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, Union General Ulysses S. Grant, Hitler’s Generals (in particular Manstein, Guderian, Balck, Rommel) and the Americans under Generals Patton and MacArthur.

– [we’ll come back to this bullet later]

With these comments in mind let’s look into the essentials of each.

111

Note: Boyd did not use the term “maneuver warfare” in his briefings.

Note: Boyd did not use the term “maneuver warfare” in his briefings.



Attrition observations

• Firepower, as a destructive force, is king.

• Protection (trenches, armor, dispersion, etc.) is used to weaken or dilute effects of enemy firepower.

• Mobility is used to bring firepower to bear or to evade enemy fire.

• Measures of success are (now) “body count” and targets destroyed.

• Seize and hold terrain objectives replaces Napoleon’s dictum: Destroy enemy army.

112

Key point: measures of success are (virtually all) quantitative and objective, and if what you’re doing isn’t working, you just haven’t done it enough.


Essence of attrition warfare

• Destructive force:

Weapons (mechanical, chemical, biological, nuclear, etc.) that kill, maim, and/or otherwise generate widespread destruction.

• Protection:

Ability to minimize the concentrated and explosive expression of destructive force by taking cover behind natural or manmade obstacles, by dispersion of people and resources, and by being obscure using camouflage, smoke, etc., together with cover and dispersion.

• Mobility:

Speed or rapidity to focus destructive force or move away from adversary’s destructive focus.

• Frightful and debilitating attrition via widespread destruction as basis to:

– Break enemy’s will to resist

– Seize and hold terrain objectives

Aim

Compel enemy to surrender and sue for peace

Create and exploit Payoff

113

Note – moral purpose

Attrition – destruction – is the means, not the end.

Note: “speed”


Observations regarding maneuver

• Ambiguity, deception, novelty, mobility, and violence (or threat thereof) are used to generate surprise and shock.

• Fire and movement are used in combination, like cheng/ch'i or Nebenpunkte/Schwerpunkt, to tie-up, divert, or drain-away adversary attention and strength in order to expose as well as menace and exploit vulnerabilities or weaknesses elsewhere.

• Indications of success tend to be qualitative and are related to the widespread onset of confusion and disorder, frequent envelopments, high prisoner counts, or any other phenomenon that suggests inability to adapt to change.

114

It’s the interpretation that’s important, not the quantitative data themselves. Unlike attrition warfare, one does not typically reinforce failure.


Essence of maneuver conflict

Create, exploit, and magnify

• Ambiguity:

Alternative or competing impressions of events as they may or may not be.

• Deception:

An impression of events as they are not.

• Novelty:

Impressions associated with events/ideas that are unfamiliar or have not been experienced before.

• Fast transient maneuvers:

Irregular and rapid/abrupt shift from one maneuver event/state to another.

• Effort (cheng/ch'i or Nebenpunkte/Schwerpunkt):

An expenditure of energy or an irruption of violence—focused into, or thru, features that permit an organic whole to exist.

Payoff

• Disorientation:

Mismatch between events one observes or imagines and events (or efforts) he must react or adapt to.

• Disruption:

State of being split-apart, broken-up, or torn asunder.

• Overload:

A welter of threatening events/efforts beyond one’s mental or physical capacity to adapt or endure.

Aim

Generate many non-cooperative centers of gravity, as well as disorient, disrupt, or overload those that adversary depends upon, in order to magnify friction, shatter cohesion, produce paralysis, and bring about his collapse;

or equivalently,

Uncover, create, and exploit many vulnerabilities and weaknesses, hence many opportunities, to pull adversary apart and isolate remnants for mop-up or absorption.

117

Note: High tempo, not (necessarily) high speed.


It is true that the Russian can besuperb in defense and recklessin mass attacks, but when facedby surprise and unforeseensituations he is an easy prey topanic. Field Marshal von Manstein proved in this operation* that Russian mass attacks should be met by maneuver, not by rigid defense.

Panzer Battles,Major General F. W. von Mellenthin,

p. 254

* The Kharkov Counterstroke – February & March 1943

why this is called “maneuver” conflict


Intentions

• Probe and test adversary to unmask strengths, weaknesses, maneuvers, and intentions.

• Employ a variety of measures that interweave menace-uncertainty-mistrust with tangles of ambiguity-deception-novelty as basis to sever adversary’s moral ties and disorient ...

• Select initiative (or response) that is least expected.

• Establish 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).

• Exploit, rather than disrupt or destroy, those differences, frictions, and obsessions of adversary organism that interfere with his ability to cope ...

• Subvert, disorient, disrupt, overload, or seize adversary’s vulnerable, yet critical, connections, centers, and activities ... in order to dismember organism and isolate remnants for wrap-up or absorption.

• Generate uncertainty, confusion, disorder, panic, chaos ... to shatter cohesion, produce paralysis and bring about collapse.

• Become an extraordinary commander.

Second impression

Transients

• Observe, orient, decide and act more inconspicuously, more quickly, and with more irregularity ...

or put another way

• Operate inside adversary’s observation-orientation-decision action loops or get inside his mind-time-space.

… permits one to

132


Select the initiative (or response) that is least expected

• (Genghis Khan) had secretly pushed and pulled another division of warriors over a distance longer than any other army had ever covered—two thousand miles of desert, mountain, and steppe—to appear deep behind enemy lines, where least expected. (Weatherford, p. 4)

• We intended to make our decisive thrust not immediately in the area where the front protruded west, but down in the southern sector, along the Black Sea coast. In other words, where the enemy would be least expecting it. Field Marshal Erich von Manstein on the Battle of the Kerch Peninsula, May 1942 (Lost Victories, p. 234). [Although outnumbered 2-to-1 and facing a well prepared enemy, Manstein won a spectacular victory that led to his promotion to Field Marshal].

Added August 2006


Agenda

• Conflict



• OODA Loops








• 4GW according to Lind, van Creveld, Hammes, Barnett, and Scheuer



• Grand strategy


– Ends and means

– Moral leverage


• Summary

– Tables





A scheme like this would be a “stage model.” The drawbacks of such models are well known – see for example, Gary Klein’s Sources of Power, pp. 127-128.

Observe

Act

Orient

Decide

Boyd’s original concept ofthe OODA loop


The only drawing Boyd made of the OODA “loop” (1995)

“Interaction permits vitality and growth, while isolation leads to decay and disintegration.” Strategic Game, 29.

“Orientation is the Schwerpunkt.” Organic Design, 16.

“Emphasize implicit over explicit in order to gain a favorable mismatch in friction and time (ours lower than any adversary’s).” Organic Design, 22.

Observe Decide Act

Action(Test)

ImplicitGuidance& Control

ImplicitGuidance& Control

Decision(Hypothesis)

FeedForward

FeedForward

Feedback

Feedback

Observations

UnfoldingCircumstances

OutsideInformation

UnfoldingInteraction

WithEnvironment

UnfoldingInteraction

WithEnvironment

FeedForward

Orient

CulturalTraditions

GeneticHeritage

NewInformation Previous

Experience

Analyses &Synthesis

J. R. Boyd, “the Essence of Winning and Losing,” 1995.


PrerequisitesFingerspitzengefühl

• An ability to “feel” or sense the flow of events

– Often associated with Rommel

• Related to the implicit guidance and control link from orientation to action

• “When this unminding becomes your mind, you do not dwell on anything and do not miss anything. In your body it comes out when a need faces it, to fulfill that need.” – Zen Master Takuan (Thomas Cleary, The Japanese Art of War, 65)

• “You must practice all of your techniques until they become second nature … actual combat is extremely fast and demands that you act and react without thinking.” – Miyamoto Musashi, Book of Five Rings

• “A major difference between a military that can do maneuver warfare in combat and one that can only talk about it is excellence in techniques. Sloppy technique slows down your Boyd Cycle [OODA loops] and makes your actions ineffective. – Bill Lind, Maneuver Warfare Handbook


Blitz operating philosophy

Key point

• Each level from simple to complex (platoon to theater) has their own observation-orientation-decision-action time cycle that increases as we try to control more levels and details of command at the higher levels. Put simply, as the number of events we must consider increase, the longer it takes to observe-orient-decide-act.

Idea

• This brings out the idea that faster tempo, or rhythm, at lower levels should work within the slower rhythm but larger pattern at higher levels so that overall system does not lose its cohesion or coherency.

Raises question

• How do blitzers harmonize these differing tempos/rhythms so that they can exploit the faster rhythm/smaller pattern (of the lower-level units) yet maintain the coherency of the rhythm/pattern for the larger effort?

Response

• Give lower-level commanders wide freedom, within an overall mind-time-space scheme, to shape/direct their own activities so that they can exploit faster tempo/rhythm at tactical levels yet be in harmony with the larger pattern/slower rhythm associated with the more general aim and larger effort at the strategic level.

Shaping agents

• Shape overall scheme by using mission concept or sense of mission to fix responsibility and shape commitment at all levels and through all parts of the organism. Likewise, use Schwerpunkt concept through all levels to link differing rhythms/patterns so that each part or level of the organic whole can operate at its own natural rhythm—without pulling organism apart—instead of the slower pace associated with a rigid centralized control.

72

These, inside a shared value system, permit implicit guidance and control.


Overall mind-time-space scheme

Message

• According to General Gunther Blumentritt, such a scheme presupposes a common outlook based upon “a body of professional officers who have received exactly the same training during the long years of peace and with the same tactical education, the same way of thinking, identical speech, hence a body of officers to whom all tactical conceptions were fully clear.”

• Furthermore, a la General Blumentritt, it presupposes “an officers training institution which allows the subordinate a very great measure of freedom of action and freedom in the manner of executing orders and which primarily calls for independent daring, initiative and sense of responsibility.”

Point

• Without a common outlook superiors cannot give subordinates freedom-of-action and maintain coherency of ongoing action.

Implication

• A common outlook possessed by “a body of officers” represents a unifying theme that can be used to simultaneously encourage subordinate initiative yet realize superior intent.

74

Boyd also used the German word, “Einheit,” to describe this common

outlook.


Schwerpunkt(focus of main effort)

Message

• Schwerpunkt acts as a center or axis or harmonizing agent that is used to help shape commitment and convey or carry-out intent, at all levels from theater to platoon, hence an image around which:

– Maneuver of all arms and supporting elements are focused to exploit opportunities and maintain tempo of operations,

and

– Initiative of many subordinates is harmonized with superior intent.

• In this sense Schwerpunkt can be thought of as:

– A focusing agent that naturally produces an unequal distribution of effort as a basis to generate superiority in some sectors by thinning-out others,

as well as

– A medium to realize superior intent without impeding initiative of many subordinates, hence a medium through which subordinate initiative is implicitly connected to superior intent.

Implication

– Schwerpunkt represents a unifying concept that provides a way to rapidly shape focus and direction of effort as well as harmonize support activities with combat operations, thereby permit a true decentralization of tactical command within centralized strategic guidance—without losing cohesion of overall effort.

or put another way

– Schwerpunkt represents a unifying medium that provides a directed way to tie initiative of many subordinate actions with superior intent as a basis to diminish friction and compress time in order to generate a favorable mismatch in time/ability to shape and adapt to unfolding circumstances.

78


Auftragstaktik—missions and contracts instead of directives

The concept of mission can be thought of as a contract, hence an agreement, between superior and subordinate.

– The subordinate agrees to make his or her actions serve superior's intent in terms of what is to be accomplished,

– The superior agrees to give the subordinate wide freedom to exercise his or her imagination and initiative in terms of how intent is to be realized.


Auftragstaktik—what “commitment” means

As part of this concept, the subordinate is given the right to challenge or question the feasibility of the mission if:

– he feels his superior's ideas on what can be achieved are not in accord with the existing situation or

– he feels his superior has not given him adequate resources to carry it out.

Likewise, the superior has every right to expect his subordinate to carry out the mission contract when agreement is reached on what can be achieved consistent with the existing situation and resources provided.

Likewise, the superior has every right to expect his subordinate to carry out the mission contract when agreement is reached on what can be achieved consistent with the existing situation and resources provided.

J. R. Boyd, Patterns of Conflict, 76


Auftragstaktik

• But once the attack is underway and the situation begins changing rapidly, the subordinate will again be expected to adjust his actions to the changes on his own initiative, with appropriate references to his superior’s intent. Lind, Maneuver Warfare Handbook, 13-14

• Advantages of Auftragstaktik:

– Leaders at all echelons are forced to analyze their own situations as well as that of the next highest command

– Transmission of orders from one command level to another is expedited

– Measures taken at the scene of action are in harmony with actual conditions

General W. von Lessow, Bundeswehr, 1977(in van Creveld, Fighting Power)

• It provides for the degree of cooperation necessary to achieve harmony of effort yet gives commanders at all levels the latitude to act with initiative and boldness … It is not more command and control that we are after. Instead, we seek to decrease the amount of command and control that we need. MCDP 6, Command and Control, Ch. 3


Before you rush in …

• Mission command and control demands mutual trust among all commanders, staffs, and Marines—confidence in the abilities and judgment of subordinates, peers, and seniors.

MCDP 6, p. 10

• Such a system, of course, presupposes uniformity of thinking and reliability of action only to be attained by thorough training and long experience. More importantly still, complete confidence of superiors and their subordinates and vice versa is absolutely indispensable.

van Creveld, Fighting Power, p. 36.

In other words, you must earn the rightto use Auftragstaktik.

In other words, you must earn the rightto use Auftragstaktik.



I. (Individual) Fingerspitzengefühl

III. Schwerpunkt

IV. Auftrag

II. Einheit

Idealized schematicThe FESA climate

Common outlook


What OODA “loop” speedreally means

Know what to do

Act

Implicit

Guidance&

Control

And be able to do it

UnfoldingInteracti

onWith

Environment

Action(Test)

Decide

Decision(Hypothesis)

FeedForward

FeedForward

Feedback

Feedback

While learning from the

experience

UnfoldingInteracti

onWith

Environment

Observe Orient

FeedForward

Implicit

Guidance&

Control

Observations

UnfoldingCircumstanc

es

OutsideInformati

on

Quickly understand

what’s going on

Key Points:

• When you’re doing OODA “loops” right,accuracy and speed improve together; they don’t trade off.

• The main function of management is to build an organization that gets better and better at these things.

Key Points:

• When you’re doing OODA “loops” right,accuracy and speed improve together; they don’t trade off.

• The main function of management is to build an organization that gets better and better at these things.

Shared values; common

experiences; commander’s

intent, etc.


Agenda

• Conflict



• OODA Loops











• Grand strategy


– Ends and means

– Moral leverage


• Summary

– Tables





Categories of conflict

Now looking back and reflecting upon the panorama of military history we can imagine three kinds of human conflict:

– Attrition warfare—as practiced by the Emperor Napoleon, by all sides during the 19th century and during World War I, by the Allies during World War II, and by present-day nuclear planners.

– Maneuver conflict—as practiced by the Mongols, General Bonaparte, Confederate General Stonewall Jackson, Union General Ulysses S. Grant, Hitler’s Generals (in particular Manstein, Guderian, Balck, Rommel) and the Americans under Generals Patton and MacArthur.

– Moral conflict—as practiced by the Mongols, most guerrilla leaders, a very few counter-guerrillas (such as Magsaysay) and certain others from Sun Tzu to the present.

With these comments in mind let’s look into the essentials of each.

111


Observations related to moral conflictGen. Hermann Balck

Theme

• No fixed recipes for organization, communications, tactics, leadership, etc.

• Wide freedom for subordinates to exercise imagination and initiative—yet harmonize within intent of superior commanders.

• Heavy reliance upon moral (human values) instead of material superiority as basis for cohesion and ultimate success.

• Commanders must create a bond and breadth of experience based upon trust—not mistrust—for cohesion.

How is this atmosphere achieved?

• By example leaders (at all levels) must demonstrate requisite physical energy, mental agility, and moral authority, to inspire subordinates to enthusiastically cooperate and take initiatives within superiors intent.

What is the price?

• Courage to share danger and discomfort at the front.

• Willingness to support and promote (unconventional or difficult) subordinates that accept danger, demonstrate initiative, take risks, and come-up with new ways toward mission accomplishment.

• Dedication and resolve to face-up to and master uncomfortable circumstances that fly in the face of the traditional solution.

Benefit

• Internal simplicity that permits rapid adaptability.

118


Essence of moral conflict

Create, exploit, and magnify

• Menace:

Impressions of danger to one’s well being and survival.

• Uncertainty:

Impressions, or atmosphere, generated by events that appear ambiguous, erratic, centers of gravity, as well as subvert contradictory, unfamiliar, chaotic, etc.

• Mistrust:

Atmosphere of doubt and suspicion that loosens human bonds among members of an organic whole or between organic wholes.

Idea

• Surface, fear, anxiety, and alienation in order to generate many non-cooperative centers of gravity, as well as subvert those that adversary depends upon, thereby magnify internal friction.

122

In other words, pump up these

In order to breed these

payoff

Aim

Destroy moral bonds that permit an organic whole to exist


Essence of moral conflict

Negative factors

• Menace:

Impressions of danger to one’s well being and survival

• Uncertainty:

Impressions, or atmosphere, generated by events that appear ambiguous, erratic, contradictory, unfamiliar, chaotic, etc.

• Mistrust:

Atmosphere of doubt and suspicion that loosens human bonds among members of an organic whole or between organic wholes

Counterweights

• Initiative:

Internal drive to think and take action without being urged

• Adaptability:

Power to adjust or change in order to cope with new or unforeseen circumstances

• Harmony:

Interaction of apparently disconnected events or entities in a connected way

Aim

Pump-up friction via negative factors to breed fear, anxiety, and alienation in order to generate many non-cooperative centers of gravity, as well as subvert those that adversary depends upon, thereby sever moral bonds that permit adversary to exist as an organic whole.

Simultaneously,

build-up and play counterweights against negative factors to diminish internal friction, as well as surface courage, confidence, and esprit, thereby make possible the human interactions needed to create moral bonds that permit us, as an organic whole, to shape and adapt to change.

125

May use a variety of tools:

• physical – movement or firepower

• mental – e.g., ambiguity via more rapid OODA loops

• or moral – propaganda, subversion & covert action, etc.


Prism of Conflict

Attrition

Maneuver

Moral

Any actual conflict

Note: This is my interpretation - as far as I know, Boyd never used it.


Agenda

• Conflict



• OODA Loops











• Grand strategy


– Ends and means

– Moral leverage


• Summary

– Tables





World War I Guerrilla Warfare(a la T.E. Lawrence)

Action

• Gain support of population. Must “arrange the minds” of friend, foe and neutral alike. Must “get inside their minds”.

• Must “be an idea or thing invulnerable, without front or back, drifting about like a gas” (inconspicuousness and fluidity-of action). Must be an “attack-in-depth”.

• Tactics “should be tip-and-run, not pushes but strokes” with “use of the smallest force in the quickest time at the farthest place”.

• Should be a war of detachment (avoiding contact and presenting a threat everywhere) using mobility/fluidity-of-action and environmental background (vast unknown desert) as basis for “never affording a target” and “never on the defensive except by accident and in error”.

Idea

• Disintegrate existing regime’s ability to govern.

64


Impression

• Infiltration tactics a la Ludendorff seem to be similar in nature to irregular or guerrilla tactics a la Lawrence.

• Why? Both stress clouded/distorted signatures, mobility and cohesion of small units as basis to insert an amorphous yet focused effort into or thru adversary weaknesses.

65


Major advances between World Wars I and II

Soviet revolutionary strategy

• Lenin, and after him Stalin, exploited the idea of crises and vanguards—that arise out of Marxian contradictions within capitalism—to lay-out Soviet revolutionary strategy.

• Result:

– A scheme that emphasizes moral/psychological factors as basis to destroy a regime from within.

Lightning war (blitzkrieg)

• Infiltration tactics of 1918 were mated with:

– Tank

– Motorized Artillery

– Tactical Aircraft

– Motor Transport

– Better Communications

• Result:

– Blitzkrieg to generate a breakthrough by piercing a region with multiple narrow thrusts using armor, motorized infantry, and follow-up infantry divisions supported by tactical aircraft.

Guerrilla war

• Mao Tse-Tung synthesized Sun Tzu’s ideas, classic guerrilla strategy and tactics, and Napoleonic style mobile operations under an umbrella of Soviet revolutionary ideas to create a powerful way for waging modern (guerrilla) war.

• Result:

– Modern guerrilla warfare has become an overall political, economic, social and military framework for “total war”.

by

– J.F.C. Fuller

– Heinz Guderian

66


Blitzkrieg and guerrilla strategy

Infiltration and isolation

• Blitz and guerrillas infiltrate a nation or regime at all levels to soften and shatter the moral fiber of the political, economic and social structure. Simultaneously, via diplomatic, psychological, and various sub-rosa or other activities, they strip-away potential allies thereby isolate intended victim(s) for forthcoming blows. To carry out this program, a la Sun Tzu, blitz, and guerrillas:

– Probe and test adversary, and any allies that may rally to his side, in order to unmask strengths, weaknesses, maneuvers, and intentions.

– Exploit critical differences of opinion, internal contradictions, frictions, obsessions, etc., in order to foment mistrust, sow discord and shape both adversary’s and allies’ perception of the world thereby:

• Create atmosphere of “mental confusion, contradiction of feeling, indecisiveness, panic”...

• Manipulate or undermine adversary’s plans and actions.

• Make it difficult, if not impossible, for allies to aid adversary during his time of trial.

Purpose

• Force capitulation when combined with external political, economic, and military pressures

or

• Weaken foe to minimize his resistance against military blows that will follow.

69

Note


Modern guerrilla campaignEssence

• Capitalize on corruption, injustice, incompetence, etc., (or their appearances) as basis to generate atmosphere of mistrust and discord in order to sever moral bonds that bind people to existing regime.

Simultaneously,

• Share existing burdens with people and work with them to root out and punish corruption, remove injustice, eliminate grievances, etc., as basis to form moral bonds between people and guerrillas in order to bind people to guerrilla philosophy and ideals.

Intent

• Shape and exploit crises environment that permits guerrilla vanguards or cadres to pure-up guerrilla resolve, attract the uncommitted, and drain-away adversary resolve as foundation to replace existing regime with guerrilla regime.

Implication

• Guerrillas, by being able to penetrate the very essence of their adversary’s moral-mental-physical being, generate many moral-mental-physical non-cooperative (or isolated) centers of gravity, as well as subvert or seize those centers of gravity that adversary regime must depend upon, in order to magnify friction, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse.

Yet,

• Guerrillas shape or influence moral-mental-physical atmosphere so that potential adversaries, as well as the uncommitted, are drawn toward guerrilla philosophy and are empathetic toward guerrilla success.

91

Question:

Are al-Qa’ida or the Iraqi insurgents accomplishing or even trying to accomplish these?


Guerrilla results

97

1775-81

1808-14

1812

1914-18

1916-18

1927-49

1941-45

1941-45

1945-54

1954-62

1956-59

1958-75

Successful

• American Colonies

• Spain

• Russia

• German East Africa

• Arabia

• China

• Russia

• Yugoslavia

• Indochina

• Algeria

• Cuba

• South Vietnam

1775-81

1808-14

1812

1914-18

1916-18

1927-49

1941-45

1941-45

1945-54

1954-62

1956-59

1958-75

*Regime exercised particular care not to inflict casualties and to protect population.

Successful

• Philippines

• South Africa

• Greece

• Philippines*

• Malaya*

• Philippines

• South Africa

• Greece

• Philippines*

• Malaya*

1899-1902

1900-02

1944-49

1946-54

1948-60

Unsuccessful

Guerrilla war is the war of the broad masses of an economically backward country standing up against a powerfully equipped and well trained army of aggression.

Vo Nguyen GiapPeople’s War People’s Army


Blitz and guerrilla theme

Essence

• Avoid battles—instead penetrate adversary to subvert, disrupt, or seize those connections, centers, and activities that provide cohesion (e.g., psychological/moral bonds, communications, lines of communication, command and supply centers ...)

• Exploit ambiguity, deception, superior mobility, and sudden violence to generate initial surprise and shock followed by surprise and shock again, again, again ...

• Roll-up/wipe-out the isolated units or remnants created by the subversion, surprise, shock, disruption, and seizure.

Intent

• Exploit subversion, surprise, shock, disruption, and seizure to generate confusion, disorder, panic, etc., thereby shatter cohesion, paralyze effort, and bring about adversary collapse.

98


Counter-guerrilla campaign Action

• Undermine guerrilla cause and destroy their cohesion by demonstrating integrity and competence of government to represent and serve needs of people—rather than exploit and impoverish them for the benefit of a greedy elite.*

• Take political initiative to root out and visibly punish corruption. Select new leaders with recognized competence as well as popular appeal. Ensure that they deliver justice, eliminate grievances and connect government with grass roots.*

• Infiltrate guerrilla movement as well as employ population for intelligence about guerrilla plans, operations, and organization.

• Seal-off guerrilla regions from outside world by diplomatic, psychological, and various other activities that strip-away potential allies as well as by disrupting or straddling communications that connect these regions with outside world.

• Deploy administrative talent, police, and counter-guerrilla teams into affected localities and regions to: inhibit guerrilla communication, coordination and movement; minimize guerrilla contact with local inhabitants; isolate their ruling cadres; and destroy their infrastructure.

• Exploit presence of above teams to build-up local government as well as recruit militia for local and regional security in order to protect people from the persuasion and coercion efforts of the guerrilla cadres and their fighting units.

• Use special teams in a complementary effort to penetrate guerrilla controlled regions. Employ (guerrillas’ own) tactics of reconnaissance, infiltration, surprise hit-and-run, and sudden ambush to: keep roving bands off-balance, make base areas untenable, and disrupt communication with outside world.

• Expand these complementary security/penetration efforts into affected region after affected region in order to undermine, collapse, and replace guerrilla influence with government influence and control.

• Visibly link these efforts with local political/economic/social reform in order to connect central government with hopes and needs of people, thereby gain their support and confirm government legitimacy.

Idea

• Break guerrillas’ moral-mental-physical hold over the population, destroy their cohesion, and bring about their collapse via political initiative that demonstrates moral legitimacy and vitality of government and by relentless military operations that emphasize stealth/fast-tempo/fluidity-of-action and cohesion of overall effort.

___________

* If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides!108


Agenda

• Conflict



• OODA Loops











• Grand strategy


– Ends and means

– Moral leverage


• Summary

– Tables





Another scheme –the generations of war

• 1GW: short-range, smoothbore weapons; line and column; rigid discipline with top down control. Training & élan could often close with and defeat enemy before absorbing debilitating casualties

• 2GW: rifled weapons, automatic weapons, indirect fire artillery; tactics still basically linear (esp. on defense), but firepower replaced manpower as predominant element. Attempts to use “élan” to overcome firepower were now suicidal

• 3GW: same weapons; but: non-linear tactics (infiltration/pull; surfaces & gaps); time rather than place as basis of operational art; emphasis on collapsing enemy rather than closing with and destroying him (AKA blitzkrieg, maneuver warfare, modern system)


1 & 2 GW

Battle of AntietamSeptember 17, 1862


Agenda

• Conflict



• OODA Loops











• Grand strategy


– Ends and means

– Moral leverage


• Summary

– Tables





Blitz/3GW Guerrilla

Penetrate Enemy forces Target society

Isolate Non-cooperative CoGs (e.g., penetrated units, fighting units from logistics, etc.)

Government from people

Subdue/Subvert Isolated remnants Elements of society, geographic entities (villages, provinces, etc.)

Reorient Ourselves for next objective Subverted elements

Reharmonize Our forces (e.g., shift Schwerpunkt)

Elements of society under our control

Content High mental High moral

Blitz vs. guerrilla

• Same basic themes (PISRR), collapse rather than overpower enemy

• Same emphasis on cheng/ch’i

• Differences include:


Army

Clausewitz’s Trinity*:State vs. State

Government

The State

People

Other state

1, 2, 3GW/Blitz/MW

*simplified


Army

Clausewitz’s Trinity:Insurgency

Government

The State

People

3GWGuerrilla

Allies of

The State

penetrate & isolate

penetrate & isolate


3GW restores maneuver

1GW

2GW

Attrition

Maneuver

Moral

3GWGuerrilla


Now, come with me into the fourth generation!


4GW, according to Lind

What defines 4GW:

• “Crisis in legitimacy of the state”: The loss of the state's monopoly on war and on the first loyalty of its citizens and the rise of non-state entities that command people’s primary loyalty and that wage war. These entities may be gangs, religions, races and ethnic groups within races, localities, tribes, business enterprises, ideologies—the variety is almost limitless.

• A return to a world of cultures, not, merely states, in conflict; and

• The manifestation of both developments—the decline of the state and the rise of alternate, often cultural, primary loyalties—not only “over there,” but in America itself.


4GW, according to Lind

The goal of 4GW is largely moral:

Fourth Generation war focuses on the moral level, where it works to convince all parties, neutrals as well as belligerents, that the cause for which a Fourth Generation entity is fighting is morally superior. It turns its state enemies inward against themselves on the moral level, making the political calculations of the mental level irrelevant.

“What if we combined terrorism, high technology, and the following additional elements?

• A non-national or transnational base, such as an ideology or religion

• A direct attack on the enemy’s culture … • Highly sophisticated psychological warfare, especially

through manipulation of the media, particularly television news …

“The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation,” Lind, et. al., 1989


“collapse a state morally”

– Moral strength: Mental capacity to overcome menace, uncertainty, and mistrust.

– Moral victory: Triumph of courage, confidence, and esprit (de corps) over fear, anxiety, and alienation when confronted by menace, uncertainty, and mistrust.

– Moral defeat: Triumph of fear, anxiety, and alienation over courage, confidence, and esprit when confronted by menace, uncertainty, and mistrust.

– Moral values: Human values that permit one to carry on in the face of menace, uncertainty, and mistrust.

– Moral authority: Person or body that can give one the courage, confidence, and esprit to overcome menace, uncertainty, and mistrust.

121

When this happens, you just give up and quit.


“Fighting” 4GWLind

• You can use either the de-escalation model or the “Hama”* (annihilation) model. If you fall in between, you’re doomed.

• The de-escalation model: stresses the moral level, understands the power of weakness, integrates troops with the local population, draws on that integration for good cultural intelligence.

• In fighting 4GW, “less is more.” Try to keep your physical presence small, if possible so small that you are invisible. If you can’t do that, then keep your footprint small in time – get in and get out, fast.

• Finally, if you have to take the least desirable route, invading and occupying another state, you must do everything you can to preserve that state at the same time you are defeating it. As we see in Iraq, if you destroy the state itself, there is a good chance nobody will be able to recreate it.

From “FMFM 1-A,” On War # 101, January 25, 2005

*Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad quelled an insurrection in the city of Hama by leveling part of it with an artillery barrage on January 30, 1982. Estimates of the death toll run from 10,000 to 40,000.


Still “fighting” 4GWLind

• Other important pieces:

– 4GW is often light infantry/Jaeger (hunter) warfare

– “Out G-ing the G” – get better at guerrilla warfare than the guerrilla (quoting COL David Hackworth, USA, Ret.)

– Most important supporting weapon is cash

– “Force protection” is the enemy of “force integration” (with the local population)

– HUMINT is the only “int” worth discussing

From “FMFM 1-A,” On War # 101, January 25, 2005


Can 4GW be avoided?

• Even had American forces understood that they were likely to face a growing insurgency after the war, it is doubtful that they could have elaborated an effective strategy for defeating it quickly, if at all …

• A different conclusion would be to devise a national security strategy in which there is no imperative to fight the kind of war that the United States has fought in Iraq. Rather than “do it better next time,” the contrary lesson would be on the order of “don’t do it at all.”

“Revisions In Need Of Revising: What Went Wrong In The Iraq War,”David C. Hendrickson and Robert W. Tucker,

Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War CollegeDecember 2005


Fourth generation warfareHammes

• It uses all available networks – political, economic, social and military – to convince the enemy’s political decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly for the perceived benefit.

• Note: Neither Lind nor van Creveld totally agree with the objective

– Lind – focus is on moral level, so calculation of benefit is not dominant or sometimes even relevant

– van Creveld – “interests” or “policies” are not the primary cause of war



• It is an evolved form of insurgency (208)

– practical people solving specific problems in order to defeat more powerful enemies (3)

– But, Lind: “Contrary to what a number of writers on 4GW have said, Fourth Generation war is not merely a new name for insurgency or guerrilla warfare.”

• (Social) networks will be employed to carry specific messages to our policy makers and to those who can influence the policy makers (208)

– Networks are exceptionally resilient and difficult to destroy. (183)

• Clausewitzian “decisive battles” and even 3GW maneuver campaigns are irrelevant (208) at least until Mao’s Phase III against a state government

• Too much central control can destroy the effectiveness of a 4GW force (209)



• A state will not give up its right to exist as a result of 4GW techniques

– a final (Mao Phase III) conventional campaign will be required (211)

– can achieve less drastic goals with 4GW

• Successful 4GW organizations focus on the movement’s long term political viability, rather than near-term tactical effectiveness. (222)

– see themselves not as military organizations but as webs

– unified by ideas

• Must bring to bear full set of economic, social, intelligence & military capabilities of western states


4GW – non-trinitarian warfarevan Creveld

Martin van Creveld doesn’t use the term “4GW” but has stated that the concept is basically the same as “non-trinitarian” warfare, as described in The Transformation of War (1991.) What changes in 4GW is who fights and what they’re fighting for.

– The state as we know it (government separate from ruler) became the dominant form of political organization in Europe only in 1648

– In many parts of the world, states were only established in the 19th & 20th centuries through colonization/ decolonization and some parts of the world never developed functioning states at all

– Even where states were established, other organizations are coming to the fore and beginning to wage war not involving governments, people, and armies.


Why societies go to warvan Creveld

• States

– interests; policy (Politik): cost/benefit calculations, often disguised, implied, or backfilled

• Non-States (and sometimes states)

– grievances, objectives, glory of individuals/status in tribe

– obtaining the spoils of war: booty, slaves, territory, women, which override and complicate any pursuit of tribal/community “policy”

– obtaining prisoners for religious or culinary reasons (150)

– doctrinal differences

– other “will of God” reasons

– justice: avenge perceived wrongs; community honor (e.g., Trojan War)

– assist an ally (WW I and to some extent WWII)

• Everybody

– existence, either as a group (insurgency) or as a state


Predictionsvan Creveld

• The side with the more rational interests will lose (149)

• Wars will be waged by groups we today call “terrorists”

– tribes, religious groups, commercial groups, criminal groups, insurgencies, etc.

– their home territories will not be continuous, impenetrable, or very large; no clear line on a map

– leadership will be along personal & charismatic lines

• Role of women in non-trinitarian warfare (4GW, but not 2/3GW!) will approach that of men, as it historically has in guerrilla warfare (180)


Predictions (II)van Creveld

• Distinctions between war and crime will break down (204) as will the difference between armed forces and civilians (194)

• Battles will be replaced by skirmishes, bombings and massacres

• Intermingling with enemy forces, mixing with the civilian population, and extreme dispersion have become the norm (208) The problem of subversion is likely to be serious (211)

• Much of the task of defending society against non-trinitarian warfare/4GW will fall to private security companies, with a corresponding decrease in the utility, size, and technological complexity (cost) of military forces

• Armies will shrink in size and wither away, to be replaced by police-like security forces on the one hand and armed gangs on the other (not that the difference is always clear, even today) (225)


War through the agesvan Creveld

“It is not true that war is simply a means to an end, nor do people necessarily fightin order to attain this objectiveor that. In fact, the opposite isoften true: people very oftentake up one objective or anotherprecisely in order thatthey may fight.” (226)


4GWBarnett

• Guerrilla or insurgency-based warfare

– Defeat enemy politically

– Not on battlefield but through years of LIC

• Incorporates notion of “war within the context of everything else”

– Military tactics subordinated to economic, political, and social pain inflicted upon opponent

– Focus is enemy’s “societal will to wage war” (Blueprint, 20)

• Could be precluded by a sufficiently large Sys Admin force (Blueprint, 17)

• Essentially a war against individuals; inside Core states, reduces to a law enforcement problem (Blueprint, 122, 123)


4GWBarnett

• Problems with 4GW:

– Suggests a world in perpetual war with an “unredeemable and inexhaustible” supply of savages (Blueprint, 21 – citing Robert D. Kaplan)

– Envisions long, drawn out conflict with al-Qa’ida or its successor (Blueprint, 88 – citing Kaplan)

– “Addicted to notion of declining state” (on his blog 1/22/06)

• 4GW techniques possible in conflict between Core states, but hard to see the payoff (Blueprint, 126-129) Discounts religion as a strong cause of the 9/11 attacks (Map, 285; Blueprint, 87 - citing Olivier Roy)

• “We seek to do unto al-Qa’ida what they did unto us: trigger a System Perturbation …” (Map, 285)


4GWBarnett

• But, system perturbation is risky

– Outcome of perturbation, itself

– Effect on rest of region (and by implication, the Gap as a whole) (Map, 290)

– “Rule-Set Reset” can be a dangerous time because “the cure may be worse than the disease” (Blueprint, xviii)

• Toppling Saddam was a real System Perturbation, but working the insurgency is a serious, long-term horizontal scenario, requiring people who can see across time. A PhD in history has to help on that score. Doesn't mean you're not still killing bad guys, it just means you do it with more care and discretion, making sure you don't simply create more enemies in the process.In the end, you get to leave when their economy is working. Jobs kill insurgencies, not soldiers. (Blog 17 Feb 06)


4GWScheuer

• Doesn’t really consider the subject – for reasons we’ll cover under Grand Strategy.

• Follows Lind and Hafez al-Assad, should military force become necessary.

• Because we are so bad at grand strategy, we are only left with one military option:

– “The piles of dead will include as many or more civilians as combatants because our enemies wear no uniforms. Killing in large numbers is not enough to defeat our Muslim foes. With killing must come a Sherman-like razing of infrastructure. Roads and irrigation systems; bridges, power plants, and crops in the field; fertilizer plants and grain mills … As noted, such actions will yield large civilian casualties, displaced populations, and refugee flows.” (241-242)


John RobbOpen source warfare

• Open source warfare: “relies on networks of peers rather than the hierarchies of command and control we see in conventional militaries. This structure provides an open source movement with levels of innovation and resilience that rigid hierarchies can't match.”

• Multiple, smaller attacks against “systempunkts” (disruptive leverage points) like power & telecom nodes, water, ports, etc.

• Iraq appears to be developing a cooperative community among diverse groups that operates like the open source software industry

• Locally successful tactics are quickly replicated; ineffective ones quickly abandoned – has evolutionary overtones

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/


Robb: open source warfare

• On the tactical level the objective is to undermine and collapse the state by driving people to primary loyalties to meet their needs. On the strategic level it is used to undermine the sentiment of the global financial/trade markets in relation to the target state to cause capital outflows, inflation, spiraling debt, and potentially economic depression.

• Note: compressing the distance between “tactical” and “strategic” is a feature of (counter-)guerrilla warfare and 4GW. The Marine Corps uses the term “strategic corporeal” to indicate that the actions of low-ranking people may have strategic or grand strategic impact (e.g., Abu Ghraib)


Other thoughts on 4GW

• Al-Qa’ida or whatever it is now, is having no problem developing future leaders and developing its “franchise” model (Sherifa Zuhur, SSI)

• The centre will reinforce successful cells with funds, skills and weapons, seeking to establish a sanctuary from which to develop. It will allow cells considerable latitude in the method they adopt to suit the local circumstances – provided that security is not breached and that the cell is both successful and in its actions no more corrupt than condoned by the movement. Gen Sir Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force

• Organized crime will sometimes cooperate with “terrorist” groups; can create dysfunctional governments (Phil Williams; Max Manwaring)

• Demographic youth bulge will continue to provide fertile recruiting grounds for “terrorist” vanguards—Nepal, for example

• There are some 30-40 “irregular” conflicts in any given year (Frank Hoffman)


Echevarria’s critique of 4GWDr. Echevarria is the Director of Research at SSI

• Uses a version of Hammes’ interpretation (1)

• Defines 4GW as: “future terrorists would first seek to infiltrate a society and then attempt to collapse it from within by means of an ill-defined psychocultural ‘judo throw’ of sorts” (2-3)

• “the types of high-technology that 4GW’s proponents envisioned terrorists using includes such Wunderwaffe as directed energy weapons and robotics …” (3)

• Critiques 4GW as claiming that US forces are: “designed to operate within a nation-state framework” and then gives WW II as a counter example (!) (5)

• “ … by comparing what essentially amounts to military means or techniques – such as ‘massed manpower,’ ‘firepower,’ and ‘maneuver’ – on the one hand, to what is arguably a form of warfare – such as insurgency – on the other… “ (15)


Comments on Echevarria

• Confuses 4GW with a technological approach to warfare (2)

• Assumes that to be effective, guerrilla warfare must support state-vs-state warfare (echoing Clausewitz) (12-13)

• Confuses “maneuver” with “movement” (15) This is a major error. And “insurgency” is simply a rebellion, not a form of warfare.

• Asserts that the epitome of warfare is violence and that Napoleon (who lost decisively to Wellington) was its master (16)

• Does not appreciate that in 4GW, the “insurgents” are primarily targeting the outside state power - the local “state” has already failed. If the local state has not failed, then he has a good point: what’s happening is classic insurgency, not 4GW.


4GW: One pattern, a la Clausewitz

4GW

People

Government

Army

The State

Supporting country

Target(failing state)

G

AP

Coup

2/3GW

LIC

Failed states


4GW: One pattern, a la Clausewitz

4GW

People

Government

Army

The State

Supporting country

Failed state

G

AP

Failed states

4GW


Blitz/3GW Guerrilla 4GW???

Penetrate Enemy forces Own society Society of supporting country

Isolate Non-cooperative CoGs (e.g., penetrated units)

Government from people Non-cooperative centers of gravity (e.g., institutions, organizations)

Subdue/Subvert Isolated remnants Elements of society Enough NCoGs to cause supporting country moral collapse & withdrawal

Reorient Ourselves for next objective Subverted elements Ourselves: for example, expand guerrilla or convert to 3GW in target country

Reharmonize Our forces (e.g., shift Schwerpunkt)

Elements of society under our control

Ourselves: for example to continue fight in target country

Content High mental High moral Moral vs. supporting country;

All vs. target country

Blitz vs. guerrilla vs. 4GW


States & non-states wage war

States & non-states wage war

1600 1700 1800 1900 2000

The “generations of war” modelFrom the viewpoint of Core states and nuclear powers

New commo & trans networks

3 GW

Precursor activities – going back to Alexander & Sun Tzu

(and before)

maneuver concepts

Peace of Westphalia

State-vs-state— only “legal” form

of war

state vs. state

2 GW

Highly irregular / partisan warfare; terrorism;

criminal organizations, etc.

Nuclear Weapons

ProliferateFall of USSR

1GW

4 GW


Agenda

• Conflict



• OODA Loops











• Grand strategy


– Ends and means

– Moral leverage


• Summary

– Tables





! Simply stated !As human beings, we cannot exist without an external or surrounding environment from which we can draw sustenance, nourishment, or support.

In other words

Interaction permits vitality and growth while isolation leads to decay and disintegration.

SG 29


Illuminating example (continued)Overall Message

• The ability to operate at a faster tempo or rhythm than an adversary enables one to fold adversary back inside himself so that he can neither appreciate nor keep up with what's going on. He will become disoriented or confused;

which suggests that

• Unless such menacing pressure is relieved, adversary will experience various combinations of uncertainty, doubt, confusion, self-deception, indecision, fear, panic, discouragement, despair, etc., which will further:

Disorient or twist his mental images/impressions of what's happening;

thereby

Disrupt his mental/physical maneuvers for dealing with such a menace;

thereby

Overload his mental/physical capacity to adapt or endure;

thereby

Collapse his ability to carry on.

SG 44

Key point: only at the level of strategy & below


? What’s the point of all this ?

• We can’t just look at our own personal experiences or use the same mental recipes over and over again; we've got to look at other disciplines and activities and relate or connect them to what we know from our experiences and the strategic world we live in.

If we can do this

• We will be able to surface new repertoires and (hopefully) develop a Fingerspitzengefühl for folding our adversaries back inside themselves, morally-mentally-physically—so that they can neither appreciate nor cope with what's happening—without suffering the same fate ourselves.

SG 45


Which carries us to the? question ?

• How do we fold adversaries back inside themselves, morally-mentally-physically … without suffering the same fate ourselves?

or put another way

• How do we physically isolate our adversaries yet interact with others outside ourselves?

• How do we mentally isolate our adversaries yet keep in touch hence interact, with unfolding events?

• How do we morally isolate our adversaries yet maintain the trust/confidence of others and thereby interact with them?

SG 46


Illumination

• Physically we can isolate adversaries by severing their communications with outside world as well as by severing their internal communications to one another. We can accomplish this by cutting them off from their allies and the uncommitted via diplomatic, psychological, and other efforts. To cut them off from one another we should penetrate their system by being unpredictable, otherwise they can counter our efforts.

• Mentally we can isolate our adversaries by presenting them with ambiguous, deceptive, or novel situations, as well as by operating at a tempo or rhythm they can neither make out nor keep up with. Operating inside their O-O-D-A loops will accomplish just this by disorienting or twisting their mental images so that they can neither appreciate nor cope with what's really going on.

• Morally our adversaries isolate themselves when they visibly improve their well being to the detriment of others (i.e. their allies, the uncommitted, etc.) by violating codes of conduct or behavior patterns that they profess to uphold or others expect them to uphold.

SG 47


Expected payoff

Disintegration and collapse, unless adversaries change their behavior patterns to conform to what is deemed acceptable by others outside themselves.

SG 48


Illumination(continued)

• Physically we interact by opening-up and maintaining many channels of communication with the outside world, hence with others out there, that we depend upon for sustenance, nourishment, or support.

• Mentally we interact by selecting information from a variety of sources or channels in order to generate mental images or impressions that match-up with the world of events or happenings that we are trying to understand and cope with.

• Morally we interact with others by avoiding mismatches between what we say we are, what we are, and the world we have to deal with, as well as by abiding by those other cultural codes or standards that we are expected to uphold.

SG 49


Expected payoff

Vitality and growth, with the opportunity to shape and adapt to unfolding events thereby influence the ideas and actions of others.

SG 50


Theme for disintegrationand collapse

Synthesize

• Lethal effort:

Tie-up, divert, or drain-away adversary attention and strength as well as (or thereby) overload critical vulnerabilities and generate weaknesses.

• Maneuver:

Subvert, disorient, disrupt, overload, or seize those vulnerable yet critical connections, centers, and activities as basis to penetrate, splinter, and isolate remnants of adversary organism for mop-up or absorption.

• Moral:

Create an atmosphere of fear, anxiety, and alienation to sever human bonds that permit an organic whole to exist.

Idea

• Destroy adversary’s moral-mental-physical harmony, produce paralysis, and collapse his will to resist.

Aim

Render adversary powerless by denying him the opportunity to cope with unfolding circumstances.

136


Agenda

• Conflict



• OODA Loops











• Grand strategy


– Ends and means

– Moral leverage


• Summary

– Tables





? Raises question ?

How do we connect the tactical and strategic notions, or the theme for disintegration and collapse, with the national goal?

138


Via a sensible grand strategy that will:

• Support national goal.

• Pump-up our resolve, drain-away adversary resolve, and attract the uncommitted.

• End conflict on favorable terms.

• Ensure that conflict and peace terms do not provide seeds for (unfavorable) future conflict.

139


Essence

• Shape pursuit of national goal so that we not only amplify our spirit and strength (while undermining and isolating our adversaries) but also influence the uncommitted or potential adversaries so that they are drawn toward our philosophy and are empathetic toward our success.

Grand strategy

140


Insight

On one hand … the national goal and grand strategy tend to be constructive in nature. On the other hand, the strategic aim, strategy, grand tactics, and tactics are destructive in nature and operate over a shorter time frame.

In this sense, the upper two and the latter four notions, as expressed, appear to be in disharmony with one another. Yet, application of these latter four strategic and tactical notions permit real leadership to avoid high attrition, avoid widespread destruction, and gain a quick victory. This combined with shattered cohesion, paralysis, and rapid collapse demonstrated by the existing adversary regime, makes it appear corrupt, incompetent, and unfit to govern.

Under these circumstances, leaders and statesmen offering generous terms can form the basis for a viable peace. In this sense, the first two and the latter four notions can be in harmony with one another.

142

Roughly, the principles of maneuver (warfare)


Further elaboration

Up to this point—by repeatedly adding, stripping-away, and recombining many different, yet similar, ideas and thoughts—we have examined the nature of conflict, survival, and conquest in many different ways.

A review and further manipulation of the ideas and thoughts that make-up these different ways suggests that, for success over the long haul and under the most difficult conditions, one needs some unifying vision that can be used to attract the uncommitted as well as pump-up friendly resolve and drive and drain-away or subvert adversary resolve and drive. In other words, what is needed is a vision rooted in human nature so noble, so attractive that it not only attracts the uncommitted and magnifies the spirit and strength of its adherents, but also undermines the dedication and determination of any competitors or adversaries.

Moreover, such a unifying notion should be so compelling that it acts as a catalyst or beacon around which to evolve those qualities that permit a collective entity or organic whole to improve its stature in the scheme of things. Put another way, we are suggesting a need for a supra-orientation or center-of-gravity that permits leaders, and other authorities, to inspire their followers and members to enthusiastically take action toward confronting and conquering all obstacles that stand in the way.

Such a scheme can be portrayed as follows:

143


Unifying vision

Side by side, unaided except by their kith and kin in the great Dominions and by the wide empires which rest beneath their shield—side by side, the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue not only Europe but mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them—behind us—behind the Armies and Fleets of Britain and France—gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races: the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians—upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must; as conquer we shall. Winston Churchill, “First Broadcast as Prime Minister,” May 19, 1940

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/


Theme for vitality and growth

Unifying vision

• A grand ideal, overarching theme, or noble philosophy that represents a coherent paradigm within which individuals as well as societies can shape and adapt to unfolding circumstances—yet offers a way to expose flaws of competing or adversary systems.

Ingredients needed to pursue vision

• Insight:

Ability to peer into and discern the inner nature or workings of things.

• Orientation

Ability to harmonize our images, views, or impressions of the world in order to comprehend changes in the world

• Harmony:

Power to perceive or create interaction of apparently disconnected events or entities in a connected way.

• Agility:

Ability to transition from one OODA state – or equivalently one orientation state – to another more rapidly than any opponent

• Initiative:

Internal drive to think and take action without being urged.

Aim

Improve fitness as an organic whole to shape and expand influence or power over the course of events in the world.

144

(Positive) essence of moral conflict – chart

125


Boyd’s pattern

Unifying Vision

Grand Strategy

Strategy

Grand Tactics

Tactics

Domain of the OODA “Loop”

v 1.4 5/17/2005


Boyd’s pattern

Unifying Vision

Grand Strategy

Strategy

Grand Tactics

Tactics

A “Code of Moral Values”—what van Creveld calls the “war

convention” —that determines what actions (“transients”) are and are not acceptable.

If you violate these, or are tricked into violating them, you isolate yourself morally and demoralize your own forces.

Basis

Key point: The attractiveness of the unifying vision is not what determines which actions are acceptable.

That would be “ends justifying means” – creative writing, in other words.

v 1.4 5/17/2005


With these thoughts in mind, let’s look at what our authors have to say about grand strategy


Grand strategyBill Lind

• “Col John Boyd, USAF, America’s greatest military theorist, defined grand strategy as the art of connecting to—while isolating the enemy from—as many independent power centers as possible. The grand strategic question facing the US is how to do that in a 21st century that will increasingly be dominated by non-state, Fourth Generation forces.”

• Lind’s grand strategy: minimize contact with sources of disorder, while making every effort to connect with sources of order:

– Control entry and immigration from sources of disorder

– Learn to live (well) without their products and resources

– If necessary, retaliate as a “spasm”: massively and immediately

– “strategic (military) defensive combined with annihilating strategic and tactical counteroffensive”


Grand strategyLind

• Sources of order:

– States

– Some religions and ideologies

– Some businesses and other commercial enterprises

– Mercenary armies

• Sources of disorder

– Failed states, including Afghanistan and Iraq

– Islam

• Idea is to “fold sources of disorder back inside themselves,” as in Boyd’s military strategy of Interaction and Isolation (Strategic Game)


Lind’s grand strategy –Assessment

• Idea of “sources of disorder” is similar to Barnett’s “non-integrating gap” (which includes all states with a Muslim majority.)

• But Lind does not propose trying to integrate the sources of disorder back into the sources of order by means of active involvement

• Sees two major drawbacks to a (military) offensive in the “War on Terror”:

– Will be widely viewed as aggression

– Will involve “sources of order” directly in the midst of “sources of disorder,” breaking their isolation

i.e., violation of universal moral code


Grand strategyin insurgency/4GW

van Creveld

• An armed force that keeps beating down on a weaker opponent will be seen as committing a series of crimes; therefore it will end up by losing the support of its allies, its own people, and its own troops …

• In other words, he who fights against the weak—and the rag-tag Iraqi militias are very weak indeed—and loses, loses. He who fights against the weak and wins also loses. To kill an opponent who is much weaker than yourself is unnecessary and therefore cruel; to let that opponent kill you is unnecessary and therefore foolish. – “Why Iraq Will End as Vietnam Did”

i.e., violation of universal moral code, the “war convention” - why in an Internet Age, states have difficulty waging attrition warfare against guerrillas.


Problems with military forcevan Creveld

• … the original goals for which the US went to war included stopping communism and preserving democracy in South Vietnam (147)

• From the Americans in Vietnam to the Soviets in Afghanistan, the number of those who found their calculations upset and their plans confounded by the enemy’s determination to suffer and endure is legion (148)

Replace “communism” with the bad ideology du jour (Islamic Fundamentalism or some such) and you get

goals similar to those used to justify the invasion of Iraq.


Core vs. GapBarnett

• Agreeing on a written, common rule set builds unity among Core nations (Blueprint 126)

• “Disconnectedness defines danger” (xvi)

• No safety until “everyone is invited in” with justice (208)

• Ends can justify means (140, 205)

• Preemptive war still the best tool (121)


Barnett’s grand strategy“Disconnectedness defines danger”

Core• Highly connected

• Codified rule sets on security

• High degree of sharing these rule sets

• 4GW is a law-enforcement issue

• Agreement on how to handle “terrorists”

• Share in burden ofinterventions into the Gap

• 6 step A-Z ruleset for processingfailed stated

Gap• Lack of codified rule sets on security

•Varying degrees of disconnectivity, oppression

• Local governments incapable of or unwilling to fight “terrorism”

• Core states have right to violate Gap “sovereignty”

• Interventions must have support of main Core states and results must be seen as fair & just


Barnett’s grand tactics:the “Six Steps”

1. UNSC “indicts”

2. “Functioning executive body” (e.g., Group of 8) sanctions military action

3. US-led force invades, arrests old regime

4. Core SysAdmin force restores stability

5. International organization (TBD) reconstructs

6. Bad guys are tried before the International Criminal Court (Blueprint 51-52)


Blueprint’s grand tactics:kinetics

• Leviathan:

– Special Ops for 4GW

– Network-Centric Warfare - primarily airpower - as enabler for Sys Admin & reconstruction

• Systems Administrator

– Most of Army

– All of USMC (except special operations)

– 50% uniformed military; 25% uniformed police; 25% government civilians

– Highly multinational


Utilize networks in Functioning Core, primarily private sector investment, as “pull” mechanism; use Core military to “export” security, “proactively shape a better tomorrow”.

Barnett’s Pattern

Unifying Vision

Grand Strategy

Strategy

Grand Tactics

Tactics

Shrink the Gap. A connected world – “disconnectedness” is the enemy.

Airpower, NCW for access, regime change. Rapid reconstruct to pre-empt 4GW

System perturbation: put system into play & integrate into the core.

Six Point A-to-Z rule set for processing failed states. “Leviathan” against rogue states & to take out “bad actors.” Sys Admin to integrate. Special ops against “terrorists.”


Making rollback work –(Gordon & Trainor)

Enabling occupation

Establishing security & rehabilitating Iraq

Know your enemy and know yourself and you

will not fear in 100 battles.

Cobra II, p. 503


What we did instead(Gordon & Trainor)

WAR Stability Operations

Our Emphasis

Other coalition members? Allies? Arabs? The Iraqis themselves?

Cobra II, p. 503


The grand strategy of al-Qa’idaScheuer

• Osama bin Laden is playing defense (a la Bill Lind.)

• His grand strategy consists of three parts, one directed towards Muslims, one directed towards the uncommitted, and one directed towards the United States.

• His intent is to remove US & Western influence from the lands that are traditionally Muslim (including Spain!) and institute a “pure” (Salafist) form of Islam in these areas

• Scheuer echoes Boyd in deconstructing grand strategy into three messages:

– To our (bin Laden’s) side / allies (in this case, the Muslim world)

– To the uncommitted

– To opponents (primarily the United States)


Grand strategy of al-Qa’idaScheuer

Message to Muslims:• Islam is under attack from non-Islamic forces

• As evidence, he preaches a consistent message:

1. Support for Israel that allows her to oppress the Palestinians

2. Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula

3. US invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan; statements that our goal is to make them “secular democracies”

4. Support for other regimes hostile to Muslims: Russia, India, China, Uzbekistan, etc.

5. US pressure on Arab energy producers to keep prices low, thereby robbing Muslims of their future

6. US & Western support for apostate, corrupt, unjust, and tyrannical Muslim governments (Saudi Arabia, Syria, Gulf States, and until recently, Iraq.)

• Bin Laden stays on message: It is your duty as Muslims to oppose this attack. You will either succeed or become martyrs

“If bin Laden’s argument is accepted, (each Muslim) must take up arms or otherwise support the mujahideen, or face eternal damnation for not performing a duty mandated by God.” IH, 8.



Message to the uncommitted:

• We have no quarrel with you, so long as you do not oppress Muslims or assist the US in the six activities mentioned above.

• If you do, we are capable of striking you and striking hard

– Madrid railway attack, 4 April 2004

– London transit attack, 7 July 2005

… and not to target whoever wanted to be neutral, but whoever insisted on fighting along with the Crusaders against Muslims should be killed, regardless of their sect or tribe.

… [but] southern Iraqis cannot participate with the United States and its allies in invading al-Fallujah, al-Ramadi, Baqubah, Mosul, Samarra, al-Qaim and other towns and villages while their areas remain safe from reprisal and harm.

Osama bin Laden, speeches of June 30 and July 1, 2006



Message to the United States and its allies:

• We hate you for what you do, as noted above.

• We do not hate “democracy” or “freedom.”

• We are not going to start a jihad to destroy your theaters, beaches, or taverns (although these are clearly signs that your civilization is depraved.)

• I (bin Laden) invite Mr. Bush and the American People to embrace Islam; I will be your guide.

• If you do not, and if you continue in the six practices noted above, we will strike you with ever more massive attacks until you finally leave.

Comment: We do not want to connect with corruption and vice. [It is the duty of a Muslim ruler to encourage that which is good and forbid that which is evil. – e.g., Qu’ran 3:104-114, 9:67; 16:90]


Why Grand Strategy in 4GW?

• In truth, such a condition of democracy is militarily difficult to achieve when occupation is involved, as Israel has discovered in the occupied territories and as the imperial powers discovered after the Second World War, when the colonies sought independence … The initiative moves to the occupied, who can choose to cooperate with the occupiers or not.

• The dangers and costs of coercing the people have already been discussed, and if, as history keeps showing, they are used, then the coercive measures must be maintained, or the spirit of freedom and independence will break out.

Gen Sir Rupert Smith,The Utility of Force


Conflict in the Muslim WorldMichael Vlahos (Johns Hopkins)

• US has indeed unleashed a system perturbation on the Muslim World

• Unfortunately it is one we do not understand and can only partially control

– Rooted in ancient Muslim traditions - freedom from outside

– Aggravated by 25 years of US support for repressive regimes

• Possibilities include:

– Failed state: 27 million person version of Somalia

– We leave, but the insurgency doesn’t

– “Iraqoslavia” - partition, then civil war, then regional war

• In all cases, we’ve trained the next generation of Jihadists

• Prescription - connect to groups we can live with


Grand Strategy in Iraq?

If there was a simple formula by which a coherent political strategy may be expressed, it was to

– communicate to the Shia that they would, as the majority group, quickly gain power through free elections;

– to reassure the Sunni that, despite losing their historic dominance over Iraq, they would not be subject to persecution;

– and to persuade the Kurds to cooperate in the maintenance of the Iraqi state and to rest content with an autonomous status short of independence.

In fact, the American occupiers did not consistently pursue any such logic.

Hendrickson & Tucker, “Revisions”


Grand Strategy in Iraq?

“People who were on the fence or supported us" in the past "have in fact decided to strike out against us."

LTG Peter Chiraelli, USA, Commander, Multinational Corps, Iraq

Quoted in Andrew Bacevich, “What Is An Iraqi Life Worth?”The Washington Post, July 9, 2006


Agenda

• Conflict



• OODA Loops











• Grand strategy


– Ends and means

– Moral leverage


• Summary

– Tables





Now, let’s collect up the bits and pieces.

Role & utility of military force

Involvement in the Gap

Fourth Generation Warfare

Grand Strategy

What “Winning” means


Issue Lind Hammes Barnett van Creveld Scheuer

Military force Massive retaliatory spasm

Occasional 4GW efforts on a defensive basis

Modernized counter –insurgency

Project homeland security

3GW: Access & regime change

New “force” to rebuild, play global cop-on-the-beat

US to play lead role

Conventional armies will rot in this environment

Armies will bifurcate into gangs & private services

Annihilating attacks in defense of national interest; collateral damage be damned

Otherwise, stay out

Involvement in Gap No – retaliation only Vital interest only Yes – integrate Gap No choice – it’s coming our way

No – vital interest only

4GW • Non-state

• Focus is moral defeat of state

• Large dose of insurgency

• Evolved form of insurgency

• (Social) netwar

• Persuade decision-makers

Included in substate violence by individuals – province of special ops.

• Non-trinitarian

• Agrees with Lind, vis-à-vis Israel – Palestinians (wall so high a bird can’t fly over it)

• Al-Qa’ida is main threat

• Change policies in ME or follow LInd

Summary


Issue Lind Hammes Barnett van Creveld Scheuer

Grand Strategic Orientation

Breakdown of state system

Isolate sources of disorder; Islam

Connect with sources of order (state & non-state)

Evolution of insurgency into netwar

Involves current situation in ME, but also criminal & narco networks

Neo-Clausewitzian view of causes of war on state side

Eliminate a few bad actors, suppressing universal longing for connectedness.

Main tool: cause & manage system perturbations

Use economic, social tools to re-integrate Gap

Breakdown of state system

Many motivations for non-state actors, including:

– War is fun

Clausewitz can be fatal (rational actor loses)

Life in Muslim ME focused on religion, honor, survival, kin obligations;

See themselves as under attack

Al-Qaida is catalyzing body for some fraction

Winning Can’t be done – isolate and hope for best

Interagency approach can contain – project “Homeland Security”

Be patient

Gap is shrunk to manageable level

Can’t be done – isolate and hope for best

Fix US ME policy; crush residual threats if they cause problems; beacon – not arsenal – of democracy

Summary


Main issue: role of military force

• Is ancient wisdom now obsolete: Whoever relies on the Tao in governing men doesn’t try to force issues or defeat enemies by force of arms. For every force there is a counterforce. Violence, even well intentioned always rebounds upon oneself. Tao Te Ching, 30

• Is Iraq really experiencing 4GW, or just classical insurgency? In particular, what is the objective of the transnational element?

• What about large-scale conventional conflict, i.e., with China, Russia, or India?


Conclusions

• We’re not going to fight Russia, China, or India (at least not with conventional weapons).


China

China USA

Potentially hostile border

13,700 mi. 0

Restive minorities Tibetans, Uygurs, Mongolians, etc.

0

Breakaway provinces Taiwan 0 (since 1865)

Strat nuc weapons 25-50 10,000

Recent invasions Vietnam(29 day incursion, 1979)

Grenada, Panama, Iraq

Defense budget $70 billion $500 billion


Conclusions

• We’re not going to fight Russia, China, or India (at least not with conventional weapons).

• Therefore we can eliminate most of the non-nuclear forces we now have.

• What we will face is “evolved insurgency,” for which we have, at the moment, no good solution. The environment will be the failed states of the Gap.

• Our best strategy is military containment combined with active, non-military measures.

• Eventually, we should privatize our residual conventional combat forces.


So, what is 4GW?

• It’s any way that non-state entities confront the organized power of a state

– Inside a Core state, it is a law enforcement problem

– If it is just inside a non-Core state, it is insurgency

• If it does not fit into either of these categories and if it is severe enough to be considered “war,” then it may be 4GW

– Transnational - gangs, tribes, corporations, nationalities without states, etc.

– Sometimes based around religion or ideology

– May use the methods of guerrilla warfare

– Focus is on collapsing the will of local states to survive or oppose and of supporting states to interfere

– May or may not have any grand plans for the future








Ref: Transformation of War, 1991


As a first step, we need to privatize much of our military force

• Bankrupt organizations can go out of business

• Markets unleash competition

– variety, rapidity, initiative

– creativity

• Privatization has a long military history

– mercenary organizations, including criminal

– British East India Company(1600-1858) and privateers

– US PMCs today

– van Creveld’s gloomy tomorrow

• Nothing less will force the amountof change that we need

Also, consider that our opponents in 4GW are already privatized.

Also, consider that our opponents in 4GW are already privatized.


Why not rollback as recommendedby Barnett?

• Don’t know how to do it


Rollback, in the heartof NATO

“In Albania and much of ex-Yugoslavia, the forces ranged against the state—crime syndicates and armed nationalists—are often more than a match for legitimate business and politics. Government, in so far as its writ runs at all, is frequently worse than useless: customs barriers and regulations simply obstruct legal business, offer bribe opportunities for bureaucrats and abet crime.

“… Albanian gangs spirit people into Britain and Germany; guns are reaching Britain from Croatia and points south; the stolen-vehicle trade in the Netherlands is dominated by Serbs; and Chinese syndicates based in ex-Yugoslavia send illegal migrants to Finland. It was once said of the Balkans that they produce more history than can be consumed locally; it is even more true that the region is a big net exporter of crime.”

“Europe's banlieue,” The Economist, Nov 24th 2005

New York Times MapNew York Times Map

NATO


Why not rollback?

• Don’t know how to do it

• Occupations are unpredictable in result, but always expensive

– nationalism, tribalism, sectarianism, etc.

– insurgency / guerrilla warfare almost inevitable

• We never fund the reconstructing phase adequately

• And then there’s corruption


Epilogue

If I were Emperor …If I Were Emperor …


Are there alternatives?appropriate bits and pieces

• play for shih (position/force/configuration/advantage/energy – title of Chapter 5 in Sun Tzu.)

1. Employ cheng/ch’i

2. Employ timing and force together

3. Develop favorable situations with great potential

4. Take and maintain the initiative

David Lai, “Learning From the Stones,” p. 2

• pump up the elements on the right side of the “Theme for Vitality and Growth” [Patterns #144; chart 124 of this presentation]

• work on improving connections with as many “sources of order”/Core states as possible

• continually improve our understanding of how Gap countries actually work – ethnic/tribal, religious, legal, criminal, etc.

Version4.01February 2006



• recall the ancient wisdom of the Tao te Ching: Violence, even well intentioned always rebounds upon oneself. This represents the distilled wisdom of practical people over thousands of years.

• if you’re going to do it anyway, exploit Sun Tzu and those thousands of years of experience:

– best to attack his plans

– next best attack his alliances

– third best alternative, attack his army

– fourth on the list – attack cities

Where we should have started

Where we in fact did start in Iraq

Taking a state whole is superior;

Destroying it is inferior to this.

Sun Tzu (Denma Trans.) Chapter 3

Taking a state whole is superior;

Destroying it is inferior to this.

Sun Tzu (Denma Trans.) Chapter 3



• take nothing off the table, so if we feel the need to help things along (e.g., to prevent misuse of nuclear material), use PISRR:

– Penetrate

– Isolate

– Subvert

– Reorient

– Reharmonize

• under this approach, there will often be no need for a large and visible Sys Admin, since most of the people who know how to rebuild and run the system are already there.

• and there will be no need for an all-American “Leviathan” - the USMC and SOF we have will do just fine (detailed recommendations in A Swift, Elusive Sword).

for populations suffering under “big men,” this shouldn’t be that difficult

idea is to preserve existing system, but co-opt it (perhaps minus the “big man”) and steer it into the world economy.

also, consider the “Theme for Disintegration & Collapse,” Patterns chart 136.


Evolved SESStrike Force

For Containment

SES“Leviathan”

SystemAdministrator

For Rollback

3GW forces

Counterinsurgency/ reconstructing

forces

Political, financial, law enforcement, engineering, etc.

Private military

companies

Potentially

Developed world must combine military containment with police, intelligence, and strong preemptive incentives:

• Financial

• Commercial

• Political

• Diplomatic

Developed world must combine military containment with police, intelligence, and strong preemptive incentives:

• Financial

• Commercial

• Political

• Diplomatic

Army Navy Air Force USMC

SESStrike Force

ReserveComponent

Heavy forces

Special operations

forces

Tactical air

Special operations

forces

Tactical air

Tactical airlift

Special operations

forces

All


Could it work?

If we spent half as much time studying this approach as we now do preparing to fight 2GW (and some 3GW) against Core states and vanished empires, we might get somewhere.

The shih of battle do not exceed cheng & ch’i, yet their variations cannot be exhausted. Sun Tzu, Chapter 5


Could it work?

We integrated:

– The entire Soviet Union(except Belarus?) and

– The entire Warsaw Pact

10 are now members of NATO

and 8 also belong to the EU

into the global system without invading anybody.

(In fact, a proximate cause of the fall of the Soviet system was its successful attempt to invade and remove a “big man,” Hafizullah Amin, in Afghanistan.)


To flourish and grow in the

• many-sided

• uncertain, and

• ever-changing world

that surrounds us suggests that we must make intuitive within ourselves those many practices we need to meet the exigencies of that world.

—John R. Boyd, A Discourse on Winning & Losing

To flourish and grow in the

• many-sided

• uncertain, and

• ever-changing world

that surrounds us suggests that we must make intuitive within ourselves those many practices we need to meet the exigencies of that world.

—John R. Boyd, A Discourse on Winning & Losing

July 2006 Conflict in the Years Ahead Chet Richards J. Addams & Partners, Inc. It will be...

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