Monday, March 1, 2010

A Clausewitzian Attack on John Boyd?

Kinda sort of, in an indirect way. But not really the one that Zenpundit claims. In this post, in which he first compliments me, he finishes with this, "but then [seydlitz89] launches a strange volley of his own, essentially blaming Col. John Boyd for George W.Bush’s invasion of Iraq (which would come as news to most of Boyd’s acolytes, almost all of whom have been militant and vocal critics of the Iraq War)."

I take it that "almost all" doesn't include Dick Cheney. Here's the offending portion of my last post:

Post Script-

The only thing I wish to add is an emphasis on John Boyd, who surprisingly is not mentioned in connection with the OODA Loop, instead that being associated with the "Clausewitz cult". So is there, or has there been a cult? I would point out that in the distant past - all the way back in 2003, if anybody can dimly remember back that far, the cult if any was associated with John Boyd, who according to the hagiography of Robert Coram had "changed the art of war" itself. Boyd's ideas where seen everywhere in 2003:

In all that time, in all that glut of information, I've yet to hear any coherent explanation of U.S. fighting doctrine, strategy, or tactics, especially with any reference whatsoever to the man who very clearly (to my mind) laid out that doctrine and those tactics, just as he did in Gulf War I. That would be John Boyd.

With two teeny, tiny exceptions. Last week the Navy League sponsored its annual Sea-Air-Space Exposition at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. On April 16, Army Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed the exposition's luncheon gathering (I didn't go, but I heard it that evening on C-SPAN radio driving home from Pax). In the course of his talk Myers mentioned how we had gotten "inside Iraq's decision cycle." That's Army-speak for the OODA Loop. And he mentioned "maneuver warfare."

The next day, April 17, the luncheon speaker was Adm. Vern Clark, the CNO himself. In his talk I actually heard him say the "O" words, "OODA Loop."

Not only do I think it is quite clear John Boyd's theories and tactics "designed" the conduct of GWII, I also think a great deal of the criticism of the war's tactics, especially in its early days, stemmed from the fact that few people understood Boyd's (and the Pentagon's) doctrine, and nobody bothered to explain it after it was over, when it would do no harm to say, "Look, this is what we did and why we did it."

The most famous point of contention occurred when critics (some "armchair" critics and some former and current Army generals) blasted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for "not sending enough troops" to Iraq. Close behind was all the brou-ha-ha over the ballyhooed "Shock and Awe" campaign that never happened.

Boyd's theories spend a good deal of time talking about using psychological weapons ?"psy-ops" in the modern parlance ? to break the enemy's morale even before the battle begins. In retrospect it now seems reasonably clear that all the pre-war talk about launching a Shock-and-Awe campaign that would bomb Baghdad "back to the Stone Age" (to use a Vietnam-ism) using 5,000 Tomahawk missiles and "smart-bombs" was pure psy-ops.


How was this possible? As everyone knew who had followed Boyd's thought at time, Boyd had powerful people among his closest followers. As Coram explained in an interview:

Boyd met all of the above when he was the leader, the spiritual leader, if you will, of the reform movement. Dick Cheney, then a young congressman from Wyoming, heard his briefing, then had a number of one-on-one sessions with Boyd. When Cheney became secretary of defense, he was rare in that he knew more about strategy than most of his generals did. He called Boyd out of retirement in the early days of the Gulf war, and from him got an updating, if you will. And it was Boyd`s strategy, not Schwarzkopf`s, that led to our swift and decisive victory in the Gulf war.

The vice president, Cheney, gave me about 30 minutes to talk about Boyd. And on television, he seems very reserved and controlled, but when he talked to me about John Boyd, he was enthusiastic, and I could tell he had great respect for this man.


Cheney knew more about strategy than most of his generals. That was the view among the war party in 2003, that being based on his close association with John Boyd who "had changed the art of war". Cheney of course had his own followers within the military who were also praising Boyd:

"John Boyd was a thinker ahead of his time," said retired Gen. Michael Dugan, who was chief of staff of the Air Force during the buildup to the first Persian Gulf war. "Without giving him a lot of credit, the U.S. military is following his ideas."


The Marine Corps was also heavily influenced by Boyd:

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf had presented Cheney with a plan for a head-on offensive. "Not only did Cheney reject it, he used Boyd's colorful language to do so," wrote Boyd's biographer, Robert Coram.

As vice president, Cheney exerts considerable influence on strategy in Iraq as one of President Bush's inner circle of war advisers. But the most significant convert may have been Gray, who first heard Boyd's briefings as a colonel. Later, as commander of the Second Marine Division, and later still as commandant of the Marine Corps, Gray was in a position to implement Boyd's ideas about "maneuver warfare."

Their first combat test came in Grenada in 1983. They passed.

"We've got two companies of Marines running all over the island, and thousands of Army troops doing nothing," an Army general was quoted as saying at the time. "What the hell is going on?"

Pentagon analyst Franklin "Chuck" Spinney, Boyd's closest associate for many years, said, "The Marines [later] used Boyd's tactics in the first Gulf war, and they worked like gangbusters."


My point is if there is "a cult" associated with the military adventures of the Bush administration, it has nothing to do with Clauewitz. Rather, the most influential theorist in the period of US military history Astore is talking about is probably John Boyd. Boyd of course followed Liddell Hart's flawed interpretation of Clausewitz and never really was able to link political purpose to military strategic effect. His emphasis was on tactics and technique, which has remained the case up to now.


So, if there was a "cult" - this is Astore's word, not mine - it obviously wasn't connected with Clausewitz, but would have been probably connected with the most influential theorist of the time, who given his influence on Richard Cheney, the Vice President of the US at the time . . .

John Boyd died in 1997, he obviously has no connection with the invasion of Iraq, but there were plenty of US officials who thought in 2003 that his ideas offered the way forward to an easy victory, even a "cake walk". To point that out is not an attack on John Boyd, but rather to question what has become part of his legacy.

72 comments:

  1. I will withhold any comments on Boyd. But let me get this straight. Somebody thinks that Cheney is a strategic genius who was the guiding hand behind Schwarzkopf???

    Are they talking about Deadeye Dickie Cheney who never learned to shoot straight? Dickie the draft dodger? Dickie de Torquemada? Dickie the billionaire and neighbor of Robert Redford and other Hollywood pinkos? The dyke daddy (is it genetic do you think)?

    An amazing piece of historical revisionism that was!!!

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  2. Keep it civil is all I ask.

    What I find amazing is that this view is "controversial", when it was pretty much the accepted wisdom at the time (2003):

    "Military transformation
    The latest "revolution" in warfare, the brainchild of the late Air Force Colonel, John Boyd, goes by the name "transformation" and combines hi-tech and maneuverability. Its model was the German Blitzkrieg. But Rumsfeld's new model army is discovering that the very instruments that make it so invincible on a conventional battlefield are of little use in the non-conventional war in which the Bush administration finds itself embroiled. As long as the enemy was the Iraqi army, the "revolution" works just fine. It has done less well against roadside explosives, ambushes and suicide bombs. . ."

    http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/EK06Aa01.html

    Let's make some distinctions here:

    First, I have avoided using the term "acolyte", have not implicated Boyd's immediate followers (except for Cheney whom I mentioned by name). The members of this "Boyd cult" would be the US government officials and their supporters who actually implemented the policies. This goes in line with how Astore used the term in regards to Clausewitz, which was demonstrably false. Cheney and Rumsfeld being the main personalities in this "Boyd cult", but ablely supported by various military officers and other officials of like mind.

    Second, this is a question of legacy, of how one's ideas are used after they have left the stage. A creation of this type takes on a life of its own which is distinct from the creator. Ask any artist, writer or movie producer. Ask any Clausewitzian . . .

    So, which legacy is it going to be concerning Boyd?

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  3. Hi seydlitz89

    Again, nice take-down on Astore.

    Re: Boyd & Cheney

    Dick Cheney was not one of Boyd's "acolytes" -i.e. a close collaborator like Chuck Spinney, Winslow Wheeler or Dr. Chet Richards. Cheney was influenced by Boyd to some degree as a Congressman when Boyd was active in the military reform movement, seeking to change how the Pentagon designed and acquired major weapons systems. Boyd's relationships with politicians were neither as close nor as straightforward as with other military officers and DoD personnel .Wheeler and Grant Hammond (to a lesser extent) have written on this period of Boyd's life.

    As far as I am aware, all of Boyd's close associates, who participated in his work, opposed the Iraq War and some like Spinney and William Lind have been extremely bitter in their criticism, no small amount of which has been directed at Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives. Don't take my word for it, look at the public record and ask Chet Richards.

    Was Cheney influenced by Boyd in his younger days and as Secretary of Defense? Yes. If Boyd had been alive in 2003 and had urged against invading Iraq, would Cheney have listened to his advice? Probably not; no more than Cheney listened to, say, Brent Scowcroft or any number of other defense officials, retired military officers and national security experts who held contrary views.

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  4. Seydlitz,
    All of this is far above my paygrade, but i try to process it all.
    Now to anon and your keep it civil reply.
    I understand what both of you are saying,but why must we be civil when dealing with the likes of Cheney and company.? Why must we hold ourselves to a higher standard?
    Mytake is that war has not and will not change due to technology or even theory. The basis of all war is bottom line killing and imposing your will upon an opponent. Whether done wrapped up in a fancy theory ,or delivered with a hellfire missile or with a bayonet, war will always be the most primitive endeavor of man, regardless of sweet talking Officers and their theories.
    I will hold my tongue and not drift OT.
    As always,
    jim

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  5. I'm not a particular student of military strategy so any sort of theoretical commentary I could provide on Boyd and his impact on national security/military policy would be both fatuous and probably misleading.

    I do have some NCO-grade observations re: some of the details you've mentioned.

    1. Boyd and the Third Gulf War (i.e. OIF); I'm not sure if it's entirely accurate to say "there were plenty of US officials who thought in 2003 that his ideas offered the way forward to an easy victory, even a "cake walk" seems to me to give a disproportionate weight to theory over practice as it affected the decisions of 2002/2003. The Boydean influence was probably not that much stronger then than it had been in 1991, when Boyd's ideas are supposed to have led to the quick tactical victory in the First Gulf War, when we loaded up the mailed fist because of our fear of the "battle-hardened" Iraqi legions backed by the threat of chemical weapons.

    The "shock and awe", I would opine, came more from our assessment of the truly sad shape of Saddam's guys in '91 and our intel that things had gone downhill since then. We knew that his maneuver units would do pretty much what they'd done twelve years before (at best) - sit behind prepared positions and get hammered.

    So we went in light and fast - I would suggest no so much as the result of any sort of strategic theory, but for political reasons; the Cheneyite wing of the GOP needed to show that you could do regime change on the cheap so they could do it whenever they wanted to. To have to have Eric Shinseki's half-million man occupation force would have been fiscally and politically prohibitive.

    Of course, in light of their Boydean rather than Clausewitzean (or perhaps I should call it what it was - their fixation with tactics over strategy and geopolitics) orientation, they never intended to occupy the place. Go in, knock the head off the bottle, shove the Chalabi cork in, leave. That was the plan.

    It was a fucked-up plan, based on a bunch of stupid, mistaken ideas about Iraq that anyone with a functioning hindbrain (see; State, Department of) KNEW were mistaken. But I'm not sure that it was because of Boyd's ideas. His tactics (and their experience in '91) just gave them the justification for their invasion TO&E.

    2. Grenada. Again, I think there's a "correlation = causation" problem here. The little snippet quoted makes the problem seem theoretical when I think it was the result of practice. In 1983, remember, the Army was at its deepest "Battle of the Fulda Gap" Period. (Disclaimer - I was an enlisted man in the 82nd at the time, so mine was a very worm's eye view). We trained to fight the heavy conventional battle, only with the knowledge that we would be vastly outnumbered in maneuver forces. So the Army doctrine was violently weighted towards all-around security, deliberate maneuver and particularly employment of indirect fires. An Army platoon or company in contact was trained to go to ground, set up a base of fire and very deliberately maneuver around the enemy element while pasting the target with fires.

    The poor IPB, dense urbanized terrain and lack of clear command relationships made this sort of battle nearly impossible for the 82nd and our then-division commander (MG Trobrough) wasn't Patton enough to think outside the box. So we crept northwards at half-a-klick-a-day.

    (continued)

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  6. (continued from above)

    The USMC, freed from the need to worry about how to stop the GSFG at the Elbe, meanwhile had reverted to the "little wars" school of expeditionary warfare they'd been so good at in the Thirties. They went ashore figuring that this was just another Haiti or Nicaragua.

    They were right, of course, but the fact that they were had more to do with their fundamental wartime mission, tactical training, and practical experience (I think) than any sort of theoretical allegience.

    Let me think a little more about the whole Boyd-versus-Clasuewitz question, tho. Not sure if I have anything to add, but I'll stand-to the brain housing group.

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  7. Chief,
    What the USMC did in Grenada is what we used to call SWANNING AROUND THE BATTLEFIELD.
    You know-the movement and progress thing.
    Movement doesn't imply progress.
    Grenada could've been done with a Ranger Bn./plus.Same USMC Bn.
    Of course, the USMC would've been a better choice b/c of naval gunfire-if reqd.
    Our policy to fight in Europe was heavily influenced by guys like Depew. I called it-THE FIELD ARMY IN THE AMBUSH. It was impossible to control b/c LOC was non existent under those conditions.
    All of our war plans in Europe were meth fantasies.
    jim

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  8. Chief,
    What the USMC did in Grenada is what we used to call SWANNING AROUND THE BATTLEFIELD.
    You know-the movement and progress thing.
    Movement doesn't imply progress.
    Grenada could've been done with a Ranger Bn./plus.Same USMC Bn.
    Of course, the USMC would've been a better choice b/c of naval gunfire-if reqd.
    Our policy to fight in Europe was heavily influenced by guys like Depew. I called it-THE FIELD ARMY IN THE AMBUSH. It was impossible to control b/c LOC was non existent under those conditions.
    All of our war plans in Europe were meth fantasies.
    jim

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  9. Jim: Give the USMC credit; they were the only ones that correctly assessed the ridiculously insignificant "enemy situation" on the Spice Island. We were all wrapped up in ourselves as the combat arm of decision living our meth fantasy. They swanned around doing drive-bys, which was all that silly expedition really required. You're right - in a military with any sort of real strategic insight a single MEB could have done the whole thing. What ran that goatrope was the need for every fricking service to have some "combat" face time. Gah.

    And as for Europe...I remember training for something called a "AAA-D" that we weresupposed to execute as part of our airborne mission to reinforce the army of occupation in Germany the moment the Sovs barreled through the Fulda Gap. The silly thing involved us dropping onto wooded hilltops and turning the things into little defensive hedgehogs where our Delta Company and CSC TOWs would command the surrounding farmland, attriting the passing Soviet armored columns if they bypassed us and slowing them if they assaulted us. Our chance of long-term survival was, obviously, somwhere in the negative single digits. And this was all predicated on the goodwill of the Sovs not just scorching these fortified hilltops with FAE or SSMs. I personally thought the entire thing was a bad-movie/Red-Dawn sort of fantasy perpitrated by someone trying to give the 82nd a mission in WW3.

    Opium dreams indeed.

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  10. "Somebody thinks that Cheney is a strategic genius who was the guiding hand behind Schwarzkopf???"

    Well, that really says more about the General than it does about Dick.

    http://www.suck.com/daily/2000/09/01/daily.html

    I would be interested in knowing how many of the acolytes soured before vs. after Shock and Awesomeness.

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  11. Well...give me a sec to put me waders on...

    Cheney was, and still is an idiot.
    The first lesson any student of military history/strategy learns is that what worked in WWII will not work in Korea, and by association, in Vietnam, and without apologies in Gulf War 1 (a.k.a. The Baghdad international Live Fire Airshow.), and of course...Gulf War redux.

    The problem is that novel ideas are great when they first come out, but that's it...they're done, novel idea, by the next week, is old...old, OLD!
    Just because we got away with it once, doesn't mean we get away with it again. but, for some reason, some people :::cough:cheney:::cough::: believed in the magnificence of their own knowledge that they would not/could not be swayed by those who actually knew how to conduct an operation.
    Rumsfeld...was so in over his head that by the time he realized how fucked up beyond all repair Iraq had become that he had nothing but shit to hand out for orders. Hence the reason why Patreaus looked like a genius next to Rumsfeld in the press conferences because he was slightly less confused that his boss.

    Which brings me back to the original topic...if there is one thing that history, and Clauswitz has revealed is that warfare, strategic down to tactical does not hang on how to win a war...but what is the long term objective...and has been amply demonstrated in Iraq and in Afghanistan...when we don't have a long term objective, then we're just playing whack-a-mole.
    Much to the detriment of our economy, national psyche, and over all health of our military, and relationships with our allies...and...well, "friends."
    And as we can all see...our economy is wrecked, our national psyche is torn, our military is recruiting 40+ year old's to fill slots, and our relationship with our allies m'yeh, and well our "friends" don't really trust us all that much.
    Yes, the consequences of those decisions made back to 2003 have come home to roost like a pack of starved vultures...it tires me out just thinking about how we, as a nation, allowed ourselves to get to this point.

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  12. I have very little to add, other than in the free republic link to a 2003 article, it names Gen Richard Myers as an Army general, which of course he was not (and we would reject his ass anyway). RE: Boyd and the Marines, of course the USMC like Boyd and hold conferences in his name. But I think their focus is on the OODA loop in terms of executing tactical warfare, and Boyd was more than that. He was looking at grand strategy and larger things, which is where I suggest that he surpasses Clausewitz.

    But at a fundamental level, the OODA loop was designed to reduce the "friction" of war that Clausewitz notes. That is to say, Boyd recognized and incorporated Clausewitz's observations and truths. I still don't see a conflict between the two.

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  13. FDChief-

    "I'm not a particular student of military strategy so any sort of theoretical commentary I could provide on Boyd and his impact on national security/military policy would be both fatuous and probably misleading."

    It's strategic theory and involves several very important questions, the first one of which is the aspects of the connection between Boyd and Dick Cheney.

    In terms of actual strategic theory, the difference is more specific imv. I have made one comment in regards to this:

    "Boyd of course followed Liddell Hart's flawed interpretation of Clausewitz and never really was able to link political purpose to military strategic effect. His emphasis was on tactics and technique, which has remained the case up to now."

    Other than that one, I haven't made any comments as to any direct comparison of Clausewitz to Boyd to my memory. So any other presumptions are simply that.

    If of course you can argue the link between "political purpose" and "military strategic effect" . . . go at it.

    This is an important thread. Boyd is a theorist of the first rank.

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  14. All-

    Don't mean to come across testy, I'm actually in a good mood. . . maybe it's the weather . . .

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  15. Seydlitz -

    I agree with you on Boyd if you are saying that his impact was more on tactics than on strategy. I do like his OODA loop as it is always good to keep an opponent off balance. That is not a new way of doing things. But I do not compare Boyd to Clausewitz. Despite some of his good points, most of his works seems to be in powerpoint briefings. I find him guilty of being the pioneer and forerunner of the PowerPoint tacticians that seem to dominate today's miltary.

    But I also am gobsmacked that Cheney is linked with either Boyd or Clausewitz. Not sure whether that was you or Coram as I got lost in the quote marks above. Cheney is not qualified to spell their names let alone call himself a strategist.

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  16. Zen-

    Thanks for commenting on our blog. Thanks also for the kind works in regards to my rebuttal of Astore.

    The one thing I got out of Astore's piece was perhaps that he was on to something in regards to a "cult" that had been used for internal policy/propaganda purposes. Btw, the subject of Boyd's influence on the Iraq War was brought up by myself in a "debate" that Dr. Chet Richards and I had six years ago on sonshi.com . . .

    http://forum.sonshi.com/showthread.php?s=18af667f2cbfbf27c47359f35cb58dc3&postid=21366

    There were other interactions on sonshi with Chet Richards, and of course he was gracious enough to publish two of my papers on his website. I think we have a high degree of mutual respect between us and no, I don't put myself at his level . . .

    I'm not attacking Boyd here, but rather questioning what his legacy is. I have not implicated any of the acolytes in support of the Iraq war or Dick Cheney. If anything I have pointed out something that the "Boydians" ought to address. . .

    You say that Cheney was not a "acolyte". I say that he was more important that an acolyte since he was a very influential political figure with a close relationship with John Boyd, who in turn was highly influenced by Boyd's thought. Coram goes into this repeatedly.

    The title of Coram's book is, "Boyd, The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art of War".

    What allowed for this "change" was the influence that Boyd was able to exert through Cheney in his supposedly "war changing" campaign during the First Gulf War. Without Cheney there would be no hype as to Boyd's accomplishments, he would have been just another strategic thinker . . .

    Coram's book came out in 2002, while the debate concerning Bush's Iraq invasion was at its height. Coram interviews Cheney, Cheney tells Coram that he wishes that Boyd were still alive to oversee the military transformation he has in mind. Cheney obviously had every reason to promote his connection with Boyd - who had died in 1997 and could not disagree with it - in the promotion of his policies. Coram is a willing medium in getting this message across. Coram was convinced that Cheney knew more about strategy then most of his generals, what better partner for the theorist who can change the art of war itself?

    As I have said, it is not difficult to find many war supporters in 2003 who were looking at the war through a Boydian lens - in many cases courtesy of Coram's book.

    I have question on a recent post of yours. Did the Jones and Smith article that you linked to (the attack on COIN) include any mention of Patrick Porter's book "Military Orientalism"?

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  17. "This is an important thread. Boyd is a theorist of the first rank."

    That's true only for 1960's to 1980's air combat theory.
    He's almost completely unknown outside the Anglosphere for a good reason.


    I have a book here, written by a modern U.S. naval theorist (and operational analysis guru as it seems). "Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat" by Wayne P. Hughes.

    He doesn't mention Boyd's OODA loop at all - for a good reason: He shows his reader instead a similar command cycle model of '77 by Lawson and Moore. It reads Sense-Process-Compare-Decide-Act, "Environment" and "Own forces" as well as "Desired state" (basically METT-TC) influence the cycle.
    Do you know Lawson and Moore? Why should Boyd have a claim to fame with OODA if Lawson and Moore do not?
    Hughes has no claim to huge fame either, but he presents just two pages later a much better model that doubles the Lawson/Moore model to incoporate the enemy's cycle as well. Again, no claim to first-rate fame.


    Boyd was a very good air combat pilot and theorist, but everything beyond that rests more on charisma than on quality. He's being hyped up post mortem.

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  18. mike & Jason-

    Both of you mention the OODA Loop. Consider how it can be used at the individual tactical level, but how that changes the more complex and involved the interaction becomes. Two fighter planes in a dogfight is one thing, two divisions conducting offensive/defensive operations is something else . . . and what of the two sides in a counter-insurgency fight . . .?

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  19. @mike: "I find him guilty of being the pioneer and forerunner of the PowerPoint tacticians that seem to dominate today's miltary." Wow, that's an unkind cut. Boyd's intent was that he did not want to just give a book of his theories to a military officer to peruse in his own time. Boyd wanted to have active participation with a small, select body who was interested in putting in the time to talk to him. And you have seen his slides, right? They are so simple and plain, there's no way you can point at him as the originator for today's Powerpoint Rangers.

    @seydlitz89 - I don't want to assume, but you have gone through the Boyd papers, no? The OODA loop is often evaluated for its value during tactical operations because it emphasizes the need to react more quickly than one's adversary. This is still applicable at the operational and strategic levels.

    People tend to minimze the "orient" part as if this was just a guy looking around to see where he was on the battlefield. If you look carefully, the Orient includes a review of cultural traditions, genetic heritage, new information, analyzes/synthesis, and previous experiences of the situation. The Orient feature directly impacts how one observes, what decisions one makes, and the acts that follow. To me, this is pretty damn strategic.

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  20. FDChief-

    Sorry if I came across negatively, it was not my intent.

    "I'm not sure if it's entirely accurate to say "there were plenty of US officials who thought in 2003 that his ideas offered the way forward to an easy victory, even a "cake walk" seems to me to give a disproportionate weight to theory over practice as it affected the decisions of 2002/2003. The Boydean influence was probably not that much stronger then than it had been in 1991, when Boyd's ideas are supposed to have led to the quick tactical victory in the First Gulf War, when we loaded up the mailed fist because of our fear of the "battle-hardened" Iraqi legions backed by the threat of chemical weapons."

    First, by 2003, Boyd's ideas had had another 12 years to ferment within the defense community. What had been limited influence in 1991, was much more broadly based in 2003. The Majors and LTC's Boyd had instructed were now generals. There was also the feeling among the pro-war crowd that they were going to "correct the errors" of 1991 this time round. I would also include the negative influence of van Creveld's notion of Non-trinitarian war (vC's book first came out in 1991) which was compatable to Boyd's approach.

    There is something else as well. At the Clausewitz conference in Oxford that I attended in 2005, the various military instructors lamented as to the difficulty of teaching Clausewitz to officers. Since then I have had private strategic theory students so I have come to understand the problems as well. Learning Clausewitzian strategic theory (which is not limited to Clausewitz) is like learning a new language. You have to internalize a series of interconnected concepts and complex structures which then can be used to analyze, describe, and communicate. Now in the time it takes to learn and understand this "system" an officer could read Liddell Hart's "Strategy", Coram's "Boyd", van Creveld's "TTW" (all of which trash Clausewitz to some degree), and go through Boyd's actual slide shows . . . which would leave you with a series of views, but without the "language".

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  21. Sven-

    "Boyd was a very good air combat pilot and theorist, but everything beyond that rests more on charisma than on quality. He's being hyped up post mortem."

    I'm more generous since I think Boyd's ideas can fit within a larger Clausewitzian framework.

    As to the "hype" consider my comments in regards to Coram's book. Very much agree as to being limited to "English-speaking", but William Lind (who displays a confused view of Boyd) does get around . . .

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  22. Jason-

    "To me, this is pretty damn strategic."

    I went through my Boyd phase. At the individual tactical level, it works as a decision model, but at the operational - think not only military, but political, economic, informational? It serves more as a model of friction . . . I would add that the higher you go the more the tendency for the four elements to be continuous and simultaneous rather than sequential. Getting "inside" your opponent's cycle becomes a fiction. The best treatment from a Clausewitzian perspective of the OODA Loop btw is Jim Storr, The Human Face of War, pp 12-14. Colin Grey praises it btw in "Modern Strategy".

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  23. Sven-

    "Do you know Lawson and Moore? Why should Boyd have a claim to fame with OODA if Lawson and Moore do not?"

    Not familiar, but then tactical decision loops aren't really my bag. I'm interested in the link between military strategic effect and political purpose which seems to be the most difficult to achieve.

    Do you have a link for Lawson and More?

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  24. Interesting discussion.

    No doubt that Boyd was an extremely important theorist for air combat and his creation of the EM diagram influenced almost every aspect of air combat from aircraft and weapons design to tactics.

    Still, I see Boyd as an operational and tactical theorist so I don't necessarily see a huge conflict between him and CvC. It seems to me if Cheney was heavily influenced by Boyd then Cheney learned the wrong lessons and misapplied tactical and operation theory to strategic questions. That kind mistake seems all too common and I think one could argue that pop-centric "COIN" is similarly misapplied today.

    One comment on "shock and awe." This was part of a large deception operation intended to keep Iraqi forces dispersed and divided. The shock and awe portion was intended to convince the Iraqi's there would be an extensive air campaign before the introduction of ground forces. The other part of the deception operation were feints in the north and west of Iraq designed to delay any attempts to redeploy forces to defend against the main US effort in the south. Overall it worked very well.

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  25. http://rapidshare.com/files/358465104/Lawson_Moore_1977.zip.html

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  26. "...Cheney learned the wrong lessons and misapplied tactical and operation theory to strategic questions."

    Again, I think we're overthinking this. Honestly, I don't think that 2003 was a "victory" for the Boydean tacticians pushing their OODA-loop theory for defeating Saddam's forces over the Clausewitzeans (WERE there any politco-military analysts in the house back in 2002-03?) fanatically defending their last geopolitical redoubt. I think 2003 happened because the entire nation was in a tizzy of fear and anger, fanned by the usual suspects, and the Vulcans knew that whether their OPLAN was based on the theories of John Boyd or the sketch comedy of John Candy they were going to walk all over the sad-sack Iraqi leftovers they'd pimpslapped around so throughly in 1991.

    In point of fact, there were so extremely pointed criticisms of their notion of regime-change that emphasized the problematic issues of long-term stability and foreign occupation. Again, the entire neocon project was predicated on the basis that tactical success was all that was needed. After the deSaddamization the damn place would be Chalabi's problem, we'd just stand around reaping the rich petroleum leases as they fell from the new Iraqi exile government tree.

    I'm not sure how the neocon-Boyd association changes this. Would things have been different if Cheney had had Lawson or Hughes at his ear? Or would he simply have done what he wanted anyway and just not bothered with the military theory window-dressing?

    Methinks the latter.

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  27. "If of course you can argue the link between "political purpose" and "military strategic effect" . . . go at it."

    But isn't that the supposed endpoint of any effective military strategy?

    Beat the enemy's field army - regardless of the size and the decisiveness of the defeat - and you're still pretty much in the range of "grand tactics", no? Wasn't the whole crux of the strategic biscuit for the French First Empire that 1) Napoleon never solved the problem of British seapower and 2) regardless of how many times he whipped Austrian and Russian ass he never solved the political problem of how to prevent the British, Austrians and Russians (and eventually the Prussians, Swedes, Larry, Moe, and Curly...) from re-forming the Umpteenth Coalition against him?

    So ISTM that you HAVE to pass beyond the realm of straightforward war-fighting to get to genuine strategy. The drive through the Ardennes to the sea is tactics; the combination of armor, mobile artillery and airpower is operational art. It's the use of all-the-above to knock France out of the war that makes it to strategy. And grand strategy...well, ISTM that the rub with continuing the analogy there is that Germany circa 1940 didn't HAVE a grand strategy. They had the same shortcoming as Napoleon and the same lack of strategic focus; they turn away from the Channel in 1941 as he did in 1805 (and with less justification, since there was no Third Coalition arising in the east...).

    So - no political purpose = no military strategic effect. No?

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  28. FDChief-

    It depends on what the political purpose is. For instance the First Gulf War of 1990-91 was as I mentioned earlier very much a Clausewitzian war. The political purpose was clear: roll back Saddam's conquest of Kuwait. For this Bush I was able to form a rather impressive coalition of Western and Arab states. The military aim was the defeat of the Iraqi army to the extent that Kuwait was liberated, that is limited destruction of the Iraqi military supported the political purpose. The war was a clear victory for the US and Bush I was very aware of the limits that he could achieve with the military instrument at his disposal given the political context. That the war offered many political opportunities which were squandered by either Bush I or Clinton is a different matter.

    With Bush II, on the other hand, we usher in the total collapse of US strategic thought . . . which took place within the context of profound confusion in strategic theory, or a "strategy of tactics" as Gian Gentile has described it.

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  29. Sven-

    You should do a thread on this . . .

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  30. Mmmm...I'd disagree. The "political purpose" of 2003 pretty clear; to defenestrate Saddam and let freedom reign. It was clear, it was just utterly mad.

    The difference was that the political endpoint in 1991 was relatively stable, a restoration of a status quo that had been fucked up when Bush I's gal April Glaspie forgot that when you tell kleptocrats with large armies that you don't care how they settle this differences with their neighbors you pretty much invite a military problem you're going to have to spend time, money and lives solving.

    The problem was solved by a successful application of grand tactics (or the operational art, if you want to be fussy). The "strategy" part IMO was assembling the military coalition and keeping together to the end of the mission - and tailoring the mission to ensure the successful maintainence of the coalition.

    The difference in 2003 was that while the fairly simple grand tactical/operational plan that finished off the Saddam regime (sorry, Andy, but two dozen bozos in clown cars would have "worked very well" against Saddam's people. 1991 proved that the First Gulf War was conclusive proof that when you pit two vicious idiots against each other it's possible for them both to lose...) - wasn't backed up with an equally well-planned and thought-out political management plan. Pretty much everyone with a brain knew that the alternative to Saddam wasn't Chalabi the Dusty George Washington but something between bloody chaos and another brutal strongman, and this time a Shiite one.

    So I'm not sure that the quality of "strategic thinking" has declined so drastically since 1991. Or can we go back to 1965, when we chose to intervene in a nasty southeast Asian civil war on the side of the nasty post-colonial bumsuckers? Or Korea, where (other than Inchon) we fought a straightforward slugging match against fairly unsophisticated east Asian opponents?

    Hmmm.

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  31. FDChief: So I'm not sure that the quality of "strategic thinking" has declined so drastically since 1991.

    In so far as Bush I stuck to the political goal attainable by, and acceptable to the whole coalition, the political strategic thinking was spot on. Had he, as some wished, "marched on to Baghdad", then the strategic thinking would have been severely flawed. Numerous Arab allies would have withdrawn, and even opposed such a goal. Limiting the goal to the simple "Liberation of Kuwait" resulted in the support of many Arab states that we (at least in 3rd Army) never would have expected to side against Saddam, or any other local regime.

    I would have to offer that Gulf I is an excellent example of the political objective being one that can be properly achieved by military means. War does not necessarily require conquest. While there are many dolts who think that we "didn't finish the job" during Desert Storm, the fact of the matter is that we did. Kuwait was restored and Saddam was reduced and contained as a player, both locally and globally.

    "Grand Strategy" fails when the political goals are far too "grand" for the situation and means at hand. Just because there are more tactical and/or operational military "victories" that can be had does not mean that the appropriate strategic political goal has not been reached.

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  32. Al-

    Agree. It was the radical and open-ended nature of the 2003 war aims that doomed the whole process to failure, or at least any military-centric approach. These goals were simply unattainable by military means, which any second-year student of strategic theory could tell you. The problem lay with the political leadership and the decline of strategic thought which had decayed into essentially "strategy as wishlist supported by targetlist".

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  33. I'm fully aware that it is a sideshow, but I need to intervene because of this quote:

    "Or Korea, where (other than Inchon) we fought a straightforward slugging match against fairly unsophisticated east Asian opponents?"

    Neither the North Koreans nor the PR Chinese were unsophisticated opponents. They were very different and no match in primitive material-centric metrics, but nevertheless tactically good. In fact, they pulled off stunts that Western forces have never been able to pull off under similar constraints, at least not post-'44.
    The red infiltration and mountain warfare tactics were vastly superior to the tactics set that the arriving Western forces imported.

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  34. Tactically, yes. But their "strategy" was no more sophisticated than it had to be, and it didn't have to be, much. No argument that they were a tactical/grand tactical match for the U.S. Army circa 1950. It's just that the Korean peninsula didn't leave much room for strategic caprioling. The landing at Inchon was a bold stroke, but otherwise the division-level-and-above seems pretty straightforward.

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  35. "...radical and open-ended nature of the 2003 war aims that doomed the whole process to failure, or at least any military-centric approach. These goals were simply unattainable by military means..."

    This is where I disagree. The goals were insane - there was not a chance that short of a multi-year, massive occupation (and probably not even then) were you going to get a Belgium out of Iraq. Eric Shineski, among others, used the U.S.'s prior experience in conquest and reconstruction to inform the Bush II administration, Congress and the U.S. public what it would have taken, but the public was to stupid and frightened, the Congress too supine, and the Bushies too goddam stupid and pigheaded to listen.

    But the military means were there to perform the first part - invasion and decapitation. And they COULD have been there for the second part; we could have done a 1942 draftee Army and serious occupation. We chose not to, but we could have. Several sources, including State, had plans to do just that.

    So I think to argue that a decline of "strategic thought" was the problem is to let the malefactors off the hook. They didn't fail because their military experts adivsed them wrong, or that somehow their strategic ideas were messed up. They failed because they deliberately chose to use an inadequate tool for the job rather than risk political failure by admitting the grandiose nature of the job itself. They wanted something that they couldn't really afford, but rather than face the political reality that the strategic solution they would need was too expensive and politically loaded, they tried to do things on the cheap hoping that everything would break their way.

    The fact that they used Boyd's formulation to explain why those breaks would happen was a smokescreen masquerading as a tautology. But because the Bushies claimed it was a tautology doesn't make it so, and because they claimed that Boyd saw a way for them to make their dream come true means, I suggest, that a gang of slippery and opportunistic liars lied as much as it meant and intellectual shift in military thinking.

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  36. The decline of strategic thought led to the attempt to implement such political aims through the military instrument. They did what they did because they actually thought it would work. This doesn't let them off the hook. Every criminal commits his or her crime with the idea that they will succeed, or do you see it differently?

    Had they understood the nature of what they were actually undertaking, they would have seen how difficult it in fact would be . . . the type of very long-term (and politically unsustainable) commitment required. Was that not clear to many of us in 2003?

    We have been arguing this for a long time, both Al and myself, you too on occasion . . . so what's new?

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  37. Nothing, really. I think it's because we disagree not so much on what happened but the WHY. You (and Al, I think) tend to see this as a failure of process; the politico-strategic analysis process had broken down (as typified by the adoption of Boyd's tactical analysis for Clausewitz's more rigorous geopolitical/geostrategic theory) and the result was an "attempt to implement...political aims through the military instrument".

    I see this as a failure of politics. The monkeys took over the zoo; the fuhrerschaft in D.C. was overwhelmed by people who REALLY believed shit like "we make our own reality". Military strategy wasn't so much degraded as discarded. Troop strength, enemy capabilities, geopolitical realities weren't problems to solve, they were distractions to be ignored. It was the geopolitical equivalent of the GOP position on taxation - it doesn't matter what the actual balance sheet income/expenditures facts are. What matters is that we're ideologically PURE. We WANT a "free Iraq". We WANT no taxes. And so they used Boyd (or whatever the philospher-de-jour was) like a stripper uses her fans - to distract the bobos in the front row so they could do their little dance.

    They "understood" what they were doing - they just believed their version of reality trumped what you and I and van Riper and Jim Fallows and Shinseki told them.

    And the importance here is that if the problem was process - that better, clearer strategic thinking at the Pentagon or the NSC or whereever - then reforming the process will help improve our national geopolitical decision making.

    But...if I'm right, and the problem is that a significant proportion of our national leadership is just flat-out, bug-fuck, bull-goose looney, willing to completely ignore anything that doesn't match their ideological desires...then the problem is much deeper, and implies being ready, as a nation, to completely repudiate such people. Our national amnesia about the idiocy of the Bush/Cheney gang and their continued presence in the public square suggests that the latter is the more likely case.

    Sadly.

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  38. Here's the whole farrago, in case you needed a trip down memory lane:
    http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/10/0079780

    How the hell did these guys fool so many people so much of the time?

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  39. "And the importance here is that if the problem was process - that better, clearer strategic thinking at the Pentagon or the NSC or whereever - then reforming the process will help improve our national geopolitical decision making."

    I do rather suspect that the problem wasn't the process. The problem was a failure of checks & balances. The media failed. Congress failed. There were no whistleblower to told the truth about the manipulation.
    It was a national failure; dangerous people came to power and were not removed in time.

    Every nation has its 5-10% idiots and sociopaths. You cannot get rid of them (way too bloody and unethical). It's in the society's best interest and its duty to keep them from power, though.
    This failed in many countries over time and many of them have improved their political system to prevent a repetition.
    The U.S. system of legislative, executive, judicative and media has failed during the Bush years and the year ahead.

    I suggest to begin the fixing of the system with a limitation of the president's command of the armed services. Congress has the privilege to declare war and no soldier should be allowed an offensive action without a declaration of war (save for preliminary alliance defence until Congress can decide).

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  40. FDChief-

    I never attributed the Iraq fiasco primarily to a failure of process. My conclusion all along was that there was no strategic process by the decision makers in the first place. I have posted on several occasions that the various players in the decision making actually had a variety of objectives, none of which were focused on militarily achievable political end states, and none of which were complementary in achieving such end state.

    Rummy simply wanted to prove that existing doctrine was far too manpower intensive, with payroll costs taking money away from gee-whiz gagetry. Thus, no thought or interest in Phave IV requirements, as he saw no Phase IV at all. Just win a battle.

    Bush simply wanted Saddam gone.

    Chaney had commercial objectives.

    And so on. All these objectives coincidentally had one common ingredient - the overthrowing of Saddam, which was an intermediate step, not a final end state.

    In short, my view is that there was never a single, coherent geopolitical objective, no less one that could be had by available military means. Thus, there never was a "process" by which a single, coherent geopolitical end state was identified, and from there the path to such end state was drawn up via the venerable old process of "Backward Planning". Instead, the wheels of war were put in motion and the players made things up as they went along.

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  41. Sven: The authority is already in place and has been since before the organization of the United States as currently constituted. When one Pierce Butler, representing South Carolina at the Constitutional Convention suggested the president should be able to but in practice have the character not to take "offensive military action" without popular approval. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts summed up the majority viewpoint thus: He "never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war."

    It's really that simple. Our Congress has failed since 1950 to fulfill its responsibility to represent the People in either declaring war or forcing the Chief Executive to recall U.S. forces. The courts are, in effect, held harmless because the Congress has never held the legal knife to the President's neck.

    Like I said: the nation, both We the People and our representatives in Congress, have been dangerously indolent in allowing the idiots and sociopaths access to the levers of power, not removing them when their obvious chicanery and mendacity became obvious, and not punishing them for misusing the same after they were driven from office.

    It is fairly clear to me that about 1/3rd of the U.S. electorate would prefer the easy lies these people told that and prefer the ridiculous fantasies they spun that - rather than any strategic planning errors - got us ass-deep in the central Asian quagmire to the hard and painful truths about our foreign policies, their REAL impacts and results. And this group include many of the people with the wealth, power and connections to influence a far wider portion of the electorate. AND there's another 1/3-1/4 who are just too damn stupid or unconnected to give a rat's ass.

    So I'm not sitting up eagerly awaiting any real change.

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  42. Al: OK. I'll buy that your assessment was one of political failure rather than strategic analysis.

    So my disagreement seems to be with Coram and those in his intellectual corner that hold the notion that we got stuck into the Iraq tarbaby because we replaced Clausewitz with Boyd.

    I would add that regardless of their individual objectives - and I agree that the Bush 43 Adminstration was twelve monkeys fucking a football in that respect - Rummy, Bush AND Cheney's objectives would have been satisfied by 1) invading and removing Saddam, and 2) replacing him with a pliant American client.

    Rummy felt that #2 was a self-licking ice-cream-cone and never really thought about it, and the other two idiots really BELIEVED that their stooge Chalabi could do the job.

    #1 was done with the force that Rummy brought to the party. #2 was undoable outside the immense force that Eric Shinseki told them they'd need - but had they manned up and taken the case to the nation I'd argue that with their lies as-yet unexploded they might have made the case for a 500,000-man occupation force. Would it have lasted long? Who knows - but perhaps the immense force might have quashed the Sunni muj so quickly that the transition to Shiite rule might have come much quicker and less bloodily.

    Regardless, in both cases there was either a certainty (#1) or at least a possibility (#2) of obtaining those "geopolitical objective(s) by available (or assembleable) military means."

    So, again, I see the problem as political...and the implication of that is that the problem is still with us, since the original crew of idiots still is and has not and WILL not be repudiated.

    We're STILL fucked...

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  43. Chief,

    Why do you choose 1950? We've had undeclared wars going back to 1798. In all our history, with all our conflicts, we've only formally declared war five times. The vast majority of our wars were fought with Congressional authorization short of a war declaration or with no Congressional authorization at all, but also no attempts to prevent Presidential action. So it seems to me if there is a problem with the Congress then it's been with us from the beginning.

    On strategy and the Bush administration I think you all are in more agreement than you might think - in other words, you're all right.

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  44. Andy,
    I can't reckon your numbers.
    I count 6 wars declared.The pwot is number 6.
    Everything, and i repeat everything i read says so-hell, even Commandante O says so.
    Therefore it must be.
    jim

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  45. Jim,

    The PWOT came from the September 2001 AUMF which said, in part:

    The president is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

    There's no formal declaration of war there.

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  46. My impeccable Wiki source says five: 1812, Mexico, Spanish-American, WW1, WW2. Mexico was already in progrss when Congress made it official.

    The 1950 date was chosen because before then the lack of a declaration of war was as much an aberration as a commonality. The Quasi-War, Barbary and the "little wars" in the Caribbean in the Teens through the Thirties could be excused as commerce protection or "defensive" use of force, if you will, and the Civil War and the PI were technically "rebellion suppression" - there were no foreign enemies to declare war against.

    But since 1950 it's ALL been undeclared. The AUMF was and is bullshit. It can genuinely be considered to cover the initial Afghan punitive expedition but the subsequent occupation is a real stretch; the bulk of the people we're fighting are probably not the same people. And Iraq? Don't make me laugh. Iraq was a soverign state, and if we had a legitimate grievance against a soverign state we should have declared war on it and invaded the damn thing.

    The point of a declaration of war is, like a hanging, it helps focus the mind wonderfully. I think we would have done well to have concluded a formal alliance with the ROK and then declared war on the DPRK with the announced goal of restoring the 49th Parallel border. It would have made our endpoint clear and helped Americans understand why our boys were dying for some numbered hill on the Z.

    Same with Vietnam. If we had declared war on the North it might have made a difference - it might not have; SVN was, in a lot of ways, fucked up like a football bat.

    And it might have kept us from fiddle-fucking around in places like Panama and Somalia. Maybe. The point is that right now there really IS no limit on the President's ability to shove our weenie into the mangle, and as Mr. Gerry pointed out, that's not where a republic is supposed to go.

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  47. FDChief-

    I agree with Al and think that we have been arguing much the same thing all along. I also think the GWOT was a political failure and it is through strategic theory (as well as the undeniable current reality) that we recognize it as such . . . just as strategic theory pointed out the fallacy in 2003. Soooo please don't throw out the baby with the bathwater . . .

    That our military and political elites no longer think in strategic terms is a separate issue from the radical nature of the policies that they support, but of course the one leads to the other. Only now is it dawning on them that these policies might indeed be economically unsustainable.

    As to your comment on Coram, yes, that's about the size of it imo.

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  48. Is it strategic theory, or the simple logical failure that proceeds from declaring a "war" on the terror of AQ but not the MEK in Iran, on the Talibs but not the Tamil Tigers?

    I think the biggest problem was that the way we sold it didn't pass the sniff test. We lumped Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, the Islamic Courts in Somalia...all into the same trashbag. It didn't take a very sophisticated analysis to see the problem with that.

    I believe that there is a place for geopolitical military strategy, and that it should be informed by a sound basis in theory. I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't do a thorough pre-war inquire into our goals, proposed means and methods.

    All I'm saying here is that I'm not sure that 1) the problems of the past 9 years are traceable to a predeliction for one (flawed) form of military thinking over another, and 2) we're seeing some sort of epic crisis in U.S. military intellectual rigor.

    We let drunks drive the car, yes. IF we can keep the drunks away from the wheel we'll be better off. But part of this involves NOT letting the drunks choose the bartenders, or, to drop the analogy, to do something about the sad state of senior Army leadership.

    I've read that the problem with the German political/military leadership between 1914 and 1945 is that the military leadership was so good at the mechanics of battle that it seduced the political leadership into thinking that battlefield success would automatically lead to political solution.

    Our military has gone so long without a peer foe - and our performance against truly underclass opponents has been so uneven - that it's hard to say whether they could come anywhere near matching the successes of the men who ran the German Heer and Luftwaffe between 1939 and 1942. Maybe yes, but maybe no. And could they have avoided the Barbarossa trap, would they have advised an Obama or Bush bent on ramming his head into the mangle?

    History seems to say no.

    My question would be; do you think this is because the level of strategic analysis at the Pentagon is so low, or because the level of political syncophantcy and cravenness is so high?

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  49. Perhaps the problem is that some political figures take the subject of war lightly?

    Granted, Sarah Palin is no intellectual heavyweight, but here's how lightly she takes war:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc1gERxMXIg&feature=player_embedded

    Note that she discusses it solely in the context of a war's impact on electability, not on what it might accomplish (or not) in other terms. Rather, she talks of a war initiated to show the American people that a president is tough.

    With this type of insane crap on the airwaves, is it difficult to understand why WASF?

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  50. I think it a whole series of interrelated problems which would be difficult to sort out. We took a long time to get to where we are now and "walking back the cat" might take a while.

    To this I would add that the political character of the elite in question seems to be the quiding influence, as to how they will use/abuse the decision making institutions/theoretical tools available. In 2002/3 those among the upper echelons of the military who thought the war a bad idea voiced their opinion and left it at that. It was felt at the time that the political leadership had already decided on war, so planning was fairly narrow, not "what if" but "when". I would also point out how this abuse of the institutions designed for strategic planning (the NSC supported by national intelligence assets) has seemingly affected our overall intelligence collection/analysis capacity.

    Al mentioned that Cheney had economic goals. I think the war party also saw war as something akin to a permanent sitution for the US in the future (as Andrew Bacevich has argued) and that this series of wars would be very profitable and essentially bloodless (from our perspective). The whole idea behind the transformation in warfare was to achieve decisive military results in support of a "morally superior" cause and avoid "attrition warfare" . . .

    Knock off the bad guys, install our hand-picked successors, allow "the market" to do our magic (notice how the whole GOP's distain for "government" fits in here ever sooo nicely) . . . move on to the next target. What a wonderful war!

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  51. Andy,
    I know, i was just being an ass.
    TO ALL,
    Why do we call GW 1 strategic thinking,and why do we all accept it as legitimate?
    IMO if strategic thinking were involved then we would've let the Arabs sort it out themselves.
    Whoever got Kuwait or it's oil would've then become our new supplier.Why do we care who controls Kuwait, it doesn't make a rats ass difference in my mind.?!
    Why are the Kuwaiti leaders seen as good and Sadam as bad.They are ALL THE SAME.
    There hows that for a generalisation?
    My strategy would be to keep them fighting,sell weapons and buy oil.Plain and simple.
    How can we call it strategy to pimp our Army out to Kuwait?What the hell have they ever done for us or anyone but their own sorry asses?
    Strategic thinking should keep a nation out of other peoples business.
    Just askin'
    jim

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  52. After thinking about Palin's remarks, it's quite telling that she says, "Say he (President Obama) decided to declare war on Iran". First off, she displays the ignorance of the Constitution so common in most people today. As we have discussed, only Congress has the authority to "declare war". And, of course, this erroneous concept goes right over Chris Wallace's head.

    But then, as we have also discussed, a small Constitutional technicality has not hindered the past several administrations from conducting combat operations overseas without a proper declaration of war.

    That we are now accustomed to presidents conducting protracted, major offensive military operations without a declaration of war, and accepting this as Constitutionally correct is obviously disconcerting, and illustrates how lightly we take the Constitutional provisions concerning same.

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  53. jim-

    The strategic thinking was the identification of the overall objective as the liberation of Kuwait and restoration of the legitimate government there - PERIOD. A very clear and militarily obtainable political objective. Drive our the Iraqi occupier and let the former local government return to power. No different that what we did for France in 1944. No attempt to establish a lapdog government or the like. No march to Baghdad. Just restoration of the status quo ante, with a clear statement that the bulk of the world, not just his neighbors, would brook no further territorial expansion by Saddam.

    That we stopped at that very point was legitimate and sound strategic thinking. Strategy need not be astoundingly vast in it's scope, and a strategic victory need not be the results of a long protracted conflict.

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  54. jim-

    Strategic theory comes down to equating available means to a military aim which promotes the achievement of a political purpose. There was a "balance" in regards to the First Gulf War in this regard, whereas in Bush II's invasion in 2003 there was not. Morality has nothing to do with it, it's about interests . . . in this case the interests of opposed political communities.

    Strategic theory of course would not be limited only to force, but would include the full spectrum of coercion as well . . .

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  55. seydlitz,
    I really don't factor any morality into my thinking or cmts about strategic thinking..
    I just think that strategy must go beyond erroneous thinking,such as,the Arab world supported our efforts in GW1,which is true but it's not strategic thinking.Rather it's a comedy since they lent their approval b/c we were doing them a favor by fighting their battles and doing their dirty work.Of course they were our strategic buddies,they'd be fools to do otherwise.
    I'm saying that we don't even have a horse in the race and can't win diddly squat,and we call that strategy.Here in the deep south this'd be called pure bullshit.And that's what it is ,no matter how much lipstick you slap on it.
    jim

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  56. jim: I just think that strategy must go beyond erroneous thinking,such as,the Arab world supported our efforts in GW1,which is true but it's not strategic thinking.

    The point that I (and I would imagine Sedlitz as well) was trying to make is that the geo-political end state identified in Gulf War I was not only attainable, but attainable by military means. Kuwait was indeed liberated, it's government was re-established, and Saddam was reduced to permanent minor player status. And, that was done without having to "conquer" Iraq or occupy it.

    Whether or not we should have been the major player or left it up to the Arab states to solve their own neighborhood problems has nothing to do with the quality of the strategic objective selected and the application of means that was applied.

    Disagreement with a foreign policy decision does not diminish the quality of the strategic decision making.

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  57. Aviator and Seydlitz,
    And how did all this strategic thinking benefit anybody in America?
    It can be brilliant but meaningless.Also whether i'm for or against is irrelevent.My point is that brilliance in strategic thinking doesn't mean a thing unless it translates into benefits for the American citizen.
    My common thinking is that the strategic thinking behind the HOW MUST SOMEWHERE INTERSECT WITH THE WHY.Without this any strategic thinking is simply an exercise in mental masturbation.
    I understand exactly what both of you are saying,and i respect your opinions.I'm trying to take it a step beyond the standard application of the concept.
    I really don't care if it's achievable etc...etc...if it doesn't address a greater national good.
    jim

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  58. Aviator and Seydlitz,
    And how did all this strategic thinking benefit anybody in America?
    It can be brilliant but meaningless.Also whether i'm for or against is irrelevent.My point is that brilliance in strategic thinking doesn't mean a thing unless it translates into benefits for the American citizen.
    My common thinking is that the strategic thinking behind the HOW MUST SOMEWHERE INTERSECT WITH THE WHY.Without this any strategic thinking is simply an exercise in mental masturbation.
    I understand exactly what both of you are saying,and i respect your opinions.I'm trying to take it a step beyond the standard application of the concept.It's a meaningless construct if it's achievable etc...etc...if it doesn't address a greater national good.
    We won't lose a battle in the PWOT so it'll meet your yardstick, but we will gain nothing,therefore it fails my standard.
    jim

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  59. jim We won't lose a battle in the PWOT so it'll meet your yardstick, but we will gain nothing,therefore it fails my standard.

    Winning or losing a battle is not what I am talking about. The so called "War on Terror" does not have a militarily attainable objective, nor a geo-political objective that is rational. Terror is a tactic, no a political end state.

    Yes, I was addressing "strategy" in the most focused terms. The pursuit of a political objective. My point is that Iraq II had no defined geo-political objective, no less one that could be attained by military means. One could probably have been determined, but the Bushies failed to do so, and thus we have been muddling at great expense of national treasure for nearly a decade there. Same, same Afghanistan. In short, step one in strategic thinking is the identification of an attainable geo-political end state, whether it is worthwhile or not. From there, one works backward to determine the appropriate means, if such exists. Without defining that defined, attainable geo-political end state, you are just trying to push a strand of cooked spaghetti up a flight of stairs. I would call to mind the varing definitions of "victory" for Iraq, each being identified as the former became obviously out of the question.

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  60. jim-

    I think that actually the crux of the problem, but it goes beyond strategic theory to politics and how the political elite defines "national interest". My point on Sven's topic and the preceding thread we had was that the political elite was indeed corrupt and that grass-roots political organization was necessary to reestablish this link between political power and the application of strategic theory/national strategy to national interest.

    Still, in 1990/91 it was not in the interest of the US for Saddam to have had control over Iraqi, Kuwaiti and possibly Saudi oil, it would have created a completely new balance of power in the Middle East, which would have been contrary to our interests.

    Well said Al, agree.

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  61. Seydlitz and Aviator,
    I understand what you all are saying.
    jim

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  62. This argument is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Boyd's work. There was much more to his contributions than the OODA Loop. Indeed one look through Patterns of Conflict would indicate that there were discrepancies between his theories and actual conduct of many parts of the war.

    Furthermore, many people get wrapped up in the 'rapid OODA Loop' idea and focused on speed and miss the subtleties and grander themes of his work.

    One certainly cannot call Boyd a Clausewitz-ian (I would contest that his views are closer to those he calls the Eastern Commanders – Genghis Khan, Alexander, Hannibal, Sun Tzu etc. - than Clausewitz), and though his work was an effort to change the flawed (in his opinion) dominant doctrine of his time period (one can say still today) that was based more on Clausewitz and Jomini. HOWEVER, Boyd and Clausewitz are not polar opposites, in fact, you cannot understand Boyd's work independent of Clauswitz. Boyd studied and took many lessons from Clausewitz, primarily his ideas on friction, though he understood that the answer was not to try to remove friction (this being impossible) but to learn to operate with its presence. Boyd agreed with other earlier theorists who felt Clausewitz's theories (as Boyd's, or anyone else's) were very much shaped by and a reaction to the time period and nature of war as he had lived it...namely the Napoleonic era and the era of total war and attritional warfare. The focus was to destroy the enemy's armed forces in battle.
    Boyd's methods would not allow him to be an acolyte of any thinker, instead his central way of thinking and creating his theories is through analysis and synthesis, he takes from Clausewitz the 'relevant bits', he takes from Sun Tzu, he takes from Hannibal, he takes from Guderian, etc. And he 'synthesizes' the bits together to form a clearer picture. In other essays he talks exclusively of this process of learning and ideas coming out of the new sciences of the 60s-80s that no knowledge is ever complete in his other essays. In fact, this is one of the primary reasons why Boyd never wrote a book. He modified his presentations every time he gave them, they were constantly changing, due to some new insight from something he read, or some idea that came out of discussion with his audience. The format most of us see now is simply the last revisions before his death, and the product would no doubt be different if he were still around today. His slide presentations allowed flexibility, modification, learning, adapting, which are all fundamentals of his way of thinking.

    Boyd does share Lidell Hart’s and J.F.C. Fuller’s views on Clausewitz, but whether that interpretation is flawed is an opinion and could be argued ad naseum. But I don't think it bears on this thread, nor does the Cheney bashing, which both get away from the real point:

    I think that misunderstanding, or misapplication of a lot of his ideas have caused some of the problems we are seeing. In addition, his ideas had effects, but there also a lot of other opponents (and there still are) to his theories (not to mention methods and personality). He is far from solely responsible for US strategies and tactics over the past 20 years.

    An example of this misunderstanding is the ‘military transformation article’ you posted. Half of Patterns of Conflict is based around unconventional warfare, he notes T.E. Lawrence, Mao, and others. And his focus was certainly not on technology, he was an avid opponent of putting more and more money into complicated expensive technology, which was and has been the trend in US armed forces since at least the Cold War, and one could argue, FAR earlier. The military reform movement, of which he was an integral part, unnecessarily complex and expensive weapons systems, an officer corps focused on the careerist standard, and overreliance on attrition warfare. The writer clearly missed the mark in trying to .

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  63. I think a lack of awareness about Boyd’s work contributes to the misconception that his Boyd's focus was on tactics. This is a common mistake made by many who think the OODA Loop his primary contribution (or Aerial Attacks, EM Theory, Fast transients, etc). While tactics are clearly represented in his work, he frequently addresses the operational art (grand tactics), strategy, and grand strategy. He also addresses theories of individual and organizational learning, which is really more of what the OODA Loop is than a simple decision process. But I would say his focus on strategy is greater than that of tactics. A good example is his incorporation of physical, mental, moral war toward the strategic goal. His studies of insurgency clearly illustrate this. The focus on speed or ‘getting inside’ the enemy’s OODA Loop is also misleading. As you go to higher levels, away from tactics, more to strategy (away from a dogfight, and more toward two divisions battling it out) the focus is less on time, and more in interaction and isolation, two key terms Boyd would mention frequently. The OODA Loop takes on a different character at the strategic level than at the tactical level. This must be understood to apply it correctly.

    Sven also brings up a good point. Boyd did not, and never claimed to invent his ideas. Boyd was 'the great synthesizer', not just from military history and strategy, but from biology, physics, mathematics, etc. The OODA Loop is in fact a hodgepodge of theories from science more than war. Again, simply naming the four Letters does not illuminate the complexity of the OODA Loop, which is much richer than what be initially realized. The comparison of Lawson & Moore’s (or Hughes’ for that matter) processes with Boyd’s is really an ‘apples to oranges’ error.

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  64. I have to agree with Chief on this one:
    "They "understood" what they were doing - they just believed their version of reality trumped what you and I and van Riper and Jim Fallows and Shinseki told them."

    Yet disagree on this one: "It's really that simple. Our Congress has failed since 1950 to fulfill its responsibility to represent the People in either declaring war or forcing the Chief Executive to recall U.S. forces."
    T.R. Fehrenbach brings up a lot of good points about limited war in his book, This Kind of War, since we were discussing Korea. And there have been less and less 'crusades' like WWI, WWII, the Cold War, as time goes on, and more dirty little wars, like Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Afghanistan?, Iraq? I disagree that it must be an "all or nothing" Crusade. We will, unfortunately, have to fight limited, unpopular wars on the frontiers of our global interests, this will continue to be necessary into the foreseeable future, and this will become the norm, and ‘crusades’ where the nation is stirred to arms will be the exceptions. Our current problem now reflects this: We tried to rouse the country, ride the wave of patriotism and anger but we forgot that wars like this take time, and patience, and willpower. These wars can't be like 1991 (which is not even as much of a success as it could have been), and we forgot that Americans, relatively quickly, get tired of a moment of silence at a ball game, or of seeing sand on CNN.

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  65. But back to the heart of the matter, I think you are hitting the point here with your comments on legacy. What will his legacy be? I don't think his views are as pervasive as many are assuming. Take Coram’s claims. Coram is an unapologetic, unabashed, rabid Boyd worshiper, and his book is certainly more colored by what Boyd did do, than what he didn't do, by Boyd's influence than his lack thereof, and he will certainly see Boyd in places he is not, he will certainly exaggerate his legacy, just as I am sure some of Clausewitz's followers do.
    I’m not sure Boyd’s ideas have quite taken hold yet, or if they will ever will. They are the new buzzword, but are they really shaping things? I think so, but not to the degree and with the level of unity it may appear. He has believers, but in practice he doesn't have a monopoly. In addition, he is more likely to be misunderstood and misapplied than understood and properly applied, definitely one of his greater weaknesses. The truth is, the merits of his theories, and the implementations of them have several hurdles:
    1. A lot of preaching of Boyd's ideas is manifested in various manuals, but oftentimes the greater theme is missed. We borrow an idea or concept, or term, but ‘miss the forest for the trees’…which, interestingly enough is a classic example of the shortcomings that Boyd (not the first) points out about “analysis”.
    2. In addition, there is still a gap putting the ideas into practice. There are still many, I would say a majority, attritionist mindsets out there, from the strategic level down to the tactical level, and many of these people avidly espouse maneuver warfare phrases, ideas, but in practical application go back to the way our military has evolved, and these people most often do so without even realizing it, still thinking they are using Boydian concepts, when many times they are doing exactly the opposite..
    3. Again, even those who truly are maneuverists sometimes miss the mark, sometimes don’t quite understand the application. To change a culture and organization takes time. IT took the German Army 100 years to do so, leading up to WWII.

    I do think he has much to offer. And as I said, his legacy will be determined on how pervasive his ideas become, and how well they are understood and applied.

    Frans P.B. Osinga points out that despite the fact that "...his historical analysis is biased and occasionally flawed, while his presentations lack clarity and academic rigor...Boyd's work constitutes a theory of considerable sophistication, consistency and persuasiveness, as well as originality. It is also more comprehensive, subtle and complex than the common rendering and the general perception of what Boyd argues."

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  66. You may call me James Avery, the last like 4 posts were all by me.

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  67. Noticed that Anon didn't get the subject of the thread till his 4th post . . . "but back" to what?

    About average for a Boydian.

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  69. It was written all at once, but posted separately due to character restrictions.

    And yes, I got it, but the tangent was necessary to correct some misconceptions.

    Those misconceptions being "about average" for those who like to make sweeping generalizations, adhere to and struggle rigorously to defend their preconcieved beliefs, ignoring anything contrary to their point of view.

    Boyd vs. Clausewitz...the very nature of the post shows the inherent flaws in the argument: the supposition that there is an either/or choice to be made, that one is right and the other is wrong, that somehow one can appreciate Boyd without appreciating Cluasewitz as he did, or the notion that either of them 'had it all figured out'.

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  70. The truth is there is much to be learned from either and both have flaws in some of their reasoning. The key is to take the good from each, ignore the bad, and combine them in new ways to find new insights...coincidentally this is Boyd's process.

    But again, the premise of the post itself is tendentious.

    -James Avery

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  71. James-

    Actually it is the Boydian crowd who rejects Clausewitz as "Trinitarian" (which isn't even a Clausewitzian concept) . . . who don't even bother reading "On War" since the post-1991 van Creveld's polemic view seemingly "says it all" . . .

    I posted enough on Chet Richards blog to realize that, although I consider Dr. Richards to be an exception to this attitude. My view is the result of that long experience, and yes at the beginning I too was a potential Boydian. To spell it out for you - it is not John Boyd but his legacy which is in question . . .

    Taking the best from each? One is talking strategic theory and the other is talking doctrinal speculation . . . oil and water, apples and oranges . . .

    The more you comment, the less you impress me.

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