James Russell — The Strike Warfare Chimera

The reality is that strike warfare—long range strikes by planes and missiles—has rarely achieved its advertised strategic consequence. Yet it remains a dangerous, drug-like chimera to states desperately searching for some sort of easy, low-cost fix in the search for influence in the chaotic international system. Like all drugs, the initial rush feels great, but the long-range addiction is, in the end, far more destructive, dangerous, and difficult (if not impossible) to kick.…

Yet despite these uncertain results and even colossal failures, we remain addicted to strike warfare, telling ourselves that we can police the politics on the ground by dropping bombs from on high. The reality is, of course, different. Those fighting the wars on the ground are fighting for political objectives, and it is on the ground that the fight will be determined—not by the missiles and airplanes flying around above it. This fact is not lost on Assad. His response to the strikes? He reportedly stepped up attacks against his enemies on the ground.

Therein lies the strategic dilemma for the West, which has invested billions in the strike, information, surveillance, and reconnaissance complexes that are designed to blow things up with little collateral damage. The revolution in military affairs (and billions of taxpayer dollars) indeed delivered the complex—much to the delight of political leaders, who saw in it a low-cost substitute for sending armies to the four corners of the globe to police political disputes.

Yet the foreign policy establishment in the United States desperately clings to the myths they helped create that the strike complex would mean that these wars would be short, low cost and that we could control the bad behavior of our enemies by bombing them.

Our enemies must surely back down in the fact of such might. Right?

Substituting a tactic and wishful thinking for a strategy. Vietnam, and the experience of France there before the US, should have taught a lesson. It did not. The US keeps on making the same mistake and is unleashing carnage. People like John Bolton don't think the US has unleashed enough of it and the solution is to double down.

LobeLog
The Strike Warfare Chimera

James A. Russell | Associate Professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA

John Robb — Delaying Chinese Global Dominance

How strategists think.

Global Guerrillas
Delaying Chinese Global Dominance

John Robb

Moon of Alabama When Generals Make Policies - From Tactics To Strategy To Political Decision

Let me draw out a bit the point that b makes about strategy versus tactics. The priories in descending order are policy, which set goals and purpose, strategy which sets objective for reading the policy goals and achieving purpose, and tactics, which is concerned with operational means in achieving objectives.

Policy is fixed, strategy is adaptable, and tactics agile.

Mixing these up is unprofessional and can become amateurish, as in mission creep led by tactics.

The etymological root of "strategy" is Greek strategos and Latin strategus, meaning a general, or other general officer such as a field marshall. Generals are in charge of strategy. They are part of the general staff. Their portfolio is planning. In the US, "the Pentagon" is an abstraction for this function.

Officers from colonel below are officers of the line, or line officers. They are responsible for the actual fighting, that is, tactics.

A problem arises because generals are promoted from the line. Therefore, the Peter principle applies. Since candidates for promotion are chosen on the basis of past performance rather than intended performance, some candidates may be promoted beyond their level of competence.

This is a persistent problem in militaries. Good tacticians don't necessarily make good strategists. For example, Patton and Rommel are known as great tacticians, even superb tacticians, but they are not considered great strategists. 

This is a problem for President Trump since he doesn't have the military competence to make good choices. He knows that so he has ceded military choices to his commanders. However, to be successful he must have the ability to distinguish good strategist, or be lucky. He was neither in choosing James Mattis.

The entire general staff seems to suffer from this syndrome when they say that there is no end in sight the global war on terror and it may go on for many decades. They have no plan and it is appearing that there is no viable plan without massively occupying many countries for the foreseeable future, which is not viable politically.

They need to be figuring out an exit strategy that saves as much face as possible, instead of repeating a Vietnam situation where they end up fleeing as they draw down.

Moon of Alabama
When Generals Make Policies - From Tactics To Strategy To Political Decision

b

Sandwichman — Game theory and rationality -- the road less traveled

What may have been almost madness in 1960 or 1970 is today stark raving lunacy.

Econospeak
Game theory and rationality -- the road less traveled

Sandwichman

A Speech of Hope for Greece? Begging Your Conqueror For Mercy? ... Better Strategies Have Been Taken

  (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

A Speech of Hope for Greece

Varoufakis makes some stellar points, but this would useful only when coming from the conquerors, not from the vanquished.

Time for Greeks to wise up. Begging for mercy rarely works.

Christopher Black — May 9th: Russian Victory, NATO Defeat

Historical backgrounder.

New Eastern Outlook
May 9th: Russian Victory, NATO Defeat
Christopher Black, international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes

GDP As A Policy Metric, It's Not Just Not Right, It's Not Even Wrong

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

GDP Is Wrong

Steve Hansen says: "The most recent quarter being reported says the real economy is growing at 4.2%. Am I the only one who believes this is a lie?"

It's a hopeful sign when steadfast financial analysts start to question the very fundamentals of economics. That's when people normally focused on business & investing tactics and strategy finally start to pay attention to national policy.

I take that as a potentially very good sign.

I really like this author, Steve Hansen. He's helping the orthodox re-think faux fundamentals, strictly using their own concepts and jargon.

When even orthodox analysis says orthodoxy is no longer useful ... maybe we're closer to a phase shift than anyone can guess.

Hope springs eternal, simply because optimists are usually the only ones left standing in the end. :)

Is the grass half smoked, or half gone?   Define smoked.   :)

"The graph below demonstrates the difference between using the previous quarter as the reference point for determining headline GDP (blue line in graph below), and using the same quarter one year ago as the reference (red line in graph below)."

On the other hand, when the BLS routinely resorts to such sophistry ... maybe the glass is only described as looking half full ... when it's actually nearly drained.

Perhaps the real expectations theory is this electorate's feeling that we'll survive even our current batch of politicians ... because we're the ones who signed off on them.  Go figure!

Very Useful Message Here: "How Politics Makes Context Pigeons Stupid"

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)




More on the "K-topic" - about people who can't discern the forest from the trees. Carrying on with the "Deficit Dove" theme, let's call such people "Context Pigeons" because they get fixated on random tactics, and lose track of what the class war is all about, or how to actually win it.

How do you convince 99 dogs to put down the 98 tactical bones they're practicing lock-jaw with, and instead look at the bigger picture that they're fully capable of perceiving & addressing with indirect agility, but are over-trained to avoid grasping?

How politics makes us stupid

(Too bad this article fixates mostly on global warming. The reasoning applies to all tactical/strategic spreads.)

Fighting over the "Last, great, unguarded pools of money in this country." Really?

(Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

That's how the American Federation of Teachers & AFL-CIO think?

That's what they think "People Power" is? Could we set our sights a bit higher?

No wonder we're focusing on tactics, winning a few Pyrrhic victories, ignoring strategy & context, and losing the class war.

Sounds like this topic meets their Gold Standard. :(

From AFL-CIO <peoplepower@aflcio.org>:

Join AFT President, Randi Weingarten

& ex Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi

for a discussion of his new book

The Divide: American Injustice

in the Age of the Wealth Gap

Monday, April 21, 2014, 3–4:30 p.m.

AFT, 555 New Jersey Ave., N.W.

Washington, DC 20001, (4th Flr Conf Room)

RSVP to Carolyn Jenkins at cjenkins@aft.org byApril 18

Matt Taibbi has led the effort to expose Wall Street firms that are making millions in profits off public pension funds.

“Essentially it is a wealth transfer from teachers, cops and firemen to billionaire hedge funders,” Taibbi says. “Pension funds are one of the last great, unguarded piles of money in this country, and there are going to be all sorts of operators that are trying to get their hands on that money.” 

[As usual] Matt Taibbi's book, "The Divide" will be available for purchase and signing.

#####

This is amazing. And also deflating. 

Reminds me of the last, great, unguarded pool of ladders, and how people might use them to get a better view of context.

We're all supposed to focus on the "last, great, unguarded pools of money in this country?" Why? When all these static pools of already-expressed-fiat pale in comparison to continuous access to our own, unlimited public fiat. 

"Fiat" currency in the USA is a direct expression of public initiative (and has been, officially, since 1933, NOT just since the inter-gov-only adjustments of 1971). Once we're convinced that we can somehow run out of our own, unlimited public initiative, then perhaps we've passed a tipping point. Past that point, is every pool of static assets already divided and conquered? Is Taibbi only uselessly railing about the mop-up exercises, AFTER implied capitulation? And in the process, completely missing the far more important DYNAMIC ASSETS?

Someone please tell Matt & the AFL-CIO that capitulation has not yet occurred? And that dynamic assets always trump static assets?

And also tell them that over-emphasis on defending (to the death) the isolated pools of already-issued fiat currency credits is a strategic error of colossal proportions? Isn't that like hunkering down to defend Stalingrad, and forgetting the purpose of the whole class war? Hint to all. Success ALWAYS tracks ability to envision the expanding scale of context - i.e., "Battle Space" - and exploring new options with more agility than opponents.

Given that the "opponents" in this struggle represent only our own, distributed ignorance, this is a battle we should win with ease, if we'd only listen, sooner, to more of ourselves!

Taibbi's call is akin to ONLY fighting over pools of already-issued tax credits?

That's how losing sides illustrate that divide-&-conquer works.

Taibbi doesn't get it? Nor does the AFL-CIO? And, they're both missing the bigger point? Worse,by doing so they actually help divert our electorate's attention away from the far bigger crime proceeding under our very noses, unnoticed by nearly all?

Nothing is as defeatist as a victimized population going along with it's own robbery, while actually helping to distract their own, distributed attention to details which are subsidiary to the greater crime.

In an all or nothing struggle for operational democracy, you do NOT focus excessive attention on subsidiary details, to the detriment of grand strategy!!! What part of all-or-nothing don't these people understand?

Instead of getting tied in knots defending specific, completely optional beachheads, the US Middle Class needs to be on an ALL OUT OFFENSIVE to preserve functional democracy .... and ACTING WITH AGILITY!!!

If the AFL-CIO would only take this context more seriously, this pointless, class in-fighting could be over in 6 months .... or it could drag on, with tragic economic losses, for another generation.

How & Why Economics Is Always An Extension Of Policy ... (and why YOUR INDUSTRY SECTOR is currently underfunded, compared to the MICC)

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



I've little to add, so I'm posting, with permission, some comments and a link forwarded by Chuck Spinney.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Chuck Spinney

Todd Pierce has produced a tour de force that is crucially important to your appreciation of the increasing possibility of Cold War II.

Related subjects not discussed include 

(1) the role of domestic politics in shaping the systematic expansion of NATO in violation of our promises to Gorbachev as a quid pro quo for ending the first Cold War and 

(2) the role of shoveling money to the Military - Industrial - Congressional Complex in the shaping the domestic politics of contemporary militarism.

These issues in no way detract from the importance of Todd's message; I only mention them because they are also central to rise of a peculiar form of 21st Century American Militarism that violates all the criteria of a sensible grand strategy. 

On a personal note: as one who laughing dismissed Wolfowitz's draft Defense Planning Guidance when it was leaked to the New York Times in 1992 as the inconsequential divagations of a troglodyte moron, I stand corrected.

Chuck Spinney, The Blaster

###

‘We’re All Cheneyites Now’

By Todd E. Pierce, Consortium News, 1 April 2014

In late 2008, when President Obama opted more for “continuity” than “change” — and ceded control over much of his foreign policy to hawkish “rivals” — he locked in many of Dick Cheney’s neocon theories that trampled constitutional principles, as retired JAG Major Todd E. Pierce explains.

Gregory Beyer — Why Business Leaders Are Obsessed With Sun Tzu's Ancient Military Guide, "The Art of War"

Is business competition well-modeled on warfare? Apparently a lot of leaders think so.

Rick Wartzman, executive director of The Drucker Institute, wrote last year in Forbes, “Ask businesspeople to peg the writer whose thinking is most clearly reflected in both military and corporate circles, and odds are that you’ll hear the name Sun Tzu.” CEO.com includes the book on its list of Leadership Books To Read Before You Die.
For business leaders, reading The Art of War is a rite of passage; quoting from it is de rigueur. The publishing industry routinely markets the book as a military/business text, with blurbs from CEOs and testimonials from trade publications. Sun Tzu’s principles have been applied to every conceivable agenda....

Game theory, too.

Does anyone else find it odd that business leaders routinely structure the game as zero-sum and not win-win? And therefore often adopt the principle of "doing whatever it takes," i.e., "the end justifies the means"aka "nice guys finish last."

The Huffington Post
Why Business Leaders Are Obsessed With Sun Tzu's Ancient Military Guide, "The Art of War"
Gregory Beyer

François Heisbourg: It’s High Time To Scrap The euro In Order To Save Europe And Preserve The Values Of Europe’s Founding [Mothers].

Commentary by Roger Erickson

François Heisbourg of the Chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, says the euro is the problem, and has to go.

He makes a lot of good points, seemingly echoing long held MMT positions.

Fabius Maximus — Realism about the prospects for reform in America

Telling it like it is. It's 1764.

Fabius Maximus
Realism about the prospects for reform in America

Battle for the Size and Direction of the US Public Budget Finally Getting Serious

commentary by Roger Erickson

Panetta: Supercommittee failure would ‘hollow out’ military's combat force.

Really? Yet the following is also true.
"the US plowed $689 billion into defense in 2011, more than the next 16 biggest military spenders combined, and 40% of total worldwide military spending. Number two China spent $129 billion, number three Russia a measly $64 billion."

Is the entire world really our enemy? Do we want to spend that much on defence? Or might we want to invest that much in broader-based innovation, general welfare of our people, and making friends with the rest of the world?

Plus, the bulk of the DoD budget is dedicated to tactical hardware, NOT to strategy!

For comparison, do we train chessmasters to think, or do we train them to constantly ask for more and bigger and badder pawns and other pieces on the chessboard? There are times to do both, but getting out of balance either way can be fatal.

Are we way out of balance on hardware, and ignoring strategic brilliance? There is no lack of current Pentagon budget reform insiders - dating back to efforts by John Boyd, Chuck Spinney, Winslow Wheeler and even Pres. Eisenhower - who have claimed for decades that the runaway MICC spending on tactical hardware has sucked all emphasis out of strategic thinking both within and outside the DoD, and has therefore done more harm to our nation than all the hardware can possibly be worth. All the hardware in the world is useless in the hands of people lacking strategic brilliance. History has proven that repeatedly.

We're gonna see a vote on those very questions, soon.

Organizational Power and the Limits of Cinematography - or any - Strategy

commentary by Roger Erickson

The power of cinematography as an organization tactic is easily seen. For example, in the Fools on the Hill Movie.

It's also clear - just from watching the movie - that familiarity with the tactical tool is there, but the actual goal, intent & strategy is still superficial.

That superficiality is actually a serious threat. Everyone lacking both Situational Awareness and the ability to adequately manage situational awareness in real time ... STILL thinks that there actually is a verifiable "one, most important thing we can do."

And, of course, most are initially also certain that what THEY are personally certain of ... is certain to solve all problems if simply scaled up to be an assumed certainty for all. Most of the time, that's a fallacy of scale. For example, if you stand up at a sports stadium, you'll likely get a better view. Therefore, obviously, if EVERYONE stands up, they'll ALL get better views. Right?  For most suggestions, we can't predict the outcome, and must practice finding out, the sooner the better.

Our naively distributed certainty in the face of uncertainty is a constant threat to all of our distributed efforts, even as it simultaneously provides the roots of our Adaptive Rate. All the metaphorically blind men groping a group situation still offer themselves the best avenue for success. They just have to organize, compare notes, and use their imagination.

Given we have 315 million and growing "situationally blind people," how do we generate the group agility needed to master constantly accelerating change and increasing complexity?  Do we all just keep leaping to our feet at the Situation Stadium, while getting more and more frustrated?

Group Practice? There are endless ways to initiate and continue organized practice, but here's one set of suggestions, just to get someone's ball rolling.

[If you, as another scout, have even better suggestions, by all means, let all of us hear them, yesterday if possible. And no, 50,000 offers to buy yet another book, for $50, or even $10, just isn't feasible.  Just pick up a phone and call, or send a free pdf, NOW!]

First off, remind everyone that we face constant, distributed, statistical SELECTION tasks? A temptation to organize?

Second, remind them that all continuous selection tasks depend upon scouting - i.e., sampling - strategies, re-sampling and the tempo of re-sampling?

Third, keep everyone comfortably practiced at both the process of continuous checking and re-checking AND the practice of rapidly and openly sharing more, if not all, of our sampled data, at high tempo, and upon demand. Pass-through societies are agile societies. Tuned Situational Awareness = Selectively Tuned Knowledge Throughput, whether in a network of computers, neurons or humans.

Fourth, keep everyone comfortably practiced at coordinating the amazing return-on-coordination available with scalable teamwork, and everything that teamwork entails. Behaviour drives mood in individuals. Group practice behavior drives social mood.

That all boils down to a fairly simple cultural mantra. Continued success of our "more perfect union"tracks the quality - including tempo - of our distributed decision-making, and we should focus most on all those, constantly changing things that improve distributed decision-making as a cultural property.

Even group or distributed Situational Awareness doesn't help if we don't have an adequate and adequately distributed sense of our own Adaptive Rate. This is an ancient observation. To map our survival to changing conditions, we must know both our "opponents" - our situations - and ourselves. In a continuous re-mapping task, it helps immensely to know, leverage and even prod the Adaptive Rate of both ends of the mapping process.

We've always known that. We just don't maintain adequate practice at actually performing it. In general, more OBT&E might help.

If we want to manage our net, National Adaptive Rate - our NAR - why not formulate an open measure of NAR, similar to NIPA, and then practice managing it? Biofeedback works. Social feedback does too, if we bother to adequately sample it, openly share the feedback, and act on it.

Rodger MItchell –MMT: To make your case, begin with what people already believe

I ask the followers of MMT, and like-minded thinkers, to switch their primary argument from deficits, debt, taxes, money creation, banking laws and other inanimate concepts, and instead humanize our economic problems by focusing on the gap – that historical source of human misery and domination. 

The populace cannot and will not understand why deficits should be larger and “debt” should not exist at all. This is not what they know about deficits and debt.

The populace cannot and will not understand why taxes don’t pay for federal spending, nor why the government does or does not create dollars by spending dollars. This is not what they have been told about taxes and spending.

All the discussions of federal banking laws, Monetary Sovereignty and seigniorage will not penetrate.

What the populace does understand and believe is the gap – the fact that the rich are getting richer and the poor, by comparison, are getting poorer.

Using the gap as a starting point, we can segue into additional facts:

Monetary Sovereignty
–MMT: To make your case, begin with what people already believe
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell

We essentially agree on policy, now we need to work on strategy.

Greg McKeown — The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

How to turn less into more by thinking strategically.

Read it at The Harvard Business Review | HBR Blog Network
The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
by Greg McKeown | CEO of THIS Inc.

How About FiscalPolicyFest?

Hacking Campaign Finance Data

This "hacking" approach sounds like a useful set of exercises to start PRACTICING.  However the application-  barring an initial StrategyFest - quickly looks like Divide&ConquerFest, or Distract&DeceiveFest.

Practice is necessary but not sufficient prelude to strategic implementation.