Kinetic vs Empathetic Warfare

[TROUFION]

"Meeting with his North Vietnamese counterpart, described by McNamara as "a wonderful man named Thach," almost 30 years after pulling out of Vietnam, Thach still insisted that America's mission was to colonize and enslave the Vietnamese. Thirty years later, McNamara couldn't convince his former enemy that we believed we were there to protect them from Communist control. In all those years of conflict and killing on both sides, we had never successfully communicated to our enemy why we were fighting and killing them, and we were unable to empathize with what they were experiencing as a civil war. Thach felt they were fighting for their independence and we were fighting to enslave them. Total misunderstanding is the result of failure to empathize. We must learn to find out why we're so hated and make an attempt to understand each other."--Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Empathetic vs Kinetic Warfare

Kinetic Warfare: warfare that resembles weapons which achieve their
destructive effect by the shear force of their impact; distinguished
in the terminology of modern warfare, from those which do damage by
blast and heat or arrival at the target. (U.S. Joint definition).

Empathetic warfare: To attack the willpower and resistance capacity of
an opponent through the capacity to understand, being aware of, being
sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts,
and experiences of an enemy of either the past or present without
having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in
an objectively explicit manner. (Definition taken from NPS Thesis Progressive Reconstruction).

My intent here is to discuss a potential difference in warfighting technique. Although it could just be a fancy way to say know thy enemy.
-T

[Rob Thornton]

On page 125 of Ori Brafman's and Rod Beckstrom's The Starfish and the Spider, the term Emotional Intelligence is introduced. The chapter its found in focuses on describing the hidden power of the catalyst.

I found this concept an interesting way to consider empathy - as a tool for understanding the situation as the other guy sees it within the context of its application to security matters (or anything you choose to apply it to).

When dealing with people, who are subject to emotions and rationalize with some degree of bias, I think this is very useful. In some jobs it may be critical (such as an advisor) as it helps you understand the "why" of certain actions, build trust and possibly help divine intent and.... advise.

[Jedburgh]

....from a NPS thesis hosted on SWJ: Progressive Reconstruction: A Methodology for Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations (http://www.smallwarsjournal.com/documents/rohr.pdf)

...At issue is the fundamental nature of the American way of war. In a traditional war, or a conventional military expedition, with a major peer competitor, where the object is purely self-defense of the United States, our national interests, or our allies, decisive combat operations are designed to rapidly destabilize and destroy the enemy’s capacity to wage offensive war. This is often referred to as kinetic warfare, which denotes warfare that resembles and utilizes weapons that achieve their destructive effects by the shear force of their impact. However, in more common low-intensity conflicts that may or may not involve conventional warfare, such as Somalia and Kosovo, an approach that relies on kinetic force as the principle activity is not appropriate. A different approach is needed, one that must account for the realities of conventional warfare but where the end state is to stabilize and reform the state vice destroy and destabilize an adversary. This is an “empathetic warfare” approach that denotes warfare that attacks the willpower, the moral and physical capacity for resistance of an opponent through the cognitive dimension, the knowledge and understanding of who he is and how and why he fights.

American forces are experts in kinetic war, but far less so in empathetic war. In the post-September 11th era, a lack of understanding of the opposition has generated new problems for nation states intervening in failed or failing states and regime change characterized by a loss of government control....

[TROUFION]

Full disclosure, I wrote the NPS Thesis Progressive Reconstruction, didn't think anyone actually read it! :D

I only utilize TROUFION because I do not want anything I write here to be misinterpreted as a statement for my service. These are my opinions only. That and because I like the idea that it means 'footslogger' and also 'fool' all in one. Sometimes I can be a bit of both.

That said I am interested in what folks think of the concept of Empathetic War. I just didn't want to create an excess of circular logic by not stating my involvment with its generation.

-Karl Rohr aka TROUFION

[astyanax]

Interesting.

There has been an on-going debate between these two fellows on how to defeat Islamicism:

Robert Spencer, Jihadwatch.org
Spengler, Asia Times

R. Spencer seems to argue for the Kinetic approach, whereas Spengler argues we must understand not just our opponent's context but also his psychological state. In other words, Spengler also argues for an 'Empathetic' approach.

He particularly advocates using the mediums of poetry and theology to better understand one's enemy.

[TROUFION]

Expanding the argument--

Empathetic warfare or "warfare that attacks the willpower, the moral and physical capacity for resistance of an opponent through the cognitive dimension, the knowledge and understanding of who he is and how and why he fights." is the principle method of war utilized by physically weaker forces. The guerilla can cause damage far beyond the size and strength of his forces applied by relying on 'emotional contagion' and 'terrain amplification or multiplication.'

Emotional Contagion- a human response to facial expression, body language & tone of other humans that causes a person to have an involuntary empathic reaction. For example a smile can cause other humans to be happy as a sneer can cause anger.

Terrain Amplification & Multiplication--Using terrain to mask and or amplify your force size and strength, generally causing it to seem larger and more effective than it actually is. The goal of any good ambush or guerilla force action. Taken in conjunction with emotional contagion the shock of an ambush or perceived ambush can cause a negative (ambushee) or positive (ambusher) emotional response either increasing or decreasing fear.

*This is the goal of all IED and other surprise type attacks.

Western militaries tend to focus on the physical differences and similarities between ourselves and our enemy. COG, CV's, priority and high payoff targets most often reflect the physical hard targets: tanks, training camps, command and control nodes, weapons caches etc. It is harder for us to grasp or to target the will and level of fear/respect of local influencers. This is what insurgents do best.

-T

[slapout9]

Troufion, I don't remember if I have posted this or not but it is a paper from the AWC about the type of problems you are talking about even it it uses a different name. Link is below.


http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj00/win00/szafranski.htm

[TROUFION]

Slapout I am looking over the thesis, I'll have to read it through more closely. My first impression is they are on to something, my second is that they want to do it from 30,000 feet. It is an airpower argument, mine is from my experience a grunt's eye view. I am trying hard to not let my experience cloud my judgment, like I said they are on to something. Value Targetting has potential, though it seems to be a top down approach. Thanks for the link it has given me some different directions, and perhaps a broader view. -T

[slapout9]

Troufion, of course they think they can do it from 30,000 feet:D What they don't realize is it would be 100% more effective applied form 6 feet. tequila posted another paper on another thread written by an Israeli Air Force officer about how EBO is often a great deal more effective when it is used by ground forces! They don't call them EBO either they call SFO Stand Off Firepower operations because that is what they have become which completely misses the whole point of EBO. But if an Air Force officer can finally realize that (even if he is Israeli) then maybe there is hope. Guerrilla Warfare is EBO at it's finest(from their side) and I don't think our side understands that yet. By the way your paper on Rapid Reconstruction is EBO or more Precisely what Col. Warden calls parallel warfare. Your paper touched on several of the most important concepts that he teaches, which the current Air Force does not. Maybe they need some empathy:cool:

[marct]

Hi Troufion,


Emotional Contagion- a human response to facial expression, body language & tone of other humans that causes a person to have an involuntary empathic reaction. For example a smile can cause other humans to be happy as a sneer can cause anger.

I think you should also add in "ideational contagion". JM Baldwin came up with that idea about 100 years ago, and its latest version is Richard Dawkins' concept of memes (aka Mind Viruses). The basic concept is that an "idea" is a self-replicating information structure that can be communicated and "infect" individuals.


Western militaries tend to focus on the physical differences and similarities between ourselves and our enemy. COG, CV's, priority and high payoff targets most often reflect the physical hard targets: tanks, training camps, command and control nodes, weapons caches etc. It is harder for us to grasp or to target the will and level of fear/respect of local influencers. This is what insurgents do best.

Actually, religious organizations are probably the best at both emotional and ideational contagion. Think about the Jesuits. Most insurgent TTPs in this area probably come from the adoption of religious techniques of contagion. It is probably better, analytically, to go back to the original forms for ideas.

Marc

[TROUFION]

Simplified,
empathy = understanding another's feelings, experience, pain without necessarily having the same experience.
sympathy = sharing another's emotion; generally feeling another's pain.

In the 1960's French Col Roger Trinquier (contrversial for many things, advocacy of torture for one, put that aside for a seperate discussion) wrote French Modern War. In his theory he puts forth the need to gain the support of the population. His methods where, in my opinion 'empathetic' in that he advocates knowing of the needs, desires, and fears of the people not out of sympathy but in order to understand and then CONTROL them. Population control is the essential element of his theory, and is the backbone of what I discuss in both Progressive Reconstruction and Empathetic Warfare. Here is an excerpt from Trinquier:

"The battlefield today is no longer restricted. It is limitless; it can encompass entire nations. The inhabitant in his home is the center of the conflict. Amidst the continuing movement of military actions, he is the stablest element. Like it or not, the two camps are compelled to make him participate in the combat; in a certain sense, he has become a combatant also. Therefore, it is essential to prepare him for the role he will have to play and to enable him to fulfill it effectively on our side.

For the inhabitant to elude the threats of the enemy, to cease to be an isolated target that no police force can protect, we must have him participate in his own defense. To this end, we have him enter into a structured organization encompassing the entire population. No one shall be able to avoid this service, and each person at any moment will be subject to the orders of his civil or military superiors to participate in protective measures.

Control of the masses through a tight organization, often through several parallel organizations, is the master weapon of modern warfare. This is what permits the enemy to uncover quickly any hostile element within a subjugated population. Only when we have created a similar organization will we be able to discover, and as quickly eliminate, those individuals the enemy tries to introduce among us.

The creation of such an organization may run into serious difficulties, but they are not insurmountable if we firmly desire to succeed. There will be no lack of good will; danger will create it. The experience of the battle of Algiers provides us with a sound basis for this assumption."

-T

[slapout9]

Trouf, I am not quite sure where I got rapid reconstruction from but I did somewhere, but what I liked most in your paper was the concept of "Rapid Decisive Stabilization" in zones all through the targeted country. The faster you can do it the better off you will be IMHO.

[Jimbo]

Yeah, old Roger is advocating they old local defense force. this is a great concept, and it is known to work, but some dynamics have changed in todays era. If there is a strong central government, this can work. If there is a weak central government, this method potnetially creates another destabilizing actor.

Empathetic warfare reads a lot like "Counter-Organization" this is a great concept because it is a political alternative at the local level. The U.S. problem with this the term "Counter-Organization" carries a lot of political baggage with it. When you say "counter-Organization" where I am located you get the Phoenix porgram and the FBI infiltration of the anti-war movement in the 1960's thrown at you. People fail to understand that you have to have a comepteing governance plan at the local level.

[Mike in Hilo]

Great paper, by the way, Trouf.

As for Trinquier, read Modern Warfare in its entirety at
http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/trinquier/trinquier.asp

A small book and well worth the time--if not the whole thing, then readers might at least focus on chapters 6,7,8 and 10. This was our principal (but by no means exclusive) COIN text (no, NOT the references to torture!) at the CORDS training center for Province and District Advisers in Arlington when I attended 1970-71. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the advocated organizational features, e.g., "Family Books," the census-based family id cards, had been instituted in VN in 1957 under the Diem regime. I found Block Warden ("Inhabitants' Organization") systems in place in some unlikely places.. But haphazard, unsystematic use of such existing systems by Vietnamese LE (to identify outsiders, for starters) was a serious, problem...Others (inter alia, De Forrest in Slow Burn) have written (and I could well substantiate anecdotally) about the propensity of Vietnamese entities such as Special Branch to release apprehended VCI with alacrity upon receipt of bribes. Of course, self defense organizations not aimed specifically at the VCI (RF, PF, PSDF) did prove effective.

I understand in 1965 DOD hired Trinquier under contract, but unfortunately this was just shortly before his untimely heart attack death.

Cheers,
Mike.

[Tom Odom]

The introduction to a history lesson series I did on Trinquier in 2003.


By late 1953, almost 20,000 men were under his command-probably the largest unit ever commanded by an army major-and engaged in operations covering several thousand square miles of enemy territory. Native tribesmen were flocking to his maquis in greater numbers than could be armed and trained; but before he could make full use of them, what Trinquier-in a masterly understatement -calls "the regrettable Dien Bien Phu incident* ended the Indochina war. What followed was a horrible debacle: Thousands of partisans had to be abandoned to the enemy, since the stipulations of the Geneva cease-fire of 1954 did not permit the French to continue to supply them.

This installment of the BiWeekly History Lesson will look at a French view of modern war. MODERN WARFARE, A French View of Counterinsurgency by Roger Trinquier offers a look back at hard line French military thinking first developed in Indochina and the matured in Algeria. Bernard Fall, author of Street Without Joy, penned the foreword to this monograph, reprinted and offered by the Combat Studies Institute. I offer Fall's introduction as the first part of this five part series. As in the past, I will follow this first section with a new installment every few days until it is completed.

Trinquier is the model for the French Colonel featured in the film, The Battle for Algiers, one recently used as a professional development topic in the Pentagon. Fall does a good job of introducing the man and offers insights into his background and career. But as a reader you will learn more about Trinquier from the man's own hand. I first read of this French colonel when studying the 1960s troubles in the Congo. As an "advisor" there, Trinquier and his men earned the title Les Affreux, or the Horrible Ones. In his chapter, Trinquier writes of Terrorism-The Principal Weapon of Modern Warfare; that will come in the next installment.

That is not to say that Trinquier's thoughts are completely without merit. As Fall points out in the opening vignette, Trinquier as a major commanded some 20,000 irregulars in Indochina. He pioneered many of the insurgency techniques used by the US Forces in Viet Nam. But as you read consider that Trinquier's willingness to stop at nothing to win--as he did in Algiers and the Congo--meant he could never achieve victory.

Best

Tom

[TROUFION]

In my thesis I talked about population controls based on the empathetic approach-a concept generated by the historical 'successes' of Col Trinquier and Marshal Lyautey. (Successes are relative of course and these two Officers and their theories are products of their times). Here is an excerpt that explains what I am leaning towards: Population and Resource controls taken from NPS Thesis -Progressive Reconstruction.

By taking note of what insurgents are trying to do politically and militarily—pick a fight, cause havoc, cause the interventionist force to loose credibility and gain for themselves the support of the population—it can be seen that force alone cannot defeat an insurgency. Insurgencies are local. The issues that motivate the average insurgent are local conditions. Transnational terrorists are outside agents, the same as intervention forces, and cannot exist without the support of the local people. Che Guevara’s ill-fated attempt at revolution in Bolivia is a good example of the failure to gain and maintain local support by an introduced insurgent ‘foco’. Therefore counter-insurgency must focus on localized solutions; attacking unstable politics and economics locally with indigenous support.

Population and resource controls cross the boundaries of development and counterinsurgency. The employment of indigenous workers, the rationing of supplies, census taking and the establishment of a national identification card program as well as taxation are all essential elements of both a counterinsurgency and a reconstruction campaign. Civic Action to provide basic services and infrastructure repair that fully involves the local population will in effect reduce the provocation towards subversion. Work programs sponsored by the PRT (provincial reconstruction team) can dry up the well of insurgent recruits. “[Lyautey’s] officers were expected to show initiative: build roads, dig wells, [and] vaccinate the population against disease,...” They were to undertake civic programs to bring the indigenous population into the government camp. Economics and counterinsurgency are fully entwined as the more intrusive control mechanisms such as a national identification card program will be easier to accept if tied to a positive economic outcome.

Population controls become even more difficult in major metropolitan areas. The political and economic magnetism of Mogadishu and other capital cities is a spur to conflict transcending interventions over the course of history. Cities like Mogadishu need to be deflated and devalued. These big cities attract the impoverished from the more rural areas with the promise of work and shelter. Yet the promise is generally a mirage leaving a growing pool of disaffected unemployed. The indigent population needs to be given incentive to leave the city for a better life in outlying less populated easier to manage regions. A process of voluntary relocation can be attempted to facilitate this.

[slapout9]

Trouf, this is one of the most important concepts you talk about I think later on you called them "Centers of Attraction." it a lot easier to deal small population groups then millions in a densely pact city.




Population controls become even more difficult in major metropolitan areas. The political and economic magnetism of Mogadishu and other capital cities is a spur to conflict transcending interventions over the course of history. Cities like Mogadishu need to be deflated and devalued. These big cities attract the impoverished from the more rural areas with the promise of work and shelter. Yet the promise is generally a mirage leaving a growing pool of disaffected unemployed. The indigent population needs to be given incentive to leave the city for a better life in outlying less populated easier to manage regions. A process of voluntary relocation can be attempted to facilitate this.

[Stevely]

Hi Troufion,
Actually, religious organizations are probably the best at both emotional and ideational contagion. Think about the Jesuits. Most insurgent TTPs in this area probably come from the adoption of religious techniques of contagion. It is probably better, analytically, to go back to the original forms for ideas.

Marc

This is an interesting comment. We are discussing ideas, faiths, as analytical factors, constituent parts of TTPs, which is a little eerie to me (as a religious (Catholic) person). Can a powerful idea or complex of ideas like a religious faith be treated in such an objective manner, with an eye toward using it to further some political-military goal? This is difficult to articulate, but I guess what I am getting at is, can you actually use religious ideas to further some goal without believing in the religion they come from? It seems to me that attempting to do so would rob the ideas of their force, one must actually believe in a religion to push that religion's ideas to effect in the real world.

Of course the enemy is using his religious faith to further his temporal ends, but he does actually believe his faith. For the most part, we in the West don't, certainly not when it comes to making policy and strategy, which closes this door to us. The question then is, can some other idea complex serve this function (and we seem to have also lost the courage of our convinctions as regards our political faith), and if not, can we hope to defeat faith-driven opponents in the current and coming small wars with no way compete in this area? Can the West set unfaith against faith and win the war of ideas outside the West?

The Pope's Regensburg message (the misinterpreted one that caused the uproar in the Muslim world...) was much about this: he makes the point that the thoroughly secularized academic world of the West now simply lacks the understanding and imagination to really engage authetically religious societies, because of this unbelief.

This is my first post here - SWC was highly recommended to me by a Tanknet buddy (ski on this board). Nice to be here, I look forward to learning a lot from the contributors here, just browsing the discussions has been very rewarding.

[TROUFION]

Regarding your post, true enough the vast majority of Westerners do not see the benefits of faith in a combative-forcible prosletizing way. We are not going to launch the next wave of Crusades to combat Islamic Extremism (despite the rhetoric). Our faiths in general have developed beyond that point. What we do have is empathy with the Islamic faithful who are not radical. While not being of the same faith we see and understand their beliefs and we allow for the freedom of choice in the matter. What we share with these folks who remain generally neutral is a desire to live free, to live lives free of fear and exploitation. Our method relys mostly on the concept of liberal democracy, the ability to choose our leaders, to govern in a secular means coexisting with our faiths. This is our culture, and it is a powerful culture. (though at times it is far easier to back a dictator as democracies in their infancy are very unstable).

I sometimes think our cultures (East vs West) truly run into conflict when you lay out the inherent right we give to freedom of choice versus the middle easterners motto of it's God's Will. Insh'Allah

Though I remember back to my studies of the Crusades I believe their motto was "God Wills It!" so perhaps we are not so different.