It's also unsustainable on several grounds.
Not least vagaries of the economy and thus the job market, actions of other nations / players, the impact of technology, bureaucracy and reorganizations...
Marc, has anyone done any studies on just how directly the organizational restructuring effort turns on simple personality conflicts creating dysfunction and due to the inability of personnel / HR elements to react, engendering massive reorganizations to shift people about simply to restore function? :D
Bizantium and COIN: the strategicon
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/...trategikon.htm
The Strategikon was written to serve as a manual to assist with the training of the mounted troops of the Byzantine army. The author suggests that this forgotten work has use for today's military organizations. He compares the philosophies of the Strategikon to those of Sun Tzu's The Art of War and discusses their differences. Finally, he notes that it was not until the 20th century that the Byzantine type of warfare returned to the battlefield.
The sources of this excellence lay not in the genius of Belisarious or Narses who, despite the brilliance of their victories, left no lasting imprint on the Byzantine military system, but in reforms enacted a generation later by the soldier-emperor Maurice (582-602) and codified in an outstanding military manual, the Strategikon. So successful were Maurice's reforms that they remained substantially undisturbed for the next five centuries. "Not until well into the nineteenth century," writes J. F. C. Fuller, "were military manuals of such excellence produced in western Europe."(2) Yet, very few copies of this work have survived; a printed version of the Greek text appeared only in 1981; and the first English translation, only in 1984.(3) Published by an academic press, it appears not to have come to the attention of the general military reader and has already gone out of print.(4)
As the author of that article, I have been very much impressed on the modernity of Strategikon and mostly about the advices and guidance given to fight against opponent practicing guerilla like warfare.
Byzantine strategy is one of the too often forgotten strategic reflections.
The advices given on the use of combine cavalry and infantry against opponent practicing “irregular” war is very much echoing what is being practiced in A-stan.
I really wonder why we spend so much time on the Romans and so few on Byzantine Empire.
On the same subject, I really recommend Gerard Chaliand book: Civilization and Strategy. A real source of inspiration and ideas on less known strategic reflections from Eastern civilizations. (It also contains some translations of Strategikon.)
Other links to Strategikon (wiki): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategikon_of_Maurice
Still on Byzantine warfare, there is a second Strategikon, the Startegikon of Kekaumenaus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategikon_of_Kekaumenos
Once again, it is interesting to have a look on it. This book is advices on warfare and the handling of public and domestic affairs.
Who said COIN (in its large understanding) is a new way of war?
PS: sorry for the editing but I have net restrictions… :(
