Stepping out on a limb...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Col Warden
Contrary to Clausewitz, destruction of the enemy military is not the essence of war; the essence of war is convincing the enemy to accept your position, and fighting his military forces is at best a means to an end and at worst a total waste of time and energy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NDD
Does anybody here believe this will really work with the enemy we face now? Or any other True Believers?
I think that a true believer would not give up.
I think one can go about destroying an enemy in many creative ways. What is needed is partly determined by those involved in the fight and what the desired end state is. For example, if your enemy want to annhilate all infidels, that makes your desire to bring them into society less appealing. On the other hand, everyone may not be hard core, so perhaps you could use PSYOPs on some parts of society or the organization, etc, etc.
The author in that quote makes a mistake in differentiating between tools and cause.
People fight for reasons. Clausewitz said that "War therefore is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfill our will." If we rewrite what Col Warden said, if the enemy has fulfilled our will, there is no need for war. But we cannot rewrite what he said so easily, because to "accept your position" entails a hint of self-destruction or drastic social re-orientation if, for instance, your demand on the enemy is to die because they do not have the same skin color, or do not believe in democracy and in the rule of law by a just justice system. Culture, too, may not allow this to happen.
On the other hand, de-escalation can work to allow negotiations to solve an issue - depends on the issue and those involved. One of the building blocks for democracy.
Then, war is a tool. You have to choose it at the right time, and know how to bend it to your needs. It still work towards that goal of getting your enemy to acknowledge and accept your position.
I think that it being a "total waste of time and energy" either suggest that you have chosen the wrong tool for the task at hand, or have mis-identified the scope. Which brings us back to the beginning: Who is the enemy, and why?
Martin
Making the enemy feel defenseless
Clauswitz point on winning was making the enemy feel defenseless. Of course destruction of the enemy army was one way to achieve that objective. But he also talks about focusing on the enemy's "center of gravity." That may or may not be his army. One of the classic ways this was done in his era was by manuevering forces to get between the enemy and their "lines of communication" i.e. their supply lines and lines of retreat.
One of the reasons why it is important for the US to defeat the insurgency is to make that form of warfare less attractive and less likely to be used against our interest. If the insurgency can be defeated, the enemy will have to resort to political means to achieve its objectives and in doing so he will find it difficult to persuade most people to live under a Taliban type society. There is some recognition of the mistakes of the Taliban in Zawahiri's letter to Zarqawi.
While this insurgency has its true believers, it is doing a very poor job of making the people think they would be better off under their trule. In fact there is substantial evidence that it is alienating the Iraq population and things like the bombing of a Shia holy site is not calculate to endear them to their cause. Zarqawi seeks to persuade through abuse like a sadistic parent.
When this thread started there was an issue of organizing certain events in connection with achieving an objective. While my question about a to do list, may have understated the complexity, it does sound like a situation that used to be addressed by project management software in the early 90's. I have not looked at that type of software in several years but it might be a solution to managing several different events in connection with achieving the objective.
LOO is useful like a set of vice grips
I won't argue the point that LOO "can" can be useful, but I will stand on my original criticism that I have seldom seen it used in a constructive matter. Vice grips are useful to turn nuts, but not drive nails, paint, or assorted other uses. LOOs are useful for maneuver, but don't necessarily add anything but confusion to operations that don't involve maneuvering to achieve an objective. I don't know how many times I have seen the following in briefs: Our lines of operation are security, civil affairs and information operations. At first glance you might think that sounds appropriate in a stability operation, but the substance to this part of the brief never follows, it just doesn't come. Obviously you think you missed something, so you have side bar discussions with the briefers so they can explain how they use their lines of operations to achieve their objectives, what the mile stones are along the lines, and how they synergistically contribute to an end state. You'll get a bunch of blank stares, and sometimes you'll get the truth, well the boss wants to see LOOs in the brief, they don't really add any value or mean anything. If we don't get back to hard core, no nonsense commanders, that demand that plans and words mean something we'll be spinning our wheels for years to come.
The Marine Corps and LOOs
Someone with an Army (SAMS?) background can better recount the development of the LOO concept, but it preceded the present conflicts and, I think, has its origins in the complex contingencies of the 1990s. In looking at older briefs and documents, there was a very rigorous and thoughtful way for planners to look at the problem and see if LOOs were necessary, and if so, what the LOOs should be. I think it had to do with complex problems not having single identifiable COGs, but possibly multiple COGs--each requiring actions along a seperate "Logical Line of Operation" (the conceptual equivalent of Jomini's physical line of operation--we dropped the "logical" piece to the title as no one remembers the physical origin and no one wants to associate our current COIN doctrine with a guy named Jomini). The commander had to arrange and coordinate all his actions across the LOOs to achieve his objective.
The Marine Corps never really embraced this doctrine until the early Irregular Warfare pubs--which to me looked largely like expansions of Chiarelli's article on LOOs in Baghdad in Military Review--a seminal piece, to my mind. From having no doctrinal background on LOOs, all of a sudden Marines were identifiying specific LOOs for COIN. Now LOOs pop up everywhere. The Marine Corps has still failed to grapple with them in any of our base doctrinal pub (the MCDPs). I look forward to that happening someday, because I think for LOOs to be useful, they can't be some template that commanders/planners just fill in the blank and start executing. Not every conflict porblem requires LOOs.
In many cases, even in complex scenarios like COIN, I see LOOs used as the equivalent of expanding the warfighting functions (maneuver, fires, logistics, etc.) into the "non-lethal" sphere. This tends to drive units to assign different parts of their forces to the various LOOs and they become almost separate commands at the higher echelons. I thought that the utility of the orginal way of thinking about LOOs was that it forced more synergy--a "kinetic action" was not relegated to a "combat action" LOO, but could affect multiple LOOs (information, enemy destruction, etc.). For the Marine Corps, its well worth looking hard at the LOO (and tell me, what is our 1-2 sentence definition of a generic LOO and what USMC or joint pub we use for it?).
Logical with respect to Physical LOOs
Yesterday my faculty partners and I had a seminar session with Army staff college students and found ourselves still (after 5 years of "settled joint doctrine") struggling with the new, more abstract idea: logical lines of operations.
Here is a slightly edited version what I wrote the students this morning -- and would appreciate your comments (I invited them to engage here and take a look at SWJ blogger comments as a follow-on).
In a conventional, force-on-force fight, operational art involves examining the integration of physical lines of communication (LOCs—the “pipeline” where forces and sustainment move from one base to another base) and physical lines of operations (LOOs—the line of maneuver between the force’s base and its objective). During WW II, the U.S.’s Pacific theater provides a superb example of the “island hopping campaign” where LOOs established new LOCs and LOCs enabled new LOOs (involving physical orientations on THE ENEMY FORCE).
Several years into the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are characterized more by FID- and COIN-oriented activities and goals, doctrinaires searched for a way to define the metaphysical (“logical”) links between military activities as they relate to more nebulous goals like “population security,” “support to insurgents,” and “increasing legitimacy of the host government.” These writers searched for the additional abstraction to describe how to intertwine activities of other agencies and organizations that are nonmilitary in nature (and may constitute the main effort with the military-in-support). Army doctrinaires called these “lines of effort” while joint doctrinaires labeled them “logical lines of operations.”
Keep in mind that these efforts are geared to desirable social and psychological change; hence, are not clearly tied to the physical world. Logical lines of operation are more existential (subjective, interpretive, infused with human-created meaning, etc.) in that they address PEOPLE -- changing minds, social norms, ideas about legitimacy, and so on. In essence, you are orienting military activities and nonmilitary activities on the opinions, values, and attitudes of a POPULATION (be they good guys, bad guys, &/or “fence sitters”).
In short, the joint doctrinaires used the old reliable operational art concept of LOO and metaphorically extended the "physical meaning" in it into a new, much more abstract meaning, i.e. "logical" (the reasoned way of expressing intentional causality). Both kinds of LOOs (physical and logical) serve to reasonably link actions toward a purpose. The former is more easily measured (because it has a physically identifiable “end state” like “we secured objective bravo at map grid so and so”). The latter desired condition is much more difficult to measure because it is so open to subjective interpretation even if we try and operationalize (objectify) it (e.g., “on average, the local population has improved its trustworthy feeling toward the central government;” “the enemy’s morale is deteriorating;” or, “on average, US citizens support the war effort.”). Such reifications of subjective reality are what makes logical lines so difficult to apprehend (as social scientist researchers have found, our "operationalized variables" are, at the end of the day, quite ambiguous; albeit, they sure seemed reasonable when invented).
Logical with respect to Physical LOOs
Presley, not sure what you are asking. Please rephrase.
Seahorse,
Whilst EBO seems to be dying a slow death, I think logical lines are still going to hang around; albeit, they seem to encourage linear thinking (one-direction causality) and fail to appreciate sufficiently the interactive complexity at hand.
My opinion is that LLOOs are rather arrogant (right word?) attempts toward "social engineering" change in groups/societies/political-economic systems abroad. The idea that US interagency operations and advisory methods can be deterministic in changing complex social systems is highly questionable -- there is no "science" and these LLOOs suggest a false sense of scientific-like causality (and lead to setting expectations that are unfortunately as illusory as a shaman rain dance).
I think the efficacy of a more philosophical approach to complexity (found in the "DESIGN MOVEMENT" led primarily by the Army's School of Advanced Military Studies) may offer some better hope. Yet joint doctrine has not yet insitutionalized these alternatives that (in my opinion) consitute a worldview shift. I wrote on this in SWJ a few weeks ago: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/jou...9-paparone.pdf. I also know there is a group at JFCOM J7 working on a design handbook and that SAMS has published a student text: http://www.cgsc.edu/events/sams/ArtofDesign_v2.pdf.
Should Logical Lines of Operations (LLOO) really be linear?
As I follow this thread, it seems to me the term “logical lines of operation” is a misleading metaphor and directs us toward a relatively narrow mode of linear thought. General Chiarelli’s article in Military Review suggests that the term “logical lines of operation” is useful because it moves us away from the phased approach to warfare, allowing for simultaneous action toward a final goal rather than discreet, albeit blurred transitional phases of action. However both concepts harken us back to traditional “lines of communication and maneuver”, and are still distinctly linear in nature. Indeed the term itself, “lines of operation” borrows from “lines of communication” and (as The Pap likes to remind us) originates from a time when communication relied on linear physical infrastructure, delivered via roads, rail, or telegraph lines.
General Chiarelli reminds us in his article that “Task Force Baghdad’s campaign to “win the peace” in Iraq has forced us, as an instrument of national power, to change the very nature of what it means to fight... We witnessed in Baghdad that it was no longer adequate as a military force to accept classic military modes of thought.”
But doesn’t thinking in terms of “Logical lines of Operations” simply borrow a linear metaphor from classic military modes of thought? Speaking from my perspective as a Navy officer with admittedly limited experiences operating with the Army, I have often thought and remarked on what occurs to me as a distinctly linear approach that the Army takes toward problem solving. And though I admit this tendency of linear thought undoubtedly pervades all of our military services (a fact which perhaps lends even more credence to these suggestions), it is perhaps more so with the Army.
In an earlier post Shane Sims makes a great point that “Logical lines of operations are existential in part, but there are very real, physical elements, which will have an impact on overall objectives.” I suggest that those physical elements are indeed lines of operation, but that what we think of in a broader sense as “logical lines of operation” should be thought of as something quite different. A design approach might help us break from this classic military linear thinking.
As The Pap notes in his article Design and the Prospects of a US Military Renaissance, “With a more open search strategy, we may collaborate with others with varying views, call upon the unfamiliar arts and sciences, merge heuristics, and, extend and displace concepts until we discover new meaning in the situation.”
I suggest we search for our own “Eureka” moment in our effort to make sense of what “winning the peace” means today. Defining logical lines of operation with a new design way of thinking might help us to break out of our linear mental mold. Though NDD points out that none of this is really new, and “We know what has to be done, we need to quit re-wrapping the package and get on with it.” I propose that words and concepts really do matter, that there is a time and place for critical thinking, and that thinking should shape our action.
V/r
LCDR Dave Purkiss
Student, Command and General Staff College
Satellite Location: Fort Lee, Virginia
The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
