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Military doctrines are often expressions of current practices. A doctrine will attempt to codify the practice, giving it a vocabulary and a set of concepts in order to help indoctrinate the practitioner more fully into abiding by that particular practice. The alignment of doctrine with the military’s training and practice makes doctrine very important, and this important doctrine business continues to grow, influencing in turn our training and practice. The joint world of the American military is articulating a doctrine that describes its current practice, and this doctrine is gaining momentum at such a rate that we will hardly notice when its unofficial status becomes official. This doctrine is referred to as the effects-based approach (EBA), and operations within this approach are called effects-based operations (EBO). As I intimated up front, we have been training and practicing along these lines for some time. The doctrine is going to formalize what we have developed informally. More and more commanders and headquarters across the services are adopting the language of this doctrine; the doctrine writers are working hard so that our doctrinal literature can keep pace with the development. I want to offer a critique of EBA by starting with my most important claim. The effects-based approach is morally bereft, and our moral challenges will only increase as we continue to embrace this doctrine. EBA lacks any moral quality because it fails in every sense as a theory. The theory of the effects-based approach rests on several mistakes, and I will deal with them in turn. EBA rests on metaphysical, epistemological, and logical mistakes. We should expect mostly mistakes as a result of a practice resting on a mistaken theory, for only by accident and not by design could anything good come out of it...
...Well, the first mistake that EBA rests on is a metaphysical mistake because of the way it handles the topic of causation. The mistake is very simple to explain. Philosophers who deal with the topic of causation think of cause and effect as being operative in the physical world, the mechanical world, the world of solid objects that abide by the laws of physics. Within the effects-based approach, the military is attempting to cause effects outside the realm of the physical world; they are trying to bring effects about in the realm of human activity. Causation is not the proper concept when dealing with human activity. A more proper topic of study than causal theory when dealing with human activity is the topic of a theory of action. Action theory recognizes that the mental realm falls outside the normal physical realm of cause and effect. One simply cannot cause another person to act a certain way; people act for reasons, not causes...
...The second problem discussed here is closely associated with the first. This problem has to do with the nature of knowledge, so it is an epistemological problem, how we can know this chain of causes and effects. There are numerous doctrinal manuals available, many on the web, that lay out a program with which to conduct operations according to the effects-based approach. One such manual is Pamphlet 4 from the Joint Warfighting Center.[2] This pamphlet is representative of the doctrinal cementing of the effects-based approach. It lays out the framework that attempts nothing less than a science. The language of cause and effect suffuses the doctrine. Even Francis Bacon is quoted in the front pages, “For knowledge itself is power.” Important in this so-called scientific approach is the establishment of what they refer to as an operational net assessment (ONA). The ONA is an ostensibly elaborate analysis of the system and all of its parts. And they recognize that we are not dealing with a single system, but a system of systems, so the language of systems engineering makes its way into the concept. A database is constructed that highlights linkages of sets of effect—node—action—resource (ENAR). And through this complex and bewildering array of causes and effects that identify nodes (that become targets) and resources (that become units and capabilities planned to service those targets), the military can bring about the effects it wants through causal means. While this may seem natural to some military minds, few are asking about the hubris required to think we can actually know how a real system works in the real world based on such a reductionist representation, as elaborate as it may appear. The assignment of what becomes a node, for example, is more arbitrary than not, usually chosen because they may be more tangible and therefore potentially more serviceable as a target. In other words, we reify entities in the framework (nodes, actions, effects, etc.) on the basis that we know something about them when in fact they will not exist in the real world in the manner in which we have assigned them ontological status...
...The next problem I will deal with is a logical problem, because it has to do with the way we think about time. It is connected to the metaphysical problems as well as the epistemological problems, but it is worthy of its own treatment. The effects-based approach presumes that final causes are operative; the system takes for granted a teleological view of science. While final causes were present in scientific thinking since Aristotle and existed throughout scientific communities influenced by Scholastic teachings, the modern era of scientific thinking abandons the notion of final causes and thinks in terms of efficient causes. By starting with the desired effect and moving through a backward-planning process, military planners and commanders actually employ teleology to their approach, which renders an allegedly scientific EBA to be actually unscientific. The effects they want to bring about in the future actually influence and have purported causal efficacy to events that occur temporarily prior to the desired effects. In other words, the future is helping to cause the past (or the present). This is a mistaken view of what really takes place in the real world, but it is a logical mistake as well. It is similar to and related to the mistakes that behavioral science rests upon....
...There is hope, though. An alternative to the effects-based approach is emerging in some circles. That alternative is called systemic operational design (SOD). The current chief advocates of SOD work at the think tank known as OTRI, the Operational Theory Research Institute as well as some at the School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS). SOD is very much more philosophically sophisticated than EBA, and has its roots in modern science and philosophy. EBA remains medieval and pseudo-scientific. The advocates of SOD at OTRI are Israelis (retired generals, philosophers, scientists—a real think-tank that privileges free inquiry) who were motivated by the hard-earned realization that the current situation they face will not be solved by force....
