Hi Wilf,
A gut guess would be that they do believe it (whoever "they" may be ;)) for two reasons. The first is that the nice little mental state of "We Understand War" has been blown up because "they" didn't understand these wars. So calling the current setting increasingly "complex" is a reaction to having nice conventional perceptual models destroyed. The second reason, IMHO, has to do with changes in budgets over the past couple of years (i.e. inter- and intra- organizational squabbling over the budgetary pie).Quote:
Originally Posted by William F. Owen
What I'm going to write next might sound like an indictment of TRADOC, but it is not meant that way - I am using them, and this document, as an example of how large organizations operate, so please bear that in mind :wry:.
All large, hierarchical organizations rely on standardized knowledge "bytes", i.e. the ability to construct a representational model of their claimed area of responsibility that is a) internally consistent, b) makes "sense", and c) allows for parsing out sub-tasks to specific offices (not individuals; for any interested academics, this is drawing of of Weber's concept of rational-legal authority, Mary Douglas' How Institutions Think, and Abbotts The System of the Professions). These "knowledge bytes" (Abbot calls them Tasks), are assigned to locations in the organizational status system (offices, ranks, branches, MOS, etc.), and are assumed to operate at a minimal level that meets the requirements perceived when they were created (the time element is crucial here).
Now, these organizations compete with other organizations for both resources and, also, for the social "right" to "own" a task-space. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of "professional" organizations is that they exercise, with varying degrees of success, a monopoly over the social right to conduct these tasks and, at the same time, over access to their knowledge systems.
Now, these knowledge systems are all about the containment of socially perceived risk. If a society views a risk as "low", then the resources associated with it tend to be lower, while the obverse is true - high perceived risk leads (generally) to higher resource allocations. Now, playing Darwinian here an applying some natural selection models, how do you think that these organizations will act in the public sphere? Are they going to say that "Things are getting easier"? Nope, things will always be getting "harder", the risk area must always be getting more "complex", simply so that the organization can keep getting a share of the social resources.
But it is also a balancing act; organizations cannot, under any circumstances, allow the decision makers who parse out resources to believe that they are incapable of somehow handling the risk; that would be an admission that their entire knowledge system, and organization, etc., is fatally flawed and would, inevitably, lead to the de-professionalization of the knowledge area or, at least, to a loss of the monopolistic hold of one organization over that area or parts of it (BTW, the history of organized religion over the past 1000 years or so in the West is a good case example of this process).
Now part of this "balancing act" is the construction of a social perception amongst decision makers that the "professionals" know what they are doing. Part of the process of constructing this impression is constructing rhetorical arguments that have enough symbols in them that mesh with the decision makers prejudices (think of it as an IO campaign by the profession aimed at the decision makers). When we look at this document, several of these symbols just jump out: "adaptive", "complex", "unique", etc. They are not used in a semantically rigorous manner; they are used for their emotional impact on the minds of decision makers.
The goal of documents like this is to lay out an emotionally satisfying vision statement that reinforces the perception amongst decision makers that the professional group a) knows what it needs to do, b) is capable of doing it, and c) "understands" their (the decision makers) concerns. At the same time, the document also has to serve as a semantic map for changes made by the professional organization, so the same symbols that are used for their emotional resonance amongst external decision makers also must be capable of being interpreted by members of the profession, i.e. those who have access to the knowledge set, as being "reasonable" and desirable. In order to convey this "double message" as it were, the document must be vague and mildly alarmist without alienating either the decision makers or the members of the profession (BTW, a similar type of document is the recent AAA report on the HTS).
So, back to your question Wilf. I think you have identified the agenda incorrectly; it's not "to try and say that today A'Stan and Iraq are more "complex" than was Vietnam, the Lebanon and/or even Mogadishu" so much as to say "there is a risk and we know how to handle it". The document uses a rhetorical proof set aimed at non-professional decision makers rather than an intra-profession argument and really should be read, at least to my mind, with that in mind. The intra-professional argument will be showing up over the next few months with the production of documents relating to actual changes and their rationales.
