Opposed System Design

[zenpundit]

This could easily be moved to the "Kilcullen" thread but I have placed it here because I'm not certain if the SWC members are familiar with the blog Opposed System Design, whose blogger "Wiggins" is a defense analyst at a well known institution that shall remain nameless.

Wiggins comments on 4GW and the Fabius Maximus article:

4GW Sub-types

(Dave - If it fits better on the thread, please feel free to move it)

[SWJED]

This could easily be moved to the "Kilcullen" thread but I have placed it here because I'm not certain if the SWC members are familiar with the blog Opposed System Design, whose blogger "Wiggins" is a defense analyst at a well known institution that shall remain nameless.

Wiggins comments on 4GW and the Fabius Maximus article:

4GW Sub-types

(Dave - If it fits better on the thread, please feel free to move it)

Thanks Mark - let's leave it here at Blog watch - I already linked to the post from the SWJ Daily News Links...

[slapout9]

We had this discussion some time ago on SWC when I said there are 2 kinds of war under our system declared and undeclared and then moved on to war in the 1st,2nd,third degree based upon intensity and violence. Bill Moore was involved. Also I found an article from military review called "Insurgencies you cannot win from 1973" I think. The author specifically mentions type one,two and three when naming insurgencies and recommends the military change to this system to better understand it. I will try and find all the post later today have to go to work now.

Here is the link to the article it was posted under thread is everybody wrong? The theory was never completed because the uthor died shortly after publication.
https://calldbp.leavenworth.army.mil...00010/art5.pdf

[marct]

Hi Folks,

First off, let me echo Mark's comments about maybe this would be betterin the Kilculen thread <wry grin>.

As a simple dichotomy for analytical purposes, we can say that 4GW’s come in two types, reflecting the degree of involvement of outside interests (obviously there are many other ways to characterize 4GW).

1. Violence between two or more local groups, who can form from any combination of clans, governments, ethnicities, religions, gangs, and tribes.

2. Violence between two or more sides, where at least one is led by foreigners – both comprising, as above, any imaginable combination of factions.

......
The issue is how to distinguish the local groups of a type one 4GW from the foreign groups of a type two 4GW.

There seems to be a basic epistemological assumption operating here that defines "distance" in terms of either physical geography or membership within a nation state: i.e. terms like "local", "foreign", etc. I think that this is a fundamental error.

We have been talking about what constitutes a "nation", or any other type of community, in the information age in another thread (sorry Dave, couldn't find it to link). I've argued elsewhere that it is a combination of shared interest and communicative ability. "Community" does not require geographic proximity or contiguity (which is an assumption that underlies the concept of nation states). Given this, why should we base any typology of conflict on it; especially when it is glaringly apparent that our opponents don't?

I'd like to pose a question for discussion: What if we recast "distance" in terms of perception, "interest" and communication?

Marc

[slapout9]

marct, I agree epistemology or proper identification of reality is the first step to success or mis-identification the first step to failure. Thats why I thought wars should be classified on violence and intensity. Example 1st degree war WMD's in use 2nd degree warfare conventional weapons in use 3rd degree warfare small arms and explosives. The range or location does not matter the intensity and effect of the weapon does. Example one non-uniformed bad guy with WMD=1st degree warfare and requires a 1st degree response. what say ye?

[marct]

Hi Slapout9,

marct, I agree epistemology or proper identification of reality is the first step to success or mis-identification the first step to failure. Thats why I thought wars should be classified on violence and intensity. Example 1st degree war WMD's in use 2nd degree warfare conventional weapons in use 3rd degree warfare small arms and explosives. The range or location does not matter the intensity and effect of the weapon does. Example one non-uniformed bad guy with WMD=1st degree warfare and requires a 1st degree response. what say ye?

I would certainly agree with you that "intensity" is useful for some classification purposes. I think that what I am struggling with now is away to shift out of rigid taxonomies and move to a model that uses these as dimensions.

Let's take your example of one bad guy with a WMD. Does it require the same response as 100 million bad guys with a WMD streaming across the order? I don't think so, although there are certainly elements of similarity. Let's for the moment drop the term WMD since it is a political rather than a technical term. Let's take the same example and say it's a 20 megaton nuke. The similarity is in defense (i.e. stopping it being delivered), intel (finding out about it and then finding it)and in worst case planing. The difference is in the other 100 million bad guys armed with AKs streaming across the border . So the presence or absence of a nuke or any other WMD should influence our perceptions of a threat or conflict, but I don't think it should define it.

The reason I mentioned epistemology is not to argue that any particular perception of reality is "True" in some transcendental way. On a purely personal level, I do believe that such transcendental "Truths" exist, but I don't believe that individuals (or groups) are capable of fully understanding them. But, as with most engineers, I can deal with a 99.9999% understanding .

I brought up epistemology, because I think it is crucial that we have an understanding of how we construct and validate those perceptions of reality; including the limitations of those constructions. Now, one of the things we "know" (read "it works most of the time and hasn't yet been disproved") is that predictive sciences only become predictive one we move them away from taxonomies and move them towards relational statements that can be tested and measured: in short, once we start modeling them using dimensions in the old Cartesian format.

Let's take that example I started with about geography vs communication. Back in the days before rapid multiple communications, say the pre-Napoleonic wars, community and geographic proximity tended to be the same (not always since there were always certain exceptions, but it was a pretty good rule of thumb). Once we started expanding our technology base to include things like deep sea telegraph lines, air flight and railroads, this shifted. The culmination of this trend (so far) is in the 'net. Nowadays, people are more likely to have a distributed community than they are to have a geographic community. SWC is actually a good example of this.

Now , let me keep on being pedantic in my lecture mode <grin> and we'll go back and look at changes in warfare over roughly the same time period.

Pre-Napoleonic warfare, and let's restrict that to 18th century, tended towards a combination of militias and professional units. The militias were raise in a geographic locality, while the professional units were, in theory, "national" structures (actually, many were composed of mercenaries bt that's another story). Napoleon used the levee en masse, rapid movement and communications (he developed the semaphore telegraph system), and used the early 19th century equivalent of Shock and Awe tactics (think of the French columns).

The post-Napoleonic 19th century saw an artificial constraint on wars in Europe and the spread of "Colonial wars" (basically counter-insurgency wars). I always found it fascinating hat breach loaders were invented at the start of the Napoleonic era (the Ferguson Rifle), but didn't really get deployed until the US Civil War (the Sharpe's Carbine) and, fully deployed, after the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 (cf the Battle of Sadowa) where the Prussians were equipped with the Dreyse needle-gun. The results of this led to an arms race <wry grin>.

Now, all of this required mass production, which certainly fit into the industrialization of the times. But industrialization also involved the strengthening of national and transnational organizations including newspapers, telegraph systems and economic alliances. One effect was to create "national" and, in some cases (e.g. the British Empire) "trans-national" systems of consciousness (e.g. a shift in the US from loyalty to a state to loyalty to the federal government). By the time of WWI, when the alliance system in Europe was breaking down, we find the oddball situation where armaments and military tactics bear almost no resemblance to each other; there is also a major cultural problem in dealing with the technical aspects of warfare (see, for example, the Canadian officer cashiered for Conduct Unbecoming for saving thousands of Canadian soldiers lives).

I'm not going to carry this on for the rest of the 20th century (hat's usually three lectures in my Intro to Anthropology course so I will spare you ). Suffice it to say that there is a strong relationship between communications, community and combat. One point of reference is that the anti-war protesters in the Vietnam era should have been considered co-belligerents with the VC and the NVA.

So, now we are dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan. Let me ask you a question: do you think that a 20 megaton nuke would be any more damaging to the war effort than the political withdrawal of an ally? I would argue that, in the long run, the train bombings in Spain were more effective, for the Islamists, than a 20 megaton nuke - they succeeded in getting the Spanish out of the war entirely, something a nuke wouldn't have done.

Okay, end of lecture .

Marc