Page 1 of 5 123 ... LastLast
Results 1 to 20 of 81

Thread: Culture battle: Selective use of history should not be used to justify the status quo

  1. #1
    Council Member jonSlack's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Posts
    156

    Default Culture battle: Selective use of history should not be used to justify the status quo

    Culture battle: Selective use of history should not be used to justify the status quo by COL. Henry J. Foresman JR. in Armed Forces Journal.

    Video teleconferences, meetings and PowerPoint presentations are how decisions are made in the Pentagon. No decision is made without countless hours spent making slides by "action officers" and countless revisions by those above them. No decision is made until all the general officers are on board. No decision is made without total agreement. Staffing actions are routinely sent back to the drawing board because some general has a better idea, further slowing a process that already moves at a snail's pace. The system is not designed for quick decisions, as all decisions must work their way through a vast bureaucracy before the ultimate decision can be made. Decisions are made in a system designed for an Army at peace, not an Army at war.

    As I have mentioned, transformation is more than organizational change — it is a change to how we think of war. The greatest threats to transformation are those who would turn back the hands of time to an earlier day when the Army would concentrate on fighting major combat operations or grand wars and ignore the rest.

    Wars of the 21st century will not be state-on-state but rather will involve states taking on organizations and groups that share a common ideology, culture and outlook and to whom the state, and state boundaries, mean nothing. They will wage their wars, holy or otherwise, wherever they must so that they can achieve their goal, whether it be greater Islam or otherwise. They do not wear the uniforms of a state, nor do they fight in the same manner as conventional armies. The wars of the 21st century will not be fought on the open plains of Europe or in vast sands of Middle East. They will be fought in the urban sprawl of our increasingly urban planet. They will be battles for the hearts and minds of a local populace where the U.S. and the Army will be seen as the invader and occupier and not as the liberator.
    "In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." - Eric Hoffer

  2. #2
    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    DeRidder LA
    Posts
    3,949

    Default Good article

    I recently reviewed a briefing prepared by the Center of Military History, which set forth a case for preserving the status quo of current Army organizations. What struck me was the selective use of history to argue the case for preserving the current organizational hierarchy in the Army — that is, divisions, corps and armies. The claim behind the argument is these are the traditional organizations of the Army. To a point, they are correct; these are the organizations that the current Army is comfortable with, but they are organizations that evolved during a much different time: World War I. These organizations represent the high-water mark of the Army and its operations in World War II — in the European theater. Divisions, corps and armies are organizations for fighting grand wars on the scale of World War II. Preserving these organizations reflects the myopic nature of how the Army views its history.
    From the same excellent article. Note of course that transformation --originally billed as eliminating much of the divisional and corps structure in favor of modular brigades--has morphed into a preserve the division and corps structures through creeping additions. How much of that has to do with culture and how much is proponent rice bowl thinking coupled to keeping GO slots is hard to say. Of course, that too is a cultural issue.

    Thanks, Jon!

    Tom

  3. #3
    Council Member marct's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    3,682

    Default

    I hink there are some very insightful comments in this piece.

    The 21st-century battlefield may look more like the American frontier and have more in common with the tribal wars of the Middle Ages, but fought with the most lethal and modern weapons at the disposal of our adversaries. The war will come to our homeland again.
    I agree more with the second than the first analogy. The warfare along the American frontier was always controlled, to some degree, by a belief in manifest destiny and, at its root, an expanding population and land grab. While the technological differences and style of warfare may be similar, I don't see, for example, the US colonizing Somalia. This renders many of the geopolitical strategies used on the American frontier null and void - e.g. creation of forts or mining / agricultural settlements as the basis for future towns and the destruction of the environment that supported First nations economies and livelihood (i.e. slaughtering the buffalo herds, etc.).

    I'm really not sure what he means by "tribal wars of the Middle Ages" either. Which ones? If we are looking at Europe as the model, then most of them operated within the same overarching weltanshauung - i.e. dominated by the Roman Catholic church. The few that weren't were examples of the Church supporting crusades of one form or another (e.g. the Thuringian crusade of the 10th century, the Albigensian Crusade, the civil war in Denmark which converted it to a Christian kingdom).

    If we leave these particular overtly religious examples aside, then most of the rest were dynastic wars with an implicit religious assumption (i.e. who is the true God appointed ruler) and, again, we have the imperative to grab chunks of land and population. The only other form that we really have running around is the constant fueding / warfare that never really resolves itself (think about the Scots border raids or Ireland ca 9th-16th centuries).

    As an Army, we must be expeditionary and capable of quickly responding to the changing needs of our nation. To fight the wars of the 21st century, we require the support of the people of our nation. Since the end of World War II, American political leaders have determined that they do not need declarations of war before sending our armed forces into harm's way. There was a time when I believed a declaration of war was a nicety that had more in common with the 18th century, when our Constitution was written, than the 21st century. As I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate the wisdom of our founding leaders who insisted that the Congress would have the power to declare war. The act of the president asking Congress to declare war, and then Congress declaring war, serves to bind the people of the nation behind the actions being undertaken by the armed forces. Without a declaration of war, without the support of the people, without involving the whole fabric of society in the undertaking of war, prolonged military operations in support of our national interest are bound to fail.
    I think the key fault in this statement, at least from my perspective, is that phrase "national interest". For the past 100+ years, most warfare has been based on conflict between coalitions not individual nation states. This may be in the form of overt conflict such as WW I and WW II,or covert conflict (i.e. which coalition supports which side in a civil war or a single state vs. state conflict).

    How these coalitions are constructed, i.e. their organizational form, has become increasingly important. For example, the old Soviet "alliance" was a pretty straight forward dominance model - Russia speaks and the Warsaw pact does. In this case, there was a clear dominance of one "national interest". This is not the model that operates in the current Western alliances, either the implicit Anglo Culture alliance (the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) or of NATO. In these alliances, the justifications for war are based on either ideology or group security (yes, I know that economics plays a major role - it just doesn't "sell" at the symbolic level). While there are hegemons ("superpowers" if you prefer the less overtly Marxist term ) who dominate these alliances (first Britain then the US), these hegemons have rarely had a complete dominance of the other nations in the alliance and, as such, individual "national interests, while important, have not dominated the alliance. BTW,think back to Macciavelli and the differences between a "first amongst equals" power structure and a "god king" power structure.

    The US may well have decided to move towards assumption of unilateral declarations of war in the "national interest", but where does that leave the other nations in their alliances? Furthermore, I would point out that such a move also inherently breaks the implied social contract of the alliance structure (a key point for Canadians in the debate over the war in Iraq - it's why we, as a country, aren't there despite what many of us as individuals may wish).

    All of this is why I say that the phrase "national interest" is problematic. Now for some more details....

    First, what is the US national interest? This is not clearly spelled out in operational, as opposed to rhetorical, terms. Many nations, including Canada, are, IMO, quite correct in being leery of such rhetorical terms since we have been on the receiving end of too many bad deals (for a current example, think about the soft wood lumber fiasco / trade war that has been dragging on for over a decade).

    Second, what actions by the US do we (i.e. everyone else in the world) see as proof that the US actually has an ideological position other than economic opportunism? For example, the claim of possession of WMDs was used as a causus belli for invading Iraq, but the demonstrated proof of the possession of WMDs in the case of North Korea is seen by many as the US backing off and trying to buy them off. Where is the consistency of logic in this and, perhaps more importantly, what does it say about the reputation of the US for being true to its word? If Canada were invaded, would the US only come to our aid if the invader was a non-nuclear power?

    My point behind raising this is not to insult anyone but, rather, to point out a glaring flaw that I see in the article that the author notes at one level of organization but not at the higher level of international relations (actually of alliances).

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  4. #4
    Moderator Steve Blair's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    Montana
    Posts
    3,195

    Default

    I took his reference to the American frontier from a more operational standpoint (in terms of small outposts of troops scattered here and there in attempts to intercept the enemy or raid out into their territory) than I did in geopolitical terms. Of course, the Frontier Army's one of my pet rocks, so that was just the jump my mind made.

    I tend to (perhaps wrongly) tune out some of the "national interest" white noise in articles like this, because I tend to take their meaning to be (in short) "don't commit troops without public backing and clear goals." In other words, I don't think anyone really knows at the operational level what "national interest" is; it's become something of a political handball or cop-out over the years. A hazy mirage people can conjure up to justify something, or to complain that proper homage wasn't paid to the mirage when things go wrong.

    Just my pre-coffee $.02. It was an interesting article, though. Personally, I'd like to see a return to a regimental system....
    "On the plains and mountains of the American West, the United States Army had once learned everything there was to learn about hit-and-run tactics and guerrilla warfare."
    T.R. Fehrenbach This Kind of War

  5. #5
    Council Member marct's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    3,682

    Default

    Hi Steve,

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
    I took his reference to the American frontier from a more operational standpoint (in terms of small outposts of troops scattered here and there in attempts to intercept the enemy or raid out into their territory) than I did in geopolitical terms.
    I am about 99% sure he meant it that way as well . I do think, however, that the geo-politics becomes crucial when we have such different situations. At the level of immediate operations the analogy is good, but the long term resolution is, however, wildly different.

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
    I tend to (perhaps wrongly) tune out some of the "national interest" white noise in articles like this, because I tend to take their meaning to be (in short) "don't commit troops without public backing and clear goals." In other words, I don't think anyone really knows at the operational level what "national interest" is; it's become something of a political handball or cop-out over the years. A hazy mirage people can conjure up to justify something, or to complain that proper homage wasn't paid to the mirage when things go wrong.
    That's a good point, and I suspect that many Americans do the same sort of tuning out - actually, I suspect there is an unconscious substitution of individual ideals of the "national interest" in place of a stated national interest. When there is a clear statement, and OIF is a good example of one - the "democracy rhetoric", it catches with people as a worthy goal.

    Quote Originally Posted by Steve Blair View Post
    Just my pre-coffee $.02. It was an interesting article, though. Personally, I'd like to see a return to a regimental system....
    I think that would be great - then again, we have one .

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  6. #6
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Rancho La Espada, Blanchard, OK
    Posts
    1,065

    Default Lord Palmerston

    Hi Marc--

    It was Lord Palmerston as PM or Foreign Secretary (I forget which - believe he served in both offices) to whom is attributed, "England has no permanent enemies or friends (or is it the reverse?), she only has permanent interests."

    A perusal of the US National Security Strategies since 1987 (when they were mandated by Congress to be published) and even earlier in NSC 68 identifies a series of vital national interests of the US. As Palmerston said of the UK, these seem to be quite permanent and, however difficult it is to sort them out of the mush of spin and propaganda, important.

    Cheers

    JohnT

  7. #7
    Council Member wm's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    On the Lunatic Fringe
    Posts
    1,237

    Default

    Foresman's articles has much to recommend it. However, I suspect that its pleas will fall on many deaf ears for a number of reasons. The following quotation, for example, only gets to part of the story.
    The Air-Land Battle in its day served another important purpose. It was a cathartic document that allowed the Army to rid itself of the demons of Vietnam, to rid the Army of all mention of counterinsurgency operations, to focus on major combat operations and to ignore the rest.
    While I acknowledge the cathartic value of Air-Land Battle doctrine, we should not forget that it also allowed the Army to justify a lot of very big spending initiatives--things like the Abrams and the Bradley and a huge investment in attack aircraft for dep strikes against the enemy's follow-on echelons. Performing effective transformation includes the need to heed Eisenhower's admonition about the military-industrial complex.

    If we truly want to succeed in Iraq and in Afghanistan, we must embrace a future that is a radical break with our past. Merely changing our organizational structure is not sufficient. We must be willing to break with our past as we execute in the present and prepare for the future.
    This break will require that the military move away from the "metrics" based world that was forced upon it by folks like Robert MacNamara. Success in a low level conflict is defined much more qualitatively than quantitively. Our future success will also require that the country review its grand strategy for defense. I know that many members of this group have little use for Edward Luttwak. However, I think that a perusal of his Grand Stategy of the Roman Empire might be in order. Our current defense strategy to keep the barbarians at bay by fighting them well forward of the homeland smacks of the Roman limes defensive concept. This strategy didn't work over the long haul then. By the end of the 5th Century AD, Roman had been sacked several times. I do not believe it will work any better today. And my reasons for saying so are identified in the following quotation from Foresman.
    Paradigm is an overused word in the military. It is one of those terms that are trotted out whenever one wishes to convince a skeptical audience that an idea is not just the repackaging of an old one. The Army truly needs a change in thinking. Wars of the future are going to be more like the campaigns on the 19th-century American frontier and less like World War II. The Army is going to have to adapt to a new world order in which our enemies will choose not to fight us conventionally but in a manner of their choosing. In the past, our doctrine stressed getting inside the decision cycle of the enemy. Now, the enemy knows it can get inside our decision cycle. It can strike when and where it pleases and knows that our response will be predictable. Although our actions may be justifiable, words will not compensate for the images speeding through the virtually connected world.
    The 3rd Century barbarians showed enough agility and acumen to figure out the Roman strategy defensive and get around it. As Foresman notes, our current foes have the same, or better, abilities in this regard. (MarcT, I think the tribal wars Foresman refers to in a later restatement of the idea quoted below, are those of the early Middle Ages --e.g., Ostrogoth vs. Visigoth, Vandals vs. Gepids, etc, etc, etc.)

    While this next quotation is true, I think there is another danger.
    As I have mentioned, transformation is more than organizational change — it is a change to how we think of war. The greatest threats to transformation are those who would turn back the hands of time to an earlier day when the Army would concentrate on fighting major combat operations or grand wars and ignore the rest.
    This other danger is that we do not look too far back in time. I suspect that the real lessons we need to learn are those of the world when there was, by and large, only one major power dominating the world stage. That would be the Roman Empire in the first few centuries AD and perhaps the British Empire in the latter half of the 19th Century.

  8. #8
    Council Member Nat Wilcox's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Location
    Houston, Texas
    Posts
    106

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    While I acknowledge the cathartic value of Air-Land Battle doctrine, we should not forget that it also allowed the Army to justify a lot of very big spending initiatives--things like the Abrams and the Bradley and a huge investment in attack aircraft for dep strikes against the enemy's follow-on echelons. Performing effective transformation includes the need to heed Eisenhower's admonition about the military-industrial complex.
    wm, would you mind elaborating a bit on what you have in mind here? Political economy is one of my areas of expertise so I might have something helpful to add here--once I understand clearly your intended point!

  9. #9
    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    DeRidder LA
    Posts
    3,949

    Default 100-5 1976 and 1986

    While I acknowledge the cathartic value of Air-Land Battle doctrine, we should not forget that it also allowed the Army to justify a lot of very big spending initiatives--things like the Abrams and the Bradley and a huge investment in attack aircraft for dep strikes against the enemy's follow-on echelons. Performing effective transformation includes the need to heed Eisenhower's admonition about the military-industrial complex.
    I agree with most of what you say with a caveat in the above. The author saw Airland Battle as a cathartic to rid the Army of the stigma of Vietnam. You seem to say that Airland battle was all about justifying the Big 5 as they were called: Abrams tank, Bradley, Apache, MLRS, and Sgt York DIVAADS (which failed miserably).

    My caution in both your's and the author's use of history in this case is that neither of you considered the threat at the time. The USSR and Warsaw Pact were still very formidable. Secondly Airland Battle was more a rejection of Active Defense than it was either a rejection of VN (which is really what Depuy intended when Active Defense turned 100-5's focus on the European theater) or a promotion for the Big 5 (4 of which have done very well).

    BG(ret) Huba Wass de Czege was lead author on the 1986 version of 100-5; his blog on here relates somewhat to the discussion. See also his essay on doctrine.Lessons From the Past: Making the Army's Doctrine "Right Enough" Today I like that essay because he quotes Certain Victory in its discussion of doctrine with:
    History all too often reinforces the familiar maxim that armies tend to fight the next war as they did the last. However, the Gulf War proved to be a dramatic exception. AirLand Battle, the warfighting doctrine applied by the American Army in Desert Storm, not only survived the initial clash of arms but, in fact, continues as a viable foundation for the development of future warfighting doctrine. The durability of the AirLand Battle concept is owed to three factors. First, unlike past instructions for the conduct of war, the 1986 version of AirLand Battle was a vision of what was possible rather than an owner’s manual for the equipment and force structures available at the time. In fact, if the 1986 edition of FM 100-5 possessed a fault, it was that some concepts were so far ahead of capabilities that many balked at their full implementation with the tools then at hand. Second, the conditions of combat and the dynamics of Desert Storm battlefields proved to be modeled with remarkable fidelity to FM 100-5. Third, and perhaps most notable, is that AirLand Battle represented a way of thinking about war and a mental conditioning rather than a rigid set of rules and lists to be done in lock-step fashion. Its four tenets, initiative, agility, depth and synchronization, are timeless, immutable precepts for present and future wars.
    I believe that COL Foresman was absolutley correct in what he wrote concerning the drift of AirLand battle thought toward science (process as in MDMP) at the cost of art (thinking).

    One of the pat phrases of Air-Land Battle was the imperative of agility, initiative, depth and synchronization. They were given equal weight, but over time, the ability to change (agility) and the ability to think outside the box (initiative) were increasingly de-emphasized, and the art of war took a back seat to the science of war. An outcome of the Air-Land Battle was the development of the military decision-making process (MDMP). Originally developed to provide a means for a commander and staff officers to organize their thoughts in conducting their analysis, it has become the be all and end all for thinking in the military. Rather than serving as an aid to analysis, analysis has become paralyzed by adherence to the MDMP.

    Finally there is an excellent analysis of the 1976 edition of 100-5 is at Leavenworth Paper #16

    Best

    Tom

  10. #10
    Council Member Mark O'Neill's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Canberra, Australia
    Posts
    307

    Default

    Hi WM,

    I do not share you enthusiasm for endorsement of the good Colonel's surety of future vision regarding future conflicts.

    If he (or any anyone else here) is that good at being certain about predicting future events, I wish that he would tell us who will win the next Kentucky Derby - that way we can all put a bet on, and help Dave out with the site sponsorship!

    I believe that Colin S. Gray is correct in his new book Fighting Maxims with maxim # 38 : " The future is not foreseeable: Nothing dates so rapidly as today's tomorrow".

    An aside - during my service in Africa I met a few Sangomas ('Witch Doctors') - none of these 'magic men' felt as certain about predicting the future as many of the earnest military sages that occasionally predict on these pages and in the spread of literature that most of us here read.
    I guess that the locals did not regard these guys as 'wise men' for no reason...


    Regarding another aspect discussed by Tom,

    I have always thought that the MDMP was the military equivalent of the old adage that " enough monkeys with typewriters, given enough time, will eventually write Shakespeare".

    I think the MDMP is almost the ultimate expression of the military training ideal - that even the lowest common denominator can be trained to do just about anything.

    My time as a 'tactics instructor' (not sure that is a good label) proved to me that you cannot teach tactical smarts. People either get it or are ultimately just adequate (but in any new or unfamiliar scenario that requires original thought, as opposed to rote responses, they are catastrophes waiting to happen).

    I have seen plenty of clowns who can recite verbatim every step and process of the MDMP - and use it in 'school', but could not find their a#$e in the dark, let alone resolve the dynamics of movement, friction, fires and terrain out on the ground - let alone what the enemy might be doing.

    The MDMP satisfies the military's love of process , and in the absence of a real enemy 'vote' to sort out who is a fool or a failure in peacetime, provides yet another perfectly pointless measure with which we can we can sort out degrees of excellence for OER and other reporting and assessment.
    Last edited by Mark O'Neill; 08-10-2007 at 02:00 PM. Reason: treated myself (and you) to a spelling check

  11. #11
    Council Member Tom Odom's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Location
    DeRidder LA
    Posts
    3,949

    Default

    My time as a 'tactics instructor' (not sure that is a good label) proved to me that you cannot teach tactical smarts. People either get it or are ultimately just adequate (but in any new or unfamiliar scenario that requires original thought, as opposed to rote responses, they are catastrophes waiting to happen).
    My corollary is that you cannot train experience, you can only train from experience, which is why if we evenr get our force structure lined out again, I hope we will change the model that holds small units are junior leader missions .

    As for the MDMP, as a guide OK. As the "yellow brick road" to success it has always struck me funny that in coming up with the MDMP in the quest to defeat the Soviets we adapted their rigid planning model.

    Best

    Tom
    Last edited by Tom Odom; 08-10-2007 at 03:40 PM.

  12. #12
    Council Member marct's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    3,682

    Default

    Hi WM,

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    This break will require that the military move away from the "metrics" based world that was forced upon it by folks like Robert MacNamara. Success in a low level conflict is defined much more qualitatively than quantitively. Our future success will also require that the country review its grand strategy for defense. I know that many members of this group have little use for Edward Luttwak. However, I think that a perusal of his Grand Stategy of the Roman Empire might be in order. Our current defense strategy to keep the barbarians at bay by fighting them well forward of the homeland smacks of the Roman limes defensive concept. This strategy didn't work over the long haul then. By the end of the 5th Century AD, Roman had been sacked several times. I do not believe it will work any better today. And my reasons for saying so are identified in the following quotation from Foresman.
    I must admit that I always liked that book. I'm not sure if you can say that the strategy didn't work therefore Rome got sacked, though. There were too many other factors, such as the fact that Rome never really had a succession law that actually worked, that led to the fall of the Western Empire. The use of limitanes was, really, a way to try and deal with the succession problem by eliminating many of the Legions. When this was tied into the foederatii idea (something to keep in mind given current immigration policies), it proved disastrous.

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    The 3rd Century barbarians showed enough agility and acumen to figure out the Roman strategy defensive and get around it. As Foresman notes, our current foes have the same, or better, abilities in this regard. (MarcT, I think the tribal wars Foresman refers to in a later restatement of the idea quoted below, are those of the early Middle Ages --e.g., Ostrogoth vs. Visigoth, Vandals vs. Gepids, etc, etc, etc.)
    The 5th and 6th century wars? Hmm, possible - I just wish that he had identified which ones he was actually talking about, since it does make a difference. If those were the ones he was referring to, then the analogy doesn't really seem to work as well.

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    This other danger is that we do not look too far back in time. I suspect that the real lessons we need to learn are those of the world when there was, by and large, only one major power dominating the world stage. That would be the Roman Empire in the first few centuries AD and perhaps the British Empire in the latter half of the 19th Century.
    I would certainly agree with Britain and the 19th century, but Rome was not the sole superpower at any time (Persia anyone?) and the West is not surrounded by barbarian kingdoms. I'm also not sure that looking for a single dominating superpower is the best model (see my earlier comments about alliances). I think a better model would be much older, circa 1850bce in the five great kingdoms period or the Warring States period in China.

    Let me toss out, for discussion and possible shredding , a few observations. First, the US and its allies can, in general, schmuck any other coalition in a direct, heads on, "traditional" combat scenario. By analogy, this is similar to a fighter who can beat anyone using the Marquis of Queensbury's rules. So, having strolled down to the docks, this fighter "knows" that they can beat anyone as long as they play by the rules. So, why would anyone do that?

    Taking this up to the current situation. China cannot win an all out "total war" against he US and its allies, therefore it won't fight one. The first thing it will do is attack, indirectly, the US's major strength, which happens to be economics not combat (look at WW II - the US had pretty mediocre equipment, but it had a lot of it). So, in this "hypothetical" scenario, China will encourage the shift of manufacturing away from the US and, increasingly, make the US consumers dependent upon China for their standard of living. The next step will be to create a fifth column within the US that takes advantage of the factionalization of American politics, and create major/support major lobby organizations to encourage elected officials to disregard this economic penetration. Finally, China thinks in decades and centuries, not 2 - 4 year terms, so they can afford a policy of gradually wearing away US resolve to hold certain positions. If the US threatens to "fight fair", China could, without firing a shot, induce another major depression in the entire Western world simply by dumping its US currency reserves (currently several trillion dollars) and jacking up the export duties on its manufactured goods.

    This, for China, is "conventional" direct warfare (read Sun Tsu). In effect, China "gets" DIME because it has been their model of conflict for over 2500 years.

    The point behind that little excursion is simple. It's not enough to maintain a strong "conventional" force or to develop a really good COIN force - these have to be integrated in such a manner that it covers and contests the DIME model of China and other models implicit in other power blocks.

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  13. #13
    Council Member tequila's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    New York, NY
    Posts
    1,665

    Default

    Let me toss out, for discussion and possible shredding , a few observations. First, the US and its allies can, in general, schmuck any other coalition in a direct, heads on, "traditional" combat scenario. By analogy, this is similar to a fighter who can beat anyone using the Marquis of Queensbury's rules. So, having strolled down to the docks, this fighter "knows" that they can beat anyone as long as they play by the rules. So, why would anyone do that?

    Taking this up to the current situation. China cannot win an all out "total war" against he US and its allies, therefore it won't fight one. The first thing it will do is attack, indirectly, the US's major strength, which happens to be economics not combat (look at WW II - the US had pretty mediocre equipment, but it had a lot of it). So, in this "hypothetical" scenario, China will encourage the shift of manufacturing away from the US and, increasingly, make the US consumers dependent upon China for their standard of living. The next step will be to create a fifth column within the US that takes advantage of the factionalization of American politics, and create major/support major lobby organizations to encourage elected officials to disregard this economic penetration. Finally, China thinks in decades and centuries, not 2 - 4 year terms, so they can afford a policy of gradually wearing away US resolve to hold certain positions. If the US threatens to "fight fair", China could, without firing a shot, induce another major depression in the entire Western world simply by dumping its US currency reserves (currently several trillion dollars) and jacking up the export duties on its manufactured goods.

    This, for China, is "conventional" direct warfare (read Sun Tsu). In effect, China "gets" DIME because it has been their model of conflict for over 2500 years.

    The point behind that little excursion is simple. It's not enough to maintain a strong "conventional" force or to develop a really good COIN force - these have to be integrated in such a manner that it covers and contests the DIME model of China and other models implicit in other power blocks.
    Allow me to begin the shredding.

    Your post appears to presume that the Chinese leadership (1) possesses nearly-omniscient foresight in economic matters (2) a long-range plan to destroy American power by displacing manufacturing out of the United States and simultaneously collecting vast sums of American dollars (3) the power and ability to do so these things over an extended period of time.

    I've encountered this sort of thinking in many a forum, usually featuring paranoid nativism as the primary means of discourse, but found that it has strongest traction among people who are utterly ignorant of Chinese history, especially of the 20th century variety, don't speak, read, or know any Chinese and have had little contact with any PRC government personnel, not to mention conventional macroeconomics. For those who do know any of the latter, the idea that Beijing could possibly do any of the above three generally calls up hysterics.

    They ain't that smart, and even if they were they ain't nowhere near that organized.

    Frankly, Marc, you can do better than that.

  14. #14
    Council Member marct's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    3,682

    Default

    Hi Tequila,

    Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
    Allow me to begin the shredding.
    LOLOL.

    Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
    Your post appears to presume that the Chinese leadership (1) possesses nearly-omniscient foresight in economic matters (2) a long-range plan to destroy American power by displacing manufacturing out of the United States and simultaneously collecting vast sums of American dollars (3) the power and ability to do so these things over an extended period of time.
    Actually, none of these are necessary conditions for that scenario to work. Let me go through your points and show why.

    1. possesses nearly-omniscient foresight in economic matters. This is unnecessary since the readily observable trend of US manufacturing and consuming interests has been quite available, and talked about in both the academic and popular press, for the past 25 years or so. The effects, in both economic and social terms, of shifting production outside of CONUS were apparent to anyone looking at the automotive industry by 1972 - think Flint Michigan.

    As far as China's "awareness" or "foresight" is concerned, China still uses a rather outdated, almost paleo-Marxist, model of social development theory based on LH Morgan, JJ Bachoven and Marx in Sociology, Anthropology and Political Economy (I ave a number of friends who were trained in China). The one thing that that model does, however, stress is a production based model.

    2. a long-range plan to destroy American power by displacing manufacturing out of the United States and simultaneously collecting vast sums of American dollars. They don't need a model or plan to do this, it was already being done by the Western feeding frenzy to get access to the Chinese markets. As far as the displacement of American manufacturing is concerned, this has been going on for decades. All the Chinese have to do is to recognize the trend and take advantage of the opportunity. Given that the US's trade deficit with China last year was 232.5 Billion U$ (http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/...ap4007555.html), I would point out the China doesn't "need"a long-range plan to collect vast sums of money.

    Once again, there is no requirement for the Chinese government to actual plot or plan, only to recognize advantages and opportunities when they arise.

    3. the power and ability to do so these things over an extended period of time. All China has to do is to a) recognize trends and b) take advantage of them, which is something that is, IMO, quite likely. Furthermore, it doesn't have to be the Chinese government that "orchestrates" any of this. The concept of "mutual arising" may well be at play here with the government playing of the economic success of the southern areas, especially Shanghai.

    Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
    They ain't that smart, and even if they were they ain't nowhere near that organized.
    They don't have to be . Frankly, when you look at what is going on in China itself, including the cultural stress and strain between the north and the south, economic dislocations, etc., China is actually quite fragile (somewhat analogous to the US in the 1850's). This certainly hasn't stopped the government from playing off on the opportunities they have handed to them on a silver platter.

    Let me ask you a question: what do you think the effects would be in the US of a trade war with China?

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  15. #15
    Council Member Dominique R. Poirier's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Posts
    137

    Default

    Marc,
    I would like to express my opinion about what you said on the United States and on the notion of national interest since I have had the sentiment that things don’t seem to be as clear as you expect about this question. I let you know my point is sustained by numerous readings, and long reflections and observations since I have been as curious and thoughtful as you are about it.

    This belief in manifest destiny you thus named exists as long as the United States does as it is and as it has always been. Since the United States is a country physically represented on a map as a land, and is perceived as such by other countries, then geopolitical considerations inescapably take place.
    From then on the United Sates has a need for a national interest, as any other country does, but whose scope in that exceptional case encompasses both territory inside the limits of her borders and political stability and geopolitical balance exterior to it. The Monroe Doctrine and, eventually, the Wilson and Truman Doctrine (or this of Keenan) describes what the U.S. national interest outside these borders is.

    Unfortunately, events involving directly or not the United States in one way or another may sometimes confuse all those who either do not fully grasp the implications of the aforesaid, or refuse to do so in the endeavor to challenge this belief in manifest destiny; for the sake of vested interests or owing to different beliefs in most instances, not to say all.

    Those who are honest and objective cannot but acknowledge that the physical expression of the U.S. national interest overseas did and does serve the common good of the humanity, overall and decades before WWI, since despotism, ignorance, poverty, and denial of liberty and individual freedom never fail to install or/and persist everywhere the United States has been unable to forestall or to counter it.

    The United States cannot do better than what she did until then because, otherwise, she would have to directly and physically rule overseas by force in order to succeed in this endeavor. In other words, she would have to choose to be an imperialist country, as she is often mistakenly accused to be; but she prefers not to because, as a nation, she sincerely and deeply believe in the right to self-determination, liberty, and justice.

    As Henry Kissinger once wrote, geopolitical realities overwhelm fashionable reveries about universalities. To which I will add that human nature is the main responsible of this and that nothing can be done to change it.

    I acknowledge that I made it short this time but should the need arose I shall willingly elaborate, of course.

  16. #16
    Council Member Nat Wilcox's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2007
    Location
    Houston, Texas
    Posts
    106

    Default Cheaper, better, smarter...

    Marc,

    the hypothetical or real war with China you are describing is, to me, not much of a military matter. It is a matter of smart economic and social policy here that recognizes the inevitable consequences and opportunities of globalization. I don't think we should worry much about an enormous trade deficit with China or any other one country. Trade, being mutually beneficial theft, is a two-edged sword. They get a lot out of it too.

    I have a huge trade deficit with the local grocery stores: They don't buy and read nearly enough of my papers. But I don't lose much sleep about that. We should worry about having a negative national savings rate across long periods of time...just as I should worry about a negative personal savings rate over long periods of time. But I do not care about running a truly massive and frightening trade deficit with Kroger, provided I am running surpluses elsewhere to cover it.

    True, China could cause short-run pain here by cutting us off, but they would hurt too and there are a lot of other countries who would be only too happy to pick up the production slack. And then where would China be: "OH we promise never to do it again, please come back and buy our products...puh-leeeeeze?" Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Trade wars, as countries have discovered, are very expensive, and cause people to diversify away from the aggressor, to the ultimate long-run detriment of the aggressor.

    We should worry about income distribution and inequality of opportunity, things that are worsened by the loss of the jobs of yesteryear's economy, whatever they may be. But the gains we get from trade generally are enough to compensate for those losses. We need to be more serious about that compensation, and also get on with the business of distributing education (and re-education) widely.

    True riches simply cannot be piled up by producing the goods of yesteryear, which have become so commodified that almost anyone can produce them, so that they essentially trade in competitive markets: There's no interesting rent to be earned there. Let the Chinese earn those relatively uninteresting and trivial rents and sell us the goods back at bargain basement prices. Relative to their incomes, those trivial rents look big and give them these big growth rates. Yes, $10 is 100% of $10. But it is only 1% of $1000. We cannot get their growth rate from producing those goods and earning those rents.

    Real rents, massive surplus value, comes from innovation and creative destruction: We want to be the masters of that economic universe, and then distribute the gains sensibly. We do that by making our people highly educated, easily re-educated, easily mobile with highly portable health insurance and retirement and hence very dynamic employment markets, and so forth. Charity really begins at home here. These things are way cheaper, better and smarter long-run solutions to a "threat" like China than anything else I can think of that we might do.

  17. #17
    Council Member marct's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    3,682

    Default Part 1

    Hi Nat,

    Quote Originally Posted by Nat Wilcox View Post
    the hypothetical or real war with China you are describing is, to me, not much of a military matter. It is a matter of smart economic and social policy here that recognizes the inevitable consequences and opportunities of globalization.
    Well, I honestly don't think they would ever really push it to open economic warfare . I was using that example because I think it highlights a) a really good illustration of a potential and b) what could be done by integrating DIME at the national level. Not that I seriously think China does this, but their pattern of territorial aggression for the past 60 years or so has been interesting.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nat Wilcox View Post
    I don't think we should worry much about an enormous trade deficit with China or any other one country. Trade, being mutually beneficial theft, is a two-edged sword. They get a lot out of it too.
    Quite true, but they certainly don't have to rely on the US. Actually, I will be intrigued to find out (I haven't really looked yet) what the EU and Russian reactions have been to the tainted products coming out of China.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nat Wilcox View Post
    We should worry about having a negative national savings rate across long periods of time...just as I should worry about a negative personal savings rate over long periods of time. But I do not care about running a truly massive and frightening trade deficit with Kroger, provided I am running surpluses elsewhere to cover it.
    Do I detect a hint of Keynes there ? Yeah, I agree that there are some really serious problems with savings rates. To which I would also add problems with mortgages and credit institutions (some of the interest ates are insane!). One of the things that has been increasingly worrying me is the speed of capital flow - not so much in markets per se, but in relation to individuals.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nat Wilcox View Post
    True, China could cause short-run pain here by cutting us off, but they would hurt too and there are a lot of other countries who would be only too happy to pick up the production slack. And then where would China be: "OH we promise never to do it again, please come back and buy our products...puh-leeeeeze?" Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Trade wars, as countries have discovered, are very expensive, and cause people to diversify away from the aggressor, to the ultimate long-run detriment of the aggressor.
    China has been diversifying her markets for quite a while now. The deal struck between Shanghai Telephone and Telegraph and Alcatel is a good example of that, since they now have access to the highly lucrative EU telecom market. And while you are right that it would be "short term pain", do you really think that many US politicians would be willing to take that chance? Especially when "short term" would translate into 2-5 years, plus a real disruption of the superstore chains which rely heavily on Chinese goods - WalMart being the exemplar here.

    I honestly don't know how well such a strategy would work, but I would put it to you, at least as a working hypothesis, that China may well see the threat of such action as a political lever to achieve certain goals that they would otherwise have to use military force for. I suspect that they would look at the cost, both monetary and political, of the Iraq war; couple that with the potential short term costs of a trade war (actually, a currency dump would serve even better), and figure that they can probably wring a few more concessions about, maybe, Taiwan from the US.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nat Wilcox View Post
    We should worry about income distribution and inequality of opportunity, things that are worsened by the loss of the jobs of yesteryear's economy, whatever they may be. But the gains we get from trade generally are enough to compensate for those losses. We need to be more serious about that compensation, and also get on with the business of distributing education (and re-education) widely.
    Okay, let's look at this. BTW, I do happen to agree with you, but I'm playing Devil's Advocate here.

    How would you go about changing income distribution? (supposedly) free market capitalism hasn't worked - look at the Lorenz curves for the US over the past 60 years. The other major social form of income redistribution, aka social programs and the creation of a Welfare State, have proved to be an unmitigated disaster in most countries (including Canada!). In order to run these programs, you need to have a massive bureaucracy that, in the final analysis, is just a sink on capital. Just ask Dominique about how it operates in France.

    How would you go about equalizing opportunity? Actually, let's start even further back and ask "how do you define equality of opportunity?". Is "equality of opportunity" defined as "everyone should have a chance to..." or is it defined as "everybody will...".? I suspect you define it as the former (I know I do) but, I would put it to you, that once you attempt to institutionalize it you end up with the latter since bureaucracies requires concrete standards. Furthermore, I would also suggest that, taken to its extreme, "equality of opportunity" will, inevitably, transform into equality of results where the metrics of the results start to loose their meanings.

    To use a really facile example of this, many years ago Canada recognized that a large part of "opportunity" was dependent upon higher educational achievement. As a result, the provinces (who control education) started very heavy subsidization of higher education (at one point about 80% of the cost of university tuition, half from the provinces and half from the federal government via transfer payments). Now this meant that a lot of people who wouldn't have been able to afford it now could. Sound good? Well, in the 1980's the federal government started pulling back o their transfer payments for education to the provinces. In turn, the provinces had to absorb more and more of the cost and where unable to which led to a massive rise in tuition costs. At the same time, the "value" of a BA was dropping on the market as more and more people got them. So we are now in a position where annual tuition is about $6,000 (which you can get loans for and many students owe 40-60k by the end of it) for four years in order to get a degree that is the equivalent, in job opportunity terms, of a high school diploma from 30 years ago. A final point on this system: there is massive pressure on instructors and teachers at all levels to pass students. Furthermore, this has been accomplished by "standardizing" parts of the education system to the point where it resembles the madrassas in Pakistan (get my daughter talking on the subject of high school sometime ). By attempting to create "equal opportunity", the governments actually did create it by producing it as the lowest common denominator.

    Part II ....
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  18. #18
    Council Member marct's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    3,682

    Default Part II

    Quote Originally Posted by Nat Wilcox View Post
    True riches simply cannot be piled up by producing the goods of yesteryear, which have become so commodified that almost anyone can produce them, so that they essentially trade in competitive markets: There's no interesting rent to be earned there. Let the Chinese earn those relatively uninteresting and trivial rents and sell us the goods back at bargain basement prices. Relative to their incomes, those trivial rents look big and give them these big growth rates. Yes, $10 is 100% of $10. But it is only 1% of $1000. We cannot get their growth rate from producing those goods and earning those rents.
    On the whole, I agree but with some limitations. Let me use my favorite example of a "product of yesteryear": Beer. Now, you are right that we can't get good rents on beer (which is all we ever do with it anyway), but that certainly hasn't reduced the demand for it. Now, I could pile up a pretty decent stash, not "true riches" but I'm not greedy, on making and selling beer. Why should I import Tsing Tao, which is a really crappy beer, when I can either make it myself or buy from a local micro-brewery?

    The point I'm trying to make with hat rather silly example is that nations that allow themselves to become too dependent on foreign supply of "low tech" items loose the local ability to produce them. In some cases, e.g. buggy whips, that doesn't really matter, but in others, e.g. electronic components, food, oil, etc., it does.

    Quote Originally Posted by Nat Wilcox View Post
    Real rents, massive surplus value, comes from innovation and creative destruction: We want to be the masters of that economic universe, and then distribute the gains sensibly. We do that by making our people highly educated, easily re-educated, easily mobile with highly portable health insurance and retirement and hence very dynamic employment markets, and so forth. Charity really begins at home here. These things are way cheaper, better and smarter long-run solutions to a "threat" like China than anything else I can think of that we might do.
    I've got no problems with a national economic program that has its eyes on the sky. At the same time, if it doesn't have its boots on the ground, all it is is a big honking target. Tell me how you can make a populace "highly educated, easily re-educated, easily mobile with highly portable health insurance and retirement" when your entire economy is based on consumption of constantly replaceable goods, many of which are produced outside your country?

    Look, part of the problem with all of this is, as you noted, in the distribution end. Right now, we have the technology to allow individuals to produce the equivalent of what factories produced a hundred years ago. And yet, our entire economic thinking and most of the cultural assumptions are predicated on the assumption of the scarcity of goods. Time after time in the 20th and 21st centuries we have seen government programs designed to increase the scarcity of goods in an effort to counter the trends in productive technologies. The most egregious examples are in farm produce (the various "marketing" boards in Canada and the direct subsidies for not growing certain crops in the US). Until we can come up with symbols systems (cultural, economic and monetary) that are not based on false scarcities, we are going to be stuck with this false model. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, the only "real" (as opposed to engineered) scarcity is in creativity loosely construed. If you really want to see a populace that is "highly educated, easily re-educated, easily mobile with highly portable health insurance and retirement" you will have to figure out how to shift the symbol systems to be based on the real scarcity.

    My, I think you hit one of my soap boxes !

    Marc

    ps. Nat, let's try and get together for several low tech products (aka beers) and really chat about this. I think we have moved the discussion totally away from its original intent.
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

  19. #19
    Council Member tequila's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    New York, NY
    Posts
    1,665

    Default

    Marct - Thank you for that much more nuanced response. I was afraid that we had a member of the Bill Gertz Brigade aboard.

    There will be no "trade war" with China. What we are looking at is just more rumbling in a very uncomfortable two-way snakefest that has been ongoing for almost a decade now. RGE's Brad Setser has a good roundup here.

    In the long run, both China and the U.S. would be better served by China untethering the RMB from the dollar and allowing a controlled appreciation.

  20. #20
    Council Member marct's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2006
    Location
    Ottawa, Canada
    Posts
    3,682

    Default

    Hi Tequila,

    Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
    Marct - Thank you for that much more nuanced response. I was afraid that we had a member of the Bill Gertz Brigade aboard.
    Wel, I will admit to having a passing fondness for Lou Dobbs, but that's as far as it goes . Anyway, I thought it would be better for discussion purposes if I put it out in that rather crude, and somewhat paranoic, format.

    Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
    There will be no "trade war" with China. What we are looking at is just more rumbling in a very uncomfortable two-way snakefest that has been ongoing for almost a decade now. RGE's Brad Setser has a good roundup here.
    Thanks for the link, I'll check it out. On the whole, I have a pure gut feeling that we are going to see more and more "pseudo-trade wars" showing up over the next century. Please, don't ask me where that feeling is coming from - it's only 5 pm and I haven't had anywhere near enugh beer yet to try and dig that up .

    Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
    In the long run, both China and the U.S. would be better served by China untethering the RMB from the dollar and allowing a controlled appreciation.
    Agreed, although I am still convinced that that won't have too much effect until we shift the basis of "money" (see my two-part post to Nat). Certainly in the short term (okay, from my rather jaundiced Anthro perspective that means from now for the next 25 years or so) such an uncoupling would be very useful. China also has some severe gender imbalance problems and, coupled with their one-child policy, that is going to lead to some interesting migration patterns.

    Marc
    Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
    Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
    Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
    Senior Research Fellow,
    The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
    Carleton University
    http://marctyrrell.com/

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •