Strategy, Values and Ideas

[JD]

At the start of this year, the UK Prime Minister opened a speech with the following:

"Our response to the September 11 attacks has proved even more momentous than it seemed at the time. That is because we could have chosen security as the battleground. But we did not. We chose values. We said that we did not want another Taliban or a different Saddam Hussein. We knew that you cannot defeat a fanatical ideology just by imprisoning or killing its leaders; you have to defeat its ideas". http://www.foreignaffairs.org/200701...al-values.html

My question is this: Is it possible to fight ideas with ideas in the current environment and has it been done successfully before, not just in the recent past, but back to even biblical times. Blair goes on in his speech to suggest the spread of the Moslem Empire was itself a triumph of ideas rather than military might. The same could be said of the Roman and Macedonian Empires. Has the study of history concentrated too much on the military maneuvers rather than the moral and intellectual issues underpinning them?

JD

[Adam L]

It has always been a combination of ideas, power and technology (the Romans brought a lot of societal upgrades.)(Indoor Plumbing ) To say that one of these was responsible would be myopic. In most cases though, one was the most dominant factor. Most often this has been military power.

***!This is post #100 !***

Adam

[walrus]

Is it possible to fight ideas with ideas in the current environment and has it been done successfully before,

I presume you are too young to remember the cold war? That was about fighting ideas with ideas.

[Jedburgh]

Is it possible to fight ideas with ideas in the current environment and has it been done successfully before,

I presume you are too young to remember the cold war? That was about fighting ideas with ideas.

When you quote another member's question, it should be with the intent of answering that question, or providing a link or resource pointing in the right direction.

The original poster did not ask if there had been previously been a war that significantly involved fighting ideas with ideas - he asked if one had been fought successfully.

Future responses of this nature will be deleted.

[Adrian]

Ideas are the primary weapon of those who aren't in power. All they have to do is make promises. But if you are in power and all you have are grand ideas and promises, but you haven't done anything to improve the lot of the people, you're in trouble. "It's the economy, stupid." "What have you done for me lately." etc. It's a basic principle from domestic politics, but it applies equally well to our current conflict and COIN in general.

So, in the current environment, I'd say we need more than just ideas to come out on top.

[Steve Blair]

At the start of this year, the UK Prime Minister opened a speech with the following:

"Our response to the September 11 attacks has proved even more momentous than it seemed at the time. That is because we could have chosen security as the battleground. But we did not. We chose values. We said that we did not want another Taliban or a different Saddam Hussein. We knew that you cannot defeat a fanatical ideology just by imprisoning or killing its leaders; you have to defeat its ideas". http://www.foreignaffairs.org/200701...al-values.html

My question is this: Is it possible to fight ideas with ideas in the current environment and has it been done successfully before, not just in the recent past, but back to even biblical times. Blair goes on in his speech to suggest the spread of the Moslem Empire was itself a triumph of ideas rather than military might. The same could be said of the Roman and Macedonian Empires. Has the study of history concentrated too much on the military maneuvers rather than the moral and intellectual issues underpinning them?

JD

I'm not sure that you could say that the Roman Empire expanded based on ideas. The legions certainly had a fair amount to do with it, although the basis of the expansion was certainly based on ideas (as are most expansions....look at Manifest Destiny for one example). Hitler also tried to fight an idea (Bolshevism) with an idea (Nazism), although his was also certainly framed and underpinned by racial ideas as well (which could also be seen in a way as an idea fighting an idea).

As for the study of history...you'll find so many shifts in this that it's hard to track them all. Military history has certainly gone through periods where it focused on maneuvers at a higher level instead of ideas, although that does also shift over time (look at some of the recent scholarship regarding the ideals of the men who fought the Civil War for some good examples of this).

I think for your best examples of ideas fighting ideas you need to turn to politics. That is, after all, what they do on a day-to-day basis. The Green movement might also repay study, as their struggles are often in the realm of ideas (as are the anti-globalists...and I feel both groups have contributed much in terms of organization ideas and methods to the network-centric terrorist organizations we see with AQ and others).

[JD]

Firstly, the cold war. It has been represented as an ideological struggle and I certainly think this was the basis of the conflict combined with some good old fashioned realist philosophy but to what extent did the ideas actually come into conflict? With the Iron Curtain firmly in place, to what extent were the peoples of communist countries exposed to western values, and if they weren't exposed, how can the war of ideas been waged? Is it not more that economic pressures eventually forced the elites to act? This obviously is only one perspective but I think it is perhaps seductive to believe that the values we hold dear won the great conflict of our recent past.

With regard to ancient empires, I look at the trouble the west is experiencing in the Middle East with its unparalleled military might and wonder how the Roman, Muslim, Macedonian or British Empires could have possibly been kept intact without significant consent from the conquered people. If that is the case, then surely the idea of belonging to these civilizations was desirable and acceptable.

Your thoughts?

[wm]

With regard to ancient empires, I look at the trouble the west is experiencing in the Middle East with its unparalleled military might and wonder how the Roman, Muslim, Macedonian or British Empires could have possibly been kept intact without significant consent from the conquered people. If that is the case, then surely the idea of belonging to these civilizations was desirable and acceptable.

Your thoughts?

I suspect that a different dynamic existed between the conquered elements of ancient empires and the perceived role of America today vis-avis the rest of the world. As a minimum, note that many of the sub-elements of the Roman republic/empire were called client kingdoms--that is they engaged in a give and take with Rome--Rome provided protestion from other forces that sought to upset a regime (or dynasty). In exchange, the client provided various goods for Roman consumption (including, BTW, specialized military forces). While America and Rome share a role as the world's policeman, Rome, unlike America, was usually invited to assume that role. America in 2007, unlike Rome in 0007, is perceived as a huge drain on the world's resources, providing little or no added value to the rest of world in exchange for its excessive consumption.

[marct]

I would have have to agree with WM here at least in regards to the differences in imperial form. Let me toss out another difference; Rome, Britain, Macedonia, etc. were all openly imperialistic, even if that may have shown up in some odd ways (e.g. Britain's empire via mercantile trade corporations), while the US goes to great lengths to publicly state that it isn't an empire (something that might be believed by a slightly retarded chimp living in the Gombe reserve but by no one else). This creates a cognitive dissonance which, in turn, probably gives rise to many of the conspiracy theories running around today.

Back to your question about ideas.

There seems to be an assumption on the part of some people that ideas are somehow separate from the consequences of those ideas, but here really aren't. How you perceive the world is, in part, a function of how you conceive the world. If you want an example of a majority non-kinetic war of ideas, however, I would suggest that you look at the spread of Christianity into Europe (both pre- and post- Constantine), and at the spread of Buddhism. Other examples would include the development of social movements operating within societies, or with something like Ghandi's non-violent independence movement.

[walrus]

First let me apologise for my snarky comment regarding JD's original question.

Yes, it is possible, in fact essential, to fight any war at all with ideas. They are an essential part of the armoury. Clausewitz specifically recognised this in stating that war was diplomacy by other means, and in stating that the objective was to break the enemy's will to fight.

If you study the end of WW1, it was the German General staff that lost its nerve and then put it's faith in Woodrow Wilson's ideas for a negotiated settlement.

The cold war involved a massive multi-country intellectual confrontation with the Soviets, that, in my opinion, dwarfed the military efforts.

This was aimed at firstly selling the benefits of free market capitalism as well as highlighting the downside of command economies and repression. About the only thing left of this today is the Peace Corps. the Voice of America and perhaps some aid programs.

If you lived in America, you would have seen very little of this effort as Europe was the main theatre. Typical programs were endless scholarships for any communist intellectual who wanted to visit and study in the west, multiple "friendship societies" and similar organisations aimed at getting the good news about western capitalism to the eastern bloc and taking any opportunity to pour scorn on the Russian "workers paradise" propaganda that they tried to foist on "non aligned" nations.

Fruits of this program were "Prague Spring" and the Polish Solidarity movement

The Russians simply gave up when they realised that the entire "workers paradise" charade simply couldn't be carried any further (it certainly would not have survived the internet). All of this infrastructure has been dismantled since the end of the cold war.

Which begs the question - where is the similar and complementary effort to demonise Al Qaeeda in muslim eyes and win over the muslim world to our way of thinking??? It appears that only Dr. Kilcullen is trying to do this, and I suspect most of his efforts may simply be undoing some of the harm earlier "policy" decisions has done.

[Schmedlap]

My question is this: Is it possible to fight ideas with ideas in the current environment and has it been done successfully before, not just in the recent past, but back to even biblical times.

To give a partial answer to the first part of the question, about fighting ideas with ideas...

I believe that we are successfully doing this now, fighting the ideas of those who wish to establish a so-called Islamic state based upon the most oppressive interpretations of Sharia law. We are helping those who have discovered how undesireable that idea is and providing them with our alternative idea. The Anbar tribes finally realized that living under the rules set forth by AQIZ were intolerable. The bankruptcy of the ideas put forth by the contrived Islamic State of Iraq were revealed. We offered an alternative idea - one of cooperation with a representative government and enforcing civil law. After trying out the ideas of AQIZ and MNF-I, I think the Anbar tribes now view our idea more favorably. The tribes in Salah ad Din, the outer ring of Baghdad, and Diyala are also being swayed after seeing the dramatic changes in Anbar and the benefits being reaped by the tribes, which is why tribal security forces (or whatever the current psuedonym is) are being stood up in those areas. They've seen oppression under AQIZ and self-determination made possible by self-government. Our idea is much more palatable.