Tactical Jenga vs. The Strategic Stopwatch

[Gian P Gentile]

I'll say the y axis is the level of coalition intervention required. The objective is to withdraw resources without collapsing the governmet: like jenga.

My personal spin is that - like jenga - the only way to prevent the entire structure from collapsing is to stop withdrawing pieces.



I agree - he chooses every word carefully - which is why I'm surprised that he chose the jenga analogy. Every game ends with the structure collapsing.

thanks, my friend, this helps

gian

[Rank amateur]

thanks, my friend, this helps
gian

You're very welcome. Let me add Gian's comment's in World Politics Review

In COIN, a precondition for success is the existence of a legitimate government. The United States has one success in the history of counterinsurgency since WW II to its credit: it succeeded in assisting the legitimate government of El Salvador defeat an internal communist insurgency. However, it was not the U.S. military that defeated the FMLN guerrillas, but the Salvadoran military under the control of its own government, with U.S. encouragement and no more than 50 or so U.S. military advisors. Moreover, El Salvador was not simply a sovereign state: El Salvadoran society was and is a single identity -- an essential prerequisite for successful internal defense of a government struggling for survival and legitimacy.

None of these conditions apply to Iraq, where the Iraqi government does not appear to be legitimate in the eyes of its people -- whether Shia, Sunni or Kurd -- and it seems that one Iraqi society does not exist.

And mention a concept I'm sure you're all familiar with: Occam's razor

This will make a lot more sense i it ends up driving towards the Coalition forces having to draw down ( take pieces out) while at the same time the HN fills gaps with whatever forces it has put together effectively.

This is a logically consistent theory, but - and I really hope you won't be offended by this term - it is a socialist theory. You can make a lot of logically consistent arguments about welfare - and sending out welfare checks to poor people will reduce the violence in a community - but in reality the theories don't matter; human psychology does. In the real world, people on welfare don't start looking for jobs until the welfare is about to run out. I really think that the Sunni sheiks are smart enough to realize that as soon as there is reconciliation we're going to stop sending them US dollars.

[John T. Fishel]

I was stumped by the slide. Even worse, this old fogie had never heard of Jenga, so what was I to make of it. Wish Kilcullen or SWJED (yeah, Dave ) had put it in simple English.

To move tangentially, don't make too much of the unity of the Salvadoran Armed Forces - police really didn't answer to the military high command; they were under a separate Vice Ministry of Public Security and the 3 police institutions didn't like each other very much. Today, the police - National Civil Police - are under a wholly separate ministry and there are still some tensions with the Ministry of Defense, but not as bad. Final comment, the Philippines with US assistance, was able to defeat the Huk Rebellion - see Edward G. Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars.

But I still don't get the slide so that is the reason for my tangential reaction.

Cheers

JohnT

[slapout9]

The slide looks like a poor imitation of Warden's TVA slide. The Time Value of Action. I sent SWEDJ a copy to post if he wants. I could not figure out how to do it But basically it is meant to convey that the longer you take to achieve your objective the more things can go wrong and the more likely you will fail in achieving your objective.

This is a good picture one Warden's posters it combines both the business and war response in it,
http://estore.websitepros.com/1761861/Detail.bok?no=27

Warden was talking about this over a decade ago!

[Gian P Gentile]

I was stumped by the slide. Even worse, this old fogie had never heard of Jenga...Final comment, the Philippines with US assistance, was able to defeat the Huk Rebellion - see Edward G. Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars. JohnT

John T:

Dont feel bad because when I first saw Jenga without looking at the slide I thought it was perhaps some obscure counterinsurgency war which i had never heard of; or, perhaps subliminally I mixed it up with Jena.

Acknowledge your elaboration of El Salvador and your point on the Huk Rebellion. I did not use the Huk Rebellion because American efforts toward it were largely in supplying military equipment as compared to El Salvador which had a lengthy commitment of American advisers. But your point is well taken and thanks for putting it up.

I am working on an essay but cant get anything down so I keep clicking on SWJ or AM blogs; sort of like I am having a "25 or 6 to 4" moment. You know the classic 70s rock group Chicago song about having writers block.

gian

[slapout9]

Gian you need some Slapout MTV

[Gian P Gentile]

Gian you need some Slapout MTV

Slap, buddy, I just listened to it. Not a big fan of R/B;

as grand master of ebo (respectfully stated of course); what effect are you trying to produce.

gian

[slapout9]

Slap, buddy, I just listened to it. Not a big fan of R/B;

as grand master of ebo (respectfully stated of course); what effect are you trying to produce.

gian

Whatever it was I don't think I succeded....You seem like a Hendrix guy to me?

[Mark O'Neill]

I have to admit, like some other people who have posted in this thread, I had no idea what 'jenga' was. It is not played in Australia.

When I first saw the title I also wondered which insurgency the 'Jenga' had fought in and why I hadn't previously heard of them......

That said, Dave D, I get nothing from that slide other than a motherhood statement of the obvious - I think that without context it might be doing DK a disservice.

Cheers

Mark

[John T. Fishel]

is an Aussie!!!!

[Mark O'Neill]

is an Aussie!!!!

That is exactly the point in my title - he has been working with the US so long that he uses terms that Aussies do not use or understand...

You could walk thorugh Sydney for days and quiz people about what 'Jenga ' is - most would probably guess it is a type of Indian Takeaway.....

[Tom Odom]

looking at a wrist watch.

I know it must be useful 'cause someone built it...

But I could use it equally to keep track of my left wrist versus my right

Or as a reminder which hand to use when...

[SWJED]

Well, the point here is to get some discussion going concerrning transition.

Several days prior to the briefing I asked Dave K. to present something to the 180 JUW participants that would stimulate thoughts along that line. The tactical Jenga and the strategic stopwatch was simply a visual tool to generate that thought. The bottom line for the brief was to set up key questions and issues, to introduce some ways of thinking about the problem and for Dave to seek participant input via a healthy Q&A session. The brief did all that.

Up to this point (the briefing) the participants had been struggling a bit in coming to terms with the differences in an events driven transition (conditions based) vs. what we all know as a political truth – a time imposed transition. Part of the timed transition is a drawdown in coalition force levels that the tactical commanders have no control over.

Concerning the stopwatch, Dave illustrated what he called the “Aden Syndrome” with his hypothesis that in a timeline-driven drawdown, local allies will turn against the withdrawing power at the approximate midpoint of the drawdown - local allies fearing loss of external support, must consolidate their future power base in an environment that is not going to include external actors, so they turn on departing external power to shore up local support and avoid retribution from resistance actors. He used two examples - Aden, 19 June 1967 and Iraq 31 March 2004.

He went on to discuss the irreversibility of a drawdown – doing so would indicate deterioration of the security situation, admitting deterioration would undermine political support – both domestic and host nation, the shifting of domestic and host nation political expectations as a drawdown continues, and the drop in troop readiness as the extraction of combat forces is completed. A caveat was that the decrease in readiness applied to forces drawn out of theater – not out of major combat operations.

Dave went on later to discuss the evaluation and assessment of the transition posing this – if it’s Jenga, how do you know the stack is getting wobbly? Concerning the stopwatch – if it’s a stopwatch, how do you ask for a timeout?

That’s the wavetop, and again – the purpose here is to get some discussion going on transition and the Jenga slide was posted merely as a means to get that discussion off the ground – for a knuckle dragger like me it most certainly did.

I hear those who have a healthy distaste for PowerPoint but in front of large audience a slide used as prop is quite useful in generating discussion as well as Q&A.

On edit: Mark, welcome back!

[Rank amateur]

Dave went on later to discuss the evaluation and assessment of the transition posing this – if it’s Jenga, how do you know the stack is getting wobbly? Concerning the stopwatch – if it’s a stopwatch, how do you ask for a timeout?

Did Mr. Kilcullen offer a third option? Or are we stuck with two ineffective alternatives?

[Steve Blair]

Gotta go with Gian in terms of the written word often (but not always) being superior to snazzy graphics. That said....

I take the stopwatch to represent the time limit often imposed on any COIN activity by political and domestic realities in democracies (Merom's "How Democracies Lose Small Wars" goes into some of this). It's a fixed scale, although those at the tactical level often don't know just how fixed that scale is (and for that matter neither do the politicians or those that monitor "home front moods"...although I contend that such monitoring is often skewed by the perceptions and biases of those doing the monitoring). I'm not a fan of the Jenga analogy, although it does capture to a degree what can be happening on the ground. Better, perhaps, for some to think of building a house of cards with four players.

Gian said:

I have come to conclude from a military perspective that using American military power to conduct Coin in Iraq is impossible.

This is accurate as far as it goes, but I would change it to state that is isn't really possible to conduct COIN anywhere with just military power. That's been demonstrated time and again. COIN is an integrated show, which might be why Kilcullen chose Jenga as his illustration. All the pieces have to fit together somehow for it to succeed, and when parts start falling out (or being removed) the whole becomes shaky. It's also often a question of how one uses military power. Placing force protection above all is clearly not the way to get things done, and never has been. I could kill the whole thread with many examples from American military history alone of how this is true, but for this discussion that just isn't necessary.

I'd also argue that the Big W and Big B (Warden and Boyd) are not as useful for COIN as many might wish (and no...I'm not doggin' on you, Slap...). Actually, I'm not sure that they are especially useful in any limited war scenario. Elements of their theories and techniques certainly CAN be, but on the whole they tend to worry me in any situation that requires restraint and finesse.

What's the answer, then? I don't claim to have one, but there's some stuff dancing around at the edge of consciousness that's trying to gel into something. The short version is that I don't think Kilcullen's stopwatch line is quite as fixed as it might seem (since public opinion is a malleable thing and politicians have the attention span of an ADD 2 year old on a sugar high) and I also think that the tactical environment is in many ways slightly more predictable (or at least comprehensible) than Jenga might imply. To make the Jenga bit work you'd need to have someone sticking blocks back in toward the bottom from time to time.

[wm]

I see the chart as an attempt to demonstrate that one’s point of view has a direct impact on how one sees progress. Using the 80,000’ strategic, soaring eagle’s view of the world, progress towards one’s goal(s) may seem to be linear, as the straight line shows. However, one needs to remember that the stopwatch needs to be rewound or it will slow down and not perform as desired—hence the downward slope of the line. Another interesting point about the eagle’s eye view is that as the eagle dives towards its prey, it loses the ability to see other options. It may end up with a meal that is sub-optimal. By focussing on the chipmunk during its dive, it may miss the javelina 100 feet away.

At the ground-level, tactical, worm’s-eye-view level, one starts with a monolithic effort, or coherent/cohesive force, as indicated by the original Jenga tower. The wavy line seems meant to show that progress at this level is much hard to track. Over time, the tower loses its structural stability as blocks are removed. Removing blocks may represent fragmentation of effort away from the original single focus. It may also represent a fracturing of the original force structure caused by asymmetrical unit rotations or an overall reduction in the deployed force. Others have already noted another aspect of the unpredictability of stability caused by the Jenga blocks’ removal: uncertainty is introduced as each side makes its choice of a next play. That is part of the reason that stability of the tactical effort is rather unpredictable.
As an aside, to those who haven’t played Jenga, sometimes removing an additional piece brings a little more stability to the surviving structure. Of course it is not as stable as the original monolith, but it may be more stable than a preceding combination.

One thing I do not like about either metaphor is the pessimism that seems operative in each, reflected by the downward trend in each line. Another problem for me was much better put by Tom Odom’s metaphor. I can put this slide to a lot of different uses, not least of which is a mystical example to obfuscate what I took to be an obvious point. (Slapout MTV’s “All Along the Watchtower” link works here: “There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief.”) Maybe Slapout MTV also needs a link to the Stone’s tune, “You can’t always get what you want.”

[SWJED]

As an aside, so as not to be confused with an obscure insurgent group, the latest rock video discovered by Slapout or an Australian take-away delicacy, here is some info on Jenga.

Jenga is played with 54 wooden blocks; each block is 3 times as long as it is wide, and slightly heavier in height than in width. The blocks are stacked in a tower formation; each story is three blocks placed adjacent to each other along their long side, and each story is placed perpendicular to the previous (so, for example, if the blocks in the first story are pointing north-south, the second story blocks will point east-west). There are therefore 18 stories to the Jenga tower. Since stacking the blocks neatly can be tedious, a plastic loading tray is included.

Once the tower is built, the person who built the tower moves last. Moving in Jenga consists of taking one and only one block from any story except the completed top story of the tower at the time of the turn, and placing it on the topmost story in order to complete it. Only one hand at a time may be used to remove a block; both hands can be used, but only one hand may be on the tower at a time. Blocks may be bumped to find a loose block that will not disturb the rest of the tower. Any block that is moved out of place may be left out of place if it is determined that it will knock the tower over if it is removed. The turn ends when the next person to move touches the tower, although he or she can wait 10 seconds before moving for the previous turn to end.

The game ends when the tower falls in any significant way -- in other words, any piece falls from the tower, other than the piece being knocked out to move to the top. The loser is the person who made the tower fall (i.e. whose turn it was when the tower fell); the winner is the person who moved before the loser.

[jcustis]

as to advance a couple of questions to muddy the water...

What is the desired endstate when the clock runs out? Put another way, what are the "right" conditions and circumstances for say, Iraq, at the end of all this that will put the pottery pieces back together with sufficient glue?

Are the "right" conditions in your mind at odds with what you understand the administration's desired endstate to be? Furthermore, is the administration's endstate clear anymore? I know we have heard and can say that it involves a sovereign Iraq, with security for the civilian populace, and the rule of law in place and supported by law enforcement, courts, etc., but what the hell does that REALLY mean?

I know I've beat this drum at length already, but how do the recent events in Basrah/Sadr City square with the desired endstate? I look at the stunts that Sadr has pulled recently and I ask myself, It's great that he supposedly convinced his followers to be non-violent, but why is he allowed to retain so much stroke?

I also look at the Maliki government, the response in Basrah, the acts of some of the police commandos, and ask What next dude? It's beginning to be your show, but all I'm hearing are boos. What will we be doing when the fractures become worse in say, another year when something happens in Kurdistan (I can't crystal ball that anything would, but I use that area to illustrate my point)? What will we be doing if the purported Iranian influence in the south gets worse? We are laying the blame squarely at the feet of the Iranians in the recent testimony, but what's the foot-stomp? Is it a dull saber rattle, or part of some grand scheme to move towards diplomacy by highlighting how pissed we are about their EFPs?

I'm slowly beginning to wonder if the model is less tactical Jenga and simply a case musical chairs, where the game started with only half as many chairs as there are players.

EDIT: I'm torn by all these questions because I really don't know if the American public - which can either pull one or more pieces, or wind the clock forward - understands what the endstate is anymore. I fear that we will come to the end not because we are done and it is time to go, but we have achieved a "decent interval" and that is enough because we have lost enough treasure and can go no further.

[Gian P Gentile]

as to advance a couple of questions to muddy the water...

What is the desired endstate when the clock runs out? Put another way, what are the "right" conditions and circumstances for say, Iraq, at the end of all this that will put the pottery pieces back together with sufficient glue?

Are the "right" conditions in your mind at odds with what you understand the administration's desired endstate to be? Furthermore, is the administration's endstate clear anymore? I know we have heard and can say that it involves a sovereign Iraq, with security for the civilian populace, and the rule of law in place and supported by law enforcement, courts, etc., but what the hell does that REALLY mean?

Well put, Jcustis.

I dont know either and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were not clear either when asked in testimony last week. And it is exactly the questions you raise about what is the strategic endstate in Iraq that I combine with my own questions about the current state of the Army and is it worth breaking over Iraq, especially if smart folks like you cant even figure out what the goal is anymore?

this is why i continue to link the condition of the Army to this most important thread and its discussion. Transition of course is the key issue in this thread but the army's ability to affect that transition is directly tied to it.

gg

[slapout9]

This is an older version of Wardens Time Value of Action. When I first met Warden I asked him what was the most important thing to remember and to my surprise this is it. I had a copy of his book and he accidentally drop it and it fell open to graph of the Time Value of Action. Spooky

http://smallwarsjournal.com/images/t...action-war.jpg

So which point on the graph does the council think the US is at?