Center of Gravity Construct

[Strickland]

Maybe I misunderstood or misread Clausewitz, but dont COGs have to offer resistance? How does either terrain or infrastructure provide resistance?

[RTK]

Maybe I misunderstood or misread Clausewitz, but dont COGs have to offer resistance? How does either terrain or infrastructure provide resistance?

Whether Clauswitz said that COGs have to offer resistance, I have no idea. I'm going with the definition in FM 1-02/MCRP 5-12A operational Terms and Graphics, which states:

Centers of Gravity – (DOD) Those characteristics, capabilities, or sources of power from which a military force derives its freedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight. Also called COGs.

Additionally, COGs are talked about in FM 3-0, Operations:

5-27. Center of Gravity. Centers of gravity are those characteristics, capabilities, or localities from which a military force derives its freedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight. Destruction or neutralization of the enemy center of gravity is the most direct path to victory. The enemy will recognize and shield his center of gravity. Therefore, a direct approach may be costly and sometimes futile. Commanders examine many approaches, direct and indirect, to the enemy center of gravity.
5-28. The center of gravity is a vital analytical tool in the design of campaigns and major operations. Once identified, it becomes the focus of the
commander’s intent and operational design. Senior commanders describe the
center of gravity in military terms, such as objectives and missions.
5-29. Commanders not only consider the enemy center of gravity, but also
identify and protect their own center of gravity. During the Gulf War, for example, US Central Command identified the coalition itself as the friendly
center of gravity. The combatant commander took measures to protect it, including deployment of theater missile defense systems.

It was in these terms that infrastructure and terrain can be centers of gravity (think oil fields).

[Bill Moore]

Read this article carefully, and it will challenge our doctrinal perceptions of what we think Clausewitz meant by centers of gravity. This will expand the conversation and COGs and EBO considerably. Our current doctrinal definition of COGs is wrong and for the most part worthless.

Use the link below to go this excellent article in the "Naval War College Review, Winter 2004, Vol LVI, No. 1"

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/navy/art4-w03.htm

I attempted to post the PDF file, but it was too large. If you can't access it let me know and I'll send the PDF file to SWJED.

Bill

[Bill Moore]

Clausewitz’s center of gravity, then, is a “focal point,” neither a strength (or even a source of one) nor a weakness, per se. Second, CoGs are found only where sufficient connectivity exists among the various parts of the enemy to form an overarching system (or structure) that acts with a substantial degree of unity, like a physical body. Third, a center of gravity exerts a certain centripetal force that tends to hold an entire system or structure together; thus a blow at the center of gravity would throw an enemy off balance or even cause the entire system (or structure) to collapse. Fourth, using the concept necessitates viewing the enemy holistically.

The U.S. military’s various definitions lack entirely Clausewitz’s sense of “unity” or “connectivity.” By overlooking this essential prerequisite, the U.S. military assumes centers of gravity exist where none might—the enemy may not have sufficient connectivity between its parts to have a CoG. In that case the analysis does little more than focus on the most critical of the enemy’s capabilities.

[Jimbo]

Echevarria still makes my head hurt, as much as when I had him for a history class many, many moons ago. I think that the U.S. military has had a problem with understanding Clausewitz, especially the nuances. The theorist who has had the greatest impact on the U.S. military is Jomini. It plays to U.S. love of formulaic solutions. Sure, parts of Clausewitz have been used, but U.S. military doctrine is still driven by Jomini, more than Clausewitz.

[marct]

Hi Bill,

Read this article carefully, and it will challenge our doctrinal perceptions of what we think Clausewitz meant by centers of gravity. This will expand the conversation and COGs and EBO considerably. Our current doctrinal definition of COGs is wrong and for the most part worthless.

Good article on the whole. I found his argument on the root of the concept to be pretty much as I had remembered it - basically an analogic use of Newtonian physics. Given Clausewitz's experience and time, I'm not surprised that he used the fairly simple analog of a singular body or interconnected system with a specific centre of gravity (i.e. the Earth-Moon system).

I found his argument about al-Queda's CoG somewhat less persuasive.

For example, al-Qa‘ida cells might operate globally, but they are united by their hatred of apostasy.39 This hatred, not Osama bin Laden, is their CoG. They apparently perceive the United States and its Western values as the enemy CoG (though they do not use the term) in their war against “apostate” Muslim leaders. Decisively defeating al-Qa‘ida will involve neutralizing its CoG, but this will require the use of diplomatic and informational initiatives more than military action.

First of all, I doubt that "hatred of apostacy" is the glue that holds them together. It is certainly our inference drawn from their actions, but I suspect that "love of Islam" is probably more accurate. And before anyone says, "they're the same thing", no, they aren't (and I know you guys wouldn't say they were anyway ). One can "hate" apostates without killing them, and you are likely to find more people who will answer "yes" to the question "do you love God?" than to the question "do you hate apostates?". What al-Queda and certain other groups have done is to remap the meaning of "loving God" into "killing apostates", and Islam is certainly not the first religion that has done so (check out the Albigensian Crusade or the Maccabean Revolt if you want other examples).

Second, the US is not an apostate nation since it has never been Islamic and was never part of the Caliphate. I do agree that the Muslim Brotherhood, which is one of the main ideological sources for al-Queda, aimed at apostates in Egypt (e.g. Nasser) and has recently extended the call to Jihad to include non-Caliphate areas of the world, but there is an inherent weakness in their argument that can easily be exploited - the rest of the world is not "apostate". This extension has already caused serious problems with al-Queda's support base in the Islamic world, since they had not even followed the basic requirements for war with non-apostates/non-believers - the call to convert (hence the recent calls to convert and all will be fine).

Their CoG is the symbolic technology that allows them to map "love or God" into "hatred of the apostate AND non-believer" and, once that technology is smashed, their unity disappears as does their ability to operate at a large scale. Unfortunately, as Echevarria notes, that doesn't mean that they will disappear...

Marc

[RTK]

A great position paper on the subject.

[slapout9]

RTK, great paper thanks for posting.

[marct]

Thanks for posting this, RTK. I think I am going to give it to my students to read since it is one of the best examples of a non-deistic, theological epistemology I have ever seen (wry grin).

What I have found most fascinating in this entire discussion is that there hasn't been any examination of the operational assumptions made by Clausewitz in his original work, i.e. no discussion of the assumed concept of "organization" (it's all ideal types) and no formalized discussion of the offensive | defensive | economic system ratio and how it effects the organization of military / ideological force. I think this ties in with Echevarria's comments about Clausewitz originally envisioning the concept as a process rather than a static.

Even if we go back to the Newtonian model of physics, there are certain processual issues that come to the fore. For example, gravity implies mass and some measure of density. Most mass is also moving along some type of a vector, at least in relationship with other units of mass. This vector is changing based on mutual attraction and / or the application of "force", and that rate of change (ΔV/ΔT) is the acceleration.

Okay, let's translate this analogy back into Iraq and the GWOT. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the spread of Wahhabist theology is the initial vector, where the "force" applied to produce an acceleration is primarily socio-cultural (e.g. pan-Islamic nationalism, a revitalization movement a la Wallace, a rejection of secular values, an increase in what Durkheim called anomie, the creation of the State of Israel, etc.). It starts as a fairly small diameter (i.e. small number of poeple), highly "dense" institutional / ideological object and gathers mass along its vector, gathering speed (accelerating) as it goes. So far, it is acting exactly the same as any other social movement in the literature.

Where it starts to change its vector is when certain crucial events happen ("strange attractors" in catastrope theory) - the short lived take-over of the Qa'bah, the Revolution in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Each of these acts to redirect the vector of the social movement by defining an immediate environment: the core of Islam is under attack, it is possible to run a "pure" Islamic nation state, and the "crusaders" (infidels) have returned and are being aided by apostates exactly the same way as they were during the period of the Crusades.

This parallel to the crusades is crucial for a number of reasons. First, they happened when the Caliphate was internally divided and fighting amongst itself. Second, they happened at a time of a resurgence of non-state Islam based around the Ulama. Third, they were a time when the first serious attempt to reformulate Islam was happening in an integrative manner (cf. al-Ghazali, The Revivification of Religious Sciences; it is also interesting to note that al-Ghazali's work is enjoying a revival in the Sudan and Somalia amongst other places). Fourth, they marked the begining of a period of shame for Islam as the Caliphate disolves and "barbarians" who, while ostensively Muslim do not share the same cultural values (e.g. the Turks, the Mongols, etc.), gain control of large parts of Islamic lands. Fifth, the period produces one of the most reveared "saviour" figures in Islamic history - al-Malik al-Nāṣir Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb (the closest Western figure is probably King Arthur). BTW, this is what I meant by a cultural propoganda node in my earlier posting - it is the "mythic" justification for transforming "love of God" into "hatred of the apostate / non-believer".

So, what does this mean operationally? RTK, you described how you operated and the results you achieved. I was particularly impressed when you said that you had been "adopted". In part, what was going on was a hearkening back to an earlier "story" from the height of the Caliphate where Christians, Jews and Muslims worked together for the good of the community (~8th century ce).

What most people don't think about right now is that, at one time, Islam was the most "tolerant" religion amongst the Peoples of the Book, and the period when that tolerance was operational is the "Golden Age" of Islam. This was the time period when the Western Empire had been replaced by barbarian kingdoms and the Eastern empire was a theocratic / bureaucratic state that made Stalinist Russia look like paradise. The main "progress" of civilization was happening in the Islamic world, and Alexandria, Baghdad and Damascus were amongst the greatest cities in the world in terms of civility, technology, law, the arts and intellectual activity. This Golden Age had already started to fall apart when Alp Arslan destroyed Romanus IV's army at Manzikert (the proximate cause of the 1st Crusade).

Back to operational reality and the CoG debate. If the conecpt of a CoG is going to prove useful, then force needs to be aimed at not only the mass (i.e. the open insurgents) but, also, towards changeing the acceleration factors, which is why, IMHO, a strictly kinetic approach is ridiculous - it actually increases the acceleration as we have all seen. The proper application of "force" is to shift the vector from the perception that the proper "story" is the Crusades to the proper "story" is the Golden Age. And that is what RTK was doing - shifting the story one person at a time.

Marc