Quote Originally Posted by SWJED View Post
Just want to hear Council member’s thoughts concerning transition.

At JUW one response to 'tactical Jenga' was "transition is not like Jenga, more like the opening scene from the original Indiana Jones - Raiders of the Lost Ark" - where, when attempting to retrieve a precious idol - set with all kinds of 1930ish IED-like traps - Jones balances time and agility to replace the idol with a bag of sand. The counter-response from someone in the audience was along the lines that you have to be able to calculate the "right time" and have something of substance to replace the "idol" - not useless sand...

SWJ Disclaimer: The link to Indiana Jones was thrown in only because I love the soundtrack and this post does not represent the views of the Department of Defense or Steven Spielberg.
I was the short, bald individual and JUW 08 who made the Raiders of the Lost Ark analogy, resulting in the shots across the bow from the SMEs and Dr. Kilcullen. I still believe my analogy to be accurate.

In my uneducated (and unsolicited) opinion, transition can be considered a close system. Input = throughput = output. The Jenga reference to me infers the removal of military forces without backfill. The end state with the game is always failure - the Jenga structure always collapse.

What I am suggesting is that the idol (US military forces) is replaced with a bag of sand (a combination of all instruments of national power). That sand could be host nation security forces, economic incentives, diplomatic actions, you name it. The bottom line is that in order to keep from getting "squashed by the rolling ball", a balance of effort with the host nation must be maintained.

Examples:

Withdrawing forces from South Vietnam without maintaining effective diplomatic/economic/military programs = squashed by the big boulder

Establishing a long term military presence, economic relationships and political unity in Japan = exiting the temple with the idol

This is my first post to the Small Wars Journal and would love to have my random thoughts torn apart. I am considering this theory as a thesis for a MMAS. Thank you for allowing me to comment.

S/F,
John