Hi Wilf,
I've been spending a lot of time over the past year or so thinking about conceptualizations of "violence", motivations for different types, etc. One of the models I'm trying to put together concerns the emergence of differing conventions (in the very broad sense) in situations of rapid environmental change (and by that I mean, physical, economic, social, cultural, etc. environments). What is really striking me as I try and untangle all the stuff I'm looking at is that for the past 10-12,000 years or so, we have really done ourselves a disservice (i.e. shot ourselves in the foot if not higher).
One thing that really stands out for me is how we have parsed the concept of "conflict" and "conflict resolution". Violence in the physical/kinetic sense is, to my mind, only one form of conflict / conflict resolution. If we go back to basic motivations for conflict, most of them seem, to me at least, to break down into one person/group trying access "scarce" resources and the consequent "power" that control over those resources represents and, once they gain control over them, trying to maintain that control.
The question of how you get (and maintain) this control, then, flips over into the development of "conventions" that limit the destructiveness of the inter-socially accepted tactics used; i.e. it develops "conventions". Sahlins talks about this a bit in
Stone Age Economics in reference to really "early" social forms, but there are a lot of more modern example. These conventions, in turn, rely on a fairly stable set of environments and, if they are going to survive, they have to limit the destruction they accept to the carrying capacity of those semi-stable environments. In some cases, there may even be "positive" (at the group / population level) outcomes associated with a particular set of conventions.
But, while all of the seperate "conventions" may be structurally similar (in the sense of structural relationships), there are always specific differences. Even trickier that one of those structural regularities appears to be related to the "carrying capacity" of key environmental sectors. When this is coupled in with conflicts between different "conventions" adapted for different environments, things can get pretty wonky.
Let me go back to the rape example. Most cultures have some form of control over what's called "birth spacing"; i.e. how much time there is between pregancies. In fairly stable environments, this ends up being a fairly simply predator-prey model (even if the "prey" is vegetables
) where the population fluctuates in response to food availability. When you get too much population, you usually find the appearance of population "sinks" including warfare, (cf. Henri Pirenne on the Crusades), disease (look at the death rates in medieval and Rennaisance cities), etc. It's the "Too many rats in the box, Jordy" phenomenon.
So, when you have a conflict between groups which are pretty finely balanced in terms of population carrying capacity, rape makes for a really good way to destabilize your opponents by forcing them to expend resources either in terms of child care / raising or in terms of fertile women. The former reduces the amount of resources your opponent can expend on a per capita basis, while the latter reduces your productive population base, and both have significant psychological impaqcts (read neuroses) on the target populations, which further reduces their ability to resist your attempts to gain / maintain control over resources.
When we get to the "competing conventions" point, things get even worse. Cultures can adapt to a convention of mutual rape as a weapon (there are certainly enough examples of this historically and, as Tom was mentioning, it seems to be gaining ground as a convention in the Congo). Where the really tricky part comes in is when the conventions developed around totally different "environments". For example, the original "command economies" - the Sumerian city states, not the Soviets
- had a totally different set of conventions from both the mountain tribes and the desert tribes they had to deal with (Iraq is
still dealing with this!).
It's this "competing conventions" point that, I think, underlies a lot of our current (and past!) problems. At the same time, I would suggest that the conventions define what is perceived as a battlespace which, in turn, influences the resources aimed for, the tactics chosen, and, in effect, the entire stratgic "plan". Rob and I have talked a bit about this, and it is behind a lot of my comments on, for example, SFA planning and design. Now, I'm certainly
not saying that violent, kinetic conflict doesn't takes place - that would be nuts! However, what I am saying is that the tactics and strategies of conflict will depend on the conventions of the combatants which, in turn, depends on what resources they see as core.
Let me take an organizational example for a minute. Fairly "classic", post-War compromise bureaucratic organizations (aka "Taylorist" or "Fordist" in a lot of the literature) identify bodies with limited skills as the core "resource", extended by specific technology. In military terms, think Industrial Age armies from William the Silent to ~1980's / 90's (FCS is sort of the last gasp of this thinking). Compare this with, for example, the hight tech, "project-based" type of organization that really starts appearing in the 1970's-80's where the core "resource" is the ability to think (Hezbolah in 2006 is one form of this, the rise of PMC's another, while AQ's current concentration as a PR/Propaganda group is a third). In this case, "bodies" can be "outsourced" by manipulating your "opponent" into creating them (cf Kilcullen's concept of accidental guerrilas as one form, while the PMC's hiring of US vets is another [minimal training cost]).
You know, all of this is a roundabout way of getting back to your comment about economic and cyber warfare
. Economic warfare has been the hallmark of the Industrial Age from ca. 1570 or so until the 1980's - the core resources have been physical, material parts of "reality" (land, coal, iron, petroleum, etc.), and our economies have expanded to require them (and, and important point, our populations as well).
But there is one major problem with Industrial Age organizations - they are "soulless" and just don't give people much sense of "meaning" in existential terms. Most people, at least in the West, are just tired of the "Grand Narratives" - my guess as to why is that we have had our noses rubbed in the hypocrisy of the institutions responsible for them too often (I suspect that we see a similar reaction in the Middle East and Africa in response to the Grand Narratives of nationalism, industrialization, "development", etc.).
As a side note, but illustrative of this, I was listening to Tom Barnett last year as he was talking about where conflicts would be happening over the next century as part of the march of glabalization. At one point, I leaned over to the MG sitting next to me and murmered "doesn't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy that we'll be fighting to guarentee corporate profits?" I thought he would crack up out loud, but he just snorted and whispered back something cynical, the content of which, I suspect Tom would approve of.
Back on topic (sheesh I'm rambling!)....
As I was saying, economic warfare has been a hallmark of the Industrial Age, and Cyber-warfare, at least in the sense of hacking / cracking, interceptions, spying, manipulation of electronic economic systems, etc. is just an extension of the Industrial Age thinking about spying and economic warfare. What we are seeing with AQ and many other extremist groups is a totally different battlespace - they are aiming at our "souls"; our sense of meaning.
You know, I think I had better stop now before I ramble on even more
.
Originally Posted by William F. Owen
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