Two different things emerging on the SWC and the SWJ Blog - but we often have different audiences in each. I wanted to pull over my post fromthe blog to add to the discussion here.
Very thought provoking piece, here are some thoughts I got out of my first read.
Regarding, force structures, capabilities and alliances developed and sustained in order to implement strategies specifically to counter U.S. policy interests –I think he’s got a valid point – it comes with recognizing that no matter how you see yourself, other states and groups are going to have their own interests, and they will often run counter to yours – particularly if you espouse things they abhor. Even our closest allies don’t fully agree with us in a number of areas due to their own cultures and domestic politics, so when we see states and organizations finding they have more in common and more to gain by forming alliances to oppose us we should not be surprised.
This “band-waggoning” to pool resources is not new – what may be new is the influence that groups and individuals have, and the ability of geographically and culturally disparate groups to communicate with each other, as well identify how their short and long term interests are served by cooperating – this allows the formation of alliances and the synchronization of efforts in ways that were not possible or feasible 10-20 years ago – the liberalization of the western political and economic environment may have further enabled this allowing like minded enemies access to places, people and ideas that they did not have before. I’m not saying the latter is all bad either, or even a problem – much good has come out of that liberalization – however it is a condition we have to acknowledge – along with the notion that even when something is intended for good, those with a will, will find away to subvert its intended purpose – their own innovation and adaptation.
At the individual level - The speed to which the individual (or individual groups) can have an impact –from collecting more accurate information and disseminating it (could be a video sent through a cell phone network), to the time in which It can be analyzed and manipulated, then posted with new context to serve psychological purposes has increased. No argument there. However – what is the context? I think it means that non-aligned groups, opportunists have greater potential to reach out and participate in ways that while not directly serving the interests of our identified opponents, will cause up problems and drain our resources. They may work counter to both us and our opponents, but unless we can identify who they are, what their goals are, etc. we may confuse the issue and misjudge the conditions and environment – causing us to expend resources (time, money, people, etc.) toward things that are not part of the root problem, or that get us no closer to our objectives. To use an analogy, technology has raised the level of static or white noise we must see through to clearly identify who we should focus on – its kind of like global “Where’s Waldo”. In order to get better at finding Waldo – we’re going to have to find better ways of separating the chaff – this could be either through better analytics that are culturally and environmentally attuned, or by co-opting the white noise where we either find ways to look like Waldo ourselves while we hunt our enemies, or we make the white noise Waldo’s problem instead of ours.
The use of “preferred opponents” vs. “thinking” ones in describing our problem of prioritizing may not fully capture the problem. There is value in the statement if the measure of success is solely how much of a structure can I destroy – meaning inanimate objects to justify acquisition strategies, but the employers of the force don’t feel that way I think. Seems to me there are multiple conversations going on – there are conversations at the tactical, operational and strategic levels, as well as between them – then there seems to be the conversations between the regional COCOM CDRs and services and OSD, then there seems to be the ones between the latter and civilians. At different times context and the language which provides better answers gets reinterpreted for a number of reasons. The closer the inter-action with our enemies occurs, the more we consider our “thinking enemies”. The further away those conversations occur, the more it focuses on hardware and less on people. This may be more a condition then a problem that can be solved. I’d say it could be addressed by articulate uniformed folks making rounds in the halls of Congress –but it may not always be in somebody’s best interest to do so – I can yell as loud in my house as I want – but until I turn off Sponge Bob – my kids don’t seem to listen. This problem has been around since people invented politics though, and probably will not go away anytime soon –we just have to get better about how we work in those conditions.
I’m not sure that Marines are particularly more innovative then other services when the conditions in which they are working are roughly the same. SOF could arguably say they are the best innovators, etc. I think it might be better to consider the conditions which foster innovation – which are by and large ones where you either don’t have enough of something, don’t have access to something, or don’t have the right stuff. Arguably over the last seven years, we’ve seen adaptation and innovation across our military services, but maybe more so in the ground forces – just due to the nature of ground warfare (although other services serving in ground roles have been pretty innovative too). When we are not at war, and when OPTEMPO is low, and conditions don’t require us to make tough choices – Mr. Hoffman may have a point – the Marines did not have the largest service budget, but had to make some tough choices. I’m not sure that is accurate anymore – fighting a war changes that, and if we expect to be fighting for some time to come, then all the services are going to have to make tough choices, and all are going to have to be adaptive and innovative to mitigate the risk that comes with making tough choices.
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Reference how to find Waldo – there are some things worth considering. One of the things that make finding Waldo easier is when you eyes become accustomed to pattern analysis – this means going beyond focusing on what is a pattern – be it intentional or otherwise, but extending it to recognizing what is not a pattern. Within the Waldo puzzle there are things that look “more” like Waldo, and things that look “less” like Waldo. Part of this gets into the whole issue of intuition and non-linearity, but you could also call it thinking beyond cookie cutter analytic tools. At first glance we tend to see allot of red & white – then we start to distinguish those blobs and develop a kind of Waldo hierarchy – until eventually we’re left with only a few choices.
There may be something worth considering when determining what we expend our resources on – in this case, even though something may not be Waldo – if it looks enough like Waldo – it may be worth going after, either to make finding Waldo easier, or to prevent it from replacing Waldo down the road – there are probably allot of variations in between. Going after these “like Waldos” does not mean we have to destroy them, it might mean we co-opt them (lots of shade under that tree) temporarily or more permanently. Notice I did not speak in absolutes – this is not a fire and forget – either the “like Waldos” become more like us and less like Waldo so that our interests remain more congruent, or down the road the “like Waldos” must be dealt with again.
With regard to making Waldo, and the “like Waldo” more at risk in their own environment – we need to figure out better ways to help the partner Host Nation develop security forces that are at home in their environment and look an awful lot like Waldo in order to better counter him. This is perhaps should be a good part of our strategy – and is one the enemy seems also to be engaged in.
Mr. Hoffman, I appreciate the effort that went into the piece, unless someone is willing to start a conversation, then the rest of us remain to degrees unengaged
Best, Rob
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