Center of Gravity Construct

[Bill Moore]

Gentlemen, the intent of this thread is to clearly show the superiority of effects based planning versus using the outdated center of gravity construct.

Put your guns down, I'm only joking! Great comments, but I would still like to see how the "people's will" as the center of gravity could be useful in a functional way to a military planner?

Using an effects based approach which is intended to integrate all of our government agencies, and hopefully academia, still seems more appropriate than trying to make centers of gravity work in this situation. Sometimes there are COG's, other times the COGs are unsuitable to facilitate planning, such as the people's will.

Marc, you bring a much needed voice to the council, and I was hoping you might share some ideas on where you think you could fit into the planning process to help us get off on the right track? Let's say we were going into country X to assist the government defeat an insurgency. What would you consider must know information to facilitate you giving advice to military planners? What type of advice do you think you give that could help military planners? I use the term planner, but that isn't restricted to the future operations planners at the joint level, but inclusive of the company commander that is developing a strategy for his area of operations.

[marct]

Hi Bill,

Gentlemen, the intent of this thread is to clearly show the superiority of effects based planning versus using the outdated center of gravity construct.

Put your guns down, I'm only joking! Great comments, but I would still like to see how the "people's will" as the center of gravity could be useful in a functional way to a military planner?

Okay, I will apologize in advance for sounding like an academic .

As far as I see it, "centre of gravity" is a concept, a mental schema if you will, that is already embedded in the minds of many military planners. Whether it is a worthwhile concept, or whether EBP would be a "better" concept is, for this point, moot. The short answer is that using the "people's will" as a centre of gravity is useful because it is drawing on a concept that already exists in the minds of the military planner. What tends to be missing from the concept is the operational specification. Still and all, it is always easier to "sell" a modification or "amplification" of an existing idea/concept than it is to sell a "new" or "different" concept. It's really just a matter of changing the referential semantics of the debate.

Can it be useful functionally? Probably, but some modification would be needed. First, I think we would have to change the name of the main focus from "people's will" to something like "people's beliefs". Second, it would probably be useful to "create" new foci for "insurgent's will" and, hmm, "COIN will" (where the popluation of the latter is those people who are actively engaged in COIN operations, both "native" and "non-native").

This allows us to stay in the emotionally "safe" construct of centre of gravity, and to shift the EBP into an operationalization of how these centres interact and how those interactions can be manipulated.

Using an effects based approach which is intended to integrate all of our government agencies, and hopefully academia, still seems more appropriate than trying to make centers of gravity work in this situation. Sometimes there are COG's, other times the COGs are unsuitable to facilitate planning, such as the people's will.

Honestly, I think that you are quite correct here, at least as far as actual operational planning, in the broadest sense of the term, is concerned.

Marc, you bring a much needed voice to the council, and I was hoping you might share some ideas on where you think you could fit into the planning process to help us get off on the right track? Let's say we were going into country X to assist the government defeat an insurgency. What would you consider must know information to facilitate you giving advice to military planners? What type of advice do you think you give that could help military planners? I use the term planner, but that isn't restricted to the future operations planners at the joint level, but inclusive of the company commander that is developing a strategy for his area of operations.

Hmmm, that definately is the "put up or shut up" question, isn't it . I'm going to have to think about this a lot more, but I will try and take a stab at answering some of the questions.

Marc, you bring a much needed voice to the council, and I was hoping you might share some ideas on where you think you could fit into the planning process to help us get off on the right track?

First off, thanks. As it currently stands, I see myself "fit[ing] into the planning process" primarily in two areas:

1. As a Canadian academic, I am somewhat constrained in who I have access to talk to. I am truly grateful for the existence of SWJ and for the council in listening to what I have to say, since this is one of the few venues I have to make my ideas heard by people who can actually do something. Certainly, what I have to say will not be heard by many Anthropologists (more on that one later - I'm putting an article together on it).
2. I think the greatest contribution I can make to the planning process is in working with people to develop adaptive methodologies that integrate culture, media, and actual operations. I think that the advantages I would bring to this are that I am an expert in "systems of meaning" (i.e. how people construct reality via symbols), I have a background in comparative religion as well as Anthropology and, finally, as a Canadian, I view US operations through a different, if friendly, lense.

(Sheesh! I feel like I'm writing a cover letter for a job application . Still, you asked and honest question, and deserve an honest answer.)

Let's say we were going into country X to assist the government defeat an insurgency. What would you consider must know information to facilitate you giving advice to military planners?

I would have to say that two things were crucial at the start of such an operation. First, what is / are the local culture(s)? Most of that material is already available in libraries, but until you know the general structures of a group, their symbol systems don't really make that much sense. Actually, it's more complex than that, but that's the basic part. Then I would have to tie in the symbol systems to those structures.

The second imperative would be to look at the insurgency's propaganda. For any insurgency to succeed, it has to operate using a symbol system that derives from or is cognate with the local symbol system(s). Most of the time, this will be tied in to a crucial, everyday "lived experience" that the vast majority of the general population can experience. By way of example, Guevera's campaign in Bolivia hinged around land distribution and when the land was redistributed by the government, the insurgency collapsed.

The case in Iraq is much more complex than that of Bolivia, unfortunately (sigh). At the absolute minimum, there are four seperate cultures to examine and each of them extends beyond the geographic boundaries of Iraq.

What type of advice do you think you give that could help military planners? I use the term planner, but that isn't restricted to the future operations planners at the joint level, but inclusive of the company commander that is developing a strategy for his area of operations.

I think that in order to answer that question, it would probably be better to split it into three seperate areas:

1. Initial planning
2. Company level "advice"
3. Ongoing analysis

Initial planning
Most of what could be done in the initial planning stage would be what I was talking about earlier: identifying the structures, symbol systems and propaganda nodes. Once they are identified, then certain initial "suggestions" could be made on how to operate. Honestly, I'd be a fool to say that any advice coming out of this would work 100% of the time. Based on WWII experience in the Pacific theatre, we would be lucky to get about 60%-70%. Still, that would be better than nothing.

Company level advice
Again, initially, it would come out of the initial planning stage. The trick, I think, would be to set up a "cultural intelligence" operation where information from the field is sent back ASAP for analysis and reworking, which brings us to...

Ongoing analysis
To my mind, this is the core "value add" that Antrhopology can bring to the table (not that most of my colleagues would do so ). We have had a lot of discussions about how much cultural training the strategic corporal and other frontline troops can have. The reality, at least as much as I see it at present, is that the mind set required for someone to be a good combat soldier is quite different from that required to be a good cultural analyst. Having said that, however, I think that it is absolutely imperative that information, analysis and observations flow freely back and forth between the two groups.

Let me return, for a second, to the tangential conversation RTK and I were having. Notice that both of us mentioned showing up at funerals. In my case, I was placing that type of action in a cultural symbolic context. In RTK's case, he was placing it in an operation and personal context. How would this work together? Well, if nothing else, I would hope that when RTK produces his COIN handbook, he includes that "story" along with a recommendation that other people do the same where possible. Why? Because it not only establishes and strengthens individual personal relationships, but also because it honours the local system of tribal honour.

Bill, I don't know if this has answered your questions. I know that I'm not happy with it on the whole, but I wanted to give you a quick answer before taking a week or two to put something more complete together.

Marc

[slapout9]

Dear RTK,
Bubba wants you to know "he ain't got no neighbors" He don't live on know block neither, he has a trailer like all regular folks does.