Military Affairs

SWJ: My Interview with Tom Barnett

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The Small Wars Journal has published an interview I conducted with Dr. Thomas Barnett regarding his new book Great Powers: America and the World After Bush.

“Ten Questions with Thomas P.M. Barnett”

…. 4. In Great Powers, you delve deeply into American history. What lessons did you find in our nation’s past that the diplomat overseas, the Army colonel in Afghanistan or the U.S. Aid worker in Africa should know to navigate their mission today?

This is all about frontier integration. Globalization is like America’s rapid and aggressive push Westward across the 19th century: a lot of the same bad actors and a lot of the same tools applied. So don’t be surprised when the Pinkertons show up, or when the covered wagons are attacked, or when the Injuns head to the Badlands for sanctuary. Thus, the goals of our frontline players are fairly straightforward: create the baseline security to allow the connectivity to grow. Focus on social trust and institutions as much as possible, but co-opt existing structures whenever and wherever you can. It doesn’t have to be perfect and it sure as hell doesn’t have to measure up to America’s mature standards. This is a frontier setting within globalization-treat it as such. The good news is, the settlers are already there, with more uncredentialed wealth than we realize (see Hernando DeSoto), if you respect their existing rule-sets and realize they will change only when the locals see the need themselves, so no instant rule-set packages applied by outsiders, please. Finally, acknowledge that with growing connectivity with the outside world, you will see more nationalism, more ethnic tensions, and more religious identity. These are all natural reactions, and not signs of your failure, so patience is the key.

Read the whole thing here.

Special thanks to Dave Dilegge for providing the forum and to Sean Meade and Lexington Green with editorial assistance and astute advice.

The Necessity of Torture

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So Obama has decided to keep rendition and the torture it implies as part of U.S. covert operations. Surprise, Surprise. Turns out that instead of being a sign of pure personal evil, at least threatening to torture spies and illegal  combatants  is a necessary tool for even the most “enlightened” individuals.  

Of course, anyone who spent any time actually studying the matter instead of trying to score rhetorical points out of selfish political motives knew that something like this is needed and as always has been.  

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Clausewitz, On War, Book II: The Intellectual Style of the Military Genius

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Last week Lexington Green and I wrote on the virtues intrinsic to military genius. These virtues were categorized as intellectual, or psychological, or both. The truths revealed came from Chapter 3, Book I of On War.

Book II of On War attempts to serve as bedrock to the theory of war, and in doing so, provides a guide to the kinds of knowledge that belongs in the intellect of the military genius. Book II also explains how that knowledge ought to be learned, and used, and ultimately the intellectual style of the military genius. This supplements the lengthy treatment I gave to psychological, emotional, and moral factors that help describe the military genius.

How does the commander go about learning what he must? What is his intellectual style and what are his habits? What must he learn? How must he learn it? Should have be a disinterested third party with respect to his knowledge? Must he internalize his military knowledge? Is his knowledge derived mainly from experience, or from study? What are the pitfalls of the intellectual methods of the military mind?

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Clausewitz, On War, Book I: Clausewitz and the Marine Corps

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This is my first time reading On War, and I have to say that I am so far impressed with the relative ease with which Clausewitz can be applied to modern situations. Book I serves us well not only as an overview of the entire work, but also provides the reader with good baselines, defining fundamental concepts with simple language and examples that I presume would make it possible for the completely uninitiated to understand.
What I find most fascinating though is the high level of Clausewitzian thought found in Marine Corps culture, and I would guess (hope) to some extent in the cultures of other US services as well. I am not certain whether this is by conscious intent, or rather a coincidental development stemming from the Corps’ history and role, but several examples were immediately obvious to me as I read.

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Clausewitz, On War, Book 1, Chapter 3: Response to Capt. Lauterbach on Clausewitz on Military Genius

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A comment began to grow to unreasonable length. I decided to post it separately. Nate posted here about Clausewitz’s chapter on military genius. (As ART noted, it was good to see this focus on the “personnel” question, rather than the more heavily plowed pages of Book I, Chapter 1.)

What follows are some comments in response to Nate’s piece.

Descriptive and “qualitative” analysis “Clausewitz is rather unscientific, yet precise, when he writes about military genius.” Clausewitz still lived in the era before all data was quantified, and before all non-quantified data was suspect. The method he uses of verbally breaking out the characteristics of military genius is old-fashioned. We would expect to see survey data, with pie charts. I tend to think the way Clausewitz did it still has value. But no one thinks or writes this way anymore.

Courage It is no surprise that Clausewitz says that “courage is the soldiers first requirement”. That is almost axiomatic. Soldiers march toward the sound of the guns, rather than following ordinary instinct, and running as fast as possible in the opposite direction.

Clausewitz divides courage into two parts:

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