Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

Operate inside adversary’s OODA loops […] to create tangles of threatening and/or nonthreateningevents/efforts as well as repeatedly generate mismatches between thoseevents/efforts adversary observes, or imagines and those he must react to, to survive;therebyEnmesh adversary in an amorphous, menacing, and unpredictable world of uncertainty,doubt, mistrust, confusion, disorder, fear, panic, chaos […];therebymaneuver adversary beyond his moral-mental-physical capacity to adapt or endure so that hecan neither divine our intentions nor focus his efforts to cope with the unfolding strategicdesign […]. 68At the tactical level units should:OODA more inconspicuously, more quickly, and with more irregularity as basis to keep orgain initiative as well as shape and shift main effort: to repeatedly and unexpectedly penetratevulnerabilities and weaknesses exposed by that effort […] 69 .Eco-systems and fitness landscapesEvolution and adaptation however should not be addressed solely at the individual level.Capra noted in 1982 that one of the key insights of research in the seventies and eighties hasbeen that ‘the tendency to associate, establish links, live inside one another and cooperate isan essential characteristic of living organisms’. Larger networks of organisms formecosystems, together with various inanimate components linked to the animals, plants, andmicroorganisms through an intricate web of relations involving the exchange of matter andenergy in continual cycles. Like individual organisms, ecosystems are self-organizing and selfregulatingsystems in which particular populations of organisms undergo periodicfluctuations.At the collective level, adaptation and evolution is due to several other possiblemechanisms 70 . Symbiosis is one, offensive-defensive competition is another. Whereas the classicalDarwinist view focused on competition, struggle and destruction, more recent detailed studyof ecosystems has shown that most relationships between living organisms are essentiallycooperative ones, characterized by coexistence and interdependence. Although there iscompetition, it takes place within a wider context of cooperation, so that the larger system iskept in balance 71 .In both forms of co-existence, species develop schemata of other species. Anecological community consists of a great many species all evolving models of other species’habits and how to cope with them. Although competition among schemata is a characteristicof complex adaptive systems, the systems themselves may indulge in a mixture ofcompetition and cooperation in their interactions with one another. It is often beneficial forcomplex adaptive systems to join together to form a collective entity that also functions as a68 Ibid.69 Ibid.70 Based primarily on Gell-Mann, chapter 16.71 Capra, (1982), pp.278-79.140