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

problems they seek to comprehend or resolve’ 127 . The awareness of fundamentalunpredictability of complex systems caused four leading scholars to exasperate that ‘Godgave physics the easy problems’. And they subsequently suggest that ‘evolutionary biology isa more productive analogy for social science’ 128 .Robert Jervis too promotes the non-linear systems perspective, noting thatinternational history is full of inter-connections and complex interactions and indeed verylittle in social and political life makes sense except in the light of systemic processes.Exploring them gives us new possibilities for understanding and effective action; in theirabsence we are likely to flounder 129 . A short discussion of some of their observations willassist in the correct interpretation of Boyd’s work. Jervis notes that within non-linearcomplex systems 130 :It is impossible to do merely one thing;Results cannot be predicted from the separate actions;Strategies depend on the strategies of others;Behavior changes the environment.Connections, interactions and interdependencies are the all important and problematicfeatures of complex systems. In a system the chains of consequences extend over time andmany areas. The effects of action are always multiple. Some call it that actions have sideeffects but besides being mostly undesired there is nothing that distinguishes one effect fromanother. Basically it is impossible to do merely one thing 131 . When the interconnections aredense, it may be difficult to trace the impact of any change even after the fact, let alonepredict it ahead of time, making the system complex and hard to control 132 . Interconnectionscan defeat purposive behavior. Not only can actions call up counteractions, but multipleparties and stages permit many paths to unanticipated consequences 133 . And because mostsystems have either been designed to cope with adversity or have evolved in the face of it,breakage or overload at one point rarely destroys them. Systems have ways to compensate.They are flexible and may have redundancy built in. So actions against interconnectedsystems may not lead to direct results but they will produce disturbances at other points 134 .This leads to the observations that tightening the connections between elements willincrease efficiency when everything works smoothly but will spread any problems that arise.127 James Rosenau, ‘Many Damn Things Simultaneously: Complexity Theory and World Affairs’, inDavids and Czerwinski (1997), Chapter 4, p.1.128 Steven Bernstein, Richard Ned Lebow, Janice Gross Stein, Steven Weber, ‘God Gave Physics theEasy Problems: Adapting Social Science to an Unpredictable World’, European Journal of InternationalRelations, Vol.6(1), 43-44.129 Robert Jervis, ‘Complexity and the analysis of Political and Social Life’, Political Science Quarterly,Volume 112, Number 4 (1997-1998), p.593; and ‘Complex Systems: The Role of Interactions’, chapter3, in Paul Davis and Thomas Czerwinski, Complexity, Global Politics and National Security (NDU Press,Annapolis, 1997).130 See Robert Jervis, System Effects, and Jervis (1997-1998).131 Jervis (1997), p.10.132 Ibid, p.17.133 Ibid, p.18.134 Jervis includes the example of the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive during WW II. When theAllied Bombers attacked the German railroad system industry was able to divert railtraffic along thewidely developed railsystem. But doing so after a period of bombing created bottlenecks in responseto which individual industries began to take individual measures which took away the flexibility of thesystem and subsequently paralyzed it.156