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

Ensure a large variety of conceptual lenses;Organize in semi-autonomous cells, avoid rigid hierarchical structures/culture;Use multiple strategies/avenues;Affect the accuracy of the cognitive/feedback process. If comprehension helps toachieve cohesion, and maintain purposeful behavior, the corollary is that confusionhelps to create collapse;Overload his cognitive capacity;Eliminate (and/or threaten) particular crucial (real or imaginary) subsystems;Diminish the variety of subsystems (affecting the capability to respond to a variety ofthreats, and diminishing the decision- or adaptation space) alternatively achieving andmaintaining a relative and relevant advantage in variety;Disrupt the moral, physical and/or informational vertical and horizontal relations (i.e.cohesion) among subsystems;Close the enemy off from his physical/social environment;Shape the environment of a system faster than the opponent’s capability to cope with it;Disrupt the information flow between the environment and the system and,Ensure the irrelevance of the schemata of the opponent, or the inability to validatethose while ensuring sufficient accuracy of one’s own schemata;Change the nature of war: waging a form of warfare that does not correspond to theopponent’s doctrine and strategic preference (schemata);Change the environment in terms of alliances, location and/or stakes involved.It is this conceptualization of war and strategic behavior that underlies Boyd’s thinking, aswill become evident from the description of A Discourse that follows in the next chapters.ConclusionTo conclude, Boyd was developing his work during a time of significant scientificdevelopments. Boyd was aware of these and consciously studied them. He incorporatedvarious themes and insights central to these developments in his work and constructed hiswork on the philosophical foundation laid by philosophical studies published in this period.The scientific Zeitgeist provided him with metaphors and new insights that connected topatterns he discerned in military history and strategic theory, as well in his own militaryexperience. He may be considered the first strategist to incorporate the paradigm shift inscience of the 20 th century into strategic theory, deliberately and normatively, and toconstruct a theory based on the insights the paradigm shift spawned. When it comes tointerpreting his work, these chapters strongly suggest that Boyd argues much more then“merely” the rapid OODA loop idea and that within the OODA loop idea a wealth ofconcepts and insights add levels of meaning to the simple graphic.172