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

This then leads to the second wrap-up of the essence of moral conflict, which combines thenegative and the positive factors, the offensive as well as the defensive side 112 .Negative factorsCounterweightsMenace:Impression of danger to one's well -being andsurvival.Initiative:Internal drive to think and take action withoutbeing urged.Uncertainty:Impressions, or atmosphere, generated by eventsthat appear ambiguous, erratic, contradictory,unfamiliar, chaotic, etc.Mistrust:Atmosphere of doubt and suspicion that loosesnhuman bonds among members of an organicwhole or between organic wholesAdaptability:Power to adjust or change in order to copewith new or unforeseen circumstances.Harmony:Interaction of apparently disconnected eventsor entities in a connected way.AimPump-up friction via negative factors to breed fear, anxiety, and alienation in order to generate many noncooperativecenters of gravity, as well as subvert those that adversary depends upon, thereby sever moral bondsthat permit adversary to exist as an organic whole.Build-up and play counterweights against negative factors to diminish internal friction, as well as surfacecourage, confidence, and esprit, thereby make possible the human interactions needed to create moral bondsthat permit us, as an organic whole to shape and adapt to changeSynthesis: pattern for successful operationsA short look back. By now Boyd is ready to come slowly to his abstract synthesis of thedynamics and patterns of winning and losing. In the first pages of Patterns of Conflict he haslaid out the aim of this presentation and a number of key themes and suggestions, offering infact already the contours of his main argument. He has taken his audience through detaileddiscussions of the style of warfare as practiced by Sun Tzu, Alexander, Ghengis Khan andthe early Bonaparte. He has argued that from the later Napoleonic battles to the First WorldWar bloody and wasteful attrition warfare was tragically en vogue. The solution to the costlyloss of flexibility, to the stalemate of the trenches, was provided by infiltration tactics.Together with the development of the Blitzkrieg concept, Lawrence’s version of guerrillawarfare and communist revolutionary warfare, this period manifested a de facto rediscoveryof the teachings of Sun Tzu. Boyd then gradually shifts to higher levels of abstraction in hiscompression of the different styles of warfare to the key elements and fundamental dynamicsof each. Based on this favored maneuver and moral categories of conflict, he now moves onto get to the most general and abstract formulation of the essence of strategy. In twentypages he brings it all together, from the tactical to the grand strategic level, coming full circleto the ideas he bluntly put forward in his introduction. But by now he has taken his audiencethrough 2500 years of military history and strategic thought to argue his points.112 Ibid, p.125.216