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

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 or related decisive strokes as they penetrate, splinter, isolate or envelop, andoverwhelm him.StrategyPenetrate moral-mental-physical being to dissolve his moral fiber, disorient his mentalimages, disrupt his operations, and overload his system, as well as subvert, shatter, seize orotherwise subdue those moral-mental-physical bastions, connections, or activities that hedepends upon, in order to destroy internal harmony, produce paralysis, and collapseadversary’s will to resist.Strategic AimDiminish adversary’s capacity while improving our capacity to adapt as an organic whole, sothat our adversary cannot cope while we can cope with events/efforts as they unfold.Theme for disintegration and collapseThe name of the game. Boyd acknowledges that so far this exercise has not producedinsights that are significantly different from the destructive attrition-maneuver-moral ideasplayed out in the synthesis of Categories of Conflict. More is required to lay bare the essenceof winning and losing. Boyd subsequently recasts both Categories of Conflict and the list ofideas above in the following schematic, once more showing the deeper meaning of the rapidOODA loop idea, dispelling the notion that mere information superiority or superior speedin command and control is the essence of that idea. In the schematic Boyd has captured andcombined elements of maneuver and moral conflict, as well as an element of the descriptionof Grand Tactics. By now Boyd has worked his way towards a view on strategy, whichfocuses on those elements that allow complex social structures to exist and function in apurposeful way and to adapt to changes in the environment. Gradually his verbiage hasbecome more abstract, general and conceptual in nature, and decreasingly recognizable asgrounded in military history 121 :121 Ibid, p.135-136.221