Chuck Spinney writes a comment here.....
http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/2016/06/why-are-defense-policy-wonks-so.html
and endorsement on what Andrew Cockburn says here.....
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176154/tomgram:_andrew_cockburn,_victory_assured_on_the_military%27s_main_battlefield_--_washington/#more
and I would like to add praise to Tom Engelhardt for publishing the link at TomDispatach.
Finally....I must add this tribute to Colonel Boyd:
“People say the Pentagon does not have a strategy. They are wrong;
the Pentagon does have a strategy. It is: Don’t interrupt the money
flow, add to it.”
Colonel Boyd was at the Pentagon while I was at Crystal City. He was at the pointy end of the spear leading with military strategy. I was way back somewhere in the spear as as relative nobody Commander with some foggy ideas about shipyard logistics. Someone suggested once I go over and see some guy at the Pentagon with forward looking ideas somehow thinking that mine were in the same time zone as his...not! Maybe relative to the magnitude of the organization and the problem but minor in scope.
I never did go over to the Pentagon except to take the subway. In retirement I saw that my view of things was similar to Colonel Boyd but I dare not presume any credit in my scope of responsibility anywhere near what he contributed. I am only pleased that anyone ever considered my thinking anywhere near the shadow of Col Boyd. Equally radical I suppose but I was only croaking in a small pond.
I have always been pleased and grateful that Chuck Spinney took up the mantel of Col Boyd. A true hero, both of them. Chuck took up the flag carried by Col Boyd that lead the charge and carried it onward bravely.
I salute them both.
I just feel like a good but pointless rant to clear my brain about the total ignorance of planning and executing the National Defense. There is no "National Defense" in terms of a single structured institutional entity by that name like the
US Department of Defense which has its own very official website explaining what it is and does. The conceptual thing entity called "National Defense" is a matrix of concepts and things ranging from all things peripherally military related like Military holidays and movies and other conceptual shaping nebulous things like tradition that shape National Defense to the tip of the spear stuff that delivers death, destruction and confusion to our enemies.
Rally 'round the flag boys.....feelings of pride when singing about the bombs bursting is air is like the stimulus of old time religion. Feel good stuff but it leads sown a slippery slope to real consequences of mis-application of not just resources but moral justice.
Allocation of resources in service of "moral justice" objectives as we define it is what the good fight is all about. War on this, war on that. The good war and the good fight is using the resources at our command in the most efficient, effective manner to accomplish the mission objective.
Colonel Boyd said he could defeat any enemy in combat any time with just three moves. Quick, deadly, efficient. The enemy is our failure to accomplish the National Defense mission. That mission now undertaken by an institutions that seems to be most closely related to it: Not the DoD but the Department of Homeland Security. Mission. Defense. Security. What would Colonel Boyd do to defeat our own institutions that work against their own objectives to perpetuate a war that is not being won. That is a bug and a feature: Endless war keeps institutions tasked with accomplishing winning the war in endless business. Cold war is endless war sustained just at the precise level of management to keep the war fires burning. Otherwise all that energy would go elsewhere. Perhaps to much better objectives.
That was preface to the rant which starts at the end of this paragraph. Having felt better after what follows maybe I can get to thinking about what 3 moves could defeat the enemy and win the war effort of the National Defense objective. What is that??? Peace? What is the conditional state of being defined as Peace. Kind of like Heaven. A place we want to go where the state of being is what we want. A place of our own design and creation.
Rant on:
Supply and logistics served the mission. In the navy that professional core is the domain of the Supply Corps. My first assignment in Vietnam set the course my career offloading cargo in Danang harbor. It was a close the the pointy end as I came. Even the two ships I was subsequently on for years off the coast were not as up close to the war.
In country the logistic operation was dictated by whatever it took to support the Mission. The war was the mission. All normal logistic controls, cost efficiencies, were of least concern. Were were the guys that shoot supplies but the bigger strategy of war is to throw men, money and material into a battle and the best example is a free fire zone where there are no rules restricting the effort.
Don't need no stinkin' rules there. Same rule always applies. Just more contractors today than RMK/BRJ back in the day to give an arms length to what should have been done to assure some reasonable level of logistic control and accountability.
The only thing that remained accountable was payday. Payment in MPC. Accounted for to the penny. Everything else? Just keep it all moving into the black hole of Mission.
I have often written in this blog about the 8 billion dollars in pallets of hundred dollar bills that were "lost" in Iraq. They were not "lost" in the sense of everything else that went down the black hole. Those greenback dollars went somewhere. They were valuable. Bombs go somewhere and disappear with a pink mist of people also going somewhere. Hundred dollar bills?? Not so much.....until we recently figured that it was a good idea to bomb the enemy's stash of money used to pay their troops.
Some of that in US hundred dollar bills may have been traceable back to the billions in pallets shipped to Iraq. More probably traceable to circuitous routes of travel from the US mint through the NYFRB shipments out of the USA finding their way to the war front. Money itself is a thing thing to throw into the war effort.
While the REMF's of logistics work at the shaft of the spear the one that throw the spear determine budgets. Those are the same mission oriented fighters that have no regard for financial management budget planning and execution responsibility that may constrain the "war effort". Everything they do is war effort. The war strategy is to fight anything perceived as limiting the strategy. Often the strategy is to fight anything limiting the way to the revolving door. Often however the strategy is believed to be anything and everything to support the the stated Military Mission and extremism in defense of that mission is no vice.
So much of the military expenditure of men, money and material is driven by those that profit from it. Of course that dictates consumption for the cause. Consumption drives more production until it becomes the Shadow Mission.
Col Boyd was Mission Oriented. Solve the battle problem in the most effective way. The most effective tactic and strategy is not the overwhelming expenditure of men, money and material but the employment of winning moves.
Winning moves win a war. Attrition was a strategy that won prior wars. They would lose ships, planes, tanks and men faster than they could be replaced. We could lose the same or more but we could replace them. The cold war was won by the same attrition strategy. We outspent. We could produce guns and butter.
Some old strategy of war of attrition. But......what resources are the enemy now attriting (expending) and at what rate of attrition that they cannot that replace but we can?
We have met the enemy and they are us. An expression often heard in my navy career. The enemy is not running out of its main resource which is not a physical material resource. We will not run out of our main resource which is physical and material and out of sight.
When neither side runs out of the fundamental resource to fight and sustain the war then the conclusion is......Duh......
Endless war.
Qui Bono?
Col Boyd would fight to end the battle and win the war.
Perhaps it is matter of defining what winning is???
Or who defines it??
Pentagon?
Politicians?
The People?
The current solution is a self licking ice cream cone.
A perpetual motion war machine.
Col Boyd would have a strategy to win that war against ourselves.
I regret that I may have had the chance to meet him once but did not.
I was a REMF Ensign in Vietnam but near the tip of the mission to Win with the big "W" that says end of game. They won with a better strategy. Yes, they won.
The Pentagon is REMF of the perpetual war. REMFS don't win a war they only support its continuation. The REMFs at the Pentagon are the lackeys of a higher order REMF echelon that win by continuation.
Continuation of war is not a winning strategy depending on who is in charge?
That is the big question of leadership.
"Who the F is in charge of this Cluster F?"
When a leader asks that question and there is no answer then they are in charge.
That is the question asked by someone that does not immediately get the right answer and takes charge.
A leader.
Ask that question in the Pentagon and a swift answer would come from the ones in charge of the charge card. They are not a tool of the national interest in defense of the constitution. They are a tool of shaping the national interest along with business in support of agenda, not mission.
Quoting Chuck Spinney from his link:
"Today, America’s foreign policy is a shambles. Its primary features are
(1) a perpetual war on terror, and (2) the seemingly inevitable march
into a new and unnecessary cold war against Russia and China. At the
same time, President Obama is leaving his successor with a budget plan
containing a front loaded and political engineered* procurement bow wave that
guarantees steeply rising defense expenditures well into the next
decade and possibly beyond. Such long term increases in the defense
budget can only be justified by a new cold war."
To some, the few, that is the definition of a winning strategy. Theirs.
Name that strategy: "Let's you and him fight".
To what purpose?
That is the purpose!
That is the winning strategy and the name of the game of the 1% that are winning big.
It is unfortunate that so much attention has been given to a narrow financial definition of the 1% in terms of the distribution of wealth that by association implies power of money itself. In another frame of 1% reference that is not a distribution of wealth there is a different demographic on the power scale and there McMansion is the Pentagon MIC.
Who is (will be in charge) of this Cluster F?
Full Spectrum Dominance and the Limitlessness of Imperial Ambition
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/17/hillarys-agenda-here-and-abroad-intertwinedfull-spectrum-dominance-around-the-globe-a-swelling-precariat-at-home/
We have met the enemy and will vote for her. Those that do will be as dumbfounded by those that vote for Trump as I am of them.
Perhaps the change will come as a function of the system, not the leaders in control of the system?
http://heavy.com/news/2016/06/wikileaks-insurance-file-hillary-clinton-emails-when-released-what/
Rant off!
It is all about money and power. The weapons that are employed in War and Peace. Money is a decision making tool. Power is the exercise of making decisions that apply of the tool. Decision makers have the power.
Three decisive moves on three Entities: Money, Power, Decision Makers.
Col Boyd was a fighter pilot. At his command was a Plane, Power and Decisive Judgment application of Plane and Power at his command. Three things. Three application moves to win. A microcosm of a classic macro problem domain focused on Mission Accomplishment.
Three moves. Two set up the kill. The third executes it. Set it up right, time the third....win the fight. The enemy might just a well pull the ejection lever before the shot is fired. It is a sure thing. Sure for certain when the enemy unaware, unskilled, bumbling, slow, inefficient, mis-directed and can't put what might even be superior resources at their command into action with speed and accuracy.
Ability to press the battle to the enemy is all about training to do it. Training exercises are a set up. Blue Forces vs Red Forces. Planned scenarios with scripts. Always training for the real thing that does not necessarily follow the script written by either side of the Battle Space Problem Domain.
Three moves to win the war on Pentagon Strategy. Perhaps "Survivor" might be a model to study.
Money, Power, Execution.
Money only conveys so much inherent Power. Call the other component of he derived nature of Power "Non-Money" for lack of a more precise definition of the multitude of things "Non-Money can be. Both components are resource decision making tools to execute winning strategies.
Perhaps a clever use of a multitude of Non-Money things resources that can be employed in the exercise of the Power they convey for execution is a good Strategy for winning against an opponent that is substantially reliant on Money as the decision making tool for investment in resources of war.
This is getting to shape the problem domain into that of "Skinning the Cat" in the most efficient, effective manner with little of no blood and gore in the process: Set it up to induce it to jump out of its own skin. To defeat itself.
Elegant path to victory.
Is that the genius of Colonel Boyd? Did he set up control of his own situation for him to win or set up the situation for the enemy to control his reaction to the situation such as to lose.
Did I just derive the secret of the Col Boyd's famous loop?
Set up the adversary efficiently to lose while the adversary is so busy managing all the things it feels necessary to win that it loses by virtue of doing itself in?
Wish I could have met him. He may be gone but his legacy lives. Due in no small part to Chuck Spinney and the believers. They are few but equal to combat adversaries with great belief and faith that bigger is better belief and their own magnitude of follow on benefit of service to their country that serves themselves and their sub-optimized agenda that keeps their eyes on that prize.
A corrupted system serves itself well....for as long as is possible to survive doing that while proclaiming to perform its intended mission. Its victory parade will be its funeral march.
That is a self defeating loop.
It is a totally different situation at the micro level but not at the macro level of how things proceed when the powers that be wake up to the sub-optimized agenda and vulnerability of the enemy take control of the situation and shoot them down:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/06/north-carolina-threatens-to-cancel-toll-road-project-showing-political-risk-of-infrastructure-deals.html
"But the bigger issue, which the IPE article only alludes to, is that it
appears that more and more state and local governments are starting to
wake up to the fact that these deals are bad for their constituents."
Is this a business model applicable to Endless War business?
Beginning with the contracting stage, the evidence suggests toll
operating public private partnerships are transportation shell companies
for international financiers and contractors who blueprint future
bankruptcies (endless war).
Self licking ice cream cone.
Add the State Department to that bigger sphere of "National Defense" influence that is the umbrella under which there are so many players. Perhaps because it is the banner of choice that draws so much funding as well as decision making power in Global National Interest. It is more that DOD that wants Full Spectrum Dominance.
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/06/17/the-state-departments-collective-madness/