{"id":163,"date":"2003-08-11T06:20:26","date_gmt":"2003-08-11T06:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2006-09-28T12:08:18","modified_gmt":"2006-09-28T12:08:18","slug":"boyd_on_moral_warfighting_and_guerilla_warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=163","title":{"rendered":"Boyd on Moral Warfighting and Guerilla Warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finished the John Boyd biography<\/a> last week, and have been digging into any source documents of his that I can find.<\/p>\n

On reading many of them, they seemed right, but somewhat stale…and then I realized that they were stale because I have been reading about reflections of these ideas for the last twenty years<\/i>. One reason I enjoyed the film ‘Shakespeare in Love’ so much was that it brought back to me the idea of what it must have been like to see ‘Romeo and Juliet’ fresh and free of preconception.<\/p>\n

I have been paying particular attention to ‘Patterns of Conflict’ (available as a blurry pdf<\/a> at Defense and the National Interest<\/a>). I keep trying to weld together the liberal half of my worldview – which tells me that, short of something that looks like genocide, we can’t kill the opposition in this War on Bad Philosophy faster than they grow, and so we must somehow disrupt their growth cycle by changing political and social conditions to radically lowering the attractiveness of these causes – with the conservative, which suggests that confronting and killing the opposition is the way to go.<\/p>\n

Boyd was there first.From Slide 108 of the pdf above:<\/p>\n

Action:<\/b><\/p>\n

Undermine guerilla cause and destroy their cohesion by demonstrating integrity and competence of government to represent and serve needs of the people – rather than exploit and impoverish them for the benefit of a greedy elite.*<\/p>\n

Take political initiative to root out and visibly punish corruption. Select new leaders with recognized competence as well as popular appeal. Ensure that they deliver justice, eliminate grievances and connect government with grass roots.*<\/p>\n

Infiltrate guerilla movement as well as employ population for intelligence about guerilla plans, operations, and organization.<\/p>\n

Seal-off guerilla regions from outside world by diplomatic, psychological, and various other activities that strip-away potential allies as well as by disrupting or straddling communications that connect these regions with the outside world.<\/p>\n

Deploy administrative talent, police, and counter-guerilla teams into affected localities and regions to inhibit guerilla communication, coordination, and movement; minimize guerilla contact with local inhabitants; isolate their ruling cadres; and destroy their infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Exploit presence of above teams to build-up local government as well as recruit militia for local and regional security in order to protect people from the persuasion and coercion efforts of guerilla cadres and their fighting units.<\/p>\n

Use special teams in a complementary effort to penetrate guerilla controlled regions. Employ (guerillas\u2019 own) tactics of reconnaissance, infiltration, surprise hit-and-run, and sudden ambush to: keep roving bands off-balance, make base areas untenable, and disrupt communication with the outside world.<\/p>\n

Expand these complementary security\/penetration efforts into affected region after affected region in order to undermine, collapse, and replace guerilla influence with government influence and control.<\/p>\n

Visible link these efforts with local political\/economic\/social reform in order to connect central government with hopes and needs of people, thereby gain their support and confirm government legitimacy.<\/p>\n

Idea:<\/b><\/p>\n

Break guerillas\u2019 moral-mental-physical hold over the population, destroy their cohesion, and bring about their collapse via political initiative that demonstrates moral legitimacy<\/u> and vitality<\/u> of government and by relentless military operations that emphasize stealth\/fast-temp\/fluidity-of-action<\/u> and cohesion<\/u> of overall effort.<\/p>\n

*If you cannot realize such a political program, you might consider changing sides.<\/p>\n

(emphasis and footnote his)<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What Boyd is suggesting is to do two things: First to reinforce the legitimacy of the government under attack, and second to do so in a way that bridges across to a fluid counter-guerilla strategy. <\/p>\n

Now to an old Vietnam-era cynic like myself, this bespeaks the “hearts and minds” approach that ultimately failed. <\/p>\n

But on a fundamental level, his proposed solution is the only one that can work.<\/p>\n

We need to do two things, according to him (and do read the whole document, it’s fascinating even if it hasn’t completely gelled for me yet): a) create a fighting force that can outguerilla the guerillas; and b) ensure that the overall population has enough faith in our side – enough belief in the legitimacy of the government – that they will not only not willingly cooperate with the guerillas but will willingly cooperate with us.<\/p>\n

I’ll even suggest that this is probably the best litmus test I can think of for how we’re doing…are people in the street helping us catch the bad guys? If they are, we’re winning.<\/p>\n

And it’s a reminder that a purely military victory in our circumstance isn’t enough. We do have to win the hearts and minds of the people in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Iran, and Syria, and Saudi Arabia, and so on). <\/p>\n

We’re faced with a pest-control problem here. Like the coyote problem that besets suburban Angelinos; we can kill them as we find them; we can make our homes more resistant (both of which are good things). But to ultimately solve the problem, you have to reduce the population. We have the capacity to burn down the forests where they live and breed, but the cost of doing that is extraordinarily high. We need to examine the lifecycle of the pest, find the places where we can disrupt it, and do so.<\/p>\n

In this, I will argue, the fundamental problem is the tolerance of kleptocracies convenient to our economies and to the investors in our political process. The injustice in those tyrannical societies is the fuel that the engine of Bad Philosophy consumes. <\/p>\n

So we need to do four things, as I see it:<\/p>\n

# Attack and kill the active terrorists where we can find them, and destroy the infrastructure (financial foremost, logistical, and physical). We need to convince other states that the cost of them not doing this is that we will.<\/p>\n

# Attack the belief-structures which constitute the engine of Bad Philosophy; attack them by expounding our own Good Philosophies and by being willing to suggest that all things are not, in the end, equal.<\/p>\n

# Deprive the engine of Bad Philosophy of fuel, by attacking the horrible conditions of life that many people in the kleptocratic states must endure – while watching us fete and fund their oppressors.<\/p>\n

# Make our own society more resistant to the kinds of attacks they are likely to mount. This isn’t going to be done by some national-scale, Orwellian bureaucracy. It will be done by the coordinated efforts of tens of thousands of county officials and the millions of front-line public safety staff that work for them. <\/p>\n

Boyd said (slide 118):<\/p>\n

Observations Related To Moral Conflict<\/b><\/p>\n

No fixed recipes for organization, communications, tactics, leadership, etc.<\/p>\n

Wide freedom for subordinates to exercise imagination and initiative – yet harmonize within intent of superior commanders.<\/p>\n

Heavy reliance upon moral<\/u> (human values) instead of material superiority as basis for cohesion and ultimate success.<\/p>\n

Commanders must create a bond and breadth of experience based upon trust – not mistrust – for cohesion.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think that sums it up better than anything I can think of tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I keep trying to weld together the liberal “root causes” half of my worldview on this War on Terror\/ War on Bad with the conservative-leaning “direct action” half. A brilliant Colonel named John Boyd was there first. Here are his insights, and how they fit into my dilemma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}