Grim's Hall

MilSci #2

You may have missed KGC's early reactions to Warfighting, but I'd like to draw your attention to what he noticed:

I finished Chapter 1 this weekend, and here are the key phrases I underlined / took home with me.

Human will factors hugely into the author's descriptions of war.

WAR DEFINED, p4:
"The object in war is to impose our will on our enemy."

FRICTION, p6:
"One essential means to overcome friction is the will; we prevail over friction through persistent strength of mind and spirit. ...we must attempt at the same time to raise our enemy's friction to a level that weakens his ability to fight."

He also points out the inherent chaos of war, and what little we can do to combat it (as well as noticing the "butterfly effect" of "small actions":

UNCERTAINTY, p7:
"The very nature of war makes certainty impossible; all actions in war will be based on incomplete, inaccurate, or even contradictory information."

p8:
"...we can never eliminate uncertainty, we must learn to fight effectively despite it...by developing simple, flexible plans; planning for likely contingencies; developing standing operating procedures; and fostering initiative among subordinates."

p8:
"Outcomes of battles can hinge on the actions of a few individuals... ."

FLUIDITY, p9: "Since war is a fluid phenomenon, its conduct requires flexibility of thought."

He points out that war is an event somewhat like a symphony (my analogy) with rising and falling action:

p10: "The tempo of war will fluctuate from periods of intense combat to periods in which activity is limited... ."

DISORDER, p11:
"...we cannot think of today's battlefield in linear terms... ." "The natural result of dispersion is unoccupied areas, gaps, and exposed flanks which can and will be exploited..."

"...we must not only be able to fight effectively in the face of disorder, we should seek to generate disorder and use it as a weapon against our opponent."

This struck me as being an especially effective insurgency tactic.

COMPLEXITY, p12: "In reality, each belligerant is not a single, homogenous will guided by a single intelligence. ... War... emerges from the collective behavior of al the individual parts in the system interacting locally in response to local conditions and incomplete information." -- the obvious home-court advantage. "...Efforts to fully centralize millitary operations and to exert complete control by a single decisionmaker are inconsistent with the intrinsically complex and distributed nature of war."

PHYSICAL, MORAL, and MENTAL FORCES, p15: "Although material factors are more easily quantified, the moral and mental forces exert a greater influence on the nature and outcome of war."

The SCIENCE, ART and DYNAMIC of WAR: "Art includes the creative, situational application of scientific knowledge through judgment and experience, and so the art of war subsumes the science of war." "...the conduct of war is...human competition requiring...the knowledge of science and the creativity of art but driven ulimately by the power of human will."

I think this would be a good place to begin a discussion, for those who've had time to read this far. War is primarily about human will. Napoleon said "the morale is to the physical as three is to one."

One of the tasks of the enemy in warfighting, then, is to try to sap your will to fight. What are some ways to counter that? This is posed as a general question for discussion, not specific to the situation in Iraq, or to insurgency/counterinsurgency fighting. In all wars, it will be necessary to raise, boost, and maintain morale in the face of an enemy effort to break it. What kinds of things can you do in this regard?