Insurgency is an old concept. If you were to travel back to Iraq between 2334 and 2279 BC, you would find a man called Sargan. Sargan ruled a vast empire spanning from Southern Iraq to Southern Turkey, enforced by overwhelming military power. His Akkadian hordes, armed with high-tech composite bows and sophisticated logistics, laid waste to all before them. Their strategy was a simple one; ‘mass slaughter, enslavement, the deportation of defeated enemies, and the total destruction of their cities.’ For years their technological edge and brutal strategy allowed the Akkadians to dominate. When they inevitably fell, however, they did not fall to a superior empire. They were victim to a new phenomenon: a tireless, guerrilla-style attack from the unsophisticated barbarian hordes all around them. In 2190 BC the city of Akkad, near modern Baghdad, finally fell.
In the Mind of the Enemy: Psychology, #Wargames, and the Duel
Over the last eighteen months, the Australian podcast the Dead Prussian has asked each of its guests a simple yet deeply contested question: “What is war?” Answers have ranged from Professor Hal Brand’s insightful “war is a tragic but inescapable aspect of international politics” to my own citation of John Keegan’s “war is collective killing for some collective purpose.”Nobody so far has said that war is a “game”. Thankfully this isn’t surprising; anyone who has fought in war, or just studied it, will be aware that this would trivialise the destruction that can lie within. But it is also of note that nobody so far has labeled war as a duel.
Burning the Village to Save It: Moral Absolutism, Strategy, and the Challenge of the 21st Century
Politicians, strategists, and tacticians need to discuss this problem. There is a group of experts who might help in this conversation, but they, sadly, are rarely invited to the sorts of parties that politicians, strategists, and tacticians attend. They are moral philosophers, and they could be our counsellors. If anything we might at least see the ethical elephant in the room, even if we can’t find him a new, more realistic, home.
Leading into the Abyss? A Reflection on Strategic Failure & Great #Leadership
Our soldiers, officers, and civilians have faced the most intense fighting since Korea, and they have endured the stresses admirably (with remarkably few mistakes given the corrupting nature of war). Nor do I fundamentally disagree with how leadership theory has developed from these experiences; works such as Team of Teams by Stan McCrystal are already helping develop military leaders fitter for the future challenges of war. The problem is that all these remarkable feats of leadership have ultimately been tarnished, infected if you will, by one thing: the dramatic absence of strategy in the Western world since September 11th, 2001.