Cutting the Crap
Posted by Tim Stevens on 12 July 2008
Speaking as someone who holds down violent urges at the mention of ’synergy’, I appreciate Pat Porter’s new post at Kings of War on Doctrine and Jargon:
Brian Linn argues in his excellent new study of American strategic culture that while we lack a coherent concept of the nature of the current war, we are left with technocratic gibberish, the Pentagon-speak of ‘capabilities organised cross-enterprise, adapting dynamically to uncertainty and turbulence in a multi-dimensional, nonlinear, competitive environment.’
Given that military doctrine is simply the principles that guide action, it should be clear and quickly understood. Once it becomes too elaborate by trying to replicate the complexity of the world, once it uses language that makes it too indigestible, then it stops being doctrine.
Read more wise words here. I’m curious what debate it’ll generate from KoW’s practitioner and academic readership.
12 July 2008 at 3:58 pm
Hmmm. A consequence of the Petraeus every-soldier-a-PhD, every-grunt-a-T.E.Lawrence world?
12 July 2008 at 4:26 pm
Good point. There’s nowt wrong with the soldier-scholar ethos, as long as practitioners can communicate clearly.
12 July 2008 at 6:56 pm
Talk about banging your head against the wall. I’m not an authority but I’d wager a bet that how we communicate is one of the most difficult things to change.
12 July 2008 at 8:09 pm
Jeffrey,
I know what you mean, but surely the communication of which we speak is a function or symptom of a deeper condition, namely the relative inability of institutions to be truly self-aware and their consequent inability to learn and adapt, at least rapidly enough for operational requirements. This is the Nagl argument stated badly, I grant you, but he’s got a point, although (as Mike says above) he might also be part of the problem.