Dancing in Afghanistan (updated)

Seriously now, consider this fascinating paradox of shared system aims and adversarialism.

System Concept 1: A nation’s military is an enterprise system aimed to fight and win wars.

System Concept 2: The system we define as “war” is one in which two or more military systems engage in the enterprise of protracted combat with the aim to overcome the opposing system’s aim to fight and win.

System 1 can be viewed as a subsystem of system 2.

These two systems are clearly related to one another. In system 1, leadership works hard to assure that all of the subsystems, parts, and individuals share aims, but are the aims shared in system 2?

In traditional warfare, the meeting of armies on the field of combat was based in shared system aims. The old saw “It takes two to Tango” comes to mind. Anthropologists say that the ancient art of war was actually based in a shared set of aims in which certain symbolic acts served to define the outcome to the satisfaction of the warring parties. Shared symbolic aims such as the American Indian’s “counting coup” were an economical means of settling disputes.

Modern “Clausewitzian” warfare — all out war — was still founded in shared aims. Chief among these shared aims was the idea of the nation-state and the leadership structure (sub-systems) that defined the state. In this system of war, the shared aim was to disable state leadership and break the economic and political systems of the opponent. So long as these aims were shared, the system of war worked.

Consider today’s war in Afghanistan. Obama’s problem is that the warring parties do not share aims. Afghanistan is not a nation-state. It is a vast region inhabited by tribes that do not even acknowledge the borders drawn on maps of the region. The aims of Afghan paramilitary systems do not match those of our traditional Clausewitzian military. We seek decisive, winnable, battle in order to behead leadership using a list of most wanted terrorists and Taliban leaders.

The Afghan tribal fighters aim for tribal honor in multi-generational vendetta. They don’t have a doctrine of decisive battle and “winning”. They attack targets of opportunity, count coup, and fade away into the deserts and mountains to await new opportunities. Like the Energizer Bunny, they just keep going, and going, and going. When a leader is beheaded, a new one emerges in short order.

In other words, we do the Tango while they do the Samba and so long as we fail to share aims, there is no “system of war” as defined in system 2 above. There is no war to be won. There is only perpetual conflict.

This problem is not fully understood by the US military, though I suspect Obama gets it and this is keeping him awake a night. Various system redefinitions have been tried by the US military. Asymmetrical Warfare and Counter-insurgency are a few of the ideas being used by those attempting to change the aims of the US military mission in Afghanistan. Sadly, these revisionist concepts still miss the point, largely because the American military doesn’t understand the nature of systems and aiming, as explained by Deming.

UPDATE: The latest strategy announced, is to stop hunting and killing combatants and start protecting the civilian population. Nonsense. Even if it were possible identify the civilians members of the various tribes, the dividing line between combatants and civilians cannot be determined. The US military needs to get down off its high horse and start taking Samba lessons.

Now consider Deming’s view of competitors (adversaries), in which a worthy competitor is good thing.

Is anyone listening?