QUOTE: Dissipative Structures at War

"So in a sense, (John) Boyd saw conflict not just as a contest between two (or more) knowledge / novelty-generating systems but between dissipative structures." Chet Richards

NOTES: Isolate your opponent from the external environment to prevent energy acquisition and trap entropy (force them towards thermodynamic equilibrium and "heat death"). Increase your own connectivity to acquire energy and expel entropy faster (movement farther away from thermodynamic equilibrium and greater structural complexity).

Comments

[Duncan Kinder]

"Isolate your opponent from the external environment to prevent energy acquisition and trap entropy"

1) How do you identify X as one's "opponent." When, where, how, and under what circumstances do we determine that we cannot or should not continue to do business with X?

2) What if one's opponent is sitting on top of something one needs? E.g., the Saudis are sitting on top of oil we need; the Chinese are sitting on top of money we need. "Isolate" them and we thereby damage ourselves.

[Cavolonero]

We used to call this one ' The Bohemian Corkscrew ' ~

[Terry]

Is it possible to implement this strategy quickly? Is this is a strategy that can be just implemented? Would this, preferably, require a long range pre-meditated plan that uses all the guile of covert operations and the very integrated and skillful finesse of all the elements of National Power?
If one is looking to implement this rather quickly and with, "plausible deniability", then supporting and instigating a rebellion might be a viable option. Regrettably, our past track record of success "post operations" with the groups we support has not been altogether good. On the other hand, if one needs International consensus then we can also surmise the time frame required if the UN Security Council is the arbitor. Economic sanctions may be lame duck as well (Iran?).
What of the fundamental paradigm shift required in thinking, task organizing, leading and implementing such a strategy within institutional cultures that are not accepting of a new dynamic approach? How would one compensate for the inevitable political, diplomatic, economic or military compromise that might wreck the original intent of the plan?
Lastly, what if one needs to keep the "infrastructure" relatively intact? Of course these are all important analysis considerations that hopefully one contemplates with the cost benefit and 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th order effects.

[Eric Hacker]

Duncan Kinder:

1) One's opponents are those that do not let one have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

2) The only thing one needs from an opponent is peace. Everything else is a desire, not a need. One gets things one desires from connectivity through mutually rewarding transactions with others. One gains opponents when one engages in deceptive transactions that are not mutually rewarding.

While our desire for oil may have benefited a few Arabs, historically it has not been to the benefit of all Arabs. The same could be said of our desire for cheap Chinese labor.

[Duncan Kinder]

"One's opponents are those that do not let one have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

So the Sunni tribes, who we are now supporting but formerly opposed, now favor life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness but only a few years ago fought against it?

And Stalin, during WWII, transformed himself into a beacon of liberty only to revert to his evil ways after the war was over?

The list is endless. The problem with slogans such as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is that they can be used to obfuscate rather than to convey information.

What would be more interesting, so far as I am concerned, would be a careful study of the Japanese during their negotiations with us during late 1941, just prior to Pearl Harbor.

According to John Toland in _The Rising Sun, the Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire_, the Japanese initially were pursuing a parallel track strategy in their dealings with the United States, negotiating seriously yet also preparing to strike in the event the negotiations should fail. It was only after Cordell Hull sent them a hostile memorandum in - as I recall - October, that they concluded that negotiations would be fruitless and that a strike was necessary. It was only from that point onwards that they conducted negotiations as a smokescreen.
http://www.amazon.com/Rising-Sun-Decline-Japanese-1936-1945/dp/0812968581/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211657949&sr=8-1

History is filled with the warp and woof of shifting relationships. When and how did Benedict Arnold actually become a traitor? Xerxes foolishly engaged in the Battle of Salamis because he believed incorrectly that Themistocles was a traitor. And so forth.

Trying to define "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" provides no assistance in studying such matters.

[adam]

Duncan,

I think I see what Eric is saying, but I'm not completely sure.

"1) One's opponents are those that do not let one have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

The key part of that is the do not let one, assuming that means they do not allow you to have "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Of course the problem with that, as you note, is that different things make different people happy, and I'm not sure its in the power of someone to let someone else have happiness. It is possible for someone to generate unhappiness for others though.

"2) The only thing one needs from an opponent is peace. Everything else is a desire, not a need. One gets things one desires from connectivity through mutually rewarding transactions with others. One gains opponents when one engages in deceptive transactions that are not mutually rewarding."

Actually I think that this is the most important part of the note that Eric left. Not all transactions in American foreign policy have rewarded the other side - in many nations its been a fairly lopsided relationship, and left the loser rather unwilling to help the US.

Bin Laden appears to have altered one fundamental relationship. He wrote a polemic when oil was $7 a barrel about the low oil price stealing from Muslims, he went to war when oil was $20 a barrel. Oil yesterday was $135 a barrel.

That means that Saudi makes around $300-$350bn a year more than it did 10 years ago. Unsurprisingly the Americans (and the rest of the world) are feeling the fallout from this as their economies suffer. Now that's what happens when a mutually rewarding relationship breaks down.

[Duncan Kinder]

Adam:

Another illustration of what I mean would be the Battle of Bosworth Field, which was decided by the last minute intervention by the Stanleys on behalf of Henry Tudor and against Richard III. The posture of the Stanleys previously had been ambiguous.

One could well argue - and I personally believe - that the Stanleys themselves had not made up their minds until just about the time they actually sided with Henry. It was as if they had previously been in a state of quantum Yorkist-Tudor flux until someone opened the door and out popped the pro-Tudor rather than the pro-Yorkist Stanley.

The best study I know of of this sort of thing, as applied to human relations, is _The Chinese Machiavelli_ by Dennis Bloodworth.
http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Machiavelli-3000-Years-Statecraft/dp/0765805685/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211721722&sr=8-1

[Azr@el]

The Art of War", the great compilation of Chinese warfare popularly attributed to the semi-mythical Sun-Tzu, provides us the best advice to the goal and best practice of any strategist. The ideal of war is to win, i.e. achieve your goals, without fighting. And when you defeat your enemy absorb his strength into yours. Temujin of the tribe of Borjin aptly demonstrated the efficacy of both these pointers.

[Mark]

John,

Thank you. This is a very thought provoking summary of Boyd's ideas. It seems to scale nicely.

I wonder if you can elaborate on the goal 'expel entropy faster'. This is obviously of great importance, but demonstrating the idea with real world examples (in a heat pump, on the play ground, or on the world theatre) require great communication skills.

[Duncan Kinder]

According to the Washington Post, the small, impoverished West African nation, Guinea-Bissau, has become a hub for cocaine distribution into Europe.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/05/24/ST2008052401733.html

Guinea-Bissau is so undeveloped that the Global Guerrillas do not need to hollow it out; it's already there. It's navy, for example, is two speed boats; one of which is out of service.

So they have simply overrun the place.

The scenario seems like one out of a movie, the Seven Samurai, for example, where the bandits have overrun the peaceful villagers.

So is the solution for the Seven Samurai, the Magnificent Seven, or the Lone Ranger to arrive, defeat the bandits, and ride off into the sunset, or are the villagers to defend themselves?

If so, how?

[Eric Nguyen]

Several commenters have touched on an important point in this post and in your original post on dissipative systems, but I wanted to note it explicitly.

The function that translates energy into complexity is far from constant. It is highly dependent on technology, for example (compare joules required to power the Pony Express vs. fiber optic communcation, per byte.) You might call this "efficiency," but my suspicion is that the translation function is much more complicated than that.

In any case, struggling over energy sources is necessary tactic for dissipative system, but a system may prevail with lower energy sources if its energy-to-complexity function outperforms.