Patterns of Conflict Slide 128

Patterns of Conflict

Patterns of Conflict Slide 128

Quantico Transcription

So knowing that, and thinking about what we’ve been through here, some words you could put to it in a very general sense, the goal would— in a sense, what you’re trying to do, is you’re trying to diminish your adversary’s freedom of action. Cut his ability down to do the kind of things that he wants to do, at the same time, improve your ability or improve your freedom of action. As a result, you can shape and cope with events and efforts as they unfold. He will be unable to stay up with you. That’s sort of your goal. You want to lay that on, in a very general

sense. I don’t want to make this specific now. We’re not talking about going to Nicaragua, or Chile, or wherever you’re going. Or even in our own country. We’re just saying, we want a general idea. What are we really trying to achieve here? In a very general sense. Remember, I want to keep it very general now.

Okay, knowing that, we say, let’s look at our plan. Straight Sun Tzu. You got to know your enemy. Remember he said, “Well, you got to know yourself.” Strength, weakness, maneuvers, intentions. Remember what I said Palmer said, and what Krepinevich, we never knew our enemy over there. We got to reach inside his system. And if you don’t reach inside, how are you going to exploit weakness? It’s kind of tough. Or expose vulnerability? Play the weakness vis-a-vis the vulnerability. It’s going to get very tough.

And then apply a variety of measures. Menace, uncertainty, and mistrust. We put in the moral dimensions, as well as ambiguity, deception, and novelty. That way, you have a basis for not only breaking down his ties, but also disorienting or twisting his mental images. So he can’t even cope with the world, with that environment you’re exposing him to. Therefore, in a sense, we magnify our presence and activities. In other words, Christ, they think we’re everywhere but nowhere, like the Mongols. And like what Liddell Hart discusses.

And then, you want to select an initiative or response that is least expected. Some people say unexpected. Well, you’ve got to expect his best. But at least, least expected, so he can’t cope with it. And not only a physical sense, we’re talking about moral and mental sense as well. Remember, we’re always keeping the moral, mental, and physical in mind.

Then you want to set up your focus of main effort, or if you want to call it your focus of effort, together with your other related effort, and pursue those directions that permit—note what I’m saying here—permit many happenings. Because you only have one thing and that gets blocked, the game’s over. You want to have many things, because what you’re doing, you’re trying to put him in a position where he can’t keep up with the activity; he can’t discern what’s going on. Also, many branches. It doesn’t mean you’re going to pursue them all, but what you’re doing, you’re giving yourself the opportunity to lever him on your terms, keep the initiative. And threaten alternative objectives. Remember, I said Liddell Hart had brought that up. In other words, have more than one objective so you can shift gears and always keep him rolling under your punch. Okay?

Then move along those paths. In fact, what you do by doing that, you’re really setting up the paths of least resistance. By setting it up, maybe getting him to reveal himself, so now you can roll through those paths of least resistance. Morally, mentally, and physically. Either reinforce or exploit successes. And then here’s something important. Note what we want to do. We want to exploit, rather than disrupt or destroy, those differences, frictions, obsessions, et cetera, that interfere with his ability to cope with unfolding circumstances.

Let me give you an example there. The guerrillas do it very nicely, and this is what I mean by this. Let’s say there’s a guerrilla operation going on, as you want an example, and there’s a corrupt province chief in there. Well, normally, the people tend to try to go through the guerrillas, to get them to try to take out that corrupt province chief. The guerrillas say, “Bullshit.

No, no. Don’t take out the corrupt province chief.” I’m going to show you how these guys are tough. Instead of taking out the corrupt province chief, by having him there, he becomes a recruiting poster for the people to come over to their, against his side. So they resist that until they got the whole thing, then they’ll take his head off. Because he’s a recruiting poster— if they put a good guy in there, then it’s going to make their job tougher. See what I’m getting at?

[10:00] I mean, this is why you got to think through this stuff. Now, if they make too big a fuss, then they’re going to have to take him out. But they sort of would like to use him as long as they can, as a recruiting poster. It’s a very subtle, very insidious game. And then, subvert or— I’m just using that as one example.

And then these concepts, subvert, disorient, and the idea is go after those critical connections. In other words, find out— to generate those many non-cooperative centers of gravity that we’re talking about here. So you can break down their cohesion and then you can mop them up. Absorption or mop them up, as the case may be, that’s what you’re trying to do. So these are the kinds of things you sort of want to—you don’t memorize. These are the sort of things that you just kind of get as part of your thinking, sort of in the back of your head. Don’t get them too present, because pretty soon you can’t think. You’re only worried about filling squares. They’re just sort of back there.

And then your action. Observe, orient, to be more inconspicuous, do it quicker, and be more irregular. Remember what I told you about Jomini. About the Cossack cavalry. Had a big a discussion between the Cossack cavalry and these other cavalries, like the French cavalry. And he talked about, boy, the irregularity, was hard to figure out what they’re doing and all that, but yet, they seem to do things to a common purpose. And he said, he made the remark that, oh, Lloyd, the guy that preceded him. He said he recognized that was—the Cossack cavalry was better than the other cavalries because of that. But then, as he looked at the evidence, he said, “In a sense, Lloyd was right. But we all know the regular cavalry is better.” So he voted against himself, even after he looked at his evidence. But we don’t do that today. We don’t vote against ourselves, even after we see the evidence. Only Jomini does that. And that’s what I’m trying to tell you. When you see it, don’t fight it. You say, “God, is it true? Do I [unintelligible]?” And you say, “It’s true.” And so therefore, you’re going to have to get over your preconceptions, say, “Goddamn, we’re going to have to face that thing.” And Jomini didn’t face it. That’s a good example.

I showed Mike in there. You go to get the book, it’s right in there like that. It’s very clear. You read it, you say, “I can’t believe this!” Clear as a bell. He voted the wrong way. And just like I told you, in the Civil War. You’re looking at the book, Attack and Die— I don’t know how many people read it. And Forward into Battle. What you wanted— it’s Civil War, I mean, not— yeah.

Attack and Diewas Civil War, Forward into Battle covered a lot of those wars in the 19th century. And where these formations would break down, because they broke down, the attack would succeed. And so they thought they just blundered into a victory. They didn’t realize that the formation, these regular formations, were making them unable to succeed. Once again, voted the wrong way. The writing’s right here. I looked at it and said, “My God, here it is.” And they couldn’t see their own evidence, because they had their biases fixed by all those drill regulations they’d been looking at for twenty, thirty, forty and fifty years. We all know that they’re good drill regulations.

And that’s why you’ve got to always try to—one thing I haven’t brought up. You always should try to unravel your own ideas. When you look at it, say, try to keep unraveling your own preconceptions. Make that an honest process within yourself. I mean, you’re not doing it to have chaos, you’re just doing it to be sure you don’t have biases that are not allowing you to face the situation. So these are the kind of things. The basic idea. By doing it— look at this. More equipped to be more irregular. Christ, the other guy says, “What the hell’s going on here?” See, that allows you to get inside his loop. So therefore you can shape your main effort and go out and unexpectedly penetrate vulnerabilities and weaknesses exposed by that effort, or the other efforts you’ve got going on, that tends to free things up. In other words, sort of like a cheng/chi idea that we talked about. Okay?

And then, your support. Your communication, your logistics. The other— one is to maintain cohesion of the overall effort, and the other one is so you can operate at appropriate base of operations. Want to be sure you have that.

And then finally, your command. Look, I call this command with a light touch. Decentralize in the tactical sense, in other words, you want those guys to be tigers. Give them freedom of action within a common outlook, a common frame of reference. And then, by doing that, as they see those opportunities open up, they go through. They streak through. I call this command with a light touch. Remember, the more you try to control somebody—what we were talking about before—the less control you really have. You want exert control through your value system, through your common ideas, common outlook. That’s your control measure. Not say, “Do this exactly this way,” because you lose your control when you do that. And I can’t overemphasize that.

And then centralize in the strategic sense, because that’s the overall—where you’re worried about establishing aims, matching ambition to the means and talents, sketching flexible plans, allocating resources, shaping the overall focus of effort. Even Patton understood that. He told his colonels, “Get the hell out of the tactics. You’re only going to muck up the operation.” You probably saw that. Remember you saw—

Wyly: Oh, sure. I found that in the—

Boyd: Yeah. I’m not quoting him, but I’m paraphrasing.

Wyly: No, I’m afraid you are. I quoted them in a Gazette article.

Boyd: Yeah. “You’re going to screw up the goddamn operation. Get the hell out of the tactics. That’s not your job.” Told his colonels that, now stay the hell out of it. So he understood that.

Okay? Knowing that, now what I want to do is, I want to sort of focus on this plan and action. I want to play with that a little bit, you see what I’m saying? So let’s play with that. [15:00]