Patterns of Conflict Slide 52

Patterns of Conflict

Patterns of Conflict Slide 52

Quantico Transcription

Boyd: So, we tie it all together. This is a good stopping point. Tomorrow night we’ll start with WWI. Any questions before we depart? We got off track a few times but I enjoyed it. I hope you did.

Audience: When you talk about multiple thrusts—

Boyd: Yeah, we’ll talk more about that. I’m not getting into a bunch right now.

[tape pauses, then begins with lecture the next day]

Boyd: We left off, remember we left off at the— [shuffling paper] here on this side, and when I’m done I’ll go to the other side.

[cross talk, shuffling paper]

How’s that? That pretty good, or is that bad? Do I have it good?

Audience: Good.

Boyd: Is this about right? Good, okay. Before we continue, I’ll answer some questions. Any questions from last night, or we can dive right on. What we want to do is, we want to pick it up from now and go from WWI on. Any other questions from last night? Anything? Okay, let’s launch then.

What I want to do now is continue to discuss—

Audience: Sir, could you go over your— explain the thing about center of gravity? I got

confused on that last night. You didn’t like the term, then you started talking about vulnerabilities—

Boyd: Well, let me go back to the way Clausewitz used it. He said— If you go back, I don’t have that chart. I don’t want to dig back in here, but if you go back to that chart where Clausewitz used it— back to Clausewitz. If you recall, he said it’s where the mass is concentrated most densely. That’s just not true. The center of gravity is, like I said, in donuts where there is no mass, or the hollow steel ball, so, you know, it’s really bad once you accept that.

Say we accept his definition. Let’s just say whether we believe it or not, we’re just going to accept it, period, right now. If you accept that, that it’s where mass concentrates most densely, then you go after that, then you’ve got strength against strength. That’s where the mass is concentrated most densely. We said we’re going after that, so you’re going right after the mass, strength against strength. It throws you right into that. It doesn’t have to be. It’s really that connectivity. Things that hold together. As long as you can destroy that connectivity, you can pull it apart. That’s why I say public opinion is so important. Like the Vietnam War, it’s what pulled us out of Vietnam. You can get the public opinion, you get those connections that permit an organic whole to stick together. If it flies apart you, many non-cooperative centers of gravity, the game’s over. If you isolate the constituents, one from another.

So his whole concept of center of gravity, which we use— we’re going to go after the guy’s strategic center of gravity. I don’t know what the hell people are talking about. I say, “what is that?” They say, “Well, you know what it is.” No, I don’t, because I read Clausewitz and he’s wrong, and I know you’re using it. [35:00]How many people here have taken physics? Anybody? The center of gravity is always where the mass is concentrated in the most dense region. It can be.

Audience: It’s not necessarily.

Boyd: It’s not necessarily. It may be. In a donut, the center of gravity is in a hole. In a hollow steel ball, it’s where the steel isn’t. So the whole concept is baloney, the way he said it. It could be, but because he did that, then he said, “Now we’re going to use all our effort to go against that center of gravity.” Christ, that’s mass smashing into mass by his definition, which is incorrect, it’s unsuitable. It could be but not necessarily. That’s why the center of gravity is a lousy concept. We say, “we’re going to go after guy’s strategic center of gravity.” I don’t know what the hell that is. What are we talking about? What is that?

So, if you’re going to go after a center of gravity, if you can identify the center of gravity, not using Clausewitz’s definition, but let’s use a true definition of center of gravity. In other words, those things that permit an organic whole to stay together, whatever they are: moral, mental, physical. Then you want to find that thing that allows them to retain their connectivity. So if I can break down those connections and get everything flying off in different directions, now you’ve got many what I call non-cooperatives. Each one’s a little center of gravity not connected up with the other one, you’ve got many non-cooperative centers of gravity. Then you scarf them up. But unfortunately, when you use that strategic center of gravity, they act like they know ahead of time. “We know exactly where that strategic center of gravity is.” You know, you’re imposing certainty in an inherently uncertain process, is what I’m trying to say.

Audience: Can you go back then, Colonel Boyd, and talk about vulnerability in relation to the concept? I think we went through that last night—

Boyd: Now, vulnerability— And I think it’s another way of looking at it. Those kind of things your adversary depends upon, you may not know whether one is better than the other. You say, “Well, these things look very important.” We’ve assessed it. We got inside it. You know, in the words of Sun Tzu, “Know your enemy,” and all that sort of stuff. At least somewhat we know him—We say—Okay, you know, he really depends on them. These allow him to do what he wants to do, whatever they are. So we should direct our activities against those. Once again, you’ve got to be careful. He has probably also made an assessment, he’s vulnerable there. So he’s going to tend to protect those very heavily. In other words, critical vulnerabilities, he’s probably also made that assessment. He may not have, but you’ve got to figure he may have.

Good possibility. So, therefore, you don’t want to go directly after those so-called critical vulnerabilities, because that also means strength smashing into strength. Instead, you want to exploit the weaknesses, so you can expose those vulnerabilities, so that they become unprotected. Then you can take them.

Audience: What if you don’t have an option? You can’t go—

Boyd: It’s nice you said there’s no option, because then that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, to say there’s no other option. So you get a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s my viewpoint. There’s all kinds of options.

Audience: Not belaboring the point, in World War II, did we have the option in the Pacific campaign other than going straight out among the islands—

Boyd: Yeah, MacArthur, initially he was going to do island hopping. Remember, his initial concept was island hopping, one after another.

Audience: But the island—

Boyd: Wait a minute. He was going to do island hopping, one after another until eventually the

idea was to reach Japan. Pretty soon they said, “Hey, this is not such a good idea. This could take forever.” So then he started doing leapfrogging and cutting off those other things by cutting their lines of communication, so they withered on the vine. They couldn’t do it. He went into a leapfrogging campaign. He’s cutting that which they depend upon. In other words, if they can’t get outside nourishment, support, et cetera., it’s kind of hard to play the game.

Audience: Is that a center of gravity then?

Boyd: If you want to use that. I call it vulnerability. I don’t like that word. You see, I’m ducking away from that word “center of gravity.” It’s got too much bad baggage with it. It may be “a” center of gravity. But see, what they do—They want people—It’s not so bad to recognize there’s more than one center of gravity. In other words, there are centers of gravity depending upon subsystems and all that kind of stuff, see. Because even when physicists or mathematicians use it, they don’t take the whole universe. They say, this thing that we’re going to examine, here’s a center of gravity. There might be another one over here, because of other things they examined, too. Like I took a donut. I could have put that in a larger concept, and it would be a different center of gravity. You know, it’s in the hole. See, they’re going to go after “the” strategic center of gravity. They might be able to identify that but— Go ahead.

Audience: Sir, what would you call the will of the people? For example, the American aversion to protracted war, would you call that a weakness? A vulnerability? Or a center of gravity for the enemy to try and get—

Boyd: It might be a center of gravity but now see, will— Now you’re taking something more abstract. [40:00]You’re not taking the mass, per se. You’re looking at what permits the people to have a center of gravity? What permits that? Since you want to use the term, you used it. So now we’re going to use that term. What permits a center of gravity for the people? You say,

we’re going to go after the will of the people, so we are going to infer that that’s a center of gravity. What permits that center of gravity to be? If you don’t understand what permits that, what are you going to do, attack all the people? That doesn’t work. That’s bullshit. So that means you can’t use the center of gravity concept. So if you’re going to use that, you can do it. Then what permits that to go after that center of gravity. That’s what I’m asking. You have to understand.

Audience: Mass understanding or national understanding.

Boyd: So what are you going to do, just get on the radio and say, “Hey, I’m going after your will. Surrender?” I am going to force you to cough it up.

Audience: I would say propaganda.

Audience: There you go, sir. Propaganda.

Boyd: Propaganda? Just because you’ve got propaganda, doesn’t mean you have subverted their will.

Audience: How would I go about doing that?

Boyd: Yeah, but what is it you’re going after? If you’re going to use propaganda—
Audience: A national consensus, a national agreement—
Boyd: How are you going to get after that—
Audience: Well, for example, World War II, did we not have more or less national consensus it was the right war, the right time, the right places?

Boyd: That was only to solidify our own center of gravity, if you want to use that term. That was for us. But I’m talking about, we’re going to try and undermine the adversary’s center of gravity. We’re trying to just solidify our own. How are we going to undermine his? The guerrillas do it very well. The guerrillas really undermine the centers of gravity very well. They figured it out. I’m giving you a hint.

Audience: Protracted war.

Boyd: Nah, no, you’re not getting—
Audience: Through the use of violence.

Boyd: That’s only part of it.

Audience: Well, yes, sir, but it is our troops being put in a position where they commit atrocities and then publicized—
Boyd: But he wanted to go after the peoples’ center of gravity.

Audience: And then the death that occurs on each side, and then the publication of that death.

All erodes the national will. That goes back to the Constitution which starts out, “We, the people.” It’s the use of violence on both sides, publicized by the adversary, which subverts ultimately, over time, the national will.

[cross talk]
Audience: The use of violence is not explained in a way that the people would accept.

Boyd: See, now, Mike’s starting to come up with— what you want to do is, if you want to subvert or pull apart a guy’s center of gravity. Note the words, “pulling apart.” You want to find out what are those bonds, those connections that permit that organic whole to exist. You know, people aren’t glued together. There are certain bonds or connections or rules of conduct, codes of conduct, standards of behavior. You want to see what they are. Then what you do, what the guerrillas do, they do it very cleverly. They say, okay, now, let’s look at the leadership and see if they’re abiding by those bonds, and then we’ll use your word “propaganda,” and they show the mismatch. The leader says this, but here’s what he’s doing. In other words, they’ve got a mismatch between the rhetoric and the reality, and they bring it up.

Not only that, they show people scarfing off funds and all that kind of stuff. Not only that, he does that in a situation where people are getting screwed. Remember I talked about that last night? Under what circumstances can you use ethics against somebody? It’s when they feel like they’re getting screwed. They’re going to get very interested in ethics because “I’m goddamned getting screwed.” So then you can develop as many non-cooperative centers of gravity, so they can’t fight as an organic whole. That’s based on what? What is the quickest way you can destroy an organization? Anybody? A Marine should understand this right off the bat. What is it? The quickest way you destroy an organization?

Audience: Destroy the morale.

Boyd: Go even deeper. How do you destroy morale? Mistrust. And when you see these guys playing these dirty games, you’re building mistrust inside the organization, and it no longer can function as a whole. Mistrust and discord. You build that up and Christ, they’re going to come unglued. Now, granted, you use violence as a part of doing that. I’m not saying that, but it’s only part of it. See, that’s how they work on it. So what we’re going to do is, we’re going to go out and have an attrition campaign and just pile up body counts and they’re going to surrender.

That’s probably going to make then madder than hell and they won’t surrender. That’s why your leaders and your people’s leaders or future leaders or lower level leaders, you’ve got to set the example. You can’t say one thing and then do another. Because your subordinates are observing you and they say, “That dirty bastard. We’ve got to do this but he doesn’t have to.”

So if you’re a leader, you’ve got to set the example. You’ve got to be tougher on yourself than you are on your own people, and if you’re unwilling to do that, as far as I’m concerned you should get the hell out of the Marine Corps or any service. You should be tougher on yourself.

Because they’re observing you all the time. They’re not going to tell you, because they know you have authority, but they’re observing you. In other words, can they trust you? If you do that kind of stuff, you’re going to already sow bonds of mistrust—I mean not bonds, but disconnect bonds of trust. You’ll be sowing mistrust. That’s what the guerrillas, they play that game. Of course, you can exacerbate with terrorism, but if you do terrorism wrong, you also can make it go the wrong way, which I’ll talk about later on. We’re going to get into some of that. Okay? That’s why, if you have a chance, hear my strategy pitch. Because I get into that moral stuff very heavily. [45:00]We get into this stuff. I show you different ways you can pull a goddamn organization down around its socks. [unintelligible]

All I know is, it didn’t work out too good. So why was the American will subverted, vis-à-vis Vietnam? It’s because our leadership was telling us one thing, and the people were coming back and telling something else. We’re winning the war. Goddamn, we’re going to win it by this time.

Everything is going good. Christ, in the meantime, we’ve got Tet ‘68 and all this other stuff going on and the guys are coming back saying—You know what helped exacerbate that? The one-year tour. Because the guys are going over there and coming back, and what they’re doing is they’re spreading among their friends, so the whole thing just builds up a groundswell. So, they found our strategic center of gravity; it was the will of the American people. And in a sense, we looked in the mirror and did it to ourselves. Okay, I don’t want to take too much time with that, because we’re going to get into some of it later on.