Culminating Points

William Lind talks here about the Clausewitzian culminating point as applied to 4GW. A culminating point is the point at which an attack becomes ineffective and the advantge switches over to a defender. A victory, if pushed too far, becomes a defeat. This is like the equilibrium model in economics--both are based on classical physics. Everything, in the long run, swings back from an extreme. Lind is arguing that 4GW presents a new kind of culminating point:

[The culminating point] represents both the point at which the invader is doing himself more harm than good by staying and the point beyond which he does not need to stay. If the political middle can fight the invader and more extreme 4GW elements at the same time, it is probably strong enough to defeat the latter. We have seen this happen in Sunni-controlled regions in Iraq. Once American forces stopped fighting the nationalist Sunni resistance, those Sunni fighters wiped out al Qaeda.

The problem with regular culminating points is recognizing them, especially when one is consumed by the rush of victory. But in irregular warfare, recognizing a culminating a point is even more difficult. One of my favorite articles in Parameters is Clancy and Crossett's essay last year on the immense difficulty of constructing metrics for irregular war. Standard MOE (Measures of Effectiveness) that employ regular OOB (order of battle) analysis won't cut it, as Robert McNamara and the Johnson-era DOD discovered. One must instead measure such intangibles as legitimacy, sustainability, and stability--the messy business of "hearts and minds."

If irregular warfare is inherently postpostivist, then we are dealing with qualitiative analysis that is more subjective. Thus, cognitive biases are deadlier in the determination of the culminating point than they would be in conventional warfare.