Intellectual Circles and Security

Bill Petti has an interesting post on how new discoveries and ideas come about:

"We tend to think of ideas as 1) creations of single, brilliant individuals, and 2) unique in history, rather than derivative. Narratives of great discoveries suggest that ideas are created de novo from individual minds. However, if we take the time to deeply explore many of the greatest breakthroughs in science, art, etc, we find that the greatest ideas are the result of communities of thinkers and their combination, in unique and creative ways, of pre-existing ideas. To use Ridley’s metaphor, communities take existing ideas and breed them. That reproduction results in mutations and recombinations, which create a new species of idea that is superior to existing populations of ideas that we all then benefit from. Knowledge creation has an evolutionary and communal character to it."

In defense history, this is often a good explanation for doctrinal advancement. For example, the 1920s debates that resulted in the creation of Soviet operational science (and the term "operational art") were the result of the reinterpretation of 19th century Imperial Russian operational thinking and practice, paired with the importation of German thinkers such as Schlichting and Clausewitz as well as British interwar theorists like JFC Fuller and Basil Liddell-Hart (although the Soviets did not think much of either Englishman). Also considered was the Russo-Japanese War, the 19th century German operational record in 1866 and 1870, the Russo-Turkish conflict, and seen somewhat distantly the American Civil War's distributed campaigns.

These ideas, paired with the experience of World War I's Eastern Front, the Soviet Civil War, and the Soviet campaign beyond the Vistula against Poland and the challenges of preparing a backward state for the next great war, created a fertile ground for debate. Stalinism had not quite set in yet, and there was still a space for the debate between supporters of attrition (Svechin) and younger thinkers more fixated on operational annihilation (Tukhachevskii and Triandfillov).

As numerous books and articles have pointed out, the current COIN movement in America is also a product of collaboration between serving military officers of a number of different branches, military historians, and interested civilian academics from a variety of different fields.

Comments

[YN2(SW) H. Lucien Gauthier III]

Great article.

Very few ideas are novel. Even fewer doctrines, tactics or anything in the military is truly innovative. But, it doesn't have to be. In many respects the last 20 years of technological development has skewed the perceptions of what is and is not 'a good idea'. It must be dozens of office Fitness Reports I've seen that used the term 'paradigm breaking'. Where as none of the officers' work really was. But, the only thing that seems good any more to most military minds is something so game changing so 'paradigm breaking' that is pretty much is impossible, or the true effects are blown out of proportion (DDG-1000, LCS, FCS, any major military procurement).

[A.E.]

On that note, you might enjoy this: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/dod/dart_guide.pdf