The last decade has seen two big developments in the academic discipline of International Relations. First and most prominent, the rise of the constructivists – scholars who reflect on the importance of meaning and discourse. Power is not just a material factor, it depends on perception. Less tangible factors like prestige and credibility are important in shaping strategic behaviour, and understanding it. Anarchy, famously, is not a given, but what states make of it. Cultures matter.
The second development is related, but comes from a different wellspring. This is the rise of political psychology. The rational actor model that dominated social science, particularly American social science, is on its way out, superseded by accounts that draw on lab and field research from psychology. Social influence and conformity; the role of emotions and of automatic, instinctive cognition; or our inbuilt cognitive biases — all these shape the way in which we perceive the world around us and reach decisions within it. That’s as true of choosing what to have for dinner, who to vote for, or indeed which countries to invade. Newcomers to the field can start with a range of popular, accessible reads, available from all good airport bookshops: Nudge, Predictably Irrational, Linked, Tipping Point, Blink. All these give a great digest of relevant research, and won’t induce a headache. Despite a long tradition, psychology remains distinctly a minority interest in IR, and more so within the sub-discipline of strategic studies. But that’s changing quickly, led by the rapid surge of interest elsewhere in social science – particularly economics.
The two genres are related – in fact, to my mind they say much the same thing: the way in which humans see the world is rational, but it is not rational in the sense beloved of utilitarian economists or game theoreticians. In large part, it is a constructed world. The world in their minds, you might say. And here’s where a third strand comes in: we’ve been here before. Go back and read Aron and Morgenthau. Take a look at the writings of the English School. Or even dig out the Illiad and the History of the Peloponnesian War. There’s much here that chimes with the new school: what about fear, honour, interest, just to cite Colin Gray’s favourite example? Scholars of strategy have been fishing these waters for a long time. Now, after a brief digression into the world of maths and systems analysis (which reminds me very much of the military’s abortive dalliance with Effects Based Operations), IR and strategic studies are returning to a richer portrayal of the relationship between individuals, groups and violence. This time though, they can draw on science in a more sophisticated way to inform their understanding of how humans behave.
Still, while constructivists and political psychologists are dusting off their EH Carr, they’d do well to remember that realism has endured so long as a tradition (as long as recorded history, really) not just because it is immensely flexible, but also because at some level it says something profound about the ways in which we construct reality and see the others with whom we interact.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
An excellent post. Thank you for that.
If we actually understood the likely effect of our intended operations because we know the enemy’s Centre of Gravity – to the point of it being common sense, then we’re at a point of sound strategic thinking. It doesn’t need a distinct term. Putting it differently, how can we hope to create an untenable situation for our opponent if we do not understand that what would constitute an untenable situation for him?
By implication, there is an underlying conflict for the Counterinsurgency practitioner though. It is within this environment that we identify the “strategic corporal”, and at that level, the operator functions on drills – which lend more to a System-Analytical approach (or appreciations-by-numbers). But what I can identify from your content, (and also agree with), is that the “strategic corporal” needs a fundamental understanding of the Psychological Factors that influence relationships as well.
But therein lies the problem. Formal training in Psychology is not exactly ubiquitous in the military at any level. How could our troops gain that required understanding (and quickly)? We have neither the time, nor the wealth to send all of our “boots on the ground” to university for three years?
I believe that the answer is to immerse.
Using Afghanistan as an example, imagine a dedicated training ground somewhere in California/Nevada/Arizona – mountainous, arid… three replica Afghan villages at 10 km intervals, populated by training staff consisting of Pashtun, imams, anthropologists and psychologists (with strategists as observers). And all military decision-makers scheduled for deployment to Afghanistan spend 3 months there, living as Pashtuns, practicing Pashtunwali, living, toiling, speaking, eating, praying as Pashtuns.
One month into the training course, a second phase… a selection of students are extracted from each village and form insurgent bands (under the guidance of Special Forces who know the opposition). Even have a “Red Force” – a dummy ISAF unit that operates in the area. Every night (after prayer), the entire group receive an intelligence briefing on the latest insurgent behaviour from Afghanistan, (commented on by the specialists), followed by a debrief of both groups (local population and insurgents).
And the final month? A free-for-all “what if” phase in which the “Red Force” are advised by the students to try different things on the ground. The students experiment within this environment on tactics and counter-tactics – and get to experience the effect themselves, first-hand.
Once our practitioners have this understanding of the organisational challenges of the insurgent, and an understanding of what works in the field and what do not, then we draw on the observations of strategists and the final debrief of all parts to work back into the campaign design – a bottom-up approach that concentrates on taking the fight to the enemy… the cornerstone being: are we creating an untenable situation for the insurgent?
Imagine that:
i) Decision-makers that do not require frequent lengthy explanations on the effects of non-kinetic operations.
ii) Decision-makers that understand the enemy’s weaknesses and how best to exploit these.
iii) A “local population” and an “enemy” that we could interview – and expect honest answers from.
Then, maybe we could stop drawing graphs on who in Afghanistan likes us, and who doesn’t. Because we’ll know. And we’ll know why.
Call me cynical (I don’t go by “Ishmael” any more, long story), but this is such a transparently good idea that it will never, ever happen.
I share your view Ed–besides how would we stop the nightly excursions to Palm Springs that would undo all the good of the training day? ;-)
As long as they walk there and wear tribal clothing on their nights out, I cannot see a problem with a bit of R&R in Palm Springs.
Good point-add even more realism I suppose by substituting Palm Springs, Las Vegas etc. as the equivalent of Dubai, or perhaps for the more pedestrian in mufti, Bradford.
How about we dont send the lower levels but the higher ups.
It seems that the troops on the ground dont need that kind of training perspective as much as the senior ranks do. Too much of the current COIN doctrine reeks of the “rational actor” approach and none of that is coming from the grunts.
But I think that even if such a good idea/perspective like that was attempted I do not think it would be able to help win the war in Afghanistan now.
The US military after Vietnam deliberately purged much of what it learnt there in the realm of COIN (knowledge that was gained through hard and bloody experience) which was as much a reaction to its loss there the COIN format clashed with the modern/conventional military format that the US operated in. Whats to say that such a thing wont happen again?
In an aside, for a good book about crossing military/culture boundaries try the book ‘In Search of Warrior Spirit:Teaching Awareness Disciplines to the Green Berets” by Richard Strozzi-Heckler.
Well said, great post. As a current undergraduate, it always bothers me when other IR students and even occasionally professors solely identify realism with caricatures of Waltz’s “black box” rationality… Realism is not incompatible with an understanding about how bias and misperception can shape our views and actions, indeed, the idea that power and self-interest shape self-identification and views of the “other” seems to be an equally realist insight, not just one for critical theorists or constructivists.
Quintin – a very interesting idea, though it seems difficult to execute. How would we make sure that it did not reinforce misperceptions of the culture of the population/enemy that already prevent an accurate reading of their mindset? Take the idea of Pashtunwali – do we go with the analysts who think it is vital to understanding the Afghan mindset, or the ones who think its role is grossly overrated? How do we make sure that such a program represents the diversity of identities within “Pashtun,” and does not create perceptions of “Pashtun man” in general that will not distort our views of particular people in the real villages?
But the idea of a cultural MOUT of sorts is very interesting nonetheless…
Hi DPT,
Thank you for your response. As Ed and C.jr had pointed out above, it is moot – but I’d like to clarify a central point nevertheless: this is not a suggestion for a cultural MOUT. Rather think of it as an extended workshop against a realistic and relevant backdrop for the accelerated schooling of military decision-makers in the dynamics of inter-relationship psychology on a COIN battlefield.
Therefore, this would not be an attempt to represent a rich culture as the Pashtun’s down to the last detail, (not that you could on such a micro-scale), nor would it be to present the student with a complete set of combat scenarios from which he could draw at will at some point in the future. It would be to create an environment in which soldiers can experience the challenges that local population and enemy face firsthand, and have the frequent opportunity to discuss these challenges with a panel of experts, (including psychologists) – often right there, on the spot. Think of it at the very least as a super-sized know-your-enemy: beyond the “and this is the Kalashnikov…”, and into the realm of “and this is the inside your enemy’s mind.”
I would compare the idea, in fact, with the idea of “walking a mile in another’s shoes”, or in this case, sandals.
I seem to have let myself latch on to the cultural aspect of it more than was warranted, then – my mistake. It would certainly be beneficial to set up a program like this. I just worry despite the eminent sensibility of this idea, it will follow some of the efforts to “anthropologize” the Iraqi counterinsurgency, where the misperceptions of social scientists might end up reinforcing inaccurate models for population/insurgent behavior and psychology…
A really useful post. I have been considering the link between perception and influence for some time, partly because the two words are banded around in the military with some abandon (perhaps both second only to the word ‘risk’), and partly having read the Mackay / Tathan Shrivenham paper:
http://www.da.mod.uk/colleges/arag/document-listings/monographs/091216%20FINAL.pdf/view
The paper is worth a read. It central themes are that changing individual / group behaviour (influence) is likely to become a pre-eminent factor in securing future success, and that the MOD is not very good at it. The first theme is axiomatic to warfare (although the vogue is increasingly for non-kinetic influence), the second hard to dispute.
But we should not take the behavioural psychologist’s view of perception as a given, as both your post and the Mackay / Tatham paper appear to. Other brands of perception exist! Not least Perception Control Theory (PCT). Whereas behaviourism sees perceptions as driving behaviour, PCT sees the reverse. It says perceptions are the only reality we know, and that the purpose of all our actions is to control the state of the perceived world.
Now I have not studied this enough to know which approach is best. But it seems to me until we can adequately discount PCT we may be embarking on an approach to warfare that attempts to influence perceptions in order to alter behaviours, when in fact perceptions are ingrained. I would recommend Behavior: the Control of Perception by William T.Powers for those who may wish to pursue this. As Powers states, ‘Attempts to control behavior arbitrarily – one’s own or that of other people – accomplishes nothing in the long run but to produce conflict and consequent pathology’ and that ‘the only way that one person can arbitrarily control the behaviour of another person…is through reward and punishment’. Which takes us back to a more traditional view of warfare.
Magruder:
Some very interesting questions and your point holds true for the strategy theorist or philosopher, though I should point out that Northedge in “The International Political System” refers to the illusion of control when analysing the state within the international political system – being that the incumbent always underestimates “how bad it really is”, and always overestimates the degree to which he can bring fundamental changes about. A good read, but having said that: the practitioner does not have to deal with the complexities of seemingly conflicting psychology theories and schools of thought, abstract as these are by their very nature. For him, the practical application of psychology is more appropriate, as I hope to illustrate during the following.
A Strategy (or indeed any conflict intent) should be a self-healing mechanism that functions by repeatedly asking (and answering as truthfully as he can): am I applying my means of coercion (force or threat of force) in a manner that creates an untenable situation (a supreme psychological disadvantage) for my opponent?
One could think of the deciding upon and implementation of strategic dispositions as an asynchronous dialogue between two opposing strategists wherein the asynchronicity is brought by the fog and friction of War. Within this dialogue, there exist opportunities for paradoxes to appear and disappear as opposing strategists strive to prevail against one another. But first, more of this “untenable situation” within the opponent that the strategist should seek:
Potential situations that may be manifested as untenable are considered and addressed, blithely ignored, or not identified at all by a strategist as and when he sets out his disposition. Once a particular disposition is sought out, the strategist may experience cognitive dissonance (a psychological effect of decision-making… or choosing) that may cause the strategist to experience a disproportionate level of optimism regarding his disposition and success prospects of future plans (as did the Israeli’s before the onset of the Yom Kippur War). He may – or he may not… rather being beset by indecisiveness and opting instead to address his uncertainty by counter-manding, and counter-counter-manding his directives in the search of a disposition that provides him a degree of comfort or prospect of success (as did Elphinstone during the retreat from Kabul). Or, being aware of the shortcomings of his current disposition, the strategist may choose to accept those in a manner of alea iacta est, either because he hopes that the opposing strategist will not notice the chink in his armour (Rommel at El Alamein) – or, if glaringly obvious, committing himself to Fate in the absence of alternatives (as at Dunkirk).
Either way, it is not a foregone conclusion that the strategist will know any or all of the situations that he may deem untenable at some point in time as these events unfurl.
Similarly, those situations that an opposing strategist may deem untenable, are not known to the strategist at the onset of a phase of the conflict. The strategist may perform attribute analyses (the humble and much abused SWOT Analysis) and/or cost-benefit analyses, and/or just plain suck his thumb, but in the end it remains guesswork since no strategist can accurately predict the future. Consider Falkenhayn at the onset of Verdun. He believed that the French government and soldier would experience a huge loss of personnel and materiel as untenable, and set about to bleed the French dry (hopefully without suffering the same fate regarding his forces in the process). As events unfurled, he was proved wrong. The French government did not collapse. The French morale survived (even only for the time being), and even as Verdun played out its grim script – being little more than a barroom brawl on a grand scale, the Allies planned and implemented their own meat-grinder in the form of the Somme. And herein lies the makings of the first potential paradox – it is not the strategist that determines if a situation is untenable or not, but the entity bearing the brunt of the situation. If the French government, Joffre and Petain did not experience it as such, Falkenhayn could not create an untenable situation in this manner. The untenable situation that the strategist hopes to establish is a psychological state within the opponent… in the manner of two school kids fighting – if the kid finding himself in the dirt in the vice-like grip of a wrestling hold doesn’t “cry uncle”, the grip did not achieve the required mindset.
Since it is a psychological state, it is equally important to give consideration to the measures that an opposing strategist may take to address this state. A good strategist may seek to change his disposition in such a manner as to reverse the effects of the untenable situation and create an untenable situation for his opponent of his own, thereby continuing the dialogue. Consider the dispositions and events of the Western Theatre in the Yom Kippur War. The IDF experienced an untenable situation in that the Egyptian Army had taken up strong defensive positions on the eastern bank of the Suez and had defeated the strongholds of the Bar-Lev Line piecemeal. To address this situation, the IDF sought to force a crossing of the Suez of their own, hoping in the process to create an untenable situation for the Egyptian army. And herein lies the makings of a second potential paradox. If my enemy breaks out in my rear and threatens my Lines of Communication, I am at a psychological disadvantage. But so should he be, since I am simultaneously in his rear. The least neorotic strategist will prevail. Staying with the Yom Kippur War by way of illustration, as a result of the failure of Chinese Farm, the IDF could not deploy a massive roller bridge forward to the Suez and could therefore not force an armour crossing en masse. Instead, Ariel Sharon floated some of his tanks across the Suez and not even bothering with the creation of a bridgehead on the western bank, broke these forces out into the Egyptian rear – hoping in the process to create an untenable situation for the Egyptian commander. But in doing so, he also created an untenable situation for his own commander (genl Bar-Lev), to the point that Bar-Lev threatened Sharon with the cancellation of the operation in an attempt to force him back to the eastern bank of the Suez.
Even when the strategist achieves this psychological state within his opponent (without evoking neurosis within his own chain of command), there are still two further conditions that need addressing (the first upon which we’ve already touched):
a. This untenable situation will not last indefinitely and may not be the final untenable situation that would be required in order to attain the conflict goal. The opposing strategist also has a job – and that job is to address his disposition as and when such untenable conditions manifest themselves, thereby perpetuating the dialogue.
b. Even if an untenable situation is created, it has to move towards the over-all goal in a manner that it should constitute “the continuation of politics by other means”. Consider our past efforts in Afghanistan. We press the Insurgent out of Helmand – and he pops up in Swat. Did we create an untenable situation for the Insurgent? Yes. Do we want him in Swat? No. Did we impose our values (continued our politics) regarding Afghanistan? Yes. How about Pakistan? No.
Whether the two opposing strategists act in a reactionary manner or a controlling manner is therefore (in my opinion) moot. It is fair to assume that they may do both. What matters more, is that they seek to act in a particular manner.
That’s a brilliant analysis. The Afghanistan/Pakistan example shows what I believe to be the fundamental difference between Af/Pak and the successful campaign in Malaya: unity of command (i.e. a single strategist with a single goal) over the whole contested area. In Afghanistan there are the local forces, and the corrupt and ineffectual local leadership, and then there are the NATO forces, with their varying levels of commitment. In Pakistan there is a different corrupt and ineffectual local leadership, and local forces of questionable commitment to fighting the insurgents (and indeed according to this LSE report, some local forces are actively aiding the insurgents, which isn’t really news).
At the moment, my closest historical comparison for Af/Pak is Vietnam, and we all know how that ended: a declaration of victory, withdrawal, collapse.
My prescription for victory: legalise and regulate presently-illegal drugs in the West, and destroy the Taleban’s funding.
Quintin:
I agree with your analysis, but am interested in how the military-operational commander can establish that psychological state in an opponent whereby he perceives a situation as untenable.
In conventional warfare we would say we achieve it through shock (surprise, shock action and destruction). Aiming to achieve this psychological state rather than merely focussing on destroying the enemy was outlined as early as Tukhachevskii and is now central to the manoeuvrist approach philosophy. Shock effects, like untenable situations, are transient and local, and will therefore require exploitation to achieve both longer term and higher level success.
But how in COIN, where the application of force is significantly constrained, and where a campaign will generally consist of cumulative actions rather than sequential decisive events, do we induce this psychological state in an opponent? Is it possible? This is where I think the different notions of behavioural control are important.
If perceptions can be influenced in order to alter behaviours, then there are potentially tactics and methods available to the military to change behaviours through the targeting of perceptions. This frequently translates to a view that militaries can do things on the cheap (we only need to present the perception of something rather than actually doing it). This is surely military alchemy.
However, if behaviours can only be controlled through punishment and reward as suggested by Powers, then I think our approach to population-centric COIN is left entirely dependant on delivery of civilian effect. If COIN is about winning over (or influencing) the population the military has few options. Punishment of a population is presumably beyond the range of tactics available to a liberal democracy’s military. So that leaves rewarding them through better development and governance. All of which are a civilian lead who have consistently not delivered. The military, unable to use the one tactic for which it is adequately equipped (coercion of the population), and in the absence of a delivering civilian partner, is left impotent. Ergo I think I have just convinced myself COIN is an anathema and the use of force is best left for use against another military force.
…am interested in how the military-operational commander can establish that psychological state in an opponent whereby he perceives a situation as untenable.
Reformulating the above into a question – how to create an untenable situation – the abstract response could be encapsulated by asking this question in return: since a strategy is a method of applying means of coercion to create an untenable situation for the opponent, what would constitute a successful strategy? Putting it differently, which of the two opposing strategists will be successful?
In a broad sense, the analysis to date may have left the impression that there are two situations in existence within which the strategic dialogue takes place. So to clarify, there is only one situation, one conflict environment, and this forms the arena within which the two opposing strategists both ply their art. However, there are two perceptions of this environment. Should Occam’s Razor allow it, the abstract definition of strategy (which was constructed by Deon Fourie, Professor Emeritus Strategic Studies UNISA) could have read:
a method of applying means of coercion to cause the opponent to perceive the environment as untenable.
It is realistic to accept, as alluded to before, that both strategists will experience dissonance to a lesser or greater extent within this arena. This dissonance is a psychological state within the protagonists of such that they will experience discrepancies between their perceptions of reality and the specific expectations they may have regarding the situation. This implies a measurement activity. The strategist asks himself, whether formally or informally, what it is that he wants – his expectation, and he evaluates reality, at least in terms of his understanding of it, against this expectation. He therefore weighs a perceived benefit up against a perceived cost.
In the light of this, let us return to Verdun where we last left Falkenhayn as he hoped to create an untenable situation for Joffre and Petain by killing as many French soldiers as he could. As we know, he failed because as I have pointed out then in the abstract, it is not the strategist that determines the success of the strategy, but the opponent. In this instance, Joffre and Petain failed to acknowledge Falkenhayn’s method of manipulating the environment as untenable. They performed the above evaluation, perceived that Falkenhayn was unable to control his own losses, and thereby reached a balanced outcome of the analysis. This would be the Equilibrium that Liddell Hart refers to – being the balance between cost and benefit that exists within the strategist’s thinking.
When does any or all of this migrate to a terminally untenable situation, (or become an end-play)? Naturally, the instinct would be to posit that this would occur when the present perceived benefit is somehow severely diminished, while the present perceived cost is vastly accentuated or even exaggerated. However, history shows us that this is not the full picture, Dunkirk being but one case in point. There are in fact three further factors that will influence this conversion:
a. Not all expectations are equal. At the very least, expectations can be stratified into core, high-valued and peripheral types. We could expect that the strategist may only ever perceive a situation as untenable if his high-order expectations are impacted. Furthermore, if we study any specific expectation, we will find that it is not a pin point on a graph (though sometimes represented that way), but rather a spectrum of needs and desires ranging from a “worst case” to an “exceeds all expectations” that mutates over time.
b. Not all experiences of dissonance are brought about the same manner and certain manners will be more impactful than others. A sudden reversal of fortune will therefore be more likely to bring an untenable situation about than an inevitable reversal of fortune or a gradual slide into the abyss.
c. The creative strategist may still discover a novel method to apply his means of coercion to reverse the situation, assuming he has remaining means of coercion. A great deal of the defence against an untenable situation (logic as it may be), depends on the strategist’s ability to identify the options available to him. Likewise, a great deal of the creation effort of an end-game will involve the removal of options available to the opposing strategist.
So in answering the question: which of the two opposing strategists will be successful, the successful strategist will be the one that first develops and deploys means of coercion to bring about the rapid onset of dissonance on set of core expectations for his opponent in a manner that the opponent cannot hope to repair or reverse. The level of success will be determined by the rapidity of the onset of dissonance, the central nature of the affected expectations, and the absence of alternative courses of action for the opponent. This is the case for all conflicts, including COIN.
For the most part I consider the ‘rational actor’ not so much a reality as much as an ideal. In my opinion everyone involved in decision making should strive for it, while admitting that they probably won’t get there.