Open Source Warfare - Update I
Thomas Barnett, noted writer and blogger who served in various areas in the DoD, shot off a rebuttle against John Robb’s Open Source Warfare article I mentioned last weekend in “Open Source War, Global Guerillas in Iraq“.
For those unfamilar with Barnett, he is famous for his article, now book , entitled “Pentagon’s New Map”, which interprets the world as caught between the Core and the Gap, with each at the opposite end of the pole of global connectivity; he uses a state’s level of connectivity as a measurement of how stable states and regions are with the evidence that the these “Gap” (low connectivity states) are those that are often in trouble.
Here’s Barnett’s response to John Robb:
Creating better rules is how we win. By doing so we attract good citizens and good states, slowly but surely. Killing symmetrically is gratifying, but ultimately pointless. Reformatting their world so that their cause dies is the real victory. Not a matter of making it like our own, but simply making it connective in a deep sense with the outside world, so that individuals can choose their level of connectivity no matter what the authorities say or do.
So I say, bet on numbers. Bet on bigger networks. Bet on growing the Core and, by doing so, restricting the enemy’s operating domain.
Information technology analogies are great, but they do not constitute tactics, much less strategy. The winning remains the same: kill their bad guys and replace bad governments with good. Don’t confuse the friction with the formatting. Don’t confuse skirmishes with campaigns. Don’t confuse their asymmetry with our disadvantage.
In the end, we win as we always do: with stuff. Capitalism bribes off its enemies with wealth. Worked in 1848 in Europe and it’s worked ever since.
