[This continues from the previous post]

Linking battle/workspaces into perceptual topologies

In a recent article, Raphaël Baeriswyl, drawing heavily on the work of Jacques Baud, argues that there are six distinct “battlespaces”: topographic space (land, sea), airspace, electromagnetic space, cyberspace, infospace, and human space. Each of these battlespaces has emerged as technological advances has shifted the options as to where conflict may take place. While I find Baeriswyl’s idea interesting and useful, it is, however, too limited.

Baeriswyl’s model of ongoing emergence is, to my mind, limited by two problems. First, “infospace”, which he defines as “where opinions are manipulated”, is really the workspace in which propaganda has been operating for millenia. In a similar manner, “human space”, as defined by Baud, is “the space of human life and action, with its cultural, social, economic, moral and political dimensions, where networks are woven, loyalties and hierarchies disputed and opinion and determination forged” which has been around since before writing was invented. The second problem is with the conceptualization of “human space” which has, by many people, been considered as divisible in terms of battlesapaces (vide the concepts of “economic warfare”, “political subversion”, etc.). Clearly, Baud’s categories are not useful, but the application of the concept of linked batlespaces is.

Broad topologies of battlespace

In general, a battlespace may be defined as any “space” in which and/or through which combat takes place. More importantly, for our purposes, is the conceptualization of a “space” as an environment or venue in which conflict may happen and where that venue sets certain boundary conditions and has certain properties that effects the form of conflict. It is also important to draw a distinction between a cognized battlespace and an operational battlespace (this draws off of Rappaport’s distinction between cognized and operational environments). Our “cognized battlespace” is how we conceive of and map the “operational battlespace”.

Now within any battlespace, humans, as a species, will attempt to extend both their senses and their physicality via technology and, as a corollary of this extension, will change the nature of the accessible battlespace available. As an early example of this, a spear extends the “reach” of an individual beyond their physical reach, while a spear thrower extends the range at which a spear can hit a target. Each of these technological extensions changes the cognized battlespace and changes the selection criteria (i.e. the rules governing “successful” tactics) operating in that battlespace.

Perceptual battlespace topologies

If Sahlins is correct in his model, then the original use of intra-human conceptualizations of conflict was to limit and control intra- and inter-group conflict; a sort of Stone Age Mutual Assured Destruction scheme where an increasing number of members of kinship and parakinship networks would be brought into a general conflict. In most cases, at least in the ones that I am familiar with, there was also some mechanism for the various groups to stop fighting. In the early law codes, for example, this tended to be concepts such as “blood price” (for example, see Gurney The Hittites and Mauss The Gift).

The creation of centralized, theocratic states (technically, it should be :magazine states, but “theocratic” will do), marked a shift in both the mechanisms of violent conflict containment and the perception of battlespaces. Rather than a centralizing effort of a tribal confederation (e.g. the Old Hittite Empire), we see a centralization around a deity and the personification / incarnation of that deity. In the Sumerian city states (and probably the Mayan as well), this led to an extreme, hypertrophied concept of battlespaces, where the primary battlespace was the realm of the Gods (see, for example, Kramer and Wolkerstein’s Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, the Enuma Elish, the Illiad, and Judges 7).

Later, as the powers of the God(s) declined and were partially replaced by “kings”, we start to see the development of standing armies and the beginings of what we would now call “conventional warfare” (see, for example, The Epic of Gilgamesh which chronicles the shift from ensi [God-King / incarnate God] to lugal ["king" / War Leader as ruler] in Babylon). This “new” form concentrated on what Baud would call “topographic space”, i.e. the “physical” (actually perceptual) world, although the Realm of the Gods was not excluded (consider, by way of example, the use of oracles / prayers before battle). This “dual order” (Topographic and, let’s call it “Spiritual”) persisted for quite some time until, I would argue, the Peace of Westphalia.

The Peace of Westphalia (1648), and it’s precursor the Peace of Augsburg (1555), established a new precedent in the perception of battlespaces by the curious expedient of separating conflict in the secular realm (topographic space) from conflict in the sacred realm (Spiritual space). This was done by the curious expedient of recognizing the principle of cuis regio, eius religio (literally “Whose region, his religion”; albeit limited to Calvinism, Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism). According to this new convention, there shall be a “free exercise of religion” (cf articles 28, 46, 49) and “warfare” shall be separated from the spiritual realm (cf articles 65 and 123).

In many ways, the Peace of Westphalia established a selection vector that has led to modern “conventional” warfare and, in so doing, has de facto eliminated from consideration a broad range of battlespaces which used to be in the “spiritual realm” until they could be secularized. This secularization started to appear in the late 18th century with ideological revolutions (e.g. the US Revolution, the French Revolution), and achieved full blown “secular” status with the wars of national liberation under the (supposedly) secular banner of Marxism. The “spiritual” battlespace had, by the Cold War, been reintegrated into warfare under the term “ideology” rather than “religion” and, more recently with Afghanistan and Iraq as a “religious” war (at least in the perceptions of some participants).

Technological battlespace topologies

Throughout most of the past 5000 years or so, warfare involved a shifting interaction between three primary factors: offensive kinetic technologies, defensive kinetic technologies and mobility. Both offensive and defensive kinetic technologies centered around the application or dispersion of force at a particular point in physical space (e.g. a human, a wall, etc.), while mobility has been concerned with movement through physical space. Thus, for example, we see an “arms race” in the 11th - 16th centuries between armour and weaponry, and between siege weapons and fortifications. Within the interplay of these three factors, we also see progressive codification of rules both in the sense of tactics (e.g. the Strategikon of Maurice), in the sense of ideals (e.g. the development of the code of chivalry) and in the sense of military factors influencing social organization (e.g. the development Feudalism).

While technological extensions shifted the selection criteria operating in topographical battlespace, we don’t see the introduction of “new” battlespaces in the physical world until the mid 18th / early 19th century with the development of underwater vehicles, aircraft (balloons), steam engines, newspapers and semaphore telegraphs. The first three of these are extensions into component parts of physical (topographic) space that were (relatively) easily predicted and assimilated. The development of telegraphs and newspapers, however, changed the face of warfare forever by a) extending the perceptions of people who were not involved directly in the conflict and b) opening a new battlespace - today we would call it “the media”.

Newspapers, at least in the form of a technological extension of the old idea of a news crier and, also, “yellow dog journalism”, have actually been around since the late 15th, early 16th century (cf Ottavia Niccoli Prophecy and People in Renaissance Italy). But, when they were coupled with the telegraph (first semaphore, later electric), they allowed for the manipulation of rumour (aka “public perception”) at a distance (on media as an extension, see here). This opened a “new” battlespace - Baud and Baeriswyl’s “infospace”. It isn’t that the space did not “exist” before hand so much as “infospace” was now centralized into a much smaller, manipulable environment. Infospace warfare was no longer a battlespace composed of books written in a specialized language (Latin) and read by a limited number of people; now it was a battlespace contained in a limited number of newspapers available in the local language and read by the general public. The vector started by the melding of newspapers and the telegraph has continued and developed into the World Wide Web - a battlespace where the constructed “image” is everything because it is abstracted from any physical sensation of what it purports to represent,

By the mid-20th century, another technological extension was starting to spawn a new battlespace. This was an extension of “thought” (actually, the processual application of “knowledge”) in the form of “computers”. By the mid-1980’s, computers had become a new battlespace behind of and parallel to infospace not because of their ability to convey person to person information, but because of their ability to communicate automated device to automated device information in such areas as Just-in-time inventory systems. By 2000, “cyberspace” had emerged as a highly complex battlespace that supported most of the infrastructure of modern states, businesses and individuals in a manner analogous to canals in Sumeria, grassy plains for Steppes nomads and watering holes / oases for desert nomads.

The spread of infospace, especially via the media of radio, movies and, later, television melded in with an old technology, rhetoric, to produce a complex and messy battlespace with an inter-social part (that Matt Armstrong refers to as Public Diplomacy) and an intra-social part (Social Theatre). One of the most striking observations about this battlespace is that it is strongly analogous to both the public ritual and public diplomacy of the 165-15th century bce in the Near East.

Next, part III