In Harmonium

Posted By Marc on August 17, 2008

[this is the final post in this series]

Topologies of competition

In the previous post, I identified two classes of battlespace topologies: perceptual and technological. While the two classes have common dimensions, it is analytically useful to treat them as if they were separate. Social groups (and individuals) operate across a multiplicity of battlespaces (“workspaces” in Darwinian terms), competing for a variety of resources, using a variety of tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) to engage with other groups opeating n the same battlespace. The combination of a battlespace, all the groups competing within it, the resources that may be procured and the sum total of all current, past and conceived of TTPs may be termed a “gamespace”.

Gamespaces

Gamespaces are subject to a process of what be termed social “co-creation” or, in other words, the “rules” of a gamespace are in a state of constant negotiation where the rate of change in the rules is dependent on the rate of change in the component parts of the gamesapce. When you have a very low rate of change in the component parts, there are almost no changes in the rules of a gamespace once a local homeostatic optimum has been achieved. This “local homeostatic optimum” becomes “hardened” or “crystallized” into a series of inflexible “rules” (aka “customs”, “traditions”, “folkways”, etc.) that are the local “conventions of the game”.

In such a low change gamespace, people act in a “ritualized” manner simply because all conceivable actions within the gamespace (at least by the current “players”) have already been tried, formalized, “named” and ascribed an emotional and “moral” value. The social “value” of such a low change gamespace is that it is predictable to the players involved, and the players who are able to best manipulate the rules will come to dominate the gamespace and, as a result of this domination, will reinforce the rules that support them.

But what about gamespaces where the rate of change is not “low”? There are two, distinct “non low” situations that we should examine. The first concerns a gamespace where there is a rate of change in one or more components that is both perceivable and predictable by the players. In general terms, this would be referred to as a “trend”, although it is actually an isomorphic vector (it also causes changes in the gamespace). Consider, for example, the progressive mechanization of military forces that took place in the 20th century. The trend to mechanization also produced a trend towards an increased value on fuel, an increasing complexity in the actual machinery of war (both physical machinery and logistics), and requirements for massive industrial development and R&D investment. Often, these new “requirements” to “play by the [changed] rules” meant that fewer and fewer groups could play which, in turn, stimulated various reconceptualizations of “warfare”.

The second distinct “non low” situation comes with the “creation” of a “new” gamespaces. Often, this is driven by changes in technology which effectively create a new ecological niche for competition, but it may also be driven by perceptual changes or a combination of both. In this type of situation, there is no body of “knowledge” (tradition, custom, etc.) that allows for predictability in the new gamespace. Within this new space, we see all sorts of different TTPs being tried out by different players; at first in a semi-random manner (applying TTPs from cognate gamespace, a process called “exaptation”) and, later, mutations of them appearing preferentially around the more successful exapted TTPs. These “new” gamespaces are subject to violent and extremely rapid mutation and a reverse flow of these mutated TTPs back into their cognate gamespaces.

Consider, by way of example, the effects of introducing the Gutenberg press when combined with the illegally written product of two deranged minds – The Malleus Maleficarum of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger. The Roman Catholic’s churches official position on witchcraft laid down in the Canon Episcopi from the 10th century was that it was “a delusion” and “superstition”. This meant that witches were dealt with as people who were non-Christian, a very important point, since the Inquisition had no power to deal with non-Christians. Kramer and Sprenger argued, however, that the practice of witchcraft was, in fact, Satan worship and, by definition, included within the cosmology of Christianity. Witches, for them, were not merely heretics, and hence subject to the inquisition, but heretics of the worst sort – those who actively sided with God’s enemy, Satan. This perceptual change, when coupled in with the mass printing of the Malleus Maleficarum in 1487 (a technological change), opened up an entirely “new” battlespace that lasted for several hundred years before it was finally codified and converted into a predictable gamespace. One of the best examinations of operations in this battlespace in the longue duree, and of how mutated TTPs flowed back, is by Carlo Ginzburgh in The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century, while Gustav Henningsen’s The Witches’ Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition (1609-1614) captures the process in depth in a limited time space.

The Witch Crazes of the 16th and 17th centuries did not happen solely because of the invention of the Gutenberg Press or the syphalitic dreams of Kramer and Sprenger. There were many other trends operating at the time – the rise of merchantalism, changes in property relations, dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church, etc. – that served to fuel the witch crazes. What the Malleus Malleficarum did do, however, was serve to define a “new” battlespace for conflict resolution that was easier for players to get involved in (anyone could lodge a witchcraft accusation), was a lot cheaper than wars (it was frequently self-funding) and was unlikely to bring in allies on the side of the accused, which a religious war or suppression would.

Topologies of gamespaces

We have three classes of gamespaces based on rates of change: homeostatic, vectored, and “new” or “chaotic”. But gamespaces are not isolated from each other; they tend to cluster in fuzzy (in the sense of fuzzy sets) taxonomies that are socially and culturally defined and, hence, subject to constant (re)negotiation. The ability to separate our perceptions and responses in one gamespace from another, to play different roles or wear different personae, appears to be a human ability inherent in our neurological makeup and, also, something we project into our cultures and societies. Despite this ability, unless we suffer from an extreme case of multiple personality disorder, there is still an interconnection between our individual roles / personae and that, also, is projected into our constructs.

This interconnectedness flows throughout all cultures and societies, but it is a fragmented, shifting, and, above all else, contingent, interconnectedness with parts of it hidden from our view even as it effects our lives. This interconnectedness is crucial when it comes to gamespaces, since the resources that are the subject of competition in one gamespace may be available through another gamespace. A classic example of this, from the Sociology of Religion literature, is the replication strategies of various religious groups: reasoned conversion, forced conversion (including structural forces), limited or no conversion. The stance on conversion is directly related to the stance of producing children inside the group (including sexual mores) and, also, to the perception of necessary universality of the religious belief. The “resource” fought over in this example is bodies (i.e. members), but the battlespace varies from Crusades/Jihads, through religious discrimination (e.g. Dhimmi laws), to boudoirs and televangelists.

The gamespace topology of warfare

What about “warfare”? In the West, the resources being fought over from, say, the fall of the Western Empire up until the Peace of Westphalia were overt control over land and population. After the Peace of Westphalia, these are still involved but, increasingly, you also see “new” strategic resources being fought over: coal, iron, oil, etc; the raw materials necessary to sustain the growing industrialization of the Western economies. The cost of sustaining such colonial empires, however, grew increasingly burdensome after World War II, in part as a result of the constantly increasing cost of “keeping up with the Joneses” in the mechanized arms race; a lesson the British learned well, and the French less so. In effect, the ex-Colonial powers (minus the US and Soviet Empire), realized that it was far cheaper to gain the resources they needed than it was to maintain their empires (easier, too).

This period of de-colonization was, in many ways, disastrous for the ex-colonies. In some instances, e.g. Singapore, they did quite well and adapted themselves to their new status as recognized players in the post-Westphalian model while in other cases, e.g. Zimbabwe, the new rulers were psychopathic savages who destroyed “their” nations. Most ex-colonies placed somewhere in between these two extremes but, on the whole, were still locked into the economic (and political) systems of the remaining superpowers and ex-colonial powers.

The Cold War period saw the development of a new “convention” in warfare; warfare by proxy, and the proxies involved were almost always factions inside ex-colonies. The goal of the conflicts was to gain influence and, sometimes, control over specific resources without having to overtly and legally taking control of the territory; a move that, it was believed, could well lead to a direct nuclear exchange. Possessing, or being perceived as possessing, nuclear weapons came to be the minimal requirement for being a “serious player”; a view that we still see today with North Korea and Iran.

So, in warfare, we have a vectored gamespace, where the vector was defined by increasing mechanization and the ability to launch devastating, possibly nuclear, strikes at an opponent. The goal was to gain influence over resources rather than control over territory, and an entire conventional social theatre was created (the United Nations) to support the conventional, self-imposed rules of the gamespace. But this gamespace, as with all non-homeostatic gamespaces, contained the seeds of its own downfall. The most obvious is the vector requiring extensive mechanized forces.

This requirement for extensive, high technology mechanized forces prohibited many players from entering the gamespace unless they could either secure an ally that would act as a counter-poise or else develop new tactics that would nullify the overt effects of such a modern force. The vast majority of the so-called Wars of National Liberation relied on having an external ally who was a “real” player. The classic Maoist Three Phase war relied not only on an external ally but, also, on the existence of the UN social theatre as a means of applying international pressure to keep the actions of the superpowers and ex-colonial powers limited. This Maoist model was, in its own way, another successful adaptation to the Cold War gamespace, at least as successful as many of the models opposed to it. But, like the concepts of “conventional warfare” of the same time period, the goal was the same – control over a proxy government which would give the controlling power preferential access to their physical resources.

Now, one of the key “discoveries” of the Maoist model was that you don’t have to have actual control over a resource in order to deny it to your opponent and, hence, raising the cost of their opposition. Indeed, it is actually fairly easy to raise popular discontent against an outside group that is trying to get preferential access to “your” resources. What is crucial is melding and channeling that discontent into a specific interpretive framework and focusing it (Sertorius knew all this 2000 years ago, but who reads Plutarch these days?). This is where the Maoist Three Phase War excelled; it provided both an operational guide and, at the same time, an interpretive framework to contextualize and focus actions. And, like all strict religious systems, it failed once the gamespace conditions changed.

What the Maoist model did do, however, was convince a number of people with the importance of an interpretive framework for the practice of warfare. And, as the requirements to become a player tightened, the value of controlling the interpretive framework moved away from the Maoist motivational model towards one where controlling the framework was more important than territory or resources. By controlling the framework, you can choose which gamespaces will be in play for a given conflict and, if your group is going to prosper, you will choose gamespaces where you can compete better than your opponents.

How do you control an interpretive framework? The simplest way to do so is to provide a target person (or group) with an explanation of why things are happening to them and what they can do about it. This explanation must be communicated, and it will compete with other explanations in the minds of the target audience. Throughout most of the 20th century, the majority of communicative media were “broadcast”, i.e. controllable through a limited number of venues. This is one of the reasons why the totalitarian states of the 20th century created government media monopolies. But what happens when the de facto monopolies break down and communications becomes popularized?

In the case of the development of a simple printing press, it led to massive social movements and the overthrow of the Roman Catholic monopoly on legitimate religion (along with several million “witches” being killed). In the case of cheap, popular pamphleteering, it led to the overthrow of British rule in the thirteen colonies and, also, to the overthrow of the Russian democratic movement. And, most recently, the development and deployment of cheap and simple audio and video communications (cell phones, YouTube, etc.), it has led to the rapid, non-geographically limited, spread of irhabi ideologies (amongst other things).

It is important to remember that the goal of warfare for many of the current groups is control over the interpretive framework of a population, not actual, physical control over the geographic area, that will flow inevitably from control over the framework and massive military costs. For many of these groups, kinetic operations, “violence”, is merely a means to an end that is shaped not by the logic of violence but, rather, by the logic of communications; a lesson learned from Vietnam where the insurgents lost almost all of the battles, but won the war.

What we currently see in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Sudan, and Somalia is truly a series of asymmetric conflicts. Few of the players are strictly using the logic of violence, aka “conventional” strategies and TTPs simply because the majority of the players are using the logic of communications. These conflicts are also not a simple asymmetry between one logic and another, they are composed of multiple asymmetries, some ancient (cf Bing West’s The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics, and the Endgame in Iraq and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel) some extremely modern (e.g. YouTube).

Category: Anthropology, COIN, Communications Theory
Tags: Asymmetric warfare