Science, Strategy and War: The Strategic Theory of John Boyd (Strategy and History)

26 Ibid.

27 As before, these are Boyd’s own words.

28 Here Boyd refers to sources 27: Jean Piaget, Structuralism; and 28: Michael Polanyi, Knowing and Being.

29 Patterns of Conflict, p. 2, underlining as in original. Where used in the following chapters, underlining directly follows Boyd’s text.

30 Ibid., p. 5.

31 Ibid., p. 7.

32 Ibid., p. 10. In the essay Boyd shows an awareness that various other survival strategies exist. Cooperation as the optimal mode for long-term survival often overrides the short-term strategy of direct conflict. Interestingly, Darwin actually stated that ‘it’s not the strongest who survive, but those most responsive to change’, a message Boyd would strongly agree with. Survival is the consequence of differences in fitness, resulting in greater reproduction, along with persistent variation in heritable traits that make for fitness differences. See Robert Brandon and Alex Rosenberg, ‘Philosophy of Biology’, in Peter Clark and Katherine Hawley, Philosophy of Science Today, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, in particular pp. 167–75.

33 Ibid., p. 11.

34 Ibid., p. 12.

35 This refers to the use of ‘the orthodox and the unorthodox’ methods of employing troops, as discussed in Chapter 3.

36 Ibid., p. 16.

37 Ibid., pp. 19, 24.

38 Ibid., p. 24.

39 Ibid., p. 25.

40 Ibid., pp. 27–8.

41 Ibid., p. 28.

42 Ibid., p. 31.

43 Ibid., pp. 30–1.

44 Ibid., pp. 33–4 for the following section.

45 Ibid., p. 31. Here he obviously followed the contentious views of Liddell Hart, Lawrence and Fuller. As Azar Gat makes clear, Liddell Hart too made the mistake of missing the points that (1) the allied forces learned during the protracted wars against Napoleon and (2) that the blatant aggression led to their adoption of several tactical and stragical methods of Napoleon, including mass mobilization. So Napoleon’s failure cannot be attributed to his tactical concepts. See Azar Gat, Fascist and Liberal Visions of War, Fuller, Liddell Hart, and other Modernists, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998, p. 165.

46 Ibid., p. 40.

47 Ibid., p. 41. Clausewitz actually mentions several other centers of gravity as well. It can be an alliance, a capital, a political leader, and other ‘focal’ points of power. See for a detailed recent corrective Antulio Echevarria II, Clausewitz’s Center of Gravity: Changing Our Warfighting Doctrine-Again, Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2002.

48 Ibid., p. 42.

49 Ibid., pp. 44–5.

50 Ibid., p. 46.

51 Ibid., p. 48.

52 Ibid., p. 49.

53 Ibid. Like Fuller in The Conduct of War, after this slide Boyd makes a brief excursion to Marxist revolutionary thought, noticing, however, that at this point in his presentation it is not clear how revolutionary strategy and guerrilla tactics fit in his argument, and he tells his audience that this will become evident after his discussion of World War I.

54 Ibid., p. 55.

55 As Azar Gat has recently convincingly argued, and as Michael Howard did before him, there certainly were genuine efforts to counter the increased lethality of the battlefield. See Azar Gat, The Development of Military Thought: The Nineteenth Century, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, in particular Chapter 3, and Michael Howard, ‘The Influence of Clausewitz’, in Karl von Clausewitz, On War, (transl.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. For the German efforts in this vein, and a similar corrective message, see Antulio J. Echevarria II, After Clausewitz, German Military Thinkers Before the Great War, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000.

56 Ibid., p. 57.

57 Ibid., p. 59.

58 Ibid., p. 60.

59 Ibid., p. 62.

60 Ibid., p. 63.

61 Ibid., p. 62.

62 Ibid., p. 65.

63 Ibid., p. 64.

64 Interestingly, in selecting these concepts Boyd ignored developments some consider also of prime importance such as the development of (strategic) air power theory (with well known names such as Guilio Douhet and Billy Mitchell) or the introduction of carriers which transformed the face of sea power.

65 Ibid., p. 66.

66 Ibid., pp. 67–8.

67 Ibid., p. 69.

68 Ibid., p. 70.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid., p. 71.

71 Ibid., p. 72.

72 Ibid. Note the use of the term ‘organism’.

73 Ibid., p. 74.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid., p. 76.

76 Ibid., p. 78.

77 Ibid. Note how Boyd quietly moves to a higher level of abstraction when he asserts that the Schwerpunkt helps in establishing an advantage in adaptability.

78 Ibid., p. 79.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid., p. 86.

81 Ibid., p. 87.

82 Ibid.

83 See p. 89.

84 Ibid., p. 88.

85 Ibid., p. 90.

86 Ibid.

87 Ibid., p. 91.

88 Ibid., p. 93.

89 Ibid., p. 94.

90 Ibid., p. 95.

91 Ibid., p. 96.

92 Ibid., p. 98.

93 Ibid., p. 101.

94 Ibid., p. 99.

95 Ibid., pp. 104–6.

96 Ibid., p. 105.

97 Ibid., pp. 107–8.

98 Ibid., p. 111.

99 Ibid., p. 113.

100 Ibid., p. 112. Notice the specific Cold War and post-Vietnam era elements.

101 Ibid., p. 114.

102 Ibid., p. 115.

103 Ibid., p. 117.

104 Ibid., p. 119.

105 Ibid., p. 120.

106 Ibid., p. 121.

107 Ibid., p. 124.

108 Ibid., p. 125.

109 Ibid., p. 128.

110 Ibid., p. 128.

111 Ibid., p. 129.

112 Ibid., p. 130.

113 Ibid., p. 131.

114 Ibid., p. 132.

115 Ibid., p. 133.