Surface Combatant Role Definition for Middle Power Navies

The purpose of this article is to propose a new distinction in classifications which will be useful to middle power navies in more clearly defining their requirements.

The navies with which this series is primarily concerned operate combatant vessels (for purposes of this article, we will define the latter as missile-capable vessels only) of three general classes.  These are destroyers, frigates, and corvettes or patrol vessels.  The trend has been to blur and confuse these categories, as capabilities of area air defence traditionally associated with destroyers have been incorporated into hulls with frigate classification, and the capability distinction between frigate and destroyer hulls has become economically unsustainable for all but a few navies (the Royal Navy with the Type 42/45 and Type 23/26, Japan, China, India and South Korea are the only nations currently producing or planning to produce both classifications in the future, given that the LCS designs of the United States are insufficiently armed in any configuration to match modern frigate designs and given that the Royal Canadian Navy’s future frigate/destroyer distinction will likely be one of armament rather than hull).  At the same time, corvette and patrol boat classes are in some cases becoming more capable, as with the Scandinavian Skjold and Visby classes and the Russian Steregushchy class.  In any case, many navies continue to see the cost effectiveness of leveraging small, stealthy, fast and heavily-armed small vessels against larger targets (most notably the Chinese Type 022 Houbei class stealth catamarans). 

In order to do this, we must face one of the fundamental contradictions of naval procurement: navies purchase surface combatants for shore support, anti-piracy, anti-terrorist, humanitarian relief, goodwill and littoral roles for which they are both too expensive and manifestly ill-suited.  Navies, like churches, endeavour to show that they are relevant, and carry out such missions in order to gain funding, which is then used to build surface combatants, which go forth and perform Operations Other than War throughout most of their service lives, ad nauseum.  The rationale for not building dedicated ships for such missions is often to keep up numbers of surface combatants.  Because the projected operational requirement for surface combatants is calculated factoring in OOW, however, the requirement becomes inflated artificially and precious funds are dispersed over a larger number of already expensive hulls at the expense of capabilities included in the design. 

 

In order to avoid this situation, it may be advisable for navies to make a clear distinction at the level of operational requirements between operations requiring fully capable surface combatants and those requiring something in the class of the United States’ High Speed Vessels.  The latter concept has much to commend it.  High speed ferries currently in service have proven extremely useful in cheap, rapid deployment of troops, equipment and vehicles, disaster relief and goodwill missions.  In the form of the Sea Fighter prototype, there is potential for such a design, using largely Commercial Off-The-Shelf components, to undertake interdiction, anti-piracy, coastal patrol, shore support and low-risk missions such as coastal ASW and minesweeping, using containerised, removable equipment.  The capabilities of such a ship in humanitarian roles could include conversion into containerised hospital facilities.  As such, and with their greater cargo and transport capacity, they would represent a substantial and significant contribution to a broad range of operations, potentially far in excess of what a surface combatant could provide.  Their military usefulness in transporting and supporting troops is equally clear. 

This absolutely requires that the two major mistakes of the Littoral Combat Ship program not be repeated.  This means that the design should privilege available empty space in the form of a large Ro-Ro deck and helicopter pad/container space above installed systems and/or warship-like appearance, and that there should be absolutely no military requirement creep with regard to the design, materials or installed systems apart from basic anti-missile defence, basic search radar and damage control.  These ships do not need to be stealthy.  If a program incorporating containerised armament and other military-specific features proves too expensive, simply buy an entirely COTS design, remembering that the main purpose of this hull is not to provide military capability, but to alleviate the operational tempo of militarily-capable platforms.  Once again, avoiding feature creep is key to success.

 

This will allow surface combatant requirements, including hull numbers, to be confined to purely military needs.  To reduce costs, all large surface combatants should share a common hull design, making use of modular systems to vary armament and equipment.  Both Area Air Defence capable and non-capable ships would be of the same hull design.  The keys to ensuring sufficient space and flexibility in armament are twofold.  The first is to avoid the main avoidable mistake of every major European surface combatant program in the last decade by including sufficient (and sufficiently flexible) VLS tubes (64 tube minimum- this ensures a good mix of medium and short range SAMs capable of handling at least one saturation missile attack, plus room for anti-ship, ASW and land attack missiles without modification).  There is no flexibility boost greater than a large number of Mk. 41 VLS tubes. 

The second key to flexibility is a flex deck, which is simply a flat surface with the ability to attach containerised weapons, a concept used to great success by the Danish Navy.  The ability to procure a number of hulls and, separately, containerised weapons systems on a Standard Flex- type model and using the inherent versatility of Mk. 41 VLS tubes, would create both savings and flexibility within a program, allowing hulls to be repurposed and allowing hulls and weapons systems to be procured on a flexible schedule.  Given the rapid turnaround time for swapping StanFlex modules, a cash-strapped navy could conceivably swap weapons from ships returning to port to other hulls about to deploy.  The catamaran hull form is ideal for this type of ship, as it provides the abundant surface area which maximises the potential of the modular concept.

 

The third and final type to identify is the corvette/ patrol vessel.  It is well known that the LCS program was heavily inspired by the Scandinavian Skjold and Visby classes.  The absurd cost and lacking armament of the LCS ships result from attempting to turn a concept for fast, extremely sea-worthy and well-armed single or dual purpose corvettes into a combination FFG replacement, Minesweeper replacement, War On Terror and OOW mutant and jack of all trades.  Separating some of these roles into a seperate HSV design is therefore critical.  What makes even more sense is a clear distinction between frigates, corvettes and high-speed vessels, multiple cheap and individually-capable classes being preferable to an expensive hybrid that is designed to do everything. 

Taking the superb Skjold design as a basis, something not much bigger could, by containerising the NSM missile armament (which is conveniently placed aft), substitute basic ASW equipment such as a towed array, sonobuoys, USV and torpedoes (Skjold’s basic characteristics of speed, lateral manoeuvrability, low torpedo vulnerability and low radar cross-section lend themselves to this role, in much the same way that the RCN once contemplated for the hydrofoil Bras d’Or).  Skjold is also a superb craft for littoral covert operations, and may be adaptable to minesweeping (better to have a purpose-built minesweeper, but better a modular capability than none at all).  With its extremely low crew requirements and impressive capabilities, Skjold is a benchmark by which to measure craft of its size, an exceptional solution for any navy looking to rapidly and cheaply boost their capability.

 

This demarcation of roles between Major Surface Combatant, High Speed Vessel and Corvette may seem like a political risk, but it fairly neatly avoids several of the major pitfalls inherent in naval procurement programs today.  Above all, it avoids the distortion of surface combatant roles and the stretching of resources to favour number of surface combatant hulls over the capabilities incorporated, by providing a relatively cheap solution for missions other than naval combat.

Adam Smith, the Wealth Gap and How Wealth Monopolies Are Broken

By the time Adam Smith laid out the reason for the decline of the feudal aristocracy in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, the writing was already on the wall.  Smith was a philosopher and one of the founders of a sub-field of philosophy called Political Economy.  Unlike modern pure economics (a fruit of the 19^th Century craze for applying mathematics to every study of human endeavour), political economy relates social, political, historical, legal and even moral trends (the latter being one of Smith’s particular interests) to economic activity.  Even the word “economy” was then interpreted in a way much closer to the Greek original, meaning roughly the equilibrium or mode of life of the national household, and thus encompassed far more than business.   The distribution of wealth was of particular interest to Smith, as it is to us today.

In Wealth of Nations, Smith puts forth a compelling theory of the change from feudal to modern political economy, and it had to do with freeing captive wealth and dissolving the feudal wealth gap.  In the chaos of the post-Roman world, wealth was the land you could defend and the number of followers who supported you.  In the pervasive violence between nobles, nothing else really mattered.  However, as the skilled artisan class slowly recovered under the protection of emergent national states, the nobility suddenly had an abundance of things to buy.  They began to rent out their previously serf-tended land, or even sell it outright in order to raise capital.  As they sacrificed their former sources of power to support conspicuous consumption and keep up with ever-changing fashion, the nobility in effect transferred their wealth in two kinds to two different classes.  Their money went to the rising artisan class.  Their land went to a rising class of free farmers, who for the first time had an incentive to improve their land and methods of production.

This kind of phenomenon, the disappearance of a wealthy class, has occurred throughout history, beyond Britain and beyond the Enlightenment, often with different details.  Louis XIV dislocated his nobility by giving them court positions and enslaving them to opulent fashions, both of which alienated the rural and urban lower orders.  The Prussian state centralised by giving its Junkers military and official positions while inculcating a sense of noblesse oblige, which helped to ensure that Germany would not experience a French-style revolution.  Farther back, Ivan the Terrible wiped out his entire noble class through a system of and installed more compliant replacements, incidentally ensuring that the first steps toward constitutional government would be impossible in Russia.  But these are all essentially the strategies of centralising monarchs. 

What should be more interesting to us are the super-rich classes of history who fell without the aid of a central authority.  The vast wealth of the British Empire dried up in the course of a single generation, owing both to the World Wars and the hubris of British administration.  The Spanish Empire, the greatest cabal of treasure thieves in history, perished because it did not plant sustainable economies in its possessions.  Without more resources, all the extra silver was simply inflation.  The Russian Revolution was the end result of a long and futile attempt of an unbearable landowning aristocracy to hold on to their positions.  The more they held on, the worse the fall they were in for.  Such classes may perish from internal causes, popular dissatisfaction, or a combination of the two.

The problem today is not one of captive capital (if anything, capital is far too mobile for its own good- marginal lending and derivatives are both devices which allow banks and investment companies to create money that simply isn’t there), but of misallocated capital and the social illegitimacy which follows- and this, I think, is a problem that Smith could easily understand.  The half-life of an economic class is arguably proportional to the social legitimacy of the distribution system which creates it.  Capital allocations on the basis of blood and race almost always seem to fail- that is one explanation for the fall of the Babylonian Empire to the more meritocratic Persian Empire, and of course for the end of the European global empires.  By contrast, the Chinese Imperial Examination system established a meritocracy that survived the falls of several dynasties. 

The point is that in today’s system, it is not the entrepreneurs and real economic creators who are begrudged their share.  It is the financial class who profit by moving other people’s money around and are paid obscenely large bonuses and benefit packages regardless of their profitability, and the upper managerial class who likewise recieve compensation disproportionate to their value, and are likely to retire with millions or billions in their pockets regardless of how badly they fail the people dependent on them.

We are trained to look down on economic systems based on patronage.  The only thing worse is a patronage system in which the modern patron completely denies any responsibility for the people affected by their activities.  By doing so, the current economic order is setting the stage for its own obsolescence.  The only question is whether the change will open up new possibilities, as the demise of the feudal aristocracy did, or whether it will drag everyone down.

US-Russian Relations in Post-Cold War Retrospective: Could the United States have won Russia over?

Whether the United States “won” the Cold War by spending the USSR into the ground, or whether it was won for them by the great awakening that spread across Eastern Europe in the 1980s is a matter of continuing debate; that the end of the Cold War was a complete shock to exactly that group of scholars which now embraces the former theory is not.  Whichever the case, one thing that is clear in retrospect about that historical moment is that the United States and its European allies failed to secure the peace as well as they should have.

By now, we are all used to seeing the weekly Russian-American spat.  Yes, there are historical and psychological factors behind this, going back as far as Ivan the Terrible, who taught his successors to unite Russia through fear of the West.  And yes, Putin is a masterful manipulator of this psychological tendency.  But the West made it easy.  How many Russians after the humiliating decline and poverty of the 1990s looked back to the Soviet Union with nostalgia, the good old days when poverty at least had a defined bottom?  And how easy to blame the change on the West, which gained everything by Russia’s decline and no doubt stood by laughing.  And then, how tempting to look back on the military might of the Soviet Union and think, “They were afraid of us then!” 

From there, militarisation and nationalist bellicosity become embedded in Russian politics, and with them the price that Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great and Lenin and Stalin have all taught their people to accept: a strong boss at the top of a strong state which will tax the people in order to defend them and spy on them and repress undesirable elements in order to keep them safe.

Could this regression have been prevented?  Could the West have prevented it?  No one can answer that question.  But the West certainly could have done more.  Consider the following scenario.

In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Union, American economic advisors were sent to advise Russia on how to manage the transition to capitalism.  From the perspective of these advisors, the Russian political establishment was so caught up in its internal problems that it implemented their advice haphazardly and clumsily.  From the Russian perspective, the Americans were suspect representatives of a foreign ideology who gave a lot of advice and did little besides. 

Suppose the United States had sent a high-level envoy to Russia with a whole package of economic incentives, including trade concessions and widespread industrial collaboration.  Many Russian industries which simply could not compete on an open market could have been easily updated through industrial partnerships rather than sold off in bulk to corrupt predators.  Above all, the United States should have tried to sustain the existing economic structure, and advised the Yeltsin government to do so, until it could be consciously and carefully privatised, rather than the disastrously rapid sell-off that actually occurred.  The concessions on offer would have been the guarantee of the government’s attention.

The United States, realising that Russia’s massive military industrial complex represented its only sound manufacturing industry and that it could easily represent a threat to the peace if left to itself, could have invested in industrial partnerships designed to convert large parts of this sector to civilian use, giving Russia the incentive of access to up-to-date computers and electronics.  The remainder of this sector could have been safely sustained by giving it US defence contracts (in partnership with US firms).  This would have benefitted the US military enormously by giving them cheap access to the systems they are most likely to face in future conflicts, as well as advances in areas such as ground-based surface-to-air and supersonic anti-ship missiles, artillery and so on in which the United States has always lagged behind.  Imagine a defence establishment with the insight to redirect the billions of dollars wasted in the past two decades on cancelled and overbudget programs into partnerships with Russian industry, which had the foresight to buy Su-30s to supplement the USAF’s ageing F-15 fleet, which bought Sovremenny-class destroyers before China could get to them, which for a fraction of today’s defence budget had unlimited access to cheap, highly-effective systems.  Russia would gain access to the world’s biggest defence market, all for the low, low price of first crack at every product they made and the occasional under-the-table veto of a purchase to a hostile country.

All of the above could have meant that American aid dollars, rather than doping the Russian economy, could have been used to sustain it until it reached profitability.  Even if the project failed (and since trying to keep a lid on Yeltsin, let alone his various governments, would at best have been an exercise in bull-riding, it very likely would have), the United States could have bought itself enormous capital, and given Russia enormous face, by placing such importance in the project.  Blame for any failure would have more than likely landed in Yeltsin’s lap, as long as the US were smart enough to make a point of deferring to him on a regular basis.

Face is the important quantity here.  Russia’s abiding inferiority/superiority complex is one of the more prominent and remarked-upon aspects of its national character.  The country that built the world’s biggest submarine, biggest nuclear-powered cruiser, biggest ICBM, biggest strategic rocket force and biggest bomber has a burning need to be recognised as an equal among equals, to be respected. That is precisely what it did not feel during the 1990s, and it is that omission for which we are now paying.

As for Europe, giving Russia face could have been as simple as an offer of access to the Internal Market, probably combined with an intimation that EU membership was a future possibility.

Of course, very little of the above would have been politically possible.  Asking the US Congress to abandon pork-barrel politics long enough to place major defence orders overseas, asking the US to actually build up an economic competitor, asking France and Germany to risk adding Russia to the list of their competitors for EU leadership- it’s all quite impossible.  So, you may ask, what is the point of this indulgence in counterfactual history if it couldn’t have happened? 

The point is that the sort of strategic short-sightedness demonstrated by the United States in its relationship with Russia arises from the same political defects that continue to diminish its position in the world today.  Anyone remember the Asian Financial Crisis back at the turn of the millennium?  That was America’s golden opportunity to make friends in Asia.  The US wasn’t paying attention, and it was China that swooped in and bailed out its neighbours, gaining very substantial goodwill and laying the groundwork for the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement.  That agreement came about because China was willing to make substantial unilateral economic concessions, tailored country by country, on the basis of a principle called “giving six, taking four.”  It was about the long game.

The entire scenario spelled out above was inspired by the strategies of the Chinese Communist Party, both in its internal economic policies and in its so-called “Charm Offensive.”  These people are incredibly smart, enjoying the world’s oldest and most sophisticated strategic culture, and unlike the United States political establishment, they play the long game as a matter of habit.  And yet, the West remains predisposed through political dogma to regard the Party as a relic, an impediment to China’s progress, rather than the architect thereof.  All that the Party needs to continue winning in international politics is to continue being underestimated.  It has found a basic weakness of the American system, and is both exploiting it directly, and profiting by the fruits of it- the Sino-Russian arms relationship has been a prime example.  So long as the United States lacks the political will to address the strategic shortcomings of its current lucre-greased electoral system, any great power lacking that liability will be able to exploit it.

Global Financial Crisis Through Chinese Eyes- The Atlantic Interview

One of the best reflections out there on the Global Financial Crisis comes, unsurprisingly, from China.  It is clear to anyone who has read the literature on the course of China's economic development that the economic strategy and learning curce of China's political class is quite formidible, and ironically immune to many of the ideological blinkers that hamper Western economics.  Deng Xiaoping was the one who famously remarked that it doesn’t matter if the cat is white or black so long as it catches mice.  This interview in the Atlantic with the American-educated Gao Xiqing, President of the Chinese Investment Corporation (which is heavily invested in the American economy) contains some of the most interesting insights into the Chinese view of the crisis I have seen, and many things which we ought to take to heart.

Gao points to the skyrocketing leverage ratios of investment banks as evidence of a disturbing economic trend.  “Thirty years ago, the leverage of the investment banks was like 4-to-1, 5-to-1. Today, it’s 30-to-1. This is not just a change of numbers. This is a change of fundamental thinking. People, especially Americans, started believing that they can live on other people’s money.”

As for financial derivatives- repackaged debt- he thinks this is an instance of collective irrationality for the economy.  When called to give a presentation to the State Council under Premier Zhu Rongji, he explained derivatives using the metaphor of mirror images.  You have a product with value, a book, and you sell that.  Then you sell a mirror image of the book- the stock- in order to get money to make more books.  Then you sell a mirror of that stock debt, and a mirror of the mirror of the mirror.  Each individual product seems to make sense; collectively, the whole enterprise is inflationary.

Gao also sees a big problem with the compensation scheme for the financial sector: “People in this field have way too much money. And this is not right.”  “It distorts the talents of the country,” since the allocation of compensation has the power to incentivise the expenditure of talent, in this case redirecting it from productive activities to ancillary activities.  He cites friends of his who could have gone into productive scientific fields choosing finance or law instead, because they pay so much better.  The result of this distortion of the country’s talent market is a whole culture of geniuses finding ever new and better ways to repackage debt into complicated financial products.

American power, he says, depends entirely on people telling the truth about the American system and the American ability to accept that truth and change in pragmatic ways.  On the global level, America must accept responsibility for the system which supports it, and renegotiate that system.  But, Gao warns, world confidence in that eventuality is waning.

Zhuge Liang’s The Way of the General: 12 Principles of Leadership

Zhuge Liang’s The Way of the General has received comparatively little attention in the English-speaking world.  Zhuge Liang first caught my attention as a writer in the introduction to Thomas Cleary’s excellent edition of the Art of War (made more valuable by the commentaries it contains by subsequent strategists).  Of all of the strategic classics, Sun Tzu’s Art of War has always stood out for me as the incomparable embodiment of the spirit of strategic understanding, alongside the Tao Teh Ching with which it should always be read.  I am ready to add a third work to the list. 

“In stillness be as quiet as a fish in the deep, in action be as swift as an otter.”

Zhuge Liang’s biography is far too hefty a project to tackle here.  Polymath, itinerant scholar, strategist, alliance-builder, regent, inventor, the list of the man’s talents seems endless.  That they were buttressed by what could be considered a soft touch and the humility of an open mind gives Zhuge Liang a lasting charm that contrasts well with the grasping hard-headedness that has led many military and political strategists to unfortunate fates.  And yet, the man was revered as one of the most successful politicians and strategists of the Three Kingdoms Period, one of the most tumultuous eras in Chinese history.

The Taoist themes in Zhuge Liang’s thought are timeless, translating very well to any area of leadership in any century.  Though he was a skilled military tactician, The Way of the General gives only the smallest hints as to battlefield tactics and strategy.  “Press enemies and contain them; lure and entice them. Confuse them and seize them; be humble to make them proud. Be familiar yet distant; weaken them by lending strength.”  And perhaps that is the point.  With effective leadership, tactics come easily.  Or, as he might say, “First organise the inner, then organise the outer.  First organise yourself, then organise others.”

A few of the strongest themes from The Way of the General:



1. The leaders must know everything about those who serve under them; hold no order of people in contempt.

“An ancient document says: “Those who are contemptuous of cultured people have no way to win people’s hearts completely; those who are contemptuous of common people have no way to get people to work as hard as they can.

“[The enlightened ruler] worries not about subordinates not knowing superiors, but about superiors not knowing subordinates. He worries not about the lower classes not knowing the upper classes, but about the upper classes not knowing the lower classes.

“Thus when you are alert to what the people in the lower echelons have to say, and take it into consideration, so that your plan include the rank and file, then all people are your eyes and a multitude of voices helps your ears.”



2. Find out the talents of your subordinates and give them the opportunity to make them count.

Appropriate use of talent is one of Zhuge’s strongest themes.  He suggests organising an army by the talents of the soldiers rather than by a preconceived structure, forming elite units for melee combat, charges, speed, horse archery, marksmanship and so on, thus giving everyone scope to use their strengths in battle.  Zhuge Liang also provides guidelines for finding able leaders at various levels.

“One who is direct yet circumspect, who is brave and can fight, is the leader of a thousand men.

“One of martial bearing and fierceness of heart, who knows the hardships of others and spares people from hunger and cold, is the leader of ten thousand men.

“One who associates with the wise and promotes the able, who is careful of how he spends each day, who is sincere, trustworthy, and magnanimous, and who is guarded in times of order as well as times of disturbance, is the leader of a hundred thousand men.

“One whose humanitarian care extends to all under his command, whose trustworthiness and justice win the allegiance of neighboring nations, who understands the signs of the sky above, the patterns of the earth below, and the affairs of humanity in between, and who regards all people as his family, is a world-class leader, one who cannot be opposed.”




3. Win the people over by righteousness and care for their needs.

This one seems almost strange today, when we almost without exception expect our leaders to be looking out for number one and any show of sympathy with the people to be little more than convention. 

“Give security to those in danger; gladden those in fear. If people oppose you, take what they say to heart; if people have grudges, let them express themselves.

“Restrain the strong, sustain the weak.

“Good generals of ancient times took care of their people as one might take care of a beloved child. When there was difficulty they would face it first themselves, and when something was achieved they would defer to others. They would tearfully console the wounded and sorrowfully mourn the dead. They would sacrifice themselves to feed the hungry and remove their own garments to clothe the cold. They honored the wise and provided for their living; they rewarded and encouraged the brave. If generals can be like this, they can take over anywhere they go.”




4. Share your subordinates’ conditions.

This was more than words for Zhuge Liang, whose will reflects that although he gained some lands for the support of his family, he himself lived and was fed and clothed little better than the soldiers.  If the leader lives in luxury, the subordinates will have little affection for him; he will be the fat cat playing with their lives and fortunes rather than a respected comrade.  Zhuge’s insistence that a general not eat before his soldiers and that he share their risks is particularly apt today in the world of unearned bonuses and golden parachutes for certain classes of people and pay cuts and layoffs for those less well-off.

“Do not sit down before the soldiers sit; do not eat before the soldiers eat.

“Bear the same cold and heat the soldiers do; share their toil as well as their case.

“Experience sweetness and bitterness just as the soldiers do; take the same risks that they do.

“Then the soldiers will exert themselves to the utmost, and it will be possible to destroy enemies.”

“According to the code of generalship, generals do not say they are thirsty before the soldiers have drawn from the well; generals do not say they are hungry before the soldiers’ food is cooked; generals do not say they are cold before the soldiers’ fire are kindled; generals do not say they are hot before the soldiers’ canopies are drawn. Generals do not use fans in summer, do not wear leather (or fur) in winter, do not use umbrella in the rain. They do as everyone does.”




5. Exercise vigilance, expecting every condition to contain the seeds of its opposite, according to the Tao.

In Taoism, every benefit may contain the seeds of future harm.  Lao Tzu’s comments on overextension leading to decay come to mind here, as do his comments about the ease of dealing with the seed compared with the grown plant.  It is no good achieving victory in a way that embitters a population you have to deal with.  It is no good passing laws to maintain order that tarnish the reputation of the state and lead to further disorder.  It is no good posting record profits if your long-term strategy is unsound.

“Danger arises in safety, destruction arises in survival. Harm arises in advantage, chaos arises in order.”




6. Punishment and reward must be absolutely consistent and never subject to personal motives.

The consistency of rewards and punishments, for Zhuge as for Mozi, should be clear and absolutely without personal bias, since this is the only way to encourage achievement and cultivate order.

“If they get angry without discernible reason, their authority will not be effective. If their rewards and punishments are not clear, the lower echelons will not be encouraged to achieve.

“If politics are inappropriate, orders will not be obeyed. If private affairs are carried over into public life, people will be of two minds.

“If rewards are given for no reason, those who have worked hard in public service will be resentful; if penalties are applied arbitrary, upright people will be bitter.”




7. In order to solve a problem or improve organisation, start at the top.

Everything starts with the leader, who will get exactly the organisation he deserves.  Every big problem starts at the top.  If the great are not properly ordered, neither will their subordinates be.

“First organize the near at hand, then organize the far removed. First organize the inner, then organize the outer. First organize the basic, then organize the derivative. First organize the strong, then organize the weak. First organize the great, then organize the small. First organize yourself, then organize others.”




8. Educate subordinates by your example.

“A policy of instruction and direction means those above educate those below, not saying anything that is unlawful and not doing anything that is immoral, for what is done by those above is observed by those below.”



9. For important jobs, seek out hidden talent in obscure places.

Zhuge Liang’s own beginnings as an itinerant scholar are reflected in the value he places on people of obscure origins who may not have had a chance to show their skills.  Most human potential is wasted; being able to find it and use it correctly is the key skill of exceptional leaders.

“Straight trees are found in remote forests; upright people come from the humble masses. Therefore when rulers are going to make appointments they need to look in obscure places.

“Sometimes there are disenfranchised people with something of value in them; sometimes there are people with extraordinary talent who go unrecognized. Sometimes there are paragons of virtue who are not promoted by their hometown; sometimes there are people who live in obscurity on purpose.”

“Sometimes there are people who are dutiful and righteous for purely philosophical or religious reasons. Sometimes there are loyal people who are straightforward with rulers but are slandered by cliques. Ancient kings are known to have hired unknowns and nobodies, finding in them the human qualities whereby they were able to bring peace.”




10. Lighten your subordinates’ burdens, be concerned for their welfare and give them a chance to thrive.

“Encourage people in productive work, don’t deprive them of their time. Lighten their taxes, don’t exhaust their resources. In this way the country is made wealthy and families secure.”




11. Reward generously.

“ [A] General should not be stingy, for if they are stingy they will not reward the trustworthy, and if they do not reward the trustworthy, the soldiers will not be dedicated., the armed forces are ineffective, and if the armed forces are ineffective, the nation is empty. When the nation is empty, its opponents are full.”




12. To Avoid:

Zhuge Liang spends a great deal of time listing everything that leaders should avoid, and that righteous leaders should punish in their officials.  His list of the eight evils of generals is particularly instructive.  Inability to formulate strategy in a moral way is the worst evil, the inability to delegate authority to men of peace in peacetime the second worst.  The inability to foresee and prevent future dangers through wise policy features twice on the list.  A second list deals with decadence in generals, beginning with greed.

Zhuge Liang also emphasises the importance of dismissing corrupt and unjust officials as well as those whose excessive meddling and bureaucracy causes the people hardship and confusion.




It is notable that Zhuge Liang remains a key standard by which officials, and especially Premiers, are still measured in China.  Wen Jiabao, sincerely or not, very much played up to this image and in so doing probably did more than anyone else to keep the Party-State stable. 

If there is one work on leadership that everyone should read, this is it.  It is much shorter and easier to read than the Art of War, appropriately demanding and very clear, and despite the title, it translates quite easily into non-military affairs, spending little time on concerns exclusive to generalship. 



All quotations from Kong Ming's Archives, translation by Thomas Cleary

China in the South Sea Islands: Pride Goeth

This article was written just before the recent announcement by China of its intention to garrison the Paracel Islands, and should be read accordingly. 

When island standoffs come once every few weeks, and the grounding of Chinese frigates on disputed shoals is the expected order of the day, the question “Why the heck does anyone care?” moves to the forefront of the minds of most reasonable observers.  What the Spratleys or the Paracels actually represent to China’s foreign policy from an internal perspective is a question comparatively ignored.   Of course, answers of a sort to both questions are quick to hand.  Resources, national prestige.  But what does that really mean? 

Is the CCP so worried about the vulnerability of their energy supplies, not to mention future shortfalls as development continues, that they are consciously risking the very considerable goodwill they had amassed in the past decade of Chiang Mai currency swaps, the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement and a carefully-strategized soft-power offensive on the geostrategic necessity of finding abundant, proximate oil and gas resources?  There is reason to believe that China is deeply concerned about the vulnerability of its African oil supply to disruption en route through the Indian Ocean and the Malacca Straits.  Further, the CCP has known for over a decade that it will have to dampen consumption levels and invest in sustainable technologies or risk outstripping the conceivable energy (and other) supplies available to them.  However, it is quite likely that they have a few years left to go before that wall is in sight. 

As for national prestige, East Asia is home to quite a number of ongoing territorial disputes, both maritime and continental, and China is involved in quite a few of them, yet life has somehow gone on without any hint of resolution.  It could be that what China might have seen as pre-emptive actions in the region- notably Vietnam’s threat last year to grant oil concessions in the Spratleys- required a countervailing assertiveness for home consumption, and that the issue has snowballed.  If this were the case, we could expect China to look for an opportunity to cool the issue down.

Why didn’t the recent ASEAN meeting show any sign of this?  China wants all of these issues to be negotiated on a strictly bilateral basis.  China has historically been quite careful about the limitations it might incur through multilateral commitments, and ASEAN can be said to bear much of the credit for acculturating China to the many multilateral organisations it has joined in the last decade.  In the end, however, the strain of caution remains, and China may well see multilateral negotiation as a dangerous gamble particularly here, where they would have to be seen to play by ASEAN rules in the best case, and in the worst case the United States might try to muscle in as it already has.  Unfortunately, many ASEAN countries seem to have been driven beyond the point where the status quo is considered acceptable.  The issue is live, and China may not be able to defuse it.

That is one interpretation.  Another is that the CCP has yet again done too good a job substituting nationalism for Maoism.  This has got it into trouble before.  Widespread protests erupted within China in 2005 over Japan’s bid for a Security Council seat, and were immediately suppressed by an embarrassed Communist Party.  It could be that popular opinion has swung through China Emergent all the way to China Triumphant.  The tone of Chinese military rhetoric and building programs certainly suggests something of the kind.  If so, then the secret fear of many China observers could come to pass: that a situation might develop in which the Chinese Communist Party feels that it cannot defy nationalist sentiment in the name of reason and will abandon its long policy of conflict containment in order to survive politically. 

By far the worst case scenario is that the Party leadership, having decided  that it cannot or will not clean up the internal corruption, political and labour scandals which have led to a constant, exponential annual increase in public protest since the 1990s, actually views these events as a useful distraction.  This is the worst case, not because the Party is stirring up conflict as a distraction a la General Galtieri in the Falklands, but because if it has truly thrown in the towel and given into another generation of corruption under the Party “princelings” (and the structure of the new leadership suggests that possibility) then China surely is headed for a different kind of wall, a political wall in addition to a resource wall.  It will surely take others with it.

In any case, whatever the scenario we entertain, the significance of the island disputes is not in the disputes themselves- but that does not mean they are not significant.  Every scenario points to the same choice.  If China doesn’t find the will and the means to cool things off (and no one but China can), China may find itself crashing right through all its rhetoric of “peaceful rise” and all of its hard-won trust in the region.  China can be either the nationalist bully, or the conciliatory regional power- but the choice is in play. 

When this article was first written, it concluded with the words “Hang on to your hats.”  Little did it appear how apt that advice might be.  The decision to garrison the Paracels comes after the installation of a municipal government for the islands’ sparse population, and announcements regarding the development of tourism and natural resources.  By themselves, any of these could be seen as diplomatic manoeuvres, and the garrisoning of the islands, which were captured from South Vietnam in 1974, is not an entirely surprising extension of China’s military presence in the group.  Taken together, however, all of these things indicate a disturbing assurance on the part of China that it can make a disputed island group its own simply by behaving as though it were.  China either does not expect anyone to muster the force or the will to effectively contest such a policy, or wishes for such an incident in order to demonstrate the futility of any resistance to its territorial boxes. 

Regardless of the military fact that China can indisputably win any conflict up to a regional war with any or all Southeast Asian countries, in either case, it is making a serious mistake.  Even if everyone backs down, the results would undoubtedly polarise the region, and even if no one wanted to risk open conflict, this would be a definitive end to the friendly face of China’s rise, and the beginning of a path that might ultimately lead to a confrontation involving the United States, something that could not fail to be disastrous for everyone involved.

Strategikon of Maurice: The Praxis of Leadership and the Art of War

The Strategikon of the Emperor Maurice (582-602) is one of several valuable repositories of military strategy left to us by the Byzantine (properly East Roman)  Empire, not only because of the unique window it provides into the military organisation of the Empire

Background

Following the collapse of the Western Empire, the Byzantines adjusted every aspect of military strategy and tactics to cope with the harsh lessons inflicted by the various invading tribes.  The army assimilated the best of the tactics used by their opponents, the Huns, Goths, Scythians and Persians among others.  They incorporated disciplined mobile cavalry tactics, as well as heavily-armoured cavalry or kataphracts.  In an era in which Western Europe and its nascent feudal system were descending into internecine warfare among rival barons, Byzantium maintained one of Europe’s few remaining non-mercenary professional armies with meaningful uniformity of training and tactics and systematic organisation.  The tactics of the Byzantine armies were quite successful in defending the empire against the primarily Arab, Bulgarian and Turkish invaders throughout long stretches of the Isaurian, Macedonian and Komnenian dynasties.  Situated at the pivot between Europe and Asia Minor, Byzantium’s successes in containing the early Islamic invasions ranks with the Mongol succession crisis in their importance for the formation of Europe as we know it.

Praxis of Strategy

If Sun Tzu’s Art of War emphasized strategic mindset with tactical annotations, then Maurice wrote extensively about how to carry a strategy into practice.  The Strategikon is essentially a handbook for generals, a step-by-step treatment of the raising, training, logistics, formations, discipline, equipment, formations, battle tactics and strategic calculus of the Byzantine armies.  It is exactly this comprehensive and methodical approach that sets Maurice in the tradition of the armies of Marius and Caesar in an age in which most of Europe’s “armies” consisted of nobles, who frequently fought one another and were occasionally brought together by an outside threat, and peasants with minimal military training. 

More importantly for our purposes, it encapsulates principles of leadership and strategy that translate very well through the centuries.

Useful Points of Strategy: Books VII and VIII

 

Books VII and VIII of the Strategikon bear the most directly on strategy as such, though strategic thought is evident throughout the book.  Book VIII, “General Instructions and Maxims,” is one of the great unsung works on leadership, and should be read right along with the Art of War by every aspiring leader in any field.  Maurice has extremely high standards for military leadership, and much of what he says is surprisingly reminiscent of the best advice of successful business, military, political and social leaders of modern times.


     1. The Art of Change

One feature that all of the really great strategists from Sun Tzu down through history have had in common is an emphasis on adapting one’s own approach to neutralise the enemy’s advantages and multiply his weaknesses in an almost automatic way.  Entire martial arts are formed around this principle: deal with incoming energy through its equal and opposite.  Emperor Maurice is a master of this strategy.

• Whatever the enemy’s strength may be, make it a weakness.  If his strength is numbers, attack his supplies.  If it is cavalry, attack in late winter when their horses are in their worst condition. 

• Use the enemy’s existing weaknesses.  Multiply dissentions and corruption within their ranks.  If they are undisciplined, make as though to attack and wait for them to grow restless.

• “A good general is one who utilizes his own skills to fit the opportunities he gets and the quality of the enemy.”

• If your force is small, select a narrow place in which to fight, thus reducing the enemy’s advantage and avoiding being outflanked.

• If the enemy relies on archers, attack when their bowstrings are wet with rain.

• Adapt your strategy to the disposition of the enemy general.  If he is a rash, hard-charging type, provoke him.  If he is careful and reserved, pick at him using surprise raids, and so on.

• Choose your terrain according to the enemy’s weakness.  Fight in the woods if he is best at fighting on the plains, plains if he prefers fighting in the mountains, and so on.  To this end, Maurice insists that even the horses be trained to manoeuvre on rough and hilly ground.

2. Logistics and Supply

Maurice is meticulous about the logistical foundations of power, down to the food carried in his troops’ saddlebags.  He dedicates an entire book to the subject, and even in these two chapters, he enjoins his commanders to study the means of poisoning enemy food supplies while protecting their own, to make sure that horses are watered before battle, to store hay for horses during wars of cavalry against cavalry and many other points of preparation.  His main concern in Book VII is that the army provides itself with enough of a reserve that it can rebound from a defeat or carry the war forward if an opportunity arises.

By the same token, it is better to starve the enemy of resources than to meet him in pitched battle.

3. Gathering Intelligence

Maurice emphasises the gathering of intelligence.  Continuous scouting, patrols and even the use of spies and the seduction of defectors are all within his repertoire.  He even issues particular instructions on what to do when confronted by an unfamiliar and powerful enemy, advising his commanders to engage in small-scale raids first to determine their methods of war and build confidence on the Byzantine side. 

4. Concealment and Deception

Maurice puts every effort into making sure that the number and disposition of his own forces are not seen until the last minute, with units moving separately from one another so that they cannot be seen at the same time, sending out ambush parties and larger units to prevent enemy reconnaissance, and even hiding in the woods until the enemy is very close.  The one exception is if a spy is caught and the army happens to be strong and in excellent condition, in which case the spy is to be released to go back and deliver to the enemy news of their inferiority.

Maurice proposes sending false messages and rumours with the intention of their being intercepted by the enemy, as well as feints and deceptive tactics.  His strategy to decoy a pursuing enemy is utter simplicity: start a fire in one place and move off in another direction.  The enemy will head for the fire.

Because armies in this period knew very well that a parade-ready army is never battle-ready, they tended overtly to judge an army’s fighting ability by the dullness of its appearance.  Maurice advises measures to appear as dull as possible until the moment of battle, and thus intimidate the enemy.

5. Spiritual Fortification

• “Before getting into danger, the general should worship God.  When he does get into danger, then, he can with confidence pray to God as a friend.”

• The troops are to sing prayers morning and evening, and the banners to be blessed before battle.

• Besides these overt manifestations of spiritual activity, Maurice emphasises the spiritual and psychological advantage that comes with making war only for just causes, settling wars with diplomacy where the enemy will be easily satisfied, and behaving, by Byzantine standards, honourably toward the enemy, regardless of the enemy’s own behaviour.

6. Leadership

The Troops: Lead, Don’t Manage

• “The spirit of the commander is naturally communicated to the troops.”  Maurice recognises that the army is only as good as its general, and that each general creates the army he deserves by his attitude, disposition and conduct.  A general must be “calm in emergencies, prudent in counsel, courteous to his associates.” 

• Maurice quotes a saying that “it is better to have an army of deer commanded by a lion than an army of lions commanded by a deer.”  For this reason, the general should present a cheerful and unflappable appearance regardless of the situation.  Also, a general must set an example by his behaviour “training himself to the highest ideals... and refraining from those things his soldiers should refrain from.”

• “...the general ought not to set himself apart... but he should begin the work and toil along with his troops as much as possible.  Such behaviour will lead the soldier to be more submissive to his officers, even if only out of shame, and he will accomplish more.”

• “The general’s way of life should be plain and simple, like that of his soldiers.”  Nothing, Maurice writes, is more destructive to an army than a general who likes to live in luxury, as the men will look at the discrepancy between their hardship and the general’s ease and will become corrupt and unscrupulous.

•  A general should behave in a “fatherly” way toward his troops, “give orders in a mild manner,” “give advice and discuss essential matters with them in person.”  He should be concerned with “their safety, their food and their regular pay.”

• The general must take every measure possible to increase his troops’ confidence and raise their spirits, regardless of reversals.

• Assign people to duties in which they will succeed.  Assign cowards and weak officers to rear-echelon duties, and honest and able men to responsible positions, as scouts and line officers.  Test the courage of your men before taking them into battle, and if you see their courage failing, take measures to build up their confidence one skill at a time.

• Real motivation comes from expectation of success and rewards, not from fear of punishment.  Fear leads to hatred, and severe punishments to mutiny.

• The general must be seen to be a fair and impartial judge in all cases, even between his own people and allies.  He must investigate thoroughly and punish mercifully.

• Take proper care of the wounded and the dead, or the army will not fight well.


Responsible Leadership:

• A general should “see that civilians are left unharmed.”  Maurice’s regulations are quite strict about any harm done to the property of a Roman citizen.  This implies that the leader must take responsibility for the broader impact of his organisation on the people and society.

• Take time making plans.  Once you have made a decision, carry it out immediately.

• Gravitas: avoid undue elation and depression.

• A general should take habitual precautions, such as making fortified camps, even when he thinks he is safe; too many military and political leaders in recent memory have given the excuse that Maurice tells a general not to give: we didn’t expect it.  A general is responsible for expecting any reasonably foreseeable reversal.

• There are rules in war for a reason.  Treat enemy envoys well, and keep sworn agreements.  If both sides can agree on these principles, they can function to the advantage of both.  Betray them, and they’re closed forever.

• Every night, a general should think about his mistakes and omissions of the day, and what he will do to correct them the next day.


The Path of the General:

• “The best general is not the man of noble family, but the man who can take pride in his own deeds.”

• “A general who desires peace must prepare for war.”

• Change up your tactics, especially when they have been working for some time.

• Failing to study the enemy and the possibilities for reversal on the battlefield is the sign of an inept and amateurish general.

Points of Interest:

Maurice was a great believer in tactics, strategy and careful preparation over raw daring or overwhelming force, and thus his attention was focussed on developing leaders who were proficient in such an approach.  “Wild animals,” he writes, “are taken by scouting, by nets, by lying in wait, by stalking, by circling around, and by other such strategems rather than by sheer force.”

There are traces everywhere throughout the Strategikon of the painful lessons dealt to the Roman Army by the barbarians in the period we now call Late Antiquity.  Maurice’s injunction never to let barbarian allies camp with, get to close to or learn the tactics of the Byzantine Army shows the marks of a very costly lesson well-learned.  Likewise, he specifically enjoins careful training of the cavalry and advocates a force consisting mainly of cavalry.


More on the Strategikon later.

 

Principles of Strategy in Action: The Theban Rise

Principles:

Improve the lot of those your enemy has oppressed.

Provide leadership where your enemy has failed to do so.

Understand the motives and desires of your allies.

After the Peloponnesian Wars, both Athens and Sparta were exhausted.  Sparta attempted to install oligarchies on their own model throughout Greece, without bothering to be in any way tactful or persuasive, or to realise that their allies had supported them because of Athenian meddling and Sparta’s history of minding its own business.  This naturally led to widespread discontent.

The city of Thebes at this time was becoming more democratic.  Sparta, accustomed to viewing democracy as a threat, immediately attempted to interfere, which only succeeded in creating a groundswell of democratic feeling in Thebes.  In response, the Thebans began to develop an army rivalling that of Sparta.

In the ensuing war, the Thebans under the general Epaminondus displayed a brilliant grasp of Sparta’s strategic failings.  They recognised that Sparta had a pattern of exposing its allies to greater risk than it was willing to take itself.  If you joined the Spartans in battle, you would end up facing the brunt of the enemy attack on the left wing while the Spartans on the right triumphed easily over the less formidable of the enemy troops, thus retaining their reputation for invincibility and conserving their numbers.  The Thebans, on the other hand, took the left wing position in their formation, ensuring that they would meet the Spartans directly, thus proving their willingness to lead from the front. 

Also, the Thebans realised that anyone who wanted to defeat Sparta had a tremendous potential ally within Sparta itself- the Helots.  The Helots were the descendants of the conquered Messenians, who had been subjugated to support the Spartan warrior class.  The Spartans had done nothing to assimilate the Helots into their society- indeed, every year they ritually declared war on the Helot population and routinely killed off any Helot who managed to gain any pre-eminence.  The Helots were only kept in check by the warrior skill of the small population of Spartan Equals, already severely depleted in numbers by the Peloponnesian Wars and were in no position to fight two wars at the same time. 

The Thebans did the logical thing, declaring that the Helots would be returned to the status of free Greeks like their Messenian ancestors.  The reaction was predictable and immediate, and from that moment, Sparta’s war became unwinnable and its economic foundation of slave labour was ripped out from under it.  It would spend the next several centuries as a kind of theme park for visitors wanting to gawp at what had once been the Mediterranean’s pre-eminent warrior culture.

Links of Interest- Leadership, Languages and Lacklustre Fighters

Found an interesting talk by the USAF's first female Thunderbird pilot (and later F-15E Squadron Commander) Lt. Col. Nicole Malachowski, on life in the Thunderbirds and her experiences as a female fighter pilot.  She offers a worthwhile career strategy toward the end- give your time only to positive people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0jZnTf-MIg


As a fervent enthsiast of the world's lesser-known languages and cultures, Google's Endangered Languages Project and its stated goal of protecting "global lingistic diversity" has a basic appeal- if only it had some content.


For anyone following the F-35 controversy in any of the many countries whose defence budgets are about to be hit by this incredibly expensive machine, here is a documentary interviewing Pierre Sprey, the man behind the A-10 and the F-16, explaining the airplane's tactical, budgetary and logistical shortcomings. 

As a Canadian, I find it particularly frustrating that commentators in this country are divided mainly along political lines.  The Left is sure that we don't need it but can't explain why, thus coming across as kneejerk doves, as always.  The Right is sure that we do need it, yet their given reasons are incredibly flimsy, and the doctrine against which the purchase is set should certainly be a matter of concern to the nation (more on all of this later).  This documentary would make an excellent benchmark for informed discourse on the subject... well, hope springs eternal.

In related news, the Netherlands' Parliament may be about to ditch their F-35 order.