AFG 4b: CRC Paperwork

Bob and I got on base early in the morning where we went to chapel with a bunch of airborne recruits. Some things that stand out about the recruits were these: how young they were, how short their hair was, and how fired up they were. The chapel also featured contemporary Christian music or CCM, which caught me, a traditional church music guy, by surprise. The lyrics were projected on a screen in the front of the church even though all the recruits seemed to know all the words, which was weird for me.

Soon it was time to leave and get back to CRC, the CONUS Replacement Center. Today we formed up and marched past the open-air concrete pad onto a road. The military guys in uniform went first marching in formation and shouting cadences that they all knew. The contractors, like me, brought up the rear in a rag-tag, undisciplined fashion. I’ve never been so proud.

We marched along this road for perhaps a mile, maybe less, up a hill to the biggest tent I’ve ever seen. In it contained a large, open-air room with row after row of tables and row after row of chairs. Behind the tables and chairs were a few classrooms that we would not see for a couple of days. We were instructed to take a seat. And there we were given forms to fill out. Forms would be passed out, we would fill them out, and then they would be collected. In one section were the military personnel in uniform, and in another section were the contractors. We were not allowed to mix. This went on for form after form, hour after hour. We went home on Sunday, came back on Monday, and filled out more forms. But there was a method to the madness. The instructors knew what they were doing – they had done this before – and it was clear that many people had been in this large CRC tent and had filled out many, many forms.

The day was punctuated by our lining up and marching back down the hill, with the military in the front and the contractors bringing up the rear, to the dining facility or the DFAC. The food was good and plentiful – you could eat as much as you wanted. It was also free; all you had to do was show your LOA. Then we’d march back up the hill to fill out more forms. After a while we also started to receive training, such as not to sexually assault our female colleagues because it could hurt team cohesion and jeopardize the mission. We were also instructed on what to do if we got captured, which was hold out for as long as possible and maintain our honor and morale but realize that everyone breaks eventually. One of the forms we had to fill out was for dog tags, and I remember thinking, “Cool, I get dog tags!”

But something else was happening, something that I did not expect but was fundamental to the CRC process: I was slowly but surely inculcating and embodying military ways. Through the process of being given instructions, implementing those instructions, marching up and down the hill, and eating at the DFAC, a civilian like me was slowly becoming adapted to the ways of the US military machine. The civilian world of hotels and restaurants was slowly fading into my mental background.

AFG 04a: CRC Arrival

It was Friday in late July in Georgia, and I picked Bob up from the Atlanta airport in a rental car, and from there we headed to Columbus and got a hotel suite with two bedrooms. At this early point in the week, everything seemed pretty normal, like an average business trip. Bob and I, once we got into town, went to a roadhouse restaurant where we got to eat peanuts and throw the shells on the floor, which was a first for me. Later that day we made it onto the Ft. Benning base and figured out where we needed to be the next morning. With nothing else to do, we left. That night, I went to sleep with little idea of what was going to happen to me the rest of the week.

We got up early and made it onto base first thing Saturday morning, the Army way. We parked the car and made it into the CONUS Replacement Center (CRC), which at this point consisted of a bunch of buildings off to the right and a large, open-air concrete pad of covered by roof to provide shade from the intense Georgia sun. There were hundreds of people, both military in and contractors out of uniform, who were there with one goal in mind: to go off to war. But before you could do that, you had to show that your paperwork was squared away, and that’s why everyone was there. Bob and I had our Letters of Authorization (LOAs), and that was all I cared about, that was all they cared about. When I got up to the head of the line and had my LOA signed off, I was oh-so-glad I had sweated those details earlier in the week because there was no appeal, there was no arguing, and there was no wiggle room: you either had the LOA or you didn’t, and it appeared that some people didn’t.

Bob and I were there as highly-educated analysts, but it appeared to me that many of the people there were mechanics or service providers on their last legs that had spent quite a bit of time and resources to get to CRC in hopes of going to Iraq, Afghanistan, or elsewhere to make some much needed money. And some of them didn’t have their paperwork together. They were arguing, and weedling, and making excuses, but it didn’t matter. There was no way for me to figure out how many people were leaving those desks for the long trip back home empty handed, but there were a few.

 

There were also a few people on the other side of the equation: guys whose paperwork was squared away and who were going over but were leaving loved ones behind. They wanted work in the United States, in CONUS, but couldn’t find any, or it didn’t pay enough. One guy I talked to was leaving his family behind to maintain helicopters, which he said “Hurt his heart.” After getting our paperwork confirmed, there was nothing left to do but leave and come back tomorrow, which we did.

AFG 03: Preparation

After leaving Tampa where I spent a week with Special Forces (SF), which was my first week of work at my new job, for some reason I went off to my second week of work at a conference in Chantilly, Virginia. The event was held at a mega-conference center that had the feel of an American version of Versailles built by the Marriott Corporation on short-notice. There in Chantilly I tagged up with my new boss, JP, and told him that the meeting at SOCOM went well but that I had unexpectedly been invited to go to Afghanistan for six months to be a political-economic analyst for SF. I then gently hinted that he probably didn’t want me to go because he hired me to do important work for him, right?

JP reaction was like a kid on Christmas morning: “You were asked to go to Afghanistan? That’s awesome! You should totally do it! What a great opportunity! That’s a once-in-a-lifetime adventure! You should totally go!”

Thanks JP, I had been sucked into and trapped within his reality distortion zone, and so began the Lowell Goes to Afghanistan (LG2A) project.

Now what I didn’t understand at the time is that it takes a lot planning, preparation, and paperwork to get yourself into a warzone, which is counterintuitive because, let’s face it, who really wants to be in a warzone? Given the work I put into it, apparently I did.

After I got back to work proper, I called my buddy Darrall who was in the Army and said, “SF wants me to go to Afghanistan – what do I do?”

Darrall said, “I hate to say this, but I’m now in the business of sending guys there. You want me to do that for you?”

I said yeah, so that’s how Darrall became my program manager, a kind of boss, for a while. So the paperwork started with me writing up what we were going to do. Now this was supposed to be Bob’s job, because: (1) recall that he was the one who knew the SF guy Fred, (2) this was his dream; and (3) I didn’t even really want to go. However, Bob worked for this gigantic defense contractor for whom a contract in the tens of millions was considered small potatoes, so this small, two-man analysis LG2A contract wouldn’t even appear on their radar, so because I worked for a small company that’s adapted to small contracts, writing up the proposal became my job.

The interesting part was that I had to write about what Bob and I were going to do in Afghanistan, a place I had never been, for a command about which I knew little, and for people I had never met. However, as a professional defense contractor, this didn’t stop me because if it was easy, then everyone would do it. Basically, I made up a bunch of stuff, including a schedule, which is insane because when I’m working for the command, basically I’ll be an analytic resource that will be tasked by the command, in a warzone, so how do I know what their schedule will be. And they’re in a warzone, so guess what? They themselves don’t know what their schedule is! But I made up a schedule anyway, which said that I’d provide a schedule a few weeks after Bob and I got there and figured out what was going on. One thing I made sure to do was write in my coming home for Christmas, the one precondition I had for going on this insane adventure. So we finished the proposal, sent it off, and after a few months, amazingly, it was accepted. Also, because I wrote up the proposal and my company was in charge, I became the project leader, what’s called the Principal Investigator or PI.

Increasing numbers of people in my new company had gotten wind of this proposed project over time because, let’s face it, it was so outrageous and interesting that how could you not have heard of it? I remember walking into work one day, and this other scientist, Ross, came walking in behind me.

Ross asks, “Are you Lowell?”

I answer, “Yeah.”

He says, “And is it true that you’re going to Afghanistan?”

I wonder how this guy I’ve never met knows about this, but say, “Yeah, there’s talk of it, but until I’m actually on that plane, I can’t believe it’ll actually happen.”

And that’s exactly the way I felt. I was going through all these motions and putting in all this work to go somewhere that I didn’t really want to go, which probably wasn’t going to happen anyway for some stupid reason, but that’s defense contracting.

One day, I’m sitting in my office with no windows directly under an air conditioning vent freezing. At my level of seniority, I should have a nice office with windows, but because I’m going to Afghanistan, the company has decided to give me a bad office and will take care of me when I get back. So I’m sitting there, freezing and not really believing that I’ll actually ever make it to Afghanistan, when this crazy senior corporate bald advisor guy with a cane, COL Ted (retired), shows up at my door. “Are you Lowell?”

“Yeah.”

Ted says, “I just wanted to meet you! You’re going to Afghanistan right? That’s awesome! You’re going to have a great time! I wish I was going!”

I have no idea what to say, so I basically just smile and nod. I was starting to feel like a semi-celebrity.

I call Darrall and ask what to do next, and he says schedule CRC and my shots. CRC is the CONUS Replacement Center, which represents one of my favorite military achievements, an acronym within an acronym, as CONUS stands for Continental United States. CRC is a center in Ft. Benning, Georgia that prepares military personnel and contractors, like me, to travel OCONUS, which stands for Outside the Continental United States, to places like Afghanistan. I get on some military website, which requests endless pieces of information, including paperwork with very specific serial numbers. I do my best, can’t complete the paperwork, and move on. Darrall also sends me lists of all the shots that I need to take. So I schedule an appointment with a local doctor for my shots.  

I go to the office building and go inside. Finally I get taken to the back where I am shot with multiple needles filled with various liquids. Suddenly things have gotten very real, and I reflect on the nature of trust in society. Here’s somebody, purportedly a doctor, that I’ve never met, and I trust him to inject stuff into my body that will supposedly protect me when other people who I trust take me off to some faraway and dangerous land. The doctor tells me that I may feel a little weird. I go back home where I actually feel a lot weird – for a while.

After a few more days, I finally get Bob and me scheduled for CRC in late July, but there’s still one final piece of crucial paperwork that I have to obtain, the elusive Letter of Authorization or LOA. I call, I write, but somebody in Afghanistan has to authorize our arrival there, and it’s tough to motivate and move that bureaucracy. Nevertheless, I finish off a proposal to the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency or DARPA, and then head down to a computer-based analysis conference at a Hyatt in Washington, DC.  The conference is a bit of a wasted effort however as I spend most of my time writing emails and making phone calls to try to spring loose the LOA because, without that, Bob and I are not going anywhere. I’m scheduled to get on a plane to Atlanta to meet Bob on Friday as CRC starts on Saturday, and the thought of going back to work and facing my colleagues after all the build-up and excitement is not pleasant. I finally receive the LOA in an email on Thursday, with almost 24 hours to spare before going to Atlanta! No problem! Off to Georgia!

AFG 00: Preface

I’m a computational social scientist, and for whatever reason I got invited by US Army Special Forces to go to Afghanistan, America’s longest war, around the 10^th anniversary of the conflict in the fall of 2011. Upon my return I’ve told a few stories to let people know of the awesome individuals I met over there, and one colleague said to me, “You should really write up your experiences.” I was a little reluctant to do for several reasons. First of all, it seemed like a bit of an ego-trip, in which I didn’t want to indulge. Second, I’ve read a bunch of books either from operators who live and breathe the stuff or from journalists who get embedded for a few weeks and then write up what they see. My experience is a bit different in that I worked for the Special Operations command for six months, so I became more of a colleague from the outside rather than an observer. But as I worked in Afghanistan, a curious thing happened. Multiple Special Forces and SEALs started giving me long explanations about what they saw, their experiences, and their opinions about the war. It happened so frequently that I finally asked one guy why he was telling me so much. He said that I was “on the outside” so his complaints to me about the way the war was run could possibly result in some good. That is, complaints up the Army chain of command would go nowhere, but telling me, a recovering academic, could plausibly result in actual action and change. So that is why I am writing these pseudo-chapters that could someday be reworked into a book: to tell the stories of America’s Special Operations warriors about their experience. But I don’t want this to be an academic treatise. Instead I want these stories and accompanying academic arguments to be told and developed through a literary, “new journalism” style. That way, the reader can get a glimpse into the world of warfare and Special Operations that few civilians ever get to see.

The 3 Big Lies of 20th Century Politics

In looking at the implementation of policy, I often wonder about the difference between the way things are and the way things "should be," -- that is, the distinction between facts and values. After thinking about politics seriously for a while now, I observe that the balance between facts and values have shifted too far in the value direction, which results in negative policy consequences. The reasons behind this merit mention, the increasing availability and power of the media throughout the 20th century, and by this I mean newspapers, radio, TV, and lately, in the very late 20th century, the internet. The premise behind the primacy of media rests with Marshall McLuhan who famously said, "The medium is the message." That is, the media to which I refer -- newspapers, radio, TV, internet, and even to a certain extent, literature itself -- emphasizes some types of messages and narratives over others. To the extent that these messages are over-emphasized and others are excluded, they contribute to the "big lie." 20th century politics, political science, and political philosophy are driven by three themes that, when properly weighted are fine, but when reified to the exclusion of other considerations result in problematic policies that will come to define 21st century politics, and these are (1) equality, (2) rationality, and (3) democracy.

First, equality is concept with a rich and problematic history in American political thought. The United States, as originally envisioned under the Articles of Confederation, was so equal that nobody was effectively in charge, which resulted in the Constitution that featured a more workable and hierarchical organization of the US. However, evidence that radical equality is not a natural feature of the world we see around us is a provided by two sources, one philosophical and one mathematical. The first derives from Marx and his socialist dictum, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," which shows that Marx himself recognized the inherent inequality of the world. Now Marx may have argued that this difference needed to be narrowed, but he still recognized the reality this fundamental social cleavage. The second source of fundamental inequality is more mathematical and natural, but it is the concept of fractals by Mandelbrot, which hold that the world is fundamentally "lumpy" and inequal. That is, if you look at the distribution of oil across the globe, it isn't equally distributed across the planet but is instead "clumped" with certain areas having lots of oil, such as Saudi Arabia, and other sections having not so much, like Japan. So the assumption of equality is not a natural state of the world. I always think of the sculpture Broken Symmetry at FermiLab in Batavia, Illinois to remind myself of the fundamental nature of inequality.

Second, rationality is a concept that too is assumed to be true and is, in fact, problematic. Old-school economists tended to make too much of rationality by assuming that the human brain, being an amazing piece of machinery, could take in incredible amounts of information, calculate it, and make "optimal" or "rational" decisions. Note that this is a flattering depiction of human cognition, and you can almost envision the undergraduates on college campuses being lectured to and thinking to themselves, "Yes, my cognitive capability is amazing." The problem is, evidence from the lab showed that this isn't the way people actually make decisions. Herbert Simon posited a more natural and empirically verifiable way of making decisions based on "bounded rationality," in which it is recognized that the human brain limits significantly the amount of information it can inculcate and process, and this has significant consequences for institutional design, policy, and politics.

Third, democracy generally and the democratic peace literature specifically because it assumes that democratic policies will be correct by definition when in fact, upon further review, democracy-based policies can be shown to be ineffective. The problem is that the assumption that democracy is an unquestionable good -- as well as of equality and rationality -- can be used to shut off debate and prevent a review of a policy's effectiveness, which results in the persistence of poor policy. As regards domestic politics, democratic arguments and assumptions have been used to achieve political power in both Great Britain and the US, though the policy results have been problematic. As regards foreign policy, democracy-based theory was used to inform the Afghan and Iraq wars, both of which did not end with the benefits originally envisioned. In fact, that's what an "unquestionable good," is, something that is reported to be so wonderful that it cannot be questioned. This argument, which is really more of an anti-argument, is at the root of political correctness, the idea that some ideas cannot be questioned.

The reason why democracy is problematic is a fundamental question of political philosophy that I've not seen articulated before directly in the modern context, though there are analogous arguments made through antiquity. On the sider of modernity, there is the "advertising ethic," which holds that, "truth is that which sells." Even Simon points out that democracy is just one way to make a decision, by voting on it, which in no way guarantees its correctness.  Christianity, in contrast, holds that "a tree is known by its fruit," which means that a policy must be judged on its long-term consequences, not its initial popularity. A similar sentiment was expressed by Spinoza who said "sub specie aeteritatis," or "take the long-term view," because short-term views, as emphasized by today's media, can be deceiving. Finally, Plato in his Gorgias made the point, using the example of a ship's pilot, that somebody who appears to know what they're doing is not the same as somebody who actually knows what they're doing. Today's media, by emphasizing appearance, helps to promote people who are convincing rather than those with true expertise. These three "lies" of the 20th century -- equality, rationality, and democracy -- are at the foundation of 20th century social bargains that will prove unsustainable in the 21st, and their re-evaluation will form the basis of this century's political debate and activity.

AFG 02: Invitation to Afghanistan

The February 2011 Education Week at SOCOM covered many topics, and one of them was press relations. The organizing committee had invited a panel of reporters, three of whom were CNN, NPR, and Army Times. The tension was palpable as there is a natural tension if not antipathy between Special Operations Forces (SOF) and the press as they work at natural cross purposes. SOF by necessity must maintain security for multiple reasons. Its tactics, techniques and procedures – that is, how it does its job – must be kept hidden because intimate knowledge about them allows other to counter what SOF does and predict where SOF will be. Operationally, the press must not know what operations are planned nor their timing and location because, once again, such knowledge can place US military personnel in danger. The press, in contrast, has a very different set of incentives. Reporters want information to be free and open, and they get paid for telling a good story that people want to read or hear. SOF and the warrior culture is inherently interesting to many because their job is active, visual, and kinetic. Moreover, SOF generates a pretty much endless stream of interesting stories. The intersection between SOF and the press gets placed into sharp relief when considering that military budgets are not guaranteed in the 21st century, and taxpayers need to know something about SOF if they are going to appreciate the work they do and continue to fund their activities. Helping young SOF soldiers to understand the incentives of the press will help them tell reporters what they need to know without jeopardizing operational security. It’s also important to know which reporters to trust, which is something that only comes only through repeated positive interaction.

On the second day of the program, a Special Forces (SF) Colonel named Fred wanted to have lunch with and meet me. Fred as it turns out was the guy who in fact issued the official invitation for me to attend Education Week. So Bob, my quantitative analysis buddy, and I had lunch with Fred in the Officer’s Club, a building from an earlier, simpler era just a short walk across some patchy grass away from the meeting hall. He was younger, quieter, smaller, and more thoughtful than I thought a SF colonel would be, not that I had met that many, but doubtless he had done something considerable to achieve his rank. Fred said that he ran an analysis group in Afghanistan and that he had heard about some advanced analytic techniques that might be useful there. I knew he was talking about some system dynamics-based, complex social systems analysis work that I had done for DARPA a few years ago. The program that funded that work finished with mixed results, but it was nice that some remembered the work I had done. Then Fred came right out and asked me, “Would you be interested in coming to Afghanistan to work for our analysis group? I think your contributions could be very helpful.” I was taken aback. Bob had of course talked about this, but I didn’t know that the invitation to Education Week was really kind of a tryout or evaluation for a much longer engagement. Also, listening to Bob hypothesize about going to Afghanistan was a heck of a lot different than having a full-bird, flesh and blood SF colonel issue a semi-official invitation. I replied that I was certainly interested, but I had a lot of questions. Where would Bob and I sleep? Fred said the Army provided all that. Would we need special equipment? The Army would provide it. Would we need special training? The Army would provide it. How long would we be there? Fred was thinking around six months. I left that lunch feeling disoriented and confused yet vaguely flattered and excited.

That night there was a meet-up at a local Tampa bar for drinks, and all the conference attendees were invited. Of course, the conference organizers reminded everyone that drinking and driving was strictly prohibited and that anybody caught would be in a world of hurt, including loss of security clearance and the career limitations associated with that. I understood that the same consequences applied to me, but I had to go to see who was there and what information I could dig up. I was also driving Bob’s rental, and crashing it drunk would have been, in a word, “bad.” The first thing I learned is that the journalists are natural raconteurs and interviewers. They were the easiest to talk to, they were interested in what you had to say, or at least appeared interested, and their stories were endless and normally pretty good. I talked a good long while with the reporter from NPR, who told a few stories about meeting Lara Logan of CBS, who I always thought was in front of the camera primarily because of her looks rather than reportorial acumen, but I was informed that she was brave, intelligent, and a friend of SOF. I also met a guy from the Army Times, who was literally swaying in front of the bar and asked me if I wanted a drink. I had made a promise to myself to just nurse one beer for the evening, but I have to admit that I was tempted. I wondered how he’d get home.

The SOF in attendance were much tougher nuts to crack. They were pretty easy to identify because they’re physically fit and stick with their team. The SEALs were the rock stars of the event because they are comparatively rare compared to SF. Also, they are “pure shooters,” which means they primarily perform the types of “kinetic,” shooting missions that SOF like, which involves taking out the bad guys. SF, in contrast, performs the foreign internal defense or FID mission, which involves training local indigenous forces to protect their own country. As a political economist and quantitative analyst, I think SF are very cool because not only are they very capable militarily—operating in small, 12-man, Operational Detachments Alpha (ODAs)—but they also know how to interact with and motivate local populations. As cool as I think they are though, I came across a group of some of America’s most elite SF warriors complaining because they didn’t get the same respect and rock-star status as SEALs. I wanted to give them a pep talk, but in retrospect opted to keep my mouth shut because they had no idea who I was and I probably didn’t know what I was talking about anyway. It was nice to be there, but I was not in that SOF world.

The rest of the week passed without incident, but I was becoming increasingly nervous at the prospect of actually going to Afghanistan. I had just started a new job, and how would my management react to my going? Also how was I going to tell my wife that I was considering this? Did I really want to spend that long away from my family and my home? Bob was driving me to the airport, and he was really pressuring me to go, but at this point, I was getting a little fed up because I knew it was Bob’s dream to go, but it was mine? Did I really want to go, or was I just caught up in the excitement? Finally Bob, getting a little bit frustrated with me, asked me what it would take for me to say yes. I said that I would need to be able to come back for Christmas if it happened, which I wasn’t sure it would. He then let me off at the curb and I went into the airport, glad that the conversation was over because, after thinking about it, I didn’t really want to go to Afghanistan – at all.

AFG 01: Invitation to Tampa

I met my buddy Bob at a conference in Quantico, VA in the summer of 2010. Seeing Bob was memorable because as soon as he saw me, he said, “Hey, do you want to go to Afghanistan with me?” I’ve made it a point in life to always answer totally outrageous questions like that with a hearty, “Oh yeah! Sure!” because there was no way this could actually be possible in real life, right? We hung out for a few days, including a spectacular evening at the new Marine Corps Museum watching the Silent Drill Team, and that was that. I basically forgot about the question and my flippant reply because people say stuff all the time, and how frequently does it work out? In my experience, such proposals work out not very frequently at all.

But about six months later I got another call from Bob, and he had been a busy guy. There was an Education Week being given at USSOCOM in Tampa for Special Operations Forces (SOF) heading over to Afghanistan, and he wanted to know if I would attend as an instructor. I told him I didn’t know anything about Afghanistan, so I didn’t want to over promise my background or experience. Bob said that I had been to a few too many graduate schools and that was good enough for Fred, the guy who was inviting me. I said sure, it sounded like fun and at least good for a few stories, so I made my arrangements to fly down and attend.

I arrived in Tampa a few weeks later in February 2011. Monday was scheduled as a day simply to get oriented with the facility, the staff, and the program content with the actual program starting on Tuesday. I found myself in a control room suspended above an audience of hundreds of US Army Special Forces (SF) and a few sundry US Navy SEALs who were inbound for Afghanistan. Now I confess, much of the reason I was there was because I was the world of SOF fascinating. When I was studying international relations in graduate school, whenever I needed an intellectual break, I’d read a book on SOF with possibly the most influential or eye-opening being Douglas Waller’s Commandos, especially the first chapter on how  each type of SOF is trained and selected. Now, looking down on this audience—all of then young, strong, and potentially lethal—I wondered I all of them would be alive in a year’s time. There was no way to know, but my guess was that some of them would no longer be with us.

There were many speeches given by multiple people. Each education week has its own character, and this one was more academic and intellectual than usual, hence my invitation. Three particular presentations stood out. First Thomas Barfield, a Boston University professor, gave a talk based on his book, Afghanistan: A cultural and political history. Not only did Prof. Barfield exhibit an admirable expertise, but his book was in the right place at the right time, making his research indispensable to this SOF audience. Barfield’s expertise might also have made a significant impression on me due to my comparative lack of it: for example, I was spelling the acronym for the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, GIRoA, with a “J” in my notes, which indicates just how uninformed I was about that particular region of the world.

Second Jeff Weiss, a financier who also taught part-time at West Point, presented his work on “Extreme Negotiations,” that captured the hard-won lessons-learned from previous generations of soldiers who had spent time in Afghanistan. His basic insight is that soldiers who are far from home and in danger, have a tendency to try and placate and mollify the locals, which usually makes the situation worse. Instead, Weiss and his co-authors recommend the following five extreme negotiations strategies for soldiers: (1) Get the Big Picture: Start by soliciting the other person’s or group’s point of view. Use what you learn to shape the objectives of the negotiation and to determine how you’ll achieve them; (2) Uncover and Collaborate: Learn the other party’s motivations and concerns. Propose multiple solutions and invite your counterparts to improve on them; (3) Elicit Genuine Buy-In: Use facts and the principles of fairness, rather than brute force, to persuade others. Arm them with ways to defend their decisions to their critics, and create useful precedents for future negotiations; (4) Build Trust First: Deal with relationship issues head-on. Make incremental commitments to encourage trust and cooperation; and (5) Focus on Process: Consciously change the game by not reacting to the other side. Take steps to shape the negotiation process as well as the outcome. The great thing about these tips for operating and negotiating is that they’re battle tested by SOF, so they can be trusted.

But the best talk, the one I’ll always remember, was from GEN Stanley McCrystal who had just been forcibly retired by Obama due to a take-down piece by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone. So GEN McCrystal gets up in front of those several hundred SOF, dressed in a suit rather than his uniform, and I could literally feel the sympathy, admiration, and affection well up from the crowd. He seemed impossibly thin and began, “When I was your age, I wanted to retire and be one of those cranky, bitter old guys. I wanted to sit around the house, smoking unfiltered Marlboros and complaining about the old days of how I was rooked over by the system.” He paused for effect, and there was a definite tension in the room as I know I for one was wondering, where is the General going with this? “But I want you to know that’s not the way I feel now. I feel very lucky that I served in the US Army and got to do what I did. But mostly I’m thankful and enthusiastic because I got to serve with people – like you. With memories like that, I could never be bitter or angry. When I think of the skills you have, and the sacrifices you’re willing to make for your country, I’m incredible proud to have served with people like you and filled with optimism for our future.” From somebody outside the Army, McCrystal did the most unexpected thing possible, especially given the recent Rolling Stone incident: he took the focus off himself and put it on the guys in the room and the mission they were about to undertake. The SOF in the audience rose up as one and gave him thunderous applause for what seemed like minutes. I felt like I was in the presence of something special, true leadership, and that I too would be willing to go to Afghanistan to do my part if I were asked.  

Engineering and the Fact-Value Distinction

"Contemporary events differ from history in that we do not know the results they will produce." -- Friedrich Hayek

The fact-value distinction is fundamental to philosophy, and perhaps counter-intuitively, to engineering as well. I explicitly attended a graduate program where I could learn from a University of Chicago-trained Straussian, where emphasis is placed on “facts.” The key here is realizing the "fact" part is realistic, complex, and the way things "are," while the "value" part is convincing, simple, and the way things "should be." Straussians explicitly embrace complexity and "facts," while society in general embraces simplicity and "values," effectively arguing that facts are messy things that can be ignored if inconvenient.  

Here the situation becomes somewhat confused, but let me try to establish an analytic baseline and then draw some final conclusions. Straussians, who are followers of Leo Strauss, are essentially traditionalists and are often described as “close-reading,” meaning that they read closely to determine original meaning and intent. This tends not to be the philosophical stance at MIT, home to Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, and Jonathan Gruber, which is more “progressive” and value-oriented and less concerned about tradition and fact-oriented. Why might this be the case? There are two arguments to be made here. The first concerns technological optimism of the kind that was on display at the Chicago World’s Fair from 1933 to 1934, “A Century of Progress,” that featured the motto, “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms.” And it appears that MIT continues with this technological optimism in that they seek to improve society through technology.

This is a fine sentiment or “value,” as far as it goes, but “facts,” reality, and life are all more complicated. Tom Wolfe in his 1987 piece, “The Great Relearning,” develop several vignettes with the common theme of progressive policies undertaken with the best of intentions that, unfortunately, bear bitter fruit, chief among them the sexual revolution. The problem is, such radical changes – and by “radical” and mean fast, significant, and fundamental – almost always turn out poorly because their advocates don’t understand the systems being radically changed and they certainly don’t understand the consequences. Here is where engineering has something significant to say about complex systems generally and social systems specifically. When I was programming and I made changes to my code base, I basically had no idea what was going to happen, so I was very careful with my changes and was always able to back out the changes I made. The interesting thing is that nobody knew more about that code than I did, and I was constantly surprised by the way consequences lined up, and my experience is not unusual. The problem is, politicians, policy makers, and philosophers are constantly advocating fundamental changes to society without knowing half as much about the systems they seek to change as I knew about my code. So is it any wonder that the history of social change is strewn with such debacles?

Of course these observations, while semi-well known, are immensely unpopular. It would be simple enough to run through the books and citations, but the video “Beware the Boom and Bust” provides an quick window with Keynes proposing popular but problematic policies and Hayek more unpopular but effective ones. Hayek of course wrote the well-known The Road to Serfdom, which is almost universally reviled by those on the value side of the fact-value distinction, which indicates, to my way of thinking, its inherent value and worth. But it is worth also considering for a moment the progressive response to Hayek, The Road to Reaction by Herman Finer. Hayek’s description of the Fabian Finer is worth recounting: "a specimen of abuse and invective which is probably unique in contemporary academic discussion." As factual arguments come into conflict with progressive values, reactions such as Finer’s are becoming all too common.

The key philosophic dichotomy in the 21st century therefore seem to have progressed from the fact-value distinction to one that is more grounded in complexity, with a natural tension emerging from the fact that nature is complex, but human success is furthered by being convincing, and simple arguments are more successful than complex ones, especially in a media age. So when I see the topics addressed by the Apple University – that is, making the complex simple – I think making products easy to use is great consumer design, but I wonder, does this also mean that they’re simplifying the world? Does this mean that Apple thinks that the rich complexity of reality can be simplified into notions of “social justice” that seldom turn out as initially envisioned?

 

Democracy as Foreign Policy

I just finished writing a chapter on a foreign policy model that reviews the American experience in Afghanistan that attempts to extract lessons learned and apply them to policies designed to address the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). International interventions were undertaken by the United States (US) President Bush in both Afghanistan and Iraq with the goal in implementing democracy in both countries according to the theories of Natan Sharansky’s influential volume, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. I disagree with Sharansky, but I’m not exactly sure why I disagree with him, so this purpose of this quick essay is to think through why I disagree with his thesis and see what comes out on the other side.

The first item for examination is the traditional fact-value distinction. Sharansky is firmly on the “value” side with the argument that democracy must be implemented to increase freedom and decrease tyranny and terror. Anybody who disagrees with him must be against freedom and for tyranny and terror, right? But the problem I have is with the workability and effectiveness of democracy in foreign policy. Does it really work as well as Sharansky said it would? Did holding elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Arab spring countries improve them? I would argue that it hasn’t, but that’s not where the critique ends. I’m not sure that Sharansky’s argument was designed to improve foreign policy as much as it was to improve the career prospects of Sharansky. This isn’t meant to be overly critical because there are many people making arguments and trying to get ahead, but at some point there has to be a clear distinction made between the attractiveness of an argument and its workability, and this line is actually getting less well defined in our media age.

One way this analytic tension manifests itself is as a debate between “curiosity” and “problem solving,” with the idealists putting forth lots of idea and realists questioning wither they could ever work. However, America’s constitution is based on the failures of the too-democratic Articles of Confederation, and it was the Federalists who organized the country and increased centralization to create a more workable and effective government organization. It can be argued that the modern media age has upset this traditional balance between centralization and democracy, implemented a more extreme democracy, and returned to the nation to an unworkable political system. However, as Tocqueville points out, democracy in America can be so all encompassing and pervasive that it is impossible to understand any alternative to democracy. It is this mindset that helps to explain why democracy is seldom questioned and when it is, why the reaction can be so emotional and negative.

Returning to Afghanistan and Iraq, elections were held in both places and resulted in Karzai and Maliki respectively. How did they do? Karzai ruled over years of epic corruption with Kabul Bank, Dawood Hospital, and the Afghan Air Force that was used to run drugs are only the beginning of the long and sordid tale. After over 10 years of American intervention effort, Afghanistan is fourth in corruption behind Somalia, North Korea, and Sudan, which is rare company. Iraq’s leader Nouri al Malaki, a close friend of George Bush’s, used Iraq’s army to attack Sunnis rather than share power with them, which helped to create ISIS. Clearly just having elections is insufficient for establishing effective and long-lasting governance in countries, but it remains to be seen how to implement security, governance, and development policies that leave a country in a stable and sustainable state.

The current policy of merely holding elections puts policy makers in an interesting double bind however because, once chosen, policy makers are no longer able to leverage them because they have been “selected” by the people. The people who usually have little experience with democracy conversely see their leaders as selected by Americans more than elected by them and believe that they are implementing American policy. The larger problem is that an overreliance on or premature implementation of elections leaves American policy makers unable to hold a nation’s leaders accountable. That is, if they are excessively corrupt, then they cannot be removed, which is a problem. Reviewing the argument up until now, I find myself arguing for Americans taking a more active hand in running countries in which we are heavily involved. In some ways this makes sense: that is, if America is funding the government, and if American military personnel are dying to protect that government, then shouldn’t the American government have some say about how that government is run? In other words, if we’re effectively in charge, shouldn’t we act like we’re in charge? While this may not square with American politics, it certainly squares with politics in many parts of the world in which the US has security interests. This is doubtless a controversial conclusion, but it’s worth considering as the US continues to confront international security challenges in the 21st century.

Security World Tour

With Michael Flynn having just retired from the Army, going on the talk shows, and criticizing Barack Obama, the policy community is worried that a person fresh from wearing the uniform is speaking out. However, as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Flynn is well informed about the threats facing the United States and the American world order. America, as the world center, tends to focus inwards with an inordinate preoccupation with domestic politics. However, there is a whole world of international politics out there that normally escapes the attention of many Americans. The question then becomes, how to organize a systematic study of the wide world of international politics?

Following Flynn’s lead, I choose to organize it around the key security threats to America. First is the Islamic State, which goes by three names: (1) the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or ash-Sham (ISIS); (2) Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL); or (3) the loose Arabic acronym for ISIL, al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham, Daesh. Already the language lawyers say that ISIS and ISIL are “offensive” because it implies that the organization is Islamic when most Muslims find it abhorrent, but other analysts make a pretty convincing argument that ISIS/L is very Islamic. However, the Daesh phenomenon is not geographically limited to only Iraq and Syria but extends its relationships throughout the Middle East through its funding relationships, which include Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Also, there is a relationship between Daesh and Al Qaeda that leads to additional systemic complexity and geographic relationships that extend across North Africa.

The second major security threat concerns the newly aggressive Russia. Now there may be some who are a little bit not “up to speed” on the current situations and who make think that while the old Soviet Union was a problem, but the new Russia is not. However, that is not the case. First, there is an undeclared war going on in the Ukraine with Russian “little green men” separatists fighting against a western leaning Ukraine government. Second, this is not the only example of such a war with previous examples including the Crimea, Georgia, and Chechnya. Third, unbeknownst to most Americans, there is a significant information operations campaign being waged within Russia against the US and NATO. On Twitter, just search on #nato and #hato for minutes of fun, and then search Youtube for “RT,” which stands for “Russia Today,” and you can find some first-rate propaganda that explores whether WWIII has already begun.

The third major security threat concerns America’s strategic economic partner China, or more accurately the People’s Republic of China (PRC), what some have called an “existential threat,” meaning it threatens the very existence of the United States. There are multiple intriguing aspects to the PRC including security threats in the Pacific, ongoing trade imbalances with the United States, cyberwarfare, and development practices throughout the world, including Africa. All of these relationships are fraught with tension, so China will continue to be a source of security concern for the foreseeable future.

Finally, there is the southern border with Mexico, which is a source of Democrat votes, cheap Republican labor, drugs, and ongoing security issues. Recently a US helicopter was shot down near the border, which probably caused no end of consternation on the part of the Obama administration. Why this is a cause of consternation is a matter to be considered at another time. However, these four international actors – Daesh, Russia, China, and Mexico – provide a starting point for an ongoing series of international analyses.

AL Productions

I received my recent issue of Vanity Fair (VF), and accompanying it was an additional, smaller magazine filled exclusively with Ralph Lauren (RL) advertising. Now I confess to a certain weakness for all things RL and wish my closet was filled with more of his... products. However, as an inveterate observer of all things RL, I noticed that Andrew Lauren, RL's son, is prominently featured, something I hadn't noticed before. So this got me to thinking, "What films has he produced?" I mean, I wrote a book but does that make me an author? And perhaps more importantly, "Are his films any good?" So I fired up IMDB and saw that Andrew's company, AL Productions, has created three films: (1) G (2002); (2) The Squid and the Whale (S&W, 2005); and (3) The Spectacular Now (TSN, 2013). But then I wondered, are these movies any good? As it turns out, S&W received a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and TSN also received a 93%, which is in my humble opinion is more than a little impressive. I look forward to watching TSN at some point and will write a review when I do. I also need to finagle a trip to New York to review the Polo Bar. I know, the world of RL is a weakness.

CIA Reorganization

On March 7th, the NYTimes features an article on Director John Brennan's reorganization of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia. There are those who argue both sides of the reorganization, with those from the Agency who remember and like it the way it was arguing that the changes are intended to create a "legacy" for those currently in charge. However, there are a couple of cross currents that inform and argue for the change. First, the threats currently faced by the Agency are much different than those that agued for its creation in 1947 at the outset of the Cold War. America's primary competition at that time was the Soviet Union -- what is present-day Russia -- which was primarily a regular or symmetric conflict in which one superpower was in a state of conflict with a second. The primary threats now are irregular or asymmetric in which a "regular" state finds itself in conflict with a less organized -- that is, "irregular" -- organizations, movements, or populations with an emphasis on radial Islam. It is instructive to review Steve Coll's description of the 1979 US embassy burning in Islamabad, Pakistan in Ghost Wars. To the point, US leadership was doubtless so focused on the familiar née comfortable foreign policy analytic posture of the Cold War that this attack, which occurred mere days after the Iran embassy takeover, caught them by surprise. Martin van Crevald's Transformation of War (1990) helps to provide insight into this dynamic, but institutionally the US Federal Government is still searching for the best ways to understand and address these more demographic and less state-based challenges.

Second, since 9/11 when radical Islam made its presence known on American shores, the Agency has been focused on targeting individuals. This targeting process was popularized by the character Maya in the movie Zero Dark Thirty, and is examined in much more detail by the HBO documentary Manhunt. However the premise is pretty simple: find people such as Al Qaeda's key leaders and take them off the battlefield. However, taking insurgents off the battlefield can cause unintended consequences as pointed out by Stanley McCrystal's Insurgent Math, which asks how you can have 100 insurgents, take away 10, and end up with 110? The answer is that the civilian casualties associated with such insurgent removal operations can radicalize populations. Once you realize this, then the question becomes, how can you understand, account for, and minimize these unintended consequences.

Third, when thinking about unintended consequences, the natural way to proceed is thinking about ways to understand complex social systems. That is, human societies are made up of lots of interconnected components and features that operate on both short and long timescales. With regard to Insurgent Math, removing insurgents from the battlefield may make sense from a short-term perspective, but if it creates problems in the long term, then have you done more harm than good. Also, the multiple interconnected system features can be considered from the perspective of counterinsurgency theory, which considers governance, development, and local populations in addition to the usual security concerns of the military. The Defense Intelligence Agency's Michael Flynn and his co-authors wrote in Fixing Intel that analysis had been too concentrated on details and that insufficient detail had been given to the intelligence supporting military operations. Flynn specifically said that intelligence had become too functional -- that is, focused on narrow technical areas. He recommended that, in contrast, intelligence analysis should become more regional -- that is, focused on all the relevant factors with a specific area of interest or operations.

The Agency has historically been organized around a significant cleavage between the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) that performs analysis and Directorate of Operations (DO) that does the things we all see on movies. During the targeting operations since 9/11, these two activities have grown closer together. It seems to me that if the proposed reorganization is correctly executed (and that's a big if), then the changes proposed for the Agency could help improve both analysis as well as operations.  

On American Sniper and Policy

I haven’t seen American Sniper (AS) yet, but that is due not to lack of interest but of time. That said, I can’t help but notice the controversy the film has generated. Rather go down the path of identifying critics and calling them out, I thought it would be more productive and instructive instead to step back and think about what’s driving this stilted and heated “conversation” between the fans of AS and its critics.

Let me first reflect on the reasons why I named this blog, “on policy, etc.” Policy always concerns the policy problématique: how to interpret events in the past to inform decisions in the present to improve the future. It’s easy to describe, but nothing is harder due to the complexity of the social systems policies are intended to influence, like the Iraq War. The implementation of policy seldom goes according to plan, which results in policy resistance. Complex social systems exhibit behaviors that confound straightforward logic and tend to yield results that are surprising, unexpected, or counterintuitive. For example, US military forces entered Iraq in 2003 expecting to oust Saddam Hussein and set up a workable democracy. Deposing Saddam went mostly according to plan, but the insurgency disrupted the UW policymakers’ plans for an early exit and eventually resulted in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Chris Kyle spent four tours in the Iraq, and it is important to remember that he was sent there by American politicians to implement US foreign policy, and by all accounts he did his best to do just that. However, I maintain that US policy in Iraq was ill-conceived, which greatly increased the difficulty of Kyle’s mission. One of the great phrases in the military is that a mission plan or policy “briefs well.” In other words, it tells a good, simple, and convincing story, but left implicit is the small problem is that the plan probably won’t work. So people like Kyle then face the intractable difficulties of inflated expectations, simplistic solutions, and unrealistic timelines that inevitably become more limited possibilities, complex considerations, and extended timelines – that is, what results when people try to achieve something hard in the real world. What’s particularly tragic is when people are criticized for taking on these difficult tasks and coming up short despite their best efforts, especially when they are undertaken in the national interest.

AS is compelling because it highlights the emotional toll such extended efforts exact, but there’s another point to be made here: shouldn’t senior policy makers be held accountable for the decision they make, the policies they craft, and the unworkable situations into which they put people like Chris Kyle? If it’s the job of senior decision makers to craft policy, should they be punished for doing it badly? It’s a story as old of time, but such policies, like invading Iraq and setting up a democracy, are too often implemented without sufficient attention given to the complexities, details, and likely consequences of such actions. Policies are too often implemented based on a feel-good, overly optimistic narrative that “briefs well.” It seems that undertaking something as serious as war with its attendant costs in terms of time, treasure, and lives, merits more serious consideration and analysis than is currently the case. Certainly seeing the pain associated with Chris Kyle’s life—both in the US and Iraq—should provide us with the incentive to consider the way policy is crafted as well as holding senior government decision makers to standards of truth, courage, and excellence as high as those demonstrated by Chris Kyle.

The Rhythms of Political Speech

I tell people that I’m a recovering academic, and one of the consequences of that is that my writing has a disturbing tendency to be dense and long, which is acceptable for academic theses but somewhat less so for blogs, social media, political speeches, or other media messages. When communicating with general audiences, shorter and clearer message are both more easily transmitted and comprehended.  Consequently successful politicians tend to adopt similar speaking styles because they are effective. There are a range of written works that inform this topic, but I’m trying to reign in my dense, academic thesis-esque instincts, so I’ll recommend one book, Our Master’s Voices: The language and body language of politics by Max Atkinson (1984). Atkinson articulates the rhythms of political language and inside tricks that makes some politicians different from or better than others.

The first of Atkinson’s rules that stuck in my mind concerns presenting arguments in terms of lists of three. This is am argumentation technique that is common throughout history from the sacred Christian Trinity to the more secular Hegelian dialectic and negative feedback relationship, but presenting information in lists of threes is a natural technique that corresponds to how people naturally think. A list of three is compelling because it makes the list seem sufficiently long that it could be easily elongated if necessary. A list of two, in contrast, seems insufficient like you may have done insufficient research or the point you’re making is insufficiently supported. So persistent are lists of three that people will often add a third item to a list of two to fill it out in the form of the word, “etcetera.” I didn’t pick this up until Atkinson pointed it out, but then I started noticing it occurring frequently.

A second effective argument pattern concerns contrastive pairs that take the form, “either this or that.” The technique implies a decision point, a choice, or a cognitive verge. Contrastive pairs can be superimposed on a policy issue to structure its confusing complexity. This superimposition can be done both for good and for ill.  When done for the former, it can help make complex issues more understandable. When for ill, contrastive pairs can oversimplify the natural complexity associated with a complex policy issue. More pernicious still, contrastive pairs can makes imply a false dichotomy that increases issue stridency by dividing populations into “them” and “us.”

The third point concerns the reasons why these argument framing techniques should be pursued: so that political communications can be more effective and more memorable. Effective communications should leave your audience whistling a tune. Talks should be memorable. So what do you want that tune to be? What should the listener take away? Note that this perspective puts the focus on the listener rather than what the speaker wants to say. It forces the speaker to consider what the listener can hear.  Experts in a field may have a deep understanding of an issue, but distilling and presenting that information in a way that is effective remains an art. This is especially true for conservatives as their worldview centers on what works over the long-term, which is inherently complex. Liberals, progressives, and Democrats in contrast, subscribe to a worldview that centers on the “advertising ethic” – that is, the truth is that which sells in the short-term, regardless of what works or “reality.”

In order to have a larger impact in the political arena, conservatives need to improve their communications strategies, and some suggestions have been made here. Additional potential suggestions include keeping arguments short and clear and being sufficiently informed and prepared to “drill down” and provide more detailed and supported explanations when required. It also helps if politicians are attractive. For example, before becoming Prime Minister, Margret Thatcher had her teeth fixed. Check out the before and after pictures as they’re quite surprising. I offer these communication tips because, in an attempt to be clear, understandable, and influential, I intend to focus on lists of threes that help the reader understand something memorable about a complex topic. We’ll have to see about becoming more attractive.   

MIT as Political Microcosm

For me, it all starts with MIT, which I treat as a condensed microcosm that reveals a larger set of wider-ranging issues. I went there to study policy and political science – what they call Course 17 – and as MIT is an engineering school, I thought that the department’s take on policy would be from an engineering perspective or at least accommodate an engineering perspective. After all, the mascot of MIT is “the Engineers,” so there are reasons to believe this is the case. However, that has not been my experience. My experience has been that MIT is surprisingly politically correct. Of course, it remains to be defined just what “political correctness” means, and there are several possible definitions. But the way it was implemented at MIT was quietly, pervasively, and powerfully. That is, if you held views that ran counter to accepted wisdom, then that was a problem.

Now you might ask, “What’s an example of accepted wisdom, and what’s wrong with it?” Well, I had a problem with the way democracy was treated as an unquestioned good, which is a view held by Noam Chomsky, which for me is a bright red light indicating “problem.” From an engineer’s perspective generally and an electrical engineer’s specifically, that view is highly problematic because we did not decide whether an answer to a hard electrical engineering problem was correct or not through voting. So how did we tell? Well, there was the matter of mathematical expertise, but even that was somewhat flawed, because how can you tell the transformation from the physical to the mathematical representation is correct? That answer is, “by experiment.” That is, the ultimate arbiter of correctness is a theory’s ability to predict the future as confirmed by experiment. Richard Feynman (MIT ’39) said at Cornell (1964) that there are three parts to science: (1) you guess it – i.e., theory; (2) you compute the consequences of the guess – i.e., experiment; and (3) if the guess doesn’t square with the consequences, then you’re wrong. It is that relationship between theory and experiment that provides the core of science.

Now there is a saying in academia that fields that are truly scientific don’t need to include the term “science” in their names. For example, computer science often amounts more to hacking than science, but computer science provides ample opportunities to determine if the code works starting with compiling and moving on to more sophisticated testing. Political science however is in my experience deeply problematic because too often policies are judged by their intentions and implicit flattery rather than logic, plausibility, or likely results. This is a problem because I expect that the policies that determine and guide our life should be crafted with the same care that engineers create Porsches or iPhones, but this simply is not the case. Moreover, even believing that this should be the case is controversial because it threatens those who have based their careers in making arguments that rest on a more… emotional and self-interested foundation, which has led to many of today’s political problems. Instead, a more cognitive and commons-oriented perspective is required, but because such change is fundamental it will threaten the status quo and prove controversial. Be that as it may, this is the challenge of the 21^st century politics. What we see now under President Obama, the European Union, and other institutions such as NATO, the IMF, the WTO, the UN, and the Federal Reserve are the dying embers of 20^th century social bargains coming under increasing pressure and eventual failure. The studies found here recognize this reality and choose to understand why this is the case in order to postulate policies that will lead to more stable and sustainable results.

AFG: The CRC Pad

So, for whatever reason, I decided to go to a warzone generally and Afghanistan specifically. The journey began in Georgia at what's affectionately called the CRC or CONUS Replacement Center -- note that "CONUS" is Department of Defense (DoD) terminology for "The Continental United States." The journey begins at a large cement pad with a roof to protect people from the sun and other elements. Note that while I was there, in July and August, there were no other elements. I had this fleeting idea that rain might also bring some much needed cooler air, but all it did was increase the humidity, if that was possible. 

We mustered there on our first day to check our paperwork because without proper paperwork, nobody was going anywhere. I had procured our paperwork only a few hours before heading down Georgia, which was a minor miracle. I wonder what would have happened had I not got the paperwork finalized, but luckily I didn't have to find out. I also wondered how many of the guys there didn't have their paperwork in order, but I didn't really care. I just wanted to ensure my situation was squared away, and it was. 

I was there with equal parts contractors and military, but the military had little love for the contractors and there was good reason for that -- we were a pretty slovenly bunch. I was there as an international relations scholar (call me a "recovering academic") who had done some analysis work for DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), but most were mechanics and workers who had other skills necessary to the US military war effort. Being "the DARPA guy" had the advantage of being interestingly different but the military guys figured that I was smart but overpaid and of dubious utility. Perhaps they were right. 

Tradition, Complexity, and Social Value

I confess that I find modern politics confusing. However, there are a few theories that I find helpful to explain political dynamics. I find that whenever a liberal – which is basically a Democrat, or a progressive, or a socialist – gets angry about a subject, I take that as an invitation to think more seriously, deeply, and logically about the topic. So when Joshua Cohen – the Martha Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society at Stanford University, though when I knew him he was at MIT – took offense at my referring to his philosophy of law class as “radical,” Joshua’s anger presents an invitation for further inquiry in hopes of revealing political insights.

The inquiry begins with a simple review of the definition of the word “radical,” which means, “very new and different from what is traditional or ordinary.” My working definition becomes, “seeking or favoring fundamental change.” So the question then becomes, why might changing the political order be fundamentally problematic? Or conversely, what value is there in social arrangements that are ‘traditional’ or ‘ordinary’?  

The observation that provides insight into this question derives from complexity theory generally and software engineering specifically. When I was a computer science student, I spent a summer creating 10,000 lines of computer code – object-oriented C specifically. It was hard, and so it’s worth considering how I treated that code. Did I “seek or favor fundamental change,” or did I pursue a more conservative course of action? I pursued the second course because, even though I created all 10,000 lines of code, and I new that code better than anybody on the planet, I didn’t know was going to happen when I changed that code. I changed the code with a plan about what I thought was going to happen, but I was frequently surprised and needed to go back. There were times that I would implement two or three changes together, which would end up breaking what was already working, and then I would have undo my changes and then test each one carefully and individually. Consequently, I undertook changes to this system very carefully. This is actually a key engineering lesson: build on what’s known because radical changes tend not to work.

There is a lesson to be learned here for politics. That is, if you treat social systems as complex systems, and there are good reasons for doing so, then this argues against making fundamental changes. Why? Because those implementing the changes DO NOT KNOW what is going to happen. People generally are bad at predicting and confirming that promised changes actually occur. This is why science – predicting what will happen, creating an experiment, and then confirming the prediction – is so important and so hard. The fundamental insight then is this: social systems are even more complex than the software I built that summer, so these so-called experts have even less of an idea of what will happen with their policy changes than I did changing my software because they didn’t create the system, they have only studied it.

Logically then, it would make sense to study social system significantly before attempting to change them. I have studied complex social systems significantly in my monograph, Environmental Impacts of Globalization and Trade, but most policies are not subject to that level of rigor. In fact, I would say that most are not given the level of study that they deserve. And why is that? It’s because these so-called experts are not experts at social systems and their analysis, which would be logical, but they’re expert at self-promotion and seeming like experts. Moreover, the consideration of policy consequences is anathema. Finally, people who are capable of actual analysis would be demonized because they are capable of revealing the charlatanism of the pseudo-experts, who revel in the make-believe world of the media. These charlatans are expert at crafting and selling compelling stories, but the ultimate question is, “Do they work?” That is the value of proven technologies and tradition: they have been proven to work. These stories purveyed by the pseudo-experts? These innovations are designed to enrich the charlatans, not to work as advertised.  

This is a very old tension, which was explained in Plato’s Gorgias in his parable about the pilot. That is, Plato says there is a big difference between somebody who knows how to drive a ship and somebody who looks and talks like they know how to drive a ship. To conclude, let me review the MIT Seal, where Joshua Cohen was a professor and where I was a student. The seal features a both a scholar and an engineer with the phrase “mens et manus,” which is Latin for, “head and hand.” The way I interpret this is that there are lots of ideas from the head or “mens,” but very few that are proven workable over the long-term by experience, the hand, or “manus.” To conclude, there is a tension between our understanding and reality – we may want to believe in the possibility and benefits of radical change, but experience and reality show that most radical changes do not work and that tradition is undervalued and traditional solutions underappreciated. 

Complex Conservatism and its Consequences

I've been thinking more about complex conservatism -- what is means, if it's real, and why, if it is real, it's controversial. Previously, I wrote about the math behind it, which is fine, but doing so is limited because politically, there's a big difference between being correct and convincing. Being correct means getting the logic and data correct, while being convincing means getting the affect and rhetoric correct. These are not the same thing, as I learned in high school debate when I'd make these logical arguments that I knew were correct and would lose the debate. At the time I wondered, "How is that possible." In modern, media-dominated American politics, it's not just possible but probable. So rather than lay out the correct academic groundwork -- which Hayward Alker did for me in his complex social systems syllabus -- let me instead talk through the everyday consequences of why it matters and how complexity manifests itself.

First, complexity manifests itself in the form of counterintuitive results. That is, we do all these things for a reason -- like doing one's homework before watching pointless youtube videos -- or maybe no reason at all, and good things come about because of them. Conversely, we may do other things because we want to or they are fun -- like drugs or eating McDonalds -- and then are surprised when things don't work out well. Now this dynamic leads to all kinds of pointless arguments such as, "My friend did everything right and got cancer," or "My cousin dropped out of college and made a billion dollars," and maybe those stories are true, but that's not the way to bet.

Second, arguments divorced from political reality -- or more likely, from a carefully selected reality -- are the currency of today's politics, which explains why it is so impoverished. What is the antidote for this poverty? Jesus said that a tree is known by its fruits, which is so significant that this insight is developed twice in the New Testament:

"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them." Matthew 7:15–20 (KJV)

And

"For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. For every tree is known by his own fruit. For of thorns men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble bush gather they grapes. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh." Luke 6:43-45 (KJV)

This is a timeless truth, many of which abound in the Holy Bible, but they also exist in the secular world as well, three of which I will mention here. Baruch Spinoza, a contemporary of John Locke (they were both born in 1632), wrote memorably sub specie aeternitatis, or "take the long-term view." Now there are some intellectuals who are dismissive of taking the Bible seriously, and to them I would direct them to Donald Knuth's Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About, which is based on his lectures on his lectures on faith and science at MIT in 1999. Finally, I was talking with Jay Forrester about these topics and he told me to concentrate on the tension between the short and long-term, and many can appreciate the former but few the latter.

Third, the reality we all confront is sufficiently complex that it cannot be described in a few catch-phrases. In fact, when I see a car festooned with multiple bumper stickers, usually the advocate leftist causes because the driver believes reality is simple and can be captured by catchy phrases. I interpret the Bible as a collection of insights from parents who love their children and are trying their best to pass on cultural wisdom to prevent them from making catastrophic mistakes. The best way to do this is through stories that are retained by the human mind. Detractors call these stories "myths," but its their correspondence to timeless truths that determine their worth, and the fact that the Holy Bible has stood the test of time helps confirm their worth.

Finally, we have an opportunity to investigate these timeless truths with modern tools, as Knuth starts to do, though the average academic will find this idea ludicrous, so it's not clear who the audience would be for this work. However, the first-rank philosophers have been trying to answer these questions for century with unaided cognition and logic, so it makes sense to revisit these timeless topics with the more capable toolkit available today. This is the project and promise of complex conservatism.