The Pentagon document dump

TPM has a group research project going to encourage people to poke through the Pentagon's recent document dump to see what kind of interesting stuff may be in there.

I was curious enough to go click on an interview with my man Rummy. One problem I notice right away is that the Pentagon page has screwy dates on these things. The dates given are apparently release dates, and not all of them were released in the last few weeks. That Rummy interview is dated 11/05/07 on the DOD "Reading Room" page but was clearly from an earlier date because Rummy wasn't still Secretary of Defense then. The interview itself is labeled , but Rummy's last day as SecDef was 12/18/06. This is a press conference with Gen. Peter Pace. Rummy indicates at the top of page 1 it is a "background" briefing, meaning Rummy can't be quoted by name. I haven't been able to tell fromt he transcript if he was speaking only to military analysts, or who.

The section that particularly caught my eye on this one is on page 3, speaking of the Iraq War:

People keep talking about going after the militias as though that they exist in a form, in a location where you can attack them, destroy them, and then mat's done: they don't exist or they're captured. And of course, our guys go into militia - into that territory and these folks disappear, and they don't want to fight, and you leave and they're back.

So it is a very different circumstance and obviously they know it. They know that the center of gravity of the thing is here in the United States. It isn't out there. And mat they're designing their attacks to have maximum effect politically to weaken the will of the American people. They're doing a pretty good job. They are a hell of a lot more skillful at it than we are and have a lot greater flexibility. They can lie. (The element?) of bureaucracy. They have media committees that they operate to manipulate the media and they do it very skillfully, but let's eat our stuff. What the hell? What he was, you know, listening to me jabber when you could be eating something? (my emphasis)

Rummy saying that the Other Side has an advantage over him in propaganda because, "They can lie", is a classic. I can't help but notice what he didn't say, which would have been a logical follow-on thought, "but we can't". Maybe even Rummy couldn't say that one with a straight face.

But it's the line about the "center of gravity" that really caught my eye. Rummy is here endorsing the pernicious idea that the only true weakness that the US military has in a foreign war is the public back home. Otherwise our infallible generals would be invincible if it weren't for those gutless civilians.

I won't try to give a detailed history here. But the "center of gravity" concept used in this way is based on a bad interpretation of Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831). And probably on a poor translation of the phrase, as well.

I discuss this "center of gravity" business in 2007 in The military, the Republican-dominated officer corps and democracy 04/03/07 and An alibi with feet of clay 04/23/07. See also Clausewitz's Center of Gravity: Changing Our Warfighting Doctrine - Again! by Antulio J. Echevarria II September 2002 (US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute) and Targeting the American Will and Other Challenges for 4th-Generation Leadership by Maj. David Harper Military Review Mar/April 2007.

Tags: antulio echevarria ii, center of gravity, clausewitz, military analysts document dump, rummy, rumsfeld, schwerpunkt

An alibi with feet of clay

Well, it's a mixed metaphor. But it fits the creative interpretations that "stab-in-the-back" theorists make when they come up with the idea that the only reason our infallible generals ever lose a war is because of the gutless civilians back home.

Between a bad analysis of Carl von Clausewitz and an uncritical reading of John Mueller, you can concoct a heckuva stab-in-the-back alibi.

But there's a little problemita with this, as explained in Clausewitz's Center of Gravity: Changing Our Warfighting Doctrine - Again! by Antulio J. Echevarria II September 2002 (US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute). Also available here. Echevarria argues that Clausewitz saw "center of gravity" as more of a "focal point" on which to focus military attacks, not as a strength or weakness, as contemparary interpretations often use it.

Oh, and the English translation of the main phrase on which the alibi totters might not be, uh, exactly right, according to Milan Vego in Clausewitz's Schwerpunkt: Mistranslated from German - Misunderstood in English Military Review (US Army professional journal) Jan/Feb 2007. Vego writes:

As the U.S. Army moves forward in its efforts to transform itself in profound ways, it might be useful for its leadership to reexamine the origins of some concepts that serve as the theoretical underpinnings of current Army and joint [service] doctrine. Among those that should be closely reconsidered is "center of gravity" (COG), a concept widely attributed to Carl von Clausewitz and now regarded as the heart of any sound plan for a campaign or major operation. ...

The term from which the COG concept has been extrapolated, Schwerpunkt, really means "weight (or focus) of effort." In reassessing center of gravity as an underppinning of doctrine, it is important to observe that the original Schwerpunkt concept is actually closer in meaning to what the U.S. military now calls the "sector of main effort" and the "point of main attack" (defense). ... Inc contrast to the modern application of the concept of center of gravity[by the US military], Clausewitz's Schwerpunkt dealt almost exclusively with the strategic level of war.

Vego does leave open a vague possibility at the end that some other concept than Schwerpunkt (he doesn't specify "center of gravity") might be need in "analyzing and applying sources of nonmilitary national power to achieve theater-strategic objectives."

But his article is a reminder of how tricky it can be to try to take a battlefield concept like Schwerpunkt and adapt it to the broader political aspects of war.

Tags: antulio echevarria ii, center of gravity, clausewitz, milan vego, schwerpunkt, stab-in-the-back