Contrasting tactical and strategic dynamics on a Clausewitz landscape

Abstract

Statistical models based on the asymptotic limit theorems of control and information theories allow formal examination of the essential differences between short-time “tactical” confrontations and a long-term “strategic” conflict dominated by evolutionary process. The world of extended coevolutionary conflict is not the world of sequential “muddling through.” The existential strategic challenge is to take cognitive control of a long-term dynamic in which one may, in fact, be “losing” most short-term confrontations. Winning individual battles can be a relatively direct, if not simple or easy, matter of sufficient local resources, training, and resolve. Winning extended conflicts is not direct, and requires management of subtle coevolutionary phenomena subject to a dismaying punctuated equilibrium more familiar from evolutionary theory than military doctrine. Directed evolution has given us the agricultural base needed for large-scale human organization. Directed coevolution of the inevitable conflicts between the various segments of that organization may be needed for its long-term persistence.

Cognitive Dynamics on Clausewitz Landscapes

“…Chapters 1 and 2 are based on, but greatly expand and reinterpret, recently published peer-reviewed material [5,6].…”

How the enemy gets a vote: Fog-of-war, friction, and the cultural riverbanks of the Clausewitz landscape

“…The stress experienced by an institution can thus be taken as an adiabatically piecewise stationary ergodic (APSE) information source, interacting with a set of dual information sources defined by modular institutional cognition at different scales and levels of organization. 3,4 The ergodic nature of the ''language'' of imposed stress is essentially a generalization of the law of large numbers, so that long-time averages approximate cross-sectional expectations. Languages do not have simple autocorrelation patterns, in distinct contrast with the usual assumption of random perturbations by white noise in the standard formulation of stochastic differential equations.…”

“…A basket is not just a basket, but an element in a complex, ongoing cultural process subject to punctuated equilibrium Lamarckian evolutionary transitions. 3,4 This is not just jargon. It is not enough to detect patterns.…”