April 16, 2014 · in Art of War
Given that this is a new column at War on the Rocks, you might be tempted to think that your humble columnist is going to use this space to discuss the ins and outs of Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and all the other centuries-dead philosopher/scholars of war.
You’d be wrong.
Well, sort of. Let me explain.
This column – and the conversations I hope it inspires – is actually about the fine and creative arts, and what they can help us understand about the art and practice of statecraft.
There’s method to the madness, I assure you. Bear with me.
I suppose when it comes down to it, the inspiration for this column can be traced to around the time that Field Manual (FM) 3-24 “Counterinsurgency” was published, just before the Surge. FM 3-24 was, roughly speaking, the military’s “how to win Iraq” book. Despite what you may think about the feasibility of counterinsurgency, (indeed, the manual itself was alternately described as “brilliant” and “incomprehensible”), one aspect of the manual was particularly noteworthy. Namely, its underlying argument that commanders must think creatively about their local circumstances and adapt accordingly in order to win a population’s hearts and minds. In order to spur such creative thinking, paradoxes were introduced, such as “the more force you use, the less secure you may be,” – a sort of Army/Marine Corps answer to a Zen koan (even though our beloved ground forces aren’t exactly “Zen”).
Homo Sapiens as Storytellers
This was no accident; the point of a koan – a counterintuitive Zen puzzle – is to inspire a deeper, non-logical level of contemplation. But we haven’t always used koans to access those creative, intuitive, non-rational parts of our psyche. Indeed, as Karen Armstrong usefully argues in A Short History of Myth, ever since we were cavemen sitting around campfires,homo sapiens (and perhaps even our Neanderthal cousins) have used stories and myths to communicate meaning, purpose and truth. Myths were not expressions of religious belief per se; rather, they were an imaginative, non-logical attempt to understand who we are, and where we fit into our world.
Full Article : http://warontherocks.com/2014/04/introducing-the-art-of-war/
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