The Art Of P-List Debate

[s~Z]

http://www.calendarlive.com/books/bookreview/cl-bk-cockburn16mar16,0,5263782
.story?coll=cl%2Dbookreview

Chaos theory
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
by Robert Coram
Little, Brown: 486 pp., $27.95

Review by Andrew Cockburn

[...]

The key conceptual breakthrough at the heart of this tour de force was what
he christened the "OODA Loop," the process (which he originally divined in
the behavior of fighter pilots in dogfights) by which we observe what the
enemy is doing, orient ourselves to this action, decide on what to do and
act. Our action of course changes the reality -- as radically and
unpredictably as possible -- of the situation as perceived by the other
party, who must then try to take action to adjust. If we repeat the process
and continue to take unpredictable actions faster than the other side can
reorient themselves, an exercise that Boyd called "getting inside their
decision cycle," they lose any coherent grasp of the situation and succumb
to something approaching mental paralysis. Their minds, in Boyd's expressive
phrase, "fold back on themselves."

[...]

Boyd's concept of the mechanism by which an adversary can be disconnected
from reality illuminates Sun Tzu's famous dictum: "The way of war is a way
of deception. When able, feign inability; when deploying troops, appear not
to be.... if [the enemy] is weak, stir him to pride. If he is relaxed, harry
him; if his men are harmonious, split them." As John Minford observes in his
commentary to a new translation: "On this basis of deception, of
dissimulation and concealment, is built the whole principle of
'manipulation' of the enemy, which lies at the heart of Master Sun's
strategic thinking."

[...]