Military Review English Edition January-February 2014 | Page 27

DO WE TRAIN TO FAIL?
23. I postulate that the West embraces a world view that uses Clausewitz, Jominiand other theorists who do not espouse an end of the world or other ideological
constructs. Time is unending, in that human society continues forward in cycles of
politics and violence, where several general principles appear to resonate across
all applications of violence regardless of technology, location, or time. See: John
L. Romjue, American Army Doctrine for the Post-Cold War (Fort Monroe: Military
History Office, TRADOC, 1997) p. 11.
24. John Shy, Jomini, Peter Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy; From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986) 164-65.
“By isolating strategy from its political and social context, Jomini helped to foster
a mode of thinking about war that continues to haunt us . . . central to Jomini’s
argument that there are immutable “principles” of war . . . is his emphasis on “lines
of operations.” See also Francois Jullien, trans. Janet Lloyd, A Treatise on Efficacy
Between Western and Chinese Thinking (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,
1996) 11. “Clausewitz set about thinking through warfare . . . according to a “model”
form, as an ideal and pure essence, “absolute warfare” . . . limitless use of force.”
25. Anatol Rapoport, ed., Editor’s Introduction to On War, Carl Von Clausewitz,
On War (New York: Penguin Books, 1968). A games theorist, Rapoport takes a
decidedly non-Western approach by framing Clausewitzian logic as a political
theory of war and introduces numerous non-Western conflict theories to demonstrate that Clausewitzian conflict theory is not as universal as the West presumes.
26. Ibid. I interpret Rapoport’s eschatological approach breaks into human
(messianic), natural, and/or divine, which can adapt to explain radical ideological
groups, environmental terrorists, or “end of the world” global or antihuman extremists. He introduces “cataclysmic” for another variation of the “end of the world”
through conflict, breaking those into ethno-centric and global cataclysmic. Rapoport
offers the Soviet world view as ethno-centric, which today translates to the Chinese
threat, whereas the UN’s position on general human conflict is associated with
the “global cataclysmic.”
27. Refer to Decisive Action Training Environment Version 2.0 (TRADOC G2,
Contemporary Operational Environment and Threat Integration Directorate, Fort
Leavenworth, KS, December 2011).
28. Berger and Luckmann, 120-30. Berger and Luckmann offer the process of
how rival definitions or reality might translate, modify, or battle with the dominant
social construction. Some are integrated; others form deviant subuniverses with
counter-definitions, counter-language, and counter-societies.
29. Brafman an B&V6