Reassessing Victory in Warfare

Mandel, Robert

doi:10.1177/0095327x06295515

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The idea of the bureaucracy as a system simply means that pulverizing a linchpin of it can trigger its wholesale collapse. 38 In the mostly American dominated literature on IW, there have been a number of books and articles that critically analyze the problems with defining mission foci among a number of overlapping governmental agencies tasked with prosecuting IW, and with identifying vulnerabilities in target organizations for IW. 39 Walter Jajko's ''Critical Commentary on the Department of Defense Authorities for Information Operations'' published ten years ago in the journal Comparative Strategy called attention to the bureaucratic weaknesses in the American effort.…”

Section: E-promise Bureaucratic Confusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Warfare?

Chong

2013

Armed Forces & Society

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While information warfare (IW) has been treated by its foremost western proponents as a strategic revolution, the reasons for such a claim are actually rather weak if one considers how non-western approaches to the informational components of warfare have put forth their positions within a multidimensional context of strategy. This article ventures an Asian perspective that can potentially offer a more nuanced contribution to the study of IW. This article will pan out by first critically analyzing the predominantly American interpretation of IW as a set of five characteristics that can be contrasted to an Asian rival. Subsequently, we will elaborate a list of features likely to characterize a generic Asian IW approach, which I will argue, is more appropriately termed information operations (IO). These Asian IO features will be teased out through a reading of Sun Tzu, Mao Zedong, and Vo Nguyen Giap. An Asian IO approach will not distinguish wartime and peacetime applications, and neither will it place a premium on liberal democratic ideology as a basis for information superiority.

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Section: E-promise Bureaucratic Confusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Information Warfare?

Chong

2013

Armed Forces & Society

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“…Yet military organizations are necessarily becoming wary of the ‘total war’ approach and its attendant psychological issues, simply because they need to adapt to the new geo-political reality whereby ‘asymmetric’ organizations are increasingly structured on the model of decentralized and independently operating or ‘composite’ units which cannot be comprehensively ‘defeated’ in the Clausewitzean sense (Sullivan, 2007; Mandel, 2007). Similarly, businesses are increasingly wary of expending resources to drive competitors out of business because they realize that global competition will always ensure that a plentiful supply of new adversaries appears whenever any one adversary has been dealt with.…”

Section: Managing Competition Risk: the Lessonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Managing Competition Risk: A Critical Realist Philosophical Exploration

Ojiako

Marshall

Luke

et al. 2012

Competition & Change

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As firms act to meet competitive challenges, they separately vary their exposure to objectively real risks, and their subjective risk perceptions. Hence the ‘fit’ between each firm's subjective risk map and its objective ‘riskscape’ is in constant flux. Realist thought, which emphasizes the separateness of mind from external reality, and sets itself the slow and painstaking task of improving the fit between the two, is therefore universally relevant for risk management. This simple ‘risk realism’ has value for academics wishing to analyse risk management practice and can provide useful working assumptions and procedural guidelines for practitioners. Mindful of both uses, this paper utilizes the philosophical thesis of critical realism to develop ontological and epistemological standpoints that relate specifically to what we call ‘competition risk’. Working from these standpoints we develop parallels between business and military engagements with competition risk. We explore what we treat as ontologically indistinct competition risk issues present across both contexts and conclude that firms can learn much from how the military deals with both ‘regular’ and ‘irregular’ forms of competition risk.

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“…However, by aligning itself with-or being aligned by or directed from-nascent or actual state formations, the transcending (and some would still argue emancipatory) potential of much of this type of cyber warfare seems to be only partly rhizomic. Moreover, the massive use of digital or information warfare (Mandel 2007), the alignment of the blogosphere with formal political entities (Williams et al 2005), and the increasing presence and control of cyberspace according to state and corporate interests 12 suggest that, in a Deleuze and Guattarian sense, the encroaching state presence must be seen as striating smooth space-also in the context of cyber wars and political conflict. 13 In other words, in contemporary processes, rhizomic and state dynamics are being brought into greater complementarity.…”

Section: Globalization and The Intensification Of Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

The Aporia of Power: Crisis and the Emergence of the Corporate State

Kapferer¹

2010

Social Analysis

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The argument focuses on the corporate state as an increasingly significant political assemblage that has enabled new configurations of power with related social effects. Here the discussion proceeds from Karl Polanyi's thesis in The Great Transformation. A critical idea that Polanyi pursued related to the state production of economism and individualism, which prepared the ground for the expansion of capital in its globalizing form. The essay develops this idea, indicating that the nationalist capitalism of the state led to a radical change in the political and social orders of states, gradually giving rise to the corporate state assemblage. The emphasis here is on the corporate state as a socio-political order that places radically distinct structural dynamics into impossible conjunction, leading to progressively disastrous social effects concerning poverty and the emergence of new configurations in which war and violence take specific shapes.

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Reassessing Victory in Warfare

Cited by 7 publications

References 28 publications

Information Warfare?

Information Warfare?

Managing Competition Risk: A Critical Realist Philosophical Exploration

The Aporia of Power: Crisis and the Emergence of the Corporate State

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