There is a remarkable disconnect between the (almost entirely theoretical) literature on ‘power’ and the (almost exclusively 'hard'/kinetic) capability planning methods that our armed forces currently employ.
Recent discussions in IR theory on ‘soft/smart power’ have certainly (re-)broadened our view of power. But this broadening has not really been operationalized into concrete capabilities. If soft power is ’real’ and if we can offer examples of how it is being ‘wielded’ (as we can) – can we not also find methods to convert these 'softer' sources of power into concrete real capability choices that defence organizations can invest in? This new literature has certainly tapped a vein in many defence analysts (AND operators), but can we also 'do' something with it?
Our current capability development processes, on the other hand, are quite 'practical', but do they allow us to reach into potential hitherto untapped sources of power? Defense capability planning has a number of important characteristics that are frequently overlooked. First of all they rely heavily on (a particular way of dealing with) the future. The future is reified into (often overly) precise scenarios, from which (not surprisingly) very concrete capabilities are derived. To be sure, a number of more ‘abstract’ categories are (sometimes) used in this process (in the form of various taxonomies - e.g. 'strategic functions', 'task lists'), but most forward defence planners jump surprisingly quickly to (very) concrete tasks and capabilities. Therein also lies a source of conservatism, as the planners (typically and increasingly people with operational experience) tend (understandably) to think in terms of the capabilities they know – and these continue to be overwhelmingly kinetic (see the availability heuristic in social psychology). Given the lack of analytical counterweights to this availability heuristic, it is not surprising that so many forward (even long-term) defense planning efforts typically yield more technologically sophisticated variants of essentially the current force structure. We tend to look for more technologically advanced (not even necessarily smarter) ways of executing the tasks we ‘know’ as opposed to finding different or genuinely smarter ways of doing them. Doing the same thing better, instead of doing (possibly) better things.
[It is interesting to note, for instance, that operational planners – who used to suffer from the same problem and have found out at their own peril that the OPP just ‘missed’ some important higher-level ‘design’ questions. These are now being engineered into the OPP. Unfortunately we are still not asking these broader design questions in forward defence.]
In our project, we are taking a much broader look at 'power'. I would like to, in this entry, present a new scheme that we are toying with.
This scheme tries to describe the various stages through which power leads to outcomes. I have provisionally named it the power conversion sequence: how power gets converted from a 'source' into an (in the best case desired) outcome. Let me illustrate this sequence with a simple example for ONE source (the left most component in the chevron chart) of power: money. Money in and of itself is a purely abstract concept (as is power itself). We all know that we have some (at least I hope we all do) and that it can be used to produce certain outcomes that we may desire. For simplicity's sake, let's take the example of acquiring a mobile phone. We no longer think of the 'power' aspects of such everyday commercial transactions. This is an interesting observation in its own right: as some point 'power' can disappear into other forms of strategic interaction that is no longer couched in power terms. But in essence, there IS a power element in every transaction. Stores have objects we may desire. But they will not just give them to us. They have to be 'persuaded'. 'Money' is one of the 'sources' of 'power' we have that we can use 'over' the store owner to give us those objects - say the TV. Is it obviously also not the only one. We could also - even though this should not be read as a recommendation - use violence to force the owner [note that in this case, the 'raw' face of 'power' would be visible again] of a mobile phone (whether a store owner or another mobile phone user) to give it to us. We could barter with the owner - may she needs or wants something from us that she is willing to trade a mobile phone for. But we could also just try to 'talk' him into it ("I will write a review for your shop in the most popular local publication and you will sell a lot more of these"). All of these individual sources of power would then still have to go through the next stages of the power-conversion sequence. But let us focus our attention for a while on the source 'money and see how the source-to-outcome sequence unfolds itself for that source in our quest for a mobile phone.
The next step we have called 'dimensions of power' (although 'ways of power' is another candidate label for this step). It is a trickier one that the other ones to explain. But we feel it is an important one, because the actual outcome (whether power led to the outcome we desire) is to a large extent determined NOT just by the source of power or the actual instantiation of it - but ALSO by the WAYS in which we decide to exercise various sources of power. Let us get back to our example. There are a number of different ways we can decide to exercise our 'money power'. We can use it directly - by going to the store and just buying the TV - or indirectly - by giving money to somebody to go buy it for us, or by calling in a debt that somebody owes us. So ONE dimension along which we can 'slice' money as a source of power is along the continuum direct vs indirect. But there are many other 'dimensions'
The third step in the sequence to make the source 'real'. We have called this the 'instruments of power'-stage. Money comes in many different incarnations. We may have enough cash in our wallets to pay for the phone. We may have to go to the bank and materialize the 'virtual' money we have on our bank account into 'real' money. We can pay with debit or credit cards - all of these we have called 'instruments': concrete instantiations of the more abstract 'sources' of power.
The next step in the sequence is that agents have to decide with combinations of sources, dimensions and instruments they may want to use in specific cases. They typically still have a large degree of freedom in this choice (a degree they may often underestimate). In our case, the agent may, for instance, decide to use money in the direct way through his credit card. But he could also decided on many other combinations.
The output of this sequence on the agent's side is the actual act of - in case of the combinatorial choice we have just described - going to the store and buying the mobile phone with a credit card. It is important to realize that this is still not the end of the sequence: the actual outcome of this sequence can still be affected by various other factors: decisions by other agents (e.g. who may have made the desired phone unavailable or out of stock; somebody might still steal the phone just after we buy it, etc.), or just by sheer happenstance (we may get run over by a car as we walk out of the store).
The essence of this project is that we are mapping the various views that exist in different disciplines about the various steps in this power conversion sequence. I can already safely say that we see that the field of International Relations (especially over the past few decades) seems to cover far fewer dimensions of power than some other disciplines (such as sociology, psychology, education or even biology). We are also starting to map the various power indices that exist against these different dimensions of power - and here we observe an even more striking reduction of the broad concept of 'power' into a remarkably narrow set of indicators. Finally, our project will make the step from these different elements of power to concrete capability choices that governments and armed forces can make - in search of potentially untapped sources of power.
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