On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, Gautam Mukunda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
One of the things that I think I've learned the last two years
(I've written about this on my blog at greater length) is that the
basic decisions to be made are not, generally, all that hard.
Right. But the question is whether this is true for the
administration of the current US occupation of Iraq?
Just today, the BBC reports
http://212.58.240.35/1/low/world/middle_east/3377781.stm
that the US is freeing about 1/20 of its prisoners as "a goodwill
gesture'. According to a report I read yesterday, the US occupation
authorities went to considerable trouble to identify those prisoners
who have the least `blood on their hands' and intend to release only
those who can obtain a guarantee for good behavior from an Iraqi whom
the US respects.
This is one of those situations where it is critical to make the right
judgements about hundreds of people. Probably, from the US point of
view, it does not matter if the authorities make a few mistakes. But
if the US authorities make many mistakes, they increase the expense of
the war and the risk of ultimate defeat.
The question is how should you characterize the situation in Iraq?
In his book, "The Innovator's Solution", Clayton Christensen (a
professor at the Harvard Business School) makes the distinction
between `sustaining' innovations and `disruptive' innovations.
When a company focuses on sustaining innovations, it establishes the
resources, processes, and values that enable it to succeed in its
circumstances. Because they have so successfully internalized the
culture that tells people their priorities, i.e., the company's
values,
Initiatives that don't make sense to the middle managers rarely
get packaged for the senior people's consideration.
and this is good for the company. However, in a business involving
disruptive innovations,
... with their ill-defined strategies and demanding profitability
targets, make-or-break decisions arise with alarming frequency,
....
[both p. 270]
In circumstances involving`sustaining' innovations, a company provides
resources, processes, and values such that people who have learned the
values and processes can make decisions that are usually right. In
these circumstances, it is heroic to work long hours and apply the
appropriate learning. Those who work longer hours are more
productive. The mistakes they make are not so expensive.
However, in other circumstances, decisions are make-or-break.
A mistake is expensive.
The problem with the US occupation of Iraq is that, to use
Christensen's language, its circumstances are more disruptive than
sustaining. Indeed, it is clear from the fact that the US changed
them (most importantly, in early November 2003), that the strategies
planned before the war were either ill-defined or erroneously defined.
Right now, the US looks to be winning this portion of its campaign in
Iraq, and gaining benefits there from -- primarily, as I wrote a year
ago, the benefits of frightening `the other Arab dictatorships into
greater efforts into policing against enemies of US.'
What if the US had been seen to have succeeded in its conquest of Iraq
a great deal sooner -- say by last August? Then the US would not have
had to make a deal with Iran on terms as favorable to Iran as it
appears to have done; Libya would have accepted UN inspections sooner;
Syria would have started its current dance sooner.
These are the opportunity costs of the strategy that has been
followed. Perhaps, having made the decision to avoid a war
mobilization and to invade Iraq in the spring rather than the fall of
2003, the US could not have done better. While it is clearly the case
that `no plan ever survives contact with the enemy', the question is
whether a different strategy -- one of those talked about a year and
more ago -- could have led to better current circumstances for the US?
As for whether the US could increase the number of civilian
administrators in the Coalition Provisional Authority, I wrote
> Last February, the former chief of staff of the US Army ...
> figured an additional 250,000 Americans could go into Iraq.
to which Gautam Mukunda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> responded
I frankly don't think Shinsecki was write about this,
and I don't know anyone else who agrees with that
assessment.
Hmm ... no one that I know has ever said that the US Army could not
move another 250,000 troops to Iraq in the months since May 1. Prior
to the first Gulf war, it took less time to move more troops.
Moreover, I have read that it appears the US Army was stretched thin
in the 6 months following May 1. In the fall of 2003, for example,
Luttwak said that at any one time, the `teeth' of the US forces
numbered only about 30,000 troops.
The argument against adding troops after May 1 (as far as I know there
was no time to bring in more before that date) was that such an action
would overly weaken US forces available elsewhere since the nation was
not mobilized for war. And even if the US had started mobilizing in
January of last year, or six months yet earlier, there would not have
been enough people: even training draftees only to be peace keepers,
i.e., to be foreign policemen, and not soldiers, would have taken too
long. The US would have had to mobilize within six or eight months of
the attacks of 2001 Sept 11.
Even if [that assessment] was true, though, there's a big
difference between putting that number of soldiers in Iraq, and
that number of civilians in Baghdad.
We are not talking of putting 250,000 civilians there. We are talking
about putting perhaps 1/100 that number or perhaps 1/25. Such numbers
do not seem to be impossible to me.
Surely one large (but often overlooked) component of,
say, the astonishing output of Winston Churchill and
Napoleon (to pick very different figures) is that both
are said to have routinely slept four hours a night.
Not every man is a Churchill or a Napoleon. Moreover, it is not clear
to me how much Churchill slept in a 24 hour period. Certainly, he was
a night owl and did not sleep much during the night. But every
afternoon he also took a long nap -- one that involved his undressing
and getting in bed.
Indeed, Churchill worried about others' fatigue. In one or other of
the history books I read in the 1960s, I remember him being quoted as
saying in 1940 or '41 that he had to be careful how much a load he put
on the members of his Cabinet. In a vivid image I still remember, he
said that the members of his Cabinet had to read the equivalent of a
`long Victorian novel every day'.
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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