Political and Military Leaders Must Understand Societal Dynamics

Sammanfattning av Ted Woodcocks artikel i KKrVAHT nr 4 2001.

Political and military leaders are faced with new and emerging challenges created by our increasingly complex and apparently chaotic world. Informed policy- and decision-making demands a new understanding of the environment within which such activities must take place. New capabilities are needed to accomplish the management of societal change and the command and control of combat forces in uncertain and unknown conditions. Societal dynamics models, pioneered by the author and his colleagues, can provide an understanding of complex processes and are reviewed in the paper. Those models can also provide a mathematically-rigorous basis for the new management and command and control capabilities that must be developed to meet future challenges.

Ambiguities of perception, fostered (perhaps inadvertently) by the media and actively generated by information warfare protagonists, can create artificial realities and force individuals and nations to make inappropriate decisions that increase risk and vulnerability. The complex nature of the command and management structures of the United Nations can create significant problems when policies are being developed and decisions made under the glare of media spotlights to assemble and deploy military forces for peacekeeping or humanitarian operations.

Research by the author and his colleagues has developed societal dynamics models. Results from this work have provided the basis for the development of new facilities to support informed policy- and decision-making and related activities. Minimalist modeling methods and a wide range of mathematical modeling techniques have been used to gain new insights into the behavior of complex systems. Selected results from the study of chaotic dynamical systems and systems based on population dynamics are presented below. Societal dynamics models form a key component of the Deployable Exercise Support (DEXES) system, a facility that, as of September 2001, has been used to support thirteen multi-national peace and humanitarian exercises in South and Central America. New prototype capabilities have been developed to support automatic scenario generation and could be used to enhance the realism of training exercises.

Techniques based on intelligent automata mathematics have been used to produce small, agile, and responsive computer systems. Spatial dynamical structures are generated by the interaction of relatively simple sets of automata rules and other properties. Automata have been used to develop The Counternarcotics Modeling and Analysis Capability (CMAC). CMAC was used with significant success to support a counter-drug exercise in the United States. The Strategic Management System (STRATMAS) project is producing a functional prototype system for the Swedish National Defence College (FHS) and Defence Materiel Administration (FMV) for potential use by the Swedish Defence Staff and for the United States Joint Staff.

New types of local and regional conflicts have gained worldwide attention as entities seek to gain advantages and create stability, or sometimes instability, to further their interests. Two of the most important conflicts, the drug war and the information war, have provided a new basis for challenges in the Post Cold War era. It is in this context that military and political leaders must understand the dynamics of those societal processes that they hope to manage or control. Failure in that endeavor will create enormous risk for the nations and other organizations and entities that those leaders have the honor and responsibility to serve.