The Offensive Warfare Problem

If life has shown itself to be particularly proficient at anything, it is fighting. There is hardly a creature alive today that does not employ physical violence in some form to get what it wants (or defend what it has) and, despite a vast array of moral arguments to the contrary of that being a good idea (I must do a post on the prisoner’s dilemma some time…), humankind is, of course, no exception. Unfortunately, our innate inventiveness and imagination as a race means that we have been able to let our brains take our fighting to the next level, with consequences that have got ever-more destructive as  time has gone  by. With the construction of the first atomic bombs, humankind had finally got to where it had threatened to for so long- the ability to literally wipe out planet earth.

This insane level of offensive firepower is not just restricted to large-scale big-guns (the kind that have been used fir political genital comparison since Napoleon revolutionised the use of artillery in warfare)- perhaps the most interesting and terrifying advancement in modern warfare and conflict has been the increased prevalence and distribution of powerful small arms, giving ‘the common man’ of the battlefield a level of destructive power that would be considered hideously overwrought in any other situation (or, indeed, the battlefield of 100 years ago). The epitomy of this effect is, of course, the Kalashnikov AK-47, whose cheapness and insane durability has rendered it invaluable to rebel groups or other hastily thrown together armies, giving them an ability to kill stuff that makes them very, very dangerous to the population of wherever they’re fighting.

And this distribution of such awesomely dangerous firepower has began to change warfare, and to explain how I need to go on a rather dramatic detour. The goal of warfare has always, basically, centred around the control of land and/or population, and as James Herbert makes so eminently clear in Dune, whoever has the power to destroy something controls it, at least in a military context. In his book Ender’s Shadow (I feel I should apologise for all these sci-fi references), Orson Scott Card makes the entirely separate point that defensive warfare in the context of space warfare makes no practical sense. For a ship & its weapons to work in space warfare, he rather convincingly argues, the level of destruction it must be able to deliver would have to be so large that, were it to ever get within striking distance of earth it would be able to wipe out literally billions- and, given the distance over which any space war must be conducted, mutually assured destruction simply wouldn’t work as a defensive strategy as it would take far too long for any counterstrike attempt to happen. Therefore, any attempt to base one’s warfare effort around defence, in a space warfare context, is simply too risky, since one ship (or even a couple of stray missiles) slipping through in any of the infinite possible approach directions to a planet would be able to cause uncountable levels of damage, leaving the enemy with a demonstrable ability to destroy one’s home planet and, thus, control over it and the tactical initiative. Thus, it doesn’t make sense to focus on a strategy of defensive warfare and any long-distance space war becomes a question of getting there first (plus a bit of luck).

This is all rather theoretical and, since we’re talking about a bunch of spaceships firing missiles at one another, not especially relevant when considering the realities of modern warfare- but it does illustrate a point, namely that as offensive capabilities increase the stakes rise of the prospect of defensive systems failing. This was spectacularly, and horrifyingly, demonstrated during 9/11, during which a handful of fanatics armed with AK’s were able to kill 5,000 people, destroy the world trade centre and irrevocably change the face of the world economy and world in general. And that came from only one mode of attack, and despite all the advances in airport security that have been made since then there is still ample opportunity for an attack of similar magnitude to happen- a terrorist organisation, we must remember, only needs to get lucky once. This means that ‘normal’ defensive methods, especially since they would have to be enforced into all of our everyday lives (given the format that terrorist attacks typically take), cannot be applied to this problem, and we must rely almost solely on intelligence efforts to try and defend ourselves.

This business of defence and offence being in imbalance in some form or another is not a phenomenon solely confined to the modern age. Once, wars were fought solely with clubs and shields, creating a somewhat balanced case of attack and defence;  attack with the club, defend with the shield. If you were good enough at defending, you could survive; simple as that. However, some bright spark then came up with the idea of the bow, and suddenly the world was in imbalance- even if an arrow couldn’t pierce an animal skin stretched over some sticks (which, most of the time, it could), it was fast enough to appear from nowhere before you had a chance to defend yourself. Thus, our defensive capabilities could not match our offensive ones. Fast forward a millennia or two, and we come to a similar situation; now we defended ourselves against arrows and such by hiding in castles behind giant stone walls  and other fortifications that were near-impossible to break down, until some smart alec realised the use of this weird black powder invented in China. The cannons that were subsequently invented could bring down castle walls in a matter of hours or less, and once again they could not be matched from the defensive standpoint- our only option now lay in hiding somewhere the artillery couldn’t get us, or running out of the way of these lumbering beasts. As artillery technology advanced throughout the ensuing centuries, this latter option became less and less feasible as the sheer numbers of high-explosive weaponry trained on opposition armies made them next-to impossible to fight in the field; but they were still difficult to aim accurately at well dug-in soldiers, and from these starting conditions we ended up with the First World War.

However, this is not a direct parallel of the situation we face now; today we deal with the simple and very real truth that a western power attempting to defend its borders (the situation is somewhat different when they are occupying somewhere like Afghanistan, but that can wait until another time) cannot rely on simple defensive methods alone- even if every citizen was an army trained veteran armed with a full complement of sub-machine guns (which they quite obviously aren’t), it wouldn’t be beyond the wit of a terrorist group to sneak a bomb in somewhere destructive. Right now, these methods may only be capable of killing or maiming hundreds or thousands at a time; tragic, but perhaps not capable of restructuring a society- but as our weapon systems get ever more advanced, and our more effective systems get ever cheaper and easier for fanatics to get hold of, the destructive power of lone murderers may increase dramatically, and with deadly consequences.

I’m not sure that counts as a coherent conclusion, or even if this counts as a coherent post, but it’s what y’got.

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…but some are more equal than others

Seemingly the key default belief of any modern, respectable government and, indeed, a well brought-up child of the modern age, is that of egalitarianism- that all men are born equal. Numerous documents, from the US Declaration of Independence to the UN Bill of Human Rights, have proclaimed this as a ‘self-evident truth’, and anyone who still blatantly clings onto the idea that some people are born ‘better’ than others by virtue of their family having more money is dubbed out of touch at best, and (bizarrely) a Nazi at worst. And this might be considered surprising given the amount of approval and the extent to which we set store by a person’s rank or status.

I mean, think about it. A child from a well-respected, middle class family with two professional parents will invariably get more opportunities in life, and will frequently be considered more ‘trustworthy’, than a kid born into a broken home with a mother on benefits and a father in jail, particularly if his accent (especially) or skin colour (possibly to a slightly lesser extent in Europe than the US) suggests this fact. Someone with an expensive, tailored suit can stand a better chance at a job interview to a candidate with an old, fading jacket and worn knees on his trousers that he has never been rich enough to replace, and I haven’t even started on the wage and job availability gap between men and women, despite that there are nowadays more female university graduates than males. You get the general idea. We might think that all are born equal, but that doesn’t mean we treat them like that.

Some have said that this, particularly in the world of work, is to do with the background and age of the people concerned. Particularly in large, old and incredibly valuable corporate enterprises such as banks, the average age of senior staff and shareholders tends to be on the grey end of things, the majority of them are male and many of them will have had the top-quality private education that allowed them to get there, so the argument put forward is that these men were brought up surrounded by this sort of ‘public schoolers are fantastic and everyone else is a pleb’ mentality. And it is without doubt true that very few companies have an average age of a board member below 50, and many above 65; in fact the average age of a CEO in the UK has recently gone up from a decade-long value of 51 to nearly 53.  However, the evidence suggests that the inclusion of younger board members and CEOs generally benefits a company by providing a fresher understanding of the modern world; data that could only be gathered by the fact that there are a large number of young, high-ranking businesspeople to evaluate. And anyway; in most job interviews, it’s less likely to be the board asking the questions than it is a recruiting officer of medium business experience- this may be an issue, but I don’t think it’s the key thing here.

It could well be possible that the true answer is that there is no cause at all, and the whole business is nothing more than a statistical blip. In Freakonomics, an analysis was done to find the twenty ‘blackest’ and ‘whitest’ boy’s names in the US (I seem to remember DeShawn was the ‘blackest’ and Jake the ‘whitest’), and then compared the job prospects of people with names on either of those two lists. The results suggested that people with one of the ‘white’ names did better in the job market than those with ‘black’ names, perhaps suggesting that interviewers are being, subconsciously or not, racist. But, a statistical analysis revealed this to not, in fact, be the case; we must remember that black Americans are, on average, less well off than their white countrymen, meaning they are more likely to go to a dodgy school, have problems at home or hang around with the wrong friends. Therefore, black people do worse, on average, on the job market because they are more likely to be not as well-qualified as white equivalents, making them, from a purely analytical standpoint, often worse candidates. This meant that Jake was more likely to get a job than DeShawn because Jake was simply more likely to be a better-educated guy, so any racism on the part of job interviewers is not prevalent enough to be statistically significant. To some extent, we may be looking at the same thing here- people who turn up to an interview with cheap or hand-me-down clothes are likely to have come from a poorer background to someone with a tailored Armani suit, and are therefore likely to have had a lower standard of education and make less attractive candidates to an interviewing panel. Similarly, women tend to drop their careers earlier in life if they want to start a family, since the traditional family model puts the man as chief breadwinner, meaning they are less likely to advance up the ladder and earn the high wages that could even out the difference in male/female pay.

But statistics cannot quite cover anything- to use another slightly tangential bit of research, a study done some years ago found that teachers gave higher marks to essays written in neat handwriting than they did to identical essays that were written messier. The neat handwriting suggested a diligent approach to learning, a good education in their formative years, making the teacher think the child was cleverer, and thus deserving of more marks, than a scruffier, less orderly hand. Once again, we can draw parallels to our two guys in their different suits. Mr Faded may have good qualifications and present himself well, but his attire suggests to his interviewers that he is from a poorer background. We have a subconscious understanding of the link between poorer backgrounds and the increased risk of poor education and other compromising factors, and so the interviewers unconsciously link our man to the idea that he has been less well educated than Mr Armani, even if the evidence presented before them suggests otherwise. They are not trying to be prejudiced, they just think the other guy looks more likely to be as good as his paperwork suggests. Some of it isn’t even linked to such logical connections; research suggests that interviewers, just as people in everyday life, are drawn to those they feel are similar to them, and they might also make the subconscious link that ‘my wife stays at home and looks after the kids, there aren’t that many women in the office, so what’s this one doing here?’- again, not deliberate discrimination, but it happens.

In many ways this is an unfortunate state of affairs, and one that we should attempt to remedy in everyday life whenever and wherever we can. But a lot of the stuff that to a casual observer might look prejudiced, might be violating our egalitarian creed, we do without thinking, letting out brain make connections that logic should not. The trick is not to ‘not judge a book by it’s cover’, but not to let your brain register that there’s a cover at all.

The Age of Reason

Science is a wonderful thing- particularly in the modern age where the more adventurous (or more willing to tempt fate, depending on your point of view) like to think that most of science is actually pretty well done and dusted. I mean, yes there are a lot of the little details we have yet to work out, but the big stuff, the major hows and whys, have been basically sorted out. We know why there are rainbows, why quantum tunnelling composite appears to defy basic logic, and even why you always seem to pick the slowest queue- science appears to have got it pretty much covered.

[I feel I must take this opportunity to point out one of my favourite stories about the world of science- at the start of the 20th century, there was a prevailing attitude among physicists that physics was going to last, as an advanced science, for about another 20 years or so. They basically presumed that they had worked almost everything out, and now all they had to do was to tie up all the loose ends. However, one particular loose end, the photoelectric effect, simply refused to budge by their classical scientific laws. The only person to come up with a solution was Max Planck who, by modelling light (which everyone knew was a wave) as a particle instead, opened the door to the modern age of quantum theory. Physics as a whole took one look at all the new questions this proposed and, as one, took a collective facepalm.]

In any case, we are now at such an advanced stage of the scientific revolution, that there appears to be nothing, in everyday life at least, that we cannot, at least in part, explain. We might not know, for example, exactly how the brain is wired up, but we still have enough of an understanding to have a pretty accurate guess as to what part of it isn’t working properly when somebody comes in with brain damage. We don’t get exactly why or how photons appear to defy the laws of logic, but we can explain enough of it to tell you why a lens focuses light onto a point. You get the idea.

Any scientist worth his salt will scoff at this- a chemist will bang on about the fact that nanotubes were only developed a decade ago and will revolutionise the world in another, a biologist will tell you about all the myriad of species we know next to nothing about, and the myriad more that we haven’t discovered yet, and a theoretical physicist will start quoting logical impossibilities and make you feel like a complete fool. But this is all, really, rather high-level science- the day-to-day stuff is all pretty much done. Right?

Well… it’s tempting to think so. But in reality all the scientists are pretty correct- Newton’s great ocean of truth remains very much a wild and unexplored place, and not just in all the nerdy places that nobody without 3 separate doctorates can understand. There are some things that everybody, from the lowliest man in the street to the cleverest scientists, can comprehend completely and not understand in the slightest.

Take, for instance, the case of Sugar the cat. Sugar was a part-Persian with a hip deformity who often got uncomfortable in cars. As such when her family moved house, they opted to leave her with a neighbour. After a couple of weeks, Sugar disappeared, before reappearing 14 months later… at her family’s new house. What makes this story even more remarkable? The fact that Silky’s owners had moved from California to Oklahoma, and that a cat with a severe hip problem had trekked 1500 miles, over 100 a month,  to a place she had never even seen. How did she manage it? Nobody has a sodding clue.

This isn’t the only story of long-distance cat return, although Sugar holds the distance record. But an ability to navigate that a lot of sat navs would be jealous of isn’t the only surprising oddity in the world of nature. Take leopards, for example. The most common, and yet hardest to find and possibly deadliest of ‘The Big Five’, everyone knows that they are born killers. Humans, by contrast, are in many respects born prey- we are slow over short distances, have no horns, claws, long teeth or other natural defences, are fairly poor at hiding and don’t even live in herds for safety in numbers. Especially vulnerable are, of course, babies and young children, who by animal standards take an enormously long time to even stand upright, let alone mature. So why exactly, in 1938, were a leopard and her cubs found with a near-blind human child who she had carried off as a baby five years ago. Even more remarkable was the superlative sense of smell the child had, being able to differentiate between different people and even objects with nothing more than a good sniff- which also reminds me of a video I saw a while ago of a blind Scottish boy who can tell what material something is made of and how far away it is (well enough to play basketball) simply by making a clicking sound with his mouth.

I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say in this post- I have a sneaking suspicion my subconscious simply wanted to give me an excuse to share some of the weirdest stories I have yet to see on Cracked.com. So, to round off, I’ll leave you with a final one. In 1984 a hole was found in a farm in Washington State, about 3 metres by 2 and around 60cm deep. 25 metres away, the three tons of grass-covered earth that had previously filled the hole was found- completely intact, in a single block. One person described it as looking like it had been cut away with ‘a gigantic cookie cutter’, but this failed to explain why all of the roots hanging off it were intact. There were no tracks or any distinguishing feature apart from a dribble of earth leading between hole and divot, and the closest thing anyone had to an explanation was to lamely point out that there had been a minor earthquake 20 miles ago a week beforehand.

When I invent a time machine, forget killing Hitler- the first thing I’m doing is going back to find out what the &*^% happened with that hole.