Just posted an article about the Joint Operating Environment 2010, a strategic framework that forecasts possible threats and opportunities that will challenge the joint force in the future.
JOE 2010 continues and improves on work first outlined in the 2008 version of the document which was downloaded over a million times from the command Web site.
Army Lt. Gen. Keith M. Huber, USJFCOM deputy commander said,
“The purpose of the JOE is to encourage strategic dialogue – we put out JOE 2008, people responded, we listened and made changes and improvements based on that feedback.”
2010 JOE did not not adequately address the competition for resources (other then oil). The graphic showing that China invests 7% of its foreign investment in Africa does not illustrate the importance of the African continent to the worlds IT and jet engine industries – or the fact that the Chinese are buying these rights in disproportionate numbers.
The nexus of criminal and terrorist networks was addressed primarily in the box on page 61. Criminal nodes and networks facilitate the global movement of a broad range of contraband (drugs, cash, technology, WMD components, people, etc.) State actors leverage these to “cover their tracks”. Non-state actors profit from AND exploit.
Interagency discussion needed to be addressed in more detail. The subject of authorities to ACT against non-state actors when war has not been declared is STILL MURKY and requires the IA.
Training of NCO’s, JOs and senior officers must include “reenactment” of real-world dilemmas in order to better prepare the HOLISTIC leaders of tomorrow.
The 2008 JOE had more “take-aways” sprinkled throughout – this helped refresh reading.
I read with interest the JOE 2010 and am now reviewing the Draft Concepts supporting CCJO. All are well written and provide much needed information. “Good Job”
A. The economic section refers to numerous issues that have to be conquered.
1. “achieve maximum military power for each dollar” yet we still attempt to procure the 100% solution. Think we need to consider the lesser solution sometimes with planned upgrades in the future. (Trade-offs)
2. Reengineering military staffs – critical – yet we keep growing! Need to do some process reviews. A lot of beef that can and must be trimmed.
3. Within DoD – Unless the “Joint” commanders and staffs control resources there will continue to be four solutions, four requirements, and four capabilities.
B. Battle of Narratives (Great Term). We have to be willing to be non-PC, first and not reactive to get the greater influence.
*Remarks are personal opinion and not representative of any organization.
Having now read the JOE document in some detail, I wish now to comment on it. This is clearly a consensus document, but “consensus” rarely equals truthfulness. To begin with, if the authors of this document understood that Thomas Malthus was a propagandist for the British East India Company and not a scientist, their outlook would be considerably different. Everything in it about consequences of population growth and resource constraints is coherent with Malthus’s outlook. According to this outlook, resources can never keep up with population growth. They treat the universe as entropic, when it is not. The formation of the planets, the existence of life, itself, and the rise of civilization all contradict the notion that the universe is an entropic place. The nature of humanity is to be anti-entropic, and that principle has, in the past, been embedded in what used to be typical American thinking, that is, there’s no problem, like landing men on the moon, or expanding food production for a growing population, that we can’t solve if we apply our best genius to it. JOE, unfortunately, reflects the abandonment of that outlook in favor of entropy, which can only lead us to a dark age.
Secondly, there’s a huge blind spot in this document, which likely reflects a broader problem. In the introduction, the document declares that “There will continue to be those who will hijack and exploit religion for extremist ends.” It fails to identify that the most fertile recruiting ground for those extremists is in London, not the in places you might otherwise think of. The Detroit underwear bomber, for example, was radicalized in London, not Yemen, as indicated by the fact the British government, itself. put him on their own terrorist watch list when he left the country in 2008. Britain has long been notorious for giving asylum to individuals wanted for terrorist acts in other countries, and being extremely resistant to extradition of those individuals. This problem was even debated, recently, on the floor of the House of Commons. Do a Google search for “Londonistan,” and you’ll see what I mean. If we remain blind to this actual threat, we will pay dearly for it.
Thirdly, the document speaks of “the challenge of disruptions,” meaning a 9/11 type of event. Aside from having to reconsider the authorship of the 9/11 attacks, given the “Londonistan” problem, defining world-changing events in such a limited way, excludes the possibility of exiting the conflict-dominated future that you envision. How did Europe actually exit the New Dark Age of the 14th Century? How did statecraft finally bring an end to the Thirty Years War in 1648? What kind of statecraft is required to end the global crisis that we’re in now? It’s the broader understanding of historical processes and of the not-entropic characteristic of human beings that is required.
I have a grand son who turns 4 in July. He has the right to expect, and we have the obligation, to provide him, and every other child of his generation, the perspective of participating in industrialization of the moon and building of science cities on Mars. What we are promising him, instead, is the destruction of his generation.
Mr Osgood suffers , I suspect, from a belief that some deity or other will return to refill the oilfields, and regreen the deserts we have created. We literally eat oil, and to equate landing on the moon with the cornucopian fantasy of feeding 9 billion is childlike, and I suspect, said is the expectation of his messiah returning to solve our imminent problems. Messiahs have a long history of promises, but based on historical records, have always been short on reality.
All things, whether animal or machine, are entropic, all forms of energy dissipate. Order becomes disorder. Malthus merely stated the obvious, his calculations were skewed for a couple of centuries by oil, but his arithmetic was correct. Europe exited the ”New Dark Age” of the 14th century through the simple expedient of transferring its dross and diseases to the new world in exchange for loot, and to gain a few centuries respite by despoiling that paradise by filling it up with people in fulfillment of Malthus’ laws. Spain looted so much gold that, as a nation, they lost the initiative and drive that created their empire in the first place. In the developed west, oil is the new gold. It drives our machines and has removed our need and ability to work. We will starve because oil has removed our ability to produce our own food without it
Wars do not end through statecraft, they end because one side runs out of energy first and is pronounced the loser. Entropy overwhelms the human soldiers that make up the losing side. In war the order and beauty of the human body is rendered entropic by a club an arrow or a bullet.
And dont blame the jihadis on us Brits. In 1945, Roosevelt signed a deal with the Saudi regime, offering protection to its profligacy in return for unrestricted oil supplies. As to authorship of the attacks, I seem to recall that the 9/11 pilots trained at US flying schools. Maybe they felt it was time to renegotiate the deal.??