In This Dimension

War and Reality

Wars are won only by inducing inconvenience to an enemy (American Revolution, War of 1812, Vietnam, etc.) or by destroying the enemy (Civil War, WWII). Creating a cease fire every other week, worrying about disarming – rather than utterly destroying – a foe, concerning oneself with “hearts and minds,” is working the inconvenience side of the equation.

Limited war, from Korea to Vietnam (French and American experiences) to Iraq, never has worked for modern countries. A non-Western, non-civilized country cannot be inconvenienced to the levels that can a modern industrial society with smaller families, more distractions and a Western liberal outlook[…]

Memo to Hollywood: Piracy isn’t the Problem

For a decade Hollywood has been at the mercy of digital pirates as sales of music and movie seats have fallen. Legal digital downloads have not replaced lost CD sales. The studio outlook seems worse than ever. Digital piracy is destroying valuable industries and thousand of industry jobs. Right?

Wrong.

Consumer piracy isn’t the problem, and anti-piracy measures aren’t the solution. What we are seeing are far stronger societal changes, and the inability of studio executives to make the business model changes necessary to keep-up with their customers.

Anti-piracy technology, on which Hollywood has wasted tens of millions of dollars and over a[…]

Gen. Scales’ Ivory-Handled Tower

In the article, “Clausewitz and World War IV,” Maj. General Scales (ret) has confused combat with war. They are not at all the same.

Combat is what occurs between armies of warring societies. Scales refers to Clausewitz several times, but misses that observer’s most important observation: That war is the continuation of politics by other means.

Rather than spending time and energy discussing winning wars, General Scales discusses winning battles.

Rather than enlighten the reader with observations that wars are political actions conducted by the forces organized, trained and equipped by a society, and that a war is a political action between societies,[…]

On War

War is the continuation of politics by other means. Societies are political entities. Societies create armed forces as tools to implement their political objectives – offensive and defensive. Simply, an army is a policy tool, not a policy maker.

Killing an army, uniformed or not, does not destroy the politics or the processes through which policy is created. Failure to destroy, or to cause the general collapse of the opponent’s society is the failure of the political goals for which the war was fought.

WWI is an excellent example. The German army was not defeated on the field of battle, its cities[…]