K -- Designing Military Doctrine

Take the Block and Physically Write it out on paper -- as in: WRITE THIS ON YOUR PAPER FLOW AND
READ IT FROM YOUR PAPER FLOW IN THE 1NC IF THIS ARG APPLIES
Link/Alt/Impact
 1NC/2NC -- K -- DIME Link/ Scenario-Planning Link/ Tech Rationalism
Link
The AFF is Locked into Functionalist Criteria for Planning Which Guarantees Failure
and Forecloses Innovation
(__). Our Evidence Assumes their Type of Scenario Analysis and IR

(__). Their Framework Guarantees Conflation Between Design and Planning --

(__). Alternative Solves the AFF But NOT Vice Versa -- Here’s Explicit Solvency for Organizational Frame
as a PRIOR Question

(__). Not All Education is the Same -- Tacit and Explicit Knowledge is Distinct

(__). The Combination of Tech Rationalism and Scenario-Planning Uniquely Fails

Zweibelson, 2016. (Major Ben Zweibelson, Program Director for Design and Innovation @ the Joint
Special Operations University, Doctoral Student @ Lancaster University, Retired US Army Infantry
Officer, Veteran of Iraq & Afghanistan, Lectures Across the USSOCOM, DoD, and US Government, Design
Conference Ambassador for the IMDC, Lectured on Design @ the Polish and Danish War Colleges,
Canadian Forces College, NATO Schools @ Oberammergau, the National Counterterrorism Center, the
IBM Capstone SPADE Conference for NATO @ Copenhgagen, as Well as Numerous Special Operations
and Strategic Level Defense Assets. “Special Operations and Design Thinking: Through the Looking Glass
of Organizational Knowledge Production” Special Operations Journal, Volume 2. Routledge Taylor &
Francis Online. [KevC])

The U.S. military over the past decade has developed various forms of “design thinking” for complex
problem solving in military conflicts. U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has recently
developed two operational design and design practitioners courses in an effort to integrate design
thinking across all levels of USSOCOM. While the conventional Army uses one form of design, the
organizational composition, mission, and high level of tacit knowledge production requires special
operations to pursue other design concepts, design education options, and organizational
improvements. This article outlines how and why special operations needs a different organizing
philosophy for design in context, where the unique qualities of special operation missions require
designing differently than conventional approaches.

U.S. special operations forces (SOF) represent the most technologically advanced, best resourced, and
most combat experienced force of professional soldiers on this planet. With those accolades, does there
really need to be a discussion on how the special operations organization approaches thinking, thinking
about thinking (metacognition), and problem solving in complexity? Shouldn’t the other attributes
simply bowl over complexity and defeat our adversaries through sheer technological and professional
overmatch, as our National Security Strategy and recent Army future operating concept indirectly
suggest (U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, 2014; U.S. White House, 2015)?1 As the recent
unresolved conflicts in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa, and elsewhere seem to run against this
logic, we might consider how and why special operations as an organization is currently unable to gain a
true cognitive overmatch against adversaries, particularly in organizational knowledge production and
creative problem solving within complex contexts.
Recently, U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), the hierarchical juggernaut in the special
operations community, launched new initiatives in military design thinking through several education
programs at the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU).2 While the U.S. military has already
struggled with implementing design through doctrine, education, and practice, this latest initiative is
important for several factors (Murden, 2013). First, USSOCOM acknowledges the importance of
distinguishing design thinking from subsequent planning. Design alone is not planning, and planning
alone is not design (Joint Staff, J-7 Joint and Coalition Warfighting, 2011; Zweibelson, 2015).3 The U.S.
Army as an institution continues to wrestle with this issue, while USSOCOM seems to be advancing
beyond it (Banach & Ryan, 2009; Graves & Stanley, 2013; Grigsby et al., 2011).4 Second, USSOCOM
realizes that existing design doctrine and approved methodologies are incomplete , still evolving in form
and function, and may not be entirely compatible with the unique nature of special operations missions,
composition, resources, and perspectives. It is in this second transition where the special operations
community is positioned to make exceptional advances (while also risking dangerous false trajectories)
in organizational knowledge production and complex problem solving.

Despite methodological quibbles over “this version of design methodology” or “that approach to
operational design” concepts, USSOCOM has deeper philosophical and paradigmatic challenges for
design. A paradigm is “the broadest unit of consensus within a science and serves to differentiate one
scientific community from another. It subsumes, defines, and interrelates the exemplars, theories,
methods and instruments that exist within in” (Rizer, 1980, p. 7; Kuhn, 1996, pp. 5–15). For design
thinking to take the best course for a tailored special operations organization and mission outlook, we
need to consider several significant sociological and philosophical concepts on how we make sense of
complexity and convey this understanding to others.

This is an article about “thinking about how the special operations community thinks about complexity”
(or metacognition upon the organization) and why these cognitive distinctions require significantly
dissimilar design approaches than what the general purpose forces now pursues. This requires a trip
down the rabbit hole that demands critical reflection and a willingness to creatively replace outdated
institutionalisms with novel and unexpected (surprising) adaptations.

DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE: SOCIOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICALTHEORIES ON KNOWLEDGE

The past five decades of sociological and philosophical advancement have ushered in profound new
ways of understanding human cognition, knowledge production, and organizational theory. While
various scientific and philosophical fields and disciplines continue to debate many of these theories,
enough momentum has been generated behind the study of paradigms to provide great value to the
military. For special operations as well as the entire military profession, dealing with complex problems
is now the new normal while traditional (and still highly coveted) linear approaches to classic warfare
may be less likely to occur, in that adversaries are becoming increasingly capable and elusive (U.S. Army
Training and Doctrine Command, 2014, pp. 15–16; U.S. White House, 2015, p. 4). Our adversaries now
avoid fighting us where we are traditionally strong, and they continue to adapt novel and emergent
approaches that exploit our weaknesses. Institutionally , we tend to misunderstand much of this and
routinely attempt to “force the system” to behave the way we wish it would.

The military prefers what sociologists term a functionalist paradigm, where the world is systematic,
reducible through scientific approaches, measurements, and repeatable linear processes (Bousquet,
2009, pp. 56–60; Guerlac, 1986, p. 67; Tsoukas, 2005, p. 171). Regarding the term systematic, we take a
reductionist approach to complexity, where the whole can be addressed after understanding the nature
of individual components that might later be reassembled back into the larger complexity. This underlies
a majority of military planning models, such as how we break down analysis into steps, groups, domains,
levels, and generalized structures that are labeled with doctrinal friendly acronyms. The scientific
method, applied in a blend of military and technological weighted choices and values, underpins this
functionalist approach to understanding warfare, military strategy, and organizational approaches in
conflicts.

Once a “law” is verified by pseudoscientific military applications, it becomes universal and timeless; the
characteristics of mass, surprise, speed, or economy of effort are applicable in every conflict with just
the right combination and analysis (Tsoukas & Dooley, 2011, p. 730). Every conflict might also be divided
and understood if our staffs correctly dissected complexity into political, military, economic, social,
infrastructure, and information (PMESII) “bins,” framed into the DIME (democracy, information, military,
economics) model or other useful models (Headquarters, Department of the Army, 2012, p. 5; U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff, 2011, p. I–4).5

At this ontological level (the “what is/what is not” knowledge level), we make deep and implicit
decisions regarding the fundamental nature of reality, upon which we construct our problem-solving
approaches and how we choose not to interpret reality (Hatch & Yanow, 2008, pp. 24–30; Reed, 2005, p.
1623; Stark, 1958, p. 13). Functionalism embraces an objectivist outlook on reality, where at the
ontological level we know that the world must be constant (Conklin, 2008; Schon, 1992b, pp. 4–11;
Taleb, 2007, p. 16; Weick, 2004, p. 42). Objectivism means that all of the observable as well as
conceptual things in reality exist in some form. Further, we as observers might remove ourselves from
the equation and apply scientific methods that reveal universal laws these objects will always obey in
some regard. This forms the basis for propositional knowledge, a key hallmark of the functionalist
military perspective (Tsoukas, 2005, pp. 70–71).

Although there are alternatives to the functionalist paradigm , nearly all Western military organizations
rely exclusively on functionalism to make sense of complexity in military contexts . Design provides
cognitive tools for breaking out of this single-paradigm thinking , and special operations design requires
it, as we expand on further (Gioia & Pitre, 1990; Lewis & Grimes, 1999; Schultz & Hatch, 1996, pp. 673–
675). Change and organization are intrinsically related; how an organization changes relates to what
defines the beliefs, habits, and experiences (Tsoukas & Chia, 2002, p. 570). Thus, special operations and
general purpose forces are not interchangeable. However, another important distinction on knowledge
needs to be illustrated next, as it becomes a powerful organizing force for how special operations should
(and should not) pursue design approaches in practice, education, and doctrinal transformation.

[CONTINUED…] INVISIBLE CHESHIRE CATS “GRIN”ING: FUTURE SPECIAL OPERATIONS INVESTMENTS

One of the strongest seductions on where SOF design ought to move revolves around the special
operations community and organizational theory. Sociologist Karl Weick (1993) addressed the
institutional forces within an organization confronted by looming disasters and unexpected
developments, in that organizations tend to stubbornly hold to existing cognitive processes as they
outstrip their past experiences (p. 636). For special operations (and the rest of Western military forces),
technology has unfortunately become a powerfully blinding tool that resists and rejects critical
reflection and promises utopian dreams of certainty, predictability, and greater control of complexity
(Bousquet, 2008a, pp. 917–919). Owing in a large way to the deep historical trend of technology paired
with military science since the era of McNamara’s Whiz Kids and the Vietnam period, technology and
science have been an instrumental part of special operations’ organizational consciousness (Bousquet,
2008b; Edwards, 1996, pp. 127–128; Rothstein, 2007, p. 97). The acronym GRIN addresses the budding
fields of genetics, robotics, information technology, and nanotechnology—all of which feature
prominently in special operations research and development (Pudas & Drapeau, 2009, p. 63). While
advanced technology is undoubtedly important and instrumental to many special operations
organizational actions, it does not necessarily trump how SOF design and complex problem solving
ought to function.

Technology is reliant on explicit knowledge in that, while there surely is art and creativity in developing
new technological ideas and applications, the execution of technology in the hands of the user is a
largely explicit and standardized process. Novel and emergent technology, of course, begins with tacit
creativity. The difference is profound yet blurred. For design thinking, special operations is tempted by
greater technological solutions to potentially standardize design thinking into advanced computer
modeling, and quantitative metrics. We are persuaded by elaborate human terrain targeting algorithms,
and other pseudoscientific endeavors that essentially mirror the standardized recipe process to reduce
the need for tacit knowledge performers. This is not a call for a moratorium on investing in future GRIN
technology; it is a caution over seeking SOF design approaches that are exclusively reliant on explicit
knowledge production within the organization. An overreliance on GRIN may leave special operations
with a toothless smile when confronting the next emergent complex conflict. Further, there are other
risks as well for special operations due to the overarching military institution and the centralized
hierarchical jabberwocky that drives military education, doctrine, practices, and organization.

“WHY IS A RAVEN LIKE A WRITING DESK?” AND OTHER SPECIAL OPERATIONS RIDDLES7

The U.S. Army incorporated initial design theory into Field Manual 5.0 (The Operations Process) in 2010
(Ryan, 2011). Since then, the Army has struggled to effectively execute design within the force,
triggering multiple studies and research into why the organization is unable to work design into
planning. In 2012, the U.S. Army Research Institute for Behavioral and Social Sciences reported that
design was considered by some in the military as “dense, elitist, and inaccessible to the masses” and
that there were a series of organizational barriers preventing the Army from integrating design into
existing traditional planning practices (Grome, Crandall, & Rasmussen, 2012, pp. 1–32). Since that
report, the Army has retooled design into “Army design methodology” and launched additional studies
—still without much success (Banach & Ryan, 2009; Murden, 2013; Zweibelson, 2015; Zweibelson,
Martin, & Paparone, 2013, p. 23). Concurrently, Joint Forces maintain “operational design” concepts
while teasing in some elements of Army design, while other services pursue other interpretations
(Banach & Ryan, 2009; Joint Staff, J-7 Joint and Coalition Warfighting, 2011, pp. 10–11; Murden, 2013, p.
106). Meanwhile, special operations has tangled with design and produced mixed results as well as great
debate within the SOF community on what design even means and whether it matters for the
organization (Martin, 2011, 2015).

In the story of Alice in Wonderland, the riddle of the “raven and the writing desk” discusses deeper
philosophical notions of organization, identity, time, and the cycle of life and death.7 An adaptation of
this riddle applies to this important design debate: How does a special operations complex problem
relate to the special operations organization? SOF performers cannot confuse the different problem
frames within complex conflict contexts with those of the conventional force , nor should it confuse a
design approach that organizes around a tacit organization with one that capitalizes on reducing tacit
performers.

Big Army has crafted (and re-crafted) design approaches into yet another standardized recipe within
doctrine and the practice of Mission Command where design works largely in explicit step-by-step
procedures and tacit performance is reduced . Instead of developing larger and deeper explanations on
design, doctrine continues to reduce and streamline design methodologies into shorter chapters
composed of universal and oversimplified terms and language. The result is that, for the general
purpose force, a larger and larger group of design practitioners can now reliably produce the same
largely explicit outputs while using a more generalized and simplistic design approach. While this
continues to work for simplistic and closed systems, the adaptive and emergent complex conflict
contexts with which we routinely find our forces struggling categorically reject simplistic design efforts.

Special operations might easily latch onto existing design doctrine, concepts, and merely build additional
add-ons to the framework to make some SOF design jabberwocky that meets the expectations of
conformity and larger institutional pressures. Special operations might also engage in layering greater
technological applications upon this, casting the illusion that with more data and faster processes of
many things, we might gain some cognitive overmatch over our adversaries. Either of these approaches
alone becomes problematic .

Special operations works in a highly tacit-to-explicit ratio for organization as well as military action. As
“doing SOF design” necessitates highly skilled designers performing tacit processes, special operations
design education must mirror the tacit performer model instead of the shorter and standardized explicit
performer approach. Design education cannot be compressed into short and highly standardized
modules where special operations students receive explicit design concepts. Output cannot be equated
to immediate responsiveness where the organization sends personnel to a week-long course and
expects quick results. Instead, special operations design education needs to mirror the long-term
operator development glide path. SOF designers require lengthy and cumulative design developments
where organizational benefits might not be observed until years after a leader approves a course.
Special operations leaders need to consider design education as a major organizational investment and
manage designers individually and in a tailored manner that cumulatively builds on multiple design
developments.

For design in particular, special operations should avoid the general purpose focused “Army design
methodology” model. At a minimum, SOF designers should add an organizational frame as a critical
precursor to any SOF design endeavors . This SOF organizational frame works differently than the
traditional environmental frame in that it demands what Karl Weick and Donald Schon term “reflective
practice” and “critical inquiry” for organizational understanding (Weick, 2011; Schon, 1987; Gondo &
Amis, 2013). This organizational frame for SOF design should encompass appreciation of all subsequent
frames , in that the solutions to complex problems on which special operations as an organization decide
are deeply tied to the organization itself. All SOF design approaches require a far greater emphasis on
tacit knowledge construction and highly skilled performers, which reduces reliance on existing doctrinal
design considerations. Ideally, the optimal special operations design approach does not yet exist and
likely challenges standing positions and organizational barriers. Designers are charged with creatively
developing these solutions to complex problems and then critically reflecting n SOF institutionalisms to
determine the best manner to articulate and implement the design deliverable. Once again, designing
with rules of thumb will trump standardized design practices.

Finally, special operations needs to experiment with design in ways that will defy conventional thinking.
Again, general purpose organizational structure is explicit based; the problems confronting special
operations and the organization itself are decidedly tacit in nature. War is wickedly complex, with tacit
and explicit combinations occurring at all scales, yet organizationally general purpose forces and special
operations forces organize towards different problemsolving applications. Both have tacit performers,
both face explicit tasks, yet the overarching organizations of both aim for different goals in war.

No innovation occurs in standardization , and no transformation comes without risk. Design failure is
always inherent when confronting complex, adaptive problems where adversaries continue to improvise
and seek new vulnerabilities. The cookie-cutter design approach, whether in execution using misapplied
conventional practices or through limited and short-term design education, will provide an incompatible
and inadequate match for the demands of special operation missions. Instituting a long-term design
model for the entire force requires lengthy investments in education, individual-tailored selection and
management, diverse and novel approaches to design solutions, and avoidance of overreliance on
emerging technologies. Tools are still tools, regardless of their unique and improved capabilities. If GRIN
tools receive significant organizational attention, the same should be given to the cognitive tools under
the designer’s skullcap (or green beret). Some of those research and developmental periods may take
just as long, but they may offer profoundly different and unexpected benefits to the force.

CONCLUSION: “SOF CAN’T GO BACK TO YESTERDAY BECAUSE IT WAS DIFFERENT THEN”

Military organizations tend to favor the yesteryear self-identifications that historian Carl Builder (1989)
termed “the Golden Age for military forces in warfare.” We prefer to imagine the past, and remember
the future, as Karl Weick offered (Tsoukas & Vladimirou, 2001, p. 975; Weick, 2006, p. 448). In other
words, our military tends to predict future events based on flawed reasoning where we misunderstand
past events. This is not unusual, and special operations as well can be susceptible to the history, rituals,
institutionalisms, and desire to repeat previously (seemingly) successful models against emergent
problems. However, complexity routinely rejects existent solutions, and emergent problems cannot be
explained using previous language and knowledge without creating new understandings (Bousquet &
Curtis, 2011, p. 46; Lewis, 2010, p. 210).

Special operations as an organization relies on, and is largely defined by, highly skilled performers who
deal with tacit knowledge construction. Despite the underlining existence of special operations’ explicit
knowledge and many standardized practices, the overarching roles, requirements, and missions for
special operations is tacit, emergent, and dynamic. Military design continues to orbit along a decidedly
explicit path where standardization is sought to reduce tacit knowledge requirements. Special
operations should avoid simply adapting existing design methodologies, practices, and education
models without first critically reflecting on whether or not SOF needs designers that work with tacit
knowledge in highly tailored, unique, and organizationally transforming ways; one is not the other . The
costs for developing special operations’ unique designers are higher overall, yet the long-term
deliverables will undoubtedly return on the investment in ways unrecognizable from this perspective.
 Link -- Generic -- NASA
AFF Continues the Functionalist Paradigm -- The Default Choice of NASA Guarantees
Cognitive Traps
Zweibelson, 2016. (Major Ben Zweibelson, Program Director for Design and Innovation @ the Joint
Special Operations University, Doctoral Student @ Lancaster University, Retired US Army Infantry
Officer, Veteran of Iraq & Afghanistan, Lectures Across the USSOCOM, DoD, and US Government, Design
Conference Ambassador for the IMDC, Lectured on Design @ the Polish and Danish War Colleges,
Canadian Forces College, NATO Schools @ Oberammergau, the National Counterterrorism Center, the
IBM Capstone SPADE Conference for NATO @ Copenhagen, as Well as Numerous Special Operations and
Strategic Level Defense Assets. “Thinking Beyond the Books: Sociological Biases of Our Military
Institutions” Air & Space Power Journal, Volume 30, Issue 2. [KevC])

We tend to see quite a bit of objectivist approaches when military intelligence analysts produce
solutions in which adversaries ought to be considered in universal, highly objectivist ways that exclude
any hint of US cultural bias or error on behalf of the analyst.11 The objective analyst sees no accidents,
desires control, and assumes that over time one might gain greater understanding (and control) even of
highly complex situations and environments via rigorous testing and data collection.12

Subjectivism works in tension with this highly objective ontology whereby an analyst might see control
as an illusion and whereby gains in knowledge and experience also produce emergence in the
environment; one simply cannot set foot in the same river twice.13 The fluid, subjective world is often
perceived within studies of Eastern (or perhaps simply non-Western) societies.14 Many of the familiar
Western (and implicitly universal) laws of war, principles, and timeless structures that operate on the
objectivist side lose their value and bearing on the subjectivist side. There is extensive research in
postmodernist as well as sociological disciplines on this topic although they are frequently a minority
voice within traditional military professional education.15 Regardless, context matters for the
subjectivist approaches, as do time and space, yet they matter in entirely different ways and purposes
than the more familiar objectivist perspective.

The second dichotomy in figure 1 illustrates a tension between stability (consistency; reality remains
predictable and more linear) and radical transformation (nonlinearity, emergence, and surprising
adaptation). In a stable worldview, even over great periods of time and space, we observe a general
consistency to reality. The stable perspective on war might see a pattern spanning most of human
civilization in which, as Clausewitz argues, endless cycles of politics and war intertwine— much like
ongoing duels at larger, state-centric scales.16 At the radical end of this tension, we might observe
profound transformation over time and space, such as Michel Foucault’s study of crime and punishment
in human societies.17 As a postmodern philosopher, Foucault argues that Western civilization has
moved from one form of penal system (the original violent and public spectacles of old) towards an
institutional and more rehabilitative (as well as private) form. This gradual transformation permeates
the human condition; thus, any social construction of reality changes with society at abstract and often
tacit philosophical levels.

With these tensions, sociologists Burrell and Morgan first built their model of four dissimilar
paradigms.18 This useful visualization forms an important second step for establishing different ways of
viewing reality and organizing therein. Figure 2 modifies their original quadrant chart by using arrows
from figure 1 to help visualize the ontological and epistemological forces afoot in each dissimilar
paradigm. This approach also leads to a different way of looking at professional military reading lists.

Figure 2 depicts the four paradigms termed functionalism, interpretivism, radical structuralism, and
radical humanism. 19 Each of these paradigms is distinct, and we shall briefly outline them to establish
necessary structure to this article’s major arguments. Paradigms appear to many (but not all) theorists
as constructs that do not play nicely with one another.20 Of these four paradigms vying for dominance
across multiple societies and organizations, functionalism is decidedly the “king” for Western societies
and military organizations within. The four-paradigm framework is one of many ways of categorizing
different worldviews for human civilization, but this article employs the Burrell and Morgan model as a
useful cognitive framework for military professionals to consider.21

Figure 2. Variation on Burrell and Morgan’s quadrant chart of four paradigms

Functionalism denotes a single paradigm that interprets reality so that the world is systematic and
reducible through scientific approaches, measurements, and repeatable linear processes. Once a “law”
is verified, it becomes universal and timeless; the characteristics of a bullet’s trajectory remain constant
anywhere in the world, now and eight centuries from today.22 Functionalist organizations dominate the
landscape, with the accomplishments of NASA , almost all major corporations, and the vast majority of
hard sciences embracing a functionalist outlook. Functionalism works exceedingly well in many
situations but perhaps less so in complex environments.23 Despite functionalism’s status as the
dominant paradigm for many Western organizations (including all Western militaries), there are others
to consider.24

On the opposing end of functionalism resides “radical humanism,” involving subjectivity and radical
change as ontological choices. Radical humanism seeks to free societies from overarching, dominant
social structures and, through critical reflection, to help profoundly transform societies into novel,
emergent forms.25 Examples of radical humanist approaches occur in postmodernist philosophy as well
as activist positions that apply tailored narratives to fluid, subjective environments.26 Although few
military applications of radical humanism exist, one finds several efforts within small groups of military
theorists.27 Radical humanism is the polar opposite of functionalism within the Burrell and Morgan
quadrant; thus, for most functionalist thinkers, the radical humanist camp seems almost unrecognizable.
A subjectivist world where radical change is the norm means that nearly all of the functionalist cognitive
tools become meaningless. Some postmodernist approaches thrive within this fluid uncertainty.

The other two paradigms are interpretivism and radical structuralism . The latter relates to radical
humanism in the dynamic and nonlinear emergence for social change yet relates to functionalism in that
radical structuralism takes the ontological position of objectivity.28 Socialist movements and revolutions
are often associated with radical structuralism in that Marx (Karl, not Groucho) and others associate
radical transformation with universal and overarching political and economic forces.29 Radical
structuralism incorporates many of the “end of the world” scenarios found in literal interpretations of
certain ideologies and thus has value in considering the motives of groups like the Islamic State. In
profoundly dissimilar ways, socialists and radical Islamic terrorists become strange bedfellows within
radical structuralism.30

Interpretivism takes a dichotomizing stance against radical structuralism, seeing a fluid and subjective
reality that also harbors stability and long-term meaningful social structuring.31 For interpretivists,
people socially construct realities that can be explored through narratives, descriptions, and
explanations which do not hold to analytical, linear, or scientific models. Sociologists such as Karl Weick
and Donald Schon offer numerous examples of the interpretivist study of military organizations (aircraft
carrier operations) as well as paramilitary ones such as smoke-jumping fire fighters.32 The interpretivist
approach has some similarity to functionalism due to shared ontological positions on stability; thus,
many “soft science” approaches in sociology, anthropology, and philosophy produce common ground
for functionalist and interpretivist alike.33

Burrell and Morgan’s four paradigms present an important element for this article’s framework for
realizing why the military as a profession might posit most reading lists within one limiting paradigm.
Paradigms seek to exclude the others and channel all comprehension and socialization of how reality
works into processes that reinforce the one chosen paradigm as exclusive. Consequently, most of our
institutions are unaware of and intellectually positioned to be hostile to any concept which operates
beyond the carefully drawn boundaries that maintain that worldview.

To promote critical and creative design approaches, military professionals should first acknowledge and
critically reflect on the dominant paradigms used to make sense of reality. We must avoid the cognitive
trap of enforcing a single dominant paradigm and denying the relevance of the other three ; instead, we
should consider approaches in which multiple paradigms might influence a fusion of design ideas and
approaches.34 How we choose our books (as well as other media content) is not as interesting as why
we reject other books as “not worth the candle” to bother reading at all.
 L/Alt -- Designing Military Doctrine K
Wholesale Rejection of Functionalist Planning Criteria is Key -- Opens Up Alternative
Pedagogies
Zweibelson & Jackson, Et al., 2018. (Major Ben Zweibelson, Program Director for Design and Innovation
@ the Joint Special Operations University, Doctoral Student @ Lancaster University, Retired US Army
Infantry Officer, Veteran of Iraq & Afghanistan, Lectures Across the USSOCOM, DoD, and US
Government, Design Conference Ambassador for the IMDC, Lectured on Design @ the Polish and Danish
War Colleges, Canadian Forces College, NATO Schools @ Oberammergau, the National Counterterrorism
Center, the IBM Capstone SPADE Conference for NATO @ Copenhagen, as Well as Numerous Special
Operations and Strategic Level Defense Assets; Aaron P Jackson, Distinguished Visiting Professor @
Canadian Forces College, Instructs on the Advanced Joint Warfare Studies; Simon Bernard, OMM, CD is a
Senior Officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. “Teachers, Leave Them Kids Alone: Debating Two
Approaches for Design Education in Military Organizations” Royal Military College Saint-Jean, Blue
Knight, Jan. 27, Online. [KevC])

Secondly, a compelling case favoring entry-level military design ought also to provide examples of how
the traditional military emphasis on controlling education and knowledge access is actually inhibitive for
design pedagogy. These traditional forms feature a rigid hierarchical “factory methodology” (Waring,
1991) for military education. This is no easy task, in that an additional institutional barrier exists within
the military profession concerning the essence of introspective pondering beyond methodology and
output. Militaries frequently are unaware of their own paradigm and its limitations (Conklin, 2008, p.
10), and institutional efforts to justify the continued use of a single “technical rationalist” approach
(Paparone, 2010, pp. 316-319) tend to create a paradox of avoidance. Militaries relish critical thinking
within the confines of never questioning deeper institutional beliefs, tenets, and organizational
behaviors (Paparone & Reed, 2008, p. 69). This makes for many deck chair arrangements on the ship
without considering the journey.

Militaries know how to plan through rationalized, analytic processes, as well as how to reliably critique
adherence to or deviation from these processes. Yet rarely does a military “think about its thinking” and
explore alternative paradigms and learning processes that disrupt and challenge institutional norms. In
this context, how might a process such as design, which operates beyond and outside rationalism and
analytical structure, work within a military that tends to approach everything using universal and
standardized processes for optimization? Further, how might the suggestion that a new cognitive tool
such as design should be introduced not at the higher levels of the profession, but rather at the bottom,
be received? This would contradict most existing military pedagogical norms across nations, services,
and units within what military researchers term the “modern military era” (Mader, 2004, pp. 28–29).
This is precisely why military design is needed broadly and systemically across all military professional
education programs, so that organizational change might flourish through these reflective practitioners
(Beaulieu-Brossard & Dufort, 2016; Kinsella, 2006; Schon, 1963; Visser, 2010).

The modern military era spans from the mid-17th century to present day and essentially commenced
when the first military professional academies were established and written doctrine began to be
published (Jackson, 2013; Mader, 2004, pp. 26-30). This coincided with the Industrial Revolution as well
as the Age of Enlightenment, which cumulatively developed the military organization into a large
bureaucratic and centralized hierarchy that focuses on analytic reasoning and a scientific management
process oriented exclusively upon reductionism (Naveh, Schneider, & Challans, 2009, pp. 7–10). That
assembly-line and efficiency-based management style is termed “Taylorism” after its leading proponent
(Waring, 1991, pp. 10-15). Underneath all of this, militaries continued to educate through the pedagogy
of essentialism. Essentialism dominated during the 20th century and is a teacher-centered model for
standardized learning. Essentialism largely defines the majority of military professional education
approaches and pairs strongly with the preferred organizational form of the military hierarchy that
favors rigidly structured training, extensive procedural rules, and a resistance to divergent thinking
(Paparone & Reed, 2008, p. 69).

Traditional military education through essentialism categorizes students by peer groups, where each
group is taught the same material and evaluated with uniform metrics and scoring through a tiered
system (Stiehm, 2002, p. 28). While the essentialist form is one of centralized hierarchies that mirror
military command and control structures, the content for this educational approach consists of an
analytic based optimization model where students memorize facts and experience a single curriculum
(regardless of class offerings, an infantry officer receives the same training as all other infantry officers,
and so on). Students obey the teacher, and the teacher controls the distribution of knowledge as well as
controlling the progression and development of all students (Ranciere, 1991). The factory assembly line
metaphor is most aptly applied to all military career paths, through selection, tiers of education,
performance evaluation as well as essential positions needed to open subsequent “gates” to
advancement.

The attraction of essentialism for the military seems obvious , in that the entire military decision-making
methodology from strategy to tactical action is encapsulated in an “ends-ways-means” objective-fixated
logic (Paparone, 2013). This logic is rationalized in that deductive reasoning with linear cause-effect
relationships provide the observer the ability to soundly (rationally) predict consequences of potential
actions prior to those actions being taken. Whether one considers the Joint Planning Process, Military
Decision-Making Process, Adaptive Campaigning, Military Appreciation Process, NATO Operational
Planning Process or other related decision-making methodology, these models all match the undertones
of a rationalist and analytical approach to reality. Planning never had it so well, and thus military
educational approaches integrate a functionalist planning epistemology within the teacher-centric
essentialist pedagogy. The priority remains one of creating convergence, conformation and reliability,
which make militaries remarkably effective and resilient in several (but not all) common military
contexts.

Military design does not replicate planning , nor should it . Design is distinct from planning , although
planning is also considered a form of designing within linear and reductionist constructs (Protzen &
Harris, 2010, p. 188). Planners do a focused form of design, while designers have greater freedom to
design as well as design for planning. Both design and ‘planning design’ are cognitive processes that
enable individuals as well as organizations to create and apply deliberate changes in the future that
result in consequences that can be further considered. Yet formal military planning is oriented on
predicting desired future “end states” while design creates that which does not exist but is needed in
future and emergent contexts. In other words, when a military plans it seeks out “déjà vu” experiences
where the emergent future appears to express relationships that the organization has already seen.
Hence, it can draw predictive reasoning from history, analysis, experience and wisdom (Paparone &
Topic, Jr., 2017). What happens when an organization experiences “that which it has never seen
before”, or Vu’ Jàde?

Design, whether used by a military or otherwise, is oriented on divergence, innovation, creativity and a
wholesale rejection of the rigid and essentialist pedagogy (Alexander, 1964, p. 34; Friedman, 2006, pp.
27–31; Naveh et al., 2009, pp. 12–15). While most military planning courses continue to employ largely
essentialist pedagogical processes, a number of design schools of thought use either a form of
constructivism or humanism (Papanek, 1971, pp. 21–32; Protzen & Harris, 2010, pp. 47–52). These
alternative pedagogies remove the teacher from the position of centralized control (Ranciere, 1991;
Zweibelson, 2015b), place students in an entirely different context and maintain a fluid and emergent
outlook where students critically self-reflect, self-assess, and self-motivate. In design, students are on
their own journeys, often to novel and emergent destinations that neither the student nor teachers can
predict. The “ends-ways-means” logic is disrupted, in order to create the contexts for innovation and
divergent thought.

Constructivism emphasizes student experience with self-reflection, where one learns to “think about
one’s thinking”. Humanism, also termed “human-centric design” (Krippendorff, 2000) approaches design
education with a focus on human empathy, contextual self-awareness and iterative framing. Teachers
use indirect approaches, emphasizing a personalized and frequently emergent process of student self-
motivation, personalized study, and a self-actualizing process where grades are irrelevant as analytic
measurements of entirely subjective and qualitative contexts (Friedman, 2006, p. 27; Ranciere, 1991, pp.
4–9). With constructivism and humanism in design education , the entire frame (including self-described
roles, structures and progression) change for students, teachers, and the process of new knowledge
construction.

For the military, what differences exist between basic training for entry-level recruits, and that of
seasoned executives, such as senior non-commissioned officers in the Sergeant Major’s Academy? How
is the basic officer’s course different in form and function from war colleges educating senior officers?
While the contexts and individuals are clearly different, the form and function actually remain quite
similar, regulated within the overarching military educational system underpinned by a teacher-centric
essentialist pedagogy (United States Army Training Command, 2011, pp. 19–20). Instructors at senior
military schools might protest this comparison, however a careful examination of the form and function
of the entire PME system illustrates a Taylorism-inspired educational management model for the career
path of all officers and enlisted personnel, using a largely essentialist pedagogy manifest through
standardized academic scoring, reports, school options, metrics, timelines, peer groups, and other
manufacturing metaphors (Paparone, 2013, pp. xi-xiii; Paparone & Topic, Jr., 2011).
 Alt -- Solvency
Alternative Solves -- Rejection of Dominant Functionalist Paradigm Opens Space for
New Approaches
Zweibelson, 2016. (Major Ben Zweibelson, Program Director for Design and Innovation @ the Joint
Special Operations University, Doctoral Student @ Lancaster University, Retired US Army Infantry
Officer, Veteran of Iraq & Afghanistan, Lectures Across the USSOCOM, DoD, and US Government, Design
Conference Ambassador for the IMDC, Lectured on Design @ the Polish and Danish War Colleges,
Canadian Forces College, NATO Schools @ Oberammergau, the National Counterterrorism Center, the
IBM Capstone SPADE Conference for NATO @ Copenhgagen, as Well as Numerous Special Operations
and Strategic Level Defense Assets. “Thinking Beyond the Books: Sociological Biases of Our Military
Institutions” Air & Space Power Journal, Volume 30, Issue 2. [KevC])

Figures 3 and 4 represent the dominant functionalist paradigm and the way the Army and Air Force as a
larger collective military profession tend to determine what they will perceive about reality: “A system
perceives those things that will enable it to maintain its organization (i.e., its identity).”42 Granted, some
people may object to the categorization of one particular book or another into a paradigm they violently
disagree with, but what about the preponderance of books in these two groups? Can one excuse such a
large degree of functionalist-minded readings? For design approaches, how might our military develop a
transdisciplinary approach to perceiving things in different ways? By “transdisciplinary,” we mean that
one might move up and out of one’s own preferred paradigm, appreciate other paradigms, and navigate
between them to develop interactions, overlap, tensions, and interplay.43

Can our Air Force and Army broaden our reading lists to include paradoxical, incommensurate, and
possibly radically dissimilar perspectives on the same things? Does such an effort even matter if perhaps
getting an organization to maintain control and universal reliability is paramount to creative and critical
adaptation? The modern uncertain and complex conflict environments seem to summarily reject
conventional, traditional, and centralized hierarchical approaches. Acknowledging that “doing things in
ways that showed success in the past” is no longer a viable model for projecting future organizational
development, we need to reconsider how and why we think the way we think. Challenging our
preference of a single dominant paradigm (paradigm blindness) will open up reading opportunities in
other paradigms, promoting creativity and organizational growth.
Theory
 Condo/Framework Bad
Hold the AFF Accountable for their Model of Debate -- Allowing them to Switch
Frameworks Gives them Conditional Frameworks -- The Damage Has Already Been
Done -- Their Ability to Jettison Interpretations of Debate Directly Effected the
Viability of Various 1NC Positions
 XT -- Condo/Framework Bad

The Conditional Nature of their Framework is Uniquely Bad, the AFF Chose their Model and Criteria,
Allowing them to Kick their Model of Debate Makes the AFF a Moving Target

The Damage Has Already Been Done, We Could NOT Read Specific Critiques of the Advantages and
Authors in the 1NC Because their Interpretation Deleted them from Consideration
2NC: Designing Military Doctrine K -- Generic Ext. -- Top -- Assumes Scenario Planning Offense

Their Interpretation on Framework Along with their Functionalist Criteria are Harmful to Military
Planning and Fatal to Designing Military Doctrine

(__). By the Word “Functionalist” Zweibelson is Simply Referring to…

Put Simply, Plan-Focus Combined with Utilitarian Criteria is Disastrous to the Military Enterprise in
Particular

(__). Previously Note, EVEN IF their Model is Good for Other Fields of Policy, in the Context of War and
Military Practice their Model is FATAL to Military Effectiveness

(__). Each One of the Links Operate as Independent Reasons Why their Interpretation is Bad for the
“Planning” Part of “Scenario-Planning”

(__). This Offense Necessarily Outweighs -- Our Links Demonstrate How their Model Undermines War-
Planning and Independently Causes Loss of Credible Deterrence

(__). This Internal Link Turns their Planning and Advocacy-Training Offense Higher-Up on the Link-Chain
--

At the Level of FORM, their Interpretation Forecloses the Critical inquiries Needed for Designing
Doctrine and It Makes Prior Questions Like Organizational Structure Impossible

At the Level of CONTENT, the AFF Adopts Functionalist and Utilitarian Criteria Which Fail on their Own
Merits
Framework
 2NC -- A2: Framework

Our Interpretation is We Get Links Beyond the Instrumentality of Mere Plan --

Specifically to Concepts Intrinsic to their Advantages and Solvency, Including
Justifications and Methods Chosen By the AFF

Our Alternative Model of Debate Forces them to EARN the Plan Which is Impossible
Under their Interp Which Deletes All Prior Questions and Forecloses Sequencing
Claims
 2NC -- A2: Framework -- Complexity Absorption Disad
There ‘Complexity Reduction Response’ Inhibits Organizational Performance and
Neutralizes Adaptability --
(__). Complexity Absorption is the Only Adequate Response

McDaniel, 2k. (Reuben R. McDaniel Jr, Chair in Health Care Management @ McCombs School of
Business, Univ of Texas; Donde P Asthmos, University of Texas @ San Antonio; Dennis Duchon, Univ of
Texas @ San Antonio. “Organizational Responses to Complexity: The Effect on Organizational
Performance” Journal of Organizational Change Movement, Volume 13, Issue 6. [KevC])
Abstract This paper uses a complex adaptive systems view to examine two different organizational responses to turbulent,
complex environments. We examined the internal make-up of eight organizations that saw their environment the same way ±
as rapidly changing, complex and requiring aggressive change strategies. Half of these organizations chose a complexity
absorption response to environmental turbulence, and half chose a complexity reduction response to environmental
turbulence and complexity. The organizations pursuing a complexity absorption response outperformed
those organizations with complexity reduction responses. Contingency theories of management (Burns and
Stalker, 1961; Scott, 1981) argue that when organizations see their environments as turbulent and complex they respond with
more complex, organic structures which reflect the variety in the environment. Similarly, when organizations see the
environment as stable and unchanging they organize in ways that are more simple and mechanistic. There are, however,
organizations that see their environments as turbulent and complex, but in some cases choose relatively simple, mechanistic
managerial responses and in other cases choose managerial responses that are more consistent with the characteristics of
complex adaptive systems. In the former instance, organizations follow complexity reduction responses (Boisot and Child, 1999)
and in the latter appear to follow complexity absorption responses (Boisot and Child, 1999). In this study we identified
organizations in a turbulent industry, each of which saw the environment as rapidly changing, complex, and requiring
aggressive change strategies. We examined the internal make-up of those organizations and observed strikingly different
One group of organizations chose internal
managerial responses to the perceived environmental complexity.
organization arrangements that were consistent with complexity theory (Capra, 1996; Wheatley, 1992; Stacey,
1995), reflecting a managerial view that organizations are complex adaptive systems and should be
organized accordingly ± with multiple and conflicting goals, a variety of strategic priorities, increased
connectivity among people, as well as structural variety intended to maximize the flow of information
and meaning in the organization. The response of this group to environmental complexity follows the
complexity absorption logic identified by Boisot and Child (1999). The other group of organizations
chose internal arrangements that were grounded in more mechanistic understandings of the world ±
with a higher value on control, predictability, and the pursuit of equilibrium even in the midst of
complexity, chaos and change. These organizations appeared to use as a logic the development of more simplistic,
single-minded approaches to complexity, a complexity reduction response (Boisot and Child, 1999). We then examined the
performance of these two groups of organizations, to determine whether there were differences associated with the way in
which they were organized. The pursuit of complexity toward complexity absorption Some organizations pursue managerial
strategies that reinforce the nature of the organization as a complex adaptive system. A complexity theory model (Capra, 1996;
Stacey, 1995; Wheatley, 1992) suggests all organizations are complex adaptive systems, that continuously self-organize and co-
describe complex adaptive
evolve. This is the inherent nature of complex systems. Brown and Eisenhardt (1997)
systems as systems that exhibit complex, adaptive, and emergent behaviors because they are made up
of multiple interacting agents. When organizations arrange themselves in ways that are consistent with
the qualities of complex adaptive systems, successful co-evolution and self-organizing is more likely. In
other words, when organizations recognize themselves as the complex adaptive systems they are, and
arrange themselves in complexity absorbing ways, successful performance is more likely. The view of
organizations as complex adaptive systems (Capra, 1996; Wheatley, 1992; Stacey, 1992, 1995; McDaniel, 1997; Vaill, 1989;
Bergquist, 1993; Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers, 1996; McDaniel and Walls, 1997) suggests that organizations gather information
about their surroundings, themselves and their own behavior and then use this information for adapting to and coevolving with
their environments (Kauffman, 1995). From the view of complexity theory organizations in which there are a large number of
ties or connections, widely distributed, are more capable of variety in their behavior which in turn leads to
adaptability (McDaniel and Walls, 1997; Stacey, 1995; Granovetter, 1973). According to Weick (1979), without such variety
organizations will miss important data points, will oversimplify their view of what is happening in the environment, and will
generally be unable to respond to the high levels of variation among elements in the environment. When organizations choose
managerial responses to complexity that are consistent with the characteristics of complex adaptive systems,
they choose to absorb the variety and complexity of the environment into the organization. This means
they ``hold multiple and sometimes conflicting representations of environmental variety, retaining in their
behavioral repertoire a range of responses, each of which operates at a lower level of specificity'' (Boisot and Child, 1999, p.
238). Such organizations would likely recognize multiple and emerging goals inside organizations and emphasize the importance
of connections among parts of the system as a way of acknowledging and working out conflict that is created in part by the
pursuit of multiple goals. Connections, especially rich connections, transmit information and enable meaning
creation among subunits, thus providing systems with improved capacity to learn. One of the ways
systems gather information about their surroundings and about themselves is through the use of connections
inside the organizations. Dense connections represent multifaceted, multidimensional relationships which allow
(even demand) organizational members to exchange more than specialized information. These relationships are
ones in which not only all kinds of data and information are in play, but also there is consideration of the meaning
of data. Ideas, and their unfolding meaning and use, will be amplified and expanded as a naturally
occurring part of relationships. New ideas will more readily emerge as a consequence of an expanded
data set and an expanded range of meaning. These new ideas are in turn set loose in the network of
dense connections where they are subject to re-interpretation and modification and where a collective sense
of what actions are needed can continually emerge. Thus, goal sets in organizations with more complex internal make-up are
constantly expanding.
 2NR -- A2: Framework -- Complexity Absorption Disad -- Top Ext.
Their Framework Adopts What Our McDaniel Evidence Calls a ‘Complexity Reduction Response’ Which is
Grounded in a Mechanistic Understanding of the World Along with a Higher Value on Predictability and
Equilibrium

In Contrast to Complexity Reduction, Our Framework Adopts a ‘Complexity Absorption Response’ -- This
Refers to the Choice to Absorb the Variety and Complexity of the Environment into the Organization as
an Adaptation -- This Requires the Multiple and Conflicting Research Goals, Supplied By Our
Interpretation

Complexity Absorption Maximizes Performance and Adaptability of the Debate System -- This Allows the
Organization as a Whole to Learn, Not Just the Individuals

This Internal Link Turns Fairness --

Localized Unpredictability Causes Feedback and Adaptation Which Increases Overall System Stability --
Ideas Will Be Amplified and Expanded by Subunits Improving the Sheer Capacity to Learn -- New Ideas
Will Be Set Loose in the Network Causing New Ideas to Readily Emerge -- That’s a Quote from Our
McDaniel Evidence.
2NR -- A2: Framework -- Complexity Absorption Disad -- Regional Ext./
Offense Ext.
Complexity Reduction Makes Adaptation Impossible --

This Internal Link Turns their Standardization of Predictability, Because it Makes Unfairness Inevitable --

Adaptability as a Concept Refers to How an Organization Adjusts to Complexity By Incorporating Internal

Goals that Can then Match the Complexity of that Environment

Instead, their Interpretation’s Inability to Suspend Multiple and Conflicting Internal-Goals Drastically
Undermines Debate’s Organizational Potential -- That’s Our McDaniel Evidence

Only Adaptability Can Solve Fairness --

It Creates a Feedback Loop that Exponentially Increases the Agility of the System to Respond to
Unpredictability Over Time --

Meaning Creation Across Subunits is the PRE-Condition for System-Level Learning --

As Arguments Begin Unfolding, Ideas Will Be Amplified and Set Loose within the Network --

This Accelerates Performance and Guarantees a More Stable System in the Long-Term
2NC: Designing Military Doctrine K -- A2: Framework -- Overlapping Horizons Disad

Their Interpretation Makes Ground Loss Inevitable --

Determining Standards from a Single Paradigm Results in Meta-Stasis and Makes
Paradigm Wars Inevitable -- Instead, Scholarship Works as Overlapping Horizons
Rather than Incommensurable Paradigms
Kornprobst, 2k9. (Markus Kornprobst, M.A., Ph.D., Chair of International Relations Vienna School of
International Studies, Lecturer in IR and Director MSc Global Governance and Ethics, Department of
Political Science @ Univ College London, Lecturer in IR and Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept of Politics and
International Relations @ Univ of Oxford. “International Relations as Rhetorical Discipline: Toward
(Re-)Newing Horizons” International Studies Review, Volume 11, Issue 1. WileyOnline Library [KevC])

There are many reasons why one could expect International Relations to be a field of lively
debates.1 The subject matter invites the exchange of different points of view. After all, we are dealing
with politics and it is in the very nature of this matter that some of us feel more strongly about certain
things than others, understand some things differently than others, and present our arguments and our
challenges to others accordingly. The recent flourishing of multiple meta-theoretical perspectives in
International Relations should provide an additional spark for debate. With scholars approaching their
research from various vantage points, there should be plenty of occasions for presenting and
challenging different arguments. The field, however, does not meet these expectations. All too often
adherents to different perspectives make very little effort to listen to what the other side has to say, or,
even more common, refuse to talk to one another altogether. The deepest and most consequential
disagreements in the field are epistemological. Both the so-called “third debate” (Lapid 1989) between
positivists and postpositivists and the “communicative stasis” (Lapid 2003:130) that has succeeded it,
speak volumes about the divisiveness of assumptions on how to produce knowledge. The “third
debate,” or, by Waever’s count, the “fourth debate,” has been much more “war” than “debate”
(Waever 1996:167). The current grand silence is testimony that, in the eyes of most scholars, the last
grand debate was futile and that it is pointless to communicate across the great divides in the field. As a
result, scholars have withdrawn into burgeoning sub-communities—with their own journals, workshops,
conference sections, etc.—and International Relations has become an “administrative holding company”
(Herrmann 1998:605) instead of a lively community of scholars. This is a deeply troubling development.
Sub-communities eclipse the heterogeneity that is to be expected by any scholarly community. Within
them, communication is easy. But this ease comes at a great cost. Four interrelated problems come
immediately to mind: First, sheltered from different perspectives, communication within sub-
communities entrenches cherished assumptions. Communication in an open scholarly community, by
contrast, enables scholars to reflect upon, question, change and at times even revolutionize otherwise
taken-for-granted (meta-)theoretical and methodological assumptions. Second, sub-communities stifle
innovation because they impede fusions across different perspectives. Communities allowing for the
exchange across different perspectives, by contrast, allow for such fusions, which are often the most
important sources for (meta-)theoretical and methodological innovations. Scholarly ideas, after all, are
hardly ever new. But their linkages sometimes are. Third, communication in sub-communities
streamlines research questions. They become repetitive and big questions remain bracketed.
Communication in an open scholarly community, by contrast, provides chances to uncover and
rediscover previously neglected big questions for research. Finally, sub-communities become too easily
too comfortable with their research findings. Mechanisms for questioning findings, such as peer review,
lose their edge when they are in the hands of a sub-community. All too often, the reviewers come from
the same camp as the author, which does not make them very reliable jurors. Heterogeneous scholarly
communities, by contrast, provide for much more demanding standards for evaluating research findings.
Is the erosion of a community of International Relations scholars as inevitable as usually assumed? This
article develops a three-fold argument against such an inevitability: First, borrowing from Gadamer, as
well as Bakthin and Bernstein, I contend that it is much more plausible to understand International
Relations as a constellation of overlapping horizons than a field dotted with hermetically sealed
paradigms. Thus, speechlessness can be overcome by uncovering overlaps. Second, I argue that this
applies even to the supposedly most irreconcilable epistemological controversies between positivists
and postpositivists (and the considerable infighting within these perspectives). My heuristic vehicle for
uncovering overlaps is a classification of epistemological stances in ancient Greece. This shows that
International Relations is a rhetorical discipline. It is rhetorical—I employ this term in the sense Aristotle
and the Philosophical Sophists used it—in terms of its truth claims, its modes of reasoning, and its
manner of disseminating what is taken to be knowledge. Third, dialogue is a precondition for avoiding
the perils and seizing the opportunities of a rhetorical discipline. Dialogue can develop out of the
overlaps of horizons, and (re-)produce the shared language across horizons on which a scholarly
community depends. This does not leave the horizons untouched. It adds novelty to existing horizons
(renewing) and gives rise to new ones (newing).

[CONTINUED…] More than two decades ago, Holsti (1985) labeled International Relations "the dividing
discipline." If anything, the divisions in the field have become even more pronounced since then.
Epistemology appears to be the most divisive complex of issues in the field. Positivists and
postpositivists--and different epistemological strands within these groupings of scholars--find it
especially difficult to initiate and sustain meaningful communication with one another. Understanding
epistemological divides as clashes of incommensurable paradigms, many positivists and postpositivists
regard these communication failures as inevitable. This article developed an argument against this
inevitability. It did so in three steps: First, I clarified that there are two very different ways of making
sense of competing perspectives in a scholarly discipline: incommensurable paradigms and overlapping
horizons. Second, I introduced the classical Greek epistemological positions as a vehicle to reframe the
stagnant epistemological debates in International Relations. This yielded a remarkable finding. Seen in
the light of the classical debate, different perspectives in International Relations share much more
common epistemological ground than usually acknowledged. International Relations is a field of
overlapping horizons and not incommensurable paradigms. These overlaps are constituted by deeply
entrenched rhetorical elements approximating the Aristotelian Rhetoric and the Philosophical Sophistic.
Third, I contended that the overlaps offer opportunities for meaningful communication, the
(re-)production of a shared language, community-building across epistemological divides, reaching out
beyond the discipline and, thus, for (re-)newing horizons for studying international relations. Seizing
these opportunities requires dialogue, and I proposed five rules for such a dialogue.
 2NR -- A2: Framework -- Overlapping Horizons -- Short Ext.
Determining Fairness from within a Single Paradigm Fails, Because It Doesn’t Translate to Broader
Predictability --

Instead, the Result is Meta-Stasis, their Localized Predictability is Achieved at the Expense of
Communication Across Disciplines

Extend Our Kornprobst Evidence --

Scholars Have Withdrawn into Self-Referential Sub-Communities, Within them Communication is Easy
and Predictable, BUT this Localized Standard Only Masks the Broader Un-Predictability and Stasis at the
Meta-Level of the System

(__). Their Framework Makes Paradigm Wars Inevitable –

(__). Only Our Interpretation Understands Scholarship as a Constellation of Overlapping Horizons Rather
than Incommensurable Paradigms --
 2NR -- A2: Framework -- Overlapping Horizons -- Long Ext.
Overlapping Horizons Disad --

Determining Predictability from within a Single Paradigm Results in Meta-Stasis and Makes Substance
Loss Inevitable --

Instead, Scholarship Improves through Overlapping Horizons, Rather than Incommensurable Paradigms

– Extend Our Kornprobst Evidence

Scholars Have Withdrawn into Self-Referential Sub-Communities -- Within them Communication is Easy
and Predictable, But this Ease Comes at a Great Cost Because it Silos Knowledge and Suppresses
Communication --

The Impact is that the Fundamental Parameters of their Framework are Utterly IN-CAPABLE of Fairness
--

This Internal-Link Turns their Fairness Offense -- Determining Fairness from within a Single Paradigm
Fails Both Directly and In-Directly --

A. Subpoint -- DIRECTLY Undermines System Behavior Because It Stifles the Shift to Broader Adaptability
Among Scholars -- The Focus on Localized Predictability Drastically Decreases the Ease of
Communication Across Disciplines --

B. Subpoint -- INDIRECTLY it Fails, Because It Undermines the ENTIRE SCOPE of their Decision Calculus in
the First Place -- It Fails at Both Description and Prescription, Because their Localized Standard Only
MASKS the Broader Un-Predictability through an Illusion of Fairness

This Results in a Vicious Feedback Loop of Siloing, Whereby Agents Withdraw into their Own Field for
the “Ease of Communication”

Makes Paradigm Wars Inevitable --

We Control the Internal Link to Education -- Fusing Ideas Across Disciplines is the PRE-CONDITION for
Knowledge -- the Dialectic of Learning ONLY Advances from Fusions Across Paradigms --

We Control Uniqueness -- the Status Quo is Stasis, Only Our Interpretation Can Think Through the
Problem as a Constellation of Overlapping Horizons, Rather than Incommensurable Paradigms --
 2NC -- A2: Framework -- Neutrality Disad
Neutrality Disad -- The Principle of “Fairness” is a Power Play to Bypass Substance --
(__). Every Interpretation Both Creates and Destroys
Olson, 2k2-President of Daemen College, PhD in Rhetoric and Writing Studies @ Indiana University of
Pennsylvania, Former Professor of rhetoric, ideology, culture, and literary theory @ University of South
Florida [Gary Olson, “Justifying Belief: Stanley Fish and the Work of Rhetoric” p. 51-52, p. 64-65]

In intractable policy debates invoking the principle of fairness will not advance these debates because at a certain
level such debates are about “what fairness (or neutrality or impartiality) really is” (3). In effect, a contest over the content of a
particular issue is also a contest over two or more contending notions of fairness (or impartiality or whatever principle is being
invoked). Even if it were possible to produce a general principle devoid of specific content -- a notion of fairness, say,
untethered to any specific perspective or ideological orientation -- it would be of no use, says Fish, because it would be empty.
That is, appealing to it would not point you in any direction in relation to other possible directions. Its very emptiness renders it
useless as a moral compass. In effect, a neutral principle is a floating signifier, an “unoccupied vessel waiting to
be filled by whoever gets to it first or with the most persuasive force” (7). In fact, it is exactly this
condition of emptiness, its status as a floating signifier available for people to invest with substance ,
that makes neutral principles so politically useful -- and even potentially dangerous, since they can be employed to
further evil (as defined by you) ends just as easily as more positive (as defined by you) goals: It is because they
don’t have the constraining power claimed for them (they neither rule out nor mandate anything) and yet have the
name of constraints (people think that when you invoke fairness you call for something determinate and
determinable) that neutral principles can make an argument look as though it has a support higher or deeper than
the support provided by its own substantive thrust. Indeed, the vocabulary of neutral principle can be used to
disguise substance so that it appears to be the inevitable and nonengineered product of an impersonal
logic. In other words, a general principle such as fairness is deployed as a weapon in political, legal and
ethical struggles precisely because it masks the interestedness of those appealing to it and cloaks the fact
that the actual policy , law, or proposal being advanced in the name of the principle is embedded in specific
historical circumstances and furthers the interests and objectives of one set of individuals over and against the interests and
objectives of others. The fact that general principles do not exist and the fact that they can be deployed to effect harm may seem at odds; however, there is
no contradiction in declaring that, on the one hand, general principles do not exist (that is, that they have no substance except when they are involved and thus
invested with a particular substance that furthers a particular agenda) and that, on the other hand, they can be deployed to further odious agendas (that is, agendas
that you yourself find to be odious). It is precisely the emptiness of principles (the fact that they can mean everything and thus nothing
and therefore do not exist in any meaningful way as neutral principles) that makes them available to be used to do harmful (or
good) work in the world. In other words, neutral principles do not exist as genuinely “neutral” principles independent of
someone’s agenda, but the vocabulary of neutrality causes principles to become very powerful tools in the
political arena exactly because such language masks particular agendas. Fish writes, “The fact that the
game of neutral principles is really a political game -- the object of which is to package your agenda in a
vocabulary everyone, or almost everyone, honors -- is itself neutral and tells you nothing about how the
game will be played in a particular instance” (7). For example, someone may very well invoke the principle of fairness (or some
other principle), but the mere fact of invoking this terminology tells you nothing of whether you will or will not agree with the petitioner’s
agenda and with the petitioner’s definition of fairness until you have heard the substance that he or she has packaged under the label “fair.”
Nothing about the word “fair” would alert you ahead of time as to where that person is likely to stand on the issue in question. Fish maintains
that it would not be unusual or inconsistent to attack the rhetoric of neutral principles in one instance and to employ that very same rhetoric in
another, because in both instances what grounds a person’s stance is his or her convictions and commitments, and “the means used to advance
them would be secondary” (8). People typically begin with a strong conviction and them employ (or attack) a principle to advance that belief;
they don’t begin with a principle and then arrive at a strong conviction. If this modus operandi sounds like a description of the Machiavellian
“ends justify the means” conduct, it is indeed, but Fish is quick to stipulate that he is only reporting on how things work, not advocating that
they ought to work that way. Because it is impossible to disentangle oneself from substantive agendas , ends-based
behavior simply cannot be avoided. People will always seek to further their own agendas and to defeat those they oppose. Fish
is only pointing out “for the umpteenth time” that “when all is said and done there is nowhere to go except to the goals and
desires that already possesses you, and nothing to do but try as hard as you can to implement them in the world” (8-9).

Olson, 2k2-President of Daemen College, PhD in Rhetoric and Writing Studies @ Indiana University of
Pennsylvania, Former Professor of rhetoric, ideology, culture, and literary theory @ University of South
Florida [Gary Olson, “Justifying Belief: Stanley Fish and the Work of Rhetoric” p. 51-52, p. 64-65]
That is, if the institution of law and institution of religion were to correspond perfectly, then citizens would be able to extrapolate from moral
precepts exactly what their legal obligation are in any given situation, thus rendering the institution of law redundant. Interpretation is seen as
a threat to the law in that it is characterized as the act of disregarding or dismissing the meaning inherent in a text in favor of another more
partisan or interested reading of the text. Both morality and interpretation, then, threaten to substitute local or individual concerns, causes, or
readings (since there are multiple moralities and potential readings) for the larger, mores table, supposedly disinterested perspective of the
law. The law attempts to keep partisanship in check by appealing to the doctrine of formalism, the belief
that it is possible to compose language with such precision that a text’s meaning will always be clear and understandable
despite the individual perspective of those reading the text. Formalist assume that statutes, contracts, and other legal
documents can be written in such a way so as to prescribe that agents take or not take certain actions under specific
circumstances—regardless of the agents’ desires, ethical creeds, political convictions, or personal values—and that it will
always be clear precisely the, why, and under what conditions such actions should be taken. Once a statement is expressed in
its proper form as a legal statement or question, this text will generate a chain of circumscribed actions unaffected by personal
agendas. In other words, the very form of legal discourse allows the law to adjudicate fairly and independently between two or
more contending interests while establishing standards that claim to rise above any specific interests. Fish, of course, insists
that nosuch independent position is possible, that individual desires, ethical creeds, political convictions, and
personal values are always already at play in the production and consumption of legal texts. The aura of blind
objectivity that the legal system embraces as its identity is an illusion -- indeed, an impossibility . He argues
that although the law yearns to have a formal existence, such aspirations will consistently be frustrated because interpretation will always play
a role in any specification of what the law is, and thus any such specification will be susceptible to challenge. Rather than concluding, however,
that the law completely fails to have formal existence, he claims that in a very important sense it “always succeeds, although the nature of that
success -- it is a political/rhetorical achievement -- renders it bitter to the formal taste” (144). Fish in effect re-describes how formalism
operates within legal discourse.
 2NR -- A2: Framework -- Neutrality Disad Ext.
The Principle of Fairness is a Power Play to Bypass Substance --

The Vocabulary of Neutrality is Used to Mask the Interests of Those Appealing to It -- The Principle Itself
is a Weapon -- It’s an Empty Vessel Waiting to Be Filled with Substance By Whoever Gets to It First --
Prefer Our Olson Evidence in the Context of Policy Debate

This Takes-Out the Theory Behind their Decision Calculus -- Abandoning Predictable-Fairness as an Overt
Standard is Key Because It Tells One “Nothing About How the Game Will Be Played in a Particular
Instance” --

This Internal Link Turns their Fairness Offense -- It’s The Illusion of Objectivity that Guarantees Division
and Partisanship -- Formalism Keeps Partisanship, Because It Ignores How Values are Always-Already at
Play
 2NC -- A2: Paradigm Wars/ Method Bad
What they Call a ‘Paradigm-War’ is Only a Symptom of the Rigid Disconnect and Isolation of their Own
Research -- Under-Exposure is the Root Cause of the Problem

Refusing to Investigate Political-Methodology Makes the Habits of the Status Quo Inevitable -- Allows for
Misinformation to Go Unchallenged

And, We Control Uniqueness -- The World is Inevitably Multi-Dimensional and Empirically Methods Can
Readily Link-Up -- That’s Our Zweibelson Evidence.

They’re Evidence is in the Context of A-POLITICAL Methodology, Our Links Prove this Methodological
Investigation is Strictly Targeted at the Affirmative, Which is Political.
2NR: Designing Military Doctrine K -- Generic Ext./ Top Overview

Vote Negative to Reject the AFF’s Model of Debate -- It’s Counter-Productive for Military Planning and
Both Directly and Indirectly Destroys Operational Readiness --

Instead, Our Model Rejects the Functionalist Paradigm -- This Re-Configures Debate as an Incubator and
Network for Post-Modern Military Studies and Design Practices PRIOR to the Plan Phase --

We Have Links at the Level of Form and Content --

The Text of their Interpretation CANNOT Access Our Model at the Level of Form– We Must Consider
Links Beyond the Instrumentality of Mere Plantext -- Specifically We Should Have Been Permitted to Test
the Concepts Intrinsic to their Harms and Solvency as PRIOR Questions.

(__). They’ve Dropped the Impact of War-Testing --

ONLY our Framework Accesses the Highest Magnitude of Testing -- Ironically, Testing the PLAN Does
NOT Test the Impact of War in Particular --

EVEN IF a Decision-Making Model is Good for Public and Domestic Planning in the Abstract, It’s FATAL to
Military Planning --

Prefer the Specificity of Our Angstrom and Widen Evidence --

EVEN IF Plan-Focus Can Test Other Harms, It Still Leaves Scenarios of War UNTESTED By Deleting the
Role of Military Doctrine --

Put Simply, TRUE Testing Requires New Theories of Victory that Need NOT Be Instrumental -- That’s a
QUOTE from Our Jensen Evidence
Permutation
 2NC -- A2: Perm/ “Blended Approach”/ Do Both Evidence -- ONLY IF
2AC Reads Zweibelson Cards
**Also if 2AC reads Zweibelson against us

Our Model Solves their Offense But NOT Vice Versa -- Treating Military Design Thinking as a Prior
Question Deals with Design and Planning Co-Simultaneously, Because it Forces them to Justify their
Ontological and Epistemological Choices Behind their Strategy -- You Have to Show Your Work to EARN
the Plan --

Our Model Was Already the Best of Both Worlds -- Planning is Subsequent to Design Thinking --

A Blended Approach Does NOT Justify the Specific Criteria NOR the Text of their Interpretation --

They Don’t Defend their Choices Beyond the Plan and Do the Opposite to Reduce the
Scope of Objectivity and Linear Thinking -- Instead Any One Research-Project Includes
DESIGN AND PLANNING Within the Same Project -- It’s Not Either-Or
Zweibelson, 2016. (Major Ben Zweibelson, Program Director for Design and Innovation @ the Joint
Special Operations University, Doctoral Student @ Lancaster University, Retired US Army Infantry
Officer, Veteran of Iraq & Afghanistan, Lectures Across the USSOCOM, DoD, and US Government, Design
Conference Ambassador for the IMDC, Lectured on Design @ the Polish and Danish War Colleges,
Canadian Forces College, NATO Schools @ Oberammergau, the National Counterterrorism Center, the
IBM Capstone SPADE Conference for NATO @ Copenhagen, as Well as Numerous Special Operations and
Strategic Level Defense Assets. “Rose-Tinted Lenses: How American Functionalist Strategy Inhibits Our
Appreciation of Complex Conflicts” Defence Studies, Volume 16, Issue 1. Taylor & Francis Online. [KevC])

Were American strategists to consider employing critical reflection upon our devotion to functionalism,
and employ strategic perspective that creatively took both an interpretivist as well as functionalist
strategic (trans-disciplinary) approach, how might that look? The objectivity and linear causality within
the American National Security Strategy as well as capstone conceptual documents such as the 2020–
2040 U.S. Army Operating Concept would need to be reduced in scope by approaching ontological and
epistemological choices behind the strategy stated . Potentially, a blended strategy would employ a
combination of objective and subjective approaches, where time becomes more than a mere
component within analytical modeling and logic. Blending does not imply “either-or”, rather
simultaneity of paradoxical strategic concepts that interplay concurrently . In some conditions, the
strategic context might drive the American foreign policy form to morph towards one ontological and/or
epistemological patterning, while in other conditions the strategic context would shift into a different
form. Unlike mass-producers of “one-size fits all” apparel, transdisciplinary strategists would design
more like custom tailors that have materials on hand but must await each customer at the door to
improvise unique solutions to their emergent requirements.
2NC: Designing Military Doctrine K -- A2: Perm/ “Blended Approach”/
Do Both Evidence -- ONLY IF 2AC Reads Zweibelson Cards
Aff Adopts a Purely Functionalist Model and Does NOT Accomplish a Blended
Approach
Zweibelson, 2016. (Major Ben Zweibelson, Program Director for Design and Innovation @ the Joint
Special Operations University, Doctoral Student @ Lancaster University, Retired US Army Infantry
Officer, Veteran of Iraq & Afghanistan, Lectures Across the USSOCOM, DoD, and US Government, Design
Conference Ambassador for the IMDC, Lectured on Design @ the Polish and Danish War Colleges,
Canadian Forces College, NATO Schools @ Oberammergau, the National Counterterrorism Center, the
IBM Capstone SPADE Conference for NATO @ Copenhagen, as Well as Numerous Special Operations and
Strategic Level Defense Assets. “Rose-Tinted Lenses: How American Functionalist Strategy Inhibits Our
Appreciation of Complex Conflicts” Defence Studies, Volume 16, Issue 1. Taylor & Francis Online. [KevC])

The interpretivist strategic approach, originating from entirely dissimilar ontological and epistemological
positions (within an incommensurate paradigm) offers novel and critical insight into American strategic
policy when applied within a trans-disciplinary strategic approach that also pays attention to
functionalism. To accomplish a blended strategic approach requires strategists to first recognize and
understand the paradigm they reside within, and how the existing policies, such as the U.S. National
Security Strategy and U.S. Army future-operating concept are structured entirely within this dominant
strategic frame. This is a difficult perspective to gain, due to the overwhelming cognitive monopoly of
the functionalist lens. When confronted by looming disasters and unexpected developments,
organizations tend to stubbornly hold to existing cognitive processes as they outstrip past experiences
(Weick 1993, p. 636). Taleb uses the turkey expecting the farmer to feed him as he approaches with the
ax, because up until today the farmer seemed so predictable in feeding him (Taleb 2007, pp. 40–41).9

Interpretivism deconstructs what functionalism builds up, which at first may seem pointless. Yet with
deconstruction comes novel construction with new language, new positions, novel concepts, and
creative approaches that incorporate entirely dissimilar ways of human cognition on time, space,
warfare, strategy, and complexity. Applying an interpretivist strategic approach blended into
functionalism would be a most challenging enterprise for American strategists, in that they would need
to strike a careful balance that essentially resides within the powerful paradox of attempting to fuse two
incommensurate worldviews.

The semiotic square, as a heuristic device is one of many useful conceptual tools available for us to
generate novel and hybrid strategies that break from the single dominant functionalist paradigm. There
are many other heuristic aids that exceed the scope of this article. To properly apply the semiotic square
(or other approaches), we must become comfortable with what is uncomfortable, and be willing to
“drop our tools” as Sociologist Karl Wieck suggests when an organization is facing uncertainty and
complexity (Weick 1993, 1998, 2011). Were we able to move away from pure functionalism, we also
need to bravely move off of interpretivism as well, into novel and emergent strategies that might
feature both or neither paradigms. To truly generate innovative strategy beyond the hankering for new
technological toys that perpetuate lockstep fantasies of future victory, we have to reflect critically upon
our way of strategizing how reality unfolds. Going beyond thinking about strategy, we must think about
thinking as an organization on strategy, and be prepared to change our language, our concepts, our
methods, and consider the complex interplay of seemingly dissimilar and incommensurate ways of
seeing the world. Although the world may appear convincingly rose-tinted within the functionalist
strategic outlook, we no longer can afford to maintain a single-paradigm dominance on how we
formulate near and long-term strategy.
 2NC -- A2: Permutation/Combine Frameworks/ AFF is Blended
Approach/ A2: But Our Evidence Based on Complexity
No Permutation -- Footnoting Design Recycles the Problem -- Our Model Solves their
Offense But Not Vice Versa -- It’s a Prior Question, Not Either/Or
Zweibelson, 2015. (Ben Zweibelson, INSERT QUALS. “An Awkward Tango: Pairing Traditional Military
Planning to Design and Why It Currently Fails to Work” Centre of Military and Strategic Studies, Journal
of Military and Strategic Studies, Volume 16, Issue 1. Online PDF. [KevC])

This figure offers one way to frame these multiple ontological and epistemological tensions in military
sense-making, with the centralized decisionmaking perspective most compatible with technical
rationalism and the desire to make most knowledge explicit. For an organization that holds to a strong
hierarchical form, the structure and appearance of control of technical rationalism coupled with a desire
to codify knowledge in sequences and doctrine as explicit is most suitable. Paradoxically, design is
comfortable with the opposite (while also highly useful within both), operating within a decentralized
organizational structure where plural decision-making remains within a largely constructivist
perspective, acknowledging that knowledge is often tacit and cannot be transferred or categorized
easily. 47 Returning to our tango metaphor, the recent efforts by the U.S. military to either combine
detailed planning with design, or reduce design to a subservient component within detailed planning
methodology are at odds with multiple ontological and epistemological tensions that drive these two
dancers apart.

Kuhn’s Paradox and Incompatible Paradigms Since Thomas Kuhn published his pivotal work ‘The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ in 1962, his conceptualization of a “paradigm” has gained global
appeal for framing the transformation of knowledge as well as the epistemological practice of how
organizations interpret knowledge. 48 Although there are numerous interpretations of the term
‘paradigm’, for this article I use sociologist George Ritzer’s description where a paradigm is “a
fundamental image of the subject matter within a science” … that “serves to define what should be
studied, what questions should be asked, how they should be asked, and what rules should be followed
in interpreting the answers obtained.” 49 Kuhn argued that paradigms were incommensurable when in
direct or rival positions attempting to perform the same purpose for an organization. Newtonian physics
and Einstein’s ‘Theory of Relativity’ do not make for collaborative math partners, as they seek to answer
the same questions.

Although detailed planning and design are subordinate methodologies, they comprise rival and
incommensurable paradigms for military sense-making. This theory is supportable by the numerous
ontological and epistemological tensions demonstrated in this article. Thus, efforts to combine design
with detailed planning reflect more than incompatible methodologies, they represent aspects of rival
and incommensurable paradigms for sense-making in complex military situations. This makes for
disastrous dance partners indeed.

Readers may misinterpret this article as “pro-design” whereas there are many benefits for employing
detailed planning in all manner of future military conflicts. I do not argue that we must abandon one
methodology in favor of the other. Instead, a reflective practitioner should shift between both as they
become relevant to a military situation, and abandon them when they are not. In stable or simplistic
environments where problems respond best to linear approaches, traditional planning may suffice
where the benefits of technical rationalism and explicit knowledge production outweigh the detriments.

In complex and adaptive military environments, design rejects the purely technical rationalist approach
and rewards innovation and creativity, while traditional planning reinforces the military hierarchy and
obedience to doctrine and past success. Design demands artists and unique thinkers that operate in
highly uncertain environments where illusive tacit knowledge cannot be compressed into a design
checklist or programmed into a series of lectures by an eminent and institutionally sanctioned expert for
uniform and rapid dissemination. Thus, in some environments, there is no need to engage in traditional
planning where the conditions favor design because of our own institutional predilections . Even in
conditions where we might not need to plan, we can design. There is no planning, however, without the
use of design.

Previous arguments that design and detailed planning are compatible methodologies or “the design
methodology is a subcomponent of planning” are incorrect and based upon a myopic perspective of
design as interpreted through the dominant epistemological and ontological paradigm espousing both
technical rationalism and explicit knowledge production. 50 Detailed planning simply “eats design” for
lunch for institutional reasons, and will likely not have it any other way, being the dominant paradigm
steering military education and cognitive approaches. 5

Design and detailed planning present methodologies of incommensurable paradigms that operate under
entirely dissimilar (and often antagonistic) ontological, epistemological, and organizational tensions.
Forcing them together, particularly in what some have suggested as a ‘master and subordinate’ sort of
relationship serves only to benefit one paradigm over the other, and ultimately confuse the force. 52
Ultimately, we seem to have everything backwards. In other words, detailed planning as a dance partner
cannot lead. Design leads, and can also dance individually without detailed planning.

Conclusions: When the Puppet Notices Strings He Might Cut… If design is incompatible with detailed
planning with either in a subordinate role, what can the military do about it? As this article offers one of
many ways to explore ontological and epistemological tensions in ‘thinking about how we think’, there is
no reason why we as a larger Western military institution cannot encourage more of this at all levels of
professional education, and recognize when our own ontological and epistemological choices create
incompatible or adversarial approaches to thinking, learning, and acting. We can, as Schön proposed in
much of his work, attempt to avoid the institutional pitfalls where those professionals accustomed to
the traditional paradigm “tend to become disconnected from what they already know” and when
encountering a rival paradigm, follow Kuhn’s prediction that many will actively resist it. 53
 2NC -- A2: Permutation/ Combine Frames
No Combination Between Models
Zweibelson, 2017. (Major Ben Zweibelson, Program Director for Design and Innovation @ the Joint
Special Operations University, Doctoral Student @ Lancaster University, Retired US Army Infantry
Officer, Veteran of Iraq & Afghanistan, Lectures Across the USSOCOM, DoD, and US Government, Design
Conference Ambassador for the IMDC, Lectured on Design @ the Polish and Danish War Colleges,
Canadian Forces College, NATO Schools @ Oberammergau, the National Counterterrorism Center, the
IBM Capstone SPADE Conference for NATO @ Copenhagen, as Well as Numerous Special Operations and
Strategic Level Defense Assets. “Blending Postmodernism with Military Design Methodologies: Heresy,
Subversion, and Other Myths of Organizational Change” Centre of Military and Strategic Studies, Journal
of Military and Strategic Studies, Special Issue: Reflexive Military Practitioners: Design, Thinking and
Beyond, Volume 17, Issue 4. Online PDF. [KevC])

Postmodernism frequently operates in what could be characterized as the shared boundary of ‘Radical
Humanism’ and ‘Interpretivism’ (or one half of the Burrell and Morgan model). Of the two, ‘Radical
Humanism’ is in complete opposition to ‘Functionalism,’ thus any postmodern concepts that are
decidedly ‘Radical Humanist’ would be most incommensurate with a military seeking functionalist
perspectives.38 This is also where change agents operate.
Disadvantages
 DA -- Reductionist Planning
Their model of debate collapses readiness and forecloses military planning.
Their Model of Debate Collapses Readiness and Forecloses Military Planning
Zweibelson, 2012. (Maj. Ben Zweibelson, Previously the 1-2 Cavalry Regiment Operations Officer in
Vilseck, Germany, Veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, M.A. from Louisiana State Univ, MMAS from the US
Army School of Advanced Military Studies, Masters Degree in Military Operational Art from the US Air
Force Command and Staff College Program, Senior Program and Project Management Specialist, Design
Theorist, Strategic Consultant, Management @ Fort Leavenworth, US Army Mission Command Training
Program SAMS. “Seven Design Theory Considerations: An Approach to Ill-Structured Problems”
MILITARY REVIEW: November-December 2012. Army Doctrine Publication/Army Doctrine Reference
Publication 3-90 -- U.S. Army Combined Arms Center -- Intellectual Center of the Army. Online PDF.
[KevC] AAAA)
1. To Appreciate the Game of Chess, Stop Thinking So Much About the Pieces Leaders attempting to fuse design theory with military planning
efforts should distinguish between the logics that various groups and organizations prefer to employ, and the vocabulary and concepts
associated with them.5 Military organizations will benefit from considering what a “problem” means, what it does not mean, and why this
is. Are all military problems definable, explainable, and solvable? Does a problem have to be tangible for
us to apply military tools to “attack” it? What happens to the planned solution to a problem when the problem changes over
time? If you identify something as a problem, target it, and achieve your objective only to find that the
problem became something different, are you focused on the problem or merely on the symptoms of
something larger?6 When we chase tactical problems and discover larger core issues beyond them, we usually associate
uncertainty with these concepts. Design theorists use the helpful term “meta-problem” to address
complex issues that go beyond tactical and linear problem sets. By tacking the prefix “meta” onto concepts
like “problem,” “question,” and “narrative,” we change the meaning of the words from something specific
into something broad, holistic, and often answered with yet deeper questions. 7 Did you notice that many of the
questions posed on “problems” in the previous paragraph led to more questions instead of answers? With design theory, that is actually a good
thing! I prefer to use the term “phenomenon” instead of “problem” to differentiate between tactical, tangible elements easily labeled as
problems, and the more elusive, self-organizing meta-issues or core tensions that endure and evolve over time within a complex environment,
but regardless of the terms one uses, as long as there is sound logic underpinning an organization’s common language, it can communicate
effectively.8 Words are important; they reveal more about how an organization prefers to seek understanding, and what it refuses to
see.9 This
becomes critical when an organization commences planning . Miss the meta-problem or core
issues, and you may commit blood and treasure towards the wrong objectives.10 Tactical problems are
attractive to military organizations because they can integrate them readily with quantifiable metrics,
bell-curves, and mathematical analysis and reduce uncertainty in an environment .11 However, the more
complex and adaptive an environment is, the more some of these planning approaches fail to explain or
reduce uncertainty.12 This is where military and government institutions prefer to seek short-term
successes and codify them into general procedures, often in doctrinal form. 13 Hence, problem solving
leads to “proceduralization.” Powerful forces within the military institution canonize lessons learned
into doctrine and universal application.14 While problem solving through traditional military decision
making often leads to proceduralization, design theory appreciates how deeper phenomena often lead
to emergent processes within a complex, adaptive system.15 Emergent processes are different from
procedures. Design theory resists the rigid “paint-by-numbers” methodology that procedure-based logic
enforces. Consider two opponents in a chess game. The staff of an organization that prefers to think
with procedure-based logic will likely develop procedures that focus entirely on the chess pieces. The procedures can
resemble sports-team playbooks with intricate turn-based moves and elaborate linear methodologies for
winning. Enemy chess pieces may feature “jackpot” targeting. These approaches are useful in subsequent detailed
planning and execution, but usually fail to support much subsequent action. Considering only the chessboard, the
chess pieces, and the rules of the game prevents an organization from realizing what lies beyond the chessboard. This approach
may lock your staff into an endless loop of description and categorization that never recognizes the
actual phenomena at work.16 To lead your staff to consider deeper phenomena and emergent processes, you must get them to stop
thinking about the chessboard. Meta-processes and emergent phenomena exist above the chessboard. Movements of the
chess pieces are indications of larger forces in motion. Reductionist and tactical thinking focuses on particular
opponent chess pieces or spaces, while design theory encourages the staff to contemplate the
phenomenon of “skill” (Figure 1). It asks us to consider how the opponent’s chess skill is an emergent tension
that affects the entire environment. Such thinking can lead the staff to improvise and adapt to overcome
skill disadvantages to influence transforming the system to a future state more advantageous to the
organization.17 Ultimately, the goal may not even be to win a particular chess game, but something beyond that. Yet, tactical
problem solving and proceduralization will lock a staff’s energies and outputs into chess-piece-centric
approaches. Getting the staff’s focus off the chess pieces and onto the area above the board is often
critical to transforming design thinking into military planning.2. Know How to Wash Babies Before Throwing Out the
Bathwater Some worry that design tends to disregard doctrine and “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” I find most doctrine
rather inhibiting for critical and creative thinking, but doctrine’s utility is undeniable . Perhaps one of the
bigger hurdles for military organizations to clear is the stranglehold that doctrine has upon military
professionals.18 (Many businesses model their planning and decision making along similar lines.) Military organizations self-
identify as groups that can consistently produce universal results in diverse conditions . To do
this, Western military institutions produce narratives that become the bedrock of doctrine,
policy, procedures, and language. However, this comes at a cost. To properly apply design theory, a
leader must appreciate that doctrine influences how our military prefer to think. Doctrine’s
primary weaknesses are inflexibility, the inability to improvise, and resistance to any change that
threatens the relevance of the organization that is the proponent for the doctrine .19 Leaders should
understand doctrine by understanding not only its content, but also its context, the military institution’s
approach in conflict environments. This includes critical and contrary thinking that explores
contradictory perspectives. Only then can leaders collaborate to use design theory to safely disregard
doctrine (when necessary) and substitute knowledge from various other fields, concepts, or
theories. Design practitioners often use the term “bricolage” to convey this concept.20 To
bricolage within a hybrid planning effort, a leader may infuse elements of swarm theory, post-modern
philosophy, inter-service conceptual planning, and businessmodeled scenario planning into war game
sessions while still using many doctrine-centric military terms, concepts, and processes. If a discipline or
field adds value regardless of its origin, it deserves legitimate consideration. To disregard a concept or
methodology and maintain intellectual honesty, one must understand what the concept or methodology
does or does not contribute to solving the problem at hand. Ultimately, some doctrine may help, and we
should put some of it back on the shelf for another time.

3. In Complex Environments, Nosebleed Seats Often Trump the 50-Yard Line Design theory seeks holistic appreciation of
complex dynamic environments through abstraction. Leaders face significant challenges when trying to change the staff’s
perspective from one that isolates, reduces, and categorizes to one that takes a broad and often ambiguous position.21 Getting your staff to
shift gears is not easy. How many targeting processes and working groups within a brigade combat team occur weekly? Is the staff predisposed
to further isolate and reduce information through iterative planning and targeting sessions?22 The
proclivity for “stove-piping”
information is unquestionably present.23 For leaders, one useful approach for guiding a staff toward
abstract thinking involves “what” versus “why” questions.24 When a product, narrative, or
output appears to seek to answer “whatcentric” questions, the staff is likely employing reductionist
logic that continues to isolate and categorize information into smaller and seemingly more controllable
chunks. We do this routinely with virtually all aspects of detailed planning from special operations jackpots to left-handed Afghan female
police officers in the Wardak province. “What-centric” questions lead to reductionist answers, or further analysis
that isolates and fragments complex systems. On the other hand, “why-centric” questions generate
different outcomes. “Why” questions often lead to abstraction and holistic appreciation and produce
more questions (and fewer answers), which makes military organizations uncomfortable due to an
increase in uncertainty. “Why” questions tend to push the staff away from reductionist logic to
appreciation of a system’s dynamic actors and phenomena, leading a deep understanding of
complexity without any misconceptions about how uncontrollable it is. To integrate design in military
planning, operate as a synthesist not an analyst. “Synergy” is distinct from what-centric analysis in that
while an analyst might produce volumes of data on individual bicycle parts, the synthesist will instead
assemble them into a bicycle and address why someone seeks to ride it.25 Synergy occurs when the
whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Synthesists question why over what, and view complex
systems holistically instead of attempting to isolate and reduce them into measurable entities for
categorization.26 The analyst collects neat piles of bike parts. The design synthesist runs a bicycle repair
shop.
[Continued…] 6. Orchestra Sheet Music is Linear; Improvisational Jazz is Nonlinear The nonlinear versus linear planning debate has confused the
current generation of military professionals while explaining very little about how “nonlinear” functions within military decision making. Army
doctrine describes ill-structured problems as “the most interactive; they are also complex, nonlinear,
and dynamic—and therefore the most challenging to solve.”29 Yet neither our doctrine nor our
professional military education system really explains what nonlinear means as opposed to traditional
linear planning. Few buzzwords have gained similar status in the modern military lexicon as the words
“nonlinear,” yet as an institution we routinely fail to understand or describe what nonlinear is, especially at the operational and strategic
levels. To humans, linear processes are instinctual. They correspond to a time and place where one event leads to another. U.S.
Army Field Manual 5-0, The Operations Process, warns of the pitfalls of linear thinking with respect to complex
adaptive systems. “The first pitfall is attempting to forecast and dictate events too far into the future.
This may result from believing a plan can control the future. People tend to plan based on assumptions
that the future will be a linear continuation of the present.”30 This is sound advice, but our doctrine never effectively
distinguishes between linear and nonlinear planning, leaving leaders high and dry. Consider a large orchestra, with its wide variety of
instruments and musicians. The composer is similar to the planning team, and the conductor is the commander. Like the orchestra’s sheet
music, the military organization’s linear planning efforts routinely follow a similar pattern where the team works out in advance the
complicated interactions of its instruments over time, and reduces it to written notes distributed to the players. Over multiple rehearsals, the
orchestra, led by the conductor, learns to work together to produce music instead of chaotic noise. This works for simple and closed systems
such as a symphony hall where clearly defined objectives are achievable through linear planning. However today’s military
institution tends to substitute “nonlinear” with this linear thinking and attempts to do so while
confronting ill-structured problems. Instead of acknowledging complexity’s adaptive, emergent
nature, we use linear causality logic and reverse-engineered planning concepts to construct
intricate campaign plans that flow backward from predetermined end states and cement them with
preconceived actions set along lines of efforts.31 An orchestra does not play music backward, yet we usually plan
backward. Design theory considers true nonlinear approaches to be free of the shackles of the linear
planning construct. “A” does not lead to “B,” nor should a branch plan “C” occur when the organization
reaches “B.” Unlike an orchestra tied to predetermined sheet music, a group of jazz musicians without any sheet music improvises along to
the beat of the drummer and plays off each other’s adaptations and riffs. Their music emerges in a linear form over time, but follows no rigid
path and relies instead upon sense-making and intuitive decisions as the complex environment transforms. The audience of the orchestra does
not influence its music, but the crowd around a jazz band likely influences the band’s improvisations. The jazz band will adjust course, yet still
follow no set script, to allow creativity and exploration to discover even more effective improvisations that please the crowd. Trial
and
error drive this process, and so does divergent thinking. Yet military operations are not jazz concerts,
and we will not solve ill-structured military problems through actions that follow no set plan . When your
crazy uncle tends to drop by for Thanksgiving, you have to plan the day with him factored in. Design theory should not subscribe
to linear planning, yet design deliverables must become linear constructs to aid the force in detailed
planning and execution. What becomes critical is striking the right balance and having a tailored
approach for each environment.32 When leaders establish their design teams and consider approaches
to planning, they need to remember that planners tend to think and explore using traditional linear
constructs, and encourage deviation instead. Appreciating a complex system requires a planning team to
invest far more time in exploring the system instead of trying to “solve it.” Instead of considering the
desired end state and attempting to force the complex system into obedience
by structuring their plan in reverse fashion, design practitioners ought to investigate why the system
behaves as observed, and how they can influence it as it transforms over time. Instead of rigidly applying
a future state that a planned line of effort must follow, planners might explore a wide range of future
states that acknowledge the high degree of uncertainty inherent in illstructured problems. This needs to
go beyond branch plans and sequels and consider military action that improvises over time as the
system’s emergent state becomes clearer and observed phenomena transform as they interact and
adapt to our actions. Although military organizations cannot conduct detailed planning “off-script,” we
can think critically about how we understand time and space, and explore ways of envisioning
conceptual planning that break free of the simplistic linear causality associated with
traditional campaign planning. When it is time to transform design deliverables into products for linear
detailed planning, a final critical planning hurdle occurs.
2NC -- XT: Reductionist Planning
Zweibelson 12’

Reductionist Planning Disad --

Their Plan-Focus Model Collapses Operational Readiness and Makes Military Planning Impossible --

Extend Our Zweibelson 12’ Evidence --

Military Design Requires a Model that Can Address the Meta-Problem of Complex Issues that Goes
Beyond Linear Approaches to Planning

Missing the Meta-Problem Commits Military Level Planners Towards the Wrong Objectives

This Leads to the Problem Called Proceduralization Whereby the Staff Get Locked into Endless Loops
that Never Recognizes the Actual Phenomena at Work --

Critical and Contrary Thinking at the Systems-Level Must Be Infused to Prevent Stove-Piping of
Information –

What-Centric Approaches Lead to Reductionist Answers -- They Fragment Complex Systems and Lead to
a Shallow Understanding

The Impact is their Model Forecloses Military-Level Planning and Synergy --

To Integrate Design in Military Planning, One Must Operate as a Synthesist, NOT an Analyst

Synergy is Distinct from What-Centric Analysis in that While an Analyst Might Produce Data on Individual
Scenarios, the Synthesist Will Instead Assemble Them AND Address Why

This Comes Before their Scenario-Planning Offense -- Reductionist Thinking Empties their Analysis of
Benefits Because they Can’t Synthesize the Information --

This is a Complexity Argument About How they Assemble Scenario Information

Put Simply, Linear Assembly of Complex Issues Still Equals Reductionism

Instead of Acknowledging Complexity their Framework Maintains Linear Causality Logic and Reverse-
Engineered Planning Concepts

This is a Major Difference Between Models -- Design Theory Considers True NonLinear Approaches to Be
Free of the Linear Planning Construct -- “A” Does NOT Lead to “B” NOR Should a Branch Plan “C” Occur
When it Reaches “B”

Appreciating Complexity Requires a Planning Team to Explore the System-Level Instead of Trying to
“Solve It”

These are Competitive Models --

Instead of Attempting to Force the System into Obedience By Structuring their Plan in Reverse Fashion,
Design Practice Enables Exploration of Prior Questions -- One Must EARN the Plan and Show One’s Work
to Do So
(__). Plans Good in the Abstract is NOT Responsive -- We’ve Internal Link Turned this Argument -- their
Traditional Approach to Planning is FATAL When Applied to Military Planning -- This Necessarily
Outweighs Because it Effects Planning at the Level of Warfighting and Credible Deterrence
 2NC -- Reductionist Planning
Assembling Advocacy Using Linear Causality and Reverse-Engineering is Failed
Planning --
Zweibelson, 2015. (Major Ben Zweibelson, INSERT QUALS. “RESEARCH REVIEW One Piece at a Time:
Why Linear Planning and Institutionalisms Promote Military Campaign Failure” Defence Studies, Volume
15, Issue 4. Taylor & Francis Online, December. [KevC])

Here, doctrine offers some important sociological framing for how western militaries seek to understand
the world around it. Within nearly all western military doctrine and as devoted objectivists, we find an
implicit adherence to applying the scientific method to solve problems (Ahl and Allen 1996, p. 1, Weick 1998, p. 551,
Bousquet 2008, pp. 920–922). We exhibit an “almost pathological desire to achieve certainty” in the notoriously
uncertain environment of war, which leads to our linear thinking and analytical campaigning (Ryan et al.
2010, p. 247). It is where the nineteenth-century military philosophies of Carl von Clausewitz (war will remain a contest of wills) and
AntoineHenri Jomini (principles of war) still dominate our western collective military outlook (de Terre 2010, pp. 39–41). Technological
innovation takes a center stage in reducing our uncertainties, and accumulating greater information over time should lead to a reduction of
confusion and an increase in certainty within complex military environments (Romjue 1997, p. 11, Olson 2013). Consider Figure 1 below,
which illustrates the “reverse engineering” process upon which we develop our linear campaign plans
(Kem 2009, pp. 15–24, Reilly 2009, pp. 14–23). Starting with a proposed future state, we determine goals meant to
solve the current military problem at hand. Working backwards, we design analysis with “center of
gravity” concepts and other mechanical or systems-based metaphors that tease out vulnerabilities and associated
decisive points for military synchronized action along various “lines of effort” (Strange and Iron 2004, pp. 24–25, Paparone and Davis 2012, p.
66, VanderSteen 2012). These work like conceptual roadways with landmarks and directions for us to navigate our way from the present state
to this proposed future state.

Figure 1. Objectivity, linear causality, analytical processes, and reverse engineering

With the reverse engineering perspective on planning, time and space becomes a linear and malleable
construct we can control and reduce, where we look for causality with “if A leads to B, then C” logic for
planning. Almost like a movie on tape, we can fast-forward or reverse, adding and subtracting elements as necessary. Taken further,
we actually reverse engineer along this linear timeline by setting in the uncertain future our goals and
objectives, with lines of effort leading back to our present state.

Upon this cognitive structure, we reverse engineer all of the phases, decision points, decisive points,
branch plans, and metrics (measures of performance/effectiveness) starting at our goals and leading
back to the present. Campaign plans are written in this manner, and with every major review, our planning output retains
this same implicit structure while accepting the same justifications on “how the world and warfare
works.” This is how the modern western military makes sense of the past, present, and future of warfare (Bruner 1986, p. 96, Marion and
Uhl-Bien 2003, pp. 56–57, Kelly and Brennan 2010, p. 110, Paparone 2012, p. 36, Schmidt 2014, p. 51). Once our campaign plan is in place, we
cycle units and resources while trudging along, expecting the overarching strategy to eventually bear fruit. Applied to simple and even
complicated problems, it tends to work remarkably well. The only boot prints on the moon came from NASA; the atomic bombs that changed
the world in 1945 came from a similar mass-organized industrial endeavor, and the East India Company dominated global trade spanning three
centuries. There are countless other examples of centralized hierarchies dominating all competitors. Yet complex environments, highly resistant
to such processes, reject centralized efforts to control and predict outright (von Bertalanffy 1968, Weinberg 1975, Holland 1992, p. 17,
Gharajedaghi 2006, Bousquet 2008, Bousquet 2009).

[CONTINUED…] Deployment after deployment, the last unit likely “messed everything up in our area of operations,” while the current unit is
“really fixing everything and wildly successful through our departure” regardless of the overarching combat situation (Foust 2012). While
most any organization tends to construct narratives for similar self-interests, it is the cognitive
underpinnings that construct the organization’s way of seeing the world that is more important here. This
explains the subtle justifications for why we see the world unfold as we say it does -- whether we are close to the
mark or wildly distant.

These are just cultural observations on military forces making sense of complex conflict environments, but they act as important secondary
forcing functions for maintaining a poorly constructed campaign plan. At times, everyone is terrified to reveal to the emperor that he is naked,
and the entire war strategy upon which all subsequent campaign plans are based is entirely ineffective. The
poor planning is
secondary to the organizational forces that prevent us from critically reflecting on why we do this , and
how we might change.

Figure 2. Centralized hierarchies and the direction of decisions/information.

Putting it together, even when the strategy’s back end looks funny How we imagine relationships between events, time, and things in the world
are an important part of our organizational logic. Many
prefer to align events along a linear timeline, and attempt to
link past events together in a chain where one causes another to occur, leading us to our next
assumption in logic. This is termed “linear causality,” and it is one way to make sense of time and space. Linear
causality, as a mode of approaching problem-solving, works in simplistic situations (Tsoukas 1998, p. 220,
Paparone 2008, p. 301). However, military conflicts whether limited in nature or approaching “total war”
conditions are anything but simplistic.

Complex situations reject linear thinking, yet our traditional campaign planning methodology continues
to plot along (Conklin 2008, p. 4, Ibrahim 2009, Ryan et al. 2010, p. 249). We publish our extensive
campaign plans and subsequently maintaining them through a massive volume of data and metrics that
somehow reinforce original concepts (Bousquet 2009, pp. 128–129, Jackson 2013, pp. 52–53). “A does
lead to B, which forms C” as we force observations and events to continue to support initial campaign
intent and objectives. Sociologist Karl Weick observes, “Bureaucracies see what they have seen before
and they link these memories in a sequential train of associations … [They] tend to imagine the past and
remember the future” (Tsoukas and Vladimirou 2001, p. 975, Weick 2006, p. 448). Weick illuminates a
dangerous output of linear causality, in that our military tends to predict future events based upon
flawed reasoning where we misunderstand past events.
 2NC -- Reductionist Planning -- Turns Case
Simple Planning Fails
Jackson, 2019. (Dr. Aaron P Jackson, Distinguished Visiting Professor @ Canadian Forces College,
Instructs on the Advanced Joint Warfare Studies. “ ‘Your Flight is Delayed’: The Impact of Complexity
Upon a Simple Plan” Medium, Online. [KevC])

The impact of complexity upon a simple plan: some observations Beyond being an interesting story (to me at least), does this travel
experience yield any observations that might be more broadly applicable? My answer is of course ‘yes’, otherwise I would not be writing this
article. Before I list my observations, it is pertinent to note that they are colored by my academic background in military and defense studies.
Much of what I am about to say is predicated on the military understanding of what constitutes a ‘planner’ and a
‘plan’. The first observation is that understanding the nature of complex systems can help one to appreciate why
small initial changes can have such disproportionate flow-on effects. My experience as both a military instructor and as
an academic tutor has led me to conclude that people who have developed a thorough understanding of the situation
are better able to cope with unexpected changes to it. Developing this understanding is inherently difficult in complex
systems, as the system itself is in a state of constant flux, so any understanding one can reach is likely to be immediately out of date. In this case,
an understanding of the complex nature of the system itself helped me to better cope with events that
disrupted my plan, because I appreciated the extent of their impact within the context of the system. That
said, there were still a few times where frustration got the better of me, and I could have benefited from being more stoic than I was. The second
observation is that the messiness of reality
always exceeds the viable scope of any plan. For the plan to go the
way the planner intends, as my air travel usually does, several factors need to align with the plan. Most of these
are beyond the planner’s control. In a complex system such as air travel, this alignment usually occurs because most of the actors in
the system are working towards the same goal — that is, getting passengers to their destination on schedule. In the case study presented here
the disruptions to the system, and therefore to my plan, were beyond the control of most or all of the actors (no actor within the system could
control the weather, for example). In other complex systems where there is not such a high degree of harmony
between the goals of different actors, plans are more likely to be subject to disruptions. This is because
the source of disruptions can originate either from factors beyond the control of individual actors, or
from the contrary actions of other actors. Understanding both the system and the actors within it
becomes more important in these cases, however there is paradoxically an even greater likelihood in
such systems that new knowledge will be out of date immediately when it is acquired. One also needs to bear in
mind that the multiple concurrent interactions of competing actors, as well as other systemic factors, are
likely to make accurate prediction difficult , if not entirely useless or even counter-productive , as the
system is in a constant state of change. In my own aforementioned case study, as soon as I commenced enacting my
plan it immediately became very difficult for me to be proactive. I was instead almost exclusively reacting to changes
within the system. Such reactionary behavior on the part of the planner, who must scramble during
implementation to adapt the plan as best they can to the changing situation, is the norm in complex
systems. Only if the planner starts over and plans again — as I attempted to do in Indianapolis when I began to investigate
the feasibility of alternative transport options — can they again become proactive. But, and here’s the rub, at that point the
planner has a new plan, devised in isolation from the system then thrust into it once complete. The
planner must disengage from the system for a long enough period to devise a new way to re-engage with
it. Hence the new plan is just as likely as the old one to be affected by unintended and unforeseeable
events. There is no escaping complexity, no matter how often one plans.
 -- Ebola/Disease
Turns Case --
(__). in the Context of Ebola --

(__). Reductionist Approach Cannot Solve Disease --

Zweibelson, 2015. (Major Ben Zweibelson, INSERT QUALS. “Military? Deep Dives? And
Organizational Management: The Continuing Hazards of Hubris, Centralized Hierarchies, and Insular
Perspectives” Small Wars Journal, May 21. Online PDF. [KevC])

Senior military and government leaders depend on their staff to produce the best options for critical,
strategic decisions that may be game-changers, so they hardly focus ‘deep dives’ on trivial subjects. Both
the concept of deep dives as well as the organizational process requires investigation, as these
organizational processes and cognitive mindsets establish what we consider a productive meeting and
exchange of ideas. Further, the frequent application of a practice tends to build repetition and an
organizational hostility to alternative processes that require a re-tooling, or even an ‘un-learning’ of your
organization in order to get over a significant conceptual hurdle.[11] Complex, messy problems tend to do
this to us, whether confronting an emergent drug war in Mexico, an enduring counter-insurgency in
Afghanistan, or adaptive humanitarian and medical assistance to treat disease outbreaks in Africa.

[CONTINUED…] The strategic charrette requires us to acknowledge and confront several key
phenomena in the military institution that if left unchecked will inhibit any charrette process from
functioning. As stated earlier, the military hierarchy is often rigid, where rank, position, and status factor
strongly into relationships, discourse, and perceptions.[38] Our reductionist tendency within military and
governmental agencies favors compartmentalization and isolation, with small teams and planning cells
operating and employing numerous defenses to keep discourse and participation at a “need to know”
basis.[39] We have classification levels for security, and even within this we employ what is derogatively
referred to as the practice of ‘stove-piping’ information and discourse so that while the direct hierarchy
maintains centralized decision-making, the larger organization is unaware until after the fact.

We also tend to equate right and wrong with rank, status and position at times; this often occurs with
ambiguous or complex problems that feature no clear answers initially.[40] This is more pronounced in
situations where a senior decision maker might be a political appointee in disagreement with another
who has ‘risen through the system’ through accomplishments and experience. These are not necessarily
good or bad things, but they require examination as part of the organization’s sociological framework .

A strategic charrette needs to create an environment where the rigid military hierarchy and centralized
decision-making is tempered to encourage design. Clearly, no one in an organization forgets for a
second who the General or Undersecretary is regardless of whether it is ‘Hawaiian Shirt Friday’ or not…
what we want to encourage is a heightened awareness of the group where discourse advances due to
sound argument and no fear of reprisal. A strategic charrette needs a wide, diverse audience that
extends beyond the core organization and into the larger spectrum of actors, clients, customers, and
participants. For instance, any strategic charrette concerning the Mexican-American border and drug
violence that does not include political, military, business and law enforcement leadership from both
sides of the border potentially inhibits that critical collaborative element. Or, designing military
operations in Afghanistan without including the Afghan Army and Police is equally detrimental due to
the marginalization of vital perspectives and voices. Ebola containment and treatment strategies that
exclude ‘Doctors without Borders’ or the medical professionals and local governmental agencies from
the designing process makes for fragile and likely incomplete critical and creative thinking.
 DA -- War Testing Disad
Independently, the Criteria Adopted Makes True Testing Impossible and Deletes
Military Doctrine --
**(__). This CANNOT Be Accessed with a Model “Based on the Rationalist Understanding of Doctrine as
Force Multiplier”

Angstrom and Widen, 2016. (Jan Angstrom, Professor of War Studies @ the Swedish Defence
University, Earned PhD from the Department of War Studies @ King’s College, Associate Professor at the
Department of Peace and Conflict Research @ Uppsala University; and JJ Widen, Associate Professor in
War Studies at the Swedish Defence University, Earned PhD in History from Abo Akademi University.
“Religion or Reason? Exploring Alternative Ways to Measure the Quality of Doctrine” The Journal of
Strategic Studies, Volume 39, No 2. Routledge Taylor & Francis. [KevC])

ABSTRACT:
In this article, we address the often ignored issue of quality standards for doctrine. In doing so, we contribute to the existing literature on
military doctrine, since much of previous research has focused on outlining the effects of doctrine or the
causes of particular doctrinal content, rather than how we should measure its quality. The predominant
way of understanding quality of doctrine is based on the rationalist understanding of doctrine as a force
multiplier. However, rationalist aims do not necessarily tell us anything about the contents of
doctrine. Hence, a doctrine can be seemingly of high quality, but ultimately impede or lead armed
forces astray . Rather than focus ing on the utilitarian side of doctrine , we suggest that doctrine should
mainly be understood as articles of faith or a belief system. And thus the quality of doctrine becomes
inextricably linked to military norms and military identity. Writing doctrine thus becomes part of
ritual, rather than reason .
Introduction In this article, we address the oft-forgotten and much-implied issue of the quality of military doctrine. How do we know that a
doctrine is good? By what standards should we evaluate doctrine? Although it is not uniformly understood in this way in military organisations
worldwide, we define military doctrine as ‘institutionalized knowledge of how, for what and why military
resources should be utilized’. 1 Such doctrine can be explicit and formalised or implicit and tacit. In this
article, we only deal with the former. In essence, doctrine constitutes important principled and institutionally
sanctioned solutions to military challenges by describing the organisation’s aims, character and modes
of operation. By what standards can such principles, and the texts in which they appear, be evaluated?

[CONTINUED….] From the anecdote described in this introduction, it is quite clear that academic standards of quality may not be helpful when
finding standards of quality for military doctrine. Previous research on military doctrine may not necessarily assist us in this endeavour either.
Considering the importance attached to doctrine among military practitioners, research
on military doctrines is surprisingly
scant. The overwhelming majority of the research, moreover, focuses on either of two major issues: the
expected effect of doctrine (i.e. that doctrine can have an independent causal effect on the outcome of
war) and the specific contents of particular doctrines.5 Those researching the first of these issues are
involved in a vast scholarly debate on the causes of victory and defeat in war and there are examples of
excellent research linking military doctrine to victory and defeat in battle, campaigns or war.6 There is
also an equally impressive range of research focusing on why some states adopt certain doctrines and
why the contents of doctrine vary among states with similar levels of expected threat. Perhaps
the most fundamental issue of this debate is whether we can understand the contents of doctrine as
driven by external, rational threat calculations, or pre-existing beliefs about how victory is achieved in
war, or whether the contents are driven by identity and role expectations .7

Research on issues related to the practices of doctrine-writing and how doctrines are implemented is
also in short supply. Geoffrey Till describes a doctrine-writing cycle, including feedback loops, but ultimately without empirical evidence,
which makes it difficult to know whether or not the suggested cycle is an accurate empirical description or an ideal-type.8 Bert Chapman,
furthermore, alludes to the writing of doctrine as essentially a process of ‘simplifying’ complex phenomena and distilling practical guidelines.9
Aaron Jackson, meanwhile, recognises that doctrine can be understood from a non-rationalist perspective,
but does not explore quality criteria.10 Perhaps the nearest attempt to include tools for evaluating doctrine exists in Harald
Høiback’s seminal work on doctrines and their characteristics. By outlining various purposes and target audiences of doctrine, Høiback
implicitly provides a series of criteria that doctrine can be evaluated against . The main problem with the
criteria, however, is that they rely on utilitarian logic. Such criteria for assessing doctrines are
particularly ill-suited to conditions lacking a clear feedback mechanism, i.e. a competitive
environment in which the outcome of activities provides feedback regarding quality of means and
methods to the actors involved.11 It is this latter gap that this article addresses.

Our argument, in short, is that deriving quality standards from utilitarian , rationalist understandings of
doctrine suffers from a lack of feedback mechanism that can provide clear and concise quality
standards. Hence, we cannot know at the time of writing whether or not doctrine will direct the armed
forces successfully in the next war simply because war is an interactive (and often rare) phenomenon
and you cannot be sure of who your next enemy will be. Instead , we suggest that it is more fruitful to
derive quality standards from a constructivist interpretation of doctrine. Such an understanding allows
us to think of doctrine as religion -- a set of beliefs.

The article proceeds as follows. First, we draw upon Høiback’s seminal study on the purpose of doctrine
to develop a utilitarian, rationalist framework that assumes that you can evaluate the quality of doctrine
with exogenous factors and that doctrines have an independent role as ‘force multiplier’ in the conduct
of war. The problem, we suggest, is that doctrine may be a tool for education, command, change and
signalling without necessarily preparing or guiding the armed forces in a way that contributes to
furthering the utility of force. In the second analytical part we suggest instead that
a constructivist framework is more fruitful when identifying standards of quality for doctrine. If we
approach doctrine as a set of beliefs, or articles of faith, where a military and professional identity is
being created, we can more easily identify what makes a doctrine good or bad.

Quality and understanding doctrine as force multiplier

According to the rationalist framework, doctrine should serve a purpose for the military organisation in
its core missions. In particular, doctrine ought to be a force multiplier insofar as providing added value,
making the military organisation do the right things and to do these things more efficiently.12
Preferably, a good doctrine also makes the military organisation in question seem more attractive in the
eyes of their political masters, their voters and future military recruits. These are utilitarian
perspectives and doctrine should thus serve a purpose -- if it does not, it ought to be revised. Following
Høiback, doctrine serves as (1) a tool of education, (2) a tool of command, (3) a tool of change or (4) a
tool of signalling.13 Below, we outline advantages and disadvantages of evaluating doctrine according to
these purposes.

First, as a tool of education, doctrine should provide crucial knowledge that everybody in the military
organisation (or service) needs to have to perform their tasks in the event of war.14 In this regard, there
is a claim to be made that academic standards are fruitful and can serve as standards of quality for the
educational purposes of doctrine. In particular, since the doctrine needs to contain elements of
substance that members of the armed forces have to learn, it is quite clear that the doctrine should take
a pedagogical approach and be written in a style that is accepted by, and is accessible to, the profession
as a whole. Similarly, it needs a purposeful structure in order to put forward a convincing argument to
teach us something about such a complex phenomenon as war. The problem is that these criteria tell us
little of the contents of what is supposed to be learned, i.e. the ‘crucial knowledge’ mentioned above. In
order for doctrine to work as a force multiplier in this regard, surely, educating the armed forces to fight
its wars in a way that is successful ought to be an important quality criterion for doctrine as education.

Second, as a tool of command, doctrine should work to increase military cohesion and to enable a
higher degree of coordination among the armed forces.15 Inherent in such a view of doctrine is the
understanding that war is chaotic by nature and that military organisations are complex and potentially
unruly entities. Doctrines of this sort probably need to specifically address such demanding issues in a
coherent manner and provide detailed guidance on how forces should be effectively led and for what
aims. If the doctrine sends out mixed messages or fails to properly address the issues described, it is
difficult to maintain the idea that doctrine directs military action and increases cohesion and
coordination. Hence, one criterion ought to be that the doctrine is coherent, not least to further its
credibility. Moreover, the doctrine needs to be attuned to politics to work as guidance. Still, this does
not say anything about content. It may, of course, be coherent, but the idea that is promoted and
authorised by doctrine can be completely wrong when war breaks out.

Third, as a tool of change, doctrine should provide direction for the armed forces on how to transform
themselves and for what end.16 Accordingly, doctrine needs to prescribe a way forward and to present
a degree of ambition, and means and methods to get there. It also may need a description of the past
that one is trying to change or deviate from and to convey a motive -- a narrative -- of why change is
needed. If doctrine ought to function as a tool for transformation, this is clearly a requirement. Even if
one has just emerged victorious in war, moreover, it seems that you need an element of flexibility or at
least to open the possibility for future change because there are no guarantees that you will have the
time to rewrite doctrine if a war turns sour. As suggested by Michael Howard a few decades ago, we can
be certain that doctrine prepares us for the wrong war, but as long as it also prepares the armed
services to adapt and get it right in the end, it will be all right.17 Again this does not tell us anything
about what kind of change is required or the extent to which it is feasible. It may very well imply that
you change your armed forces in completely the wrong direction from what you should have
and consequently leave one’s armed forces in a worse situation than if no change had been
promoted in the first place.
Finally, as a tool of signalling, doctrine serves as a key vehicle for the military organisation’s
communication. This communication serves internal purposes insofar as it aims to increase the
attractiveness of the military organisation among politicians and the wider community. Service rivalry,
moreover, is often fierce and the competition for limited funds continuous, which means that a well-
written, rhetorically shrewd and purposeful doctrine may be an important instrument in protecting the
interests of a particular service or branch within the armed forces. Sometimes, in fact, service doctrines
are written, not because they are deemed necessary for any educational, command-related or
transformational reasons, but primarily because other services have written such documents and for the
political, pecuniary and public benefits they might bring.18 Consequently, a criterion for quality in this
regard may be the public impact or ‘approval rating’ that a doctrine can generate among the target
audience. The communication also serves external purposes insofar as it is part of the state’s wider
signalling -- for example, to credibly commit to a strategy of deterrence .

All things considered, the general problem with searching for quality standards for utilitarian rationalist
purposes, as shown above, is the lack of feedback mechanism. A political party, for example, in the run-
up to an election will get feedback from the electorate on its election campaign and election manifesto
through the ballot. For a military doctrine, there are problems with the corresponding mechanism ,
i.e. war . Wars are rare and complex and even if wars were plentiful it would be difficult to isolate the
cause of victory or defeat as being doctrine. Of course, there is research that has done this successfully
on single case studies but, there are problems involved in generalising these findings, since plenty
of doctrines are written that never become tested by the mechanism described.

The lack of feedback mechanism also points to another criticism of doctrine as a force multiplier. Since
we cannot know what kind of war the armed forces will be expected to wage in the future, it is difficult
to develop criteria that clearly evaluate whether or not the doctrine is any good before the war. The
reason for this inherent weakness is of course what Clausewitz and others have pointed out: wars are
interactive and neither of the combatants therefore controls the behaviour of its counterpart
completely.19 If, as this reasoning suggests, there is a Wechselwirkung between the opponents, it
implies that you cannot control events and make them predictable in advance -- and then devise
doctrine that meets the challenge. The inherent nature of war, therefore, makes doctrine less useful,
since it constantly threatens to make doctrinal guidelines irrelevant.
 2NC -- XT: War Testing Disad

Independent from the Text of their Interpretation, their Criteria and Standards for
Testing Deletes Military Doctrine Production
Instead Functionalist and Utilitarian Criteria is FATAL to Designing Military Doctrine --

The AFF’s “Focus… on the Effects of …Doctrinal Content, Rather than How We Measure Its Quality is
Based on the Rationalist Understanding of Doctrine as a Force Multiplier”

“However Rationalist Aims Do NOT Tell Us Anything About the Contents of Doctrine” “Hence [It Could]
Ultimately Impede or Lead Armed Forces Astray”

- That’s All QUOTES from Our Angstrom and Widen Evidence -- Which Continues to Say:

“The Main Problem with the Criteria… is that they Rely on Utilitarian Logic”

“Such Criteria for Assessing Doctrines are Particularly Ill-Suited to Conditions… of Warfare”

“Our Argument is that Deriving Quality Standards from Utilitarian, Rationalist Understanding of Doctrine
Suffers from a Lack of Feedback Mechanism that Can Provide… Quality Standards”

“Instead We Suggest that … to Derive… Standards from a Constructivist Interpretation… as a Set of

Beliefs”

“Rather than Focus on Utilitarian Side…” Our Alternative Suggests Doctrine Be Understood as Articles of
Faith or a Belief System” “Writing Doctrine Thus Becomes Part of Ritual Rather than Reason”

“The Most Fundamental Issue of this Debate is Whether We Understand Contents of Doctrine as Driven
By External, Rational Threat Calculations… OR Whether the Contents are Driven By Identity and Role
Expectations”

The Impact Outweighs -- Doctrine Design is Directly and Indirectly Key to Military Effectiveness --

(__). As a Tool of Command It Works to Maintain Cohesion and Coordination Among Forces

(__). As a Tool of Change It Provides Direction on How to Transform and Adapt to Threats

(__). As a Tool of Education It Provides Crucial Knowledge that Everybody in the Military Organization
Needs to Perform their Tasks in the Event of War

(__). As a Tool of Signaling It Serves to Communicate Internal and External Purposes for Example, to
Credibly Commit to a Strategy of Deterrence

(__). Doctrine Must Give Coherency to Simulations of War

(__). Doctrine Lends Utility to the Simulation

(__). Without Doctrine There’s No Baseline to Judge What Comes After

Posen, 2015. (Barry R. Posen, Professor of Political Science @ MIT, Director of the MIT Security
Studies Program, Executive Committee of Seminar XXI, Author of Three Books on Grand Strategy,
Military Doctrine, and War, Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, Rockefeller
Foundational International Affairs Fellow, Scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow, Smithsonian Institution, Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall
Fund, and Visiting Fellow at the John Sloan Dickey Center at Dartmouth College. “Foreword: Military
Doctrine and the Management of Uncertainty” Journal of Strategic Studies, Volume 39, Issue 2,
Published December 28. Taylor & Francis Online. [KevC])

Doctrine must lend some utility and coherence to the necessarily disjointed and partial peacetime
simulations of the rigors of war. It must strike a balance between the need for an ‘agreed way of war’ to
get the organization through the transition to conflict, and to fight the campaigns that follow, and the
need to be responsive both to the possibility of real change in the world, and the claims of change that
will be advanced by organization entrepreneurs and outside audiences. Without a doctrine at time T,
there is no baseline against which to judge what comes after .
 2NR -- XT: War-Testing Disad

A. Subpoint -- War-Testing -- their Model Leaves Theories of Victory and the Scenario
of War Un-Tested…

B. Subpoint -- Military Effectiveness…

 2NC -- War Testing -- Mili Sociology/Ontological Security DA
(__). Rationalist Understanding of Doctrine Undermines Ontological Security and
Collapses Military Sociology --
This is Because Instrumentality-Focus Deletes the Dimension of Military Sociology
Which Unravels Faith in the Organization -- Their Model Actively Forecloses
Cultivation of Affects -- the Shared Feelings of Devotion, Loyalty, and Honor-
Necessary for Cohesion, Recruitment, and Success of Military Units
(__). Only Our Framework Debates Military Sociology as a PRIOR Question --
Examining Military Identity and Norms Contributes to a Wider Field of Military
Sociology and Strategic Studies
“Rather than Identifying Measures of Quality Derived from the Utility of Doctrine as a
Force Multiplier in War, We Identify Measures of Quality Reinforcing Military Identity
and Providing Believers with Ontological Security” -- that’s a QUOTE from Our
Angstrom and Widen Evidence
 DA -- Military Sociology
Our Model is Competitive -- “Following this Interpretation” is Key to Military Cohesion
and Success --
**(__). Their Elimination of ‘Military Sociology’ Unravels the Organization

Angstrom and Widen, 2016. (Jan Angstrom, Professor of War Studies @ the Swedish Defence
University, Earned PhD from the Department of War Studies @ King’s College, Associate Professor at the
Department of Peace and Conflict Research @ Uppsala University; and JJ Widen, Associate Professor in
War Studies at the Swedish Defence University, Earned PhD in History from Abo Akademi University.
“Religion or Reason? Exploring Alternative Ways to Measure the Quality of Doctrine” The Journal of
Strategic Studies, Volume 39, No 2. Routledge Taylor & Francis. [KevC])

Quality and understanding doctrine as religion

In contrast to the rationalist framework , it is possible to understand and approach doctrine as a set of
beliefs or as a way of creating identity.20 Following this interpretation , it is possible to identify
alternative measures of quality that are practice oriented and have a different feedback mechanism
from war, i.e. one that can be tested against before the document is issued. In this section, we
elaborate on doctrine as religion and the alternative set of quality measures that follow from such an
understanding. In short, rather than identifying measures of quality derived from the utility of doctrine
as a force multiplier in war, we identify measures of quality reinforcing military identity and providing
believers with ontological security .

The word ‘doctrine’ itself is etymologically derived from religion and an authoritative interpretation of
the Holy Scriptures by the church. This connection is still relevant today. Doctrine often has a religious
and authoritarian character, setting forth articles of faith that members of the church (or members of
the armed forces) are supposed to believe in. Ideally, it should furthermore appeal to others and
convert non-believers into believers. Such articles of faith, while not completely beyond human reason
to question, function like a set of ideas that works best if everybody in the community believes in them
and works in unity to implement them. Sociologists of religion stretching back to Emile Durkheim and
Max Weber have stressed the unifying effect of religion in society and military doctrine can serve similar
purposes. If we follow Ernest Gellner’s definition of religion as articles of faith that answer ultimate and
existential questions that cannot be answered empirically or logically, there are clear similarities
between religion and military doctrine. Critically, doctrines direct future action without being able to
predict the future. These similarities make religion a more fruitful frame of reference for doctrine than
other sets of belief structures such as for example ideology, i.e. sets of ideas providing answers to how
society ought to be organised and governed. The similarities in this regard -- the belief system enables
action based on faith -- also make religion more fruitful than ideational structures in general.21

The doctrine may in and of itself not be sacred or divine, but it still alludes to logic of such things.
Perhaps most importantly, the doctrine provides ontological security for the military in a potential
future of making decisions about life and death under uncertain conditions. As in religion, believing in
the contents of doctrine provides strength and comfort when one faces hardship. While rationalism and
modern science offer doubt and alternative courses of action, religion provides the comfort of
faith. Understanding military doctrine as articles of faith implies that doctrine provides the practitioner
with the same certainty. It follows that soldiers and officers even consider the contents of doctrine to be
expressions and descriptions of reality. In this way, doctrine also subsumes the duality of religion as
both metaphorical and real. As in religion, sharing beliefs among a community is critical. Christianity
even attributes divine power to these shared beliefs. It is the Holy Spirit that operates in the community
when all believe. There is, of course, an immediate equivalent among the military insofar as an espirit de
corps -- shared feelings of devotion, loyalty, honour and pride to the same cause -- is considered
important for the cohesion and success of military units.

As religion, military doctrine also functions as a meaning-making device. If everybody believes, reality
will be created according to those very ideas. Challenging such faith, on the contrary, will work in
opposition to the wellbeing and aims of the community. From this, we can derive that the function of
doctrine is not to identify, for example, concentration of force at the decisive point as the guideline to
achieve victory, but rather to declare that ‘this is what we believe in’. The way future operations are
conducted will not necessarily follow from these guidelines, but we have faith in these guidelines
nevertheless. It is this shared faith that our identity is composed of. This suggests that a doctrine is of
high quality if it adheres to and resonates with pre-existing and dominant patterns of ideas of what the
armed forces are about, how it ought to conduct its day-to-day activities as well as major operations,
and what it means to belong to the military.

As religion, military doctrine may also be viewed as an expression of identity, a document that sets forth
military ideas that enhance a collective sense of belonging to a specific military organisation, branch of
the armed forces or the officer profession as a whole. Accepting the principles that are stipulated in the
doctrine, or even feeling a certain connection to them, brings an individual officer or service member
closer to the community of military professionals. Accordingly, doctrines and their messages are ‘true’
mainly in a ‘subjective sense’, turning the individual member into a collective member of something
greater, a community with traditions, honour and a sense of purpose. Without doctrine, they are mere
state officials in charge of protecting the nation from foreign aggressors. As religion, military doctrine
also signals a hierarchy, thus providing a sense of self in this wider community. The hierarchy is
important to establish also from the perspective of who that has the right to interpret the articles of
faith. As many nonliteral interpretations of religion, military doctrine is understood to guide rather than
immediately determine courses of action. This calls for ascribing someone the right to interpret the
doctrine authoritatively.

If we think of doctrine as religion, the measure of success (and in effect quality) is rather how successful
doctrines are in making the participants feel like they belong in an exclusive group of like-minded
individuals, i.e. the sharing of a certain set of principles. Within such a perspective or framework it is
relevant to ask to what extent we are asking the wrong question, in regard to standards of quality. Here,
it may not be quality at all that makes doctrine-writing teams end their contemplation, lay down their
pencils and declare the doctrine finalised and complete. Instead, it may well be the case that what
matters for a doctrine is not the quality of its content, but rather whether the doctrine is legitimate or
not. If so, we end up in a reductionist position that whatever is accepted and being given consent in the
military organisation is the most important criterion of its relative degree of success. A doctrine, in
short, can be dead wrong, flawed and poorly written from an outsider’s perspective, but yet firmly
established and indeed hailed as being supreme as long as it conforms to practice and the expectations
of doctrine that are shared among the practitioners. The problem with legitimacy or authority as
criterion then is that they are not necessarily measures of quality. This signals that doctrine is about
something else. It is about articles of faith and the sense of identity it provides. As such, doctrine
becomes intensely political by nature and very hard to criticise by any academic or utilitarian standards.

The role of criticism is particularly interesting in this regard. In a utilitarian setting, criticism has a natural
role, since it serves as the driver of improvement. Any critique therefore that improves practices,
organisation, ways of war, or planning procedures ought to be welcomed in organisations that strive for
efficiency and utility. In military organisations, however, criticism partly plays a different role and this
proves that the organisation is not primed for efficiency only, but rather serves as the embodiment of a
certain set of beliefs. Rather than being the motor of improvement, criticism in military organisations
tends to partly rely on the logic of efficiency, but also on what has been called a logic of officers’ career
systems or even a perceived logic of hierarchy needed for the purposes of war-fighting.22 The latter, in
particular, suggests that criticism may be downright dangerous, since it implies that something could be
done differently, i.e. that the articles of faith should be doubted. Criticism and disbelief, in turn, can be
construed as disobeying orders and disrupting the chain of command. From this perspective, criticism
does not improve the organisation, but is a sign of its demise. It is evidence of heretics in the
organization.

These traits are rather apparent when one considers the reluctance many military students feel (in our
experience) about criticising a document signed by the supreme commander or any other senior military
commander. ‘Why criticise it’, they often utter, ‘when it is signed by our highest military authority! He
must surely have a good reason for writing as he does. Who are we to question these instructions and
description of events?’ When instructed in class to ignore these feelings, however, and coached by
another authority (the professor or military teacher) to read the doctrine with critical eyes and in terms
of different forms of utility, the military students often excel in finding faults with the doctrinal text at
hand. But this critical examination would hardly take place at all, or at least not reach such a high level
of focused scrutiny, if it were not initiated and encouraged in an educational setting. Articles of faith
from a supreme military authority, set forth in a document seemingly produced to enhance a sense of
belonging, are thus hard for a participating member to question, at least intuitively. In this way doctrine
resembles religious texts.

From this perspective, there is a danger that the community of followers become indoctrinated in the
negative sense of the word, i.e. not capable of thinking independently. Although too harsh to describe
most Western modern military contexts, Richard Dawkins’s religious critique is not too far-fetched to
describe military organisations in other contexts. Dawkins contends that ‘one of the truly bad effects of
religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding’. 23 Translated into
the military context, this implies that the existence of doctrine may not provide incentives to critically
scrutinise and improve our knowledge. It is doctrine in the sense of authoritarian guidance that the
leadership wants the members of the community to acknowledge, absorb and accept. Indeed, this
implies one of the great dangers of doctrine. If it indoctrinates believers into not challenging what is
taken for granted, it fosters inertia and creates great danger of cognitive dissonance if the war pans out
in a way not expected and predicted by doctrine.

Conclusions In this article we have attempted to develop ideas useful for the practice of writing
doctrine. Doctrines are hugely important documents and shaping doctrine is widely regarded as a
central task involving both the higher echelons of the armed forces as well as the political
leadership. Doctrines are generally understood to direct military organisations in their operations as well
as shape their future force structure and thus be a motor for transformation into a successful
organisation adapted for future war. Doctrines are also important in terms of the identity of military
organisations and possibly more important for the military organisation’s degree of cohesion and sense
of purpose. From this perspective, understanding and shaping quality standards of doctrine become
even more important.

Specifically, we have elaborated on various quality standards for military doctrines. How do we know
that one doctrine is good, while others are not? We have found utilitarian quality measures of doctrine
wanting. In particular, since we cannot evaluate whether or not the contents of doctrine were good at
the time of writing -- presumably before a war -- it is difficult to develop quality standards for utilitarian
purposes. Indeed, the whole enterprise of writing an explicit, official doctrine is somewhat paradoxical,
since it provides potential adversaries with information about how you intend to conduct a war. Such
information can of course provide adversaries with knowledge that places the adversary in an
advantageous position.

Instead, we have suggested that doctrine should be understood less as a force multiplier and more as
religious texts spelling out articles of faith. Following from this understanding, we can derive a different
set of quality standards that are more fruitful for doctrine-writing as a professional practice. Such
standards are legitimacy, identity, creating a sense of belonging, and providing ontological security .
Most importantly in this regard, it is more fruitful to approach the quality of doctrine as perceptions of
quality. On the one hand, this applies to perceptions of the task and role of the armed forces, how the
armed forces ought to behave and the identity of the armed forces. On the other hand, it also applies to
perceptions of the doctrine writers about the quality of doctrines. While beyond the scope of this
article, a way forward would be to systematically map what the practitioners who write doctrine think of
as quality standards? Taking the issue back to the practical realm from where the question emanated
has several advantages: it opens the possibility of developing empirical research and it opens a new
venue in which to investigating the limits of what we can call the specialised professional knowledge of
officers. Empirical research on the perception of quality of doctrine could also open a new way to
examine variation in professional military identity and norms and thus contribute to the wider field of
military sociology and strategic studies.
 DA -- Organizational Structure
The Organizational Structure of their Model Guarantees Collapse through Internal
Conflict and Circumvention
Posen, 2015. (Barry R. Posen, Professor of Political Science @ MIT, Director of the MIT Security
Studies Program, Executive Committee of Seminar XXI, Author of Three Books on Grand Strategy,
Military Doctrine, and War, Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, Rockefeller
Foundational International Affairs Fellow, Scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow, Smithsonian Institution, Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall
Fund, and Visiting Fellow at the John Sloan Dickey Center at Dartmouth College. “Foreword: Military
Doctrine and the Management of Uncertainty” Journal of Strategic Studies, Volume 39, Issue 2,
Published December 28. Taylor & Francis Online. [KevC])

Approaches to organizational analysis

Broadly speaking, there are two major theoretical perspectives in the study of large organizations. The
more traditional approach may be called ‘Structural’, and stresses the organization’s overriding
commitment to a rational pursuit of formal purpose. A second school may be termed ‘Human
Relations’, and stresses the variability of human beings, and their natural propensity to seek, from their
lives inside the organization, rewards that may have little connection to the pursuit of formal
purpose.2 Both perspectives highlight sources of uncertainty, which organizations strive to reduce.

2 Mauro F. Guillen, Models of Management, Work, Authority, and Organization in Comparative

Perspective (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 10–11. Guillen actually cites a third school,
‘Scientific Management’. The third school, although influential in the management world, largely
evolved with reference to the factory floor management of production workers. Guillen chronicles the
evolution of ‘management’ theory, and divides it into these three schools. Management theory is,
however, closely related to organization theory, and indeed claims many of the same theorists as its
own. Management theory is distinguished by its instrumental rather than analytic concerns. Guillen’s
intellectual history and his typology of theories is developed from the viewpoint of managers, and is
especially concerned with production. But it is a very useful work from the more general perspective of
organization theory.

View all notes

The structural approach

Formal organizations arrange people and physical resources for the mass production of
rationality.3 Organizations are established to ensure that some purpose is regularly and systematically
pursued on a large scale. Purpose or function is therefore the principal driver of the organization’s
structure and its processes. Over time, a rational distribution of power and authority within the
organization is developed to pursue these purposes. The organization’s managers carefully consider the
‘best way’ to accomplish sub-tasks, often on the basis of hard won experience. Because resources are
inevitably scarce, decisions are influenced by ‘cost-benefit’ calculations. The ‘best way’ is locked in
through the evolution of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and more elaborate programs
that combine SOP’s in standard routines or patterns. New members are trained in these programs, and
are promoted on the basis of their mastery. A record is maintained of the organization’s accumulated
wisdom, and this record is often consulted. Even when the organization encounters contingencies for
which its programs and SOPs may be inappropriate, it first looks to its own experience.

The biggest barrier to the rational achievement of purpose is uncertainty. Uncertainty may arise from
the people within the organization, or from the environment outside the organization. The organization
wants to control as many sources of uncertainty as possible in order to protect its ability to act
rationally. Modern organization theorists have long since abandoned the notion that people are
perfectly rational, and also perfectly controllable. Rationality is understood to be bounded, which is one
of the reasons why so much attention must be paid to the distribution of power and authority in the
organizations, to the evolution of programs and SOPs, and to the careful socialization of organizational
leaders. The structure thus evolved ensures that the purpose will be pursued, but at the same time it
makes the organization difficult to change. Resistance to innovation is an unintended consequence both
of the organization’s reason for being, and the limitations of human capacity.

The organization’s environment presents a host of other kinds of uncertainties. An organization’s ability
to execute its own programs and SOPs can be disrupted by others. For example, organizations depend
on contributions from the environment to survive. They act to protect and normalize the flow of those
contributions as best they can. Government bureaucracies spend considerable time trying to protect
their budget shares. Historically, large businesses have often colluded to divide markets. Businesses
today try to have very close relationships with their suppliers, to ensure that the materials or sub-
assemblies they need will be available when needed, in the necessary quantities, and appropriate
quality. Still other kinds of uncertainty arise from the necessity to cooperate with other organizations,
whose behavior cannot be controlled.

Uncertainties may arise from the fact that others have some kind of formal authority over you. In
western democracies, political authorities, whether in the executive or legislative branches may have
the ability to reach deep into the organization’s business to try to achieve peculiar ends. If this happens
too often, and too successfully, a bureaucracy will soon find rationality to be
impossible. Thus bureaucracies try to preserve their autonomy from outside authority.

Organizations may also face basic ambiguity about cause–effect relationships. This is the hardest kind of
uncertainty for formal organizations committed to rationality. Organizations may be able to rationalize
internal processes but they still may not quite understand how to make things happen in the world.
Indeed, in the end they may not know how to achieve the organization’s purpose at all. So they imagine
what might contribute to the purpose and rationalize that.

The Human organization

The Human Relations school takes as its starting point that people simply are not cogs in the
machine. This is not only a consequence of the limits to rationality discussed above. Rather, humans are
complicated. They want more from organizations than remuneration. Some people are in the
organization for money or power, others because they believe deeply in its purposes, and still others
because they simply like being part of a team, they like associating with other people. Often, people
have mixed motives. Executives must understand the full range of reasons people ‘cooperate’ in an
organization, and manipulate these reasons to get them to work toward the common goal. The formal
authority of organizational leaders can only be exercised though a kind of systematic campaign to
manipulate these various incentives. Whether or not managers understand this, the humans in the
organization will either find a way to bend the organization in the direction of providing the satisfactions
that they want, or expend much energy in the effort. Like the organization as a whole, individuals may
struggle to create their own little islands of autonomy. They may try to reduce uncertainty for
themselves. They protect themselves from organizational managers, and the authority they wield. All of
this individual self-protection can become a barrier to the pursuit of organizational purpose.
 2NC-- XT: Organizational Structure
Their Advocacy is Wedded to an Organizational Structure that Guarantees Failure and
Inevitable Collapse --
(__). We Have Separate Links to Form and Content of the AFF --

Impacts --
Internal Conflict -- Resistance to Innovation/ Promotes Self-Protection/ Fragments
Interoperability

Circumvention -- Formal Authority/ Desire for Circumvention Inevitable

 DA -- Theories of Victory
Their Model Forecloses Development of “New Theories of Victory” at the Level of
Both Form and Content
(__). Instead Our Model Reconfigures Debate as Incubator and Network for Advocacy– These “Need Not
Be Singularly Instrumental” to Allow for Testing of “New Theories of Victory”

Jensen, 2016. (Benjamin Jensen, Associate Professor @ Marine Corps University at Quantico, Scholar-
in-Residence at American University School of International Service. “Escaping the Iron Cage: the
Institutional Foundations of FM 3-24. Counterinsurgency Doctrine” The Journal of Strategic Studies,
Volume 39, Issue 2. Taylor & Francis Online. [KevC])

While the idea of ‘gaining hearts and subduing minds’ is neither new nor novel, it stands in stark
contrast to a post-Vietnam American Army built to fight armored wars. This observation presents a
dilemma. Military organizations are deeply entrenched bureaucracies. While the structure
of bureaucracy provides the controls and procedures necessary to command large armies, it also tends
to lock-in particular processes and ways of thinking about war. Big structures created deep habits. This
standardization implies modern military bureaucracies should resist change.4 These organizations --
bundles of rituals, standard operating procedures, mandates, and bureaucrats focused on turf and
budgets -- tend to adapt either incrementally or in response to threats to their autonomy.5 The question
then is, what enables military officers to escape their iron cage?

This essay argues that doctrinal change requires incubators, informal subunits established outside the
hierarchy, and advocacy networks championing new concepts that emerge from
incubators. Ranging from special study groups to war games, test beds and field exercises, incubators
provide a safe space for experimentation and the construction of new operational concepts. Incubators
form sites where officers engage in what scholar-practitioner Thomas Mahnken calls speculation,
a search ‘to identify novel ways to solve existing operational problems’. 6 These concepts, along lines
similar to other essays in this volume, become the foundation of new doctrine articulating a theory of
how to fight and win future conflicts.

While the network of military and civilian practitioners who advocated for a new counterinsurgency
doctrine is neither a revolutionary nor transformative change, it is an episode of adaptation of interest
to scholars and policy makers concerned with understanding military reform . Professional soldiers
require these safe spaces to visualize new forms of warfare. Outside the formal hierarchy, they provide
a space where officers are free from routines and bias that crowd out the space for
innovation.7 Advocacy networks represent crosscutting institutional networks that diffuse these
concepts throughout the broader defense community. These networks connect different constituents in
the bureaucracy and infect them with new ideas that officers would otherwise reject . New doctrine
requires forums where officers (re)imagine war and networks along which they can tell their story.

[CONTINUED…] Incubators and advocacy networks This paper argues that a key aspect of overcoming
organizational inertia is the formation of incubators. Innovation requires creating new forums or
subunits free from the normal push and pull of the bureaucratic hierarchy where professional military
officers are free to visualize new theories of victory. These new spaces contribute to organizational
change along two axes. First, incubators enable officers to search for new ways to understand a
problem.16 Articulating new action repertoires and standard scenarios generates rational incentives to
innovate. Time pressure and goal clarity, moments in which senior leaders pressure subordinates and
link the incubator to core missions and mandates, further catalyze these incentives.17 The design of
organizations affects their capacity for change.

Second, by charting incubators to study different ways of war, military professionals increase
organizational complexity. Research from organizational sociology highlights how increases in
complexity, in terms of both the division of labor and types of structures present in the organization, are
held to increase rates of innovation.18 In military organizations, generating new theories of victory
starts with increasing the diversity of voices and types of studies circulating the corridors of power. This
implies not only the design, but also micro-level processes associated with disseminating information,
determine the capacity of an organization to innovate.

Introducing new theories of victory developed in incubators into the broader organization requires the
presence of advocacy networks that circulate and legitimate emerging ideas. Advocacy networks are
loose coalitions of defense and civilian officials championing new reform initiatives.19 Multiple military
innovation studies emphasize the importance of understanding how alliances between senior and mid-
level officers influence patterns of adaption and change.20 The establishment of U.S. Special Operations
Command (SOCOM) in 1987 provided a forum for officers to collaborate and new career paths.21 An
alliance between senior officers and mid-level bureaucrats enabled the development of the cruise
missile.22

Like any other bureaucracy, an army has various internal and external constituents that benefit from a
particular mode of warfare. These networks need not be singularly instrumental and driven by the
projected distribution of resources. Advocacy may also emerge from the concatenation of particular
threat definitions and implied response repertoires proclaimed by various groups of actors. A
professional duty, an operative code of conduct, to maximize the national interest, holds these groups
together.23

Senior leaders act like norm entrepreneurs.24 They compete with one another to articulate new
theories of victory through networks cutting across the organization in order to define the reform
agenda. Therefore, regardless of the form, advocacy networks act as positive feedback loops
legitimating particular configurations of innovation. They act to bridge intraservice reform agendas with
broader national security imperatives. As they connect various actors, these networks circulate and
narrate new theories of victory.
 2NC -- XT: Theories of Victory
Their Model Forecloses Development of “New Theories of Victory” at the Level of Both Form and
Content

Put Simply, Plan-Focus Criteria Undermines the Incubation of New Theories of Victory -- These Networks
Need NOT Be Singularly Instrumental -- that’s a QUOTE from Our Jensen Evidence --

Instead Our Model Reconfigures Debate as Incubator and Network for Advocacy,

Military Planners Must Be Free to Debate the Theoretical Underpinnings on their Own Terms -- This
Means the Cultivation of New Ideas that Officers Would Otherwise Reject --

This Independently Outweighs -- the Plan Might Never Happen, But New Theories of Victory Directly Get
Taken Up in the Network of Military Studies to Deal with Future Conflicts, Articulating a Theory of How
to Fight and Win is Crucial

(__). Scenario Planning is NOT Responsive to this Disad, Even IF their Model Tests the Scenario of War,
their Approach is Incapable of Testing Variations in Different Theories of Victory that Animate the
Scenario --
 DA -- Realism
Their Model Accelerates the Collapse of Realism and Allows for Liberal Takeover
(__). Ignoring the Role of Discourse and Aesthetics within International Relations Makes Realism
Susceptible to Liberal Take-Over --

Bleiker, 97. (Roland Bleiker, Professor of International Relations @ Queensland Brisbane. Aesthetics
and World Politics. Palgrave MacMillan. [KevC]) pg.5-6)

The prevalence of realist ideologies in the theory and practice of international relations can serve as an illustration. Realism
has become
so entrenched that we no longer recognise the particular and inevitably subjective positions from where
they emanated. By realism I mean not only the positions associated with the realist school of
international relations, but also the more fundamental assumption that we are able to understand and
represent the realities of world politics independently of our values and assumptions. While I use realism here as an
illustration of such broad positivist assumptions, the same attitude underlines most other prevailing approaches to

international relations scholarship, such as liberalism and constructivism. Policy-makers, likewise, often
assume that we are somehow able to capture the facts of world politics without having to interpret
them. This is why liberal and open-minded diplomats, such as the former US Secretary of Defence William Perry, frequently evoke the realist dictum that we
need to understand the world ‘as it is, not as we might wish it to be’, and that this position necessitates a ‘realist view, a hard-headed understanding of
military realities’.11 We are herd animals. We often take the path of least linguistic resistance. This is why we
have rehearsed the realist mantra to the point where, as Nietzsche once put it, ‘we start to lye herd-like
in a style obligatory to all’.12 We easily forget, for instance, that the language of realism only appears
clear and realistic because we have acquired familiarity with it. Abstract realist concepts like realpolitik, balance of
power, national interest and security dilemma are not clear and intelligible by some objective standard, but only because

they have been rehearsed, time and again, as part of a system of shared meanings that channels our
thinking into particular directions. But these concepts do, in fact, reflect an entire system of thought -- a
system that embodies and at the same time masks a series of inherently subjective political judgements
and assumptions. This is not to say that realist ways of conceptualising politics are wrong. Realism is a
highly sophisticated and diverse body of literature and knowledge. It is certainly far more complex than my brief and
necessarily stereotypical sketch here can portray.13 The problem is that realist insights , compelling as they are , have been

elevated to the status of common sense , so much so that they are no longer recognised as the
inevitably partial and historically contingent interpretations they are . The same powerful construction
of common sense is visible in liberalism, which has re-emerged in a particularly powerful manner since the
end of the ColdWar. Numerous peacekeeping and peace-building interventions around the world , from Bosnia

to East Timor and Iraq, are shaped by strong liberal policy preferences . These preferences have been
advanced with such a strong realist sense of righteousness that they are no longer recognised as
a rather particular -- and inherently subjective -- approach to solving conflict. Oliver Richmond is among the growing
number of scholars who convincingly demonstrate how liberal approaches to international peace missions tend to impose a

top-down strategy that promotes individual human rights, elections and institution-building in a manner
that often marginalises local needs and cultural practices. The result is all too often growing
resentment and new conflicts .14 Just as I did with realism, I am inevitably simplifying the complex nature and sophisticated diversity of liberalism.
But this is irrelevant, at least in the present context, for all I want to do is underline a basic but very important point: that no matter how

sophisticated they may be, all theories, including realism and liberalism, are not beyond contention, nor
are they as unequivocally ‘realistic’ as their proponents would claim. Nietzsche would say that ‘all things
that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their origin in unreason thereby becomes
improbable’.15 By placing their insights beyond contestation, realism and liberalism make it very difficult,
if not impossible, to identify the many instances where their own values have generated the types of
conflicts they seek to analyse and solve . Nor does the strong prevalence of realist and liberal values
throughout all aspects of life today allow enough space to explore and validate viable alternatives .
 2NC -- XT: Realism
Their Model Guarantees Collapse of Realism -- Ignoring the Role of Discourse and Aesthetics within
International Relations Makes Realism Susceptible to Liberal Take-Over --

Extend Our Bleiker Evidence -- Their Epistemological Commitments Cede Realism Over to Liberal
Factions - “By Placing their Insights Beyond Contestation” they Make it “Impossible to Identify” How
“Their Own Values Have Generated the Types of Conflict they Seek to Analyze and Solve”
2NC: Designing Military Doctrine K -- A2: AFF is Sensitive to Complexity/ Blended Approach is the AFF/
Our Authors are Based on Accurate Theories

The 1AC is NOT a Blended Approach to Knowledge-Production Because they ONLY Adopt a Plan-Focus
Model that is Singularly Instrumental --

They’re Conflating Content with Form -- The AFF is a Blended Approach at the Level of Content, But NOT
at the Level of Form -- At Best, the Content of their 1AC Might Defend a Blended Approach BUT their
Framework Interpretation and Model Never Permits a Debate Over the Blend of Paradigms that
Surround and Contextualize the Plantext

Even In the Instances Where their Model Does Asses the Links, the Criteria Adopted by their
Interpretation to Measure the Alternative Guarantees Test Failure and Eliminates Military Doctrine --
Utilitarian Criteria Makes Doctrinal Change Impossible, Because It Fails to Measure Qualitative Theories
and It Discounts Organizational Structure -- That’s Our Angstrom and Widen Evidence

They are the Worst of Both Worlds -- Of Course their Authors Employ Methods and Paradigms, YET their
Framework Makes it Off-Limits, Because it Bars Any Critique of those Link-Sites and Leaves the Meta-
Level Issue Inadequately Tested -- Instead, Military Design Must Be a Prior Question at the Level of
Military Planning Scholarship --

This Means Our Alternative Model of Debate Solves Your Offense But NOT Vice-Versa -- It’s Not a
Question of EITHER Design OR Planning, But Rather It’s a Sequencing Claim -- Military Design Works as a
Prior Question BEFORE Planning --

And, Their Plea to Start By Weighing the Plan Only Magnifies the Problem -- It’s Incoherent to Let the
AFF Presume Solvency Against an Internal Criticism of the Theories and Concepts Employed to Access
that Solvency -- Put Simply, Our Offense Comes First Because the Variables and Inputs for their Scenarios
Rely on Flawed Assumptions Which Fatally Corrupts the Output -- This Internal Link Turns their Scenario-
Analysis Offense, Because their Model Trains Military Planners for Failure with False Positives and
Harmful Assumptions About Warfighting
 2NC -- AT: We’re Complexity/Our Predictions Accurate

Not Responsive -- We Didn’t Read the Complexity K of Predictions, But Rather a Kritik of Planning and
How they Stitched Together the Various Claims and Cards to Determine the Plan

The Difference is Crucial: This Link is NOT About Any Single Prediction, But Rather It’s About the Logic
that Assembles or Attaches them to the Plan --

Put Simply, Each of their Predictions Can Be Accurate But the Pedagogy for How they Fit Together the
Components Uses a Reductionist Logic and Teaches Failure

This Turns their (_____) Offense --

Reductionist Logic Reverts Complex Information into Over-Simplifications -- In Other Words, their Model
Actively De-Values the Lessons Learned By their Various Authors Because It Cannot Adequately
Approach the Meta-Level Issues–

Prefer the Specificity of Our Zweibelson and Jackson Evidence -- In the Context of Military Planning, This
Corrupts the Pedagogical Software Needed to Uptake Complexity --
Blocks
 2NC -- Turns Case
Turns Case -- Reductionist Approach Ensures Cascading Failure
Zweibelson, 2015. (Major Ben Zweibelson, INSERT QUALS. “RESEARCH REVIEW One Piece at a Time:
Why Linear Planning and Institutionalisms Promote Military Campaign Failure” Defence Studies, Volume
15, Issue 4. Taylor & Francis Online, December. [KevC])

The recent strategic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan for military coalitions illustrate that we have
significant problems with understanding how and why we plan military campaigns in ways that over
time demonstrate ineffectiveness and confusion. Arguably, we may not realize why we construct
insufficient campaign plans because we are not even aware of our cognitive behaviors. This article
critically charges that our entire approach to understanding conflict and our subsequent military
planning methodologies stem from highly limited yet deeply cherished conceptual models that operate
behind the scenes. We hardly realize them, yet they dominate our very understanding of how we
imagine the world functions. With military campaign plans, our centralized hierarchies, linear causality
reasoning, and other significant sociological forces send us into cycles of poor planning along with
institutional blinders that resist critical reflection on why we are failing.

Introduction In 1976…Johnny Cash was singing the last of his songs to hit number one on the country
charts. Its title was One Piece at a Time. It told the story of a fellow from Kentucky who moved to
Detroit in the 1940s to work for GM. It wasn’t long before he realized that, on his wages, he would never
be able to afford one of the Cadillacs to which he spends his days attaching wheels. Like a lot of brilliant,
yet budget-strapped folks before him, he hits upon a novel solution to his problem. He and a co-worker
decide to build their own Cadillac by removing one piece at a time from the factory. [T]he project that
began in 1949 wasn’t completed until 1973. Cash refers to the finished vehicle as a ‘psychobilly Cadillac.’
It has a ’53 transmission, a ’73 engine, a single tail fin, and three headlights, two on one side of the car.
Wilson (2014)

There will be plenty of arguments on the institutional failures of the Iraqi and Afghan conflicts in the
coming years. Many will focus on individuals, some on cultures or politics, while fewer seek to tackle the
deeper philosophical and organizational flaws in military approach to planning. This is one of those
articles. I intend to demonstrate that our entire approach to understanding conflict and our subsequent
military planning methodologies stem from highly limited yet deeply cherished conceptual models that
operate behind the scenes. We hardly realize them, yet they dominate our very understanding of how
we imagine the world functions (Hatch and Yanow 2008, p. 23). We have a serious institutional problem
with our own logic, and we employ flawed strategy to subsequent operational and tactical applications
in ways that become systemically entrenched throughout a conflict. No matter how brilliant the
leadership seems or how rich the resources offered, we tend to plan things beyond short term poorly,
and over time reinforce planning failures with institutionalisms revolving around self-interests (Builder
1989, pp. 11–19). Why does this happen?

First, we need to break away from the tactical minutia of assigning blame to a particular military or
elected leader, or drilling down into a specific battle where if things had gone differently, a linked chain
of events might have resulted in a staggering victory for us. Witch hunts will not fix overarching military
cultural and organizational failings; they simply distract us with straw men and fall guys that create
another temporary illusion of “progress and change.” We instead need to move to abstract levels, and
consider some philosophical and organizational concepts beyond even our strategy, as our strategy
forms upon these deeper constructs. To do this fairly, I will introduce some distinct language and
concepts that are likely unfamiliar to military audiences. Metaphors shall also abound here, starting with
variations upon the classic Johnny Cash country song introduced in the opening citation (Gerhart and
Russell 1984, p. 113, Bousquet and Curtis 2001, p. 56, Paparone 2008, p. 56).
 2NC -- Turns Case
Turns Case -- It’s Harmful and Counter-Productive Planning
Zweibelson, 2017. (Major Ben Zweibelson, Program Director for Design and Innovation @ the Joint
Special Operations University, Doctoral Student @ Lancaster University, Retired US Army Infantry
Officer, Veteran of Iraq & Afghanistan, Lectures Across the USSOCOM, DoD, and US Government, Design
Conference Ambassador for the IMDC, Lectured on Design @ the Polish and Danish War Colleges,
Canadian Forces College, NATO Schools @ Oberammergau, the National Counterterrorism Center, the
IBM Capstone SPADE Conference for NATO @ Copenhagen, as Well as Numerous Special Operations and
Strategic Level Defense Assets. “The Military Design Movement: Drifting Towards Embracing Uncertainty
and Transformation in Complex Environments” OverTheHorizon Journal, Multi-Domain Operations &
Strategy. January 20, Online. [KevC])
Over the past few decades, the international military community has incorporated a multi-disciplinary approach that breaks from traditional
and largely mechanistic decision-making methodologies of the Industrial Era. Some have termed this a ‘post-industrial’ or ‘post-structural’ age
or era. Others apply ‘post-modern’ despite the contradictions inherent in applying that term to label a period or era after the modernist one.
This is where multiple theorists and military professionals hailing from a diverse mix of disciplines and fields attempt to explain how the world
and the nature of war appears to be changing. More importantly, these different discourses also attempt to make sense of why accepted
and traditional military decision-making and planning methodologies alone are inadequate or even
harmful to military endeavors in this new confusing environment. I would offer that the emerging multi-disciplinary
process known as ‘military design’ or simply ‘design thinking’ is quickly gaining international military interest. It really is not a field, or a single
methodology; design appears to be a cognitive vessel or container that stretches to include some incredible blends and hybrids of seemingly
incompatible theories, processes, language, and methods.

A blend of complexity theory, alternative managerial theory (change management), instructional design,
and post-modern philosophy forms just some of this strange and new context for the 21st century
military practitioner. The term ‘bricolage’ applies here, in that a practitioner might grab a handful of whatever is close at hand, and
experiment with novel combinations therein. Think of improvisational jazz musicians working on the corner of a cafe where there is no sheet
music, and the musicians are experimenting along a shared beat while playing out new combinations. This is not akin to formal campaign design
or traditional military planning, which suits the metaphor of an orchestra with sheet music, rehearsals, and the desire to synchronize everyone
to attain conformity and reliability. Both musical groups accomplish different things; one produces a reliable and uniform pattern for the ear,
while the other risks failure to experiment with constantly new combinations and avoid repeating the same performance. Perhaps in the
swirling and overwhelmingly complex conflict environments of this new post-Industrial or ‘Information Age’ of social media, drones, flash mobs,
3D printers, and trans-regional networks wielding near-IOP capabilities of nation states, there is a shift from seeking sheet music processes in
war towards something new? Could an organization blend orchestras with jazz trios, tailoring military thought and action in an adaptive and
fluid manner that places the right sense making process at the disposal of the Commander and staff instead of seeking to force the
environment into the model we wish to use? Is there a paradigm shift afoot in warfare for the 21st century? While
the traditional
military establishment initially resisted this paradigm shift towards a more fluid and normative (how the
military ought to perform within complex adaptive conflicts) warfare methodologies, by 2016 multiple
militaries have incorporated or expanded professional education, doctrine, and research into military
design thinking.
Anglo-Saxon (as well as western and non-western) Armed Forces are all adapting within this new context of a shifting and transformative post-
Cold War Era, albeit in different ways due to culture, ideologies, politics, and ideas. Many militaries have already gone through major revisions,
doctrinal transformation, and mission realignment within this turbulent and uncertain period. Nonetheless, international, regional, and local
emergent threats and new rivals will continue to seek vulnerabilities to exploit; the dominant military decision-making and organizational
management processes (turning strategy into tactical execution) is nonexempt. Each
military (as well as each service) has the
opportunity to implement military design thinking into a uniquely self-reflective adaptation for their
Armed Forces, within institutional as well as NATO and Allied contexts, for long-term military cultural
transformation as well as critical innovation. Additionally, seeking ‘one design ring to rule them all’ in a
single uniform design methodology for all Armed Forces is inherently dangerous and counterproductive
for what military design stands for. Design comes in many flavors, tribes, and forms. However, I would offer that all military
design possesses have three key ingredients. First, there is a strong element of reflective practice, or ’thinking
about how one thinks’ and ‘why does our organization do this?” Critical thinking about the details alone
is not enough; one must consider beyond the structure into the sociology, organizational theory, and
even philosophy. Or, a fish never thinks about the water it is in until it is out of the water; a military tends to ignore
institutional processes until it suffers significant failure. Design contains a healthy dose of critical
reflection.

Second, design
also includes a strong element of innovation, divergent thinking, and tolerance for
experimentation and increased risk. Risk here is not about throwing lives and resources at a dangerous situation or anything
literal. Instead, an organization that stretches the boundaries of what is possible (normative thinking) invokes risk. Increasing opportunities,
experimenting with novel combinations, and applying new connections to ideas, tools, and relationships leads to increased risk as well as
divergent thinking. Risk in divergent thinking is different than risk in convergent processes, where the reduction of risk is the objective.

Lastly, design
includes a high tolerance for uncertainty coupled with the awareness that organizational
transformation (the development of new forms, new content, and new ideas) will always occur in war.
Like a shark in water, an organization that does not swim forward in cognitive transformation and exploration will die. Again, for design to
create the conditions for novel and innovative opportunities for a military to accomplish objectives within complex conflict environments, the
military design approach must feature all three of these elements in some manner. All existing military
design methodologies (as well as civilian-oriented ones) exhibit these, and the primary structural and
organizational distinctions between various military design models consists of institutional, cultural, and
methodological nuances.
 2NC -- Turns Case -- 98% Failure
Turns Case -- 98% Failure Rate
McCauley, 2015- (Daniel McCauley, serving as a faculty member with National Defense University’s
Joint and Combined Warfighting School, has served in several course director and curriculum
development capacities. “Failing With Single-Point Solutions: Systems Thinking For National Security,”
Small Wars Journal, 9/29/2015, http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/failing-with-single-point-solutions-
systems-thinking-for-national-security, [DKP])

I have a problem with the Sunday morning political talk shows that our nation’s leaders use as a testing
ground for solutions to the challenges, issues, and problems besetting the US on a regular basis. My
problem is not that I watch the shows, but when I do indulge I have a hard time understanding the
simple, linear, reductionist explanations of experts that offer predictable and comfortable responses to
complex issues. Terrorism, nation-state bankruptcies, stock market crashes, humanitarian disasters,
invasions through proxies, nuclear and technology proliferation, and transnational criminal organizations
are just a few of the more recent headlines that all experts agree are undermining US national security.
But few of these experts identify—let alone explain—the interrelationship of many of these issues or the
multitude of contributing factors inherent within each of these challenges. The pundits of opposing
political parties, aka experts, seek to define a static end-product easily judged as right or wrong, good or
bad that doesn’t exist.

What has become clear are the uncertainties of a changing, continually globalizing world. Each
subsequent change highlights the growing mismatches between the capabilities and capacities of
traditional nation-states and the complexities inherent within non-traditional, global challenges. These
complexities pose theoretical and real-world puzzles that demand thoughtful holistic policies by national
security experts. Unfortunately, single-point solutions developed by government experts have failed to
account for dynamic and volatile global conditions highly resistant to predetermined resolution. In fact,
there is compelling evidence that suggests the very policies proffered as solutions act as catalysts to
spawn the unanticipated consequences and shocks currently manifesting in the global environment. In
fact, Dr. Jay Forrester, Professor Emeritus at the Sloan School of Business at MIT, assessed that up to
98% of all policy interventions fail in whole or part because of a lack of understanding of the systems in
play. These failures highlight the limitations of our mental models and our overly simplistic approaches
to problem solving.

Oversimplified, piecemeal focus on single-function groups or issues ignores the inherent

interrelationships and feedback loops by relying on front-loaded predictive planning. Though predictive
planning cannot adequately address these types of puzzles, even the most forward thinking leaders
utilize that approach. The 2015 National Military Strategy, for example, seeks to convey certainty in an
uncertain world through the development of a “blueprint” that will systematically and sequentially allow
the US to maintain the best-led and best-equipped force in the world. Blueprinting continues, in reality,
to use the same techniques in the same way even though we recognize the limitations of that approach
in such a volatile global security environment. A volatile environment demands feedback and
information, but this approach delays, discourages, or inoculates against it because it prohibits learning.
This is an administrator’s strategy that, as noted leadership thinker Gary Hamel stated, possesses “an
exaggerated confidence in great execution, believing that is all you need to succeed in a discontinuous
world.”

When systems adapt to interventions, policy makers and pundits like to point to unforeseen shocks to
excuse simplistic thinking. Therefore, a paradigm shift is needed from the plodding, methodical thinking
associated with disconnected systems from a bygone era of limited communication and transportation
to one that conforms to the realities of the Twenty-First Century. As Donella Meadows identified in the
opening quote, thinking that fails to take a long-term perspective and that fails to understand system
behavior and structure will not end well. For example, if a more holistic systems approach was taken
before the removal of Saddam Hussein was contemplated, a broader set of stakeholders, internal and
external to Iraq, would have been identified. Decision makers would have gained a better understanding
of the historical, social, cultural, religious, political, and economic dynamics underpinning the region.
Thinking in systems would have likely yielded a different policy approach. Failing to understand
politically-constructed boundaries and engaging in bounded rationality causes a lack of transparency,
limits the ability to improve, reduces flexibility, and increases strategic and operational risk.

To change the paradigm through which the Department of Defense (DoD) operates, a number of
questions that pertain to an interconnected, complex world must be asked. First, how can the DoD
improve its understanding and the discussion of complex issues and environments? Second, how does
the DoD identify key intervention points that have a disproportionate effect on outcomes? Third, how
can the DoD test decisions and strategies against different scenarios? Fourth, how can the DoD
understand key causal factors and drivers of behavior, to include key dynamics such as resistance to
change, tipping points, delays, and unintended effects? Fifth, how can the DoD expose and check logic
and assumptions while noting areas of uncertainty and disagreement? In short, how do national security
professionals develop useful models of complex issues that integrate multi-functional groups and issues
while facilitating agile and adaptive thinking and decision-making throughout planning and execution?

The basic narrative discussion, which is the traditional way of providing understanding, fails to provide
the depth and breadth of understanding needed for these complex global issues. Given human cognitive
limitations, mental models are necessarily simplified to allow decision makers to function in a complex
world. These mental models work well for near-term, visible effects of potential actions, but usually
collapse under the weight of longer-term second- and third-order dynamics, non-linear relationships,
and feedback loops. So, getting back to the earlier questions of how to frame these global challenges
better, I offer a relatively old tool, systems thinking, as a remedy to simple reductionism. As Peter Senge
discussed in his book, The Fifth Discipline, systems thinking is the discipline for seeing the structures that
lie beneath complex issues, and for identifying high from low leverage change elements. Systems
thinking is a discipline for seeing the parts in the context of the whole. It is a framework for seeing
interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static “snapshots.”
Systems thinking provides context for the issues under consideration, improves one’s understanding of
complex issues, and strengthens decisions and plans.

Joint doctrine writers understand the benefits of systems thinking and espouse its use in operational
doctrine, such as Joint Publication (JP) 5-0, “Joint Operation Planning” and JP 2-01.3, “Joint Intelligence
Preparation of the Operational Environment.” In JP 5-0, systems thinking is promoted as “one way of
developing solutions is to view these interconnected challenges from a systems perspective.” JP 2-01.3
calls a systems perspective of the environment necessary for providing the commander and staff the
necessary “understanding of significant relationships within the interrelated PMESII [political, military,
economic, social, infrastructure, and informational] and other systems relevant to a specific joint
operation….” Unfortunately, doctrine fails to provide the tools to facilitate systems thinking and instead
relies upon a systems perspective that does little more than provide categories to “bin” data. System
and subsystem elements, interrelationships, functions, and system dynamicity are neither explained nor
explored.
 2NC -- Turns Case -- Space Influence
Doctrine Key to Signal Influence -- Focusing on Control is Bad Criteria
Wright, 2018. (Nicholas Wright, affiliated scholar at Georgetown University, a Consultant at Intelligent
Biology, and an honorary research associate at University College London, Associate in the Nuclear
Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC and a Senior Research
Fellow in International Relations at the University of Birmingham, UK, Conducted work for the UK
Government and US Department of Defense, examined decision-making using functional brain imaging
at University College London (UCL) and in the Department of Government at the London School of
Economics. He worked clinically as a neurologist in Oxford and at the National Hospital for Neurology,
received a medical degree from UCL, a BSc in Health Policy from Imperial College London, has
Membership of the Royal College of Physicians (UK), and has an MSc in Neuroscience and a PhD in
Neuroscience both from UCL. “Mind Space: Cognition in Space Operations” Report for the Pentagon
Joint Staff Strategic Multilayer Assessment Group, Intelligent Biology, Univ of Birmingham, July 2018.
Online. [KevC])

To conduct deterrence operations, or manage escalation, requires anticipating how others will decide to
respond to our actions. Anticipating your adversary is imperative for offense or defense. Thus, it is
crucial to understand audiences’ decision-making. But how can you put yourself in the others’ shoes in
space operations? • Firstly, operations such as deterrence have a crucial cognitive dimension—
acknowledged in U.S., Chinese and Russian thinking—and thus here I apply the latest neuroscience and
cognitive work to understand how humans really make decisions. • Second, I identify key features of
space operations that require distinctive emphases compared to other domains, and I examine their
cognitive foundations to describes implications for space policy.

I apply this understanding of cognitive foundations of space operations to three areas:

• Deterrence and escalation management are examined in Part I. See table below.

• Grey Zone conflict is examined in Part II. The current space epoch is the “Grey Zone Entangled Space
Age”, and space is an ideal forum for Grey Zone activities in which the U.S. must have the tools to
compete. • West Pacific security is examined in Part III with a focus on the PRC and Near-term Sino-U.S.
scenarios.

FIVE KEY TAKEAWAYS (1) Influence—not just control—is a principal means by which U.S. policymakers cause
intended effects on key adversaries in space, across the spectrum of conflict from Grey Zone to limited war upto and including
the nuclear level. Focusing only control denies U.S. decision-makers key tools . Influence is affecting the
adversary’s decision-making and U.S policymakers must have the doctrine, policies and capabilities to
achieve influence in space as well as control. (2) Space is ideal for Grey Zone conflict—more than normal
competition and less than war—and Grey Zone strategies require different emphases from peace or war . Grey Zone conflict is
characterised by the ‘Five multiples’, which can be applied to space operations: multiple interpretations (ambiguity is a key feature in
space, see below); multiple levels (e.g. state and population levels may view space activities differently as legitimate reasons for war); multiple
audiences (allies and significant third parties are key, see extended deterrence below); multiple instruments of power (e.g. systems such as GPS
or Beidou can be sources of economic influence); and multiple timescales (e.g.
persistent adversary subthreshold actions can
over time cumulatively present a serious threat; norms have a fundamental cognitive dimension that
U.S. policymakers can manage). Grey Zone conflict in space is necessarily limited conflict, and thus the
central aim is to influence the decision-making of adversaries and other key audiences -- success requires
policymakers understand and wield influence in space. (3) Ambiguity and difficult risk assessment
pervade the space environment, due to challenges of attribution, damage assessment, dual use, high
classification and reversible actions. Ambiguity makes communicating deterrence much harder, and
increases the risk of escalation for instance by muddying mutually understood red lines . U.S. signals will
likely have to be much clearer than U.S. policymakers anticipate, and some communication must be
performed ahead of crises. (4) Humans pay large costs to reject perceived unfairness, and this
complicates the perceived legitimacy of potential U.S. responses to adversary actions in space. An
adversary’s space actions may have large strategic impacts, but because “satellites have no mothers” in
comparison to potential U.S. conventional responses they may rouse little moral impact in key audiences
(e.g. allies). Such mixed perceptions may cause inadvertent escalation, which may only be ameliorated by
clear communication ahead of time before crises. (5) Extended deterrence and ally perceptions are
central to U.S. success in near-term escalation scenarios involving space with Russia or China . Allies’ trust
and confidence in the U.S. are the central pillar of extended deterrence -- and are inherently
psychological. Increase trust and confidence by: increasing allies’ comprehension of space operations during escalation; increase the
bandwidth of trust between elites, security apparatuses and populations; and consider how unpredictable behaviour decreases
confidence and trust.

[CONTINUED…] 1.26. Influence is a principal means by which U.S. policymakers cause intended effects
on potential adversaries in space during peace, grey zone conflict and war. U.S policymakers must have
the doctrine , policies and capabilities to achieve influence— not just control—in space. ➢ Influence
should be explicitly added, alongside control, to U.S. space doctrine and practice. ➢ Space policy should
learn from the centrality of influence in Chinese and Russian thinking -- and should adapt recent U.S.
thinking, such as that on the “7th Joint function”, to the character of cognition in space.27 1.27.
Influence in space must place the adversary’s decision-making at the heart of strategy. This must
include a realistic understanding of the nature of human decisionmaking (Ch. 2), as well as its character
in space (Chs. 3-5).
 2NC -- Turns Case -- Space Critiques
Internal Critiques and Theories Good
Cappella, 2019. (Matteo Cappella, Tomas Hrozensky, Marco Aliberti. “Chapter 2: Analysing Space
Power: A New Conceptual Framework” Measuring Space Power: A Theoretical and Empirical
Investigation on Europe. August 3, 2019. SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology Series.)

Having briefly overviewed current spacepower and space power definitions and theories, it is now useful
to point out major setbacks and flaws that these have and to try to draw some insights on how to
elaborate a more useful definition/theory. In fact, four major drawbacks stand out.

2.1.3.1 Narrow Focus For one thing, most space power theories prove to be excessively narrow-focused.
Even though, to quote Lutes, “spacepower can be looked at through sociocultural, economic, and
security lenses, each roughly equating to the civil-scientific, commercial, and military intelligence sector
of space activity” (Lutes, 2008), theorists have so far looked at spacepower through the military/security
lens, particularly doing so by exploiting the work of the “masters” of the past.
This is not surprising given that the origin of the debates around spacepower was set in the context of the Cold War and the Gulf War, with the
national security and military dimensions inevitably emerging as the predominant elements of spacepower definition. However, almost two
decades in the NewSpace age, it
appears clear that spacepower should be analysed from a wider perspective,
with theories embracing perspectives on the growing use and importance of space in areas that go
beyond its military uses.
 2NC -- Turns Case -- Naïve Realism
Their Framework’s Reliance on Naïve Realism Turns Case - Disrupts Transparent
Communication
Pagano and Stevenson, 2018. (Sabrina Pagano, PhD, NSI; John A Stevenson, PhD., NSI. “NSI
Concept Paper, How Disagreement Over Space Terms Can Create Barriers to Transparency in the Space
Domain” NSI Concept Paper, April 2018. Prepared for Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment Contested Space
Operations. Online. [KevC])

One solution to reduce the risks of misperceptions from limited SSA is creating transparency through
communication among space-faring nations by sharing SSA-relevant information, particularly in times of
crisis. This is depicted in Figure 1. Transparency in communication helps reduce risk because transparent
communication, according to space experts, can be an important tool for mitigating or avoiding conflict
spirals that can occur based on misperception. 4 While transparency in space alone “does not directly
ensure space security, it can be an aid to the maintenance of norms and disincentivizes the possibility of
a kinetic military action,” space and policy advisor Massimo Pellegrino (formerly of United Nations Office
at Geneva) observes.

An under-appreciated (and under-theorized) aspect of this process of creating transparent

communication is the key space terms used to describe events and causality in the space domain. Key
space terms shape and reflect how actors ascribe intentionality and describe threats within the space
domain. As such, agreement on key space terms constitutes an important aspect of operating in the
space domain—one that has gone largely unrecognized. In this Concept Paper, we argue that
disagreement among authorized representatives of space-faring nations over key terms related to
events in space form barriers to creating communication transparency. 6 While the consequences of
these discrepancies in the use of key space terms are in some cases benign, in other cases, disagreement
over key space terms can negatively impact US national security. This is likely when these disagreements
stifle effective, transparent communication among space actors, particularly in the face of adverse
events about which space actors have limited SSA.

Inconsistent Use of Key Space Terms Limits Transparency Among Space Actors Key terms and the
concepts they represent are the foundation of the kinds of communication necessary to overcome the
barriers introduced by limited SSA. Terms are given meaning both by the speaker and the listener. A lack
of common usage and understanding of key space terms can create or maintain existing barriers to
transparent communication “even where there are no basic incompatibilities” in actor preferences
(Fisher, 2000). A lack of common usage and understanding of language can manifest in multiple ways,
including when speakers use different words for the same concept or the same words for different
concepts.7 These forms of disagreement are the most easily observed form of disagreement over key
space terms, and create barriers to informationsharing and transparency in the space domain.

Detecting variations in language usage for key space terms is impeded by a common cognitive bias,
known as “naïve realism.” Naïve realism describes the human tendency to believe that the way we see
the world is based in an external “reality,” rather than a reality that is filtered through our internal
expectations and perceptions.8 As such, actors are prone to believe that others are using key space
terms in the same way that they are, when in fact this may not be the case.
A simple example can be used to illustrate this bias in a low-stakes situation. Suppose that someone
shares with a colleague that is also taking lunch outside the observation that the temperature is “hot”
today. She may assume that her interlocuter shares the same conceptualization of “hot.” Yet, she may
define a “hot” day as 80 degrees and humid, whereas a second person may define a hot day as 100
degrees and dry.

However, when these individuals speak to one another, the discrepancy in their conceptualization of
“hot” temperature may not be apparent to them. Rather, they assume that the words they are using
have shared meaning.

In the example above, the two individuals are using the same word (hot) to indicate different conditions
(hot is 80F and humid vs. hot is 100F and dry). Their concept of “hot” differs and thus so does their
usage of the related word, despite using identical terms. This example is a metaphor for similar
processes of disagreement over key space terms, the effect of which is to limit transparency. To
illustrate the potential pitfalls for national security from barriers to transparency, let us proffer the
example of the terms “space weapons” and “armed attack.”9

The concept of “space weapons” is one of the more commonly acknowledged space terms with multiple
usages indicating different concepts. As part of NSI’s Virtual Think Tank (ViTTa)® expert elicitation on
space terms,10 Victoria Samson of the Secure World Foundation, noted that the way “space weapons”
is commonly used, “it could be defined so generally that everything is a space weapon or so strictly that
nothing is a space weapon.” Disagreement about this key space term could easily allow for different
states to perceive the same capability or object in very different ways based on the ways that they
define “space weapon.” Such terminological disagreement—particularly when unacknowledged due to
naïve realism— limits the transparency in communication necessary to convey, for example, that a given
state is not seeking to deploy into space any capability it understands as a weapon. It is via this
mechanism that disagreement over key space terms can ultimately negatively impact US national
security.

[CONTINUED….] Awareness of Terminological Discrepancies is the First Step Toward Greater

Transparency Limited SSA make efforts to independently ‘trust, but verify’ activity difficult, leaving
actors with two methods of understanding the activity-event: transparent communication with each
other and their own attributions, absent any dialogue. Disagreement in the use of key space terms limits
the effectiveness of the former approach. Naïve realism undercuts the utility of the second method.

NSI’s Space Virtual Think Tank (ViTTa)® SME elicitation effort indicates that variation in the use of
language can be recognized or unrecognized. In cases where expert respondents were not aware that
there are different ways of thinking about key space terms, they naturally cannot anticipate this issue
and address it in advance. Awareness, then, can be an important first step to mitigating this
communication barrier. Awareness begins when actors refrain from assuming that others share their
own use and understanding of key space terms. Speakers can identify how and when they are using
language in different ways from one another if they engage in an active process of communication
regarding the words they use and the concepts to which those words refer, which will provide these
actors with the opportunity to identify discrepancies.
 2NC -- Turns Case -- Dysfunctional Military
Turns Case -- Guarantees Dysfunctional Military
Zweibelson, 2015. (Major Ben Zweibelson, INSERT QUALS. “RESEARCH REVIEW One Piece at a Time:
Why Linear Planning and Institutionalisms Promote Military Campaign Failure” Defence Studies, Volume
15, Issue 4. Taylor & Francis Online, December. [KevC])
In 2014, after nearly a decade of committing billions of dollars in resources and extensive campaign planning to reduce illicit drugs in
Afghanistan, the crop and export numbers of opium and other drugs in Afghanistan are the highest on record (Pizzi 2014). Yet along the past
decade of supporting the counter-narcotics “line of effort,” illusions of progress drove the further commitment of resources until now it is
impossible to ignore how the future has turned out. Afghan literacy rates within the security forces remain dismally low, while integration
efforts to increase female Afghan security force numbers have also fallen flat (Quinn and Smith 2014). Our efforts to modernize (and
westernize) Afghan military logistics has been a tragedy. In Iraq, the rise of the Islamic State and the catastrophic collapse of the Coalition-
trained and equipped Iraqi Army in 2014 indicate that the ongoing campaign plans of two conflict zones, largely unchanged since inception, are
either failed or clearly far from accomplishing any of their original charter. Of course, hind sight is always 20/20 and criticizing campaign plans in
retrospect seems a bit unfair. Yet
if the planning concepts, cognitive processes, and ontological choices (how we
know about what is knowledge) that form the bedrock for military campaign planning gets a free pass,
we are only allowing conditions for the next conflict failure to fester (Ritzer 1975, p. 7, Jackson 2013, p. 3).
When strategists want to hang their heads and cry, as them strategies roll by If we tend to imagine the past and remember the future, while
forcing our campaign planning to drive us in rigid and unrealistic ways towards synchronizing military action, what else can we do? For the
military, the
overwhelming institutional dependency upon existing planning methodologies means that
challenging how we campaign plan leads to challenging many associated concepts to how we think. What
we cannot do here is attempt to surgically remove our reverse-engineering approach to campaigning with another similar process that might
have a new buzzword or novel technology for increasing the micro-management grip of an even steeper hierarchy (Bousquet 2008, p. 928).

Challenging how we think about planning will help liberate us from the bureaucratic March towards yet
another conflict with the same favorite tools in hand. We need not abandon linear causality, the
centralized military hierarchical structure, or the reverseengineering logic of building vast campaign
plans entirely. Instead, we need to temper the dominance of these institutionalisms, question why we
use them exclusively, and consider alternatives to help break us out of serious ruts. In some conflicts,
some of our cognitive tools are not just disadvantageous to us, they add burdensome layers of
complication upon an already staggeringly complex environment. Many of our institutional behaviors
over time contribute to this, preventing us from self-editing or changing course, and driving failed ideas
forward with greater expenditure of lives, resources, and valuable time. Paradoxically, being a loyal
advocate to a current plan (and associated leader, organization) sometimes creates disloyalty to future
units that subsequently suffer from effects that the current unit never experiences. Critical and creative
thinking tend to often be in tension with the institutional forces of the centralized hierarchy.

There are numerous non-linear alternatives for approaching planning, as well as different paradigms to
use to understand complex environments than the one our military insists is the only possible way to
make sense of the world (Ritzer 1975, p. 7, Kuhn 1996). A big problem is that our military professional
education systems hesitate to fully acknowledge nonlinear approaches, and instead predominantly
reinforce the singular and doctrine-centric mantra that espouses the aforementioned limited
perspectives in campaign planning. We teach it in steps and mechanistic procedures, reinforcing them in
sterile “simulation” laboratories and exercises, and inculcate illusionary success within accepted
traditions, values, and beliefs about reality. In the end, there still will be boots on the ground with
equipment, ammunition, logistics, politics, and the full gamut of associated military tangibles; how we
decide to plan their synchronization is what offers us the potential of realizing better cognitive
approaches (to include plans).

Understanding why we think the way we do, and thinking about how we think is an important part of
maintaining critical and creative thinking (Ahl and Allen 1996, p. 18). Reflective practice, where we
appreciate both complexity and our own inexplicable interrelationship within that complexity, must
provide us the intellectual maneuver space so that we can cease using ineffective planning constructs, to
include existing campaign plans, and generate entirely novel approaches (Weick 2006, p. 451). Some of
these approaches may defy our service and joint doctrine, or even contradict what our institution
defines as a “rule” or “law” in warfare. Sometimes even trying to manufacture a future “end-state” is a
futile endeavor due to how complex environments adapt (Holland 1992, p. 20). This does not mean we
simply shrug our shoulders and give up. We simply need to be willing to critically question our core
tenets.

[CONTINUED…] There are many advances in non-linear processes, hybrid organizational structures
where decision-making is “flattened” or changed from a strict centralized manner, and entire fields of
sociology and other “soft sciences” that promote new language, concepts, and management models for
planning, executing, and reframing an approach while engaged within complexity (Lewis and Kelemen
2002, p. 271, Schmidt 2014). Until we as a military force are legitimately willing (and able) to question
fundamental concepts that comprise our overarching and singular paradigm for sense-making, we
cannot actually embark upon planning alternatives (Nagl 2002, p. 9). Until the conversation migrates
from “you cannot really question things like our principles of war, military doctrinal concepts (that are
popular and promoted by senior leadership), or fundamental military decision-making processes” to
something where true discourse and critical reflection might occur, we will continue to build
“psychobilly Cadillacs” of dysfunctional military campaigns and blame the individual parts for systemic
failures, not the overarching processes.
 2NC -- Doctrine Interest Now, But Understudied
We Control Uniqueness -- Interest Now, But Understudied
Petersson, et al., 2015. (Magnus Petersson, Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies; Thomas
Slensvik, Norwegian Command and Staff College; and Palle Ydstebo, Norwegian Command and Staff
College. Introduction; Understanding Military Doctrine, Journal of Strategic Studies, Volume 39, Issue 2.
December 27. Taylor & Francis Online. [KevC])

What is the character of military doctrine? How is it developed and implemented? Why does it matter, if
it matters at all? Military doctrine, not least counter insurgency doctrine, has been a central element in
the debate about the use of force during the last ten years . The reason for that is, to a large extent, that
the long-term engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan have tended to focus on how to fight rather that
why to fight, on doctrine rather than strategy, on the military level rather than the political level. That, in
turn, has created a new interest for the content, logic, and implications of military doctrine in the policy
debate as well as in the scholarly literature .1 The topic is, however , still understudied , and the aim of
this edition of the Journal of Strategic Studies, based on papers presented at a conference on military
doctrines in Oslo at the Norwegian Defence University College in June 2014, is to contribute to a better
understanding of the role of military doctrine in a wider context.
 2NC -- Differs from Plan
Differs from Mere Plan
Petersson, et al., 2015. (Magnus Petersson, Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies; Thomas
Slensvik, Norwegian Command and Staff College; and Palle Ydstebo, Norwegian Command and Staff
College. Introduction; Understanding Military Doctrine, Journal of Strategic Studies, Volume 39, Issue 2.
December 27. Taylor & Francis Online. [KevC])

The importance of a sound civil–military relation and dialogue when developing and implementing
doctrines is high-lightened by Echevarria and Zapfe. Echevarria argues that the military cannot blame
the politicians for not guiding them enough: ‘The lack of clear policy guidance is not sufficient reason for
failure.’ On the other hand, the absence of a grand strategy ‘capable of restoring perspective to the
problem’ in Afghanistan made the coalition strategy shift several times. In such a situation, doctrine can
‘help prepare military practitioners to operate in the absence of a grand strategy , and to appreciate a
broader array of military strategies, their advantages and disadvantages, and how to reconcile them’.
According to Echevarria, doctrine ‘ must rediscover what strategy is and how it differs from a mere
plan .’
 2NC -- Tech Rationalism Disad
Technical Rationalism Counter-Productive for Scenario Planning
Zweibelson, 2016. (Major Ben Zweibelson, Program Director for Design and Innovation @ the Joint
Special Operations University, Doctoral Student @ Lancaster University, Retired US Army Infantry
Officer, Veteran of Iraq & Afghanistan, Lectures Across the USSOCOM, DoD, and US Government, Design
Conference Ambassador for the IMDC, Lectured on Design @ the Polish and Danish War Colleges,
Canadian Forces College, NATO Schools @ Oberammergau, the National Counterterrorism Center, the
IBM Capstone SPADE Conference for NATO @ Copenhagen, as Well as Numerous Special Operations and
Strategic Level Defense Assets. “Rose-Tinted Lenses: How American Functionalist Strategy Inhibits Our
Appreciation of Complex Conflicts” Defence Studies, Volume 16, Issue 1. Taylor & Francis Online. [KevC])

Our strategic outlook on how the future will unfold is objective, in that regardless of the individual and
unpredictable future conflicts, all future conflicts will still largely adhere to these general strategic rules
(Morgan 2006, p. 248). Of course the context will always change, but functionalists prescribe a future
where general rules and principles will readily apply once we get more information, study the problem,
and apply scientific measurements or technology to gain the upper hand. Further, to link the
anticipation of change to universal and objective principles of war indicates yet another manifestation of
propositional logic where regardless of the context, some combination of principles of war will always
be present for analysis.

Whereas “ontology” dealt with the content of our strategic knowledge construction, the philosophical
term “epistemology” works to structure the format within the paradigm. Epistemology is how we know
about knowing to do things, to include how our strategies are to unfold in reality. In functionalism,
strategists epistemologically chose to apply technology, scientific methodologies, and ever-bigger piles
of data and information to somehow gain greater control of complexity. The additional epistemological
choice of linking the strategic character of war to emergent technology reinforces the functionalist
devotion to an entirely scientific (analytical, objectivist) outlook on complexity (Ahl and Allen 1996, p. 1,
Bousquet 2008b, pp. 920–922, 2009, p. 56, Weick 1998, p. 551).

[CONTINUED….] American strategy as articulated in current conceptual doctrine exhibits the

functionalist “almost pathological desire to achieve certainty” in the notoriously uncertain environment
of war, which promotes linear thinking and analytical structured campaigning (Ryan et al. 2010, p. 247).
It is where the nineteenth century military philosophies of Carl von Clausewitz (war will remain a contest
of wills; his “trinity”; centers of gravity) and Antoine-Henri Jomini (principles of war present in all
warfare) still dominate our Western collective military outlook (Romjue 1997, p. 11, Bousquet 2009, pp.
128–129, Paparone and Davis 2012, Vandersteen 2012, Jackson 2013, pp. 52–53, Olson 2013).
Technological innovation takes a center stage in reducing our uncertainties, and accumulating greater
information over time should lead to a reduction of confusion and an increase in certainty within
complex military environments (Bousquet 2009, Bousquet and Curtis 2011). Termed “technical
rationalism” as well as the “scientific way of warfare”, it represents a specific technology-centric
strategic approach to reducing complexity through an overarching functionalist paradigm (Bousquet
2008a, pp. 917–918, 2008b, pp. 84–88).

“Win in a Complex World” fixates on technological innovation in particular, where the Army’s advantage
over all possible future enemies “depends in large measure on advanced technology”, and innovation
merely “drives the development of new tools or methods…to stay ahead of determined enemies” (U.S.
Army Training and Doctrine Command 2014, pp. 20–34). In a recent Army War College speech, the
Deputy Secretary of Defense reinforced this with, “Since World War II, American military strategy and
our entire national defense strategy has been built upon an assumption of technological superiority”
(Work 2015). He prefaced this with the acknowledgment that, “I am often accused of being too
technologically oriented.” There is nothing wrong with some in the organization fixating on important
future technology, but what happens when nearly the entire organization hedges on technical
rationalism as a fundamental strategic pillar?

Even the acknowledged U.S. Army bureaucracy is only considered a problem that merely prevents
“responsive development and fielding of new capabilities and necessary counters to enemy
technological advances” (U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command 2014, p. 41). Bureaucracies become
just another obstacle for functionalists, as they are not seen as contextually in the same room as the
functionalist strategic paradigm. Networks, computers, and the underlying ontological choice that
greater and greater data analysis coupled with more powerful technological tools will somehow de-
clutter the fog and friction of complex warfare is pervasive in modern American strategy. Technical
rationalism grants us the ability to “seize the initiative, control the narrative, and consolidate order” in
“unknowable and constantly changing” complex and uncertain environments (U.S. Army Training and
Doctrine Command 2014, pp. 9–10). Bureaucrats be damned, as the promise of technical rationalism
always offers a promising solution right around the corner. Yet the failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Africa,
Homeland Security, and other major international hot spots reflects the failures of technical rationalism
to deliver General Westmoreland’s fantasy of seeing “battlefields on which we can destroy anything we
locate through instant communications and the almost instantaneous application of highly lethal
firepower” (Duggan 2004, p. 274). The Islamic State is rapidly boiling the Middle East, while the Taliban
are surging back from the brink. The security forces raised and equipped in Iraq and Afghanistan have
crumbled, while countless American drone strikes and surgically precise raids continue to pile tactical
success upon what cannot be described as strategic victory. Even efforts at counter-narcotics, women
rights, democratic elections, and literacy campaigns have all gone “off the rails” (Oppel 2008, Pizzi 2014,
Quinn and Smith 2014, Remnick 2014, Semple 2014).

Thus the U.S. military strategy and organizational approach to warfare, as articulated in the American
Army’s capstone conceptual publication and the National Security Strategy present a decidedly
functionalist worldview that has a most decidedly responsible hand in the many failures of the past
decade of persistent conflict. For functionalists, failures in governance and endemic corruption cause
conflict, an increase in freedom in other societies results in increased strength for America, and our
strategy employs physical and biological metaphors such as “fluid”, “trajectory”, “clear-eyed”,
“arteries”, “economic engine”, and “stability” (U.S. White House 2015, pp. 1–15).6
 2NC -- Technical Rationalism Disad
Technical Rationalism Undermines Planning
Zweibelson, 2015. (Major Ben Zweibelson, INSERT QUALS. “Gravity-Free Decision-Making: Avoiding
Clausewitz’s Strategic Pull” Army Research Papers Series, No. 8, Produced By the Directorate of Future
Land Warfare, December. Online PDF. [KevC])

The centre of gravity as a construct integrates favourably into a centralised hierarchy. At the
epistemological level, the military seeks to find order in chaos, and embraces the scientific approach to
making sense of military problems.51 Organisational theory offers the term ‘technical rationalism’ to
specify a driven belief that complex systems can be both understood and even controlled through a
regimented scientific approach, reductionism and quantified measurements.52 Technical rationalists
seek to break unwieldy problems into smaller ones, and attempt to reassemble ‘solved’ smaller
problems expecting the larger solution. Technical rationalists are drawn to details, data, metrics and
modelling that swap complexity for smoothed-out, closed systems.53 Universal laws are sought, with
the promise that technology coupled with scientific approaches might untangle any complex system and
provide deeper explanation.54

For an organisation comprised largely of technical rationalists who organise into a centralised hierarchy
with top-down decision-making, the centre of gravity concept resonates on multiple levels.55 The top-
down directives, reductionist approach, and linear perspective of ‘targeting this vulnerability causes this
effect’ is well suited to integration to hierarchical world views. Figure 7 illustrates how friendly (blue)
and enemy (red) centres of gravity at each level of warfare share similar structure to centralised
hierarchical structures. Thus, they appeal to most Western military organisations by embedding at
epistemological and ontological levels. In addition, we cannot ignore the fact that centralised hierarchies
are the most powerful and successful organisational constructs in human history. They dominate and
can wield enormous power in highly productive ways. Yet there are many lessons to learn from
hierarchies that suffered defeats against decentralised rivals, whether we consider military situations
(Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia) or capitalistic ones (entertainment industry and piracy/social file-sharing).

Figure 7: How centralised hierarchies and COGs reinforce similar structures

Technical rationalism encourages the reduction of complexity to smaller measurable parts.56 Adherence
to a top-down hierarchy encourages the tight couplings (strong relationship bonds) where targeting an
essential node might topple or severely disable the system. This lays the groundwork for the entire
‘critical vulnerability, critical requirement’ analysis espoused by Strange, Eikmeier, Rueschhoff, Dunne,
Reilly and other noted military academics.57 Technical rationalism seeks universal, scientific principles
and laws of organisation and management, illustrated by the dominance in military doctrine of Jominian
principles of warfare and select Clausewitzian constructs such as centres of gravity.58

Finally, technical rationalism desires prediction and the ability to control, which plays ontologically and
epistemologically into how we construct, select and subsequently measure centre of gravity success
through targeting and coordinated ‘lines of effort’ in campaign plans.59 We construct through reverse
engineering, where we establish a desired future state, build linear timelines within our ‘lines of effort’
and tightly coupled decision points, decisive points, and other metrics associated with centre of gravity
critical vulnerabilities, critical requirements and critical capabilities or the ‘ends–ways–means’
constructs.60 We take selected aspects (often key points that relate to identities, self-relevance and
institutional biases) of a complex system and cast these into the future. We shackle this watered-down
but organisationally attractive misrepresentation to our planned goals and end-states, and subsequently
build a bridge of phases, decisive points, and metrics along lines of effort backwards to the present.
Figure 8 provides an example of the reverse engineering espoused by planning doctrine in joint and
Army applications.

By planning in this manner, the technical rationalist accepts ontological suppositions that a complex
system is measurable, ‘mapable’, comprehensible and, most importantly, controllable from our present
state out into the future.61 Yet, by definition, complex systems are impossible to map, and transform far
too rapidly and in directions that are too novel for any person or organisation to anticipate accurately.62
Figure 9 provides an illustration of how, as complexity increases, the ability to identify any possible
centre of gravity relationship reduces commensurately. While leaders in centralised hierarchies will
undoubtedly select something in the decision-making process, the odds that they select anything
remotely useful decreases once we enter more complex environments where systems are open,
emergent, non-linear and adaptable.63

Figure 8: Technical rationalism and ‘reverse-engineered planning’

Figure 9 illustrates the relationship between simplicity and centre of gravity selection options. In
simpler, static systems, it becomes possible to identify patterns and processes that relate to a ‘centre’,
yet as change and options increase exponentially, it becomes rather futile. Even if, for one instant, we
might link three ‘centres of gravity’ under complex conditions, they would all transform within the
emergence of the next moment (which includes our own engagement in attempting to measure the
system). For every proposed centre of gravity in modern conflict environments such as Syria, Ukraine,
Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria or Somalia, military professionals might easily offer five different centres of
gravity for debate. Ultimately, the centralised hierarchical structure for the military ends this debate
through the deliberate decision of a senior leader (centre of gravity selection). Yet complexity does not
yield to ‘classic, equilibrium-based mathematical approaches that rely on linearity … fixed points … and
the like’, nor do complex systems obey top-down decisions in a linear, predictable sequence.64 To
understand why the centre of gravity construct fails repeatedly in modern military applications, it helps
to consider other organisational forms beyond the traditional hierarchy. We must dismantle the
hierarchy, as well as the ontological, epistemological and methodological structures working against our
efforts to make sense of complexity in warfare .
 2NC -- Doctrine Good -- Interoperability/ Clausewitzian Friction
Doctrine Key to Branch Interoperability and Reduces Clausewitzian Friction
Hoiback, 2016. (Lieutenant Colonel, Lectures at the Norwegian Defence University College, PhD in
Philosophy from Oslo College. “The Anatomy of Doctrine and Ways to Keep It Fit” Journal of Strategic
Studies, Volume 39, Issue 2. Taylor & Francis Online. [KevC])

To sum up: even though doctrines have their pitfalls, there are still ample reasons to have them: An
effective doctrine reduces the effect of Clausewitzian friction. ● Doctrine-like patterns of thought and
cultural idiosyncrasies pop up and flourish whether we like it or not. By developing doctrine formally, we
get a kind of control. ● Sometimes the experts’ recommendations do not point unambiguously in one
direction, and therefore we need a deliberate and approved doctrinal decision as bedrock for planning,
procurement, education, training and collective action. ● The process of making and issuing doctrine can
sharpen our language and clarify our concepts. (This is particularly important for branch interoperability
between air force, navy and the army, and within alliances and coalitions.) ● A doctrine can provide a
steady platform for improvisation. It creates the box to think out of. ● A doctrine can serve as an
academic punching bag to elicit better doctrines in the long run.11
 2NC -- AT: Ontology Bad
Dismissal of Ontology is a New Link
Zweibelson, 2016. (Major Ben Zweibelson, Program Director for Design and Innovation @ the Joint
Special Operations University, Doctoral Student @ Lancaster University, Retired US Army Infantry
Officer, Veteran of Iraq & Afghanistan, Lectures Across the USSOCOM, DoD, and US Government, Design
Conference Ambassador for the IMDC, Lectured on Design @ the Polish and Danish War Colleges,
Canadian Forces College, NATO Schools @ Oberammergau, the National Counterterrorism Center, the
IBM Capstone SPADE Conference for NATO @ Copenhagen, as Well as Numerous Special Operations and
Strategic Level Defense Assets. “Rose-Tinted Lenses: How American Functionalist Strategy Inhibits Our
Appreciation of Complex Conflicts” Defence Studies, Volume 16, Issue 1. Taylor & Francis Online. [KevC])

Functionalism requires several important abstract choices to be made at the highest levels of how our
organization conceives of “strategy”. By this we mean at the “ontological” level of philosophical thought.
This is where we determine abstractly what is, and what is not knowledge within our paradigm. We
make deep and implicit decisions regarding the fundamental nature of reality, upon which we construct
our strategies, and what we decide that strategy is, and is not (Stark 1958, p. 13, Reed 2005, p. 1623,
Hatch and Yanow 2008, pp. 24–30). One’s ontology becomes the cornerstone for all aspects of the
subsequent strategic thinking, and thus it is within ontological choice where we first see opportunities as
well as blinders for us to put over our eyes.