The Machine Nexus: Institutional Bias Against a Capabilities-Based Force.
Abstract
The Department of Defense and Congress are currently conducting an extensive review of the U.S. Armed Forces for the purpose of determining the military capabilities that our nation will require in the 21st Century. Referred to as the Quadrennial Defense Review, or QDR for short, this review is supposedly a fresh look at defense needs in light of the requirements of the new post-Cold War world. Like the Base Force and Bottom Up Reviews that preceeded it however, the QDR was doomed from the beginning to merely promoting the solutions of the past. The reason for this is that the system within which the review is taking place is a product of the Cold War era, hopelessly trapped in the biases of a threat-based paradigm. Central to that paradigm is a machine nexus, or connection. The machine nexus is a way of thinking that says that machines are the keystone of defense and around them revolves everything else. This nexus forces the system to view the world through the colored lens of technology, seeing solutions to all things in the form of some new wizardy. This view is not in balance with the realities of the world. For that reason, if meaningful dialogues and decisions are to occur, the system must be shifted to a new capabilities-based paradigm; one with a balanced, vector nexus.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 28, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA326894
Entities
People
- Clif Tooley
Organizations
- United States Army War College