Deconstructing John Robb’s “Bazaar of Violence”

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I left a comment on Dan’s recent D5GW post which began to summarize my reconsideration of the doubts I’ve had about GGT.  In response to a statement about how GGT might complement 5GW theory, I was forced to reexamine some of the connections I have already made between the theories.*  I also had in mind thoughts inspired by Shloky’s examination of the ‘global’ aspects of Global Guerrillas: primarily, whether networked tribes might ultimately create a global system that is relatively stable, or balanced - perhaps a kind of market-state — even if nation-states cease to exist.  Would autonomous ‘cartels’ or else GG factions and other non-state networks eventually be put into the position of maintaining the [changed] system now roughly maintained by balances between nation-states?  Or would constant system perturbations, or else never-ending attacks on systempunkts, by disgruntled factions keep the system in perpetual turmoil; i.e., would widespread chaos continually emerge, preventing the formation of any relatively stable or balanced system?

These questions may indeed be too broad, if they require knowledge no one can possibly have in the present. At Shloky’s, I pondered the possibility that the debate on the “Gibberish” thread had erringly fallen into an Order vs. Chaos debate, with the pro-GG faction assuming a general future chaos and the anti-GG faction assuming a general future order.  Does GG theory assume one or the other, or does it leave the question open?  In addition to the Order vs. Chaos error, a Nation-State/Hegemony vs. Anarchy dichotomy may have led the debate astray — particularly if GG theory assumes the formation of something not either of those, i.e. a kind of market-state.

Another subject that arose in the “Gibberish” debates:  will future GGs and others living in the future sit idly by while everything crashes down around them, or continue to be active, whether destructively or in trivial pursuits, while everything crashes?  This question arose as a consequence of the Order vs. Chaos dichotomy, but it was also inspired by the now-tedious question of whether global guerrillas will have nothing but destruction on their minds, or be consummate nihilists.  And it is this question that hangs in my mind and creates the most doubt about Global Guerrilla Theory.  If we can have no specific knowledge of future non-state factions, networks, and so forth that will emerge, nor precise knowledge of attacks on systempunkts (or massive retaliations by nation-states, for that matter), may we nonetheless have certain knowledge concerning the most basic elements of ‘states’, ‘factions’, ‘networks’ — individual humans?  If so, can we develop a better understanding of how conglomerations of individual humans may act in the future?


Wiggins at Opposed Systems Design has a new, relevant post that also relates to something from my comment: “Ought vs. Is”.

An interesting issue is this is that what will be depends upon what is… but it will be affected by what we wish the future might be.

[Wiggins]

This may be related to the concept of the OODA, at least as I use that concept in the Revised OODA —






We have The World that is observed (Concrete Observation) and we have the individual’s Mental Constructs that, along with concrete observations of the world, feed into the Abstract Observation phase; but what comes out the other side after these have interacted, the Concrete Act, will depend on both; and that activity re-shapes the world in at least some small way.

So when I wrote,

The assumption of a continuously emerging chaos rests on the theory that not only GGs but other actors — all individuals on the Earth — do not tie their activities to either: (1) an observation of the existing environment, (2) a vision for a future environment that can be shaped given the existing environment.

[CGW]

and that

General standards may develop as a result of so much diverse activity, since the activities of GGs will be shaping the world, albeit from multiple directions and without much explicit coordination, and this changing environment will in turn direct the cognitive development of these actors and others forced [to] live in such a world. (Robb appears to neglect any consideration of how the various GGs will be forced to re-align in reaction to a such a changing environment, however.)

[CGW]

I was narrowing down my primary doubt about what GG Theory appears to imply.  Each person has an individually operating OODA process; each person may have unique Mental Constructs formed over a lifetime; each person may have not only a unique and limited, localized observation of the World (perspective) but also an idiosyncratic vision for the future (resulting also from unique mental constructs), leading to multifarious, non-aligned activities that change the world from many directions as each individual acts.  GG Theory appears to imply that groups with internally-aligned visions will form, but each of these groups will have peculiar motivations, leading to non-aligned activities between GG groups, and such diverse activity will keep the world rather chaotic.

What GG Theory fails to address:  how the GG groups will alter as their environments alter “according to plan.”  I.e., if these non-aligned activities change the environment — they would be useless otherwise — and create more chaos simply because they are unaligned, or at cross-purposes, GG groups observing that environment would need to alter their strategies and activities if they still want to achieve their individual, peculiar goals. O - O - D - A.

However, John Robb has thus far focused mostly on the emergence of ‘global guerrillaism’ in Iraq and a ‘bazaar of violence’ useful for taking down a government or preventing the establishment of a stable government:

Infrastructure disruption (network attack). These attacks are the bread and butter of global guerrilla operations. It deprives the emergent government of the ability to deliver those services necessary for legitimacy and economic recovery. It also, particularly in the case of Iraq, deprives the government of funds necessary for reconstruction and ongoing security. The rate of return from these attacks is by far the highest of all attack types.

[“The Bazaar of Violence in Iraq”, 08 July 2004]

The implication is that these various groups are largely working toward the same goal: “depriv[ing] the emergent government of the ability to deliver…”, “depriv[ing] the government of funds necessary for reconstruction…”  Robb continued the thought in a later post by suggesting that diverse GG groups “combine” for a purpose:

The bazaar solves the problem: how do small, potentially antagonistic networks combine to conduct war?

[“The Bazaar’s Open Source Platform”, 24 September 2004]

So these groups are “potentially antagonistic” but instead only work toward one common goal:  the destruction of a nation-state structure.  Quite possibly each group will have ulterior motives, non-aligning goals for the more distant future, but all agree that first the state must fall.  What remains unconsidered is how the more distant goals affect the present activities.  Should these “potentially antagonistic” groups realize that future competitors will still be around after the state’s collapse, what might they do to prevent their own ultimate collapse when the state no longer serves as the focal point of hostilities?

To the degree that they are dependent on systems — cellphone relays, for instance — they might need to protect those systems. GG Theory introduces the concept of ‘black globalization’ to account for this protection, but fails to answer how ‘black globalization’ can be maintained when global oil production is brought to a halt, for instance, or at least severely disrupted:  how shall arms, food, and so forth be transported?  If by mules and donkeys, it will not be very global.  Perhaps limited oil production will be protected by the black marketeers; how then protect against unmanned drones sent in by nation-states to disrupt those supplies and flows — or from competing GG’s?  If systempunkt attacks cause cascading effects which also happen to disrupt ‘black globalization’, why will GG groups continue to cause disruption?  This last question should address not only whether such groups are capable of observing such blowback, ahead of time or as it occurs, but also whether continued activities will be possible once enough blowback has happened.

A bazaar of violence is a hallmark of global guerrilla warfare. When a state collapses, as it did in Iraq, global guerrillas quickly arrive with money and violence. Through this funding, terrorist violence, and infrastructure disruption; global guerrillas create conditions ripe for the establishment of a bazaar of violence. In essence, the bazaar is an emergent property of global guerrilla operations within a failed or collapsed state. Once established, it builds on itself and creates a dynamic that is almost impossible to disrupt.

[08 July 2004, emphasis added]

This would seem to suggest that the term “bazaar of violence” only applies to “failed or collapsed state[s]” and not a global dynamic.  It may appear in multiple places around the globe — but only in failed states.  Can it fuel activities directed against succeeding states, to cause them to fail and open the door for expansion of the “bazaar of violence”?  John Robb does suggest the possibility, through (1) Leveraged attacks, (2) Swarms, and (3) Rapid innovation [24 September 2004], but these considerations fail to answer the question of why GG groups will coordinate to achieve mutual destruction of their own resources while attacking common foes.  Presumably, for such a reality to occur each GG group would need to have tunnel vision focused only on local effects and be entirely unable to see how cascading failure of global systems will produce negative feedback for themselves — even after such negative feedback begins to occur.  In the case of Robb’s prime example, Iraq, the resources of globalization coming from without, i.e., from foreign sources, allow some protection against the internal collapse GGs are causing.  A global “bazaar of violence” dynamic would not provide such a buffer.  Furthermore, John Robb provides a paradox when considering “rapid innovation”:

With a sufficient number of guerrilla networks unearthing vulnerabilities (particularly ones with system’s leverage), security forces will likey be outmatched.

[24 September 2004]

Combine this with considerations earlier in that post relating to the advantages of an open-source platform:

This pattern shows a level of learning, activity, and success similar to what we see in the open source software community….

• Given a large enough pool of co-developers, any difficult problem will be seen as obvious by someone, and solved. […]
  
• Your co-developers (beta-testers) are your most valuable resource. […]
  
• Recognize good ideas from your co-developers. […]

[24 September 2004]

According to the theory of open-source platforms and Global Guerrillas, diverse groups will not only learn very quickly whatever happens globally, but will be quite aware of tactics other groups are using.  “Unearthing vulnerabilities” in systems will occur, and such knowledge will quickly spread.  How not, then, detect adverse system perturbations or unwise attacks on systempunkts with a high potential for blowback?  In an environment which permits rapid learning, how can GGs operate only with a tunnel vision focused on their local environments — especially given the fact that these diverse groups are at the same time somehow “co-developers”?

For GG Theory to address a global dynamic leading to sustained chaos, these diverse groups must continue to see only their localities, must continue to believe that their peculiar visions of the future can still be manifested if those localities are altered (this keeps them acting destructively), and can never be persuaded from such visions (of actual local environments and the potential for manifesting the desired but different futures).   Or else they must be able to destroy nation-states and state-protected markets, one at a time, without destroying themselves in the process, while ensuring the growth of “black globalization” and their individual networks, which would suggest a level of coordination that goes far beyond the violence-oriented “Stigmergic Learning” [14 July 2004] John Robb has suggested in another post:

Stigmergic systems use simple environmental signals to coordinate that actions of independent agents (each with their own decision making process). These signals are used to coordinate scalable, robust, and dynamic activity. This activity is often much more intelligent that the actions capable by the individual actors (in this case individual global guerrilla groups).

[14 July 2004]

— Another paradox.  The concept of stigmergic learning has been incorporated into Global Guerrilla theory to explain, once again, how diverse GG groups may ‘learn’ which targets to attack, in an open-source environment; only, this time, there is a type of independent discovery of systemic weaknesses rather than a joint discovery.  Robb considers only the attack impulse, the destructive impulse.  The concept of stigmergic learning has not been considered in the context of ‘learning what not to attack’ or for any limitation of disruptive behavior, however, which is unfortunate.  In a discussion concerning normative theory here at D5GW, I considered something quite related to the subject of stigmergic learning:

In archetypal Barnett vs Robb terms, the erroneous majoritarianism operates from a belief in closed-source, vertically enforced, and hierarchical establishment of standards, whereas standards in fact really form as a result of confluential processes during the continual emergence of systemic reality. Applied normative theory tends to be the first; but one might consider normative theory as an explanatory theory that describes the emergence rather than prescribing the emergence.

[CGW, 22 January 2007]

Relating this to Global Guerrilla Theory and a previous paradox, I wonder how tunnel-vision GG’s, even if they are truly perpetually tunnel-visioned, may nonetheless move toward an independent discovery that maintaining general order is far preferable to allowing a world to spiral into perpetual chaos, since “This activity is often much more intelligent tha[n] the actions capable by the individual actors”.  From an OODA perspective, stigmergic learning would seem to suggest that, as chaos increases past a certain point, independent actors may increasingly shift their activities toward limiting it or preventing it, or to building orders.  This does not mean that they will throw their weight on the side of nation-states (although non-GG actors on the world stage might), but only that an impulse for building and/or maintaining localized stabilities and security may usurp the impulse to disrupt and destroy.  To the degree that actors outside of localized environments may affect the stability of those environments, coordination with groups outside those environments might be required for ensuring localized stability.  As we often see in geopolitics.  I.e., as chaotic situations become sufficiently widespread, more and more people will “Observe” chaos and shift their Activities to try and halt it; few people love such a vision.  But I said Robb’s consideration of stigmergic learning was paradoxical:

Stigmergy is a term used in biology (from the work of french biologist Pierre-Paul Grasse) to describe environmental mechanisms for coordinating the work of independent actors (for example, ants use pheromones to create trails and people use weblog links to establish information paths, for others to follow).

[14 Juiy 2004, emphasis added]

Neither example involves creating disruption; rather, the opposite.

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* ” Barnett and Robb”, “‘Global Guerrillas’ as 5GW Warriors”, “Follow-up to ‘GG as 5GWarriors’”, “Static, Transparency, and Systemic Resilience: Part One”