4GW/5GW Game: “The Takedown of Sam Adams and John Hancock”
Early in my blogging attempts I wrote a post called 4GW/5GW: The Takedown of Sam Adams and John Hancock.
It was inspired by a blurb in US News and World Report about a counter-insurgency class at the Army’s Command and General Staff College:
During a recent visit, we learned that Schmitt has his students test strategies on the Red Coats’ move against Sam Adams and John Hancock, an act that helped spark the Revolutionary War. His question: “Could Sam Adams and John Hancock have been discredited by nonmilitary actions? Could they have looked at nonkinetic ways to address the Colonies’ grievances?
So, here is the 4GW/5GW game for all of you:
How could the British have taken on the American proto-insurgency with 4GW/5GW to hang onto the colonies (without magic or hi-tech breakthroughs).
You can read mine if you want to critique it. It was written early in my 5GW thinking, so it is more 4GW then 5GW.
Submit your take in the comments, or post it at your own blog (but please leave a comment with the link - don’t depend upon trackbacks).
Update: I decided to include my analysis and recommendations with this post after all.
Here is the results of my solitary brainstorming on this (in the context of 4GW and 5GW).
Background British vs. a North American proto-insurgency
- Similar Culture/Heritage
- Long Communication latency between North America and London/UK
- North American Colonist consider themselves British
- At most 33% of Colonist really want full independence (maybe less in the 1774/1775 time-frame)
- Colonist are merchant/merit/Capitalism driven
- British are hereditary/hierarchical/Mercantilism driven
- Both sides want profit
- Colonist belong to a wide variety of churches without coordinated top leadership
- Britain is mostly Church of England
- The Colonist have newish intelligence service (Committee of Correspondence) and loosely coupled Independence-minded patriotic societies (The Sons of Liberty)
How could a sort of British Pro-Consul defuse the situation (which is being politically led by Sam Adams and John Hancock)? Here are some of my ideas:
Release Steam
- Roll back some of the repressive acts that have the colonist agitating
- Minimal Parliamentary participation for each colony (“No Taxation without repre…oh…right then…never mind”)
- Utilize a strong Crown appointed Governor and a weak (but non-token state legislatures
- Create a North American High Court of Appeals to handle judicial appeals (with judges from both Britain and the Colonies)
- Create a King’s Commission for Grievances and Petition for North America (have both Colonist and Britons serving on it…co-opt Sam Adams time on this)
- Remove one Regiment Garrisoned in Boston to outside of Boston. Reposition the other regiments to a coastal fortress. Create a joint colonial/British constabulary to provide policing functions.
Recruit/Integrate Colonial Officers into the British Officers
- Re-enforces British identity
- Gives a positive (to Britain) outlet for martially minded colonist
Trade Reform
- Don’t treat America as a second class trade partner
- Move to free trade (away from Mercantilism)
- American energy can be redirect toward profit (as we are naturally inclined)
Divide and Conquer
- Create (and manipulate) a mild anti-slavery society/movement to wedge Northern colonies from southern colonies
- Create (and manipulate) a mild Indian Friendship society/movement to wedge eastern colonies from western colonies
- Use/manipulate Freemasonry in the colonies to increase universal Englishman Sentiment
- Create (and Manipulate with money through Loyalist) local patriotic organization as an alternative to the various Sons of Liberty organizations
- Infiltrate the Committee of Correspondence through spy trade-craft
- Manage Agents of influence State Legislators and other public leaders through trade-craft
- Discreet/shame/compromise/entrap key folks to destroy their public credibility
- The above also necessitate the create a British/Loyalist Intelligence service and an even more secret smaller version (sometimes the actions of the first will give cover to the second).
“We are All Englishmen”
- Create a Secretary of State for North American Affairs
- Creation of North American High Court
- Create a King’s Commission for Grievances and Petition for North America
- More opportunities for Colonial gentlemen in the British Army
- Establish a UK wide Holiday to Celebrate North American. Have a major dignitary visit the Colonies each year around the time of the holiday (e.g. the King, Crown Prince, PM, Deputy PM, other princes, the 1774 equiv of Lord Mountbatten)
- Slots for Americans based on merit at British Universities
- Offer Sam Adams a teaching job at Oxford for 2 years with a large large stipend
- Create an American campus extension (like the various American University campuses around the world) of Cambridge or Oxford to build colonial candidates for an English-style Civil service emphasising administration, engineering, natural philosophy, diplomacy and English identity.
Last Resort
- Create an Operation Phoenix on the proto-rebel American Leadership disguised as a crime wave of some sort (or pirate attack or something).
Filed in The Vault and tagged 4GW
I suppose a historian of the British Empire could answer this question best, because, of course, London did just that. Considering the cataclysmic 1770s, when thirteen colonies declared independence, the the Crown's delaying the 14th such unilateral declaration until 1965 is breathtaking.
Parliament's strategy of co-opting local leaders, including liberal oversight and long-term strategies for phased withdrawal, was such a defensive 5GW.
P'log,
Of course the Crown had alternative methods for satiating the colonists -- for instance, the King could have appointed someone to represent the colonies' interests in Parliament (thereby vacating the "Taxation without Representation" charge). In fact, if King George had appointed a prominent businessman/politician like, say, Sam Adams, then he would have achieved two objectives: answer the predominant complaint of the colonies, while also keeping a key separatist busy -- and close at hand. Besides, a lone representative could easily be contained in the legislative process, so the risk would have been minimal.
The irony of the occupation of Boston was the utter lack of strategic and cultural intelligence by Gage et al. I can imagine the Governor's staff meeting on the 20th of April, 1775: "It seems that the colonists really don't like us!" Despite instructions from London in early 1775 to arrest the leaders of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, none of Gen. Gage's orders directed his forces to do so -- rather, he was focused solely on the colonists' capacity to wage conventional war.
So, less greed with regard to taxation, coupled with a subtle co-optation of the key separatist leaders (and associated Affaires de Court and soirées to keep them distracted), and the world would be a very different place. Oh, and not massacring Bostonians in 1770 would have helped too.
So, essentially, Britain could have formed a "united states" on its own, with the colonies as a separate state? Hah.
Many of the items in the last-half of your suggestion do appear to be the standard 5GW "create noise" type of activity: by which I mean, that some strains of 5GW thought focus on subversion through the creation of events/groups/movements that are hostile.
But other parts are a positive, co-optation sort of 5GW, in which the target is offered successes which just happen to leave the target some distance behind where it would be without the 5GW -- although it would never know it.
Hmmm, interesting thought experiment.
I think the most important consideration is that the actions of the independence/equality movement has a de-facto goal of making it an 'us and them' scenario. If the Crown were to engage in a 5GW response, that us/them division is the aspect that needs to be addressed by the campaign. The redirection of will would be to turn that independence/equality effort toward a goal that in the end actually benefits the Crown. In other words, give them vicories of your choosing and in doing so, bind them closer to you. If there is no 'us and them' division there is no independence for the colonies. This would likely involve many concessions in taxation and representation but if the colonies are still contributing to the power and wealth of the Empire this is worth the cost.
Strategically speaking, the Crown should always have worked to bind its subjects in this manner as the Crown's power is represented by its subjects. This may have required the vision for a movement for equality between religions, races and sexes much, much earlier than the historical reality, but can you imagine the potential? Granted, such a movement (5GW or otherwise) would have been an exceedingly delicate balancing act, perhaps an impossiblity, but again with the long view in mind well worth the effort and the cost. I imagine the world would be a very different place if the Crown had taken that sort of view.