Ep 019 "Murphy Rex: Complexity and War"

**Bill Buppert** (0:06)
I'm Bill Bubert, retired Army Officer and a regular warfare practitioner and scholar. Welcome to Chasing Ghosts, an Irregular Warfare Podcast. The show that examines the mythos, loss history, bad thinking, martial malpractice, and government incompetence that informs so much of irregular warfare. I want to peek behind the curtain at the vast machinery and briar patch politics of insurgency and counterinsurgency and everything in between. Now, let's go ghost hunting together. Hello, this is Bill and welcome to Episode 19 of Chasing Ghosts, an Irregular Warfare Podcast. This episode's title is Murphy Rex, Complexity and War. A little housekeeping, I've had some interesting conversations with listeners and one of them asked me, well, Bill, how do you keep up with the war in Ukraine and Russia and what's going on? As I have told you in the past, it is the one conflict in my entire adult life of watching conflict as both a profession and an interest planet-wide, in which I can't trust any of the sources. But I do find one of the singular voices of sobriety and just spot-on analysis happens to be Colonel Douglas MacGregor. So if you can catch his observations on the conflict, I highly recommend them. What have I been reading lately? My listeners are always asking me that. Currently, I started Alan Eckert's Narratives of America, The Frontiersmen, which is about the irregular conflicts and settling of the North American landmass with Colonials versus Brits versus Aboriginals in the late 18th century. And Eckert is fascinating. He really footnotes these historical novels. And for the most part, he has this conceit, and I believe that these books are written in the 1960s, in which these are fact, not fiction, but he weaves them into a narrative to make the factual telling more interesting. Also, as a result of correspondence and really interesting conversations, I have with my friend EF., he recommended Etan Shamir's Transforming Command about how mission command is changing the way things are done. Well, actually, it's not changing the way things are done now, because it's adopting what the Prussians started in 1805, ending in 1945, which is known by the German term, aufregschtaktik, which means mission command, which means the ability of lower echelons to assume their initiative, even if it results in what has been characterized as the Prussian culture of disobedience.
And I like Shamir's work. My original work and inspiration for mission command came from my friend Don Vandergriff. I recommend all of his books on this. He is the guy who really introduced me to the notion, and convinced me the notion was efficacious and saleable when it comes to conducting conflict. And I recommend it. I just spent the last week, the week before last, shall I say, at the Military Operations Research Society Annual Symposium, which is usually at a service academy. And this year, it was at West Point, New York. So I had the opportunity to go there for a week and mingle with other defense intellectuals and folks who were interested in conflict and war and the way things go. I had a great week, gave five presentations, among which was my annual tutorial on antifragility and systems engineering and antifragility and the future of conflict, which I really enjoy. And then I gave a couple others to include my notions of antifragility and counterinsurgency, in which to, for those listeners who haven't listened to, I think it was the second or third episode in this entire series, my conceit is very simple. It is this. Most insurgencies are antifragile and all counterinsurgencies are fragile. And I expanded upon that during the week. I also did a new presentation and a paper that I presented called Prometheus' Gift about decanting smaller conflict from larger conflict.
And of course, the abstract and pracy of that is rather elegantly simple, which is that when large wars are started, they uncork, decant and make free all the other simmering conflicts that have been going on for years, decades or centuries, and give them the sea room to make those conflicts real in the world. So I had a great time, you know, it's terrific to be around people who have some of the same narrow and rather arcane interests that I do. So I really enjoyed that time there. And again, if you wish to correspond with me, that would be CG Podcast at PM dot me. That is CG Podcast at PM dot me. So let's get into the meat of the episode today. Why did I call this episode Murphy Rex? Because Murphy's Law, which when things go wrong, they will go wrong. And if they can go wrong, they will go wrong in a big way. I would say it instantiates itself in everyday life. And I would say also that it characterizes conflict, large, small, and everything in between, because that's what happens. Now, as a matter of fact, I would suggest that Murphy is the king of battle and not artillery. Sorry for my artillerist in the audience. And infantry remains the queen of battle, in my estimation. So for the purposes of this podcast, we will refer to artillery as the minister without portfolio in battle.