Complexity, Networking, & Effects-Based Approaches to Operations

Abstract : Our world is a myriad of ever-changing, interdependent variables whose courses we can never entirely predict. The strength of an effects-based approach to operations is that it squarely addresses these complexities by concentrating on their most nonlinear aspects: humans, their institutions, and their actions. Indeed, the entire effects-based approach can be characterized by four things: a focus on the human dimension of competition and conflict; the consideration of a full spectrum of actions whether in peace, crisis, or hostilities; a multifaceted, whole-of-nation concept of power; and the recognition of the complex interconnected nature of the actors and challenges involved. The human dimension arises because all effects-based approaches are ultimately about shaping human perceptions and behavior, and because they depend heavily on human beings to make the complex estimates and decisions involved. The focus on an entire spectrum of actions means thinking holistically across a peace-crisis-hostilities spectrum. Finally, any effects-based approach must proceed from the recognition that all actions and the reactions they provoke are inextricably linked in a system of ever-changing and adapting human systems whose complexity shapes both the nature of the problem and the task of assessing, planning, and executing any operation. The central tenet of an effects-based approach to operations is that we can somehow purposefully shape the interactions of the actors in this complex security environment. Living systems theory offers a way of approaching this complexity. It sees the world in biological and sociological terms as an interlocking multilevel system of complex adaptive systems from which no individual system can be extracted without changing both its character and that of the system as a whole. In the model, interactions occur simultaneously on many different levels with each interaction tending to proceed at a pace dictated by local circumstances.