Infinity Journal Volume 5, Issue 2, Spring 2016

Volume 5, Issue 2, Spring 2016

Infinity Journal

Page 4

This article discusses a geographic phenomenon we

consider centrally relevant to military strategy and planning

at all scales,

risk distance

. Risk distance is the distance to

the theoretical point in space and time beyond which it

would be imprudent to continue an activity or to remain in

a place. That dangerous point is what many in the military

refer to as the ‘culminating point’.[i] When a commander

calculates relevant distances to some likely confrontation in

an armed struggle, the perceived costs and risks have an

intimate relationship to the correlation of force at the points

of potential contact. If, for instance, a point of

intended

future

contact were so distant that a commander could expect to

wield only inferior relative strength (at that contact point),

he might be overreaching by forcing the contact, unless he

at least assures that his force will have a safe escape. This

question of the culminating point is central to rational strategy

at every level, but has been short-changed in recent strategy

literature. We emphasize it here, starting with a theoretical

discussion of distance as the geographer knows it.

We take as axiomatic that competitive armed strength

diminishes in accordance with the distance a force must

travel away from its base or sanctuary. This ‘law’ is known in

some circles as the

Loss of StrengthGradient

,a termproposed

by economist Kenneth Boulding in 1962.[ii] A peace activist,

Professor Boulding was nevertheless anti-communist enough

that he wanted to enter the Cold War arms race debate

in a reasoned way. It seems that to Professor Boulding it

made a lot more sense to station forces in Europe than to

increase the total amount of coercive force (especially

nuclear) available to the United States. He believed that

more ICBMs did not equal greater military advantage, a

point he expressed in part through use of distance theory.

The Loss of Strength Gradient is related to Professor Waldo

Tobler’s ‘First Law of Geography’ that “everything is related to

everything else, but near things are more related”; as well

as to the observation called ‘distance decay’ that is widely

referenced in geography and economics literature.[iii] The

loss of strength (or influence) caused by increasing distance

has a geographic consequence.Theoretically, there will exist

places on the earth where opponents, although they may

possess greatly unequal amounts of total coercive strength,

will nevertheless have equal amounts of practicable coercive

strength.

Geoffrey Demarest,

Ivan B.Welch,

and

Charles K.

Bartles

US Army, Fort Leavenworth, U.S.

Geoffrey Demarest is a researcher at the US Army’s Foreign

Military Studies Office at Ft. Leavenworth. He holds a JD

and a PhD in International Studies from the University of

Denver, and a PhD in Geography from the University of

Kansas. He is also a graduate of the US Army War College

and of the School of the Americas. He is a retired Army

officer and civil lawyer. He is the author of numerous

works on military topics, including his latest book,

Winning

Irregular War: Conflict Geography

Ivan B. Welch, PhD (LTC retired) has extensive academic

and professional expertise in applied geography. He

served some 27 years in the United States Army where

he participated in peacekeeping operations, ground

combat, coalition warfare, and joint military policy

planning. For the past several years he has done

extensive open source research and writing on foreign

perspectives and international relations. He teaches

cultural geography in interagency seminars and offers

frameworks for analysis based upon geographic factors.

He is currently doing field work regarding the interaction

of place, people, and purpose as entangled systems in a

cultural, economic, and political context.

Charles K. Bartles is a Russian linguist and analyst at the

Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

He has deployed in various assignments to Afghanistan

and Iraq is now an imagery officer in the Army Reserve.

He also has served as a security assistance officer at U.S.

embassies in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. He

has a BA in Russian from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,

an MA in Russian and Eastern European Studies from

the University of Kansas, and a Geospatial Information

Systems certificate from the University of Missouri-Kansas

City.

To cite this Article:

Demarest, Geoffrey, Welch, Ivan B., and Bartles, Charles K.,“Risk Distance”,

Infinity Journal

, Volume 5, Number

2, spring 2016, pages 4-10.

Risk Distance