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Volume 5, Issue 2, Spring 2016
Infinity Journal
Page 6
compelled a unit to carry more water than it would otherwise
need.The higher cost distance (measured as an amount of
needed water) shortens the perceived risk distance, that is,
shortens the time or physical space beyond which it is not
prudent to go.[vii] The careful military leader anticipates
contacts, and, unless the mission involves some resigned
contemplation of suicide,will make sure his line of withdrawal
is secure in case he attacks or is attacked by a stronger force.
Competent strategy implies the constant measurement
of relative power, but with prudence to know that those
measurements will often be wrong. Like so much else, this
truth reigns in both the palpable world and the solipsistic
one. The competitive leader wants to correctly interpret and
shape physical reality in order to act prudently
and
to affect
the perceptions and mindset of the opposing leader.
Theperception ina leader’smind regarding thewhereorwhen
of his culminating point is obviously affected by geographic
circumstances. Less obvious, or at least less discussed, are
certain specific kinds of places and moments in time that
most affect calculations of risk distance. Mountainous up-
slopes are an example. During a pursuit in mountainous
terrain, the fugitive usually knows which direction he will take
when he gets to a junction of watercourses. His pursuer, on
the other hand, is often obliged to make a blind decision
as to which stream to follow. If for no other reason than this
mundane fact of water and gravity, an advantage is given
to uphill escape.[viii] Some human geographic phenomena
have the same effect.[ix] An international border can act in
a way similar to that of upslope terrain.The two phenomena
(border and mountain) have a commonly measurable
effect – they each can serve to shorten the pursuer’s risk
distance more than they shorten that of a fugitive. With the
international border the effect is not usually manifested
directly in the perceptions of the small unit commander, but
rather through a risk appreciation that is transmitted down
from his leaders. For a squad in pursuit, an international
boundary might be all but invisible, presenting little physical
impediment to that squad’s continuation of its mission. The
fact that it is an international boundary, however, creates
a risk in the minds of superior leaders in the squad’s larger
organization. Disciplined, the squad stops at the border
– at what a more senior leader considers the culminating
point. Sanctuaries of the FARC in Venezuela, or of the Taliban
in Pakistan are common examples. Guerrillas often exploit
administrative borders for the disparate advantages these
geographic phenomena give to fugitive elements.
Renowned commanders and theorists counsel aggressive
pursuit because an inferior force can be destroyed if it
is unable to escape.[x] However, when a pursuing force
presses beyond its risk distance, the pursued force may
turn and counterattack, effect an ambush, or maneuver to
cut off the pursuer from the erstwhile pursuer’s own line of
withdrawal. Care regarding calculations of distance and
strength (not just as to one-off pursuits in irregular war, but
every kind and mix of military encounter) is a hallmark of
great leaders.[xi] Our strategic conversation has to be taken
beyond the effect that costs might have on a unit’s strength
as distance increases, to the relative strengths of all forces,
ours and our opponents’ over time. A discussion that took
place in our office (apologies for not being able to cite a
written reference) regarded the cost of an American soldier’s
lunch in Arghandab. That meal might cost US taxpayers
around $130.00, an expensive proposition over time. An
ineffable rumor circulated that in getting that meal up from
Karachi in ‘jingle trucks’, cash on delivery in Kandahar, $20
of the $130 easily might fall into Taliban hands in the form of
willing and unwilling contributions along the way. Given all
the relevant aspects of the human and physical geography,
maybe it only took $10 to serve the Taliban fighter
his
lunch,
money left over for a few rounds of ammunition. If the rumor
were true, in a palpable sense, we were paying for both sides
of the contest – an effect of dissimilar cost distances.
Informed by Boulding’s reminder of the obvious, we offer
below a
mapamundi
that we are titling,
The Access
Environment
(We include an appendix after the concluding
paragraph of this article’s text that elaborates the strategic
and cartographic rationales).[xii] We could have perhaps
called it the ‘prudent risk map’ or ‘risk distances map’, or
the ‘map of military culmination points and areas beyond
them’. The map speaks for itself in great measure, showing
that but for a minor percentage of the earth’s land surface,
the impediments presented to the planner charged to
contemplate the moving and sustaining of significant
regular US military units are formidable.The map says, loudly,
that while it might be difficult to predict where a US armored
brigade will be sent into combat in the future, it is not hard
to reasonably assert where it is unlikely to be sent except at
great (probably imprudent) cost financially, diplomatically,
or politically.The map suggests that, at this moment in history,
by far the greater expanse of the earth’s land surface lies
beyond the American military risk distance (at least if
military
were defined by the employment of an armored brigade).
It would, in effect, be presumptively imprudent to send an
armored brigade almost anywhere uninvited. If the reasons
for going somewhere are great enough (newly perceived
risks to the nation appear so great as to leave no option
but to advance), then almost any costs will be born and
hopefully some ameliorated. Today, however, (and posing
the armored brigade as an appropriate standard unit for
discussion) the following map makes an assertion, country-
by-country, regarding how much of the world lies beyond the
culminating point, that is, the world beyond which it would
be imprudent to send an armored brigade in the absence
of some new and startling knowledge.
Figure 6: The Access Environment
The Access Environment
expresses strategic risk distance
via three layers of phenomena that we believe will tend to
influence some near-future (within twenty years?) American
decision to send or maintain regular military units abroad.
The first layer (which we depict in colors by country unit) is a
Risk Distance
Geoffrey Demarest, Ivan B.Welch, and Charles K. Bartles