Soccer As a Paradigm For War

The November 2003 issue of the Armed Forces Journal, which is available at this link, has an article entitled: “Football vs. Soccer – American warfare in an era of unconventional threats”. In the article, the authors suggest that the American armed forces should change their approach to contemporary warfare. They state that current military thinking is patterned in part on the U.S. game of football, with its use of power and force and the goal of taking territory.

They suggest that in order to better respond to guerrillas and militants, a more soccer-like approach is required, one that is more fluid and less centralized.

Not bad, however to get people motivated, perhaps they should have suggested adopting pok-ta-pok. This is an ancient Mayan game that resembled soccer, wherein the losing captain was executed, along with some members of his team.

While the author’s suggestions seem reasonable, my general impression is that soccer-loving countries mostly seem to lose wars. Please do a search on “French military victories“.

But seriously though, the paradigm should be modified even more than the authors suggest. There should be some consideration given to the famous quotation from Mao Tse-Tung : “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea.” The question then becomes: ‘How to drain the sea referred to by Mao Zedong?’.

A starting point is a book entitled “Social Order and the General Theory of Strategy“. The author suggests that is the real base of a nation’s power is its social structure. The implication then is that some portion of the military budget be re-tasked to facilitate or effect an armed invasion of the social order that has as its goal a basic reordering of the social structure.

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