Sports writer Joe Posnaski was more than surprised when the Army invited him down to Fort Leavenworth to talk about "Moneyball" back in 2008.
Like the cash-strapped baseball team in Michael Lewis' book-turned movie, the military was facing a conundrum of sorts: it has to trim spending and preserve its effectiveness in the changing face of modern conflict.
Marc Tracy of The New Republictalked to Posnaski about it:
"They wanted to try to get into the mindset of a group of people that don't have the resources," said Posnaski, "and how they would try to overcome those things. They really were focusing on Moneyball and how the A's did it with less."
Doing "it" with less is a matter of life and death for the military, which has zero room to mess up, with China launching cyber attacks, Islamists storming around Africa, and Iran and Israel at each other's throats.
Tracy makes the point that COIN, or COunter INsurgency, is the "Moneyball" of modern military doctrine.
Here's some of his interview with a retired Army colonel:
"What we liked about Moneyball is that on the face of it, they looked at baseball and said, 'The things we believe we know are based on mistaken premises, and if we take a look at baseball differently, we will see solutions we would not see,'" said Col. Gregory Fontenot (Ret.), the director of the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies, who hosted Posnanski. "Counterinsurgency requires you to look at problems from perspectives you hadn't previously considered."
Tracy attributes COIN to "Baby Boomers""like David Petraeus," but Petraeus was just one half of the COIN equation. The other half was Marine Corps General James N. "Mad Dog" Mattis, who co-wrote the official COIN doctrine with Petraeus.
The Marine Corps' own history of fighting small wars should indicate that Petraeus might have been peeking at Mattis' test more so than leading the effort himself — and that makes sense, seeing as the Marine Corps' 2010 budget was $29 billion, while the Army's was $283 billion.
Nonetheless, the theme here is correct: The military is going to have to do more with less. Already America is seeing a likely boost in cyber capabilities and special forces, with a harsh aversion to the phrase "boots on the ground"— the U.S. has no plans for another massive (and expensive) military incursion any time soon, if it's avoidable.
Not to mention that things could get even worse under sequestration (ugh).
Yes, it's "Moneyball" for the Pentagon from here on out. As for Posnaski's meeting with the military, he said, "we ended up just talking a whole lot of baseball."
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