Pentagon's "Political Will" in a Box

The world is a complicated place. And the American government is having a tough time figuring out who's really on its side, these days. One day, Tony Blair is George Bush's BFF in Iraq -- the next, he's planning on troop withdrawals. Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki hates the "surge" (or maybe he's really committed to it.) Pakistani chief Pervez Musharraf is either a valuable ally in the war on terror, or a jihadist whipping-boy. And let's not even get into where all those Iraqi tribal sheiks stand.

So I guess it makes sense that the Office of the Secretary of Defense is wants to build an "analytical tool" and "web-enabled/deployable training" for "determining the presence, absence and/or degree of political will for reform and collaboration with the USG [U.S. government] in democratization, counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism efforts within governments and/or leadership elites of crisis prone states." A request for proposals explains...

Military and other planners traditionally make instinctive assumptions about the presence or absence of political will based on a variety of subjective factors. Until now, no objective framework for determination has been developed or applied. The result is that major decisions regarding collaboration, information sharing, funding and planning are based almost exclusively on individual idiosyncracy, without taking into account historical or collective experience.

You mean like, "The more I get to know President Putin, the more
I get to see his heart and soul, and the more I know we can work together in a positive way"? Sure, I can see why...

A capability to dynamically assess the impact of political will on national/military objectives would be of enormous value to USG
planners in that it would allow for more efficient/effective allocation of USG resources/efforts. This research project will de-construct and unpack the concept of political will into its constituent elements.
The reduction of political will to a binary variable misses the tremendous array of intermediary positions between the poles of presence or absence. The project will establish a full spectrum of gradients between the two extremes based on the level of intensity of political will. This will enable policy-makers and field leaders to gauge just how much political will their counterparts possess...

Even the most autocratic regimes are not entirely monolithic – there are always elements within a regime which favor reform. The study will therefore develop a mapping methodology to help determine the universality of political will - which sub-components of host country regime possess political will for reform and collaboration. Finally the project will develop a dynamic component to measure the propensity to variation in political will, or its robustness, based on behavior and fact patterns.

Sounds noble -- if a little impractical to pull off. And it's not the only effort the Pentagon is pursuing to try to squeeze squishy social questions into tight little analytical boxes. Darpa recently funded some studies into "Pre-Conflict Anticipation and Shaping," which combined...

computational social science modeling and simulation, scenario generation, evolutionary programming, planning, and multiplayer gaming. When integrated, these technologies allow combatant commanders and senior decision makers to understand and anticipate the societal/regional indicators that precipitate instability and conflict within an area of responsibility, then mitigate the impact of that instability... The goal of PCAS' more powerful societal/regional models is an integrated perspective encompassing, in a consistent way, all the dimensions of social change.

*"*A demonstration problem involving actions the US might take regarding
Pakistan's Northwestern Territories" was worked out, for the project.

UPDATE: What does this have to do with the Green Lantern and the Guns of August? Find out in this killer commentary from Robert Farley.