The Quest for Certainty

Until the 1980s, it was just command. Neither Clausewitz, Jomini, Sun Tzu, nor Basil Liddel Hart talked about Command and Control. Indeed, until the 1980s, no one outside the Warsaw Pact talked about ‘control’ at all – at least as it related to command. The origins are fascinating but the key remains that C2 is supposed to be about Command and Control: perhaps as interdependent facets, perhaps as supplements, perhaps – even – as parasitic necessities. We don’t really know because no one has explained or articulated it. Not in a way we could understand – free from gobbledygook, spin, and neophilic language. And if no one has bothered telling us why we want command and control or what they think it achieves (aside from being a more complex way of delivering leaders’ decisions), then we are undoubtedly facing danger.