Religion-in-COG-Analysis
Religion-in-COG-Analysis
Relationships with God and Community as Critical Nodes in Center of Gravity Analysis
U.S. joint doctrine fails to account for critical relationships with a person’s conception of god and their community, which impacts the operational environment. Social network analysis further hampers strategists’ ability to account for these significant relationships by only accounting for concrete nodes and links. The political, military, economic, social, information, and infrastructure framework is a WEIRD approach that ignores the critical role that some form of religion plays in every society.
The article suggests that planners and strategists should develop a formal accounting for subjective perspectives of religion and significant relationships with the community and god that is separate from the current black box of social and cultural analysis.