Philippe Beaulieu-Brossard | Can We Wage War with Post-Positivist Approaches?

Philippe Beaulieu-Brossard is a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (University of Ottawa). His research enquires the politics of knowledge in and on the Middle-East. His current project investigates the translation of critical ideas in military organizations (Israeli Defense Forces, US Army and Canadian Forces). Philippe completed a Ph.D. in International Relations at the University of St-Andrews in the United Kingdom in December 2014. His thesis developed a methodology and method to analyse relationships between theory and political-practice in specific issues. Philippe relied on this methodology to reveal how IR knowledge production was involved in the Iranian nuclear crisis (1998-2014). Philippe recently published on reflexivity and actor-network theory in International Relations and, on smart power/soft war in US-Iran relations in the International Studies Journal. Post-positivist approaches became gradually popular in International Relations (IR) from the late 1980s onwards. This phenomenon was not isolated. In the meantime, the least expected post-positivist concepts found influence and application in the least expected institutions: military organizations. This conference reveals how this became possible through the story of systemic operational design (SOD) in Israel between 1995 and 2015. SOD is a methodology to design military operations. SOD promoted, to name just a few, a non-linear understanding of the battle space, a decision-making process based on deconstruction/reconstruction and command based on the clash of ideas among equals rather than hierarchy. What does this story tell us about military science making in the 21st century and what are the implications involved in using post-positivism for military purposes? This conference will seek to answer these questions through interviews conducted with 20 IDF defence scientists, military instructors and commanding officers in May and June 2015.