Time is one of the elements in the universe that remains a constant. But despite this supposed constant nature, perception of its speed can be quite relative. Three years ago, on a day that looks quite far away, this blog was established with the initial purpose of serving as a branch, a specialized complement for a former and previous initiative. Initiative whose inner dynamics gave further reasons for this blog to emerge, yet to serve as an independent and individual initiative. Three years seem indeed like a long time, yet this time went by with quite a fast speed.
During this time the Blog and the author both witnessed many interesting events and milestones. In the mid-2016, number of viewers and visitors skyrocketed. In March-April 2016 the author was given the opportunity of contributing to a very interesting and equally promising project called Plane Encyclopedia, providing some articles reviewing warplanes of various periods in aviation history. I strongly recommend it to be visited, as the warplanes reviewed and illustrated are rich in detail and also in an insight of the operational needs and strategic context – or combat experiences – that gave way to those incredible machines. The work of everyone taking part of Plane Encylopedia is also another reason that makes the site worth of a visit. Many thanks to them, by the way, for allowing me to help in crafting such interesting initiative. In fact, one of the people involved in Plane Encyclopedia contributed to ‘Drakkar’ with a renewed and better looking logo. Many thanks to that person.
Back to ‘Drakkar – Defence, Strategy and Security Blog’. The growth in terms on quantity, a bit on quality (though clearly more need to be done on this regard) and the number of views and visits is quite impressive. At the turn of its first year, for example, the number of viewers and visitors was around 150 and 91 respectively. By the third year, the abovementioned rise in viewers and visitors resulted in a total of 7,983 viewers and 6,143 visitors (by the time of writing this reflection). Something that exceeded even my most optimistic expectancies. It is a very good development, all in all.
Also, the number of articles reached a total of nearly 50 pieces, with half of them being of the times where the ‘Drakkar’ was sailing on its own. Yet mere statistics are not enough to fully evaluate and assess the performance of this initiative, even less to see if its meeting its initial purpose and objectives. Like the Prussian General Staff, it is time for a feedback and self-examination of ‘Drakkar – Defence, Strategy and Security Blog’ after this time.
First of all, the birth of ‘Drakkar’ took place during quite stormy days, days that pointed out the need and the advantages of sailing by my own, to do my own ways, instead of sailing with unreliable and not-so dependable company. Three years after such a stormy birth, ‘Drakkar’ is validating the idea of autonomy and of doing things by oneself as worthy. There is indeed an ample degree of autonomy and of application of one’s own standards, priorities, schedules, topics and path. But as autonomy is a perk, this is also a big challenge. As Friedrich Nietzsche once said: “Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves”. It is not only the will but also the required characteristic freedom or autonomy ask. In other words, walking on your own allows you to enjoy autonomy and freedom, but also requires a high degree of responsibility. It is a very asking and challenging path. It asks a lot of yourself by pushing you to give the best of talents and qualities to deliver a good article, thus testing yourself at unexpected ways. It is easy to escape the big and asking responsibility freedom and autonomy asks by taking the easy path of pleasing others by submitting to their standards and requirements. But it is hard to be asked to be responsible to yourself and your own projects for the level of discipline and hardship is even higher. One needs to be though and brave to take such an endeavouring path.
Simply because one is placing oneself under a hard test every time a new piece is to be written, every time a careful and detailed research is required to craft such piece, every time editing an article is like the little devil mocking and pointing out the mistakes and failures detected on each draft. Because every new article and topic is a jump straight into the unknown, every article is a test by itself, a challenge to be able to deal with failure, to learn from it, and improve on the march while learning. It is also because it challenges to write in a language that it is not the mother language, and also to deal with other languages one can master at some degree.
But responsibility is not only required: discipline, constancy, commitment, a strong will and dedication are also required in order to undertake the task of walking by oneself and run a project that it is very asking. Capacity to deal with failure and mistakes, to have the strength and patience to deal with the loads of information during research and to have a clear aim for each piece, and to avoid monotony or repetition are all required as well. To make every article interesting or readable is a challenge on its own. And to do much with the very scarce resources one has.
So, we have responsibility, discipline, constancy, dedication, strong will, patience and strength as requirements autonomy/freedom requires. You need to love what you do, you need to be interested and be passionate for what you do; yet love and interest and passion are not enough. The abovementioned traits are required to put such love, interest and dedication to have a goal and advance towards it. Yet another important lesson ‘Drakkar’ – and the topics treated here – is flexibility. It acts as an antidote to discipline becoming a strait coat rather than an asset; it also enables one to have better reaction capacities or responsiveness when the way is not appropriate to reach into an aim. The secret is to learn to balance both and advance with both.
Second, ‘Drakkar’ was intended to be a self-learning process for many aspect, ranging from professional to personal. The abovementioned first point is a first evidence that it is fulfilling its (self)educational purpose. This comprises the first set of lessons learned since this project began to run. The other set of lessons ‘Drakkar’ has provided is that one indeed learns in many ways, from the same topic one is working on, to the realization of the things needed to undertake a project run basically by one person. Moreover, one is enabled to improve, to experiment and to decide the course of action product of such learnings.
This learning purpose of this project is providing lessons useful for Life and for the various aspects of a person: from personal to professional aspects, that allows self-examinations aimed at yielding improvement.
This brings us to the third purpose of ‘Drakkar’: to highlight the gaps and shortcomings and solve issues, and to recognize and further strengthen the advantages and assets. But such highlighting is not enough if a good spirit of self-criticism is not developed. One must always criticize everything, but mainly one must criticize oneself in order to allow such self-improvement and learn more about what one is capable of and what not.
Fourth, ‘Drakkar’ is serving its purpose of further increasing my knowledge on topics that are of both personal and professional interests, as every article requires a research that brings more lights and knowledge. It is also purposed at contributing with its content to the knowledge of anyone interested in the topics covered by this blog.
Now, on the shortcomings or issues ‘Drakkar’ might be having. This project has allowed me to work, write and structure the content the way I consider more suitable. This could be a problem considering that English is a language were brief and direct texts tend to be preferred over very lengthy and detailed ones. I’m aware I might be jumping over more than one rule of writing in English. Also, our times require texts to be short and brief as the rhythm of life puts speed and briefness as main preferable traits.
But the level of detail and length of the articles (at the point of having many parts) are of my preference for many reasons. One is the clear interest for the topics. Another is the high value I put for detail, for everything is detail from my perspective. Le Diable est dans les details. The more the details about a problem, an event, a battle, a strategic position and objectives, or a military system, the easier the comprehension of them. Details allows a better understanding and to grasp the nature and the elements and factors of the subject of study and analysis, let alone the implications and lessons the subject might provide. It might be at times misleading for the minds that prefer a more direct and direct approach, and they might be right. Yet detail allows a better understanding of the subject, a better learning from it. To say that a given Great Power has a number of warships is not enough to get the whole picture and to understand why the number of warships is having is important. Detail allows one to know how those warships can contribute to its power projection and security, how they enable said power to wage war or meet its strategic interests. Because it is also important to know the strategic needs, the strategic and operational concepts and doctrines that resulted in such warships – or the development of naval power – to be developed and built, the operational behaviour, the strong and weak points of those commanding those warships and the skills of those crewing them. It is necessary to understand the mindset that framed the development and deployment – and operation – of said warships. It is necessary to know the political elements and the role played by geography in conjunction with the strategic interests in the development and operation of those warships. Detail allows one to do so.
Moreover, the nature warfare, military history and military affairs, defence, security and strategy have is, from my point of view and despite the idea of being ‘direct’ topics, complex. It is complex as the articles have made evident so far. And given such complexity, detail is necessary to be able to understand their nature and the nature of the problem(s) they are dealing with. Indeed, the idea is not to be stuck with details, yet a brief and simple approach is not helpful when studying on analysing those topics; it might even mislead or give the wrong ideas about them.
Now, the time that takes between one piece and another is very lengthy. This is true, and it might signal laziness, lack of commitment and lack of constancy and dedication. Yet the reality is very different. One is the call by other duties. Another is my preference for such amount of time to allow the readers to have their time to read, enjoy and analyse the lengthy and detailed articles. I also prefer to avoid delivering content at a high frequency that could be self-defeating by ‘bombarding’ the public with content each two or three days. Moreover, ‘Drakkar’ is still small like to reach such frequency. I also prefer to take time to prepare a good or decent article by doing a careful and exhaustive research: if time is needed to craft something of value or with a decent degree of quality, I prefer to take such time instead of producing far too general and superficial content.
The idea behind this Blog and its content is not to have ‘far too general’ and ‘rush’ articles. Instead, the idea is to have articles to read carefully, to read and re-read them time and time again so to absorb, debate, discuss and learn from the information given. This Blog wants to deliver articles to be read while taking a warm cup of coffee or tea while the reader reads the details of the content. This Blogs seeks to contribute to their inner debates, curiosity, interests and personal or professional formation in the sense of providing another source among many of knowledge and debate on certain topics. This Blogs wants people to take their time to read and absorb the information given. To enjoy what their are reading. These approaches might be the curse of my philosophical side, but I wanted this Blog to be a source of lessons and knowledge not only for me, but also for those interested in the same topics as I. If the reader feels this Blog is contributing to their intellectual curiosity, if the reader is ‘forced’ to ask, to question… then ‘Drakkar’ is fulfilling another one of its purposes. Of course, I don’t pretend to be an authority, for I am also learning in the process, being ‘Drakkar’ the tool for that. There might be also gaps, missing points or point one might disagree with. After also, mine is only but one voice among many, some with more expertise than I. Yet I hope that my voice is a contribution to the people taking their time to read, as well as for myself.
There is a lack of illustrations and maps. This is definitely true, and it is something I must work on, so to make the article more user-friendly, more dynamic and less heavy to grasp. The idea is to work soon on acquiring the needed skills to incorporate illustrations and maps where needed.
And many projects are pending. That is also true. At the moment there are other priorities, but I haven’t lost the aim of materializing them. When I finish with the current schedule, I will set myself to put those projects into fruitions.
This reflection is going a bit long… unsurprisingly. But the time, the reach and the things that took place in these three years this project have been running worth it. The exercise is – and will always be – necessary.
Now, what does the future holds? Who knows? The idea is to keep the gradual growth and to see the possibilities ‘Drakkar’ might have, the heights it can reach, the paths it might take, the possibilities it might open, and the pace it might acquire. For the time being, it is still an exercise, a firing range, a field or an intellectual manoeuvre and exercise aimed at testing abilities, hone skills, detect the shortcomings and to see how improvements can be made, as well as to keep its purpose of being a learning tool and a way to… know more myself and improve myself.
After these three years, ‘Drakkar’ is still a small initiative, with a high chance to grow. Back in the time between the 8th and 11th centuries, men from the north took sail in longships to seek for new – needed – lands and fulfil their thirst for discovering new lands, unbeknown to them the destiny the winds would be taking them, the things they would encounter, the fate of their expeditions and their very lifes. The same is going on with ‘Drakkar’. I don’t know where the winds might take this ship product of intellectual and personal curiosity and of the need to discover new professional and intellectual ‘lands and seas’. But like the Norsement of those days, the unknown might lead to new promising paths and events, to possibilities I cannot imagine, even now. Only time will tell.
And last but not least, I want to say a special thanks to the people that took their time to read the very lengthy and heavy pieces talking about a topic that is not – apparently – that attractive or interesting considering the prevailing mentality and ideals nowadays. thanks for their patience and curiosity, and if there are people keeping track of ‘Drakkar’, thanks for waiting for the next piece(s). As I said before, I hope that I am a contributing voice here.
Many thanks once and again.
Drakkar: Defence, Strategy and Security 