Rethinking Security

Social Media and Networked Social Movements

Reflecting a bit more on the social media and the evolution (or not) of networked social movements at GroupIntel.

Veteran's/Armistice Day

Can't really add anything to this.

Also see Library of Congress resources in American Folklife Center.

Social Media and Ft. Hood

I've got a new post on RTJ about the Ft. Hood shooting coverage and what it means for social media's future.

Police-Military Interaction in Mexico

My frequent writing partner John P. Sullivan has a great new piece in the Spanish edition of Air Space and Power Journal (link goes to English translation) on police-military interaction in Mexico's drug war.

Key graph:

"Policing post-conflict situations is notoriously difficult for military forces. The military establishes the conditions for order, them generally seeks to transition social control to civil police or transitional gendarmerie forces.50 The situation is even more complex in a state of on-going high intensity criminal violence such as that found in a “criminal insurgency” or drug war. Police and the military are equally challenged by brigands and gangsters who operate with near impunity. This is compounded by the challenge of operating within a fearful community, compromised by corrupt officials and a plethora of security leaks. To effectively operate in this environment, both the police and military services need to develop and employ new skills at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels."

Metaphors at War in Cyberspace

Selil on the evolving cyber-literature:

"Whether we are part of the military, intelligence, corporate, counter culture, or civilian communities we bring a certain set of expectations and thinking to the idea of cyber warfare. Unfortunately those biases often have the leaders talking past each other ....The metaphors of cyber warfare are partially to blame. In trying to force cyber warfare into a metaphor it is denigrated and castigated as much as it is heralded with miraculous powers. The better case is that metaphors and analogies are rife with systemic bias of the community positing the miraculous conceptual allegory."

To a large extent this is also a process of people trying to superimpose elements of experience or reference from their experience (or institutional memory) into the cyber-realm. Hence, for example, an Air Force officer would write an article titled "carpet-bombing in cyberspace." It underscores the fact that cyber warfare (a very nebulous term in and of itself) is an emerging medium of conflict.

Perhaps some decades into the future cyber-metaphors will trickle back the other way around.

Be Suspicious of Essentialism

Sven Ortmann has a great post dispelling the myth that Germans are a uniquely warlike people. He runs down the list of events in German history that most misunderstand, and argues that there is no uniquely German impulse to take to the battlefield. Ortmann's larger point, however, cannot be emphasized enough:

"The whole idea of "warlike tribe", warlike nation" and so on is very misleading in my opinion. It's a curtain that conceals the more complicated origins of military prowess - and this curtain tells nothing about the origins."

It is very common, for example, for Americans to make jokes about French cowardice. Yet even a passing glance at the kind of losses that the French suffered on the Western front in World War I falsifies such a notion. The passionate nationalism and military exertion that characterized French history from the Revolution to World War I also belies the notion of uniquely French pacifism.

Even more common are essentialist works that expound on a certain "Asian way of war" characterized by subterfuge--an equally specious notion that ignores the tremendous diversity in military traditions across Asia and the commonalities between Asian and Western military thought and practice. Not to mention the fact that reading Sun Tzu instead of Mao may not be of much help in understanding modern China.

Essentialism appeals to people because it offers the opportunity to trace an unbroken line from past to present and easily categorize. But it is extremely harmful in practice for security decisionmaking.

The Tactics of Urban Assault

The recent attacks on Pakistani cities and military bases, John P. Sullivan and I argue, falls into a larger pattern of urban attacks and paramilitary assaults that makes for increasingly more violent strikes against urban targets. The strategic significance of these attacks, however, is hard to assess. Check our article out at OpenDemocracy's new security page.

Compression

Leah Farrell and John Robb interacting with the subjects of their writing, while fascinating, is only one element of a complex process of strategic diffusion of ideas. Many jihadist theorists, for example, make implicit and explicit reference to the theory of fourth-generation warfare.

Additionally, the writers of the Chinese military tract Unrestricted Warfare regularly lecture on their work in the United States. UW's influence has been over-exaggerated somewhat in China, but it has been immensely popular in the West, especially due to its encapsulation of campaigning principles that some believe have become "orthodoxy" in modern military doctrine about "the war amongst the people."

Vigilante Violence Spreads in Mexico

(via Susanne Ure) Unfortunately very predictable:

"As kidnappings, muggings and car jackings spiral out of control, and the authorities appear increasingly impotent, shadowy groups have been advocating justice by the sword. In other recent cases, alleged kidnappers and car thieves have been abducted and murdered and had their corpses dumped in public places along with threatening notes. There are also rising cases of mobs lynching alleged thieves and leaving them beaten, naked and tied up."

The Illusion of Safety

Kings of War 's Faceless Bureaucrat eloquently states what the United Nations should already know: good intentions does not dissuade terrorists:

"[The UN] is not an independent and neutral actor, performing a series of good deeds around the world. Rather, it is an important (albeit imperfect) component of a system that is “Governing the Periphery with Aid, Peace, and Justice”. And it is in this sense that is open to attack: those who are resisting the governance believe it to be legitimate to attack those who are party to it. "

Whether or not things like "such as respect for the rule of law, democracy, human rights, access to food for all" are Western or universal values is another discussion entirely, but many terrorist groups make hostility to many parts of globalized modernity a basic element of their ideology. To use the language of Thomas P.M. Barnett, one might argue that UN and NGOs perform the function of a SysAdmin, albeit a heavily demilitarized one.

Even outside the specific context of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, Qat-chewing child soldiers and their masters do not think too highly of blue helmets either. The UN will have to spend more on security, certainly more than the 1% figure that the Bureaucrat cites in his post.