Rethinking Security

Open Forum on Millennium Challenge 2002

Please join RTJ readers and authors for a debate on the legacy of the controversial wargame. Although the wargame happened seven years ago, the lessons (or lack thereof) have a continuing relevance to today's defense issues, especially the "Crusaders vs. Conservatives" debate in military thought and practice.

Thinking the Unthinkable?

Great interview with Israeli national security advisor Uzi Arad over at MESH. This, by far, is the most interesting (and puzzling) message:

"The second note of importance is the continued building of infrastructure to prepare the ground for action to prevent Iranian acquisition of the bomb. Arad does not believe that the non-military options will work, and that a maritime blockade might escalate in any event. At the same time, he defines preventing an Iranian bomb as an existential imperative: we cannot live with a nuclear Iran because a nuclear Middle East would not be the same as the Cold War nuclear stalemate. A nuclear Middle East would become a multi-nuclear Middle East, with all that entails.

There is an ironic contradiction here. Arad puts great weight on preventing nuclearization of the region, but at the same time declares himself an acolyte of the late Herman Kahn, the nuclear strategist who rejected the idea of mutual deterrence and insisted on “thinking about the unthinkable,” that is, the actual waging of war with nuclear weapons. Arad even mentions that he once wrote a paper on possible limited nuclear war in Central Europe. If it is so critical to prevent Iran emerging as the first declared nuclear-weapons state in the region, then why is Kahn, of all people, put forward as an icon for the new era?"

The Operational Level for Police

John P. Sullivan and I have a new post at GroupIntel that summarizes some of our more recent work on building a better operational theory for police counterterrorism and high-intensity engagement. In particular, we elaborate on some of the doctrinal and intellectual steps that should be taken to help bring some of the things Fred Leland discusses to pass.

Leland Connects the Dots

One of the more insightful observers of changing law enforcement and counterterrorism practice is Fred Leland, a Lt. in the Walpole, MA police department, Marine Corps veteran, and longtime law enforcement trainer. Leland runs Law Enforcement and Security Consulting, a firm very much inspired by Maj. Don Vandergriff's research and writing on adaptive leadership. Fred has linked to many of the pieces John P. Sullivan and I have written about law enforcement and counterterrorism and incorporated them into his firm's work.

Fred has an interesting piece of his own that I'd like to highlight on creating operational theory for complex law enforcement that expands on our "Postcard from Mumbai" piece on urban siege:

"In my view in police and security situations where conflict and violence often linger, the center of gravity is the adversary’s motives and mindset. Motives and mindset cannot be predicted with certainty; therefore we must develop knowledge of conflict and violence in its three dimensions, the moral, mental and physical and how to translate this knowledge as it is applied in a given set of circumstances. This knowledge combined with the ability to apply in the context of competition or crises based on the unfolding circumstances is ‘operational art.”"

Developing operational art for law enforcement, Leland argues, is going to require extensive knowledge of the dynamics of violence, psychology, and the operating environment and the ability to use that knowledge to guide tactical responses and allocation of resources.

MEND Halves Nigerian Q1 Oil Revenue

Not surprising at all:

"Nigeria's oil revenue was slashed by half in the first quarter of 2009 compared to the previous quarter, official statistics released Thursday show, as the industry suffered the impact of militant attacks. The huge slump in oil income dragged down total external trade by 29 percent over the same period last year. Sales in the first quarter of 2009 fetched the country 735.4 billion naira (4.9 billion dollars/3.4 billion euros), sharply down on the previous quarter, when oil returned 9.86 billion dollars, the National Bureau of Statistics said in its July publication. 'Crude oil export stood at 735.4 billion naira (4.9 billion dollars/3.4 billion euros), a sharp decrease of 734.2 billion naira or 99.8 percent over that of fourth quarter 2008,' the Bureau said."

This is powerful demonstration of the potency of the global guerrilla model. (h/t FP Passport blog)

PowerPoint Disasters

Starbuck of Wings over Iraq weighs in:

"PowerPoint in and of itself is not to blame for communication failures in the workplace or military. As a reader in Dr. Edward Tufte’s blog points out, blaming PowerPoint for the Columbia disaster would be like blaming Microsoft Outlook for spurring people to donate money to non-existant Nigerian royalty. Rather, our over-reliance on slide-view software, over-filtering of information, and over-simplification of complex ideas into small bullet points and cartoons is to blame for our communication errors. Not all presentations need be complex and filled with special effects, nor do important ideas need to be transmitted via PowerPoint. After all, our counterinsurgency manual, FM 3-24, was, in part, written based off of notes taken on a beer napkin at a hamburger restaurant."

There's a lively discussion going on in comments section at RTJ about PPT as well.

Down with the Czar

Agree wholly with Mike here. Have always been puzzled why we are so fascinated with czars of (of all kind) lately.

A Better View of Hans Morgenthau

(h/t NYUProf) At e-IR, the father of modern realism gets a more complex rendition:

"John Mearsheimer (1995: 91) summarizes the orthodox view on how power is defined within the realist paradigm in the following statement: “Realists believe that state behaviour is largely shaped by the material structure of the international system”. This quotation however deeply misrepresents Morgenthau’s definition of power. This is evident when Morgenthau states that: “Power may comprise anything that establishes and maintains the power of man over man …. from physical violence to the most subtle psychological ties by which one mind controls another” (Morgenthau, 1965: 9). For Morgenthau, the most important material aspect of power is armed forces, but even more significant is a nation’s character, morale and quality of governance (Morgenthau, 1956: 186). The validity of this reading of Morgenthau is further enhanced when he contends: “power …. tends to be equated with material strength, especially of a military nature, I have stressed more than before its immaterial aspects” (Morgenthau 1965: 9). Michael Williams (2005:109) is thus right when he claims that the closest affinities to Morgenthau’s extremely broad understanding of power are to be found in the works of Michael Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu and not in the narrow and materialistic conception of power realism often is accused of."

Morgenthau was never a "scientific" realist and thus his work is but a curious oddity to statistics-obsessed American international relations academics. But while it may not conform to the rules of social science it does offer the policymakers struggling to come up with a unitary conceptual frame of power to employ that is far more flexible than the narrow and materialist realism offered by Waltz and the neorealists.

Red-Teaming: A Failure to Communicate

New post at RTJ on red-teaming failures. Also, make sure to check out Tim Hsia's excellent post on historical examples of flawed assumptions in strategy.

Thoughts on Cyber Commons

David Ronfeldt is on a roll here:

"Meanwhile, a curious new trend in strategic thinking is growing, parallel to these developments: a claim that cyberspace is as much a part of the global commons as air, sea, and outer space. This means that cyberspace is a kind of collective good, even a global public good. It also means that access to, if not command of, this new commons is essential for America’s power in the world, and that cyberspace must be defended against state and nonstate threateners. According to its early proponents, Michèle Flournoy and Shawn Brimley (2008, p. 136), “America must take a leadership role to ensure that access to the global commons remains a public good.” They have recently expanded on this theme as Pentagon officials.

Declaring a domain to be strategic commons eases the way for asserting public over private interests. And that may have all sorts of implications. It might help with efforts to foster a “multi-partner world,” as Secretary Clinton urges. But it might also lead to a “cyber Monroe doctrine” or help justify unleashing an “af.mil botnet” (insensibly?) under other circumstances. Whatever the circumstances abroad, declaring cyberspace a strategic commons would surely bolster the organizational clout of cybersecurity officials within the U.S. government and over the private sector."

Tim Stevens and I have pointed out the problem with the "cyber-Monroe" frame: the analogy doesn't fit. You can't control the Internet in the same way that you can dominate the air and the sea. It's much too fluid, dispersed (not to mention non-corporeal) to work that way. There's no digital equivalent of an aircraft carrier. Selil has always considered cyberwar to be a form of low-intensity conflict, and I think this is fundamentally correct. Tim explains why:

"I have argued consistently that cyberspace is not a purely technological construct. It is as much made of people and politics as it is of hardware and software. No technology is in and of itself a material entity, as all technologies require human interaction – they are socially constructed in both their use and abuse."

And as Ronfeldt points out, "a social movement is taking shape that views the information commons as a new realm for peer-to-peer social development; and it is sure to raise objections to a strategic military concept of this commons." Any strategy for the information commons is going to be based as much on as strategic communications as purely kinetic paradigms.