“Losing the Long War” is a common refains among the chattering pundits, but they are making one fundamental mistake: those of us with brains and eyes and ears all knew this in 1988 and gave voice to our views in 1998. The problem is the chasm between those in power, who live in a “closed circle,” and those with knowledge, who actually follow the multicultural nuances of cause and effect and inputs and outcomes. Below is a quote from Daniel Elsberg speaking to Henry Kissinger–the same could be said today to the National Security Advisor now serving:
The danger is, you’ll become like a moron.You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours” [because of your blind faith in the value of your narrow and often incorrect secret information].
Daniel Ellsberg
Daniel Ellsberg, SECRETS: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers (Viking, 2002).This is his recollection of his words to Henry Kissinger, then National Security Advisor to President Richard Nixon.The three pages on the pathological effects of falling prey to the cult of secrecy, on pages 237-239, should be forced rote memorization for all who receive clearances. Click on the book cover to read our complete summative review of SECRETS: A Memoir.
The Administration does not lack for solutions. It lacks for openness and outreach to those who do know, and it lacks for independence from Goldman Sachs specifically and Wall Street generally.
The US taxpayer is starting to figure this out, and over half those eligible to vote are now contemplating an end to the two-party bi-nopoly of the White House and Congress through massive Independent turn-out.
It also bears mention that the good Mr. May appears to have no clue as to the actual cause of the global economic collapse, namely Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, and the Russian Roulette that Wall Street has been playing with the US and the Global economies–at our expense. See my review of Webster Griffin Tarpley's revied and updated edition of Surviving the Cataclysm: Your Guide Through the Greatest Financial Crisis in Human History. The American taxpayer does not just need a new government–we need to flush all the “think tanks” down the toilet, for they have clearly lost any semblance of the ability to actually THINK.
+++++++End Editorial+++++++
Full Story
Below is an excerpt from a Washington Times story, and a link to the book being discussed.
Losing the Long War by Clifford D. May, Saturday, July 25, 2009
In 1993, R. James Woolsey, about to become President Clinton's first director of Central Intelligence, remarked to a Senate committee on the defeat of international communism: “We have slain a large dragon.”
He then added: “But we live now in a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes. And in many ways, the dragon was easier to keep track of.”
Years later, we still seem bewildered. America's military has demonstrated astonishing ingenuity and adaptability. But have other instruments of government power risen to the challenges posed by international jihadism?
In his new book, “Winning the Long War,” Ilan Berman, vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council, makes a persuasive case that they have not, that the United States instead has lost “the initiative on the dominant battlefields of today's conflict: ideology, strategic communications, economics, law and development.” Regaining the initiative, he urges, should be among the highest priorities of the new administration.
Amazon Page and Full Review
Click on the book cover to reach its Amazon page.
It turns out the Washington Times is just pulling the whole thing from Scripps News, so below is a second excerpt, click on the Scripps News logo to read their entire original version.
ScrippsNews
Berman gives higher marks to the U.S. Treasury Department, which has waged economic warfare by seizing or freezing hundred of millions of dollars that otherwise would have gone to al-Qaeda and similar organizations.
But there has been no serious effort to “make the international economy as a whole inhospitable to exploitation by terrorist groups and radical regimes,” to prevent multinational companies from carrying out “business as usual with terror-sponsoring regimes,” or even to stop American taxpayer dollars from ending up assisting regimes such as that in Iran. The Bush administration never aimed at Iran's Achilles' heel: its dependence on foreign supplies of gasoline. Congress and the Obama administration are now, finally and rather hesitantly, considering this last, best option to peacefully pressure Iran's rulers.
“If we are to stem the tide of Islamic radicalism, then we must do more than simply continue down the path we are currently on,” notes former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the foreword to Berman's book. First and foremost, winning the long war will require re-thinking the conflict being waged against the West, and learning how to utilize non-military instruments of national power much more effectively than we have done to date.
+++++++Other Related Online Elements+++++++
Long War Journal
Long War Journal and Counterterrorism Blog
Worth a look. Includes contributions from Zachary Abuza and many others outside the US Government war college and think tank circuit.
Antiwar.com
July 21, 2009 by Kelley B. Vlahos Listen closely and you can hear the slow release of hot air. There’s a leak somewhere, and it appears to be coming from the giant red, white, and blue balloon set aloft some months ago by the counterinsurgency experts who convinced everyone in Washington that Afghanistan was one “graveyard of empires” that could be resurrected for the good of the world.
In fact, anxiety over the latest major U.S. offensive in Afghanistan is increasing among military officials and policymakers every day, sources tell us. News reports coming in from Helmand province and repeated public complaints from American and British leaders bear that out.
And the story is this: in order for so-called “population centric” counterinsurgency to work in a place as vast and geographically unrelenting as Afghanistan, there must be a lot of counterinsurgents (more than 600,000, according to the current Army counterinsurgency manual). Right now, there is a lid on the number of coalition forces approved for the mission, and worse, there are pathetically few Afghan troops and police available to do the most important work, which is to collaborate with the foreign forces to fight the Taliban and successfully hold areas on behalf of the Afghan government over the long term.
Even as 10,000 Marines pushed into the Hindu Kush bearing the talisman of David Petraeus and his patented COIN doctrine this month, it was clear to top U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal that something was amiss.
“The key to this is Afghan responsibility to the fight,” he told the New York Times on July 15. “As a team we are better.”
His anonymous lieutenants were much blunter. “There are not enough Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police for our forces to partner with in operations … and that gap will exist into the coming years even with the planned growth already budgeted for,” an unnamed U.S. military official told the Washington Post four days earlier.
Click on photo above for complete story. See also our reviews of:
Tech's inroads to a “global society” will influence its governance, Mr Brown said
By Jonathan Fildes
Technology reporter, BBC News, Oxford
Technology means that foreign policy will never be the same again, the prime minister said at a meeting of leading thinkers in Oxford.
The power of technology – such as blogs – meant that the world could no longer be run by “elites”, Mr Brown said.
Policies must instead be formed by listening to the opinions of people “who are blogging and communicating with people around the world”, he said.
Mr Brown's comments came during a surprise appearance at TED Global.
“That in my view gives us the first opportunity as a community to fundamentally change the world,” he told the TED Global (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference.
“Foreign policy can never be the same again.”
Global change
The prime minister talked about the power of technology to unite the world and offer ways to solve some of its most pressing problems.
He said that issues such as climate change could not be solved alone, adding that digital technology offered a way to create a “global society”.
“ You can't deal with environmental problems through the existing institutions ”
Gordon Brown
“Massive changes in technology have allowed the possibility of people linking up around the world,” he said.
In particular, he said, digital communications offered the possibility of finding common ground “with people we will never meet”.
“We have the means to take collective action and take collective action together.”
He talked about recent events in Iran and Burma and how the global community – using blogs and technologies such as Twitter – was able to bring events to widespread attention.
He also highlighted the role of technology in recent elections in Zimbabwe.
“Because people were able to take mobile phone photographs of what was happening at polling stations, it was impossible for [Robert Mugabe] to fix that election in the way that he wanted to do.”
But Mr Brown also stressed the need to create new organisations to tackle environmental, financial, development and security problems.
“We are the first generation to be able to do this,” he told the conference. “We shouldn't lose the chance.”
He said that older institutions founded after the Second World War, such as the United Nations or the International Monetary Fund, were now “out of date”.
“You can't deal with environmental problems through the existing institutions,” he told the conference.
Two officials from the Office of the Secretary of Defense look at a changing and challenging world and what it means for the future of American power.
The world is undergoing a profound and lasting shift in the relative balance of power among nations. While the United States will remain the single most powerful nation well into the century, globalization, combined with the rise of new powers such as China and India, will undeniably reshape the contours of global power.1 This evolution in international affairs offers as many opportunities as it does challenges. The challenge for U.S. strategists and policymakers is to develop and implement a grand strategy that can protect our people, preserve our interests, promote our values, and position America to lead during a century of complex change.
A core task of senior leaders at the Department of Defense is to ensure that hard-fought wartime lessons are institutionalized at all levels to win the wars we are in while simultaneously preparing for future challenges-not all of which are apparent today. Finding and maintaining the right balance between these imperatives remains the guiding principle as DOD develops and eventually implements the Quadrennial Defense Review.
In broad terms, America's recent wartime experience, combined with insights derived from other contemporary conflicts, suggest that the U.S. military will increasingly face three types of challenges: rising tensions in the global commons; hybrid threats that contain a mix of traditional and irregular forms of conflict; and the problem of weak and failing states.
Three Challenges
First, as rising nations and non-state actors become more powerful, the United States will need to pay more attention to emerging risks associated with the global commons, those areas of the world beyond the control of any one state-sea, space, air, and cyberspace-that constitute the fabric or connective tissue of the international system. A series of recent events-including anti-satellite missile tests, piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the east coast of Africa, and attacks in cyberspace-highlight the need for the United States to work with its allies and partners to maintain relative peace and stability throughout the global commons.
Second, America's continued advantages in traditional warfighting provide powerful incentives for our adversaries to employ a mix of traditional and irregular approaches that span the range of conflict. The 2007 Maritime Strategy was correct to conclude that modern wars are “increasingly characterized by a hybrid blend of traditional and irregular tactics, decentralized planning and execution, and non-state actors using both simple and sophisticated technologies in innovative ways.”2 Defense Secretary Robert Gates has written that “one can expect a blended high-low mix of adversaries and types of conflict . . . being employed simultaneously in hybrid and more complex forms of warfare.”3
Third, as trends ranging from the economic crisis to climate change and globalization continue to put pressure on the modern state system, the number of chronically weak or outright failing states will likely increase. For example, the same factors that may engender the rise of new great powers may also accelerate the decline of other states that-by virtue of poor leadership, economics, and/or geography-are unable to adapt to a new era and meet the basic needs of their populations. Conflict in the 21st century is at least as likely to result from problems associated with state weakness as from state strength.
Sea, Air, Space, and Cyberspace
The problems associated with emerging hybrid threats and weak or failing states are well known to policymakers and analysts, as they are central features in today's wars. Less obvious are the growing challenges to American power and influence that are associated with how we perceive and use the sea, air, space, and cyberspace.
The architecture of the modern international system rests on a foundation of free and fair access to a vibrant global economy that requires stability in the global commons. Alfred Thayer Mahan was perhaps the first strategist to coin the term, describing the world's oceans as “a great highway . . . a wide common” in his classic 1890 work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History.4
Since the end of World War II, American grand strategy has centered on creating and sustaining an international system that facilitates commerce, travel, and thus the spread of Western values including individual freedom, democracy, and liberty. The construction and protection of such a system was the central pillar of America's Cold War strategy. NSC 68, the 1950 planning document generally credited with establishing the foundation of that strategy, outlined a two-pronged approach:
One is a policy which we would probably pursue even if there were no Soviet threat. It is a policy of attempting to develop a healthy international community. The other is the policy of containing the Soviet system? In a world of polarized power, the policies designed to develop a healthy international community are more than ever necessary to our own strength.5
Pressure on the System
Ensuring relative stability throughout the global commons remains central to the maintenance of U.S. power and influence in the 21st century.6 However, there is a growing consensus that rising state and non-state powers, combined with continued globalization, will put great pressure on the international system as a whole. While assessments point to a changing world, relatively little analysis has addressed when and how such changes will materialize. We are likely entering an era in which a series of strategic trends will make it more difficult for the United States to sustain stability within the global commons.
Recent trends in several dimensions of the global commons illuminate how the international system is beginning to evolve and change:
* Space: China's successful 2007 antisatellite missile test spurred a series of responses, including French, Indian, and Japanese declarations of intent to prepare for challenges in space.7 The Chinese test created the single largest debris field in orbital space, posing obstacles to global use of space for decades.8 The United States demonstrated an antisatellite capability in 2008 by destroying an ailing satellite in a deteriorating orbit.
* Cyberspace: Cyber-warfare is increasingly seen as an inevitable component of state and non-state conflicts. Russian use of offensive cyber capabilities in Estonia and Georgia is well known, as is China's reported use of cyber capabilities. Non-state actors such as al Qaeda and Hezbollah make frequent use of cyberspace as a planning and propaganda tool.9
* Maritime: A host of maritime examples portend future challenges: the 2006 Kitty Hawk (CV-63) incident (in which a Chinese submarine surfaced within the perimeter of a U.S. carrier strike group), recent tensions in the South China Sea (rooted in China's territorial claims), and China's continued investment in a host of surface, submarine, and anti-access capabilities; Russia's claims on wide areas of the Arctic seafloor and increased military operations in the region; the scourge of piracy in and around key sea lanes; and Hezbollah's use of an advanced antiship missile during the 2006 Lebanon War.10
Strategic Trends
These examples are indicative of two strategic trends that will pose significant challenges to the United States and its allies:
First, barriers to entry for both state and non-state actors to develop and field capabilities that can pose challenges to U.S. and allied freedom of action will lower substantially over time. The proliferation of knowledge and technology will allow an increasing number of state and non-state actors to deploy anti-access capabilities and high-end asymmetric technologies that can put allied infrastructure at risk and hamper U.S. power projection.
Second, rising powers will not likely be content to simply acquiesce to America's role as uncontested guarantor of the global commons. Countries such as China, India, and Russia will demand a role in maintaining the international system in ways commensurate with their actual or perceived power and national interests. Such demands are already occurring, from declarations of interest in space capabilities, to indications that the Indian and Arctic oceans will become new global centers of gravity.11
While these trends are already apparent today, their enumeration should not be interpreted to mean that U.S. dominance in, for example, space-based capabilities or in blue-water naval power projection is being eroded at a precipitous pace. Far from it-America's military will remain without peer for some time in the ability to project and sustain substantial military power from the air and sea over large distances.
These trends are, however, harbingers of a future strategic environment in which America's role as an arbiter or guarantor of stability within the global commons will become increasingly complicated and contested. If this assessment is true, then a foundational assumption on which every post-Cold War national security strategy has rested-uncontested access to and stability within the global commons-will begin to erode. To assume away or leave these trends unaddressed as we formulate a new U.S. national security strategy and complete a Quadrennial Defense Review would be unwise, increasing the possibility of a future strategic surprise for which we would be unprepared.
Implications
The consequences of a shift in the international system that opens the global commons for other state and non-state actors to pursue their interests-and perhaps credibly threaten America's use of these domains-are likely to be profound, posing challenges to U.S. security strategy and defense planning. To address such challenges, we need to think hard about their operational and resource implications, particularly as QDR deliberations evolve.
Challenges to American interests in the global commons will have serious implications at the operational level. In the maritime domain, for example, a recent U.S. Joint Forces Command report concluded that, unlike in recent operations, the United States may not enjoy uncontested access to bases from which it can project military power:
Given the proliferation of sophisticated weapons in the world's arms markets-potential enemies-even relatively small powers will be able to possess and deploy an array of longer-range and more precise weapons. . . . Thus, the projection of military power could become hostage to the ability to counter long-range systems even as U.S. forces begin to move into a theater of operations and against an opponent. The battle for access may prove not only the most important, but the most difficult.12
Secretary Gates echoed this concern during his address to the Naval War College in April, stating that potential adversaries do not intend to contest us directly but rather invest “in weapons geared to neutralize our advantages-to deny the U.S. military freedom of movement and action while potentially threatening our primary means of projecting power: our bases, sea and air assets, and the networks that support them. . . . We ignore these developments at our peril.”13
Any state or non-state actor wishing to oppose U.S. or allied forces will look for ways to deter, deny, or frustrate our ability to swiftly employ and sustain combat forces across a variety of scenarios. This is nothing new. What is relatively new is both the scale of the threat posed given the proliferation of advanced high-end systems, and the real potential for non-state actors to employ such technology, as evidenced by Hezbollah's use of advanced antiship and antiarmor weapons.14 While these dynamics are most clearly at play in the maritime domain, there are similar forces at work in other dimensions of the global commons.
These developments challenge us to think creatively about how DOD can best develop the strategy, concepts of operations, and capability mix needed to meet these challenges.
The New QDR
For example, the QDR is exploring several high-end asymmetric threats of the type described here. Adequately preparing for these challenges may be more about identifying where new operational concepts and discrete investments are needed than in focusing on major shifts in force structure. From a naval perspective, it is clear that several issues need to be addressed, including the future of amphibious landing capabilities, the role of naval unmanned combat aerial vehicles, and the overall mix between ships designed for littoral environments and blue-water surface combatants.
Similar dynamics should influence the debate over how the Air Force pursues more capable unmanned aerial systems and the next-generation bomber. All the services must prepare for a future in which power-projection can be sustained at greater distance than in the past and vulnerabilities reduced through better defense and dispersion.15 These operational imperatives must be balanced with the strategic need to ensure that America's global posture remains strong enough to assure our allies and dissuade and deter potential adversaries.
Finally, the security of America's space- and cyberspace-based information architecture has become a matter of national concern. The QDR and other defense and interagency reviews are examining how we can improve the ability to organize America's instruments of national power to ensure the security of these vital networks. Far more than a military matter, stability and security in space and cyberspace will depend on working with our allies and partners to develop a common framework and advance international norms that can shape the choices and behavior of others.
Opportunity to Lead
While this article focuses on security, it would be unwise to react to the emergence of tensions in the global commons by simply altering the mix of military investments and adapting America's global network of defense alliances and relationships. They are necessary but insufficient responses to what will be a lasting shift in international affairs. The task for the United States is to respond to these challenges with a whole-of-government approach that advances our interests while legitimizing our power in the eyes of others.16
One way the United States could respond would be to (re)embrace a grand strategy that focuses on sustaining a healthy international system, the maintenance of which is not only central to our national interests but is also a global public good-something everyone can consume without diminishing its availability to others. Such a strategy would essentially update and make explicit what had been a consistent theme in U.S. grand strategy since the early years of the Cold War, but has been underemphasized in the post-Cold War period.
These developing challenges in the global commons also offer the United States a profound opportunity to reassert a leadership role in an area that will only grow in importance. Because stability on and within the global commons is a public good, others have powerful incentives to work with us on issues involving governance of cyberspace, ensuring peace in space, and settling contentious maritime issues. Protecting and sustaining stability throughout the global commons cannot be achieved by America alone.
We must lead in the creation of international norms and standards that can help advance the common good and expand the rule of law in these domains of growing importance. Helping to build the capacity of our partners and allies and working toward a common agenda on these increasingly complex issues should be a critical pillar of America's national security and defense strategy.
The 21st century will see momentous change in the international system. There is every reason to be hopeful that the shifts under way in the global system can improve the prospects of peace and security. By virtue of its size, geography, economy, and values, the security of the United States is directly related to the security of the broader international system. As the Obama administration prepares a new national security strategy, and as DOD conducts its Quadrennial Defense Review, the time is right to both reframe American grand strategy and rebalance the U.S. military to succeed in today's wars while preparing for tomorrow's challenges.
1. See National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (November 2008), and the 2008 Joint Operating Environment: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force (Suffolk: JFCOM, 2008).
2. ADM Gary Roughead, GEN James Conway, ADM Thad Allen, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower (October 2007), p. 6.
3. Robert Gates, “A Balanced Strategy,” Foreign Affairs (January/February 2009).
4. Alfred Thayer Mahan, “The Influence of Sea Power Upon History,” in David Jablonsky, ed., Roots of Strategy: Book 4 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1999), p.79.
5. NSC 68, reproduced in Ernest May, ed., American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68 (New York: St. Martins, 1993), p. 41.
6. Barry Posen, “Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. Hegemony,” International Security (Summer 2003), pp.5-46.
7. David Sands, “China, India Hasten Arms Race in Space,” The Washington Times, 25 June 2008, p. A01, Marc Kaufman, “U.S. Finds It's Getting Crowded Out There,” The Washington Post, 9 July 2008, p. A01. See also Pavel Podvig and Hui Zhang, Russian and Chinese Responses to U.S. Military Plans in Space (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2008).
8. See Bates Gill and Martin Kleiber, “China's Space Odyssey,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2007), pp. 2-6.
9. See Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military Power of the People's Republic of China (Annual Report to Congress, 2009); Shane Harris, “China's Cyber-Militia,” National Journal, 31 May 2008; Jonathan Adams, “Chinese Hacked Computers, U.S. Lawmakers Say,” Christian Science Monitor, 12 June 2008; Sandhya Somashekhar, “Wolf Warns of Foreign Attacks on Computers,” The Washington Post, 12 June 2008, p. B3.
10. See “The Long March to be a Superpower: China's Military Might,” The Economist, 4 August 2007, p. 20; Robert Kaplan, “America's Elegant Decline,” The Atlantic Monthly, (November 2007), pp. 104-112. See “Into the Wide Blue Yonder; Asia's Navies,” The Economist, 7 June 2008, p. 6; Ronald O'Rourke, “China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities-Background and Issues for Congress” CRS Report for Congress, RL33153, 16 April 2008; David Lague, “Chinese Submarine Fleet is Growing, Analysts Say,” The New York Times, February 25, 2008, p. 10.
11. See Robert Kaplan, “Rivalry in the Indian Ocean,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2009), pp. 16-32; Scott Borgerson, “Arctic Meltdown,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2008); and Marc Kaufman, “U.S. Finds It's Getting Crowded Out There,” The Washington Post (9 July 2008), p. A01.
12. 2008 Joint Operating Environment: Challenges and Implications for the Future Joint Force (Suffolk: JFCOM, 2008), p. 44.
13. Robert Gates, Speech to the Naval War College (Newport: RI, 17 April 2009).
14. Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker, “Arming of Hezbollah Reveals U.S. and Israeli Blind Spots,” The New York Times (19 July 2006). See also Stephen Biddle and Jeffery Friedman, The 2006 Lebanon Campaign and the Future of Warfare (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, 2008); Andrew Erickson and David Yang, “On the Verge of a Game-Changer,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings (May 2009), pp. 26-32; Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military Power of the People's Republic of China (Annual Report to Congress, 2009); and Roger Cliff, et al, Entering the Dragon's Lair: Chinese Antiaccess Strategies and their Implications for the United States (Washington: RAND, 2007).
15. Tom Ehrhard and Robert Work, Range, Persistence, Stealth, and Networking: The Case for a Carrier-based Unmanned Combat Air System (Washington: CSBA, 2008).
16. See Joseph Nye, “Recovering American Leadership,” Survival (February-March 2008), pp. 55-68.
Ms. Flournoy is the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Mr. Brimley is a strategist in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
What does maritime domain awareness mean, and does it represent a flawed analytic agenda?
A pillar of the new maritime strategy, A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, published by the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard in October 2007, is an “increased commitment to advance maritime domain awareness” (MDA).1 It is unclear, however, whether the lessons the Navy has learned in almost a decade of operations prosecuted in support of the global war on terrorism, or the current manifestations of terrorism and illicit behavior at sea, are reflected in the prominence played by MDA in the maritime strategy.
The national and Navy plans to achieve MDA are predicated on the assumption that automated systems can identify terrorists, pirates, or other illicit actors such as smugglers by passively detecting “anomalous” or unusual behavior, an assumption unsupported by any review of the events of the recent past. In the post-Cold War maritime environment, terrorism and other illicit activities have instead been conducted by those who conform to accepted norms of maritime activity precisely by not doing anything that can be described as uncommon or unexpected. An MDA plan focused on finding anomalies will be good for little more than identifying unusual (yet probably explainable) ship movements, ignoring smaller craft and elements of maritime behavior conducted on land, thus not providing the deep understanding of maritime activity necessary to both provide sufficient warning and drive future operations, especially against nonmilitary targets.
Both the National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness and the Navy Maritime Domain Awareness Concept define MDA in broad and unobjectionable terms. They describe MDA as “the effective understanding of anything associated with the maritime domain that could impact the security, safety, economy, or environment of the United States.”2 This vision of a “multilayered, multi-domain picture that links the identity, location, known patterns and present activity of ships, cargo, people, and hazards within and adjacent to the maritime domain” is an affirmation of exactly the kind of all-source analysis that forms the bedrock of what Naval Intelligence believes it has provided to the Fleet throughout its history.3 MDA is ideally not “just vessel tracking,” “just intelligence,” or “just more sensors,” but an attempt to gain a truly comprehensive understanding of what is happening at sea, a task much more daunting than simply monitoring tracks on a display.4
Ship-centric Focus
Unfortunately, the details of the national and Navy MDA plans reveal a course of action not well suited to achieve this ambition, and instead provide the framework for what amounts to the implementation of a platform-centric ship tracking system, rather than a system that provides a broad and deep comprehension of activity at sea. According to the Navy's MDA concept, it will be achieved through “Maritime Change Detection,” a process defined as “the identification of anomalies from established trends and patterns.”5 The assumptions of this anomaly-focused form of MDA are misguided, however, because this anomalous behavior at sea (especially when defined solely in the context of vessel movements) is not necessarily suspicious or even important, particularly if what the system has defined as a trend or pattern does not serve as an accurate or explanatory model of maritime behavior.
Despite claims that it is not “just vessel tracking,” the Navy's MDA concept is clearly ship-centric, due to its repeated assertions that identifying anomalous behavior will be the critical element in developing actionable intelligence capable of targeting maritime terrorists or other illicit activity. Claiming that “forensic analysis has discovered that most terrorist activity is preceded by criminal events or aberrant behavior,” the MDA concept calls for “correlating seemingly unrelated criminal activity with anomalous maritime behavior” through “continuous assessment of the maritime domain and automated tools that alert commanders when suspicious items are uncovered.”6
The fundamental flaw with this premise is the assumption that maritime terrorism or other illicit maritime activities are correlated with suspicious, illegal, or unusual behavior. A review of recent maritime terrorist acts demonstrates that this is clearly untrue. The boat used to attack the USS Cole (DDG-67) in Yemen in October 2000 was bought (not stolen) in the Saudi port of Jizan.7 The “most destructive act of terrorism in maritime history,” the bombing of Superferry 14 in the Philippines in 2004, was conducted by a passenger who concealed the explosives in a television he brought aboard.8 Better security and safety practices on board Filipino ferries may have prevented that attack (or saved lives), but there was nothing anomalous about how the attack happened. Until they turned to ram the structures, there was nothing particularly unusual about the boats that attempted to strike the Al Basra and Khor al Amaya oil terminals in April 2004, killing three U.S. servicemen in the Persian Gulf.
In November 2002, al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists used small boats to escape after attempting to shoot down an Israeli airliner and destroying a hotel near Mombasa, Kenya. Such travel was not at all unusual in a region where small craft are commonly used to move along the East African coast.9 Loai Saqa, a Syrian associate of Abu Musab Zarqawi, was arrested by Turkish authorities in August 2005 while reportedly planning to attack Israeli cruise ships. The Turks were led to Saqa not through unusual maritime behavior, but because of an explosion and chemical fire in an apartment where attack preparations were being conducted.10 All accounts of the interrogations of the lone surviving gunman from the November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, India, indicate that the attackers traveled on board at least two vessels from Pakistan to Mumbai, hijacking at least one of them along the way.11 It is unclear, however, whether even a perfect, NORAD-like system for maritime traffic control would have detected that the routes used by those ships to transport the attackers to India were somehow anomalous.
Anomalies fail as an effective indicator or predictor of other forms of illicit maritime activity as well. For example, widespread smuggling of fuel has taken place in the northern Persian Gulf since the 2003 Coalition invasion of Iraq, with “an estimated 1,000 tons of diesel fuel per day” being smuggled on board Iraqi vessels during 2006.12 Meanwhile, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, at least 43,500 Africans were smuggled across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen in 2008, an increase from 29,500 in 2007.13 Are illicit activities such as these two examples actually anomalous if they are also normal in the sense that they occur daily and in large numbers? Would the algorithms and systems currently being devised as part of the Navy and Coast Guard's MDA efforts provide advanced warning of these activities?
Ignoring the Variables
A system using anomalous or unusual vessel movements to identify suspicious behavior is inherently skewed, and misses out on many of the most important aspects of commercial maritime behavior. There are numerous reasons, for example, that a ship calling at a port where it had never previously visited would not be suspicious, including new ownership, new management, an emergency, engineering casualty, service to a new port, the particular cargo it is carrying, etc. Multiple scenarios are plausible for a maritime terrorist event in which the crew of a ship could be completely unaware that illicit cargo is on board. By focusing analytic effort on where a ship moves, one ignores many other variables that may provide better indicators of a potential illicit event. The ability of intelligence analysts to answer a broader set of questions and explain a vessel's behavior (including that of its cargo, crew, or passengers at a particular time) in the context of commercial maritime practices is much more important than being able to point out that a particular ship has never called at Djibouti or Singapore before. A ship is simply a tool. Making her movements the decisive variable in an anomaly-detecting algorithm will ensure that analysts miss out on truly important data.
Models that try to identify other anomalies, such as unusual passengers or cargo, may prove to be more useful than one analyzing vessel movements. But even those approaches have weaknesses, as author William Langeweische notes in his description of a new generation of illicit maritime actors capable of using “the methods and operational techniques of the shipowners,” in order “to escape the forces of order not by running away, but by complying with the laws and regulations in order to move about freely and to hide in plain sight.”14
The notion that systems will be able to detect unusual or suspicious maritime behavior automatically, and provide the cue to bring in human analytic power to solve the maritime intelligence problems of the future, is seductive. Yet while that idea has some merit, the MDA concept instead lays out a process focusing primarily on one element of maritime behavior. That element, vessel movement anomaly detection, has proved irrelevant in terms of providing indicators before most recent examples of maritime terrorism.
Statistical analysis can be a powerful tool, and the Navy should be making a greater effort both to use it and expand its potential applications for solving new problems. Making anomaly detection the primary analytic workhorse, however, will ensure that indicators of future maritime terrorism will be missed, and if not accompanied by a significant investment in training and hiring people truly knowledgeable in the maritime realm, will contribute toward the atrophy of that knowledge and expertise.
The new maritime strategy and maritime domain awareness concept have the right goal-a Navy, working hand-in-hand with the other Sea Services and interagency partners, maximizing its ability to collect data and truly understand what is happening at sea around the globe. The manner in which these documents call the Navy to accomplish these goals are very narrow and not particularly insightful, however. If implemented, the Navy of the future will have the computing power to sift through mounds of vessel movement data. However, that Navy may not have analysts who deeply comprehend how the maritime world works (particularly its commercial component), or the ability to leverage the unprecedented collection opportunities of the future to enhance that understanding.
1. A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower, October 2007, http://www.navy.mil/maritime/MaritimeStrategy.pdf.
2. National Strategy for Maritime Security: National Plan to Achieve Maritime Domain Awareness, October 2005, http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/docs/MDA%20Plan%20Oct05-3.pdf (accessed 8 July 2008).
3. Navy Maritime Domain Awareness Concept, 29 May 2007, http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/Navy_Maritime_Domain_Awareness_Concept_FINAL_2007.pdf (accessed 8 July 2008).
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. James Risen and Raymond Bonner, “A Nation Challenged: Fatal Attack; Officials Say Bomber of the Cole was in Yemeni Custody Earlier,” The New York Times, 7 December 2001, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html-res=9C0CE5D7133CF934A35751C1A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all (accessed 25 June 2008).
8. Peter Chalk, The Maritime Dimension of International Security: Terrorism, Piracy, and Challenges for the United States (RAND Corporation, 2008), 51.
9. Counter-Terrorism in Somalia: Losing Hearts and Minds? (Nairobi/Brussels: International Crisis Group, 2005), 9.
10. Amberin Zaman, “Syrian Charged in Plot to Attack Israeli Ships; The suspected Al Qaeda militant planned to use a speedboat filled with explosives, a Turkish court alleges. The Jewish state will lift travel alert,”Los Angeles Times,12 August2005, http://www.proquest.com (accessed 25 June 2008).
11. Geeta Anand, Matthew Rosenberg, Yaroslav Trofimov, and Zahid Hussain, “India Names Mumbai Mastermind,”The Wall Street Journal,3 December2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122823715860872789.html(accessed 11 January 2009).
12. Terence B. Moran, “Port of Umm Qasr: Challenges and Opportunities,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 1 July 2006, 72-74, http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed 21 February 2008).
13. “Gulf of Aden: 20 Die as Smugglers Force Migrants Overboard,” UNHCR Briefing Notes, 2 December 2008, http://www.unhcr.org/news/NEWS/49351e202.html.
14. William Langewiesche, The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime (New York: North Point Press, 2004), p. 7.
Lieutenant Munson currently serves as the intelligence officer at Naval Special Warfare Group Four, at Little Creek, Virginia. He has previously served on board the USS Essex (LHD-2), and at the Office of Naval Intelligence. He received a M.A. in security studies in Middle East Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School.
[1] M4IS2: Multinational, Multi-Agency, Multi-Disciplinary, Multi-Domain (M4) Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (IS2). Originally a Swedish concept, it has been enhanced by the Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3.
Commandant of the Marine Corps
Click on portrait to read General Gray's “Global Intelligence Challenge in the 1990's” as published in American Intelligence Journal (Winter 1989-1990).
An initiative by the Hungarian Foreign Ministry to establish a research center aimed at preventing genocide and mass atrocities is nearing fruition, with the center planned to be up and running by 2010.
Below are extracts from the feasibility study for the Budapest Center for the International Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, made available to the BBJ by István Lakatos Human Rights Ambassador and main proponent of the venture.
Despite the significant progress, the second half of the 20th century has, unfortunately, witnessed several genocides and mass atrocities even after the Holocaust. That fact stresses the need to continue the efforts to fill the gap between the political will for preventing genocide and establishing the necessary international mechanisms for effective operations. Recent research shows and makes evident that, even if escalation to mass violence often happens swiftly, the progression of events toward genocide is gradual, and that the months from initial threat to full genocide offer ample warning time for the international community to take preventive action. It means that genocide is preventable! The international community should make use of this fact to increase the efficiency of its activities in this field.
