Journal: Evaluating the Gaza Confrontation

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

The American strategist and military reformer Colonel John Boyd argued that nations and groups should shape their domestic policies, foreign policies, and military strategies so that they:

pump up one's own resolve and increase one's own solidarity,
drain away the resolve of one's adversaries and weaken their internal cohesion,
reinforce the commitments of allies to one's own cause and make them empathetic to one's success
attract the uncommitted to our cause or makes them empathetic to one's success
end conflicts on favorable terms that do not sow the seeds for future conflicts

These criteria are the essence of grand strategy and can be thought of as guidelines for evaluating the wisdom of specific policies or actions. And while they make sense logically and intuitively, the difficulty of defining policies that simultaneously conform to and strengthen to all these criteria is equally obvious. The latter challenge is particularly difficult for the unilateral military strategies and the coercive foreign policies like those preferred by Israel or the United States. Military operations and political coercion are often destructive in the short term, and these destructive strategic effects can be in natural tension with the aims of grand strategy, which should be constructive over the long term.

Moreover, the more powerful a country, the harder it becomes to harmonize the often conflicting criteria for a sensible grand strategy. Overwhelming power breeds hubris and arrogance which, in turn, carry a temptation to use that power coercively and excessively. But lording over or dictating one's will to others breeds resentment. Thus, possession of overwhelming power increases the risk of going astray grand strategically.

That risk is particularly dangerous when aggressive external actions, policies, and rhetoric are designed to prop up or increase internal cohesion for domestic political reasons. Very often, the effects or military strategies or coercive foreign policies that are perceived as useful in terms of domestic political cohesion backfire at the grand-strategic level, because they strengthen our adversaries' will to resist, push our allies into a neutral or even an adversarial corner, or drive away the uncommitted … which together, can set the stage for continuing conflict.

With these general thoughts about grand strategy in mind, read the following article by Uri Avnery and ask yourself if Israel's most recent war in Gaza made sense at the tactical level of conflict?, the strategic level of conflict? … and most importantly, at the grand strategic level of conflict?

Chuck Spinney

Full Story Online

Cast Lead 2

by Uri Avnery

Antiwar.com

December 28, 2009

Did we win? Sunday marked the first anniversary of the Gaza War, alias Operation Cast Lead, and this question fills the public space.

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2009/12/26

Journal: Billions in Aid Mis-Appropriated–Global to Local Needs Table Would Eliminate This Kind of Fraud

Communities of Practice, Ethics, Gift Intelligence, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats

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Sri Lanka tsunami aid misappropriated: watchdog

COLOMBO (AFP) – Nearly half a billion dollars in tsunami aid for Sri Lanka is unaccounted for and over 600 million dollars has been spent on projects unrelated to the disaster, an anti-corruption watchdog said Saturday.

. . . . . . .

The group alleged that out of 2.2 billion dollars received for relief, 603.4 million dollars was spent on projects unrelated to the disaster.

Another half a billion dollars was missing, the group said.

2009/12/26

Journal: Hubris Loses to Angst & Reality–Every Time

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats

graphic shaking earth for coins JPEG — Last Shake for Last Coin

British student held over alleged airline bomb attempt

Nigerian man reportedly linked to al-Qaida in custody after foiled terror attempt on transatlantic flight to Detroit

Police identified the suspect as Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, 23. It is understood that he is an engineering student at University College London.

One official said the man claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over US soil.

Failed terror attack…Blizzard warning…Fuel spill in Alaskan waters

ROMULUS, Mich. (AP) — Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials say the components of a failed explosive were apparently mixed onboard an international flight bound for Detroit. Passengers subdued a Nigerian man who was apparently burned when the device fizzled, but didn't explode.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. counterterrorism officials are trying to figure out if the failed bombing of an international flight preparing to land in Detroit reveals a serious new threat. Even though it burned but didn't explode, investigators wonder how the mixture allegedly used by a Nigerian man evaded detection

Phi Beta Iota: In the time immediately following 9/11 it was clearly established by multiple parties that our asymmetric opponents were spending $1 for every $500,000 we spent. Today we speculate that the ratio is closer to $1 (them) to $5 million (us). We lack a grasp of reality; we lack a strategy; we lack a force structure; and above all, we lack the moral high ground. Imperial Hubris is what happens when government get “too big to fail” and then promptly collapse because they suffer from a culture that turns disaster into catastrophe. Terrorism is the LEAST of our problems, but for the sake of avoiding argument we accept the United Nations High Level Panel's conclusion that terrorism is number nine out of ten high-level threats to humanity. What we do every day to ourselves is easily a million times more threatening, more costly, and more immoral than anything a single terrorist or terrorist group–whatever their motivations–might do. The BAD DECISIONS made by government are the real sucking chest wound for society, both in terms of perpetuating catastrophic industrial and weather changing practices, and in terms of failing to meet the fundamental needs of people who–if empowered with connectivity and education–would create infinite wealth in every clime and place.

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2009/12/252009/12/25

Journal: Life in the Cloud–Repeating Past Mistakes

Communities of Practice, Ethics, IO Secrets, Key Players, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Threats

Full Story Online

January/February 2010

Security in the Ether

Information technology's next grand challenge will be to secure the cloud–and prove we can trust it.

By David Talbot

Phi Beta Iota: The story is so good we will not extract from it. It must be read in its entirety. Government is failing to do its job, leaving a “wild west” environment alive and corruptible in the cloud. Standards are beginning to emerge but security is not a priority and the end-user as the ultimate source of the security is not even being considered (over ten years ago Eric Hughes conceptualized anonymous banking and end-user controlled encryption of all data). Eventually, after great expesne and great loss of data, government and industry may realize that the ultimate security is that which originates with the individual end-user, not a central service that can be hacked by disgruntled insiders or that can make a mistake that instantly explodes tens of millions of clients. Below is the original Mich Kabay slide, still relevant.

Mich Kabay's Threat Slide Link Leads to NSA Las Vegas Briefing

2009/12/242009/12/24

Journal: High-Tech Low-Risk No-Brains Zero-Sum

10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Washington Times December 24, 2009 Pg. 4

High-Tech, Low-Risk Wars By Tim Haake

Retired Maj. Gen. Tim Haake is a Washington lawyer who served on active and reserve duty in special operations for 36 years. Now he is a lobbyist.

Phi Beta Iota: The article has to be read in the original. Well-intentioned and totally divorced from reality, it is what the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Congressional Complex (MIICC) wants the taxpayer to believe. Missing from this fairy tale depiction are the realities: we cannot afford, nor is there sufficient time, nor can the Air Force carry, nor can the intelligence community inform, such a force, spending $5 million for every $1 spent by asymmetric opponents holding the moral high ground. Furthermore, and Jim Bamford and Will Durant agree on this point, the only infintely expandable resource we have is the human brain–neglecting our investments in global education and national population health as we have been and will continue to do, is the certain death of the Republic.

2009/12/232011/10/22

Journal: Huffington Post–Congress is Corrupt

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Policies, Real Time, Threats

Carl Bernstein: US Congress Is Corrupt, Systemically Broken (VIDEO)

During an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe today journalist and author Carl Bernstein lamented that the debate over and the writing of health care reform legislation has shown us “Congress at its worst.”

Bernstein harshly critiques the nation's legislative branch as a body that is “responsive only to money and special interests” while ignoring the public and national interest:

The bad news is the really great problem in this country is the systemic breakdown of one of the three branches of government: the Congress of the United States. And until it's repaired, [Obama] and this country are going to be undermined. We could have had health care legislation in a meaningful way that would have gone twice as far at solving our budget and our health care problems, but because of the irresponsibility and the systemic corruption of the United States Congress, we don't.

Phi Beta Iota: Actually, all of our major institutioins have failed–the Executive, the media, the church, the schools. We live in a “cheating culture” in which INTEGRITY is no longer the foundation value. The good news is that there is nothing wrong with America the Beautiful that cannot be fixed by an Electoral Reform Act followed by reform of national intelligence, governance, and then national security.

A few references:

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2009/12/232009/12/23

Journal: A Tale of Two Flying Pigs

03 Economy, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Military

The below article written by my two good friends Winslow Wheeler and Pierre Sprey is one of the very best case studies describing how the incredible corruption of critical thinking that prevails in the day to day life of the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC) produces techno trash.

With programs like the F-35 populating the Pentagon's modernization plan, there can be no question of why the defense budget is now at a post World War II high, yet is powering the Defense Department into a Death Spiral, where forces continue to shrink (the AF is now contemplating yet another reduction of its fighter structure by 2 more tactical fighter wings), weapons continue to get older, and there is continual pressure to cut readiness, even though we are fighting two wars. Add in the fact that the Pentagon's planning and budgeting system can not pass a simple audit that identifies and verifies the links between money appropriated by Congress to the money expended by the Pentagon, which is required by the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, not to mention the Accountability and Appropriations Clauses of the same Constitution every member of the federal government has sworn to protect and uphold … and you have a prescription for ever increasing disasters at ever higher costs.

Chuck Spinney

A Tale of Two Pigs

by Winslow T. Wheeler and Pierre M. Sprey

Huffington Post

23 December 2009

Setting aside the not-so-proud history of the P-38, the Lightning II moniker is a poor fit for the F-35. Despite the F-35's whopping (and still growing) $122 million per copy price tag, the Air Force and other advocates pretend it is the low-priced, affordable spread in fighter-bombers. Though horrendously overburdened with every high tech weight and drag inducing goodie the aviation bureaucracy in the Pentagon can cram in, the Lightning II is hardly a pioneer, being little more than a pastiche of pre-existing air-to-air and air-to-ground technology – albeit with vastly more complexified computer programs. The P-38 Lightning of the twenty-first century it is surely not, especially for those who hold the P-38 in undeserved high regard.

In the interests of giving credit where credit is due, a more historically fitting moniker for the F-35 would be “Aardvark II.” Aardvark — literally ground pig in Afrikaans — was the nickname pilots (and ultimately the Air Force) gave to the F-111–and for good reasons. The F-111 was the tri-Service, tri-mission fighter-bomber of the 60s, and also a legendary disaster. The F-35 is rapidly earning its place as the Aardvark's true heir.

There are astonishing parallels between the two programs.

Click A Tale of Two Pigs to read entire story. other references below the fold.

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