04 Inter-State Conflict – Page 142 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/01/122010/01/12

Journal: Yemen, Guns, Tribes, & Deja Vu

02 China, 03 India, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence, Policy

Three Guns for Every Person

Only Fools Rush Into Yemen

By PATRICK COCKBURN January 11, 2010

The mounting crisis in the country only attracted notice when a Nigerian student is revealed to have been “trained” in Yemen by al-Qa’ida to detonate explosives in his underpants on plane heading for Detroit. But this botched attack has led to the US and Britain starting to become entangled in one of the more violent countries in the world. The problems of Yemen are social, economic and political, and stretch back to the civil war in Yemen in the 1960s, but Gordon Brown believes solutions can be found by holding a one day summit on Yemen to “tackle extremism.”

Al-Qa’ida in Yemen is small, its active members numbering only 200-300 lightly armed militants in a country of 22 million people who are estimated to own no less than 60 million weapons. Al-Qa’ida has room to operate because central government authority barely extends outside the cities and because it can ally itself with the many opponents of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in office since the 1970s.

Continue reading “Journal: Yemen, Guns, Tribes, & Deja Vu”

2010/01/112010/01/11

Reference: UN Checklist for Small Arms

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 10 Security, Key Players, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

cover un checklist — UN Small Arms Checklist

UNIDIR (United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research) has produced a superb checklist approach to the mission of reducing the proliferation of small arms, which kill and maim and orphan tens of millions at a time. The Director of UNIDIR at the time, Dr. Patricia Lewis, was the first UN official in modern times to contemplate the need for a UN-sponosred World Brain. 2003 Lewis (UNIDIR) Creating the Global Brain: The United Nations.

Continue reading “Reference: UN Checklist for Small Arms”

2010/01/092010/01/09

Journal: Selected MILNET Headlines

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Ethics, Government, Military, Reform

O's ‘Fixes' Will Fail:Feeding more fat to obese US intelligence (Ralph Peters)

None of these people, including our president, took what almost happened on Christmas seriously — until the public outcry spooked them.

To energize the bureaucratic proles, you have to chop off aristocratic heads. But President Obama won't use the guillotine. He's protecting incompetents. At our nation's expense.

The corrective measures announced Thursday boil down to two things: Buy more stuff (additional computer systems, full-body scanners, etc.), and re-arrange the deck chairs.

That won't do it. These measures don't address the two enduring handicaps our intelligence community (and our government) suffers in our duel with Islamist terrorists.

Yemen's Al Qaeda Scam (Robert Haddick)

It seems that whenever the international community discovers another al Qaeda franchise, a financial reward to the host seems to follow. Pakistan has perfected how to profit from this perverse incentive. Yemen is now showing itself to be an able student of the same technique.

U.S. Army In Africa: Dodging The Continent's Worst Wars (David Axe)

The U.S. Army’s role in all of this is to help strengthen the capabilities and capacity of our land force partners … so they can help protect their people, secure their borders, support development, contribute to better governance and help achieve regional stability.

Except, apparently, in cases where there’s too much terrorism, violent extremism, cyber attacks, piracy, illicit trafficking, crime, corruption, disease and displaced people.

2010/01/092010/01/09

Journal: Open Source Vignette From Cuban Missile Crisis

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 10 Security, Communities of Practice, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence

Robert, I had lunch with an old friend, Herb REDACTED, a retired intelligence officer and military judge (Air Force). The subject of OSS and your role in the IC came about, and my friend sent me a very interesting, brief, story about the open source back channel in the Cuban Missile Crisis I want to share with you. You may well be aware of this, given your knowledge of history, but I wanted you to have this in case it, or my friend Herb, has potential utility to your initiatives. Perhaps the current environment, in DC, will result in a change in policy and effectiveness in the IC. In his note to me, he is commenting about the paper I presented at OSS '94, as a result of your gracious invite. I still tell people about the role you have played in bringing the intelligence community into the limelight, open source into greater adaptation. – REDACTED

Great to visit with you in Tampa-

Your OSS presentation is not simply impressive, it recognizes and highlights a very real and valuable component of intelligence currently as well as in those long distance days when I was immersed in the discipline. It was an open intelligence source that was the first indication that the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was resolved.

It's a rather long story but to offer a brief synopsis: A Reuters News Service correspondent posted to The Kremlin was close to Khrushchev (Big K), close enough to be the only correspondent to gain a private audience during the crisis. On Oct. 27th (I think it was) Big K. told the Reuters' fellow that: “I will do anything to prevent the world's destruction over Cuba.” The reporter then asked incredulously: “Mr. President, do you really mean ‘anything?” The reply was: “Yes, I will not be the cause of the death of millions of Soviet citizens and radiating the world.”

In the USAFE Command Room in Wiesbaden, we intelligence wennies had every news service and major newspaper teletype machine known to mankind for open source material. Apparently the reported took a fast cab ride back to his office and put the conversation on the wire. We had a method of verification, used it and confirmed the fact that he had placed the story on the wire. Presuming it accuracy, we passed it on the Situation Room at the White House. In mere moments we (in the intel. Secure office) received a secure red phone (secure with those punched IBM cards) call from the WH (MacGeorge Bundy on the other end) asking me (since I picked up the phone) was the wire story accurate. I answered yes and handed the phone to Brig. General Julius Gibbons ( CoS for Intel. USAFE) and he spoke to RFK.

Within minutes the deal between JFK and Big K made in Washington was announced. But they knew the deal was to get closed by the USAFE report a few minutes earlier. And don't overlook the excellent ploy hatched by RFK to ignore Big K's second letter that he was forced to write by his military goons.

The play-by-play version is suitable for a beer or two, it's a little longer.

Thus, your open source presentation was well appreciated as an old intel wennie.

Continue reading “Journal: Open Source Vignette From Cuban Missile Crisis”

2010/01/012010/01/01

Worth a Look: Israeli Connections to USS Cole & 9-11

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, 9-11 articles, Ethics, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence, Worth A Look

photo israel and 9-11 — Israel, USS Cole, 9-11

Phi Beta Iota: This is worth a look rather than a reference because we have not had time to evaluate it properly. It most certainly is worth a look. Israel is known to have attacked the USS Liberty, and similar to the USA being responsible for Abu Ghraib, such a crime against humanity cannot be forgotten.

We are especially troubled by the USS Cole allegation with respect to the Israeli's using a cruise missile. Unfortunately, the US Government has a track record of covering up “friendly” attacks (USS Liberty) as well as “enemy” attacks (USS Scorpion) so the bottom line is that we have no reliable source of information on any of this.

photo cb — Christopher Bollyn, Independent Journalist "Without Frontier"

This material furthers our deep interest in strategic public counterintelligence. It is a certainty that no one is defending the USA from “white collar” domestic enemies, and we are generally doing more to incite foreign enemies than to contain them. We are increasingly seeing the discipline of counter-intelligence as one that demands that we know ourselves–that we look deeply into our soul, and that we find and eradicate all those commiting treason against the Republic, including those who collaborate in the murder of Americans for “higher purposes.”

Separately Christopher Boyllyn, a self-described journalist “without frontier” who has standing with Prison Planet and Mike Ruppert, former LAPD who wrote Crossing the Rubicon, has posted a number of items also worth a look.

To that end, we respectfully post these two links for public consideration.

2009/12/292009/12/29

Journal: Yemen–Opening A New “Front” in the Long War

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Military, Peace Intelligence

Nicht Schwerpunkt as a Prescription for Defeat by a 1000 Cuts

Operation_Barbarossa_corrected_border — Operation Barbarossa

Recent events like the Fort Hood Massacre and the bungled attempt to fire bomb the airliner bound for Detroit have focused attention on and encouraged our escalating intervention in Yemen, which has been taking place quietly, as if Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan were not enough to keep our strategic planners and stretched out military forces occupied. Our reactions to events in the so-called Long War on Terror suggest an aimless spreading of effort throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. This aimlessness brings to mind a comment General Hermann Balck, a highly decorated German officer in WWII, made to a small group of reformers in the Pentagon in the early 1980s. The subject was Operation Barbarossa, or Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Balck pithily dismissed the German strategy shaping that invasion with the words: “Nicht Schwerpunkt.” Balck was saying there was no focus or main effort to the German invasion, and without a focus, there was no way to harmonize the thousands of subordinate efforts. The result was a spreading of effort that led to eventual overextension as can be seen in the following map.

Now the Eastern Front of WWII is very different from the ridiculously misleading label of a Central Front in the Long War on Terror. But the idea of schwerpunkt is germane to both efforts, and the US is showing all the signs of spreading and over extending its efforts which accompany a nicht schwerpunkt.

This is no small thing. As the American strategist Colonel John Boyd showed in his famous briefing, Patterns of Conflict, the idea of a schwerpunkt is central to organizing all effective military operations. It is far more than a simple question of concentrating forces. According to Boyd, the idea of a “Schwerpunkt represents a unifying medium that provides a directed way to tie initiative of many subordinate actions with superior intent as a basis to diminish friction and compress time in order to generate a favorable mismatch in time/ability to shape and adapt to unfolding circumstances.” Now this is a very compressed statement, pregnant with information, and based on a lot of research, but it nevertheless makes it self evident that there is no comparable unifying medium in America's Long War on Terror. Our failure to form a schwerpunkt is just as much a prescription for paralysis and defeat by a thousand cuts in a guerrilla war as it is in a mechanized conventional war between standing armies.

To see why, consider please the following three attachments:

Continue reading “Journal: Yemen–Opening A New “Front” in the Long War”

2009/12/282009/12/28

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