4 Star – Page 58 – Public Intelligence Blog

Great Raw Material, Helpful Commentary, Missing Closure,

September 21, 2002

Ali Ahmad Jalali

It may not be obvious to the hurried shopper, so it is worth emphasizing up front that this book not only has the full support of the Foreign Military Studies Office of the U.S. Army, but is provided courtesy of the United States Marine Corps Studies and Analysis Division.The selection of stories may have been done by the Soviets from whom the work is borrowed, but in any event is quite good–16 vignettes on ambushes, 10 on raids, 2 on shelling attacks, 6 on attacking strong points, 2 on mine warfare, 6 on blocking enemy lines of communication, 2 on siege warfare, 4 on defending against raids, 3 on fighting heliborne insertions, 5 on defending against cordon and search, 14 on defending base camps, 6 on counterambushes, 3 on fighting an encirclement, and 14 on urban combat. One wonders if those responsible for inserting our forces into Afghanistan in the failed effort to capture the Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership intact, ever read this book. It is quite good.

Although it provides very professional U.S. commentary after each vignette, commenting on both Soviet and Mujahideen behavior in the combat situations, it fails on two counts: the index is terrible (mostly an index of names, rather than combat lessons), and the final chapter is a whimper rather than a sonic boom–this book should be re-issued immediately with a proper index and a concluding chapter that pulls together the concise troop leading “bullets” for each of the 14 combat situations depicted by the vignettes ennumerated above.

One final note: the availability of this book via Amazon.com deserves special commendation. I have been trying for years to get the U.S. Army's Strategic Studies Institute to get all of its very superior and valuable publications made available via Amazon.com so that its taxpayer-funded knowledge would be more widely available, and have simply not been able to get them off the dime. As 9-11 demonstrates, knowledge that is not shared can ultimately exact a great price–what our war colleges produce, at taxpayer expense, needs to be given broader dissemination, and Amazon.com is “the” portal for monograph and book form knowledge.

2002/08/292009/12/04

Review: Supreme Command–Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime

4 Star, Biography & Memoirs, Decision-Making & Decision-Support, Leadership, War & Face of Battle

Isolates Leadership from Intelligence,

August 29, 2002

Eliot Cohen

Edit of 18 May to add links, images, and comment for the war college students.

This is a first-class book and everything that it offers is laudable. Unfortunately, it completely isolates the civilian political to military professional relationship from ethics, intelligence, or the public.

This is not to suggest that leadership cannot take place in the absence of intelligence–indeed, Churchill was at his greatest when he formed his private informal intelligence network to replace the static and myopic official intelligence channels that muddled along in the pre-war years.

However, to discuss Viet-Nam, for example, and not acknowledge what George Allen has documented so well in None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam, or Michael Hiam in Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars, to wit, the consistent manner in which policy-makers in Washington refused to listen to accurate intelligence estimates, while their Generals and Ambassadors in Saigon steadfastly “cooked the books,” leaves the reader with a distorted understanding of how the policy-military-intelligence triad actually fails, more often than not, on the policy side rather than on the intelligence side. The manipulation of truth from the Saigon end, and the refusal to listen to truth on the Washington end, resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, and American, as well as allied nationalities.

Ethics–and intelligence–matter, and no treatment of Supreme Command should fail to address how these two should be but often are not the foundation for the civilian-military relationship. Let me be blunt: until complete transparency is achieved in how we plan, program, and budget for national security, the military officer corps, not the elected politicians or the secret bureaucrats, are going to be the truth-tellers.

Eight other books (all with my Cliff Note reviews) that I recommend as context:

Modern Strategy: Time is the one strategic variable that cannot be bought nor replaced.

Hope Is Not a Strategy: The 6 Keys to Winning the Complex Sale Neither is ideological fantasy and flag officers that forget their Oath and confuse loyalty with integrity.

Security Studies for the 21st Century Policy makers are seriously stupid about reality, and all too prone to believe classified crap or make up their own (see next two books)

Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers See my review on Ellsberg lecturing Kissinger how he would become like a moron in shutting out ground truth in favor of codeword.

The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People Reality 101, not taught in most war colleges

The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World General and President Ike Eisenhower warned us–we let it happen anyway.

Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025. Strategic Communications is seriously stupid and ineffective if we continue to support 42 of the 44 dictators, and allow Guantanamo and Abu Grahib to dominate how others see us

A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change Reality 102. LtGen Dr. Brent Scowcroft was the US member of this panel on high level threats, challenges and change. Here they are, in priority order:

01 Poverty
02 Infectious Disease
03 Environmental Degradation
04 Inter-State Conflict
05 Civil War
06 Genocide
07 Other Atrocities
08 Proliferation
09 Terrorism
10 Transnational Crime

See my many lists on emerging threats, intelligence support to acquisition, etcetera. See comment for the free weekly report on Global Challenges: The Week in Review, and the Marine Corps Expeditionary Analysis Model.

TAKE-AWAYS:

01) $60 billion a year for secret intelligence that can be ignored and only touches 4% of the relevant information in 183 languages we do not speak is institutionalized lunacy.

02) Spending $1.3 trillion a year on war when peace and prosperity for all can be bought for under $250 billion a year is institutionalized lunacy.

03) You are responsible for keeping policy makers honest–that is a core Constitutional, moral, and command responsibility…you owe your troops, and the average American, this discipline of mind and heart.

04) The collective intelligence of the public is vastly more aware, more conscious, more moral, and more relevant to national security that the idiot ideas that come from loosely-educated policy makers who got their jobs by blowing smoke up someone's butt (or academics who lie to Congress when Service leaders are not willing to kick them down the steps of Capitol Hill and put their stars on the table).

05) The Chinese brought Dick Cheney's plane over Singapore. Why have you not been told this? Search for the Memorandum <Chinese Irregular Warfare oss.net>. Waging Peace (Irregular Warfare) is the ONLY win-win.

06) DoD, for all its faults including an inability to pass an audit and $2.3 trillion “missing and unaccounted for,” works better than the rest of the government. DoD needs to become the inter-agency and coalition hub for global action.

07) Foundations, corporations, other governments, and international organizations spend close to $1 trillion a year in charitable giving and planned assistance. Wrap your heads around this: a Multinational Decision Support Center in Tampa, taking over the CCC building that is being vacated, could create and promulgate an annual Global Range of Gifts Table to guide, on an opt-in basis, how they spent that money, while using Civil Affairs Brigade as the hub for regional multinational Civil Affairs Brigades who help connect the one billion rich with the five billion poor at a household level of granularity, with needs from $1 to $10,000 being covered by individuals that will not give to foundations.

The world has changed. Most of what is in this book is history, and completely out of touch with how the Services must motivate and lead Digital Natives, the Web 2.0 generation, and how the Services must become brain-housing groups–thinkers as well as shooters–able to deliver Peace from the Sea, Peace from Above, and Peace one cell call at a time.

I welcome invitations to speak informally after hours on a not to interfere basis. You folks at the next generation of leaders–you will need to learn most of what you will use outside the normal curriculum. Amazon is a great place to start.

2002/08/292009/12/04

Review: Breakdown–How America’s Intelligence Failures Led to September 11

4 Star, 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Helpful,

August 29, 2002

Bill Gertz

The author has done a wonderful job, without reference to any of the fifteen books on intelligence reform published between 1999 and 2000, in quickly reviewing the key elements of intelligence failure and in recommending some specific reforms that thus far have been denied by successive Administrations.If this book forces policymakers to think, and makes it possible for the public to get very angry about the various failures of intelligence that contributed to 9-11, then it will be in the running for most patriotic and useful book of the year.

The author leaves one aspect of the 9-11 failure untouched–although he makes references to Democratic and to Republican policymakers, what he does not tell the American people is that intelligence failures do not occur without very substantive policy failures of two kinds: first, policy failures where the intelligence professionals are gutted, abused, intimidated, and generally prevented from being effective. The Director of Central Intelligence usually serves as the policy representative to intelligence in carrying out these abuses, rather than as the intelligence representative to policy. The second failure is one of “inconvenient warning,” where solid professional intelligence estimates are set aside and ignored because the politicians don't want to be bothered, don't think it will cost them with their domestic constituencies, and are not truly committed to long-term national security. This is a bi-partisan problem–until the American people appreciate the connection between voting, policymaker character, and intelligence success, we will continue to get the government–and the intelligence community–that our citizens deserve.

2002/07/272009/12/04

Review: Congressional Caucuses in National Policymaking

4 Star, Congress (Failure, Reform)

Descriptive, Not Evaluative, Useful First Book on Topic,

July 27, 2002

Susan Webb Hammond

This is a very fine first book focused specifically on Congressional Caucuses in National Policy Making. It is largely descriptive and does not include what I really was looking for, measures of effectiveness and deliberate enumeration and evaluation of tangible legislative successes by each caucus, mor does it describe and evaluate specific outputs or methods used by caucuses (e.g. web sites, monthly newsletters, email lists). It also does not include the specifics of Member names in relation to each caucus, or of key experienced staff participants in caucus management, both of which would have been useful appendices (and must now be dug out from the Congressional Yellow Book). Finally, it makes reference to but only gives passing attention to the very strong anti-caucus element within the Congress, in which very serious respected Members take issue with the lack of fiscal accountability and other negative elements of the caucus.Having said all that, I completely recommend this book as the only really good book-level treatment of this issue in isolation. The bibliography is superb, covering books on legislative policy making as well as articles and primary documents. The index is acceptable but not exemplary.

The author's bottom line, based on original research and a fine overview of national, regional, state/district, industry, party, and personal interest caucuses, is that they provide a very substantial *complement* to the formal committee process, and thus render an invaluable service to Members.

Caucuses, in the author's investigative report, exist primarily to help Members deal with complex issues that are either multi-jurisdictional in nature, not covered adequately by existing Committee assignments, or lacking in political support or attention for various reasons–the High Altitude Caucus, to keep environmental regulations designed for sea-level from being too silly at high altitudes, is a good example of the latter.

Caucuses are primarily information collection and sharing vehicles, followed by agenda and policy setting tools. They serve as valuable forums for orienting new Members or helping Members across various Committee jurisdictions focus on shared concerns.

The book finds that caucuses are perceived as policy actors, both within the legislative process and within the Administration. In the 100th Congress, the focal point for the book, most caucuses were focused on economic issues, especially trade. About a quarter focused on defense and foreign policy including international trade and immigration issues. Roughly 20% worked trade issues, 17% defense issues, and 13% immigration, human rights, and terrorism issues.

At the time of the book's writing there were no caucuses on national information strategy or information technology applications relevant to improving government operations at the federal level, or between the federal and state/local levels.

Administratively, in the past caucuses could be recognized as legislative service agencies and given official funding and floor space. These privileges were eliminated in the mid-1990's due to leadership concerns over accountability and propriety. Some converted to non-profit status, others to a new form of caucus, the congressional member organization. In the aftermath of the 104th Congress elimination of the older form of caucus, most have staffs that are very small, 1-2 at most, and tend to be managed by the leading Member.

This is a fine book and a good first start for what could be a new literature on new forms of democratic representation enabled by the Internet. There is no reason why the emerging trends in cyber-advocacy and digital democracy at described so well by the Foundation on Public Affairs might not eventually be integrated into a larger digital caucus environment in which Members can matrix various grassroots civic offerings, industry information, and caucus-based filtering and analytic services, to get in closer touch with real-world information that is not filtered by the Administration or the constrained by the limitations of the Congressional Research Service, which does the best it can with excruciatingly limited resources. I hope the author goes on to write this second book as her first is a valuable and helpful offering to policy-makers, citizen advocates, and students of the emerging new democratic processes made possible by the Internet.

2002/07/232009/12/04

Review: The Volunteer Recruitment (and Membership Development) Book

4 Star, Best Practices in Management, Civil Society

Somewhat Dated, Some Nuggets,

July 23, 2002

Susan J. Ellis

This book (acutally an 8.5 by 11 manual), originally published in 1994 and based on 1980's readings, is somewhat dated and has been only marginally updated. It falls into the second rank of the four books that made the cut from among the many available. Helen Little's “Volunteers: How to Get Them, How to Keep Them” stands alone as the single “must buy.” This book is co-equal to two others, each recommended as supplementary reading because each has something to offer at a secondary level: Sue Vineyard and Steve McCurley's “Best Practices for Volunteer Programs” and Jarene Frances Lee with Julai M. Catagnus, “Supervising Volunteers: An Action Guide for Making Your Job Easier.”There are two aspects of this manual by Susan Ellis that I did not see in the other books: first, her emphasis on casting a wide net and reaching as many potential volunteers as possible….(“Most people do not say ‘no'; they simply never knew you wanted them to say ‘yes'.) While I am skeptical of wasteful advertising programs in this time of diminishing leisure hours, there is something to this. The other vital chapter that this manual offers is the one addressing the importance of image, i.e. the public perception of the organization seeking volunteers, the reputation that it can specifically draw on as a resource.

There are a few flakey notes (e.g. one vignette about recruiting people to call parents and offer support as they are getting kids out the door to school. Any normal parent, especially if one parent is absent or has an early work start, would be furious at any volunteer daring to call in the midst of the chaos that charactizes getting three kids out the door to three different bus pick-up times.)

This manual does have an index. Bottom line: dated, some nuggets, if volunteers are vital to your success, worth getting.

2002/05/282013/10/20

Review: Grant’s Secret Service The Intelligence War from Belmont to Appomattox

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Intelligence (Public)

William B. Feis

4.0 out of 5 stars Well-Intentioned, Terrible Maps and No Timelines, May 28, 2002

I do not regret taking the time to read this book, and it is a well-intentioned worthy effort–however, given a new choice, I would probably go with the alternative, by an intelligence professional, “The Secret War for the Union: The Untold Story of Military Intelligence in the Civil War.”

I give the author, not an intelligence professional, high marks for the research, the story-telling, and the consistent themes. I give the editor and publisher low marks for the terrible maps (many seem to have lost their unit location markings and other key annotations) and the lack of tables showing “who knew what when…”

Three themes stayed with me as I put the book down:

1) A great deal can be accomplished in terms of intelligence with even a very small number of people–as few as 1-2 on staff, 3-5 behind the lines. We in America have substituted billions for technology and a cast of close to 100,000, for rather poor intelligence and counterintelligence.

2) Maps, especially “information maps,” are worth their weight in gold. I was reminded by this book that intelligence has in the past been an off-shoot of topographical engineering and map making, and do believe that we must restore the “hard-wired” connection between geospatial information and the “data” that our human, imagery, and signals professionals seek out.

3) Deserters, prisoners, and legal travelers are a gold mine of information and must, must, must be systematically exploited. No matter the degree to which they may offer up untruths and deceptions, the bottom line is that any commander who fails to plan for the systematic exploitation of these human resources, and to do so in a timely fashion, is derelict in their duty. As I recall, we do not yet have a proper table of organization or equipment in the U.S. force inventory for handling such individuals–the worst battalion, or the over-burdened military police, or some kludge collection of reservists, seems to end up being the solution each time. This dereliction is even more costly in “low intensity” environments.

I will not make too much of it, but I was especially pleased to see how much of Grant's intelligence came from enemy newspapers.

The author seeks to make much–perhaps too much–of how Grant did not allow himself to be immobilized by a lack of intelligence, substituting initiative when intelligence was lacking, but I for one don't buy it. What I see in the book is a substantive appreciation by the General Commanding of the role of intelligence, however poorly manned or funded, and that makes all the difference.

2002/03/112009/12/04

Review: The Paradox of American Power–Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone

4 Star, Diplomacy, Economics

Brilliant Strategic Insights, Operationally Disappointing,

March 11, 2002

Joseph S. Nye Jr.

My highest complement for a book used to be how many pens I broke on it. This book leaps into a new category. I actually had to read it three times, short as it is. It is brilliant, with paragraphs of such substance that multiple readings are needed to “unzip” the implications. This is not an undergraduate text although it could certainly be used as such, to open deep discussions.Among the strategic thoughts that I found most valuable were these: 1) a plenitude of information leads to a poverty of attention; 2) in the absence of time or means to actually review real-world information, politics becomes a contest of competitive credibility (with the Internet changing the rules of the game somewhat); 3) Japan has vital lessons to teach Islamic nations–that one can adapt to the new world while maintaining a unique culture; 4) we are failing to adapt our democratic processes to the challenges of the Earth as well as the opportunities of the Internet.

This last merits special attention. I found in this book an intellectual and political argument for restoring democratic meaning to our national policies. From its evaluation of the pernicious effect of special interest groups on foreign policy; to its explanation (“When the majority are indifferent, they leave the battlefields of foreign policy to those with special interests.”); to its prescription for healthy policies: a combination of national discussion (not just polling), with a proper respect for the opinions of others (e.g. foreigners), the author clearly sets himself apart from those who would devise national policies in secret meetings with a few preferred pals.

Throughout the book, but not given any special chapter as I would have preferred, the author is clearly cognizant of the enormous non-traditional challenges facing the community of nations–not just terrorism and crime, but fundamentals such as water and energy shortages, disease, genocide, proliferation, trade injustices, etcetera.

Operationally, the book is slightly disappointing. Despite the fact that the author has served as both the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council (and perhaps left the operational bit to his Vice Chairman, Greg Treverton, whose book, “Reshaping National Intelligence for an Age of Information” I recommend be read in conjunction with this one), and as an Assistant Secretary of Defense, I did not see two things in this book that would have bridged the gap from strategic reflection to operational implementation:

1) How must we change the manner in which our nation handles information? What should our national information strategy be, to include not only a vast new program for properly collecting, processing, and understanding foreign language materials that are openly available, for but improving our K-12 and undergraduate education with respect to foreign affairs?

2) How must we change the manner in which our nation authorizes, appropriates, allocates, and obligates the taxpayer budget? While noting that we spend 16 times as much on military hard power as we do on diplomatic soft power, the author left this issue largely on a single page.

On the topic of values and accountability the author excelled. Although I would disagree that values by themselves are the foundation of national power (“knowing” the world, in my view, is the other side of the coin of the realm), the author sounds very much like Noam Chomsky with a social make-over–we have to be honest on human rights and other core values, and not act nor permit our corporations to act in ways that are antithetical to our true national commitment to decency and honesty. The section on new forms of accountability and transparency being made possible by changing in information tools and practices are valuable–admitting non-governmental organizations to all bodies; accelerating the release of records into the public domain, and so on.

We learn from this book that the author is an avid admirer of The Economist, that he thrives on Op-Ed reading (I have never seen a more comprehensive use of Op-Eds in the notes), and that he is largely accepting of the World Trade Organization and other multi-lateral groups, most of which have not yet accommodated themselves to the new world of citizen-centered policymaking. As good as the notes are, the book would have benefited from a bibliography. The index is acceptable.

If we part ways on any one thing, it would be that I am less sanguine about any foreign policy, however much it might use “soft power,” being successful if it persists with the notion that we can cajole and seduce the world into wanting what we want. We've done that with Hollywood, and McDonalds, and chlorine-based plastics, and it is not working to our advantage. It may be that America must first recognize its own demons, adjust its global goals accordingly, and interact with the world rather than striving for a grander version of the “Office of Strategic Influence” that recently got laughed into oblivion. We appear to agree that the U.S. Information Agency must be restored as our two-way channel between our people and all others. I would dramatically expand USIA to also provide for a Global Knowledge Foundation and a Digital Marshall Plan on the one hand, and the education of all women on the other (Cf O'Hanlon's “A Half-Penny on the Federal Dollar”).

This book opens the great conversation, and in doing so, renders a valuable service. Missing from the public conversation is the Department of State. Both the politically-appointed and the professionally-trained leadership of the diplomatic service appear to have been cowed into silence by a mis-placed coda that confuses abject compliance with loyalty to the larger national interest. If this book can draw State back into the public service, into a public debate on the urgency of protecting and expanding our most important soft power tools, then the author's ultimate impact on the future of American security and prosperity will be inestimable.

Category: 4 Star

Review: Afghan Guerrilla Warfare–In the Words of the Mujahideen Fighters