Diplomacy – Page 13 – Public Intelligence Blog

THE Common Sense “Primer” for Everyone Including Bozo,

April 14, 2006

Tony Zinni

I was initially inclined to give this book four stars because it does not “name names” and have footnotes or a bibliography, but as I got deeper into the book I realized that what Tony Zinni has produced is a world-saving “primer” that ANYONE can appreciate, including Bozo the Clown. This is not a dumbed down book as much as it is “straight talk” with no gobbly-gook.

I have known over fifty flag officers in my time, and only a handful have actually been world-class, including Zinni, Gray, Stackpole in the USMC, Clapper and O'Lear in the USAF, Studeman in the Navy, and of course Schoomaker in the Army. No doubt there are others, but in my experience most flag officers have simply won a beauty/etiquette contest, and they do not acquire any additional strategic vision upon being promoted from the lower ranks. Zinni is incontestably the one general we have that has done three things brilliantly:

1) been a foxhole Marine with grievous wounds and innovative leadership at the company and field grade levels (see my review of his book “Battle Ready”);

2) been a general deeply experienced in Operations Other than War (OOTW–what a stupid former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff once said of “Real men don't do OOTW–which is about as stupid as the DNI still saying (we paraphrase) “we're in the business of secrets for the President, the hell with open sources and everyone else”); and

3) been a true inter-agency Commander-in-Chief (CINC) able to make full use of *all* the inter-agency capabilities, not just the military, and done so diplomatically and personally. He is the George Shultz (himself a former Marine) of the current warrior class.

With that as pre-amble, here are the highlights of the book that demand its reading by every citizen in time to challenge their light-weight (and generally corrupt) Members of Congress prior to casting a vote in November 2006:

1) Chapters 1-7 are essentially an overview of reality and why global reality impacts on America's security and fortune. This is required reading for all but a handful, and needs to be read very slowly and carefully by those encumbered with ideological filters. As the author notes, very often perception is reality, and when an ideologically-biased perception conflicts with actual multi-cultural reality, what you get is a catastrophe such as Iraq.

2) The heart of the book is the author's prescription for achieving both an unbiased view of the real world, and the ability to fully plan for and leverage all the sources of national power as represented by the varied agencies, through three simple and elegant “hubs”:

2a) At the national level, a National Monitoring and Planning Center (NMPC) that is able to integrate both intelligence (less than 20% of the relevant information) and operational inter-agency information (the other 80%), and to then plan, coordinate, and guide the execution of long-term inter-agency campaign plans.

2b) At the operational level, the modification of the currently planned Joint Intelligence Operations Commands or Centers (JIOC) to turn them into more of a Joint Inter-Agency Collaboration Center (JICC) such as SOCOM has developed in concept. Although JFCOM's Joint Inter-Agency Coordination Group (JIACG) is the example used by the author, I believe that we actually need to bring together the JFCOM and SOCOM concepts with those emerging in the NORTHCOM inter-agency directorate under Bear McConnell, and the Global Innovation and Strategy Center (GISC) at STRATCOM, which not coincidentally also has the lead for getting a grip on all open source information in all languages all the time, something the DNI cannot provide.

2c) At the tactical level the author is right on target when he proposes the civil affairs model (as does Congressman Rob Simmons, R-CT-02 from the HASC and Homeland Security Committees) as the focal point for inter-agency application of resources in-country. The author does not dismiss the U.S. Embassy, which was supposed to play that role, but his book is a clear demarche with respect to the incapacity of the Department of State to provide a leadership role, a planning role, or an inter-agency management role in-country. The Embassies are simply not working the way they are supposed to our could be made to work.

3) The author concludes his work with an analogy of cobras being killed by the death of a thousand stings from bees. Exactly right. The threat to America is NOT Iranian nuclear power (just as it was NOT Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction) but rather a global concerted effort to destroy Americas economy through the simple expedient of putting oil prices up to $300 a barrel, something that can be achieved very inexpensively with tiny but potent attacks on key oil pipelines and pumping stations in Nigeria, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.

Tony Zinni is one of my heroes. He not only understands asymmetric warfare and the urgency of getting serious (that is to say, professional, which we are not at this time) about global instability in the intangible non-military dimensions, but he is a clear-headed diplomat and warrior-philosopher who knows how to make big bureaucracies do his bidding.

I hope the day comes when we have a chance to work together to save this great Republic from the morons that have broken the piggy bank, cost us all moral legitimacy in the eyes of the world, and started a 100 year six front war we did not need and were not ready for.

BRAVO ZULU and GUNG HO.

Admin Note: If you select “see my other reviews” and bookmark that page, you can, over the course of several hours, receive a free graduate education in reality and non-fiction about global issues. If Zinni *had* had footnotes, most of the books I have reviewed would have been in his book as supporting elements for his personal and professional essay.

2006/04/092009/12/04

Review: The Battle for Hearts and Minds–Using Soft Power to Undermine Terrorist Networks (Washington Quarterly Readers) (Paperback)

4 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Diplomacy

Several excellent contributions, fails to connect to open source intelligence,

April 9, 2006

Alexander T. J. Lennon

This is a pretty good volume from 2003, with a good mix of academics, journalists, and practitioners. The most useful pieces for me personally were on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which manages the Voice of America.

On balance this is a solid reference on all but two of the aspects of soft power: it completely neglects the importance of getting a grip on historical and cultural reality through open source intelligence (OSINT) and also neglects the strategic bottom line that demands an educated American public that is fully informed about the real world and demanding of intelligent policy choices.

The book certainly does well with the limitations of military power, the importance of nation building, the urgency of having a massive capability to do stabilization and reconstruction operations as needed, and the critical roles that public diplomacy and foreign assistance could, but do not, play in winning hearts and minds.

Of special interest to me was the failing report card on the broadcasting board of governors, whose equipment is 30 years old in many cases. I applauded the informed judgement of the author who made the case, based on experience, for keeping the short wave and middle band capabilities that too few understand is essential for Africa and other locations.

Across the book it becomes clear that the US needs to upgrade the Combatant Commanders or mirror them with a civilian coordinator for non-military strategy, power, and resources. As someone who grew up overseas with the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), and served in three Embassies overseas, it is crystal clear to me that we need to double the Department of State, in part by reconstituting USIA as a separate organization, and by placing USIA, the BBG, and a new Open Source Agency (for collecting and making sense of all public information in all languages all the time) in a tight partnership. We need to double and triple aid, develop a peacekeeping from the sea program, as well as the ability to do multiple Berlin Airlifts.

This is a good basic book for anyone thinking seriously about “soft power,” a term popularized by Joe Nye, whose varied books I have reviewed and recommend very highly.

2006/03/312009/12/04

Review: Turmoil and Triumph My Years As Secretary of State (Hardcover)

5 Star, Diplomacy

His views on intelligence (secret bad, open good)–Of Lasting Value,

March 31, 2006

George P. Shultz

This is one of those rare memoirs that combine ease of reading, common sense, and substantive greatness. Much much easier to absorb that Henry's Kissinger's turgid prose.

Although no longer in print, there are a number of copies floating around, and as long as I was using the book for a new article on strategic intelligence, I thought I would offer up my notes from the flyleaf for the Amazon community. My page numbers are from the 1993 hard cover edition.

Secretary Shultz is a former Marine and says early on in the book that his wife is part of a “package deal.”

Some extremely thoughtful views on competition in the information age, and very strong explicit angry statements against the “cult of secrecy.” Clearly understands the revolution in communications and information technology. p 18

Has some real issues with flaws in raw open source information loaded with unfiltered bias. p. 26

First director of OMB, p. 29, does not evince concerns over the disappearance of the Management function over the years.

Crisis management still not making proper use of open sources of information including commercial imagery, p. 44

CIA under Bill Casey too independent and unreliable. p. 50

Diplomatic “gardening” consists of SecState visiting counterparts on their home turf. p. 128

Vatican intelligence, p. 150

Emphasis throughout on values, integrating cultural policy, cultural strategy, cultural warfare

Firehose of information, nothing offered by intelligence or by information technology managers helped deal with it. p. 272

CIA “wild plan” for Surinam, p. 297

CIA “out of control” in mining Nicaraguan harbors, p. 307

Faulty intelligence to the President, p. 312

Intelligence pattern over time: first alarming and then vague, -. 425

On Strategic Defense Initiative, going to a briefing only to be asked, “Is the Secretary cleared?” Dumbfounded by this. p. 492

“So much for our intelligence” faulty biography on Soviet Premier Tikhonov, p. 493

State/Schultz versus Defense/Weinberger “poison” sapped government cohesion, p. 498

Security reviews, ridiculous impositions, p. 544

CIA botches Yurchenko, p. 595

Intelligence cooking the books, p. 619

Bottom line: Intelligence let this Secretary of State down, and does not appear to have gotten any more competent since then despite a doubling of its budget from $25M to $50M or more (some estimates suggest $70B total).

If you are interested in grand strategy, unified national security (using ALL of the instruments of national power wisely), and the vagaries of a really rotten Presidential inter-agency management process, this book is well worth buying used.

2005/08/242009/12/04

Review: New Glory–Expanding America’s Global Supremacy (Hardcover)

5 Star, America (Founders, Current Situation), Consciousness & Social IQ, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Future

Devastating on Middle East and Europe, Uncritical of US,

August 24, 2005

Ralph Peters

Ralph Peters is more compelling than Tom Friedman, goes deeper than Robert Kaplan, runs the numbers as well as Clyde Prestowitz, and runs as many risks as Robert Young Pelton. All of these men are among the best and the brightest of our generation. Ralph Peters is first among these equals.

New Glory is most devastating in its professional appreciation of the crash of Islamic civilization and the hollowness of Europe, with Germany and France coming in for special scorn. While Peters is acutely sensitive to the mistakes that France and Germany have made with immigration–allowing millions to immigrate without enfranchising them or assuring their loyalty as citizens–he tends to overlook the same faults in the US and the UK, and this is my only criticism: patriot that he is, he tends to downplay US errors and misbehavior. Having said that, I would also say there is no finer observer of reality outside the US than Ralph Peters.

Like his earlier book, Beyond Terror, Peters again excels with gifted turns of phrase that sound like pure poetry. Peters is not just a grand strategist equal to the likes of Scowcroft or Brzezinski (while less diplomatic than they), he is a gifted orator and his book reads as if one were in the Greek Senate listening to Socrates hold forth.

Especially strong in this book is the author's focus on Africa and Latin America as area rich with potential that the Americans are ignoring. Instead of obsessing on assassinating Chavez, as moronic an idea as there ever was, we should be focusing on how to include Africa and Latin America in our free trade zone, along with India and Japan.

Peters jumps into the intellectual stratosphere when he takes on the issue of bad borders, the cancerous heritage of colonialism. I would recommend that the book by Philip Allott, “Health of Nations,” and also the book by Jed Babbin, “Inside the Asylum” (on the UN) be read along with this book. I would add Mark Palmer's book on “The Real Axis of Evil” as well, about the 44 dictators we support. Taken together, perhaps adding Joe Nye's book on “Understanding International Conflicts” to have a really fine grasp of current challenges.

Peters, author of a novel about treasonous defense contractors, comes out in the open with his sharp criticism of the military-industrial complex, pointing out that they are among the worst enemies of our national defense. Their corruption, legalized by a Congress all too eager to take its standard 2.5% to 5% “cut” on delivered pork, diverts tens of billions of dollars from education, infrastructure, border control, public health, and other sources of national power. When added to light-weight decision-making at the very top, where we go to war and waste thousands of lives and over $187 billion dollars on a war that was both unnecessary and pathologically in favor of Iranian ambitions against Iraq, one can quickly see that General Eisenhower and General Smedley Butler (“war is a Racket”) were both correct–we are our own worst enemy. Peters concludes his real-world damnation of contractors by summing up the many problems that occurred in Iraq when contractors failed to deliver to US troops the ammunition, food, and water, as they were contracted to do. I myself heard of units that lost 30 to 40 pounds per man after months on a diet of water and *one* Meal Ready to Eat (MRE) per day.

Peters draws his book to a close with compelling thoughts down two distinct lines. First, he clearly favors a policy of carefully identifying and then killing those who will not heed any other means of peaceful coexistence. As with the author of “Civilization and It's Enemies,” he reminds us that liberty comes at the price of regular shedding of blood. It is not free.

Peters' second line is the most interesting to me. He is scathingly on target when he labels US intelligence professionals to be uniformly timid and bureaucratic in nature, part of the problem, not part of the solution. He goes on to dissect how we fail to listen to foreign cultures, and fail to understand what is in the minds of the very people we are trying to reach. Finally, he concludes that education, not guns, are the heart of power. Consistent with the findings of the Defense Science Board in their reports on “Strategic Communication” (July 2004) and “Transition to and From Hostilities” (December 2004), Peters recognizes that open source information in all languages must be gathered, read, understood, analyzed, and acted upon, before we can possible communicate any message to anyone. He would agree with those who say “forget about the message, deliver the tools for truth–the Internet, education, translation software, information sharing devices–and get out of the way: the people will educate themselves, and in educating themselves, will be inoculated against terrorism.”

In passing, Peters points out that the US Navy and US Air Force have largely fallen into irrelevance because of their obsession with big expensive systems that are useless most of the time, and he notes that a larger Army, and a sustained Marine Corps, remain the true core of American national power.

This book is a “tour d'force” to use a term of phrase in a language Peters churlishly suggests is used only by waiters and dictators. I myself find much that is good in France and Germany and the UK, but overall, I agree with Peters when he says that Europe is a failing civilization, following Islam into chaos, and that Africa, Latin America, and South Asia (Indian Ocean) are the future. Interestingly, Peters sees no conflict with China brewing–they are too dependent on US consumption.

2005/06/282009/12/04

Review: Squandered Victory–The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (Hardcover)

4 Star, Diplomacy, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback, Executive (Partisan Failure, Reform), Iraq, Leadership, Military & Pentagon Power

Somewhat tedious, speaks truth, reveals our shortfalls,

June 28, 2005

Larry Diamond

The bottom line is this book is on page 290: “We never listened to the Iraqi people, or to the figures in the country that they respected.”

While some reviewers are critical of this author for representing all that is wrong with our post-war approach (he doesn't speak Arabic and knows nothing of the Middle East) I do not hold that against him–he tried to help, and he was the best we had. It is the fault of a long series of US Administrations, and multiple generations of Congress, that have chosen to ignore the real world and to short-change American education to the point that we are literally clueless as a Nation about the real world and how billions of people in the real world hold mixed feelings about America: admiring much of what we represent, while despising our immoral corporate and unilateral government behavior.

The U.S. Army, both before the war and in the post-reconstruction period–and the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army–come out of this book looking very professional. The Army got it right, both in its pre-war estimates of what would be needed, and in its post-war recommendations. The author places the blame for the post-war deaths and disasters squarely at the feet of a naive President that empowered a Secretary of Defense inclined to go light, and side-lined a Department of State whose own intelligence estimates on Iraq have been consistently superior to those of either the Central Intelligence Agency or the Department of Defense.

I put this book down with a heavy heart, coincident with Secretary Rumsfeld announcing that we will be in Iraq and be taking losses for another twelve years. The good news is that Iraq will over time achieve its own balance, its own form of democracy. The bad news is that, as Winston Churchill has said so famously, “The Americans always do the right thing–they just do it last (after making every other possible mistake).”

2004/12/122009/12/04

Review: Public Information Campaigns in Peacekeeping : The UN Experience in Haiti

4 Star, Civil Affairs, Diplomacy, Information Operations, United Nations & NGOs

Best available overview, narrow focus,

December 12, 2004

Ingrid Lehmann

This is a fine monograph, the best available overview in this area that I could find, and well worth the price. It is also included, in a different form, in the author's book, “Peacekeeping and Public Information,” itself a seminal work, and therefore if you buy the latter, you need not buy this one. If you are focused largely on Haiti, this is priceless.

The author's primary focus is on what some would call “public diplomacy” or “public affairs” information, that is, the message that goes out from the United Nations force (civil, military, police) to all concerned–the world at large, the participating governments, the Member governments not participating, all other NGOs and organizational participants, the host government, and the indigenous belligerents and bystanders (many of them refugees).

The author's two core points are that information operations must be in the UN mandate or it will be unlikely to be addressed as a coherent unified program by the leaders on the ground; and that the information program *must* be unified–there cannot be separate SGSR, force commander, and police commander messages and programs.

Although the author makes passing reference to intelligence and the value of information collected overtly by elements of the total force, both this work and the book specifically avoid any discussion of intelligence in the form of decision support, as the Brahimi Report has stated so forcefully is needed by the UN at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels.

The author makes very good points with respect to the need for continuity of operations (too many personnel on short tours make it impossible to succeed), for substantial numbers of language-qualified interpreters and translators, and for an educational program to teach all concerned within the force, the message, and their role in getting the message out.

The author touches very lightly on the fact that no amount of message is going to save a completely screwed up mission with the wrong mandate, insufficient forces, insufficient aid, and lousy tactical leadership.

In my view, in the age of information, the concepts of peacekeeping intelligence and information peacekeeping, two different concepts, are going to comprise the heart of stabilization operations world-wide. Emerging technologies including application oriented intelligence networks, semantic web and synthetic information architecture, super-sized federated data systems, and fully funded commercial information support operations, will dramatically alter what we do, when we do it, and how we do it, as we all seek to avoid war and foster prosperity within the lesser developed regions of the world.

The author is, in my view, one of the intellectual pioneers whose voice must be heard, and it is my hope that we will see more from her on this topic in the very near future.

2004/12/122009/12/04

Review: Peacekeeping and Public Information: Caught in the Crossfire

4 Star, Civil Affairs, Diplomacy, Information Operations, United Nations & NGOs

Seminal work, focused on message out, not information in,

December 12, 2004

Ingrid Lehmann

Edit of 20 Dec 07 to add links.

This book is a first class piece of work, a seminal work with ideas not readily available elsewhere. Building on her earlier monograph about the UN experience in Haiti with respect to public information–a monograph that is included in this book as a chapter–the author has gone on to look at several other UN operations.

The author's conclusions are consistent with but expand upon her findings from the Haiti mission.

1) Information Operations must be in the mandate and must be a major focus of effort from day one. Although the author has a limited focus, on information as public affairs or public diplomacy, her points are all relevant to the larger appreciation of Information Operations as inclusive of decision-support and tactical-operational Peacekeeping Intelligence, as well as the larger concept of Information Peacekeeping.

2) Secretary General's Special Representative (SGSR), the military force commander, and the police force commander must agree on unified public information operations and an integrated staff with a single coherent message.

3) Standing staffs and normal tour lengths are essential to success. The somewhat common practice of Member states rotating people in and out in 30-90 day cycles is simply not professional and ultimately undermines the mission.

4) Considerable numbers of language-qualified translators and interpreters are required.

5) In illiterate societies (such as Haiti), radio and music rule. Strong radio programs can be extremely helpful, but only if hundreds of thousands of portable radios, and the batteries to power them, are given out. When confronting violence on the street, or seeking to break up gathering mobs, music has extraordinary power to diffuse anger.

While the author is most diplomatic in addressing the facts, it is clear from this book that the Department of Public Information (DPI) at the UN has still not matured, and is still a major obstacle to the implementation of the Brahimi Report recommendations on creating strategic, operational, and tactical decision support or intelligence capabilities for all UN operations. In my personal view, the next head of the DPI needs to be given one simple order: “turn DPI into a global grid for information collection and information sharing, or find a new job.” DPI today is 77 one-way streets, and generally immature one-way streets with potholes. DPI has no understanding of peacekeeping intelligence, information peacekeeping, information metrics, or information as a substitute for money and guns. In the context of what the Brahimi Report seeks to accomplish–all of it good and urgently needed–DPI appears to be a huge cancer within the UN, one that must be operated on before the larger UN information environment can become effective.

The author adds to the literature in articulating six principles for outward communications of message in a peacekeeping operation; in brief, 1) public perceptions are a strategic factor; 2) international and local public opinion impact on the political influence that impacts on tactical effectiveness; 3) external information campaign must be a strategic focus from day one; 4) education campaigns, e.g. on the rule of law, are vital aspects of peacekeeping campaigns; 5) culturally-sensitive messaging is a must; and 6) transparency of policy and objectives is a pre-condition for message success.

The notes and references in this book are quite professional. One wonders if the Brazilians and the Americans are reading the DPKO Mid and Post Mission Assessment Reports from Haiti in 1996, or simply making the same mistakes anew.

Category: Diplomacy

Review: The Battle for Peace–A Frontline Vision of America’s Power and Purpose (Hardcover)