Review: Non-state Threats and Future Wars

4 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Future, War & Face of Battle

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

4.0 out of 5 stars Rehash of Old “New” Ideas–Preface is the “Must Read”,

August 31, 2003
Robert Bunker
Edit of 21 Dec 07 to add links.

The authors, with the exception of those writing about intelligence, are world-class, and if you have not read many books about 4th Generation Warfare, non-traditional threats, and non-state actors as forces in their own right, then this is a superb single book to obtain and read.

If, on the other hand, you have read most of the books and articles written by these talented individuals, you will find the book irritatingly “old”–most of these ideas were published ten years ago, and the book is a superb undergraduate publication well-suited for those who have not done the prior reading.

The book is a reflection of its institutional provenance, and brings together a mix of defense writers and the current crop of transnational crime academics and practitioners. It does not adequately discuss the non-violent traditional threats (water and resource scarcity, mass migration and genocide, pollution and corruption, inter alia), and it does not really discuss the future in creative ways.

There is no index and the bibliography is marginal.

There is one bright spot, and it alone makes the book worthy of purchase: Phil Williams, a top academic with superb law enforcement and national security connections at the working level, provides a preface that is concise and useful. He begins by pointing out that Clinton as well as Bush to date have ignored non-state threats, specifically including terrorism, and failed to understand the gravity and imminence of the asymmetrical threat. He lists five realities and three solutions:

Reality #1: International security is more complex. It is not sufficient to focus only on states.

Reality #2: Distinction between foreign and domestic security is gone–one cannot have homeland security in isolation from global security, and vice versa.

Reality #3: States are not what they were–the balance of power now requires that states, corporations, and organizations find new means of coordinating policies, capabilities, and actions.

Reality #4: Non-state enemies are everything that states–and especially the USA–are not. They are networked, transitional, flexible, learn from their mistakes, can embed themselves invisibly into existing financial and other communities, and possess a capacity for regeneration that national policy-makers simply do not appreciate.

Reality #5: Globalization has down and dark sides. It is imposing costs that lead to “blowback” and it is diffusing technologies and capabilities to non-state actors to the point that the complexity of Western infrastructures is now the greatest vulnerabilities of all of these state-based societies.

He concludes with three solutions: get intelligence right (a draconian challenge); change mind-sets (an equally draconian challenge); and revitalize and revamp the entire institutional archipelago through which national security policy, acquisitions, and operations are planned and executed (also a draconian challenge).

This is an excellent and reasonably priced undergraduate paperback, and a fine primer for those who are not already steeped in the literature. It does not significantly advance the literature in and of itself.

See also, with reviews:
A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change
Seeing the Invisible: National Security Intelligence in an Uncertain Age
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Eagle's Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World
Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror

Vote on Review
Vote on Review

Review: High Noo–20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them

6 Star Top 10%, Best Practices in Management, Capitalism (Good & Bad), Complexity & Catastrophe, Complexity & Resilience, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Priorities, Public Administration, Survival & Sustainment, United Nations & NGOs, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Straight-Forward, Understandable, URGENT, “Strong Buy”,

August 29, 2003
Jean-francois Rischard
Edit of 21 Dec 07 to aadd comment and links.

Comment: This is still the best strategic overview and a book I would recommend all. See the others below.

Having read perhaps 20 of the best books on global issues and environmental sustainability, water scarcity, ocean problems, etc, over the past few years (most reviewed here on Amazon) I was prepared for a superficial summary, political posturing, and unrealistic claims. Not this book–this book is one of the finest, most intelligent, most easily understood programs for action I have ever seen. The book as a whole, and the 20 problem statements specifically, are concise, illustrated, and sensible.

The author breaks the 20 issues into 3 groups. Group one (sharing our planet) includes global warming; biodiversity and ecosystem losses, fisheries depletion, deforestation, water deficits, and maritime safety and pollution. Group two (sharing our humanity) includes massive step-up in the fight against poverty, peacekeeping-conflict prevention-combatting terrorism, education for all, global infectuous diseases, digital divide, and natural disaster prevention and mitigation. Group three (sharing our rule book) includes reinventing taxation for the 21st century, biotechnology rules, global financial architecture, illegal drugs, trade-investment-competition rules, intellectual property rights, e-commerce rules, and international labor and migration rules.

The author's core concept for dealing with these complex issues intelligently, while recognizing that “world government” is not an option, lies with his appreciation of the Internet and how global issues networks could be created that would be a vertical complement to the existing horizontal elements of each national government.

The footnotes and index are professional, but vastly more important, the author's vision is combined with practicality. This is a “doable-do” and this book is therefore my number one reading recommendation for any citizen buying just one book of the 360+ that I have recommended within Amazon. Superb.

See also, with reviews:
The Future of Life
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Green Chemistry and the Ten Commandments of Sustainability, 2nd ed
Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution

Vote on Review
Vote on Review

Review: The Search for Security–A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century

6 Star Top 10%, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Culture, Research, Force Structure (Military), Future, History, Military & Pentagon Power, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Security (Including Immigration), Stabilization & Reconstruction, Strategy, Survival & Sustainment, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution, Voices Lost (Indigenous, Gender, Poor, Marginalized), War & Face of Battle, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, Coherent, Holistic, and Above All, Sane,

July 4, 2003
Max G. Manwaring
This book is a gem, and it is worth every penny, but it is a pity that it has not been priced for mass market because every U.S. citizen would benefit from reading this superb collection of chapters focused on how to keep America both safe and prosperous in a volatile world of super-empowered angry men, ethnic criminal gangs, mass migrations, epidemic disease, and water scarcity.President David Boren of the University of Oklahoma, himself a former Senator and former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, provides a non-partisan foreword that clearly indicts both Democrats and Republicans for what he calls a “zig-zag” foreign policy that is guided by TV images and weekly polls, rather than any coherent and calculated evaluation of ends, ways, and means.

Divided into three parts, the book first addresses the Global Security Environment (2 chapters), then discusses elements of a grand or total strategy (5 chapters), and concludes with a prescription (2 chapters). Every chapter is good.

Chapter 1 by Richard Millet does an outstanding job of discussing the global security environment in terms that make it crystal clear that the highest probability threats are non-traditional threats, generally involving non-state actors in a failed state environment. These are not threats that can be addressed by a heavy metal military that is not trained, equipped, nor organized for humanitarian or constabulary operations. Among his most trenchant observations: America can not succeed when the local elites (e.g. Colombia) are not willing to pay the price for internal justice and stability; sometimes the costs of success can exceed the costs of failure (Afghanistan?); what America lacks today is any criteria by which to determine when to attempt coalition building and when to go it alone; the real threat is not any single government or non-state organization, but the millions of daily decisions (e.g. to buy cocaine or smuggle medicine) that incentivise crime and endless conflict.

Chapter 2 by Robert Dorff dissects existing U.S. national security “strategy” and shows clearly, in a non-partisan manner, that the U.S. does not have a coherent inter-agency capability for agreeing on ends, ways, or means. He calls what we have now–both from the past under Clinton and in the present under Bush, “adhocery” and he makes the compelling point that our failure to have a coherent forward-looking strategy is costing the U.S. taxpayer both money and results.

Chapters 3-7 are each little gems. In Chapter 3 Max Manwaring suggests that our existing assumptions about geopolitics and military power are obsolete, and we are in great danger if Americans cannot change their way of thinking about national security issues. He suggests five remedies, the most important of which is the establishment of a coherent inter-agency planning and operational control process for leveraging all sources of national power–political, diplomatic, economic, military, and informational–simultaneously and in balance. In Chapter 4 Edwin Corr and Max Manwaring offer a fine discourse on why legitimate governance around the world must be “the” end that we seek as a means of assuring American security and prosperity in the face of globalization. Chapter 5 by Leif Rosenberger addresses the economic threats inherent in globalization, including free flows of capital, concluding that fixed exchange rates divorce countries from reality, and that the US must sponsor a global early warning system dedicated to the financial arena. Chapter 5 by Dennis Rempe is good but too short. He clearly identifies information power as being the equal of diplomacy, economics, and military power, going so far as to suggest an “International Information Agency” that could eventually become a public good as well as an objective arbiter of “ground truth.” I like this idea, in part because it is consistent with the ideas I set forth in NEW CRAFT, to wit that we need to migrate from secret intelligence intended for Presidents (who then manipulate that intelligence and lie to their people) toward public intelligence that can be discussed and understood by the people–this makes for sounder decisions. Chapter 7, again by Edwin Corr and Max Manwaring, discusses deterrence in terms of culture, motive, and effect–they are especially good in pointing out that traditional deterrence is irrelevant with suicidal martyrs, and that the best deterrence consists of the education of domestic publics about the realities of the post-Cold War world.

The book concludes with 2 chapters, the first by Edwin Corr and Max Manwaring, who discuss how values (education, income, civic virtue) must be the foundation of the American security strategy. They then translate this into some specific “objectives” for overseas investments and influences by the U.S., and they conclude that the ultimate investment must be in better educating both domestic and international audiences. They recommend the legitimacy of all governments as a global objective; End-State Planning (ESP) as the way to get there; and a new focus on holistic and long-term programs rather than “adhocery” as the best way to manage scarce means. One can only speculate how differently Afghanistan and Iraq (and Haiti, now discarded for a decade) might have turned out if the US had rolled in with a Marshall Plan or Berlin Airlift equivalent the minute organized hostilities ceased. Robert Dorff closes the book by pointing out that state failure is not the root cause, but rather the symptom, and that the U.S. must intervene before a state fails, not after.

I recommend this book, together with Colin Gray's “Modern Strategy” as essential reading for any national security professional. The publishers should consider issuing a more affordable paperback (books cost a penny a page to produce, perhaps a penny a page to market, so anything over $5 on this book is pure profit). This is a book, like Harry Summers on strategy, that should be available for $15 in paperback–if it were, I would buy 200 for my next conference.

Vote on Review
Vote on Review

Review: Robert Young Pelton’s The World’s Most Dangerous Places: 5th Edition

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atlases & State of the World, Country/Regional, Future, Games, Models, & Simulations, Geography & Mapping, History

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars 5th Edition Even Better–Valuable to Business and Government,

June 19, 2003
Robert Young Pelton
I've heard Robert Young Pelton speak, and he is, if anything, even more thoughtful and provocative in person. He has written an extraordinary book that ordinary people will take to be a sensationalist travel guide, while real experts scrutinize every page for the hard truths about the real world that neither the CIA nor the media report. The 5th Edition is even better than the earlier version that I distributed to all the professional intelligence officers attending the annual Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) conference, so I am going to distribute the new improved version.Unlike clandestine case officers and normal foreign service officers, all of them confined to capital cities and/or relying on third party reporting, Robert Young Pelton actually goes to the scene of the fighting, the scene of the butchery, the scene of the grand thefts, and unlike all these so-called authoritative sources, he actually has had eyeballs on the targets and boots in the mud.

I have learned two important lessons from this book, and from its author Robert Young Pelton:

First, trust no source that has not actually been there. He is not the first to point out that most journalists are “hotel warriors”, but his veracity, courage, and insights provide compelling evidence of what journalism could be if it were done properly. Government sources are even worse–it was not until I heard him speak candidly about certain situations that I realized that most of our Embassy reporting–both secret and open–is largely worthless because it is third hand, not direct.

Second, I have learned from this book and the author that sometimes the most important reason for visiting a war zone is to learn about what is NOT happening. His accounts of Chechnya, and his personal first-hand testimony that the Russians were terrorizing their Muslims in the *absence* of any uprising or provocation, are very disturbing. His books offers other accounts of internal terrorism that are being officially ignored by the U.S. Government, and I am most impressed by the value of his work as an alternative source of “national intelligence” and “ground truth”.

There are a number of very important works now available to the public on the major threats to any country's national security, and most of them are as unconventional as this one–Laurie Garrett on public health, Marq de Villiers on Water, Joe Thorton on chlorine-based industry and the environment–and some, like Robert D. Kaplan's books on his personal travels, are moving and inspiring reflections on reality as few in the Western world could understand it–but Robert Young Pelton is in my own mind the most structured, the most competent, the most truthful, and hence the most valuable reporter of fact on the world's most dangerous places.

What most readers may not realize until they read this book is that one does not have to travel to these places to be threatened by them–what is happening there today, and what the U.S. government does or does not do about developments in these places, today, will haunt this generation and many generations to follow. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who cares to contemplate the real world right now.

Vote on Review
Vote on Review

Review: Our Final Hour–A Scientist’s Warning: How Terror, Error, and Environmental Disaster Threaten Humankind’s Future In This Century–On Earth and Beyond

3 Star, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Future

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but High Noon by Rischard is Better,

May 29, 2003
Martin Rees
This is a good book. If E.O. Wilson had not published “The Future of Life” or J. F. Rischard “High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve them”, or Brian Czech, “Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train,” then this would be a great book. The book could not have a more distinguished author or more erudite arguments–it suffers from a boring presentation, including an unreadable choice of colors by the publishers for the back cover.If this is an area of professional interest, the book is absolutely essential. If this is an area of personal interst, and you can afford five books, this book definitely deserves to be in that number. If you can only afford one or two books, buy “High Noon”, followed by “Future of Life”.

Vote on Review
Vote on Review

Review: Free Flight–Inventing the Future of Travel

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Biography & Memoirs, Future

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Opens the Sky to Non-Pilots, Great Overview,

May 24, 2003
James Fallows
I bought this book for a very practical reason. In the aftermath of 9-11 I was thinking about moving to Smith Mountain Lake, four hours drive to the South of Washington, D.C., and I wanted a sense of whether “general aviation” might provide me with a once a week “commuter solution” for getting back up to the National Capitol Area.The book is fully satisfactory. While some might complain that it tells a personal story, I found this perfectly useful as a means of understanding both the pros and cons of airline travel through “hubs” that impose time loss on the passengers for the convenience of the commercial airline companies, versus “general aviation” which allows point to point travel.

Most interesting to me was learning that with the hubs and the problems inherent in airline travel today, the average speed for any trip by air can be just about the same as the average speed if going by car–60 miles per hour.

I ended this book with three understandings that more than warranted its purchase:

1) I, a non-pilot, could easily learn to fly and it would not only be worth my while, but great fun as well.

2) General aviation, while not as robust as it could be, is alive and well in America, and new solutions (including an airplane that comes with its own parachute, lowering the entire plane, with passengers, in the event of an engine failure) are there.

3) NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Agency) does a lot more than space flight–I was quite astonished to find that they are heavily engaged in thinking about general aviation solutions, and generally optemistic that in an era when time is the most precious commodity, and general aviation may be a solution for many businessmen as well as traveling families that shy away from the nightmare of getting kids through airports.

Bottom line: a great read, a great buy, and a vision into the future that is practical and fun.

Vote on Review
Vote on Review

Review: Tomorrow Now–Envisioning the Next Fifty Years

5 Star, Future

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

5.0 out of 5 stars Some Real Gems,

January 19, 2003
Bruce Sterling
I know and admire the author, whose other non-fiction book, “Hacker Crackdown” was an extraordinary contribution to social understanding, of both the abuse of uninformed government power, and the potential enlightenment that could be achieved by hackers (who are like astronauts, pushing the envelope in cyberspace).This book is uneven. There are some truly brilliant gems, but there is also a lot of rambling, and I fear that the author's brilliance as a science fiction writer may have intimidated the publisher and editor into settling for what they got, instead of what the author is truly capable of producing when diligently managed. However, after thoroughly reviewing the book to write the review, I ended up going for 5 instead of 4 stars because this kind of writing is uncommon and provocative and my lack of patience may be the external limiting factor.

There are a number of gifted turns of phrase and ideas, and so I do recommend this book for purchase, for reading, and for recurring review. The author focuses on generic engineering, imagining an order of magnitude of achievement beyond what is now conceptualized; he properly redefines education in the future as being disconnected from the schools that today are socializing institutions, beating creativity out of children and doing nothing for adults that need to learn, unlearn, and relearn across their lifetimes; he is brilliant in conceptualizing both crime as necessary and exported instability as tacitly deliberate–Africa as the whorehouse and Skid Row of the world; he recognizes oil as the primary source of instability and inequality, sees all politicians as devoid of grand vision (and we would surmise, character as well); he is hugely successful in talking about the mythical “American people” that do not exist, about moral panics after Enron or 9-11 that achieve no true reform; and his focus on the information age basics that make it cheaper to migrate business than people, that make it essential for the Germans to see through Microsoft's insecure code and thus to opt for LINUX or open source code for their military as well as their government systems in general.

He ends brilliantly in conceptualizing a new world order within a new world disorder, in which very rich individuals combine with very poor recruits from a nationless diaspora, a new network that looks like Al Qaeda but has opposite objectives.

In the larger scheme of things, as the author concludes, Earth is debris and the humans are on their way to being the Sixth Extinction. Party while you can.

Vote on Review
Vote on Review