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Insurgent Consciousness
We like to speak foreign languages, hunt terrorists, and do Crossfit.
Interests: to dare and to conquer by derek leebaert, tribes by seth godin, brave new war by john robb, imperial grunts by robert kaplan
Recent Activity
That would be incredible. Now that I know I'll be in DC, I'll be there.
Expanding on Information Access Superiority
In Sid Heal's classic work on tactics, Sound Doctrine: A Tactical Primer, "good intelligence" is properly noted to be the "linchpin for all tactical operations." Heal agrees that Information Access Superiority is crucial, not only on the strategic level, but also the tactical, as it al...
Thanks for bringing this up. Seems like a bit of a feedback loop- seeing as stable jobs come from development and development is made possible through security (there's a reason companies aren't lining up to build factories in, say, Somalia), then security leads to development and then more security, and the converse is also true- instability results in de-development and more instability.
Police and Stability
There has been a lot of interesting commentary on the role of competent, well trained, and honest police lately. Andrew Exum noted in his trip report from Egypt that re-establishing the police force will be crucial for Egypt's future: We Americans paid -- and are paying -- a heavy price in ...
Nice Catch, fixed
Is Mexico Our Pakistan?
Mexico's National Security Council confirmed today that US drones have been flying legally into Mexico to gather intelligence on the drug cartels. The drones are currently flying along the border where drugs (and people) are regularly smuggled and gangs battle for territory. Such counter-ins...
amo003, it sounds like what you "applaud" is whistle-blowing but disapprove of revealing secrets for no reason, or secrets that harm a person or organization without helping anyone. Whistle-blowing has been around for a while, with journalists doing it responsibly. That's how most scandals have been exposed.
Most of the content on Wikileaks is NOT whistle-blowing or investigative journalism. It's a secret-dump. Lots of information on the military, for example, says little about the ethics of out practices and instead just gives a good idea of how best to kill our soldiers. The only reason to support WikiLeaks is a desire for a truly transparent world where no secrets are safe, not those of the government, military, foreign service, private sector, and yes, the Greek system.
Wikileaks: Media Insurgency or Information Vandalism?
Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News has a good post on Wikileaks and how it failed a "due diligence" review. According to The New Yorker, Wikileaks founder “[Julian] Assange is an international trafficker of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and imagery that governments and other...
I think this mixed approach is important. Historically, it seems that soft power works best with some pressure to sweeten the deal, and some sort of concession, even to extremists, facilitates surrenders and truces by allowing the loser to save face. Pirates aren't a unified group to bargain with, but even negotiations over single boats tend to work best with this "good cop, bad cop" style, which was exactly what the Navy was doing before negotiations fell apart.
As for restoring fisheries, that may help but, as Jay-Z said about selling crack, "9 to 5 is how you survive, but I ain't tryin' to survive/ I'm tryin' to live it to the limit and love it a lot." These pirates are doing much better than fishermen. More money, more fame, more women. But offering an alternative may work if international forces manage to raise the price of piracy by making it harder to get away with.
Pirate Complexity
EDIT: More news is coming in, giving varying and confusing accounts of what happened. Apparently, there was an exchange of fire among the pirates, a possible attack on the Navy warships, and uncertainty over whether the hostages were killed intentionally or not when the Navy boarded the yacht....
Not a theory, at least not yet, just a hypothesis based on increased terrorist activity in the region coinciding with what looks to be a global recruiting drive, and a suspicion that Central Asia and the Caucasus will remain important for international security. That's why the title of the post ends in a question mark- I think it's a question worth considering for far-sighted security and intelligence policy.
Global Jihad Shifting Back to Chechnya?
http://www.waronterrornews.com/caucasus.html While in the Netherlands a few weeks ago, I was surprised to find the following story on local news: 11 Belgians, Dutch, Germans, Moroccans, and Germans were detained in a counter-terrrorism sweep through Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. A...
You could have said much the same thing about the likelihood of a Joint Special Operations Command ever being created from the perspective, of say, 1976. Funding for all special operations was way down, jointness had not yet come into fashion, and in general the need for an institutionalized, all-military, special operations command was not yet perceived.
LINKS 100819
Bernard Knox: led a very cool life that is probably not feasible anymore for people from my generation. "Soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army, where he trained as an aircraft armorer and, after attending officer training school, returned to Britain in 194...
It is to be mentioned that Yemen is not a new area of interest to U.S. policy. American military trainers have been active there since the beginning of the decade. Why then does it seem that "it will take time to develop and grow that capability (information access.)?
Familiar Concepts
Obama administration officials defend their efforts in Yemen. The strikes have been “conducted very methodically,” and claims of innocent civilians being killed are “very much exaggerated,” said a senior counterterrorism official. He added that comparing the nascent Yemen campaign with American d...
The key point here is the disconnect between the resources invested in Afghanistan and those in the many other places where Al Qaeda is located (often in similar numbers.) Why?
Haass on A-stan
http://jkneilson.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/obama-afghanistan-war1.jpg Richard Haass, We're not winning. It's not worth it: Here's how to draw down in Afghanistan. "So what should the president decide? The best way to answer this question is to return to what the United States se...
Some have suggested that the solution is a large project of expanding nation-state control into the many lawless regions of the world. I am doubtful. We can barely (if that) afford large scale COIN in one country, so an international COIN effort is unrealistic.
A more practical strategy is improving our operational capacity in lawless areas against hostile non-state actors. The problem is not one of geographical access, given JSOC and the drone programs, but (predictably), one of information access.
Borderless Enemy -> Borderless War
Adam Elkus, of Rethinking Security, turned me on to this interview with Pete Mansoor, Gen. Petraeus's Executive officer in 2007-2008: When asked what three things Petraeus should do to turn the war around, Mansoor's second point is the most insightful (as well as the most pertinent to the theme...
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