Defense and the National Interest

May.26.2009
by Chet

4GW comes to a town near you

More precisely, near me:

“Quiet Atlanta suburbs draw drug cartels”

The Mexican cartels responsible for transporting 99 percent of illicit drugs into the United States are “studiously low-key,” said Jack Killorin, director of the Atlanta High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force.

“They are trying not to interact in the communities in a way which draws attention,” Killorin said. … Cartel operatives find it easier to “hide in plain sight” among the county’s large Hispanic immigrant population, Killorin said.

Killorin said Mexican drug trafficking organizations are running an estimated $28.5 billion-a-year business, and yet the U.S. government only intercepts about $1 billion of it. …

Bill Lind suggests that the defining characteristic of 4GW is “a crisis in the legitimacy of the state.” This is sometimes simplified to “the decline of the state,” but it does not mean that states everywhere are going away. That is patently not the case.

What does appear to be happening, however, is that in some areas, large numbers of people are transferring their primary loyalties to organizations other than the state to which they happen to be citizens. There is nothing new about this: Organized crime is as old as the species itself, and many state boundaries, particularly in areas affected by European colonialism, are arbitrary and don’t reflect ethnic or tribal composition.

Within the last several decades, however, factors have arisen that have accelerated this trend in some areas. These factors include:

transportation systems, particularly airline travel
the Internet
the huge amounts of money produced by global drug trafficking
the fall of the Soviet Union and the bipolar world system along with it

The question you might ask is not whether these trends are real but whether the type of conflicts they create should be considered as “war.” Does 4GW represent an evolution of war or of crime?

Filed in 4GW - Theory, William S. Lind | 10 responses so far

May.19.2009
by Chet

On War #305: The Future is Now

by William S. Lind
19 May 2009

For years, I have warned in these columns and elsewhere that the future weapon of mass destruction we should most fear is not a nuke. Rather, it is a genetically engineered plague, a plague no one has ever seen before and against which no one has any immunity. In the time it would take to identify the new disease, develop a vaccine, distribute the vaccine and have it become effective, modern societies could suffer death rates equivalent to those of the Black Death: up to 2/3 of the population.

Filed in Global and Strategic Issues, William S. Lind | 7 responses so far

May.12.2009
by Chet

On War #304: The Balkans Again

by William S. Lind
12 May 2009

A story I read years ago culminated with the protagonist holed up in a cheap hotel in the Balkans, listening unwillingly through the paper-thin wall as the man in the room next door beat his wife. As he pummeled her, she cried again and again, “Balkan! Balkan!” “Balkan,” it seems, may be a term of opprobrium even in the Balkans.

Filed in The Balkans, William S. Lind | 12 responses so far

May.05.2009
by Chet

Adaptive Leadership Training in DoD

Developing an Adaptability Training Strategy and Policy for the DoD
Interim Report (1.5 MB PDF)

William R. Burns, Jr.
Waldo D. Freeman

Institute for Defense Analysis, October 2008

Excerpts:

Among Army pilot efforts, the Adaptive Leader Methodology (ALM) originated
by Major Don Vandergriff (ret.) while teaching ROTC at Georgetown University
illustrates the critical role played by instructors and mentors in developing adaptability. (31)

…

A number of training commands have shown an interest in using all or parts of
ALM. However, since the training has not been applied in a universally consistent
manner and there are no metrics associated with it, indications of its value are anecdotal. We find it encouraging that junior officers who have had the training and have subsequently deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan have credited the training with being their best preparation for their real world and very dangerous assignments, where being adaptable is essential to success. (51)

Comments are welcome; please observe our comment policy.

Filed in Leadership | One response so far

May.04.2009
by Chet

On War #303: Rehearsal

by William S. Lind
May 4, 2009

Thus far, the great swine flu “pandemic” exists mainly in newspaper headlines. “World Ends Tomorrow” always sells a few extra papers. I’m waiting for the Onion: “Pigs flu.”

If swine flu follows the route of its 1918-1919 predecessor, receding over the summer, then coming back in a more virulent version next winter, it could get serious. But so far, the “pandemic’s” most interesting aspect is as a rehearsal for one of 4GW’s most dangerous threats, the release of a genetically engineered plague.

Filed in 4GW - Articles, William S. Lind | 4 responses so far

May.02.2009
by Chet

Security of DNI

As I have mentioned, we’re being routinely hacked. So far, the only evidence I can find is a large number of spurious links hidden in the footer (the dark brown area at the bottom of the page). However, once hackers gain access, articles posted on the Inernet suggest that there is little limit to what they can do.

Many thanks to those of you who have sent suggestions. It seems that some of our problems could stem from our residing on a “shared server,” in this case, Network Solutions, and I have reported the situation to them.

Most of the rest of the suggestions are far beyond my technical capabilities:

All files should be owned by your user account, and should be writable by you. Any file that needs write access from WordPress should be group-owned by the user account used by the webserver.

/ — the root Wordpress directory: all files should be writable only by your user account.
EXCEPT .htaccess if you want WordPress to automatically generate rewrite rules for you
/wp-admin/ — the WordPress administration area: all files should be writable only by your user account.

etc.

And I actually know what some of these words mean. A few, anyway.

POINT: Until I can find someone who can assist in securing DNI, you must assume that the site may contain malicious code. This is true of DNI and from what I can tell of many other blogs because the systems that make it simple to operate the blog also offer a network of ways into it.

VISIT THIS (AND ANY) BLOG AT YOUR OWN RISK. We cannot assume liability.

IF you would like to take the position of CIO here at DNI and have the requisite technical skills — operating WordPress in a shared environment, e.g. — I’d be delighted to hear from you (info at d-n-i dotnet). We handle all the content, but we need some assistance with an occasional technical issue, and, of course, securing the blog. All we can offer in return is a little publicity, if you’d like, and the satisfaction of keeping DNI online.

In the meantime, please keep your own browser, operating system, and other software updated and follow the security procedures appropriate to your computer.

Filed in Uncategorized | One response so far

May.01.2009
by Chet

The Epistemology of Strategy

by Richard Maltz
1 May 2009

[A slightly revised version of the original presented at the Army War College 2009 Strategy Conference]

I. Introduction. I have been asked to speak to you today about the most exciting subject in the world … Epistemology. For those of you who are not familiar with the term, Epistemology is the “theory of knowledge”. It is that branch of philosophy that explores and illuminates the origins, nature, methods, and limits of human thought, perception, knowledge, understanding, and learning. Epistemology will be one of very few “academic” words that I will inflict on you in this discussion; but I see no way around addressing it by name. … Read more of The Epistemology of Strategy (80 KB PDF).

Comments are welcome; please observe our comment policy.

Filed in Strategy and Force Employment | No responses yet

May.01.2009
by Chet

DNI Site Warning

We are being routinely hacked and spurious links are being added to the footer. We are deleting them as quickly as we can find them, but for now, please do not click any links in the footer.

If anybody has any ideas for securing the site, I’d be most appreciative. It’s a WordPress 2.7.1 blog running in a Network Solutions site.

Filed in Uncategorized | No responses yet

Apr.28.2009
by Chet

On War #302: Blinders

by William S. Lind
28 April 2009

At the height of the Cold War, a U.S. army corps commander in Europe asked for information on his Soviet opposite, the commander of the corps facing him across the inter-German border. All the U.S. intelligence agencies, working with classified material, came up with very little. He then took his question to Chris Donnelly, who had a small Soviet military research institute at Sandhurst. That institute worked solely from open source, i.e. unclassified material. It sent the American general a stack of reports six inches high, with articles by his Soviet counterpart, articles about him, descriptions of exercises he had played in, etc.

Filed in 4GW - Articles, Intelligence, Leadership, William S. Lind | 16 responses so far

Apr.27.2009
by Chet

Latest U-Boat Threat

Another set of interesting posts to ponder together this week.

Sunday’s NYT Magazine ran a fascinating feature on semi-submersibles used by Colombian cartels to bring cocaine close to the US, where it is offloaded to speedboats for the final leg. The sub itself is then scuttled (it’s made out of wood and fiberglass for the most part). Despite this, the economics tell the tale:

But because of their ability to elude radar systems, these subs are almost impossible to detect; only an estimated 14 percent of them are stopped. And perhaps as many as 70 of them will be made this year, up from 45 or so in 2007, according to a task-force spokesman. Made for as little as $500,000 each and assembled in fewer than 90 days, they are now thought to carry nearly 30 percent of Colombia’s total cocaine exports.

Nobody knows, of course, how much cocaine moves into the country — estimates for 2006 total about 1,000 metric tons — and a successful sub run brings in upwards of $200 million worth of the stuff. What’s more interesting, narco-sub technology seems to be evolving at a rapid pace, with larger ships, sound and IR suppression, and possibly true subsurface capabilities. Sounds like a thriving business to me, and our failure to end it has led to a movement to legalize drugs in this country.

On the other hand, an opinion piece in today’s WSJ claims that “progress in Colombia provides clear evidence that the war on drugs is winnable”:

Between 2001 and 2007, the U.S. government’s estimate of the maximum potential production of cocaine in Colombia dropped 24%. There is no certain method of translating that into drug profits, but even conservative estimates show that a 24% reduction equaled hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue. There is now evidence that the combined effect of reduced production and increased seizures dropped the available Colombian cocaine supply to the U.S. from 2001 to 2007.

The problem with this is that both can be correct: Maximum drug production undoubtedly did fall, but production appears to still be well within levels that the cartels find lucrative.

Comments are welcome; please observe our comment policy.

Filed in 4GW - Articles | 4 responses so far

Defense and the National Interest

4GW comes to a town near you

On War #305: The Future is Now

On War #304: The Balkans Again

Adaptive Leadership Training in DoD

On War #303: Rehearsal

Security of DNI

The Epistemology of Strategy

DNI Site Warning

On War #302: Blinders

Latest U-Boat Threat

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