by Richard Gowan | Apr 7, 2008 | Influence and networks
There isn’t a think-tank, policy institute or academic department anywhere in the world that doesn’t have a cupboard or entire room given over to hoarding vast quantities of unread pamphlets from years gone by. When I was at the Foreign Policy Centre in London, we actually had a whole cellar (although the FPC has moved office since then, which probably meant a good spring clean). Surveying the serried ranks of good ideas going stale, your average policy wonk is liable to wonder whether anyone actually reads their stuff – and then go and gloomily Google themselves for any scrap of evidence that someone might have done so…
It was only a matter of time before someone came up with a theory of why nobody reads stuff. An insightful summary of the problem comes from the unexpected quarter of Police Practice and Research (erm, rather ironically given the subject-matter of this post, I can’t get a working link to the PPR website). I guess you’ve already powered through your copy, but just in case you’ve been too damn busy policing to get to round to it, you should check out “Their Reports are not Read and the Recommendations are Resisted” by Gordon Peake and Otwin Marenin. Their tripartite theory of why writing on police reform goes unread could be applied to almost any field:
There is a copious amount of non-directed research produced by this community. There have been country and regional specific articles, monographs and books. Why is their effect so slim?
First, it is simply difficult to get people to read them. Reading an article, book or report takes time and patience. This combination of luxury and attribute is something that only a few have. Moreover, as these pieces of writing are targeted to general audiences, they tend to lack the specificity that may resonate with implementers. Policing is often asserted as being one of the most ‘context-specific’ of activities – it is scarcely surprising that authors writing in geographic and temporal isolation from these contexts don’t get specificities correct.
Second, these products may be written with purposes other than police reform more uppermost in the mind of their authors. Members of this community write with multiple intents – the desire to burnish a career in the ‘community,’ get invited to conferences in exotic locales and generally live the interesting life of the travelling purveyor of policing knowledge. Some of these goals may even run contrary to police reform. For those desiring recognition within an academic community, an esoteric argument has more motility than a simple one.
The third reason is prosaic but no less important for that: the outputs of this community are not easy to find. Determined sleuthing is required to seek them out. Articles are parked in academic journals or working papers that are hard to find. Members of the community seem content to let research pollinate freely, hoping that someone will happen up it up, read it, internalise and use it. At the very least this is a leap of faith.
I’d like to quote more, but that would be a breach of copyright. Just in case you felt like reading about not reading… but that would defeat the point of the article.
by Charlie Edwards | Apr 7, 2008 | Middle East and North Africa
Robert Mueller the head of the FBI, believes the West can achieve victory over al-Qaeda within three-and-a-half years.
In a speech to Chatham House Mueller describes the West confronting a three-layered threat from al-Qaeda:
The top tier is the core of the organisation which has established new sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
The middle tier is the most complex, consisting of small, self-directed groups like the London bombers of 7/7 who had some ties to al-Qaeda’s leadership.
The bottom tier is made up of homegrown extremists who met on the internet instead of in foreign training camps.
His speech is available here.
The speech hid no obvious surprises (aside from the headline that AQ will be defeated in three and a half years)
- Quote from Churchill – check-
- Number of terrorist plots -check-
- Quote on the need for close partnerships – check-
- Quote on AQ being a resilient network – check-
- Quote on freedom – check-
- Story + quotes from Eliza Manningham-Buller (past DG MI5) and Jonathan Evans (present DG MI5) What?
Mueller:
I met Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller just after the September 11th attacks. I was new to my job, and I asked her what she considered the key to MI5’s success in thwarting terrorist attacks. She said, “Two things: sources and wires.”
I don’t think I have ever heard EM-B publicly say that the key to success against AQ is sources and wires – I was under the impression the Security Service didn’t talk about operational matters.
It also became a bit disconcerting to hear him quote both EM-B and Evans so extensively. It was an interesting speech but you can’t help wondering why British officials don’t want to discuss success against AQ (we just hear how many networks and terrorists are active) and, come to think of it, why we only learn about British intelligence, terrorist plots and the UK’s response to terrorism from the US administration … as Churchill once said… [enough Ed.]
by David Steven | Apr 7, 2008 | Conflict and security, North America
Do, if you get time, read Phillippe Sands on the American ‘torture trail‘ in May’s Vanity Fair. Sands is a law professor at University College London and author of Lawless World, in which he questions US and British commitment to the basic tenets of international law.
Sands, like a growing number of other commentators, believes that torture was sanctioned from the top of the Bush administration and that senior members of that administration may eventually be prosecuted for war crimes, especially if they travel internationally once they leave office. (This, by the way, is the premise of Robert Harris’s latest thriller – though it is Tony Blair not George Bush who is in trouble.)
According to Sands, “lawyers for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the C.I.A” were directly involved in sanctioning new interrogation techniques – techniques that had emerged from a series of brainstorming sessions at Guantanomo, facilitated by Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver, a military lawyer.
These sessions looked far and wide for inspiration:
Ideas came from all over. Some derived from personal training experiences, including a military program known as SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape), designed to help soldiers persevere in the event of capture. Had SERE been, in effect, reverse-engineered to provide some of the 18 techniques? Both Dunlavey and Beaver told me that SERE provided inspiration, contradicting the administration’s denials that it had. Indeed, several Guantánamo personnel, including a psychologist and a psychiatrist, traveled to Fort Bragg, SERE’s home, for a briefing.
Ideas arose from other sources. The first year of Fox TV’s dramatic series 24 came to a conclusion in spring 2002, and the second year of the series began that fall. An inescapable message of the program is that torture works. “We saw it on cable,” Beaver recalled. “People had already seen the first series. It was hugely popular.” Jack Bauer had many friends at Guantánamo, Beaver added. “He gave people lots of ideas.”
Here’s Beaver on her role – which she saw as a moderating one:
The brainstorming meetings inspired animated discussion. “Who has the glassy eyes?,” Beaver asked herself as she surveyed the men around the room, 30 or more of them. She was invariably the only woman present—as she saw it, keeping control of the boys. The younger men would get particularly agitated, excited even.
“You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas,” Beaver recalled, a wan smile flickering on her face. “And I said to myself, You know what? I don’t have a dick to get hard—I can stay detached.”
by Charlie Edwards | Apr 7, 2008 | Off topic
Soaring corn prices hit ethanol profits (The Times)
Darling accused of failing to spot credit danger (The Times)
IMF head calls for global action on turmoil (The Financial Times)
‘We are aiming for climate disaster’ (The Guardian)
Web could collapse as video use soars (The Telegraph)
Soaring price of food ‘may lead to riots’ (The Telegraph)
Economic Woes Render Growth Debate Moot (Washington Post)
In Egypt, Technology Helps Spread Discontent of Workers (The New York Times)
