Admiral James G. Stavridis PhD will soon take up his new post as commander of U.S. European Command and NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe. In an interview with the Florida Times-Union Admiral Stavridis talks about strategic communications, COIN and compares Colombia and Afghanistan.
What will you take from your experiences at Southcom that will shape how you do your new job?
I think I will try to approach my job at NATO with three things in mind: international partnerships, interagency cooperation within the U.S. government and strategic communications. I think those three approaches will be the pillar of how I will try to do my job both at NATO and at U.S. European Command.
What do you mean by strategic communications in this sense?
I mean deciding what our message is and thinking about how to communicate it in new and innovative ways. I’ll give you examples: Facebook. Twitter. Linked-in. I’m on all those social networking mechanism…. I think that it’s extremely beneficial to use these new methods of moving information. Secondly, I think strategic communication has to be interactive. In other words, instead of simply trying to blast your message out there, you need to understand how to use feedback both from your partners and from those with whom you are competing and from those who are your enemies. You have to understand all of those feedback loops and then adjust your strategic communications. And then, thirdly, I think that an essential part of strategic communication is understanding the language and the culture of your partners, both of which are very important to me. I speak Spanish and French; I’m learning Portuguese.
How does being an admiral rather than a general shape your approach to the NATO job and what challenges will it bring not being a ground-force commander?
As far as my connection with ground force operations, I’m comfortable that the level of time and effort I’ve put in in study and in the joint world will make me effective. Let’s face it: The operations I’ve been most focused on in South America has been the insurgency in Colombia. My experience there will translate well to my role as the NATO commander in Afghanistan, which is, let’s face it, an insurgency, drug-fueled, obviously 100 percent different in many ways. But, my experiences in understanding and learning counter-insurgency I think are up to the task.
Interesting. I haven’t heard that comparison made between Colombia and Afghanistan before.
Both are insurgencies seeking to topple the government, both are drug fueled. In Colombia it’s a political insurgency. In Afghanistan, it is a deeper, more cultural, religious-based insurgency. But insurgency is something I’ve studied and learned about and I’m comfortable I can be a contributor.
Hmmm…
There’s something else I think is exciting about Admiral Stavridis’ posting this side of the pond – his concept of Humanitarian Service Groups (Pdf). The traditional carrier battle group model is not well suited to hearts and minds missions of today’s hybrid wars (Pdf). While Admiral Stavridis thinking was in the context of Southcom’s role in Latin America – I think there is great potential for translating his idea across to Europe. In a nutshell:
The idea is that instead of having a group of ships centered on an aircraft carrier, whose primary mission is to launch strikes on shore, we ought to have groups of ships that have as primary functions training, providing humanitarian disaster relief, and U.S. smart power in Latin America supporting humanitarian projects. What I am thinking about specifically is centering a group around a hospital ship and then including in that group several smaller ships that bring training capability with them.
Given previous ESDP missions I wonder if the first European Smart Power Initiative (ESPI) might be the assembly of a new multinational battle group centred around a hospital ship such as Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) Argus, currently undergoing a refit, and ready for action soon…
June 21, 2009 at 2:05 pm | More on Conflict and security, Europe and Central Asia, Influence and networks, UK | Comments Off
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Last week Demos hosted David Kilcullen, the counter-insurgency guru and former adviser to General Petraeus in Iraq. In his speech (audio available soon) he spoke at length about the deployment of drones in Pakistan, their effect on the local population and whether there was value in continuing such an approach.
At the week-end Kilcullen and Andrew Exum, a Fellow with the Center for a New American Security, published an op-ed in the The New York Times going one step further. Their basic argument: ‘End the drone attacks’. Why? One of their arguments is pretty compelling (irrespective of the validity of the data):
While violent extremists may be unpopular, for a frightened population they seem less ominous than a faceless enemy that wages war from afar and often kills more civilians than militants. Press reports suggest that over the last three years drone strikes have killed about 14 terrorist leaders. But, according to Pakistani sources, they have also killed some 700 civilians. This is 50 civilians for every militant killed, a hit rate of 2 percent — hardly “precision.”
Kilcullen and Exum suggest:
Expanding or even just continuing the drone war is a mistake. In fact, it would be in our best interests, and those of the Pakistani people, to declare a moratorium on drone strikes into Pakistan.
A moratorium on drone strikes in Pakistan? Surely a step too far? The authors readily accept that:
The appeal of drone attacks for policy makers is clear. For one thing, their effects are measurable. Military commanders and intelligence officials point out that drone attacks have disrupted terrorist networks in Pakistan, killing key leaders and hampering operations. Drone attacks create a sense of insecurity among militants and constrain their interactions with suspected informers. And, because they kill remotely, drone strikes avoid American casualties.
But, they argue, on balance the costs outweigh these benefits for 3 reasons:
First, the drone war has created a siege mentality among Pakistani civilians. This is similar to what happened in Somalia in 2005 and 2006, when similar strikes were employed against the forces of the Union of Islamic Courts. While the strikes did kill individual militants who were the targets, public anger over the American show of force solidified the power of extremists.
Second, public outrage at the strikes is hardly limited to the region in which they take place — areas of northwestern Pakistan where ethnic Pashtuns predominate. Rather, the strikes are now exciting visceral opposition across a broad spectrum of Pakistani opinion in Punjab and Sindh, the nation’s two most populous provinces. Covered extensively by the news media, drone attacks are popularly believed to have caused even more civilian casualties than is actually the case.
Third, the use of drones displays every characteristic of a tactic — or, more accurately, a piece of technology — substituting for a strategy. These attacks are now being carried out without a concerted information campaign directed at the Pakistani public or a real effort to understand the tribal dynamics of the local population, efforts that might make such attacks more effective
According to the authors, experience in Iraq suggests that the capture or killing of high-value targets — Saddam Hussein or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — has only a slight and fleeting effect on levels of violence.
Having Osama bin Laden in one’s sights is one thing. Devoting precious resources to his capture or death, rather than focusing on protecting the Afghan and Pakistani populations, is another. The goal should be to isolate extremists from the communities in which they live.
May 18, 2009 at 8:07 am | More on Conflict and security | Comments Off
SOCA’s recent claim (see Alex’s post ) that the world cocaine market is in retreat is looking more and more like a failed attempt to distract us from the news that the troubled agency is going to be overhauled – big time. The orphan of Whitehall‘s task was spectacularly grand – made all the worse by the launch of the agency in a blaze of glory a few years back. The simple truth is that not only do we not have a clear idea of the scale and nature of the problem(s) but we continue to take a primarily enforcement-led approach. This ain’t clever in the 21st century. Not least because such an approach is unliekly to succeed.
Obama and Clinton’s new approach to the ‘narco- insurgency’ in Mexico is a timely admission that a ‘war on drugs’ which doesn’t take account of the social and economic implications of organised crime is destined to fail. Unfortunately there are no simple solutions or answers to the problem of organised crime and drugs in particular. The resounding success of Portugal’s approach to decriminalising drugs is a triumph for the Portugese Government and should be carefully considered. However it is unclear whether the Portugese approach would work in the UK – which is different in context and scale – however that shouldn’t mean we don’t experiment with new approaches and initiatives.
SOCA’s failure was exacerbated by its secrecy. Given the very public nature of the challenge we face from organised crime, the decision by the senior management of Soca to operate under a veil of secrecy since its inception in 2006 has been not only misguided but potentially damaging. The tentacles of organised crime reach into cities, towns and villages across the UK. Unfortunately, one of the victims of the organisation’s secrecy has been SOCA itself.
As The Times reports:
The Prime Minister’s strategy unit at No 10 has been carrying out a review of Soca, which has been criticised for failing to halt the spread of organised crime from the cities to the shires. Soca, which is due to publish its annual report tomorrow, is seeking a new chairman to take over from Sir Stephen Lander, the former head of MI5, who retires in July.
I doubt whether the conclusions and recommendations in the PMSU report were very different from a previous report by the same unit on the subject a few years ago however it may provide some impetus for a much needed change in approach.
May 13, 2009 at 3:48 pm | More on UK | 1 Comment
Once upon a time Dad could only buy junior the Playmobil Security Check Point (btw – read loosnut’s review) but now the creative Legofesto has gone one step further (perhaps too far?) and recreated a series of torture scenes (including waterboarding below) out of lego.
According to Wired
Flickr user Legofesto (who prefers to remain anonymous) was fed up with news outlets refusing to publish images depicting torture due to their graphic nature. So she recreated the images and first-hand accounts using Lego to protest what she saw as irresponsible censorship. The use of children’s toys is at once sanitizing and horrifying and many of the images have received thousands of views.
May 4, 2009 at 2:24 pm | More on UK | Comments Off
Obama has apologised, so too have officials. It’s still not clear why US agencies acceded to an FAA request to keep details about the photo op in which a Presidential Boeing 747 flew low around the statue of Liberty followed by two US Air Force Fighters, given the potential for concern and a public relations disaster. As The Times reports:
CBS TV reported last night that it had obtained a memo which made clear that the Federal Aviation Authority knew that the low altitude flyover could cause panic and demanded secrecy from the New York Police Department, the FBI, the Secret Service and the mayor’s office.
“The Public Affairs posture for this effort is passive. No media or press releases are planned,” said the memo, which was signed by James Johnston, an FAA security official.
It added: “Due to the possibility of public concern regarding DOD aircraft flying at low levels, coordination with Federal, State and Local law enforcement agencies, emergency operations centres and aviation units has been accomplished.”
Risk Communication. Difficult at the best of times, made worse by idiots. As Amanda Ripley suggests:
Perhaps the most alarming thing about the Air Force One fiasco was that it was planned and announced in advance to several agencies–with an order to keep it SECRET. This, to me, stinks to holy hell. I have talked a lot in the past about people in charge not trusting the public–and the devastation that follows. This is a classic bureaucratic move.
April 29, 2009 at 12:46 pm | More on UK | Comments Off
On Monday I spoke at the IPPR’s conference on The National Security Strategy: One Year On. The organisers and the Cabinet Office team would, I hope, have been pleased with the meat of the conference – the three panel sessions on domestic/ international security and a separate session on the key drivers of the global insecurity went pretty well.
But sandwiching the panel sessions were two Ministerial speeches and based on what was said and people’s reactions to the speeches it seems as though we are in middle of a crisis of leadership and strategy in UK defence. This isn’t solely an issue for the Government it is an important issue for the Conservative Party and for the Liberal Democrats too.
To be fair to the Defence Secretary John Hutton he had a more difficult challenge than Lord West who opened proceedings. For Mr Hutton the challenge was to tap into the mood of the conference – a hundred or so participants who had spent the day analysing the global security challenges, identifying key concerns, and raising important issues.
The trick with Mr Hutton’s speech was in some way to reflect this mood, embrace some of the more difficult issues but above all listen (after all Mike Clarke had just gone through all the problems of British defence policy). Lastly the crowd was predominantly white, Anglo-saxon, males – average age 40. In short it was a crowd who know all the problems (some are up to the necks in it) but need leadership and a sense of direction.This was not to be. The speech was littered with utterly pointless and disingenuous phrases like:
‘As a Defence Minister, you would rightly expect me to talk about the role of defence in national security and it is here that I want to confine my remarks today.’
‘And I am not prepared to be reckless with our nation’s security.’
‘Our defence policies have adapted comprehensively in recent years from the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, through the New Chapter of that Review four years later, the Defence White Paper of 2003 and its 2004 companion, leading to the NSS itself.’
‘The world remains a dangerous place after all.’
I could go on. The general feeling from the group I was sitting with was that really difficult decisions are about to made and this speech was meant to be a primer – thing is it didn’t work – finally his officials should have done a better job at briefing him before he made his remarks…
Elsewhere the Conservative Party are fighting over defence spending. George Osborne should have been more aggressive – particularly on wastefulness – rather than focusing on the A400M – which was odd. The big question though for the Tories is who will be Defence Secretary in a Conservative Government – it won’t be Liam Fox so who will it be – there isn’t much strength in depth – and that should worry Cameron and his team.
April 29, 2009 at 12:04 pm | More on UK | Comments Off
In Resilient Nation (pdf) I suggest that the main concern with how government’s approach risk communication is not always what they say but how they say it. Often the failure of emergency planners to motivate communities is the failure to accommodate the fact that it is not information that determines action but how people interpret it – which they do in the context of their experiences and beliefs, and expectations that develop in and are sustained by the community and societal contexts in which they live.
So communicating risk (such as swine flu) demands a nuanced, intelligent and multi-pronged approach. Mass communication based on a single approach (leafleting) won’t be effective – not least because it will fail to penetrate the noise already generated by the event; is slow when the potential risk is perceived to be spreading quickly; and ironically is unlikely to reach your whole audience (btw if you don’t receive your leaflet please contact us).
Instead the goverment should adopt a more targeted approach (which it can’t really do now the NHS have said they will send leaflets to 25,000,000 households) and look at where the most obvious places are to communicate their key messages.The information needs to stick as well. For example contrast these two approaches on the NHS website: The alert and the ‘behind the headlines’- what message did you take away? The NHS also suggests people should establish a network of “flu friends” . Useful but it would have been good if the NHS had thought about taking a networked approach to communicating the risk in the first place.
Finally – and as an antidote to some of the scaremongering in a lot of the press – read Caroline Gammell in The Telegraph and a piece by Simon Jenkins today in the Guardian though David is unimpressed).
And remember, preventing the spread of germs is the single most effective way to slow the spread of diseases such as swine flu. You should always:
* Ensure everyone washes their hands regularly with soap and water
* Clean surfaces regularly to get rid of germs
* Use tissues to cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze
* Place used tissues in a bin as soon as possible
April 29, 2009 at 11:09 am | More on Global system, Influence and networks, UK | 1 Comment
More trees than the Amazon rainforest are going to have to be chopped down in the next few months to keep up with the rash of reports set to be launched this summer on national security and related subjects. Below is an initial list:*
- IPPR’s final report on national security (interim paper here) (June 30th);
- UK Government’s National Security Strategy (Mark II) (Mark 1 here);
- Conservative Party green paper on national security (first effort here);
- UK Government organised crime strategy (which I think will be focusing on nexus between organised crime and terrorism). 2004 strategy here;
- Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) Mark 2** (first attempt here);
- DFID White Paper on International Development (here’s one submission I found);
- Community Resilience Strategy (Cabinet Office – linked to NSS II).
*If you know of any other documents please let the team at GD know.
** Will update when news becomes public.
April 27, 2009 at 5:17 pm | More on UK | 1 Comment
On Tuesday Demos launched a report I’ve authored called Resilient Nation. The report argues that we live in a brittle society with over 80 per cent of Britons live in urban areas relying on dense networks of public and private sector organisations to provide them with essential services. But our everyday lives and the national infrastructure work in a fragile union, vulnerable to even the smallest disturbances in the network. And both are part of a global ecosystem that is damaged and unpredictable.
So how does Britain protect against threats (like terrorism), hazards (such as natural disasters) and major accidents? Much of our infrastructure is outmoded and archaic. And with their narrow focus on emergency services and institutions, so are the policies that underpin it. The pamphlet calls for a radical rethink of resilience. Instead of structures or centralised services, it argues that citizens and communities are the true source of resilience for our society. Resilience, I suggest, is an everyday, community activity. It is people’s potential to learn, adapt and work together that powers it. Only by realising this potential will we succeed in building a resilient nation.
The report connects neatly with the Government’s own work on community resilience – which could be a central plank in the next iteration of the national security strategy and may be a public strategy in its own right. The general feeling I got from meetings with officials in central and local government and relevant agencies as well as from people in pubs, sitting rooms, warehouses and meeting rooms was that citizens and communities were the missing piece of the resilience jigsaw.
More often than not in the past no one really bothered to talk about what role citizens and communities could play and this was reflected in official guidance and advice where they were seen as ‘a problem to be dealt with rather than a source of help’.
In short – the shift towards a more citizen focused approach to resilience is happening…and in the summer the Government will unveil its own thinking on the subject (one hopes using the 4Es of community resilience ).
And then I remembered the Government’s response to the Pitt Review and I began to have serious doubts about whether such a strategy will succeed.
It’s not that there is anything wrong with the Government’s response – it is after all a response to an independent review on the floods of 2007. Fundamentally however it kicks the idea of a self-resilient society, and by that I mean a more citizen-focussed approach to resilience, into touch. Very early on the response welcomes Michael Pitt’s approach suggesting that:
Sir Michael has rightly put the needs of ordinary people at the heart of his Review .
I took this sentence to mean that when Sir Michael began his review, first and foremost he was thinking about the impact of flooding on ordinary people. If we were applying a community resilience approach – the next step would logically be to focus on the roles and responsibilities of citizens and communities and how government, relevant agencies and the emergency services were supporting them.
But what that sentence actually means is what more could Government and the emergency services have done, as in:
The Review contains 92 recommendations addressed to the Government, local authorities, Local Resilience Forums, providers of essential services, insurers and others, including the general public.
So while the public are the focus of Pitt’s attention their role is relegated to watching from the sidelines. This approach runs right through the Pitt Report and the Government’s response to it and yet as Resilient Nation points out time and again if you give people the space and tools to step up – they will do – as the Director General of Emergency Management Australia has said ‘the more that we as individuals can do to prepare ourselves, the more effectively the emergency services can direct their resources.
Instead the Government has taken on too much of the burden, saddling itself with more work, and more spending. This will only divert attention inwards – on strucutres, processes, and plans than outwards – helping shape, influence and support a resilient nation. The point I am driving at is that community resilience demands a new approach by Government based on the motto: Less is more
April 23, 2009 at 4:21 pm | More on Key Posts, UK | Comments Off
He’s done it again. Berlusconi’s gaffe’s just keep on coming. His latest comes as he went on a walkabout in the Abruzzo earthquake zone. Turning to one female doctor he told her: “I wouldn’t mind being resuscitated by you” . Dr Fabiola Carrieri, a specialist in intensive care from Milan replied diplomatically that she hoped she would never have to resuscitate him and that he had been trying to raise a smile in the middle of all the sorrow we have all around us.
Dr Carrieri a specialist and a complete professional. Sadly the same can’t be said for the Italian Prime Minister. Remember these:
April 2009: Touring camps set up for survivors of the recent Italian earthquake he told a journalist: They have everything they need, they have medical care, hot food… Of course, their current lodgings are a bit temporary. but they should see it like a weekend of camping
On left-wing voters at a conference of retailers during the 2006 campaign : “I trust the intelligence of the Italian people too much to think that there are so many pricks around who would vote against their own best interests.”
At the launch of the 2006 campaign : I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I am a patient victim, I put up with everyone, I sacrifice myself for everyone
To German MEP Martin Schulz, at start of Italy’s EU presidency in July 2003 : I know that in Italy there is a man producing a film on Nazi concentration camps – I shall put you forward for the role of Kapo (guard chosen from among the prisoners) – you would be perfect.
*We will aim to update this page as and when they occur in the future. More here
April 14, 2009 at 4:23 pm | More on Off topic | Comments Off
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has a comment piece in today’s FT outlining 10 principles that might bring ‘economic life closer to our biological environment: smaller companies, richer ecology, no leverage. A world in which entrepreneurs, not bankers, take the risks and companies are born and die every day without making the news.’
1. What is fragile should break early while it is still small. Nothing should ever become too big to fail. Evolution in economic life helps those with the maximum amount of hidden risks – and hence the most fragile – become the biggest.
2. No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains. Whatever may need to be bailed out should be nationalised; whatever does not need a bail-out should be free, small and risk-bearing. We have managed to combine the worst of capitalism and socialism. In France in the 1980s, the socialists took over the banks. In the US in the 2000s, the banks took over the government. This is surreal.
3. People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus. The economics establishment (universities, regulators, central bankers, government officials, various organisations staffed with economists) lost its legitimacy with the failure of the system. It is irresponsible and foolish to put our trust in the ability of such experts to get us out of this mess. Instead, find the smart people whose hands are clean.
4. Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks. Odds are he would cut every corner on safety to show “profits” while claiming to be “conservative”. Bonuses do not accommodate the hidden risks of blow-ups. It is the asymmetry of the bonus system that got us here. No incentives without disincentives: capitalism is about rewards and punishments, not just rewards.
5. Counter-balance complexity with simplicity. Complexity from globalisation and highly networked economic life needs to be countered by simplicity in financial products. The complex economy is already a form of leverage: the leverage of efficiency. Such systems survive thanks to slack and redundancy; adding debt produces wild and dangerous gyrations and leaves no room for error. Capitalism cannot avoid fads and bubbles: equity bubbles (as in 2000) have proved to be mild; debt bubbles are vicious.
6. Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning . Complex derivatives need to be banned because nobody understands them and few are rational enough to know it. Citizens must be protected from themselves, from bankers selling them “hedging” products, and from gullible regulators who listen to economic theorists.
7. Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”. Cascading rumours are a product of complex systems. Governments cannot stop the rumours. Simply, we need to be in a position to shrug off rumours, be robust in the face of them.
8. Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains. Using leverage to cure the problems of too much leverage is not homeopathy, it is denial. The debt crisis is not a temporary problem, it is a structural one. We need rehab.
9. Citizens should not depend on financial assets or fallible “expert” advice for their retirement. Economic life should be definancialised. We should learn not to use markets as storehouses of value: they do not harbour the certainties that normal citizens require. Citizens should experience anxiety about their own businesses (which they control), not their investments (which they do not control).
10. Make an omelette with the broken eggs. Finally, this crisis cannot be fixed with makeshift repairs, no more than a boat with a rotten hull can be fixed with ad-hoc patches. We need to rebuild the hull with new (stronger) materials; we will have to remake the system before it does so itself. Let us move voluntarily into Capitalism 2.0 by helping what needs to be broken break on its own, converting debt into equity, marginalising the economics and business school establishments, shutting down the “Nobel” in economics, banning leveraged buyouts, putting bankers where they belong, clawing back the bonuses of those who got us here, and teaching people to navigate a world with fewer certainties.
April 8, 2009 at 2:24 pm | More on Economics and development, Global system | 5 Comments
April 8, 2009 at 11:53 am | More on What we're watching | Comments Off
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