Dr Nick Ritchie, a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Bradford Disarmament Research Centre, presented his developing ideas on the options for renewing Trident to a recent workshop at the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies.

In a period of economic recession, mounting UK national debt and pursuit of the ‘Global Zero’ option being manifested in the United States and elsewhere reducing the UK’s nuclear deterrent might prove to be an attractive objective for a future government. If so, a number of possible options present themselves:

• ‘Trident Lite’:  involving a drop in the number of submarines from 4 to 3, and/or in the number of missiles or warheads they carried, but would not necessarily mean the end of a continuous at sea deterrent [CASD] although it could significantly reduce force flexibility.
• ‘Reduced Alert’: the effective abandonment of CASD with 2/3 submarines and reduced patrols, with further reduced missile and warhead numbers.
• ‘De-mated Alert’: 2/3 submarines, reduced missile and warhead numbers and with still further reduced patrol frequency, and with the warheads routinely stored ashore and open to verification.
• ‘Emergency Alert’: as above but with stored warheads kept in a disassembled state and open to verification.
• ‘Cruise Missile Emergency Alert’: replacing ballistic missiles with cruise missiles deployed on the Astutes and the Successor SSBNs with warheads once again stored ashore.

The subsequent discussion on present and future technologies revealed how complex these apparently simple options were. There was widespread scepticism amongst the participants about the level of real savings that some of these options would actually achieve, although all agreed that it was virtually impossible to make hard predictions either way. Submariners in the workshop were particularly sceptical about the cost-saving notion that the Successor SSBNs could be used for activities and options normally associated with SSNs, or that such patrols would prove a means of maintaining training standards in a regime of reduced deterrent patrolling. All of this seemed to most to make the prospect of re-generating CASD, once abandoned, prohibitively expensive, even if a future government thought world conditions justified it.

Leaving aside the possible political advantages of such a shift of policy within the UK, the political ramifications of such a policy seemed almost as complicated. Whether such options would have a significant dissuasive effect on the various countries contemplating developing their own nuclear programmes or expanding existing ones seemed problematic. Moreover some members of the workshop felt that the advantages of a continuous at sea deterrent were that it removed the necessity for a deliberate and necessarily public political decision to put a deterrent SSBN to sea in a time of crisis, a move that could be seen as highly escalatory.

On 5 November, Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people at a military base.

In the US, this event has already become deeply and divisively political.

Its still not entirely clear what his motives were. Some stress that he was an Islamic religious extremist. Others that he was angered by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and may have been victimised for this faith.

Some broad thoughts:

Militant religious extremism can find a grievance if it wants one. If its not Iraq, or Afghanistan, its East Timor, or Chechnya, or Palestine, or the Sudan, or headscarves, or heresy, or apostasy, etc.

But wars can very powerfully energise ideologies. Clearly, radicals can be motivated even if we are not ‘over there’ en masse. Yet that doesn’t mean the current wars are irrelevant. It seems highly unlikely that being at war is irrelevant to the momentum and will of these killers.

Does that in itself mean that we shouldn’t fight these wars? I have always been uneasy with this line of argument. By definition, being at war does invite hostility on oneself. Australia could have forestalled Al Qaeda’s anger by not supporting East Timorese independence. Britain could have prevented the carnage of the Blitz by reaching a diplomatic settlement with Hitler, but that doesn’t mean it should have or that it would have been wise or prudent.

If armed force is one necessary way to disrupt and weaken the capability of highly seasoned and expert killers who are at large ‘over there’, then it isn’t necessarily wrong to wage war, even if one cost is that it fires up radicals at home. The overwhelming majority of attempted terrorist attacks on home soil fail or are prevented. Would it be better not to fight abroad, leaving domestic radicals less angered, but the most hardened terrorists far more free to operate? There are difficult tradeoffs here.

Whatever one thinks about that problem, it still seems clear that expeditionary wars do bring this cost attached, and that this must be factored into our decisionmaking. As a matter of causation, war does often radicalise, and not being at war in these countries would probably have made Major Nidal Malik Hasan less likely to carry out this killing. Not impossible, but less likely.

This isn’t about our intentions. I agree that the US and its allies do want to leave behind a stable, democratic and prosperous society in Iraq and Afghanistan, that this isn’t intended to be some kind of bloody-minded assault on Islam. A glance at the history books shows that America has very often fought on the side of Muslim populations against their enemies, and a country that was determined to annihilate Islam would not go to the trouble of extensive humanitarian effort, from earthquakes in Pakistan to tsunami relief to billions in aid to Egypt, nor would it take in so many Muslim immigrants, many of whom have made proud lives in America. And yet…

…it is just so easy for radical clerics and propagandists to portray the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as unjust attacks on Islam. There is so much footage to be manipulated, so much unintended killing of civilians, so many images of foreigners patrolling foreign soil. Whether we like it or not, this is a propaganda dream.

Does this mean there is a domestic insurgency underway in the United States? Readers will disagree on definitions. But one horrific shooting spree does not make an organised, sustained armed uprising. I base this not only on the assumption that concepts like ‘insurgency’ should be delimited to have coherent meaning. Its also on the assumption that the vast majority of Muslims are strongly against blowing people up. So before we rush to the excited conclusion that this is evidence of a domestic revolt, lets beware of characterising a mass of ordinary, unremarkable, human beings in our midst as potential fifth columnists.

The real difficulty with this case is that it has so quickly been wrapped up in the toxic politics of the ‘culture wars’, the ongoing and bitter struggle over the nature of American society, and the origins of violence within and against it. The simple question, ‘why did he/ they do it’ is now so ideologically loaded, that it is hard to tackle in a cold and analytical way. But we’ve got to try.

The new Joint Doctrine on Stabilisation is out, and it’s a brick. Lots in there worthy of comment, but here’s my initial reaction:

1. It’s intriguing, and perhaps unfortunate, that this is published just as the Prime Minister announces his intention to craft a timetable to leave Afghanistan. Here’s what he said last night:

[We] should identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control and set a timetable for transfer starting in 2010.

That’s not much of a ringing endorsement of our ability to stabilise Afghanistan. Still, there is a good chapter on influence in the manual, and I reckon the PM may just have designated the British electorate as a target audience for the purposes of his influence activities.

Lots of effort went into this doctrine, and I suspect it’s going to feature heavily in my classroom. But has the high tide of stabilisation already passed? What do you think?

2.There’s a line in there that suggests we’re going down the James Mattis route on Effects Based Operations – and good riddance too, I say:

This is not a reprise of a mechanistic form of Effects Based Approach to Operations, which simply does not work for complex and variable human systems.

3. The doctrine is an amalgam of theoretical approaches. I’m intrigued particularly by the blending here of two distinct literatures: that on governance and state-building,  honed during the messy wars of the 1990s; and that on COIN, where most of the big thinking happened during the era of decolonisation in the fifties and sixties. One is the literature of the anguished liberal, the other that of the cynical colonist. Happy bedfellows?

4. As you’d expect of our august institution, there was a healthy KCL involvement – Tim Bird helped write the thing, while KoW’s own David Betz and Theo Farrell chipped in to good effect. Our path to world domination continues.

5. The process of writing this manual, and the result itself, seem a conscious emulation of the genesis of FM 3-24. Lots of academic engagement, both in person and with the literature. It’s doctrine, but not as we know it. That’s great for us eggheads, but does it make for good doctrine? It certainly seems to slow the process down – having stabilisation doctrine is a great thing, but we’ve been trying to stabilise Afghanistan for the better part of a decade now.

Any thoughts from you all?

Update: Another thought occurred while cycling to the library. This behemoth might be a bit big for practically minded officers – I recall hearing about one brigadier, who opined that any doctrine which didn’t fit in his pocket was staying behind; and I recall FM 3-24 gathering dust in the battalion commander’s office in David Finkel’s recent fly-on-the-wall account of the surge. Like FM 3-24, then, isn’t the real purpose of this doctrine to act as a big stick with which to beat institutional change into the British military? And change in the direction of low-intensity operations. Doctrine, I suppose, becomes the institutional memory of military organisation: if you write it, it will be so.

Edward Woodward who played Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant in the 1980 Australian film Breaker Morant has died. A great film. The scene in which he explains the rules of engagement which he applied ‘out on the veldt, fighting the Boer the way he fought us’ can hardly fail to resonate. Based upon a true story, see Scapegoats of the Empire.

In the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review there is a very useful graphic threat/capability matrix which I often use in lectures and seminars.

Usually what I like to do is illustrate each element of the matrix with a photo overlay which I hope captures the character of the threat–you know, Osama bin Laden in the upper left square, something big and metallic bristling with firepower in the lower left, the Twin Towers collapsing in the upper right. But to be honest I always struggle with what to put in the lower right quadrant. What exactly does the Pentagon mean by a ‘Disruptive’ threat? It’s not exactly clear in the QDR itself and I’ve long assumed it to mean, more or less, some form of cyber attack. And how does one illustrate a cyber attack? Well, since a shot of a microchip isn’t really all that visually exciting, I have tended to use the movie poster below from Die Hard 4.0 (the crappiest of the Die Hards but at least it purports to be about cyberwar–sorta).

Which is kind of stupid because, as my friend and coilleague and PhD student Tim Stevens writes in today’s Guardian. ‘Keeping ‘digital 911′ fears in check‘ Die Hard 4.0 is pretty much exactly the opposite of a helpful illustration of the concept.* The reality:

Apocalyptic visions of “cybergeddon” or a “digital 9/11” are overblown but there is little doubt that the digital networks on which British innovation and economic growth have relied over the last decade are as much an achilles heel as they are its foundation. 

Tim talks a lot of good sense about Cyberwar. If this issue is on your research agenda too you would do well to read his article and hang around his excellent blog ubiwar too.

*Which isn’t to say that this isn’t how the Pentagon conceives of the disruptive threat/cyberwar.

Following on from Pat Porter’s licence to stray a bit (but perhaps as I can demonstrate in the conclusion to this post, only a bit) I wanted to share the following thoughts on the current negotiations on climate change.

A diplomat from a country in sub-Saharan Africa went to Barcelona for an important conference.  He was, perhaps, expecting to find a warm welcome from the developed world and a place in which to work seriously on the issue at hand.  Instead, he found himself mugged three times in the space of thirty minutes: once by a pickpocket, then by two fraudsters purporting to be police coming to his aid, and finally by another who lifted his bag whilst he was distracted dealing with the first two incidents.  By the end of his visit he left bewildered, bitter, and angry.  He was not alone, and the rough treatment was not restricted to a dark corner of the busy train station.

During the week of 2-6 November, Barcelona was home to negotiations held under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).  These were the final talks before Copenhagen in December and represented the 5th in a series of ‘ad hoc working group’ sessions this year.  Working to the Bali Action Plan, the talks aimed at establishing the agreed upon structure for what could be signed on to in Copenhagen, itself merely a waypoint on the road to replace the Kyoto Protocol by 2012. 

By the end of the week, after a whirlwind of meetings, statements, contact group sessions, and the like, the Barcelona Climate Change Talks did not produce much in terms of substantive achievements.  But what they did do is cement the feelings of distrust, bitterness, and anger in the developing world. 

I, like many of you, first look at the topic of climate change, from two perspectives.  The first is that is it a dreadfully technical field, debating the technological fixes to the problem of human-induced climate change.  Enter scientists with slide rules and competing models.  The second is that there are many debates about the validity of these models, with people divided into those believing that ‘the end is nigh’ or those believing that ‘wolf is being cried’. 

It turns out that I was wrong on both counts.  The topic, somewhere along the road, transformed from a technical one to an eminently political one.  This is in accordance with Harold Lasswell’s definition of politics. “who gets what, why, and how”.  Because that is what these talks are about: who gets technological transfers, who gets billions of dollars in assistance, who gets the bill; why these payments are made (equity, historical responsibility, noblesse oblige); and how they get them (a tax on growth, offsets, other market solutions).   It is not technocrats that are attending these talks, but rather tough-minded negotiators, who are clear on what to give and what to take. 

Which leads to my second erroneous assumption.  There is no debate about the impact of climate change at these conferences.  It is assumed, or rather subsumed, within the discourse.  “Climate is happening and will get worse, but what are we going to do about it?” is the question being debated.  Now, that does mean that a) the claims about climate change are true nor that b) they are accepted wholeheartedly by all parties.  It just means that they are not up for debate in these fora. 

What does this have to do with KOW?  Well, the level of animosity created over this very real political problem will not be easily compartmentalized.  The bitterness and distrust expressed, for example, by the G77 and China and the Africa Group, has spillover implications for issues such as Darfur.  If those feelings of having been cheated—or perhaps worse, ignored—fester, and if climate change is real and it leads to increased pressure on water and food security, then reasonable, peaceful solutions may not be possible. The ’scarcity breeds conflict’  thesis is a well-developed, if not entirely accepted, one. 

If we think a war between the West and radical Islam, for example, is bad, surely we cannot look forward to a war between the Haves and the Havenots, based not on religion, but on deprivation and grievance (real or exploitative). 

As the APEC summit shows, there is little hope of anything concrete coming out of Copenhagen.  The Core countries of the North, and those of the semi-periphery, have made a decision on the matter of addressing climate change.  For those in the periphery of the South, expecting a considerable amount of money as part of then process, this will be seen as yet another robbery in broad daylight.  

What happens when they decide to fight back?

When we started this blog, it was supposed to be a pretty  relaxed place where we could kick around ideas freely.

So instead of another super-serious exchange about Afghanistan, lets try an open thread.

Tell us what’s on your mind. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

Michael Smith in The Sunday Times has another eye catching UK defence story to add to his one about cutting a carrier that appeared a few weeks ago. This time the RAF is the focus, and deep cuts are apparently in the offing:

AIR FORCE chiefs are preparing to cut 10,000 staff — a quarter of their manpower — and close up to five large air stations.

Who’s behind the story? Could the RAF be outlining harsh cuts so that when the axe really does fall it doesn’t seem quite so bad? And the carrier? Maybe the Navy has the same strategy in mind: if we demonstrate frugality now, we can be an honest partner in SDR negotiations. No story about army cuts yet…

Either way, this sort of briefing is titillating, but utlimately frustrating. Call me naive, but I like defence planning that starts with the policy, then does the strategizing and develops appropriate force structures.

Is it a bird? Is it an elephant?

… but it’s a pretty dismal way to make strategy: ‘Rift in US war cabinet as Obama throws out all options in debate over troop surge.’ What is with all these leaks?

Professor David Betz recently posted a blog challenging the “lateral entry” accession barriers related to the U.S. Army officer shortage and talent management. The lateral entry option is, indeed, a complex management issue with real and perceived challenges, but one worthy of additional exploration.  As for the Young Bull versus the Old Bull UK humor David mentions (I shouldn’t go there), age is not important; what really matters in the end is if the bull can perform.

For the sake of argument, perhaps we could examine the lateral entry idea in the context of recruiting an esteemed COIN expert professor to join our ranks. Please allow me to use Professor Betz as an example (with all due respect, of course) and explore the challenge of bringing someone as talented as he is into the U.S. Army via lateral entry. If he has an unknown hidden M.D., law, Chaplaincy, or other professional degree (though not a Ph.D. in war studies or public policy, I’m afraid), it is already a done deal. The Army does have a direct officer commission for these unique professional fields; via this route, he could be directly commissioned in the rank of major or lieutenant colonel. Without those degrees and associated slotting in the medical, judge advocate general, or chaplain corps, let’s suppose he really wants to be an infantry battalion commander, a position commensurate with his age, maturity, and worldly knowledge. Would it be an easy transition for him to suddenly be responsible for the lives and welfare of 700 soldiers in harms way, and to put his own life on the line for his country? Can the bull perform?

Sure, David is a brave man. Yes, he could probably recite FM 3-24 in his sleep. He certainly knows COIN inside and out. I know he appreciates the importance of – and probably enjoys – drinking “three cups of tea.” Maybe he even speaks Arabic, Pashtu, or Urdu. But, does he know the nuances of the systems approach to warfare, peacekeeping, and nation building? Does he know how to manage a joint, combined, multi-national task force? Could we quickly train him to be a lethal shooter/killer as well as a frontline diplomat? Does he know how to use the Army systems such as FBCB2, Blue Force TRACKER, or Command Post of the Future? Does he even “speak Army” or know what the basic terms OER, AR-15, FBCB2, GPS, ILE, CAC, or BOLIC stand for? Does he embody the Army’s ethics and morality training? Is he ready to train his troops on the rules of engagement and schooling them on what they should do if a pregnant Iraqi woman voluntarily places herself as a human shield in front of a room of known insurgents? Can he ace the Army Physical Fitness Test by running two miles in 13 minutes and 36 seconds, do 73 pushups and 76 situps in two minutes? Is he psychologically equipped to handle a dying trooper in his arms? How would he manage the delivery of the tragic news to that soldier’s family back home? How would LTC Betz prevent a soldier from committing suicide when the soldier receives a “Dear John, I’m pregnant with someone else’s child” letter from back home, or if the soldier is suffering from MTBI or PTSD and just can’t take the stress from the threat of the VIEDs that killed his bunkmate? Will LTC Betz stay in the military and deploy for four or five years in a row, setting aside his wife and children and the lucrative salary of a KCL professor?

I am certainly not trying to patronize Professor Betz, but I will take a stand that there are a lot of complex issues for which it takes nuanced education, training, and – especially – developmentally appropriate experience to prepare to meet. As Captain Hyphen clarified, lateral entry *should* be an option, but it is not that easy and the system has spent little time examining mechanisms that may not necessarily be cost effective but which could still help to fill the void (quanitity) and improve our talent management (quality).

The above example infers, perhaps, that we could train David Betz quickly to fill that billet. But I think leadership development goes beyond simple education and training. For the masses (and we cannot count on outliers like Paddy Mayne, Vo Nguyen Giap, or TE Lawrence, although it might be great if all our soldiers had such tenacity), it takes gritty experience at the bottom to gain the be-know-do concepts and maturity to assume such a command position, in my opinion. As most of our deployed leaders have learned, most of that experience and maturity cannot be gained by studying the books. Sure, some of the tasks are mundane and could be performed by a simpleton; but other tasks, especially those carrying international repercussions require a higher-level skill set. I don’t think it takes a lifetime to prepare for this type of field grade command, but it certainly won’t happen in a year or two either.

Further, as David concedes, military culture is a critical component of a soldier’s social fabric. I think understanding the nuances of military culture is important for sanity and job satisfaction.  You have to know what you’re getting into and like it.  As the Army Command and General Staff College states, culture includes the customs, heritage and achievements of a particular segment of society. It is based on the total range of activities and ideas, shared by a group of people with common requirements, customs, laws and traditions. These are transmitted within the group by the thoughts and feelings of the people concerned and are reinforced by actions of individuals and sub-groups to present a whole picture of a common and shared perception of a uniform blend of ideals working and striving towards the achievement of a common goal. This group ultimately working in accordance with and in response to a single ‘will’, political and military attains the objectives laid down for it in peace, and particularly during operations in war. It is essential for the solidarity and cohesion of the force and its professional competence.

Civil servants or private sector individuals from different organizations naturally embody their own organizational cultures, and rightly so. But as one spectator mentions on David’s blog, there is a divide between civilian and military cultures. While it sometimes appears that the gap is closing because of our increasing civ-mil task force engagements and joint assignments, the gap is still very real. Truthfully, many times it is a two-way misunderstanding: the military doesn’t always understand the out of the box thinkers  or even OGA, NGO, or IGO personnel; and conversely, individuals on those teams sometimes do not fully understand the military culture or embrace the warrior ethos and informal and formal “codes.” Even if we improve the mechanisms for lateral entry from the civilian sector to fill the military billets, not every American wants to learn to kill nor are all American s willing to give up their life for our country. Further, we are having a hard enough time as it is recruiting (from the bottom up or from prior service) qualified individuals who are, as the Soldier’s Creed/Warrior Ethos above states, “disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills.”  Have you seen the new report about the status of potential American recruits?

In a study called “Ready, Willing, and Unable to Serve,” the authors state that about 75 percent of young Americans are unfit to join the military because they are overweight, didn’t finish high school or had scrapes with the law. Further, the report says that 26 million people between the ages of 17 and 24 cannot sign up for the military for these reasons. Specifically: 26 percent of students didn’t graduate on time from high schools in 2009; 32 percent of 10- to 17-year-olds were overweight or obese in 2007; One in every 31 adults were in prison or on probation or parole in 2007.

Sad.

Further, if it were so easy to find individuals qualified for work in the COIN environment, then how should one interpret the status of a U.S. interagency Civilian Response Corps? The idea is a fabulous one, but shows how difficult it is to “recruit laterally” for the contemporary operating environment. Senior defense officials, including the Pentagon’s #3, Michele Flournoy, and the former head of TRADOC’s Combined Arms College at Ft. Leavenworth, LTG Caldwell (now headed to A’stan to lead the ISAF training mission there), have been proponents for bringing the qualified civilians into the arena. In support of such an idea, LTG Caldwell said, “It is imperative that Washington strengthen the ability of nonmilitary agencies to do a host of economic, developmental, diplomatic and political tasks. If you ask commanders on the ground [in Iraq and Afghanistan] what they’re doing, they will tell you 70 percent to 80 percent of what they do every day are things we wouldn’t typically think of as what a military should be doing.”

But, the military is doing it. And, the military is going to keep doing it. Unfortunately, the called-for surge of civilian “bulls” in Afghanistan has not surfaced; neither have various departments been able to fill all the permanent billets for the proposed 250-person civilian team do carry out the “three Ds” of diplomacy, developmental and defense in places where U.S. assistance is needed. If we can’t find a mere 250 civilians to fill these positions, do we think that civilians will be stampeding to wear the uniform instead?

Probably not, but that does not excuse the military from examining this option more closely, especially with prior-service personnel who already know the culture and can perform. Talent management demands as much.