Putin Blinked

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/opinion/friedman-putin-blinked.html?_r=0

MAY 27, 2014 

Thomas L. Friedman

There was a moment at the height of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 when Soviet ships approached to within just a few miles of a U.S. naval blockade and then, at the last minute, turned back — prompting then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk to utter one of the most famous lines from the Cold War: “We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked.”

The crisis in Ukraine never threatened a Cold War-like nuclear Armageddon, but it may be the first case of post-post-Cold War brinkmanship, pitting the 21st century versus the 19th. It pits a Chinese/Russian worldview that says we can take advantage of 21st-century globalization whenever we want to enrich ourselves, and we can behave like 19th-century powers whenever we want to take a bite out of a neighbor — versus a view that says, no, sorry, the world of the 21st century is not just interconnected but interdependent and either you play by those rules or you pay a huge price.

In the end, it was Putinism versus Obamaism, and I’d like to be the first on my block to declare that the “other fellow” — Putin — “just blinked.”

In fact, I’d like to say more: Putin got pretty much everything wrong in Ukraine. He thought the world was still shaped by “spheres of influence” dictated from the top down, when Ukraine was all about the emergence of “people of influence” — The Square People, organized from the bottom up and eager to join their own sphere: the world of liberty and free markets represented by the European Union.

Putin underestimated Ukrainian patriotism; even many Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine did not like pro-Putin thugs trying to force them to join Russia. “Ukrainians have said in opinion polls that they want open borders and visa-free access to Russia,” noted the pollster Craig Charney. “But they also said in those polls — and confirmed with their majority vote for a pro-European candidate in Sunday’s election — that while they think Russia is a nice place to visit, they wouldn’t want to live there.”

And, most of all, Putin underestimated the impact of Western economic sanctions. The world turned out to be more interdependent, and Russia more exposed to that interdependence, than Putin thought.

So he blinked. The first flutter was pulling back his troops from Ukraine’s border and letting the election proceed. Interestingly, he chose to blink this out most directly at last week’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russia’s annual conference to attract global investors. “We want peace and calm in Ukraine,” Mr. Putin told the business executives. “We are interested that on our western borders we have peace and calm in Ukraine. ... We will work with the newly elected structure.”

The Russian Navy is More Rusty Than Ready

May 28, 2014 

Russia’s Navy: More rust than ready 

David Axe 

On May 8, the British Royal Navy destroyer HMS Dragon sailed from the naval base at Portsmouth on an urgent mission — to find and follow the Russian aircraft carrier Kuznetsov and six accompanying vessels steaming through the English Channel. 

“A Russian task group of this size has not passed by our shores in some time,” said Rex Cox, Dragon’s captain. 

True, the Russian navy has been more active in recent months. Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula with its strategic ports and asserted itself with troop, ship and warplane deployments along the frontier between Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 

That’s important to the Kremlin because, historically, Russia has struggled to maintain warm-water ports. Seizing Crimea helps ensure Moscow’s access to ice-free waters for commercial and military shipping. 

But Russia’s busy fleet schedule masks an underlying seagoing weakness. Moscow’s warships are old and unreliable. Yet the government is finding it increasingly difficult to replace them with equally large and powerful new vessels. 

Russia is a geriatric maritime giant surrounded by much more energetic rivals. 

In the final years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was determined to match the mighty U.S. Navy on the high seas. Moscow funded the construction of its first three full-size aircraft carriers in the late 1970s and 1980s — the non-nuclearKuznetsov and a sister ship, plus a nuclear-powered vessel. The United States then possessed 15 large aircraft carriers, most of them nuclear-powered. After post-Cold War force cuts, today the United States has 10 nuclear flattops plus another nine small carriers. 

The Soviet Union’s collapse dashed Moscow’s naval expansion plans. The Russians managed to finish paying the Ukrainian shipyard to complete Kuznetsov.But there was not enough money for the other two flattops. Today, a new aircraft carrier can cost billions of dollars. 

Commissioned in 1991, Kuznetsov was Russia’s last new large warship. In the past 23 years, Moscow has managed to complete a few new submarines and small frigates and destroyers at its main Sevmash shipyard, on the North Atlantic coast. But many of Russia’s current naval vessels — and all its large vessels — are Soviet leftovers. 

They’re outdated, prone to mechanical breakdowns and wickedly uncomfortable for their crews — especially compared to the latest U.S., European and Chinese ships. Washington alone builds roughly eight new warships a year, including a brand-new nuclear carrier every four or five years. 

Fixing Our Foreign Policy: 12 Ideas From a Sometimes Critic

Richard N. Haass

President, Council on Foreign Relations 

Posted: 05/27/2014

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/richard-n-haass/fixing-our-foreign-policy_b_5398379.html 

President Obama has been critical of his foreign policy critics of late, suggesting that they had little to propose other than military intervention. As a sometimes critic, I take exception to that charge, as I rarely support "boots on the ground," but do question the Obama administration both for what it is doing and not doing.

Ironically, the president just put 80 pairs of boots on the ground in Chad in an effort to locate and liberate the kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls. Hopefully this effort will accomplish just that, but even if it does, the criticism of the administration's foreign policy will not go away. Nor should it.

I appreciate that it does not take a whole lot of effort to find fault. In that spirit, here are a dozen proposals -- some likely to be popular, others anything but -- that if adopted would enhance this country's national security. I offer them now in the hope the president and his aides are open to new ideas as they prepare his much anticipated May 28 national security speech at West Point.

1. The European allies are far too dependent on Russian oil and gas, a dependence that constrains their willingness to stand up to Mr Putin when he behaves badly, as he is wont to do. What is needed is a trans-Atlantic energy initiative, one that involves increased US exports of both oil and gas and increased European production of shale gas. The US would be better positioned to suggest France start fracking and Germany reconsider its opposition to nuclear power if the president were willing to put aside politics and support the Keystone pipeline.

2. Expanded trade would boost economic growth and provide new strategic ties to Asia, Europe, and Latin America. How about a major White House commitment to and push for Trade Promotion Authority?

3. A modest increase in defense spending is warranted on grounds of need and would send a clear signal of renewed US interest in global leadership. Coupling it with long overdue reforms of military retirement, healthcare, and veterans programs would be a two-fer.

4. Syria is a strategic and humanitarian disaster. We need to act to reduce the fighting and the absolute and relative strength of the jihadists, who are threat not just to Syria but to the entire region and the world. It is time to extend greater intelligence and military help to the non-jihadist opposition and to put forward a diplomatic plan that accepts the reality of Alawite primacy and Mr. Assad's position for the immediate future.

5. Afghanistan will soon have a new government. Let's re-establish a regional diplomatic mechanism that includes its immediate neighbors (including Iran, which has a stake in a stable Afghanistan) as well as Russia and India to increase the odds the new government does not fail. Keeping 10,000 or so American troops there, as the President is now calling for, looks both possible and desirable.

Obama just announced the most anti-war foreign policy doctrine in decades

Updated by Max Fisher on May 28, 2014

@Max_Fisher max@vox.com 

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President Obama made a commencement speech at West Point on Wednesday that the White House hadaggressively billed as a grand articulation of Obama's foreign policy vision. This was not the first time he had attempted to lay out a foreign policy doctrine, and few expected much more than the usual vague policy mish-mash — when it's year six of your presidency and you still need to explain your doctrine, it's not a great sign that you really have one.

So it was a legitimate surprise when Obama articulated a unified, tightly focused vision of America's role in the world. And while it's not a vision that will thrill many foreign policy hands, including perhaps some of those in his administration, it is the clearest Obama foreign policy doctrine he's made in years: no war, no militarism, no adventurism. With the possible exception of Jimmy Carter's 1977 Notre Dame speech, it may well have been one of the most dovish foreign policy speeches by a sitting US president since Eisenhower.

EVEN TERRORISM, OBAMA'S MOST HAWKISH ISSUE, WILL BE FOUGHT MORE DOVISHLY

Obama argued, directly and repeatedly, that the US would have to reduce its use of military force as a tool of foreign policy. Obama argued that the US could not and should not use military force, including even limited actions such as off-shore strikes, except when absolutely necessary to defend "core interests" or to "protect our people, our homeland, or our way of life."

That's a very high bar for the use of military force. Obama didn't just make the point abstractly, going through several major US foreign policy changes to explain why, in each, military force was not and should not be applied. 

Obama's dove doctrine: get involved, but indirectly

Syria was his one big policy announcement: the US will dedicate more resources to "support Syria's neighbors" in hosting refugees and containing the extremist groups spilling out of the conflict. That's a pretty coldly self-interested calculation, exposing the US to minimum risk and doing the minimum to protect America against immediate terrorist threats. But it's squarely in line with his articulation of US foreign policy: no military involvement, deal with conflicts indirectly, focus on core American interests.

The case where Obama made his argument for dovishness most tellingly was, interestingly, on terrorism — the foreign policy issue where he has been consistently the most hawkish. No, Obama did not announce he was grounding the drones, but he made a telling case for continuing even this sole hawkish element of his foreign policy in a way that more aligned with dovish principles.

New Book by Retired US Army Lt. General Says U.S. Has Lost the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

May 27, 2014

A General Writes the First After-Action Report on the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: Why We Lost

Mark Thompson

AFTER 35 YEARS IN UNIFORM, RETIRED THREE-STAR SAYS HE WILL EXPLAIN WHERE U.S. WAR STRATEGY FAILED

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ book sparked a firestorm upon its release in January, although you would never have predicted it by its humdrum title: Duty. But recently retired Army lieutenant general Daniel Bolger, who played key roles in Afghanistan and Iraq in his 35-year career, wasn’t coy when it came time to titling his upcoming book Why We Lost.

It’s a jaw-dropping phrase in a political-military world given to mealy-mouthed assessments of military progress in the two wars the U.S. has fought since 9/11. Its assertion calls into question the wars’ costs — 6,800 U.S. troops, untold enemy and civilian dead, and a $2 trillion, and rising, bill for U.S. taxpayers. Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is publishing the book Nov. 11. Its publication date is exactly two years after Bolger declared, during a Veterans Day ceremony in Afghanistan, that “our nations count on us, and we’ll deliver.”n Ways to Die in the West

Apparently not.

“By next Memorial Day, who’s going to say that we won these two wars?” Bolger said in an interview Thursday. “We committed ourselves to counterinsurgency without having a real discussion between the military and civilian leadership, and the American population —’Hey, are you good with this? Do you want to stay here for 30 or 40 years like the Korean peninsula, or are you going to run out of energy?’ It’s obvious: we ran out of energy.”

The military fumbled the ball by not making clear how long it would take to prevail in both nations. “Once you get past that initial knockout shot, and decide you’re going to stay awhile, you’d better define ‘a while,’ because in counter-insurgency you’re talking decades,” Bolger says. “Neither [the Bush nor the Obama] Administration was going to do that, yet I was in a military that was planning for deployments forever, basically. An all-volunteer force made it easy to commit the military to a long-term operation because they were volunteers.”

The nation and its military would have been far smarter to invade, topple the governments they didn’t like, and get out. “Both wars were won, and we didn’t know enough to go home” after about six months, Bolger argues. “It would have been messy and unpleasant, and our allies would have pissed and moaned, because limited wars by their nature have limited, unpalatable results. But what result would have been better — that, or this?”

The mindset persists. “The senior guys say, ‘Well, it’s not lost yet — we may still pull it out’,” Bolger said, as Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, returned from a NATO session in Brussels where Afghanistan was a topic. “I don’t give military advice to the Taliban,” Dempsey told Jim Garamone of the Pentagon’s American Forces Press Service. “But if I were giving them advice, I’d tell them their negotiating position is not going to improve, it’s going to erode.”

THE INTERNET OF THINGS 2020: A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE

May 20, 2014 · by Fortuna's Corner

Internet Of Things 2020: A Glimpse Into The Future

http://www.fortunascorner.wordpress.com

Last month, April 30, 2014, a thought-provoking conference called: “Internet of Things 2020: A Glimpse Into The Future,” was hosted by the global strategic planning and knowledge company — A.T. Kearney. The conference was part of what’s known as The Silicon Valley Thought Leaders Series. A.T. Kearney Partner’s Alex Blantner and Mark Holman presented a briefing which is attached that looked out into the end of this decade and made some educated guesses as to how the Internet of Things (IoT) might play out.

“Everyone seems to be talking about it,’ the two Kearney Partners noted; but, they posed the question — “exactly what is it?,” — the Internet of Things (IoT). To their surprise, the conference attendees — that included the who’s who of the Internet/Social Media landscape — submitted 20 different/unique definitions of what they thought the IoT actually is. Mr. Blantner and Mr. Holman defined the IoT as a : seamless combination of embedded intelligence; ubiquitous connectivity; and, deep analytical analysis — put together in a very disruptive and value-generating way.

“Regardless of the sphere,” the to Kearney Partners note that “the key feature of the IoT — is the full cycle from the physical world of things through the digital one — and back to the physical.” This is the “first time ever,” they contend, “that such a closed loop can be implemented, on such a vast scale, across so many areas, and with such enormous potential.”

“By 2020,” A.T. Kearney says, there will be a staggering “30B mobile devices connected to the Internet (20X higher than today), by some 7.7B people; and, an average of 3.5 mobile devices per person by the end of this decade.” “How about Silicon Valley?” they ask. Kearney projects an average of 250 mobile devices — per family in Silicon Valley by 2020, and more than 200M mobile devices in an area less than 30 miles in diameter.” By 2020 they contend, the IoT “will impact close to six percent of all global commerce (total world GDP of $100T) — some $3.5T in revenue; an increase of $177B in value per customer and, an increase in productivity equaling $1.9T or more.

Mr. Blantner and Mr. Holman contend that “close to two-thirds of all incremental revenues will accrue in the business-to-business (BTB) sector, with the remainder split between the business-to-consumer and the public sector at a 3:1 ratio.” At present, they note that there is some $1.1B of venture capital investment going into the IoT; and, investment in this domain is growing at a 46 percent yearly increase versus a 7 percent yearly increase in all venture capital investment.”

“All this is very exciting,” they say, “but, how long will it actually take for the IoT to actually live up to its expectations?” “We believe, and most experts in the industry agree, that we are in the early stages of the IoT lifecycle. At the moment, there is more buzz than there is real value…yet. That said, significant money and attention is being put into/devoted to this space and inevitably, they will start producing results.” They expect the IoT ” uptake to accelerate in a couple of years and take six to eight additional years to truly deliver the value we expect from it.” But, Mr. Blantner and Mr. Holman said some internet technologists think the IoT could get here within the next two to three years.

** New Details About NSA’s Biggest Cable Tapping Operation: DANCINGOASIS

May 27, 2014

NSA’s largest cable tapping program: DANCINGOASIS

Peter Koop

electrospaces.blogspot.com

On May 13, Glenn Greenwald published his book ‘No Place To Hide' about the Snowden-disclosures. It doesn't contain substantial new revelations, but from one of the original documents in it we can determine that NSA's largest cable tapping program is codenamed DANCINGOASIS, something which was not reported on earlier.

Here we will combine information from a number of other documents and sources to create a somewhat more complete picture of the DANCINGOASIS program.

Special Source Operations

In Greenwald’s book and on his website, the following chart from NSA’s BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool was published. Although these charts are not always easy to interpret, we can rather safely assume that this one gives the overview for NSA’s Special Source Operations (SSO) division, which is responsible for collecting data from major telephony and internet cables and switches.

During the one month period between December 10, 2012 and January 8, 2013, a total of more than 160 billion metadata records were counted, divided into 93 billion DNI (internet) data and 67 billion DNR (telephony) data:

In the “Most Volume” section we see that the program which collects most data is identified by the SIGINT Activity Designator (SIGAD) US-3171, a facility that is also known under the codename DANCINGOASIS, which is sometimes abbreviated as DGO.

During the one month period covered by the chart, this program collected 57.7 billion data records, which is more than twice as much as the program that is second: US-3180, which is codenamed SPINNERET. Third is US-3145 or MOONLIGHTPATH and fourth DS-300 or INCENSER. This chart will be analysed in general in a separate article.

“WE’RE AT GREATER RISK:” Q. AND A. WITH FORMER NSA DIRECTOR GEN. (RET.) KEITH ALEXANDER

May 19, 2014 · by Fortuna's Corner 

We’re At Greater Risk”: Q. & A. with General Keith Alexander

New Yorker Online, May 15 | Mattathias Schwartz

Since Edward Snowden’s revelations about government surveillance, we know more about how the National Security Agency has been interpreting Section 215 of the Patriot Act and Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We’ve learned some new words —“bulk metadata,” “selector,” “reasonable articulable suspicion,” “emphatic-access restriction”—but we don’t really know how much of this works in practice.

The intelligence community isn’t used to explaining itself in public, but over the past few months, with much prodding by Congress and the press, it has taken some small, tentative steps. Last week, I spent an hour with General Keith B. Alexander, who retired in March after eight years as the director of the N.S.A. The forces pushing for omnivorous data collection are larger than any one person, but General Alexander’s role has been significant. We met on Wednesday morning, in the conference room of a public-relations firm in the Flatiron District. He is a tall man with a firm handshake and steady eyes who speaks rapidly and directly.

Here are excerpts from the interview.

In January, President Obama claimed that the N.S.A. bulk-metadata program has disrupted fifty-four terrorist plots. Senator Patrick Leahy said the real number is zero. There’s a big difference between fifty-four and zero.

Those [fifty-four events] were plots, funding, and giving money—like the Basaaly Moalin case, where the guy is giving money to someone to go and do an attack. [Note: Moalin’s case is awaiting appeal.] It’s fifty-four different events like that, where two programs—the metadata program and the 702 program—had some play.

I was trying to think of the best way to illustrate what the intelligence people are trying to do. You know “Wheel of Fortune”? Here’s the deal: I’m going to give you a set of big, long words to put on there. Then I’m going to give you some tools to guess the words. You get to pick a vowel or a consonant—one letter. There’s a hundred letters up there. You’ll say, I don’t have a clue. O.K., so you’ve used your first tool in analysis. What the intelligence analysts are doing is using those tools to build the letters, to help understand what the plot is. This is one of those tools. It’s not the only tool. And, at times, it may not be the best tool. It evolved from 9/11, when we didn’t have a tool that helped us connect the dots between foreign and domestic.

Around 9/11, we intercepted some of [the hijackers’] calls, but we couldn’t see where they came from. So guys like [Khalid al-]Mihdhar, [one of the 9/11 hijackers who was living] in California—we knew he was calling people connected to Al Qaeda in Yemen. But we thought he was in the Middle East. We had no way to connect the dots. If you rewound 9/11, what you would have done is tipped the F.B.I. that a guy who is planning a terrorist attack is in San Diego. You may have found the other three groups that were with him.

The C.I.A. could have simply told the F.B.I. that al-Mindhar was in the country. Which they didn’t do, for whatever reason.

But, you see, not everybody is looking at the same picture. So you’re thinking, We’re solving this puzzle. C.I.A. is over here, solving this puzzle. There are a lot of these puzzles that many of us are trying to work. Thousands at any given time. You might ask: What’s the best way for you to figure out who bad guys are? I’m going to tell you there’s a bad guy. What would you start with? You’d say, Well, I need to know who his network for friends are, because chances are many of them are bad, too.

4 DARPA PROJECTS THAT COULD BE BIGGER THAN THE INTERNET

May 21, 2014 · by Fortuna's Corner

Four DARPA Projects That Could Be Bigger Than The Internet

http://www.fortunascorner.wordpress.com

Patrick Tucker’s DefenseOne.com, had an online article yesterday, May 20, 2014 with the title above. Mr. Tucker began by noting that “forty years ago, a group researchers with military money, set out to test the wacky idea of making computers talk to one another in a new way — using digital information packets that could be traded among multiple machines; rather than telephonic, point-to-point circuit relays. The project called ARPANET, went on to fundamentally change life on Earth, under its more common name — the Internet.”

“Today,” he writes, “the agency that bankrolled the Internet (no it wasn’t Al Gore) is called the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which boasts a rising budget of $3B — split across 250 [known] programs. They all have national security implications but, like the Internet, much of what DARPA funds can be commercialized, spread, and potentially change civilian life in big ways that its originators didn’t conceive of,” at the time.

“What is DARPA [currently] working on that could be as big as the Internet?,” asks Mr. Tucker. “Last week,” he writes, “at The Atlantic Council, DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar declined to name names, but in her recent Congressional testimony (Senate Appropriations Committee), she highlighted some of her favorites:”

— Atomic GPS: The Global Positioning System, or GPS, which DARPA had an important but limited role in developing, is a great tool — but, maintaining it as a satellite system is increasingly costly. A modern GPS satellite can run into the range of $223M, which is one reason why the USAF recently scaled back its procurement.” “DARPA doesn’t have an explicit program to replace GPS,” notes Mr. Tucker, “but the DARPA-funded-chip-scale combinatorial atomic navigation, or C-Scan, and Quantum Assisted Sensing, or QuASAR, initiatives explore a field of research with big relevance here; the use of atomic physics for much better sensing. If you can measure or understand how the Earth’s magnetic field acceleration and position is effecting individual atoms (reduced in temperature), you can navigate without a satellite. In fact, you can achieve geo-location awareness that could be 1000X more accurate than any system in existence, say researchers.”

“The British military is investing millions of pounds in a similar technology,” writes Mr. Tucker. “Researchers associated with the project forecast they will have a prototype ready within five years. The upshot from quantum navigation for any military is obvious. It arms them with better and more reliable situational awareness for soldiers and equipment and better flying for missiles. Perhaps, more importantly,” Mr. Tucker adds, “a drone with a quantum compass wouldn’t require satellite navigation, which would make it easier to fly and less [susceptible] to hacking.”

“The big benefit for everybody else? asks Mr. Tucker. “Future devices that understand where they are in relation to one another, and their physical world won’t need to rely on an expensive satellite infrastructure to work. That means having more capable and cheaper devices, with geo-location capability, have the potential to improve everything from real-time, location-based searches to self-driving cars, and those anticipated pizza delivery drones.”

TIPPING THE SCALES: HOW TO COMBAT CYBER THREATS TO THE U.S. DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL BASE

May 10, 2014 · by Fortuna's Corner

Excerpt:

Source Link

In order to meet this challenge, the Department of Defense (DoD) must work with the nation’s largest and most critical corporations to facilitate an active cyber defense framework designed to proactively engage non-physical threats within the virtual domain and change the cost-benefit calculation of the potential cyber intruder.

U.S. government entities must work with the private sector to create deterrent mechanisms. There are four key factors in the cybercriminal’s decision making apparatus: level of expected effort, value of cybercrime, risk of cybercrime, and net reward. The level of expected effort includes the initial capital investment for computing tools and intrusion applications and the continuous level of operational investment. The overall value of committing a cybercrime is most easily understood in terms of composite financial gain. A cybercriminal’s risk calculus, on the other hand, is a function of three factors: effectiveness of preventative measures, quality of detection capabilities, and the harshness of judicial policies for prosecuting cybercrime.[5] The level of net reward equals the level of expected value minus the levels of risk and expected effort. Over the last decade, the expected returns from intellectual property theft, direct financial theft, online banking vulnerabilities, and network-based market manipulations have increased substantially because of the world’s increased reliance on the Internet.[6]

DoD systems absorb approximately 360,000,000 probes, scans, and intrusion attempts per day;[12] this equates to millions of opportunities to identify and publicly expose malicious cyber actors and put pressure on host-governments to prosecute them. A brighter spotlight would force force cybercriminals exert more effort concealing their attacks and assume higher levels of risk, pushing the threshold for committing a cybercrime to the right and reducing the expected reward (see Figure 4).

Conclusion:

By increasing the required effort and risk of committing a cybercrime, the U.S. government can reduce the number of cyber-espionage attempts against its defense technology projects. Collaborative efforts between DoD and the defense industrial base may help mitigate the compromise of critical defense-related intellectual property and preserve the U.S. strategic military advantage over its adversaries.

The Professional Bridge Discourse and the Bondage of Needing the Right Answer

This post was provided by Robert Mihara, a US Army strategist. The views expressed here are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the US Army, Department of Defense, or any other organization of the US Government.

Over the past several years under US Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, much has been made of the need for revitalizing the profession of arms in the US military generally, and in the US Army specifically. The attention has taken place against the backdrop of scandals in the general officer corps and worries the post-war army will suffer from a malaise inflicted by converging influences of declining budgets, inane garrison demands for leaders accustomed to the dynamism and gravity of war, and the accumulated traumas of twelve years of constant conflict that have been deferred for many by the cycle of separation and reunion. However, the discussion has focused more on normative standards, structures, and processes for the profession and less on the ethos of the professional discourse to vibrant and socially responsible professions. It is fine to discuss the normative aspects of the ideal military profession and what must be done to establish or maintain that ideal, but those fine arguments often fail to fully recognize the hindrances that exist to an active and open discourse that is so necessary to realizing that ideal.

Discourse is more than a professional activity that one simply does. It is an interaction based on a perspective of collective, shared, discovery. This characterization of discourse might seem academic in a military setting, but, as much of the criticism leveled against military proclivities suggests, the necessary cultural precursors for productive discourse are neither entrenched nor broadly accepted. As with leader initiative, the rhetoric of open and dynamic discussion of professional matters within the military runs aground on the reality of institutional risk aversion and an fear of being fired, made ironic when so few officers are actually dismissed from places of significant responsibility.

6 Leadership Lessons From A 3-Star General

Retired Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney.

"Leadership is deliberate: You don't accidentally have successful teams," retired Lt. Gen. Frank Kearney recently told a group of small-business owners.

He was speaking to more than 130 dealers from a Fortune 50 automobile company at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. They had gathered for the Thayer Leader Development Group's leadership program.

The three-day executive-development program is designed to immerse business leaders in the habits and beliefs of the U.S. military. The day begins with a 7 a.m. boot camp of situps, pushups, and relays or a three-mile run on the West Point campus. Next comes a series of leadership exercises, workshops, and lectures like this one. 

Kearney, who was formerly the deputy commander for the U.S. Special Operations Command, a 62,000-person global enterprise with a $10 billion budget, says businesspeople tend to underestimate the similarities of leading an infantry unit and leading a company. The Army may not seek profits, but it certainly aims for results, he says, all while recruiting, training, and organizing thousands of people. "Disciplined processes create agile organizations," he likes to say.

Here are lessons business leaders could learn from the U.S. military, according to the three-star general. 

You're Only As Strong As Your Least Experienced Team Member It's important that businesses establish trust in their organizations to gain credibility, says Kearney. "When we went to Afghanistan, it was important to work with people in the community. We talked to tribal leaders and showed them pictures of the twin towers falling and tried to explain why we were in their country or valley." 

But that trust is easily eroded. It needs to be maintained from the lowest-level employee all the way to the top. Often, the receptionist communicates more about a business than its CEO, Kearney says, because they are the first line of contact for customers. And in the Army, it's typically the young soldiers on the battlefield who represent the relationship. "Everyone in the organization is responsible for building and sustaining your brand." 

Intelligence: Soliciting Human Geography

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htintel/articles/20140527.aspx

May 27, 2014: U.S. SOCOM (Special Operations Command) recently advertised for individuals or organizations able to supply social, cultural, economic and military information on places like Burkina Faso, Burma, China (mainly the southeast), Djibouti, Honduras, Iran, Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, North Korea, South Sudan and Trinidad & Tobago. Technically, the information provided is to be obtained legally. That is, outside the countries in question by consulting travelers from those countries. In practice the suppliers can obtain information inside the countries listed at their own risk and without any official support from SOCOM or the United States. 

All this information is what SOCOM calls human geography (or cultural geography). This sort of data collection and analysis was employed extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan. Data collected from open sources (like this recent open solicitation) is merged inside SOCOM with classified data to produce a database that SOCOM can use to plan operations and which the operators carrying out those missions can consult while they are on the job. 

This is not the first time SOCOM or the CIA, has used “open sources” like this. During and after the Cold War (1947-1991) intelligence was often collected from people who were not spies but were usually residents in foreign countries. This was often innocuous stuff like clippings from local newspapers or simply gossip heard on the street. Depending on where the source was, collecting such information and passing it on (often to a legal visitor from a neighboring country) was considered espionage and punishable by severe punishments if you were caught at it. The U.S. would instruct these open source information providers how to proceed with the least risk, and pay then according to the risk they were exposed to. Even in dictatorships, the local spy catchers tended to go after more dangerous (to the national security) spies and ignore the suppliers of newspaper clippings and gossip. 

The U.S. often relied on contractors (local or American) to supervise these open source informants, to further insulate the United States government from these sources, and vice versa.

Rethinking Douglas MacArthur Fifty years after his death, it’s time America’s most misunderstood military genius got his due.

By MARK PERRY

May 25, 2014

Great lives, fully lived, cast long shadows. Fifty years after his death, it’s not unusual to hear people rank Douglas MacArthur among America’s worst generals—alongside Benedict Arnold and William Westmoreland. His critics say he was insubordinate and arrogant, callous in dealing with dissent, his Korean War command studded with mistakes. “MacArthur could never see another sun, or even a moon for that matter, in the heavens, as long as he was the sun,” once said President Eisenhower, who had served under MacArthur in the Pacific. Some of what the critics say is undoubtedly true, but much of what they say is wrong. And all this noise seems to have drowned out the general’s tremendous accomplishments. What about his near flawless command during World War II, his trailblazing understanding of modern warfare, his grooming of some of the best commanders this country has ever seen? What about the fact that he is—as much as any other general in the war—responsible for the allied victory? It’s time to give “Dugout Doug” credit for these merits and not just cut him down for his mistakes—real and imagined. It’s time to reconsider Douglas MacArthur.

In a sense, MacArthur is the victim of his own success. If he had been content to receive the Japanese surrender on Sept. 2, 1945, and retire instead of continuing his career, he would be considered the greatest commander of World War II—and perhaps the greatest military commander in American history.

Instead, after serving as America’s “shogun” in Japan, where he laid the groundwork for Japan’s emergence as a democracy, he led U.S. forces in the Korean War. While MacArthur did author the assault that staved off an early defeat of U.S. forces on the peninsula, he consistently mishandled the Korea fight, underestimating China’s commitment to its North Korean ally and then purposely flouting Washington’s directives to limit the conflict. He fought bitterly over Korea policy with President Harry Truman and was relieved of his command.

MacArthur, who died 50 years ago last month, returned to the United States to great acclaim—he was, after all, one of the nation’s most decorated officers—but his fight with Truman overshadowed what he had accomplished in both of the world wars. He defended his actions in Korea in a series of public congressional hearings, but his testimony was self-referencing, uncertain and ultimately unconvincing. He dabbled in politics (without success) and, after failing to win the 1952 Republican nomination for president, moved with his second wife Jean and their son Arthur—Arthur MacArthur—to New York City, where the family lived in a set of suites at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Jean and her husband would be seen, from time to time, at the opera or taking in a baseball game. But for the most part, they spent their days out of the limelight. MacArthur, once so popular that mothers named their children for him, just faded away.

History has not treated him well. A recent, if informal, Internet poll listed him as America’s worst commander; Benedict Arnold, the Revolutionary War general who defected to the British and whose name is practically synonymous with the word “traitor,” was second. A popular nonfiction television series on the war has Marines on Peleliu, a small coral island where the Allies and the Japanese fought for more than two months over a single airstrip, cursing MacArthur for expending their lives needlessly. In fact, he had nothing to do with the battle.

Many Americans are convinced that MacArthur rehearsed his landing at Leyte, in the Philippines, where he dramatically waded onto the invasion beach through the Pacific’s rolling surf, reboarding his landing craft until the cameras got it just right. That would be Patton—on Sicily. A Pentagon hallway is dedicated to MacArthur, but a recently retired senior army officer who spent 30 years in uniform admitted that he found MacArthur embarrassing to his profession, because of his insubordination and his fight with Truman. “What about Cartwheel?” he was asked, in reference to MacArthur’s hugely successful operation against Japan. He had never heard of it. MacArthur’s detractors relay the story that his son Arthur renounced him and changed his name out of embarrassment. There’s not a shred of evidence to prove it.

History has forgotten all those things. But Douglas MacArthur is remembered, still, for his actions during the Bonus March, where he commanded troops that gassed and trampled World War I veterans peacefully protesting in Washington, D.C, during the Great Depression, and for his evacuation from Corregidor Island, in Manila Bay, which he had fled during the darkest days of the Pacific War. He was a man of enormous courage—yet the term “Dugout Doug,” referring to his time spent bottled up on Corregidor before the evacuation, has followed him through six decades.

***

But MacArthur’s legacy is so much richer than that.

Although he was vain, arrogant, ambitious and overly confident, these traits have been shared by so many of our nation’s military commanders that they seem almost a requirement for effective leadership. More crucially, a close study of World War II shows MacArthur to be the most innovative and brilliant commander of that conflict. His was the first approach to modern warfare that emphasized the need for rapid, light and highly mobile amphibious and air forces operating over vast distances.

Best Practice or Best Strategy: Can New Counterinsurgency Doctrine Win Future Wars?

27 May 2014

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/Detail/?lng=en&id=180195

If counterinsurgency theory supposedly succeeded in Iraq, why did it fail in Afghanistan? For David Ucko, the answer is clear – theory is no substitute for practical strategies that appreciate the ‘nature and grammar’ of real conflicts. 

By David Ucko for ISN 

Two weeks ago, the United States Army and the Marine Corps updated their counterinsurgency doctrine, last published in November 2006 before the ‘surge’ in Iraq. The publication of the new doctrine has raised fresh questions about the role of counterinsurgency in campaign planning and strategy. Was the 2006 field manual in some way responsible for the subsequent stabilization of Iraq? If counterinsurgency succeeded there, why did it not meet expectations (some might say ‘fail’) in Afghanistan? And will the doctrine published last week allow for better results in campaigns to come? 

Counterinsurgency and strategy 

These questions suggest two fundamental points. First, as the most recent counterinsurgency manual states, ‘counterinsurgency is not a substitute for strategy’. Counterinsurgency theory offers a collection of insights collected from past operations, which, if adapted to local context, can help in the design and execution of a campaign plan. To the degree that counterinsurgency theory worked in Iraq, it was because it was tied to a campaign plan informed by the specific contextual enablers relevant to that operation: the Sons of Iraq, the Anbar Awakening, and splits within the main Shia political structures. Counterinsurgency was then implemented in Afghanistan, but without an appreciation of these contextual enablers, which explains why the same approach produced such different results. Best practice is not best strategy. 

An important reason for the success of counterinsurgency in Iraq was the cooperation of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who during the surge recast himself as a national rather than sectarian leader. Of course, the Iraqi leadership was far from perfect. For example, US support for Sunni tribes and former insurgents was not accompanied by the support of the central government, and this has complicated the reintegration process for the Sunni forces that fought against al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Nevertheless, in broad terms, the Iraqi leadership compared favorably to that in Afghanistan, which has proved either unable or unwilling to move against the warlords who have established themselves (often with coalition assistance) in recent years. 

Reaction to the President’s West Point Speech (w/ Update 1)

by SWJ Editors

Reaction to the President’s West Point Speech

At West Point, President Obama Binds America’s Hands on Foreign Affairs - Washington Post Editorial


President Obama has retrenched U.S. global engagement in a way that has shaken the confidence of many U.S. allies and encouraged some adversaries. That conclusion can be heard not just from Republican hawks but also from senior officials from Singapore to France and, more quietly, from some leading congressional Democrats. As he has so often in his political career, Mr. Obama has elected to respond to the critical consensus not by adjusting policy but rather by delivering a big speech.

President Obama Misses a Chance on Foreign Affairs - New York Times Editorial


President Obama and his aides heralded his commencement speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday as a big moment, when he would lay out his foreign policy vision for the remainder of his term and refute his critics. The address did not match the hype, was largely uninspiring, lacked strategic sweep and is unlikely to quiet his detractors, on the right or the left.

Obama's Vision of U.S. as 'Empowering Partners' - Christian Science Monitor Editorial


Obama quoted President Kennedy about peace needing to be based upon “a gradual evolution in human institutions.” As more people and nations evolve toward shared ideals, the task of maintaining international order also becomes more of a shared one. The U.S., which was so instrumental as a military leader in the 20th century, can take on a new role in bringing nations and people closer.

America Can't Ignore Military Muscle of Russia and China - Washington Examiner Editorial


President Obama told West Point's graduating cadets Wednesday that “some of our most costly mistakes came not from our restraint, but from our willingness to rush into military adventures without thinking through the consequences.” Apparently the nation's commander-in-chief is unaware of -- or perhaps unconcerned by -- the more pressing reality that bad things happen when America's real and potential adversaries don't fear U.S. strength.

Obama’s Unclear Foreign Policy Path - Richard N. Haass, Council on Foreign Relations


President Barack Obama has laid out a vision for U.S. foreign policy calling for the need to avoid both unnecessary military entanglements and isolationism. CFR President Richard N. Haass said the speech at West Point on May 28 appeared too focused on what the president opposed and less on what he favored. "It was an attempt to essentially carve out a form of involvement in the world that avoided any and every excess," Haass said. "But with one or two exceptions, it didn't provide any specifics." Obama's call for ramping up support for non-jihadist rebels in Syria is welcomed, Haass said.

Four Disappointments in Obama’s West Point Speech - Thomas Wright, Brookings


President Obama’s commencement speech at West Point was intended to reboot his foreign policy for the rest of his administration but it is likely to raise additional concerns in the United States and allied nations. He presented it as a speech that seeks to strengthen the international order but unfortunately I believe it fell short in at least four respects.

Doubling Down on a Muddled Foreign Policy - John Bolton, Wall Street Journal


At West Point on Wednesday, President Obama told the graduating seniors that he had discovered a middle way in foreign policy between isolationism and military interventionism. To the White House, this was like "the dawn come up like thunder outer China," in Kipling's phrase. Others were less impressed, especially since it took five-plus years of on-the-job training to grasp this platitude. Of course the United States has options between war and complete inaction. Not since Nixon has a president so relished uncovering middling alternatives between competing straw men.

The Obama Defense - Michael O’Hanlon, Foreign Affairs


U.S. President Obama -- increasingly accused of having a listless foreign policy that, in the eyes of some, made Russian President Vladimir Putin believe he could get away with stealing Crimea -- is doing much better on the world stage than his critics allow. But he does still have to address one significant problem. If he does not, he will likely find himself increasingly harangued over a supposed decline in American influence and power on his watch. His West Point speech on May 28 will probably fix some of the problem, but not all of it.

Obama’s Foreign Policy Repeats Some Avoidable Mistakes - David Ignatius, Washington Post


President Obama’s measured defense of his foreign policy at West Point on Wednesday made many cogent points to rebut critics. Unfortunately, the speech also showed that he hasn’t digested some of the crucial lessons of his presidency.

Obama Just Accidentally Explained Why His Foreign Policy Hasn’t Worked - Elliott Abrams, Washington Post


At West Point today, President Obama marched out his army of straw men and continued his ungracious habit of taking credit for successful actions attributable to his predecessor. But at bottom, the policy he outlined will be of little comfort to our allies and to the cause of freedom in the world.

Obama at West Point: A Foreign Policy of False Choices - David Frum, The Atlantic


On the evidence of President Obama’s commencement address at West Point on Wednesday, he’d have made an outstanding State Department memo-writer. The president outlined a Washington policy debate occurring in three corners. Over in Corner 1 are those who believe in “a strategy that involves invading every country that harbors terrorist networks.” Huddled in Corner 2 are those who insist that “conflicts in Syria or Ukraine or the Central African Republic are not ours to solve.” Between these obviously stupid extremes is a sensible third way, which happens to coincide perfectly with the policy of the Obama administration.

What Obama Didn't Explain in His Foreign Policy Speech at West Point - Doyle McManus,Los Angeles Times


President Obama’s foreign policy speech at West Point on Wednesday didn’t break any new ground, not even rhetorically. But it wasn’t intended to. It was meant as a rebuttal, an answer to critics who have harried Obama for months complaining that America’s adversaries (Russia, China and Syria, for example) are pursuing their goals with more success than the United States has found in stopping them. The criticisms have gotten under Obama’s skin. He gripes about them frequently, in public and in private. So, with a speech already promised for West Point’s graduation ceremony, he seized the opportunity for a longer, more considered version of his side of the argument.

Obama Says Goodbye to American Hubris - Peter Bergen, CNN News


What Obama did in his West Point speech was to chart a course that balances two natural, and contradictory, American national security impulses -- isolationism and interventionism -- and points to a hybrid approach that avoids some of the pitfalls of either of these strategic approaches.

A Sad, Half-hearted Address to the Wrong Audience - Bing West, National Review


Before a silent graduating class at West Point, Mr. Obama monotonically delivered a defensive foreign-policy address empty of substance. He failed to connect with an audience that responded with polite but tepid applause to a vapid speech more suitable for the United Nations than for the United States. He put forward four points that he asserted comprised the bedrock of American leadership in the world.

Obama vs. His Imagined Critics - Max Boot, Commentary


In his much ballyhooed West Point address, President Obama employed what in the 1990s was known as “triangulation”–but not an effective or convincing form of triangulation, rather one that appears to be mainly rhetorical instead of policy oriented.

The New World Disorder - Richard Parker, McClatchy-Tribune


The president’s speech Wednesday at West Point was, as all of his speeches are, a fine speech. But it did not advance the ball. He did not move the locus of American attention and energy out of the Middle East and northern Africa, where he continued to focus on the fragments of the remnants of al-Qaida. For a president who correctly noted that “not every problem is a nail,” he focused chiefly on the nails of terrorism and the hammer of the judicious use of force.

Obama's Small Ball Foreign Agenda - Steve Huntley, Chicago Sun-Times


A strategy of singles and doubles is how President Barack Obama recently characterized his foreign policy. Anyone looking for more than small ball in what the White House billed as a major speech at West Point on Wednesday was bound to be disappointed. No big agenda or ambitious goals were pronounced. It was more a steady as we go on the more modest role Obama has chartered for America in world affairs.

Obama’s Foreign Policy Speech Sounds Familiar - Michael Crowley, Time


Obama's foreign policy address at West Point won't satisfy his critics, but it might reassure anxious supporters. For all the hype, President Barack Obama’s foreign policy speech at West Point on Wednesday didn’t break much new ground.

The Goldilocks Speech - Eric Cantor, ABC News


Today's address at West Point was a goldilocks speech. Trying to find the lukewarm bowl of porridge will not likely reassure those who worry about our lack of leadership, and will not concern those who fear its return.

Commentators Break Down Obama Foreign Policy Speech at West Point - U.S. News & World Report Roundup


Views You Can Use: Staying the Course on Foreign Policy - Obama's West Point speech didn't break much ground.

Did Obama Make His Case? - New York Times Debate


In his address to graduating West Point cadets on Wednesday, President Obama laid out his administration’s foreign policy goals. His speech was directed at his critics who have suggested “that America is in decline” and “has seen its global leadership slip away.” Did it work?

US Lawmakers React to Obama Speech at West Point - Michael Bowman, Voice of America


One of Barack Obama’s top congressional critics in foreign policy matters has responded forcefully to a speech in which the president mapped out his vision for U.S. engagement around the globe.

Full transcript of President Obama’s commencement address at West Point

President Obama delivered the following remarks at the United States Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., commencement ceremony on May 28, 2014. Transcript courtesy of Federal News Service.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, General Caslen, for that introduction. General Trainor, General Clarke, faculty and staff at West Point, you have been outstanding stewards of this proud institution and outstanding mentors for the newest officers in the United States Army.

I’d like to acknowledge the Army’s leadership -- General McHugh -- Secretary McHugh, General Odierno, as well as Senator Jack Reed who is here and a proud graduate of West Point himself. To the class of 2014, I congratulate you on taking your place on the Long Gray Line.

Among you is the first all-female command team: Erin Mauldin and Austen Boroff. In Calla Glavin, you have a Rhodes Scholar, and Josh Herbeck proves that West Point accuracy extends beyond the three point line. (Laughter.)

To the entire class, let me reassure you in these final hours at West Point, as commander in chief, I hereby absolve all cadets who are on restriction for minor conduct offenses. (Laughter, applause.)

Let me just say that nobody ever did that for me when I was in school.

I know you join me in extending a word of thanks to your families. Joe DeMoss, whose son James is graduating, spoke for a whole lot of parents when he wrote me a letter about the sacrifices you’ve made. “Deep inside,” he wrote, “we want to explode with pride at what they are committing to do in the service of our country.” Like several graduates, James is a combat veteran, and I would ask all of us here today to stand and pay tribute not only to the veterans among us, but to the more than 2.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as their families. (Applause.)

It is a particularly useful time for America to reflect on those who’ve sacrificed so much for our freedom, a few days after Memorial Day. You are the first class to graduate since 9/11 who may not be sent into combat in Iraq or Afghanistan. (Cheers, applause.)

When I first spoke at West Point in 2009, we still had more than 100,000 troops in Iraq. We were preparing to surge in Afghanistan. Our counterterrorism efforts were focused on al-Qaida’s core leadership -- those who had carried out the 9/11 attacks. And our nation was just beginning a long climb out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Four and a half years later, as you graduate, the landscape has changed. We have removed our troops from Iraq. We are winding down our war in Afghanistan. Al-Qaida’s leadership on the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been decimated, and Osama bin Laden is no more. (Cheers, applause.) And through it all, we’ve refocused our investments in what has always been a key source of American strength: a growing economy that can provide opportunity for everybody who’s willing to work hard and take responsibility here at home.