China leads a peacekeeping op

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

The UN announced the first-ever Chinese led peacekeeping operation.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Major-General Zhao Jingmin as the new Force Commander for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara (MINURSO), the first time that the world body has had a Chinese national head one of its missions.

This syncs with Chinese public statements to use peacekeeping as a way of increasing its profile with governments and people directly (like with a hospital). The public diplomacy angle has been stated repeatedly, perhaps most clearly when they voiced their intent to up their contribution to the Lebanese PKO to increase their profile in the Middles East (as well as in Europe).

As China builds its expeditionary capability and while building prestige and influence, how exactly is the US improving its image by forcing democracy at the barrel of a gun?

Mash-Up for Tuesday, September 4, 2007

~ Matt Armstrong

Al-Jazeera has a cartoon depicting what may unfortunately be an Arab view of American democracy through our diplomacy of deeds to date. (Courtesy Memri)

The Chinese have published a new English-Chinese Dictionary of Military Terms.

This dictionary contains 23,000 English terms and 20,000 Chinese terms, including army organization, operational command, training, ordnance material, minor tactics, service support, space technology, computer, electron, autocontrol, biology, nuclear energy etc.

IED-porn on YouTube is the old rage. Now it’s being used to share simulations of VBIED attacks, presumably for training. (h/t Internet Haganah)

Swedish Meatballs posts their own version of RAND’s “Enlisting Madison Avenue” report.

Bob Pape applies his book’s thesis that most suicide attacks are from groups fighting against a military occupation of their country to today’s Iraq. His prediction:

If foreign occupations do indeed provide the strategic fuel for insurgencies, Pape said, Americans should expect to see a spate of Shiite suicide attacks. He said he could not predict when the insurgency would take that disturbing turn but said it would be soon: “We’re heading toward the cocktail of conditions that favor suicide terrorism from the Shia.”

Jihad_fields_logoAnd, finally, from Danger Room comes the observation that terrorists keep blogs too (the guy heading DOD’s Office to Support Public Diplomacy knows that, but don’t tell Karen Hughes, you’ll ruin her day).

Islamists use the Web to spread propaganda, communicate anonymously, share training guides, get organized — even sell t-shirts.  So it’s not exactly a shock that Muslim extremists are blogging, too.

Dancho Danchev reviews a handful of terrorist blogs — and warns that “these are just the tip of the iceberg, but yet another clear indication of the digitalization of jihad.”

One particularly active site Dancho highlights is Jihad Fields are Calling: Allah Send Us To Bring People Out From the Slavery of The People to The Slavery of Allah.  And it’s got all the features you’d expect from a top-flight — if crude — propaganda operation.  Here’s a diary from a woman who claims she was drugged and raped in Abu Ghraib.    There’s a silly, downloadable, anti-Bush wallpaper for your PC.  Over here is another one, celebrating “the most feared weapon in Iraq” — the improvised bomb.  In another place are theological justifications for “waging a war against atheism.”   You get the idea.

The point is, these guys are using all the tools they can to spread their message, and wage the information war.  Is the U.S. really prepared to do the same?

Tony Corn’s Revolutionary Thought: a Revolution in Transatlantic Affairs

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Tony Corn has another provocative article in Policy Review, this one titled The Revolution in Transatlantic Affairs. Tony, you may remember, also wrote the “conservative, chewy, [and] cantankerous” article, also published on Policy Review, World War IV as Fourth-Generation Warfare (see MR post on it here).

His latest article looks primarily at the apparent rise of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a new NATO and EU bundled into one in the shadow of heliocentric-like view of perpetual and natural global US dominance. While some question the viability of the SCO and its ability to weather competing interests of Russia and China, we’re already seeing some rhetorical unity come from the partnership with the recent warning from Russia, China, and Iran (a non-voting member of sorts) on US involvement in Central Asia. Highlighting the potential of SCO to become at least an imperfect bloc should be worrisome at least in the near term if not mid and long term.  

Continue reading “Tony Corn’s Revolutionary Thought: a Revolution in Transatlantic Affairs
“ →

New Blogger on American Civil-Military Relations

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

New on the blogging scene is Don @ the CivMilBlog that’s “Dedicated entirely to civil-military relations, serving as a gateway to the community for policymakers and serious researchers.”

Pundits and casual observers disregard the complex relationship between the military, the executive branch, the legislative branch, the public, and the media. The military is not an exclusive agent of the President, but, especially since WWII, an active and increasingly independent actor that is increasingly aware of its own power. To be sure, this does not mean the military is planning Dunlap’s Coup, but it does mean muscular posturing by the US takes many forms and has many more influences than many realize.

His most recent post, American Political Development and American Civil-Military Relations, looks to put American civil-military relations into context. In this post, he scratches at the apparent paradox of American embedding of “an autarchic, fundamentally illiberal institution (the military) inside a larger liberal democratic institution (the United States).” Remember that this uniquely American civil-military relationship was intended by our insurgent Founders. Wary of a standing military, their concern over the potential abuse a standing military could affect on our own population as well as the potential of politicization of that military for personal gain, they wrote into the Constitution a division of responsibilities for Congress and President. Over the years, additional powers were assumed by each side. It looks like Don will explore these over time.

If you’re interested in an updated civ-mil reading list, in addition to Don’s post & blog, I suggest the following:

Talking about The White Rabbit

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

I’ve neglected posting on one of four foci of this blog: the privatization of force. To catch up a bit, let me throw The White Rabbit, aka Blackwater Blogger, at you.

I’ve followed The White Rabbit since it appeared a couple of months ago, but I have neglected to post on it for, well, no good reason at all. (In fact, I started to write this post over the weekend, but opted to continue to reading Singer’s Children at War instead.) It’s a well written, if wordy, blog seeking to clarify sensationalist stories about contractors. Most of the time it does a descent enough job while mocking the industry’s attackers, especially Scahill. For the fact-conscious, the blog does go too far at times with oversimplified arguments and data that mirrors its attackers. To be sure, there are the profit-seeking criminal contractors like Custer Battles who bend the rules, but there are others who are operating within or near the fuzzy rule set incompletely managed by the client who bears the ultimate responsibility of the actions of its agents.

When problems arise, whether its the Christmas Eve shooting, Aegis contractors hunting Iraqis, or vigilante justice by contractors, how the principal (the US) handles the situation is more important as it sets the precedent and perceptions of limits for the contractors, the local population, and the global media.

Continue reading “Talking about The White Rabbit
“ →

When nobody is shooting, you’re winning

~ Matt Armstrong

From Michael Yon (h/t OP-FOR):  

Some of our own commanders believe that units who are not “in contact” or fighting here are perhaps not out beating the bushes enough. If there is a criticism of Marines on this, I heard Marines and American Army officers say on many occasions that some of the higher Marine command is stuck in the kinetic mindset, and this is very frustrating for Marines and Soldiers who realize that WHEN NOBODY IS SHOOTING IT MEANS YOU ARE WINNING.

Weapons that create and shape perceptions

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Modern war is fought over strategic influence more than territory. Win the first and the second is gained easily. In this struggle, we are battling over perceptions and in the hyper-communications environment today, facts do not matter. We risk tactical and strategic success as we rely on a lawyerly conduct in war resting on finely tuned arguments of why and why not. Human nature in a crisis doesn’t care about the finer points that exist further up Maslow’s pyramid, human nature falls back on the quick response of emotions and are vulnerable to rumor and simple distortions, especially those reinforced over time.

Sharon Weinberger at Danger Room noted the government’s concern over the potential for the Active Denial System in the war of ideas.

Not only did Pentagon officials refuse to send the controversial weapon to Iraq, they blocked a request that came as late as December 2006. The big concern is clearly the public fallout from deploying a microwave weapon.

Senior officers in Iraq have continued to make the case. One December 2006 request noted that as U.S. forces are drawn down, the non-lethal weapon “will provide excellent means for economy of force.”

The main reason the tool has been missing in action is public perception. With memories of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal still fresh, the Pentagon is reluctant to give troops a space-age device that could be misconstrued as a torture machine.

“We want to just make sure that all the conditions are right, so when it is able to be deployed the system performs as predicted – that there isn’t any negative fallout,” said Col. Kirk Hymes, head of the Defense Department’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate.

As revolutionary as it is, the Active Denial System is not a sea-change in warfare. It’s simply a hi-tech water cannon. There is, however, a sea-change in warfare coming that is not being accompanied with an equivalent discussion over the impact on perception, even though potential impact and repercussions are several orders of magnitude greater than the ADS.

It’s interesting because my work on this sea-change does use much of the same branding principles found in a recent RAND report. No real details now because I don’t want take away from a report-in-progress I presented as a working draft at a workshop a few weeks ago…

Enlisting Madison Avenue by RAND

~ Matt Armstrong

Read RAND’s report Enlisting Madison Avenue (by Todd C. Helmus, Christopher Paul, Russell W. Glenn) for two reasons. First, it does a good job of laying out the realities of how perceptions are created and provides recommendations on how to operationally manage those perceptions, both proactively and retroactively. Second, MountainRunner is cited on p132 (H/T to Adrian for pointing that out).

If you’re interested in IO, PSYOP, or Public Diplomacy (PD), you should consider this report. On describing the challenges and realities of info age warfare, I didn’t find anything particularly ground breaking — a lot of the report says what this blog has written about for a while, albeit in better war (probably because they spent more time editing than I do, and because they were paid 🙂 — but it is, unfortunately, new ground for many policy makers still confused about the struggle of hearts and minds.

Continue reading “Enlisting Madison Avenue by RAND
“ →

Shaping perceptions

~ Matt Armstrong

Quickly, read Foreign Policy’s recent article on the latest Crusader Castle, the new US embassy in Baghdad. I’ll post more on this later.  

Saturday is reportedly the State Department’s self-imposed deadline for completion of construction on the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The facility has been plagued with controversy, including unproven allegations that the Kuwait-based contractor in charge of  construction imported Filipino workers against their will. But more profound questions about this new compound remain. Is it even correct to call something this large, this expensive, and this disconnected from the realities of Iraq an “embassy”? And what does it tell us about America’s thinking on Iraq?

In the September/October issue of FP, architectural historian Jane Loeffler–who knows more about U.S. embassy design than just about anybody–gives readers a taste (sub req’d) of just what kind of embassy $1 billion buys these days:

Located in Baghdad’s 4-square-mile Green Zone, the embassy will occupy 104 acres. It will be six times larger than the U.N. complex in New York and more than 10 times the size of the new U.S. Embassy being built in Beijing…. The Baghdad compound will be entirely self-sufficient, with no need to rely on the Iraqis for services of any kind. The embassy has its own electricity plant, fresh water and sewage treatment facilities, storage warehouses, and maintenance shops. The embassy is composed of more than 20 buildings, including six apartment complexes with 619 one-bedroom units. Two office blocks will accommodate about 1,000 employees…. Once inside the compound, Americans will have almost no reason to leave. It will have a shopping market, food court, movie theater, beauty salon, gymnasium, swimming pool, tennis courts, a school, and an American Club for social gatherings.”

But what, Loeffler asks, does an embassy this large and this costly say about the nation that built it?

If architecture reflects the society that creates it, the new U.S. embassy in Baghdad makes a devastating comment about America’s global outlook. Although the U.S. government regularly proclaims confidence in Iraq’s democratic future, the United States has designed an embassy that conveys no confidence in Iraqis and little hope for their future. Instead, the United States has built a fortress capable of sustaining a massive, long-term presence in the face of continued violence.”

Forty years ago, after the 1967 Six Day War, America was forced to flee a newly constructed embassy in Baghdad just five years after it opened. It’s unlikely we’d abandon this new compound–whatever the circumstances. Instead, this time around, the question is whether something so isolated can really be used to conduct diplomacy and spread democracy. To get Loeffler’s full argument, check out her essay: Fortress America.

Keep Rove off welfare, give him Hughes’ job

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

Thomas Friedman’s op-ed this past weekend is spot on with many a post here at MountainRunner, especially my comment last week about replacing Karen Hughes with Karl Rove. If Rove approached international public opinion, especially public opinion in contested physical and mental states (i.e. Middle East and disenfranchised Muslims in the EU), Osama, Sadr, and all the others would be either running scared or panhandling.

Today, the direct impact of bullets and bombs is often much less than the propaganda opportunities and perceptions they create. A famous dead Prussian once said war is a continuation of politics, but the reality today is that war is politics and nearly every act is an attempt to gain strategic influence over friends, foes, and neutrals. YouTube, blogs, and all forms of other media and connectivity everywhere means every GI Joe and Jihadi gets at least a bit part in the theater of information, for better or worse.

Now imagine Karl Rove takes this to heart and instead of the US telling foreign audiences what we want our own people to hear, we tell them the truth about their false idols?

Continue reading “Keep Rove off welfare, give him Hughes’ job
“ →

Support MountainRunner

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

As a reader of MountainRunner, you’ve no doubt noticed I don’t do ads or tip jars. Instead of overt links to other business that waste screen real estate or straight donations to my wallet, I rely on click-thru’s to Amazon.com to pay for this blog and ConflictWiki (to-be reincarnated soon with different and more user-friendly software that’s not Wiki-based… let that be a lesson in name choice).

Advantages of using Amazon to support MountainRunner:

  • You buy stuff you would be buying already but a percentage gets kicked-back to me, with no change in cost to you
  • They send me gift certificates to buy stuff at Amazon, which in turn feeds my habit of, er, killing trees. The cash offset pays for the website.

How to transparently support MountainRunner without any cost to you:

Neither the blog nor myself are affiliated or supported by any institution or organization, including my graduate degree program. Hopefully this will change when I complete my degree in December ’07…

Thank you in advance for your support.

Admin Note: A work in progress

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 2 Comments

So the upgrade to MovableType 4 wasn’t as easy as I hoped it would be. If you went to the site today you may have some of the neat “features” I temporarily implemented: redaction of major portions of the screen. I had forgotten how much I didn’t know about CSS. The site isn’t done yet as there are still some layout & format issues here and there, which I’ll get to later, in addition to some elements from the old version of the site that haven’t made their way over yet.

However, the new version is cool and it will be worth it when the system’s fully up and running. The coolest of the new bells that functioning now is the expanded list of authentication systems for commenters. No longer do you need a TypePad account, you can reg here on MountainRunner, use your AIM ID, LiveJournal, OpenID, or WordPress credentials.

If you see something wrong on the site, please let me know by posting a comment here or emailing me. Thanks in advance.

Tomorrow I’ll resume posting… tonight, I’m walking away from the computer.

Admin Note

~ Matt Armstrong

A quick admin note on the blog. This blog was upgraded to Movable Type 4.0 last Friday. But the upgrade was incomplete and I was locked out until now. Posting will resume late tonight or early tomorrow (Tuesday).

Among the new feature available in the upgrade is more ways to authenticate commentors. More to come.

LTC John Nagl on the Daily Show

~ Matt Armstrong

It’s worth watching, even if you know the manual. About 80% in, John avoids a question that, if he wasn’t on TV, he would have given a different answer. John’s a good guy and his personality and humor comes through in the interview.

Note the host of the video. Didn’t CC stop allowing vids on YouTube? Did DOD cut a deal? 

I’m sure more detailed analysis will come from others, but I have to cut and run…

Hotel Tango: SWJ.

Better tech isn’t always the answer

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 1 Comment

See Noah’s post earlier this month on NavSec Winter’s comments at the DARPATech:

…he just informed the 3,000 geeks gathered at the DARPATech conference in Anaheim that all their gee-whiz gadgetry may not help at all in the war on terror. 

There’s a tendency to view Islamists as backwards barbarians, Winter said.  This image is “misleading and very dangerous.”  The terrorist enemy is more likely to be a “engineer in a lab” than an “evildoer in a cave.”

Growth in commercial computing power has “eroded” America’s Cold War “technical edge,” Winter said.  The same – or even better – gear gets out to kids worldwide, before soldiers ever see it.  “The playing field has thus been leveled.”  Just look at how Iraqi insurgents have been able to the Internet to recruit, train, and spread propaganda. And check out the network-like “command and control” structures that these guys are using, compared to our old military hierarchies. 

There is more here than command and control, it goes to understanding the value and purpose of technologies. Without an R&D budget that exceeds the GNP’s of many countries as well as the entire defense budgets of many of our allies, we look for the magic bullet in technology, an American tradition.

Continue reading “Better tech isn’t always the answer
“ →

Time for a little catch-up

~ Matt Armstrong

Tip: when you return from a trip in which you get at best 4hrs of sleep at night, don’t do a double-red blood cell donation. Maybe it’s me, but it knocked me on my ass for a day, throwing off my week.

The short of it is I’m here and online and the rhythm will return to the blog. I’ll be posting some of the results of the robot survey, which some have requested, and I’ll talk a little more about why I did it. I won’t reveal too much because I’m looking for a little funding to complete and polish the 6k word discussion the survey contributed to. My trip last week was to present a working copy of the document.

For those who read the blog only through RSS or email, there was activity on the one post made this week. Check it out.

Back to blogging…

Measuring Success

~ Matt Armstrong ~ 9 Comments

Austin Bay posted a list of “measurements of effectiveness” he thinks Petraeus will consider in the too-highly hyped September progress report. Even though Austin acknowledges the importance of perception, he focuses his list on Industrial Age (no, not “3GW”) qualifiers that are essentially the same that led to the “surprise” collapse of the Soviet Union.

Here’s Austin’s nod to perception management:

Recognize this problem: if you tell the enemy what you are measuring and it become very easy for him to frustrate it — at least frustrate it perceptually. The best example (or perhaps “worst example” is more appropriate) is the conclusion that Babil is secure. The leader of an Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia cadre sees that conclusion in a newspaper headline so he sends several suicide bombers to Babil. One gets through and kills twenty Iraqis. What’s the media tout? Petraeus was wrong?

Yes, the enemy sees an opportunity. He’s smart, even when he’s sitting in a cave he’s more adept at us at manipulating public opinion. And what do we do? Nothing. We create his opportunities, do nothing to defend proactively or retroactively. It isn’t a big challenge to be a propaganda officer for an insurgent group, but it should be.

Not only do we need to move away from numbers of officers and soldiers in defining success and toward more qualitative measurements, but we need to have active countermeasures that anticipate and respond to enemy IO.

There’s too much complaining that the media jumps on the bandwagon after a terrorist strike. Who else will they hear? There ain’t nobody else talking to counter the IED or suicide bomber pinpricks. Not only can we not counter enemy IO, we can’t anticipate it, and this inability to manage perceptions continually strikes at our credibility, legitimacy, and lowers confidence. (How’s the urban tourniquet going for those inside the walls? Last I heard, not so great. No mini-PRT to make the walled communities something to be demanded.)

Too many fret about the media jumping the bandwagon driven by insurgents and terrorists, but with such a passive and suicidal stance on IO must include getting the truth out and exposing the lies, deceptions, perversions, and self-serving criminal behavior in the name of Islam or tribe, it’s not surprising. You can go ahead and be upset when the media questions Petraeus, but what else are they supposed to think? What other news do they have to cover? How else are they to frame the messages?

Monday Mash-up for August 13, 2007

~ Matt Armstrong

I am traveling this week, presenting at a workshop about a half-hour west of Harrisburg, PA. If you’re around, drop me an email. Between limited internet access and a busy schedule, posting is likely to be light this week.

  • The Army goes hybrid (finally).
  • SecNav: The terrorist enemy is more likely to be a “engineer in a lab” than an “evildoer in a cave.”
  • Buy your kids the toys the military wishes it had.
  • Jason posts on the PRT discussion from the Blogger Roundtable
  • Remember the walls? Well what’s going on inside isn’t getting the golden glove treatment is should.