Global Peace Operations 2012

The United Nations Security Council authorized two new peacekeeping missions during 2011—the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA)—the first missions since the joint UN-AU Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) was established in 2007.

The Council also authorized the use of force to protect civilians in Libya, clearing the way for a NATO air campaign that divided members of the Security Council. Following the fall of Muammar Qaddafi, the Security Council mandated the civilian UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL), a political mission, to help reestablish state authority.

Brought to you by NYU's Center on International Cooperation, the Annual Review of Global Peace Operations covers both UN and non-UN peace operations during 2011. The latest edition focuses on the role of peacekeeping operations in extending and consolidating state authority in post-conflict and post-crisis states.

This edition covers a year that saw continued overall growth in peacekeeping operations, albeit at a slower rate than past years. However, UN peacekeeping experienced a decline in the deployment of uniformed personnel, the first such decline since 2003. This is despite the two new peacekeeping missions.

 Peacekeepers in 2011 were tasked with responding to a number of rapidly changing environments including supporting the referendum on South Sudan, and supporting its establishment as an independent state; elections in Haiti, Liberia and Democratic Republic of Congo; the post-electoral crisis in Côte d'Ivoire; and wresting control of Mogadishu from Al-Shabaab in Somalia.

All of these activities occurred against the backdrop of intense debate on the cost of peacekeeping, with increasing pressure to draw down a number of missions. The preoccupation with mission costs and the lighter footprint of these missions may indicate that a decade of large multidimensional peacekeeping missions may be coming to an end.

 

Global Peace Operations 2012

Seven Pillars of Small War Power

How might we think differently about a “center of gravity” in an environment where asymmetric strategy dominates and power is diffused? Insurgencies and movements of resistance are dynamic, living systems powered by social dynamics.Successful insurgent movements leverage their available sources of power to gain the sympathy of the broader population and to mobilize a small cadre of armed forces. For the insurgent, these dynamics—the power of rising expectations, the power of the people, the power of the underdog, the power of agility, the power of resistance, the power of security, and the power of belonging—become the pillars of small war power. For the counterinsurgent, each of these pillars presents both a potential hazard and an exploitable vulnerability.

The full article from Military Review is available for free download HERE.

SOCOM Commander Sees & Understands the Big Picture

I continue to be impressed by Adm. Eric Olson's deep and sophisticated understanding of contemporary armed conflict. When I have made this observation before, some have responded to me that his conclusions are actually rather obvious and so widely shared that they hardly merit recognition. What I find so encouraging, however, is that the leader of the world's most elite and lethal kinetic force understands that - in his words - "it’s the nonkinetic that will be decisive." In a large organization where those wielding hammers tend to see nothing but nails, Olson both understands and acts on the fact that a full array of tools are needed to get the job done. In my view, that is commendable and distinctive.

Yesterday (1/20/10), Olson testified before The House Armed Services Subcommittee On Terrorism And Unconventional Threats where he highlighted some of the following points

• Regional AQ affiliate groups are a growing concern. The networking of affiliate groups has two pernicious effects: (1) it extends AQ’s global reach, posing an increasing threat to North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Iraq, India, Southeast Asia, and again in the United States; (2) it provides a more diversified infrastructure for recruitment and training.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is a rising affiliate group that is benefiting from this process and whose leadership ranks are made up in part from Saudi and Yemeni extremists who have been released from detention or escaped from Yemeni jails.

• The network is still largely built on personal connections and relationships developed during the Afghan resistance against the Soviets in the 1980s. Its growth and resilience are enabled by a convergence of instability, crime, corruption, and disruptive migration in the region.

The network sustains its operations mainly through individual relationships that are rooted in the 1980’s Afghanistan jihad against the former Soviet Union. The strength and tenacity of this network is due to the environment in which it functions. It is woven in the fabric of multi-ethnic communities, working with legitimate companies and charities while simultaneously exploiting the criminal networks to move people, money, and supplies around the world. Al-Qaida thrives on sources of friction created by a growing nexus between extremism, crime, and migration.

• AQ affiliate groups are increasingly stepping into ungoverned or under-governed spaces where they can more easily leverage a base of population support through aid or coercion.

The problems we must be prepared to address include the inability of nation states to deal with increasingly complex challenges and to meet the needs and expectations of their populations. These challenges are exacerbated by the growing number of non-state actors who have strategic effect in a networked and interconnected world. In the vacuum created by weak or failed governments, non-state actors have achieved greater influence over benign populations by addressing their basic needs and grievances, and by intimidating and sometimes brutalizing them into submission. When governments fail to address the needs of the population, they become irrelevant and the people will make choices that are shaped by their own immediate needs for survival.

Adm. Olson concludes with the following:

We believe that SOF must simultaneously focus on the environmental dynamics and root causes that create today’s and tomorrow’s threats and adversaries. This belief requires an approach that is integrated with our interagency partners to foster US credibility and influence among relevant populations. We clearly recognize that deterring, disrupting and defeating terrorist will require a whole-of-government and international approach.

You can read the testimony in its entirety HERE.

WarThinker's Digest - Issue #4

WarThinker's Digest is a feature of theScience of Global Security & Armed Conflict blog that scans the scholarly literature from academia, government agencies, and major think tanks, highlighting new reports and documents bearing on the complexity of conflict and future trends in warfare. A must-read feature for defense and security strategists from all sectors interested in honing their "actionable intellect."


Obama's COIN toss

In Afghanistan, we have a plan -- but that's not the same as a strategy

By Eliot A. Cohen
The Washington Post
Sunday, December 6, 2009

Excerpt:

Strategy is the art of choice that binds means with objectives. It is the highest level of thinking about war, and it involves priorities (we will devote resources here, even if that means starving operations there), sequencing (we will do this first, then that) and a theory of victory (we will succeed for the following reasons). That is the job of wartime presidents; it’s why they have the title commander in chief. Obama set out his objectives for Afghanistan, focused on thwarting al-Qaeda, and enumerated some of the means, chiefly a 30,000-troop, 18-month surge. But what about the hard part: setting priorities, establishing a sequencing and laying out a theory of victory?

C.I.A. to Expand Use of Drones in Pakistan
By Scott Shane
New York Times
Published: December 3, 2009

Excerpt:

The White House has authorized an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, officials said this week, to parallel the president’s decision, announced Tuesday, to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. American officials are talking with Pakistan about the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time — a controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas — because that is where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide.

By increasing covert pressure on Al Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan, while ground forces push back the Taliban’s advances in Afghanistan, American officials hope to eliminate any haven for militants in the region.

One of Washington’s worst-kept secrets, the drone program is quietly hailed by counterterrorism officials as a resounding success, eliminating key terrorists and throwing their operations into disarray. But despite close cooperation from Pakistani intelligence, the program has generated public anger in Pakistan, and some counterinsurgency experts wonder whether it does more harm than good.

Assessments of the drone campaign have relied largely on sketchy reports in the Pakistani press, and some have estimated several hundred civilian casualties. Saying that such numbers are wrong, one government official agreed to speak about the program on the condition of anonymity. About 80 missile attacks from drones in less than two years have killed “more than 400” enemy fighters, the official said, offering a number lower than most estimates but in the same range. His account of collateral damage, however, was strikingly lower than many unofficial counts: “We believe the number of civilian casualties is just over 20, and those were people who were either at the side of major terrorists or were at facilities used by terrorists.”

Reconstruction Under Fire: Unifying Civil and Military Counterinsurgency

By: David C. Gompert, Terrence K. Kelly, Brooke Stearns Lawson, Michelle Parker, Kimberly Colloton
RAND Corporation

Effective civilian relief, reconstruction, and development work can help convince people to support their government against insurgency. Knowing this, insurgents will target such work, threatening both those who perform it and those who benefit from it. Too often, the result is a postponement of efforts to improve government and serve the population until contested territory has been cleared of insurgents. This can lead to excessive reliance on force to defeat insurgents — delaying or even preventing success. A RAND team with combined security and development expertise set out to learn how civilian counterinsurgency (civil COIN) (essential human services, political reform, physical reconstruction, economic development, and indigenous capacity-building) could be conducted more safely in the face of active insurgency, when it can do the most good. The authors propose the following to improve the security of civil COIN under fire: a concept for setting priorities among civil COIN measures; a way to allocate security forces optimally among various civil COIN activities, as well as between them and other COIN security missions (e.g., direct operations against insurgents); new, integrated concepts of operation (ICONOPS) that military and civilian leaders could employ during COIN campaigns to manage risk and produce best results for COIN as a whole; and general requirements for capabilities and corresponding investments to secure civil COIN, derived from ICONOPS.

The New Counterinsurgency Era
By David Ucko

Confronting insurgent violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has recognized the need to “re-learn” counterinsurgency. But how has the Department of Defense with its mixed efforts responded to this new strategic environment? Has it learned anything from past failures?

In The New Counterinsurgency Era, David Ucko examines DoD’s institutional obstacles and initially slow response to a changing strategic reality. Ucko also suggests how the military can better prepare for the unique challenges of modern warfare, where it is charged with everything from providing security to supporting reconstruction to establishing basic governance—all while stabilizing conquered territory and engaging with local populations. After briefly surveying the history of American counterinsurgency operations, Ucko focuses on measures the military has taken since 2001 to relearn old lessons about counterinsurgency, to improve its ability to conduct stability operations, to change the institutional bias against counterinsurgency, and to account for successes gained from the learning process.

Given the effectiveness of insurgent tactics, the frequency of operations aimed at building local capacity, and the danger of ungoverned spaces acting as havens for hostile groups, the military must acquire new skills to confront irregular threats in future wars. Ucko clearly shows that the opportunity to come to grips with counterinsurgency is matched in magnitude only by the cost of failing to do so.

Table of Contents:

Foreword by Lt. Col. John A. Nagl, USA (Ret.)
Introduction
1. Framing the Reorientation
2. A Troubled History
3. Revisiting Counterinsurgency
4. Innovation under Fire
5. Counterinsurgency and the QDR
6. FM 3-24 and Operation Fardh Al-Qanoon
7. The Ambivalence of the "Surge"
8. Innovation or Inertia
Conclusion: Kicking the Counterinsurgency Syndrome?



Counterinsurgency – a much failed strategy?
By Patrick Lang

Excerpt:

Conclusion:

COIN is a badly flawed instrument of statecraft: Why?

- The locals ultimately own the country being fought over.

- Such COIN wars are expensive, long drawn out affairs that are deeply debilitating for the foreign counterinsurgent power.

- COIN theory is predicated on the ability of the counterinsurgents to change the mentality of the “protected” (read controlled) population. The sad truth is that most people do not want to be deprived of their ancestral ways and will fight to protect them.

- In the end the foreign counterinsurgent is embarked on a war that is not his own war.

- For the counterinsurgent the commitment of forces must necessarily be much larger than for the insurgents.

What should we do?

- Hold the cities as bases to prevent a recognized Taliban government until some satisfactory (to us) deal is made among the Afghans.

- Participate in international economic development projects for Afghanistan.

- Conduct effective clandestine HUMINT out of the city bases against international jihadi elements.

- Turn the tribes against the jihadi elements.

- Continue to hunt and kill/capture dangerous jihadis,

How long might you have to follow this program? It might be a long time but that would be sustainable. A full-blown COIN campaign in Afghanistan is not politically sustainable.

Civil War Outcomes
By Roy Licklider
Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University
Saltzman Working Paper No. 11
November 2009


This paper attempts to summarize the rapidly expanding literature on civil war outcomes, organizing it around three central questions, all of which remain under debate: (1) what are civil wars, (2) how do we know when they end, and (3) what can outsiders do to help end them and prevent their recurrence? It focuses on the normative and ethical issues involved in negotiated settlements to civil wars: do they reduce violence or not, do they encourage democracy or not, the conflict between amnesty and justice which they often raise, and, if they are seen as desirable, when are they likely to occur and how, if at all, can outsiders support them.



Third-Generation Civil--Military Relations

by Frederik Rosén
Security Dialogue, Vol. 40, No. 6, 597-616 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0967010609350633

Counterinsurgency strategies employed by the US military in Afghanistan have led to the US military embarking on civil governance reform. This has created new forms of civil—military relations with Afghan and international counterparts. These relations appear less dramatic than ‘conventional’ civil—military relations, in that they do not create the same visible alignment on the ground between military and non-military identities. In addition, the increased merging of civil and military work areas creates a new complexity that stems from semantic confusion. This complexity is mostly about norms and principles, in that the core puzzle is the more general question of what kinds of tasks the military should and should not do, rather than about violent consequences to civilians and questions of neutrality. This article proposes the term ‘third-generation civil—military relations’ to capture and examine the conceptual challenges that stem from the merging of military and civil work areas in Afghanistan’s reconstruction.

Natural Resources & Armed Conflict

Natural resources can make conflicts more deadly. When gems or oil/gas production exist inside a conflict zone, more combat deaths tend to result. This finding comes from an analysis of 258 worldwide conflicts conducted by Paivi Lujala from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Lujala's research builds on earlier studies showing linking the presence of natural resources to the onset and likelihood of armed conflict in a given area. His analysis extends this knowledge by focusing on the impact of these resources on conflict severity. Severity was measured by the total number of combat deaths and the average rate of combat deaths (which he refers to as a measure of "intensity"). He also was able to compare effects inside vs outside of conflict zones within a given country, rather than just using the country as a single geographic unit.

The study examined three commonly occurring natural resources: (1) gemstone mining; (2) Hydrocarbon (crude oil/natrual gas) production; and (3) illicit drug cultivation (cocoa, opium poppy, & cannabis). Results are interesting and some are a bit surprising.

Think for a moment about which of these three resources - gems, hydrocarbons, or drugs - you would immediately associate with an increase in combat deaths. Here's a hint - Two of them are linked to an increase in deaths and one is associated with fewer deaths. OK - if you read the headline, you know the answer. Drug cultivation inside conflict zones is linked to fewer - yes, fewer - combat deaths and a lower battle death rate. Tony Addison and colleagues - in analyzing African conflicts - have suggested that this kind of effect may occur because combatants on both sides of a conflict spend some proportion of their time looting resources rather than just killing each other.

Gems and hydrocarbons, on the other hand, significantly raised the risk of severity. Gemstone production inside the conflict zone basically doubled the the number of conflict fatalities . Similarly, when oil and gas production existed inside the zone, more than twice as many combat deaths occurred as when that production was absent. The effect was most pronounced in secessionist conflicts. A seemingly significant mechanism in both cases is that conflicts seem to go on longer when these resources are inside the conflict zone. Longer conflicts, of course, tend to produce more deaths.

Drilling down further (no pun intended), though, oil and gas production was associated with lower severity (lower rate and fewer deaths) when it was present in the country/region, but existed outside the conflict zone. Perhaps this is because the resources are less accessible to rebel combatants, and they continue to provide a source of revenue for the government/military, which may then be able to invest more in quashing the rebellion and ending the conflict sooner (shortening the duration).

Though not the focus of this particular study, a couple of incidental severity predictors also emerged:

The comparative size/strength of state military and rebel forces affects severity. The death toll tends to be highest when both force sizes are more equal. When the rebel forces are notable weaker, the rate of overall combat deaths seems to be lower.

Conflicts tended to be more severe when they:

• occurred during the Cold War period
• were fought in mountainous terrain
• were fought in more populated countries and
• were internationalized internal conflicts

Conflicts tended to be less severe in countries that were more democratic and ethnically heterogeneous.

Lujala, P. (2008). Deadly Combat over Natural Resources: Gems, Petroleum, Drugs, and the Severity of Armed Civil Conflict Journal of Conflict Resolution, 53 (1), 50-71 DOI: 10.1177/0022002708327644

Gangs & Insurgencies

John P. Sullivan from the LA Sheriff’s Office and the Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism (CAST) has an interesting analysis this week, published in Small Wars Journal, on the connections between gangs, crime and war. This article summarizes and builds upon some of his work on the topic over the past decade. He proposes a “framework for understanding ‘criminal insurgencies’ where acute and endemic crime and gang violence challenge the solvency of state political control.” Sullivan’s work represents an excellent opportunity to apply criminological research to global security issues. It also causes me to reflect on how the analysis of transnational gangs might also benefit from research and analysis on “armed groups,” including the thoughtful work of folks like Richard Schultz and Andrea Dew. The following are excerpts from Sullivan’s article - RB:

John P. Sullivan. Future Conflict: Criminal Insurgencies, Gangs and Intelligence. Small Wars Journal 5/31/09.

Gangs dominate the intersection between crime and war, particularly in ‘criminal enclaves’ or ’lawless zones’ where civil governance, traditional security structures, and community or social bonds have eroded.

Criminal gangs come in many forms. Some advanced gangs—known as ‘third generation gangs’ and/or maras—are waging ‘wars” and changing the dynamics of crime. In some extreme cases they are waging a de facto criminal insurgency. They are transnational in scope and impact and have the potential to change the nature of war and politics.

Samuel D. Porteous, in “The Threat from Transnational Crime: An Intelligence Perspective,” explains that transnational crime:

• undermines civil society, political systems and state sovereignty by normalizing violence and legitimizing corruption
  
• erodes society by distorting market mechanisms through the disruption of equitable commercial transactions
  
• degrades the environment by sidelining environmental regulation and safeguards.

Examining Cartel Evolution

1st Phase Cartel (Aggressive Competitor) : The first phase cartel form originated in Colombia during the 1980s and arose as an outcome of increasing US cocaine demand. This type of cartel, characterized by the Medellín model, realized economies of scale not known to the individual cocaine entrepreneurs of the mid-1970s. This early cartel was an aggressive competitor to the Westphalian state because of its propensity for extreme violence and willingness to directly challenge the authority of the state.

2nd Phase Cartel (Subtle Co-Opter): The second phase cartel form also originally developed in Colombia, but in this instance, is centered in the city of Cali. Unlike their Medellín counterparts, the Cali cartel was shadowy organization devoid of an actual kingpin. Its organization is more distributed and network-like, rather than hierarchical. Many of its characteristics and activities were stealth-masked and dispersed, which yielded many operational capabilities not possessed by the first phase cartel form. Specifically, it possessed leadership clusters that are more difficult to identify and target with a decapitation attack.

3rd Phase Cartel (Criminal State Successor) : Third Phase Cartels, if and when they emerge, have the potential to pose a significant challenge to the modern nation-state and its institutions. A Third Phase Cartel is a consequence of unremitting corruption and co-option of state institutions. While this "criminal state successor" has yet to emerge, warning signs of its eventual arrival are present in many states worldwide. Of current importance in the United States are the conditions favoring narco- or criminal-state evolution in Mexico. Essentially, third phase cartels rule criminal enclaves, acting much like warlords.

Transnational gangs are another state challenger. Transnational maras have evolved into a transnational security concern throughout North and Central America. Transnational gangs can be defined as having one or more of the following characteristics:

• criminally active and operational in more than one country;


• criminal operations committed by gangsters in one country are planned, directed, and controlled by leadership in another country;


• they are mobile and adapt to new areas of operations; and

• their activities are sophisticated and transcend borders.

Gangs have evolved as they have been influenced over time by : politicization, internationalization, and sophistication. The three generations of gangs can be described as follows:

Turf: First Generation Gangs are traditional street gangs with a turf orientation. Operating at the lower end of extreme societal violence, they have loose leadership and focus their attention on turf protection and gang loyalty within their immediate environs (often a few blocks or a neighborhood). When they engage in criminal enterprise, it is largely opportunistic and local in scope. These turf gangs are limited in political scope and sophistication.

Market: Second Generation Gangs are engaged in business. They are entrepreneurial and drug-centered. They protect their markets and use violence to control their competition. They have a broader, market-focused, sometimes overtly political agenda and operate in a broader spatial or geographic area. Their operations sometimes involve multi-state and even international areas. Their tendency for centralized leadership and sophisticated operations for market protection places them in the center of the range of politicization, internationalization and sophistication.

Mercenary/Political: Third Generation Gangs have evolved political aims. They operate—or seek to operate—at the global end of the spectrum, using their sophistication to garner power, aid financial acquisition and engage in mercenary-type activities. To date, most third generation (3 GEN) gangs have been primarily mercenary in orientation; yet, in some cases they have sought to further their own political and social objectives.

Bruneau, paraphrased below, describes five (multi) national security threats or challenges associated with transnational maras:

• They strain government capacity by overwhelming police and legal systems
  through sheer audacity, violence, and numbers.


• They challenge the legitimacy of the state, particularly in regions where the culture of democracy is challenged by corruption and reinforced by the inability of political systems to function well enough to provide public goods and services.


• They act as surrogate or alternate governments. For example in some regions (i.e., El Salvador and Guatemala) the “governments have all but given up in some areas of
  the capitals, and the maras extract taxes on individuals and businesses.”


• They dominate the informal economic sector, establishing small
  businesses and using violence and coercion to unfairly compete with legitimate
  businesses while avoiding taxes and co-opting government regulators.


• They infiltrate police and non-governmental organizations to further
  their goals and in doing so demonstrate latent political aims.

Sullivan’s Conclusion: "Intelligence and operational art need to be closely integrated. A high degree of co-ordination and co-operation among government agencies and community groups at all levels of governance is needed. This requires both police forces and intelligence services need to co-operate across borders to gain understanding and achieve the ‘co-production” of intelligence necessary to counter transnational criminal threats."

Fact and Fiction About Child Soldiers

Scott Gates and Simon Reich, coeditors of the forthcoming book Child Soldiers in the Age of Fractured States, have become mythbusters in the study of child soldiers in armed conflict. In a web exclusive story on ForeignPolicy.com, they reveal “what human rights activists never tell you about young killers.” They address the following six points of conventional wisdom and offer their response to each.

1. "Child Soldiering Is a Human Rights Issue."

Gates and Reich do not deny that child soldiers are exploited casualties of conflict, but they also point out – even beyond the moral hazard – their proliferation poses geostrategic and development risks as well. Though children, they are also soldiers - often mobilized as cheap and expendable labor to commit atrocities and used for strategic advantage. The legacy of those who survive their childhood is a continuing risk for stability.

2. "There Are 300,000 Child Soldiers in the World."

Gates and Reich suggest the true global number is unknown and perhaps unknowable, but this often cited figure from the 1990s probably overestimates the scope today. They argue that – for strategy and development - it would be more useful to count by country, rather than globally. We could learn what proportion of a country’s child population was engaged in soldiering and what proportion of soldiers in a conflict were children. They say “child soldiers have constituted more than a quarter of all belligerents in many conflicts, including at least nine in Africa over the last two decades.”

3. "Most Child Soldiers Are African Boys."

“Not even close” Gates and Reich say. First, child soldiers have a variety of rols from support to armed fighting – so some prefer the term "children associated with fighting forces." Second, girls are a bigger part of the effort than you might think – they have fought in more than 40 conflicts over the past 20 years and comprise as much as 40% of some armed groups. Third, they point out “child soldiering is a global phenomenon, not simply an African one. More than 70 military organizations in 19 countries around the world recruited and used them in armed hostilities between 2004 and 2007.”

4. "Globalization Created Child Soldiering."

Gates and Reich say, bluntly, this is wrong; that child soldiering has existed for thousands of years. Ancient Spartans used boys as young as seven. They say the view of childhood (as a time for protection and nurture) and level of awareness have changed.

5. "Child Soldiers Are No Match for Western Militaries."

This is only true, the authors suggest, in “conventional combat” but most of the conflicts in which they are employed are irregular and asymmetric, where they have some advantage over convention military forces. Conventional soldiers often do not know how to respond to a child who is armed or suspected of being armed – perhaps even as a suicide bomber.

6. "Our Current Approach to Ending Child Soldiering Is Working."

Gates and Reich point out that current strategies focus on deterrence (prosecuting the adult recruiters) and demobilization (taking away the children's guns and sending them home), but neither approach goes far enough. Brokers of child soldiers are undeterred by sanctions because they believe (often correctly) they will not get caught or will ultimately be granted amnesty. The demobilization programs (like current “deradicalization” programs globally, I would note) are mixed. Often they exclude the eligibility important groups (like girls) or mis-train them for re-integration.

How Armed Groups Make Money from Crime

In the latest issue of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Bilal Saab and Alexandra Taylor look at the different ways in which Colombian armed groups are connected to criminal activity.

Transnational crime poses a daunting economic security problem. The volume of activity, including the $300-500 billion drug trade, accounts for between 2 and 5 % of the global GDP. Pretty remarkable.

That connections exist between armed groups, including guerillas and insurgents, and transnational crime is rather obvious, but how the connections work is a bit more complicated. Some theories suggest that armed political group develop business arrangements with existing criminal organizations. Others, however, suggest that the once-politically motivated groups are themselves morphing into criminal enterprises. To put it simply: some partner with crime specialists, while others develop their own “in-house” capacity.

“One fundamental characteristic, however, distinguishes armed insurgent groups from organized criminals. Participants in organized crime are motivated by the pursuit of profit, while armed insurgent groups use profits from crime as a means to support their political goals. For an armed group to transition into a criminal organization, it would need to supplant its political motivations with a drive to pursue illegal profits.” P. 457

Saab and Taylor analyze these relationships among the major sub-state armed groups in modern Colombia: (1) The loose coalition of paramilitaries previously organized under the recently demobilized Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) and (2) what was once one of the largest guerrilla organizations in the world, Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—FARC). Both enterprises – the authors suggest – “derive the majority of their revenues from criminal activities, including kidnapping, extortion, and the protection, production, and trafficking of Andean-grown narcotics. However, paramilitary groups and FARC differ in the level and form of their participation in the international drug trade.” (p. 455)

The authors note that “before its demobilization, the AUC developed the ability engage in almost all levels of drug production and trafficking without resorting to alliances with autonomous criminal organizations (p. 463-4).” They established a vertical presence in the drug trade, as they essentially morphed into a criminal enterprise. FARC, on the other hand, controlled a substantial amount of coca, but made some tactical alliances with a several criminal groups to handle the trafficking and distribution, and instead focused their “in-house” criminal infrastructure development to support
kidnapping and extortion.

“Proponents of “in-house” criminality theories persuasively explain why armed groups and organized criminals would generally avoid collaboration. Such interaction is risky and may increase the likelihood of law enforcement surveillance, and generally such groups are likely to regard each other as market competitors and even political opponents, as violent political insurgents and terrorists seek to upset a comfortable status-quo enjoyed by criminal organizations. Despite these drawbacks, and based on the examples of FARC and the AUC, this article suggests two possible reasons why armed groups would choose to form alliances with criminal organizations over developing “in-house” criminal capabilities. First, some criminal activities—like trafficking and distributing narcotics—require resources and networks that are difficult and costly for an armed group to create. Second, the political environment may make certain criminal activities too politically costly for an armed group to be associated with; thus, armed groups may prefer to form short-term agreements with criminal groups and deny that their members take part in such activities.” P. 468

Saab, B., & Taylor, A. (2009). Criminality and Armed Groups: A Comparative Study of FARC and Paramilitary Groups in Colombia Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 32 (6), 455-475 DOI: 10.1080/10576100902892570

Social/Behavioral Science & Security

Throughout the post-industrial era, science and technology have been central to understanding both global security threats and possible solutions. Within the US and across the globe, major scientific organizations have developed Committees and working groups to integrate science with security policy, however, those efforts have focused almost exclusively on physical/life sciences and been applied predominantly to WMD-related threats．

Although high-tech and catastrophic issues maintain their relevance, the contemporary global security environment has increasingly diffused, evolved in complexity, and become more “human.”

The concept of “national security” for the US and of “global security” for the international community have necessarily broadened to adapt to the demands of this new environment. Security no longer centers on a static tension between two large state superpowers.

It must now concern itself with weak and corrupt governments, not just strong ones.

It must contend with non-state actors and violent extremists who pose a more grave and present danger than any single nation.

It must struggle with the fact that genocide and insurgencies are more prominent and more likely than conventional military standoffs, and that transnational criminal enterprises – from drugs to human trafficking – are deeply interconnected with social, economic and political conflicts.

It must confront and account for the reality that global climate change, energy crises, shortages of potable water, poverty and hunger threaten lives and challenge development. And it must appreciate that this diverse array of threats is dynamic and transactive.

The social and behavioral sciences offer theories and findings that might enhance our understanding of security issues, but they also offer a method of systematic inquiry to develop new knowledge.

A Report from the National Research Council (2002) suggests, for example, :

With regard to security concerns, the social sciences could focus on the precise nature of current “threats” to national and global security, including investigations of the culture of terrorist groups and the structure of terrorist networks. In addition, the social sciences could inform us about the difference between Cold War approaches and strategies for coping with biological threats, terrorist attacks, and stateless violence.

There are many ways in which the study of human behavior – at individual and collective levels – can inform policy and provide a platform for a more empirically-informed multidisicplinary science of national and global security.

It is in the long-term interest of the U.S. and the international community to encourage social/behavioral scientists to engage with each other around global security issues and to connect them with the security enterprise.

Accordingly, this blog is designed to serve as a resource for social/behavioral scientists interested in security issues and for security professionals interested in what science has to say about human behavior.