Fallout from Tibet: dueling interpretations of the PRC’s response.

The role, that of a modern country embracing the world, has already been compromised by the unrest in Tibet and the way the world is viewing the government’s reaction, the analysts said. Shambaugh, at George Washington University, characterized the government’s attempt so far to manage its image in the aftermath of the violence as “heavy-handed” — resorting to vilification of the Dalai Lama and questioning the motives of foreign critics.

“The government is not particularly adept at public diplomacy, as they define it as ‘external propaganda’ and pursue it as such,” he said.

But a Beijing-based scholar and political analyst said some party factions do not care much about China’s image abroad, even in this Olympic year, provided the party is seen to be firmly in control. “A lot of these guys in a crisis go into the default mode, and that is: Crack down,” he said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive subject.

Does anyone have sources analyzing which party factions are less concerned with China’s image abroad and why? This offers an excellent entree for some exploration of the organizational dynamics of the CCP.

An interesting attack vector presumably coming from PRC sources to gather intel on the Tibet protesters and their allies: using pro-Tibet mailings to get people to open usually safe attachments (.pdf, .doc) which install a keystroke logger on the target computer.

This is particularly interesting given the PRC’s stated IW strategy of developing “human wave” cyber attacks. Interesting because this is

• A) not a human wave attack (it would have required a very small group of “information warriors” [1]) and
• B) an example of a type of attack that could be used to hamper an “info militia.”

[H/T Bruce Schneier]

[1] If a spy is a con man who works for the government, then an “information warrior” is a hacker who happens to get a government paycheck.

What would an index fund for strategy look like? Is there a basic national security approach that would be cheaper than those currently in use? The answer to this question has applicability to both what strategies we actually follow and how we judge alternative strategies.

A few days old, but this SWJ post and ensuing comment thread brings some primary actors together. Lieutenant Colonel Gian Gentile criticizes FM 3-24, finding it wanting in comparison to the process of reevaluation that led to FM 100-5.

Steven Metz, Frederick Kagan, and John Nagl all participate in the discussion.

[Like clockwork, as soon as I put a radio silence post up, I find myself posting something in spite of it…]

Spurred by Mark’s stimulating prompt, some thoughts on the Golden Age of RAND.

A confluence of unique trends combined to create RAND’s Golden Age. The organizational dynamics in particular were extraordinary. An entirely new service leapt into being, Athena-like, endowed with birth with the capability to deliver the most destructive weapons yet designed. The confluence of no institutional inertia, extraordinary power and budgetary security gave the Air Force latitude that it, in turn, could transitively provide to RAND. The creative tension between the freedom to explore and all-consuming urgency to address the most pressing strategic questions of the day drove extraordinary advances.

Where are the equivalent confluences in the 21st Century’s trends? Is the entire think tank model tapped out? Do we need to move to a more distributed and indirect model, where people don’t get paid directly for the value they create or they are compensated through a far-flung network of prediction markets, freelance writing, and self-organizing research programs? If we do want to walk that path, then we’ll need some David Hilberts to step up and propose some programs of research. In other words, we need some common orientations to direct the ambitious energy of rising stars towards a series of problems that will move us towards our goal.

And we need it done yesterday, of course.

Heads up folks: some radio silence for the next few days (not that it’s THAT unusual here). Doing some excellent crisis simulation work.

The central metaphor of Lind’s latest essay mixes several meanings of “linear.” In his usage, “linear” alternatively means:

• “straight fortifications,”
• “physical assets literally positioned in a line,”
• “a tactical and operational concept whereby units form a contiguious front”
• “assuming sequential strategies” (as opposed to cumulative strategies)
• “assuming progress without setbacks”
• “forecasting based on a linear extrapolation of past trends”
• “order” (because apparently non-linearity equates with chaos)

By lumping so many different criticisms under the same concept, Lind turns “linearity” into a vaguely pejorative term describing all that is wrong with the US military. If being linear is bad, then does that mean that being non-linearity would be good? What would a non-linear US military look like?

Lind doesn’t answer this; he only uses non-linear as a description of reality. So what constructive conclusion can one to take away from all this? Given Lind’s ambigious use of the concept of “linearity” the answer could range from “don’t build 19th Century fortification” to “don’t forecast based on linear extrapolations.”

This ambiguity paints Lind into a corner, as his conclusion demonstrates. After finding numerous ways to call the US military linear, his advise reduces to “don’t be linear.”

It will happen from time to time that the chaos shakes out into patterns in which we can see linear progress. But the reality remains chaos, which means the patterns will soon reform into other, quite different shapes. We cannot anticipate what those shapes might be. If we can be quick enough, we may be able to use some of those new shapes, as we have used the unexpected outbreak of fighting between local Sunni militias and al Qaeda. What we must not do, if our orientation is to be accurate, is project these kaleidoscopic pattern shifts in linear terms.

Lind could have started his essay with a call for more accurate orientation, demonstrated the need, and then proposed some methods for actually addressing the problem. Instead, he piles on the problem, using “linear” as a vague and universal criticism that obscures instead of clarifies the way forward.

Richard Pearle’s most recent oped cites Albert Wohlstetter’s 1976 essay “Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?” (PDF generously posted by Robert at AlbertWohlstetter.com).

One still encounters the claim that arms races become self-sustaining through an action-reaction cycle as nations accumulate more and more weaponry in the attempt to maintain a relative edge over their rivals. Wohlstetter demonstrated that there actual dynamics are far more complex, but this point never seemed to permiate the larger discourse (meaning that classics like this can be a valuable secret weapon in cutting through presentist debates).

Incidentally, the need to understand some of the other factors that governed Soviet strategic investments drove Andy Marshall’s research program into bureaucractic/organizational behavior.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…

I love xkcd.

In reviewing Chet Richards’ If We Can Keep It, Mark succinctly captures a point I’ve been trying to make for a while.

…I am dissatisfied with the sections dealing with the differentiation between “true insurgencies” and “wars of national liberation” which suffers from some degree of contextual ahistoricality…

Reaching for a dogmatic rule, which the 4GW school is currently doing with “foreign COIN is doomed”, is an error because the more heterodox and fractured the military situation in a country happens to be, the more relative the concepts of “foreigner” and “legitimacy” are going to become to the locals. Rather than binary state vs. insurgents scenarios, historical case studies in military complexity like China 1911-1949, the Spanish Civil War, South Vietnam 1949 -1962, Lebanon 1980’s, West Afrca 1990’s and Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia and Central Africa the 2000’s should be pursued to better understand 4GW and COIN dynamics.

Read the whole thing.

A deeper understanding of these dynamics deserves an organized research program. The first concept - an artifically binary distinction between “foreign COIN” and “native COIN” - has served its purpose by highlighting the need for further work on the subject.