North Korea's Right To Self-Defence.

“If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing” – Malcolm X.

North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un. Picture Credit: Alaska Dispatch News.

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

In condemning North Korea’s latest missile test, but not the large-scale military drills between the United States and South Korea and other shows of force as well, the United Nations Security Council is being true to its stock-in-trade: Hypocrisy. International law itself outlaws even the threat of the use of force, but allows use of force in self-defence. United States show of force against North Korea is a threat of the use of force, while North Korean actions, properly understood, are preparations for the act of self-defence. 

The way I see it, military drills between the United States and South Korea, and flights by nuclear capable bombers, are a threat of the use of force against North Korea. The two countries are essentially perfecting how they will fight North Korea. North Korea thus has every right to perfect how it will fight its enemies when the time comes. 

What is also missing from the headlines is that the United States has harmed North Korea even more grievously through what Johan Galtung called “Structural Violence” – structural violence are all those actions that are not overt violence, but which still result in injury and death (just as would happen had open violence been used). This is precipitant from the United States’ involvement in the 1950 – 1953 Korean War, the United States has since blockaded North Korea for over 6 decades, with the result being stunted economic development for North Korea, and all the human insecurity that that precipitates.

Security Is Development

Diagrammatic representation of this thesis

Security In The Contemporary World

This was Robert S. McNamara's central thesis - that security is development - and; if anyone cares to notice, the world since 1966 (it is now 2017) has unfolded as McNamara predicted.

Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense's Speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Montreal, Canada, May 18th, 1966.

"Security is Development"

Any American would be fortunate to visit this lovely island city, in this hospitable land. But here is a special satisfaction for a Secretary of Defense to cross the longest border in the world and realize that it is also the least armed border in the world. It prompts one to reflect how negative and narrow a notion of defense still clouds our century. There is still among us an almost eradicable tendency to think of our security problem as being exclusively a military problem-and to think of the military problem as being exclusively a weapons-system or hardware problem. 

The plain, blunt truth is that contemporary man still conceives of war and peace in much the same stereotyped terms that his ancestors did. The fact that these ancestors, both recent and remote, were conspicuously unsuccessful at avoiding war, and enlarging peace, doesn't seem to dampen our capacity for cliches. We still tend to conceive of national security almost solely as a state of armed readiness: a vast, awesome arsenal of weaponry. We still tend to assume that it is primarily this purely military ingredient that creates security. We are still haunted by this concept of military hardware. But how limited a concept this actually is becomes apparent when one ponders the kind of peace that exists between the United States and Canada. 

It is a very cogent example. Here we are, two modern nations, highly developed technologically, each with immense territory, both enriched with great reserves of natural resources, each militarily sophisticated; and yet we sit across from one another, divided by an unguarded frontier of thousands of miles, and there is not a remotest set of circumstances, in any imaginable time frame of the future, in which our two nations would wage war on one another. It is so unthinkable an idea as to be totally absurd. But why is that so? 

Is it because we are both ready in an instant to hurl our military hardware at one another? Is it because we are both zeroed in on one another's vital targets? Is it because we are both armed to our technological teeth that we do not go to war? The whole notion, as applied to our two countries, is ludicrous. Canada and the United States are at peace for reasons that have nothing whatever to do with our mutual military readiness. We are at peace-truly at peace- because of the vast fund of compatible beliefs, common principles, and shared ideals. We have our differences and our diversity and let us hope for the sake of a mutually rewarding relationship we never become sterile carbon copies of one another. But the whole point is that our basis of mutual peace has nothing whatever to do with our military hardware. 

Now this is not to say, obviously enough, that the concept of military deterrence is no longer relevant in the contemporary world. Unhappily, it still is critically relevant with respect to our potential adversaries. But it has no relevance whatever between the United States and Canada. We are not adversaries. We are not going to become adversaries. And it is not mutual military deterrence that keeps us from becoming adversaries. It is mutual respect for common principles. Now I mention this-as obvious as it all is-simply as a kind of reductio ad absurdum of the concept that military hardware is the exclusive or even the primary ingredient of permanent peace in the mid - 20th century. 

In the United States over the past 5 years, we have achieved a considerably improved balance in our total military posture. That was the mandate I received from Presidents Kennedy and Johnson; and with their support, and that of the Congress, we have been able to create a strengthened force structure of land, sea, and air components with a vast increase in mobility and materiel and with a massive superiority in nuclear retaliatory power over any combination of potential adversaries. Our capabilities for nuclear, conventional, and counter – subversive war have all been broadened and improved; and we have accomplished this through military budgets that were in fact lesser percentages of our gross national product than in the past. 

From the point of view of combat readiness, the United States has never been militarily stronger. We intend to maintain that readiness. But if we think profoundly about the matter, it is clear that this purely military posture is not the central element in our security. A nation can reach the point at which it does not buy more security for itself simply by buying more military hardware. We are at that point. The decisive factor for a powerful nation already adequately armed is the character of its relationships with the world. 

In this respect, there are three broad groups of nations: first, those that are struggling to develop; secondly, those free nations that have reached a level of strength and prosperity that enables them to contribute to the peace of the world; and finally, those nations who might tempted to make themselves our adversaries. For each of these groups, the United States, to preserve its intrinsic security, has to have distinctive sets of relationships. First, we have to help protect those developing countries which genuinely need and request our help and which, as an essential precondition, are willing and able to help themselves. 

Second, we have to encourage and achieve a more effective partnership with those nations who can and should share international peacekeeping responsibilities. Third, we must do all we realistically can to reduce the risk of conflict with those who might be tempted to take up arms against us. Let us examine these three sets of relationships in detail. 

The Developing Nations: 

First, the developing nations. Roughly 100 countries today are caught up in the difficult transition from traditional to modern societies. There is no uniform rate of progress among them, and they range from primitive mosaic societies fractured by tribalism and held feebly together by the slenderest of political sinews to relatively sophisticated countries well on the road to agricultural sufficiency and industrial competence. This sweeping surge of development, particularly across the whole southern half of the globe, has no parallel in history. It has turned traditionally listless areas of the world into seething cauldrons of change.On the whole, it has not been a very peaceful process. 

In the last 8 years alone there have been no less than 164 internationally significant outbreaks of violence, each of them specifically designed as a serious challenge to the authority, or the very existence, of the government in question. Eighty two different governments have been directly involved. What is striking is that only 15 of these 164 significant resorts to violence have been military conflicts between two states. And not a single one of the 164 conflicts has been a formally declared war. Indeed, there has not been a formal declaration of war anywhere in the world since World War II. 

The planet is becoming a more dangerous place to live on, not merely because of a potential nuclear holocaust but also because of the large number of de facto conflicts and because the trend of such conflicts is growing rather than diminishing. At the beginning of 1958, there were 23 prolonged insurgencies going on about the world. As of February 1, 1966, there were 40. Further, the total number of outbreaks of violence has increased each year: In 1958, there were 34; in 1965, there were 58. 

The Relationship of Violence and Economic Status: 

But what is most significant of all is that there is a direct and constant relationship between the incidence of violence and the economic status of the countries afflicted. The World Bank divides nations on the basis of per capita income into four categories: rich, middle income, poor, and very poor. 

The rich nations are those with a per capita income of $750 per year or more. The current U.S. level is more than $2,700. There are 27 of these rich nations. They possess 75 percent of the world's wealth, though roughly only 25 percent of the world's population. Since 1958, only one of these 27 nations has suffered a major internal upheaval on its own territory. 

But observe what happens at the other end of the economic scale. Among the 38 very poor nations those with a per capita income of under $100 a year not less than 32 have suffered significant conflicts. Indeed, they have suffered an average of two major outbreaks of violence per country in the 8 year period. That is a great deal of conflict. What is worse, it has been predominantly conflict of a prolonged nature. The trend holds predictably constant in the case of the two other categories: the poor and the middle income nations. Since 1958, 87 percent of the very poor nations, 69 percent of the poor nations, and 48 percent of the middle income nations have suffered serious violence. 

There can, then, be no question but that there is an irrefutable relationship between violence and economic backwardness. And the trend of such violence is up, not down. Now, it would perhaps be somewhat reassuring if the gap between the rich nations and the poor nations were closing and economic backwardness were significantly receding. But it is not. The economic gap is widening. 

By the year 1970 over one half of the world's total population will live in the independent nations sweeping across the southern half of the planet. But this hungering half of the human race will by then command only one sixth of the world's total of goods and services. By the year 1975 the dependent children of these nations alone children under 15 years of age will equal the total population of the developed nations to the north. 

Even in our own abundant societies, we have reason enough to worry over the tensions that coil and tighten among under-privileged young people and finally flail out in delinquency and crime. What are we to expect from a whole hemisphere of youth where mounting frustrations are likely to fester into eruptions of violence and extremism? 

Annual per capita income in roughly half of the 80 underdeveloped nations that are members of the World Bank is rising by a paltry 1 percent a year or less. By the end of the century these nations, at their present rates of growth, will reach a per capita income of barely $170 a year. The United States, by the same criterion, will attain a per capita income of $4,500. The conclusion to all of this is blunt and inescapable: Given the certain connection between economic stagnation and the incidence of violence, the years that lie ahead for the nations in the southern half of the globe are pregnant with violence. 

U.S. Security and the Newly Developing World: 

This would be true even if no threat of Communist subversion existed is it clearly does. Both Moscow and Peking, however harsh their internal differences, regard the whole modernization process as an ideal environment for the growth of communism. Their experience with subversive internal war is extensive, and they have developed a considerable array of both doctrine and practical measures in the art of political violence. What is often misunderstood is that Communists are capable of subverting, manipulating, and finally directing for their own ends the wholly legitimate grievances of a developing society. 

But it would be a gross oversimplification to regard communism as the central factor in every conflict throughout the underdeveloped world. Of the 149 serious internal insurgencies in the past 8 years, Communists have been involved in only 58 of them - 8 percent of the total- and this includes seven instances in which a Communist regime itself was the target of the uprising. 

Whether Communists are involved or not, violence anywhere in a taut world transmits sharp signals through the complex gangli of international relations; and the security of the United States is related to the security and stability of nations half a globe away. But neither conscience nor sanity itself suggests that the United States is, should or could be the global gendarme. Quite the contrary. Experience confirms what human nature suggests: that in most instances of internal violence the local people themselves are best able to deal directly with the situation within the framework of their own traditions. 

The United States has no mandate from on high to police the world and no inclination to do so. There have been classic case in which our deliberate non-action was the wisest action of all. Where our help is not sought, it is seldom prudent to volunteer. Certainly we have no charter to rescue floundering regimes who have brought violence on themselves by deliberately refusing to meet the legitimate expectations of their citizenry. 

Further, throughout the next decade advancing technology will reduce the requirements for bases and staging rights at particular locations abroad, and the whole pattern of forward deployment will gradually change. But, though all these caveats are clear enough, the irreducible fact remains that our security is related directly to the security of the newly developing world. And our role must be precisely this: to help provide security to those developing nations which genuinely need and request our help and which demonstrably are willing and able to help themselves. 

Security and Development: 

The rub comes in this: We do not always grasp the meaning of the word "security" in this context. In a modernizing society, security means development. Security is not military hardware, though it may include it. Security is not military force, though it may involve it. Security is not traditional military activity, though it may encompass it. Security is development. Without development, there can be no security. A developing nation that does not in fact develop simply cannot remain "secure." It cannot remain secure for the intractable reason that its own citizenry cannot shed its human nature. 

If security implies anything, it implies a minimal measure of order and stability. Without internal development of at least a minimal degree, order and stability are simply not possible. They are not possible because human nature cannot be frustrated beyond intrinsic limits. It reacts because it must. 

Now, that is what we do not always understand, and that is also what governments of modernizing nations do not always understand. But by emphasizing that security arises from development, I do not say that an underdeveloped nation cannot be subverted from within, or be aggressed upon from without, or be the victim of a combination of the two. It can. And to prevent any or all of these conditions, a nation does require appropriate military capabilities to deal with the specific problem. But the specific military problem is only a narrow facet of the broader security problem. 

Military force can help provide law and order but only to the degree that a basis for law and order already exists in the developing society: a basic willingness on the part of the people to cooperate. The law and order is a shield, behind which the central fact of security – development - can be achieved.  

Now we are not playing a semantic game with these words. The trouble is that we have been lost in a semantic jungle for too long. We have come to identify "security" with exclusively military phenomena, and most particularly with military hardware. But it just isn't so. And we need to accommodate to the facts of the matter if we want to see security survive and grow in the southern half of the globe. 

Development means economic, social, and political progress. It means a reasonable standard of living, and the word "reasonable" in this context requires continual redefinition. What is "reasonable" in an earlier stage of development will become "unreasonable" in a later stage. As development progresses, security progresses. And when the people of a nation have organized their own human and natural resources to provide themselves with what they need and expect out of life and have learned to compromise peacefully among competing demands in the larger national interest then their resistance to disorder and violence will be enormously increased. Conversely, the tragic need of desperate men to resort to force to achieve the inner imperatives of human decency will diminish. 

Military and Economic Spheres of U.S. Aid: 

Now, I have said that the role of the United States is to help provide security to these modernizing nations, providing they need and request our help and are clearly willing and able to help themselves. But what should our help be? Clearly, it should be help toward development. In the military sphere, that involves two broad categories of assistance. 

We should help the developing nation with such training and equipment as is necessary to maintain the protective shield behind which development can go forward. The dimensions of that shield vary from country to country, but what is essential is that it should be a shield and not a capacity for external aggression. The second, and perhaps less understood category of military assistance in a modernizing nation, is training in civic action. Civic action is another one of those semantic puzzles. Too few Americans and too few officials in developing nations really comprehend what military civic action means. Essentially, it means using indigenous military forces for nontraditional military projects, projects that are useful to the local population in fields such as education, public works, health, sanitation, agriculture - indeed, anything connected with economic or social progress. 

It has had some impressive results. In the past 4 years the U.S. assisted civic action program, worldwide, has constructed or repaired more than 10,000 miles of roads, built over 1,000 schools, hundreds of hospitals and clinics, and has provided medical and dental care to approximately 4 million people. What is important is that all this was done by indigenous men in uniform. Quite apart from the developmental projects themselves, the program powerfully alters the negative image of the military man as the oppressive preserver of the stagnant status quo. 

But assistance in the purely military sphere is not enough. Economic assistance is also essential. The President is determined that our aid should be hard-headed and rigorously realistic, that it should deal directly with the roots of underdevelopment and not merely attempt to alleviate the symptoms. His bedrock principle is that U.S. economic aid - no matter what its magnitude - is futile unless the country in question is resolute in making the primary effort itself. That will be the criterion, and that will be the crucial condition for all our future assistance. 

Only the developing nations themselves can take the fundamental measures that make outside assistance meaningful. These measures are often unpalatable and frequently call for political courage and decisiveness. But to fail to undertake painful, but essential, reform inevitably leads to far more painful revolutionary violence. Our economic assistance is designed to offer a reasonable alternative to that violence. It is designed to help substitute peaceful progress for tragic internal conflict. 

The United States intends to be compassionate and generous in this effort, but it is not an effort it can carry exclusively by itself. And thus it looks to those nations who have reached the point of self-sustaining prosperity to increase their contribution to the development and, thus, to the security of the modernizing world. 

Sharing Peacekeeping Responsibilities: 

And that brings me to the second set of relationships that I underscored at the outset; it is the policy of the United States to encourage and achieve a more effective partnership with those nations who can, and should, share international peacekeeping responsibilities. 

America has devoted a higher proportion of its gross national product to its military establishment than any other major free-world nation. This was true even before our increased expenditures in Southeast Asia. We have had, over the last few years, as many men in uniform as all the nations of Western Europe combined, even though they have a population half again greater than our own. 

Now, the American people are not going to shirk their obligations in any part of the world, but they clearly cannot be expected to bear a disproportionate share of the common burden indefinitely. If, for example, other nations genuinely believe - as they say they do - that it is in the common interest to deter the expansion of Red China's economic and political control beyond its national boundaries, then they must take a more active role in guarding the defense perimeter. Let me be perfectly clear. This is not to question the policy of neutralism or nonalignment of any particular nation. But it is to emphasize that the independence of such nations can, in the end, be fully safeguarded only by collective agreements among themselves and their neighbors. 

The plain truth is the day is coming when no single nation, however powerful, can undertake by itself to keep the peace outside its own borders. Regional and international organizations for peacekeeping purposes are as yet rudimentary, but they must grow in experience and be strengthened by deliberate and practical cooperative action. 

In this matter, the example of Canada is a model for nations everywhere. As Prime Minister Pearson pointed out eloquently in New York just last week: Canada "is as deeply involved in the world's affairs as any country of its size. We accept this because we have learned over 50 years that isolation from the policies that determine war does not give us immunity from the bloody, sacrificial consequences of their failure. We learned that in 1914 and again in 1939. . . . That is why we have been proud to send our men to take part in every peacekeeping operation of the United Nations in Korea, and Kashmir, and the Suez, and the Congo, and Cyprus." 

The Organization of American States in the Dominican Republic, the more than 30 nations contributing troops or supplies to assist the Government of South Viet Nam, indeed even the parallel efforts of the United States and the Soviet Union in the Pakistan-India conflict these efforts, together with those of the U.N., are the first attempts to substitute multinational for unilateral policing of violence. They point to the peacekeeping patterns of the future. 

We must not merely applaud the idea. We must dedicate talent, resources, and hard practical thinking to its implementation. In Western Europe, an area whose burgeoning economic vitality stands as a monument to the wisdom of the Marshall Plan, the problems of security are neither static nor wholly new. Fundamental changes are under way, though certain inescapable realities remain. The conventional forces of NATO, for example, still require a nuclear backdrop far beyond the capability of any Western European nation to supply, and the United States is fully committed to provide that major nuclear deterrent. 

However, the European members of the alliance have a natural desire to participate more actively in nuclear planning. A central task of the alliance today is, therefore, to work out the relationships and institutions through which shared nuclear planning can be effective. We have made a practical and promising start in the Special Committee of NATO Defense Ministers. 

Common planning and consultation are essential aspects of any sensible substitute to the unworkable and dangerous alternative of independent national nuclear forces within the alliance. And even beyond the alliance we must find the means to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. That is a clear imperative. There are, of course, risks in non-proliferation arrangements, but they cannot be compared with the infinitely greater risks that would arise out of the increase in national nuclear stockpiles. In the calculus of risk, to proliferate independent national nuclear forces is not a mere arithmetical addition of danger. We would not be merely adding up risks. We would be insanely multiplying them. 

If we seriously intend to pass on a world to our children that is not threatened by nuclear holocaust, we must come to grips with the problem of proliferation. A reasonable non-proliferation agreement is feasible. For there is no adversary with whom we do not share a common interest in avoiding mutual destruction triggered by an irresponsible nth power. 

Dealing With Potential Adversaries: 

That brings me to the third and last set of relationships the United States must deal with: those with nations who might be tempted to take up arms against us. These relationships call for realism. But realism is not a hardened, inflexible, unimaginative attitude. The realistic mind is a restlessly creative mind, free of naive delusions but full of practical alternatives. There are practical alternatives to our current relationships with both the Soviet Union and Communist China. A vast ideological chasm separates us from them and to a degree separates them from one another. There is nothing to be gained from our seeking an ideological rapproachment; but breaching the isolation of great nations like Red China, even when that isolation is largely of its own making reduces the danger of potentially catastrophic misunderstandings and increase the incentive on both sides to resolve disputes by reason rather than by force. 

There are many ways in which we can build bridges toward nations who would cut themselves off from meaningful contact with us. We can do so with properly balanced trade relations, diplomatic contacts and in some cases even by exchanges of military observers. We have to know when it is we want to place this bridge, what sort of traffic we want to travel over it, an on what mutual foundations the whole structure can be designed. There are no one cliff bridges. If you are going to span a chasm, you have to rest the structure on both cliffs. Now cliffs, generally speaking, are rather hazardous places. Some people are afraid even to look over the edge. But in a thermonuclear world, we cannot afford any political acrophobia. 

President Johnson has put the matter squarely: By building bridges to those who make themselves our adversaries, "we can help gradually to create a community of interest, a community of trust, and a community of effort." With respect to a "community of effort" let me suggest a concrete proposal for our own present young generation in the United States. It is a committed and dedicated generation. It has proven that in its enormously impressive performance in the Peace Corps overseas and in its willingness to volunteer for a final assault on such poverty and lack of opportunity that still remain in our own country. 

As matters stand, our present Selective Service System draws on only a minority of eligible young men. That is an inequity. It seems to me that we could move toward remedying that inequity by asking every young person in the United States to give 2 years of service to his country whether in one of the military services, in the Peace Corps, or in some other volunteer developmental work at home or abroad. 

We could encourage other countries to do the same, and we could work out exchange programs much as the Peace Corps is already planning to do. While this is not an altogether new suggestion, it has been criticized as inappropriate while we are engaged in a shooting war. But I believe precisely the opposite is the case. It is more appropriate now than ever. For it would underscore what our whole purpose is in Vietnam and indeed anywhere in the world where coercion, or injustice, or lack of decent opportunity still holds sway. It would make meaningful the central concept of security a world of decency and development where every man can feel that his personal horizon is rimmed with hope. 

Mutual interest, mutual trust, mutual effort those are the goals. Can we achieve those goals with the Soviet Union, and with Communist China? Can they achieve them with one another? The answer to these questions lies in the answer to an even more fundamental question. Who is man? Is he a rational animal? If he is, then the goals can ultimately be achieved. If he is not, then there is little point in making the effort. 

All the evidence of history suggests that man is indeed a rational animal but with a near infinite capacity for folly. His history seems largely a halting, but persistent, effort to raise his reason above his animality. He draws blueprints for utopia. But never quite gets it built. In the end he plugs away obstinately with the only building material really ever at hand his own part-comic, part-tragic, part-cussed, but part-glorious nature. 

I, for one, would not count a global free society out. Coercion, after all, merely captures man. Freedom captivates him.

Russian Involvement in Syria: Enforcing Its United Nations Security Council Veto.

“Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquillity for an apparent temporary advantage” - Thucydides, The History Of The Peloponnesian War, 5th Century B.C.

Ambassador Vitaly Churkin of the Russian Federation at the United Nations Security Council.

by Kudakwashe Kanhutu

The Western mainstream media has been working hard to portray Russia’s involvement in the Syria conflict, on the invitation of the legitimate government there, as an act of misplaced geopolitical ambitions which has prolonged the conflict and suffering. The Western media and government officials are peddling the idea that Russia is on the wrong side of history and international law. I cannot say much about who is on the right and wrong side of history, as that is a subjective determination. In Libya, the intervention in 2011 was claimed by the same sources to be on the right side of history – a narrative which is belied by the facts of Libya today. We can, however, say something definitive about Russia’s intervention in Syria vis-à-vis International Law.

The closest the international society of states has to a Constitution (a repository of public international law), is the United Nations Charter, and the highest enforcement body of the United Nations is the Security Council (UNSC). Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter is where the Security Council’s powers and functions are described. The UNSC sits in deliberation over breaches of international law and passes binding United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCR). Any one of the five Permanent Members can block the passing of a Resolution by resorting to its Veto power. The Veto is a mechanism which allows a Permanent Security Council to block the passing of a United Nations Security Council Resolution. Once the Veto has been deployed, no actions that undermine that Veto should be taken by the other Members of the international community. A Permanent Security Council Member thus has three options available to it when deliberating a Resolution: Vote for, Abstain, or Veto. The United States tends to Veto all Resolutions demanding that Israel should observe rules of common decency in its occupation of Palestine. Once the United States vetoes a Resolution on Israel, the matter is closed.

I have characterised Russia’s intervention in Syria as enforcing its United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Veto. I am thus talking about something that is only happening because, in pursuit of its perceived exceptionalism, the United States and its allies have chosen to deliberately circumvent Russia’s Veto of the UNSC Resolution on Syria. Syria, too, cannot be discussed in isolation from Libya and the UNSC Vote authorising use of force there. The Russian Federation abstained from the UNSC Resolution establishing a No-Fly Zone over Libya, the United States then overstepped the limits of the Resolution and effected Regime Change in Libya. The result is that Libya is now in a state of anarchy. Russia, having given the United States the proverbial enough rope in Libya, rightly, vetoed the Resolution proposing protection of civilians in Syria. Experience had shown that protection of civilians is only a cover for the United States’ geopolitical manoeuvres. Having failed to get the Resolution, the United States decided to still give arms to the rebels and terrorists fighting the Syrian Arab Army, in direct contravention of the rules of Security Council Veto.

Russia’s intervention in Syria should then be viewed in the light of these facts. Russia and Iran are the only countries that are in Syria legally. Turkey, the United States, United Kingdom, France and Jordan are in Syria illegally. Use of force without a United Nations Security Council Resolution is illegal, as is being in a country without the invitation of the legitimate government of that country. Russia is in Syria on the request of the Syrian Arab Republic government, and Russia’s actions have so far prevented regime change there, as would have been the case had the UNSC Resolution on Syria passed. The Veto, therefore, has been enforced.     

Alexander Prokhorenko, the Russian Spetsnaz Operative who called an airstrike on himself to avoid being taken prisoner by ISIS in Syria.

Book Review. A Great Perhaps? Colombia: Conflict and Convergence.

“Always remember that the most important thing in a good marriage is not happiness, but stability” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombian Author.

Myself with two of the authors - Dickie Davis and David Kilcullen - at the book launch in London.

On 16 May 2016, I attended the A Great Perhaps? London Book Launch at the Royal United Services Institute, Whitehall. I did not manage to engage in the actual discussion myself because, up to then, my knowledge of Colombia was very limited. But this has since changed after I managed to finish reading this book in a record 4 days, despite my other commitments. I now know enough to have a competent discussion on Colombia, as this book has illuminated a part of the globe that was previously dark to me. 

The book is very readable (and accessible) even to a non-academic readership. I have sometimes read books that are quite useless to the policy-maker as they are laden with high sounding academic premises and analyses that have no relation with reality, the type that is often referred to by the shorthand - “ivory tower speculation.” This book avoids that pitfall. The authors have military backgrounds in counterinsurgency campaigns such as the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan and, therefore, manage to get the balance right between academic premise and practicality. A Great Perhaps? thus succeeds in its main stated aim, that is, to furnish the policy-maker with actionable intelligence insofar as it explains the dynamics of Colombia’s conflict, and what lessons can be drawn from them by African governments.

The whole of government approach (Defence, Development, Diplomacy) is emphasized as the solution to Colombia’s problems, and the book finds endorsement from African leaders such as Uhuru Kenyatta (Kenya), Donald Kaberuka (African Development Bank), and Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria). I presume they have read the book, Obasanjo certainly, for he wrote the foreword and was involved in the project. Lessons learnt from Afghanistan and Iraq have proved what should have been obvious all along, that: even a military with an annual budget of over $700 billion may not win against a rag tag militia. Military power alone does not solve conflict, attention has to be paid to the political and socio-economic issues as well if success is to be attained. This is the important lesson that comes from this book for the policy-maker.

But, dismayingly, the book also highlights that there are people known as ‘conflict entrepreneurs’ who may have no interest in peace because they benefit from the war economy. These conflict entrepreneurs can be found in the government as well in the insurgencies and will not be enticed by the prospects of peace. A further disheartening point is that even if peace is negotiated successfully in Colombia, it may actually sow the seeds of the next conflict. From reading this book, the advice I would give to any African countries is that, if they can help it, they should never open the door to war, as once war starts, it has logics of its own which defy human control.

The main weakness of this book is that although it mentions the 'dual economy’ in Colombia, the racial differences, the need for land reform, the marginalisation of indigenous people, human rights abuses by the government and other genuine grievances, the authors were hosted by the Colombian government and the book is essentially written from the point of view of the government. The story of the poor, the marginalised, and the disenfranchised who fight on the side of FARC is not given its own voice. But this is excusable because these authors are former military men and advise “legitimate” governments all over the world. This defect in their book can be easily corrected by picking up the works of FARC sympathisers, to which I am certain there is no law against. 

David Kilcullen et al (2016). A Great Perhaps? Colombia: Conflict And Convergence. London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers.

My copy, signed by two of the authors.

Information Superiority In Warfare: A Myth?

A diagrammatic representation of USAF Col John Boyd's Observe - Orient - Decide - Act (OODA) Loop.

The above decision making model will be my reference point during my attendance at a major warfare conference in London in the next few days. The OODA Loop is fully explained here and a good example of how Donald Trump has (unwittingly) used it appears here 

The conference is on information superiority in warfare and, make no mistake, information, in all walks of life, is an invaluable commodity. The thing to remember, however, is that information has its own nature and rules which defy total domestication even by the most dedicated adherent. So, even before I attend this important conference, I am already circumspect about the grand pronouncement western war fighting says it aims at;  

Information Superiority is defined by Western militaries as “the operational advantage derived from the ability to collect, process, and disseminate an uninterrupted flow of information while exploiting or denying an adversary’s ability to do the same.” 

With an annual budget of over US$700 billion, failures to win (outright) the war in Afghanistan, makes a mockery of such a grand pronouncement and opens up avenues to discuss more decisive factors in warfare.

The Gerasimov Doctrine: The Value Of Science In Prediction.

“Fas est et ab hoste doceri” - Ovid. [“It is right to learn, even from the enemy”]  

As Russia's position is dialogical (and not axiological), with regards intervening in African States's affairs, it follows then that African militaries are better off borrowing from the Gerasimov Doctrine than from the Western Doctrine. The former enumerates all the ways interventionist powers threaten African States, while the latter asks African States to make themselves susceptible to intervention. The Gerasimov Doctrine refers to an article by the Russian Chief of the General Staff - Colonel General Valery Gerasimov - which appeared in the Russian Academy of Military Science’s Military-Industrial Courier, and was titled “The Value of Science in Prediction.” It has since been misinterpreted by Western commentators but you can read it here for yourself;

The reclaiming of Crimea by Russian Armed Forces stunned the world and made a nondescript February 2013 entry, in the Military - Industrial Courier, the subject of intense study.

THE VALUE OF SCIENCE IN PREDICTION 

by Colonel General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation. 

The Military – Industrial Courier, 27th February 2013. 

In the 21st century we have seen a tendency toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace. Wars are no longer declared and, having begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template. The experience of military conflicts — including those connected with the so-called coloured revolutions in north Africa and the Middle East — confirm that a perfectly thriving state can, in a matter of months and even days, be transformed into an arena of fierce armed conflict, become a victim of foreign intervention, and sink into a web of chaos, humanitarian catastrophe, and civil war. 

The Lessons of the ‘Arab Spring’ 

Of course, it would be easiest of all to say that the events of the “Arab Spring” are not war and so there are no lessons for us — military men — to learn. But maybe the opposite is true — that precisely these events are typical of warfare in the 21st century. In terms of the scale of the casualties and destruction, the catastrophic social, economic, and political consequences, such new-type conflicts are comparable with the consequences of any real war. The very “rules of war” have changed. The role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness. 

The focus of applied methods of conflict has altered in the direction of the broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other non-military measures — applied in coordination with the protest potential of the population. All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character, including carrying out actions of informational conflict and the actions of special-operations forces. The open use of forces — often under the guise of peacekeeping and crisis regulation — is resorted to only at a certain stage, primarily for the achievement of final success in the conflict. 

From this proceed logical questions: What is modern war? What should the army be prepared for? How should it be armed? Only after answering these questions can we determine the directions of the construction and development of the armed forces over the long term. To do this, it is essential to have a clear understanding of the forms and methods of the use of the application of force. 

These days, together with traditional devices, nonstandard ones are being developed. The role of mobile, mixed-type groups of forces, acting in a single intelligence-information space because of the use of the new possibilities of command-and-control systems has been strengthened. Military actions are becoming more dynamic, active, and fruitful. Tactical and operational pauses that the enemy could exploit are disappearing. New information technologies have enabled significant reductions in the spatial, temporal, and informational gaps between forces and control organs. Frontal engagements of large formations of forces at the strategic and operational level are gradually becoming a thing of the past. Long-distance, contactless actions against the enemy are becoming the main means of achieving combat and operational goals. The defeat of the enemy’s objects is conducted throughout the entire depth of his territory. The differences between strategic, operational, and tactical levels, as well as between offensive and defensive operations, are being erased. The application of high-precision weaponry is taking on a mass character. Weapons based on new physical principals and automatized systems are being actively incorporated into military activity. 

Asymmetrical actions have come into widespread use, enabling the nullification of an enemy’s advantages in armed conflict. Among such actions are the use of special operations forces and internal opposition to create a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state, as well as informational actions, devices, and means that are constantly being perfected. These ongoing changes are reflected in the doctrinal views of the world’s leading states and are being used in military conflicts. Already in 1991, during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, the U.S. military realized the concept of “global sweep, global power” and “air-ground operations.” In 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom, military operations were conducted in accordance with the so-called Single Perspective 2020. 

Now, the concepts of “global strike” and “global missile defense” have been worked out, which foresee the defeat of enemy objects and forces in a matter of hours from almost any point on the globe, while at the same time ensuring the prevention of unacceptable harm from an enemy counterstrike. The United States is also enacting the principles of the doctrine of global integration of operations aimed at creating in a very short time highly mobile, mixed-type groups of forces. 

In recent conflicts, new means of conducting military operations have appeared that cannot be considered purely military. An example of this is the operation in Libya, where a no-fly zone was created, a sea blockade imposed, private military contractors were widely used in close interaction with armed formations of the opposition. 

We must acknowledge that, while we understand the essence of traditional military actions carried out by regular armed forces, we have only a superficial understanding of asymmetrical forms and means. In this connection, the importance of military science — which must create a comprehensive theory of such actions — is growing. The work and research of the Academy of Military Science can help with this. 

The Tasks of Military Science 

In a discussion of the forms and means of military conflict, we must not forget about our own experience. I mean the use of partisan units during the Great Patriotic War and the fight against irregular formations in Afghanistan and the North Caucasus. I would emphasize that during the Afghanistan War specific forms and means of conducting military operations were worked out. At their heart lay speed, quick movements, the smart use of tactical Paratroops and encircling forces which all together enable the interruption of the enemy’s plans and brought him significant losses. 

Another factor influencing the essence of modern means of armed conflict is the use of modern automated complexes of military equipment and research in the area of artificial intelligence. While today we have flying drones, tomorrow’s battlefields will be filled with walking, crawling, jumping, and flying robots. In the near future it is possible a fully robotized unit will be created, capable of independently conducting military operations. 

How shall we fight under such conditions? What forms and means should be used against a robotized enemy? What sort of robots do we need and how can they be developed? Already today our military minds must be thinking about these questions. 

The most important set of problems, requiring intense attention, is connected with perfecting the forms and means of applying groups of forces. It is necessary to rethink the content of the strategic activities of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. Already now questions are arising: Is such a number of strategic operations necessary? Which ones and how many of them will we need in the future? So far, there are no answers. 

There are also other problems that we are encountering in our daily activities. We are currently in the final phase of the formation of a system of air-space defense (VKO). Because of this, the question of the development of forms and means of action using VKO forces and tools has become actual. The General Staff is already working on this. I propose that the Academy of Military Science also take active part. 

The information space opens wide asymmetrical possibilities for reducing the fighting potential of the enemy. In North Africa, we witnessed the use of technologies for influencing state structures and the population with the help of information networks. It is necessary to perfect activities in the information space, including the defense of our own objects. 

The operation to force Georgia to peace exposed the absence of unified approaches to the use of formations of the Armed Forces outside of the Russian Federation. The September 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi , the activization of piracy activities, the recent hostage taking in Algeria all confirm the importance of creating a system of armed defense of the interests of the state outside the borders of its territory. 

Although the additions to the federal law “On Defense” adopted in 2009 allow the operational use of the Armed Forces of Russia outside of its borders, the forms and means of their activity are not defined. In addition, matters of facilitating their operational use have not been settled on the inter-ministerial level. This includes simplifying the procedure for crossing state borders, the use of the airspace and territorial waters of foreign states, the procedures for interacting with the authorities of the state of destination, and so on. It is necessary to convene the joint work of the research organizations of the pertinent ministries and agencies on such matters. 

One of the forms of the use of military force outside the country is peacekeeping. In addition to traditional tasks, their activity could include more specific tasks such as specialized, humanitarian, rescue, evacuation, sanitation, and other tasks. At present, their classification, essence, and content have not been defined. Moreover, the complex and multifarious tasks of peacekeeping which, possibly, regular troops will have to carry out, presume the creation of a fundamentally new system for preparing them. After all, the task of a peacekeeping force is to disengage conflicting sides, protect and save the civilian population, cooperate in reducing potential violence and re-establish peaceful life. All this demands academic preparation. 

Controlling Territory 

It is becoming increasingly important in modern conflicts to be capable of defending one’s population, objects, and communications from the activity of special-operations forces, in view of their increasing use. Resolving this problem envisions the organization and introduction of territorial defense. Before 2008, when the army at war time numbered more than 4.5 million men, these tasks were handled exclusively by the armed forces. But conditions have changed. Now, countering diversionary-reconnaissance and terroristic forces can only be organized by the complex involvement of all the security and law-enforcement forces of the country. 

The General Staff has begun this work. It is based on defining the approaches to the organization of territorial defense that were reflected in the changes to the federal law “On Defense.” Since the adoption of that law, it is necessary to define the system of managing territorial defense and to legally enforce the role and location in it of other forces, military formations, and the organs of other state structures. We need well-grounded recommendations on the use of interagency forces and means for the fulfillment of territorial defense, methods for combatting the terrorist and diversionary forces of the enemy under modern conditions. 

The experience of conducting military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq has shown the necessity of working out — together with the research bodies of other ministries and agencies of the Russian Federation — the role and extent of participation of the armed forces in post conflict regulation, working out the priority of tasks, the methods for activation of forces, and establishing the limits of the use of armed force. 

[…]  

You Can’t Generate Ideas On Command 

The state of Russian military science today cannot be compared with the flowering of military-theoretical thought in our country on the eve of World War II. Of course, there are objective and subjective reasons for this and it is not possible to blame anyone in particular for it. I am not the one who said it is not possible to generate ideas on command. I agree with that, but I also must acknowledge something else: at that time, there were no people with higher degrees and there were no academic schools or departments. There were extraordinary personalities with brilliant ideas. I would call them fanatics in the best sense of the word. Maybe we just don’t have enough people like that today. 

People like, for instance, Georgy Isserson, who, despite the views he formed in the prewar years, published the book “New Forms Of Combat.” In it, this Soviet military theoretician predicted: “War in general is not declared. It simply begins with already developed military forces. Mobilization and concentration is not part of the period after the onset of the state of war as was the case in 1914 but rather, unnoticed, proceeds long before that.” The fate of this “prophet of the Fatherland” unfolded tragically. Our country paid in great quantities of blood for not listening to the conclusions of this professor of the General Staff Academy. 

What can we conclude from this? A scornful attitude toward new ideas, to nonstandard approaches, to other points of view is unacceptable in military science. And it is even more unacceptable for practitioners to have this attitude toward science. 

In conclusion, I would like to say that no matter what forces the enemy has, no matter how well-developed his forces and means of armed conflict may be, forms and methods for overcoming them can be found. He will always have vulnerabilities and that means that adequate means of opposing him exist. We must not copy foreign experience and chase after leading countries, but we must outstrip them and occupy leading positions ourselves. This is where military science takes on a crucial role. 

The outstanding Soviet military scholar Aleksandr Svechin wrote: “It is extraordinarily hard to predict the conditions of war. For each war it is necessary to work out a particular line for its strategic conduct. Each war is a unique case, demanding the establishment of a particular logic and not the application of some template.” This approach continues to be correct. Each war does present itself as a unique case, demanding the comprehension of its particular logic, its uniqueness. That is why the character of a war that Russia or its allies might be drawn into is very hard to predict. Nonetheless, we must. Any academic pronouncements in military science are worthless if military theory is not backed by the function of prediction. 

[…]

Colonel General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Federation.