Christopher Keys -- Critique of Manifesto, Explanation of Extremes

(I think the Blog activation isn't automated, so this is Chris Keys posting on Allison Wright's account.) I think that, overall, the Manifesto does a solid job of explaining the various aspects of Global Security that Dr. Der Derian would like to analyze. I do feel, however, that certain aspects are lacking. Firstly, I am still somewhat confused by the term "networks." While a potentially important category, I feel that that its nebulous nature hurts any attempt to accurately assess how threats affect this category. It seems as though networks are either too disparate or too subject to overlap with other categories to judge according to the matrix's terms. Similarly, I believe that writing (accurately) that WMDs are one of terrorism's greatest potential weapons and then separating the two categories is, like networks, either hurtful or duplicative in assessing the threats posed by terrorism and WMDs. If only traditional, state-sponsored WMDs are meant by WMDs, then this would help alleviate this situation but it seems difficult to accurately analyze the threat of terrorism without the threat of WMDs. Like Allison, I believe that the last area of overlap could be in Resource Conflict, which is mainly dangerous when it manifests itself in other areas. However, certain actors (such as humans) are affected by resource conflict regardless of warfare, so it seems necessary for it to remain as is. Finally, I would like to applaud several aspects of the Manifesto. The updated definition of warfare to include more actors makes it a much more relevant category. Additionally, the inclusion of the environment is an all too often overlooked part of worldwide threats. Overall, the Manifesto does a very solid job of explaining and assessing the various aspects that threaten today's world.

Posted by Allison Wright on September 30, 2006 09:32 PM | Permalink

Critique of Global Security Matrix

The Global Security Manifesto presents a clear and complete analysis of the threats facing humans, states, networks, systems and the globe as a whole. The structure of the Matrix allows a participant to clearly follow the more traditional threats to security, such as warfare, to the more modern constructions of fear, such as information war. The Manifesto offers detailed explanations of each threat as well as explaining the actors in global society. The examples it introduces, also provide the participant with background knowledge, which will inevitably help them pursue their own conclusions as to which threats constitute the greatest danger. With this knowledge a participant will be better able to rank particular threats to security on a personal, state, system, network and global basis. Although I think the Matrix Manifesto is very straightforward, there may be certain areas of overlap. For instance, while I think resource conflict is a threat to security, this conflict usually manifests itself in warfare or terrorism, and therefore could be included in either one of these particular areas of the Matrix. This is true for infowar as well. Although these threats to international security are prominent in the current system, the primary threat, in my opinion, to individuals, states, systems, networks and the globe as a whole, is still warfare. States exist in a constant state of competition and while these other threats can motivate fighting among states, the primary threat to the international system is warfare. I think that it is important to include the Environment in the Global Security Matrix because its abuse is increasingly becoming a danger to the world as a whole. I think Resource conflict is very tied to the Environment. If humans did not abuse the environment, reource conflict would certainly be less of a concern in international relations. I am, however, not that clear on how Resource conflict affects particular actors of the Global Security Matrix, such as networks or systems, so perhaps it does warrant its own category in the Security grid. All together, though, I do think the Manifesto provides a descriptive analysis of the threats facing the world today.

Posted by Allison Wright on September 30, 2006 08:03 PM | Permalink

Critique of Global Security Matrix as well as explanation of Rankings

Posted by Allison Wright on September 30, 2006 08:03 PM | Permalink

Critique of the Global Security Manifesto

Security is the guarantee of one's perceived rights, whether it is the right of an individual to seek 'life, liberty and happiness' or a state's right to seek territorial sovereignty. For an individual, first and foremost must exist the right to be free from violence and to have his or her promises and contracts honored. To a large extent, in a functioning state with its judiciary and administration, these rights are honored unconditionally as the state posesses a legal monopology on the employment of violence and a symbiotic relationship with the laws of the land. But as soon as the field broadens to analyse international security, there exists no singular unifying authority to perform or to mediate over the rights of actors in the matter of security.

In this 'international anarchy', certain states over history have sought to establish themselves as the singular arbiter of global order - from Rome and China (both of which had encompassed their respective 'known worlds') to the more recent attempts by America to establish and mantain its global superpower status. But by establishing oneself as the supernational arbiter, suddenly one becomes a combined threat to the rest of the world. By establishing security for oneself, one invariably impedes upon that same sense for another. And without an established, respected and legitimate supra-national governing body, there can never be established, effectively, a global concensus on what international security of what should and neccessarily consist of.

The security that threatens us today as individuals, states, systems, networks and globally range in terms of scale, intensity and time. To an individual in a wartorn part of the world, a roadside bomb blast represents a very real and immediate threat, which to a superpower in a distant corner of the globe barely makes a news story on its information networks. The immediate threats of today are usually a product of the threats of yesteryear, where unresolved issues have suddenly become pressing exigencies. And a threat not countered today swiftly and deliberately will continue to live on and fester to burden us over again.

Terrorism as we know it today from the branding of Al-Qaeda was barely monitored a decade ago. The concept of 'Islamic terrorism' or 'a clash of civilisations' was barely noted - academics like Fukuyama were instead celebrating the 'end of history'. But present events have taught us otherwise. Instead of 9/11 and the successor terror strikes around the world being singular catablysmic events, they have spawned instability, fear and have in many large and subtle ways, altered our way of life from California to New South Wales. The West's often ham-fisted attempts to quell and extinguish subsequent threats have done little to alleviate and address the key concerns of terrorism too. Homeland Security's threat level indicator has barely ever reached a sense of comfort ever since it was established.

Terrorism, bluntly, can be classified as the failure of states and their monopolies on violence. Osama bin-Laden's terror network was a result of a conflict between himself and the House of Saud. With the myriad of intra-state conflicts boiling all over the globe, one has to wonder where the next bin-Laden will arise. When states fail their citizen members, when questions arise over their legitimacy, where their failings are laid bear and their inability to adequeately and legitimately govern becomes a source of constentation, that is where resentment and hatred is bred. States at risk are more than just safe havens for terrorism, they breed terrorists and the hate and fear they peddle.

Hence, the most pressing concern we need to address is the threat that failing states will continue to pose to not only themselves, but the greater international community around them. More deaths are attributed to malnutrition and disease in at-risk states then by warfare, violence and terrorism. In modern Western states, the standard of living that many of us hold to be essential on a daily basis, exceeds the wildest dreams and the net economic wealth of the world's most disadvantaged. To them, living until the next week is hardly even certain. It is in states like this where volunteers and recruits to powerful demagogues are found - those most easily swayed are the most hungry and the least educated. They see the images of Western excess and see, not wealth or liberty, but deep and unfair inequity. They find in religion not peace and charity, but righteous vengeance and the personification of nemesis. Hate is bred from hunger.

The international community must recognise this and understand that the world we live in is wracked by such choices on a daily basis - that either all men are free or none at all. We have to establish basic rights to freedom and understand the normative conditions which we have to place in all as self-evident. Without building for our future, we merely imperil it.

Posted by Aaron Wee on September 30, 2006 05:59 PM | Permalink

Critique of the Global Security Manifesto

I think that the manifesto captures in a precise and well thought out way the essence of international society at the beginning of the 21st century.

The manifesto clearly shows how the current globalization expanded the numbers of actors in international society. The world can certainly no longer be understood only in terms of states. New players came on stage and complicated our perception of the threats to international security. Today, the states have to deal with private organizations such as NGOs, or economic actors (like transnational firms) for example. Those actors are quite new on the international level and clearly derive from the current globalization..
But I agree with the manifesto when it claims that the state is not going to disappear. I think that it is important to put the "decline of the state" into perspective. If it is true that the state is more and more in a situation of competition with other actors, it seems to me that it still remains the main actor on the international sphere. For example, it is argued that in Europe, with the development of the European Union, the states are losing their sovereignty. I think that this point of view is wrong because the European states chose to transfer some of their competence to the European Union. The states keep their sovereignty because they still own the "competence of the competence" meaning that if they want to leave the EU, they formally can. Moreover, I think that nationality is still the base of identity. For example, when I introduce myself, I always say that I am French and not European, although I formally have both the French and the European citizenships. Therefore, I think that it is very interesting and accurate for the matrix to provide different levels of actors but I would still consider the state as the main actor of international relations.

I think that the threats presented in the manifesto describe the international society nowadays in a good way. The matrix includes threats that are considered modern such as failed states or infowar. Those two threats would have probably not even been mentioned a couple of decades ago. Infowar is a very interesting threat because not only does it constitute a threat in itself but it also modifies our perception of the other threats as well. Moreover, even the threats that are more traditional such as warfare or pandemics are explained in the manifesto in terms of their impact today. In particular, it is interesting to see how the definition of 'war' has evolved over time. Today, on the one hand, war has a more general meaning than before: while warfare used to describe an organized conflict between two or more states, today it encompasses a wider definition dealing with multiple actors, goals and strategies. On the other hand, the term ‘war’ itself is more and more avoided and international leaders as well as scholars often prefer to talk about ‘conflicts’ or ‘intervention’.
Eventually, I think that the manifesto manages to give a good account of the relations that exist between the different threats presented. Indeed, in sorting out the international threats into eight different categories, the manifesto could have easily been drawn into the trap of dealing with each one of the threats without drawing links between them. But it was interesting to read in the manifesto how the threats reinforce one another. For example, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are particularly interesting to study together given that the prospect of a terrorist group acquiring WMDs is considered one of the biggest international threats nowadays.

In conclusion, I found the manifesto, as well as the idea of creating a matrix of international threats very interesting and intellectually challenging. I think that, by allowing everyone of us to reflect about the current international threats as well as our own perception of those threats, the matrix can help us acquire a more lucid vision of the world.

Posted by Emeline Lemoine on September 30, 2006 04:38 PM | Permalink

Rankings

My critique of the manifesto proposes that cyber-terrorism is an excellent addition to the Global Security Matrix. In theory, the category makes much sense, but I wanted to conduct some research to further investigate this topic. A 2002 article written by Mark Ward for the BBC blames overzealous American officials for hyping up the idea of terrorists attacking their targets in cyberspace. The article points out that disrupting services we have all come to depend on via the Internet pales in comparison to bombings and other physical acts of terrorism. Ward quotes security expert Bruce Schneier: “Breaking pager networks and stopping e-mails is not an act of terror…If I cannot get my e-mail for a day, I am not terrorised. [sic]” A 2005 article in the Christian Science Monitor is much more specific and less pessimistic about the prospects of such attacks creating large-scale ramifications. The article mentions cyber assaults on power grids and chemical processing plants as possible tangible manifestations of this form of terrorism. The author, Nathaniel Hoopes, also presents the notion of a cyber attack that is coupled with a physical assault resulting in a debilitated response by officials during the subsequent emergency. My conclusion mirrors that of the Global Security Matrix’s manifesto in some ways. Although cyber-terrorism is currently regarded as a minor threat, it has the potential to cause immense damage to an economy and could be used to augment the impact of an attack if used properly.
Another area I would like to focus on is the rankings concerns failed states. The events of September 11, 2001, as alluded to in the manifesto, allow us to see how a failed state on one side of the globe can affect all levels of analysis on the other. Suffice it to say, the threat of failure is paramount to any state. Thus, it is easy to rank at the state level. At the system level, the failure of the United Nations to establish a lasting peace in East Timor hurts the global body’s credibility and decreases the likelihood of nations lending their support to further UN intervention. Among others, Professor Noam Chomsky asserts that Iraq has become a failed state since the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Iraq has a power vacuum. Without a central authority to control the nation and provide citizens with basic support, any number of nefarious networks can use Iraq as a recruiting and training ground for terrorism. Harlan Ullman, writing in the Washington Times last week makes the same argument as Chomsky, but does so to achieve different ends (namely asking the U.S. government to send more troops into the Middle East). Both authors see the prospect of a failed state as a serious threat to the security of western nations, people in the Middle East, business networks and the legitimacy of international bodies. Global threats by failed states seem to be less consequential than the threats this phenomenon poses to the other levels examined. Granted, failed states have the potential to begin wars between major powers, but so do many other occurrences. Failed states also seem to breed the other threats considered by the GSM. For example, the idea of a terrorist organization storing or detonating weapons of mass destruction from the safe house of a failed state affects many levels of the matrix. In-and-of-themselves, failed states are less consequential than many of the other threats. This is because they are a catalyst for, not necessarily the cause of, these other phenomena.

Movable Type ate my links, so here they are:

Cyber-terrorism
http://www.cs.georgetown.edu/~denning/infosec/pollitt.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2850541.stm
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0816/p01s02-stct.html

Failed States
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/etimor/2006/0614return.htm
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/31/148254
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/hullman.htm

And on my first post:

http://www.sierra-leone.org/panelreport.html (Sierra Leone)
http://www.cocaine.org/colombia/drugwar.html (Colombia)
http://www.tierramerica.net/2001/0225/acent.shtml (Peru)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/1840182.stm (Afghanistan)

~Josh Rosenthal

Posted by Joshua Rosenthal on September 30, 2006 04:33 PM | Permalink

Global Security Manifesto Critique, with additional comments

The Global Security Matrix presents a clear, comprehensive, and an all-encompassing understanding of the variable definitions, concepts, and projections for threats facing the international system

The main strength of the Manifesto lies in the specification and detailed explanation of the different types of threats, especially information war and the close inter-connection between organized transnational crime and asymmetric warfare.

Despite several basic strengths, the Matrix suffers from a partial lack of objectivity in its use of historical examples to buttress present security challenges, and fails to adequately connect shifts of security policy to changes in understanding of current security threats.

1.4- In this portion of the Matrix, which deals with the seemingly contradictory nature of the actor's pursuit of increased security, the leap made in the historical evidence is startling. The argument at its end point seems to imply that true security can never be achieved. Yet this seems rather like saying that a perfect life can never be lived. Both are quite evident. No state, individual actor, networks, or system expects to achieve perfect or complete security. A much stronger point would have been to demonstrate how actors used the understanding of the impossible aim of perfect security to reach crucial compromises and advance their aims (be they humanitarian, national, or otherwise).

The leap made from historical security dilemma to post-911 is also troubling, as I see this leap and the focus on "eroding the foundations of a democratic civil society" underpinned by a veneer of political partisanship rather than objective analysis. Why did the argument not mention Dr. Aaron Friedburg's famous paper detailing the unique approach the United States took, as opposed to the USSR, to organize its political and economic resources during the Cold War? Whereas the Soviets were spending close to 25% of GDP on national defense, and shifted most industrial production by the GOSPLAN to heavy industry (thus becoming tantamount to a Garrison State), the United States maintained what Friedburg called a "Contract State". Instead of completely altering the basic political and economic foundations of the state, the US government was able to spend significantly less on defense, while producing higher quality product due to its close engagement with a limited number of arms producers. The absence of this clear distinction in the Matrix detracts from its breadth of historical scholarship.

3.4-I think a caveat would enhance the potency of this point. The paragraph shifts between the threat newly emerging forces pose to the universalization of western norms and the priority of system over state security. It is important to address here the arguments of such theorists as Fukuyama, Ikenberry, Krauthammer, and Huntington about this changing nature of the international system. Fukuyama's argument in the End of History and Huntington's attacks on Endism as being overly idealistic and practically flawed would create the kind of balance necessary for a reader to grasp just what this conflict between "western norms" and "new threats" means. Is the future one of the slow acceptance of western, liberal, democratic superiority by the rest of the globe? Or is it just a renewed effort to preserve an international system that actually has not changed at all (according to Ikenberry)?

As for the subpoint regarding system over state security, it is important to distinguish here between aggressor states, which seek to either destabilize or remove the system for a specific set of interests, and coalitions formed to counter such threats. When Nicholas I moved to annex Moldavia and Walachia, throwing the possibility of an Anglo-French-Turkish alliance to contain Russian expansion to the wind, he was clearly not acting out an interest to maintain system security. Similarly, Bismarck brooded over a possible alliance between Russia and France, and shunned the colonialists in Berlin, only after having turned the European status quo upside down in 1866 and 1871. Transnational networks, individual leaders, and asymmetrical movements cannot be properly analyzed without clear distinctions and analysis of possible motives.

3.6-I cannot understand why an analysis that seeks to describe such a fundamental and oft spoken goal as security, and those which seek to advance and undermine it in international relations, would end the definitional portion of the study with quotations from two American presidents, both Republicans, and both serving in the last twenty years. Such a closing is reminiscent of the same sort of possible partisanship described in my earlier critique of point 1.4.

All of this having been said, the description and level of work placed into defining and expanding upon classical interpretations of security challenges to the international system, with its vast array of multi-faceted actors, makes this manifesto and matrix timely in our present international relations discourse.

In addition to the previous critique:

I think it is becoming more and more imperative to note demographic shifts and cultural clashes in order to fully understand the array of threats facing global actors, particularly states. Direct acts of terrorism do not pose, short of a nuclear or massive bio-chemical incident, an existential threat to the physical and political development of the state. Nevertheless, cultural alterations brought about by vast migrations from across regions pose just such a problem, especially in its political sphere. A number of leading theorists and commentators, from administrators in London, Paris, and Berlin to Oriana Fallaci and fellow journalists, have pointed to very troubling changes afoot in Europe due to the inability of the continent to properly assimilate an increasingly volatile Muslim minority. In Sweden, this has led the state’s largest Muslim Association to pressure for passage of separate Shari’a law on three separate occasions, and led France to adopt restrictions on public religious expression. A surge of anti-Semitism on the continent has also been linked to this troubling development. The clash of values and ideologies is at the center of the puzzle of threats facing the international system. Such a clash, I believe, should take its place next to the threats already established in the Matrix.

Posted by Boris Ryvkin on September 30, 2006 04:30 PM | Permalink

A Critique of the Global Security Matrix and Manifesto

I do not think that you will find very many people who will argue with the concept of the Global Security Matrix. Any time a scholar can take a large number of complex concepts and clearly reduce them to a visual representation, it makes information more presentable, which is undoubtedly a good thing. For my part, I found this project to be the most inclusive and understandable piece of work I have seen on global security. If we do find anything wrong, then the project has served, at the very least, to get us thinking of this topic. The issues that arise from the GSM are those of content. Do the categories make sense? Are the methods of ranking as readily apparent as their graphical representations? Does this project over simplify? Because I only have 500 words to write here, I picked two categories to examine.

Resource Conflict, under 4.3, defines risks to security only under the banner of essential resources such as food, water and energy. Non-essential goods such as gold, diamonds and drugs, which are luxuries, can be equally important as we examine global security at all levels. I understand that human security is defined in part by this manifesto as freedom from want. One can think in those terms, but this is a myopic view of how natural resources affect actors at any level. Because of non-essential resources, people are enslaved, states are toppled or coerced, wars are fought, networks are forged and destroyed among many other changes to global security. We can go back to the founding of Jamestown in 1607 as English colonists sought gold in North America, but eventually found themselves farming tobacco. The Jamestown settlement, founded in hopes of securing luxury items and maintained through the farming of a non-essential crop, led to genocide, slavery and many other changes to the global system. It is easy enough to observe how such resources have negatively affected states such as Sierra Leone, Colombia, Peru and Afghanistan.

I was intrigued to read the section on cyber-terrorism. Although such crime is uncommon now, it seems highly likely that it may become a serious threat to economic and social stability in the future. The authors hint at weapons that could destroy electronic devices, ala Escape From LA, and anticipate a rise in cyber attacks on internet infrastructure. The authors’ foreboding makes a lot of sense given the nature of internet attacks. Such assaults would be cheap, bloodless and able to cripple a major power’s economy if executed correctly. For now, I understand why cyber-terrorism is included under the label of general terrorism, but in the future is likely that it will split with that association and become several fields that differentiate between attacks in cyberspace and those that physically disable electronic devices.

Posted by Joshua Rosenthal on September 30, 2006 04:05 PM | Permalink