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June 22, 2005
Under the Radar
Here's a few under-reported events and stories that have caught my attention:
1. Porter Goss's recent interview with Time has been remarked upon elsewhere, especially his statements about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. But it doesn't seem that many people have paid much attention to this exchange:
Q: YOU HAVE BEEN A BIG CRITIC OF CIA HUMAN INTELLIGENCE. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO FIX IT?I won't speculate on the many new things Goss says are in the offing, but I just want to draw attention to the tone of this response as compared to "we need another five years" from George Tenet. Let's hope Goss isn't blustering.A: We're fixing it with quantity and quality. We're changing methods. We're changing systems. We're changing it from the beginning to the end, from the recruitment--the types of people we are trying to attract--to the way we bring them in, to the experience we give them in training, to the ways we get them on station or in places where they are of use to us. We are focused very much on finding ways to get our eyes and ears out and about on a global basis. And we are doing it in ways that you can't even imagine and I'm not even going to slightly discuss.
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2. A few weeks ago I noticed that during his trip to Asia, Rumsfeld spent a few quiet moments with his South Korean counterpart, and they agreed to the contingency plan in case of the North's collapse (from the Korea Herald via Benador Assoc.):
Code-named OPLAN 5029, it calls for joint military actions to be taken in line with different levels should there be any kind of internal trouble in North Korea, including massive defections, a military coup or a regime change.I noted our policy toward North Korea back in December. See this Korea Times piece:
In an apparent policy turnaround, the United States will seek transformation of the North Korean regime without attempting to change or overthrow it, a top U.S. security policymaker said Tuesday.Could it be that these two things are related? All manner of pressure to transform the regime a la Eastern Europe in the 80s and then a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose and the party cadres come south with the peasants?
Worth thinking about. Here's some more background.
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3. Finally, Forbes recently carried an interesting piece: an analysis of the war by Oxford Analytica, which is one of those foreign policy analysis outfits kind of like Strategic Forecasting. Check this little bit out:
. . . the Administration is moving toward a new phase in its anti-terror campaign. It is likely to embark on developing a new Presidential Decision Directive.If any of this is accurate, we are in for a round 3 that is as different as rounds 1 and 2 were from each other. Especially interesting is the idea of painting the conflict as a civil war within Islam. Perhaps such efforts would change things in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, places where we want change but are hamstrung by economic and political ties with parts of the government. Those places in particular seem the ones destined to be affected most by such a campaign.
This document, which would replace the one created in October 2001, will provide interagency strategic guidance to U.S. counterterrorism policy.
The review will probably increase the scope of counterterrorist strategy, involving more instruments of state power than the current military/intelligence-heavy approach.
More focus will fall on terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. These are known to be separate from al Qaeda and its affiliates but share some logistical assets.
Regime change in so-called state sponsors of terrorism (Cuba, North Korea, Syria and Iran) is not high on the agenda.In essence, the strategy will aim to make permanent the gains so far accrued in the war against terror by striking at the root causes and residual networks of Islamic terrorism. A growing trend in Islamic terrorism is the decay of global operations by al Qaeda against principally U.S. targets and the proliferation of local affiliate cells that strike mainly at perceived U.S. proxies or civilians in their own country of residence. The U.S. Country Reports on Terrorism 2004 document noted that al Qaeda's leadership threatened about three dozen countries in 2004, encouraging local affiliates to develop their own terrorist campaigns.
Washington is thus focusing rising levels of security assistance on a broad range of threatened nations in an effort to fight terrorists where they are active. State Department-administered counter-terrorism assistance rose from $38 million in 2001 to $133 million recently requested for fiscal year 2006. Since 2001, 20 new countries have begun receiving assistance, which means the number of states receiving training is now 67. Key focus states include Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Philippines, Columbia, Kenya and Malaysia.
In addition to response and post-incident investigation, a large proportion of training focuses on the border security aspects of preventative security. A growing number of U.S.-led initiatives are underway to reduce unregulated cross-border movement, control access to the global air-transport network, and "fence off" areas of weak government control where terrorists can develop bases.
The U.S. government is also focusing more attention on the intangible but vital dimension of the "war of ideas" between radical Islam and moderate Western and Islamic thought. The Pentagon's September 2004 National Defense Strategy stressed the need to counter ideological support for terrorism to secure permanent gains in the war against terrorism.
It stated the importance of negating the image of a U.S. war against Islam, and instead, developing the image of a civil war within Islam, fought between moderate states and radical terrorists. This kind of imagery will feed into the broader debate beginning in the U.S. on how to win such a war of ideas and how to cultivate moderate democratic Islamic states.
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How 'bout them apples?
Posted by Chester at June 22, 2005 10:04 PM
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