Sometimes you wish you never accepted to review a friend’s book/article : you lack the time to read the document, and once you finally find a few minutes/hours to discover it, it proves disappointing (and it’s pretty hard to find an easy way to say that). Some other times, fortunately, it’s the opposite: you get just what you were looking for (but still have to find the right way to say it, not to look like you’re congratulating a friend for being a friend). I’m glad to write from the start that this monograph clearly belongs to the second group.

Of course, it cannot be said to be a huge surprise when someone studying both military innovation and nuclear weapons policies (curiously enough, not the two of them together) finds interest in a paper on the innovation processes that gave birth to US Navy’s ballistic missiles. Still, disappointment was a real possibility, either due to a lack of empirical research, superficial treatment of the issue, or lack of theorization. Again, you’ll find no such thing here.

In his monograph, Sébastien Miraglia, a researcher at the Oslo-based Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies (IFS), reviews the development of the Fleet Ballistic Missile program from its creation back in the 1950s, to the Trident II D5, which currently equips US Navy’s Ohio-class SSBNs (as well as Royal Navy’s 4 Vanguard-class subs). Sébastien’s argument is that initial orientations taken by the Navy’s office in charge, the Strategic Project Office (SPO) weighed on its future choices and constrained its ability to respond optimally to external stimuli for change, such as new nuclear policies. This, in turn, created serious risks of disconnection between requirements identified at the policy level and available capabilities. For instance, following the deployment of the Soviet Galosh anti-ballistic missile defense system, SPO chose to respond not through the development of penetration aids – a path taken by the USAF for its Minuteman II ICBMs – but by putting multiple, smaller warheads on top of US SLBMs (MIRVing, for those who might not be familiar with the issue). It didn’t follow that path because MIRVing seemed to be the optimal way to deal with the threat from these rudimentary defenses. It took a path that would allow it to make good use of previous R&D on MIRVing, avoid entry costs associated with such developments as penetration aids, all the while fulfilling what it considered its core missions: saturate defenses and strike “soft” targets such as urban areas.

As one may guess, the paper rests heavily on concepts and approaches drawn from historical institutionalism and sociology of organizations. What one may not guess is that in addition to using classics such as MacKenzie’s Inventing Accuracy, Sébastien made extensive use of historical, unpublished material/archives from the SPO and its successor, various memoranda and transcripts of interviews of individuals directly involved in the program.

The result is a highly readable, rigorous and insightful research, as well as a great opportunity to discover the inside story – or close to – of the program and to understand how technical and operational dilemmas were solved. A great read for anyone interested military innovation, technology development and US nuclear history.

The study is available online for free (here) but you may as well consider buying a softcover copy as the format is great (much better, for example, than SSI monographs). Also, take some time to visit the IFS website and the other one dedicated to their publications, as you’ll find lots of interesting stuff here (by the way, people at IFS are the ones you should thank for last year’s amazing special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies on the Information Revolution in Military Affairs).

Gratulerer, Sébastien !

Sébastien Miraglia, Nuclear strategy and the development of military technology. The case of the Fleet Ballistic Missile programme, Defence and Security Studies – Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies (Institutt for Forsvarsstudier), 2/2010, 124 p. PDF or paper (free / 100 NOK or approx. ~USD 16.00)

Etienne de Durand recently gave a speech before the Institute for International and European Affairs of Dublin, on “French Security and Defence Policy under Nicolas Sarkozy“.

The IIEA has been kind enough to put the video online on Youtube, so we’ve inserted it here. Since it lasts almost 45 minutes, here’s the outline of the speech:

• Introduction
• Where do we come from? Traditional French or Gaullist Policy (starts at 3’10″)
  • Origins
  • Defense policy during the 1990s
  • The Iraq war and afterwards
• Sarkozy’s New Look Policy, the FR-UK Deal and Its Implications (starts at 17’30″)
  • French security policy under Sarkozy
  • Sarkozy’s military policy and FR-UK deal
• Conclusion (starts at 41’38″)

We hope you’ll like the video. Don’t hesitate to leave comments here !

Dana Priest and William Arkin’s reporting on Top Secret America in the Washington Post was an important media event. Its various graphs and installments nicely illustrate the sheer magnitude of US intelligence privatization. Mind you, the size and the compartmentalization of the US intelligence community is difficult to grasp and a cause for many problems of its own. Add to that the even more elusive layers of contracting and sub-contracting (an estimated 265’000 contractors have top-secret clearances) and one gets a security state that has grown beyond that what anyone can call reasonable by a long stretch of imagination. (If only McNulty had a fraction of that cash for the fight against drugs in Baltimore…)

Here are a few more thoughts on both the content and the style of the WaPo story.

First off, the sprawling privatization of US intelligence is, of course, hardly news to the engaged reader. The WaPo must be criticized for not even referring to Tim Shorrock, the real authority on this subject. He was the first author to have studied post 9/11 intelligence contracting, and he did it in a much more systematic and problem-centered fashion (albeit with less colorful graphs and less floury language on Washington suburbia). His book, Spies for Hire, is a compelling read that tells us why, where and how the US arrived at a situation where an incredible 70 percent of its enormous intelligence budget ends up in the hands of private companies. One can also find his data set, here. Shorrock obtained an unclassified document from the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) that corroborates his basic estimate. After his book release, the CIA and the main stream media (MSM) simply ignored Shorrock’s research. The former called his figures ‘way off the mark’ and the latter shunned an awfully gripping story. Why? Surely, it would be too simplistic to associate big advertising companies of MSM, such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman with this. Fact is, though, it took MSM a long time to pick it up. [...]

Eurosatory’s Think Tank village organised Wednesday last week its second conference on the future of land warfare. A podcast is already available for you to listen to but first here are the broad lines of what was said in the three presentations.

Is counterinsurgency the Future of Land Warfare ? (Etienne de Durand):

• Warfare is a chameleon and its future evolution remains thus uncertain.
• From a French point of view, COIN (“counter-rebellion”) is but a specific sub-genre of irregular warfare and is mingled with peacekeeping and other tactical modes; therefore the main question decision makers should ask themselves is whether or not irregular operations will represent the future of land warfare.
• Large scale, high-intensity conflicts are unlikely in the present geostrategic context; the few conventional campaigns that are likely to happen will most likely take place at sea or in the air. Therefore, from an Army perspective, it makes sense to prepare mostly for irregular warfare.
• Irregular Warfare is more than just light infantry. It requires tactical mobility, precision fires, protection and more generally a lot of technology, as insurgents themselves also have access to modern technologies.
• At least for European armies, medium forces are likely to become the dominant model in terms of force structures.

A British point of view on hybrid warfare (Olivier Grouille):

• The British MOD and Army are at a strategic crossroad (overstretched financially, in the middle of a strategic defence review, an with new coalition government).
• A common understanding exists that a return to COIN as a mode of operations will have to take place within the British army.
• The UK needs to be prepared for both conventional and irregular warfare.
• Hybrid warfare will represent the future of many operations and state on state warfare itself could become hybrid.
• An adaptation of British troops will be necessary through education and training.
• The UK will not enter major operations alone in the future and cooperation will be necessary.

Insurgencies in tribal, clan societies (Jean-Jacques Patry):

• New wars of various intensities have emerged and have changed the security equation in the twenty-first century.
• Two types insurgencies should be distinguished: one that aims at gaining state power (classic Maoïst model) whilst the other tries to deny the (re)emergence of the state (typical of tribal societies like Afghanistan).
• Without a local state structure it is impossible to launch a successful COIN campaign. In other words, “winning hearts and minds” does not work when facing state-denying insurgencies.
• Powersharing is the solution to stabilise local actors. Once power is shared in a stable way it becomes possible to launch a COIN operation against the remaining insurgents.

If you wish to hear the full length recording of the conference please click below:

Etienne de Durand – Is COIN the Future of Land Warfare?:

Olivier Grouille – A British View on Hybrid Warfare:

Jean-Jacques Patry – Insurgencies in Tribal / Clan Societies:

Earlier this month, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism submitted a “compilation of good practices and institutional frameworks and measures that ensure respect for human rights by intelligence agencies while countering terrorism, including on their oversight” to the UN Human Rights Council.

Despite its cumbersome title, this annotated enumeration of 35 examples of good practice is certainly worth reading. It contains a comprehensive and well-structured account of what national intelligence laws and institutional frameworks for intelligence services could look like. This compilation is the outcome of a consultation process where Governments, experts and practitioners provided input in various different ways. I’ve been asked to give comments on an earlier draft and hope that the following general thought on this kind of best practice advocacy might be of interest to Ultima Ratio readers.

What exactly is the objective of this report? It is interesting how A/HRC/14/46 fails to provide a clear statement of purpose. In the introduction, the Special Rapporteur states that “it is not the purpose of this compilation to promulgate a set of normative standards that should apply at all times and in all parts of the world”. Fine, this should not be read as a blueprint for all nations to follow. But what then is its purpose?

Possibly, this was a contentious issue for the various parties that have contributed to the consultation process. National governments, academic experts, the UN bureaucracy and professional consultants are likely to pursue different and potentially conflicting objectives. Perhaps, then, the author felt compelled not to spell this out in further detail. If this was the case, it would illustrate one of the numerous problems with (or better: constraints of) such mandated research. All too often it is the logic of the consultation process rather than the logic of an empirical enquiry that is decisive in the end. This is all the more deplorable because the latter can generate custom-tailored and sustainable policy recommendations for intelligence governance, too. [...]

Ifri’s Security Studies Center has just released a new issue of the Proliferation Papers electronic series :

North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Development: Implications for Future Policy, authored by Jonathan D. Pollack, professor at the U.S. Naval War College. [...]

For researchers interested in government secrecy, www.wikileaks.org can often be a valuable site. Sometimes, however, it presents information in an unbearably biased fashion. Consider, for example, this recent headline:

“US intelligence planned to destroy wikileaks”.

This sounded like quite a story. What would be the implications if that was true? Should Google pull out of the US? I was curious and started reading a bit in the leaked study commissioned by the US Department of Defense Intelligence Analysis Program (DIAP). It examined how wikileaks.org might jeopardise the interests of US forces by playing vital intelligence into the hands of its various opponents. Not surprisingly, it concluded that

“Wikileaks.org, a publicly accessible Internet Web site, represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, operational security (OPSEC), and information security (INFOSEC) threat to the US Army.”

Looking then for signs that US intelligence actually planned to disrupt this site, I only stumbled across a number of rather common-sense recommendations:

“the identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders,
leakers, or whistlblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site”.

Don’t get me wrong. I admire and support the power of investigative sources on the net. Still, it is also understandable (and a calculated risk for leakers) that those who would like to keep the information will not pull their legal punches against them for informing the public. That’s not anything new under the sun nor has this threat become a more serious for leakers than before.

What I find disturbing, then, is the sensationalist headline. Based on what I’ve gathered from DIAP study, this is a far cry from any plan to “destroy” Wikileaks. This kind of reporting is, in my view, entirely inappropriate. A more factual approach would be in order.