In Britain, a new PM is waiting
Michael Goldfarb serves as a GlobalPost correspondent in the United Kingdom, where this article first appeared.
The press was summoned early one recent morning to Chatham House, Britain’s leading foreign affairs think tank, to hear the thoughts of Conservative leader David Cameron on Britain’s national security. As Cameron is likely to become prime minister later this spring, attendance was high.
Anyone in the audience who, like me, thought they would hear a talk about his grand strategy for how to deal with threats to Britain’s national security in these extremely insecure times was disappointed. Cameron, bright and confident, spent most of his brief remarks outlining how he intended to change the internal decision making of government on national security issues rather than outlining a new approach to Iran or China.
The strategic decisions made by the Labour government — e.g. joining the U.S. in invading Afghanistan and Iraq — weren’t questioned … it was how they were arrived at that provoked Cameron’s criticism. The cabinet had been sidelined, he said. “Sofa government,” the prime minister’s unelected friends and advisors sitting comfortably on couches at Downing Street and deciding policy had replaced collective decision-making around the cabinet table. This would stop once he was prime minister, said Cameron. There would be a return to the traditions that had stood Britain in good stead. To facilitate cooperation among the various government departments he would form a “National Security Council.”
The lack of a grand vision from the prime minister-in-waiting demonstrates the degree of convergence between the country’s main political parties when it comes to security issues. On the major international crises of the last dozen years of Labour government it is hard to imagine that a Conservative government would have reacted differently.
Your Globalpost correspondent put the question to Cameron: Regardless of whether the decision was reached on a sofa or around the cabinet table, would he not have joined with the U.S. in bombing Belgrade in 1999, invading Afghanistan in 2001 and overthrowing Saddam in 2003?
American intelligence and fortune-telling
– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own —
Hot on the heels of what President Barack Obama called a potentially disastrous “screw-up” by the civilian intelligence community, here comes a devastating report on shortcomings of military intelligence in Afghanistan, by the officer in charge of it. He likens the work of analysts to fortune-telling.
The report is highly unusual both because of its almost brutal candor and the way it was published, outside military channels. Even more unusual: the three authors hold out journalistic skills as models to emulate for gathering and putting together intelligence.
“Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy,” write the authors, Major General Michael Flynn, the most senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan, his advisor Captain Matt Pottinger, and Paul Batchelor of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
“The … vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which U.S. and allied forces operate and the people they seek to persuade. Ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects and the levels of cooperation among the villagers, and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers … U.S. intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug in response to high-level decision makers seeking the knowledge, analysis and information they need to wage a successful counterinsurgency.”
While finding and finishing off enemy leaders is an important part of intelligence work, the report says, there have been only token efforts to acquire knowledge about the population, the economy, the government and other aspects of the environment the U.S. and its allies in the 43-member coalition are trying to secure and eventually leave behind.
I think the US Government could employ Madame Zora (www.TheWhatBox.com) for their fortune telling needs!
Why we must profile airline passengers
Philip Baum is the editor of Aviation Security International and the managing director of Green Light Limited, an aviation security training and consultancy company based in London. The opinions expressed are his own.
Whenever an individual manages to circumvent the security system designed to protect our airports, airlines and the people who use them, we ask why our countermeasures failed. And yet the real problem lies in our determination to screen everybody in exactly the same way using technologies that are not fit for purpose.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year old alleged perpetrator of the Christmas Day attack, should have been identified as a potential threat to the flight both in Lagos and again in Amsterdam. Here was a passenger who had bought an expensive ticket in cash in a country different to that of his port of embarkation or his intended destination, was traveling without any checked luggage for a two-week trip over the Christmas period, and about whom some agencies, and his father, had security concerns. It’s not rocket science we need; it’s the deployment of common sense.
Regrettably, regulators are loath to implement international profiling standards that would screen different passengers in different ways, for fear of being branded politically incorrect. Profiling is a risk analysis of a person or situation carried out by a trained, streetwise workforce. In terms of passengers, the aim is to analyze their appearance and behavior, along with their travel documents, and determine to what extent they meet our expectations for international air travel. The key advantage of profiling is that it responds to future threats as well as to those of the past and enables us to then select the right technology to screen passengers with. We are not going to ask all passengers to undergo a through-body X-ray, however safe such technologies are, but we could use the technology to screen those we have concerns about.
Detractors of profiling claim that decisions will be racially motivated, that we will start picking on young Asian men and that all Muslim passengers will be treated unfairly. Yet, the best examples of profiling actually working have identified people who do not meet such a stereotype. Anne-Marie Murphy, a pregnant Irish woman identified as a potential threat to an El Al flight in 1986, is the best example – and she certainly did not fit the terrorist stereotype. As a result the 1.5 kg Semtex-based device concealed in her bag was identified.
The limited degree of profiling that is currently done has been proven to work, when it is properly applied and enforced by trained staff. Richard Reid, the “shoe-bomber,” was identified as a possible threat on 21st December 2001 and refused boarding; he returned the next day and managed to board. The Chechen Black Widows responsible for the downing of two Russian airliners in 2004, each carrying explosive charges on (or possibly in) their bodies, were initially refused boarding. They paid bribes to be accepted, with tragic results.
It is up to security trainers to ensure that profiling decisions are based on logic rather than race, religion or skin color. In any case, aviation security is about preventing perpetrators of all acts of unlawful interference with civil aviation, such as unruly passengers, criminals and asylum seekers, not only terrorists, from boarding aircraft. Employers, meanwhile, will have to ensure that the screeners they employ have the requisite skill-set with which to perform their duties.
Profiling should be no different than any medical scan. Terrorism has many of the same traits as a disease, in this case a disease of civilization. Preventing, finding, and removing these infectious cells can be similar to doing it with real cells. We don’t cat-scan or x-ray everyone, just those with symptoms.
Look at all the countries that quickly banned imports from countries that reported Mad Cow disease, Swine flu, and Bird flu, for example. Russia and China instantly began quarantining travelers with any symptoms, even those that sat within 10 feet of anyone with symptoms. They had fever scanners set up. Russia immediately banned imports of pigs from the U.S. and Mexico. The list goes on. The point is that diseases scare the hell out of people, and they often overreact. But the result is that the originating country, where the disease started, is the one put under tremendous pressure to deal with the problem, and then prove to the world they are OK. The burden shifted to them, not the importing country.
The same logic should, and eventually will prevail with terrorists, which are spawned, bred, trained, educated, and knowingly allowed to walk proudly in their country of origin. If they succeed, they become martyrs. Those countries should be treated like intentional “carriers” and “breeding grounds” for this new disease. It should become the responsibility for those country’s leaders – national, tribal, or family – to find and remove this problem for the survival of their own country. The cost should be shifted to them.
Any country that condones terrorism in any way, should be blacklisted and their travelers put automatically into a separate screening process. Besides all of the other logical clues for screening, mostly physical, national origin should therefore be key. Hate to say it, but the U.K. has allowed itself to also become a breeding ground for terrorists. We know the terms “Londonistan” and “Eurabia.” In any case, it’s better to implement tough profiling now as a security measure instead of waiting until we are hit with a full lockdown, when the problem becomes an overreaction, harder to fix, and economically much more costly.
from The Great Debate UK:
Getting to grips with the post-Cold War security threat
The fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9, 1989, was one of history’s truly epochal moments. During what became a revolutionary wave sweeping across the former Eastern Bloc countries, the announcement by the then-East German Government that its citizens could visit West Germany set in train a series of events that led, ultimately, to the demise of the Soviet Union itself.
Twenty years on, what is most striking to me are the massive, enduring ramifications of the events of November 1989. Only several decades ago, the Cold War meant that the borders of the Eastern Bloc were largely inviolate; extremist religious groups and ethnic tensions were suppressed, there was no internet (at least as we know it today) and travel between East and West was difficult. The two great Glaciers of the Cold War produced a frozen hinterland characterised by immobility.
Today’s world is a vastly different place. When one of the great Glaciers - the former Soviet Union – melted it helped unleash a potential torrent of security problems. We now live in an era characterised by huge mobility and instability, in which issues such as mass migration, international crime and international terrorism have a much higher prominence.
The end of the Cold War, together with subsequent conflicts across Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, for instance, has led to many millions of people migrating the globe in hope or fear. In the West, this has given rise to pressure on jobs, healthcare, education, housing and cultural identity, causing local populations to feel threatened.
While international migration has generally been culturally enriching and beneficial, it has nonetheless also increased the range of threats to our societies. For instance, the 48 radical Islamicists implicated in terror plots in the United States between 1993 and 2001, including the 9/11 hijackers, all used legitimate immigration devices (e.g. "green cards", student/tourism/business visas, and amnesty and asylum) to get into the country.
Getting to grips with this specific threat is a major challenge and the reason why, as UK Home Secretary, I placed so much emphasis on the need to overhaul our immigration system. Key elements of the changes I championed include a new points-based system -- which represents the biggest reform of UK immigration procedures for more than half a century; electronic border controls (all UK entry visas, for instance, are now based on finger prints); and the National Identity Scheme which features compulsory fingerprint biometric identity cards for foreign nationals.
If the power countries of the world are serious about democracy being a part of globalization the obvious first move would be to abolish the wrongly named ‘security-council’ and empower the general assembly.
To restore a little faith would be a great start, but it will not happen until the power countries themselves are truly democratic.
National cyber security leadership starts now
– Enrique Salem is president and CEO of Symantec Corp. The views expressed are his own. –
We recently had the privilege of hosting Melissa Hathaway, cyber security chief at the National Security Council, at Symantec’s Government Symposium, our annual conference for public sector customers and government officials.
In one of her first appearances following the White House announcement of the 60-day cyber review results, which examined the country’s preparedness against cyber attacks, Ms. Hathaway outlined the report’s recommendations to help the United States achieve a more reliable, resilient, and trustworthy digital infrastructure for the future.
Development of the report is a reflection of the Administration’s commitment to addressing our nation’s cyber security and elevating it to the national priority that it deserves. We whole heartedly support President Obama’s efforts and appreciate his leadership on this initiative.
The report recommends that the president names an official who would be responsible for coordinating the nation’s cyber security policies and activities across government. This is a critical and necessary position that should be a senior adviser in the White House.
The recent mass denial of service attacks on the websites of various U.S. government agencies in early July, serves to emphasize the need and urgency for such a position to be created.
With that in mind, there are several actions that can taken by Congress right now – immediately – to increase the nation’s cyber security and to help the cyber security coordinator hit the ground running once that position is named by the White House.
from The Great Debate UK:
UN resolution on women, peace and security: anniversary worth celebrating?
- Donald Steinberg, Deputy President for Policy of International Crisis Group, is a board member of the Women’s Refugee Commission and served on the UNIFEM executive director’s advisory council. The opinions expressed are his own. -
Preparations are now starting for the 10th anniversary of the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. This groundbreaking resolution was passed unanimously in October 2000 to address abuses against women during armed conflict, including sexual violence and displacement, and to bring women more fully into conflict prevention and peacemaking.
Resolution 1325 was properly hailed as a road map to promote, among other steps, women’s full engagement in peace negotiations, gender balance in post-conflict governments, properly trained peacekeepers and local security forces, protection for displaced women and accountability for sexual violence. It urged the Secretary-General to bring a gender perspective to all peacekeeping operations and other UN programs, and called for greater funding for measures to protect women during armed conflict and rebuild institutions that matter to women.
The key problem with the celebration plans is that there really is not that much to celebrate. The promise of Resolution 1325 is so far largely a dream deferred. Women continue to be raped and trafficked in conflict situations with impunity, both by rebel forces and by government militaries charged with protecting them. Women peace builders still face severe legal and cultural discrimination; coupled with sexual violence and threats against them, this imposes a victimization and danger that makes even the most courageous women think twice before stepping forward.
In recent peace negotiations in Indonesia, Nepal, Somalia, Cote d’Ivoire, the Philippines and Central African Republic, not a single woman served as a negotiator, mediator, signatory or witness. Men leading peace conferences still exclude women or shunt them off to ante-rooms while “real” negotiations take place, thus producing agreements that are disconnected from ground-truth and less likely to be successful and enjoy popular support.
The absence of women’s participation still silences their voices on issues of internal displacement, trafficking in women and girls, sexual violence, abuses by security forces, maternal health care and girls’ education. Such concerns are typically given short shrift in peace processes and reconstruction efforts, and provided inadequate funding. The UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) estimates that less than 6 percent of funds committed in donors conferences after peace accords are targeted in any way towards women.
The UN has failed to lead by example. The UN’s gender architecture on armed conflict is a hodgepodge, with no lead agency and no clear division of responsibilities between UNIFEM, the Special Adviser for Gender Issues, the Division for the Advancement of Women, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, the Peacebuilding Commission, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, UNDP’s Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction (BCPR) and others.
UN Resolutions will loose all credibility unless they are enforceable.
I’d like to see more coordination between the UN, IMF and the World Bank with the aim of closing down the loop-holes which allow “off-shore” money transactions which permit despots and criminals to move masses of money into “legitimate” capital centres, which not only destabilizes the countries of the capitals origin, but also the capitals destinations. This would move the ambulance from the bottom of the cliff and possibly result in less ambulances being necessary.
