Rid, T. Cyber War Will Not Take Place, London: Hurst/Oxford University Press (2013) 256p 

‘Cyber war is coming,’ announced a landmark RAND report in 1993. In 2005, the U.S. Air Force boasted it would now fly, fight, and win in cyberspace, the ‘fifth domain’ of warfare. This book takes stock, twenty years on: is cyber war really coming? Has war indeed entered the fifth domain?

Cyber War Will Not Take Place cuts through the hype and takes a fresh look at cyber security. Thomas Rid argues that the focus on war and winning distracts from the real challenge of cyberspace: non-violent confrontation that may rival or even replace violence in surprising ways.

The threat consists of three different vectors: espionage, sabotage, and subversion. The author traces the most significant hacks and attacks, exploring the full spectrum of case studies from the shadowy world of computer espionage and weaponised code. With a mix of technical detail and rigorous political analysis, the book explores some key questions: What are cyber weapons? How have they changed the meaning of violence? How likely and how dangerous is crowd-sourced subversive activity? Why has there never been a lethal cyber attack against a country’s critical infrastructure? How serious is the threat of ‘pure’ cyber espionage, of exfiltrating data without infiltrating humans first? And who is most vulnerable: which countries, industries, individuals?

Advance coverage

Interview, 2.34 mins, BBC Today, Radio 4, 13 March 2013

Interview (mp3, 6.36 mins), Deutschlandradio Kultur, 4 February 2013

Rid, T (2012) “Deterrence Beyond the State. The Israeli Experience” Contemporary Security Policy, April, vol 33,
iss 1,  p. 124-147, DOI:10.1080/13523260.2012.659593

Israel’s experience with deterrence is unique: it is older, more diverse, and more experimental than that of any other state. How did Israel’s strategy of deterrence evolve? How was it adapted to fit the non-state threat? And what is its utility? This article argues that Israel’s experience with deterrence beyond the state can best be understood through the conceptual lenses provided by the other grand deterrence debate, that in the philosophy of law, not international relations. Israel’s use of military force against non-state enemies doesn’t fit the classic concepts of strategy: it is not just one act of force to compel one actor to fulfill one specific political goal at one given time; deterrence consists of a series of acts of force to create — and maintain — general norms of behavior for many political actors over an extended period of time. Using force, consequently, doesn’t represent a principal failure of deterrence but its maintenance through swift, certain, but measured responses. The inquiry concludes by identifying the method’s limitations.

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Covered by

“Deterrence — The Israeli Experience” (27min) War Studies Podcast, 18 March 2012

Rid, T and P McBurney (2012) "Cyber-Weapons" The RUSI Journal, vol 157, iss 1, February, 6-13, DOI:10.1080/03071847.2012.664354 

What are cyber-weapons? Instruments of code-borne attack span a wide spectrum, from generic but low-potential tools to specific but high-potential weaponry. This distinction brings into relief a two-pronged hypothesis that stands in stark contrast to some of the received wisdom on cyber-security. Maximising the destructive potential of a cyber-weapon is likely to come with a double effect: it will significantly increase the resources, intelligence and time required for development and deployment – and more destructive potential is likely to decrease the number of targets, the risk of collateral damage and the political utility of cyber-weapons.

In the days and hours leading up to the afternoon of 19 March 2011, air force planners in France, Britain, and several other NATO countries were frantically preparing an imminent bombing campaign against military targets in Libya. In Washington on that same March weekend an unusual discussion took place between the Department of Defense and the White House. Should America deploy its cyber arsenal against Libya’s air defence system? After the Pentagon’s generals and geeks had briefed the president on the options, he decided that, No, the time was not ripe for cyber weapons.

The behind-the-scenes episode is part of a much larger debate about offensive cyber weapons. [...]

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Covered by

“Ansteckende Neugier,” Der Spiegel, 23/2012, p. 124

BBC Radio 5, 31 May 2012

RUSI podcast, 23 April 2012

“On Cyberwar Hype” Schneier on Security, 14 March 2012

“What are Cyber Weapons?” Infosec Island, 14 March 2012, reposted from Cyber Arms

Radio interview (7.47min), Monocle 24, 6 March 2012

“Why Anonymous will never be able to take down the power grid,” Jerry Brito, 27 February 2012

“The cyber-weapons paradox,” The Register, 24 February 2012

Rid, T (2012) "Think Again: Cyberwar" Foreign Policy, March/April, p. 58-61

Don’t fear the digital bogeyman. Virtual conflict is still more hype than reality.

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War 2.0 is available in paperback in Chinese, published by the People’s Liberation Army Press.

战争2.0 信息时代的非常规战, 托马斯 里德 (作者), 马克 海克 (作者), 金苗 (译者), 出版社: 解放军出版社; 第1版 (2011年5月1日), 302页

Rid, T (2012) "Cyber War Will Not Take Place" Journal of Strategic Studies, vol 35, no 1, 5–32, February,
DOI:10.1080/01402390.2011.608939*

Out soon: significantly expanded and updated version as a book.

For almost two decades, experts and defense establishments the world over have been predicting that cyber war is coming. But is it? This article argues in three steps that cyber war has never happened in the past, that cyber war does not take place in the present, and that it is unlikely that cyber war will occur in the future. It first outlines what would constitute cyber war: a potentially lethal, instrumental, and political act of force conducted through malicious code. The second part shows what cyber war is not, case-by-case. Not one single cyber offense on record constitutes an act of war on its own. The final part offers a more nuanced terminology to come to terms with cyber attacks. All politically motivated cyber attacks are merely sophisticated versions of three activities that are as old as warfare itself: sabotage, espionage, and subversion.

In the mid-1930s, inspired by the lead-up to World War I, the French dramatist Jean Giraudoux wrote a famous play, La guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu, the Trojan War will not take place. The English playwright Christopher Fry translated the two acts in 1955 as Tiger at the Gates. The plot is set inside the gates of the city of Troy. Hector, a disillusioned Trojan commander, tries to avoid in vain what the seer Cassandra has predicted to be inevitable: war with the Greeks. Giraudoux was a veteran of 1914 and later worked in the French foreign office. His tragedy is an eloquent critique of Europe’s leaders, diplomats, and intellectuals who were, again, about to unleash the dogs of war. The play premiered in November 1935 in the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris, almost exactly four years before the dramatist’s fears would come true.

Judging from present pronouncements about cyber war, the world seems to be facing another 1935-moment. ‘Cyberwar is Coming!’ declared the RAND Corporation’s John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt in 1993. It took a while for the establishment to catch on. ‘Cyberspace is a domain in which the Air Force flies and fights’, announced Michael Wynne, a US Air Force Secretary, in 2006. Four years later the Pentagon leadership joined in. ‘Although cyberspace is a man-made domain’, wrote William Lynn, America’s Deputy Secretary of Defense, in a 2010 Foreign Affairs article, it has become ‘just as critical to military operations as land, sea, air, and space’. In the same year, Richard Clarke, the White House’s former cyber tsar, invoked calamities of a magnitude that make 9/11 pale in comparison and urged taking a number of measures ‘simultaneously and now to avert a cyber war disaster’.4 In February 2011, then-Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta warned the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence: ‘The next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyber attack.’ That year a highly sophisticated computer worm may have significantly damaged the Iranian nuclear enrichment program at Natanz. One much-noted investigative article in Vanity Fair concluded that the event foreshadowed the destructive new face of twenty-first century warfare, ‘Stuxnet is the Hiroshima of cyber-war.’

But is it? Are the Cassandras of cyber warfare on the right side of history? Is cyber war really coming?

Read more (PDF | html)

Covered by:

“La cyberguerre n’aura pas lieu, mais il faut s’y préparer” Politique étrangère, 2/2012, p. 305-316

“War and Peace” Joel Brenner, Foreign Policy, May/June 2012

“La cyberguerre est un mythe” Slate.fr, 10 April 2012

“Web Worriers” Standpoint, April 2012

“On cyberwar hype” Patch Monday (ZDNet), 2 April 2012

“Must-read” Council on Foreign Relations, March/April 2012

“Hype or Reality?” Naked Security (Sophos), 20 March 2012

“Xinhua ‘borrows’ a Foreign Policy article” Foreign Policy, 14 March 2012

“On Cyberwar Hype“ Schneier on Security, 14 March 2012

“网络战难成现实威胁” People’s Daily, 10 March 2012, reprinted in Xinhua

“Cyber War Is Already Upon Us,” John Arquilla, Foreign Policy, March/April 2012

“Think Again: Cyberwar” the author, Foreign Policy, March/April 2012

“The empty threat of cyber war,” The Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2012

“Cyber war may not happen,” Comment, iss 198, January 2012

“Rid hat eine philosophisch-technische Diskussion ausgelöst”  ZDNet (Germany), 17 November 2011

“Not theoretical, can actually kill” ZDNet (Asia), 17 November 2011

“网络战争还不会发生” Science and Technology Daily (China), 4 November 2011

“War and freedom” KCL Comment (podcast), 4 November 2011

Recommended by Schneier on Security, 3 November 2011

“No cyber war, no nuclear war” Forbes, 3 November 2011

“Wahl der Waffen” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2 November 2011

“Cyber war (is not)“ Department of War Studies’ Podcast, 27 October 2011

“Rid’s essay has added fuel to the debate“ Forbes, 26 October 2011

“no lethal act of force“ Computer Weekly, 25 October 2011

“Clausewitz and Cyber War“ Digital Dao, 23 October 2011

“Still not a thing“ Reason.com, 21 October 2011

“Die Hard 4 is just a movie, kids“ The Register, 20 October 2011

“Миру не грозит война в киберпространстве” SecurityLab, 20 October 2011

“an exceptional read“ Infosec Island, 20 October 2011, cross-posted from Cyber Arms

“convincing“ Ink Spots, 20 October 2011

“myth or reality?” InKings, 17 October 2011

“Hollywood producers short on ideas should talk to Rid” (.pdf) InTouch, Autumn 2011, p. 20-23

* Published with iFirst in the JSS in early October 2011.

Rid, T (2011) "Cracks in the Jihad" in T. Badey (ed) Annual Editions: Violence and Terrorism 12/13, Columbus, OH: McGraw-Hill

“Cracks in the Jihad” is an essay originally published in The Wilson Quarterly and reprinted in Thomas Badey’s Violence and Terrorism, September 2011.

Rid, T. (2011) "Abschreckung zwecklos?" Internationale Politik 66/5 September-Oktober, p. 80-88

An analysis of different deterrence scenarios that should be discussed if Iran acquired nuclear weapons.*

Rid, T. (2011) "Risse im Dschihad" Internationale Politik 66/1 Januar-Februar, p. 10-19.

The article was republished online with a new introduction after Bin Laden’s death on 2 May 2011.

Osama Bin Laden ist tot. Bedeutet das den Sieg im Kampf gegen den Terrorismus, womöglich das Ende der Dschihad-Bewegung? Nein. Der Heilige Krieg wird wohl noch unübersichtlicher. Das könnte seine Eindämmung erschweren.

Osama Bin Ladens Tod ist ein herber Rückschlag für Al-Kaida und die breitere Dschihad-Bewegung, psychologisch wie organisatorisch. Das Timing der amerikanischen verdeckten Operation im pakistanischen Abbottabad ist dabei ein zusätzliches Problem für die Gotteskrieger: Erst die arabischen Frühjahrsrevolten, bei denen Al-Kaida durch Abwesenheit glänzte, und jetzt das Ende ihrer Gallionsfigur. Zudem mussten die extremsten Taliban im pakistanisch-afghanischen Grenzgebiet in den vergangenen Monaten weitere Rückschläge einstecken.

Doch ist Vorsicht geboten. Jetzt könnte die Gefahr wachsen, dass Terroristen, mit dem Rücken zur Wand, verzweifelten Tatendrang entwickeln. Auch könnten sie das revolutionäre Chaos in einigen Ländern ausnutzen, etwa im Jemen. Pakistan bleibt in höchstem Maße instabil. Die Identitätskrise in muslimischen Diaspora-Gemeinden bleibt akut, gerade in den USA. Der globale Dschihad wird sich weiterhin in drei Strömungen aufspalten.

Da sind zum einen lokal agierende islamische Aufständische, die sich aus dem Unmut über den autoritären Führungsstil, die Korruption oder die Zusammenarbeit angeblich „abtrünniger“ arabischer Regime mit „ungläubigen“ äußeren Mächten rekrutieren. Aus Sicht mancher Extremisten ist eine Hinwendung zur Demokratie nur ein anderes Übel. Die zweite Strömung formiert sich aus einem mit organisiertem Verbrechen kombinierten Terrorismus, der vor allem in Afghanistan und Indonesien, aber auch in Europa zu beobachten ist und der sich unter anderem durch Drogenhandel und Erpressung finanziert. Die Mitglieder der dritten Strömung lassen sich schwerer als einheitliche Gruppe definieren. Es handelt sich dabei vornehmlich um junge Muslime, die in der zweiten oder dritten Generation in der Diaspora leben und sich in einem anhaltenden Zustand des Heiligen Krieges wähnen. Deren Motivation zum Kampf speist sich aus ihrer eigenen Unzufriedenheit, die sich auf eine Vielzahl von Gründen zurückführen lässt. Für die Al-Kaida-Führung heißt das zweierlei: Die Legitimität eines radikalen Islamismus nimmt in den Augen des „Mainstream“ der Muslime ab, und die Ränder der militanten Bewegung fransen aus.

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Rid, T. (2010) "The Nineteenth Century Origins of Counterinsurgency Doctrine" The Journal of Strategic Studies 33/5 October, p. 727-758.

Counterinsurgency is a military activity centered on civilians. The counterinsurgent competes against the insurgent for the trust and the support of the uncommitted, civilian population. These assumptions have become a core conceptual foundation of today’s counterinsurgency debate and doctrine. The publication of a much-discussed US manual in December 2006, so-called FM 3-24 Counterinsurgency, prepared the ground for a fundamental reorientation of the use and the utility of force. Then, in 2008, the United States Army updated its most elemental capstone doctrine, Field Manual 3-0 Operations. It recognized and consolidated a ‘revolutionary departure from past doctrine’, its foreword announced. Modern wars are ‘increasingly fought ‘‘among the people’’’, General William Wallace wrote there. In more detail:

Previously, we sought to separate people from the battlefield so that we could engage and destroy enemies and seize terrain. While we recognize our enduring requirement to fight and win, we also recognize that people are frequently part of the terrain and their support is a principal determinant of success in future conflicts

Wallace’s carefully pronounced ‘previously’ hints at a historical trend that is as old as modern, industrial-age armies: the professionalization of military organizations, so succinctly described in Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State. Officers became specialists in planning, equipping, training, and using industrial force to fight one another. The battlefield, in Winston Churchill’s words, turned into ‘a common professional meeting ground between military men’. Political affairs, be it in capitals or in theater, ceased to be the prerogative of officers who were trained as apolitical experts in the ‘management of violence’, not public administration. Against this background, the current shift appears remarkable and perhaps indeed revolutionary. So it is highly desirable to better understand the emergence of the military focus on the civilian population in theater. What are the roots of population-centric operations?

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Journal of Strategic Studies, 33: 5, p. 784-787.
Review of Patrick Porter’s, Military Orientalism: Eastern War Through Western Eyes. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, 256 pages.

The ‘orient’ is a diffuse idea. Oriental was what lurked beyond the boundaries of civilised Europe, unknown and fascinating. It stood for the East, sometimes for the South, always for the unknown other. Ideas of the oriental other have not just influenced, and sometimes dominated, Western perspectives toward the East. As Patrick Porter’s fine new book shows, orientalism has also affected Western views of its battles and wars.

On the face of it, the scene is predictable: Western armies are made for industrial battles, decisive plots of organised force, and orchestrated manoeuvres. They are rational, orderly, calculated bureaucracies with a sophisticated division of labour, high-tech weapons systems and clear lines of authority from civilian politicians. They develop plans in institutionalised general staffs, and their strategic and operational thinking guided by post-Enlightenment intellectual craftsmen like Antoine de Jomini or Carl von Clausewitz.

Easterners, so the popular stereotype goes, fight altogether differently – as martyrs and kamikazes. They are deceitful, cunning, irrational, emotional, chaotic, and spiritual, their raw violence seemingly triggered by primordial ethnic or tribal hatred, vendettas, and blood feuds. Some of these juxtapositions are very much alive today. Patrick Porter sees the orientalist world view come to the fore in popular culture, for instance in films like 300, Black Hawk Down, Rambo II and III, and The Last Samurai. But such an argument would be trite. Military Orientalism is shrewder.

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The Wilson Quarterly, autumn, 98-100
Review of Andrew Bacevich’s Washington Rules. America’s Path to Permanent War, Henry Holt, 286 pages.

Over the past five years, Andrew Bacevich has emerged as one of the most prolific and eloquent critics of American foreign policy. In several influential books and essays, Bacevich, a professor of international relations and history at Boston University, has often walked the fine line between scholarship and mass-audience opinionating. As a self-styled realist, he has mostly crafted these positions with detached, historically balanced analysis.

Washington Rules breaks with this trend: It is the passionate, personal, and polemical story of how Bacevich, as an Army officer visiting Berlin in 1990, embarked on an educational journey that led him to discover the ideological roots of America’s path to permanent war. At times Washington Rules articulates a sophisticated critique of the United States’ global ambitions. But with this book, Bacevich is dancing along another line. He now has at least one foot in the murky territory of conspiracy theory.

[...]

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Note: I only contributed to this piece as Graeme Wood’s photographer and driver. The article is about pork production in the Galilee and was published on 23 September in The National, a magazine based in Abu Dhabi. As printing imagery of pigs in their full glory is problematic there, below the object of desire, unveiled.

The roads of Mi’ilya, an Arab town in the Western Galilee, snake their way up a steady incline, and the houses all have at least one window that looks out onto another village nearby. Most of those villages are hostile, in one way or another.

The 2,800 residents of Mi’ilya are almost all Roman Catholic Arabs, though in the last few years a small number of Muslims have taken up residence, arousing some suspicion among Catholics who fear for the ethno-religious character of the town. The village’s closest neighbours are Jewish settlers.

Just a few kilometres to the north, across the Lebanese border, Hizbollah reigns in a series of old and tightly clustered hill villages, the sites of rocket attacks against Israeli communities, including Mi’ilya, for the past five years. From the village’s highest vantage point, near the local church, one gets a showstopping panorama of enmity: Jews who hate Catholics, who dodge Shiite rockets that land near Sunnis.

[...]

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various authors, Stiftung Neue Verantwortung, Policy Brief 02/10, September, 8 pages

Die Bundeswehr ist mit der vielleicht größten Reform ihrer Geschichte konfrontiert. In diesem Policy Brief zeigen die Autoren, warum die Politik die Bundeswehr jetzt konsequent zu einer Einsatzarmee weiterentwickeln muss. Finanzielle Spielräume sind dafür unerlässlich – eine Bundeswehr als Steinbruch des Gesamthaushalts wäre die Bankrotterklärung nachhaltiger und verantwortlicher Sicherheitspolitik.

Die Deutsche Sicherheitspolitik leidet unter einem finanziell-personellen sowie einem konzeptionellen Ressourcenproblem. Die internationale Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise zwingt alle Länder Europas zum Sparen. So stehen auch in Deutschland öffentliche Kassen unter Druck, insbesondere das Verteidigungsbudget. Es ist daher höchste Zeit, dass deutsche Politik zu grundlegenden Fragen der deutschen Sicherheitspolitik Stellung bezieht, um latente strukturell-politische Probleme in einem übergreifenden Ansatz anzugehen und über die Sparzwänge, die die aktuelle Diskussion beherrschen, hinauszudenken: Welche Rolle spielt der militärische Anteil im Kontext deutscher Außenpolitik? Welche Rolle will und kann die Bundeswehr in Bündnissen zukünftig noch spielen? Worauf soll sie vorbereitet und ausgerichtet werden? Und – angesichts der schon finanziell unausweichlichen Notwendigkeit zur Prioritätensetzung – worauf muss sich die Bundeswehr künftig nicht mehr vorbereiten? Schließlich: Ist Afghanistan, der bisher kostspieligste und verlustreichste Einsatz der Bundeswehr, Regelfall oder Ausnahme?

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with Marc Hecker, “Stratégies et politiques de communication des belligérants non-étatiques,” Centre d’Etudes en Sciences Sociales de la Défense (C2SD), Paris, Les Thématiques du C2SD, n° 21, 192 pages

[...]

Le constat de faiblesse pourrait conduire les « belligérants non-étatiques » àne pas se lancer dans la lutte. Tel n’est pas le cas. Combattre est en effet perçu par ces derniers comme une obligation éthique, résultant de la supériorité morale de la cause qu’ils défendent. L’origine de cette supériorité varie selon les situations. Les deux cas de figure les plus fréquents sont les luttes de libération nationale et les soulèvements à caractère religieux. Dans le premier, les insurgés combattent pour l’indépendance, la liberté et l’égalité, contre un adversaire étatique décrit comme un tyran impérialiste déniant au peuple son indépendance et ses droits civiques. Dans le second, ils considèrent comme un devoir religieux de mener une guerre contre un ennemi impie. L’exemple des jihadistes est, à cet égard, éloquent. Abdallah Azzam, perçu par certains comme le père spirituel d’Oussama Ben Laden, distinguait ainsi le « jihad offensif » du « jihad défensif ». Le « jihad offensif », qui consiste à « attaquer les infidèles dans leur pays », est considéré comme une « obligation collective » à laquelle il est possible, sous certaines conditions, de déroger. Le « jihad défensif » est en revanche une « obligation individuelle » et même « le plus important devoir individuel » lorsque « les infidèles pénètrent dans l’un des territoires musulmans » ou encore lorsqu’ils « font prisonniers des musulmans ».

Que ce soit dans le cadre d’une lutte de libération nationale ou d’une confrontation religieuse, le statu quo est si inconcevable pour les « belligérants non-étatiques» qu’ils sont prêts à mourir pour modifier la situation. L’importance de l’enjeu transparaît dans les slogans révolutionnaires. Le bataillon de Ngo Van Chieu avait par exemple choisi comme mot d’ordre « Mieux vaut mourir pour l’indépendance que de vivre en esclave ». Dans le même esprit, Amilcar Cabral, chef de la guérilla en Guinée et au Cap-Vert, ponctua son discours à la première conférence tricontinentale des peuples d’Asie, d’Afrique et d’Amérique latine (janvier 1966) en reprenant une devise chère aux guérilleros cubains : « Patria o Muerte ! Venceremos ! ».

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With Martin Zapfe, Financial Times Deutschland, 13 April 2010, p. 24.

In der Debatte über den Afghanistaneinsatz fehlt es oft an militärischem Sachverstand. Daher sollten sich Soldaten häufiger zu Wort melden — und auch mal Widerspruch wagen.

Die Bundeswehr steht im politischen Gefecht. Die Meldungen aus Afghanistan sowie die Kundus-Debatte haben das Verhältnis von militärischer und politischer Führung ins Scheinwerferlicht gerückt. Sind die zivil-militärischen Beziehungen in Deutschland dem Afghanistaneinsatz angemessen?

Die deutsche Haltung zum Einsatz militärischer Gewalt ist aus historischen Gründen besonders sensibel: Die Politik allein definiert das nationale Interesse und die Aufgaben der Streitkräfte, nicht Soldaten. Das Militär bleibt also immer Instrument. Es kann nichts anderes sein. Aber das Instrument agiert nicht immer militärisch.

[...]

Das Instrument Militär ist nicht mehr nur stumpfer Hammer, sondern ein scharfes Allzwecktaschenmesser. Soldaten müssen alles können: kämpfen, aufbauen, verhandeln. Das bleibt jedoch schwierig für eine Organisation, die dazu nicht ausgebildet wurde. Aber um als Allzweckwerkzeug zu funktionieren, braucht die Bundeswehr scharfsinnige — und manchmal scharfzüngige — Offiziere, die risikobereit sind und improvisieren können. Der Wetzstein für dieses Allzweckmesser kann nur die öffentliche Debatte sein. Und die braucht den Sachverstand der Soldaten.

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Rid, T. and T. Keaney (eds) Understanding Counterinsurgency
London: Routledge (2010) 280p

This textbook offers an accessible introduction to counterinsurgency operations, a key aspect of modern warfare. Featuring essays by some of the world’s leading experts on unconventional conflict, both scholars and practitioners, the book discusses how modern regular armed forces react, and should react, to irregular warfare. The volume is divided into three main sections:

1. Doctrinal Origins: analysing the intellectual and historical roots of modern Western theory and practice
2. Operational Aspects: examining the specific role of various military services in counterinsurgency, but also special forces, intelligence, and local security forces
3. Challenges: looking at wider issues, such as governance, culture, ethics, civil-military cooperation, information operations, and time.

Understanding Counterinsurgency is the first comprehensive textbook on counterinsurgency, and will be essential reading for all students of small wars, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism, strategic studies and security studies, both in graduate and undergraduate courses as well as in professional military schools.

To request a copy for review, please contact:
Jessica Plummer, jessica.plummer@taylorandfrancis.com, +1 212 216 7897

* Cover image courtesy of the U.S. Army.

With Timo Noetzel, Financial Times Deutschland, 5 February 2010, p. 26.

Die Bundesregierung behauptet zwar, mit Militär allein sei Afghanistan nicht zu gewinnen — tatsächlich aber entsendet sie fast nur Soldaten. Fünf Vorschläge für mehr ziviles Engagement.

“What the Prussians learned at the hands of Napoleon,” The Weekly Standard, 8 February, vol 15, no 20, review of Peter Paret’s The Cognitive Challenge of War. Prussia 1806. Princeton, 2009

It must have been an eerie Monday afternoon, on October 13, 1806. Napoleon rode through Jena, where French troops had already started looting. Hegel, in his study, was working on the last pages of his Phenomenology of Spirit. From a window the philosopher was able to spot “the Emperor” ride out of town: “Truly it is a remarkable sensation to see such an individual on horseback, raising his arm over the world and ruling it,” he later wrote to a friend. Europe was on the eve of one of the most momentous battles of its bloody history. Before sunrise on the next day, the fields still covered by mist, Bonaparte ordered an attack.

[...]

Prussia’s reaction to what could not be imagined, the shock of 1806, is the subject of The Cognitive Challenge of War. In what turned out to be a spectacularly productive quest, Germany’s greatest minds — among them artists, writers, and military intellectuals — went to work and wrestled with the consequences of France’s revolutionary wars. Paret is at his best when he deciphers some of the paintings and engrav- ings that depict the battle. Perhaps the most impressive is Caspar David Friedrich’s The Chasseur in the Forest. It is an elaborate allusion to Prussia’s defeat. On a narrow opening framed by a stand of firs, a chasseur à cheval, his horse and strength vanished, walks slowly into the dark forest. Watching is a raven on a tree stump, symbols of death.

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Rid, T. (2010) "Cracks in the Jihad" The Wilson Quarterly 34/1 Winter, p. 40-48

“Get ready for all Muslims to join the holy war against you,” the jihadi leader Abd el-Kader warned his Western enemies. The year was 1839, and nine years into France’s occupation of Algeria the resistance had grown self-confident. Only weeks earlier, Arab fighters had wiped out a convoy of 30 French soldiers en route from Boufarik to Oued-el-Alèg. Insurgent attacks on the slow-moving French columns were steadily increasing, and the army’s fortified blockhouses in the Atlas Mountains were under frequent assault.

[...]

Later that year, a well-known military thinker from Prussia traveled to Algeria to observe Bugeaud’s new approach. Major General Carl von Decker, who had taught under the famed Carl von Clausewitz at the War Academy in Berlin, was more forthright than his French counterpart. The fight against fanatical tribal warriors, he foresaw, “will throw all European theory of war into the trash heap.”

One hundred and seventy years later, jihad is again a major threat—and Decker’s dire analysis more relevant than ever. War, in Clausewitz’s eminent theory, was a clash of collective wills, “a continuation of politics by other means.” When states went to war, the adversary was a political entity with the ability to act as one body, able to end hostilities by declaring victory or admitting defeat. Even Abd el-Kader eventually capitulated. But jihad in the 21st century, especially during the past few years, has fundamentally changed its anatomy: Al Qaeda is no longer a collective political actor. It is no longer an adversary that can articulate a will, capitulate, and be defeated. But the jihad’s new weakness is also its new strength: Because of its transformation, Islamist militancy is politically impaired yet fitter to survive its present crisis.

In the years since late 2001, when U.S. and coalition forces toppled the Taliban regime and all but destroyed Al Qaeda’s core organization in Afghan istan, the bin Laden brand has been bleeding popularity across the Muslim world. The global jihad, as a result, has been torn by mounting internal tensions. Today, the holy war is set to slip into three distinct ideological and organizational niches. The U.S. surge in Afghanistan, whether successful or not, is likely to affect this development only marginally.

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Rid, T. and M. Hecker (2009) "The Terror Fringe" Policy Review 158 December-January, p. 3-19

The Afghan-Pakistan border region is widely identified as a haven for jihadi extremists. But the joint between local insurgencies and global terrorism has been dislocated. A combination of new technologies and new ideologies has changed the role of popular support: In local insurgencies the population may still be the “terrain” on which resistance is thriving — and counterinsurgency, by creating security for the people, may still succeed locally. But Islamic violent extremism in its global and ambitious form is attractive only for groups at the outer edge, the flat end of a popular support curve. Jihad failed to muster mass support, but it is stable at the margin of society. Neither the West nor its enemies can win — or lose — a war on terror. [...]

The linkage between terrorism and insurgency has been altered in the early 21st century. Instead of seeing high-volume popular support in an insurgency as the “soil” on which resistance and terrorism are flourishing — and counterinsurgency as a competition for that support — an additional paradigm is needed: the “tail.”

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Forum: Progress, Dissent and Counter-Insurgency: An Exchange, Gian P. Gentile;  Thomas Rid;  Philipp Rotmann;  David Tohn; Jaron Wharton, Survival, vol 51, iss 6, p. 189-202

In the August-September 2009 issue of Survival (vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 31-48), Philipp Rotmann, David Tohn and Jaron Wharton argued that the US military’s change to a counterinsurgency posture in the on-going conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq was catalysed by two products of an institutional culture that strove to be self-learning: the response of junior leadership to tactical problems and senior institutional dissidents driving deep, controversial changes in doctrine and culture. In this Survival Exchange two experts offer US and European perspectives on the authors’ argument and recommendations to preserve and advance this dynamic in anticipation of future requirements for rapid change. A response from Rotmann, Tohn and Wharton concludes the debate.

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The Wilson Quarterly, autumn, 92-4
Review of Mark Moyar’s A Question of Command. Counterinsurgency From the Civil War to Iraq. Yale University Press, 2009.

In the summer of 2003, during the early days of the Iraq war, “counterinsurgency” was still an odd and cumbersome word. Soon it dawned on politicians, military officers, and scholars that they better understand its nuances. The literature on “coin” began to mushroom, and today small libraries could be filled with the books and articles devoted to the subject. Most notably, in 2006 the U.S. Army published a much-anticipated field manual, Counterinsurgency. Known among aficionados simply by its official publication number, FM 3–24, it became the blueprint for improvement in Iraq, and now, possibly, Afghanistan. The University of Chicago Press republished the manual in 2007 as a book, and it became one of the publisher’s bestsellers in recent years. The gist of the counterinsurgency wisdom is that the local population, not territory, is what matters most. Counterinsurgent and insurgent, in theory, compete for the trust of the locals, for legitimacy. The population is the “prize.”

Mark Moyar pitches his book as a challenge to that thesis. Counterinsurgency must not be just population-centric. Nor can it be merely enemy-centric, as conventional wars against opposing armies were. No, successful counterinsurgency is “leader-centric.” Counterinsurgency struggles are contests between elites, in which the elite group with better “leadership attributes” usually wins.

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Noetzel, T. and T Rid "Germany's Options in Afghanistan" Survival 51/5, October-November, p. 71-90

Germany’s military mission in Afghanistan has become increasingly politicised in the eight years since it was launched. Political and ideological differences between parties and even between ministries are becoming more pronounced, not less. This trend narrows the room for manoeuvre and limits the strategic debate. Greater instability in Kunduz province, at the heart of Germany’s area of regional responsibility in Afghanistan, has two immediate effects: it both increases the need to act decisively and it heightens the risk of political paralysis in Berlin. This article argues that the latter is likely to prevail.

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Rid, T. (2009) “Razzia. A Turning Point in Modern Strategy” Terrorism and Political Violence 21/4, p. 617-635

The razzia, a tactic of swift and brutal raids used by the French military against recalcitrant tribes in Algeria in the 1840s, was a necessary step in modern military thought. At first glance the destructive and violent razzias stand in stark contrast to the constructive and non-violent bureaux arabes — an institutional ancestor of Provincial Reconstruction Teams. But both were developed in the same conflict and by the same men. These two innovations, this article argues, were also flipsides of the same coin: what today is called war “among the people.” The razzia consequently appears as a necessary historic precursor for contemporary counterinsurgency doctrine.

Algiers in the 1840s was tantalizing. Seen from the deck of an approaching Alexandrian steamer, the “Pirate’s Daughter” — as contemporary travelers nicknamed the city — appeared like a triangular shape of chalk on a slope of green hills, the dark Atlas mountains rising menacingly in the distance behind. In 1837, just after the French had taken Algeria’s last Ottoman city in Constantine, it was the muezzin’s monotonous cry from a towering minaret that roused the traveler from his morning sleep. Such observed Thomas Campbell, a poet and one of the first Britons to describe Algeria after the French conquest. Ten years later, the sound that made sleep fragile in the mornings was the “irritating rattle of the regimental drums,” noted a later traveler from England. A “lively masquerade” awaited European visitors: narrow streets winding steeply up the hills, more like staircases than roads, spilling into public squares with porcelain pavement, framed by pillars and arches and palm trees. There they found French women wearing white aprons and handkerchiefs, Minorcan laborers returning from lush gardens, dark-skinned Kabyles offering fresh fruits, Berbers with embroidered coats, Jewish dandies with blue turbans, dark-eyed girls with bright sashes, old men playing chess. As bewildering as the peculiar smells and sounds were military men in their harlequin uniforms: zouaves with red pantaloons and white jackets; indigènes with black instead of yellow gaiters; spahis with red jackets and blue pantaloons; the chasseurs d’Afrique mounted on formidable Arab horses.

It was alien territory that awaited Major General Carl von Decker, a military thinker who had taught under Clausewitz at the Kriegsschule in Berlin. “Hopefully you left all your European ideas over there in Toulon,” a French officer greeted the Prussian general as he debarked from his vessel in Algiers. Decker came to Africa to observe the ongoing French campaign against Abd el-Kader’s insurrection. But the study of European warfare and its history was of limited use on the Mediterranean’s southern shores. Decker soon discovered that the essential elements of war as he knew it were missing in Algeria: There were no enemy positions that could be attacked, no fortifications, no operationally relevant locations, no strategic deployments, no lines of communication, no army, no decisive battles — in a word: there was “no center of gravity,” he noted in a direct, puzzled hint at Clausewitz. “The finest gimmicks of our newest theoreticians of war lose their magic power [in Africa].” One new element of war that baffled European observers was that territory could not be held. If a soldier “can’t even remain on the square-inch of land which he fought for with his own blood, then indeed the most sublime ‘Theory of Great War’ will be obsolete and one has … to come up with a new one,” Decker concluded.

How did that new theory of war emerge? …

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Policy Review, 156, p. 76-82
Review* of Christopher Caldwell’s Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West. New York: Doubleday, 2009

We hear that Europe is about to ram a double-edged dagger into its underbelly: A lack of babies is bleeding the old world of native young people while immigration is pumping in masses of unskilled Muslims. Worse, the aliens don’t work hard and they sap the welfare state. Several American authors have spotted what they think is a trend leading to collapse. […]

Now comes Christopher Caldwell, a columnist for the Financial Times, writer for the New York Times Magazine, and senior editor at the Weekly Standard, who has written a well-researched and provocative book, to be translated into Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and French. It is one of the first in-depth studies of Muslim immigration all over Europe. The book’s Burkean title, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, betrays both the author’s pessimism and his ambition. After skimming the introduction, most informed readers will be tempted to toss Caldwell’s book on the doomsday pile. They would be wrong to do so, especially because a closer reading reveals that his Reflections do contain a great deal of uniquely insightful information. […]

The pessimistic books on Muslims in Europe cannot be understood without taking one more step back, beyond Caldwell’s book. A significant number of American conservatives, authors as well as readers, seem to be driven by two fears: fear of Islam and fear of Europe. The second fear perhaps cuts deeper. It would be naïve to think that the wellspring of the ire dripping from many pages of the books quoted above could be found in the Islamic world or even in Europe. No, the source might as well be in America.

Hardly anybody seriously considers the possibility that the United States could become Islamic. But America — horror of horrors — might turn more European. […]

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* My thanks to Esther Ben-David, of the blog Islam in Europe, for her counsel.

With Marc Hecker, Internationale Politik, Juli-August, p. 46-53

Die Afghanistan-Strategie der amerikanischen Regierung sowie der NATO geht von der Annahme aus, das Problem des Terrorismus werde an der Wurzel gepackt. Diese Prämisse – nämlich den Kampf gegen den Terrorismus in Afghanistan zu führen, um ihn nicht in Amerika führen zu müssen – hat Präsident Barack Obama von seinem Vorgänger George W. Bush übernommen. In der deutschen Afghanistan-Politik baut Bundes-kanzlerin Angela Merkel ebenfalls auf dem griffigen Diktum ihrer Vorgängerregierung auf, dass Deutschland auch am Hindukusch verteidigt werde. Eine ernsthafte Auseinandersetzung mit den Schwächen dieser Sichtweise blieb jedoch aus. Welche Wirkung hätte es auf den globalen Terrorismus, wenn die NATO in Afghanistan erfolgreich wäre? Dass dieses Szenario derzeit unwahrscheinlich ist, macht die Frage nur noch dringlicher. Denn stimmen die Annahmen überhaupt, auf denen die Aufstandsbekämpfung und die Afghanistan-Strategie der westlichen Verbündeten beruhen? Oder haben moderne Informationstechnologien, im Verbund mit neuen Ideologien, nicht vielmehr veränderte Voraussetzungen für politische Gewalt geschaffen?

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Hecker, M. and T. Rid (2009) "Jihadistes de tous les pays, dispersez-vous !" Politique Internationale, 123 printemps, p. 175-189

Le terrorisme est souvent considéré, de nos jours, comme la menace numéro un planant sur les sociétés occidentales. Il suffit, pour s’en rendre compte, de comparer deux documents français : le Livre Blanc sur la Défense de 1994 et le Livre Blanc sur la Défense et la Sécurité nationale de 2008. Dans ce dernier, contrairement à celui de 1994, le terrorisme est omniprésent, à tel point que cette forme de conflictualité semble éclipser la menace de la guerre. [...]

Où en est l’organisation jihadiste aujourd’hui ? A-t-on raison de l’ériger en menace suprême ? Comment la mouvance jihadiste internationale a-t-elle évolué depuis une dizaine d’années ? Et selon quels scénarios pourrait-elle décliner à l’avenir ?

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Chivvis, C. and T. Rid (2009) "The Roots of Germany's Russia Policy" Survival 51/2 April-May, p. 105-122

In the aftermath of the Cold War, many American observers expected that the new Germany would more or less follow in the strong Atlanticist tradition of the old West Germany and its Conservative leadership in particular. A rejuvenated, reunited Germany is now seeking a more prominent role in international affairs, but its foreign policy is evolving away from the staunch Atlanticism that predominated during the Cold War. Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany unquestionably sees the United States as a crucial ally, but also sees Russia as an inevitable partner for the stability of the European order. The bottom line for most German leaders is that the isolation of Russia is unacceptable and must be avoided at all costs. It would deprive the West of its few remaining economic levers over Russian policy and leave Europe and the United States with only cruder means of influencing Russian behaviour. Meanwhile, Russian nationalism and even militarism could accelerate. The sense that Germany has become Russia’s last strong link with the West only intensifies German concern, driving German leaders to redouble their efforts to maintain good relations.

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Rid, T. and M. Hecker War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the Information Age Westport: Praeger (2009) 280p

New: War 2.0 in Chinese by the People’s Liberation Army Press, as “战争2.0.“

War 2.0: Irregular Warfare in the Information Age, co-authored with Marc Hecker, argues that two intimately connected trends are putting modern armies under huge pressure to adapt: the rise of insurgencies and the rise of the Web. Both in cyberspace and in warfare, a public dimension has assumed increasing importance in recent years. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Web 2.0 rose from the ashes. This newly interactive and participatory form of the Web promotes and enables offline action. Similarly, after an attempt to transform the U.S. military into a lean, lethal, computerized force faltered in Iraq in 2003, counterinsurgency rose from the ashes. Counterinsurgency is a social form of war — indeed, the U.S. Army calls it “armed social work” — in which the local population becomes the center of gravity and public opinion at home the critical vulnerability.

War 2.0 traces the contrasting ways in which insurgents and counterinsurgents have adapted irregular conflict. It examines the public affairs policies of the U.S. land forces, the British Army, and the Israel Defense Forces. Then it compares the media-related counterinsurgency methods of these conventional armies to the more diverse methods devised by their asymmetric adversaries, showing how such organizations as al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and Hezbollah use the Web not merely to advertise their political agenda and influence public opinion, but to mobilize a following and put insurgent operations into action. But the same technology that tends to level the operational playing field in irregular warfare also incurs heavy costs on terrorists and insurgents. (hardback)

Thematically rich and masterfully constructed, this book shows how our wired-up world has changed the operational environment, making both war and insurgency more complex, decentralised, and bottom-up. Few other books have grasped so effectively the seismic change in the character of war. War 2.0 is Clausewitz rebooted for the 21st century.
– Christopher Coker, Professor of International Relations, The London School of Economics, author of Humane Warfare

War, flowing from society as a whole, is constantly evolving. Winning wars requires understanding the changing environment and adapting faster than the enemy. Rid and Hecker provide powerful case studies on how our primary enemies have understood and adapted to the changes Web 2.0 is driving. It would behoove professionals to read and understand this remarkable book.
– T.X. Hammes, Colonel (Ret), U.S. Marine Corps, author of The Sling and the Stone

High-tech revolutions are rocking the military and the media, toppling hierarchies, and upending traditional players. Until now, no one has shown how these twin upheavals are linked–and feeding one an-other. War 2.0 reveals how the old ways of war and communications are coming apart, and what the chaotic, self-organizing, networked future is likely to be.
– Noah Shachtman, Wired magazine, editor of Danger Room, a security blog

The public, more than ever before, has become the center of gravity in irregular warfare. Sharp and testing, War 2.0 probes the burgeoning impact of the new media.
– Gérard Chaliand, author of History of Terrorism. From Antiquity to Al Qaida.

For review copies, contact reviewcopies@abc-clio.com

Reviews

Jem Thomas, Media, War, and Conflict, Vol 3; Iss 1, 2010, p. 114-115 (.pdf)

George Michael, Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol 22, 2 April 2010, 332-334

Robert Cassidy, “War in the Information Age,” Parameters, winter 2009/2010, 117-122 (.pdf).

A. C. Tuttle, Choice (Association of College & Research Libraries), February 2010

Stéphane Taillat, Revue Française de Sciences Politiques, No 6, Vol 59, Décembre 2009 (.pdf)

Défense et Sécurité Internationale, No 51, décembre 2009, p. 98 (.pdf)

Jacques Perriault, Hermès, No 55, décembre 2009

A short article on the Israel Defense Forces and the public affairs side of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, with Marc Hecker, published at Rue89, an interactive news site, on 22 January 2009 (in French).

Au cours de la guerre à Gaza, Ehoud Olmert a annoncé à plusieurs reprises que les objectifs israéliens étaient sur le point d’être atteints en se gardant bien, toutefois, d’en préciser la nature exacte. Ne pas annoncer clairement les objectifs d’une opération permet d’éviter qu’elle ne soit perçue comme un échec si ces derniers ne sont en définitive pas atteints.

Le flou ouvre néanmoins la porte aux spéculations. Ainsi, selon les déclarations, les objectifs de guerre ont varié de l’arrêt des tirs de roquettes à l’éradication des brigades Ezzedine al-Qassam en passant par le retrait du Hamas du pouvoir, la mise en place de nouvelles “règles du jeu” garantissant la sécurité d’Israël ou encore le rétablissement de la capacité de dissuasion de Tsahal.

Si les errements de la communication stratégique israélienne observés pendant le conflit de l’été 2006 n’ont donc pas été complètement corrigés, les communicants israéliens ont cependant tiré plusieurs leçons de l’échec partiel de la guerre contre le Hezbollah.

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Rid, T. War and Media Operations. The US Military and the Press from Vietnam to Iraq London: Routledge (2009) 229p

In late summer 2002 the Pentagon considered giving the press an inside view of the upcoming invasion of Iraq. The decision that followed seemed to contradict earlier more restrictive policies, and the innovative “embedded media program” itself received intense coverage in the media. Many observers denounced the program as a new and sophisticated form of propaganda. The critics implicit assumption was that the Pentagon had become better at its news management and that the American military had learned to co-opt the media. War and Media Operations tests this assumption. It introduces a model of organizational learning and military innovation, redraws the US military’s cumbersome learning curve in public affairs from Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Somalia, and the Balkans to Afghanistan, and finally examines whether the lessons of the past were implemented during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. (paper)

“War and Media Operations is must-reading for anyone who wants to understand how modern wars are sold to public opinion.”
– Jamie Shea, Director of Policy Planning at NATO, alliance spokesman during the Kosovo War

“Those who support or oppose ‘embedded’ journalism will find ammunition here but Rid himself doesn’t take shots.”
– Steven Komarow, USA TODAY, embedded with the US Army’s V Corps during the Iraq War

“thought-provoking, insightful, and deeply engaging”
– Ikujiro Nonaka, Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, author of The Knowledge Creating Company

“The best analysis I have yet seen of the role of Public Affairs within the wider context of Information Operations.”
Philip Taylor, University of Leeds, UK, author of Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda

Reviews

Naveen Sharma, Pointer, 2011, vol 36, no 3-4, p. 74-75 (.pdf)

Politique étrangère, 2007, no. 3, p.674-675

British Journalism Review, vol. 18, no. 3, 2007, p.89-91

Steve Tatham, The War and Media Network, April 2008

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