I’m almost certain it’s written into the DNA of Kings Of War types that shameless self-promotions are a definite no-no… so please excuse this inadvertent act of self-promotion on behalf of myself and my esteemed colleague Mike Goodman of this institutional parish and to those whose papers are linked here.

Responding to the post-Butler moment of reflection and engagement across government, we secured funding from the AHRC and interesting people to write on interesting topics to provide lessons learned from history, arts and humanities. This is the mainstay of this project (which has multiple dissemination routes) and the book that proceeded it, which has disappeared from our side bar >>>> but which is titled ‘Learning Lessons from the Secret Past’, available in all good book shops etc etc. I have been told that I could nab the following text from the online publication series website, which provides links to the first two papers, which I would hope KoW readers would find of interest.

”

1. Lessons Learnt: Post-Mubarak developments within the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (pdf 503kb)
December 2011 – Dr Lorenzo Vidino, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, Part of the ‘Lessons Learnt’ series of AHRC policy publications.

2. Lessons Learnt: “Islamic, Independent, Perfect and Strong”: Parsing the Taliban’s Strategic Intentions, 2001-2011 (pdf 644kb)
January 2012 – Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, Part of the ‘Lessons Learnt’ series of AHRC policy publications.

The ‘Lessons Learnt’ project was originally funded by a grant from King’s College London. In May and June 2010 Rob Dover and Michael Goodman, with AHRC funding, ran a series of 5 policy seminars on Lessons Learnt from the History of British Intelligence and Security. These were held in partnership with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), the Cabinet Office, King’s College London and The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

This current project aims to build upon the 2010 seminars, improving and developing the relationship between researchers and government via the production of research and briefing papers, and seminars held in Whitehall. The primary impact is on improving national security, achieved via academics contributing to the development of the government’s analytical capability.

The project is split into two halves:

• Highlighting historical examples of good analysis.
• Improving understanding of regions of current interest.

Leading academics have been specially commissioned to produce research and briefing papers for a Whitehall audience. This publication series reproduces the reports.”

T

Computer says No.

In the news this week and last has been the Stop On-Line Piracy Act (SOPA) which was up for a vote in the Senate. If you don’t know what SOPA is about then look here SOPA and PIPA: Just the Facts for a quick summary. In a nutshell, it’s about stopping people in the United States from downloading films and music from websites like The Pirate Bay and Megaupload by blocking access to those sites. Site blocking by governments is generally considered illiberal and the proposal made a lot of people very angry. They protested loudly and effectively and the bill was killed. Again, a short roundup is here SOPA and PIPA: What Went Wrong. There has been a certain amount of congratulatory back-slapping and hearty well-doning amongst Web activists (I suppose you might call them that). As it says in the second article linked above:

… no one — not supporters nor opponents — anticipated the massive response by Internet users, and no one could predict the effect the blackout, led by Reddit.com, would have on lawmakers and the legislative process.

Everyone underestimated the Web, “which is sort of the beauty of it,” said Maura Corbett, president of the Glen Echo Group and spokeswoman for NetCoalition, a tech trade group opposed to the bills.

“This was Outside the Beltway descending on Inside the Beltway, and we all just bore witness to it,” she said. “People are fed up. Washington is broken, and now Washington wants to subject the Internet to it? The Internet said no.”

Now, KOW readers–all three of you–will know that I am myself in the ‘fed up’ category. I too reckon ‘Washington’ (taken as a simile for ‘government’ by and large, including ours in Britain) is broken, out of steam, up the creek without a paddle (pick your metaphor) and I positively do not welcome it meddling. But… I can’t quite join the ranks of the gleeful on this one. The thing is while I’m not really sure that SOPA was a good cure for it we do have a serious ailment here. ‘Knowledge economies’ such as we are becoming, or you may say have already become since we tunnelled out the manufacturing things sector years ago, have to be able to get people to pay for the stuff they still do make which more and more is intangible and digital. That’s what it comes down to, right? It’s a security issue: how are we going to make our way in the world?

For my money, Andrew Orlowski gets it entirely right in this article from The Register White House Shelves SOPA… Now What? The gist of what he says: SOPA not really good but Silicon Valley needs to grow (and smarten) up. Along the way he makes some astute observations, such as this one:

China today mirrors the dynamic growth of the United States 100 years ago, and has the same buccaneering disrespect for other people’s stuff. Which leaves the question of how to compete. The West doesn’t do manufacturing any more, so the ‘intangible’ or ‘invisible’ inventions are much more important. The West can’t afford not to protect its inventors and creators: if it can’t, there’s nothing to build the service economy of the future upon, and life becomes a diminishing series of asset bubbles. This is simple, brutal economics, and Utopian waffle about internet freedoms do not cut much muster – at least not on a planet where unicorns don’t have the vote, and the emerging Eastern economies are delighted to take what they can.

I often find with discussions of things ‘cyber’ that we are too much impressed by how NEW and unprecedented everything and fascinated by the shiny new technology. It’s a bad habit because, as Orlowski points out, this isn’t at all a new situation. Perhaps Americans forget their own attitudes towards foreign copyright right up to the 20th century. It went something like this ‘oooh, shiiiny, let’s have that.’ No ‘thank you’ and no damn royalties either. Ever read Charles Dickens’ satirical novel Martin Chuzzlewit and wondered about its vicious anti-Americanism? It makes sense when you understand that American publishers at the time were taking his books published in Britain and reprinting them in cheap copies while not paying him one red cent for his efforts. What’s more they were selling these cheap copies into other English-speaking markets. In technical terms this is called ‘taking the piss’ and it pissed off a lot of 19th century ‘content creators’ in a big way.

OK, the shoe’s on the other foot, what goes around comes around, etc and so on… but allow me one more observation: yes, we should act to protect the digitizable things that our economy is good at producing otherwise, it stands to reason, the people currently making a living at it won’t be able to do so anymore. But we need to have a sense of perspective too. The United States stopped robbing Britain blind when it learned to innovate faster and make better (not just cheaper) stuff than we could. The larger argument, which Orlowski also notes, is about China and its rise. On which point I would say that their copying is not what should be worrying over the long run. It’s a good thing when you’re competitor is in your wake. That’s where you want them. Try it the other way round–it’s much, much worse. What should worry us is when they stop copying. That’s the sign that the culture of innovation, ingenuity, and constant reinvention which got you to the top in the first place has moved on.

Finally, after many years of the Department of Homeland Security messing around with Philip K. Dick, the U.S. army deciding that social scientists and anthropologists were the way forward in war, DARPA funding research to deal with the insane amounts of information produced by today’s UAVs, the USAF has decided to one up them all in the improbable research stakes. Ladies and gentlemen: the social radar.

Danger Room’s quote from the chap in charge: “And the comparison to traditional sensors is no accident… we also want to see into the hearts and the minds of people”

Diplomatic hat tip to Noah Shachtman for managing to wedge the ‘almost’ into “It sounds almost laughably ambitious”.

Let’s think of this one for a second, from perhaps a non-military perspective. What type of data are they after? Well, the same type of data that social scientists, anthropologists, economists and so on are after: what goes on inside a person’s head. How close have all the above come in the past couple of hundred years (allowing for the fact that those disciplines didn’t even exist in their current form over this time frame)? In some cases close, in a great many cases, not even near. The point being that academics can go away, figure out why they haven’t gotten close and go back for another go, so ‘failure’ isn’t necessarily a downer. So let’s sit and chew on that one: if the vast body of academia can’t do what the military wants, what good is the military leveraging computers and twitter feeds going to do?

For the record, I think it is a great and totally non-Orwellian thing that the military is going to work on “Metropolitan Area Persistent Sensing” because it’s not like the military’s new toys get deployed in domestic situations.

As an addendum, here’s two coup scenarios for you: Military A gets annoyed with democratic government and launches a coup with all its fancy new guns and bombs. Military B does the same, but has spent a couple of decades openly developing the tools of mass social surveillance, targeting and control. Which do you think would be more successful? More importantly, and perhaps a question that someone, somewhere within the US DoD should be asking: Which prospect is more likely to strike fear into the hearts of liberal citizens in a democratic state?

I think the US military’s professionalism means that it wouldn’t feature in either scenario, but hopefully they’ve learnt from the past decade that it doesn’t matter what you think, it’s what the “other guy” thinks that is important.

The British have a long history of stealing/saving (depending on your perspective) historical monuments from other cultures. The Elgin Marbles are a case in point.

However, I think we can all agree that we reached a new high of historical preservation/theft with the acquisition in 2003 of the buttocks from the iconic statue of Saddam Hussein by a (now former) SAS soldier, which he wants to auction to raise funds for wounded UK soldiers.

But now apparently the Iraqi government has demanded its return, claiming that the former dictator’s shiny metal ass is…wait for it…“a cultural antiquity”.

I have no doubt that in some ways it’s a very serious issue with lots of valid argumentation on both sides…but sometimes you really do just have to laugh!

Back in July 2011 The Economist did a piece on the uncertain future of the F35 Joint Strike Fighter. Plagued by delay after delay and spiralling costs the F35 is no eagle. Its future has long been in doubt. And yet, said The Economist, this fighter undeniably had two things going for it:

The first is that many of the current generation of fighters are approaching 30 years in service and must soon be replaced. The second is that because the F-35 was designed to replace so many types of aircraft, it has, in effect, a monopolist’s grip on the future fighter market.

No one, I suspect, feels this dilemma more acutely than the Royal Navy which, to recap, has staked its future on two not yet built (one to be mothballed) aircraft carriers which it plans to run without any aircraft (having retired the Harrier fleet already) for a few years until the naval variant of the F35 comes into service in 2020. Just a couple of problems: the plane can’t fire British missiles and, um,  it CAN’T LAND ON A SHIP, probably ever!

Please make it stop. This is an ex-fighter plane, it is bereft of life, it’s not ‘pining for the fjords’, it’s gone to meet its maker etc, so on…

First a word on torture, and the news story yesterday. I’m not sure I’m in anything other than the smallest minority on this (certainly in the academic world) but my reading of yesterday’s news stories about our main agencies and their alleged role in torture (and the future investigation into rendition and Libya) was firstly ‘insufficient evidence? No shit!’..it would be poor practitioners who left enough. But secondly that the period from 1998 to 2010 will mark a distinct period. The courts, and the old and new media have done, in a patchy way,  an effective job of bringing these episodes to light and holding the government to enough of an account to see this end as a distinct period. Whilst I am personally opposed to the use of acts recognised internationally as torture, and prefer the methods that were successful in the past, I can see – from a purely pragmatic and empathetic stance – that officers placed in particular structures, networks of contacts and relationships with other agencies who were able to produce information quickly… might have felt the need to, er, cut a corner, if that cut was offered to them. A few years ago it was suggested that the 70% of the CT intel provided into the European area was provided by the US. Such a relationship of dependence (and by God the Americans must be fed up of providing us with endless security blankets.. coming up for a century now!) will of course require some kind of reciprocity. If we want to criticise the methods that have helped keep us safe, then we really need to step up to the plate (as a European area). Only when have sufficient capacity can we start suggesting terms.  In an obviously uneven relationship, there will inevitably be a price for cooperation, that price Is usually accepting the terms of the stronger party.

But the main plot.. Macapaca and HTS. The world of the Macapaca is a simple one. He or she categorises objects in two ways. Things to be cleaned. Things that have been cleaned. There’s a great deal of squeaking and guffawing surrounding this process, but that appears to be to pad out the scene, and to encourage the young viewers to expand their own attempts at squeaking and guffawing.

Things in Afghanistan seem more Sweevo’s world than Macapaca world. Things are endlessly complicated. If only us mere mortals understood just how complicated it all was, we’d probably repose to the nearest toilet to read War and Peace for some light relief. Breaking a state (well, a uneven system of governance at best), policing it, and then trying to encourage enough of a local effort to rebuild it to make people believe in it is clearly not desperately simple, but I think we’re making a meal of it. The good people at International Affairs were kind enough to send me a copy of Frank Ledwidge’s book ‘Losing small wars’. I don’t agree with it all, but I still have it as a must read. His account of the absence of strategy is damning. But we might embrace that absence of strategy with a drop-dead simple approach. What do we want for Afghanistan in 2016 (when we should have all left)?

We want no return of terrorist training camps keen on transporting nightmares to our shores, or those of our European and American friends.

We want the pipelines across the country to still be piping things without trouble or interruption. It might also be a good earner for all of us.

And we’d prefer it if large amounts of white powder didn’t arrive in Europe to addle the brains of the morons who insist on sticking it up their noses. Go and buy a Playstation, chill out, and drink a cup of tea.

And that is it.

There are objects waiting to be cleaned, there are objects which have been cleaned.

What? No mention of democracy? No, don’t care. If the locals want it they’ll find a way. They’ve had ten years to think about it.

What? No mention of thriving education systems or economic prosperity? No, again, the locals will need to mobilise, and find a way. You can’t save everyone. We’ve given it ten years.

But why the mention of the Human Terrain System (HTS). Well, it’s been years since the storm erupted over this programme, and having had now years to think about it, I still think it was – in theory – a well thought out programme. It was a way of utilising area-specialism, and academic specialism but without having to agonise over whether the specialist was on side or not. The classic tools of working out who the expert really wants to win, or who they are carrying messages for were almost entirely eradicated by the HTS. The programme also had the potential to add needed knowledge lubricant to the entire command chain – from the company commander with the specialist in team, to the reporting chain ‘back at base’ , to the returning expert walking into the high towers of power. This is infinitely preferable than sitting back in the high towers receiving various streams of information and trying to discriminate between and amongst them. The potential to over-read the fortuitously acquired, must be all too real, particularly in combat theatres where the micro-nuance of individuals ascendant and descendent in the influence stakes looks all too important.

No harbouring problematic people.

Nice pipelines, unmolested.

No white powder.

Objects waiting to be cleaned, objects that have been cleaned.

So this evening, I was reading through the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Annual Report 2010–2011 (you know, just casually). As I delved inside, I became particularly intrigued by the sheer number of agencies who were tasked with protecting the UK from cyber attack, or at least some particular portion of it.

Now I’m no cyber guru, but it seemed to me baffling that we could have created such a uniquely complicated tangle of overlapping authorities spread across a whopping 18 (!) different agencies (nominally headed by the Cabinet Office):

It would seem that I am not alone either.

Of course, this is slightly old news, but the government’s response to the issue is definitely not. It appears now that government has begun to attempt to unravel this convoluted web (sorry for such a terrible pun!) of agencies through the establishment of a new, centralised (at least partially) cyber security hub (full report here), which it announced in November.

My knowledge of this topic area is very limited, but I was interested to know from some of the cyber aficionados (and others too) as to their thoughts on these issues:

- Is it right for multiple agencies be employed across the private and public sector to formally help protect the UK from cyber attacks? It seems that, done right, this could lead to an synergistic, mutually supportive system whereby the different agencies provide interlocking safety nets that stop threats more effectively than a single brittle barrier. But done wrong, it could be a chaotic shambles where no one really takes overall responsibility, coordination breaks down and massive gaping gaps are left open for cyber attackers to exploit.

- Is the government right to try to scoop it all up under the jurisdiction of one centralised centre? This seems like a good idea on the surface, but will having one central agency like this ultimately lead to bureaucratic inefficiency? In fact, is this even really viable as an idea, or will the other entities – particularly within the private sector - continue to flourish at such a rate that the centre will quickly become all but obsolescent?

Any thoughts?

As an undergraduate I did what used to be called ‘Soviet Studies’. The curriculum consisted heavily of political science with an admixture of Russian language, history, literature, and so on. I remain a big fan of area studies which tends to go in and out of academic fashion. The ‘holistic’ approach to analysis appeals to me. The intellectual toolkit of area studies strikes me as a good foundation for a strategist, even if (as mine have) your interests subsequently veer away from that particular region. The only real regret I have had about my undergraduate training was that I ended up studying Command Economics for a year instead of, you know, regular economics. For 20 years I reckoned this precluded me from a career in more lucrative sectors of the economy than higher education–kay sera sera… I didn’t want to be a banker anyway but, still, it bugged me that I’d put all that effort into the study of something pointless.

I’ve come to realise though that the effort was not really wasted at all. I do not claim by any means to be expert on it (though like many of you, presumably, I’ve been doing crash course reading on it for the last year or two) but it has led me to certain insights which I think are valid. You be the judge:

1. What is happening today in technocratic circles with respect to our economic system is very similar to that of late ’80s USSR. I’m not saying the problems are the same–on the contrary; nor have I a view on whether they are worse, or less worse–though they are decidedly bad. What’s the same is the feeling that the people at the top have lost it. What used to work now doesn’t. Old sticking plasters no longer suffice to close the wounds, in fact they seem to make things worse. A once compliant and beneficent genie isn’t either of those things anymore and no one can figure out how to get him back in the bottle. The problems get too big and too manifold to manage.

2. The elite in this situation could double down (0r triple, or quadruple–I forget how many final rescues we’re at now) on the old ways. Heroic efforts do work sometimes. Just bail the ship faster until the storm blows out. Or they may abandon ship. The thing is it may not be immediately evident that they’ve done so. This was the case in the USSR where the elite largely psychologically abandoned the system far before anyone on the outside grasped that they had. The system more or less voluntarily disbanded itself as the people running it decided that they would get less out of the propping up the status quo than they would out of positioning themselves for its ineluctable crash.

I think that’s where we are now. I apologise for this linkless post but it seems redundant. If you’ve read a newspaper lately you’ll have seen ample evidence that no one has the faintest idea how to deal with simultaneously:

• a credit bubble
• a bond bubble
• a real estate bubble and a farmland bubble
• a commodities bubble, and
• several currency bubbles.
• (Plus a higher education bubble?)

All of which are resting on a banking sector megabubble which in turn sits upon a ultramegabubble of sovereign debt. Meanwhile, we are seeing what looks like a tectonic shift in employment patterns which may, or may not, be connected with some underlying technological transformation. Global demography looks pretty bad too with at one and the same time too many old people concentrated in some places and too many young people in others and apparently not enough young females in particular in some of the latter. Environment looks shaky as well (and it’s not climate change which concerns me so much immediately as it is that the oceans are looking increasingly like sewers without fish). Anyway, that’s long term stuff. Why worry about the next decade when you can worry about tomorrow which, incidentally, is kind of alarming:

Iran gives every sign of itching for a war (perhaps in a bid to prop up the popularity of the regime–nothing else will) which it is entirely likely that they will get. Hard to see how this will not put a rocket under oil prices.

China’s economy appears to me and lots of others (there are contrary opinions) to be in a right state. In the last 18 months Chinese banks have issued loans equal to 80% of GDP. Do you feel confident that rational credit analysis has been done on all that lending? Personally, I fear that their accounts books are riddled with more holes than ours. Please, Heaven, let me be wrong. Who  thinks that the average Chinese consumer earning less than $5,000/year is about to start consuming on the scale of Americans and Europeans who have suddenly gone very bearish? What do we actually know, really know, about the Chinese economy? What we knew about the Soviet economy was rubbish because the data was so inadequate and what there was of it so thoroughly and irremediably cooked. Here’s a good question: is all the industry which has migrated to low-cost China actually making any money for the country or is it just a loss leader for levels of real estate speculation unseen anywhere in the world before ever?

What happens when that bubble bursts?

Madness? This is Spaaaartaaaa!!!

I probably should run this story past KOW’s actual German speaker but, what the hell, let’s throw caution to the wind and trust in Google Translate. On Zeitonline one finds this intriguing story, ‘Schöne Waffen für Athen‘, the gist of which:

1. If Greece gets the next big (80 billion Euro) tranche of IMF-EU bailout moulah in March; then,

2. it will be able to conclude a whole bunch of new defence contracts including, inter alia, new Eurofighter jets, frigates from France, submarines from Germany, and Apache helicopters from the USA.

This is on top of a whole heap of kit purchased, largely from Germany, but not yet paid for–Leopard 2 tanks, Eurocopter helicopters, M109 howitzers, phased plasma rifles in the 40 watt range…

In case you’ve missed it, the Greek economy is tanking. In the Guardian today one reads:

…Greece’s economy is being smashed by the heavy spending cuts and tax rises imposed since the country accepted its first IMF rescue package. And as if Greece didn’t have enough problems – Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has urged its leaders to hurry up and agree a debt-reduction deal with its creditors:

Schäuble told German radio that:

‘Greece…could go faster. We are pushing hard for that.

Greece has to implement what was agreed. All the rescue packages in the world can’t help if the causes are not tackled credibly.’

Now, it would be easy to get on the high horse here, and I must admit I find Schäuble’s words a little nauseating in context. The ‘rescue package’ for Greece has very little to do with rescuing Greece and everything to do with rescuing its creditors and those who have sold it guns on credit. But I’ve got to say if the money has to be spent I’d rather it was on guns than on paying people in ‘arduous’ professions (barbering, waitering)  to retire at 50-55. I think they may find the former more useful since I reckon things are going to hell in a handbasket…

Of course, the band's founder, Phil Campbell, left in 1984 for a very successful career with Motörhead; but that, dear readers, is another story for another day.

Amidst a hockey-sock of uncertainty and anxiety, one country stands out from the crowd–and that is saying a great deal, given that the crowd includes Syria, Egypt, Nigeria, China, and North Korea (to name but a few).  That country, of course, is Iran.

Now, as the sharper amongst you may have guessed, I am a bureaucrat (at least for the moment!) and that means that I belong to one of the most risk-averse (and risk-insulated) tribes that you will ever meet.   Therefore, I will not offer a prediction as to what –if anything–will happen.  But, because I am specialist bureaucrat that deals with risk analysis and management, what I will do is analyze the process of determining the risks and the options surrounding ‘the problem of Iran’. 

Risk

What is needed here is a little methodology (bear with me).  Risk is an oft-abused term that needs to be defined before it is of any use.   The risk to an object (be it a person, an asset, or a programme) is generally regarded as the function between threats to that object, the vulnerabilities of that object, probability of those threats actually occurring, and the impact or consequence to the object if they do occur. 

The very first thing to determine,  however, is the object in question.  ‘What is at stake?’ Or more stated more properly, ‘What is at risk?’  This is crucial, because depending on what we regard as ‘at risk’ the threat posed by Iran varies significantly.  Given that we are operating in the realm of the political, which means that there are a number of choices or perspectives that we might adopt, the question of what is at risk cannot be assumed to be self-evident.  Do we consider American regional influence to be at risk?  Or is it the existence of the State of Israel? Or the security of other allies or states of interest, such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, or Afghanistan?  Or is it the concept of innocent passage and perhaps even freedom of the high seas?  Of course, we may choose to hedge our bets and use fluffy terms, such as ‘national interest’, but since these lack specificity, we only (perhaps not by accident) add to the ambiguity, rather than providing clarity. 

Commentators, such as John Yoo, have made the case that Iran is “a looming threat” but it is not quite clear what it threatens, exactly.  The breathless warnings of Cassandras like Yoo and Matthew Kroening take it for granted that the reader knows what is at stake.  Frankly, most of the time it seems as if they are implying that it is the very existence of civilisation, at least, that is in jeopardy.  As Stephen Walt points out, this is a tried, tested, and true (unfortunately) rhetorical device that bears no relation to the actual risk being described. 

In any event, we can see that even in the first step of the risk analysis process, we are beset by argument and debate.  What is critically important to see is that this debate is not, at this stage, about facts, but rather about perspectives.  About chosen frames of reference.  About ideological positions.  And that means it is often going to be a nasty, emotion, and heated debate, rather than a productive one. 

Unfortunately, the subjective aspects of the debate that characterise the beginning of the ‘risk analysis’ process often continue to colour the remainder of it.  For instance, when the notion of probability comes up, it is most often discussed in equally subjective terms.  Yoo, for instance, speaks of Iran as an “unavoidable challenge”, pushing any measurement of probability towards the end of spectrum marked certain.  And yet any forecast is clearly arbitrary, even if mathematical terms are introduced.  There is no way of knowing the probability of an Iranian nuclear strike.  Attempts to ‘know’ these things have failed in the past (such as with Iraq in the lead up to the 2003 invasion), not least because the process of measuring has a significant impact on the thing being measured (ooo…quantum politics kids, a la Herr Doktor Heisenberg, hang on to your hats!).  Warnings, monitoring, discussing options–these activities alter the risk equation as it goes along.  See, for instance, this week’s naval cat and mouse game.    

The same skewing occurs with respect to impact.  Those looking to spur action choose to portray potential impacts in the most dire way, while those looking for other courses will downplay any consequences.  That goes for second order consequences, too.  THEY will cause Armageddon, but WE will be surgical in our response, causing nothing but joy and light.

Response

Once an analysis has been conducted and a determination of the risk made, the next logical step is to formulate some kind of response.  There are two important aspects to be aware of here.  The first is that ‘risk appetite’ or ‘risk tolerance’ is not a pre-set value.  What one actor can live with, another may find intolerable.  Famously, for instance, Dick Cheney was said to have preferred the ’1% Doctrine’ (whereby even a 1% chance of an event occurring was enough to warrant a response).  Others set there thresholds higher.  Some too high: Neville Chamberlain, for instance, faced with indications of Germany’s desire for domination in Europe, was satisfied with verbal assurances to the contrary.   Again, I would claim that risk appetite can also be associated with a particular ideological–rather than empirical or biological–position, so where you sit often determines where you stand, as it were.

Given a particular risk tolerance, there are four strategic options for risk management:

1. Avoidance
2. Transfer
3. Mitigation
4. Acceptance

Avoidance means what it says: try and have nothing to do with the threats that you have identified, insulating yourself from their impacts.  Essentially, you are trying to reduce the probability of a threat occurring to zero.  This can be easier said than done, depending on the circumstances.  If you want to avoid the risk to your life posed by commercial air travel, it can be done.  You may have to forgo some opportunities (vacations abroad, membership in altitude-calibrated societies…), but it is possible.   In the world of geopolitics, however, it is not so easy, especially at the strategic level.  Again, the issue really defines how you frame the argument; what is at risk in the first place?  The USN could, for instance, avoid confrontation with Iran by withdrawing from Gulf.  This, however, would not work as a feasible strategy if the ‘object at risk’ were US freedom of the seas, for instance. 

The second risk management option is transfer.  In ordinary realms (such as finance or commerical operations) risk transfer means insurance.  Essentially, one outsources the risk, by passing it on to a third party.  Worried about the threat of fire as a source of risk to your home, you can ‘transfer the risk’ to the insurance company.  Note that while some benefit (and arguably peace of mind) can come from such a transfer, you can never really transfer all the risk away.  If your house burns down, you might get a pay-out, but you cannot escape the risk of being injured or killed in the blaze.  Again, note that the risk that was transferred was specifically about a particular ‘object at risk’ (the physical dwelling).  Your life is another matter entirely.  In geopolitical terms, risk transfer is often attempted–by kicking difficult balls into touch, by referring them to the Security Council, or Allies, or other actors.  But, just like in real life, there is often a sticky residue that remains.  Iran is not North Korea where a strategy of containment and compartmentalisation has worked (to a degree). 

The third option is mitigation.  It is sometimes referred to as control, but I think that overstates the case.  This is the most ”active” of the options: it contains the measures one takes to try and reduce the risk.  Generally speaking this can be done in two ways: by reducing the threat or by reducing the vulnerability to that threat.  In physical security terms, this might mean going out and disrupting or destroying those pesky terrorists or pirates.  Or it might mean improving the armour plating on your vehicles, or getting a newer high-tech IED jamming device.  Geopolitically, it might mean increasing your means of deterrence or launching pre-emptive strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, or providing naval escorts to commercial vessels navigating the tricky Straits of Hormuz.  Whatever the decision, this option is about capabilities.  There is little point in coming up with ideas that cannot be put into practice.  Similarly, there is little point in implementing plans that have no effect.  Making a sweeping generalisation (and invoking the Rid Principle of Blogorific Freedom in so doing) those commentators, be they civilian or military, that one might label as Hawks, tend to put their faith in this option as the best one available.  More guns, better ships, awesome F-35s–these are the ‘mitigating measures’ that are needed to address risks. 

 Finally, we come to acceptance, which while the term of art, is not one that I think adequately addresses what this option actually entails.  One way of looking at acceptance is to view it as resigning oneself to the risk that remains after all else has been tried.  Another way is to see it as the result of a deliberate ‘cost-benefit’ analysis: whatever the potential upside is (a better reputation, cost savings from not taking an aggressive approach, etc.) outweighs the potential downside (money spent on guns and not butter, potential to ignite a tinderbox, etc.)  I think both views are needed.  The problem is, of course, that acceptance is–perhaps more than any other option–bound up in the inherently subjective/ideological Gordian Knot of risk tolerance/risk appetite.  How much risk should we accept?  How far should we attempt to avoid, transfer, and mitigate before we accept?  All very good questions, and none of them are technical in nature.  They are inherently political, and that is where the fun starts.

While not a formal risk management option, I would like to propose that what lies behind these active options is the idea of risk absorption.  In short, this is what we end up with when all that ‘sticky residue’ (mentioned above) and ‘unintended consequences/second order risks’ and accepted risks are accounted for.  Often times, the total risk picture is not known, due to neglect, the sheer complexity of it all, errors in calculation and/or wishful thinking.  But all the ‘real risk’ (if such a thing could ever be known) is absorbed by an object…until it can no longer be accommodated.  For instance, we might say that we accept the risk of a nuclear Iran, but can we really?  Or, we might say that we can accept the risk of armed conflict with Iran if that is what results from a strategy of ‘not backing down’.  Maybe, though, with all the other risks that we have absorbed (either knowingly or unknowingly) perhaps our capacity to deal with that risk is exceeded.  Maybe we need to cut our budgets and cannot deal with two contingencies at the same time any longer.  So we might ‘accept’ a risk, without being able to actually deal with it. 

In reality, of course, nothing is simple.  There are not simple ‘risk-reward’ calculations, or cost-benefit analyses to be done.  And it is not that we would make the ‘right’ decisions ‘if only’ we had more information, more time, another satellite, better allies, more honest interlocutors, better hair (but it never hurts).  There are risks that need to be traded, prioritised and off-set.  Military risks sit along side financial and economic risks, which must be seen in the context of domestic political risks.  There is no correct answer, no preferred perspective. 

Risk is a tricky thing.  It is as beguiling as it is confusing.  As some wise old Persian once observed

If one has to jump a stream and knows how wide it is, he will not jump. If he does not know how wide it is, he will jump, and six times out of ten he will make it.

 The trick is in knowing whether or not you really do know…or not.