Really, I am not sure I can affect an entire zeitgeist. Instead, I will be sufficiently content to adjust the perspective on counterinsurgency (COIN) a bit (1), and offer a means to begin describing its grand objectives, terms, costs, requirements, etc., as simply as those used for conventional warfare. You are surprised that I am more concerned about the zeitgeist bit, and not what you might be thinking about the first part. I would be foolish not to expect a raised eyebrow or more over that one and so it does not concern me. In fact, I will enjoy imagining these first impressions. Besides, you would be disappointed if I did not fully exercise my titling license. 

It should be obvious that the COIN’dinista zeitgeist is taking a beating over the recent turn of events in Afghanistan. Born in the chaos which emerged tentatively and then spread like wildfire across the fracturing regions that was Iraq in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s ouster, the newest iteration of counter-insurgency theory had all the markings of a favourite son striding onto the world stage to earn a place in destiny sustaining the “surge to victory” in 2007/08. Despite claiming intellectual (and tactical) victory in COIN and extolling the virtues of the COIN’dinista Wise Men, we seem to be down the rabbit hole again in Afghanistan. To be honest, I’m not even sure if the conflict there is an insurgency. It may well be a civil war. Perhaps no foreign intervention can eliminate it – perhaps foreign intervention is the cause. That would be tragic-comic, to say the least. No matter the outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan an understanding the fundamentals of insurgency and counter-insurgency deserves to be worked out, particularly as Western countries and their military forces will continue to get caught up in insurgencies elsewhere. Let’s not lie to ourselves, such operations will continue. Insurgencies sparked by regime collapse, natural disasters, and resource shortages will all continue to demand the attention of multi-lateral forces, especially in key locales or for key objectives. For example, I suspect the clock is ticking on “Back to Somalia II: The Pirates of Mogadishu,” as the costs and disruptions to the shipping industry and critical resources is becoming too great. Because the root of the piracy issue is the dislocation at the center as factions struggle for control, any foreign intervention would rely to a degree upon COIN expertise. This, then, is an exploration of a particular view of COIN that might be of use to a foreign force in such contingencies.

I have always wanted to argue for a radical review of the assumptions regarding use of force requirements, and was inspired by the topic of a talk put on recently in the department, a critique of the use of happiness as a metric (ugh) for progress in counter-insurgency activities. For the record, I hate this term. It makes me utterly despondent that military affairs have been so quantified that a new and rarefied term for “measurement” was necessary.

To attempt to measure the happiness of a population as a means to tally tactical, operational, or strategic progress in COIN operations? I clearly understand the near impossibility of doing that with any usable reliability. But happiness as an objective to orient COIN doctrines and practices at all levels (policy, strategy, operations and tactics) away from force and towards something else suggests itself as a plausible answer to the riddle of this form of warfare. 

So, I wanted to know what the speaker thought of this perspective, as she had spent a fair bit of intellectual energy coming to grips with the terms of happiness in the context of COIN. I do not care what makes for more effective COIN, it is imperialist and should not be done, even if done well, was the response my inquiry earned. (2)

I was not happy. I am a military historian. I am not interested in political interpretations of current events, and I am neither recommending nor making policy. My purpose was to understand what makes for effective COIN practices to provide a means to interrogate events in my capacity as a historian. I take the world as given and try to explain why things have happened as they have, set the context, narrate events, and examine and analyze the outcomes. If I am to be any good at this I must be able to set aside my personal opinions and interrogate a subject rigorously.

Nevertheless, I was quite intrigued by the conceptualization of the objective in COIN to be the happiness of the people. And I think I can offer my own reasoned response in support of this idea. The historical record on the topic – from the insurgent, partisan, and “terrorist” as well as the COIN’dinistas’ perspectives – in addition to the general run of the military strategic and tactical treatises and studies on the subject suggests that where the people are the object their happiness matters. First, and yes, before defeating the insurgents. Always.

While other views on COIN nod to the Hearts and Minds mandate, most cannot fully commit to stepping away from the kinetic fight and still urge, recommend, and require the use of a good deal of force. It seems to me that this is because the focus is too often to counter the insurgent rather than the insurgency. The former orients the COIN forces to fighting and defeating the insurgent military as the means to succeed. To take the latter as one’s focus offers different perspectives and approaches. Most importantly, as I see it, making the insurgency the objective requires consideration of its causes (which must lead to political, economic, and social reform) as well as the temper and inclination of the people. This is the starting point, that it is the insurgency, not the insurgent, that must be countered and this inevitably includes limiting force and a consideration of the people. (3)

It is not easy to create a frame of reference for a Western military mind of war that makes quite clear that while strength and resolution are required, the profligate use of force is not a good option. Hence the rather stark coupling of babies and insurgencies to characterize this view. Yes, it’s unconventional, but that seems entirely appropriate to the topic.  Nevertheless, the comparability is impressive given the perspective of COIN I wish to create. (4) Consider:

You don’t win by physically crushing the baby. Even though you can. And sometimes really think you want to – sort of. It’s that brief moment of insanity, in which we are all mostly lucky for not acting on the idea. Furthermore, the baby can hurt you to its heart’s content, with glorious impunity.

In short, this makes clear that COIN victory cannot come at the point of a bayonet and you must be willing to accept that the insurgent – and sometimes even the civilians – will cause casualties. Force does not serve the ends of COIN in the contemporary political-strategic environment. “Collateral damage” is a euphemism for feeding an insurgency. Furthermore, as the conflict’s roots tend to be in political, economic, or societal issues, the population will necessarily be involved. Thus, these conflicts tend to take place within an environment in which the local civilians are at best ambivalent towards the established authority, and it may even be the case that they support the agenda of the insurgents. In conventional warfare, this would make them collaborators. Not so in COIN. But if you are fighting around them with great frequency or intensity they will not only suffer the incidental effects, but their actions and attitudes could make the come to look like the enemy. This creates too great an opportunity for confusion and frustration for the COIN forces. Even where loyalties are legitimately questionable aggressive action towards civilians does not aid COIN – in any way. As events in South Vietnam a half century ago and Afghanistan in recent months demonstrate, the natural problems of COIN are exacerbated by active and offensive combat operations. The rigors and confusion of COIN can lead to terrible outcomes where the COIN operator is not prepared to accept this context and serve the people unconditionally.

Moreover, this restraint is a key requirement for Western armies deployed abroad given the proliferation of communications’ media and platforms. If you are a foreign COIN operator you should probably leave the bulk of the fight to the locals. To the extent that you exercise a mentoring role, you should probably counsel arrest, light treatment, and as many amnesties as possible. Does that risk sending a few bad apples back into the general population? Yes, but you limit the downside of alienating further those who might not have really been committed insurgents. This “train a local to fish” approach was the brilliance of William Corson’s original concept for the Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam. He knew instinctively that there was a limit to what the Marines could do for the Vietnamese and that his real mandate was to work the Marines out of a job. (5)

Above all else, for the baby you will die. Same for the civilians, the people whom you are committed to serve in a COIN environment. (6)

Sgt. Weichel was right. I feel nothing more than the most sincere sympathy for his family, friends, and comrades. But his inclinations and actions were exactly correct. Were such ideals the standard that defined COIN in the US armed forces, for example, events in OEF/OIF might have followed different trajectories. And were we to train and indoctrinate personnel to see the people caught up in these conflicts humanely it would become easier and more transparent to see our own forces in the same way, thus minimizing the chances for men and women in uniform to ever become so troubled as it appears Sgt. Bales did and yet still be deployed. (7)

This vision of counter-insurgency codifies the sanctity of the civilian and looks to eschew force wherever possible. Not to make the military forces softer or because I want people to think I’m nice (I’m not), but because THIS is the only way to render the costs of COIN for Western armed forces abroad accurately. From the most selfish perspective the costs, in time, treasure, and the blood of our sons and daughters, are all far greater than the position on the warfare spectrum leads people to assume. COIN is not soft warfare. It is, in fact, peltingly difficult. These characteristics arise out of the necessary exercise of restraint in the use of force on the one hand and the willingness to die – to sacrifice – for one’s protectees on the other.

Of course, my interpretation and analysis could be wrong. Probably not entirely wrong, though - there is enough to the point that it would interest me to see a discussion that took the issue of the use of force in COIN and interrogated all of the assumptions and objectives with vigor. At the very least it seems to me that the past ten years suggests the wisdom of such a review.

Endnotes

1. I was counselled that COIN was passé. Perhaps this is true for the flash in the pan pop-scholarship commentarists. The Abu-pundits will resurrect themselves anew with the next big idea – I’m waiting for a Boydling. (A free drink to anyone who gets that reference.) But I’m a historian, what do I care of fads?

2. There is the matter of ‘complicity’ – that is, that one’s ideas might be hijacked and used, or rather abused for ends or arguments you never intended and might in fact protest. I understand how this might be a concern, but the truth is we can neither know nor control how our intellectual work product will be interpreted and applied once we put it out there. Little remembered any longer, but Alfred Thayer Mahan was viewed dimly by Americans in the aftermath of WWI for having taught the Germans naval strategy. A book about Long Island, NY, written in the 1930s notes with glee that the Captain had learned the truth of sea power when his home was damaged by the hurricane of 1938. (William Oliver Stevens, Discovering Long Island, Dodd, Mead & Co. (1939).)

3. You will think me quite infatuated with Hearts and Minds in COIN. I will go further than that to say that as concerns war generally, where the people are valuable to the political and strategic objectives, then they – their needs, preferences, desires – must be factored into the decision-making. When the people no longer matter in war I will set my sights elsewhere, but until then, I remain focused.

4. Who puts babies and insurgencies together? What do you expect from a military historian made recurrent single parent by the fortunes of war?

5. Corson wrote his own book on Vietnam and his efforts at COIN in The Betrayal, (New York, W.W. Norton & Co.); see also Michael Peterson’s history, The Combine Action Platoons: The US Marines Other War in Vietnam, (New York: Praeger, 1989)]

6. As I originally conceived this concept, I had a rather cheeky PowerPoint presentation in mind for the points. For the first rule, a picture of a parent throttling a baby, in a circle with a line through it. That sort of thing. When I imagined how to train for the mission: Photo of a ranker, NCO, or officer, in full combat gear holding an infant — if he can keep the baby happy and safe for a month on his own he’ll have an idea of what will be demanded of him in a counter-insurgency conflict. A scary prospect I am certain, and perhaps some might prefer the clarity of storming a fortified position. Other rules: Everybody loves the baby. Highlights the point that the insurgent is often ahead in the PR campaign, whereas the side with the preponderance of power usually finds itself coming up short on this front. If Van Creveld is correct, the obviously stronger side is _always_ going to have a PR problem. What worked yesterday may not work today, and today’s victories could be tomorrow’s tragedies, the corollary of which is where you solve one problem but create another. Build a school in one village and you risk offending the denizens of a neighbouring village. Insurgencies usually involve complex issues that will destroy any vain hope that the path to success will be straight forward or simple.)

7. It is for the opposite but similar reasons that I deplore any form of torture or harsh treatment for prisoners – to have our people behave in such a way is an act of brutality – unwarranted – done to them.

In Norway the trial of Anders Breivik who killed 77 people last summer has begun. Over the last couple of days he has been giving testimony in his defence arguing that he was acting for the good with a ‘preventive attack against state traitors‘ who themselves were guilty of the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of the Nordic race enacted through aggressive multiculturalism and mass immigration. It has been hugely discomforting to survivors and families of victims, and Norwegian society more generally. The courts have placed restrictions on reporting of Breivik’s ‘day in the sun’ and there is consternation, as Daniel Bennett observes at the Index on Censorship, of the ethics of journalists propagating his views and political agenda. There is an understandable temptation to declare him insane, which may or may not be the case. That would be tidier for practically everyone, except Breivik; but the law is as it is and due process in Norway, as it should be in all democracies, means that even heinous terrorists get a fair trial. In the Telegraph today Dan Hodges captures the essence of the problem:

But there is something faintly sickening, not validating, about the process unfolding before our eyes. For one thing, I find its sterility demeaning. The cramped, featureless courtroom. Brevik seated casually at the table between his attorneys, looking like a man taking part in a civil custody hearing, rather than someone on trial for 77 murders.

It’s an environment that appears to be framing Breivik, not cowing or reducing him as I’d hoped. There is no banality of evil on display here. Breivik actually appears quite an imposing figure, his physicality if anything enhanced by his calm, softly spoken interventions.

That’s not how this was supposed to be. We were supposed to grow in proximity to him, not the other way around.

He concludes, again quite understandably, that it would have been so much better if ‘they’d just killed him‘. It would be interesting to generalise from that point to the wider ongoing debate over ‘targeted killing’ which we’ve talked about on KoW before, see Adam Stahl’s Pro et Raffaello Pantucci’s Con. But that’s not my main interest today which is, rather, to stick to the case at hand. The Oslo bombing and Utoya shootings on 22 July 2011 really struck me because they occurred at a time when I was just beginning to grapple with the impact of connectivity (the Web, basically, but not just the Web) on domestic security, the prospects of ‘revolution’ particularly in Europe, and the whole phenomenon of ‘super empowerment’ which, it seemed to me, was manifesting before our eyes in a pretty uncongenial way. A few weeks before the attacks I wrote a post here entitled ‘Revolution! Is anyone really up for it?‘ After the attack I hesitated to say what I was thinking. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions before brooding a lot more on the evidence.

I’ve done that now. In particular, I’ve read pretty carefully Breivik’s manifesto. And thought a lot more about digital connectivity, the way in which it is reshaping the public sphere, and how various social movements–small and large, violent and non-violent–are using the power of networks to enhance their capabilities for action, to popularise their agendas, and attempt to animate their chosen constituencies through multimedia communications. This has ended up in various papers to be published, anonymous reviewers agreeing, here and there in the course of time. I’ll let you know. For what it’s worth, though, I thought I might put down a few observations here for discussion/disagreement now.

In my post last summer I linked to this fascinating lecture from the Salt Lake City Ignite conference from a couple of years ago. As far as I know almost nobody watched it. According to You Tube it’s had a grand total of 163 views, half a dozen of which are probably me. You should look at it again. The lecturer, Matthew Reinbold, who enjoins his listeners to ‘make the world what you want it to be’ sounds like a clever guy and he is clearly passionate about the ability of connectivity to empower people to do good. Watch the lecture. It’s short and clear (Ignite‘s motto is ‘Enlighten us but make it quick’ which I love as a principle, probably because I’m so far from attaining it in practice).

But, you see the dark side, yes? That’s pretty much Breivik’s playbook to a tee. Of course his manifesto at 1500+ pages is a lot more specific on his ‘sacred cause’ about which he is colossally prolix and the specifics of the ways and means about which he is meticulous. Nonetheless, it covers the same ground, following the same logic, in practically the same order. Here’s Reinbold (emphasis added by me):

When you organize your tribe and you’ve decided to tackle one of these problems make sure that you have a semi-permeable membrane made out of belief. That belief will tell you what ideas you should accept into your organization and what ideas you should reject. But ultimately it starts with you. You have to care. You can’t just idly sit back and decide that somebody else is going to solve your problems, that somebody else is going to come save you, that somebody else is going to be the champion that you’ve been waiting for; it is all up to you. The alternative is sitting in darkness, stumbling around victimized by boom and bust cycles. It’s imperative that you take action. You decide the problems that you want to solve, you decide the world that you want to make. You can keep calm and just hope that things get better or you can make the effort to get excited and make the world that you want. Find your tribe. Decide what you believe. Rally them around you.

Believe me when I say that Breivik goes on and on (and on) about these things in his manifesto. The whole thing is a ‘semi-permeable membrane of belief’, his obsession with ‘tribes’ runs over hundreds of pages (and is a theme he’s picked up again in his testimony where he compares himself to Sitting Bull), the warnings to himself and others against complacency and the need to champion one’s own tribe are too numerous to count, and there can be no doubt whatsoever of his network savviness and perception of his efforts as being part of a much larger ‘war of ideas’ (his words). Here are a few snippets.

I don’t want to belabour the point here which is, simply, that Breivik is following a strategy which is well understood by students of insurgency and social movement theory. The terms they use differ as do the emphases they put on various phases and methods but, in a nutshell, I think Reinbold puts it very well–succinctly and without jargon: 1. find your tribe, 2. decide what you believe, and 3. rally them around you (though arguably you might say that two precedes one). What’s noteworthy about Breivik’s case, objectively, and I’m sorry if this upsets people, is that he is playing the part extremely well. It’s not just the ‘framing’ that the courtroom allows him which so infuriates Dan Hodges, as noted above. Nor is it the seemingly deliberate appropriation of Leftist iconography such as the clenched fist salute, normally symbolic of Left-wing radicalism, which really gets beneath the skin. As the BBC explains:

For psychologist Oliver James, author of Affluenza, the clenched fist has proved such a powerful symbol because it encapsulates connotations of resistance, solidarity, pride and militancy in one simple gesture.

“It’s a way of indicating that you intend to meet malevolent, massive institutional force with force of your own – you are an individual who feels bound with other individuals to fight an oppressive status quo,” James says.

It’s these things combined with two others which are, in my opinion, very discomfiting and worrying for the future. First, while Breivik himself is an extremist (the word seems underpowered to describe someone who coldbloodedly gunned down 69 children and young adults but there it is) but the essential underpinning of his strategic narrative is not. In the past few years, all the major European leaders have made speeches to the effect that multiculturalism is a failed policy–in Angela Merkel’s estimation, as an example, it had failed ‘utterly‘. A 2011 report by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation on Intolerance, Prejudice and Discrimination (pdf) in Europe concluded ‘Europeans are largely united in their rejection of Muslims and Islam’ (see pp. 61-63 for details). In other words, at a rough estimate a good half of Europeans would likely agree with a good half of his rationalisation. A very much smaller fraction would agree with what he did and a vanishingly small fraction are wont to imitate him–though according to the group Hope not Hate the ‘Counter-Jihad‘ movement which inspired Breivik is thriving. Anyway, this too is not new; terrorism experts have observed the same thing in various populations in respect of various causes for decades. Take, for instance, the Palestinian terrorist attack on the 1972 Munich Olympic Games which caused the death of eleven Israeli athletes. Before September 11 there is no better example of the power of terrorism to rocket an insurgent cause onto the international agenda. The attacks were widely decried—even by the PLO which feared that the Palestinian cause had been damaged by the atrocity; yet, they were also hugely successful. As Black September boasted:

In our assessment, and in light of the result, we have made one of the best achievements of Palestinian commando action. A bomb in the White House, a mine in the Vatican, the death of Mao Tse-Tung, an earthquake in Paris could not have echoed through the consciousness of every man in the world like the operation at Munich. The Olympiad arouses the people’s interest and attention more than anything else in the world. The choice of the Olympics, from the purely propagandistic view-point, was 100 percent successful. It was like painting the name of Palestine on a mountain that can be seen from the four corners of the earth (quoted in Bruce Hoffman’s Inside Terrorism).

Second, what’s new-ish is that while the trend of smaller and smaller groups (i.e.,’bunches of guys‘ as Marc Sageman puts it–link is to the famous Foreign Affairs exchange between Hoffman and Sageman, which you’ve probably already read) being able to conduct ever more spectacular attacks is well established, Breivik is just one guy–an extreme example of super empowerment (‘…work solo, be disciplined and keep your mouth shut’, he says at one point). It would be good for everyone if he was crazy; hence, it seems to me, why we see two Guardian articles on him in the same day, one saying he has no coherent ideology and another that his ’ideology may be difficult to listen to, but not because it is incoherent.’ Personally, I tend to the latter view. The manifesto is an absurdly overstuffed hotchpotch of cut and paste but, still, there is a thesis there which is apparent enough (stated and restated over and over). Moreover, the reflective parts of it where he considers what he is planning to do and anticipates some of the challenges do not seem to me that of a maniac. His physical preparation, working out  and watching his weight, is the least of it. There is also the meticulous sourcing of components for and preparation of the bomb as well as the purchase and prepositioning of the weapons used on the island. The eeriest part is the psychological preparation: reckoning that systematically murdering dozens of terrified people will be psychologically jarring he admits that he,

… can’t possibly imagine how my state of mind will be during the time of the operation, though. It will be during a steroid cycle and on top of that; during an ephedrine rush, which will increase my aggressiveness, physical performance and mental focus with at least 50-60% but possibly up to 100%. In addition, I will put my iPod on max volume as a tool to suppress fear if needed. I might just put Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell on repeat as it is an incredibly powerful song. The combination of these factors (when added on top of intense training, simulation, superior armour and weaponry) basically turns you into an extremely focused and deadly force, a one-man-army.  At the moment, I do not fear death, but I am very concerned about being afraid on the day of the mission. I’m afraid that the potential fear I might experience during the mission will paralyze me or will result in me “crapping my pants” so to speak. Theoretically, this will not happen, as I have grown to be extremely mentally disciplined and I have undergone numerous hours of training and simulations. Nevertheless, it is impossible to properly simulate a martyrdom operation so I am still somewhat concerned for my mental state during that time. 

By ‘simulations’ he seems to be referring to video games such as Call of Duty and Modern Warfare which he plays a lot of as part of his ‘training’ regime. Indeed, a lot of his preparation involves on-line preparation of the attack primarily as what you might an ‘information operation’. He spends more time ‘Facebook farming’ than he does constructing the actual bomb:

I’ve now worked with email farming for two months. God, I wouldn’t have imagined it was going to be this f…… boring:D I’m using Facebook to target various nationalist related groups and inviting every single member. I’ve managed to farm approximately 1700 email addresses this way. I did generic swipes of various blogs and internet sites earlier this year as well. Total number of email addresses is aprox 3000-5000, haven’t made an exact count yet<3

Ofc, it’s a quite tedious task due to the fact that Facebook has a 50 invitations cap per day. Even with my two accounts I’m limited to inviting a maximum of 100 per day, where an average of 40-50% accepts. Of these 40-50% around 90% have email addresses whereas aprox only 50% are checked on a regular basis. So of 1000 Facebook friends I will achieve a penetration rate of around 20-30%. Not optimal but then again, I can’t think of a more efficient way to get in direct touch with nationalists in all European countries.

OK, again, let’s not belabour the point. If Breivik is a nut then he is a calculating, patient, and self-aware one following a well established terrorist strategy quite adroitly, on his own, and demonstrating a fairly cutting edge sense of the propaganda potential of social media. Pretty unusual, no? Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? Is he one in a million? Ten million? A hundred million? A hundred thousand? Ten thousand? There’s a lot riding on the answer to that question. I don’t know what it is, though my gut feeling is that Breivik is not all that remarkable in his combination of traits. I don’t think the Norwegian government knows, or the UK’s for that matter. That’s pretty bad–particularly as one of the effects of connectivity is that even if the population of Breiviks is very small the Web can help them find each other. What’s worse is that there’s no patent on these techniques. Breivik quite happily drew on diverse sources including Jihadist manuals for the information he required. As he put it:

All the guides [on bomb-making] I reviewed, around 8, had flawed or even dysfunctional methods. I had to locate an entirely different method from YouTube which proved to work excellently.

Thanks YouTube! The bottomline is that you can expect lots more Breiviks. The techniques are more than adequately demonstrated. The means are readily available if you know where to look. It’s the causes which are more nebulous. ‘Counter Jihad’, in my view, is the most likely to metastasise into something larger and more virulent. But all sorts may give it a try: anti-vivisectionists, radical environmentalists, post-crash anti-capitalists, neo-anarchists… One thing which might make Breivik a one-off in Norway is the peculiarity of Norway’s economy which is buoyed up on a still large amount of recoverable oil. Norway is rich and likely to remain so. I suspect money has an important emollient effect. Unfortunately, just about everywhere else in Europe the money is running out fast.

The Malayan Emergency is back in the news – again. And once again, bloggers and pundits are invoking this British campaign from the 1950s to say something new about the wars of today. If one were to anthropomorphize the campaign, one would have to feel sorry for the Malayan Emergency: buried only to be repeatedly exhumed and used, in the most simple way, as ammunition for arguments largely unrelated to it. Held up by some as the paragon of counterinsurgencies, it is more frequently derided by others for failing to meet frankly ridiculous standards. All too often missing in this never-ending carousel of a polemic is a genuine interest in the campaign on its own terms.

Exhibit A is the recently penned review of the campaign by Sergio Miller, posted at the Small Wars Journal. To be fair to Miller, he appears to be genuinely interested in the Malayan Emergency and has done some solid research on the case. The text is in many ways good. The trouble is his ‘lede’, or the use to which he puts his research. When Miller titles his article ‘Malaya: The Myth of Hearts and Minds’, he unwittingly or deliberately enters the fray between counterinsurgency proponents (who use the Malaya campaign to validate their doctrine) and counterinsurgency critics (who think the doctrine is frankly suspect). He also picks his side, as dismissing ‘hearts and minds’ and dismissing the Malayan Emergency’s historiography are key hobbies of those who resent the U.S. Army’s adoption of counterinsurgency and want to use the doctrine as a punching bag.

It would be one thing if the article proved that hearts and minds in Malaya was a myth but the author actually ends up arguing something else, leaving some confusion about what is actually being said. First, Miller notes that, at a symposium examining the Emergency, ‘none of the British participants (all military) spoke of winning Malay hearts and minds by military force’ (emphasis in original). But as he goes on to explain, this related to the division of labour in Malaya, which left the police in charge of community engagement. For the Army, ‘There was limited contact with Malay civilians, other than jungle aborigines and Dayaks, used as scouts. Good relations were maintained but this was a matter of pragmatic common sense, not doctrine’.

From this, the conclusion could be drawn that the military should not be used to ‘win hearts and minds’; that this is a civilian task. Still, this division of labour was possible in Malaya only because the British had a full colonial presence there, something modern states typically lack when going to war. Thus, the military has become the main muscle of expeditionary operations, where they are forced to chase insurgents all while engaging with the population and honouring other traditionally ‘civilian’ duties. This is a serious conundrum of modern counterinsurgency but it cannot be solved by basing our division of labour on a colonial infrastructure that no longer exists.

The second implication might be that winning hearts and minds did not occur at all, either by the military or the police and that it was therefore irrelevant to the success of the campaign. If this is Miller’s meaning, he ends up arguing against himself. He writes that ‘it was the consistent show of reasonableness that won over the people of Malaya and the problem was still easier once the country became self-governing’. He continues by explaining that ‘Templer’s hearts and minds was first an economic and social policy, laced with political promises that also served a military purpose’. The British gave the local population, even the transplanted communities ‘a good deal, not least because the policy increased employment’.

From all this and other statements in the article, the conclusion that ‘hearts and minds’ is a myth seems somewhat puzzling. A cynic might suggest that Miller used this lede to sell what would otherwise have been a mere account of what happened in Malaya – a far less interesting story to a bloodthirsty audience. I wouldn’t want to impugn Miller in this way. Instead there appears to be some confusion – or at least disagreement – on what hearts and minds really means.

Miller does not appear to see the many examples of goodwill included in the article as proof of a hearts and mind effort; in fact he explicitly excludes them from consideration. For example, Miller writes that ‘units did interact with nearby settlements… and they were assiduous in respecting local custom and making an effort to learn the (difficult) language’. But this, he argues, was not about ‘hearts and minds’ but ‘more “get to know your neighbour” affairs’. Similarly, Miller appears to see no tension between the broader argument of the piece and his anecdote of one officer ‘bring[ing] along the regimental band to entertain the natives before sitting down for a village feast’.

The reader is left puzzled, then, about what winning hearts and minds might look like. The one instance that Miller paints as such is the ‘handing out [of] sweets and other presents’ to local children – ‘the one example’, Miller writes, ‘where it may be stated that the Army indulged in winning “hearts and minds”… If that is the test by which we understand ‘hearts and minds’, I wonder about the utility of our findings. First, what distinguishes handing out sweets from the other, more serious examples of constructive civil engagement in the article? Second, has it not been firmly established by this point that ‘winning hearts and minds’ entails much more than simply ‘being nice’? Assessing the importance of hearts and minds can no doubt be fruitful, but we must first be clear about what is meant by this term.

Miller later refines his argument: the campaign did in fact win hearts and minds, but they were won ‘not by the British but by the Alliance Government’. Again, this thesis seems to contradict the many anecdotes of community engagement in the article but even if it didn’t, what does it matter that support was won by the local government rather than intervening forces? Isn’t that the way it is supposed to be in counterinsurgency, where the legitimacy of the local government is under threat? It would be one thing if the Alliance Government and the British authorities were operating at cross-purposes, but as Miller himself points out, in the process of getting ‘Malays talking to Malays’, ‘the British played an important role facilitating this dialogue and maintaining stability’.

All this talk of hearts and minds leads nicely to exhibit B: a Guardian article detailing recently unearthed Colonial Office files on the Emergency. The article leads with the revelation that the counterinsurgency campaign in Malaya included the ‘elimination’ of guerrilla leaders. Well frankly I am shocked! In a war, no less! Yet on Twitter and elsewhere, this article has been leapt upon to show, again, just how little the British and its partners cared about hearts and minds.

The new files are interesting from a historical perspective and the Guardian should be commended for covering the recovery of these long-lost documents. But on the basis of what we’ve seen so far, these files do not say anything particularly new or surprising about the campaign. Yes, lethal force was used in Malaya, as it always is in armed conflicts. And yes, there were instances of abuse in Malaya, as there are in all conflicts. The question left unanswered by this article is whether abuse marked the campaign as a whole or was an exception to the rule.[1] So to read this article in isolation and to conclude that hearts and minds was a sham, that the campaign was one of terror and abuse and that counterinsurgency doctrine is therefore entirely bogus, reveals a very parochial mindset that says very little about Malaya.

The point of this post is not to say that winning hearts and minds is strategically decisive, fantastic, and should always take place. Those are separate debates. What is worrying is the hurry with which historical material is weaponised to score points in more recent yet unrelated debates. Of course analytical shortcuts are sometimes necessary but they should always be faithful to fuller accounts that treat the past on its own merits.

By ways of conclusion, let’s quickly deal with one more Malaya-related argument currently in circulation: that the role of Gerard Templer has been exaggerated at the expense of Harold Briggs so as to sell the ‘COIN narrative’. This argument is most often advanced by Gian Gentile and the target is typically John Nagl’s research. I do not understand where this Briggs vs. Templer stand-off comes from but I suspect it was constructed to resonate with the Westmoreland vs. Abrams debate and the separate Casey vs. Petraeus debate in Iraq. In other words, if Briggs can be shown to have been important in Malaya, then Casey mattered in Iraq and the counterinsurgency fanfare around Petraeus can be proved all wrong. This type of historical analysis by analogy is deeply troubling. What’s more, all of the serious scholarship on Malaya (Nagl included) recognises the critical role played by Briggs during his time as Director of Operations. If there is truly a problem with the historiography on Malaya in this regard, let’s discuss it. But let’s be careful so that we don’t talk about Malaya when we actually mean Iraq.

A wise man once said ‘Remember it’s just a blog. Have fun’. In the light of these sage words, I give you the parody saga of Generalissimo Grice versus the Mouse Insurgents.

My wife and I recently moved into a new territory (rented a new flat). Like many occupying powers, we decided to take over the location because of its geostrategic advantages (it’s near the local high street and has good transportation links), its natural resources (a dishwasher, washer-dryer and a large fridge freezer), its relatively tranquil surroundings (a nice quiet residential street) and territorial considerations (it’s slightly bigger than our old apartment).

However, after the initial turmoil and subsequent euphoria of occupation (moving in), we came across the first symptoms of something worrying: insurgents in the mist (we found mouse droppings under the fridge and a few other places).

Like many occupation forces, our first reaction was denial. We  convinced ourselves that the symptoms were exaggerated (that the droppings were old), that the threat was inconsequential (just one or two mice) and that any resistance would quickly expire (our very presence would drive the mice away). We repaired the damage (vacuumed up the droppings) and set about the other tasks of governance (studying, working, paying bills, etc).

But the problem didn’t go away. In fact, it became worse. Noticing our lax approach, the mouse insurgents grew bolder and began to sally out from their strongholds (holes in the walls) on guerrilla raids (dashes across the living room floor late at night). Other evidence of insurgent activity increased (the droppings reappeared), and gradually we realised were in for a fight.

In response to the threat, we first consulted with our North American support base (our Canadian landlady), and then embarked upon a series of counterinsurgent campaigns, also known as: Generalissimo Grice’s five anti-mouse bandit encirclement campaigns:

The first campaign involved an attempt to physically prevent the insurgents from infiltrating into our territory and to coop them up within their hideouts. Without resources, so the plan read, the insurgents would be starved and forced to either surrender or perish. We erected walls and barb wire fences around potential strongholds (stuck a bunch of steel wool into the holes in the walls) and restricted access to open food sources (vacuumed up any and all crumbs after each meal).

Alas, the number of potential hiding places vastly outnumbered the quantity of resources available (too many holes, not enough steel wool; too many meals, not enough vacuuming willpower), and we weren’t entirely convinced that the defences we had erected were effective anyway (my wife remains convinced that they were pushing the wool out of the way or simply climbing over it). When it became clear that the campaign had failed to have a measurable impact (we had further mouse sightings), we decided to embark upon a second campaign.

For the second campaign, we took the fight into the very outskirts of the mouse rebel heartland and placed false sympathisers within the area, each of whom was tasked with infiltrating and killing the enemy (we put a bunch of poison into areas where we had found droppings).

Once again, however, this undertaking failed. We had underestimated the strength of the enemy’s organisational structure and intelligence network. They were able to detect and ignore the agents (didn’t seem to eat the poison, despite its supposedly wheaty smell and grainy goodness). Insurgent activity remained high (yet further sightings), and we decided on a different approach.

The third campaign represented an escalation of the strategies employed during the first. We deployed heavy artillery (high pitched noisemaking devices that only mice can hear) along the outskirts of the insurgent borderlands and used this to try to drive them out of their holes and either destroy them entirely (force them out of the building) or at least make them flee to another country (go and bother some people in another flat in our semi-detached building).

This too failed to make a clear difference. Our resources were limited and artillery is expensive (anywhere between £25 and £40 pound for a decent quality noisemaker and they only really cover one room each) It was also unclear whether the artillery used was actually impacting on the movements of the insurgents at all; foreign reports suggest that insurgents can operate under such conditions relatively unhindered (some Amazon.co.uk reviews suggest that mice may just run past noisemakers). Fresh evidence of insurgent activity continued to appear, and a new campaign decided upon accordingly.

Campaign number four represented a change in approach. Up until now we had tried to fight using precision tools, without success. Now it was decided to go with more aggressive approaches, including building armed block houses, laying mines and preparing ambushes (setting mouse traps). We piloted both violent and violent methods, but found the more humane options to be more expensive (£0.99 for a standard mouse trap, around £10 for a humane one) and less effective in design (they set themselves off constantly and seemed less appealing for a mouse).

However, insufficient resources were used (we purchased just six mouse traps in total) and negligible impact achieved. On review, we noticed that some of the new methods seemed to contradict the older ones still in place (placing the traps in the kitchen seemed pointless when that was the same room which had the most steel wool and the noisemaker in it) and that some of our intelligence was wrong (apparently mice don’t like cheese, but prefer peanut butter or chocolate paste). Learning from our mistakes, we prepared yet again for a new campaign.

The fifth and final campaign (so far), involved a massive effort to root out and destroy the mouse insurgents. Significant amounts of resources were invested (I purchased a further 26 mouse traps) and efforts were taken to adopt the latest counterinsurgent ruses from abroad (we copied this YouTube video of an American building a bucket trap). Efforts were synchronised to avoid internal contradictions (we removed the steel wool from trap heavy locations and switched off the noisemaker) and lines of blockhouses, mines and ambushes were set across all of the major insurgent border areas (all of the mouse traps were laid, now with peanut butter and chocolate paste baits). This time, we vowed, there would be no respite, only victory.

The results are hard to discern. We have yet to catch a single mouse insurgent, a sad truth that has permeated our entire counterinsurgent endeavour. However, there have been no further raids and no other symptoms of insurgent activity (no more sightings or droppings). We know that our immediate neighbour (the flat downstairs) has had success in using capitalist running dogs within their territory (their dogs have caught several mice in their garden) and wonder if perhaps these were the same mouse insurgents that we had fought against. Similarly, we conjecture about whether some of the methods used in our initial campaigns may have gradually worn the enemy down and had a belated impact (e.g. they ate the poison and eventually died away from our flat).

We are now facing a period of internal disagreement. One side of the government (my wife) remains convinced that the mouse insurgents are still present, merely biding their time, growing in strength while we become complacent. On the other side (me), there is a growing belief that the mouse problem has been resolved and that by focusing in on an expired threat impairs our ability to rebuild our territory for the future.

Who is right? Time will tell. If hostilities flair up again, it will feed fire to my fear that Formosa/Taiwan may be represented in this analogy by our attic. If the comparison plays out in full, I may end up writing the remainder of my PhD while perched up there with a laptop. Here’s hoping for a more successful outcome!

I hope you will forgive me for the somewhat whimsical tale (inspired perhaps by too much reading about Chiang Kai-shek and his war against the Chinese Communists on my part perhaps) – definitely not a post to be taken too seriously!

From Thomas Pakenham's The Boer War (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979), p. 110, a terrific book which should be reprinted and republished.

My friend and former student Ryan Evans has penned a new piece over at Foreign Policy on Afghanistan ‘Mission Can’t Complete‘. I think it’s worth a read. If you’re stuck for time, however, here’s a handy summary in the form of a picture.

Potential negotiations between the Afghan government and representatives of the Taliban have stirred ever increasing international interest during the last two months. Pundits the world over have voiced myriad assessments of the morality of such talks, the possible agenda of the negotiations, and the potential outcomes. Many have argued that talking to terrorists is inherently a bad idea, fearing that negotiations would legitimise terrorist groups, their goals, and their means. Others have speculated that the US and the Taliban would agree neither on fundamental political concerns – such as the Taliban’s renunciation of international terrorism and their support of a peace process – nor on normative issues – such as human rights and other social norms. On the whole, opinions on the prospects and dangers of negotiations differ widely, and evaluations of possible conclusions range from emphasising their necessity for establishing peace in Afghanistan to voicing concern about the return to Taliban rule in the country. Despite this variety in assessments, a fundamental difficulty of talks with the Taliban has been neglected: Even successful negotiations may not be enough to have a positive impact on the country.

After all, a negotiated agreement with the Taliban would only solve one of the many problems faced by Afghanistan – and such an agreement would also, miraculously, need to satisfy the various stakeholders inside and outside the country. And stakeholders there are many. Although Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly insisted that his government must have the lead in any negotiations with the Taliban, he faces considerable criticism from a number of different factions within his country opposing a potential power-sharing agreement. The Taliban leadership (Mullah Omar and the Quetta Shura) is in a comparable position, having to accommodate hardliners and different factions (such as Hezb-e-Islami and the Haqqani Network) in a settlement, and convince field commanders that they will be provided for even in peace. On top of this already intricate setting, Pakistan has repeatedly revealed that, while it supports talks between Afghanistan and the Taliban, it has a strategic interest in the outcome and cannot be expected to sit idly by during the process. Similarly, the US government has expressed its own interests in talks. It supports negotiations with the Taliban in principle, having adapted its Afghan strategy to “fight, talk, build”, and hopes that a negotiated settlement will foster greater stability in Afghanistan and reduce the threat of Taliban terrorist attacks following the withdrawal of coalition troops by the end of 2013. The original cause for the international involvement in Afghanistan, al Qaeda, seems to have broken its ties to the Taliban as well as to Afghanistan and will likely not intervene in any negotiations.

But apart from the negotiations, Afghanistan faces a number of unsettling challenges in the near future that could impact the country’s future dramatically – and perhaps influence its course more than the pending talks with the Taliban. Most imminently, the Afghan government needs to prepare for the impending withdrawal of coalitions troops in 2013, which could leave a gaping hole in the Afghan security architecture if no provisions are made before then. Currently, coalition forces still provide much of the country’s security as well as substantial training for police and military. Afghan military and police alone will not be able to provide comprehensive civil and military security, which would include continuing the fight against insurgents. Instead, a provision needs to be established for the post-withdrawal period that would allow foreign forces to remain in the country in a support capacity. Yet, attempts to achieve exactly that through a strategic partnership with the US, for example, are stalled because disagreements have arisen on topics such as the execution of night raids and the handover of detention centres – a discussion suggesting notably different expectations in Washington and Kabul on how specific issues should be handled. Additionally, the increase of violence against NATO personnel by their nominal Afghan allies, particularly in the past weeks in response to the burning of Qurans on Bagram Air Base, has horribly demonstrated the lack of mutual trust and respect between foreign trainers and local trainees. More violence should be expected after the killings of at least 16 Afghan civilians by a rogue American soldier on Sunday. Moreover, with the end of international military involvement in 2014, Afghanistan needs to secure further financial assistance, which may plummet with the end of the coalition’s official commitment. While many countries have already pledged further assistance to Afghanistan, it will be difficult for the country to sustain the degree of international assistance it currently receives and needs in order to maintain its large government and security apparatus.

Regionally, the withdrawal of coalition troops carries a certain risk of reviving old rivalries between regional powers, such as India and Pakistan as well as Pakistan and Iran, in which Afghanistan is a token in a broader struggle for influence. For instance, India’s strong financial involvement in Afghanistan wakes fears of isolation for India’s historic enemy, Pakistan. For this reason, Pakistan has in the past tolerated and supported Afghan Taliban groups to represent Pakistani interests over India’s commitment in Afghanistan. And Iran’s protection of Shiite and Persian minorities, such as Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Turkmen, against the powerful Sunni and Pashtun Taliban disgruntles Pakistan. The reduction of foreign involvement in Afghanistan opens the door for these antagonisms to grab a hold of Afghanistan again.

Furthermore, Afghanistan as well as its allies need to prepare for a change in Afghan political leadership in 2014, as President Karzai has stated repeatedly that he would not seek a third term. In such instance, Afghanistan not only has to prepare for the transition of responsibilities from the coalition forces to Afghan leadership, but also it needs to prepare a new Afghan leadership to handle these challenges. Considering the country’s current levels of ethnic regionalism, factionalism, corruption, and cronyism, a transition of leadership is in itself a challenge and potentially destabilising. Depending on the quality of the election, the transition process, and the new leadership, the security situation in the country may be under systematic threat in the near future. The inclusion of further contestants from the Taliban through a negotiated power-sharing agreement may complicate this process even further.

Given that these factors all come together in Afghanistan, the impact even of successful negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban is questionable. While the adoption of an agreement is only a matter of time, its nature may not be favourable to some of the non-Afghan stakeholders – and perhaps even to the Afghan population. Concessions will have to be made to reach an agreement. The Afghan government can only hope that offering positions of influence to members of the Taliban through a power-sharing agreement will indeed have the anticipated effect – an end to the fighting and an improvement of the overall security in the country. It is this aspiration, however, that makes talks with the Taliban necessary. With the coalition forces withdrawing from the country and the Afghan security forces lacking the necessary capabilities to fill the gap, ending the insurgency through the marginalisation, disbandment, or elimination of the Taliban becomes a distant prospect. Under these circumstances, refusing to engage the Taliban in negotiations would risk prolonged violent conflict that would impede the country’s stabilisation and development. Accordingly, a potential agreement with the Taliban presents an important piece of the Afghan puzzle; yet it remains only one step along the way. In the immediate future, more looming issues may have a greater impact on the country’s stability and growth.

______________________

Claudia Hofmann is a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Her current research concentrates on non-state armed actors, civilian approaches to conflict management, and criminal networks.

After some intensive research (read: googling for a few minutes) I learned that that Eskimos do not in fact have hundreds of words for ‘snow’. Nor, in case you were wondering (which you probably weren’t), do Arabs have dozens of words for ‘sand’.

This makes for an amusing contrast with the plethora of English words we have for conflicts that could be classed as ‘insurgencies’ (or conflicts very close to insurgencies). I’ve noticed the use of a range of words by different authors during my research, but never really stopped to think about quite how many we really had. Not until the other day when, to pass some spare time, I started to idly jot them all down in a notebook:

• Irregular Warfare
• Unconventional Warfare
• Guerrilla War
• Terrorism
• Counter-Terrorism
• Insurgency
• Counterinsurgency
• COIN
• Partisan Warfare
• People’s War
• Revolutionary War
• Limited Warfare
• Low Intensity Conflict
• Revolt
• Uprising
• Insurrection
• Rebellion
• Revolution
• War of Independence
• Small War
• Non-traditional warfare
• Resistance
• Savage Wars
• Wars Amongst the People
• Fourth Generation Warfare
• Maoist Warfare
• Post Maoist Warfare
• Focos
• Coup
• Putsch
• Riot
• Mutiny
• Violent Protest
• Assymetric Warfare
• Retrograde Warfare
• Hit and Run Attacks
• Colonial Warfare
• Anti-Colonial Warfare
• Anti-Bandit Campaigns
• Popular Warfare
• Protracted War
• Wars of Pacification
• Freedom Fighting
• Emergency
• Resistance
• Civil War
• Civil Strife
• Civil Disturbance
• Violent dissent
• Class Warfare
• Hybrid Warfare
• Compound Warfare
• War of the Third Kind
• Anti-Thesis to Industrial War

New additions:

• Occupation (Jared)
• Armed Rebellion (A.E. Stahl)
• Troubles (Ed (The Real One))
• Sedition (Me)
• Dead Ending (Perry)
• Military Aid to the Civil Power (Alex)
• The Long War (Alex)
• Tactical Use of Armed Struggle (Alex)
• Three Block War (Jill Sargent Russell)
• Surgency (The Faceless Bureaucrat)

(While many of these do not technically describe exactly the same thing, but instead reflect subtle differences, they are nonetheless often used to describe the same or similar events/conflicts)

With the recent withdrawl from Iraq and the winding down of operations in Afghanistan, I think we can rest proudly that – no matter what else we may or may not have achieved – we have come up with a heck of a lot of words to describe that kind of conflict. And people have pretty strong feelings about the use of some of these words too, as shown here, there, here, there, here and finally there.

As we enter a period of reflection about these recent conflicts, it seems to me like the very first step we need to take to adopt a simpler selection of words. Some diversity is useful, but if we keep using as many words as those listed above, we’re just going to become/remain confused. Some analysts  will talk about ‘insurgencies’, others will talk about ‘terrorism’, yet more will talk about ‘wars amonst the people’, and no one will really know exactly what anyone else is talking about.

I think we need a more straight forward way of talking about these conflicts. Eskimos don’t need hundreds of words for snow, and we don’t need hundreds of words for ‘insurgency’ either.

P.s. Did I miss any?

Some amazing pictures from the PLA. Ok, they are almost three years old, from 1 October 2009. Still impressive. Here’s the full show (.pdf).

If that looks like an old clichée of German military aesthetics, it may be because it is — at least to a certain extent. Germany’s historic influence on China’s military is difficult to gauge. The years between 1919 and 1938 can be seen as a ‘Golden Age’ of Sino-German relations, according to one 2006 dissertation on the subject, although a proper official relationship between the two nations never really existed. Yet, Stefan Berleb pointed out that German military advisers helped organise and train the troops of several armed groups even before the establishment of the Chinese Republic and Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalist armed forces. “In the end,” Berleb writes, “the German influence on Chinese military affairs was only minimal.” But doesn’t it look as if some of that Prussian spirit has survived Mao?

Wang Xixin, Square Formation Commander, said in 2009:

We are going to display more than 40 types of armaments. More than 90% of them will face the public for the first time. There are main combative armaments as well as telecommunication facilities, radar and reconnaissance planes. All the armaments are independently developed and manufactured by China, which demonstrates the PLA’s comprehensive combative capabilities.

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!

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?