“Newton’s laws describe the motion of everything under the Sun and give physics great power in its ability to relate cause and effect. Yet the path of a ball in a pin ball machine seems to defy human control, it seems chaotic.” ~Chaos, Professor Steven Strogatz, Cornell University

Chaotic, a word often used to describe, the acts of mass killings we see happening all too frequently as of late and over the past couple of decades. Although still rare statistically, the randomness, unpredictability, chaos and sheer rage and deliberate violence and lives taken, involved in these acts has us with a laser like focus on, questioning, WHY would someone be so evil and do something like this, something so senseless, seemingly random and unpredictable? Yet when we dig deeper into these seemingly chaotic and random acts there seems to be some determinism, something’s in common, that strangely attracts these killers, towards rage filled outbursts that leads to these horrific and violent acts. Within these acts of violence is there some semblance of hidden order we can harness in the prevention of violent encounters? If so, what are these strange attractors that lead to chaos, hidden within the mind of a mass killer as stress, anxiety, motive and intent? When and how do they manifest themselves in the signs and signals we can read and interpret helping us exploit an opportunity in a timely way to prevent the violence and the chaos that ensues?

The science of chaos asks a critical question I think relevant to these violent acts. How can something be chaotic and random yet follow deterministic laws? I am a non-scientist but I am an avid explorer into violent acts and the people that commit them, who asks critical questions, how does chaos relate to violence and what are the commonalties in these tragedies that can help us prevent more violence from occurring and bring order to disorder? Can we predict violence in its chaotic and disordered form or is there something hidden or fail to see or, see and fail to act on in those who would commit violence in its ugliest form, that can help us prevent violent acts and if so, how?

What is chaos? The ancient Greeks summarized the tension between order and disorder with two opposing words cosmos and chaos. Cosmos means order. Chaos initially meant chasm, the abyss, the bottomless pit. Later, it came to mean the primeval state before creation, a state of utter disorder. This sense of “chaos” as utter confusion persisted into the modern era. Over the past few decades scientist began finding strange, unexpected connections between different forms of chaos. Geologist noticed surprising patterns in the frequency of earthquakes. The same patterns appeared in the variability of human heart rates and bursts of traffic on the internet. The rules of chaos were turning out to be universal, independent of the stuff behaving chaotically, the same for electronic circuits, lasers, chemical reactions, or nerve cells. It was if disorder was a thing in itself. It didn’t matter what was behaving chaotically; the process of becoming chaotic was turning out to be lawful, but the laws were like nothing science had ever seen before. (Chaos, Professor Steven Strogatz, Cornell University, 2008)

Today chaos is defined as “a paradoxical state, a kind of unpredictable behavior in a system governed by deterministic laws.” The term “butterfly effect” derived from a lecture scientist Edward Lorenz entitled “Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wing in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?” (Chaos, Professor Steven Strogatz, Cornell University, 2008) The “butterfly effect” refers to the extreme sensitivity of chaotic system to tiny, imperceptible changes in initial conditions. In the minds of those who kill, could their thoughts, intentions, motives, stresses and anxieties, poor coping skills be the “butterfly effect” influencing violent acts? Could it be that in violent chaotic acts, the vexing or, missing piece of the puzzle in how to predict and prevent them from occurring lies in the strange, unexpected connections between the different people, how they cope with life, and different methods they use to plan and carry out their acts? If so, where do we look for indicators of violence, when is the best time for prediction, how much time do we have to observe and orient to these indicators, which could lead to prevention of violence? My theory is it’s in the pre-attack stage where stress and anxiety are building and the feeling of loss of control over one’s life is building towards confusion, a sense of loss of control that if unchecked leads to rage. The signs and signals begin to manifest themselves in body language and changes in behavior that indicates this person is on the path of destruction. This destruction can lead to depression, mental conditions, abusiveness, and drug and alcohol dependency and, yes at times, violent acts.

People although complex are most of the time predictable. In an attempt to have some semblance of control over our lives we follow daily routines or habits. Think about it for just a second. What do you do when you first get out of bed, do you brush your teeth, put on your bathrobe and slippers, get your coffee and watch television? Perhaps you throw on your workout clothes and do some physical exercise? Whatever your, routine, is it the same on most days? I am willing to predict yes it is, unless something happens on a particular day(s) that cause you to change. The same goes for kids in school or you and your fellow employees in the workplace, unless something alters your situation.

If you sleep late your routine is broken and we often discuss how our day started out wrong and we had a chaotic day. Our determined routine turned unpredictable knocking us off our normal pattern of behavior and “stress out” rules the day. We may feel rushed and upset or perhaps even angry. We look and feel different to others, our loved ones, friends and co-workers, that prompt the question; you look stressed, are you ok? Once we re-establish our routines we begin to calm down and focus on the tasks we need to complete throughout the day which has a calming effect on us and we get back to our normal selves. This is how most of us respond to stress and disorder in our lives. Most of us have healthy coping skills that allow us to adapt to the changes in routine or the feeling of loss of control over our conditions. Even when something is overwhelming like a loved one, who is ill, or bills we struggle to pay, someone has made us angry; most of us cope by adapting to the situation, learning from it and persevere through the problem in a healthy and successful way. People who commit mass violence do not cope, or adapt in a healthy way and that stress of not coping and adapting shows itself in abnormal patterns of behavior, and body language, facial expressions, what they say and how they say it, leaks out as they struggle to regain control or plan and plot their violent acts.

When looking at behavior or behavioral changes it’s important to look at them in context of the situation; there is no profile. Yet there are behaviors to look for based on continuing normal patterns of behavior or a change in that behavior in an individual who may be struggling with anxiety, stress or potentially fixed on violence. Understanding these behaviors and taking action to reach out to the vast array of resources to help the individual may be the bridge between prevention of violence and the act of violence. There must be training and education in this area of recognizing the signs and signals of stress, anxiety that lead to potential violence. Some common patterns and anomalies (behaviors and behavioral changes) you can look for are:

Inflexibility

Hopelessness

Extreme lack of energy

Identifies with perpetrators of violence

Intimidation of others

Need to have control over others, manipulative

Paranoia, views self as a victim of society

Socially awkward or uncomfortable

Adverse reaction to constructive criticism

Does not take responsibility for own actions

Blames others

Dwells on the negative

Sense of entitlement

Creates unrest for the sake of unrest

May have history of disciplinary action

Obsession with weapons. Not a strong interest but obsession

Police encounters (not always)

Stalking others

Inability to “let it go”

These signs are common and most likely manifest themselves in every one of us at times. It’s important not to lose sight of this and that its recognizing a person’s normal patterns and then changes to those patterns that are what we need to mindful of. There are people who would never hurt a soul who show many of these signs daily because it’s their nature to do so. The context of the situation always must be considered when you’re assessing threats through pattern analysis.

Recognizing these behaviors help us in our assessment of the person. Threat assessment is situational awareness and management through; observation, orientation, decision and action cycles, on the part of individuals, teams and the organization working together to snuff out risks and threats: Good threat assessments should answer the questions; Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? The process of threat assessment is driven by information concerning the behaviors of the involved individual. In general the more information provided to the assessment process, the higher quality the assessment.
The process of information and knowledge management brought to a level of actionable knowledge to determine best prevention strategies to promote safety and a healthy workplace or learning environment. Knowledge is the catalyst to awareness; Learn-unlearn and relearn what we know or think we know about violence. Violence does not unfold in a linear way; it unfolds in a non-linear and probabilistic way. It is full of complexity and uncertainty in the potentially violent individual and in the way a violent individual carries out his violent acts. But within the uncertainty, and probabilistic way violence unfolds is some hidden order and determinism that shows itself prior to an attack and we must do our best to adapt and act here.

When these indicators manifest themselves we only have so much time to determine when someone is spiraling out of control and act to intervene in an effort to prevent violence. Violence in these people takes many forms “mass killing” is the most extreme. Others commit suicide or live abusive lives, gamble, abuse drugs or alcohol, or spend too much money. We call these people crazy, weird, nuts, and when they act out violently we call them evil or monsters. I have used the terms myself but not all of the people who commit violent acts were always monsters or evil. In general people who commit suicide or abuse were not always crazy or nuts. Many lived healthy and predictable lives much like our own until something triggered their spiraling down a horrific and violent path. Are there exceptions to this rule? Yes! There are those sociopaths who feel no stress anxiety or remorse, for their actions, but they are rare and do not manifest the pre-attack indicators in the same sense prior to attack. They do manifest the indicators in the attack stage as they move in like the predators, on their prey.

The key to preventing violence lies in taking advantage of the time we observe the changes in behavior or behavior so bazaar and out of the norm it alarms others. When we observe indicators of someone struggling and we orient towards the behavior in a confused, puzzled or even fearful state we must act on it before it goes too far. Changes in behavior are a big sign of someone struggling. These changes vary in length and extremes and their seemingly unpredictable acts of violence do not occur instantaneously. People who commit these acts do not just snap most mass killings are planned and, plotted over time. This is the time we need to focus our efforts on threat assessment, prediction and prevention. Many of these killers who have survived to talk about it have described their mental state as, their lives being out of control and their only way of gaining control was to act out violently. Many said they tried to reach out for help only to feel helpless. This is no excuse, for their behavior; in my opinion they are responsible for their horrific acts. Instead I see this as an explanation of why and a catalyst to preventing these acts from occurring.

When we recognize normal patterns of behavior in a person we can determine and predict the type of person they are. We do this all the time in developing relationships with others. The personality traits we like or see as normal in others attract us to them. This is important to recognize and understand because in people who commit unpredictable and chaotic acts we only have a certain amount of time to intervene before conflict turns to violence. In chaos theory there is another factor known as “strange attractors.” In chaos theory it is known that chaos is order as well as randomness. “Strange attractor is the natural shape of chaos. It’s strange because its geometry is strange.” (Chaos, Professor Steven Strogatz, Cornell University, 2008) It’s extremely complex much like, human beings who are termed as complex adaptive systems. “And it’s an attractor because the system that it describes is always drawn towards the behavior that it represents, as if attracted to it.” (Chaos, Professor Steven Strogatz, Cornell University, 2008) Much like normal human behavior attracts normal healthy relationships and actions, while abnormal or unhealthy behavior attracts stress, anxiety, conflict and violence. The existence of strange attractors, looking at the human condition through the lens of chaos and strange attractors helps us to see when there is order and or disorder in people’s lives. Scientists are encouraged by strange attractors because by revealing the unexpected order in chaos, strange attractors offer hope that this sort of seeming chaos might be partly predictable and controllable. Could this hold some hope for the prediction and prevention of violent acts?

In violence prevention the “strange attractors” in all of these acts lies in the pre-attack phase, in the anomalies of behavior we all hear discussed in the aftermath of a violent act. Statements like; “He did appear to be stressed.” “He changed in recent months” “He wrote letters and made phone calls that were alarming to others.” He said he was stressed but I never thought he would do something like this.” “He used to be a team player but recently he became a loner.” I knew he was having financial and family problems but this, I never thought he would do!” “He was always friendly and approachable but recently he had angry outbursts at work, that alarmed us but we never thought…” Statements like these and more in the aftermath of a violent mass killing are common in all these cases. Yes the people who carry out the acts of violence are different. The circumstances that lead to the abnormal behavior are different. The locations of the acts are carried out in different places. And the victims are different. But the signs and signals of stress and anxiety in a person struggling are almost always the same and if left unresolved, sadly the results are all too often the same.

Chaos, randomness, and disorder plague violent acts, as they are carried out in the attack phase. But it is the strange attractors, those signs and signals we observe and orient to in the pre-attack phase and that certain amount of time a person is struggling to cope we can gain the advantage and prevent violent acts from occurring. This time frame, known as the” horizon of predictability” is fleeting and it varies so we must be vigilant, be willing to work together with strength of character accepting risk of possibly being wrong or alienating a friend or co-worker to prevent violence. The “laze fair” and “it will not happen here or to me” approach is no longer good enough.

Predicting events of violence is a very difficult job but it can be done, not perfectly but in a much more efficient and effective way through planning, awareness and training those in adaptability and decision making under pressure and in recognizing the signs and signals of anxiety and stress that potentially lead to violence that often go unseen. Yes, indeed there are risks involved. But a good comprehensive threat assessment and violence prevention program involving resilient networks of people, and collaborative effort, with strength of character to implement the program fully can make these risks calculated which is far different from rash. The threat assessment is meant to prove as well as disprove the potential for violent action. The threat assessment is also a tool to get early intervention to someone struggling, helping them find their way back to productive, violent free and fulfilling life. Is there a hidden order in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty of violent acts? I believe there is and if we leverage these signs early on, disorder and chaos acted out physically in a violent way will be a lot less likely.

Stay Oriented!

Fred

Resources:

CHAOS, PROFESSOR STEVEN STROGATZ, CORNELL UNIVERSITY, 2008

THREAT ASSESSMENTIN SCHOOLS: A GUIDE TO MANAGING THREATENING SITUATIONS AND TO CREATING SAFE SCHOOL CLIMATES

THE FINAL REPORT AND FINDINGS OF THE SAFE SCHOOL INITIATIVE: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE PREVENTION OF SCHOOL ATTACKS IN THE UNITED STATES

“The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better. You see it in his science. You see it in the magnificence with which he carves and builds, the loving care, the gaiety, the effrontery. The monuments are supposed to commemorate kings and religions, heroes, dogmas, but in the end the man they commemorate is the builder.” ~Jacob Bronowski

Professional trainers/developers will tell you they are sometimes a teacher, but always a student. This is a very important attribute we cops must make an effort to continuously “build” and improve upon. There is a constant ebb and flow of conflict in our world and we need to be able to cope with the diverse conditions and adapt sound tactical options towards them in a way that makes sense. What we must develop is a way to respond to these diverse situations without taking a dogmatic closed-minded approach. Our responses need to be executed with strategic and tactical mindsets versus the all too prevalent emotional responses basked in a false sense of urgency or the, this is the only way we do it mentality.

The key to mastering our craft is learning. Learning is something I consider to be a lifelong building process of continuous improvement. If we are to succeed in continuous improvement and become, better than good, we must, take an interest in our own learning and in how, what we learn applies to, what we do. This does not come from a sole training class or even a full academy. It does come from making every effort to better ourselves throughout our lives.

This means learning not only from our successes but also very much so from our failures. Alfred Thayer Mahan stated; “Errors and defeats are more obviously illustrative of principles than successes are…Defeat cries aloud for explanation; whereas success, like charity, covers a multitude of sins.” Successes and failures we see in our day to day encounters both on and off the job and they bring about lessons we can learn from if we only make the decision, to take the time, to pause and, think about what each lesson has to offer us, can we, develop keystone habits that match with the realities of the job. Lifelong learning in an effort to develop good tactical habits is an important attribute for cops to possess as it directly affects our effectiveness on the street and our safety as we handle dynamic and random encounters.

My New Year’s resolution is to encourage every cop I meet to take small steps this year to improve every day in some way and build yourself into a better than good cop. Look at your training from the point of view; you can always learn something new and different from every source. Do not rely on any one source as the, be all, know all when it comes to your training. Train with an open mind and develop the critical skills necessary in the moral, mental and physical dimensions so you become very effective at using “tactical options” that influence these dimensions.

Be sure to take complete advantage of the day to day lessons of the street that informal training only experience can offer, when it is critiqued and leveraged in an effort to learn more about strengths and weaknesses. Discuss the call you just handled, and ask what lessons did it offer? Pick up a book or article, or a blog post on strategy and tactics each month (or more often) and ask; how does this apply to me? Start having discussions about crisis you handled or heard about and ask how would I have handled it, or how would “we” have handled it working together? An investigation, you’re working on ask; how could I have done more for the victim? How could I have done more to find the perpetrator? How can I patrol my area of responsibility better? How can I influence those I serve in a positive way that helps them understand what it is cops do and why and how, we do it? Don’t forget, to utilize tactical decision games and after action reviews. Spend time observing and reading people, their body language and facial expressions and attempt to understand the meaning behind the unspoken language we humans through micro-expressions and gestures, leak out, that tell us a lot about what’s going on. Also take some time to read or train in some disciplines other than cop stuff. Cop stuff is important but cross disciplinary learning helps us to see things from other points of view and opens our minds to more options for becoming better than good. We need to be better than good in these changing times where threats are more serious and those who threaten, more dedicated.

Lau Tzu said, “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with the first step.” Let’s all strive to be lifelong learners and always remember it is, a “step by step process” and not an “instant gratification” thing where you will master your abilities right this second. Learning does not work that way. Knowing something is one thing, understanding it another. Being able to apply it in context of a dynamic situation still an all-important other thing, crucial, to our winning on the street at low cost. What does it take to win? Continuous lifelong improvement, which takes individual interest, willingness, discipline and motivation and a love for what you do, to continually learn-unlearn and relearn throughout our careers building our own skills so we can call upon them individually and collectively when needed.

In 2013 I vow to continue to step outside my own comfort zone and provide insightful, perhaps controversial but, hopefully useful, blog posts, articles, ideas and other resources that stimulate debate, and thinking about how we police and the decision making and tactics we utilize in doing so. My hope is that it influences each of you to ask critical questions of me and, of yourselves and of your fellow officers, to dispel fear and inspire a deeper interest in strategy and tactical science so you can be more creative in applying them in the real world. Small steps lead to solving small problems and solving small problems leads to solving complex problems even when faced with overwhelming crisis. In 2013 discover what your capable of and go beyond the physical aspects of the job and build upon the mental and tactical decision making aspects of the job. I will be right there with you all every step of the way, training to make a difference.

“Discovery is a double relation of analysis and synthesis together. As an analysis, it probes for what is there; but then, as a synthesis, it puts the parts together in a form by which the creative mind transcends the bare limits, the bare skeleton, that nature provides.” ~Jacob Bronowski

Happy New Year and remember to Stay Oriented, and evolve, through lifelong learning and continuous improvement!

Fred

“In complex settings in which we have to take the context into account, we can’t codify all the work in a set of procedures. No matter how comprehensive the procedures, people probably will run into something unexpected and will have to use their judgment.” ~Gary Klein

Much of this post comes from an outstanding book, Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making, written by Gary Klein. Klein is a leading researcher on recognized primed decision making and experiential learning that has culminated in two other books, “Sources of Power” and “Intuition at Work,” as well, as, countless research papers. The information in this topic of decision making and how to create and nurture it, is beneficial to every cop in their quest to mastering tactics and tactical decision making and are a must read for every cop wanting to be more effective and safe on the street. My purpose is to get cops thinking about this Critical question: In mastering tactics shouldn’t we be blending policy and procedure with people and ideas?

It should be understandable that teaching people, procedures helps them perform tasks more skillfully doesn’t always apply. Procedures are most useful in well-ordered situations when they can substitute for skill, not augment it. In complex situations, in the shadows of the unknown, uncertain and unpredictable and complex world of law enforcement conflict, procedures are less likely to substitute for expertise and may even stifle its development.

Here is a different way of putting it as Klein explains: In complex situations, people will need judgment skills to follow procedures effectively and to go beyond them when necessary.

For stable and well-structured tasks i.e. evidence collection and handling, follow-up investigations, booking procedures and report writing, we should be able to construct comprehensive procedure guides. Even for complex tasks we might try to identify the procedures because that is one road to progress. But we also have to discover the kinds of expertise that comes into play for difficult jobs such as, robbery response, active shooter and armed gunman situations, hostage and barricade situations, domestic disputes, drug and alcohol related calls and pretty much any other call that deals with emotionally charged people in conflict.

Klein states, “to be successful we need both analysis (policy and procedure) and intuition (people and ideas).” Either one alone can get us into trouble. Experts certainly aren’t perfect, but analysis can fail. Intuition isn’t magic either. Klein defines intuition as, “ways we use our experience without consciously thinking things out”. Intuition includes tacit knowledge that we can’t describe. It includes our ability to recognize patterns stored in memory. We have been building these patterns up all our lives from birth to present, and we can rapidly match a situation to a pattern or notice that something is off, that some sort of anomaly is warning us to be careful. Here is where we must trust our gut and go beyond the policy, adapt and innovate to be successful. There is a science and art to policy and procedures. The science is where the best practices, policy and procedures come from and are developed around. The art is where people, ideas, insight, innovation and initiative come as we interact and attempt to resolve law enforcement problems.

Like all tools, procedures have strengths and weaknesses. Although I have been describing their limitation, we certainly shouldn’t discard them. Here is what Gary Klein says they buy us:

• They are training tools. They help novices get started in learning a task.
• They are memory aids. In many jobs they help cops overcome memory slips.
• They can safeguard against interruptions.
• They reduce workload and make it easier to attend to critical aspects of the task.
• They are a way to compile experience and historical information. Procedures are useful when there is a lot of turnover and few workers ever develop much skill.
• They help less experienced cops do a reasonably acceptable job. They can walk a skilled marksman through the steps of handling a pistol or rifle malfunction. They can help a crime annalist troubleshoot a tricky crime trend.
• They can help teams coordinate by imposing consistency. If the people on the team know the same procedures, they can predict one another’s next moves.
• The last advantage is particularly important for ad hoc teams that don’t have a chance to practice and train together regularly.

The downside to procedures is that they usually aren’t sensitive to context. In complex situations we may not know when to start and end each step. The people making procedures usually try to substitute precision and detail for tacit knowledge. People sometimes make up procedural guides to capture what they think experts are doing. That’s a noble intent, but procedural guides really can’t explain the tacit knowledge that people acquire over decades of experience. We must be careful in the policy and procedure development process.

Procedures help when you need people to reliably follow the same steps. However, that’s different from needing reliable outcomes. For example, on the range or on the street a shooter must place the round down range to the center of available mass, shot after shot, yet we don’t care if the arc of the gun, the foot placement, movement, the bend in the shooters knees, is the same each time. And it isn’t the same. Even the experienced shooter alters the arc of the gun, his stance, position, his posture in order to get an accurate shot.

Getting procedures right is not just a matter of getting them to be accurate or efficient or updated or covering all the needed contexts, which may well be both impossible and prohibitively expensive in time and money. It is also a matter of getting the organization to have the right attitude toward procedures.

To put procedures into prospective, Gary Klein gives this example; “consider the difference between directions and maps. When we have to travel to an unfamiliar destination, we sometimes get directions, a sequence of actions (e.g., go straight for two blocks, then turn left). Other times we get a map showing where we are, where we want to be, and the terrain in between. The directions are easier to follow, but if anything goes wrong (say, a street is blocked off) we are stuck. A map demands more of us but makes it easier for us to adapt and can be used for other routes in the same area. We have the guide but we still must use our judgment.” Think about this in terms of the types of calls we in law enforcement respond to. Is everything always the same on that domestic or a car stop or are their mismatches that create confusion and a need to bypass certain policies and procedures and we must resort to real time innovative tactical problem solving to resolve the situation more effectively?

Klein states; “for many types of complex work we need both procedures and the judgment to interpret and work around the procedures. In a 2007 study (Hockey, G.; Sauer, J.; Wastell, D. “Adaptability of Training in Simulated Process Control: Comparison of Knowledge- and Rule-based Guidance under Task Changes and Environmental Stress, Human Factors, Vol.49) found, “people trained to understand the way a system worked were more flexible, and did a better job of spotting and fixing unfamiliar and complex problems, than people trained to follow rules and procedures. However, they also take longer to do the work, and they were more affected by a stressor, noise, than people who had been trained to follow procedures.” This clearly states to me, there is a need for “blending policies and procedures with people and ideas.” How? Developing effective policies and procedures and implementing them with effective training. Ongoing training that builds the foundation and the ability to adapt when necessary!

Teaching procedures

When we want to teach some procedures, the typical way is to present the standard procedures and make everyone memorize and practice them. Not good enough!

Here is another way to teach procedures. Setup scenarios for various kinds of challenges and let cops go through the scenarios. If the procedures make sense, then cops should get to see what happens when they depart from the optimal procedures. When procedures are taught in a scenario format, people can appreciate why the procedures were put into place and can also gain a sense of the limitations of the procedures. This scenario format works better than having people memorize the details of each step. The scenarios provide a good counterpoint for learning the steps of complicated tasks. Moreover, the scenarios can help people acquire some of the tacit knowledge they need in order to apply procedures effectively.

Why Does Blending Policy and Procedures with People and Ideas Matter?

It matters because when we emphasize procedures over skills we set a standard of mediocre performance. The standard procedures become a basis for evaluating job performance, making people even less likely to adapt or improvise and more careful to comply with the rules.. In unpredictable settings (law enforcement setting), the standard procedures can impede progress because cops may have to explore the situation and experiment and not be told what to do every step of the way.

It matters because too often we issue procedures in order to change behavior even though there may be simpler and more effective ways to do that.

We cannot take all the guesswork out of law enforcement decisions by providing procedures to follow and clear criteria for how to move on to each step. Teaching people procedures helps them perform tasks more skillfully. This statement reflects our desire to break complex tasks into step by step procedures. Dr. Gary Klein ran into this attitude in initial research on recognized primed decision making, working with firefighters. I asked them how they made their decisions and they explained that they rarely if ever, had to decide anything. “We just follow the standard procedures,” they explained. But when asked to see the procedures they told me they weren’t written down. Firefighters just knew what to do. Even when faced with a complex situation, the commanders could see it as familiar and know how to react. … The commander’s secret was that their experience let them see a situation, even a non-routine one, as an example of a prototype, so they knew the typical course of action right away. Their experience let them identify a reasonable reaction as the first one they considered, so they did not bother thinking of others. They were not being perverse. They were being skillful. We now call this strategy recognition-primed decision making.”

Klein says, “the Recognition-Primed Decision Making Model fuses two processes: the way decision makers’ size up the situation to recognize which course of action makes sense, and the way they evaluate the course of action by imagining it. It is important to keep in mind that decisions evolve with circumstances. While some decisions are made simply, with more time to decide, other decisions require quick if-then thinking in order to achieve results.”

The focus here is how to prepare members of the law enforcement profession to make those rapid decisions that need to be made under pressure. Blending people and ideas with policy and procedures is the way to that outcome. This is a challenging task, which will take hard work and a coactive effort by all members of policing. After careful consideration, and reassessing and reshaping my own ideas on the value of policy and procedures, is a task I believe worth undertaking, when balance out by allowing people (cops) and their ideas, their skills to evolve when dealing with real time rapidly changing circumstances if we are to move our profession forward toward full spectrum and effective responses.

Stay Oriented,

LT Fred Leland

Guerrilla Leader,I read last year and have been meaning to do a review.  T.E. Lawrence in my humble opinion was the epitome of what a leader should be. As you read the book you will find it is much more than a lesson in history and that it is in fact, a lesson in leadership. T.E. Lawrence took the principle of know yourself and no your enemy to a level I have not read of anywhere before. He dug in and learned all he could about the Arab culture and adapted his leadership style to meet the task at hand.

Think about it a British officer becomes liaison officer to the Arabs during the Arab revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule. He is able to gain their trust which forms into mutual trust and inspires them to action in campaigns of insurgency distracting the Ottoman Turks.

The book covers the campaigns, his ideas on strategy and tactics, his triumphs and troubles and my favorite part his leadership style which is adaptive and relevant today.

The next couple of pages are straight from the book Chapter 7: “The Grief of Leaders” which ultimately discusses the toll combat, combat leadership, betrayal and distrust can take on an individual and talks of Lawrence’s internal struggles within himself and the British Army. I found this particular section on what the author describes as Heroic verses Autonomous Leadership very intriguing.

…Lawrence’s grief opens a further window unto an understanding of tactical leadership. He seems to assert that leadership is a fundamental human need: that every human being possesses both a desire to lead and a desire to follow, but these desires are never in balance. The Confucian project, for instance, was an effort to establish in the East a doctrine of followership as a way to order a just society. The West took a different path. Here the idea of heroic leadership came to reside at the center of Western culture, and the myth of the warrior king became its exemplar. In literature, the epic of Homer’s Iliad and its two heroes, Achilles and Hector, express the heroic paradigm better than any other work, with this style of leadership dominating Western culture to this day. Essentially, the heroic leader is the man of quality whose worth and worthiness are reflected in his personal honor and reputation: a man of low honor has little worthiness, small esteem, no reputation. The hero is a physically strong man, for a weak man is an unworthy man. The heroic leader manifests all the exterior qualities that enable the force of his physical presence, and this presence represents his personal core identity, which he projects vigorously among his followers and protects with utmost savagery. He has little time for self-reflection, since reflex and passion dominate his action.  Indeed, long reflection is counterproductive when immediate action dominates the idea of tactics.

The projection of his identity as a kind of physical magnetism becomes registered among his followers as the leader’s charisma. This, of course, has significant implications on a battlefield and the premium leaders must pay is denominated in courage, valor, bravery, and, after the rise of Christianity, lip-service virtues like chivalry, fairness, and moderation. Self-identity through reputation thus serves a core human need. As followers, our identification with the leader serves the same psychological need and so completes and essential symmetry.

But there is an alternative to the heroic leader, which could be described as the autonomous leader who seeks to transcend the level of psychological need and gain personal autonomy for human desire. The idea is exemplified in the leadership of T.E. Lawrence. Again, literature offers a model in Homers Odyssey. Here Odysseus breaks fundamentally with the heroic tradition. The human qualities that Odysseus strives to foster are interior and intellectual. This is not to say that he eschews physical prowess. Instead, his actions are shaped by due consideration and self-reflection, trying to hold reflexive action at bay through careful design and planning. Only then is action appropriate. It should come as no surprise, then, that Lawrence would personally identify with Odysseus and spend over two years translating The Odyssey while on active duty with the RAF in India.

The autonomous leader asks the central question that the heroic leader chooses to ignore: If I am to lead others, how do I feel about myself? There is only one answer: he must overcome the leadership of his desires and passions and become independent-autonomous-of them. But practically, how does he accomplish this? For the heroic leader. There is no issue. He has been anointed to lead by right of succession or through some other social legitimation. The autonomous leader can overcome his desires only through learning and self-knowledge, hence the Socratic imperative “know thyself.” But this is a struggle of a lifetime, and it is precisely in this struggle that character and confidence are built. As Lawrence said to Liddell Hart in 1932: “I was not an instinctive soldier, automatic with intuition and happy ideas…. When I took a decision, or adopted an alternative, it was after studying (doing my best to study) every relevant, and many irrelevant, factor. Geography, tribal structure, religion, social customs, language, appetites, standards, all were at my fingertips. The enemy I knew almost like my own side. I risked myself among them a hundred times to learn.” The autonomous leader becomes and expert learner. The struggle to learn creates the dynamic tension between character and competence. And here character develops beyond the trivial sense of virtue as a checklist from Boy Scout manual to mean strength of character and its natural corollary, strength of mind. Character is about respect and not reputation: it is societies signal and lasting embrace to the members of its community. Character revolves around living in accordance with certain key ethical and moral values, but in the enduring paradox and tragedy of our existence, war subverts this centrality and places martial competence at its heart.  Thus a military leader gains respect in direct proportion to his prowess.

How did this paradox come to pass? In a peaceful and just society, ethics and morality create and preserve the very existence of peace. War is the ultimate breakdown of morality, and personal survival comes to the fore. At the social level, we turn to leaders who will guarantee our national survival. We are willing to accept the philandering leader as long as he gives us the best chance to exist. In war, this social compromise has already been made: men follow the most competent leader because he is the best guarantor of their lives; the competent sinner will always supplant the incompetent saint in tactical leadership. Yet in a further evolution or twist of the paradox, within the society of soldiers war often brings out the best character qualities among the combatants: self-sacrifice, self-discipline, generosity, initiative, hopefulness, spirit, camaraderie, responsibility, patience, determination. All these qualities were manifest throughout Lawrence’s life, before and after the desert. The crucible of combat simply refined the metal and mettle of his humanity.

The autonomous leader, like Lawrence, seeks respect rather than reputation, for only the autonomous leader, who finds ultimate solace within himself, can find self-respect as meaningful, while “self-reputation” makes no sense. Reputation is always exterior to the self, dependant on the estimate and esteem of others. The autonomous leader also views charisma much differently. Where the heroic leader derives immense satisfaction from the adulation of his followers, who sense the gravity of his presence, the autonomous leader is more concerned with making others feel good about themselves. This sense of enabling helps to foster a spirit of empowerment. The subordinates feel self-actualized in their engagement with the world. Their identity shifts from the leader to the self and creates a sense of self-confidence, a willingness to assume responsibility, and a spirit of initiative. As an expert learner, the autonomous leader naturally becomes and expert teacher, further reinforcing conditions of empowerment. Within the context of conflict learning, mutual learning becomes crucial since the military milieu is so ambiguous, volatile and dynamic.

Perhaps the best précis on Lawrence as an autonomous leader was penned by the commander who knew him best: Edmund “the Bull” Allenby. After Lawrence was killed, Allenby wrote: “he depended little on others; he had his private reasons for all he did and those reasons satisfied him. Loyal pursuance of his own ideals, and the habit of independent thought, brought about sound self-education; practice in analysis of character resulted in a full understanding of other men. His exceptional intellectual gifts were developed by mental discipline; and the trained mind was quick to decide and to inspire instant action in any emergency. Hence his brilliance as a leader in war.”

In perhaps the final testament to Lawrence’s leadership, almost sixty of his body guards died in his service, over half of the original compliment. They had formed a fellowship out of sinews of leadership. As pariahs outcast by thirty or more desert tribes, they has developed into a firm union bound fast by a courage of despair, whose only hope was mutual trust. Only the intensity of mind-numbing activity seemed to transcend the loss of personal identity, which they seemed always to rediscover in the freedom of the group. Over time, Lawrence’s iron will and determination in creating his own tempered striking force challenged him to higher standards of leadership: “to live up to my bodyguard,” he said, “to become as hard, as sudden, as heedless.” Lawrence ascetic self-abnegation had created a refined and efficient desert fighting machine and added yet another jewel to a never-ending chain of irony: the image of the ascetic Templar knight leading a band of renegade Muslim raiders in a holy war.

Thus, leader and led in a dance of mutual self-respect, changed each other, slowly, irony by irony, the transformation bending to the will of Lawrence: “Into the sources of my energy of will I dared not probe…. The practice of our revolt fortified the nihilistic attitude in me. During it, we often saw men push themselves or be driven to a cruel extreme of endurance; yet never was there an intimation of physical break. Collapse rose always from moral weakness eating into the body, which of itself, without traitors from within, had no power over will. While we rode we were disembodied, unconscious of flesh or feeling; and when at an interval this excitement faded and we did see our bodies, it was with some hostility, and with a contemptuous sense that they reached their highest purpose, not as vehicles of the spirit, but when, dissolved, their elements served to manure the field.”

The autonomous leader, though, often pays a heavy psychological and emotional price.  His predilection for self-reflection creates a self-awareness that, over time, can create the personal grief experienced by leaders like Lawrence, who refuse blithely to rationalize the moral ambiguities of their actions and the actions of their men and the doublespeak and even betrayal of superiors.

I highly recommend this book.

Stay Oriented!

Fred

“The challenge for every organization is to build a feeling of oneness of dependence one another because the question is usually not how well each person works, but how well they work together.” ~Vince Lombardi

Cohesion is the message of Coach Lombardi in the quote above. Cohesion means sticking together. It is hard to underrate it. So how do we create and nurture it?

I read an interesting article, which mentioned S.L.A. Marshall, who was a military historian who developed a unique way of doing historical research. He went to the front lines and interviewed everyone from private soldiers to their sergeants and officers, right after the action. He frequently came under fire in doing his research. Afterwards he analyzed his results.

One of the most amazing things he discovered was that when it was a life and death situation in battle, soldiers soon forgot about their idealism or patriotic reasons for fighting. If things were tough enough, even unit pride lost much of its power. But there was one emotion which never slipped. It was such a strong motivator that soldiers would frequently give up their lives because of it. What was this great motivator? It was not to let their buddies down. Everything else might vanish under the stresses and strains of combat, but not this one feeling. That feeling made all the difference in sticking together, in cohesion. No wonder that the idea of an army constituting a “band of brothers” should be shared by cops. It is the wise leader who fosters cohesion for with it; any organization is many times stronger than an organization that lacks it.

Cohesion is one of the most important elements of organizational productivity. Cohesion means that every member of the organization bears a responsibility for success or failure. Cohesion helps motivate members to put the organization needs above their individual needs. If we focus on sowing cohesion verses sowing discord how much more effective an organization would we be? How much better servants would we be? How much better prepared would we be for handling crisis situations? How much more respect would we garner from one another, from the community? How much stress and anxiety would be relieved if cohesion out weighed individualism?

Cohesion will help the organization attain great achievements. Police departments are organizations that can create and nurture this group feeling of unity also known as cohesion or esprit de corps. Yes it takes work. Yes it takes self reflection and self-awareness and learning to focus on the important issues, like each other and those we serve. Yes it takes getting out of the past and moving forward! For example; if you feel you have been wronged professionally in some way that’s ok…for a short period of time, but then you must pick yourself up and carry on! I have seen too many folks in our profession let an ass chewing or some other grievance ruin there careers and or more critically ruin their attitudes toward other officers and the public they serve. To quote the character Rocky Balboa: “It ain’t about how hard you hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. It’s how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.” In other words being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.

“Know yourself and seek self improvement” is a leadership principle I have never forgotten since my days in the Marine Corps and it is applicable to us cops of all ranks as well. There are 16 traits that we should focus on when we put the principle “Know yourself and seek self improvement” to work creating and nurturing a cohesive environment.

• Courage or strength of character, demonstrated by taking calculated risks on the street and with your boss back at the station. Acting calmly in stressful situations. Standing up for what’s right, regardless of what others might think. Accepting personal responsibility for your mistakes. Making full-bore effort towards, mission accomplishment, even in the face of obstacles and problems.
• Bearing demonstrated by setting and maintaining high standards of professionalism.
• Decisiveness is demonstrated by studying alternatives and carefully selecting the best course of action when time permits. Picking alternatives and making decision quickly when there is no time for careful study. Knowing when not to make a decision.
• Dependability, demonstrated by being places on time when you’re told to be there or when you say you will. Doing those tasks that you have been told to do and those tasks that you’ve promised to do in a complete and timely manner.
• Endurance, demonstrated by maintaining the physical and mental stamina to perform your duties under stress conditions and for extended periods of time.
• Enthusiasm, demonstrated by consistently communicating a positive attitude. Emphasizing each others successes. Encouraging officers to take the initiative to overcome obstacles to performance.
• Humility, demonstrated by ensuring officers receives credit due them when they perform well. Emphasizing to one another how important they are to the unit. Describing performance in terms of “what WE did” instead of “what I did.”
• Humor, demonstrated by having fun doing your job. Joking when the going gets tough.
• Initiative, demonstrated by taking action in situations where something must be done, even in the absence of direction from a superior. Looking for and figuring out better ways to do things. Planning ahead.
• Integrity, demonstrated by telling the truth, to both your superiors and your fellow officers.
• Judgment, demonstrated by closely considering a range of alternatives before you act. Thinking out the possible effects of what you’re about to do before you do it.
• Justice, demonstrated by consistent application of rewards and punishments to all in your unit. Making decision that support mission accomplishment and that also take into account the needs of officers. Listening to all sides of an issue before making a decision that affects all.
• Knowledge, demonstrated by making sound tactical decisions. Performing administrative and technical duties well. Recognizing and correcting inadequate performance.
• Tact, demonstrated by speaking to others with the same kind of respect that you expect yourself.
• Loyalty, demonstrated by passing on and carrying out the tough orders of superiors without expressing personal criticism. Defending officers against unfair treatment from outside or above. Discussing problems in your unit and the problems of your officers only with those individuals who can help solve the problems.
• Selflessness, demonstrated by ensuring that the needs of your officers are met before attending to your own needs. Sharing hardship, danger and discomfort. Taking every action possible to provide for the welfare of one another.

The responsibility for developing our abilities and the type of organization we want rest squarely on each and every one of our shoulders. Like good leaders cops are made not born. But the making of a good cop, the making of a good law enforcement agency involves dedication, hard work, and a willingness to try out new skills and techniques, new attitudes as we grow and develop.

There is warmth in being part of a cohesive group which comforts and helps when the environment is hostile and that this comradeship means that each individual is one of the whole, bearing part of the responsibility for either success or failure. If we want to build an organization that will last, one that can grow in good times and bad, we must develop a shared feeling of accomplishment. We must continually develop strategic wins for our organizations, our communities, and not just for our own personal and private gain.

Our own band of brothers, “the brotherhood in blue” has slipped into individualism of the past few decades. It is time we begin to understand the benefits of unity and mutual trust which lubricate the OODA cycle and reduce friction and builds confidence in our abilities to execute. Let’s bring that comradeship back into the ranks of law enforcement with strength and honor.

Sun Tzu said; “you must control your soldiers with esprit de corps. You must bring them together by winning victories. You must get them to believe in you.” Hell this quote is 2500 hundred years old and I often find it humorous that we often struggle with its simple message. I believe we are more than capable of attaining this if we focus outward on our mission to protect and serve and focus outward on others verses inward and solely on ourselves. It is the positive attribute of selflessness that is the key to obtaining this. As cops we are public servants but we must also treat and serve ourselves with integrity while holding each other accountable in a candid and fair way. Trust is the cornerstone of cooperation. It is a function of awareness and respect.

I have heard it said; moral accountability is the foundation, either solid or crumbling, upon which our legacies stand. Let’s make ours a solid foundation based in unity and supported on earned trust.

Stay Oriented!

Fred

The reason for doing this was to demonstrate the ability to crowsource funding for initiatives that are championed by ideologies that are on the hard-power end of foreign policy.

As the last blog I posted demonstrates, the ability for motivated individuals to become active in a conflict exists and is very real.  What amounts to DIY intervention can have an impact upon the course of World events (similar to the warning given to us service members from the SECDEF).  To me, what this says is that citizens no longer only vote for a foreign policy with their ballots, but they can also–directly–do so with their wallets, time and skill-sets.

The conditions are right, and the historical precedent is now set for the ‘memetic stew’ to bring forth a Non-Governmental Organization as a third option that takes elements from Kony2012, private security firms, and Kiva for those who wish to see some sort of change in the World.

What strikes me as ironic, is that the words typically espoused towards supporting World peace, are now the intellectual foundation under which we may see a new method for hard power applied in the World.  This is not to say that the end goals of those who see the utility of hard power is all that different from those who see greater utility in soft power.

Rather, in the long-term, I am interested to see if the potential I’ve outlined here coalesces to incorporate both hard and soft power elements.  Such a coalescing would amount to a private sector analog to a nation’s foreign policy.  Which would, arguably, be the tipping point for the replacement of the Westphalian era, where an organizational paradigm like a government is no longer required to bring together the ends, ways and means to execute foreign policy.

[Cross-posted at USNI]

Yesterday, Al Jazeerainterviewed Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasool on the prospect of U.S. drone strikes after 2014. He responded:

“Afghan soil will not be used against any country in the region. The presence of the remaining forces in Afghanistan is for training, equipping and securing Afghanistan’s security. It has been mentioned, it is going to be mentioned, that this force is not for use against any neighbors in the region.”

The Afghan government’s final decision on whether to permit U.S. drone strikes and/or special operations raids could change several times over the next twenty months. If Rasool’s statement becomes official Afghan policy, however, it will be extremely difficult for the United States to sustain drone strikes against suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan in the future.

This shift could have serious consequences for CIA drone operations. It is hard to envision the Pakistani government re-permitting drone strikes from its territory. Last summer, Pakistan evictedthe remaining U.S. personnel from Shamsi Airbase in the Balochistan province, where drones were based since as early as 2006. In recent months, the prime minister, foreign minister, and aparliamentary committee on national security have repeatedly condemned U.S. drone strikes as violations of Pakistani sovereignty.

Zenko then assesses alternative basing options for the U.S. drone programs directed against Pakistan, namely India and China. I largely agree with him about why these options are unrealistic, and that the implications of a loss of a neighboring state as a drone base for operations in Pakistan would have a significant impact on the campaign. Contrary to many assertions that drones allow the U.S. to strike with impunity or overcome geographic distance, drones remain dependent on basing in-theater to maintain high operational tempos.

The ability of the United States to conduct drone campaigns and other so-called standoff strikes is in fact heavily constrained by geopolitical and logistical considerations. While the drone aircraft may be unmanned, they are just as dependent on bases, ground crews, and a logistical tail as their manned counterparts. So too are they dependent on permissive airspace. In Kosovo, the United States lost 24 UAVs, including many to Serbian fire. Assuming that Pakistan would idly sit by while America resumes drone strikes in a post-drawdown environment is untenable. Serbia’s air force was able to adapt unconventional platforms, take advantage of their knowledge of drone bases and flight routes, and use relatively primitive Soviet-era air defense systems to inflict casualties on drones, even in the context of an air war where manned platforms were presenting much more pressing threats. U.S. policymakers may be able to countenance the loss of a drone platform more than they would a manned one, but ultimately a downed drone is a drone that has probably not accomplished its mission, and at a potentially large political price.

The use of maritime-deployed drones, aside from the potential provocation that Zenko points out, would only exacerbate the vulnerability of a drone campaign to Pakistani air defenses. Unlike Pakistan’s western border, where Pakistan has for decades now faced an aeriall -incapable and often Pakistan-aligned Afghan state, air defenses in the south are more substantial and, as Zenko notes, on the watch for Indian attacks. Furthermore, armed drones capable of conducting missions from U.S. maritime assets are a ways from maturing, so the old standby of cruise missiles launched from Central Command assets would be the more likely choice anyway.

Strikes against al Qaeda and affiliated targets in Pakistan would need to be reserved for much higher priority targets. The days of conducting an air war with similar numbers of sorties as the drone campaign saw earlier are, logistically and politically speaking, likely over. While the tempo and scale of the campaign was enhanced by drone platforms, the so-called impunity of the drone campaign was a product of guaranteed, unconstrained basing at airfields such as Jalalabad, a Pakistani government that was at times compliant with U.S. operations in Afghanistan, and a robust network of cross-border covert assets which could provide the intelligence necessary to feed targets to drone operators. Drones allowed policymakers to increase the quantity of strikes, but the quality of impunity was maintained by political and logistical arrangements.

Of course, there are ways to preserve or substitute these qualities – but they would require not simply fewer strikes, but a genuinely covert campaign. The drone war, while for legal purposes, is a secret war, the drone campaign itself is hardly shrouded in secrecy. Pakistan and Afghanistan are aware of what bases are involved, and information about the results and frequency of strikes are relatively available to the public. The CIA’s running of a secret air forces is hardly a novel occurrence either:

By the Congo period, however, the men at Langley say they had learned that their earlier instincts to try to solve nasty political problems with money alone had been overtaken by the recognition of the need for far more sophisticated and enduring forms of influence.

“Purchased?” one American commented. “You can’t even these guys for the afternoon.” And so the C.I.A. kept growing in size and scope.

By the time Molse Tshombe had returned to power in the Congo through American acquiescence, it not design — it became apparent that hastily supplied arms and planes, as well as dollars and cars, would be needed to protect the American-sponsored government In Leopoldville.

The CIA used Cuban exiles with foreign mechanics and American contractors to create an aerial capability to serve U.S. interests in the Congo Crisis. These operated alongside South African and Rhodesian mercenaries, eventually employing CIA pilots directly. The Congo model is obviously only a rough guide, but it does demonstrate that there is a historical precedent for using a combination of local or deniable proxies and covert-sponsored and operated air power to conduct combat air missions with a degree of plausible deniability and risk insulation.

In Afghanistan, even if the Afghan government publicly denies compliance in a much more limited aerial campaign against AQAM in Pakistan, a roughly similar model may persist. The U.S. will likely retain the ability to conduct smaller-scaled operations, and the U.S. will also likely play an important role in developing Afghanistan’s light attack aircraft capability.

For example, Raytheon has - with much less fanfare than drones receive - expanded opportunities to employ Griffin missiles with manned platforms such as AT-6B light attack aircraft and C-130 based platforms such as Harvest Hawk and Dragon Spear. Whatever light aircraft Afghanistan actually ends up deploying, they will be capable of conducting precision airstrikes in difficult terrain. Colombia’s use of light aircraft in activities such as Operación Fénix provide a more recent possible model here. C-130 derivative aircraft such as Harvest Hawk and Dragon Spear could also potentially provide support for critical strikes without requiring the more obvious profile of a drone base. Nevertheless, these capabilities would still be need to use sparingly, as would any persisting CIA drone bases in Afghanistan.

All that said, what will likely be critical to maintaining a viable portfolio of covert and overt coercive and intelligence options in Afghanistan will be the use of proxy forces, irregular capabilities and similar assets. After all, even conducting the drone war requires boots on the ground, as Joshua Foust points out:

They require lots of people to make them effective, not just back in the piloting booths in the U.S. but also in the countries where they’re deployed. In Yemen, there are estimates that the number of U.S. troops on the ground (working under JSOC) is in the 300 to 500 range. Some of them train Yemeni counterterrorism forces and some of them go after terrorists. The CIA, for its part, built up a 3,000-man militia to target militants in northwest Pakistan.

Covert assets and proxies are necessary to support a drone campaign, but they can also be used outside the context of one. Indeed, the use of proxies, clandestine officers, and special operations is far more common than drone campaigns, as Foust goes on to note. Indeed, even ensuring the security of these covert bases in an Afghan government that now denies or rejects would require loyal militias or proxy forces capable of defending the bases from terrorist attacks or worse – and again, building secret air bases to support air campaigns and proxy forces, and further enhancing proxy forces to defend those air bases, was something the U.S. pioneered during its wars in Indochina. Airstrikes or not, though, stay-behind forces will be necessary for the U.S. to maintain effective coercive options against high value targets in Pakistan. Even were the U.S. audacious enough to launch a cruise missile barrage from the sea, it is highly doubtful such a strike could offer the same precision as manned or unmanned assets operating from closer bases. The loss-of-strength gradient endures.

The pilots of drones may be able to act with impunity, but the vehicles themselves and the very present human beings who support them on base, gather intelligence for them in the field, and defend the infrastructure which makes this possible from attack cannot. Ultimately even a remotely-operated vehicle requires a direct presence in hostile, or at least potentially vulnerable areas. Particularly as the U.S. cedes additional air sovereignty to Afghanistan, it will need an independent method of defending any lingering counterterrorism assets from being targeted by terrorist groups or their allies and patrons. While al Qaeda may have no interest in returning to Afghanistan, there are a great many actors who would be interested in disrupting the forces that would be staged there to target terrorists in Pakistan. Especially in a scenario where the U.S. wished to retain the ability to conduct strikes in Pakistani safe havens, the U.S. would need to maintain at the very least a very sizable covert and proxy presence in Afghanistan and the border region.

There is no happy medium by which the U.S. can conduct merely a campaign of counterterror with purely offshore assets without getting caught up with the deployment of potentially vulnerable in-theater infrastructure and logistical tails or the messy business of dealing with local politics. Particularly as many question the necessity or value of U.S. deployments in the Gulf or the need for an onshore capability to conduct military and covert counterterror strikes, logistical and diplomatic realities must not escape our notice. Without, at the very least, covert proxy forces in the Afghan-Pakistan border region or drone bases in Afghanistan, there is no practical means for the U.S. to conduct targeted killing campaigns in Pakistan save by the potentially escalatory deployment of major conventional forces in strikes on Pakistani soil. Similarly, even the staging of so-called offshore assets as a deterrent or over-the-horizon capability in fact requires significant local involvement. Even in Yemen, which has – and appears to retain – a government relatively supportive of U.S. counterterrorism policies, the U.S. still needed JSOC and CIA operatives on the ground, and had to train Yemeni military formations to provide additional targeting data.

Maintaining the ability to kill or coerce terrorists, let alone the states which harbor them, from thousands of miles away from one’s homeland is no easy task. A reactive, over-the-horizon force with minimal in-theater footprint can provide only illusory benefits. After all, in most geographic locales, the U.S. will need to still have a significant basing presence and exert diplomatic and military pressure to extract foreign compliance with military and non-military U.S. counterterrorism preferences – whether that means encouraging local forces to crack down against terrorist groups they might otherwise ignore or support, building up partner capacities to combat terrorist groups, developing proxy forces to sidestep local political preferences or support intelligence gathering and direct action campaigns, or attempting to deter or coerce regimes with interests in harboring or supporting hostile non-state actors. I am all for attempting to alleviate the constraints U.S. coercive options will face through more limited political objectives, restrained use of direct action, and the refinement of maritime-centric strategies and covert capabilities. Ultimately, though, even cure-alls such as drones, standoff strikes, and light footprints do not obviate the same geographic and logistical difficulties which dog the old ways of warfare and foreign policy.

The main Syrian exile opposition group suffered a serious fracture on Wednesday as several prominent members resigned, calling the group autocratic, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and powerless to help Syrian rebels as government forces, having flushed insurgent strongholds in the north, swept into the rebellious southern city of Dara’a.

…

The council, [Kamal al-Labwani] added, was in danger of causing splits in Syrian society by failing to create a single rebel military command under its control, leaving individual militias to seek their own sources of help.

…

On Tuesday, the Syrian National Council had taken steps to bring the Free Syrian Army under its umbrella. But Mr. Labwani, the council member who is resigning, said the exiles had few ties to the fighters inside. “The Free Syrian Army is the people who are inside Syria,” he said.

The tension and difficulty of coordinating the activities of exile groups and local militias is hardly a new one in covert warfare. As Labwani notes, the absence of a unified command structure leaves the rebel movement open to fracturing. But interestingly, Labwani simultaneously complains of  ”Muslim Brotherhood members within the exile opposition of ‘monopolizing funding and military support.’” In other words, Labwani wants the ability to create a unified military command structure but opposes monopolization within the political structure. This arrangement would approximate the nature of a democratic government (not dominated by any one party or clique) with normal civil military relations (a subordinate and unified military command structure) – but unfortunately for Labwani and the SNC, such things do not come about easily.

So what is sending arms to an irregular force actually useful for? Certainly not ending a war quickly. But absolutely useful for prolonging a war. Campaigns to arm irregular or rebel groups are generally most effective when the objective is to engage the foe in a war of attrition. Arguments about creating an “equality of forces” or “leveling the playing field” are misleading and fundamentally misunderstand the political dynamics at play in Syria. The Free Syrian Army, despite its name, is not a nascent conventional force and has demonstrated very little ability to seize and defend territory on their own, the way that the Croatian Army had during the Bosnian Wars or the Confederacy had during the Civil War. Neither, really, were the Nicaraguan Contras, despite the presence of defectors from the Nicaraguan internal security forces, a military force sufficiently strong enough to hold territory within Nicaragua without U.S. support. Even with U.S. support, most Contra operations had to be run out of neighboring states such as Honduras.

Operation Cyclone, the covert campaign to arm Afghan mujahideen, also demonstrates many of the shortcomings of arming a proxy force. The mujahideen, even with significant foreign support, were notably less successful in maintaining cohesion during offensive siege operations against Soviet-controlled population centers. This trend persisted well after the withdrawal of the Soviet army, when the USSR was able to provide enough funding to Najibullah that he was able to resist siege efforts by the mujahideen. While effective for forcing the USSR into a drawn-out costly military campaign, proxy forces were not able, even after years of conflict, to launch decisive offensive operations to topple the Afghan government.

What Attrition Yields

Another important factor to note is the comparative under-armament of the minority groups in Afghanistan, even ones opposed to Soviet rule. War, because it is an extension of policy, does not suspend the politics which animate war and policy both. For a variety of factors, owing to more experience with firearms, better-adapted extant political structures for the mobilization of rebel forces, and the monopolizing effect of the Pakistani ISI’s preference for certain warlords and factions, non-Pashtun minorities were at a disadvantage for receiving foreign support.

Massoud’s militia in the Panjshir was notable for relying on local support (although he often received a CIA stipend and some limited equipment support from British and French intelligence agencies). But as a consequence of this determination to achieve local political legitimacy, he engaged in truces and other behaviors antithetical to the prosecution of an attrition campaign against the Soviet Union and forces aligned with it. Such dynamics are not uncommon to irregular wars, and the dissonance between factions willing to cooperate with the exterior partner and centralize control often creates friction with more autochthonous movements. Or, vice versa, the most genuinely indigenous aspect of a movement – or at least the most centralized and able intermediaries – might not be the most preferable conduits for foreign influence and support.

In Afghanistan, as in Nicaragua, proxy war yielded results. Regime change and the exhaustion of the counterinsurgent force. But not quickly. Each endeavor, even with significant U.S. support, took roughly a decade of bloody warfare to conclude. Each left a significant portion of the normal political dynamics of the country intact. The Contras, for example, did not triumph by seizing Managua and completely undoing the Sandinista system – indeed, despite armament and support from the U.S, there was never really any danger of these major cities falling. UNO, the anti-Sandinista coalition, triumphed in an election under the shadow of the civil war’s potential extension with dire consequences for the national economy and the livelihood of rural Nicaraguans. There was, of course, no conclusive victory of any particular warlord or faction in Afghanistan until that of the Taliban, and even then they failed to completely pacify the country. As a humanitarian tool, proxy forces are not particularly useful. Indeed, as political instruments, proxy forces often functioned effectively by doing ugly things that a foreign force would be unwilling or unable to do itself.

There are only two ways for a quick end to a civil war where the rebels seem on the brink of defeat without external intervention – the defeat of the rebels, or a rapid and successful intervention involving ground troops capable of seizing major urban centers. A strategy of attrition, particularly one directed at Iran, as arguments about Syria often are, should rely on prolonging the war. Because prolonging the civil war is exactly the result creating armed proxies will get.

Chaos or consolidation?

Of course, there are other possibilities the use of proxies raises. One is the creation of forces capable of operating in areas where a U.S. presence would be politically unacceptable. Such is the case of the Afghan Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. As CIA-backed proxies, groups such as the Paktika Defense Force have conducted cross-border raids against Taliban forces. However, these forces are inherently destabilizing. The arming of militia groups does not contribute to the consolidation of the Afghan state, and indeed it may undermine it. They also have malign consequences for Pakistan, further highlighting its inability or unwillingness to control its own border regions and reviving fears of Afghan irredentism, which helped begin the Pakistani policy of supporting proxies within Afghanistan in the first place. Indeed, for Afghan state consolidation to occur, the incorporation of border-crossing militias may create a more destabilizing effect within Pakistan.

But in a country where chaos is either inevitable or a preferable outcome to hostile state consolidation, proxies are useful tools for a destabilized environment. The presence of a funded, trained, and adequately equipped local force to pursue objectives that would otherwise require host-nation compliance or direct U.S. intervention makes tasks such as, say, assassination and sabotage much easier tasks. Long before there were drones or JSOC was traipsing across the globe, much to the consternation of modern voters, it was the use of foreign proxies through the CIA/SAD that allowed the U.S. to wage irregular warfare or assassination campaigns without causing undue political strain.

Another instance of U.S. proxy warfare with important implications was the Secret War waged in Laos. Laos, in the midst of a civil war, was subject to repeated incursions both by People’s Army of Vietnam regulars and Viet Cong irregulars servicing the Ho Chi Minh trail.  Particularly for dealing with the latter, the CIA began support of the Hmong minority as a proxy force for direct action against communist forces in Laos. The Hmong “Secret Army” is among the better examples of a proxy force with extreme loyalty to the United States. For one thing, they were hugely dependent on the U.S. and no intermediary or regional backer had competing interests. Additionally, the use of Air America meant that the U.S. owned a significant portion of the logistical routes for Hmong forces into Laos. The U.S. backed a similar strategy in the central highlands of Vietnam by supporting the Montagnard tribes, although by the early 1960s Army Special Forces, not the CIA, had taken over this operation.

If the aim of U.S. proxy support in a country is to create pro-U.S. sentiment and leverage, then these cases are particularly instructive. For one thing, they were cases where the logistical routes and field work was disproportionately run by the United States. This required relative air superiority, compliant regional partners, and ultimately a significant intelligence and military commitment on the ground to coordinate the action. Also important to note was that these proxies were ethnic minorities which had in some cases been associated with collaboration with prior colonial regimes, and certainly with resistance to nationalist aspects of local communist policies.

Just the Same, But Brand New

In the case of Syria, a situation favorable to the creation of a reliably pro-U.S. force is not likely to be forthcoming. So long as the Syrian regime maintains a robust air defense network and Lataika remains a loyalist stronghold, the United States will likely be forced to rely on Turkey or the Gulf Cooperation Council states to access logistical ratlines and set up working relationships with Syrian rebel commanders. As was the case during Operation Cyclone, Saudi, Qatari, and Jordanian intelligence services (which are already likely active in arming the rebels) will likely have a strong influence on where and how U.S.-bought weapons are ultimately sent into Syria. Until the United States is able to independently access Syrian airspace, it will have extremely limited options for sustained and unilateral cultivation of relationships and proxy forces in Syria.

But even that scenario is incredibly optimistic. Even if a unilateral effort to support a Syrian rebel group separately from groups associated with radical or anti-American political Islamists succeeds, the support of separate militias simply sets up post-Assad Syria for a power struggle between militia groups. Even in Libya, where sectarian politics are muted and there was relatively little competition or disagreement by the rebel forces patrons’ over who to support, power struggles between militias have broken out. In Syria, where a much greater volume of arms would be necessary to even resist against government offensives and Western and Gulf state political preferences appear to be more at odds, the likelihood that sectarian or ideological divides in militia forces could lead to civil strife is far greater.

Additionally, most of the minority groups with which the United States could cultivate a relationship on par with its ties to minorities during the Indochinese wars in Syria are currently fence-sitting or relatively allied to Assad. On the one hand, offering to finance the self-protection of a fence-sitting or neutral minority group could be a useful political inducement to at least pull them out of Assad’s camp and secure a unilateral asset within Syria. But just as reaching out to minority groups with limited options for foreign backing is able to secure loyalty to the United States, it also makes that group even more of a political threat to regional neighbors supporting forces from the ethnic majority. The tragic tale of U.S. cultivation of proxy forces from the Hmong and Montagnards ended with the violent assertion of nationalist majority groups over the minorities, who were now doubly damned as collaborators with undesirable foreigners, and the languishing of thousands in refugee status despite some U.S. attempts to provide asylum for its partners.

Go big and go home?

Of course, most of the cases of U.S. proxy support during the Cold War in Eurasia bring to mind a sobering reality of the geopolitics are influence – regional neighbors have a staying power that the United States simply can’t maintain. In a world of competing military suppliers, the United States is rarely going to have the opportunity to dictate terms to potential proxy groups, particularly ones with strong ethnic or ideological ties to other regional powers. At the very least, the United States will always be hard pressed to compete with these groups. But in the long run, these groups will step in after the United States has lost interest in the conflict. The capabilities the United States provides and logistical infrastructure it fosters will be available to use by regional powers that can step in afterwards – and obviously, they’ll have even less reason to remain deferential to the United States than what little they did when it was present. Just as it was completely unrealistic to expect that the CIA was ever going to win a competition for influence with the ISI, and maintain that influence after the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, it’s hard to imagine that the United States would be able to successfully win a competition for influence with Syria’s neighbors and maintain it long enough to keep the majority of armed resistance or post-Assad military power centers aligned with U.S. interests indefinitely.

Again, none of this is to say that proxy forces would not have some uses. But they would entail a radically different approach than is generally outlined in most advocacy of arming the rebels. Undertaking such an effort would require a cold analysis of what U.S. objectives and priorities were in Syria. Arming the rebels is not a useful strategy for the U.S. to gain influence within Syria, particularly in a competition against Gulf states. A proxy commitment aimed at checking the operation of radical or anti-American groups would need to be unilateral – that is, set up and maintained by U.S. forces separately from regional intelligence services. Logistically, this would require working with a relatively small force – likely too small to be a decisive force in the struggle against Assad – or need to wait until Assad’s military had collapsed enough to create a more permissive environment for U.S. cross-border infiltration. The ability of the U.S. to recruit from ethnic or ideological minorities might be an additional advantage for such a proxy force, as said groups would be more inclined to resist Sunni majoritarianism and perhaps more pliant because of the need for external protection, particularly if it was a group formerly loyal or cooperative with the Assad regime.

A limited proxy force in Syria could begin as, say, a vehicle for tracking and targeting the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps within Syria. If modeled on the Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams or the Hmong and Montagnard militias, the likely goals of such a unilateral outfit would be to attack and sabotage other irregular actors within the battle space. In a post-Assad scenario, such irregular forces could be activated with greater U.S. support to target jihadist groups within Syria. Of course, another advantage, and one the CIA likely exploited during the Nicaraguan civil war, would be the use of such a proxy group to create plausible deniability, logistical support, and local cover for direct action by U.S. covert assets. Again, it is important to distinguish specifically U.S. interests in Syria from the nature of the conflict itself. The objective of the Syrian rebels, broadly, may be to bring about the fall of Assad. That is also quite likely the objective of many of the Gulf states. There will be governments, intelligence assets, and special forces looking after those interests. But who will be looking out for America’s?

What Short-Term?

As romantically alluring the idea of U.S. secret agents and arms being the decisive instrument to win the liberation, and allegiances, of Syria is, it is a logistically and strategically implausible outcome. At the largest strategic scale, a U.S. proxy force would be an instrument of attrition that would act in cumulative effect with regional efforts, rather than to the exclusion of their influence or counteraction of their interests. But peripheral to the decision of the war – but perhaps with larger returns to U.S. interests – would be a smaller scale effort to directly counteract Iranian influence in Syria and create capabilities for pursuing specifically U.S. interests in a post-Assad Syria.

For all the talk about Syria as a case where U.S. interests and values are aligned, the harmony is both once the ugly sausage-making process that is politics and the perhaps even uglier processes of logistics and strategy come into play. The Nicaraguan Civil War, one of the few recent cases where U.S. proxy support felled a regime without a major escalation in commitment, worked precisely because it prolonged the civil war in Nicaragua and made Nicaraguans fear that prospect. Supporting the Contras worked because it changed the cost-benefit analysis for Nicaraguan voters, not because it achieved military decision. But ironically, had Nicaragua had fewer democratic institutions, or had the Contras been able to fully subvert their legitimacy, the tactics the Contras employed might have been less effective. Had the Sandinistas more fully consolidated their power, they might have been able to ignore the elections and continue the fight anyway.

Achieving such a decision in Syria is likely politically impossible. Assad’s government has always been based on minority rule by a combination of military and business elites, and he will not permit his political framework to be used for subversion by voters. Even if Assad and the immediate members of his clique are able to secure exit, for the Alawites and other groups deeply implicated in the political elite and security services, for whom exile is not an option, the civil war will be a fight to the death. Crafting a covert response to such a scenario demands a clarity about actual U.S. priorities in the region, rather than embracing the obfuscating warmth that slogans like “arm the freedom fighters” provide.

“Public order is a fragile thing, and if you don’t fix the first broken window, soon all the windows will be broken.”~James Q. Wilson

There is an terrific article from 1982 on the Broken Windows theory By GEORGE L. KELLING and JAMES Q. WILSON in the Atlantic Magazine. Mr Wilson who died March 2nd 2012 and Mr. Kelling had some great ideas and insights into crime and violence and on how to reduce it. The “broken windows theory”  is very familiar to cops working the street and is the catalyst to “community policing” and its evolution in law enforcement over the past 30 years. The term “broken widows” is a metaphor for all crime, crime problems and violence as well as quality of life issues people relate to a productive society. The theory is very sound most especially when translated, practiced and applied on the streets. Broken windows and community policing leverages the mutual trust factor between police and the community and builds upon it so collaborative efforts are made in solving hosts of problems within a community. The theory, has been proven in the locations that had adopted the theory and translated it robustly to their philosophy of policing and to their communities. In other words they, “community and cops” lived and breathed the strategy and implemented problem solving methods to see it through. In doing so they saw results, a reduction of crime and violence and a better quality of life.

One of the problems with the community policing philosophy is that law enforcement agencies in many locations has only talked about broken windows and community policing theories. Some agencies used the buzzwords associated with community policing in PR campaigns, and efforts to obtain grants and other resources but they failed to walk their talk in creating the sense of urgency throughout their ranks and the community. They never or half-heartedly executed community policing principles. This lack of effort by some agencies gave the strategy a bad name in law enforcement circles and many community members began to see through it, as an all talk no action  plan to curtail negative talk about their police departments. Due to this half-hearted approach some street cops saw it as B.S. and weak on crime. Cops thought of the philosophy in much the same way community members saw it, as a ploy for better public relations and an ineffective strategy to deal with crime. Therefore resistance to changes took hold in many locations throughout law enforcement and implementing  the philosophy despite its documented benefits were stifled. This is one of the reasons why so many law enforcement agencies still implement random patrols and rapid response techniques as part of their patrol strategies. Strategies that have been proven ineffective over and over again in solving the root causes of crime and violence. 

“Our crime statistics and victimization surveys measure individual losses, but they do not measure communal losses. Just as physicians now recognize the importance of fostering health rather than simply treating illness, so the police — and the rest of us — ought to recognize the importance of maintaining, intact, communities without broken windows.” ~George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson

Take a look at this powerful piece (about 5 pages), think about it and ask, what if police departments implemented the strategy and built these recommended relationships with vigor 30 years ago, would things be different? Would law enforcement be supported more by their communities? Would the crime and violence be down in your community? Would drug and alcohol abuse be down and hence the problems associated with them?  Would the distrust and lack of understanding of law enforcement and what our mission is, be better understood? Would we be more effective? Would we community and cops be safer? Would the image of law enforcement officers portrayed by the media often in a negative light, be more positive? When reasonable force is utilized by law enforcement would force utilized be seen as it actual is, a rare occurrence and cops be given the benefit of the doubt verses them being portrayed as abusing their power and as bullies taking advantage of their power? Would cops be seen by the majority as a positive factor, as part of society and those who are in their positions to protect and serve? These are just a few of the questions that come to mind when I think of community policing and the broken windows theory. Mutual trust is created and nurtured by interacting with the community and builds this type of connection as the people we serve get to see who we are and WHY we have chosen the law enforcement profession. 

…”We suggest that "untended" behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls. A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other’s children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle. A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers.

At this point it is not inevitable that serious crime will flourish or violent attacks on strangers will occur. But many residents will think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and they will modify their behavior accordingly. They will use the streets less often, and when on the streets will stay apart from their fellows, moving with averted eyes, silent lips, and hurried steps. "Don’t get involved." For some residents, this growing atomization will matter little, because the neighborhood is not their "home" but "the place where they live." Their interests are elsewhere; they are cosmopolitans. But it will matter greatly to other people, whose lives derive meaning and satisfaction from local attachments rather than worldly involvement; for them, the neighborhood will cease to exist except for a few reliable friends whom they arrange to meet.”

Isn’t it time we started thinking just a little bit more about how we police? Isn’t time we started walking our talk, get out of the patrol cars, and connect with those we protect and serve? Isn’t it time we started to implement these ideas in a robust way so we influence the community in a positive way towards our profession? Cops are good people doing a tough and at times dangerous job that is often times paid with their lives. People should know this, but they are not going to learn anything about the reality of who we are and what we do if we stay glued to our patrol cars waiting to respond to calls for service. Our country is in for some tougher times, that will challenge police and their communities so please get out there and connect with those we serve so they know the true meaning of WHY we DO what we do and that we are in this thing together. The alterative will be costly! 

To read the complete article “Broken Windows” click here 

Stay Oriented!

Fred