Category: Bombs and rockets

Military matters and state security: the hard-edged kind of international relations

Tolkien on real and legendary wars

Given when it was written, many people have interpreted J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series as an allegory about the first or second world war. In one introduction to the books, he addresses this matter directly, denying that they are in any way allegorical. He goes on to say:

The real war does not resemble the legendary war in its process or its conclusion. If it had inspired or directed the development of the legend, then certainly the ring would have been seized and used against Sauron. He would not have been annihilated but enslaved, and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed, but occupied. Saruman, failing to get possession of the ring, would in the confusion and treacheries of the time, have found in Mordor the missing links in his own researches into ring lore, and before long he would have made a great ring of his own with which to challenge the self-styled ruler of Middle Earth. In that conflict, both sides would have held hobbits in hatred and contempt. They would not long have survived, even as slaves.

Open thread: naval warfare

There have been a number of interesting developments in the area of naval warfare recently: Chinese efforts to develop anti-ship ballistic missiles, American experiments with broad area marine surveillance, China’s declaration of an air defence identification zone, the launching of a Japanese destroyer seemingly designed for possible conversion into an aircraft carrier, the launching of China’s first aircraft carrier, and the development of supercavitating torpedoes, to name a few.

Particularly in Asia, the coming decades seem likely to involve considerable developments in marine military technology and deployments.

War with Syria approaching?

The August 27 – September 6 issue of The Economist includes an article discussing the military options that may be possible in Syria, in response to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the government of Bashar Assad:

As The Economist went to press, it seemed clear how the attack would begin, if not when. Four American Arleigh Burke destroyers stand ready in the eastern Mediterranean, the 1,600km range of their Tomahawk land-attack missiles allowing them to stay well beyond the 300km range of Syria’s Yakhont anti-shipping missiles. There are doubtless American submarines in the area, too, and a British one may be on its way. Christopher Harmer of the Institute for the Study of War, a think-tank, says the destroyers should have about 45 Tomahawks each. Add in the submarines and there are about 200 available to make precision strikes, roughly twice the number used against Libya in 2011.

British and French aircraft flying out of Incirlik in Turkey, which has said it will support such missions, or Akrotiri, the British base in Cyprus, might be used too; this may be the only way for French forces to participate. They would probably also launch cruise missiles, as getting close to targets would mean being in range of the Syrian air-defence system, which is a great deal more capable than was Libya’s. Heavier ordnance, including bombs needed to destroy underground bunkers, could be delivered by stealthy B-2 bombers flying directly from America.

The objective of reinforcing the international norm against the use of chemical weapons does seem to have some validity. The world’s wars – civil and international – are bad enough without the use of such arms. Still, it’s clear that nobody is enthusiastic about the prospect of yet another war in the Middle East, particularly after all the suffering that has taken place in Iraq and Afghanistan with few and precarious results to show for it.

At this stage, most people seem to be expecting a military strike that is focused around cruise missiles. The Syrian regime is doubtless expecting this too, so there will probably be an effort to make it surprising at least in terms of the timing. For the last couple of weeks, I have been nervously checking the Google News front page every few hours.

HOPE 6 videos

2600 Magazine has just posted an archive with 67 hours of talks originally given at HOPE 6 in 2006. They are available for purchase at DVD quality, of free viewing via YouTube at lower quality.

There is some seriously interesting stuff in here: Basics of Forensic Recovery, Binary Revolution Radio, Exploring Your World with Open Source GIS, GPS, and Google Maps, Keynote Address – Richard Stallman, Urban Exploring: Hacking the Physical World, and a lot more.

Note: many of these videos include bizarre and implausible conspiracy theory ideas.

Maureen Ramsay on torture

“What is inherently wrong with torture?

Investigation as to what is wrong with torture, independent of its bad effects, may throw some light on why torture is practised and how academics obscure the purpose of torture when they debate its justification as a way of extracting information to save multiple lives in a ticking bomb context. What is inherently wrong with torture is captured by the Kantian idea that torture violates physical and mental integrity and negates autonomy, humanity and dignity, coercing the victim to act against their most fundamental beliefs, values and interests. For Shue, it is that fact that the victim is powerless before unrestrained conquerers that accounts for the particular disgust torture evokes. For Parry, torture demonstrates the end of the normative world of the victim and expresses the domination of the state and the torturer. The torturer and the victim create their own terrible world of over-whelming vulnerability and total control with potential escalation that asserts complete domination. Torture is world destroying in its ability to invert and degrade ideas of agency, consent and responsibility.

Sussman argues that there is a distinctive kind of wrong that characterises torture that distinguishes it from other kinds of violence or physical and psychological harm. What is wrong with torture is not just that torture enacts an asymmetrical relation of complete dependence and vulnerability so that the victim acts against his or her own choices and interests. Nor is it just the profound disrespect shown to the humanity and autonomy of the victim as an extreme instance of using a person as a means to an end they would not reasonably consent to. Torture involves a systematic mockery of the moral relations between people. It is a deliberate perversion of the value of dignity and an insult to agency. Agency is turned on itself. The torturer forces the victim into a position of colluding against himself, so he experiences himself as simultaneously powerless (a passive victim) yet actively complicit in his own debasement. Torture is not just an extreme form of cruelty, but an instance of forced self-betrayal where the torturer pits the victim against himself, an active participant in his own violation.

These accounts focus on what happens when torture takes place, rather than the bad consequences of torture or what specific practices constitute torture. What constitutes torture here is not defined by the severity or intensity of pain, but rather by the logic of the morally perverted structure of the relationship between torturer and victim. If what is inherently wrong with torture is the mockery of moral relations, the asymmetrical relationship of power and defencelessness it enacts which degrades agency, humanity and dignity; which coerces the victims to act against their choices, beliefs, values and interests, then it could be that this is precisely why it is used. The explanation of what torture is, is connected to the point and purpose of torture.

Within a ticking bomb situation, the motive for torture is the need to extract information, but Parry argues that this is not the only purpose:

… the impulse to torture may derive from identification of the victim with a larger challenge to social order and values. The possibility takes on greater salience amid claims that the threat of terrorism requires aggressive self defence in the post September 11 world… when the social order is threatened especially by people seen as outsiders or subordinates, torture may function as a method of individual and collective assertion that creates perhaps an illusory sense of overcoming vulnerability through the thorough domination of others.

Parry points out US interrogation practices take place against a background of terrorism which has created a sense of vulnerability and social upheaval. Given this, it is plausible to suggest that in addition to seeking information from suspects, torture has been used to assert and confirm the unconstrained power of the US, to degrade and dehumanize the enemy, to force the silencing and betrayal of their beliefs and values, to signify the end of their normative world. It would not be surprising to learn that torture has been used as a means of total domination and social control, not only over the prisoners in the cages of Guantanamo, or the cells in Afghanistan and Iraq, but over those communities hostile to US power, to intimidate and to break their collective will in accordance with their own beliefs, values, and interests.

If the impulse to torture is as much about instantiating power relationships as it is about extracting actionable, credible information, then this may explain, though it could never justify, why the US resorted to torture in its war on terrorism. Such an explanation is necessary especially given that counterproductive consequentialist considerations undermine arguments which excuse or sanction the torture of terrorist suspects for alleged intelligence benefits. Such an explanation fits given that the vast majority, if not all cases of torture and cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment since September 11 could not be justified by the belief that the suspects held vital information that could divert imminent catastrophic attacks. Torture and other forms of ill-treatment have become the norm rather than an exception in rare circumstances. Yet, despite this, torture continues to be debated as if it were merely a morally questionable way to extract information and as if it was this purpose which requires defending.”

Ramsay, Maureen. “Can the torture of terrorist suspects be justified?” in Andrew, Christopher et al eds. Secret Intelligence: A Reader. London; Routledge. 2009. p. 422-3 (paperback) (emphasis added)

Related:

Psychological factors in conveying intelligence

“The process of relaying intelligence can distort its meaning. Content can be altered unconsciously in transmission. Garbled data are made to appear more coherent when relayed in conversation, allowing actual disjunctions between facts to be replaced by false connections; lengthy information can be made shorter; details are suppressed subconsciously if they are not consistent with the rest of the relayer’s message; and transmission errors tend to make the message sound like what the person transmitting it had been expecting to hear. Subordinates also tend to bias messages so as to minimize distress to their superiors; transmitting individuals tend toward ‘closure’ of incomplete images and ‘confabulating detail where gaps are conspicuous’; long periods of time are reported as shorter; and short ones as longer. Early on the morning the Yom Kippur War began, a trusted source warned Israel that the Arabs would attack that day. Somewhere in the communication chain the time of six o’clock was added erroneously to the warning. The Arabs struck over four hours sooner.”

Betts, R.K. “Surprise despite warning: Why sudden attacks succeed” in Andrew, Christopher et al eds. Secret Intelligence: A Reader. London; Routledge. 2009. p. 94 (paperback)

[Update: 13 May 2013] More on the same topic:

“When a consumer is faced with data he prefers not to believe, he can fall back on four psychological mechanisms.

First, he can be more attentive to reassuring data. The threshold at which evidence confirming the individual’s assumptions is recognized comes well before the threshold for contradictory evidence. Information that challenges reigning expectations or wishes ‘is often required, in effect, to meet higher standards of evidence and to pass stricter tests to gain acceptance than new information that supports existing expectations and hypotheses.’ The consumer can also challenge the credibility of the source. An analyst or agency that has been chronically wrong in the past can be dismissed. Some political leaders also tend to be skeptical of advice from military sources and suspicious that professional soldiers manipulate information in order to gain authorization for desired changes in posture. A consumer’s belief that the person giving him information has an ideological axe to grind, or a vested interest in changing policy, will tend to discredit the information. Third, the decision maker can appreciate the warnings, but suspend judgment and order stepped-up intelligence collection to confirm the threat, hoping to find contradictory evidence that reduces the probability the enemy will strike. Finally, the consumer can rationalize. He may focus on the remaining ambiguity of the evidence rather than on the balance between threatening and reassuring data, letting his wish become father to his thought. He can explain away mounting but inconclusive threats by considering other elements of the context, or believing that enemy mobilization is precautionary and defensive. In many cases such reasoning is quite correct. The likelihood a responsible policymaker will let himself think this way varies directly with the severity of the specific costs involved in response to the warning and with the availability of reassuring evidence. There are always some data to dampen alarm. Such data can also be fabricated.” p.99 (paperback) emphasis in original

A lot of this seems quite applicable in the case of policy-makers deciding whether or not to take serious action in response to climate change.

Leading and managing

“The [Central Intelligence] Agency’s position is that it evaluates and trains its senior offices in management ability, but there is a substantial difference between the two concepts: leadership requires inspiring people, while management involves stewardship of resources. The U.S. military observes this distinction: their doctrine is that one leads people and manages non-human resources. Managing, instead of leading, is to treat them as commodities.”

Jones, Garrett. “It’s a cultural thing: thoughts on a troubled CIA” in Andrew, Christopher et al eds. Secret Intelligence: A Reader. London; Routledge. 2009. p. 33 (paperback)

The Looking Glass War

I picked up a library copy of John le Carré’s The Looking Glass War because all my own books were in moving boxes, and to begin re-habituating myself to intensive reading in the lead-up to my comprehensive exam in August.

The novel is what you would expect from le Carré: not sensationalized, conveying a sense of awareness about realistic tradecraft. The characters aren’t much differentiated, but the writing is very good and the book seems like a nice counterweight to the sensationalism of the general espionage genre. For instance, there are a number of detailed passages about the inconveniences of operating a WWII-era radio using Morse code. The bureaucratic turf war that forms the primary motivation for the action in the novel seems depressingly realistic.

To sum up: it’s a reasonably interesting quick read which provides the sense of a brush with realism that distinguishes le Carré from other writers in the genre.