Category: Intelligence and Security

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Thinking about life in a nuclear armed crowd.

The title of this post comes from Albert Wohlstetter’s 1976 seminal essay Moving Towards Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd. In that essay he contemplated a world in which several nations had nuclear weapons, and also the strategic logics governing their proliferation, deployment and use (mainly as a deterrent). For years after his essay was published, the number of nuclear-armed states remained low. Today they include the US, UK, France, PRC, Russia, India and Pakistan, with Israel as an unacknowledged member of the club and Iran and North Korea as rogue aspirants. At one time late in the Cold War, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa had nuclear weapons programs but abandoned them as part of the their transitions to democracy. By and large the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has kept the acquisition of nuclear weapons in check, something that along with various arms control agreements between the US and USSR/Russia (SALT I and II, START, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)), helped stabilise a low number nuclear weapons state status quo for five decades.

But that may be about to change. Not only have nuclear powers like the PRC, India and Pakistan opted to not be bound by international arms control agreements and others like Israel, Iran, India, Pakistan and DPRK have ignored the NPT. All of the major bilateral treaties between the US and Russia governing strategic and tactical nuclear weapons have been allowed to lapse. The non-proliferation regime now mostly exists on paper and is self-enforcing in any event. There are no genuine compliance mechanisms outside of voluntary compliance by States themselves, and in the current moment nuclear armed states do not wish to comply

The situation has been made considerably worse by the re-election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. Although he speaks of securing some sort of “deal” with Iran that freezes its nuclear weapons development programs, his threats of withdrawing from NATO, including withdrawal of security guarantees under the collective security provisions of Article 5 of the NATO Charter, coupled with his pivot towards Russia in its conflict with Ukraine, has forced some countries to reconsider their approach towards nuclear weapons. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told his parliament this week that Poland “must reach for the most modern possibilities, also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons” because of the threat of Russian aggression and unreliability of the US as a security partner under such circumstances. Similarly, French President Emmanuel Macron has floated the idea of extending a French “nuclear umbrella” over Europe (read: NATO and the EU) should the US renege on its Article 5 obligations.

The perception that the US is no longer a reliable security partner, at least under the Trump administration, must be considered by front-line states such as South Korea and Taiwan, perhaps even Japan and Germany, that are threatened by nuclear armed rivals and which until now were heavily dependent on the US nuclear deterrent for defending against aggression from those rivals. The situation is made worse because Trump is now using extortion (he calls it “leverage”) as part of his approach to security partners. His demands that Ukraine sign over strategic mineral rights to the US and that Panama return control of the Panama Canal to the US under threat of re-occupation are part of a pattern in which US security guarantees are contingent on what the US can materially get in exchange for them. Even then, Trump is notoriously unethical and prone to lying and changing his mind, so what US guarantees may be offered may be rescinded down the road.

Trump wants US security partners to spend 2 to 5 percent of GDP on defence and threatens to not honour US agreements with them if they do not. Although this may well force some NATO members and others to up their spending on defence (as Australia, Poland and South Korea already do), the one-size-fits-all percentage of GDP demand fails to recognise the circumstances of small and medium democracies such as NZ, Portugal and Holland, among others. Trump may call it driving a hard bargain, others may say that his approach is “transactional,” but in truth he is extorting US allies on the security front in order to gain concessions in other areas. And for “whatever” reason, he admires Putin and deeply dislikes Ukrainian president Zelensky as well as Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, something reflected in his approach to bilateral issues and the way he talks about them. The personal is very much political with Trump, and he is an impulsive bully when he believes that it suits him to be.

The US pivot towards Russia under Trump has been much discussed in terms of its implications for the world order, strategic balancing among Great Powers and the future of the US-centric alliance systems in Europe and Asia. It truly is a major transitional moment of friction in world affairs. But the issue of nuclear proliferation as a response to the changed US stance has gone relatively unnoticed. Remember, these are not the moves of rogue states that are hostile to the old liberal international order. These are and may well continue to be the responses of democratic and/or Western aligned states that were integral members of that old order, who now feel abandoned and vulnerable to the aggression of authoritarian Great Powers like Russia and the PRC.

In the absence of the US nuclear guarantee and in the security vacuum created by its strategic pivot, indigenous development and deployment of nuclear weapons becomes a distinct possibility for a number of states that used to have the US nuclear guarantee but now are unsure if that is still true, and have the technological capabilities to do so. The global spread of high technologies makes the pursuit of nuclear weapons easier than in previous eras, and if time, money and willpower are devoted to doing so, nuclear proliferation will inevitably happen. Remember that nuclear weapons are primarily deterrent weapons. They are designed to deter attacks or retaliate once attacked, but not to strike first (unless destruction of the targeted society is the objective and retaliation in kind is discounted). They are the ultimate hedge against aggression, and now some non-nuclear states are reconsidering their options in that regard because the US cannot be trusted to come to their defence.

Russia has repeatedly raised the spectre of using tactical nuclear weapons in Europe should it feel cornered, but even the Kremlin understands that this is more an intimidation bluff aimed at comfortable Western populations rather than a serious strategic gambit. But that only obtains if the US still honors its nuclear defense commitments under NATO Article 5, and if it no longer does, then the Europeans and other US allies need to reassess their nuclear options because Russian threats must, in that light, be considered sincere.

Even so, first use of nuclear weapons, specially against a non-nuclear state, remains as the ultimate red line. But that line has been blurred by Trump’s equivocation. Nuclear hedging has now become a realistic option not just for front-line democratic states facing authoritarian aggression, but with regards to the US itself because it is a no longer a reliable democratic ally but is instead a country dominated by an increasingly authoritarian policy mindset at home and in its relations further abroad. Ironically, the “madman with a nuke” thesis that served as the core of deterrence theory in the past and which continues to serve as the basis for resistance to Iran and North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs can now be applied to the US itself.

There are two ways to look at the situation. On the one hand the chances of nuclear proliferation have increased thanks to Trump’s foreign policy, especially with regards to US international commitments and alliance obligations. On the other hand, deterrence theory is in for an overhaul in light of the push to proliferate. This might re-invigorate notions of flexible response and moves to provide stop gaps in the escalatory chain from battlefield to strategic war. Notions of nuclear deterrence that were crafted in the Cold War and which did not change with the move from a bi-polar to a unipolar to a multi-polar international system must now be adapted to the realities of a looser configuration–some call them metroplexes or constellations–in which the spread of advanced technologies makes the possibility of indigenous development of nuclear deterrence capabilities more feasible than in the old security umbrella arrangements of previous decades.

The irony is that it is the US pivot towards Russia that has popped the cork on the nuclear proliferation bottle. States like Iran and the DPRK have been subject to sanctions regimes that have slowed the development of their nuclear arsenals. But that happened against the backdrop of the US providing binding security guarantees to its allies, offering a credible nuclear deterrent to those who would seek to do harm against them and giving material support to the NPT. That is not longer true. It is the US that now must be viewed with suspicion, if not fear. The briefcase with nuclear codes is within a few arm’s lengths wherever Trump goes and he is now staffing the highest ranks of the US military-security complex with personal loyalists and sycophants rather than seasoned, politically neutral, level headed professionals with experience in the practice of strategic gamesmanship, including nuclear deterrence and war planning. Under those circumstances it would be derelict for military and political leaders in erstwhile US allied states to not hedge their bets by considering acquiring nuclear weapons of their own.

This was not what Wohlstetter envisioned when he wrote his essay. But after a period where that nuclear armed crowd appeared to stabilise and even shrink, some of his insights have become relevant again. It may no longer be about MAD (mutual assured destruction), but it sure is SAD.

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About that PLAN flotilla in the Tasman Sea.

Here are some thoughts about the hysteria surrounding a Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) flotilla conducting freedom of navigation exercises in the Tasman Sea, including live fire drills.

1) The flotilla has been tracked for over a week by New Zealand and Australian forces. The tracking began when the flotilla was well NE of the Australian northeastern coast.

HMAS Arunta shadowing PLAN vessels in the Tasman Sea. Source: ADF handout/AFP.

2) The flotilla is operating in accordance with international law and maritime regulations regarding military operations in international waters.

3) The flotilla has no air cover deployed with it and therefore no effective means to defend itself against a coordinated air assault. It is basically a sitting duck for Australian air defences and even NZDF air defences (because the NZDF P8s and Seasprite helicopters carry air to surface munitions as well as torpedos).

4) The flotilla may have a submarine deployed with it.

5) The presence of the PLAN ships in the Tasman is a form of military diplomacy, showing the flag in a distant body of water as a demonstration of blue water power projection capabilities.

6) The PLAN freedom of navigation (FON) exercise in the Tasman Sea may well be a response to a joint Australian-New Zealand FON exercise in the Taiwan Strait in September 2024. Those waters are far more disputed than the Tasman Sea (because the PRC claims them as territorial waters), so the PRC objected to the exercise at the time and declared that it would formulate an appropriate response in due course. This could be it. But the PLAN vessels are far from Australian and NZ territorial waters, so the legality of their presence in open seas is indisputable.

7) The presence of the PLAN flotilla conducting live fire drills (5 conventional surface to surface rounds fired from the Type 055 destroyer Zunyi’s main gun at a floating target, as observed by personnel on the HMNZS Te Kaha) and other exercises is an excellent opportunity for Australian and New Zealand to hone their naval counter-force capabilities, including tactical signals and technical intelligence intercepts and collection from the flotilla. If a submarine is involved then the Antipodean allies can refine their anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capabilities as well, which is exactly what their P8 patrol and ASW aircraft are designed to do. As it stands, Australia and NZ are using air and surface platforms to shadow the PLAN boats.

8) Much has been made about the lack of warning given by the PLAN before the live fire drills. Such warnings are a courtesy, not part of any formal protocol. They are usually issued 12+ hours prior to the drill in order for interested parties such as civilian aviation and maritime operators to plan accordingly and clear away from the target area. The PLAN gave 15 minute warnings, forcing a few planes to adjust course away from the no-fly zone. That was perhaps rude as far as courtesy goes, but nothing more.

9) Most of the hysteria about the flotilla is led by Australian opposition figures in politics and media in an election year. Most of the alarm in New Zealand is led by Sinophobic media commentators or people with little knowledge of military affairs or the nuances of military diplomacy, much less naval operations (especially in NZ). All of them want to tie the exercises to broader Chinese moves in the Southwest Pacific such as the recent bilateral strategic agreement between the PRC and the Cook Islands. For their part, Ministry of Defense officials on both sides have been muted in their response and military officials have been largely silent (presumably because they know what is really happening).

10) It is clear that the PRC is “flexing” its military might in more and more distant places, as any Great Power would do. But not every display of power capability constitutes an imminent threat. Should Australia and NZ pay attention to the exercise? Absolutely, especially because it can be used as a learning tool for their respective naval counter-force platforms. Should they feel threatened by the exercises? Absolutely not. Claims of the exercise posing a threat, being a provocation or an act of intimidation by the PRC betray the biases of those who make such claims. The PRC is just doing what Great Powers do, and if anything it is reminding others of its capabilities while testing them in front of foreign eyes.

Sailors aboard an Australian navy ship look out at Chinese vessels on February 13, picture by the Australian Defence Force

Sailors aboard the HMAS Arunta observe the PLAN flotilla in the Tasman Sea. Source; AFD handout/AFP

11) In the end, if the US, UK, French or other Western navies conducted the exact same exercise in the Tasman Sea, there would be little controversy about it. Because it is the PLAN, however, anti-PRC elements in Australia and New Zealand want to use the occasion to stir up trouble in pursuit of their own agendas. But the truth is that the PRC is not designated as an adversary or hostile state by either Australia or New Zealand, who in fact enjoy largely cordial and beneficial trade relations with the Asian giant. Although there have been moments of friction between Australia and New Zealand, on one hand, and the PRC on the other over a number of political, diplomatic and military strategic issues, and the PRC remains a major concern for the Australian and NZ security communities for a number of reasons, none of this justifies turning what is a relatively small display of power projection into an international incident.

Everyone needs to clam down and relax.

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On the DOGE data sweep.

Among the many other problems associated with Musk/DOGE sending a fleet of teenage and twenty-something cultists to remove, copy and appropriate federal records like social security, medicaid and other supposedly protected data is the fact that the youngsters doing the data-removal, copying and security protocol and filter code over-writing have not been properly security vetted and have at best been temporarily deputised into public service to do the retrieval tasks. They are loyal to Musk first, second and third and MAGA/Trump fourth. They are not loyal to the US public whose data they have now appropriated. This means that all that data collected is potentially being compromised or at risk of wider exposure and can even be data-mined, gifted or sold off to third parties for purposes other than public sector auditing or transparency.

That is pretty mind-boggling. As someone who held a S/TS/SCI clearance before leaving the US for a better life overseas, I had to undergo two polygraph and background checks conducted by the Defence Intelligence Agency before being granted the clearances, and upon leaving the security community I was placed under a 20 year gag order on what I had seen/done, with any material that I wanted to use after the 20 year gag window period ended subject to DoD censoring and editing (should I have decided to write or speak about topics that included using classified materials). I say this because I handled material that was just pertinent to my official duties, not wide swathes of data about everything under the sun, so the lack of security vetting of Musk’s minions is, again, astonishingly wrong.

This has the potential to end very badly, not just for the US government or what will be left of it after this reckless DOGE wrecking ball is done with it, but for the millions of people whose data can now be manipulated and used for untoward ends. We must remember that Musk is a dishonest and unscrupulous person, his cult minions and other “techbros” subscribe to variant of an anti-democratic and Social Darwinistic ideology known as “neoreactionism,” and MAGA acolytes like Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, Pam Biondi and the authors of Project 2025 now installed in the corridors of power are all too happy to use any means to pursue the Trump/Musk agenda. Since all of these people are disreputable curs, none can be trusted to prevent misuse of personal confidential data for revenge, profit or other non-accountable purposes.

The questions then become: who benefits from the data-grabbing move? The GOP? Putin? The techbro oligarchy? What is the end game?

Whatever it is, it is a disaster in the making.

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The disinformation grift in NZ.

A while back I was engaged in an unpleasant exchange with a leader of the most well-known NZ anti-vax group and several like-minded trolls. I had responded to a racist meme on social media in which a rightwing podcaster in the US interviewed one of the leaders of the Proud Boys movement (in 2017) in which the Proud Boy made claims that 55 percent of UK Pakistanis were in-bred (“consanguineous” in their pseudo- scientific terminology) and that 50 percent of the births by women in such relationships were still-born. The IV was reposted late last year as a way to link the incidence of inbreeding to the “Pakistani gang rape networks” stories circulating in the UK and picked up by white supremacists the world over. The local anti-vax leader reposted the IV approvingly.

I made a comment on the thread about how if their data was true they should have nothing to worry about since a 50 percent stillborn rate pretty much is a path to extinction, especially when half of the surviving in-bred children would be too mentally incapacitated to do anything dangerous and pose a threat to the UK status quo (which was the implication in the IV). Because the Proud Boy leader showed photos of supposed official medical data charts to back up his views, I questioned if he had data on Mormons or Hasidic Jews in order to make cross-religious/ethnic comparisons. Instead, one of the trolls on the thread posted an official looking chart (but with no title, source or other information) listing a number of Muslim majority nations with their respective “consanguineous” birthrates. When I noted that the data presentation look cherry-picked because it only covered Muslim majority countries, the respondent insisted otherwise. So be it. The best response I got was that Pakistani Muslim in-breeding in the UK was a problem because they would burden the health care system. Fair enough but that was not the thrust of the discussion, which again was focused on social issues related to Muslim immigration in the UK. In any event, after that the argument descended into personal insults, ridiculous claims and, well, racism.

I have chosen not to identify the NZ anti-vax group or the referenced particular leader other than with generic “woke” pronouns because they are not worth the energy. People who follow the NZ anti-vax movement will know who the person is. So why expend oxygen on them and give them more attention, especially since that is what they crave? Also, when I refer to the “disinformation grift” I am not referring to the government-funded anti-extremism and radicalization entities that sprung up after the March 15, 2019 rightwing terrorist attacks in Christchurch, which have been falsely accused by rightwing mouthpieces of being opportunistic troughers pilfering from the public purse. I give no credence to those accusations and instead will focus on those who deliberately spread lies and falsehoods about vaccines, the nature of government health edicts, health indicator demographics and assorted other seditious claims among the tinfoil hat brigade.

The exchange with the anti-vaxxer and racists got me to thinking about how it appears that this NZ anti-vax leader has materially benefitted from arguing against government pandemic mitigation efforts, health authority mandates, “socialist” or “fascist” infringements on individual rights (of movement and assembly), forced introduction of foreign materials and nano-technologies into humans via the “jabs,” and imposition of quarantines and travel bans while vilifying Jacinda Ardern as being a modern day Hitler or Stalin with Ashley Bloomfield (and Dr. Anthony Fauci in the US) being her Dr. Mengele, among assorted other lunacies.

The twist is that I know this person because “they/it” live in my small community and was a teacher’s aide at the local primary school that my son attended. They/it was known in the community for their/it’s anti-vax views (for diseases like measles) well before the pandemic, but back then they/it took a relatively low profile and did not proselytize their/it’s views until Covid struck. This is not to say that these views were unknown, since they/it used personal social media accounts to post about their/it’s beliefs. These include a well-known antipathy towards large people, particularly those of colour, seemingly due to they/it’s healthy diet and “wellness” lifestyle (let’s just say that they/it does not like people who enjoy KFC).

Unfortunately, in the exchange following the racist IV post they/it accused me of stalking and being “weird and creepy” because I could see they/it’s comments even though I had blocked them a long time ago (that is actually part of the blocking policy on the social media platform that we were using). The resort to personal attacks is of course taken off the rightwing playbook where, as Steve Bannon recommended, “you flood the zone with crap” by hurling false accusations and smears at detractors, who you then accuse of censorship, de-platforming and attempting to shut down free speech rights. I told they/it to not flatter themselves thinking that they/it was worth my attention. Ultimately the whole thing turned into a circle-jerking waste of time so I blocked them again and left the discussion.

They/it’s move into rightwing racial politics reminded me of they/it’s past comments and those of other anti-vaxxers on the subject. In fact, if I remember correctly, members of this particular anti-vax group appeared at anti-mandate rallies alongside neo-Nazis like Kyle Chapman. In that light I continued to reflect on how they/it’s material fortunes seem to have improved since they/it founded their group and began soliciting funding for it (some which is allegedly from foreign–mainly US–sources), to the point that they/it now appears to have moved well beyond the knitting circles and reading to kids line of work that they/it had before the pandemic arrived. They/it was, unsurprisingly, part of the 2022 Parliament demonstrations but fled before the rioting began, and continues to agitate for their causes on social media and radio, including doing an interview with Infowars, the US-based conspiracy podcast website run by the attention-seeking cur known as Alex Jones.

They/it’s messages overlap with other “cookers” such as the now separated duo of lunatics at Counterspin Media and the seemingly deranged Liz Gunn, and their/it’s focus has evolved to include anti-Maori, anti-immigrant and the usual Deep State BS that gives rightwing extremists fever dreams. That is interesting because it appears that concerns about vaccines are not the only thing that they/it fears, which might explain their approvingly re-posting about Pakistani in-breeding in the UK and the general reproduction rates of Muslims world-wide. It seems replacement theory is on their radar, which is odd because one way to get ethnically replaced is to stop taking vaccines for previously common diseases while other groups follow the science of vaccinations. That is an irony lost on white reproduction-obsessed cookers.

Anyway, what struck me is that the entire anti-vax movement not only overlaps with other causes based on prejudice and “othering” of targeted scapegoats, but also is a source of grift for those who lead them. Gosh, who would have thought it? As that wretch Jones has proven, there is money to be made in disinformation if you are just dishonest and unethical enough to do so. From what I have discerned and without wanting to waste further time and energy on this sorry subject, here is how I see the disinformation grift progression as a crude flow-chart:

Prior anti-vax beliefs+general discontent with authority–> anti-vax disinformation riding on concerns about Covid mitigation efforts–>Deep State conspiracy theories (Ardern as Hitler/Stalin, bureaucrats trying to control everyone, etc.)–> Big Pharma/globalist machinations (dove-tailing with Jewish) conspiracies–> racism (anti-Muslim, anti-maori, anti-immigrant)–> homo- and transphobia–> climate change denialism–> defence of “free speech”–> pleas for money–> foreign funding–> realisation that fund-raising surpluses can be appropriated as personal rents= the disinformation grift.

The idea is to keep spreading lies and fomenting hate and division, make money off of the effort, put some money back into public information campaigns and pocket the rest. This could well be a lucrative business model for those so inclined. I do not know the tax status of this particular anti-vax group but would not be surprised if it claimed charitable status. As mentioned earlier, its sources of funding may include foreign donors as well as mum-and-pop subscribers/donors. But there does not appear to be any public auditing of the group’s accounts, including the remuneration of its directors and amounts spent on luxury items (as opposed to public information materials regarding the supposed dangerous of vaccinations).

As far as I can tell, no media investigations have been launched into the tax status, revenues and expenditures of this group or similar astroturf (as opposed to genuine grassroots) “interest group” cons like Counterspin, Groundswell or Brian Tamaki’s personal “church.” I shall leave aside for the moment alleged grifting at places like the Waipareira Trust simply because the Trust’s stated objectives are not based on abject lies and disinformation and they do deliver real tangible community services, so whatever grift that may be occurring there–and legitimate questions have been raised to that effect–is not a disinformation grift.

Presumably an OIA request might pry open some information about them from the IRD and other pertinent authorities, but that is beyond my forensic capabilities at the moment. Any investigative reporters willing to give it a go (if there are any left, other than Gordon Campbell, Nicky Hager and Matt Nippert)?

In the end, my suspicion is that even if there was legitimate vaccine skepticism before the pandemic arrived that carried over into some of the opposition to the Covid pandemic mitigation efforts in NZ and elsewhere, it has morphed into a broader-focused globally-networked rightwing money-making scheme based on the propagation of dis- and mis-information about health matters, social issues, culture, demography and identity. To make matters worse, the disinformation being peddled by “cookers” has crossed over into mainstream political discourse thanks to it being parroted and mainstreamed by some corporate media, most rightwing social media and ignorant and/or opportunistic politicians doing so for partisan gain.

None of this is good for democracy (the abuse of rights to free speech is part of the grift) or social cohesion. But that is the state of play as we begin the second quarter of the new century.

PS: Now that the Disinformation Project and the Violent Extremism Research Centre (sic) were defunded by NACT and have ceased to exist, is there any other dedicated research agency looking into the activities of group’s such as those mentioned above? Both of these entities had their flaws but at least kept their eyes on the ball when it came to political extremists in Aotearoa. But what exists now? Just curious.

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About Syria.

I have been thinking about Syria and coverage of the fall of the Assad regime, and to be honest I believe that there is something missing from the picture being painted, at least in NZ. Although I am no expert on Syria or the Middle East, I do have some experience working with irregular and unconventional fighting groups as well as writing about authoritarian regime demise and the modalities by which that occurs. I will therefore take a moment to reflect on what I think is missing.

Media reporting has it that the attack on Aleppo and rapid, two-week drive through Hama and Homs to Damascus was a surprise. That may be true for the media, many non-Syrian laypeople and perhaps the Russians and pro-Assad Syrians themselves, but otherwise I beg to differ. The reason is because the training and massing of rebel fighters in Northern and Central Syria would have taken time (some believe the uprising has been 5-10 years in the making), and would have therefore been detected by Western and regional intelligence services some time ago. If we think about satellite and aerial imagery, signals intercepts, ground based thermal and other technical acquisition capabilities as well as human intelligence on the ground, then consider that Syria and its armed factions are in the middle of a larger geopolitical conflict in the Levant and wider Middle East, and then think about who has a direct vested interest in Syria’s fate (as well as their partners and patrons), it is probably safe to assume that intelligence agencies grouped in the 5 Eyes, Jordan, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, France and/or Germany were monitoring at one level or another developments in rebel-held areas long before the assault on Aleppo was launched.

And then there is the pro-Assad intelligence community.

Perhaps distracted by events elsewhere, the Russians appear to have been genuinely caught off-guard, although it has been reported that they started pulling out personnel from Syria weeks before the attacks began (which would suggest they knew something was about to happen). Likewise, perhaps distracted by their own concerns regarding Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, the Iranians eventually airlifted key personnel out of Damascus shortly after Aleppo fell, so even if they were blind to the preparations for the uprising, they clearly believed, correctly, that momentum was with the rebels once the assault was launched. More tellingly, weeks ago there were credible claims that the Syrian State had been “hollowed out” by senior officials (i.e. state coffers were raided, corruption and drug-dealing was endemic and public service provision halted), who then fled the country. Make of that what you will.

All of this would have given some clear indications that the Syrian status quo was about to change and Assad and the rest of his henchmen were soon to exit one way or another. What is telling is that the intelligence agencies that would have known about the rebel’s preparations (including NZ via its connections to 5 Eyes and other Western intelligence agencies including Mossad), maintained excellent operational security and did not let it be known, either by leaks or mistakes, that a major coordinated assault by the rebels was in the making. This was done not so much to spite the mainstream corporate media, which clearly had zero boots on the ground in rebel-held areas prior to the assault, but to prevent the Syrians, Iranians, Hezbollah, Hamas and Russians from learning about the uprising before it was underway. By the time the “axis of resistance” realised what was happening, it was too late to do anything but wait, watch and if need be, flee.

Whether the Russian, Syrian and Iranian intelligence failures were caused by them being stretched too thin on the ground, distracted with external events and/or incompetence, there are lessons to be learned learned from their lack of forewarning.

Israel’s successful (at least for now), multi-front campaign against Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthis, with some sidebar strikes on Syria thrown in for good measure, degraded the axis of resistance’s capabilities to detect and prevent the uprising. Now it appears that Israel is opening another front in Syria with an eye to significantly changing the geopolitical landscape in the region. Hamas and Hezbollah have been decimated as military forces. Iran has been intimidated into passivity. The Houthis have gone largely silent. This, thanks to Israel’s scorched earth, targeted assassination and long-range missile strike operations against all of them. Now Israel has launched a two-pronged offensive in Syria, conducting a bombing campaign against weapons storage facilities (some containing chemical weapons stockpiles) while simultaneous targeting command and control facilities as well as the entirety of the Syrian Navy (which shares major port facilities with the Russian Mediterranean fleet at the city of Tartus, which in turn raises the question of what will become of the Russian presence there and at a nearby airfield once the rebels seize control of them).

The IDF has also sent ground forces into and beyond the UN-monitored buffer zone separating Syrian control from Israel within and beyond the Golan Heights. Much like in Southern Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank, Israel has seized the opportunity provided by neighborly discord in order to expand its presence in its neighbours’ territory, perhaps with an eye to redrawing their common borders. Since there is no foreign power capable of stopping Israel or willing to do so, it looks like the Israeli gambit will pay off. But that may depend on what the rebel-led government in Syria does next.

If foreign powers were aware in advance of the rebel’s plans, it is also very likely that they conducted more than passive observation and information-sharing amongst themselves. The US has 900 troops in Syria, most of them US Army Special Forces (Green Berets), Green Berets’ main mission is to train, advise and assist local forces in any given conflict, so it is possible that they had working ties to the rebel groups in advance of the assault on Aleppo. The US also has combat troops stationed in Jordan, Israel and Iraq and a variety of military assets in Turkey, effectively surrounding Syria’s land borders. Likewise, in part because of the lingering presence of ISIS in central and eastern Syria, a number of other countries–NATO members most likely–have special operators and/or military intelligence assets “in theatre.” Turkey acknowledges its military working relationship with one of the rebel groups, the Syrian National Army (SNA) in Northern Syria. The US has close ties to Kurdish insurgents in Northwest Syria and Northwest Iraq. The Jordanians are said to have operatives in Southern Syria and one can assume that, if not an surreptitious military presence, Israel has its covert hand in the pie as well.

What this means is that it is quite possible that foreign forces provided training, advising and intelligence and logistical support in the years, months, weeks and days leading up to and through the assault on Aleppo. If so, it should not be surprising that he rebels maintained an unusual amount of discipline previously unseen in their ranks, and that the various armed factions worked well together, sometimes in coordinated fashion. Even some of their combat fatigues and weapons look new and Western in origin!

So who are these rebels? Basically they are Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), who are the remnants of a group formerly known as Jabbat al-Nusra (Nusra Front), an al-Qaeda and ISIS-connected Islamicist group; the Free Syrian Army (an anti-Assad “secular” group backed by the West); and the afore-mentioned, Turkish-backed SNA. There are also Kurdish PKK/YPG/SDF militias in the mix who control approximately one quarter of Syrian territory east of the Euphrates River (and major oil fields), although these divide their time between mopping up Syrian Army troops in Northeastern Syria and fighting ISIS militants, the SNA, the Turkish military and pro-Turkish militias.

The rebel coalition has formed a tactical alliance against its common enemy. None of the constituent parts are particularly democratic in orientation, and in spite of HST’s claims that it has served all ties with ISIS and does not espouse (Sunni) Islamicist beliefs such as Salafism or Wahhabism, such statements must be taken with a grain of salt. There are numerous reports of lethal attacks on Christians and Alawites (which is a Shiite sect) by rebel forces in Aleppo and Hama, so the proof of the rebel’s good intentions remains to be seen, especially if military discipline has broken down amid the quest for collective revenge.

The sectarian nature of the rebel coalition is worth noting because the Assad regime was Alawite, which is a mostly coastal minority community in an otherwise Sunni-dominated country. Assad reserved many of his governments’ top positions to co-religionists in the Syrian Baath Party (originally related to the Iraqi Baathists led by Saddam Hussein), so retribution and revenge against those who formed the support base and bureaucratic staff of the Assad regime can be expected, HST assurances to the contrary notwithstanding. What is promising is that HST has agreed to form an interim (not yet transitional) government with various sects represented and some carry-overs from the Assad regime appointed in order to restore and/or maintain continuity in public services.

The HST-led government is now focused on rooting out Assad loyalists, imposing social order, securing military and police facilities (including notorious prisons), and bringing public services back to life where possible. But reconstruction of battle-damaged areas will be lengthy and difficult process given that Syria’s treasury has been emptied, many public offices looted and/or damaged, and corruption is rampant within and between various sectarian groups. The international community will be asked to foot the bill and provide the human, material and financial capital required to return the country to some semblance of normalcy. This is complicated but the fact that the HST and PKK/YPGSDF have been designated as terrorist entities by the UN and a number of countries (although for different reasons, with HST designated because of its ties to ISIS and the PKK/YPG/SDF designated at Turkey’s insistence because of their irredentist activities in pursuit of an independent Kurdistan in territory now controlled by Syria, Iraq and Turkey). Before international relief can be offered, the terrorist designations will have to be lifted, something that will not please many interested parties for a variety of reasons.

More broadly, the fall of the Assad regime is one variant of what is known as “bottom-up transitions,” where before the regime is prepared to exit it is forced to do so by public pressure and mass collective action. Bottom-up transitions can stem from revolts, rebellions, general strikes, mass protests and the ultimate sub-type, revolutions (which, unlike the others, involve parametric change in the economy, social order and political society). These are not to be confused with top-down transitions, in which the outgoing regime frames the conditions by which it relinquishes power. This can be done peacefully or by a coup d’état, which is essentially an armed quarrel amongst elites in which the military acts as the arbiter of who wins and loses in the power struggle by siding with those that favour an exit strategy and transition to a different regime type. Examples of peaceful top-down transitions were seen in Brazil in the 1980s and Chile in the 1990s, where power was devolved from military control and handed over to elected civilian rule rather than be overthrown by force.

In Syria as has happened elsewhere, there will be major tensions between so-called “moderates” and “militants” (soft-liners and hard-liners) in the HST-led coalition. Hardliners and militants tend to come from fighting backgrounds. They tend not to seek compromise and conciliation because they have succeeded in imposing their will by force of arms. They are reluctant to forgive their defeated adversaries and many are sworn to avenge the affronts committed against their families, friends and communities (and in Syria, the affronts included atrocities and other forms of barbarism committed by Assad’s forces against the civilian population). Moderates, on the other hand, tend to come from the non-fighting political opposition, religious, business and community leaders and foreign interlocutors. These seek to draw a line behind them when it comes to dealing with the past in order to facilitate the reconstruction of society and promote national reconciliation.

The key to keeping the post-Assad transition relatively peaceful is for the moderates and softliners to gain the upper hand in negotiations to form the new government. For that to happen, inducements and constraints (think carrots and sticks) must be offered to and placed on the militant hardliners. Inducements can include open trials for those accused of heinous crimes committed on Assad’s behalf, placement of senior rebel commanders in leadership roles the Syrian security apparatus, establishment of Truth and Reconciliation Tribunals that address past sins committed on all sides, and even material rewards for those who refrain from continuing to use violence as a means to an end. Constraints could include weapons impoundments, criminal prosecutions, and other legal and material disincentives that discourage continuation of hardline or militant behaviour.

None of this will be easy but it is necessary is stability is to return to Syria. It is possible that the armed factions and their political and social supporters can use the common ground forged fighting the common enemy to expand the basis for commonality into other aspects of Syrian life. It could start with something as simple as national sports or cultural traditions and then move to the more thorny issues of governance, economic accumulation and distribution, religious and secular civil rights, and so forth.

What is clear is that, for the short term at least, the big losers in Syria are Alawites, Iranian and Russians. Assad is gone and his minions routed. Iran has lost its major overland transit route connecting it to Lebanon (Hezbollah) and Palestine (Hamas) as well as the intelligence, forward basing and logistical support of the Assad regime. Russia has lost it foremost ally in the Middle East as well as the intelligence and military assets that it had stationed in Syria prior to Assad’s fall (assuming that the new regime will confiscate the Russian facilities at Tartus and Khmeimim Air Base near Latakia city). Reputationally, both Iran and Russia have taken a major hit with their weaknesses as a security partner now exposed.

Israel appears to be the primary short-term beneficiary of Assad’s overthrow. To a lesser but significant extent, so are Western and Middle Eastern powers with a stake in the Levant. But a longer-term prognosis is more difficult to ascertain because the direction of the HST-led government has yet to be determined, and the post-Assad settling of scores has yet to be decided. Whether or not this involves a return of Islamicists with or without the ISIS brand is foremost among the concerns of many security agencies.

In any event the best we can do is embrace the uncertainties inherent in the moment, attempt where possible to bolster the moderate/softliner positions within the new government and offer concrete steps based on the experience of others as part of the path towards national recovery. History will be the ultimate judge of the process but for the moment all we can say is that we live in interesting times.

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Media Link: AVFA on Israel going rogue.

In this episode of the “A view from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and I discuss Israel’s expansion of its war in Lebanon as part of a “six front” strategy that it thinks it can win, focusing on the decision-making process and strategic logic at play that led to the most recent turn of events. Plus some game theory references just to place things in proper context.

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Media Link: ” A View from Afar” on multidimensional hybrid warfare and the ineffectiveness of multilateral institutions.

This week’s “A View from Afar” podcast addresses the issue of multidimensional hybrid warfare using the Israeli pager attacks in Lebanon as a starting point before moving on to discuss the failures of multilateral institutions, the UN in particular, when it comes to handling war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is a sad state of affairs.

The Murky World of Israel’s Booby-Trapped Pagers and Walkie-Talkies

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Security Politics in Peripheral Democracies, Excerpt Five.

Military politics as a distinct “partial regime.”

Notwithstanding their peripheral status, national defense offers the raison d’être of the combat function, which their relative vulnerability makes apparent, so military forces in small peripheral democracies must be very conscious of events happening in the world around them. At the same time, the constitution and deployment of military forces is a part and product of national political history and domestic considerations. Specifically, the dynamics of having to balance force flexibility, political ideology, popular consent and international security commitments constitute the crucible within which national military politics is forged. It is the vessel in which external strategic necessities give body to specific policy rationales and practices, or what can be called the military politics “partial regime” (Schmitter, 1993). 

In turn, this core area of state activity can be disaggregated into its component parts. Military politics involves three analytically distinct fields that, although addressed separately by the literatures on military science, sociology and warfare, are seldom examined together. At one level, lines of division are drawn between those who write as generalists versus those who write as specialists. Generalists focus on comparative civil-military relations, while on the other hand specialists focus on military organization and geopolitical strategy. One side looks at the relationship of the security community (mostly that of its military apparatus) with civilians holding positions in and out of power The other side looks at the logic and organization of the military apparatus itself. Comparative scholars who study civil-military relations operate at the macro level of analysis. Those who study military and geopolitical strategy focus on the meso-analytic level. Those who study military organization and tactics dwell on the micro-level of military politics. 

The generalist literature concentrates on issues of control, influence or relationship of the national security apparatus with civilian political society, the institutional features of which make for broad typologies of civil-military relations. The question of how specific civil-military relations impinge on organizational and strategic aspects of military politics is seldom addressed. Here we look at at the interrelated features of all three approaches in a cross-regional section of small peripheral democracies after the Cold War.The approach is novel for several reasons. The field of comparative politics is dominated by regional comparisons based upon linguistic, ethnic, constitutional, cultural, political or geographic proximity. The specialist literature on military affairs is divided into organizational and strategic analyses. In neither sub-field is it common to engage in cross-regional comparisons, much less coupled with an analytic perspective that cuts across the generalist versus specialist dichotomy. This project bridges the sub-disciplinary divide as part of an extended methodological and conceptual introduction to the case studies. 

The argument put forth is that military politics is more than the sum of its parts, nor is it just concerned with “military affairs.” Rather than a piecemeal treatment that highlights some features while ignoring others, the intent is to adopt a holistic approach that addresses the distinct aspects of military politics by dividing it into four issue areas instead of the three-fold division mentioned above. The four issue areas are civil-military relations (which examines the relationship of the military with the national political regime); force composition (comprised of organizational hierarchy, budget, personnel, training and equipment); geopolitical perspective (including geo-strategic context, strategic culture, threat perception, net assessment and risk projection); and force deployment (where, why and under what type of operational command and control). Having examined the particulars of each, the four issue areas can be summarized in order to provide an overview of the major features of military politics in each case. In doing so a more comprehensive picture can be drawn of the rationales and impact of the external security approaches adopted by the countries under scrutiny.

As an example of why a more integrated approach to the subject of military politics is necessary, consider briefly some of the issues involved in the study of one of its component parts or issue areas: civil-military relations. Most of the specialist literature on comparative civil-military relations focus on the relationship between military and civilian political elites, or on the relationship of the military as an institution with civilian political institutions. The impact of civil society on these relations is seldom and then only tangentially discussed. But the issue has more depth than conventional wisdom would suggest. 

Consider that New Zealand lost the protection of the ANZUS (Australia-New Zealand-United States) military alliance once it declared itself, over the objections of the military high command but riding a broad wave of popular support, a nuclear-free state in 1985. This forced reconfiguration of the New Zealand Defense Forces (NZDF), which now largely relies for military assistance and intelligence on Australia even if its military ties with the US have strengthened since 9/11. Today New Zealand reliance on Australia is expected in the event of external aggression against its national territory as well as seen in the military and logistical assistance for New Zealand troops deployed in regional theaters such as Afghanistan, Iraq, East Timor and the Solomon Islands. Although it is the cause of some professional embarrassment, the NZDF largely configures its forces to operationally mesh with Australian units. Beyond that, New Zealand has banked heavily on its strong commitment of troops to United Nations peacekeeping operations paying mutual defense dividends in the event that it is subject to external aggression. The government sees the Army as a peace keeping and humanitarian assistance force, with the Navy and Air Force largely confined to coastal defense and multilateral support roles (e.g., freedom of navigation exercises). The public remains largely disinterested in military-security affairs, and when it does focus on the subject it tends to be in reaction to civilian partisan disputes over defense policy.

In recent years Islamicist terrorism has dominated the threat perspectives the NZ intelligence community (NZIC) and military planners, leading to support for involvement in the anti-jihadist campaigns in Afghanistan (as part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission authorised by the UN) and Iraq (as part of the post-Hussein effort to impose political order in Iraq and prevent the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in its territory). This orientation also dominated local security-intelligence perspectives, at least until the March 15, 2019 white supremacist terrorist attacks in Christchurch that killed 51 people and injured over 100 others. At that point the NZIC was forced to take a serious look at itself and the assumptions and methods (and biases) that underpinned their threat assessments until that day.

For its part, Portugal has a long tradition of alliance with the largest maritime power in the Atlantic, first the United Kingdom, then the United States, which influenced the military strategic perspective confronted by three different threat scenarios during the latter part of the twentieth century. These were the Portuguese colonial wars, the Cold War, and the War on Terror. The first scenario ran in parallel to the interests of the maritime patrons during the Cold War, and was prosecuted with their support because the colonial struggles in Lusophone Africa were seen as part of the global conflict between the Western and Soviet blocs (as proxy wars). This made for a relatively tight alliance in which Portugal recognized its role as a subordinate partner to the US and in which the US and other Western nations overlooked its authoritarian political features in exchange for military assistance to the declining empire. 

The Portuguese military perspective began to shift in the 1970s with the loss of the colonies and subsequent regime transition to democracy in the Portuguese “metropolis.” That was followed by the increased economic integration of Europe, the decline of the Soviet bloc, and the rise of Islamicist armed struggle flowing on the heels of greater economic and human interchange between Portugal and the Arab world. These shifting conditions made for a very different domestic and international context in which Portuguese military politics were formulated. The effects of these changes are ongoing but have, among other things, seen recent emphasis on land-based peace keeping roles that reversed the maritime interdiction priorities that had been the hallmark of the post-colonial Cold War strategic perspective. This led to disagreements between the Portuguese Army, on the one hand, and the Air Force and Navy, on the other, about the proper thrust of Portuguese strategic policy. The government wavers between territorial defense and extra-territorial mission orientation. 

In contrast, after a period of post-authoritarian hyper-politicization in the 1970s in which all issues of policy were the subjects of popular debate, the Portuguese public remains largely disinterested in the subject of national defense. The majority sees the proper role of the armed forces as humanitarian and logistical assistance at home and abroad, followed by multinational peace keeping duties. 

This raises a noteworthy point. In many democracies, civilians and the military high command responsible for defending them often do not share perceptions of threat. For peripheral democracies, the differences in threat perception can be acute. Portuguese and New Zealand public opinion sees very little in the way of direct external threats, especially if the countries steer clear of foreign entanglements such as the “War on Terror.” There is a strong current of neutralism in both countries in spite of their overwhelming identification with the West, and both have significant isolationist elements among the public at large. Civilian political leaders are more attuned to larger geostrategic and diplomatic realities, but these do not necessarily translate into convergence of perspective with military strategic planners. 

As an illustration, the Portuguese Navy wants submarines as a priority for maritime interdiction purposes while the Army wants more troops for multilateral operations, while the New Zealand Air Force similarly wants tactical combat aircraft for air defense and the Navy wants an upgrading of the blue water component of its fleet. The civilian political elite and public in both countries cannot see the reason why. This divergence of views between unformed personnel and civilians makes for a very different set of civil-military relations than in countries where threat perceptions or at least public opinion on the proper role of the armed forces coincide or are relatively proximate. 

Such is the case with Chile and, as an extended example, Fiji. In Chile the elected political elite installed after 1990 have insistently pushed for military re-orientation towards international peace keeping operations, whereas the military high command and public opinion continue to view territorial defense as a primary focus of the armed forces. In Fiji the political and military elite tend to agree on the international role but disagree on the domestic responsibilities of the armed forces, something that is reflected in the views of the ethnic groups from which each is in the majority drawn. The larger issue is that civil-military relations is a multi-faceted phenomena that operates both dialectically and synergistically, something that colors the other aspects of the military politics partial regime. 

A schematic representation of the military politics partial regime for any given country that covers the way in which the four issue areas (and their component parts) combine can be depicted as follows:

FIGURE 1: The Military Politics Partial Regime

The specific mix of the four issue areas makes for variations in military politics between regime types (authoritarian, democratic) depending on the way in which they are integrated and related. Changes in geopolitical conditions and geostrategic context have an impact on national civil-military relations. The latter are rooted in the specific power relationship between civil society, political society and military society. As a result, different types of civil-military relations respond differently to the external contextual shifts with specific security perspectives and institutional morphologies. This is seen in the organization, strategic doctrine, equipment and physical deployment of their respective militaries over time.

Variance is not just seen at the level of regime types. It also occurs within regime types, and across the sub-types of each (e.g. between parliamentary versus presidential democracies or between bureaucratic-authoritarian and national-populist regimes, to say nothing of post-revolutionary regimes such as Cuba, Iran or Vietnam). Although undoubtedly a worthy subject, here the focus is not on variations in authoritarian military politics. Instead, by examining a small-N cross-regional sample from Australasia, Southern Europe and the Southern Cone, the project seeks to demonstrate how historical and institutional factors at the national level combine with the geostrategic context to make for recent variation in the military politics of small peripheral democratic regimes. The general conclusions may turn out to be intuitive, but the specific process and nature of change makes for difference within the sample, which in turn makes for variance in the specific explanation for each. 

NEXT: The “double shocks” in international security affairs.

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Security Politics in Peripheral Democracies; Excerpt Four.

Internal versus external security.

Regardless of who rules, large countries can afford to separate external and internal security functions (even if internal control functions predominate under authoritarian regimes). In fact, given the logic of power concentration and institutional centralization of coercive control that defines them, authoritarian regimes do not completely separate internal police and external military roles. Instead they prefer to overlap (if not fuse) the two (especially when confronted by mobilized internal dissent). In some cases the overlap or fusing is accompanied by an expansion of intelligence services with paramilitary capabilities, most of which are directed against domestic dissent. Conversely, small countries often find that the best way to achieve economies of scale in military matters is to combine some internal and security functions, such as through a national gendarmarie that merges police and paramilitary functions (border control, organized crime interdiction, counter-terrorism, etc.). However, a political problem makes the issue a bit more problematic for small democracies. That is because the combination of internal and external security roles may suit the political needs and threat perceptions of small country authoritarian regimes, but is at odds with the liberal democratic tradition with regards to the management of organized violence by the state.To wit: democratic regimes of all sizes prefer to administratively and legally separate internal police from external military security functions as part of the decentralization of economic, political and normative power that defines them as a system of rule. 

This has traditionally extended into the field of intelligence, although some small democracies such as New Zealand have historically centralized their intelligence gathering services as a matter of economy given their abject reliance on foreign patrons for external intelligence provision. More recently, some liberal democracies, led by the United States, have adopted more integrated approaches towards intelligence gathering in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and subsequent acts of rightwing/white extremist terrorism.  For post-authoritarian regimes such as those of Chile and Portugal, the tension between the urge to centralize internal and external military and intelligence functions versus the normative preference for democratic decentralization became one of the major issues of civil-military relations after the restoration of electoral rule.

Regardless of size, the external/internal division of the combat function versus police duties has been the source of debate with regard to its impact on the ability to fight and win external wars. Some analysts believe that the ability to achieve victory in external wars is not a function of regime type, which means that the external versus internal security dichotomy only matters with regard to domestic control issues. What is most important for victory in conventional war is the relative size of the adversaries, specifically large size (see Desch, 1999). For other authors military preoccupation with domestic security, especially those such as the counter-insurgency operations that was the focus of Latin American national security doctrines in the 1960s-1980s, adversely impact of their ability to carry out external military missions. Here the diversion of resources towards internal warfare, especially when carried out by military authoritarian regimes with political agendas that involve the military as an institution remaining in power for extended periods of time, is a certain recipe for external combat weakness. The Greek invasion of Cyprus in 1973 and 1982 Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands, done for diversionary reasons by military regimes confronting rising socioeconomic unrest after extended periods of internal repression, are considered emblematic in that regard. 

It should be noted that the argument in favor of internal mission orientation being a drain on the external combat function is based upon the modern experience of recent military authoritarian, not democratic regimes. Even then, those who see no significance to the internal/external combat distinction point to other authoritarian regimes—the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Vietnam, as well as Nazi Germany and Japan prior to 1942—to argue that the issue is problematic only when the military as an institution occupies the highest political decision-making roles in the regime. Military colonization of the state apparatus outside of its areas of professional expertise, coupled with the politicization of the officer corps that inevitably entails, is widely considered to be deleterious to military professionalism, particularly with regard to the external combat function. If for no other reason than this, many authoritarian regimes as well as all democratic regimes hold axiomatic that the armed forces as an institution, regardless of strategic focus, will subordinate to civilian political authority. The Peoples Republic of China, Cuba, Iran and contemporary Russia conform to this norm.

Whatever the truth of the matter with regard to the internal/external combat orientation and conventional warfare fighting ability, separation of external combat and internal security functions under democratic regimes is a normative preference rather than a practical requirement, even when logistical support infrastructures overlap to a significant degree. It is by no means an immutable norm, since the distinction between combat and police functions can be (and has been) blurred by democratic regimes in the event of major internal unrest or conflict.  In fact, concern with internal threats can and are often a focus of major attention by democratic regimes, as evidenced by Portuguese military concern well into the 1980s with so-called “indirect threats” (Marxist third columns) after the abortive Communist government take-over of 1975.  As a result, analysis of threat perception herein will not be confined to externally focused assessments, and will include internal threat assessment as well. But by and large, the combat function of militaries in democracies is an externally focused enterprise. After all, policing is about law enforcement and disciplining those who would violate universal standards of mores, norms and acceptable codes of social conduct; military combat is about killing foreign enemies of the state. Rather than maintaining domestic law and order, it is in carrying out the latter task where small democracies are at a disadvantage.

Because of the benefits conferred by size, the combat role of the armed forces in small democracies (demographically defined as those with populations under 20 million) is generally limited to being the junior partners of multi- or bi-national external military alliances, rather than the ultimate guarantors of national self-defense. Armed forces in small democracies most often serve as territorial and border patrols, be it at sea in the case of maritime nations such as Chile, Portugal and New Zealand, or on land as in the case of Chile and Portugal, or as an internal reserve should civil disorder assume mass proportions unmanageable by the police (as in New Zealand).  For most small democracies, contributions to larger security alliances pay dividends in the form of national defense being guaranteed by collective security reciprocities within those alliances. Some may choose to enhance value per soldier in the form of combat specialization, to include special operations (such as the New Zealand Special Air Services, or SAS, which often are attached to British or Australian SAS units when deployed overseas). Others may prefer to deploy troops for humanitarian and police operations such as nation building and peacekeeping under multinational aegis (where New Zealand has extensive experience with “blue helmet” deployments). In such missions the skills utilized are more akin to civil defense and disaster relief infrastructure. In any event, the nature of these commitments and missions differ, which brings up the question of political justification, mission definition, operational control–and of mission creep.

There is a two-fold external orientation among the militaries of small democratic regimes. The armed forces of small democracies tied to formal military alliance structures like NATO or ASEAN tend to specialize in defined combat roles (such as long range patrol and tracking) as part of joint force integration with their larger partners. In doing so they respond to the political justifications for the use of force offered by their larger allies, and seldom have their specific national interests at stake or used as a primary rationale for the deployment of troops abroad. This is sold to domestic constituencies as the necessity of burden sharing, where the protection afforded by larger allies is the return on the investment of troops in the larger conflicts those allies may be involved in.

On the other hand, the armed forces of small democracies with independence of mind and a non-aligned posture often seek refuge under the multilateral umbrella of United Nations mandates. Participation in “blue helmet” exercises such as peacekeeping and nation-building gives reason for keeping troops on the payroll, thereby offering a bureaucratic rationale of self-preservation for the military as an institution. Here the political justification for the external deployment of troops responds to the broader concerns of the international community as expressed through the United Nations or regional security agencies. It has a basis in self-interest because it reaffirms notions of mutual self-defense that smaller states embrace as a deterrent against the unilateral depredations of larger states. It also reaffirms the role of the armed forces in providing for the well being of others as well as being the last line of national defense. It is seen to encourage military professionalism via collaborative exposure to and interaction with other military forces. 

The international role of the armed forces in such cases is mostly directed towards engineering, medical and police support, often in concert with civilian non-governmental or multinational organizations. These not only can be deployed internally in the case of an emergency, but also serve as human resource training for skilled labor inputs to the domestic market (the two sides of its internal support role). The combat function, although trained for, is clearly subordinate to the humanitarian and other non-lethal functions of the military apparatus.

Next: The Military Politics “Partial Regime.”

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Media Link: Discussing the NZSIS Security Threat Report.

I was interviewed by Mike Hosking at NewstalkZB and a few other media outlets about the NZSIS Security Threat Report released recently. I have long advocated for more transparency, accountability and oversight of the NZ Intelligence Community, and although the latter remains only as a hope the Report is a decent step towards making the NZSIS more open about how it sees the NZ threat environment. The Report is straight-forward and easy to read, and even if it does not identify sources and methods (as it should not), it gives the public a good idea (sometimes in refreshingly blunt terms) of how it prioritises the threat landscape and the means and criteria by which threats are identified as matters of national security concern.

The interview is here.

The Report is here.