Here is Part II of ‘Ungoverned Space: American Foreign Policy’:

UGS Implications & the Crime and Terror Nexus

            Just by seeing the list Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and warlords and Islamists in Somalia, it does not take long to see how UGS has affected the US’s security and policy.  As Greenstock exclaims, these ungoverned spaces are local issues comprised of local actors, however these local issues have proven to have worldwide implications, as 9/11 and 7/7 dramatically showed, and are therefore vitally important for the global community to address.  Greenstock elaborates;

“People who reject the traditions of their society or resent the way they find the world treating them move out to the extremes and find that they’ve got an advantage there; in fact, two advantages.  One is that the world is freeing up and allowing a greater choice in what people do.  That is good if people obey the law, not so good if they don’t.  Second, those who do not want to obey the law or the rules of the international community find that they can accumulate weaponry in the hands of a small number of people that is more powerful than it has ever been.”(5)

Al Qaeda could easily fit into this description.  When government’s fail to provide security and basic goods and opportunities for their citizens and some of these citizens choose a life of crime or terror, it can be very dangerous for us, because although the origins of their motivation are local, globalization is exploding that outward.

Failed and failing states featuring ungoverned territories dot the globe.  Take a quick glance at the US foreign policy landscape; it is dominated by failed or failing states.  Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Lebanon, and many more are all central to our foreign policy and national security.  The thought of any one of these states collapsing keeps policy makers up at night.  UGS creates several problems for the international community and for US interests.  UGS has proven to lead to human and drug trafficking, mass migration, humanitarian crises, piracy, regional instability, and of course can provide sanctuary for terrorist and criminal operatives.  When UGS creates or foments these types of occurrences, the US in one way or another is called into action and its chosen action can lead to unintended and tragic consequences, as the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia showcased.  In fact, over the last twenty years a large majority of US military actions have been in what can be categorized as failed states with UGS.(6)

The most crucial part of US security interests in regards to UGS is the threat of criminal and terrorist elements reaching our shores or vital allies and interests abroad.  The US National Security Strategy stated that ‘if left unaddressed, regional conflicts can lead to failed states, humanitarian disasters, and ungoverned areas that can become safe havens for terrorists,’(7) and therefore must be avoided or at least contained.  In concurrence, the US National Strategy to Combat Terrorism stated that one of its most vital short-term priorities was ‘to prevent terrorists from exploiting ungoverned and under-governed areas as physical safe havens.’(8)  Ungoverned spaces have strong links to criminal and terrorist behavior and elements and in many ways they all feed off each other.  London Police Commissioner Ian Blair, former Chief of the MI6 Richard Deerlove, and British Home Secretary John Reid have all made references to the connections between criminality, terrorism, and UGS.  John Reid states this point emphatically;

“Now if I just say something briefly on the crime side.  It would be naïve to look at terror as a threat which is independent of the other challenges we face in the world.  It is international – and organized crime very often supports and fuels the actions of terrorists.  And only by addressing all of these issues can we defeat the terror threat.”(9)

When one combines these with the observations of Greenstock, clear links between crime, terrorism, and ungoverned space emerge.  For example, there are numerous cases of unemployed youth finding sanctuary in international criminal and terrorist networks.  In many cases these youth and their criminal/terrorist networks move beyond the borders of their own states, and have come into conflict with US national interests and citizens.

When space opens up there is an opportunity for profit and criminal/extremist elements have usually proven to be quicker than lawful participants in filling it up.  Reid specifically discusses the effect new commodities create in opening up new venues for profit, some legal, some not. Bootlegging, identity theft, credit card fraud are just a few examples of crime adapting to changing technological commercial advancements.  Of course, the situation becomes a lot more serious when the people that fill this gap have more sinister motives than just money and profit.  Terrorists have used theft, fraud, and technology to help them commit atrocious acts.  The 9/11 attackers used identity fraud and raked up thousands of dollars on credit cards to assist them in their task.(10)  They were able to obtain some of these things in the United States, utilizing small gaps where the US government was not omnipresent.  The perpetrators behind the Madrid bombers made their living selling drugs in the city before they moved on to terrorist acts.  Tamara Makarenko, an expert on the connections between transnational organized crime and terrorism, argues that there is a growing nexus between the two activities and groups and lists eight areas of congruence: both utilize network and cell-based structures, have activities that cross national-regional-transnational divides, require safe havens, take advantage of diaspora communities, use similar targeting, deployment, intelligence, counterintelligence techniques, have a program of government and public relations, and both have an absolute dependence on external sources of funding.(11)  The exploitation of ungoverned space is easily seen in these areas of criminal/terrorist connections.  Of course not all criminals are terrorist, but terrorists inevitably utilize the same space, gaps, and tools as criminals, whether it be in purchasing a fake passport, trading for weapons, or hiding from the authorities.  Areas which are not governed effectively provide ample opportunity for both criminal and terrorist elements to thrive and prosper.

The US government is not naïve to the connection between crime and terrorism. Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky makes a dramatic claim of the link between the two in ugs;

‘Corrupt states attract terrorist operatives, just as they attract money launderers, drug and human traffickers, and other international criminals.  In weakening people’s faith in government and limiting economic opportunities, corruption also breeds resentment that can at times, provide a fertile recruiting ground for violent extremist ideologies.  This resentment and the ensuing political instability can create other dangerous security problems even in the absence of a specific terrorist threat.”(12)

Indeed, the US State Department’s official list of foreign terrorist organizations features 14 terrorist groups that are well-known narco-traffickers.

A couple years back, I wrote a paper examining ungoverned space and how it impacts American foreign policy and interests that was never published. Well, today’s the day! Below you will find the first of several installments of my article on ungoverned space.

UNGOVERNED SPACE & US FOREIGN POLICY

“Across the globe, the continued fragmentation of nation states, the increase in ungoverned space, and the crime and terrorism that these conditions breed continue to compel attention.”
–James Dobbins
“The rise of Hezbollah [non-state actors] indicates the fed-upness of people with their governments, their ineffective, self-serving, unchanging governments in the Middle East is leading ordinary people to look for other sorts of champions.”
– Sir Jeremy Greenstock

In November 2006, former UK and US ambassador and Foreign Service expert Sir Jeremy Greenstock presented his views on the current state of the world’s political and social system to the Citizen’s Crime Commission of New York City. What he saw was a tremendously important effect of the modern world’s process of globalization that was and will continue to have crucial and dangerous implications for the United States and the world at large, and that phenomenon was the growth of ungoverned space throughout the globe. Ungoverned space (UGS) is not new to our times, but its ability to negatively impact the international system and US national security has never been more powerful.

Much has been written about failed states and why they matter to US foreign and domestic policy, but this paper will be different as it concentrates on not just failed states, but on all ungoverned spaces or gaps, whether they be in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Columbia or even in parts of the United States. Even so-called strong states may contain small gaps where the government does not have complete control, and in the world we live in today, these small gaps could have tremendous consequences. The connection between criminal and terrorist elements that grow and prosper in and from ungoverned space is a crucial element of this topic we intend to emphasize and explore. We will also offer a framework in order to more clearly portray and evaluate UGS and the negative elements it fosters. To conclude, we will provide policy recommendations specifically for US foreign and domestic policy and general prescriptions for decreasing and mitigating the negative effects and growth of ungoverned space.

What is ungoverned space? What does it look like? What causes it to come about? Why is it important for the US? Defining ungoverned space is not an easy task, as no one case looks or comes about exactly like another. Many leading scholars, institutions and US government agencies have attempted to define and describe this phenomenon, including Sir Greenstock. There are definitions as simple as ‘regions not governed by central authority’(1) and others that can fill a whole chapter of a book.(2) The President’s National Security Strategy and Strategy for Combating Terrorism do not outright define/describe ungoverned space per se, but they do discuss its implications and the fact that it can exist in non-physical spheres, such as in legal, cyber, and financial systems.(3)

The most well-rounded and encompassing definition of UGS comes from the RAND Corporation, and when combined with Sir Greenstock’s input, one can start to see what UGS is all about and why it is so important to the world’s current and future security. RAND’s Project Air Force report ‘Ungoverned Territories’ is in agreement with Greenstock’s assessment that after the Cold War, UGS has become an increasingly more common phenomenon. Their definition of ungoverned territories is as follows:

‘Ungoverned territories are areas in which a state faces significant challenges in establishing control. They can be failed or failing states, poorly controlled land or maritime borders, or areas within otherwise viable states to which the central government’s authority does not extend.’(4)

Greenstock views ungoverned space within the context of globalization, which though has brought a tremendous amount of positive outcomes for many, has also had a polarizing affect on political and culture structures. The governing of states and territories is becoming harder as state institutions and policies are being challenged by groups and individuals. In other words, the monopoly of the state over the use of violence, information, and community leadership has faltered in recent years and even more important, groups and individuals have risen up and taken advantage of this newly ungoverned space or gaps, and unfortunately, some of these groups and individuals choose to follow a path of criminality, terrorism, or both.

Many modern states are not just weak or ineffective, but also have lost some of their legitimacy because of their failure to meet the basic needs of their citizens. Where a government loses legitimacy and its ability to control and provide services to its citizens, a vacuum is created, and groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and various warlords in Somalia have stepped in to fill the void.

1. Groh, Ty, “Ungoverned Spaces: The Challenges of Governing Tribal Societies”, Naval Post Graduate School, June 2006.
2. Rotberg, Robert, When States Fail: Causes and Consequences, University Press, 2004.
3. United States National Security Strategy, March 16, 2006.; United States National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, September 5, 2006.
4. RAND Project Air Force, “Ungoverned Territories,” RAND Corporation, 2007.

The next section ‘UGS Implications & the Crime and Terror Nexus‘ will be coming soon. Comments? Questions?

A President has to make many tough decisions. To send troops in. To get them out. To put his political capital and efforts toward tax reform or health care or energy policy or immigration, etc, etc. But sometimes some decisions should be pretty straightforward. A slam dunk to use a sports metaphor. I believe President Obama shot a serious airball on his Keystone XL Pipeline decision. He was given a 75 mph slowball right down the middle plate and swung and missed. Like fumbling the ball on the one yard li….Ok, that’s enough. The pipeline had by far more positives (jobs, good paying ones!, cheaper oil, aka lower energy and gas bills, less dependence on foreign energy) than negatives (environment degradation, possible spills, eyesore) for the United States and its citizens. The American working class is struggling like we haven’t seen in decades. Working class males have been hit harder than almost all other demographics and Keystone would provide a positive future to thousands of these folks and their families.

The respected Robert Samuelson agrees and speaks with unusual candor:

President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity. It isn’t often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and — beyond the symbolism — won’t even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it. All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his re-election that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.

The admittedly more partisan Fred Barnes from The Weekly Standard lays out 12 choices the President made in making this decision:

Here are a dozen of the choices represented by the president’s decision to turn down a permit for the pipeline.

1) The Middle East over Canada.
2) Unfriendly countries over a close ally.
3) Troubled ties with Canada over good relations.
4) A vulnerable oil supply over a secure one.
5) Higher oil prices over lower prices.
6) Spill-prone tankers over a safer pipeline.
7) China (who will likely get the oil) over the U.S.
8)Unavailable green fuel over a plentiful fossil fuel.
9) Ideology over prudence.
10) The political left over the center and right.
11) Partisanship over bipartisanship.
12) Liberal, anti-pipeline public unions over private unions seeking jobs.

The President is wrong and our country is poorer for it.

When I was a young, liberal college student, I held great respect for Christopher Hitchens. Presently, I am older (surprise, surprise) and rather conservative, but what has not changed is my respect for Christopher Hitchens. It is hard not to respect a person who so defends the principles they believe in with such non-violent gusto. Though I disagreed with many of Hitchens’ beliefs, he was always worth listening to and his arguments were always worthy of thoughtful analysis. He also earned a special place in my heart by refusing to suffer fools. Here’s a short video of Hitchens discussing Islamist violence and ideology:

A better friend to the liberal world order, you will not find. Rest in Peace.

A friend of mine brought this old video to my attention last week and boy is it a good one. I love my country and I love the sport of baseball and somehow the scene from this video captures both exquisitely. Here is the video and a short description of what you are watching:

On April 25, 1976 at Dodger Stadium, Rick Monday of the Chicago Cubs, grabbed and secured the American flag from two individuals as they were attempting to burn our flag in the middle of the playing field. It was an outstanding display of American Patriotism.

Rick Monday was a baseball name I’ve heard of, but he played just before I came of age. Now, he’s one of my favorite players. As a huge San Francisco Giants fan, this next sentence was hard to right. Tommy Lasorda, who was also racing to save the American flag, deserves great praise.

So Rick Monday and Tommy Lasorda, great Americans, that’s for sure, but of course their efforts on that April day in 1976 pale in comparison to the sacrifices being made by our troops overseas. This other patriotic story from the Weekly Standard shows another way we Americans ‘back home’ can help honor our country and the soldiers fighting for our rights and freedoms abroad:

A care package drive for deployed U.S. troops is receiving national notice after a professor at Suffolk University Law School criticized the operation.

Professor Michael Avery emailed his colleagues just before Veterans’ Day in response to a school-wide email soliciting donations. “I think it is shameful,” he wrote, “that it is perceived as legitimate to solicit in an academic institution for support for men and women who have gone overseas to kill other human beings.”

Avery’s email inadvertently contributed to the drive’s success, however, because its publication drew an outpouring of support for U.S. service members.

Samantha Caplan, a law student at Suffolk University, organized the drive after her boyfriend in the Marine Corps was deployed to Afghanistan. Since the publication of Avery’s email, the response from Suffolk students, faculty and administrators has been very positive, she said, not to mention the “incredible” support from people across the country.

“The majority of the student body has recognized that people are free to have whatever opinions they like,” she said, “and we’re certainly free to disagree with them.” She said that the donation bin for the drive has been “overflowing,” so much so that she has had to empty it every day since the drive started. “That speaks louder than anything anyone could say.”

So thank you Rick Monday, Tommy Lasorda, Samantah Caplan, the generous students at Suffolk U, and most of all, all of those representing the US by serving their country here and overseas. We have a great country and you are all representing it very well!

I got to wake up this morning and spend the whole day with my daughter as today is Veteran’s Day. It is because of the sacrifices of millions American soldiers, those serving presently and throughout our nation’s history, that I’ve been able to enjoy such a gilded life here in California, and even more importantly, my baby daughter will have the same opportunity. So thank you to all who have served, especially my Dad, my two Grandfathers, my Stepfather-in-law, and his Dad. There is no doubt that America is the best place in the world and it is thanks to these men and women that we still get to enjoy today and tomorrow.

Happy Veteran’s Day.

The more you read about the Solyndra bankruptcy the worse it gets. Our federal government appears to have just thrown money to favored friends in support of the idea of green energy. Let’s here what some of the Solyndra’s employees, sorry, former employees, had to say about the company and what they did with the infusion of tax payer cash:

Former employees of Solyndra, the shuttered solar company that exhausted half a billion dollars of taxpayer money, said they saw questionable spending by management almost as soon as a federal agency approved a $535 million government-backed loan for the start-up.

A new factory built with public money boasted a gleaming conference room with glass walls that, with the flip of a switch, turned a smoky gray to conceal the room’s occupants. Hastily purchased state-of-the-art equipment ended up being sold for pennies on the dollar, still in its plastic wrap, employees said.

As the $344 million factory went up just down the road from the company’s leased plant in Fremont, Calif., workers watched as pallets of unsold solar panels stacked up in storage. Many wondered: Was the factory needed?

“After we got the loan guarantee, they were just spending money left and right,” said former Solyndra engineer Lindsey Eastburn. “Because we were doing well, nobody cared. Because of that infusion of money, it made people sloppy.”

Angry is definitely a natural notion for a taxpayer to feel in reading about this debacle, but as I pointed out earlier, this situation is so ridiculous, one also has to laugh. For instance, this same Washington Post article reports that within a week of receiving their 500+ million dollar loan from the Obama administration, Solyndra executives asked for $400 more. Well, why not!

Here are this week’s Top 5:

1. American’s Desire for Earned Success – Pollster and pundit Michael Barone pontificates on why Democrats’ plans for winning over the majority of Americans – by buying them off with entitlements and benefits – isn’t working:

Why aren’t voters moving to the left, toward parties favoring bigger government, during what increasingly looks like an economic depression?…

I think the larger mistake the Obama Democrats have made is that they suppose ordinary voters want government to channel more money in their direction.

But ordinary Americans don’t want money as much as they want honor. They want what the chance to achieve what American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks calls “earned success.

2. Wisconsin Recall Elections Bring Disappointment to Unions – As expected by political insiders, last Tuesday’s recall elections involving six Republican state senators yielded only two new Democrats, falling one shy of what was needed to turn the State Senate. This affirms the voters’ general support for how things are going in the state. It also comports with the good news coming out of Wisconsin in the last few months showing the positive effects of Governor Walker’s collective bargaining law – cities able to re-negotiate with unions and save their budgets from a lot of red ink:

Someone has to be pretty deep in the Land of Denial to spin the Wisconsin recall elections as good news for Democrats. But the Daily Kos’ Markos Moulitsas rose to the occasion yesterday.

Republicans managed to keep four of the six seats that Democrats and their public union allies had targeted for recall, thwarting Democratic plans to wrest control of the state legislature from GOP hands. Of the two seats that Republicans lost, one was in a solidly Democratic district that a Republican happened to hold only due to a fluke of nature, David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner notes. And the second was held by an alleged adulterer whose wife revealed that he had moved outside his district to live with his young lover.

3. Getting Serious with the Super Committee – The Super Committee was chosen this week by the respective Congressional leaders and the positioning has already begun over spending cuts, defense cuts, new tax revenues and entitlement changes. But like we saw with the previous budget deals, there seems to be little willingness to make structural or permanent changes. Yet a cursory review of current programs with the question in mind – do they serve a valuable purpose – could go a long way toward debt reduction:

But what many of these media accounts will inevitably fail to do is ask fundamental questions about these programs: What were they designed to do? And is there any evidence they accomplish their purpose? Those questions are significant because much of discretionary spending that our government introduces is speculative in nature. That is, there is little or no evidence when we begin this spending that the money will actually accomplish what we want it to. That’s why we wind up funding anti-poverty programs that don’t reduce poverty, and job training initiatives that don’t get people jobs. We justify tax expenditures to make homes more affordable or to reduce our energy dependence, when there’s little evidence they accomplish either. And yet, once begun, we often can’t get rid of this spending, even when the evidence against its effectiveness is substantial.

4. Britain is in Disarray – Despite the hullabaloo caused by S&P’s downgrade of the U.S., this last week saw even more turmoil in the European economies and even violence in Britain:

5. Are US-Sino Relations Destined to Fall Apart - As the U.S. economy continues to stumble, questions and fears continue over the Chinese and their long-term desires. The relationship is made even more tense by the Chinese military buildup as evidenced by their first naval battleship completed this week. What some are arguing is a serious focus on improving and maintaining better relations with the Chinese:

The United States would not be what it is today without the tremendous bravery and sacrifices of our fighting forces. From the Battle of Lexington to Fallujah, over a million Americans have paid the ultimately sacrifice, making possible the gilded life we currently live in this country. Right now, the US has soldiers in harms way fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Libya, with thousands more protecting allies in Europe, Japan, Korea, etc. I’d like to highlight some of the sacrifices made by our military families:

Over the decades, however, the shared element of this sacrifice has waned. Although Americans have been wonderfully supportive of their service members in the recent conflicts, many have also observed that, with few exceptions, the nation’s elites – the politically powerful, office and rank-holders, influential, wealthy and highly educated among us – do not typically have their children at risk in today’s wars. Whether an inevitable result of our military becoming an all-volunteer force, or perhaps some deeper cultural movement, the trend has been growing relentlessly for decades.

In our politically polarized society of today this phenomenon has provided yet another political battleground for competing visions about the country’s values and her future. The political left focuses on “chicken hawks,” conservative politicians who advocate aggressive military action but without having ever personally served in uniform. The political right focuses on those progressives or liberal elites that use politics or declared conscience as an excuse for not serving as having demonstrated a “dereliction of duty.” Regardless of the ideological merits of these arguments, neither group has allowed its children to serve. Among members of Congress, for example, whether Democrat or Republican, only a handful have children in the military.

But is there is one group among our great nation’s leaders and elites whose children are very much at risk. The children of those in the military itself. Many of the generals and admirals who lead our armed forces today have children who are also serving.

Indeed, studies have shown that one of the strongest indicators for whether someone will join the U.S. military today is whether they have a parent who has served. A recent government study found that more than 61 percent of the Marines serving in Iraq in 2004 had at least one parent who was or had been in the military. I saw this vividly myself during my last tour in Iraq. Half of the senior officers on our command staff had children that were in the military, many of them deployed to combat at the same time as their parent.

Military service has become a family tradition and collectively these families have formed a small “military tribe” within our broader society.

Spouses from the outside quickly assimilate when they marry into this warrior tribe. They learn first about the military culture – the rank structures, moving between bases and stations, commissaries and post exchanges, field exercises and deployment orders. They also learn, as one military wife noted, that the spouse associations were not about proper etiquette at social events but about family separation, anxiety and fear of loss and sometimes tragedy.

Because with service comes sacrifice. The son of Army Gen. Ray Odierno, the former U.S. commander in Iraq, lost an arm in combat. The son of Army Gen. Mark Graham was killed in action. Beyond these high-profile examples of loss, numerous colonels, sergeants major and first sergeants have seen their children hurt or killed in war.

Their grief has not manifested itself in public displays that are too often the face of grief that get broadcast to the world. Instead, these families nearly always say the same thing: military service was what our child wanted to do, we are very proud, and we miss them terribly. Not long ago an old Marine friend learned that his son had been killed in Afghanistan. Can pride in a son’s service ever compensate for a father’s loss and grief? Some things are in the hands of God.

I hope that on this Memorial Day we can for a moment think about our military tribe. Families that at their core are not much different from other American families, the nation entrusts them with its safety and security and its future as a free people. They comprise less than 1 percent of our citizenry but bear disproportionately the burden of sacrifice.

These families, who have given so much, deserve our utmost praise and respect. Happy Memorial Day!