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National Security Policy Survey of the Literature

BLOWBACK, DISSENT, & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Robert David SteeleOSS CEO

bear@oss.net

Updated 19 August 2002

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Plan of the Brief

• You have 150 books in the lecture handout.

• Will only cover 50 or so of them now.

• Complete text reviews for over 350 books are at OSS.Net, at Amazon, and in the red and green books

• Information• Intelligence• Emerging Threats• Strategy & Structure• Blowback, Dissent &

International Relations• US Politics, Leadership

& the Future of Life

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Relevant Readings onBlowback, Dissent, &

International Relations

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Perrow on Normal Accidents

• Simple systems easy to diagnose & fix

• Complex systems have multiple failures, interact in unpredictable ways

• Society is a constellation of complex systems

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Death of Kinship & Ethics

• Industrialization removed kinship & ethics from the equation

• Absent alternative incentive system for ethics, industry not heldaccountable to the community

• Ethics is a community value

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Pathology of Power

• Power drives intelligence underground

• Power becomes theology, treats dissent as treason

• Power distorts & damages institutions it dominates

• National security depends on more than military power--values & freedom

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Vidal on Perpetual War

• Suggests that both McVeigh and bin Laden had provocation

• Believes that a police state attack on civil liberties is much greater threat to US than any terrorist actions

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Chomsky on US Aggression

• US refusal to abide by international convention will cost us dearly

• US is a major bio-chemical aggressor

• US embargoes impose very high human costs on populations, few costs on regimes

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50-Year Wound

• Price of victory includes time, talent, secrecy, confidence, trade, growth

• Incompetent intelligence and White House deceit joined special interests to mis-serve the Nation

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Johnson on Blowback

• Administrative secrecy conceals US political crimes against others

• Military-industrial complex incites foreign military toward represssion

• Blowback is what happens when it catches up with us

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War as a Racket

• General Smedley Butler, USMC (Ret.), most decorated Marine of time

• Disgusted with his role as an “enforcer” for oppression of locals by US corporations

• Only arms merchants profit--all others lose lives

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McNamara-Blight on Chaos

• Elites representing billions of people regard the USA as the greatest threat to their future security & prosperity

• Collection security comes with collective decision-making

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McRae-Hubert on Human Security

• Human security in all its forms is vital to national security

• Multi-cultural approaches and large investments in peacekeeping and stabilization pay off handsomely

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Baer on Sleeping with Devil

• US ignored all open source information from Middle East for last two decades

• US not capable in Arabic• US chose to accept

repression & debauchery as price of cheap oil

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Queen Noor on Her Reality

• USG & US public do not have a good grip on Middle East realities

• Jewish political power in US distorts policies

• Ghandi quoted as saying Palestine belongs to the Palestinians

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American Encounters Abroad

• Best of the best from Foreign Affairs

• US has responsibilities it cannot ignore

• US is vulnerable to global instability and economic depression

• Culture and community matter--US must network

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Kissinger

• Congress and Public are apathetic on foreign policy

• “Old” politics outpaced by, cannot properly manage global economies and global technologies

• Africa is the ultimate test for US foreign policy

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Boren et all on Foreign Policy

• Diplomacy is about knowledge of the world

• Politicians losing ability to be objective and think

• Domestic uncertainty & insecurity reduce foreign policy influence

• Military should not dominate foreign policy

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Nye on Soft Power

• Too much information, too little attention

• Lacking time, credibility outweighs substance

• Failing to migrate democracy to rest of world

• Spend too much on heavy metal, not enough on soft power