Homeland Security Watch

Yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Secretary Napolitano unveiled the new National Strategy for Global Supply Chain Security (1.5 megabyte PDF).  The President signed-out the document on Monday.

The strategy offers two goals:

Goal 1: Promote the Efficient and Secure Movement of Goods – The first goal of the Strategy is topromote the timely, efficient flow of legitimate commerce while protecting and securing the supply chain from exploitation, and reducing its vulnerability to disruption. To achieve this goal we will enhance the integrity of goods as they move through the global supply chain. We will also understand and resolve threats early in the process, and strengthen the security of physical infrastructures, conveyances and information assets, while seeking to maximize trade through modernizing supply chain infrastructures and processes.

Goal 2: Foster a Resilient Supply Chain – The second goal of the Strategy is to foster a global supply chain system that is prepared for, and can withstand, evolving threats and hazards and can recover rapidly from disruptions. To achieve this we will prioritize efforts to mitigate systemic vulnerabilities and refine plans to reconstitute the flow of commerce after disruptions.

In my judgment we are much closer to achieving “efficient and secure movement” than we are to a “resilient supply chain”.  The new strategy could help with each, but the tougher task will be the effort “to mitigate systemic vulnerabilities.”

On January 11 the Wall Street Journal reported,

After a decade of streamlining their supply chains to make them less costly, the natural disasters and political upheavals that marked 2011 showed many multinational companies just how vulnerable those links have become.

A senior supply chain executive recently told me (clearly depending on me to protect his name and the name of his firm), “We have several known choke-points. I’m sure there are many more we don’t know about.  It won’t take a major disaster to disrupt supply, just a couple of unusual, probably simultaneous accidents.  I think — hope — there would be a similar impact on our competitors.  But that doesn’t help our consumers.”

“There are ways to mitigate our risk, but they’re all expensive,” another executive explains.  ”And for the last decade and the foreseeable future the lower cost of US supply chain management has been our principal economic advantage.  We’re much better than the Europeans, tons more efficient than the Chinese.  Increase supply chain costs and we lose just about the only advantage the US has left on most commodity trading and even a broad range of high-end specialty goods.”

Again from the Wall Street Journal:

Justifying redundancies is one of the toughest aspects of managing a supply chain, because backstopping doesn’t pay off unless there is a disaster. When CFOs ask about the return on such investments, the answer is, “If we’re lucky, absolutely zero return,” says Sean Cumbie, vice president in charge of global supply-chain management at genetics-testing company Qiagen NV, based in Germany.

The new strategy makes a glancing reference to “appropriate redundancy” which, for most supply chain executives, is like discussing the practical difference between manslaughter and murder.   Whatever you call it, the outcome ain’t pretty.

The senior supply chain guys (and a few gals) are the pioneers of the field.  In the last twenty years they have transformed the known world.  Not just the supply chain world, but the everyday world of billions of consumers.  Today the supply chain is faster, cheaper,  delivers much higher quality with much more assurance and transparency than a quarter century ago.

On most days the supply chain is also stronger, more flexible, and better at handling a range of emergencies and disasters.

But what we saw in Northeast Japan and Thailand has exposed a parallel reality.  Like all networked systems, risk tends to pool in unexpected ways and often unexpected places.  What if the earthquake-and-tsunami had hit the economic heartland of Tokyo and Osaka, instead of the Tohoku periphery?  What’s would the outcome be if  instead of Thai flooding it was an earthquake in San Francisco and down the east side of Santa Clara County?  What happens if the Port of Long Beach is seriously disrupted for an extended period?  What if cyber-vandals — or economic or national or terrorist adversaries –seriously target the digital systems on which the modern supply chain absolutely depends?

In a report — “New Models Addressing Supply Chain and Transport Risk” (7 megabyte PDF) —  released Tuesday, the World Economic Forum found:

Supply chain and transport networks have continuously evolved to deliver capacity, speed, efficiency and customer service through organizational trends such as globalization, specialization, volume consolidation and information availability. The focus on cost optimization has highlighted the tension between cost elimination and network robustness – with the removal of traditional buffers such as safety stock and excess capacity. These developments have shifted risk distributions…(while) their effects have often included sharing risk more broadly around the world, reducing high-frequency risks and focusing risk within sectors, common technologies or nodes. Another common feature has been to disassociate risk from responsibility, misaligning incentives and creating moral hazards – the notion that a party that is insulated from risk will behave differently from how it would behave if it had full exposure to risk.

Most supply chain managers I know tend to discount low frequency, high consequence risks (see related post).  They discount this kind of risk because over the last twenty years they have become true masters of risk management.   They also discount high impact risks because their CEO’s, Boards of Directors, and shareholders reward them for squeezing every possible penny out of supply chain costs.  They discount catastrophic risk because their creation — the modern supply chain — has never experienced a fundamental systemic failure.

Yet.

Many supply chain executives have become what economists sometimes call “risk preferers”, they have learned to maximize their return by skating with great style, grace, and confidence along the edge of chaos.   Each day they become more adept at mastering the chaos.   Is the experienced supply chain executive a sorcerer or  sorcerer’s apprentice?

The new National Strategy is the starting point for a collaborative process of discussion, analysis, and policy development.  It seeks to “develop a culture of mutual interest and shared responsibility” across government and the private sector.  It’s the right goal.  It’s the right way to pursue the goal.

It is a very ambitious goal.

The chart is taken from a December edition of Fortune Magazine.  These estimated costs — almost certainly underestimated — reflect a record-setting $380 billion in global economic losses; nearly two-thirds higher than in 2005, the previous record year. (See more from Munich RE.)

This week’s leader in The Economist is entitled, “The Rising Cost of Catastrophes” (see below and for a link to a more detailed article).  In the run-up to the 2012 Davos Summit the World Economic Forum has identified key global risks and gives special attention to the implications of the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear emergency in Japan.  They warn about “seeds of dystopia” being planted worldwide.  Fortune, The Economist, and WEF… in the business world this is a thoughtleader trifecta.

The unprecedented scale and recurrence of these losses may — but I emphasize, may — have begun to influence strategic decisions by some major players.  A once-upon-a-time client lost nearly $1 billion as a result of the floods in Thailand. They are certainly learning from hard-knocks what a decade-ago I tried to communicate as a competitive opportunity as well as competitive risk.

So attention must be paid, either now through thoughtful mitigation or at some future point through even higher declared losses.

And yet, last week I was with three serious, practical business leaders who seemed unaware of the triple-header in Japan or the epic flooding in Thailand or the eventual shift in the San Andreas and New Madrid faults.   They have not personally experienced anything analogous.  Accordingly such high impact risks are only “theoretical”, which being serious, practical men they cannot allow to distract from what they know and know how to manage.

To ponder the experience of a peer from Sendai or Bangkok would require a kind of empathy, imagination and vulnerability that does not typically earn seven-figure bonuses.  Will the criteria for bonus payments shift to reflect a shifting context?  Hiring criteria?

The potentially catastrophic risks that I use as examples currently tend to be dismissed as either “ancient history” or “fanciful futures.”   It is helpful when Fortune and The Economist and the World Economic Forum begin to sing a similar tune.

Over the last year, Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, has argued, “In the past the decisive factor in success was productivity, the efficiency with which you used resources.  Today the most important success factor is to recognize risks and mitigate those risks.”  If the pace of global economic growth continues to slow, risk-mitigation will become even more critical to bottom-line success… even survival.

– +–

The following was published in The Economist on January 14

COMMERCE has long been at the mercy of the elements. The British East India Company was almost strangled at birth when it lost several of its ships in a storm. But the toll is rising. The world has been so preoccupied with the man-made catastrophes of subprime mortgages and sovereign debt that it may not have noticed how much economic mayhem nature has wreaked. With earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand, floods in Thailand and Australia and tornadoes in America, last year was the costliest on record for natural disasters.

This trend is not, as is often thought, a result of climate change. There is little evidence that big hurricanes come ashore any more often than, say, a century ago. But disasters now extract a far higher price, for the simple reason that the world’s population and output are becoming concentrated in vulnerable cities near earthquake faults, on river deltas or along tropical coasts (see article). Those risks will rise as the wealth of Shanghai and Kolkata comes to rival that of London and New York. Meanwhile, interconnected supply chains guarantee that when one region is knocked out by an earthquake or flood, the reverberations are global.

This may sound grim, but the truth is more encouraging. When poor people leave the countryside for shantytowns on hillsides or river banks they are exposed to mudslides and floods, but also have access to better-paying, more productive work. Richer societies may lose more property to disaster but they are also better able to protect their people. Indeed, although the economic toll from disasters has risen, the death toll has not, despite the world’s growing population.

Preparing for the worst

The right role for government, then, is not to resist urbanisation but to minimise the consequences when disaster strikes. This means, first, getting priorities right. At present, too large a slice of disaster budgets goes on rescue and repair after a tragedy, and not enough on beefing up defences beforehand. Cyclone shelters are useless if they fall into disrepair. A World Bank study recommends using schools and other bits of normal public infrastructure in disaster-protection plans, so that the kit and buildings are properly maintained.

Second, government should be fiercer when private individuals and firms, left to pursue their own self-interest, put all of society at risk. For example, in their quest for growth, developers and local governments have eradicated sand dunes, mangrove swamps, reefs and flood plains that formed natural buffers between people and nature. Preserving or restoring more of this natural capital would make cities more resilient, much as increased financial capital does for the banking system. In the Netherlands dykes have been pushed out and flood plains restored to give rivers more room to flood.

Third, governments must eliminate the perverse incentives their own policies produce. Politicians are often under pressure to limit the premiums insurance companies can charge. The result is to underprice the risk of living in dangerous areas—which is one reason that so many expensive homes await the next hurricane on Florida’s coast. When governments rebuild homes repeatedly struck by floods and wildfires, they are subsidising people to live in hazardous places.

For their part companies need to operate on the assumption that a disaster will strike at some point. This means preparing contingency plans, reinforcing supply chains and even, costly though this might be, having reserve suppliers lined up: there is no point in having a perfectly efficient supply chain if it can be snapped whenever nature takes a turn for the worst. Disasters are inevitable; their consequences need not be.

Last Wednesday, January 4 marked the five year anniversary of the landmark Wall Street Journal op-ed, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons:”

Reassertion of the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and practical measures toward achieving that goal would be, and would be perceived as, a bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage. The effort could have a profoundly positive impact on the security of future generations. Without the bold vision, the actions will not be perceived as fair or urgent. Without the actions, the vision will not be perceived as realistic or possible.

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal, beginning with the measures outlined above.

The bi-partisan authors of these words, referred to in arms control circles as “The Four Horsemen,” are not traditional peace activists or long-time nuclear abolitionists.  Instead, their identity as realists, hawks, and Cold War warriors is what lent such weight to the argument for nuclear zero:

Mr. Shultz, a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, was secretary of state from 1982 to 1989. Mr. Perry was secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997. Mr. Kissinger, chairman of Kissinger Associates, was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977. Mr. Nunn is former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The desire to rid the world of nuclear bombs is nearly as old as the weapons themselves. What was new about this particular call was not simply the sketch of concrete steps that could be taken at the beginning of such a journey, but the gravitas of the messengers.  In the abstract it seems almost silly to think that such ideas cannot inhabit a respected space in the relevant conversation without a blessing from above, but at the same time these “wise men” provided the rhetorical room for such a conversation to expand from a minority view to a wide-ranging debate across the foreign policy, international security, and defense worlds.

What does this have to do with homeland security?  There is the obvious impact that comes with a reduced reliance on nuclear weapons that includes a reduced risk of nuclear terrorism, accidental launch, and war with all it’s worldwide implications.  However, reference to this particular anniversary in other venues made me both appreciate the potential coercive power of such an opinion piece and made me wonder if there had been anythings similar in the homeland security sphere. If not, as I suspect, what could have a comparable effect?

Stephen Flynn and the idea of “resilience” is the only candidate that springs to mind.  Yet it introduced a new concept, one which in my opinion has been twisted into various shapes to fit various needs and definitions.  The Four Horsemen did not conjure a “world without nuclear weapons” out of nothingness, but instead by lending their voices to a relatively marginalized idea shifted the terms of conversation and analysis on which nuclear policy is grounded. Perhaps a true paradigm shift.

Are there possible candidates, authors and topics, in what is considered “homeland security” that could result in such a radical shift?

Earlier today the President signed out and the Secretary of Defense released new strategic guidance for the Department of Defense. Following are my quick-takes on those aspects of the document  most closely related to homeland security.

Page 1:

The demise of Osama bin Laden and the capturing or killing of many other senior al-Qa?’ida  leaders have rendered the group far less capable. However, al-Qa?’ida and its affiliates remain active in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. More broadly,violent extremists will continue to threaten U.S. interests, allies, partners, and the homeland.The primary loci of these threats are South Asia and the Middle East. With the diffusion of destructive technology, these extremists have the potential to pose catastrophic threats thatcould directly affect our security and prosperity. For the foreseeable future, the UnitedStates will continue to take an active approach to countering these threats by monitoring theactivities of non-state threats worldwide, working with allies and partners to establishcontrol over ungoverned territories, and directly striking the most dangerous groups and individuals when necessary.

Page 2:

In the Middle East, the Arab Awakening presents both strategic opportunities and challenges. Regime changes, as well as tensions within and among states under pressure toreform, introduce uncertainty for the future. But they also may result in governments that,over the long term, are more responsive to the legitimate aspirations of their people, and aremore stable and reliable partners of the United States.Our defense efforts in the Middle East will be aimed at countering violent extremists anddestabilizing threats, as well as upholding our commitment to allies and partner states.

Page 3:

To enable economic growth and commerce, America, working in conjunction with allies and partners around the world, will seek to protect freedom of access throughout the globalcommons ?– those areas beyond national jurisdiction that constitute the vital connective tissue of the international system. Global security and prosperity are increasingly dependent on the free flow of goods shipped by air or sea. State and non-state actors pose potential threats to access in the global commons, whether through opposition to existing norms orother anti-access approaches. Both state and non-state actors possess the capability and intent to conduct cyber espionage and, potentially, cyber attacks on the United States, with possible severe effects on both our military operations and our homeland. Growth in the number of space-faring nations is also leading to an increasingly congested and contested space environment, threatening safety and security. The United States will continue to lead global efforts with capable allies and partners to assure access to and use of the global commons, both by strengthening international norms of responsible behavior and by maintaining relevant and interoperable military capabilities.

Page 4:

Acting in concert with other means of national power, U.S. military forces must continue to hold al-Qa?’ida and its affiliates and adherents under constant pressure, wherever they may be. Achieving our core goal of disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al-Qa?’ida and preventing Afghanistan from everbeing a safe haven again will be central to this effort. As U.S. forces draw down in Afghanistan, our global counter terrorism efforts will become more widely distributedand will be characterized by a mix of direct action and security force assistance. Reflecting lessons learned of the past decade, we will continue to build and sustain tailored capabilities appropriate for counter terrorism and irregular warfare. We will also remain vigilant to threats posed by other designated terrorist organizations, such as Hezbollah.

Page 5:

Accordingly, DoD will continue to work with domestic and international allies and partners and invest in advanced capabilities to defend its networks, operational capability, and resiliency in cyberspace and space….

U.S. forces willcontinue to defend U.S. territory from direct attack by state and non-state actors. We willalso come to the assistance of domestic civil authorities in the event such defense fails or in case of natural disasters, potentially in response to a very significant or even catastrophic event. Homeland defense and support to civil authorities require strong,steady?–state force readiness, to include a robust missile defense capability. Threats to the homeland may be highest when U.S. forces are engaged in conflict with an adversary abroad.

Page 6:

The nation has frequently called upon its Armed Forces to respond to a range of situations that threaten the safety and well-being of its citizens and those of other countries. U.S. forces possess rapidly deployable capabilities, including airlift and sealift, surveillance, medical evacuation and care, and communications that can be invaluable in supplementing lead relief agencies, by extending aid to victims of natural or man-made disasters, both at home and abroad. DoD will continue to develop joint doctrine and military response options to prevent and, if necessary, respond to mass atrocities. U.S. forces will also remain capable of conducting non-combatant evacuation operations for American citizens overseas on an emergency basis.

You may see more.   The document includes considerable attention to WMD and cyber threats not excerpted above.

Wednesday’s joint House-Senate hearing on homegrown terrorism was interesting, enlightening, painful, embarrassing, and infuriating… sometimes in the course of a single minute or two.  If you were not in the hearing room or missed the C-SPAN broadcast (available in archived entirety), individual videos and prepared testimonies are available at the House Homeland Security Committee website.

One of those testifying was LT. COL. Reid Sawyer, Director, Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.  In his prepared testimony LT. COL. Sawyer noted,

The emergence of homegrown terrorism and the targeting of U.S. military forces requires a renewed examination of the nature of radicalization and the changing nature of autonomous radicalization—a process that today occurs largely in isolation from direct connection with external networks, creating new challenges for law enforcement and intelligence communities to detect, prevent and deter homegrown terrorism.

Most of Wednesday’s testimony, questions, answers, and occasional pontificating focused on detecting and preventing.  The lack of attention to deterring is unfortunate.  Especially in regard to homegrown terrorism there is a significant opportunity for deterrence… especially if deterrence is well-understood.

The Latin origin of deter, deterrent, and deterrence is deterrere.   During the classical era deterrere was much closer to our understanding of discourage or hinder than the Mutual Assured Destruction of Cold War deterrence.  There is even a positive aspect to the concept.

In Cicero’s Impeachment of Verres we read, “… testis praesertim , timidos homines et adflictos, non solum auctoritate deterrere, sed etiam consulari metu, et duorum praetorum potestate.”  A reasonable translation: “… witness in particular, timid and oppressed men, hindered not only by your own private influence, but fear of the consul, and the power of two praetors.”  The explicit distinction between deterrere (hindered) and metu (fear) is meaningful.  Moreover they are hindered by influence, while they fear power.

Deter entered English in the 1570s.  An early use is found in Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667):

Rather your dauntless virtue, whom the pain
Of death denounced, whatever thing Death be,
Deterred not from achieving what might lead
To happier life, knowledge of Good and Evil?
Of good, how just! Of evil-if what is evil
Be real, why not known, since easier shunned?

John Milton, Paradise Lost (l. Bk. IX, l)

Early English usage reflected the classical meaning.  In the passage above, dauntless virtue being not discouraged or not hindered seems more coherent with the tone than “not terrorized.”

In 1764  Cesare Beccaria published Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crime and Punishments) in which he argued for a systematic approach to what we would now call deterrence.

It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them. This is the fundamental principle of good legislation, which is the art of conducting men to the maximum of happiness, and to the minimum of misery, if we may apply this mathematical expression to the good and evil of life. But the means hitherto employed for that purpose are generally inadequate, or contrary to the end proposed. It is impossible to reduce the tumultuous activity of mankind to absolute regularity; for, amidst the various and opposite attractions of pleasure and pain, human laws are not sufficient entirely to prevent disorders in society.

To effectively prevent crime Beccaria recommended swift, consistent, and just punishment of proven wrongs combined with education, rewards, and application of science to encourage desired behavior.

The English philosopher Jeremy Bentham built on Beccaria’s foundation, gave considerable attention to the efficacy of punishment to prevent unwanted behavior, and called it a “deterrent” (introducing the word in 1829). But Bentham notes a distinction between a longer-term and nearer-term deterrent:

All punishment has a certain tendency to deter from the commission of offences; but if the delinquent, after he has been punished, is only deterred by fear from the repetition of his offence, he is not reformed. Reformation implies a change of character and moral dispositions.

The ultimate deterrent is change of disposition or what moderns might call motivation. Bentham certainly perceived we could be influenced by fear of detection, detention, and punishment.   But a more permanent form of prevention would, he argued at length, emerge from engaging the prospect of pleasure.  By understanding the fear of pain and the prospect of pleasure, Bentham perceived society can be constructively shaped:

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.

From 1861, when “deterrence” first appeared in the English language, until the mid-Twentieth century the most common usage of the word related to issues of criminology.  Following World War II, however, deterrence was increasingly associated with military strategy and, particularly, the nuclear doctrine of Mutual Assurance Destruction.

In a January 1954 speech Secretary of State John Foster Dulles declared,

We need allies and collective security. Our purpose is to make these relations more effective, less costly. This can be done by placing more reliance on deterrent power and less dependence on local defensive power.

This is accepted practice so far as local communities are concerned. We keep locks on our doors, but we do not have an armed guard in every home. We rely principally on a community security system so well equipped to punish any who break in and steal that, in fact, would-be aggressors are generally deterred. That is the modern way of getting maximum protection at a bearable cost. What the Eisenhower administration seeks is a similar international security system. We want, for ourselves and the other free nations, a maximum deterrent at a bearable cost.

Local defense will always be important. But there is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty landpower of the Communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power.

Rather than carrot and stick, after Dulles deterrence was understood as the prospect of a very big stick pounding as hard as possible.

This Cold War definition was so deeply ingrained in our political culture that in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks President Bush asserted, “Deterrence—the promise of massive retaliation against nations—means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend.”

Deterrence is being retrieved.  In defense policy there is considerable talk of a “new deterrence.”  In homeland security and counter-terrorism important work has been done by Matthew Kroenig, Brian Jenkins and Paul Davis. But we still tend to operate under the shadow of Dulles and his terrible swift sword.  For optimal deterrence we also need some beauty of the lilies, wisdom to the mighty, and succor to the brave.

Can homeland security be measured? Consider a couple of possibilities:

One current project is concerned with supply chain resilience.  What is a resilient supply chain?  How does it behave?  How does it deal with threats and vulnerabilities?  According to interviews with senior supply chain owners, operators, and various experts no one has visibility over any single supply chain, much less the entire Supply Chain (like God, capitalized).  A supply chain seems to work best when it is widely distributed among several sometimes-competing, sometimes-collaborating players  who may or may not share what they know.  The Supply Chain is a complex adaptive system beyond measuring or managing in anything like a traditional understanding of these terms.

A second project is concerned with deterrence.  Is deterrence a short-term or long-term outcome? How is it achieved?  It seems to be the outcome of how positive and negative sanctions are applied to a well-defined audience for a specific purpose, often at a particular time-and-place.   Is there any way to accurately predict what mix of positive-and-negative, time-and-place will be most effective?  How do you measure absence? Isn’t this what deterrence means, the absence of something unwanted?  Almost everyone agrees that deterrence is an affective outcome, it is most effective when it influences motivations and unconscious tendencies.  How do you measure progress toward such a goal?  What does success look like?

It is reasonably clear and widely accepted that supply chain resilience and deterrence are each sub-elements of homeland security. Yet I am not at all sure how any of the three,  including homeland security, are to be defined — to be made finite — and thereby measurable (as traditionally understood).

I believe homeland security (as a practice, perhaps even a weird sort of verb), if effective, produces a public good called homeland security (a noun).  How do we assess such effectiveness?

Elinor Ostrom, the 2009 Nobel Laureate in Economics writes,

The task of measuring performance in the production of public goods will not yield to simple calculations.  Performance measurement depends instead on estimates in which indicators or proxy measure are used as estimates of performance.  By utilizing multiple indicators, weak measures of performance can be developed even though direct measures of output are not feasible. Private goods are easier to measure, account for, and relate to cost-accounting procedures and management controls.

Private goods are easier to measure because we can exclude potential users from consumption.  The private good of shelter is measured by, in part, the number of homeless… those excluded from shelter.  How would we exclude consumption of effective deterrence? How would we exclude free-riding on effective supply chain resilience?  How would we exclude effective homeland security? Why would we exclude?

Despite the complications, Congress wants better performance measures. GAO is a principled and persistent advocate of performance measures.   Any senior official with the temerity to quote Dr. Ostrom would, I expect, be received rather skeptically in most Hill hearing rooms. Most “masters of disaster” would, in any case, welcome meaningful measures.  So we keep looking.

Recently a senior FEMA official pointed to a possible relationship between mid-term sales-tax revenues, long-term recovery, and resilience.   This made some intuitive sense. We were encouraged.

After a disaster sales-tax revenue almost always shows an immediate spike. For example,  according to the Tuscaloosa News in the month following the April 27 tornado, local sales tax revenue of $2.5 million was about $160,000 higher than the same period in 2010 and about $300,000 more than in 2009.

What about one year or more later?  Sales tax revenue is a leading indicator, the FEMA official argued, for a whole host of other indicators: population, recovery of the retail sector, sustainable government services, overall economic activity, and more.  If following the immediate spike there is a long-term slide in sales-tax receipts this is almost always evidence of non-resilience. The reverse is also true he suggested: stable or higher sales tax revenues signals a range of resilience.

According to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, “City of New Orleans sales tax collections for the first six months of 2011 are at $78.5 million — higher than any other six–month period post–Katrina, and only 2 percent lower than the same months in 2005.”  Taken alone this could seem a sign of extraordinary resilience, especially for a city with a considerably reduced population and in the midst of a deep national recession.

Other indicators are mixed:  New Orleans school enrollment is 63 percent pre-Katrina numbers and the rate of violent crime is 80 percent higher than the national average.  New Orleans has not seen the collapse in employment of other places in the nation, but the biggest employment sectors — energy, tourism, and shipping — are all in decline.

Is New Orleans struggling or strong?  Resilient or just hanging on until the next big one?

Greensburg, Kansas is widely celebrated as a premier example of resilience in its creative, courageous response to the May 2007 tornado that devastated the community.  Between 2009 and 2010 Kiowa County — Greensburg is the county seat — saw sales tax revenue grow about 3 percent.   Does this quantity fairly capture the resilience of Greensburg?

How do we measure homeland security?  As input or output, might be the next question.

There is a Hebrew word — transliterated as ‘esher — that is usually translated as happy or blessed. This is the noun form of a verb — transliterated as ‘asher — that means to advance, go straight, make progress.

Do we achieve the noun by experiencing the verb or is experiencing the noun what motivates the action?

“How blessed (‘esher) is the man who finds wisdom and the man who gains understanding. For her profit is better than the profit of silver and her gain better than fine gold. “(Proverbs 3:13-14)

Gold and silver can be precisely measured, valued, and excluded.  Wisdom is worth even more,  but resists unambiguous measurement.  I don’t think wisdom can be excluded (in the economic sense of the term), but it can certainly be elusive.

The new National Preparedness Goal is “a secure and resilient Nation with the capabilities required across the whole community to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk.”

The upgrade given mitigation is arguably the most important policy shift represented in the NPG.   Mitigate now joins Prevent, Protect, Respond, and Recover as “Mission Areas.”  Once the red-headed stepchild of preparedness, mitigate has — at least intellectually — been fully accepted as a strategic priority.

According to the NPG several “core capabilities” are necessary to achieve the mitigation mission area, including:

• Community Resilience
• Long-term Vulnerability Reduction
• Risk and Disaster Resilience Assessment
• Threats and Hazard Identification

The details of these capabilities are not — yet — specified.  The forthcoming National Preparedness System is likely to provide much more.  All of these capabilities have significant pedigrees in both research and practice.

There has tended to be an engineering orientation to mitigation.   Fifty-four of 77 examples in the FEMA Mitigation Best Practices Portfolio relate to flooding.  A specific threat is identified, vulnerabilities related to the threat are assessed, risk is reduced usually through some change in the built environment.  You can see this same logic embedded in the capability list.  All of this is helpful and works for earthquakes, wildfires, industrial accidents, and terrorism too.

According to the NPG mitigation is, “The capabilities necessary to reduce loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters.”  Unpacking the definition, this suggests that community resilience (see capability list above) contributes to mitigation.

As a strategic principle I would turn this around: mitigation contributes to community resilience.  Resilience and mitigation can be complementary.  But they are also quite distinct. The very best mitigation cannot ensure resilience.  Nor does less-than-full mitigation negate the possibility of significant resilience.   If I had to choose, I would choose resilience over mitigation.

Fortunately, we don’t have to choose.  Attention to both mitigation and resilience is helpful.

The NPG defines resilience as, “The ability to adapt to changing conditions and withstand and rapidly recover from disruption due to emergencies.”

The use of steel reinforcement to allow buildings to sway with an earthquake is an example of both mitigation and resilience.  The ability of the Internet to allow information-packets to find multiple open channels and opportunistically use whatever is available is another example of resilient design that can mitigate the impact of a threat.

But resilience and especially community resilience is much more than mitigating impact.

Last Thursday I was driving a narrow road through rural Virginia when the radio sounded a tornado warning.  The rain and wind were already strong.  At the first opportunity I pulled off at a convenience store to allow the tornado, about five miles ahead, to finish its run Northeast.

Paying for coffee and a cookie I asked the sales clerk if she had heard the tornado warning.  Glancing at the rain lashing the windows she replied, “Nope.  No radio.  Grew up in Oklahoma thought I’d gotten away from ‘em. ”

I showed her the tornado’s track on my smartphone’s screen.

“Funny thing.  Both my grands (grandparents) had storm cellars, purpose built in the backyard,” she said. “We never did and no basement neither.  Just a ranch house on a slab.  Was like we don’t believe in tornadas no more.”

The storm cellars — my mother’s parents in Oklahoma also had one — are examples of mitigation.   But as the sales clerk observed, before mitigation there was something the authors of the NPG would no doubt call “Threat and Hazard Identification” (this is tornado alley) and “Risk and Disaster Resilience Assessment”  (I need a place to be protected from a tornado) which leads to “Long-term Vulnerability Reduction” (I will build a storm cellar).  In other words, our grandparents actively acknowledged a realistic threat.

On May 22 the residents of Joplin, Missouri were alerted to a Tornado Watch at 1:30 PM local time.   A Tornado Warning was br0adcast at 5:09.  Sirens were sounded at 5:11.  The killer tornado touched down southwest of Joplin at 5:34.  According to a study conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),  ”The majority of surveyed Joplin residents did not immediately go to shelter upon hearing the initial warning.”  There were 159 deaths and several hundred injuries.

“Was like we don’t believe in tornadas no more.”

I was never in a storm cellar during a storm.  Several times I was in the cellar to retrieve a sack of potatoes or a jar of preserves.  Most storm cellars were also used to store what was harvested from the garden.  Every storm cellar I can remember was dug next to the garden.

You can argue that gardening is also a mitigation measure (against hunger).  But that would squeeze all the joy out of it.  My father’s parents owned grocery stores, but were also gardeners.  I have never had such luscious tomatoes, fresh or canned, since they stopped gardening.

Here’s my hypothesis:  As gardening declined and home refrigeration increased, storm (root) cellars fell into disuse, eventual disrepair, became a hazard themselves, and were filled in. The prospect of tornadoes was not sufficient  to sustain the mitigation activity.  The need for a cool dark place to store vegetables was a crucial indirect motivation for the mitigation.

We never really believed in “tornadas”, but once upon a time we believed in tomatoes (and green beans and peas and potatoes) and retrieving the taste of an August garden deep into February.

Resilience is the outcome of positive behaviors regularly practiced.  Resilience is being aware and appreciative of your environment. Resilience is being enmeshed in a dense network of human relationships.  Resilience is caring for yourself and others.

Resilience is about tomatoes.  Mitigation is about tornadoes.

–+–

For a more technical take on resilience:

Resilience: Five principles of good practice

A Super-cell outbreak is one kind of complex threat: Do the principles of good practice apply?

Principles of good practice for advancing resilience: Awareness of complex context and connections

A new national strategy for an important aspect of homeland security is nearly complete.  I expect it will emerge from the interagency process in another three to six weeks.

The subject matter is of particular interest to me.  Because of prior work done on the issue and relationships of trust within the homeland security community I received an unauthorized copy for review.

[un·au·thor·ised adj not having official permission]

With the benefit of the preview I have had conversations with various  parties involved in authoring the national strategy and those who are likely to be most affected by the national strategy.   I have tried to use these conversations to influence how the national strategy will be finalized and initially received.

[in·flu·ence n. A power affecting a person, thing, or course of events, especially one that operates without any direct or apparent effort.]

I happen to mostly agree with the draft I have seen.  It is short, truly strategic, and offers a substantive argument.  Even if you disagree with its goals, it will be helpful to engaging the issue.

Because I am drawn to the principles and priorities set out by the new strategy I am  inclined to portray it as being as  attractive as possible to those who will be affected by it.

[a·ttrac·tive adj 1. appealing to the senses or mind through beauty, form, character, etc. 2. arousing interest an attractive opportunity 3. possessing the ability to draw or pull an attractive force.]

Especially in terms of practicing mitigation and advancing resilience, I find the new strategy appealing. (It has other goals as well.) But some will perceive a potential threat.  Depending on how the new strategy is interpreted and implemented it might hurt as much as help.  Threats can also attract.

I perceive human life — and especially social life — as a complex adaptive system.  While certainly susceptible to over-abstraction, most humans and most societies are inclined to descend into deepening basins of attraction.   The deeper the basin the greater the stability.  But regardless of how deep or how shallow, once inside the basin the system tends to cycle again and again around a point (or points) of equilibrium.

[Basin of Attraction (physics) The collection of all possible initial conditions of a dynamical system for which the trajectories representing that system in phase space will converge to a particular attractor.]

We can conceive the Roman imperial system as an especially deep basin of attraction.  Even after the Western empire collapsed the cultural attractor continued to exercise considerable influence through Byzantine, medieval German, and Russian political systems and perhaps most directly through the Catholic Church.  Certain British and American notions of power and influence can be seen emerging from this basin.  I have spent a considerable part of my life in an ancient Roman plunge pool.  Two generations ago the pool was full.  Not today.

Every living society or culture can be conceived as a collection of basins — a veritable lake district — where from time to time there are periods of flood and drought.  One basin joins with another and another yet.  A single basin is divided in parts.  A once deep basin is filled by silt and debris becoming more and more shallow, finally evaporating away on one especially hot day.

As long as the basin of attraction persists it serves as a source of authority.  The deeper the attraction and the more who are attracted, the stronger the authority.

[authority early 13c., autorite "book or quotation that settles an argument,"from O.Fr. auctorité (12c.; Mod.Fr. autorité), from L. auctoritatem (nom. auctoritas) "invention, advice, opinion, influence, command," from auctor "master, leader, author".]

The book or citation that could claim real authority did so on the basis of broad and deep attraction.  We approached the Bible or Aristotle or symbols of tradition or the Congressman or the President with authentic respect, even affection.  Not today.

As I have worked to encourage a positive response to the forthcoming national strategy, the recurring question is whether or not it will make any difference.   Its origin in the federal interagency process, authored in the White House, and signed by the President is not sufficient and may, in some quarters, considerably heighten skepticism.

The process of framing and forming this new strategy and other official documents assume a basin of attraction that too often is nothing more than a muddy puddle. Authority is little more than a thin sheen.  It is not the intent, invention, or content of the document, decision, or initiative that produces this outcome; it is the time, place, and environment into which it is introduced.

I perceive we are living in a time of shallow and very permeable basins.  Rather than a lake district, our fitness landscape is more like a swamp.  There may be a deep clear pond out there, but that’s not where we are today in homeland security, national security, or most of modern life.

["Evolutionary adaptation is the process that increases the fit of a population to the fitness landscape it inhabits. As a consequence, evolutionary dynamics is shaped, constrained, and channeled, by that fitness landscape." (Critical Properties of Complex Fitness Landscapes)  My use of a basin's depth, rather than height reverses the most common visualization of a fitness landscape.]

For some — turtle, muskrat,  alligator, snake, many birds — the swamp is okay, even preferred.  For me it is not preferred.

I am looking for something deeper, something less susceptible to flooding and freezing.  I perceive the new national strategy may point to at least one way out of the swamp.  But authority will not get us there.  There must be attraction, sufficient attraction to move quite a number of stakeholders considerably upstream to higher ground and deeper basins.

It is an interesting challenge:  Can government eschew the mirage of authority enough to attract meaningful collaboration?

…well, you probably know the rest.

This colorful turn of phrase was uttered within my earshot at a Boston bar following the Patriot’s loss to the Buffalo Bills.  Until this game the Bills had not beat the Pats for 15 straight games, a streak that began in 2003.  The Bills are not a bad team this year, in fact they had the same undefeated record as New England entering the game.  Instead, it was the expectation that the result this past Sunday would be the same as so many games before that added to the befuddlement of viewers across the region (in addition to Tom Brady throwing the same number of interceptions in one game–four–that he had thrown all last season). The same colorful, and upset, individual remarked that his “nephew had never known the Bills to beat the Patriots.”

What it says about my life that this episode inspired thoughts about homeland security I will consider in greater depth another time. Regardless, this animated man unintentionally uttered insightful homeland security ideas.

“My nephew has never known…” As a greater time elapses between events, the expectation that those events are possible generally decreases and the urgency to prepare dissipates.  Perhaps because the original attack on the World Trade Center did not achieve a catastrophic result, the nation was strategically unprepared for 9/11.  The same group not only carried out an attack in the U.S. mainland again (after several against various U.S. targets overseas), but they struck the same target. By strategically, I am not referring to the question of whether our intelligence services were properly aware of the threat or if our leaders were aggressive enough in their chosen courses of action.  Instead, as a nation we were seemingly shocked by the attacks as if the threat had never manifested before that terrible day.  Would the reaction to the attacks have been different if they occurred in 1994 or 1995 instead?

The “sun shining”: Sometimes your star player has a bad day and throws four interceptions.  Sometimes as a fan, you underestimate your opponent because they weren’t so hot the year before but you haven’t bothered to analyze whether they improved over the off season.  Sometimes, a plot will develop in a place intelligence services are not looking and by a group that has not appeared on anyone’s radar screen.  Sometimes a less-then-catastrophic storm will cause the failure of levees generally believed to have been built to stricter guidelines. Sometimes a system designed to prevent blow-outs fails.

My point: the unexpected will occur and we can’t count on preventing, deterring, or mitigating all the worst case scenarios.  Somehow in a time of fiscal and political constraint, room for catastrophic planning should be carved out of a system that rests on preparing for the expected. Following the next “unexpected” catastrophe, there will not be a chance for quick redemption on the following Sunday.

Sunday evening at the Kennedy Center, President Obama said,

These past 10 years underscores the bonds between all Americans.  We have not succumbed to suspicion, nor have we succumbed to mistrust.  After 9/11, to his great credit, President Bush made clear what we reaffirm today:  The United States will never wage war against Islam or any other religion.  Immigrants come here from all parts of the globe.  And in the biggest cities and the smallest towns, in schools and workplaces, you still see people of every conceivable race and religion and ethnicity -– all of them pledging allegiance to the flag, all of them reaching for the same American dream –- e pluribus unum, out of many, we are one.

These past 10 years tell a story of our resilience. The Pentagon is repaired, and filled with patriots working in common purpose.  Shanksville is the scene of friendships forged between residents of that town, and families who lost loved ones there.  New York — New York remains the most vibrant of capitals of arts and industry and fashion and commerce.  Where the World Trade Center once stood, the sun glistens off a new tower that reaches towards the sky.

Our people still work in skyscrapers.  Our stadiums are still filled with fans, and our parks full of children playing ball.  Our airports hum with travel, and our buses and subways take millions where they need to go.  And families sit down to Sunday dinner, and students prepare for school.  This land pulses with the optimism of those who set out for distant shores, and the courage of those who died for human freedom.

Saturday in his weekly radio address, speaking of the continuing threat of terrorism, the President said, “no matter what comes our way, as a resilient nation, we will carry on.”

–+–

We may be a resilient people, but after huge wildfires in Texas,  killer tornadoes in Joplin and Tuscaloosa, extraordinary flooding caused by Hurricane Irene and much more, the Disaster Relief Fund is just about depleted.  The worst of hurricane season is probably still ahead.  California’s wildfire season is just ramping up.  I wonder when the San Andreas, New Madrid, or another past-due fault will shift.

While we may be resilient, so — we are told — is our adversary.  Testifying Tuesday before the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Matt Olsen, the new Director of the National Counter Terrorism Center said,

Al-Qaida, its affiliates and adherents around the world, as well as other terrorist organizations, continue to pose a significant threat to our country. This threat is resilient and adaptive and will persist for the foreseeable future. America‘s campaign against terrorism did not end with the mission at Bin Ladin‘s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May. A decade after the September 11th attacks, we remain at war with al-Qaida and face an evolving threat from its affiliates and adherents.

A variety of reports tell us there has been no resolution of the “credible” threat to Washington DC and New York announced in the days just before 9/11.   But on Sunday we did evidently kill Abu Hafs al-Shahri, a Saudi Arabian national who was chief of operations for al-Qaeda inside Pakistan.

–+–

According to Wednesday’s Report Regarding the Causes of the April 20, 2010 Macondo Well Blowout, resiliency was not readily found in the design, operations, or response to last years explosion, fire, and oil spill.

The loss of life at the Macondo site on April 20, 2010, and the subsequent pollution of the Gulf of Mexico through the summer of 2010 were the result of poor risk management, last minute changes to plans, failure to observe andrespond to critical indicators, inadequate well control response, and insufficient emergency bridge response training by companies and individuals responsible for drilling at the Macondo well and for the operation of the Deepwater Horizon.

Well… at least the BP stock price has been resilient.  Transocean and Haliburton too.

–+–

Resilience was once a radical reframing of homeland security strategy. Less than five years ago, a colleague passionately critiqued resilience as a dangerous, defeatist concept.  I argued resilience is how we productively work with uncertainty.

Arguments over definition (and implications) can still be heard, but resilience is — already — making the transition from provocation to platitude.    In too many speeches, editorials, memos, and blogs resilience has joined freedom, equality, love, and courage as meaning whatever the author wishes it to mean, especially if the author is advocating rigid, inflexible, and non-resilient notions.

I am reminded of Orwell’s essay on political language, “In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.”

When authors of platitudes are allowed to persist, their audience shares responsibility. Meaningful principles devolve into platitudes through unquestioning, self-indulgent, unthinking consumption. Orwell again, “Our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

As an antidote for foolish thinking about resilience, please give careful and critical attention to three recent considerations of resilience.  Each includes its own platitudes or worse, but when thoughtfully consumed each promises greater precision in how we think about and practice resilience.

Community Resilience Task Force Recommendations (2011), Homeland Security Advisory Council, Department of Homeland Security. “The  Task Force identified an urgent need for clear articulation of the relationships and dependencies between resilience and other homeland security  efforts—particularly preparedness and risk reduction.   Clarification of these relationships is crucial both to build shared understanding across diverse stakeholder communities and to motivate action throughout the Nation.”

Building Community Resilience to Disasters (2011) RAND and the US Department of Health and Human Services. “Community resilience entails the ongoing and developing capacity of the community to account for its vulnerabilities and develop capabilities that aid that community in (1) preventing, withstanding, and mitigating the stress of a health incident; (2) recovering in a way that restores the community to a state of self-sufficiency and at least the same level of health and social functioning after a health incident; and (3) using knowledge from a past response to strengthen the community’s ability to withstand the next health incident.”

Key Trends Driving Global Business Resilience and Risk (2011) IBM Global Technology Services. “Business resilience refers to the ability of enterprises to adapt to a continuously changing business environment. Resilient organizations are able to maintain continuous operations and protect their market share in the face of disruptions such as natural or man-made disasters. Business resilience planning is distinguished from enterprise risk management (ERM) in that it is more likely to build capacity to seize opportunities created by unexpected events. Another difference is that while ERM can be implemented as a management capability, an integrated business resilience strategy requires the engagement of everyone in the organization, and often means a change in corporate culture to instill awareness of risk.”

Bureaucratic writing is innately banal.  Authors — including yours truly — try to gin up with length or style an authority not achieved in substance.  Often we are busy trying to paper over unresolved conflicts and complexities.   This results, Orwell explains, in two recurring faults: “First, staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing.”

The three documents listed above are not the worst examples of bureaucratic writing, but they share the sins of their species.  To nurture your critical reading with rich imagery and exacting precision, I suggest, You Think That’s Bad, a recent collection of Jim Shepard’s fiction.  Between each of the bureaucratic reports read at least one of the ten short stories.  Many in this collection struggle with issues of resilience.  I especially recommend, The Netherlands Lives with Water.

Midnight tonight is the deadline for your comments on the current draft of the National Preparedness Goal.  The downloaded document provides instructions on how to make your comments.

At the end of March Presidential Policy Decision 8 included the following:

I hereby direct the development of a national preparedness goal that identifies the core capabilities necessary for preparedness and a national preparedness system to guide activities that will enable the Nation to achieve the goal… The national preparedness goal shall be informed by the risk of specific threats and vulnerabilities – taking into account regional variations – and include concrete, measurable, and prioritized objectives to mitigate that risk. The national preparedness goal shall define the core capabilities necessary to prepare for the specific types of incidents that pose the greatest risk to the security of the Nation, and shall emphasize actions aimed at achieving an integrated, layered, and all-of-Nation preparedness approach that optimizes the use of available resources. The national preparedness goal shall reflect the policy direction outlined in the National Security Strategy (May 2010), applicable Presidential Policy Directives, Homeland Security Presidential Directives, National Security Presidential Directives, and national strategies, as well as guidance from the Interagency Policy Committee process. The goal shall be reviewed regularly to evaluate consistency with these policies, evolving conditions, and the National Incident Management System.

The draft document offers a succinct statement of the goal:

Our National Preparedness Goal is a secure and resilient Nation that has created the capacity for the organized commitment of the whole community, in the shortest possible time and under all conditions, to successfully prevent, protect, mitigate, respond, or recover from the threats that pose the greatest risk to the Nation.

A secure nation is not a new goal.  A resilient nation, while not a new goal, has seldom (ever?) been accorded strategic equivalency with security.  The emphasis on the whole community is also not precisely new, but it is given heightened priority in this statement.  Focusing on the capacity of the organized commitment of the whole community to prevent, protect, mitigate, respond, and recover is a potentially helpful strategic differentiation.  (The “capacity of organized commitment” is, however, something worth unpacking a bit more. I have a sense the attention to speed and condition also has more meaning embedded than is immediately apparent.)

Consistent with the President’s instructions, the draft National Preparedness Goal gives attention to core capabilities.  The definition offered by the draft is:

A “capability” is the ability to provide the means to accomplish one or more tasks under specific conditions and to specific performance standards. A capability may be achieved with any combination of properly planned, organized, equipped, trained, and exercised personnel that  achieves the intended outcome. “Core capabilities” are those that are central to the Nation’s  ability to achieve our National Preparedness Goal. Their availability is essential and  indispensable for the execution of the mission, and therefore, they are subject to continuous  monitoring and management at all levels.

The draft offers forty-two core capabilities, as outlined in this graphic (a larger version will open if you click on the graphic):

The draft document provides considerable detail on each of the core capabilities.  There is a particular effort to identify meaningful performance measures for each capability.

Three critiques intended to be constructive:

1. Despite the draft regularly invoking an all-hazards perspective, do the prevent and protect focus areas strike you as tilting heavily to counter-terrorism? They do to me.  When I look at the individual core capabilities “prevent” might be better entitled “preempt”.   Looks like these core capabilities are mostly practiced when bad guys/gals have a clear intention to cause harm.  There’s not much (any?) attention to forestalling bad intentions.

2. Taken together the proposed preparedness architecture seems mostly a matter of preparing-to-respond.  The protect collection strikes me as focused on potential terrorist threats and a kind of strategic agility similar to the Great Wall of China or the Maginot Line.   Mitigate  provides a few proactive, positive steps to increase actual strength and resilience.  We might be able to conceive a couple of recover’s core capabilities as offering constructive opportunities.   But the overall approach seems, at least to me, quite defensive in stance.  I want to be prepared to engage opportunities, as well as deal with problems.

3.  The draft National Preparedness Goal gives considerable attention to security.  In this the NPG is consistent with previous priorities.  The new draft goal gives equal priority to resilience. I regret that I do not see how the core capabilities and performance measures as currently articulated substantially advance resilience.  This new goal seeks to more fully involve the whole community.  I do not see how the core capabilities and performance measures as currently articulated would substantially enhance the commitment of the whole community to the preparedness mission.

First drafts are usually more expansive — and unwieldy — than subsequent drafts. Producing a reasonable first draft in a timely fashion is helpful to public consideration and comment. In final draft effective goal-setting will probably involve a tightened focus, clarification, and crystallization.  It will be interesting to see what is sent to the President on September 25.

A  firefighter, a  cop, and an emergency manager walk into a bar.  This is not a joke.  I was with the three of them.

One had red wine, another had a beer, the third ordered scotch.   I was drinking Dry Sack on the rocks with a twist.

Can you guess which one had which drink?  Can you guess which offered what to the conversation:

“The problem is everyone is in denial about the worst risks.”

“New Orleans after Katrina was simple compared to Sendai after the tsunami.  How about Memphis after New Madrid or LA after the big one?” You can know the real pros by whether or not they pronounce it Maaadrid, as in really crazy.

“How about DC, Pittsburgh, and Birmingham after New Madrid?  How about pipelines, rail bridges, interstates, and the Eastern Interconnect after New Madrid?”  Hows about every little town downstream from a dam?

“How about the whole economy for the next ten years after Long Beach is taken out? I don’t care if it’s tsunami, pandemic, or an IND.”

“How about the whole economy if some cyber-anarchists decide to really screw with credit cards and ATMs?”

“As long as they vaporize my mortgage too.”

The bar talk was not as grim as this suggests.  Extended conversations with this crew are like a public reading of Dante’s Inferno (no Paradiso) with a running commentary by the comedian Lewis Black.  You roar with laughter over a comment that ought not be documented here.   A slightly sick sense of humor is essential to survival in these professions.

“We’re the real problem,” one guy said wrapping his arms around the shoulders of those on either side.  ”We’re too good.  Why worry when the A team’s got your back?”

“Just call 911 and the cavalry always comes.”

“Even under fire… hell, with radioactive brimstone falling from the sky.”

“Thing is, we’re really good at the everyday stuff and lots of the tough stuff.”

“Did you hear about the 911 call because the citizen thought her remote had been stolen.  Cops found it in a drawer.  They responded!”

“That’s the problem, we are so #$!@ responsive we’ve trained the citizens to depend on us.  When the big #$!@ happens they just wait around.”

“Not everyone.”

“Practically EVERYONE!”

“There’s two big pile-ups:  real increasing dependence. Who grows their own food anymore?  Who even eats at home? And where does our food come from? Not anywhere close.  Second pile-up: The #$!@ complicated system works really, really well until it doesn’t work at all.  So there’s no obvious reason to pay much attention, until it’s too late.”

“So… what we’re really good at is hiding the problems?”

“Sure.  There’s a fire.  You put it out.  You get ‘em temporary housing or they go to the in-laws.  I keep gawkers away.  Everything’s fine. No worries. But in Joplin or Tuscaloosa? Even those huge twisters were tiny compared to what we’ll get when the wrong fault shifts under 5 million or a wildfire overwhelms San Diego.  Hows about a CAT 5 and flood surge pounding Miami-Dade?”

“When they call 911 no one will answer, they won’t even get a #$!@ dial-tone!”

“It doesn’t take such a big hit.  Maybe catastrophe comes on little cat feet?  You read Ted Lewis’ new book?  The complex systems we depend on are so intricate  just one little complication and the consequences cascade.”

“Sort of like the 2003 blackout caused by tree branches in Ohio?”

“But the cause wasn’t tree branches, it’s the way WE build and manage systems. Tree branches are a preexisting condition.  Our choices create the vulnerabilities.”

“You know when I was a little kid,” (the guy to his right mimicked the Staten Island accent) we had a farm right down the road.  It’s a landfill now.  The big farms in Jersey, they’re all McMansions.  Mom and pop get their broccoli and peas from California just like all of us.”

“You know what though? The beers alot better than back then.  Hey waitress, another round here.”

Earlier this month Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released the sixth edition of Inspire magazine, a colorful web publication written in English designed to recruit Al Qaeda volunteers.  I got my copy last weekend.   The link immediately above takes you to the Public Intelligence website’s slightly censored copy.

This is a memorial issue, considerably more somber than previous versions, marking the death of Osama bin-Laden.  The cover is above.  Notice the headline: Sadness, Contentment and Aspiration.  Six others killed in action are also profiled.

I have a hypothesis about bin-Laden:  What I have seen and heard suggests he was — as much as possible given our intense search — an ego maniacal micro-manager.  This would be consistent with the characteristics of many other confirmed sources of evil.

I speculate bin-Laden was so consumed to out-do the 9/11 attacks that he became an impediment to many other less spectacular plans.  Bin-Laden no longer had sufficient command-and-control to effectively launch an attack that matched his ambitions, but he had enough authority to veto other more likely-to-succeed efforts. Bin-Laden was working hard to stay involved and — paradoxically — his ego was a big help to our counter-terrorism effort.

I don’t have enough evidence to prove or disprove this hypothesis.  But Inspire encourages my hypothesis.  In the same issue marking the death of the al-Qaeda founder and — very briefly — affirming Ayman al-Zawahiri as the new head of al-Qaeda, there is a long article on individual jihad by Abu Mu’sab al-Suri. Also known as Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, this long-time strategist of terrorist violence has been a sophisticated critic of the 9/11 attacks and the more centralized strategic approach of bin-Laden.

Following are two paragraphs from al-Suri’s piece in this month’s Inspire magazine.  Al-Suri is answering, why is individual jihad necessary? (Compare to what Marc Sageman has called leaderless jihad.)

1. The failure of the operational methods of the secret, hierarchical organizations, in light of the international security campaign and the international and regional [counter-terrorism] co-ordination, which we have referred to above. Furthermore, the need for an operational method, which makes it impossible for those security agencies to abort the Resistance cells by arresting [some of] their members, based on [information extracted through] torture and interrogation [of other members].

2. Inability of the secret organizations to incorporate all of the Islamic ummah’s youth who want to perform the duty of jihad and Resistance by contributing with some kind of activity, without being required to commit themselves to membership responsibilities of a centralized organization.

The king is dead (and he was, by the way, wrong). Long live the (kingless) Resistance!  Which could result in an increasing scope and frequency of deadly — but less than apocalyptic — attacks.

I received Inspire on the same weekend that the final Harry Potter movie was opening. The temptation to analogy is too great.

Ten years ago, just weeks after 9/11, still hurting and much more innocent than now, I took my tween children to see the first Harry Potter movie. In subsequent years any pretense to innocence was lost, hurt multiplied many times, and evil became increasingly explicit. The personification of evil was finally surprised and killed. That ended the decade-long fictional tale. The death of bin-Laden does not end the real world’s narrative nor the emergent threat.

At the core of the Harry Potter series — and in the narrative of terrorist martyrs — is the power of self-sacrifice. The Inspire magazine profile of six lesser known martyrs invokes this power. For love of God, neighbor, and family Muslim youth are called to self-sacrifice.

But there is a difference between these visions of self-sacrifice, potentially a crucial difference. From near the end of the current movie:

Harry Potter: “… But before you try and kill me, I’d advise you to think about what you’ve done…. Think, and try for some remorse….”
Voldemort: “What is this?”
Harry Potter: “It’s your one last chance, it’s all you’ve got left…. I’ve seen what you’ll be otherwise…. Be a man…. try…. Try for some remorse….”

Innocence cannot be retrieved. Our own self-sacrifice is still needed.  Our adversary also depends on and glorifies self-sacrifice. Each of us claim to sacrifice ourselves — or too often others — for a cause beyond ourselves.

But with luck or faith or courage we may be able to preserve our sense of remorse.  In remorse we recognize our own pride and failure.  In remorse we grieve, even over the death of our enemy. In remorse we mourn that violence is sometimes the tool of love.  By embracing such remorse and learning from it, we may transcend remorse and even be redeemed by it.

–+–

The finished man among his enemies? -
How in the name of Heaven can he escape
That defiling and disfigured shape
The mirror of malicious eyes
Casts upon his eyes until at last
He thinks that shape must be his shape?
And what’s the good of an escape
If honour find him in the wintry blast?

I am content to live it all again
And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch,
A blind man battering blind men…

I am content to follow to its source
Every event in action or in thought;
Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing,
We are blest by everything,
Everything we look upon is blest.

W.B. Yeats, The Winding Stair

At the following link please find a DHS “progress report” on implementing-9-11-commission-report-progress-2011 (3.6 MB PDF).

The report gives particular attention to:

• Expanding information sharing,
• Developing and implementing risk-based transportation security strategies,
• Strengthening airline passenger pre-screening and targeting terrorist travel,
• Enhancing screening for explosives,
• Protecting cyber networks and critical physical infrastructure,
• Bolstering the security of US borders and identification documents, and
• Ensuring robust privacy and civil rights and civil liberties safeguards.

I have not had time to give the report a fair reading.  Will be interested in what you think.

The purpose of strategy — sez me — is to generate comparative advantage to deal with uncertainty.  The source of uncertainty — enemy, adversary, competitor, lover, child, weather, markets, or the innate complexity of the universe — is one influence on choosing a strategy.  But in many cases strategy is less about a specific source of uncertainty and much more a matter of capacity and opportunity.  We choose to do what we can do.

As of June 29 the United States has a new National Strategy for Counterterrorism.  This document replaces — or perhaps builds upon or clarifies or updates — the 2006 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism.  There is considerable continuity.

The 2006 document states:

Today, the principal terrorist enemy confronting the United States is a transnational movement of extremist organizations, networks, and individuals – and their state and non-state supporters – which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends. This transnational movement is not monolithic.  Although al-Qaida functions as the movement’s vanguard and remains, along with its affiliate groups and those inspired by them, the most dangerous present manifestation of the enemy, the movement is not controlled by any single individual, group, or state.  What unites the movement is a common vision, a common set of ideas about the nature and destiny of the world, and a common goal of ushering in totalitarian rule.  What unites the movement is the ideology of oppression, violence, and hate. Although its brutal tactics and mass murder of Muslims have undermined its appeal, al-Qa‘ida has had some success in rallying individuals and other militant groups to its cause. Where its ideology does resonate, the United States faces an evolving threat from groups and individuals that accept al-Qa‘ida’s agenda, whether through formal alliance, loose affiliation, or mere inspiration.

The new document states:

The preeminent security threat to the United States continues to be from al-Qa‘ida and its affiliates and adherents… In addition to plotting and carrying out specific attacks, al-Qa‘ida seeks to inspire a broader conflict against the United States and many of our allies and partners. To rally individuals and groups to its cause, al-Qa‘ida preys on local grievances and propagates a self-serving historical and political account. It draws on a distorted interpretation of Islam to justify the murder of Muslim and non-Muslim innocents. Countering this ideology—which has been rejected repeatedly and unequivocally by people of all faiths around the world—is an essential element of our strategy…  Adherence to al-Qa‘ida’s ideology may not require allegiance to al-Qa‘ida, the organization. Individuals who sympathize with or actively support al-Qa‘ida may be inspired to violence and can pose an ongoing threat, even if they have little or no formal contact with al-Qa‘ida.

There is a source of uncertainty, tension, and conflict that we call al-Qa’ida.  We also acknowledge important aspects of uncertainty beyond al-Qa’ida.  These relate to historical, ideological, economic, political and religious complexities that al-Qa’ida, its affiliates and adherents draw upon and can exploit.

Neither the 2006 strategy nor the new strategy give much detailed attention to these deeper sources of uncertainty.   This reflects, I perceive, both a lack of consensus as to the nature of the deeper uncertainties and a lack of confidence in the ability of the government of the United States to positively engage these profound complexities.

So we do what we can do — or hope we can do — including:

• Protect the American People, Homeland, and American Interests,
• Disrupt, Degrade, Dismantle, and Defeat al-Qa’ida and Its Affiliates and Adherents,
• Prevent Terrorist Development, Acquisition, and Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction,
• Eliminate Safehavens,
• Build Enduring Counterterrorism Partnerships and Capabilities,
• Degrade Links between al-Qa’ida and its Affiliates and Adherents, and
• Deprive Terrorists of their Enabling Means.

Each of these bullets are subtitles within the new strategy and each receive a long paragraph’s explanation. These are ambitious, difficult, but practical and measurable goals.  Choices are made.  Priorities established.  These each and all strike me as reasonable.  Elsewhere in the document there is a shout-out to resilience in case these efforts fail.

In the midst of the prior seven is the following goal with its own long paragraph.

Counter al-Qa‘ida Ideology and Its Resonance and Diminish the Specific Drivers of Violence that al-Qa‘ida Exploits. This Strategy prioritizes U.S. and partner efforts to undercut al-Qa‘ida’s fabricated legitimization of violence and its efforts to spread its ideology. As we have seen in the Middle East and North Africa, al-Qa‘ida’s calls for perpetual violence to address longstanding grievances have met a devastating rebuke in the face of nonviolent mass movements that seek solutions through expanded individual rights. Along with the majority of people across all religious and cultural traditions, we aim for a world in which al-Qa‘ida is openly and widely rejected by all audiences as irrelevant to their aspirations and concerns, a world where al-Qa‘ida’s ideology does not shape perceptions of world and local events, inspire violence, or serve as a recruiting tool for the group or its adherents. Although achieving this objective is likely to require a concerted long-term effort, we must retain a focus on addressing the near-term challenge of preventing those individuals already on the brink from embracing al-Qa‘ida ideology and resorting to violence. We will work closely with local and global partners, inside and outside governments, to discredit al-Qa‘ida ideology and reduce its resonance. We will put forward a positive vision of engagement with foreign publics and support for universal rights that demonstrates that the United States aims to build while al-Qa‘ida would only destroy. We will apply focused foreign and development assistance abroad. At the same time, we will continue to assist, engage, and connect communities to increase their collective resilience abroad and at home. These efforts strengthen bulwarks against radicalization, recruitment, and mobilization to violence in the name of al-Qa‘ida and will focus in particular on those drivers that we know al-Qa‘ida exploits.

The intent of this paragraph is to move beyond treating symptoms and get to the heart of the problem.  With the possible exception of the sentence underlined (my underline), does this policy stance strike you as much more defensive than offensive?  Is this the sort of problem we mostly have to defend against and wait out?

Maybe the offense is being handled outside of CT per se. In explaining the new strategy John Brennan cautioned, “Our strategy recognizes that our counterterrorism efforts clearly benefit from—and at times depend on—broader foreign policy efforts, even as our CT strategy focuses more narrowly on preventing terrorist attacks against our interests, at home and abroad.”

Today Hillary Clinton begins an eleven-day round-the-world tour.  She will visit Turkey, Greece, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and China and engage in plenty of multilateral meetings along the way.  Writing in The Guardian Simon Tisdall offers, “But paradoxically, this diplomatic tour de force may unintentionally highlight the apparently inexorable decline of American power and influence.”

In this context, it is relevant that Public Diplomacy is on the GAO list of High Risks and Challenges.   This means, in my dictionary, its a tough and important job with a very uneven track record of success.

In the Department of State’s Congressional Budget Justification for Public Diplomacy we read:

The FY 2012 request includes a $6.2 million dollar investment for the creation of the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communication (CSCC) which is tasked with leading a U. S. Government wide rapid guidance and communication effort to counter violent extremism.  As stated in the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), the CSCC will coordinate, orient, and inform whole-of-government communications activities targeted against violent extremism to audiences abroad.  The QDDR also acknowledges that the Center will work closely with the Secretary‘s Coordinator for Counterterrorism or its proposed successor Bureau of Counterterrorism, as well as the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice‘s National Security Division, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies responsible for information programs related to counterterrorism.

Clearly the CSCC is only one small part of how we might put forward a “positive vision of engagement”.  But I will note the last time I heard, one predator drone cost $4.5 million.  The new reaper drones cost about $13 million each. Perhaps even in these tough times the CSCC might be worth an investment equivalent to two predators or even one reaper?  Apples and oranges some will complain.  Apple seeds and dragon’s teeth I am inclined to reply.

The Obama Administration recently made public the new “National Strategy for Counterterrorism.”  If you didn’t notice (and missed Phil’s earlier post referencing the strategy and Brennan’s public roll-out ), no worries, as little has changed since the last such strategy was released by the former Administration.

There are differences between the plans, however they reflect different viewpoints of the same problem set, namely the threat posed by one specific terrorist group: Al Qaeda.  The Obama Administration’s strategy is crystal clear about the focus:

This Strategy recognizes there are numerous nations and groups that support terrorism to oppose U.S. interests, including Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and HAMAS, and we will use the full range of our foreign policy tools to protect the United States against these threats.

However, the principal focus of this counterterrorism strategy is the network that poses the most direct and significant threat to the United States—al-Qa’ida, its affiliates and its adherents.

The focus begins to widen when a definition of the enemy is offered:

• Al-Qa’ida has murdered thousands of our citizens, including on 9/11.
• Al-Qa’ida affiliates—groups that have aligned with al-Qa’ida—have attempted to attack us, such as Yemen-based al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula’s (AQAP) failed attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25, 2009.
• Al-Qa’ida adherents—individuals, sometimes American citizens, who cooperate with or are inspired by al-Qa’ida—have engaged in terrorism, including the tragic slaughter of our service members at Fort Hood in 2009.

If one only has to be “inspired” by the ideology to be considered part of the war, is there any possible end in sight for the war against Al-Qa’ida?  New Defense Secretary Leon Panetta seems to think so:

The United States is “within reach” of defeating al-Qaeda and is targeting 10 to 20 leaders who are key to the terrorist network’s survival, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Saturday during his first trip to Afghanistan since taking charge at the Pentagon.

“Now is the moment, following what happened with bin Laden, to put maximum pressure on them, because I do believe that if we continue this effort that we can really cripple al-Qaeda as a threat to this country,” he told reporters on his plane en route to Afghanistan.

“I’m convinced,” he added, “that we’re within reach of strategically defeating al-Qaeda.”

Bruce Hoffman disagrees, and if he is correct, the U.S. may be in a war with “affiliates” and “adherents” for quite some time:

“Al-Qaeda’s obituary has been written countless times over the past decade,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and professor of security studies at Georgetown University. “Each iteration has proved to be ephemeral, as the moment has continually shown itself to have a deeper bench than we imagine.”

“While it is certainly true that al-Qaeda’s leadership has been significantly eroded over the past two years, there is no empirical evidence that either the appeal of its message or the flow of its recruits has actually diminished,” Hoffman added.

The Bush Administration’s last “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism” also focused on Al Qaeda:

Our strategy involved destroying the larger al-Qaida network and also confronting the radical ideology that inspired others to join or support the terrorist movement. Since 9/11, we have made substantial progress in degrading the al–Qaida network, killing or capturing key lieutenants, eliminating safehavens, and disrupting existing lines of support. Through the freedom agenda, we also have promoted the best long-term answer to al–Qaida’s agenda: the freedom and dignity that comes when human liberty is protected by effective democratic institutions.

However, it laid out U.S. counterterror efforts in a more general (almost strategic) framework as opposed to the regional focus of the Obama strategy:

As laid out in this strategy, to win the War on Terror, we will:

• Advance effective democracies as the long–term antidote to the ideology of terrorism;
• Prevent attacks by terrorist networks;
• Deny terrorists the support and sanctuary of rogue states;
• Deny terrorists control of any nation they would use as a base and launching pad for terror; and
• Lay the foundations and build the institutions and structures we need to carry the fight forward against terror and help ensure our ultimate success.

On the surface, it would seem that the new strategy is a significant departure from what came before.   Yet both focused almost entirely on Al-Qa’ida, and except for the Bush Strategy’s efforts attempting to assert the primacy of the Iraq war in the Global War on Terrorism, most of the same tools and tactics are on display: concerns about WMD;  eliminating safehavens; the importance of international partnerships; countering Al-Qa’da ideology; etc.

Same wine, different bottles?