(72-73) The insurgency is not a single army with one goal. Instead, it's actually made up of hundreds of small groups (seventy-five of which have been identified) currently operating in Iraq.
(74) External Sunni fundamentalism
Local Sunni fundamentalism
Saddam loyalists
Baath loyalists who didn't want Saddam to return
Sunni nationalists
Tribal groups
Criminal gangs
Shiite fundamentalists
Both external and internal Shiite fundamentalists
Various Kurdish factions
And don't forget the Spanish Inquisition.
(74 - 75) The decentralization of the tools of warfare
Unlimited shelf space
Low barriers to entry
has created Global Guerrillas, only one of which is al-Qaeda.
John Robb has written Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization all about it.
Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization by John Robb
Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007
ISBN 978-0-471-78079-3
(95) The most disturbing aspect of the rise of global guerrillas is that they have found a way to fight nation-states strategically without the use of weapons of mass destruction. This method, collectively called systems disruption, uses sabotage of critical systems to inflict economic costs on the target state.
(107) Attacks by Iraq's global guerrillas keep Iraq's infrastructure below what is needed to adequately provide for the population. Additionaly, there appears to be evidence that these attacks have moved into maintenance mode - just enough disruption to maintain current levels of insufficient output even though complete collapse is within their means. This makes sense if the desired effects are an extremely weak Iraqi state and the withdrawal of a chastened United States.
Creating temporary autonomous zones, hollowing out the state, pinning down US forces to prevent redeployment. Present situation, based upon what I've read, is we have enough troops to maintain present deployments until maybe April and it will take at least six months to transport the troops we have over there now back home.
Complete collapse would create total war (via a bloody civil war)...
Partial disruption delegitimizes the state (and the US occupation)...
Partial disruption maximizes economic attrition and provides the illusion that the situation is manageable...
The logic of machine guns in WWI - aim at the legs to wound rather than at the heads to kill because casualties tie down more people and materiel than corpses.
(127 - 128) Loosely organized global guerrillas can now, at will, curtail the supply of oil through low-tech attacks (systems disruption) on facilities in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Central Asia (and it is only a matter of time before Mexico is added to the list). The amount of oil already under the effective control of these guerrillas exceeds 5 million barrels a day, more than Saudi Arabia's 2 million battles a day of swing production
.
Amory and Hunter Lovins' early 1980s study Brittle Power provides examples of how this might work with the USA energy system and is, unfortunately, still all too pertinent.
(128) Delegitimization of the target state
Coercion of core developed states
Criminal profit
The integration of political and religious terrorism with criminal gangs proceeds easily into the corporate marketplace and business as usual. The MS-13 gang is already multinational. During the first six months of 2007, Mexico had over 1000 deaths connected with border drug wars.
(129) The success of guerrillas to control production in Iraq and Nigeria will spawn similar developments in Russia, Central Asia, and Mexico...
So far there aren't many signs of coordination between guerrillas and global financial interests (hedge funds, wealthy individuals, current members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Coutnries, and so forth). There will be. There is too much money to be made.
(135) ...the more attacks we see, the more attacks we will see. And each will be more innovative and effective than the last. Iraq's IED attacks, for example, have become more effective, more competitive, and more rewarding over time, not less, as most Americans sitting at home might expect. If the military has made a goal of trying to stop them, why would it be getting easier, which is what seems to be happening?
(136 - 139) hierarchy of IED cell
the financier
the bomb-maker
the emplacer
the triggerman
It usually takes five days.
Fighting a Thousand Tiny Armies
In the future, it will become harder and harder to put a name and a face to our enemies. Just as the attacks will be smaller and more numerous, so will the armies that carry them out against us.
Valdis Krebs' analysis of 9/11 attacks:
sparse operational network
larger administrative network to support operational teams
leadership structure without formal hierarchy
Dynamics:
sparseness in operations and the closeness of administrative support enhance the network
trust in the network based upon deep relationship between the members
Lessons:
expect these networks to be run by relative unknowns
assassination of single operational leader will not collapse system
strategic attacks are possible with a network of less than seventy people, 9/11 for example
Strategic attacks may take many less than seventy people. Probably a group of about a dozen could cause significant damage if they were smart and serious.
(140) A good starting point is to look at the limits of group size within peaceful online communities, on which we have extensive data (in many ways, terrorist networks are like geographically dispersed online communities). The technology analyst Chris Allen does a good job of analyzing optimal group size with his work on the Dunbar number.
His analysis (replete with examples) shows that there is a gradual falloff in effectiveness of online groups at 80 members, with an absolute falloff at 150 members. The initial falloff occurs, according to Allen, because of an increasing amount of effor spent on "grooming" the group to maintain cohesion. The absolute falloff occurs at 150 members, when grooming fails to stem dissatisfaction and dissension within the group. This will cause the group to cleave apart into smaller subgroups (although some may remain affiliated with the original group).
The WELL? Dailykos? Wikipedia? Facebook? eBay?
(141) This leads us to optimal group size, which according to Allen's analysis on online groups can be seen at two levels; small and medium sized. Small, viable (in the sense that they can be effective at a large number of tasks) groups or cells are optimized at seven to eight members. A lower boundary for this can be seen at five, since groups of fewer than five members don't have the diversity in skill sets to be effective at tasks. There is an upper boundary of nine members.
Medium-sized groups are optimally effective at forty-five to fifty members, with a lower limit of twenty-five and an upper limit of eighty. Between the levels of nine and twenty-five, there is a chasm that needs to be surmounted at significant peril to the group. This is due to the need for groups above nine members to have some level of specialization of function. this specialization requires too much management oversight to be efficient if the group is any smaller than twenty-five, given the limited number of participants able to support a functional specialty. At twenty-five members, the group gains a positive return on specialization, given the management effort applied (a break-even point).
(145) He [Ralph Peters in "The New Warrior Class"] defines the term warrior as "erratic primitives of shifting allegiance, habituated to violence, with no stake in civil order... Paramiliatry warriors - thugs whose talent for violence blossoms in civil war - defy legitimate governments and increasingly end up leading governments they have overturned. This is a new age of warlord from Somalia to Myanmar/Burma, from Afghanistan to Yugoslavia."
Not to mention Rwanda and Darfur. Contrast with the rise of warrior ethos in the US military. The difference between a soldier and a warrior. "Be polite, be professional, be prepared to kill," LTC John Nagl summing up the most recent US Counterinsurgency Field Manual to John Stewart on The Daily Show.
(152-153) Despite this, we have to adapt. If we do not, our security will only deteriorate from here on out. The technology leverage afforded individuals to conduct warfare will continue to increase. Additionally, there are also systemic and naturally occurring threats that loom in the near future. These include avian flu (and pandemics), peak oil (that is, when the supply of a nonrenewable resource reaches the natural limit of production), and global warming. If you think these threats are unrelated to what I am talking about in this book, think again.
This is one reason I say Solar IS Civil Defense and believe a Solar Swadeshi might mean the difference between survival and the alternative.
Previous posts on Brave New War I and Brave New War III