NSIC’s project Adapting America’s Security Paradigm and Capabilities is documenting 21st century security challenges and identifying the practical capabilities required to manage them. NSIC is working with leadership—both governmental and nongovernmental, in the U.S. and abroad—to develop and implement an integrated security strategy.
Developing Capabilities
Over the last decade, irregular conflicts have drawn increasing attention and resources as democratic governments strive to improve their capabilities. Yet, capabilities-based analysis has identified significant shortfalls. NSIC is addressing this by (1) developing practical steps to reduce identified deficits, and (2) identifying military and civilian security capabilities for managing irregular challenges.
This includes the development of
- Intelligence dominance focused on acquiring and operating with local knowledge
- Security, Stability, and Rule/Culture of Law Teams trained to assist local leaders in fostering stability, development, and rule of law principles
- Military Units organized and trained to address the full spectrum of irregular challenges
- Strategic Communication, integrated with policy implementation
- Coalition Builders—skilled professionals forging cooperation among local leaders.
NSIC has assembled a Security Capabilities Network. These current and former practitioners and specialists from within and outside the U.S. government are identifying doctrine, tools, and skill sets to successfully prepare for and conduct population-centric operations in irregular conflict zones.
Framing the Issue
To say the world is changing is to state the obvious. The security environment has become more complex, with shadowy and seemingly unpredictable threats around the globe. What is much less understood is exactly how the world is evolving, and what can be done to meet the new national security challenges that arise as a result. Understanding these trends, patterns, and challenges is critical. They are likely to persist for decades.
In the 20th century the world beyond our borders made sense to most Americans. There were the “good guys”—a small number of states and governments living at peace—and the “bad guys”: Nazi Germany, warlord Japan, the Soviet Union, and countries ruled by communist parties. When the bad guys threatened, the U.S. forced them to back down. When war was necessary, it was a last resort. We mobilized and defeated their armies, declared victory, and peace usually followed. For our parents and their parents, the players on the global stage—and the methods of dealing with them—seemed relatively simple and clear.
Challenges of the 21st century security environment arise from a multitude of armed groups.
But times have changed. Now there are many more players—state and nonstate—on the world stage. Some threaten their neighbors with the same tools and tactics that we saw in the 20th century. Others now use very different means to intimidate their own people, the populations of their neighbors, and communities in other parts of the world. Particularly since 9/11 we have seen that many of those opposed to democracy and human rights can strike in imaginative ways. Daily, on the news we see roadside and suicide bombers, massacres of civilians, the trafficking of women and children, kidnappings, hostage taking, pirates seizing people and ships, usually in distant countries, but sometimes on our borders and even in the United States. The world seems complex and chaotic and it is not easy to make sense of it, let alone protect ourselves.
NSIC’s researchers and security innovators — backed up by senior security practitioners from democracies around the world – do believe that we can make sense of today’s world. In the 1990s, after educating professors, lawyers, labor leaders, and military professionals for decades, NSIC was among the first centers to perceive sweeping changes in the global security environment. NSIC believes it is essential to change or modify the 20th century worldview to understand today’s new forces and relationships. If we don’t, we will waste time and money, lives, and opportunities to meet and master current and future global challenges.
What’s different in the 21st century?
What are some of the major changes that make it difficult to understand today’s security landscape? First, there are many more nations in the world—nearly 200, versus the 60 or so that existed right after World War II. Approximately 40 of these nations are strong liberal democracies. Sixteen are competent authoritarian regimes. But most are fragile and weak states. Many of these struggling states cannot control their own territory, protect their people from violence, or deliver essential services such as clean water and decent schools to major sectors of their people. And over half of the world’s population lives in these countries.
Why should this worry us? Because weakened states are vulnerable states—places where new and dangerous players have stepped in to fill the void. These “nonstate actors” include hundreds of armed groups: terrorists, insurgents, militias, and criminal cartels. They use violence (kidnapping, rape, murder) and illegal means (extortion, bribery) to control territory and local populations, and some to gain regional, even global influence.
These groups operate in complicated ways, for complicated reasons. They have a variety of aims: religious, ethnic, or criminal. They don’t abide by formal treaties or swear loyalty to a particular country, as traditional armed forces do. They sometimes have an “above ground” operation, a political or ethnic movement, but most exist—like icebergs—below the surface, in clandestine organizations that obtain arms, secure funds illegally, and conduct sophisticated intelligence operations. They may work alone, together, or in partnership with authoritarian regimes. For example, Iran supports the political party of Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as Hezbollah’s clandestine intelligence and terrorist wings, which operates in many parts of the world.
These micro groups can do macro damage: Terrorists can hit targets in Europe, Asia, and North America. Crime cartels and organized gangs are major players in Mexico, Central America, and the circum-Caribbean. Experts predict that cyber attacks and biological weapons are on the horizon. Also playing a key role on the world’s security stage are “super-empowered” individuals and organizations who traffic in technology and weapons of both mass disruption and mass destruction.
War among the people will be a major factor in 21st-century conflict
War among the people, or irregular warfare, is waged by armed groups, political movements, and (through proxies), by authoritarian regimes. There is no official beginning of or end to this war. It is not fought on battlefields between armies. It uses nontraditional tactics—from assassinations and roadside bombs and suicide attacks, to bribery and propaganda in the media—to slowly gain power over territory and populations. The theater of irregular war is streets, neighborhoods, villages, websites, schools, and television – settings where local governments are often weak and American troop strength and tanks, superior weaponry and technology, by themselves, lose effectiveness.
Ingredients of success: diplomats, military, intelligence officers and rule of law specialists, skilled at interaction with local leaders and social groups.
When we start to understand the players, their strategies, and their operational environments, we begin to understand a pattern that is likely to be with us for years to come. There is no quick fix to today’s weak states. There will be voids in these states filled by armed groups of one kind or another and their authoritarian state allies for years if not decades.
This does not mean we are helpless, but we first need to understand the environment, before we can manage it effectively. By adapting our framework—and our paradigm—so that we can make sense of the world, we can move forward to pinpoint the opportunities and capabilities we can use to influence the environment.
To learn more about the need to develop our security capabilities and to adapt the U.S. security paradigm as well as NSIC’s role in that effort, see our Security Capabilities Network Statement, overview Report, and Book.
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