Organized Stalking – The New Enemy
This new war is being waged against a wide range of potential threats. According to the DOD and other sources there is a new enemy that lives among the people. These threats to US national security are “complex and ill-defined” the Los Alamos National Laboratory tells us.
Regarding these new enemies, the Unconventional Warfare publication put out by the US Army in September 2008, proclaimed: “Adversaries threaten the United States throughout a complex operational environment, extending from critical regions overseas to the homeland.”
The US Army’s Strategic Studies Institute revealed in its June 15, 1998 report, Nonlethality and American Land Power that in the future, military forces will be facing opponents who were schooled in America.
“[We] must also focus on non-traditional threats at home,” mentioned the US Army War College in its April of 2002 report, Defending the Homeland. “The country must refocus and fix its attention … on defending the homeland against a wide array of threats.”
This new enemy includes groups and individuals that are not members of a military force. “We’re not in a war against nations or big armies, we’re in a war against individuals,” proclaimed US Air Force Lt. Col. John Forsythe in a February 8, 2005 Defense Daily article.
In an article entitled, Man-Hunting, Nexus Topography, Dark Networks, and Small Worlds, which appeared in the winter, 2006 issue of Iosphere, Chief Warrant Officer 3, John R. Dodson announced: “The asymmetrical threats currently challenging U.S. national policies are not that of large standing armies. They are individuals and groups of like-minded individuals.”
The enemies are seldom states, says Toffler Associates, in a report published for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Instead, they are individuals and groups who are threats to national security and must be neutralized.
The US Army declared that this war will be waged against confirmed enemies as well as a wide range of other potential threats. The multinational force will rely heavily on the civilian population to neutralize the new enemy that lives among them. “New asymmetric threats have emerged,” announced the Department of Defense in its 2007 Annual Report. “This is an enemy that lives and hides among the civilian population,” they emphasized.
“Today’s threats” revealed Applied Energetics, a government defense contractor, “are often characterized by a non-state enemy who operates among a civilian population, in urban and congested areas.” The new enemies have been described as: insurgents, nonstate actors, asymmetric threats, irregular threats, adversaries, etc. Before we examine the new enemy in more detail, let’s have a look at the various terms used to describe them.
Labels of the New Enemy
Adversary
The February 27, 2008, US Army Field Manual Operations defines an adversary this way: “An adversary is a party acknowledged as potentially hostile to a friendly party and against which the use of force may be envisaged.” Adversaries also include members of the local populace who sympathize with the enemy. So, an adversary is someone who might be hostile or people who support them.
Irregular Enemy
The US Army’s 2008 Unconventional Warfare document describes an irregular enemy in the following manner: “Irregulars, or irregular forces, are individuals or groups of individuals who are not members of a regular armed force, police, or other internal security force.” They are usually nonstate-sponsored and unconstrained by sovereign nation legalities and boundaries. Irregular enemies use unconventional or asymmetric methods to counter US advantages.
The Army says that irregular enemies include but are not limited to: specific paramilitary forces, contractors, individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistance or insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorists, disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other social or political “undesirables.”
Nonstate Actor
Nonstate actors (NSAs) are those who operate outside the control of states or governments recognized by the United Nations. They include but are not limited to, terrorists, vigilante groups, civil defense groups that are not under government control, and insurgents. Other types of NSAs are dissident armed forces, guerrillas, liberation movements, freedom fighters, rebel opposition groups, farmers’ cooperatives, local militias, and some individuals.
In addition, all of the various organizations in the NGO category can be considered nonstate actors if they are not under state or corporate control. The RAND Corporation further describes an NSA as, “those who seek to confound people’s fundamental beliefs about the nature of their culture, society, and government.” Other adversaries, according to RAND, are “civil-society activists fighting for democracy and human rights.” RAND then links these social activists to state-run militant anarchist groups such as the black block, thereby labeling them domestic terrorists.
The book Network Centric Warfare, authored by David S. Alberts, John J. Garstka, and Frederick P. Stein, and sponsored by the Department of Defense, explains actors as: “entities that have the primary function of creating ‘value’ in the form of ‘combat power’ in the battlespace. Actors employ both traditional (lethal) and nontraditional (nonlethal) means.”
In another RAND publication released in 2005, written by Deborah G. Barger, entitled, Toward a Revolution in Intelligence Affairs, a nonstate actor is described as anyone who either acts or plans against US national security interests. Individuals using such asymmetric approaches, says RAND, will become the dominant threat to the US homeland.
Insurgent
The August 1, 2007, Air Force Doctrine document on irregular warfare, defines an insurgency as “an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through use of subversion and armed conflict.”
An insurgency is a revolutionary war, says the US Army. According to the DOD’s Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, an insurgent is a “member of a political party who rebels against established leadership.” Insurgencies usually occur when a population is oppressed and are waged by people who orchestrate what the Air Force calls an information operation (IO), which is basically the dissemination of information. Insurgents use the news media and the internet for communicating, training, recruiting, and funding.
They also blame the ruling entity as the cause of latent widespread social, political, or even religious grievances. They may use violent or nonviolent methods to convince the population that their cause is moral. Some insurgencies are international.
Insurgents are those who try to persuade the populace to accept political change. If persuasion doesn’t work they may use intimidation, sabotage, propaganda, subversion, military force, or terror. Some insurgents attempt to organize the population into a mass movement, according to the Air Force, to separate from or overthrow the existing government.
If all of these conditions must exist in order for someone to be labeled an insurgent, then those using nonviolent methods to cause change may not be included. However, if only a few nonviolent actions, such as influencing a population, compelling a ruling party to change its behavior, spreading information (IO campaigns), or organizing a mass movement against oppression are required to meet this explanation, then those resisting tyranny may be considered insurgents.
A New Enemy for a New World War
As official sources mentioned earlier, these descriptions of the new enemy are indeed vague allowing for many possible interpretations as to who the enemy is. According to these definitions, the enemy does not necessarily use violence to promote political change. Their methods may be nonviolent.
The primary consideration here is that they are groups or individuals who are not under government control, are against the established leadership, and may influence the population to promote political change. Then there are the potential enemies who will be targeted because of an action they might take in the future. We’ll discover in the next chapter that nonviolent protesters are being labeled terrorists. These enemy variations will be referred to throughout this book as the new enemy.
Resistance to Global Movement
“The most pressing threats of the new security environment are violent reactions to the world’s movement toward a single international system,” revealed the Department of Defense in its November 2002 report, Effects Based Operations: Applying Network Centric Warfare in Peace, Crisis, and War. “The overt hostility toward what is perceived to be a heavily American globalization,” it added, “make it plain that this evolution will be neither easy nor without significant peril.”
Likewise, the CFR had this to say regarding the resisters of this global movement: “In the transformation of a process … there are often elements less subject to evolution.” According to the CFR these evolutionary resisters are using a dispersed resistance movement that is concealed within the civilian population. They suggest that the US military change its tactics to neutralize these resisters.
“As globalization increases world integration,” explained the US Army, “the scope of threats to US security and public safety becomes more global.” “The enemies of integration,” advised Toffler Associates, “pose the most serious threat to world order.” The security forces, therefore, will be increasingly locating and neutralizing these threats to globalization, according to the US Army.
So, these government think tank and military reports are telling us that the new enemy includes groups and individuals with particular political views who are standing in the way of human development as our society evolves into a global civilization.
Information Warfare
These new enemies exist all over the planet. According to the US military and government defense contractors, they use computers, the internet, fax machines, cell phones and public media to convey their messages. The internet is used for communications, propaganda, funding, and training, they tell us.
The enemies use their position within a state’s military, political, or social structure to further their objectives. They use information operations to influence state forces within the population. In various publications, the act of transmitting information has been called netwar, information operations, information warfare, information attacks, etc. According to the RAND Corporation, most of this netwar is waged through the media, including newspapers, magazines, TV, faxes, and particularly the internet.
Information attacks, according an article called, A Theory of Information Warfare, that appeared in the spring, 1995 issue of Airpower Journal, are attacks aimed at the knowledge or belief systems of adversaries. Information operations (IO) have also been called cyberwar, information warfare (infowar), network centric warfare (netwar, NCW), and command and control warfare (C2W).
The DOD describes IO as: “The integrated employment of the core capabilities of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception, and operations security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own.”
Because there is no reference to the use of IO by enemies in this definition, when an enemy is said to be engaging in IO, it can be considered that their activities meet this definition. However, the context with which IO, and its related terms have been used by official sources suggests that the act of simply conveying information, alone, can be described as an IO.
The following definition of infowar appeared in a 1999 edition of Air and Space Power Journal, in an articled called What is Information Warfare?: “Information Warfare is any action to deny, exploit, corrupt or destroy the enemy’s information and its functions; protecting ourselves against those actions and exploiting our own military information functions.” So, information attacks, information operations, command and control warfare, information war, etc., are all basically the same.
The new war is one fought for political purposes. It is done for the support and influence of the population. “Its battles are fought amongst the people,” the US Marine Corps tells us, “and its outcomes are determined by the perceptions and support of the people.”
What makes this new type of warfare different, says the DOD, is the focus of its operations, which is a relevant population, as well as its purpose, which is to gain or maintain control or influence over, and support of, that relevant population. The focus is on the legitimacy of a political authority to control or influence a population.
Because the multinational force must be perceived as legitimate by the civilians whom it relies on, information is a devastating weapon. The ideas which influence a person’s perception are transmitted by information. “Information warfare techniques,” explained Steven J. Lambakis in Joint Force Quarterly’s Reconsidering Asymmetric Warfare article, “pose asymmetric threats to the United States and its interests.” This new war is a “war of ideas and perception,” as described by the US Marine Corps.
The book, The Information Revolution and National Security, published by the Strategic Studies Institute describes information warfare as a type of virus or cognitive agent that infects people with a unit of informatioThis new war is being waged against a wide range of potential threats. According to the DOD and other sources there is a new enemy that lives among the people. These threats to US national security are “complex and ill-defined” the Los Alamos National Laboratory tells us.
Regarding these new enemies, the Unconventional Warfare publication put out by the US Army in September 2008, proclaimed: “Adversaries threaten the United States throughout a complex operational environment, extending from critical regions overseas to the homeland.”
The US Army’s Strategic Studies Institute revealed in its June 15, 1998 report, Nonlethality and American Land Power that in the future, military forces will be facing opponents who were schooled in America.
“[We] must also focus on non-traditional threats at home,” mentioned the US Army War College in its April of 2002 report, Defending the Homeland. “The country must refocus and fix its attention … on defending the homeland against a wide array of threats.”
This new enemy includes groups and individuals that are not members of a military force. “We’re not in a war against nations or big armies, we’re in a war against individuals,” proclaimed US Air Force Lt. Col. John Forsythe in a February 8, 2005 Defense Daily article.
In an article entitled, Man-Hunting, Nexus Topography, Dark Networks, and Small Worlds, which appeared in the winter, 2006 issue of Iosphere, Chief Warrant Officer 3, John R. Dodson announced: “The asymmetrical threats currently challenging U.S. national policies are not that of large standing armies. They are individuals and groups of like-minded individuals.”
The enemies are seldom states, says Toffler Associates, in a report published for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Instead, they are individuals and groups who are threats to national security and must be neutralized.
The US Army declared that this war will be waged against confirmed enemies as well as a wide range of other potential threats. The multinational force will rely heavily on the civilian population to neutralize the new enemy that lives among them. “New asymmetric threats have emerged,” announced the Department of Defense in its 2007 Annual Report. “This is an enemy that lives and hides among the civilian population,” they emphasized.
“Today’s
threats” revealed Applied Energetics, a government defense
contractor, “are often characterized by a non-state enemy who
operates among a civilian population, in urban and congested areas.”
The new enemies have been described as: insurgents, nonstate actors,
asymmetric threats, irregular threats, adversaries, etc. Before we
examine the new enemy in more detail, let’s have a look at the
various terms used to describe them.
Nonstate actors (NSAs) are those who operate outside the control of states or governments recognized by the United Nations. They include but are not limited to, terrorists, vigilante groups, civil defense groups that are not under government control, and insurgents. Other types of NSAs are dissident armed forces, guerrillas, liberation movements, freedom fighters, rebel opposition groups, farmers’ cooperatives, local militias, and some individuals.
Organized Stalking – The New War
Part of this RMA includes a change in competing forces because most nations can’t challenge the US with a direct military force. Now that most nations have been conquered, either by military might or economic subversion, the regular state-to-state type of warfare will be phased out.
The US and its allies will now be waging war against individuals and groups all across the planet. The global military campaign being used to wage this new type of warfare has been called the global war on terror (GWOT), and the long war (LW). It was explained by the RAND Corporation in the book, In Athena’s Camp, this way: “In the future, few rational opponents will be likely to challenge, or will even be capable of challenging, the US in a contest with large, multi-dimensional military forces.”
Such an adversary, says RAND, will not seek to destroy the US with military power, but to ruin its core values, particularly if those values are not consistent with their deeply held religious, cultural, or ideological beliefs.
The United States Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies mentioned in its May 22, 2003 report, Deterring and Responding to Asymmetrical Threats: “Due to the conventional military dominance, the United States will most likely face regional threats that will challenge it through asymmetric approaches, such as area denial strategies, economic competition, and information warfare.”
Specific names given to the small wars that will be waged globally include, asymmetric warfare (AW), fourth generation warfare (4GW), third wave warfare (3WW), network centric warfare (NCW, netwar), NATO networked enabled capability (NNEC), and military operations other than war (MOOTW). Others are low-intensity conflict (LIC), irregular warfare (IW), and unconventional warfare (UW). Related terms include effects-based operations (EBO), civil-military operations (CMO), and peace operations (PO).
There is a variety of terms and definitions used to describe this type of warfare. The definition of a single term may be overlapping or contradictory, when multiple sources are observed. Some sources portray a particular type of warfare as synonymous with other types, thereby associating its characteristics with those other kinds.
Some terms that have been replaced by more recent ones may still be used by some authors. Some are more or less theories than they are types of warfare. However, there is a pattern of strategies and tactics that these methods of warfare share, which I refer to as shared characteristics.
For the scope of this study, the types of warfare just mentioned are synonymous because they have been described as such by credible sources and because I’ve noticed that each contain most of the shared characteristics, which are:
- They are international, protracted, political wars that are fought among the people.
- They are an interagency joint effort between the military, federal law enforcement, and local and state law enforcement, which is known globally as the multinational force (MNF), as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs).
- They use the civilian population and private sector of the host nation (HN) during civil-military operations (CMO) against a state’s internal enemies.
- They must be perceived as legitimate by the host nation’s civilian population in order to gain their cooperation.
- They rely on psychological operations, isolation, and nonlethal weapons, typically for the destruction of the enemy’s will.
- They use synchronization of tactics and strategies.
Unity of Effort/Interagency
These wars are interagency, international operations that use a combined, highly coordinated and synchronized approach to achieve unity of effort, also called unified action, during attacks. The organizations that are involved include local and state law enforcement, which cooperates with federal agencies and the host nation’s military. In the United States this means the FBI, NSA, CIA, and FEMA.
The military forces of most countries are participating through an allied military force called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). They are working with the civilian population as part of civil support, also called civil-military operations (CMO). Non-military participants include: nongovernmental organizations (NGO), private voluntary organizations (PVO), and intergovernmental organizations (IGO). Nationally, this combined force is called the interagency; globally it’s called the multinational force (MNF).
The private sector is also involved. So, this includes not just people in communities, but workplaces, stores, restaurants, businesses, etc. Basically all of the core entities that compose a nation are involved. Some of these activities are being directed by the United Nations (UN).
Because of the advancements in communication, this interagency, international force, which is fused with the civilian population, functions as a single unit, or what the US Army refers to as unified action. Their activities on the strategic, operational, and tactical level are closely synchronized due to technological advancements.
Synchronization
Synchronization is a type of unified action which consists of multiple operations conducted simultaneously in the battlespace, usually at a high tempo. It is an ancient military tactic where the speed and sequence of attacks is arranged to achieve victory. It is a product of C4ISR (which will be explained shortly) and an important concept in this new type of warfare.
The US Army explains unified action as: “the synchronization, coordination, and/or integration of the activities of governmental and nongovernmental entities with military operations to achieve unity of effort. It involves the application of all instruments of national power, including actions of other government agencies and multinational military and nonmilitary organizations.”
Synchronization is an international, interagency function involving the UN, NATO, NGOs, government contractors, the private sector, as well as a HN’s military, local, state, and federal government agencies.
The idea is that launching multiple attacks or a series of attacks done in a particular sequence will have a multiplying effect that will “immobilize, suppress, or shock the enemy,” according to the US Army. Synchronization occurs on the strategic, operational, and tactical level.
It consists of a vertical and horizontal sharing (harmonizing) of information. On the vertical level, the type of environment, objective, and forces determine the guidance and flexibility necessary for an operation. Synchronization occurs horizontally across the battlespace on the tactical level between forces and organizations. The MNF uses automated computerized methods to synchronize information. The transmission of this information occurs frequently and quickly.
The activities that are synchronized continually change in relation to any new information obtained by intelligence. It involves the rapid processing and transmission of information gained by intelligence to commanders, planners, and forces in the battlespace.
Because of the speed at which the processing and transmission of information occurs, the attacks which are directed at an enemy may be the result of near-real-time, or even real-time intelligence. In the past, force maneuvers were delayed by the transmission of information. Now, due to technological advances, it is the commanders who must wait for their previous instructions to be executed before instantaneously transmitting the next set of commands, which may be the result of real-time intelligence.
The book, Understanding Information Age Warfare, by David S. Alberts, John J. Garstka, Richard E. Hayes, and David A. Signori, sponsored by RAND and MITRE Corporations, explains it this way: “In fact, as the speed of decisionmaking and information flows associated with the C2 process increase, the dynamics [attacks and movements] associated with the force elements in the physical domain will define the limits of overall synchronization.”
Expanded Battlefield
The battlefield for this new type of warfare has expanded into the civilian sector. For this reason, it’s now called the battlespace. The battlespace is global. The battles take place among the civilian population where the military uses civilians as irregular forces.
The physical architecture of the battlespace has several levels. At the top is the space level which includes satellites. The near-space level has UAVs and high-flying aircraft. Then there is the maneuver level which contains people, robots, vehicles, ships, and low-flying aircraft.
“Defense of the Homeland involves a global, multi-domain battlespace,” proclaimed the Department of Defense in its June 2005, Strategy for Homeland and Civil Support report. “The global reach of potential and existing adversaries necessitates a global perspective.”
The civilian population is playing an important role in the expanded battlespace, according to the DOD. In order to succeed in these new missions, the actions of the military and civilian organizations will be coordinated far more closely than they were in the past. In its Network Centric Warfare publication of 2000 the DOD had this to say regarding the civilian population being used by the military: “Although civilians have been involved as victims and in supporting [combat] roles throughout history, they will play an increasingly important role in the battlespaces of the future.”
“The operational environment will expand to areas historically immune to battle,” the US Army tells us in its February 27, 2008 Field Manual Operations report, “including the continental United States and the territory of multinational partners, especially urban areas.” “All operations,” it continued, “will be conducted ‘among the people’ and outcomes will be measured in terms of effects on populations.”
According to the Army, the new enemy will increasingly seek protection among the civilian population. The essential “struggle of the future” they say, will take place primarily among civilians and will therefore require US security dominance in these areas.
The development of the technology followed a very traceable history which began in the early 1960’s at the height of the cold war. In 1961, Dr. Allen Frey wrote, “Our data to date indicates that the human auditory system can respond to electromagnetic energy in at least a portion of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum. Further, this response is instantaneous and occurs at low power densities, densities which are well below that necessary for biological damage. For example, the effect has been induced with power densities 1/60 of the standard maximum safe level for continuous exposure.” This observation had incredible ramifications because it meant that within certain ranges of RF people could create a sound perceived in the brain of a person at energy concentration levels considered too small to be significant.
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