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.
New World War: Revolutionary Methods for Political Control – Mark M. Rich
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