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Global Analysis

On the Nature of International Law & Interactions with Power

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Jason Chuma in his post Law from Power raised certain interesting questions relating to power and the enforcement of international law. Chuma draws a parallel between the domestic/municipal and international systems of law arguing that sanctions are the only way to counter violations. Chuma concludes saying that owing to the lack of such a mechanism in international law it is redundant. His Austinian definition of the law considers international law to be a set of rules backed by the threat of sanctions. As Chuma puts it “Claims without the ability to enforce are rhetoric, nothing more”.

Chuma’s definition of law (an Oxford dictionary version) may appeal to us given the domestic law we interact with in our everyday lives. Indeed it would be hard to conceptualize domestic law as law at all if it did not have a certain ‘coercive’ element to it, but it is here that a problem arises. Chuma’s poor opinion of international law flows from his drawing an analogy between the international and national systems of law. This analogy is incorrect simply because legal authority is vertical in domestic societies and horizontal in the international order. In the domestic/vertical system there exists a clear hierarchy wherein the law is at a superior pedestal and its subjects the citizens are at a lower one. Obedience to the law is demanded and can be ensured by the use of organized violence upon which a state has a monopoly within its territorial boundaries.

Sovereign states who are the primary subjects of international law are co-equal by contrast and subordinate to no one. There is no central authority and no hierarchy in a system whose subjects themselves make the law which is why international law works on the principles of reciprocity and consensus. It is evident then that the operation of the law as most individuals are familiar with within a nation is not how the law will operate in between states internationally. What Jason has done is confuse the question of whether international law is law with the problem of the effectiveness of international law.

The idea that law is necessary for a stable existence free of chaos and anarchy may have been in dispute at the beginning of the 20th century but not today. Two devastating world wars and the recognition that there are problems which can’t be dealt with only nationally (communications, international trade, environment and refugees) have put to rest that dispute. Given increasing global interdependence and rapidly proliferating non state actors the role played by international law in providing stability and predictability becomes all the more vital.

It is true that international law can’t solve every problem. For instance situations where the very survival of a nation is at stake international law may indeed take a backseat. The truth is that violations of the law are just as rare in the international realm as they are in the domestic one. There has always however been little incentive to focus on how international law is largely complied with everyday. This is understandable given how ‘mundane’ matters which form the bulk of the business of international law lack the ‘sexiness’ inherent in issues involving great political questions. Hence issues ‘brought’ to the fore front are the rare breaches such as those involving national security or a nation’s independence. Such matters where rational decision making is often overwhelmed by passions and pride are the instances when international law is apt to be violated. Another factor that contributes to skepticism about international law is scale. In a domestic system the subjects of law number in the millions whereas internationally the number of states does not even exceed the 200. In such a scenario violations of international law are bound to be known immediately while some thousands of deaths occurring in a domestic system fade in a background that is vast enough to absorb such numbers. The violation of laws domestically is not however hailed as a failure of the system despite the fact that the state holds a supposed monopoly on violence. For no matter how good the laws are or how efficient enforcement is some measure of non compliance will always occur. Given how the international legal order does not have a world parliament, a world executive or a monopoly of force but yet it continues to influence state actions speaks volumes about its resilience and real existence.

Notwithstanding the structurally different nature of international law vis a vis domestic law, international law could not have staked a claim to being law if it was not adhered to by states as a matter of obligation. It is because states adhere to international law as a matter of obligation that it is different from international comity or international morality. Whilst the UNSC can theoretically act as a global executive which can sanction nations for violations of international law this rarely happens in practice owing to the need for such decisions to be unanimous. The lack of a unified system of sanctions however simply means that states resort to self help. The high end of the spectrum of actions encompassing self help includes the qualified exercise of armed force in select circumstances. It is the rare occasion though when states have to take that path. In most circumstances the element of reciprocity is a powerful means of ensuring compliance with international law since violations may bring short term gains but only at the cost of long term disadvantages. The failure to ensure diplomatic immunity for example would place the diplomats of the violating country at risk everywhere. Similarly seizing commercial possessions of foreign nationals unlawfully would not only invite similar counteraction but would also damage the prospects of foreign business coming to the nation in the future. States are more or less permanent entities which is why in the long run a nation benefits more from cooperative behaviour rather than confrontational behaviour. Hence the inducement for reasonable behaviour which is facilitated by the existence of a common vocabulary that international law provides.

Jason has focused on the role played by power in letting a nation do as it wishes and (as he says) avoiding the penalties for violation of the law (a contentious assertion as these penalties needn’t be material but can be loss of international standing the physical quantification of which is very tough). The more interesting theme Jason has missed is the role played by power in enabling the formulation of international law to suit the interests of major powers. A juxtaposition of law with power is flawed to the extent that the law is projected as being concerned solely with authority and not power. Law exists where there is an interlocking of authority with power. The idea that international law sustains the international political order is not unique to the early brand of Marxist international law. Marxists conceived international law as being just one of the many devices used by the ruling classes to further their ends. Even outside the Marxists it is widely accepted that law cannot exist in a vacuum. This is the reason why international law cannot simply be divorced from its socio-political origins which always influence it.

For it to be considered that international law just ‘exists’ out ‘there’ waiting to be objectively applied is quite farcical. Viewing international law as strictly rules is not incorrect but what is incorrect is to presume that rules are what international law exclusively and predominantly consists of. International law is not just authoritative decisions (rules) rather it is the whole decision making process by which rules are made. If this were not the case then international law could never adapt to a world with continually changing political conditions. Accepting that international law is not merely applied but rather that the framing of it involves making choices between claims with varying degrees of legal merit opens a Pandora’s Box. This is so since such a visualization of international law creates scope for the argument that international law is made in furtherance of extralegal ends.

For international law to have such a quality may well be perceived as a negative aspect by some. It could be attacked as a feature that allows states to engage in actions as they see fit using international law in an apologist manner that covers up for their deeds. Consider also however the positives. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) with its 5 permanent members is a frozen reflection of the international order as it existed at the conclusion of the Second World War. A failure of international law to reflect today’s changed dynamics is what can lead to rising powers refusing to abide by an order that isn’t flexible enough to accommodate them. When this happens the historical tendency for resolution of such a problem has been war. Contemporarily, China’s rapid rise has raised questions about whether the existing international legal order will prevail in the form it exists. How China chooses to continue to engage or not with the international legal regime may well determine the shape it assumes in the future. But for now the fact that no nation has till date opted to withdraw from the United Nations or substantially reject the principles of public international law is evidence that international law no matter how inefficiently it may be working, is working.

Himanil Raina is a B.A LL.B (Hons.) student at the NALSAR University of Law and a freelance writer on geopolitical and international affairs. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Global Analysis

Cyber Power: A Personal Theory of Power

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This essay by Billy Pope is part of the Personal Theories of Power series, a joint Bridge–CIMSEC project which asked a group of national security professionals to provide their theory of power and its application. We hope this launches a long and insightful debate that may one day shape policy.

Cyberspace is enabling new forms of communication, influence, awareness, and power for people around the world. Families use cyberspace to communicate face-to-face over great distances. Financial institutions execute global business and commodity trades at the speed of light through the cyberspace domain. The world’s citizens are granted unprecedented access to information, facilitating more awareness and understanding than at any time in history. Yet the same cooperative domain that fosters so much good for mankind also offers a tremendous source of power. The antithesis of the mutually beneficial electronic environment is a cyberspace where competition and fear overshadow collaboration. This conundrum, however, is not new. Hobbes, in his fundamental law of nature, warns, “That every man, ought to endeavour Peace, as farre as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek, and use, all helps and advantages of Warre.”[i] Cyberspace will continue to civilize. As the domain matures, however, so too will the forces that aim to use the cyberspace domain to project power.

Hobbes’ Leviathan





Before diving into the concept of cyber power, one must first frame the term power itself. Power, in its most basic form equates to might: the ability to compel a person or group to acquiesce through force. Thucydides captured this concept in his artful depiction of the Melian Dialog, penning the famous phrase, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”[ii] Hobbes, too, warned that power possessed is power to be used, suggesting every man lives in a state of constant competition with every other man.[iii] In this way, power is the ultimate arbiter, framing both what a man can do and what he should do in the same breath.

The close cousin to might is coercion. Thomas Schelling suggests “Coercion requires finding a bargain, arranging for him to be better off doing what we want — worse off not doing what we want — when he takes the threatened penalty into account.”[iv] Unlike a strategy centered on might, coercion requires insight. Military strategists and theorists who emerged from the Cold War coalesced around a single basic tenet of coercion: one must attempt to thoroughly understand an adversary before coercion can succeed.[v] Hearkening Sun Tzu’s notion that one must “know the enemy,” this community of great minds suggests in-depth analysis helps determine the bargaining chips in the coercion chess match.[vi]

Coercion is not limited to massive Cold War-styled conflicts. Non-state actors and other asymmetric threats may also be influenced through coercive strategies. Emile Simpson, in his book War From the Ground Up, infuses current counterinsurgency strategies with Aristotle’s concepts of logos, ethos, and pathos to distill the concepts of modern coercion.[vii] Simpson argues the vital importance of information as a source of power. He suggests the very definition of success in asymmetric conflicts is framed by one’s ability to compel an adversary to accept an imposed strategic narrative. Simpson writes, “In this sense, success or failure in war are perceived states in the minds of one’s intended audience.”[viii] In wars where annihilation cannot even be considered as a feasible strategy, one must win with ideas. Coercion offers a framework of thought that centers on this very approach.

Artist’s depiction of cyberspace, Feb 2011 via Cameroon’s Ministry of Defense





Why focus so much of an essay on cyber power theory to a lengthy discussion on traditional forms of power? Quite simply, cyber power is still just power at its core. Cyber power will not change the nature of war. Cyber power, at least in the foreseeable future, will not reorganize the international consortium of states, leaving the Westphalian system to flounder in a new electronic world order. Cyber power offers tremendous opportunities to enhance how people interact, cooperate, and even fight. It does not, however, make traditional forms of power obsolete.

Overzealous futurists exuberantly claim that cyber power is a game changer, saying things like, “Cyber war is real; it happens at the speed of light; it is global; it skips the battlefield; and, it has already begun.”[ix] The attuned strategist will peer through the chafe, realizing that cyber power offers new, innovative methods by which to project power. The same savvy practitioner will also appreciate that power and conflict are grounded in basic human requirements, psychology, and relationships. Neither Thucydides’ realist notions of fear, honor, and interests, nor Keohane’s collaborative concepts of cooperation and interconnectedness were developed with cyberspace in mind.[x] Cyberspace, and in turn any notion of cyber power, however, contains these concepts in troves.

What, then, is cyber power specifically? This author argues it takes two forms. First, cyber power extends and accentuates existing forms of military power. It helps shape the battlefield through intelligence collection and information operations. In some cases it facilitates military effects that were previously only achievable through kinetic means. Second, cyber power is a unique political instrument. Most military professionals are all too familiar with the elements of national power marched out during professional education courses: diplomatic, informational, military, and economic. Cyber power connects to each of these components but also offers new options. Stronger than diplomacy and sanctions, yet not to the level of Clausewitzean war, cyber power expands the spectrum of power projection available to policy-makers.

The Aviationist, March 2013





In its militaristic form, cyber power has proven its worth as an accoutrement to traditional military engagements. Two historical examples of air power employment serve as cases in point. When the United States repelled Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, the American Air Force disabled Iraq’s integrated air defense system by permanently destroying radar sites, anti-aircraft systems, and electrical switching stations.[xi] In 2007, the Israeli Air Force penetrated Syrian airspace en route to an alleged nuclear reactor at Dier-ez-Zor. Israeli pilots simply flew past Syria’s air defense systems undetected. While Israeli officials have never confirmed the details of this operation, it is widely accepted that a cyber attack blinded the air defense systems, achieving the desired effect, while preserving the systems and their associated personnel from physical destruction.[xii] By producing military effects, cyber power enhances more traditionally understood forms of power in terms of might and projection.

The second framework of cyber power, however, places more emphasis on the combination of interdependence and leverage than military might. In this way, the concept of coercion again takes center stage. The United States serves as an appropriate case study. America is the most technologically advanced nation on Earth. The U.S., after all, invented the Internet and gave rise to the framework for cyberspace. Until very recently, the United States maintained control over the mechanisms that form the central nervous system of the Internet and its interdependent connections.[xiii] This outright advantage, however, also translates into a serious vulnerability. The U.S. and other similarly connected nations are more dependent on cyberspace for normal societal functions like banking, municipal utilities, and interstate commerce.

Prominent powers are incentivized to exercise cyber power to achieve political effects while attempting to limit vulnerabilities to the same types of actions. Largely non-lethal and quite influential against nations that find themselves dependent upon the domain, cyber power offers attractive options. Some states will attempt more cooperative approaches to limit vulnerability, as Keohane’s post-hegemonic theoretical approach would suggest. At a minimum, capable entities will communicate their abilities to exert influence in the cyber domain to influence the strategic narrative Emile Simpson so aptly describes. The ability to project power in the cyber domain becomes an important source of influence alongside economic, military, informational, and diplomatic leverage. It is in this grand-strategic purview that cyber power holds the most potential.

The difference between these two aspects of cyber power is both strategic and philosophical. In the militaristic sense, cyber might conjures a Clausewitzean approach where engagements form the foundation of strategy and digital blood is the price of victory.[xiv] A strategy centered on coercion, leverage, and dependence, however, falls into the realm of Sun Tzu and Liddell Hart where perfect strategies involve very little actual confrontation on the way to achieving political objectives.[xv] Familiar in concept yet quite novel in execution, these two methods produce power where none previously existed. Both approaches, however, must be considered as parts of a greater whole that includes the full spectrum of power and political will. Cyber power is poignant and increasingly relevant, but it is not sufficient in and of itself.

While some soothsayers predict cyberspace will reshape the global landscape and the power structures that govern it, this author suggests otherwise. So long as people depend on the physical domains of air, land, and sea for basic survival needs, the physical powers used to protect these domains will remain relevant. That is not to say, however, that cyber power is flaccid. Nations that depend on cyberspace can be held at risk through the exploitation of cyber power for political effects. Whether through direct engagement or a more indirect approach, cyber power is capable of swaying political decisions in the same way others sources of power influence policy. Cyber power is a force to consider as military leaders and statesmen alike contemplate all dimensions of national power.

[i] Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Rev. student ed, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought (Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 92.

[ii] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, [Rev. ed, The Penguin Classics (Harmondsworth, Eng., Baltimore]: Penguin Books, 1972), 406.

[iii] Hobbes, Leviathan, 88.

[iv] Thomas C. Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 4.

[v] Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2nd ed (New York: Longman, 1999), 404; John J Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001), 338; Emile Simpson, War from the Ground up: Twenty-First Century Combat as Politics (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013), 206; Robert Anthony Pape, Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War, Cornell Studies in Security Affairs (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1996), 20. This list is not exhaustive, but is representative of the importance the community of scholars places on understanding one’s adversary.

[vi] Sun Tzu, The Illustrated Art of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 205.

[vii] Simpson, War from the Ground up, 202–203.

[viii] Simpson, War from the Ground up, 61.

[ix] Richard A. Clarke, Cyber War: The next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It, 1st ed (New York: Ecco, 2010), 30–31.

[x] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 20–21; Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, 1st Princeton classic ed, A Princeton Classic Edition (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2005), 243.

[xi] Michael R Gordon and Trainor, The Generals’ War: The inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), 112.

[xii] Charles W. Douglass, 21st Century Cyber Security: Legal Authorities and Requirements, Strategic Research Project (U.S. Army War College, March 22, 2012), 14.

[xiii] “NTIA Announces Intent to Transition Key Internet Domain Name Functions | NTIA,” accessed May 7, 2014, http://www.ntia.doc.gov/press-release/2014/ntia-announces-intent-transition-key-internet-domain-name-functions; “US Transitioning Internet DNS Control,” accessed May 20, 2014, http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2014/03/us-transitioning-internet-dns-control.

[xiv] Carl Von Clausewitz, Michael Howard, and Peter Paret, On War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 128, http://site.ebrary.com/id/10578581.

[xv] Basil Henry Liddell Hart, Strategy, 2nd rev. ed (New York, N.Y., U.S.A: Meridian, 1991), 324.

Beans Boots Bullets, Strategic Outlook, Theory

Defense Industrial Base: A Personal Theory of Power

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This essay is the third in the Personal Theories of Power series, a joint Bridge-CIMSEC project which asked a group of national security professionals to provide their theory of power and its application. We hope this launches a long and insightful debate that may one day shape policy.

Defense industrial base [hereafter “industrial base” or “defense industry”] issues are almost always discussed in a contextual vacuum — as if their history begins with World War II factories or with President Eisenhower’s 1961 warning of a growing industrial complex. But manufacturing materiel is as ancient as war itself. This essay attempts to first set a historical narrative for the defense industry and then to propose a theory of its power.

Marching through history

In 1528, Charles V of Spain hired a Genoese firm to supply and operate a fleet of galleys to help control the Italian coast. Due to their increased size and sophistication, the price of galleys grew. By 1570, this led his son Philip II to experiment with having court administrators operate seventy percent of Spain’s fleet. They failed to recruit experienced oarsmen or to provision equipment efficiently. The price of operating galleys doubled without any vessel improvements before the policy was reversed to private enterprise.[i]

In 1603, Charles’s grandson, Philip III paid 6.3 million ducats to Gonzalo Vaz Countinho, a private merchant, for 40 ships and 6,392 men. This eight year contract supplied Spain with its entire Atlantic fleet. Twenty-five years later, Philip IV contracted a Liège company to build cast-iron cannon and shot. By 1640, 1,171 canons and 250,000 shot were built. Until the end of the eighteenth century Spain was self-sufficient in iron guns.[ii]

Contracting was not limited to the House of Habsburg. Governments have always relied on industry to provide materiel. It is not surprising then that in Michael Howard’s classic War in European History private enterprise plays a prominent role. Knights, mercenaries, merchants, and technologists shaped the history of Europe and thus its wars.[iii]

An industry is born

For centuries supply caravans traveled with armies and small, decentralized, enterprises such as blacksmiths were ubiquitous. To profit, merchants repurposed equipment on commercial markets. Other proprietors assumed financial loss for military titles or, when victorious, profited from the spoils of war.[iv]

The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) changed the scale of conflict and the materiel required to conduct it. At last there were “large-scale profits to be made” from the “business of war”.[v] In Genoa, Hamburg, and Amsterdam centers comprised of weapons manufacturers emerged alongside merchants that specialized in capital, financing, and market access. A multinational arms industry was born that “cut across not just national, but confessional, and indeed military boundaries.”[vi]

Berlin based Splitgerber & Daum was one firm born from this system. Formed in 1712, its two proprietors began as commissioned agents. They raised capital to supply munitions first to local arsenals in Saxony and eventually the Prussian army itself. Their growth can be attributed to an early observation: that success in their business “could be achieved only within the framework of a strictly organized mercantilist economy.”[vii] Patriotism became a marketing tool.

By 1722, Splitgerber & Daum was manufacturing “gun barrels, swords, daggers, and bayonets” at Spandau and assembling guns at Potsdam.[viii] By mid-century it was a conglomerate. Frederick the Great, unlike his grandfather the “mercenary king,” was not an admirer of contractors. But after the Seven Years’ War ended in 1763 he guaranteed the company a “regular flow of government orders” as long as it remained loyal to Prussian interests.[ix] He understood that in order to “raise Prussia to the status of great power required the services of merchants, manufacturers, and bankers.”[x]

Pouvoirs régaliens

Twenty-six years later, the French Revolution would change Europe. Until then, states were the property of absolute sovereigns; after they became “instruments of powerful forces dedicated to such abstract concepts as Liberty, Nationality, or Revolution.”[xi] As the nature of the State changed, so did its wars. French armies were now comprised of conscripts. In 1794, France attempted a planned economy. It reasoned that if people could be conscripted so could resources. The experiment failed due to inefficiency; manufacturing reverted back to private enterprise before the year’s end.

Battle of Waterloo by William Sadler

Industry would flourish during the Napoleonic Wars. From 1783 to 1815 two thirds of Britain’s naval tonnage was produced by private shipyards. And the Royal Navy began to experiment with managing industry. It sacrificed deals with large lower-cost providers to bolster small contractors that it considered to be more flexible. In the nineteenth century, the birth of nations launched state industries: private, but British shipyards; private, but German steelmakers.

Krupp would embody this development. Founded in 1811 in Essen (by then Prussia), it would first develop steel. By 1851 it became the primary provider of Prussian arms and, after German unification, the country’s preeminent defense firm. By 1902, Krupp managed the shipyards in Kiel, produced Nassau-class dreadnought armor, and employed 40,000 people.[xii]

Defense Industrial Base Power

Defense industries evolved from distributed providers, to unaligned enterprises, and finally to state-managed industries. They became consortiums of private or government-owned entities that translate the natural, economic, and human capital resources of a state into materiel.[xiii]

Krupp’s steel plant in Essen as captured during The Great War

World War II stretched this logic to its absolute; all state resources were translated into the machinery of war. In 1940 the US only built 2,900 bombers and fighters; by 1944 it built 74,000 on the back of industry. From 1941 until the war’s end 2,711 Liberty ships were built; welded together from 250,000 parts, which were manufactured all over the country. And from 1942 to 1946, 49,324 Sherman tanks were built by 11 separate companies such as Ford and American Locomotive — built by the “arsenal of democracy.”[xiv]

After the war, all countries began to balance national security objectives with resources via defense industrial base policies. A country’s industrial base capability could be measured as a combination of its scope (how many different cross-domain technologies it could develop), scale (at what quantity), and quality (battlefield performance).

The path to independence

National resources limit capability. Less capable countries are more dependent on allies than more capable ones (see Figure 1). As countries develop an industrial base their level of dependence decreases, but never goes away. This can be best understood through industry itself. Prime contractors rely on their supply chains. But a widget supplier is more dependent on its customer, than its customer is on it.

Figure 1: Interdependence in the International System

Reflects a manufacturing view of the defense industrial base. Information technology capabilities (i.e., data PED or cyber) have made industrial base capabilities more accessible to smaller countries with less national resources. How this impacts the curve or a nation’s independence is worth further exploration.

 

Industry developed a science for managing the inherent risk of dependence — supply chain management. However, corporate practices do not translate to international politics. Country A may find new allies; Country B may seek to act on its own. And all countries shift along the curve depending on their level of investment.

For example, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have invested into defense since the first Gulf War. They are now capable of “manufacturing and modernizing military vehicles, communication systems, aerial drones, and more.”[xv] Through offset agreements and foreign partnerships they have acquired “advanced defense industrial knowledge and technology” and are expected to rely on their “own manpower and arms production capabilities to address national security needs” by 2030.[xvi]

To borrow from Henry John Temple — Britain’s Prime Minister from 1859 to 1865 — in the international system, states have temporary friends, but permanent interests.[xvii] Over time, it is thus in the interest of each country to increase its independence by investing into defense capabilities (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Ability to Achieve Political Objectives Over Time

Without such investment, Country Z capabilities erode. Country Y may attempt to sustain its capabilities, but as other countries develop new technologies, sustainment also leads to capability erosion. Only countries that invest into industrial bases over time are able to achieve political objectives independently.

One more supper

The United States has never shown, over a sustained period of time, “a coherent long-term strategy for maintaining a healthy domestic defense industry.”[xviii] American defense budgets are cyclical; they have contracted after every war. Every time, the Pentagon intervened with reactionary strategies to manage industry. And each time, as one former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense noted, the Pentagon got it wrong.[xix]

This was most evident in 1993 when the Pentagon held a dinner, known as the “Last Supper,” with top defense executives. It told them that after the Cold War, America no longer needed nor could it afford the same volume of materiel. But it left it up to industry to decide its overcapacity problem. Industry began to consolidate, based on rational business sense, but not a national strategy.

The 1990s were focused on consolidation, commercialization, and dual-use technology. Today, as budgets are again tightened, new strategies such as increased competition and international expansion have emerged. This may help save some companies, but how will it impact our ability to act independently over time?

In 2003, after decades of following a similar industrial base approach, the UK realized that it no longer had the design expertise to complete development of its Astute-class nuclear submarine.[xx] And in 2010 the UK’s Strategic Defence and Security Review, by listing the capabilities it will have, spelled out what it can no longer accomplish independently. Although the UK received American support for its submarine, what would happen if it did not?

As the US argues over budgets or program cuts, a theory of defense industrial base power could help set priorities. Commercial diversification or international expansion are tactics by which defense firms gain new revenues to save themselves in a downturn. We need a national defense industrial base strategy to maintain our capability for independent action.

[i] Parrott, David. The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military Revolution in Early Modern Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Howard, Michael. War in European History. New York: Oxford University Press. 1976.

[iv] Parker, Geoffrey. The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West, 1500-1800 (2nd Edition). Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1996.

[v] Parrot, The Business of War.

[vi] Howard, War in European History.

[vii] Henderson, W.O. Studies in the Economic Policy of Frederick the Great. Oxon: Routledge. 1963.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] Clark, Christopher. Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 2006.

[x] Henderson, Studies in the Economic Policy.

[xi] Howard, War in European History.

[xii] James, Harold. Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2012.

[xiii] Peck, Merton J. and Frederic Scherer M. The Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economic Analysis. Boston. Harvard University. 1962.

[xiv] Gansler, Jacques S. Democracy’s Arsenal: Creating a Twenty-First-Century Defense Industry. Cambridge. The MIT Press. 2011.

[xv] Saab, Bilal Y. “Arms and Influence in the Gulf: Riyadh and Abu Dhabi Get to Work.” Foreign Affairs, accessed May 5, 2014.

[xvi] Ibid.

[xvii] Gartzke, Erik and Alex Weisiger. “Permanent Friends? Dynamic Difference and the Democratic Peace.” International Studies Quarterly (2012): 1-15

[xviii] Harrison, Todd and Barry Watts D. “Sustaining Critical Sectors of the U.S. Defense Industrial Base.” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. 2011.

[xix] Marshall C. Tyrone Jr. “Pentagon Revamps Approach to Industrial Base, Official Says.” American Forces Press Service. February, 20 2013, accessed May 16, 2013.

[xx] Harrison, Sustaining Critical Sectors.

Theory

The Cognitive Domain

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This essay, provided by Lt Col Dave “Sugar” Lyle, USAF, is part of the Personal Theories of Power series, a joint Bridge–CIMSEC project which asked a group of national security professionals to provide their theory of power and its application. We hope this launches a long and insightful debate that may one day shape policy.

Complimentary mental models hold the social world together. It’s not the lines painted on the road that keep us from careening into each other on the highway, as we sadly find out too often. Paper money has no intrinsic value on its own, unless you like the pictures and holograms, are trying to starting a fire, need a bookmark, or have just run out of toilet paper. Online credit purchases do not even require the plastic card anymore, and only work because we collectively believe that strings of ones and zeros — stored electronically in computers that we’ll never see — equal our right to receive services and things from other people, and keep them. In all of these cases, it’s not about the symbolic artifact. Our agreements about what those artifacts represent, and our willingness to act on those beliefs, are what keep the wheels of society turning.

If it’s true that the plot of every story in the world can be reduced to trying to answer the question “Who am I?”, then it speaks volumes about the importance of identity to human beings.

Our brains are hard wired to socialize; to find personal meaning in the groups we belong to and the groups we interact with. If there’s a group, we instinctively figure out if we belong to it and what our place is in the pecking order. We usually try to maintain or improve our position in the hierarchy, even if it’s only within a subgroup we identify with. And to do so, we simultaneously cooperate and compete with others, usually both at the same time.

If it’s true that the plot of every story in the world can be reduced to trying to answer the question “Who am I?”, then it speaks volumes about the importance of identity to human beings. In fact, our brains process things that we associate with our own identity in different ways than we process things that we see as being “other”. We have a very hard time rationally questioning anything that becomes part of who or what we imagine ourselves to be.

But how do we know what is “us”, and who or what is “other”?

We make up stories to set the boundaries. We love stories, and literally can’t live socially without them. The basis of our shared mental models, we encode our stories in metaphors, in ceremonial rituals, in songs, in books and films, and in various physical artifacts that help us to remember and communicate both the stories and their meaning. We use the stories as guides for social interaction, and we rewrite them over time to incorporate new experiences. Stories help us understand where we’ve been, and set the direction for collective effort in the future. They are our guideposts for understanding and negotiating ever changing social landscapes, and for accepting our roles within them. Because we have stories, we have identity, we learn to specialize, and we learn to work together for mutual benefit, creating far better lives together than we could ever possibly experience separately.

We only think we’re in charge of what we believe, and that we deliberately control our own decisions through conscious, rational thought.

And here’s the real kicker. We only think we’re in charge of what we believe, and that we deliberately control our own decisions through conscious, rational thought. What really happens is that a multitude of mental submodels — most of which we’re not even aware of — compete for control of our conscious attention, and the domination of our decisions. The idea of unconscious thought influencing the conscious is nothing new — the Greeks were talking about it thousands of years ago. But what is new, as we learn more about the neurobiological foundations of our cognitive processes, is how little control we actually have over our own thoughts most of the time. “Gut feel” intuition usually trumps the pure, unbiased processes of reason that we like to credit ourselves for, but seldom employ in practice — but that’s not always a bad thing. So how does this work inside the mind itself?

Heuristics  — the “rules of thumb” built in our brains through combinations of conscious and unconscious encoding — are really combinations of associated and connected mental submodels that are called up in specific contexts. Formed from the bottom up over time, ideas and memory literally emerge from countless physical structures in our brain building and interacting through electrochemical processes. With the numbers of neurons in our brains estimated to be in excess of 500 billion, the combinatory possibilities of brain processes are even greater than the known numbers of stars in the universe. To add to the complexity, nature and nurture combine as co-creative forces, ensuring that no two brains are ever alike, even if the basic structures are similar. The true “Great Unknown” can be found in the space between our ears…

But the human mind isn’t completely unknowable either. As Joseph Campbell observed, the same myths are constantly reinvented over the millennia because basic human nature — and the basic cognitive heuristics that form it — is universal across ages and cultures. An intuitive understanding of this has been the key to success for generations of generals, politicians, illusionists, and con artists, giving them the power to predict and shape human behavior. But now, through neuroscience and neurobiology, we’re finally starting to better understand the underlying biochemical processes that were at work the whole time.

The knowledge of identity stories — and the history of how they came to be — is crucial to building your own mental model of other people’s mental models.

Imagine all of those competing mental submodels as if they were Lotto balls, tumbling around in the hopper of our brains, competing to be selected as the winning ball at the top of conscious attention. Now imagine that all of those balls are connected to the other balls in various ways by small, invisible strings, with different degrees of connection and strength. If you could grab specific balls and strings, in specific sequences, you’d have a better chance of influencing which balls make it to the top of the hopper to be selected. You may not know exactly which one will be the winner, but your odds of predicting it are much better if you know something about how those balls are connected together, and how they interact. It works the same way with interconnected memories, ideas, and feelings: “cognitive priming” activates specific mental heuristics at specific times, for better or for worse. The knowledge of identity stories — and the history of how they came to be — is crucial to building your own mental model of other people’s mental models. It’s this “Theory of Mind” we use every day to negotiate and modify the heuristic driven social landscape, as we seek to shape it in ways that favor us.

Except it’s not always that easy. Sometimes the stories don’t match up. Sometimes we disagree about who is in our group, who gets to have what, who gets to tell others what to do, and what should happen if we disagree on these things. We try to define the boundaries with artifacts that evoke the stories. We write laws and codes. We wear uniforms, and issue IDS and badges. We buy power ties, $50,000 wristwatches, and $500,000 cars to cement our place in the social strata. Then we use these stories and artifacts to reinforce our place and our “rights” within the social system. We plead. We cajole. We flatter. We threaten. And finally, we fight.

We fight when our primitive brain senses that something is threatening our physical survival. We fight when something threatens our identity or place in the pecking order, and occasionally we fight over things peripheral to survival and identity that do not threaten the first two. We fight over fear, honor, and interest, as Thucydides observed, and we usually do it in that order. And when we fight, we often equate the ability to maim and kill as having power.

But killing really isn’t the point when it comes to power. While it’s true that killing someone else is a way to exercise power, and a way to prevent someone else from exerting power over you, power is much more about influencing their mental models of the people who you don’t kill, in order to drive the continuing social interaction in directions that you favor. As Thomas Shelling once said, it’s usually much more useful to have the ability to kill someone than it is to actually do it. And as he also said, it’s the loser who determines when the fighting stops, not the winner.

it’s usually much more useful to have the ability to kill someone than it is to actually do it…it’s the loser who determines when the fighting stops, not the winner.

So how does the loser accept the new reality? They rewrite their story in ways that rescue their personal and social identity. A temporary stability can be maintained under the threat of future sanction and violence, but when peace follows war, it happens because the stories of the victor and vanquished have become complimentary enough that the loser can not only answer the “What am I?” question with honor, but perhaps more importantly, “What can I become?” favorably under the new status quo.

Using knowledge of the basic human cognitive processes, and the stories that define people’s identity — to take actions that convince others to change their stories, identities, and actions in ways that accommodate yours, accepting your story as their own in the ultimate exercise — is called POWER.