1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:10,040 Q Thank you very much. Yes, indeed. I think it's the issue of cities and conflict is as relevant today as it was perhaps 5000, 2 00:00:10,190 --> 00:00:15,180 5016 years ago when, you know, if I remember my history lessons well, 3 00:00:15,330 --> 00:00:22,020 you know, as you know, the whole written history began when as we've become in cities, we're fighting for control of each other. 4 00:00:22,650 --> 00:00:26,940 And the city state was was the rule of the day in that in that region. 5 00:00:27,810 --> 00:00:36,990 And 5000, 16 years later, I think cities still haunt us as kind of daunting areas for operations, security, 6 00:00:36,990 --> 00:00:45,569 conflict and puzzles policy makers in in how to apply force in those in those areas be 7 00:00:45,570 --> 00:00:50,880 that military is or as you said and or the low intensity more non-state armed groups. 8 00:00:53,040 --> 00:01:03,870 Units. So for law enforcement agencies urban security missions often means leaving their comfort zones in hyper violent cities of Central America, 9 00:01:04,050 --> 00:01:05,700 Mexico, Brazil, Colombia. 10 00:01:05,910 --> 00:01:12,810 Police forces are quickly deployed to counter sudden surges in armed violence by well-equipped and organised criminal groups. 11 00:01:13,380 --> 00:01:17,520 For military forces, the main challenge of cities has been, until very recently, 12 00:01:17,520 --> 00:01:25,440 how to increase the lethality of soldiers in order to increase both their speed and deterrence capability in those areas. 13 00:01:26,100 --> 00:01:30,570 The difficulties of the urban environment for state combatants is legendary. 14 00:01:30,990 --> 00:01:38,280 Despite the military surge for this increased speed and mortality dense and chaotic, sprawling developing world, 15 00:01:38,280 --> 00:01:46,950 cities have often defeated modern armies in a comprehensive study of urban warfare by the U.S. Strategic Studies Institute in 2011. 16 00:01:47,280 --> 00:01:52,650 The urban is described as an unhappy domain of armed forces. 17 00:01:52,980 --> 00:01:57,210 Are army companies or rifle companies fighting to take control of city blocks 18 00:01:58,050 --> 00:02:03,390 usually take an average of 30 to 40% of casualties during a 12 hour fight. 19 00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:08,459 So such casualties, such level of casualties and stress, usually random. 20 00:02:08,460 --> 00:02:12,600 This compound is completely unusable after these fights. 21 00:02:14,010 --> 00:02:14,700 Despite that, 22 00:02:14,700 --> 00:02:23,550 strategic thinking about cities has been rare and some of the efforts made to understand how modern armies could fit their increasingly heavy tanks. 23 00:02:23,790 --> 00:02:30,630 RoboCop, like soldiers and their heavy calibre weapons into city streets, have relied on the promise of technology. 24 00:02:31,170 --> 00:02:35,400 So in 1999, the U.S. Army began an urban warrior program. 25 00:02:35,790 --> 00:02:44,130 The name kind of says it all. It's about the transformation of the current infantry soldier into a truly lethal urban warrior. 26 00:02:44,310 --> 00:02:47,790 Equal parts men and a machine. I'm quoting that directly from them. 27 00:02:48,690 --> 00:02:55,110 Since then, of course, the emphasis is on fabulous technologies such as integrated helmet, assembly, subsystems, 28 00:02:55,380 --> 00:03:01,410 thermal weapons sites and unmanned ground vehicles has greatly diminished in strategic documents on cities. 29 00:03:01,950 --> 00:03:10,350 Recent urban engagements in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria had been, as I said, as unpredictable and destructive as always. 30 00:03:10,980 --> 00:03:19,950 The Urban Warrior Program from the 1990s did nothing to change the famous pattern of militaries avoiding urban warfare as much as possible, 31 00:03:20,670 --> 00:03:26,520 especially since the World War Two, the conduct of so-called military operations in urban terrain. 32 00:03:26,700 --> 00:03:30,410 And will you? I don't know if they see this mode or mode. 33 00:03:30,450 --> 00:03:34,080 UTI is due marked by failures or disastrous victories. 34 00:03:34,410 --> 00:03:44,549 The U.S. Strategic Studies Institute reminds us that the French victory in Algiers after happened after widespread human rights violations there, 35 00:03:44,550 --> 00:03:51,480 and the growth in the Russian victory in Grozny happened after the Russians basically destroyed the entire city and depopulated it. 36 00:03:52,800 --> 00:03:56,760 So perhaps we haven't learned much, much in this past 5000 years. 37 00:03:57,780 --> 00:04:02,129 So far, there's not much in the way of changing character of war in my presentation. 38 00:04:02,130 --> 00:04:08,670 So in order to win my free lunch, I should probably start to see what is really, really changing. 39 00:04:09,510 --> 00:04:15,740 And I do think that the role of cities as sites of armed conflict is changing and increasing. 40 00:04:16,710 --> 00:04:25,920 And I think if you have been looking to the whole, you know, recent literature on urban fragility, urban law enforcement and urban armed forces, 41 00:04:26,280 --> 00:04:35,280 use of armed forces, I think if it is a consensus that cities are increasingly important for for for all these sectors. 42 00:04:35,820 --> 00:04:38,880 So I think this stems from the developing world. 43 00:04:39,210 --> 00:04:44,130 Urbanising at unprecedented speed and in unprecedentedly chaotic fashion, 44 00:04:44,550 --> 00:04:51,300 developing countries will concentrate almost all of the two and a half billion new urban dwellers expected by 2050. 45 00:04:51,810 --> 00:04:59,790 Africa that is beset by various types of armed conflict, will see three fold increase in its urban population by 2050. 46 00:05:00,690 --> 00:05:05,820 Some fragile and conflict afflicted countries are already struggling to implement governance 47 00:05:06,060 --> 00:05:11,070 and manage the demands of metropolitan citizens will be at the forefront of this trend. 48 00:05:11,400 --> 00:05:18,780 Nigeria, DRC, the global population living in slums, will grow by 500 million people by 2030. 49 00:05:19,590 --> 00:05:27,000 Both local authorities and top level strategic thinkers have had to address this challenge of unmanaged growth in recent years. 50 00:05:27,480 --> 00:05:32,880 Protracted violence has become an increasing feature in the sprawling urban areas of the developing world. 51 00:05:33,360 --> 00:05:40,950 Latin America, which has had an early urbanisation process, now has 41 of the world's 50 most violent cities, 52 00:05:41,100 --> 00:05:44,850 according to a ranking that came out just last week by a mexican NGO. 53 00:05:45,690 --> 00:05:52,110 The tools applied to fight organised crime and cities have moved disturbingly into paramilitary territory. 54 00:05:52,410 --> 00:06:00,690 Honduras has created a military police force. Mexico has created its gendarmerie, which is also a kind of paramilitary style force. 55 00:06:00,930 --> 00:06:05,969 Guatemala has created hybrid military civilian task forces. 56 00:06:05,970 --> 00:06:12,990 Rio has its military police. Military thinkers have also tried to freeze urban complexity head on. 57 00:06:13,350 --> 00:06:19,080 The U.S. Army, in a notable change from the Urban Warrior Project of the late 1990s, 58 00:06:19,200 --> 00:06:25,590 is now conducting a mega-city instead study project, which draws heavily from urban studies. 59 00:06:25,740 --> 00:06:28,530 And to some extent, law enforcement and criminology. 60 00:06:30,840 --> 00:06:38,610 Emphasising emphasise the context of the urban environment so that the different elements, the non-military elements that compose the cities. 61 00:06:38,970 --> 00:06:43,799 Indeed, one military thinker actually from Australia who criticised the U.S. Army's study 62 00:06:43,800 --> 00:06:48,210 on megacities is that it was too narrow and instead called for the inclusion of, 63 00:06:48,570 --> 00:06:53,459 quote, military history, human geography, sociology, city planning, architectural design, 64 00:06:53,460 --> 00:06:58,740 municipal management procedures, criminology, policing, and the employment of emergency services, unquote. 65 00:06:59,520 --> 00:07:04,920 The point that is relevant for our purposes is that the character of urban armed conflict is changing. 66 00:07:05,730 --> 00:07:14,520 Militaries and armies in particular are learning that facing irregular non-state forces in dense grids of narrow streets is too costly, 67 00:07:14,820 --> 00:07:18,060 costly and usually not sustainable in the long term. 68 00:07:19,200 --> 00:07:26,490 At the same time, the convergence of rapid urbanisation and state weakness has created ample space for ingrown threats, 69 00:07:26,670 --> 00:07:31,410 such as the criminal groups that are born and raised in the urban territories, which they now challenge. 70 00:07:32,730 --> 00:07:39,960 That is what Robert Muga, an academic on urban fragility in Rio, calls endemic urban violence. 71 00:07:40,560 --> 00:07:46,290 I would add that alongside criminal groups such as the Harley School Cartel in Mexico or the rat command in Rio, 72 00:07:46,560 --> 00:07:52,140 endemic violence is also erupting in other contexts, such as, for instance, peacekeeping missions, 73 00:07:52,350 --> 00:07:58,559 which have been consistently challenged by gangs, militias and insurgent groups in environments such as Mogadishu, 74 00:07:58,560 --> 00:08:03,570 in Somalia, Burundi, in the Central African Republic, and Port-Au-Prince in Haiti. 75 00:08:04,830 --> 00:08:10,830 Although these forms of endemic violence vary tremendously in their routes, character and dynamics, 76 00:08:11,100 --> 00:08:20,820 they have displayed a tendency for urban forms of armed conflict to resist pressure by militaries and paramilitary paramilitary forces alike. 77 00:08:21,480 --> 00:08:28,110 Authorities are finding themselves more and more tied to the nitty gritty use of robust urban security responsibilities. 78 00:08:28,770 --> 00:08:36,540 Cities have increasingly been caught in a cycle of low intensity conflict that has frequently blurred the distinctions between warfare, 79 00:08:36,750 --> 00:08:42,900 peacekeeping and law enforcement. Although I am not saying that the three are equal, they are different. 80 00:08:44,160 --> 00:08:51,210 On one hand, armed forces from the Americans in Iraq to peacekeepers in Mogadishu have learned the difficult way 81 00:08:51,390 --> 00:08:57,600 that cities is still stubbornly defying the strategic assumptions at the core of these agencies. 82 00:08:57,810 --> 00:09:03,990 So cat and mouse games, instead of the size of victory, confusing urban battles against gangs and militias, 83 00:09:03,990 --> 00:09:07,950 that of peacekeeping and equally confusing urban battles against gangs and militias. 84 00:09:07,950 --> 00:09:09,630 Instead of classic law enforcement. 85 00:09:10,650 --> 00:09:19,710 With the protracted character that urban conflict has taken, using force in cities becomes not only an operational issue, but a strategic one. 86 00:09:20,250 --> 00:09:28,290 That is an important distinction. Urban warfare operations are often undertaken both by military or local civilian forces, 87 00:09:28,590 --> 00:09:33,900 with a view on achieving the defeat of an opponent within the shortest possible amount of time, 88 00:09:34,350 --> 00:09:41,640 especially given the costs of this type of operation and the unpopular character of force deployment in densely populated areas. 89 00:09:42,480 --> 00:09:50,340 The medium to long term reality is that armed violence and conflict tend to spread out through a considerable amount of time, 90 00:09:50,550 --> 00:09:56,190 often irrespective of the success or lack thereof of any particular security operation. 91 00:09:57,330 --> 00:10:00,049 So think of Fallujah. That was. In Iraq. 92 00:10:00,050 --> 00:10:08,180 That was the setting of not one but two costly battles for the U.S. Army just to be taken years later by the Islamic State. 93 00:10:08,780 --> 00:10:11,840 Think of security operations in Mexico, Central America, Brazil, 94 00:10:12,020 --> 00:10:16,909 where the deployment of military and paramilitary forces underwent anarchy from 95 00:10:16,910 --> 00:10:22,280 exceptional to permanent measures in the propensity for cities to prolong armed violence. 96 00:10:22,460 --> 00:10:26,930 Calls for a broader view of cities as sites of security policies. 97 00:10:26,960 --> 00:10:30,710 It requires a strategic view and is not just missing it. 98 00:10:30,980 --> 00:10:39,470 John Sullivan, our Los Angeles career police officer and counterterrorism expert, suggested in 2011 a theory of urban strategy. 99 00:10:39,890 --> 00:10:43,730 This is something that remarkably is absent from both policy and academic documents. 100 00:10:44,930 --> 00:10:53,390 Strategies for specific aspects of global security landscape have been put forward regarding the air, the sea and more recently, the cyber domain. 101 00:10:53,510 --> 00:11:00,050 My my institute itself has released a book recently on strategy for Cyber Power. 102 00:11:00,350 --> 00:11:04,190 So there are strategies for many domains of of of armed force. 103 00:11:04,850 --> 00:11:11,540 However, the development of an urban strategic thinking has been hampered by the heterogeneous character of armed conflict in cities, 104 00:11:11,720 --> 00:11:15,020 which can vary a lot as as I have just, just said. 105 00:11:15,830 --> 00:11:23,930 And also, both military and law enforcement forces have had few incentives to strategically think about protracted conflicts in cities, 106 00:11:24,290 --> 00:11:31,730 because both of them saw the urban conflicts as being outside of the remit or outside of their areas of interest. 107 00:11:33,350 --> 00:11:41,690 However, things are changing. In 2010, 2002, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff launched its first ever Joint Urban Operations Doctrine, 108 00:11:42,320 --> 00:11:49,460 and the Brazilian Army published a few years ago an operational and doctrinal document on what it calls guaranteeing law and order, 109 00:11:49,880 --> 00:11:55,010 after it became clear that deployments to sprawling slums would not disappear anytime soon. 110 00:11:56,630 --> 00:12:03,260 A strategic view on cities means a view somewhat distanced from individual, short term policy objectives. 111 00:12:04,040 --> 00:12:07,790 Even if you consider urban security purely through the military dimension, 112 00:12:08,210 --> 00:12:11,570 something that even the purely military studies are trying to get away from, 113 00:12:11,580 --> 00:12:13,760 but even if you consider it purely military, 114 00:12:14,030 --> 00:12:21,080 then looking at specific short term deployments would technically constitute a tactical or the best an operational view. 115 00:12:24,560 --> 00:12:29,629 And indeed, this is how multiple official doctrinal documents released with an urban focus have defined 116 00:12:29,630 --> 00:12:35,150 themselves as operational guidelines or exploratory documents for operating cities. 117 00:12:35,750 --> 00:12:41,930 That again, brings us back to the historical inheritance of urban thinking cities as alien, 118 00:12:41,930 --> 00:12:47,809 hostile and frequently dystopian environments where a heavily armed force should 119 00:12:47,810 --> 00:12:52,640 be carefully introduced and withdrawn as quickly and surgically as possible. 120 00:12:53,480 --> 00:12:58,820 This view looks at the urban context as a necessary evil in order to avoid operational 121 00:12:58,820 --> 00:13:04,040 mishaps or a repeat of the Russian disaster in Grozny or the American one in Mogadishu. 122 00:13:05,390 --> 00:13:14,570 So the alternative to an operational and short term view of cities requires less emphasis on the adversary, the kinetic aspect of operations. 123 00:13:14,720 --> 00:13:20,780 If you want to go tactical and more on urban dimension, in this case the urban strategic dimension, 124 00:13:21,410 --> 00:13:26,899 it is remarkable how some really in-depth studies are conducted by think tanks, 125 00:13:26,900 --> 00:13:36,050 military or otherwise, ignore the focus on cities as systems, which has been perhaps prevailing view of cities since at least the 1950s. 126 00:13:37,520 --> 00:13:42,469 I will go through the cities as systems framework a little bit and then explain how I 127 00:13:42,470 --> 00:13:49,460 see it fitting within my ideas of utility of force in urban strategic environments. 128 00:13:50,480 --> 00:13:52,250 So these systems approach, as I said, 129 00:13:52,250 --> 00:14:03,080 kicked off in the fifties and sixties when systems and other fuels like became sexy and popular within biology and cybernetics and others. 130 00:14:03,560 --> 00:14:11,900 As one recent review of the issue by the University College London puts it, cities fit the systems characterisation admirably. 131 00:14:12,290 --> 00:14:18,559 So the traditional approach of looking at policies there through a structural focus on organising the physical space in a 132 00:14:18,560 --> 00:14:27,920 linear way gave way to the systems framework a more fragile and complex entity that requires more subtle interventions. 133 00:14:28,430 --> 00:14:33,920 At this basic. At its basic, this approach looks at cities as composed of sets of patterns, 134 00:14:34,730 --> 00:14:41,090 of three sets of elements tied together through sets of interactions held together by feedback patterns. 135 00:14:41,780 --> 00:14:45,530 So think of spatial connections like burrows linked by traffic. 136 00:14:45,740 --> 00:14:50,980 But also many studies have proposed systems of innovation, systems of human capital, 137 00:14:50,990 --> 00:14:55,070 systems of employment and so on, all within the broader urban system. 138 00:14:56,360 --> 00:14:59,110 But security has been absent from this debate. My. 139 00:14:59,660 --> 00:15:06,580 Just why that is so is that security strategy is usually considered within the national levels of policymaking. 140 00:15:06,910 --> 00:15:08,830 The powers that be, if you will. 141 00:15:09,370 --> 00:15:18,339 An example is that the minds of the people as it organises some of the world's largest defence and security conferences and local policymakers, 142 00:15:18,340 --> 00:15:26,830 local decision makers are usually absent from these debates, and I think that it they should be included. 143 00:15:27,580 --> 00:15:29,680 But as I said, this is this is starting to change. 144 00:15:29,950 --> 00:15:37,450 John de Boer, the United Nations University, has been vocal about the inclusion of a systems lens to interpret urban policies, 145 00:15:37,660 --> 00:15:44,140 especially for the context of fragile or post-conflict countries, which of course, are of high urgency for the U.N. 146 00:15:45,700 --> 00:15:50,230 This lens is a starting point for an understanding of the urban strategic environment. 147 00:15:50,770 --> 00:15:55,239 Systems models for cities can be applied and in fact have been applied several times to 148 00:15:55,240 --> 00:16:01,840 display or test shifts of each node within the system in response to different inputs. 149 00:16:02,350 --> 00:16:06,460 It is also useful to better understand the drivers and dynamics of change. 150 00:16:06,910 --> 00:16:11,290 Let's think of fluid and dynamic contexts of violence, 151 00:16:11,290 --> 00:16:17,020 where the balance of power between actors change relationships like alliances and enmities change. 152 00:16:17,290 --> 00:16:23,230 The amount of manpower, vehicles, equipments that view the policymaker have might fluctuate. 153 00:16:23,830 --> 00:16:29,770 And system perspective. Sorry, a system perspective puts change at the core of its policy analysis. 154 00:16:30,100 --> 00:16:36,040 The whole point of systems is that its elements are constantly interacting and influencing each other through feedback. 155 00:16:36,640 --> 00:16:42,700 In fact, one of the recent trends in the whole systems debate is that cities are in fact not in equilibrium, 156 00:16:42,850 --> 00:16:47,680 but frequently in the equilibrium and actually, or at least far from a perfect equilibrium. 157 00:16:48,640 --> 00:16:53,620 The main point for now is that a systems perspective helps us understand the 158 00:16:53,620 --> 00:16:57,820 different elements of a complex environment and the relationships between them. 159 00:16:59,230 --> 00:17:05,560 So now I want to lay out briefly what I see as a strategic environment, since I'm talking about an urban strategic environment. 160 00:17:06,100 --> 00:17:09,910 Here I also build a pre-existing literature, of course, from strategic studies. 161 00:17:10,780 --> 00:17:14,200 In reading some of this literature with systems and urban plans. 162 00:17:14,440 --> 00:17:20,890 I kind of saw how the two are indeed similar in many ways. 163 00:17:20,950 --> 00:17:28,510 Strategy and systems strategies usually viewed as a relation of subject, and as Sir Laurence Friedman puts it in a great recent book. 164 00:17:29,050 --> 00:17:34,870 It's about maintaining a balance between ends. Ways and means alongside objectives and methods. 165 00:17:35,320 --> 00:17:38,140 Also in explaining why strategy is more than a plan. 166 00:17:38,500 --> 00:17:45,240 So Lawrence lays out the linearity, usually meaning to the idea of a plan versus the complexity of strategy. 167 00:17:45,250 --> 00:17:52,660 When actors affect the two other, frustrate each other's plans and interact with often opposing interests and concerns. 168 00:17:53,740 --> 00:17:56,920 In a curious echo of the more recent discoveries of urban systems, 169 00:17:57,250 --> 00:18:04,240 so Lawrence warns would be strategist that there is rarely an orderly movement to goals set in advance. 170 00:18:05,230 --> 00:18:07,780 Relationships are the core of the strategic environment. 171 00:18:08,290 --> 00:18:15,310 Strategic environment is understood as the realm in which leadership interacts with other actors to advance the well-being of the state. 172 00:18:16,000 --> 00:18:21,490 The words relationships and interactions come up quite a lot when you read on strategic environments. 173 00:18:22,810 --> 00:18:27,160 One common feature in military studies of cities is the recognition that it is 174 00:18:27,340 --> 00:18:31,540 fundamentally different from what the sites of armed forces such as deserts and seas. 175 00:18:31,810 --> 00:18:36,940 So I think there is plenty of school for us to explore the concept of urban strategic environments. 176 00:18:38,780 --> 00:18:43,250 For instance, what are the actors in the system and how they are interacting with each other? 177 00:18:43,520 --> 00:18:46,489 The nodes to be analysed within the system, however, 178 00:18:46,490 --> 00:18:51,620 include not only the networks of criminal or insurgent groups that usually concern security authorities, 179 00:18:51,830 --> 00:18:57,320 but also the productivity, transportation, infrastructure and even cultural elements of the city. 180 00:18:57,800 --> 00:19:04,790 Such and such an approach take cities and the complex systems that they are instead of sites for specific operations. 181 00:19:05,210 --> 00:19:07,940 Therefore, urban services, infrastructure, 182 00:19:07,940 --> 00:19:15,980 stakeholders and flows of traffic and information can be incorporated as parts of a system that reacts to security inputs. 183 00:19:17,360 --> 00:19:25,820 More importantly, this view allows us to distinguish between the force that is used to stabilise the system and the force that disrupts the system. 184 00:19:26,570 --> 00:19:30,020 Here I reach my main point about the utility of force in cities. 185 00:19:30,200 --> 00:19:32,180 When you look at the environment as a system, 186 00:19:32,330 --> 00:19:39,860 you are looking at something that is immensely more fragile and connected than other operating environment, such as deserts and seas. 187 00:19:40,340 --> 00:19:43,430 There are many more connections and relationships in the urban system. 188 00:19:43,700 --> 00:19:51,110 Therefore, the application of force can can often destabilise the system, something that in the system jargon is called disruption. 189 00:19:52,610 --> 00:20:00,620 So the presence of cities as systems seems compatible with initial lessons learned from instances of urban armed conflict that I mentioned previously. 190 00:20:00,620 --> 00:20:03,799 And I'm sure you are familiar with protracted, protracted, 191 00:20:03,800 --> 00:20:12,260 complex problems involving anti-crime deployments in Latin America or peacekeeping missions in Africa, in cities more than in other environments. 192 00:20:12,440 --> 00:20:15,410 Security interventions can cause violent reactions, 193 00:20:15,620 --> 00:20:24,570 especially when conducted in the absence of stabilising policy tools due to the complexity and unpredictability of complex systems. 194 00:20:24,590 --> 00:20:32,120 It is preferable to shape elements of the system more surgically than to attempt broad control in order. 195 00:20:32,150 --> 00:20:37,970 In other words, the less foreign elements you apply into a complex system, the more stable it will be. 196 00:20:38,630 --> 00:20:43,640 Therefore, it is up to the strategists to identify the nodes within the system where he can deploy 197 00:20:43,640 --> 00:20:49,220 his resources in a way that will generate the most desirable and achievable end result. 198 00:20:49,760 --> 00:20:56,120 For our purposes, it means that instead of controlling or attempting to control the whole of a city through massive deployments of force, 199 00:20:57,590 --> 00:21:04,760 it might be preferable to identify actors, institutions and services that can help shape the strategic environment in a positive way. 200 00:21:06,470 --> 00:21:11,540 Now, because urbanisation is proceeding at a rapid pace in developing or fragile settings, 201 00:21:11,810 --> 00:21:17,030 some countries have already conducted experiments in urban security and stabilisation 202 00:21:17,240 --> 00:21:21,980 that have interfered with the urban system in different forms and levels of intensity. 203 00:21:22,640 --> 00:21:30,290 Cities that have experienced sharp drops in their homicide rates show a shift from disruptive use of force raids, 204 00:21:30,290 --> 00:21:35,870 incursions, a predominantly kinetic approach to more comprehensive and stabilising policies. 205 00:21:36,260 --> 00:21:41,120 These can be understood as a process of trial, error and learning in urban strategic environments. 206 00:21:41,990 --> 00:21:47,860 Fortunately, this approach has gained some visibility in recent years and is starting to spread over the western slopes. 207 00:21:48,590 --> 00:21:55,129 If we take two cities that have become key studies in urban security change in South America, with the scenario in Brazil and Medellin, 208 00:21:55,130 --> 00:22:01,790 Colombia, we observe not only tactical changes towards a less aggressive posture, but also a conceptual change. 209 00:22:02,480 --> 00:22:07,340 Armed forces are armed force with that by the military or by the various paramilitary 210 00:22:07,340 --> 00:22:12,170 or police agencies is to be applied in order to support a broader stability effort. 211 00:22:12,800 --> 00:22:18,560 This is hardly a groundbreaking discovery, but its practical application had eluded Latin American cities, 212 00:22:18,740 --> 00:22:21,860 even as they struggle for decades with endemic armed violence. 213 00:22:23,300 --> 00:22:26,870 So we don't have time to go through these examples in much detail. 214 00:22:27,080 --> 00:22:34,880 But very briefly, first met regime, which was first in time as well in relation to real, 215 00:22:35,330 --> 00:22:42,110 the start of the law enforcement shifts there helped stabilise the city can be traced to the early 2000, 216 00:22:42,110 --> 00:22:49,250 when mediation played an important role in the U.S., supported efforts to turn the tide against guerrillas and drug cartels. 217 00:22:49,760 --> 00:22:57,260 The armed forces were used with extensive support from Black Hawk helicopters to Occupy Keys lands known locally as communities. 218 00:22:58,070 --> 00:23:03,410 The influx of military and police forces in the city succeeded in expelling most of the guerrilla groups 219 00:23:03,590 --> 00:23:08,870 and was followed by agreements in the criminal underworld that allowed for a temporary instability. 220 00:23:10,160 --> 00:23:12,500 This opportunity was seized by local authorities. 221 00:23:12,740 --> 00:23:22,190 We implemented policies that are now famous building libraries, schools, cable cars to connect the slums into the broader city. 222 00:23:23,420 --> 00:23:26,570 Bulldog Tactical works inside the most fragile communities. 223 00:23:26,870 --> 00:23:31,010 The overarching aim was to use a broad range of state tools, 224 00:23:31,310 --> 00:23:37,850 including a limited amount of armed force to stabilise volatile communities and create the conditions for longer term development. 225 00:23:38,540 --> 00:23:41,599 I study off by University of Georgia, 226 00:23:41,600 --> 00:23:51,170 concluded that the communities connected by public transportation works saw a 66% drop in homicides between 2003 and 2008. 227 00:23:52,790 --> 00:23:58,910 The Foundation for this Peace Building Initiatives was a significant reinterpretation of urban law enforcement. 228 00:23:59,510 --> 00:24:06,500 The police received state of the art technology to connect its outposts, place to guard the slums in other places of the city. 229 00:24:07,010 --> 00:24:16,129 When I visited in late last year, I visited the security secretary and called my attention that not the technology. 230 00:24:16,130 --> 00:24:23,870 That was also very impressive, but the variety of people that were involved in monitoring and planning the urban security there. 231 00:24:24,590 --> 00:24:29,270 So to me, the greatest security change he made was not the technology it acquired, 232 00:24:29,270 --> 00:24:34,150 but the successful integration of different civilian and military institutions around the world. 233 00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:43,180 Stabilising the city system today, joint patrols and operations by army and police, supported by surveillance aircraft from the Air Force are routine. 234 00:24:44,810 --> 00:24:51,530 The model of joining forces in creating the stability necessary for broader development attracted the attention of all the cities, 235 00:24:51,890 --> 00:24:54,350 most notably Rio de Janeiro. 236 00:24:54,920 --> 00:25:02,030 There we see a very different background, but also remarkable similarities in the application of military law enforcement and peace building measures, 237 00:25:02,300 --> 00:25:05,540 and then equally significant reassessment of the role of force. 238 00:25:06,320 --> 00:25:11,570 The example of Rio is essentially is especially interesting because it applied some of the 239 00:25:11,570 --> 00:25:17,450 lessons from engaging to a much larger scale in a metropolitan area with 11 million inhabitants, 240 00:25:17,450 --> 00:25:20,990 whereas media has 2 million inhabitants or slightly more than that. 241 00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:28,910 And also a situation of endemic violence in Rio have been the status quo since at least the 1980s. 242 00:25:29,480 --> 00:25:38,480 So, like managing the slums or favelas have historically lacked effective state presence, public services and infrastructure. 243 00:25:38,690 --> 00:25:43,280 Again, we don't have time to go through the background of the of the criminal threats there. 244 00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:47,030 But I assure you it's this qualifier, if not more than in Beijing, 245 00:25:47,030 --> 00:25:52,969 as some of you might know from watching Narcos or but faced with the challenge of implementing 246 00:25:52,970 --> 00:25:58,880 two major sporting events in a city where criminal gangs actually control swaths of territory. 247 00:25:59,210 --> 00:26:05,900 The Government of Rio is started in 2008, a pacification program in slums consisting of permanent police presence, 248 00:26:06,230 --> 00:26:10,100 followed by improvements in public services and peacebuilding initiatives. 249 00:26:11,330 --> 00:26:17,570 The state used its military police force, considered one of the world's most experienced forces in urban operations, 250 00:26:17,900 --> 00:26:25,640 with varying degrees of support and involvement by the Army and Navy to retake the slums from criminal groups and occupy them. 251 00:26:27,500 --> 00:26:34,040 It slum chosen to host the pacifying force as they came to be known, hosted a permanent base for the Pacifying Police Unit. 252 00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:41,209 Or it would. This was in stark contrast with the preceding approach prevailing for decades of conducting 253 00:26:41,210 --> 00:26:46,760 occasional raids with armoured vehicles in search of high value targets and with heavy firepower. 254 00:26:47,360 --> 00:26:53,390 One of the main shifts that took place in the manner in which authorities viewed the aims of the security effort, 255 00:26:53,720 --> 00:27:01,760 the old objective of dismantling drug gangs was called a utopia by the security secretary and father of the pacification programs. 256 00:27:01,830 --> 00:27:11,120 Somebody on a tram, securing key spaces in order to pave the way for all their state institutions became the real aim of the new strategy. 257 00:27:13,170 --> 00:27:22,680 So I'm coming to my conclusion now, and I know that I've done a quite vast exploration of the urban globe. 258 00:27:23,970 --> 00:27:29,130 But this week, examples to me show a path towards the strategic assessment of cities as systems. 259 00:27:29,760 --> 00:27:33,510 The changes there stemmed not only from a shift in the use of force, 260 00:27:33,690 --> 00:27:38,940 but more importantly from a reassessment of the role of force in achieving security results in cities. 261 00:27:39,450 --> 00:27:47,550 So the utility of force in cities is not just, you know, these examples, but the cities themselves promote that reassessment. 262 00:27:47,670 --> 00:27:54,900 When you visit Rio and Medellin and the changed approach to secure part of the narrative of modernisation and change, 263 00:27:55,770 --> 00:27:58,890 these cities had a long time to learn from their own mistakes. 264 00:27:59,220 --> 00:28:07,650 And there were several mistakes. As I'm sure you know, if if we look closely at the periods of changing their security postures, 265 00:28:07,650 --> 00:28:13,830 we can see that there was indeed a shift in the understanding of force with a break from the past kinetic approach, 266 00:28:13,980 --> 00:28:18,120 which is what I'm calling disruptive force to a holistic approach with law 267 00:28:18,120 --> 00:28:22,860 enforcement and military agencies married to development and peacebuilding policies, 268 00:28:23,430 --> 00:28:25,140 what I'm calling a stabilising force. 269 00:28:25,770 --> 00:28:33,240 All of these, as I said, came not centrally at all, but as a result of a hard won understanding of the urban strategic environment, 270 00:28:34,020 --> 00:28:39,720 the usefulness of studying these cases and developing this understanding of the urban strategic environment, 271 00:28:40,110 --> 00:28:43,980 in my view, stems from the urbanisation trends in all the developing regions. 272 00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:49,200 Latin America is currently the most urbanised of all the developing regions or subregions, 273 00:28:49,380 --> 00:28:54,300 with 80% of its population live living in cities in Asia and Africa. 274 00:28:54,330 --> 00:29:01,740 These numbers are way below, but they are growing fast and even faster than in Latin America during the 20th century. 275 00:29:02,550 --> 00:29:08,520 So the understanding of the utility of force within systems, I think will become even more important in the coming years. 276 00:29:09,390 --> 00:29:09,810 Thank you.