Identifying vulnerability and ambiguity in the US.
The Great, both the civilian and military world just loves models, mathematical models.
But the problem is that they're not capturing the nuance.
And because they're not capturing nuance, if you only have good data going in, then you're understanding what's happening.
If you don't, if you have limited data or siloed data, then there's big problems.
So I've seen that as a huge problem and not only in the US, but they're particularly vulnerable to that with mathematical modelling.
But elsewhere as well. We focusing on transitions, developing effective responses for different volatile environments,
a non cookie cutter approach and avoiding unintended consequences.
Let's see how this is going to play out.
That vulnerability and ambiguity in crises civilian perceptions of personal security is an under-discussed issue.
What do people in the country really think will keep them safe?
And there's been a few attempts at understanding that, but mostly it's been an external view of security.
It's either been a military version of security, it's been a human rights aid organisations version of security.
But usually that often the people in country are not really asked use on a generosity of force.
And they're it's about their exposure to formal and informal armed groups.
And early on, long before Iraq and Afghanistan, I understood that communities could be,
if you want to use the term occupied or are would be visited by formal forces during the day.
It's could be security forces, could be army, it could be policing who would then leave at night and then be visited by informal forces,
militias, rebels, terrorists, whoever at night and civilians would be caught in the middle.
So I'd be asking, who did you see? What are they saying? But they're caught in the middle there.
It's their lives at stake. They're the ones in true danger and they feel unprotected.
Different roles of civilians, of complex crises. Well, as far as I'm concerned,
you got some role play the Bible on that and killing civilians about depicting the many roles of civilians in these situations.
I also found victim and perpetrator were often the same person it depending on timing
a victim could a victim defined as individuals and communities often were targeted,
had the most horrific incidents happened to them,
but could later in the right circumstances and act exactly the same on the group that originally attacked them.
So there a cycle of revenge that was being perpetuated complicit supporters in
communities and areas who just would allow groups to come in and never say anything,
would see things happening and never say a word.
Then a truly tragic, innocent bystander overtaken by events.
This is really the real sad, sad situation of of individuals and communities who have no interest in conflict.
Trying to live their lives are in the wrong place and time and then community advocate not activists
are are highly visible people individuals so on who understand that they can be targeted,
who have an understanding of the risks, the different roles of formal informal security forces and complex crises.
Unfortunately, as we have seen, both state forces, formal forces and informal militias,
rebel forces can both uphold law and order and protect civilians,
and they can enact agendas and kill civilians depending on the situation either or in a conflict.
And a real understanding of that by external civilian and military groups is essential.
Refocusing on transitions is developing and communicating strategies for addressing major shifts within a country region caused by conditioned events.
Time. Everyone was woefully unprepared for what happened in North Africa, really unprepared for Syria.
If there's any way to anticipate and begin to understand that this the transitions that are the hard part
stop stopping fighting or preventing fighting or securing an area is might very well be the easy part.
But assisting an area in transition in a region transitioning is difficult.
Refocus civilian military interventions on conflict transformation, prevention, mitigation, they said,
protecting individuals and communities also in addressing the legitimacy of the judicial and political systems that exists in that country or region.
Whether they're perceived to be legitimate or not is makes a huge difference.
Host Nation Ownership and capacity. Is there an infrastructure, institutional infrastructure?
Is there not? That requires two very different approaches coordinated efforts to civil, military and regional engagement.
I still hear people say a conflict, talk about a conflict.
So it's local, though. It's isolated. I really don't think there's any such thing as a isolated conflict anymore.
And a local conflict can become global really quickly with the right motivation and technological tools.
And it needs to be looked at that way if it stays local and stays local, because that's the decision of all parties to keep it that way.
Developing effective responses. Re-examining ways to achieve high impact and low visibility cost effective operations.
Cost effective is the key phrase now.
Budget constraints for the ERA, certainly for the US, have trillions of dollars.
This is absolutely gone and I see that certainly in Europe and other places as well.
And there are many ways to achieve really good results without spending a lot of money.
But it didn't seem no one seemed to be bothering with that because there was so much money.
So it requires a rethink about how to do this effectively.
And in small, small footprint, developing a better understanding of distinct responses and roles required by different global crises.
A mali will require a different response than perhaps a crisis in a part of Latin America or the Asia-Pacific.
It's not that they're so different, it's just the context may be slightly skewed.
Maybe reform may reformatted,
so certain action in one place may produce an unintended consequence and another incorporating constraints caused by local domestic geopolitics.
I think of politics as a player in all of this, almost a person, almost an entity, but it needs to be figured in any equation.
I don't think there's any way around it. Better understanding of the impact of international criminal syndicates and cartels.
If you want to know how people, how terrorists, insurgents, rebels, arms their narcotics, money is flowing.
Just watch the flows of human trafficking.
Human trafficking is the number one most profitable resource in the criminal world, and on the back of that flows everything else.
So those are mafias.
When people are doing good research on that and you'll see how everything else is flowing globally, avoiding unintended consequences.
This is so difficult when you see civilian organisations and military organisations.
We're trying to help with help people have good intentions and then don't understand why their good intentions aren't rewarded with good outcomes.
But there needs to be a better understanding of the advantages and pitfalls of waging war by proxy.
This is part of the regional conflict dimension. We're seeing that with Iran in the US, for instance.
Now in various areas in the Middle East, you're going to see it with China and the U.S. You'll see that with other countries in Europe
and the superpowers in different parts of the world who are really it's really nothing new.
The Cold War, that's really what was going on in the Cold War as well.
Need more communication between civil military individuals and organisations in the virtual around.
There are some attempts to do this, but there really needs to be more communication and the civilian military cross training on
concepts of provocation and deterrence in volatile environments when it's affected by external,
by virtual and external events. And just think of the Koran burning in one country and how many people are killed in another country because of it.
And within the same day and you begin to picture the sort of the issues that are going on and why they need to be addressed.
Looking ahead, developing international civilian military protocols for rapid and deeply thoughtful responses.
This is aspirational, of course, to decision timelines affected.
Salary by information technologies.
There really needs to be and I think there's a lot of good people really beginning to think about this in various parts around the world.
How can everyone communicate with each other?
We have amazing technologies at our disposal now, but how we use them are using them to really communicate.
And none of the I have found personally, and I think others as well have found that none of the issues have really changed the core issues.
It's dealing with them in a more global way, a sort of a macro micro view,
simultaneously increased international civilian military coordination and communication for effective response.
And the US role is rapidly changing. As everyone knows. I think America is slowly coming to terms with this.
Anyone, any Americans who work outside that country understand that America's power and affect and effective role influence has diminished greatly.
And so while they have great, great military capacity, their ability to influence has changed a great deal.
And that's directly connected to Iraq and Afghanistan, which I recently heard on a major political show in the US.
A foreign correspondent returned and said, Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan are considered catastrophes by the rest of the world.
There's a sort of silence, but no argument. Seek ways to better support internal groups seeking peaceful mitigation of conflicts.
Again, that goes back to individual perceptions of security.
Often those are linked conflict mitigation.
There are usually groups really trying to peacefully settle problems that are often overlooked and ignored.
And then as violence began to take hold or are just sidelined until much later.
And then finally, in Iraq in 2012, I had the privilege of going back to Erbil in Kurdistan and Baghdad with the U.S. Institute of Peace.
I then working with them on writing their history in Iraq from 2003 to 2011, and it was a good time to go back as an American.
The military was gone, the trillions of dollars were gone, and they were not coming back.
It was the new beginning of a new world, so to speak.
And I spoke to a number of Iraqis and this comment about we talked about civilian and military organisations in general,
as well as USAID, his role and this comment stuck, stuck with me.
And I think I want to leave you with this on the value of civilian organisations versus military.
And this was said this was told to me by a senior politician of a minority background in Iraq.
Civilian organisations, if they do things that arms and forces cannot do, prevent the conflict and save $1,000,000,000.
Security is not peace and the target must be peace.
Security is everywhere because there's no peace. So thank you very much.
Moving on to other questions.