Smersh!!!

Modern Intelligence

Security

The End of

Copyright?

A New Culture

for Free Thought

The New Map Part II

Blueprint for Action:

by Thomas M.P. Barnett

A Review

Volume II, Number 5

Table of Contents

P. 3–Strategos Procurator

Progress, Not Perfection

P. 3–Club News

P. 4–Society

Copyrights and Natural Rights:

Towards Liberty and Freedom

by

Charles M. Barnard

P. 8–Politics

SMERSH Part I:

The Politics of Modern Intelligence

P. 22–Review

Review of: Barnett, Thomas M.P. Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2005.

Graphics

Cover–KGB Emblem “The Sword and the Shield

P. 4– “People’s Rights” by Erik Bobzin

P. 17–“Bloody Feliks” by Erik Bobzin

Strategos Procurator

Progress, Not Perfection

The Cepia Club Strategy Gazette is a huge tool for our Purpose of “ending public ignorance and apathy.” As a tool, the Club needs to learn how to use it, how get the best results from it, and how to adapt and improve it for even better results. The Gazette is our flagship publication. As far as our Enterprises are concerned, not just our Publishing Enterprise, this newsletter is the single most important product the Club offers.

This is issue Number 5 of the newsletter, the first issue in Volume 2. Each of the four issues in the first volume built on the lessons and achievements of the previous. We aim to establish a competence for professionalism that draws in readers and increases the Club’s credibility with others. With the message we have, focused on “ending public ignorance and apathy,” the better written, formatted, edited and distributed, the more people will become better informed. With awareness growing, the shorter the time transcends between someone aware and their individual positive action for peaceful change. This newsletter has not been perfect. Like anything in life, we have engaged in a process of progress toward higher standards and more influence. We appreciate all of the support our readers have given in this project.

Since we offer this newsletter “e-free,” we run into certain the wall people not Internet accessible. We have instituted a “Guaranteed Printed Delivery” special subscription program for such people. But that defeats our aim to keep what we have by giving it away. Therefore, we beg our readers to forward the e-mailed attachments and the web links for this newsletter AND to Print Freely and “Pass It On” anyway they can and want.

Club News

Club Television Show In Regular Production: The Cepia Club’s flagship television show, Freedom Affairs, started regular production in December 2006. The pilot/experimental episode had been filmed the previous spring. The first three episodes of the show, the pilot among them, are posted on the Club Web TV station at www.cepiaclub.com/TV.htm . The first three guests were LaMoine MacLaughlin, discussing community arts; Don Hansen, Amery area thespian and orator, talking about freedom of expression through the arts; and Amery Mayor Harvey Stower giving insights on the importance and future of community in America. The show is themed around grass roots participation in building community ideas and activism. The next scheduled taping will take place in mid-April. Keep an eye out for episode 4 on the Club’s Web TV.

Club Family Growing: Good news! The diversity of opinion, wisdom, and expertise in the CepiaNet is growing. Many people are on the off-line branch of the CepiaNet, but the CepiaNet on-line via the Yahoo! Group (see ad above) is expanding as well. Ideas are developed and shared. Action is happening with the different Friends and Participant in a positive cooperative exchange of help and service. Join the CepiaNet to be part of it

Culture

 

Copyrights and Natural Rights:

Towards Worldwide Liberty

by Charles M. Barnard

 

In a free world, would not free thought and even a free-market community of ideas help increase individual liberty and political and economic freedom? Is not knowledge power? If so, why is knowledge and experience, which are the foundations of wisdom, withheld from the masses? Even opinion and inspiration, beauty and the things of joy and creative insight are available only to those with money. This restriction of access is a form of intellectual oppression which contributes to the ignorance and apathy. It keeps people powerless and oppressed to those who can afford access to “Ideas,” those who assume for themselves the right to rule and decide for the many. How can humanity make access to knowledge and even to truth a sacred natural right? The problem lies in copyright, owning a piece of “unreal” property for an exclusive economic benefit. The trend is undergoing changes. Some analysis of the major issues with copyright are necessary. From this free idea, perhaps a future action can be developed. For now, it is time for discussion.

 

What does copyright have to do with compensating content creators? Until recently, (the 1960's) copyrights were very seldom held by “creators.” In the vast majority of cases the copyright was purchased from the creator for a few dollars, and owned until expiration by “publishers.” Many magazine publishers still do this, “compensating” the creator with what amounts to a very small fraction of a percent of the value of the work.

 

The main court battle currently with copyright is that concerning Google and its project to scan millions of books and put them on-line, for free access and download. The vast majority of what Google is putting online with their project to scan the libraries of Stanford University, the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and the University of Texas are works on which the copyright has expired--they are in the public domain. Still, the big publishing corporations see a trend that challenges their long-assumed privileges to own “ideas,” be it creative or factual, in any media form from books, to pictures, movies, and beyond.

 

Copyright is a hindrance to that liberty to learn and to think freely which comes ultimately in having access to knowledge and experience of different sizes, shapes and forms. The history of copyright controversy has had a common, recurring theme that has suppressed the development of a free-market of ideas.Copyright owners have been bitching about “theft” since the first copyright was issued. The vast majority of these owners, were, of course, not the content creators.Even where copyrights are held by the creator of the content, the creator usually manages to collect only a very small percentage of the receipts, on the order of 5-10 % of the total. Note that nearly all of the folks who actually “create” a film (the actors, the screen-writers, the hundreds of behind the scenes people), normally receive a straight payment for their work. The film and entertainment industry is famous for their capitalist system where the financiers of the picture get the bulk of the revenue. And they are very good at never making a “profit” on paper. (I love their accounting methods! Everyone gets paid, but the film never makes a profit!)

Not all content creators feel that being copied is a bad thing. Most notable are the Grateful Dead who have been talking about such matters as copyright for a couple decades. Their view is that recordings of their work are not the creative content: The live show is their creation, and the recordings are a faint image of that creation--suitable only for advertising the shows. They have thus encouraged people to tape their performances, spreading their mystique and generating hype, and voile–selling even more tickets to their shows.

 

Some film directors and producers also feel that the copies of their work are not the same as the theatrical release, and thus not a problem in their “not-generating-a-profit” margin. Granted, as the technology improves, the difference between the live and the recorded diminishes.

 

Until it was possible to copy video and music, no one ever thought of “secondary rights.” An artist, if lucky, got paid at the time of performance. For many centuries the pay was food & lodging & the opportunity at the serving wenches.

 

There is the matter of what's “fair;” fair to the artist, fair to the distributor, and less-so up until recently, fair to the public. Is it “fair” that an artist receives 25 cents from the sale of a $10 CD which cost 5 cents to produce; when the retailer gets $2.50-$8 of the price? What is fair for an electronic copy of something which costs nearly nothing to copy? A movie may cost anywhere from a few thousand to many millions of dollars to make, but will usually, if it's any good at all, (which most of them aren't,) pay its costs in the first few months of theatrical release. Overall, the entire copyright issue, like the patent and trademark issues, is going to get more and more difficult to enforce.

 

Right now, a person can (and many do) walk into a movie theater with a small camera, and walk out with a decent pirate copy of the film. Right now the size of the camera involved has stabilized at a size easily handled by people. The size needed to contain the equipment can be much, much smaller. “Off air” (which term is mostly obsolete), copying of video is even easier.

 

My personal experience with artists is that art is more akin to a psychological disease than a business. Most of the artists I've met and worked with are not very good at, nor even very interested in making a profit on their work. That is the prime fact which allows others to take

advantage of them. For centuries painters have produced wonderful images and only sold them for enough materials to create more work. Writers write because they are compelled to, as do painters and even product designers are compelled to produce their art. The profits from their work usually end up in the hands of those who distribute the work.

 

Spider Robinson, a SF writer and critic and a better-than-fair musician, has been arguing against extending copyright protection for increasing periods of time. The proposed extensions was an early attempt by the corporations to increase the profit potential of their holdings. Spider makes the point that there are only so many combinations of notes which are pleasing to the ear, and thus, in reality, a finite “set” (in the mathematical sense) of music. The argument can be extended to other work.

 

And then there is software. When I started programming in the early 1970's, the vast majority of

software was produced in universities and distributed for free. Then as now, like many things, the effort put into the work had little or nothing to do with the work's utility or value to the end user. This is not unique to the software business. This attitude has continued within the universities and has a foothold on the consumer market (shareware, freeware, GPL licenses, etc.). The attitude has gained considerable currency with the commercial markets as such “freeware” expands into Net marketing. The biggest market share for the infrastructure under the Net is Apache, which now offers a Windows version, but it is freeware for Unix/Linux. But the head office has no idea, as the decisions are beneath them, and as some techie suggested it, it was accepted only because the total

changed line above project cost quotes lower if there is no payment for software. Not a great deal less, but less.

 

The average software manufacturing package, currently called Enterprise Management, is around $500,000 to purchase, and as much as 4 times that cost in training and modification expenses. Other software is about the same ratio: If a person installs a $500 package, he or she can figure onspending at least 3-4 times that on learning how to use it. If the software is free you save %20-25 on the project.

 

Lastly, there is the question of national variation of what "copyright" actually means; I asked my supplier in India one day, "Can we use your images from your website for our catalog?"

 

"Certainly," he said. "In my country, copyright means 'if you can copy it you have the right.’"

 

In both the long and short runs, copyright has become nearly unenforceable. Soon it will be totally unenforceable.

 

A current trend in recognition of the problem by the movie industry is the decreasing gap between theatrical release and recorded release. I fully expect to see premier tickets which include a DVD. The time between theatrical release and DVD's on the street and uploads on the Net is now down to 10's of minutes. If you are in the theater business, you really ought to include a DVD (used & new) sales outlet in your lobby--it could triple your income. (Free advice, but if you use it I'd not turn down a cut....)

 

The prime business rule is, if you can't beat ‘em, join ‘em. It is better to get a reduced income from the picture than to permit the illegal market to use up all of after-market sales.

 

Like the just in time (JIT) manufacturing and consumer goods distribution systems, the media distribution system is eliminating the middleman. For example, to sell your books as a publisher to Amazon.com, you must pay a $29.95 per year fee to them. They give you 40% of the“retail” price you set for your published book. For initial inventory Amazon.com wants: 4-5 books. They want you to ship them new books every time they ask, with orders running usually under 15 books. The initial sales lifetime of such goods is also rapidly declining (mostly due to tax regulations regarding inventory taxes on books. The government changed those tax rates a few years ago to make it financially unprofitable to retain copies in a warehouse--which has the (possibly) unintended effect of reducing sales on thoughtful non-fiction books, which take many months to make their first few

thousand sales.) I have a friend who published a book on geology last winter, it was released early last spring and was remaindered out by last October.

 

The cycle time keeps getting faster, with only temporary holds as the current economy's “winners” try and hold on to their control.

 

This is only the smallest part of the copyright problem; functional high level

nano-technology will permit making identical copies of physical objects at a cost of hours per kilogram. The designers of consumer items, "fashion" in particular, are already upset that their work is copied--sometimes before it is released. What will they do when such copying is free to the copier and distribution is by electronic file transfer?

 

The good news is that we can approach a world without need (although want will undoubtedly continue!).The bad news is that our entire basis of economics will disintegrate; actual "workers" needed to support the civilization will drop even more drastically. This will lead to a huge, bored

underclass who have no actual 'reason' to exist. Already we have an underclass of unemployed or underemployed people with self-worth problems because our society has no way to value people who are not part of the work force. It is this social change which must occur in order to successfully adapt to the future of "material plenty."

 

Yet, the "Star Trek" economy is one thing which could result from the long-term trend if the dictatorship of corporate copyright ownership is forced to dissolve. By Star Trek economy, it is meant that a total free-market system for consumer and producer will result, with the freedom of choice to not consume or not produce according to personal preference. By theory such visions, such an economy of freedom, in part based on a trend of public common copyright, would have so much abundance that it would be preferred if people did not enter production and instead worked on creating art or improving themselves for the benefit of humanity.

 

We can dream.

 

Politics

 

SMERSH Part I: The Politics of Modern Intelligence

 

I. Paranoia, Fear, and Terror: “SMERSH”-Think

 

SMERSH is a contraction of the Russian words Smert Shpionam:: “Death to spies.” As a special counter-intelligence wing of Soviet military intelligence, the GRU, it operated under various names almost from the beginning the Soviet regime in 1917. But during the years of World War II and the year immediately following its end, the Soviets officially designated SMERSH with its most notorious nameand tasked it with defending the rear areas of the Soviet front. SMERSH defended them against Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian partisan guerillas who fought for Germany, against German agents and saboteur networks, and against such “enemies” of the Soviet Union as deserters and soldiers retreating without orders.

 

As the Red Army marched toward Berlin, SMERSH also had charge of separating former Soviet POWs, marking those who surrendered to or collaborated with German prison camp officials. SMERSH, as the name implies, had the simple solution to protect the Soviet Union from any Soviet citizen with the potential or motivation to betray the Soviet Union: Execution. As a side effect of their free license, SMERSH reportedly also kidnaped American and British soldiers and German and Japanese prisoners-of-war for imprisonment in the Soviet Union following the war. (04./03/07: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMERSH).

 

 

In its brief official life as an arm of the GRU, SMERSH set an example on par with the RSHA (the Nazi SS security arm) for espionage driven by psychotic paranoia and used as an instrument of domestic political terror. SMERSH had more bloodlusty results than the paramilitary intelligence organization of the Soviet Union, most popularly known as the KGB, the Committee for State Security. Counter-intelligence as a form of intelligence security started when espionage itself began in ancient times. Counter-intelligence seeks to eliminate the espionage of another nation or group, ally, friend or neutral.

 

Few counter-intelligence units took such extremes of torture, torment and mass murder as SMERSH. Counter-intelligence in organizations accountable to the people at-large and not to dictators use counter-espionage to defeat espionage and to protect their own espionage, not commit atrocities. When politics and the concentration of power into a smaller group of people mix, then SMERSH-think, “Death to Spies” contributes to the breakdown of moral restraint and illegal limits on liberty.

 

  The massive and frequent purges and genocides of Soviet ruler Joseph Stalin ordered in the 1930s and 1940s condemned whole national populations to mass murder. The only indictment authorities had came from Stalin finger pointing personal threats and class enemies to his power. Stalin’s mega-paranoid psychosis eliminated people who could challenge him in the near and distant future. SMERSH became a political instrument of terror to protect Soviet power during the war, the source that power living in Stalin himself. Stalin’s decisions had human costs approaching tens of millions. SMERSH succeeded by virtue of eliminating potential for betrayal following the war.

 

SMERSH stemmed from logical extension of Stalin’s mind, which Soviet politics created out its very nature. An elite class of privilege and a “cult of elite personalities” centered around dictator ruled in the Soviet system with the rulers’ own interests separate from the people’s. Uses of political terror exist whenever an illegitimate government holds power–Napoleon’s France, Hitler’s Germany, Mao’s China– and these regimes make things like the use of espionage against average people the enforcer of fraudulent rule of the “chosen” few over the many. Espionage can be and is used this way to attack the internal “enemies” of any ruling class or party not accountable to the public and requiring their approval.

 

Espionage, in pure form, also forms the first line of defense for a nation, free or closed. If used wisely and correctly, espionage provides security at far less cost in terms of lives and treasure than the use of standing armed forces. Intelligence security, the reason for espionage, does not need a conspiracy of military-industrial-electoral complexes to maintain such large armies, navies, and air forces. Intelligence organizations and their activities remain vulnerable to manipulation and misunderstanding. A brief history of intelligence since 1917 may help people understand more about the nature and benefits of espionage, and the real and potential threats against liberty when partisan politics interferes with the intelligence profession.

 

 

 

 

II. The Meaning of “Intelligence”

 

Espionage, commonly called “intelligence,” comes in different forms, with each form contributing information to an overall picture of the world. The picture required for sound national security policies and decisions. Not really a “form” of intelligence as considered here, most of the information gathered on a foreign nations and groups by an intelligence service comes from “open-source” material. Much of the useful information on foreign military forces, politics, science, society, and culture comes from things publicly broadcasted on radio or television, published in newspapers and magazines, or even through modern Internet search engines. “Open-source” intelligence provides information a target country freely puts out for public consumption. The observations obtained from open sources get collected and analyzed, assessed and reported like the information obtained from the other intelligence forms. The key to intelligence demands the combination of the public sources of information with information obtained by actual spying to create a more complete picture of other nations.

 

The first and oldest form of intelligence, the traditional espionage, is “human intelligence.” This form of intelligence as implied comes by human action–the operations of stealing and passing secrets from first-hand sources. One example would be a spy within a foreign army who informs his spy masters of another government that about an intended invasion. Most human agents act covertly, without diplomatic immunity, illegally in other words. The agent obtains classified information like plans, designs, etc. from secret documents or unsuspecting individuals in a target nation or sub-national or transnational group. Human intelligence, as opposed to the other forms, often gives the best insight into what a country actually will do. Human intelligence penetrates the invisible walls of secrets guarded carefully by a target nation. Spies can operate in the military, in legislative or executive branches, in businesses, even in universities or think tanks that deal with restricted or privileged information. In the United States, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the most well-known intelligence service, engages in human intelligence operations.

 

The second form of intelligence information comes from “signals intelligence.” This involves deriving insights into enemy plans and actions through covert interception of a target nation’s or group’s communications, and then follows with the decryption, deciphering, decoding, and interpretation of such messages. Signals intelligence can come from any source, but most commonly from teleconference video, radio and satellite communications, telephones or cell phones, or even written communications like simple ciphers (disguised written material). Often times, as with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) or Great Britains Government Communications Headquarters (GHCQ), signals intelligence services exist as the most secretive and protected sources of modern intelligence, not always to the benefit of the people the agency serves. For the convenience of this essay other “electronic intelligence,” comes under this general heading. Electronic intelligence can come from intercepted telemetry data on ballistic or cruise missile tests or radiation signatures of air defense radar networks.

 

The third form of intelligence considered, known as “imagery intelligence,” interprets photographs and other images like infrared views, etc. As the name implies, imagery intelligence uses sophisticated cameras and such things as infrared and ultraviolet sensors, taken from hand-held cameras to cameras in high-performance aircraft (like the U.S.’s U-2 and SR-71 spy planes during the Cold War), or, commonly today, orbiting satellites (such as the U.S.’s KEYHOLE network). The interpretation of images by highly skilled analysts using expert methods of deduction show what a foreign country has in plain view, such as tank divisions, airfields and aircraft, ballistic missile silos and mobile launchers, or naval ships. Just as importantly, image reconnaissance can inform about things not in plain view but should or could exist. Again, like open-source methods, human and signals intelligence, the information gleaned from images complements the other information obtained to construct a more accurate picture of a foreign nation’s or group’s plans, resources, and activities.

 

Although not traditionally seen as a separate form of intelligence like human, signals, and imagery intelligence, “counter-intelligence” uses intelligence to defeat the intelligence operations of another country or group. Counter-intelligence operates spies and double-agents to locate and neutralize hostile spies that threaten to expose a nation’s most valued and highly guarded secrets. As internal security for an intelligence agency, counter-intelligence can not only serve defensive purposes but can also hold offensive potential in using a “turned agent” against his own masters through the use of deception.

 

III. The Great “Debates” of Intelligence

 

Since humanity first used spies to penetrate its enemy’s secrets, intelligence agencies have centered on themselves a great controversy. The controversy turns between what they produce in terms analysis based on the collected data and how that raw information and the refined viewpoint helps policy makers to determine a course of action in response. Intelligence aims at one of two results, often incompatible or contradictory in policy decision-making. On the one hand, intelligence, especially signals and imagery forms, can reveal very precise information determining the capabilities of a target nation or group. On the other side of the intelligence coin, intelligence such as human intelligence and counter-intelligence can create a more concrete conclusion on the intentions of a target government or organization.

 

Despite the seeming similarity between capabilities and intentions, the structure and use of a nation’s intelligence services can limit knowing one or the other well, or both only very slightly. Issues of personnel resources, institutional experience, budgetary limits, and party politics shape the focus of a nation’s intelligence operations, which in turn pre-determines knowing a target’s capabilities or intentions, but seldom both to a high degree of certainty. The range of such capabilities or intentions can come from political, military, diplomatic, and economic policies of a target that can either seriously damage a defending country’s physical or personnel safety, its standing, its friendly relations, its alliances and allies, or broad interests.

 

 Furthermore, national security should approach policy-making by having no permanent friends in the present and all potential enemies at some point in the future. Spying in the largest sense targets allied, enemy, and neutral nations and groups. Intelligence security operates on the principle of paranoia: Trust but verify even rather benign or friendly behavior. As a result of such wide interest in the secrets of others, a measure of economy always figures in the development of intelligence capabilities and operations. Do billions spent on surveillance and communications interception satellites return a better investment for security? Indeed, the politics of such decision-making plays a significant role. Other questions come up, such as about potential bad public relations when trying to penetrate the defense ministry of a friendly power if the fact became widely known. In that case, would taking photos from space be more prudent?

 

Such are the large and timeless issues of intelligence, even performed by modern technology. Nations possess no easy policy decisions reflecting the investment in time, people, and money into effective intelligence systems. When the long-term costs and benefits of such decisions become too strongly influenced and abused by interference of partisan party politics of any kind, no less in a republic like the United States, policy complexity multiples. The wrong decisions can lead to catastrophic breakdowns for security.

 

But what about the right choices? What does intelligence ultimately do for a nation? Ideally, if intelligence agencies serve their nations well, forewarned becomes forearmed. Obtaining the secrets of a “real” enemy action against one’s own security can provide ample time for counter-measures, a preventive offense or reactions of defensive preparation. Time stalks as the critical element in preserving the peace or victory in war during an international crisis. The range of responses can extend from covert or public action, preventive diplomacy or military alert, or even pre-emptive strike. In any international issue, not just a crisis of war and peace, having more choices than the opponent can often separate the success or failure of a nation’s security policy.

 

IV. Decisive Victory Through Intelligence: Historical Cases

 

So often in history, one or the other of the different forms of intelligence have played decisive roles in a battle, a campaign, or tense crisis. The fusion of all the forms–human, signals, imagery, and counter-intelligence–will give one side or another victory in a world war, survival in a cold one, or, as may prove the case, peace in a clash of civilizations.

 

Intelligence contributed to ultimate decisive Allied success in World War II, saving Moscow in 1941, and with it, Russia’s continued participation in the war against Germany. If Moscow had fallen to the German’s during the Wehrmacht’s Operation Typhoon aiming to capture the city, the Soviets would have lost the key political and historical center of Russian. That may have not have proved critical to keeping Russia in the war and able to fight, but could have nonetheless proven important. Moscow, however, did exist at the center of an irreplaceable road and rail communications network. With the central communications hub intact, the Soviet Union during the rest of war fought in Russia shifted forces from the northern front to the central and southern fronts to meet German power where it concentrated to attack. In turn, Moscow’s communications net allowed the Soviet High Command, the STAVKA, to concentrate the Red Army at decisive German weak points. All things considered, holding onto Moscow had a critical moral and strategic necessity for the overall success of the Allied war effort. The Germans from October to early December 1941 came closest at any point in the war to knocking the USSR out of the war in one battle. How did intelligence turn the tide of this critical campaign for Moscow?

 

The answer comes from human intelligence. The Soviet Union had an agent, a German communist named Richard Sorge (04/03/07: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sorge), operating an espionage network of agents in the capital of Germany’s soon-to-be ally, Japan. In Tokyo in 1941, Sorge ran his operation covertly as a journalist. As a German national, Sorge had access to high officials in the Germany embassy in Tokyo. German officials shared secrets of Japanese war plans with Sorge. Prior to the German invasion of European Russia in June 1941, Sorge correctly informed his Soviet superiors of the time, strength and directions of the German attack. His superiors ignored his warning. In the fall of 1941, the Soviet Union had heavily reeled before the German panzer thrusts deep into its interior. In the Far Eastern provinces of the Soviet Union, the Soviet High Command maintained a rather sizeable force of Red Army units to face a possible attack from Japan. It was not an unlikely event, as the USSR and Japan fought a border war in the Far East during 1938-39 while Japan conquered northern China prior to the start of the world war.

 

From his espionage, Sorge learned that Japan, while making apparent preparations for entry into the war, intended on attacking only the European empires in the Far East, and attack the United States in the Pacific. Sorge reported to his superiors that Japan would maintain its treaty of non-aggression with the Soviet Union. Confident that it could withdraw most of the best-equipped and best-trained Siberian units of the Red Army, the Soviet High Command brought well-trained and well-equipped reinforcements from the Far East to participate in the defense of Moscow. With the launch of a Soviet counter-offensive on December 8, 1941 (the day after Pearl Harbor), the Soviets secured Moscow for the rest of World War II from the German Army. Russia maintained its strategic city and used it as a fulcrum until the German Wehrmacht out of Russia and back toward Berlin.

 

Without the “high confidence” in Sorge’s information, the Soviet High Command still may have made the same decision out of desperation, but the historian can add the critical point: The decision made came at the most important time. Otherwise, the Soviets may not have had a victory. The Red Army grinding the German Army from the East for four years stands as one five most vital strategies that provided Allied victory in the war in Europe. Without the Red Army and what it accomplished, it seems doubtful that the Western Allies, Great Britain and the United States, would have successfully invaded Africa, Italy, and France against German armed forces unhindered on their Eastern flank. Human intelligence gave a wider margin for the Allied victory.

 

In the Western half of the war in Europe, a different form of intelligence, signals intelligence, made one of the other key contributions to Allied victory. While the Allies read German codes throughout the majority of World War II, the decisive role of signals intelligence occurred in the Battle (rather “Campaign”) of the Atlantic. In that campaign, German surface and sub-surface naval units (the latter the infamous Unterseebööts–“U-boats”) tried to close the sea lanes of communications feeding and arming Great Britain. Without the ability to pass great amounts of munitions, arms, food, fuel and consumer staples to the British Isles, Great Britain could not sustain a war effort.

 

After the U.S. entry into the European war following Pearl Harbor, the movement of American weapons, vehicles, men, and other material became necessary to a build-up of armies that could carry the war into the heart of Germany from the West, beginning with the landing at Normandy in June 1944. As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill put it, “Had we been forced to suspend, or even seriously restrict for a time, the movement of shipping in the Atlantic, all our [Allied] joint plans would have been arrested.” (Churchill, Winston. The Second World War, Vol. 4: The Hinge of Fate. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1950, p. 109). Such a massive use of armed force to decisively defeat Germany in Western Europe stands as a second military reason for Allied victory over Nazism. Winning the Battle of the Atlantic was the third major reason. (The strategic bombing of Germany is the fourth of the five reasons for victory over Nazism. Clearing the Germans out of the Mediterranean is the fifth).

 

Just prior to and in the early days of the war, Polish intelligence made great progress on the way to breaking German communications codes. The German armed forces used a small type-writer-looking machine code-named “Enigma.” The machine was invented for German commercial business communications in the 1920s but the Wehrmacht adapted the use of its electronic impulses and metal cylinder “rotors” for military operations. The Enigma contained a radical concept in secure communications. The combination of electrical circuits made by touching different points on the three, and later four, rotating metal cylinders produced complex mathematical encryption potential with hundreds of billions of possible code grouping combinations, and combinations of those billions, that appeared almost unbreakable for humans using paper, pencil and simple, pre-computerized methods of math.

 

The only real solution to this problem took the form of stealing an actual Enigma machine and the code books used to align the moveable rotors and settings for the wires feeding into the circuit boards. The Germans never conceived during the entire war (reportedly) that Allies could ever break their communications codes. In such hubris, the seeds of downfall get sown. When Germany invaded Poland, Polish intelligence shipped a partially rebuilt Enigma and their tons of files, which included a million punched note cards used to represent settings, to their new British and French allies.

 

After the fall of France, when Great Britain stood alone, defiant, and vulnerable, the British had one life line to short-term survival–fighting Hitler’s legions with superior intelligence. The high-security British decoding program, known as “Ultra,” played a role in land and air warfare throughout the conflict, but the naval war in the Atlantic developed into the most important intelligence operation. U-boat codes proved very difficult to break. As author Jerry Russell says,

“Cracking the German Naval ciphers was a far more difficult task than that of breaking the German Air Force or Army codes.” (Russell, Jerry. Cmdr, USN. Ultra and the Campaign Against the U-boats in World War I. Individual Study Project. Studies in Cryptology, NSA, Document SRH-142. Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency, 20 May 1980. http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/ultra/navy-1.html, p. 3) . The British solved the problem only by capturing a Naval Enigma from a sinking U-boat in May 1941. From there, hard work and deduction paved the way, allowing British commanders to read German decrypts in 48 hours by late 1941 (Russell, p. 4).

 

Reading decrypted German U-boat messages between the units at sea and their headquarters, the Allies rerouted convoys in the Atlantic away from the “Wolfpacks” of German submarines. Despite even this, the U-boats still did almost fatal damage to Allied shipping. Ultra also allowed the Allies to target U-boats if Ultra could remain a protected secret. Allied scientists provided the British and U.S. navies with other useful radio direction finding and radar equipment at the height of the U-boat menace in 1942 and early 1943, but when the German Kriegsmarine routinely changed the code books and procedures of their Enigma, Ultra became almost blind. By the fate of gods of war and brilliant minds, Ultra broke the new U-boat “Triton” code in December. 1941.

 

During the climatic 12 months of the battle, the Germans nearly won, reaching a near peak of 90 Allied ships sunk in March 1943 (http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsAtlanticDev2.htm) in that Atlantic, a loss rate far more than the Allies could build to replace them. The Allies had built at this time what amounted to the world’s first vacuum tube computer. The Allies broke the new German codes using multiple solutions, much of it tedious, exhausting, and frustrating deduction. In June 1943, the tide had turned against the U-boats, because of Ultra combined with all of the other “wonder” weapons of Allied science and industry (key among them small aircraft carriers to cover the mid-ocean “blind spots” in air protection). U-boat commander Admiral Karl Döenitz withdrew his units and called the battle a decisive defeat. U-boat operations had become unprofitable and wasteful suicide missions. While the full range of Allied minds, people, and weapons helped defeat the U-boat threat, Ultra stuck the dagger in Döenitz’ soul. Considered so important to the Allied success and to the Cold War that followed World War II, the U.S. and Great Britain did not reveal Ultra’s role in the war on land, sea and in the air until the 1970s, nearly 30 years after World War II.

 

In his war memoirs, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said nothing about Ultra, but he did state the importance of the moral, mortal struggle to win the Battle of the Atlantic. “The U-boat attack was our worst evil. . . it constituted a terrible event at a very bad time.” (Churchill, p. 125). Such swings the “hinge of fate” on intelligence.

 

 

V. Diverting Armageddon Through Intelligence: Historical Cases

 

We may never know the extent that accurate, in-time intelligence delivered to policy-makers has diverted war, even nuclear holocaust, in the last 90 years. The role imagery intelligence played in the Cuban Missile Crisis over 13 day earth-stopping days in October 1962 typifies intelligence contributing to conflict resolution short of violence.

 

Realizing that American strategic nuclear weapons superiority had blunted Soviet threats for war over the Suez Crisis in 1956 and in the Berlin Crisis of 1961, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev launched a foreign policy move that would suddenly even the odds for Russia. Without a large and capable Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBMs) force or a long-range bomber force to provide adequate deterrence to U.S. nuclear weapons, Khrushchev conspired with the recently established Castro regime in Cuba, 90 miles from Florida, USA. If his gamble would have been successful, it would have placed a Soviet trump card in any future foreign policy crisis with the United States.

 

Not otherwise capable of striking at the Continental U.S. (see below), the Soviets deployed nuclear-armed Medium Range and Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (MRBM and IRBMs, respectively), which they did possess, into Cuba. Theoretically, Soviet policy-makers and military commanders would have the ability to threaten the U.S. with the with a “no-warning” missile attack on U.S. cities and military basis. The missiles could reach their targets with less than 10 minutes warning for America’s national security system to respond. Immediately once the missiles would become operational, the Soviet Union could take U.S. foreign policy hostage to the enhanced deterrence provided by missiles in Cuba.

 

Khrushchev gambled his entire political future on this single bullet of Russian roulette. Tempted at multiplying their strategic options against the U.S. in the luke-warm Cold War, the Soviet political powers, intelligence chiefs and the military leaders backed Khrushchev’s game. The key to success, however, rested presenting U.S. President John Kennedy with what is known in diplomatic jargon as a fait accompli–a choice with no chance of refusal. The matter revolved around timing: deploy and arm the missiles before the Americans knew about the move and could counter with either diplomacy or military action. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, imagery intelligence played one of the two vital intelligence roles in resolving the crisis without war.

 

In October 1962, a U.S. U-2 spy plane, flying above Soviet anti-aircraft missile and aircraft interceptor range, took photos of missile launch pads and air defense sites under construction. This caught Kennedy Administration unprepared. The photos analyzed, they revealed the possible presence of actual missiles under camouflage. Intelligence officials promptly informed President Kennedy and his National Security Council (NSC). Knowing the missile had yet become operational, and the fact the Russians did not know for sure if the U.S. knew of their presence in Cuba, gave the Kennedy NSC time to prepare a range of optional responses. The U.S. established the goal in the crisis as the withdrawal of the missiles without appeasing or compromising over such an aggressive, hostile, act of war by the Soviets to achieve the goal.

 

The response options ranged from diplomacy at the UN to preventive air strikes and pre-emptive invasion of Communist Cuba. The diplomatic routes played on world-wide public opinion and political pressure. The military options, a last resort, came to the forefront of choices presented by U.S. military commanders. Men, vehicles, planes, ships and supplies moved into position before the U.S. announced that the presence of missiles in Cuba to the public. These preparations, well advanced when the Kennedy Administration the announcement almost a week after discovering the facts, also included a naval blockade of Cuba.

 

Given time to consider a full range of actions, President Kennedy used the naval blockade of Cuba to “draw a line in the water,” to give the Soviets a way to back out of a potential war. Such a war, without question, would involve nuclear weapons. When the Russians “knew we knew,” they they faced the consequences of a war without their “trump” in their hand. Some Soviet missiles in Cuba might have become operational late in the 13 day crisis. Former Soviet officials and officers have since claimed that warships near Cuba or on their way carried tactical nuclear weapons like torpedoes and depth-charges, with orders to use them in a shooting war.

 

As it happened, the U.S. allowed Khrushchev to back down and save face before a possible a military coup in Moscow, and more problems with it, erupted into a reality. The final agreement stated that the Soviets would remove their missiles under United Nations supervision and the U.S. would not invade Cuba. In exchange, without publicity and under “deniability”, the U.S. removed obsolete “Jupiter” IRBMs from Turkey to help Khrushchev maintain his political position in the Soviet government. It turned out, however, that Khrushchev’s embarrassment led to a palace coup that removed him from power one year later. As a result of their strategic failure to deter the U.S. in any of the three crises (Suez, Berlin, and Cuba), the Soviets accelerated programs to build a reliable strategic nuclear missile deterrent of ICBMs.

 

By the turn of the 1970s, Soviet ICBMS far outnumbered U.S. land-based nuclear missiles. But during the 1970s and 1980s imagery intelligence played another role in the Cold War. Reconnaissance satellites helped create confidence between the two Superpowers for a string of arms limitations agreements which required a reliable verification of good faith, helping prevent serious miscalculations of policy.

 

Imagery intelligence made one of two vital intelligence contributions to resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. The other vital contribution came from a counter-intelligence operation. The information gained by this means, as later revealed, helped President Kennedy and his advisors predict Soviet responses to the American reactions , allowing U.S. policy to show a boldness and aggressiveness that avoided appeasement and a major diplomatic defeat.

 

In 1960, the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) found a willing Soviet double-agent, Colonel Oleg Penkovsky, who worked in the GRU. Protecting Penkovsky as he passed technical and policy information on Soviet intelligence, politics, and even nuclear weapons to the West, the U.S. and Great Britain learned that despite the success of the Sputnik satellite, the Soviet Union possessed a small ballistic missile of poor quality, a shortage of uranium weapons-grade material, test problems, and a lack of investment for missile development (Penkovsky, Oleg. The Penkovsky Papers. Introduction and Commentary by Frank Gibney; Foreword by Edward Crankshaw; Translated by Peter Deriabin. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1965. pp. 320-323). Early Soviet missiles also used liquid fuel instead of solid fuels, thus requiring pre-launch fueling and time-consuming servicing and maintenance.

 

Because of this information, the Western Allies knew the Soviets could not deter U.S. nuclear weapons with anything other than short-range weapons. Penkovsky reported to the West, “But as far as launching a planned missile attack to destroy definite targets is concerned, we are not yet capable of doing it. We simply do not have missiles that are accurate enough [emphasis added]. . . . Of course, there have been some fine achievements in the development and improvement of tactical and operational short-range missiles. It is still too early, however, to speak of strategic missiles as perfected” (Penkovsky, p. 326). To deter requires a massive attack against an enemies cities, preventing the enemy from launching a first strike. The U.S. could very well destroy the feeble Soviet missiles in a sneak attack, thus leaving the Soviets with no deterrence.

 

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, this information and information he may might have passed about high-level Soviet military decision-making during the crisis, presented a window of opportunity for the U.S. Knowing that the Soviets used bluff and guile to bully the U.S. UNTIL SOVIET MISSILES IN CUBA BECAME OPERATIONAL gave U.S. policy makers more time and choices in responses and preparations as discussed above. Sometime following the crisis in October 1962, Soviet counter-intelligence discovered, arrested and, in spring of 1963, shot Penkovsky.

 

Some commentators, either by truth or deception, have speculated that the Soviets may not have executed Penkovsky. The darker shadows of espionage makes it possible, though not probable, that the Soviets planted Penkovsky as a triple agent in the first place. From whatever the SIS gleaned from Penkovsky, even if a “triple agent,” he nonetheless helped to resolve the crisis short of war. Intelligence, counter-intelligence and the murkier “Alice-land” of “counter-counter-intelligence” can tell much to any party involved, where the craft of spying becomes the pure art of professional espionage.

 

These four case examples of decisive contributions of intelligence, either in winning a war or preserving a peace, explain a few of the major public achievements of professional spies and professional spy organizations. As mentioned, the far more numerous cases of winning battles, campaigns, and wars, or avoiding, preempting or preventing war may reach the public. As Churchill said during World War II, the Truth is so important that it needs a body of lies to protect it. Intelligence success and failure transcends time. Success may build on success, as long as it remains secret. Even failure holds lessons too dangerous to reveal, as examples of revealing them caused major problems to U.S. intelligence (coming in Part II of this essay–Strategy Gazette Vol. 2 No. 6, June 2007).

 

VI. The Misuse of Intelligence: Terror Incorporated

 

In history, few organizations have displayed such craft and effectiveness in protecting the realm as the Soviet Union’s Committee for State Security (KGB). Under different names through the life of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the founding of such a security agency began with the Cheka in December 1917. Cheka stood for an abbreviation of the Russian words for “All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage.” While the GRU arm of the Soviet General Staff served a military intelligence unit, professionally competent and technically knowledgeable, its SMERSH unit in World War II existed as a by-product of Soviet power and the mentality behind it. SMERSH, a wartime responsibility given to military intelligence, operated close to the front lines and had the primary aim of securing military information and rear-area operations. Yet, the mentality of SMERSH–extermination of all threats to the power of the Soviet leader, Stalin–came from the roots of Russian politics.

 

In pre-revolution times, the Russian Imperial government used a secret police and intelligence service, the Okhrana, to fight socialists and anarchists trying to overthrow the Czar. As the later emblem of the KGB signifies, living in the paranoia of assassination, sabotage, anarchism and revolution of “historical” Russia, the Cheka and all of the Soviet agencies that followed it–GPU, OGPU, NKVD–called themselves the “sword and shield” of the revolution. Despite many names, the Soviet secret intelligence services used espionage in the Soviet Union to exterminate dissent and suppress opposition to the governing elite rulers. The history of the Cheka typifies the long-74 year reign of the Soviet experiment.

 

The Cheka very early on, along with the GRU, started extensive espionage operations in Europe, Asia and America immediately upon the formation of Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic after the Bolshevik coup in the autumn of 1917. Soviet intelligence planted agents posing as trade representatives and they developed networks of agents in the countries where Russian emigres lived, the expatriates who conspired to overthrow the Bolshevik government under Vladimir I. Lenin.

 

The Soviets penetrated foreign governments with moles and plants to protect the Russian Revolution from the capitalist, decadent Western countries who feared Bolshevism spreading to their borders. In 1918, at first publicly to protect Allied supplies in Russian ports, Western governments and Japan violated Russian territory and landed troops in the north, south and Far East. During the bitter civil war from 1918-1921, and during the Russo-Polish War during the same period, Western military forces in Russia supported the “White” armies of former Czarist generals and troops attempting to overthrow the Bolsheviks.

 

Paranoia throughout the existence of the Soviet Union about the internal and external threats to their regime came from experience. In fear for their survival of power, and self-perfecting prophecy, the Bolshevik (Communist) rulers of Russia believed that only by world revolution would the revolution in Russia remain secure. Through the decades of the inter-war, post-war and Cold War periods, the Soviets used the “Sword” of intelligence with the “pure” purpose: “the effective and efficient defense” of the nation from all foreign enemies by use of espionage.

 

Domestically, however, the “Shield” of state power took the form of espionage as secret political police, used against domestic real or imagined enemies of Bolshevik rule. Soviet power came by way of an armed coup d’etat in the October 1917 (Old Style calendar) Revolution, not a popular uprising of the masses. The Bolsheviks overthrew a moderate socialist government led by Alexander Kerensky, which overthrew the Czar the previous March. The Bolsheviks had not attained power by popular support, but with violence and a murderous civil war.

 

The Cheka used force and fraud, fostering insecure feelings, intimidation, fear and institutionalizing torture and murder on anyone who opposed the Bolsheviks. Because of the illegitimate nature of their rule, the Soviets, until the very termination of the Soviet state in December 1991, could only ensure the continued rule of the Soviet’s elite and privileged-based ruling class through the widespread use of terrorism. The use of the Cheka-based secret police methods ranged from genocide under Stalin to petty thuggery and gangsterism. Bolshevik rule ended only when the ruling elite lost the will to impose en masse their weapons of force and fraud on Soviet society. The Dark Lie of Soviet legitimacy dissolved when they withdrew the weapon of state-sponsored terrorism.

 

The Cheka and its descendants used moral crimes–arbitrary arrest, imprisonment without writ, physical and psychological torture, internal exile, brainwashing, and murder–to support the regime. This “religion” of force and fraud, SMERSH-think, stands the ultimate result of using espionage against one’s own people for reasons of politics. While lesser forms of such mental and physical terrorism can come in smaller degrees, politics in espionage will perhaps always have the means of the Cheka and the ends of the Soviet Union at the end of that dark road of paranoia mixed with party politics. The cases of history, from the Age of Napoleon to the United States during the Vietnam protests to Red China (it is still “Red”) prove more or less the rule of espionage controlled by partisan politics, without the legitimacy of the people, or accountability to them. Sic semper tyrannous. Thus always the tyrant.

 

VII. The Sword of Lenin Part I: Offensive Defense

 

Abroad, the Cheka pursued Russian emigres who threatened the Bolshevik regime by “counter-revolutionary” activities. These Russian expatriates posed a threat to Soviet Russia as they supported “White” (Czarist) forces during the Russian Civil War and tried to manipulate international diplomacy to keep the Bolshevik government isolated and in dire poverty, banned from international trade and finance.

 

Under the founding director of the Cheka, “Iron” Feliks Dzherzhinsky, Russian Soviet intelligence organizations developed a refined and high art too often underutilized by nations: The art called maskirovka. Translated roughly from the Russian, the term maskirovka meant “grand strategic deception” in the intelligence profession. The Russians used such deception to their benefit from a combination of cleverness, craft, audacity, bluff, bluster and guile, all mixed with well-placed facts, playing an audience willing to believe what it wishes.

 

Both the Cheka and its descendants throughout Soviet history, and the military, developed rather sophisticated ploys, dummies, falsehoods, tricks, schemes and magic to both hide the reality of Soviet strengths and weaknesses and misdirect and cover-up Soviet intentions and activities. The German Wehrmacht suffered heavy losses and disastrous reverses on their Eastern Front from maskirovka during the Second World War. Grand strategic deception uses the efficient and effective use of information to deceive the opposition about a nation’s capabilities and intentions. The use of deception operations, all utilizing small amounts of harmless truth, and coordinated into a larger whole for greater effect, allows the side who uses deception art to conserve strength and to apply it where the opposition least expects it. Deception. concealment, and stealth multiply a nation’s strengths, choices and advantages.

 

Deception not only applies during wars, campaigns, and battles. As the Soviet intelligence agencies developed maskirovka into their high art, it paid them great benefits when used in espionage at a time when the Bolsheviks had a tenuous grasp

of power and the Russian Soviet Federation lived vulnerable to more powerful neighbors and distant enemies.

 

Once the Bolsheviks secured Russia from internal counter-revolutionaries, Soviet intelligence developed one of the most successful counter-intelligence operations of all time: Operation Trust. The Soviet spy masters set up an organization, known as “The Trust” and promoted it as a group of dissidents operating inside Russia with the aim of overthrowing the Bolshevik government. Russian emigres abroad, capitalist industrialists and bankers, and even capitalist governments gave The Trust support, including money, and confidential information.

 

The Trust built on what intelligence calls a “legend,” the fictional history, the fabricated personalities, and the imaginary exploits of agents in espionage. The legend builds a plausible story for, say, an individual acting covertly in a hostile place. As with maskirovka itself, a legend the real identity of an agent and creates a background of dull and unexceptional normality. In counter-intelligence deception operations, aimed at deceiving foreign intelligence agencies or their public and leadership, legends often-times succeed by the simple expedient of fulfilling an audiences pre-conceived prejudices and expectations.

 

One reason why Operation Trust, and its legend identity of the Monarchist Association of Central Russia, succeeded so well, comes from an order that Bolshevik leader Lenin reputedly told Dzherzinksy. “Tell them [emigres and Western governments] what they want to hear.” (Dziak, John J. Foreword by Robert Conquest. Chekisty: A History of the KGB. Lexington, MA, Lexington Books, 1988, p. 43). Unfortunately, democracies, as we will discuss in the second part of this essay, have offer themselves easily deceived to intelligence deception operations.

 

The Trust ran agent networks in the Western Hemisphere, in Western Europe and in Asia behind the cover of anti-Bolshevik activities. Soviet intelligence used The Trust to lure enemies back into Russia to face arrest and/or execution. It penetrated expatriate organizations and Western business and politics. It used the West against itself to solidify its power, at minimal costs, and with a profit. Few suspected its real nature until The Trust had operated successfully for five years. The Trust operated completely under the control of the Bolsheviks. The Trust had more or less fulfilled or exceeded expectations by the time it became exposed, through means not confirmed to history.

 

VIII. Intelligence Comes of Age

 

From the time of World War I, particularly with the advent of Soviet Russia, the last 90 years have seen the most active and important period of espionage. As the 1920s and the rise of Fascism and militarism bled into the 1930s and the coming of World War II, intelligence became more important to national policy, indeed to national survival. After the war, in which even America created the basis of a more or less permanent peace-time intelligence agency, intelligence during the Cold War played to a decisive advantage to whichever side used it more effectively.

 

While intelligence both before and during the Cold War developed a degree of the professionalism and political acceptability it would need to keep a country safe, the Cold War also created the conditions where such extremes as SMERSH became reality. Not even Great Britain and the United States remained immune to the never-ending hunt for spies among themselves. On the other hand, the Cheka mentality of using espionage for domestic political purposes also became commonplace in Western democracies, at the cost of personal liberty and freedom. Part II of this essay will show how SMERSH-think, and the political motivation and abuses driving it, have jeopardized the future of liberty in the 21^st Century and put the people of all free nations, especially the United States, in great peril.

 

Resources Cited for SMERSH Part I

 

Churchill, Winston. The Second World War, Vol. 4: The Hinge of Fate. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1950.

 

April 3, 2007 http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/ultra/navy-1.html

 

Penkovsky, Oleg. The Penkovsky Papers. Introduction and Commentary by Frank Gibney; Foreword by Edward Crankshaw; Translated by Peter Deriabin. New York: Doubleday & Co., 1965.

 

April 3, 2007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleg_Penkovsky

 

Russell, Jerry. Cmdr, USN. Ultra and the Campaign Against the U-boats in World War I. Individual Study Project. Studies in Cryptology, NSA, Document SRH-142. Record Group 457, Records of the National Security Agency, 20 May 1980.

 

April 3, 2007: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sorge

 

April 3, 2007: http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignsAtlanticDev2.htm

 

Review

 

 

Review of: Barnett, Thomas M.P. Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2005.

 

Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating is the more detailed strategy for resolving the problems identified in Thomas M. P. Barnett’s first book about his thesis, The Pentagon’s New Map. The thesis behind the title of the New Map is that the matrix of globalization, political institution building, interdependent trade, commerce, finance, and the “connectivity” provided by information technology has created a Functioning Core of modern 21^st century countries in two-thirds of the globe. This Core is stable, relatively war-free, prosperous, and plugged into the advantages of technology, education, and enterprise. In the other one-third of the world–running from South and Central America, through most of Africa, Southeast Europe, the Middle East, and Central and Southeast Asia–there is a Non-Integrating Gap of countries unconnected to modern thought, tools, and opportunities as found in the Functioning Core of Barnett’s New Map.

 

Whereas the Core has all the advantages of liberal politics and market economics, the Gap is prone to war, disease, genocide, poverty, famine, ignorance, oppression, tyranny, and dictatorship. This Gap part of the New Map has been the scene for almost of all of the conflicts and human catastrophes since the end of World War II in 1945. Barnett believes, and possibly rightly, that the Gap countries will continue to be areas of in the future, involving major world powers.

 

These conflicts, as they have always done, will create mass human suffering, ecological disaster, economic turmoil, diplomatic tension, and war in the future. These wars, as they have already done in the last six decades, will use or threaten the use of massively destructive weapons. In Barnett’s thesis, as long as this “other” world remains weak internally and externally against all enemies, the future of the Non-Integrating Gap is misery, destruction, and death. That is, unless something happens to bring the personal liberty, economic freedom, stable institutions, and community “connectedness” to the Gap.

 

Herein is the major reason for this second book, Blueprint for Action. The blueprint is Barnett’s suggestion of a U.S. grand strategy to lead a world-wide alliance which systematically shrinks the Gap, country by country, connecting them to the 21^st century, until the dire danger to world peace presented by the Gap’s “backwardness” is removed. This proposal is nothing more than a call for the “humanitarian” intervention for the overthrow of national governments by a Leviathon military force (so named after the large creature in the Old Testament) through preventive invasion. This Leviathon Force, which is mostly the United States and NATO, would then move onto the next country on the regional target list. Unlike the post-invasion plan for Iraq, the rest of the world in a unified Systems Administration Force (SysAdmin) would assume sovereign control of the occupied country. This SysAdmin force would be the militaries of second-tier powers, constabulary and paramilitary forces, civilian outsourced personnel, and government and international civil servants. The country under occupation would be rebuilt, reordered, “freed,” and connected to the principles and advantages of the Functioning Core, then turned over to a trained, and apparently obedient, national government.

 

The real implication of Barnett’s prescription, even if his diagnosis of “unconnectedness” proves correct, is the smacking of the colonial and imperial “white man’s burden” of 19^th and 20^th European empires seeking to remake the “aboriginal” peoples of the world into “better” people. Then, such “better” ideas were accomplished through religious conversion, legal near-slavery, economic exploitation, and foreign rule. Barnett basically says that the people in the Non-Integrating Gap and their leaders cannot be trusted to make necessary changes in their countries to prevent human catastrophe. This may be true enough for the dictatorships, who have been nonetheless supported and financed by Western “democratic” nations. But more sadly, Barnett believes that the only way to shrink the Gap, to connect those countries, and prevent war, disease, etc., is through the use of war.

 

To make the task more manageable, Barnett makes a radical proposal to anchor the “other side” of the world to this new international system of “connectivity.” The anchor to this system, in Barnett’s opinion, requires securing the consent and participation of the People’s Republic of China. Barnett’s suggestion poses the most far-reaching consequences for the future of the world. His proposal requires surrendering to all of China’s claims and demands in the world–from domination over oil resources in East and Central Asia, to unification and complete contro