GailForce: Aspen Security Forum

In my last blog, I mentioned I would be heading out to attend a forum on national security issues sponsored by the Homeland Security Program of the Aspen Institute in partnership with the New York Times. The topic of the 3 day forum is counterterrorism. On their website the institute stated: “The Forum will bring together top-level government officials, industry leaders and leading thinkers for 3 days of in-depth discussions at our Aspen Meadows campus in Aspen, Colorado on the state of: aviation security; maritime security; border security; mass transit security; intelligence; critical infrastructure protection; cybersecurity; counterterrorism strategy; terrorism finance; and much more.leaders, and leading thinkers…”

I’ve attended countless conferences over the years but this is hands down the best experience I’ve ever had. The speakers and moderators are a who’s who of government, industry and media. The talks have been informative and often quite “lively” and not once have I gotten the impression someone was just speaking “the party line” of whatever organization they were representing. I just finished day two and have many highlights I’d like to cover so will use a series of blogs in order to do the subject justice. It’s not my intent to give a thorough report on all of the speakers and topics; but simply to highlight things that jumped out at me and add my “two cents” now and then.

Two of the sessions come to mind as I write this. One was called “The View From Abroad” and featured two current and one former Ambassadors from the Middle East and South Asia. The most provocative and thought provoking one for me was Husain Haqqani, Ambassador to the United States for the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The moderator of the session, Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, asked all three participants to answer the question: where did U.S. strategy go wrong.

Ambassador Haqqani began by saying a serving Ambassador can’t say what a host country has done wrong then he proceeded to let the volleys fly. The following is a summary of some of his key points concerning the U.S.:

• We have a lot of problems here that has sucked a lot of energy out of our leaders.
•  Americans don’t have patience. Changing hearts and minds takes a long time.
• Pakistan has lost more than 30,000 civilians to terrorist attacks, more than any country. They’ve also lost more troops fighting terrorists.
• They intend to find the people who hid Osama Bin Laden because it is in their interest to do so.
• To use the Bin Laden incident as a basis for insulting them and marginalizing them is not good.
• We have to begin by respecting their sacrifices not insulting them.
• When the U.S. approaches them with a list of requests we tell them what we would like, in response they say what they can do and what they can’t.
• He used an example saying if the U.S. approached them and made a request for say ten things. In response they say something like some we can do tomorrow others may take a while. He indicated out of 10 there may be 3 requests they can’t fill. When that happens they give the reason.
• What generally happens is someone will then go to the media and say they are not cooperating.

Ambassador Haqqani concluded his remarks by saying they do understand how we work and he wants us to understand how their country works and to listen to us more.

As I listened to Ambassador Haqqani my thoughts went back to comments made the previous evening by the former Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, during a session called,“Threat vs Response” moderated by Lesley Stahl from CBS. Lesley Stahl stated she had been in Pakistan recently and was shocked by the level of anti-Americanism. Admiral (he’s retired Navy) Blair said the anti-Americanism is fueled by the drone attacks. He suggested pulling back on unilateral drone attacks except in exceptional circumstances. That would make it a lot easier to work with allies like Pakistan in the long term. If we changed our policy in this manner he wouldn’t expect Pakistan to say yes to future attacks right away. I need to point out Admiral Blair said he was not suggesting that we should never act unilaterally. He cited the Bin Laden raid as an example of what he meant by saying “exceptional circumstances”. He said giving Pakistan a veto over the drone strikes would complicate things but he thought it still would be wise to do.

I think the reason this jumped out at me is because one of the major problems I noted when I worked in Naval Intelligence was a lack of a sustained program to allow intelligence personnel to develop expertise on a geographic regions and/or languages and cultures. One of the many things an intelligence professional is expected to be able to do, particularly those who specialize in support to military operations, is predict what a potential enemy will or will not do with their military forces. Just because a country has a strong military does not mean they will frequently look for a chance to use it. To help determine that; you have to understand a particular country’s history and culture. You also need to understand what are their priorities and “hot buttons”. For instance, there were not many people who predicted that Argentina would provoke a fight with the United Kingdom over the Falkland Islands; yet that was exactly what happened. Some speculated that the Argentine leaders did it to take the mind off of their economic problems. Who owned or should own those islands was a “hot button” for the Argentines. If you were not familiar with Argentina’s history, that could and did hamper some initial assessments intelligence analysts provided to decision makers they were supporting on whether the United Kingdom and Argentina would go to war.

Think I’ll end here. As always my views are my own. I have much more information to pass on including more on Admiral Blair session. There is one more day of the forum and it’s being streamed live over the web. Here’s are the links:

Aspen Security Forum Online:

• Aspen Security Forum Website: http://aspensecurityforum.org/
• Twitter: #AspenSecurity
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AspenInstitute
• Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aspeninstitute

Jeffrey Harris (no relation) of the Aspen Institute provided the following quotes from the forum:
Quotes from the Forum:

• “Anybody who is worried about the future of America based on the youth they’re seeing just aren’t seeing the same youth I am in recruiting.” – Admiral Eric T. Olson, Commander, US Special Operations Command
• “The special ops community is a fantastic community. It is a microcosm of the Department of Defense.” – Admiral Eric T. Olson, Commander, US Special Operations Command
• “The bin Laden raid wouldn’t have been as successful if not for the interagency collaboration.” – Admiral Eric T. Olson, Commander, US Special Operations Command
• “Counterterrorism without counterinsurgency is a flawed concept.” – Admiral Eric T. Olson, Commander, US Special Operations Command
• “Bin Laden was not the CEO of a multi-national corporation. He was the head of a largely dysfunctional family.” –Michael Leiter, former Director, National Counterterrorism Center
• “I think it is possible for the first time since I have been working on al Qaeda to envision their collapse.” – John McLaughlin, former Deputy and Acting Director, CIA
• “My opinion is that the White House is not a very good place to coordinate intelligence, much less to integrate it.” -Adm. (Ret.) Dennis Blair, former Director of National Intelligence
• “To say this has nothing to do with Islam is like saying the Crusades had nothing to do with Christianity.” – Peter Bergen, National Security Analyst, CNN