Essential Elements of Information for a Culture of Preparedness

During the 1970s the iconic terrorist target became the international airliner. But as airline security increased in response to terrorist incidents, it became more difficult to hijack or bomb aircraft, and this difficulty resulted in a shift in targeting. By the mid-1980s, while there were still some incidents involving aircraft, the iconic terrorist target had become the embassy. But attacks against embassies have also provoked a security response, resulting in embassy security programs that have produced things …which some have labeled "fortress America" buildings due to their foreboding presence and their robust construction designed to withstand rocket and large IED attacks.

 ...Overall, however, this trend of making embassies hard targets has caused yet another shift in the terrorist paradigm. As STRATFOR has noted since 2004, hotels have become the iconic terrorist target of the post-9/11 era. Indeed, by striking an international hotel in a capital city, militants can make the same type of statement against Western imperialism and decadence that they can make by striking an embassy. Hotels are often full of Western businessmen, diplomats and intelligence officers, providing militants with a target-rich environment where they can kill Westerners and gain international media attention without having to penetrate the extreme security of a modern embassy. ( extract from STRATFOR analysis -next EEI post)

Essay

Eight summers ago I was heavily involved with final planning, then execution, and analysis of a Navy exercise – experiment really – focused on battle group staff decision making when faced with multiple attacks on Navy ships by a non-state actor group using weapons of mass destruction.  My observation throughout the evolution was that while this was a very enlightened approach to explore just how well -or not –  current decision making templates would hold up when applied against a new type of threat, much of the Navy was seemingly not overly concerned with "asymmetric warfare."  When the USS Cole was attacked three months later, the exercise/experiment seemed most timely.

While some may have not been completely surprised that a U.S. ship would be attacked in the Middle East, few of us were not caught completely off guard by the airliner-as-weapon attack of September 11, 2001.  The initial conditions for defense of the country within  the country that existed that morning just prior to American Airlines Flight 11 impact at eight hours, fortysix minutes, thirty-nine seconds – were later characterized by investigators with the terms "lack of imagination," and "poor to non-existent procedures for sharing timely intelligence among the key agencies." 

An overlapping but different set of initial conditions – no more in context or appropriate content – existed for offensive action on the following day September 12.  Indeed, our total National Defense structure, offense and defense, thinking, and planning still reflected more the capabilities for Cold War type response than that required for a non-state enemy intent on attacking civilians, using people as weapons, marginalizing our military capability, and in fact, purposefully choosing his battlespace "amongst the people."

It should really be of no surprise that our response has been difficult.  Use whatever description you like – global insurgency, "hybrid" of war and terrorism, fourth generation warfare (4GW), guerrilla warfare – we have still not, as Von Clausewitz stated, first fulfilled the requirement to understand what kind of war we are in.  And thus approaching the eighth anniversary of 9-11, our leaders have still not been able to fully explain to the country why, how, and even who we fight.

Given that, it should also probably be of no surprise that as we begin to downsize and move out of Iraq, that the media and the blogosphere now focus not only on why we should not remain in Afghanistan, but even question why we ever went in to start with.  Concern with lack of imagination has turned to accusations of creating fear – "Hollywoodizing" the threat.  Comments now abound on "we panicked, overreacted, should have known better, seen how badly things would turn out, indeed, 9-11 should not have unhinged us the way it did."

I bring this current focus up not to begin a dialogue on the merits of going into either Iraq or Afghanistan, serious mistakes made both strategic and tactical, why we fight, nor to debate the tactics, techniques, procedures of counter insurgency (COIN).  Rather, the purpose here is to hopefully provide contrast to the continuing issue of a global conflict – of which, terrorist organizations and their severe acts of violence on any and all are a major possibility – that remains  as a major characteristic of this century, still. 

Having actionable understanding of terrorists and terrorism is indeed a continuing essential element of information, if one believes in the need for building and maintaining a culture of preparedness.  Have things changed in the world since 9-11?  Most assuredly, but consider the following aspects of terrorism, all controlled by the terrorist:

• Choice of battlespace: By understood definition, terrorism is  an act of violence against civilians intended to intimidate government into effecting change. It has merged with aspects of insurgency, irregular warfare, etc (discussed below) as a mode of conflict played out on a global stage. The protagonists not only use people as targets, but specifically choose to fight in and among the population. This "war amongst the people" as the battlespace is a major element of the 21st Century security environment.  As such, leveraging greatly British General Sir Rupert Smith's   The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, "war amongst the people" will be the subject of a future EEI post.


• Use of time: We fight an enemy for which time, as we in the West think,m is on such as scale as would be considered asynchronous.It is worth recalling that after some seven decades, Osama Bin Laden in discussing Al Qa'ida's griefs with the West and their operations , referred to the serious afront to the Muslim world of the post WWI dismantling of the last remnants of the Ottoman Empire. The Crusades are still part of the equation and time of the next attack is on no short term planning cycle.  Use of the term "Long War"  or "persistent conflict" may be off-putting to manyin the U.S., but not all issues are in our span of control. 


•  Evolving Tactics, Techniques, Procedures:  From David Kilcullen, in The Accidental Guerrilla – Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One:

The 9/11 attacks are an example of what might be called 'expeditionary terrorism.' Al Qa'ida formed the team  for attacks in one country, assembled them in another, ran logistics and financial support for the operation out of a third, and then clandestinely inserted the teams across internatinal borders to attack its target…essentially an expeditionary raiding approach.

Contrast this with the Madrid bombing in 2004 or the London 7/7 bombing in 2005. In the latter case, rather than smuggling 19 people in, AQ openly brought one person out: Mohammed Sidque Khan, who traveled by ordinary commercial airliner on his own passport to Pakistan for briefing and training prior to the attack.  He then returned to the UK and formed the attack team inside the country, using British nationals… a guerilla approach that allowed AQ to sidestep the improved transportation security measures and international border controls put in place after 9/11 to defeat expeditionary-style terrorism.

... as the 7/7 example shows, the expeditionary model now coexists alongside a guerrilla model in which local clandestine cells are recruited and trained in the target coubntry.  Some cells are directly linked to AQ , while others receive training from AQ affiliates, or are inspired by AQ propaganda.   There is a trend towards smaller, looser networks that are less capable , but also less predictictable, and harder to detect, than the more sophisticated networks of the pre-9/11 period. (PWH emphasis added)

This suggests that AQ is agile in its approach, and willing to change and adapt as the situation develops…

The analysis of the recent hotel attacks in Jakarta following the attacks in Mumbai last November would seem to support Kilcullen's logic. In this vein, EEI #8 provides analysis on the Jakarta attack by STRATFOR writers.

Concluding remarks

Kilcullen offers that there are four models for characterizing the Twenty-first -century security environment:

1) A backlash against Globalization, characterized by a fostering of resentment in splitting cultures, creation of a severe have-have not  population environment, openess that affords opponents use of sophisticated IT technology, easy co-ordination of distant groups, and leverage of the media marketplace.

2) A globalized insurgency thesissuggesting that the "War on Terrrism" is best understood as an extremely large-scale globalized insurgency, rather than a tradiytional terrorism problem.  Defining groups by use of the tactic of terrorism is less analytically useful than defining and understanding their strategic approach.

3) A civil war within Islam which includes radical movement to overthrow existing political and religious structures in the Muslim world, revival of the Shi'a vs Sunni conflict, and the geopolitical rise of Iran.

4) Asymmetric warfare as a method to marginalize unquestioned Western military dominance. The methods include violence targeting civilians for purposes of inrtimidation – terrorism, but also incorporate propaganda, subversion, popular agitation, economic warfare, hit-and-run attacks on regular forces to wear them down or to induce overreaction – thus placing the stronger on the horns of a moral dilemma.

Whether this mix is exhaustive or in need of modification, one thing should be evident – we still face a highly volatil asynchronous global environment with non-state actors, terrorists, terrorism and war -by choice of the a opponent – amongst us all.  It stands to reason that this certainly defines understanding terrorism and its evolution as a continuing essential element of information. Further posts in this series will expand on other aspects.

The development and exploration of critical "operational threads" for future editions is still necessary. It would appear to me that education for wearing a uniform in Detroit … or in Baghdad requires a global focus as well as local. Lessons in one are needed in the other.
Here are some issues under consideration:

RC#13 (Part 1) To Lead  introduced the discussion of leadership in the context of understanding the needs of a resilient community.  Part 2 as a book review of America's Army; A Model for Interagency Effectiveness by Generals Zeb Bradford and Frederic Brown – provided an introduction to the Team of Leaders (TOL) concept.  This was followed by a four part discussion of TOL as a potential "disaster operations force multiplier."  This post of "To Lead" begins a multiarticle series exploring further, leadership requirements for response to worst case disasters, sometimes considered low probability high impact events.  While it is not uncommon in today's media to see discussion of "worst cases" in light of political scare tactics, indeed doom, failure and catastrophe are part of ordinary life – they are normal.  And yet worst cases carry an interesting, somewhat at odds definition in relation to "normal."

"These three attributes – inconceivability, uncontrollability, and social identification – seem to be common to unfamiliar events that people label worst cases…(but) what really makes something worst is not the event itself but what people think about the event." Lee Clarke, Worst Cases; Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination

This series of articles suggests that leadership requirements for response to such events have both overlapping AND distinctly different aspects and considerations necessary from business, political and combat operations.  This first offering provides a short "baseline" of leadership theories and begins discussion of distinct areas of interest.

 Amazingly, while many of today's crises are preceded by long "brewing" periods, and many of the natural disasters are predictable – if not in terms of date then at least in terms of certainty of their occurrence – and the news of crises and disasters spreads around the globe with unprecedented speed, our ability to control their development and spread continues to be limited, the actions to contain them feeble, and for the most part, we continue with mutual assurances that "next time, we will do better."  The results appear to follow the comment of the French general J-R Bachelet on the preparedness for the crisis of WWII - "In 1914 we were caught totally unprepared.  In 1940, we were fully prepared – for the First World War" (Lagadec, 2005).

At times, as on September 11, 2001, we appear totally unprepared despite ominous signs of approaching cataclysm, we fail to anticipate the catastrophic potential of events outside the most commonly accepted bureaucratic and political routines, fail to realize the dangerous nature of "event outliers," and complacently reject warning signs by dubbing them as rumors or "minor incidents of utter insignificance."

Speculation "what-if" notwithstanding, many recent crises and disasters (the "dot-com" crash, Hurricane Katrina and Tsunami of 2004, war in Iraq, etc.) indicate that many of the failures do not originate at the responder/operator level but much higher – at the level of executive management, a level mired in strict adherence to outmoded dogmas, inability to adapt to the constant change and unpredictability of the modern world, and saturated with the demands of political gamesmanship (and political correctness) and expedience (Robert and Lajtha, 2002).  And thus, throughout the modern world, firefighters, medics, police forces, soldiers, rescue volunteers, and humanitarian aid workers fight often heroic battles to save lives, to restore stability and at least partial peace to regions ravaged by cataclysms, unnecessary wars, economic privations, and disease caused by nothing more dramatic than simple poverty, doing it in the most devastating vacuum of all: the vacuum of adequate leadership at the highest levels of corporate and governmental bureaucracies (Lagadec, 2005.)

Theories of leadership

The art of leadership, the attributes of leaders, and the manner in which they approach conflicting situation has been the subject of much academic and popular interest.  In recent years a vast number of popular, almost evangelical offerings emerged based on rousing examples of success drawn from business life.  For the most part, majority of these texts present the serious reader with nothing more than trivial analyses of leadership in comparatively placid environment of daily corporate routines where decent management acquired a shinier name of "leadership."  Moreover, the majority of these works offer but quick fixes based on idealized scenarios, and a diluted mix of organizational psychology, with ideal leaders presented as team-building super-humans of grand vision, stalwart moral spine, decisiveness, and team-building inclination (e.g., Sim et al., 2007; Sidle, 2005; Schaffer et al., 2005).  Yet, as the reality of "post mortem" exploration of almost every major crisis and disaster shows, one of the principal (if not the principal) reasons for failure was leadership incompetence (Cooper and Block, 2006; MacKenzie, 2002; Witt and Behr 2002).  Unsurprisingly, the city of New Orleans is still riddled by inadequacies of infrastructure, raising crime levels, and grossly inefficient efforts at rebuilding.

During the past 80 years, academic studies of leadership resulted in four "classical" theories of leader ship. 1) The trait theory (e.g., Gardner, 1989; see also Stogdill, 1948) contends that some individuals are characterized by a definable set of personal qualities (traits) which predispose them to become leaders.  Leadership ability appears thus to be contingent on specific genetic traits but a closer look reveals that the list of desirable qualities published ever since publication of Gradner's work represents not only a mix of acquired behaviors, skills, intellectual and emotional maturity, and, indeed, genetically determined traits, e.g., physical appearance, but also the grand sum total of almost every positive trait ascribable to a human being.  Interestingly, the "male-spin" appears to be associated with the "trait theory," the preferable characteristics of a leader being perceived as distinctly "male" (Rosener, 1997) although no evidence exists supporting differences in male vs. female quality of leadership.

2) The shift of focus from leadership traits to how leaders act resulted in the emergence of behavior theories (e.g., McGregor, 1960; Blake and Mouton, 1964; Wright, 1996) and led to identification of several distinctive leadership styles.  Further research demonstrated quite clearly that the art of leadership is greatly affected by the task at hand, environment in which the act of leadership is performed, the quality (maturity) of the followers, etc.  (e.g., Fielder, 1987; Fiedler and Garcia, 1997; Hersey and Blanchard, 1977). 

Clearly, leaders not only represented several identifiable styles but the style was contingent on situational context.  The most significant deficiency of 3) contingency or situational concept of leadership is its pronounced US bias that derives from analyses based on US models of corporate environment (.  The undeniable existence of often pronounced differences between culturally very closely related North Americans and Europeans (e.g., Rifkin, 2004) clearly indicates potential difficulties in using contingency models as the underlying leadership theory suitable for complex international operations such as those following Indian Ocean Tsunami or, for that matter, those encountered in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

4) Finally, it has been proposed (Burns, 1977; Bolman and Deal, 1997) that leaders serve as agents of change (transformation) who influence behavior of the followers either through transactional (trading) or transforming approach in which the leader and the followers interact in a mutually uplifting manner.  The two forms of leadership proposed by Burns (1977) are highly polarized, and Bass (1985) proposed a hybrid approach based on transformational exploitation of the transactional approach – "transformational leadership" – where the leader transforms the followers through uni-directional influence.

Van Maurik (2001) both argued that transformational leadership is particularly well suited to actions executed in environments where high levels of uncertainty and change affect not only the leaders and their staff but the entire organizations, and also identified three main lines of thought within the broad concept of transformational leadership.  Overall, "the goal of transformational leadership is to 'transform' people and organizations in a literal sense – to change them in mind and heart; enlarge vision, insight, and understanding; clarify purposes, make behavior congruent with beliefs, principles, or values; and bring about changes that are permanent, self-perpetuating, and momentum building" (Bass and Avolio, 1994).

Transactional leadership remains the principal model for organizations rooted in rigid vertical chains of command and inflexible bureaucracies and which, despite operating in a rapidly changing world, adhere to the inflexible past and fail to adopt transformational methods as the platform for executive leadership (Bolden et al., 2003).  While transactional leaders are proactive, anticipatory, and influence organization's development rather than only its performance, the question of authority and charisma as the necessary attributes of successful leadership remains.  As pointed out by Heifetz (1994), authority of formal organizational rank is often confused with leadership, and represents the principal attribute legitimizing the powers of directing others.  Major executive powers (authority) when associated with inadequate leadership capability proved consistently to lead to major policy errors, major operational inefficiencies, fiscal losses and a host of other adverse consequences (e.g., Boin et al., 2006; Cooper and Block, 2006; Ricks, 2006; Lagadec, 2005).

True leadership appears then not to depend on the exercise of formal authority but the leader's reliance on personal qualities and actions – informal authority – that inspire and make the followers concur and accept leader's directions.  Formal authority has, however, significant advantages when wielded prudently and employed in the context of mission execution: it facilitates acquisition of resources and access to the executive levels of the organization both of which may provide critical mechanisms necessary for the operational effectiveness of the led entity (e.g., removal of Mr. Brown, the former director of FEMA, from the cabinet level contributed to the loss of his ability to perform as an efficient leader during the immediate, and most critical, period following Hurricane Katrina; see Cooper and Block, 2006).

Personal qualities – the charisma factor

Charisma is among the most intangible qualities of leadership, and its role has been emphasized by Max Weber (1922).  It comes to the fore particularly in the times of major crises (e.g., Nelson, Churchill, Gandhi or Kennedy), with the leader's power grounded in "...exceptional personal qualities or the demonstration of extraordinary insight and accomplishment, which inspire loyalty and obedience from followers" (Kendall et al, 2000).  Although Charismatic leaders emerging during period of turbulence offer inspiration, and the sense of emotional safety and direction, they need not represent positive forces (e.g., Hitler or Mussolini).  More importantly, charismatic leaders have a tendency of causing emotional dependency among the followers that may paralyze their ability to act independently in situations of crisis or lethal threats to the organization (as seen, for example among many generals of Napoleon performing brilliantly while in the presence of the Emperor, and suffering defeats in his absence, e.g., McLynn, 2002).

 Altogether, personal qualities of the leader, as important as they may be, do not ultimately translate into effective execution of leadership and, in the context of increasingly globalized world and contact of societies with vastly divergent cultural foundations (perfectly exemplified by the clash of Islamic and Western values in Iraq, e.g., Rick, 2006), excessive emphasis of such qualities may lead to harm rather than operational benefits (Bolden et al., 2003).  Consequently, leadership is better exercised when based on a framework of universally accepted rules of conduct, ethics, and professionalism.

A striking divergence from the generally common standards is that of the US Senior Executive Service (SES, at http://www.opm.gov/ses/competent.html) which, under the competency of "building coalitions/communication" requires "political savvy."  One can not escape the notion that excessively developed political savvy may have contributed to the problems of the executive leadership that have emerged with striking clarity during the recent crises and disasters.  It is thus quite likely that the official encouragement of acute awareness of political atmosphere surrounding these events might have promoted operational rigidity, adherence to agency rules and regulations, and interagency divisiveness and territory protection.  In short, "political savvy" may mean nothing else but increased fear of consequences resulting from "politically incorrect" but operationally essential decision, elevated timidity and intellectual paralysis at the time of the most intense demand for clear-cut decisions, precision of actions, and focus on the mission rather than personal survival (see also Boin et al., 2005).

Discussion

At the moment, practically every major organization, whether corporate or governmental, has a well defined set of competencies that need to be mastered by their leadership.  A survey of several European US corporate and governmental/public organizations (Bolden et al., 2003) shows that the differences notwithstanding, the majority of these frameworks center on a number of common values related to personal qualities, ability to provide vision and direction to the followers, development of subordinate personnel, and achievement of positive outcomes.

The question of interest then, which this series of papers intends to explore further, relates to the specific leadership requirements for disaster response.

The nature of crisis and disaster is the subject of the next paper in the series.  But as prelude, consideration must be given to the following:

• In disaster operations – as in combat – one neither knows nor even expects to know all sources of information, or assumes the ability to verify all sources (who may represent government or private organizations, informal groups, or individuals) generating and participating in the transfer of information.


• Leaders may be responsible or not for the content and transfer of the information. The degree of responsibility may vary. The degree of exactitude in the process of transfer may vary. The identity and character of all participants in a given scenario may not be known.


• When applied to either disaster prevention or consequence mitigation process, the extant information has to be transformed into leader usable knowledge.  Given the broad span of disaster problems, assimilating the breadth of knowledge, decision making and actions necessary will require an approach as presented in the previous article discussing the "Team of Leaders" concept.


• In those cases where decisive control of results is possible, leadership can be concerned with obtaining the best results possible.  In severely stochastic situations, however, the best that can be done is to manipulate the initial response so as to achieve the highest possibility for favorable outcomes or the lowest probability for unfavorable ones.


• But in a completely indeterminate situation, – worst cases – the unstable nature creates the significant tendency of serious operational missteps to create failure modes that allow the situation to snowball even further into complete disasters, making command of the response operations process much more sensitive to risk than that of more stable stochastic type event processes.

This suggests that management of risk is as at least important as the management of expected results. Leaders must proceed intuitively, protecting as well as possible against disaster at each point while attempting actions more designed to learn about the situation than control it. 

The implication is that leadership success in "worst cases" is highly determined by the ability to tolerate high levels of uncertainty, the willingness to make critical decisions with limited information with the knowledge that results may be unknown or negative. The ability to regain control over the situation, survive and eventually thrive in uncharted waters requires a level of general subject knowledge and experience-based knowledge to be brought to the decision process by all participants at all levels.  Not only must senior personnel understand leadership in this context, but also must those that will be led.

Next: Describing the disaster environment