Australian Researcher
I’m giving a PhD Confirmation talk as part of Monash University’s annual PSI Symposium on 26th October (at the 1:30-3:00pm session in HB.39, Caulfield campus).
You can download the slides here and read the 2011 initial PhD proposal here.
My thanks to Michael Janover, Pete Lentini, Ben MacQueen, Andy Butfoy and Luke Howie.
I opted for a ‘document format’ rather than the aesthetic communication wizardry of Nancy Duarte’s Slide:ology. Maybe next time.
A PhD insight: study the leading scholars in your domain and read books from the imprints of leading university presses. This month I’m looking at new titles of the Stanford Security Studies series from Stanford University Press. Thomas Mahnken‘s anthology Competitive Strategies for the 21st Century provides an overview of the geopolitical landscape centered on United States-China rivalry. Meir Finkel‘s On Flexibility examines how doctrinal and strategic surprise affects politico-military actors and institutions: a study that might fit within the so-called fourth generation of strategic culture. Sheldon M. Stern‘s The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory re-evaluates the ‘memoir’ tradition about ExComm’s crisis decision-making under uncertainty, and the leadership and political myths that have grown up around the 13 day confrontation. Collectively, these books provide benchmarks and examples of security studies research that will inform my in-progress PhD chapters.
Coauthor Ben Eltham (a PhD candidate at University of Western Sydney and rising star in Australian national affairs journalism for Crikey and New Matilda) and I have two papers accepted for the International Studies Association‘s annual convention in San Francisco in 2013:
Australia’s Strategic Culture and Constraints in Defense and National Security Policymaking
Scholars have advanced different conceptualizations of Australia’s strategic culture. Collectively, this work contends Australia is a ‘middle power’ nation with a realist defense policy, elite discourse, entrenched military services, and a regional focus. This paper contends that Australia’s strategic culture has unresolved tensions due to the lack of an overarching national security framework, and policymaking constraints at two interlocking levels: cultural worldviews and institutional design that affects strategy formulation and resource allocation. The cultural constraints include confusion over national security policy, the prevalence of neorealist strategic studies, the Defence Department’s dominant role in formulating strategic doctrines, and problematic experiences with Asian ‘regional engagement’ and the Pacific Islands. The institutional constraints include resourcing, inter-departmental coordination, a narrow approach to government white papers, and barriers to long-term strategic planning. In this paper, we examine possibilities for continuity and change, including the Gillard Government’s forthcoming ‘Asian Century’ whitepaper and 2013 defense whitepaper.
(Thanks to Wooster College’s Jeff Lantis for coordinating the Strategic Culture panel that this paper is on.)
Complexity, Model Risk, and International Security
International security thinking has evolved beyond initial research in the early-to-mid using the chaos and complexity sciences. Firms including Kissinger & Associates, Pimco, The Prediction Company (now part of UBS), Roubini Global Economics and Stratfor have created new models to understand catastrophic/tail risks, and to profit from geopolitical flashpoints such as the current speculative bubble in rare earths, China’s growth in the Asia-Pacific region, and the greater involvement of multi-national corporations in the international political economy. This paper builds on the work of scholars in international security and the sociology of economics and finance, journalists, and hedge fund and risk management practitioners, to address how these new models have diffused into hybrid academic-commercial environments, how they construct new social realities, and ‘model risk’. We focus on structural micro-foundations: to what degrees and under what conditions do the assumptions underlying these new risk models correspond to real-world phenomena like geopolitical flashpoints? Are these phenomena measurable? Are the relationships between them robust? We examine as a case study the Anonymous hack of Stratfor in December 2011, Stratfor’s planned hedge fund StratCap, and Stratfor’s reaction including its hiring in March 2012 of Atlantic Monthly journalist Robert D. Kaplan.
In December 2011, Gillard Government announced the Cornall-Black independent review of the Australian intelligence community.
Australian National University professor Hugh White and the Lowy Institute’s Sam Roggeveen have each reflected on Cornall-Black; Australia’s understanding of Asia; diplomacy versus intelligence; and the value of open source intelligence (in deference to US grand strategist George Kennan). Kate Grayson and I responded separately to White and Roggeveen. White also responded to Roggeveen. I will probably respond to White tomorrow. This is an unfolding, interesting debate.
Harvard’s Stephen Walt has a well-argued case for valuing many different approaches to international relations:
But because academic disciplines are largely self-defining and self-policing (i.e., we determine the “criteria of merit” and success depends almost entirely on one’s reputation among fellow academics), there is the ever-present danger that academic disciplines spin off into solipsistic and self-regarding theorizing that is divorced from the real world (and therefore unlikely to be refuted by events) and of little value to our students, to policymakers, or even interested citizens. This tendency occurs primarily because proponents of one approach naturally tend to think that their way of doing business is superior, and some of them work overtime to promote people who look like them and to exclude people whose work is different. Anybody who has spent a few years in a contemporary political science department cannot fail to have observed this phenomenon at work; there just aren’t very many people who are genuinely catholic in their tastes and willing to embrace work that isn’t pretty much like their own.
I read Walt’s comment after re-reading Michael Desch‘s discussion of Waltzian structural neo-realism, constructivism, and strategic culture (PDF), which is shaped by how different proponents have approached their research programs.
1. Initial Explanations
Al Qaeda-related literature focuses on several explanations for the terrorist organisation’s survival, growth and influence. A subset focuses on Osama Bin Laden as a charismatic leader and the Bin Laden family (Bergen 2006; Coll 2007). AQ evolved from Bin Laden’s financing of Abdullah Azzam’s Maktab al-Khidamat during the 1979-1989 Soviet-Afghanistan war and involvement in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan and Afghanistan (Scheuer 2002; Coll 2004; Wright 2004; Bergen 2011). Other explanations advance theories about AQ’s entrepreneurship (Reeves 1999); its perceived similarity to earlier terrorist groups (Gunaratna 2001); the possibility of broader movements in the Middle East (Burke 2003); the Hamburg cell responsible for the September 11 attacks (McDermott 2006); the influence of regional intelligence agencies (Bodansky 2001) and an unsuccessful Balkans jihad (Kohlmann 2004). Scheuer (2002) made historical analogies with the Founding Fathers of the American Revolution whilst Johnson (2000) suggested September 11 was ‘blowback’ from the Afghanistan mujahideen.
2. Strategic Culture Explanations
Alastair Johnston’s ‘three generations’ (1995, 1998) provide one framework to examine if and how AQ has a strategic culture. The post-September 11 portrayal of AQ as an existential threat echoes ‘first generation’ work on US-Soviet rivalry in nuclear weapons proliferation (Gray 1979, 1984; Snyder 1977). The numerous Bin Laden biographies and those of Ayman Al-Zawahiri (Al-Zayyat 2004) and Abu Mus’ab Al-Suri (Lia 2008) highlight a tradition of political profiling of terrorist group leaders (Post 2005; Post 2008; Hudson 2001). These histories suggest pivot points such as Bin Laden’s feud with the House of Saud during the 1990-91 Gulf War about the presence of US military forces. Scheuer’s (2002) analogical study of AQ and Patrick Porter’s Reciprocity of War thesis (2007, 2009) are different responses to the concerns that Ken Booth (1979, 2007) raised in ‘second generation’ literature about ethnocentric profiling. Coll (2004), Wright (2004) and Bergen’s (2011) reportage maps the doctrinal, ideational and organisational factors that other ‘second generation’ analysts like Elizabeth Kier (1992), Bradley Klein (1994), and Michael Desch (1998) have raised in their scholarship. As yet there is no empirical, falsifiable theory for AQ as Johnston (1995, 1998) posits, although Long (2006) contends that ‘fourth generation’ analysts focus on AQ’s covert development of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. Strategic culture insights can also be applied to Bin Laden’s communiqués and public statements (Bin Laden and Lawrence 2005; Kepel and Milelli 2010), and to his interviews with journalists (Fisk 1996; Miller 1997; Arnett 1997; Fisk 1997; Ummat 2001).
3. Other Explanations
The ‘self-images’ of Al Qaeda appear to have evolved in proximity to the September 11 attacks and to the role of idea entrepreneurs (Mueller 2009; Mueller 2010). They may also reflect the potential biases of analysts from different intelligence agencies (Tversky and Kahneman 1979; Scheuer 2002; Treverton 2009; Jervis 2010) evaluating AQ as a complex, ambiguous problem. Snyder (1977) also noted this about Soviet elites’ possible use of nuclear weapons during the late Cold War.
Wrote two pages for PhD draft on Alastair Johnston‘s generational model of strategic culture analysts in security studies and international relations theory.
Image Source: Amazon.com
Michael Lewis on Bloomberg‘s ‘For the Record’ to promote his new book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010). Amazon’s #1 book although the reviews are affected by end-user problems with the Kindle version. Lewis clearly has had extensive media training.
Major points that Lewis makes:
The five main people that Lewis profiles are outsiders — stockmarket analysts rather than bond market specialists — who had to learn about the subprime mortgage market in order to track stocks that they were interested in, and who then decided to short the market.
Financial innovation should be regarded with some skepticism – we can see examples that led to greater inefficiencies rather than more efficient markets, so some innovation can have a downside, and this may be clear only in retrospect. Lewis believes collateralised debt obligations should be more transparent, i.e. traded on exchanges and clearinghouses, so that all parties can manage their counterparty risk.
Financial service firms are now more professional than what Lewis saw at Salomon Brothers during the late 1980s. Yet Wall Street is now far more cynical: bonuses, incentives and hypercompetition have eroded the partnership ethic that keeps these firms stable.
Reviews of The Big Short: The Big Money, Washington Post.
A 20th anniversary piece on David Lynch’s Twin Peaks has a couple of interesting anecdotes on how Lynch dealt on-set with his actors.
John Kay on oblique decisions.