Month: March 2011

Drafted 5th March 2011.

Relevant Hypotheses

1. Counterterrorism Studies

1a. Eventisation (Stampnitzky 2008): Counterterrorism Studies knowledge evolves in a Lakatosian reaction to terrorist attacks as events, such as the Munich 1972 Olympics and Al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States on 11^th September 2001. This knowledge may be descriptive, analytical or conjectural, such as speculation about non-state actor acquisition of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons.

1b. Contestation (Stampnitzky 2008): Counterterrorism Studies has contestation over accreditation mechanisms in the sub-field, which exists as a government-dominated monopsony (where one buyer controls the market). The majority of knowledge is created by a small, academic core and by idea entrepreneurs who are affiliated with think-tanks and other institutes. Others such as journalists, subject matter experts or self-appointed ‘terrorism experts’ may have a role in the sub-field’s debates.

1c. Sub-field Crises (Betts 1997; Bull 1968): The legitimation crises that Counterterrorism Studies currently faces are similar to those faced by Strategic Studies during the Vietnam War and after the Cold War’s end.

1d. Policy Cultures (Clarke 2003; Naftali 2006; Zegart 2007): Administration, intelligence, military and national security cultures shape how the United States government anticipates and responds to terrorist events. These cultures act as a filter on how research from academia, journalists and think-tanks are disseminated and used.

1e. Terrorism Industry (Herman and Chomsky 1988; Herman and O’Sullivan 1989; Mueller 2006): Counterterrorism exists as a government-controlled monopsony and an institutional network of academic researchers, idea and risk entrepreneurs, media outlets and think-tanks. This institutional network shapes the definitions of terrorism, who are designated as terrorist organizations, the scope and priorities of counterterrorism policy, and the domestic bases of grand strategy.

1f. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (Zulaika 2009; Curtis 2003): The Counterterrorism sub-field constructs terrorism through interpretation of events and worldviews. This involves an interlocking process of counterterrorist doctrines which enables the transformative conditions for ‘terrorist subjectivities’ to occur. Alternatively, it may be due to ‘mirror-imaging’ and the dialectical action between terrorist and counterterrorist, who are each acting on particular values and worldviews.

2. Strategic Culture

2a. Strategic Enculturation (Gray 1999): All strategists are ‘encultured’: as conceptualisers and decision-makers they are influenced by cultural patterns of assumptions which may be independent of immediate, situational constraints.

2b. Three Generations (Johnston 1995: 5): Theorists who examined strategic culture fall into three generations: (i) early 1980s security specialists and Sovietologists; (ii) Gramscian security specialists and institutional studies; and (iii) empirical, falsifiable theorists and constructivists.

2c. Reciprocity of War (Porter 2009): Combat experience forces adversaries to re-examine their strategic cultures, to improvise and to adapt to new conditions, and to compress learning into smaller timeframes than the longer timeframes which existing theories suggest are needed.

3. Project Hypotheses

Some of the initial, specific hypotheses and postulates that the project will explore and test:

3a. Nation-State Emulation: Strategic culture theories may be applied to non-state actors who seek to emulate nation-states. The selection criteria may include: (i) longitudinal survival of a group, organisation or campaign; (ii) conceptualisation of a grand strategy in available doctrines and propaganda; (iii) direct emulation of nation-state functions and/or ‘institutional capture’ as part of a political party process; and (iv) pursuit of a strategic agenda that requires significant resources, such as CBRN acquisition.

3b. ‘Borrowed’ Culture: Individual terrorists and terrorist groups may use aspects of a strategic culture that is ‘borrowed’ or ‘mirrored’ from another source. For instance, these may be practices developed by particular institutional cultures: civilian academic, war college, journalist or military. Bergen (2001: 139-145) notes that Al Qaeda operative Ali Mohamed took Special Forces training at Fort Bragg’s JFK Special Warfare Center. This may also be applied to civilian artistic movements which adopt ‘terrorist chic’ (Selzer 1979) for antinomian, shock value.

3c. Journalist Boundary-Spanners: Contrary to Stampnitzky (2008), investigative journalists working for ‘quality media’ outlets may contribute original research that contributes to the Counterterrorism Studies knowledge base. They may also gain direct access to terrorist groups and can thus provide the public with information not accessible from other sources, such as Murakami’s (2001) interviews of Aum Shinrikyo and its victims. This information may also be retrospective, such as Gibson’s (1994) study of paramilitary groups at the time Timothy McVeigh planned the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

3d. ‘Encounter’ Narratives: Counterterrorism analysts and scholars may revise their knowledge through direct, anthropological ‘encounters’ with terrorists. For instance, Harvard’s Jessica Stern experienced ‘cognitive dissonance’ during early interviews with Kerry Noble of the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord and had to revise her ‘theories-in-use’ despite extensive knowledge of nuclear proliferation and smuggling activities (Stern 2003: xiii-xviii).

3e. Integrative Strategic Cultures: Terrorist individuals, groups and organizations are often analysed in isolation from other sociopolitical phenomena. However, terrorist actions, choices and preferences may, in some cases, only make sense when integrated with the dimensions and perspectives of other strategic cultures.

3f. The Prospective Fallacy: Attempts to forecast the plausible and probable future(s) of terrorism will more likely place greater weight on immediate past and near-term threats than on what actually will emerge. For example, the forecasts in Kushner (1997) emphasised United States paramilitary and domestic militia groups rather than Al Qaeda.

3g. The ‘Profiling At A Distance’ Fallacy. Some analysts have attempted to use strategic culture to ‘profile’ adversaries. They are inspired by a political psychology tradition which includes Langer’s (1972) war-time study of Adolf Hitler and Jerrold M. Post’s (2005) anthology on leadership profiling. However, ‘profiling at a distance’ introduces greater potential for interpretative error. Gray (1999) and Porter (2009) remind us that adversaries are ‘encultured’ and can also learn from events and experiences.

Relevant Hypotheses

1. Counterterrorism Studies

1a. Eventisation (Stampnitzky 2008): Counterterrorism Studies knowledge evolves in a Lakatosian reaction to terrorist attacks as events, such as the Munich 1972 Olympics and Al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States on 11^th September 2001. This knowledge may be descriptive, analytical or conjectural, such as speculation about non-state actor acquisition of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons.

1b. Contestation (Stampnitzky 2008): Counterterrorism Studies has contestation over accreditation mechanisms in the sub-field, which exists as a government-dominated monopsony (where one buyer controls the market). The majority of knowledge is created by a small, academic core and by idea entrepreneurs who are affiliated with think-tanks and other institutes. Others such as journalists, subject matter experts or self-appointed ‘terrorism experts’ may have a role in the sub-field’s debates.

1c. Sub-field Crises (Betts 1997; Bull 1968): The legitimation crises that Counterterrorism Studies currently faces are similar to those faced by Strategic Studies during the Vietnam War and after the Cold War’s end.

1d. Policy Cultures (Clarke 2003; Naftali 2006; Zegart 2007): Administration, intelligence, military and national security cultures shape how the United States government anticipates and responds to terrorist events. These cultures act as a filter on how research from academia, journalists and think-tanks are disseminated and used.

1e. Terrorism Industry (Herman and Chomsky 1988; Herman and O’Sullivan 1989; Mueller 2006): Counterterrorism exists as a government-controlled monopsony and an institutional network of academic researchers, idea and risk entrepreneurs, media outlets and think-tanks. This institutional network shapes the definitions of terrorism, who are designated as terrorist organizations, the scope and priorities of counterterrorism policy, and the domestic bases of grand strategy.

1f. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (Zulaika 2009; Curtis 2003): The Counterterrorism sub-field constructs terrorism through interpretation of events and worldviews. This involves an interlocking process of counterterrorist doctrines which enables the transformative conditions for

‘terrorist subjectivities’ to occur. Alternatively, it may be due to ‘mirror-imaging’ and the dialectical action between terrorist and counterterrorist, who are each acting on particular values and worldviews.

2. Strategic Culture

2a. Strategic Enculturation (Gray 1999): All strategists are ‘encultured’: as conceptualisers and decision-makers they are influenced by cultural patterns of assumptions which may be independent of immediate, situational constraints.

2b. Three Generations (Johnston 1995: 5): Theorists who examined strategic culture fall into three generations: (i) early 1980s security specialists and Sovietologists; (ii) Gramscian security specialists and institutional studies; and (iii) empirical, falsifiable theorists and constructivists.

2c. Reciprocity of War (Porter 2009): Combat experience forces adversaries to re-examine their strategic cultures, to improvise and to adapt to new conditions, and to compress learning into smaller timeframes than the longer timeframes which existing theories suggest are needed.

3. Project Hypotheses

Some of the initial, specific hypotheses and postulates that the project will explore and test:

3a. Nation-State Emulation: Strategic culture theories may be applied to non-state actors who seek to emulate nation-states. The selection criteria may include: (i) longitudinal survival of a group, organisation or campaign; (ii) conceptualisation of a grand strategy in available doctrines and propaganda; (iii) direct emulation of nation-state functions and/or ‘institutional capture’ as part of a political party process; and (iv) pursuit of a strategic agenda that requires significant resources, such as CBRN acquisition.

3b. ‘Borrowed’ Culture: Individual terrorists and terrorist groups may use aspects of a strategic culture that is ‘borrowed’ or ‘mirrored’ from another source. For instance, these may be practices developed by particular institutional cultures: civilian academic, war college, journalist or military. Bergen (2001: 139-145) notes that Al Qaeda operative Ali Mohamed took Special Forces training at Fort Bragg’s JFK Special Warfare Center. This may also be applied to civilian artistic movements which adopt ‘terrorist chic’ (Selzer 1979) for antinomian, shock value.

3c. Journalist Boundary-Spanners: Contrary to Stampnitzky (2008), investigative journalists working for ‘quality media’ outlets may contribute original research that contributes to the Counterterrorism Studies knowledge base. They may also gain direct access to terrorist groups and can thus provide the public with information not accessible from other sources, such as Murakami’s (2001) interviews of Aum Shinrikyo and its victims. This information may also be retrospective, such as Gibson’s (1994) study of paramilitary groups at the time Timothy McVeigh planned the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

3d. ‘Encounter’ Narratives: Counterterrorism analysts and scholars may revise their knowledge through direct, anthropological ‘encounters’ with terrorists. For instance, Harvard’s Jessica Stern experienced ‘cognitive dissonance’ during early interviews with Kerry Noble of the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord and had to revise her ‘theories-in-use’ despite extensive knowledge of nuclear proliferation and smuggling activities (Stern 2003: xiii-xviii).

3e. Integrative Strategic Cultures: Terrorist individuals, groups and organizations are often analysed in isolation from other sociopolitical phenomena. However, terrorist actions, choices and preferences may, in some cases, only make sense when integrated with the dimensions and perspectives of other strategic cultures.

3f. The Prospective Fallacy: Attempts to forecast the plausible and probable future(s) of terrorism will more likely place greater weight on immediate past and near-term threats than on what actually will emerge. For example, the forecasts in Kushner (1997) emphasised United States paramilitary and domestic militia groups rather than Al Qaeda.

3g. The ‘Profiling At A Distance’ Fallacy. Some analysts have attempted to use strategic culture to ‘profile’ adversaries. They are inspired by a political psychology tradition which includes Langer’s (1972) war-time study of Adolf Hitler and Jerrold M. Post’s (2005) anthology on leadership profiling. However, ‘profiling at a distance’ introduces greater potential for interpretative error. Gray (1999) and Porter (2009) remind us that adversaries are ‘encultured’ and can also learn from events and experiences.

Drafted 5th March 2011.

This project is an analytical, evaluative study of how strategic culture—the norms, ideas, symbols and patterns of behaviour which shape identity, preferences and choices—has been used as a theoretical construct in the international security sub-field of counterterrorism studies. Figure 1 in Appendix 1 summarises Stampnitzky’s (2008) conceptualization of key events and theories in the problematic development of counterterrorism studies.

Different views exist on what strategic culture is, how it is defined, and its utility for defence planning and national security analysis. The emerging consensus is that strategic culture may help to explain the preferences and thinking of a national security community. More recently, strategic culture has been applied to understand the Bush Administration’s ‘Global War on Terror’; variations in the defence policies of European Union member states; the long-term goals of terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda; and Hezbollah’s effective use of psychological operations against Israel’s Defence Force. Thus, it can be applied both to terrorist groups to understand them, and to the national security communities which must deal with them. Appendix 1 lists some relevant hypotheses from the scholarly literature, and some initial, specific hypotheses and postulates that the project will investigate and test.

Strategic culture has several implications for counterterrorism studies which this project will explore. The project’s key research questions include: How can theories originally developed for nation-states and national security institutions be applied to non-state actors? Why have scholars used strategic culture differently, and are these views reconcilable? Who are the ‘keepers’ of strategic culture in counterterrorism? How is the same strategic culture viewed by scholars across the civil-military spectrum and different institutions? How does strategic culture contribute to theory-building, and in particular to cycles of terrorist innovation and decisions to use aspects of strategic culture?

The project is presently organised around six chapters. Chapter 1 (‘Origins and Visions of Counterterrorism Studies’) examines the subfield, its history and controversies as the problem context. Chapter 2 (‘Counterterrorism Studies and Strategic Culture’) considers the recent, sporadic debates about conceptualising strategic culture, and how these frameworks could be applied to counterterrorism. The aim here is to strengthen the sub-field links between counterterrorism studies and strategic studies. Chapter 3 (‘Research Methodology’) outlines the conceptual models, specific hypotheses and inclusion criterion for comparative case studies. Chapter 4 (‘Evolutionary Pathways’) considers how strategic culture contributes to theory-building cycles in counterterrorism studies and the reasons for variation. Chapter 5 (‘Weaponising Cultural Knowledge’) considers how different terrorist individuals and groups have used aspects of strategic culture, why, and to what ends. Chapter 6 (‘Conclusions’) summarises the project, considers the implications for national security policymakers and intelligence analysts, and suggests future research opportunities.

Issues from my PhD-related first supervisor’s meeting:

1. Profiling groups. Early work in strategic culture built on the ‘operational codes’ literature of the 1940s and on political psychology (e.g. Walter Langer’s OSS study on Adolf Hitler, and Jerrold M. Post’s more recent work). I don’t speak/write Arabic, and ‘at a distance’ profiling has numerous problems, such as noted by Patrick Porter (2007 and 2009), and in the intelligence studies literature, by Gregory Treverton, Robert Jervis, and Richard K. Betts. I am more interested in comparative analysis of the ‘estimative assessments’ made of groups such as Al Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo, and where such assessments either fail, or alternative explanations may exist. This approach is similar to ‘mosaic theory’ in law where information is analysed and evaluated from several different sources.

2. Counterterrorism Studies as a sub-field. For the purposes of this study, I am defining CTS as a policy subfield of international security, with sub-field links to strategic studies, and which draws on other fields such as anthropology, sociology and psychology as needed. Stampnitzky’s (2008) PhD notes a range of problems, from lack of academic acceptance, to periodic crises and no accreditation mechanisms. This struck me as broadly similar to Hedley Bull (1968) and Richard K. Betts (1997) on crises in strategic studies. Louise Richardson noted that prior to September 11, the entire sub-field had perhaps 40 key researchers, globally. Andrew Silke, John Horgan, Avishag Gordon and others have written about post-September 11 developments. Since about 2005, there is also a ‘critical’ school of CTS, being advanced by Richard Jackson, Joseba Zulaika, and others.

3. Counterinsurgency. Due to the Mau-Mau insurgency in Malaya, the FLN in Algeria, and the background of Walter Laqueur and RAND studies, there is some overlap between CTS and COIN. There is renewed focus on this due to General David Petraeus, David Kilcullen, Ralph Peters and others. David Ucko’s (2009) PhD was on the US Army’s adaptiveness to COIN, whilst Patrick Porter (2007 and 2009) has included COIN as a driver of recent interest in strategic culture. I emphasise CTS for two reasons: (i) there are gaps in the both the CTS and strategic culture literature; and (ii) whilst COIN is very topical, I also want to include some examples and case studies of some earlier groups and time periods.

4. The project focus. To-date, strategic culture has been applied to nation-states and to national security communities, and in the context of either constructivist international relations theory or security studies. This project examines the utility of strategic culture within CTS to analyse non-state actors, and how intelligence analysts, journalists and scholars seek to understand them. It is also an exercise in theory-building about strategic culture and an analytical evaluation of past CTS work. The hypotheses and postulates are some tentative ideas that have emerged from ‘draft zero’ writing.