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21. At the Edges of the Map: The Chronotope of Informatics and Maps of Human Terrain

Author:
Riley Collins and Sabrina Peric
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Cultural data gathered by researchers has provided militaries across the globe with intelligence and a unique insight into a category of analysis that is not normally given primacy in military strategic planning. Such data has been used in the past; it was used during World War Two to gain insight into the Japanese mind; it was used during British Colonial pacification efforts in Northern Africa; and it is again used today by the U.S. armed forces’ Human Terrain Teams to understand and relay cultural expectations and needs of occupied communities. This paper examines how the U.S. forces relate to an idea of culture for consumption as intelligence through an analysis of the Human Terrain Teams Handbook. Through this lens, we show how the U.S. armed forces condition members of Human Terrain Teams to interact with and think about local cultures in certain ways that are operationally relevant to military activities.
Topic:
Intelligence, Military Strategy, and Culture
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Japan, Asia, and North Africa

22. Revisiting Africa in Canadian Security Planning & Assessment

Author:
Christopher Roberts and Tim Stapleton
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
During the Second World War, Canadian expeditionary forces played a proportionally significant role in the war in Europe, but, just like the First World War, Canada avoided or was not asked to consider deployment of land forces in any significant way to African theatres of operations. Not since the South African War (also known as the Second Anglo-Boer War) of 1899-1902 had Canadian-raised combat arms units been sent to the continent. Between 1956 and 1969, however, Africa became an active theatre of operations for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), but in substantially new roles: peacekeeping (Suez, Congo) and military training and assistance outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (Ghana, Tanzania and Nigeria). Africa was the experimental lab for both of these new taskings, and the first time Canadians served alongside, under, or trained soldiers from newly independent African states. Canada’s early engagement with post-colonial Africa was led by security, commercial, and world order considerations, with the CAF and not official humanitarian and/or development assistance at the forefront. Where commercial and security concerns characterized Canada’s initial activity (1955-1965), between 1965 and 1975 development, “facilitated by, rather than caused by, the public’s increasing responsiveness to the humane internationalism of the era,” came to dominate Canada-Africa relations.1 From one of the lowest contributors to foreign aid on a proportional Gross National Product basis in the early 1960s, Canada had surpassed many other major and minor Western donors by the middle of the 1970s.2 Not unrelatedly, the 1970s also marked a nadir of Canadian defence spending, with the CAF shrinking in personnel, its presence in Europe halved, and its ships, aircraft, vehicles, and even small arms aging without replacement. Under Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, from 1968 to 1979, the government’s international fiscal envelope skewed spending heavily towards development at the expense of defence. Peacekeeping – or at least support for “Collective Measures for maintenance of peace and security embodied in the Charter of the United Nations”3 – that rated first mention in the 1964 White Paper on Defence – dropped to last in the foreign policy priorities articulated in the 1970 foreign policy overhaul, Foreign Policy for Canadians,4 and the subsequent 1971 White Paper on Defence. Military training assistance efforts shrank to a care and maintenance basis in the 1970s, totalling less than 0.25% of Canada’s growing annual foreign aid budget.5 Kilford concludes his chapter on the winding down of military assistance in the early 1970s with the observation that it took thirty years (until the early 2000s) “before the funds allocated for military assistance even came close to the amount spent in the 1960s.”6 These periodic shifts that privileged defence/security over development, or development over defence/security (to use two of the “3Ds” of diplomacy, defence, and development now in regular use), have represented a somewhat regular thematic influence in Canadian relations with Africa. At times, especially during the “human security” era of the late 1990s, development and security were seen as complementary. In the mid-2010s, however, there is wide consensus that security, development, and governance are the three crucial interlocking pillars required to underpin Africa’s economic prosperity, human empowerment, and regional stability. In other words, one cannot be prioritized at the expense of the others if any kind of long-term stability is the goal of local and international stakeholders. Over fifty years of pursuing development and conflict-management in Africa and fifteen years of doing the same in Afghanistan have produced agreement on the three pillars but no consensus about how to go about cultivating them concurrently. Many good intentions around state-building, poverty alleviation, humanitarian intervention, and conflict amelioration have foundered on the shoals of the hard reality of political and economic complexity and vested interests, both local and international. This is the conundrum which lies behind this “African security” themed issue of the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies. It follows a workshop the editors co-chaired, in June 2016 at the University of Calgary, on the precise theme of “Revisiting Africa in Canadian security planning and assessment,” an initiative which grew out of that conundrum.7 As Canada signals it will again increase its involvement in addressing African security and development challenges,8 the workshop examined the difficulties in mobilizing consensus around what Canada and other external actors can and should do, as well as some of the multifaceted security challenges facing contemporary Africa, from terrorism and transnational criminal networks to political elites who are not that interested in deepening constitutionalism. This collection of essays showcases the research and insights of a handful of the over thirty participants at the June workshop.9
Topic:
Security, Military Strategy, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
Africa, Canada, and North America

23. An Awkward Tango: Pairing Traditional Military Planning to Design and Why It Currently Fails to Work

Author:
Ben Zweibelson
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Over the past decade, traditional military planning methodology and doctrine has gained an unlikely dance partner-the ambiguous, conceptual, and controversial process called ‘design.’ Although I will expand in this article on what exactly traditional military planning’ constitutes as a methodology, readers familiar with the debate over conceptual and detailed planning will recognize traditional military planning as the linear, analytic process grounded in metrics, categories, and objective scientific tenets. Many call this ‘detailed planning’ to refer synonymously to traditional military problem-solving, reflecting a military institutional practice of developing specific, sequential, and highly scientific-based plans that are quantifiable (analytical, objective) according to an accepted language, format, and professional education.4Unlike detailed planning, design as an emerging practice evokes eclectic combinations of philosophy, social sciences, complexity theory, and often improvised, unscripted approaches in a tailored or “one of a kind” practice. Ultimately, design becomes something beyond military planning entirely, thus we should avoid an “either or” sort of debate with design and detailed planning. Although this article employs the metaphor of awkward dancing partners, the metaphor is incomplete in that design may “dance” with detailed planning, while also able to depart the dance floor and do things that detailed planning is simply incapable of. However, for military professionals facing complex problems, we might continue the awkward tango metaphor for this article in that a military might employ both design and detailed planning in many conflict environments.Both design and detailed planning are elements of sensemaking, where for military applications we derive the notion of ‘planning’ and ‘knowing’ in a broad sense as an integral part of comprehending reality. Planning is subordinate to ‘knowing’ in that the detailed blueprints for constructing a tank are subordinate to the conceptual design of“how does one construct an armored vehicle to dominate specific terrain”? Planning is subordinate to design, with detailed planning further subordinate to various types of planning, with ill-structured conflict environments requiring militaries to whirl various dancing partners of design and planning across confusing and dynamic dance floors. Yet as our associated western military doctrine, military education, and practice in conflict environments demonstrates repeatedly, we are unable to get these dance partners to work together as a team, or move to the music for purposes of effectively creating and directing useful action for a military organization.5Institutionally and as a practicing community of professionals, the Western military has little trouble agreeing upon the general principles of traditional planning.6Yet we collectively remain fiercely divided, confused, and often resistant to design in any form, whether a rival methodology, complimentary, or even a subset of traditional planning.7‘Military Design’ comes in as many shades and patterns as service camouflage patterns now, and just as uniform differences symbolize organizational relevance and identity, so do the various service-centric design versions available for sensemaking and subsequent planning applications. Design has become so much of a stumbling block that the U.S. Army has devoted multiple research projects on design integration using the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, and in 2011 revised Army design doctrine with a name change and “rebranding” complete with academic realignments.8While the U.S. Army has cycled through several incarnations of design in the past decade, American Joint doctrine (which strongly influences other western military doctrines) has separated design from ‘operational design’ while casting both within traditional planning, resulting in a rather befuddled operational force. The U.S. military Joint Staff’s Planner’s Handbook for Operational Design from 2011 offers the following explanation: In general, the terms [design and operational design] have been related but not identical. The focus of discussion and writing on design during the past three years has been on the critical and creative thinking and learning required to understand complex operational environments and ill-defined problems facing the commander. Such understanding should facilitate early development of a broad operational approach that can guide the more detailed planning process. Operational design is a construct that joint doctrine has used since 2002 to encompass various elements of operational design (previously called facets of operational art) that planners have applied to develop a framework for a campaign or major operation... In essence, the above explanation conveys that joint doctrine’s operational design has embraced and subsumed design’s philosophy and general methodology.” 9 Thus, United States military organizations at the Joint level apply some aspects of the service-specific “Army Design Methodology” into joint doctrine where “operational design” functions more as a reverse-engineering planning project for campaign construction.10 This confuses military professionals because our organizations are not only mixing terms and concepts, but engaging far too much in methodological discussions without getting above it all and into the challenging abstract levels this article will offer. Although “design” is intended in the various U.S. Army doctrinal incarnations to be an iterative and adaptive sensemaking process for focusing critical and creative thinking on complex military problems, the American Army struggles to make sense of why military organizations have so many problems grasping what design is, and how it integrates into traditional military decision making. 11 With all of these different interpretations of how to make sense of complex military situations with ‘design’, is it any wonder why our militaries remains unable, or perhaps at a deeper institutional level, unwilling to integrate design effectively with traditional planning? We need to explore why traditional military planning and design theory remain awkward dance partners, and where we might try to nudge the larger Western military institution towards in the future. The difference goes beyond superficial arguments on language, doctrine, or conflict environments- it has to do with how the military prefers to make sense of the world beyond methodologies entirely.
Topic:
Military Strategy and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
United States

24. Strategic Bombing if Possible, but Possibly not Strategic Bombing: an examination of ends, ways, and means and the use of strategic airpower during the Great War

Author:
Dr. Randall Wakelam
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
This paper is an offshoot of research conducted in preparation for the University of Calgary History conference of 2014 focussing on new perspectives of the Great War. My primary intent in that research was to explore the notion that air services were, using the recent educational concept of the Learning Organization, in fact precursors of this concept within a military context. One of the conclusions I came to is that this learning was not just happening within the air services but took place even at the national, or grand strategic, level where decisions had to be made both about how to use this new means of warfare and about the allocation of resources while continuing to support the needs of the army and navy. The former had to do with strategic bombing of enemy targets and the balance of this paper looks at how the concepts and practice of strategic bombing evolved in France, Germany and Britain.
Topic:
Military Strategy, World War I, and Air Force
Political Geography:
Britain, Europe, France, and Germany

25. When the generation gap collides with military structure: The case of the Norwegian cyber officers

Author:
Hanne Eggen Roislien
Publication Date:
12-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
As the military integrates cyber into its structures, gradually more nations are recruiting and educating personnel to serve as "cyber officers". Tech-savvy men and women from ‘Generation Y’ grew up in the post-modern era, recognized not only by its individualism and erosion of overarching, coherent maxims, but also by the fact that technology is taken for granted. Thus, in the situation of the cyber officer a particular generation gap occurs, one in which the characteristics of postmodernity, military command structures and the inter-disciplinarity of cyber pull in conflicting directions. This friction creates a peculiar situation as technology and cyber contribute to sharpen the generation gap that necessarily exists between the young generation of cyber officers, and their superiors in the military. I explore this quandary through an examination of cyber officers’ testimonies. In particular, I focus on the cyber officers’ conceptualization of “cyber” and how this resonates with that of their superiors’. The data is ethnographic, based on interviews with cyber officer students at the Norwegian Defence Cyber Academy.
Topic:
Science and Technology, Military Strategy, and Cybersecurity
Political Geography:
Europe, Norway, Northern Europe, and Scandinavia

26. Maritime Non-state Actors: A Challenge for the Royal Canadian Navy?

Author:
David Rudd
Publication Date:
12-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
Global security and prosperity depends in part on good order at sea, with its attendant flow of licit maritime commerce. While challenges to that order have existed since the earliest sea-farers, new players have emerged in recent decades that inhibit the ability of nation-states to regulate domestic and international maritime activity. This paper is intended to provide a brief exploration of the nature of maritime non-state actors (MNSAs) and the challenge they pose to national and international maritime security. It will examine the types and motivations of MNSAs and identify some of the ways in which a navy may interact with them. In doing so it will help to shape decision-making on how allied navies in general and the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) in particular might theoretically align their capability-development efforts with these trends. As the paper is intended to be an overview of a complex and evolving phenomenon, it proceeds from the premise that the strategic/policy, doctrinal, and tactical questions raised herein will require more study.
Topic:
Military Strategy, Non State Actors, Navy, and Maritime
Political Geography:
Canada and North America

27. Clandestine Communication in Historic China

Author:
Ralph D. Sawyer
Publication Date:
03-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Military and Strategic Studies
Institution:
Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies
Abstract:
As military forces grew in strength, tactics evolved, and warfare became more lethal in ancient China, the need for communication between the political authorities and leaders in the field, as well as among commanders and their subordinates, was increasingly recognized. Vestiges in Shang dynasty (1650-1045) oracle scripts and Western Zhou dynasty (1045-771) bronze inscriptions show written commands were already being issued to field commanders. Furthermore, according to the earliest historical writings, the Chun Qiu, Zuo Zhuan, and Guo Yu, written and verbally transmitted reports were being routinely furnished to the ruler and directives frequently received by the seventh and sixth centuries BCE.
Topic:
Military Strategy
Political Geography:
China