Major Emmanuel Chirchir, the Kenyan military spokesman, said on his Twitter account that residents of Baidoa, Baadheere, Baydhabo, Dinsur, Afgoye, Bwale, Barawe, Jilib, Kismayo and Afmadow that their towns are under imminent attack.

Chirchir said that anyone with relatives and friends in the towns should be advised accordingly.

The Kenyan military said that it will attack 10 Somali towns where it believes al-Shabab has a presence and advised civilians to stay away from al-Shabab camps or being used as conduits for weapons.

Al Jazeera’s Peter Greste, speaking from Nairobi, said that while it is not unusual for the Kenyan government to make such warnings before attacks, the use of social media to do so is, however, something novel.

Bringing social media into protocol “advance warning” by a government has interesting implications for the future of civilian casualties in conventional warfare. Customary international humanitarian law makes it clear that the attacking force should give such a warning before an assault which may have civilian ramifications. “Effective advance warning shall be given of attacks which may affect the civilian population, unless circumstances do not permit,” is what the Geneva Conventions officially say.

These standards aren’t new, obscure, or hippy-dippy; advance warning through traditional methods has been standard practice even before 20th century warfare. In modern times it was first codified in Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 “Lieber Code”: “Commanders, whenever admissible, inform the enemy of their intention to bombard a place, so that the noncombatants, and especially the women and children, may be removed before the bombardment commences.” But in Lincoln’s days (when it was prudent, of course) these commanders would send a messenger to a town on horseback to warn a centralized local figure; villagers wouldn’t get a pop-up in their inbox letting them know directly. While improvements to this practice came over time with the adoption of radio, television, and Internet, a “middleman” has always held some sort of role in advance warning.

The use of social media by governments to carry out advance warning effectively cuts out this middleman, a shift which is certainly a step in the right direction. When information doesn’t have to be filtered through a chain of command, reaction time can be reduced and lives may ultimately be saved. The egalitarian essence of public information like this also ensures, at least on its face, that no single group will be excluded from receiving it.

But the official use of social media to warn civilians of military offensives may not be all rainbows and butterflies. One unsettling possibility is that a public broadcast runs the risk of endorsing hatred and violence against the target. It is not difficult to imagine the role social media would have played in the Rwandan genocide, where Hutu radio and print media fueled killings through hate speech and direct calls to action. If the climate was right, an initial government advance warning tweet might signal an offensive among a country’s own citizens towards a minority population.

Regardless of its potential for “good” or “evil”, one thing is for sure here: the social media explosion is changing the way we do absolutely everything.

Other

Over the weekend, the Times reported that the war in Afghanistan is nearly nonexistent on voters’ radars for the upcoming midterm elections. The dismal economy, healthcare, and jobs obviously take precedence. Not a big shock. The thing is, the war and the economy are inextricably linked. I wonder what the people polled for this report would say if they knew that U.S. defense spending comes out to be about $700 billion every year, with the FY 2011 DoD budget request tallying up to a $708.3B. That accounts for about half of security spending worldwide. So if the economy is on voters’ minds this November, the war should be as well because it’s costing taxpayers way more than they might realize.

Ample Congressional hearings and testimonies have demonstrated that the economy is in itself a matter of national security because the more the American dollar devalues and the economy stays stuck in the mud, the less traction we have worldwide. It’s not rocket science. Similarly, continuing to spend, spend, and spend on defense does not do the economy any favors. It’s a tricky situation, to be fair–DoD is the largest single employer the U.S.  and I get that. But it concerns me that the narrative in our country seems to divorce these two interrelated things from one another. In my ideal world (in which The West Wing never ended, but that’s another story) we would realize that we’re basically hemorrhaging money in Afghanistan. I’m not an economist, but that’s probably not good for, well, the economy–so perhaps the war ought to rank a little higher on voters’ tunnel-visioned priority list of issues that matter at the ballot box. Just saying.

Other

…next August, we will begin a transition to Afghan responsibility.  The pace of our troop reductions will be determined by conditions on the ground…

Clear. As. Mud.

Other

In roughly a dozen countries – from the deserts of North Africa, to the mountains of Pakistan, to former Soviet republics crippled by ethnic and religious strife – the United States has significantly increased military and intelligence operations, pursuing the enemy [al Qaeda] using robotic drones and commando teams, paying contractors to spy and training local operatives to chase terrorists.

Perhaps I’m jaded, but nothing in this article surprised me.

Other

Other

The U.S. government has hired the defense contractor [Lockheed Martin] to test an emerging tenet of its security policy. Called “smart power,” it blends military might with nation-building activities, in hopes of boosting political stability and American influence in far-flung corners such as Liberia.

U.S. officials are concerned that nations imperiled by poverty and political strife could spark regional conflicts and foster terrorist networks. Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the problem posed by failing states “is in many ways the ideological and security challenge of our time.”

My aversion to the term “failed state” notwithstanding, this is a fascinating policy turn. Currently, about half of the US government’s global funding for D&G programs is in four conflict-ridden countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Sudan. The big question is whether this represents a transitory reaction to 9/11 or whether it is the new normal. The article suggests the latter:

Morgan Stanley defense analyst Heidi Wood says Lockheed’s early push into this realm sets it apart from competitors…”It’s a complete paradigm change.”

Some question whether big military contractors are the right ones to carry these programs out…

Others worry that once defense firms get into this business, their longstanding relationship with the U.S. government will end up driving more money into these initiatives, no matter the results. “It’s sort of like the soft-power industrial complex,” says William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, who is writing a history of Lockheed.

Defense firms are going into an area that was the domain of smaller firms and nongovernmental organizations, not shareholder-minded corporate giants. Mr. Hartung questions whether defense firms have a long-term commitment to this kind of work. “It’s a little bit outside their comfort zone and different from their normal corporate activity,” he says.

Recently, defense firms have begun investing in this direction. In January, DynCorp International Inc. bought Casals & Associates Inc., which specializes in building up public-health and legal systems in the developing world. The acquisition “furthers our alignment with the Obama Administration’s emphasis on the application of ‘smart power’ to global challenges,” said DynCorp Chief Executive William Ballhaus in announcing the deal.

In 2008, L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., a major military technology and services contractor, bought International Resources Group Ltd., which works on economic development, energy and other projects in dozens of countries.

The economic and political tenets of smart power are in many ways a modern extension of past U.S. foreign endeavors such as the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild Europe after World War II. “We cannot kill or capture our way to victory,” Mr. Gates said in a 2008 speech that outlined the new policy. He has said the biggest threats to U.S. security “emanate from fractured or failed states,” and to combat them, the Pentagon needs to engage with these countries in a way “that reduces the need for direct U.S. military intervention.”

Democracy during war is the new normal. While this means D&G budgets will most certainly be larger, it also means the funds are likely to be concentrated in basket cases. For years people who work in D&G have been asking for a seat at the policy making table. Now we have it. Lesson: be careful what you ask for because you might get it.

Other

A House oversight subcommittee said Wednesday that it has begun a wide-ranging investigation into allegations that private security companies hired to protect Defense Department convoys in Afghanistanare paying off warlords and the Taliban to ensure safe passage…Two weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton described the same situation before a Senate committee while discussing the truck convoys that bring supplies into landlocked Afghanistan. “You offload a ship in Karachi [Pakistan]. And by the time whatever it is…gets to where we’re headed, it goes through a lot of hands,” she said. “And one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money.”

This is a bit of a conundrum.  I am somewhat sympathetic to the contractors as they really have no choice.  The Taliban controls the roads and the US military needs the supplies.  What is the alternative?  Having been stopped on the road many times in Africa for bribes I know that the best solution is to pay and leave as quickly as possible.  The longer you sit, the more of a target you become.  At the same time, the US is funding both sides of the war.  What a mess.

Other

Other

Positive Consequences:

• Spread of Democracy. While the third wave of democracy began in the mid-1970s, the trend gained substantial momentum after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  According to Freedom House, since the end of the Cold War, the percent of not free countries in the world has dropped from 41% to 22%.  The European Union deserves particular praise for its efforts to ensure democratic transitions in Central and Eastern Europe.  More important than the change in the number of democracies is the general perception that democracy is the most legitimate form of government.

• Decline in War. Starting in the early 1960s, the number of armed conflicts began to rise from about twenty active per year, steadily rising to about 55 in 1993.  Since then, the number has dropped to about 35, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program.  Even more remarkable is the decline in the number of war deaths.  According to the Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO), between 1950 and 1990, about 200,000 people per year died fighting wars.  Since the end of the Cold War, the number has plummeted to about 80,000.

• Reduction in Threat of Global Nuclear War. The Cold War was not a friendly rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union.  As hard as it is for us to remember, the greatest fear during the Cold War was global nuclear war.  When the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962, this possibility became all too real.  When the Cold War ended, the fear of global nuclear war did as well.       

Negative Consequences:

• Nuclear Proliferation. Since the end of the Cold War, efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons have faltered.  Today, two unstable regimes, North Korea and Pakistan, both have nuclear weapons, and Iran is attempting to develop them.  As the number of countries who have nuclear weapons rises, the possibility that one country will use them increases as does the possibility that non-state actors, primarily terrorist groups, will acquire them.

• Failed States. Failed states did not exist during the Cold War because the Soviet Union and the United States were prepared to prop up weak regimes in return for political alliances.  Since the end of the war, this exigency has subsided.  The result has been state collapse in a number of places, primarily Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Somalia.  Failed states are not pleasant places.  Close to six million people have died in the DRC’s civil war, making it the deadliest conflict since World War II.  When Afghanistan fell into civil war after the Soviet Union left, the Taliban and its brutal form of justice emerged as the only force capable of providing security. While the cost of keeping these countries together during the Cold War may have been high, the cost of letting them fail seems far higher.

• 9/11. It would not be accurate to argue that terrorism was a consequence of the end of the Cold War (ask the British about the IRA).  It would also not be accurate to argue that fundamentalist Islamic movements were a consequence of the end of the Cold War either.  Rather, because the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 and because the Mujahideen were the main force fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, fundamentalist Islamic movements were more a product of the Cold War than a consequence of it.  One can plausibly make the claim, however, that 9/11 was an unintended consequence of the end of the Cold War.  After the Soviet Union left Afghanistan and the US pulled its support as well, Afghanistan collapsed into civil war.  The Taliban emerged as the only force that was able to provide security and by the mid-1990s was governing large parts of the country.  It also allowed Al-Qaeda to use its territory for terrorist training camps.  Although we can never know for certain if 9/11 would have happened without Al-Qaeda using Afghanistan as a base of operations, that it was able to do so should give pause to those who think the country poses no threat to the US today.  I am not saying that if the US leaves Afghanistan Al-Qaeda will return.  In fact I do not believe this would happen.  Rather, my point is that we need to have some imagination when thinking about unintended consequences.

On balance, my belief is that things could have turned out much worse.  In the mid-1990s, many thought they would.  Wars in the Balkans, the Caucuses, and Central Asia led many to believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union unleashed frozen conflicts that would engulf the region in an endless series of bloody wars.  That has not happened.  Instead, democracy has spread (thanks in part to the EU’s admirable efforts in Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe), wars have become less frequent, and the threat of nuclear annihilation does not exist.  True, terrorism, failed states, and nuclear proliferation are big problems, and Afghanistan in particular looks increasingly hopeless.  However, in my estimation things could have turned out far, far worse.  Perhaps there is hope for humanity after all.

Other