Shifting the Climate of Security

If you are reading this on Thursday afternoon, join in and recommend over on Daily Kos too:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/17/1909/61866

... from dKos. Signed up and everything.

Kudos for the great resource, I have thought much the same for a while, and now I have a good primer on how to articulate those thoughts in a much better way than I did on my own.

I'm probably going to be mostly a lurker here, but wanted to check in an say hi...

Joe, thanks for addressing global warming and the security frame. At the present time, this is certainly the greatest security issue facing the world, and addressing all the other problems of humanity will become moot if we don't deal with this one. (Which is not to say I think we should put other problems on the shelf.)

You might be interested to know, if you don't already, that one of the greatest pushes for addressing global warming as a security issue is coming from the Pentagon itself. They've been trying since 2003 to persuade Republican policy makers that this is the biggest security issue facing us. There's no question that their view is based on their mission of national defense, but even so it's fascinating to see that some of the longest range views of world problems are issuing from such an unlikely place.

In a way, they're trying to do what you suggest here. And when they speak of global climate crisis, they even talk about the facilities and training they will need to help deal with famine, drought, thirst and mass migration. They are, it appears, thinking as much in terms of aid as in terms of national protection.

Apparently they're being ignored by the policy makers, and thus their views are beginning to leak into public press.

My guess is that their reframing of "national security" is what is causing the deafness among the policy makers, who lately seem to think everything should be solved by shooting.

Thanks, Joe. And no pardon for the pun needed. I happen to enjoy them.

There are times, like now, when I think the U.S. government needs a little less leading from the top, and more leading from the bottom. Career personnel carry experience with them from administration to administration, experience which tries to withstand the shifting political winds. Among these are people who are pressing hard indeed to reframe the security debate.

Then there's the real "bottom," the American voter. Most of us (85% in one poll) seem to think global climate change is a crisis demanding "urgent action."

In the public mind, I think the issue is already being reframed as a matter of security. Now if we could just get the attention of those with the power to make the sweeping changes! You and I can change our light bulbs, drive less, recycle more, and reduce our overall carbon footprint. But without carbon caps or taxes, the big changes will be slow in coming.

Sue

Hi Joe,

I really must take issue with your proposed progressive and conservative definitions of "security." I don't think either is accurate - politically or factually - and they obscure more than they reveal.

Security is not about the "elimination of risk," by whatever means. We can't even theoretically eliminate risk. This isn't an academic objection; ordinary people know we live lives filled with risk. Ultimately, we all know we're going to die, however we may try to suppress that awareness. So when you propose definitions of security in terms of "elimination of risk," they immediately and inevitably become straw man definitions ... attributing meanings and thus intentions that don't really explain how either progressives or conservatives think. It comes off sounding like semantic game-playing rather than serious analysis.

Security - as individuals, groups, industries, and nations practice it - is about risk prediction and management (RPM). We know, intuitively and from experience, that we can't eliminate risk. So we try to predict risks, both in terms of their likelihood and their consequences, and to find strategies for managing the risks.

As I wrote in another thread, we're generally not very good at this analysis. For example, most people feel more secure driving a car (we can predict the risks that we're likely to encounter, and we have strategies for managing those risks) than we do as passengers in an airliner (we don't understand the risks, and we're basically helpless to do much about them). But that perception of security is illusory. In terms of deaths-per-travel-hour, we are in FAR greater danger driving a car than in an airliner. Despite that far greater objective danger, most of us still feel safer in our cars.

I repeat that example here because it points to something profound and fundamental in how we correlate security policies with actual danger. We tend to favor security policy that maximizes the predictability of a risk (even triggering the "dangerous" event rather than waiting for it to happen or not happen), and policies for which we believe we have the most strategies and institutions for managing that risk (even if they're more expensive and usually less successful).

The Iraq War is a good illustration. There was SOME risk that Saddam Hussein would acquire the means to cause harm to the U.S. But that risk was almost impossible to predict and quantify. Did he already have the means? How soon might he acquire them? Would he strike the U.S. homeland directly - using missiles or special ops forces - or would he strike at allies and interests in the region?

There were also a range of strategies for managing that risk. We could rely on international political and economic pressure. We could encourage resistance to and ultimately the overthrow of his government by the Iraqi people. We could rely on allies in the region to contain him and protect our interests. Or we could try to topple his regime directly, either covertly (by assassination or a CIA-funded coup d'etat) or overtly (by direct military action).

Predicting the risk posed by Saddam Hussein was extremely difficult. We didn't have good intelligence on his capabilities, nor even on his intentions. And looking at the range of strategies for managing that risk, only one (direct military action) seemed wholly within our control. So we invaded Iraq, thus crystallizing the risk - precipitating the conflict rather than trying to predict when it might happen - and employing what the Bush Administration believed was the most "certain" strategy for managing that risk, even though that strategy was more costly than the risk itself.

And ... like the illusion of greater security in driving a car rather than riding in an airliner ... we chose the path of GREATER DANGER. We enabled the Hussein regime, and surrogate threats unleashed after its collapse, to inflict FAR greater human and economic loss on the U.S. than Saddam Hussein ever could have by his own actions.

The important lesson here, in terms of correlating security policy to actual danger, is that THE PATH OF GREATER CERTAINTY AND CONTROL IS OFTEN ALSO THE PATH OF GREATER REAL DANGER.

This carries an implicit corollary: THE PATH OF GREATER SECURITY IS OFTEN THE PATH OF LESSER CERTAINTY AND CONTROL.

And that, I believe, is a better frame from which to develop a progressive security policy. Progressive security policy would tend to preference:

* Uncertain vs. Certain Risk Prediction - Reality-based risk predictions often accept and rely on "fuzzy" words (unlikely, possible, probable, very likely) rather than "certain" words (impossible, inevitable), because the "fuzzy" words more often reflect what we actually know or can know. Certainty relies on ideology, clinging to preconceived beliefs and intentions, regardless of conflicting information. But while it's more difficult to rely on "fuzzy" words - reasoning in probabilities rather than known values - we make better judgments that way than when we try to impose certainty on uncertain situations. In fact, imposing certainty on uncertain situations usually requires CHOOSING TO FAIL (e.g.: invading Iraq and precipitating the war, rather than trying to guess whether, when, and how Iraq would attack us).

* Cooperative vs. Control-based Risk Management - Optimal risk management strategies usually rely on cooperation rather than control. I won't go into the mathematics of game theory, because most of us act on this at an intuitive level: accepting that we are often more likely to achieve SOME solution (in cooperation) if we're willing to forego a SPECIFIC solution (control). To give an admittedly sexist example, many husbands rely on their wives to manage the risk of hunger for the family. He might not know WHAT the solution will be (what will be cooked), but he trusts that there will be SOME solution (dinner will get cooked). Indeed, trying to force a SPECIFIC solution ("Cook this!") may well make THAT solution even more difficult ("Cook it your-damn-self!").

When we look at security policies in these frames - uncertain vs. certain risk prediction, cooperative vs. control-based risk management - the distinction between progressive and conservative security policies is very plain. Conservative security seeks certainty and control, even at the risk of precipitating the events we fear, and not getting the solutions we want. Progressive security accepts that we must accept uncertainty in predicting risks, and prefers cooperation with others to find SOME acceptable outcome, even if we can't guarantee a SPECIFIC outcome.

Seen from this perspective, the military is a very dangerous "ally" in dealing with climate change, or indeed with any security issue. The military mindest is, by the nature of its mission, "conservative," valuing certainty and control. In a military perspective, it is often better to strike the enemy first - or provoke him to attack at a time and place of your choosing - rather than trying to predict whether, where, when, and how he might attack on his own. And military policymaking relies on firm control (following orders) rather than cooperation (gaining consent).

Quite simply, the more we allow the military to shape our security policy, the more our conservative our policies are likely to be, owing to the basic frames imposed by the military's mission and traditions. While we should be grateful that military leaders are voicing concerns about climate change, we tread a dangerous path if we don't temper that gratitude with concern that our climate change "security" policy will be framed in terms of certainty and control.

Crissie

Crissie, your comments to Joe got me to thinking until a small light bulb went on. I understand your argument and at least to some extent agree with it. I say some extent because I need to do more thinking.

In my post, I was merely pointing out how the Pentagon's shifting frame was being ignored because policy makers weren't making a shift to a less warlike view of world problems. If the Pentagon can help make that shift, I think it's good. But I also understand what you're saying in terms of the Pentagon's culture, and its most basic framing. One (myself particularly) feels quite certain that however the Pentagon reframes the issue to try to lift it in importance, there are underlying frames inherent in their thinking that we need to be extremely wary of.

But back to my lightbulb. You mentioned control. The perception of control does indeed seem to be inherent in our frame of security. We are "more in control" driving than in an airplane...or so we think. This feeling, however, totally ignores the actions of others on the road which are beyond our control, thus making driving a much more dangerous activity that we admit to ourselves.

Unions sought to control hiring/firing. That "job security" they worked so hard for eventually led to absurdities such as firemen being carried on every train decades after their jobs ceased to exist. This job security led to an even bigger danger, one my grandfather, a railroad switchman (and union member) all his life, often commented on: the cost of those firemen was damaging to the economic health of the railroads, and thus a danger to EVERYONE's job security.

In my thinking last night about the issues you raised, I suddenly made a connection on the control issue which I think may be at the heart of the difficulty progressives face our culture.

Conservatives seek order and control. Progressives seek a more liberal view which to many conservatives represents chaos. Tolerance, for example, can be perceived as dangerous chaos to those who want everyone to be like them so they can be more predictable. Even the notion of welfare can create a sense of chaos in the mind of a person who feels he/she has worked for what he has, so why should others get it "for nothing." There is much in the progressive and liberal agenda which can create that sence of chaos, or disorderedness, which can be truly frightening to those who seek "security" in perceived order.

Since our earliest days, we humans have sought to impose order on chaos through chiefs, kings and shamans. Our world "threatens" us. Hence it is easier to hide behind the notion that there is some kind of control, whether our own or someone else's, that we perceive to reduce our risks.

And you're quite right, that the perception of risks is often at odds with reality.

Perhaps, then, one of the greatest barriers we face is switching from "perceived" risk thinking to "actual" risk thinking. Yes, we all know risk is inherent in life. The problem is our perception of where that risk lies and how to deal with it.

Mother Nature often reminds us how little control we really have. The climate crisis is going to do the same thing whether we start working on it today or not. In this situation we can hope for nothing but mitigation through our efforts. Hence, we have to convince the conservatives that in this case this is no security, no real control. There is only "more" security versus "less" security.

Thanks for the mental stimulation.

Crissie,

If I understand your initial point correctly you are claiming that Joe fails to understand the ways that conservatives and progressives think about security based on how you believe they use the concept of security in the process of analysis.

While people in the process of deeply considering issues and giving them thorough analysis would concede your points I suspect that people do not think that way in everyday discourse. Just because people know they live lives of risk does not mean they use that fact in any meaningful way as they think about this issue.

Joe, can you provide some references to demonstrate your analysis of how people think about security?

The challenge of framing the issue is to point to the deeper understanding that is easily recognized by a more thorough consideration of the issue, which you, Crissie, point out. The fact that people would think differently in considering the issues in a deeper way does not change the fact (as Joe has asserted) that they think about it in flawed and incomplete ways in common everday cicumstances.

I believe that Joe's way of explaining the common understanding is totally congruent with my own ways of thinking and reflects how many people I know seem to think as well, under some circumstances, even though we all can think in more precise and factually correct ways under other circumstances. That's the real mind bending challenge of the deeper aspects of framing, it is difficult to realize that we humans tend to be very sloppy and imprecise in our actual thinking, even though we are capable of so much more.

Regarding the equation of the "military mindset" with control and certainty:

This looks to me like a stereotype of the military and an unhealthy dismissal of the progressive potential to influence the military. While I am not in the military both of my brothers, my dad, one of my granddads, and other family members and friends have served in the military. I agree that if strict father moral values continue to dominate the military then we shouold be very careful about how much guidance they provide to political leaders.

However, there is no reason to believe that progressive moral values are incompatible with military service. I suspect that many people join the military to achieve options in life (regardless of the objective effectiveness of this method) and with the intent to provide genuine community service. There is a difference between the moral values that drive behavior and the organizational roles and culture that express those values. True, the military tradition of heirarchy and control looks strict, that does not mean that those who act within that culture are exclusively motivated by strict father conservative values. I am sure there are plenty of progressive soldiers and many are probably bi-conceptual, therefore they would benefit from the clear articulation of how progressive values that are consistent with their highest ideals and personal aspirations for service and a better life through the military.

If we assume the military is defacto conservative then we lose without even entering the contest. I live near Seattle and the military is a significant prescence around here. They are very proud of many of the successful initiaitives they are working on and have completed in areas of environmental stewardship and community service. Unfortunately, there are a lot of liberals who have a knee jerk reaction against the military and they can easily alienate potential allies wihtout realizing it. If we can learn to lead with our values instead of our judgments, then perhaps we will discover that people we knew only as strangers before can become quick friends.

--
Enjoy,

Don Berg

Site: http://www.Attitutor.com
Blog: http://donberg.blogspot.com

Hi Don,

You wrote:

> If we assume the military is defacto conservative then we lose without even
> entering the contest. I live near Seattle and the military is a significant
> prescence around here. They are very proud of many of the successful initiaitives
> they are working on and have completed in areas of environmental stewardship and
> community service. Unfortunately, there are a lot of liberals who have a knee
> jerk reaction against the military and they can easily alienate potential allies
> wihtout realizing it.

Thank you for your comments. I'll offer a couple of points, the first biographical and the second analytical, and then try to clarify what I meant.

First, I'm a former U.S. Marine myself, with one son who's a Navy recruiter, another who was recently discharged from the Marines after a training injury, and a daughter would like to play in the Marine Corps Band someday. I'm also a lifelong student of military history and theory, from classical authors such as Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, and Mahan to modern theorists and historians like Douhet, Liddell-Hart, Guderian, Dupuy, Marshall, Griffith, Dunnigan, Keegan, Doubler, and Leonhart. So my views on the military - as an institution - are shaped both by my own experience in the military and a lifelong study of military history and theory.

Second, it's important to note that my statement that the military is conservative - favoring certainty and control over uncertainty and cooperation - was referring to the military AS AN INSTITUTION, and not the political leanings of those serving in that institution. Our military servicemembers span the whole breadth of political ideologies, and indeed in 2006 most of the recent veterans running for Congress were running as Democrats.

With those points in mind, I believe the U.S. military as an institution is indeed inherently conservative, by virtue of its mission and its traditions. When it comes to policy, the military is "the pointy tip of the spear." Its primary mission is to be ready to go into harm's way to secure interests defined by policymakers, many of whom have never been in harm's way themselves. That last clause is not a political jab; it's simply a fact, and a fact which leads to the military's secondary mission of informing those policymakers and thus shaping those policy interests.

Thus, it should hardly be a surprise that when the military as an institution looks at a policy issue it will consider that issue from a military perspective, a frame which includes an acute awareness that, if a fight happens, it will be the military which does most of the suffering, bleeding, killing, and dying. As Samuel Johnson noted, "nothing concentrates the mind like the imminent prospect of being hanged." The military, as an institution, lives with and is shaped by "the imminent prospect of being hanged."

So, when the military as an institution looks at an issue like global warming, it does so with one eye firmly fixed on the potentials for conflict, and how it will try to shape and control those conflicts. That is, inherently, a perspective that favors certainty over uncertainty (the military NEED to know whether, where, and when a fight will happen), and control over cooperation (commanders NEED to impose order on the chaos of battle if and when that fight occurs).

While that's an excellent, indeed essential frame for military analysis, it's not a progressive frame for policy analysis. If we give the military institution too much deference in framing policy - and we do - our policy frames will always be shaped in large part by fear, by "the imminent prospect of being hanged" inherent in military analysis. An institution which is "the pointy tip of the spear" cannot escape the everpresent concerns of whether, where, when, and why that spear might be bloodied or broken. Indeed, a military which ignored those concerns, and did not structure itself toward those concerns, would be derelict in its duty.

So when progressive policymakers interact with the military AS AN INSTITUTION, they must be aware that the military's institutional focus and structure is not entirely consistent with our nation's democratic ideals ... not because the military is "bad" but simply because the military is "the pointy tip of the spear," its concentration focused by and toward "the imminent prospect of being hanged." We must always be wary of giving the military too great a role in shaping policy, because its frames are not - and cannot be - those of the nation as a whole.

Crissie

I come from inside the military (past) and have many family members who have served and are serving. I would therefore never dismiss the military as being incapable of liberal or progressive thought. Unfortunately, however, their mission as an organization is limited by law and practice, which leads to certain underlying frames in thinking. The old "if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything becomes a nail."

There is another dichotomy in military thinking which is basic to human nature: Us versus Them. I was quite astonished to discover during my introduction to military culture that the uniformed services see themselves as quite distinct from the civilian population. Within that dichotomy, two feelings are inculcated: 1) We are better than They are, because We are willing to take up this onerous duty and They are not, and 2)at some level, They are a threat to Us. The first, and most important, actually, leads to a sense of paternalism among the military. (We gotta take care of these folks because they can't take care of themselves.)

These are basic frames which can lead to things we certainly ought to keep an eye on. Which is not to say I'm dissing the military. Quite the contrary. But we all operate on frames, and the more we are aware of them, ours and others, the better we can manage the paradigms.

Thanks for elucidating further. Some of us here, myself included, learn a lot from debate, and don't find it easy to skim the surface of ideas. For myself, I'm like a bird with a seed, and I'm not going to quit until I've pecked it apart and can digest it.

It's great to have a forum where ideas can bounce around. In the process, I become aware of my own frames, a surprising number of which need some changes. :)

Many thanks for giving us all this opportunity to share our feelings and insights.

Hi Joe,

First, my apologies for the confrontational tenor of my prior comments. I was trying to draw attention to the specific issues upon which I disagreed, and did so too forcefully.

As for eliminating risks, again, I suppose that's a phrase that might be useful in a very casual kind of discourse, but I guess I feel like a "think tank" should be more rigorous in its language. While we're trying to reach out to the public at large, I think we need to be doing so with an eye toward deepening understanding, rather than pitching to the most casual vein of thought.

My own sense is that deepening understanding is important because progressive frames embrace the very complexity that conservative frames reject. I sometimes wonder if it's even possible to be "simply progressive," because progressive thought tends to avoid over-simplification and take greater note of, indeed an appreciation for, the greater complexity that life offers.

This seems to be inherent in the concept of "Nurturant Parent," for example, A nurturant parent has to empathize with her children, not as abstractions but as real people, each with individual needs, dreams, hopes, and fears. That kind of empathy and experience of parenthood is inherently more complex; it attends to differences, it tries to weigh conflicting needs (including one's own), and seek solutions which must consider multiple interests.

That kind of framing calls forth complexity and uncertainty, a willingness to note, weigh, and seek to accomodate a larger set of needs, dreams, hopes, and fears, some of which can only be guessed at, few if any of which can be "written off."

It has been said that mothers are the original multitaskers, doing our work with one ear on the children, one eye on the stove, and part of our hearts always wondering if we're letting someone down. It's an everpresent kind of mental messiness that we learn to embrace, a disorderly kind of order that ensures that Jenny gets to soccer practice, Billy's braces get adjusted, and the baby's diaper gets changed, all while thawing a roast for dinner and folding the laundry. (I'm aware this is sexist, but there's a truth beneath the stereotype.)

Nurturing requires that mental messiness, that disorderly order. The Strict Father can (try to) make do with firm rules, zero tolerance, and his own ideas of "the way things ought to be" (to quote the title of a prominent conservative pundit's book), but the Nurturant Parent has to deal with the mess and noise and chaos and confusion of "the way things are" ... and indeed find beauty in that mess, noise, chaos, and confusion.

My fondest memories as a mother are not the times things went the way I expected or wanted them to go, but the times they went so "wrong" that they came out better than I could have hoped ... those serendipitous accidents that reminded me that maybe, just maybe, there had been an angel or two nudging things along when my best efforts were not enough ... often in ways that may have had me tearing my hair out at the time, but which now bring a smile to my face and a glow to my heart.

If I've become better as a Nurturant Parent - and I hope I have - it's not because I've become better at imposing order on chaos, but because I've become better at finding beauty in that chaos. Like a new driver who must learn not to over-steer, I've learned that a lighter touch on the wheel, a greater willingness to encourage and enable my kids to muddle along on their own paths, makes it both easier and far less stressful to find good solutions to life's issues ... often better solutions than I would have found on my own.

And when I cast that frame up to issues of national policy, I find myself much more willing to embrace complexity, to consider more points of view, to try to attend to and weigh more kinds of interests, to simplify less and explore more.

That is, to me, the essence of the progressive "Nurturant Parent" frames. And for that reason, I find myself resisting oversimplification within those frames, because oversimplification tends to defeat the very embracing-of-complexity that is the goal of progressive, "Nurturant Parent" framing. If we try to simplify those frames and ideas too much ... we're likely to change them in ways that leave us talking about Nurturant Parents while thinking (and acting) as Strict Fathers.

All of which is a very long-winded (gee, what's new?) way of saying that I think we need to be wary of simplifications-of-convenience in our dialogue. While we can't be so arcane as to leave new readers wondering what planet we live on, neither can we be so casual as to undermine the very ideals we're pursuing.

Thanks again,

Crissie

Hi Joe,

I've just re-read the long version of the article with interest.

I agree entirely with the rationale of reframing security and the proposed dimensions that you touch on. I do have some points that I wonder if you could clarify for me.

The article leaves me with the feeling that you are classifying climate change as a NON-AGENT threat.

As an environmentalist intimately involved in the issue of climate change I've spent a fair bit of time advocating the scientific liklihood that global warming IS an agent based threat. We know that the IPCC has recently upgraded their certainty on this point, the human cause, to 90%.

The agency is varigated. The responsibility for global warming is disproportionate and the impact unequal. Some nations, developed, are overwhelmingly responsible for global warming, now and for the considerable future. Other nations, mainly poorer ones, are not responsible and much less capable of adapting and are more vulnerable to the impacts. Further, there are coporate agents. This may be either as the "externalising machines", shifting the burden of pollution out of their private realm and into the commons. Or it may be more strategic and interventionist, let me cite Exxon, as an example.

I accept the "call to action" within the security framing you propose, that "we are all in this one together", nothing could be plainer, and I have seen this have resonance in the broader community. I wonder if there is a soft underbelly to this framing (if my reading is correct) that global warming is categorised as a non-agent threat?

Kind regards

Daniel