Browsing by Subject "intelligence studies"

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Additions to "Ukraine and the 30 Year's Global War on Terror" for cadets and professors at Mihai's Excellent Intelligence Academy
(2014-10-21) Andregg, Michael M.
Additions on “Ukraine and the 30 Year’s Global War on Terror” for the cadets and professors at Mihai’s Excellent Academy, 21 October, 2014 1. What can I tell Romanians about the Ukraine? You should know 1000x more than I do about this country on your border. What can I tell you about the mind of Vladimir Putin, who is more dangerous to the greater Black Sea area than to the western hemisphere? 2. Well, I can say your political psychologists should be studying Mr. Putin very carefully! I do that to forecast wars, but be assured, it is not really possible to get into the mind of a leader thousands of kilometers away, with almost all sources of information about them mediated by groups with interests of their own. Propaganda is everywhere, but in war zones it is pervasive and professional. To take another hard intelligence target for example, we don’t even know if Kim Jong Un of North Korea is ALIVE right now, or confined to a hospital, or tied up in a tank somewhere to protect his security services from flagrant craziness with WMDs, and Kim’s affection for killing relatives on short notice, like his uncle. So political psychologists in Romania should study the mind of Mr. Putin carefully, and I will say more about that in a moment. 3. I can also tell you that the “Global War on Terror” declared by my President George W. Bush on 20 September, 2001, while renamed for public relations purposes, is going on briskly and some intend to keep this up for many decades. That has a significant bearing on security calculations by Mr. Putin in Russia, just as it does on calculations by the Saudi’s, the Israelis, the Pakistanis, the Indians, the Germans, and many other countries with global interests, like the Turks, who have many boiling issues of their own to worry about. So I will talk about Ukraine and the War on “Terror” simultaneously. 4. It is important to recognize that both Russia and the USA are empires in decline today. There are many technical differences, of course, and some will quibble about the word empire, but the decline is what matters most. Both Putin and Obama want to restore their countries to global dominance of the past, but rivals will block them and combine in unexpected ways, which is why declining empires are more dangerous than stable ones. 5. The “Developing Global Crisis” I mentioned in my first and second lectures here remains extremely relevant. But that is hard to review because it looks at everything all at once, which is difficult for even the best of our tiny little brains, much less for students who are burdened with other tasks like trying to find a long-term job, long-term relationships, etc. But do not forget that all these conflicts occur in the context of tremendous population pressure, significant resource depletion and environmental changes, and phenomenal corruption of governments around the world that limit solutions to these problems. 6. Ukraine and the 30 years Global War on “Terror” are different, but deeply related topics. Romania is a member of NATO now, and what causes the big gorilla of NATO to itch can affect smaller members more. So professional officers of Romanian security should pay close attention to the psychology of both US and Russian Presidents. ISIS (or ISIL, the Islamic State, or whatever the name of the day is for scary terrorists) causes our President many sleepless nights, probably more sleepless nights than Ukraine is today.
Biological Weapons
(Combating Terrorism, 2020) Andregg, Michael M.
BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS Since 1945, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) have included chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. All have been used in wars, with casualties greatest for chemical, then nuclear, and least from biological weapons, at least in the modern era. However, modern genetic engineering technologies like “CRISPR” could change that dramatically. Historical biological weapons typically involved infectious organisms from nature like smallpox, plague and anthrax. They were used at least as early as Hannibal tossing plague infested corpses into Roman cities. Some white Americans gave smallpox-infected blankets to Indians, and a Japanese Unit #731 did similar and worse things to Chinese people during World War II. During the “Cold War” both the Soviet Union and the United States developed extensive biological warfare programs. However, near universal horror at the concept of breeding and “weaponizing” ancient plagues for use against human populations resulted in a UN mediated treaty called the “Biological Weapons Convention” that banned all such activity by civilized nations in 1975. As of January 2018, this convention has been signed and ratified by 180 of the UN’s 193 nations. Moral and legal constraints on biological weapons are challenged, however, by the relative ease and low cost of creating biological weapons compared with nuclear and even chemical weapons. Modern genetic engineering techniques (which go far beyond CRISPR) raise fears that terrorists in basements using chemicals bought online could recreate ancient scourges like smallpox, or even create new “designer diseases.” These could be “Chimera” organisms that combine lethal genes from multiple organisms, and even include genes for resistance to all known antibiotics. One of the novel properties of biological weapons compared to other WMD is that they can reproduce themselves and spread far beyond any initial target. This helped military institutions to recognize that biologicals could turn on one’s own troops, and were not very useful against military targets. Instead, they would afflict mainly vulnerable civilian populations, and could spread worldwide. Biological weapons could also be used against food crops and animals, spreading famine as well as novel plagues. For all these reasons, even the most fierce warrior generals have generally agreed that biological weapons should not be created much less used. Some terrorist groups have expressed considerable interest in WMD, however, including biological weapons. One Japanese death cult called Aum Shinrikyo made chemical weapons, killing 12 people on a subway system in 1995, and tried to make biological weapons to attack Japan’s civilian population, but it was thwarted by Japanese police and counterterrorism forces. Another cult in Oregon organized by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh put salmonella bacteria on salad bars in ten restaurants in an attempt to swing county elections their way. In November, 1984, 751 people were sickened, but no one died. Assassinations are another area where biological weapons have been used. Biological toxins like ricin have been used to kill selected individuals like Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov in London, in September of 1978. Several packages of weaponized anthrax were also sent to about a dozen targets shortly after 9/11, killing five people and infecting 17 others. According to the FBI, the alleged culprit was not a ‘typical’ terrorist, however, but a veteran of America’s biological weapons program named Bruce Ivins. There remains controversy over that conclusion, but whoever sent the US weapons-grade anthrax packages to several news media offices and two Democratic US Senators included notes with Islamic terminology hoping to arouse mass anger against Muslims. Therefore, better control of biological weapons before terrorists (or false flag operators posing as terrorists) can build or buy any is a top priority for counter-terrorism around the world today. Michael Andregg [Word count excluding “Further Reading” is 600] Further Reading Osterholm, Michael T. and Mark Olshaker, 2017. Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company. Wright, Susan, 2002. Biological Warfare and Disarmament: New Problems/New Perspectives. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Cirincione, Joseph, John B. Wolfsthal and Miriam Rajkumar, 2005. Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats. 2nd Edition. Washington, D.C.: The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Nuclear Threat Initiative is a well-financed, long-term, non-profit educational organization that maintains extensive files on all weapons of mass destruction, including one on biosecurity http://www.nti.org/about/biosecurity/. It also sponsors conferences like one in 2018 that can be seen whole at http://www.nti.org/about/projects/global-biosecurity-dialogue/event/nti-seminar-biosecurity-design-getting-ahead-risk-world-designer-organisms/ The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs has a link to the full text of the Biological Weapons Convention that includes many supporting documents, history and data. It is at https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/bio/ .
The Birth of Professional Ethics: Some Comparisons among Medicine, Law and Intelligence Communities
(2008-02-22) Andregg, Michael M.
Doctors in antiquity used leeches, herbs and shamanistic rituals to try to help their patients heal from the wounds and illnesses of life. Yet even in this long pre-scientific period, some felt a need to develop an ethos and codes of ethics specific to their craft. One goal was prestige, a social good of intangible but real value (especially when practitioners are ridiculed by many, common when medicine was young). Close behind was another goal, a privileged and eventually exclusive right to practice their craft commercially. As science and technology advanced, a third goal emerged. This was continuing professional education to meet a growing need for both technical competence and some systematic way to evaluate novel dilemmas that emerged as medicine became truly effective. The best examples of those dilemmas come from “test-tube babies,” but there are many other dilemmas like end of life issues when machines can sustain a brain-dead body, or access to intrinsically scarce resources like transplantable organs. The concept of a professional medical ethos was built upon more general ethics of the Greeks (and independently within the Chinese and Indian civilizations at least). Its earliest generally recognized form was the oath of Hippocrates. This served to identify special responsibilities to be assumed by those who would call themselves ‘professionals’ of the healing arts. Sometimes rights were included, but the responsibilities were primary to Hippocrates, like his famous injunction to first, “do no harm.” In addition to that he urged doctors to take care of mentors who trained them and to not dishonor the emerging profession by sexual acts with patients or their families, or by inducing abortion. American Law developed a variety of professional ethos over about 100 years, which is another long story. Intelligence professionals (a.k.a. 'spies') who desired to improve the reputation of 'the world's second oldest profession' began thinking about ethics for spies in the early 2000's, and created an International Intelligence Ethics Association in 2005 as part of a broader effort to "professionalize" what was, in practice, a craft. This paper attempts to integrate these three paths to thinking about codified "professional ethics" and records some of the early efforts in that direction among intelligence professionals and those who study them.
Birth Rates Determine Life Expectancy in Theoretical Equilibrium Populations: Implications for political demography and conflict early warning
(American Intelligence Journal, 2018-04) Andregg, Michael M.
Executive Summary This paper examines implications for political demography of a theoretical population that is in complete equilibrium. By “complete equilibrium,” we mean that the population neither grows nor shrinks, there is neither immigration to nor emigration from it, and that the age structure has stabilized so that it no longer changes over time. These are all important elements of complete equilibrium, as opposed to stability in just absolute numbers. This condition is found in some natural populations of animals and plants, but it has not obtained in most human populations in recorded history. Reduced to basics, this theoretical population has the following characteristics: 1. In complete equilibrium populations, birth rates will equal death rates so the population neither grows nor shrinks. 2. In a complete equilibrium population, death rates determine life expectancy, expressible as: LE = 1000/DR. 3. Since, in a complete equilibrium population, birth rates equal death rates, this can also be expressed as: LE = 1000/BR. 4. This implies that fundamentally, birth rates determine life expectancy in complete equilibrium populations. This paper has two goals. The first is simply to check the accuracy of the theoretical formulas identified above. Since they are quite simple and likely accurate, I invite others to identify any errors. The second goal is at least as important. How do human populations evade this limiting outcome? Or do they really? I fear the short answer to these questions is a) genocide and war, and b) no, they do not really escape an iron law of biology. However, they often do displace the high death rates to marginal or weaker populations. If correct, this has significant implications for conflict early warning as illustrated by several real-world examples.
Breaking Laws of God and Men: When is this OK for Intelligence Professionals?
(2019-11-20) Andregg, Michael M.
Attorneys and philosophers have presented detailed answers to the question of when it is permissible to break laws, some of which begin and end with the word “never.” Others answer “always” if reasons of state are compelling. To compound confusion, governments often write special laws for their “spies”* and other “intelligence professionals”* [1]. Some of these laws are publicly known, but others are classified, like a significant fraction of US NSDD’s (National Security Decision Directives) and NSPD’s (National Security Presidential Directives). So what is forbidden for ordinary citizens may be legally “OK” for intelligence professionals, but citizens cannot tell because some of the laws are secret laws administered by secret courts like the FISA court in the USA [2]. This situation can easily degenerate into simple codes: like “Do anything you need to accomplish your mission, but do not get caught” which has been noted by several CIA veterans [3]. That noted here, the CIA may be among the more restrained intelligence agencies in the world, because it is besieged by lawyers who have some actual laws to work with, unlike the secret services of some other countries. Many cases can be studied as dilemmas that challenge these simple, black-and-white views of the world and of moral codes of conduct. A modern classic is the ‘nuclear terrorist with a ticking time bomb’ scenario. Many people conclude that there are no limits at all on what one might properly do to stop him (or her!). A dilemma of longer duration is that of the small unit infantry commander whose surrounded troops will all die if he does not do something to a prisoner that is forbidden by the Geneva Conventions and the American Laws of War. Such cases often involve torture or murder. There is also a long, Catholic tradition called “Just War Theory” that attempts to bring systematic thought to both jus ad bellum issues (is the war just?) and jus in bello (is the war being conducted justly?). Even in a theoretically unified church (regarding fundamental moral issues) one can find substantively different opinions about this among highly competent commentators [4]. This paper will consider both of these hard cases in the context of many years of moral and legal thought with a final focus on two moral principles and one practical observation addressing the question of whether evil means can be morally pursued to achieve good end goals. They are: 1) the Do No Harm principle; 2) the Lesser of Evils principle; and 3) the lesson from human history that the Means Used Determine the Actual Ends Achieved.
Building Bridges Between Cultures in the Nuclear Age: Globalization and the Current World-Wide War
(2005-08-26) Andregg, Michael M.
The peace community encourages building bridges between cultures to resolve conflicts and prevent war. Other positive results can be more trade to increase wealth, nation building, and growth of our global civilization by cross-fertilization of ideas and art as well as commerce. The UN asked people of goodwill to consider building bridges during a decade of dialogue among civilizations, rather than engage in destructive clashes. Unfortunately, the current “global war on terrorism” (“GWOT” in American military jargon) highlights some downsides to the building bridges theory. The same mechanisms that move people, money, goods, and information more efficiently can also move murderers, bombs, war plans, and nuclear or biological weapons components. Also, “Globalization” was increasing economic inequalities and tearing up established economies long before the current war. And “cultural hegemony” became a recognizable term long before the “war on terrorism” did. So global tension grows for many reasons. This paper will review these issues and examine three specific cases: South Africa, North and South Korea, and Israel / Palestine to ask whether, on balance, we are moving forward or backward on the road to peace and global harmony. One case appears a clear success, another a failure, and the third remains to be determined.
Can We Resolve Tensions between the US and China?
(The Future Center in Dubai publishes Arab language commentary on many issues including security issues, 2019-04-27) Andregg, Michael M.
Can We Resolve Tensions between the US and China? Michael Andregg, University of St. Thomas, mmandregg@stthomas.edu The trade war between the US and China worries many people these days, not least the business community. Worst-case scenarios involve real war, because trade and conflict have been connected throughout human history. A Harvard professor recently wrote a book called “Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?” (2017). Allison’s research suggests a 75% probability for the harsh outcome. A thermonuclear war would set the world economy back by generations at least, and even a “small” military conflict in the South China Sea between a rising China and declining US could cost trillions, and disrupt supply chains all over the world. Economic damage could last decades, even if land armies never met. So peace between these behemoths is imperative for many reasons. Both prefer to behave as empires, however, so neighbors should stay cautious. Therefore, the short answer to whether the US and China can patch up their trade differences must be a “yes” even if the challenges are large, which they are. Current US President Trump enjoys trade wars, and is unrealistic about their consequences. China’s push for dominance in key technologies, like artificial intelligence, quantum computing and 5G cell systems, will not abate. Those trends frighten national security hawks, and businesses that do not want to be left behind like the buggy-whip makers a century ago. In the short term, the most likely place for conflict to turn into bombs and bullets on targets is the South China Sea. China resents the projection of American power into the Pacific, despite the historic fact that American naval power was essential to rescue China from dominance by Japan. Hence, China’s massive engineering project to raise tiny islands in the South China Sea, and turn several into military bases.
Causes of Wars and the Developing Global Crisis
(2018-06-15) Andregg, Michael M.
This paper connects some ultimate causes of wars through history with a set of contemporary problems we have been calling the “Developing Global Crisis” for about 20 years. Therefore, one first step is identifying what that crisis entails. Very briefly, the living system that sustains all of our global civilizations is in great distress these days. This leads to many armed conflicts and even “failed states.” Sometimes failed states produce terrorists and large numbers of other desperate people who flee the chaos that results. Former US Director of National Intelligence, General James Clapper provides an apt description of the Developing Global Crisis on page 157 of his 2018 memoirs: “Factors like food and water shortages and poor living conditions – increasingly driven by climate change – oppression of political freedoms, corruption by autocratic governments and rulers who had been in place for decades … made them (North African and some Middle Eastern states) extremely unstable. The spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) threatens Everything under Heaven, because many terrorists want WMD and are not deterred by threats of retaliation. There are at least 40 recurring causes of wars through history, so we cannot consider them all in the time available. Today we will focus on four especially important ultimate causes of wars. They are Population Pressure, Militant Religion, Authoritarian Law, and Corruptions of Governance. The case of contemporary Syria will be examined briefly to illustrate connections between these causes of organized armed conflict and many other problems. There is also a particular reason why I came to China. This is called “Thucydides’ Trap” which is a theory about great power relations of Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, inspired by an ancient Greek historian named Thucydides. Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian War that ended Greece’s dominance of the Eastern Mediterranean and Western civilization about the same time that Sun Tzu wrote his incomparable “Art of War.” Allison’s more recent theory suggests that when one “great power” declines while another great power rises, war between them is almost inevitable.
The Challenge of Achieving Wisdom in Intelligence Products and Processes
(2016-03-16) Andregg, Michael M.
This is a PowerPoint presentation sized for typical, ISA intelligence section panels. Its ~ 20 frames deal with institutional constraints much discussed elsewhere like the perennial desire of policy makers to keep their intel staffs out of policy (e.g. they often discourage anything close to wisdom, preferring "just the facts" so they can make the big decisions. Other common themes are very short time constraints and overreliance on "secret" sources of information that are often tainted in many ways. It brushes on some uncommon themes like the prevalence of psychopaths in secret power systems, but does not go into any depth on those difficult topics.
The Challenge of Achieving Wisdom in Intelligence Products and Processes, outline
(2015-02-19) Andregg, Michael M.
The word "wisdom" almost never appears in intelligence literature. Here are eleven reasons why, which were offered as hypotheses for a roundtable of extremely experienced practitioners from many three letter agencies to discuss.
Climate Change and U.S. National Security
(US Government Printing Office, 2020-05) Andregg, Michael M.
In October of 2014 the U.S. Department of Defense published an “Adaptation Roadmap” for climate change that started with: “Climate change will affect the Department of Defense’s ability to defend the Nation and poses immediate risks to U.S. national security.” Then Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel was quoted saying: “Climate change does not directly cause conflict, but it can significantly add to the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict. Food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, more severe natural disasters – all place additional burdens on economies, societies, and institutions around the world.” This chapter will detail what those challenges and burdens are, with emphases on national security implications and consequences for U.S. Army personnel in particular. But it cannot and should not be narrowly focused, because this is a global problem with global consequences that affect the entire U.S. military. It affects alliances, flashpoints, basing issues, geopolitics and budgets in complex ways we will try to exemplify with specific cases, like Syria and South Asia. Propaganda can influence assessments in any war zone. So that is not new, but it is an especially pernicious problem with climate change. , , , , For example, at Minnesota’s leading public policy institute we have been talking about, and some studying, climate change since at least 1982. It took 31 years before Andy Marshall commissioned the first publically known, Pentagon study of national security implications of climate change in 2003. Yet this author was told personally at the National Intelligence University in 2005 that officers there had been “ordered not to talk about that subject.” This was all because of a sustained campaign by legacy industries to suppress discussion of something profound that they already knew was guaranteed to occur.
Creating a Reader on Intelligence Ethics, 2008 for INS
(Intelligence and National Security (a journal), 2008) Andregg, Michael M.
The information age is burying everyone in noise. Globalization increases stress. Then the poorly named Global War on Terror drove some leaders to suspend, or at least radically rethink, ethical constraints that had been settled two generations past, like the unequivocal ban on torture in the Geneva Conventions and many subsequent laws and treaties. This was the context in which we set out to create a reader on intelligence ethics that would, a) actually be read by busy professionals buried in urgent texts, and b) make a real difference in a profession better known for breaking rules. All involved recognized the “oxymoron problem.” All know that while most of our colleagues are moral people trying to do legitimate work to protect their peoples and governments, there are some who certainly think that ethics for spies is the dumbest idea ever. To them we say that intelligence ethics is actually a force multiplier, and dramatic deviations like officially sanctioned torture are force degraders. So 26 intelligence professionals from seven countries collaborated to create a reader designed to be 50 pages maximum, an hour’s read for busy people who recognize why ethics matter, even for spies and the many other intelligence professionals of the modern age. They gathered knowing only half would make the quality cut, and struggled to compress lifetimes of experience into extremely short forms. Each had specific reasons, but the overarching recognition was that national power declines when “all gloves off” immorality prevails. We are engaged in a very “Long War” that is basically between barbarism and civilized ways of life and conflict. There are always tactical voices who seek a quick victory by any means necessary. And real terrorism frightens all thoughtful people, so the danger of becoming that which you oppose has never been greater. This is a story about how that reader was created, with summaries of the 13 essays selected for publication. First, a professor at the National Military Intelligence College (then JMIC) Dr. Jan Goldman, collaborated with a philosopher of ethics with national security background Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo and about six others to create a new “International Intelligence Ethics Association” branching off of the long-running JSCOPE conferences (Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics). They held their first meetings on January 27 and 28 of 2006, which made the front page of the New York Times precisely because the novelty of ethics for spies was, well, news. Their association can be found at: http://www.intelligence-ethics.org/ and their fourth conference will be at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, February 20-21 of 2009. Inspired by them, I went to the intelligence studies section of the International Studies Association seeking permission to do this project. They concurred, and let me fill one-fourth of their next year’s panels with papers on intelligence ethics of various kinds. Those engaged 18 participants, but some solicited could not come and others were advisors to international leaders who could not participate publicly. From those, 8 other papers were procured. A panel of judges was created. Two were editors of major intelligence publications, one was a former Chancellor of America’s National Intelligence University system, and one was an operator near the end of his career. Their task was to review all submissions and to pick the best half. The authors’ task was to compress what they thought essential into 4 double-spaced manuscript pages. All judges were invited to submit forwards to the final piece, recognizing that most could not. The one who did was INS senior editor Loch Johnson, whose forward will be reprinted here next.
A Critical Lesson not yet Learned in America: Intelligence Ethics Matter
(2012-10-16) Andregg, Michael M.
Introduction Intelligence ethics matter because mistakes here can result in loss of thousands of innocent lives, and in worst cases to destruction of whole governments and their peoples. The Cold War swung as much on moral factors as political, economic or military, but bureaucracies learn slowly. Deep history shows that political hubris can bring any empire down. When mistakes have such large potential consequences, accuracy is critical. The modern world must deal with diffuse terrorist and “failed state” threats, and complex, non-military threats to civilization like global warming, international crime and rogue financial entities that can ruin entire economies. Accuracy in complex problems requires close cooperation among intelligence systems, both national security and law enforcement focused. Close cooperation requires trust. When one intelligence entity in a cooperative system becomes immoral, corrupt or unreliable in protecting methods and sources, cooperation declines, accuracy declines, and somewhere down the line innocent people may suffer or even die. Many examples could be considered, but a particularly relevant case is what happened before the United States of America attacked Iraq on 19 March, 2003. The causus belli alleged were aggressive weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in Iraq, with a secondary concern that Saddam Hussein was helping Al Qaeda. After many over 100,000 Iraqis were killed, the country laid waste, occupied and thoroughly searched, no WMDs were found. And Hussein had been hostile to Al Qaeda, not a friend. In the short space available, we will consider this case in detail. Some have called this an “intelligence failure,” but most call it a policy failure blamed on intelligence agencies. Either way, the cost to the USA has been huge. Thousands of billions of dollars were wasted attacking Iraq, and thousands of US and allied troops were killed or gravely wounded. The costs to Iraq were relatively much larger. I will focus on how these costs reflect failures of ethics at the level of intelligence professionals who knew that bad things were being done for false reasons, but remained silent. That was the biggest ethical lapse for many of them. But do not forget the policy people who actually ordered this unjustified carnage, or the citizens like me who let them do it. In America we sacrificed a modest reputation of respect for rule of law, for due process, for human rights and for many other things like honest cooperation with allies as we rationalized these mortal sins that killed so many innocent others. Cold War contests helped set the stage for this illegal and immoral war so we will comment on that also. But we begin with some specific lies that led to the deaths of perhaps a million people if all casualties were properly counted.
Critical Thinking for Ordinary People and Professional Analysts
(2015-10-02) Andregg, Michael M.
Educators are constantly urged to cultivate “critical thinking.” This would be difficult even if everyone agreed what “critical thinking” is. Which they don’t. Furthermore, many of the teaching aids available on-line or in print were written by philosophers (of logic usually) which makes them hard to understand. Logic has an honored place in critical thinking, but also a big weakness because two highly educated and very intelligent people can have opposite opinions on what is “logical.” Consider the firm opinions of Democrats and Republicans on many issues, for one example, or the evidence presented by ardent proponents of different religions for another. This essay tries to simplify commentary on critical thinking to focus on a few themes that most would agree with. Those will be: 1. Sourcing all data, and searching for multiple, independent sources. 2. Evidence based reasoning contrasted with “authority” and “credibility.” 3. Editorial frames (or “bias”) among sources, and the value of editorial processes. 4. Propaganda, Marketing and Spin Doctoring. 5. Groupthink, Politicization and “Logic.” 6. Financial and other Conflicts of Interest among sources. 7. Statistics 8. Wisdom (ha, try defining that!) versus “facts” and “opinions.”
Demographics and Conflict
(American Intelligence Journal, 2016-04) Andregg, Michael M.
Demographics and Conflict (written April, 2016, by Michael Andregg for the American Intelligence Journal, of the NMIA) Introduction to an Ancient Paradigm: population growth, environmental degradation, rising death rates and conflicts; exodus, war or genocide. People have been killing each other since before the beginning of written history, as recorded by the broken bones of people massacred long before writing was invented. One of the quiet reasons for the large scale killings called genocides and wars is demographics, the statistics of birth rates, death rates, growth rates and migrations into or out of territories. This dimension is under-covered by those who focus on the statements or acts of key leaders. Politicians and commanders of war typically describe their reasons in political, religious or military terms, not demographics. But they were also often driven by forces they barely understood and could not control. The Mayan Empire probably fell that way. Easter Island certainly did. And the deserts of North Africa are filled with ruins from cities and empires that thrived … before the forests and farmable land turned into desert. The Kenyans have a saying: “First came forests, then man, then the deserts.” Therefore this chapter will show how simple births, deaths and migrations lead to an iron law of biology. This law observes that all living populations eventually achieve equilibrium with their environment, which means birth rates equal death rates and the population neither grows nor declines, or they die. Populations that try to grow forever suffer catastrophic death rates or become extinct. The modern case of Syria disintegrating after 2010 will be considered in some detail, because it also shows how other global factors like climate change can trigger chaos. Syria’s population growth rate in 2011 was 2.4% per year, but when half of its population was displaced by civil wars and about 6 million fled, its growth rate became sharply negative. At least 450,000 people died by violence alone. This will be followed by a short section on “Human Nature, Nurture, Free Will and War” because that topic has generated much commentary over centuries, with large implications if one accepts the simplistic conclusions that people are either born “innately” warlike, or rather “innately” social and cooperative. Truth is that people can be either one or the other depending on circumstances, and that much neglected factor “free will” or personal decisions. Finally, we close with how a few more complicated demographics like “pyramidal” vs. “columnar” age distributions, and distorted sex ratios may influence the probability of organized armed conflict on earth today and in the future.
The Developing Global Crisis and the Current Wave of Migrant / Refugees heading for Europe
(National Intelligence Academy of Romania (Mihai Viteazul), 2015-10-16) Andregg, Michael M.
The Developing Global Crisis and the Current Wave of Migrant-Refugees heading for Europe (a PowerPoint presentation)
(2015-10-16) Andregg, Michael M.
The Developing Global Crisis and the Future of Global Security
(Journal of Global Security Studies, 2014-08-07) Andregg, Michael M.
The Developing Global Crisis and the Future of Global Security For the JoGSS group, by Michael Andregg, mmandregg@stthomas.edu, Aug. 7, 2014, d1c “The Developing Global Crisis” is a term we use to label a bewildering array of old and emerging problems with large security consequences. Only some are military per se, but all have significant implications for human security and most have big impacts on conventional military issues as well. Examples include: Climate change, population pressure, failed and failing states, emerging diseases, transnational crime, terrorism, cyberwarfare, globalized economics that promotes severe income inequality and social unrest, peak oil transformations of the global energy system, and most important in our opinion, corruption of governance which frustrates solution to many of the other problems. All these together are ‘the developing global crisis.’
The Developing Global Crisis: A Strategic Paradigm for Understanding Global Conflicts Today
(2017-02-25) Andregg, Michael M.
The Developing Global Crisis: A Strategic Paradigm for Understanding Global Conflicts Today by Michael Andregg, University of St. Thomas, mmandregg@stthomas.edu For the ISA/ISS meetings in Baltimore, MD, USA, Feb. 22-25, 2017 Scheduled for SA-28, Feb. 25, in 326 BCC, -- draft 7 abstract The US Air Force has been at war continuously for over 25 years now, and large areas of its operation like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya are still convulsed by wars. Those zones of conflict have grown, adding Syria, Yemen, Somalia and ‘tribal areas’ of Pakistan to the regular Air Force target lists. Dozens of other countries in Asia, Latin America and especially Africa see more discrete visits by US Special Forces with occasionally lethal consequences. Many Americans, including some troops who have deployed into war zones that their parents fought in, are starting to wonder why these wars do not end. The “Developing Global Crisis” is a strategic paradigm that tries to answer that question with a focus on why the wars are starting in the first place, and how to better address their ultimate causes, instead of just symptoms. That is the strategic “solution” to this problem, focus on ultimate causes instead of just symptoms. Those ultimate causes of organized, armed conflict present a disturbing picture because militaries cannot easily influence many of them. This is a main reason such wars are so hard to stop once started. Those forces, or ultimate causes, include population pressure, corruptions of governance, rising authoritarian law and militant religions that interact synergistically, severe and growing income inequalities, and derivative factors like climate change (a consequence of the ever-growing population pressures and corruptions of governance in addition to the obvious burning of fossil fuels and forests). That is six, very tough problems facing human civilization today. Basically, there are too many people trying to live on too little land in most conflict zones today, so genocide or at least ethnic “cleansing” is an option contemplated by far too many people and politicians. Fear of genocides, so amply illustrated by the ancient histories of such areas, also fuels violent resistance to elites. Syria provides an exceptionally vivid case with relatively hard numbers that can illustrate this “Developing Global Crisis” and why that resists solution by ancient and modern military methods. The confluence of WMDs and hundreds of millions of teen-aged males maturing into such desperate circumstances provides real urgency to the task of rethinking the old ways of conceptualizing global conflicts and how to solve them.
The Developing Global Crisis: Executive Summary
(2017-03) Andregg, Michael M.
The Developing Global Crisis: A Strategic Paradigm for Understanding Global Conflicts Today by Michael Andregg, University of St. Thomas, mmandregg@stthomas.edu Prepared for the ISA/ISS meetings in Baltimore, MD, USA, Feb. 22-25, 2017 -- Executive Summary – draft 9 The US Air Force has been at war continuously for over 25 years now, and large areas of its operations like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya are still convulsed by wars. Since then, those zones of conflict have grown, adding Syria, Yemen, Somalia and tribal areas of Pakistan to the regular Air Force target lists. Many Americans, including some troops who have deployed into war zones that their parents fought in, are starting to wonder why these wars do not end. The “Developing Global Crisis” is a strategic paradigm that tries to answer that question with a focus on why the wars are starting in the first place, and how to better address their ultimate causes, instead of just symptoms. That is the strategic “solution” to this problem: Focus on ultimate causes instead of just symptoms! Those ultimate causes of organized, armed conflict present a disturbing picture because militaries cannot easily influence many of them. Yet they have very serious consequences. This is a major reason why such wars are so hard to stop once started. Those forces, or ultimate causes, include population pressure, corruptions of governance, rising authoritarian law and militant religions that interact synergistically, severe and growing income inequalities, and derivative factors like climate change (a consequence of the ever-growing population pressures and corruptions of governance in addition to the obvious burning of fossil fuels and forests). That is six, very tough problems facing human civilization today. Basically, there are too many people trying to live on too little land in most conflict zones today, so genocide or at least ethnic “cleansing” is an option contemplated by far too many people and politicians. Fear of genocides, so amply illustrated by the ancient histories of such areas, also fuels violent resistance to elites. Syria provides an exceptionally vivid case with relatively hard numbers that can illustrate this “Developing Global Crisis,” and why that resists solution by both ancient and modern military methods. The confluence of WMDs and hundreds of millions of teen-aged males maturing into such desperate circumstances provides real urgency to the task of rethinking the old ways of conceptualizing global conflicts and how to solve them.

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