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National Security Policy Survey of the Literature
BLOWBACK, DISSENT, & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Robert David SteeleOSS CEO
Updated 19 August 2002
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Plan of the Brief
• You have 150 books in the lecture handout.
• Will only cover 50 or so of them now.
• Complete text reviews for over 350 books are at OSS.Net, at Amazon, and in the red and green books
• Information• Intelligence• Emerging Threats• Strategy & Structure• Blowback, Dissent &
International Relations• US Politics, Leadership
& the Future of Life
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Relevant Readings onBlowback, Dissent, &
International Relations
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Perrow on Normal Accidents
• Simple systems easy to diagnose & fix
• Complex systems have multiple failures, interact in unpredictable ways
• Society is a constellation of complex systems
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Death of Kinship & Ethics
• Industrialization removed kinship & ethics from the equation
• Absent alternative incentive system for ethics, industry not heldaccountable to the community
• Ethics is a community value
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Pathology of Power
• Power drives intelligence underground
• Power becomes theology, treats dissent as treason
• Power distorts & damages institutions it dominates
• National security depends on more than military power--values & freedom
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Vidal on Perpetual War
• Suggests that both McVeigh and bin Laden had provocation
• Believes that a police state attack on civil liberties is much greater threat to US than any terrorist actions
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Chomsky on US Aggression
• US refusal to abide by international convention will cost us dearly
• US is a major bio-chemical aggressor
• US embargoes impose very high human costs on populations, few costs on regimes
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50-Year Wound
• Price of victory includes time, talent, secrecy, confidence, trade, growth
• Incompetent intelligence and White House deceit joined special interests to mis-serve the Nation
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Johnson on Blowback
• Administrative secrecy conceals US political crimes against others
• Military-industrial complex incites foreign military toward represssion
• Blowback is what happens when it catches up with us
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War as a Racket
• General Smedley Butler, USMC (Ret.), most decorated Marine of time
• Disgusted with his role as an “enforcer” for oppression of locals by US corporations
• Only arms merchants profit--all others lose lives
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McNamara-Blight on Chaos
• Elites representing billions of people regard the USA as the greatest threat to their future security & prosperity
• Collection security comes with collective decision-making
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McRae-Hubert on Human Security
• Human security in all its forms is vital to national security
• Multi-cultural approaches and large investments in peacekeeping and stabilization pay off handsomely
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Baer on Sleeping with Devil
• US ignored all open source information from Middle East for last two decades
• US not capable in Arabic• US chose to accept
repression & debauchery as price of cheap oil
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Queen Noor on Her Reality
• USG & US public do not have a good grip on Middle East realities
• Jewish political power in US distorts policies
• Ghandi quoted as saying Palestine belongs to the Palestinians
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American Encounters Abroad
• Best of the best from Foreign Affairs
• US has responsibilities it cannot ignore
• US is vulnerable to global instability and economic depression
• Culture and community matter--US must network
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Kissinger
• Congress and Public are apathetic on foreign policy
• “Old” politics outpaced by, cannot properly manage global economies and global technologies
• Africa is the ultimate test for US foreign policy
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Boren et all on Foreign Policy
• Diplomacy is about knowledge of the world
• Politicians losing ability to be objective and think
• Domestic uncertainty & insecurity reduce foreign policy influence
• Military should not dominate foreign policy
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Nye on Soft Power
• Too much information, too little attention
• Lacking time, credibility outweighs substance
• Failing to migrate democracy to rest of world
• Spend too much on heavy metal, not enough on soft power
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