Imagine global security
driven by collaboration -- among superpowers and governments, through each
one’s private sector and the public.
This is the vision of
James Stavridis, a highly accomplished U.S. Navy Admiral. Stavridis shares
vivid moments from recent military history to explain why security of the
future should be built with bridges of collaboration rather than trenches and
walls.
·
Verdun was where a battle
in France was fought just north of the present
NATO headquarters in Belgium. At Verdun, in 1916, over
a 300-day period, 700,000 people were
killed, or about 2,000 a day.
·
In the Second World War, 2 million people were killed in 300 days during the Battle
of Stalingrad.
·
From the trench warfare of
the First World War to the Maginot Line of the Second World War, and
then into the Cold War, the Iron Curtain and the
Berlin Wall, we continued to build walls and
trenches.
What will 21st-century
security look like? Navy Admiral James Stavridis suggests that dialogue and
openness will be the game-changers.
He argues that open-source security is about connecting the international, the interagency,
intercorporate, the private-public, and lashing them together with
strategic communication, largely in social networks.
He avers that our global commons is under attack in a variety of ways, and that the sources of these threats are within us and
will not be solved by building walls.
Ocean liners have concertina wire along the sides to prevent
pirates from boarding. Piracy is a very active
threat today around the
world. It's a $10-billion-a-year
security threat in the global transport
system. Last year, at this
time, there were 20 vessels with 500 mariners, mostly Filipinos, held
hostage.
There is now the cyber security threat. At the moment, there are
two young men incarcerated. They conducted a credit card fraud that netted
them over 10 billion dollars. This is part of cybercrime wave, which is a
$2-trillion-a-year glitch in the global economy. So the Internet,
which is the fundamental piece of radical openness has huge potential for
positive ends, but can likewise be misused or abused.
Another thing to worry about is the threat posed by
trafficking, the movement of narcotics, opium, coming out of Afghanistan
through Europe over to the United States - about cocaine coming from
the Andean Ridge. We also need to stop the movement of illegal
weapons and about human trafficking.
Eighty to 90 percent of the world's poppy, opium and heroin,
comes out of Afghanistan. Of course, terrorism and al Qaeda are also
staged from there, including a very strong insurgency embedded there. So
this terrorism concern is also part of the global commons
that must be addressed.
So, knowing
that our 20th-century tools can no longer work, what
should be done?
Security will not be delivered solely from the barrel of a gun. We
will need the application of military force, but done in a more competent
manner.
Open-source security is about international, interagency, intercorporate,
private-public connection pulled together by this idea of strategic
communication on the Internet.
There are two US Navy hospital ships called the Comfort and Mercy.
The Comfort operates throughout the Caribbean and the coast of South
America conducting patient
treatments. On a typical cruise, they
will do 400,000 patient treatments. It is crewed not strictly by military but by a combination of
humanitarian organizations: Operation
Hope, Project Smile. Other organizations send volunteers. Interagency physicians
and nurses are all part of this effort.
As an example of the impact this can have: there is this little boy,
eight years old, who walked with his
mother for two days to come to the eye clinic put on by the
Comfort. When he was fitted with glasses over his extremely myopic
eyes, he suddenly looked up and
said, "Mama, I see the
world." Multiply this by 400,000
patient treatments, this private-public
collaboration with security forces, and you begin to see the
power of creating security
in a very different way.
We can do open-source security partnership in disaster
relief. US Air Force helicopters participated in disaster relief after the tsunami in 2004 which killed 250,000
people. In each of the following major disasters — the tsunami in
2004, 250,000 dead, the Kashmiri earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, 85,000 dead, the Haitian earthquake,
about 300,000 dead, more recently the earthquake-tsunami
combination which struck Japan and its nuclear industry — in all of
these instances, there were partnerships between international
actors, interagency,
private-public working with security forces to respond to this kind
of natural disaster. So these are examples
of this idea of open-source security.
Meanwhile, Xinhua of
China quoted Ruan Ruiwen, head of the Hainan Maritime Safety Administration, as
saying that the Haixun 21’s departure for the South China Sea marked the
beginning of Chinese sailing beyond coastal waters - a move that threatens the
territorial boundaries of other countries.
“In the past,
Hainan provincial maritime law enforcement entities could only cover coastal
waters and never reached the high seas. The newly enlisted Haixun 21 ends the
history of no large ocean-going patrol vessels in South China Sea,” Ruan said.
Xinhua also quoted
Huang He, deputy head of the maritime bureau of China’s Ministry of Transport,
as saying that the vessel “will monitor maritime traffic safety, investigate
maritime accidents, detect pollution, carry out search and rescue work, and
fulfill international conventions.”
In summary let me cite Wikipedia, which we appreciate and use all
the time
to look up facts. Wikipedia
is not created by 12 brilliant people locked in a room writing
articles. Wikipedia is made up of tens
of thousands of people inputting
information, and every day millions of people withdrawing that
information. It's a perfect image for the fundamental point that no
one of us is as smart as all of us thinking together. No one person, no
one alliance, no one nation, no one of us is as smart as all of us
thinking together. We should not forget the Arab Spring, and the power that
brought it about.
The vision statement of Wikipedia is very simple: a world in
which every human being can freely share in the sum of all
knowledge. By combining international, interagency, intercorporate,
private-public, strategic communication, together, in this 21st
century, we can create the sum
of all security.
These concepts are on the table in full view of all
competing world powers. What the world needs is honesty and transparency in
open dialogue among decision-makers, sans national pride, biases and stubborn
self interests. Hopefully, back channel talks are already in the works,
defining national roles and even intercorporate boundaries and limitations. Otherwise,
the first shot to trigger world holocaust can come from an ill-tempered
militiaman guarding turtles in a small Pacific island.
