Category Archives: Inter-state war

MStrat and ARRCADE FUSION

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‘Headquarters Allied Rapid Reaction Corps’ is an imposing title that is entirely suitable for NATO’s premier rapid deployment headquarters. This means ‘HQ ARRC’ is the headquarters that NATO may turn to in its hour of need. If it is believed that a region needs stabilising, this will probably be the organisation that does it.

However maintaining the capability and expertise that ensures this is not an easy task. This is where exercises like ARRCADE Fusion become important. At several points throughout the year the staff at HQ ARRC are tested to breaking point through simulations designed to mirror what could happen if they were deployed. The Exercise Control, or ‘EXCON’, spends three weeks causing chaos within the simulation and the staff of HQ ARRC has no choice but to respond with all the energy they can muster.

Within this maelstrom of activity and acronyms, two former MStrat students found themselves arriving with sleeping bags and, in my case, wholly inadequate waterproof clothing in hand. Daniel Sowik and I had volunteered for this mission determined to understand what the ‘Applied’ in ‘MA Applied Security Strategy’ actually means.

As part of an experiment for HQ ARRC and SSI, we were attached to the G2 Branch’s All Source Cell. The G2 is responsible for the HQ’s intelligence activities and our cell analysed the intelligence gathered. The All-Source Cell’s team of analysts makes assessments that help guide senior level decision-making.

Thrust into this frenetic environment Daniel and I were given our roles. He was working with the G2’s Political Advisor as Political Analyst and I, with a counter extremism role in Whitehall, as the Counter Extremism Subject Matter Expert.

However before we dove into the workings of G2 there was the simple matter of the simulation itself. We read hundreds of pages about it, covering mineral deposit locations to relationships between key individuals. After wading through this information, we began to develop our contributions.

Learning how the HQ worked and improving our situational awareness, we eventually became integrated into the processes driving the ARRC’s activities rather than being just ‘attached’. Daniel and I developed white papers that helped to inform the HQ’s commanders, as well as operating as sounding boards for intelligence assessments. Mostly importantly we gave different perspectives on the situation that were appreciated and taken onboard by senior staff, giving us excellent feedback that helped drive the creation of our products. For Daniel and me, hearing that experienced and respected military personnel were finding value in our output was extremely gratifying.

However this is not the whole story of the ARRC.

My personal reflection often returns to being genuinely impressed by HQ ARRC and its personnel. Seeing people work 15 hours a day, keep their spirits up, and find time for the gym is mind-blowing to my former student self. This was whilst sleeping in tents situated in a cold and constantly wet Cornwall far from home.

But what has really surprised me is my reaction to leaving HQ ARRC. After integrating into and experiencing the simulation I remember the feeling of immediacy and the adrenaline rush from operating in that environment. Suffice it to say, I hope to be back soon.

Al Cole was a student on the Innovation Cohort who now works in the Department of Education on Counter Extremism

Grand Challenges, ‘Resetting the UK National Security Agenda’ Government response to open letter

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From the National Security Adviser

 

15 July 2013

Lieutenant General (Retd) Sir Paul Newton KBE

Professor of Security and Strategy

Director, Strategy and Security Institute

Dr Danny Steed

Lecturer in Strategy and Defence

Strategy and Security Institute

Dear Sir Paul and Dr Steed

The Prime Minister was grateful for your letter of 17 June, and the interesting analysis it contained of the UK’s National Security Strategy.  The Prime Minister has asked me to reply.

We are preparing for a review of the National Security Strategy in 2014-15.  In the light of this, and without agreeing with every word, it was timely and valuable to have this input from your students on the current text.  They made some useful points about the handling of cyber threats, terrorism, and inter-state military crises, and about Britain’s future role in the world.  I’ve passed the letter to the team who will be responsible for preparing the next version of the Strategy.

With my best wishes.

 

KIM DARROCH

Grand Challenges, ‘Resetting the UK National Security Agenda’ open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron

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Monday, 17 June 2013

Dear Prime Minister,

We are students participating in the University of Exeter’s Grand Challenges programme. Our inquiry group, titled ‘Resetting the UK National Security Agenda’, is charged with assessing Britain’s National Security Strategy and considering how those aspects labelled “Tier One” might better serve the nation’s security agenda.

Cyber attacks

We believe that this is the area of the NSS with the most expansive potential. Malicious activity in cyberspace is a transnational issue and, indeed, we contend that it should also be considered a human security issue.

We therefore agree that cyber threats do qualify for Tier 1 status. As it currently exists, however, the cyber section of the NSS also demonstrates significant misunderstanding of the issue. We believe that a clearer definition of what constitutes a cyber threat is needed; currently there is not enough technical articulation of the threat with which to educate the British public.

Cyberspace is an arena of both state-perpetrated attacks and of widespread criminal activity. While GCHQ focuses primarily on the former, it is in fact the latter which has the greatest effect on British nationals and companies. We must also remember that cyber attacks are perpetrated by real world actors; where legislation can impact the problem we must ensure that such provisions are in place, both internationally and domestically.

We fundamentally dispute the idea that Britain’s primary objective should be to secure the country for business purposes, as is stipulated in the Cyber Security Strategy. We believe instead that the importance of educating citizens and developing computer talent should be the primary objective in Britain’s cyber efforts. The objective should be for the British population to become the most secure, educated, and aware users of cyberspace in the world, which would in turn enhance online business security. Education forms part of our proactive defence, as does the recruiting of the most skilled British individuals to work toward solutions.

Terrorism

We unanimously agree that terrorism represents a Tier 1 threat. We believe, however, that it overly dominates our foreign security policy. While our relationships with international partners are important, the NSS is, in the end, a national security document. Terrorism should thus hold priority only to the extent that it poses a threat to Britain and its interests. Foreign policy should react to terrorism, not be dictated by it.

To present an effective strategy, the NSS should reflect the ways in which our international political and military actions can not only catalyse, but also precipitate, domestic tensions. It should thus put more focus on non-militaristic, soft-power approaches and encourage more holistic policies. Prior to military solutions, we must use all of our available assets such as NGOs, foreign aid bodies, and avenues of economic integration to address the underlying causes of terrorism.

The almost exclusive focus on Al-Qaeda, while politically expedient, contributes to a public misunderstanding of the nature of this complex threat. Rhetoric such as that within the PREVENT strategy has the unintended effect of marking huge societal groups as outsiders and actively contributes to factionalism within our society. The terminology used to describe terrorist actions must be consistently applied, whatever the identities or affiliations of the perpetrators. Using the lessons learned from Northern Ireland, we should differentiate between terrorist actors and the populations that they claim to represent in order to diminish the societal divides exemplified and exploited by the terrorist groups.

Conversely, the term ‘Lone Terrorists’ also implies a misinterpretation of the threat. The NSS should differentiate between true independent actors, whose motives lie in the psychology of the individual, and members of connected groups. We bestow upon terror groups undue power when we label lone criminals with the same moniker as internationally linked domestic terrorists. We should tackle such incidents for what they are – acts of criminality.

Interstate military crisis

This was the most divisive issue in our inquiry because we believe there is a tension in the ambiguous wording of the NSS document. It is not clear what ‘drawing in the UK’ actually means; there is a clear divide in our inquiry for the need to either specify this phrase or retain its inherent ambiguity. Many of us see the existing ambiguity as a potential problem, while others also view it as potentially advantageous in the event of an unforeseen crisis.

For our NSS to more accurately reflect the nature of our options, we recommend that direct threats to the nation be differentiated from crises that pose threats to our national values. Thus, we propose the current Tier 1 threat should be split into two different threats, one to be kept in Tier 1 and one to be moved to Tier 2.

Tier 1: Conflicts in which Britain would be de jure implicated from their outset: attacks on us or our allies by foreign powers, imminent issues of international security, large threats to international stability.

Tier 2: Conflicts in which our involvement would be a matter of real choice, however difficult that choice might be: humanitarian crises, combatting arms proliferation, foreign internal peacekeeping efforts. These decisions should be directed both by a commitment to the values in which our country believes and a realistic assessment of their potential economic and international impact and, indeed, of our available military resources.

Our proposed change to the tier system would, we hope, reflect the real limits on the finite nature of our economic and military resources, the allocation of which is a fundamental purpose of the NSS.

Britain’s role in the world

We believe that the NSS is based upon an underlying assumption – that Britain should exercise an influential global role. This assumption appears to be entrenched in the attitude and policy making of the British Government.

It has therefore been expressed as a concern in our inquiry group that such an important assumption remains unchallenged; while it is clear that in the short-term Britain will exercise an influential global role, in the long-term it would be beneficial for Britain to institute a regular debate seeking to define Britain’s expected role in global affairs.

While we do not dispute the notion of Britain playing a global role at this time, it is our contention that Britain must not take decisions based on an assumption that such a global role is there by default. Instead, the British Government should take active, open, and public measures to regularly define exactly what our role in the world should be.

Yours faithfully,

Thomas Charlton

Stephane Chui

Alastair Cole

Conrad Deverell

Ryan Hopkins

Matthew Morley

Kiah Shabka

Thomas Owen

Charles Tolley

Nick White

Participating in Grand Challenges, A Student’s Perspective II, by Kiah Shabka

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Following our exams in June, Exeter University ran a project called Grand Challenges. After two weeks of lounging about on Exmouth beach, I felt that it was time to do something a little more productive so I signed up to be part of the project. The inquiry group I took part in looked into Re-setting the UK National Security Strategy, focusing primarily on issues classified as Tier One threats: terrorism, interstate conflict and cyber security. In this post, I hope to provide an insight into the work we did during Grand Challenges by discussing some of the activities we undertook and the outputs we produced.

 

The first activity we took part in focused on interstate conflict and, being ever-present in the news, we were asked to look at Syria through an activity called Red Teaming. At the start of the session I thought that I knew my feelings towards Syria, however Sir Paul wanted us to do a deeper analysis of the situation and introduced us to a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). Through the SWOT analysis, we began to look at the situation in a completely different way and it became clear to me that my previous views on Syria were far too simplistic for such a complex scenario. We were split into groups and together formulated a plan of action which we then presented back to the other groups. Luckily my group were broadly in agreement over how we should prioritise the issues that we had identified during the SWOT analysis, and we quickly decided that intervention was simply not an option. Even humanitarian intervention carried far greater risk than reward. As this was a Red Team activity, each presentation was followed by a harsh critique from other groups, and surprisingly each team had decided on a different plan on action. This really demonstrated to me that there was no right answer and that if you put an idea forward, you really had to be willing to defend it tooth and nail among both peers and experts.

 

One of our key outputs was an open letter to the Prime Minister in which we critiqued the UK’s National Security Strategy (NSS) in terms of its approach to terrorism, interstate war and cyber security. This was an interesting task because, unlike the Red Team activity, we were forced to agree on how the next NSS (to be published in 2015) should be improved. We began by discussing terrorism which turned out to be relatively simple as we all agreed that the main flaw in that section of the NSS was the focus on ‘Islamic terrorism’. By solely focusing on Islamic terrorism, we felt that the NSS ran the risk of exacerbating the isolation often felt by vulnerable societal groups, which can actually contribute rather than prevent home-grown terrorism and radicalisation.

 

When we moved on to interstate conflict, however, the task became significantly harder. Whilst we all recognised that the wording of the NSS was vague, there was a fifty-fifty split in our group as to whether this was good or bad. Our solution to the group divide was simply to sit in a room for forty minutes and thrash out our dispute and, after a heated debate, we concluded that clarification was necessary for the sake of any future NSS. We proposed that the threat should be divided in two, with one to remain in Tier One and the other to be lowered to Tier Two status. Remaining in Tier One should be situations in which the UK is de jure implicated from the start, and demoted to Tier Two would be situations where Britain is not obliged to intervene, regardless of the amount of pressure being put on us. I really enjoyed being able to argue my views with fellow students and felt that it was incredibly refreshing to be able to decide amongst ourselves which direction we should be taking in our letter.

 

Finally we discussed the approach taken in the NSS to cyber warfare. Once again we were all in agreement that the document, and subsequent actions based on this document, showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of cyber security. Currently over sixty per cent of the cyber budget is sent to GCHQ and we felt that this completely overlooks the personal level of cyber security. Over eighty per cent of UK households have internet access, with this number rising significantly every year; in a world where your personal device can be hacked and used in a DDoS attack against a business or even one’s own government, all without your knowledge, we should be ensuring that citizens have the knowledge necessary to protect themselves from attack. We decided that investment in education should be the key message of the NSS; computer programming should be taught in every school just as other languages are, and we should be aiming to make British citizens the most secure users of cyberspace, whilst producing world-class programmers to protect our national interest.

 

The letter to the Prime Minister was one of the most exciting outputs we created because it has the potential to generate tangible impact. We have now received confirmation that our letter to the Prime Minister has been received, read, and will be passed onto the team who will create the 2015 NSS. I am very much looking forward to its publication as it will be interesting to see whether our critique has actually been listened to and acted upon.

 

In addition to the letter to the Prime Minister, we created a series of podcasts on the topics previously discussed. I was interviewed by one of the lecturers working with us, Dr Danny Steed, about my opinions on cyber warfare and why I thought it was so important to national security. It was a great experience to be able to openly discuss cyber security, a topic I find very interesting, and these podcasts should be available on the SSI website shortly.  The final outputs we produced were two presentations: one pitching our group’s findings to the media and the other presenting them to the other Grand Challenges groups. A team member and I created and presented the second presentation, summarising our task and findings. As well as the three key threats, we also discussed Britain’s role in the world and how our legislation in response to the aforementioned threats reflect where we see ourselves on the world stage. Personally I found this task very enjoyable and interesting and I hope that the people watching felt equally as interested.

 

Grand Challenges proved to be an incredibly interesting and informative two weeks and I can honestly say that the experience has sparked new interests and made me rethink future career paths. I would like to thank everyone involved in Grand Challenges and, in particular, those who helped create and run the programme. Sir Paul Newton, Dr Danny Steed, Ryan Patterson and Atienza Saldaña – thank you.

Participating in Grand Challenges: A Student’s Perspective, by Ryan Hopkins

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Encouraging a student out of bed for a 9am start, the week after exams have finished and for one of those dreaded “extra-curricular” activities, is by no means an easy task. Yet when the morning of June 3rd arrived, and the University of Exeter’s Grand Challenges (GC) programme kicked off, there I was, (mostly) bright-eyed and eager to go.

 

Some months earlier I had decided the join the GC inquiry group run by the University’s new Strategy and Security Institute, entitled “Re-setting the UK National Security Agenda”. SSI had grabbed our attention early – inviting us all to attend a lecture by the former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6), Sir John Scarlett. This was quickly followed by an intimate, closed seminar with the current head of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), Mr. Jon Day. The SSI had thrown two huge actors in the world of strategy and security at us, and promised more of the same to come during the GC programme. This, I deemed, was worth getting out of bed for on June 3rd.

 

At the core of our inquiry group was an investigation into a document imaginatively entitled the UK National Security Strategy (NSS). This, as one can probably guess, set out the main national security threats faced by the UK, and the Coalition Government’s proposed responses to them. It was to be the purpose of our group – under the guidance of SSI’s Director, Sir Paul Newton, and Lecturer of Strategy and Defence, Dr Danny Steed – to examine this document, in order to assess whether or not we deemed the threats presented in it to be realistic dangers to the UK, to examine the Government’s understanding of these threats, and to judge whether or not the proposed responses and classifications were fit for purpose. Essentially, we were tasked with the question, “Is the NSS up to scratch, or does it need to be re-set?” By the end of the programme, we were expected to have written an open letter to the Prime Minister, recorded podcasts, and have presented to our peers participating in other GC groups, with our findings and recommendations for the next NSS – due to be published in 2015.

 

In order to allow us to do this, the SSI facilitated a huge range of external speakers – all more than living up to the exceptionally high standard that had been set previously by Sir John Scarlett and Jon Day. The idea was to expose us students to a broad selection of experts in the field of strategy and security policy, in order to allow us to see how strategy was applied in the real-world, away from academic debate and examination, which, in turn, would aid us in our quest to assess the utility of the NSS. I must confess, however, that in some sessions I simply forgot the purpose of the inquiry group, as I became caught up by some fascinating talks. Each of the “real people” (always a novelty, within a university) presented to us held captivating jobs and could speak of incredible experiences, all of which they were willing to share with a small inquiry group of around 15 people.

 

A particular highlight for me from the GC speaker set was a visit by the former Director of the National Security Secretariat at the Cabinet Office, Mr. William Nye. Mr. Nye also currently holds the position of Principle Private Secretary to HRH The Prince of Wales, so commands much respect. This session in particular stands out for me, because after giving a short talk on the NSS (which he was responsible for commissioning), Mr. Nye sat down in amongst the students, and took questions. Somewhat controversially, given his position as a lifelong expert in the field of UK National Security, I found myself disagreeing with some of what Mr. Nye had said. In most academic circumstances, disagreeing with the expert doesn’t really get you very far – it’s often a case of fair enough if you disagree, but please be quiet and just get on with it. Not so on this occasion. Mr. Nye gave me the chance to thrash out my own argument – contrary to his. He responded and asked for my opinion in return, he corrected me when some of my points were incorrect, and he gave me the chance to debate back.  Deliberating real UK National Security Policy, with a real National Security expert, gave me an insight that no lecture or conventional seminar could ever have provided. By placing students into small, closed sessions with practitioners who were willing to engage in debate and discussion, the SSI and GC programme went beyond the realms of traditional university learning, and in turn, allowed us to hone and perfect our own views and arguments.

 

And it is this aspect, fundamentally, that gave the inaugural Grand Challenges that added extra; that engaged students, that kept us coming back day after day for the two week programme, and which, if continued, will allow GC to grow and expand in future years. The Strategy and Security Institute realized and embraced this, and went above and beyond in providing activities and speakers far-removed from traditional academia. I have focused primarily on the range of speakers that were hosted, but of course, the SSI’s inquiry group went beyond that, and pushed the boundaries of teaching methods by engaging us in activities that were far-removed from the humdrum of the average lecture theatre. It was this combination of expertise, stimulating debate, and engaging activity that gave the SSI the edge in facilitating this programme. And from a student’s point of view, well, it was worth getting out of bed for.

 

On behalf of all of the students who took part in the “Re-setting the UK National Security Agenda” inquiry group, may I extend the warmest thanks and congratulations to Sir Paul, Danny, Ryan, and Atienza, for hosting a truly engaging, innovative, and successful programme.

 

Danny Steed – Gearing up for Grand Challenges

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The University of Exeter’s Grand Challenges programme is almost upon us with its launch on June 3rd and the inquiry group that SSI will be heading, “Resetting the UK National Security Agenda”, promises to deliver an exciting experience for the 40 students taking part and ourselves.

Grand Challenges is an eleven-day programme designed to provide junior undergraduate students from a diverse disciplinary background with a broader learning experience than that which they typically receive during the course of the academic year. When Sir Paul Newton and myself were asked to deliver one of the inquiry groups as part of the Human Security versus Power Politics dilemma, we hungrily took the chance.

Sir Paul and I agreed that Grand Challenges presented not only an exciting opportunity to Exeter students, but also an opportunity for us to showcase our philosophy of teaching that we intend to take into our taught courses launching here at Exeter in October 2013. Here in SSI we seek to enthuse a highly interactive, collaborative learning environment that never leaves our students as passive and inactive in a classroom. We seek instead to foster an atmosphere of peer engagement, as well as exposure to our large network of highly experienced practitioners so that students will constantly benefit not only from academic expertise, but also face-to-face access with practitioners.

During our Grand Challenges inquiry our students will receive no less than seven external speakers across eleven days, ranging from the Department of International Development, the Royal Marines, active defence correspondents, the Director of the Royal United Services Institute, a former Secretary of State for Defence, and the former Director of the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. By facilitating maximum engagement between students and practitioners, SSI hopes to bring the subject of strategy to life by exposing our students to the reality of how decisions are made and how strategy is done in the practitioner’s world. Or as we here in SSI say, Applied Strategy.

This exposure will build on the experience that many of these students have already had in the past month of meeting both Sir John Scarlett, the former Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6), and Jon Day, the current Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). Amy Walker, Department of Law and one of our group’s students, said of John Scarlett’s visit: ‘I was in awe of John Scarlett and felt extremely privileged to be in his company hearing about his experiences within MI6…He was very thorough in his lecture and provided a fantastic Q&A session…Well done SSI for another fantastic and memorable event!’

Throughout the inquiry students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds will be exposed to the thinking behind the UK National Security Strategy, as well as conduct a broad range of activities designed to engage group interaction and critical thinking. All of this is intended to assess the suitability of the current National Security Strategy of the UK with these questions guiding them throughout: is the UK NSS up to scratch? Or does it need to be reset in 2015? They will focus on what the British Government has declared as representing “Tier One” threats to national security; cyber attacks, terrorism, and inter-state war.

Our activities include a student workshop, where teams dedicated to cyber, terrorism, and inter-state war, will be “Red Teamed” by their own peers in a dedicated Red Team. A Red Team session will be conducted by all on a current crisis of global significance to identify possible scenarios, as well as participating in joint activities with other inquiry groups. These will include looking at the role of the media in contemporary warfare, and a joint debate with the Nuclear Wars inquiry group into the question of whether or not the UK should renew the Trident nuclear deterrent.

Our students will not only reach a point where they can confidently answer the questions motivating our inquiry, they will also produce a series of outputs that we in SSI intend to make available for public access. Those outputs will consist of a series of podcasts that will serve to formally launch the SSI podcast series, and an open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron, expressing the inquiry group’s view on his government’s National Security Strategy.

By the end of the inquiry, students taking part in our activities will have received a wealth of expertise, both academically and from practitioners, on the subject of British National Security Strategy. Further to this though, these students will have experienced a different way of teaching, one that encourages maximum exposure to practitioners, fosters an atmosphere of peer engagement and critical analysis in the classroom, and generates tangible outputs. These students will develop the skills and the confidence to makes reasoned arguments and develop ways of communicating their thoughts to an audience beyond the University of Exeter.