Turbulent Arena: Global Effects Against Non-State Adversaries
Abstract
This is the 58th volume in the Occasional Paper series of the U.S. Air Force Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Violent non-state actors (VNSA) pose a pressing challenge to human and national security across the geo-political landscape. In the midst of a global war against terrorism, collective violent action thrives as a strategy of groups ranging from the al Qaida network to Maoist rebels of Nepal to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The dark dynamics of globalization enable VNSAs to prosper in a turbulent international environment marked by deepening roots of violence, failures in governance, and burgeoning illicit trade in guns, drugs, and humans. With few exceptions, VNSAs play a prominent, often destabilizing role in nearly every humanitarian and political crisis faced by the international community. Successfully countering VNSAs across the geo-political landscape is complicated by a host of factors, including the adaptive character of the threat and the difficulty of developing and implementing a coherent strategy that engenders measurable victories. By applying systems analysis to this intensifying problem, the authors first proffer an actionable and universal analytical framework for diagnosing the non-state adversary. Building on previous research into the operational environment and VNSA properties, they expose the internal workings of the organization to understand its sources of strength and critical vulnerabilities. This sets up a counter-VNSA (C-VNSA) strategy that goes beyond coercion to the defeat of the enemy. At its core, their C-VNSA strategy defeats a VNSA by the following: (1) denying the negative entropy, or stores of energy, required to survive attack; and (2) disrupting congruence, or fit, among sub-systems to achieve system failure. By also understanding the indicators of organizational change during its developmental life-cycle, preemptory defeat before the VNSA reaches maturity becomes feasible.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA435411
Entities
People
- Troy S. Thomas
- William D. Casebeer
Organizations
- United States Air Force Academy