Violent Non-State Actors: Countering Dynamic Systems
Abstract
Violent non-state actors (VNSAs) 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 Qaeda network to the 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 them 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, we 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, we now expose the internal workings of the organization in order to understand 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, our C-VNSA strategy defeats a VNSA by: (1) denying the negative entropy, or stores of energy, required to survive attack; and (2) disrupting congruence, or fit, among subsystems 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. Importantly, our approach allows for measuring campaign progress by assessing changes in VNSA effectiveness.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2004
- Accession Number
- ADA524591
Entities
People
- Troy S. Thomas
- William D. Casebeer
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School