Sunday, September 28, 2014

Mr. Putin, Mugging Foreign Journalists is Bad PR

http://online.wsj.com/articles/bbc-journalists-attacked-investigating-servicemen-deaths-in-russia-1411038737



Vladimir Putin often seems to make decisions as though he is playing the role of a stereotypical Russian villain in a B-list Cold War spy film. Whether it is casually threatening nuclear annihilation or jovially bantering about his ability to have any political opponents killed, he seems to derive personal enjoyment from inflating his cloak and dagger, ex KGB image.  This image may be ideal for domestic consumption, but it seems to work against Russia's interest on the world stage. Earlier this month, a crew of BBC journalists who were investigating the deaths of Russian servicemen alleged to be fighting in Ukraine were accosted in the street and beaten. The crew's cameras and tapes were also destroyed.

While there is no concrete proof that the "mugging" was sanctioned by the Kremlin, it is hard to see this event as a coincidence.  A Russian journalist and opposition leader named Lev
Shlosberg was attacked in a similar manner following the same story. The fact that a second attack occurred rules out coincidence.

Attacking journalists seems counterproductive from the point of view of the Kremlin. If one wants a journalist to stop pursuing a certain line of evidence, the last thing to do is attack him/her. A beaten reporter is the journalistic equivalent of a neon sign telling prying eyes exactly where to look. Having ones tapes destroyed represents a logistical setback, but nothing more; one can always buy new tapes. If the attackers' goal was simply to scare the journalists off the story, attacking them may have the opposite effect. Many young Western journalists want to be seen as the next Edward R. Murrow, bravely risking life and limb to get the tough story. Getting a solid beating in pursuit of a controversial story is seen by this type of journalist as more of a merit badge than a deterrent. If an older, more risk averse journalist in the group chooses to abandon the story, there will doubtless be a younger journalist with a bigger Murrow complex eager to take his/her place.

The most vexing aspect of this story is that the Russians are aware of the Murrow complex. There are people employed by the Russian government whose job it is to analyze Western media. These analysts would certainly inform their superiors of the Western journalistic tendency to perceive injury in the line of duty as a badge of honor. Given the above suppositions, there are two potential explanations for the beating of the BBC team. The less likely, but more amusing, possibility is that Putin simply enjoys playing the role of a cartoon villain. The more likely, but less amusing, possibility is that the decision to attack the journalists was made by a lower level, local official who was either unaware of or unconcerned with the downstream geopolitical consequences.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

ISIS... Even Al Qaeda Thinks They're Crazy

Al Qaeda Appealed to ISIS to Release British Aid Worker



Over the past few months, the Sunni Muslim extremist group known as ISIS, ISIL, or simply The Islamic State has embarked on a campaign of carnage across Iraq and Syria. The brutality of ISIS is unprecedented even in a region known for terrorist violence. On paper, ISIS is merely the better trained, better armed, and better funded offshoot of Al Qaida. The two organizations also share the same long term goal of establishing a unified Sunni caliphate. The gulf between the two organizations lies in their methods and perspectives. Al Qaida thinks strategically, whereas ISIS thinks tactically. Al Qaida follows the formula of a typical terrorist organization, Terrorists work indirectly. The goal of a terrorist attack is not to destroy an enemy or take land, but rather to scare the masses into forcing their leaders to give the terrorist organization what it wants. On the other hand, ISIS follows the typical formula of a revolutionary organization. Revolutionaries work directly. The goal of a revolutionary is to wipe out every trace of the previous regime, leaving a blank sociopolitical slate on which the revolutionary's ideology can be grafted.

Al Qaida and ISIS thus find themselves at cross-purposes. ISIS, along with all similar revolutionary groups, is narrowly focused and short sighted. ISIS is not concerned with the downstream effects of its actions, only with preserving the revolution and keeping it ideologically pure. When ISIS stopped Mr. Henning's convoy, they did not see a humanitarian who missed Christmas with his family to help people in need regardless of religious affiliation, all they saw was a threat to the revolution.

Al Qaida is a global organization that operates through manipulation of public sentiment. This means that public support is key to its success. The emir of Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al Qaida, claims he is against ISIS because it violates Islamic law by targeting innocents and attempting to supersede the muftis. It is true that ISIS is in violation of Islamic law, but Al Qaida has no problem violating Islamic law when it has to.

The real reason Al Qaida denounced ISIS is because ISIS makes Al Qaida look bad. The willingness of ISIS fighters to kill anyone, even fellow Sunnis, in the name of revolution robs Al Qaida of its ideological base. If Al Qaida loses the support of the radicalized Sunni population, then it cannot operate.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

All this time, I thought my profession was safe from the impending robot takeover.

Playing Nostradamus 
(In Firefox or Chrome, right click link and select open link in Private or Incognito window to bypass subscriber log-in)

On August 30th, a contributor to Foreign Policy Magazine wrote about an algorithm which could be used to help policymakers predict the future geopolitical landscape. My first thought was that such a predictive program would put me out off a future career. The skill of an international relations specialist comes from combining knowledge of a group's interests with knowledge of culture and history.  The goal is to predict that group's reaction to a given stimulus. The task of synthesizing a response based on the integrated, and almost sub-conscious, calculation of many variables is completed by utilizing the amazing parallel processing power of the human brain. The output of this subconscious, parallel processing is perceived by individual humans as intuition. As the power of man-made computers increases, parallel distributed architectures can be developed that are capable of making "leaps" previously reserved for the human brain.

The Global Database of Events Language and Tone (GDELT) is a program that uses the exponential increase of computing power to turn a jumble of hundreds of variables into a concrete trend line.

The GDELT works by analyzing all sorts of global media, coding the media with different values for each variable, and using these values to create a trend line of general unrest (link to the math in article for those who know stats). The predictive power of GDELT is derived by comparing the trend line of an ongoing event with the trend line of a similar previous event. GDELT is designed to provide a concrete measure of the degree to which history repeats itself.

Luckily for me, the GDELT will not be replacing political analysts any time soon. The system has two major flaws. The first flaw is endemic to any model with a bunch of variables. If a variable is missed when constructing the model, it is hard for the researcher to find his mistake because one can't see what one doesn't know to look for. The second big flaw with GDELT is the input data. Since GDELT relies on media coverage of an event for data, the data is tainted by media bias before it even enters the system. Even if the model were technically perfected, the reliance on media coverage would always contaminate the data. The designers of GDELT say that even if the system cannot be used to predict events, it can be used to predict the way the media responds to events.

Here is a link to a cool animated map of global unrest the GDELT team created using their program. They are definitely on to something.

http://gdeltproject.org/globaldashboard/

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

NATO: can you fight crazy?


Source
Nato to create high-readiness force to counter Russian threat

Ever since Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine this past March, experts and laypersons alike have imbibed in a potent cocktail of alarmism and nostalgia. The outbreak of fighting in southeastern Ukraine was thus seen by many as the opening salvo of Cold War II. Any hope of sobering the collective consciousness of the Western World was dashed by Putin's embracing of the thuggish, James Bond villain-esque image the world media created for him.

On September 1st 2014 NATO announced that it would dedicate time in its upcoming summit to the creation of a 4,000 strong rapid reaction force. The stated objective of this force is to combat potential Russian incursions into the territories of any Eastern European NATO Country. The creation of this "spearhead" force represents the squirming of an organization stuck between a rock and a hard place. NATO can't be seen to do nothing about Russian expansion because the organization was created for the sole purpose of preventing such expansion. On the other hand, increasing NATO troop concentrations in Poland and the Baltic states goes against the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) signed between NATO and the Russian Federation.

The problem with violating the CFE is that Putin may use it as an excuse to ramp up military action in neighboring countries not under the protection of NATO. The bottom line is that Putin needs this war. In his mind he has been tasked by a higher authority with bringing Russia back to superpower status. He has parlayed this personal belief into the backbone of his entire domestic political strategy. Putin has used his de facto control of Russian media to show his people a world in which "The West" controls everything and seeks to crush the once mighty Russia into a helpless vassal state to be exploited by the global corporate elite. Of course, Putin fits himself into this narrative as the heroic figure who will defend The Motherland against her many enemies and help her reclaim her rightful place in the pantheon of great nations. Put simply, NATO's actions play into this narrative. There is no doubt that those in command at NATO are fully aware of this, but they have little choice.

The Eastern European NATO states are right to worry for their security. Ironically however, Putin does not have the capability to win the war he so desperately craves. The Russian army has a relatively small quantity of very well armed and trained special forces soldiers. Aside from these units, the Russian army consists almost entirely of unpaid, under-trained, and barely equipped conscripts. The Chechen rebel fighters proved the Russian regular army as good for little more than high capacity lead absorption.

The profound inefficacy of the Russian regular army explains the almost complete reliance on local proxy forces in Ukraine. If Putin does continue to move west, there won't be any local proxies to rely on. If Putin succeeds in sparking his pet world war, it is a near certainty that Russia will lose. However, the sheer size of both prospective forces ensures massive casualty levels. Even if Putin succeeds in "uniting all Russian speaking people across the globe," his country will be worse off than it was before the conflict.

There is an axiom that states, "you can't fight crazy."  By creating this spearhead, NATO is attempting to fight crazy. They know they won't succeed, but also know there is nothing else they can do.