Anticipating Opportunities: Using Intelligence to Shape the Future
"We spend $45 billion annually to reduce uncertainty, to help us combat threats to our nation, our people, and our security," said Payne Distinguished Lecturer Thomas Fingar in his third Payne lecture on October 21, devoted to anticipating the future -- "not for purposes of prediction but for purposes of shaping it."  Noting that strategic intelligence treats the future neither as "inevitable or immutable," Fingar employed real-life examples from his career in national intelligence (most recently as deputy director of national intelligence for analysis and chairman of the National Intelligence Council) to explore concrete ways intelligence can be used to move developments in a more favorable direction.

Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World examined the trends which will "drive, shape and constrain" individuals, governments, and nations around the world. Among prominent trends, he cited globalization, which will provide unprecedented prosperity but greater inequality; the rise of the BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China; the rise of new powers such as Indonesia, Turkey, and Iran; and the coming demographic boom, which will add 1.2 billion people to the world, with less than 3 percent of that occurring in the West.

The Geopolitical Implications of Climate Change.  Instructed by the Congress to provide an assessment of the impact of global climate change, given controversy about the imminence of the threat and man's role in it, the NIC studied which regions and countries would be most dramatically affected by climate change, with a focus on water, food production, and changes in weather patterns. The results remain classified, because of the potential impact on vulnerable countries. 

The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities. This estimate, attacked from both the right and the left, concluded with a moderate to high degree of confidence that Iran had not obtained sufficient fissile material from external sources (to make a bomb) and that its fastest route to produce a nuclear weapon would be through domestic production of enriched uranium. The NIE also judged that Iran had halted the weaponization portions of its nuclear program in 2003, but had retained the option to pursue a weapon and whether to do so was a "political decision" which could be made at any time.

CISAC is pleased to announce fellows and visitors in residence at the Center during the 2009-10 academic year.

• Max Abrahms
  University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Political Science
  Strategic Logic of Terrorism
• Undraa Agvaanluvsan
  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Nuclear Experimental Group
  Energy, Security, and Economic Implications of Nuclear Industry Development in Mongolia
• Chaim Braun
  CISAC
  Nuclear Power Growth and its Nonproliferation Implications in India, the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula, and South America
• Sarah Zukerman Daly
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science
  Guns, Politics or Bankruptcy: Disentangling the Determinants of Armed Organizations Post-war Trajectories
• Matthias Englert
  Darmstadt University of Technology, Interdisciplinary Research Group in Science Technology and Security
  Managing the Proliferation Risks of Gas Centrifuges - Technical and Political Measures
• Andrea Everett
  Princeton University, Department of Politics
  Responding to Catastrophe: Democratic Society and the Origins of Humanitarian Intervention
• Kelly Greenhill
  Tufts University and Research Fellow, Harvard University
  Fear Factor: Understanding the Origins and Consequences of Beliefs about National Security and the Threats We Face
• Tom Isaacs
  Director, Office of Planning and Special Studies, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  Internationalization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle and the Role of the U.S.
• Joseph Martz
  Los Alamos National Laboratory
• Katherine Marvel
  University of Cambridge, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
  Nuclear Energy in Africa: Utility, Feasibility, and Security
• Emily Meierding
  University of Chicago, Department of Political Science
  Fueling Conflict, Facilitating Peace: Oil & International Territorial Disputes
• Eric Morris
  Ford Dorsey Program in International Policy Studies
  Civilian Capacity for Peace Operations
• Charles Perrow
  Yale University, Department of Sociology
• Brenna Powell
  Harvard University, Department of Government and Social Policy
  Normalizing Security After Conflict: Jobs for the Boys and Justice for the Hoods
• Arian Pregenzer
  Sandia National Laboratories, Department of Cooperative International Programs
  International Technical Cooperation to Support Arms Control and Nonproliferation: Review of Past Approaches, Identification of Lessons Learned, and Recommendations for the Future
• William Reckmeyer
  San Jose State University, Department of Anthropology
  Systemic Connections: Developing an Integrated National Strategy to Promote International Security and Cooperation
• Jefferey Richardson,
  Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  Science as a Tool for International Engagement
• Robert Rosner
  University of Chicago, Distinguished Service Professor, Departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, and Laboratory Director, Argonne National Laboratory
• Jan Stupl
  University of Hamburg, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy
  Missile Technology Control Regime
• Michael Sulmeyer
  Stanford Law School
• Phil Taubman
  Former Associate Editor and Reporter, The New York Times
• Jianqun Teng
  China Arms Control and Disarmament Association
  Nuclear Free World Initiative in the Context of Sino-U.S. Relations
• John Vitacca
  United States Air Force
  Nuclear Policy Issues
• Gang Zhao
  Chinese Academy of S & T for Development (CASTED)
  Deepening the China-U.S. Relationship through Collaboration in Science and Technology with Particular Attention to Alternative Energy Solutions
• Yunhua Zou
  General Armaments Department, People's Liberation Army, China
  Space Arms Control; Security Cooperation with China; U.S.-China Relations

Martha Crenshaw, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), has been awarded $500,000 by the National Science Foundation to identify patterns in the evolution of terrorist organizations and to analyze their comparative development.

The three-year grant is part of the Department of Defense's Minerva Initiative launched in 2008, which focuses on "supporting research related to basic social and behavioral science of strategic importance to U.S. national security policy."

Crenshaw's interdisciplinary project, "Mapping Terrorist Organizations," will analyze terrorist groups and trace their relationships over time. It will be the first worldwide, comprehensive study of its kind-extending back to the Russian revolutionary movement up to Al Qaeda today.

"We want to understand how groups affiliate with Al Qaeda and analyze their relationships," Crenshaw said. "Evolutionary mapping can enhance our understanding of how terrorist groups develop and interact with each other and with the government, how strategies of violence and non-violence are related, why groups persist or disappear, and how opportunities and constraints in the environment change organizational behavior over time."

According to Crenshaw, it is critical to understand the organization and evolution of terrorism in multiple contexts. "To craft effective counter-terrorism strategies, governments need to know not only what type of adversary they are confronting but its stage of organizational development and relationship to other groups," Crenshaw wrote in the project summary. "The timing of a government policy initiative may be as important as its substance."

"Mapping Terrorist Organizations" will incorporate research in economics, sociology, business, biology, political science and history. It will include existing research to build a new database using original language sources rather than secondary analyses. The goal is to produce an online database and series of interactive maps that will generate new observations and research questions, Crenshaw said.

The results, for example, could reveal the structure of violent and non-violent opposition groups within the same movements or conflicts, and identify patterns that explain how these groups evolve over time. Such findings could be used to analyze the development of Al Qaeda and its Islamist or jihadist affiliates, including the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, she said.

The findings may also shed light on what happens when a group splits due to leadership quarrels or when a government is overturned, Crenshaw said. "Analysis that links levels of terrorist violence to changes in organizational structures and explains the complex relationships among actors in protracted conflicts will break new ground," the summary noted.

Extensive information on terrorist groups already exists, but it has been difficult to compile and analyze. Despite such obstacles, Crenshaw said, violent organizations can be understood in the same terms as other political or economic groups. "Terrorist groups are not anomalous or unique," she wrote. "In fact, they can be compared to transnational activist networks."

Crenshaw should know. Widely respected as a pioneer in terrorism studies, the political scientist was one of a handful of scholars who followed the subject decades before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. She joined CISAC in 2007, following a long career at Wesleyan University, where she was the Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor of Global Issues and Democratic Thought. In addition to her research at Stanford, Crenshaw is a lead investigator at START, the Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism at the University of Maryland.

End goal

Crenshaw wants to use the findings to better analyze how threats to U.S. security evolve over time. "Terrorist attacks on the United States and its allies abroad often appear to come without warning, but they are the result of a long process of organizational development," she wrote. "Terrorist organizations do not operate in isolation from a wider social environment. Without understanding processes of development and interaction, governments may miss signals along the way and be vulnerable to surprise attack. They may also respond ineffectively because they cannot anticipate the consequences of their actions." The project seeks to find patterns in the evolution of terrorism and to explain their causes and consequences. This, in turn, should contribute to developing more effective counter-terrorism policy, Crenshaw said.

Conflicts to be mapped

• Russian revolutionary organizations, 1860s-1914.
• Anarchist groups in Europe and the United States, 1880s-1914. (Note: although the anarchist movement is typically regarded as completely unstructured, there was more organization than an initial survey might suppose, and the transnational dispersion of the movement is frequently cited as a precedent for Al Qaeda.)
  
• Ireland and Northern Ireland, 1860s-present.
  
• Algeria, 1945-1962 and 1992-present
  
• Palestinian resistance groups, 1967-present.
  
• Colombia, 1960s-present.
  
• El Salvador, 1970s-1990s
  
• Argentina, 1960s-1980s
  
• Chile, 1973-1990
  
• Peru, 1970-1990s
  
• Brazil, 1967-1971
  
• Sri Lanka, 1980s-present
  
• India (Punjab), 1980-present
  
• Philippines, 1960s-present
  
• Indonesia, 1998-present
  
• Italy, 1970s-1990s
  
• Germany, 1970s-1990s
  
• France/Belgium, 1980-1990s
  
• Kashmir, 1988-present
  
• Pakistan, 1980-present
  
• United States, 1960s-present (especially far right movement)
  
• Spain, 1960s-present
  
• Egypt, 1950s-present
  
• Turkey, 1960s-present
  
• Lebanon, 1975-present
  
• Al Qaeda, 1987-present

'Survival' editor's note:

In the June-July 2009 issue of the journal 'Survival,' Scott D. Sagan argued the current case for the United States to adopt a declaratory policy of nuclear no first use. 'Survival' invited four experts from Europe, Asia and North America to comment on Sagan's argument. The author concludes the debate with his own final thoughts.

Note from editor of Survival:

In the June-July 2009 issue of Survival, Professor Scott D. Sagan argued the current case for the United States to adopt a declaratory policy of nuclear no first use. Survival invited four experts from Europe, Asia and North America (listed below) to comment on Sagan's argument, with a final conclusion from the author:

Morton H. Halperin worked on nuclear issues in the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Clinton administrations in the Department of Defense, the National Security Council and the State Department. He is a member of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States and senior advisor to the Open Society Institute. He has written numerous books and articles on nuclear policy.

Bruno Tertrais is a senior research fellow at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research and a contributing editor to Survival. He is the author of War Without End (New York: The New Press, 2005).

Keith B. Payne is president and co-founder of the National Institute for Public Policy, head of the Graduate Department of Defense and Strategic Studies of Missouri State University, Washington, D.C. campus, a member of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Review of the United States, Policy Panel chairman of the U.S. Strategic Command's Senior Advisory Group, and a member of the Department of State's International Security Advisory Board.

K. Subrahmanyam is an Indian strategic analyst and journalist. He served as the director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and has held a number of other government positions, including chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

Scott D. Sagan is professor of political science at Stanford University and co-director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation.