Mulling over security policy

This is outside of my areas of competence, but here is a thought. In discussions of international security policy we hear about threats from state actors and non-state actors. It seems to me that non-state actors must be found within states, so that we need to consider a couple of properties of states in which non-state actors are found:

• the strength of the state;
• the support within the state for non-state actor threats to our security.

There are very different responses to a threat that comes from Germany versus one that comes from Somalia, and both those responses should be different than the response to a threat that comes from Pakistan.

It seems to me that the U.S. response to a threat from a terrorist network would be quite different that that to a threat from a state. So too, the response to a state threat should depend on:

• the magnitude and nature of the threat;
• the strength of the state.

The appropriate response to the threat we now face from Iran must be different that that which was appropriate response to the threat posed by the fascist states of Europe in 1940.

Military preparedness policy must include preparedness to deal with non-state actors of various kinds in various states as well as to deal with state actors. I am reminded that the United States entered World War II late, having taken some years to build its military capacity. The country need not be fully prepared to undertake wars as long as it begins in time to meet a military challenge.

It seems to me likely that the security threat to the United States posed by Gaddafi's Libya was different than that posed by Assad's Syria, and the implications of direct action in the two countries were very different. I am uncomfortable with a one size fits all foreign policy, and more comfortable with a cautious than an adventurous foreign policy.

Another thought

We fought the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan without a draft. As a result, the military burden was shared narrowly, and a few people suffered a great deal. Viet Nam demonstrated that a citizen army tends to generate a lot of opposition to a war in a country we don't understand very well in support of a foreign government we don't like very much.

We not only did not have a citizen army in those wars, we did not levy taxes to pay for them. We said our kids and their kids can pay the bill some time in the future. Thus there was not even immediate financial pain for the vast majority of the population to cause us to think about the war.

These were wars fought in large part by commercial firms -- supporting troops, providing security to civilians, and conducting nation building services. Thus these functions were not provided by people conscripted by the government to serve the nation at low cost, but rather by firms which saw the war and occupation as means of earning profits.

The Bush administration thus had eliminated many of the factors causing opposition to the wars in the short term while building support for the wars from the commercial sector. Maybe that is good policy for allowing necessary wars, but very dangerous policy for wars that we really don't need to fight.