Building new datasets for foreign and security policy analysis

I have long been very frustrated about the lack of a systematic empirical basis for our analysis of foreign and security policy. Newspapers, with their many well-known biases, essentially dictate what 'facts' are and 'analysts' and 'scholars' then cherry-pick these 'facts' to buttress whatever theory, ideology, etc. they espouse.  A number of new datasets and tools hold great promise to revolutionize this state of affairs. 

Capability-Based Planning: The Fight Continues...

Dr. Ben Taylor, Team Leader of Strategic Planning Operations Research at Canada's DRDC has authored an interesting new piece that outlines some of the main tenets of what I have called the TTCP school of capability-based planning. It builds on a 2011 TTCP meeting in Ottawa I had the pleasure to attend. The paper is called 'Analysis Support to Strategic Planning' and has now been approved for unlimited release. Since I have not been able to find a copy on the internet (yet), I am taking the liberty of making it available on my blog and of adding a few personal thoughts.

I spent a few days last week in the presence of about 10 academics working in the field of Russian Foreign Policy. As I told them at the end of our meeting, I was struck by three main characteristics of this field: 1) the often astoundingly non-systematic empirical basis of much Russian foreign policy analysis; 2) the stovepiped nature of much of the work; and 3) the lack of any serious attemtp at cumulative knowledge building on this country that is once again become a major policy preoccupation of Western defense and security planners. My main rallying cry was that if we, as a community of experts, want to make a useful contribution to the West's attempt at dealing with a 'new' Russia, we will have to find ways to overcome these three hurdles.

Stephan's Top-10 Book Recommendations for Defence and Security Planning

Paul Davis
Beinhocker
Taleb
Zolli & Healy

European Defence Agency's First-Ever War Game

From June 4-6, the European Defence Agency (EDA) will conduct its first ever war game in The Hague. The game will stress-test EDA's current Capability Development Plan against a stretching set of scenario ensembles. HCSS and TNO are the core team that was contracted by EDA to assist in the preparation and execution of this war game, which we called ECAPAG (European Capability Assessment Game). This table-top exercise will bring together participants from EDA’s participating Member States as well as from EU entities like the European Union Military Committee and the Crisis Management & Planning Directorate. HCSS developed a method to derive a set of scenarios from a large volume of foresight studies in a traceable way that can also be regularly updated. HCSS, in close cooperation with TNO, also formulated a computer-assisted game design that allows to translate these scenario ensembles into capability trends for each of the tasks described in the EDA's Generic Military Task List as well as for possible new tasks that may emerge from the game. 

Attachment security

Thanks to a large EU project on societal security, I have been reading up what we called the unexplored crevasses of  security. One of the big discoveries for me was the rich literature on attachment security
reminded by the Boris Cyrulnik, the impressive French popular writer
link to resilience,
talked on Laurent Ruquier (10/7/2012) about the serenity of a kid experiencing a bombing raid in a basement in the security of his closest family vs the fear of a kid that might be far away from the bombs but also from those securitizing links
also mentions the favellas in Rio:
when police is sent in, the main guys of the gangs have to show they are tough
now they send in soccer players, samba dancers, etc - create links, attachments

C'est  l'exemple  des favelas de Sao  Paulo au  Brésil, où  j'ai travaillé  : les enfants envoyaient  balader les psychologues, mais pas les guitaristes, les danseurs de samba ou  les footballeurs, avec lesquels  un  début de  lien  se  tissait. Avec cette méthode culturelle, le président Lula a  pacifié  50  %  des  favelas,  là  où  la  police avait échoué . Donc il y a du travail culturel à faire, il faut convaincre les hommes politiques que c'est possible.

The rise of the rest

"The decline of the West and the rise of the rest" has become a very popular one-liner amongs the kommentariat.

UK equivalent : ask the average Britton

but also other away of looking at this: the rest is becoming like the West. Which may have enormous implications for armed forces. right now, we are willing to do things in 'the rest' that we would never tolerate in 'the West'. e.g. strike and collateral damage.
we are still willing to use 'force' in the West when we feel that
but we don't fire live ammo - we use rubber bullets, tear gas, water canon