The central premise of what follows is that a sovereign state like Russia, or any other state, composed millions of people and myriad competing interests can, for the purpose of behavior modification, be treated like a small furry animal. This was broached in U.S. Expels More Russian Diplomats; try Rat Psychology Instead.

Russian readers may prefer a big furry bear. But a small furry animal allows us to apply the methods of B.F. Skinner, who set out his philosophy in one of the great humanist reads without an index of the 20th century, Beyond Freedom and Dignity. The strongest argument in favor comes from  turning Skinner on himself. Skinner  believed behavior is deterministic, that we are all biologic robots, that  free will is an illusion; that all behavior comes from the effect of environment on the organism.

Skinner (page 200, Alfred A. Knopf, 1971) writes,

What is being abolished is the autonomous man–the inner man, the homunuculus, the possessing demon, the man defended by the literatures of freedom and dignity.

But since modern physics has severely dented the mechanistic universe, Skinner is wrong. Since readers are mainly interested in foreign policy, I won’t delve deeper. Beyond Freedom and Dignity is contemptuous of the mind that free will implies.  But his  learning method, operant conditioning, is widely used today in the design of educational tools and methods. If he was on the wrong side of the free will argument,  it doesn’t matter — the method works.

This suggests we don’t have to be too particular about what’s inside the head. It could be a brain, a robot, a crazy person, or a body politic. The only specification is that it exhibit behavior that is initially spontaneous, called the “operant”, which is to be reinforced or inhibited by training. In our case,  subversion via social media is to be inhibited.

To Skinner, as far as training goes, the basic method, operant conditioning, is the same if the subject is a small furry animal, a gold fish, or a human. From human, it’s a short hop to consider a nation-state as a kind of supra-organism. The concept was demonstrated several hundred million years ago by eusocial insects, such as ants and termites. Humans are eusocial.

If you take your time with Beyond Freedom of Dignity, the philosophic prose can be decoded into common sense insights. Page 120, second paragraph tells us how to housebreak a pet.  Negative reinforcement should immediately follow wetting of the carpet. It should be immediate, or it may condition something not intended. Quoting,

Behavior cannot really be affected by anything which follows it, but if a “consequence” is immediate, it may overlap the behavior.

Operant conditioning can also be used with music lessons, learning foreign languages, or improving the behavior of children. Skinner promoted it as a humane alternative to traditional punishment, such as corporal. Traditional punishment requires a competent intellect to associate the occasional severe punishment with the behavior to be discouraged. But nation states do not possess competent moral intellects. Operant conditioning can  be used with autistic children to reduce self-harming behaviors. It can even be used with robots! So why not Russia?

Skinner supplied schedules of reinforcement, detailed recipes for the intervals at which reinforcement should be applied. With negative reinforcement, it saves the subject from the discomfort of negative reinforcement in excess of need. With positive reinforcement, schedules save dog treats.

How do the Russia sanctions fit into the above? The sanctions are analogous  to what Skinner would call a punishment of an individual in a moral or religious paradigm. They appeal to us as an extension to the tradition of Western moral education of the individual, to which Skinner compared operant conditioning as the superior and more effective choice. But the recent sanctions cannot be made part of an operant conditioning approach.  And history provides no instances of nations that have received moral educations via punishments administered from abroad.

Next: the mechanisms for operant conditioning of Russia, or any other sovereign state.

Politico: Nikki Haley on Russia meddling: Election interference is ‘warfare’ Quoting,

“I will tell you that when a country can come interfere in another country’s elections, that is warfare. It really is, because you’re making sure that the democracy shifts from what the people want to giving out that misinformation,” Haley said Thursday at a forum hosted in New York by the George W. Bush institute. ”And we didn’t just see it here. You can look at France and you can look at other countries. They are doing this everywhere. This is their new weapon of choice. And we have to make sure we get in front of it.”

In part, Haley was responding to (ABC) Vladimir Putin’s statement at a Sochi conference,

“An unprecedented anti-Russian campaign has been unleashed in the United States,” Putin said. “After losing the election to Trump, they have put all the blame on Russia and engaged in a frenzied anti-Russian hysteria.”

Haley may be right, maybe it is warfare, but the word may carry us in the direction of ineffectual response. The (BBC) Russia sanctions passed on August 2 are close to the most severe yet reasonable response, yet the Russians are still running their troll farms. In Advice for a New Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, Part 1, I wrote about  mechanisms. But the New Subversion is in a new class, requiring new mechanisms. It’s really more like pest control, or training someone out of a bad habit. Subversion is a highly intellectual activity. A habit is mindless. What is the connection between the two?

It has to do with the characteristics of organizations. Vladimir Putin has been variously cast as the ultimate arbiter of a society, or as the ultimate mastermind of Russia. It is obviously a mix. Quoting  James Clapper from  (WP) Full transcript: Sally Yates and James Clapper testify on Russian election interference,

“The Intelligence Community Assessment concluded first that President Putin directed and influenced campaign to erode the faith and confidence of the American people in our presidential election process.”

So Putin was the mastermind of this. But Putin is also the head of a huge organization. Once an organization gets a ball rolling, it keeps rolling from sheer inertia. Russian subversion is a huge, industrial scale activity. Even  Putin has limited personal capital. When he initiates  an activity that is successful, his personal capital increases. If he shuts it down, his personal capital takes a big hit.

Even if the election hacks, and possibly most of the New Subversion, are Putin’s brainchild, these activities are now the shared meme of a vast organization. In crafting our response, it is a mistake to think we are now dealing with an individual. We need to influence an enterprise, something more like a huge corporation. Organizations have activities that become policies, engaged in without continuous, thoughtful evaluation. This is mindless, just like a habit.

So we need to create a continuing situation that will eventually cause a broad swath of Russians within their government to ask themselves, “Why are we doing this? It’s not paying off.”

This calls for linkage, plus some new tools. There will be nothing secret about it. Vladimir Putin, read along with us 🙂

To be continued shortly.

Part 1 of Advice for a New Secretary of State is about the kind of job-skill knowledge that can be found in books, and the kind that cannot. Students of military tactics study the tactics of famous and successful generals, but nobody can lay a finger on exactly why Alexander Suvorov may have been the best general of all time. He never lost a battle, but why?

The reasons include leadership,  expertise that cannot be bottled, and  luck. Of the many generals throughout the ages,  luck shone on a few. Those who had luck preferred it. Lefty Gomez said, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” Part of it is the situation, finding a space to work in. Since World War II, the space in which the Secretary of State operates has been constrained by other power centers that want to work in the same space.

In Advice for a New Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, Part 2, the suggestion is offered that Russian subversion could be handled as a foreign policy issue by the mechanism of linkage. This is so novel, you might ask, why can’t it be handled by statute and by law enforcement?

There were two Red Scares. The official “run times” were 1917 to 1920 for the first, and 1947-1957, with considerable overhang, for the second. Each scare was characterized by an actual threat. In each case, the response had elements of fakery. The Palmer Raids of 1920 were justified by the display of bombs that were just balls of iron. The second Scare featured McCarthyism,  precisely a modern form of witch-hunt, ruining the lives of complete innocents, as well as those whose socialist beliefs did not approach the definition of sedition.

The first Scare did not even deter the growth of communist sympathy in the 20’s and 30’s.  The second Scare was followed by intolerance in America for communism, but this was mostly due to the actual threat posed by the Soviet Union, not the burning of witches. The second Scare  damaged civil rights in America for a long time, lingering into the 70’s.

In The Anatomy of Revolution, Crane R. Brinton likened a revolution to the fever of illness. It’s time for another analogy. The second Scare provoked a prolonged autoimmune response;  the body-politic attacked its’ own tissues, weakening and damaging them. Like an autoimmune disease, there was no way to turn it off. Only the turn of generations, the passing of the electorate, could do that.

If the American public were smarter, could they have detected the fraud that was Joseph McCarthy? In Part 2, I offered:

Homework:  Google Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature, 1977-92, by Cleveland Cram. download the pdf, and read. (I can’t provide a functional direct link.)

The answer is No! The literature of counterintelligence is both captivating and sad. The  fears and fakes in the microcosm of the intelligence agencies mirror the larger world.  James Jesus Angleton corresponds strongly to Joseph McCarthy. True, Angleton’s character was mysterious while McCarthy’s was malevolent, but both destroyed  innocents in rough proportion to the sizes of their communities. The brilliant analytic minds of the intelligence communities were just as vulnerable to fits and fears of traitors as the larger world. Smarts didn’t save them.

Angleton’s success in finding moles in the C.I.A. was zero. The few  possible moles that actually existed outlived him. McCarthy’s record  is slightly better; nine possible moles. But in the process of discovery, he strafed the crowd.

But this  old problem of rooting out “commies”  was much easier than the modern equivalent. Excepting a few very professional spies, the bearer had a set of characteristics, an ideological point of view,  social contacts, sometimes even a party card, that could be assembled, though frequently in error, to a conclusion. This was the basis of McCarthy’s extortionate demand to “name names”, to betray your friends. Associations are still important with security clearance. You are known by the friends you keep.

The old threat came from individuals who knowingly worked for Russia as moles inside the U.S. government.  The threat persists. Without ideology, motivated by pecuniary gain, frequently fronted by legitimate business, it has enough novelty to be part of the new subversion. It’s not part of this discussion.

What does the above have to do with today, with attacks through social media, using unwitting agents who repeat and amplify? The common element is that defense from within damages our society. Social media is pervasive, so statutory attempts to stop the flow of fake news would amount to the end of freedom of speech. Voluntary work by social media hosts and users is the most that can be done within our society.

The more of it that can be carried out by means  external to our society, avoiding the autoimmune response,  the better.  Let’s concentrate on mass media and social media, because it is particularly amenable to a foreign policy response.

To be continued in a bit.

(Click to Enlarge)

Today’s readers came from 20 countries. You are a sophisticated bunch. The prize for the most internationally aware nation  goes to the U.K. Per capital, UK readership is about 10X the next ranked country. In absolute terms, UK readership leads the world on many days. The U.S. lags, mired in self-preoccupation.

There are occasional outliers. The other day, someone from Mauritius showed up. Since detailed statistics might affect the privacy of some readers, they are not provided.

Thank you. I wish there were more of you 🙂

Reuters: President Trump to decertify Iran nuclear deal in major shift in U.S. policy, with additional cooks stirring the broth: U.S. lawmakers set plan to fix ‘flaws’ in Iran nuclear deal

I discussed outright withdrawal in  Withdrawal from Iran Nuclear; Mattis Plan; More Aggressive U.S. Strategy.

Compared to the withdrawal, this is more nuanced approach, with at least the possibility of better outcomes. What should a reader with an inclination towards open source intelligence look for?

Iran is a society split down the middle. Ultimate power resides with a clergy in partnership with a military-industrial complex, of which the prominent part is the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRG). Though infused with religion, some respects of the IRG resemble China’s old Red Army, which formerly encompassed a  miscellany of state enterprises. The secular government of Iran, with some of the trappings of a democracy, is actually a consensus building framework, a kind of reactive ball of clay in the hands of the theocracy.

But the mind of the person who is occupied with religious fervor cannot contain the greatest scientific or engineering intellect. So the human resource attachments of the IRG blend gradually into a sophisticated, nearly secular, technology workforce,  dependent on the IRG for contracts analogous to the dependence of Western defense industry on secular politics. Further out in the blend, Iran’s society encompasses a large, completely secular component that completely rejects the thinking we find so odious.

Previous attempts to incentivize moderation in Iran have backfired, because when the religious-military establishment sensed an external threat, it reacted with internal repression. But when Iran’s religious establishment sensed internal threat to stability, it popped the escape valve, letting off some steam with “liberalization.” The quotes emphasize that what is given can be taken away. Liberalization, in the mind of Iran’s theocracy, does not mean ceding of ultimate authority.

The secular democracy is the window into Iran. The theocracy and IRG are opaque to open source. But to mold the consensus ball of clay, the hidden hands have to show at least fingers and knuckles. The open source intelligence enthusiast can watch this interaction.

The intelligence establishment has a hard job in this. In reaction to the decertification, and the sanctions to follow, the various public fronts of Iran will throw off all kinds dire threats of smoke and fire. Which is real? Will Iran be coerced into acting as a responsible state, or will it go totally rogue?

To be a member of the international community, or not to be? That is the question.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

This is an index to the 28 articles about the North Korea conflict, most-recent first. Coverage began on 2/25/2017, with the assassination of Kim Jong-un’s half brother. Predictions are highlighted in red:

• North Korea; U.S. “Declares War”; Prediction Update
• North Korea; EMP Attack Rehearsal; Nuclear Weapons as a Political Tool
• North Korea Test H-Bomb – Andrei Sakharov’s Soviet “Layer Cake”
• North Korea tests H-Bomb?
• N. Korea Missile over Japan; Kim Jong Un’s Fakeout Move
• Reuters: Korea Nuclear escalation likely
• North Korea’s Miniaturized Nuke Part 2
• North Korea’s Miniaturized Nuke Part 1
• North Korea & Trump’s Mental Rubicon; Smuggling Nukes?
• North Korea ICBM & EMP Attack
• North Korea lacks capacity to hit U.S. with accuracy: U.S. general; Napkin Calculation
• U.S. Strike on North Korea? Prediction Update
• Correction to North Korea ICBM Estimate
• North Korea’s ICBM test Succeeds
• Meeting between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un ? John Ciliza
• Reuters: Trump says ‘major, major’ conflict with North Korea possible
• North Korea says it is ready to strike U.S. aircraft carrier
• Two Candidates for Revolution: Venezuela and North Korea
• CNN: U.S. has a Program to Hack North Korea Missiles
• NBC: U.S. May Launch Strike on North Korea Nuke Test
• Xi-Trump meeting; Long Range; North Korea
• North Korea ICBM test — Trump says, “It’s not going to happen.”
• N. Korea Nuclear Test
• North Korea’s Plutonium, Iran’s Uranium / Suitcase Nukes
• North Korea’s Nuke Test; Teller-Ulam for Idiots; How to use Packing Peanuts
• North Korea’s Hydrogen Bomb, Baloney!
• Withdrawal from Iran Nuclear; Mattis Plan; More Aggressive U.S. Strategy
• Kim Jong Nam & Vladimir Kara-Murza; All About Poisons; Novichok

Discussion, not prediction.

Spain, or the bag of ethnicities called Spain, is a democracy. Compared to countries run by stagnantly retentive elites, democracies defy analysis. For an excellent example, we need look no further than U.S. elections, to which many pundits apply much intelligence.

The semi-objective factors provide little guidance:

• Geography. Is Catalonia isolated by geography from the rest of Spain? Not particularly. The Pyrenees protect if from invasion by the French, which is not the issue here.
• Economics. Is Catalonia markedly subsidizing the rest of Spain? With 13% of the population, it has 16% of the GNP. Compared to the geographic variations in the U.S, this is not a remarkable ratio. In fact, Catalonia owes Spain money from a 2008 bailout.
• The vote. 92% of a 40% turnout could well be a minority.
• Organic cultural drive. (Guardian) Colm Tóibín: ‘Catalonia is a region in the process of reimagining itself’.

The last item doesn’t belong in a list of objective factors, but it is the capsule of everything we don’t know about the situation.  Quoting,

Madrid is not itself prepared to make a detailed case against the vote being held, but rather is insisting that it is illegal, as though the law were something that could not be changed.

This is the crux of it.  Since the Enlightenment, and the complete devolution of monarchic prerogative, there has been a gradual shift from the prerogatives of the state towards the rights of the individual, with the prerogatives of the constituent sub-states sandwiched variably in between.

In less-than-democracies, every sub unit of government, down to the individual citizen, is arranged in a rigid hierarchy of subordination. In western democracies,  this is not the case. In the U.S., even as individual rights have continued to evolve, the “rights” of  states have diminished. In western democracies, for the most part, national elections keep the bargain between the individual  regions or states, and the nation. In Spain, this “broken hierarchy” has failed.

If Catalonia secedes, this will be the first time since the American Civil War (colonies don’t count) that a modern western democracy has devolved (Scotland is close.) But until the map of Europe was rewritten in the 19th century game of “balance of power”, Europe was a continent of duchies and city states. In the wake of Napoleon, when arable land was the principle measure of strength, nations sought security in size.

Since the EU and NATO offer, on paper at least, all the benefits of size, the motivational glue of security provided by membership in a larger national organism has diminished. Such security may be more imagined than real. But Spanish politicians have shown no inclination to convince the Catalans that Spain is good for them.

Is it?

Reuters: U.S. cuts staff in Cuba over mysterious injuries, warns travelers. Quoting,

Engage Cuba, a Washington-based lobbying group, said the decision was “puzzling” given that American travelers had not been targeted. It said halting the visa process in Cuba and discouraging Americans from going there “will divide families and harm Cuba’s burgeoning private sector, civil society groups and efforts to improve human rights on the island.”

Maybe it will. But consider: The “Committees for the Defense of the Revolution”, the “eyes and ears of the Revolution”,   are the the pervasive arm of the Cuban police state, present in every block of every neighborhood of Havana. Quoting Wikipedia,

As of 2010, 8.4 million Cubans of the national population of 11.2 million were registered as CDR members….CDR officials have the duty to monitor the activities of every person on their respective blocks. There is an individual file kept on each block resident, some of which reveal the internal dynamics of each household. Even after its 54-year existence, CDR activity remains contentious.

This rivals, or perhaps exceeds the penetration of  the Stasi in East Germany. And yet, quoting AP via NY Daily News,

WASHINGTON (AP) — Cuba’s top diplomat insisted Tuesday that his government had nothing to do with unexplained health “attacks” on U.S. diplomats, telling Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that Cuba still has no evidence to explain what transpired in Havana.

The gist of a typical nutball conspiracy theory is that “they know everything”, or “they control everything”, and it’s false. In Cuba, the conspiracy is more likely to be true.

The inability of this police state to come up with even a partial explanation gives the hardliners against Cuba engagement all the argument they need. This is the time for a demonstration by Cuba. Come back when you have something to give us. It doesn’t have to be everything, but it has to have the ring of truth. Somebody has to pay the ticket for this.

(CNN) Kurds vote overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Iraq. and (Reuters) BRIEF-Fitch says Kurdish referendum shows persistent Iraqi political risk.

The vote is the basis of a potential revolt, determined by geography associated with ethnography,  differing from a revolution, which is based on general discontent. The prediction is that this will go hot. Kurdish history of the past 100 years, and  features likely to evolve resemble the classic revolution. To make the analogy, it’s only necessary to equate or identify the national government of Iraq with a non representative tyranny.

This analogy means that the situation is served well, with some modifications,  by at least parts of the classic texts: The Natural History of Revolution by Lyford P. Edwards (1927) and The Anatomy of Revolution by Crane Brinton (1938, 1952, 1965). Since second book takes inspiration from the first, with more “structural” analysis, the 1965 Vintage paperback is the primary reference. The bullets points have correspondence with Brinton:

• Page 86-90, Incompetent use of force. Quoting (p88)

The striking failure on the part of the rulers to use force successfully  is not, however, likely to be an isolated and chance phenomenon.  Indeed, it seems intimately bound up with that general ineptness and failure of the ruling class we have noted in the previous chapter. Long years of decline have undermined the discipline of the troops...There is no coordinating command, no confidence no desire for action. Or if there are some of these things; they exist only in isolated individuals, and are lost among the general incompetence...

In case you’re not familiar with this type of analysis, Brinton was not taking sides.  I’m not endorsing the use of force against the Kurds. But prediction isn’t about what you or I hope will happen.

Despite the taking of Mosul, which relied on heavy U.S. support, this characterization of the will to use force describes Iraq very well. (Reuters) Last flight departs as Iraq imposes ban for Kurdish independence vote. Iraq’s leadership lacks the will and the means to do more.  (I’m not unhappy about this.)

• Prodromal changes. (Brinton, The First Stages, Chapter 3, Brinton Chapter 2, page 40.) This is the gradual expulsion of the recognized government, and replacement by an “illegal” government Although this has occupied all the years following World War I, the finality occurred with the toppling of Saddam Hussein, by April 2003.

Fitting the Kurds into Brinton’s framework may seem contrived. It works because Brinton’s histories are really the histories of sentiments, which carry over well even when the specific anatomy is different. Brinton considers four revolutions, the English, American, French, and Russian. Even though they are markedly different, takeover by more radical elements is a common thread. The history of Kurdistan post World War I actually includes the following stages, which are due for recapitulation. History may not repeat, but it certainly rhymes:

• Rule of the Moderates, (Brinton, chapter 5)
• Accession of the Extremists, (Brinton, chapter 6)

The recent period, before the referendum, is analogous to moderate rule. The 92% vote in favor of independence empowers the extremists. This is a landlocked quasi-state, surrounded by four hostile powers.  Iraq and Syria are weak; Turkey and Iran are strong. Both have their own “Kurdish problem”, in the form of bordering areas with Kurd majorities. The tenacity of the PKK in Turkey against obvious cultural repression gives an idea of the future of extremism in Iraqi Kurdistan.

The accession of the extremists, who because of the popularity of the cause, can’t really be accused of hijacking the situation, is illogical, and yet it will happen. The advantage of studies such as Edwards’ and Brinton’s is that it helps us overcome the relativism of our own experience. In the Middle East, a quiltwork of incompatible ethnicities, this is the way things go. Extremists are randomly extreme. There are almost  inevitably a few extremists who think that the assassination of Haider al-Abadi would further the cause, by causing repression that would further radicalize the Kurds.

Crazy? So was the Gavrilo Princip, assassin of Archduke Ferdinand. The randomness of this the kind of “heat engine” drives events in the Middle East.

The impact on the U.S. will occur mostly after ISIS has been mostly ground down. In Plan to Defeat ISIS Part 3; 1000 Troops to Kuwait; New Doctrine, I wrote

The Shiite Iraq that follows the passing of Sistani will not be a permissive setting for American operations. Other parts of it, such as the Kurdish area, might be. But the kinds of cultural shift and political combinations that would make a viable rump state are prohibited by the strange-to-us cultural animosities.  Iran, a unified and disciplined state, would  steamroller it.

Iraqi Kurdistan is economically viable. The surrounding states will destroy this by embargo and capture of the easy pickings of Kurdistan petroleum assets (map.) The “supergiant” field just northeast of Kirkuk would be first to go. The region is mountainous, excellent terrain for guerilla warfare. We’ve seen before starving populations, captive to wars that can be neither won nor lost.

The obvious flashpoint is Kirkuk, which was subject to “Arabization” under Saddam, and which the Kurds want reversed. This is a classic opportunity for the Iraqi government to reneg, and play, “What’s mine is mine. What’s yours is negotiable.”

In their drive for the Levant, in the absence of very strong U.S. support, Iran will steamroller the Kurdish region. As long as Iraqi Kurdistan remains a part of a federal Iraq, U.S. support serves three interests, containment of Iran, an independent Iraq, and support of an ethnicity with an arguably greater cultural affinity than any other in the Middle East.

The State Department has thrown a few words at the problem: U.S. does not recognize Kurdish independence vote in Iraq: Tillerson. It’s a good start. But we have seen that in the Middle East, words mean little unless backed by force and opposed by sheer exhaustion.

Unless Brinton’s sequence can be averted, the U.S. position will become untenable. The nature of extremists could make resolution impossible. The curtain on this conflict rises perhaps a year, or a bit more, from now.

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This is just a reminder that I  am looking for a gig. There are  a lot of UK readers. I can fly out of Newark Liberty.

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