How The Military Became Everything

This is a summary of the book How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon by Rosa Brooks. The author is a professor of law at Georgetown University and was counselor to Under Secretary of Defense in 2011 (a civilian position to advise the secretary of defense and deputy secretary). The book discusses how the military has increased in size and responsibility, invites us to consider how to define war in an ever increasingly inter-connected world, and poses ethical questions about the nature of accountability and power.

As the boundaries around war and the military grow ever more blurry, will we all pay a price?

In the past war was very clearly defined: two group of people came together with weapons and killed each other and to the victor went the spoils. "Historically wrote Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Ziangsui, 'the three indispensable hardware elements of any war' have been 'soldiers, weapons, and a battlefield.' This, they warned, will soon cease to be true: humans are now entering an era in which even these most basic hardware elements of war will be transformed beyond recognition." "In the wars of the coming decades, predicted Qiao and Wang, the 'soldiers' will increasingly be computer hackers, financiers, terrorists, drug smugglers, and agents of private corporations as well as members of organized state militaries. Their 'weapons' will range from 'airplanes, cannons, poison gas, bombs [and] biochemical agents' to 'computer viruses, net browsers, and financial derivative tools.' Warfare, they wrote, will soon 'transcend all boundaries and limits... the battlefield will be everywhere... [and] all the boundaries lying between the two worlds of war and non-war, of military and non-military, will be totally destroyed.'" Cyberattacks that take down electrical power in cities, cyber disruption of national financial economic markets, bioengineered viruses tailored to specific DNA, intercontinental ballistic missiles, etc are now possibilities and viable options in warfare. The old concept of a battlefield no longer exists.

As such, the U.S. has taken an offensive approach to defense, strike before struck. Additionally, more people are confident in the military than other aspects of government with 72% of Americans in a Gallup poll expressing confidence in the military compared to 8% in Congress. Plus, the more funding the military receives, the less other agencies receive. This cripples civilian agencies and programs and results in someone needing to pick up the slack the budget cuts create, typically falling yet again on the military who has the largest budget. These elements have created a vicious cycle of the military taking an ever increasing role in international affairs.

Part of the expansion of the military happened in 2008 when the military defined the six stages of conflict.

1. Phase Zero - Shape other countries (literally what it says in very similar words; my post on how the U.S. manipulates other countries is very relevant to this point).

2. Phase One - Deter. If that fails, enter armed conflict.

3. Phase Two - Seize the initiative (strike first).

4. Phase Three - Dominate.

5. Phase Four - Stabilize.

6. Phase Five - Restore civil authority.

In other words our policy is to make other countries do what we want or engage in armed conflict. Not exactly a recipe for peace.

"If your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

-Abraham Maslow

Here are some examples of how the U.S. military is used in capacities that are controversial:

• In 2009 Somali pirates attacked a U.S. ship. This propelled the U.S. to create an antipiracy program that cost $64 million dollars in 2009, $274 million in 2011, and $69 million in 2013. We ended up spending a lot of money on something that is rarely ever a problem.

• Guantanamo Bay was a scandal because the prison was full of detainees from Afghanistan, most no name prisoners. When the media reported on it the U.S. quickly turned around and said the prison contained the worst prisoners on Earth. Eventually it came to be recognized that most of the prisoners were turned in for a bounty and 55% had never committed any hostile act against the United States. Torture was commonplace in the facility. Guantanamo became known for imprisoning civilians without cause or trial, labeling them as dangerous without reason, and torturing them.

• The military was used to train the Afghan judicial system. The military has been sent to many countries around the world to teach about law and human rights. While this may not be problematic at its face, there are considerations that should be made about what the military would teach about the law and human rights, especially considering situations like Guantanamo Bay where human rights weren't considered.

• The military has been used as an armed Red Cross to build schools, vaccinate cattle, research sexual violence and human rights, combat drug trafficking, and create wells. Note that none of this is intrinsically bad in any way. This is problematic according to Samuel Huntington, a Harvard political scientist, who says, "the mission of the Armed Forces is combat, to deter and defeat enemies of the United States. The military must be recruited, organized, trained, and equipped for that purpose alone. A military force is fundamentally antihumanitarian: its purpose is to kill people in the most efficient way possible." It's a blurring of lines that can create future problems and increase dependency on the military as an organizational Swiss army knife when the same responsibilities could be done by civilians with less bias.

• The military created call-in talk shows, media websites, art and cultural events, gave out branded soccer balls, helped with agriculture, and ironically, funded a peace concert throughout the world. In other words the military had entered "the television business, the radio business, the journalism business, the film business, the education business, the sports business, the branded product business," and the music business. When aid becomes wrapped up in the military aid loses its neutrality and "becomes an instrument of war, and aid agency personnel become targets." In other words it both takes over civilian sectors and wittingly or unwittingly subjects its personnel, the non-combat personnel, to consequent risk.

As we spend more on our military budget than the next highest 15 nations combined, the military is increasingly becoming the Walmart of services. And like Walmart, it doesn't generally attract the most educated and talented of people, a complication if it's going to increasingly be leaned on to resolve future problems.

A lot of the book is spent on bringing up questions of accountability. Here are some of the points it addresses:

• Drone Strikes. "If all that appears to be at risk is an easily replaceable drone, officials will be tempted to use lethal force more and more casually." "And this, of course, is exactly what has been happening over the last few years. Increasingly, the publicly available information suggests that drone strikes appear to have targeted militants who are lower and lower down the terrorist food chain, rather than terrorist masterminds. Strikes also seem increasingly to target individuals who pose speculative, distant future threats, rather than only those posing urgent or catastrophic threats." While some of that is concerning on its own, the author says there is virtually no oversight on drone strikes. Drone strikes are also increasingly used outside of war zones, even in countries in which we don't have jurisdiction to make such attacks. The U.S. military policy is "that they only use force inside the borders of a sovereign state when that state either consents to the use of force or is 'unwilling and unable' to take 'appropriate action' to address the threat itself." Or in 2011 the government decided it can do what it wants if there is an "imminent threat." What constitutes "appropriate" action or an "imminent" threat? The U.S. has used this justification to make drone strikes in sovereign nations without their consent, even when that nation purposefully chose not to condone the use of force against a target.

• Military contractors are increasingly being used by the military with some estimates saying that more contractors died in Afghanistan and Iraq than military personnel. This raises questions of whether contractors should be viewed as combatants or a civilian participating in hostilities. Moreover, oversight again becomes a concern.

• Classifying Documents. "In 1970, a Defense Science Board task force reported that 'the volume of scientific and technical information that is classified could profitably be decreased by perhaps as much as 90 percent.'" Furthermore, agencies can prevent automatic declassification of documents by reviewing them (possibly indefinitely).

• Future Warfare. With increasing technology many things become possible such as facial recognition technology, intentional break failure in a car (if it uses electronics), DNA specific killing agents, drone swarms, killer robots, etc. How will ethics and accountability be determined for future technology? Or if computers end up making decisions about who lives or dies, is that ethical?

• How should soldiers be held accountable for atrocities committed when ordered to do so at gun point? Should they lay down their lives willingly or should they be pardoned?

• What accountability do nations have to stop atrocities? What responsibility to we have to help other countries besides our own? What is our rational to stop some atrocities but not others? How many atrocities can be committed before intervention is merited?

• What are the greatest security threats that should be targeted? Al Qaeda? Islamic terrorism? Weapons of mass destruction? Global economic collapse? Climate change? The drug trade? Starvation? Mass genocide? The poisoning of the global fresh water supply? How do we determine who or what we should be at "war" against?

• If it isn't man to man combat, how do we determine who is a soldier vs a civilian? If an organization gathers intelligence for an enemy, is that a soldier? What about a neutral group that occasionally works with an enemy group for mutual interests, do they automatically become an enemy? If local people attack a political ally for encroaching on their land, do they become an enemy? What about a financier who gives money to a charity with terrorist links? Or a teenager that sends out posts on social media on behalf of a terrorist organization? Where do we draw the line?

One of the core doctrines of the Declaration of Independence and therefore one of the founding principles upon which America was built is that "all power must be constrained by law." Power unchecked nearly always leads to abuse of that power. Here are some ways in which power may continue to be abused:

• State secret privilege allows states to prevent classified information from being released from court cases. "Georgetown's Laura Donohue found that the state secrets privilege has increasingly been invoked by private litigants in cases relating to "reach of contract, patent disputes, trade secrets, fraud, and employment termination... wrongful death, personal injury, and negligence." "Donohue also noted the rise of a form of graymail, in which corporations that possess sensitive information as a result of government contracts seek to pressure the government to intervene in private litigation by suggesting that unless the government invokes the state secret doctrine, they may be 'forced' to reveal state secrets in order to defend themselves." Moreover, "in the context of criminal prosecutions, parallel dangers are raised by the Classified Information Prodecures Act (CIPA). Under CIPA, the government can make an in camera ex parte submission to the court - that is, a secret submission made without the knowledge of the other party to the litigation - asking the court 'to delete specified items of classified information from documents to be made available to the defendant." The ability to classify information has been abused and will likely continue to be abused.

• Private Information. "The post-9/11 USA Patriot Act effectively eliminated the pre-9/11 firewall between foreign intelligence gathering and domestic law enforcement. Today law enforcement officials can access a wide range of sensitive information (including Internet records, telephone metadata, library records, and credit and banking information of U.S. citizens) as long as they can show 'reasonable grounds to believe that the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation... to obtain foreign intelligence information not concerning a United States person or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities." While not immediately concerning to some, it's easy to see how this could be abused to put pressure on potential witnesses or informants if desired.