PRIMARY LOYALTIES

Global guerrillas are in the final stages of the systematic elimination of the all-volunteer Iraqi security system (which started in earnest with the siege of Fallujah).  As anticipated (particularly given John Negroponte's appointment), the interim government's response has been to delegate power to loyalist paramilitaries.  For example: Kurdish paramilitaries are now responsible for the security on convoys from Turkey and the northern oil pipelines.  This decentralized approach draws on the same source of moral strength that powers Iraq's global guerrillas:  primary loyalties.

Drivers and dynamics

A primary loyalty is a connection to a non-state group that is greater than loyalty to a state.  These loyalties include those to clan, religion, tribe, neighborhood gang, etc.  These loyalties are reciprocated through the delivery of political goods (see the brief Weak, Failed, and Collapsed States for a list of political goods) by the group that the state cannot or will not deliver.  Here's a list of the dynamics driving behind primary loyalties:

• Catalytic systems sabotage.  Global guerrilla system sabotage undermines the delivery of basic political goods (see the brief State Failure 101 for more).  The state's failure to deliver these goods undermines its legitimacy and radically increases the strength of ties to non-state groups.
• A decentralized moral center.  These loyalties supply global guerrillas with the moral cohesion they need to sustain operations.  Additionally, these strong non-state connections drive coherent network growth, despite its decentralized form.  NOTE: This continually confounds American strategists/planners searching for a centralized political center to target.
• Economics provide positive feedback.  Despite appearances, nearly all guerrilla activity in Iraq contains an economic feedback loop that reinforces ongoing activity. Guerrilla entrepreneurs use the lure of direct payments, theft, ransoms, and other forms of financial reward to co-opt their groups into participation.

Globalization and Primary Loyalties

Contrary to conventional wisdom, globalization isn't a destabilizing challenge to primary loyalties.  Connectivity via globalization heightens the threat by turbocharging otherwise disconnected guerrillas into innovative, resourceful, mobile, and dangerous global foes.  Here's how:

• Knowledge.  Globalization provides a layer of sophistication and expertise necessary for global guerrilla innovation.  Think Internet and cell phone communications, international money transfers, attacks on network vulnerabilities, etc.  Unlike Vietnam, where our opposition was mainly uneducated rural farmers, we face a well educated foe in Iraq.
• Leverage.  The presence of complex infrastructure (for example: the electricity, communications, and transportation infrastructure necessary to support globalization) provides global guerrillas with the network leverage they need to turn small attacks into extremely costly and disruptive events.
• Global scale.  Operations directed against strategic infrastructure (ie. OIL), have already had a global impact.  This will continue (see the brief, A Shadow OPEC for more).  Additionally, the sophisticated use of communications (for example:  professionally produced videos posted on the Internet or sent to al Jazeera) that can cross borders without restriction, will quickly spread destabilization. 

Comments

[gmoke]

I've been following Barnett and you since I discovered each of you in the past year. My impression is that Barnett is very smart but not necessarily wise and sometimes only clever. One problem is that he doesn't see the differences and has a big chip on his shoulder. However, he is thinking seriously about these problems and provides a framework for more or less informed discussion.

Connectivity is a major part of the problem, as you clearly understand. Al Quaida is part of a continuum that, for me, includes Aum Shinrikyu and Heaven's Gate. What we call "terrorism" is the technological enabling of small, determined groups and individuals to do massive damage far beyond their usual impact. We in the US play into that by dwelling on our own fears, the Washington sniper attacks illustrate the point.

Walter Mosley reports that most people in the African-American community were not really surprised by 9/11. Neither was I. But then, I have kept an emergency drop bag by my bedroom door for years now. The Boy Scouts are right, "Be prepared." That's one place to start.

[Cardenio]

What's in a ' drop bag ' ? I might need one too.

[John]

Found this site thanks to a Google News Alert...interesting content! Will have to read it regularly.

I'm not sure I completely understand why connectivity or the three points listed would turn Barnett's logic on its head. As best I understand his work, he's not claiming that terrorists won't use connectedness for their own advantage...in fact, it seems likely they will and are.

But the terror attacks we've seen on and since 9/11 have been physically capable for decades, and with the exception of flying airplanes into skyscrapers, have been done for as long, not as the result of new capabilities acquired through globalization or connectedness.

I will grant you that communication is easier today, and certainly our enemy is using new methods of communication to further his message and objective, but is it really more effective because of connectedness? If so, where are the toppled Middle Eastern states from the quickly spreading destabilization? Where's the wildly motivated Arab street? Why aren't the sophisticated and expert enemy forces killing dozens of American soldiers a day, like the uneducated rural farmers of Vietnam? What's been the net result for their actions so far in this war? I'd argue 'Less than they expected.'

If the logic being turned on its head is that bad things could come from connectedness, I'm not sure that Barnett would disagree with you (I'm not speaking for him, obviously, but the point seems like a natural answer). But couldn't you equally say that the driving force for this 'new' threat is that they can see that connectedness makes their way of life unappealing to the population they seek to influence? I would think they'd be much more worried that their ideas are losing ground, instead of rejoicing that now they can film, distribute, and email snuff films and propoganda thanks to connectedness.

[Valdis]

Connectivity does NOT equal communication! Just because you are connected, or can be, does not guarantee any conversation/influence across that link. Physical connectivity is NOT a sufficicient condition for "winning friends, and influencing people".

Big diff between physical connectivity and social connectivity. The new physical connectivity DOES help those who have active/dormant social connectivity, but it does not create new social connectivity by itself. Those with 'primary loyalties'[strong social connectivity], who are distributed around the world, love the new physical connectivity.

[Marcello]

"Unlike Vietnam, where our opposition was mainly uneducated rural farmers, we face a well educated foe in Iraq"

Personally I have doubts that the shiite ghetto youth that follows Al Sadr or the people who are planting IEDs in Baghdad and storming police stations in Mosul are much better educated than the average Vietcong partisan or North Vietnamese regular.
However if someone has data on the literacy rates in Vietnam in the mid-late 60's, feel free to contradict me, of course.

The èlites, which is to say people like Bin Laden or the 9-11 terrorists are of course better educated, but so were Ho Chi Minh and the others communist leaders.
Someone else has pointed out that the social backgrounds and underlying driving motivations are probably the same in both cases, once adjusted for cultural differences.

[phil jones]

John, here's a more general question.

What, now, would you say is the difference between Global Guerrillas and some kind of organized crime network like the mafia?

For example, it would seem the mafia are working on the same dynamics and motives as the GGs, and have everything they need in terms of knowledge, leverage and scale to bring down the Italian state. But the two have, more or less, coexisted for decades. Is that the eventual fate / what we can hope for for Iraq? And if not, why not?

Is it that the mafia have a vested interest in preserving the Italian state? And that these groups don't?

[John Robb]

Excellent Valdis. That is very true. We can connect, but that doesn't mean we communicate.

Marcello, I think you are going to find that Iraq is much different than Vietnam 40 years ago across all measures of advancement. It's not just the elites that are educated.

Phil, both crime networks and global guerrillas draw on primary loyalties and economic crime. Criminal networks can even go to war with the state (see El Salvador and Hondurus) like Iraq's guerrillas. However, to tell you the truth, I am still wrestling with this. Will post more later.

[gmoke]

A drop bag is a bag filled with survival necessities that can be picked up as you rush out the door in any kind of emergency. Last time I was in Ace Hardware they had backpacks filled with survival gear on sale.

If memory serves, Iraq has something close to 80% literacy, believe it or not, and had the reputation of being the most advanced Arab state in terms of the social position of women as well as a large "middle class". All three of those advantages are going away under the strains of war and they just might be a little pissed.

[phil jones]

gmoke : that statistic about Iraq is something that needs to be screamed from the roof-tops. We didn't just screw up any old backward Arab feudal society, we fucked up one of the most modern and (in some ways) progressive.

Same with Afghanistan, where women had plenty of education, freedom and senior jobs under the Russian backed government and we paid peleo-islamic fundamentalists to bring the system down. :-(

If we go to war against Iran (another fairly advanced culture and society) we'll do it a *third* time.

BTW : latest datapoint on the crime / GG thing :

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/4154657.stm

[Marcello]

"Marcello, I think you are going to find that Iraq is much different than Vietnam 40 years ago across all measures of advancement. It's not just the elites that are educated."

Current literacy rate in Vietnam is above 90%. Apparently they started mass educational campaigns in the mid 50's.
As I said I do not have the data for the late 60's but I would presume that by then the majority of the young people of military age would have been literate, as I presume the majority of young iraqis are.

"For example, it would seem the mafia are working on the same dynamics and motives as the GGs, and have everything they need in terms of knowledge, leverage and scale to bring down the Italian state."

Well, when they started to use massive IEDs and car bombs in the early 90's against judges they triggered a reaction that led to the capture of several of their most important leaders, including the chairman.
They have been forced to keep a lower profile since then.
The italian state (or more accurately, the political èlite) tends naturally to mantain a "live and let live" approach to the problem.However it has the means to strike back hard if forced to to do so.
In what is probably the majority of the country and surely its economically most important regions organized crime is not present to a substantially greater degree than others industrialized countries, nor popular attitude towards it differs.
It is really pervasive only in some regions and it can claim legitimacy only in some pockets.
Bottom line, the mafia does not have the means to destroy the state and is satisfied with the status quo.
The state is not interested in an all out conflict with organized crime but it has the ability to defend itself should the mafia cross the line.

[phil jones]

"As I said I do not have the data for the late 60's but I would presume that by then the majority of the young people of military age would have been literate, as I presume the majority of young iraqis are"

But Iraqis today are literate in and have access to a whole new array of communication technologies like the internet, cell-phones, camcorders etc. And they are a primarily urban population, wheras the vietnamese were often rural.

[tim fong]

John,
I think one difference between an organized crime group (such as the mafia) and global guerrillas is in terms of goals. Global guerrillas may be attempting state disruption/elimination or replacement. As per your analysis, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the groups engaged in global guerrilla activity may have some or all of those goals. Even if some groups only want to cause state failure, while others want to install a new state, the effect is similar--chaos.

On the other hand, I would think that the main goal of criminal organizations is profit. They provide illegal services (drugs, prostitution, 'protection') and charge a premium commensurate with their risk and overhead (bribery, etc).

Criminal organizations may serve as subcontractors for global guerrilla groups, or may attempt to latch onto 'revolutionary' language in an attempt to gain credibility. Again, I would point to the Asian example where the secret societies in southern China often worked closely with revolutionaries. Both groups blurred the line between organized crime and revolution.

[Jean-Philippe Barrière]

Hi

First, I must tell that I’m writing in a language I don’t fully master. Tonight I’ve read the article on primary loyalties. It made me think because the mechanics regarding the abandon of the loyalty to a State are quite similar to those I’ve encountered in my field of study, namely “geography of development”. “Geography of development” is a tool to analyse the ways to develop a region. In the past, that is until late 20th century, development was the concern of the state. It was from top to bottom. That is, the state decides where to put manufactures, or tries to influence the companies to establish themselves in places in need of jobs. It failed, as failed fordism.

Now, the state supports local initiative. That means that the state will lend money to sound projects solely designed by the local community. So, the local communities are the sole responsible for their success, the state is only a “facilitator”. But without the initiative of the local population, produced by an open source dynamic, nothing gets done.

This logic is in vogue throughout the West. And I think we might draw a link to primary loyalties in that this kind of way of developing a territory reinforces the loyalty people confers to their local environment since it is the environment responsible for the primary iniative of their development. So, even in this pacifist field, we can somehow conclude that the support for the State is weakening.

Jean-Philippe Barrière

[vasili]

@ "A primary loyalty is a connection to a non-state group that is greater than loyalty to a state".

Though I've notice you apply the term 'primary loyalty' for over a year now, I would like to suggest you change it - for instance in 'alternative loyalty' or 'non-state loyalty'. The main reason for this is that the loyalties involved are frequently not primary at all.

The jihadist-salafist loyalty, for instance, is in fact newly adopted by most people motivated by it. It is not passed on by either their society or family. As such it represents a clear break with traditional non-state identities - clan for intance - and state/national identities alike.