Global Health Is National Security

by Joia Mukherjee

September 30, 2020


The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated that the national security of the U.S. depends on the country reckoning with its outdated health-care architecture. The pervasive damage to the global system of commerce, profit, and labor wrought by the coronavirus has proven that we are, indeed, an interdependent world.

The U.S. stands out as exceptionally ill-prepared for this threat. For too long, many have believed that outsized military might would guarantee U.S. national security. But COVID-19 demonstrates that national security — the security of everyday men, women, and children, of small business, of schools, of the food supply, of livelihoods – relies on health. And health in the U.S. is inextricably linked to the health of everyone around the world.

The risks Americans face on account of pandemics, fires, floods, and migration are all accelerated by climate change. Enjoying security in this century requires reimagining it, and taking bold action to secure a healthy planet and a healthy global population. No wall can protect against these threats. Most importantly, these 21st century threats simply do not have military solutions. If they did, the U.S.’ world-leading defense spending — more than the next 10 highest countries combined — would have prevented its world-leading COVID-19 death toll. For the U.S. to promote security at this important moment in history, it must move from investing in war to investing in health, at home and abroad.

As an infectious-disease doctor, I have seen first-hand the decades-long, successful U.S. leadership in efforts to improve global health. From pandemics like HIV to more focal crises like the West African Ebola epidemic, U.S. investments in global health have enjoyed uniquely bipartisan support.

Three key elements made global health bipartisan. First, whether Democrat or Republican, leaders and their constituents have been motivated by compassion for the sick. Second, both parties understood that a healthier world is more prosperous and peaceful for everyone. Third, all understood that in this era of globalization, uncontrolled disease outbreaks elsewhere threaten health at home.

Partners in Health (PIH), where I serve as chief medical officer, was on the front lines of responding to the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak. We saw how the Obama Administration’s rapid and generous response helped contain the disease and prevent transmission to the United States. We fought AIDS both before and after George W. Bush launched his President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), so we know the human stories behind the more than 22 million lives saved by the initiative. We gratefully collaborate worldwide with the World Health Organization (WHO), whose largest funder has been the United States, from its founding in New York in 1946 through the present (thankfully the Trump administration’s July notice that it would withdraw from the WHO requires a year to take effect). These efforts made by both Republican and Democratic presidents with bipartisan congressional support and budgetary authorization not only saved lives but were critical elements of U.S. diplomacy.

Abdicating Global Health Security

Sadly, at the very moment that such global and domestic leadership in health is needed, the Trump administration has abdicated this tradition. Instead of supporting the bipartisan consensus for global health efforts, President Donald Trump and other Republican leaders have politicized science and even common sense. The abandonment of reason has weakened institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization that have advanced global health — and U.S. health — for decades.

These political tactics have facilitated COVID-19’s advance in the U.S. and worldwide. They are directly responsible for the loss of more than 200,000 American lives – 60 times more than U.S. lives lost in the 9/11 attacks, and more than were killed in battle during the U.S. wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, and World War I, combined. The economic fallout, also unprecedented, will force the United States to put money towards recovery that could have been invested in health care and pandemic prevention.

The lack of U.S. leadership on COVID-19 and the failed strategy at home mean the United States is nowhere near the end of this crisis. However, that means there is still an opportunity to change course, to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the United States and to collaborate to fight this pandemic around the world.

Past investments in global health are already benefitting the U.S. coronavirus response. Partners in Health is using what we learned fighting epidemics overseas to support successful government contact-tracing efforts in Massachusetts and other U.S. cities and states. Tools developed for diseases like tuberculosis are now being used to fight COVID-19. And collaborative international efforts in vaccine development multiply the chances that we will succeed in finding a vaccine sooner.

But U.S. investments in domestic and global health must be commensurate with the scale of this pandemic. Billions of dollars are needed now to save countless lives and to right the sinking global and domestic economy. And these billions of dollars should go to the proven strategies of fighting pandemics—prevention, testing, care, and treatment.

Record Defense-Budget Increase Dwarfs U.S. Global Health Spending

But instead of investing in the domestic and global health strategies that have proven effective against pandemics as deaths surged in July, the president proposed — and a bipartisan majority in both the House and Senate approved — a record $740 billion defense budget. The budget increase for this year alone — $18 billion — dwarfs the U.S. government’s entire annual global health spending — about $12 billion.

But even Congress’ massive mis-investment of resources in the wrong solutions was not enough for the Defense Department. The Washington Post reported on Sept. 22 that the Pentagon diverted hundreds of millions from money that Congress had appropriated for medical supplies to combat COVID-19 to defense contractors making body armor, jet engines, and army dress uniforms.

Six months after the president signed the CARES Act, Congress has yet to approve a second fiscal response to the pandemic, explain how it will prevent defense officials from making dress uniforms with COVID-19 prevention money, or fight the lack of accountability that a 2018 audit blamed for billions in improper payments. In the meantime, hospitals lack basic supplies like masks, and the failure of the national response kills hundreds of Americans every single day.

Vice President Joe Biden has promised to renew American leadership to mobilize transnational cooperation on global threats. This is a good start, but he should commit to detailed plans to enhance U.S. security by supporting the ability of poor countries to contain pandemics. He should endorse the People’s Pandemic Prevention Plan, a proposal developed by major progressive organizations and experts to develop diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines that would be available for all. Biden must fully fund PEPFAR and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and malaria, and re–join and fully support the WHO. Biden should explain how he will pay for this work, and promise to fund global health with savings from defense spending if necessary.

Rebalancing U.S. spending to increase support for global health is not just the right and practical thing to do; it is also good politics. Voters understand that the main security threats to the U.S. are largely non-military. They support a 10 percent cut in defense spending, and prefer the money go to health care and to coronavirus response.

If a Biden administration is to stop the ravages of COVID-19 and fulfill the promise of a return to effective U.S. leadership, both the administration and Congress would be wise to heed experts and voters rather than defense industry lobbyists, and to direct more taxpayer resources to countering the security threats that those taxpayers actually face.
IMAGE: A healthcare worker talks to a patient in the ER at Oakbend Medical Center in Richmond, Texas, on July 15, 2020. (Photo by MARK FELIX/AFP /AFP via Getty Images)

Canada’s Scattered and Uncoordinated Cyber Foreign Policy: A Call for Clarity



by Josh Gold, Christopher Parsons and Irene Poetranto

August 4, 2020


In mid-July, Canada joined the United States and U.K. in attributing COVID-19 vaccine-related hacking to the Russian government. In response, Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan called for reinforcing a “common understanding of rules-based norms,” and for deterrence against foreign actors. Yet despite Canada’s attempts to play a leading role in upholding global peace and security – as illustrated by its (failed) June 2020 bid for a U.N. Security Council seat – Canada lacks a clear and holistic international cyber strategy.

Since 2010, the Canadian government has recognized the need to develop a cyber foreign policy to ensure that cybersecurity policies align with broader foreign policy and security objectives. The 2018 National Cyber Security Strategy (NCSS) acknowledged that it will align with a “cyber foreign policy in Canada’s international agenda.” Two years later, Canada still lacks a cyber foreign policy. This is unlike Canada’s allies and adversaries, which have released strategies outlining their interests and values in cyberspace – and how they plan to promote and defend them.

A comprehensive and well-developed cyber foreign policy is needed to replace the Canadian government’s current ad hoc, spasmodic approach. A consistent articulation of its foreign policy position in cyberspace is necessary for Canada to promote and defend its interests effectively. Moreover, Canada’s cyber foreign policy must be developed transparently, and this policy must reflect enduring Canadian values, such as respect for human rights and other democratic principles.

Cyber Foreign Policy: Why Bother?

In 1947, Canada’s foreign minister Louis St. Laurent said that a foreign policy “must have its foundations laid upon general principles which have been tested in the life of the nation and which have secured the broad support of large groups of the population.” But when it comes to cybersecurity – especially its international dimensions – the Canadian government has not clearly articulated what it should be promoting and defending, let alone why. Such an articulation is necessary because cybersecurity is inherently a discussion of political philosophy; not all actors share the same understanding of what is, or should be, the object of security, nor is there necessarily a shared understanding of what constitutes a threat.

As a liberal democracy built upon respect for human rights and the rule of law, Canada depends on the security of these ideals both at home, and abroad. As political scientist Ronald Deibert has argued, an open and distributed cyberspace through which citizens around the world can share ideas freely is a “critical and inseparable component of [Canadian] ideals.”

Cyberspace, however, challenges how Canada might support these ideals in a domain increasingly characterized by censorship, the development of militarized cyber commands, ascriptions of domestic and international security to intelligence services, and reliance on offensive computer operations. Articulating Canada’s first principles in the context of cyberspace would help clarify what Canadian interests are, and what they mean, in a digitalized world. Only after defining such interests can the government focus on what must be protected or secured, and how best to do so – including how to promote these interests globally and multilaterally. Values and goals must be comprehensively defined to truly constitute a strategy; anything else is instead a collection of tactical interventions. While technology and the realities of the cybersecurity landscape change rapidly each year, fundamental Canadian values and ideals do not.

Many of Canada’s closest allies, such as the United States, U.K., Australia, and the Netherlands, have released strategies to clarify their specific foreign policy goals that pertain to digital technologies and their use, both in terms of security and defense, and also in a human rights context. The Canadian government has yet to do the same.

Canada faces a challenge, whereby its membership in the Five Eyes alliance (with the United States, U.K., Australia, and New Zealand) brings immense security value, while simultaneously carrying significant responsibilities, restrictions, and possible contradictions with certain Canadian values, such as human rights. For example, Canada’s involvement in mass surveillance activities can be seen as infringements upon the rights – including privacy rights – of non-Five Eyes citizens, and such surveillance activities now threaten the abilities of Five Eyes countries to process European data for routine commercial activities. A Canadian cyber foreign policy must lend clarity to how Canada would navigate both generalized human rights infringements that are linked to mass surveillance, as well as specifically how such surveillance will be conducted without endangering Canada’s economic well-being.

Recent Policy and Legislative Developments

The Canadian government has been developing cybersecurity policy, but not as comprehensively as is needed. The 2018 NCSS updated the previous 2010 Strategy, but it remains vague, high-level, and without substance; in its 40-pages the NCSS does not once mention “democracy” or “human rights,” despite their pertinence as core Canadian principles. The 2019 National Cyber Security Action Plan outlines specific initiatives that are intended to implement the 2018 NCSS, and broadly stresses the need to advance Canadian interests in cyberspace internationally. The Action Plan recognizes that “[t]he international dimension of cyber security has not been the focus of Canadian action to date, despite the fact that … cyber security is an inherently transnational issue.” Further, the Action Plan acknowledges that the federal government should “take a leadership role to advance cyber security in Canada” while also coordinating with allies “to shape the international cyber security environment in Canada’s favour.”

In this context, Global Affairs Canada’s (GAC’s) cyber policy team is developing an “International Cyber Strategy.” Although it was supposed to be completed by 2019, this has not happened by the time of writing. Few details are known about the expected Strategy, including what it will look like, the extent to which it will be public, or whether civil society or other stakeholders will be consulted during the policymaking process (it does not appear that they have been thus far).

In addition to work on policy and strategy, legislation was passed in 2019 to better enable state actors to mitigate, respond to, or overcome national security threats. Specifically, the National Security Act, 2019, (also known as Bill C-59), was a major and omnibus update to Canada’s national security legislation. Among other things, the Communications Security Establishment Act (CSE Act) within C-59 enables the CSE – Canada’s foreign intelligence and cybersecurity agency – to conduct defensive and “active” cyber operations abroad, while simultaneously expanding the range of actions the agency can carry out from its historical mandate. These new powers raise new implications for human rights, political transparency, and global security, and are made all the more manifest given the European Union’s opposition to both mass surveillance capabilities and also the lack of redress for Europeans caught up in Five Eyes dragnets.

International Engagement, Diplomacy, and a “Gendered” Focus

While Canada engages enthusiastically in international processes to develop rules in cyberspace, and particularly emphasizes gender dynamics therein, its current approach is inadequate. Canada participates in international and regional cybersecurity fora alongside allies, where it expresses and develops its positions in cyberspace with like-minded states, while also engaging with less-friendly states to seek agreement on areas of mutual interest – and to understand their positions more broadly. In groups such as the Freedom Online Coalition, Internet Governance Forum, G7, and the United Nations’ Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) and Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG) processes, Canada aligns itself with the positions of other liberal democratic countries.

Canada has also disbursed over CA$13 million to global cyber capacity building projects since 2015 to train local officials in legal, technical and policy fields (see here at 4:15:10). Per GAC, such efforts form a critical part of Canada’s strategy to “influence countries to share our vision of preserving an open, secure and multistakeholder-led Internet.” However, given that Canada lacks a public cyber foreign policy, it is unclear how these measures align with broader Canadian objectives, such as efforts to promote democratic and human rights-based cybersecurity policy and practices to counter the narrative of authoritarian control promoted by other states.

Under the Trudeau government, foreign affairs have been guided by feminist-forward policies targeted toward achieving gender equality and empowering women (for specific examples, see here, here, here, and here). Within the realm of cybersecurity, GAC has funded research on the gendered dimensions of cybersecurity and organized events on the topic. At the second formal U.N. OEWG session in February 2020, GAC joined other nations to sponsor dozens of government officials and civil society representatives from developing countries to attend the meeting under the auspices of a “women in cyber” fellowship program. This program helped the OEWG meeting make U.N. history, as it was the first meeting in the First Committee in which there was a gender balance among those who delivered remarks.

While the prominence of gender considerations in Canada’s cyber foreign policy is admirable and important, these ad hoc efforts remain incomplete elements of a larger unarticulated whole. A gendered cybersecurity strategy must go beyond research and discrete initiatives, to emphasize coherent policies which are clearly integrated within a larger agenda – of which gender is one consistent element. For example, if it is to be credibly gender-focused, Canadian cyber foreign policy must also send clear signals on the importance of gender and human rights across a wide range of security issues, including defense, offense, and deterrence.

A Murky, Seemingly Military-Dominated Cyber Defense Strategy

Canada has recognized that defending its interests and values in cyberspace requires more than just diplomacy, a position reflected in Bill C-59. In addition, the 2017 Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) defense policy announced that it would “assume a more assertive posture in the cyber domain,” for example “by conducting active cyber operations against potential adversaries.” Yet the CAF’s decision saw no public discussion and has had the effect of the military and intelligence agencies leading cyber policy. These agencies’ activities threaten to contradict or undermine Canadian diplomatic efforts, including work at the U.N. focused on promoting peace and stability in cyberspace.

Canadian military activities in the “cyber domain” are developing further, such as joining the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, a NATO-accredited think-tank and research center, in the near future. NATO is fast developing its cyber operational doctrine and has opened a Cyberspace Operations Centre in Belgium. Nine NATO members – but not yet Canada – have officially offered the Alliance their cyber capabilities in the event a cyber operation is needed in response to an attack.

In September 2019, Canada joined 26 other states in affirming a “Joint Statement on Advancing Responsible State Behavior in Cyberspace,” declaring that signatories “will work together on a voluntary basis to hold states accountable” for malign behavior and stressing that “[t]here must be consequences for bad behavior in cyberspace.” It is unclear what this joint statement entails, or its relation to a like-minded “Cyber Deterrence Initiative,” as described in the 2018 U.S. National Cyber Strategy. But what is evident is that Canada increasingly values imposing consequences on malign actors, further demonstrated in an October 2019 briefing note to Prime Minister Trudeau which states that Canada’s position on foreign cybersecurity threats is that “[r]ules and norms in cyberspace are critical, but they must be supplemented by measures to impose costs on hostile actors” (emphasis added). The briefing note adds that a key pillar of Canadian cybersecurity strategy includes developing “coordinated mechanisms among like-minded countries to hold malicious actors to account and impose costs on them.” The nature of these “costs,” and the extent to which they will follow international law, is unknown – sending unclear signals to Canadians, as well as Canada’s allies and adversaries.

All 27 signatories of the Joint Statement are U.S. and NATO allies, which raises credibility questions as to potential bias among the group in calling out the malicious behavior of others, versus similar actions undertaken by its own members. If the Canadian government hopes to promote international cooperation for global cybersecurity, it may need to go beyond solutions reliant on camps of like-minded nations.

The State of Affairs: Gaps in Consistency, Clarity, and Coordination

Canada has generally adopted rights-affirming foreign policy positions but has experienced challenges in implementing them. For example, the Canadian internet filtering firm Netsweeper Inc. receives federal and provincial government support despite research by the Citizen Lab showing that the company’s technology is often used to undermine human rights through internet censorship. Furthermore, Bill C-59’s CSE Act includes language that some have interpreted as permitting interference in judicial processes or electoral outcomes in certain contexts. The mere prospect of such interference may provide a veneer of legitimacy to adversarial nations that do interfere in foreign judicial or electoral systems, including Canada’s.

Moreover, unlike key allies, Canada has not clearly outlined how it believes that international law applies – or should apply – in cyberspace, despite publicly calling for other U.N. member states to do so (see here at 1:01). By contrast, a growing number of countries, including Australia and the Netherlands, have published position papers expressing their interpretations of the applicability of international law to cyberspace. In the absence of clear communication concerning what Canada will (and will not) do as a matter of law or policy, allies and adversaries alike may not fully appreciate the Canadian government’s position. This absence makes it difficult for Canada to clearly signal its foreign policy intentions to other countries, which can hamper efforts to set norms and establish deterrence.

In terms of defense and security, available documents indicate that Canada is aligning itself with U.S. cybersecurity approaches, including offensive capabilities. Along these lines, the CAF published a Joint Doctrine Note on cyber operations in 2017, but this document adheres to Canada’s lack of transparency on such issues and, thus, remains classified – in contrast with U.S. and U.K. military cyber doctrine documents. Any decisions by the Canadian government to align itself with, or to adopt, more aggressive cyber operations akin to those of the United States are thus being made without substantive public input. Such decision making processes raise questions as to the public’s ability to debate and influence policy; secrecy surrounding strategic approaches – and opacity around cybersecurity policy more broadly – prevents the Canadian public from holding the government to account for its policy decisions, and questions the extent to which policy has a public license. If Canada is following U.S. approaches, it is doing so without articulating how this approach accommodates Canadian foreign policy values, goals, exigencies, and realities.

The Continuing Need for a Clearly Articulated Set of Cyber Principles

Principles that are embedded in a comprehensive cyber foreign policy should bring together the Canadian government’s existing focuses on international coordination, integration of gender considerations into security policies, and development of offensive cyber capabilities. But a holistic policy must go further, ensuring that Canadian interests and principles are both defended and projected abroad – such as those of democracy, human rights, and respect for the rule of law.

Efforts to develop cyber foreign policy should not be secretly siloed within government and must, instead, include consultations with a broad cross-section of stakeholder groups, including civil society and the private sector. The United States undertook such consultations over the course of its “Cyberspace Solarium Commission,” which included over 200 meetings with private sector representatives and more than 25 with academics. In GAC’s purported development of its International Strategic Framework for Cyberspace, there has been no non-governmental consultation to date. Domestic stakeholder engagement is needed to tap into expertise residing outside of government, and to ensure that adopted policies address any significant concerns raised during consultations.

Canada could become a leader in the development of norms, principles, and values that accompany the intensifying use of digital technologies. Currently, however, allied and competitor nations alike must compile and assess Canada’s piecemeal policies and divine how they might extend to the government’s broader range of foreign policy practices. This is an ineffective way to explain a nation’s intentions, its red lines, or its ambitions; nor does it enable Canada to clearly work with allies to shape the international space. Canada needs a holistic cyber foreign policy if it is to be an effective middle power that can clearly explain how and when it will exert its power.

As Canadian foreign policy comes under broad scrutiny after Canada’s failed bid for a U.N. Security Council seat, the development of a comprehensive and sound cyber foreign policy is an important opportunity for reset and renewal. The time to start is now.

(Author’s Note: The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful comments provided by Paul Meyer, Ronald Deibert, and anonymous commentators. Any errors remain solely with the authors.)
Image: Sean Gladwell, Creative # 1224364251 via Get

Is the United States Heading for a Rural Insurgency?


by Vasabjit Banerjee

October 5, 2020

The intrusions of white supremacist militias into cities to intimidate and attack protestors from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement highlights the possibility of rural insurgency. Rural insurgencies range from week-long armed rebellions against local governments, law enforcement, and the wealthy to decades-long ones against subnational and national-level security forces, which seek to impose new revolutionary regimes. Many African, Asian, and Latin American countries have faced such insurgencies, which have slowed economic growth, caused mass internal migration to more secure urban areas, as well as undermined democratic politics locally and nationally. While the U.S. is not currently at the point of a full-blown insurgency, such insurgencies exist across a spectrum rather than being characterized by the crossing of a line, and consequently, it behooves us to worry now rather than when we get to “there.”

Although culture, economic or political grievances underlie such rebellions, a successful rebellion must overcome collective action barriers because the rewards of victory cannot be restricted to rebels who risk their lives and liberty, thus, encouraging people to free-ride. Resources that lower the collective action barriers of rebellion include availability of weapons, rebel organizations that provide leadership and training, as well as funding from wealthy allies. Opportunities that reduce these barriers include inaccessible terrain, weak and complicit law enforcement, as well as uncertainty or weakness in the repressive capacity of state security forces. Currently, these factors are present in the United States.

Ideologies of Rebellion

In her book on white supremacist groups, Bring the War Home, Professor Kathleen Belew shows that the grievances of rural white militia groups center on threats to white racial supremacy that date back to the U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War. These have recently combined with fears of becoming a minority group due to changing demographics. The targets of such fears have shifted from primarily African Americans to include non-White immigrants. In conjunction with racial fears, other causes include anti-Semitism as well as perceived threats to Christianity from Muslims, who have replaced Catholics as antagonists. Some scholars have observed, however, that the militias do not constitute a cohesive movement, but have many groups with varied beliefs, broadly classifiable as anti-federal government control of lands, guns, speech, and other liberties.

With regards to political alignments, many such groups were formed after Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 presidential election. Although racial animus played a factor, their official positions were similar to that of the conservative Tea Party movement’s demand for low taxes and reduction in government. These militias became associated with President Donald Trump partly due to his rhetoric during the 2016 campaign, which emphasized anti-immigrant nativism, proposed banning Muslims from coming to the United States, and supported fundamentalist Christian beliefs. After he assumed office, in addition to his equivocation about deadly white supremacist attacks against protestors, his administration’s policies also appeared to favor militia groups by reducing monitoring by federal law enforcement. Trump may accept pre- and post-electoral violence by such militias during the 2020 elections, as indicated by his statements about the white supremacist Proud Boys during the first presidential debate.

Rebel Resources: Available Weapons, Access to Funding, Existing Organizations, and Military Training

Unlike insurgencies in countries evaluated in RAND’s seminal How Insurgencies End study, the wealth and freely available weapons in the United States may obviate the need for foreign assistance—in terms of funds, personnel, and material—as the critical determinant of the fate of such insurgencies.

In most countries, insurgent groups must smuggle quantities of small arms, offered by willing foreign sponsors or bought in black markets, across international borders. In the United States, however, per capita gun ownership is the highest in the world, while gun laws are some of the least restrictive. Thus, militias can legally acquire vast quantities of small arms. Although eight out of the top 10 states with the highest percentage of gun ownership relative to their population voted for Trump in 2016, the problem is not just a state-level one. Guns from states with lax gun-ownership laws can also be easily transported to states with stricter laws. For example, of the guns used for criminal activities in Chicago and its suburbs under the purview of the eighth strictest gun laws of Illinois, 21 percent are brought in from Indiana (with the 28th strictest gun laws), 5.1 percent from Mississippi (with the 50th strictest gun laws) and 4 percent from Wisconsin (with the 21st strictest gun laws).

Although foreign funding may not be accessible to American militias, they can acquire funds to buy weapons, ammunition, and logistics, from food and blankets to vehicles, via a network of associated organizations. Akin to the use of mosques by Islamic terror groups in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, militias can use sympathetic churches to seek donations. Also racist but peaceful allied organizations like the Council of Conservative Citizens can act as fronts to sell products and accept donations via websites like Amazon, DonorBox, and Stripe. For example, a Christian crowdfunding website called GiveSendGo has collected more than $ 500,000 for the defense fund of Kyle Rittenhouse who shot three protestors in August, 2020 during the BLM protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

By comparing insurgent groups in South and Southeast Asia, Professor Paul Staniland’s book The Networks of Rebellion reveals that militia organizations also need leaders who are both internally united and embedded within pre-conflict social networks in order to successfully challenge the national government in multi-year confrontations. Despite ideological similarities, militia groups in the United States lack cohesive regional and national-level organizations. Rather, disparate groups communicate and coordinate via social media sites like Facebook. Thus, while such fragmentation may prevent a civil war that seeks to topple the federal government, loosely tied groups of small organizations may be sufficiently powerful to prevent state and federal authorities from controlling rural areas. A phenomenon that has occurred in parts of India, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Although training is critical for insurgent success, levels of training among militia groups can vary contingent on the presence of veterans and active-duty members of the military and National Guard. Reports suggest that a number of veterans and currently serving members of the armed forces have joined these groups, although the former are more numerous. With the military’s increasing proficiency in counter-insurgency tactics, training, and experience, veterans and active-duty troops could introduce exactly the type of small-unit, small-arms focused training that militias would need to fight against the government.

Rebel Opportunities: Inaccessible Terrain, Weak and Complicit Law Enforcement and Security Forces

Militias will also benefit from geography, the nature of local law enforcement, and the makeup of the U.S. military. The large size and difficult terrain in parts of rural America, exemplified by states like Montana and Arizona, would both slow counter-insurgency efforts by security forces and deliver the advantage to insurgents because of their local knowledge and civilian sympathizers who can provide food and shelter.

The other major advantage for militias is the nature of local law enforcement agencies and national-level military and security forces. Local police forces in many states have a history of being either sympathetic to white supremacists and/or being infiltrated by these groups. More importantly, geographical recruitment patterns in the U.S. military show that the representation ratio is the highest in states like Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, and Texas that are conservative in cultural and political orientation, have significant presence of militias, and are reliable supporters of the Trump administration. Thus, deploying troops to quell rebellions would have to account for the unwillingness of some troops to fire upon ideological sympathizers or possibly their kith and kin.

Conclusion: The Threat and Promise of Inevitable Urbanization

Mao Zedong allegedly remarked that rebels should inhabit their environment as fish in the sea, which was the case in mid-20th Century China with its rural hinterland where the vast majority of the population resided. In the past 50 years, rural insurgencies from Vietnam and India, to Colombia and Guatemala, have followed this dictum of garnering local sympathy for both recruitment and logistical support with varied success.

Twenty-first Century United States, however, has a mostly urban population. In a social media interaction with me, Professor Doug Thompson of the University of South Carolina mentioned that less than 2 percent of the American population lives in 100 percent rural countries, while most states have “roughly the same spatial distribution of partisanship,” which neither overlaps with traditional regions like the North, South, Midwest, etc. nor with urban/rural divides. Rather, what he terms the “new sectional conflict,” in a reference to antebellum regional divisions, could be centered in the exurban and suburban areas. In which case, the nearness to urban centers may mitigate conflict by facilitating pacification efforts, which may even deter insurgencies from breaking out, or worsen insurgencies because of the accessibility to high-value urban targets and populations.

Despite how the political geography of the United States ultimately shapes the nature of such insurgencies, however, the above-mentioned grievances, resources, and opportunities indicate that the preconditions for insurgencies are already present. Consequently, militia groups deserve more scrutiny from security forces and a unified political consensus to deter and suppress them in order to maintain peace and stability.

Image: Armed members of far right militias and white pride organizations rally near Stone Mountain Park in downtown Stone Mountain, Georgia on August 15, 2020. Photo by Logan Cyrus / AFP) (Photo by LOGAN CYRUS/AFP via Getty Images

Confronting Russia’s Role in Transnational White Supremacist Extremism



by Elizabeth Grimm Arsenault and Joseph Stabile

February 6, 2020


A member of the neo-Nazi terror network the Base told a federal prosecutor in December that he believed the group’s leader, known then as Norman Spear, was a Russian spy. One month later, the Guardian revealed Spear’s true name to be Rinaldo Nazzaro and presented evidence that Nazzaro lives in Russia. BBC subsequently reported that Nazzaro was listed as a guest at a 2019 Russian government security exhibition which “focused on the demonstration of the results of state policy and achievements.”

Though Nazzaro’s relationship with the Russian government remains uncertain, these reports point to a broader trend: a mutual affection between Western white supremacists and the Russian government. It also highlights the reality that the distinction between foreign terrorism and so-called domestic terrorism is increasingly irrelevant. Dating back to 2004, David Duke characterized Russia as the “key to white survival,” and American white supremacist Richard Spencer recently identified Russia as the “sole white power in the world.” Both Jared Taylor—founder of the white supremacist outlet American Renaissance—and Matthew Heimbach—a Unite the Right organizer and leader of the now-defunct Traditionalist Workers Party—have met in person with ultranationalist Russian political leaders in 2015 and 2017, respectively.

For its part, the Russian government has exploited this interest. It has both turned a blind eye to far-right paramilitarism within its own borders and actively cultivated neo-Nazism in the West. These decisions align with its broader project to sow discord in Western democracies and influence transcontinental relations, despite its relatively weak military and economy. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s support for right-wing violence in the West constitutes an element in his broader destabilization campaign.

In the United States especially, white supremacist terrorists act upon an ideology that is deeply rooted in the country’s history of racist violence. The United States and its Western allies, therefore, must confront the issue of white supremacist terrorism at home and work towards a long overdue recalibration of counterterrorism priorities. But while the United States and its partners must confront this problem at home, they must also remember that hostile foreign powers have exploited homegrown racism for decades. Moreover, as Western counterterrorism efforts against white supremacist violence continue to ramp up (U.S. authorities, for example, have arrested seven members of the Base and a leader of the Unite the Right rally in recent weeks), extremists and aspiring terrorists may seek refuge in a more permissive environment, exacerbating the problem of Russian support.

To degrade existing links between Western extremists and Russian actors, and prevent the further formation of these connections, the United States and its partners must bolster their diplomatic capacity to confront this threat on a global scale. Here, we assess the current nexus between Western right-wing extremists and Russian actors at the state and non-state level. To be clear, we do not have a complete picture of these connections. Further work—from investigative reporting to intelligence sharing—is necessary to discern the scale of links between Western extremists and Russian actors. The counterterrorism community, however, must proactively work to understand this threat to prevent its further growth.

A Culture of Permissiveness

In 2014, the ultranationalist political organization Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) began training volunteers to fight alongside its paramilitary wing in eastern Ukraine, but the group has since expanded its operations to include global ambitions. According to the group’s spokesperson, RIM seeks to “continue to establish contacts with right-wing, traditionalist and conservative organizations around the world” in order “to share the experience of political [and] information warfare and joint squad tactics training.” Most prominently, RIM has worked alongside the Russian political party Rodina (also known as the Motherland-National Patriotic Union) to convene the World National-Conservative Movement (WNCM), a conference organized against the principles of “liberalism, multiculturalism and tolerance.”

WNCM’s organizers, however, sought to move beyond ideological exchanges and establish “joint camps for military and athletic instruction.” Now, through its paramilitary arm Imperial Legion, RIM carries out weeklong military-style training sessions known as Partisan. Led by a former member of the Russian armed forces, this program teaches ‘cadets’ to operate firearms and move in tactical formation.

In recent years, RIM’s terrorist training has proven deadly. Months before bombing a refugee center in Gothenburg, Sweden, the two perpetrators attended RIM’s Partisan training camp. According to the prosecutor handling the case, attendance at the “paramilitary camp in St. Petersburg was a key step in [the bombers’] radicalization” and it “may be the place where they learned to manufacture the bombs that they used in Gothenburg.” Both men had a history with the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), though it appears that each had moved on from the organization.

Despite the fact that these Swedish terrorists split with NRM prior to their attack, the group has maintained its own troubling relationship with RIM. In 2015, a RIM leader traveled to Sweden to speak at a NRM-hosted event called “Nordic Days,” and RIM has reportedly provided very modest financial support to its Nordic allies. Notably, NRM operates a Russian-language page with more than 2,000 members on the social media platform VK, according to the investigative journalism outlet Hate Speech International.

The November 2018 National Strategy for Counterterrorism of the United States lists the Nordic Resistance Movement as a “prominent transnational, self-described nationalist-socialist organization with anti-Western views,” that poses a threat, particularly to Europe, because of its propensity to use violence and its intent to destabilize societies. The relationship between the Nordic Resistance Movement and RIM reflects the transnational nature of right-wing extremism and acts as a reminder of how cross-border relationships can enhance the threat of terrorism. As political scientists Michael Horowitz and Philip Potter contend, cooperation and alliances between terrorist organizations increase group capacity.

What, then, is the connection between RIM’s transnational activities and Putin’s desire to undermine Western democracy? According to Alexander Verkhovsky, director of the Moscow-based SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, Russian authorities knowingly tolerate RIM’s paramilitary camps. The Kremlin does not directly support RIM, but it does nothing to combat the group’s violent activities, despite knowledge of their operations. As former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Carpenter characterized the situation, RIM’s paramilitary arm “operates freely” in Russia. The lack of counterterrorism pressure from domestic forces in Russia allows the organization to form alliances with extremists across Europe and the United States, enhancing the overall threat of right-wing extremism.

Russian strategy plays into its tolerance for RIM in two different ways. First, the Kremlin has an incentive to turn a blind eye to the group because of RIM’s role in helping to recruit Russians to fight in eastern Ukraine (it’s worth noting, however, that the conflict has also attracted white supremacist foreign fighters to fight with Ukrainians against Russia). Second, and more importantly for Western security services, the decision to allow RIM to act with impunity aligns with Putin’s zero-sum worldview in which liberal democracy in the West threatens his authoritarian hold in Russia. By allowing violent, globally minded paramilitarism to take hold within Russia’s borders, the Kremlin facilitates the growth of right-wing extremism in Europe and the United States that exacerbates threats to the stability of democratic governments.

Direct Tactical and Ideological Support

Although the Kremlin’s support for RIM only amounts to tacit approval, Russian intelligence officials have directly interacted with other far-right groups such as the Hungarian National Front. A neo-Nazi paramilitary organization, the Hungarian National Front began to exhibit affinity for the Kremlin in 2012, when its leader István Györkös launched a website that promoted a pro-Putin message. According to a joint report from two Hungarian research institutes, the site “has clearly and unequivocally become a tool in the hands of Russian government propaganda.” The connection between the Hungarian National Front and Russia, however, goes further than just messaging efforts. Hungarian security services have testified to the country’s parliament that the neo-Nazi organization regularly took part in paramilitary training exercises with Russian military intelligence officials operating in Hungary under the guise of diplomatic cover. This direct support for far-right extremism, according to Andras Racz of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, fits into Russia’s broader effort to bolster “fringe groups in an effort to destabilize or simply disorient the European Union.”

Confronting State Sponsorship and Eliminating Safe Havens

Given this understanding of Russia’s complicity in this growing threat, how might Western officials address the Kremlin’s actions (and inaction) with regards to right-wing violence? First, the United States and its partners must lead by example. The West will have no credibility in condemning Russia’s soft stance on right-wing extremism if it cannot demonstrate a willingness to act seriously and combat the threat itself. In a time when elected officials hire unabashed extremists as senior advisors, parrot extremist talking points, laud the merits of white nationalism, and cover up their meetings with far-right extremists, the West has a long way to go in building its own legitimacy to call out other States. This necessary step includes adopting long-overdue policy measures to combat the threat of right-wing terrorism.

In the United States, lawmakers should adopt policies that boost resources for domestic terrorism prevention and aim to reduce the lethality of terrorist attacks. For example, Joshua Geltzer has suggested that the National Counterterrorism Center should be empowered to provide “analysis of the nature and direction of the white supremacist threat as a whole,” rather than trying to distinguish between the international and domestic aspects of a transnational threat. Lawmakers must also embrace interventions that precede the threshold for legal investigation. In recent congressional testimony, terrorism experts advocated for expanded funding for community partners such as non-law enforcement resources inside schools. Moreover, the Department of Defense should improve screening efforts to ensure white supremacists cannot infiltrate the military, as was stipulated in the House’s version of the most recent National Defense Authorization Act before an alteration in the Senate removed this provision. Congress could also improve data-collection efforts by passing the NO HATE Act, the Domestic and International Terrorism DATA Act, and the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, which would appropriate resources to help the national security community better understand the threat of white supremacist terrorism.

With regards to reducing lethality, scholars and policy experts agree: ease of access to firearms in the United States exacerbates the threat of terrorism. In addition to common-sense background checks, Congress should pass red-flag laws on a national level and also adopt the Disarm Hate Act, which would prohibit individuals who have been convicted of misdemeanor-level hate crimes from buying or possessing guns.

It is also critical to note that white supremacist extremism is not a threat conjured up by a far-off Russian boogeyman, but rather is America’s original sin. In fact, it has often been white supremacist extremists within the United States who have exported their ideology and violence across the globe. Recognizing this reality and addressing this challenge at home are necessary preconditions to confront the role that state actors play in this threat across the globe.

How then, should the United States and its partners work to degrade any relationships between far-right extremists and malign state actors? Terrorism experts suggest that the removal of a leader can help degrade international alliances. Doing so may also undermine transnational links. The United States and its partners should apply this lesson in a diplomatic, rather than lethal, approach to the threat of transnational white supremacist violence. In this case, a unified effort to encourage greater cooperation on extradition laws may be one way to target group leadership. Lars Agerbak was the leader of the far-right Danish organization National Front and once received paramilitary training in Russia. Though convicted of weapons-related charges in his native Denmark, he has since fled to Russia. Given that both parties are signatories to the 1957 European Convention on Extradition, the European Union might push to have Agerbak returned to Denmark. Doing so may undermine the international alliances established between Danish and Russian extremists, eroding the overall potency of transnational right-wing extremism. Moreover, if it is true that Rinaldo Nazzaro currently resides in Russia, the United States possesses legal options, including past precedent, to push for extradition or criminal accountability if U.S. authorities can bring a charge against Nazzaro.

In addition to a focus on extradition, American and European officials should work together to implement travel bans or other forms of targeted sanctions. Specifically, these sorts of diplomatic penalties could target leaders within RIM or Rodina to prevent them from traveling to the West to cultivate alliances and exchange ideas. Such provisions could have prevented a RIM representative from traveling to the United States to meet with Matthew Heimbach in 2017 and could undermine future collaboration between RIM and the Nordic Resistance Movement. Similar sanctions might also target intelligence officials determined to have directly trained or supported paramilitary organizations in Europe or the United States. Tools to fight state-sponsorship measures may not persuade Russia to altogether abandon their sponsorship of these groups, but they could convince the Kremlin to avoid further escalation of these activities. Though a relatively modest objective, it could help to stymie a growing threat.

In the United States, these objectives will require staffing and procedural changes that provide the necessary tools to confront the threat of white supremacist violence on a global scale. In particular, the State Department might consider the creation of a Special Envoy position to help elevate the priority of this issue. Fighting this threat, however, will require a whole of government effort, including building a workforce that understands this movement and its deep history.

Conclusion

From Heimbach to Nazzaro to an unnamed white supremacist leader and New Zealand soldier who planned to travel to Russia prior to his December 2019 arrest, the relationship between white extremists and the Russian state demands further attention. Moscow has already begun to exploit this fascination by intentionally stoking neo-Nazi sentiment and permitting extremist actors to use Russia as a transnational paramilitary training ground. The United States and its partners must act now to confront the globally linked white supremacist extremist movement in anticipation of an increasingly diffuse threat in the coming years.

Our recommendations are not limited to confronting Russia’s role in this threat and indeed could serve as a foundation for a broader diplomatic effort. As previously discussed, Ukraine’s Azov Battalion has actively recruited foreign fighters from Atomwaffen Division and the Rise Above Movement. Our partners should not be absolved of responsibility, and indeed may prove more receptive to these types of diplomatic efforts.

The long-overdue campaign against white supremacist terrorism appears to have prevented a potentially horrific attack in Richmond, Va. This near-tragedy underscores the importance of domestic counterterrorism efforts, but this fight must occur within a broader effort to dismantle the global white supremacist terrorist movement. As Western extremists feel increasingly vulnerable to law enforcement activity, they may flock to refuges in which they will not face counterterrorism pressure. To mitigate the risk posed by such an evolution, the United States and its partners must challenge state actors that aggravate the threat of transnational white supremacist extremism.
Image: Supporters of the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement chant slogans during a demonstration at the Kungsholmstorg square in Stockholm, Sweden on August 25, 2018. Photo by FREDRIK PERSSON/AFP via Getty Images

The Surprising Convergence Between 

Neo-Nazis and Jihadis

A new terrorism case shows how the two extremist movements attract the same people


by Max Kutner
July 17, 2020

From a military base in Europe in May, U.S. Army Private Ethan Melzer typed out a series of encrypted messages offering support to the Order of Nine Angels (O9A), a neo-Nazi group, according to federal prosecutors. He allegedly revealed sensitive information about his unit’s upcoming deployment. Apparently he hoped the information would get to a member of al-Qaeda and lead to a jihadi attack on his unit.

Authorities arrested Melzer. On June 22, the Department of Justice announced an indictment against him. He is charged with terrorism offenses. On July 6, he pleaded not guilty to all counts.

Federal prosecutors rarely if ever charge people linked to far-right extremism with terrorism. Maybe they did so here because neo-Nazism wasn’t the only ideology involved.

Two sentences in the DOJ’s announcement seem almost contradictory: “Melzer allegedly attempted to orchestrate a murderous ambush on his own unit by unlawfully revealing its location, strength, and armaments to a neo-Nazi, anarchist, white supremacist group. Melzer allegedly provided this potentially deadly information intending that it be conveyed to jihadist terrorists.”

Why would someone linked to neo-Nazis want to help Islamic extremists? I’ve spent three years researching that question and many months working on an upcoming podcast about it.

Neo-Nazi and Islamic extremist movements seem opposed — one advocates for a white supremacist society, while the other wants an Islamic caliphate devoid of Western influences and based on a certain interpretation of the Quran. But the movements are in some ways more similar than they are different. Members of each believe that their identity is threatened. Both movements claim to have the same enemies: Jews and the capitalist West. And both advocate for the same basic desire: a new world order, focused on either religious or racial exclusion.

The similarities go beyond ideology.

Both movements often recruit the same way, using sleek-looking propaganda to draw in vulnerable people. This was allegedly the case for Melzer, whom prosecutors say possessed propaganda from both ISIS and O9A. Also, American neo-Nazis increasingly go abroad for training, as FBI Director Chris Wray warned last October, something that Americans had been doing for Islamic extremist movements since at least the 1990s. And both movements call for using violence, even against members of their own racial or religious groups.

The acts of violence are often the same. For example, in 2017, first in Finsbury Park, London, and then in Charlottesville, Virginia, far-right extremists rammed vehicles into crowds of people, long a tactic of Islamic extremists. More recently, in June, a man in Virginia who identified himself as a local Ku Klux Klan leader drove into protesters during demonstrations against racism and police violence. And the tactic is spreading outside of violent extremist groups; The New York Times counted at least 66 instances of vehicles ramming into crowds, including seven with police officers at the wheel, during the recent demonstrations. This suggests that extremist tools are even more malleable than previously thought.

Neo-Nazis have drawn inspiration from Islamic extremists beyond vehicle-ramming attacks. The group Melzer allegedly supported, O9A, openly admires al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. Extremism experts believe that the founder of O9A was David Myatt. He once led a British neo-Nazi gang and later converted to Islam and supported Islamic extremism. (His alleged ties to O9A appear to be unconfirmed.) Westfield State University Professor George Michael wrote in his 2006 book, “The Enemy of My Enemy: The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right,” that Myatt “has arguably done more than any other theorist to develop a synthesis of the extreme right and Islam.”

In these ways and others, there has been crossover between neo-Nazis and Islamic extremists. Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, CEO of Valens Global, a firm that analyzes violent threats by non-state actors, has called this “fringe fluidity.” In a 2018 article in the journal “Studies in Conflict & Terrorism,” he identified eight examples of far-right and Islamic extremists cooperating, or of members of one movement switching to the other. A recent example he mentioned is that of Nicholas Young, a former Washington, D.C., transit police officer who in 2018 was sentenced to 15 years in prison for attempting to support ISIS. Young’s home was full of Nazi paraphernalia, he had a Nazi tattoo, and he had once attended a neo-Nazi gathering, according to Gartenstein-Ross’s article.

So, if extremists lack commitment to a single ideology, what motivates them? University of Maryland psychology professor Arie Kruglanski has argued it’s a “quest for significance.” This desire to matter is a basic human instinct, but some people take it to extremes. Melzer allegedly wrote in messages that if he was killed in the attack, “I would have died successfully” because it would cause a “new war,” and “another 10 year war in the Middle East would definitely leave a mark.” His case is scheduled to move forward in August.

If extremists bounce between ideologies or embrace multiple movements at once, then extremism is more dangerous than we think. Not everyone will believe “Mein Kampf” or ISIS propaganda. But significance and meaning are things that most people are seeking.

Image: Hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the “alt-right” march down East Market Street toward Emancipation Park during the “Unite the Right” rally August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Vehicle Ramming: The Evolution of a Terrorist Tactic Inside the US

by Mia Bloom
July 16, 2020

People ran for their lives on July 4 as a car drove through a police barricade and barreled down a Seattle freeway where protesters had been peacefully demonstrating against police brutality. Video of the attack showed a white car traveling at a high speed, swerving around two vehicles positioned as a barrier to protect protesters. As a local journalist put it, “Video showed the car careened toward the protesters and struck two, sending them flying into the air.” One of them—Summer Taylor, a 24 year old from Seattle—died that night. Although the motive remains unknown, these types of vehicle-ramming incidents have been happening in the United States with alarming frequency.

Indeed, just hours later, in Mishawaka, Indiana, another vehicle-ramming attack took place. This one involved an SUV that swerved around police barriers into a crowd of protesters, hitting and dragging 23-year-old Trevor Davis. Two days later, a woman plowed into protesters outside a courthouse in Bloomington, Indiana, before speeding away. Video footage showed one woman clinging to the roof of the car, while a man held onto the car’s driver side as the car drove forward.

To be specific, vehicle ramming is, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), when a perpetrator deliberately aims a motor vehicle at a target with the intent to inflict fatal injuries or cause significant property damage by striking with concussive force.

These recent incidents appear to be part of a worrying trend: In the United States, white supremacists and other emergent types of terrorists are using vehicle ramming with an increased enthusiasm. Ramming has, for example, been used by violent incels, with Alex Minassian driving a van down a busy downtown street in Toronto in 2018 and killing 10 pedestrians. The tactic gained traction among white nationalists after James Fields’ murder of Heather Heyer at Charlottesville. It remains that terrorist organizations have a finite number of tactical options available to them until they develop new technologies. Consequently, terrorist groups learn from one another and emulate each other’s tactics. Now, we are increasingly seeing extremist right-wing groups — called “White Racially Motivated” (or “WRM”) groups by DHS — using vehicles to attack civilians during protests in response to George Floyd’s death and other marches and demonstrations in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. This tactical evolution is a microcosm of the broader tectonic shifts in today’s terrorism threats: just as vehicle ramming has migrated to right-wing and incel extremists, so, too, has the thrust of today’s terrorism threat, especially as these groups absorb more and more tactical learning from terrorists such as jihadists.

An unsophisticated and low-tech tactical innovation, vehicle-ramming attacks tend to be successful as they minimize the potential for pre-attack detection by law enforcement while retaining the potential to inflict serious fatalities. It has been called the “poor man’s weapon of mass destruction.” While ISIS was not the first group to employ such tactics (in London, Nice, Lyon, Graz, and New York), it certainly integrated vehicle ramming in their propaganda material as one of the group’s preferred tactics against Western targets and encouraged supporters to use vehicle ramming against crowds.

The tactic originated in the West Bank and was employed by Hamas. As Israel successfully hardened targets and made it more difficult to penetrate inside the Green Line, militant groups turned to the use of less easily detected cars and trucks for attacks. During the early 2010s, Israel witnessed an uptick in car-ramming attacks. From mid-March through November of 2014, there were six attacks; whereas, in 2015, there were 36 attacks in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

From 2014 through 2017, terrorists carried out 17 known vehicle-ramming attacks worldwide, resulting in 173 fatalities and 667 injuries. And in recent months the tactic has become the preferred mode of attack by extreme right-wing groups against protesters, self radicalized individuals lashing out against Black Lives Matter, as well as people who were not affiliated with any groups and whose motives are unclear (e.g., Dawit Kalete who killed Summer Taylor) leading the overall use of the tactic to dramatically increase. In an NPR interview in June, Ari Weil had counted 50 vehicle-ramming incidents just since Floyd’s death on May 25, many of which have been categorized as assault. The New York Times recently updated this number to 66.

Despite vast ideological differences among Palestinian terrorist groups, Salafi Jihadists, and right-wing extremists, their common choice to weaponize vehicles demonstrates how tactics, like a virus, move from one terrorist group to the next. Jacob Stoil of West Point’s Modern War Institute has rightly asked: “How can we understand the process by which an attack type popularized in the West Bank became the tactic of choice for white supremacists in the United States?”

In my own work, Dying to Kill, I demonstrated how specific tactics learned in one location had a contagion effect to other conflicts and to other regions. It is how Palestinian prisoners left on the border with Lebanon subsequently returned to Israel with the new idea of suicide bombing. Just as Hamas proved the utility of vehicle ramming, ISIS quickly adopted it and used vehicles (both cars and commercial trucks) in France, Germany, Britain, and eventually the United States.

Stoil makes clear that, as far as tactics go, the barriers to entry are very low for terrorist groups deciding to adopt vehicle ramming. The individual operative requires little to no formal training to carry out such an attack. My research shows that ISIS was able to train children as young at 12 to ram their explosive laden vehicles into fixed targets, this kind of training is quick and easy. As a result, vehicle ramming has become popular across a variety of terrorist groups regardless of their ideology, affiliation, or type.

The reactions to the recent escalation of vehicle-ramming attacks echo ISIS’ propaganda strategy, in particular, its amplification through a wide range of relatively uncoordinated users on social media. Mimicking ISIS’ propaganda on Telegram over the last few years, users on social media sites from Facebook to Twitter to Parler, which has billed itself as the conservative-friendly alternative to Twitter, have shared memes about the attacks, minimizing civilian casualties and taking the core BLM message of “Black Lives Matter” and turning it into the grotesque “All Lives Splatter.” As Ari Weil, the deputy research director at the Chicago Project on Security and Threats of the University of Chicago, told the New York Times, “sharing memes and joking about running over people can lead to real danger.”

To make matters worse, many of those making the jokes have backgrounds in law enforcement or government. Weil also pointed out that law enforcement officers had perpetrated seven of the vehicular attacks themselves. The police have defended some of these incidents, claiming the police vehicles were under attack. The uptick in vehicle ramming in recent weeks has been driven in part by the widespread popularity of the Black Lives Matter message and the number of large gatherings of people taking place – in marches and demonstrations across the country (especially after weeks of social distancing), coupled with the widespread dissemination of social media encouraging people to run them over.

The most graphic of the images widely shared on various social media platforms, pictured a blood covered Dodge truck, echoes ISIS propaganda. The use of such a repulsive graphic is, itself, yet another adoption of terrorist tactics: In the same way ISIS used these kinds of images to grab the attention of over-stimulated online audience members, so, too, are far-right groups now using similar horrifying imagery.

All told, terrorist groups learn tactics from one another, adapting along the way. In turn, it’s a responsibility of those trying to thwart such groups to learn and adapt as well. Until social media companies clamp down on images that encourage vehicle ramming (many of which are still circulating widely on Twitter despite being reported for violating the platform’s terms of service), some people will follow through on the encouragement.

DHS and the FBI suggest being more vigilant in response to these escalating attacks. But, rather than policing vehicle ramming, for example by creating better barriers to safeguard civilians protesters, law enforcement has used these incidents as an excuse to limit where protesters can legally march. Both tech companies and law enforcement need to do better if this escalating tactic is to be addressed before it causes more injury and death. On July 11, Twitter informed me in an email that the #hashtag “all lives splatter” would now violate the company’s terms of service for “glorifying violence” and would be banned. It is incumbent for the other smaller social media companies to follow suit. However, the most egregious images, memes and encouragement occur on the smaller platforms like Gab, Parler, 4chan and 8kun that are neither part of the Christchurch accord or the Global Internet Forum for Counter Terrorism (GIFCT), additionally platforms that are based outside the United States are less susceptible to political or consumer pressure.

The author’s research is supported in part by the Office of Naval Research “Documenting the Virtual Caliphate” #N00014-16-1-3174. All opinions are exclusively those of the authors and do not represent the Department of Defense or the Navy
Image: A woman is received first-aid after a car accident ran into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville, VA on August 12, 2017. Photo by PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images

Turkey Fuels Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: Drones, Mercenaries and Dreams of Imperial Resurgence

[Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of articles on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Stay tuned for further installments.]

It’s been four years since the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh (known as Ertsakh in Armenian) was reignited in 2016. In September of this year, fighting over the disputed territory resumed with a vengeance.

Both sides share the blame for the long-term conflict in a region that has changed hands many times in history. Occupied by the Russians in the early 19th century, it was allotted to the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan by Stalin in the 1920s, even though most of its inhabitants were Armenian. After the Soviet Union disintegrated in the late 1980s, full-scale war erupted between Azerbaijan and Armenia, in which some 30,000 were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced. A ceasefire was declared in 1994, but since then the conflict flared up a number of times. In several of these bouts of fighting, Armenians were cited for attempts at ethnic cleansing.

In 2016, Azeri forces renewed their attack, this time with Turkey’s clear encouragement, and the two armies have since been locked in sporadic warfare that recently became much more intense. Several countries in the region have sided with Azerbaijan, including, weirdly, Iran and Israel, which (reportedly) supplied arms and materiel, but Turkey’s involvement in the fighting is on a much bigger scale.

Turkey’s wide-ranging political and military support for the Azeri attack reflects President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s bellicose approach to solving problems in the region. In recent years, Turkey invaded Syria, ostensibly to fight against anti-Turkish Kurdish militias there; has conducted frequent bombing strikes against Kurds in Northern Iraq; has actively supported one side in the Libyan civil war; and is on the verge of war with Greece and Cyprus over oil- and gas-drilling prospects in the Mediterranean and over islands in the Aegean.

Erdoğan has expressed anger at Greek sovereignty over the Aegean islands that were once governed from Istanbul; at Bashar al-Assad’s disastrous control of Syria; at Egypt’s struggle against the Muslim Brotherhood; and at Israel’s illegal occupation of Jerusalem. This, he claimed numerous times, stems from the downward spiral that the region has experienced since the great days of the Ottoman Empire. Despite runaway inflation, a rapidly tanking economy, and Erdoğan’s growing authoritarianism, this kind of talk has garnered mass support for him and his government among the more conservative and even secular nationalist groups in Turkey.

Turkish warfare in Nagorno-Karabakh is a weird mixture of tactics. On the one hand, Turkey sent in thousands of Syrian mercenaries whose salaries it pays. Most of them participated in the Syrian uprising against Assad’s regime over the previous decade under Islamic, mostly jihadi, organizations. Some may still hold on to their Salafi beliefs but have since become soldiers of fortune, fighting for the highest bidder. Some of them are fighting for Turkey in Syria; others were sent to Libya, and the rest are doing Turkey’s work in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Alongside these mercenaries, Turkey uses state-of-the-art drone formations. The long years of fighting in the region have led to the deployment of advanced air-defense systems against rockets, but in recent years Turkey has joined the widening club of states who discovered the great potential of drone warfare.

Drone swarms are used for intelligence gathering, pinpointing targets, shooting, and blowing up assets. Nagorno-Karabakh has become a testing site for this new technology. The weapons wreak havoc on Armenian civilian and military sites. The combination of drones and mercenaries, with some back-office military planning, allows Erdogan to conduct operations on three fronts simultaneously, with very limited involvement of Turkish forces.

Under this Turkish aegis, Azerbaijan seeks to scare away its Armenian inhabitants and annex parts of the region. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of civilians and soldiers have already died in this war. The actions of Israel, Iran, and other countries involved in supplying war materials to both sides should be condemned and stopped, but Turkey’s actions require a more serious response.

In recent years, Turkey has stepped up its military actions in the region, bullying its neighbors, betraying its commitment to NATO and its allies in the West, and killing civilians with impunity. If Turkey does not stop its violent actions, the United States and the European Union should impose sanctions, as punishment and as a deterrence to further escalation. This would not be entirely unprecedented, despite Turkey’s status as a member of NATO. The U.S. effectively penalized Turkey last year by suspending it from the multi-nation F-35 fighter jet program and threatening additional sanctions, after Turkey ignored U.S. pressure and opted to buy the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system.

[Readers may also be interested in this Oct. 15, 2019 article by Aurel Sari: “Can Turkey be Expelled from NATO? It’s Legally Possible, Whether or Not Politically Prudent.”]

IMAGE: An armed villager arrives at a neighbor’s home destroyed by shelling following an overnight attack during the ongoing fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in the Martakert region, on October 15, 2020, -The origins of a flareup in fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh that has now killed hundreds and threatens to involve regional powers Turkey and Russia are hotly contested and difficult to independently verify. Both sides accuse the other of striking first on Sept. 27 over the ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan.  (Photo by ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images)