On April 27, the German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance (CPG) presented a special lecture about civil military relations at the Thammasat University Faculty of Law. The lecture was by Dr. Christopher Ankersen, chief of security at the United Nations (UN) Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and former deputy chief of security for the UN offices in Geneva and Vienna, as well as security coordination officer for Iraq at UN headquarters in New York. Adjunct Assistant Professor of Politics and Economics at the Royal Military College of Canada, Dr. Ankersen was recently hired by New York University where he will begin lecturing soon. The TU Libraries own a book coedited by Dr. Ankersen, Understanding Global Terror. The book’s title gives an idea of Dr. Ankersen’s approach to difficult subjects that upset and anger many people. Trying to understand something in order to prevent it can be challenging when our first instinct is to prefer not to think about it at all. Instead of ignoring something unpleasant, Dr. Ankersen suggests that we think about what it means, why it happens, and what can be done about it. In Understanding Global Terror, Dr. Ankersen writes that even the word terrorism is difficult to understand exactly, because it has so many definitions that it might almost be said that
anyone can use it to mean anything, therefore rendering it meaningless.
If we do not understand this basic term, can we understand the events, and other terms associated with it, such as the war on terror? One definition of terrorists is people who deliberately try to harm civilians who are not themselves fighters. Even so, almost all wars do harm to civilians who are not fighters, so we see that precise definitions remain difficult to achieve. Another book coedited by Dr. Ankersen is Civil-Military Cooperation in Post-Conflict Operations. Civil-military cooperation (CIMIC) is the relationship between militaries and humanitarians. His book discusses the wide range of national approaches to CIMIC activities. Dr. Ankersen’s lecture was appropriately held in the Jitti Tingsabadh Room of the TU Faculty of Law. As Thais know, Jitti Tingsabadh was a devoted public servant, of whom Professor Prayoon Jindapradit wrote in his text “จิตติ ติงศภัทิย์ แบบอย่างแห่งสามัญชน” (Jitti Tingsabadh, a Role Model for Commoners):
The exemplary life and success of Professor Jitti Tingsabadh is not a result of miracles but it is a life with value, which has explanation and reasoning in how it came to be. It is a model that can be learned from and practiced by all. This extraordinary example for commoners can only be expected from those who live a simple life. Therefore, no matter if we call him as a teacher, professor, President of the Senate, Privy Councilor or other terms, this individual shall remain to be Mr. Jitti Tingsabadh, an ordinary individual who is a role model for all commoners for eternity. (English Translation by Pimvipa Kunanusorn)
On April 27, Dr. Ankersen cited many political philosophers from Thomas Hobbes in the 1600s to Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault in the 20th century to try to understand how the civilian population gets along with the military in countries across the world throughout history. The famous work Leviathan by the British thinker Thomas Hobbes describes why nations need armies and other bodies of defense. If all people had to individually defend their families and possessions, we would have no time to do anything else. There would be no culture or civilization. As Hobbes memorably, put it, human life outside of civil society would mean
continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Keeping this in mind, Dr. Ankersen suggested that civil-military relations theory rarely goes into detail about how it is actually understood and carried out on the ground. The main issue is not one of control, who guards the guardians, but how a nation may establish and maintain structures of legitimacy. The basis for this legitimacy may be found in tradition or social context. Yet classic civil-military relations theory does not discuss how such relationships come about. There is no single view of civil-military relations. They are a reflection of the people who carry them out. Civil military relations is a political activity, setting up who will rule and who will follow. It needs to be negotiated and argued, established in that way. This is a healthy way of looking at the subject, rather than taking it as written and accepting it as it appears to be. The importance of civilized discussion is clear in developing these understandings. People caught up in their own day to day lives often do not ask why things are the way they are. Change is possible, but it is not easy to do. Wanting to be successful within the game, people would like the world to be as they know it is. Matching the inner certainties of individual people, the larger world of civil-military relations can reward society as a whole.
One of Dr. Ankersen’s key messages was the importance of taking time to think things over, discuss them, and agree on definitions. In Rapid Decisive Ops Are Risky Business, an article co-authored with Losel Tethong, a Tibet-born entrepreneur and writer, in 2003 for the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, Dr. Ankersen discussed how split-second decisions were not always the best ones. Lightning moves without time for consideration have flaws in other fields, he observed:
In the 1990s, similar claims were being made, not about military strategy, but about economics. Again, technology was making it possible for companies to break the rules. Slow, bricks-and-mortar firms, with lots of employees and physical assets such as warehouses, head offices, and even products, were seen as dinosaurs. Agile, nimble enterprises with few employees and fewer physical assets were king. To survive in this brave new world, firms would need to work at e-speed. Velocity was everything: speed to market, speed to the next big thing. Lightness and agility achieved near perfection in a virtual world. Companies went online, shedding bricks for clicks. Manufacturers, the paragons of the old economy, were eclipsed by upstart cellular telephone concerns, selling bandwidth and airtime not widgets and gadgets. Even oil companies went high tech, becoming energy derivatives traders. Old methods and measurements no longer worked. New benchmarks had to be created to capture the potential of this revolution. In addition to going virtual, the new economy meant that companies needed to shed unproductive components. For instance, why have a shipping department if you could team with FedEx and have it take over that function for you? The practice of vertical “dis-integration” produced a whole host of alliances, each allowing companies to focus on their core competencies while at the same time shedding unneeded weight (in the form of employees, vehicles, or buildings). One of the most fascinating aspects of the e-economy in the late 1990s and early part of this century is how high expectations (on the part of consumer, investor, and analyst alike) grew. With every technological advance, the farfetched became possible, and the barely plausible a certainty. Very quickly there arose an expectations gap. If stock prices could double in a month, surely they could triple in a fortnight. And so it went. As one analyst commented, in the case of one infamous company, “investors were valuing Enron based on the prospects of industries that had yet to be invented.” Of course, this story does not end happily. Obscene amounts of money were lost when the emperor’s clothes were found to be missing. The NASDAQ crashed hard, shedding cash and hope along with it. There were many losers. Purely virtual enterprises were wiped out, literally overnight.
Smart planners take time to think about worst-case scenarios instead of just believing that their inspiration will always work out for the best.
(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)