The Zapatista social netwar revisited — more grist for TIMN

Ten years ago we — John Arquilla, Graham Fuller, Melissa Fuller, and myself —wrote The Zapatista “Social Netwar” in Mexico (1998), and in the last few days it has bounced back to my attention. I’m seizing on the opportunity to make a few comments, and to post for the first time in English a Postscript that we wrote a couple years ago. I include it here as an Appendix.

The impetus comes from the post “Social Netwar, Fifteen Years On,” at Adam Elkus’s Rethinking Security blog, beginning April 23, 2009. He makes several salient points about the Zapatista movement, including that

. . . it does demonstrate the difficulty of netwar groups to sustain campaigns after the "culminating point" has been reached.

I/we quite agree; indeed, our Appendix concludes on that note. Netwar — a mode of conflict that revolves around the use of network forms of organization and related doctrines, strategies, and technologies, especially for mounting swarming attacks — is easy to undertake in today’s information age. Violent examples currently abound, notably in aspects of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Somali piracy, and in the attack at Mumbai. Social netwars gain less media attention, but there have been plenty of those too, recently including in the turmoil in Thailand, the protests against the G20 meeting in London, and in some activist campaigns here in the United States. But it’s also true that governments and their security forces are learning to wage counternetwar more effectively. The Zapatista movement, a seminal social netwar, has run its course partly for that reason, as we explain in the Appendix.

Elkus’s departure point is a summary of a recent academic conference, “Fifteen Years After the Zapatistas,” posted at the Harvard International Review blog, beginning April 13, 2009. This summary barely alludes to netwar aspects, or even to the once-important roles of activist NGO networks. But the summary does convey a critical understanding of what has happened in the Zapatista zone in Chiapas, and to the Zapatista movement more broadly throughout Mexico:

[E]ven the most ardent supporters of the Zapatistas [at the conference] admitted that the militants, who have largely given up violent struggle, have not replaced it with a realistic alternative tool of social change. Zapatistas today continue to experiment with the creation of “autonomous” zones of power in Chiapas, where they have set up parallel institutions of governance. Panelists disagreed about the efficacy of these institutions in political and juridical terms, but not in economic terms: the Zapatistas have not created a viable model of economic autonomy for poor peasants. At the same time, the turn inward, and away from the state, has rendered the Zapatistas less effective at reforming the Mexican state. While some panelists saw the Zapatista experiments as noble efforts to create alternative political structures that are more democratic than those of the wider society, others argued that the Zapatistas had missed an opportunity to build a broad movement to reform the state.

These are important points not only for understanding the dynamics of netwar and counternetwar, but also for another key aim of this blog: understanding the nature of tribal peoples and their forms of organization, pursuant to fleshing out the TIMN framework. The conference summary makes the Zapatista indigenas appear to be leading rather unhappy lives fraught with poverty and inequity, as though the Zapatista movement were a failure. But two blogpost commenters, presumably outside anthropologists, insist that many indigenas are living just fine in Chiapas, in accordance with the traditional cosmologies and values that they had fought to defend — and, the commenters scold, the conference participants do not understand this.

What calls my attention here is the commenter’s elevation of the bright side of tribalism as something valuable that should not be discarded in today’s market-mad world. Tribalism’s dark side has become daily news, particularly in reportage about Taliban excesses, Somali piracy, and Mexican gang-fights. But as the two commenters point out — and as Bolivia’s President Evo Morales elaborates in a recent speech — the bright side has much to offer, especially where people are attuned to living in balance with nature and kinfolk, forsaking many material possessions.

Expressed in TIMN terms about long-range social evolution, this means that there are many people who would rather live according to idealized T-type practices than deal with the stresses and strains of the T+I+M+N progression. I’m fully in favor of the TIMN progression; that’s how major societies progress and great civilizations rise (and fall). But it’s evident that many traditional peoples in diverse places around the world, from the jungles of Mexico to the valleys and mountains along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, think otherwise. They are bound into their ancient tribal ways and determined to defend them, no matter what, and no matter how. Globalization — and the attendant intrusions of outside actors — are just making them feel more so (as I've discussed elsewhere).

All very interesting. Enough to prompt a rethinking of U.S. prospects, policies, and strategies in distant battlegrounds?

But I’ll end on a different note: In a sense, the significance of the Zapatista social netwar is barely about the Zapatista indigenas in Chiapas and their particular expression of the tribal (T) form. Instead, it’s more about the world at large, the growing role of the +N network form, and the fusion of T and +N forces among modern actors who are not indigenas.

This netwar was able to occur in 1994 because so many activist NGOs were already networked and mobilized outside of Mexico, ready for a new target, after having tried (quite unsuccessfully) to protest U.S. policy in Central America and/or halt passage of NAFTA. Then, years later, as we discuss in the Appendix, many Mexican and foreign NGOs turned away from the Zapatista struggle to focus (quite successfully) on other high-impact efforts: e.g., in 1999, the protest movement known as the “Battle of Seattle”; and in 2000, the presidential campaign and election in Mexico that displaced the ruling PRI party from power. In sum, the Zapatista social netwar was about much more than the Zapatistas.


[Many thanks to John Arquilla for reviewing and commenting on an earlier draft of this post, and for remarks that prompted me to expand on the points about the persistence of tribalism.]

[Notice: Readers interested in Mexico may want to know that I have added updates to the counter-alarmist post a few weeks ago on why Mexico may not fall apart.]

* * * * *

Appendix

Emergence and Influence of the Zapatista Social Netwar: Postscript (March 2007)[1]

David Ronfeldt and John Arquilla


What follows is the Postscript we prepared for a Japanese book that reprinted the chapter on the Zapatista movement from our book on Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy (2001). This is the first time this Postscript is posted in English. It’s a bit dated, and may not be precise enough for some readers, but many of its points remain timely.

* * *

That was the case in 1998. Here is a summary of what has occurred since then.[2] The most exciting, innovative phase of the Zapatista social netwar, which ran from 1994 to 1996, is long over. Since then, the Zapatista story has cycled several times between quiescence and renewed activism. It is a story still in search of an ending.

1999 and 2000 were comparatively quieter years for the Zapatistas and other parties to the conflict. Subcomandante Marcos spoke out less. The EZLN did not mount major new operations, in the field or in the streets. The Mexican army confined it to a small zone in Chiapas. Mexican officials kept a sharp eye on foreign activists. And most NGO activists began to turn their attention to other issues.

Inspired by the Zapatista experience, many U.S., European, and Asian activists shifted to organizing anti-globalization and pro-democracy protests elsewhere around the world. In particular, many U.S. and some foreign activists gathered to protest the WTO Ministerial Conference meeting held in Seattle in 1999. The ensuing “Battle of Seattle” became the next major model of social netwar.[3]

Meanwhile, most Mexican activists turned their attention to Mexico’s presidential election campaign of 2000. That proved consequential. The fact that the Zapatista netwar had aroused so many NGO activists had the interesting side-effect of helping create a good climate for voter mobilization, democratic competition, and electoral transparency throughout Mexico. And for the first time, the powerful ruling party -- the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) -- lost the presidential election, after major competition from the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and the rightist National Action Party (PAN). The surprising result was victory for the PAN candidate, Vicente Fox, who took office in December 2000. This victory became possible partly because the Zapatista netwar had opened up political space in Mexico for people to organize to oppose the monopolistic PRI regime.

Seeking reconciliation, President Fox quickly proposed a new peace initiative, released some imprisoned Zapatistas, and withdrew army forces from some positions in the rebel zone in Chiapas. Subcomandante Marcos and the EZLN, voicing both hope and doubt, responded by conducting a huge, dramatic “March for Indigenous Dignity” from Chiapas to Mexico City in early 2001. Their goal was to press the government, specifically Congress, for a new law on indigenous rights and culture that would grant more autonomy to local communities.

However, Congress rejected the EZLN’s draft and passed a diluted version of the law. The EZLN promptly renounced it, and marched back to the Chiapas countryside to install its own system of what it declared to be “autonomous communities” and “good government councils” based on indigenous traditions of self-governance. In addition, five small regional coordinating centers for health and education were eventually organized. The EZLN, as a military organization, claimed it was transferring local power and authority to these affiliated political bodies.

All this created an odd patchwork of political, economic, and military conditions in Chiapas. The scattered Zapatista communities, only 32 in number, existed amid a far larger number of indigenous communities that were aligned, to varying degrees, with the government or with a major political party. These communities received increasing amounts of economic aid from President Fox’s administration. But the Zapatista communities rejected government aid, seeking assistance instead from international agencies. Meanwhile, Mexican officials avoided going into the Zapatista zones, and the Mexican army kept a low profile. To its credit, the army responded innovatively to the Zapatista uprising, by granting new authority to small units while improving their dispersed deployment patterns, tactical mobility, and communications networks in the region. This amplified the army’s presence and the speed with which its units could respond to signs of unrest.

As a result, Chiapas remained the impoverished, isolated scene of an uneasy ceasefire and unofficial truce. There was occasional talk about restarting formal peace negotiations, but nothing formal developed. At least, armed conflict was not occurring, aside from some isolated atrocities apparently committed by pro-government paramilitaries. The social netwar had died down as well. Marcos and the EZLN still enjoyed a presence on the Internet; but many social activists remained more interested in anti-globalization and pro-democracy struggles elsewhere in the world.

For the next several years, Subcomandante Marcos and the EZLN laid low again. Indeed, Marcos -- whose family name was found to be Rafael Guillen, and who was identified as a former school teacher from another state -- turned to spend some of his time quietly overseas, often in Parisian salons, cultivating global civil-society actors for whom he remained an iconic figure. He seemed to neglect matters in Mexico, but he did co-author an odd detective novel published there. All this diminished his standing as an activist in the EZLN and in Mexico as a whole.

Lately, however, Subcomandante Marcos and the EZLN are making a new effort to generate a resurgence. And once again this has occurred on the eve of a presidential election. They began by publishing the “Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona” in June 2005. It reiterated their opposition to the destructive effects of capitalism and “neoliberal globalization.” It called for building “another way of doing politics” that is “from below and for below.” And it declared the following: Marcos and the EZLN will maintain their commitment to an “offensive ceasefire” despite the absence of a peace treaty. They will convene a new “intercontinental encounter” for activists from around the world, perhaps in 2007. They will organize a new leftist social movement, in which all people who are trying to rebel realize “that you are not alone.” And they will propose a new Constitution for Mexico.[4]

Next, the EZLN disbanded the civic front it had established in 1997, the Zapatista Front for National Liberation (FZLN). Now, the EZLN declared, it alone would be in charge of promoting “a new stage of civil zapatismo.”

This set the stage for Subcomandante Marcos and the EZLN to approach the 2006 presidential election cycle with a major new initiative: They created, in parallel to the official campaign, what they called “the Other Campaign.” Through the media and in small meetings convened across Mexico, they heaped scorn on traditional party politics and refused to back any party’s candidate. The rightist PAN candidate, Felipe Calderon, narrowly won the hotly disputed election.

So far, President Calderon has shown little interest in reaching a settlement with the Zapatistas. Meanwhile, they continue to conduct “the Other Campaign,” including on the Internet, as a vehicle for pursuing the goals announced in the “Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona.”[5] In some respects, the EZLN wants to use “the Other Campaign” to represent what is sometimes known as “the Other Mexico” -- the masses of poor, downtrodden, oppressed folk who have little voice and not truly benefited from modernization and liberalization.

* * *

That is the situation as we write today (March 2007). What do we conclude from these ten years of activities, since we wrote our original analysis?

First, in our view, the EZLN has not fared particularly well in Chiapas. It has wrested no new agreements from the government. Its control of its “autonomous zone” has slowly eroded. And its NGO allies have largely gone away. Nonetheless, the EZLN has persisted; it has held onto most of its initial territorial gains at the municipal level.

Second, the social netwar of 1994-1996 has died down, and nothing so significant has recurred in Mexico. The EZLN has continued to mutate from an armed insurgency into a rebellious but nonviolent radical-reformist movement. It now sees itself as conducting a “war against oblivion” and trying to “change the world without taking power.” It is focused mainly on traditional efforts at building coalitions with other groups. Moreover, the Zapatista movement as a whole -- that is, the EZLN plus its NGO allies -- is much smaller. Nonetheless, the EZLN can still attract some attention from NGO activists, and it still has a significant presence on the Internet at various Web sites. Thus, the prospect of a renewed social netwar lingers in the background, giving both the government and the EZLN reason to continue on a path toward a peaceful resolution of their differences.

Third, in retrospect it appears that the Zapatistas’ major initiatives are timed to Mexico’s presidential election cycle, every six years. Remember that the initial uprising occurred on January 1, 1994. At first, this date looked important because it was the day the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect. But it also marked the beginning of the year when President Carlos Salinas de Gortari’s term (1988-1994) would end, a national election would be held, and power would pass to his successor, President Ernesto Zedillo (1994-2000). No EZLN leader has ever said that this was a reason for beginning the uprising in 1994. But we see that the next two presidential election cycles -- in 2000 and 2006 -- were the next times that the Zapatistas shifted from being quiet to making a new effort at mobilization. This may be a sensible strategy for a dissident organization that is relatively weak, yet wants to maximize its leverage in the Mexican political context. This way it can reassert its presence and gain attention, while it waits for new opportunities to align itself with unrest elsewhere in Mexico (although, in the past ten years, only a few minor opportunities have arisen.)

Fourth, the Mexican government and army have become adept at constraining the Zapatistas within Mexico. In addition to containing the EZLN, they were routinely able to control and inhibit visits to Chiapas by foreign activists. The army also institutionalized the organizational innovations it used to deal with the armed uprising in 1994, notably by improving its own networking in order to counter the Zapatistas. The skillful responses of the Mexican government and military may prove instructive for authorities who may, sooner or later, have to deal with social netwars in other countries. The Zapatista movement was initially far more adept than the Mexican government and military at using information-age doctrines and technologies, but the government and military have learned as well.

Overall, then, the Zapatista story continues to unfold, and its ending is far from near or clear. The EZLN’s lower profile and the constraints imposed by the Mexican government leave little choice for the Zapatistas but to pursue a two-part strategy.[6] One part is to play a waiting game. This is especially true now that Subcomandante Marcos’s waning international prominence has reduced the EZLN’s chances of seizing the initiative alone once again. The Zapatistas may have to maneuver prudently for long periods -- mostly via ideas expressed on the Web, with a multitude of postings -- as they strive to protect their political space and wait for possible, even unlikely, opportunities to reassert their influence.

The second part of their strategy, in our view, is to build “parallel structures.” The Zapatistas stand no chance of gaining control of Mexico’s existing institutions at national or state levels. Indeed, it seems they have never aspired to do so. Instead, they appear to be pursuing a strategy that aims to create new organizations and/or coalitions, amid civil society, that can be used to displace or pressure the existing institutions. An indirect, lateral strategy of creating “parallel structures” -- even a “parallel polis” -- was used in the pro-democracy struggles in Eastern Europe in the 1980s, after this concept was espoused by an underground Catholic philosopher-activist, Vaclav Benda, in the 1970s in Czechoslovakia.[7] It is not clear that the Zapatistas are deliberately emulating the East European case -- as a leftist movement, they have other Marxist sources to draw on. But the growth of the information age, by facilitating social networking and online broadcasting, may make this strategy a sensible one for the Zapatistas.

* * *

Whatever befalls the Zapatistas in the future, their social netwar of 1994-1996 will remain a seminal model for (mostly) nonviolent social netwar elsewhere around the world.[8] Indeed, activists who have emulated the Zapatista example have often been successful at achieving their aims. In Asia, for example, the deepening of pro-democracy movements in the Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan and South Korea have been facilitated by the social-netwar paradigm, which has helped guide opposition movements into power in several countries. In Europe, a series of "color revolutions” -- empowered by organizational networking and netwar techniques -- has toppled authoritarian systems across a range of countries, from Serbia and the Ukraine to transcaucasian Georgia. In all these cases the Internet, the World Wide Web, and other information-age tools have proven crucial for the creation of powerful social and political forces. Activist networks have raised the price of political repression to high levels, and many authoritarians are giving way in the face of social netwar.

Even so, there are significant exceptions to the rule that activist networks will generally drive authoritarian leaders into submission, or at least acquiescence. In Burma, the military junta has figured out how to wage counternetwar by engaging in international propaganda campaigns and building a support network among multi-national corporations. Singapore, too, has shown adroitness in dealing with even the hint of a threat to authoritarian rule. The Singaporean government’s measured responses resemble how Mexico’s civil and military authorities dealt with the Zapatistas. And nearly two decades after the Tiananmen Square unrest, the government of the People’s Republic of China has shown a new aptitude for putting social networks on the defensive -- notably in its campaign against the Falun Gong. Each of these cases provides counterpoints to the idea that networks are somehow ultimately destined to sweep all before them.

The information age will continue to give rise to new cases of social netwar and counternetwar. But do these all have to be struggles where one side necessarily wins, and the other side loses? No. Civil-society activists and governments around the world are still learning how to take advantage of the new network forms of organization, as well as the new strategies and arrangements that are now possible. In these early years of the information age, there are likely to be many confrontations in which civil-society activists will use social netwar to press their demands regarding political democracy, economic justice, human rights, the environment, and poverty. But conflict is not the only prospect. In time, we expect that all parties will learn to develop new mechanisms, based on networks, to improve communication, coordination, and cooperation among government, market, and civil-society actors. This is already beginning to happen in a few cases where NGOs and corporations are collaborating on environmental matters.

With this more constructive possibility in mind, the Zapatistas merit continuing study, as they have provided a pioneering case of social netwar. It is important to keep watching what happens with them and the Mexican government, to see whether they can move beyond constant criticism and opposition, and help point the way to a future that benefits both nations and networks. We hope this will be the case.

Endnotes

1 The authors prepared this Postscript on their own. It reflects only their own views. They thank Harry Cleaver for insightful comments on a prior version, and for posting online many informative documents about the Zapatista movement.

2 To prepare this Postscript, we consulted articles in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. We also consulted web sites, such as the “ZNet Chiapas/Zapatista Crisis Page” (at http://www.zmag.org/chiapas1/index.htm), and “Zapatista Army of National Liberation” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Liberation. These sites have links to additional sites. Also see the guide called “Chiapas 95” at http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/chiapas95.html.

3 See Paul de Armond, “Netwar in the Emerald City: WTO Protest Strategy and Tactics,” in John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, MR-1382-OSD, 2001, Ch. 7, pp. 201-235 (online at http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1382/index.html). Also see Starhawk, Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising, Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2002. The text of this book is not posted online, but key ideas appear in Starhawk, “How We Really Shut Down the WTO,” December 1999, online at http://www.starhawk.org/activism/activism-writings/shutdownWTO.html.

4 From the “Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona” (June 2005), as posted at http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/SixthDeclaration.html.

5 From “The Other Campaign: Documents of the New Zapatista Initiative” as posted at http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/TheOtherCampaign.html.

6 We stress that this is our interpretation. No Zapatista leader has stated that this two-part strategy is being pursued.

7 See Vaclav Benda, “The Parallel ‘Polis’,” in H. Gordon Skilling and Paul Wilson, eds., Civic Freedom in Central Europe: Voices from Czechoslovakia, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991, Ch. 2, pp. 35-41. We thank Ted Coopman, at the University of Washington, for pointing this out. See Taso G. Lagos, Ted M. Coopman, and Jonathan Tomhave, “Parallel polis: Towards a theoretical framework of the modern public sphere and the structural advantages of the internet to foster parallel institutions,” paper presented at the Western States Communication Association convention, Seattle, WA, February 2007.

8 Recent writings on the Zapatista social netwar from a leftist perspective include Harry Cleaver, “Computer-Linked Social Movements and the Threat to Global Capitalism,” July 1999, posted at http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/polnet.html; and Harry Cleaver, “Deep Currents Rising: Some Notes on the Global Challenge to Capitalism,” September 2006, posted at http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/DeepCurrentsRisingFinal2.htm. Another interesting analysis of the netwar concept appears in W. Sean McLaughlin, “The use of the Internet for political action by non-state dissident actors in the Middle East, First Monday, vol. 8, no. 11, November 2003, online only at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_11/mclaughlin/index.html.

Useful discussions at other blogs about TIMN matters

[UPDATE — April 15, 2009: I’ve retitled, enlarged, and revised the original version of this post. It now focuses solely on TIMN matters. I’ve removed a comment that was here about an STA matter — “Can the past become as uncertain as the future?” — and will reintroduce it some other time.]

Googling around has enabled me to spot extensive posts and discussions about TIMN at a couple of unusual (for me) blogs: In Communicado, and The Elusive Wapiti. I relate a few highlights below.

These two new discussions add to the earlier useful discussions at the P2P Foundation and Global Guerrillas blogs (see earlier posts here). I’m also grateful for the plugs that TIMN has received in the interim at the blogs of Mark Safranski, Clay Spinnuzi, Jay Taber, and Shlok Vaidya.

In addition, I found a post about primitive / tribal societies at the Culture and Cognition blog that recommends an interesting 1980 paper by Richard Posner. The blog also gave me a passing opportunity to make a comment about information revolutions and the four TIMN forms that I’ve been intending to present as a proposition here anyway.

One pattern that suffuses all the discussions at all these blogs is a concern about the nature and role of the tribal form, both its bright and dark sides. This pattern — or concern — is all the more interesting in that it is growing across all sorts of ideological and other spectrums. And everywhere I go, it is heightened by perceptions of its links to the rise of the network form.

TIMN theory aside, concerns about the dark aspects of tribalism keep mounting. Today, it’s Somali pirates, Taliban warriors, and Mexican gangsters — who / what / where is next? Thus my latest favorite quote is from John Robb: “If you find yourself alone and naked in a global gun fight — tribe up!”

* * * * *

Extended discussion at In Communicado

The unusual blog In Communicado carried a good long post about TIMN this month (April), and we had a useful exchange that I’m reiterating here. I’m supposing that doing so will help continue clarifying aspects of the framework.

The blogger, Dhoa, ended the post with this thoughtful observation:

“At first, I am uncomfortable with the hierarchical implications of Ronfeldt’s framework, mainly due to the cited linear timeline on which the various forms emerged. The obvious fear in this is seeing tribal forms as primitive in light of networks, for example. And heavens above, are we tired of that!

. . . To me, the above screams Western ethnocentricity. Additionally, as one of the comments mentioned, tribal societies can keep a check on the anti-democratic nature of some of the other forms. A prime example of this is the international indigenous struggle, especially in light of the climate change issue.”

I appended a clarifying comment, as follows (with capitalizations fixed):

Googling enabled me to spot your long post about my TIMN work. I’m delighted. Since I’ve been slow lately to add new material about TIMN at my own blog, I thought I’d try to clarify a few matters here.

Yes, the TIMN framework treats tribes as the earliest major form of social organization. And that initially means primitive tribes, where the emphasis is on family kinship and related values. Even so, the tribal form remains essential and evolves in various ways throughout the entire TIMN progression. The importance of family and other kinship never goes away. But new expressions gain significance too. For example: As nation-states (hierarchical institutions) developed, the tribe form was -- and still is -- expressed in nationalism. Now that the development (or misdevelopment?) of markets has brought late capitalism, we see the tribe form expressed in brand loyalties and fashion trends. I’m still wondering what may be the tribal aspects of the rise of the new network form, but I don’t doubt that information-age expressions will arise. Issue loyalties among civil-society actors might be one.

I deal with some of this at greater length in a 2006 paper focused on the tribal form posted at:

http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/wr433/

As for being ethnocentric, I suppose I can be personally so at times [though let it be clear that the blogger was not calling me ethnocentric personally]. But the TIMN framework is another matter. It is not inherently ethnocentric; at least I am trying to make sure of that, and there is no reason for it to be so.

Analysts like Jay Taber and John Robb have been making good points about how the collapsing of hierarchies and markets may lead to a greater reliance on tribal and network forms of organization. That is consistent with the TIMN framework. My view differs somewhat from theirs (and theirs differ from each other’s too). But at least we are all reasoning in TIMN-related terms; that’s what I find helpful as I continue to try to develop (actually, more like discover) what this framework means.

Yes, the point is sound that tribal societies may sometimes help check anti-democratic tendencies stemming from the other forms. That is worth building on. But, I’m sorry to add, the tribal form does not always have such a bright character: there have been many instances, including in modern systems, where particular clans, aristocracies, old-boy networks, criminal gangs, etc. -- all tribal kinds of actors -- have had anti-democratic consequences. The TIMN framework is about the bright and dark sides of all the forms.

We did some additional chatting, but the above were the most substantive parts. I am grateful for the interest.

In the first version of this post, I had thought that was the end of it. But then Jay Taber and Mark Safranski (ZenPundit) jumped in and offered useful observations.

Mark made a good point that being tribal can be a source of strength that depends on its seeming primitiveness:

Tribalism endures because it is “primitive” — i.e. a simple, basic and highly *resilient* social structure. It weathers stress and deprivation by adapting where more complex and brittle social-political structures fail.

Jay added that tribes of all eras are tantamount, in a positive sense, to “ancient protector societies”:

As authentic political structures that served as the basis of organic democracy, tribes today have developed their own institutions and networks as shields against predatory markets. In this sense, the obligations of tribal membership in the modern world foster responsibilities that are pan-tribal, even cosmopolitan.

Dhoa then introduced a good point that size and scale matter. Which gave me an opening to reiterate that:

. . . it’s when migrants and other people from different tribes and clans start mingling in cities ages ago that state hierarchies start to be “needed” — at least, that’s one explanation. Laws start to be needed when so many people interact who are not kinfolk and thus can no longer rely just on customs.

* * * * *

Discussion at The Elusive Wapiti

Meanwhile I found another good long discussion from March at the blog of The Elusive Wapiti, which appears to have a fairly conservative political tone. The discussion raised a number of thoughtful points, particularly about what was happening to / with each of the forms these days, particularly in our own American society.

My comment was mostly this:

I agree that what happens at the tribal (T) level remains crucial throughout a society’s evolution. And its expressions change a lot over time too, as do the ways it may affect and infuse the other forms. The various remarks here about criminal gangs and fascist tendencies capture some of my worries in this regard.

I also sense — and am pleased you detect — that many T-level aspects of our American society are currently out of balance, if not out of whack. In my view, most of what goes in the “culture war” category of issues reflects this.

I’m not really a conservative as I gather many of you are, but I also don’t regard myself as really a liberal. So the details of my assessment might differ from yours. But the TIMN framework is meant to be non-ideological, and I hope to be specific about that in future posts over at my blog and in other writings, including by laying out specific indicators and measures.

To my final remark, the blogger offered this (elusive?) clarification: “Many of us here would probably be classified as conservatives, but — speaking mostly for myself here — we consider ourselves Liberals of the classical type.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile at the blog for Culture and Cognition

What caught my eye at the blog of the International Cognition and Culture Institute was a post regarding “What is a primitive society?” — a question posed and addressed in an article by Richard Posner that I’ve never heard of, but that deserves to be on standard readings lists about cultural anthropology and/or social evolution. Too bad, in my view, that he did not continue in this field. (His own blog, reflecting what he has ended up doing, famously, is here.)

Posner’s paper — “A Theory of Primitive Society, with Special Reference To Law,” Journal of Law and Economics, April 1980, pp. 1-53 — applies economic theory to understand primitive / archaic societies, especially their legal institutions. In Posner’s words,

It argues that many of the distinctive institutions of primitive society, including gift-giving and reciprocal exchange, customary prices, polygamy and brideprices, the size of kinship groups, and the value placed on certain personality traits, such as generosity and touchiness, can be explained as adaptations to uncertainty or high information costs. (p. 4)

Other adaptations he soon adds to the list include the denial of privacy, the obligation of sharing, and the importance of collective responsibility. His analysis focuses on information in part because “the costs of obtaining information are higher in primitive than in advanced societies” (p.5). The way people live in these societies — the adaptations he lists — reflect a constant quest for a kind of insurance. They are insurance mechanisms.

Thus, he concludes,

I have argued that these institutions are best understood as adaptations to the pervasive uncertainty and high information costs of primitive life, which create a demand for insurance that cannot be supplied through formal insurance markets and which in other ways directly and indirectly shape the values and institutions of primitive society. (p. 52)

The comment I left at the blog was this:

Posner’s explanation of “primitive” societies (what I call “tribes”) in terms of information is particularly interesting to me. What I would like to add is that, across the centuries, the rise of each major form of organization is associated with a different revolution in the information and communication technologies of the time.

The rise of the tribal form depended on a symbolic revolution: the emergence of language and early writing (runes, glyphs), enabling the storytelling and gossiping that is central to tribal cultures. The rise of the hierarchical institutional form — as in the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church, the absolutist states, and their vast administrative structures — reflected a mechanical revolution: the development of formal writing and printing, first penned script and later the printing press. This was important not only for keeping records and issuing commands, but also for inscribing laws that chiefdoms and states could apply to growing populations who were not kinfolk and often not well-known to each other. Next, the rise of the market form and its far-flung business enterprises was sped by the electrical technologies of the 19th century: the telegraph, telephone, and radio. Today’s spread of the decentralized, distributed network form extends from the digital revolution and its technologies, notably the Internet, fax machines, and cellular telephones, which are empowering civil-society associations around the world and across political spectrums.

This does not mean that tribes are solely ancient and primitive. There are numerous modern-day expressions of the tribal form that still exhibit the basic patterns that Posner and other analysts point out.

My comment, however pertinent as a proposition that spans all the TIMN forms, does not even begin to explore the richness and variety of Posner’s analysis of the tribal (T) form. Also, there is one curiousity I'd note about the main blog post: It reflected a sensitivity to Posner’s use of the term “primitive” — shades of the discussion at In Communicado.

Meanwhile — and to conclude this post almost where I began it — I’m wondering whether Posner’s kind of analysis can be applied to today’s tribalists. To what extent are those Somali pirates, Taliban warriors, and Mexican gangsters behaving like they do partly because of high information costs and high insurance needs? Or does the continuation of many of the classic adaptations have to be explained entirely differently now? Network dynamics again?

Baseball trilogy (2nd of 3): strategy — “Let’s first-and-third ‘em to death”

[UPDATE — October 12, 2009: I have finally finished and posted the third in my trilogy of posts on baseball. The first is over here, the second right here, and the third over here. Writing them has been fun. Onward.]

- - -

Most team sports exhibit military dynamics. Rugby amounts to a melee (the first major form of military organization and doctrine to take hold, ages ago), with some elements of mass and maneuver (the second and third major military doctrines to be developed). Football, the most military of sports, is basically a game of mass and maneuver. Soccer, basketball, and hockey have elements of mass and maneuver (and melees in the case of hockey, and at moments in basketball), but these sports — especially basketball — also demonstrate omnidirectional swarming by dispersed forces (which is just now emerging as a fourth major approach to military organization and doctrine). [See end-note for source.]

By comparison, baseball is not at all military. There is an offense and a defense. But there are no deployed forces mashing into each other. There is no clock to define urgency. And the fabled batter-pitcher duel is more meditative than military. Indeed, baseball’s slow-paced, pastoral, non-military nature is partly why it appeals to so many intellectuals.

Yet baseball manifests one of the most interesting situations for strategy and tactics in all of sports. And that situation is two men on base, at first and third, with one out. It’s not one man on base, since that reduces to whether or not he can be marched around. It’s also not when the offense has three on base — bases loaded — since, though exciting, that starts to narrow everybody’s options.

What’s so interesting about two men on base, especially at first and third with one out, is that the offense looks to be in a very strong situation, threatening to load the bases and/or score a run or two, even more. But curiously, the defense is not equivalently weakened; in some ways, it is strengthened. Both the offense and the defense now have expanded options. Facing two on base and a batter who may hit a pop fly or a weak (or better yet, a sharp?) ground ball, the defense actually has increased odds of gaining an out, and better yet a double play to end the inning. Sometimes, depending on how well the pitcher is doing and who bats next, the defense may deliberately opt to walk the next batter and load the bases, precisely to increase the odds of a double play. Meanwhile, the offense may be plotting to have its next batter bunt and probably be thrown out at first, in order to score the runner from third. Indeed, “let’s first and third ‘em to death” has been a saying among managers. As play pauses between pitches, both team’s managers come heavily into play as strategists; and covert communications via hand signals intensify all around the diamond.

No other sport commonly manifests this situation, where the enhanced position of the offense simultaneously enhances the potential of the defense (though football comes close when the offense drives into the red zone near the goal line, limiting the area the defense must protect). It’s partly why the underdog often stands a fighting chance — and why baseball has such an American essence.

This situation also speaks to a classic dynamic of grand strategy: the so-called security dilemma. Here, the steps that a major power takes to improve its own strength and security — everything from acquiring new weapons systems, to establishing new bases for operations abroad — risks motivating others to pursue offensive and defensive countermoves that end up exposing one to new risks and vulnerabilities, fraying one’s original efforts to improve security. Baseball, the least military of team sports, is the most highly attuned to reflecting this classic dilemma of grand strategy.


[Text is mostly from draft of op-ed published in 2000. The opening, TIMN-derived distinction about four forms of military doctrine and organization — melee, mass, maneuver, and swarming — is from a 2000 study on Swarming and the Future of Conflict, though it first appeared in a 1998 journal article. My thanks to Bob Bridges and Kevin McCarthy for comments that led to edits. Last edited on April 21, 2009.]

Why Mexico may NOT fall apart — and a way to think about it

[UPDATE — July 8, 2014: While I ceased updating this post years ago, it still gets some traffic. So I thought I should mention a paper I just recently came across that provides additional discussion about the nature and role of the camarilla system in Mexico. It’s Joy Langston’s An Empirical View of the Political Groups in México: The Camarillas (CIDE, 1997). Yet, I do have questions about the paper’s analysis, and I’ll hope for clarification someday.

1. Re. historical background — My generation of American researchers acquired our first substantial knowledge of the camarilla system from Frank Brandenburg's classic book The Making of Modern Mexico (1964). It was oriented mainly to discussing the old Cardenista and Alemanista camarillas, but nobody offered a better analysis of the concept for decades (until Roderic Camp). While Langston’s paper does good work on 1980s-1990s trends, I was hoping for better historical background on the nature and evolution of the concept over those foundational decades.

2. Re. conceptualization — Langston’s paper starts on p. 1 by stating that “Camarillas are groups of public employees” — a definition to which the paper adheres. Yes, camarillas have long been mainly about public-sector elites. But my understanding has always been that camarillas often bridged into private-sector elites as well, sometimes via business favors and public-private deals. The pro-business Alemanista camarilla was like that; some later ones too. If that has changed, it would be a significant departure.

3. Re. recent trends — In the 1980s when I was still working on U.S.-Mexico relations, I’d hear that camarillas were declining as a political factor, partly (mainly?) because the old single-party was giving way to a multi-party system and few great political families were still operating. Accordingly, individual leaders, their equipos (teams), and institutions per se were becoming more important. Even so, it still remains my impression that camarilla-like dynamics (more distinctive, more clannish than abstract network-like dynamics) remain significant today.]

[UPDATE — September 15, 2010:  At the risk of further cluttering these updates to an old post, I want to note that Mexican specialists keep adding significant new analyses to the topic at hand.  Two that have shown up on blogs and that should not be missed are as follows:

Alfonso Reyes, “Plan Mexico? Towards an Integrated Approach in the War on Drugs,” posted at the Small Wars Journal blog, September 14, 2010.  His historical sections show that, even back in the 1920s, “[T]he illegal drug trade did not create corruption among Mexican authorities. On the contrary, the illegal drug trade was just one of the many illegal activities that corrupt officials were running in their states and which they were more or less permitted, even encouraged, to do given the political arrangements of the day.” (p. 8)  His sensible conclusion is that “Finally, the Mexican government should keep in mind that a strong state presence is not achieved just through law enforcement. . . . [T]he Mexican state has to improve its performance at all levels and in all areas of state responsibility: nothing short of a revitalization of the social contract is going to change the current situation. Failure to improve the effectiveness of the state and failure to build or rebuild the social contract will lead to power vacuums that will continue to be filled by new or revitalized criminal organizations.”  (p. 35)

Diego Valle-Jones, “Statistical Analysis and Visualization of the Drug War in Mexico,” posted at his Food and Fishing blog, June 15, 2010.  His analysis tends to indicate that one cartel in particular may have inside tracks.  Indeed, “Its not pretty when a state gives up its monopoly on the use of violence, and clearly there won't be peace until a new equilibrium between the cartels is reached or the Sinaloa Cartel becomes the only cartel operating in Mexico.”]

[UPDATE: May 26, 2010: I suspended updating this post months ago, but an article has recently appeared that is too relevant to leave out: a special NPR story on "Mexico Seems To Favor Sinaloa Cartel In Drug War," by John Burnett , Marisa Peñaloza, and Robert Benincasa. It speaks to a kind of networking that I had in mind as a possibiity when I wrote this post, even though I was not explicit about it.]

[UPDATE: August 26, 2009: See updates added today to prior post on Mexico’s potential being plagued by multiple netwars.]

[UPDATE — May 15, 2009: Expressing the view of a Mexican intellectual living in Mexico, a new article by Sergio Aguayo, “Mexico: living with insecurity,” posted at openDemocracy.net, provides a contrast (a corrective?) to the op-ed noted below by Enrique Krausze. Aguayo’s article shows how tentative is personal security for individuals and their families in Mexico City, and how some key elite networks remain preoccupied more with enhancing personal power and position than with improving public security and safety.]

[UPDATE — May 11, 2009: A new article by George Grayson, “Mexican Governors and Mayors Place Ex-Military in Public Safety Posts,” Hemisphere, May 11, 2009, provides excellent data and analysis about the increasing appointment of ex-military officers to sensitive posts at state and local levels. One reason is network-oriented in that “The former officers may be more adept at cooperating with their active duty counterparts against drug cartels.” At the same time, Grayson holds to the view that “Mexico is far from becoming a failed state as some Cassandras claim.” Also holding to this view is an excellent article in yesterday’s New York Times by Larry Rohter, “The Crisis Came. Mexico Didn’t Fail. Surprised?” Meanwhile, RAND has issued a reprint of a balanced article by Brian Jenkins, "Could Mexico Fail?"]

[UPDATE — May 1, 2009: RAND has just issued a report on Security in Mexico: Implications for U.S. Policy Options, plus a summary research brief. As one option, the report calls for U.S. policy to: “Engage in a strategic partnership with Mexico that emphasizes reform and longer-term institution building.” I’ve also just found that the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute issued an impressive report a few months ago, The United States and Mexico: Towards a Strategic Partnership (January 2009), that provides many similar, wider-ranging, often more detailed recommendations, likewise focused on institution building. Yet, many points in both reports are implicitly about networks: e.g., bridging coordination gaps and building consultative partnerships across all levels of government, strengthening interagency cooperation and planning, and developing cross-border collaborations among state, market, and civil-society actors. Thus, while the two reports show that institution-building is currently the hot concept, my view remains that network-building may now be a more advisable, illuminatinig concept for analyzing and addressing some matters.]

[UPDATE — April 26, 2009: In a new overlap with my key points, John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Plazas for Profit: Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency, Small Wars Journal, April 26, 2009, conclude, among other recommendations, that “the US must engage both informal Mexican governing networks and help construct new cross-border partnerships that can act as policy shops for coordinating policy response and military/law enforcement cooperation against the cartels.”

[UPDATE — April 22, 2009: There's a good, balanced, earlier post on "Helping Mexico Help Itself," at Shannon O'Nell's LatinIntelligence blog, beginning February 24, 2009. However, her policy prescription is a standard one — "building institutions" — and networking barely gets noted.

[UPDATE — April 19, 2009: There have been interesting follow-up discussions about this post at two other blogs — in “Point–Counterpoint on Mexico,” at Mark Safranski’s ZenPundit, beginning March 31, and in “Building Networked Force Structure in Mexico,” at Adam Elkus’s Rethinking Security, beginning April 7. Now that I’m finally able to add comments at my own blog, I’ve quoted selected materials from these discussions in the comments section below this post.]

* * *

I’ve never seen so many American analysts and journalists sounding alarms about Mexico — most for good reasons, others for their own agendas. And it’s true, parts of Mexico have turned awfully violent, barely governable. Government controls have weakened, and security trends are adverse. Domestic terrorism and insurgency are not presently the problem; it’s the extreme crime and corruption, driven by the drug cartels and other criminal gangs.

In a previous post here, I showed that criminalization and a “stuck system” were likely for Mexico, and interlaced netwars remain a possibility. I have nothing new to add to the latest alarmist accounts; it looks as though all the dire trends and scenarios are being spotted. According to them, Mexico is headed for major instability, even collapse, with a failed or at least hollow state. (Recent analyses and round-ups in this vein include stimulating postings by John Robb at Global Guerrillas, John Sullivan and Adam Elkus at Red Team Journal, Jeff Vail at his blog, Stephen Meiners at STRATFOR, and Mark Safranski at ZenPundit.) [UPDATE — March 30, 2009: Also see the entries by Brian Jenkins and Samuel Logan in response to the question "Mexico: Failing State?" posed March 23 at the National Journal blog for its national security experts.]

Yet, I’m struck that long-time American experts who specialize on Mexico are not providing counter-arguments. A few Mexicans are, lately Enrique Krauze. But no Americans I know of (though I’ve not searched exhaustively).

Shouldn’t analysts and journalists who specialize on Mexico be doing a better job of wondering whether and why the growing alarmism may be wrong — again?

When I worked as a specialist on Mexico, I experienced three or four periods when Mexico seemed to be on the verge of instability, in particular:

• In 1968, at the time of the student uprising and its military suppression (I was then a graduate student studying in Mexico City).
• During 1984-8, when a few U.S. government analysts claimed that Mexico was about to collapse due to multiple economic, political, and other crises.
• In 1994-5, when the Zapatista uprising raised new specters of widespread insurgency, if not terrorism.
  

Each time Mexico remained stable and recovered. And it did so mostly for reasons that American analysts had not understood or anticipated well at the time — including American experts on Mexico who did not buy into the alarmism.

In these three instances, the key stabilizing factor turned out to be some kind of social or organizational network that American analysts were barely aware of:

• In 1968, it was intra-elite networking that revolved around the mysterious camarilla system (or so I think, though I was just a grad student then).
• In the mid 1980s, it was familial and other social networks that cushioned the effects of unemployment and other economic displacements.
• In 1994, it was the roles played by newly-formed networks of human-rights and other activist NGOs, first in calming the Zapatista scene, later in monitoring the 1994 presidential election campaign.

Conditions in Mexico look worse than ever this time around — much worse, not just along the U.S. border, but everywhere that the drug cartels are powerful. So I'm not suggesting optimism, but rather a search for additional factors that may moderate the equations of gloom.

What might keep Mexico from disintegrating this time? My guesstimate is that networks will be the decisive factor again. And the networks that will matter most this time will be:

1. Informal intra-elite social networks that reflect what’s left of the old camarilla dynamic.
2. Cross-border organizational networks for U.S.-Mexico security (military, police, intel) cooperation.
   

Regarding the second point, I have little to say today. I’ve (we’ve) already said a lot elsewhere in connection with the proposition that “it takes networks to fight networks.” Exactly how to apply that to U.S.-Mexico cooperation is going to be an increasingly important challenge. In my view, Secretary Hilary Clinton used exactly the right word: “co-responsibility.” It’s a crucial concept for this awful problem. And working it out may spell the difference between failure and success along the border. These kinds of networks matter a lot more now than they did in the other alarmist periods mentioned above.

Instead, I'm going to elaborate on my first point, about camarillas. The term usually means circle, clique, or even faction. But no single word reflects their nature. They are not interest groups the way Americans may think. A camarilla is more like a fluid, informal, political clan, clustered around an ambitious leader who is on the rise — a hierarchical, clannish, “big-man” network. Internal relationships tend to be patron-client and mentor-disciple, and to depend on mutual obligation. The goal is to pull each other up a system’s levels. It is like a sub rosa team on the hunt, constantly scheming and maneuvering, willing to share and trade information with anyone that offers advantages. And the ultimate spoils are positions — it’s a clannish system geared to near-term patronage, not long-term policymaking.

Ideally, the makeup of a camarilla is rarely consistent except for a commitment to the leader’s rise. Indeed, a camarilla should have members from diverse political, professional, ideological, and other backgrounds — even criminal, if that can help. Whereas Americans may tend to seek uniformity in building alliances and coalitions, Mexicans may prefer diversity. And that’s because a camarilla’s activities depend on being able to tap and trade information from all sectors of society. Camarillas often have loose boundaries that allow for myriad, multiplex connections elsewhere; an ambitious individual may even belong to more than one camarilla.

I am far from certain that camarillas are still a major factor — I just don’t know that much about Mexico anymore. The camarilla system had its heyday when Mexico was run by the PRI, essentially as a one-party system. Camarillas were then the informal, personalistic structures that made the formal institutions work — and not work. Today, now that Mexico has evolved to more like a three-party system (PAN, PRD, PRI) in which ideology matters more than before, these informal intra-elite structures surely operate quite differently and may be less significant. But I gather that camarilla dynamics still matter, and I think they're worth wondering about, especially if there is evidence of links between criminal gangs and officials or other elites who may play on those links for political gain. Camarilla dynamics can cut in favor of the alarmist scenarios, but they may also turn matters in positive, stabilizing directions too.

Those are my principal points for this post. I’d advise most readers (if there are any) to stop here. For those few who may want to know more, I’ve added three appendixes, two of which provide excerpts from some very old writings. I add them in order to emphasize that we are dealing with deep histories and deep logics that have to do with the enduring powerful nature of the T part of TIMN in some societies.

* * * * *

Appendix A: The Camarilla System and Elite Cohesion [circa 1988]

To say more about the nature of intra-elite networking in Mexico, I’ve dredged up old material I wrote in a paper long ago for a book chapter somewhere — David Ronfeldt, Whither Elite Cohesion in Mexico: A Comment (1988). I know it’s old, but it’s about all I’ve got. For a recent analysis about the continuing relevance of the camarilla system, see Roderic Ai Camp’s book Politics in Mexico: The Democratic Consolidation (2006).

At least my old paper offers an illuminating comparison to the dowreh system in Iran. The subsection on it was based on writings by James Bill and Marvin Zonis. That this kind of analysis is still pertinent is evident in a recent article by Abbas William Samii, “The Iranian Nuclear Issue and Informal Networks,” Naval War College Review, Winter 2006.

Brazil is said to have a similar system called panhelinha (see writings by Howard Wiarda). News accounts I’ve seen lately about the nature of some powerful families/clans in Afghanistan and El Salvador indicate that this may be a common cultural phenomenon worldwide that Americans have not understood well. If so, it adds further light to the significance of the T part of my TIMN work. It also helps explain the roots of corruption — and why corruption, especially that which involves nepotism or smuggling, has such a natural fit in some societies.

Here is the except from what I wrote in 1988. Remember that this is from an era when Mexico had essentially a single-party political system (the PRI), and was still a decade away from evolving into a three-party system (PRI, PAN, PRD).

For decades [the 1920s-1980s], Mexico has had a phenomenally cohesive ruling elite known as the “revolutionary family”. Its outstanding feature used to be its ability to encompass a wide range of personalities, interests, sectors, and ideological tendencies. The diversity of the family's membership sometimes gave way to serious infighting, but a broadly shared commitment to principles of balance, equilibrium, and mutual accommodation generally worked to preserve elite cohesion. The durability of the family was even thought to involve a “pendulum” whereby different political “wings” would take turns alternating in power across presidential terms. In its classic period during the 1940s-1960s, the family was renowned for its most prominent wings, the Cardenista and Alemanista wings — the former being more identified with left of center, statist, centralist, populist, and nationalist positions, the latter more with right of center, conservative, federalist, and pro-private sector positions.

The result was a uniquely Mexican system that could occupy and control all relevant political space. To use a common spatial metaphor, the system was pyramidal. It was highly centralized. But it was also broad-based; it cut across diverse regions, classes, sectors, institutions, and ideologies. Both the centralizing and the cross-cutting capabilities of the system were important for elite cohesion.

The system not only dominated political space; it co-opted all relevant dimensions of political time. Individuals of leftist as well as rightist aspirations could easily coexist within the revolutionary family — not just because the system rewarded them for doing so, but more to the point, because each could persist in believing, regardless of circumstances at any given moment, that the long-range future of the system was wide open and could ultimately evolve in accord with his preferences, be those of the left or the right. So long as all future options seemed open, the system could retain the allegiance of all sorts of elites.

The term “revolutionary family” is still used to refer to Mexico's political elite. But so many changes have occurred that this family no longer exists in its classic form. The political elite is in the throes of a dramatic transformation. Elite cohesion, far from being assured, has become a major uncertainty. . . .

Analysts may often talk as though the Mexican political system is well organized into formal structures, like the Ministry of Interior, the PRI, and the labor sector. We may then talk as though political consensus and conflict occur in terms of such formal structures. Yet we know full well that what happens in Mexican politics often depends on underlying, informal, fluid interactions among the elite. It is easy to overlook this because it is difficult to do research in this area and know more than incidental anecdotes and gossip. Yet any effort to analyze the evolution of the elite and the prospects for continued cohesion must attend to the formation and interaction of informal groups like camarillas and equipos.

The camarilla system

In a word, camarillas may be defined as cliques. They typically consist of a key leader and the individuals who get grouped around that leader, usually with the objective of getting the leader and other members of the camarilla into higher positions of influence. The formation and cohesion of the group depend on personal ties and loyalties, as well as on mutual interests in acquiring and exercising political power and enhancing career mobility. The cohesion and effectiveness of the group also depend on the ability of the members to provide information and access that is useful to the group and its leader(s), and on the ability of the leader to provide rewards to the other members as he gains higher positions.

The group may have an ideological complexion. But ideology is not what holds it together, and too clear a definition may not be to the group's advantage. The group may also be identified with a particular institution. But again, institutional connections are not what hold such a group together, and too strong an institutional identification may not be to its advantage. The literature on Mexico is not as clear on this point as it should be — one reason for introducing the discussion about Iran in the next section. The more diverse the membership — that is, the more it cuts across personal, institutional, sectoral, ideological, and other lines, and the more it links varied interests together — the better the prospects for a camarilla.

As leaders compete with other leaders for power and other rewards, so do camarillas compete with other camarillas. In the Mexican system, no leader can advance without building his own grupito, along with connections to other important camarillas. Thus they, and not the individual leaders per se, have been called the “most basic membership units of power.” (Johnson) Accordingly, “Power struggles between various individuals within the official party are often conflicts between competing camarillas, rather than true ideological debates between the left and the right.” (Camp)

The camarilla system writ large resembles a vast web. An individual may belong (or at least have connections) to more than one camarilla. Each camarilla may seek links to other camarillas. Membership in any one camarilla may be fluid and shifting. The interconnections may thus result in “extended alliance networks” (Grindle) that suggest “wheels within wheels” (Padgett) or pyramids within pyramids (Camp).

By comparison, the equipo is a somewhat different phenomenon. In a word, it means “team” and refers to those trusted, confidential persons, usually employees, who work as staff for a particular leader, usually a high-ranking office-holder who needs able advisers and aides. A high-ranking leader must have a good equipo, but members of the equipo may or may not belong to the leader's camarilla.

Camarillas and equipos are thus crucial mechanisms for building vertical and horizontal alliances in Mexico. They are “of fundamental importance in ensuring and maintaining elite cohesion in Mexico.” (Grindle) Functioning properly, they embody the principles of accommodation and equilibrium that have long held the political system together. Policymaking processes within the government and the PRI, the ability of one leader to influence another, and ultimately Mexico's political stability, may depend more on the workings of these informal elite structures than on the formal institutions per se. . . .

Similarity to the dowreh system in Iran

Mexico is not the only country where elite politics revolve around informal groups that take shape around around key individuals and connect together into vast web-like networks. Elsewhere in Latin America, Colombia and Brazil reportedly have informal, group-based systems similar to Mexico's. However, the system to which I will call attention lies farther afield. The literature on the dowreh (or dawrah) system in Iran in the early 1970s often sounds like it could be describing Mexico's camarilla system. Moreover, that literature makes points about the dowreh system that seem useful for better understanding the camarilla system.

In a word, dowreh means clique — more literally, circle, ring, or cycle — and refers to a “small group of people...who organize about some common purpose and meet on a regular basis.” (Zonis) Dowrehs are designed to build and reinforce personal ties. In politics, their purpose is to further the members' careers in a system where traditions are strong, channels to power are personal and informal, institutions are weak, and overt political activity is impossible or risky.

The dowreh system helps advance and protect personal interests by plugging individuals (and their groups) into diverse communications channels and information networks — the more the better. Ideally, an individual should hold several positions and jobs at the same time. He should then belong to, or be in contact with, several dowrehs at the same time. For its part, a dowreh should have a member located in each key ministry or other sector, encompass all shades of opinion, and be represented in all camps. Important families should act like dowrehs. In this way, the dowreh can help its members to move up if a break comes, to survive if things change to their detriment.

To Western eyes, dowrehs may seem composed of strange, unlikely, and even contradictory assortments of individuals: perhaps old-style politicians as well as young technocrats, merchants as well as bureaucrats, leftists as well as rightists, and individuals from disparate regions and classes. But that is precisely a strength in this highly personalistic system. The deliberate diversity of membership helps position the dowreh and its members to collect information from all directions and take advantage of contacts and opportunities wherever they may arise. It is natural in Iran for an individual to cultivate multiple loyalties and keep shifting position, and for dowrehs to be elastic and constantly in flux. Indeed, there may be no clear distinction, for either individuals or dowrehs, between who are the moderates and pragmatists,and who are the radicals and ideologues — a dowreh may need both, and an individual may shift from one stance to the other depending on the circumstances.

Personalism may be the most important cultural or psychological factor that explains the tenacity of the traditional dowreh system — but it is not the only such factor. Bill and Zonis found that the system results from, and compensates for, the constant climate of tension, insecurity, uncertainty, cynicism, distrust, dissimulation, intrigue, exploitation, and avoidance of responsibility in which the elites work. The sense of uncertainty and insecurity was most evident among the younger generation of elites in the early 1970s, with the alienation from traditional personalistic politics being most evident among new technocrats (who would compensate by looking outside the system — abroad — for support and allies).

The dowreh system, difficult as it may be for Americans to understand, is inherently designed to provide balance and equilibrium and facilitate control and co-optation among competing elites. When working properly, it serves to distribute power — it inhibits excessive concentration and splinters heavy opposition. By keeping politics hidden, it serves to avoid open conflict and confrontation. And because no demands are ever totally rejected or refused, it promises that individuals or groups may eventually have a new opportunity to recover, advance, and circulate.

A few implications of the comparison

To be sure, Mexico is not Iran; any similarity of their elite systems does not necessarily imply an Iranian-like future for Mexico. There are big differences between the two countries. For example, traditional cultural and religious forces are stronger in Iran, whereas formal institutions and political parties are stronger in Mexico. Personalism — a key factor behind both the dowreh and the camarilla systems — takes different forms in each country; patron-client attachments are more important and durable in Mexico. The two countries' political cultures reflect differences in their Islamic and Catholic backgrounds. . . .

The similarity of the Mexican to the Iranian elite system also helps call attention to some interactions between elite change and institutional change. Traditional systems like the camarilla and the dowreh appear to work best when formal political institutions are relatively weak and far from modern. Institutional modernization, by compartmentalizing elites and requiring them to define themselves more precisely, can interfere with the fluidity and flexibility required by the traditional elite systems. Where modernization is occurring and formal institutions are gaining strength, then such elite systems seem best suited to corporatism as a way to build a broad-based (and purportedly democratic) but nonetheless highly centralized (and therefore authoritarian) system. If the formal structures of power weaken drastically, then power struggles, policy outcomes, and political stability may depend largely on who can make best use of the traditional informal mechanisms of elite interaction until institutional power is restored. But if at the same time the traditional mechanisms of elite interaction and cohesion have lost their flexiblity and vitality, and/or if extreme fragmentation and polarization have taken hold, then it will be very difficult to restore the established institutions as the decisive actors.

The similarities between the dowreh and camarilla systems show that elite cohesion may depend on the ability of leaders to form highly diversified alliances that may seem contradictory and incompatible at first sight, but where the contradictions are really quite compatible and to mutual advantage. The analyses of the dowreh system illuminate that where personal loyalties can be counted on, such alliances enhance a group's prospects by plugging it into a broad range of communication networks, information sources, and rival decision centers. As noted earlier, Mexico's classic revolutionary family, and the camarillas comprising it, long embodied such alliances. The family had strong centralizing and cross-cutting abilities that enabled it to occupy all relevant political space. And it could incorporate elites who had different ideological (i.e., time) orientations, partly because of widespread beliefs that the future possibilities and policy options of the system remained open regardless of present circumstances.

This is not the case with today's elite in Mexico. The principles that guided the classic camarilla (and dowreh) system do not appear to be working very well anymore. However this should be explained — whether it owes to shifts within the elite or broader forces of social change — the centralizing tendencies within the elite and the key institutions have become excessive, and some groups comprising and competing within the elite seem to have lost the ability and the interest to cut across diverse personal, ideological, sectoral, and other lines. In addition, a sense seems to have spread, both in ideological and personal terms, that the system's long-range future options are not so open anymore. Members of the elite have begun operating according to much narrower spatial and temporal horizons.

* * * * *

Appendix B: The Growth of Organized Smuggling [circa 1992]

What follows is an excerpt from an analysis we did long ago about the rise of organized smuggling networks. Though dated, the analysis shows that these networks tend to be deeply embedded in Mexico, partly because of the nature of camarillas and other kin-like systems. The analysis also shows that the history of relationships between criminal organizations and government personnel runs a lot deeper than today’s write-ups reveal when they keep focusing on the Zetas. (But, for a good recent analysis of them, see Samuel Logan, “Los Zetas: Evolution of a Criminal Organization,” International Relations and Security Network, posted March 11, 2009.)

Here’s my excerpt from Peter H. Reuter and David Ronfeldt, Quest for Integrity: The Mexican-U.S. Drug Issue in the 1980s (1992, pp. 12-14):

Within the limits, it appears that smuggling was not regarded in Mexico as being inherently criminal or “outside” the system. Indeed, major smuggling operations often became embedded in that system. In the mid-1970s, tens of thousands of peasants participated in marijuana and poppy cultivation and trafficking, particularly in Sinaloa. In the late 1980s, the “traffickers [were] increasingly viewed in the countryside as modem Robin Hoods, who finance hospitals, schools, and churches in a time of crisis, and who defy an unpopular US-made ‘law and order’ that protects rich American consumers and producers, and punishes underprivileged Mexican peasants.”

Smuggling enterprises, like many Mexican business enterprises, tend to be family- and region-based. Extended family ties, along with equally extended political and social kinship (compadrazgo) ties, assure that no major enterprise can operate in isolation from society and politics. Any enterprise that needs respect and protection can probably obtain it. A leader can eventually make contact, directly or indirectly, with almost anybody he wants. Once an operation gets well established, elite political cirdes or cliques (camarillas) at the local and national levels may begin including individuals who have contacts with the smugglers, if not the smugglers themselves.

Elite coalitions in Mexico normally include what, to American eyes, are incredibly diverse, contradictory tendencies. In the United States, it is normal for like-minded individuals to band together. But in Mexico, the camarilla system works best when the individuals in a clique cut across diverse ideological, institutional, professional, and other lines. This permits the coalition to tap into as many sources of information, power, and wealth as possible. Major smuggling enterprises cannot be ignored in such a system. Moreover, from a traditional Mexican nationalist perspective, a smuggler who sells to Americans but is anti-American and keeps his money in Mexico may be more respectable, and less suspect in terms of nationalist credentials, than a businessman who admires and works for Americans in Mexico….

The proposition is sometimes voiced, particularly in Mexico, that the narcotics boom since the mid 1980s resulted largely from the oil bust in the early 1980s. According to this line of argument, the oil boom in the late 1970s spread funds throughout the government-PRI apparatus, increased the incomes of the middle and upper classes, and whetted the appetite for corruption at high levels. When the economy plunged, some individuals and offices turned to exploiting the drug business and allowed it to expand as a major new source of wealth at the time.

But this is too facile an explanation. It appears that Mexico's major smuggling enterprises — for narcotics and illegal aliens going North, and for automobiles and other items going South — were largely organized in the mid- and late 1970s. The oil boom and bust may have facilitated their expansion, but they were already on their way to consolidation. Narcotics production and trafficking in Mexico were not spurred by the decline in the oil-driven economy, but by the continued demand in the U.S. drug market, along with Mexico's natural advantages. Even if the oil boom and strong economic progress had continued, Mexico would probably still be a major supplier of narcotics to the U.S. market. Besides, the regions in which marijuana and poppy cultivation occur were relatively untouched by the oil boom.

Another proposition argues that narcotics production and smuggling develop as a result of poverty and underdevelopment. To some extent, this assessment is true, but again it is an oversimplification that misses important points. Most of the major smuggling enterprises are technologically and organizationally sophisticated. They may be filled with crude characters, but their operations rest on the latest advances in air and ground transportation, information and communication systems, financial operations, and, in the case of narcotics, weaponry. Such organizations exhibit functional specializations and complex networks that are not “underdeveloped.”

After the termination of the U.S. bracero program in 1965, smuggling of aliens into the United States was conducted by adventurous loners who had little concern for security and by small family-based operations. But the growth of and competition for new business, the increasing importance of operational skill and security, and the shift from agricultural areas to cities as the destination of many aliens created a need for larger, better organized operations. Thus organized smuggling developed in the 1970s, and today it includes multimillion-dollar businesses, many of which are still based on families, each with its own turf. But they are functionally specialized operations, with different people serving as recruiters, organizers, guides, and credit collectors, and with staff on both sides of the border. Much of the smuggling is now done on credit, a phenomenon that emerged in the late 1970s.

Organized drug smuggling developed in a somewhat parallel manner, but with a particularly pernicious manifestation of institutional corruption and complicity. During the 1970s, the police forces under the Office of the Attorney General (PGR), which had overall charge of the anti-drug campaign, remained quite professional. But a powerful office in the Government Ministry, the Federal Security Directorate (DFS), along with its police forces, fell into league with major drug traffickers. One interviewee suggested that the DFS's involvement with drugs may have grown out of “dirty war” operations that the DFS conducted against guerrillas and terrorists —e.g., the guerrilla groups led by Genaro Vazquez Rojas and Lucio Cabañas, the urban terrorist group known as the 23rd of September Communist League — in the early and mid-1970s in the states of Guerrero, Jalisco, and Sinaloa. According to this speculation, the DFS resorted to using local drug producers and traffickers as operatives, exchanging tolerance of their criminal activities for assistance with paramilitary operations. After the armed leftist groups were wiped out in the late 1970s, the DFS personnel went into business with the drug traffickers. Whatever the explanation, it became evident by 1985, following the kidnap-murder of Enrique Camarena, that the DFS had been in league with the traffickers; largely as a result of U.S. pressures, the agency was disbanded.

* * * * *

Appendix C: Mexican Periodicals and Blogs on the Internet

I have no desire to become an expert or specialist on Mexico again. But out of curiousity, I browsed to see what Mexican periodicals and blogs are now on the Internet.

Leading daily newspapers: Lots are online. One of particular note is Reforma, at http://www.reforma.com/.

Key weekly and monthly journals:

• Este País, at http://www.estepais.com/inicio/index.php
• Letras Libres, at http://www.letraslibres.com/
• Metapolítica, at http://www.metapolitica.com.mx/
• Milenio, at http://www.milenio.com/
• Nexos, at http://www.nexos.com.mx/
• Proceso, at http://www.proceso.com.mx/

Blogs: I’ve found only one active blog in/on Mexico that relates to this post: Medios México. A blog that had dealt with security and military matters has evidently gone away.

If anyone has suggestions to add, please leave a comment.

Onward.

Millenarian terrorism — an STA perspective (3 of 4): modern parallels to chiliasm, importance of spatial orientations

[UPDATE — August 30, 2009: See a very interesting post titled “Apocalyptic Vision: Guest Post by Charles Cameron” at Mark Safranski’s ZenPundit blog, August 27, 2009. The post, the first I’ve seen anywhere on this important topic for many months, focuses on the rise of Mahdism and other millenarian expectations, in the Middle East and around the world. A comment by Charles also points to some informative new writings. I thank Charles and Mark for their recognition of my own post’s efforts to contribute from here. And I note that I still intend to do Part 4, eventually, partly along the lines of the comment I left at the Zenpundit post.]

Prior posts laid out why, at least in European history, some fringe groups turned to violent, fanatical kinds of religious chiliasm or revolutionary millenarianism. These groups arose from a sense that absolute disaster had befallen people’s lives — that life had gone far more awry than frustration-aggression and relative-deprivation models capture.

Why is this interesting to revisit? Because some of the most dangerous terrorist groups of our times — such as Al Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo, not to mention extreme right-wing American Christian patriot elements — resemble the millenarians of old.

For years I have occasionally tried to urge, in minor ways, that analysts and strategists inquire into the parallels between those old Christian and Jewish chiliasts and today’s Islamic jihadi radicals. At first, I was told that Islam had not generated true counterparts. But more recently, I have heard that some scholars do find parallels. The scholars I've learned of include R. Scott Appleby, David Cook, Hakim Hazim (with Robert Bunker), Richard Landes, Laurent Murawiec, James Rinehart, and Catherine Wessinger. I’ve scanned some writings that are easily accessible online, but only heard a bit about other writings. Rinehart’s book Apocalyptic Faith and Political Violence: Prophets of Terror (2006) is, I’m told, a particularly relevant read. [I thank Spencer Skaggs of New World Global Outlook for pointing Rinehart out.]

This is apparently a knotty, controversial, inconclusive area for scholars and other analysts. There are problems of comparing earlier situations and religions to contemporary Islam, and then within Islam, of separating Sunni and Shia strains. There are also problems of interpreting particular texts. And then there are further problems of determining where terms like jihadi, millenarian, and apocalyptic do and do not apply; for there are situations where one term may apply but not the other(s) — there are jihadis who are not truly millenarians or apocalyptics, and vice-versa.

Even so, I’m sticking with my presumption that not enough is being done in this vein.

One of my original inspirations, Barkun, wrote follow-up papers (1977, 1999, 2002) to deepen analysts’ understanding of disaster models, the overlaps between millenarian and terrorist mentalities, and some implications for policy and strategy. For example, he would point out that:

[T]argets that make sense to a millennialist may not make sense to someone else. The reverse is also true: what you or I might think would be a “natural” target might seem irrelevant to someone operating from within a millenarian belief system. . . . We need to be careful as well about making hard-and-fast distinctions between symbolic targets and infrastructural targets, since what may appear symbolic to one party may be part of the infrastructure to another. (Barkun, 1999)

The thinking I have just described recapitulates a process common among extremist and millenarian groups. The group develops a detailed picture of future developments, particularly those associated with the behavior of evil forces. The government, ignorant of these expectations, acts in ways that resemble what the group anticipates. The coincidence of behavior and ideology has two effects: First, it legitimizes the ideology by validating the predictions. Second, the group, now convinced that movement towards a final battle has accelerated, adopts what it considers essential defensive measures. If the cycle is not broken, the result will be a spiral of provocative action and violent response. (Barkun, 2002)

That’s insightful — and could be helpful for understanding Islamic millenarians. But Barkun would shift to focus on right-wing and other kinds of extremists here in America, notably in Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement (1997).

Meanwhile, the scholar who gained the lead in writing about religious terrorism — Mark Juergensmeyer, in Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence (2000) — was articulate about terrorists thinking they were engaged in a “cosmic battle.” But he seemed to be unaware of the disaster model, and to prefer frustration-aggression and deprivation explanations. Elsewhere, a scholar-strategist who offered valuable insights about jihadi mindsets — Michael Vlahos, notably in a study about Terror’s Mask: Insurgency Within Islam (2002) — turned to claim it is U.S. policy that has been so messianic, millenarian, and apocalyptic.

Since my knowledge about religious terrorism remains spotty, my presumption may be flawed that the Cohn-Barkun view deserves renewed, expanded attention. Nonetheless, I proceed here as though my thinking is on track. The earlier posts benefited from the fact I drafted most of the text years ago, based on a deliberate reading-and-writing effort. But I never did more then than make notes about contemporary parallels and their implications. So, what I’m posting now is sketchy by comparison — less finished, informed, and thorough. But hey, this is a blog.

Instructive parallels between old and new manifestations

The parallels, though imprecise, are impressive. In keeping with the classic model of millenarianism, Al Qaedans believe that the world — the world of Islam, the Middle East in particular — is in a state of disaster, owing largely to the overweening power and presence of the infidel United States. Al Q and its ilk hold to a vision of achieving an apocalyptic (or nearly so) upheaval through devastating deeds. They wish to inflict on America the experience of multiple disasters that they believe has been inflicted on the Arab Muslim world. The end goals include the creation of a new caliphate and ultimately the welcoming of the Mahdi — a breakthrough to a new era of salvation, purification, and righteous domination.

Al Qaeda does not quite promise what chiliasm promised: “imminent, this-worldly, collective transformation” (Barkun, 1974, p. 181). And its leaders do not constantly harp in millenarian tones. But its eschatological imagery is similar, and its vision of martyrdom — that an Islamic paradise awaits the sacrificed warrior — amounts to an apt other-worldly substitution, in that it fuses an apocalyptic into a utopian moment, modulated by an insistence that “this world” and the “other world” are not all that separate anyway.

The parallels extend to the nature of leaders and followers. Al Qaeda’s leaders correspond to chiliasm’s self-appointed, itinerant prophetae who aimed to be profound but proved to be lesser intellectuals. And AQ’s jihadi followers exhibit many of the socio-economic, cultural, and psychological traits that Cohn and Barkun stressed: they feel beset, blocked, displaced, estranged, aggrieved, humiliated — they are wandering in search of new meaning and connection, looking for a way to be angry and righteous. They feel worse than deprived; they’re lives — and the milieus connected to them — are disasters awaiting redemption. I would not be surprised if many of today’s recruits are more millenarian than the leaders.

And once these leaders and followers join together, a charismatic relationship binds them all. Al Qaeda and its affiliates have shown they can organize and execute tactical operations in a methodical manner that may look more corporate and managerial than charismatic and chiliastic. But the driving vision is indeed millenarian: to commit deeds that rend the evil world asunder, striking down unbelievers and breaching the way to a salvationist new world order.

Further in keeping with Mannheim’s, Cohn’s, and Barkun’s analyses, this rise in millenarian terrorism is occurring not in isolation but as part of a culture in deep ferment — this time, the Arab Islamic culture — whose people are under great stress, having difficulty with ideas of modernity and progress, and groping for conceptual reformations of their own making. Al Qaeda and its like are not the fleeting, anomalous products of particular episodes of paranoid delusion and narcissistic rage among folks who fall under the spell of charismatic leaders. AQ and its affiliates have arisen as expressions of a sense of disaster, on the fringes of larger yearnings for change.

Role of space-time-action orientations — space in particular

Again, my main interest is STA analysis. I see a lot of material here for advancing it. But since I’ve already gone on and on about that, I’m going to focus here on three specific points.

My first point is that many analyses of terrorism — millenarian terrorism included — tend to emphasize just one of the three STA dimensions. But the more an analyst elaborates, the more it becomes clear that all three STA dimensions are embedded in his or her analysis.

Often the initial emphasis is on time perceptions— e.g., loss of hope, a new vision of the future. But it could be on space or action perceptions. Here, for example, a scholar emphasizes an action orientation — the loss of power:

It is this sense of a personal loss of power in the face of chaotic political and religious authorities that is common, and I believe critical, to Abouhalima’s al Gamaa-i Islamiya, Timonthy McVeigh’s circle of militia activists, and most other movements for Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Buddhist, and Hindu nationalism around the world. The syndrome begins with the perception that the public world has gone awry, and the suspicion that behind this social confusion lies a great spiritual and moral conflict, a cosmic battle between the forces of order and chaos, good and evil. Such a conflict is understandably violent, and this violence is often felt by the victimized activist as powerlessness, either individually or in association with others of his gender, race, or ethnicity. The government — already delegitimized — is perceived to be in league with the forces of chaos and evil. (Juergensmeyer, 2000, p. 224)

But look at the details. There is chaos, a separation of good and evil, an association of one kind, a league of another kind — all spatial factors. Moreover, the world is awry, heading into a cosmic battle — time notions (and if not quite, there are temporal criteria elsewhere in the book, as I recall). In short, one STA dimension is stressed, but all three show up, in a rather jumbled fashion.

Which leads to my second point: All three STA dimensions are important. Scholars and other analysts could do a better job of analyzing mindsets if they attended to all three in a systematic manner, so as to dissect — deconstruct, disassemble, reverse engineer — them in detail. This could also help clarify what other kinds of models work best, including the relative-deprivation and absolute-disaster models discussed in my initial post on this topic.

And that brings us to my third point: While all three STA orientations are significant, the space orientation — the orientation that often gets the least attention — may be key to understanding the appeal of terrorism. This may be particularly so for disaster-driven millenarian terrorism, even though it is defined by/as a time orientation.

Consider this: People who have made statements about becoming a terrorist refer to having lacked an identity, feeling small and humiliated, facing obstacles and barriers, and feeling lost after moving abroad. Then they gain a new sense of worth from finding new connections. They see better how the world is split between good and evil — in a duality that must be overcome. They view an outside power’s presence as an invasion that must be expelled. They want to regain what was lost or stolen. They want to extend the borders of Islam — as God’s soldiers, not an organization’s. They want the sacred to rule over the secular — indeed, to deny any such dichotomy. And whereas they used to feel marginal, now they are part of something that has cosmic importance.

These are all spatial referents. I could list time and action referents as well. But my point is that the number and variety of spatial referents is really quite large — larger than I have seen analysts notice. Thus, spatial orientations may deserve a lot more attention than they have received. The keys to understanding terrorism’s attraction to some mindsets may lie more in their space than in their time or action orientations. (This may also apply more broadly to the tribal mindset, which is so emphatic about upholding solidarity, respect, pride, honor, and dignity — all spatial values.)


[I have altered the titles of the preceding posts on this theme, so that it is more evident they all fit together. I have one post to go — on implications for policy and strategy. I do not regard these posts as written in stone; if I see a need to edit, I will do so even after the post is up. But I will add a notice if I make a major edit.]

TO BE CONTINUED

[BUT MAYBE NOT: FOR AN UPDATE ON THE STATUS OF PART 4, SEE THIS 2014 POST HERE.]