Asymmetric Warfare

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

OSS STATEMENT ON NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR TERRORISM AND OTHER THREATS

Washington, D.C., September 12/PRNEWSWIRE/ -- According to Robert David
Steele, founder of OSS Inc., 25-year veteran of the U.S. national
security community and author of ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in
an Open World (AFCEA, 2000): "The national discussion of what America
should do in the aftermath of the tragic airline hijackings and
deliberate kamikaze dives into landmark buildings appears all too naïve
and limited. Contrary to official statements, U.S. forces are not ready,
not trained, and not
equipped to deal with asymmetric warfare."

"Modern war is not a multiple-choice test with one right answer," Steele
says. "Many of us, from Winn Schwartau on information warfare to Ralph
Peters on rogue warriors to GI Wilson on fourth generation warfare to
myself on non-traditional threats, have been saying for close to a
decade that we have the wrong force structure, no strategy, a poor
understanding of the 21st century threat environment, and an
intelligence community that is over-invested in secret satellite
collection and inadequate with respect
to multi-lateral burden-sharing agreements, serious clandestine
operations, multi-lingual analysis, all-source processing, and access to
open sources of information."

According to Steele, it is essential that the President and Congress
avoid making three fundamental mistakes in the near future. They should
not: 1) militarize the war on terrorism; 2) throw new money at
intelligence without demanding fundamental reform; and 3) lose sight of
the longer-term fundamentals. On this latter point, Steele stresses
again and again that, "We cannot lose sight of the strategic
fundamentals. America lives in a closed international system--there is
only one earth and we are liquidating
that one earth at a frightening pace, heedless of the stress and anguish
that this imposes on the billions of Africans, Arabs, Chinese, Indians,
and Russians whom we are literally abusing from a distance. Before we
act precipitously, it is essential that we reconstruct our global
intelligence architecture and our global diplomatic
architecture--America is a strong country, we can afford to be patient."

The following references are respectfully provided to the American
public and the policymakers who serve our public, as well as the media,
in hopes that this turning point in our national understanding will
result in a mature, holistic, and strategic redirection of how we invest
in the varied instruments of national power, and how we formulate and
resource our foreign policy.

http://www.defensedaily.com/reports/takedown.htm
http://www.oss.net/Papers/white/FourthGenerationWarfare.doc
http://www.oss.net/Papers/white/Strategy21.doc
http://www.oss.net/Papers/white/GOARMY.ppt
http://www.oss.net/Papers/white/Streamlining.doc
http://www.oss.net/Papers/white/TheNewCraftofIntelligence.doc

SOURCE: OSS Inc.
-0- 09/12/2001
/CONTACT: Robert Steele, OSS CEO,
703-242-1700, or bear@xxxxxxx/
/Web site: www.oss.net