All posts by Alessandro Regio

SEGP Symposium: “The Price of Intelligence”

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“The Price of Intelligence” was a discussion surrounding the ethical implications of intelligence gathering since its inception to modern day. The talk jumped from satellite imagery, to wire-tapping, to torture, all in an effort to distill the moral implications of gathering information at each particular step in the intelligence gathering process.

Below are photos from the event:

Left to Right - Philippe Mauger, Capt. Tim Doorey USN (Ret.), Alexander Hecht, Dr. Edward Laurance, Ruben Rgzrian, Alessandro Regio
Left to Right – Philippe Mauger, Capt. Tim Doorey USN (Ret.), Alexander Hecht, Dr. Edward Laurance, Ruben Rgzrian, Alessandro Regio

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Left to Right – Phillipe Mauger, Dr. Edward Laurance, Capt. Tim Doorey USN (Ret.), Alexander Hecht

The panelists who took part in this discussion are:

Capt. Timothy Doorey, USN (Ret.): Capt. Doorey is the Maritime Security Program Manager at the Naval Post Graduate school in Monterey, California. He previously developed content, led and taught executive-level Mobile Education Teams all over the globe. He has also had extensive experience in acquiring and assessing intelligence for United States and allied coalition forces. 

Alexander Hecht: Mr. Hecht is a graduate of the George Washington University with a BA in political science. After graduating from GW in 2008, Alex worked as a legal researcher for a New York based criminal defense firm, and in 2011 began working with a small Virginia-based defense contractor, the MASY Group. While at MASY, Alex trained members of DoD’s Joint Military Attaché School (JMAS) in detecting and subverting foreign intelligence and terrorist surveillance TTPs. After leaving the MASY group in late 2011, Alex joined the Navanti Group as a Eurasia Researcher in 2012, and in mid 2013, Alex transitioned to Team Lead for the company’s Social Media Analysis team, and Project Manager for Navanti’s innovation, research, and development arm, Navanti Labs.

Dr. Edward Laurance: Dr.Laurance is a professor at the Monterey Institute who specializes in security and development issues. He has previously worked for the United Nations Development Program and has also published numerous essays on development and disarmament. His contribution to the discussion reflected an interest of his, which is how to balance the expectations of being an impartial aid worker with the responsibility of potentially reporting nefarious activity or information that may be useful for the aid worker’s country.

Phillipe Mauger: Phillipe is a research assistant at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute and is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree from the Monterey Institute.

A Train, a Conversation and the Gaza Conflict; How a talk changed my Perspective on Peacebuilding in the Middle East

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I don’t really expect much from Italian trains. They are a way to get from point A to point B in a country that otherwise has difficulty connecting towns and villages, but that’s about it. The seats aren’t that great and you’d consider yourself lucky if your regional train wasn’t covered in graffiti (albeit very well made graffiti). That is why I was surprised when, on my way from Fiumicino Airport to a dinner appointment aboard one of these regional trains, I found myself talking to a complete stranger. For boring legal reasons, his identity will be known as C.

It’s not in my nature to start conversations with strangers on public transport. The first and last thing I do when I get on a bus, plane or train is stick my headphones in and shut off from the rest of the world. However, having spent nearly four weeks away from the states, the American passport that C clutched in his hand as we were watching our train approach was a sight for sore eyes. “Hello’s” and pleasantries exchanged, we boarded the train and snatched a four-person booth for ourselves and our luggage (my apologies to the Italian rail system which explicitly forbids this from happening). His relaxed American accent was as refreshing as it was, well, American. He told me he lived in Rome, that he was going to college there. My assumption at this point was that he was some sort of ex-pat with an Italian last name, misspelled by an Ellis Island worker in the early 20th century, who came back to the motherland to study and to discover himself. At least, that was the case until I told him what I studied; International Relations.

“Oh, that’s … interesting”. It didn’t take a genius to realize that the mood took a very serious yet odd swing. I’ve been known to offend people here and there, but very rarely does it happen as I’m still introducing myself. I asked what brought about the change in tone and he very directly asked me what I thought about “the Gaza thing”. I stuttered. Where to even begin? Why would he ask me this outright? Why would he even be interested? The best I could come up with was “well, it’s a very complicated issue”. As I reflected on how all my past professors probably felt a shiver go up and down their spines as I spit out such a weak answer, he began to reveal his real identity to me.

C had been an Israeli soldier for four years, working in combat zones for the majority of that time. He went on to tell me what unit he operated in and what missions he had undertaken. It took less than 60 seconds for him to whip out his cell phone and show me a picture of him standing on a dirt mound at night, holding a marksman rifle with an infrared sight fitted to its top rail. Neither of us were able to understand exactly what rifle it actually was.  But the conversation quickly reverted back to the original inquiry, what I thought of “the Gaza thing”. This time around I was prepared, and blurted out “well, we want to be able to have it so that Israeli children and Palestinian children grow up without any fear”.

“Ah, but that’s not reality is it?”, C responded with a smirk on his face. “Rightly so”, I responded, but as I went on to explain, people working in the field of International Relations have to keep some sense of idealism in order to guide what they do in the “real world”. He then asked me if I thought it was a good thing that Israel began its ground campaign a few days before our encounter. I proceeded to walk that very fine tightrope of explaining both sides of the issue strategically: “It’s advantageous to do so because of X, but Israel is probably very wary of Y”.

As I responded, C was swiping across his phone, looking at his messages. “That unit that got 13 KIA’s today, yea, my friends are in that unit. I’ve tried texting them but they’re not responding”. An Israeli ground unit had been ambushed that day by Hamas fighters in which a rumored 15 soldiers had been killed or kidnapped by Hamas. “I’m sure they’ll respond soon”, was the only thing I could possibly use as a reply, “they’re probably busy with something”. It later turned out, long after we parted ways, that of the 13 confirmed KIA’s, two were American citizens. We didn’t know that yet, and so kept discussing the conflict. Jumping back and forth between rules of engagement, human shields, hospitals, schools, excessive force, popular sentiment, right to defense, national sovereignty and AIPAC, something became painfully clear to me. This was not just a conflict of states, it is a conflict of peoples.

C was not going to budge on any of his positions. No matter how reasonable I thought my points were, no concessions were going to be made by this particular person. C had not struck me as an unreasonable person when we were discussing the merits of studying abroad or when we were talking about football, but talking about the crisis that hits close to home was simply non-negotiable.

I can’t imagine that being any different on the other side of things. If you looked at my Facebook newsfeed since the conflict started, you’d see that all my friends with an Arab background would consistently post pro-Gazan news, information, statistics and outcry. Those are not messages of peacebuilding or understanding, they were messages of engaging in the conflict. I would now like to take time to ask the reader to understand that these words are not meant to make people sound less reasonable than they actually are. These are good, reasonable people, people who want to join the ranks of those we would consider to be “educated”; there is no lack of awareness or tact among these people, yet both C and pro-Gazan friends are ready to defend their respective sides regardless of what or whom is in front of them.

C’s unwillingness to concede the criticism of human rights abuse by the IDF is born of the same mentality that allows for Hamas to remain a viable political option in Gaza even though their presence as a major political player has often sparked violence in the region, including this particular conflict. Although deliberations and agreements will be made on the state level, it is important that we as policy makers do not forget the real actors involved here; the public in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. They are the fuel of this conflict and conversely it’s solution.

Perhaps getting Israelis and Palestinians to drop their anger simultaneously pertains to C’s notion of things that do not belong in the real world, but at the same time that is what will quell this conflict in a more permanent sense. As such, those of us who say that we want a secure world should pay more attention on what it means for that world to feel secure, not merely enacting edicts and hoping for the best. The stories here are what will make the difference for peace and more importantly understanding in the future, and it is our responsibility to make sure that happens.

Opposing Viewpoints and their Effect on Policy

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The more naïve among us would like to think that the most “efficient” or most “popular” policy option is always the one that must be chosen, but many times that is not the case. Either there is no obviously efficient policy option, or there isn’t a way to accurately assess the popularity of a specific option. Worse still, very rarely does a policy option “no-brainer” comes across the desk of a mayor or governor or president. Even then, the decision maker may run into frustrating issues like that of congressional blockage on something closely resembling a “home-run” of a law or regulation. These idioms that are being tossed around here may seem infantile but the fact that there isn’t a technical term for “a policy so obvious, anything with a pulse would enact it” only reinforces the point that choosing policy options are never an easy task.

Things get even more difficult when policy options are backed not only by points of data that seem to contradict each-other, but when they are backed by a “viewpoint”. There’s a big problem in policy. It’s called different opinions. If everyone in society thought exactly the same way, policymakers would probably have five hour work weeks. With today’s technology bringing the citizen ever closer to the decision maker, policy options rarely escape the draw of popular outcry. The way we offer our internet has now become a philosophical debate, national security is now part of the privacy v. state intelligence fight, even the rights we should otherwise expect to be accessible by fellow citizens has fallen prey to the divisive nature of this debate culture in the United States.

It is a fact that this is the world we live in, where policy is not merely a game of statistics; it is a game of words and more importantly a game of sentiments. It is these “sentiments”, the emotions that people hold as justified beliefs that are applied to value judgments that skew the policy game. “Skewing” should not be taken as a negative connotation here; it merely implies that people’s sentiments are impossible to account for the same way that the expected dollar cost of a policy may be, or the time that it may reasonably take to complete a particular project. Knowing how 100% of the country is going to think and react to the suggestion of a policy option is absolutely impossible even with the polling industrial complex that exists today.

As scary as all this may sound (and actually may be), the only reason for this to cause worry in the policy world is because the dynamic is unknown to the policy professional. Knowing about the issue tends to improve the situation, as it does for most things. There is one key aspect of this matter which can help ameliorate a toxic debate or at the very least control it.

Not every sentiment is justified. This may seem clear at first but public opinion has a way of winning over reason like nothing else. Therefore, the prudent policy professional will be quick to examine the claims of each particular sentiment as it relates to one side of the policy debate in order to settle things as fast as possible. For example, in the 50’s the issue of segregation was a policy debate. In this highly simplified recapitulation, there were two sides to the debate: to desegregate or maintain the status quo. One side called upon the ethical standpoint of “equality for all”, while the other side called upon the ethical standpoint of “citizen’s privacy and choice”. Both are equally good sentiments when compared to one another. Equality is a societal necessity at this day and age; at the same time, respecting the individual choices of the individual is close to sacred in the Western world. Putting these two sentiments to battle is a losing proposition for any policy maker because to have one but exclude the other would mean the death of what it means to be a democracy. Yet, the way each sentiment is used is what makes the difference in this case. “Equality for all” was used to decrease the amount of arbitrary discrimination, whereas “citizen’s privacy and individual choice” was used to argue for the continuation of that discrimination.

Framing sentiments with their intended use instead of just their banner name is a perfectly good way of understanding exactly what these sentiments mean in terms of ethical considerations for the people backing their respective policy option. It just so happens that we cannot base ethical judgments, or policy for that matter, on the fact that we “feel” something to be pulling us on one side of the debate and not the other. Feelings or sentiments of the ethical weight of a particular policy option provide that initial reaction to a policy option, that “gut-feeling” as to what would be the ethical or right thing to do. They do not however go further than that, and sometimes can use perfectly reasonable ethical points to promote the suppression of equally pressing ethical concerns as the example provided shows. Decision makers that want to avoid that outcome should be able to break through the initial banner statement of a particular ethically founded debate corner. Doing so would force them evaluate each ethical argument beyond what it would immediately enforce and what it may unknowingly affect.

SEGP Symposium: Development as Fairness

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We’ve finished polishing up the first ever Symposium held by the Students for Ethical Governance and Policymaking back on April 17th on the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) campus. “Development as Fairness” was a discussion surrounding the ethical implications of development work, using the UNDP’s Millennium Development Goals as an example of real world policy.

The panelists who took part in this discussion are:

Professor Jeff Dayton-Johnson: Prof. Dayton-Johnson is a Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Institute. His academic focus has been on economic development and the economies of Latin America.

Professor Tsuneo Akaha: Prof. Akaha is an expert in Japanese foreign and security policy, international relations of the Asia Pacific, international political economy, Asian studies, Asia-Pacific development, East Asia security, globalization, human rights, human security, international migration, international relations theory, Northeast Asia and security issues and US-Asia policy.

MIIS Student  John Gebbia: John is a current BA/MA student at MIIS under the International Policy Studies program and is a co-founder of the Students for Ethical Governance and Policymaking. His academic interests include international organizations and international trade.