How Much Space Do You Need to Plot?
All else being equal, I feel better when Islamic militants control less territory rather than more territory. That said, when I read this from Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt I wonder about the logic:
It remains unlikely that Islamic militants could seize power in Pakistan, given the strength of Pakistan’s military, according to American intelligence analysts. But a senior American intelligence official expressed concern that recent successes by the Taliban in extending territorial gains could foreshadow the creation of “mini-Afghanistans” around Pakistan that would allow militants even more freedom to plot attacks.
I’m not sure I understand the relationship between “territorial gains” and “freedom to plot attacks.” You need a lot of territory to raise cattle or build a parking lot. But plotting doesn’t strike me as a particularly space-intensive activity. When the ThinkProgress team gets together to plot, we usually do it in a small confined space. More generally, the entire safe haven concept strikes me as overrated. The 9/11 attacks were primarily plotted in Hamburg. A terrorist in the Swat Valley is, by definition, not in a position to blow something up in a western city.
36 Responses to “How Much Space Do You Need to Plot?”
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May 11th, 2009 at 9:20 am
There’s no “logic”. This kind of thing is just a cockamamie excuse from those who still have wet dreams of military adventurism and from the military-industrial complex that profits from such adventures. It needs to start being treated with utter contempt instead of being taken for a serious policy position.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Just coming up with things off the top of my head, but in Afghanistan, didn’t the government receive aid in various forms (food, possibly agricultural assistance)? That would provide some resources to do something with…not terribly sure what though. Grow opium poppies?
May 11th, 2009 at 9:27 am
But as any corporate executive who’s done a Montana retreat will tell you, you need wide open spaces in order to clear your head and dream big dreams that can destroy societies.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Could be that a larger base, means a larger economy, larger tax revenue, more money to spend on plotting. The taliban economy is essentially the poppy. It brings in foreign currency, connects the taliban directly to the economies of the western world. Growing more poppy seems to me to require land. And probably works best when the crop is scattered in many locations.
It doesn’t seem like a foolish idea to me at all. That that the reporter skipped a couple of steps (or they were edited out) does not mean that the intelligence staff are fools.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:28 am
Come on. Dr. Evil always made do with only an island. Who needs a whole country?
May 11th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Just off the top of my head, I would have thought more territory translated into less successful plotting, since having to hold/administer said territory resources away from the Ministry of Plotting.
Like when Johnny Caspar takes over (briefly) from Leo in Miller’s Crossing, and finds it’s not so fun to ‘run things.’
Again, that’s all of the top of my head.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:31 am
Looks like Jeremy and I are both going with the “top of the head” analysis…
May 11th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Good point, I plot all my nefarious schemes in the morning, while I’m taking a shower.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:52 am
More territory could possibly lead to more training facilities, hence more trained terrorists. Matt, is that a logical thing to assume?
May 11th, 2009 at 9:57 am
You need a lot of territory to raise cattle or build a parking lot. But plotting doesn’t strike me as a particularly space-intensive activity.
True, but man doesn’t live by plots alone. Next time the wife and kids are driving you up the mud wall, its nice to be able to take them to the picturesque Swat valley, rather than Tora Bora again. And Islamabad probably has better school districts than Waziristan.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:58 am
If you’re plotting how to layout the next version of the website you don’t need a lot of room. A table, some rolly chairs, a white board, access to coffee. If your plotting involved training with AK-47s, rocket launchers and bomb-making materials, you might need a little more open range. Enough such that the neighbors wouldn’t call the local cops when Trainee #43 blew himself just before becoming Graduate #14.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Maybe the extra territory means that you’ve got a buffer zone between you and your enemies, so that you’ve got a bit of a warning when someone’s coming after you, so you don’t have to grab an AK-47 every time you hear a car engine. Plus you’re also much less of a target from a drone missile. And it’s not just about Europe and the United States.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Nice post, good point. One small quibble with the first line, though. All else being equal, I feel better when there are fewer religious militants of any type in control of any territory. Let’s not be hypocritical here and pretend that there’s something inordinately bad about Muslim fundamentalists. All fundamentalists think that they have the exclusive rights to interpreting truth (a bad habit which we, as a nation, tend to share), and it doesn’t matter whether they follow Mohammad, Jesus, Krishna, or the Law of Moses. The world would be better off without the lot of them.
And before you reply, “yes, but Christian fundies don’t go around blowing people up,” just remember two names: Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:13 am
I’m not sure I understand the relationship between “territorial gains” and “freedom to plot attacks.”
It is pretty simple. Terrorists (especially the kinds eager to kill us) should not have safe havens where they can subvert a state and its agencies for their nefarious purposes. Even if the main 9-11 plot was hatched in Hamburg, presumably the German government was not aiding and helping out. Our (including allies) intelligence apparatus failed us and 9-11 resulted. But the source, financing, and command structure behind the attacks was in Afghanistan. I understand that square footage is not the issue here. But it would be really bad for Taliban type organizations to gain a safe foothold on any real estate anywhere.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Only megalomaniacal imperialists would really imagine that this is an attainable goal. We can’t control every fricking square mile of the planet’s habitable surface.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:27 am
But it would be really bad for Taliban type organizations to gain a safe foothold on any real estate anywhere.
It would be! It’s also pretty much an inevitability that they will always be able to do this. So that’s unfortunate. You seem to think if we just tried a little harder, we would be able to, erm, make sure no real estate anywhere on earth has a Taliban foothold. You might want to go into some detail on how exactly we do this.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:02 am
I do think that large scale group activities by terrorist organizations do require access to areas of warlord chaos or lack of government penetration.
Spinoffs or free agents may not need a lot of room to plot, but the core movements and funders maybe do need spaces like Southern Lebanon or lots of areas in Pakistan / Afghanistan.
Or the FARC narco-guerrillas and their narco-paramilitary counterparts in Colombia. They both, the guerrillas more so than the tacitly on/off gov’t supported paramilitaries, need areas with weak governance and useful chaos.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:04 am
I think you are putting undue emphasis on “plot” due in part to a poorly worded sentence.
The real concern is for safe havens that would harbor future terrorist, allow for their training and provide cover for leaders of these groups to operate, raise money, etc. Had OSB been in Hamburg on Sept 11, 2001, he would have been arrested and in US custody in short order. If OBL had no safe haven, 9/11 may well not have occurred.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Steve Labonne writes:
This kind of thing is just a cockamamie excuse from those who still have wet dreams of military adventurism and from the military-industrial complex that profits from such adventures.
Why the heck would the “military-industrial complex” try to elevate a counterinsurgency war by proxy in Pakistan to the top of our list of national security concerns?
The defense industry is more likely to hype supposed foreign threats that require expensive fighter jets, missile defense systems, ships, etc. I guess they might make a few bucks off Predator drones, but on the whole, a shift toward an emphasis on counterinsurgency and state-building seems pretty clearly contrary to those industry priorities.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:34 am
N, you’re not thinking about the entirety of the M-I C. Blackwater, for example, is also part of it. So is Halliburton.
As we’ve seen in Iraq, companies like that profit obscenely from “small” imperialist wars.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:34 am
(correcting quote formatting)
Steve Labonne writes:
This kind of thing is just a cockamamie excuse from those who still have wet dreams of military adventurism and from the military-industrial complex that profits from such adventures.
———————-
Why the heck would the “military-industrial complex” try to elevate a counterinsurgency war by proxy in Pakistan to the top of our list of national security concerns?
The defense industry is more likely to hype supposed foreign threats that require expensive fighter jets, missile defense systems, ships, etc. I guess they might make a few bucks off Predator drones, but on the whole, a shift toward an emphasis on counterinsurgency and state-building seems pretty clearly contrary to those industry priorities.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:41 am
Not necessarily. Some of us prefer emphasizing policies that tend to not break nations into limited governments alongside ungovernable hellholes — say, not repeatedly invading Southern Lebanon, or blowing apart Iraq into a warlord hellhole, or accepting several generations’ worth of excuses for why Colombia can’t manage to end its civil war.
The interventionist types on the other hand sometimes enjoy creating lawless warlord hellholes when it serves them.
May 11th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Only megalomaniacal imperialists would really imagine that this is an attainable goal. We can’t control every fricking square mile of the planet’s habitable surface.
I did not state or suggest that we need to control every “fricking” square mile. I stated that the U.S. government should make every effort to prevent terrorist organizations from having safe havens. There are a whole range of policy options (military and non-military) available to prevent this. If you thought I was suggesting we invade/subjugate the whole world, then you are mistaken.
It’s also pretty much an inevitability that they will always be able to do this.
Why inevitable?
You seem to think if we just tried a little harder, we would be able to, erm, make sure no real estate anywhere on earth has a Taliban foothold. You might want to go into some detail on how exactly we do this.
Every situation is different so I don’t think there is general policy tool to use in every circumstance. As stated, there are a wide number of policy measures that can be used. I generally think use of force is not very effective but don’t rule it out either if all else fails. There are other reasons besides terrorism to oppose these guys (e.g., their atrocious treatment of women). Also, I don’t think organizations like the Taliban are popular – they sustain their power though force and coercion.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Plotting and scheming by terrorist types happens on computers and cell phones. Meaning anywhere and everywhere at once.
The land being taken from Pakistan is worthless by itself, except for its proximity to vital parts of Pakistan, and for demonstrating how weak the Pakistani government is.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Well, they’ve plotted the murder of a couple of hundred thousand Iraqis right there on Matt’s doorstep in Washington – I think it’s time to invade.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
More territory means more power, which means more resources, which means more capability to conduct complex transnational strikes.
That’s what is meant by this whole thing. But I agree that the phrasing has become rote and sloppy to the point where most probably don’t consider that and just use the phrase because that’s what people say.
May 11th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Also, it’s not the “territorial gains” that allows the “freedom to plot.” It’s the creation of mini-Afghanistans. I agree that “plot” is a careless term in this context, but the failed state has unquestionably been an attractive organizing environment for militants.
May 11th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
As for the financing for 9-11, I could have paid for it myself, though admittedly I would have had to dip into my IRA.
Just to keep things clear, though, I didn’t.
May 11th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
The more territory that is not controlled by counterterror-allocated forces, the more territory plotters have in which to hide. The more territory you have to hide in and move within, the longer it will take you to be found. Time is necessary for plotting. I.e., when in hiding, available time is proportional to safe space. Terror plotting is of necessity done in hiding. Therefore more space=more time=more successful terror plotting. Granted, Hamburg was in theory controlled by the German state, but they didn’t know how aggressively they needed to be looking for Islamist radicals plotting against the West, or certainly against the U.S. So arguably there was not a strong counterterror force there at that time. Also they were a cell whose command and control came out of Afghanistan, where there was unrestrained space and time for plotting.
More space gives more time, freedom of movement, and minimizes visibility. All those promote plotting and successful plots.
May 11th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
The poisonous idea that we have to control every square foot of sand on Earth must have been developed by some truly insidious foe – maybe Fu-Manchu – because its exponents are obviously too stupid to have come up with it themselves.
I like better the attitude expressed in Churchill’s book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force. He and his comrades were bashing the fuzzy-wuzzies in exactly the same places that we see in the news today, but he doesn’t really pretend that it makes any sense at all. It’s just what we do.
May 11th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Right now he Pakistani government looks shakier than it has ever been before: it seems to me that our actions are probably the cause, rather than a sudden uptick in the appeal of Pashtunwali or jihadism.
I had hoped that Obama might be less of a fool on this sort of thing than our previous idiot-in-chief, but I guess not.
May 11th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
As others have hinted, “plot” was a poor choice of words. What more territory does is give one more room to set up the sort of formalized training and supply infrastructure that Al Qaeda had in Afghanistan.
May 11th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
It would be good if a legitimate and accountable government held control of every square foot of land on Earth and the environments close to land. Preferably, that conrol is held by some form of government accountable to and representative of the local population. If not, it would still be preferable to have some government to none at all.
To the person who said, “The land being taken from Pakistan is worthless by itself, except for its proximity to vital parts of Pakistan, and for demonstrating how weak the Pakistani government is,” has the comfort of not being subject to the rule of the Taliban. The vast majority of Pakistani people are not jihadists or Taliban sympathizers, as were the majority of Afghans. But, a powerful, active minority always has the opportunity to subject the minority to its whim if the majority remains passive.
May 11th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I think some of y’all might be missing the point a little bit.
It’s unquestionably a very bad thing locally that the Taliban is taking over more territory. We’ve all seen the pictures of refugees fleeing the fighting, and nobody wants to see more girls getting stoned for going to school, etc.
But the question is about global effects. Whether, as the analyst claims, this marginal increase in Taliban controlled land actually translates into any significant additional advantage for terrorism with a global reach. But that’s really hard to see.
It’s true there are advantages for terrorists to having some territory. (To train and indoctrinate loyal followers in isolated camps, to have a secure rear base, etc.) So it’d be easy to see how it would be a big deal if the supply of lawless land in the area had just gone from zero to 2000 square miles.
But that’s not the case. There are already thousands of square miles of land in Afghanistan and Pakistan that are either Taliban controlled or lawless, and over which terrorists have more or less free range. (They have to watch out for drones, obviously, but that’s true no matter who nominally controls the territory – and they seem to be doing well enough.)
So I think Matt’s absolutely right that an additional couple of thousand square miles just doesn’t make that much difference, terrorism-wise.
May 11th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
That’s right on, Cortney H. We don’t have to control every square inch, but we do want as many square inches to be controlled by a state or state-like authority that is committed to its international responsibility to deter internaional terrorist *plots*. (I actually think the word is perfectly appropriate, if not technical.)
May 12th, 2009 at 4:21 am
This is a rather large planet. Anybody who thinks the states of the world are going to control every square inch of it – short of some sort of nanotech surveillance of every square inch – is an idiot.
Terrorists can find plenty of ways to train without needing safe havens in countries – and if they do sometimes need such, there are plenty of places where the state does not control the few square acres needed to make a training facility.
I pity you people if and when terrorists – who for the most part aren’t particularly smart – actually get a clue and start to realize, like The Joker in “The Dark Knight”, that all you need is some bullets, some gasoline and some explosives – properly targeted – to bring down Western civilization – or any civilization.
Once again with feeling: “Armies create problems by killing many, when the solution to all problems is to kill one – the right one.”