festival in california. from the savannah book festival, celeste headley offers communication strategies and herbal need to talk. and from the roseland literary festival, catherine smith discusses her book the gatekeeper. e.g., all this week in prime time on c-span two. >>. >> the heritage foundation hosted a discussion with carl walling, a naval war college professor and former us army interrogator on the tactics and strategies of terrorist organizations. >> the discussion is an hour. >>. >> good afternoon, welcome to the heritage foundation, i'm at lewis auditorium and thank you, those joining us on heritage.org as well as those joining us on the "after words" network this morning. for those in house we would ask that courtesy check for our mobile devices are silenced or turned off and we will post today's program on the heritage homepage for

everyone's reference. today's event is hosted by heritages kenneth simon center for principal politics. the simon center focuses on teaching the foundations of liberty and principles of the american political tradition to those who shake the public opinion. meeting and welcoming our guest is doctor david as ram, director of the center for principal and politics and awc family foundation fellows. >> good afternoon. the caliphate has fallen. osama bin laden is dead. the threat of islamic terror remains. indeed, isis continues to direct or inspire attacks in the last including the halloween back in new york, a string of atrocities in europe. some ear has not yet been captured. meanwhile, al qaeda remains active in afghanistan, syria and yemen.across the world, france and nigeria, islamism continues to extract

followers and the threat of terror still looms. >> and while western governments made considerable progress in countering islamic terrorism since the attacks of 9/11, infusion remains over the exact nature of the threat and the mindset of the jihadists. if we are to defeat this enemy, we must first learn to think like him. some advice in the art of war remains astute today as when he first wrote it down 2500 years ago.know yourself, know your enemy, and 100 battles will never be the same. >> how then do terrorists think about strategy? more specifically, in what ways do they think about strategy differently than we do. >> how do they define winning , what do they fear most? >> to help us think through

these questions, you're very pleased to have you with us at the heritage foundation professor carl walling. who through a careful study of terrorist organizations spanning the entire globe, professor walling has distilled the key lessons , americans must learn in order to defeat terrorism. professor walling teaches in the department of war and strategy at the united states naval war college in rhode island. he served as an interrogator in the u.s. army and has taught at harvard university, often all college, u.s. air force academy and colorado college.rolling is the author of republican empire, alexander hamilton on war and government and the co-editor with bradley on strategic logic and political rationality. currently he's writing a book on the history of the polynesian war. join me in welcoming professor carl walden. [applause] >> before i begin i have to

give you this. nothing in this talk reflects the official views of the united states naval war college, the department of the navy, department of defense or any other government entity. in the handout i passed around i have two quotations at thetop . one is from sun tzu. know yourself, know your enemy and in 100 battles you will never be defeated. that strikes me as optimistic. sometimes your enemy has much more superior force and it doesn't matter how much you know, you're going to lose but in most cases, our knowledge ofstrengths and weaknesses relative to your opponent are a crucial component of devising a strategy . those of you who know american football or perhaps have pleaded on a friday night game if it's high school, you take a break and then you watch games film and

you look at what you did well and what you did badly, your strengths and weaknesses and you look ahead to the next game, whatever film you can get on your upcoming opponent. coaches will do an assessment in which they tried to find a way to get their strengths against an opponent's weaknesses and prevent an opponent from pitting strengths against their own weaknesses.this is the foundation of strategic thinking. and an assessment first, know what kind of conflict you're getting into.and you have to do it before you construct a strategy. the second quotation i have is from one of my favorite philosophers , pascal who said philosophers were most serious when they seem to playful and playful when they seemed most serious. that is to say clay can be a

serious thing at work colleges around the world , sometimes they are thought experiments and sometimes what they're doing is they're testing hypothesis invariably by actually seeing what happens when you are out in the field. so play is an essential component of thinking strategically. you have to play before you fight. if you don't play before you fight, you may discover you are not ready to fight. so i'm going to ask you all to play a game with me. and there's something mischievous about the game. and even devilish. i want you to pretend that each one of you is a young terrorist, each one of you and your superiors have identified you talents that

may enable you to rise in the command. >> such that you are no longer the kind of person who detonates a bomb. but someone who's in charge of the people who detonate bombs. >> your job is to learn to think repeatedly about how to use terrorism and here i need to stress something. i am not used to talking much at all about ideology that drives terrorism. instead i'm going to talk about, it's not working? all right. this better? all right. instead i'm going to talk about the methodology of terrorism. and i'm going to base my talk on certain theories of war that have been taught for millennia . and how terrorists adapt such

theories of war to serve their strategic purposes. >> now, the key point here when i say how to think like a terrorist, i say how to think how terrorists try to think strategically. so pretend that you are a young terrorist. also pretend that i am your professor. and that this is the first day of terrorism 101. the introduction to thinking about terrorism. and i say introduction, that means it's not terrorism 400. it's not terrorism 5000. >> i'm not going to get into the most specific ways of thinking about it. i'm going to lay out some of thefundamentals . because the more sophisticated approach, there are all different ways of combining the fundamentals.

now, as a young terrorist who study strategic three thesame way they do at other works , it's vast. you read your sun tzu. you read maus a time and you also look at historical cases of the effectiveness and failures ofterrorism. you want to find out what works , what doesn't work. so the view could be a more effective terrorist yourself. and there are four cases i'm going to draw on here. the first is the party of the socialist revolutionaries, from russia, from approximately 1895 to 1885. the second is the irish republican army fighting against england from 1916 through 1923. the third is that shining path to peru in the 1970s, 1980s. and the fourth is the fln, algerian independence

movements fighting against the french from approximately 1950 to 1963. what i'm looking at is what's common. these different approaches to strategy. what worked andwhat failed . because we as terrorists, remember. we are terrorists in this thought experiment. we as terrorists want to know what works and what fails. we need to make a distinction between methodology of terrorism. plenty of people who join terrorist organizations are criminals. but just because they are criminals, that doesn't mean they are bosses . >> we should give terrorist leaders credit for being rational, at least until they

prove themselves otherwise. when i say rational, i mean about their methodology, not about ideology. so i start by thinking about the rational use of violence and the classic source for thinking about that is positives who devise war as an act of violence to compel your adversary to your will. but violence is not an end in itself . instead a means to achieve something else, your will which is your political will . so your matching strategy to achieve whatever policy you have in mind, terrorism is a species of war i am going to argue today. that is to say, you can apply cognitive logic to understand what terrorists are up to. it is premeditated violence against noncombatants to achieve political objectives.

a common way of looking at terrorism where we look at it as a species of war. that means it's different from your crime or even worse, insanity area the objectives are political and you're not trying to get rich. and the objectives are political and range from compelling political reform to expelling an occupier to inciting arevolution . in our case, here in the terrorists view, conspiring a revolution throughout the world, to restore the caliphate, and impose sharia law. terrorism overlaps frequently with insurgency but is not identical to it. >> here i have to borrow from our very famous theorist of insurgency, now's a tongue .

i think you have to understand about him. he hangs around with 20 guys and they're really a bunch of frat boys. the question before them is how do we take over all of china? what will be our strategy? so there might be something to learn now about how to take over an entire country. and he developed a three-phase theory of war. the first phase is called the strategic defenses. the terrorists have nomoney, they have no weapons .and they need to get both. what they need to get his recruits. so terrorism is arecruiting tool . you blow up, kill hated figures of authority and young and repeat people say i want to be like those guys. i want to do what they do.

back in the day and by the way, this first phase is primarily terrorism and the second phase , it's much more organized . you acquire weapons, you've acquired money, you begin to develop a base or sanctuaries , where you can train and discipline your people. terrorism is still part of the strategy . and in the third phase, you managed to transition from conventional warfare as your opponent has grown weaker and weaker. still using terrorism for the conventional dimension is much moreimportant . when you think about the islamic state, in 2014 a shot of the world. and they've been conducting terrorist activities in iraq at a very low level and during the search we thought we question, no, theyjust went underground . but in 2014 they captured the city of mosul in a synagogue.

and the iraqi army. >> for the most part, the most modern american equipment, and then they captured that equipment. that means they were able to move from stage i to at least stage ii of mouse. they were hoping to go all the way to stage iii, his head. >> and its, if you're working to counterterrorist approach. you don't want your opponent to go to stage i. that's one way of thinking about counterterrorist strategies. don't let them get beyond stage i. don't let it rise to the level of organized insurgency. certainly don't allow them to have a state where they can practice conventional warfare. i should point out that not all terrorists are able to follow the maoist model. some can never get beyond stage i and occasionally, not frequently, terrorists still managed to achieve their

objectives by staying and relying simply on terrorism. in other words, what i've been trying to say to you is a real method to your apparent madness of terrorism. terrorism is commonly called the strategy of the week. look, if you have an army, you would resort to terror. >>

>> and change the rules. play by the rules of conventional warfare. not just terrorist you can escalate up but ratchet down. war is a lie it does not remain constant it is always changing that is why it is compared to water and just you thought you were on top of it and nobody could beat you the new change form and do something else. all right there is a method to the madness we can't win by conventional means if you

can't go force on force you can still win but it is force multiplied by will or the intangibles like leadership, training, discipline, strategy you can't beat your opponent then beat his mind -- defeat his mind. terrorism is a strategy of the week manipulating the minds and political system neutrals and enemies to get what they want. there is a famous saying from those revolutionaries that terrorism is the propaganda.

you try to sell it to others through deeds so much i am not only willing to kill innocent people but kill myself spreading the gospel. the propaganda. in that sense terrorism tries to work on the minds of those who would support it. right now you might have guessed where i am going. i say terrorism is political theater. and you always have to worry about your audience. apparently political theater goes on in washington as well and you should think about the audience. i will say there are five for

terrorist violence. first the adversary government sending a message and what message might that be? so you want to intimidate anyone that is unable to exert their authority by example the british maintain control throughout the island but what the ira did was they would hang a sign to say this what happens to traders. if you do that too many times you get the case of the blue flu showing up to work. and then to create its own

police force but the ira did not do kindly. so the violence is directed to anyone. another way is to raise cost to the government this is very important to understand more in general and terrorism as a species. if you go to war you always have a political objective, or you better because no one in his right mind doesn't know what he is trying to accomplish or how. every objective has some value you can be fighting until the cost hits that value.

you don't throw good money after bad you could raise cost to a government to say it is no longer worth it to cost approximately $1 million ask yourself how much money we paid that strategy a protracted war until people say i just don't want to do this you are exhausting your opponent so no state has ever benefited if the state does not benefit why? maybe not a nonstate actor.

also if you really want to promote the government to overreact that is an interesting question those of you who watch soccer in general direction it falls on the ground you try to hit the referee and you put on theater for the referee. conveying certain ways of certain acts of violence if you do something for redness and despicable that you do something so angry they will react equally or even worse

appalling and despicable manner because you play for the sympathy of the people one good example is from the algerian war of independence and in order to ignite those terrorist organizations to conduct a horrible massacre i mean really horrible. killing people indiscriminately right and left, a pregnant woman and cut out the fetus stuck the room on top of her because they wanted to make the french angry, so angry they would respond in equally appalling manner.

the french colonials went on a riot to killing indiscriminately the french he bombarded in the french bombers hit those villages. what does that mean? unintentionally french one -- the france ended up being recruiters to split that collateral damage and then fed into the narrative the story the flm was trying to sell to be exploited by the french and in the process if you think about it that way or they are not strong jaw reported strength against him another

audiences terrorist themselves. why? imagine you are all young terrorists and if you do it is a grub form. you have to sustain morale and how do you do that? those of you who own stock with a return on your investment because if you don't get a return the logical thing is to no longer support the organization but every once in a while a say a -- i will hold the stock because it

can be a growth stock may be on the individual investment i have made another way terrorists is the audience you have discipline problems with the kind of people to join the's organizations you want to make sure they follow your strategy and not killing indiscriminately and i mean in a manner not consistent with your strategy you don't one then taking control of the operation so if they violate orders, discipline them. kill them. set the example and sometimes what is going on his arrival

terrorist organization if you are a member of the bloods you don't want the crips if you are a member of the flm you don't want arrival organization of the flm in nigeria fighting the french were also fighting the arrival terrorist organization. another audiences the constituent population. sometimes known as friends and i do that deliver lead to set you up to understand terrorism has a lot to do with what we call election politics we want people to vote for your side against the other side where as we write editorials and speeches and social media what is going on with the terrorist

you are using bombs so in that fence it is violent but with that constituent population or what you would call your base. what is the message you try to send? it is good for morale and if you succeed if you are successful operationally you could gain financial support. with the impact of 911 even though al qaeda lost its base in afghanistan the recruiting went way up. and so did financial support for the organization so in that way it was a way to those that were naturally sympathetic to al qaeda then

there was the non- constituent population horrified compare that to american politics with those independence namely you are with us or against us. there are no neutrals. you sit there to say give peace a chance the have been listening to john lennon you want peace and a compromise no no no no no. that will not work. the first people to die frequently were the neutrals who said why can't we all just get along and reason with each other? because they are shot out from both sides from the counterterrorist they do not want neutrals because they give people an alternative way

to achieve their objectives through the political system. a final audience for terrorism is international so get your army from the international agenda. so many different issues. do we focus on trade? environment? nuclear proliferation? global climate change? there is only 24 hours in in the day. there are opportunities to investing see want people to make your issue their priority. that is someone of organizations and leaders should focus upon and a good example is the algerian war for independence and violence against the french counter

violence that involves torture as the french become like the gestapo 15 years after the world war ii to be against the terrorist in algeria. this looked horrific to the rest of the world than a young senator from massachusetts got up and made a speech what the french was doing was despicable and they should grant the algerians independent and then jfk became president but at that moment the handwriting was on the wall for the french if you want american support forget about algeria so then that was

very helpful for the flm. if you haven't figured this out already it should become perfectly clear that the media is a crucial battlefield because of an act of terror occurs than there are no cameras around to show it and what significance does it have? so we have to think of the role of media and how terrorists try to manipulate the media to achieve their objective and as i said before i see terrorism to produce a violent election to manipulate the minds. so at this point i should note

the incredible irony risen credible overlap between strategies of terrorism and nonviolent civil disobedience those of al qaeda overlap the strategies of gandhi and that is a real irony. think that through willing to use violence and mlk and gandhi renounced violence under any circumstance. how could any sober person say there is an overlap? the answer has to do with the media and the provoking overreaction think back to the

american civil rights movement. of the march on selma and confrontation of the nonviolent protesters and the beatings that they took turning fire hoses on the protesters and the german shepherds and people trying to sit in a restaurant and get a meal with the vigilantes to beat them up you can broadcast it to the entire country who looks better? people beating them up the matter what happens you create martyrs this way with people's sympathy protesters and that

helps them recruit and to delegitimize the actions of the government my family was very involved in this book martyrs aren't a bad thing those that want to be that says something about them individually as a personality but from the standpoint of a martyr is a really good thing from the standpoint of success it is horrible that doctor king was assassinated but it was very helpful. so there is some overlap because that same audience for terrorism by the way with

civil disobedience in and know a lot of you are here you're always thinking about audiences and messaging so what i am talking to about should be reasonably familiar. when it comes to terrorists, and political psychology which is a fancy term, the most useful source is machiavelli who came up with psychology of fear, love and hate. remember this is an election for the people love of your cause or hatred of the other guys cause and then you hope they come to your cause but

just to get them to hate the other guys cause more and then finally your opponents space and you want to marginalize them strip them as many supporters as possible by intimidating them. this all means those competing narratives or competing stories to marginalize the constituents so remember outside of the war college you are a holy warrior. you are a freedom fighter from the impression of the crusaders. you draw attention to the cause you are fighting for not

the means by which you fought it but that counterterrorism will do just the opposite and then to undermine your cause that this dangerous use is desensitizing relative to israel and palestine but in the 70s that might have been shocking of palestinian knifed the israeli but then you pick up the newspaper there was a terrorist attack in israel today. that's not news. that happens all the time so if you are a terrorist you try to get attention the small acts of violence, if they don't work then you kill people at the olympics that

you escalate to a bigger one and i know fly some airplanes into buildings. there is that dynamic link to the media campaign but i would point out open is more vulnerable than those close societies think of the russians in chechnya they are fighting al qaeda also and a very nasty version but trying to get information what is going on i am pretty sure what the russians have done is appalling but because those terrorist strategies shut out the media they have better odds to defeat that and those in a free society and it is the price of freedom that we will be more vulnerable then

closed societies. and you at heritage know this. the speech that appeals to one audience completely turns off another poly science 101. so you have to calibrate how you do the messaging that could look irrational to us in america makes really good sense if you pay attention to the audience for which the theater is directed some of you may remember three years ago there was a poorer jordanian officer who was burned alive in a cage. but imagine you are young and angry now i want to join i

want to do the same thing. give me a chance. so it turns off one audience but it turns on another and if you are a terrorist strategist it really provokes people to react against me but it may help with recruiting so i will say a few things and make some suggestions tell a terrorist may defeat the them. we should know this but to define victory to achieve your political objective how do terrorists achieve their political objective?

frequently they sell their violence one of the most common sources you can say this is about freedom whether from an empire or a regime or american imperialism or religious oppression then your odds of success go up because history has been shown to take big risks on what they consider to be freedom it helps if you can attack while your enemy is exhausted while the british came in after world war i with just a few

resources to address that and superior intelligence and counterintelligence are crucial to successful strategy in here i will tell you a story about michael collins who was the general in charge to achieve the independence of ireland they planted a mole inside of british intelligence the first thing he did was go into the intelligence file but the british did not know he was running the ira but to ride around dublin go get

those terrorist. but he had no clue that he was doing so the other thing collins did he had the whole give him the idea of the british intelligence officer and then arranged for those officers to be killed on the same day at the same hour so he knew what the british were doing the british were clueless but by the way i do not give royalties there is one entitled michael collins and it is a good film to see with your partner because it seems to turn on one type of partner but there is roman

one -- romance with the female lead so to learn about that terrorist strategy again i mentioned provoking your adversary the place where opponents have reached examples today afghanistan and yemen ideal sanctuaries are failed or failing states with the long arm of the government and where it does not reach. the police -- places you can build up your base. most important those strategies when they morph to insurgency with the protracted struggle many of my students

have done five or six or multiple tumors in afghanistan they always recital line from the taliban you have watches in america but we have the time. but it means more to them than us the struggle means more to them in afghanistan so if they have the patience and endurance, they can wait us out and shorten the amount of time we are willing to spend by keeping up a low-level protracted war that raises the cost. i'm looking at the clock i do

give versions of this around the country summer 60 minutes but i will go 40 for the sake of audience involvement know yourself, know your enemy presuming we know something how terrorist strategy works it is time to think about how to develop counterterror strategies. what if we faced an intelligent appointment understood our game? what would the intelligent opponent who understands our game do? so with strategy everything is new again. all new strategies are modification of the best is to

attack your enemy to assume that his right powers is to provoke overreaction logical thing is not to overreact. you know they want that. so don't. you have to practice some self-restraint but here is the downside it will look like weakness at home so political leader -- leaders it could help me strategically so with

a time-tested strategy you have to understand al qaeda with the islamic state and the coalition yes you have al qaeda, afghanistan libya, all over the place. isis is in different countries as well. but the local actors have local loyalties to have the tension between the local royalty into the larger organization my suggestion is over tony it is more to try and my source for thinking

about this is during the cold war when they thought they were facing he said right now they are that national loyalty will trump another this will happen in you. he was right. he said it will happen in china, chinese nationals will trump so they are not guaranteed to be allies at all if you know there is a crack to stick awaken it as far as possible to divide them into

organizations to coordinate effectively in the third-best strategies to attack your enemies what does that mean for counterterrorist today? keep your objectives very limited to al qaeda isis fighters you want very strict rules of engagement with no collateral damage that helps to create martyrs not to use in such a manner that you were using recruit it will require incredible discipline focusing on the fighters and to avoid collateral damage. i should point out it isn't easy to defeat a terrorist organization but it can be

done how do you kill an idea? the best you can do is marginal so fewer and fewer people are willing to support that and that requires incredible discipline and the were strategy is nothing benefited from a protracted war so that is the worst thing so to focus on the light footprints you don't want

hundred of thousands of troops in the country you want special forces that are highly skilled barely noticed the bigger the presence bigger the adversary could say the imperialists are dominating us so you go very light. so i would also point out if this is political theater with messaging in the media, you have to ask yourself who is the best messenger? my argument is it's not american. it's not anyone. with respect to his vomit

terrorism the best messengers is to get other muslims to stand up to say no. this is not what islam enjoys. you know you get people to say that the better off you are so therefore i would argue under no circumstances of her ever ever to for trey are struggle with a terrorist organization that it is a struggle with islam itself there are 1.5 billion muslim in the world today do not need one .5 billion enemies so that leads me to say how the struggle might end and to understand that you have to define

victory it is like one of those diseases that comes and goes. or like diabetes that is a condition we have no cure but you can manage that. you can reduce terrorism to a nuisance level. that is my definition that those terrorist tax occur if that is all that happens in the violence is limited then a free society will keep going and going and going victory here does not mean no casualties but just to minimize them to make sure we preserve our own free way of

life there have been relatively few terrorist and 11 are as far into the future as anyone can see remember they want to provoke us to overreact and we have to keep our heads in other words it is because of the war in iraq relatively few terrorists haven't committed since 911 and has cooperation of different government agencies cia fbi police forces than anything else and if that is true is that cooperation is the primary source of our

security then it is more but it is a different kind of four in the military could be the least relevant tool success of intelligence and police forces somewhat is controversial but i will take whatever you have. [applause] >> i'm an intern here at the heritage foundation talking about the idea instead of marginalizing the idea to rely on muslims to carry out how do

you balance that prescription with the fact the most prominent and affluent countries in the world not only refused to deride these ideas but instead actively encourage and support instead? - islam is diverse. we should avoid black and white categorization of islam as a whole some people practicing very peaceful some pacifistic some subscribe to a more violent form. it is true in some parts of the goal line -- the golf

people have given a lot of money to very extreme versions of his mom that can wait a terrorist hands. my argument is look at the people who were willing to give money, rich people like the coke brothers -- t5 or george soros but also the religious leadership writer religious users willing to stand up to those who practice terrorism? about one year. egypt issued a flock want that

terrorism is an islamic and those who practice that are not true muslims. you don't want one of them to say that but over 100 you want a thousand on your side and the more that you can do to get people to say that the better off you are but please note that is a delicate position. how does that look for them if we give them money? we have just legitimized them and turned them into target for those who practice took terrorism so you know this happens in strategy and what you must do to him but you're

not sure how to get there and i will say that victory here is when the religious leaders turn on into nouns the terrorist such that people would say no good muslim can be a terrorist. if that happened to win but how do you make that happen? and my answer is a light footprints and indirection with tons of plausible deniability that would be a beginning. >> i am listening to you on c-span on my phone so my family is in pakistan.

>> your english is great but slow down a little bit. >> so my question is how best can you help muslim communities because basically some of these are buried in the old testament but they are very related and not very seriously i would say that as a joke so my friend in grade school i came here in a study

here but i see absolutely no difference because i can make a comparison but there is no difference that the average family has nothing to do with terrorism but i'm sure people turned against mormons in this country they would behave the same way as muslims i suspect you are right. >> it is how it is interpreted

i am not an islamic scholar actually i can be a fellow in american political thought which is nice but somehow went on to give a talk on terrorism? now having acknowledged the absurdity of the situation but i do teach courses on terrorism as part of my job. let me say that i do think it is entirely logical to say how islam is interpreted that there are teachers with their interpretation to change the minds of the teachers and you will change the interpretation. everybody gets there that the question is how?

mice justin is probably not with bombs. military force can disrupt these organizations to make it difficult for them but it will not change people's minds. >> thank you for having me. [applause] and i'm sure he is happy to answer any other questions. >> if you want to hang out we will talk be five. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]

[inaudible conversations] >> we will go ahead and get started.