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can radical compassion win the war against violent extremism?

March 9, 2014
civil society, counter-radicalisation, de-radicalisation, disengagement, formers, internet, media, radicalisation, security, terrorism, Uncategorized
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I’m pleased to be chairing an event in London organised by the Forgiveness Project on 28 April where the focus will be on how former extremists can use their own experiences to help tackle violent extremism.

Sharing their own personal journeys of moving away from extremism will be Tony McAleer, a former white supremacist and former organiser of the White Aryan Resistance in Canada and Hadiya Masieh, a former Islamic extremist who was recruited by Hizb ut-Tahrir radicals, until the 7/7 bombings changed her perspective.

I’m a passionate believer that the stories of former extremists are a credible counter-message to extremist propaganda and I’m working to create a global resource of testimonies through my work at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and via the AVE network we run there.

More information about the event and tickets are available here.

5 messages for ed miliband on foreign policy

February 7, 2014
foreign policy, internet, security
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Here’s a piece I’ve got on HuffPo this morning, setting out 5 messages for Ed Miliband on foreign policy. It draws on a chapter I wrote for a new Fabian Society collection, One Nation in the World, that was launched on Monday in Parliament. The wonderful Kirsty McNeill has written a response to the collection.

5 Messages for Ed Miliband on Foreign Policy

When Prime Minister Miliband walks into Downing Street on 8 May 2015, he will inherit a foreign and security policy machine that needs fixing. The country can’t afford to support its ambitions for world leadership; new alliances are needed with the private sector; investment is needed in systems capacity – especially technological and linguistic – and the Labour Prime Minister will need to rebuild the trust of a public rocked by Snowden’s revelations about how the machinery of foreign and security policy really works.

Here are five messages for Prime Minister Miliband and his foreign policy team.

Labour needs a streamlined foreign policy

Austerity Britain can no longer afford to support its grand ambitions; the Foreign Office (FCO) budget is set to half as a proportion of departmental spending and the Ministry of Defence is facing cuts larger than any other department. Given these constraints, it makes sense to do less but better, focusing on a much smaller number of strategic priorities. The FCO should think in terms of campaigning rather than diplomacy, taking on a small number of touchstone foreign policy campaigning issues with a clear objective, measureable aims, a roadmap for success, smart communications strategy, and high-level leadership. The Foreign Secretary’s campaign to end sexual violence against women in conflict areas is a great example of this approach in practice, and will have ripple effects to broader work on gender, conflict and development.

Labour needs to rethink multilateralism

Let’s be honest; our international institutions do not work. And while reform efforts continue, a Labour government needs a new way of getting things done. It should look to convene small action-oriented networks of countries looking for solutions around specific problems. The Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia, created in 2009, is an example of what these flexible can-do networks can achieve – the results have been staggering.

Labour should also prioritise investment in regional bodies to deliver local solutions because these efforts tend to be more effective, build resilience and are sustainable. The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has turned a lost cause into a beacon of hope – this is the kind of thing we need in Mali instead of French boots on the ground. Three-quarters of Al Qaeda leaders are now in Africa.

Labour needs to bring the private sector into foreign policy making

Discussions within foreign policy tend to read like a cartographical roll call of who’s hot and who’s not. But power is not just shifting from West to East; it is seeping away from government, meaning that foreign policy solutions are found in boardrooms rather than embassies. For example, while Cathy Ashton deserves credit for mediating a landmark nuclear agreement with Iran, for years the EU failed to enforce its own sanctions. 18 months before this agreement was reached, a tiny NGO – United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) – successfully lobbied SWIFT to discontinue its services to EU-sanctioned Iranian financial institutions, including Iran’s Central Bank. What brought Iran to the table? Careful diplomacy or economic isolation achieved by a tiny but focused and determined advocacy group? Similarly, Google’s new uProxy product that allows ordinary citizens to allow campaigners under repressive regimes to use their internet connections as safe, anonymous proxy servers, could have a much larger impact on political reform in countries like Iran and China than careful, steady diplomacy.

Labour needs to put technology at the centre of its foreign policy making

Foreign policy can draw on a multitude of new technology tools to make it more effective – but it doesn’t. It could use large-scale sentiment analysis of social media big data to gauge the mood on the street. It could use social media platforms as a route to direct communication and engagement with foreign publics. And it could even crowd source policy making by enabling citizens to analyse data, as exemplified by the work of Brown Moses, who managed to join the dots quicker and more effectively on weapons in Syria than diplomats and analysts within government with access to highly classified information.

Labour needs to win back public trust in foreign policy

Perhaps the most important foreign policy ally for the next Labour government will be the British public. What Iraq started, Snowden finished, reinforcing the feeling that things aren’t working, that the ‘system’ has as much interest in self-preservation as public duty, and that elected politicians are not up to the job of reform. Labour should launch a public national enquiry into the impact of new technologies, the Internet and social media on foreign and security policy, addressing the full range of ethical challenges, governance issues, access to information, and opportunities for improving effectiveness and impact. It should be led by someone independent of the establishment who will not shy away from holding the foreign policy community to account.

The previous Labour government’s approach to foreign policy was the source of considerable public mistrust and dissatisfaction of the party. The scale of the challenge means that foreign policy is something that the next Labour government ignores at its peril.

corporate security for the 21st century

November 22, 2013
corporate security, kidnapping, security, Uncategorized
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Today I spent the morning with a group of security directors from some of Canada’s largest companies, talking about how corporate security has changed during the 15 years that I have been following it.

I talked about the four key changes that have occurred and how they have helped to bring security out of the boiler room and into the boardroom.

philosophical shift
Fifteen years ago, corporate security directors talked about the frustration of being seen as little more than the ‘man on the gate’. Both literally and metaphorically, they were shut out of the real business of their organisations.

This was largely of their own doing; most were trying to apply the logic and practices of their old organisations (mostly police and military – where hierarchies and command and control are how things get done) to complex, fast-paced and flat global matrix structures. They also limited themselves to being ‘boots on the ground’ because they focused on detailed operational delivery rather than strategic vision and oversight. Old habits died hard.

A decade and a half later, and things couldn’t be more different. The corporate security functions of the large multi-nationals are led by individuals – still the majority are men – who understand that they need to be business enablers rather than corporate cops.  They are proactive at interfacing with the business, rather than waiting for problems to come to them. They focus on persuasion and influence rather than change management through orders. And they are now much more strategic than operational, delegating a higher proportion of the delivery to local business units.

structural integration
Fine words are not enough to realise this 21st century vision of corporate security. So much rests on structural integration to lock the function into the key decision making parts of the company and give it the face time with the business that helps it to gain traction when it matters. The majority of corporate security directors now report directly into the executive committee. They have standard policies and practices that are mandated by the company. And they put in place smart reporting lines and relationships to embed themselves into the horizontal complexity of global multi-nationals with multiple business units and regional hubs. Fifteen years ago, corporate security departments were marginal players. Today, they are increasingly at the heart of business critical processes.

changing corporate security workload
One of the most stark shifts has been in the nature of the work of the corporate security department. A decade and a half ago, their time was spent on investigations, man guarding contracts and organising the travel and protection of the company’s top team. Many corporate security directors proudly talked about their close relationship with the chief exec, but in reality this was almost no different that which he or she enjoyed with their driver or chef.

Today, corporate security functions spend much more of their time on strategy, vision, leadership and oversight, and less on operational delivery. There is also much more focus on new areas of business risk, such as information security, due diligence, risk analysis and business continuity. Of course physical security is still important, but if the central team provides clear policies and procurement rules on man-guarding, for instance, this is just as effectively managed and acquired by local business units.

One of the most important trends within corporate security departments is the growth of in-house intelligence and analysis units. These small teams focus on regional, geo-political and threat specific analysis, tightly tailored to business needs, which can help to inform future decision making and insert corporate security into new business development processes. It is this change that will have the most profound impact on corporate security in the years ahead – it is this that will truly make it a business enabler.

people
Ultimately, any process, practice, procedure or strategy is delivered by people. While the majority of those within corporate security departments still come from a traditional security background (police, military, government, intelligence), they are leaving their old careers earlier, they are more diverse, and there are – slowly but surely – more women entering the function. If corporate security departments are there to serve diverse, multi-cultural and complex organisations, they must do a better job of reflecting them. And they must also do all they can to avoid group think.

The corporate security departments of 15 years ago thought their power and respect emanated from their expert knowledge. Today they realise that they need to talk and walk the language of business, be excellent communicators, and focus on building relationships. Boards do not want to know the minutia of a threat assessment and security process – they just want to know that the company’s problems are in hand. The corporate security directors that cry wolf are a dying and marginalised breed.

For more on corporate security, see The Business of Resilience.

 

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