Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
True sanctuary does not come from a "space"; but from a favorable terrain/veg that also is protected by some legal status (often a sovereign border) and the support of a poorly governed populace. Focus on the legal status's that bind us and the elements of poor governance that shape a populaces motivations. Many of these new actors are taking advantage of new forms of sanctuary, and those sanctuaries are primarily a function of laws that we follow but they can ignore; and poorly governed populaces that we have ignored in favor of the governments that in many cases, we have imposed or sustained over them.
That definition of "true sanctuary" may need to be opened up a bit, to include disaffected sectors of a generally well-governed populace. I'm thinking particularly here of the foothold radical Islam has gained in Western Europe... many of us may have criticisms of European governments, but as a rule it would be hard to classify the European populace as poorly governed. Radical movements have still managed to gain a significant presence there, often using the very rights and privileges that we associate with good governance as protection. It's a different form of sanctuary, one that poses a different set of challenges.

I suspect that the use of the term "deterrence" is becoming a bit of an obstacle to the discussion. There seem to be two different definitions floating around: some use "deterrence" in the broad sense of "any action or policy intended to prevent or discourage an attack", others see it in the more limited sense of "using the threat of retaliation to discourage an attack" (off-the-cuff definitions). I personally think the first is more appropriate, especially since massive retaliation against the type of amorphous organization that typically presents an irregular threat may not be possible. We need the entire toolbox, and terminology that tends - by design or by reflex - to emphasize one tool can distort the discussion from the start. Perhaps it would be better to speak of "confronting irregular threats", "neutralizing irregular threats", or something similar?

The question of whether the security environment presented by "irregular" threats is more or less complex than that presented by "regular" threats seems irrelevant to me. It may or may not be more complex, but it's certainly different. Is the threat presented by a nuclear warhead delivered by a ballistic missile more or less complex than the threat presented by a nuclear warhead smuggled into the country in a cargo container? I don't know or care: the point is not to decide which is more complex, the point is to prepare for both possibilities, and for possibilities we have yet to consider. Bob's effort seems a useful step toward that goal, and I'll be interested to see what comes of it.