Ep 199. Rerun: NATO: A Model for Ordering the Disorder?

When I was dealing with Afghanistan, we had a major problem with improvised explosive devices, roadside bombs.

Jamie Shea has worked as a senior NATO official for decades.

It was sometime in the 2010s that he found that these bombs were becoming a real issue for the alliance's troops.

Problem for NATO was that the Taliban could manufacture these in seconds, spending just a couple of dollars, you know, a bit of explosive, a, a mobile phone to activate device.

Dead easy to plant in the ground, no big tech required, and yet they would blow up NATO vehicles, NATO soldiers on TV, 12 British soldiers killed in one attack.

What are we doing in Afghanistan? It looked very, very bad.

So Jamie was tasked by NATO to come up with a solution, and solving this problem was difficult.

It required coordinating with the militaries of many, many countries, many defense contractors, and a whole range of civilian and governmental institutions.

We tried military solutions, spending billions, and I mean billions of dollars, protective vehicles, protective clothing, hospitals, satellite detection of where the earth had been moved, expensive vehicles to clear roads by blowing up the mines.

They came back that same night.

It was just like mowing the grass.

You had to always repeat, repeat, repeat.

He knew that better coordination was needed to protect NATO troops and defend and deter their adversaries.

This is not the solution.

They're attacking us at our weakest point, and they're exploiting their strongest point.

We've gotta turn it around.

We've gotta attack them at their weakest point and exploit our strength.

Jamie spent two years speaking to the FBI, Homeland Security, Interpol, manufacturers, customs officers, everyone he could think of who was relevant.

The goal was pretty simple: cut off their cash and eliminate their access to bomb components, all to protect NATO troops.

It cost a fraction, a fraction of the money that we were spending on military protection.

It didn't make the problem go away entirely, but it greatly reduced the number of explosions and therefore the PR effect of having NATO soldiers being blown up in Afghanistan.

So it takes a network to defeat a network.

This was a rare win in the era of global enduring disorder, an instance where coherent collective action was taken.

It was possible because NATO works.