|
The objective of the conference is to explore the
role of adaptation and counter-adaptation in dealing
with novel threats to international security in the
21st century. Adaptation is arguably the most
important characteristic in today’s international
security environment. Compared to 20th century
conflicts between clear-cut nation states,
international security in the 21st century is
dominated by unpredictable and rapidly changing
threats from non-state actors— such as terrorists,
insurgents, transnational criminal networks, ethnic
violence, WMD proliferation, as well as
major “natural” threats such as pandemic diseases and
climate change.
The conference will bring academics and practitioners
from the U.S.
and Europe together, to share information on how
scientific approaches to understanding and achieving
effective adaptation can be exploited in counter-
insurgency, counter-terrorism, strategy, and homeland
security. My own interest in this -- as well as many
of yours -- is that biology and evolution offer an
especially useful framework for understanding
processes of adaptation and counter-adaptation.
The particular focus of this conference will be
discussions of security threats facing the U.K. and
U.S. today, as well as those facing NATO operational
forces in, for example, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The problem of adaptive responses applies across a
striking range of
applications: from strategic (e.g. policies and
deployments that are resilient), to technical
(designing machines and systems that have in- built
adaptability), to operational (enacting strategies
that remain flexible when deployed), to human
behavior (tactics, techniques and procedures that can
adapt over short periods of time).
What would be helpful in meeting the problem of
adaptation in 21st century international security is
a unifying framework for understanding and exploiting
the phenomenon of adaptation and counter- adaptation,
and this conference is a first step in laying out the
scope, applications, and utility of different
approaches.
|
