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Year 2000 International Security Dimension Project Summary
Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett, Project Director

U.S. Naval War College
Center for Naval Warfare Studies
Decision Support Department
12/15/99 UPDATE

Project Objective:

Formulate Department of Navy (DoN) input to Department of Defense (DoD) review of possible courses of action (COAs) with regard to U.S. Government (USG) responses to the global unfolding of the Y2K systemic event—however defined (and there are plenty of definitions out there). Project is not about U.S. domestic Y2K situation or consequence management thereof, nor about Y2K problem within USG or DoD. Instead, we focus on potential for Y2K to serve—in conjunction with any "millennial mania"—as triggering event or catalyst for significant scenarios of domestic or cross-border instability in enough countries around the world so as to represent a higher-than-average frequency of possible USG and/or DoD response efforts (typically, about 6-8 crisis responses per year since late 1940s). Examples of response efforts might include intervention along the lines of past Complex Humanitarian Emergencies (CHEs) or other DoD activities designed to restore stability. In short, the questions are, "Can Y2K engender enough local crisis situations of significance to the U.S. to represent a stressing of our DoD-led response capability?" And, if so, "How best to prepare?"  Keep in mind, though, that our focus is not to create a list of possible problems (we leave that to the intelligence organizations).  Rather, it is to frame the larger dynamics of the Y2K event as it may unfold in any non-US country (by generating a range of generic Y2K scenarios and a realistic model of Y2K event dynamics—see below).  Thus, while others in the USG and DoD are concentrating their energies on how best to launch specific policy initiatives or prepare for specific missions, the Naval War College endeavors to create the larger policy framework (concentrating more on "how?" and "when?" questions than "what?" questions) within which these individual tasks can be oriented for maximum positive effect.  In short, we're working to create a "do's and don'ts" list for DoD as it wades ever deeper in the unfolding Y2K global event. In this sense, we seek to offer a reasonably worst-case analysis of what could happen (our speciality as scenario designers), but not a prediction per se of what will happen (beyond our organizational capacity).

Project Report/Briefings Delivered:

We posted our Final Report on the Internet on 23 July 1999. A hard copy final version, augmented with additional analysis, will become available sometime shortly before 1 January 1999. It will also be available on the web in a PDF format. 

Our summary brief was presented to the following entities (in addition to representatives from other organizations who attended one or more of our four workshops to date; see below):

Project Road Map and Summary:
 

2-4 December 1998 Scenario-Building Workshop

We conducted this workshop to explore four Y2K "onset models" (see Slide 1 below), and, by doing so, populate four possible scenarios (see Slide 2 below) based on the following four subject areas:


Slide 1: Four Generic Y2K Onset Models

EXPLANATORY REMARKS:


Participants at this event provided the study team with a number of useful and imaginative inputs via a meeting facilitation software program known as GroupSystems (e.g., scenario pieces presented in the format of "newspaper headlines," possible warning indicators of events moving from one scenario to another, "bumper sticker" names for individual scenarios), in addition to their impromptu participation in nine separate discussion sessions covering the following topics:

Click here to see the read-ahead package for the December workshop

The following individuals participated in the workshop:

Below is a snapshot description of the four scenarios generated by the workshop.
 
 


Slide 2: Four Generic Y2K Scenarios

EXPLANATORY REMARKS:

Click here to view the edited GroupSystems input captured in the December workshop
 
 


13-15 January 1999 Scenario-Dynamics Workshop

We conducted this workshop to explore four Y2K scenarios developed in the December event, this time using non-Y2K experts with a strong experience/knowledge base in "networks" (broadly defined as any structure that "moves things"), business activity, social issues and/or government in one of five world regions:

Participants at this event provided the study team with a number of useful and imaginative inputs via the GroupSystems approach (e.g., advice-filled "e-mails" written to their "close personal friend" who serves as top policy adviser to the President of Country X), in addition to their impromptu participation in eight separate discussion sessions covering the following topics:

Click here to see the read-ahead package for the January workshop
 
 
 


Slide 3: The M Curve of Opinion Leader Influence Over Y2K Event


EXPLANATORY REMARKS:


The following individuals participated in the January scenario-dynamics workshop:

Below is a snapshot description of the major themes discussed across the six phases of the composite scenario.
 
 


Slide 4: Y2K Themes & Linkages by Scenario Phase

EXPLANATORY REMARKS:

NETWORKS

BUSINESS

SOCIAL

GOVERNANCE

Click here to view the edited GroupSystems input captured in the January workshop
 
 


4 March 1999 DoD Consequence Management/CINCs' Strategies Workshop

We conducted this workshop to explore the possible range of DoD policy measures and associated CINC regional strategies that might be pursued in response to the unfolding of the Y2K and associated millennial date-change events along the phased scenario timeline developed and populated in the January workshop.  While we benefited by some CINC representation (CENTCOM), our real focus was on tapping into the extant inside-the-Beltway knowledge base regarding Y2K contingency planning (centered, within DoD, in OASD C3I) with an eye toward blending that knowledge with our own for eventual provision to the individual CINC-doms (specifically, CENTCOM, PACOM, SOUTHCOM, and EUCOM) as both they and the Joint Staff begin planning in earnest against the threat of Y2K-induced crises around the world (i.e., moving beyond the focus on remediation that has occupied most of their attention until this spring).

Click here to see the read-ahead package for the March workshop

Participants at this event provided the study team with a number of interesting and illuminating inputs via the GroupSystems approach, which in this instance involved providing us feedback on our proposed list of "policy do's and don'ts" for the governing authorities of a notional country (see Table 1 below), as well as our list of possible CINC mission categories (see slide 5 below).  For purposes of the one-day workshop, we reduced our six-phase scenario timeline to the following three groupings (which formed the basis for our three discussion sections):


Table 1: Y2K Policy "Do's and Don'ts" By Scenario Phases


 


MANIA/
COUNTDOWN

ONSET/
UNFOLDING

PEAK/
EXIT

Do focus on the most vulnerable, but don't do leper lists--just offer help

Do keep up official appearances and routines, but don't let your guard down on old foes

Do focus on urban centers, but don't ignore remote regions for long

Do work media to shape expectations, but don't hide any info you can share

Do channel the inevitable backlash of some, but don't be caught short-handed on security

 Do soften or slow small-and-medium-enterprise (SME) failures, but don't try to save real "losers"

Do offer quiet warnings to some, but no preemptive crackdowns

 Do encourage low-voltage celebrations, but don't let party-goers be stranded

Do keep lines open between have's and have-not's, but don't let economic chasms split large groups apart

Do push private-public cooperation, but don't use it as excuse to extend regulations into new areas

 Do arrest illegal economic opportunists quickly, but don't use the military except in dire circumstances

 Do focus bold responses on causes, but don't respond in knee-jerks to symptoms

Do promote early "outings" of private transcripts, but don't be hypocritical or impose last-minute rules

 Do focus on trans-shipping points, but don't let pirates & bandits flourish inbetween

 Do mobilize all relief efforts at your power, but don't forget opportunists lurk

Do spread the people risk where possible (i.e., avoid concentrating events), but don't try to limit people's movement in heavy-handed fashion

 Do focus Tiger Teams on blackouts and traffic jams, but don't let power losses persist, nor fortressing/islanding in essential services

 Do recognize all economic hardship, but don't promise what you can't deliver soon

 Do financial CBMs and do them early, but don't allow flight-to-quality stampedes

 Do focus online financially in stages, but don't be afraid to shut down in face of quakes

 Do "fire wall" financial contagions, but don't let Y2K become excuse for protectionism

 Do promote NGO/PVO outreach, but don't promote security-based solutions

 Do punish panic-mongers quickly, but by the book, and don't let rumors drive mass actions (fight them with truth squads)

Do declare an endpoint or create one, but don't leave restrictions in place afterwards

 Do isolate Y2K fellow-travelers & publicize them as such, but don't use them as excuse to abridge civil liberties

 Do ration supplies to protect most volatile people, but don't let the distressed concentrate around relief centers

Do keep "due process," but don't allow sense that "guilty" will get away with it

 Do all to influence individual decision-making right up to the very end, but don't try to run things in the waning hours

Do respond quickly to everything you can verify, but don't give in to quick fixes when you can't

 Do accept responsibility, but don't give in to temptation of scapegoating


 


Slide 5: Possible DoD/CINC Missions by Scenario Phase

EXPLANATORY REMARKS:


The following individuals participated in the January scenario-dynamics workshop:

Below is our snapshot description of the major themes we took from the workshop, arrayed across the six phases of the composite scenario.
 


Table 2: Possible CINC Issues By Scenario Timeline Phases

MANIA

COUNT
DOWN

ONSET

UNFOLDING

PEAK

EXIT

KEY COMMAND TASK

Update existing plans for Y2K slant

Exercises &
training

Intelligence (common operating picture)

Consequence management

Juggling resources

The gracious hand-off to host nations

KEY STRATEGIC CHOICE

Degree of outreach to countries in AOR

Force posture
across AOR

Moving vs.
waiting

Triage
(what and where?)

How much do you throw in?

When to declare "victory?"

KEY 
WILDCARD/
UNCERTAINTY

Extent of vulnerability across AOR

Resource allocation: homeland vs. CINCs

"Unknown Unknowns" still out there

Troop morale about situation back home

Resource allocation: CINC vs. CINC

What's left over? (scheduling)

Below is our snapshot description of the four major themes covered in the workshop regarding possible long-term fallout from the Y2K event with regard to U.S. foreign policy.
 


Slide 6: Possible Y2K Legacy Issues for U.S. Foreign Policy

EXPLANATORY REMARKS:

Click here to view the edited GroupSystems input captured in the March workshop
 
 


3 May 1999 Y2K Economic Security Dynamics Workshop

We conducted this workshop at the "Windows on the World" restaurant on the 107th floor of One World Trade Center.  Our hosts were Cantor Fitzgerald LP, the world's largest broker of U.S. Government securities, Eurobonds, and sovereign debt.

Click below to visit

Click here to see the read-ahead package for the May workshop
 

This workshop focused on how global financial markets would "process" and/or be impacted by the Y2K event.  Most specifically, we were interested in exploring how Y2K could trigger a "new rule set" for the international economy by further crystalizing some of the most pressing issues arising from the Global Financial Crisis of 1997-98 (e.g., push for more controls over international capital flows, calls to revamp/reform the IMF, more transparency in Emerging Markets and Hedge Funds, de facto dollarization of some economies).  Slide 1 below puts this notion into a larger historical perspective.
 
 


Slide 1: Time for a New Rule for the International Economy?


 

Participants at this event provided the study team with a number of interesting and illuminating inputs via the GroupSystems approach, which in this instance involved providing us with arguments--both pro and con--as to Y2K's potentially negative impact on global financial markets across the following three scenario-phase pairings:

These arguments are summarized in the following three slides, with the majority position identified in each discussion phase.
 


Slide 1: Mania/Countdown Phase Discussion
(Key Issue Defined as "Flight to Quality")

EXPLANATORY REMARKS:


Slide 2: Onset/Unfolding Phase Discussion
(Key Issue Defined as "Market Liquidity")

EXPLANATORY REMARKS:


Slide 3: Peak/Exit Phase Discussion
(Key Issue Defined as "Failures")

EXPLANATORY REMARKS:

The following individuals participated in the May economic security dynamics workshop:

Below is our snapshot description of the major themes we took from theworkshop regarding how the international financial community will likely judge economies in terms of the competency they display in preparing for, and dealing with the consequences of, the Y2K event.
 


Slide 4: Global Scorecard on 010100

EXPLANATORY REMARKS:


Click here to view the edited GroupSystems input captured in the May workshop
 
 

Bottom line of Naval War College effort:

Understanding that there is a tremendous gap between the public face many corporations and governments put forward on this issue ("we will have it well in hand") and the private fears and concerns expressed by many information technology experts (ranging from "global recession" to "apocalypse 2000!"), we want to explore this topic in as systematic a fashion as possible. We don't pretend that we'll end up with all the answers, but merely a sensible read on what's possible, how governments and companies are likely to respond across a range of scenarios, and what the USG and DoD should be prepared to undertake in response to Y2K's global unfolding. In short, while we're not interested in unduly hyping the Y2K situation, we are interested in exploring the "dark side" potentials because, frankly, that's what we get paid to do as a research organization that serves the U.S. military.

U.S. Naval War College points of contact:

Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett, Senior Strategic Researcher/project director

Prof. Henry D. Kamradt, Senior Strategic Researcher/project team member

Dr. Lawrence Modisett, Director, Decision Support Department (DSD)/team member

Ms. Linda Miller, DSD Administrator/team member

Y2K-related Web Sites You May Wish to Check Out:
 


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