PoliticalWarfare.org

Exclusive: New 'Strategic Influence' book is finally available

After years of anticipation, my anthology, Strategic Influence: Public Diplomacy, Counterpropaganda and Political Warfare is now available to the public.

The book won't be available in bookstores or on Amazon until October, but you can get it online through this blog.

Strategic Influence is the work of 13 scholars and practitioners in the fields of public diplomacy, counterpropaganda and political warfare. The book surveys the subjects from the American Revolution, through the Cold War, to present-day wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We strove to make the book the best single volume on the subject. It's a combination of scholarly, personal narratives and the policy essays from some of the best minds in the business - some recognizable, some emerging. Here's the table of contents:

• The American Way of Propaganda: Lessons from the Founding Fathers. J. Michael Waller, Institute of World Politics;
• What 'Strategic' Public Diplomacy Is. Carnes Lord, Naval War College;
• Public Diplomacy and Soft Power. Carnes Lord;
• Cultural Diplomacy, Political Influence and Integrated Strategy. John Lenczowski, Institute of World Politics;
• Mediators of the Message: The Role of Religion and Civil Society in Public Diplomacy. Jennifer Marshall, Heritage Foundation;
• Conducting a War of Ideas with Public Diplomacy. Robert Reilly, former director, Voice of America;
• Counterpropaganda: We Can't Win Without It. Herbert Romerstein, former director, Office to Counter Soviet Active Measures, U.S. Information Agency;
• Recovering the Lost Art of Counterpropaganda. Andrew Garfield, Glevum Associates;
• The Interagency Active Measures Working Group: Successful Template for Strategic Influence. Herbert Romerstein;
• Political Warfare: Means for Achieving Political Ends. Angelo Codevilla, Boston University;
• Political War vs Political Terror: Case Study of an American Success Story. John J. Tierney, Institute of World Politics;
• The Importance of Words. J. Michael Waller;
• Hearts and Minds Online: Internetting the Messages in the Infosphere. Hampton Stephens, World Politics Review;
• Toward a Theory of Low-Intensity Propaganda. Stephen C. Baker, Institute of World Politics;
• Red-Teaming Strategic Communications and Political Warfare. David Spencer, National Defense University;
• A Comprehensive Approach to Information Operations. Andrew Garfield;
• Synchronizing Rhetoric, Policy and Action. Juliana Geran Pilon, Institute of World Politics;
• An Immediate-Term Wartime Message Strategy. J. Michael Waller;
• Getting Serious About Strategic Influence. J. Michael Waller.

Strategic Influence is published by the Institute of World Politics Press. The original edition was published for restricted circulation in 2007. This edition was revised in 2009 but was not available until today, and will not be generally available to the public until October 2010.

The book is only available at present - as a paperback and as an e-book - by clicking here.

A swell way to declare an Afghan victor

Here's a terrific way for the United States to settle the Afghan presidential election controversy: Have the Voice of America broadcast an "exclusive interview" with the CIA director who says the US-favored candidate will win and that a vote recount won't matter.

Not!

Yet that's just what the VOA and CIA Director Leon Panetta have done. Here's what the VOA reported on September 18:

Official preliminary final totals in Afghanistan's recent presidential election have incumbent president Hamid Karzai the winner, but the election was marred by allegations of massive vote fraud. A U.N. electoral oversight group has ordered a partial recount. But the head of the Central Intelligence Agency believes that will not make much of a difference.

In an exclusive VOA interview, CIA director Leon Panetta says that even if suspect ballots are discounted, President Hamid Karzai will in all likelihood win re-election.

"It's clear that there was some degree of corruption and fraud involved in the election," Panetta said. "It's being viewed now by the commissions involved in counting those votes. I think what appears to be the case is that even after they eliminate some of the votes that resulted because of fraud, that Karzai will still - still looks like the individual who's going to be able to win that election."

The preliminary final results have Mr. Karzai with enough votes to avoid a runoff with former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. Mr. Karzai has angrily denied major fraud and denounced the media for what he says are exaggerated reports of electoral corruption.

A few problems show themselves here. First, the CIA director should never try to declare the winner of a US-backed election in another country. Even if the CIA wasn't involved in trying to manage the outcome of the Afghan election (and shame on the US for not using the CIA for that purpose, given that the Saudis, Pakistanis, Iranians and others are meddling plenty in Afghan political affairs), an official CIA comment simply looks bad and taints the favored candidate.

Second, why in the world is the Voice of America, as a major public diplomacy instrument of the United States government, eliciting and promoting such statements from the CIA Director?

The CIA-VOA electoral pronunciation has other negative effects, too, but I'll end with just the above pair of thoughts and the following question: Who is in charge of US strategic messaging on Afghanistan?

Stability Operations field manual: A good start with lots of room to grow

The US Army's new Stability Operations field manual, FM 3-07, takes warfighting to a new art form, with an emphasis on preventing large-scale conflicts from occurring, and on winning the peace after winning a war.

Lots of political warfare applications here. There's a lot that this book of doctrine doesn't say, but it leaves open a lot of room for our tools of first resort. 

For people who want to make a difference for all the right reasons in the information operations and related fields, the new field manual is a great place to start.

I ran excerpts from the field manual and related commentary in the latest issue of Serviam magazine, insofar as the book relates to the private sector and contracting opportunities:

• "US Army Embraces the Private Sector for Mission Success"
• "Comprehensive Approach: Army's New Field Manual on Stability Operations Stresses the Private Sector"
• "What Army Doctrine Means for Businesses and Charities"

A piece by Maj. John Rose, "Missed Opportunities in the Stability Operations Doctrine," notes how the field manual comes up pretty short on the information operations side of things.

Here's a pdf of the Stability Operations field manual: Download FM3-07.

What Army doctrine means for businesses and charities

By J. Michael Waller *
Serviam magazine, November-December 2008

Businesses and charities involved in the global stability sector will find a lot of opportunity in the Army’s new stability operations doctrine.

The Army wants it that way. Principally designed as a guide for the Army’s senior leadership—officers at the rank of major and above—the Stability Operations Field Manual 3-07 “is also intended to serve as a resource for the other government agencies, intergovernmental organizations, agencies of other governments, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and private sector entities who seek to develop a better understanding of the role of the military in broader reconstruction and stabilization efforts,” according to the preface.

That’s a big invitation for private sector involvement. Opportunities are immense. According to the field manual, the new doctrine “addresses military stability operations in the broader context of United States government reconstruction and stabilization efforts. It describes the role of military forces in supporting those broader efforts by leveraging the coercive and constructive capabilities of the force to establish a safe and secure environment; facilitate reconciliation among local or regional adversaries; establish political, legal, social, and economic institutions; and help transition responsibility to a legitimate civil authority operating under the rule of law.”

This fully integrated approach means that businesses and charities that had worked on the purely civilian level may now plan to contract and otherwise collaborate with the military, and vice versa.

Based on the experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, the new integration combines the vastly increased resources of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and other public institutions with the even greater resources of the U.S. military. The successes of both depend heavily on private contractors and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from around the world.

According to the field manual, “This transition is fundamental to the shift in focus toward long-term developmental activities where military forces support broader efforts in pursuit of national and international objectives.” Reverting to the tradition of the great former general and Secretary of State George Marshall, author of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, much of the assistance will be user-driven: “Success in these endeavors typically requires a long-term commitment by external actors and is ultimately determined by the support and participation of the host-nation population.”

Translation: Pay close attention to the needs and aspirations of the people who live in unstable areas. By tending to those needs and hopes, the doctrine reasons, the United States and its allies can undermine the appeal of political and religious extremism, both violent and subversive, and advance American interests.

Those with their ears closest to the ground in such places will be able to shape the allocation of resources, and so those already working in the field with established track records have a running start. The need is so great, however, that there is plenty of room for new and innovative companies, charities, and NGOs that have yet to be created. And plenty of established groups have yet to get into the game of collaborating with the U.S. military.

The Army doctrine provides the framework for an industry of war prevention that could rival the size of the industry that creates the products and services needed for warfighting. The potential client list is endless.

Nonprofit Advantages

First, nonprofits can stretch their charitable dollars by letting the military pay the huge logistical costs of moving people and supplies from point A to point B. This frees up considerable resources to reinvest in actual relief and development work. Second, those nonprofits can also contract with the military where U.S.-sponsored stability operations are under way. In parts of the world without a U.S. presence, the demand-driven feature of the doctrine also allows nonprofits in remote trouble spots to bring problems and solutions to the attention of American officials.

The doctrine notes that many charities and NGOs believe they function best independently of any affiliation with the U.S. government. That independence can still be an asset, as cooperation can be unofficial and unacknowledged yet mutually beneficial. The Army field manual respects the fact that some humanitarian groups and NGOs will want no involvement of any kind with the U.S. military.

Building Private Sectors

The ground-up philosophy behind the doctrine is premised on protecting and expanding private enterprise in unstable areas. Government intervention is generally seen as a temporary fix in order to protect fragile institutions, which include private business and the government systems that protect enterprise. Stability operations are designed so that the external governmental or military presence will disappear. Their goal is to work themselves out of their jobs.

So the contracting of goods and services—often in the form of joint ventures between American businesses, companies from other countries in an alliance or coalition, and new companies in the host countries—is institutionalized in the new Army doctrine. The challenge for businesses is to prove that they are more cost-effective and politically desirable to provide solutions on contract, as opposed to having governments do the work directly.

Humanitarian Relief

Nonprofit and for-profit humanitarian relief groups will play important roles under the new Army doctrine. Private medical practices, hospitals, ambulance services, and pharmaceutical and equipment providers should find new contracting opportunities globally as the United States and other large powers increase their funding on the humanitarian and health sectors of unstable areas worldwide.

In addition, the infrastructures needed for a healthy society—potable water, sanitation, housing construction, urban planning, energy generation, communication, and transportation systems—are all major growth areas under the stability operations doctrine.

Civil Society

Over the past two decades, a specialized industry in civil society building has sprung up around the world, centered particularly in Washington, D.C., near the hub of U.S. spending on the promotion of pre- and postwar reconciliation, democracy building, rule of law, transparency, and the development of functioning civil institutions around the world. This industry has proven itself indispensable under contracts with USAID, the World Bank, and other multibillion-dollar public organizations.

Having learned from spectacular successes and colossal mistakes in Asia, Latin America, and the countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan, the civil society sector is better placed than ever to grow as a service business. Yet the risk of mere marginal success and even total failure remains high, and the sector should police itself more rigorously to preserve the solid reputation it is starting to earn.

Economic Development

Much of the same can be said of economic development, not only in light of today’s global crisis, but also in the context of the often ineptly or corruptly designed and executed schemes that have given market-driven economic reforms a bad name around the world. Dictatorial models offered by the People’s Republic of China offer tempting alternatives to those who saw political reforms collapse under the weight of economic change, and, with more and wealthier economic actors on the world stage, it is up to American, Canadian, British, Latin American, and other market reform businesses to work harder to stay viable over the long term. The Army doctrine offers a way to help make that possible, but the innovations will have to come from the private sector, not the military.

Security Sector

No viable economic system can survive without the legal structures and law enforcement tools to keep people as honest as possible. Economic success depends on well-trained police and security services that operate under efficient and equitable civilian control, with all the requisite accountability measures to ensure against abuse of power.

Tough enough in normal societies, this is a tall order in transitioning countries and places in crisis, and even in stable societies where corruption is the norm. The training and equipping of police and security services by private contractors under license from the provider governments can have an experimental effect beyond the governments’ own resources.

Ideally, the U.S. military will not be primarily responsible for ensuring the security needed for successful humanitarian relief and national development. That job, under the doctrine, should go as much as possible to third parties and host countries, which, in turn, would depend on contracting private companies to do the job of setting up functioning and viable institutions so the U.S. military will not have to do it.

_____

*J. Michael Waller used a pen name, Ann Jocelyn, in the original version of this article.

USAID and global stability solutions

US Agency for International Development Administrator Henrietta H. Fore outlines the new strategy for public-private partnerships in the global stability field. Her edited comments appear in the July-August 2008 issue of Serviam magazine.

Click here for the contents of the July-August issue. Related articles in the magazine include:

"USAID Focuses on Entrepreneurship"

Cmdr. John Wrenn, "Do Words Matter? Using the Wrong Words Supports Radical Islamism"

'An ounce of prevention' - Ben Franklin and private fire departments

by J Michael Waller
Serviam magazine, July-August 2008

Out-of-control wildfires out West show the severe limits on government’s ability to protect society from one of nature’s weapons of mass destruction. Federal and state officials waited for more than a half-million acres to burn last June and July before calling the National Guard for help.

With hundreds of homes destroyed among the billions of dollars’ worth of damages, some policymakers and entrepreneurs are considering the revival of private firefighting companies that can be contracted to help authorities battle blazes.

Naysayers call the idea preposterous, denouncing the concept that businesses should profit from other people’s misfortune. But with private ambulance and rescue services, private medical practices, and private hospitals being a firm part of the American tradition, proponents say, private firefighting contractors are an idea whose time has come.

Like so many “new” ideas, private fire departments are an old idea.

Boston’s great fire of 1679 led to the creation of “the first paid fire department in North America, if not the world,” according to the National Fire Protection Association. Though employed directly by the city of Boston, the 12 firemen, like members of the local militia, were essentially private contractors. The colony of Massachusetts was run by a private company at the time.

Firefighting in colonial cities was an ad-hoc affair in the 1600s and 1700s. Some colonial or city governments provided ladders and leather buckets for public use in battling blazes, which were all too common in an age where most urban construction was made of wood. In 1718, the city of Philadelphia bought an English-made pump, mounted on a wagon, to aid in fighting fires.

Franklin’s Union Fire Company

There were still no organized and trained firefighters in America. That changed in 1736 when Benjamin Franklin organized the Union Fire Company in Philadelphia. Franklin had seen the professional firefighters in his native Boston, and he saw the need for a well-trained and organized force in his adopted city. He was worried that untrained firefighters could inadvertently spread or even start other fires. The Union Fire Company is recognized as the first fire “department” in what is now the United States.

We usually think of Franklin from his portraits painted in the later years of his life, when he had become a wealthy and famous statesman. At first glance, the idea of Franklin as a fireman strikes one as odd. Biographer Walter Isaacson estimates that, at just under 6 feet in height, Franklin weighed as much as 240 pounds in his older years, when he suffered from obesity and gout. As a 29-year-old when he first came up with the private fire company idea, Franklin was vigorous and athletic, a barrel-chested man noted for being an excellent swimmer. He once had to jump out a second-story window to escape a house fire.

‘. . . a Pound of Cure’

One of Franklin’s most famous sayings had to do with firefighting. He had seen the city government’s response to the destructive waterfront fire of 1730, in which the old pumper had proven almost worthless. According to the Fireman’s Hall Museum in Philadelphia, the city council authorized the purchase of three more pumpers, 400 leather buckets, and other firefighting gear, but did not organize people to use them.

Early in 1735, Franklin wrote a letter under a pseudonym to his own newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, about the need to train citizens in basic firefighting techniques. He had been publicly urging action for a few years. This time, he referred to the practice of safely cleaning ashes out of a fireplace with a shovel, or carrying a bed warmer or warming pan from the fireplace to the bedroom on cold nights. The pan consisted of a shallow, long-handled metal box that contained hot embers from the fireplace. A hinged lid kept the burning coals safely in the box, which was placed between the cold blankets of the bed. Even small children knew how to carry warming pans, he said, using basic fireplace safety as an example of how a firefighter must be trained.

Franklin wrote: “In the first Place, as an Ounce of Prevention is worth a Pound of Cure, I would advise ‘em to take care how they suffer living Coals in a full Shovel, to be carried out of one Room into another, or up or down Stairs, unless in a Warmingpan shut; for Scraps of Fire may fall into Chinks and make no Appearance until Midnight, when your Stairs being in Flames, you may be forced, (as I once was) to leap out of your Windows, and hazard your Necks to avoid being oven-roasted.”

Everyone at the time knew that residue buildup inside chimney flues also caused fires, but not all were good about cleaning the shafts regularly, and even those who were often used the dangerous cleaning practice of burning soot out of chimneys. Given urban population density, in which one person’s carelessness could cause the loss of other people’s homes, Franklin urged Philadelphians to follow Boston’s example of using chimney sweeps, licensed and regulated by the city, to reduce the likelihood of chimney fires. Building in an accountability measure, Franklin argued that the city should hold chimney sweeps liable for the quality of their work.

With Franklin as its chief, the Union Fire Company was a volunteer organization, independent of the city government. Its members were civic-minded men who took no pay. So many locals volunteered that Franklin urged them to set up their own fire companies in their neighborhoods.

Civic-Minded Businessman

Volunteer firefighters respond to a house fire.

Throughout his long life, Franklin combined his spirit of public service with private entrepreneurship. He arrived in Philadelphia as a teenager with nothing and became wealthy through a seemingly endless range of business ventures, all the while using his daring and his wit to improve the lives of others.

Years later, in 1752, Franklin founded the city’s first insurance company, in partnership with several members of other local private fire companies. The for-profit venture was known as the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. “This was a mutual company organized to offer its members monetary compensation in the event of fire,” according to the Fireman’s Hall Museum. “Premiums varied depending upon the type of structure, the materials used, and the thickness of the party walls. The Deed of Settlement further stipulated that every insured house be equipped with a trap door to the roof and iron rails to facilitate fire fighting.”

This idea led to the widespread practice of private fire companies that were funded not by taxpayers but by subscriptions. For a regular fee, individual citizens or businesses would purchase firefighter protection from specific fire companies so that, in the event of a blaze, the company would come and put out the fire. To mark their buildings as protected under the policies, owners would attach cast iron “firemark” symbols, usually oval or rectangular markers with the name or recognizable symbol of the respective fire company, to the front wall facing the street.

The private fire companies were not liable to extinguish fires at properties of nonsubscribers, much as insurance companies do not pay damages to those who do not buy their financial protection. Insurance companies would later own or fund fire companies as a means of protecting their investments. The practice all but died out with the rise of full-time municipal and volunteer fire departments, some of which still refer to themselves or their units as “fire companies.”

Today in the western United States, the American International Group (AIG) offers subscribers an option for intervention in the event of wildfires. AIG is the largest insurance company in the world. Its Mobile Wildfire Protection Unit doesn’t put out the fire if the home is being destroyed, but it does spray the home and surrounding vegetation in advance of the flames to spare the insured property from destruction.

Legacy of First Responders

Franklin’s private firefighting system served Philadelphia for 135 years, until the city—much larger and more prosperous than ever—created the Philadelphia Fire Department in 1870. The department recognizes Franklin as its ultimate founder.

The International Fire Chiefs Association calls Franklin “a prime contributor to the wealth of tradition that symbolizes the fire and emergency service worldwide.” The association’s most prestigious annual award is the International Benjamin Franklin Fire Service Award for Valor.

_______
From the July/August 2008 issue of Serviam.

by J Michael Waller
Serviam magazine, July-August 2008

Out-of-control wildfires out West show the severe limits on government’s ability to protect society from one of nature’s weapons of mass destruction. Federal and state officials waited for more than a half-million acres to burn last June and July before calling the National Guard for help.

With hundreds of homes destroyed among the billions of dollars’ worth of damages, some policymakers and entrepreneurs are considering the revival of private firefighting companies that can be contracted to help authorities battle blazes.

Naysayers call the idea preposterous, denouncing the concept that businesses should profit from other people’s misfortune. But with private ambulance and rescue services, private medical practices, and private hospitals being a firm part of the American tradition, proponents say, private firefighting contractors are an idea whose time has come.

Like so many “new” ideas, private fire departments are an old idea.

Boston’s great fire of 1679 led to the creation of “the first paid fire department in North America, if not the world,” according to the National Fire Protection Association. Though employed directly by the city of Boston, the 12 firemen, like members of the local militia, were essentially private contractors. The colony of Massachusetts was run by a private company at the time.

Firefighting in colonial cities was an ad-hoc affair in the 1600s and 1700s. Some colonial or city governments provided ladders and leather buckets for public use in battling blazes, which were all too common in an age where most urban construction was made of wood. In 1718, the city of Philadelphia bought an English-made pump, mounted on a wagon, to aid in fighting fires.

Franklin’s Union Fire Company

There were still no organized and trained firefighters in America. That changed in 1736 when Benjamin Franklin organized the Union Fire Company in Philadelphia. Franklin had seen the professional firefighters in his native Boston, and he saw the need for a well-trained and organized force in his adopted city. He was worried that untrained firefighters could inadvertently spread or even start other fires. The Union Fire Company is recognized as the first fire “department” in what is now the United States.

We usually think of Franklin from his portraits painted in the later years of his life, when he had become a wealthy and famous statesman. At first glance, the idea of Franklin as a fireman strikes one as odd. Biographer Walter Isaacson estimates that, at just under 6 feet in height, Franklin weighed as much as 240 pounds in his older years, when he suffered from obesity and gout. As a 29-year-old when he first came up with the private fire company idea, Franklin was vigorous and athletic, a barrel-chested man noted for being an excellent swimmer. He once had to jump out a second-story window to escape a house fire.

‘. . . a Pound of Cure’

One of Franklin’s most famous sayings had to do with firefighting. He had seen the city government’s response to the destructive waterfront fire of 1730, in which the old pumper had proven almost worthless. According to the Fireman’s Hall Museum in Philadelphia, the city council authorized the purchase of three more pumpers, 400 leather buckets, and other firefighting gear, but did not organize people to use them.

Early in 1735, Franklin wrote a letter under a pseudonym to his own newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, about the need to train citizens in basic firefighting techniques. He had been publicly urging action for a few years. This time, he referred to the practice of safely cleaning ashes out of a fireplace with a shovel, or carrying a bed warmer or warming pan from the fireplace to the bedroom on cold nights. The pan consisted of a shallow, long-handled metal box that contained hot embers from the fireplace. A hinged lid kept the burning coals safely in the box, which was placed between the cold blankets of the bed. Even small children knew how to carry warming pans, he said, using basic fireplace safety as an example of how a firefighter must be trained.

Franklin wrote: “In the first Place, as an Ounce of Prevention is worth a Pound of Cure, I would advise ‘em to take care how they suffer living Coals in a full Shovel, to be carried out of one Room into another, or up or down Stairs, unless in a Warmingpan shut; for Scraps of Fire may fall into Chinks and make no Appearance until Midnight, when your Stairs being in Flames, you may be forced, (as I once was) to leap out of your Windows, and hazard your Necks to avoid being oven-roasted.”

Everyone at the time knew that residue buildup inside chimney flues also caused fires, but not all were good about cleaning the shafts regularly, and even those who were often used the dangerous cleaning practice of burning soot out of chimneys. Given urban population density, in which one person’s carelessness could cause the loss of other people’s homes, Franklin urged Philadelphians to follow Boston’s example of using chimney sweeps, licensed and regulated by the city, to reduce the likelihood of chimney fires. Building in an accountability measure, Franklin argued that the city should hold chimney sweeps liable for the quality of their work.

With Franklin as its chief, the Union Fire Company was a volunteer organization, independent of the city government. Its members were civic-minded men who took no pay. So many locals volunteered that Franklin urged them to set up their own fire companies in their neighborhoods.

Civic-Minded Businessman

Volunteer firefighters respond to a house fire.

Throughout his long life, Franklin combined his spirit of public service with private entrepreneurship. He arrived in Philadelphia as a teenager with nothing and became wealthy through a seemingly endless range of business ventures, all the while using his daring and his wit to improve the lives of others.

Years later, in 1752, Franklin founded the city’s first insurance company, in partnership with several members of other local private fire companies. The for-profit venture was known as the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. “This was a mutual company organized to offer its members monetary compensation in the event of fire,” according to the Fireman’s Hall Museum. “Premiums varied depending upon the type of structure, the materials used, and the thickness of the party walls. The Deed of Settlement further stipulated that every insured house be equipped with a trap door to the roof and iron rails to facilitate fire fighting.”

This idea led to the widespread practice of private fire companies that were funded not by taxpayers but by subscriptions. For a regular fee, individual citizens or businesses would purchase firefighter protection from specific fire companies so that, in the event of a blaze, the company would come and put out the fire. To mark their buildings as protected under the policies, owners would attach cast iron “firemark” symbols, usually oval or rectangular markers with the name or recognizable symbol of the respective fire company, to the front wall facing the street.

The private fire companies were not liable to extinguish fires at properties of nonsubscribers, much as insurance companies do not pay damages to those who do not buy their financial protection. Insurance companies would later own or fund fire companies as a means of protecting their investments. The practice all but died out with the rise of full-time municipal and volunteer fire departments, some of which still refer to themselves or their units as “fire companies.”

Today in the western United States, the American International Group (AIG) offers subscribers an option for intervention in the event of wildfires. AIG is the largest insurance company in the world. Its Mobile Wildfire Protection Unit doesn’t put out the fire if the home is being destroyed, but it does spray the home and surrounding vegetation in advance of the flames to spare the insured property from destruction.

Legacy of First Responders

Franklin’s private firefighting system served Philadelphia for 135 years, until the city—much larger and more prosperous than ever—created the Philadelphia Fire Department in 1870. The department recognizes Franklin as its ultimate founder.

The International Fire Chiefs Association calls Franklin “a prime contributor to the wealth of tradition that symbolizes the fire and emergency service worldwide.” The association’s most prestigious annual award is the International Benjamin Franklin Fire Service Award for Valor.

_______
From the July/August 2008 issue of Serviam.

Clara Barton and the American Red Cross: A private volunteer serves with the US Army

by J Michael Waller
Serviam, November-December 2007

First Sergeant Roland Williston lay on a gurney in the 100-degree Virginia heat, with gangrene consuming the amputated stumps of his shattered left hand and leg. The 26-year-old barber from Holyoke, Mass., had been among the first volunteers to answer President Abraham Lincoln’s call to save the Union. Now, in the sweltering humidity of a sick bay swarming with flies, he knew he would never see home again.

Williston’s unit, the Second Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, was the last federal force left standing on that terrible day of August 9, 1862, when ill-prepared Union troops engaged a superior Confederate force at Cedar Mountain near Culpeper, Va. The only Civil War engagement in which Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson would draw his sword, the battle was in part the product of the Union army’s own poor planning.

The battle also marked the start of something new—something that would bring relief to the sick and wounded and hope to the hopeless millions of times over. It marked the first time that Clara Barton, who would found the American Red Cross, ministered to soldiers in the field, becoming a harbinger of today’s global stability industry.

Barton was a true pioneer in getting more efficient, private-sector support to the military, as she was in advancing the cause of women’s rights. A 40-year-old U.S. Patent Office clerk in Washington, D.C., when the war began in 1861, she was horrified at the plight of the wounded young men flooding the nation’s capital from the battlefields. The Army Medical Department, she noted, was terribly unprepared to treat casualties.

Inspired by her father, who urged her to devote her life to patriotic and charitable causes, Clara Barton lobbied the army for months to allow her to go directly to the front with her own medical supplies. The army wouldn’t hear of it. Finally, in April 1862, after the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas), Gen. William Hammond issued her a pass to travel with wounded soldiers in army ambulances.

But she was still not allowed in the combat areas. In those times, few single women of good repute traveled with the rough and lonely soldiers. Military camps were no place for ladies. Barton and her volunteers, though, were undaunted. By summer, thanks to the intervention of Senator Henry Wilson of her home state of Massachusetts, the army relented.

Sgt. Roland Williston: Clara Barton was there as he lay dying of his wounds.

Barton, her volunteers, and their small mule train of supplies reached Culpeper, Va., four days after the Battle of Cedar Mountain. With army surgeons and medics grotesquely overworked and lacking many of the most basic supplies, the Barton group spent two days and two nights tending to wounded and dying Union soldiers, stopping later to tend to Confederates as well. When they could do nothing to heal the wounded or lessen their pain in the stinking heat, they comforted them as best they could, washing them, listening and talking with them, and singing or praying as they closed their eyes to fall asleep or die.

The military was already experiencing technological advances, from using the telegraph and railroads for rapid communication and logistics to employing new classes of rifles, artillery, and other industrialized products on the battlefield. Barton was another aspect of that change: Her nongovernmental organization outside the military chain of command would now play an important role in warfare and its aftereffects. She would revolutionize how the U.S. military took care of its wounded, its veterans, and its dead.

Barton and her volunteers were present at Second Manassas, the carnage at Antietam, and Fredericksburg. At Antietam, a bullet ripped through her sleeve, killing the man she was assisting. By 1863, the Army Medical Department was better equipped to meet the needs of the military, and Barton’s efforts were tiny in comparison. She remained on the fronts. In 1865, Barton started a nationwide campaign to identify missing soldiers, helping with the identification of 13,000 Union unknowns buried at the Andersonville, Ga., prison camp.

An innovation that began as an unwanted intrusion on the military is now a national institution.

She went to Europe on doctors’ orders, only to be convalescing at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Back in action, Barton assisted with the French relief effort, where she discovered the volunteers of the Red Cross, a charitable group that had been founded in Switzerland while she was working in the battlefields of the American South.

Returning to the United States, she started organizing the American chapter of the Red Cross in 1873. Congress recognized the American Red Cross in 1881 as a private aid provider in time of disaster. Industrialist John D. Rockefeller provided the resources to buy a parcel of land one block from the White House and build a magnificent marble headquarters building.

In 1905, Congress chartered the American Red Cross to “carry on a system of national and international relief in time of peace and apply the same in mitigating the sufferings caused by pestilence, famine, fire, floods, and other great national calamities, and to devise and carry out measures for preventing the same.” In World War I, the surgeon general enlisted the American Red Cross to set up 58 base hospitals in Europe. The American Red Cross recruited more than 104,000 registered nurses to serve in military hospitals. The group served similarly in the Korean War, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, the Balkans, and the Middle East, and continues to assist today in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At home, the American Red Cross responds to more than 70,000 disasters a year, from house fires to hazardous waste spills, from tornadoes to earthquakes. It provides 3,000 American hospitals with blood and blood products and assists 1.4 million active duty military families and 1.2 million members of the National Guard and Reserves. An innovation that began as an unwanted intrusion on the military is now a national institution.

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From the November/December 2007 issue of Serviam.

by J Michael Waller
Serviam, November-December 2007

First Sergeant Roland Williston lay on a gurney in the 100-degree Virginia heat, with gangrene consuming the amputated stumps of his shattered left hand and leg. The 26-year-old barber from Holyoke, Mass., had been among the first volunteers to answer President Abraham Lincoln’s call to save the Union. Now, in the sweltering humidity of a sick bay swarming with flies, he knew he would never see home again.

Williston’s unit, the Second Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, was the last federal force left standing on that terrible day of August 9, 1862, when ill-prepared Union troops engaged a superior Confederate force at Cedar Mountain near Culpeper, Va. The only Civil War engagement in which Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson would draw his sword, the battle was in part the product of the Union army’s own poor planning.

The battle also marked the start of something new—something that would bring relief to the sick and wounded and hope to the hopeless millions of times over. It marked the first time that Clara Barton, who would found the American Red Cross, ministered to soldiers in the field, becoming a harbinger of today’s global stability industry.

Barton was a true pioneer in getting more efficient, private-sector support to the military, as she was in advancing the cause of women’s rights. A 40-year-old U.S. Patent Office clerk in Washington, D.C., when the war began in 1861, she was horrified at the plight of the wounded young men flooding the nation’s capital from the battlefields. The Army Medical Department, she noted, was terribly unprepared to treat casualties.

Inspired by her father, who urged her to devote her life to patriotic and charitable causes, Clara Barton lobbied the army for months to allow her to go directly to the front with her own medical supplies. The army wouldn’t hear of it. Finally, in April 1862, after the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas), Gen. William Hammond issued her a pass to travel with wounded soldiers in army ambulances.

But she was still not allowed in the combat areas. In those times, few single women of good repute traveled with the rough and lonely soldiers. Military camps were no place for ladies. Barton and her volunteers, though, were undaunted. By summer, thanks to the intervention of Senator Henry Wilson of her home state of Massachusetts, the army relented.

Sgt. Roland Williston: Clara Barton was there as he lay dying of his wounds.

Barton, her volunteers, and their small mule train of supplies reached Culpeper, Va., four days after the Battle of Cedar Mountain. With army surgeons and medics grotesquely overworked and lacking many of the most basic supplies, the Barton group spent two days and two nights tending to wounded and dying Union soldiers, stopping later to tend to Confederates as well. When they could do nothing to heal the wounded or lessen their pain in the stinking heat, they comforted them as best they could, washing them, listening and talking with them, and singing or praying as they closed their eyes to fall asleep or die.

The military was already experiencing technological advances, from using the telegraph and railroads for rapid communication and logistics to employing new classes of rifles, artillery, and other industrialized products on the battlefield. Barton was another aspect of that change: Her nongovernmental organization outside the military chain of command would now play an important role in warfare and its aftereffects. She would revolutionize how the U.S. military took care of its wounded, its veterans, and its dead.

Barton and her volunteers were present at Second Manassas, the carnage at Antietam, and Fredericksburg. At Antietam, a bullet ripped through her sleeve, killing the man she was assisting. By 1863, the Army Medical Department was better equipped to meet the needs of the military, and Barton’s efforts were tiny in comparison. She remained on the fronts. In 1865, Barton started a nationwide campaign to identify missing soldiers, helping with the identification of 13,000 Union unknowns buried at the Andersonville, Ga., prison camp.

An innovation that began as an unwanted intrusion on the military is now a national institution.

She went to Europe on doctors’ orders, only to be convalescing at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Back in action, Barton assisted with the French relief effort, where she discovered the volunteers of the Red Cross, a charitable group that had been founded in Switzerland while she was working in the battlefields of the American South.

Returning to the United States, she started organizing the American chapter of the Red Cross in 1873. Congress recognized the American Red Cross in 1881 as a private aid provider in time of disaster. Industrialist John D. Rockefeller provided the resources to buy a parcel of land one block from the White House and build a magnificent marble headquarters building.

In 1905, Congress chartered the American Red Cross to “carry on a system of national and international relief in time of peace and apply the same in mitigating the sufferings caused by pestilence, famine, fire, floods, and other great national calamities, and to devise and carry out measures for preventing the same.” In World War I, the surgeon general enlisted the American Red Cross to set up 58 base hospitals in Europe. The American Red Cross recruited more than 104,000 registered nurses to serve in military hospitals. The group served similarly in the Korean War, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, the Balkans, and the Middle East, and continues to assist today in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At home, the American Red Cross responds to more than 70,000 disasters a year, from house fires to hazardous waste spills, from tornadoes to earthquakes. It provides 3,000 American hospitals with blood and blood products and assists 1.4 million active duty military families and 1.2 million members of the National Guard and Reserves. An innovation that began as an unwanted intrusion on the military is now a national institution.

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From the November/December 2007 issue of Serviam.

Captain Myles Standish, PSC

by J Michael Waller
Serviam, September-October 2007

When American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, private security and military contractors will have guarded the convoys bringing the turkey and gravy.

If not for the private security contractor (PSC) business, there would have been no Thanksgiving at all. For it was a PSC whom the Pilgrims hired in 1620 to join them on the Mayflower and provide security for what would become their new colonial settlement in Plymouth, Mass.

Myles Standish was a former English army soldier who had fought the Spaniards in the Netherlands. Private investors called the merchant adventurers financed the expedition of a small group of Puritan religious dissidents to establish a colony in northern Virginia—a royally decreed territory that at the time stretched as far north as present-day New York.

Standish was not a Puritan; he was a soldier and a businessman. He prepared for the Pilgrims’ security before the Mayflower left England. Under the authority of the British government, the merchant adventurers, and the colony’s civilian leader, Standish served the mission for pay.

He certainly earned his money.

Protecting a Vulnerable Band of Immigrants

According to the Mayflower log and historical documents compiled by the late historian Azel Ames, the weaponry aboard the small sailing ship was significant. The private party even had its own heavy ordnance. At least six cannons were aboard the Mayflower.

The Mayflower was not a warship; it was a freighter for the wine trade that seldom sailed out of sight of land. The three-masted vessel was not built for the open ocean. The guns and shot lay at the keel, providing ballast along with bars of raw iron for forging into tools, and extra chain and anchors.

John Carver, the leader of the small religious community of English exiles in Leiden, Holland, chartered the Mayflower and the services of its crew. Christopher Jones, a part-owner of the vessel, captained the 12-year-old ship. Carver hired John Alden, a cooper, and Standish, the military adviser.

“Standish served the mission for pay. He certainly earned his money.”

Apparently Captain John Smith of Jamestown fame, who had mapped and named New England a few years before the Pilgrim voyage, had sought a contract. The Mayflower group bought his maps but not his services. Smith ridiculed them in his 1630 book, True Travels, Adventures and Observations, for being too stingy, implying that, had they hired him instead of Standish, they would have avoided many hardships. Smith wrote of the colonists who “went to New Plimouth, whose humorous ignorances caused them for more than a year to endure a wonderfull deale of misery, with an infinite patience; saying my books and maps were much better cheap to teach them, than my selfe. . . .”

Like Smith at Jamestown, Standish led the recon missions to find a safe harbor for a settlement, establish relations with the local Indians, build fortifications, and provide the men with military training and organize them into a militia.

He earned his keep. Governor William Bradford would chronicle that as soon as the Mayflower landed on Cape Cod, Standish and 16 men went on a scouting expedition, armed with “musket, sword, and corslet.”

A Costly First Year

Half of the colonial expedition—Pilgrims and crew, including Standish’s wife, Rose—died by the end of the first winter in Massachusetts. All the survivors, with the exception of Standish and a half-dozen others, fell ill. Bradford recalled the “abundance of toil and hazard of their own health” that Standish and the hardiest displayed. For the sick, they “fetched them wood, made them fires, dressed their meat, made their beds, washed their clothes, clothed and unclothed them.”

The next year, in the new village of Plymouth, Standish supervised construction of a wooden fort at the top of a hill overlooking the harbor and the inland forests, and he mounted the cannons on its second floor. The first level served as a “meeting house” —a combination town hall, courthouse, and church. Sometime in 1621, tradition holds that the colonists and local Wampanoag Indians held the first Thanksgiving feast.

A PSC Rises to Leadership

Whether due to good relations with the friendly local Indians or the deterrent effect of the well-organized militia and relatively well-armed fort, Plymouth never came under direct enemy attack. But other English colonial towns would. Standish and his men volunteered to come to their aid when threatened or attacked, and in at least one case they left the invaders bloodied and dismembered. Some accounts say Standish led revenge raids and, in one case, used a medieval form of intimidation—mounting an enemy Indian’s head on a pike—to protect the colonists from further attack.

Such operations earned Standish criticism for being too harsh. But the colonists held him in high regard. They repeatedly elected him military captain of Plymouth, and, being accepted by the religious community even though he never joined their church, he held civilian posts as assistant governor and treasurer. He returned to England to renegotiate terms with the merchant adventurers and sell the colony’s debts to other investors. On his return to Plymouth, he remarried in 1623, raised a family of seven children, and founded the town of Duxbury, where he died in 1656. 

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J. Michael Waller wrote under the pan name Ann Jocelyn for the original version of this article. From the September/October 2007 issue of Serviam.