While al-Qaeda is a fragmented and highly compartmentalized organization — or set of organizations — it does not imply that there is no leadership and directedness to it. I tend to think that Rose is right in that certain spin-offs and localized extremist communities can be penetrated, but there is a core network to the jihadist movement that would be increasingly difficult to penetrate. Dan Darling and Dan Nexon have been having an interesting exchange on these issues.

My take is that the command-and-control paradigm is largely and American invention; part of the Pentagon lexicon. We shouldn’t conflate that with the presence or absence of hierarchy. “Leadership and coordination” is, in my view, perhaps a more accurate characterization of the kind of hierarchy a fragmented, dispersed network can withstand. The close one circles in to the leadership, the less possible it is to infiltrate — something Rose is unforgivably simplifying.

Thus, tactics against the localized self-starters versus tactics against the core leadership and crucial network nodes must be different. I think you are perfectly right that we should dispense with false dichotomies.

On a different note, the future of private defense seems promising. If only they’d just let the market work its magic:

Executive Outcomes: A New Kind of Army for Privatized Global Warfare

Shame they disbanded it, those guys were really good at what they did….