Making Prevention Contagious for the Holidays

Security in its broadest application is all about preventing adverse consequences, but the details of prevention can seldom compete against loss-inducing fads ranging from knockout game attacks, flash mob robberies, spree killing, and even to teen suicide. In the case of the latter, the magnitude of the challenge becomes apparent in a statistic: Since 1950, the suicide rate today is three times what it was then. However, the source of this statistic also offers new hope in trumpeting otherwise unheralded successes in curbing suicidal tendencies of today's teens. (For details on both data points, see http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2013/1208/Teen-suicide-Prevention-is-contagious-too)

What can we learn from such suicide prevention programs to inform other protection via prevention? First, there is a question of attitude. In the suicide prevention world, this comes down to noting and continually reminding oneself of reasons for living, as the linked article highlights. Perhaps no one said it better than concentration camp survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl in his book, Man's Search for Meaning, where he pointed out that what kept some concentration camp prisoners going while other, more or less identical prisoners lost hope and perished was that the survivors chose their attitude and set themselves tasks to perform every day. These are what the foregoing article today calls things to live for. Speaking in the voice of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle put it another way a century ago when he said that work remains the best antidote to sorrow. What, then, is the attitude to adopt to any protective challenge? It is that the challenge is attainable, a job to do, and one that is worth doing.

Second, what else can we learn? As in suicide prevention, protective action in general delivers its best yield when focused upstream of a crisis point. In other words, waiting until just before disaster is waiting until it is too late. One must anticipate adverse events and act in advance in order to channel them away from the worst of consequences. Prevention is best and most affordable when performed early, before a crisis has become apparent.

Third is a focus on relative costs and benefits. As a colleague in the protection business used to point out, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. The application to preventive action for situations less dire, such as protecting one's retail business, or trade secrets, or even for defending against some sophisticated form of reputational risk calls for similar taking of stock. What is the cost of neglecting security contrasted against a catastrophic loss? If we don't know or haven't thought this through, then we are most likely contributing to an unwitting acceptance of such risk. This is akin to the myopic perspective of a self-absorbed, callow teen obsessed with eluding temporary, often exaggerated torments through immolation without regard for the pain that suicide causes to others or the variety of alternatives which could not only have solved the ephemeral problem but ultimately led to the sweet self-satisfaction that maturity finds in another aphorism: Living well is the best revenge.

Here, in a nutshell, is the derived prescription for recharging the protective batteries of one's security prevention program for the holidays:

1. Adopt a can-do attitude based not on wishful thinking but on a candid appraisal of alternatives.

2. Focus prevention efforts upstream of the crisis point. Do the little things in advance so as to face less of a herculean obstacle just before all hell breaks loose.

3. Weigh relative costs against benefits, with an eye to long-term benefits. Remember that the cost of not taking prudent, preventive action is likely to outweigh the expense if the net result of inaction proves to be a catastrophic consequence.

Happy holidays.

-- Nick Catrantzos

Sopko Seeing Cash Cow in $34M White Elephant?

Why would Pentagon brass soldier on with construction of a multimillion dollar building in Afghanistan for a U.S. military that did not want it or had no reasonable expectation of taking up beneficial occupancy as America was announcing plans to withdraw from Afghanistan? John Sopko, Special Investigator for Afghanistan, raised this question before and, after being stonewalled with a perfunctorily report of the military's own inquiry into this matter, Sopko is back. (For details, see http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/05/miltary-watchdog-to-re-open-investigation-into-millions-wasted-afghanistan-hq/?intcmp=trending) Sopko's probe is no small task, and the answers and support that have eluded his efforts to date may signal a greater deception than mere bureaucratic stonewalling.

A look at the built-out but unoccupied facility cannot help raise eyebrows. If pictures shown in an unintelligible mangling of the original news story are better than the story's atrocious English (at http://www.daytodaynews.com/topstories/34m-white-elephant-watchdog-to-re-open-probe-of-unused-military-facility.html ), then the building looks like an ordinary administrative facility, rather than some exotic laboratory or production plant whose price tag traces more to the contents than to the structure of the complex.

Let us thread together some logical premises and conclusions to infer what dark current may be running beneath the glittering surface of what looks like a $34M waste of construction funds.

First, if the story Sopko unearthed so far is true, one military general has already gone on the record to rate this facility unneeded and undesired. That it also remains unoccupied only adds to this general's credibility.

Counterbalancing this general officer's doubts over the operational value of the facility, the Pentagon's internal probe of this expenditure apparently concluded that the construction was warranted and the expense justified. Now, assuming that generals do not reach flag rank by being stupid or demonstrably disingenuous in the face of legitimate audits, what legitimate reason could there be for one general's studied and fully staffed report to contradict a field general's unvarnished assessment of operational value?

The only category of answer that makes sense is this: There must be a higher, prevailing national interest at stake. And what might the face of that overriding national interest look like? It could very easily look like what may be variously called, on a scale of euphemistic intensity, offsets, facilitation payments, bribes, payoffs, kickbacks, or extortion payments.

In the United States and for U.S. companies, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act exists to curb the predatory impulse that leads some businesses to win contracts by lining the pockets of the entity awarding the contract and some customers to deny business to any entity that refuses to supply some kind of requested kickback. At its most benign, this process results in U.S. sales to foreign clients on condition of offering certain offsets to the high cost of items sold. Such offsets could take the form of assembling some components of a U.S. product in the buyer's country or accepting as partial payment some natural resource or manufactured goods that the buying country has in abundance. Thus, the buyer's sticker shock is offset with local benefits, like jobs for its citizens or an artificial market for goods that are not selling well on their own. Such arrangements could, at least theoretically, explain why a struggling Latin American country bought its jet engines from France instead of Britain or the U.S. because the French were willing to buy more bananas and set up an assembly facility in-country, whereas their competitors were slow to warm to such an arrangement. So much for the benign approach to offset, which may well be structured in legitimate and transparent terms.

Where does the ethically challenged version creep in? Countries run by plundering oligarchs are notorious for giving bidders to understand that it is impossible to do business in their country without having a local office run by a local national. Unsurprisingly, the best if not only such local office invariably ends up being operated by a government official's family member or tribesman. A commission, or facilitation payment, is expected to go to such an office, and woe to the international business that tries to compete only on the basis of product quality and competitive pricing. It soon becomes clear to serious business people from the outside that the only way to obtain business in such an arena is to pay. Such payment may take the palatable form of facilitation fees charged by a local office acting as middleman and perhaps even providing actual value. However, it may equally transpire that the business finds itself compelled to pay the same fees for no service at all. This becomes the cost of doing business in that particular market, no matter how unpalatable it may be. And some of the recipients of such payments are less subtle and more demanding than others.

Look to the contract and to where the bulk of the $34 million has gone since this white elephant of a building was commissioned. Was this a glorified cash-for-poppies program crafted to supply Afghani villagers with an alternative means of making a living in exchange for backing down from their opium trade? Was it a payoff to regional panjandrums to buy their cooperation or at least reduce their targeting of American combat troops? Or was it part of a quieter, national leadership arrangement to "facilitate" arriving at a desired level of cooperation with Afghani officials in positions of influence?

The Sopko probe may have been stalled, but it appears as unyielding as the Chinese water torture and, as long as it is not completely halted or undermined, it will eventually bring to light some instructive findings.

-- Nick Catrantzos